WHO: Silver and Alice WHAT: Meeting under odd circumstances WHERE: Wren's suite at Caesars Palace WHEN: Directly after this. WARNINGS: None!
True to her word, Alice had a room ready for Silver when he arrived. She had prepared as she could have been with the details that Wren had given her, knowing she could have pressed for more information but figuring that the time was better spent trying to round up what was asked of her. When Wren had arrived back at the suite with Silver in tow, Alice had watched them out of the corner of her eye, watching which room he picked and then turning her attention back to her phone call with a doctor.
It wasn’t too much longer until she heard a knock at their door, and she was glad she was at least decently dressed in jeans and t-shirt to quickly answer it. She spared the suite a glance to see where Wren was - and couldn’t find her - but didn’t dwell on it and focused on the doctor who had come up. After quick introductions she led him inside and had him follow her to Silver’s door, giving it a quick and firm knock. She hoped he wasn’t asleep.
“Mister...” Damn. She hadn’t caught his full name. “... Silver? It’s Alice. Doctor Jenkins is here. About your heart?”
Reclining half-upright on the bed surrounded by finely plushed pillows was Silver, still in his loose-fitting t-shirt with the blue glow of the phone near at hand. He was awake, finding some cool, deep place in his mind to erase anything that interfered with simply being, a place without numbers or letters, only voices and oddly cool orange light. Tony hated it, but Silver was good at ignoring Tony by this time, and the meditating helped. It also helped modulate his breathing, and when his breathing was steady his chest didn’t hurt. He opened tawny eyes halfway to see what was at the door, and then very intentionally opened them all the way to take in Alice and the person behind her.
Silver looked good, to all appearances. His color was back, and compared to most of the Vegas natives, so careful to stay in their air conditioned boxes, his skin was naturally closer to the color of the desert than the oasis casino brick. “Hello.” He should have known Wren was serious about the doctor. Despite his dismay on that count, he gave Alice a small smile visible across the room.
The doctor came in, but he was too good at his job to immediately take Silver’s word to turn right around and leave again, though he was surprised at the technology implied by the six connected wires over the left side of Silver’s chest after he helped him take the shirt off. There was a conversation that was probably meant to be uncomfortable, but Silver was too still and serious for discomfort, as long as he didn’t try to move. The doctor took Silver’s blood pressure, which was apparently at normal if not better than normal for his age, blood for a BNP test, and tried to get him to go to a hospital. The patient politely declined. He also wouldn’t let the doctor replace Tony’s advanced, nearly wireless EKG system with the one the doctor wanted to bring in. This one was recording readings in comparison to patterns and he didn’t want to remove it. In the end, the doctor was the one who got agitated, and Silver just looked thoughtful; the EKG stayed.
Alice waved her fingers in hello but remained silent, the doctor moving around her and fussing too loudly and too often to be interrupted. She remained on the sidelines, back to the wall, fingers gently pulling and twisting around each other until she forced them behind her back. She wasn’t too surprised that the new guest declined the hospital; if he felt like going he would have by now and not to a friend’s apartment. So when the doctor shot her an incredulous glance she merely shrugged her shoulders and showed him out, thanking him for his time and slipping him the agreed payment for services and discretion.
When she returned, because hovering duties weren’t done quite yet, she knocked on the slightly ajar door before peeking her head in and leaning on the doorframe. “Is there anything you’d like me to get?” This wasn’t what she imagined for her first day on the job, but he was a guest of Wren’s and it was the sort of question she’d ask of her boss, so it felt only natural to ask it of him. “For you? Or for your...” She gestured slightly over her own white shirt. What had been that piece of tech she had seen over the doctor’s shoulder? She hadn’t seen his face but she easily read the surprise that tensed Jenkins’ back and noticed the unwavering calm on Silver’s face. It wasn’t common, so if there was something it needed to function, she might as well ask now while he was awake and stable.
After the doctor decided on strategic retreat, Silver picked up one of the beautiful pillows that he judged as much for its soft embroidered fabric as for its pretty charms and stuffed it under his lower back. He smiled again at the woman that remained at the room, taking her measure in the unthinking physical observations of his past trade (height, weight, build, race, hair and eye color, general features) before looking at her again as a whole in an attempt to find personality and meaning. Silver was like that.
He glanced down at the electrodes and leads visible on his chest and sighed. Silver did not pound protein or lift weights, but there was definition and effort where there could have been softness and prosperity, and he wasn’t embarrassed about his skin, just about his state and the tech on it. “I know it looks bad. But I just need... a couple days to get... back on my feet.” He spoke on the rhythm he breathed, and he was better at it than Tony, who just rambled until he ran out of breath. He never rasped and yet he couldn’t seem to take a deep breath either. To Silver it felt much like drowning, but in very slow motion. “I could use something to eat.” He shifted, thought for a second, measuring his ability, and then pushed his feet off the bed.
Alice was very good about not staring, just a quick glance at his chest before raising her eyes and settling on his face. He said it looked worse than it was, and the doctor had left even after his own protests, so if rest was what was prescribed then rest Silver would get. And food. She smiled warmly at his request. Appetites were a good sign.
She immediately stepped to him, offering a hand when she saw he was getting up, even if he wasn’t going to take it. Habit, that. “Not sure what we have around. I haven’t had a chance to check. But we can check.” We. She wasn’t going to let him out of her sight. “Or I can have them bring something up?” They were now in one of the biggest suites Alice had ever seen. Wren’s accounts could afford whatever the restaurants were offering downstairs.
Silver was not unobservant, and it was only his heart that wasn’t working. He caught the look at his chest and when she looked back up, his smile had acquired a certain unmistakable smugness that was male up and down. He didn’t overdo it, and Tony would have accompanied the look with a clever comment (which he immediately volunteered in the back of Silver’s head), but Silver just completed the process of standing, breathing carefully and tipping upward to angle his spine out of the uncomfortable fold. His shoulders ached but avoiding the stabbing pains was preferable to good posture. He touched her arm with a light three-fingered touch, grateful but dismissing the support. He could walk.
“Or a cab back to my place; I also need clothes. A shirt I can button, for example.” The smile acquired dangerous hints of Tony, but it was a ghostly impression and so soon gone that one had to squint to imagine where it had been to begin with.
There he went, a shirt making Alice remember the glimpse of his shirt, made her almost look again before she caught herself. Oh, please, said a voice not too unlike her own in the back of her head and she rolled her eyes before she could think too much on it, though there was a hint of an embarrassed smile tugging at her lips. “I’ll have someone grab some of your things shortly.” Someone was probably going to be here though she hadn’t settled on that idea, and wasn’t ready to disclose it just yet.
Instead she opened the doors for him as they moved through the suite. “Is there anyone I should let know about your... temporary location?” At every turn she was finding that she new painful little about the man, or the exact protocol to something like this. “Hell of a first day,” she muttered with a shake of her head and a soft laugh on her lips.
Silver didn’t care for the idea of someone going through his things, especially without him there. Old habits set up precautions so that he’d know without question if someone entered his space, whether it was the garage, the van, or the working cars. He knew the offer was meant to be helpful, and smiled. “No, I’d rather not. I can... go pick something up this evening.” A cab, if necessary. Which it probably would be. That, or he could wash his shirt in the sink. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t before.
Silver shook his head. No one to notify, no one to notice. Felicia already knew, and there was no one else. Depressing, but true. He tipped his head. “Is it your first day?” They stepped out into the main suite, with Silver pausing to lean his weight on one of the chairs.
“Yeah,” she breathed with a sigh and a chuckle all at once. “Still sort of wrapping my head around it. I was supposed to start in a few days but hey there’s no better time like the present, right? Hitting the ground running is the way to go. It’s just a shame you’re getting front row seats to my fumbling.” She left his side once he found something to lean on and maneuvered around to peer through cupboards and then fridge. Dry goods, snacks, drinks of all kinds, she frowned slightly as she kept looking though she did show off the bags and boxes to Silver to see if anything appealed. Soup, the tried and true choice for anything that ailed as far as Alice was concerned - heart problems be damned, was her goal but was nowhere to be found. Maybe she’d just order something, or pop out for something elsewhere.
“I can give you a ride back home if you like?” She did have to watch over and she’d be bringing him back there. “My car’s downstairs. Haven’t quite grasped the ‘no driving on the Strip’ concept yet.” Though she was learning. That long stretch of road through the heart of Vegas tourism was driving her crazy with all the traffic but at least it would serve her well tonight.
In Silver’s world, all information had value, and knowledge was currency. He weighed revealing his life and home to strangers and indirectly to Wren (an obvious master of information, and manipulation, where necessary). Silver didn’t mind being honest with Wren, but he preferred to do it to her face, where he could judge her reaction and overcome his natural impulses. He had known Alice all of ten minutes, and he was sure that she was a very nice woman, but that didn’t mean he wanted to send her out into the world with his address and his key, or more than that, allow her into his private world when he was not in the shape to defend it.
Silver reflected that the weakness was making him defensive. Tony told him he was being paranoid.
“You’re kind to offer, but no, thank you.” Silver smiled at her. “I think... I’ll have a friend bring me something.” Silver knew a dry-cleaner that owed him favors up and down because he brought the business so many high-profile clients. People left fine clothes there all the time, and he’d probably have no few button-up shirts he could drop at the front desk. Moving with care, he joined her in the kitchen. He was disappointed to see that there was nothing fresh, everything packaged and preserved, but he chose a package of dried fruit, a cereal bar and some wildly expensive iced tea. “You’ve just moved here... then?”
She gave him a sympathetic smile as she watched him choose his food. “Yeah. Here,” she gestured to their luxurious surroundings, “and to Vegas. This definitely beats couch surfing though it remains to be seen whether or not it’s better than San Francisco.” She was only mildly embarrassed though it was more about her constant babble rather than what she was telling him about herself. Sharing wasn’t an issue with her and Silver seemed very nice. “So now you know why I take my hovering oh so seriously. Can’t get bumped back to unemployment line so soon, now can I? But I promise I’ll ease up some. Sometimes it’s just easier to nudge until you find the line and then scale it back, you know?”
With his square proportions and distinctly casual manner of movement, it was obvious that Silver wasn’t used to moving cautiously, and his rounded shoulders and careful distribution of weight didn’t suit him. He sat with a somewhat pained sigh on the excessively white sofa and took out a dried apricot to gnaw on as he contemplated the luxury. He wondered who paid for the hotel, an extravagance that he found incredibly excessive, but over the course of his life he’d known many people with just as much money and just as eccentric. In his experience, Silver thought that such people hired efficient, intrinsically quiet assistants that were good at blending in and scheduling things. Alice did not strike him as someone that blended into the background. “What did you do before this?” he asked, curiously.
“Jury consults mostly,” Alice replied, half hidden by the door for the refrigerator as she grabbed some juice to pour herself a glass. “Talking with firms about what sort of people they want to be looking for. What backgrounds will help or hinder their case. Definitely nothing like this.” She swung the door closed with her hip before turning back to Silver, leaning on the edge of the counter. “Though this isn’t really the norm, is it?” She was hired for scheduling and dealing with clients, and then some. Wren’s driver and friend living with them fell into the latter category but it was new and abrupt enough to throw her slightly off course. Still, the longer she was in his presence the less worried and nervous she was getting. She’d find her balance again soon enough. “Have you been Wren’s driver long?” she asked over the rim of her glass.
The law. Interesting. That explained the inquisitive manner. Silver suspected that Wren must know Alice on a personal basis, as he’d never seen the woman before and Wren was quick to leave her in the apartment with (he assumed) a great knowledge of her personal business. Wren was not quick to trust; after all, Silver hadn’t even used that first name since the day before yesterday. “A few months. Not always.” There were cheaper ways Wren could get around them him, but of course that would require hiring someone on salary and providing benefits and a certain familiarity that she could pretend she didn’t have with Silver’s more private, specialized services.
“Vegas is an interesting place to work. You’ll either love it or hate it within the next few months.” Silver ate all of the snacks, not greedy but obviously with appetite, and after drinking half the tea while he listened to Tony theorize plans on how he would handle Loki, he settled back into the couch. Nearby the high-tech glass phone scrolled numbers and the bobbing line of a heart monitor over its glowing surface, and Silver’s eyes drooped.
Alice was about to laugh, about to agree that the next months would be telling but that was part of the fun of something new. She set her now empty glass in the sink but when she moved to Silver, her conversation died on her lips. Quietly grabbing a blanket from the other room. she settled it on him and picked up the discarded wrappers. As she walked away, she sent a text onto Wren on Silver’s status. All was taken care of, for now.