Nicholas Shaw | Severus Snape (clairvoyantly) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-08-15 10:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | severus snape, supergirl |
Who: Nicholas Shaw & March Hatfield
What: A random meeting
Where: A bar in Vegas
When: Recently, let's say.
Warnings/Rating: Nada.
Some people might have described Nicholas' lack of interest in alcohol or partying as being 'straight edge', but it wasn't done out of a desire to follow some trend or to separate himself from the crowd. Simply put, alcohol didn't taste good, he disliked the effects it had on his mind and body, and something bad always seemed to happen whenever he had more than a single drink. Abstinence was best, no matter what peer pressure tried to tell him, and peer pressure was quite loud in Las Vegas. But bars were everywhere and potential clients seemed to prefer them as a neutral place to meet when discussing possible work, so Nicholas resigned himself to the fact that he had to step into them every so often and deal with the looks he inevitably got when he said that he didn't drink.
He only wished that this particular client could have canceled on him earlier than fifteen minutes after their scheduled meeting. Was there something so difficult about being prompt, on time, or even courteous to other people and the plans you may be impacting? Nicholas understood that emergencies happened, but it didn't seem like an emergency when someone canceled due to no longer needing their services. It was annoying, but not in a way that he couldn't push to the side to deal with later. If the woman called back, he would simply recommend to Noah that they not accept her as a client in the future if this was the way she was going to behave.
But for now, he was at the bar with no particular purpose, but feeling too awkward to leave after only a glass of water. So something was ordered, greasy in the way that bar food tended to be, along with an iced tea, because Nicholas felt that it was almost impossible to mess up a glass of iced tea. He'd stay for at least thirty minutes, long enough to shrug off that awkward feeling, enjoy the basket of fried things and the glass of tea, and then he'd leave. Until then, he'd try not to sit and ruminate on everything that was going on, including the strange journal of yellowed parchment that was currently sitting in the messenger bag he had slung over one shoulder.
Vegas hadn't been his idea, hadn't been his choice when all was said and done. He had been fine in Chicago, close to home, close to Valerie and their child, even if Nicholas didn't see them except for a couple times a year. But the lack of distance was comforting because he knew he could be there in a matter of hours no matter what. Here, in Vegas, in the middle of the desert, there were no guarantees, and he didn't like that. Nicholas enjoyed guarantees, enjoyed things he could rely on, lean on for support. There was enough of life that was left to chance that he liked having something he could trust. Pull that out from underneath him and the worry that he would drown in uncertainties was almost overwhelming. It took concentration, focus, and a lot of controlled breathing to keep those worries away, but all in all it made him someone who was tense, whose shoulders were set in rigid straightness.
It hadn't always been that way, though. If Nicholas sat and thought, he could remember when he had been able to relax, when he hadn't felt like the world was going to fall to pieces around him with the next breath he took. That was several years ago, and he didn't like to think on that, on what he had lost, on the pieces of him that were gone, taken away, eaten, snatched by something he still didn't have a name for, something that he couldn't think of for more than a moment or two without breaking out in a cold sweat.
Even now, just for those few moments, it was enough to have his palms sweating with anxiety. Nicholas shook his head, focusing on the cool of the glass beneath his palm, cold and wet, as he took a drink of tea that was too bitter.
Yes, it was possible to ruin a glass of tea, it seemed. But he drank it anyway and picked at the basket of fried things that had no taste.
March didn't, as a rule, go to bars. He couldn't drink, not with the cocktail of drugs in his system. He couldn't go looking for sex, because he was real abstinent, and he intended to stay that way. Heck, he didn't leave Turnberry real often, not unless it was to go ministering to the dying folks at work. It was too damn hot, and he couldn't push himself like he had once. Sweating was all fine and good, but dehydrating wasn't, not when he was on so many meds. He drove his cherry, 1965 'Stang everywhere, but there was still getting in and out of it to fuss over. No, March didn't normally go to bars.
Which meant March was at the bar for something that didn't have anything to do with what normal folks did at bars. Someone had died that morning at the hospice, which wasn't out of the ordinary. But the man's boy hadn't wanted to come see his daddy in a bag, which wasn't surprising. It happened plenty. Folks would come in for weeks, and they'd sit at their loved one's bedside and talk until they were hoarse for hours on end, even if the dying folk couldn't hear a damn thing. But the second it got close (and working in a hospice, you knew down to the hour when things were going to be ending), they left, and they never came back. So, the boy not coming, that wasn't real strange. And March meeting him to give him his daddy's scapular - the one the hospice priests had slung on the old man's neck days earlier - wasn't real strange neither.
March walked into the bar, loose khakis to his knees and a white, v-neck shirt that was meant to be under something, and not out showing itself. His boots were black, high on the shin, and he had on round glasses that fit themselves into the 60s. His black hair was mussed, and he looked young and free of worries. Pallor and thinness were fashionable these days, and no one thought a thing about them. He made his way right to the boy, and he didn't bother with words. He handed over the scapular, and he closed a hand on the boy's shoulder, and he stepped back when the boy scooted out his stool and took to leaving.
After waiting a few seconds, March nodded at the bartender. "Can I get a glass of water?" he asked, pulling out cash and making it real obvious he would tip for the sip.
Another sip of iced tea that he was having to force himself to drink, and Nicholas watched the short exchange between the man in the khaki and white and the boy sitting at the bar. He didn't say anything, didn't hardly move from where he sat at the bar, greasy fingers wiped on a bar napkin though it did little to clean the skin. Thumb and forefinger were rubbed together and he found himself wanting to go wash his hands, to get that film of grease off of his fingers immediately, but Nicholas pushed that desire away right then. His thirty minutes weren't up, not for another twenty. He'd wash up then.
It would have been incredibly easy to just continue on as he had been doing, but something told him he should be a little daring. It was possible, just not what he wanted to do, but neither had moving to Las Vegas in the first place. So Nicholas pulled himself out of his quiet and reached out with voice rather than hands. "I'd like to tell you to pass on the water and go for the iced tea instead, but it's rather awful." Was it the best intro to a conversation that he'd ever offered up? Likely not. But it was something, and that was more than Nicholas did on most days.
March wasn't expecting any talking, and he turned his head slow, not realizing the man was talking to him at first. It was the water that gave it away, because no one else in this place was sucking on a clear straw, and he rested an elbow on the bar and gave the man with the tea a smile that was southern sweet and tea that tasted plenty different on the tongue than whatever the man was drinking. "Ain't no one ever told you not to drink tea north of the Mason Dixon Line?" he asked. Once, when he was studying medicine and planning to actually be talking to folks at bedsides, he'd reigned in his accent, but there wasn't much of a point these days, and dying folks didn't really care what he sounded like. He was Kentucky, which was all Texas with more twang. There was nothing genteel about his voice, and he rumbled when he talked, old as the light in his dark blue eyes.
"I can't say that anyone has, save for you," Nicholas said in response, and unlike March's smile that was sweet and warm, Nicholas' was more reserved, a careful sort of expression that he didn't let out very often. There was nothing about him that read 'shy', however, so it wasn't a lack of social skills that left him quiet and tucked away from the world, but a simple lack of desire to employ their use any more than he had to. As such, his voice was quiet, carrying no accent that gave him a home anywhere you could pick out easily on a map. "Not that I spend a lot of time talking about such things." One shoulder shrugged up and he gave a nod of his head to the stool beside him, nudging over the basket of fried things that he had been picking at.
March had known plenty of reserved folks in his life. He didn't know what to make of them, as a rule. It was one of the reasons he had such trouble with Toby most days. Toby just kept everything on inside. Not like Jan, who was sweet as cherry pie and wore every damn thing about himself on his sleeve. He looked at the man with the tea, and he wondered what he was doing there, sucking tea from a straw in a place that probably hadn't bought new tea bags in near ten years. "You spend a long time talking about anything?" March asked, plain and taking a sip of his water. Might as well do some chatting, while he hydrated. He worried about every last thing he put into his body these days, including how much water flowed on through it. He wasn't moving himself until he'd finished the glass, and he didn't mind some casual chatter. It was expectations that set him itching, but he was real damn sure this man didn't want a thing from him.
If there was any disappointment that the offer of the seat went ignored, it didn't register on his face. It was an offer given out of politeness than anything else, so there were no hard feelings when it wasn't taken. He took another drink from the tea, the glass nearly half down, before pushing it away with the tips of his fingers. "Some things, yes," Nicholas responded, turning slightly, angling himself towards the other man. "Depends on the topic. I'm not much for small talk, but on other things, it's quite difficult to stop talking." He paused, gaze fixing somewhere over March's shoulder for a moment, growing far away, but only for a heartbeat. "Yourself? Or do you pass your days drinking water in bars?"
Sitting meant staying, and March didn't go sitting often these days. The problem with being his kind of sick was that it kept him apart. Sitting meant getting to know, and getting to know meant talking long, and talking long meant confessing things. He liked it fine like this. Some words and no real need to explain how things were with him. It was all lying, pretending, but he needed some of that in his life. He sipped at his water, and he watched the man angle. He was a handsome thing. Back when March was healthy and not thinking about things like dying, he would have liked those wiry curls just fine. But that time had gone and done, and he just grinned when the man said he didn't care none for small talk. "What gets you chattering?" he asked, his interest genuine. He didn't care if talking was small or big. It was all talking, but he liked thinking the man with the bad tea had something to say. "I never drink water in bars," he added, his smile coming more easy. "I pass the days same as anyone. Breathing in and out from waking to sleeping."
It was a simplistic view of the world, Nicholas thought. Breathing in and out from waking to sleeping. He liked that, so he filed it away in that place of his brain where things tended to stick, pushing forward from lingering on it too long and appearing more antisocial than he really was. "Things most people tend not to believe in," he responded to the question that was asked, the flicker of his eyes from the other man back to the top of the bar saying more than his words usually did. Nicholas was a firm believer in what he did, held onto it as truth, breathed it as though he would die without it, but he knew well enough that it wasn't a popular thing to believe in. He had had more than his fair share of folks giving him those looks that made him feel as though he were someone just trying to milk some money out of people who didn't have a lot to begin with, but it was never about that. Never about the money. It was about helping people and using this gift he had to do so.
His hands felt empty without the glass, so he picked up a napkin to worry between his fingers, not quite to the point of shredding it, but nearly so.
"Now that's a real cryptic response if ever I heard one," March said, all grin and a sip of that water that was starting to make the glass sweat. He watched the man look around, all flicker of eyes and not a whole lot more. He wondered how the man got there, but it was a real quick and fleeting thing, because March had never been about pushing hard. He thought this man might need someone who did that, someone who shoved and just kept on shoving until he gave something. He considered asking if there was anyone like that in the man's life, but he kept that hushed too. Asking, that meant telling, and March wasn't intending on telling a damn thing. His gaze followed the man's empty grip for a second, and he grinned when the man picked up the napkin and worried it on between his fingers. "You ain't got to stay here. There's no rule saying," he finally said, swallowing down that last swig of water. "Go on and do something more than twisting paper, son."
Nicholas gave a slight incline of his head to March's response, a small smile tugging at his lips. "It either shoos people away or interests them more. Either way, I normally benefit from it." If the other man didn't want to ask, that was quite fine with him. It was just idle talk, the sort that he was better at a number of years ago, but it had been a long time since this sort of interaction felt anything close to comfortable.
"And I know that I don't have to stay here," he answered a moment later, smoothing the napkin out and laying it down on the bar, fingers making some attempt to press out the wrinkles he had forced into the paper. "But it's polite. Better than running in and running out without a thought to the people who work here. If I use their establishment for something, I might as well make sure they get something from me in return." But his time was nearly up according to the mental stopwatch he had going, and the basket of fried things that might have been almost okay when they were hot had long since lost their appeal as they went cold in the air conditioned air of the bar. "But I've spent long enough." Nicholas wiped his fingers on the napkin and folded it neatly, tucked it in the basket along with what he didn't eat before pulling out his wallet to lay down several bills, enough to pay and enough for a tip. He wasn't bathing in tubs full of money, but he appreciated people who worked in these sort of things, and would never try and save a little and avoid tipping. Only then did he slide from the stool, an average-heighted thing without an extra ounce of fat on him. Even in the Vegas heat, he was covered up from head to toe, a collared shirt with every button fastened, sleeves down to his wrists, dark pants. "Are you leaving as well?" he asked, sliding his hands into his pockets, giving the other man a long look that demanded nothing from it.
March wasn't real sure he agreed about needing to sit on down and buy something, just because he'd walked into a place. But, then, he'd never wanted for money none, and he'd never really stopped to think of folks here as anything but workers. They got paid to stand around, and they might even like it better if they didn't have to wait on so many damn people the day through. It was a different way of looking at things, something privileged that hadn't gone fleeing with his few years in the Fischer house when he was real small, before water had gone seeping in his lungs and bringing the reality of eventual death crashing on with it. He looked up when the man said he'd spent long enough, and he nodded and gave him a smile that had obviously been a heap of trouble once upon a time. These days, it was just a smile. "I'm going," he said easy, sliding a wad of thoughtless cash across the bar and taking one last ice cube from his glass of water. "You have yourself a nice day," he added to the stranger, already turning to get on. He wasn't sure how he felt about meetings that didn't go anywhere, and it just drove home how damn lonely he was these days. He should check on his brothers, and he should see if Ford was ready to move on in, he decided halfway to the door.
"You as well," Nicholas said in response, watching the other man leave even as he lingered a bit longer, thoughtful for a long moment about bits and pieces of that conversation. It didn't last long, that thoughtful moment, before Nicholas departed the air conditioned bar for the Las Vegas heat, a pair of sunglasses slid over his eyes as he joined the other pedestrians making their way somewhere and nowhere at the same time.