WHO: Marcus, Wren (looks like we got McLean and O'Brien in the bar coming in, as well! Yay, for public venues!) WHEN: After 10 pm, 8/13 WHERE: Picking up Wren at the infirmary, and then to The Four Horsemen to be social and stuff. WHAT: Drinking, talking... iunno. Truth or Dare? Impromptu glass juggling? Whatcha got? RATING: M for "Marcus" and also "Medium" (language, language, language) STATUS: In-progress. Long intro is long. Forgive me.
Punctuality was something Marcus valued. If a time was agreed upon by interested parties, then said interested parties had better show their asses on time. That was the way a perfect world should work, anyway, and Marcus liked to do his own small part to make the world work in the way he felt it should. So when he agreed to meet someone at a certain time, his ass was always there at that time, barring things like hospitalization or death. Of course, in this instance, since he was meeting Wren at the infirmary, hospitalization wouldn't have been an issue.
It was exactly 10 o'clock when he sauntered into the medical ward to meet Wren, duly uninjured and sporting a very strong, regular pulse. He was in decent spirits, having managed a shower earlier that day without wrecking the cast on his right hand. Clean hair helped a man feel civilly inclined, he always felt. Alas, no half-dressed blondes had been in the shower area that time, and he was perfectly aware that his chances of scoring with Wren were fairly low, given her recent trauma. So he was largely expecting the night to be much like many of his previous ones at Sing Sing, just with the addition of a little company.
It was better than nothing. Marcus was more than willing to play the part of the strong shoulder and willing ear for that company. Besides, he was genuinely curious about what Wren had seen. His knowledge of the killer and the victims was limited to what had been posted in public network posts by the so-called authority figures, which hadn't left much to go on. He'd personally seen nothing to make a judgment call on, and couldn't yet decide just how to feel about the whole thing. The fact that people were scared didn't weigh heavily with him, given how easily scared people could get. So far, what had unsettled him most was the threat that had been thrown out just before the mass interrogation. Failure to show up for your interview will result removal from Sing Sing's premises. Sure, there'd been may and possible thrown into the sentence at the time, muddying it up, but Marcus had read between the lines. Do what we say, or we throw you out. That was the shit that scared him. A lynch mob mentality and some poor asshole -- possibly his poor asshole -- getting a gate locked in his face because he hadn't toed the line to somebody's liking. Feeling like that was what had encouraged Marcus to piggyback onto their little rebellion in the first place. If it got worse, he might have to start making some serious plans about skipping town.
But Marcus still felt as though those plans were premature. For one thing, he hadn't heard anything since the interrogation, so whatever he'd said must have passed muster. The older man he'd spoken to - O'Brien - had seemed like a legitimate cop, not just someone playing the part, so there was reassurance to be had there. The guy hadn't flown off the handle at the smart-ass remarks Marcus had thrown out, either, which bespoke of professionalism. Both of those things were a comfort. It meant there was at least one person investigating this thing who was using his head, rather than knee-jerk reactions. So it was possible that the investigation itself wasn't a joke. Maybe they had real information, and were wisely keeping it to themselves. Whatever it was, Marcus just assumed that he'd been cleared. It wasn't like he was in good shape to be slaughtering the masses. So he wasn't worried.
He was a little curious as to what answers Wren had given. Although he'd asked her to keep quiet about his hand, he rather hoped she'd mentioned he'd been volunteering to hang out with her in the library. He wasn't sure why that mattered to him at all, but he liked the idea of someone knowing about it. Someone other than one of the other library regulars who'd spotted him there with her, that was. Who the hell knew what they thought about it. Probably that he was stalking the lady doctor against her will.
Fuck that noise. She'd said yes to the library. Said yes to meeting him on this night, too. And she always thanked him. If there was any stalking going on with him, it was between consenting adults.
This was a cycle of thoughts that had been played out before, though, and it wasn't exactly the right time for brooding, second-guessing silence. Not when he was supposed to be playing the friend to a distraught woman. That wouldn't do at all. So he shook himself out of it, walked up to Wren and gave her his best version of a comforting smile. "Hey, pajarita. Wanna get the hell out of here?"