Poe was a ballerina (ex_claret380) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-03-18 13:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | ballerina, hit girl, viola |
Who: Matty, Poe and Preston
What: Checking on Mockingbird related injuries
Where: Hamartia
When: During the blackout
Warnings: Some talk of gay-bashing, blood
By the time Poe hung up with Preston his lips were bright red, and he was having trouble sitting upright. The conversation had taken a lot out of him, but he wasn’t sorry he’d had it. He held the phone out to her. “He’s on the stairs,” he told her, assuming she’d been listening and would know pretty much who she was talking about. He wanted to thank her, just in case, but he thought maybe that’d be bad luck, so he didn’t. He just tried to smile a little, which he kind of managed in the dark. He wished the lights would turn on, too, but they hadn’t, and then he was maybe glad Preston wouldn’t be able to see how bad he looked.
Matty hadn't realised the stupid kid was bleeding internally, and admittedly, she probably should have checked him over better, but he'd still been running when she saw him and he hadn't exhibited any signs of shock. That meant a slow bleed. She'd been ready to carry him downstairs and liberate one of the empty cars on the street to get him to the likely overtaxed hospital, but someone was apparently coming to get him, which might actually be faster than the time it would take to find a car she could hotwire.
"He better be," she grumbled. "I refuse to let you die of internal bleeding in my kitchen, I just got this fucking apartment and I am not giving up the fucking security deposit over your corpse." Between the lines, there was concern there, but you had to squint to find it.
Problem was, Matty didn't like people, and she was not supposed to get herself this involved with a victim. She could almost hear her father's voice in her ear that involvement just gets you caught, that the best you could do for someone who had suffered an attack was call them an ambulance and move on. She tried to reassure the phantom nagging her that she was doing just that, but really, if that had been all she was doing, she would have gotten him back to his own apartment and left him to sort himself out. She had made him her problem instead, which was a sign of weakness, because if you tried to save one person you had to try to save everybody. They were supposed to focus on taking out the bad guys, not nursing the victims.
She moved toward the door to wait for Poe's rescue, but first checked around his mouth to see how much blood was there - not that she cared, again. "Stupid motherfuckers." She would never understand what drove people to do things like beat up a defenseless kid like Poe, and her daddy had told her that was important - she shouldn't understand it, because criminals were evil. If you understood evil too well, you could be drawn in, made weak and sympathetic, and that could not be abided.
Third floor. Preston had taken a side entrance into the staircase, into an emergency door that never closed, and climbed the stairs two at a time, bypassing the lobby entirely. He didn’t knock on the third door down the hall, he just tried the door and pushed his way in. “Poe?” Preston was hardly an imposing opponent, and threatening moves in his direction just resulted in a stare of confusion. He looked like what he was, all business and secretary, but he gave Matty a steady, measuring stare before crouching next to Poe and putting a hand up to his face to see the visible damage.
Poe tried to sit up straight when Preston walked in, but it just resulted in his arm moving to guard his stomach and that same almost-hunch he’d had since the stairs. When Preston crouched, Poe was glad; it made it a lot easier than having to look up. He threw Matty a look, that would have been an impressive glare if it wasn’t for the fact that one of his eyes was swollen shut and his lips were bright red. “I think Matty might really be a boy,” he confided to Preston, lowering his voice when he said it, because the girl was still a little terrifying.
Preston didn’t try to touch Poe’s chest or stomach without warning, but he recognized the movement. His fingers were cool on Poe’s cheek, and the light wasn’t great, so he had to make do with what he could see. His mouth thinned, but he didn’t say anything. “Why do you say that?” he asked, low in response, focusing on keeping Poe talking. He lifted one hand to Poe’s mouth and when it came away wet, he took in a deep breath through his nose.
“Because she beat away three guys with a crowbar,” Poe confided, because maybe telling Preston he hadn’t been able to fight the guys off himself wasn’t such a big deal, not when Preston had been beaten up, too. “I think my stomach is what’s worst,” he confided.
“I think so too, Poe,” Preston said in his even voice, “We need to get you to a hospital, and I can do it quickly, but I don’t want to move you too much. We’re going to have to wait for an ambulance and the stretcher.” He looked at Matty, sure that she would take the hint and call for help. Back to Poe, he didn’t lift from his crouch but rather eased a knee down and sat on his haunches rather than crouching.
“I made it up the stairs,” Poe said immediately, because no way was he getting carried out of here. It was going to be hard enough to explain this to his friends without telling them he’d had to be carried out like a baby. “I can make it back down. Are you in love with Blake?” It sounded all like one sentence, mushed together and without any punctuation between the words.
“You could, but this is safer. You can blame it on my mothering.” Anton did that, and the term made Preston smile when he did not feel like smiling. Preston took a square of cloth out of his coat pocket and wiped the blood of Poe’s mouth. “No. He’s not in love with me, either.” He was rather sad about that, rather than superior; you could hear it.
“But I want to be able to tell my friends I at least did something badass,” Poe explained, using a word that sounded new on his tongue, because it wasn’t his, it was Bly’s. “Other than just get saved by a girl,” he added in a hush. He reached for the cloth, and he finished wiping his mouth himself before replying to the Blake comment. “That makes you sad?” he asked.
“Love is a difficult thing for both of us. I think I only compounded the problem,” Preston confided. It felt strange to speak of it. He usually buried such things deep. Taking his hand back, he let Poe keep the bit of cloth, though he would have liked to do something with his hands that was useful. He lifted up a little and touched Poe’s elbow to get him to lift it. “Let me see.”
Poe didn’t immediately lift his elbow. “I haven’t looked,” he admitted.
Preston met Poe’s eyes. “It’s easier to pretend it’s not there.” The paramedics were coming. Preston pulled his hand back. “Let’s leave it. Tell me about your dance. Or let’s talk about something else.”
Poe didn’t argue. “If I have broken ribs, I’ll be out for the season,” he said, referring to the dancing, and he shook his head. “Tell me how you... compounded the problem,” he said, hesitating to find Preston’s word again. “He thinks everything bad is going to happen all the time,” he added about Blake.
“Yes. I didn’t reassure him.” Preston put his hands on his knees and sat back on the tile. He could hear Matty on the phone, clipped and angry at the delay. He didn’t know how to reassure Poe about his dancing, not knowing enough about it to even try. “It’s a bad habit.”
“Not telling people everything is going to be ok?” Poe asked, a little bit of a smile in it at the echo from their phone conversation. “I don’t think you think everything is going to be ok,” he guessed. “Right?”
“I think you will,” Preston said. “But not everything.” He wanted to be sure that he was doing a good thing with this conversation, but he couldn’t, and he looked visibly uncertain.
“But not you?” Poe asked, shifting with a whimper and a spasm of coughing and blood against the cloth between his fingers. “Why haven’t you told me I can’t see Blake?” he asked after, as he caught his breath again.
Preston rose up off his heels and back into the crouch again. He knew enough not to touch Poe’s chest, but he caught his shoulder and supported him carefully. “Try not to cough. Breathe slow if you can.” Maybe this was not the right conversation to have. “Because I’ve no more right to tell you who to see than the people who did this.”
“It’s going to be ok,” Poe reminded him. “Remember, you said so. Maybe we should go, though. If there aren’t any lights anywhere, I bet the ambulances are busy with accidents and stuff,” he said, some worry slipping through despite the original reassurance. “How old are you?”
“They’ll come. It’s safer if they come.” He was afraid to move him. There was a lot of blood, and even Preston knew what it meant when you were coughing up blood. “We’ll wait a little while longer.” Shifting, unable to decided again, Preston leaned back. “Thirty-four.”
Poe’s expression was one of uncertainty, but in the end he slumped back a little more comfortably, because Preston was the adult, and he had to know what was better, right? “Ok, so tell me things, besides your age, while we wait,” he said, wanting the distraction more and more the longer they had to wait.
Preston was temporarily at a loss. “I work for Anton Sparke and help him run his business.” It was not the way he typically put it to people, but he did this time. “I live in Bathos... it’s not far.” His hand moved in that general direction.
“Sparke Industries, where Bly works,” Poe said, and he watched Preston’s hand as it moved in the direction of a place he didn’t know. “Does Shiloh live there, too?” he asked, the sound of sirens finally filtering in distantly through the window.
“Bly is one of your friends?” He should have known. He sighed, but shook his head. “Shiloh does, yes. It’s a nice building; you can visit us there.” Preston glanced quickly to the door and back. “I’m going to bring the paramedics back here. Don’t move, Poe.”
Poe nodded at the question about Bly. "Why did that make you sigh? Don't you like him?" he asked, but the question was forgotten as soon as Preston looked toward the door and back. He nodded, fear passing his face as the reality hit that he was really going to the hospital.
“I’ll be back, and we’ll go together,” Preston said, recognizing the fear perfectly. He remembered all the times he’d come home bloody, remembered an empty house and knew that he hadn’t called a hospital, not ever. Poe would have someone to come with him. Preston would make sure of it. He nodded a little, and disappeared out the door to meet the paramedics.
Matty had given the paramedics a piece of her mind when they said that there would be a delay in getting the ambulance sent out to pick up Poe. She was trying and failing not to feel guilt for not identifying right away that he should have been kept immobilized, and daddy was right, of course, because all she’d done was make all of this more complicated and get sucked in and involved. She picked up the crowbar from beside the door, checking out the window. “Looks like those assholes turned tail and ran,” she said, with no small amount of satisfaction mingled in the contempt. She picked up a fresh towel from the kitchen and brought it back to Poe, taking the one already bloodied and tossing it into the trash. “He’ll be back in a minute,” she said, probably the closest she’d get to comforting. And anyway, if he wasn’t back in a minute, she’d go running after him and drag him and the paramedics upstairs by their collars.