splitbrain (splitbrain) wrote in oblivion_rp, @ 2010-04-28 23:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2009-12-29, danny, flint |
Never mind the creaking in the walls...
Who: Danny and Flint
When: 1:30AM
Where: Flint’s room, ship at large
What: Some kind of fucked up scavenger hunt
Danny was not freaking out. Categorically not freaking. There was no freaking going on because, yeah, he wasn’t freaking out just because he’d ripped his fucking cabin apart and still couldn’t find his shoulder bag, checked every bar on board, the lost and found, talked with every one he knew on crew who might know anything about where he’d been the night before didn't mean he was freaking out. He managed to track his progress from bar to bar, sleuthed out who he’s talked to, who he’d pissed off (Keane, some guy named Juan, his boss, but that wasn’t anything new) and for all his efforts no one could say definitively where he’d been during the hours of the blackout. Frankly all that left was Flint the mysterious pants thief but he’d been out of his room whenever Danny went by that afternoon.
By evening he still didn’t know where his bag was and was beginning to think that he’d hidden it from himself. Theft would be possible except his camera, laptop and valuable he’d left locked in his cabin and his bag had contained exactly his photos (dumped on Delia's floor) a granola bar, his notebook, pencil shavings, the fucking pager, his medication, a book of Chinese children's stories, an eraser, his medicine, a couple pens, a cheap recorder, and - oh yeah - his fucking medication. The last possible place and the last possible lead he had was Flint and his calling card and Flint was missing all day long and at some point between 9 and 12 that night Danny laid back in his cabin to close his eyes then opened them on the Arete Deck at 1AM. He had no idea how he got there.
At one thirty - after taking some time to have a short panic attack - he went to Flint's cabin again and banged on the door. He didn't give a shit if this man was the creepiest creeper who ever lived to molest him, he needed to know where the hell his meds were before (Jesus calm down. You're not that bad off.) things got any worse. BANG! BANG! BANG!
"Flint open up! Open up!"
Danny certainly had an interesting sense of timing. Last night? He showed up -- completely plastered -- singing Bon Jovi right after Flint had showered. Wonderful first impression. Tonight? He managed to show up less than five minutes after Flint had made it back to his stateroom after the 1920's party. The older man was tired but... happy. Relaxed. He was really getting a handle on interacting with people. Well. He was trying. That counted.
Flint hadn't even had a chance to remove the outfit that Delia had helped him put together when he heard the frenzied banging on the door to his sitting room. The complete outfit. Dark double-breasted vest, black fedora and trousers, white shirt and bow-tie. Only the pocket-watch had been unclipped and safely put away. He was headed out of the bedroom and towards the pounding on the door when he heard Danny's voice and internally groaned. Now? Seriously? Forgetting to take a moment to close the double doors to his bedroom, Flint sighed. Knew this was coming. Left the card. Wonder how much he remembers. He crossed the sitting room and opened the door to the hallway. "Danny," he greeted quietly. Stepped aside for the younger man to enter so he wouldn't have to push past him this time.
"Look," leveled Danny, making no move toward the interior of the room just yet. Other than the fact this guy had swapped out his jeans for a pair of cargos he didn't know a thing about the gentlemanly looking fellow standing the door of the room. Flint was not the ass raping hulk that Danny might have speculated but rather a a bookish looking graying man in a fine suit that looked like he should have taught at universities and talked with an English accent. He should have felt a sense of irony, amusement, curiosity, a desire to ask him every detail of their interaction because this guy was not the sort of guy who undressed strangers in Danny's mind. But all he felt then was a hot, curling, impending sense of urgency and an intense pressure behind his eyes.
"I'm certain I did hiliarously ridiculous things while under the influence of enough alcohol to knock out a cart horse and his driver but seriously, Flint, whoever you are and whatever happened and however I lost my pants or whatever else of significant import that took place in the ungodly hours I don't remember last night -" He stopped to take a deep and much needed breath. "I need to know if I left a shoulder bag in here." A pause. Blue eyes flickered briefly to the side. "You know... with my pants."
And whatever Flint had expected from Danny, this had not been it. He read a sense of desperation in the younger man's stance and tone. Something in him had expected The Return of Danny Boyd -- yes, in caps, like that to be the sequel to the original visit. Brash. Loud. Reckless. Loud. Then again, hangovers never did tend to think volume to be a positive thing. The quieter, the better. Flint remembered.
Pulling off the fedora and feeling a little sheepish about it, as if he was trying to recall his manners... and his mannerisms... he tilted his head to the side. The Flint that could sit at a piano for four hours and have the basic capacity to interact with people was not the same one that Danny had met the night before and wasn't really the same man standing in front of him now. He felt better, like a truer version of himself after the music... but he couldn't ignore the fact that his encounter with Danny -- whether the photojournalist remembered it or not, clearly not -- had left him unsettled and a little surreal. Even standing in front of him right now, Danny pinged something in the back of Flint's mind, things he should be piecing together and figuring out. He shook his head to clear it, rubbed his free hand over the back of his neck. Deal with the situation at hand. Puzzles? Thoughts? Save it.
"Didn't have one. A bag. Last night." Flint stepped away from the door so Danny would have no choice but to follow him into the room if he wanted to continue talking. He limped over to the nearest end-table and set down the fedora. The cuff-links he'd taken from his sleeves earlier were taken from his pockets and set inside the hat. Adjusting his rolled shirtsleeves, he turned back around to face Danny. He hoped his fragmentary speech didn't disconcert his guest but frankly Flint was too tired to do any better. Talk about the pants? Or no? Deciding against it for the time being, he merely added, "Welcome to look around. But... almost certain. When you came down the hallway? No shoulder bag."
Flint moved - with the exception of a limp - with a smooth and calm sort of assurance that spoke of method and control that Danny, explosive, incendiary, brash, and loud, could never understand. In his body language Danny read some surprise, a quick and penetrative look in his eyes and Danny felt that he too was being read and whatever was scripted on his face slightly unsettled the man. More than his banging on the door at 1 in the AM. He was detecting something more subtle (though Danny couldn't really hazard what) and it set him slightly on edge. Nevertheless, he followed Flint into the room, shut the door behind him and was unfazed by the unique cant of his speaking. He felt like he'd heard it before - probably had - and somehow the sound of his voice, more than anything else, Danny felt he recalled from before.
But he hadn't brought the bag into this room.
Dammit. Danny's eyes shut briefly, a ripple of tension sliding through his skin, down from his shoulders, down his spine through his thighs to his toes and he had to force himself with a burst of pins and needles through his finger tips to relax. He sighed audibly and lifted a hand to rubs his forehead where a sharp heat was pressing at the back of his left eyes, ghostly shrapnel glowing cherry red behind the orb of his dark blind eye. He dropped his hand and sighed, "Kay, that means I lost it some time between then and 8 last night. That's a long time..." He didn't have the energy for his usual volume, his voice spent for reasons beyond drunkness and worry. "Umm... sorry about whatever I did last night. I know for a fact I'm a rowdy drunk so good of you to help me out or clean me up or..." He scrubbed his face. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! "Thanks, Flint. It was decent of you."
Control: Flint had it in spades. The man was more than controlled; he was contained. If he wasn't so... What? Calm? Exhausted? No. Not quite that. Too jazzed. From the music. Bad, bad pun. Whatever it was Flint was feeling, he didn't have it in him to put up his usual bland facade. At Danny's audible sigh, Flint turned and watched as the younger man massaged his forehead. More than desperation. What words had Danny used to describe his drunken state less than twenty-four hours before? Ah, yes. Appropriately... properly... fucked. S'how he looks now. Like something more is... wrong. Very wrong.
After Danny's apology and thank you, listening to how worn down he sounded, Flint knew exactly what was going to happen next. Gonna help him. Don't know how, yet. Compartmentalize. Delia? Keep her secrets. Danny? Keep his. Already reaching up and pulling at an end of his white bow-tie to undo it, Flint softly returned, "Welcome." A beat. "You really don't remember? Anything?" The tie loose around his neck, stark against the charcoal vest, Flint pushed his hands into his pockets and leaned his weight onto his good leg. This might not be the best idea he'd ever had, certainly not after a long day, but something about Danny made the introvert want to reach out and help him. If he really remembered nothing, it must have been confusing at best to find himself in Flint's cargo pants wherever he'd wound up. Not to mention the playing card. Real nice. Snarky last words to the blitzed boy. And there was something else bouncing around Flint's head, about how Danny had scoured the nightstand in the bedroom looking for some sort of medication, his reaction when it hadn't been there. Offering further assistance to Danny was the only thing his conscience would allow him to do.
"Want help? Retracing your steps? Finding the bag?"
“Hmm,” said Danny, moving deeper into the room. “Remember arguing at the bar and that’s it.”
His gaze swept the walls and the floors, studied the complex mosaic that of Goddess he wasn’t sure he knew, eyes ran over bed and end tabled, picked out the little details and the placements of things. He worried his lower lip with his teeth, feeling a powerful sense of de-ja-vu in this room that he hadn’t felt in all his sleuthing previously. He felt like he already was familiar with the fractured spectrum of color thrown across the walls by the lamps. He’d been in here before and that in itself was a sort of uncomfortable thought. He couldn’t shake the impression that Flint, again, wasn’t the sort to undress strangers.
Fuckity.
“I remember this room… a little,” he said with caution. “But everything before feels…unsteady. Disorganized. I can’t tell where I went first or even if I went for sure.” His left eye throbbed sharply and he winced as Flint asked he’d like help which was an uncommonly kind thing to do. Danny was pricked by a sort of instinctive admiration for the man. (Stemming from a long history of desperately looking for good people.) “You know what, actually I’d really appreciate it,” confessed Danny, a crooked and self deprecating grin twisting his mouth up at the left hand corner. “I really need to find that bag. I –” (don’t) “-need it.”
Dragging the tie from around his neck and unbuttoning the top button of the shirt with the wing collar, Flint folded the white bow tie carefully and set it on the end-table next to the fedora. He chose his words with equal care. "Didn't... spend a whole lot of time. In here. You bypassed it. Straight to the bedroom." A vague gesture in the direction of the open double doors, the neatly made bed beyond.
With a sigh, Flint gingerly settled himself to sit on the couch so he could remove the white spats attached to his shoes. Not going to get changed. Still. Won't roam around the ship with the tie or the spats on. Starting with the right one, knowing it would be easier, he settled his right foot against the coffee table and began to undo the buttons. He continued speaking without taking his eyes from the task at hand. There was a part of Flint that didn't think he could look at Danny and deliver this information as matter-of-factly as he was doing now. "Thought it was yours. Back in college. You... kicked off your jeans. Usurped my bed." A faint twitch of the lips, an almost-grin as he glanced up. His way of letting Danny know that while he didn't exactly understand the younger man's actions, he could appreciate how being drunk led people to do (stupid) things they wouldn't normally do. That it was all right. It really hadn't been, not at the time, but he'd had enough time to process the whole event as best he could and in light of Danny's current behavior, it could be classified as... all right. S'okay, boyo.
Right shoe-covering removed, Flint lowered that foot down, tossed the white fabric into the fedora. With the left one, however, he bent at the waist without removing his foot from the floor. He made quick work of it and both spats had been flung aside before he spoke again, looking only at his cell phone as he removed it from his pocket to take it off of 'silent.' "Here maybe an hour. Less. Got sick. Felt better. Decided to leave. Couldn't find your jeans. Gave you the cargos." There was a brief, unconscious motion of his hand on his left knee, massaging muscle and bone that rarely wanted to do what he wished. Then Flint stood. There was no discernible change in his limp -- no worse, no better -- when he approached Danny again. "Came down the hall..." Another head tilt as he considered. Finally, a gesture to the right. Came from thataway. "Suggest we start there."
At hearing what he'd done from Flint's sober point of view Danny's gut reaction was, "Oh fuck me flat."
And then felt suddenly and unexpectedly embarrassed. Danny seldom felt embarrassed about anything on the grounds that he was in entirely too much of a hurry to spend much time dwelling on what people might or might not think of him, but in the context of having barged in, drunk (a loud drunk he knew), undressed himself, puked and made an ass of himself to a total stranger, somehow that particular phrase took on one entendre too many. There was an uncomfortable needling in the pit of his stomach that he squashed quickly before he was forced to think too hard about... about anything he'd done. Oh fuck. Shit. Goddammit. He sought the ceiling with his eyes and didn't find the solution to the heat in his face up there.
"Uhh..." he said, displaying unparalleled mastery of words. "Hmm." (Oh and when were the Pulitzers this year?) He rubbed the back of his neck and wished he could evaporate through walls while Flint explained further. But through his internal agony, Danny didn't miss any of the pain that leg gave Flint, or a soft and amused smile passed his way, the fact the man seemed to have taken no offense from his antics it was all very... remarkable really. A small percentage of the sober population that reacted to a drunk Danny Veis in a favorable fashion. That said something about Flint, but he'd need more time - with less pressing problems - to sort that out. Flint indicated the right hand hall and Danny paused. "You don't have to. You've already done a hell of a lot..." he started to say, then sensed it was the wrong thing to say. "Never mind. Right hall. Let's go."
It was only decades of keeping his facial features schooled into neutrality that kept Flint from bursting into peals of laughter at Danny's first words. His only visible reaction was to arch an eyebrow. There was quite a lot he could say to a statement like that, none of it particularly flattering to either of them. Lines of innuendo kept leaping into his mind, to be squashed flat by natural reticence and common sense. Do not. Torture. The repentant. Drunk interloper, he told himself. Seems to be doing just fine torturing himself. Does not need commentary of that nature.
Best way to deal with Danny's obvious embarrassment for the moment was to set it aside. Though he didn't want to actively ignore it, Flint didn't possess the words to reassure Danny that while he'd indeed been a 'rowdy drunk,' he hadn't caused any lasting damage. That even the suspicion in his eyes at the end -- the suspicion that went hand-in-hand with the entendre comment -- could be and had been patiently endured. Stumbling in, getting sick... these were minor offenses. When the very important bag was found, perhaps when they were both a little more comfortable, he'd be able to properly express his lingering confusion about some aspects of the late night visit. Certain things Danny had said. Until then, though, he would simply let Danny off the hook in terms of his chagrin and let his own questions go.
The grey-haired man listened in stoic silence as Danny figured out all on his own that if Flint said he'd help, he'd help. It didn't matter what time it was or how long it might take or how much the fucking leg hurts, he'd help. True, he knew he'd been limping a little more ever since the blackout -- that he was tired and therefore there was more pain -- but he wasn't about to sleep now anyway. Could take a while. Might as well be useful. Help him find the bag. After checking to make sure he had a keycard to his stateroom on him, he merely nodded and opened the door, gesturing to Danny that he should step out first. He'd said more today than he probably had in a week or more, not counting teaching back in Baltimore. And as much as he knew he needed to get more comfortable with the idea of expressing himself aloud, he was sick of trying to wrestle his own words out of him. Though he definitely wouldn't lapse into total silence with Danny, he would take verbal shortcuts whenever he could. A gesture here, a nod there.
Out in the hallway, there was an unintended break in Flint's iron control, a small smirk on his lips as he recalled his introduction to the ridiculously intoxicated Danny.
"So," said Danny by way of opening salvo for conversation. "How'd you win your ticket?"
They'd taken the right hand hall which didn't take them anywhere that jogged anything loose for Danny, F-Deck was assorted staterooms and other than the torrid affair between one of the deckhands and a passenger's wife a few doors down there wasn't going on that Danny took interest in. Kassandra Thompson and little Abbie Wickham lived nearby, both staff. Kass was a hardass with a tight ass who ran a tighter ship in the kitchens of Circean Delight. Danny was still awaiting lawsuits for psychological damages. Abbie, meanwhile, was the daughter of a ship electrician and was one of the Wickham four (her mum, dad, and older sister). She ran on Plutonium batteries as far as he could tell. A doctor of some kind lived a bit farther down, Indian, kissed a blond woman while boarding. Danny didn't know him yet and despite all this he couldn't remember being down here the night before.
"I'm an soundtech," he continued, deciding if he was going to retrace steps he didn't remember taking he was going to at least find out a bit about the man who was not only willing to redress a drunk stranger, but help him hunt for his lost belongings... despite a considerably painful limp. He glanced sidelong at the other man. "Working my second job you could say. So no vacation for me, despite all evidence to the contrary. Also I am sorry for being sick all over your cabin, for whatever that's worth."
No, there was no way possible Flint was going to be able to lapse into silence around Danny. He'd gathered early on in their first encounter that the younger man was the talkative type, drunk or sober. Shrugging in response to the question, he realized that more of a reply was required and summarily took a few seconds to articulate his thoughts: "Don't know. Colleagues. Entered me. Didn't have a clue. Not 'til ticket arrived." Lucky me, right? Lucky, lucky, lucky. Well intentioned. Thought I should have a vacation. Meet people. Interact. Wonder if they had any idea the last few days would happen the way they did.
His eyes scanning the area for any sign of something other than door after door, Flint dragged his gaze over to Danny at his description of himself as a 'sound tech.' So. That's how. You got on board. No wonder Delia was surprised. Prize-winning photojournalist takes second job as a sound tech. Danny didn't offer up a description of his first job and Flint wasn't about to pretend to innocently ask about it. That wasn't his style. He'd seen some of the younger man's work and wouldn't hide the fact if the subject came up. Still, he wasn't about to advertise the fact, for the moment. He only let his eyes appraise the slightly shorter man for a few seconds before he looked away, back at the endless parade of stateroom doors.
"Danny," he drew out patiently, "S'okay. Weren't sick 'all over my cabin.' Sick in a trashcan. Could've been worse." Sure. Could've been worse. Could've vomited all over yourself. My bed. Could've kept going after the boots and the jeans came off. "Apology accepted," Flint added, in a tone that said more than the words themselves did, a tone that indicated that he wasn't busy holding half a dozen grudges against Danny for his drunk and disorderly conduct and that Danny could take him at his word on that score. He looked around where they wound up and massaged his forehead. "Take it... none of this looks familiar?" He lifted an eyebrow as he dropped his hand. "Wasn't long after 3AM. That you were here. Power was back on. Could've taken an elevator. Or stuck to stairs. Ideas?"
Danny cast about, blue eyes vaguely unfocused as they searched a nearby stairwell leading down to the fifth floor. E-Deck ran along the wall by the stair well, printed up on the wall to the left. He stared long and hard at the letters. He'd come up and down on the elevators, not the stairs prior to now and standing right there right then he wouldn't say he remembered being here but it at least felt familiar, the same way the inside of Flint's room felt passingly familiar, so too did the stairs; and without really saying yes or no either way to Flint's question he ventured with a slight frown down the first couple steps.
"Weird," he said quietly, distractedly. He glanced over his shoulder. "I don't remember it." He looked back to the stairs. "It's like muscle memory. Or signing your name." His fingers on the handrail up the steps tightened slightly and that felt like an echo of something he'd already done. (Which was an uncomfortably familiar feeling and he didn't like it.) "I'm not sure but I think it was up this way, that I went up this way or maybe..." He went down a couple steps, turned around and considered the new angle. "I think I was up on the 5th deck and came down." He jogged back to joint Flint on the landing with a grin then walked backward toward the elevator. "So your colleagues entered you as a gag? Colleagues... where? Do you teach somewhere?" He hit the 'down' button for the elevator, intent on not letting his companion limp his way down the stairs on account of him. Danny glanced at him. "Professor maybe?"
Watching what he could of Danny's investigative methods with interest, Flint rested his weight on his good leg as he stood at the landing. Muscle memory. Highly likely. When higher brain functions are interrupted. Or impaired. With a large quantity of alcohol. The muscles all keep on. You breathe. You walk, you talk. Varying amounts of success there. And no matter how many brain cells you've fried, if you're still... functioning... the grey matter keeps on working. With his hands tucked into his pockets, he observed sedately as the other man prowled the stairwell and jogged down a few steps to get a different feel of things.
He listened, merely nodded at what Danny said, conducted his part of the walk to the elevators in silence. While he could have managed the stairs, it wasn't something he would have looked forward. Though he had his pride, Flint was grateful for Danny's consideration. Impossible though it was for him to verbalize that feeling, there was a flash of recognition and appreciation in his dark eyes. Without knowing it, he was starting to relax just a little more.
Danny's intuitive leap didn't surprise him as much as it might have the day before. According to Delia, he looked like he fit his profession. And Danny was certainly astute. Flint's answer came after the elevator pinged, as they stepped inside the empty car and he pressed the button for the fifth floor. "Yes. Professor. Adjunct." The elevator doors closed behind them. "Teach Psychology. A few schools in, around Baltimore. Mostly at Goucher College." He smiled slightly as he said the name. When he finished his doctorate soon, very soon there wasn't a shadow of a doubt that he'd become full-time faculty there.
The doors opened one floor up among all the shops and boutiques. "Psychology, huh? Well in that case you tell me the best technique for remembering what you don't remember. There a trick to it? Because all I'm getting a very unhelpful 'hotter colder' feeling that's about as exact as a dousing..." He paused, stared across as the shop across the way. Now it wasn't the shop itself or the sign hanging over the door or even the merchendise in the window that he recognized but the sight of his own face in the darkened glass after hours. "Now that," he said, pointing and crossing the floor to the front of the little souvenir shop, moving to press his a hand against the glass. "That is uncanny." He squinted through the pane."I think I stood here before."
Danny stared at his own face in the glass and felt a ripple of discomfort move up his back, follow the path taken by Tibetan needles from the base of his spine to the nape of his neck. He felt like the expression he was wearing now, wide-eyed and penetrative, was not the expression he'd been wearing when he last looked into the glass. He frowned, leaned closer, until he was very nearly nose to nose with his reflection - muscle memory - then gently breathed against the glass. In the white fog a series of letters, written by a fingertip, appeared reading: Seat A-4 Sec 3
He stared while the letters faded - saw this own face staring back stricken - then turned around to look at Flint, grinning goofily. "Fuck that. I rescind my previous claim." He pointed at the glass. "That was uncanny." A beat. "Also sort of cool. I'm the coolest drunk ever." He grinned broadly because there was no way in hell he'd let on how much that had fucked with him.
Flint maintained his silence, figuring the question to be rhetorical in nature, though his mind catalogued the information anyway: Alcohol related blackout. Not wholly en bloc. Loss of episodic memory. Sensory cues triggering vague recall. Not unlike dowsing, no. Other than hypnosis? Trick is... do what we're doing. As Danny trailed off and stared hard at the dark shop window -- at himself in the window -- he came further under Flint's scrutiny. Though a few paces behind the younger man, he positioned himself to the side so he could observe what was turning out to be a fascinating facial study. One that discomfited Flint when he saw that flash of how stricken Danny looked. He was more than willing to go along with the silly grin but something about this strange hunt seemed off to him. He'd been going in and out of coherency while in Flint's room less than twenty-four hours ago. It was a little hard to believe that he'd left himself drunken clues to find this shoulder bag but it appeared that was what Danny had done.
His face was unreadable as Danny turned to look at him with the goofy smile; he'd put his facial features into lockdown as he limped next to Danny to examine the clue. His companion's words, however, produced a glint of humor in his eyes, a wry twist of the lips. Oh, yeah, boyo. Coolest drunk ever. You were cool as fuck: vomiting into the trashcan, thrashing on the bed, short-story time... yeah. That was cool. Flint glanced over at Danny, let the expression speak for itself. There was no malice to his faint amusement.
For the most part, he'd kept his hands in his pockets as they'd ambled along. Flint wasn't much for gestures except for where they filled in for speech. Here, he lifted a hand and tapped a finger on the glass thoughtfully next to the message before it began to fade. Seat A-4 Sec 3. Something familiar... A snap of his fingers. Got it. Spent plenty of time in there this morning. Guess I'm right. "Sounds like a theatre seat."