Who: Pyro, Storm, Celeritas (sort of) What: Finding the body When: October 16, 2009. [3:05am] Immediately after this. Where Outside Jamie's apartment Rating/Status: R for character death and language/complete
John's timing was either fantastic or terrible, but his brain wasn't functioning well enough to translate which one was more likely. He'd been sick for the past few days, stuck in the apartment he was "borrowing" watching bad day-time television and quickly running out of his food supply. He'd kept mostly out of contact from the rest of the team, or anything for that matter, figuring it wasn't really anyone's business whether or not he had a cold. He'd spent most of the day sleeping, but by the time night rolled around he was feeling well enough to go out. Not too many places were open at nearly three in the morning, none that had decent food anyway, but he knew Chow's Diner was pretty much 24-hour and it served beer. He'd been going there for years, sometimes with Jamie, and knew the route from the guy's apartment fairly well. There was probably a faster path, but so late at night he'd stick to what was familiar.
Sort of a bad call in retrospect.
A crowd had gathered. As John made his way down the sidewalk he tried to think if there was a bar or club near where Jamie lived, but he wasn't sure. People were dressed to go out, dressed to stay in, dressed to sleep, all forming a semi-circle around the wall of what John soon recognized was Jamie's apartment building. He frowned a bit to himself, plucking his cigarette out of his lips to exhale a line of smoke that left a trail behind him. As he drew closer, his eyes scanned over the heads in view, looking for any that looked familiar, but he didn't see Jamie among them.
"Did he jump? Did anyone see?"
"Oh God, someone called the police, right?"
The cigarette was tossed to the ground, scattering ash across the concrete as John's interest focused, pushing his way part way through the mass of people to get a better look at what was going on. A jumper? Jamie's building. What were the chances that it was....
"Fuck." He didn't know exactly how loud he'd spoken, but didn't care. The pool of blood under the very familiar body was still slowly growing, one blue eye half-open, the glazed stare looking out at nothing. It took less than a couple seconds for John to successfully identify the body from a distance and make a decent assessment of the situation, though that didn't mean it made any more sense. Pulling himself back away from the others and farther down he reached into the inner pocket of his denim jacket, dialing Ororo.