lucas_apollo (lucas_apollo) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-07-03 22:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | apollo, chernobog |
Watch me dazzle like a diamond in the rough
Who: Matt and Lucas
What: Doctors meet
Where: Rosemary & Thyme
When: June 20, 2017
[ooc note: yes, I'm kind of obsessed with Moana songs atm sorry not sorry]
Matthew Buchanan didn’t know that the people he had run tests on all came from the same apartment building. Just the same as he didn’t know that the people were all from his apartment building.
Beside the loss of his one patient, which filled Matthew with enough guilt to last him a lifetime, the oddity of having tested all of his neighbors weighed on Matthew heavily and he found himself desperately trying to make up for it all in any way possible. The one way he could think of was to frequent any establishment that was owned by a person from his apartment and today he was paying his respects to Alice Kennedy and her bakery.
He had met the girl outside of the operating table and he found her sweet, naive and incredibly talented. It was her sweets that seemed to raise his spirits a little and it helped that Matt had a sweet tooth as well. Today she wasn’t working and her less than chipper employees were handling the shop, yet the baked goods were still delicious and Matt was happily enjoying a fruit tart in the afternoon when he noticed another neighbor of his. A fellow doctor, if he recalled correctly. Candidate 10L03 who was healthy as a horse and had absolutely no reactions to the serum.
Matthew shifted on his seat and considered approaching the man only to frown as he realized he had no way of introducing himself to the man. How would he claim he knew him other than saying “I saw you passed out on a table and experimented on you”?
Lucas was slightly disappointed that Alice wasn’t working today, though the consolation of having one of her incredible danishes for breakfast somewhat made up for the loss. The employee behind the counter was kind enough, happily warming up his strawberry rhubarb danish for him and serving it with a smile. He grabbed it and his coffee off the counter and turned to condiments bar to add milk and sugar, smiling at the other man in the room who was sitting nearby and eating a little tart. “Morning,” he said cheerfully, checking his watch and noting that he actually had time to sit and eat before heading off to work. He took the table next to the other man and carefully unwrapped his warm danish.
Matt glanced at the man again and shifted in his seat, considering how he could possibly introduce himself and get to know the man. He took a sip of his drink, immediately swallowing it down the wrong pipe and coughing loudly. Quickly, his cheeks turned red from both embarrassment and the effort to clear his windpipe. “Excuse me,” he murmured, placing a napkin over his mouth and a fist to his chest.
Lucas immediately reacted, getting up from his seat, though he knew there wasn’t much he could do for that. Still, he hovered nearby to make sure he wasn’t really choking on something that was blocking his windpipe and that he’d instead just swallowed too fast. “Hey, are you okay? Shake your head if you need help,” he said, knowing how frustrating it was to not be able to speak when being asked questions. The longer he watched the more he was sure the man was able to breathe and he was just coughing out an irritant. “Take a drink to clear it, slowly this time,” he added with a little smile.
Matt shook his head and smiled, clearing his throat once more before trying to speak. “Just swallowed down the wrong tube,” he replied to the man. “Took a sip too fast, you know the drill. But thanks for your concern, luckily I’m well acquainted with the heimlich if it was needed.” He smiled, this time with his teeth, at the man. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb your meal.”
Lucas smiled and sat back down once he was sure the other man was okay. “Kinda hard to do the heimlich on yourself, but I know there’s a way,” he said, tearing off a piece of his danish as he spoke. “I’m Lucas,” he said with another smile, popping a piece of danish in his mouth and doing his best not to sigh in pleasure. The tart rhubarb, the sweet strawberries and flaky buttery pastry dusted in sugar...it was his morning guilty pleasure, but it would be even more so if Alice was here to chat with while he ate it.
“Matthew Buchanan,” Matt replied. “And you’re right. Doing it to yourself isn’t preferred but… doable.” He smiled, his stomach already twisting with discomfort of the social interaction he was forcing himself into. But then he thought of the man before him, standing and dressed, and the man from the previous month, laid out and asleep on a table. The guilt fell heavily on Matthew’s shoulders. “Do you come here often? I’m new to the area, met the girl who owns this place, I can’t get over how delicious the food is.”
Lucas nodded, “I try to come as often as I can for breakfast,” he said with another smile. “I really enjoy the food here, and I also like supporting a local business. Alice lives in my building so we know each other pretty well, and I’m always happy to stop by for some of her baking.” He tried very hard to keep any of hint of his attraction to her out of his words and his voice, staying firmly in friendship territory. “Her strawberry cupcakes are really something else,” he added happily, “though I’m also partial to the danishes, especially for breakfast.”
“I’ll have to try her cupcakes as well. Maybe I’ll get a couple to go. I’m lucky I live as close as I do, I could make this a daily stop,” Matthew commented, glancing at the display of cupcakes as he tried to appear casual. “Or maybe it’s rather unlucky. It’ll be hard to combat the temptation of living off of baked goods with this right down the road. I just can’t get over how good they are. They almost make my day better, you know?”
Lucas chuckled and nodded, but his brows rose just a little. “You live nearby too? Where do you live, if you don’t mind my asking?” He was just making polite conversation, but he was also curious. He’d looked at a few places in the area before deciding on Pax, so he was wondering if Matthew lived in any of the places he’d turned down, and what they were like. He took another bite of his danish and followed it up with a sip of coffee, both of which were perfect today.
“Pax Letale,” Matthew replied, conveying happy honesty when in actuality Matt was happy the man finally asked. This was his entryway into learning more about the man he had experimented on. “It’s close by, that large towering apartment building. Do you know it?”
Lucas’s brows rose in surprise. “I live there,” he said happily. “What floor are you on? I’m on the tenth; I got a great view of the city.” He scooted his chair a little so he was angled a little more towards the other man. “It’s a nice building, but...well, I’m sure you know. It’s kind of...weird,” he added in an undertone, as if they might be overheard.
“I’m in the deluxe suites,” Matthew replied with a nod before appropriately raising his eyebrows and scooted his chair a tiny bit closer to Lucas in a conspiratory manner. “I have heard some murmurs of odd things going on. There was that one post about the guy who hadn’t been seen? The comments were pretty interesting.”
What he didn’t say was that the man they had been looking for was the same man that had died on the table before him. Even now he could almost hear the song that had issued from the man’s throat before he died.
“I didn’t know the man who went missing,” Lucas confessed, “but it does seem rather fishy, doesn’t it? I mean...a disappearance, a suicide, another attempted suicide, and strange...transformations...all in the same building?” He glanced around them, but there was no one within earshot. “It it was only one of those things it wouldn’t be so alarming, but...they’re adding up, aren’t they?” He hadn’t really thought of it like this until now, but talking with Matthew seemed to set his curious mind to work, putting all the little pieces together and coming up with a picture he didn’t really like.
Matthew blinked. “I didn’t know about transformations or a suicide.” He leaned back and rubbed the back of his neck. The feeling of guilt abated slightly, realizing that the suicide and transformations had nothing to do with him. But the transformations certainly had his interest. “Actually, I have heard some talk about transformations…” Matt tried this slight lie out. There was enough chatter at the apartment and he himself saw transformations on his table… “I just thought people were being dramatic but that on top of odd dreams and everything else…”
And Matthew knew odd dreams. He had them too since he arrived at the complex. Dreams of a man made of smoke and darkness.
“Odd dreams,” Lucas echoed, “it seems like everyone is being affected by those.” If he was a psychologist or a sleep specialist he would have dug deeper into the phenomenon, but there were bigger things going on than just a few curious nighttime narratives.
Lucas hesitated in saying more though. Max and Alice weren’t technically his patients, although he did examine Max’s mouth, but Nish was under ongoing care. He’d have to be careful about what he divulged. “I’ve heard about people having strange things happening to them. A few people have lost memories recently,” he said, thinking that was suitably vague. “A friend of a friend had...well, it’s hard to believe, but her teeth changed shape. They now resemble those of a domestic cat, from what I can tell.” Max’s transformation was a little more public than anyone else’s, and was plain for anyone to see, so he didn’t think he was violating any sort of trust between them. Besides, she seemed to have embraced her new look, at least since there wasn’t much that could be done about it.
Matt’s brows rose and he leaned back. “Jesus,” he murmured. The logical part of his mind shushed his shock but his memory was clear. He remembered the woman whose teeth had changed on the table and back again. “Have her teeth changed back?”
“Changed back?” he asked curiously, as if that was a strange thing to say. “Not that I know of. She says she’s had them for about a month, so I think they’re a permanent thing.” He popped the last of his breakfast into his mouth and picked up his coffee. “At first I thought it was a cosmetic thing, something you can get done at a plastic surgeon or a dentist, but they are definitely not cosmetic. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He sipped his coffee and found that it was almost gone, then glanced at his watch. It was time to head off to work.
He stood and drained the rest of his mug, gathering it and the plate his danish had been on and setting it over at the side table for collecting dishes.
“Well, it was nice to meet you Lucas,” Matthew said, taking note of the man’s progress to get going. “Thanks for giving me a little more insight on the apartment. I’ll see you around?”
“Yeah, we should definitely talk more sometime,” Lucas replied in a friendly tone. He nodded to him and to the person behind the counter and then headed outside to his car.