Peter Kimura Whelan (itakunai) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2016-07-13 09:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2019 [06] june, noa bellamy, pete whelan |
Who: Noa Bellamy and Pete Whelan
Where: UMCB
What: Noa chaperones a Prospect to the medical center, and made plans to see to Pete. It doesn't go as they hope.
When: Backdated to 6/5/19, evening
Cheney banged himself up something good. Nothing that a few stitches and some gauze couldn’t fix, but enough that the Hounds had decided to test their newfound amnesty and take him into the UMCB. Noa had been lucky enough to be around when they’d decided, and offered without hesitation to ride in with Cheney and another Prospect, since she’d already been planning to see if Pete and it saved her a trip. As much as she still thought about the phone conversation a month before, some of the more humiliating factors of it had been smoothed over by conversations after. She never liked showing her soft underbelly to anyone, but at the time she couldn’t have avoided it. UMCB was daunting once they pulled up and parked, and for just a fraction of a second Noa wanted to turn back around and avoid treading on property that had been closed off to their people for so long. But she wasn’t a woman who cowered or turned tail, and if Pete could step into the Dog Park she thought she could at least extend the effort to step into his turf. She really did want to see where he lived and worked, even if it created an uncomfortable feeling in her gut. Once Cheney was settled, Noa followed the directions that Pete had given her in order to find his office within the hospital. The longer she spent inside the less she felt like some kind of a fraud. There were curious looks, but Noa attributed most of them to her leather pants, motorcycle boots, and tattoos. When Noa had reached the correct floor, and the right office, she wrapped her knuckles against the open doorframe and leaned a hip against the metal as Pete turned his office chair around to face her, a grin on his face. “Hey sweetheart,” she greeted with an easy smile. "Hey, yourself!" Pete stood up and reached for her hand, gently pulling her in closer. He'd been looking forward to this all day, glad that his schedule worked out so that the end of her friend's appointment would coincide with the end of his shift. He'd tried to picture, once they'd set this up, what Noa would look like against the backdrop of UMCB. It'd been so long since Olinger's new world order had settled around them, he couldn't even imagine what kind of figure a woman like her would cut. Pete liked knowing she'd come over just for him. "I don't usually like to wait this long between dates." Pete stepped forward to close the distance between them, allowing the length of time between their first kiss a month ago and their second, just now, to justify the length of the kiss as his free hand settled on her back, pulling her in towards him. Noa moved with the gentle pressure of his hand, pliant as the distance between them was erased further. "But I'm glad it's sounding like it's not gonna be as hard to figure this stuff out, right? You have any trouble today?” “Me too,” she agreed, the colony of butterflies that had been residing in her stomach had slowly been overtaken with the blissful satisfaction of being near Pete. It wasn’t anything extraordinary, or racy even, but she was already a little drunk off the contact. She’d been worried that it would have felt stilted, or that they would’ve gone two steps forward and three back after the bar, and after the length of time they’d gone without seeing each other. “I got a few looks. But nobody said anything to my face,” she continued. “I suspect they might have been intimidated by the woman in leather.” Or the two gruff looking Prospects she’d walked in with. "Well, you're a very intimidating woman." It was a joke, of course, and maybe sort of a nod to some of the things they'd talked about a month ago. But now that they were face to face again, Pete could pair the comment with a grin, hoping to assuage any concerns. Pete’s remark earned him an entertained smile from Noa. It was a good sign if they could joke, or it was a possible sign that things were uncomfortable without some humor. But that wasn’t the impression Noa got, so she felt confident when she brushed that doubting voice back into the recesses with the rest of her insecure demons. “Do you think anyone will say anything to you?” It wasn’t ever far from her mind what kind of ramifications Pete might face because of her, even though she believed he felt that whatever it was they had might be worth the trouble. "I don't know." Pete glanced over at the open office door, but made no move to close it just yet. After all, it wasn't like they were doing anything wrong. "I hope not, but I don't really give a shit if anyone does." Twisting, Noa craned her head to look out the office door. The hall was empty as far as she saw, but that fact barely kept her from saying, “Well if you don't care, we could make a real show of it, sweetheart.” With a straight face as she tugged on his tie. It was as much a joke as Pete’s had been. He grinned, taking it in stride as easily as she had. "May as well," he said, though he shut the door anyway. About an hour later, around dinnertime. In love with the government or not, you had to admit the quality of food had gone way up. It had always been better at UMCB than at the LBJ, something he'd never realized until it was too late, but now that things were changing it wasn't unusual to see real, fresh meat and vegetables at the cafeterias. Pete was looking forward to when he didn't always have to take his meals here, of course, but with some chicken on his plate he wasn't about to complain. "Can you believe we went almost three years without stuff like this?" He asked conversationally, once he'd cleared his throat with a healthy sip of water. "And the stuff we've been picking up at the station for the other meals have been awesome too." “I haven't been to any of the stations,” Noa admitted as she picked at a broccoli floret on her plate. Though Bishop and Vic both seemed to want to work with the new government, and she agreed it was the smartest move they could have made, she hadn’t lined up with everyone else to receive the government hand outs. There was still a fair amount of suspicion roiling in her. What would they do to the Greenbelt if they felt their guidelines weren't being met? "Wait. You haven't?" Pete frowned as he looked up at her; the very thought of it was so far removed from his own experiences, and the surprise of this didn't do much to help his tact. "What have you been eating this whole time?" It'd been all of two days, but still. “We have food at the park. Food that ain’t gone over yet,” she replied with a shrug to cover the lightning burst of irritation that flashed through her. "Oh, yeah." There was more he would've said if it had been anyone else and any other situation, but he managed to swallow it down somehow as she continued. ”I’m not sure I will until I know all the strings that come along with taking their supplies.” To her it felt like there had to be strings; she hadn’t encountered many acts that were done out of the goodness of someone’s heart when it came to the government, or government entities. Pete was silent for a moment, though the puzzled expression on his face did more to explain how he felt about this viewpoint than his silence. "What kind of strings would there even be?" he asked finally, genuinely confused. Sure, Olinger's government had been that way, turning its back on the people of the LBJ when they'd decided not to take their handouts, but -- If Savannah thought her shelter should comply with the US government, that had to be reason enough to do so. It hadn’t seemed complicated or confusing to Noa, but she reminded herself that she and Pete had grown up very different; worlds apart practically. “Expectations.” Noa didn’t know a better way to put it. “A buy in to their efforts.” She shrugged again. “I ain't been in any system that minds its own business and lets you live your life while getting a hand out.” A cynical perspective colored more by her own youth than anything she had experienced under Olinger’s reign. “I ain’t saying they're the villain, but I don’t think they’re Mother Teresa either.” "Bribe us with food that's actually safe to eat for what, exactly? It's not like we've got a lot to offer them." It was hard to see Noa's perspective, especially since Pete was ignorant to the details of what she'd lived through. Despite his intermittent moments of restraint, he had never done well with dealing with opposing views. "Half the people, more than half, are walking around malnourished -- not that I think that's good -- and it's not like there's any money or natural resources around. Maybe oil or something, since it is Texas… I mean, the only efforts I'm seeing so far are efforts to keep us alive." Noa bit the inside of her cheek, irritation flared beneath the surface. “I don’t see why they need to do it through registration. We’re already citizens. They could dig up everything from my marriage license to my juvenile record if they wanted to.” The tables nearest them seemed to take an interest, and she questioned how loud she might have been to attract their attention. Her opinion was immovable, though. "I don't know what the records are like these days or if those things even survived. For all we know, everyone else in the other states have gone through this process already." It was complete conjecture on his part, made up entirely on the spot, but Pete had never needed to question something like this. "They wouldn't do it if they didn't need to. How would they keep track of whether you're already getting your rations? How would you get paid if you had a job? What if you didn't have any ID from before?" “How could they play Big Brother if they don’t know who they’re watching?” Noa added, clipped and annoyed that the subject wouldn’t just drop, and with herself for being too stubborn to be the one to drop it. “You really think they’re looking at every person that steps into line the same way?” It was possible she’d spent too long looking over her own shoulder, that every person or entity was met with paranoia. Or maybe she’d adopted too much of the men that left her without a thought, that even now she couldn’t shake their habits. “You think they’d look at you and me the same?” She spoke that much softer, to avoid any more eyes on them. He huffed out a sharp breath, frustrated. This hadn't been what he'd intended at all out of this evening, but now that he was in it he couldn't get out. No wonder they'd been skirting the edge of this for so long if this was how quickly it could undo everything that had happened between them so far. "Honestly? They probably won't, all things considered. But I don't think they would refuse you at registration. Not if they're really extending it to the men at your camp, and they are." “The criminals at my camp, you mean?” Noa folded her arms, her food forgotten. “Why don’t you just say it? It’s true, and it’s why you and me wouldn’t get the same kind of reception.” She was even more aware of the not so subtle eyes on them, and the undercurrent of whispers after she said that. She pushed her chair back, and was halfway to standing when she added, “can we do this somewhere else?” "Fine." He stood, too, the food on his place forgotten in his haste to leave. Suddenly, Pete didn't feel all that hungry anymore. Three hours later. They'd gone around and around in circles, alternating between raised voices Pete was sure others could hear through the closed door and frustrated mutterings and snappy remarks. It wasn't all arguing; they'd slipped into moments of quiet, tense silence here and there, only for one of them to break the quiet and begin the next round. It was late now, though, and he was exhausted. Neither of them had been willing to back down or admit the other had a perspective worth seeing from for even a moment, trying to find some common ground. And curfew had come and went; like it or not, fighting or not, Noa was at UMCB for the rest of the night and into the morning for good. "If it's okay with you, I think I'm just gonna go to bed." It wasn't the most exciting way to end the night with a woman he was interested in, but Pete was ready for this day to be over. “Fine.” Noa was exhausted too, drained of all the fight she had in her, and desperately out of place. There wasn’t the luxury of leaving, and she couldn’t make Pete leave his own space, so she was just there. “I’ll sleep on the couch, if you have one.” Truthfully she’d been concentrated so much on their disagreement she hadn't even bothered to take in where Pete lived. “Or an extra room.” She was tired enough that she could curl herself into a corner and sleep, if it was necessary. "I don't." Things were spartan at UMCB, thanks to just how poor a setting a hospital was for permanent homes. All he had was a bed plus a table and chairs, and he wasn't about to let either of them be that uncomfortable, fight or not. "It's fine, just take the other side." He'd endured much worse than this. At the very least, they could manage to still say a few civil words to each other even now. If the circumstances were different Noa might have made a crack about keeping her chilly toes to herself, instead she just nodded. “Okay,” she replied as she wasted no time and kicked off her boots, then shimmied out of her pants. She felt vulnerable in an oddly unpleasant way as she stood in her panties and tank top, though she covered the fact by pulling the covers back and climbing into the bed without any fanfare. “Night,” she said, before she settled with her back to Pete. She knew the lingering mood from their fight wouldn’t be erased by morning. |