Israel Alderdice (izzy_alderdice) wrote in v_nocturne_rpg, @ 2009-09-20 18:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | izzy alderdice, simon alexander |
And Luck Be A Lady Tonight
[Takes place a few days after A Boy and a Girl]
There was no escape in this city, of that he was entirely sure. At least back home, there was a small forest, someplace far away from other humans. Here, if you didn't know the nooks and crannies and places that had been brushed out of the way, and even there you'd find some stung out opium fiend or destitute drunk or any kind of human, usually the kinds that had been kicked off the main streets because London had to hide her diseased masses somewhere.
But this had been entirely unexpected. Mrs. Daugney almost never gave him anything to get rid of, and when she did, it was never a full body. Tonight, she had, with a little look of disgusted disappointment on her face. The body was hardly recognizable as human, but he'd still cut it up to get it to fit in the sack better. As he'd looked at the mangled form, he'd thought for a moment that it could have been him. If whatever she'd done to him hadn't gone as well as it had, would someone be cutting up his corpse and throwing him in the river, a few bricks tossed in the bag to keep his dismembered form at the bottom?
He was incredibly lucky to be here; to have all he had, he hardly deserved it.
The feeling had stayed in the pit of his stomach as he'd done the job, and has he'd walked back, a skinny young man in clothes far too neat for this kind of neighborhood. To be quite frank, he should have expected it. Within a few blocks, he was in an alley with a knife held to his throat by someone who couldn't have known better. Needless to say, the man was on the ground in one punch, completely surprised. Izzy gave him another whack for good measure. And maybe a kick to the teeth. Maybe he decided to round it off with a few more hits. And it had been a while since the werewolf, he'd love a little...
It was then that he ran. He wasn't sure where he was going, but he hoped it was somewhere where he wouldn't hurt someone. The next time he looked up, he couldn't tell where he was. He leaned against the side of the building and closed his eyes tightly and buried his hands in his hair and tried not to think of anything at all.
He was the luckiest man in the world.
Simon Alexander would like to contest Izzy's title for luckiest man in the world! He'd seen a werewolf! He'd made friends with a fellow Magi! He'd even got to have a little chat with John Abbott once again, and now? Now he was drunk! It was an excellent night! The stars shone, the moon was like a blur of gleaming silver up in the sky, and Simon was in high spirits and glad to be wandering the streets. Weaving past a crowd of drunks, he took the opportunity to stagger out into the road, spread wide his arms and just enjoy taking up space on top of everything else, before continuing his wide, happy stroll down one of the many side streets of the city.
It was at around this time that he literally, physically, bumped into Izzy.
Misjudging his own weight as he was turning a particularly unevenly paved corner, Simon had to take a few compensating steps to the left, and aptly collided with the young man leaning there. Letting out a slight 'umph' sound, Simon righted himself quickly, and gave the young man a most put upon look, in his present state of exuberance and in the gloom of the evening not quite recognizing the young man as a familiar face, he set about quickly constructing his general temperament of superiority, narrowing his eyes as he did so, "What a foolish place to stand! Well rest assured sir, my better nature bids me to excuse you none the less, but you might pray that our paths do not cross again, or I shall be less merciful next time!"
Impossible though it may be to tell, this was actually sort of his equivalent of a joke.
And this particular street had to be alive tonight, at least, one person on it was and seemed quite happy to come colliding into Izzy. Terrified, he took a few steps back into the alleyway, hoping that he could at least avoid whoever it was. The smell of human and alcohol flooded his nostrils, a very tempting smell at this point. Someone slow, inebriated, an even easier catch than the mugger. He covered his nose and mouth with his hand and squeezed his eyes closed. Not tonight, really, really, not tonight, not some other poor innocent bastard, please, no.
"Go away!" he shouted, "Please, god, run!" He probably sounded bloody stupid but that hardly mattered if it actually got the drunkard to go away. He could feel his mind creeping into a place he didn't want it to go, a place that would have run after the man.
At the sound of his voice making some insignificant comment, Izzy looked up and opened his eyes. This was the wrong thing to do. "Mr. Alexander?" he asked, his voice shaking. This was a face he hadn't expected to see, and he let it distract him for a few moments too long. Of all the people to meet right now -
He couldn't have been luckier if he were the Queen. The dhampir straightened up, gaining a certain nonchalant elegance that Izzy only had when he wasn't trying. He cocked his head to the side and gave a smile as bright as the blade of a knife in the sunlight. It might have worked had his eyes reflected it. "Such-a-pleasure-to-see-you," he said softly, "And-you-are-well-I-hope?" It was then that he grabbed Simon's wrist and pulled him right towards him.
At the direction to run, Simon couldn't help but laugh. Drunk and now more than slightly confused, he really wasn't that concerned about the apparent distress of some skinny little guttersnipe, instead he stepped forward, bending slightly to try and catch the boys eye, "Excuse me? What on earth are you talking about? Look, I was only joking, are you--"
He cut himself short when Izzy looked up at him, his laughter fading into a moment of genuine concern (not so much for Izzy, as just happening near to him). He knew the boy not to be mad, and not to be easily scared, if his recent adventures in homicide were to be believed, but the look in his eyes when he looked up was truly... quite sincere in it's shock. Simon frowned, beginning to speak again as the boy straightened, "Israel. I didn't-- Are you--" he allowed his voice to trail off as it became apparent that whatever had been wrong with Izzy, he was now smiling. He was smiling, and... for some reason Simon very strongly suspected that something in the universe had just tipped in favor of his night getting worse.
He took half a step back just as Izzy reached forward and caught hold of his wrist, and already drunk and slightly off balance, Simon fell forward easily, getting a nice, slightly bleary close up view of that knife edge smile. Simon smiled back, slightly unevenly, and started trying to work his hand free from the boys grip, "Ah, yes, quite well. Of course, I am quite well this evening. How about yourself?"
Drunkards were cheap shots, but so long as he could, this one was well worth his while. Any one of them might have been. His lips curled up into an expression that might have been sweet and pitying if the situation had been different, and dug his fingernails into Simon's wrist when he tried to struggle. "Quite-well?" he parroted the words back at him, in almost the same tone but with the same strange cadence, like a stream of thought. "Quite-well-I-am-even-better-so-glad-to-s
Just as quickly, he jerked Simon into the alleyway, and, not really giving a care for whether or not the man could have regained his balance that quickly, let him go. The beast had not been so easy to catch, and in truth the boy could have killed him right there. Tonight, however, he rather wanted to play with his food before he ate it. The alleyway ended in a brick wall some ten feet away, so he casually stepped in front of the opening and waited, the same expression plastered onto his face like he'd forgotten to take it off.
"Ow!" Simon objected loudly as Izzy dug his fingers into his wrist. The boy was stronger than he looked, apparently. When released, Simon staggered back a few paces, and kept his distance, watching Izzy guardedly. Not having examined the alley too carefully before, he was fairly certain that there should be some way out of the alley behind him, but even as he thought it there came the accompanying occurrence that he didn't really want to turn his back on the young man blocking the way before him right now. Obviously, there was something quite wrong with Izzy tonight. Something which Simon responded too in... well, in the only way he really knew how to respond to the things that were wrong in the world.
"Israel, I am beginning to strongly suspect that you are a lunatic. Now, what you want to do in cases like this, is to go turn yourself in to some strange doctor on the west end of London, and stay away from full moons and dark corridors, but first and foremost, my dear boy, you want to get the hell out of my way, you understand?" Izzy wanted to wear that stupid, eerie smile? Fine, Simon could smile back, his teeth bared into a slightly off kilter grin, he continued, "And again, while I am deeply flattered by your maintained interest in me, I'm afraid it's an unrequited state of being you find yourself in, I really am pleased to keep running into you, but brevity is the pinnacle of all encounters, so why don't you get the fuck out of my way all ready and let me go home?"
So he was still standing? That was no good. An now he was talking? No one had ever spoken to him like this before. Usually they screamed a bit more, maybe cried a little bit. A thought shot through the boy's head for the moment that Simon would likely look rather nice if he cried, and he wondered where it came from. He twisted his face into Simon's expression, though his eyes remained incongruously calm and steely, not that it made much difference in this light.
When Simon had finished, the boy cocked his head to the side before walking right up to Simon and putting a swift uppercut into his stomach. He then grabbed the man by his collar and pulled him up to his height so that they were face-to-face. "Mum-calls-me-that-name," he said with a small smile, "You-know-her?" He stared at Simon, looking at all his features and trying to find that expression in his face, a certain twitch of the muscles that he hadn't put a name to yet. It was simply edible. When he didn't see it exactly, he grabbed the collar of Simon's jacket and slammed him into the nearest wall.
"What in the names of God are you--" Simon cut himself off with a grunt as his back slammed against the wall behind him. Well, that hurt! He was still in some shock over the fact that Izzy had hit him when he found himself being manhandled by a young creature who had apparently suffered from a psychotic break in the very recent past. Perhaps the most annoying part of which? Was that the young man wasn't content to just beat him up down at the reasonable height of five foot nine inches, but instead seemed to expect Simon to spend this particular altercation on tiptoe. Simon let out a noise of irritation, and managed to reply to the boy, punctuating each word with an attempted jab at the young mans ribs, "No, I, do, not, know, your, stupid, mother!" He abandoned his attack at the last word, and instead tried to shirk out from under the coat which Izzy seemed to think was an appropriate device with which to control his movement, "Look, just-- get off me, Israel!"
Simon couldn't help but let a little of the tension he was feeling sink into his voice towards the end. Despite his instinct to deal with just about any problem which came his way with an air of cold indifference or disdain, he had to admit there was a certain level of the utterly uncanny about this whole meeting. He didn't like feeling threatened, he didn't like being hit and he really, really didn't like whatever the hell had gotten into Izzy tonight. Just listening to the boys voice was now sending a chill down his spine.
The first thing he noticed was that Simon was attempting to worm out by his jacket. That wouldn't do at all. The dhampir let go of the man's jacket and immediately slammed his hand over the man's throat, holding him in place that way. He couldn't wiggle himself out of his skin, after all. He winced a little when Simon jabbed at his ribs, but made it incredibly clear that he had no intention whatsoever of letting him move. "I'm-not-on-you-dear," he said, calm as ever, the smile leaving his face. There was always fear, but this man seemed to be a little bit more difficult than he'd expected. Drunkards usually fell apart in an instant. This one seemed to have a little more spirit in him. It was terribly irritating.
Without any warning, he then threw Simon to the ground with a great deal more strength than was necessary. In this instant, he decided quite what he wanted before he bit open Simon's throat. Two things, in fact. His expression remained entirely neutral as he put a foot on Simon's head, not entirely gently. He pressed his foot down on Simon's head slightly and decided that this was an excellent purpose for shoes. Looking over the man, he simply said, "Cry."
The hand on his throat was what really did it, the sudden force of pressure against his neck enough to chill his blood. Partly it was because there was a big difference between someone dragging you around by the jacket and dragging you around by the neck, and in other part because for the first time it became absolutely clear exactly how much stronger than him Izzy actually was. Simon opened his mouth, some half formed thought springing to his lips in some kind of attempt at a response to the boys words, but he didn't get a chance to deliver them before the world shifted and he fell, hard against the paving slabs. Pain shot up through his arm where his elbow cracked against the stone, and even as he scrambled to brace himself enough to get up Simon was uncomfortably aware that the shock of it left his arm feeling completely weakened from the blow.
He'd barely managed to get both hands pressed flat against the ground when he felt his head pushed down suddenly, trapped against the floor by the force of the scrawny child's foot, and somehow, shamefully, completely unable to shake him off. Simon swallowed hard, trying not to note just how ragged his breathing had grown in the last few minutes, the evidence of his own fear becoming ever more apparent to him. He gave a weak laugh at the command given, but when he replied his voice betrayed him, "I can't-- I can't do it on cue you know. It usually requires more incentive than just a polite instruction."
Admittedly, there was a break in his voice that suggested it wouldn't require much more.
Pursing his lips, the boy examined the face of the man under his foot again for a second before obviously deciding that he didn't like what he saw there. Really, he could have complained but he'd run out of words, as much as Simon seemed to like them. He was still talking articulately, which was surprising. Most of the time they shut up or started with some kind of incoherent cries for help or mercy. This man's voice had hardly started to break. It was exceptionally irritating.
Then, he stepped over Simon's head and stepped blithely over to his stomach, wherein he kicked him unthinkingly hard. There was a small expression of irritation on his face that he'd forgotten to wipe off, and when he realized this he replaced it with a wide grin which looked nothing like Izzy smiling before bending down and picking Simon up by the neck again, this time pinning him against the other wall, this time a little bit lower. His calm eyes raked over Simon's face. It was clear the man was afraid by now, but that wasn't enough. Tough little bugger. This was taking far too long, but it seemed that though he would have normally been toting Simon off to the Thames by now, something wouldn't let him. Something wanted to wait a little longer. Something was lucid and trying very desperately to keep him from killing this stupid little man.
It was annoying. The boy clocked Simon roundly about the head a few times to get back at it.
It was becoming swiftly apparent that Simon's usual approach wasn't working here, he sagged back against the wall, screwing his eyes shut as Izzy-- or whoever the hell was wandering around in the boys skin right now, continued to rain down blows on him. Some time between insisting that he needed more incentive to cry and the immediate point, Simon's eyes had begun watering. That was about as close as he could admit to himself that he just wanted to aquiest already and just have this stop.
His arm tensed at his side, the part of him desperate to respond to all of this in some way other than complete surrender burning with the desire to just lash out and hit back, even knowing how futile it would be. He didn't though, through some personal psychic strength he managed for once to control his worse instinct and just took the beating. For some reason the thought hadn't actually occured to him that Izzy planned on killing him at the end of this, perhaps there was some part of him which actually did consider the boy to be at least some sort of friend, and on some level for it to be acceptable to occasionally wound one friends with impugnity was actually a concept in ettiquette which Simon had a certain amount of sympathy for. Not that he was thinking in terms anywhere near this rationally at the time, indeed, his thought processes were more in the area that even the exceptionally strong could not continue to hit someone forever, so if he just gave the boy no further incentive then eventually he would have to stop!
At the last blow the boy felled, Simon let out a slight sob, before coughing hard to try and disguise the fact that he'd done so.
By this time, the boy was simply frustrated above all else. There was something fundamental crossing his wires and keeping him to a goal that he was quite sure he did not care about. Something was stalling him, but this man was going to die tonight if nothing else. It appeared that right now he'd just have to go about it in a roundabout way.
To vent his frustration, the boy petulantly slammed Simon against the wall a few times, hopefully not enough to kill him. It simply wasn't the same when they were dead. It didn't matter much if he was unconscious however, though this would be counter-intuitive. He could still bleed, after all. Still holding Simon up by the neck, he lifted him up against the wall so that he was looking up at the man. He cocked his head to the side. "What-a-stupid-little-creature-you-are,"
Lifting up Simon's face to his so that he was looking directly into the man's face, his eyes widened in annoyance, but he grinned when he hissed, "You-will-end-sooner-be-less-painful-you-u
Simon gritted his teeth, the world around him was slowly beginning to seem progressively less stable as his head cracked back against the wall again. He didn't fully register what was happening then until he felt himself being lifted off the floor, pushed up so that the boy could stare at him from below. His last thoughts of trying to hit Izzy were lost as both his hands shot up to grip the boy's hand, taking some of the weight away from his neck as his feet scrambled to reach the floor again. He could feel his face growing hot and red from the continued pressure. He tried to cough again, expel a little of the air half caught in his throat as the space at the edge of his vision began to cloud with darkness. He felt the wall behind him scrape upwards, barely connecting it to the possibility that he was being lowered slightly in the moment before Izzy's knee slammed into his groin.
Which actually, was an occurrence familiar enough to him that it really wasn't the worst thing that had happened that evening. Still, the pain of it, on top of everything else was enough to send Simon weak at the knees. He swallowed hard, biting down into his lip as the boy pushed his face up, forcing him to make eye contact, the pain just some desperate attempt to take control of his own extremity of feeling. The ever increasing tightness in his chest spiked when the boy spoke, a cold prickle of anger crawled up his spine as it suddenly began to sink in that he was not intended to survive this encounter. When finally, he spoke again, his voice was strained and hoarse, and dripping with venom, "You-- you can kill me-- you can kill me-- perhaps. Perhaps you think that you can kill me but you had better make damn sure that it is enough to end me." a strange, half desperate, half manic laugh raked through him, and Simon jerked his head back, just long enough to spit in the thing's face.
At this, the boy gave a tittering little laugh, the kind one wouldn't expect to come out of his mouth. "It-is-enough-to-end-you," he said softly, pityingly, "You-are-human-I'd-know-if-you-weren't-d
On the whole, you wouldn't call anything the boy did delicate in any capacity. But there's a first time for everything, and though this was quite fun, he'd much prefer to get it over with. He held Simon's hand up and grabbed his middle finger, indelicately pulling it further back further than it was supposed to go. Then, he started on another. He'd never watched bones break, it was rather interesting.
Simon let out an immediate cry of pain as the boy pushed back his first finger, the sharp and sudden agony shooting through his hand so soon after the implication of gentility was enough of a shock to his system that after a momentary, futile attempt to wrench away, Simon finally let his chin fall to his chest and began to cry in earnest, tears blurring his vision and burning hot tracks down his cheeks, before trickling down to land on the boys arm, where it still clamped across his torso.
That really, really hurt.
He listened to the cracks as he pulled back Simon's index finger before he recognized something hot and watery running down his arm. He gave a wide smile. Letting go of Simon's hand, he lifted up the man's face and looked at him for a moment. The dhampir's eyes were completely calm until what might have been excitement flashed in them for merely a moment.
"You-look beautiful. Completely beautiful." He had to move fast, and did, biting down onto Simon's neck and sinking in before something snapped. At this point, his arms dropped to his sides, and he almost jumped back.
Someone else was dead tonight, someone innocent and bloody stupid. Someone else to dump into the Thames. Izzy pushed back his hair and was about to...well, he wasn't sure what before he realized that there was no blood in his mouth. He looked up, completely shocked. Before him he saw a man, Simon of all people, in tears and with good reason. It occurred to him briefly that this was exactly what he'd wanted, but he couldn't remember why.
His voice shook when he said, "I...you're alive?"
Simon sank down the wall, to sit on the floor cradling his broken fingers and pressing his face down into his shoulder to try and hide the fact that he was still pretty obviously crying. The bite wasn't such a big deal in terms of pain. Of course it did hurt, but just about everything hurt right now, and by far the most dominating pain was his hand, which did him at least the small mercy of distracting him from his other assorted injuries. When Izzy spoke, Simon reacted almost instantly. His one uninjured hand scooting out to grab the nearest piece of trash that he could find and flinging it at the boy.
Half of him was waiting for the boy to attack him again, and the other half disgusted at the thought of that useless urchin seeing him in such a state. He scrambled for another missile he could use as a deterrent for Izzy coming any closer while he spat furiously, "Piss off!"
His unwounded fingers brushed against something round and hard, and moments later Izzy had a small stone hurtling towards him.
Izzy's heart was pounding in his throat, but he looked a little bit calmer now, at least. Not quite the same calm as before, since he looked quite a lot more human. He let out a short bark of laughter when Simon threw the bit of rubbish at him, though nothing about this situation was funny, really. Out of all that he was realizing right now, this almost childish reaction seemed the most ridiculous. However, he wasn't surprised. He wouldn't be surprised if Simon ran or attacked him. He caught the stone with one hand and let it dropped to the ground, taking a few tentative steps forward.
"Are you -" he started uncertainly, and then recinded quickly, "That's a stupid question, of course you're not alright." He tried not to seem like Simon's appearance had much of an effect on him. He could feel it in the back of his throat; this was how someone looked when they lived through it. It was unreal, and he wasn't sure what he was going to do about it. Obviously, he couldn't just leave Simon here. No matter what he did, Izzy resolved that he was going to help him and that was it.
He paused for a moment, then asked, "Do your legs feel alright, do you think you can walk? I'm going to get you to a hospital, is that alright?" He held his hand out to Simon and tried to seem like he knew what he was doing, though he really didn't.
Simon made to push himself back further away from Izzy, only to be uncomfortably reminded of the fact that he's already got his spine pressed about as far into the wall as he can manage. He glared at his feet, still refusing to look at the young man until at least he's regained enough of his composure to look half way respectable. Clearing his throat, Simon manages to reply in a voice which is almost level, "Nonsense. It's nothing but bruises and broken fingers. Not worth the cost of a doctor. I shall go home, splint my hand, and tomorrow I shall by laudanum for it."
He took a deep breath, not yet entirely trusting his legs to take his weight, but for the moment not feeling quite threatened by the young man either. So perhaps his response to Izzy's sudden return to sanity had been less than composed, hearing the boy laugh at him while he felt quite this awful had still managed to sting, and worse than that? Just hearing it had lifted every hair on the back of his neck. "Look, just... go away, all right?" Simon let out a slight sigh, keeping his eyes trained on the ground. He'd almost been tempted to add a 'please' onto that request. Much as the thought disgusted him, while Simon apparently wouldn't be polite out of courtesy or for the sake of his image, fear, was enough to inspire it.
"You have a point there," Izzy sighed. This wasn't going to be easy, of course, he should have expected that. He'd practically killed the man, after all. "At least let see you home, sir." It wouldn't hurt to be polite, he supposed, or it wouldn't make things any worse than they already were. Not that they could be much worse. He suspected that the man was worse off than he knew, since he highly doubted he'd have just given him a few broken bones and bruises.
He walked right up to Simon, and then squatted down suddenly so that they were face to face. "No," he said, "I'm not just leavin' you here. If you don't mind me saying, could be worse off than you thought." He stood up and offered Simon his hand again.
Simon pointedly ignored Izzy's hand. He also pointedly ignored Izzy's insistence that there was anything worse off for him than a few bruises and the obvious damage to his hand. Instead he braced himself against the wall and struggled to his feet. Once he was on his feet he stopped, leaning heavily against the wall as his head swam and a haze of dizziness overcame him. Simon swallowed, trying to will his body into obedience as it became progressively apparent that Izzy was right about his injuries being more severe.
Still, that was no reason to make this easy for the young man. Simon gave him a scathing look, still making no move to accept his help, "And wander willingly wherever you see fit to take me? Israel you must forgive my mistrust, but considering your behavior thus far? I find myself inclined against accepting your company." This did, however leave him with the problem of actually getting home alone. He reached up and wiped his arm across his face - careful not to jar his hand as he did so - still trying to wipe off the last remnants of his own weakness, but only succeeding in leaving himself even more disheveled than he'd already been.
He had a point there. No matter how well Izzy meant or how sane he was right now (arguably not very, but more than he'd been just minutes before), Simon had no reason whatsoever to trust him, and Izzy wasn't entirely certain how to turn that around. When he saw Simon faltering, however, he immediately rushed over to the man's side and grabbed his shoulder to steady him. He braced himself for being pushed off or hit or otherwise rejected.
"And leave you here so that someone else can come along and finish the job? Because there are plenty of people around 'ere what don't exactly care that it wouldn't be fair. I wouldn't trust me either, but...I'm only trying to help," by this time he was getting quite frustrated, "So if you'd stop being such a child," he doubled back on himself, "I'm sorry, didn't quite mean that," he continued, a little softer, "But where would I take you? Back to my mistress's house? That'd go over well," here he trailed off, then then cleared his throat, a little embarrassed, "Sorry. - But I know where you live, and I've really got noplace else to take you."
"You just broke my fingers and took a bite out of my neck! It is not childish to object to your presence!" Simon snapped, but despite his objection, when the boy moved in to take his shoulder, he made no move to resist him. With his one good hand still supporting himself on the wall, there wasn't that much he could do to resist him. He closed his eyes, scrunching his face up as he felt the slowly throbbing pain in the back of his head swell through him. When he spoke again, his voice was cold, with a certain measure of weariness in it, "I don't know where you'd take me. I'm sure you'd find a doctor content to buy a fresh corpse for his students. It's not as though my sudden absence from the universe would cause much of a stir, I shouldn't think. Cut off my hair before you take me in and I doubt I'd have any distinguishing features left."
Izzy shook his head then. "Shouldn't be so pessemistic. I could take take you back to your house, too - that's what I plan on doing. I've never thought of the whole bit with the doctor, though. That's really clever." He was starting to realize how inane he sounded, how his voice was still shaking slightly, like he was still afraid. He'd never had a chance to speak after when this sort of thing happened. Right now he would have been carrying Simon's corpse through some sodden alleyway, trying to find a roundabout way back to the riverbank. Of course he would have been nervous, if for nothing else than fear of getting caught at it.
Looking down for a moment, he continued, "Last place I remember being was somewheres off Wellington Street, maybe a few blocks from there. Do you know where we are now?" He stopped for a moment, and then said, out of context, "They might recognize your...eyes, sir. Yes."
Simon shrugged away from Izzy at that comment, before very quickly regretting it. He put a hand on the wall once again to steady himself, "I think considering the circumstances, pessimism would be a pretty realistic stance to take at this point." He huffed, before nodding towards the alley he'd come down from the main street, "That was-- I was drinking over there. It'll be better to get our bearings from than here." There was a part of him which merely wanted to take a more populated route back home, due to a small paranoid feeling that it would be far from difficult for Izzy to decide to change his mind about whether he wanted Simon going home alive at this point. He did feel strangely heartened by the quaver in the young man's voice, however, and so decided that perhaps he could at least take a stance of apathy towards whether or not he survived the night. The idea that he was permitting his inevitable death, felt somehow more forgivable than that he was giving Israel the benefit of the doubt.
"I believe when you die one mans eyes become much like the next." He commented dryly, before letting out a long suffering sigh, "Shall we go then?"
Shrugging, Izzy replied, "If you like. Can't really afford to say the same for myself...I'd slit my wrists, you know?" He almost sounded like he would laugh at that. In fact, he wanted to, but he felt like that would only make things worse. It wasn't as funny as it was just unbelievable. He nodded at Simon's suggestion that they go out into the street, though he wasn't sure what the average passerby might think. "Do you think you can walk, Mr. Alexander?"
"But think of what you'd be missing out on if you did." Okay, there might have been a bit of amusement in Simon's voice right there, but it faded out a little as he continued, "The bad things in life are as real and as relevant as the good ones, and every fresh hell that finds you is at least something that you've never seen or done before." After a moment, he straightened his back a little, and replied softly, "I can walk."
"You're right about that," replied Izzy, taking his hand off Simon's shoulder and realizing that he hadn't noticed that it had been there for the last five minutes. "This is a little bit new for me, I suppose," he gave a dark little smile to the paving stones, "I've never come out of it to find a living person, at least."
He nodded, but made a note to keep close to him unless he fell, which was quite likely. "Right, then," he said, turning towards the street, "You lead the way."
So Simon did. Or, well, tried too. Unfortunately it was slightly harder to walk straight than he'd expected, but with the occasional redirection from Izzy, he managed fairly well (in his opinion) to get back towards the area of his house with only a minimal amount of redirection! Upon arriving at his house, he grinned, and gave a lavish gesture towards the property, "There! I told you I was quite capable of making my way back!"
Upon declaring this, Simon took the opportunity to turn around quickly and face his company. The proceeding rush of dizziness, combined with some internalized decision that he was finally home safe, was enough that when he felt his grip on conciousness finally beginning to ease? Some carefully concealed part of him decided not to fight it. His legs went limp, knees fell out from under him, and Simon dropped.
Before he hit the ground, Izzy caught Simon quickly. He supposed he should have thanked his lucky stars that this hadn't happened sooner, and someone decided to ask questions. "Yes, you certainly can," he whispered to the unconscious form as he pulled it back up and rifled through its pockets for keys. Not the most ethical thing in the world that he could have been doing, but just leaving Simon out on his front doorstep wouldn't have been that polite, either.
Once inside, Izzy carried Simon over to the sitting room and laid him on a couch before going off to look through the house. He supposed rooting through someone's medicine cabinet wasn't the nicest thing one could do, either, but he figured he would be here for a while. The last time he'd made a splint for anyone was when Helen had gotten into some kind of trouble with one of the other girls in town, and it had turned sour. His mother hadn't been around, and she'd been crying and complaining, so he'd fixed her up as well as he could. And that was only the last time. His sister seemed to like fighting even better than he did.
When that was done, Izzy sat in front of the fireplace casually. He thought of lighting up a cigarette - he could use one right now - but that might not have gone over well. However, he wanted to wait here, if only to make sure Simon actually woke up. After a little while, he noticed that he was not alone. He patted the floor and murmured, "Here puss puss puss." The cat hesitated for a moment, but came over. The boarding house he'd lived in a few months ago had had a cat living in it, officially to keep the mouse population down and unofficially to get under everyone's feet. Despite this, Izzy had no real aversion to the creature - it was a kitten, even - and scratched it behind the neck. It sniffed at his jacket. "I smell like bird, do I?" he asked it.
Flickering light swam into Simon's vision, for a moment he half panicked, the thought of facing a fire on top of everything else in his present state... but no... the light was too soft in quality, a warm glow rather than an inferno. Lamplight. It took him a moment to work out what had happened, to remind himself that he'd not been wandering the streets alone, and that obviously he'd been brought inside. Without saying anything, he lifted his hand, examining the job that Izzy had done at splinting it as he listened to the boy conferring with his cat. After a few minutes he glanced over to them, studying the familiar markings on the things back.
"His name is Simon. Or... possibly her name. I never checked." He offered, distantly.
At the sound of Simon's voice, Izzy looked up. He should have been better at noticing these things. Of course he knew what death looked like, but it hadn't exactly been a long time since he'd seen signs of life either. He drew back his hand immediately as he realized he was being watched as well. The cat rubbed up against him. He raised his eyebrows at the name, but asked politely, "After its master?" To the cat, he said softly, "Pleased to meet you, Simon."
His legs were a little cramped from sitting on the floor for so long. Aside from the lamps and a little furniture, the house was decidedly empty, as if its owner had just moved in and hadn't finished unpacking. A stark contrast to Mrs. Daugney's lavish mansion, he would reflect afterwards. He looked back at Simon. "Feeling alive?"
Simon grunted, keeping his eyes on his pet as the little creature vied for attention from Izzy, "Named after the great grandfather of it's master. Or the great great grandfather. The lineage of my ancestors vanity becomes unclear to me after a few generations. Suffice to say, the eldest of every generation gets the name, and since I have no intention of enslaving the next lot of Alexanders to my evolutionary legacy?" He managed a particularly self satisfied grin at that comment, slumping his face into his shoulder somewhat sleepily as he did so, "I gave it to the cat."
He considered moving his legs off the lower part of the couch and letting Izzy sit somwhere more comfortable, then thought better of it. It wasn't as though he'd invited the boy in, after all. Dropping one hand down near the floor, Simon rubbed his fingers together and made a little whispering sound, until the other Simon came over to be stroked. Then he decided it was time to answer the later question, "Alive, in a manner of speaking, perhaps."
That was the kind of comment to smile and nod at, since there were probably other conversations to be had about it that he had no intention of starting. From the sounds of things, Simon was quite a bit richer than he looked. A vindictive part of him whispered that he should have demanded more, but he shot it down immediately. Besides, that was what? Three months ago, now? How time flew here. "I see," he said, nodding with a small, amused smile, as if he understood completely. He'd gotten good at that at one point, and a part of him wondered if he was out of practice.
Standing up and stretching, Izzy replied, "Then I really must be off now, I have to wake up tomorrow, you see. Terribly sorry about tonight, wouldn't be surprised if you never forgave me," his tone grew a little quieter at this, but then he cleared his throat, "I'll try to keep out of your way." He bowed his head for a moment, "Good night, Mr. Alexander," and then began to walk past the couch and towards the door.
Simon hummed in response to Izzy's words, mostly ignoring the young man, as he reached back to scratch behind his cats ears. "Forget it. Just don't do it again." He muttered something to his smaller and furrier namesake, which would likely have been quite embarrassing if Izzy actually heard it, before adding, "I'm sure your best efforts will fail. I'll see you some other time, Israel."
Looking down at the floor for a moment, Izzy replied, "I shall try." He opened the door and was about to walk out before he heard Simon's next comment, and though it was incredibly frustrating, Simon was probably right about that. "If you ever venture to Stanhope Street, sir. If it wouldn't ruin your credibility. Goodbye." And with that, he closed the door and pulled his jacket tighter around him as he ventured out into the night.