[Visual] [Location- Random Warehouse]

[smecker.livejournal.com]

The tablet briefly displays a skewed glimpse of what looks like a makeshift science lab inside a large empty warehouse-- the emphasis on makeshift. A few library books stacked on surfaces, spines bearing titles like Chemistry for Students and Practical Science. There's bits of pipe, a sink, projects scattered in phases of half-completed.

Paul Smecker rights the tablet, and takes a breath. In one hand he has a pair of safety goggles, which he sets down on the counter with a level of care that is a marked contrast from the last time he made a broadcast.

"Hey, Taxon," he says after several awkward seconds. "I don't know how many people got a chance to know her, but Alexis Castle's gone."

He pauses, opens his mouth as if to say something else, then just shakes his head and presses the button to end the call.

Paul stands there a moment in the silence of the warehouse, then sets a plastic bag full of supplies down on the counter. No need for them now. Class for Alexis has been canceled, permanently.

Comments

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Paul blinks at that question... and then he starts laughing. It's not really a happy noise, but it's something.

"Shoot me and put me out of my misery? Or take me somewhere secluded and re-enact scenes from my favorite porno? ....Jesus. No, I'm fine. Just... processing." He stares down at the coffee in his hands-- it's really too hot to be drinking it, but Wyatt brought it. He takes a sip.

Any of them can go, anytime. There's people here he doesn't give a shit about; there's others like Alexis where he's just as glad they're no longer here, for their sake, but all the same...

And there's a few he gives a serious fuck about. Like the man sitting next to him on the bench.

Paul tosses his cigarette to the pavement and grinds it under his toe like an offensive insect. His now-free hand drifts over to Wyatt's, brushes the other man's fingers in passing before settling on the bench.

"Thanks for the coffee."

[hasaheart]

"You're welcome," Wyatt says on the tail end of the exasperated rant, and tries not to smile as though the other man's said something funny. There's nothing funny about people disappearing without any kind of warning. Just a stab in the back, in the dark, and then you're gone.

He presses air out of his nose, spreading his fingers to cover Paul's on the bench. He agreed not to advertise, but also not to hide - and to his mind, he can't find one single thing offensive about one hand touching another.

"If one day I'm no longer here..." Oh, what the fringe. He lets go of Paul's hand, sliding two long fingers into his breast pocket, coming out with a teeny tiny little thing. A trinket, really, but he holds it out for Paul to see as if it's not just a painted clay horse with what seems to be a bullet crammed right into it.

"I want you to have this. It's not a Hell of a lot, but..." He shrugs. "Call it a lucky charm."

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Paul purses his lips at Wyatt's introductory words. If one day I'm no longer here...

Yeah. It's too close to what he was thinking on himself, nothing here is permanent. He closes his eyes-- only to open them again when Wyatt says I want you to have this.

(The last time someone he had been genuinely interested in in that sense had given him something, it had been a gun. Well. Unless he counts the brothers, who gave him nothing but headache and heartache and moral catastrophe.)

But the small thing in Wyatt's hand is neither of these, and he stares at it blankly for a moment before picking it up, the forensics mind in him unable to resist looking at it.

"What is that, a .38?" he asks, brows knit. Yes, he's more focused on the bullet right this second than the horse. Blame a lifetime of being trained to focus on bullets.

[hasaheart]

"Uhuh," he hums in response, watching Paul more than the horse. Can't blame him for enjoying the shift from down in the dumps to sparked interest, can you.

"It saved my life. And then I fell backwards out of a window and plummeted into an ice covered lake."

[smecker.livejournal.com]

"Are you seriously telling me this--" he turns it over in his hands, "--this clay horse stopped a bullet?"

Have a suspicious look, Wyatt Cain.

"What the hell's in the middle, Kevlar?" A brow arch, and then the rest of the word register. Paul opens his mouth to say something about Wyatt Cain's fucked-up world, changes his mind, and just shakes his head.

[hasaheart]

Wyatt simply smiles back, finding it increasingly difficult to hold back a broad, completely inappropriate grin. "I told you I'm nearly impossible to kill."

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Paul resists the urge to throw his coffee at Wyatt's grinning mug.

"So you're made of Kevlar, is that it? Jesus Christ." He shakes his head and hands the toy horse back to Wyatt for safe-keeping. "Why the hell did you have a pottery pony on you, anyway."

[hasaheart]

He gives a shake of his hand, doesn't take it back and won't unless Paul insists. "I helped my son make it. Which in actuality means I made it for him. And...I kept it even after he'd moved onto other interests. Took it with me when I left the house for good."

It's the closest thing he's got to something substantial, something that well and truly matters where material belongings are concerned. It's hardly worth a fractured sliver of platinum, but it's the most precious thing he's got.

[smecker.livejournal.com]

When it's clear Wyatt meant keep it right now Paul just nods a little, folds his fingers around the mix of bullet and clay. He flicks a sharp glance up at the little revelation this is something tied to his son, his family, that life Wyatt doesn't have anymore.

"I'll take care of it," is all he says, and puts it carefully into a pocket.

Paul picks up his coffee again, stares out at the park.

"...the ice cold lake thing sounds good right now. Not so much the plummeting, but.... it's hot enough I'd be willing to get back into the water."

[hasaheart]

At the promise, Wyatt inclines his head and leans back in the hard wood of the bench; it creaks slightly under his weight. Paul's hair seems impossibly golden in the bright sunlight, inviting enough that he can't help but reach out and run the fingers of one hand through it.

"I'm...not good with lakes. Thought I was, but turns out I really don't like them," he says, making a slight face at the memory of having to walk across the drawbridge to the Northern Island.

"But there's always the Sanctuary pool..."

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Paul makes a face out of habit, but doesn't pull away from the touch. He just lets his head drop to his chest, squeezes his eyes shut, takes a deep breath and lets it out.

He studies his shoes for a bit. They're scuffed. He doesn't remember when they got scuffed. Goddamit, there was a time he'd have had these fuckers polished after getting a little stray fingerprint dust on them. Did they get scuffed during the zombies? No-- no, that pair had gotten wrecked, he remembers now. He'd replaced them entirely by means of employing the good ol' five-fingered discount.

And now the aliens have started paying him.

They give you the toys, they give you the hatches, they give you the tablets. They let you march through the motions of having jobs, and they think it makes up for things like Alexis, like vampires biting you, like dying.

There's a trash can next to the bench; Paul tosses the rest of his coffee into it and stands.

"Sanctuary pool, check. Sounds good to me. Let's mosey, cowboy... I have to stop and steal me some new shoes along the way."

[hasaheart]

Wyatt shakes his head with a long suffering sigh that is nothing at all like that. He stands up, bringing his cup along for the simple sake of not wasting even crappy coffee.

Even if lately, even hatched coffee seems to be tasting better.

Falling into step beside his friend, he turns to him with an unreadable look on his face.

"When you say shoes, I hope you mean proper ones." As in 'not heels'.

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Paul flutters his eyelashes in answer. "Whatever is wrong with heels?" he asks in an abrupt falsetto, then kicks at a leaf that's drifted across the path.

Back in his normal octaval range, he says, "No, regular shoes. Replace these. I... should probably get some work boots, really, with what we've been doing on the birdhouse."

At least he knows Wyatt won't make a Village People reference.

[hasaheart]

That voice always seems to tug his lips into a perplexed little smile; he shrugs, reaching up to right his hat against the glaring sun up above.

"Nothing wrong. It's just, if you want us to get nothing done...

"Work boots is a safer bet, but not by much."

[smecker.livejournal.com]

Paul snickers in answer. "Construction Worker it is."

He may be humming YMCA as they walk towards a tram line to take them to the Sanctuary. The sun's hot-- but hell with it; he's not giving up. And it's good to know you're not alone.