damned_institute | Day 37: Breakfast

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Day 37: Breakfast

[for Sylar, I believe]

At the sound of the intercom, Wally jerked awake and blinked around at the room. He’d fallen asleep. He should have been up and keeping an eye open for ZEX, but he’d fallen asleep waiting on his bed.

“Idiot,” he groaned, ruffling his hair and sighing in annoyance. “Way to help a guy out, hotshot.” Hopefully ZEX hadn’t dropped by and thought he’d left or something, or wouldn’t be too mad at him for just forgetting about it like that. If he was lucky, he’d be able to catch up with the other patient at some point and explain what had happened.

Rolling himself a little awkwardly out of the bed, Wally took the opportunity to stretch his injured leg and test how well it was holding up. It was feeling a bit better, not so much that he could abandon his crutch or that it didn’t pull painfully if he wasn’t careful, but better. Tony had apparently made it through the night in one piece as well, which was a relief. He really didn’t feel comfortable about the thought of his roommate wandering about on his own with an injured arm. Not when Wally himself could relax and fall asleep in the apparent safety of their room.

Yeah, he wasn’t going to let himself forget that one in a hurry.

It was at that moment that the door swung open to admit one of the nurses. She seemed surprised to find him awake and ready to go already, but smiled warmly. “Hungry, are we Mr. West? Well in that case, let’s get you to the cafeteria. The staff have provided some delicious French Toast as well as a range of other foods I’m sure you’ll like. Now will you be needing a hand with your leg, dear?”

“No thanks, I can handle it,” Wally replied, smiling back. After all, it probably wasn’t the nurses’ fault that this place was so messed up, so it wasn’t like picking fights with them would do anything. With a cheery wave goodbye, Wally slowly made his way to the cafeteria, keeping a tight grip on his crutch all the while. Obtaining a plate of food was only slightly less difficult than it had been yesterday – he didn’t have the painkillers to work around this time – but he managed well enough, coming away from the buffet with a tray containing a plate piled high with slices of French Toast and slathered in maple syrup, butter, and sugar, as well as a glass of juice. Not quite as good as some coffee would be right now, but the sugar would hopefully make up for it. And, with how few people were here at the moment, he could afford to take more food than might have been considered ‘normal’ – he’d have most of it gone by the time anyone came to keep him company, then he could just worry about how many extra serves would be allowed before he aroused suspicion.

Feeling pretty happy with how things were looking so far, Wally hummed faintly to himself as he dug in to his breakfast.

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[for Demyx]

When the voice started pouring from the intercom, Sangamon groaned, and reached out to input the correct set of pokes and prods that would shut off his clock-radio without knocking it on the floor or throwing it across the room. The former tended not to stop the noise; the latter was a waste of electronics. His hand was met by empty space, and its momentum continued unchecked until his knuckles hit the floor. He pulled the hand back, shaking off the sting, and sat up, blinking to try to return reality to normal operation. The voice was still booming from the intercom, sounding more cheerful than an NPR announcer describing another Reagan gaffe. Must be the Head Doctor. Charming son of a bitch.

Identifying the voice meant identifying his location; he'd woken up in the same shithole he'd been in last night. It hadn't melted away into vague recollections of one of his more creative nightmares. He took a deep breath, and then buried his head in his hands. Pathetic and lost, dazed and confused. What the fuck had happened last night? Memories were slotting themselves into order with too-sober clarity. He'd woken up in a room just like this one, gone wandering around a B-movie asylum set, complete with monsters. And lawyers -- he'd been spending way too fucking much time on the mop-up of the Basco affair if he was hallucinating lawyers, even personable ones. Then he'd
been in another dormitory-style room, talking to a bored pseudo-intellectual with delusions of grandeur. Then everything went blurry. Darkness. A voice, sinister and familiar, laughing at him. The same voice that he'd woken up to. Oh shit.

He was still sitting like that feeling sorry for himself when a nurse practially bounded into the room, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. "Good morning, Mister Quincy. Time to rise and shine."

"Kwin-zy," he corrected, automatically.

"Quincy," she repeated, allowing his correction to stand and making a note on her clipboard. "Or would you prefer 'Paul'? We don't have to be formal here at Landel's. We want you to be comfortable during your stay."

"I'd prefer 'Sangamon Taylor'," he growled. Not that he expected that to be honored, given what he'd heard last night. But he was still going to register a protest.

"It's time for breakfast, Paul," she continued, as if he hadn't said anything.

"Not hungry," S.T. shot back, standing up. Crap, I had a map and a flashlight. He patted his pocket; the maps were still there. A quick shuffle through the blankets yielded the flashlight, still warm from where he'd apparently been cuddled up with it. He tossed it back on the bed. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his nurse tapping her foot, smile still plastered across her face.

"Some nice french toast should make you feel better. We all want you to get better. Come on, you don't want to be late. First meal of the day, don't you want to make a good impression?" She was wheedling, now. Pretty soon she'd be whining.

"I said, I'm not hungry." A wet gurgle from his stomach made that one of his more obvious lies. "Fine, fine, just gimme a fucking minute." He walked over to the dresser, retrieved all of the slippers, and crossed the room directly in front of the nurse, refusing eye contact. He shoved two pairs in the closet, dropped the third on the floor, and stepped into them. Then he turned around and yanked open the desk, taking out two pens and the notebook. He opened the notebook, unfolded the maps Phoenix had given him carefully into it, and shut it again. Finally, he gave his shirt a quick sniff to see if sleeping in it had rendered him socially unacceptable (fortunately not), and picked up the notebook. "Okay, whatever. Let's go."

The nurse led him down the hallway, babbling away about how his friends must miss him, how Martin Landel was a gracious bastard, and other nonsensical meaningless social noise. He counted doors -- he hadn't been in the same room he'd woken up in last night -- and then traced out the route against his memories of the map. Everything matched up as they made their way through several other brightly-lit halls and into a cafeteria. It smelled heavenly. Acrylamides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons -- two traditional breakfast carcinogens -- were battling for airspace dominance along with a cacophony of chatter bouncing off hard walls and floor.

He grabbed a tray and slid it into the line, clacking along the metal strips like a herd of ravenous railroad boxcars. Tall stack of French toast, generous pat of real butter (no artificially hydrogenated fats or toxic nickel additives here). Three strips of bacon, glass of orange juice, admonition that syrup was on the table. It all smelled (and looked) surprisingly edible. For cafeteria food, it was practically four-star. He glanced around for the nurse that had brought him there to ask about coffee, but she was nowhere to be seen, and the line was moving, spitting him out into the seating area of the cafeteria.

He found a table with several empty chairs and set his tray down at one of them.

Demyx was in an exceptionally good mood when the morning rolled around. He hadn't expected to make friends with his roommate so quickly - well, to a given value of 'friend' where Soubi was concerned, he supposed, but he was determined to get along with his roommate regardless of Soubi's thoughts on the matter - and he'd made a second, unexpected friend in Ritsuka, too. And when nighttime rolled around, he might well be getting his sitar back!

He couldn't remember the last time his life had been going so well. And instead of feeling sad ~~or convincing himself he felt sad~~ about how depressing his life had been for so long, all he felt was excitement for the future. Showing up in the institute after dying the second time had worked out a lot better for him than waking up on The World That Never Was had worked out for him the first time.

Grabbing a tray of food without even really paying attention to what it is, he happily sat down across from someone he hadn't seen before. Perhaps it was his good mood that prevented him from noticing that the guy didn't look anywhere near as happy, or especially open to company. "Hey!" he greeted the guy cheerfully.

S.T. was engrossed in saturating all of his food evenly with artificial-maple-flavored pancake syrup when someone took the seat across from him. He looked up, expression neutral. Good food went a long way in holding the anxiety at bay; he couldn't honestly say he'd relaxed, but he was back to 'capable of rational discourse'.

Teenager or college kid, with a seriously rock-and-roll mullet. Cheerful -- S.T. wondered if he had a stash of mood-altering drugs to match the metal image, or if he'd simply done so many before landing in here that he'd fried whatever brain cells he'd had under that hair.

"Morning. You don't know where they hide the coffee, do you?" That was the one thing seriously missing from a breakfast spread otherwise nicely balanced between grease and sugar.

Demyx frowned, momentarily baffled. "They hide the coffee?" he asked, bewildered. It had never occurred to him they would, and he wasn't much for drinking it so he'd never actually looked.

Also - was that guy pouring syrup on his bacon? Was he doing it on purpose? Dude, that was kind of gross.

"Do you see any around? No." Okay, so it made sense that they might keep stimulants off the menu. No coffee, no tea. No weird-ass herbal tea that supposedly centered the mind but mostly induced diarrhea. The latter was what told him no-one he knew had sent him here. Not that any of them would spend this kind of cash on him anyways, but if they were going to, it would be someplace with that kind of tea. And yoga lessons before breakfast.

Yeah, there was syrup on everything. The kid was watching him like he'd never seen a trucker take on a blue-plate special. He took several large bites of bacon and toast, washing them down with orange juice before prying his attention from the food. Clearly, small talk was warranted. "Been here long?"

"I didn't look," Demyx replied with a slight shrug. "Caffeine's really not my thing." It quite clearly was this guy's thing, judging by his attitude. It kind of reminded him of what Luxord could get like if he didn't have his tea in the morning.

Oh, jeez. Syrup-covered bacon followed by orange juice? Demyx tried not to cringe. He couldn't really think of any way that could be a good combination. "Only a couple days. You?"

The guy was looking at S.T.'s plate like he'd committed some egregious sin against nature. Vegetarian? Jewish? Nah. Obsessive-compulsive need to keep food from touching? The theory had merit. Either way, he could afford to slow down his consumption from 'inhale' to 'fit for mixed company'. He was clearly, he reminded himself, even more of an asshole without caffeine. Just as clearly, his compatriot hadn't yet been to college. Even if you didn't need to study, coffee and Jolt were staples in treating the aftermath of a good party. Mentioning that might be seen as ivory-tower elitism, though, since the kid looked old enough. So he just echoed the shrug and dropped the subject.

"Just last night. Thought it was a bad dream, but no such luck." He set down his fork, thinking. Newspapers. That was what was missing along with the coffee. There should be fifteen copies of the fucking business section, no comics section, and one hotly contested copy of the baseball results. That brought to mind his own photo on the nightly news, and the fact that no-one here seemed to recognize him. Whoops. "Uh, sorry. I'm Sangamon Taylor -- S.T. for short." He reached a hand awkwardly across the table, well above the plates and cups.

Having finally decided that there was no accounting for taste, and resolving not to observe whatever weird combinations this guy put into his mouth next, Demyx grinned and shook the guy's hand. "S.T., hunh? I'm called Demyx. Nice to meet you." He shook his head slightly. "Sorry it's not just a dream."

Okay, that settled it. Having a bizarre name was definitely a dangerous thing. At least as far as landing here was concerned. This one took the cake -- like his parents had come up with it by dumping letters out of a Scrabble set. While high.

Motion caught his eye -- the kid he'd seen tangling with the squirrel had sat down a few tables over. And the Big Guy, both with limbs intact. That was a load off his shoulders. He could go back to telling himself there was nothing useful he could have done with a clean conscience.

"So what do people do around here for fun? Besides trying not to get eaten by the wildlife?"

"For fun?" Demyx rubbed the back of his neck absentmindedly. "I don't really know. During the day, you kind of just have to do what the nurses tell you. At night, though, when all the monsters come out...well, I guess you can do whatever you want? Although it's kinda hard to have fun when there's monsters wandering around and everything's dark and creepy." He brightened slightly. "My friends and I are starting a band, though."

A band. Well, at least he had the hair for it. "What kind of band?" It had better be something involving guitars. Preferably loud guitars. Some seriously good rock would go a long way in making life more tolerable.

Okay, it would probably suck. But beggars couldn't be choosers, and music was music. Except Gloria Estafan. That was unadulterated crap, toxic to the ears.

The nights here would make a good MTV music video. He could see it -- camera wandering through hallways, band playing a concert in the middle of a trashed auditorium, carcasses of monsters adding some hard-core gore. Very metal. "Gonna have a concert? Maybe I should look into amateur brewing. Can't have a concert without beer."

A food fight had broken out across the room. Well, it was still at the shot-across-the-bow stage, but it'd be nearing border skirmish soon. Too bad he hadn't grabbed any fruit or other non-sticky, easily-thrown consumables.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. Good ol' Groucho. Though whether he'd meant aerodynamics or Drosophila Melanogaster was still unclear. Both were bread-and-butter to the the gene-tinkering community. Fruit flies for their short lifespan and easily-mutable genome, bananas because they were grown as a monoculture. Attack of the Cloned Bananas. One good disease and bam -- a horde of duck-squeezers would be crying into their fruit-free granola. Scientists had been squawking about the imminent demise of the banana as long as S.T. could remember. But as ecological disasters went, this one was pretty damn low on the priority list. 'Save the bananas' just didn't have the crowd appeal of whales or fuzzy baby seals.

Demyx glanced across the room at the food fight before grimacing and trying to hunker down into a smaller target in his chair. Two thoughts warred for dominance in his head - oh my god those people are going to be sticky in places they won't even find for a week, which was something he knew from experience, and oh please not in my hair. His hair was way too cool for syrup.

Actually, considering that he was apparently eating across from a guy who thought syrup worked with everything, maybe he was not in such a good place right now.

"I dunno what kind of band yet," he admitted absently, keeping one eye on the fight. "I mean, I've been inviting my friends, but most of them can't play any instruments yet - I'm gonna show them how." And it was a good thing he'd gone through so many instruments before finding his calling in the sitar(or at least he assumed that was the case, as he had a hell of a lot of instrumental knowledge in his head and that seemed the likeliest explanation for it), since if he weren't able to teach Matsuda and Ginji to play anything but the sitar they'd all be kind of stuck. "I play the sitar, though."

Demyx didn't seem too enthused about the food fight -- S.T. wondered if he was just playing 'too cool', or if he knew something S.T didn't. So far, the staff was tolerating the hijinks, but he doubted that would last. Either way, he'd stick to eating his breakfast. For today.

Ouch. He revised "probably suck" down to "the bad kind of noise pollution". The only people who were going to enjoy this band was the people in it. If they were tone-deaf. Or just deaf.

"Into the Beatles? Or just a big fan of everything Eastern?"

It was a good thing Demyx didn't know about the doubts S.T. was harboring as to the projected awesome factor of their band. Sure, Matsuda and Ginji didn't know how to play yet, but Demyx would teach them. And they'd be good, he just knew it. They were too cool not to be.

Demyx shook his head slightly. "I just tried it and liked it," was his response. It wasn't as though he even remembered why, but he was pretty sure he hadn't had much exposure to the sitar as a human. He knew they'd been exotic where he came from, anyway.

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Day 37: Breakfast

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