damned_institute | Day 41: Sun Room

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Day 41: Sun Room

Haseo's steps were heavy with the weight of righteous anger as he was escorted into the Sun Room, his posture so sullen and reluctant you could almost hear the nostalgic cry of an electric guitar. He was seething, and though perhaps it was a bit harder to be intimidating while wearing the uniform of an insane asylum and flanked by a bored-looking orderly, it was not for lack of trying.

Unfortunately, his nurse seemed unaffected by the act, and even with the cloud of failing to keep "Kai" away from "Peyton" hanging over her, remained determinedly cheerful. She merely said something about receiving a lecture later on, ignored his retorts, and assured him that it would be alright even though his internet stalker was in the same building. For the most part, Haseo tuned her babbling out after that, dismissing it as hopeless.

"...and usually this would be the time children would be taking showers, but you don't have to worry about that right now. Now then, le--"

"Wait. What?"

"Oh, all the children seventeen or under are separated right now while the adults go to the courtyard..."

"Hey, I'm not a kid you old--!"

"Oh of course you aren't dear, but you're not eighteen yet either, now are you?"

Haseo resisted the urge to do something rash, literally biting his tongue to keep quiet. But upon having the bulletin board pointed out to him, he shrugged off his anger for the most part and headed that way, fully intending to get more answers than he'd had time to receive during breakfast.

Well... at least Endrance is in another shower group, he thought, Thank god.

[Closed to Tsukasa, for now!]

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S.T. sneered. "I'm already a dead man walking, thanks to the fuckers upstairs." He cut the litany off before he started sounding like some forcibly-retired sad bastard.

Then he contemplated the chair. There were a number of options available. First, forcibly removing the offending appendages. From the chair, not their owner. But that would cross the boundary of acceptable personal contact with a guy he'd never gotten into an argument with and/or been introduced. And getting into a fistfight at every opportunity was Spider's department.

Second, admit defeat and slink away like an alleycat that failed to duck when the shoes came out.

Third, change the parameters. He grabbed the near arm of the chair and dragged it away from the guy. Little rubber nubs tacked onto the bottoms of wooden feet screeched against the floor, and he reflexively glanced at the floor. Whether he was worried about getting in trouble for potential damage or was hoping to at least make some impression, even he wasn't sure.

"My heart is bleeding. Really, I'm gonna cry." Badou replied, without a hint of sympathy. He had to meet with Artemis soon, so he figured maybe the man would just go away if he was... well himself. He didn't really want an audience for that meeting, now that he thought about it. Just another good reason to continue being an asshole, which was more than he usually had.

Then the chair made an escape attempt and, since he was such a nice guy who didn't like violence or being sedated, Badou didn't kick the thing closest to the chair and instead tried to hook his legs against the arm. He even opened his eye and propped himself up on his elbows.

"What's with you? Can't you see some of us are trying to enjoy a nice restful morning in the sun? You should really relax after you get that chest cold taken care of. Maybe find a nice chair or something."

"You do that." He punctuated the sentence with another tug on the chair.

At least one nurse was eyeing them while maintaining her holding pattern. Turkey vultures turning lazy circles in the patches of sunlight, looking for roadkill. The more dead squirrels on the shoulder, the more they thrived. Even if they might admit that a one-to-one patient-to-chair ratio made more sense.

Calling in the local authorities was what other people did to him. Except in New Jersey. Figures.

"And funny, that was what I was thinking. Minus the 'taking care' since the only doctors I see around here want to talk about feelings rather than giving a fuck about the Hippocratic oath. So fuck off and let me sit down and I'll leave you to your good cry, Miss...?"

He let the sentence trail off. In the tactical pause while the other guy thought up an appropriate return volley, he gave the chair a much harder yank.

The nurses were always eyeing him with what he liked to think of as professional loathing, so he didn't pay much attention to them. They hated him, he hated them, and he liked to think any of the ones who weren't eating people at night could hear his incessant whining in their dreams. It was therapeutic.

Much unlike the chair being yanked several times. Each time he scooted forward a little more to maintain his hold. "Go fuck yourself." Badou replied, smiling cheerfully. Ah, so that was where the nicotine kick went. "But most people call me -" Asshole. Eypatch. Red-haired fucker. "Badou.

"Whateverthefuckyournameis, I don't know if you want this chair but you should try asking for it. You'd make more friends that way. Is that why you're so bitchy? You should watch some of that Barney the Dinosaur shit. Sharing is caring, use your words, please and thank you, you know? People here are such dicks."

"I have absolutely no idea what the fuck you're talking about," he deadpanned, although he really didn't know the reference. Kid's TV was all the same, though, except for the PBS educational bullshit which added boring to the usual 60's-era love-in with hand-puppets.

"And I'm Sangamon Taylor. I don't do polite unless it's professionally prudent. Or if it will get me laid. And I don't see anyone here who falls into either category."

Normally, he'd be happy to stand there trading insults indefinitely. But lack of sleep and an overenthusiastic response to breakfast not being met at the border with bile-fueled semi-automatic weaponry was making him woozy. "If I sit down I'm at least half as likely to accidentally puke on you. Which would be more of a dick move than I was aiming for."

"You must lead a privileged life with cable TV." Badou replied dryly. "And you're not my type. Your tits are too small and your name is too long."

He unhooked his legs from the chair and sat up on the loveseat, which was now his sole territory. Sigh. Well, it was better than laying around in someone else's puke. He didn't want to know what Haine felt like that one time.

It also gave him a better chance to look around for Artemis...who was talking to Haku. He looked away again. Not really worried if they saw him - he needed to talk to both at some point - but anything he could do to avoid antagonizing Haku further was probably a good idea. He'd seen Mihai in action and he wasn't about to play chicken with a trained goddamn assassin who didn't have any reason to like him half as much. He hoped Artemis was giving him the 'don't kill Badou, he lets me watch the good porn' talk.

...Well, the point was Artemis was occupied at the moment so that meant he didn't have to worry about reserving seats. Besides, the guy looked like he was serious and Badou was feeling awfully empathetic after his own morning. "Remember, if you puke on me after this nice gesture I'm going to return the favor in spades and all I've got left is stomach acid."

"Aye, aye, cap'n," S.T. quipped, and then flopped into the chair before the offer could be rescinded.

Then he pulled his journal out of a back pocket, flattened it back out, and turned to an empty page. "The bulletin. What can't we get away with saying?" Various notes had mentioned official censorship, but the only blackouts and tear-downs he'd seen were local conflicts. Border wars while the superpowers were busy dispensing sedatives, bullshit, and platitudes. "Or does their glasnost extend to anything they think is just delusion?"

Here he was thinking he'd finally met someone who was only mildly crazy and he just had to start talking to his diary. Toss in what felt like an oncoming headache and this morning kept getting better and better.

Badou wasn't surprised anymore. Continuing with the trend of Not Thinking About Last Night, he decided to focus on this Taylor guy instead. "Are you monologuing or asking me a question? Because I can leave you two alone."

If Badou really wanted to be left alone, he'd've shut up or faked snoring or wandered off.

Or punched S.T. in the face well before he'd gotten to the vomit threat.

"I've known enough pretentious academics to be able to cite the difference between talking to the media and talking to the medium." He thwapped his pen against the notebook on the final, drawn-out syllable. Sure, stupid Latin tricks were the refuge of the bored overachiever who wanted to prove that there'd been a point to learning the fucking language in the first place beyond SAT scores. Which he hadn't needed any help with, due to being smarter than them. Whatever. Then he looked up, eyebrows semaphoring the universal symbol for try me.

"I thought you might have been here long enough to know something. But I can admit when I'm wrong."

"I'm happy for you." Badou replied, not taking that bait. The word 'academic' was enough to warn him off.

Though in all truth this was the first guy he'd met here who actually spoke Asshole, and it was kind of a relief. He kept having to backtrack and translate to Landel's Standard with other people. Right now, he didn't feel like being that nice to anyone he didn't know.

"It's good you're so humble." He added, flashing another grin that was mostly teeth. "Does that actually work on people? I think I'm mildly insulted."

Edited 2009-05-18 21:24 (UTC)

"Only on idiots, morons, and middle-management." A corner of his mouth twisted into a grin. Well, it worked on most of the Boston office of GEE, too, but they knew it was bullshit. It was just a highly-advanced form of code.

"No, seriously. If, hypothetically, someone were to put up a notice advertising a little get-together after lights-out, the staff wouldn't feel it was their ethical duty to confiscate the supplies, would they?" He turned the notebook around. Most of the half-written note was in small handwriting, illegible at that distance unless Badou was hiding telescopic lenses in his head.

Which, around here, might not be a safe assumption.

But to the ordinary person, four letters would stand out. Four letters spelling BEER, spaced unevenly across the top of the sheet. It looked like a tacky frat-party flyer, the kind that got tacked to telephone poles and dormitory windows like parking tickets at the end of the month.

And minor mafioso, come to think of it, but they fell into the first two categories. At least they did when they weren't chasing his sorry ass halfway across the city and back.

Badou cocked an eyebrow at him. Beer didn't hold nearly as much appeal as cigarettes, but he could understand the desire to get totally wasted every once in a while. "There are people offering everything from battle axes to group sex for virgins. Come on. Shit's impossible to find around here though."

If S.T. had known what Badou was thinking, he'd have agreed. The thugs Basco had hired had been long on brawn, short on brains. At least the ones that had done the actual chasing -- some of them fatally (for them) so. Physics, unlike city government, didn't make exceptions for organized crime.

"Yeah, I figured." Group sex for what? He'd missed that particular lurid episode. If they ever got out of here, none of them would ever need to work again -- the talk-show circuit and ghostwritten autobiographies of sex, aliens, and alien sex would leave them set for life. "And it might be hard to find, but you don't have to be a brilliant biochemist to make the stuff. Though it doesn't hurt." He grinned. Modesty was something he'd never been accused of.

Badou grinned back. "You total shit."

Which mostly translated to 'that's awesome and I think I'm fangirling a little'. He'd seen people try to do the whole brewing in the bathtub thing but it usually tasted a lot like it had been mixed with not-so-clear toilet water...which wasn't all together unlikely. But a biochemist had to get it right...right?

"Sounds like higher education is highly underrated. So what're you planning Mr. Biochemist? Reliving your co-ed dorm years tonight, or are you still hunting supplies?"

Edited 2009-05-19 19:20 (UTC)

Grinning, like yawning, was infectious -- the kind that didn't require quarantines or hacking coughs or CDC pamphlets. His widened into an outright smirk.

"Got everything I need. Just need to give the micro-organisms another day or two to work. Tomorrow night." From the smell leaking out of the closet this morning, it'd be drinkable tonight. But it'd be better with another day, and something didn't sit right about kicking back with a beer on a night they'd dragged another set of poor bastards upstairs. Tomorrow, anyone brainwashed would appreciate a smaller range of targets for morning-after abject apologies.

He levered himself out of the chair. Then, feeling generous, he shoved it back into foot-usurping range. He swaggered over to the board, slammed the note onto the board, and walked off. Not that there was anywhere to go, but just on general principle.

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Day 41: Sun Room

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