damned_institute | Day 50: Cafeteria (Brunch)

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Day 50: Cafeteria (Brunch)

Somehow, after their talk in the chapel, Elaine felt simultaneously more accepting of and more irritated by her future husband. On the one hand, seven years had clearly been good to him. He seemed more sincere and thoughtful than he had been before his disappearance, and he had a more mature (dare she say, handsome?) look to him. On the other hand, there were clearly some things that made even time throw up its hands in vain and say, "To hell with this!" Guybrush was still inexorably prone to disastrous accidents if the story about the Pox of LeChuck was anything to go by, and he was so obviously keeping something important from her that any passing dolt in the Institute would have been able to tell. In the end, that eternal underlying sweetness of his that won out, keeping her from punching him again, at least. That was only by a hairs width, though. Her snugglecakes was going to have to stay on his best behaviour if he knew what was good for him.

She left the Mighty Pirate™ alone for the time being when the announcement of the next shift went off. He would want some time to catch up with Morgan next, presumably. As much as the woman's attitude bothered her, she was a friend of Guybrush's, as she had claimed. Elaine could be strict, but she wasn't the kind of shrewish future wife/past fiancé who would keep her man from seeing his friends. Besides, she needed some more time to catch up on the goings-on of the Institute. Patients filled the building to the brim, now, it seemed; there would be a lot to investigate.

After a few quick trips back and forth to the bulletin and a few new leads to follow up on, the governor gave in to her nurse's persistent nagging and headed to the cafeteria for brunch. After the relatively light fare of the day before, Elaine took advantage of the Institute's admittedly scrumptious offerings and loaded up a full, balanced brunchfast of eggs, sausage links, waffles, and vegetable soup. As expected, the selection of drinks did not offer either root beer or grog. Grog she could live without, at least, she thought while making a face. Eugh. For now, she settled for a tall glass of water.

Elaine settled into a seat in the cafeteria and tucked into her meal. Her eyes didn't stay on her food, though, instead gazing around restlessly; she hadn't seen LeChuck so far this morning, and god forbid he wanted to invite himself to brunch with her if he chose now to show up. A certain horribly unpleasant dinner on Mêlée Island came to mind. She was prepared to either move at the first sign of the dread pirate or signal a random stranger to sit with her before he could.

[For Dean]

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Scott half-expected the door from the Sun Room to the Cafeteria to dump him off in a closet or a doctor's office or a lake, even to the point where he squinted his eyes shut and prepared himself for that inevitable wave of nausea. The human body being the marvelous thing that it is, Scott easily managed to convince himself that he actually felt the nausea, too. But no, there was the Cafeteria, right where it was supposed to be. Unless he had gotten a portal that happened to warp him to exactly where he needed to be, that sort of thing was all over. For now, anyway.

Still feeling a little sick to his stomach both from his expectations and from being slumped over on the couch for the whole previous shift, Scott didn't take much for brunch. He grabbed a burger and a slice of pizza without thinking much about what was on them. It wasn't until he found an empty seat that he realized the pizza he had grabbed was full of gross little anchovies. Scott made a face. He wasn't going to eat that. Yeuck. But did he really, really want to get up, go all the way back over to the food line, swap out his pizza, then come all the way back here (without a guarantee that the seat would still be free) when he still had a perfectly good cheeseburger in front of him?

Scott pushed the pizza plate aside purposefully and started nomming on his burger. "Fshupid anschofies."

[Free Scott Pilgrim!]

Heat hated the smell of the cafeteria. He hated it even more when he hadn't had a decent meal in a couple of days. The demon was starving and surrounded by food that could fill the stomachs of every patient in this facility and then some - all of which would do nothing for him. And despite his attitude about it in the past, the nurses still insisted on trying to get him to eat every now and then.

He didn't even feel like arguing about it today, and he let the nurse pick items to toss on his plate at random. Every so often the woman would glance back at him uncomfortably, which might have had something to do with the way he was staring the exposed skin of her neck above the collar as though it was a tender, juicy steak.

None of the patients would miss a nurse, surely.

Without much of a preference for where he sat that morning, Heat allowed himself to be led wherever the nurse felt like. This meant he ended up sitting across from some kid that looked vaguely familiar, except that he couldn't place where he might have run into him before. Chances were he'd just seen him around the Institute.

He didn't feel like wishing anyone good morning, so the only greeting Scott received was having the demon's tray shoved in his direction.

Edited 2010-06-18 21:24 (UTC)

Scott blinked at the food suddenly shoved into his field of view. Well, that was one way to get a replacement for the pizza - random act of God.

"Uh, thanks, dude," Scott said with no small amount of awkwardness and confusion in his voice as he took the offered plate of assorted foodstuffs. "I don't know if I can eat all of this, though. You sure you don't want any of it?"

Looking the stranger over a little more closely, there was something a little familiar about him. Scott squinted at him, not sure quite what it was. Had they met recently? Then he started to make the connection. That red hair, that imposing look... Was it...? No. Could it really be...?!

"You know, you look a lot like my friend Kim Pine," Scott commented after a few moments of silence. "You're bigger, but she's a surly redhead too. Separated at birth, maybe?"

Edited 2010-06-19 20:37 (UTC)

Given that Heat hadn't been born, per se, he stared at Scott for a moment in bewilderment before asking "...Who?" Then he shook his head. He didn't like being compared to others, whether it was just a passing similarity or not, but it wasn't worth arguing over. The answer should have been enough to tell the kid he had no idea who he was talking about.

"It's Heat, not Dude." He'd already had to tell Junpei this, and he didn't honestly care if it was a title rather than a name. "And no, I don't want it. I don't eat before dark here." And the teen was free to take that however the hell he wanted, since there really wasn't any better way to phrase it and he was tired of trying to explain. People were just going to form their own opinions anyway.

The demon slouched in his chair, hating the time he had to spend waiting through meal shifts with nothing to do but make conversation or watch others sate their hunger while he couldn't himself.

Couldn't eat before dark? What was Heat, a Mogwai? He was tempted to ask if the guy couldn't get wet or stand in bright sunlight, either.

"Well, Heat Not Dude, I'm Scott Pilgrim," he answered back after finishing off the burger he had started with and starting in on the hodgepodge plate. He felt kind of bad about eating in front of a clearly hungry man, but the stuff on the plate was just going to go all cold and soggy if he left it alone. The anchovy pizza was already starting to look a little limp and gross just from leaving it off to the side for a while. "That must seriously suck, having to wait like that. Is it a condition that needs a special diet or something? Diabeetus? Vampirism?" He hoped it wasn't vampirism. The guy's eyes were definitely a suspicious red colour, though. Ulp.

From the incredible grouchface look on the guy's face, Scott wasn't sure he was going to get an answer to that question. Just in case, he tried to think of something else to talk about that maybe wouldn't get him turned into vampire chow that night. His eyes wandered, eventually hitting upon something interesting on Heat's right arm. "Hey, cool tattoo, guy! Kinda looks like a killer Pac-Man on fire. I like it," he commented with one of his signature doofy grins.

Edited 2010-06-20 08:22 (UTC)

"Yeah. Special diet." A special diet that involved the living flesh of other demons, possibly humans, and one that the nurses weren't willing to acknowledge he needed. Having spent a day believing himself to be a med school drop out, he knew what the staff believed him to be. That just made it all the more infuriating. Heat had no idea what diabetes or vampirism were, having retained only the basic shell of knowledge from that time, so those particular queries got Scott only another confused look.

His eyes strayed to the mark on his arm when the boy asked, and he held it up where it was more visible. "It's the fireball, my Atma." The demon was hungry enough that it didn't take much concentration for it to flare up red for a moment. How soon would it be, he wondered, before he lost control just like Roland had? As the only Embryon left in the facility, he refused to let that happen. That night was going to be dedicated to getting himself a meal.

He supposed he could devour his roommate, if it came to that, except Beelzemon apparently had a friend who might notice his absence.

Scott gave Heat a wary, also confused look at the very simple answer he got, but didn't question it. He had a feeling that doing so would likely earn him a bite on the neck at some point. And not the sexy kind, either.

Focus on the tattoo for now, he told himself. That, at least, was still pretty cool. It was even cooler when the guy managed to turn it red for a moment. Or would that be hotter, what with the red colour and the name Heat? Scott left that serious quandary be for the moment, instead just rolling with his initial reaction. "Oh, that is too cool! What's an Atma? Does it do anything else?" he asked, curiosity like a child's lighting up his face.

Yes, it was the symbol of his demon. The transformation started with the mark and spread. But once again, Heat wanted to avoid the details, especially since this looked like the sort of kid that might get too nosy and ask things he shouldn't. A lot of people were like that here, though in their defense there wasn't much else to do here at times aside from talking.

Especially when one didn't have their own meal to eat, like now. "It marks me as having certain abilities," he decided on finally. "And if it glows brighter than that, you're in trouble." If it spread, in other words, glowing lines like webbing moving outward from the mark. But yeah... details.

His other hand began tapping his leg, light and without rhythm. There was too much time left until nightfall.

"Ohhhh, so it's like a meter, kind of? When you push it to the max, you get a Limit Break or something?" That made enough sense, then.

Scott noticed the tapping. It was kind of hard to ignore, even as he ate. It wasn't even the noise or the impatience it conveyed that annoyed him, either. It was the fact that the tapping didn't really have rhythm that bothered him the most as it went on. Why make so much noise without putting a beat to it?

After about a minute of this, Scott couldn't take it anymore. To himself, he mouthed a silent, "One, two, three, four!", counting in for Sex Bob-omb's "Launchpad McQuack." With a free hand, he started tapping in time on his uninjured leg. Maybe Scott didn't do much on drums nowadays, but he had done his share of percussion playing with Kid Chameleon back in the day; he had that much rhythm, at least. The beat was easy enough to follow, and though Scott doubted anything would come of it, he wondered if Heat would pick up on it. At the very least, it distracted him enough from the lighter, more formless noise across from him. The reminder of home wasn't a bad touch, either.

It might have made sense to Scott, but it didn't make much sense to Heat. In a very confusing and roundabout way, perhaps. "...Huh?" The comment wasn't even really worth thinking about. He was already irritated that he looked as baffled as he did, since that could just prompt more questions.

As for the lack of rhythm, it wasn't Heat's fault, really. He just hadn't had the opportunity to listen to much music. There were those couple songs from the CD the other day, but he couldn't recall the actual beat well, given how little he'd been able to listen to, and he was having a difficult time focusing in his current mental state anyway. When Scott started up his own thing, he was fairly certain he was being mocked, and he glared at the boy accordingly. What did he think he was doing, exactly?

The demon glanced down toward the boy's hand, though he couldn't see it, and then back up again, his own hand now curling into a fist where it sat on his lap.

Oh hey, Heat had ceased his own tapping. Had he stopped to listen? That must have been it, Scott thought. Clearly, the power of Sex Bob-omb was unstoppable and irresistible, even when muffled through flimsy grey sweatpants and lacking his epic (okay, decent... okay, tolerable... okay, not ear-bleeding) bass.

Scott picked up the tempo a bit, starting to get a bit lost in the song within his own head. At some point, he had started humming the vocal parts, though he couldn't pin down exactly when that had started. He would have started in on the lyrics, but truth be told, he wasn't really sure he remembered the actual lyrics right now. Humming would have to work for now.

He had reached about the second verse by the time he looked up again. Heat was just staring, and though Scott was pretty sure that was a scowl he saw on the potential vampire (potentialpire?)'s face, the expression was too muted for him to tell for sure. Could just be tired, too, he thought. In any case, on the off-chance that he could still get the guy to join in, Scott grinned and asked him about just that: "Hey, why don't you join in, man? What's life in a balls-trippingly terrifying mental asylum without music?"

It was a little hard to believe, but the kid was actually serious. He didn't seem thrown off in the slightest by Heat's obvious displeasure, either. That just caused him to make the scowl more obvious, though he thought it had been obvious enough before. Maybe Scott just didn't care.

"I'm not gonna join in," Heat growled. He didn't know how, for one thing - couldn't sing or hold a tune for the life of him. Hell, he hardly knew how to hum. Music interested him, no doubt about it, especially because Sera had been so fond of it, but this boy was just ticking him off. "You look like an idiot."

His irritation had nothing to do with not wanting to admit his own lack of knowledge, of course. None at all.

Scott probably should have been more intimidated by Heat suddenly growling at him. Partly, he was. Red-eyed male Kim Pine vampires were nothing to be sneezed at, and a short tense in Scott's body showed that. Partly, though, Heat's reaction kind of struck him the way someone who just didn't want to admit to having a fun side would. "The lady doth protest too much," as a certain famous bald guy once put it.

Thus, Scott couldn't help but grin a bit more after his initial scare, this time with +1 to Cheekiness. "Oh do I? You sure you just aren't holding out on me, man? Afraid of looking like an idiot yourself?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "What are you, a chicken? A big ol' disgruntled chicken? Bawk bawk bawk bawwwwk!" Schoolyard taunts were maybe a bit overused in the world for the purposes of egging people on, but hey, Scott figured that was because they worked. No one wanted to be caught being a chicken.

While Heat wasn't sure why he was being compared to a small bird commonly eaten by humans, he did know he was being mocked. Even if he'd known how to sing, he wouldn't have done so for this boy. His best option was probably to just ignore him, but that required a certain amount of restraint that the demon didn't possess in these types of situations. No, no, the best method for getting Scott to shut up was pure, old-fashioned physical pain. He just needed to make sure not to do anything that would have one of the nurses or orderlies immediately heading their way.

One of the boy's hands was on the table. Heat reached out quickly and snatched it in one of his own, twisting the wrist in a manner that would be painful but not cause any lasting damage. Then he leaned closer, snarling through a forced smile. "I won't sing because I don't want to sing. Got it?"

He let go just as quickly, slamming Scott's arm back down on the table. Hopefully, that would be enough to get the boy to quit with the attitude.

Okay, now the lady doth protest way, way too much!

"Hghah!" Scott tried twisting his body and arm in the same direction his wrist was going in a feeble attempt to cut down on the pain. With the table in his way, doing this didn't get him far. Thankfully, he was released quickly enough. Un-thankfully, he was released with a rough slam back down onto the table. "Got it..." Scott croaked after a moment.

There was some silence between the two young men for a while after Scott pulled his arm back and returned to his brunch. The only thing that broke it after a time was one single mumbled utterance from Scott as he munched on the last of his pizza: "Jerk."

Edited 2010-07-05 21:23 (UTC)

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Day 50: Cafeteria (Brunch)

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