Grey
It's getting toward the end of the first month of the summer term, and already Grey is losing precious spare time to accidentally extended office hours and late nights grading papers. He could take those papers home with him, in fact he usually does (what else does he have to do on a weeknight?), but tonight was supposed to be different. He had another meeting (he has grown hesitant about labeling them 'dates' since that would put an expectation on them he no longer has) set up with someone he met and exchanged a few messages with over some online dating site or other. He was supposed to be on the road five minutes ago.
By the time he finds his car in the lot he was supposed to be on the road fifteen minutes ago.
And by the time he's rolling out of the lot, rolling and then suddenly stopping as his car jolts! and makes a horrible grinding sort of thudding sound, he knows he's never going to make it to the restaurant.
Growling, he backs his way back into the lot, out of the way in case someone decides to drive down the narrow one-and-a-half lane road lined with cars on either side. As packed as it looks, there's hardly anyone around. Usually, this isn't a problem for Grey. It's been a few weeks since that mysterious fellow Jack Spicer twisted his arm and got him to the Brown Palace's smoking lounge, but he's still been a little wary of being out alone in the dark of night.
Which is why when he exits his vehicle, a practical little VW Golf made at the turn of the decade, he casts a quick glance around his surroundings. Then he turns back to the car and his shoulders slump, he shakes his head, and he mutters a quiet, "Aw man," into the empty air. Depressing a button on his key fob pops the trunk, and he goes to look to see if he has a spare. Which he does.
What he does not have, however, is a jack. He pulls out a cell phone, but pauses before thumbing it to life as he debates who he should call first. Triple-A? Or the date - no meeting - who is probably beginning to think she's been stood up by now.
Jack[How good is tonight's M1K? That's Obfuscate, for the newer folk! Perf + Man.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
JackHey, hey. Here's a story. The lawyer-professor is still wary of solitude and the dark together because of one mysterious Jack. His car - his steed? Should we stick with a theme, make the lawyer-professor into a knight-errant about to get into the poor graces of a maiden fair? - throws a shoe - uh. His car doesn't make it. The narrow street, the aisle of silent and glossy cars, some hulking, the others brooding, in various states of cleanliness similar only in their anonymity, their lack of personality: the night has a way of leeching life from the cityscape, polishing it smooth so that when there is some color it's all the more vital. But the story! Let's not lose the thread of story. The lawyer-professor would be on his way, if only he had a jack. He probably doesn't want the first Jack. The mysterious one who's made him uneasy of the dark. He'd probably really like the second jack.
But, you know, you've gotta be specific with wishes or thoughts, because the universe might go he needs a jack, let's give him one and then he finds himself with something not at all what he might've meant. If he'd made that wish.
Here is a third Jack.
He doesn't melt out of the shadows. He's not just suddenly there, per se, having scraped himself out've being Nobody and Nothing, Nothing's favourite Jack of the night. But he's cutting through the lot, not exactly briskly, no hurry here, but not ambling like dark back-lots are places he frequents without purpose.
Tonight: He's a man whose age might be anything with a scruff of dish-water colored hair that almost curls but rills flat around his ears like he should get a new haircut or maybe just stop wearing hats, with a squashed, over-large roman nose and a jaw that's just a little too narrow for the rest of his freckled features. The freckle fairy was very unkind to this one. He's wearing a long coat that's unbuttoned and practically falling off his shoulders, like he regretted wearing it, like maybe it didn't get as cool tonight as he thought it was going to get but now you've just gotta soldier on, and tucked under his elbow there's a big squashed pink box of something. It's a pink box, so that narrows it down to baked goods.
Jack eyes the man standing by the VW Golf and the popped trunk, thumb hesitating on his cellphone's buttons, and he does what he always does when presented with a moment and an opportunity.
"Looks like you need some help? What'cha got there?"
GreyGrey doesn't know it, but he's becoming something of a master of Be Careful What You Wish For. He's an ordinary man, no different than this or that guy except he's a little nicer than most. Sometimes he's a little less sure of himself. He's not a cowardly lion, no, but he's not the sort to rise up to occasions. But he wants to. Or wanted to. He wanted to be someone's hero, even if it meant being a hero of the mundane. He wants to be a Knight of Helping Old Ladies Cross the Road, or Super Sandwich Getter, that sort of hero.
He was someone's hero one night a few weeks back, though she'll probably never ever realize it. Another date that went not-so-great and ended very bizarrely. When a woman he was out with became suddenly very agreeable to him, instead of taking advantage Grey took her home, and he made sure she made it inside, and he checked with her the next day to make sure she was feeling alright. He's alright with being that sort of a hero.
But wanting those things, wanting to save the damsel fair from dragons and trolls means he has to meet, well, dragons and trolls.
Tonight he wishes his kingdom for a jack, and he gets one, it just so happens that it's not the right kind of jack.
The stranger walks up when he's just deciding to call up the woman of the evening. Grey looks up at him with wide eyes that are colorless in the darkness. Clear or grey or blue or something. He's only slightly more than average, both in height and in build, and that look fairly reeks of innocence. A lamb for the slaughter.
And then it shifts to something else, a wary kind of suspicion. The newcomer doesn't look the type to be a student around the DU campus.
"Uh, a flat," he says. "It's okay, though, I was just about to call triple-A." He wasn't, really, but as he says it it becomes the truth, because suddenly it seems a lot more prudent to call for someone to come here to him than to someone he'll never see in person.
JackThe stranger looks over Grey's car instead of looking over Grey and he impatiently shrugs his coat back up onto his shoulders like he's realized that it's more irritating to have it worn that way than it would be to wear and suffer being a trifle over-warm for. Grey, suspiciously eyeing Jack, might notice a few things. The age-range narrows down to anywhere from late twenties to early forties. How difficult it is to tell with men, sometimes. And with Jack, there's a comfortable kind of assurance at work. He is self-assured, or at least seems comfortable in his own skin, and that has nothing to do with arrogance at all, no bully-boy petty-tyrant here. Not Jack. He's never been able to scare a rat. He wouldn't try. Rats have long memories.
After looking over the car (about to call Triple-a), Jack glances again at the Grey Man Who Was Someone's Hero For A Night, Grey who is becoming a master of Be Careful What You Wish, who will not make his date, and he says, "You know, you look like somebody I know. I'll wait with you if it doesn't take too long." And he sets his pink box down on the bumper of somebody's abandoned pinto, and then sits on top of the bumper. "We haven't met before, have we? Ah, wait, make your call first."
GreyHe gets that a lot. Strangers he would swear he'd never met before think he looks like that guy they knew, at that concert he wouldn't go to or that school he didn't attend. They're sure of it. It's almost not even strange anymore, except that it always is. Particularly when the person who thinks they recognize him is a man with a long coat on a warmish cool summer evening who happens upon Grey in a deserted parking lot in the hours past sunset.
His response this night is to make a kind of nervous looking smile which clears at the suggestion he make his call. "Oh, yes. Thanks," he says, for what he couldn't say.
While he waits for the call to go through to an operator he pulls out his wallet and flips through it before half-pulling out a battered thick paper card. What follows is the normal sort of call for that kind of thing. He has to give his name and some other information, which he tries to give quietly while wandering a few steps away. Account number, last four of his sosh, name. When it's over he says into his phone, "Okay...okay, thank you." He holds it for a second, staring at it, wondering briefly if he should maybe call someone else. His mom, maybe, or his dad, but they're out in Aurora and he's a grown man who doesn't feel right calling his parents for back up.
So the phone gets slid into the pocket of his jeans. The rest of his attire is ordinary, a brownish short-sleeved polo with thin horizontal stripes of a darker color, the top couple buttons undone to give him room to breathe. It's his summer school uniform.
"Ah, where were we?" he asks, the question genuine.
JackGrey does. He does look like somebody or something, doesn't he, the Grey Man met in the abandoned lot when he summoned a third Jack and got Jack of the Nosferatu. Jack is considering this, considering the resemblance or the feeling that there is one, while he waits for Grey to finish his call. "D'you smoke?" he asks, making as if to take a pack out of his pocket. "I don't much, myself. But have you ever noticed it's more comfortable talking to a new face when you've got something in common."
He grins; it does his squashed nose no favors, flattening it and making him look a little bit like he could audition for a troll in some fantasy show or the other and get the part. Or maybe not a troll, but some plain, weird-featured little fairy creature. We've all got our curses to bear. But seriously: did somebody fucking step on him when he was a baby? Though: his grin's an easy spark; it makes his eyes bright in a nice a little knowing a little wry sort of way. He doesn't quite become self-deprecating; there's a touch too much assurance for that. But he could, if he had to.
The grin fades, not because he's unamused or because oh shit no now it's serious times time, but because people don't keep grinning unless they're crazy, and crazy is not a thing that Jack exudes.
"And I think that's about where we were. The beginning. And me, wondering whether we knew each other from somewhere. But I guess we don't."
Grey"No, I don't think so," Grey admits to the knowing each other from somewhere. No, because no, and I don't think so because how else can he soften the negative? Grey is not a particularly harsh person if he doesn't have to be (and even when he is, it's only when it's absolutely unavoidable, which is why the majority of his students like him - as far as professors of law go, he doesn't send them crying from the middle of class). He doesn't feel he has to be right here, right now. He doesn't know this man, doesn't know if he'll be friend or foe, danger or something less than dangerous. So he doesn't drop out the gate all harsh and snarly and suspicious.
Which isn't to say he's not suspicious, or that his suspicion doesn't show.
"I'm Grey," he offers, though Jack probably already knows that if he overheard his conversation with triple-A. "Do you..." Work around here? Go to class around here? Come here to murder unsuspecting and unassuming lawyer-professors in the night? "...know someone who goes here?"
Nice recovery!
JackJack taps out a cigarette, the base of the pack against the palm of his hand, then offers it to Grey. He's easily put off by that hand-wave a non-smoker does when he's trying to be polite to a smoker, and if that's the case, he doesn't tap one out for himself, letting the pack live out another un-burnt day. Truth, he doesn't even have a lighter, but smoking's a social thing, and somebody else always does.
Here are some other things about Jack: Jack doesn't pin Grey with his eyes. He keeps an eye on his surroundings. Jack might be the most normal-seeming vampire that Grey has met, to date. But Grey hasn't met any vampires: just strong, forceful personalities. Jack's got a strong, forceful personality - it's just gentled by what seems to be a general affability.
"Yeah. I'm doing a friend a favor," he nods to the pink box. "Kind of. It was supposed to be 'nutritious and balanced meal,' so I had them put in some of those bacon-maple bars. Maple is a tree, so I figure that'll do for vegetable. Bacon's meat. Bread's grain. The frosting is dessert. Think that'll hold up in a court of law." Jack eyes the donut box as if has misgivings. He does. It sounds, to him, like the most disgusting of foods. After that glance, his attention returns to his temporary companion: "What about you? You just get off work or out of class or something?"
"Name's Jack." He pushes off the car in order to shake Grey's hand. People still shake hands, it's true, but he does it like it's as common as the head-jerk, the 'sup, when two people who know one another espy each other from across the room. He does it like: manners.
GreyGrey gives that polite wave toward the pack of cigarettes, and a slight shake of the head, too. When the pack is left alone he assumes this stranger is also being polite, abstaining from lighting up for the sake of the non-smoker in his midst.
In fact, everything about this stranger tells him he's normal. Just a guy walking along who happened to see another guy having trouble with his car late at night. Nothing scary, nothing worrisome. And now they'll chat about whatever, shoot the shit while Grey waits for the tow guy to come and fix him up with his spare or whatever it is that triple-A does when people are stranded in parking lots.
Jack was doing someone a favor. The logic behind his choice in getting said friend a bacon maple bar, complete with the conclusion that logic would hold up in a court of law, startles a laugh out of Grey. It's a short little chuckle-y sound, and gets coupled by a smile not that different from the nervous one he wore before. Grey has a weird smile, he just does. "If I were a judge, I'd allow it."
If he were a judge. He's the only one of the pair of them who would get that joke, so he keeps the self-deprecating humor to a minimum. Inside jokes aren't so fun when you're the only one in on the joke. "Work. I teach here," she says, lifting his hand to point vaguely toward the College of Law building with his thumb. That hand lowers and he shifts his weight forward to shake that hand. His own is as ordinary as the rest of him, warm and rough but not so rough that its used to hard labor or whatever. "Nice to meet you, Jack," he says, and he realizes as he says it that it's pretty much true. It's nice to meet a stranger for once who isn't circling him like a vulture or looking at him like they want to stalk him through the night.
Jack
He has a strong grip; it stops far short of being 'crushing,' but the word 'strong' probably comes to mind before 'firm.' Maybe even the word 'bracing.' His hands are cold, too, ice cream hands as the song goes, you, yeah you with your ice cream hands. After the shake, Jack rubs his hands together, as if waking the blood in them, a beside the point gesture that has nothing to do with an amused quirk of the mouth, something that owns more to some wistful trickster archetype than anything else, or at least just a guy who likes a good story and maybe looks a little goofy and senses - hopeful, always hopeful - there might be one in the offing.
"Hah." The smile spreads; he blinks stubby lashes. "So what's the weirdest piece of free advice you've ever been asked for once people find out you're knowledgable about the law?"
It's funny, how people ask for free advice. Doctors have good stories; why shouldn't a lawyer? That seems to be Jack's view of the matter. There was a brief waver betetween you're and knowledgable about the law; Jack doesn't actually know if Grey took the bar; maybe he's a T.A. Maybe he's not a practicing lawyer any longer.
GreyGrey doesn't notice the waver, or if he does he doesn't call to it. He doesn't interrupt to say, Wait what was that just now. That would be awkward, maybe even rude, and while Grey is usually awkward, he's rarely rude. He's a Nice Guy. Not a Nice Guy™, the sort of guy who's nice only in order to get something, a reward, a date, sex, something. He's nice for the sake of being nice, gentlemanly because he doesn't know any other way to be.
Which is probably why another weirdo he's met puts him off his guard so much, makes him so uncomfortable, and perhaps why he's doing considerably better in the presence of Jack. Jack doesn't look at him like he wants to eat him like that crazy girl, and doesn't look like he's planning on batting him around with his paws a bit before sinking his teeth in. Looks can be deceiving, of course, and Grey knows that, but, well. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.
He lets out a little kind of a laugh, eyes lifting upward in that universal look of Maybe the answer is above me somewhere. He slides his phone into his pocket - still without having called a certain lady at a certain place - and he thinks about it.
"Most people try to get me to help them out of parking tickets," he admits. "A couple people have asked for advice about their divorces, usually about pats and stuff, like how they should divide the fish."
Jack"I can see how that might get awkward. I wish I had an outlandish situation to ask your advice on," Jack says, somewhat regretfully. Then, and he asks this as if the answer will have real merit, as if it is more than just the next thing one says in a conversation, waiting for a pat answer. "But that probably isn't why you went into law. Are -- or," he corrects himself with the air of an apologist, "were, I suppose -- were you an idealist, or a man who likes complicated puzzles, or a man who likes money?"
Jack sinks back onto the bumper of that pinto, bracing himself with his thick-fingered hands. There's coarse hair on the back of his knuckles; he probably has hobbit feet. There's the hint of a watch, peeking out from beneath his jacket sleeve.
Looks can be deceiving. Jack exemplifies this, though not in the same way his fellow creatures bound by the kingdoms of night and shadow, blood and saltlessness are. At least, not the ones Grey has wandered across. Grey, Grey: don't you know yet that you're cursed? Maybe he's not. But the man Grey is talking to exists; his face does not. Or did he, ages ago? Was he someone Jack fed off of, someone Jack noticed and followed for a while, because he knew something Jack wanted to know? Maybe he'd look like a ghost to someone else, someone who'd say: That guy. He looks just like. He looks just like.
Looks are always deceiving. What do they matter, anyway? They're signs and symbols, symptoms: they don't get at the heart of it.
GreyGrey nods, yes that can get awkward, then his head tilts and his brows lift. What comes next in the conversation is a surprise, obviously. People don't usually go that route, prodding and supposing at his reasons for studying the law. Usually they try to weed out what it is he does exactly, what branch he studied, what sort of cases he defends, and they try to see what they can needle out of him. He suspects, or suspected, that was the design of that other Jack, Jack Spicer, the strange tall man in the fancy suits. He hasn't seen him in a while. Maybe walking out of that smoking lounge and into the night, maybe it wasn't the right thing to do. Or maybe it was. Maybe he's free.
He's not free, though. He doesn't know it, but he, ordinary everyday man that he is, the sort of person who doesn't ping on anyone's radar, who doesn't stand out in any crowd. Somehow he's caught the attention of beings beyond his ken. He's a fly buzzing blindly close to too many webs. One of these nights he's going to stumble in and get caught.
"A little bit of the first two, I guess," he says, thinking about the second more than the first, because the first was the thing. But maybe it's the second that's kept him with it when the first started to fade. He studies the pavement between them, not really noticing shoes or the fall of pantlegs, his mind working at a new possibility he hadn't thought about before. Then he shrugs, brushing the question away. "I don't know really, but it was never for love of money. I work more for less than I used to, but I think I'm better off. What about you? What do you do?" he asks, redirecting the conversation back the way it came.
Jack"You could say I'm at loose ends right now," Jack says, because you could say that, if you were a mortal with an expectation of 9-5. He might mean that he is homeless. He could be one of those guys who doesn't have a regular home because luck abandoned him to the economy, and he's got a prescient of getting better any day now. "But that wouldn't be 100% accurate. I find things out for people - uh, you might blame too many detective shows for that, and some lucky investments. I've got a card if you'd like one."
Hey, look. It's conversation ball. Jack lobs the direction of the conversation back to Grey with: "So you think you're better off. Happier, or just - " brief pause, to give added emphasis to an idea that is difficult to communicate in words: " - better?"
Better as a person, maybe. Better off, not being happy? Better for the world. Better for - well, better. There's a reason the pause needed to give emphasis to what the word might mean, yo.
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