Jack and Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out

Nobody

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )

Nobody

[Mask?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Nobody

How does Nobody want to appear tonight? Nobody wants to appear like somebody who would be found on the Santa Fe stretch. That doesn't narrow it down a whole Hell of a lot, does it? This is Nobody, on a Monday night:

Approaching six feet, but not quite there. Built like a brick shithouse, pardon the French, ma'am, they don't know any better. A square-ish face, a thrice-pierced eyebrow, a nose like a lopsided banana that somebody used just their toe to press down in the middle so the banana has spread just there, like it wants to escape its peel, but the basic banana shape holds. 

He is sitting outside of a gallery, in an alcove, a storefront that is closed for repairs whatever that means, and there is a little toy piano on the sidewalk next to him, a piece of cardboard that says Please No Coffee next to a cup, and he is scruffing the chin of an ungainly sprawl of tomcat which is purring in his lap and oozing around his knees and rubbing against his ankles and might be convinced to dance if Nobody thinks that'll draw in the coins.

He's been here a time or two before, and although some people stop to see if he can 'do' anything, or will 'do' anything, most of the walk-by traffic (and it is cold, cold) don't stop for very long, especially not on a Monday.

Amber

Amber's around.  She doesn't live in the area, precisely, but she stays somewhere nearby.  In someone's house a few blocks to the east, on their couch.  She should be nervous walking out at night, she has been nervous walking out at night before, but lately she's not so worried as she was.  Or at least she's not worried for the reasons she was worried before.

So when she wanders out into the cold dark streets, naturally just shy of six feet herself though her boots help her up those last two inches, hands stuffed in the pockets of a hooded sweatshirt that is all she has against the chill of Denver's temperamental spring, she isn't walking with Great Purpose.  She does not need to go grab an emergency refill of smokes and then jet the hell back to where she's staying.

That doesn't mean she's not mindful of where she's going, or who's on the street with her where she walks.  Monday means not too many people are out and about offering coin to the Nobody seated in the crook of some closed space, with his cat and his little toy piano.  Those who don't know the tempestuous woman well might expect her to blow on past him, ignoring him just the same as everyone else.

But Amber knows things.  And she knows things because she's acquainted with the Nobodies of Denver, the lost and the forgotten, the petty street gangs, the homeless, the beggers and the buskers.  She pauses just beside the man with the squashed banana nose and she roots around in her jeans pocket for whatever spare change and loose bills she has on her, not because she's a good Christian girl (hah).  It is a combination of goodness-of-her-heart (man has a cat jesus fucking christ) and knowing better than to simply walk past someone on the street.  Someone else can be the judge of what percentage of which is the greater, Amber doesn't think on it too much.  She just acts, like she usually just acts.  Part-heart and part-instinct.

A couple coins drop heavily into the cup followed closely by the whisper of a crumpled five dollar bill.

Nobody

Amber stops and begins to search her pockets for some spare lucre. Nobody does not give her a fixed stare or glance down in embarrassment or stare off or start in on a schpiel. He looks up at her once, and she can hear the rusty tin-can rattling around motor-cycle rrr rrr rrr purr of the cat from where she is standing hitch up a notch when Nobody looks back down and uses both hands to scruff the tomcat's cheeks and chin instead of just the one. The tomcat has his paws on Nobody's knees, its eyes closed in ecstasy, and it is leaning as up as it can get because it likes being pet. Indeed, when Nobody begins scritching the top of the tomcat's head instead, it pushes up so hard that it unbalances itself and falls off of his knees and onto the sidewalk. Proceeds to lick its paw as if nothing happened, and purr receding slightly lean forward to sniff delicately at Amber's boots.

"Thanks, miss," Nobody says, certainly not a Jack that Amber has been told about, oh no. Certainly not that Jack. Nobody at all. His voice is like a warm swallow of brandy, a spoonful of honey left out by the stove, attendant though it is by a plegm-y cough which he covers with one fist. "Say thanks, Boots. Wet food tonight." His throat's clear now. "What'll it be? A song or a dance?"

Amber might of course say neither; she just dropped the coins and the five because she felt like it. But this Nobody has a toy piano and a cat, things perhaps to make accepting charity something other than charity. Perhaps like most street performers he does it for love.

Amber

[Amber B do you have the self-control to resist a cat?  +1 diff because who can resist a cat sniffing their shoes, honestly?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (2, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Amber

[Amber apparently can resist a cat sniffing her shoes, whatadick]

Amber

The cat'll have wet food tonight and that makes Amber's bitter little broken heart swell a bit.  She is not so swept up in a moment of goodwill that she drops into a crouch to scritch at the cat herself.  And besides, the cat's the man's and the man's the cat's.  Amber would as soon initiate a Boots-petting as she would a hug for Nobody.

A Nobody she does not recognize, because this mask is not the one he wore in the bar (is it?  no, and even if so she wouldn't recognize him).  And it's been months and months since she was told about a Jack with a smooth voice who loves music.  Hm, maybe something starts to stir at the back of her mind, but nothing catches, not just yet.  Time, it fades things into the background, it does.

Nobody asks her if it'll be a song or a dance and her eyes, a storm-tossed-sea green that's murky in the low light of the street, narrow thoughtfully.

"Whose dancing?" she asks, aware now that she's not given charity but paid for a performance.  "You or the cat?"  Her voice is a low, throaty rasp.  Some might call it sultry, others might tell her she needs to stop smoking so many cigarettes.

Nobody

[Animalism Things. -1 Diff.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Nobody

"Who's dancing?" Nobody at all looks down at Boots. This Face's eyelashes are too stubby and too pale to lend anything attractive to the look. There is a certain fondness. "Boots? Is it your turn or mine?"

The tomcat's nose is still twitching as he sniffs at Amber's boots. Amber doesn't sweep in to pet him and that's just fine. The tomcat is not the finest specimen of cat: looks like a street cat that's been taken good care of, since then. More muscle under that fur than soft house-cat flesh, fur sleek but only because it happens to be between fights at the moment. The tomcat takes one of those twitch-hesitation-hesitation steps forward, sniffing more forcefully at Amber's bootlaces, when Nobody addresses the cat. Its ears flick back and it circles around,

the better to roll onto its belly, shoulder first (how the heck do cats do that?), body rolling after, a C on the ground that clearly does not intend to move.

"Apparently myself."

Amber

The tomcat continues to sniff determinedly at Amber's boots and she can't help but wonder what he's finding.  The scent of some other animal, maybe?  A whiff of paint or the smell of cooked food lingering from time spent in some eaterie or another?  Whatever he's found, she holds still for him to investigate it further, or rather she makes a conscious decision not to shuffle her feet until he's finished.

If Amber decides on a dance then it seems that Nobody is dancing, not the cat whose twisted himself around on the ground.  Her mouth quirks into a grin and she takes a couple steps back to clear some space in case it's needed.

"Alright.  Dance, then."  Which is less a command and more her stating her choice, but as intense a force as Amber is even at rest, even when her temper isn't a squall whipping in the air around her, it'll be taken as it will be taken.

Nobody

[You get what you pay for, doll. Dex + Perf.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Nobody

[... Or like... A lot more.]

Nobody

Dance then. Nobody takes it in the spirit it was meant. The earthy (attractive [solid, Pentacles, Harvest, Fecundity?]) slice of gorgeousness is intense. That's just fine; it doesn't rub Nobody the wrong way.

"Uh oh, I hope you're pleased with yourself, Boots."

He clambers to his feet. He winces as if his back hurts. He practically creaks, an old man in a young man's body, hrms. "A little music, at least?" He starts to hum with that rich ol' honey voice of his. And then his left foot seems to get an idea in its head, and he starts soft-shoeing it.And then his right foot starts to get into it, and Fred Astaire ain't got nuthink on Nobody, whose feet are dancing while he just looks like he's trying to keep up, arms wind-milling, body contorted, and then the feet take a running tap-tap-tap leap for the alcove's wall and he's like no no not the wall so his feet swagger back toward the mini piano. Boots continues to look unimpressed. To get away from the dancing feet he goes up onto one hand, the other hand twinkling (tinkling) out a quick trill on the piano, but his feet've gotta come back to earth sometime, right? Naw, he flips over the mini piano, and then the feet tap-dance him all the back to the wall, up the wall, up the wall, then boom, hit the ground, soft-shoe it, soft-shoe-it, Boots gets up and puts a paw on the piano, clink-clank, mrowl, and Nobody hums himself into a quick rapid-tempo

fastfastfastfastfastfastfastfastfastfastfast crescendo BOOM

And then the Muse of Dance abandons the building, and a bow. Huff, puff, huff, puff.

Amber

Amber said dance like dance was supposed to be on the menu, but when the old man starts to rise and he creaks with the rising she gets a pang in her gut.  That pang in her gut starts to travel upwards, is just about to wrap itself around her spinal column in a shiver of guilt when the old man starts a humming, and then starts a dancing.

Brows like two soft, sweeping wings lift above the storm-sea of her eyes and Amber takes a few steps to the side because a few more steps back might take her into the street.  She steps to the side and she gives him some goddamned room because wow.

Wow.

Wow.

Boots may not be impressed but Amber sure as hell is.  When the dancer finally stops, he gets applause not just from the woman what paid for the show, but from the other pedestrians walking the street who stopped first because their way was blocked and stayed stopped because Wow.  A few other coins and bills find their way into his cup, and Amber holds back, waiting for the tide of onlookers to wash back out again.  Once it has, she asks, "There's a Conoco down the block, you want me to get you a bottle of water or something?"

Because huff puff huff puff the guilt comes crawling back into her insides.

Nobody

He tugs on one of his eyebrow piercings with just the air somebody else might twirl a mustache, smiling a little because who doesn't like to have money rain into one's money cup. Much better than coffee. And his breathing, it regulates quickly, and he retreats back into the shadows (the metaphorical shadows, for the most part, although it is a shady alcove), sitting down hard on his tailbone. And nobody was prepared to get a shot of him with their camera phone. 

Having caught his breath, he begins to say, Oh no, until, "Actually, I'd greatly appreciate it. Here," and he reaches into the cup and takes out a couple new dollars, holding it out. "You're a nice lady."

Amber

[percept+med diff 7: after all that exertion did you really just regulate your breathing so fast?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2) ( fail )

Amber

[yep, totally normal, that's a human, everybody]

Nobody

Behold: The healthiest human that Amber has ever met.

Amber

Nobody gets themselves back to a baseline breathing rate like that, and yet somebody has.  And Amber thinks nothing more of it than that perhaps the creaky rise is part of an act.  People (suckers (like Amber)) think he's weaker, less adept than he is so that when he breaks out it seems like magic is happening.  And then the moeny pours in, money enough for Amber to wander off to get him a bottle of water.

He says she's a nice lady and she blinks at that, perplexed.  Though she supposes she's done some things without thinking of personal gain (uh, saving a certain journalist's life perhaps?  and keeping him company in the hospital a few times?), but no one's ever called her nice.  Or if they have it's been a long, long time between then and now.  Her smile is a bit warmer than it might have been otherwise as she takes the dollars and stuffs them into her pocket, a little of the storm blown out of her (but only a little).  She looks at Nobody and she looks at Boots, and then she nods her head the once as though coming to a decision.  A decision to simply accept the words rather than deny them or try to deflect.

She wanders off to get that bottle of water for him (and one for his cat (and a pack of Marlboro Lights for herself)).  And as she goes she thinks about how weird her life's gotten, and lately.  Like maybe she had to have a taste of immortality, of a home, of a person to return to and then lose all of it in order to let her life really start to turn around.

Nobody

Amber wanders off.

Nobody thinks that she'll probably return with a bottle of water. He won't drink the bottle of water. He doesn't remember really what water tastes like; does bottled water taste differently today than the stuff he used to drink, back when he was still part of the Day's world? He knows what sewer water tastes like. He knows what rain water tastes like. Sometimes that stuff, it still gets on his mouth, on his tongue. He remembers the idea of swallowing salt water; remembers that he didn't really like that. But water, the taste of? It looks like it tastes really nice, but not as nice as blood. That's how he knows he's still part of the dark kingdom, that he's still a Jack; blood always looks like it tastes like a dream; looks like it is the answer to hunger; like hunger is the answer.

He sets his spine back up against the building, and coaxes Boots back into his lap. Boots is a cat, but Boots is more than a cat.

A servant. A blood-slave. A ghoul.

And the ghoul purrs, and purrs, and purrs, and purrs, in Jack's lap, its ears flattened like a devil's. 

Amber

Amber is gone for some small while.  It takes time to get to the gas station at the corner, and perhaps it is a different corner gas station than the one where she met Flood last.  Either way, she can't help looking around, peering at the shadows with a suspicious sideways glance, hands stuffed in the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt.  Her gait is quick because she is going to meet up with the dancing Nobody, and she makes it to the gas station without incident.

A ghoul purrs, and a once-ghoul makes her way back to his shadowed alcove.  She does not realize the potential danger he could be to her, how easy it would be to overpower her to steal a little sip, a taste, a drink of her to sustain him for another night.  That's the only thirst he has, and the only liquid that can slake it.  She thinks him ordinary, not harmless, but an ordinary kind of harmful.

The bottles of water slosh from the pouch of her messenger bag.  Smoke trails in her wake as she wakes, peeling away from the burning orange-red cherry of a cigarette held between her lips.

Nobody

There are Jacks who enjoy their blood terror-laced and pumping hot from veins while the heart the heart tries to run right out've the chest tries to beat its way to safety. This is not one of those Jacks. There are Jacks who enjoy their blood pulled from the throat of a beautiful girl and only from a beautiful girl because it adds a certain piquancy to the vintage. This is not one of those Jacks, either, this Nobody of a Jack, this Nobody's Jack.

He does wonder if water tastes good though. He's still thinking about it when Amber swings back into sight, trailing smoke, and he smiles faintly, because look how his faith in humanity is rewarded. She didn't make off with the two bucks, but came right back, and perhaps she'll even give him a cigarette, and he coughs like he's got smoker's lung in preparation of asking.

His scritch-scritch of the tomcat has ceased, and the little devil-faced thing puts its pointed chin on his knee, eyes blissfully closed, purring less obvious now that it is segueing into the 'cat nap' portion of this evening. Instead, Jack braces a hand against the sidewalk, patting his coat down with the other in order to find -

- a smooshed-up starbucks cup lid, which he sets down. That'll do as a dish for his cat, huh?

"Thanks again, miss," he says, when Amber's near enough. "Don't suppose I could implore a smoke, too?" He reaches up and over to pick up the cup of coins, and Boots flexes his claws into Nobody's leg, lifting his head in protest, shake out a quarter or two because cigarettes are expensive.

Flood

Flood is too late to come upon the watering hole that springs up around nobody in particular's (certainly somebody peculiar's) performance before it dries up and this stretch of Santa Fe returns to its usual state of travel and transience. The oasis is forgotten as quickly as it is paid for. He sees the man who was once its source and does not yet have suspicions its truly a honey pot if we're talking means of sustenance.

And even at a distance he is, of course, too late to see that familiar woman's shape marching away on her supply run. Not past the dispersing crowd and the persistent flow of somebodies and anybodies.

No, by the time the stiletto of a man (not to be confused with that lazily smiling man in stilettos passing by or that still man from the ghetto painted in silver and busking as a statue for tourists) makes his way there the street has become altogether less enticing. That is until the sound of a voice from the past that has reappeared in the present. That is until a shape from the nearer present reveals herself sauntering back with a pack full of water bouncing at her hip. That is until the many things that make this world's denizens enticing to a Beast and its Hunger, to a monster and its even-more-monstrous loneliness, to a walking possible-to-be-eternity and its boredom-possibly-eternal.

Flood does not slink out from the shadows as Amber might think he would. Instead he continues in his gait and in the direction that has brought him to both. Why? Because what is the night if persistent to his kind and what choice  have they but to persist against it? And to run away from it brought him such turmoil so many last times he has lost count. 

Flood goes on and like his namesake rushes to meet it and crash upon it instead.

Flood does not need to straighten his black tie or adjust his white linen peeking from beneath the cuffs of his charcoal wool suit. He does not need to adjust his hat, it looks fine where it is, so it's a nod to this mindset that makes him bring a finger and thumb to punch it at its peak and push it back. This will manage to open up his countenance to interaction, or so Sinatra would argue, and even Flood has his influences (and contemporaries). He stops and looks between the pierced bull with a cat on his lap and the woman returning to join him like that are both equally interesting (and of interest to him) as any of the night's varied populace could be. More so, actually, because he has taken the time and stopped instead of letting his eyes sift over.

Gold in the pan. A panhandler and a woman he'd once treated as precious as a stone that could ransom a king or befit a queen. A polite smile and a nod.

"Evening," begins his mandolin song smoothly enough.

Amber

Amber doesn't come back with something to pour the water into for Boots, her niceness only stretches so far.  It ended mostly with the second bottle of water, because she was given a couple of dollars and water's usually only a dollar a bottle.  If the dancer man makes an issue of it Amber's got another dollar...somewhere.  In her wallet, maybe, because her pockets are now mostly empty.

She does not shy away from his request for a cigarette, but neither will she refuse a coin or two in repayment.  Again, niceness only goes so far and then someone starts looking like easy prey for predators.  She pulls the bottles free of her bag when another comes upon them, interrupting what has so far been a pleasant random encounter.

There is Flood, tall dark stranger in a suit, and there is Amber, once-precious creature he succeeded in pushing from him.  And the way that Amber's eyes widen and her head comes up and turns toward that voice, it's like nobody is there instead of Nobody.  For a half of a half of a second, vampire and once-ghoul are almost alone.

But of course they're not alone, and Amber catches herself staring a second after it's obvious.  She frowns and looks away to hand over a cigarette to Nobody's Jack.  "Hey."  That must be for Flood.  She digs her lighter from her pocket.

Nobody

A polite smile and nod. Nobody's polite smile and nod. A mirror image, accompanied by a whisper of recognition. Acknowledgment. In Nobody's lap, the cat wakes up. The fur goes bristle-up, bristle-up, but the tom-cat does not react to vampires as an animal who has never tasted Caine's blood might and so though the tom comes alert and ceases purring it does not scratch Nobody's lap up to launch itself into a streak of fleeing this popsicle joint.

No; the tomcat stares at Flood and its tail twitches but it stays in Nobody's lap, until Nobody shifts from one asscheek to the next, hand held out with a coin or two for Amber to take -- Amber, who has frozen in order to stare at Flood, in just that way, and this is dejavu, isn't it Jack? There's a certain rue to the expression in observant Jack's observant eyes -- and also to take that bottle of water. Then the cigarette.

The tomcat oozes into a puddle of fur by Jack's side, and Jack sticks the cigarette into the side of his mouth like he's a scarecrow, says around it after another clearing of his throat, honey-voice warmed over, liquid gold of a thing, "Evening yourself, sir. Nice one isn't it."

The sort of fade-into-the-background commonplaces one says when one is going to fade-into-the-background and let the sharp-dressed man and the beautiful woman who know each other talk. 

Nobody's nothing, you know, go ahead and talk, Nobody surely won't.

Flood

Someone with a voice like that doesn't simply fade away. That voice befits a chorister, a narrator, or both. Once it's come to leave it quiet without action or return simply seems rude. That is why Flood takes Amber's greeting in return with a moment of his own attention, in the form of a long look, before leveling its equal again back toward the now-somebody once he begins commenting on the night.

Flood seems intent on forming nobody into somebody. Forging it and tempering it into something with edges he can recognize. There's no question in his tone, no inherent inquisitiveness, but that doesn't keep him from answering. Or at least recognizing there's room for interpretation:

"I'm not sure yet, but I'll let you know, friend," that last word carrying no more or less familiarity than it would with a stranger.

"What do you think? Has the night be nice to you?" The questions comes after he has turned his attention back to Amber.

"A night for making friends?" And again it shifts with a look to a man given water, offered cigarette, and back to coming flame when it's again cast like a fishing line upstream (she has been upstream for so long) toward Amber.

Amber

[am I still in tune with your feels, Flood-san?: percept+empathy (on the long look, or whatever)]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Flood

Flood is dripping with familiarity. A tinge of nostalgia.

A dangerous playfulness, but even that seems like the second half of a game that she isn't in on, though the stakes are higher than anything sport-like. Anything with sportsmanship. No, there's the shrewdness of a poker player there, one who cares about his chips and will do anything to keep them on his side of the table.

And oh, is he curious, because when he asks if it's a night for making friends he is observing for the answer in more than whatever words might come out of Amber's lips.

Amber

Flood gives her that first long look and Amber tries to keep her attention pointedly away, though her whole body is tense with his nearness it's probably pointless.  At least she doesn't fly at him and pummel him uselessly with her weak little mortal fists, nor does she scream at him, asking him why he can't just leave her alone.  She thinks that maybe she's figured out why, though it took some time to get to that point.

Not that she can tell him that, not with the way the air is suddenly alive with some higher game beyond her sight.

"Maybe," she answers, because really she isn't sure.  She doesn't have a name for the man with the cat and the toy piano, nor does he have one for her.  There's more to friendship than an exchange of names, though, and Amber has been kind.

But while Amber has spent most of the beginning of this year feeling like a unwanted and discarded piece of a chess set, his blood still has its grip on her heart.  She is still one of his chips, whatever she might want otherwise.  She offers Jack her lighter, and whether he takes it or not, it makes its way back into her pocket and she rises.  Her lips part and her lungs fill with a breath meant to say...something.  Instead, Amber's eyes shift to Jack, then narrow back on Flood.

Her gaze drops away.  If he's in a sporting mood then this is not a place she should hang around.  She looks at Jack, but when she says, "I'll see you around," it sounds like it could be for both of them.

Molly Toombs

Much like the night before, the weather in Denver was pleasant and mild for an early March day.  Even as the sun had set and taken its warm glow along with it, the air still maintained some of the warmth from the day.  It wasn't a skirt evening, not like the night before.  Molly didn't have any dates lined up tonight, not like she did yesterday evening when she so patiently waited outside of a speakeasy-styled bar and club for a gangly young man carrying gifts.  Tonight, her second consecutive night in a row with good weather, was Molly's night.

She'd charmed (somehow, clumsily) the bus driver into letting her bring her adorable puppy (let's face it, she did most of the charming) with her to Santa Fe District.  She'd walked and enjoyed the weather and found a park and flirted with a stranger and had a fine afternoon with herself and her pup.

She was dressed in a pair of dark well-fitted jeans over which brown riding boots were zipped up.  She had a gray tee-shirt on (V-neck, certainly), and a heavy knit southwestern styled cardigan to keep warm.  Hair down, but tossed and messed to simply be as it would after being tourmented by wind throughout the day, Molly walked along the night's sidewalk on her way back home.  The puppy had long since given up on the journey, little paws sore from the long day's walk, so Molly was carrying the sleeping thing curled up under and about her chest.

She looked to be in the best of moods!

Until she rounded a corner and spied a familiar specter.  Then her step slowed, faltered, and the sunshine that her face had still been carrying from the day sapped out, overcome instead by apprehension's shadow to, at last, match the night around her.

"Well, shit."

Nobody

[A Molly, too? Let's have alertness before I finish this post.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Nobody

Flood seems intent on forming nobody into somebody, so somebody nobody's got a name for (that's not true [the truth wears many faces]), this somebody right here, this crooning crooner of a nobody who is if nothing else a somebody who can dance quite well, there is a: slight nod. As if to punctuate the little nothings properly, oh, Flood'll let him know.

He does accept Amber's lighter. He turns his head when he lights the cigarette. He turns it away from the cat and he turns it away from the Lasombra and he turns it away from the beautiful woman, and he closes his eyes while flame catches on paper, then hands the lighter back.

"I'd like that," says Jack, says Nobody at all, to Amber or perhaps also to Flood, regarding friends and the making there-of. His teeth are still clamped down tight on the cigarette so the words are a little smooshed, bitten-off, though the voice is still honey. "As long as next time it's a song, not a dance. Or least Boots here, he can do the dancing, I think I threw my back out."

He waits a beat; his gaze ticks from Amber, who is turning to leave, to Flood. "Got a request sir? Something to set the appropriate tone."

Perhaps for when the sharp-dressed man goes chasing after the beautiful woman, eh? Like this is a movie, and just like this is a movie, here's a Molly and a Florence cradled in her arms. Boots is unamused by the appearance of a dog; slinks underneath Nobody's knees, glares balefully out at Flood, then even more balefully out at the woman holding a dog. 

Nobody: quietly, quietly, a watchful thing.

Flood

That man in the gutter of an alcove with his cat has his answer to Amber's farewell, though for Flood is feels more like a goodbye, and that's maybe why Flood chases after her with a question instead.

"Will you?" That is if she's already set herself to not looking at him an to turning away from them. But it comes one way or the other, whether after or straight to her if he gets a final look. Sound comes faster and he reaches out with it instead.

And then there is Molly with her dog and filth in her mouth at seeing him and it seems like the world is turning further upside down. Wasn't there once a cult? Weren't there once hangers on in another life? Intelligent men and women he sat and spoke with before they died and he continued to be dead.

Another life. Yes, that was it. He sees it all and there's a look in his eyes like he's waking up from a dream.

Restlessness and wit turns to restfulness and a smile. A new kind of a smile, so new it even feels like a coat that hasn't worn in on his lips, because for all the calm on his face there's excitement blossoming behind it.

"You have to get up very early in the morning if you want to please everyone, don't you, friend?" And a beat. He's asked for a request, hadn't he? A fiver effortlessly finds itself out of his pocket and in his hand. His forefinger presses it through middle and thumb, folding it one last time before he drops it into the piano player's cup.

"Surprise me again," leaving it to the musician's choice.

Flood

[ Manipulation + Subterfuge: Zero. Fucks. Given. ]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Nobody

[Really? Percept + Emp.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Amber

Amber hasn't quite taken flight just yet.  She lingers as though waiting for something, or maybe hoping.  Either would be pretty terrible, as one is even more pathetic than the other, but she can't help it.  She lingers.  And is gifted with a question that reaches out to her and halts her.  It's a struggle not to let it show how that affects her, but she does try to hide it.

"Yeah," she answers, and means it.  Maybe he'll see her sooner than expected, and on purpose for the first time in ages.  Months, a blink to him, but ages for her.

She looks from him to Jack and then to Boots balefully staring at- ah, her.  Nathan's friend.  Amber takes off in the direction of Molly Toombs.  Unlike last time Molly saw the tall Israeli-American, Amber doesn't approach like a thundercloud, though there is always an intensity about her.  It's in the set of her jaw, the tightness of her mouth, the set of her shoulders.  And she's not coming straight toward the woman, because while Amber is not the worst and most heartless human being on the planet, and while she does actually give a fuck about Nathan's friends, she does not have it in her to try to convince an almost total stranger of anything.

Her eyes shift toward the woman holding her pup, and she says to her, "Molly, right?  I'd pick a different street if I were you."  She herself is already wandering off into the night to some other place.

[manip+subt+WP because she is actually trying real real hard yo!  so take that as you will: I am not all full of feels because you asked me a question, nuh uh no way no how]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Molly Toombs

Following that initial moment, and an adjustment of a sleeping pup in her arms, Molly's eyes flitted to take in the others right quick.  Amber, noticed seconds later, recognized immediately (you don't forget a face like that), remembered and placed for the woman at the bar, Nate's friend, they were introduced.  Granted, Molly spent a large chunk of that evening socializing with other friends she'd seen there by chance, but she circled back around to spend a little time hanging out at least.

The man smoking a cigarette with them noticed, taken account of, but not recognized-- not considered as carefully, therefore.

And wouldn't you know it, two blocks past them was the bus stop she needed.

So, she resumed her pace (she never actually stopped walking, really, only slowed) and continued forward.  When Amber had started coming toward her, the red-haired ER nurse coaxed a smile on to her freckled face to greet Nate's friend (curious, how they associate one another to that title exclusively at this point [soon to change]).  The smile is polite, she really is trying to be nice, but it's tight none the less.

As Amber came up and expressed that she should pick a different street, Molly blinked at her in surprise and came to a stop.  Full halt, but not immediately turning about just yet.  Instead, she laughed, as though struck in some twanging funny-ironic way by the statement.  The laugh wasn't boisterous, though.  The pup in her arms snoozed on undisturbed.

"Jesus Christ, wouldn't you know I was just thinking the same thing?"

This, followed soon by a flicker of eyes toward Flood and the man (transient?) with his cat, and a question to match that brought Molly's gaze back onto Amber again.  "Is there... ah, something going on?"

Nobody

[We perform things. We're vain enough to willpower it. Specialty: Singing. Totally a go.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Nobody

Nobody pushes the tomcat out from under his legs. The tomcat pushes against Nobody's hand but then slinks down the road: drifting across it like a pale, sepia ghost -- fur still a-bristle -- before a-slinking underneath a car and disappearing there-after. Nobody straightens instead of staying spine-curved against the wall, wiggling his fingers. He's wearing fingerless gloves, but it looks as if they're fingerless because the fingers got torn off through various misadventures, not because it's a fashion statement. Nobody, he folds his big frame so he's seated cross-legged, he's seated in front of that toy piano. He is keeping an eye on Molly [hello, little project, you don't know me now] and Amber, but: forgive him. There was something like amusement ghosting there. The amusement diminishes in the face of Flood's excitement.

"My honest opinion, Daniel?" Now that Amber's out of earshot. "Load of bullshit. You can please everyone regardless of the hours you keep,"

and he starts to pull a tinkling, ghosts-in-the-attic, bluesy sort've really out of THAT instrument song from the toy piano.

"Of course, helps if they don't know everything, huh? What've you been doing with yourself?"

He asks a question that seems to want an answer; it does want an answer. But that doesn't mean Jack doesn't sing, too, like he can do both, like he can pause and play between stanzas: with some effort thrown in, thank you, sings a Bessie Smith song, sings it slow like it really is honey dripping from a spoon, like an ache, Nobody Knows When You're Down and Out...

Nobody

ooc: Ahem. Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out.

Amber

[percept+alert: IS SHE OUT OF EARSHOT HMMM]

Dice: 4 d10 TN10 (5, 5, 6, 7) ( fail )

Amber

[yes]

Nobody

[Hahaha.]

Flood

It is a strange pairing left behind. There are alternatives that could have resulted from this handful of strangers-to-some-and-not-to-others, but Flood's smile remains and he remains looking content enough to even cross his arms and find the outer frame of that doorway, that recess where nobody is sitting, yet still the music and that voice comes singing out of. He leans sideways against it and watches the man's fingers tickle away at the keys and make them sing a sad song to join his voice. Wrings more emotion to join it from the little toy.

And he listens to the words drip out and if they're honey he soaks them up like sweetened tea. His smile grows a little more genuine even as the song goes on. He just doesn't shut his eyes. There's another question that needs answering and it seems he can't set himself adrift in the music and the words and especially their meaning.

"If I were to take your advice I'd leave you blissful in your ignorance of what I've been doing with myself, wouldn't I?" And his face looks surprised, though only a carefully caricature of the expression, before he crosses his arms a little looser and leans forward to correct himself and allay any concern that his words have or haven't nurtured.

"But nothing so nefarious as what you might expect. I've either been distracted or found something to distract myself with," watching from afar as the two women begin to talk if one answers the other.

Amber

Amber's plan had been to keep on going, hit up some other bus stop or find some other way of getting to where she wanted to go - to wait, foolish girl - but Molly speaks and that stops her.  In her own thick-soled boots the painter is a good half-foot taller than the ER nurse, and she looks like she has a chip on her shoulder the size of the Continental United States.  That look eases as she looks back over her shoulder and down.  Then she looks back to where the men are, where Flood stands listening and the homeless man with the cat begins to sing.

The skin around her stormy eyes tightens, her gaze rested on the tall thin man.

"Men," she says around her cigarette, with a sense of finality that doesn't come coupled with an annoyed or disgusted roll of her eyes.  No, there is a wariness in her as she watches Flood and Nobody together.  There was that sense of familiarity between them, and that sense of dangerous playfulness in Flood.  Closing her eyes she turns her face away from them, opens them again when she looks at Molly.  Something compels her continue beyond that single word.  Maybe she's worried this friend of a friend will want to brave going past them.  It seems so harmless, yeah?  One man is singing the other is listening, surely they won't pay any mind to someone else.  "Playing games people like us don't wanna get near or we'll get sucked in and come out mangled."  She should probably clarify that it's more one than the other they'd need to worry about, at least so far as she knows.  And probably it's just her that needs to be concerned.  But she doesn't do these things.  Instead, she looks back at Molly and says,

"I'll walk you where you wanna go."  It sounds like a statement, because it's Amber who has only recently started calming down to a point where she can talk to other people without sounding like she wants to rip their heads from their shoulders and drop kick them across the street.  But really it's just an offer.

Molly Toombs

For what it was worth, Molly was invested in what answer Amber had to give-- the question was not posed just conversationally, or distractedly at all.  She was almost keen on the answer she got, as though checking it to make sure that no foul play had come upon this woman (whom, as far as Molly knew or understood, was a friend of Nate's and not at all dripping with supernatural affairs), or anyone else perhaps that may have been left behind.

The answer she received was met with a huff that sounded like it could have bloomed into more of a chuckle if there were enough humor to be found.  As Amber expressed specifically that they may get sucked in and mangled, Molly looked back down the street to where Flood stood in a doorway where music and movement but not much else seemed to come from.

Oh, he's in that sort of mood, is he? She mused, but had the sense not to utter aloud as she may have were it still just her and Florence out on this stroll.  But instead she made a face that portrayed concern, but not enough to do anything about it-- self-preserving concern, not the vigilante sort.

"Yeah?  I'd appreciate that.  I just need to catch a bus to swing me downtown...," is how Molly led the conversation, and it would doubtless continue from there (this is the bus you'll want, here we can walk this far-- hey, how did you meet Nate anyways?  whatever happened with that flock of bachelorette girls?).  The nurse opted to turn instead, to take the convincing woman's advice and offer alike and walk with her back the way she came.

One short block corner later, and the women were out of sight.

Nobody

He plays and he plays like music's all there is. Music one sings from the gut. Unh. Nobody's got a voice like Nobody, eh? This is the part of the song where it's just humming, where it's just music, where it's just mmm and Jack uses the moment to reply to Flood.

"Oh, but I'm different," says he, honeyed voice even when he's not singing, honeyed words to swallow right down, old friend. Does he mean it? He seems sincere. Troubled, perhaps, but sincere. "Different type of people anyway. The only displeasure I anticipate you doing me you've already done and it weren't never your fault." He sighs, Jack with no need for air in his lungs, but air certainly helps the song. There is a certain wistfulness. "Like maybe if you're so hard-up on nefarious doings, we can have an adventure."

Flood's found things to distract himself with. Jack, he hums another bar of song, and starts to bring it to a close: sadder, saddest, sad.

"Women, eh?"

An unknowing mirror-echo of Amber. Molly, asking questions, looking back; Amber, saying something, who knows what, and moving away, away, away, herding together, good job, kids, maybe you'll make it yet.

[Manip and Subt from Jack this time. Specialty, eh maybe.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Molly Toombs

[That was short, but fun anyways!  Now I must away to bed.  Thanks guys!]

Amber

[thank you, Kenna!  and thank you Jess and Joey, it was fun!]

Nobody

[No no, thanks to you both for coming in. Fuck yeah, open scenes!]

Flood

[ Perception + Subterfuge: To roll perchance to dream? ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Nobody

Jack is being sincere, technically speaking, isn't he? Oh, Jack. He is different, though he can imagine displeasure still; he doesn't judge, our Jack, neutral Jack, Jack of the quest, the Jackiest Jack. He sighs like it's just a segue into wistfulness, but it's a vehicle for a hook. He wants something from Flood, does Jack, and if it's an adventure, well. It's an adventure. He's also got a bit of interest in one of the women who just wandered-away, smart money says it's not the pretty one. 

Flood

Flood's eyebrow, only one, raises at the observation of genders and his eyes go from the heart string fiddling finger to his face and finds something there.

"I couldn't have said it any better myself," leaving it at that before tabling the topic and moving on to the next subject of discussion.

"Sounds like a job and I've never been the kind of be afraid of a little hard work," because adventure has a different sort of ring to it and maybe it's because he'd just heard Jack singing that he has an ear for recognizing his tone. He just catches it. And neither of them are Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn and trying to convince the other that whitewashing a fence will be fun isn't going to slide too easily.

"What kind of venture for our idle hands to get used to working next to one another again, then, friend?" The first time had been in passing, but his utterance of that word had still seemed to have vestiges of conscious and deliberate usage. The second time even more than the first. Now it's almost begging for analysis. But he leaves it there.

Nobody

Here is the melancholy end of Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out. The toy piano's got a voice that is best suited for drifting on the air. A music box of a thing, and Jack laces his fingers together and pushes out. The bones pop and the joints crack, but only after a moment or three of pressure. He doesn't scootch back into the far recesses of his shadowy shadow of an alcove, but hunches instead so he can rest an elbow on his knee and pinch his chin, looking upward at the Lasombra.

There is a moment of course of sharp awareness, as there must always be in public spaces, eh? If there's a cat in the shadows, who knows what else is there, and this isn't a parking lot with car alarms to set off to hurt any hopeful would-be spies.

"Do you still think about Church, Daniel?" A beat. "Have you ever had a cult?"

Like he might say, You ever done business with a man from St. Louis?

Flood

"I know that ours was a jealous God," he begins. The wording says it all, but he goes on, pleased with a chance to speak about the kind of philosophy that is genderless and abstract and of a vein that only one of his contemporaries can counter him with. Can understand.

"And if the first commandment is to take no other above Him, then surely there is an even worse place in Hell for those who would set themselves to be worshiped as one," arms falling from where they are crossed over his chest to signal that an opening is coming. That he isn't closed off.

Then that must be why he continues in this way...

"But I stopped taking stock in what men chiseled in stone when I became as ageless as it and more easily made whole by their blood," folding his hands before his waist as he speaks.

"I haven't. I've mostly relied on things they already worship. Money. Power. Themselves," enumerating each with the tap of a finger against the back of the other hand. Counting off the three and then his eyebrow bounces again after he's done shaking his head. "Why do you ask?"

Nobody

He nods once or twice as Flood expounds on commandments and God. Hell and immortal flesh: blood that'll make him longer-lasting than stone. Then:

"I had a cult once - " - Jack says, confides. That is not the point. " - and I did not like having it very much." He sounds thoughtful (distant), and so he is. Because when he thinks of his herd, of his little cult, of those people he was dragging out've the Day, those people who he'd marked, attached a ribbon to, a door, so that they'd slowly fall between the worlds, out've that one, the world which is beside this world, and into this one, but oh, not completely into this one, just the worst part: a worse kind of twilight - it made them so much nothing. When he thinks of them, of the trick of them, he misses a certain ease, and a certain coldness that went with it. Once.

But whether or not Jack liked having his cult-of-nights-past is not the point either. He confides. Of course one should confide to one's friends, hm?

"I have come into some information," says he, the Nosferatu, "regarding an interesting prospect, a Gehenna cult -- perhaps," a pause. "Not nearly as large as yours, just the living; still, they are rooting in, I've heard them, and I think it would rather be a fitting adventure for a one like you and a one like me to go digging at. See what it is they're worshipping."

"I suspect it is not God, and I do not think it is one of yours or one of mine. Maybe there's something in it for you."

Flood

They confide like friends do and now they're conspiring as friends do, though every encounter in which they don't sprout fangs or unsheathe daggers around one another could be called a little conspiracy. Jack is not the kind to disappear as his kind can around Flood's very presence and Flood is not the kind to try and roast Jack on a pyre. Jack is not the kind to summon up the warren and stifle his old comrade with knives in the back, or maybe only one once he has disappeared and turned from nobody to nothingness, and Flood isn't the kind to call the mob down upon his old friend or manifest the Abyss to swallow him.

Why?

They both must have their reasons. And surely in some places those reasons overlap like layers of tar hardened and sealed thatch or dried husks of wicker. Become bound tighter by it like they become held fast by each moment like this in which they share moments and words and somehow, dear Caine would be proud, do not find a reason to seek out unbeating heart's blood and spill it on city streets.

Conspiratorial. It's a good word for the smile that Flood gives. He bends his knees and folds his arms and crouches down until he can rest the upper limbs upon the lower, resting his back against the frame of the door and leaning in closer, listening and lapping up honeyed words like a predator with a taste for blood who still can't help enjoying the sweet sucrose spilling. His eyes twist toward him with interest, watching his lips make w

ords, and his eyebrows furrow as it becomes his turn to nod back and indicate he is listening.

“Then we stake out a claim and dig and see what is waiting to be unearthed,” he begins.

“There's always something in things like this for mine,” analytical and agreeable now. “Always something to be gained for yours in keeping the secrets yours want kept.”

“What sort of capital have you amassed so far when it comes to information?” Details. Always details. You can only get so far and if you fill yourself on appetizers you always feel like you're missing out. Time for the meat.

Jack

What sort of question is that for a Nosferatu to answer? He smiles. Jack of the Nosferatu. And this unfamiliar face's tallow-drip of a nose divides his smile evenly in half, a joker's smile. A devil's, maybe, advertising some rot-gut liquor. If there is wistfulness at the heart of this Jack: who is to say? What sort of capital has Jack of the Nosferatu amassed so far when it comes to information? He smiles and his chin is still resting on his laced long spidery boogeyman pianists fingers with the ugly nails.

"All right, Daniel, listen up and I'll scatter crumbs. Angels would weep and claw with their fingers til those fingers bled fire or whatever it is angels bleed," a wink. The old cadence: huckster, Jack, the wind-up, just for style's sake. Then he gets serious and down to the business of conspiring:

There's a place - he tells Daniel. There's a construction site - he tells Daniel. Industrial joint - out in the hinterlands of Suburbia, eh? Owned by a gentleman by the name of Jonson. Bradley Jonson. That name might ring a bell from back in the day. There was a Bradley Jonson, a politician, in Denver who didn't really enjoy Prohibition the way certain families did, eh? A good old boy. Anyway, appears to be owned by Bradley Jonson, and this Bradley Jonson, he's also recently bought a Hertz rental joint, place that rents out construction equipment, so far so good?

Jack. He doesn't divulge his sources. He's a Nosferatu: damn it. He mentions that the reason this caught his attention: "I was playing somewhere high class." He can go anywhere, can't he? He does, when he's tending his bureaucratic contacts, anyway: sometimes. "And nobody notices the help." Or the obfuscated. "This woman, Elizabeth Faulkner, she starts complaining to this other guy whose name I didn't catch about this other guy, Phil, Brad's assistant maybe, and how ..."

Jack's got a honeyed tongue. The tale he pours out is essentially one of rumours put together and a stroke of fortuitous luck (he always was lucky): How Elizabeth didn't like this new push made on the construction because it'd disturb 'the Cainite's Bones,' how 'the word might be stoppered,' whatever the fuck that meant, and how Father Peter Townsend wasn't in a position to influence Phil, because he was looking at the new blood... and if the end's nigh anyway, why can't he take a break?

There's your meat, Flood. 

Flood

Flood feasts delicately. One could imagine him in life with a thin blade and a sharp fork making his way through a meal and savoring it. Taking time for sips of wine. He does not look like the creature of excess that one might imagine most of the Sword of Caine to be. Instead he slowly digests the meat. Contemplates each bit and enjoys the stew for both its summary flavor and its parts. The Italians were always known for honoring their ingredients.

Flood slices until he gets to bone. Until Jack gets to those words he repeats, the Cainite's Bones, and that's when he gets a look in his eyes.

Getting to the marrow is not easy and it's not pretty. That's nothing dainty or civilized about it. It's a practice of less moneyed peoples. But when he sees a hunk like that it's hard to restrain himself...

So he doesn't.

No, Flood practically mouths the word as he considers their meaning. Their gravity.

Another contemporary from another life was one thing, a Gehenna cult was another, and the more mundane aspects of this tale certainly fell within the common denominators he'd identified as his modus operandi for influencing the living, but this is something that crystallizes his interest.

"I'll see if any of the laborers are talking about what's going on. And then I might be able to slow progress. I'll light a fire. You can let me know where smoke comes out? That is if you could be persuaded to weather a few more shifts as the help," he offers and ask in that order. Shows he's willing to be equal partners in this venture. And that makes him curious.

"And I'll see if any of my sheep could be convinced to look in on this other flock," a beat as he considers. "Maybe take a gander myself."

Then...

"What's your investment? Other than the obvious. What would be the best possible return?" He seems genuinely curious as to Jack's interest, and not for any reason near identifying vulnerability, though if one were to reveal itself... Who knows how he'd use it later. One of the dangers of friendship: maintenance.

Jack

"I am always ready to be surprised by the possibilities of what I do not yet know," Jack says. The emphasis is like a clot of darkness in honey, see? A fly in amber: the point. Knowledge for knowledge's sake then? And perhaps it seems for a moment as if he would leave it there. Glib and true enough if not the truth. But no: This Jack's voice is musing, and this Jack's eyes have taken on a certain quality of inward-turning which is actually outward-looking.

" - I have a dream of the world as it may be." Beat. "I chase that vision. The best possible return, ah. Sure enough I'll find an angle - " He is an optimist. " - but perhaps. Perhaps I'll find a piece of what I'm looking for, huh? Cainite's bones. Sounds like a promise."

He grins - had begun to filter out've that thoughtful inward-outward looking, and is it vulnerability? That devil's grin split by the drip of his nose creasing his face an unpleasant prospect but who cares isn't he so nice. He knows that owls aren't real. He knows that owls are less real than Lasombra who are, some of them, after all, just darkness wearing the clothing of Vampires, who are, after all, just dangerous Courtiers. He knows that under the ground there are kingdoms of rats and under the kingdoms of rats there are kingdoms of a darkness that is hungry and that all of this is banded by a loss. He knows. 

"So I'll find a way to reconcile myself with playing at being the help," the grin becomes a smile, a shrug. He's a Nosferatu. He's Many-Masked, Many-Faced. "I'll tell you where the smoke comes out. And where the beasts flee once they're untethered."

"Your sheep," he begins. There is a tautening, a tightening, distaste around his eyes. He does not like thinking of people as sheep. He does not at all. "That girl one of them?"

Flood

"I deal in practicalities. Amongst fanatics I use a parlance they can understand. I'll be sure to take into account your own sensibilities and sensitivities, though, They're admirable," and he is not finished, because it's not really an apology Flood is going for. He has an answer to more than his look of disappointment, for that's how Flood reads it.

"Is there anything about that young woman's constitution that seems ruminant in nature?" Flood seems to enjoy his own grasp of the English language. Of course, he comes from a time before intelligence was vilified or derided as a signifier of weakness. And he's just as happy to add a dash of wit when wielding it in conversation.

"But, shepherd or not, I would be inclined to beat back any wolves that would set themselves upon her. My own way of making the world in another image. Of enacting my own agency upon it, whether it be a slight whim or a great dream," looking up and down the way the women had disappeared upon seeing the Lasombra.

"Knowing that might stop those who would fear me, upon threat of reprisal, and those who don't fear me already..." He considers it.

"Them? I most likely couldn't stop. Take that secret with you for free to sell as you would. For the rumor mill," a smile, again conspiratorial, followed by a wink aimed at that homely face that might be waiting for it.

And with that he straightens his legs and returns to his full height, rounding upon where the street musician is hidden away in the stone hollow of a building, holding out his hand to shake his farewell.

"Let's touch base at the parking lot. You know the one," and this time he doesn't smile or wink. "The night after tomorrow? Three hours 'til sunrise."

Jack

Jack waves a hand to dismiss his own sensibilities and sensitivities. Breaking in to say: "Needn't." Before compelled along by Flood's oration. Look at that smirk. Ruminant indeed - well. Jack straightens his back now: no longer spine-slouched by that toy piano and that dark little alcove. He plays his fingers along the sidewalk and clicks his tongue against his teeth. Baleful-eyes from under a car: the tomcat comes slinking back alley-cat muscles a-shift beneath and Jack too looks in the direction the women went but only for a moment. He is more interested in Flood.

Who comes to the end. Holds out a hand. Jack rubs his own hands together shifting his weight from one ass cheek to the other and reaches out to clasp Flood's. "If it's the parlance of fanatics you're used to using, used to thinking, don't change your words on my account. I'm not dainty. Night after tomorrow. Three hours 'til sunrise."

"If anything comes up, I'll let you know." His grip tightens; firms. It does not crush. Jack's hands are ice cream cold tonight, though the sharp eye would detect the movement of his breathing; must mollify the kine some how, eh? 

This is deliberate. This: meeting of eyes. "And I look forward to conquering a new venture, to a new adventure, with you."

Then: Jack releases Flood's hand. He sinks back into what he is tonight: penniless, or almost - his cup runneth over nearly, hm? - ugly man panhandling on a night that is only distinguished by its relatively balmy weather for winter near the Rockies. He's absolutely Nobody at all, Nobody and his cat.