2019-07-28 - Like Four Thousand Papercuts

It's a diner, so it stands to reason that people at the diner are probably sitting at a table. Duncan and Maddie are people at a diner, so they are sitting at a table. Their dishes are stacked up haphazardly on the edge of the table, just waiting for the opportune moment to crash to the floor and make all the noise and all the mess. The majority of the table has been given over to a map spread across it, with both of them poring over this thing. It's Duncan that drops back onto the booth-seat after a few intense seconds of frowning, reaching for his glass of soda, sucking through the straw contemplatively. And then chewing on the straw with his back teeth while he says, "I mean, maybe bears ate them." He looks at one of the hat-wearing grizzlies. "We can't discount the possibility, right?"

Maddie chews on the end of a red marker as she contemplates this map; she's been chewing on it for quite some time, as evident by the gnaw marks all around. "Bears?" she blinks up at Duncan, then gives a wary glance to one of the nearest grizzlies, her lips bowing into a frown around the marker. It comes out of her mouth with a dull 'pop!' and she uncaps it, writing B-E-A-R-S? across the top of the map. "Wild moose, too," she considers, but she doesn't write that down. She instead opts to put something else in her mouth - a gulp of coffee, from her cup.

Blake stares down at his menu in one of the booths. "Bear facts..." he murmurs as he waits for something to happen, like getting waited on, or something. He has a black backpack settled next to him in the booth. "I don't know. I don't know why I came here." Blake sits alone, a plate of something he picked at collecting dust off to the side, coffee in front of him. He pinches the bridge of his nose and pushes his fingers out under his eyes with a sigh.

"I need that marker." So saying, Duncan reaches across and yoink, takes it right out of Maddie's fingers. He should be bothered by the fact that she's been chewing on it, but he's not. He pushes forward to the table again, puts an X over the ? at the end of BEARS, and tacks on !!!!! instead. Then he writes WILD MOOSES!!! underneath it and rolls the marker back across the table to Maddie. Flumping into the seat again, he looks over the back of it at the guy in the next booth over. "I get that a lot. Try retracing your steps. But don't go through any doors, walking through a door is the number one way to forget what you were about to do." He gives Blake a quick thumbs-up, like he's sure Blake will be fine now.

"Heeyyyy..!" Maddie makes all the complaining noises when Duncan goes and takes her marker, but really, if she wanted it so badly she would've held onto it tighter. "People don't really disappear from wild mooses, Dun," she catches the marker as it rolls towards her edge of the table, and writes underneath WILD MOOSES!!! unlikely. Then the cap gets put back on, and the marker goes right back into her mouth, chewing as she tilts out of the booth to look in the direction of Blake. She pops the marker out from between her teeth so she can point it at Blake. "Don't people usually come to diners for food?" she gives a smug look to Duncan, as she solved the problem. Then her eyes go wide, like a lightbulb's gone off. "Duh! Food!." It all clicks. She twists the cap back off the marker, crosses out unlikely and writes FOOD FOR beside wild mooses. "Maybe someone chopped them up. Used them for hunting bait."

Blake actually looks behind him when Duncan turns his way. Then he looks back, brow creased. "Are you talking to...me?" He watches Duncan carefully, eyes slightly wide before his gaze flicks off to the opposite corner of his booth and back. At Maddie's statement, he simply holds his thumb out, pointing to the plate of half eaten food. "Fucking hate the fatty bits." If he's talking about the bacon, all that's left on the plate are the meaty bits. His attention drifts from the bear facts back to his neighbors as they begin to discuss not-so-every-day-things.

Things you shouldn't just blurt out at diners: "Well, people don't really disappear from shadow-vultures, either, Mads, but good luck convincing Jimmy of that." Fortunately, no one else in the diner (least of all the waitresses) is paying Duncan any attention at all when he so-theres that back at Maddie. Then he turns in his seat entirely, putting his knees onto the bench-seat and looking over the back of it at Blake. "Sure. Are you talking to me? 'Cause I like the fatty bits. If you're not gonna eat them..." He zeroes a look in on Blake's plate.

Maddie's lips bow into a frown when Duncan talks of shadow vultures disappearing people. "I thought we were supposed to ixnay on the immy-jay. We're pretty damn lucky that the police put the camper right back where we parked it, we don't need to jinx ourselves. Or get people asking questions," she knocks on the wood of the table - tap tap tap - and then makes a grab for her coffee again. Over the rim of the cup, she looks back to Blake. "What do you do?" she asks rather abruptly. "For money."

"Uh...no, that's cool." Blake immediately tosses his dirty napkin out over his plate, conveniently covering up that there are only meaty bits left. The whole thing is kind of abrupt, his attention seemingly fragmented. "Next time man..." He doesn't sound so sure about it as he scoots out of the booth, sliding the backpack on as he steps out. Then he actually /busses his own dish/ but doesn't take all of it. Just the plate. "I'm an engineer. I do penetration testing and security stuff. Freelance now." He looks down as his phone buzzes. "Shit. I'm late." Without even leaving his name or looking up, Blake steers himself out the door. He left money in his wake, presumably for the food.

"You think that guy was really an engineer? I'm thinking no. What engineer sits around talking to his bacon? Crazy ones." Duncan spins back around so he's sitting properly, causing the stack of dishes on the edge of their table to teeter dangerously. A fork is riiiiiiight there, about to crash, and probably upset the whole mess. "I bet the cops brought the trailer back 'cause of that phone call I made. They knew we were on to them. Hey, do you think they have a moose and bear refuge at this big forest?" He finger-draws a circle around the big forest north of the city.

Maddie's brow ticks upward as Blake gets out of his chair and busses his own dish, just so Duncan can't get his bits of bacon. "Wasteful," she mumbles under her breath, focusing on that money that's left on the table a bit longer than humanly necessary. There's no waitress around, no one rushing to get their tips. "I think he was just using 'engineer' as a fancy way of saying he's the guy that turns your computer off and on again when you have a problem," she shrugs back to Duncan. "And I bet the cops knew they can't just take people's houses because of a skel.." ixnay on the eleton-skay, Maddie! ".. a prop. But sure, sure. It was your phone call," she reaches over to pat-pat him on the hand and smile endearingly, before her attention drops to the circle he makes on the map. "I guess it's possible? We should check it out, just in case. Add it to the list."

Whether or not Duncan 'adds it to the list', Maddie will look back to the money that Blake left on the table. No one else is around. No one but them will notice the bills that float from Blake's abandoned table over to their own.

Sullenly, "Well, that's not fair. I'm the guy that turns my computer off and on again, I didn't know I was supposed to be getting paid for that this whole time." Gears turn. "Shit, do you think it's a union job? Maddie, I can't have union enforcers coming down on me for scabbing their work! Those guys are brutal, do you know what they do to your fingers if they find you?!" Duncan makes chopping gestures at his splayed hand, completely ignoring her little trick with the money. Not because he's super-smooth; just because he's really deep into the dark fantasy of some union boss hacking off his digits. "They'll cut off my fingers, then I won't be able to drive, then you'll have to drive, and I'll have to sit in the way back, and you know I get car-sick when I sit in the back of the camper when we - " plz stop him

Maddie's focus was on the money - she checks back in with Duncan around the time he gets to union bosses chopping off his fingers, and well. He's been her ride-or-die-in-this-camper for so long that she's used to this by now. So up goes her elbow, and she props her chin up onto her knuckles, brows hiking as he goes on and on and .. "Wait," she sits up straight, holding her hand out in the universal sign for 'plz fucking shut up for a min'. "Stop right there. You know what happens if they chop off your fingers, Dun-Dun," she looks very sorry for what she has to say next. "It's straight to the side of the road for you. I can't do the stubs thing. But hopefully they leave your thumbs so you can.. you know.." she extends her thumb and waves it in the air, like she's hitching a ride.

" - drive all over, 'cause it's not like we can just put Jimmy in the back. I mean, okay, sure, he doesn't really serve a purpose, but I like to think he has his eye-sockets on the ro-- " Wait. Duncan folds his lips together and raises his eyebrows in the universal sign for 'totally being quiet and listening now.' The eyes underneath those brows get large and round at the apologetic things coming from Maddie, and he twitches his thumbs a couple times after she does. They fold into his palm, imaginarily cut off, and he looks sadly down at what his hands would look like, thumbless. "What if the only thing they cut off is my thumbs?" (god that grammar...) "Hey, did you steal money?!"

Maddie snorts a laugh up through her nose when he tucks his thumbs into his palms to make them disappear. "I'll find you some sticks or something before I - hey! SHHH!" Maddie extends her forefinger and mashes it into Duncan's lips, narrowing a look at him as she frowns. "We barely have enough money for gas," she hisses back at him. "And he wouldn't share his bacon! It's his own fault," rationalization is part of the fraud triangle. "We're gonna need to find some work. Or put on a show or something. Until then?" she pushes her finger a little more firmly against his mouth, squishing his lips around her digit. "We gotta do what we gotta do, Duncan."

Duncan is totally trying to stay stuff behind the lips that are smooshed closed. "Hm mruf hruum frmhm hm... flm hmhm hrm hm frihm hmrrrmm hm mrrfl feeb - " Yeah, this goes on for a while. Like, whatever he said, it was pretty much a complete sentence or two. Finally, he thinks to pull Maddie's finger off his mouth, looks around shiftily, and suggests, "You know what we gotta do right now? Get outta here before anyone finds out we stole money. Preeeeeetty sure that's still a crime, even in Washington state. Though," he laughs twitchily while he starts folding up their map. How good a job is he doing?

Just the worst job ever. He's pretty much just crumpling it into a ball. Which he drags through the water-spot on the table, whups. Anyway, he was saying: "Though, if any state's gonna legalize stealing stuff, you know Washington's gonna be the first to go."

Also, "HOLY SHIT, I JUST GOT LIKE FOUR THOUSAND PAPERCUTS, MADDIE!" He starts sucking on all his fingers.

"What are you even --" Maddie starts, but of course it's the Wits-2 character that figures out her finger needs to be moved before he can talk properly. Though, let's be honest, Maddie was kind of enjoying squishing his lips around her finger; she even flicks his bottom one a few times before he pulls her hand away. Still, he has a point - they should probably leave, before one of these lazy ass waitresses decide to start counting cash. She slips a fiver into her own pocket as she gets out of the booth, while he wrestles with the mouth. "Dun-Dun, jeeze, lemme just --" she leans over to help him with the map, making all sorts of noises, "If you would just .. no, you've got to fold it this .. oh my fucking God, why do they make these things so impossible?!" And now it's wet. Great.

Maddie really wants to feel bad for all those four thousand papercuts, but in the midst of all this chaos, she knocks an elbow into the pile of dishes. They weeble .. they wobble ... and unfortunately they all come crashing down. SMASH, CRASH, COLLAPSE! go the dishes. SQUEAK! goes Maddie. Now the waitress is definitely gonna look over here. "RUN!"

"OH MY GOD!" Duncan's delivery is just terrible. Like, really awful. "That grizzly just went right for our throats!" Which doesn't explain why he shows the waitress the cuts on his fingers, but he does show them to her, holding up one hand while the other one stuffs the completely ruined map that he will FITE Maddie to keep into his pants.

Not his pocket.

His pants.

While the staff are busy trying to work through wtf is up with those two, he bolts for the door after Maddie. And steals a handful of peppermints from the hostess station on the way out. Successfully. Beats the fuck outta me how, but there you have it.