2019-08-03 - Checking for Brain Injury

Blake steps into the Pizza Kitchen first, holding the door for, "After you, Girlfriend." He's sporting a smirk. "Fuck this is going to taste so good," he breathes out, unable to hold character in the moment.

"Sure you should say the F word? Dorothy might have followed us." Zoiya's eyes aren't on Blake she passes him to walk into the restaurant. She gives the place a once over, decides this can't be a bad idea and makes her way to a table. She uses the sole of one of her kicks to push a chair back, settling into it. "Okay, so what do you actually like on pizza? If we're gonna disagree, let's do it early, because I'm not gonna compromise on toppings."

"Don't fucking scare me like that," Blake says with another smirk. It's just them, and this seems to have put him at incredible ease already. He follows in behind Zoiya with his hands in his jacket pockets, sits down opposite of her, but he's not as rough with his chair. "Normal things like pepperoni and olives. I don't like that crappy sausage but I once had salami on a pie. That was fucking fantastic," he seems to emphasize as if it could banish Dorothy. "I think we're both in agreement about no pineapple."

Tyler wanders into the pizza joint. He's just left his shift at the firehouse, so he's wearing a pair of khaki cargo pants with a tight blue polo with the Gray Harbor Fire Department logo embroidered on the left chest. He sniffs, making a little dissatisfied face at the burn smell, and then makes his way to a table by himself not far from the others.

Hello, a fireman. Zoiya stares, because that's what she does. "No olives, anything else is fine." She drags her hazel eyes back to her table mate and shrugs. "They feel funny in my mouth, I don't like them, or mushrooms." She takes a deep breath, glancing back at Tyler for a few moments, and then she seems to realize something. "Where is the person who is going to get me drinks? I'm thirsty?" She sits up straighter, glancing around for waitstaff, but she spots an arcade machine. "Got any quarters?" She asks Blake, holding out a hand as if it's a foregone conclusion. "Men don't toss those at the club." Though the mental imagery is amazing.

Blake is currently wearing black framed glasses and he reaches up to rub his forehead a little. "Okay. So basil? That's fine...artichoke...prosciutto...sardines..." Are these even on the menu? He looks up and then looks over to the man who just entered. He quiets and then looks back when Zoiya questions about the drinks. "Let me check." He digs his hand into the back of his grey jeans, then the other pocket. "Here." He dumps some quarters into her hand. He was going to use those for laundry, but arcade machines are more important apparently. He glances toward the newcomer out of the corner of his eye, nodding to him should the man notice.

Tyler rubs his eyes, tired, and then takes a look at the menu. He glances at the only others in the restaurant, and he offers a return nod to Blake when their eyes catch. He smiles just a little at the man, and then nods at the woman with him. Once the waitress finally makes her way around, he orders a Diet Coke and then returns his gaze to the menu.

"I was with you all the way up to sardines." Zoiya says, pushing the sleeves up on her shirt. She tucks the quarters into her pocket and gets to her feet, moving over to the arcade machine. "Though, I've never had them, so they might be good?" She keeps up the conversation as if she isn't six or seven feet away from Blake instead of one. She leans into the machine, slipping a quarter in. "Grab that woman and get me a Sprite!" The waitress can clearly hear her, so she stops at their table. The inked woman bounces on the balls of her feet as she plays the game, absorbed enough to not hear what Blake orders on their pizza. Better not be any mini fish.

"I was joking," Blake says, nearly deadpan. He can't seem to bring himself to continue on at full volume with the freedom he feels in privacy. He looks up at the waitress and offers a wan grin. "Okay. If I say olives don't listen to me. She doesn't like them. Can we get a..." he looks back at Zoiya and then back to the waitress, "a large double pepperoni, double cheese, thin crust. A sprite and a coke? And a lot of napkins? Please?...Yeah," he says as if confirming and then surrenders the menu. After the waitress leaves him, Blake simply sits there. He doesn't escape into his phone, he doesn't chase after Zoiya to the arcade machine. He does look at the ceiling a little.

Tyler watches Zoiya head for the arcade games. He smirks at Blake, "Your girlfriend just ditched you for a video game over olives." He glances at Zoiya, then back at Blake. "That's a tough gig. Ouch." He smirks a little playfully, and then orders a small cheese pizza for himself.

Zoiya makes a noise, losing two quarters to her really bad instincts in Pac-Man. She barely restrains herself from kicking the machine, jingling the quarters she still has in her pocket as she makes her way back to the table. She looks toward Tyler, a smile forming on her lips. "Hey, why don't you come over and sit with us, I mean.. this place isn't hopping, and the waitress will pay more attention to us if we're grouped up." She retakes her seat, crossing her legs. The waitress drops off their drinks and a lot of napkins. The look she gives them speaks volumes.

"No girlfriend here. We're just roommates." Blake sports a small grin and shrugs, nonplussed, "She can ditch me all she wants." He looks over when Zoiya clearly loses at the game. "Yeah...Plenty of room. Unless you're waiting for someone? Unless she ditched you for a video game too?" His brow lifts slightly at that.

Tyler grins, "Roommates. Is that better or worse?" He takes the Diet Coke from the waitress as she brings it by, and he rises, moving to join the other two. "This is kind of weird. I don't normally just take up with strangers..." As he sits, he notes, "I'm Tyler. And I'm not waiting for anyone. No girlfriend."

"Worse. Less sex." Zoiya mutters, picking up her Sprite so she can suck some through her straw. She flashes a grin toward Tyler, and then remembers something. "Why did you get all of these napkins?" She asks Blake, tapping them with an inked finger. "They're gonna think we're five." She sighs, and then turns her attention back to the guest. "I'm Mae, this is Blake. So, are you really a Fireman?" She leans in to see the logo on his shirt before she sits back in her chair again.

"I don't know." Surely the question was rhetorical, but Blake provides a non-answer anyways. His answer comes out at the same time as Zoiya's and he looks down at the bevy of napkins. "I thought we'd need them. Who cares what they think." Blake keeps to his own bubble. But he looks to Tyler and offers a small grin when he's introduced. He glances off to the side at nothing in particular and then back. "Welcome," he offers the man. "...Why do you doubt it?" he looks sidelong to Zoiya.

Tyler lifts his brow a little, glancing between the two of them, uncertain of what sort of storm he's just begun to navigate. "If it will help, I can spill my drink later and you can use some of those to wipe it up." At the question, he looks at Zoiya and teases, "Meet a lot of fake firefighters, do you?"

Zoiya stares at the napkins, it makes her wonder what Blake ordered. She sips from her Sprite again and shakes her head. "I don't doubt that he.." She looks at Tyler and her smile gets wider. ".. I don't doubt that you're a firefighter. It's an ice breaker, you're supposed to say yes and then tell us stories, or something." She sets down her soda and leans back to gaze toward the kitchen. "Well the food smells good. Don't spill your drink though, I'll just wipe my fingers with separate napkins. I'm gonna use them all now."

"Maybe." Blake looks at the ground and wonders how long it's been since it's been cleaned. It's a passing thought as the other two chat through Zoiya's fake interrogation. "Did you just get off your shift?" Blake tries his hand at chit chat. He's as awful at it as one would imagine, barely maintaining eye contact with the other man before his gaze flits off to the corner again and then back. "You don't have to tell us stories if you don't want to." He says nothing of Zoiya slaying trees at his expense with her napkin wiping strategy.

"Yeah. Trying to grab a bite to eat before I head home. I have zero desire to have to cook tonight." Tyler smiles and shakes his head a little, "You don't really want me to tell stories. That's the thing about firemen and cops. Everyone asks us what's the worse thing you've ever seen. I'll tell you a secret." He leans forward a little. "We never answer honestly.

"I have zero desire to cook every night. Thank goodness there are a few options for food around here, though if I'm not careful I'm gonna get fat." Zoiya gives Tyler a sympathetic look, but she stays in her personal space, hand on her drink. "Well then tell us something about you that we'd never guess. That can't be bad, right?" There is movement near the kitchen door, looks like pizza is on its way. She sniffs at the air and lets out a sigh. "I could never do those kind of jobs, so more power to you."

"There's enough shit in the world. Who needs to hear about it?" As for cooking Blake nods in agreement. "There's only so much I can cart back from the market without an actual cart," he admits. He leans back a little, slouching in his chair when he sees the kitchen door open. he seems happy enough to let Zoiya drive the conversation, retreating into his own introverted corner of the table as he moves things around for the waitress to set them up. First the personal size pizza is set in front of Tyler, then the big pizza is put on a stand between the other two. A stack of plates are set to the side along with utensils.

Tyler shrugs, "I just try not to take my work home with me." He laughs a little to himself, "So, I'll tell you this funny thing... When we roll up on an accident or someone who has a head injury, the fastest medical way to tell if they have massive head trauma or not is to see if they have an erection." He picks up a slice of the pizza. "It's an odd medical trick, but it's 100 percent accurate in the field." Taking a large bite, he chews it up and swallows. "Hrm. So, one thing you'd never guess about me. Ummm..." He thinks a moment, then offers, "I don't own a computer."

Zoiya picks up a slice of pizza, pulling it on one of the plates. She sees the reason for the napkin right away. Pepperoni makes a lot of grease. She watches Tyler as he speaks, picking up the pizza to take a bite. She almost burns her tongue, and then her eyebrows shift up. "Why does that happen?" Her voice is muffled when it comes out, but waiting to swallow means waiting to hear an answer. Then Tyler offers a thing not known about him, and her hazel eyes shift over to Blake, a pert of her wondering if her roomie will take that as sacrilege.

"Really? Why is that? Blood just pools up down there or what?" Blake asks, genuinely intrigued by this medical trick. Doesn't seem to deter him from taking a slice and transferring it to his own plate. When Tyler says he doesn't have a computer, Blake is in the middle of trying to take a bite and he /definitely/ burns his tongue. "Fuck-" he hisses under his breath. Then he tilts his head at Tyler as if staring at one of the most strange things in the world he could come across in the wild, "You own a phone right? In case of emergency?"

Tyler shrugs once more, "Honestly, I'm not a medic, I don't know a lot of this stuff beyond initial trauma assessment, but it has something to do with how it affects the spine. As to the sudden judgements of him, he laughs in defense, "What? Why is that such a bad thing? I mean, sure. Yeah, I have a smart phone. But, I don't really need a computer. I do other things."

"Yeah, I don't understand them. I don't have one either." Zoiya takes another bite of her pizza, the extra cheese sending the pepperoni off the side of the pizza. She wrinkles her nose, picking up a piece of pepperoni to toss into her mouth. She folds the crust in half and takes another bite. It's even more messy. At this point she's resigned to eating it and keeping it off her shirt. "I'm gonna look that up when we get home, you'll have to show me how to look shit up on the internet." This is said to Blake, watching to see if he's making a mess too.

"No judgement meant. Just-" Blake looks down a little, and then Zoiya admits she doesn't have one either, which Blake kind of knows by now. "So..like what kinds of things?" he finally asks before taking another bite of his scalding hot pizza, "Damni-" he puts it back on the plate. He's lost privileges. He reaches for his soda to cool his mouth before looking to Zoiya. "So you're saying we're going to be going home and putting the words dick, blood, and emergency into google and you want me to show you how to do that? That's like asking me to teach a kid how to put their hands on the stove." His mess hasn't even begun. He looks pristine and his pizza untouched unless one counts the attempts. He holds a bunched up napkin in one hand.

Tyler laughs a bit more, "Good luck. Try looking up priapism and spinal injury if you can't find anything with those searches." He finishes the slice of pizza he was working on and then stares at Blake a little, smiling. "What other things do you want me to do?"

Zoiya has her mouth full of pizza when Tyler poses that question at Blake. She glances from her roommate to the firefighter and then back again. She swallows, but this is too good to interrupt, so she takes another bite, her gaze settled on Blake. Your move, pal.

"You should write that down if you want my help later," Blake tries to clue Zoiya in as if he's really going to teach her. He might actually be under that impression. Blake has his soda, in his hands, on the table when Tyler poses his question, and he opens his mouth as if to say something and then looks utterly confused for a moment, staring back at the smiling man. Speechless. No smooth words come out, but nothing horribly embarrassing either. Suddenly though, he feels his cheeks flush and he feels frozen there. "I need some air," he mumbles and leaves his worried napkin behind, walking out into the night air.

Tyler just watches Blake as he rises and walks out. Once the man is fully outside, he looks at Zoiya. "I um... I didn't mean to break your friend. I'm sorry." He seems to genuinely feel bad about it. Reaching into his pocket he puts a twenty on the table and offers her a smile. "It was really nice to meet you, Mae. Blake as well." He rises to his feet then, preparing to go.

"He's not broken." Zoiya feels the need to make that clear, reaching for the napkins on the table, wiping at her fingers. "Hey, I'll talk to him, he probably just didn't like the pizza or something, and then got poked at with a question he didn't know how to answer, and .." She makes an explosion sounds, her balled hands near her temple before she lets her fingers woosh out. Mind blown. "I mean, it happens, right?" She flashes him a bright smile, and then gestures to the waitress for a pizza box. "It was really nice to meet you, Tyler. Stop by the club sometime."

Tyler smiles at her warmly, tossing his pizza into the box. "Really, it's okay. I didn't mean to weird him out. You can tell him I was just giving him a hard time," he tells her, probably lying. "You may want to check him for a brain injury when you get home. Anyway, it was nice to meet you too." With that, he heads off.

Zoiya puts the rest of her and Blake's pizza into a box, considering Tyler's words. Did he just tell her to check Boyfriend for an erection. She watches him head out the door, and any other time she might have a snappy retort, but this time she's clean out. She closes the box and leans forward, looking out the door of the pizza place. Where the fuck did Blake go?

Blake is around the corner, he had to go there to completely avoid the looks, or least he felt like that. By the time Zoiya makes it out there, he's trying to pull himself together and is on his way back to the sidewalk from the alley. That's when he appears. He looks back and notices Zoiya. Then he decides to come back in apparently, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He scans the room but finds Tyler gone. He says nothing but a mumbled, "sorry."

"Whatcha sorry for, Boyfriend?" Zoiya gets to her feet, fingers in her purse. This time she pulls out money, drops enough to cover both bills and a decent tip. She picks up their pizza box and starts to walk toward the door. "Let's go home, watch something stupid, and eat pizza. Firefighter told me to make sure you don't have a brain injury, but I don't want you to shove me out a window or anything." She smirks at that, holding out the pizza box for Blake to carry.

"Shut up," Blake doesn't really mean it, but he wouldn't be above shoving her into a pool if she were standing next to one right about now. "He didn't say that really...did he?" It doesn't matter. Damage done. Blake can already feel the heat returning to his cheeks, looking rather flustered about it all and confused. "Come on." He takes the box and holds the door open for her. "He was nice, but he never answered my question." /That's/ what he has to say about it?

"Why the fuck would I lie about that?" Zoiya rolls her eyes, slipping out of the door, waiting for Blake to follow her. "Oh well, you can ask him next time. I think he was flirting with you." She pretends to stumble, bumping her shoulder against his. "Oops!"

Blake follows after and swallows right before he bumps into Zoiya easily. Does he look like a guy who made the football team?

Blake follows after and swallows right before he bumps into Zoiya easily. Does he look like a guy who made the football team? "Next time? What did you get his number or something?" It's hard to tell whether Blake seems interested or merely terrified. He's trying to play it cool and succeeding, but it's hard to shake the blushing image of him out of the head from just a few minutes ago. "I think it was a misunderstanding."

"I didn't get his number, want me to go down to the fire station tomorrow and fix that?" Zoiya grins in his direction, rolling her eyes. She watches him, waiting for him to crack, but he doesn't. Drat. "Sure, it was a misunderstanding, just like him telling me to grope you before he left. Misunderstandings left and right."

Zoiya has Blake wrapped around her little finger. When she pulls the string, he jumps. "No. What? No." He knows she'll do it too. "Wait why would he say to check for an head injury ant then grope me if he's trying to flirt with me?" Blake shakes his head. He doesn't realize he's putting way too much thought into this. His mind latches onto every little thing it can. He falls into a deep quiet, then finally admits something patently obvious, "I'm just not used to people hitting on me." He walks on with Zoiya and pulls his glasses from his nose to fold them away, rubbing the bridge a little where they were.

"No? Are you sure? He was hot." Zoiya walks close to Blake, they're close to home now. She turns her head, grinning in his direction. "I don't know, maybe he thinks you took off because you're hot for my inked body." There is a wicked grin on her face and she shrugs. "Well the best way to get used to it is to practice scenarios in your head. Don't walk away next time, because that just signals that you're not interested, and even if you aren't? You shouldn't be dismissive or rude, people are mushy. They have feelings." She watches him put his glasses away and lets out a sigh. "You're lucky, honestly."

"Oh I am Girlfriend," but there's nothing there to indicate she isn't safe with him. No feral intent behind the jest. It's easier to joke about than to really talk about. "Practice. Okay." When Zoiya tells him not to walk away about these things called feelings, a worried crease appears at his brow. "Fuck. I was an asshole wasn't I..." he sounds like he suddenly realizes he owes that guy an apology, thinking how it must have felt. "Lucky? Why?"

"Mhm." Zoiya pulls keys from her purse, unlocking the door so she can shove inside. "You weren't an asshole, you clearly looked a little startled, and he apologized for .." She chooses a new word, broken sounds so.. harsh. ".. startling you." She grins at him and tosses her keys in her purse, setting it down next to the couch. "You weren't an asshole, but an apology never goes amiss honestly. Even if you don't need to offer one, sometimes it's better safe than sorry." She shrugs at Blake, making her way to the kitchen, she opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of water. "You're not used to it, so when it happens you know it's because someone is into you for real." Flirting, that is.

Zoiya's choice of words proves wise. Blake doesn't go scuttling off into the night to his computers. "Fuck. He didn't need to do that." But Blake's embarrassed, and so no one needed to do anything about anything but him in his eyes. He trods in and flops down onto the couch, immediately going to work on his shoes. "Honestly, I think most of the time I don't even notice." It's an admission. "So, it's kind of like it never happened ever usually. I just miss it. Or I don't know how to respond...so that's that." He suddenly looks back to Zoiya, realizing how comfortable he feels talking to her that he's said this much.

"What would you do if you noticed?" Zoiya sits down next to Blake, using her toes to push her shoes off her heels. She leans back against the couch, frowning down at her jeans. "Hold that thought, I'm gonna go get out of these clothes and into something more comfortable." She pushes her way to her feet, walking toward her bedroom. "Or you can follow me and tell me, I'm good either way." She snickers to herself, her fingers going to the hem of her shirt, tugging at it as she walks through her bedroom door.