2019-08-09 - Empanadas ≠ Empathy

The hospital is about the last place Captain de la Vega wants to spend a Friday night, and it shows; the man looks like he's done with this shit, and is occupying his mind with staging a breakout, in between answering the occasional text message on his phone with his one good hand. The other - inconveniently, his dominant right hand - is bandaged up all the way to the shoulder, as is his chest in about five layers of gauze. He's been forced to suffer the indignity of one of the hospital's ridiculous gowns, and there's an uneaten plate of cafeteria food, as well as a little glass-covered bamboo garden sitting on the table by his bed while he gazes contemplatively out the window.

It, as things ever do, takes a little finagling. Carver's good at finagling. Ever so good. At saying the word, too. It's such a fun word to say aloud. In fact, he's doing just that as he shoulders his way into the room, a somewhat spherical wrapped-white-paper package held in his left hand, the other tucked deep in the pocket of his usual long coat, since cleaned of the soot and grass stains it was marred with earlier in the week. Other than the coat, he's dressed almost identically to the last time Ruiz saw him. Waistcoat, shirt, so on, so forth.

"Finagle. Finagle. That really is fun." He sounds far, far too perky, still muttering as he heads straight for the bed, glancing down at the untouched plate of food before holding out the parcel to the man. "Figured. Hospital food sucks. Don't judge me for the Empanadas, there's a festival in town and I wasn't about to detour for your sake."

Perky Brits in waistcoats are not a common occurrence in Ruiz's life. And certainly not what he expected to find strolling into his room at this precise moment. Bearing gifts, no less. His dark eyes travel from the window, to the arriving man who's managed to finagle his way in here. Somehow.

"Hello," comes out perhaps a touch more guarded than he intended. A glance from Carver, to the package in his hands. Back to Carver. He has one good hand, which happens to be the less richly inked of the two, and it extends carefully to accept the food that's offered. If it is indeed food, and not something rigged to explode on opening. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Mr. Carver?"

Of course the word comes out more guarded than intended. It's Carver. The package, however? That's legit. Four empanadas, Argentinian style with diced beef and hints of cumin and paprika rest inside the loose paper, sealed with but a single sticker. And it's handed over without additional comment.

"Sutton."

The answer is simple, quick, and said with all the emotion of a drywall sheet. It's followed by the slightly wet noise of air being drawn through the teeth at the side of his mouth, and the most haphazard drop into the nearest chair a human could manage without completely ragdolling. "I'm trying out this 'being a friend' thing. Seeing how it fits."

The chair isn't terribly comfortable. Then again, neither is lying in a hospital bed after effectively playing human meat shield against a bunch of angry ghost cops in a moment of impressive irony. They really didn't like him.

"Gracias," is his quiet offering for the food. Carver did owe him one, technically, for the bacon sandwich. Does this make them even? Maybe. There's a soft crinkling of the sticker being torn off and the package unwrapped one-handed. Which is trickier than it seems. "So did she put you up to this? Or you are doing it in order to get in her good books?" One might get the impression that the captain does not have many friends. One would probably be right.

"She doesn't know I'm here." Carver's tongue clicks. There's no denying that this chair has worked long and hard to be named one of the hospital's least comfortable, and through years of hard work and slow degradation of any supporting material, has truly earned the title. He shifts. It doesn't help. "Figure we do this right, she never will."

The hand that was in his pocket has stayed there, and only now draws clear to unwrap the silver foil from a stick of gum, sliding it into his mouth an a slightly transparent attempt to stop whatever tics he's got going on in the attempt to be utterly civil. "So." To the point, then. "How much do you know about all..." The now stick-free hand gestures towards the gathering of bandages and gauze that is Ruiz's body. "Nyeeeh."

"Hm." That's it. That's the sum total of his response to the whole she doesn't know I'm here. Like that factoid has been filed away in his mental rolodex for later dissection and analysis.

He resumes trying to get the package of food open. It's awkward, and it takes some finagling, but he does manage to work the paper off enough to slip out a slightly warm empanada and bite it in half. He chews slowly and swallows, eyes on the man suffering silently in that horrible chair. "The shootout?" he guesses, disappearing the rest of the pastry into his mouth before speaking again. "You came here to question me about the shootout. I'm more interested in your lies, personally." Cool as a fucking cucumber, he watches Carver and he waits, as if for a sign.

Carver almost rolls his eyes. You can tell the urge is there, suppressed by the smallest latch that holds shut an emotional gate. It's not even padlocked. Someone stuck a twig in there in the hope it'd stop a soft breeze from opening the pen. What he actually ends up doing is rubbing the tip of his nose with the pad of his thumb, glancing up to the ceiling as he does so in a silent prayer for a little assistance.

Of course, none comes.

"I-... Fuckin'-..." Oh, Carver. Where has your smug composure gone? "Fine!" He throws up the hands. "Which lies interest you so much, mon capitain?"

"The ones concerning Harry, of course." He reaches for another empanada, and if that's a twinge of victory in his eyes, surely he can't be blamed entirely for it. "She cares for you, and I presume you for her. So what have you been lying to her about, that's necessitated midnight hikes through the woods in an attempt to try to get you out of her system, I presume?" It's not like the captain has such a high horse to sit on, right now, in the composure department. He's hopped up on painkillers, dressed in a goofy hospital gown, and keeps dropping his food on account of needing to use his left hand to eat.

And right there, Carver admits to himself he might have been wrong about Ruiz. He'd never admit it out loud, and it only lasts a moment, but it was definitely there. The uncertainty flickered across his face, clear as day. "You either really know her, or Elias." ...Cop. The Seattle PD offduty he wore on the first night they met. For a guy with his alertness, Carver can so, so miss the forest for the trees.

His tongue worries a back tooth in thought, the gum completely failing in it's task as the Brit pulls himself from the seat to half mosey, half shuffle to the window. It's difficult to combine the two, but not impossible.

Ruiz is in the midst of trying to pilot an ornery empanada from the plate into his mouth when Carver hits his realisation about Elias. The name gains an immediate response; his dark eyes narrow a fraction as they settle on the other man, and remain there while he pushes out of the chair and starts shuffling for the window. Is he planning a sudden and dramatic autodefenestration? The cop's about to find out.

"I knew Eli. Yes. We, uh." We what, Javier? "He was my partner, on and off, for about a year." He gives up on the empanada, and sets the plate aside so he can study Carver without the added distraction. "You don't like me very much, do you."

"Not even a little, mate." Carver's looking out of the window by the time the question comes, missing the narrowing eyes, but catching the slight hesitation in the words. He doesn't really make the effort to turn, but it's a Friday night, and there's far more light in the room than outside. Carver's face is reflected pretty well. It's more than easy to watch a tongue run over his top teeth from left to right, no sign of the casual smile he usually wears. "But don't take it personal. I find the whole lot of you cops to be a bloody nightmare. Demanding the truth but changing it when it doesn't fit your desired narrative."

That... sounds pretty personal, Carver.

"I've not fit the desired narrative once in my life."

Carver may not see it, with his eyes on the window, but the cop is smiling slightly with those first five words out of his mouth. Why? Because it's probably the most honest thing he's heard from him yet, in their short time knowing one another.

"Someone's done you wrong. A cop, I'd presume. Eli?" It seems a bit of a reach, but he takes that stab in the dark and asks it anyway. Otherwise, the captain is mostly inert in his bed. His vitals are being monitored with a soft, occasional bleep of machinery, and even someone who doesn't know him well could see plain as day that he wants to crawl out of his skin right now. Being trapped here like this, subjected to an endless parade of visitors who come in and look at him like an exhibit at the zoo. "Unless we've encountered one another before and I've somehow forgotten." He doesn't seem to think that's likely.

"Every cop has done someone wrong, Ruiz. They're human." Carver's reply doesn't really help elaborate anything. How very like him. "My problem is that the rest of us don't go around demanding respect in spite of it because of a bit of metal on a shirt or a belt."

The guy's head tilts a little, the side of his face alighting against the glass to get a slightly better view of something going on outside. Or maybe just the scenery. If he's noticed that the other man seems uncomfortable (Besides the obvious wounds, of course) he's not mentioning it. Or reacting to it. Even to enjoy it, and you know Carver would normally be enjoying it.

"First thing Elias did when I'd said five words to him was reach for a gun he no longer had. Pretty sure he'd have carried out a little bit of percussive interrogation if he could actually fuckin' touch anything any more. If that don't highlight my problems with you guys, I don't know what will."

"You're right about that," Ruiz will allow, voice low. No mockery in his tone, no facetiousness. He watches Carver watch the window, and reaches for a cold empanada, and bites off half of it. "Eli was not at all unlike his sister, in life. Acted without thinking. Leaped before he looked." He finishes off the thing, unhurried, before speaking again. "He was fiercely protective of Harry. He made me swear I wouldn't sleep with her." Why is he telling Carver this? Who the fuck knows. "And I'm pretty sure he'd try to kill me now, if he could."

He smiles, slightly, and then it's gone. "So don't take it personal, Mr. Carver."

"I said I'd still be there."

It's an answer to Ruiz' inquiry about his lies that comes from Carver's mouth. He'd listened when Ruiz spoke, shifting from leaning his head against the glass to taking up the weight with his shoulder. If Ruiz is questioning why he'd tell Carver such things, he might be just as confused to know that Carver's wondering the same thing in reverse. They're perfect for each other.

"She made me promise not to lie to her. Sat in a room with that brother she refuses to see. And she made me promise not to lie to her. Mate..." The smile on Carver's face when he turns to look at the other man only spreads from one side of his mouth, and everything about it screams it should be coupled with a shrug. "Yesterday, I traded a toaster to an eight foot bird in return for unsolicited relationship advice. I'm used to covering up what I do. Lying because people won't get it. And I couldn't do that."

So that'd be the lie he told then. The lie that had Sutton taking a late night hike. And Carver totally meant 'Bird' in the English way, right? Right. Of course.

It's Ruiz's turn, then, to listen carefully while Carver speaks. Fortunately, the man has about as captive an audience as he's likely to find in the captain, shot up to within an inch of his life, wrapped in a metric fuckton of gauze and hooked up to machines designed to alert staff immediately if his vitals start going south. It's an effort to do something as simple as scratching his belly, to say nothing about taking a leak.

"So you were trapped, then, between a rock and a hard place." Why, is that empathy in his voice? A glimmer of dawning understanding? The pieces start to fit together now, and he meets the younger man's gaze evenly, when he turns from the window. "Have you made it right yet? With Harry." He breathes in, then out. Carefully. Something about a compromised lung, yadda yadda. He didn't really listen to the nurse as well as he probably ought. "She needs you." It's put out there plainly, unvarnished and without couching it in something more palatable. He ignores, for now, talk of eight foot women. Or avians. Or whatever the fuck the guy's talking about.

"I yelled at her for not telling me you were a cop." Carver sniffs, actually throwing out the shrug now to properly complete the half-cocked smile. "So, kinda?"

If Ruiz gives out the impression that he doesn't have many friends, Carver can sometimes seem real good at not entirely understanding how usual social interactions should go. Or maybe he understands it more than most. Honestly, it's really hard to tell, sometimes. "And mate. Really?" That's not his impressed face. "She quite obviously needs the both of us about as much as she needs a hole in the head. Which, judging, you helped her avoid. So, good job."

"I'm sure that helped." Yelling at her, that is. "Good fucking job." That one was facetiousness. It's just hard to tell it apart from his honest face, as they're roughly the same thing. The plate of food is pushed away finally when it's clear he's starting to feel queasy, and a half-full glass of water nearby is reached for. And sipped from with a wince. "Well, she's stuck with me. I made a promise to her brother. And.."

And.

On second thoughts, he doesn't go there. Even under the influence of hospital-grade narcotics, he seems to have an idea that what he was about to say may not be in anyone's best interests. Instead, a soft grunt of, "Fix things." The glass contacts the little table again with a soft thump. And Ruiz's eyes are already threatening to close by the time he's finished speaking. Consciousness, clearly, is becoming a struggle.

"And." Carver agrees. Wait, what? Nope, it's right there, he's nodding and everything, his hand coming down from the thumbs up he just threw at the burst of Ruiz brand facetiousness. "It's like my da always said. 'You can't un-fuck a pudding.'" Sure, his face is hard to read, but the shrug is easy enough to follow. Carver's dad was... definitely a person.

And under the influence of hospital-grade narcotics, fighting against unconsciousness, Ruiz is in the perfect position for Carver to both make a point and an exit all in one. Unfolding his arms, one palm goes flat against the window. It must be the drugs, because from the center of his hand, a milky sheen runs out across the glass, turning transparent again in a slow gradient once the outer edge first touches the window's edges. The sky outside begins to lighten. Night turns into a cloudless grey. There's no definition to it. Just a seemingly endless void of grey that hovers above the town. The town that shifts. Moves. Buildings aren't where they should be, buildings that aren't where they were when Ruiz was looking a few minutes ago.

Give it a day, Ruiz will probably be certain this was the drugs. Won't he?

"Get some rest, copper." He offers by way of a 'get well soon', peeling his hand away from the pane. That new image stays there while he heads for the door, and will for a minute or so. "Because if that promise you made was to take care of her, you've got a fuckin' bunch to learn. 'Cause it'll have to be you."

Before he's out the door, Carver at least gives a reason. "I just break them more."

There's no reply from the damaged cop reclining a few feet away. Maybe he wants to shove the bedsheets off and surge to his feet and throw Carver up against a wall by his throat, and tell him how the fuck it's going to be. Certainly there's a hint of it in his eyes, for a moment. It's gone, though, before it's really ever there; courtesy of the one-two punch of painkillers and sedatives that are doing a pretty good job of tempering his baser instincts.

He watches Carver, then he watches the window. And at some point, he simply dozes right off. Might be he'll dream of that cloudless grey sky and slightly skewed landscape, or might be he'll remember his body being torn to pieces, again, like he does most every time he closes his eyes.