2019-10-03 - The Little Prince
Ruiz doesn't get his hoodie back.
IC Date: 2019-10-03
OOC Date: 2019-07-08
Location: Park/Addington Memorial Hospital
Related Scenes: 2019-10-03 - The Twilight Forest
Plot: None
Scene Number: 1923
Well, that was a hell of a thing.
Itzhak fell asleep again after the Dreamway dumped him out. He'd felt fine in the Dream, but once he was standing in the hospital room, wearing nothing but Ruiz's GHPD hoodie, nothing had seemed as important as crawling back into bed. The confused nurse had checked on him, couldn't explain to herself why his gown was missing but he'd gained a sweatshirt, or why he looked like he'd rolled in a fireplace. Why did he smell like a forest fire?
The Veil protects itself; she'd just cleaned him up (through his half-asleep growling at her), changed the bedding, and let him rest. Patients got into weird shit. It happened.
Now that it's evening, he's awake again. Restless, bored, the memory of the blighted tree chasing itself around his head. He's trying to make sense of it.
Hell of a thing indeed. De la Vega woke up feeling like he'd run a marathon, his heart going like a jackhammer after the rush of bringing life back to that blasted landscape. It's like nothing he's ever done before, or is likely to do again, and perhaps it's the fact that Itzhak still has his hoodie. Or perhaps it's something else entirely that draws him to the hospital where the man is evidently staying.
It took some convincing of the head nurse on watch at the station up the hall, but they've allowed him in to see Rosencrantz even though he isn't family. A friend is what he told her. And, I really need to see him. So he's here, and so is Itzhak, and the door's nudged open with a soft click of the latch being disengaged. And the captain's standing right there. Possibly the last person on earth that the mechanic thought he'd see.
His dark hair's scruffy and uncombed, and he's showered and changed into an equally ratty tee shirt, dark jeans and motorcycle boots. No jacket, ho hoodie, lots of ink as per usual.
"Concerto for Two Violins in D Major" is playing from Itzhak's phone where it lies on the bedside tray. He's focused entirely on the music, eyes half closed, right hand swaying gently resting on the covers. When his doorway is darkened, he expects the nurse, and glances over.
The nurse, it ain't. Itzhak frowns--scowls, really, sitting up. "De la Vega? The fuck?" He stares at him, irritated, worried, trying to cover the worry with irritation. He can't shake the feeling that he's probably in trouble. No matter what they accomplish in the Dream, on this side of the border it's a different story between them.
The older man simply stands there for a minute, hand on the doorknob, dark eyes on the suddenly frazzled-looking guy in the hospital bed. He doesn't answer that question right away, if indeed it wasn't rhetorical. His gaze flicks to the man's phone as he steps inside, then turns to shut the door. Click. Then he pushes his hands into his pockets, and prowls toward the solitary window, leaning over to look out it.
Then, finally, "Good evening. Why are you in here?"
Itzhak spreads both hands at Ruiz in Yiddish aggravation as he walks by. "This one of those things you already know the answer so you're getting me to talk? The flu, man. The flu. They said I got a thing called a cytokine storm, my immune system went crazy. Got me on a bunch of steroids and shit like that. Why are you in here?" Since he hadn't allowed the nurse to put him in another one of those humiliating hospital gowns, he's wearing a t-shirt with Reinhardt's icon on it, from Overwatch.
Spotify changes to another classical violin piece. Itzhak just lets it play. He's going to need it.
Ruiz looks over from his study of the parking lot, apparently unperturbed by the Yiddish aggravation rolling off the other man. His gaze flicks over Itzhak's shirt, then roves toward his face when he mentions cytokine storm. He does remember him saying something about that. "Si. The flu." Something not quite a smile curls his lip, then slinks away again. The tee shirt, or rather what's on it, doesn't seem familiar to him. "I'm visiting you. Can't you see?" He goes over to drop into the visitor chair, dropping his bulky frame into it with that space-eating sprawl of his. "When do you get out?"
Sweet, high violin music sings quietly from the phone. Itzhak squints. "You're visiting me." He rubs his eyes. "'kay. 'Kay, sure, visiting. They're letting me out tomorrow. They said that yesterday, though, so," he shrugs, and folds his long arms across his chest. He looks okayish, pale with dark circles around his eyes, but not nearly so on-the-edge-of-death as a lot of other people have been looking lately. Then again, this is after two days in the hospital.
He eyes Ruiz, gaze flicking down him then back up. "Have a seat, why don't ya." Oh. He remembers. "I was still wearing your sweater. It's pretty comfy, I might keep it." So apparently he's feeling good enough to needle Ruiz a little.
Tomorrow? "That's good." It's unclear whether he really means that, or is just making mindless small talk. He watches Itzhak for a beat, two, then lets his gaze trail one of the machines he's hooked up to. It's monitoring his vitals, which de la Vega takes note of briefly. "Gracias," he murmurs, dimpling a smile when the seat is 'offered' and weaving his fingers together atop his belly. Then he looks back, once more, to the man in the hospital bed. "No. I don't think you will." Keep his sweater. "I don't know how the fuck you wound up in my dream. But I.." His lips stay parted on that unfinished sentence, and his tongue touches the inside of his cheek before they clamp shut again.
"What is it?" He nods toward the phone. The music, he means.
"Wasn't your dream. Was Roen's." Itzhak shrugs again, like he knows it sounds comfortably insane and yet, here we are. "He needed help." He glances at the phone, following Ruiz's nod, and takes a second to listen. "'The Lark Ascending'. Uhh, Ralph Vaugh Williams. It's a poem, Williams wrote this song about it. 'He drops the silver chain of sound'. That's the only line I remember." Then he's looking back at Ruiz, eyebrows doing something between curiosity and wariness.
Insane or not, he isn't wrong. It was August's dream, and Ruiz doesn't argue it. Nor the fact that he needed help. Though that causes him to tense up slightly. He's quiet as the music is explained, and listens for a few moments more to the sweet, soulful strings being plied. Then, "I'm not familiar with it." He taps his fingers a couple of times against his stomach. "I've been thinking a lot about what you showed me. Out at the old sawmill." He meets Itzhak's gaze for a moment, then glances down at his hands as they're opened, palms up. "Haven't been able to get it out of my head. So I came over here." As one does.
Itzhak frowns at Ruiz, not knowing what he means...then. Oh. His eyebrows lift up, going yearning, his expression softening. He looks down, too, arms unfolding to open his hands in his lap, unconsciously mirroring Ruiz. Mechanic's scars and callouses and ink. "Yeah?" He's quiet a moment. "Was somethin', wasn't it?" he says, still quiet. He lifts his gaze to Ruiz's, searching, brief, before he lets himself look away again. They're not posturing, he doesn't have to force himself to a staredown. Yet.
Ruiz looks too weary to be posturing tonight. The past few weeks and months and years have worn away at him, cutting soft grooves into his weathered face, and knitting a slouch into his shoulders that leaves him barely resembling the straight-shouldered military man he once was. "Si," he murmurs, voice clipped and low, eyes bloodshot. Healing scratches along the inside of both forearms, deep grooves that one might mistake for cuts made by a knife, but they aren't clean enough for that. He sniffs sharply, turns his palms over again, and looks up at Itzhak. Then down at the other man's hands. He's silent; there's too much he wants to say, and yet none of the words want to come out. So he sits, dark eyes slanted slightly as he studies those mechanic's hands and listens to the monitor beep softly every so often and the laughter down the hall.
Inevitably, Itzhak begins to fidget. First the long fingers start twitching. Then he's rubbing at his palm with his thumb. Then he's rubbing his forearms as if he's cold. He's alternating staring at Ruiz with staring down at his arms while he does all this and it's more than a little weird. ("The box" must have been hell on this guy.) He stops abruptly, putting his hands flat on his thighs. Then he starts it up again deliberately. No. He won't make his hands be quiet. They say things he doesn't know how to say with words.
Right now they might be saying 'oh God he's looking at me and I don't know what he wants.'
When the tension seems unbearable Itzhak blurts, "Thanks," looks mortified, and tucks his hands under the covers pooled around his waist. "...For helping. Roen. For helping Roen."
Itzhak's a fidgeter. Javier is not. Which gives him plenty of opportunity to watch the other man were that singular intensity he has. Rather than Alexander's flat, lizard-like stare, the Captain's is penetrating and aggressive. He speaks with his eyes like Itzhak speaks with his hands.
Finally, "You're welcome. For helping Roen." He's not talking about Roen. He also smiles, and it's weary, too. Weary but genuine. "You've got something else to say?" It is, for once, a question rather than a statement. The older man doesn't move an inch from his languid slouch.
Also inevitably, Itzhak turns red, color slowing fading in up his neck. He'd retreat if he had the option. He doesn't.
That penetrating, predatory stare.
He huffs a wry silent laugh, shakes his head. Ruiz's smile gets the tiniest quirk of a reply, although Itzhak's looking down. "This how you break 'em down? Just watch 'em with your pretty eyes?" His tone could be nasty, but it's not.
When Itzhak glances back over, his attention lands on the wounds along Ruiz's forearms. He looks at them. Obviously, not bothering to pretend that he isn't. He looks his fill before he glances at Ruiz's face. "You're the one showed up here. If I didn't know better, I'd think you're the one with something to say."
Break 'em down? Pretty eyes? Javier's expression says he has no idea what the other man might be talking about. His smile, however, grows into that hungry, wolfish thing when the flush creeps up Itzhak's throat. The smile that presages a snarl, and prominent canines, and his body closing in to corner his quarry. Except he does none of those things; the want's all in his eyes.
"I said what I had to say." His gaze shifts away finally, and he bends to retrieve something from under his chair. Something he'd stowed there when he came in, and sat down; unobtrustive, as he's wont to do. The Dream, is what he means. The sawmill. It's like a thing that sits between them, everything and nothing, an ache he can't soothe away. Something's tossed atop Itzhak's bed, then. A book. Small. Plain cover. Le Petit Prince. "Brought you something, though."
Itzhak goes very still. If it's the stillness of prey, it's prey which can mess up a predator--a stag, or a stallion. Something big with long legs that isn't afraid to fight. He lifts his head, eyeing Ruiz narrowly. While continuing to blush deeper every second. If Ruiz speaks with his eyes, Itzhak's capillaries are holding a roast session.
He snaps a hand out from under the blanket to clap the book down before he quite realizes what it is. Fast hands, but then he's a fiddler. He picks it up, turns it to see the cover. Then his expression shifts all at once to interested and curious.
"Never read this one, funny enough." He opens it. Of course the first thing in it is a drawing of a snake eating a shrew. Itzhak grins sudden and bright. "Awww." The whole first little section is about snakes. Aww!
The surly Mexican goes quiet as Itzhak retrieves the book, turns it over in his hand. The cover is worn and old; this isn't something he bought recently. It's been read and read a number of times, and looks to be something close to a first edition. That the other man isn't watching him at the precise moment that he realises the whole first little section is about snakes.. well, he doesn't see Javier's expression turn briefly guileless. The soft, worn crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, the downturn of his lips; not in his habitual scowl, but something else. The precipice of something. And then it's gone, and he pushes to his feet slowly.
Lorsque j'avais six ans j'ai vu, the book begins, une fois, une magnifique image, dans un livre sur la Forêt Vierge qui s'appelait "Histoires Vécues".
He pushes his hands into his pockets, checks the window once more, and prowls off for the door without another word.
It's also in French. Itzhak frowns. "I can't read--" he looks up. Ruiz is already out the door.
Itzhak's eyebrows lift to the top of his forehead. Thoughts churn behind his eyes.
"Guess I'm gonna learn," he murmurs, and looks down at the weathered little book.
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