∞ [ action post ]
✏ LOGGING: This is your thread for logging, whether spontaneous or plot-related, silly or serious. His normal haunts include shifts at the Blue Light, various city bars, cafes, random encounters, etc. Prose preferred, [] are fine too.
✉ TO SET UP: Just drop me a line at aeloriax[at]gmail.com or Y!M/AIM (listed in the post below) to give me a ( Read more... )
✉ TO SET UP: Just drop me a line at aeloriax[at]gmail.com or Y!M/AIM (listed in the post below) to give me a ( Read more... )
Not that he's ever taken orders from sullen boyband rejects (there's a thought-- no), but if the distraction works for a little while Chase can be gracious enough in departure. Sometimes talking to Amory turns out to be unexpectedly worth the fight with a brick wall it usually requires. Tonight needs to be a quicker fix than that, before his mind wanders in search of the next possibility, which a quick glance at the other patrons suggests could be a significantly worse prospect than snoring through some stock-in-trade teenage angst.
I've never started a barfight with a guy twice my size. Is that a hook?
He looks back at Amory before he can look too long elsewhere, making a study of the broken threadveins stark against sallow skin. Too little sleep and too much booze still not much out of the ordinary. Chase isn't in the mood for lectures, and they'd taste hypocritical against the bitterness of liquor on his teeth, so he pours himself a second shot, raises it.
"So what's your liver thanking you for today?"
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Go and busy yourself in a barfight with a guy twice your size, Chase. Do it.
Or that's what Amory would say if he could read his mind, which sadly, is not found in his stock of peculiarities. Though, he probably wouldn't actually suggest something that hazardous if he knew that Chase was attached to the strings of a curse. Perhaps something involving dresses and clowns and a funny dance... but that's all besides the point. The point is that the last thing Amory needs around is a certain Australian doctor, and the expression on his face, the rolling of hazel eyes and that pronounced sigh that passes through his lips, are good descriptors for the words that follow
"The weather was cold today. Too windy. Windier than San Francisco. I hate the wind, don't you dislike the wind? It's supposed to be warmer tomorrow. That's good. There, conversation done. Now leave," he throws his words around fast enough that Chase possibly won't catch half of it. That's just fine with Amory, as perhaps the blond one will be one step closer to comprehending the message being slammed in his face.
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"Right. You're cold. You need a coat, not a beer." He may comprehend, but it's not yet making him compliant with the want to be rid of him. God knows why. Maybe he actually is more of a masochist than he thought, or maybe passing the time with people who pretend to barely tolerate him is second nature, now. It is pretence, he knows, because Amory too often proves bad at it.
"That was your half of the conversation. We haven't had my half, yet," Chase reasons, and rests his palm flat over the top of his glass, settling into deliberate contemplation. Silence, for a minute, and an array of exaggerated deep-thoughts are crowned with a lazy heave of his shoulders. "I don't mind the wind. Makes for good surf."
Chase has a face (an echo of a younger man's) that need never betray his intelligence unless he lets it, and he's happy to play up the careless ass when it goes some way to mask a less stable subconscious. The double-dog-dares forming part of his internal commentary are starting to make him feel crazy, and that's a state ever more unsettling in the city. He's vigilant for degeneration, though he's starting to question what couldn't be taken as a sign. His own prognosis sits level alongside the ones meted out to what might as well be imaginary friends -- he could tell Amory he's killing himself, but he knows he'd be wrong at least in the traditional sense. He could tell him that even if that's impossible, he spends a hell of a lot of time acting like he wants to. Despite himself, despite long experience with the impossibility of changing people, it's a performance Chase can't quite bring himself to ignore.
"Why are you here?" he asks, spreading his fingers and pouring between them into the glass. "Blue Light just reopened. Either you started feeling guilty for freeloading off your boss or you're avoiding someone."
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Anyone who knows the Telmarine moderately well ought to be aware of his temper. Rarely has it ever reached a level only a handful of people have ever seen, his uncle the usurping murderer included. The tense posture he takes upon approaching the pair is aggressive, unstoppable. But at least he hasn't drawn a blade. Yet.
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Or that's what used to be the case.
Recently, Pevensie had taken up the inclination to be a nag. Or rather, he simply expressed concern, and thus Amory's time-tailored reaction snapped into play. He seems to have skipped out on steps c and d taking a hop-skip-jump from civility to blowing out the fuse on Peter's recollection. To be perfectly honest, it is something he barely recalls, shades and sounds of that night a muddled tracing of memory. He remembers enough pieces though, the broken scenes reconstructed to root fault and cause and repercussions back to him.
Repercussions like Telmarine currently advancing toward them.
But Amory doesn't notice the approaching brunette, too preoccupied with figuring out what formation of words might offend Chase enough to inspire a departure. Months of knowing the doctor suggests his efforts are futile. They probably are, and so he settles with usual tactics.
"I didn't say I was cold. And if you manage to surf this time of year, I'll be vaguely surprised" there's a pause, nails digging against the table's wooden edge, "I never liked the ocean very much." Negatives, negatives, and negatives seem to be Amory's only vocabulary tonight. In terms of echos, perhaps it's a reflection of whatever is actually crossing that mind of his, subconsciously or consciously. A reflection of the scattered bottles before him, alcohol that, as Chase is well-aware of, routes a path to kill him.
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Concern could be a cardinal sin in Amory's personal bible. Both his for others and their returning interest. Chase gets that, to a degree. He can understand not wanting to reach for something that's bitten his hand before. Can understand not wanting to owe debts he never asked for. But Amory on his best day is reminiscent of Chase on his worst, and that's both impressive and wearying. If it's this tiring to watch, he can't help but think Amory must be exhausted just keeping the walls in place.
He's still watching his reluctant companion, hands forming a chinrest, one folded over the other, elbows digging against the table edge. Dubious and vaguely indulging, like a parent with a toddler at the 'NO' stage. "You never like anything very much. Surfing this time of year's just the difference between a suit and boardies. Have you ever--"
And that thought (probably a terrible suggestion, Chase is brimming with those tonight) is lost as he becomes aware of the presence encroaching on the table. It takes a stratospheric strength of feeling to overwhelm Amory's radiating displeasure, but Caspian achieves that with ease. One look at the Narnian's expression chokes back any greeting Chase might think of. He's suddenly alert, watchful, and perhaps leaning back from the table an imperceptible amount. Whatever this is, it's more than half a truck, and he's near enough certain it's not headed for him.
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"Amory," Caspian barks, hand pressing to their table with disregard for their drinks, with disregard for anything else for that matter, "you lied to me. You lied about Peter."
His hand does not reach for a weapon but who needs that when fingers will do just as well? His curl tightly into Amory Felix's collar to bring them face to face. Brown eyes cut the quickest look at Chase, a kind that speaks in a threat: Do not interfere.
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"Lied about what? What are you talking about, Caspian?" he stays true to his previous farce, setting confusion in his tone as he stares wide-eyed at the Telmarine. Wide-eyed only because it makes him appear innocent, just as the inflection of his voice perfects the portrait. Admitting fault now would destroy any chance of leading Caspian astray with lies, and Amory's far too inclined to saving his hide to miss out on a chance to convince the King that he's mistaken.
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He's heard a little about Peter's condition -- something he'd been meaning to look into when not overwhelmed with other work or cursed himself. Amnesia isn't exactly a freak diagnosis in this city. Painful to the forgotten, but for the patient? Ignorance is bliss. So something has been put on the backburner when he might have been a better friend, at least one more prepared, had he followed it up earlier.
He stands now, Caspian's unspoken warning not going unnoted - he's still out of the line of fire - and catches an empty bottle, setting it straight again before it can roll off the table. "Caspian," his hand raises in a gesture that smooths the air if no one's temper with it, "he's not going to talk to you when you've got him like that. Take a step back."
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How does Caspian know this? Well he certainly doesn't feel any incentive to share it with either Amory or Chase. That would put Eden in a tough spot. So he argues in the face of wide-eyed innocence, feigned innocence. No, Caspian X isn't such an easy mark, even he knows when Amory means what he says in his own defense he is usually abrupt, stubborn, frustrated in return. Right now he is none of those things and that only infuriates the Telmarine.
"You--you did something to him," he says, full conviction behind his accusation. Days passed, he has considered other possibilities, that Peter was subjected to a curse (a long one) or Peter had left and returned a new slate as many others have before or that he might have been attacked by the White Witch who has not been heard from since Christopher and his friends stood against her. Persistence has paid off in revealing none of these to be true. It should be a relief for Caspian but it does nothing for him. Learning this happened at the hands of someone he considers almost a friend--someone Peter trusted--is still a severe blow, leaving only the question why which still matters very little when compared to how the magic will be reversed. Not if either, but when because Caspian will beat it out of Amory if he has to. His other hand clutches at Amory's collar too, both lifting as if he might drag the man across the table.
"No," he addresses Chase without looking at him, without looking at the echo of a face of someone who is at the center of this mess. Caspian doesn't even think about missed opportunities where the doctor might have been able to help Peter. With magic involved that would have been only headache and heartache. Similarly Caspian hasn't thought about asking for His help either. That he's gotten this far is no doubt partly due to faith, but he knows it's not his place to ask the lion to force change on human nature. Amory will do what Amory pleases because that's his way. How enraging. "He owes us" me "an answer," he speaks through clenching teeth, "and I will damn well get one from him."
Caspian almost never swears, never threatens, never comes close to causing fatal injury unless afflicted by some kind of injustice. Learning his uncle killed his father was one of those times. Burning away his friend's memory to the point where, as Edmund has emphasized, the High King of Narnia asks what's a Narnia falls in the same realm. Amory may as well have taken a pick-axe to his head. By now they've definitely caught the attention of a few patrons, but none willing to intervene yet.
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Undoubtedly, it is painful to be forgotten, but to forget is more than ignorance, more than merely not knowing; the loss of memory is the subtraction of identity, unraveling the filament binding human form to self. Can two people, identical in composition but strangers in memory be considered the same person? Can the divided Peter Pevensie, unknowing of the heart of himself that is Narnia truly be the Peter Pevensie as others know him? As he once knew himself? It is a question that rests at the root of Amory's guilt, lidded and tempered with pride as its wax seal. The truth of what Amory Felix believes is that forgetting one's self is a step below death. Both involve negation, one leaves a husk- a paraphrase of what had been.
Maybe he's being dramatic. Maybe it's a matter of over-thinking, but as fingers grasp his collar, brown cutting hazel, he tells himself that Caspian has every reason to seek revenge, if revenge is what this is. Nevertheless, this revelation doesn't diminish the reflex of self-preservation, certainty not when it comes to Amory Felix, and in this position his mind yet compiles escape routes. Caspian may be something of a friend, a friend if truth was the only sound, but if he had to burn Caspian's hand to cinders to save his life, then he would. It's the honest truth.
It is because of these exits that he can look at Caspian without fear, even if the idea of him physically defending himself against the Telmarine is laughable. He's exhausted and sick, and top it all off, moderately inebriated. But he still locks eyes without the slightest waver of expression, flat-lining his lips as he lets lids fall to a half-set glare, "I had-- I have no reason, no motive to ever hurt Peter Pevensie. Don't be a fool," his tongue tries to trap the venom, but when did rationality ever proceed temper for Amory?
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If Peter was the one to feel guilt for then it would be Peter here with his fists balled in Amory's collar. It might be a simplistic view, but in medicine it's practiced often enough that what isn't known won't hurt. Peter doesn't know what he's lost. Caspian is all loss and fury, quite terrifying in it, and anyone should feel guilty for turning his benign days here on their head. He'll see enough of that.
Chase's instincts still tell him to keep his distance. Responsibility and the feeling that this isn't going to end right on either part see him levelling his shoulder somewhere near Amory's, his hand going to brace Caspian's arm. "Yeah, you're helping," he tells one and, to the other, "You can get your answers without choking him. One step back."
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What?
Split seconds pass to fill the space of silence that defines Caspian's complete surprise at Amory even suggesting it. He should expect it from this man's mouth, finds it not exactly out of character for Amory Felix, but to hear it leveled at him is another kind of experience entirely. More than this is a single word making all the difference.
Had.
If he had his sword, blood would have been drawn already. Because he doesn't and because his hands are already close to Amory's face, Caspian chooses to disregard Chase's interjection. Well, not completely. The arm he braces stays where it is, bending only to bring Amory closer against the table. His other hand curls into a fist whose knuckles cover the short distance to Amory's face. Caspian aims to hit him hard, not just once, not just twice, but repeatedly. It is brutish, it is far from noble, and he doesn't care. Amory is flippant and callous with his words, his mouth pays the price.
Don't be a fool.
The Telmarine thinks to himself he was a fool for giving Amory Felix his time, his friendship, and the benefit of the doubt.
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There are two options in this situation. Either he takes it like a man or finds some way to slither out of it. The latter would require some magic elbow grease, or in other words, perhaps some quick teleportation. However, last Sunday's encounter with Peter had taken enough out of him in terms of stamina and lashback, and he's not eager to add on an additional charge unless it's absolutely necessary. A deck, or two decks in the face won't kill him. Then, there's the option of evasion, which would actually make sense in this case. Whether he can dodge the blow in time is an uncertainty, but there's no time to think in a pas
Well, see.
There was no time to think as the fist of an angry Telmarine comes barreling into his eye. Stars and stripes of the non-patriotic kind explode on the right side of the canvas, and yet the strike has managed to set his reflexes on edge. Only thanks to said reflexes does the subsequent one-sixteenth of a second involve Amory's head snapping away to dodge.
Whether he's fast enough is the question.
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Never been knocked out by an eighteen year old. Still not quite. Am I--
He is bleeding, the hand cupped around his jaw confirms. His own teeth have split his lip, but as he gingerly presses his tongue against his teeth none prove loose, just slick with copper and salt. He hisses, fingertips pressing over the connecting points of his jawbone. Dizziness and pain make his head swim, hard to focus on which of the two to glare at as he looks back up.
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Note he hasn't forgotten Amory's place in this, he is just remembering himself. Something Peter Pevensie can't do right now. He turns to Amory again.
"I wanted to believe you," he says to the other man, tone losing its sharpness, its edge, "do something if you ever cared at all." The Telmarine points at Amory before sending a glimpse of anger now mixed with hurt and question at Chase for the briefest moment: What else can I do? If it makes Chase feel any better, Caspian shakes his hand out, knuckles sore from impact.
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