Bahir
For those on base:
- Natalie and Bahir have returned from a trip to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, with Terry's com unit in tow. You don't want to know where they found it.
- There are no signs of foul play - blood stains, scraped skin, etc - and despite spending half a day trying, Natalie hasn't found anything useful off the unit yet. She continues to try from the comfort of base.
- There are 8 com units still out there! Teams are heading out to find them as they can. Hopefully they will not all be in the same condition as Terry's.
05 / 09 / 09 - Bahir, Natalie
A long drive, even split between two licensed drivers, is /still/ a /long fucking drive/. The car is low, long, and sleek with many buttons with which a bored passenger might amuse himself. Bahir does not touch the air conditioning or the music, having learned his lesson. As the light fades from the sky, he watches as a multi-hued glow bloom upon the dashboard and does his best to stretch in the cramped confines of the car. "Think we should stop before long?" he asks, breaking an easy silence.
Natalie's head bobs absently with the tunes that keep them company - largely classic rock - before she turns to look at Bahir and snorts a half laugh. "No, I think we should stay in this car for the rest of our fucking natural lives," she answers, leaning forward so she can arch her back in a stretch. "Also, we should definitely never eat again. Or pee."
Bahir shifts with a thoughtful expression at Natalie's last, his stretch folding inward. "I don't know. Skanky as that last gas station bathroom was, I'm almost inspired to hold it until we get back to base." /Almost/.
"At least you can piss without a bathroom," Natalie answers with a roll of her eyes and a sideways glance at Bahir before she turns her eyes forward to the road again. "Or sitting on the skanky seats-- there." She jerks her head toward a road sign as they pass it. 'Teec Nos Pos', it says. "They've got to have a hotel, right?"
"It still gets on my shoes." Bahir scuffs his soles on the mats of the car once again. "And I don't even want to discuss what 'it' is." He glances at Natalie with brief pity for her non-manly-standiness. He shifts in his seat to turn and watch the sign as they pass, squinting at it. "What the hell did that even say, and what space language was it written in?"
"T-E-E-C--" Natalie starts before scowling and answering, "Just get the laptop out and google it. The last thing we passed was... uh. Tes... N something. We're on 160, you'll find it."
Bahir wiggles his hand, substitution phone for laptop in his hunt for information. The typing is ridiculous, laborious, and time-consuming, but eventually he says, "Teec Nos Pos." His pronunciation is probably pretty bad. "Tell me that doesn't sound like something an alien would say."
"Uh huh, sure," Natalie dismisses, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel with impatient twitchiness. "And where's the hotel?"
"Ahead," Bahir says unhelpfully, tapping and twitching his way to an answer.
"Great," Natalie says, grumpily.
"There's nothing in alien-land," Bahir reports after a moment. "At least, not that this is showing. If you keep going a little further, there are a couple, though." Covering the glow of the screen with the side of his hand, he glances over at Natalie. "Think you can manage?"
"I think my ass has melded to this seat," Natalie answers, her nose wrinkling with a flicker of exhaustion in her expression. "Okay, okay. Tell me the exit. I'm ready to be done for the night. We're close enough we can hit Pagosa Springs early tomorrow."
Bahir's fingers lift and pause. "The /exit/? It will be the exit that says 'Hotel here'."
"Find the /number/," Natalie insists, giving Bahir an exasperated glance. "Please tell me I don't have to suggest they add 'map reading' to the certs."
"The n--? Shut up," Bahir snaps, and slouches down as he frantically attempts to find a number. "It's not like I've had to /read/ a map any time in the last ten years, other than a subway map."
"Well /learn/ before we fucking pass the exit and I have to drive for another three hours!" Natalie snaps.
"I'm trying!" A tense silence passes and then Bahir spits out an exit number, just a little tentative. As it happens, it is the correct one.
GOOD THING. Natalie lapses into silence as she cuts across lanes and slides off the interest, speaking only occasionally to request more specific directions as they go. Eventually, she finds herself in front of a sign, neon, blinking 'Hotel' and 'Vacancy.' It's the sort of roadride hotel that's dirt cheap - and looks it. Rooms open straight to the parking lot in a strip, with the ice machine sitting outside and the tiny office radiating more neon lights. Natalie pulls in and slams the car into park, and then turns to /look/ at Bahir.
A look of horror crosses Bahir's features, quite clear in the lurid neon glow. His eyes widen, his eyebrows arch, and he bites his lip, just slightly.
Natalie's eyes narrow, very slowly. She stares at Bahir.
Bahir holds his phone out to Natalie. "Clearly, I can't read a map, and I gave you the exit for 'hellhole' rather than 'motel'."
"What. The hell. Is this?" Natalie answers.
"Our punishment."
"For /what/?"
"I don't know, but apparently we had a /lot/ of fun." Bahir spreads his hands wide: "Roach Hotel. Guests check in, where they are immediately eaten by herds of insects." As advertising slogans go, it could use work.
"I fucking hate you and I have to /pee/," Natalie grumbles, and she leans over to push her door open so she can stand with wobbly legs, bracing against the car. "Find something else. I'm going to go whine until they let me use their bathroom."
"Careful you don't catch anything," Bahir says as he fishes out his phone again to try again. "Like rabies. Or syphilis. Or swine flu."
"Fiiiind something elllllse," Natalie draws out, hop-skipping toward the small lit office.
"Avoid making eye contact if they are drooling and try not to stare if they only have two teeth!" Bahir shouts after Natalie, surely audible to whatever poor unfortunate is manning the office, and doing /worlds/ to predispose then favorably to Natalie's request.
"I hate you!" comes floating back, and then Natalie disappears.
Bahir takes his time finding a place, getting directions, and checking pictures and reviews. By the time Natalie has returned he has a list scribbled on the back a receipt.
Natalie isn't long, and she's still mince-stepping on her return. "They won't let me unless we check in-- /please/ tell me you found something five miles down the road," she calls as she approaches.
"Uhm. Not so much, actually. You might want to, uh--" Bahir waves at some bushes. "There are quite a few places in Colorado, though?" he offers helpfully.
Natalie wiggles uncomfortably. "Where?" she demands.
Bahir fails to hide a smirk. "Cortez."
"Fuuuuck how far?" Natalie wants to know.
Bahir coughs, "Fifty miles." Cough, cough.
"Fucking /hell/," Natalie says. "What else?"
"Not much," Bahir says with a helpless shrug. "This is the ass-end of nowhere. There's a place called the 'Grizzly Roadhouse B&B.' Don't you feel manlier just hearing it?"
"Fuck you," Natalie says, clearly fond of certain vocabulary words tonight, and she turns on her heel to stalk back to the office.
Bahir does not add anything helpful, this time. Instead he researches the Grizzly Roadhouse.
When Natalie returns some ten minutes later, she's dangling a key from her fingers and moving swiftly, past Bahir and toward a room. "29B!" she shouts toward him. He apparently can get the luggage. She's peeing.
Bahir startles and nearly drops his toy phone as Natalie calls a combination of letters and numbers at him. He turns to stare at her. "/What the fuck do you mean 29B/?"
"TWENTY. NINE. B." Natalie shouts the numbers back at him as she wiggles her way across the parking lot.
"OUT. OF. YOUR MIND," Bahir calls back, clinging to the car, as though it will save him from the skeeze.
"I HAVE TO PEE!" And then she's gone, disappearing through a rather shady door. The paint is peeling. The window looks like it does not seal up right. But the door, at least, locks.
Bahir leaves all their things in the car in some desperate hope this is a joke, or a ploy, and only follows Natalie after making sure the car is locked and he has his keys.
The toilet flushes, and the bathroom door opens. Natalie appears, scrubbing damp hands against her legs. "Where're the bags?" she wonders, eyeing Bahir.
"In the car," says Bahir, a 'duh' in his tone. He points over his shoulder, settled on his heels. "Can we go now?"
"I paid for the room. This is /your/ fault," Natalie answers, extending her hand for the car keys in a 'gimmee' gesture.
"I think there are stains on the ceiling," Bahir says, eyes turned up. "How do they get stains on the ceiling? Go demand a refund on 'ew' grounds."
"Nonrefundable," Natalie answers, and jerks her head toward the single queen bed in the center of the room. "This is /your/ fault. And I'm making you sleep on the floor. Come help me carry all this shit."
Bahir whimpers a little as he passes Natalie the keys and follows her to the car. "Not the floor. Seriously. Bodies have probably lain on that floor. Dead ones. Copulating ones. Dead, copulating ones."
"Now you're just being a baby," Natalie retorts, popping the trunk from a distance so she can sweep a bag up to her shoulder as soon as she arrives. "It can't be worse than that boat we were all packed into."
"But we are in /America/," Bahir says, grabbing another bag with a faint grunt as he shoulders it. "Land of the free, the brave, and the clean hotels."
"You clearly have not traveled much," Natalie answers, jerking another bag up before she slams the trunk shut. There's a pause as she looks over at Bahir and adds, "Seriously, with the whining. My nerves are close to fucking shot as it is."
Bahir whimpers, but shuts up, following after Natalie. He is silent about half a minute before he asks, "So how bad is the bathroom?"
"It's /clean/." Mostly. "It's just... old."
Bahir bites his lower lip and very carefully does not complain as he sets his bag down once inside and steps over to investigate for himself once the door to the bathroom is closed. He peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.
Natalie , in the meantime, first eyes the bedcovers carefully and then, determining that they are apparently clean /enough/, flops over backwards onto it with an audible "Oof!"
The toilet flushes. The sink runs. Bahir emerges and rolls his eyes across the furnishings and over to Natalie. "I hope no one murders us in our sleep."
"You should stay up all night and watch out with your crazy telepath mind-- stuff," Natalie suggests, arm draped over her eyes as she sprawls.
Bahir snorts, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. Gingerly. "Dream on."
Natalie's foot kicks up against Bahir's leg. It's rather amazing, given how slight she is overall, that she can manage to take up this much of the bed. "Then I guess we'll die."
There must be something feline in her DNA. "At least I'll die young and attractive, having gotten my beauty rest."
"Well," Natalie allows. "Young, anyway."
"Jealousy becomes you not," Bahir says with a jab at her ankle.
"Hey now," Natalie answers, edging her arm up just enough to peer down at Bahir as her ankle jabs back. "/I'm/ plenty attractive, thank you. Amadeus even told me so." Sort of.
"Ow," says Bahir, reflexively. He pauses in a meditative silence and then breaks it, /very/ mild: "Amadeus, huh?"
"/Exactly/," Natalie says, and then pushes herself up to sit, wiggling to one side to politely allow Bahir half of it. She scrubs at her faces and then looks over at him. "Okay. So we've got what, another two and a half hours in the morning before we're on top of it?"
Leaning back, Bahir oozes to take up the available space so politely given over to his use. "Yeah," he agrees between a grunt and a huff. "That sounds about right."
Natalie glances over at Bahir after a moment, fingers twisting along the com unit on her wrist that masquerades as a watch. She breathes in deep, then out again. "Nervous?" she wonders cautiously.
Bahir wiggles his hand, rubbing at his jaw. "Yeah. I guess that's close enough. Tense. I mean--." He breaks off, silent.
"Ha," Natalie answers, a short almost-laugh. "Terrified?" Or maybe that's just her.
"/Tense/," Bahir repeats, with emphasis. "Cautious."
"Terrified," Natalie repeats, rubbing her hands against her thighs as she pulls her legs in to sit crosslegged.
"You're obnoxious." Bahir shifts, echoing Natalie's posture with a bump of his foot against her calf. "You going to be okay?"
"Ask me after we track down one of the com units that may or may not still be attached to the wrist of an out of touch secret agent tomorrow," Natalie answers, looking toward Bahir with a smile that's somewhat less than happy.
The grimace which crosses Bahir's features is likewise unhappy. The bump of his foot repeats, and lingers this time. It is a kind of comfort. "I'm sure they are fine," he says, because that is the polite lie one tells.
"Ha," Natalie says again, and edges across the bed toward Bahir proper rather than his foot. "You're such a crappy liar."
"It's the thought that counts." Bahir gives Natalie's shoulder a squeeze as she creeps in range. "We'll know more tomorrow. Speculating, especially the kind of speculating that makes it hard to get to sleep and thus be at your bright-eyed, bushy-tailed best tomorrow, is pointless."
"Gosh, I'm so glad I have you hear to feed me lame platitudes and trite advice that I can't particularly follow," Natalie answers, but she leans up against him anyway, lazy familiarity. There's something of a pause, and then she adds with quiet dryness. "At least I know how to shoot a gun now."
"You're welcome." Silent a moment, Bahir then adds, "Follow your dreams. Look before you leap. Two wrongs don't make a right."
Natalie's elbow digs into Bahir's side and she straightens away again, wiggling away to stand. "Right. You're in charge of food. I'm taking a shower."
"Ow." Bahir stretches out once she stands and looks up at the ceiling. "I hope you like Doritos."
"I'm blaming you if it sucks!" Natalie calls, and then she disappears into the bathroom, bag hitched up over her shoulder, to shower.
This is all Bahir's fault.
Several hours away from the rather shady hotel that managed to house them safely through the night, Natalie jerks the car into park and exhales heavily, turning to look away from the sign perched next to a gated fence - Pagosa Springs Landfill - to glance at Bahir instead. More importantly, perhaps, to look at the screen tracking the GPS locator in Terry's com unit. "This doesn't look good," she says.
"This doesn't look sanitary," Bahir mutters, sliding his sunglasses down his nose to peer over them. Tension wired through his shoulders, he slouches and snarks most unconvincingly. He briefly closes his eyes, telepathy sweeping the area. "There's an attendant at that weighing station, but no one else as far as I can tell." Not a lively spot, for some strange reason.
Tension slides its way up Natalie's arms and down her spine to match Bahir's. "Lightly guarded looks even worse," she murmurs. Her gaze settles on Bahir as he stretches with telepathy, waiting, and then she breathes out and nods. "Well."
"You're such an optimist," says Bahir. He pushes his sunglasses back in place with a certain snap to his movements. "I am drawing a blank on good reasons to go and dig around in the trash. Art project?"
"Are /you/ feeling optimistic?" Natalie answers, tilting her head toward Bahir before she shrugs and reaches to unsnap her seatbelt. "Art project, sure."
"In fact, I don't think that is the word I would use." Bahir hesitates before reaching to unsnap his seatbelt, as well, and then pulls the GPS locator to shove it into his battered messenger bag. In that, at least, he could assume the form of poor art student. Out of the car, he follows after Natalie, telepathy sliding light over the thoughts of the attendant to make sure that he isn't an ENEMY PLANT.
Natalie sweeps her own bag up over her shoulder and sends a self-conscious hand down to check the fit of her gun in its holster under the light jacket she wears, and then glances over the car at Bahir before moving forward to sweet talk her way into the landfill. She can talk sweet when she has to! Especially if her talking comes with telepathic influence.
Telepathic influences help win them through when combined with pretty eyes and a lot of bullshit about reclaiming the corporate excess in an expression of neo-modern whole-world synergy through the medium of-- et cetera, et cetera, and blah blah. In short order, Bahir and Natalie overlook the landfill. Muttering something vague under his breath, Bahir digs through his messenger bag again in order to get the unit out to triangulate. << I'm keeping an ear out for incoming, so to speak, but my range is less than 150 meters. >>
Natalie glances toward Bahir as they move inward, giving him a brief nod that makes it perhaps a good thing that no one's around to note its strangeness in the ongoing silence. Her stride forward is a bit tentative, and she adjusts the heft of her bag over her shoulder. "So where should we start looking?" she wonders aloud.
"We should look for something sturdy, first, for the base. Maybe wood, so we can hammer it together." Bahir's words have an awkward broken hesitation, concentration lacking as tries to make sense of the GPS data. He shrugs, and then hands it to Natalie, since he fails at maps. He pulls out his phone and adds, "We can take pictures of thing." Because that GPS-whatever-it-is totally could be a camera or a cellphone, right? Not that anyone is watching. /But if they were/.
"Totally," Natalie answers, taking the device to peer down at it, her steps slowing to a near halt. She inhales deeply, then regrets that action with a wrinkle of her nose as she adds, "Fuck."
Bahir snorts, suggestion light: "Shallow breaths." He glances over at the screen of the device again, peeking over her shoulder, and then leans away to glance around. Presumably after something base-like.
Natalie jerks her head to the right, with an eye roll. "That way, I think," she suggests. Lifting her head, she notes that 'that way' is blocked by a rather large pile of garbage. "Shit. Maybe /that/ way," she corrects, indicating a path that goes... around. Sort of.
Bahir sidles around. He eyes the pile with a deep wariness. << If we have to dig--. >>
<< Ew, >> Natalie answers shortly, and she learns to breathe shallow breaths as she leads the way down one curvy path and then another in an attempt to get close to the signal the com unit is still transmitting without going straight through a mountain of trash.
Bahir does a poor job of pretending to be looking for base-like bits of trash. He looks over Natalie's shoulder far too much, keeping a close eye on the relative distance of the signal. He says nothing, but his entire /manner/ is an, 'Are we there yet?'
At one point in the process, Natalie turns to Bahir to snap a somewhat short, "Back /off/," before taking off again. Eventually, finally, she stops in front of a rather towering pile of garbage, the stench and level of decay indicating 'relatively fresh'. She breathes very shallowly and says, "I think here somewhere."
Bahir bites off a complaint in a grunt and squeezes his eyes closed. He is in no rush.
Natalie lowers her hands to her side, staring at the pile in front of them in dismay, and then wonders in a hushed whisper, "Do you see anything... suspicious?" You know. A hand? A foot? A bit of red hair?
"I see trash," Bahir says, a little too sharp, a little tense. "Let's -- let's just ... /shit/." He starts poking around.
"Shit," Natalie agrees, and tucks the tracker away in her bag before she slides it to a relatively clean spot on the ground and starts... poking.
Half an hour later, still digging through the trash, Bahir's nerves are beginning to /fray/. He throws stuff into the 'no' pile with more force than is necessary in any world. He reaches out to snatch at the next bit -- and just as he is about to toss it, pauses. The band is ripped, but--. He straightens suddenly, and stumbles into Natalie. "This--?"
Natalie has given up on staying clean, and streaks of dirt and other unknown substances decorate her clothing. One particularly lovely one is smudged across one cheekbone. She staggers at Bahir's stumbling, nearly going down and finding her balance at the last possible second. Straightening, she turns with wide, hopeful eyes and does not even snap at him. "Is it--?"
Bahir reaches out to try to steady Natalie and ends up just kind of yanking on her shirt rather than really help her keep her balance. "I think so. Get the thing, would you? I'll move around. See if it follows me." He forgets to speak telepathically in his nervousness, comm turned over in hand. There are no gory streaks on it, at least.
"There cannot be /two/ things that look like..." Natalie says, but she bounds down from the pile of garbage anyway, needing very little encouragement to do so, and digs the tracker free. She balances it in one hand, taking a moment to be sure it's functioning properly, and then nods. "Okay."
Bahir walks in a wide, slow circle around Natalie with his eyes wide on her as he does so. This causes him to stumble at one point over one of their mini-piles, but he recovers admirably.
Natalie frowns at Bahir and waves her hand in a jerk, indicating that he should go /further/.
Bahir swallows a frustrated noise and walks away from Natalie before heading off at a sharp angle.
"Yes!" Natalie shouts suddenly, her voice lifting with triumph. "There, there, yes! That's it!" Let's /really/ hope no one's listening.
<< Let's get the /fuck/ out of here, >> Bahir says, a little more subtle in his evident relief. Having already started that way, he continues a long-legged stride outwards, and away from the enchanting sights and smells.
<< I saw a Holiday Inn on the way in. We're having a shower, and then we're seeing what we can find off this damned thing, >> Natalie agrees, moving with a hop-skip of a run to follow Bahir.
Still Bahir's fault.
- Natalie and Bahir have returned from a trip to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, with Terry's com unit in tow. You don't want to know where they found it.
- There are no signs of foul play - blood stains, scraped skin, etc - and despite spending half a day trying, Natalie hasn't found anything useful off the unit yet. She continues to try from the comfort of base.
- There are 8 com units still out there! Teams are heading out to find them as they can. Hopefully they will not all be in the same condition as Terry's.
05 / 09 / 09 - Bahir, Natalie
A long drive, even split between two licensed drivers, is /still/ a /long fucking drive/. The car is low, long, and sleek with many buttons with which a bored passenger might amuse himself. Bahir does not touch the air conditioning or the music, having learned his lesson. As the light fades from the sky, he watches as a multi-hued glow bloom upon the dashboard and does his best to stretch in the cramped confines of the car. "Think we should stop before long?" he asks, breaking an easy silence.
Natalie's head bobs absently with the tunes that keep them company - largely classic rock - before she turns to look at Bahir and snorts a half laugh. "No, I think we should stay in this car for the rest of our fucking natural lives," she answers, leaning forward so she can arch her back in a stretch. "Also, we should definitely never eat again. Or pee."
Bahir shifts with a thoughtful expression at Natalie's last, his stretch folding inward. "I don't know. Skanky as that last gas station bathroom was, I'm almost inspired to hold it until we get back to base." /Almost/.
"At least you can piss without a bathroom," Natalie answers with a roll of her eyes and a sideways glance at Bahir before she turns her eyes forward to the road again. "Or sitting on the skanky seats-- there." She jerks her head toward a road sign as they pass it. 'Teec Nos Pos', it says. "They've got to have a hotel, right?"
"It still gets on my shoes." Bahir scuffs his soles on the mats of the car once again. "And I don't even want to discuss what 'it' is." He glances at Natalie with brief pity for her non-manly-standiness. He shifts in his seat to turn and watch the sign as they pass, squinting at it. "What the hell did that even say, and what space language was it written in?"
"T-E-E-C--" Natalie starts before scowling and answering, "Just get the laptop out and google it. The last thing we passed was... uh. Tes... N something. We're on 160, you'll find it."
Bahir wiggles his hand, substitution phone for laptop in his hunt for information. The typing is ridiculous, laborious, and time-consuming, but eventually he says, "Teec Nos Pos." His pronunciation is probably pretty bad. "Tell me that doesn't sound like something an alien would say."
"Uh huh, sure," Natalie dismisses, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel with impatient twitchiness. "And where's the hotel?"
"Ahead," Bahir says unhelpfully, tapping and twitching his way to an answer.
"Great," Natalie says, grumpily.
"There's nothing in alien-land," Bahir reports after a moment. "At least, not that this is showing. If you keep going a little further, there are a couple, though." Covering the glow of the screen with the side of his hand, he glances over at Natalie. "Think you can manage?"
"I think my ass has melded to this seat," Natalie answers, her nose wrinkling with a flicker of exhaustion in her expression. "Okay, okay. Tell me the exit. I'm ready to be done for the night. We're close enough we can hit Pagosa Springs early tomorrow."
Bahir's fingers lift and pause. "The /exit/? It will be the exit that says 'Hotel here'."
"Find the /number/," Natalie insists, giving Bahir an exasperated glance. "Please tell me I don't have to suggest they add 'map reading' to the certs."
"The n--? Shut up," Bahir snaps, and slouches down as he frantically attempts to find a number. "It's not like I've had to /read/ a map any time in the last ten years, other than a subway map."
"Well /learn/ before we fucking pass the exit and I have to drive for another three hours!" Natalie snaps.
"I'm trying!" A tense silence passes and then Bahir spits out an exit number, just a little tentative. As it happens, it is the correct one.
GOOD THING. Natalie lapses into silence as she cuts across lanes and slides off the interest, speaking only occasionally to request more specific directions as they go. Eventually, she finds herself in front of a sign, neon, blinking 'Hotel' and 'Vacancy.' It's the sort of roadride hotel that's dirt cheap - and looks it. Rooms open straight to the parking lot in a strip, with the ice machine sitting outside and the tiny office radiating more neon lights. Natalie pulls in and slams the car into park, and then turns to /look/ at Bahir.
A look of horror crosses Bahir's features, quite clear in the lurid neon glow. His eyes widen, his eyebrows arch, and he bites his lip, just slightly.
Natalie's eyes narrow, very slowly. She stares at Bahir.
Bahir holds his phone out to Natalie. "Clearly, I can't read a map, and I gave you the exit for 'hellhole' rather than 'motel'."
"What. The hell. Is this?" Natalie answers.
"Our punishment."
"For /what/?"
"I don't know, but apparently we had a /lot/ of fun." Bahir spreads his hands wide: "Roach Hotel. Guests check in, where they are immediately eaten by herds of insects." As advertising slogans go, it could use work.
"I fucking hate you and I have to /pee/," Natalie grumbles, and she leans over to push her door open so she can stand with wobbly legs, bracing against the car. "Find something else. I'm going to go whine until they let me use their bathroom."
"Careful you don't catch anything," Bahir says as he fishes out his phone again to try again. "Like rabies. Or syphilis. Or swine flu."
"Fiiiind something elllllse," Natalie draws out, hop-skipping toward the small lit office.
"Avoid making eye contact if they are drooling and try not to stare if they only have two teeth!" Bahir shouts after Natalie, surely audible to whatever poor unfortunate is manning the office, and doing /worlds/ to predispose then favorably to Natalie's request.
"I hate you!" comes floating back, and then Natalie disappears.
Bahir takes his time finding a place, getting directions, and checking pictures and reviews. By the time Natalie has returned he has a list scribbled on the back a receipt.
Natalie isn't long, and she's still mince-stepping on her return. "They won't let me unless we check in-- /please/ tell me you found something five miles down the road," she calls as she approaches.
"Uhm. Not so much, actually. You might want to, uh--" Bahir waves at some bushes. "There are quite a few places in Colorado, though?" he offers helpfully.
Natalie wiggles uncomfortably. "Where?" she demands.
Bahir fails to hide a smirk. "Cortez."
"Fuuuuck how far?" Natalie wants to know.
Bahir coughs, "Fifty miles." Cough, cough.
"Fucking /hell/," Natalie says. "What else?"
"Not much," Bahir says with a helpless shrug. "This is the ass-end of nowhere. There's a place called the 'Grizzly Roadhouse B&B.' Don't you feel manlier just hearing it?"
"Fuck you," Natalie says, clearly fond of certain vocabulary words tonight, and she turns on her heel to stalk back to the office.
Bahir does not add anything helpful, this time. Instead he researches the Grizzly Roadhouse.
When Natalie returns some ten minutes later, she's dangling a key from her fingers and moving swiftly, past Bahir and toward a room. "29B!" she shouts toward him. He apparently can get the luggage. She's peeing.
Bahir startles and nearly drops his toy phone as Natalie calls a combination of letters and numbers at him. He turns to stare at her. "/What the fuck do you mean 29B/?"
"TWENTY. NINE. B." Natalie shouts the numbers back at him as she wiggles her way across the parking lot.
"OUT. OF. YOUR MIND," Bahir calls back, clinging to the car, as though it will save him from the skeeze.
"I HAVE TO PEE!" And then she's gone, disappearing through a rather shady door. The paint is peeling. The window looks like it does not seal up right. But the door, at least, locks.
Bahir leaves all their things in the car in some desperate hope this is a joke, or a ploy, and only follows Natalie after making sure the car is locked and he has his keys.
The toilet flushes, and the bathroom door opens. Natalie appears, scrubbing damp hands against her legs. "Where're the bags?" she wonders, eyeing Bahir.
"In the car," says Bahir, a 'duh' in his tone. He points over his shoulder, settled on his heels. "Can we go now?"
"I paid for the room. This is /your/ fault," Natalie answers, extending her hand for the car keys in a 'gimmee' gesture.
"I think there are stains on the ceiling," Bahir says, eyes turned up. "How do they get stains on the ceiling? Go demand a refund on 'ew' grounds."
"Nonrefundable," Natalie answers, and jerks her head toward the single queen bed in the center of the room. "This is /your/ fault. And I'm making you sleep on the floor. Come help me carry all this shit."
Bahir whimpers a little as he passes Natalie the keys and follows her to the car. "Not the floor. Seriously. Bodies have probably lain on that floor. Dead ones. Copulating ones. Dead, copulating ones."
"Now you're just being a baby," Natalie retorts, popping the trunk from a distance so she can sweep a bag up to her shoulder as soon as she arrives. "It can't be worse than that boat we were all packed into."
"But we are in /America/," Bahir says, grabbing another bag with a faint grunt as he shoulders it. "Land of the free, the brave, and the clean hotels."
"You clearly have not traveled much," Natalie answers, jerking another bag up before she slams the trunk shut. There's a pause as she looks over at Bahir and adds, "Seriously, with the whining. My nerves are close to fucking shot as it is."
Bahir whimpers, but shuts up, following after Natalie. He is silent about half a minute before he asks, "So how bad is the bathroom?"
"It's /clean/." Mostly. "It's just... old."
Bahir bites his lower lip and very carefully does not complain as he sets his bag down once inside and steps over to investigate for himself once the door to the bathroom is closed. He peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.
Natalie , in the meantime, first eyes the bedcovers carefully and then, determining that they are apparently clean /enough/, flops over backwards onto it with an audible "Oof!"
The toilet flushes. The sink runs. Bahir emerges and rolls his eyes across the furnishings and over to Natalie. "I hope no one murders us in our sleep."
"You should stay up all night and watch out with your crazy telepath mind-- stuff," Natalie suggests, arm draped over her eyes as she sprawls.
Bahir snorts, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. Gingerly. "Dream on."
Natalie's foot kicks up against Bahir's leg. It's rather amazing, given how slight she is overall, that she can manage to take up this much of the bed. "Then I guess we'll die."
There must be something feline in her DNA. "At least I'll die young and attractive, having gotten my beauty rest."
"Well," Natalie allows. "Young, anyway."
"Jealousy becomes you not," Bahir says with a jab at her ankle.
"Hey now," Natalie answers, edging her arm up just enough to peer down at Bahir as her ankle jabs back. "/I'm/ plenty attractive, thank you. Amadeus even told me so." Sort of.
"Ow," says Bahir, reflexively. He pauses in a meditative silence and then breaks it, /very/ mild: "Amadeus, huh?"
"/Exactly/," Natalie says, and then pushes herself up to sit, wiggling to one side to politely allow Bahir half of it. She scrubs at her faces and then looks over at him. "Okay. So we've got what, another two and a half hours in the morning before we're on top of it?"
Leaning back, Bahir oozes to take up the available space so politely given over to his use. "Yeah," he agrees between a grunt and a huff. "That sounds about right."
Natalie glances over at Bahir after a moment, fingers twisting along the com unit on her wrist that masquerades as a watch. She breathes in deep, then out again. "Nervous?" she wonders cautiously.
Bahir wiggles his hand, rubbing at his jaw. "Yeah. I guess that's close enough. Tense. I mean--." He breaks off, silent.
"Ha," Natalie answers, a short almost-laugh. "Terrified?" Or maybe that's just her.
"/Tense/," Bahir repeats, with emphasis. "Cautious."
"Terrified," Natalie repeats, rubbing her hands against her thighs as she pulls her legs in to sit crosslegged.
"You're obnoxious." Bahir shifts, echoing Natalie's posture with a bump of his foot against her calf. "You going to be okay?"
"Ask me after we track down one of the com units that may or may not still be attached to the wrist of an out of touch secret agent tomorrow," Natalie answers, looking toward Bahir with a smile that's somewhat less than happy.
The grimace which crosses Bahir's features is likewise unhappy. The bump of his foot repeats, and lingers this time. It is a kind of comfort. "I'm sure they are fine," he says, because that is the polite lie one tells.
"Ha," Natalie says again, and edges across the bed toward Bahir proper rather than his foot. "You're such a crappy liar."
"It's the thought that counts." Bahir gives Natalie's shoulder a squeeze as she creeps in range. "We'll know more tomorrow. Speculating, especially the kind of speculating that makes it hard to get to sleep and thus be at your bright-eyed, bushy-tailed best tomorrow, is pointless."
"Gosh, I'm so glad I have you hear to feed me lame platitudes and trite advice that I can't particularly follow," Natalie answers, but she leans up against him anyway, lazy familiarity. There's something of a pause, and then she adds with quiet dryness. "At least I know how to shoot a gun now."
"You're welcome." Silent a moment, Bahir then adds, "Follow your dreams. Look before you leap. Two wrongs don't make a right."
Natalie's elbow digs into Bahir's side and she straightens away again, wiggling away to stand. "Right. You're in charge of food. I'm taking a shower."
"Ow." Bahir stretches out once she stands and looks up at the ceiling. "I hope you like Doritos."
"I'm blaming you if it sucks!" Natalie calls, and then she disappears into the bathroom, bag hitched up over her shoulder, to shower.
This is all Bahir's fault.
Several hours away from the rather shady hotel that managed to house them safely through the night, Natalie jerks the car into park and exhales heavily, turning to look away from the sign perched next to a gated fence - Pagosa Springs Landfill - to glance at Bahir instead. More importantly, perhaps, to look at the screen tracking the GPS locator in Terry's com unit. "This doesn't look good," she says.
"This doesn't look sanitary," Bahir mutters, sliding his sunglasses down his nose to peer over them. Tension wired through his shoulders, he slouches and snarks most unconvincingly. He briefly closes his eyes, telepathy sweeping the area. "There's an attendant at that weighing station, but no one else as far as I can tell." Not a lively spot, for some strange reason.
Tension slides its way up Natalie's arms and down her spine to match Bahir's. "Lightly guarded looks even worse," she murmurs. Her gaze settles on Bahir as he stretches with telepathy, waiting, and then she breathes out and nods. "Well."
"You're such an optimist," says Bahir. He pushes his sunglasses back in place with a certain snap to his movements. "I am drawing a blank on good reasons to go and dig around in the trash. Art project?"
"Are /you/ feeling optimistic?" Natalie answers, tilting her head toward Bahir before she shrugs and reaches to unsnap her seatbelt. "Art project, sure."
"In fact, I don't think that is the word I would use." Bahir hesitates before reaching to unsnap his seatbelt, as well, and then pulls the GPS locator to shove it into his battered messenger bag. In that, at least, he could assume the form of poor art student. Out of the car, he follows after Natalie, telepathy sliding light over the thoughts of the attendant to make sure that he isn't an ENEMY PLANT.
Natalie sweeps her own bag up over her shoulder and sends a self-conscious hand down to check the fit of her gun in its holster under the light jacket she wears, and then glances over the car at Bahir before moving forward to sweet talk her way into the landfill. She can talk sweet when she has to! Especially if her talking comes with telepathic influence.
Telepathic influences help win them through when combined with pretty eyes and a lot of bullshit about reclaiming the corporate excess in an expression of neo-modern whole-world synergy through the medium of-- et cetera, et cetera, and blah blah. In short order, Bahir and Natalie overlook the landfill. Muttering something vague under his breath, Bahir digs through his messenger bag again in order to get the unit out to triangulate. << I'm keeping an ear out for incoming, so to speak, but my range is less than 150 meters. >>
Natalie glances toward Bahir as they move inward, giving him a brief nod that makes it perhaps a good thing that no one's around to note its strangeness in the ongoing silence. Her stride forward is a bit tentative, and she adjusts the heft of her bag over her shoulder. "So where should we start looking?" she wonders aloud.
"We should look for something sturdy, first, for the base. Maybe wood, so we can hammer it together." Bahir's words have an awkward broken hesitation, concentration lacking as tries to make sense of the GPS data. He shrugs, and then hands it to Natalie, since he fails at maps. He pulls out his phone and adds, "We can take pictures of thing." Because that GPS-whatever-it-is totally could be a camera or a cellphone, right? Not that anyone is watching. /But if they were/.
"Totally," Natalie answers, taking the device to peer down at it, her steps slowing to a near halt. She inhales deeply, then regrets that action with a wrinkle of her nose as she adds, "Fuck."
Bahir snorts, suggestion light: "Shallow breaths." He glances over at the screen of the device again, peeking over her shoulder, and then leans away to glance around. Presumably after something base-like.
Natalie jerks her head to the right, with an eye roll. "That way, I think," she suggests. Lifting her head, she notes that 'that way' is blocked by a rather large pile of garbage. "Shit. Maybe /that/ way," she corrects, indicating a path that goes... around. Sort of.
Bahir sidles around. He eyes the pile with a deep wariness. << If we have to dig--. >>
<< Ew, >> Natalie answers shortly, and she learns to breathe shallow breaths as she leads the way down one curvy path and then another in an attempt to get close to the signal the com unit is still transmitting without going straight through a mountain of trash.
Bahir does a poor job of pretending to be looking for base-like bits of trash. He looks over Natalie's shoulder far too much, keeping a close eye on the relative distance of the signal. He says nothing, but his entire /manner/ is an, 'Are we there yet?'
At one point in the process, Natalie turns to Bahir to snap a somewhat short, "Back /off/," before taking off again. Eventually, finally, she stops in front of a rather towering pile of garbage, the stench and level of decay indicating 'relatively fresh'. She breathes very shallowly and says, "I think here somewhere."
Bahir bites off a complaint in a grunt and squeezes his eyes closed. He is in no rush.
Natalie lowers her hands to her side, staring at the pile in front of them in dismay, and then wonders in a hushed whisper, "Do you see anything... suspicious?" You know. A hand? A foot? A bit of red hair?
"I see trash," Bahir says, a little too sharp, a little tense. "Let's -- let's just ... /shit/." He starts poking around.
"Shit," Natalie agrees, and tucks the tracker away in her bag before she slides it to a relatively clean spot on the ground and starts... poking.
Half an hour later, still digging through the trash, Bahir's nerves are beginning to /fray/. He throws stuff into the 'no' pile with more force than is necessary in any world. He reaches out to snatch at the next bit -- and just as he is about to toss it, pauses. The band is ripped, but--. He straightens suddenly, and stumbles into Natalie. "This--?"
Natalie has given up on staying clean, and streaks of dirt and other unknown substances decorate her clothing. One particularly lovely one is smudged across one cheekbone. She staggers at Bahir's stumbling, nearly going down and finding her balance at the last possible second. Straightening, she turns with wide, hopeful eyes and does not even snap at him. "Is it--?"
Bahir reaches out to try to steady Natalie and ends up just kind of yanking on her shirt rather than really help her keep her balance. "I think so. Get the thing, would you? I'll move around. See if it follows me." He forgets to speak telepathically in his nervousness, comm turned over in hand. There are no gory streaks on it, at least.
"There cannot be /two/ things that look like..." Natalie says, but she bounds down from the pile of garbage anyway, needing very little encouragement to do so, and digs the tracker free. She balances it in one hand, taking a moment to be sure it's functioning properly, and then nods. "Okay."
Bahir walks in a wide, slow circle around Natalie with his eyes wide on her as he does so. This causes him to stumble at one point over one of their mini-piles, but he recovers admirably.
Natalie frowns at Bahir and waves her hand in a jerk, indicating that he should go /further/.
Bahir swallows a frustrated noise and walks away from Natalie before heading off at a sharp angle.
"Yes!" Natalie shouts suddenly, her voice lifting with triumph. "There, there, yes! That's it!" Let's /really/ hope no one's listening.
<< Let's get the /fuck/ out of here, >> Bahir says, a little more subtle in his evident relief. Having already started that way, he continues a long-legged stride outwards, and away from the enchanting sights and smells.
<< I saw a Holiday Inn on the way in. We're having a shower, and then we're seeing what we can find off this damned thing, >> Natalie agrees, moving with a hop-skip of a run to follow Bahir.
Still Bahir's fault.