rekindleme | (no subject)

Who: Dick and y'all thar
Where: Shopping district.
When: 04/27, morning
Summary: Dick is two days into stage three withdrawal, and faking health because the show must go on.
Warnings: will update if necessary, but he does have some nausea. I'll avoid it in threads, but he might mention it.

It made him a little angry at himself-- you know, you can do complex trapeze routines after literally having your acrobatic ability taken away, but you can't walk to the mall with a fever without stopping to vomit? Get a grip.

It was the choice -- stay at home sick or walk around sick -- that made him go. He found a small radio and a pair of walkie-talkies for his project, but nothing more useful than that. For all that he was flushed and sweaty and walking at roughly the pace of a sloth with a ball and chain, he was trying to juggle the two walkie-talkies and the radio. Trying to force himself to ignore the dizziness and the queasiness by focusing, focusing on the way the three objects would leave his hands, each in revolution, and it required a lot of concentration, a lot of concentration that would be hard to muster if he wasn't trying to figure out if that dark-haired girl he'd glimpsed at the market before a dizzy spell the other day really was Piper or if M'gann was in withdrawal, too, or if Barbara was or if there wasn't a walkie-talkie falling out of the air because he hadn't used enough force and it just bounced off his skull.

Wow. Okay. That distracted from the queasiness, but he staggered-- it exacerbated the dizziness. He had enough wherewithal to dodge the other walkie-talkie and the radio, but the day he was going to let a little trifling illness bring him to his knees is--

--apparently this one. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and reached for his purchases with a tired sigh. He'd thought about going to visit M'gann, but her stupid little white lies required more tiptoeing than he could really care about, between the fever and the dizziness and the sense of unbalance he'd felt after the first anniversary of his families' deaths he hadn't been able to mark or adequately distract himself from. And, sick or not, he knew what they'd say:

The show must go on, if only back home and straight to bed...

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"Sorry, I phrased that--" he drops one arm and brings the other hand to wipe his brow.

"Give me your hand, okay?" He holds his out-- thankfully, not the sweaty one. "Pride goeth afore I fall right on my face."

He closed his eyes, briefly, hand still out, and took a deep breath.

"It was more like, you asked me to walk off the roof, and I did, because I was... compelled."

Ugh. This city is really going to make them do the touching thing, isn't it? She was stubborn, but she wasn't stupid. If things kept progressing at the rate they had been then both of them would indeed be laid out on their faces before they knew it. It was just his hand, besides, and if he knew her then maybe HE could explain why her room was already furnished with things and clothes that seemed to suit her taste. Maybe there was an answer to all of the strange questions.

Maybe she should just take his hand and stop thinking about it.

So after staring at his hand for a few moments she did eventually reach out, taking hold. The relief wasn't strong, but she felt a fraction of a bit better than she had a second ago.

Her free arm came up to wipe at her own brow, wiping a layer of sweat away. The frown stayed, though. Too much energy required to be shocked by that last admission.

"But that still doesn't make sense. Why was I asking you to walk off the roof...?"

... She should probably be a little leery. Maybe this guy tried to kill her or something? But what he said at least made sense. It was in line with what happened with the salesmen she'd encountered and "robbed".

Wow. Dick was just that far off his game-- everything he said just came out five kinds of wrong.

"I think it was... sarcasm," he said. "But you were sick, and you have... I mean, you're compelling."

Did she want others to know about her powers? Here? He didn't want to chance mentioning it.

He sighed as the worst edge of his nausea dulled. Bless, bless this girl and her timing. Even if she was confusing him.

"You've been here a while, Piper. I'm afraid you're confusing me as much as I'm confusing you."

She'd seemed so sorry after the roof thing. He'd thought she was being more careful.

So he definitely knew her. And sarcasm. Okay. That made sense, too, but... just, that wasn't exactly a GOOD thing was it? It wasn't exactly a relief to hear that she'd almost killed someone- Sticks and stones, her ass.

"Well if by a while you mean a month."

She paused, letting out a breath as the edge started to come off of her dizziness.

"I just got here last month. I don't know how they managed to drag me off here, or where here even is."

God, was it amnesia? Was that what had happened to her?

"I didn't... I didn't hit my head or anything when the roof thing happened, did I?"

"Uh, you weren't the one in danger of that." Just for the record. He has a brief pang in his head from remembering that, oh yeah, haven't spoken to M'gann all month, have you? But he dismisses that as the contact not working fast enough.

"You disappeared a month ago." I looked for you, being the implication. "The roof thing was an accident. You said sorry. And no harm was done."

But the rest of the stuff... typical of being new, he felt, and frowned. "None of us do. Mass kidnapping, touch others or suffer, that's about the... end of it."

Her face was gaining some of its coloring back steadily until then, but his comment caused her face to flush hot with embarrassment. She hadn't been intending to play a victim card- he wasn't the only one suffering from phrasing difficulties.

"No, I meant- I'm trying to figure out why I don't remember being here before."

Smarta--

"Good. I'm not the kind of person that goes around telling people to put themselves in danger."

Well, she winced, then frowned, brows knit tight for a moment.

"You'd be the first person that knows about my..."

Charmspeak is what she might have said, if her memories had been intact, but instead the pause feels heavier, less like she's hesitating and more like she has to fish for a good word to finish that with.

"... persuasiveness."

She might have to start using it now that she was at the end of her stipend, though.

"Sorry, again, for what it's worth. Would you mind telling me your name? You know, since we're already holding hands and all." And she was strangely compelled to admit dumb things.

"I'm Dick," he said, and braced himself for the usual responses. Most of his stock answers teased the edge of his sick-muddled brain.

His other hand comes to sandwich the one of hers. God, his mind just isn't clearing fast enough. He's going to have to find a girlfriend so this doesn't happen again.

"Persuasiveness," he echoed. "I wish you could persuade the people here to tell us anything. I don't know why you don't remember, but I know you couldn't persuade them to tell us anything before, so I doubt it'll happen now. And it's the people who run the place that have all the answers."

Nope. As someone who got teased for her name as much as her ethnicity she was not about to be that person.

In fact, all she said was-

"Short for Richard, right?"

Look it has been established that both of them are a little out of it, at least what she's blurting out now actually makes sense and isn't painfully obvious like earlier.

Obvious, just not painfully so.

Maybe.

Also the hand holding was... strange. Thinking of it as strange was strange. But she was holding hands with a stranger. In fact, she was thinking about doing other things with this stranger if it just meant getting totally back to normal and staying that way. He'd likely be the first person she called if she needed some help again, just because he was the first person she'd let get this close.

"They're the ones that brought us here, right? Maybe they did something to us."

Not buying the whole "withdrawal" bit being natural. Her money is on them MAKING them sick.

"Some kind of human testing? Maybe they're just really, really strong willed."

Fingers curling around the edge of his hand, but she's not quite there returning the hand-sandwiching yet. Instead- "... Do you feel like you can walk again? Maybe we can go someplace less open to talk?"

Wow that was a lot of words for someone usually so antisocial. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED.

"Don't ask me why. I've never been able to figure it out."

By way of answer, he tugs her along, not breaking contact but approaching his room. It's most less-open place he can think of, and a fairly short trip, all considered.

"Not a bad thought to consider," he acknowledged, approaching the elevator. "But I think we should both be firing on all cylinders before we go making ourselves paranoid. I've heard of this thing causing delusions."

Hasn't he? He thinks he has.