towerofanimus | Continuing Distractions

Entry tags:

[ou] patrick dawn

Continuing Distractions

Characters: Patrick Dawn and YOU
Setting: Dorm Floor One and the Cafeteria on July 16th (day after hacking plot consequences)
Format: Prose to start, can match as always!
Summary: People need to CHILL. Rick makes comfort food for this purpose (also, obligatory morning cat patrol).
Warnings: Rick is still terrified of talking to new people and will stutter A LOT. The horror!

Dorm Floor One: as promised, Obligatory Morning Cat Patrol

Rick wasn't sure what caused the commotion outside his room in the early hours of the morning, but whatever it was, he deduced it wasn't pleasant. Recent posts on the network, combined with the collar boycott going into full swing, had made him reasonably nervous for the tower's well-being the past few days, and now it seemed things were about to get much worse.

He didn't have the stomach to step outside while it was still dark. Sometimes he could hear, in the halls, the scraping of talons, the whisper of feet, the soft voices of the creatures as they stalked their sleeping prey just out of reach, leaving only their vile scents behind. They, more than anything else in the tower he'd encountered so far, scared him senseless. He was far from prepared to run into one anytime soon.

Still, Rick could not sleep. He lay motionless on his back for several hours until the first rays of artificial daylight flickered in from under the door; then he slipped silently from his corner, careful not to disturb his (probably) slumbering roommates, crept into the empty hallway and took on his typical orange tabby form. Both Rusty and Rick had settled comfortably into this morning routine of territory patrol. Now it provided them with much-needed stability and an excellent couple hours of quiet contemplation before the crowd awoke.

That is, if the crowd wasn't as restless as they were.

Floor One (Cafeteria): Soul Food

After much thought over precisely what was bothering him and what could be done for the rest of the tower, Rick remembered what he'd heard about the recent actions of a strange French man and decided that he had a passable way of bringing something from home that could also ease the nerves of his fellow captives.

Granted, his level of culinary expertise was not on par with some other members of the tower (see the aforementioned breakfast), but nothing calmed Rick's mind more than a routine, and nothing calmed his wife's mind more than a good meal. They had long since synthesized this process through daily themed dishes, either for lunch or dinner, most of which Rick cooked himself because he liked memorizing the different recipes and seeing if he could reproduce them exactly. Since this had been the pattern for nearly five years, he'd become rather good at it.

As he recalled, Tuesdays were pasta days, which left a lot of room open for seasoning and the like so long as the noodles were established. Based on the resources available for the lunch menu--despite it being more a dinner dish--he decided on a hearty meat lasagna. They were slotted to have spaghetti later, but Rick preferred to think of that meal as a source of much-needed ricotta cheese rather than a redundancy. Plus, if people liked it, he could just keep cooking more through dinner.

He arrived in the cafeteria kitchen at the closing of breakfast and did not eat. About two hours later, the first massive batch of lasagna found its way in front of the rows of bland hotdogs and hockey-puck hamburgers and the second batch was already in the oven, giving Rick some time to sit back behind the counter and breathe (and gently dissuade any cafeteria drones from disturbing the oven while he waited).

Is the lasagna messy? Yes.

Is it full of meat and grease? Yes.

Is it delicious? MOST CERTAINLY

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With everything else that's been going on, Zel all but forgot about the weird shapeshifting cat dude thing he met when he first showed up. He hadn't been in his room much at all, only returning periodically to sleep (and even then, it was sporadic and unpredictable). So, this morning, he was on the way back to his room to catch a quick nap after spending all night doing who knows what.

Of course, the moment he sees that orange tail swishing at the other end of the hallway, he pauses, narrowing his eyes.

"Hey, you. Cat-man."

There's no hostility in his voice, since he's too tired to be properly angry, but this is about as close to a polite greeting as Zel can give.

The cat-man in question froze at the sound of Zel's voice--despite having only met him once, the experience was traumatic enough that such details remained crystal-clear in his mind and nagged him constantly at these odd hours. He had been starting to wonder if that volatile alien man lived on this floor or had merely wandered up in a post-abduction haze, but the frequency at which he ran into the familiar scent on his morning walks (however briefly Zel actually appeared on the hall) indicated otherwise.

Predictably, Rick had been actively avoiding that scent trail for the past week now. Did he expect this trend to continue without incident? No, but it was worth a shot.

Of course, that ruse wasn't going to work anymore. The cat exhaled deeply, deflating like a spent balloon, and then promptly shifted into a slouching human--still in his pajamas, because he hadn't bothered to change.

Rick required a moment of mental preparation before he could speak. When he did, the words spilled out of his mouth, over-loud and frantic.

"I-I-I'm so sorry. Really, really sorry. You were just running down the hall, and I wasn't sure what was happening, and then it escalated very quickly and I panicked and..."

"What are you...oh. I guess I got a little carried away." It took Zel a moment to even realize what the pajama-clad man was even babbling about, since by now he's basically over that event. He smirks despite himself, allowing a little enjoyment at his ability to strike fear into the heart of another person. "Don't be so scared; if I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead by now."

He figures if he's going to run into the nervous shapeshifter every now and then, it would probably benefit him if there wasn't panic and disorder at every encounter. Of course, the statement was practically a threat on its own, but no one ever claimed Zel was good at making friends.

If Rick would catch anything from that statement, it would be the thinly-veiled threat--and so he did. He nodded and chuckled nervously through a smile that said, quite clearly, that he was in no way comfortable enough with this situation to be laughing, let alone close the safe distance between himself and the terrifying man down the hall.

His giggling trailed off into awkward silence.

"...Um..."

What are you doing you idiot get away while you still have the chance!

"...Y-Y-You were...um...g-g-g-going to ask, er, ask me s-s-something?" Before he ran away, he meant. Best tie up all loose ends while he was feeling adventurous.

"I was just greeting you, since you were passing by."

Zel almost rolls his eyes at the stuttering, but he figures the guy would either get over it or break his teeth trying. He folds his arms and leans a shoulder against the door to his room, all super-casual-cool-guy-like.

"But I was wondering about your shapeshifting. How does it work? Are you human?"

It's a personal interest, okay.

Oh well he meant...before he ran off...ah, whatever the case. Based on Zel's nonchalant reaction to him earlier, Rick was wondering if he even remembered much of their first encounter at all.

No use worrying about that now, though. Zel's overconfident, impatient demeanor still made him uneasy, but he'd been asked a question, and it would simply be rude not to answer after going out of his way to make amends. Although...it was about his abilities. Straight off, even. That forwardness was even more unsettling than the atmosphere, and it took Rick several moments of pensive staring at the back wall to convince himself that he was in no position to judge.

"...It's...k-kind of hard to e-explain," he murmured at the floor, giving the back of his head a thorough scratch with one hand while vaguely gesturing with the other. "I, um...I f-f-f-found cr-creatures that were...d-dying, I guess, and...ah...con-convinced them to, um..."

Rick trailed off, gesturing more violently at his forehead. Mind, mental...he's got cats in his brain? Something? The explanation escaped him, so he abandoned it with a huff.

"So um...I just kind, kind of...call o-on them, and...then I am th-them."

Flawless!

"So it's partially summoning of the dead, partially body transformation." The look on Zel's face is as if he's focused on dissecting a small animal that might contain some secret of the universe, trying to figure out how this ability fits into his own understanding of the world---and if he can make any use of that information.

The man certainly looks normal enough to him, and it's a little surprising that someone who can barely seem to hold himself together has enough control over some force that can perform such a large transformation.

"In my world, this is something that only highly powerful demons, or perhaps incredibly unlucky cursed individuals would be able to manage. Human transformation takes a lot of magic, but you seem to do it on a whim. We're you born like this?"

Sorry, buddy; so long as you keep answering, he's going to keep asking.

Rick quietly pondered if he was lucky or not to have the same knowledge of the Elements that some of his friends back home had. On one hand, he always wondered what made his abilities work, but no matter how many times the specifics were explained to him he could never quite parse the details--so his explanations suffered more than they already would have. On the other hand, should someone be tempted to use his abilities against him, they'd have to figure out the little things on their own. Small victories.

As to be expected, Zel's simple question received a simple, if still extremely anxious, answer. Staring at the ground, Rick shrugged and silently shook his head.

"No? So this is an acquired skill."

Tired as he is, Zel will always perk up when the beginnings of ideas start to sprout. His eyes are lighting up with careful curiosity, but the thoughts are gathering momentum.

"Could you...show another how to do this? I have a particular need for ways to perform body transformations."

Because with everyone else that's going on in the tower, Zel is still going to prioritize finding a way to turn his body back to normal.

Another swing and a miss, thanks to Rick's crippling inability to accurately express his ideas under pressure! He frowned and continued to shake his head, becoming increasingly embarrassed and frustrated with himself, and mimed for a few seconds to express the fact that he had more to add when he could speak again.

Once he could: "...S-S-Sorry...I m-m-meant, I...c-c-c-couldn't always d-do this. It w-wasn't s-s-something I...I'm um..."

Rick squeezed his eyes shut and looked like he was about to throw a fit. The phrase he wanted was "genetically predisposed," but that was a lot of syllables to wrangle while so nervous, and finding a different way around was proving to be annoyingly difficult.

"...Y-Y-You h-have to...h-have the r-right g-g-genes f-for it--a-a-and then m-manifest."

Sigh. Another dead end. That's okay, he's used to this. He gives Rick a little shrug once the words more or less found their way out, as if dismissing the notion entirely. "Too bad, then. If I can't learn it, I'm not really interested."

At least for Rick's sake, it's not more shouting and chasing. He opens the door to his room, pausing for a moment before he steps inside.

"I'm Zelgadis. Have a good night."

Rick remained frozen at the end of the hall as Zel retreated into his room. Various interruptions and parting remarks ran through his mind--introductions, for one, seemed important, as did a proper apology for not being more helpful, or maybe even asking why shapeshifting was so helpful and see if there was a different way around it.

Instead he called quietly, "B-But...it's morning..."

Rick deflated with a sigh, silently kicking himself, and shifted back into a cat to continue his rounds.

...Well that's different. Someone who's not Equius is doing the cooking today.

The troll was alarmed to find that there was an unusual dish sitting in front of everything else on the buffet table; normally Equius threw his creations on the side, because it seemed a bit precarious to put pans too close to the edge, so he casually picked it up and moved it over to a nice blank space near the opposite end. There. Now nobody would accidentally walk by and spill sauce and cheese all over their white outfit -- or whatever else they happened to be wearin that day.

And while he was at it, Equius also noticed that someone had thrown the salt and pepper in a completely dumb spot. Who does that? Jerks. He also put the condiments back where they belonged.

Well, one thing led to another, and eventually Equius looked up to find that he had actually spent an entire twenty minutes rearranging various items on the table. He noticed this because someone was actually trying to get at the food, and informing him of this in a not-especially-kind way. So, after apologizing about ten times, he darted into the kitchen to hide-- oh, wait, sorry. Cook.

The presence of another person in the kitchen probably shouldn't have come as a surprise to him, with the lasagna outside. But it did anyway.

"--Oh! Hello." He was in the middle of baking something else in the oven. Crap. "Uh, sorry, I didn't... you know... uh, it's not often that people really... come... never mind."

...What? What do you mean Equius might not be in his right mind today? He's feeling perfectly fine, that's a silly accusation and also a totally false one.

Rick looked up from his temporary resting chair (the corner of a counter, but it served its purpose well) and nearly leaped out of the kitchen--he probably would have, if he hadn't met Feferi on his first day in the tower and been properly acclimated to the troll species. Alien or otherwise, though, this was still someone addressing him, and that was alarming enough. Rick hurriedly hopped off his perch and tried to explain himself.

"H-H-H-Hi!" His voiced cracked with apprehension and he jammed a hand in his hair, stuttering while Equius spoke and stuttering slightly more coherently when he paused. "...N-No, I sh-sh-should be...um, well...I d-d-d-d-didn't, uh...so um...oh."

Rick stared at the ground and intently watched himself massage an invisible speck of dust with his foot. Then, with a frantic air:

"--I'm--I'm not, not in y-y-your way, am I? I c-c-c-can leave. S-S-Sorry."

"What? In my way? No!" Shit. "I, uh. Oh god. I'm sorry. You just do whatever! You were here first. I can just. I can go. I mean, if you want."

Shortly after Rick threw his head into his hair, Equius also began casually combing out his own massively long hair with his hands (ha ha. Combing. Ha. There was a reason that someone else had to literally brush that shit for him -- because he almost never did it on his own.) Maybe it was that great minds think alike. Or that a couple of guys with serious social anxiety issues just tended to do the same things when faced with one another.

It wasn't like Equius had exclusive ownership of the kitchen, after all. It was just that if he wasn't in the Tower to use it and clean it religiously like every day, not a lot of people would actually be able to safely prepare food back here -- the dust would be piling up, oh god. (The benefits of being both a cook and a germophobe were astounding.)

Augh, discomfort! Rick made a desperate attempt to correct (what he perceived as) his egregious errors.

"--No wait!" He took a single step forward and stopped dead. No wait what? Would it be more comfortable for this guy if he had full reign of the kitchen--possibly his kitchen, even--or if he were allowed a non-confrontational escape? Frustrated with his own lack of social perception, Rick commandeered the hand in his hair and used it to knead his temples instead.

With his initial state of alarm passed, speaking without considerable thought was, based on the broken stutters grinding through his teeth, now impossible. It took him a minute to collect himself. Now, how would he address someone at those business parties he and Codi went to...?

"...Do...um...are you h-here often?"

Smooth.

See, this is why people should generally make sure that they can deal with others before going outside. Because otherwise, things like this thread happen.

Anyway.

Equius yielded to the command to wait, mostly out of a habit that he thought he had broken by now. (But, well, the Tower has a nasty way of bringing back the old -- with a vengeance.) So instead of actually leaving like he offered to, the boy wound up lurking in the doorway; this was more or less where he had been lurking the whole time, but he was now actively looking at Rick instead of something else in the room. Evidently he was waiting for another order to follow up on the first.

But then it turned out that all the human wanted was the answer to a question. Oh. Um... okay.

"I, uh, I guess. Yeah." Whoops, and there he goes looking somewhere else again. "I mean, normally I'm the only one in here, because no one else really... cares. They're just happy to eat the food outside, I guess? But. You know. I guess I wasn't expecting someone else to be here already, so, uh, I'm sorry. If I messed you up or. Anything. Sorry."

Quietly, Equius wished that someone would just walk in and shoot him now.

Oh...that actually worked. Rick hadn't expected it to, so he didn't have the most concrete response available off the top of his head. Thankfully, Equius's halting apology gave him some time to think of one.

"Er...n-n-no, no n-need to, ah..."

Well kind of. Had to get the awkward stuttering out of the way, first.

"...So you c-cook?"

"Uh. Yeah. I do."

You know.

"Sometimes. ...I-I'm not, like, a professional or anything. I'm not very good." (Blatant lies, mind.)

Oh! A similarity! Rick latched onto that with a slightly over-desperate grin.

"--Really? W-Well, I mean, I'm--I'm not ah, a pr-p-professional, either, I just, um...thought I'd..."

He trailed off, looking between the floor and the oven, with very, very brief glances at Equius's face.

"...I-If, um...if you still w-w-w-want to..." Rick made a few wide swings of the hand at the oven. "Cook" was the word he was looking for. "I-I-I could use, ah..."

"Oh, what? N-no! Oh, that's okay... you were here first." Cue the arm-flailing. "You were here first, you know, you can just -- uh -- stay here. It's okay."

He casually backed towards the small table in the corner of the kitchen.

"I'll just... oh. God. Shit." DIDN'T MEAN TO GO BACK THERE. "Um. If you... still don't want me to leave? I can just. Stay here. Yeah."

Oh no, the tactic of finding a common interest was not successful! Abort! Abort!

"--I-I mean, only, only if you, u-um, w-w-want..."

Rick laughed very nervously.

"Just, ah...don't want t-t-to imp-impose, s-sorry. Er. Sorry."

He needed to find something to do and he needed to find it immediately. Rick abruptly turned and started rummaging through the open cabinets in ways that were not at all conducive to finding proper cooking implements.

Equius watched the man flounder worthlessly in ~~his~~ the cabinets. The only thing that went through his mind was how long it was going to take to reorganize all those. He had to find some way to stop the human, now.

"Uh!!"

Shit.

"Can we... can we start over?"

~~Rick would probably have reorganized them before leaving anyways so why not~~

He stopped abruptly, summoned by Equius's call of imminent distress. Rick probably would have found these back-and-forth pleas humorous if he wasn't so embarrassed with himself for being a part of the whole thing. He looked over his shoulder with wide eyes and the pink bridge of his nose.

"--Oh, uh, yeah! S-Sure!" Rick squeaked into his shoulder.

...And he made no further attempts to revive the conversation, since he couldn't think of a tactful way just then.

fkhdsa

"Er... hi," he started weakly. God, this is going to be a long conversation. "Um, my name's Equius. Zahhak. Equius Zahhak. And, uh, sometimes I come in here and... cook. It's kind of like a. Recreational activity. For the benefit of the other people here, because the food they serve out there is sh-- not. Not very good."

It also helps him to not have panic attacks.

Okay. Okay, this was something he could do. For the first time since he realized someone was with him in the kitchen, Rick visibly relaxed, leaning back on the counter and smiling with a brief, bashful laugh. It was an expression that demonstrated that he looked back on the previous state of affairs and had successfully identified how ridiculous it had been. Start fresh. Yes.

He started with a small wave. "...N-Nice to m-meet you, E-Equius. I-I'm Rick." He stuck his hands in his pockets, genuinely embarrassed ~~but what's new~~. "I, um...used t-to cook a, a lot--b-back home. I thought it, a-ah, w-would b-be...you know..."

...A nice thing to do? Relaxing? Better than putting himself in constant danger by heedlessly exploring different Tower floors? Rick shrugged and trailed off.

Then, meekly: "...H-H-Have you...tried any yet?"

Edited (orz html) 2013-07-26 04:47 (UTC)

"The food outside, you mean?"

He looked uncomfortably outside. The food was one of the first things he'd noticed when he got here. In the beginning, maybe a few months, he tried something once every month, and it never really got above the line of food that he himself could prepare with the same ingredients.

But that was a year ago. He hadn't eaten any in a long time. However, thinking about how long he'd been here (and how skittish he still was), Equius concluded that mentioning that to Rick might not be the best idea. Considering the fact that he'd mentioned home, the man was probably still a newcomer. Maybe it would be best to keep that illusion going just a bit longer.

"Yeah."

Rick followed Equius's gaze to the line of food. He hadn't been in the Tower long enough to make any associations with its quality, or the change of the months, or even think too deeply about what it really was he was eating beneath the glamour illusions; nor was he prepared to make any judgements based on its consumption or otherwise.

As it happens, Rick blushed heavily and, staring at the ground, shook his head and pointed at the plate of lasagna that Equius had moved to the end of the line. "...Er...I-I-I meant..."

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Continuing Distractions

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soul food

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INTENTIONALLY AMBIGUOUS that was mean sorry