bigapplesauce | Soup Kitchen

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Soup Kitchen

Rush is a good source of energy. Rush is a very good source of energy, or at least a very plentiful one. There has never been a time when Rashad has encountered him and not found him bursting with some form of emotional distress. At the party -- Rashad had not even meant to feed on something like panic and anger at the party; he had intended to find some form of joy so that he might stay and partake in the event itself. Temptation had struck, and once he is in his right mind again he will decide that it was right after all that he partook while he had the opportunity, even if it was not his first choice. It can be difficult to find sustenance; he will not turn his nose up at what is offered.

The downside to getting a rush from Rush is that the emotions in question strongly incline him to flee to his apartment and hide there in agitated solitude for some time. It is the next day before he recovers, and then he must go to work lest he call attention to himself. There is much work to catch up on, too much for him to take a long enough lunch break to obtain the kind of lunch he actually needs or to leave work on time. That evening is one of slim pickings; somewhere in the city there is sure to be someone going through an emotional state that would feed him, but Rashad is unable to find such a person and finally retreats home to conserve energy until the next day, when he must go to work again, this time running on reserves. It is unlikely that he will find what he needs by chance on his lunch hour, and unlikelier still that he will remain in prime control of himself if he does not feed before the afternoon. Manhattan is a neverending hubbub of emotions, but he needs more than happiness or sadness -- he needs extremes, the intensity of emotion most mortals feel only every now and then. The decision is a deliberate one, a calculated risk -- but it is not difficult to obtain the home address of someone he knows is all but sure to give him what he needs, perhaps with a little prompting if necessary. Then he will be able to think clearly again.

At lunch he makes an excuse and leaves, work undone, for home. It will be a simple operation, he thinks as he makes his way upstairs and stalks along the hall toward Rush's apartment. He will feed quickly, perhaps even through the wall if Rush is close enough and upset enough, and then he will ~~have a lengthy panic attack~~ quietly return to work with no one the wiser.

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Rush slips lower, bare inches from outright collapse. Fuck. Is he weakening continuously? Has Durant opened a constant link that neither of them can close? Is Rush having the whole of himself drawn from him?

He must remain coherent. He must remain fucking rational.

There are parts of him being pulled away, that already have been pulled away, and they are funneling into this fucking - thing in the corner of his apartment and this will not be a tenable mental state for Rush to maintain this is not a workable standpoint and this will not be a state of mind in which he can function optimally or at all and there must be a way for him to deescalate this growing fear that he is being steadily hollowed out by this thing this person that has invaded the boundaries of his mind and torn scraps of him out to feed on like some sick fuck how many times has this happened and Rush has not known and he must remain rational.

"Stay away from me."

The words are ragged and barely present; Rush is shivering against the floor and trying to glare at Durant and not be engulfed in the visceral terror Durant has unknowingly tapped into.

He's whimpering.

He is not whimpering.

He is furious and he is holding fast to that fury, that justified fury over what Durant has done to him in repeated violation.

"Eat?" echoes Iman, for the moment ignoring Durant's outburst and the subsequent mess that is Rush. She crouches down, aiming to catch Durant's eye. "You eat people's emotions?"

That sure seems to be the logical extension here. It is not, however, a practice she's ever run across, and she can't imagine Rush has either. Durant seems even to take steps to cover it, though he's done a real shit job of it these last couple times.

"And what happens if you take too much?" she says coldly. "Something like before? When you left him unconscious? Something worse?"

Rush's obvious distress is only fueling her anger. She reaches forward and seizes Durant's collar. "Tell me exactly how this works, fuckstick."

Rashad gives Asadi the eye contact she seeks for a moment, but his gaze slides over to the quaking Rush still nearby. He could...anger would have its uses in this moment, and he has expended a great deal of energy in the last few minutes. But then Rush has been all but depleted; he must not take again from that source before the mortal has had time to renew himself.

And somehow, Asadi seems to know this. Rashad turns his eyes on her again, letting her take hold of his clothing as his heart beats just a little too quickly for the post-feeding rest state in which he should find himself. "You have seen it now," he replies. "I do not take anything that cannot be regained with food and rest." Unless he takes too much at once. The death of the first person he encountered in Manhattan was unfortunate, if unavoidable.

Unbelievably, Durant is attempting to detail some sort of fucking justification for what he's done to him - what he's done to him regularly.

He entered Rush's apartment for this specific purpose.

How many other contrived interactions were initiated solely to siphon Rush's own fucking emotional reactions from him.

His eyes close.

No. God, fuck, no, he cannot think about this, he cannot devote thought to this, not now, not in this state.

"That's not your fuckin' call," Rush rasps. Maintaining any measure of eye contact and or steadiness of tone is not a feasible exercise. He is lucky to still be conscious and capable of relative movement. "It's my head."

His head that has been rearranged and dissected and torn from so often and so frequently that he can no longer allow himself to wonder how much of Dr. Nicholas Rush is truly left.

"What happens," she reiterates, her voice and eyes hard, "when you take too much?" No way in hell is she falling for this bullshit tale of innocuousness. To say nothing of Rush's point, which is valid as fuck. Durant clearly doesn't understand consent, and she's beginning to wonder if he's human at all, there's so much he doesn't seem to get, on a level that goes beyond ordinary obtuseness. But right now all of this is second to her question, which has not been answered.

"...Death," admits Rashad, meeting her gaze. It is becoming easier now to do so. "And that is why I do not take too much." Except for when he has. He would regret that if he were capable; as it is he merely views that memory as an example of an error to avoid making a second time lest he add to the entropy of the world with another mortal's death.

Rush he utterly ignores. It is nonsensical to suppose that he might know better than Rashad what he can give when Rashad is the one who can sense his every emotion, taste out the energy in him. He knows even now what Rush is feeling and how much he could still give before dying.

In a spike of fleeting, fearful energy Rush shoots upright, propelling himself sharply upward and coming up hard against the surface of the wall, nearly crashing into it, slamming into it with the frenzied dismay that immediately threatens his tenuous lack-of calm.

"Well thank fuck you know how to exercise fucking restraint," he counters hoarsely, bitterly, pinning Durant with a look full of something scathing and horrified. "One wouldn't want there to be any danger involved, would they."

Holy fucking shit. She releases her grip on his shirt, straightening up and taking a small step back. There's no fear in her eyes, only disbelief and disgust.

She can see him calming - whatever he stole from Rush is probably being absorbed, wearing off. She's not sure he'll be as easy to subdue when he's not suffering another man's panic. The time for dealing with this head-on has passed, now she has to think about it practically, and that's immediately a problem. She and Rush can't afford to expose him to ROMAC - Durant knows way too much about them, her in particular. And they aren't about to become snitches for an organization they already don't trust, she's fairly certain Rush will agree on that. But Durant cannot be allowed to just keep doing his thing. This has to be handled, somehow, even if it's just to spread awareness of him. There are other powerful beings here - the TARDIS, Gabe - who might be able to step in if need be.

For now she isn't sure what she can do, and it galls her to think of it, but letting him go is probably the most pragmatic course of action. Rush needs to calm down, needs the threat removed. They can talk about what's next after that. After she lets this fucker just walk away.

"You listen to me," she says coldly. "Listen well, since you didn't seem to catch it last time. You stay away from him. He is not your fucking meal ticket. I don't care how little you want to take, you don't take it from him. You find your fix somewhere else."

She nudges him with her foot again, more of a kick this time. "Now get the fuck out of my sight."

Rashad does look over at Rush, his gaze calculating. No. He is still hungry because after all his work to feed himself they forced him to expend it again defending and healing himself, but he must not take any more. Iman, for her part, is too calm...and too likely to become volatile should she understand that she has been fed upon.

He flinches at the kick and scrambles to his feet, removing himself from hitting range. Now that his head is clearer, it is evident that she hit him harder than should have been possible. "I will do what I deem most beneficial," he says stubbornly. It is neither a refusal nor agreement to abide by her new rule for him...though if he is to feed on Rush again, greater caution will be indicated.

"Get to fuck." The desire to stand, briefly, overtakes him but Rush knows he has only the requisite energy to stay where he is, partially hunched and partially sitting against his own wall, one hand curled protectively over his chest, fixing Durant with a glare of unremitting hatred. He struggles for a moment, the heel of one shoe scraping ineffectively against the ground in a search for purchase that does not exist as he straightens, shoulders quivering and rigid.

"You come near me again," he drags the words out of his hollowed core, cold and desolate, and tries and fails to mask how much his slight posture shift has left him trembling, "then I don't care," he hisses the word out with a venom, a savage and icy flash of teeth, "what you are."

He stills abruptly, seething in tranquility, locking eyes with Durant. "I will. Kill you."

All right, that's probably not helping anything. Iman blows air out her teeth but resists looking at or speaking to Rush. She feels the sentiment, though she's not entirely confident either of them can follow up on it. But that doesn't need to get hashed out now, not with Durant still looming.

"Go," she says, and advances a threatening step.

There would be no purpose to disabusing Rush of the notion that he is capable of causing even permanent injury to Rashad, let alone engineering his death...at least, not at the present moment. Even if he would somehow benefit from it, to do so would be inadvisable. It is not impossible that the little mortals before him might find a way to harm him, merely extremely improbable. He listens to Rush in silence, his own eyes locked with the man's, and feels the last of the fear seeping out of him.

He will have to feed again soon. He must turn his attention in that direction, as well as consider how he will explain his prolonged absence from the office. He does correctly interpret Iman's movement as a threat, and as a credible one -- permanent injury or no, he has no desire for her to hit him again and he takes a matching step backward without displaying the corresponding fear that should go hand in hand with caution. "As I said," he replies, then turns and walks quickly from the room.

Rush watches him leave, expression fixed.

Upon his exit, keeping his exhausted musculature locked in tension ceases to be sustainable. He shudders once, drawn and involuntary, unable to resist the slow, unrelenting slide back against his wall, the press and predetermination of gravity. He prevents it from metamorphosing into a complete collapse with an unsteady lurch and braces his back against the wall - an uneven curve against an even plane, unsuited for support. His head drops against the wall's warmed paint. His fingers trail limply.

He feels as he felt in those brief moments of ill-timed waking aboard an unknowable vessel, conscious to know the experimental stabs of foreign thought and helpless to counteract them. Here, the situation is evaluable now that Rush has been removed from the sphere of its context. Durant attacked him and encouraged an emotional response and drained him. He will, in all likelihood, attempt to do so again.

He will also, in all likelihood, succeed.

There is a certain unpreventable nature to certain things.

Rush slides his eyes closed and thinks of the monotony of shallow breath. When he opens them again he directs his attention to Asadi, though with considerably less precision or speed than would typically be acceptable.

"You have," he whispers, controlled and even, "excellent timing."

Iman watches Durant until he's gone, then turns immediately and crosses the room to where Rush has crumpled back down. She quirks a faint smile at his words, crouching down just outside arm's reach. "You're one lucky fuck, all things considered," she retorts. "I just happened to be in the neighborhood. Did you mean to call me or was that just panic?" She glances at his dropped phone, then back at him. She's not overly invested in an answer to that question, which is more conversational than curious, so she moves on promptly: "Are you all right? Is there any... permanent damage that you can detect?"

She doubts it. But it's hard to tell. He pretty much always looks like he's on the verge of a meltdown.

Rotating a wrist to flatten one palm against the floor rewards Rush with the creeping, dull return of his more average perception of reality. The pronation of a hand to whisper skin against hardwood. Sensory input. Sensation. He curls fingers briefly into the solid surface, reveling in the pinpricks of pain and pressure.

He shakes his head fractionally, a gesture that does little to alleviate the clinging vertigo. "It wasn't my intention. It was the only weapon I had on hand." He finishes with an angling of his chin at the prone device wearily, unable to construct a scenario in which the phone would otherwise have been remotely helpful. He hadn't compiled a strategy at the time, simply held it out as a symbol, a threat of contact if Durant came any closer. A poorly thought-out tactic, accomplishing the common feat of being less effective in practice than in theory.

The spread fingers shrink into a fist, pressing into the floor's sun-warmed wood.

"Unlikely," he rasps, missing the muscular coordination that would have allowed him to push the disorderly fall of hair from his eyes and potentially salvage some remaining modicum of dignity. "I recovered well enough before. Those were worse circumstances."

Edited 2015-03-12 16:18 (UTC)

"Yeah." She nods, watching him closely as he tests out his capacity for movement, like coming out of a drugged state. She grimaces faintly and looks away, still feeling the boil of rage over what Durant did to him, and how he refused to acknowledge there was anything wrong with it. "We need to do something about him. Can't report him. He saw me sneaking around in ROMAC's labs before I joined up, he knows to much. Fucker." She pushes a hand through her hair then absently resets her hijab. "And anyway, who would we tell, Fring? For all we know they might be aware of it. Keeping their thumb on him. I don't think he's human. They have a particular interest in those, from what I can tell."

She rubs a hand thoughtfully over her jaw. "The TARDIS will know, at least, since last time it happened there. Probably good to let the Doctor know. I mean, we have to spread this around, right? People have to be warned, or something."

Maybe this is too much for him to deal with right now. She's moving a little quickly and he still hasn't entirely regained his faculties. She glances back at him. "You want some coffee?"

He can manage little more than an insubstantial jerk of his head to one side, a corner of his mouth contorting in a fleeting tear of disgust. Neither Fring nor ROMAC have particularly managed to inspire any sense of trust from him - nor from, he notes with a distant sense of approval, Asadi. But within that structure of paperwork and bureaucratic consolidation, they have aligned themselves in an axis opposed. There is little doubt that Fring is aware of it, and now Durant as well. The TARDIS he trusts unquestionably, both to maintain awareness and to potentially take action. As for the Doctor - Rush grudgingly must accept that he would trust him in this particular case as well, if solely by association.

"God, yes," he whispers, flicking his gaze to the coffeemaker that sits in crisp, glowering adjacency to the apartment's bare stretch of empty space. A jumbled row of mugs and paper cups have lined themselves up beside it in an unconcerned and meandering arrangement, the sole indications of any sort of frequent use. "There should be grounds. Somewhere."

Adjustment of posture is still an agony of unresponsive limbs and tensely contracted musculature, but Rush inches himself upward, straightening incrementally with a tautening of shoulders.

She gets to her feet and strides over to his sad little coffee corner. How can anyone live like this? If Greta saw it, she'd - well, that's ridiculous, why would that happen. She sighs and gives a little twitching half-shake of her head as she picks through the woefully understocked kitchen until she finds grounds.

She sets up the coffeemaker and chooses a pair of mugs to wash out. There is a disarming lack of soap in this house as well. She refrains from commenting on any of it. Now's not the time.

She steps back out to where she can see him, holding the somewhat cleaned mugs. He looks like he's having a hell of a time. If Durant is some kind of predator then Rush is like a wounded animal that drags behind - talk about low-hanging fruit. She represses another surge of anger. That he'd go after someone so comparatively defenseless - who's so isolated - ugh. She swallows her disgust, composing herself.

"Rush," she says, picking her words cautiously, "I know you called me by accident, but you know you can do that on purpose, right?" She crouches down to the coffeemaker, setting the mugs down, watching the pot fill. "I mean, preferably not for mathematical breakthroughs at three in the morning, but..." She leans around and peer at him over her shoulder, then looks away again quickly. "If anyone tries to fuck with you, I want to know about it." She pulls the pot out and starts pouring. "You don't have to deal with your shit alone."

A low, discontented noise grates in the back of his throat as he shifts again, now to reposition hands to press against the wall for some minimal leverage. Standing will likely take the vast majority of his effort and concentration. Fucking Durant. Assuredly not human, or if so some warped and unrecognizable version of one, something beyond Rush's conceptual grasp at the present moment.

"Yes, yes," he mutters, wishing for the spare physical control that would enable a dismissive wave of a hand. Asadi made that point quite transparent in her unanticipated defense of him. Any potential for elaboration of that factor is lost in the involuntary grunt of pained exertion that accompanies his wrenching, tortuous attempt to stand. The amount of resistance in both kinetic effort and air density is quite remarkable, as if his various faculties have systematically decided to abandon his body to the slide and pull of gravity, ceding everything to its destructive, dominant force.

The end result is less than satisfactory. Awareness signals vertigo, and vertigo sags him uselessly against the wall, breathing perhaps heavier than is typical, but unquestionably vertical.

She gets up, turning back to him. She didn't really expect anything other than dismissal to her statement, but hopefully some part of it cut through his thorny exterior. She drifts back over and hands him a mug.

"You okay?" she says. Obviously he isn't, but this is a man generally predisposed not to ask for help and loathe to reveal that he needs it at all. She takes a step back but stays in range if he should topple or sag down again, sipping her own coffee.

A hand with a distinct lack of nervous coordination pushes the rough fall of hair from his face in a brusque compensatory sweep of a reestablishing equilibrium, then drops back down to accept the mug. The heat from the surface and its contents is frighteningly double-edged, simultaneously resharpening his senses appreciably while doing little to mitigate the crawling periorbital discomfort of an overheated apartment. He thanks Asadi with a jerking dip of his chin.

"I suspect I'll have no difficulties recovering." His expression darkens meaningfully, eyes flicking back to Asadi and away again, one muscle twitching subtly in his cheek. "At least this time."

Edited 2015-03-15 00:53 (UTC)

"Yeah." She's silent for a moment, contemplating her coffee and their limited options. "Well if that changes, don't you dare keep it to yourself." This with a warning arch of her eyebrow. "I might send some kind of message about this to the network, if I can figure out how to encrypt it properly. The trick is keeping it from ROMAC, probably the Rebels too. It's civvies who have to know about this bullshit." She frowns, sips, studies the mildly scuffed floor. "And we should probably rendezvous at the TARDIS soon."

The caffeine immediately has the desired effect, wearing away the bladed edge of a steadily mounting headache, if only slightly. Rush makes a quiet, disparaging noise and turns his evaluative gaze to the opposite wall.

"I agree," he answers quietly, closing his eyes in a largely ineffectual effort to scrub the sensation of being lifted and pinned from his mind.

The memory replays itself with distressing clarity - Durant's hand closing around the front of his shirt, a snap of fingers wrapping around the material and pinning him inescapably against his own wall while he did little more besides writhe and panic and make himself vulnerable.

The corner of his mouth twitches in distaste.

He fixates instead on the wall's numerical scrawl, and redirects his attention back to Asadi.

"Encrypting a message should be fairly simple," he says with dry, forced insouciance, "assuming you have access to a cryptographer." He meets her gaze finally, canting a wry eyebrow to mirror hers.

"Yeah?" She smiles wryly in response to that eyebrow and lifts her head. "Well, we should probably work on that, then." She pulls out her phone and holds it up. Work is probably gonna be a good normalizing thing for him, so why not now. "I'll draft, you encrypt?"

Edited 2015-03-19 19:31 (UTC)

"Naturally."

He navigates the empty stretch of apartment to his laptop and the table on which it's balanced with something of his usual dexterity and coordination, then opens it with a quiet, satisfying click. Shattering the vertigo beginning to burrow mercilessly into the fringes of his vision with a brusque shake of his head, he opens a sequence of programs with a burst of furious typing and sets to work.

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