Mime Your Manners || Frank and Kaden
TIMING: Current LOCATION: The Perfect Pint PARTIES: @frankmulloy and @chasseurdeloup SUMMARY: Kaden runs into Frank on a smoke break and they have a mime of a time.
There were less and less evenings that Kaden was out late enough at a bar, but he couldn’t miss the Lyon matches when he could catch them. And the only place to watch those was The Perfect Pint. That said, half time was as good a time as any to catch a quick hit of nicotine. Outside. The authenticity of the pub apparently only went so far. Kaden slipped into the alley way and pulled out his lighter, flipped it open, and… Nothing. He tried again. “Putain de merde,” he grumbled to himself, still struggling to try and make the fucking lighter work. He sighed, clean breath puffing out around the unlit cigarette pressed between his lips. Looked like he was shit out of luck. Out of the corner of his eye, Kaden spotted someone else in the alley, a tall man with a pretty distinct leather jacket. And a cloud of smoke coming off their lips. “Hey,” he asked as he approached. “Mind if I borrow your lighter? Mine seems to have bit the dust in my time of need and I don’t want to miss the second half.”
Frank lazed against one of the dumpsters that lined the back alley of the pub. Hungrily feeding off the heat of the little cigarette stick between his fingers, and the solitude; a temporary respite from a room full of drunk, happy, people. He didn’t ask for much of his work, just the occasional smoke break, which increased in frequency the longer he went without feeding. Shane MacAuley did not share this same practice, but was sympathetic and relented with relatively little input. The same could not always be said of his coworkers who could not resist a lecture about the dangers of smoking before every break. He braced himself for another one of said lectures, when the door of the alley opened. Thank christ. He took another long drag of his smoke, content to share the space silently though that didn’t last very long. Without a word, Frank reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a little red lighter, and tossed it across the distance between them. A silent gesture to indicate that the 6 feet between them was close enough. Frank wasn’t an avid follower of any of the particular sports the pub broadcasted, but working there meant he knew about them whether he liked it or not. “Which team?”
“Thanks,” Kaden said as he caught the lighter without any trouble, his brow furrowing at the gesture to stay away. Alright. Odd, but certainly not the oddest thing in this town. Still, he held up a hand and obliged. “I’m not sick or anything, for the record,” he said as he lit the cigarette. “Just French. Hard to tell the difference, surely.” He pulled out a long drag, inhaling every pit of nicotine as he could in a single breath before tossing the lighter back. He should really quit. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that. And if he didn’t, Regan sure would tell him herself. And he had cut down a lot lately, at least when he wasn’t stressed, but something about him just liked having a vice to lean on. Giving it up entirely felt like an admission of defeat, a shift from who he saw himself distinctly as just a year ago. Plus, he was fairly certain hunter healing delayed the negative effects, right? Whatever, he was probably going to die young anyway. Might as well enjoy what he could when he could. “Lyon,” he replied as he exhaled a cloud of smoke. “You follow football at all?” His mouth pulled into a thin line as he remembered where he was. “I mean soccer. You know, if you prefer using the wrong word for it,” he added in a joking manner. Even if he did thoroughly believe that was the wrong word.
Frank felt a strange bit of guilt and the temptation to apologise, and invite the man closer, was at the tip of his tongue. Alas, he did neither, “it’s me.” He said instead, “I’ve been working out the back in the kitchen most of the day, I probably reek. I thought I’d spare you the smell, and me the embarrassment.” The smile was an easy one, and well practiced, with just enough good natured humour laced behind the words to make the excuse (and himself) seem agreeable. He was working out the back for most of his shift today. He probably smelled. Nothing about what he said was a lie. He pocketed the lighter, taking another long drag from his smoke, in time to his new company. “Ahh,” the sound came accompanied by a puff of smoke, the corner of his mouth adopting an upward lean, “I should have guessed the Frenchman would support the French team. I don’t follow football,” he made a point to say, for his new company’s sake, “or any sport really. We were never a big sports household growing up. But when you work at a place like this and that’s all that ever plays on the TV you’re forced to know what’s going on whether you want to or not. Plus it helps us relate to our patrons...or at least according to Shane.”
Kaden huffed out a laugh. “I work in Animal Control. It’s impossible for you to be the worst thing I’ve smelled today.” Add to that he was dating the medical examiner and it was a wonder he could smell anything at all anymore. Either way, he wasn’t going to push it. Far be it from him to tell anyone to be closer to anyone. “True, but it was a question of which French team. You had a 50/50 shot either way,” he said with a small smile, taking another puff of his light. “But yeah, I grew up following Olympique Lyonnais with my dad. My parents weren’t big on the whole tv or movies thing so watching a match was pretty exciting, you know.” It was one of the few normalities he got growing up and he clung to it pretty fiercely, had to admit. He got the impression when he talked to most people, they couldn’t imagine growing up without the things he’d passed over, missed out on as a kid. Was this what it felt like? Strange. He was rarely on this side of the coin. “So how’d you end up working at a sports bar with no love of sports?” Just as he asked, a chill ran down his spine. His forehead creased as he looked around cautiously to find the source, any source. Was this guy a werewolf? Would he know if he was a little closer? No, that wasn’t how it worked, not really. Sure, his hunter senses might intensify if he got a little closer but if he concentrated, and he was, a few feet wouldn’t make a huge difference. There was a rattling in the back by the dumpsters. Kaden craned his neck to look down the alleyway before catching a glance back to his current companion as if to ask a question. Should they investigate it? He was pretty sure he would either way.
“I’ll take your word for it.” Had Frank been speaking plainly he would have said something along the lines of he could not think of anything more tiresome, although the solemn tinge to the words was a pretense designed to coax his comfort and amicability, it wasn’t as if he has any particular prejudice about people who watched sport, or followed it. Okay...maybe some prejudice, although the man in front of him did not seem the type to engage in a one sided shouting contest with the TV, which was always a good sign. “My ma’s Irish. I grew up in Boston,” the owner of the bar was a gancanagh, “I feel like it’s almost inevitable.” His reply was an odd sort of stare that made Frank ill at ease, he wasn’t looking at him anyone but rather past him to something behind. That seemed to be happening a lot lately and frankly, Frank was fucking over it. Frank followed his gaze behind him to the back of the dumpsters, just beyond the ring of light graciously provided by the alleylamp. An ominous scene to witness, made worse by the rattling of metal on metal as the lid of the furthest dumpster was shaken by some unseen force. Maybe it was just some rodent. He put out the last of his cigarette on the lid of the dumpster he had been leaning on, and was more than eager to step away from it, and its trembling twin. “It’s probably just a rat or a raccoon or something,” a really big, really jacked-up, fucking raccoon. Either way, Frank wasn’t particularly interested in finding out. “Let’s just head back inside, the game should be coming back on any minute.”
As Kaden approached the dumpster, he could feel the chills spread along his back. If he wasn’t so used to it, he’d shiver, try to shake it off. Instead, he steeled himself for what was ahead, pausing only to get a glance of the other man nearby, see if he was-- Well look at that, he wasn’t following. That-- Alright, that actually made sense. This guy had some self preservation skills. Good for him. He was doing better than half this fucking town, to be honest. “I mentioned I’m animal control, right?” he said in response. “If it’s a raccoon I can handle it, don’t worry.” He could probably handle it if it was something else, too. But that wasn’t so much because of being animal control as much as being a hunter. Logic stood that Kaden should leave it be, walk away, go inside and watch the came as his current companion suggested. But he wasn’t one to back down. So he got closer still to the rattling, reaching back for the knife in his pocket and flipping it open, opposite hand reaching out for the lid, carefully. His fingers brushed against it, he was preparing to throw it open when it flung open on its own, a small, crumbly creature leaping out. It was black and white, alright, but it was no fucking raccoon.”Putain de merde!” he shouted as he lunged for it, waving the knife in front of him, trying to get a piece of the mime monster. He couldn’t manage before it threw itself, stomach leaned back to reveal its teeth, at the second smoker. “Watch out!” he yelled, trying to pull the beast away and not hurt himself in the process. Or turn striped again.
Frank, with some combination of adrenaline and fighting instinct, threw himself out of the line of fire of the set of angry gnashing teeth. Eager and hungry: a deadly combination. “What the fuck?!” His fear was palpable; weighing down his gaze as it skirted across his surroundings, tinging his cheeks with paleness as his eyes finally settled on the monster, a frown tugged at his brows, growing harsher and digging deeper the longer he tried to make sense of the beast, to put some sort of identification to the stripped abomination. Logic dictated that if he knew what it was, he would also know how to beat it. Logic was made a shadow by the fear and adrenaline that had made temporary home of his mind, and thinking was infinitely more difficult when those set of teeth turned on him again. Maybe it had preference for fae flesh? He wasn’t sure, and at this point was too afraid to ask. (Who the fuck was he even asking?) In any case, he couldn’t very well stand around waiting to get chomped on. That, at least, was clear enough to prompt action as Frank’s hand grappled for the nearest thing he could use as a weapon: a long metal pipe, that Frank himself had discarded after he fixed the pub’s sink not too long ago. Perhaps someone somewhere liked him after all. Frank’s arm rose, the metal pipe in hand, in a poor imitation of a baseball player (he was bad at sports, but boy did he have a mean swing)—and brought the improvised bat down onto the little beast’s head. Was it its head? He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Point was; he hit it where its teeth were, and he hit it hard.
Before Kaden could reach out and grab the monster by the scruff (did it have that? Putain, guess he didn’t get a chance to find out), the other man had whacked it with a pipe. The creature let out a squeal that was like nothing he’d ever heard before. Fucking hell, that was satisfying to watch. “Good job you g--” Kaden’s words caught in his throat as he saw the pipe rise away from the mime monster. It was curved. It hadn’t been curved before. “Bordel de merde!” This was cursed. So fucking cursed. The creature turned back towards the guy and leaned backwards, revealing its teeth lined stomach once more. Only this time, a long black and white striped tongue rolled out. Kaden didn’t know what the fuck it planned to do with that, but he sure didn’t like it. He leapt over and grabbed the tongue to pull it taught before slicing down through it with his knife. It severed easily enough, but there was another ungodly screech as the creature flew back, rolling away from them both. The tongue was still in his hands and it burned, like it was covered with some sort of acid. Kaden let go with a scream and it fell to the ground. Only it was still moving, slithering like a snake. “Putain de merde,” he said again, this time more horrified than annoyed. Before he could do anything else, there was another striped tongue splaying out towards them from the monster across the alleyway. His hand was throbbing, but he kept his grip on his knife and tried to slash out at the-- “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” The blade on his knife was eroding. And to make matters worse, the severed-tongue turned snake was about to curl its way around his companion. Kaden tried to slam it to keep it from moving, but the monster sent its new tongue out to lash him and he ducked out of the way.
For a moment, fear was replaced by horrible fascination as they both realised the pipe was now curved to the shape of the impact. Only a moment. Fear returned just in time to propel Frank into action, prompting his legs to fling him aside just as the Frenchman wrestled with the monster’s…tongue? An already gruesome sight made only worse as his knife detached the tongue from its throat (can it even be called a throat?) and tossed it aside. The scream was loud, and within it Frank recognised a more human one. His companion had learned of his misstep too late, and now the striped tongue seemed a lot more threatening than it was as it writhed toward him. “Fuck me!” Frank half gagged, half groaned; horrified and sickened both. He didn’t know how to kill it, that much was clear. He didn’t know if it could be killed, but he didn’t have to kill it, he just needed to stop it. Now how to stop a supernatural thing? How to stop him? Iron worked well. Although the odds of finding iron in a pub owned and operated by a fae was next to none. So what next? “Jesus H!” Taking advantage of his relapse in thought, the snake—tongue—thing lurched forward. Frank had no time to think so he didn’t, but batted at it as hard as he could with his curved bat. The tongue hit the lid of an open dumpster with a wet slap and fell inside, the lid falling closed behind it. That’ll work.
The pub’s dumpsters were not yet emptied. They were big and heavy to boot. He didn’t need to kill it, he just had to stop it. Frank’s supernatural inheritance did not lend him any great advantage when it came to strength, but even on his own Frank was strong. Certainly strong enough to push a dumpster. You didn’t need to be very strong to knock someone out if you had the speed behind the punch. Without much thought (at all), Frank heaved the dumpster away from the wall and positioned it into a straight path down the length of the alleyway that ended at the brick wall. Apparently he was also dumb enough to follow on a plan that was more mad than sound, and with probably very little odds of success. “Please work, please work, please work—move!” With his legs (and a sweep of his wings), and a healthy dose of fear and adrenaline, as leverage, Frank put his entire weight onto the side of the dumpster. It obeyed with surprising ease, barreling toward the set of teeth and, the attached, striped tongue. His stomach churned at the initial impact but he wouldn’t slow, and did not slow until he felt the final lurch of the dumpster as metal hit flesh, hit brick wall. It was as if a thunder had echoed across the narrow alleyway, and the sheer force of the impact kicked back against Frank with enough ferocity to send him onto his back and knocked the wind out of him.
“Nice hit!” Kaden shouted as he watched the other man take a swing at the flying mime tongue with a curved pipe. His brow furrowed as he tried to follow whatever it was that he was doing next. “Shit!” He ducked to the side as the dumpster swung out towards him. The guy was strong. Was he a hunter? Kaden didn’t know but it didn’t fucking matter right now. He saw what was happening and ran to help, trying to throw some of his strength in to help trap the mime monster but it seemed like he didn’t have to. The other guy had it. The sound of it crunching against the wall should have been satisfying. Only Kaden knew how resilient these fuckers were. That sound didn’t mean shit. And it looked like he had put his whole force into it, too. “Shit, are you okay?” Kaden didn’t get a chance to get an answer, the dumpster was pummeling right back towards them both. “Fucking hell!” he shouted and threw himself at the dumpster, stopping it before it barreled into them both. He thought about pushing it back away from them again, but he remembered the tongue snake thing was inside. He reached for the lid, scrambled for the lock and made sure the dumpster was going to stay shut. Just in time, too, the strange four-legged creature was peeling itself from the wall and wandering back towards them both. It was like the crumbs that had formed it in the first place were pulling themselves back together, congealing. He really hated the sight of it, but it transfixed him for a moment.
Fuck, right. He had to act. Mime monster. Made of crumbs. This was probably insane and moronic. But it just might work. Kaden frantically looked around and dug a bit through the trash. The monster was making its way back towards them, its tongue ready to unleash, he could tell. Fuck, fuck, fuck, there had to be one of these in the trash. Just one. He dug some more and found it! A water bottle. Still full of water. Thank god. He ran over, ripped it open, and poured it on the creature. It squealed and screeched, but it was melting, breaking up into smaller pieces, the crumbs once again separating. He was about to turn on his heel and run when he realized it was probably a shitty idea to leave the monster out in the open like that for someone else to run into. Fuck. His eyes darted around and spotted a plastic bag. It’d have to do. He scooped up the pieces of monster like it was dog droppings, tied the bag up and threw it in the dumpster. “Come on, let’s go!” he said, running over to grab the other man’s arm and get them back safely inside. “Uh, I guess be careful when taking out that trash later.”
It was a sound that would haunt his nightmares. The screeching, the hissing, the gurgling as its own acid was choked out of it, the very body of the beast crumbling apart like wet sand. Frank had never seen any creature crumble the way that it did. It was as if the beast brought its ghostly hand (or claw, or whatever it was) and dragged it down his spine, causing a chill to rise in its place. It was a horrific scene but he could not bring himself to look away, until he felt a warm grip on his arm and he felt his entire body seize up. Were it not for the realisation that he still had his jacket on, that the other man’s hand was on the leather and not his skin, he would have jerked it out of his grasp. Thankfully after what they had just gone through, Frank didn’t need much persuading at all to leave.
Inside, the pub was peaceful…well, as peaceful as far as pubs went; some heads turned in the direction of the door as Frank and his companion burst in, but otherwise they were completely oblivious to the events that occurred not five feet away from some of them. From one of the television screens someone scored a goal, and a table erupted into a celebratory chorus. Enviably ignorant. Frank startled back to himself at the Frenchman's voice. He detected a thin note of humour laced through his words, but could not quite replicate the same enthusiasm in his own voice when he said, “yeah…right. I’ll keep that in mind.” The image of the writhing acidic tongue, and the set of razor teeth that guarded it, was one that would be not easily forgotten anytime soon. “What the fuck was that?” He said finally, strangely calm though he could feel his own heart beating a mile a minute. “You knew to grab the water bottle. I mean when that…thing attacks you, and you go dumpster diving for something you could use to defend yourself with, I mean call me crazy but I don’t think a water bottle is very high on the list of weapons you could use. Not unless you know it would stop it.” He said again in the same measured tone even when he felt anything but calm, but when the alternative was to freak out in the middle of his place of work in front of all his colleagues and customers, it wasn’t as if Frank had much of a choice. “So what the fuck kind of animal control are you?”
Kaden leaned over and braced his hands against his thighs, trying to bring his pulse back down after the fight outside. The pub was the same as before, lively and completely oblivious to anything that had happened outside just now. They had no idea how close they were to dealing with a monster had they taken one singular step outside. “I have no idea,” he said, shaking his head as he straightened himself up to look back at his companion. “I mean yeah I saw it in my apartment complex a while back. It was-- Okay, so I was being sent cookies. By the mimes. It’s always the fucking mimes. And they kept sending them and they were black and white and cursed. Fucking cursed. Some were stuck in my door. Not on. In. And then the thirteenth day. Thirteenth because it was fucking cursed, they-- the cookies-- They exploded. And the walls: striped. The hallway: striped. I was--” He stopped. On second thought maybe leave that out. No need to explain his momentary stripes. Or the mime face paint. “And the crumbs. The crumbs, they-- They built up a thing.” He gestured, his hands trying to make a vaguely monster-y shaped thing. “That thing. A monster thing. Like the ones in the alleyway by those mime places, you know?” The look on his face said he didn’t know. Putain. If only he could stop talking, but no, his mouth wouldn’t stop moving. “But I don’t know, I figured crumbs. Water. Might work. Because I can’t figure out how to kill it because you saw-- you saw what happened when you hit it. The pipe. It bent. That thing. It’s fucking indestructible. The mimes. They always fucking come back.” It was then he realized how absolutely fucking insane he sounded. And that this guy might be onto what he really was. Putain. “What do you mean what kind of animal control am I? The kind that works for the fucking police, that kind.” Sure. That made it better. Great.
“Cursed mime cookies…right.” A pause, and then a resigned, “excellent.” Frank angled his head a small fraction to the left, the gesture one of grudging acceptance. Experience had counseled (begrudgingly) him that to deny the explanation or to demand logic to the madness would somehow always succeed in making him more insane. After all, he had already seen ghost girls crawling out of leaky TVs, and was very nearly impaled by a rampant moose were it not for the intervention of his friend, the werewolf, and he’d had seen through a storm of dog-toys, why not add mime monsters to the fucking list? Or perhaps he ought to curate a new one: A series of things White Crest will try to kill him with. Mime monsters existed somewhere near the top, right next to killer moose.
“Animal control that works for the police. Of course,” Frank acquiesced, a weary bite to his voice. He didn’t expect to laugh but he did, a short sharp exhalation followed that gave birth to a lingering smile that looked more tired than mirthful. In the security of the pub and the ignorance of its patrons, the adrenaline from their fight was beginning to drain out of him, giving way to the fatigue that perpetually weighed his bones, and Frank didn’t have the energy to demand the truth out of the man. He didn’t particularly want to. Perhaps his shift would have gone more peacefully had he not gone out for his smoke break when he did, had he remained oblivious to the remains of the monster that now occupied the dumpster that lined up the wall of the bar, point was, perhaps it was better if he didn’t know anymore than he did. In any case, it wasn’t as if the Frenchman was the only one with secrets to guard. “Look, I don’t care what the fuck you are, you saved our asses back there so thanks. But you have got to get better at your own bullshit man...and maybe don’t talk so much.” Frank peeled himself off the door, and started toward the bar, picking up a towel and throwing it over his shoulder; he was still technically on the clock. He turned back to his companion, his voice softened by the smile that had a little more good-humour in it than the last, “come on French guy, I’ll pour you a beer.”
