[psl] 2015: Crawl 'til dawn, on our hands and knees

[firewatcher]

The end of the first night of the rest of her terrible garbage life saw Palmer in a situation she never imagined possible: in the first all-night diner she could find, sitting across the table from Vera Volkov, back from the dead.

Or—Liv Lazzari, now, wasn't it.

That was going to take some getting used to. That, and the fact that despite the drastic changes to her appearance, Vera—Liv—still didn't look a day older than when Palmer had seen her last, over twenty years ago. Not worth the price of admission, in Palmer's mind, but it felt a little unfair. Palmers tended to start showing age early, and she herself was no exception.

Palmer leaned on the slightly sticky table with one elbow, absentmindedly stirring her coffee with the other hand and biting back a yawn. "Is every night in hell this eventful?"

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[firewatcher]

Palmer took all this in—particularly the line about Kitty Hawk's "favorite Cole"—and frowned, looking thoughtful. "I don't want my source to get any kind of heat for this. They told me But—well, you're right, I do have a lot of reason to want to cause trouble. There are probably people who can confirm this independently. I..."

She suddenly looked uncomfortable. "You know I've never believed in ghosts..."

[wolfatyourdoor]

Unusual to see Maria of all people looking uneasy about the supernatural; Vera's frown went thoughtful. And then she passed her the flask, sliding it towards her across the table.

"Yeah, I remember. Kind of funny to me where you drew that line—Bigfoot is still bs, by the way—but go on." Was she already hanging with sin-eaters or something? Christ, it had been less than twenty-four hours; she certainly worked fast if that was the case.

[firewatcher]

Palmer stared at the flask for one long moment, and then took it, pouring a not-insignificant amount into her own coffee, looking grateful.

"Yeah, yeah, but I like the idea of Bigfoot—and anyway, a big furry guy in the mountains is a lot less far-fetched than the lingering presence of the restless dead. Sorta figured that I have enough dead people pissed at me that I'd know if ghosts were real."

She looked down at her coffee, and took a long drink. Much better. "I thought, anyway. I think. Jury's still out. Anyway, the source is, well, ghosts. Or something like ghosts. He's, uh, apparently left some unhappy ones behind. I'd be more skeptical, but when they lead you to concrete evidence..."

[wolfatyourdoor]

"Dead people like me?"

She took another long drink from her mug, nonchalant—at least outwardly—but studying Palmer's face for a reaction. The flask she took back and replaced inside her jacket, before their waitress could get see it and potentially get all judgmental.

[firewatcher]

Palmer's mouth twisted—maybe hiding the instinct to wince visibly. "Hadn't been counting you with the ones that'd want to haunt me, but maybe that was a mistake," she said, folding her arms across her chest. "Since you're not dead and somehow you're managing to haunt me anyway."

[wolfatyourdoor]

"Thanks," she said drily. "It's a talent. And shit, Maria --sorry, Palmer-- we watched enough horror movies as kids--ghosts always hate the living for having what they can't, right?"

She let out a short, sharp laugh, though it wasn't particularly funny.

[firewatcher]

"So they do, I guess," said Palmer, flatly, not laughing at all. It really wasn't funny. "That, or they're just waiting for someone to come along who can do justice for them. Though it's always unclear for the first half. Gotta keep up the suspense."

She drummed her fingers on the table, staring intently down at her coffee. "I—you know—" She shook her head. "Never mind."

...aaand here we go again

[wolfatyourdoor]

Vera smirked. "What, are you offering to rescue me, Lieutenant? Your princess is in another fucking castle."

A pause, and she snorted and leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms. "--Or your prince is."

[firewatcher]

Definitely never mind what she'd been about to say. "Not with that attitude," she said, scowling. "Christ, Vera, what the fuck am I supposed to say? What do you want? Would you be any less fucking annoying about this if he had been a woman?"

She drank the rest of her coffee in one swig, a little like a shot, and set the empty mug back down on the table with a heavy clunk.

[wolfatyourdoor]

She threw up her hands, then dropped them heavily against the table. "Yeah, you know, I'm pretty sure I would be. Everyone—" Vera paused, looked away, then began again, her voice lowered but no less hard. "I was so sure I was gonna die of fucking AIDS if the leeches didn't get me first, and then I had to go and fuck up and get outed, and my parents—"

But she cut herself off again, and looked back at Palmer. Her expression was nothing short of hateful. "I kept your secret, Masha. Guess I shouldn't have bothered; I was just some phase you had to get over."

With that she went back to her former pose—arms crossed and turned away.

"—Fuck, I need a cig."

[firewatcher]

"Didn't matter anyway," Palmer said, her voice low enough to sound a little like a growl. "Your relatives from out of town came in and made enough solid accusations that Mom and Dad put Andy in charge. Died before I could change their minds. I'm sure they would have loved to think of my wedding as proof that they'd been wrong, too, if they'd lived that long."

She leaned on the table with both elbows. "Vera. Vera, look at me."

[wolfatyourdoor]

The sky outside the window was beginning to look properly bright, oranges lightening to the same yellows as the Vegas city lights. Vera's eyes shifted sideways towards Palmer, still narrowed—hostile. But considering. It was true—the rest of her family had fucked that up plenty all on their own.

Finally, she shifted her weight and leaned against the table as well, head resting heavily on one hand.

"What, Palmer."

[firewatcher]

She studied Vera's face for a moment—beneath the hair and the scars, there was every familiar curve and angle that Maria remembered. Her heartbeat sped up; a feeling long-buried trying desperately to sprout again.

Palmer took in one long, ragged breath, and then leaned across the table to kiss her.

[wolfatyourdoor]

Vera froze in place beneath Maria's lips, eyes wide—this she hadn't expected. But already her mouth was parting. And then her left hand went to the collar of Maria's jacket, roughly pulling her in close with a small noise of frustration.

She never did have a whole lot of self-control in love. (If the waitstaff at the diner weren't going to remember them before, well, they'd sure as hell had made enough of a scene, now.) And for a long moment she indulged herself.

[firewatcher]

She'd made so many stupid, stupid choices in the last 24 hours and this might be the worst of them, but when Vera pulled her closer all inklings of regret vanished. Palmer brushed her right hand up through Vera's hair to cradle the side of her head.

It had been how long, since—well, best not to think about how long since anything. But, dear God, had she missed this. She sighed, a low, pleased humming noise muffled by Vera's mouth pressed to hers. Oh, she was so going to Hell.

nice icon keyword you got there

[wolfatyourdoor]

Maria's heartbeat thudded in her ears, so close it could almost drown out the rest of this—the sticky table, the faint uneasy hum of the diner's fluorescent lights, every paranoid thought. Vera leaned into Maria's hand, and dug her nails hard into her shoulder—and deepened the kiss.

Then, abruptly, she paused; stiffened. A moment later she bit Maria's lip sharply, hard enough to hurt, and shoved her away with both arms.

"—Get the fuck away from me." Russian, again. She'd clearly meant to sound angry; the venom came out half-confused.

THANKS IT WAS 1000% INTENTIONAL

[firewatcher]

Palmer let Vera push her away; honestly, she probably deserved that. Expected it, even. Still, though, she folded her arms tightly across her chest again and looked Vera in the eye. “Still think it was a phase?”

[wolfatyourdoor]

Vera mirrored the pose, glaring. (Still, she studied the rate of Palmer's heartbeat.)

"...Fine. It's not like it changes anything, but you can keep your--" she waved a hand, "--lesbian cred, or whatever you want to call it." Her cheeks were flushed.

Now it was her turn to down the rest of her coffee with a swig. She shoved her mug to the side of the table, but none of the waitresses looked particularly eager to approach them with a refill.

[firewatcher]

"It was never about the—oh, whatever. Think whatever you want, I guess." She shook her head, letting a breath out slowly, trying to slow her heart rate. It wasn't working as fast as she'd like. There was a coppery taste on the inside of her lip where Vera bit her, reminding her that the whole thing had been real.

"God, what were we even talking about? It was important, it had to be." She frowned upon remembering. "Oh, right. Ghosts. Ghosts."

[wolfatyourdoor]

Vera looked torn between holding her own scowl and smirking at some apparent private joke.

"...Yeah. Ghosts." She gave her head a rough shake, as if to clear it. "Anyway, these...ghosts of yours..." With a sigh, she dragged a hand through her hair again, then dug around in the bags she kept on her belt for a notebook and pen.

"Unless you're suddenly some kind of medium, which I doubt, it's not like there's a large group of so-called people you could've gotten this intel from. I'm impressed you got whichever one of them it was to open up to you—real skittish lot, from the little I can tell." Her breathing was still a bit ragged.

[firewatcher]

"Look, I'm a cop. Lotta folk find that inherently trustworthy, for some reason." She shrugged, not bothering to hide her slight smugness. It was nice to be on firmer ground after that... episode.

"Anyway, I can neither confirm nor deny any details about my source at this time. I want assurance that this won't just go nowhere and mark me as even more of a troublemaker, before I take this risk." She snorted. "I know how corrupt systems work; I work for one, after all."

[wolfatyourdoor]

That got an uncomfortable look out of her, her mouth twisting into half a grimace. "I don't actually know if I can make that kind of promise, Palmer." She still put a slight emphasis on the name, keeping it a subtle dig. "There's all those factors I mentioned before. I can't just— I can't put them down like we used to."

Vera looked away. Not the greatest feeling, having to admit how well they had her whipped.

"Maybe if you...I don't know, showed me some of these bodies or something, I could take a look for myself. If I'm really lucky, he'll have gotten careless, maybe gotten some of his blood on one of them, and I could..." She trailed off, awkward with the realization of how this was going to sound; she'd almost forgotten what it was like to not take her own unnaturalness for granted. "...I could track him by that."

[firewatcher]

"You—what? Okay, that's..." She trailed off, looking uncertain and a little alarmed. "Well, that's... dead useful, at least, if kind of unsettling. Good God. Anyway—" She ran a hand through her hair, a sort of self-calming motion. "I'm going to get a team out there to retrieve some of the bodies real soon. If one of the lab boys finds something that might be useful to you on 'em... I'll give you a call."

Palmer grimaced. "We can't put them down like we used to, I guess. I get the impression that a repeat of my performance with Uriel Jones would not exactly be greeted warmly. More like the opposite of that."

[wolfatyourdoor]

"You realize that as soon as your team touches this stuff, it's gotta be your problem, not mine? By all means, arrest the monster if you can—it's better than I can get you. But I can't help you with anything...fucking...traditional." Read: anything legal, or even pretending to be.

Vera tried to crack a smile, but it came out more of a cringe. Назва́лся гру́здем — полеза́й в ку́зов, like her mom would have said.* She began jotting down notes, which conveniently enough allowed her to avoid looking Palmer in the eye as she spoke.

"And look, if you want me to help... with anything, I guess... you really don't fucking know the half of it." She paused; gritted her teeth slightly; dove in. "We always knew they thought of people like livestock; that if they got close enough, they could find us where we hid, and could go mad just smelling a bit of blood, but— it's more than that. They can smell even a drop of it across a room—from further, if they're old, or they've got those special senses some of them have, plus they can track you if they've...tasted you. They can see in the fucking dark, because of course they can. And the reason it's so fucking hard to hide from them is that they can hear our goddamned heartbeats." Vera tilted her head back as if to laugh, but it wasn't funny at all, and she dragged a hand down her face instead. "You know the best part? Turns out, even as one of their fucking pets I'm still a freak, so I can do all that too— 'cept with their blood instead of ours."

And then she leaned back in her seat, eyebrows lifted in a weak attempt at self-deprecation, as if admitting how unnatural she was somehow made it better.

"...I hadn't figured your heart got like that around me because you still wanted some, but hey, you're full of surprises."

[ *"Назва́лся гру́здем — полеза́й в ку́зов" translates as, "If you called yourself a milk-mushroom—get into the basket," and is the Russian equivalent of "in for a penny, in for a pound." In a related story, Russian proverbs are bizarre. ]

[firewatcher]

Palmer sat stock-still for a second, her mouth hanging open, before she shut it abruptly with the snapping sound of teeth clicking together. "Well, that's it. Forty-two years of monster-hunting and I am literally killed by embarrassment. That's fucking creepy, Jesus Christ."

She shook her head as if to clear it, and switched to Russian. "All right. Well. That's new information, good to know, thanks. Shit, that's... well, yeah, that explains a lot about them." A minor, perturbed pause. "Sorry, that's got to be... real weird. Okay. Yeah." She massaged her temples. "Maybe I can get you in before my team, I don't know. I guess I just told you because I figured you should know, even if there's not much you can do on this right now. Maybe we can't get him on this right away, but I can be a little patient."