milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

That was unpleasant.

And yet Boyd, like so many, cannot help but pick at a sore spot. And he wants to know what that was -- that thing that's left him with a bullet in his pocket to turn over and over in his hand.

It's what he's doing at the bar right now. There's a drink at his right hand, to assist in thinking. The bullet can and will be palmed.

And Boyd is ready, if it happens again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

X flicks a glance in that direction, nostrils flaring again.

Some things leave a scent residue.

Some do not.

Then she looks back at Boyd.

"Not often," she says eventually.

Carefully.

"But sometimes."

Beat.

"You are okay?"

"No blood appears to have been spilled."

It's true.

"I know," she says.

She does.

"Sometimes that is not relevant."

"Why wouldn't it be relevant here?"

"You do not have to bleed," X says, very clearly, "to be hurt."

Boyd grins. There's something a little feral to it.

"Why, Miss X," he says. "You a licensed psychologist?"

"No," X says levelly.

Her expression is blank.

"But I have been dismembered."

That was never the worst part.

There is just enough of a pause to indicate that this has registered with Boyd Crowder as something out of the ordinary.

"Then I suppose you know," Boyd says, "that the presence of blood might indicate that somebody got hurt."

X tilts her head, studying Boyd a bit more intently.

"Hurt," she allows, with a one-shouldered shrug. "Or dead."

They are not the same thing.

"But that is not what I said. You know."

He looks at X for a moment, unblinking.

And then Boyd says:

"Miss X, what you might not realize is that men like me, we don't much care for contemplating our own inner mechanisms out in public with somebody else. So that's not what I'm talking about. And that's not why I started down this line of inquiry."

"I do not think it is just men," X says, expression more than a little dubious. "Who do not like to do that."

Beat.

"You think you are hallucinating? Or you are worried. About that."

X is terrible at guessing games.

She is also terrible at meandering around a point.

"I suppose," Boyd says after a moment, "I'd like to know if it's a common occurrence to run into spectral figures from your past who have the ability to commit violence upon your person and who then vanish."

"It is not common," X says.

"And Milliways dead do not vanish. Like that."

A pause.

"But I do not think you are the only one."

"I suppose that might be a comfort," Boyd says, a little dry.

"I do not know."

Her reply is matter-of-fact.

"It has not happened to me."

"Well," Boyd says, "it's nice to know it's not likely I've started hallucinating all by myself. But it's not as nice to know that there's a pack of personal ghosts that can harm an individual roaming around this place."

X blinks.

Twice.

"You said you were okay."

She does not, however, look surprised.

"Ghosts," Boyd says, patient, "are supposed to go right through you. This one could land a punch."

"Okay."

X absorbs that, frowning slightly.

"There is a name? And a description. For the ghost."

Beat.

"I will look."

Boyd is very still for a moment.

Then he drains his glass.

"I'm not pressing charges," he says.

"Okay."

She says it easily.

"Some people do not."

Except --

"You do not think it will hit anyone else?"

"He might," Boyd says. "If they backtalk him."

"I do not know what that constitutes."

At least she knows the term!

"For him."

Dust-dry:

"Anything he don't like."

"That is not a very specific parameter."

She pauses for a moment.

"For people who do not know him. Your ghost."