milliways_bar | (no subject)

In winter it can be difficult to balance dressing warm enough not to freeze outside and dressing cool enough not to burn up from exertion. Rae comes in from the lake area a short time after Matt's entrance, her breath fogging in the cold air, sweat wetting the little locks of hair framing her face and at the back of her neck, making them stick to her skin. The ground isn't frozen yet, so she pauses a bit at the doormat to get as much mud off the soles of her beaten-up running shoes as possible before she comes in.

She is crossing the room towards the bar - her water bottle needs refilling and she's ready for a rest - when she notices Matt standing with his hands against the wall, breathing hard.

"Matt?" Sunshine asks, concern in her voice as she approaches. "Are you all right?"

He's running through scenarios and regrets and possibilities in his head and trying to figure how the hell he's going to get back there.

Rae's voice registers and his hands come off the wall. At last he finally takes stock of himself and where he is exactly.

Turning around his movements to straighten himself out are jerky. He runs a hand through his hair and adjusts his glasses, very conscious of the fact now that he's still out of breath and doesn't have his cane.

"Yeah, uh-- I just... I think my door is gone." He tries to give her a sheepish smile, but it doesn't quite make it.

"Shiva wept," Rae mutters, sympathetically. She's been there, herself, and the feeling is sincere. "I'm sorry."

It explains why he was standing at the wall where the door usually is, and why he's upset. Though he looks like he might have been riled up before finding he was bound, rather than after.

"Being bound is... frustrating as all hell and really inconvenient," she remarks. It hadn't been the best introduction to Milliways, for her. Rae had taken to calling Milliways the 'friendly, kidnapping bar' for a while. "The door'll come back eventually, at least, but there's no sure way to know when."

Edited 2016-12-07 22:31 (UTC)

He straightens the knot on his tie and forces the hand that smooths it out to become steady and his breathing to slow, as well.

"I really need to get back. Surely there must be some way." He works hard to keep the anxiety and anger from his voice, but there's a tightness in his jaw and tension in his shoulders that aren't dispelled so easily.

It's like the full-body version of taking a messy pile of cards, putting them together, and fanning them neatly in one's hand. Same hand, just more put-together.

"I don't know of a way out of being bound - and you're not the first to really need one - apart from the door just showing up again. We could ask the Bar?" she suggests, unsure. Even if his anxiety and anger are mostly hidden from his tone of voice, the turmoil in his shadows is as clear as day.

"If it's a time-sensitive issue, you know that time stops on the other side of your door while you're here, right?"

Her answer isn't satisfactory, but he knows she's right, and that this isn't her fault.

Behind his glasses Matt's eyes close, and he can hear Claire's struggle on the other side of the phone ringing in his ears.

Rae's last words give him some small measure of comfort and he tries hard to hang onto that.

"Yes. I know."

Pulling in a slow deep breath he finally finishes gathering himself together.

"I'm sorry. I didn't expect this to happen."

Rae shakes her head. "No one ever does," she says, with wry but heartfelt sympathy. "I was bound my very first time in, which as a first impression didn't endear the place to me very much, I can tell you."

There was the minor complication of being weakened by slow-acting poison at the time, which would have killed her had the door not returned in time.

"I don't... really think the Bar has anything to do with what Milliways does as a whole, like with the door, but we can at least ask."

"That does sound like it would be a rough introduction to this place." Although Matt would honestly take being bound his first time in over right now.

Resigning himself to the fact that the door isn't going to reappear on it's own he accepts the offered suggestion.

"Alright."

A brief, hesitating moment and he lifts his hand.

"Would you mind?" If nothing else maybe Bar can give him another cane, and help him figure out what the hell he's going to do while he's stuck here.

"Breakfast rush, lugging a full, heavy tray of cinnamon rolls out to the front, and I'm suddenly here with the door locked behind me and a bunch of weirdos in front of me," Rae says, wry. "I may have freaked out more than a little." At least one of the weirdos had been a vampire, and still it hadn't been too bad. No one had ended up dead! That's always a plus.

"I don't mind at all," she replies, stepping forward to let him take her arm. "So long as you don't mind me being a bit of a mess. I caught you on my way in from my run."

One can be as clean as one can be when one starts out, but after a few miles run around a pseudo-Scotish lake in the cold, no one is at their best.

The arm under his hand as Rae leads Matt through the tangle of tables to the bar is lean and muscled, hinting at somewhat more strength than perhaps one would get just from lifting heavy baking trays every day. There is also a sizeable scar running the length of her upper arm. Not from a cut or a scrape or a burn, but the scar of a messy tear such as would be made by teeth. It is long healed, but the scar is still there, currently with the faint rasp of salt from dried sweat.

Edited 2016-12-08 03:53 (UTC)

"Rough and inconvenient," he says, this time his smile managing a bit better. "Did the rolls at least earn you some friends?"

He dismisses the idea that there is anything offending about her current state with a short shake of his head and accepts her help with a, "Thank you."

His hand closes on her arm and he can feel the muscle tone and notes that it isn't exactly the same as someone who strength trains. The definition doesn't speak so much of a sculpted physique as it does muscles which are used, and often.

It makes him curious, and the scar only adds to that. He resists the urge to feel it out with his fingertips and instead walks along with her seemingly more focused on navigating than on her arm.

"A few friends and a few more repeat customers yeah," she says, smiling faintly. "Still, I needed to be back in my world quite badly, and I didn't take very well to the bar keeping me here."

Even apart from the whole slowly-dying-of-poison thing, she had resented being kept away for so long. It's almost ironic now, when she has spent so long in Milliways of her own free will.

"Here's the bar. There's a bar stool about a foot in front of you, and the counter top beyond that," Rae offers as they reach their destination. She generally doesn't hide her scars, but she doesn't exactly show them off, either. It is very rare for someone to actually touch them, and so it was a bit difficult not to be a little self conscious of his hand on her arm as they walked.

He doubts her reasons for needing to get back match his own, but also allows that that fact doesn't lessen the hardship of her own stint being bound here.

"Anyone stuck in a place against their will wouldn't take it well," he replies, reaching out his free hand and locating the stool before slipping his other free of her arm; his fingertips perhaps trailing along the line of her scar briefly before pulling away.

"Hello again, Bar," he greets the counter as he takes a seat. Best to be cordial, right?"

"Sometimes there's a reason behind being bound," Rae says as she takes a seat at the bar, though she sounds skeptical. "Sometimes. And it might not be easy to tell if there is at the time, and there's no guarantee of there being a worthwhile reason at all."

General source of frustration, yes.

A napkin appears on the counter top, one corner under Matt's fingertips. On it, in Braille, are the words,Hello again, Matt Murdock.