2007-02-24: Ice, Ice, Baby

Starring:

Lachlan_icon.gif Hector_icon.gif

Summary:

Lachlan and Hector have a Rematch. It winds up with Lachlan in the hospital after Hector whips out his Hands Of Icy Justice.

Date It Happened: February 24th, 2007

Ice, Ice, Baby


Lower East Side

Nighttime in the City that Never Sleeps means several things to several people. To some, it is a time of danger; to others, a time to party. To Lachlan Deatley, it means the dogs have to go out for a walk if he wants to keep his apartment even remotely sanitary. Two Dobermans can make one /hell/ of a mess, if given the opportunity. Dressed in his usual jacket-jeans-shirt combination and bearing a newly lit cigarette between his lips, the Scotsman exits Eastern Centennial Apartments and sets off down the sidewalk, his canine companions leading the way on their leashes.

For Hector, nighttime in the city provides a unique opportunity to drink with a familiar pair of alcoholic vagrants while they are still conscious enough to imbibe. Occasional laughter echoes from an alley painted in flickering shades of orange by a small pile of burning trash. A boot too worn to be worn, several old newspapers, a crumpled Mcdonalds bag. Cheap vodka is passed around with little care for cleanliness, and for the most part, the trio seems ignorant of the outside world. That is until a distantly familiar outline with a distantly familiar pair of dogs passes by across the street, and the tallest (if not strictly the scruffiest or soberest) figure lifts his head and narrows his eyes.

For the most part, Lachlan is quite oblivious to anything going on outside his own head. The dogs weave about busily in front of him, noses to the ground and (occasionally) legs cocked against trees, fences, hydrants, and anything else a male dog might see fit to mark. It's not long before they cross to the side of the street that opens into the alley occupied by the bums. Even as they near the mouth, master and dogs remain rather unaware of the homeless men and their fire.

They are not quite there yet when Hector steps out of the alley and onto the sidewalk, less thickly dressed than his companions in a simple overcoat over an even simpler suit. There are no pinstripes this evening. Merely bare threads, and a thin crust of dirt to mark the position he had been settled in before deciding to rain upon Lachlan's parade. "You there!" is his greeting, cigarette-roughened voice made even more coarse than usual by what he's had to drink. "Spare a smoke?"

So caught up in his own thoughts, Lachlan doesn't even realize there are people in the alley until Hector looms out of the darkness. Immediately, the dogs begin barking, recalling exactly what happened the last time they and their master encountered this man. However, they are held in check by the leashes and Lachlan's sharp order of, "Shut yer bloody yaps!" Once the dogs have quieted, he narrows his eyes at Hector, lifting one hand to pluck the cigarette from between his lips. "No' fer the likes o' ye, no," he grunts. "Last I saw ye, ye looked like ye could afford yer own bloody smokes." He hasn't forgotten the subway train. He hasn't forgotten the fight, either. His still-wrapped left hand won't allow him to.

Meanwhile, though it's difficult to see in the relative darkness (particularly when he's staggering to avoid falling over backwards when the dogs start barking), the side of Hector's face has bruised quite nicely. Bearings regained quickly enough once they /stop/, if still awkward in a fight-or-flight sort of posture necessitated by threat of his imminent death by mauling, he chuckles nastily. "And last time I saw you, I marked you for dead. How deceptive appearances can sometimes be."

Gruntsnort, goes Lachlan, who is highly amused by Hector's mad scramble when the dogs start barking. "'M no' easy ta kill," he remarks dryly. It also helps that Hendrickson hasn't shown up on his doorstep. Yet. "Bit pissed, are ye?" Alcohol's not an easy smell to mask, especially to dog noses and, incidentally, the man who picks up on their brainwaves.

"Unless you've trained these mongrels to /catch bullets/, I suspect…I suspect…" Whatever Hector /suspects/, he seems to forget what it is, exactly, so that his brow furrows and he looks briefly aside. "A bit, yes, but nevermind. We could test precisely how not easy it is. A sort of…scientific experiment."

Experiment? That doesn't sound like an experiment to him. That sounds like a /brawl/. "Ye want me ta beat the shit outta ye again?" Lachlan snorts. "Ye dinna learn yer lesson the first time?" /Honestly/, some people. And this time, Hector's a bit drunk, too. The Scotsman has no doubt he could come out on top. Again.

"Such self-security." Tone and expression rife with condescension, Hector straightens himself out as well as he can while still falling somewhat short of his usual upright posture. "There was a study done on that, you know. Turns out that stupidity correlates directly with over-confidence."

Having less than a high school education and even less of a propensity for learning, Hector's last statement is somewhat lost on Lachlan. However, there is the word 'stupid' in there, and that's never a good word to hear when someone is talking to (about!) you. His jaw clenches, and his lips contort into a deep scowl. "Yer lookin' fer a box," he growls warningly.

Already cold enough to cloud breath and create thin continents of ice over puddles in the street, the air dips colder still, and Hector clears his throat around a wheezing cough. "Am I? Well now I'm truly frightened."

"Ye want me ta black up the other side o' yer face ta match the last whippin' I gave ye?" Lachlan growls as he takes a step closer, shivering as the temperature drops further. The dogs shuffle on their feet uneasily. Sudden dips in temperature are really unsettling. Even with one hand, the Scotsman figures he can win. Then again, if he were in a full-body cast and eating food through a straw, he'd probably think he could still beat Hector in a fight.

Unsteady on his feet as he is, Hector chuckles again — which leads into another foggy cough. The overall effect falls somewhere short of intimidating, but he doesn't shiver at the cold. He merely curls his right hand into a fist, and holds his ground. "Honestly."

Well then! Knowing full well that the dogs are well under control without their leashes, Lachlan drops them to the sidewalk and lunges forward, aiming a fast jab with his right hand toward Hector's stomach. Unfortunately, as the Scotsman is a lefty, this strike is not nearly as powerful as it would be coming from the opposite hand, however it is still capable of being painful. No more talk, just brawling.

"Hrff—" Well, this is familiar. Breath caught sharp, if not lost like before, Hector stumbles back and aside into the wall at the alley's edge. An odd glitter at his fist glistens sharp in the firelight, and he swings brutally at the side of Lachlan's head while the two bums from before cheer. Should the blow make contact, it will feel a bit like being bricked in the head with a chunk of ice.

/Crack!/ That is the sound of ice meeting skull, as Lachlan was in the process of stepping forward to deal another blow when Hector swung. Caught off-guard, the Scotsman is unable to duck or dodge away, and the blow knocks his face to the side and sends him reeling. Spots dance before his eyes, his knees go watery, and he drops onto his backside on the sidewalk, trying desperately to make the world stop spinning. "Ffffffffuck," is barely discernable in the hiss of pain he emits. Blood dribbles from between his lips as it drains from the gash on the inside of his cheek where flesh met teeth, and his face burns red-hot with pain. Ow, ow, ow.

Still relying upon the support of the grimy wall behind him to stay standing, Hector brings his iced-over right hand briefly up to his chest to expose lines of red spidering out beneath frosty blue. "Well that was terribly anti-climactic," he rasps to the top of Lachlan's head once he's evened out his breathing to a respectable degree. "Care to try again?"

Judging by the fact that Lachlan is swaying a little bit where he sits on the sidewalk, it's a good guess that, no, he'd not like to try again. There's not even an indication that he heard Hector. There's just a wobbly hand being lifted to wipe at the blood on his lips and a rather dazed expression. The dogs are soon at his sides, snuffling at his face and whining softly in concern. It's going to take some doing to explain /this/ to hospital staff.

"/No/? Are you certain? Your dashing reputation as The Amazing Invicible Scotsman is at stake. Your dogs will think so poorly of you." Hector heckles without mercy while the ice layered about his hand cracks, and with some help from his left hand, begins to fall away in pieces. It is in the midst of this process that he looks up again and notices that Lachlan hasn't…actually done much of anything along the lines of getting up. He pauses. "Hello?"

There /is/ some progress in the department of mobility! Lachlan manages to lift an arm and push half-heartedly at one of the dogs' faces to get the thing's muzzle out of /his/ face. However, it is a groggy and somewhat uncoordinated movement, followed by a low groan and eyes that are squeezed tightly shut. /Bugger/. His head has reached the 'throbbing pain' stage. "Fffffuck," is heard again, though a little less articulate this time, what with a mouthful of blood and all. He's vaguely aware of Hector's heckling, but isn't inclined to react to it much.

A sharp breath hisses between Hector's teeth when the largest chunk falls away and crackles to the ground, exposing split knuckles to the open air. The pain is forgotten quickly enough, however, with alcohol's numbing effect such that he's able to flex those fingers even while the other five grope around in the interior of his jacket after a cell phone. He does have the forethought, at least, to step out of the line of sight of his other two bum friends as he does so. The fact that he sticks a foot out with intent to plant it in Lachlan's side and knock him over in passing is purely for his benefit. He should really lie down. Really.

Unfortunately, he only makes it halfway down before a dog-body stops him, and Lachlan latches onto the dog drunkenly as he knocks into it. Oof! "Mnaryebloodysonuvabissssh," is his very comprehensible and witty response to being shoved around. The dog who isn't acting as a body prop bares its teeth at Hector as he passes, but makes no moves to attack. He hasn't been told to do so, and he's a good dog.

Bared teeth are more than enough to prompt a stumbling adjustment in Hector's course that veers him back into the wall. Something along the lines of, "Mangy bastard," spared the canine in question, he continues to grumble as he dials with his left hand, and shakes a trickle of blood away from his sleeve with the right. Blllgh. "Yes — 911. I've just witnessed a crazy homeless person attack a man with two dogs near the…the…" he glances up, and squints. It takes him a few seconds to make out most of the letters. "The Eastern…Centetharian Apartments, or something like that. No, self-defense I think. Tall, grey hair. Sort've…creepy and thin. Britishy." Not even bothering to attempt shielding his own accent as he speaks, Hector eyes Lachlan with clear distaste.

Lachlan is coming out of it enough to pick up a little on Hector's conversation, but he's still not conscious enough to get back onto his feet. He squints at the tall dark silhouette against the wall. "Bastar'," is what he manages to growl before he turns his head to spit a wad of bloodied saliva on the sidewalk. It was /not/ self-defense. Hector swung /first/, what with his name-calling.

A street location rattled off a little more coherently in contrast to the rest of his rambling about the victim (bit thick looking, Scottish, bleeding from the mouth), Hector hangs up. "We should really do this again sometime," he says, perhaps a little too cheerfully, "but I must run away or risk another night behind bars. I am sorry about your face." There is a pause there, and then, "Not as sorry as your mother, I'm sure."

Another blob of crimson saliva exits Lachlan's face, and this time it's directed somewhere in the vicinity of Hector's face. Or … well, actually, it's more in the vicinity of his torso. And possibly it will land short and land in the vicinity of his feet. Somewhere. In that area. "Piss off," is his chipper reply (only it's a little less chipper and more drunkenly angry).

Splat. Bloody spit makes it all the way up to Hector's middle. Only just having managed to tuck his phone away, he brushes at it with his undamaged hand, and looks dimly annoyed as he turns to walk away. Still brushing, and still bleeding. "Ingrate."

"… Bastar'!" Lachlan can't think of a more creative insult, so he just recycles the other one. In time, the ambulance arrives, and he's transported to the hospital for some X-Rays and a little overnight watch for the mild concussion. The Scotsman will live to fight another day, which may or may not be a good thing.

A few blocks over, Hector is eventually forced to do a runner when a cop car pulls over to ask him a few questions. He is really way too old to still be doing this sort of thing. It's all Lachlan's fault, too.

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