2007-07-29: The Masochism Tango

Starring:

Bekah_icon.gif Elijah_icon.gif DFNamir_icon.gif DFSamantha_icon.gif

Summary:

Namir and Samantha are happily married, Bekah is energetic and bouncy, Elijah is an impostor, and this entire summary is a lie.

Dark Future Date: July 29th, 2009

The Masochism Tango


Samantha and Bekah's Apartment

Your eyes cast a spell that bewitches.

The last time I needed twenty stitches

To sew up the gash

That you made with your lash,

As we danced to the masochism tango.

It's dark out — or at least darker than it usually is these days — and the two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan is no exception. All the lights are out and it doesn't appear that anyone is home. But looks can be deceiving. Sitting in the utter darkness is a man who once lived here, but now he resorts to breaking in whenever he needs something. And he really, really needs something now. Namely medical attention. Whatever fine furniture there is in this place is now a bit bloodstained from the oozing hole in the Israeli's arm, but that's okay. Call it vindictiveness. He's field-bandaged it, but it's going to need a lot more than that if it's going to heal properly in the future. So there he sits, waiting for the medical personnel to arrive home so he can give them a nice bloody surprise. While he's being so wonderfully patient, he's raided the fridge, which is now two beers short. The empty bottles have been conspicuously hidden away, thrown out the window to the street below. It's not always easy being a devout Muslim in this day and age.

There's the sound of a key being applied to multiple locks, and Sam arrives with Bekah in tow. "I'm serious Beks, I'm not going to write you another scrip, what you need is sleep, not - " The minute she's opened the door she realizes someone is in the apartment, and the paper bag of groceries she's carrying is dropped. Shifting in front of Bekah, she withdraws something from her jacket, held with confidence that came as a result of Namir's training. Even the firearm is something they picked out together. It's like nostalgia, only with the possibility of critical wounds. Sam two years ago would never have picked up a gun. Sam's different now.

"I sleep." Bekah states rather stubbornly. Not enough, but she does. The permanent dark circles under her eyes are caused more by the overuse of a power that exhausts her. The upside to the current situation is that she can heal more openly. The downside to that being that she does it more. Whatever else she was going to say in this argument when she sees Sam pull the gun. Exhausted as she is, she didn't realize as quickly as Sam did that someone is there.

What, no 'pookie I'm home'? The magic is gone. The person who is indeed in the apartment sits in a chair in the living room. It would look completely natural, were it not for the bloodied bandage around his upper left arm and the trickles of dried and fresh blood running down to his elbow. Namir's stripped off his Kevlar vest and most of his other combat gear too and remains in cargo pants and a white tanktop that have seen better days. When he hears the keys in the lock, voices, and spots Sam with the gun, his already cold expression darkens considerably. "Go ahead," he grunts. "Even me up and put a hole in the other arm." Hello, sweetums.

-Click- goes the safety, back into place, and Sam moves to put the gun back in its holster under her jacket. It bothers her, wearing that thing, but one never knows when an unexpected appearance by people wanting to tag you and/or kill you might occur. Guns are more subtle then her sonic abilities. She bends to pick up the grocery bag, her voice nasal and irritated, "Did you bleed halfway across Manhattan to our doorstep?" Oh, and to be clear, that 'our' is her and Bekah. Kiss, pookie.

"Great. Blood on the chair. Just what we need." Bekah says as she moves over towards Namir. She's not as angry at him as Sam. But then, she's not married to him. "What did you do to yourself now?" She asks before looking to Sam. "Will you get the light? I'll take care of this." Even if she is already dead on her seat. "I wouldn't want him to make any more of a mess. Well, maybe. You made the mess, you get to clean it, Namir."

"Would it have been more convenient if I'd gotten shot right in front of your door?" There's just the slightest emphasis on the word 'your' which is quite bitter and snappish. "Maybe I should have waited a little while and you could have done the honors yourself." And how was work?~

When Bekah approaches, Namir's dour demeanor eases just the slightest bit. See, at least there's one doctor who is nice to him. A little bit. He pulls his arm away from her slightly, as though attempting to get it out of reach, grimacing a little at the movement. "No, don't worry about it, Bekah. You look like you are about to drop dead." A pointed glare is shot towards Samantha. "Just stitch me up and I'll get out of your way."

Samantha is almost simultaneous with Namir. "No, /you/ get the lamp, I'll take care of him. You're going to collapse if you exert yourself one more time today. And after you bring me the lamp, you can sit the hell down." Sam's already moving to collect supplies (they keep a triage kit in the house now) and wash up. "Take off your shirt." she orders Namir crisply.

Bekah moves off to get the lamp with a shake of her head. "I'm /fine./" She says. And likely she's said that way too many times lately when it wasn't really true. She returns with it, passing it off to Sam before she reaches out to grab Namir's arm. She doesn't heal it all the way. In fact, it's still going to need stitches. But any damage the bullet had down to the muscle is healed by her touch. She's too stubborn, or too stupid, not to do it. "Alright. Now I'll sit." On the floor. Because she doesn't want to show Sam she shouldn't have done it by swaying when she walks.

There's no argument from Namir. He starts to strip off his shirt grudgingly and, though he doesn't make any sound or many faces to indicate, his stiff movements would testify that the process is just a bit painful. He's just peeled the thing off when Bekah leaps in with her surprise healing. As soon as he realizes what she's doing, the man jerks his arm away with a guttural snarl of something in Arabic. It doesn't sound like a 'thank you', but it does smell a bit like beer. Once she's seated, Namir scowls at Bekah. He told her not to do that, damn it.

Sitting on the floor pretty much tells Sam the same thing. "Get yourself up and onto the couch." she bullies Bekah without sympathy. Nor does she help Namir with his shirt. Once her gloves are on and she's all set up, she inspects the wound. "You're lucky." she says. Snark tends to dissapate when she's working on a wound. Mostly. "Passed through, missed the bone, all we've got to do is sew you up. When Bekah's feeling better she can help to speed heal it." For a moment, Samantha considers not utilizing her anesthetic. Because she's evil.

Just not that evil.

With a sigh, she reaches for a bottle holding something to sterilize the wound with.

Bekah wrinkles her nose at Namir. Thank you, too. "Couch. Right." She states as she stands shakily to move over towards it. And lay down across it. Because sitting is for losers. "How did you get yourself shot this time?" She asks towards Namir as she watches Sam work.

"Thanks, I sure feel lucky," grumbles Namir with no small amount of sarcasm. He keeps his head turned away from Sam for no reason whatsoever. Thank Allah Bekah is right there to provide something to look at that isn't the wall or a piece of furniture. Otherwise he might look like he's sulking or something. "I surprised a couple of goons in an alley over where the old Starbucks used to be. They won't have to worry about such things anymore." Probably because they're dead.

"Government?" asks Sam, in a tone that is somewhere between a never admitted concern about him and contempt for the undoubted idiocy that wound him up in that alley.

Bekah is laying across the couch turned on her side to watch Sam and Namir. There is tension between Sam and Namir there that would be hard to imagine two years before. Samantha looks to be preparing to sew up a gunshot wound in Namir's arm. Bekah covers a yawn with her hand before she comments dryly, "You know. I really used to like that Starbucks."

There is a rap on the door, the sound slightly muffled from the inside, though the sudden sound might startle in this unknowable time. "Bek, it's me, you home?" Elijah's voice slips around the edges of the door, marked by a weariness that can easily be heard.

"Mm." It sounds a lot like a pained grunt due to the cleaning of the gunshot wound in his arm, but it's really an affirmative answer to Sam's question. It's also less venomous than his previous utterances to her, but this little nuance might be difficult to pick up, since Namir is still looking at everything but her. He smirks a little at Bekah's remark and lets out a wry snort. Then it's back to Sam. He finally does look at her, then down at her hands as she works on his arm. "It looks like you've been doing well for yourself in our apartment." The 'our' is not meaning Bekah and Sam, thankyouverymuch. The knock at the door causes him to tense and he jerks his arm away from Sam to reflexively reach for the assault rifle that's been resting near his feet.

Samantha has a really good stitching hand. So good that she probably could have taken a surgeon rotation back when she was a resident, and she's even done it under durress. So perhaps one could assume that the press of the anesthesia swab being much harder then necessary is entirely on purpose. "We're safe enough thus far." she murmurs, refusing to rise to his bait. Her brows narrow together and her mouth purses in concentration.

"Our apartment has held up just fine." Bekah places a bit of emphasis on the our as she stands, resting hand against the edge of the couch to steady herself. She really shouldn't have healed some of the damage to Namir's arm. "It's Eli." She adds towards the tense Namir as she makes her way to the door. She still looks through the peep hole before she carefully opens it. Just in case Elijah has someone with a gun pointing at him or something silly like that. "Come in, come in." She states as she opens the door, ushering him in quickly so she can lock it again. And return to a horizontal position.

As the tired looking young man slips in past Bekah, he glances over at her, "Bek, you look like hell." Elijah's grin is playful, if short lived, his own eyes marked by a slow exhaustion that creeps over him. Namir's presence is met with an impassive grunt as he nods his greeting to Samantha, himself unarmed as he allows Bekah to secure the door behind him.

Wince! Namir's jaw clenches when Sam presses that swab down. He knows that was on purpose. Even if it wasn't on purpose, he would have known it was on purpose. "Surprising," he growls, "considering that you don't seem to have any defenses against shapeshifters." The doctoring seems to have stopped him from getting to the assault rifle, but he's got a pistol within easy reach on his belt, and he draws it to rest it casually in his lap, within plain sight and easily capable springing into action at a moment's notice. He watches Elijah with obvious wariness and offers no greeting. Someone's become a little more paranoid over the past two years.

"There's a point at which we'd never leave the house." Sam snaps defensively. Then, "Hey, Eli." She goes back to work, starting with the stitching. This is she doesn't muck around with. Too easy to make a mistake. She goes silent as she starts stitching him up on one side, and then will have to do the other.

Bekah reaches out to give Elijah a quick hug, if he'll take it then heads back to the couch with a look to Namir. "You know, if you shoot my brother, I will be royally pissed off at you." She says to Namir before she stretches out on the couch again, curling her feet in to leave room for Elijah. "Please tell me that you're not here because you're bleeding, too, Eli." Bekah says with a bit of dry humor in her tone, ignoring the comment on how she looks completely.

The gun gets a dismissive glance as Elijah shakes his head, his eyes turning toward Bekah and Samantha, "I'm going on a run tomorrow, should be able to pick some things up, do you guys have anything you desperately need?" Bekah's hug is accepted and returned as moves to sit in the open spot, the whisper of a grin returning, "No, just checking up on you two and making a shopping list, as it were."

"How do you know it's your brother?" mutters Namir, somehow managing to put a spin on it that doesn't scream 'I'm a paranoid crazy person'. His eyes remain on Elijah for a bit before they finally snap away to glare at Sam again. "Pardon me if I don't particularly feel like scraping your corpses off the floor would be the highlight of my year."

Samantha pauses mid-stitch just because he's ticked her off enough to merit a response. Baring her teeth, she snarls, "Aww, I love you too, baby." She then goes back to stitching. "Depends on where you're going. You know the usual if you're going to have access to medical supplies - antibiotics, painkillers, some dermapatch if you can get it, but I won't hold my breath. Otherwise, just what you can. Thanks, Eli." She doesn't look up from her work while she gives the young man her shopping list.

"Because he hugs like my brother." Bekah says, annoyance seeping into her tone. "How do I know you're not a shapeshifter? Maybe we should shoot you full of a few more holes. After all, you broke in. Eli at least had the decency to knock." Bekah considers that for a few moments before she nods to Sam's list. "The medical stuff is the most important. Definately antibiotics."

A nod is directed at Samantha and the barest hint of a wry grin given as she expresses her displeasure with Namir. As the usual list is offered up by both doctors, Elijah sighs at Namir and says, "What proof do you want, man? I'm tired and I don't feel like playing twenty questions, so put away the gun, I've seen enough of those being waved around today."

"Do you want proof?" Namir's lips move and his throat works as though he is speaking — the only major difference is that the actual question seems to be coming from right beside Bekah, though it's a little wavering and weak. Blame the fact that Namir is currently enduring a stitching. "I don't think a shapeshifter could do this." Same result, different place: now the voice is under the couch. His voice returns to him when Elijah speaks. "I don't need to ask a question. You could offer me proof if you wanted."

The same cannot be said for Samantha who, should she try to speak, will find that her voice is no longer functioning. Namir is just so mature that way.

Samantha des in fact, start to speak only to find that she's not able to. And it's not like she doesn't know why. Lips tightening in a thin line, She takes the pincers she's been using to sew him up, shifts them carefully into one hand…and uses the other to cross-clock him in the jaw with her free elbow. (He taught her that, too.) Then calm as you please, she goes back to sewing.

Bekah lifts her eyebrows as Namir sends his voice all around the room. "Show off time?" She asks before she just smirks when Samantha clocks his face. "Men." She mutters before she looks over to Elijah. "Take this as a lesson. Don't be mean to your wive, even if you're not getting along splendidly." Bekah muses. "Well, I already showed off my power, so I figure you'll believe I'm Bekah. Besides the fact you broke into my home and bled on the furniture." That's addressed back to Namir, of course.

Elijah sighs, nearly too tired to make the effort, but he does, rising from where he is seated to approach Namir. As the man sits there, unmoving, the blond haired younger man picks up the handgun from Namir's lap, sets it on the table out of his reach and moves back to his seat with Bekah, "Good thing I'm not a shapeshifter, yes?" His tone is sarcastic as he rests an arm on the armrest that his sister has so conveniently provided in the form of legs.

Namir is so focused on Elijah and the fact that the man could possibly maybe be not himself that he doesn't even consider such retaliation from Sam. When it happens, he's quite taken off-guard. That's what he gets for pointedly not looking at her. The impact is frozen mid-way, however, leaving him with his head comically turned to one side and his face contorted into something rather odd and unnatural. Thusly stuck, Namir can't do anything to prevent Elijah from taking the gun, but he's really rather not happy about the fact that Sam just hit him in the face and he was prevented from retaliating in any sort of real way by this rather untimely proof that Eli really is himself. Sure he asked for it. Doesn't mean he likes it.

"Eli." Sam's tone is oddly gentle, with an undercurrent of something waspish. "Let him go." There's the evidence of something left between them, as fast as they are to attack each other, God help the person who tries to intercede between them, much less harm one or the other.

"Is that proof enough that he's a Morgan?" Bekah asks with a smirk for the position that Namir ended up frozen in. Hey, he did ask for it. Literally. Bekah grabs an end pillow tucking it under her head. When Elijah sits back down, she kicks off her battered sneakers and rests her feet in his lap. Brothers equal foot rests after all, right?

"I'm just giving him proof, Sam, you know it doesn't hurt." Elijah's voice reflects the weariness that seems to have settled over those in the apartment, a nod of thanks directed toward Bekah. Shifting his gaze back toward Namir, he poses a query touched by honest curiosity, "How'd you get shot, anyway?"

Once he's able to actually move again, Namir shakes his head and brings his free hand up to rub at the growing bruise on his jaw. "Thanks," he grunts rather bitterly. "Work on your timing." It's proof enough, however, and he doesn't reach to pick up the pistol again. "Someone had a gun. They pulled the trigger when it was pointed in my general direction." My, but someone is a little sore, isn't he?

Samantha can't help herself. "Sloppy." she mutters, and moves to the second hole - the one the bullet went out by way of.

"I thought his timing was perfect." Bekah says sleepily. Her eyes are starting to close. Even with all the tension between people in the room, she's starting to fall asleep.

"Then you shouldn't stand in front of guns, I suppose." Elijah's words are unamused, green eyes flickering toward Samantha as she mutters with an arched eyebrow directed at Bekah. As his sister begins to nod off, he turns his attention on Samantha, "Do you want me to stay?" The question is pointed and his failure to look at Namir underscores the reasoning behind the question.

Who knew one little two-syllable word could sting so much? Then again, Namir's always been proud of his abilities and his skills when it comes to such work. The only reason he got shot was because he was as surprised as the men he'd walked in on. So that one little word sparks some renewed ire, and once again Samantha will not be speaking much anytime soon. This time, however, Namir is watching her — glaring at her, even — prepared for any physical retaliation she plans to throw his way.

Samantha starts to open her mouth to reply, and when she can't, /again/, retaliates by digging the pincer into the edge of his wound, just a little. But she looks at Elijah and shakes her head. Points to Bekah, flutters a hand toward the other doctor's bedroom. And while Namir is wincing from the pain remarks now audibly, "If I wanted self-righteous, I'd call my mother in Tel Aviv. Go put Bekah to bed and leave me to harrass my husband in peace, kid."

Bekah is out like a light. Or almost. She mutters something completely unintelligible when Sam tells Elijah to put her to bed. Couch is comfy. Sleep good. All that.

Rolling his eyes, Elijah rises, "Whatever you say, Sam," his words taking on a long suffering tone as he helps his sister to bed. Making sure she's settled in the room, he moves to leave the apartment and the troublesome couple to their own devices. "I'll stop by with the supplies tomorrow night, if all goes well. Take care until then and don't forget to lock up after me." The master of the obvious at the moment, he lets himself out, the door closing quietly behind him.

The cry of pain that Namir releases is muffled by the fact that his jaw is tightly clenched shut. He squeezes his eyes closed and, though he fights to keep his concentration in maintaining Sam's silence, it just doesn't work out to his liking, and he fails utterly. So now it's time to sulk, at which he succeeds admirably. He only offers a glower at Elijah and what sounds like it could have been a grunt in farewell when the man steps out. Then, he turns his attention to Samantha. It's not entirely friendly. "Are you almost finished, or did you plan to break a few fingers while you were there?"

"I'll be finished soon provided you quit fussing like a great big baby." she tells him, and assuming he doesn't give her a hard time, is finished in a few moments. "Do you want any painkillers? I can give you something strong if you stay here, if not, the best I can offer is acetametaphine or ibuprofen."

Namir's only response during the rest of the stitching is a grunt and a scowl at other parts of the room. By the time it's all finished, he's had sufficient time to cool down more, and his reply to the question of painkillers is noticeably less snappish and harsh. Not entirely so, but some. He emits a quiet snort and smirks sardonically. "Would you want me to stay here?" But he doesn't wait around long for an answer, because he's already starting to get to his feet. "I need to wash up. Is the shower still there?"

"Everything in the apartment's intact, including the plumbing." Sam replies. "You know where the towels are." She doesn't answer his first question, but looks bone weary as she starts washing up and putting away the supplies.

"Hm." Yes, Namir knows where the towels are. He starts off on his way to get one but pauses and glances over his shoulder again at Sam. She didn't answer the first question, and it most certainly couldn't have been to spare his feelings. He turns around again and heads back to stand directly behind her in what would be considered an invasion of personal space, however he doesn't touch her save for the brush of a cheek against hair when he lowers his face until it's almost level with her ear. "You didn't answer my question."

Samantha is silent for a time, then turns her head to look him in the eye. "Wanting you was never the problem."

What was the problem, then? He doesn't know. Or maybe he does and just doesn't want to bring it up. Whatever the case, Namir doesn't say anything. He simply moves in for a kiss — because honestly, wanting Sam was never the problem either.

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