applesaucedream | Blessed are the vagrant, lonely are the static ones [closed]

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Blessed are the vagrant, lonely are the static ones [closed]

Loose change can only take one so far in terms of public transport and it's well past noon and Daniel hasn't even eaten today, so he elects to walk even if it is, as his luck would have it, raining very heavily. The present downpour is a great deal more copious than is fair considering the streak of abysmal events that have led him along to this unremarkable moment in his life.

In an effort to avoid the downpour he ducks into the closest establishment he can find, a cramped-looking café or deli sort of place that probably doesn't appreciate him dripping all over the faded blue tile floors and maneuvering awkwardly around the tables so he can get to the farthest, most out-of-the-way corner booth he can find. Shaking wet hair from his eyes, he shoves his two bags beneath it with less care than is really warranted. Both bags are already battered and falling apart at the corners enough, and they hold every possession Daniel has left in the world.

The sole barista at the counter doesn't look happy to (a) be maintaining an almost empty establishment on a spectacularly rainy late afternoon or (b) have to deal with the colony of puddles steadily collecting beneath Daniel's table as he hunches his shoulders and tries to count out his change to see if he has enough to avoid being thrown out for loitering. It's not looking optimistic. He wilts a little at the realization and shoots a nervous glance at the barista who has ceased her mechanical wiping of the countertop to level a simmering glower at him, fingers drumming, silently daring Daniel to think of a reason for why he should be the least bit welcome here. At the present moment, he's coming up empty. He swallows hard and returns to recounting his change in the blind hope that he's miscalculated.

Five minutes and seven recounts later, Daniel deposits the change onto the booth table with a shower of wet clinks and stares at the little pile of coins miserably. Ladies and gentlemen, we present to the board Dr. Daniel Jackson, thirty-one and already the archaeological hack of the decade, homeless and in debt and probably about to get thrown back out into the rain very soon on account of him being unable to afford even a cup of coffee to alleviate the pounding headache drilling itself into the center of his forehead.

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"Can't think why," he answers, glancing behind himself to look out the windows, where it's still coming down heavily. Not the most tempting, no.

At Daniel's question he grins a little, shaking his head. "I wouldn't say that. You're unlikely to find me at the soup kitchens. Guess I just liked the look of ya." He's not regretting coming over, so he's trying to make that clear. Daniel's obvious awkwardness and suppressed embarrassment is only making Seth more fond of him. Perhaps because he sees himself so easily in it, and it makes him feel weirdly relaxed, like he doesn't need to pretend too much in front of him.

The...look of him.

Daniel frowns, mouth parting a little in puzzlement. Sure, he supposes he stands out by virtue of the water streaming liberally from his rain-saturated hair and jacket, but otherwise...

"Oh," is all he says, and he promptly feels extremely dumb. Which, after stumping around in the streets for two hours following his latest humiliating failure in erudition, is saying kind of a lot. "Um. Okay."

Okay. Daniel has no idea what that's supposed to mean.

Daniel's confusion only makes Seth smile more, though he tries to suppress it a little - he doesn't want to seem like he's laughing at him. He's not entirely sure if Daniel's uncomfortable with being complimented by a guy, or if he's just outright confused, but it does seem more like the latter.

"You can tell me if you're not interested, I'm not extorting conversation in return for caffeine here," he says mildly.

"No no no, it's fine, it's, um," he hastens to correct himself. This guy went out of his way to buy him coffee and the least he can do is give him a mildly engaging conversation. He waves one hand at himself illustratively and immediately stops when the movement sends small droplets skittering across the table. "I'm just. Dripping."

Eloquent. Truly.

"Sorry," mumbles Daniel, trying to sip at his coffee at a more acceptable rate. "I've been, uh. It's been a bad day. Bad year. Bad...everything."

Seth frowns sympathetically, watching Daniel for a moment. The guy's pretty much soaked to the bone, and even during this decently mild weather, he's not unlikely to catch his death if he walks around like this. And if he's not got anywhere to stay, nowhere to dry off...

"D'you wanna.." he starts, though he's not sure how to phrase it. He did literally just meet the guy, and knows next to nothing about him. He knows his name, and that he's found himself homeless. Still...

"I live right around the corner," he continues finally. "I bet you have some slightly drier clothes in one of those bags. You can borrow my bathroom to change."

"What? I mean -" Woah, did that come out of nowhere? Daniel's at least ninety percent sure it did. He looks up at Seth in a startled, vaguely terrified sort of way that quite clearly spells out that he had definitely not been expecting this. Then he realizes his behavior is probably not coming off as very friendly or sociable at all, and races to correct it. "I mean, I - sorry. I'm just not really used to, um."

He cringes. Where's that expressive verbosity that so impressed Dr. Jordan and landed him a scholarship? Did he lose that along with any trace of his academic ambition?

Evidently yes.

"Sure," he says finally, a tad desperate to salvage the offer before Seth decides he's too much of a bother. It would be right in line with the sort of luck he's been having, after all. "Sure. Thank you. That'd be great."

See, this is how Seth knows Daniel absolutely wasn't fishing for any help. You just can't fake looking that completely taken aback. How surprised he is at just being offered a little friendly help. Given his situation, it's probably been a while...

He smiles and nods, pleased when Daniel accepts the offer. "Well," he says, looking back out the window. "It's let up a little bit. Don't think it's likely to stop raining completely for ages, so we should probably just go while it's not as heavy. Not like you can get much wetter."

He looks down at himself, every inch waterlogged, and back up again.

"Fair enough." He really can't get much wetter, and if there's any more ensuing soaking to be done, Daniel would really like to get it over with now. Once more unto the breach and all.

After a moment's deliberation, he drains the remainder of his coffee without much regard for the still-scalding temperature then gets semi-unsteadily to his feet, tripping a little over the bags when he stoops to drag them back out. There's not much he can do to hide how small and shabby they both are, so Daniel just opts to try to get out of the building as quickly as possible to avoid further exposure to the animosity still radiating from behind the countertop.

Seth gets to his feet as well, abandoning the tea he's barely taken a sip of. It wasn't that good anyway, he's got better at home. Or perhaps he'll put on coffee to get this guy a second cup. He still looks like he needs it. He doesn't look like he needs help with his bags though, with how huge he is and how small the bags are.

Seth pulls up his hood, which is unfortunately part of the cloth hoodie, not the leather jacket, so it won't do a terribly good job at keeping out the rain, but it'll have to do. He can change too when he gets back.

"Ready?" he asks with a smile back at Daniel, then leads the way outside and down the street, shoulders hunched up against the rain.

He nods wordlessly and follows, though not before having a kinematically clumsy moment where he has to hold the door open with his shoulder while he tries to keep one of his bags from getting caught in the doorway but manages to peel away from the establishment with minimal damage to the cases or his person.

The icy torrential is a shock to Daniel's nervous system even though he braced himself before stepping out beforehand, his unhelpfully pre-drenched clothing doing very little in terms of warmth or protection from the downpour. He just hopes Seth wasn't lying about living right around the corner, because it's been less than five minutes and Daniel is already shivering again.

The streaks of rainwater streaming down his lenses are making his already weather-obscured vision even worse. Dimly, he hopes he doesn't trod on Seth's feet by accident. That wouldn't be the best in terms of first impressions for the first charitable person he's stumbled across in years.

"It's just up here," he says through the rain, and turns into a side alley. It's a little more shielded from the rain here, the buildings on each side and stuff overhead blocking out a lot of it, but unfortunately also shielded from the view of the general public.

Which is probably the exact thoughts of the guy who'd been skulking around there, and as they pass, suddenly shoves Seth into Daniel, then takes advantage of them being unbalanced to snatch one of Daniel's cases right from his hands and take off down the street.

It probably says something about how used to this kind of stuff Seth is that he has the instincts to immadiately push himself upright and bolt down after the guy. In normal circumstances Seth night not have been able to catch up so easily, but that bag must be pretty inconvenient to run with, so even with him having a late start, it's only a short intense sprint before Seth manages to grab the back of the guy's jacket and pull him to a sort of stop.

He throws a punch that doesn't quite connect, but is still enough to make the mugger reconsider and drop the bag, before wrenching himself free and running away. At this point Seth is more concerned about Daniel's possessions than he is about giving the guy a solid banging, so he stops for a moment to catch his breath, then stoops to pick up the bag and heads back to return it to its proper owner.

Daniel generally does his best to avoid dark alleyways that look like they might be unpleasant, but as of late he hasn't had the luxury of getting to steer clear from them so much. And Seth seems earnest enough so he trails after him, trusting that they're going the right way and that they won't be unexpectedly shoved by someone lurking just off to the side and toppled to the ground so one of Daniel's bags containing everything he has left to his name can be dragged off, which of course is exactly what happens.

It takes him a moment to regain his coordination after Seth gets pushed into him and sends Daniel smacking into the alley wall and sliding halfway to the ground, and he's hardly in the best physical shape to go dashing after the guy or fighting back. But Seth takes off after him instead to his surprise, leaving Daniel to claw at the wall in the effort to get back to his feet. He should be pelting after the thief, fighting tooth and nail to retrieve what belongs to him, but right now the string of horrible karma has all but crushed any pretense of resolve, so Daniel simply sags against the wall in abject defeat. For all he knows Seth could have set this up and conspired with the second guy, and Daniel being the obviously homeless, totally alone, and extremely physically nonthreatening guy that he is, of course he'd been the perfect target.

Of course.

So his mouth drops open a little in shock when Seth comes back, holding the lost bag no less, and his mouth works a little for a moment before he can come up with something adequate in response.

"Um. Thanks," Daniel says breathlessly, fumbling to rearrange the glasses that were knocked askew in the struggle. "You didn't have to - thanks."

Poor Daniel still hasn't recovered by the time Seth returns, and in fact looks pretty surprised to see him. Which, Seth has enough self-awareness and familiarity with how these guys operate to guess what Daniel might've been thinking, and it's a little disheartening to see how Daniel hasn't even tried to fight back. It's like he's given up.

"I hate people who think it's okay to steal from those who've got just as little as them," Seth says, walking over and offering him a hand to get up. "Sorry about that. This is a shortcut, and I figured no one would be trying shit like that in this weather." Guy must've been pretty desperate. Of course, with that delay, Seth's getting about as extra soaked as he would've been if they hadn't taken the shortcut, but what can you do. Nothing got successfully taken, and Daniel doesn't seem hurt.

"Thank you," Daniel mutters again, touched by the other man's compassion, taking pity on him and then going out of his way to help more than once. He accepts the hand and then the bag, shoulders hunching in mild humiliation at having to twice now be rescued.

"Look, I'd understand if you didn't want to, um. It's okay if you just want to, well, you know." He waves the re-appropriated bag vaguely at the direction they just came from, before they were beset by the would-be mugger. "You've done enough is, is what I'm saying."

Edited 2014-11-12 21:43 (UTC)

Seth has to smile a little and shake his head in disbelief. Daniel seems properly grateful at the help, and he's also given Seth the impression of being a generally good-natured if someone downtrodden guy, not wanting to be a burden - and not out of pride either, but just out of concern for the person he'd be a burden on. The idea that Seth could just ditch him right here is completely ludicrous. He might not be able to help much with Daniel's general situation, but at the very least he's going to fulfill his offer.

"Come on, it's just through here," he says, giving Daniel's back a pat and leading the way again. Daniel's suggestion is so inconceivable and easily dismissed out of hand that Seth doesn't even think it merits a response.

Startled by Seth's apparent refusal to have them go their separate ways but grateful nonetheless, Daniel returns to following, now tightening his grip on the bags for more than just self-security reasons.

His hair is well and truly plastered to his head and he's blinking rainwater out of his eyes every other minute by the time they stop again.

"Is this it?" he asks, peering curiously past the sheeting rain at the building they've apparently halted in front of.

"Yup," he answers, fumbling with his keys to try and get the front door open quickly so they won't have to be out in the rain any longer. His hood is completely soaked through by now, the water making its way down his neck and shoulders even if his jacket keeps the rain out. His jeans are pretty damp by now too, he'll probably just have to change completely.

"It's not much," he adds as he pushes the door open and leads the way inside, holding the door open for Daniel. Then he heads up two steep and narrow flights of stairs, before finally getting to his apartment door, his cold fingers fumbling a bit with the keys again until he finally gets them inside.

It's pretty cramped, definitely an apartment on a budget, but at least it's warm and dry. It doesn't really have a hall, just an area for shoes and coats, a little living room area with a worn couch, and with a tiny kitchen where the appliances are probably older than Seth himself, and two doors.

"Bathroom's through there," he says, gesturing at one of the doors. "You can drip safely in there."

Navigating with two clunky cases isn't very graceful, but at least Daniel manages to get them both up the narrow little staircases that are entirely too small and cramped to be in any way practical. And he only stumbled once or twice, he notes with an embarrassing amount of pride, though he admittedly almost put a foot through the wall while climbing those last few steps.

"Thanks," he says yet again as he squeezes into Seth's apartment gratefully, quickly edging his way to the indicated door in an effort to avoid dripping over the floor overmuch. He forgets to completely shut the door in his eagerness to change into something that's less liable to make him shiver as uncontrollably as he is now, divesting the waterlogged clothing into a puddled mound on top of his bare-bones luggage. Daniel pulls on a pair of passable jeans fairly quickly, worn and frayed as they are around the edges, but soon finds himself cursing under his breath in Arabic while he stands, shirtless in another man's bathroom, rooting frantically about in search for the tiny pile of shirts that he knows are buried somewhere in his sparse wardrobe.

Seth carefully peels off his jacket and hangs it, so it can just drip a pool right there where he's not likely to step in it, and then takes off his trainers too, before going to check on Daniel. What's that language? Sounds like something he's heard while out getting fast food.

Once he reaches the bathroom, he can't... quite manage to make himself announce his presence right away, distracted for the moment by the sight of Daniel's back. He finds himself stuck, studying the tense muscles in his back, his shoulder blades, his arms, all glistening slightly with rain... For a poor homeless guy, he's in pretty good shape, Seth notes distantly.

Then he realises he's staring, and shakes himself back to the present, clearing his throat a little. "Feel free to use the shower, get yourself warmed up. I'm not letting you go back out there until the rain's stopped, so you might as well," he says, with a smile that's much more awkward now than it is cocky.

He triumphantly extricates a shirt at the same time he hears a faint cough behind him. Daniel freezes, unwilling to turn around and face the sight he knows is directly behind him because he stupidly, stupidly forgot to close the door, who even does that. Also his face is burning, so. Yes. He is very adamantly not going to turn around in this case.

"Um, right. Okay," says Daniel, as steadily as he can despite the mild thrill of alarm and self-consciousness that's currently pulling all his blood flow to his ears, still refusing to turn around. He is terrified to turn around, ridiculous as it is. "I will. Thanks."

Seth can't be entirely sure, but he is watching pretty closely at the moment, and he thinks Daniel's ears may have taken a turn for the redder, in a way that has nothing to do with the cold. This realisation somehow makes his stomach squirm a little bit.

"Good," he answers, unable to keep the smile completely out of his voice. And then he decides to give Daniel a break and some obviously wanted privacy, and he closes the door for him.

Seth's still smiling to himself as he goes to his bedroom to get changed himself, stopping only on the way to put on some coffee. He ends up changing into more or less the same sort of thing he was already wearing, except with a nicer shirt, a bit too tight and rolled up at the sleeves. He feels a bit ridiculous doing so, but whatever.

All his hair stuff is in his currently occupied bathroom, so his hair will just have to kinda wetly flop into his forehead for now. It could look a lot worse, he decides, and goes to pour two cups of coffee.

Even after he hears the snap of the door, Daniel waits a solid minute before actually going through with showering. It does warm him up, and he is definitely not going to think about how long it's been since he last took one. Even when he actually had access to an apartment with running water, showering was far too often relegated to an afterthought along with eating and shaving and pretty much anything besides regular caffeination. He would simply get so caught up in his work that -

His work. Right.

The work he no longer has.

Once the shower is off Daniel towels his hair with an almost vicious resolve, a doomed attempt to purge those gloomy reminders of his general failure to accomplish anything from his head. And then he does his best to flatten the half-dried disarray for reasons he can't quantify, though no amount of smoothing or tousling will get the entirety of the mess to organize itself. Daniel gives it up as a lost cause, carefully folding the towel and leaving it next to the sink before packing his sopping clothes in with the rest of his luggage. It might soak through the entirety of his wardrobe by tomorrow, but there really isn't much to be done about that.

He exits the bathroom at last, warm and clean and dry for what feels like the first time in weeks. It probably has been weeks.

"Thanks," he says, feeling a lot more confident now that his appearance isn't reminiscent of a wet dog. And, hey, he can even smell coffee. The day that had begun so horribly is starting to improve, which gives Daniel enough of a reason to smile faintly at Seth in gratitude.

Edited 2014-11-13 02:22 (UTC)

Seth looks up as Daniel rejoins him, looking a lot less miserable than he had when he'd first caught Seth's eye. He looks a lot better like this, even with the birds nest of a hairstyle he's ended up with. His face just seems a lot better suited for smiling, and Seth decides for as long as he's got Daniel around, he's going to do his best to make sure he does smile more often. He seems like he needs it.

"Coffee," he says, somewhat unnecessarily, and gestures at the cup that's even had a little time to cool off, so Daniel won't immediately scald himself by drinking it.

"Um. We've got a washer and drier in the basement. I was gonna do some of my laundry, but I don't have a full load," he says. "Do you wanna throw some of yours in, at least the wet ones you just got out of? Feels a bit wasteful to run a half load."

There's absolutely no need for Seth to do laundry right now, and he could absolutely wait till he has a full load. He might even have a full load already, he hasn't checked. But if Daniel can't even pay for a coffee, Seth doubts he's got enough for to go to a laundromat, and Seth just wants to offer some help in a way least hurtful to Daniel's pride.

"Oh. Oh, okay. Sure." That solves the problem of the damp wardrobe. With considerably more cheer than he's moved with all day, Daniel pulls the slightly crumpled, wet garments out from his luggage. "Do you, uh, have a basket or anything? Or should I just...?" He trails off. He doesn't know if that sentence actually had a destiny in mind when it embarked. At least it didn't ramble as so many of his sentences tend to do. Used to tend to do. When he had things to ramble about.

Well, so much for not thinking about his failures.

"Oh, yeah," he answers, disappearing into his bedroom to fetch the basket. He's relieved to see that it DOES have about half a load, so he doesn't have to look like he's just blatantly lying. He returns to the bathroom with the basket, setting it on the floor.

"Just dump all your stuff in there, I'll fit in what I can," he says. Chances are if it doesn't all fit, it's his own clothes that will have to wait, but he doesn't mention that.

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trash.

such trash.

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