a good wind down from the day

who: eric and december
where: his place
when: late

For all his sternness, for all the militaristic bent of his mindset, plenty of people might have thought Eric was incapable of relaxing in any real way. They would’ve been soundly wrong, given the myriad ways he relied on for releasing the tensions of his daily life. Boxing worked wonders, as did a few stiff drinks, or even working the forge and furnace of his workshop, but all of those pursuits were the kind that distracted him and kept him occupied, bleeding off enough of his zeal to get him to the next day. Sometimes, he wanted to lose it all.

The aftermath of talking with Dodge turned out to be one of those times as Eric drove away from the city, smiling to himself despite the soreness and ache in every muscle. He needed to stop thinking a mile a minute, to try and dispel the aches, to get a head start on tomorrow’s plan of recuperation. That meant a bath, believe it or not. It was a massive claw-footed thing, dragged into place next to his shower tap and filled with hot water, then kept heated with a series of small braziers burning below the metal, and Eric loved it for these rare moments.

Stretched out in the tub that dwarfed him with his arms hanging to either side, a cigarette perched in one hand as Eric lazily poured scotch with the other, then let his head fall back with a sigh. The water seemed to sizzle and pop as the bath salts worked their magic, easing the ache in his ribs and shoulder. If he didn’t know the guard dogs would keep unwanted company away right now? Eric never could’ve relaxed so thoroughly as he was at this moment.

December had been on duty for a ridiculous amount of time since the park. She'd had a short catnap in the office and then had continued on helping the day coroner with the pile of bodies waiting to be processed, something that they needed done sooner rather than later. So she'd stayed on, and it meant some intern was taking the night tonight, and she was actually, blissfully, off. After sleeping some, she headed out again, taking a cab out to the scrap yard, feeling the need not to be alone after all that she'd been sifting through. So, after she ghosted through the property, petting the dogs while she was at it, she sought out Eric.

It was with the help of said canines that she found the man, and she didn't announce herself right away, even as she slipped in quietly. She just looked him over. "Looks like a good idea you've got there."

Letting his head roll in her direction, Eric grinned around his cigarette once he'd opened his eyes to look December's way, raising his glass in salute before he took a drink. "Trickiest part's reaching under the tub to move the braziers now and then," he greeted, setting his glass aside and damping a hand before he slicked back his hair. "And you look like you could use a good idea right now." She looked weary, rested but not, like it was more a mental toll than a physical one. She looked like she'd probably had to clean up his mess.

"So if I say there's room for one more," he went on, chuckling before he could even finish. "You feel free to put that burner right under my ass where I can't reach it. Blisters would serve me right. Or you can share a bottle and a pack of smokes, forget about what I'm gonna bet was a shit night or two..."

She walked over, dropping her coat onto a chair as she pulled that over. "A drink I could use." she said. "Or several. I have, in fact, had a shit night or two. I got called in early and stayed an extra shift and a half late. Let's just say it's been non stop." she admitted, kicking her shoes off, and she propped them up on the edge of the tub. "And it's not just the ridiculous amount of corpses to go through. It's everyone coming in to identify people. It's the sobbing going on in the corridor, and every few minutes someone trying to get secret information out of me. Like I've got answers or something. Like I'm just hiding the magical key to the puzzle that'll make it all make sense." she rolled her eyes. "I ain't got shit for any of them, and no one's happy with that answer. Including me."

"It's taboo, is why," Eric said as he passed his fresh drink over to December easily, sitting up in the tub just a bit. "They'd be too spooked to work with a body, so since you aren't? You must have some insight they don't, or that's what they think. That..." he trailed off long enough to light a new smoke off his old. "...or the idea that no one has any answers yet is scaring them even worse. I was down at the station today and it didn't seem like they had much to work with, not that I was really in the loop." Seeming unconcerned with the consequences (like usual), Eric turned on one hip as he reached out to close a hand on December's bare foot, fingers pressing into the arch deftly and rubbing. "Sounds like one more reason I'm right to live outside of town."

Taking the drink and knocking back a good portion of it, December made a soft little appreciative noise when he started to rub her foot. She could handle that. There was an ache in both of them, possibly her whole being, that needed tending to. So if he was going to do that, she wasn't going to complain. "I think it's part that, and part they think that there has to be an answer. Like for some reason, because it's so offensive to everyone, that whoever did it signed their damn name. But the truth of the matter is they didn't, and there isn't shit to go on. Not really. The grunts at the station can dust every pipe they want for fingerprints, but all they're gonna find are people who tried to pull them out of loved ones, and then they're just going to have to rule those people out, and...it's a mess. And there isn't anything that's going to make it clean again, end of story. No one likes that idea, so they're demanding an answer from someone. Anyone." she said, done with her little rant. "...but that said, yeah, maybe living outside of town is the way to go."

Eric may not have been a masseur, but he did have hands like iron and a thorough understanding of where feet could ache after you spent forty eight hours straight on them, and he leveraged both of those traits with his smoke held in his lips. Working the tension down from the ball of her foot and back to her ankle in passes that went from firm to gentle, he frowned slightly at the spiel from December. "Could be more than just the two parts, even," he mused as he rubbed. "Could be that someone using something so benign to kill that many folks struck a chord. I mean shit, pipes? Cops're gonna be jumping up the ass of every plumber, construction foreman, and shift manager at the Mills now, making life harder for a whole lot of people. And they should if they want to catch whoever did this. It won't erase what happened, but maybe it'll bring some understanding, which is one thing this city's never been keen on," Eric waxed, eventually shifting his grip to December's other foot.

"Could be that too." December said, sighing as she thought it all over, eyes on a middle distance. "I just know I got more than one person shouting at me over the body of someone they lost, telling me 'someone's got to answer for this!'." she said. "Like just because it's so awful, and so widespread there'll be some cosmic balancing act that happens. I don't know. As far as I've ever known, there is no balancing act. Shit happens to good people, so on and so forth. They peole wind up on the slab, and that's the end of it." She gave a rueful smile. "I'm cheery tonight, as you can see. What the hell happened to you, anyway?"

"Picked myself a damned good fight down at the Round," Eric said with a satisfied grin, leaning out of the tub to butt his smoke in the ashtray, exposing the purple and yellow bruising along one side of his ribcage as he did. "A few bottles might've been busted on my head, and the cops got called in at some point, they locked me up for the night. That was one hell of an early edition of the paper to see when I got out, but it sounds like my night was a tea party next to yours." Working up to one of her calves, Eric shrugged as he watched December. "If there's any balance out there, it's too big in scale for us to notice, it gets adjusted for reasons we can't guess. Try to make sense of it or have an answer and you'll just rush yourself straight to a cell a Bedlam.

"People want it all the same." she said, addressing his last comment first. Then she went back to the other, because she had done nothing but talk about the massacre in the park for what felt like ages. "Why'd you pick a fight?" she asked curiously, shifting a little to get herself a little better situated so he could keep up what he was doing. She also killed the rest of her drink while she was at it. "Someone looking for one?"

"You remember when you asked if I always corrected folks with my fists?" Eric asked, pausing the massage long enough to pass the bottle of scotch her way. "If I didn't talk first? Most times, I do. I even tried this time, but..." he trailed, sighing quietly. "I've got one woman on my crew out here, good sort too. She got hurt pretty bad by some red Irish shit a few days back, and she didn't want anyone going after him for it. She fights her own battles, and I respect that. It wasn't to avenge her." Eric was quiet for a moment, just working the muscles in December's leg as he soaked in the tub, then eventually looked up to catch her eyes intently. "Some people never know how immediate the consequences can be for their actions. Others think strength is all it takes to triumph. This guy was both types of people, and I wanted to teach him two lessons at once."

Taking the bottle, she refilled the glass, setting the bottle down by the foot of the tub after she was through. She listened to him speaking, watched him while she was at it. There were a lot of things the two of them saw eye to eye on. "Think he learned?" she asked. "In my own experience, men like you're describing never actually learn. Not til they wind up face down in the gutter. They're too stupid to take the point." She smiled a little. "But that doesn't mean the point shouldn't be made."

He shrugged slightly, tattoos twitching with the gesture as Eric switched to December's other calf. "No way of knowing, but I think he might've. He didn't seem the type who'd ever welcome cops, but the bastard was smiling in relief when they cuffed me," he recalled with a smirk. "If nothing else, I think he learned he's not unstoppable. The way I hear it, no one put a beating on this guy like I managed, and when you're not used to losing? Even one fall can rip all kinds of wiring loose." He hoped it did, because Patrick was a damned good fighter, but he was too full of himself to ever be what Eric considered a worthwhile one. "I'll keep an eye out and see," he added, mirroring the tiny smile she wore.

"Good. You'll have to keep me posted." December said, thinking that she'd like to see how the other guy looked. She might head down to the Round at some point and see what she could see. She'd definitely be interested in seeing what kind of damage he could hand out first hand, but even the aftermath she'd be good to go for. "So..." she started, taking another drink. "When the city lights up like a goddamn christmas tree because the mobs are busy trying to kill each other, where are you going to watch it go down from?" she asked.

"Well now that just depends on circumstance," Eric said thoughtfully, resuming his work on her leg. "If I'm in town? The library's pretty easy to break into after hours, and it's got a good view. I should start keeping a folding chair in my truck so I've got somewhere to sit. Maybe go hop on the edge of the Sixth Street bridge, that way I'd have a view to each side." He wanted to see that show, too. Eric definitely wanted to watch the mobs collide with each other like the warring hordes of days gone by would, he needed a vantage point to judge their strengths and follies from. "But if I'm out here, I guess I'd just have to climb one of the heaps with a pair of binoculars," he lamented with a sigh, head shaking December's way.

"Suppose I could stack car chassis' and dead ice boxes up, build myself an even higher perch... what about you? You're welcome here, y'know," Eric offered, pulling away from the massage to grab the bottle of scotch and take a quick gulp. "I like that idea a lot more than thinkin' you might be down at the boardwalk when trouble hits, or neck-deep in the corpses that get left behind whenever one side calls a time-out."

December quirked a humorless sort of smile, something distant in her gaze, even if it had nothing to do with Eric. "Nice to know you'd rather I was here." she said, instead of 'worry'. "But that's probably where I'll be. At the Boardwalk, or at the morgue in one way or another." she told him, shifting her position a little to lean farther back in her chair, relaxing more. She also moved so she had her knees over the edge of the tub, and she let her feet and legs down into the water. "Can't let them down, you know." she added, even if she didn't clarify who 'they' were.

Straining to reach over the other side of the tub, Eric felt around blindly for a minute as he watched her, wondering just what it was that seemed removed in December’s eyes. With all the other similarities they had, it wasn’t a stretch to think that maybe he had as little of a chance at guessing as most people did with him. “Them?” he asked simply, bringing up his pack of bath salts and dropping another tablet in with a sudden fizzle from the water. “And truth told, December, I’d rather you were here pretty damned often. Not because you can’t handle the city, either.” he said, occupying his hands with a fresh smoke for a moment.

"You getting sweet on me, old man?" she asked, tone light, teasing. But she didn't wait for the answer, instead she answered his question. "The dead." she told him. "I don't do what I do because I have some deep need to help dole out justice. I don't do it because I wanted to be a cop. I do it because they deserve to be heard." she said. "You know that old saying, the dead tell no tales? It's bullshit. They speak plenty, if you know how to get it out of them. If you know what to look for. I know how. And no matter who the schmucks are that land on my slab, they deserve to let people know what happened."

Eric nodded slightly, the low levity slipping out of his expression as he listened to the woman who surrounded herself in the dead, and who he’d kept very busy these past two days. “It’s nowhere near what you got trained for, I’d wager, but I think I follow. I could likely gauge most entry wounds to a caliber,” he offered with a grim smirk, resuming the leg massage. “But you can learn from what’s left behind.” Maybe they just worked in different mediums. “As for my disposition towards you?” Eric added belatedly, “I like knowing you’re here, yeah. Gettin’ kinda fond of thinking that some part of me makes sense to you.”

"You'd be surprised." December said, shrugging one shoulder. "There's some sick shit that hits my table. There's a lot more sick fucks out there than people even think about--even in a city like this one. There's kind of a silly level of torture that happens. People who just...not only want to kill a man, but they want to drag it out, make him cry first. Make him scream. So it's not even just learning from what's left behind, it's learning from the little details. Like the blood vessels that pop in the eyes when someone suffocates." She trailed off, reaching for the bottle and she took a pull from it. "I think people like the two of us have pretty little in common with everyone else. So there's got to be some cross over, right?" she asked rhetorically.

Smiling at the rhetoric, Eric shrugged in kind. “I’m sure there’s crossover, from our ink to our outlooks. There’s also just human nature, a want to find out the crossover exists, to connect. City life alienates folks from each other, and if you’ve got two wits to your name you realize how degrading and counterproductive most of it is,” he mused, working over December’s feet once more. “The writer Mencken said the most dangerous citizens of any culture were the ones who could see beyond modern stigma and taboo to think for themselves, I think you fit his idea pretty perfectly.” Maybe that was the spark he liked so much, just thinking that she saw past the pointless bits of deception already, even if Eric planned to tear them all down.

"The best philosopher I ever came into contact with was in the freak show I ran with before." December said thoughtfully, letting her eyes drift shut for a few long moments. "You look at things differently when you're seeing people from that angle--both sides, really. And the thing was, most of the people in the actual freak show, not the carnival but the freaks...they loved the life. They did better than so many people out there. And all because people want to see a disaster. That's really it, you know. People...there's something deep down in everyone, no matter how deep it's buried, that want to line up to see something that's gone truly wrong somewhere. But this guy, he used to say that you couldn't fault them for it. Not really. Because when they passed over the coins to see the show, it was the most honest they were being with themselves than ninety percent of their lives. Because in those moments, they gave themselves over to that little itch in the back of their head. That tiny, dark little voice that wants to delve into something like that, that wants to see, and see close up to be sure it's not a sham. Had nothing to do with going to church and sitting there trying to get a peek down the shirt of the girl in the pew ahead of them, it didn't have anything to do with the day in day out grind no one was happy with. It was something different. And no matter how it made them feel--and I'll tell you right now there were a whole lot of different reactions--they felt something."

“So it’s the honesty that does it for you?” Eric asked curiously, watching the smoothed curves of her expression as she shut her eyes and spoke. “Or is it seeing, knowing that there’s a twist in everybody’s moral chain no matter how pious they act?” It sounded like a middleground, and one he could relate to; there was something empowering about catching people without their social defenses, getting to see the rough edges for what they were.

"More like it's the acknowledgement of the twist." December said. "Everyone's got their damage somewhere, and that part's I believe a part of true human nature, and for just a second you can see it." she told him. "Only other places you see that sort of thing is when people go to boxing matches and the like. It's more removed with boxing than a freak show, but at the end of the day, they're there to see something wrong. They're there to see nature gone awry, or they're attending violence, wanting to see someone else get a beat down." She shrugged then opened her eyes and looked at him again. "Everyone's got their own twists."

He was grinning encouragingly when December looked again, fitting his understanding of her together on the fly once again. “It doesn’t feel like that in the ring, but I can see how it’d exist in the stands during a match,” he considered, nodding slowly and reaching for the bottle of scotch. “And what about the people who don’t hide their damage? The ones who figure out how to be honest about it? Say... you,” Eric offered thoughtfully. “What’s your twist?”

"Oh, I'm sure it's entirely different for the boxers." December agreed, not doubting that for a moment. She held the bottle to him when he reached for it. When he asked the question of her, though, she smiled distantly, looking off into the hanger a little, formulating her answer. There was the honest one, of course, though it was one that left her more vulnerable than anything else. But she guessed if there was ever a time to be that, it was now. She was buzzed, and getting rather good foot massages from a naked man in a bathtub. One who'd literally just let her take her tattoo gun to him and didn't even check the design til afterwards. "It was the only time I felt like I belonged, and I miss that." she said eventually. So yeah. A little bit of a monumental admission from a girl who spent most of her energy alienating people.

The consequence of that wasn’t lost on Eric, not one bit. She preferred working with the dead, ran a shop that never seemed to do any business, and had grown up in the ranks of the shunned. But there she was, admitting she liked the security of being a social creature. “No harm in missing it,” he offered. “We’re geared to do exactly what you’re doing, right? To connect in strange times?” A freak show could be a family, a platoon of soldiers could be too. “Hell, I’d be more worried if you never missed being around folks. I’d also be more lonely out here, I’m guessing.” And he hoped that whether December felt like she belonged out here or not, she still knew she was welcome. That counted for something.

She smirked at that, turning her eyes back on him. "Something tells me you could find some company if you really felt like it." she told him. After all, there was something about him. What, she couldn't quite put her finger on, but there was something, most certainly. Maybe that dark streak was what drew her in, but she imagined that there was more than that going on, and people would be drawn to whatever those things were. Plus he was pretty easy on the eyes, especially for an older man. Sometimes that happened with men though. They got finer with age, where as women just got haggard. "I don't like most people. But they were different. You're different." she told him.

Removing one hand from her submerged feet, Eric worked the excess water off in his hair before grabbing his pack of cigarettes. “Odds aren’t bad on that,” he agreed easily, grinning and lighting up. “But there’s a world of difference between a tumble and what’s happening here,” Eric insisted, gesturing around the tub lazily. “I meet most people once, and I know enough to call it good. You, I just keep learning that there’s more to learn.”

Age difference or not, Eric knew when he was drawn in by a woman. His blood ran hot enough that it happened a couple of times a year usually, but not like this. This was more a rapt fascination than a thrilled pursuit, and he liked the change. “Goin’ back to before I knew you sounds about as fun as joining the priesthood, to boot. So don’t go assuming I’d be fine,” he teased, working the arch of one of December’s feet.

That got a little grin out of her, a wicked expression. "Oh, I didn't say you'd be fine. Just that you'd be able to stave of loneliness if you really wanted to." she agreed. "Because I'll let you in on a little secret right now. There is always going to be more to learn, and there is no one in this city like me. I'm not the easiest girl in the world to get to know or even get along with, even if you do a pretty good job on that, but you'll never be bored."

“I don’t do anything because it’s easy, December,” Eric reminded her, smiling back easily and savoring the wicked bent of December’s features. “And I figured out the night I met you that there’d be a definite lack of boredom , so far I’ve been pretty right.” And with so many people it would’ve been a brag, but December was telling the truth; there was something distinct and singular at work in her, something compelling, something shadowed.

Eric had never seen it before he’d met her, and it was nearly inspiring given his current work. “And a pretty good job? I think I can live with that,” he added, palming another bath salt and holding it under one of December’s feet.

She laughed a little, and smiled. "So now that we're in agreement with that..." she said, trailing off, and she leaned forward a little so she could grab the bottle again. Either way she knew she felt better, which was part of why she'd shown up. Her mind was off of her work, she was a hell of a lot more relaxed, and she was having a pretty good time, all things told. She'd take it.

“Indeed,” Eric said lightly, settling back in the tub. He’d already been content before her arrival, but now Eric was in a spot he could’ve kept up all night long. “So I know I promised you stories before, since you’d encouraged me to go to the gala for your good friend Detective Trent,” he offered after a moment, smirking at the memory of how effortlessly Brett had known exactly who December was.

"You did. So, please. Regale me." December invited, smirking. Oh...she could imagine the sort of evening he'd had. And she wondered if Eric had spoken to Brett. She knew she'd not really been able to talk to the guy since the field o death, and that really hadn't been all that much of a proper talk. That had been shop. So she was very curious on that score, and she just imagined Eric had gone and insulted some high and mighty assholes.

Chuckling richly at the request, Eric sat up in the tub, boosting December’s feet onto his knees as he pampered them. “We’ll start at the beginning, then, with however it was that I managed to catch the man of the hour literal moments after the mayor’s speech,” he decided, figuring that it’d make a decent tale throughout. With a bit of theatricality, it’d be just as good as any war story, just with a different sort of battle. And from gaining Brett’s trust to his argument with Judge Hastings to tossing wine on some socialite’s tuxedo, Eric had definitely won his battles.