cottoncandypink

Entry tags:

2018,
tess mercer

Tess

The door opens to Wilford's dressing room. The blue walls are decorated with framed vintage movie posters, opening up for a vanity that doesn't look like it's been used since Wilford moved into the building. Along the exterior brick wall is where Wilford's set up his office, with a few shelves and filing cabinets behind the massive desk. The other side of the room is more of a lounge, with a black leather sofa and matching chair, and a smudged up glass coffee table that shows evidence of small, sticky hands.

Wilford closes the door behind them, only to open it again to reveal the large closet where he keeps several other guns. He stores the rifle in with the rest, making sure the door is locked so the nosy little toddler can't find his way in.

Beyond the door leading to the hall, people are obviously coming and going. Someone's having a heated argument, but the soundproofing in the building is heavy enough that nothing specific can be made out.

Now that there's signal, Wilford pulls out his phone to check the traffic report. Wilford sighs. "Someone dropped a yacht on the beltway," he says.

His phone isn't buzzing with missed texts though, so he's hoping it happened after Andy got past that point.

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She tries again. "M-ah, m-ah."

The rest she looks slightly amused at as well.

"You act like a mess is the worst thing in the world."

She understands not wanting to clean them up all the time, but it's to be expected.

The dinosaurs are held out to the boy and she makes more noises for them.

"Isn't it?" Wilford asks.

He's lived alone his entire life. No messes, no trouble, everything exactly where he wants it, as he wants it.

When Tess starts making noises, Michael forgets all about making Wilford grumpy.

"Ba ba ba ba!" he shouts back.

"That's all he says," Wilford says. "We've had a few flukes, but I think that's all it was."

He goes to pick up the backpack, to see what was packed along with the kid. It probably needs to be emptied out and thrown in the wash just for good measure.

"Of course not." Granted, Tess has done things like purposefully crash a plane and then clean it up afterward, so she takes the bad with the good.

"You need to reward the flukes and continue to speak to him normally. Teach him the proper words for things. Have you got him a speech therapist?"

She assumes yes, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Wilford nods as he slings the bag over his shoulder. "Speech therapist, psychologist, general... whatever, ear specialist, and a dentist so far. That's how I found out they still had him using a bottle before I got him."

Even with Wilford's extremely limited experience with his friends' children, he knows that was all kinds of too late.

"He told Teja to fuck off once." Or something similar. 'Fuck' was definitely the key component to whatever Michael had said. Wilford was too busy laughing to even consider how to appropriately handle that.

"You ready, pipsqueak?" he says to Michael. "Get your friends. Let's go."

"Ba ba ba ba," says Michael as he starts carefully picking up his toys one by one and putting them back into his inventory.

She stands, lips pursed.

"Is he eating all right now?"

Then she smiles back down at Michael again.

"He knows what you're saying, at least. That's a good sign."

Wilford nods. "Those both took some work, but we got there."

When Michael's done packing away all his toys, he trots over to Wilford, only to shy away before he can be picked up. He deliberates very carefully on the situation at hand before deciding he'd rather go with Tess.

"He'll punch you in the face. Watch out," Wilford warns.

They've been working on that too, but apparently tiny minds can only handle learning so many new concepts at once.

"Then he's capable enough. He's a smart kid."

She holds out a hand to Michael, curious to see what he'll do.

"I've been punched in the face before, but the warning is appreciated."

Michael holds up both hands, waiting to be carried. He's probably a little old to still be carried everywhere, but it's more socially-acceptable than putting him on a leash.

"Yeah, everyone we've talked to so far says it's environmental. His shrink says he'll probably be behind for a while, but once he starts to catch up he should do it in a hurry."

If Wilford sounds a little relieved over that, it's because he is. There are enough psychological skeletons in his closet without adding more.

He barely makes it two steps out of his dressing room before getting an odd look from someone Tess may have seen around the bar. Wilford waves Nichola off, ignoring whatever she might be speculating right now.

Beyond Wilford's dressing room, the studio takes on a vastly different appearance. It's clear he's not in one of the main studios in town, but shunted off to one of the smaller ones reserved for lower-budget shows. The carpets are a mess, it's loud, and there are definitely some plastered-over bullet holes in one of the walls. His dressing room has only been kept nice because he's put effort into keeping it that way.

The boy is picked up with a little effort - she's out of practice - and they follow Wilford out into the rest of the studio.

It's not quite what she expected, but then this is the kind of place that likes to surprise.

"That's a promising prognosis." She boops Michael's nose. "See? Just keep working hard and you'll be fine."

Michael boops back. With the spiky dinosaur.

"Put it away, or I will," Wilford warns, not even in the mood for this game right now.

Michael holds the dinosaur to his chest, but doesn't put it away.

"Give it to me."

The dinosaur disappears. He's not in the mood for this game either, but it's also a game he never wins, so he moves on.

It's a quick walk out to the parking lot. The weather would almost be pleasant — sunny and warm — if not for the fires of Mt Doom raging off in the distance and filling the already smog-choked air with smoke. He leads the way to a big, black luxury sedan out in the parking lot. Like most of the cars in town, it shows evidence of traffic battles, but nothing he's felt worth taking it into the shop over. He unlocks it and tosses the bag into the back seat.

While the front of the car is just as clean and tidy as his dressing room was, the back... well, the back is obviously used to transport dogs and a small child. Nothing's been trashed, necessarily, but it sure isn't clean.

"We should just miss the dinner rush if nobody's messing around on the highway," he says, taking Michael to strap him into his seat in the back.

Tess sighs, an indication that Wilford could have left well enough alone. Being booped by a child's dinosaur toy is the least of her many and varied injuries.

The smoke and smog is unexpected and she coughs a few times, waving her hand at the air around her. She's grateful to be ending up in a sedan, child and dog mess be damned. Her clothes will dryclean.

"Where are we headed to?"

Wilford's been clobbered by that thing enough times to know how much it hurts when it has enough force behind it.

"My restaurant. Out in Del Perro," he says getting into the car. He turns on the AC as soon as the engine is running, since even in the winter a big, black car tends to turn into an oven. "Get him fed and make sure nobody's burned the place down. I get the feeling his mom only fed him when they were out of the house, since that was the only time I could get him to eat anything for a while."

Michael's getting better at it, but he still fusses and whines sometimes. From the back seat, he still keeps making his noise to himself.

Wilford leaves the parking lot, almost forgetting that he can't take the beltway. At the last moment, he changes his mind to take a left instead.

"You own a restaurant? Not an industry I've ever considered."

Not that she doesn't have enough on her plate already.

"Does he like it there?"

"I was bored and it was for sale." Which describes half the things he does.

Rush hour traffic is already in full-force. Which is to say that it would be total gridlock, if lanes meant anything to the average Los Santos driver. Three cars in front of them decide that the sidewalk is a perfectly acceptable right-turn lane. Wilford just looks bored.

"I don't think he cares where he is either way. I think he just likes being included."

She stole Luthorcorp out of spite, so she's not really one to talk. National defense, agriculture and news were never her dreams.

Traffic is why she prefers to travel by helicopter. Or at least have a ton of work to do while her driver handles the car.

"Sociability is important. I never really got that part."

Wilford makes an exhausted noise.

"Yeah, we're working on that too. He's fine around older kids, but the ones closer to his age freak him out like you've never seen."

He leans on the horn as someone decides to start backing up right in front of him. For a long moment, it seems like the driver doesn't realise anything's wrong, but he finally stops before he backs into them.

"Perhaps because he can't get much attention from them."

If Michael's anything he's an attention freak.

Then the car stops right in front of them.

"Jesus. How does anyone survive here?"

"Nah, he's afraid of them," Wilford says. "Screams like he's being murdered."

A few more quick honks convinces the idiot in front of them to actually put his car into the correct gear and get going.

"You don't have rush hour where you live?" he asks, while Michael starts shouting in the back seat.

Craning her head to check on Michael, she decides to leave the driving to Wilford.

"We do, it's just not like this." Again, helicopters. She wouldn't really know.

"Hey, kiddo. It's okay. We're going to get there soon."

"Ba ba ba!" Michael shouts. Apparently he likes all the noise.

Speaking of helicopters, there's a bunch buzzing around up in the air. Whether they're watching chaos or causing it isn't clear.

"We do this every day, don't we runt?" Wilford says.

Michael shouts something that sounds an awful lot like 'fucking business.' Wilford knows he's not supposed to laugh, but boy is it hard.

"No, we tell them to learn to drive." He's barely holding it together.

That's a scowl directed at Wilford.

"Don't encourage him."

At least they know he can say something other than ba ba ba.

"I couldn't live in something like this. Metropolis is bad enough."

Wilford shakes his head, still trying not to laugh. "What?" He's not going to discourage the kid when the goal is to get him saying anything at all.

In the back seat, Michael's gone back to his usual sound.

"You should see it on a Friday."

Eventually, they make it off the surface streets and onto the Del Perro freeway. Traffic doesn't necessarily improve, but it is at least moving faster. Of course, moving faster means there's less time to react to the idiots deciding they need to do a U-turn to catch the exit they just missed. At least they lose the helicopters. They never bring anything good.

She's just glad she has her seatbelt on as they race through traffic.

"I think I'd rather not."

Wilford manages to get them down the freeway and into Del Perro without any damage, despite the city's best efforts. He expects Michael to fall asleep at some point, but apparently having someone new in the car is enough to keep him engaged and awake as he tries to show her all his toys again.

They finally make it out to the beach. Wilford drives them down to the boardwalk, parking in a reserved spot behind the building. The parking lots for all the shops and restaurants along the way are crowded, but it's a nice day in a touristy part of the city, right on the beach. Crowds are a good thing to have. After getting Michael out of the car and locking up, Wilford leads the way to the ramp at the side of the building. A sign above the door calls the place Buster's, but the cheapness of the sign suggests the name may not be a permanent choice.

The restaurant inside is crowded and busy, and even the patio outside has been filled up, smoke and haze be damned. Someone has taken it upon themselves to decorate the inside of the building for Christmas, with colourful garlands and lights strung up along the tops of the walls. That's fine. Wilford's not too pleased about the little angels and Christmas trees that are tacked up along with the garlands.

Wilford grabs a menu from behind the counter and hands it over to Tess. "Tell Devon to take these fucking angels down," he says quietly to the hostess as he keys an order for himself and Michael into the system. "The trees too."

The menu is heavily Korean seafood, but presented in a way that makes it a little more attractive to picky American tourists. The main theme of the menu is a mix-and-match system, with aside from a few exceptions, most of the items being presented as individual side portions.

Edited 2018-12-07 18:30 (UTC)

Between trying to keep Michael from bothering Wilford while he's driving and looking out the window at the strange world around them, the trip is mostly a blur to Tess.

Once out of the vehicle, her eyebrows rise at the sign outside the restaurant.

"Isn't Buster your dog?"

It's cute. Sort of.

She takes the menu, eyeing the decor around them.

"You got something against Christmas?"

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