2020sight | (no subject)

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There's a nice little park on 57th Street -- fountain in the middle, baseball diamond nearby. It's busy in the summers, with students and tourists and kids on the playground.

It's November now, though, and getting chilly, and the only person in the park is a figure on a bench feeding the pigeons, long legs stretched in front of him.

He's not exactly covered in birds, but he's definitely surrounded.

No Hitchcock jokes, please.

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A chunk of bread hits him in the back of the head.

"Shit!"

Lucky his hair is so thick, or he'd have felt that fucker harder.

He turns around, clutching at the affronted section of his head.

"What the hell was--"

Whoa.

That wasn't what he was expecting at all.

"Honestly, since when are you that unobservant?"

Epimetheus looks up at his brother and presses a hand -- the one not holding half a loaf of bread -- to his heart.

"That hurts, man."

Prometheus eyes him sidelong, and talks a few slow steps closer.

"That wasn't unobservant. That was exercising the Life of the Mind."

He jerks a thumb over one shoulder. "Bakery's down that way. Gimme a minute and I'm sure I can return the favor."

He waves the loaf. "I'm covered, thanks."

"With all these birds around? Not yet, you're not."

"Now, come on--"

He crumbles off a bit of bread and offers it to one of the pigeons on the bench beside him; it hops up onto his hand, polite as you please.

"Do you really want to suggest anything about these guys when I'm around? And already throwing things at you?"

Now you can make Hitchcock jokes.

"I knew you were gonna say that."

It never stops being fun, pulling that one out.

He refrains from reminding his brother that pigeons are commonly known in the vernacular as "rats with wings." Given that Epimetheus is tight with the rat community, Prometheus has no intentions of turning his day into a deleted scene from Willard either.

Cheerful -- "Asshole."

Equally so -- "Dweeb."

"No, seriously," he says, standing and sending pigeons scattering. "It's a good name for you. 'Cause you look like shit."

Prometheus crooks one side of his mouth. "I'm touched. You didn't smell me out just to offer me a makeover, did you?"

"Might've. That kinda thing's still lucrative, right?"

"It's all over the teevee. You get that where you keep yourself? Which, where the hell is it, these days?"

Epimetheus has the grace to look vaguely sheepish.

"Yeah, uh. Indiana, over the summer. Kinda all over the place before that."

"That close? Who's the asshole now?" But there's no heat behind the admonition. "Come on, you owe me a hug or something now." He even takes his hands out of his pockets, helpfully.

"Hey, I'm here now! And I was working. Can't leave the farm for Chicago on a whim."

"What the hell else is Chicago for if not for ditching good, honest labor and mixing it up with wild hellions? I'm confused."

He laughs. "You tell me, local boy."

That raises a grin. "Well hell, there's a set of lanes just two blocks that way. Assuming you're still stuck in 1957." He flicks the collar of Epimetheus' shirt. "There are better places for that in other parts of the city. But that's a quick fix, if you're just passing through."

Epimetheus claps his brother on the shoulder.

"I will happily wipe the floor with your sorry ass -- but not 'til I've had something to drink and pumped you for information."

"Two and three, we can take care of, but one ain't gonna happen without an arduous and epic fight."

...to hell with this manly standoffish thing. Prometheus pulls his little brother in for a hug.

He doesn't say anything about that. There's a reason he looks like shit, after all.

--Yeah okay. He can deal with this.

It's been a while.

"Good to see you, brother."

Prometheus clears his throat, and lets go. He nods, once, before meeting his brother's eye.

That's all he's prepared to allow himself in public, for the moment.

"If we're gonna go make trouble, I think your buddies might not squeeze past the 'no shoes, no shirt, no service' rule."

He eyeballs the pigeons. They better not have been staring just now.

One of the pigeons eyeballs him back.

(Nobody eyeballs like a pigeon. Except maybe a goat.)

Epimetheus snorts, and glances at the birds. "Go on, then."

The flock takes off in a clatter of wings and cooing; Epimetheus watches them go with a satisfied grin.