castadrift | open(ly furious)

Entry tags:

alfred,
deirdre

open(ly furious)

Deirdre is sitting on the beach, her knees pressed to her chest, bleached blonde hair clinging to her face in salty clumps. She isn't doing anything, not even thinking about her situation, just staring out at the sea. The gentle roll of the surf is entrancing. Under different circumstances, she might be paying a shitload of money for the pleasure of catching some sun on this island. String bikini, sunglasses, a drink with a fucking fruit salad in it... She probably couldn't even afford a vacation like that. The waves keep brushing the tips of her boots. Finally it's too much for her to take.

"Motherfucker!" she hollers, rocketing to her feet to stalk towards the jungle. Her squelchy boots undermine her tantrum, but Deirdre is so pissed off that she can't even hear them. Picking up the first rock she finds as she keeps marching past the first few palm trees, she hurls it as hard as she can with a wordless roar. She hopes she brains the last member of some endangered species. She hopes she topples another poor stranded fucker's lean-to. Better yet, she hopes she hits the poor stranded fucker. Anything to drain this white-hot anger.

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"Ow!" The roar should have clued him in to something dangerous coming his way. However, it does not and the rock soon ricochets off his forehead. Alfred growls and rubs his head, looking about furiously for whoever threw it.

He spots her soon enough, and stands in front of his attacker angrily, hands on his hips. Usually he slinks away from flights, but he's angry, hungry and irritated enough to take on anyone right now. "Just what in hell's bells was that for?"

At the cry, Deirdre narrows her eyes and freezes. Shit. She really hit someone? Good, she tells herself, but the fear shows on her face. He sounds angry, is a perfect stranger and the one thing she knows for certain is there isn't anyone around to pull him off her if he gets violent. Never mind she'd cast the first stone...

She takes a step back, but only one. Glaring, Deirdre puts her hands on her hips. She's got nothing on her that could be used as a weapon. She could, what? Throw her wallet in his face?

"Watch it," she barks back just the same, like she isn't ready to run, "Didn't see you, alright? Alright?" Her voice is deep and angry and she's trying to seem as big as she can. "You never thrown something when you were furious before?"

"Not since I was 3," Alfred folds his arms and glares. Alright, she'd another survivor. Probably shouldn't be too cruel, but at the same time that'd hurt! "What adult seriously starts throwing things when they're upset?"

But it would be just as childish to stamp his feet and demand apology, he realises, and unfolds his arms. "There's more of us back that way. Got a fire going, looking for food. Might as well come over."

She sets her jaw and tilts it up. "One that thinks they're alone on an island?" Deirdre suggests, still refusing to back down. He doesn't seem dangerous, but that's no reason to stop posturing.

Taking her eyes off him for a moment, she glances around. There's more of them? Makes sense, she supposes. She's not exactly got the odds stacked on her to survive a plane crash. If she made it through, plenty of others should have, too. Still...

She looks Arthur up and down. "You walk first."

"Excuse me?" Alfred gives her a doubtful look. Is she really telling him to walk first? "Do you think I'm tricking you?" Really?

He sighs and shakes his head, annoyed beyond belief. "Wow."

But still, he does walk first, heading back in the direction of their camp.

She raises an eyebrow. She'd be dumber than anything if she pranced headlong into the jungle with this man without any reservations. She's stupid still for doing it, but desperate. Deirdre has no water, no food, no tools. Still, how stupid is he for not expecting some hesitancy from an unarmed, lost woman? "Maybe. Don't really know what the fuck's going on." She tilts her head to the side and forces a condescending smile. "Do you?"

Deirdre follows, resisting the urge to shove her hands in her front pockets.

"We crashed, we're in a jungle, and some crazy person just threw a rock at me."

He's allowed to be snippy. It's been a long few hours. His clothes are still stiff with salt and it's getting more and more uncomfortable to walk around in them. He's so hungry he's fast developing a headache and he was just in a bloody plane crash and now he's millions of miles away from land. Oh yes, he tells himself, he's allowed to be snippy.

"That's about the long and short of it. Nobody knows any more than you or I do. Nobody's found the pilot yet, or if they have they're being awfully quiet about it. The only food we have is coconuts and chocolate."

She takes a step towards Alfred. "I don't need your lip and I don't need some stranger calling me crazy, alright?"

He's allowed to be snippy. So is she. This was her way home. Everything she owned and cared about was on that plane. Now she's alone, destitute and feeling like she swallowed the rock she threw at this rat-faced English snob.

As they traipse into the jungle, Deirdre slaps the plants away violently. "What good's a pilot, ey? If they're going to find us, they're going to find us..." Satellites, phones, black boxes, all that shit. For all the good he's done the passengers, Deirdre hopes the pilot is dead.

"And I don't need random women pelting me with rocks," Alfred is moving quickly, though still pausing to check the trees occasionally for his signature 'A'. He still doesn't know the way back off by heart yet. Will he ever? He's always getting lost, even in signposted cities. "So I'd suppose we're both out of luck."

"We don't know how long it'll be. Best to dial back the crazy, hm?" He glares at her over his shoulder and nearly walks into a tree. Worst day ever.

"I only hit you with one rock," she warns, pushing the hair from her face, "You called me crazy twice." When he nearly walks into a tree, she smiles. "Careful."

Deirdre glares at the carved A's. Can't be any sort of identification, they haven't been here long enough. A path? The longer they walk, the crankier she becomes. These boots kill, she's soaked with sweat and this guy seems an asshole even without the head injury she's given him. Taking off her jacket to tie it around her waist, Deirdre ducks beneath the biggest palm frond she's ever seen.

"Who are you, then? Not that it matters."

"You know that whole sticks and stones saying? You know, sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me," Alfred is in full grumble mode now as he picks his way through the path, finally stumbling upon the beginnings of the river. Rubbing his hands together, he looks up and down it for other survivors, before taking a few more steps. If possible he wants to warn people that she's coming.

"Alfred, I'm, Alfred," his gentlemanly instincts pop up just enough for him to hold up a branch for her to pass beneath. "Who on earth are you?"

"Ey, you're the one who made it tit for tat." His grumbling is wearing on her. Might've been cute if she were anywhere without this humidity and these insects and these fucking palm fronds. She slaps another one away and barely misses having it whip her in the face on its return.

She's poised and ready to shove away more branches, but Alfred goes to the trouble for her. A bit surprised, she slowly slips past. "Deirdre. The barista." Cocking an eyebrow, she continues, "And what do you do?"

"Tit for tat would be me launching a missile at your head," Alfred is quick to make his way back to the fire as they approach camp. It's burned down a little and he immediately sets about trying to wake it up again, prodding at it desperately.

"What does it matter what either of us did? Until we get back, our only job is staying alive and getting help."

The truth is, Alfred doesn't want to talk about life back in civilisation. It wasn't exactly going wonderfully, so here, he'll bury it.

"Sure, if the tats were Double Q's..." she mutters, staring at the back of his head like it's suddenly sprouted horns. Deirdre takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh, her cheeks puffed out and her eyes narrowed. Maybe it's better to be angry. Angry, after all, is preferable to being annoyed.

She lifts an eyebrow when she spots the fire. Alright. Boy scout here is good for something. There's no need to warm her hands, but it's nice to know they can cook, boil water, all that survival shit.

"Excuse me for making conversation." You unpleasant asshole. Best not to say that until he teaches her how to make a fire.

Alfred sits down heavily and looks up at her, annoyance clear in his expression. "There's no point focusing on the past now, is there? 'What do you do that can keep us alive' would be a much better conversation topic out here."

With that, the master of conversation folds his arms and glares into the fire. "There's coconuts and shit around if you want them."

"You make it sound like we're on fucking Gilligan's Island." Deirdre rolls her eyes as she sits down beside him, keeping a healthy distance. "They'll find us soon. We're probably only a stone's throw from some resort, anyway." She quirks an eyebrow and smirks.

Deirdre studies Arthur openly. Something definitely went wrong with him, hence the unpleasantness, but she ought to be nice for better reasons than learning how to strike rocks together. She ought to. As it stands, she refrains from commenting on how much more damage a coconut to the head would do.

"No survival skills here. I've got nothing," she says with a resigned shrug. "'Side from the fact that I'm sure as fuck not dying out here, nor watching anybody else die." She's seen enough death to last her a long, full lifetime.

"I don't know what that is," a television show? Alfred stares at his feet glumly. He hopes they're close to a resort. Maybe he'll get an actual holiday after all of this bullshit. "Probably."

"That works," he says after a moment. "I can make a fire, but that's about it. One of the others can identify plants," Alfred trails off, shaking his head. Leaning forward, he wraps his arms around his knees and stares into the flame. "I suppose if nothing else we can put 'survived a desert island' on our CVs."

She blinks slowly and wishes for a cigarette for the umpteenth time. "Yeah. Don't matter, though. You're probably better off for not seeing it." And he'll make fewer annoying jokes, if he's even capable of making jokes.

Deirdre shakes a hand through her hair, still thrumming with angry, nervous energy. Best to conserve that- sit by the fire, Alfred has the right idea- but she still keeps manically humming along. "Do you really think we'll die out here?" she says as if she's asking if it'll rain tomorrow.

Alfred takes a moment to consider the possibility - really, honestly consider it - then forces himself to dismiss it out of hand. "No. Someone will come and find us before you know it. We'll do a few celebrity appearances, get interviewed, and then someone else will survive something even worse and we'll be left in peace."

This is how he's getting through it, by thinking very carefully about the future. In the future, everything is laid out. He'll go back to drifting from job to job, bring up anecdotes from the island when he's lost for conversation topics in job interviews and on dates, buy a nice house and get older and even grumpier. Getting through the present is simply a formality. So long as he doesn't live fully in the present, so long as he hides himself in ideas of the future, everything will work out.

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open(ly furious)

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Alfred not Arthur

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