Bad Day, Part Six

Who: Manhattan and Brian
Where: The phone, then the Winchester place
When: Around 1:30PM

Manhattan grumbled and groaned, a hand slapping to the solid surface of the table next to her bed as she rolled over. Her hand patted around for her phone as the ringtone of her cell sounded over and over again to announce an incoming call. She'd only been back in Marquette less then a handful of hours and was wanting to just sleep the day away, but it seemed as someone was intent on messing with those plans.

"This better be important." She grumbled out once her hand made contact with the mobile piece and put it to her ear.

"Of course it's important," Brian's voice answered her back, blinking a bit from his truck's cab, rolling at the speed limit towards Manhattan's house. And it was important. He couldn't leave town for a year, or whatever, without saying goodbye. "You home, Man'? Cuz I'm on my way over."

"Oh. Brian. Hey." She got out with a bit of an irritated sigh. "You're on your way over? What's wrong?" Manhattan pulled herself upright in the bed to sit against the headboard. His latter words bringing her around to a bit more of a coherent state of mind. One did not phone on their way over unannounced without there being something wrong or some kind of trouble having been run into. At least Brian hadn't been in the habit of doing that.

"Can I tell you when I get there?" Brian asked with resignation-- yes, something was wrong. "It's kind of why I'm coming over. I'll be there in a couple minutes, probably. Er, if I'm coming at a bad time, though, I can come back later?"

"No, keep headin' this way otherwise I'll be inclined to track you down." Manhattan inched toward the edge of the bed to swing her legs slowly over the side. "I'll get a pot brewing." Even if Brian might not be wanting any of the hot stuff, Manhattan could really do with it if she was about to be hit with company. "Come around back when you get here, I'll have the door unlocked." With a slow push Manhattan found her feet and trudged off toward the kitchen. She'd get the coffee brewing and make sure the door was free of its lock before making the trek back to her room to change.

"Coffee sounds great," Brian said with a tiny grin. He liked coffee, yup. "I'll be there." He hung up and tossed the phone back onto the seat beside him, then kept heading the way he was heading. He even pulled around back when he saw the place, rather than parking up front and then having to walk all the way around. Less limping, and all. He knocked on the back door first, then cracked it open. "Hello?" he called inside.

Bryson had taken the dogs, Pride and Gunthar, out with him to the kenneled area, so at the moment the kitchen was empty. Manhattan was back in her room making a quick change of clothing, or at least as quickly as her body would allow, so Brian'd receive no response to his questioned greeting as the back door was slid open a crack.

Nobody in, apparently. Or not within calling distance. Brian hobbled inside and went to pour two mugs of the newly-brewed coffee, one for him and one for Manhattan, and settled down at the kitchen table to wait for her.

Manhattan made her way back to the kitchen after tossing on a clean tee and pair of jeans. The only visible evidence that she might have been in something like a fight was the discoloring around her right eye. "Just make yourself at home." A smirk riding her features as Manhattan step out of the hallway and into the kitchen to take a seat at the table in the chair adjacent to Brian.

"So. What's up." Manhattan glanced across the table at Brian while drawing a mug of coffee toward her and then brought it up to her lips to take a small sip.

"I'm good at that," Brian answered with something resembling his usual wit, at least, to the "making himself at home" comment. Then it fell back into the near-melancholy he'd been sporting before. "I'm going back to Texas, Man'," he said, not really feeling the need to stall or parse words with her. She was a pretty "direct and to the point" kind of woman.

"Ok. You wanna be a bit more forthcoming there, Brian. Like tell me the whys behind your decision." Something major had to have happened the two days she was gone to have the man sitting here now, telling her he was leaving town.

Brian winced a little over the rim of his coffee mug, but nodded. He'd been expecting the question, but not so much the cool tone. "My brother called this morning. My mother's... well, she's not doing well. There's some condition he couldn't remember the name of, a continual series of small strokes... she's dying."

"Shit dude, I'm sorry. You know how long she has?" Manhattan questioned as she let her mug sit idle within her hands.

"I have no idea. Tom isn't good with those kind of details if it's got something to do with someone he cares about...." He'd probably forgotten them all immediately after coming home from the doctor's, as a self-defense mechanism, or something. "Probably a while, since she only just got diang-- diag-- t-told what it was." Thus, he was going to be gone for a while, too....

"When you leaving?" Manhattan was figuring it was really soon, especially since he had called her when he was already on his way over. She knew that if Dathan or her father were in a grave way she'd be heading out of town at a moments notice, hell she'd not even stop to tell anyone she was leaving she'd just make the couple necessary phone calls to deliver the news on her way out of town.

"Tomorrow morning, probably...." Because there was Domino. "Tonight'd just be too hard to do, I still need to pack and I've got a bunch more people to say goodbye to." And there was Domino. "So yeah. Tomorrow morning is what I'm aiming for. I don't know how long I'll be gone... couple months, at least-- over a year, at most." It sounded like such a long time, every time he said it.

"You call if you need anything, ok." Manhattan told him. Situations like this she wasn't really good with. Not knowing the right thing to say that might make things better. All she really felt she could do was offer her help. The least she could do.

"Promise," Brian said with a little grin. "I'll probably call just to shoot the shit, too. And if you're ever in the area, down outside Houston, feel free to stop by...." He knew her, well, her hunting took her all over. "I'm gonna miss this place. It feels more like home now, than Texas does."

"I may just take you up on that." a brief smile lighting her face. Not like she hadn't been that way before. One hunt had actually taken her all the way to Houston, then to Colorado, and finally to South Dakota. It had been one of her more lengthy jobs.

"Well, good," Brian said. "I'm gonna need some friendly company and a drinking partner before too long, I'm sure." And he meant it as a joke, but it came out a little plaintive. He really didn't know anyone down in Texas anymore, besides his family, and he expected the caretaker duties would be difficult before too long, as his mother got worse. Not to mention he'd probably have to find some kind of job.... Ugh. It was probably wrong of him to think like that, but he couldn't help it. Maybe once he actually down there and the gravity of the situation actually hit him....

"That friendly company is just a phone call away." Not that talking via the phone was any compensation for actually being there, and not that Manhattan was always considered friendly company, but at least the the connection would still be there. "And as for the drinking partner bit, hell it might be worth heading down that way just for an all night drinking party for two." She grinned trying to lessen the severe gravity of her friend's whole situation.

"You ever want to do that? You just let me know," Brian said with a little laugh. "I'm down with random visits and booze, seriously. I'll keep in touch-- I do plan to come back, when... when it's all over, however long from now that winds up being. I'm not, like, selling my house or anything."

"Maybe I'll just pay ya a surprise visit. No advance word or warning, I'll just show up randomly one day at your front door. Bottle of whiskey in hand." It was good to hear though that he wasn't selling his place, made his coming back some day all the more realistic. Made his leaving less final.

"You do that," Brian laughed, imagining it very clearly, "and you run the risk of being dragged inside by my mother and forced to listen to her chatter for a few hours, along with not-so-subtle hints that you ought to be marrying me, before she insists on feeding you until you want to burst. So, uh, a little advance warning might be a good thing." At least, that's how his mother was now. He had no idea what this illness would do to her.

"Yeah, well maybe it'd be worth the risk. Your mother sounds like quite the interesting person." Manhattan offered in return with a grin. She found his descriptive scenario more then slightly amusing. "But thanks for the advance warning of what I might find myself walking into."

"Your choice, then," Brian said with a little smirk, picking his coffee back up for a long drink. "Don't say I didn't warn you." His eyes drifted around the kitchen, a house he wasn't likely to see again for a long time, and then drifted back to Manhattan. Manhattan the hunter. "Can I get you to promise me somethin'?"

"What's that?" She questioned back. Manhattan gently setting her mug back down on the table as she waited to hear what the promise was that Brian was wanting from her.

"Look after my friends for me? Marlowe, Isabella, Domino, Olivia, Mya, Hunt...." What with Marquette being a hell-hole right now, and his uncertainty that this was actually the end, having someone keeping an eye on people for him... well, it made him feel better. Domino and Isabella he was pretty sure could look after themselves, but all it took was one unwary moment-- and Olivia was a Protector who didn't know how to fight, and Marlowe an untrained Fire Elemental. Mya would never be able to defend herself, and Hunt... who the hell knew what Hunt was, at this point, aside from fucked in the head. "I can give you addresses, phone numbers, workplaces-- anything. Just make sure they stay safe, as best you can?"

"Domino going to still be staying at your place?" If that would be the case then she'd already have his address and one of his numbers. The others. Well she'd be sure to collect them before Brian left.

"If he's not coming with me, then probably. I don't know what the plan there is, yet...." But if Domino stayed, and they didn't wind up in some spectacular fight over it, he was planning on letting the guy stay in his house, yeah. Somebody ought to be paying the bills on it, after all. "Is that a yes?" he asked hopefully.

"Have I ever refused you anything?" Manhattan smiled. This was a promise she wouldn't have any problems with keeping. And since all the mentioned were his friends plenty of phone calls would be made every so often just to let him know how they all were doing, at least from her point of view from what she'd observe of them.

"I'm sure you have at some point," Brian chuckled, his grin one of relief. Even if he wasn't always sure he trusted Manhattan's morals, he was pretty damn sure he could trust her to keep people he cared about safe. "I'll write out everything you'll need and leave it at the house... you can get it from Domino whenever you get the chance." He set down his coffee, and reached across the table to give her nearest hand a quick squeeze. "Thank you. That's a huge weight off my mind...."

"It's what friends are for." She gave a squeeze to his hand in return before Brian pulled away. "And Brian, if you need anything, and I mean anything. You call and I'm on the first plane out." And she wasn't just talking about if things got too rough for him where his ailing mother was concerned. She knew the type of people who were out there. Others like her. And with him, in the very near future, no longer going to be in Marquette, Manhattan couldn't keep am eye on him. Not that he probably couldn't take care of himself, but no one was infallible.

Though his observation skills weren't at their best at the moment, Brian did at least cotton on to that, and he nodded slowly. "I will, if I run into anything I don't think I can handle. Thank you, again. You're a good friend, Man'. I'm gonna miss you."

"We had some good times, didn't we." With a light smile Manhattan drank a bit more of her slightly cooled down coffee. Brian was one of the few people she trusted, that knew what she was and accepted her regardless. Things definitely weren't going to be the same around Marquette with the guy gone.

"Definitely," Brian agreed with a little grin. "Try'n stay out of too much trouble while I'm gone, a'ight?"

"I'll try, though without you here to keep me in line...." She tossed back with a little ole grin of her own. Though trying and actually staying out of trouble fell into two completely different categories, especially in the line of work Manhattan was into.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm such a good influence on you," Brian smirked. He held his coffee mug in her direction, to clink them together. "I'll be back, and it'll be just like it always was."

"To good friends." Manhattan tipped her mug to Brian's, glass clinking lightly as contact of the two mugs was again made. "And we'll have to get into some major drinking real soon." Even if it wouldn't be in the town of Marquette itself.