Just what the world needs, another Delacourt.

Who: Pandect and Rafe
When: afternoon
Where: in the park

Despite the cold, Rafe had gone out wandering again. He took his sketchbook along, hoping in a very vague way that some fresh air would do him some good. Get his mind off of the bottle of perfume he'd found in his bathroom that morning. The perfume that smelled exactly like Chelo. He actually remembered to put a coat on, which was something relatively new. As he started to walk the town, he'd frowned a bit at what looked like creatures of various shapes and sizes that were made of snow. As he went into the park, he found more of them, some with people still working on them. He'd found a place to sit and watch, opening his sketchbook to a fresh page and starting to draw them. In a twisted, different way than they were being made.

When some people had started to build one near his bench, he'd watched avidly. It was a young father and a couple of his children. They started to build the same old shit, however, that bulbous sort of man-figure that Rafe had seen a couple hundred times already. All it had taken was the right sort of criticism, and there was a shouting match. Already edgy, Rafe had pushed the guy, and the next thing he knew, his nose had exploded in pain and he was looking up at the sky. He heard the crunching of boots hurrying away through the snow, and then everything fuzzed into gray.

Pandect sneezed once and rolled his eyes. It didn't help. "This is stupid," he said to himself in French, and then once again in English as if that would change matters any. He had been heading to the bank to cash in his veteran's pension, the whole wounded thing got him a bit of a bonus and the money was comforting, as comforting as money could be. It meant that he could leave Marquette whenever he needed to, he sneezed again. The woman making some sort of plant thing out of snow next to him had stopped thinking his sneezing was humorous and started giving him annoyed looks. "This is stupid," Pandect said again for emphasis and bent down to lift the demon off the ground.

He must have been knocked out cold, and (demon or not) Pandect shot a disappointed look at the woman who had been standing nearby a man who had been laying right there in the snow. Unconscious. With blood on his face. He noticed a sketch book nearby, (wet, that would disappoint the boy he was sure) and picked that up as well before tucking the demon in the bed of his truck. "This is taking acts of kindness to a whole new level," he muttered to himself. It took a bit of snow and his handkerchief to clean the man's face, Pandect was surprised he hadn't awaken during him ministrations and finally, since there was nothing else he could do, Pandect drove off with a demon in the back of his truck, using his oldest sweater (the one with the hole under the left arm) as a pillow.

"This is stupid," Pandect sneezed.

Rafe had been hit in the face before, but not very often. Generally he wasn't part of many direct confrontations, as bad as his temper was. Rey was usually there to smooth things over and redirect him. That, and the dude had a mean right hook, so he was out cold through being picked up and washed off and put in the back of a truck. The vehicle had been moving for a minute or two when he started to come around. He blinked rapidly, squinting up at the sky. The first two things he noticed were the pain in his head and the sense of movement. As he saw the bare skeletons of trees rushing by in his peripheral vision, he sat up abruptly. Then let out a startled yelp. He was in some sort of truck, driven by gods knew who, being taken gods knew where.

He ducked down a bit as one hand shot out to cling to the side of the truck bed. Rafe's mind raced uselessly, the only thing he could think was that he needed Rey, but there was no way to get him. He twisted round, half in a panic, and saw the back of a head in the driver's side of truck-cab. Crawling toward it, he didn't balance himself well enough when Pandect hit the brakes, and hit his head against the back of the cab. It inspired some loud and colorful cursing in Spanish.

"Par bleu!" Pandect yelled reflexively at crash behind his head. It was a good thing he had stopped or he might have swerved the man right out of his truck bed. They were only a few miles from the Venture, where Pandect could lay the man out and call somebody to pick him up. Everybody had somebody. He reminded himself he never would have been in this situation if he had a cell phone. Or some self control when it came to bleeding people. Demons, whatever. Hopping out of the cab, Pandect sneezed once sharply into his wrist (he wasn't taking that handkerchief back after it had the demon's blood on it) and came around the side of the truck. He recognized the Spanish pronunciation, although Mache's Spanish lessons had never included those words.

Rafe was still holding his head and cursing up a storm when the truck stopped and the driver got out of it and appeared. He glared at the man fiercely, face twisted with pain and anger. "Who are you?" he demanded, still in his mother tongue, sounding righteously pissed off. "Where are you taking me? Kidnapper! I will feed you your own spleen if you do not release me at once!" Even as he said it, he spotted his sketchbook in the bed of the truck and scrambled for it, hugging the thing to his chest like it was a lifeline. His face hurt and yelling wasn't helping anything, but there was nothing else to do.

Pandect thought about boosting himself up to sit on the edge of the truck bed, but something told him the gesture wouldn't be appreciated, the demon was (how did Amy put it?) 'freaking out' as was. So instead he switched to Spanish, as antiquated as his syntax was, it would do the trick, "Settle yourself! I'm not kidnapping you! Look around you, we are only a little bit out of town. We are almost at the Venture Motel, I was going to call some one to come get you there." His tone was sharper than he usually spoke with, almost scolding, a response to the demon's angry outburst. He sneezed again and scrubbed once, absently and his throat, his finger playing with his collar, he needed clean air.

Looking at the way the man was clinging to his sketch book, Pandect sighed and moved the hand at his collar to his hair (he really needed a haircut, he should have done that last night) and combed it down against his head sharply. "How far are you from home? Do you think you can walk?" Speaking sharply would hardly put the man at ease, now would it? The quicker he came back to his senses the quicker he could get out of Pandect's truck. Whatever, or whomever had knocked the man - the demon, he meant the demon - out seemed to have confused him as well. He muttered to himself again in French and motioned the demon to come a little closer, "Come here."

Rafe didn't respond well to the scolding tone. Only one person in the world was allowed to scold him, and this man was not Reynald. Far, far from it. He sneered angrily, wishing all sorts of messy death on the arrogant bastard. Telling him to settle himself, when he'd been the one to clock Rafe in the head and put him in the back of the truck. He flinched back at the gesture, putting his back against the cab of the truck. "I woke too quickly for you, did I, asshole?" he demanded, his twisted brain taking the idea that Pandect had been the one to hit him and running with it. He completely ignored what was said about calling someone to pick him up, and how far was he from home, as if he hadn't even heard it. He more or less hadn't.

"Put your rancid cock in some other unsuspecting victim, you son of a harlot, I will destroy you!" he hissed. But it had been ingrained deeply enough into him that he should not kill with his hands in public that he didn't even think of actually attacking. What he did do was stand up and start to scramble up over the top of the truck-cab, the route of escape that was farthest away from his assailant. It was awkward with trying to hold on to the sketchbook at the same time, and he made it as far as the engine hood before he slipped off and landed hard. Adrenaline had him back on his feet in a split second, however, and he picked a direction and ran.

Pandect took a deep soothing breath, the man was a demon, what else did he expect? He sneezed once, rolled his eyes, grabbed the sweater (it had demon smell all over it any way) and hopped back into the cab. The man could run fast, but he was obviously lost and Pandect's truck was much faster. He pulled up beside the man and held the sweater out to him. "You can not destroy me if you freeze to death. Your coat is soaked through. Do you have someone I could call to tell that you have escaped from my evil clutches so they can pick you up before you keel over and die?" Pandect's sarcasm was hardly contained, it was the French in him.

"I do not know who hit you, not that you'd believe me, but you seem to be rather... discombobulated, it would probably be best to call someone. Roommate, brother, pet goldfish, someone who can get you somewhere warm," he said to the (pointedly) unresponsive demon, if the man continued to ignore him, Pandect was just going to leave, he owed a demon nothing. "Enfant terrible," he muttered to himself in French before sneezing again.

Rafe wasn't running terribly well, as it wasn't something he made a habit of doing very often. His breath was coming harsh in his throat, and he stumbled a little as the truck pulled up next to him, but managed to keep his balance. He looked over with another death-glare, and veered away from the vehicle, shoes moving into the snow as he went off-road. He had to get somewhere safe, had to call Rey. There was indeed a cell phone tucked into one of his pockets, with only one number programmed into it: his brother's. But that wouldn't be safe to use until the sneezing kidnapper had gone away. Rafe stumble-ran into some trees and stopped, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. His face was starting to go numb, and that was a bit of a blessing. He groped for his phone, hoping Rey was somewhere close enough to come and get him. Even though he didn't really know where he was.

Pandect moved to toss the sweater back into the back of his truck and saw a cell phone. He looked at the crouched over, shivering man (demon, he meant demon, the boy's foul mouth was enough proof of that) and banged his head a couple times against his steering wheel.

It didn't help.

He hopped out and grabbed the phone, flipping it open and went straight for the address book (he may be fast approaching 300, which by the way he wasn't going to talk about right now, but he knew how to work a phone) and to his horror read the only entry. This could not be possible. Maybe his karmic retribution was backing up to have this happen to him, maybe he should go crash a truck full of eggs or something to release the back up. This had never happened to him before, two people he knew in the War, both of them rather odd, and then the crazy demon boy. Well that last bit was his own fault, maybe he should seek therapy for his inability to leave injured people alone. It was like a disease. A really, really inconvenient disease, he had a roof to finish roofing and the old water heater needed to be fixed.

"By all that is holy, please tell me you do not know Rey Delacourt," he held the phone out to the panting boy as far as his arm could reach, as if it was a snake that could suddenly bite him. And far enough that even someone with brain damage couldn't mistake him for having molestation on his mind. If the boy said yes that was enough reason to throw himself into the snow and wait for death to come.

With an enraged growl, Rafe snatched for the phone, knocking it out of Pandect's hand before he dropped to his knees to dig it out of the snow. He was a thief too, a dirty fucking kidnapping vile thief, who had an absolutely horrid accent and was butchering his mother tongue. He got his hands on his phone and stood up, backing rapidly away from Pandect, still all hopped up on adrenaline and rage. "I am Rafael Delacourt, and Reynald is my brother, and you will rue the day you crossed us, whoreson! RUE!" he shouted, still backing away.

He spit on the ground, even if it wouldn't reach, and then turned to run again. He had his phone, he had his sketchbook, and he thought he was pointed relatively in the direction of town. If the man stopped him again, there was going to be bloodshed. From whom, he wasn't sure, but it was most certainly going to happen, and bloodshed that he wasn't in complete control of wasn't a good thing. So Rafe continued to book it.

"Just what the world needs, another Delacourt," he said to himself in French before switching over to English, he wasn't fond of Spanish. "Fine, I'm leaving now. For the record I had no plans of doing anything except getting you somewhere where your fingers and toes wouldn't fall off. I don't know if you noticed or not but its kind of cold out. I just found you lying in the snow and you didn't exactly have a collar around your neck," he sighed and headed back toward his truck. He could try the whole 'I knew your brother during the War' tactic. Which was strictly speaking true, but it was no skin off his back if Rafael died in the woods. Pandect was already ruing the day. The day couldn't get anymore rued if it tried. He was probably saving someone by letting the concussed demon wander off. And that wasn't exactly a memory he was excited for Rey to remember (he should really start thinking of the demon as Reynald now) and he wasn't going to remind him. He let that sit there while he knocked the snow off his shoes before hopping back in the cab.

He had thought Rey had said he didn't had any family, but then Pandect had been very very drunk, celebratory drunk. He didn't have much more than that information on Rey. Except that he had a good taste in wine and promised Pandect he knew all the best brothels, (Pandect had politely declined). His truck complained a little as he shifted out of park, he might have to considered taking it in, or it could be that the truck was just complaining as well about his poor choices. He needed to stop being so helpful.

As soon as he got back to the motel he was going to lock himself in and sulk. That is after he finished that stupid roof.