othercaptjack | Jack Harkness' room :: Mid-2005 timewarp AU

Puck can't quite tell what is happening; the mechanisms of the thing all seem to whirl at once, disguising their direction. When the thing gives a bump and a clank, his fingers clench abruptly over-- nothing.

But a hiss escapes his lips.

Havelock looks over, but can still make out nothing of his face. He hadn't thought, but perhaps it makes sense - it's hardly a natural environment for a faerie. It's odd, because Puck always seems... not necessarily at ease, but fitting in any situation.

With one last jolt, they stop moving, but Havelock pauses to listen intently to the silence.

Puck stops his breathing from speeding, but there isn't much he can do about the bumping of his heart.

"I think so," says Havelock, very soft, and moves carefully forward to listen against the front of the cage, ignoring the way their legs knock against one another, and shoulders bump as he shifts in the confined space.

It would not do to walk into a gaggle of those undead creatures, after all.

Puck is really having trouble focusing on the task at hand.

He would like to listen against the door himself, but that might bring him a little too close to Havelock's shoulder and his side.

... Puck presses forward to peer and listen out, with what he personally considers to be reckless abandon.

Havelock really wants to look round right now, but doesn't because a) it is still completely dark and b) that's fairly irresponsible behaviour when in the middle of reconaissance.

Instead he remains as still as he can - and that is considerably.

Is there movement out there?

Puck thinks he can hear-- something.

Something, that is, that is neither their breaths nor their two hearts nor the arrant scampering of mice and associated vermin in the dark.

There is- but nothing definite.

And nothing close by, that is for certain.

(Also, Havelock absolutely does not jump a little at the soft sound of Puck's voice so near behind him.)

"Let's find out," he murmurs back, and releases the lock on the hatch to slowly slide back the doors.

Puck experiences a temptation, so strong he thinks he's really going to do it, to grab Havelock's arm and pull him back.

But nobody is so alluring that they're worth getting eaten alive for, and for only a kiss.

So instead he slides past him and out, taking in their new surroundings.

That is probably for the best at this stage.

Havelock lets Puck slip out past him, gazing intently over his shoulder and across the room. Being a kitchen, it is fairly large and open - with any number of corners and bulky equipment where danger could lurk. Hardly ideal, but at least the light is marginally better.

He drops down himself - stretching out one cramped arm - and draws his sword again, cautious.

Puck pops up onto one of the tables, a long one strewn with cutting boards, abandoned produce, and knives.

It looks as though there was some kind of struggle, but nobody's here.

"How perfectly dreadful," he murmurs absently, kicking at a half-head of lettuce.

"Untidy, certainly," Havelock agrees, absently picking up a kitchen knife in one hand and weighing the balance.

(What? They look like they have a decent edge.)

Puck had considered taking one, but figures he'll wait until a sign of trouble.

It isn't as if they're going anywhere, after all.

"The corners, then?"

He's already picking his way along the tabletop towards an unpromising patch of darkness. The growing chill in the air denotes either demonic presence or a meat locker.

Havelock nods and obediently falls in behind him - just enough in reach to lunge at any sign of trouble.

There are still sounds just at the edge of hearing, which are making him feel even edgier than he has all day. Not knowing for sure whether they are a legitimate threat is just insult to injury.

Puck sadly does not know the rule that there are Always Zombies in the Meat Locker.

He does know that he's still hungry, which is why, when he spots the colander of strawberries, he picks it up and begins to pop them voraciously into his mouth (leaves and all) as he approaches the metal door.

"... Do you hear a tapping?" he inquires of Havelock, mouth slightly full.

Tragically, Havelock doesn't either, but he does know that small confined spaces are at their most dangerous after a period of tense but falsely reasssuring quiet.

(You don't survive long in Ankh-Morpork, or indeed anywhere in Havelock's world, without certain instincts.)

"Yes," he says, even softer than before, and follows just a little closer.

Puck rises on tiptoe to peer in the window, but can't quite manage it.

A hop carries him to the right height; after the first one, he hastily eats a few strawberries and tries it again.

"I see there may be some of our creatures," he tells Havelock, "as well as a quantity of meat."

But hungry as he is, he'd rather eat lettuce. Icky dead dudes getting their icky deadness all over perfectly beautiful food.

"Perhaps we should be best served to leave them to it."

"Graghdadk ..."

"Oh dear," Puck mutters, with the intonation one typically expects of an expletive.

"Shut the door," says Havelock, still low but with extreme urgency, and shoves at it himself.

They can do without multiple attackers.

Puck, perceiving that Havelock seems to mostly have it covered where the big metal door is concerned, reluctantly parts with the strawberries and takes up a knife to follow the new source of guttural groaning.

"Gragh ... nngh ... god dammit ..."

The fairy blinks.

Havelock yanks up the metal handle to seal the door, to muffled but futile outrage from the other side.

And then he looks up with a frown as the grunting from nearby goes coherent.

"Who's there?" he calls out steadily, but raises the sword to a stance that has a certain intent to it.

"... 'Who's there'?" the voice echoes, somewhat poshly.

"I say, old chap-- you come upon somebody in the bloody throes of the worst dashed shock he's ever had, right as he intends to have a bit of a snack, and you're going to go round asking his name instead of if he's in any bloody pain?"

Laboriously, a pale hand appears over a counter at the far end of the room.

"Have it your own way, I suppose." And as the speaker hauls himself over the edge of the counter, he reveals himself to be a well-to-do gentleman in his middle twenties, sporting a jaunty green tie and a good deal of blood. "Bertram Wooster, at your service. And I do apologize about the swearing, dashed impolite of me, but you see I've fallen somewhat in the line of duty."

He holds out his arm for inspection. Something, or someone, has bitten him rather badly in the forearm.

"Hurts like bloody hell."

And Havelock thought his accent was a little too upper-class.

The young gentleman is dressed in a style not quite what he is used to, but the manner is more familiar than a good part of the people he meets in Milliways, enough to identify him- wealthy, well-born, no combat experience whatsoever, idiot.

Not necessarily in that order.

"That's to be expected," he says clinically, eyeing it, but making no move to get closer. "Still, you don't appear to have hit any major blood vessels."

You can tell, by the way it isn't spurting. In spite of the apparent depth of the wound.

Puck sidles a little nearer, sniffing the air. He frowns.

"Who has done it?" he asks.

Bertram Wooster appears affronted by the memory.

"Some fellow just popped up to me and did it. No explanation, no account of himself whatever! Naturally, I got clear of there in a hurry." He frowns around at the kitchen. "This place is a jolly wretched mess. I could use a bit of a repast, myself, but none of it looks the least bit appetizing."

He peers speculatively at Puck, who flashes him a perfectly charming smile.

Havelock's eyes slide to where Puck has reappeared, and he very carefully doesn't move while he registers the fact that he does not like Puck moving closer to this possible source of - not danger directly, the man is a harmless buffoon, but of contagion, of... -

Then he looks back, and begins a rather warier approach of his own, sword still in hand.

"We encountered similar trouble," he says. "They are most everywhere now. From where have you arrived?"

Bertram Wooster appears troubled by this revelation. He was already pale when first he appeared; now he looks positively ghastly.

"Why-- I popped in for a spot of something. The spread at Aunt Gussie's wasn't exactly capital, not that it does to tell the old girl. Dreadfully bad manners, that. Anyway, I popped in here from I suppose the sitting-room, and happened on a very dull sort of crowd; nearly everybody looked in a bad way. Then the fellow bit me-- and here I stand before you."

Puck has drawn quite close now. Bertie glances to him with a look between unease and appreciation.

"I say," he says, unsteadily, "have you got anything for this, by any chance? Bandages and whatnot?"

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