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[Number 6 lifts his gaze back to Arthur, turning toward the man and giving "Steve" plenty of opening with his back to the bathroom door.]

What does it mean to you? I was polite enough not to ask at that first meeting but now I think-- AH!

[Mid-sentence, his ears prick at the suspicious sound of someone behind him. But, it's too late. That someone is on his back, and there follows a sharp jab in his neck. He's horribly familiar with that pain. Staggered, he turns to see who has drugged him and gasps in horror.]

Billy? How did you...?

[His eyes snap back to Arthur. His voice raises in urgent insistence directed toward the blind man. He doesn't have much time. Already he can feel the gauzy warmth of the sedative settling over him. His speech is slurred and he has to try very hard to enunciate this final warning.]

Arthur... if you are not... one of them... beware. That's... not...Steve...He's an...imposter...

[He can't fight gravity. So, rather than let himself fall and injure his head even more, he sinks to his knees willingly and braces his hands against the floor that suddenly feels both close and far away.]

What did you... give me...?

[The drug pulls at him, tugging on his mind as if separating it from the rest of him. He can still feel that his hands are on the floor, but it's joined by a sensation of falling. That would be his muscles giving way, letting him drop down prone, face-first, to the carpet at last. But he's too far gone, swimming in some unseen current, to even register the pain of his nose meeting the flood head-on. Some part of his rational self remarks that he ought to be afraid, but he simply doesn't have the capacity for it at present.]

Edited 2022-10-18 14:37 (UTC)

[ Well that sucked to listen to.

And it's partly because there are now two distinct possibilities: that he's helped a friend successfully subdue a violent victim of possession, or that the truth is-- is quite the opposite. ]

What? [ he says, quiet but alarmed, as Smith slurs his warning.

Of course, he could be lying. One of them is lying-- and both of them, it turns out, remember details of their interactions, so that method of verification isn't as useful as he thought it was. Arthur really hopes he hasn't fucked this up: partly for Smith's sake, and partly because he'd rather not be blind and alone in a room with a possessed guy armed with knockout drugs. That would be very bad, actually.

Steve didn't act like he was lying. Neither of them acted like they were lying. Would a ghost possessing Smith be able to use his spy training? ]

Steve, [ says Arthur, wary. He hasn't gone for his gun or anything, because he's not sure, but he holds his cane upright, less mobility aid and more blocking weapon. ]

Why did he call you Billy?

[ He's bluffing is the obvious answer, but he wants to hear Steve's answer anyway. Was there something in their conversation that Arthur dismissed, or moved past when he shouldn't have? Are there visual clues that he missed out on? He knows there was something that made him uncertain. And Bash still hasn't replied, and Steve was the one who contacted him.

But the emotion in his voice when he talked about the thing from Hawkins -- that was real, Arthur's sure of it. They understood each other on that level, even if 'bad feelings caused by something invading your brain' is a strange thing to bond over; jesus, surely he didn't spill his own secret, even implicitly, to someone lying about their own. Surely? ]

I'm not-- not accusing you, but- you know I have to ask.

[ Of course the asshole had to go and say his name, but that's fine. He can work with it — he only has to keep up the act long enough to make it out of this room. Arthur's words from just moments earlier spring to mind:

If I absolutely have to, I can shoot blind. Hard to miss point blank.

Let's try to avoid that. His expression twists into the most Patented Steve Harrington Expression of Vague Confusion and Disbelief that he can muster, and he hopes it comes across in his tone. ]

I don't know, man! Who the hell is Billy? [ Honestly he's never been more grateful to have such a generic name. Billy is a little easier to play off as some random accusation than, say, Pickles. ] I promise, I — I have no idea what he's talking about.

[ He pauses, seems to draw in a breath to steady himself. ] I can talk to... to what's-his-name, Bash, if that'll help.

[ God, he's just not sure. So Arthur falls back on an old standard: playing along. Getting help if Steve is Steve, and getting him out of the cabin if he isn't. He can play it however he needs to from there. ]

Yes. Go and see if he's in his cabin, tell him to come here.

Leave the - the needle and everything here, in case it wears off and I have to give him another dose.

[ Yes Arthur is willing to give somebody an injection blind. Have you met him. He's off the chain. ]

Okay.

[ He's already capped the needle and set it aside with the bottle. He would've drawn up a fresh dose but quite frankly he just doesn't care. He does, however, perform one more act as Steve, which is to crouch next to Smith and roll him over on his back so he's not just laying facedown. ]

Do you need help moving him first? He's pretty heavy.

Edited 2022-10-18 22:38 (UTC)

[ Maybe a bad idea, but... he really wants to believe that this is Steve. And, well, Steve isn't wrong. Arthur's been building his strength back up during the time he's spent on the ship, but moving a guy would still be easier with two people than with one. And with one person who can see where they're going, rather than none.

It's a calculated risk! Let's see if today is a day when Arthur can do maths. ]

I... yes. Yes, I- I think I do. What do you think, the bathtub? Probably better if he's nowhere near the front door.

[ Relax Arthur you're like the tiger king chillin in the tiger pen with your tiger pal. Everything is a-ok and perfectly safe! ]

Yeah, sure. But, I mean, it'll definitely be uncomfortable.

[ Giant man folded up into bathtub... sounds like a bad time. It's really not like they have a lot of options though. ]

I guess we can pad it, at least. Which bedding should I use?

[ Yeahhh Arthur's thoughts were going in the same direction. That and the benefit of a bathtub, which is that it's impossible to move silently in one of the damn things. ]

Take it off- off the bed.

[ The bed is Crichton's. He's not going to need it today.

Remembering that the possessed people have already succeeded in murdering at least one person steels Arthur's resolve. He moves to the bed himself, grabs a couple of pillows. ]

Where did you put the, the -- what was the drug called?

Ketamine. It's on the desk with the syringe, [ he says as he begins stripping the bed. ] Oh, and the syringe is capped.

[ He steps over Smith as he carries an armload of bedding to the bathroom. Lining the tub is easy enough, and he takes the pillows from Arthur and plops those in there too. It doesn't look comfortable. Smith is definitely going to wake up with a hell of a crick in his neck but maybe by then it won't matter anymore.

Anyway, moving on from that ominous tidbit, Steve straights and puts his hands on his hips, surveying his work. ]

I think that's as good as it's gonna get, [ he says, then turns to exit the bathroom. ] Ready?

[ The desk. Right. Arthur confirms this, and then carefully pockets both bottle and syringe, just in case. When Steve's done in the bathroom, he'll find Arthur at the wardrobe, pulling out a shirt-- one of his, he's like, 90% sure. His system would be more exact if he didn't keep forgetting to use it and throwing his clothes wherever, but in theory, these ones on the left should be his. ]

Tear this into strips. We're tying him first.

[ Just because he's not certain doesn't mean he's not going to go whole hog.

Arthur tosses the balled shirt underarm towards his approximation of the location of Steve's voice. If Steve moves very quickly to the right then he might even catch it! ]

[ As a certified Basketball Boy™, Steve has no problem catching the shirt. It takes a few moments but he manages to work a tear into the fabric and begins ripping it into strips, as instructed. ]

Maybe we should tell someone else, [ he says thoughtfully as he works. ] If he gets away he could try to flip it back on us. Tell people we're the messed up ones. If it gets out that we drugged him and tied him up in your bathtub it's gonna look pretty bad.

[ That, and if more people are suspicious of Smith and put work into watching someone who isn't even possessed, it'll be better for the ones who actually are. ]

[ Arthur laughs under his breath at the notion that this will look bad. Yes, he's aware it looks bad. Strangling his building's maintenance man also looked bad. Hiding Parker's body also looked bad. Drowning himself in spirits looked bad, skipping the country looked bad, stopping going to church looked bad, he knows, he knows. It's not that he doesn't care what he looks like here, but it's surprisingly easy to fall back into an old pattern; a pattern that always seems ready to welcome him home when the person who'd pull him out of it is cold and dead. ]

You're going to tell Bash, remember? Dotting that i.

[ And Arthur is too, just as soon as Steve is gone. Crossing that t.

He finds Smith, and then Smith's face, and rests a hand loosely across his mouth -- not blocking it, but making sure his breathing is still strong. Ketamine doesn't exist in his universe, as far as he's aware, so he wants to make sure. Even if they were using something he was familiar with, he'd want to make sure.

Then he rolls him onto his front again with a grunt, and holds out a hand towards the sound of Steve, ready for the first of the shirt strips. ]

Fabric.

Right, yeah. Bash.

[ Consider that i dotted. Ish. Possibly more like a leaky pen dripped a blob of ink on the paper that could maybe pass for a dot over the i. Nothing strange here.

He hands Arthur a strip of fabric. ]

What do we do if we can't stop this?

[ The obvious answer is "nothing" but that's not an acceptable answer, not for Steve Harrington. Steve Harrington would want to plan, he'd want to talk it out, go over every detail until there are no more details left to consider. He'd want to be ready for whatever comes next.

He'd want to know there's a chance to win, however small. ]

[ Arthur... doesn't have an immediate answer to that. He makes a vague noise, a considering noise, while he ties Smith's hands behind his back. It's far from a hack job. He may be blind, but he's dextrous, and good at working without seeing, and he ties knots better than some people with both their eyes. ]

There will be a way to stop it. Some puzzle to putting them all back where they belong. There always is, I just have to- to find the first clue. There were a lot more ghosts than passengers on the ship, so- so why aren't we all possessed, if they're able and willing to do that? There's something stopping them, a- a bottleneck, or some other weakness, and that's to our advantage.

[ HEH HEH HEH is what he thinks about that. The first clue. Good luck on that one, buddy. ]

Yeah, okay, [ is what he actually says, resolute and firm, determined to solve this mystery and save Mr. Smith. ] We find the first clue. It might be something super obvious that we just haven't noticed. It's like that Sherlock Holmes quote. The world has obvious things... something, something. I can't remember the rest.

[ Steve's butchered that quote before, he will not be butchering it again in front of Arthur, thank you very much.

In this moment, he does find himself wishing someone else were here with him. One of the smarter people from his own cruise. Dr. Rick Dagless, for example, would surely be able to come up with some brilliant misdirection, send Arthur off on some wild, fruitless goose chase.

But he only has himself, and he's self-aware enough to know he's not clever in that way. He's not going to risk botching things by trying to play chess when he only knows checkers, so he settles for leaving it at that half of a Sherlock quote and waiting with another strip of cloth at the ready for whenever Arthur needs it. ]

Edited 2022-10-24 00:09 (UTC)

The world is full of obvious things, which nobody by any chance ever observes.

[ Good timing! Arthur is just holding out his hand for another fabric strip. And because he's now thinking of gloss on a hat and boots, he does so with a bitter little muttered comment: ]

Look after your powers of observation, Steve; you'll miss them when they're gone.

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cw: drugs/drugging

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