A Spoon Full Of Sugar

Participants:

abby_icon.gif logan_icon.gif

Scene Title A Spoon Full Of Sugar
Synopsis …makes the medicine go down. (in the most delightful way.)
Date October 17, 2010

Oh So Sweet


The geeks are leaving. This is how you know that closing time will soon be happening, the disconnecting of their digital umbilical cord, dropping tips on the table in that back room of the bar that hides them away from the other people who actually come here for dates and meeting up with friends. Brenda's manning the front, Delilah long gone back to her place to rest her puffy feet, the German has gone, off to do what those in Cardinal's pocket do and not hunkering in the basement for an hour. a smattering of people in the front prove that it has been a lackluster Monday. Another day of breaking even which in this day right now, is really a good thing. Better than not breaking even.

Abigail's in jeans and boots, raspberry colored shirt with the logo across the chest, wiping down the tables in the back room, putting dishes and cups into the grey plastic bins that will be brought into the kitchen to wash and put them up. The gold cross jangles back and forth with each swipe of her arm across the wooden tables, easing a chair in with her knee. The match to Calibans ring is there, simple band of gold on her left hand. Engagement ring around the gold cross as if protecting it.

When he wants to, where he wants to, was all Logan had promised Robert Caliban, and by extension, Abigail Beauchamp. In all fairness, Logan has not chosen a particularly inconvenient time, the closing hours of a Monday evening when the streets are thinning and the light is waning. He makes sure the door won't be locked so as best to step on inside with all the ease of which he has not permitted Abby to enter his establishment, but. That's neither here nor there. He doesn't need her for anything.

He would not say no to cake, though. Stepping inside, that's where he halts, lingering to take a scoping glance around. He's difficult to miss, today, in a frock coat with fabric enough in the skirt of it to hang in folds, and constructed of a predominantly dark red tartan, with black satin lining the lapels and a distinctly metallic sheen to the fabric. It is of McQueen. The black shirt beneath it is blessedly plain, black slacks, patent leather shoes that come to a point.

Spying Brenda, Logan deals a brief smile to her, insincere in the way that strangers can be. "Evening. I'm looking for Abigail."

Cigarette in her mouth, leaning behind the bar, flame haired Brenda watches Logan as he enters, blowing a plume of smoke out of the corner of her mouth after removing the cancer stick. "Evening right back at you handsome. Boss lady's in the back, washing down the tables. You want me to get you something while you go stick your head in there?" The cigarette is ground out into an ashtray and she gives Logan a wink.

"A bottle of cognac would be divine." At an angle, Logan glances over the shelves on display, then points a long finger. "That Martell would do nicely. Cheers." He tips her a wink, and with a rustle of tartan fabric, heads for the backroom as directed, that easy smirk vanishing as he more or less mentally braces himself. Logan doesn't do many things that he distinctly doesn't want to do. It doesn't make everything else easier, however. Placing a splayed hand against the corner of the wall, he pauses, takes a breath, then steps around.

There's a doubtful glance around the dining area, before blonde is easily and quickly spotted. Rather than enter the area fully, Logan balances a lean against the edge of the entrance, elbow braced there and hand holding his head up, fingertips scritching through vibrantly golden curls as he watches her clean up.

It could be worse.

He could be greeted by a burning pillar of fire and a coronal Abby within. Instead, he gets her back for a few moments more as she slides a rag across a damp surface and wipes away the fingerprints of the individual who sat there, while Brenda gets around to bringing down a bottle of cognac that he requested. Two glasses as well, presuming that he's not going to drink it all by himself.

When she turns to look at the archway, noticing the rough shape of a human in her peripheral. He can tell when she realizes who it is because the hand freezes in it's motion and the whole of her just tenses up even as lips purse. She straightens up, dropping her arms to her sides, one hand around the neck of the spray bottle, other gripping the rag tightly. "Logan" About as nice a greeting as he's going to get.

It could be worse. She could have called him John. Logan lifts his chin in a semblance of a nod back in greeting, a glance back towards where Brenda is securing the items requested, before he slips into the backroom completely, hands tucking into the pockets of this week's favourite coat. Judging by the way one hand tenses within the fabric, there is probably something to grip, there, but his steps inside are small, wandering, and not really directly to her.

"Odd, isn't it. The people your husband will trust with you. Sure you married the right bloke?"

"I don't rightly think that you get a right to pose me that question. You're his employee. You can do something that will help with a very… unique issue and I trust my husband. Besides, he was up front about it. He said I wouldn't like his answer. He's right. But.. I don't really have a choice" The rag is tucked into the back of her belt, the spray bottle into the corner of the plastic tub.

Brenda comes up behind Logan and then to the side, bottle and glasses in hand, pin thin raised brows that arch sky high in question towards the boss lady. No ones actually ever seen logan in the old place. "Back room Brenda. Give us some privacy will you, holler if you need help"

"Yes boss lady" But she doesn't go to the back room, instead offering the wares to Logan to take to the back, a gesture to the door that Abby's using her ass to push open and go on through. "Leave your number before you go. I might be interested"

Taking glasses in one hand, bottle in the other, Logan's response to Brenda is a thin-lipped smile before he's turning, moving off to follow Abby, nudging the door further open with shoe toe after her as he goes. No comment from the Briton, not likely until they are good and settled. In the intimacy of an arranged meeting, there are more details, the silver ring around his thumb, and the fact that he, for once, is entirely uninjured. Even his bad leg is giving him no trouble, today, no hitch in his step that's noticeable. He watches the back of Abby's head as they walk, kicks the door closed behind them.

The door swings closed behind him leaving logan following Abby into the back which is a big kitchen, one person working in the back at preparing for the morning opening. "Gonna be in the room, if you need in, knock first" To the dark haired individual whom she doesn't both to introduce, just leaving Logan at the threshold so she can drop the container off and then double back. That she happens to pick up a plate along the way, pluck up some fresh turnovers is a bonus and likely more hospitality than anything as she moves past him.

A door in the squat short hall between kitchen and the dining area heralds two doors. Bathroom, and 'staff only' on the other door. It's through the latter that she goes, slipping in then holding the door open for him. Carpet, flat screen screwed into the wall, little steel lockers for the staff to put their personal stuff in and a comfortable couch and chairs. "What did he tell you?"

Logan drifts for the table, setting down both glasses with care and dignity, not paying her much attention as he twists the cap of the cognac. A brief sniff of the powerfully scented liquor, angling it to glance over the label, before he's dealing himself a helping, hesitating, then doing a second, smaller dose into the other glass Brenda provided. Sitting down, with a careful adjustment of the tails of his coat, Logan glances back at her as if just remembering that she'd asked him a question.

"That you mimic fire now and are addicted to negation drugs," he states, bluntly. "He asked me to get you off them. Is that about the long and short of it? What did he tell you?"

"Not addicted." She's quick to correct him on it. "I don't crave it. I don't wake up and need another hit or I'm gonna die. Ever been on a drug where, quitting cold turkey is like, something your doctor would advise against because of all the things it'll do. They take you off it little by little because your body is used to it… doing this job and it's not ready to take it back over? Like steroids. For an inflammation. You gotta take the pills like they say or bad stuff happens, could do more than good right?"

Abby gesture to her locker, where her purse sits.

"It's like being electrocuted, and you wish someone would take a shotgun to your head to make it all stop hurting. You sweat, you throw up and if you look the wrong way, you feel like someone took a live wire and touched it to some part of your body."

Abby eye's the cognac, a glance to her wrist and the time. She never actually tasted cognac before and lets her hand close around the glass and retreat to the couch. "I had to go four days without it. I got separated from my belongings while overseas. I had to get doused a few times with water, so I didn't just… combust." She looks down at the glass, uncomfortable that she's telling the very man who ordered her tongue cut out, all this. "I wasn't in a good place then until someone brought by the drugs again so that I didn't burn down the house I was in." Her tongue comes out, swiping across her lips. "Good chance that I am going to be parked in jail for a couple months. I can't go through that while I'm in a cell. Too many questions."

"Physical dependency," Logan says, deliberate, like announcement, "is addiction. The part that I care about, anyway. I told Robert to tell you to have a couple of doses on hand. Bring 'em both, and sit down. Here." A point, to the empty space in front of him, a head tilt towards a nearby chair before he removes his attention from her to pick up the glass of brandy and take a tasting sip. Expects her to obey, clearly, and not even in a testing, trying, needling way — he just does.

Abigail bristles at his reiteration that it is an addiction. In truth, her choices in how to go about getting off the pills are limited. With Francois time hopping with Hiro to make sure the world is set right and the chunk of electronics around her ankle, he is all she has. "He did"

With those two words, she's tossing back half the liquid in the cup before putting it down and heading for the lockers. She digs around in one, bringing out the orange bottle with it's white cap. Haitian written across the blank label. It would only make sense to some what that would mean. With slow steps, one hand grasping the back of a chair that will put her within reach of Logan, she's settling down as directed. Her palm pinches one tab on the bottle and twists it open, working past the child lock till it's popped off and she's pouring out two helping of negation drugs, ten pills in all. Few seconds later, she's got the separated into their respective doses.

"They're anti-psychotics, anti depressants. The combination meant to make an ability go dormant. Lasts about twenty four hours, give or take a few hours. Don't double dose. I don't know why, but I was told to never double dose. I haven't had any today. I've been going every second day"

With lazy gentleness, so fluid that it doesn't seem threatening until it is, Logan is leaned forward enough in his chair to gently snag her dangling engagement ring and crucifix both between thumb and the curl of his finger. There is slight pressure, of the chain cutting a little tighter into the nape of Abby's neck, but he's being subtle about it — it's no more harsh than the tug a friend would give to inspect a particularly cool pendant. His breath is smokey and now sweetened with liquor.

"Let's get a few things straight," he states, gently. He hooks a finger through the hoop of gold and diamond so as to better deny her the right to tug away — only as far as a knuckle, finger curled. "I may work for Caliban, but in a few weeks, I suspect that won't matter anymore, so don't get the wrong idea. I don't give a fuck who you're fucking, who you've married. I never have. I'm helping you, so you're going to be nice to me."

His other hand goes out for the pills, palm flat. "And I'll be nice to you."

Feet plant, ready to rear back and her palm gripping the side of the table as she closes her eyes and cringes. She's expecting something from him and it's not quite what she gets. "We're not fucking" He can take that how he wants to take it. "I think, that I've been very nice and polite with you Mister Logan, given the history between us. I don't like this arrangement any more than you surely do. We're not the kind of people I think, who will forgive and forget what we've done to each other." She holds her breath after, waiting with eyes still wrenched shut.

"No," Logan disagrees, with a velvety chuckle, running the ring an inch back and forth on the chain, toying. "I suppose, in the name of karma, you have a point. But you do what you can get away with. Little comments in public places, about your boyfriend, and what he don't know can't hurt him. I'm respectfully informing you that that's not going to work out well for you anymore, if you try it again." There's a pause, as if considering pushing the issue, before he wrinkles his nose and flicks the ring off his finger, letting it hang once more.

The chair squeaks slightly as he sits back, reaching out for his glass again with that other hand still hovering expectantly. He isn't looking at her, studying the colour of the liquor in his glass.

She won't apologize for that. Nor tell him that her boyfriend now husband only told her to stay away from his place of business. But he's put her on notice, and she's acknowledges that with a sharp swallow as her hand comes up to grasp the ring and cross as if it might alone, wash away some sort of taint left behind by his touch.

It takes her a minute of staring daggers at him trying to get her temper - the her temperature - under control before she's picking up half the pills, placing them in his outstretched hand before she drops her own hand with it's clear lacquered nails down to her lap, still holding tight to her necklace, refraining from saying a word.

Logan turns the pills over in his palm, as if his power could translate to seeing their chemical makeup just like this. Not so. Still, he opens up his coat, taking out a small, plastic baggie better suited for drug dealing than drug acquiring. Slips the negation drugs inside, then secures that, in turn, within the satin-lined breast pocket inside his coat. Abby's silence seems to suit him, taking another lingering taste of his cognac, before he lifts his chin at her.

Offers out both hands, for her to place one of her's within. "Take one. I need to sort of feel how it works. Basically— " It occurs to him to explain, and minor, glimmering selfconsciousness has him hesitating. He isn't book smart. His ability requires some book smart. But it's not all big words, as he settles on, "what I do is tell your brain it doesn't need what it's taking anymore. But if I don't get a feel for how it hooks in, then I'm feeling around in the dark. This may take a couple of goes, and I can't just do it in a day either."

Manicured nails gleam, longer fingers splay, minor scars on a couple of knuckles on his right. Waiting.

She wants to snatch the pills away from him that he just slips away into his pocket. Ferry supplies, he's taking Ferry supplies, the extra's intended to be returned for in case someone else ever needs them. To stuff away in case some day, god forbid, she'll need it. Fingers twitch, but she doesn't stop him, considering it part of the payment for what he's intending to do.

He drinks, she watches, the lay out of palms with the expectation that she'll take them, words falling from his mouth one syllable at a time and working to understand it through the sheer rememberance of what he'd done with his hands using his ability almost what? Almost two years ago? less. She has more than this to look forward to. Joy of joys. The second dose of pills not taken up by him are plucked up and she places them on her tongue, swallowing them down with the practiced ease of someone who's had to take them in a pinch before, lacking something to wash it down with. This case, she doesn't want to because she doesn't know what the alcohol will do to affect how Logan's ability will deal with the drugs. Warm palms make contact with his, squeezing her eyes shut, stiff as a board. What's the discomfort of holding John Logans hands versus not going through full blown withdrawal? worth it apparently. "Just do it please"

His hands close around her wrists, palm to palm, Logan watching her face as she closes her eyes. There is always that temptation, to send off a frission of warm positivity, to force her body to respond to him in the way that contradicts every else that makes up Abigail Beauchamp. Resists, however, as if staving off his own addiction, and lets out an exhale.

Brightly green eyes close in turn, as he sinks into listening to a symphony only he can hear.


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