Dangle

Participants:

logan_icon.gif wendy_icon.gif

Scene Title Dangle
Synopsis Logan answers the call of the white knight and dangles an offer in front of Wendy. It leads to a small fight and eventually, something that makes him smile.
Date January 27, 2010

Medical Clinic, Brooklyn

Brooklyn is located on the westernmost point of Long Island and shares its only land boundary with Queens. The East river borders and defines the borough's northern coast, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, and Manhattan beach are to the south, and the Narrows separate it from Staten Island to the southwest.

Downtown Brooklyn is one of the NYC's largest business districts. Between the Bridge and Prospect Park, brownstones, townhouses, and high-end restaurants are dominant. The culturally diverse communities of Williamsburg and Greenpoint are snugged against the East River to the far north. Close by are far more criminally active neighborhoods such as Brownsville, Crown Heights, and Bushwick. Regardless of the social situation, the so-called Borough of Neighborhoods is packed to the gills in post-bomb NYC.


It's started to snow. It does that a lot with no sign of letting up. The snow here seems cleaner and crisper than it ever did in London, from Logan's scattered recollection — lots of slush, mud and rain. Right now, it falls as fine as ash, pinwheels patterns from a black sky, and collects like frosting on the pavement, along the street sides and in the gutter. It makes him wish he'd worn better shoes, feet cold in patent leather, but it was either stand out here and have a smoke, or wait in the warm and cosy clinic waiting room and not have a smoke.

Being an addict drives you out into the cold. He's started considering stopping. They turn your teeth yellow.

Brooklyn is getting its last amount of traffic in before curfew comes down a couple of hours from now. Cars skid along on the cold wet streets, and Logan huddles beneath the overhang of the clinic's building, which was meant to close an hour ago before he put in some calls.

He's bundled in a heavy woolen coat — Prada — of grey and black, with a matching scarf looped twice around his neck. Gloves, too, lined leather with the fingers cut out, jeans and then sensible shoes that are no match against nighttime snow.

Halfway through, he pitches the cigarette to the pavement, and considers going back inside and upstairs. She should be done by now.

THey may turn your teeth yellow but that's what cosmetic dentistry is for and in an hour, all evidence of the smoke will eb gone with generous applications of a laser. Modern technology at it's best. This place is not modern technology but they'll take her money and not ask how she broke her nose. Given who she came in with, well, there's probably certain assumptions made considering that she didn't use the name Wendy but opted to just call herself Jenny Smith.

Jenny smith has a broken nose, so she's been told.

The door creaking behind him is the answer to his thought as Wendy emerges from the door, taking her time to get out. Papers in hand, purse stained with snow and dirt, colorful scarf now streaked with dried blood. Two black eyes peek from beneath a splint across her nose and she has the look in her eyes of someone who's got a very numb face that will wear off with time and had yet another bad day.

"I'm starting to wonder who gets hurt more. You or me" She drones nasally, relegated to breathing through her mouth as well as talking thanks to all the packing. "Probably think I'm one of your dancers"

Logan turns at the sound of the door opening, eyebrows raising at the sight of her — somehow, with the splint and the bandages in place, it seems worse than when he'd first seen her, and he stares for a second or two before offering her a half-smile. "Then they'll probably think that I'm the one that did it," he says, swallowing around the ashy taste in his mouth from his last cigarette and tilting his head in a gesture for her to walk with him. Let's go. "You know, for as long as they're making up stories.

"You do look a sight. How is it a high society little thing like you gets to be in the middle of such trouble? Least I have an excuse." His teasing is light, ignoring possibility that more might be bruised than just her face. As long as he gets to play white knight out of not particular cost to himself—

"I'm not that high society. I tend to slum it" Teeth hurt, little bruises where she fell. The bigger they are the harder they fall is how it's said. "High Society when I need to be the proper daughter for my parents" She's taking her time to say her words so that they come out sounding no mashed and unintelligible.

"truth be told? it's cause I go places I shouldn't so I can get ideas to paint and sculpt. Cause I don't keep my hands to myself. Touch slut is what Peyton calls me. Affectionately" And it's pretty hard not to surmise why.

"Maybe I'm just loved" She shrugs carefully. "Or maybe I just like to have you visit me in hospitals or come riding to my rescue ever since you bailed me out of jail and covered my ass" THe list could be endless in possibilities.

"Which, thank you, for riding to my rescue. You could be warm in your bar or whatever else it is you do for the Linderman Group. Instead you're-" She gestures with the folded papers that is the care and feeding of a broken nose, prescriptions, and receipt for services rendered. "Carting my sorry ass around"

On a noble steed, maybe. Logan spares a glance at her— can't quite remember the disjointed recollection of a dream some weeks ago, maybe he should write these down, but he's pretty sure he didn't ride a unicorn, and— it's a turn of phrase, in the end. Moving off towards the car parked on the far corner, possibly illegally, his stride is slow and meandering despite the cold nipping at their heels, and he snorts once, softly.

"I choose who I look after, and you're a good investment, Hunter. You got any idea who did it?" His hand slips into his pocket, grips his cigarette case and rotates it around, but makes no effort to get another.

Good investment. She was since the start wasn't she. She's made no overtures to him at being something more even though peyton's said as much and thought as much. It's a little hard to run back through her memory and try and grab the name. She knows the ability right off the tip of her tongue. "Empath" That's at least what she gleaned off him. "Fucking empath. He called himself… black. Something Black. I'm too fucked in the head right to remember more."

She's glad for the slow pace none the less so that she can take her time walking. There's taping and aluminum and who knows what else blocking part of her view. All of her view if she focuses on her nose. "They made noises about some house being theirs, at this rundown subdivision that's being redone by folks. I know the place cause that's where I'd go to get some refrain or other shit before" Which goes without saying that likely, that's why she was there in the first place too. "Can't go home. Not safe there right now Logan"

There's some silence, but hard to tell if it's brittle, thoughtful, absent. The sound of their footsteps fill it up, either way, Logan's eyes narrowing as if trying to figure out how something might register on an emotional level. A hand goes up, rubs over his face as if to stave away the chill of the air, and he breathes out a thicker plume of steam in a sigh. "Well, I've a place in the Upper West Side," he says. "You'd be in good company.

"I might take a look into this empath of yours as well. See if anyone's got the faintest idea as to who he is. I've a talent for redirecting negative criminal energy, you know."

Now he looks at her, analysing her bruised profile. Eventually, he says, "You must know my employer is a healer."

"You mean i'd get to actually see your place" It's teasing in as much as she can muster for it right now. "Drink your alcohol and sleep in your bed" There's a weak prod of her elbow against his and fragile grin - it hurts to smile - When he offers his place. "Peyton called, she's got friends in different places and she said the asshole that blew off my ear and fingers is still alive. Pardoned by the government and roaming the city." glassy brown eyes are tinged with no small amount of fear as she speaks those words. "She's afraid he'll try to come finish what he started" It's offered up as an explanation as to why she doesn't want to go home. That and she can't - won't - go to her family because she doesn't want the smothering.

"You've got the talent for a great many things Logan, the least of it being that energy and yes, I know your employer is a healer. I'm pretty sure there's not many people in the city who don't know that the patron of the Linderman act is evolved himself. Is this your not so subtle way of saying that you could see if he would fix you're broken friend?" She glances over at him when she stops moving forward beside him. "Why has he never fixed your hurts?"

"It's my subtle way of asking why you haven't asked," Logan says, tracking a look towards the shining black car before them instead of at her. Amusement tweaks his expression a little, at her question. He had broken fingers until they set on their own accord, scars still marring his torso, and the old injury of his leg still makes a twisted vine of scar tissue around his kneecap. All the same— "He's fixed the ones that matter. That, and I'm not fond of being subjected to people's abilities." The admission comes easily, along with a shrug.

Another piece of neurosis along with the fact he never invites people to his pretty apartment. It's not the worst of his traits. "You should ask. No sense walking around like that. I can see what I can't do."

"I don't ask because it's never occurred to me to ask. Because I have met only maybe two healers before and both were very busy people and a broken nose is not sufficient reason to bother a man who's more than just a healer" Because like with Logan getting her out of jail, there's be strings and she's sure that unlike when he did get her out of jail, these strings would be a great deal more important and costly.

"You're always subjected to my ability. That doesn't unnerve you? It's not like I can turn mine off at will. Fuck, I wish I could, but I can't. Just ignore it a bit"

"It did," Logan admits. "But when a thing is done, it's done. You know what I can do, you can feel it. If you somehow managed to shut it off, I don't see what difference it makes, in the end." He comes to a halt, just a foot from the car, and when he turns a look at her, his eyes have gone luminous green. There's no pump of adrenaline, no release of serotonin or endorphines, no fidgety tricks with dopamine. Something switches off — her ability ceases to function, too muted to detect.

He raises an eyebrow in silent inquiry, a smug kind of smile on his face as he adds, "Your hand, too. Your ear. What if he could fix them?"

That extra sense is as numb as her nose right now and in the blink of an eye, John's gone from being ever present in that sense to just there physically. She'd met negators but she'd never been negated. "Oh fuck, what did you just do…" There's no fear that might be present on others when he normally does that, just shock and awe as she looks around.

She closes her eyes, does a little turn and cocks her head this way, that, unable to sense where he is save for his breathing and even that is a faint thing and hard to hear over the noises of the city. "Fuck me… Logan… I can't…" She can't anything and she opens her brown eyes with blue and purple bruises beneath and above.

"Of course he could fix them John. He wouldn't be a healer if he couldn't. It's whether he should or not. I got them all through my stupidity. Not some accident, but because I was too stupid-" Well no, just her nose was through her stupidity. Wendy eases some steps forward, testing proximity to him and reaching out to lay a hand on him, see if that too is muted, gone.

Logan glances down at her hand, deciding to lift his own so that ungloved fingers brush against her palm, but doesn't let up on the negation. Nothing happens, no sense of recognition, no nothing. "I was arrested, once," he says, presently. "Just recently. And so they made me Register. I told them that this was all I could do. You can keep a secret, can't you?"

And slowly, negation ebbs away, Logan's eyes diluting into their usual tone. "Whether he should or not is up to Daniel," he states. "But you weren't stupid for getting kidnapped and hurt. I wasn't stupid for getting my leg shot twice with a sniper rifle. But if you realy don't care, then I won't say a thing."

He reaches out, grips the door handle of the car, and jerks it open.

"I can keep that secret" She offers. Her palm closes over his while it's still touching, marveling at being able to feel him and no extra sensory perception with it, or the chemical taste that it always brings with it. It seems back when his eyes loose their brightness and there it is thrumming across her being like a becon, the pinpoint of him on her radar reappearing like some plane on the control towers. Blackness and then blip.

She doesn't know though, whether she offended him, looking over as the door is opened. "what if you ask Logan. What if you ask and he doesn't." It's a quietly asked question, the subtle underlying one of whether she should get her hopes up that she could have her fingers whole, could carry on a conversation with someone to her left. Could wear her hair up. Wendy is vain, he knows that. She does care.

"I don't like it when something is dangled and then… taken away"

The door clicks closed again, but not with either Logan or Wendy in it. It's batted shut with almost an irritated gesture. "If something is dangled then you fucking grab it and don't go," he says, voice coming across blunt. "You ask with the expectation that you'll get, even if it means being tenacious. But I suppose that doesn't come natural to people who can say they're slumming it, instead of those who aren't sure.

"You'd really never ask for fear that you won't get it? You'd rather a certainty of failure as opposed to the possibility?" He seems baffled, aggravation beneath that.

"Fucking hell Logan, you think I hang around you after I got hurt because your boss is a fucking healer? It never occured to me to ask because I figured that this was it. People get shittier breaks than me, I got born with a fucking silver spoon so at least I have the money to have rebuilt my ear. I didn't ask because I didn't think about it till you told me"

"It occur that maybe I don't want to deal with the strings that might be attached to getting my livelihood back and my hearing? A guy like that doesn't does stuff like that without making a deal. You cut me a deal that I could swallow, that I could take, and I stuck around you because I like what you do. And i'm not talking about what you do when your eyes light up." She cranky, broken nosed and it's cold and she still got the hankering for some refrain that didn't go away with the punch to the face.

"Ask your boss. I can pay even, for it. Would I love to put my hair up again, yes. I'd love to sit a fucking wheel and sink my hands into the clay or work with my shit again. I'd give the world, but I'm afraid someone would actually ask for it"

He considers her words in silence, which is exactly the same amount of noise the snowfall makes before Logan is dusting himself off of tiny icy sparkles, partially gloved hands ruffling through blonde curls before he's reaching for the door again. He's not one for arguing— no, that is a blatant lie, but he has heard whatever it was he wanted to hear. "I'm sure we could cut you a discount," he adds, and offers her a smile before he's tilting his head to the car. "Get in. If you're dragging me from work the you can drag me home too."

"That means he'll just want the moon and maybe a quarter of the sun, instead of the whole universe" Wendy manages to say after a few moments. It's a joke, lame attempt at one. "Listen, Logan, John. I'm sorry okay. I'm sorry. This was shitty of me. You've always been nothing but kind and patient even when you shouldn't, when you don't need to." She carefully eases around him, reaching to open the door and get in. Out of the direct cold with the promise of heat to come as soon as he gets in.

He ducks into the car after her, closing the door and dealing instructions towards the driver, his address, and now she knows!, before settling back into his seat. The scarf looped around his neck is loosened, the leather lined car interior comfortably warm. "Too late — I've already forgiven you." Speaking of warm, so is Logan's smile, actually, a quirk of ruefulness as much as his eyes tell of aloofness and apathy. He says, with a certain amount of self-deprecating dryness, "Besides, that's just the kind of man I am."


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