Just A Game

Participants:

logan_icon.gif wendy_icon.gif

Scene Title Just A Game
Synopsis Wendy becomes the subject of Logan's interest as he explores what he can and cannot do.
Date September 15, 2009

Solstice: Wendy's Home


A call to push the day back, another phonecall the day of to make sure that something food wise was delivered so that she could have stuff to eat in the place when Logan came. But he was coming to Wendy's so that she could fulfill her part of the bargain that got her out of jail scot free save for a sharp look or two. He be present while she took some refrain. That's all and really, a very small price to pay for not being run through judicially because a tiny spanish cop was pissed he had to go more than two steps.

It's an artists abode through and through despite the high class nature of the building. Bright colors, artwork on the walls that belong to her and belong to others. Comfortable furniture that would likely be scoffed at by other residents of the building. The trappings of high technology though, she gives in to that with the stereo system, surround sound, wall mounted plasma TV. Near the front though, through one archway is her studio, the smell of wet clay, plaster, paints of various kinds permeate the air. Various projects in states of creation rest here and there. The most lived in room within the whole condo.

Front desk had been warned that Logan was expected, send him on through and up to the appropriate floor. Wendy was knocked back on the couch, feet up on the coffee table in anticipation of her house guest. Skinny jeans, blue and black striped sweater and ponytailed, bare feet tap out in time with some rock that plays throughout the apartment and waiting for the doorbell that announces her impending visitor.

As ever, Logan is in his familiar armor of expensive lines and fabric choices. His shoes are ordinary, black leather, zippers up the ankles rather than laces and buttons, but the slacks and matching waist coat are inevitably expensive, with slivers of silver in the pinstripes. The deep blue shirt he wears beneath, open collared and designer, exhibit the same sort of silvery threads under the right light, though all is mostly obscured by the woolen coat drawn over.

He knocks sharply, at approximately the time he'd promised his presence. Life has not been especially unkind, lately, as difficult as sleeping hours can be. There will always be deeper shadows beneath his eyes but otherwise he's healthy, groomed, skin not as pallid as usual and cheekbones not as sharp against his flesh.

Guest! Visitor! If there was dog here there would likely be lots of barking, someone screaming for the dog to back the hell away from the door. But it's only Wendy as she bounds up from the couch and towards the door. There's a throwing of the lock and the turn of the doorknob before she's in the doorway, looking out at him. Head canted to the side, eyebrows up and a smile on her face.

"God, such a snappy dresser. Do you always walk around like you're the cover of an italian magazine?"

Logan smiles brightly at her observation and glances down at himself, rocking back on his heels briefly as he opens his coat a fraction. Black leather pointed toes gleam in the light of the hallway. "I try really hard." He's quick to let himself in, a hand curling long fingers around the door frame and moving on past her. Oversight, on his part - it's always polite to wait to be invited, but it's a formality he skirts by as easily as he skirts by her.

"I'm not like you, my love, I know I'd look like a wreck after spending a night in jail, for instance. How are you since then, anyway?" He spares a glance back at her once his attention wandered about the apartment and its lived in decor, a touch of admiration in that look before it's returned back to her, along with an inquiring lift of his brow.

"Bullshit. I looked a wreck too. I'm doing good. Same old same old. Working, attending meetings. ES ES Dee Dee. You? How's the club? Gianna had a good time. Poor woman's had the wickedest hangover for her wedding. Serves her right for making us wear those horrid dresses, I mean really, hot pink plaid with a big bow?" Wendy shrugs her shoulder, securing the door from any others who might decide to visit or otherwise interrupt the ongoing's of the evening.

"Welcome to Chez hunter, don't go in the studio if you don't want your suit to be at risk. Want something to drink? I got bottles over everything here. Almost like a bar at home" She turns away from him to hit up a bar at the far end of the livingroom, snatching up her own glass so that she can refill her drink.

Logan shrugs off his coat and finds a surface, a clean one, of which to discard it over. He doesn't take off his shoes, or his waist coat, the narrow waisted cut of it doing nothing to make him seem less wiry, if making shoulders seem broader in contrast. Not a scrap of jewelry save for an expensive watch around a wrist. "The club is doing well. I keep expecting its honeymoon period to be over but it's doing fine, enough that I can be a bit choosier if I pick up a second enterprise."

No rest for the wicked. Tucking his hands into the pockets of his slacks, Logan paces the room, taking a good look around, eyes darting towards the window and then back again. "I like your place. A drink would be nice - gin, if you've got it."

"Present from my parents, for selling my first piece. They dislike the city, they consider it too dirty and dangerous since the towers and then the midtown. So they unloaded it onto me and they stick it out in the Hamptons. They come in for work and then head back out" Gin she has and the clear bottle is plucked from behind the counter by hands that have spent many a year doing this. Grabbing bottles, pouring and drinking.

"I like the city. I can immerse myself in it and get inspiration, there's always something going on, somewhere to be, something to do" One shoulder lifts as the bottle tips into a lowball with some strange stones resting it in. Gin sliding over them all till the appropriate height is met and then she pours some into her own glass. Next a can of soda water.

"Staten islands good for that too since the bridge went down. I don't get out there often enough anymore. This whole other subculture to study to draw from, to nurture on some levels within"

"Nurture." There's a scoffing tone of disbelief in Logan's voice, sauntering on over towards where drinks are being poured, reaching out to steal the one intended for him. "Most would put a massive flamethrower to the place if they could, you know. But I don't know if studying is any better. Residents would prefer the petri dish to be left alone, I imagine. What do you think of it?"

He knocks back a sip of gin, the taste of it bitterly acidic, sharper when it goes down, and warm all the way. He licks away a clear droplet of liquor from his lip, before clarifying, "Staten Island."

"I think it's days are numbered" Gin passed off and she moves to the couch so that she can put her black laquered toenails and attached feet up on the coffee table. "It's a segment of society that everyone prefers to ignore, but because it's right there on an island, and right under their noses that they can't ignore" Another shrug of her shoulders as she throws back a sip. "They just forget that whats on staten island is also everywhere else, in alleyways, in unmarked buildings…across the hall from them"

Not that she's saying she's anywhere on the scale of whats on staten island, but she does have that closet with a bag of about 30 syringes of refrain. "By nurture I meant that I can nurture what I experience there, within me and use it, turn it outwards into my work" There's a gesture for Logan to join her on the couch if he wants or the adjacent furniture. "So how exactly is this going to work? You just want me to shoot up?"

Logan follows, keeping his mouth shut, now, as to Staten Island. There are some things that are telling, and talk of the forgotten borough is similar. As well as its inevitable fate. He swirls the gin in his glass as he settles down on the couch, a long arm going across the back. "I don't know about just," he says, with a fleeting smile. "But yes, essentially. And I'd like to touch you."

The words linger between them as he takes a sip, before he lifts a shoulder in a shrug. "Your hand works fine, but touch is important. Before the needle makes its mark, too - you'd be surprised about how much your body does for you before it's ravaged by chemical. Tell me— if you think about Refrain, about doing it, what do you feel?"

She figured that some touching would be involved given the inherent nature of his ability, the way he made her feel when he touched her. Taking away pain or pushing her into a high without the chemicals from a pill or syringe or smoke to do it.

"Giddy, excited. I anticipate it, wonder what I'll remember this time, relive. Will it be a good trip? Usually. Bad trip?"

Wendy's glass moves this way, that, up and down as she talks, hands animated as the gin hits the surface of the glass that contains it. "I feel anticipation and I have to breath, calm myself down a fraction. It's like.. opening a present at christmas only the cost is a prick and puncture of flesh instead of risking a thousand papercuts and disappointment that it might not be what you wanted. That santa fucked up what you wanted. I know that when that plunger goes down, when the blue fairy hits my bloodstream, that I'm not going to be disappointed. It's a good thing, nearly always. Only once it hasn't been. I get a bit of a high before I end touch the syringe"

Logan listens, and he at least seems enraptured, his pale eyes focused on her darker ones and brow making a serious line above them. Eventually, a small smile plays out on his mouth, head angling to the side, bare neck and jaw, cheek, all clean of stubble, close shaven. "That's chemical," he says, when she finishes. "Drugs are second best, although I'll admit Refrain is unique, if the stories are true. All that about memory. But what makes you feel good, what makes you want it, your body does it all on its own. Addiction. Dirty word, perhaps."

"With refrain it's … it's the crash afterward" The brunette supplies as her bare feet are pulled from the table, bent knees taken from their 45 degrees to 90 and the gin glass put down. "You could come to crying, tears of utter joy, elation, or you could be smiling, laughing, content. What you felt during it, what emotion it invoked, it just sticks with you" An ornate chest on the table is pulled over, the latch flipped and top pulled up by it's handle. Immediatly, the light glow leaks out, telltale of it's contents.

Settling a little closer, he reaches out a hand and plants it warmly against the nape of Wendy's neck. It's a gentle and familiar kind of touch, Logan's eyes still remaining that mix of ice and green rather than anything telltale and brighter. "And it's so pretty," he notes, attention moving towards the chest being opened.

She breathes deeply at the touch, of a mans hand there against her neck. No tensing, pulling away. If anything, she experimentadly rolls her head to get a feel for his hand there, let her hair brush against the back of his hand while she reaches for the drug as if by rote. A movement she's practiced over and over. She has, with her every two days habit with this stuff, sometimes even once a day depending on what her mood is like.

"I won't move. Once i've taken it. Fair warning. Freaks some people out and the like" Her fingers close in on one syringer, bright orange cap covering the steel tip, and deposits it on the wooden table while she dips into the chest again to get out a little alcohol pad. "Be a handful of minutes, maybe an hour. Depends sometimes. So unless you want me across your lap so you can keep a hold of me like you are, you might want to let me lay on the couch and take an ankle" She offers helpfully.

Hand shifting enough to run a fingertip down Wendy's neck, Logan tilts his head in consideration. "As much as a chore it is to have an attractive young woman sprawled in my arms…" The smile is facetious, as much as his eyes are never warm. "You just make yourself comfortable. I've all the time in the world." As she starts to fidget around with the equipment, Logan's eyes begin to glow that same brighter green, although there is nothing for Wendy to feel. His gaze itself becomes distracted and distant, as if reading words no one else can see.

Whatever he's doing, she can't feel a difference, and part of attention is focused on him, on that strange sensation that accompanies his ability. But it won't hinder what she's set to do, the experimentation that he's running. Lid closed, she shifts enough to not break contact with him while her teeth rip off the paper that covers the alcohol wipe.

She's not a vein user. The feeling, the hallucination will come soon enough and this way she can vary where she stabs herself and make it less obvious that she's using. Today it's… Her hip. "Let me know when you're ready" Since it's him that's going to actually be coherent and doing his own business. The syringe goes between her teeth while skinny artists fingers smudged and stained with ink from sketching that day lift the side of her sweater to expose pale pale flesh with veins etched beneath. A section of said pale flesh washed clean with the biting scent of unadulterated alcohol in preperation for the Refrain.

"I'm ready," Logan responds, leaning back against the couch as he watches her in a way that seems to be seeing through her. Coherent, yes, but completely present? Not entirely. His eyes are drowsy as if whatever he was studying was on the inside rather than out, pleasant in the way a cat relaxes when being skritched behind its ears. And then he does begin to reach out with his power, connecting with Wendy's system.

It's nothing she will feel now. Everything is fine right now, and usual. Maybe later, when she goes to open that ornate chest again, and that glimmer of dopamine induced excitement is duller than before, though not gone entirely. He finds the hooks, and gently, he picks them free - nothing expert, simply experimental. One at a time.

Onto her side she turns, pinching skin between fingers and with a jab, slides the needles home, plunger down then pulls it out. Enough time to put the cap back on, lay the used needle on the table and curl up. There's bare feet, skinny ankles available for contact if he needs it. But for now? Glowing green eyes are spy'd on by brown ones that wait for the well known and well anticiapted, adored, wanted feeling to come.

For the blue fairy to visit.

Which it does, how could it not. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty seconds and it hits and Wendy's eyes widen a fraction as something Logan can't visibly see passes into her view and the woman on the couch seems to sink into and relax into the cushions as the drug takes hold.

Logan's hand slips around her slender ankle, the erstwhile pimp relaxing back into the opposite corner of the couch as he knocks back the last of his gin. He shares a smile with her, a crescent curve beneath glowing green eyes, and watches with a more physical vision as she succumbs to the effect of the drug. Licking his lips, Logan leans forward to set his glass down, keeping in skin-to-skin contact all the while before he changes his attention towards the chest of Refrain.

He takes none. She had already promised him some anyway, and god knows, junkies count their stash. Instead, he focuses on her, sensing— it's a pull in a different direction. Something works against his influence. Refrain.

"There you are. You are pretty."

The drug can't reply, it can only works its magic on Wendy's system. No hooks are buried - they're already there, tugging on those strings of need and craving. Though he does nothing for what is happening to her - he leaves alone the giddiness, the memories - Logan almost playfully snips free the ties that bind her to it, bats away the hooks of addiction that seem to try to dig back in. It's a symphony of dopamine, receptors opening and closing, and it's fascinating.

"What do you mean it's mine?" Wendy looks from the classic mustang in it's cherry red that drives any hot blooded male crazy when they see it paired with a young woman and a set of keys.

"Happy Birthday fish" One of her brothers pipes up from his corner of the garage, wiping his hands down with a rag. The two others gathered in the garage just grin. "We figured, dad was gonna skimp, get you some little fuel effecient one. But sixteen, well" Henry grins while Andrews shaking his head. "Our little sister needs something not nerdy to drive." John just sulks in the corner as the car he covets is effectivly passed over to his baby sister. His baby sister who gets everything. The baby of the family getting spoiled.

Wendy runs a hand over the front of the car, squatting down to look at it, brown eyes taking in the color, the shine, the detailing and the obvious care that her oldest brother the hobby mechanic put into restoring it. "Fucking A. Andrew. Henry, god. Just. Fucking A. Best Present ever. Best! Fuck, where's the keys?" She bounces up on gangly legs that she has yet to really grow into, a body that she has yet to grow into and frankly in years to come will not even look like she's ever going to.

John in his corner huffs "She'll crash it. I'm putting in fifty dollars, within the first week, that she's going to smash the poor thing and then where will we be? Told you that you shouldn't have given it to her!" "You're just jealous! You wish they'd given it to you!" Wendy fires back as she snatches the keys from Henry's outstretched arm before she turns and pitches them at her sulking brother so that he can catch them. "Ask me nicely and I might let you drive it first"

The minor battle going on between biochemical manipulator and the drug itself slows to a halt. Which doesn't mean to say that the drug isn't hooking itself into Wendy still - in fact, it is. It just means Logan is forfeiting. Eyes bleeding back into paleness, he slumps back against the couch once some time has past, and Wendy's eyes flicker over the memories she's seeing, and Logan lets go of her leg to run the back of his hand across his brow.

Skin cooler than it should be, damper, fingers trembling. That's new. Gently, Logan insinuates himself off the couch, collects his glass, and moves towards the drink stand to shakily pour himself another. The alcohol is tossed back for its artificial warmth, to bring colour to cheeks that have gone white. Thoughtfully, he keeps his back to the sprawling Wendy, a hand tucked beneath his chin with his thumb against the cleft of it, other hand spidered over his half-filled glass.

Johns face lights up as a hand snatches the keys on the leather fob from out of the air before he hesitates. "Yeah right fish, like you'd let me have the first ride of your present" Andrew and Henry look at each other and the strange display of the youngest of the Hunter brood seem to get along and nto be at each others throat.

"Do you want the first ride or not? Cause I remember your face when Dad got you your first car. It sure as hell was a cheery red mustang and I can see the look in your eyes. so either get in and be my cool brother and take it for a spin with me, or sit in the corner and sulk" Wendy snaps back as her hand closes on the handle and pulls out. The driver side opens with no protest, it's hinged coated with WD40, swinging wide to invite John to come off his perch.

Whiche ventually he does. Keys into ignition, Wendy in the passenger seat with her sunglasses slipped on and a wave to her older brothers as John backs the car out of the garage and nurse it out onto the road. When they've gone a few miles, have gotten used to the sound of the engine and the whine, the protest and almost animate desire for it to go fast, John pulls over. "Your turn. I'm nto speeding in this thing, you know my luck" And she does.

She knows Johns luck and for the next hour the two of them tour the long stretches of pavement, back road, gravel road, dirt road, driving along the coast in the birthday present and letting him help her break it in.

In the real world, there's just the joyus smile on Wendy's face till the refrain induced hallucination starts to end, a short trip this time it seems and the brunette starts to come to.

At the sound of limbs moving and stirring against the couch, Logan glances over his shoulder, then downs the dregs of gin with a slight wince of tension. However, all she sees when she opens her eyes is a pleasant, masking smile, Logan moving to lean against the opposite arm of the couch with a tilt of slender hips, a hand placing on the other. "Welcome back," he says. "How was it?"

drowsy eyes, languid smile. Wendy uncurls enough to sit up and focus what little attention she has for Logan on Logan. "Forgot about that car. Cherry red Mustang. Brothers bought it for my 16th, restored it. I totaled it a month later" She shakes her head, rolling her sleeves up so she can rub at her lower arms. "You?"

"It was educational," Logan says, shifting to slide down to sit. "Thank you for letting me see." No word of what he did— hell, he's not even sure of exactly what he did, other than it wore him out, made English pale skin a little sharper, his smile waner. Settling back against the couch, an ankle rested against the opposite knee, he adds; "It sounds almost tempting."

"You seem like you could use some. Or some weed" She observes from her comfortable position. Not that right this moment she wants to move to get any of the latter even though that just means lifting a hand to the chest on the table. "Never had anyone say that anything I did was ed you kate shonal" The lets the syllables rolling off her tongue, halting before she breaks out into giggles. "You look like you could use another good stiff drink or a massage"

Logan chuckles, a genuine, breathy sound, lifting his drink in indication. "Had another. Learning is surprisingly tiring," he says, looking her up and down, before leaning to set the glass down. "But I'm always good for another go. I have remarkable turn around time." He manages not to wink, and instead places his hand back where it had resting before, high up her ankle, fingers tucking beneath the hem of her pant leg.

Wendy quirks her head, a glance to said chest that contains the drugs. She never had more than one a day. The hesitation on her face seems to momentarily rise above the relaxation before she nods, extending her body to get more from the chest. Two in a day wouldn't kill her and it was all in the sake of experimentation, of whatever it was the Logan was doing and she owed it to him for getting her out of that sticky spot. "One more. At least for today" She informs him. Seems to inform him.

For her, it's more like setting a limit, a self imposed rule. Only two says the addict to her addiction. Only two today.

"No," Logan corrects, a hand up, though he doesn't physically prevent her from reaching the Refrain. Instead, his smile only becomes sharper, and his eyes greener. No pinch of the needle is required before warm simmers up from low in her belly, encases her heart in warmth, and clears her head while beginning to make the world seem that much fuzzier. "It's my turn."

And this time, he pays attention to the hooks. It'll be a game. It's always just a game.


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