Participants:
| Scene Title | Magnetic |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | adj. exerting a strong attractive power or charm |
| Date | August 15, 2009 |
Logan's Apartment - Dorchester Towers
Lots of space.
The light is switched on, illuminating the apartment with IKEA shallow shadows and warm gold. Not a tiger stripe in sight, perhaps surprisingly, or maybe Logan just hasn't had the time or the inclination to put his mark on the place yet. Fully furnished if still bare— or at least, simple, instead of the luxurious clutter of Logan's former living spaces. And a lot of space, as well, and space is really the indicator of wealth in this city, whether Logan realises it or not.
For now, it just gives him room to pace. Striding inside, he allows his date for the evening to shut and hopefully lock the doors as he tosses keys onto the stone-shine surface of the open kitchen counter. Everything is black and cream and teal. Wide open windows towards the left stare blindly out into the street, where cars go by beneath them and the view is more to do with people looking in rather than anyone looking out.
"Do you mind telling me what happened back there?"
Cusswords of emphasis are somehow wrangled, kept leashed for now, although his voice is certainly edged, and though quite a lot happened back there, that's where Logan leaves his question, pacing a few feet towards the windows, a few feet back towards the stainless steel corner of a reasonably unused kitchen, all the while keeping Bebe within his sights.
Well… Logan did say that Bebe would get to see his new digs sooner rather than later, didn't he? A promise is a promise; perhaps one of the few that the Englishman has ever accidentally — or, should that be actually? — kept. To say that this place is far more impressive than the last just might be an unforgivable understatement. The sky is sometimes blue. Water is often wet. Bebe can occasionally make Logan's life difficult.
Locks all put in place, perhaps against her better judgment, the tiny (ex)tart then presses her bare shoulder blades up against the interior of the door and lolls her head slowly over in order to observe Logan's pacing. "I don't know," she keens, exasperation evident. Almost immediately, she finds herself having swift second thoughts and reconciles her tone into something more submissive and silent in her follow up. "I— I mean, I'm… not sure.
"How much do you know about Felix Ivanov?" It's a dangerous gambit, this sort of half-hearted distraction technique, but it might spare her some of her lover's wrath if she can just keep him preoccupied with the details about someone else's unusual ability instead of her own — if only because, truth be told, she hasn't a whole hell of a lot to offer on that front. She'd barely just begun to 'temet nosce' before she'd made the decision to throw herself off a broken bridge.
I don't know has Logan narrowing his gaze across at her with barely bridled annoyance, and so if her next question functions as anything— it distracts him from snapping with blustery Britishisms. Instead, he sets about removing his jacket, and tossing it over the low arm of a couch upholstered with smooth black leather, and walking back in her direction as his hands rise to unknot and remove his tie of the same shining black. "I know he's a fed, and I know he's thrown your name around before," he states.
Logan slides the silk out from beneath his collar, impatiently undoes the top button as he lifts a shoulder in a shrug. "And I know— actually, I don't fucking know what he was doing at Burlesque, or with you. Is that where you were going with this?"
Erm… maybe? Well, okay, no. Not really. "Do you— " Bebe's ability to render her replies in anything akin to the carefully planned fashion in which she was trained deteriorates rapidly the longer she remains pinned underneath Logan's formidable green-eyed gaze. "…do you know what he can do?"
In lieu of answering anything directly, Bebe has opted to take the most roundabout route possible. It comes complete with pit stops in the form of physical contact that might be interpreted as solicitous if it weren't for the fact that she's no doubt soon to be interrogated. Those grasping fingers seek out the silk fresh from his collar, digits dancing in with his for a moment in a makeshift game. It's a test. Will he relinquish the tie to her possession or pull away? That's how she'll judge his mood, you see.
Questions answering questions. It's kind of like an improv game, which means someone is meant to lose. Logan's gaze dips down from hers towards where small hands are coaxing the tie from his, lashes veiling that pale green and giving her a moment of reprieve from being glared at. As for what Felix Ivanov can do—
"No," Logan opts to answer, shortly, inevitably losing that game, but at the same time, the strip of silk is reeled back in front of wandering fingers, retracting from her grasp and taking a meandering step back. Ever the hedonist, Logan's poison of the night isn't so much the warm flesh of a woman in a purple dress— right now— but, rather, answers. "What can he do?" he prompts, in a tone of mock inquiry, coiling the tie he's won back for himself once, twice around the ridges of his knuckles.
The sound of silk on skin, abruptly recalled, echoes oddly in all of that extra space that surrounds them. Bebe's hands recoil up to her chest, where she clasps them together tightly for a moment — it looks like she's begging — before throwing them away and retreating from the vicinity double-time.
If only she could still think and be clever while being forced to look Logan in the eye.
She can't.
Quick! To the kitchen! (Where all the metal is!) Bebe claims one corner of the countertop as her own, back to the bar, hands stretched out on either side of her hips and hung over the edge of the brush surface by a knuckle or two. "He can move very fast. Rapidement." Oh, hey. French. That's fancy. "That's… where I got it from." It. Whatever it is. "…or had, as the case may be."
Logan paces back towards where he draped his jacket, letting the tie slither off over his fingers and tossing it in roughly the same direction as he listens and regards her out his periphery. The jacket is plucked back up and absently smoothed, before his hand dips into a pocket, taking out something black and metallic, ordinary and inoffensive looking for the most part.
"And so what do you have now? Because you see this." A dexterous wrist flick has the very wicked silver blade swinging out of the handle, clicking into place. It's a familiar weapon, for some more than others, like those that go an eyeful of it (har har). Logan's grip is white-knuckled around it as he turns it a little for her to see, allowing light to strike off the steel. "This practically leapt out of my pocket. Like a frog."
No more questions for answer. No more answers at all. Bebe has averted her gaze, turned her head to the side so that her chin can rest against the forward curve of her own shoulder. She stares at nothing but invisible motes. She offers the man little else other than a pose. She looks— pained.
Snikt. The blade is closed once more, palm pressing against the blunt side and easing it in, then back out in a contemplative, fidgeting motion. "Could have opened and hit an artery," Logan feels inclined to point out, voice conversational, if ever pointed and prompting. "The femoral one, I think it's called. Gushes and spurts instead of bleeds." He carries himself closer again with a few wandering steps, arms loose at the shoulders enough to swing subtly with the movement. Waiting, waiting for an answer.
"It's not normal," she says. Finally. Bebe's words come wrapped in a sad sigh, as if she were confessing to some sort of dire crime. She's just washed all of his linen suits and dried them on high. It was an accident. "I'm a freak. One of those Evolved people you hear about on the news…
"That's why he left." The aforementioned he is not Felix Ivanov, of course. Logan no doubt recognizes this. However, that she seems to be laying it all out for him now so gingerly and with what appears to be very genuine shame seems to suggest that she wasn't the only one keeping secrets in her previous relationship. Bastard.
Knowing now how completely she was blinded and bound, might that make having her now that much sweeter… or far more bitter?
He, who could drown people in a puddle without ever having to knock them down. Logan manages not to let amusement show so plainly on his face— not so much for the benefit of her sadness, but because that would be telling. And it's not hard, because there are other niggling questions, as he comes to stop less than a foot away from where she's leaning against the counter. At this distance, his chosen attire for the evening is a little less boring, with the black all bleeding into each other. There's more separation in texture, from buttoned waistcoat to shirt to slacks, beneath the brighter lights of the kitchen that bounce off so many reflective surfaces.
"He really pulled the wool over your eyes, didn't he?" Logan says at a dull murmur, not expecting her to reply - the kind of question posed to an inanimate object than a living, breathing person. The next one is sharper; "How long've you known? What you could do?"
"Maybe a year," she says, murmuring the word so casually, as if that meant she hadn't been lying to Logan either this entire time. A year. "But— I… I met someone." She's been seeing someone else?! "There was an accident. And— we switched. Ivanov and I." An accident. This isn't exactly the sort of thing that happens every day and yet Bebe's relaying the news just as if she were reading it off the shiny surface of the stainless steel sink that she seems to be awfully interested in staring at.
Luckily for her, Logan is used to hearing bizarre news, truth and lies. Like possessors who take the bodies of old enemies and come to work for you, or the news of his own power in the wake of the discovery that there are men out there who can turn to fire with a thought, which is especially bad when they are angry at you.
But worse for them if you know how to turn it off at a very crucial moment. Not a scientific man, despite the specific nature of his power, Logan couldn't tell you what abilities can and can't do. Apparently, they can be exchanged. That's interesting. But not as interesting as— "A year." There's a sliver of tooth that's shown in that quiet, accusatory snarl. "Well isn't that nice. And just when were you going to get around to telling me something like that?"
He'd probably mentioned it at one point, that he'd been feeling more like himself lately, and they're certainly right back where they were in the Dagger when Logan reaches out a hand tip grip her upper arm in a vice-grab, a jostle that pulls her closer. "Answer me," is the suggestion. The knife is forgotten, at least by him, in his other hand.
"I was scared," Bebe pleads with wide eyes and a subtle sob choked down into the back of her throat. It's a sentiment that rings true both in the past tense and in light of current events. "I didn't know what to do!"
Her significantly smaller hands struggle to find purchase on Logan's waistcoat or perhaps even the sleeves of his silk shirt as she's shaken; it's a bracing maneuver. The steel blade twitches in the palm of the Englishman's hand but doesn't burst forth or lurch like it did earlier in the evening. There is an odd noise that emanates from the space around them, however, as most of the magnetic metal in the vicinity shifts by an inch.
"Please don't— please don't be mad at me!"
It's an instant sort of reaction that follows, as soon as Logan feels that gentle twitch of the blade in his hand and then the eerie sound of cutlery scattering in the drawers, metal handles tugging at cabinet, the resisting groan of the surfaces around them. Glassy green eyes bleed into something more vibrant, and instantly, that pull Bebe will know as her own magnetism cuts out like a knife through a rope.
Those twin points of green blink down at her, Logan's jaw taut, before he steps back. The grip he has on her arm is loosened only after he gives her a small, discarding shove to the side. "You should watch your mouth. You never know what freaks you might be talking to."
The look of startled wonderment at Logan's discernibly odd response soon melts into something that almost resembles relief. Until she's so unceremonious cast aside, that is. Then she just stands there, both hands pressed flat out onto the stainless countertops, hips favoring the cabinets and chin downcast. She takes this moment's recess from physical contact to regroup and gather her racing thoughts, tuning her tongue to a note that isn't stung with shame or awkward accusation.
She then turns, very slowly, and regards the man with a thoughtful look in her eye as she asks the obvious question. "You're one, too… aren't you?" It might make some kind of sense in the scheme of things, really. She's isn't terribly confident as to why; it just does.
"No."
It's an instant response, tossed over his shoulder as he moves away from her and cleanly closing the blade. Slowly retracting his ability's stranglehold over hers, and so when he next glances at her, there's not a trace of his ability left. "Yes." Despite himself, there's no smile to accompany facetiousness, and his voice is edged. "No. Yes. No. There, now we've both got secrets."
It's not coincidental that his next strides carry him away from the kitchen, away from the reflective surfaces of stainless steel and other pointy objects.
Bebe pursues. She has no choice. She follows Logan out of the kitchen and over to wherever the path of his wake might lead; compelled to return to him over and over again no matter the distance or the circumstance like so much cold iron might be perpetually attracted to a powerful magnet.
"What would you have done if I'd told you? It isn't exactly as if I could register." Given that she's, you know, an illegal alien. A fake person. His very own Bebe Dahl.
"Register." The word is repeated with thorough disdain as he turns towards her, arms folding across his chest. "No, I wouldn't have made you register. But I think I had a right to know." Whatever springboard of logic that leapt from, Logan doesn't seem inclined to explain - perhaps presumes it doesn't need to be. It's of the same brand that has her following him as if he were the one with the magnetic pull and in many ways, he is.
And while we're on the subject— "That's why Ivanov's been looking for you, isn't it? Christ, I thought you'd done something to get the FBI looking for you. You didn't even tell me then."
What's worse? That Logan's logic is apparently flawed… or the Bebe, by all accounts, seems inclined to agree and acquiesce? "I know," she concedes, pleading after him with a hand that finally finds purchase once again on a black silk sleeve. "I should have said something. But, after the way Jack— " Left her out in the middle of the ocean. "…reacted, can you understand why I didn't?"
Pleasantly pleading and perfectly willing to play the part of a woman unbound by love or some other silly emotion, there's an undercurrent of something else hidden within Bebe's voice that suggests she isn't entirely interested in being made to beg all evening. Her fingers say the same, their grip firm as she does her damnedest to make Logan stand still wherever it is that she's managed to snag him, be it in the large living room near his leather couch or somewhere in the corridor headed for whatever boudoir waits at the end of the hall.
"Ivanov and I had unfinished business. It wasn't anything that involved you and I thought that the less I said, the less he might try to press you. I was trying to protect you." Ha! The world must have fallen over on its ear.
They pause in a vague limbo, a no man's land between living room and kitchen and bedroom, Logan effectively caught by the grip on her arm. There's enough steel in it and her words to stop him from simply wrenching loose in all the bluster and anger, justified or not, instead turning a look down at her. As she asks him to understand, one of the thirty million mistakes past women and a handful of men in her place have committed.
Perhaps not much of a mistake this time, however. It's nice to feel protected. Uncertainty flickers in the look he has leveled on her. "I can take care of myself," Logan settles on, although the rigid nature of his arm under her clasp slackens some, turning back to her. "I just don't like secrets."
"That makes two of us," the young woman fires back from the hip. Right on target. Perhaps what Bebe does next ought to be blamed on the evening's over-abundant adrenaline; too much testosterone, British bravado, flying fists and this protracted moment of intensity between them. Or, then again, maybe her mutable mood and outspoken attitude comes from a much more likely singular source. Logan.
Either way, she swings wild from shy and ashamed mere moments ago in the kitchen to bold and blatant now in the nowhere space between every other room of her former pimp's new pad. She releases her iron grasp on his arm only to apply both hands to his chest and immediately put a serious bit of wrinkle onto the shoulders of his fine waistcoat when she yanks him into close quarters by the grace of surprising upper body strength and a little extra help from his belt buckle adhering to her magnetic whim.
Silver grin meets cherry lip in an abrupt crash of skin against skin as Bebe pulls Logan in for a crushing kiss that couldn't be any more nor any less sweet.
There's a hitching beginning of a groan at the back of Logan's throat as soon as Bebe's mouth meets his in a kiss, and it doesn't take him very long to allow himself to veer off the tracks of his own train of thought. Especially when his belt is apparently tugged without hands. Temporary loss of control is traded in in favour of Logan gripping her waist, kissing back, and of course allowing for that fuzzy warm surge that almost leaps up in Bebe's system on its own accord with only a nudge of urging.
Confirms exactly why she keeps coming back, the invisible reeling in of chemical dependency that makes eyes give their vague vibrancy beneath currently closed lids. The kiss breaks but not necessarily the more insidious connection established, Logan lifting his head to have his cheek brush against her temple, words murmured through her hair; "I've so missed this."
Bebe isn't inclined to ask question or unnecessarily nitpick at the semantics — this or me? — while reeling merrily through the chemical torrent of torrid and libidinous longing. Instead, what she says is, "You're overdressed." It's true. He is. So is she. Not for long, of course. Silk is easy to escape if you're in an awful hurry. This dynamic works both ways. Black and purple mix well together against cream carpeting.
Some might find it insidious; the almost inescapable hold that Logan has over her, the way he uses it at every opportunity. But, to Bebe, it feels more like freedom than anything else she's known. When left to alone, unattended to languish in her own skin, she just feels awkward and unwanted and unspeakably lonely. Yet, when she's with Logan and under his influence, she is unbridled; she doesn't feel anything but bliss. No wonder she keeps crawling back for the so-called abuse.
Leaving a breadcrumb trail of clothing in their wake, it will be very much like old times as Bebe is pushed back against the oversized bed, Logan's hands exploring the skin exposed to him as much as taking advantage of it. There are other kinds of abuse. Abuse of trust, or faith, or respect. The kinds that one doesn't even have to have any awareness for, and also seem, though not ultimately, meaningless in the very present, which is filled with other things designed to distract. Such as bedsheets and falling back against them and a cocktail of biochemicals.
So why does he keep coming back to her? Beyond the need to reconnect to former relative glory. Opposites attract, possibly. Mutual needs fulfilled, even if it leaves one wrecked and shallow by the end of the day and the other looking for more. Even if one has a hell of a lot more cause to walk away and can't, and the other can and simply doesn't.
Magnetic, in other words. He likes her weakness, pinning arms down against the bed and taking everything she has to offer while he gives her everything she thinks she's craving.
Most nights like this might find Bebe pliable and easy, wilting instead of willful, but between the ecstatic chemical electricity and the reckless rush of disrupting a whole room's worth of shiny metal things, she isn't in the mood to give herself up so simply. She wants the illusion of control and she's willing to fight for it, at least initially, until she comes out on top. As it were.
Several hours later…
The curative combination of (a lot of) sex and (a little bit of) sleep seems to have been sufficient for something akin to restorative rest to be achieved. She drifts somewhere weightless in the vague ether of waking, strung out with limbs haphazardly exposed to the cool air while other are still her thoughts are still scattered and strewn beneath the sheets. The stray grazing of a finger against someone else's hip or the momentary sensation of warm breath on the back of her neck makes for a more pleasant alarm clock than anything made out of plastic. It's still dark but close enough to dawn that it brought ought to be considered morning. And, for the very first time in their strange and sordid relationship, it's Bebe that actually makes the first move to get up and leave.
She tries to go through the motions slowly, attempting to manipulate her body in the exact opposite manner to which she had only recently become accustomed, but whether or not she actually manages to succeed is anyone's guess. Logan's just as good a faker as any one of his girls ever were.
When you've gone without a conscience for around a decade and then a new one seems to be attempting to grow somewhere in dreaming, you become a light sleeper. Defense mechanism. All the same, Logan is still and deep breathing throughout Bebe's attempts at squirming away from loose, sleepy embraces. It wouldn't be the first difference of tonight - it's been one of surprises. Though judging by the hazy beginnings of pre-dawn against the curtains, it now counts as 'tomorrow'.
It's when Bebe has only his hand to remove from her arm that fingers tighten. Not harshly, just enough to show that someone's woken up in the midst of the subtle shifting around. Logan doesn't move otherwise, apart from cracking his eyes open a fraction, and whatever movement goes on to allow him to give a sleep-roughened, questioning grunt at the very base of his long throat.
So busted! But not broken. Not tonight, er— this morning. (Whatever.) For once. Bebe's not-so-hasty retreat is temporarily beaten as she slides back down beneath the sheets in order to linger still at Logan's side for a few moments, laying her lips against the wrinkle of his too often troubled brew. She debates lying for a little longer than she'd planned but finally places a bevy of barely there kisses against his earlobe before she whispers, "Bathroom. Go back to sleep."
Of course, she isn't bound for the bathroom, as she claims, but it's the softest excuse she has to offer and the only one that she thinks he might be willing to give up his tentative grip in order to accommodate.
The feather-light kisses both rouse and placate him, eyes relaxing shut once more even as she whispers her excuse warm into the shell of his ear. Perhaps worryingly, for her, his eyes open in a couple of blinks, although the pale chips of faded green that make up his irises read bleariness behind them. The grip on her arm squeezes in some misplaced (or not) token of affection. Go back to sleep, she had said. He darts a glance towards where there's only a touch of hazy light at his windows, and seems to agree. The only acts of consciousness this hour should contain are trips to the bathroom or getting home after a long night.
Logan eases out a sigh and lets slip his hold of her, hand shifting to tuck beneath the pillow as he settles back into the bed with faith it will still have company by the time he is meant to wake up.