Participants:
| Scene Title | Scaring Customers |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Two and a half feet of snow on the ground and two weirdos in dark coats across the street thin out Old Lucy's clientele enough that Abby's forced to come out and broom them off the stoop like retarded pigeons. |
| Date | March 10, 2010 |
Outside of Old Lucy's
It's late, and it's dark. Across the street from Old Lucy's, a tall man in a dark coat stands and has been standing for some time under the orange probe of a street lamp warm over features hewn hard into his long face, all angles and shadows in a scruffy, disheveled package that hasn't done much more than stare. Unfortunately, when you are a tall scruffy man in a dark coat with eyes that occasionally flash like a coyote's in the lightless hollows pitched in under your brows, standing and staring is more than enough to garner the attention of multiple unsettled patrons trying to sidle unmolested into Old Lucy's. And as of just now, they've complained back and forth enough for talk of calling the cops to have come up.
At Flint's back, snow piles ever higher into drifts that've had time to thicken deep over stoops and walkways less used than the one he's been scowling at dimly for going on ten or fifteen minutes, now. It's in the street too, stained grey under the slither and churn of taxi tires all shiny and black against patches of ice that make the sidewalks treacherous and driving even moreso. For the moment, the weather can't seem to decide exactly what it wants to do. Fresh snow swirls and eddies in uneven breaks with the wind, and it's very, very cold.
It was Magnes' turn to brood a bit, but when he arrived on the rooftop behind Deckard, he spotted the man before even having time to go over everything that's wrong with his life. Sure, lots of things are going right, but it's nice to go over everything that's wrong every other night.
He quickly drops down from the roof, landing behind the older man with a small bloom of gravity-blown snow. He's carrying a briefcase, wearing a buttoned up black coat that goes down to the dark-blue knees of his suit pants. He's a bit better built than the last time Deckard saw him, but it's hard to tell in all this clothing. One major change is the pale left eye, clearly blind in it now. "Flint Deckard. You're someone I could definitely talk to about life, though I hope yours has gotten better." he says with a hint of bitter exhaustion in his tone, having no real reason to hide it from this particular man.
There's a guy with glowing eyes. Then there's a guy standing on the roof and staring. Enough to invoke the worry of employee's in the building, and probably more than enough for the real cops who are actually keeping an eye out for Russians to eyeball them. Soon enough though, emerging from the door of the bar with a smile for two patrons who are coming in, wrapped up in her winter jacket and likely a familiar skeleton for Flint. She pauses on the sidewalk, scraping a boot back and forth to check for the slipperiness, whether she needs to lay down more salt-gravel-kitty litter combo.
After that, there's a wave for the cops and a thumbs up, all is good and fine. These are not the stalkers that you are looking for. A car passes and she's quickly crossing the street. 'Flint, you're scaring customers. You are literally scaring customers. Where's your sunglasses? Hello Magnes"
Deckard smells. Like whiskey, mainly, but also like smoke and maybe coffee for those who care to get close enought discern one musty stink from the other. Short hair shorn into a scruffy buzz, narrow jaw as coarse with grizzled beard growth as ever, he turns his head slowly after the wet plop of dislodged snow against the back of his coat, and lo: still another skeleton he recognizes, this one in the form of Magnes J. Varlane.
The hand he'd crooked up under his overcoat lapel falls away, held breath expelled after it in a visible furl a beat later. Christ. Blindness and suave getup alike are missed while Flint looks Magnes over like he's not sure what he should do with him, if anything. His own clothing is on the shabby side. The coat's old. So is the suit underneath it. And it looks like someone's been sharpening their knuckles on his face, to boot: one of his eye sockets is smudged with shades of brown and purple where bruising is just starting to fade, and he's got a split healing in a black line across the ridged arch of his skull over his left brow.
Fortunately(?) before he can formulate an inebriated answer about the state of his life as it applies to Varlane, Abby's voice draws his attention back around to the fore again so that he can size her up instead. "I dunno," is the honest answer, brows tipped up unevenly after it. "Haven't been wearing them. Magnes is here."
"Oh, hey, Abby." Magnes tucks his bitter/brooding mood combo away for another day, forcing a smile and a slight wave in greeting. Political smiles, something he's still piss-poor at, but is surely in the Tracy Strauss book of functioning in everyday life. "Um…" there's a short awkward pause, and instead of saying something else to her, he acknowledges Deckard again. "Sorry I haven't called to do any business, I sort of won't be needing that kind of stuff anymore." He's vague, but Deckard knows what he means. "Kind of working for the President now…"
"No Magnes, you're working for Tracy Strauss, and Tracy Strauss works for the office of.. what was it.. She's the director of communications. Something like that. She works for the United States of America. The president's secretary works for the president. There's a difference" She's tired, it's been a long day. "He's her coffee boy and secretary. Shall I go back inside while you discuss bullet proof plating?" It harkens back to the day she and Flint first met in a diner far far away. Actually, not that far away. "Did your sunglasses break Flint? I think you have a pair still upstairs, I haven't boxed your stuff up yet"
"…Insurance," says Deckard after a dumb pause, possibly spent thinking back however many months. Over a year. Something like that. "I told you I sold insurance." He is drunk. Like. Really. Really drunk. Enough that he's evidently having some trouble focusing on her despite the osprey ring of white-blue light around his pupils, neon rendered dull by orange muffling in from the lamp overhead.
"S'ok," comes out as an aside for Magnes, non-argumentive as a particularly slouchy shrug even as his eyes lift after the apartment where extra sunglasses may or may not lie. "I figured something came up."
"A lot of somethings, but now it's just, my life is a bit different I guess. Certainly not better, but, different." Stable but not happy would be an accurate description, if he could think of the words. Magnes stares at Abby while she's explaining his job, not bothering to argue over it, not that there's anything to argue about, he simply offers a nod. "Don't worry, we don't really have business anymore, so you don't have to go anywhere."
Then, back to Deckard, he offers, "I'm sorry for, well, a while back. A lot of things I guess. Funny thing is, I don't even care that you tried to shoot me, twice, I just never really understood how or why someone could feel so bad and angry. I did something similar, to make myself feel better, didn't help." He takes a breath, steam escaping from his lips as he momentarily closes his eyes. "Nothing really helps, but talking about it gives a temporary relief."
Well there's a puzzled look. Shot him twice? Oddly, Abby can understand why someone would shoot Magnes. She turns her back to the two, digging her hands into her back pocket of jeans so that she can dig out her cellphone and dial someone inside. A few rings later "Brenda, there's… a drawer upstairs, Flint drawer" There's a pause and a nod that Brenda can't see but the two guys can. "Can you get the sunglasses there? Yeah, spare room. Bring them out? Thanks" Hopefully that will allow flint time to throttle Magnes or whatever it is that he wants to do.
The nice thing about having Magnes around is that he tends to talk enough to fill the awkward silences that Flint surrounds himself with like his stink. A lot of somethings have happened, they aren't in business anymore. Flint tried to shoot him twice. Unbeknowest to two out of three present, Magnes has succeeded in shooting him at least once.
And as if things couldn't get any worse, with Beauchamp trying to dissipate the accumulation of insane men on the front lawn of her business and Varlane pouring his twee heart out about how shitty things have gotten, Flint punctuates a short span of silence in which none of them are talking with a groggy (and quiet), "I miss you." Probably not so quiet that Magnes can't hear it, though — the awkwardness of which only occurs to Deckard as an afterthought. One that arches at the brow on the less damaged side of his face when he cranes a sideways look back after him.
"I only tried to shoot you once."
"It hasn't been that long since I last saw you." Magnes answers, apparently hearing that comment and taking it in… some way, who knows what way, but his reply sounds more friendly than anything else. "And you shot at me twice. Once when I was standing on a wall in an alley, and once when I was in the cemetery with Abby. I think the first time was either before or right after I met Abby. But that doesn't matter anymore."
He sits his briefcase in the air, then reaches into his coat pocket, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. they seem mostly full, give or take one or two, then he starts hitting it repeatedly against his palm. He's clearly not used to even getting them out of the package yet. "Now we're all screwed up. Or at least meeting you halfway." is offered to Deckard with a slight grin.
"I miss you too Flint. I worry about you as well" Abby's eye's flicker towards magnes, going straight to the pack of cigarettes. Her lips thin a fraction of an inch before she's leaning over to snatch them out of magnes hands with a roll of her eyes and start tearing open the top of the package sos he can pull them out and snap the smokes in half.
"Lord above Magnes, chew some fucking gum. Flints been doing it his whole life, I don't expect him to stop, but really? Really Magnes, cigarettes? You're going to die of cancer and there's nothing I can do to fix it so quit while it hasn't quite got it's hooks into you" This distracts her from Deckard and his drunken attempt to inform her of his feelings.
"…Oh." says Deckard once Magnes dredges up the thing in the cemetery with the hat, memory effectively jogged. "Yeah. Sorry." He could almost be really sorry too, except that he isn't. Nor is he sober enough to fake being actually sorry. On the other hand, he isn't sober enough to bother sounding sarcastic about it either, so. In the end he kind of bottoms out somewhere in the midst of affably intoxicated ambivalence while he watches Abby steal his cigarettes and break them like so many twigs.
"Bet you a hundred bucks I'm still ahead in the screwed up department," spoken with the same flat affect as his mumbled, 'sorry,' Flint tries to stand himself up a little straighter and burps foggily for his efforts. Snow's falling again, and he knits his brow against the sting of individual flakes there, attention more and more occupied by the stand of the street lamp next to him. It's tall. And made of metal.
"Abby…" Magnes watches his cigarettes get ruined, not making a move to stop her while she warns him. "I'm just so stressed lately, well, not lately, more like how I was before Claire, and now again. I don't wanna be an alcoholic, so, I tried something else…"
He looks over at Deckard, then down at the snow, not making eye contact with Abby anymore. "Sorry, I didn't mean to upset you."
"Then chew some fucking bubblegum, bite your nails take up tennis or indoor soccer. Not poison. Really" She's disgusted with it, visually disgusted and crushing the smokes under her heels as Brenda's coming out of the bar quick as a flash bearing sunglasses in hand. Across the street she hightails it in her army boots to flash Deckard a wink and toss them to the older man and head back into the bar to get back to work.
Whether Deckards ahead in the screwed up department or not, Abby's not saying, or telling. Though she is leveling a look to him. "And you better not be staring at my underwear" Pointedly to Deckard.
Clack. Sunglasses bounce of Deckard's chest and clatter down to the snow-slushed sidewalk in a glittery black heap. He frowns down after them a second or two later, broad shoulders sloped and expression distracted, like he's trying to figure out when they arrived and whether or not they are his. They don't look all that familiar, but then — he probably hasn't actually had x-ray vision to look at shit with since they came into his possession.
Snow settles in his scrubby hair, grey and brown and more grey and across his shoulders as points of white that melt quickly to make way for more, and he's predictably slow to twitch his brows into a defensive knit when Abby's speech penetrates the thick of his skull.
"I'm not saying smoking was good for me, definitely wasn't, I know that. I just wanted to feel at ease again, like nothing's wrong, or at least like I don't have this huge void in the pit of my stomach. I don't really know how to explain, and I'm sure you don't wanna hear, so I'll just shut up and promise to stop smoking." Magnes breathes a sigh, but it's not of relief, it's just… frustration, or something similar. When she mentions looking at her underwear, his eyes almost automatically go to her thighs, then quickly avert to the snow on the ground. "Sorry." he mutters, even though he technically didn't do anything.
Also, those glasses of Deckard go floating up to his chest, bumping.
"Then get laid Magnes because that seems to put a lot of people at ease" Abigail manages to shoot at him, eye's widening at the drop his eye's to parts of her that he has no business looking. There's a shake of her head and purse of lips at the Gravokinetic. "You still get free drinks at the bar Flint, but my house is full up on guests right now, but if you need to bunk for the night, there's the back room and the couch. If you need to loom still, put the glasses on please, so that you stop freaking out the customers and they send over the cops. I really don't want them arresting you" Because somewhere, Abby has affection still for the tall gangly individual. "i"m going back in, no magnes, you're still not allowed in unless you are playing with Sable"
Flint's spectral eyes slide blearily over onto Magnes, vaguely appreciative the way drunk people sometimes are of bright lights or. Things that spin. His expression's hard to read in the sallow lighting and with everything so slack; the lines around his mouth are fuzzy under a mask equal parts shadow and scruff. He lingers there like that for a beat or two, then reaches to fumble thickly after the glasses bumping insistently at his chest so that he can try to somehow coordinate himself enough to get them into a pocket in the process of turning to bumble off down the sidewalk. Apparently he does not need a place to sleep.
"I… really don't wanna hear you tell me that. No offense or anything, it's just… kind of weird to hear." Magnes gives her an awkwardly uneasy look for a moment, eyes glancing up to places he's not supposed to be looking at again, as if to assess a target for the whole getting laid thing. "Um, I'm gonna go. And I hope you stop being mad at me soon. I told you I never did what I was going to, but, well, nevermind." Who knows what's bugging him lately, but he seems less inclined to argue or even defend himself much now, just suddenly flying into the air just as Deckard starts walking off. No goodbyes or nods, he just leaves.
There might be a retort but she's not saying it, turned on her heel and hoofing it across the street when Deckard's inclined to not take the couch. Just play voyeur for fifteen minutes. She's got more laundry to do, bathrooms to clean, uniforms to drop off at the dry cleaner tomorrow and help her parents pack to go home before her father exploded at her for being in New York longer.
And an Odessa to help start down the detox path without needing to lean on Peter to help. SO much stuff to do and these days, just not enough time to do it in.