Participants:
| Scene Title | Chicken |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Abby offers a housing solution to Flint and gives him a kiss when he accepts. When he doesn't return it, she calls him a chicken. |
| Date | July 9, 2009 |
Old Lucy's has a vibrant and lively feel to it, from the dark wooden floors to the shady crimson walls lit up by neon lights and many times, the flashing of cameras from the oft-crowded floor. The mirror behind the bar reflects prices of various drinks, bottles lined up, as well as the entire saloon as seen from the bartenders; bolted-down stools line the other side, and there are loose tables and chairs placed all around, though many times they find themselves pushed back for more space within the center of the saloon. A few speakers are placed at strategic places and around a raised stage to the far corner from the bar. Above the counter, an obviously well-used bar is hung; it is this that the girls working will use should there be dancing, which is one reason many patrons choose to come aside from the drinks. Across the bar and near the back, there is a door that leads to the owner's office and just inside a stairwell that leads a apartment on the floor above the bar.
Old Lucy's is not suffering for the demise of the boss. THere's candles behind the bar, lit up not in memorial so to speak. No, those who knew Izzy know why the candles are lit. The extended curfew means that there's more hours that the bar is open. More money coming in and more hours for the staff. Abigail's behind the counter, pitching in a few hours after classes, and because it gives her something to do. Especially since she's waiting for Flint to show up. She'd be there all night, that's what the message had said and she was. Black tank top and jeans, sucking on a lollipop behind the counter, shoving out rums and coke, beers, you name it. Like good old times.
Leather jacket, lank. Greying hair and grizzled stubble, neither kempt enough to be particularly tidy. Even sans sunglasses these days, Deckard cuts a distinct figure at the entrance of Old Lucy's — enough so that he's able to shoulder in past the bouncer with a glance and a nod where most males fitting his description and approximate age bracket would catch a boot.
Tired and a little weathered and stale around the fringes, he doesn't waste any time in meandering his way over to the bar. He doesn't come here often anymore, and even now seems to exist at an unconscious remove from loud music and dancing and the atmosphere in general.
And no one wastes time in pointing him out to Abby. She slips from the one side of the bar, rattling off a list of drinks to the other blonde while untying her apron. Now that Flints here, she's going off duty. Well, after she gets him a drink of course. "Hey. You came" Loud enough to be heard over the music but not so loud as to do a worse job on his ear drums than the rock music that blares. "How's the dreams?"
"Hey." Inspiring as ever in his usual greeting and the hazy shrug that follows, Deckard glances over her as if to make certain that all her limbs are still mostly intact, then turns enough to look down the length of the bar. He is the only person at it with grey hair. His mouth flattens out a little there, private annoyance still pulling dim at the fuzzy lines on either side of his frown when the last thing she said sinks in and he looks back to here. Warily.
Yeah, all the older guys who come to the bar that she knows, the cops and such have not been there of late. "I'll still take you to her if you want. You can tell her not to do it again. She thought it would help. Help me, help you. But it didn't. I got the feeling you'd have rather been in your own nightmare than in Louisiana." She sighs softly, turning around to get the bottle of whiskey, collect a lowball and gesture to the back room. "Wanna go back there? Or stay out here?"
Deckard doesn't want to talk about it. Where his discomfort was largely to blame on the setting blurred in around his relative sobriety before, it drags itself 'round to face off against Abby directly in the hood of his brows over clear blue eyes and a frown that's managed to get even more standoffish in the last three seconds or so. Maybe that's why he nods to the offer of the back room. That and the fact that the pair of girls seated at the bar next to him are giving him 'what's that guy's problem?' looks.
That guys problem is that guy's problem and everyone who works here is used to Deckard and his behavior. He doesn't grab asses and he doesn't make a spectacle of himself and he's the friend of… one of the bosses, so he's golden. There's a shake of her head towards the back room and ABigail disappears, lollipop stuck in the corner of her mouth, stick poking out of the side and she sets up the glass on a table in the back, pouring a generous couple fingers of whiskey into the glass after some ice is popped into it. She knows how he likes it.
"So, I found something out. That what I had, and now you have, used to be in someone else. A loooong time ago. Like 1979 long time ago. In a guy named Francois, non the less. What do you make of that"
Into the back room. Deckard trails behind at a hangdog distance, not quite reluctant, but close enough even with the offer of semi-privacy and whiskey. He's comfortably dressed in a dark t-shirt and dark jeans beneath the fit of his jacket, lax enough to slouch despite his unease. Fortunately, there's a change of subject in the cards once they're in there, and he manages to make fleeting, baffled eye contact on his way over to retrieve his drink.
"I dunno." He doesn't know what she's trying to say, even, if his next sidelong glance is any indication. He smothers the worst of it with a sip, then a longer swallow, sleeve lifted to scrub at the corner of his mouth before he sets to looking the room over. He's never seen it in color. "Is he your uncle or something?"
"No. I don't have any uncle named Francois. Hiro and Xiulan are back. They sat me down and talked to me about how, what you have, what I had, what this guy named Francois had is.." Yeah, she's gonna say it. She's doesn't quite believe it. "A spirit or an angel. They kept asking me if it talked to me"
Ice clinks, clacks and resettles after another long draw of amber booze, already slivered thin. Deckard practices not looking at Abby in the meanwhile, more interested in the way water and whiskey mingle in the tilt of the glass in his hand. Abby's made some new insane religious friends to reinforce the crazy. Great.
"I don't believe them, don't worry. But they're wanting to talk to you about it. They're calling it a Kami, and they're convinced that I didn't kill Kazimir at the bridge. really convinced, despite me telling them that I killed him" The whiskey bottle is uncorked again and tipped over into his glass, top it up just a bit. "Izzy's dead. I own half a bar now. I, Abigail Beauchamp, owns a bar. Someone else too, probably Beth. If she doesn't want to live up top, I was gonna offer it to you"
"Mngh," says Deckard. As far as non-commital noises go, this one is particularly unenthusiastic about talking to this Hero guy and Xuwhatever about something he shouldn't have in the first place that might make him hallucinate more than he already does. Like a dog presented with the option of a trip to the vet or a bath, he opts to stick with that failure of a response, drinking again in the span of time where elaboration should go. He's already almost running on empty. His, "Congratulations," is muffled around a broken piece of ice, shattered only partway when he freezes up mid-crunch. "Wh—"
"I have Leo at the Village. I can't leave him alone. The place would just be empty. There's a reading of her will, but if it's the same as before, then It's Becky and I and Becky won't leave her place and it'll be empty. It's above a bar, which means, alcohol, when you need it. No one will be looking for you there. It'd be rent free, not like Me and whoever won't make money off the bar itself. There's no strings flint. It's a way to show my appreciate for.. for what you've done for me, and I don't want something to happen to you, and you never know that I do know and do appreciate how many times you've pulled my ass out of the fire. I would have died on Staten. Twice"
Deckard opens his mouth to argue partway through, but she keeps on talking. …And keeps on talking. Resigned to his defeat, he polishes off the remainder of his whiskey and reaches to set the glass back down on the table he drew it off of, next to the bottle. "You wouldn't have been on Staten the second time if I wasn't there."
"So you blame yourself? It was me who wanted to go out and see what was going on. It was you who just walked out first" She points out. Abigail will let him pour more for himself if he wants it. "Unless you want to turn down the place above us, then that's fine Flint, I'll accept that too. Because I know how hard it is to take stuff when it looks like Charity. I really do. I hate that Cat is paying for my education and for my apartment, so I'm cleaning the building on the weekends instead of.. mooching. I figure, at least here, you have anonymity, a stable roof over your head, it's not far from stuff. Far from the church and Pastor Sumter when you need to go rile him up and keep him on his toes"
The corner of the older man's mouth pulls sideways when he's called on the charity thing, right hand tracing idly down the neck of the bottle only to tuck itself up into his jacket pocket instead, where it can't get into trouble. His left hand follows suit in slower kind, sinew and bone no more pronounced than it's ever been. He's wavering closer to a healthy weight again, so his clothes actually fit and the shadows around his eyes have more to do with sleeplessness than malnutrition. "Ok."
"Okay" The ever popular and ever present word between the two of them. "Getting better at the healing thing? You're looking better" It's offered up, lollipop slipped out of her mouth and put into a plastic cup with her name on it. The cherry slick on the inside of her mouth. "Wanna go see it? I still have a key. Eileen might, on occasion pop up since I gave her a key to hide out up there, if she ever needed it, but that's about all. You can hop out the fire escape, or there's the door here, to the back room. Pretty easy to get in and out" Up she peels herself from the chair, digging for her key chain in her locker and out of her messenger bag. "We'll probably box up Izzy's stuff but.. we'll see, I don't think she had any family, I knew she was in the foster system growing up"
"I haven't been healing anyone." Aside from her. Obviously. Gaze fleeting unconsciously past the passage of the sucker, Deckard rankles his nose a little until the jangle of the keys draws his attention back to Abigail. He nods, passive in his distraction. Spent enough time pawing through the wreckage in Midtown not to be bothered by the belongings and lingering spirit of the recently deceased.
Old Lucy's: Upstairs
This apartment is nice looking, spacious. There is a big TV in the living room with a DVD player on a shelf with a few movies. A kitchen is connected to living room and separated by an island of counters. Down the hall is a bathroom and then three other doors, each different bedrooms. The flooring is dark and hard wood, there are a few paintings around the place and the apartment overall smells of cinnamon and old spices.
Up the stairs Abby leads Deckard, pausing only to rifle through her keys and upon getting the right one, with the little nail polish flame on it, the door is unlocked that leads into the apartment. "Three bedrooms. I stayed here a couple times" She doesn't want to sound like some real estate agent and instead slips off to the side, her sneakers silent on the floor as she lets him in all the way so she can close the door behind them. "Everything works and she remodeled, not long ago after she.. kinda.. burned Officer Baxter to a crisp almost"
The hell is he going to do with three bedrooms? Maybe avoid laundry day for longer by switching beds instead of washing sheets.
Deckard lingers near the closed door, which is par for the course, prowling around left to his weakened monkey eyes to accomplish until he's determined that there are probably no evil people hiding behind pieces of furniture ready to jump out and murder them both. Or whatever it is he's worried about when he locks up at the entrance.
All of this, and he can't stop himself from uttering a low, "Hot," when his eyes lift to the ceiling. Poor taste, what?
'Hot?" Abigail's confused. "The AC control is down the hall here, if it's too hot, I can turn it down"
"No…just. She set him on fire. So." What's worse than making a tasteless joke about someone who just died? Probably having to explain it to someone who didn't even get it enough to be offended in the first place.
"Oh" Duh Abby. "yeah.. she was… Hot. In more ways than one. I'm sorry that I didn't get it" Abigail starts to start the laborious process of unhooking the key from the others. "We got an extra downstairs if you loose this one. Washer and dryer here, if you leave your clothes in a basket i'll see that they get washed. I hope you enjoy it. Sorry if the noise will keep you up, the key will also open the access to the roof, so if you can't get in during open hours downstairs it'll get you in up there. Any uh.. questions?" There, it's off and she shuffles over to hand it to him.
"It's…" Fine? Not a big deal? Awkward? Probably mostly the last one. Not that isn't fitting, what, with a rickety 40 year old murderer about to move into the space above a theme bar that its owner occupied up until recently. Because they died. He winds up lifting his shoulder into another shrug, helplessly vague and quiet until she gets the key off the ring and he reaches to take it. "I don't know how long I'll stay."
"It's not like you've signed a lease. You won't come stay with me, so.. " Ups he goes on toes when his hand is on the key, steal a kiss, corner of the mouth. "I'll be satisfied if you'll even stay one night here flint. At least I know you'll be safe. Safe and warm and fed" And then back down to the flat of her feet, releasing the key to him.
The hard angles of Deckard's face turn down away from the kiss once it's already there, automatic withdrawal echoed in the wrap of his hand around the key and still more inelegant silence.
'Chicken" Abigail fires off, quietly, but turns regardless, heading for the door. "I'm heading home, you have the number. Be safe Flint"
Anger is one of those cold-burning emotions that tempers out into the set of Deckard's jaw and hood of his brow in hard strokes of black and white in no time flat. Which — is probably why he doesn't turn to look at her once she's started off for the door, preferring instead to study the imprint of Isabelle's key across the inside of his palm once he's forced his hand back open again.
And the door closes behind her, leaving him alone in the apartment, the sound of the music throbbing in through the floor.