Crooked

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logan_icon.gif vincent_icon.gif

Scene Title Crooked
Synopsis A story of two lonely men who hate each other, coming events, a toilet, a bottle of whiskey and character icons that look like they want to make out.
Date August 12, 2010

Logan's Pad


You can probably tell that Logan lives alone. In fact you can probably tell that Logan exists alone, bring no one home, lives like a leech beneath the ceilings of others, always your place if any place at all, like maybe it happens to be raining or something. There's beer in the fridge and not much food, laundry of his lesser clothing items kicked into corners, lowball glasses littering his kitchen sink,and the apartment bare, otherwise unlived in, save for minor touches like a zebra throw dragged over the black leather couch. The lights are neutrally low, and the place quiet save for the nattering of a radio he only puts on to defeat the quiet.

Also, if you intend to bring anyone back to your apartment, you tend not to have copies of Barely Legal or Just Us Boys stashed on hand in your bathroom, or a convenient ashtray on one of the wicker pieces. Fortunately! Neither thing is being touched currently, but considering the pattering of fluid against porcelain bowl, the readership might not be very interested in things Logan is touching.

Soft grey cotton sweatpants sit low on narrow hips, a black T-shirt with some stretch in the hem, denoting age and wear, and slightly more elaborately, a scarlet silk robe with black Chinese dragon stitched patterns barely clinging to his shoulders and left open to hang. Absently curls his feet inwards and endures the effects of drinking alone, quite patiently.

Low lighting is a friend to shadow, and shadow is a friend to Vincent Lazzaro, who thrives in it precisely the way tabloids purport that government officials tend to. He's in a warm grey suit in spite of the hour and setting, fussily dapper to his finely fashioned core, pyrite grey tie knotted neatly at his throat, cuffs and collar fixed crisply into place.

He's also smoking, rudely, when he resolves from a pillar of black risen impossibly from the floor out've reach of the open bathroom door. It's the dry stink of his cigarette that distinguishes him from a more two-dimensional hallucination, telepathic manipulation or dreamwalking entity when the last of his remnant fog structures its streamers into tendon and phalanges and rolled tobacco at his right hand.

"About as miserable as I'd assumed," assessed without mercy, he tabs ash off onto the floor at his feet and rolls his dark eyes ceilingwards in search of more forethought than he'd like to give him credit for. "The bathroom porn is a surprise. Hello, Logan."

A full bodied jerk of surprise has some inevitable splashage, Logan sending a round eyed glance in the direction of both smoke and voice before he kind of crowds in on himself around the toilet protectively without further interrupting himself midstream. "Fucking fuck," is eloquantly hissed, finishing in a hurry before the rattling of toilet paper on its stand acts as keysmashing punctuation in the wake of breathy cussing. Seconds later, the lid is flipped to slam back down and he's readjusting himself, scarlet then fanning out in a silken wing when he spins to confront what must—

Not be a hallucination. Defensively, twin circles of bright jade glows, blank, in a way, lacking the sharpness that his stare achieves when he's not negating the threat. He's clutching his robe closed for all that everything is back where it should be, heart coming down to a canter as opposed to the gallop that home invasion will bring.

There are no guns in Vincent's hands. Just a cigarette. He could do with one. If Logan could redo the last ten seconds, he might have blithely kept peeing. Dignity(?) is scraped back up, chin jutting up a little as he goes to retie his robe closed, tassles flipping with the jerk of silk rope, and he glances to glossy flesh photography tucked in with fresh towels. "You should consider trying it yourself. Might liven up your evenings instead of being a perve. Perve."

It's hard.

Not to go tense at tell-tale green staring flat at him out of Logan's ladyface, that is. Not to adjust his stance to provide better access to the gun under his jacket. Not to say, 'Don't.' Especially not to say don't. Or else.

The unhappy medium between self-control and wary irritation is an overall hardening about the stubborn set of his jaw and the level of his brows, like he might be grinding his teeth somewhere within his stock stillness until he lifts his cigarette and takes a long, measuring drag.

"Monday nights are slow;" he says (finally), "sometimes I get lonely. I like your robe, by the way. It's very you."

Ffwwsshhh. That would be flushing, which is hygenic, for all that the rest of Logan's apartment leaves something to be desired. He casts a thin smile across at the other man, and maybe he knows exactly that tension and restraint setting in steely beneath Vincent's suit and facial expression, because maybe he's seen it before, the reactions of bugs caught under the glass jar. Or maybe it's just British reserve in twisting smirk. Either or is hard to read when his eyes are washed out in preternatural cat-glow.

His bare feet track a path across checkered tile, now, aiming to ease past the agent, bringing with him the strong scent of whiskey, stale cologne, recent smoke of his own. "Thank you," is spoken by the time he's far enough to say it just above Vincent's ear as he goes, hem of his robe flipping a little at each jaunty step.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Lazzaro? Come in, why don't you," extravagant sarcasm, lubricated with booze.

A near perfect foil to Logan's feline swishing and his forked accent and his head full of pretty (mostly) blonde hair, Vincent retains his composure through smirking and undesired, smelly nearness alike. If he rolls his eyes at all once the younger, limeier man has passed, that's between him and the ceiling.

He looks tired for his part, once he turns to follow. Dark around the eyes. Like he has a lot on his mind that he isn't going to talk about because that isn't what he came here to do (probably) and Logan makes for poor company besides. "Checking in. Times are changing for people like you and I, you know. New policies and procedures are being pushed out into testing every day."

Forced to trail the long way — by foot — Vincent is in no hurry to follow. He hangs back. His progress is slow. "Why don't we start with whatever you have a reason for wanting me to know?"

A near perfect foil to Logan's feline swishing and his forked accent and his head full of pretty (mostly) blonde hair, Vincent retains his composure through smirking and undesired, smelly nearness alike. If he rolls his eyes at all once the younger, limeier man has passed, that's between him and the ceiling.

He looks tired for his part, once he turns to follow. Dark around the eyes. Like he has a lot on his mind that he isn't going to talk about because that isn't what he came here to do (probably) and Logan makes for poor company besides. "Checking in. Times are changing for people like you and I, you know. New policies and procedures are being pushed out into testing every day."

Forced to trail the long way — by foot — Vincent is in no hurry to follow. He hangs back. His progress is slow. "Why don't we start with whatever you have a reason for wanting me to know?"

Swinging by where alcohol and glittering glass is stacked, it's a fresh cup that Logan clucks up before veering again for the lounge set up, all in a lazy, arcing kind of pace while Vincent makes his slower progress. It's upon the zebra-fied sofa corner that Logan sits himself down, setting down clean glass beside the one with amber dregs making prism shapes at the bottom. This latter one, he doses himself just a couple of mouthfuls, but the second is a more substantive helping. Uses the butt of the whiskey bottle to nudge it across the glass coffee table, flicking a still-shining glance Vincent's way.

"I'm all Registered, I'm sure you're very aware," he feels the need to say, carefully setting down the half-emptied whiskey bottle and picking up the smaller helping. His legs cross with enough flourish that it's a good thing he's wearing pants under that robe. For a twenty-something pushing thirty who lives mostly off nicotine, alcohol and hatred, Logan proves to be healthy. Unhurt. Thin, as ever.

Not particularly sleepless, or at least, not more than what can be expected. The apartment is white and glass around them, hollow. "I could tell you about the Frenchie mob boss. Wouldn't mind knowing what's on him on your side of things." The legal side of things.
Public> Aristofox Renard says, "Its late, so g'night!"

"You are." Dryer, certainly, than the stuff he's being offered, Vincent glances at his watch once he's rounded the couch corner, measuring against some unknown variable before he reaches to cage his fingers around the nudged glass. He probably shouldn't.

But he does. A sip clipped reservedly off the side does little to mitigate the fact that he accepted the offer of alcohol at all. But it's very late and they're alone.

He checked.

He doesn't take a seat, though, less comfortable with zebra print than he is more familiar whiskey. And emptiness. Naked walls and black windows and quiet, empty rooms with the radio's murmuring to weave it all together. This is a depressing line of thought, he decides, correction outwardly evident only as a twitch of his brows as he takes a second, (slightly) less conservative sip.

"Do you have reason to suspect he's primed to have some kind of impact upon Evolved and their Affairs?"

And suddenly, Logan isn't drinking alone, even if he's seated alone. A luxurious lean back might be enough to compensate for height disadvantage, being comfortable upon faux-fur and clad in worn cotton and satiny silk as opposed to the tailored armor Vincent has.

Which, granted, is what he usually has to work with. He scrapes the edge of his thumbnail around the crystal rim of his glass. "I'm Evolved. And I've got affairs. Gideon d'Sarthe, is his name, bought up the Tavern on the Green or whatever it is, and he's a Linderman adversary. But perhaps you might need to clarify for me what team you bat for." A quirk of an insincere smile, obscured when Logan takes a sip enough to near finish his modest helping.

"I see," says Vincent, after just enough of a pause to inject wary, downplayed interest into the lack of it purported by his short answer. It's not a good time for adversaries. In fact, d'Sarthe's timing sounds to be pretty piss poor. Lazzaro graduates from a sip to a manlier swallow and tips his head down after a potential dribble near his tie to find that there is none. On him, at least. "I can look into it. Obviously, we have a vested interest in the maintenance of a certain status quo."

Surely negotiations with the head of an organizational regime change would fall on someone else's shoulders.

Surely.

"Generally speaking I bat for the best interest of the American People. For the time being that encompasses the maintenance of our relationship. If that's what you're asking."

Glowing eyes go crescent in the imitation of a smile when Vincent agrees to look into things, but there's no snark — not for something Logan is genuinely interested in the other man doing for him, before he finishes the last few drops of whiskey and sets the glass down. "That's about the answer I was looking for," he agrees, picking at a loose black thread off his sleeve without looking at it, studying the other man instead before his eyes sink back into their icy green mix of colour, pallid and neutral.

Doing that for very long is a little headache inducing, anyway. "I don't know. Some people in the Group've already been in contact with the man, sounds like, and I'll know better sooner, but it certainly sounds like he's not just after a little bit of property or buying up the Refrain supply," and this critical conversational error is blithely breezed by, "because I probably would've heard sooner. Sounds personal, from his daughter.

"How was it that Al Capone got jailed? Tax evasion?"

"Outstanding."

Says Vincent.

A little sarcastically. Voice muffled 'round the filter of his cigarette, one poison buffering the other.

Mention of Refrain elicits no extraordinary response, which could mean that he missed it, or that he already knows. Or that he didn't know but doesn't care. Smoke spills elegantly forth through his parted fingers whichever the reason for his apparent apathy, tenuous, fluid flow across stiff edges and hard dropoffs. He doesn't say anything about tax evasion either, but he does Look, sideways and sharp as obsidian is black. And also sharp, coincidentally.

"It's been quiet," observed apropos nothing in particular, he stirs out of his increasingly blank stare to seek out something at least remotely ashtray shaped.

There is always the ashtray in the bathroom. Barring that, one of a sort of permanent status on coffee table, black ceramic and probably not cleaned in the past week, lined as it is with grimy grey, like a hearth.

Topic of the suicide dream drug left to ember out, among that of French crimelords and their pretty offspring, Logan curls a leg up onto the couch beside him, brings the other to cross ankles and spill his elbow over the raised arm of the couch, narrowing a look of study at the older man before his gaze seems to slide through him instead. "Has it," he asks, in a tone that's not much of a question. "What's noisy, to you government types?"

"Well." Ashtray spotted and bent for so that the remaining stump of his cigarette can be smashed and sooted down into dirty death, Vincent dusts his fingers off across themselves as if in unconscious fear they've been sullied by mere proximity to such a buildup of filth. "Typically instead of me having to track each of you down, it's the other way around. And my phone rings more." It hasn't buzzed at all since he's been here, point in fact.

He's still making steady (if slow) progress with his whiskey — careful, perhaps, to the point of excess, for whatever reason. He doesn't look like a lightweight. Stature aside.

Logan's gaze lingers on where the cigarette is crushed out, as if only just noticing the state of the tray and allowing a sigh to stream out through long nose, before it's dismissed once more. "Maybe your department is giving good reason not to have us coming to you," sounds a little acidic between sharp cockney consonants, a shaped eyebrow raising. For all that Sir Smokey is very clearly of an Evolved, some perculiar line is drawn between them. "It's not going to work, you know. The Registry. It's just going to get more corrupted. The first thing I would have done, had I not already been marked, is look for someone to fake it for me.

"And I'm sure you're very familiar, Lazzaro, with the concept of a crooked cop. And Christ, you wouldn't happen to know about the practice of snapping up illegal aliens and ex-terrorists for the all Evo boyband that is FRONTLINE, now would you?" On the topic of tarnished law enforcement, anyway.

"But you are marked," says Lazzaro, punctuation clearly defined in inflection as it is in his pauses. Forever to the point, even with the bleary warmth of a fine buzz already weighing heavy at his eyelids, halfway into a single glass of whiskey. He's watching Logan all the while, boot black regard not as penetrating as it is cloying in its unwavering measure. Lax, tarry death for any flicker in Logan's p-p-pokerface that may say more than he particularly wants to say.

He could use another cigarette.

He looks like he could use one.

"Content yourself with the knowledge that you don't know everything and some mysteries may seem less so. If no less nefarious. I don't suppose you're speaking from experience," a sudden change of tack involves no change of tone, "in reference to law enforcement officials manipulating the Registry."

"Stupid luck," is fired back, with a little more zeal and expression that Vincent's tailored neutrality, pale eyes flaring with a royal kind of indignation before muting out again into apathy, Logan skipping his glance away from the other man. Long fingers curl to rub knuckles against the underside of his jaw, clean shaven, capable of taking good care of himself for all that he doesn't commit the same to his place of residence. "Bad, stupid luck. But do you know what I'm Registered as?"

Attention, once more, writes back up Vincent, now paying more attention the flush of alcohol a lot more emphatic in his own demeanor, in rollercoaster tones of voice and the looseness of his limbs. Despite this, Logan could probably do with a cigarette as well. Instead, he reaches out a hand, toys with the neck of the whiskey bottle, and angles it in such a way that the gesture is turned into offer.

"He regrets it, you know. Linderman, and the Registry. But no, I'm not speaking personally, about law enforcement officials. I could be soon, if you really wanted — tit for tat."

Vincent does, actually. With his perpetually tidy seasoning of stylistically relevant stubble and what little legitimate hair he has left shaved down into a shadow around his skull. He doesn't say so, though. Doesn't say anything initially — a lift of his bristly chin inviting an answer to what he must have taken to be a rhetorical question. Still watching.

And in no need of a refill. His glass remains low at his side, held as he might at a social function or ~charity event~. Casual. Neither half empty or half full.

"I would like that," rounds out the full of his eventual response. A dead coyote or two to nail around the farm by their testicles as a warning.

Logan rocks the whiskey bottle back to stand upright, caps it from when he'd left it open the first time, and flows to his feet in a coordinated untangling of long limbs, unfurling black-stitch Chinese print in the same movement. Makes a sealegs wander back to his bar to replace the whiskey among the gin, exotically flavoured vodka, tequila. The rhetoric is left to be as such, ignored or missed entirely, mouth shut against furthering his point about the Flaws in the System.

Especially on the topic of cops screwing the system — this coyote would like to keep his balls unmolested (mostly). Logan's hands achieve a bloodless grip on the edge of the minibar once he turns back to Vincent, a braced lean back on wood and metal. "Then I'll see what I can do," he says, tone generous, eyelashes rapid fluttering around the ice chips of his eyes. "Though, one question — if I'm the one that doesn't know everything, what does that make you?"

"You're registered as a negator," Vincent reminds on a substantial delay, once Logan's turned back around to face him.

He's helpful that way. In reminding, that is. Like he is now. Helpfully.

Unblinkingly, also.

He's gone a little hard about the jawline again, tepid whiskey drink and all associated inner warmth aside.

It'd be a staring contest, maybe, if he didn't interrupt it with a thicker swallow of bitter alcohol than he's previously allowed himself. Hard to tell if the timing's deliberate. He's already had enough that there's a certain bleary weathering about the staunchness in his neck and shoulders. "October '09. Arrested in connection with a kidnapping. As for what your ignorance makes me — mortal. Fallible. We're not so different, really."

A breathy chuckle funnels through nasal cavities, no where else to go as Logan presses a closed-mouth smile together in response to that ~reminder~ as insistent as the ones you get about unused icons on your desktop. He unclenches his hands, dances the tips of his fingers along the stainless steel edging of the bar. "Labels," he says, as poison green non-light reflects off the lower row of eyelashes, gaze tilted away even as that steady warmth in Vincent's system seems to unspool even more, relaxes muscles in a deeply warm satisfaction that seems to mimic, or act as an undercurrent to, the helping of whiskey in his system.

It's a harsher nudge than the usual tact he might play the levels of serotonin in another person, but both of them having been drinking. Green dims into greyish mossy vagueness again, and Logan sniffs. "Oh, I'm sure we've got loads in common," is said with the kind of picky resentment one gets when developing a hard and fast distrust for the law. Even of the clippitly helpful variety.

"Mmm," says Vincent, more absently in sock puppet agreement than he should be. Comfortable, whiskey-induced warmth is a welcome diversion from his norm. His eyes glitter black in their study of coffee table and ashtray and crippled cigarettes.

Unsurprisingly confidence remains firmly intact where formal rigidity bleeds gradually from his bones. Lazier, more predatory self-assurance cants in the lean of his torso and the slack of his grip on his glass. A rare glimpse of what lies beneath for the length of time that he is not-quite-blissfully unaware, if as close as he's ever likely to get. "You sound awfully insincere."

One shoulder goes up in a shrug, which has silk slipping down over black cotton sleeve and pale bicep, before scarlet is agitatedly twitched back into place. By now, Logan drags his attention back forward again, unable not to observe the furthered effects of alcohol and enriched pleasure centres, mouth small and expression cool, but eyes skipping interested from the toe of shiny, sensible shoes, up to shaven skull. Long arms wrapped around his narrow midsection, Logan strolls forward some more, foot steps silent on clean carpets once a stagnant pause goes by.

"But you think I'm stupid," is accusation, but managing to be pronounced with a flick of a smile at a single corner of his mouth. "Or maybe that's just the way you are. As you like — we're two peas in a pod, and I mean that sincerely. You should drop by more often." Insincerity would have to be guessed at, some talent applied to vanish it behind a neutral, silken tone and flat shark stare.

"Mmm," says Vincent, more absently in sock puppet agreement than he should be. Comfortable, whiskey-induced warmth is a welcome diversion from his norm. His eyes glitter black in their study of coffee table and ashtray and crippled cigarettes.

Unsurprisingly confidence remains firmly intact where formal rigidity bleeds gradually from his bones. Lazier, more predatory self-assurance cants in the lean of his torso and the slack of his grip on his glass. A rare glimpse of what lies beneath for the length of time that he is not-quite-blissfully unaware, if as close as he's ever likely to get. "You sound awfully insincere."

One shoulder goes up in a shrug, which has silk slipping down over black cotton sleeve and pale bicep, before scarlet is agitatedly twitched back into place. By now, Logan drags his attention back forward again, unable not to observe the furthered effects of alcohol and enriched pleasure centres, mouth small and expression cool, but eyes skipping interested from the toe of shiny, sensible shoes, up to shaven skull. Long arms wrapped around his narrow midsection, Logan strolls forward some more, foot steps silent on clean carpets once a stagnant pause goes by.

"But you think I'm stupid," is accusation, but managing to be pronounced with a flick of a smile at a single corner of his mouth. "Or maybe that's just the way you are. As you like — we're two peas in a pod, and I mean that sincerely. You should drop by more often." Insincerity would have to be guessed at, some talent applied to vanish it behind a neutral, silken tone and flat shark stare.

"I think that you cannot know what no one will tell you if you're not in a position to see it for yourself," says Vincent, reassuringly. Sort of. He has a staying hand lifted, anyway, somewhat reassuringly. Reassuring, presumably, that he does not think Logan is stupid. Not in any traditional sense of the word, anyway. "You know things I don't. I know things you don't. What little we do share is a luxury." Cheers, says a lift of his glass-wielding hand to that, only for him to forget (or elect not) to take a drink. He looks woozily down in searching for a place to set it instead, a half step taken back and sideways to maintain unconscious balance where his inner ears have failed to.

"Stupid informants are a mixed blessing, you see. You can count on an intelligent self-preservationist to preserve himself. It's harder to predict what a stupid person will do."

Completing the movements of being a gracious host despite not actually being one— especially in the wake of being walked in on mid-splash— Logan continues pacing forward enough that he can take Vincent's glass from him, the barest brush of fingers to knuckles sending warmth shimmering up beneath Vincent's skin as if he'd taken that next sip after all. "Well, I do like my luxuries," Logan agrees through a quirk of a compulsive smile, dressed in silk when he wasn't actually expecting any guests. "And I'm glad to see you're a man of good taste."

And he neatly finishes off Vincent's drink in a quick throw back of whiskey down gullet, mouth twisting at the bitter taste and the way his stomach shifts a little queasily. Tomorrow morning's gonna be awesome.

"To the American people, or whatever it was you said before," is juddered out with a suppressed chuckle, hand up to wipe the back of it against his mouth, though there's no need. "Though let it be noted, you can count on intelligent self-presss— ervationists to leave you high and dry when it most counts. Except for me, of course."

"Of course," agrees Vincent. Not all that convincingly.

Glass having been passed off without resistance, he's slow — very slow — to look down after the region of tenuous contact from bone-ridged knuckles to wrist. The winding dig of a scar there is more easily registered than he'd probably care for it to be. Even doped up as he is, thoroughly incapacitated and off his guard, he's distracted by it.

Which may, unfortunately, insinuate an overly astute interest in something else that just went down there. Silence lingers for an awkward beat, and when he finally looks up, he has to do some searching to pick Logan's silken dragons out of the gloom.

They shimmer before Vincent's vision because Logan is turning away enough to set the emptied glass on the clear silver coffee table, go back upright. Maybe on a better day— or a worse evening— there would be a cause for alarm, the way Vincent's pitch eyes go sharp for a second in all the hazy goodtouches, finding that imprint of influence. But there is smirking satisfaction instead, gone softer than usual thanks to his own imbibing.

"Are you alright?" with a voice that wouldn't melt butter out of the mouth from whence it came, forms sugar crystals in the air. It's an experiment when his white hands go out to see if he can slide Vincent's tie out from its knot, with the kind of tension of a mouse waiting for the trap to go snap.

Vincent doesn't answer immediately. He has to think about it.

Because he still feels pretty good, see, and therein lies the problem. He's not supposed to feel good. Certainly not this good.

He says, "I think so," but not loudly. More to himself and with an odd flicker of displaced humor while there are pale hands working careful at his throat. He smells pretty good for a government agent, weirdly. Being the sort to concern himself with such things, and all. Kind of old school and warm. He probably would have worried about it less if he'd suspected a homoerotic ambush.

It's when he looks at his hand again that something finally triggers — a twitch of tangentally related, self-conscious panic that sees the same hand snapped up to grasp stony and square around whatever progress Logan's made so far. More of his weight holds to that grip than it should. Dizzy enough now that he might not stay standing without the sudden extra support, he has to do the thing where he tries to think fast through disorientation and strangled adrenaline.

"Shit," isn't the most intelligent conclusion he could come to, but it's heartfelt. And apt. A tongue of black vapor lifts off his shoulder as more of the same furls light through his sinuses. Awkward.

It's a mercy or maybe just— laziness that Logan stops touching Vincent's chemicals from here on out, as well as the fact the man is turning intangible, and he stops touching Vincent all together when his hands dart back. That smile cuts across his angular face like an overturned crescent moon. Pale eyes slide to the left to observe that tendriling smoke, and Logan ducks his head just enough to blow a stream of air against black vapour, to watch the delicate play of patterns it makes in response. He watches Vincent all the while. Another chuckle through the nose.

"Next time you drop in, and I do expect you will," he says, back straightening, "fucking knock, Lazzaro." Done with playtime, Logan swaggers a step back at a sailor's tilt, turns on a heel to put definitive distance between them both.

Some things look sexy in slow motion. Boobs, for example, attached to a hot lifeguard bounding down a snow white beach. Vincent gradually transmuting into Something that in turn rapidly sublimates into the inky vapor he's better known as is not sexy. Soft tissue and cloth goes first in fits and starts, with more resilient muscle, tendon and bone following too slow at first. Then faster. It looks like it should hurt. Maybe it does.

The more he is smoke, the greater the transition's speed, and all at once, remnant, black-eyed-glare Lazzaro collapses into a formless tangle of smog with none of its usual flourish. If he remembers what happened tomorrow, there's going to be hell to pay.


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