Participants:
| Scene Title | Nice Drinking With You |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Two folks with something on their minds come together over drinks, problems and even a little flirting. |
| Date | December 16, 2010 |
A Bar
It's coming up on last call this fine Thursday evening and Mister Agent "Doctor" Scientist Calvin Rosen is slouched over the unremarkable polish of a boot black bar in a fine coat and a finer suit. The sort that probably belongs in a finer establishment than this one, with its sallow lighting and sticky floors.
Naked heels hooked up over the lower rungs of his barstool, ginger-crested head down in its rest against the upturned brace of his palm, he has the air of a vaguely homeless person with none of the homelessness.
In any case, a crisply unfolded Benjamin Franklin says that this particular location is going to remain open a bit after the lights dim and the sign flips to closed, cigarette ash tapped into a spent glass of coke and rum between intermittent taps at the flat screen of his phone. The pale light it casts up onto the planes of his face is not flattering: his eyes are ringed dark with sleeplessness in addition to eyeliner and he's got a haze of stubble fading in gradual-like around the otherwise crisp trim of his anchor beard.
Last call isn't even something on Robyn Quinn's mind tonight as she stares down into a half empty glass of rum in her. She wasn't sure what brand, or even what the oddly tinged flavour to this particular drink is. She didn't ask for specifics, she just told the bartender (a bit of a gruff, curt fellow, none of the attentiveness she'd come to expect from Nadira) to bring her either a pint of Guinness or whatever rum he could find.
Perhaps for Quinn's benefit, he had chosen the rum.
THe musician herself is huddled over the bar's edge, hovering over her drink as if it, combined wtih the long, black button up jacket she wears could keep her exactly as warm as she wants to be at the moment. There's a grimace on her face, a look that just screams of something being on her mind. For once, the normally energetic and talkative Irishwoman looks like any other morose bar patron.
At least, until she sees a hundred dollar bill being withdrawn from the corner of her eye, something which has her looking over at Calvin with a quirked eyebrow. "What, are y' buyin' up their stock a' whatever you got there?" she asks with a bit of a forced grin. She doesn't look at s tired as Calvin, at least, but she also ins't making an effort to thred red hair out of her face.
Bless the bartender forced to accomodate the invasion of ginger fruits with accents that consists of roughly his entire clientele at the moment. He looks to the offered one hundred dollars and mutters a question, to which Calvin mutters an equally unenthusiastic, "Forty-five minutes."
The bartender says, "Thirty." Calvin says, "Thirty-seven."
An accord is reached.
President Franklin vanishes.
Cigarette fingered back into the corner've his mouth so that he can run his hand carefully under an along the meager brush of scruff he's accumulated, Rosen's slow to look over sideways at Quinn. Who he looks at. And looks at. And looks at. The way people are prone to staring uncomfortably at TV or tabloid stars while they're trying to eat, cigarette wobbled up and down and up again to swing loops into the otherwise steady wind of smoke off its cherry. "Time, s'all."
Quinn looks back at Calvin too. For a good moment or two even, before she leans back and slowly looks around, as if looking for someone else that Calvin could be staring at. Finding no one, her attention turns back to the man just down the bar from her, and she adopts a rather curious expression. "I'm sorry, did I say somethin' t' offend you?" It's only a hald serious inquiry, though, as the grin on her face hopes to reflect. With no warning, a messanger bag is lifted up from her feet, making a bit of a ruckus as it lands on the counter next to the dwindling glass of rum.
"Time?" she repeats as she digs around inside of her bag, a look of annoynace her her face. "Aren't you worried about bein' out after curfew? I've been caught out once, it isn't fun. Particularly when you get the really bitchy cops." An iPhone is produced from the bag, a very noticable crack sitting on one of the upper corners of the screen, one that looks like it's spread nicely since whatever impact originalyl caused it - how the screen itself is still functional is a mystery.
This, however, doesn't seem to be the object of Quinn's search. "An' isn't there a smoking ban now?" This said a bit more seriously, though that grin doesn't fade - and in fact, a moment later, a pack of cigarettes is withdrawn from Quinn's own bag. "Glad t' know I'm no the only one who doens't give a fuck about it." She might be just a little drunk, but it's still the truth!
Temper neither ill or good but somewhere in the muddled middle region of creeping, apathetic exhaustion, Calvin can only look away and shake his head in a sluggish no when she does the 'Have I offended you somehow?' thing. "I don't see any fuckin' cops," meant to address the matter of both smoking ban and curfew, he has some trouble steering the blunt of his latest smoke down into a notch on the edge of an ash tray that appeared at some point after his last payment vanished. Miraculously.
There's a fresher glass somewhere off to his left, melted ice floating thin at the top when he hooks it in closer for a sip and a swallow. The ash tray is nudged a little closer to her reach once he has.
"Mmm," is Quinn's succint reply. She'd say more, but she's too busy drawing out a cigarette of her own and a lighter to match, and in no time it's between her lips, a puff of smoke sent blowing through the air and up towarsd teh cieling fan. The bartender isn't complaining, so what the hell. "I guess that's fair enough," is replied with a shrug, Quinn tilting back some of her rum. Fingers drum on the glass for a moment before she looks back at Calvin, that smirk returning.
It seems, that at this hour and with a bit of alcohol in her, Quinn's tact is failing, though, her next question being a poorly thought out. "So, what in the hell has you out here buyin' time after close, anyway?"
"Bad dreams," drawls Calvin, without shame or fear of judgment, as someone with his hairdo would presumably have to be. It's hard to tell if he's serious besides, alcohol's influence sunk lax through the slope of his near shoulder when he dips his wrist limp after his smoke. "Can't sleep, you know."
He doesn't look to see whether or not she does, a single lengthy drag pulling paper back off the white of his cigarette like skin from bone while the bartender washes glasses and pretends not to be listening. "What about you. S'thursday night."
"Bad, uh… whatever y' call bein' awake." It's stumbled over, and she laughs at herself for her own bad joke. "Avoidin' makin' decision," she says more seriously, attention turned bakc to her mysteriously refulled drink. This bartender knows how she operates, and she doesn't hestiate at all in tipping back that glass once more. "Real stupid kinda shit I just feel like dealin' with at the moment," she amends, shrugging a bit. "Jus' one a' those days, if you know what I mean." She's sure he does, everyone does, right? Really, Quinn's lucky that this is the worst she's had since the eighth. Too many decisions to make.
"Cognizant…ss…state of existence," suggested with a touch of slur for what the opposite of a dreaming state must be, Calvin turns bleary eyes a shade suspiciously after the bartender (so pointedly) ignorant of their persistant presence now that it's getting closer to the time that they should probably go. He blinks hard, then, motivation to maintain scrutiny lacking where evidence for any real reason to be suspicious of a random bartender is also lacking.
Glasses are washed. His cigarette is stifled ashy nose down into dusty ceramic. Rum is sipped. "I know what you mean."
"I'm glad someone does," Quinn offers with a smile,e ven as she pushes herself up and off of her seat. Her bag sits, though her glass comes in hand with her, it's unclear if she's intending to leave or not, at least at first. Really, she's just moving down closer to him. Robyn Quinn is a social creature, and even in varying states of intoxication, and with a total stranger, that holds true. Largely ignorant of what time it is and the fact that she likely should be leaving before too much longer, she plops down next to him, making a long reach for the strap of her bag so she can pull it down to her.
"Not bein' able t' sleep, though," is interrupted as she decides to drink down a healthy amount of her glass of rum, "that really sucks. Hope that gets better for y,…?" She hasn't asked a name, and she's not fishing for one, but she does trail off as she draws a blank. "Or that you find some sorta magic white pill that'll let y' give the finger t' whatever's keepin' y' up. Hope it's nothin' too bad,"
"Calvun," says Calvin, sloppy inflection warping vowel sounds when he dips his brow back down for the bar. The better to study grafitti scratched into the ancient surface, the pad of his middle finger tracing uneven 'round the border of a shabbily carved heart. He is a creature but not an exceptionally social one, the addition to his acrid New York City stink to the mix the only thing new about him at closer range. The shadows under his eyes are also better defined.
"Maybe I'll look into getting a prescription," is lazy like most of his lies are, flopped out like a bean sack in place of real furniture. To put matters off and take up space.
“Mm. Roben,” is offered in return, a similar sort of inflection mixed in with her Irish accent. “An’ go with whatever works, Calvun. It’ll keep you from lookin’ like a morose motherfucker.” Her hand rises up and awkwardly pats him on the shoulder, a smirk on her face. “Not that you do.” He sorta, kinda does. Not that she looks much better herself at the moment. A thin trail of smoke blows out the side of her mouth, and somewhat expertly, the remainder of drink is swallowed down with removing the cigarette from her mouth.
Her phone is slid over to her by the bartender, making sure she doesn’t forget it amongst her conversation. A look is given down to the clock at the bottom of it’s screen. She squints, looking down at it. “Shit. I forget how hard t’ read this thing is when I can barely see…”
"M'not morose. You are. Mizz Quinn." Spoken morosely and with a curl at his lip that shows some teeth, this does little to help Calvin's case, and it's only a very fortunately timed grope of his left hand over the open rim of his glass that spares it being swept away from him when the bartender sets to collecting his other empties. The way he sniffs and cranes his head down after the near loss is almost enough to distract from the brush of the inner arch of his right foot along the inside of her left calf.
Almost.
Enough.
"What? Oh, Quinn, yeah." She waves a hand dismissively, and then shrugs. "I donno. I guess I kinda am, but-"
And then she feels his foot brush against her calf, and she really can't help but giggle. At least that's not morose. Right? That hand pats down on Calvin's shoulder again and she leans towards him with her cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mout and a finge rpointed away from the rim of her drink, aimed up at him. She inhales deeply, and then grins.
"Now, see here, Calvin," she remarks, fingers tapping rythmicly, "i'm not goin' t' stop you from what your doin', but you might be a bit disappointed. Just givin' you fair warnin'." Quinn, self centered as she is when drunk, may ahve taken that the wrong way, maybe not. Her bets are not, and it amuses her to no end. That hand pats down on mroe time before she turns back towards the bar and leans forward to look at her phone. "Please tell me that's anything but green," she remarks absently, holding her phone up to reveal a Christmas Tree that is, indeed, very green.
A giggle isn't a no. Calvin even laughs with her. Kind of. A breathy, slightly insincere chuckle through his teeth that he muffles into a turn of his wrist before it falls and he offers a mild: "No harm in a little give'n take."
Meanwhile 'footsie' may occasionally be written off as unintentional contact in a fit of private embarrassment at ill reception, but this isn't really that kind of footsie. Perhaps spurred on by the advantage inherent in the absence of socks or shoes (or a 'please stop') he traces on, toes curled to follow the contour of achilles tendon and then barely there back up again.
"It's so fuckin' green," commended of the tree with half-hearted and half-polite exuberance, he downs the rest of his drink and sets to the project of fumbling his wallet open without dropping it.
"Fuuuuuuuck!" is drawn out drunkenly as Quinn draws back the picture of the tree and stares at it. Even being drunk can't help her vision at the moment! Wait, isn't that the way it always works? "Shoulda told me is was some kinda, like… gray tree or somethin'," she kinda grumbles, before blinking and looking down at her feet. The giggle is more subdued this time, but it's there. Her drink is finished as well, glass slid over towards the bartender - it stops short, eliciting another loud curse from Quinn.
"Mm," she says, eyes still cast downwards a bit. "You're going t' be disappointed~" she says in a sing songy voice-
And yet does this , she drunkenly leans over and abruptly kisses Calvin on the cheek. "You're not my type," she says a bit more drly, before she sets to rooting around in her own bag for some form of payment.
"Don't knock cock 'til you've tried it, pussy …cat," is the kind've awkwardly woozy thing that snubbed inebriated people say and so probably not entirely unpredictable issued forth as it is without mercy once Calvin's taken the kiss without complaint, paid and slithered kind of sideways…backwards…still holding on for balance off the lift of his barstool. The tail of his coat slides off at a slow swing after him. Like a cape. Woo!
His shoes are around here somewhere, suspended by the laces from a coat hook along with his socks. He heads that way, stride uneven while he tucks his wallet away into his trousers. "Nice drinking with you."
"I 'ave heard a lotta people vouch for it," she notes, tossing a few bills at the bartender - overpaying a bit, but maybe that's tip? Or maybe she just doesn't really care at the moment. Her bag is picked up, Quinn sliding off her own stool. With the only other interesting person leaveing the bar, it's time for her to catch a taxi before it gets too late. Being caught too far after curfew is not in her best interests after all.
"Didn't mean t' lead you on," she says a bit apologetically. "Hope your evenin' hasn't gone all t' pot." That's said a bit more mirthfully, a bit of a sway to Quinn's step as she gives a bit of a stumble forward. Really, it's not that big of a concern to her, but she feels a little obliged regardless. "Let's do it again sometime," she says teasingly, but there's a bit of a genuine tone behind it. "An' let's at least share a cab. Headed t' Manhattan at all?"
"Don't worry about it," says Calvin to everything, shoes collected by the laces on his way to shouldering swiftly on out into the cold. "I drove m'self."
So he like. Doesn't need a taxi.
…<:D