Participants:
| Scene Title | Promise You Won't |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Abigail catches up Caliban outside Old Lucy's after a tense standoff inside the bar. |
| Date | February 3, 2010 |
The Alley Behind Old Lucy's
"Robert"
Cue the movie music, brunette in a pair of jeans and a black apron pushing open the emergency exit from the bar into the dirty alley. Look stage left, look stage right, focus on the tall blonde guy who's making swift strides away from. Cue dashing past the fluttering police line tape that's since been ripped down. past the darkened dirty pavement that will never quite be clean of the blood spilled.
"Robert"
She's calling his name. Caliban can hear it — fresh-fallen snow muffles the rumble of Manhattan traffic, the slush squelch of tires rolling messily through melt water and grit. Even the music that leaks out of the bar when Abigail pushes open the door is a whisper in comparison to the blood drumming in his ears as he moves toward the alley mouth at a brisk, even pace.
It isn't until she's shoving through the police tape and in true pursuit of him that he stops, hands closed into fists at his sides, and turns his head just enough to track her approach in his peripheral vision and give her a view of his hawk-like profile.
"I'm sorry"
Again.
"Again" Abigail doesn't seem to at the moment care a whit that it's cold or snowing and she's in a tank top. "I wasn't thinking, I don't do that to everyone. Are you.. okay?" She asks this yet again, when he'd answered before but that didn't include an exploding beer bottle at the time. "You're not cut not… anything?" Out of the alley proper she emerges finally, sinking her thumbs into her jean pockets, hunching shoulders in while looking him over. "Thank you, for protecting me in there"
Shards of glass too small and blunt to pose a danger glitter in Caliban's hair and in the dark fibers of the greatcoat he wears over his suit. There's no blood — the only thing that could even come close to passing for it are the stains on the front of his dress shirt where he was sprayed with beer, and these appear a sallow shade of brown rather than red.
He doesn't say anything at first. Pivots instead, showing Abigail one side of his long, lean body illuminated by the glow bleeding into the alley from the street lamps beyond it. A gentleman would tell her that it was no trouble, that she's overreacting and that the touch was nothing.
He isn't particularly feeling like a gentleman anymore.
The few shots of whatever she's shared with customers have banished her common sense and whether one might normally shrink away when Caliban and his glare/glance/stare hit them, it just makes her remain where she is, looking up at the other man. "Cops won't come, you'll be fine to come back in if you like, toast Tanya's life" her Right hand - the one he'd wrapped his hand around - is gestured behind her in the vague direction of where the bartender had fallen. Above, way above, is one of the windows to her place and a lone black cat looking out of the window and the ongoings below.
"You don't need to run Robert, no ones going to blame you, other people had guns in there and they won't blame you" Redundancy, have to love it. English was likely never Abigails forte in school when she actually attended public school. "After what happened.. that's why the shotgun's downstairs. Really, don't go. It's good to see you here"
Caliban turns the rest of the way, his back to the alley mouth, silhouette made pitch black, and closes the distance between himself and Abigail in a series of deceptively smooth strides that betrays nothing about the war being waged inside of him. He tips a glance up at the cat in the window, sensing movement, then shifts his focus back to the brunette standing in front of him.
This time, he does not stop. In his defense, she isn't asking him to. Strong hands find Abigail's shoulders and take them in her grasp, fingers closing around her arms with enough force to anchor them to her sides.
Which somewhat forces her hands out of her pockets completely and make her look up at the public relations agent/high class henchman for the local high class crime syndicate. Oh the people who Abby consorts with. A certain Doreen Beauchamp would be fanning herself into a faint right about now to think that her daughter would be in a dirty alley with a man like him.
"It happened Robert. What happened in Russia happened. Can't take it back, can't run away from it. It's good to see you here, to… know that you're not mad at me for walking away and my stupidity or for.. trading my life to save yours. I don't think Mr. Linderman would have been very thrilled with me if you had died and he found out that you came all the way across the world to Russia at the whim of a broken healer"
Caliban takes another step forward into Abigail, using his hands to steer her up against the wall so that he shoulders are flush with it and the brickwork presses cold against the back of her neck and exposed arms. There's something about her being out here in subzero temperatures that's bringing out either the protective or the predatory side of him — right now, she has no way of knowing which she's thrown herself at the mercy at. "Do you want to know why I came to Russia?" he asks, and his voice is very coarse.
"Because I called, and you always answer because you're not allowed to screen your calls." Fuck the wall is cold and the brick isn't favourable to scratched up flesh, but as her feet connect with the wall and the difference in temperature between his hands and the air sinks in, she's still looking up, fingers digging in between bricks. "because… it's your.. job?" As if she's just not that sure whether that's the right answer or a very wrong one that's likely to bring about the same look of self disgust that he dredged up in Russia.
"I would have done what I did with Grigori even if you hadn't been employed by him Robert"
Caliban's lip twitches up around a quiet snarl but he stops himself before it can curl too far. "The thought of Muldoon being anywhere near you," he starts, instinctively clamping down harder on her arms. "I started to feel sick, and then I remembered—" His voice hitches, and he makes a strangled sound in his throat that's almost too low to be heard. Apparently satisfied that she won't be going anywhere as long as he continues blocking her route of escape with the barrel of his chest, he moves his hands from her arms to his face and cups it in his palms.
They're softer than Kozlow's had been, though not by much. Whatever work he does for Linderman outside his job as his publicist is comparatively gentle on his skin, leaving them somewhat weathered by age but otherwise smooth. Whoever this man is, wherever his allegiances lay, he's been a white collar worker all his life. "I feel like I'm disappearing, Abigail. Fragmenting apart. This job—"
"Do you love it?" Her pulse flutters underneath his pinky finger, not fighting to get out, but kicking up to keep her body warm in the assault of cold air. "I don't know exactly what it is that you do for him, I don't know how easy it would be to walk away, but if you don't love it… walk away before you do" She blinks once, twice, a third time in quick succession, breath curling out into the air in a little puff of steam to mingle with the same that comes from him.
"Come work in the bar. Lord knows I could use the publicity that you could stir up for it after everything that's happened here." It's a joke really, she's not expecting him to take her up on it. "Break away, leave him, do something else. It'll hurt but.." Maybe more than she could fathom. "Do what you want, what you love.. Robert.. I don't love this bar. I run it because someone left it to me, and I like it, but.. I don't love it. There's people fornicating on the wallpaper, really, there is. What I love? I loved healing, I loved putting my hands on people and taking away their hurts and when I finally get my certification, I will find nothing better than the thrill of sitting in the ambulance and toggling that siren, knowing that while I can't make sure that they live, I will throw my whole being into making sure they stay alive until we get them to a hospital"
Because she's sure as hell not getting back what she saw disappear in the deserts of Mexico in a lick of green flame. She swallows harshly, holding her breath and praying that the observant jerk who screamed to call 911 that he was attacking the bartender, doesn't choose to walk outside right about now lest he have a few more other accusations and mistaken assumptions.
"Money," Caliban answers huskily. "I love money." He rubs his thumb along Abigail's jaw, tracing its outline beneath the downy softness of her rose-tinted skin before he allows it to settle where her pulse beats the strongest. The act of touching her is enjoyable, too. "No one needs to tell you to stay away from Muldoon," he says, "but you shouldn't be around me, either. James and I are cut from the same cloth. I'm a bad person — isn't that what all your friends tell you?"
As he speaks, he moves his mouth against Abigail's cheek and breathes warmth into her ear, his whiskers rough against nose and lips. She isn't the only one who's been drinking, and this isn't counting the shot he took at the bar or the half-finished pint of beer that's still sitting on the counter inside. It's clear that he needed something to help him work up the courage just to come here, and whatever that something is — it's influencing his actions as much as the alcohol in Abigail's system is influencing hers.
"I'm not supposed to want you," he mutters under his breath. "I'm not even supposed to like you."
"I cavort with murderer's and thieves on a regular basis. I am a murderer as well" No matter how others protest that you can't kill a guy who cheated death/was a ghost/deserved it. "They tell me to stay away from bad people Robert but I've been…" nope, the confession that for the last few months she's been screwing Deckard on the side while refusing to date anyone never leaves her lips. "I don't because god never cared who told him to stay away from"
He's making her into a puddle and her own shots trudging along in her blood skew with her inhibitions. Not so much that she can't think for herself or scream that she's, or was far too influenced to be coherent. She's very much so. Cold air will do that. "Money can't buy you love. Money can't piece you back together when you do fall apart. Money won't find you when you disappear into wherever it is that you're afraid you'll disappear" Money can't get you back your morals.
"Everyone likes me. I'm Abigail. I'm stupid Abigail who trips into danger and waits for god to sort it out and save her fuck, just kiss me already Robert. So I know what I'm missing, what I missed in Russia. Because I'm just tipsy enough that… it won't be awkward"
Kiss me, she says, and with those two words Abigail sacrifices whatever protection she might've had against the man pinning her to the wall. His hips press against hers as his mouth finds hers, hard and wanting, filling her senses with the sharp reek of whiskey, sandalwood cologne and stale cigar smoke made all the more potent by the sweat gathering in his collar.
He's rougher than Deckard but his touch isn't completely absent of tenderness. The teeth that graze her lower lip and catch it between them don't bite down as forcefully as they could, and there's something truthful and sincere about the way he murmurs her name against her mouth, his voice thick with affection.
He doesn't want to hurt her. "Promise you won't hate me."
God Damnit all to hell he smells like Flint.
Fuck.
That's all it is right? There will time for probable regrets in the light of the next day, and the laws of humanity dictate that there will ALWAYS be a rebound. Doesn't help that the smells of whiskey, sweat and smoke for her are synonymous with some of the acts that populate the wall of the bar inside. But that's where the comparison of he who came before, ends. "You're not on my list of people to hate and you never will be" Just herself. Maybe. She'll deal with it in the morning when morning comes. When her hands aren't moving of their own accord to grab his tie, twine a forefinger through it and pulls down, forcing it to loose and pull on the back of his neck.
"Promise me that you won't think any less of me" Think of her as something that starts with the letter W or S. Her other hand curling behind a shoulder to anchor herself against him, and curl in towards his warmth as the cold is getting to her, goosebumps from him and the weather respectively pebbling her arms and making fine hairs stand on end.
Caliban doesn't give Abigail the verbal acknowledgment that she's looking for. It isn't for lack of desire — quite the opposite. His need to make physical the urges that are guiding his motions is so crushing he can only groan in response at first. He must have been thinking about this a long time because when he lowers his hands from her face, he takes his time exploring her body on his way down it and resists the temptation to get caught up on the narrow strait of her waist or her curving hips.
Maybe there will be an opportunity for that later. Right now, what he wants from her is very simple. Instinctive. As he's unbuttoning the top of her jeans between his thumb and forefinger, he kisses her chin, nose and eyelids, reveling in the heat of her body while warming her with his, greatcoat drawn around them both to shelter and protect. How much modesty does she have left to preserve?
"Tell me you want this," he hisses. "I need to hear it."
She has more than enough, and not so far gone in hormones, adrenaline or alcohol to ignore that it's an alley, very dirty, dumpsters within visible distance and the knowledge that a woman lay gasping for air not a few feet away. Or the bad things that have happened to her here in this alley.
She could make it, remake it with new one! Good ones! "Not in a god damned Alley" Not even eight or nine years in the future did she go further than hands down pants and cold walls in an Alley with someone. "Car. My car over there" It's more sanitary, seats pull down, can be warmed up and tinted windows are all the rage for preserving ones modesty. "Keys in my apron…" More an explanation as to why his tie is being abandoned and her hand joining his by her waist as she dives into the black swatch of fabric pulling out the keys so she can fumble with buttons and press them.
Behind them bleats the alarm for a few seconds before it's silenced and doors unlock. Another button and the engine comes to life and with it the heating in the vehicle. She doesn't want to drag him through the bar and up the stairs. They're dropped into a pocket in his jacket and she's back to subjecting herself to stubble burns, trading teeth grazes on lips with the other man and otherwise giving in to giving herself, allowing herself a selfish moment.
Selfish evening.