It. (rasatabula) wrote in repose, @ 2017-06-24 00:04:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | *log, cat dubrovna, jack penhaligon |
Jack + Cat: late night plotting
Who: Jack & Cat
What: Undercity plus
When: Fuzzy-recent
Warnings: Maybe upsetting stuff in passing, idk.
The minutes ticked. He had a watch, it was cheap plastic and chipped dial but it didn't glint in the slivers of light there were up-top. The time was important to the man who stood in the thick shadows that limned the entrance to below with the familiarity of frequent visits, not because he was impatient but because the hours there were ahead were sharply defined. Jack was bloody impatient, this scheme was the result of weeks, months of work and patience and the lick of adrenaline was on slow-burn in his gut. Cat would show, or she wouldn't and if she didn't, the whole thing fell apart for another month. He was reliant, which was not entirely surprising given the extent to which he did rely on her, but there was a portion of Cat's talents that were admirable not for sorting out the detritus of his own appalling mess of people, nor in fact, merely the way she looked walking away but a particular set of requirements he had no bloody idea how to deliver without her.
It wasn't bloody selfish. Of course, Jack was entirely capable of selfishness, it was why he was entirely comfortable loathing a man he'd never met, along with two others he'd never met and hoping the lot of them sank like a stone in the river. But he waited, scuffed leather over black cotton and denim and his hands dug into his pockets and the bike stashed along and behind the trash bins until it looked almost forgotten. It wasn't exactly shiny either, the thing stayed together largely through prayers to a long-since-dubious-God but there was no possibility of it being considered valuable enough to sell. For a scheme, that was about as harebrained as they got, but he was long bloody past the point he could continue in all good conscience to spin something into a story. It wasn't enough. It wouldn't make a bloody bit of difference written down and he'd learned that, hadn't he, in the bowels of the place Cat herself had introduced him to.
The minutes slid past, five after two and he didn't think of the hideously mundane on the other side, Jack, all night burger places that smelled of stale coffee. He was familiar enough, AA late night left people unsatisfied on poor coffee and sickly donuts and it let out reasonably close by. It was too immediate, it was copper-veined and live-wire and Jack watched the minute slide past five into six before he saw or heard a trace of Cat.