Who: Jessica and Logan What: First meeting; Jessica needs a drink, as usual. Where: Bar near her crappy apartment. When: early Jan Status: close enough to complete to work Rating: PG-13
Today had been a long day and, honestly, the last thing she wanted to do was go out to a bar. Well, one of the last. Job hunting was pretty far down on the list, but she had a habit to maintain and alcohol wasn’t cheap. The only reason she wasn’t at home nursing a bottle of cheap whiskey right now was because she was new to the area and Jessica hadn’t learned all the places that were open late at night to buy liquor. This bar happened to be barely a few blocks from her apartment, close enough that she could stumble her way home when she was done.
She plopped herself down at the bar, dumping her on the floor by her feet. “Two shots of Jager, and a whiskey neat.” Jessica pulled a credit card from her blazer pocket -- yeah, she’d actually put effort into looking nice today -- and slid it across the bar. “Start a tab.”
It wasn't the bar Logan had bought, but he liked to frequent dives. He could say it was to check the competition, but it was mostly because the beer here was damned good, and Logan never said no to good beer. Besides, one could meet interesting people in dive bars. Like the man on the other side of a bar that Logan was pretty sure was involved in some shit he deserved a beating for.
Worse part of bars in California was that he couldn't smoke. He crunched on a pretzel, because that at least kept his mouth busy.
A familiar voice drew his attention, and a whiff of scent confirmed what he was seeing. Huh. Now that was a familiar face. "Startin' off strong, darlin'?"
The bartender was quick with serving the drinks, either because he wasn’t busy or because he thought it would win him favor with Jessica. It wouldn’t, and the lack of smile that she gave him when he set the glasses in front of her was indication enough. Or it should have been. She could tell he wasn’t deterred as she lifted the first shot and turned it up. It didn’t matter how much she drank, it always burned on the way down.
With a tired expression, she turned to look at the man sitting next to her. Jessica was used to comments about her drinking. Apparently, it was surprising when a woman of her size went in hard. What caught her off-guard was the tag ‘darlin’ at the end. It didn’t sound like a pickup, but that didn’t mean she was fond of hearing it. “Overachiever,” she answered in the driest voice possible. “Can’t say the same for you, can we?” She nodded toward his beer as she picked up another shot and tossed it back.
“Like beer, ain’t trying to get drunk.” He shrugged a shoulder. If she wanted to play ‘who could drink who under the table’ she’d lose. Not that he cared if someone thought he was a lightweight. “Have beer for breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Put it in cheerios sometime. The whiskey here is shit anyway. Fair warnin’. They got a decent scotch at least, if that’s your kinda drink.”
She didn’t try to hide the obvious look of skepticism in her face. Bars weren’t her favorite place to drink, mostly because she couldn’t afford it, but she’d been to enough to find it unlikely that someone would drink for the sake of taste, or just because they enjoyed alcohol. Jessica did offer him puff of air that could have been construed as a laugh. “I thought I was the only one who did that.” She was joking, even if it didn’t sound that way. “I couldn’t give a shit less if they served me rubbing alcohol, so long as it got the job done.” To prove her point, she drank the whiskey as quickly as possible and set the glass back on the bar with a hard clink. “But hey, I’m feeling adventurous.” Jessica motioned for the bartender to bring her another round, this time with the scotch.
"Well if you want to kill yourself, rubbing alcohol is a good place to start." Logan knocked back the rest of his beer and made a point to order the scotch too. "One place I lived, I hid a bottle of Jack in a grandfather clock for emergencies." He figured she had hiding places too. She seemed like the kind of person who had booze hiding places, and he could respect that, self-destructive as it was.
Jessica’s jaw tightened and she didn’t respond directly to the comment. Did she want to kill herself? No, but she couldn’t deny that the quiet would be a nice change from the constant noise going on in her head. “Secret space on a bookshelf,” threw back. Or at least that was where she kept things when she lived with Trish. Now she kept her alcohol out in the open. There was nothing to hide when you lived alone. After the scotch was delivered to them, Jessica lifted the glass to her lips, this time actually tasting the drink first. “Doesn’t suck.”
"Nice. No one fuckin' reads anymore. Good spot." He nodded at her, acknowledging the comment about the scotch. It was really decent, at least. Not as good as the beer.
Now, he could ask her who'd fucked her over or what had led to the constant need to drink, but she didn't seem like the kind of person who'd talk about it, let alone volunteer any information of her own accord.
"Never seen you here before. New to the area?"
She offered him a smug expression of pride. He wasn’t wrong. Honestly, there wouldn’t have even been a bookshelf in their apartment if it weren’t for the fact that Trish actually had a book collection. Jessica was just lucky that she’d been too busy to read anything. She nursed the scotch a little more, only taking the time to appreciate it because the drinks she’d had so far were starting to work their way through her system. Jessica would have a nice buzz in no time.
It was fortunate that Logan didn’t ask her anything in the realm of personal, at least in regards to her drinking. She was starting to warm up, in her own way, and nothing would have made her shut down faster than to have that button pressed. “Brand new. Well, give or take a week or so.” Jessica set her glass down and focused her attention on him, really getting a good look for the first time. “I take it that you come here often.”
“This place, couple others,” Logan grunted. He tapped the bar for another refill on his beer. “Been here long enough to know which shit-holes are actually half-decent, and which ones should be burned to the ground.” The ones where you took your friends versus the ones you went to when you were in a real bad mood, at any rate. “Putting down roots sometimes has it’s upsides.”
“You seem to be trustworthy when it comes to scotch, I may have to ask you for a list of places to avoid. Save me some trouble.” She wasn’t normally the type to ask for help, or other people’s opinions, but when it came to places to drink, she was willing to accept anything if it meant getting her fix as easily as possible. Speaking of which, Jessica finished what remained of the scotch. The bartender made eye contact when he heard the empty glass hit the bar. She nodded for a refill, but didn’t move to drink once it arrived. “I’ll have to take your word for it. I’m not sold on the ‘OC’ just yet.” Truth be told, Jessica wouldn’t have been happy anywhere, not fully. The only thing that Orange County had going for it was the fact that it wasn’t New York.
"Know a place with good whiskey too. Bit more upscale by two notches though. And if you want real smooth vodka there's this russian I could get you in contact with." Logan had contacts, and contacts of contacts, and not just for booze, but he figured the booze part was the important part right now. "Spent a long time just traveling. Around the world, here in the states. Wanted to try something new, so I opened a motorcycle repair shop. Then it blew up." He took a drink. "Trying again. Hopefully less explosions this time." There probably wasn’t a point to the story. Or maybe the point was trying something new.
“Sounds like I came to the right bar at the right time.” Jessica didn’t do friends, and she really wasn’t in the market for one right now, but anyone who could keep her flush with something to drink, even if it was the name of somewhere to go, was… Well, she didn’t have a good side, but Logan could be somewhere close to one. She laughed in spite of herself, mostly because how often did people have their business blow up in the real world. “Here’s hoping,” Jessica said as she lifted her glass to cheers and take a sip. “So now I gotta ask, who blows up a repair shop?”
Logan let out a half snort, half laugh. "People you get on the wrong side of. Tryin' to scare me off or teach me a lesson or some shit. Don't really remember anymore. Don't think it really matters." He neglected to mention that he'd been inside at the time. Just thinking about how much it hurt to knit back together after that made him order another drink.
“That’s one way to send a message.” The information changed how she looked at Logan. Her initial perception of him was shifted. She couldn’t decide which was the bigger question: what had he been involved in that required sending a message through explosions, or what kind of person just shrugged off their business burning down? Jessica settled on another: Did she care? And the answer was no. “Personally, I’d go with a Post-It, but I doubt that was the vibe they were going for.” With a shrug of her shoulders, she turned up the glass of scotch. The burn was gone, which was the first sign that Jessica was way on her way to drunk. Of course, it would take a while for the alcohol to catch up with her, but not long. Not long at all.
“A post it. Now that would have been something. Just post it to the fucking door.” Logan laughed. “That would be a first.” He was a dangerous man, with dangerous friends and dangerous enemies and he’d made about half of them before he’d even started dreaming. But he mostly tried to do good, which Jones would probably sneer at at this point in her life.
Jessica didn’t have any idea what Logan’s life was like, not enough to fully understand his laugh, but she was tipsy enough that the sound of his amusement caused her to laugh in spite of herself. Wouldn’t that actually be funny? Just a sticky note, in a bright neon color, with harsh words scrawled across it. “You wouldn’t look as cool, ignoring that one. Not as dramatic.”
“I’d be plenty dramatic,” Logan protested “Just dramatic in another way. Post it notes are serious.” He grinned at the mental image, though. It was giving him an idea, for another time. A way to get back at someone who didn’t deserve a full retaliation.