riverviewlogs | april catch-all

Entry tags:

april catch-all

WHO: Jack Harkness
WHAT: walking, drinking, meeting new friends?, making dinner, whatever else
WHEN: the whole month of April
WHERE: the streets, Quarantine Bar, community housing

NOTES/WARNINGS:

Quarantine Bar - drinking / making friends

Jack gets distracted. It happens. With him, it happens a lot. In the end, it’s the amusement he feels watching a kid with electroluminescent wiring all over his bicycle that makes him think of Willa again. He did say he’d stop by, after all.

He hasn’t been to this bar before. Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t know anything about it. He’s walked past, just never while he also felt the need to get a drink. Now he’s looking for it, though, and he walks in with purpose, allowing his eyes a moment to adjust to the change in the ambient light before settling himself at the bar. The person who comes after a moment to take his drink order is not the blonde girl from the bike conversation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

“Whiskey. Neat. I’m looking for a girl who tends bar here. Blonde hair, long, wavy. Greyish blue eyes. Might have recently gotten herself a bike?” He shoots a charming smile, no malicious agenda here. “She told me to stop by. Never gave a name, though.” Probably a good thing that he’s got a natural way about him, because the story does sound odd.

If WIlla isn’t there the first time he goes, that won’t make much of a difference to him. It’s not a bad bar, and alcohol is alcohol. Maybe something else will take his attention.

[[OOC: He’s going to the bar specifically to meet the girl he talked to about getting a bike. He could go back a few times before he ends up there while she’s working, so that gives him plenty of opportunity to meet other people there first.]]

Floor 4, community housing - making dinner

It’s not even about the food, his desire to make his own dinner. It’s not about the food, or saving money, or privacy, or anything like that. It’s the normalcy. The novelty of it. If novelty could ever be correctly attributed to Jack. It’s been a very long time since anything was new or novel. Still, in his life, peace and quiet are two of the rarest commodities.

Which might explain why there’s something almost meditative about rinsing, drying, chopping the strange alien vegetable he’s already forgotten the name of, adding the slices to the pot before reaching for another one to give the same treatment to. He hasn’t been hungry in a very long time, but he should eat, the pot smells good, and he’s gotten his mind almost calm enough to stop thinking about the crocodile that almost took off his arm earlier in the week. So that’s good.

The noise is so quiet, he’s not even sure it isn’t in his own head until he turns and sees someone standing there. It’s a communal kitchen, so it shouldn’t be surprising, but he’s managed to not run into anyone else here all day. “Am I in your way?”

WILDCARD!

Anything else you can think of. He’s in communal housing - floor 4, room 1 - so there are options for running into him anywhere in the building or in the communal areas of his floor. He’ll also be out doing his bit while there are nasties from the river flooding (no pun) the streets.

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Iona doesn’t mind the Quarantine bar. It’s not The Herald’s Rest, or anything (and Creator’ she misses Cabot something fierce, sometimes. She hadn’t realised she was quite so fond of their dwarven bartender until she’d ended up here), but it’s decent enough. And carries a variety of alcohol in an even wider variety of strengths. Some of which she’s familiar with and some she isn’t. But she always enjoys trying new things. So it works out.

She slips inside, pausing a moment to let her eyes adjust. Her omnipresent pair of fingerless gloves hide the Anchor on her left hand; it’s just easier to avoid the questions that might be raised by the sight of it in all of its green, glowing, annoying glory. Particularly if she’s stopping for a drink.

She winds her way through the room to the bar, leaning on its surface as she flags down the bartender for a drink. “Could I get a Guinness, please?” The one thing they don’t have here is mead, which is disappointing. But there are other bars and shops in the Quarantine that do, fortunately, and Guinness is utterly different from mead but she likes it. (And thinks it might be an improvement over some of the ale in Thedas, quite frankly.)

He's watching every person who comes in because that's just the way he's wired. He can be fully invested, or completely detached. It's that tricky middle ground that gives him so much trouble, the balance. He's never been good at the balance. So, yes, every new person through the door catches his attention. This one holds it.

She's beautiful, but that's not the only reason to look at her. The tattoos across her face are striking, her ears are prominent, and there's an almost imperceptible flash as she walks from the bright light outside into the much darker bar that has him wondering if it's a trick of the light or something more.

When she walks up next to him and places her order, even her way of speaking is attention grabbing. There's weight in her words. Not many people can put weight into unimportant conversation. So, he turns slightly in his seat. "Where are you from? If you don't mind my asking."

Drink order placed, Iona turns her attention toward the stranger beside her. “I don’t mind at all,” she replies, giving him a playful smile. “I’m from the northern region of a place called the Free Marches.” If he knows it she will be very pleasantly surprised; so few know it when she speaks of it here, beyond Dorian and Serah Rutherford, that if she finds someone who does she will be delighted.

Free Marches. Free Marches. He considers that for a moment, running through a mental catalaogue while he sips at his drink. Nope. Never heard of it. Though that doesn't sound like a planet name to him. "Where is that, exactly?" His tone of voice says that, while he might not know where it is, he's not so certain he won't know the planet that contains it.

If he hasn't, hell, he'd still like to hear about it. There's not much of the universe he's not at least passingly familiar with.

When the bartender returns with Iona's drink, Jack holds his own tap card across the bar, intending to pay for it. Before he does, though, he looks to Iona for approval. "If you don't object?" Because there is an inherent social contract that she sit here for a while and talk to him after he's paid for her alcohol. Which, he won't make her. He won't even be all that insulted if she bails immediately. He'll still pay for the drink.

It won't take Jack long to run into Willa. Work was the most prominent part of her life, more so after a friend of hers had left the city. Willa didn't consider herself to be the type of person to have friends but the disappearance had stung all the same. So, she threw herself into her work and focused on moving out of the communal building.

She was wearing a cute tight fitting black top that showed off her shoulders while keeping her arms covered. The neck line was a little low for a seventeen year old but Willa was playing to her strengths. Her long blond hair was tied back with wisps of curls breaking free and framing the round curves of her cheeks. A towel was tossed over her shoulder and she smiled at one of the patrons from behind the bar. The bar was her favorite place to work. She got to see the whole room and talk to people but all with a polished smooth three foot counter between her and everyone else.

Willa was rinsing out glassware when she heard the girl from the other end of the bar call her name. Her head turned and her eyes immediately found Jack. She honestly hadn't thought she'd see him again though it was a pleasant surprise.

She finished the glass she was on and headed down towards his end of the bar. "Here I thought you had gotten so lost that I'd never see you again."

Cute girl incoming. She knows how to put herself together, that's immediately evident. It's attractive, but not trying too hard, not provocative. Appealing, slightly inviting, and he can definitely see why she brings in big tippers. It's also intentional, and that would probably be difficult for most people to notice, but he can see it slightly at odds with the way she carries herself. A few hundred years as part of secret government organizations has hones his natural people pleasing and reading abilities. It takes a great amount of skill to make anything look effortless, even beauty. She has that skill.

"Hello, Gypsy Girl. Willa. I got a little distracted, but it's nice to finally meet face to face. Captain Jack Harkness. It's a pleasure." He holds out his hand to shake hers, all smiles, like it doesn't even occur to him that she might think he was trying to avoid her or had forgotten about her entirely. He only forgot about her partially. A little bit of forgetting. Temporary forgetting.

"Did you end up getting some wheels?"

Willa raised her eyebrow in a delicate arc when Jack offered his hand. It was a little funny, not maybe people did the hand-shake thing anymore. She took his hand in a friendly manner and then let her arm drop down to her side. He had a similar presence to him that he had over the video.

"It's nice to meet you in person."

Willa had grown up in a family of liars and con-artists. Lying was second nature to her, so much so that it was rare to fine people who could call her out on her shit. Even her uncle, the head of the gypsy family, had trouble telling when she was lying and when she was telling the truth. It was a skill that she was born with but also one that she had spent years perfecting.

"No. I got distracted." Willa smiled a little wider as she flipped his words back at him. "Have you ordered a drink already?" She had seen him talking to her co-worker but that didn't mean that he had actually gotten his order in. Some of her co-workers were space cadets.

"Distracted." He chuckled as she so easily tossed his own excuse back at him. "Guess there's been a lot of that going around."

Jack glanced over her shoulder at where her colleague was now chatting animatedly with a few patrons who were definitely regulars. They'd sat down and had drinks placed before them almost immediately, which meant that she had begun preparing them as soon as the pair walked through the door. Probably good tippers, too, judging by the amount of flirting and casual touching going on. No, Jack had definitely been forgotten, along with his order.

"I think I might have failed to make an impression," he told Willa with a smile and a nod of his head in their direction. "So... would you mind?" Except he didn't actually place a drink order, and when Willa inevitably pointed it out, by either word or action, he just grinned even wider. "Surprise me. Whatever you put in front of me, I'll drink." He was adventurous, yes, and maybe it was also a bit of an apology. For waiting so long to come and see her.

"It's the theme of Quarantine." Willa agreed with an easy smile.

She watched the directions of his eyes and glanced over at her coworker. Goldfish, all of them. "I got you." Willa assured him. "Do you have a preference or do you want me to surprise you?" She had spoken to Jack only once before but she didn't think that he was that easy to pin down. She had been on her guard since the beginning of the conversation.

Her fingers move swiftly as she stepped back, grabbed a glass and began to make Jack a drink. "One surprise coming up." Willa made a Manhattan. It was a simple whiskey drink but good and, because she liked him, she gave him two cherries.

The glass chimed softly as she set it down in front of him. "Just know, if you hate it, you're still paying for it." Willa winked before cleaning up the small mess that she had just made.

Distraction. Jack muses for a moment on how right that probably is, on many levels. No one wants to look too closely at what's going on here. Why would they? Small, fleeting lives, and very limited power. They can't change things here. Hell, even Jack is just planning to wait it all out. This moon is obviously not built to last. It's going to collapse, and when it does, he'll get out of here. Easy.

Not so much for everyone else here.

Jack smiles at her when she sets his drink in front of him, lifting it slowly to his lips and taking an unhurried sip. "I haven't had a Manhattan in a long time," he says with a chuckle. "Haven't had one this good in an even longer time." He fishes out one of the cherries carefully, with a pair of cocktail straws used as chopsticks, and raises an eyebrow at her. "Is it completely inappropriate to ask if you want one of these?" Because yes, he noticed that she gave him two.

"That's a shame. It's a classic." Not that Willa was a big drinker but Manhattan's were a staple in the world of whiskey. They were also very easy to make while also being very easy to mess up.

Her smile widened at his compliment. "Thanks. I live for your compliments." She teased, a twinkle of light glinting in her light green eyes.

Willa wiped down the counter in front of him, making it appear as if she's busy while they're talking. She didn't stop listening to the customers around her, in case anyone needed anything, but Jack took up a great deal of her focus.

"It would be completely inappropriate but I wouldn't say no."

Jack smiles, and holds the cherry out a little further. He doesn't move his hand too quickly, because he is doing this with cocktail straws, which are not the most reliable of tools.

"The problem with classics, I think, is that they become so entrenched in our minds. The slightest variation and it's ruined. Not just drinks." All classics. There are plenty of people and places that have been ruined for Jack in the same way, small variations robbing them of their inherent charm.

"So, Willa, where are you from and how did you learn to mix such a perfect Manhattan?" There's little else he can do in this place that feels even slightly productive. Collecting stories, histories - well, maybe it's not productive. It's something, though. It's an effort made at forging connections. It's more than he's done in a while.

Plus, as fucked up as this whole situation is, he is mildly fascinated with discovering whatever it is that they all have in common.

Willa dropped the rag onto the counter and leaned forward to capture the offered cherry between her teeth. She flashed a toothy smile and then proceeded to eat the whiskey soaked fruit. It was probably a good thing that her boss wasn't watching her since she technically wasn't supposed to 'drink' at work.

"That's true though some variations, if they're slightly more than a slight variation, can be a lot of fun and just as classic." Her voice was light and teasing as she turned to the woman to her left and handed her the glass of water she'd asked for about a minute earlier.

"From?" She sounded amused. "Looking for a life story. You might be disappointed." Only because she'll lie. It had nothing to do with Jack, merely that Willa lied. It was what she knew how to do and she did it well. She'd sprinkle in enough truth to make it believable and then make small twists and turns that were nearly impossible to identify. It was her gift.

"Florida, that's where I was before I was here. I'm not sure where I am from. I did a lot of bouncing around in the system as a child. As for the Manhattan. I think I'll keep that one to myself."

Jack dropped the straws onto the counter when she was done with them. He decided to just leave his own cherry for the end. Easier that way.

As for lying about her past, that was fair. Jack did his fair share of that. Far be it from him to judge anyone who wanted to keep their personal history guarded. Hell, Torchwood had been made up almost exclusively of that type of person. For those who had a choice, the job tended to attract people who wanted a place to hide, rather than turning normals into hermits. People weren't forced to avoid the world because of the job, they came to the job in order to avoid the world. Kind of morosely funny that it ended up showing them just how much more there was to see, how much more there was for them to keep at arm's length.

Speaking of the world. "I know Florida." He said it with a smile, because it wasn't a given here. "Have you noticed how many people here seem to be from Earth? Kind of weird, isn't it?"

"Maybe because all of the cool kids are from Earth." She flashed him a smile that suggested that she was, in part, joking.

Willa had some ideas about that but most of them had to do with the fact that people were the same everywhere and you needed a planet with life. Those conditions for life are rare and while there might be life in other universes, it wouldn't happen at the same time. Which was Willa's theory about why people seemed to be here from different times but all locations that are very similar to Earth.

"Or are you thinking that it's something more nefarious than that?" She watched him, her light brown eyes inquisitive and open as the lingering taste of the cherry balanced on the tip of her tongue.

"I'm not sure if anyone can predict what the portal does."

Jack pretty much always thought there was something more nefarious going on. Occupational hazard. Didn't mean there was any reason to scare someone else with his theories. Not yet. Not before he knew whether or not he could do anything about it.

So, instead, he cracked a joke. "Are you saying I'm not cool?" Jack gasped, and clutched weakly at the front of his shirt. "Ouch." A lame dad type joke, but still a joke.

He took a sip of his drink, and shook his head lightly. "I'm sure someone can predict it. It's just that someone is not you, and it's not me." There was always someone in charge who knew what was going on, though. Universal constant. Multi-universal constant, even. "I think it's interesting, though, the implication that almost all versions of the universe that exist in parallel dimensions have a planet Earth capable of sustaining life. In some cases, it appears to be the only one that can."

"Maybe. I haven't made up my mind yet." Willa cracks a smile.

Dad jokes were really lame but they were always a little entertaining to. Maybe it was more entertaining because she never had a Dad to make those kinds of jokes.

"Someone with a mind as big as a planet and no social skills?" Willa asked, sounding innocent and almost sweet. "You make Earth sound like a conspiracy theory, you know that?"

He chuckled, and took a long drink. "You'd be amazed at how many of those things are actually true. It used to be my job to keep people from finding out about them. Entire agency devoted to it, working outside of the government. Earth... had some very quaint notions about its place in the universe. I always liked that, the way humans made it all a little more bearable by shrinking it down to a manageable scale, and still yearning as a whole to push those self-imposed boundaries." It had been sweet. Misguided, and at times incredibly dangerous, but sweet.

"For example." Jack set his drink down and leaned a little further over the counter. "Did you know that the British Royal Family has been a lycanthropic bloodline since Victoria?" Technically he shouldn't have been sharing this, but it wasn't as though he still currently owed any sort of allegiance. Besides, as Willa so neatly demonstrated, people would absolutely not believe it. They wouldn't want to, so they just wouldn't. Nothing this far beyond the comfort zone could ever be allowed.

"That doesn't surprise me. People aren't very good at seeing anything they don't want to see." Willa had a very negative opinion about Earth and human societies. Then again, she'd spent the last seventeen years of her life working as a scam artist. She sometimes did scams now but with her bar job she was trying to straighten out her ways.

It wasn't really working but that was fine too.

Willa's eyebrow rose at Jack's secret. "You know what, that explains a lot." She believed him but about as much as she believed anyone. It was a very measurable scale.

"So, back up real fast. Where are you from? Mr. Not Earthling?"

She didn't have to believe him about Victoria and her supernatural encounter. Honestly, sometimes that was part of the fun, being able to tell someone something while knowing that the secret would still be kept by the sheer force of denial. It was a game, of sorts. Not a very fun one, but still a game.

When she asked where he was from, Jack's smile didn't waver, but the tiniest bit of hardness crept in at the edges. It wasn't that the question was unexpected. He'd left it wide open. Of course she would ask. "Boeshane. One of the colony planets. Long way from Earth." He took another sip of his drink. "Not much to do. Didn't stay long." No family to stay for, either, but he didn't tell her that. That part was personal - the pain, the loss, the look on his mother's face. It cut too close to ever be let out.

"Sounds cool."

Willa was good at reading people and while he didn't say anything, she noticed that hardness in his expression. It was as if his friendly mask was slipping but only by the smallest measure before being secured firmly back into place.

"I can't say I've been to many places outside of Earth." She rolled her eyes at him. "Besides this backwater moon-" Her sentence was cut off by a patron who beckoned her towards the other side of the bar. Willa held up a figure to Jack, pausing the conversation to offer the woman a warm smile. After making the customer more relaxed, Willa returns though she pauses at a few other customers along the way to see how they're doing.

"Do you have a favorite place?" She asked as she returned and began to prep some drinks for other customers. Willa was a master multitasker.

While Willa was gone, Jack finished his drink. Then, with nothing else to do, he began tying the stem of his cherry into a knot with his tongue. When she returned, and asked her question, he spat the tied stem into the empty glass on top of the ice. "I mean, I enjoyed Earth. Florida was fun." He doesn't mention the cannibalistic alligator men. "It's nice to see where you come from, even at three thousand years' removal. I liked exploring the twentieth century. Boshane was a pretty bleak place. Mineral salts mining operation. I left as soon as I could."

Because, of course, with Jack the when was as valid a consideration as the where. Ancient Greece had been fun, too. End of the universe, not so much.

He held up the empty glass, shifting it from side to side so that the ice tinkled against the sides. "Feel like surprising me again?"

Willa eyed the tied cherry with an amused smile. It wasn't a new trick and for some reason it didn't surprise her that it was something that Jack knew how to do. He looked like the type to have a lot of little tricks up his sleeve, be it to impress someone or catch someone off guard. In that respect, him and Willa were a lot alike.

"I would have left too."

She laughed softly as she took his glass and placed it behind the counter. "Do you want to stick with whiskey or should it be a complete surprise? I make a very good vodka martini too." Her light brown eyes glittered mischievously.

Willa liked Jack. She was hesitant to get close to anyone after her last two almost friends disappeared from Quarantine without warning but he was impossible not to like to some degree. She was also a little weary of him, seeing pieces of her uncle in him that she didn't much care for.

"Everyone who could afford to, did. Even those who couldn't afford it tended to find a way."

The likeness to her family was fair. Jack had been a con artist for most of his life. He just tended to ply his trade for large government organizations. Which, honestly, probably only made it worse. He was good enough to do this professionally, sanctioned, heavily funded. Hell, it had been his ticket away from Boeshane. Traveling through time, fixing continuity mistakes he didn't really care about, pretending to be something he wasn't.

"Well now, you've told me so it wouldn't be a surprise." This was easier. Far easier than thinking about important or painful things. What was the point of it, anyway? Most of the bad things in his life couldn't be undone, and when he messed with time to try and do just that, he often ended up somehow making things worse.

"Sounds like a pretty shitty place to live." Willa was pointing out the obvious but it was hard not too. She couldn't think of a single place on Earth where everyone tried to get out. A lot of places were plagued by wars and famine but even then... people still stuck to their homes.

Home was something important. Even someone like her who's never had a home gets that.

She exhaled a slow breath as she glanced down at the bar and then behind her. "You're very high maintenance, you know that? I better get an impressive tip." Willa winked at Jack and then turned to make him a drink. She thought about it for a minute or two before mixing together a Sidecar martini. It wasn't too hard and like many of the things that Willa did, it was with a talented flare.

The sidecar was made with cognac, orange liqueur, plus lemon juice. To make it fancy, Willa put a loop of lemon peel at the edge of the glass. "There."

"Oh, the shittiest." He could say it with a smile on his face. That tended to happen, with enough time remove and also the gradual acceptance that he just couldn't change anything about his shitty childhood, the shitty things he'd been responsible, the incredibly shitty way he basically just ran away. Embrace the shittiness within. Or something along those lines.

He watched her fix the drink. "How about you? Tell me about growing up in Florida." She hadn't actually mentioned growing up there, just coming from there. That wasn't always the same thing. He knew that much firsthand. Boeshane hadn't been where he was from for thousands of years.

There was something there, though, and while Jack didn't particularly care about digging deep into the personal business of a stranger, a shift in focus would be nice. Either she'd tell him something, or she'd try to talk about another topic entirely. No matter what, he'd count it as a win.

"I didn't grow up there. I traveled a lot." She leaned against the counter. Her long hair spilling over her shoulders as she spoke. "It wasn't that exciting. I went in and out of the system a lot. Had a parole officer who hated me and wanted to see me in jail. It wasn't exactly what'd I'd classify as fun." Willa made little air quotes in the air as she straightened her spine and looked back along the bar.

"Give me a second." She disappeared to the other end of the bar for about ten minutes before reappearing.

"Don't think I can keep talking like this. So do you have a Spark-notes version of your life I can be clued in on?"

In and out of the system. Yeah, that was another thing Jack was all too familiar with. Not for himself, obviously, but in the scouring of background and criminal checks on the hunt for potential employees. Those who, at one point or another, were forgotten. Those who could disappear and not be missed. Not a pretty reality, but he couldn't deny it. He'd been that guy. Some would argue that nothing had changed, he just now worked on a much larger scale.

"Just the highlights?" Jack pursed his lips and blew out a sharp stream of air, as though Willa were asking for a truly massive effort. "That's not easy, distilling that much into a paragraph. Let's see..."

He took a sip, seemed to very thoughtfully consider the possibilities. "Well, time traveling, peace keeping, alien fighting, treasure hunting, sometimes government agent spends the bulk of his considerable life chasing after an almost god-like meddling alien archaeologist with a penchant for leaving massive amounts of trouble in his wake. Something like that, probably." Another sip. "Is that helpful?"

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april catch-all

Quarantine bar

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