kore_logs | I don't feel like calming down, no I don't

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I don't feel like calming down, no I don't

Who: Charlie Luciano and Ned
What: Fine scotch is the perfect apology for accidental kidnapping, right?
When: Day 67
Where: Ned's place again (man he needs to get a guard dog all these gangsters are finding him)
Warnings: Really really terrible attempts at apologies. Also booze!

To be perfectly fair to Charlie, he had been planning on coming to see Ned himself. So all the nagging he'd got from Meyer about it was completely unnecessary. He'd been aware of Meyer paying his own visit the other day, and figured he just had to bite the bullet and go for it. With the two of them trying to set up their game in town, it would be damn stupid to leave yourself with any potential enemies when the problem could be cleared up with a little dialogue.

Not that dialogue was Charlie's forte. Which is why he brought a peace offering.

He'd found the bottle of scotch under the floorboards in the closet of his room. And yes, he'd looked under the floorboards. It had been a very long week stuck indoors and it had made him feel marginally better to at least pretend he was hunting for treasure.

Which is why Charlie is holding a bottle of rather nice scotch with him as he rings the doorbell. He's dressed down from his usual suit, as they finally decided to make an attempt to blend in a little more. And the knees of his suit pants were wearing through. He's in jeans and a modern-looking jacket, with his hair curly and sticking up everywhere without the usual pomade.

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Charlie's timing is not quite so fortuitous as Meyer's had been. What with Kenzi (and half the town apparently) going missing, Ned's been stress-cleaning the house for the last few hours. He just kept thinking that if he got everything scrubbed and in its proper place, Kenzi couldn't possibly resist showing up again to make it untidy the way she always did. That was a law of the universe; nothing the scientists did could get in the way of that, could it?

He is thus very close when the doorbell rings, opens it at once, a broom in one hand and a stupidly hopeful look on his face. Only, he should have realized that Kenzi wouldn't ring the bell. His face falls when he recognizes Charlie, expression settling into a look of apprehension.

"H-hello?"

Charlie's first thought - what the fuck is a man doing cleaning - he quickly pushes aside. This is an apology, dammit. He holds up the bottle of scotch.

"Found this in the bottom of my closet. I now we ain't got money in this place, but it still ain't a cheap bottle."

And then thrusts it forward towards Ned. Like you do.

Ned takes the bottle automatically, looks down at it for a moment without saying anything, a crease forming between his brows. He almost, almost tells Charlie that he should take it back because he doesn't drink, but that would be rude. It's clear that Charlie is trying to make amends, in his own way. He shouldn't refuse what is clearly, in Charlie's eyes, a generous and appropriate peace offering.

He steps aside, opening the door wider in mute invitation inside.

"Would you like a glass?"

It's Ned's own way of saying that he accepts the apology, such as it is. He's trusting Charlie enough to invite him inside and share a drink with him. Because why not have a drink after all? What harm is it really going to do him? In fact, it might do him a world of good. Get his mind of Kenzi's disappearance and Jesse dying and their collective helplessness, just for a little while.

Well, good. That went well. Assured his apology has been accepted, Charlie steps over the threshold. He tries adjusting his tie, then remembers he isn't wearing one, and shoves his hands in his pockets instead.

"I wouldn't turn it down, no. Fuck, you got a huge place." Where him and Meyer are hiding out is little more than a cottage. Although, being a New Yorker he's lived in far smaller.

Ned shuts the door behind him, nodding towards the living room couches. "Pretty big, yeah. There are a lot of us living here." There ought to be more, he thinks, glancing over the spotlessness of the room and feeling a dull ache of worry in his chest for Kenzi. Where is she, and what might the scientists be doing to her right now? He shivers. That whiskey is sounding like a better and better idea, all of a sudden.

"I'll get us some glasses."

He returns in a moment with two glasses, joins Charlie rather awkwardly on the couch. Ned still is avoiding looking at him, for the most part, and he sits a good distance away from him. What on earth is he even supposed to say? This isn't quite like it had been, with Meyer. They had at least had a few conversations, before he attacked Ned. Had gone through the basic introductions, that kind of thing. With Charlie, he has absolutely no ground to stand on that isn't shot-through with terror. Ned pours two generous glasses and nudges one towards Charlie, wordlessly. He takes a sip of his own and makes a small face, somewhere halfway between disgust and appreciation. It's been a long time since he's had anything to drink, much less straight scotch.

"It's good." Or at least he assumes so. Much as Ned can be a complete snob in terms of many things, he doesn't have much of a discerning taste in hard liquor. The point had never been the taste, but to get as drunk as he could, as fast as he could - but that was a long time ago, now.

It is damn good whiskey, and Charlie drinks a lot of whiskey. Probably evidence by the way he downs half of it like it's water. Half the time him and Meyer have to live on the shit moonshine people all over New York are making in their back room. But this - it's like the stuff Rothstein keeps around that he sneaks some of whenever he can.

He looks over his glass to agree with Ned, but is hit straight in the face with the awkwardness of the situation. Rothstein always tells him it takes him way too long to pick up on what everyone else is thinking, and he always kinda brushed that off. But... really he has a point.

Ned is still afraid of him. Normally he'd take that as some sort of compliment, in a situation where he'd wanted to scare someone. But what had happened with Ned had been out of his control. It wasn't for any reason. They didn't need anything out of him. And Charlie may know he's not a nice man, but he doesn't just attack people for the fun of it like some people he knows. He never saw the merit or enjoyment in it, and it wasn't good for business.

He's just not used to gift-giving and silent apology not being enough. From being a kid in Sicily to the Lower East Side to his six months in prison, to the high-class world of crime Rothstein dragged him into, that type of behaviour had always been accepted. With a generous donation of cash, of course, but he's working with what he got here.

So he just coughs, and lets his eyes cast around the room, figuring out how the hell he got himself into this and why he thought it would be a good idea to do this alone.

"Good don't cover it. Back home, this'd cost you an arm and a leg, if you can find it at all. More likely you'd wind up with some swill moonshine in the same bottle."

"Prohibition, right?"

Even more than his face, Charlie's voice is unsettling. Ned stares down into his drink and does his best not to remember that same voice saying different things - terrifying things. It's a losing battle. Even if nothing had come of it, if he hadn't hurt Ned more than a few bruises, quickly healed, it's hard to listen to him. Still, Ned makes himself. Downs the rest of the glass with a faint wince and pours himself some more. Much as Charlie might talk about the quality, he isn't really looking to savor it.

"Thanks." He realizes he hadn't said that, yet. Is it appropriate to say thank you for an apology gift? Ned ventures a glance at Charlie, can see discomfort written all over him. Ned relaxes, sympathy finally starting to overtake his fear. Now that he's back to normal, Charlie is probably no more dangerous than Charles, or Galen. Ned has forgiven them. It would be silly not to forgive Charlie, to hold onto his fear, when the only difference was he hadn't been friends with him before the experiment.

(Of course, a corner of his mind supplies, forgiving him isn't the same as letting go of the fear. He can't lie to himself; he's still afraid of Charles, of Galen, of the others, even now that he knows they are back to normal. That isn't how fear works.)

"It wasn't even your fault," he says out of nowhere, vehemently, but he's sure Charlie will know what he's talking about at once. It's the elephant in the room. Will he be like Meyer, insisting this his choices were his own, despite the change? Or will he accept the opportunity to place the blame elsewhere. Ned tops up Charlie's glass, takes another gulp of his.

"Yeah. Dumb idea if you ask me, but I hears it doesn't last long."

He's acutely aware, now, of how Ned is looking at him. Which is why the second comment surprises him.

He cant hide the look of shock on his face, looking over the top of his glass. He lets Ned top him up, staring silently down at his hands as he does.

"Maybe you're right. Sure fucking felt like it was, though." He follows with another gulp of booze. He is too fucking sober for this right now.

Ned can see how surprised Charlie is at his words, can tell how bad he must feel from the way he can't seem to stop looking down. It takes one to know one, after all. Sometimes, no amount of justification and reasoning in the world is going to make you feel any less guilty for something that you did. Though he might not have attacked anyone during the change that had taken place, Ned knows only too well the kind of guilt that can come from hurting people without meaning to. He wants to do what he can to lighten that burden, to reassure Charlie that he isn't going to hold a grudge.

"I don't know how much Meyer told you-" and he assumes that it was a certain amount, considering the two of them are good friends, and that both of them found themselves in the position of apologizing to Ned, "-but it- uh. It wasn't just you two. You know. Who attacked me." What a great time to take another drink and give that little fact a moment to sink in. He's not looking for sympathy, much less pity. He just wants Charlie to understand that he's only one of many, that there's a broader context to all of this. "I think it was something to do with whatever I turned into. People just started acting crazy."

And that had been how it was with Charlie, after all. He hadn't come looking for someone to kidnap, hadn't even known Ned existed. But the second he was in his presence, he'd gone a little off his rocker. Ned remembers, suddenly and with great vividness, the way Charlie had stared at him, had leaned in and smelled him. He shivers and has to set his glass down a moment, lacing his fingers together to try to hide that his hands are starting to shake.

"So if you think about it, if it's not their fault," he jerks his head in the direction of the nearest camera, "It's as much mine as it is yours."

And isn't that always true? When things go wrong, isn't is always, always his fault, one way or another?

Edited 2013-05-03 18:21 (UTC)

That comment gets Ned a highly skeptical look.

"You're gonna say it's your fault you got kidnapped and attacked for a fucking week? What kind of fucked up logic is that, huh?"

Well, when Charlie just comes out and says it like that it doesn't sound logical at all. Ned doesn't really know how to defend his own statement, not without thinking about it too much. He knows that this is something he does. That he blames himself automatically, when there is little to no justification for doing so. He knows exactly why he does it, too. But knowing why and knowing it's wrong doesn't mean he can just stop.

So he just gives a little shrug and downs the rest of his drink. It's starting to not taste so bad to him, now. He likes the way it burns down his throat, the warm feeling beginning to glow in his cheeks and the faint buzzing in his head. That's what makes it possible for him to ask something that's pricking at the back of his mind, making him restless and uneasy.

"Can I ask you something?" He pours himself a little more (he should slow down, he knows, he hasn't eaten anything since the morning and his tolerance isn't exactly high...) and clears his throat. His voice is low, the way it gets when he's saying something that's difficult. "What, uh- where were you planning on-" he's having a hard time getting the words out, goes for something a little safer, without any 'you's or 'me's in it, "-if River hadn't shown up, what would've happened?"

Oh thanks, Ned. He thought they were over the awkward. It's all Charlie self control not to snap at him there, and he sure sends him a nasty looks before he catches himself and downs the rest of his glass. Letting your emotions get the better of you again, the voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like AR chimes in.

He fidgets in place for a while, crossing and uncrossing his legs, working out the least-worst thing he can say before he speaks.

"Would you believe me if I said I ain't certain?" Fuck he needs more booze, excuse him topping himself up for this.

"I can't remember half the shit happened that night. Just this feeling, you know? Like there was shit I knew was mine and I was gonna do anything to keep it that way. Never really thought of you as a person you, know? No offense."

Ned catches that nasty look and looks away quickly, down at the glasses, swallowing against the surge of adrenaline it brings on. Charlie isn't going to hurt him, he reassures himself. He just doesn't want to talk about it, and Ned should have respected that. At least, he's almost positive that Charlie isn't going to hurt him. That is just his mind playing tricks, seeing danger where there isn't any, and he's tired of it. Tired of being afraid. Tired of everything being such a struggle.

He'd thought that if he just knew, concretely, what had been happening, it would be easier to set it aside, to forget about it. Apparently, that's not true.

So he nods, even though he doesn't know, doesn't understand. Screw trying to sort it out, Ned decides. He's going to skip that step and move on to the trying to pretend it never happened portion of things. "None taken." He gets up, tells himself that he's only being hospitable, that his next question is by no means an excuse to put a little distance between himself and Charlie just for a few seconds. "Are you hungry? There's pie in the fridge..." After all, he'd offended Charlie by asking that last question, and what offense is there that pie can't fix. He'd given Meyer pie, when he'd come to apologize. It was only fair.

He's already drinking the guy's whiskey, he feels bad eating his pie as well seeing as he was the one coming to apologise. Well. Not guilty enough to turn down pie.

"What kinda pie is it?" which is clearly the most important question.

"We've got apple and we've got kiwi-lime."

In the kitchen he can breathe easier, can take a moment outside the line of Charlie's sight to bring a hand to his neck, unconsciously, to rub away the memory of heat and constriction and pain. He wills his knees to stop shaking. The whisky is going to his head already, making him feel light and ever so slightly skeptical of the floor's ability to stay in the same place beneath his feet.

He follows Ned into the kitchen after a little while, just soon enough to catch the end of that hand on his neck. And while some people may give him grief about being a little slow on the uptake sometimes, it'd take a real idiot not to recognise what that was for.

"You ain't gonna pass out on me, are you?"

Charlie's words make him start, but are oddly reassuring; Charlie isn't angry. Seems, in fact, concerned about him, in his own, apparently sarcastic manner. Ned lets out a small but genuine laugh at his own jumpiness (and really, he thinks, Charlie can't blame him for being jumpy, after everything that happened), opening the fridge and getting out both pies.

"Don't think so."

He gets down two plates, cuts out two small slices of both pies, sets one of each kind on a plate. This way Charlie doesn't have to choose between the two, and doesn't have to feel awkward about sitting there eating pie while Ned has nothing.

"So Meyer said you two run a card game?" He hands one of the plates, and a fork to Charlie. The conversational cue is, he hopes, clear: he isn't going to be asking about that night or bringing it up anymore. Better to leave the past in the past and start afresh, as far as he can manage it.

Charlie pulls the green one towards him because it looks interesting and he knows for a fact he likes pretty much anything. He takes a bite and his eyes go wide with shock. Damn, he hasn't tasted food, real food since they showed up here. It's been rice and canned beans for days and damn if that one bite of pie doesn't blow it all out of the water.

"Fuck this is good, huh." He chases it with a sip of whiskey he brought in with him and then takes another bite.

"Yeah, been doing that for a few years. We're thinking of moving onto into bigger stuff, you know? But the card game was a good place to start when neither of us was exactly rolling in it."

Edited 2013-05-04 16:36 (UTC)

Okay, Charlie, you like his pie, you can stay. The corner of Ned's mouth quirks up into a smile at the foul-mouthed but clearly heart-felt compliment. He waits for Charlie to be done chewing and then walks with him back to the couch and the bottle. It's a bit more of a relief than he'd like to admit to be sitting down again.

"What kinds of bigger stuff?" Ned asks, politely. Meyer hadn't mentioned any future business plans to him, but then, perhaps it had seemed too depressing to him. That whatever he'd been hoping for was interrupted by this unasked for stay by the sea.

Ned meanwhile has another sip of his whiskey, eats a small bite of his slice of apple. It's nice, being able to eat his own pies for once, without the fruit rotting inside. He spends so much time making pies for other people that he forgets, sometimes, to make it for himself.

"Y'know. Just stuff. Branching out." Please, sound more sketchy if you can, Charlie. He mentally kicks himself for sounding so goddamn obviously and sort of throws himself on the sofa a little too aggressively in retaliation.

Fortunately for Charlie, Ned's ability to sense shadiness is severely underdeveloped. Though he notices the vehemence with which Charlie sits back down, he thinks that's just because of the whiskey. As for his vagueness when it comes to future prospects, that's easy enough to account for: they haven't been planned yet. Perhaps, in fact, Charlie's more enthusiastic about the idea than Meyer, and that's why he didn't bring it up. He seemed, as far as Ned can tell, to be the more measured and cautious of the two. "Cool."

Ned sits down, too, though more carefully. His cheeks are already beginning to show the telltale flush. It's a little funny to him, now, how different the two of them seem to be. Conversation with Meyer had never flagged, but with Charlie, his attempts to strike up talk seem to get shot down within a second or two. Still, Ned doesn't mind trying a few more times. The whiskey is certainly helping with that level of social courage.

"Are you like Meyer then? All about the... statistics and stuff?" Because it is really just statistics and stuff, to Ned. He is competent at math, enough to get by, but it's all very basic-level knowledge.

Charlie's mood goes from surly to grinning broadly again in the space of about two seconds. It's something Ned may pick up on soon. No matter what mood he's in, it's likely to get interrupted and be something completely different in a few minutes.

"Naw, I never had much of a head for all that shit. Why do you think I keep Meyer around? I swear he gets off on numbers or something. I ever interrupt him in the middles of it he always looks like he's gonna lose it and shoot something. 'sides he just gets pissy if I try to do his jobs, you know?"

Ned is having a hard time picturing Meyer getting angry enough to seem like he was going to lose it. Generally speaking he seemed to have 'it' pretty well under control. Then, Ned thinks back a bit further - not to their friendly conversation, but to the way he'd thrown himself between Charlie and River and told the two of them on no uncertain terms that they were going to stop fighting that instant or so help him.

And, well, if Ned's a little surprised by the "and shoot something," it can be written off as a difference of the times. Charlie's not saying that Meyer would actually shoot things, let alone people. It's just part and parcel of the entertaining way that Charlie has of speaking.

"I'm like that when I'm baking," Ned says, with a nod. "Not my fault that other people get things wrong. It's easier if I can just do my thing without anyone interfering."

He tops off Charlie's glass, and it is taking considerably more effort, now, to pour neatly. When the conversation turned to Meyer, it didn't instantly fizzle and die, so Ned continues on the same subject. "So how'd you two meet?"

Yeah, it really is a topic of conversation Charlie will happily ramble on about. It is a good story about how they met, although he is going to edit it slightly in his favour.

"We was both kids, on the Lower East Side, you know? I was... fourteen? Maybe? Meyer was the scrawniest fucking kid you'd ever seen in your life. There was this group of guys, Degos who thought they owned the block. They was hassling him for a nickle, and even though he was outnumber and about nine years old he tried to take them on, the idiot. And when you see a thing like that you wanna find that kid again and tell him he got nerve."

Neatly leaving out the fact that Charlie was IN the gang in question, and had given up trying to get any money off him the minute the little fucker started biting.

Well, that was a fair bit more horrifying than Ned was anticipating, even without the details that Charlie leaves out. Of course, he'd run into his fair share of bullies in his time at boarding school, but this sounds distinctly more violent, more awful. Perhaps it's partially because, apart from the exact moment when he'd been attacking Ned, Meyer had been so agreeable, so pleasant to be around. And it really doesn't strike him as fair, particularly if he'd been so much smaller than the others.

There's a crease between his brows, and he clearly doesn't find this story as charming as Charlie seems to. "What's a Dego?" He's not familiar with the term. He takes another sip of his whiskey, thinking that, actually, the taste isn't so bad, in between bites of tart-sweet pie.

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