Starring:
Summary: Giselle attempts to shift a defensive confrontation from verbal to physical, but things don't work out so well.
Date It Happened: August 3rd, 2007
Take That Back
Brooklyn, NYC - Den of Iniquity
This is very much a blue collar bar. Full of FDNY, generally, though that's not all of the clientele. Which is why Felix isn't in a full suit - he's removed his suit jacket, tie, and shoulder rig, and untucked the back of his white Oxford shirt to hide the gun holstered just off center of his spine. He's nursing a Jack and Coke, at the moment, gazing absentedly at the baseball game on one of the televisions, and having a desultory conversation with the 'tender.
Whatever the clientele is composed of, it is never lacking in crowdedness here, especially since it is The Weekend. Giselle Muldoon has just arrived, dressed in jeans and a white peasant blouse that makes no pretense whatsoever of covering her bare shoulders. Huge golden hoops drag from her earlobes; her blonde hair is loose in a messy mid-back braid. She surveys the rectangular room with through similarly enormous sunglasses, literally elbowing her way through until she can steal the single, conveniently just-emptied seat at the bar. Right next to Felix.
He's not the only one she gets a curious glance from - not the usual patrons. The 'tender wanders over, idly polishing a glass. "What'll it be?" Felix eyes her a moment, though it's fairly cool - a cop's sussing out, rather than any sort of flirtatiousness.
After Giselle tells him- a jack and coke, double-tall, please- she adjusts her bodily position in the seat, disdainfully shoving away the remains of a crumby platter that hasn’t /quite/ been cleared away yet. She turns to stare at Felix through those gigantic shades, looping her black, scaly purse off her shoulder. “What’re you looking at?”
"Thought you were someone I knew," Felix says. His tone is offhand, matter of fact. It's not a line. "Sorry," he adds. lazily.
"/Really/." Giselle clucks within her cheek, surveying Felix and his incomplete suit. She'd sound positively interested, if her eyebrows weren't still lifted over the plastic frames. "Who might that be?"
Felix looks at her over the rim of his own glasses, as if not sure if she's flirting, or spoiling for a fight. "Girl I knew in college, Anya," he explains, blinking at her.
With Giselle, it’s a positive guess towards the latter. But /who really knows/. “Nice taste in women, if that’s the case,” she comments half-idly, half-sarcastically, her face straight ahead as she receives her drink. Quicker than she’d been expecting, that.
"Works for me," he says, peaceably, before looking back to his own drink, and finishing it off. The 'tender hands him another, before he can ask.
As she cups her palms around the glass containers and pulls them towards herself, popping the tab off the Coca-Cola, Giselle questions further in a flatter voice. She is not satisfied with such an apparently nice answer. “Hmph. What’s your name?”
Tempting to lie, but really, Felix is an honest creature. "Felix," he says, simply. And watches her patiently, waiting for the inevitable response to that reply. "You?"
“Felix? That’s a cat’s name. Don’t be ridiculous.” Contrary to expectation, perhaps, Giselle does not return the courtesy of a name in reply. Something clicks at the base of her memory, however; Anya was a Russian name. Maybe…? “You’re not—Felix /Ivanov/?”
"Yeah, I know, the cartoo- what?" Her last question brings him up short, and she gets an owlish stare. "How'd you know that?" Giselle gets a closer, warier looking-over now
This brings out a lazy smile from Giselle, but she continues leisurely adjusting the Jack Daniels and coke levels in her glass. Finally, they’re getting somewhere. “I think you’re best friends with my boyfriend.”
Felix shakes his head, firmly. "No. I'd know if I'd met you before," he says, lips thinning out. Not as welcoming as he might be - this is already setting off alarms, in the back of his brain.
"You haven't met /me/ before." Satisfied that her jack is topped off the way she wants, she jiggles it around a bit before tipping her chin back to drink, the two different liquids misting into each other. "I daresay, though, that you've met a Mr. Babenkov."
It's really sort of weird, the way all the light dies out of his face - his expression is instantly shuttered. "To my sorrow, yes, I have," he says, voice gone very dry.
Though Felix’s voice has gone dry, Giselle’s voice stays just as it is. Easy. She finally removes her sunglasses, however, letting her bright, unfriendly gray-blue eyes settle on the fed’s face. “Seems to me that you /should/ be sorry.”
"For you? Yes, if you're involved with him," he says, swirling the drink in its glass, making the ice clink against it. "But you're an adult, so presumably you know what you're doing." His tone expresses polite doubt on that latter point.
Oh no you didn’t. “Take that back.” Giselle’s voice is suddenly very quiet.
Felix stares at her. "What the hell, this is a bar, not a playground. Lady, your boyfriend is lowlife scum. He's a thug, a thief, and a killer. If you get off on dating a felon, more power to you. Knock yourself out. But I'm calling it like I see it," he says. The glass is set aside, gently.
Actually, Giselle is all of those things, too, and she doesn’t see anything particularly wrong with being any of them. Though her glass is still largely undrunk from, she drains off a generous portion of it with a single, drawn-out swallow. When finished, she also sets her drink aside. “I’ll give you one more chance. One.” Want to try again?
"I don't care what you think," Felix says, voice low and tight, gaze not wavering from her face. "Listen, you came in here, obviously gunning for a fight. But I've been setting the dogs on that bastard for years. He's got a sheet the length of my arm. If you have a problem with that, talk to him about it."
“I don’t have a problem with that.” Giselle’s legs uncross slowly, one of her heeled feet swinging off the barstool to pause with its toes, poised, onto the floor. “I have a problem with /you/—” Teeth clenched, she attempts to introduce her palm to Felix’s cheekbone.
He doesn't dodge. But despite the swiftness of her reflexes, her blow doesn't land with the speed it should - odd, that. Slow enough that he catches her hand with his, in midstrike, and holds it. No matter how egalitarian New York may be, you can't hit a girl in a bar, and expect to ever drink there again. "I'm not going to hit a woman, no matter how misguided she is," he says, tightly. The bartender looks over, with disapproval. "Take it outside," he says, coldly. "Just leaving," says Felix, reaching into his pocket for tab and tip, and dropping it on the bar, before yielding his grip on her hand.
Giselle’s eyes widen a little. Actually, a lot – the slowing down of her hand totally weirds her out, her startled gaze meeting Felix’s as her wrist is released. For once, she decides /not/ to pursue, but finishes her own drink in angry, contemplative silence before paying.
Vasili will hear about this.
After that, the Company.
Behind the lenses of his glasses, his gaze is empty. No threat, no challenge, just an odd acknowledgement. And then he turns away, takes care of his bill, and heads for the door.