tampered | Log : Ongoing

The door swings open almost instantly. Without looking at Jack, Sands head swings to the left and right to make sure no one else is around. Then grabs the not pirate by his shirt, yanking him into the apartment and slamming the door behind him.

The place is a mess, especially for someone as tidy as Sands. Everything he owns seems to be thrown out on the floor.
"Internet porn is not enough, Jack! I need to see a woman!"
He grabs hold of his friend, shaking him.
"Show me the most beautiful thing in this city!"

Pulled bodily into the apartment, Jack is left blinking and confused. He takes a moment to blink back to reality.

"The most beautiful, eh?" He thinks to drop his pants, but stops himself. Jack's so used to simply going through with his every sexual impulse with women, but with Sands it's so strange he finds himself with many urges he has to restrain.
"It will be the underground, then. Liquor, lights and bare women. The most beautiful things we've permission to gawk at."

"First we meet Daisy. This might be the only chance I have to see her and... you realize she wont be interested tomorrow. I just want to enjoy this."
Sands likes Daisy a lot. Mostly what he likes is all those things about her that make people want to run her over. If this was his own world and he still had his eyes he'd be taking her to office parties, introducing her to his boss in the first step of 'I'm settling down. Appoint me to Langly.' He pictures a white picket fence, the correct amount of children after a few years, and suffering through her dinner parties. She'll wear white gloves, drink cocktails, vote republican, and never work again.

After a few moments Sands realizes he went to his happy place and snaps out of it.
"Daisy should have been the woman I ended up with, Jacki. She's perfect. I'm meeting her at the cafe. Then we'll go straight underground."
He gathers the things he's picked up for her this morning. Flowers, a box of chocolates, and a velvet box. He's already wearing his guns so they won't have to come back afterward.

"Oh. Of course."
At least, for once, Sands can truly appreciate Jack's pouting. The man doesn't want to go about courting some woman he has no personal interest in so his best friend can 'settle down'. He's not sure why Sands going on a date with someone else qualified as 'very important' for him to come along. He could have kept up his conversation with Rose and possibly talked her into his bed. Jack feels sure he could have, anyway.

"Will be a bit awkward, will it not? Your attempting to woo the young lady with a spare party in tow?"
Maybe there's still time to back out of this. If Sands gets over the girl quickly enough, maybe there's still room to enjoy the evening afterwards?

Sands isn't cock blocking. While Jack was making his way over, Sheldon was busy sweet talking Rose on behalf of Jack. The two of them spoke at length while trapped as teenagers and are friendly. Sheldon is just trying to fit a lot in for his one day. He wanted Jack with him and ready to go the moment he left the cafe. He dosen't plan to spend too much time there, Sands may like the woman a lot but this is his only day of sight when he still knows enough to take advantage of it. She's not the only thing he wants to see before midnight.

"I'll buy you something to eat. All you have to do it sit in another booth and eat. In fact-"
He unplugs the lap top and shoves it into Jack's arms.
"There. Now you can be there for me and chat up Prom Dress."

"Fair enough. I'll do my best to remain entertained and out of your way. I can make no promises if I'm made to sit about in excess of an hour though, savvy?"

Despite his being tied to land for much of this life, Jack still has a strong wanderlust and a nagging curiosity that makes it difficult for him to remain in one spot for terribly long. It's a wonder he gets any work done at all, but it helps that he takes a great deal of pride in what he does.

Jack follows dutifully behind Sheldon, wondering what he should make his twin do as payment for his cooperation.

"Di it for me, Jacki."
Sands gives Jack his very best smile. One that's made many people do things they don't really want to. He looks very happy.
On the way to the cafe sands is filled with wide eyed wonder at everything. Childlike in his joy over it.

Jack pouted, Sands ignored it, Jack pouted harder. Before a muscle was pulled, Sands dragged him out to Cafe Juliet where his 'brother' could get an eyeful of Daisy and maybe have a little understanding of why Sands was so interested. Though the interest was there before the agent saw her, Jack is slow and needs visual aids. He sits the not-pirate down in a booth and waits for Daisy at a small table by himself. Jack is given permission to put everything on Sands' bill and the agent feels it's something to worry about later.
He drinks a cup of coffee while waiting for her and as he catches up on his people watching.

Edited 2007-11-15 22:44 (UTC)

Daisy knows the merits of being fashionably late, she's fashionably everything from the sweater set downwards. Tonight, however, she's bored, and George's car isn't nearly expensive enough for her to want to be seen in. Daydreaming about convertibles and what kind of car a government agent could spring for, she pulls in somewhere near the cafe. After a brief appointment with a store window to check that her hair and outfit are (still) perfect, she crosses the road to the little place she arranged to meet Sands. Still no first name, but that's okay, agent sounds both impressive and just a little mysterious.

She checks the booths and wonders if he carries handcuffs.

{{ooc- sorry. I was called away for dinner.}}

When Sands could drive, Daisy would probably be impressed with the black sport vehicles of death he tooled around in. As it is his lack of car will be one more disappointment to her when she finds out the truth. It just wont be tonight. Tonight he's going to have everything he wants even if it's temporary. This includes lavishing attention and wooing upon Daisy.

Sands sees her come in and meets her with the flowers. He's dressed nicely for this minny date. Sands is always dressed nicely unless he's undercover. All in black but tailor made. His suit jacket hangs fitted but hides his shoulder holsters. A black button down is under it with a delicate western design and his belt buckle is silver. The virgin Mary painted on. Sands' buckles are works of art. He likes shopping for more then just food and guns. He's just not quick to admit the effort that goes into his style.

"Daisy."
His smile can be very creepy in even the best circumstances. Even though his features don't allow for too much in the way of threatening. Today he's too happy to be very scary. He holds out a bouquet of white roses.
"Right over here."
He skips the kiss on the cheek, not wanting her to feel pawed but does lay his hand very lightly on the small of her back as he leads her to their small table. Sands pulls her chair out for her. At her place at the table there's a box of chocolates.
"Your pictures don't do you justice. I know how that sounds but you really are breathtaking."
He's very sincere, though truthfully most of what he sees is a real vision considering.

At his own booth, Jack takes note of the girl Sands is meeting with. He has to hand it to the man, Daisy is quite fetching. Not particularly Jack's type, but he wouldn't throw her out. He orders himself a glass of wine and a piece of cake and tries to keep from sighing audibly at the efforts his twin is going to for this girl. He's never been one for serious wooing, personally, but that may be why he's a bachelor.

"I know," Daisy smiles at the compliments she's only too used to accepting, the very faint blush colouring the apples of her cheeks the only outward sign that she's not fully confident that she deserves them. "Thank you. And what pretty flowers!" She hugs the bouquet and dips her head to catch the scent. "It's such a shame that men only give flowers on dates, on dates and after betrayals. Red roses are so predictable, and yellow always mean that they've slept with someone else. These are beautiful."

She lays the bouquet lightly on the table and smoothes her skirt as she sits. Daisy aims for fresh and pretty during the daytime, and a cafe date isn't an occasion to dress up for. Overdressing can be as vulgar as the seldom laundered jeans and t-shirt combinations that Georgia and her friends like to live in. A skirt just the right side of appropriate, a sweet little top and co-ordinated sweater is a combination that she knows is timeless, she's kept the same sense of style since 1938.

Sands is very well dressed, she both notices and approves. Even the belt buckle doesn't go unchecked. She may have only flirted with catholicism before she and the religion had a messy break up, but she still enjoys the romance of feeling pious. It's a rare sensation. She looks back and up at him over the tilt of her shoulder. "You're being very charming for a coffee date."

Sands isn't great at the wooing. He goes to a country, picks a pretty native, moves her in with him and.. well last time it ended very badly for him. He's only seriously dated a time or two. He dosen't get lonely enough to warrant it. Sands smirks when she nonchalantly 'I know's his compliment. Why shouldn't she? False modesty is so boring. It's not as if she's unaware of what she looks like. He also likes the way she rattles off flower meanings. Knowing seemingly useless facts is big plus with him.
"Daisy's mean innocence. The closest I could come to without being repetitive was purity."

Sands dosen't sit down until she's comfortable. This isn't for the occasion so much as the way he was raised. His father was a bastard in Sands eyes but the man instilled discipline and manners.
"I'm always charming. Would you like something to eat or drink? The coffee is refreshingly not orange flavored or whatevers popular right now."
Sands plans to give her order to the waitress himself. If Daisy lets him, she'll be the first. But he always tries for old fashioned.

Daisy is old fashioned in the literal sense, and like the faint traces of a Georgia accent that's stuck with her through sixty years of reaping souls in NYC, she's never quite lost her appreciation for the values. She was an actress, not a debutante, but she's so good at the former that people believe the latter to be true.

She doesn't correct him on the matter of purity, but enough time and one or two of her more salacious stories will take care of things on that score. Daisy is innocent, for a girl who's been around any number of blocks she has enough naivety to believe at the start of each ill fated encounter that this one might be different.

"Just a black coffee and, hmmm," she examines the laminated menu that seems to be what passes for a table centrepiece, and points to one of the pictures, "this ice cream. It's much too early for a full meal, and I'd probably eat somewhere the food wasn't deep fried or reconstituted. Now, are you going to tell me what all the hurry was about?"

His grin this time is lopsided and a bit sheepish.
"Mmmm. Sorry. I'll get to that."
Or tiptoe around the subject, artfully, so he dosen't have to admit certain things. Things that will make Daisy leave. Things that will put him on that long list of another same encounter. Or worse yet, see pity on her face.

He raises his hand for a waitress. This one was here last time he went on a rampage, shooting her coworker and sending everyone scattering. But with eyes, Sands can blend in with the handful of others wearing his face in this city. She refills his black coffee while she's there. He gives the waitress her order, waiting for her to walk away before continuing.

"It's a curse day. Did you realize that? My brother... well he woke up all kinds of clean and straight wristed. Everything was going right for me, Daisy. For the first time in... a while now. I just didn't want to waste it. And if I disappeared tomorrow, or you did, I wanted you to remember me today."
He laughs at himself, how weird he must sound to her.
"My job affects me. Sometimes I get a notion in my head and I'm already doing it before I even start to question how it looks. I work in the field mostly. Too long and it makes a man think he's on a deadline for every encounter. But you never know. The city threw me out once. It could again any day now."

She knows it's a curse day, not that the people of this city seem to require a reason to be bizarre and unsettling, but there's a higher level of insanity in the air today that she would have had to have been blind to miss. Daisy has escaped being affected by any of the mind altering curses so far - it makes her feel a little like the sober one at a party. She guesses the hospital run that Georgia gave her the car keys for earlier really does make her the designated driver. How dull.

The rest of what he says, though, that hits a nerve that he might not even realise. She doesn't know what George has told him about what they do; even though there's no real need to hide it in a city where no one dies it still feels like breaking the rules to talk about reaping with the living. If she knew what he was thinking she could tell him that it doesn't sound weird at all. "My job is all about transience, Agent Sands, I understand not wanting to waste a moment. Sometimes a moment is all we've got."

Daisy gave up on the concept of forever a long time ago, it never lasted. Resting her chin on her hand she tries to remember that strange little foreign phrase that seems to sum it up. "Carpe Diem!" she beams when the words come to mind, "As they say in Latin America."

Sands is usually very aware of the nerves he hits but slow at knowing what's coming to him. This time however, it was luck that made him seem less weird and sort of new agey. He hates sounding like a hippie.
One other thing he's unaware of is what Daisy and George do. He knows George is dead but assumes that's why she's in the city. Jack came here the same way and Sands really questioned whether he lived through his torture in Mexico. He doesn't know about the reaping. He dosen't know Daisy isn't any less alive or normal then she seems. At least they both have their secrets.

He wont correct her, asking her to drop the 'agent' business or give her a first name. Only Jack calls him Sheldon. He prefers it that way. The last girlfriend he had that used his first name was in grade school. And he likes the way Daisy says 'Agent Sands'. The formality of it is flirtatious to him. He even laughs sincerely at her jokes, surprised by it. Sands usually only laughs at his own. It's only fair. No one else does.
After a year of no longer needing to hide the emotion in his eyes, he's out of practice. Sands is obviously very happy but also with a curious nervousness to him. Like a kid that's just found something he knows isn't his but decides to take it anyway.

"What do you do when you're not charming men out of their wits, Miss Daisy?"

She reaches for her purse, unsnaps the clasp and slips one photograph free of a banded bundle, all without needing to look away. This is a habit formed over more than a lifetime, and the manner in which she usually introduces herself. "Well, I'm an actress." and she holds up the black and white image as proof. A portrait picture of her against a black background, name, telephone details and the address of a now defunct New York theatrical agency printed at white across the bottom.

"At home, that is. Here, I wake up in my beautifully decorated bedroom and attempt to forget the horrors of the apartment just beyond my door. I take a bath - showers are for people who prioritise time over hygiene - with just a little lavender oil and some pretty candles. Then I drink green tea and read the newspaper, before trying to decipher whatever horrible adolescent emergency Georgia has decided to adopt as her own for the day. If the world isn't ending, I may do something charitable with the rest of my afternoon. Today I ordered a new couch."

As she reels off the neat little list that tells him everything and absolutely nothing about what's important to her, she passes the photograph across the table. He gave her something pretty, she's only returning the favour, and she doesn't know it will be just another worthless piece of paper to him by midnight. "If you didn't do such an important job already I would tell you you could have been in movies. You have such an expressive face."

She means his eyes, of course. They're the windows to the soul, and souls are Daisy's stock and trade.

An actress. His eyebrows go up, marveling at how little he should be surprised but still is. It makes perfect sense for her to be yet it's a tiny blemish in the image he has of her. As expressive as he may be today, Sheldon is actively hiding his disappointment. The joy fades but it's not replaced by anything negative. Just attentive.
He wants to start a little squabble with her for fun about the issue of showers verses baths. Just to play. But though Sands isn't great with the opposite sex he's old enough to know better to pick a fight on the first date. Even if he does suspect she's adorable when she's angry.

He takes the photo, knowing full well how worthless it will be by midnight but planning to keep it anyway in some place of honor. He lays his finger tips over the back of her hand before she pulls it away.
"I think that's the first time a woman suggested I was handsome enough to be a movie star instead of just pretty. Though- truthfully I'd rather direct."
He's mostly keeping a straight face but obviously and goodnaturdly teasing her.
"Tell me more about your work. Have I seen you in anything?"
They're from different worlds. He knows that she knows it's not possible. But Sands is having fun.

"You're not pretty, Agent Sands, you're handsome. Any boy with a pair of puppy dog eyes can be pretty, but handsome is different. There has to be something about the jaw, something about a way a man holds himself that gives you little chills at the back of the neck. Really, Errol Flynn was just the same." Daisy teases in return. She isn't given to flattery as a general rule, always preferring to be the one for whom the effort is made (anything of value having to be worked for, naturally).

She likes to watch people, though, and today it's more interesting to see how Sands reacts to her being responsive than aloof. The desperate guys, people like Mason, they're the ones she keeps at arms length to see how they struggle.

"But I'm sure you'd make a fine director." she grins, then waves a hand dismissively, "Oh, the main body of my work is the kind of thing you'd catch on Sunday afternoons on the classic movie channel. Nobody respects vintage movies anymore. Of course 'Gone With The Wind' should have been my big break, such a tragedy. Oh, but I'm not bitter, Vivien Leigh was such a sweet girl, and she did the very best that she could in the circumstances."

[I'm so sorry this was so long in coming o_O I didn't get any reply notification and have been distracted]

((No, jesus. I'm sorry. For the last week I've just been hissing at my computer every time I walk by. I totally forgot I was leaving you hanging. I'm gonna wrap it up here. I usually don't suck this bad with replying. It's rare for me.))

"Oh! I see."
He leans back, smiling at her.
"Here I thought I found something rare and precious. A woman who dismissed all the modern idiosyncrasies of her generation for traditional American values. My first lady Daisy. But you really are from the past."
He comes forward again, taking her hand.
"Jack, my brother, who for all I know is actually my forefather, he's the same. Plucked up from his own time and out here with the rest of us. You know I was just a tiny bit put off at you being an actress but now it seems really romantic. Flipping around and seeing you in black and white, just as pretty as sitting across from me now and knowing anyone else that knew you then is withered and old while you're forever young. I usually hate fairy tales but I like that. It has a certain something."

Sands got a little overexcited when the pieces came together there (or so he thought) but he doesn't get off track easily.
"What tragedy was that, dear?"

Edited 2007-11-25 15:25 (UTC)

Log : Ongoing

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