Blueshift

Blueshift Chapter Thirty Seven (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… *nervous as all hell * InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. :) ProPhile: *GLOMP * Morgan: Good luck with the performance! Readers/Reviewers: Okay. By the time most of y’all read this, I’ll be mid-panic attack on the plane so wish me luck or at least wish I find a good sedative.

“Come here often?”
Logan took a long pull off his beer and raised a brow as he set the bottle down. “I don’t know if that means the same thing in England as it means here but I don’t recommend you go throwin’ that phrase around, Bub.”
Mark laughed half heartedly. “It means the same thing. I was trying for levity and obviously failing miserably.” He signaled the bartender for a beer without glancing in his direction. “I guess it was destined we meet… not a lot of bars in Bayville.”
Logan shifted in his seat and assayed a careful glance at Mark. “You know… your side of the conversation ain’t gettin’ any better…”
The librarian sighed and ran his finger down the condensation on his beer bottle. “I’ve only been here a few days and already I think I’m underpaid,” he began, then smiled ruefully. “Not that I’m ungrateful. I just never expected…” he paused “Never expected this.”
“Welcome to the family,” Logan muttered, finishing his beer and pondering another. “Don’t let on to Storm… she thinks I’m runnin’ when I come down here. I walk both ways so I smell like I’ve been exercisin’ but damn, you know, I need out of there sometimes.” He sighed, unsure why he felt this sudden need to confess to a stranger but he figured, in for a penny, in for a pound. “Tell me somethin’… you think you’re gonna stick around this place?”
Mark was silent for several moments, debating the best possible answer. Finally, he settled for, “Yes.”
“Then listen to me good… believe everything you see.” He stood, shoving his barstool away noisily. “I’m gonna hike it back to the Institute. Want me to wait around for ya?” he asked as an afterthought, eyeing Mark’s barely-touched beer.
“No, I’ll be fine here…” He opened and closed his mouth, debating saying something else. When Logan raised his brow again, this time in a distinct ‘go on…’ expression. Glancing around the bar quickly, seeing that the few other patrons were, by and large, distracted by the game on the television in the far right corner of the establishment, Mark said sotto voce, “Aliens?”
Logan snorted softly. “Looks that way… Chuckles is very rarely wrong about these things and…” he gave in and signaled for a third beer, “Emma, Jean and Jono all back up what’s going on.”
“It could be a really great mind fuck,” Mark opined, downing half his beer at once. “Great as in far reaching, not great as in so good even the neighbors needed a cigarette.”
“Uh uh… Not this.” Logan sat back down and tapped the bar.
“You so sure?” Mark noticed the striking red head at the end of the bar and saw her notice him, picking up her drink and moving a bit closer. _Interesting… _
“Positive.” Logan glanced at the red head and frowned. She did not seem like she belonged there, but then again, he thought, a lot of women did not belong here but showed up anyway. “Look, let’s finish this back at the house. I don’t like the looks of some of the folks ‘round here.”
Mark could smell the faint musky scent of perfume and skin as the red head sat down next to him, not speaking to him but obviously awaiting his attention. “I’ll be along shortly,” he said to Logan, smiling faintly. “I’m not done with my beer yet.”
Logan paused judiciously. “Right. Don’t catch nothin’ you can’t throw back.”
Mark raised his beer bottle in salute as Logan shot him one final, uncertain glance and slipped out the door into the cold Bayville night. He did not even have to turn around before the red head started talking to him.
“You look like you’ve had a crap day,” she opined, stirring her drink—something very ether-heavy and a color not found in nature.
Obviously, Mark thought, the bartender had been reading up on popular mixed drinks and somehow gotten them confused with some sort of nail polish popular with teenaged girls. “Why do you say that?” he asked neutrally, starting to tear his soggy bar napkin into long strips of reasonably equal length.
“I can tell…” She smiled at him and he noticed she had green eyes, not an uncommon combination with red hair, but what made her eyes so striking was the faint gold starburst in the center of each. “You’re new here, huh?” she asked as he stared into her eyes unwillingly. “I mean, you’re obviously not FROM Bayville… and no one comes here for the fun of it… so you must’ve gotten a job here. Lemme guess…” She made a small show of appraising him and said, smiling again, “You slept with the CEO’s wife so you’ve been relegated here to this backwater to audit the files of their farthest flung branch?”
Mark barked out a laugh. “Not quite. I’m a librarian. Fear my power,” he added, drinking down the last of his beer. “You?”
“I’m…” she paused and quirked a brow, “complicated.”1
“I’m sure… look, I have to be honest with you here… I’m not into one nighters.”
She cocked her head to one side and made a low humming noise in her throat as she seemed to consider what to say. “This might be our last night on earth,” she teased. “Haven’t you heard, aliens are invading Bayville?”
“Excuse me?” It took him nearly ten seconds to form the words around his surprise.
“Oh, some nutjob saw something fall from the sky out on route ten, near that old mansion on the river and…” she blinked as she looked up from fishing the maraschino from her drink. Mark was gone. She sighed and looked over at the bartender. “Well, damn. Remind me never to lead off with ET again, Tony.”
1 Stolen liberally from the movie League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. One of my two favorite lines from that movie, lol.