KC (doingmything) wrote in low_tide, @ 2009-11-24 21:18:00 |
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Current mood: | working |
Going Easy
Around 2:15a.m., once the last employee left for home, Hayden locked up the bar. The patio faced a marina, crowded by schooners, charter boats, and a few house boats. One of those had already been strung with blue Christmas lights, which made a strange neighbor for the yacht next to it, where a party was in full swing. Music from a steel drum band floated on the air.
Hayden sat down on the end of a pier and pulled a joint from his pocket. He didn't like to smoke at the house because he only rented the bottom floor. The upstairs neighbors, a pair of yuppies saving to buy a condo, complained if the acrid odor got in the air vents. It was easier just to hang out here. He felt a little weak burning one by himself, but things at the bar weren't going that great. His business partner, a laid-back guy named Mike, wasn't pulling his administrative weight and Hayden was debating how to bring it up. He couldn't exactly fire him.
Holding the joint in his mouth, he lit up. Under his shoes, salty water rolled with what passed for waves on Key West.
Kris Michaels was cursing her bad luck, not for the first time on this particular day, she'd gotten stuck with the late shift and Leon she was sure was somewhere at home cackling merrily about it. Bastard. Of course she didn't mean that because he was a great partner and she was lucky to have him. It just sucked, that was all. Her patrol had taken her to the marina which at this time of the morning was beginning to become deserted, practically everybody had locked up and left to go home.
She blew out a breath and then turned her head, catching the hint of something on the air. With her apparently heightened sense of smell it didn't take her very long to figure out what it was exactly: marijuana. Narrowing her eyes Kris spotted a lone figure perched on the end of the pier, a suspicious cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Given that she had nothing better to be doing, Kris broke off from her beaten path and began down the pier in long strides.
Kris took another sniff of the air and that was all she needed to determine that yes that cigarette was full of marijuana, an illegal substance unless the broad shouldered quite healthy looking man was in some way sick and had himself a prescription. "You do realise that's illegal, right?"
When he heard footsteps on the planks, Hayden looked over his shoulder. The person, a woman judging by her figure, was back lit by the lights that lined the boardwalk. Unfortunately, that meant his face wasn't. He took the joint out of his mouth before she got too close and cupped it in his hand. He didn't think much of it, but he kept glancing back while she approached, hoping the stranger would board one of the small vessels.
Her hips looked kind of... wide.
The woman was almost on top of him before he realized that was a gun holster. "Shit." He dropped the joint in the water, trying to dodge being brought up on possession, but the scent was pretty obvious and he was the only guy around. "Ah..." He fumbled for a good line. One of his problems was lying. Whenever he tried, he wound up laughing on accident and blowing his cover. "No?" Right, because denial worked wonders. "I didn't know, is this pier private?" He looked around, like he thought he was trespassing.
Kris' response to that was to lift an eyebrow and regard him closely, taking in everything about him including the brief wide eyed look that flickered across his face. "Not last time I checked," she said with a shake of her head. "And to be honest I'd be more concerned about the joint that you just dropped into the water." Kris was a law enforcement officer and therefore had a duty to reprimand and administer justice, but she wasn't a machine and had views and opinions all of her own and some of them didn't really gel with the law she upheld.
"And the smell isn't doing you any favours either."
She placed her hands on her hips and looked at the man again. "You had a bad day?" Kris was guessing, but she knew how she fell back on her cigarettes when work had been particularly bad and this guy didn't look like he dealt and he certainly wasn't your average criminal so maybe he had a reason for lighting up an illegal joint? Never hurt to check.
When she mentioned the joint, he sighed and squeezed the back of his neck. Yeah, he figured it was dumb to lie to a police officer about weed. She didn't look like she was born yesterday. Besides, they probably smoked whatever was left in the evidence locker, providing it wasn't laced. "Sorry," he said, having the decency to look sheepish about bullshitting her. "I got shafted at work tonight. I was blowing off steam." That didn't explain why he showed up at work with an illegal substance, but whatever, she hadn't asked if he personally cultivated it or anything.
"Do I have to ride in the back of your squad car, or can you just write me a ticket or something?" Hayden hadn't been busted since college, when his R.A. followed the cloud of smoke to his dorm room. The girl had the nose of a bloodhound.
Kris listened as the man spoke, relieved that her hunch was right and she hadn't been reading the situation wrong. Sometimes her gut got weird this early in the morning. "You know there are better ways of blowing off steam. Healthier ways too." Given her personal views around marijuana Kris was doing her best to give her 'it's wrong and bad' speech, even if she herself didn't share the viewpoint. Rosa and Daniel smoked it after all and she didn't cart them off to the nearest prison cell.
Given the time and the fact she was walking this patrol alone Kris allowed her personal feelings cloud her decision. "I'll let you off with a warning this time, but I'd advise you to be more careful about where you smoke in future. The next cop might not be so lenient." She knew Leon would have busted this guy over something as small as a one joint after a rough day.
Maybe she was too soft?
"You've gotta be kidding me." Hayden stared at her. But he could tell she wasn't. With her eyebrow up like that, she didn't look like the type of woman who cracked jokes, even if she was going to let him slide and avoid misdemeanor charges. Leaning over, he looked between his shoes, where the ruined remains of his joint bobbed on the water. He wondered if she would've let him extinguish it and keep it for later, if he hadn't freaked out. What a waste. "Aaaagh..." He smiled and rubbed the knees of his jeans. "That's... that's decent of you. Thanks." Man. No way in hell was Mike believing him when he said a good-looking cop let him off the hook.
Hayden asked, "So what kind of healthy activity would you suggest? It's not Pilates, is it?"
"Everybody deserves a break now and then," Kris shared with a lift of her shoulder. "Especially at this time and after a rough day." She knew a little something about rough days, she'd already had a couple close calls with a few people and their fists. People tended to get a little heated when they were a) stuck in traffic b) dealing with romantic difficulties or c) being chased. She shifted the way that she was stood, allowing her to get a good view of the ocean. God, she really needed to get a day off so she could enjoy it during the day rather than really late or really early in the morning.
She shook her head with a slight smirk. "I was thinking more jogging, enjoying a night out with friends, maybe even a woman, I dunno, it's up to you." She tucked an escaping piece of hair behind one ear and wondered when her plait had gotten loose enough to let strands free. "You're just lucky I don't have my partner with me. He's a lot harsher."
"Wait a minute." Hayden shifted to sit sideways on the pier, so he wasn't breaking his neck trying to look at her. "You're actually advocating I jog at night? What if I get mugged? You'd be creating work for yourself." His blood pressure was still high from the near-bust, but he decided to keep sitting there and chill out for a few instead of turning tail. The officer seemed conversational, maybe even enough to pull her leg a little bit. "Or is that how you guarantee job security?"
Looking over his shoulder, he checked the nearest wooden post for seagull shit, then put his back to it.
"Gotta keep things interesting," Kris shared with a slanted smile. "It gets kind of boring walking the beat this late in the day." She rubbed at the back of her neck and then turned her head, thinking she'd heard something, but frowning as there was nobody else in sight. Weird. Kris shook off the weirdness and wound up dropping her hands from her hips to rest at her sides, thumb turning a silver ring around on her index finger.
She stilled her movements and turned back to the blonde. "Of course you could go with my other suggestions and then you wouldn't get mugged. Might lack in the same excitement though." Kris knew she should be on her way, but she hadn't spoken to another human being in a few hours so it was nice to touch base with somebody else.
"Women are more exciting than jogging," he said. "In a perfect world, I could combine the two." He stared at the nearest boat, the Medusa, which was about thirty years old. The guy who owned it came into his bar sometimes, always with sunbaked blondes on his arm, which gave him an idea. "Maybe I could get some girls to run ahead of me and I could chase after them. That's an incentive." Hayden held up a hand. "I mean that in a totally legal, non-stalking kind of way, Officer."
Kris' eyebrow lifted at the somewhat odd imagery she now had of the other man. "Good," she remarked with a smirk. "Or I'd have to book you for that." She felt a tingle and turned her head, surveying the empty marina. Bah, stupid odd feelings. Shaking it off, Kris turned back to the joint-smoking man and realised that she didn't have a name and she should probably get one or she'd forever label him as the joint-smoking man.
"Kris," she offered up. "Rather than Officer."
"Hayden," he supplied. He scratched his bicep, which was pale from wearing t-shirt sleeves, and looked over her shoulder, too, paranoid that something was behind her just because she kept looking. He thought Kris was kind of a weirdly friendly police officer, but since his major exposure to them came from reruns of COPS, he might be stereotyping. They weren't in L.A. and he wasn't smuggling coke or beating up his girlfriend, after all.
"You expecting somebody to drop in?" he asked. When he thought back a few seconds, he remembered hearing a bump, too, but it was small enough to have been somebody moving around on their boat. "It's probably a rat or something. I just hope it's not your partner coming to bust me."
Kris snorted quietly and shook her head. "Doubtful considering I pulled the short straw and he's safely wrapped up in bed with his wife." She did her best to ignore the odd feeling, figuring it was all in her head and so what if it had helped her out more times than she could count in the past? Hopefully it was a rat and nothing more sinister.
"Anyways," she said after a moment of silence. "I should probably get back to it, leave you in peace." She had a couple more hours of lonely wandering to look forward to and she wasn't exactly thrilled. Leon was totally doing this shift next time.
"Oh yeah?" Hayden held up his empty palms. "It's cool. I don't have anything else on me. I promise." He managed to stop just short of offering her a voluntary pat-down. Luckily, he realized that while such suggestions might be deemed cute in a bar setting -- he could get away with a lot by offering his trademark 'ah shit, I don't know any better' grin -- they could be construed as offensive sexual harassment by an officer of the law, and he wasn't the one wearing cuffs and a firearm, so... yeah. Best to be on his good behavior, even if she was cute.
"Thanks for being cool about it." He held out his hand to shake hers, if she'd take it.
Kris gave a small smile. "That's good to know." Cuffs and firearms tended to put people off unless they happened to be very... quirky, yeah, that was one way of putting it. She eyed his hand and then reached out to take a hold of it, grip firm and surprisingly strong. "I guess I should say try not to get mugged but like you said I've got to look after my job security and what better way than by saving hapless night joggers?"
She cleared her throat and dropped her hand after a few moments, hitching a shoulder. "Take care, Hayden. Hope tomorrow's a better day for you."
"Yeah." He smiled. "Job security." He lowered his arm.
"Well, maybe my house'll have a breaking and entering. I kinda doubt it though." He pulled on his ear and squinted. "Even if I put a sign on the door saying, 'Expensive shit in here,' I'm pretty sure they'd skip it." After he was done being self-deprecating, he lifted his hand in an easy wave. "Have a good one, Kris."
"Yep," Kris confirmed with a nod of her head. "We police officers like that."
She turned on her heel and started walking down the pier, a distinct female sway to the way she walked before stopping abruptly, turning on her heel to look at Hayden. "I hear leaving the front door open is a sure fire way to get yourself robbed, but you didn't hear it from me."
Of course he was looking. He was a guy. When she turned around and caught him, he jerked. "I'll keep that in mind," he called and gave her a thumbs up. He nodded to himself, then turned around to face the ocean, his legs hanging off the pier. "Yeah," he muttered and rubbed a hand over his face. "Busted twice in one night. That's... really slick."