Connor Endore ; Wolf (cursethatfalls) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-02-05 17:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | chewbacca, han solo, mystique, wolf |
Who: Charlie, Hal, Connor and Lilith
What: It started out with a drink.
Where: A bar.
When: A day or two ago.
Warnings: Swearing, barfights.
Since the nightmare of his partner’s near death and subsequent recovery, Charlie felt like he could use a drink or few. Their business had suffered a lot, the calls didn’t come often after the first few refusals from Charlie, all short clipped answers and hanging up the phone. Now they were at risk of getting booted from their apartment. Their shithole of an apartment which a month ago was ripped apart when they were out of town, so to speak.
Life always had a nasty way of twisting the knife after it took you down.
Needless to say, Charlie couldn’t say no to Hal’s offer to go out and have a drink. They could put their ears to the ground, listen in and see how the word of mouth was for them. Well, Charlie could do that while Hal enjoyed himself and had a few more glasses of whatever he fancied. However, he kept himself on guard especially when Hal offered to pay. Noticing things out of the ordinary was his specialty, it’s half of what makes them a great team.
Nevertheless, when their drinks where slid over to them, Charlie simply raised his to clink against Hal’s before taking a drink.
This was normal, and Hal liked normal. He wanted to go out and have a drink, smoke a cigarette without being mobbed by five people telling him it was unhealthy, gamble twenty bucks on a billiards game he was sure to lose, and generally pretend like he hadn’t almost died last month. That was the plan. He appreciated Charlie’s cooperation, because he knew that it was probably unconditional even if he hadn’t bothered to ask. Hal clicked his domestic bottle and turned around on his bar stool to look over the crowd.
Bars were a unique sort of chaos for Connor. Even when you stripped away the supernatural elements of being in a room full of people who smelled too heavily of perfume, cologne, aftershave, makeup, and their own unique scents, the variety of items behind the bar and the scent of the bar itself, the sound reverberating off the walls - even without all that sensory chaos, which sort of fell in on itself and dissolved into white noise, there was the issue of being a minor celebrity. That sometimes meant nothing, and other times it meant people talking his ear off for an hour when all he really wanted was to get a drink. Tonight, thankfully, didn't seem like it was going to be one of those nights.
Connor made his way through the crowd to the bar, found an open space, and ordered a pint of whatever nondescript draft they had on hand. He was dressed maybe a little too well for the dive, but he'd been to this bar before, liked it because it was a little out of the way, beaten down in the way pubs were back home, gritty and grimy with ugly history that gave it what some would quaintly call 'character'. He was just happy to have a beer - it had been an odd week, and he'd be glad to put it behind him.
Lilith was leaning against the bar with a cherry stem between her fingers and a wandering eye. The bar wasn't to her taste, but it wasn't a social outing, despite all appearances to the contrary. She was dressed in paramedic blues, yet she was completely herself, red hair tumbling curled and sweaty over her shoulder and green eyes intelligent under arched brows. She was looking for information, for the lay of the land, and she'd been told everything worth selling could be bought in this place - for a price.
She had a beer in her hand, domestic, and she tipped back the dark amber bottle as she looked over the crowd. She'd been told there were transporters that frequented this place, and she wanted to have one in her back pocket if she could manage it. This wasn't a place for roots, this Seattle, and she might need to move cargo in the form of a young girl who'd gotten in over her head.
At the far end of the bar, raised voices caught her attention, and a blonde woman neared three men, her boyfriend drunkenly trailing her. “This is where it gets fun,” the woman at the stool beside Lilith said, all atwitter with the expectation of a brawl and the subsequent gossip. Lilith didn’t roll her eyes, but it was a near thing.
Someone unfamiliar sat next to Charlie, which he wasn’t so fond of but a regular risk of being out in public. Mentally assessing the threat level, he dismissed the young man as harmless but just like everyone else in the bar, kept them all in his peripherals, kid included. Though he was no wolf, Charlie’s prior training gave him a heightened sense of awareness and it didn’t take him long to notice the heavy wafts of fake flowery perfume that neared the bar. Catching the drunken couple approaching, he elbowed Hal once in the arm, cocked his head at the two then went back to his beer. He hoped there wouldn’t be trouble, but if there was, he was going to finish his drink, dammit.
A lot of people came and went in this bar that Hal didn’t notice. He didn’t have Charlie’s awareness, but that was because when people shot at him they were usually looking him in the face when they did it, so he wasn’t real worried about his back. (It was distinctly possible that since Charlie was always watching it, Hal never saw the people aiming at it, and they were dead by the time he turned around.) He was watching a billiards table from afar over the rim of his beer bottle, one of those men that to Connor would smell of alcohol, cigarettes and an aquatic cologne that sat very close to an barely detectable layer of motor oil and fuel on the skin. Charlie probably smelled like an arsenal, but Hal smelled like a mechanic.
Hal turned his head to see who was coming their way, and groaned. He knew the blonde, and the blonde knew him, and he sincerely wished that wasn’t the case. “Shit.” He eyed her coming, probably with a bone to pick, and he took a quick swig of his beer too, since he was going to have to pay for it whether or not he drank it. “I have de worst taste in women,” he said dejectedly to the person to his right, lucky, lucky Connor.
Connor hadn’t been looking behind him. He’d been calmly focused on his beer, and on looking around at the other people sitting at the bar. He’d noticed the two men to his left, but not to the point of striking up a conversation, so the sidelong remark caught him off guard. “I - What?” he said, lifting his head, looking behind himself to see the blonde coming toward them like a heat-seeking missile. She did not look happy, nor did her boyfriend, and his mind slowly caught up to the fact that it likely now appeared that he was a member of the mechanic’s (he did catch the oil, just a touch, nearly smothered by everything else) party. “Blondes usually aren’t worth the trouble they bring,” he said, accent clipped British, and he turned back to his beer an in attempt to not get pulled into what could be a potentially disastrous situation. “Good luck, though.”
Lilith knew a guilty looking man when she saw one, and the men with the Cajun accents looked guilty. She would have ignored them entirely, but the bartender returned with an answer to her earlier question about transport, and he pointed at the men in question. Figures. She sighed, throwing the cherry stem aside, and she walked to the far end of the bar with a sway of hips and a toss of her hair that she would have found annoying had anyone else done it. She tapped the blonde’s shoulder, gave a smile to the man behind her, and interrupted. “I’m sorry, but if you were about to accuse my men of something, you’re going to have to go through me first,” she said, winking at the angry man over the blonde’s shoulder.
At the Young Man-now-Brit's comment, Charlie's lips twitched in a manner that seemed to imply a tic but only Hal knew to be his way of conveying amusement. That disappeared when the unfamiliar redhead came into view, pretending to know them. His eyebrows raised in confusion and he leaned slightly toward Hal. "One of yours?" he asked in French, indicating with his bottle toward the new girl. Leave it to his friend to stick his fingers in multiple pies at once and get them both in trouble with the baker, so to speak.
Hal had a slow smile for Connor’s comment about the blonde. “Sounds like experience talkin’,” he laughed, not bothering to keep his voice down. He slapped the guy on the back, preferring to have a nice human cushion between him and somebody coming swinging, and the more people involved the easier it was to get out of the way. Charlie had his attention again, and Hal’s head turned--and then kept turning, until he had a good look. “Non.” His expression split into another grin. “But if she was, Ah wouldn’t be complainin’.” He didn’t have any idea why she was involving herself in the situation, and it made him curious, so he slid off the stool with his beer and meandered up to the trio--blonde, man and redhead. “Hey Lori,” he said to the blonde, as if nothing at all was wrong. “Who’s yo’ friend?” The redhead got an unmistakable smirk.
Oh yes, this situation couldn't possibly go well. Connor took the slap on the back with a raised brow and a nod, because yes, experience talked. His most recent, truncated relationship had been with a blonde daughter of a studio lawyer, and it had gone fairly disastrously when she realized he didn't want to ride off into the sunset with her.
Now there was a redhead embroiled in the situation as well (also trouble) and Connor found himself sitting at the bar beside Charlie, watching with fascination and a little horror as Hal wandered into the thick of the female confrontation. "That is a brave man," he said, and took a pull from his beer.
Lori’s friend didn’t take the slight well, and the man threw a punch before Lilith could even think about chastising the ballsy Cajun man. She could fight, but she didn’t, because harmless paramedics weren’t expert brawlers, and so neither could she be. She turned her back to the man, who was yelling at the Cajun about hearing about his rig being in Lori’s driveway. “Don’t you know enough to have him park elsewhere?” she asked Lori, because how stupid could one woman be. “Next time, he takes a cab or you make him walk partway,” she said, managing to sound as unimpressed with this whole thing as she felt. She sidestepped the fight, and she touched one hand to the cuckolder’s shoulder, while walking up to the other two men. “Is this how you conduct business?” she asked, mistaking the Brit for part of the operation.
Oh fantastic. Charlie rolled his eyes and hurriedly finished his beer before turning his head to the Brit. “So brave, he gon’a git punched in da face,” he sighed as though it was a common occurrence because well, it was. So tempted he was to allow this to happen and hope somehow Hal might learn something, he didn’t move when the first punch was swung. Shaking his head, Charlie swore under his breath and stepped in. As the second wild punch tried to make contact with Hal’s face, Charlie caught the wrist and tweaked it in a way wrists were not meant to go. As the drunken boyfriend swore at him to let go, he looked up at Hal, an annoyed glare on his face.
Connor was beginning to feel genuinely tense. It was a few days past the new moon now, so he wasn't in any distinct danger of something really bad happening, but violence tended to bring the wolf out, and situations that might lead to it left him uneasy. "Oh I'm not with them, I'm -" There was the distinct sound of a punch hitting home on someone or something, and his head snapped around, the scent of adrenaline flooding the bar from most of the people in the vicinity. His nostrils flared as he caught the scent, unthinking. He paused, then brought his attention back to the reality of the situation. He had two options - leave and brave somehow getting past the fight to the door, or stay and hope it wrapped up swiftly. He felt rooted to the spot, and glanced over to the redhead. "Do you know that woman?" he asked. He'd seen her talking to the blonde - maybe she would have some insight on how serious the fight was.
“No,” Lilith answered, watching Charlie walk away without answering her question, looking none too pleased by the turn of events. She leaned over the bar, appropriating a pen and writing her number on a napkin. She handed it to Connor, despite his claim that he wasn’t with the two men, and. “If they decided business is as important as their conquests and dealing with jealous boyfriends, have them call me.” She began to walk away, but she gave Charlie’s retreating back one last glance, adding. “If they can put business before testosterone, that is.”
Hal could acknowledge that he probably deserved that first punch. He saw it come toward him a little late, and he moved with it on an exhale to fend most of it off. He still let the guy have it, though, and he swore not because it hurt, but because he dropped his beer on Connor’s head when it happened. That was a good beer, at least a quarter full. Hal was back upright and a little pissed by the time Charlie had slid into the fight with his usual flawless grace, and nobody ever thought the big man could move like that until suddenly he just popped up and trapped your wrist on your second punch. Hal, who by this time wasn’t much interested in niceties, wanted revenge for his spilled beer. He snapped a front jab over Charlie’s arm into the boyfriend’s face, and knocked him neatly back on his ass. “Merci, mon ami,” he said, grinning at Charlie as their opponent tried to disentangle himself from a table of twenty-somethings.
Connor didn't know why he'd been elected representative for the two men whose names he didn't know and had never met, and he couldn't help but think that any 'business' conducted in bars likely wasn't particularly legal. He had just set the napkin with the number on it down on the bar when Hal came backwards with the beer. Connor had just enough time to throw his hands partway up before it dumped over his head, and he rocked to his feet, pissed off in two seconds flat. "What the hell are you doing?" he spat, shaking his hand out, spraying beer across the floor. His hair was soaked in it, and it had run down his back. Everything smelled of beer. He felt the familiar sensation of being immediately more angry than he should be, and fought to pull back on it.
Once again, Hal just had to interrupt Charlie’s handle on the situation with a touch of extra violence. Letting go of the ‘boyfriend’ as he took the brunt of Hal’s punch and plopped to the floor, he wiped his hands on his pants to rid himself of the disgusting arm sweat the drunk guy had. “Feel better now?” he asked his friend. Before he could get an answer, drenched Brit kid was clearly pissed and interrupted. Whether he was yelling at Hal or someone else, Charlie wasn’t sure. Instead of getting in the middle, he leaned against the counter. “Dis be your problem, mon ami,” he muttered to Hal.
Hal, completely ignoring Lori, who was screeching and fuming, turned all the way around, facing Connor again and discovering the redhead was still in the general vicinity--though not for long, by the looks of it. “You scare de pretty girl off, friend?” he asked Connor, eyes laughing. He took a tiny little bar napkin off the bar and started to hand it to him. “Sorry ‘bout de shower. Dese t’ings happen.” At the last second Hal took the napkin back out of the air, squinting at the number on it. He whistled, darted a glance at the redhead, then back at Connor. “Look at you,” he laughed. “Took you two minutes.”
The redhead rolled her eyes as she walked away, still within earshot. The men reminded her of the ones [Destiny] derided so, the ones that she had been taught were so easy to control, and she stopped at the bar long enough to leave a tip for the bartender and give him a wink. After all, it wasn’t his fault the night had ended up being a dud. She grabbed a napkin, and she wrote on it in long, elegant script (The pretty girl has a job for you, if you can stop thinking with your dick,) she wrote, and asking the bartender to deliver it to Hal, she slipped out of the bar and into the night.
Connor should have let him have the stupid napkin for whatever 'business' the pair of them wanted to conduct with the cool, pretty redhead, but he wasn't feeling so forgiving at the moment. He snatched the napkin back from Hal, slapping money down on the table for his beer. "I've got a way with girls," he said, and added, darkly, "Cheers." He pushed past Hal and Charlie. He was going to go find another bar, rinse the beer out of his hair, and get a sizeable drink.
Charlie sighed, but a smile was beginning to form at the corner of his mouth. At least he wasn’t wearing the beer this time. Sitting back on the stool, the bartender placed a note down next to Hal’s drink. Before his friend had a chance to do anything, he picked it up first, reading the note presumably left for the both of them. Realizing it was from the redhead, he flipped it over once to see if there was a name or number. Other than the snarky comment, there was nothing else. Charlie held it out in front of Hal. “Dis must be for you,” he smirked.
Already leaning back over his elbows and calling for his next drink, Hal sent a quirked brow back at his partner and then accepted the napkin. He dropped his eyes to it and said, “Huh!” before balling it up and shoving it into his jean pocket. Lori was already nursing her new boyfriend at the other side of the bar and Hal was looking forward to round two--but only after he had another beer.