Who: Booker and Lina. What: While getting a bite to eat, they also get the waitress fired and the bill for free. When: Before the sleeping curse. Where: Random Seafood Joint. Rating/Warnings: Medium. Lots of cursing and crude jokes about pedophiles. Status: Complete.
It wasn’t shark, but it was seafood at least. It wasn’t even that cheap of seafood, but Booker knew Lina enough to not bust the bank - because she had the metabolism of an overactive teenager. Then again she was almost an overactive teenager. Great. She was legal, right? He liked her (too much) and she drank harder than he did but that didn’t always mean anything.
He pinched the bridge of his nose as he waited for her, then ordered a beer to hold himself over. Might as well get to ruining his liver again early. Booker developed strings more easily than he’d like to admit.
Despite everything, if there was anything Lina was genuinely innocent in, it was the art of dating. Which in this case, she didn’t really view it as a date - Booker was a friend she cared for a lot, fucked every now and then, but other than that, it wasn’t much to contemplate. She was never the one to turn down food. Ever. Even probably from a stranger. If someone walked up to her and flat out said, ‘Hey, let me buy you a cheeseburger,’ she would forget what she was doing and follow them to the burger joint.
“Hey early bird! Don’t think I’ve been to this one yet.” She took a seat in front of him, beaming with excitement. Lina had been saving her appetite specifically for this meal. She was dressed kinda cute today; a stripped little sundress, sandals, and her hair had been pulled half-up by bobby pins. “Whatcha drinking? Do they do beers by the pitcher here? We should get a pitcher.”
“Yeah, I figured you hadn’t and I heard their hot wings are killer.” He gestured for a waitress. “You heard the lady, bring us a pitcher of beer and keep it full until we’re shit faced.”
The waitress rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’ll get you and your girlfriend a pitcher, do you want the hot wings?”
“Whoa, lady, assumptions, assumptions. What if I was his daughter, hmmm?” She leered at the waitress. “But yeah, hot wings. Three orders. I might make it four, depending on the portion sizes, so make sure they’re big enough.”
Ah, she shouldn’t be rude to waitress anyway. Lina could already feel Luna glare daggers into the back of her head all the way from New Orleans.
Booker squinted his eyes at the waitress, then at Lina, then at the the waitress again. “Just make it six orders..” He grinned at Lina. “Cuz I already knw that four ain’t gonna be big enough.”
“Okay,” The lady said. “Six orders for porky and one order for Pedo Pete. Got it.”
With the way Lina had been glaring at the lady, someone could assume she’d been trying to sit the bitch on fire with her mind. And she could have, too, if she just shot a hand out and fireballed her ass to kingdom come. Lina was a little more discrete than that though (only sometimes...actually, rarely), so she kept the magic in check. Booker was already paying for the meal. It’d suck if he had to pay for property damage, too.
“I’m going to make the bitch run around like a headless chicken,” Lina declared once she was gone with an indignant huff. Fuck the waitress etiquette Luna drilled into her. It was on. And with Lina’s voracious appetite, she had always been considered a living nightmare in any restaurant she frequented. Ate too much, was too loud, and got drunk too fast that something was bound to break eventually.
Booker put his hand on Lina’s leg, as though trying to keep her somewhat calm. “Get our revenge by workin’ her to the bone an’ then stiffin’ her the tip,” Booker agreed. “An’ break the shit that they can’t make us pay for. Like..hey watch this.”
He waved his hand, and there was a flash of green light. The waitress suddenly threw her tray on the floor.Possession. It was a powerful thing.
Suddenly, Lina felt a lot better. “Effective. And less subtle than setting her on fire. Good job there, buddy. So, to the important stuff: the food. Whatcha getting?”
“Eh, she spits in our food you can light her up.” Booker meant that. You just don’t spit in peoples’ food. He was a killer, a thug, and an all around mostly bad person and even that was too far!
“Think I want the fries and the chicken tenders. The ones without the hot shit on them.”
Lina was fine with that. She really had no issues with the waitress unless she was going to come back and make snotty comments. Who the hell does that these days? She always knew from Luna to ‘not mess with the people that handled your food,’ but the girl shouldn’t mess with people that can point and shoot fire at her either. Not like the poor bitch knew that, but still.
“You like it spicy, huh?” Lina raised an eyebrow at him before glancing at the menu, her eyes identifying several things she could order and easily scarf down within the hour. For a second her concern was Booker’s budget, but this was Booker’s idea and he should be more than aware of just what it really meant to ask Lina Inverse to ‘get a bite to eat.’ She’d just gotten back from experimenting with a few black magic spells, and another go at the Dragon Slave - which, unfortunately, she still couldn’t successfully cast - so she was in serious need of nutrition. “Craving seafood. So much seafood. And so much beer. I’m gonna stick with the platters.”
“Only a little spicey. You count as a whole lot spicey.” He smirked at her. Platters would actually be cheaper. He could have made a crass comment, but he didn’t. Which was a shock in and of itself. He picked up the pitcher to fill his mug. “I see you’re done with blowin’ up half the county.”
Lina looked like a deer caught in headlights when he brought that up. She could deny it, but Xelloss and Elizabeth already knew. And he obviously didn’t believe she didn’t do it either. So it was a wasted effort, really. “I had to let off some steam. And I needed to replenish my savings quick. In case of emergencies and such. Why not take stolen crap from crooks and sell it?”
She totally understood the way Robin Hood worked, except she didn’t give back any of that stuff. Whatever. Details.
“Steal from the crooks an’ keep for yourself?” There was no judgement in his eyes. It was a damn sight better than some of the things he’d pulled. And he liked her too much anyway. “Didn’t seem to do too much collateral damage. Mostly.”
“Hey, a vigilante of justice needs to be paid somehow, right?” That wasn’t how it worked, she was sort of aware of that, but she was mostly in the realm of denial and was completely okay with that. “It wasn’t too bad. I mean.” She held her fist up, and a finger rose for each place she hit. “Stark Tower. That warehouse. Palvano. Some car show room I didn’t even know was there. Uh, I accidentally made Logan homeless. And, uh, I accidentally made some other guy I know homeless.” Lina winced. “Okay, all that sounds bad, but it really just sounds worse than what it was. And I think that’s it--oh! And some other warehouse with some creepy logo on it. That one didn’t make the news for some reason…”
“Stark’s an ass, I think you blew up some bad people too. Palvano doesn’t get very high ratings from what I’ve heard.” He smirked at her, knowing she worked there. Light, playful teasing. “What kinda logo?”
Lina let let down all her fingers except for the middle one at his jab.
“Uhhh…” What was it? She poured herself a glass of beer, thinking it over. “I saw it on one of the crates. Uh...an octopus. Not quite, but I think it was a skull with tentacles or something. I don’t know.” Lina shrugged, taking a sip.
“That’s kinda weird. I was half expectin’ a three headed dog.” At least it wasn’t Cerberus. If only he knew. “Maybe we should be lookin’ into that shit more.”
The waitress brought over their food. “The crate for Lardo, and the plate for old and creepy.”
"What, the--" And then the waitress came, and Lina twitched. Slowly her head turned to face the woman and she smiled. "Lady. What's your trauma? Daddy didn't love you enough or did he love you too much? Or are you just sad this guy's at a table with a pretty girl and you don't stand a chance?"
The waitress’s eye twitched. “At least I’m not stuffing my craw like the world’s ending tomorrow, tubby.”
“Okay that’s it,” Booker got up. “Shut the fuck up, an’ get me your manager before things get uglier than you.”
Lina choked a laugh and shut up by sipping her beer. Ah, she could just never go out for a bite to eat and a drink in peace now, couldn’t she? She didn’t know if she was a magnet for assholes or not, because she sure as hell didn’t walk into places with a big sign over her head that says ‘HEY GUYS, START SHIT WITH ME!’
She leaned over the table and whispered to Booker, “If we bitch enough maybe we can get the whole bill for free.”
He did. And they did, along with a gigantic cake for dessert and the pleasure of watching the waitress get fired. “I feel like an ass but I don’t care. She earned that.”
“That was awesome.” Lina was grinning widely, piling up the rest of the platters into one gigantic heap. She’d eaten until the plates were practically clean, and had cake all over her face. And beer breath.
Super attractive, here.
“Wanna go to a bar and see what shit we can stir up there?”
“Yeah.” He tossed a napkin at her face, smiling fondly. “Clean up first before you embarrass yourself.”