Kiera Cameron (bitchcop) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-11-11 00:04:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, booker dewitt, kiera cameron |
Who: Kiera Cameron, Booker DeWitt
What: Random Encounter
When: Mid-September, Friday
Where: A bar.
Rating/Warnings: Low. Maybe some mention of alcoholism.
Status: Complete!
It was well past dark when Kiera made her way into the dimly lit bar. She'd been working late again. But she and her partner had just closed their current case, meaning she was officially off the clock. For the first time in...she didn't even know how long. After a while, the days started blurring together. She usually preferred it that way. She didn't have anyone to go home to at night, no one to worry when she came home late. Or didn't come home at all. Working was what she did best. Everything else was messy, complicated.
Then the dreams had started. Dreams about being stranded in the past, missing a husband and a son she'd never had. The weird thing was, now she was starting to miss them here.
She watched the room as she waited for her drink, not quite able to turn off the part of her that always would be a cop.
Booker had fallen off the wagon months ago. He wasn’t as bad off as he had been the last time. He still couldn’t let a drink go undrunk, but there were...reasons to pull himself away. Maybe reasons enough to make him stop, if he really thought about it. And he really should. But with his dreams came nosebleeds and a crisis of identity, and that was enough to drive even the most righteous man to drink.
And Booker was anything but a righteous man. He sighed, and wished he could smoke.
Kiera made note of him, right along with everyone else. Automatically making a threat assessment of the room. By now it was habit.
She couldn't say why he stood out any more than anyone else, but it made her curious. She wanted to know more about him. Who he was would be a good start. But Kiera wasn't in the habit of chatting up guys in bars, so she bought his next round, dropping a few more bills on the bar. "Looks like he could use it."
He wouldn't need to worry about flirting though; she wasn't even looking his way anymore.
He raised his eyebrows at her, but wasn’t going to turn down a free drink. “Thanks, ms. I appreciate it.” To the bartender, he said, “Another Jack.”
She did look back at him then, with a slight nod. “Cameron. Kiera Cameron. Just Kiera.” Awkward much? You’d really think she’d be better with people.
She didn’t seem that good with people, but neither was Booker. He was gruff. “Booker DeWitt.”
Given her line of work, she should have had enough practice not to be this bad at it. But the art of social interaction still often eluded her. She just...wasn't like other people.
"Long week?"
“You could say that. More like long month, long year…” He shook his head. “It’s complicated. You?”
“Yeah. Complicated.” That was a good way to put it. Everything here was complicated. She had thought moving here would make things easier, help put the last year behind her. “You know, I came to California because I thought it would make things less complicated.”
Booker let out a snorting laugh. “Looks like you picked the wrong damn state for that. Might’ve been better to go someplace like...vermont.”
That actually got a smile. A small one. But a smile, nonetheless. Her expression did change from serious once in a while. “Maybe I should have stayed in Vancouver.”
“Vancouver sounds kinda boring, if you ask me.” Which she hadn’t but he was volunteering anyhow. Booker was in the mood to offer his opinion.
“Ever been there?” Hey, everyone was entitled to their opinion, even when she thought it was the wrong one. “Sometimes boring isn’t as bad as it sounds.”
“Once, was passing through on a job.” He made it sound like he did odd jobs or the like. He’d actually been chasing someone down on an extradition bounty. It had proven to be really, really boring.
“See. There’s your problem. You didn’t get the full Vancouver experience.” Sometimes it was hard to tell when she was joking and when she was being serious. But in Kiera’s own experience, it was anything but boring. Maybe it was the career she was in.
“Now I’m listening,” he said, leaning forward.
“I’m guessing you weren’t checking out the scenery? I think it goes over better if you’re into nature.” It could be beautiful. Not that she took much time to enjoy that side of the city. “It’s probably different when you live there.”
“Yeah, nature ain’t exactly my thing. I’m more likely to find the seedier parts of town to be more my style.” Bars, run down alleyways, pawn shops..gambling dens.
“Saw my share of those.” No. She didn’t plan to elaborate.
Booker nodded, understanding. “So what do you do, if you’re able an’ willin’ to say what you do?”
That even earned him a small smile. “Cop. Homicide.” And she loved her job, as terrible as that probably sounded.
Booker nodded his head and grunted a little. “Any really crazy cases you’re allowed to talk about?” He maybe should be a bit more careful about some of his word choices.
“Allowed? Anything that’s public record. Nothing active. No names. Willing?” There was a faint shrug. “Nothing like what I’ve seen here.”
“Nothing like the dreams, you mean,” Booker said, raising his eyebrows and smirking.
“And the things that come with them.” How had she managed to walk into the middle of this mess? She moved to get away from the chaos. And the people who knew her, but that was an entirely different story that she wouldn’t be telling.
“Yeah, the things that come with the dreams can go to hell.” At least his nose wasn’t bleeding. Happened enough that he had a few excuses but he didn’t want to get into it if he could help it.
"You would think someone would've figured this out by now." And how to stop it from happening.
“You’d think, but I guess not everyone is a genius. Even the geniuses are clueless.” He thought about the Luteces, and their quantum theory work, and it gave him a headache. Dies, died, will die. Meeting yourself. If the woman Lutece had found a male version of herself, did that mean there was a female Booker out there? The thought gave him another headache.
"Makes you wonder why we stay." She couldn't be the first to ask that question. Why did they stay? Why was she staying? It would be easier to go back to Vancouver. So why did she stay? "Maybe we want to know what happens next."
“Seen the end. Ain’t nothin’ after. Think I only really stay for a couple of people, really.” Booker shrugged his shoulder.
“I think I’ve only seen the beginning.” There was the briefest of pauses, possibly more telling than she would have liked. She didn’t have a reason to stay. She barely had a reason to go. “I’m not staying for anyone.”
“Then why are you stayin’?” He didn’t think he would have if it weren’t for Elizabeth and Lina. And Neena but he didn’t want to think about that. That boat sailed.
"I have nothing to go back to." She'd left a mess behind in Vancouver that maybe she wasn't ready to face yet.
“So nothing to stay for and nothing o go back to?” Booker shrugged his shoulder. “What motivates you then?”
There’s an almost imperceptible shrug. “Same as always. Work. Not really interested in begging for my job.”
“There’s more to life than work,” he replied. Which was funny coming from him, because he hasn’t exactly done more with life than work lately. Every attempt to do more hasn’t ended up the way he’d wanted it to. Add to that a mild death wish and well...
"Said like someone who's heard it one too many times." She definitely had. Everyone seemed to think she worked too much.
“Yeah. Maybe I’m told that too often. So I stopped working and ended up at the bottom of a bottle and that didn’t really work that well either.”
“Trading one problem for another. Never does.”
Booker grunted. “The way I work best, I guess.”
“The way you work best? Or the way you work?” Not that she was in any position to judge. “Hey, you’re only human.”
"Little of both." He grinned, this time. "Fix one problem, make five others. But that's life."
"Yeah. That's life." And they all had their own way of dealing with it. She didn't blame him for his. Settling the rest of her tab, she slid out of seat. "I should go. This was...nice."