[C.J. Nash] He’s in the wrong goddamn restroom.
This bar is ancient, has likely been standing since the Chicago Fire; the bartenders are young and nubile and likely carrying at least four strands of venereal disease between them, and while the flooring is new, the televisions haven’t been cleaned in over a year and the clientele are raucous and on a wide variety of substances besides alcohol. Cannabis smoke clings to at least every tenth person, and the music is supplied by a jukebox rather than a DJ.
It’s the sort of place one only goes if one is looking to get obliterated on two-dollar beers and four-dollar shots, which is pretty ideal, considering the place is named after the street it’s on. Makes calling for a cab easier, assuming one doesn’t get so fucked up that one loses one’s orientation to place.
The tall, long-haired drink of water who ends up in the women’s room without a companion seems to have accomplished this already. He stands stock still a moment, as if attempting to figure out where the urinals are, then scratches his head and checks his watch, as though knowing that it’s just past midnight is going to help him out at all.
This, he realizes, is why he quit drinking.
[Luana Kirchmann] The door opens behind him and shuts again. Even if he glanced over his shoulder he wouldn’t see her – she’s not that tall. Dressed down in a pair of jeans and a casual, dark top, the woman’s dirty blonde hair was loose around her shoulders and partly down her back. She looked up at his back with dark rimmed eyes and smirked.
“Have you lost something?”
Noticing after that he’d been looking at his watch, her eyes drift up from his lowering hand to what she can see of his face from this angle. Mostly it’s just his hair and the broad jut of his shoulders. “Or you have a meeting with a name on the wall?” she quips, amused at herself.
[C.J. Nash] Have you lost something?
He turns around at that. Even with his hair being as long as it is, once they’re facing each other, there is very little mistaking this man for a woman, for a transsexual, for anything other than what he is: a male who just happens to be simultaneously pretty and masculine, with a nearly lupine bone structure and eyes that, at present, are a calm if not amused green-gray. He hasn’t shaved his face in several days, but his clothes are clean, and he doesn’t have a junkie’s build or an alcoholic’s sallow complexion.
“Well, hell, darlin’,” he says, and to his credit he does not slur his words or waver on his feet, though his thick Southern accent may very well sound like slurring to her, “you ain’t her, are ya?”
[Luana Kirchmann] He’s better looking then she expected. What did she expect anyway? He’s between her and the stalls and the water taps, and she’s between him and the door. It’s a nice little stand off, but also makes her acutely aware of her height. This is nothing new.
Finding a man in the womens bathroom that isn’t drunk enough to be slurring rings some caution bells though. What didn’t these days?
Arching her brows at him, her softly painted mouth quirks into a wry expression. Her eyes are olive. A dull green that isn’t helped by the dim cast of the bathroom lights in a dive like this. “Definitely not.” Luana wears her intoxication well. Whether it’s alcohol or another vice, these are tell tale signs for only those that look closer, the eyes the most. Other signs are to do with behaviour, and for that, he’d need to know her first.
She’s well composed, reaching into her pocket for a packet of cigarettes that she begins to worm out. Still looking at him, direct and bold for all her smallness, she asks: “Are you going to take a piss or moving on out?”
[C.J. Nash] She assures him that she’s not the girl he’s looking for if he’s looking for a good time, and that seems to be the impetus he needs to get his skinny ass out of the women’s room; unfortunately, he’s not in a huge rush to get a move on when there’s an attractive woman in his path, when he’d have to brush past her to get to the door so he could get the hell out of here.
Attractive women, it’s worth mentioning, have been the cause of and solution to most of his problems over the course of his life. They’re the reason he’s had his ass beaten as often as he has, although really, in the eyes of the Nation, it’s his inability to keep it in his pants rather than the women. That would be what we call a Moot Point, though.
“I was tryin’ to,” he says, without clarifying which one. “I’d have to be some kinda pervert to be takin’ a piss in the women’s room, though, don’t you think?”
Still, he doesn’t step into her space to try and get past her. The standoff continues.
[Izzy Montoya] It’s a party in the bathroom – or some might think, as the door opens again, revealing one Detective Izzy Montoya – intent not on busting those smoking in the bathroom, or doing drugs, or fucking against the sinks. No, she’s intent on one thing…
“Hey! Scuse me – I gotta take a fuckin’ piss.” And with that she’s brushing past Luana, and moving toward the stall.
Even now, even a couple shots into what is destined to be an amazing hangover tomorrow, she walks like a cop. Looks like a cop. She don’t smell like one right now though – no. she smells like Whiskey and Cigarettes.
….hot.
[Luana Kirchmann] A quick step to the side has her shoulder into the wall, body narrowing to let Izzy rush past into the ladies. Her laugh is low, broken off at a chuckle. While Izzy walks on to one of the stalls, Luana is taking her time to light up a cigarette. She even offers one to the man that’s still standing in the bathroom. Luana feels better for having another woman in the room, even if she won’t admit it aloud.
“I think as long as you’re not pissing in a woman’s wine glass, you’re fine. And that there’s no wine in this place, or glasses around…” She waves over to the stalls and the basin with the lighter and cigarette in hand, “… help yourself.”
Putting the cigarette to her mouth, she takes a moment to light it, only glancing away long enough to make sure she’s setting the tobacco aflame and not her hair, before she’s looking back up at him. If he took a cigarette the lighter is now offered, and if not, it disappears back into the narrow pocket, filling it out against her hip.
[C.J. Nash] In through the door comes a tall, tough female who looks vaguely familiar, yet who he can’t place in the handful of seconds she’s in his bleary field of vision. The tall man stands looking after her a second, then slowly looks back to the much tinier blonde, visibly gauging whether he can sneak past her now that she’s pressed against the wall.
Oh, but she speaks. It holds him up.
“I’m not sober enough to stand here figurin’ if I’m supposed to put the seat back down when I’m done,” he says, and does not take her up on the offer of a cigarette; he’s grabbing hold of the door handle and letting himself back out into the foyer where he’d gotten lost in the first place.
Some clown sees him emerging from the women’s room moments after he received company, and lets out a war whoop in congratulation.
“Whaddaya think this is!” he calls back, affecting an air of irritation, the second half of his question muffled by the door swinging shut behind him. “A goddamn frat house?”
[Izzy Montoya] “You always put the motherfuckin’ seat down. Heathens.” This, from the stall, voiced after a sigh of relief as she pees.
Moments later there’s a flush, and she lets herself out again, and goes to wash her hands. she glances at Luana and then to the door, and back again. Then, a smirk as she washes up. “Sorry to interrupt.”
Only she’s not.
Really.
[Luana Kirchmann] “None of us sit on public seats,” she’s telling him as he’s rushing past her to flee, “never know what you might catch.”
In the wake of the closing door, she chuckles and leans against the wall where she intends on finishing her cigarette.
Izzy is done with her business and comes out to keep her company, at least while washing germs off her hands. She smirked back, shaking her head a little. There’s something else instead: “You’re the woman that told that Fang to fuck off.” More or less. That wasn’t the exact words. Luana sounds amused by it. She’s even smiling as she blows out smoke towards the ceiling.
[Izzy Montoya] She narrows her gaze, slightly, peering at the other woman’s reflection, as if that will help her place the small blond. Normally she’d remember. Of course, normally she wouldn’t have already been involved in – and one – at least one drinking contest.
She holds up a finger… closes her eyes, then peers at the woman again. “….which time?”
Ah, Izzy. Her reputation does proceed her…
[Luana Kirchmann] Flicking ash off to the side, she watches Izzy’s reflection too, rather than her back. “That meeting. Where all of us dived out the window when the pompous cunt showed up.” It sounds funny, that sort of cussing, coming along with her accent – a noticeable thing even around her well educated English.
[stray cat] [Nash’s phone begins to buzz or beep or play really awful midi tunes in his pocket or whatever it is the presently drunk kinsman may be keeping it]
[Izzy Montoya] She blinks, then smirks. “Oh. THAT fuckin douchebag.” She nods. It was, indeed, her who told him to fuck off. “Dr. Slaughter probably has more fuckin’ honor in her little toe, than he’ll ever fuckin’ get. He’s lucky I didn’t just fuckin’ shoot the cunt.”
Shockingly, that fang had cautioned her about her language, too. Tsk.
[C.J. Nash] While the women have a very important discussion about a very important Silver Fang Ragabash, the tall intruder returns to the bar, where he’s just finished slamming back a shot and procuring another beer when his phone goes off.
It fucking buzzes, thank you very much.
He sees who it is, and says, “Ah, hell.”
“Ex-wife?” a bystander asks.
“Worse,” he says, and hits… whatever it is one hits on a smart phone to take the call. “Hello?”
[Luana Kirchmann] “You should have.” There’s a pause for a quick puff. Exhaled with a: “I can hear the chorus of cheers.” Ivan had made the kinfolk scatter within five minutes of coming into the so called Kin meeting. What a joke it had been, like any other Kinfolk meeting that had been held. Now that fool Amunet was on the case, too.
She takes her cigarette into the stall with her. It’s flushed away with a trail of piss.
[Izzy Montoya] She snorts. “Yeah. Well. Next time maybe. If I can get that twat Simon in my sights too – that’d be a bullet well fuckin’ spent.”
The thing about Izzy is, you always know where you stand. She likes ya, you’ll keep all your blood INSIDE your body. She doesn’t… well. She’s armed.Likely deranged. Certainly female. All dangerous – in that psychotic kinda way that folks should really fear more than they do.
She dries her hands off, and then heads back to the bar proper…
[Luana Kirchmann] Her laughter follows Izzy out.
[C.J. Nash] As whoever is on the other end of the line speaks, the Fenrir pushes back from the bar, taking his beer with him–he must be afraid of rophynol appearing out of nowhere–and passing by Izzy en route to the back door. He looks at her a little longer than is absolutely necessary, and it’s difficult to tell if he’s sizing her up, trying to place her in his memory, or checking out her tits.
It’s probably all three.
He pushes the back door open with his hip, emerging into frigid, damp weather with a cough. Thus far he’s the only one out here.
“Out,” he says, into the phone, and then the door slides shut behind him.
[Izzy Montoya] “They’re just tits, man. Stop starin at them. It’s not like they do any goddamned tricks…” Well, now we know which one Izzy assumes he’s doing…
To the bar, then, and another whiskey.
[Luana Kirchmann] [dont wait on me.]
[Luana Kirchmann] When Luana exit’s the bathroom, it’s not to go and join the fray at the bar or head out the back door. After a brief stop by a table with a few drinking buddies, she bids her goodbyes and makes her way out the front to catch a cab. She doesn’t say goodbye’s to the other Kinfolk. She’s not on those terms with them.
[C.J. Nash] From outside comes the crashing of glass. Anyone who’s spent any amount of time in a bar will recognize that sound immediately: some dickhead just whipped a bottle as hard as he could at a brick wall, and it actually managed to shatter.
Fancy fucking that.
[Izzy Montoya] The shattered glass gets her head to snap up, her hand instantly sliding to the small of her back. She blinks once – twice, three times, before she realizes it came from outside – where the man who oogled her tits went.
Interesting.
She pushes from the bar, grabs her drink, and heads toward the back door. Never fear, poor denizens of the seedy bar nightlife… Detective Montoya is on the case. She pushes open the door, and searches for the culprit…
“broken fuckin’ bottle’s are a major party foul…”
[C.J. Nash] “Oh, yeah?”
As a matter of fact, it is the man who ogled her tits. He’s facing away from the door, and doesn’t turn around when he hears the caustic yet feminine voice cracking a joke, or else warning him of his impending arrest for destruction of property and public intoxication.
“Well, put me in the fuckin’ penalty box then, because I ain’t done breaking shit.”
[Izzy Montoya] She could arrest him, sure. She’s not going too, though – likely because at this point, she’s likely drunker than he is. Instead, she exits the door fully, and pushes it shut behind her, leaning back against it as she takes swallow of her whiskey, and nods.
“I could make a fuckin’ crude joke about boxes right about now, but well. I just wanna see ya break shit.” She shrugs, and finishes off her drink, and offers him her glass.
[C.J. Nash] Izzy hands over her bottle, and Nash–hey, it’s the son of a bitch who spoke out of turn at that dreadful Kinfolk alliance meeting headed up by Mister Balance Without Fault–turns toward her, skeptical at first, before taking it from her.
“Hey, you’re a woman.”
It’s not a pickup line; he’s about to ask for her expert opinion.
“Lemme ask you somethin’: say you’re… I don’t know, old enough to drink, young enough to be my daughter. We screw. Once. Let’s say, by some bizarre goddamn coincidence, you also happen to be shacked up with an angry mother fucker who could beat my ass into the pavement in about three seconds flat, and this angry mother fucker knocks you up. You keep right on callin’ me, and textin’ me, and showin’ up at my goddamn motel room, even though I fuckin’ know better and don’t want to fuck up this lovely little Fisher Price arrangement he’s got goin’ on. You say you love this guy. You screw me again. He finds out and kicks the tar outta me. Why the fuck are you gonna keep–”
Okay, he’s hit the point where he was before he broke the first bottle. The man whirls away from Izzy, pure human rage driving him rather than supernatural fury, and whips the bottle as hard as he can with his left hand into the side of the building. Glass and foam spray everywhere, and he wipes his hand down his face, huffing out a breath.
[Izzy Montoya] Hey, she’s a woman. She peels her shirt away, looks down and confirms, and nods. “Yup, got the tits and everything.” And then he goes off.
and she listens.
Even now, she’s an expert listener. Even drunk, she makes him feel like his story is the most important thing in the world, that she’s got nothing but time, so that he can unload all his cares [and his crimes – as the case maybe] on her. She’s strong enough to take it, she wants it, and if he tells her now, she won’t have to pry a confession from him later…
…good thing he’s not actually a suspect in her interrogation room, hm?
He gets to the point of needing to toss the bottle, she gives it up without a fight, and then chuckles, softly. “Because women are fuckin’ nuts man. In college, I briefly considered turning lesbot, but man, the fuckin’ drama”
She digs around in he pockets for her smokes, and proceeds to light one. She takes a drag, and shrugs a shoulder. “So change your fuckin’ number. Or block her calls. Angry motherfuckers… well, they aren’t the type to need an excuse of a beatdown. So best to get to steppin, and wash your hands of her. Unless her pussy is REALLY made of fuckin’ gold or some shit…”
[C.J. Nash] [PAUSATION STATION]
[C.J. Nash] It comes out of nowhere, lubricated by alcohol and an utter lack of concern or care for whether or not her shoulders can bear the burden of a complete stranger unloading his recent strain of misdeeds and missteps on her. Perhaps it’s only the alcohol that provides him with the lack of concern; perhaps if she actually had him in her interrogation room, dead sober and hauled in for a crime that he had a proper hand in committing, something premeditated and carefully executed, Izzy might find herself with a bit more difficulty extracting a confession than she finds herself with at the moment.
It’s all build-up to another explosion, and once he breaks that second glass bottle, he’s able to breathe again. Behind him, the detective laughs, her tone quiet and unobtrusive, and when he turns back to her, he appears calmer. That isn’t saying much, as he’d been somewhat calm when she walked out to begin with, but the muscles in his jaws aren’t working as he grinds his teeth; his eyes aren’t burning with an approaching storm.
When she reaches for her cigarettes, so does the taller Fenrir, pulling out a pack of smokes that are expensive and harsh and longer than the average person deems absolutely necessary. Lighting his own, he takes a furious drag and blows it out, nostrils flaring in a brief recurrence of anger.
Then he snorts.
“Darlin’, I somehow doubt it’s made’a anything different’n any other pussy I’ve ever seen in my life.”
[Izzy Montoya] Darlin, he says, and he’s rewarded with her chuckle, again. “I’m drunk, so I’ll let that fuckin slide. It’s Izzy. Not Darlin, not Luv, not Hotpants, sweet cheeks, love of my life, anything full of bullshit like that. I’m also armed, so remember the warning.” She says all this while lighting up her cigarette, her voice filled with amusement, without making fun.
“Back to the pussy, however.” She gestures with her cigarette as she exhales, and sticks her lighter back into her pocket, leaning comfortably back against the door. “The only other option is to quit fuckin’ girls half your age, and find someone who like to fuck without all the drama attached.”
Oh the mouth on this one…
[C.J. Nash] It’s worth mentioning, if only as an inward mental note and not aloud where she can hear him, that the only women who ever tell him not to prefix speech addressed to them by anything other than their first names or professional titles are women who possess a modicum of self-respect, who have had to work hard to get to where they are, who wake up in the morning believing themselves to have purpose and a point for existing.
Those women, it ought to go without saying, want absolutely nothing to do with guys like him.
“Is that the only other option?”
He doesn’t dismiss it outright. If anything, he sounds as though the notion is impossibly out of reach, or else the thought just hadn’t occurred to him yet.
“Well, shit, Izzy, you know’a anyone fits that bill, you send her my way.”
[Izzy Montoya] She nods, slightly. “Pretty much. Unless there’s an absolute reason you have to fuck girls that could be your daughter, and if there’s that, I might not want to know about it for professional fuckin’ reasons… but yeah. Most of us get over the need for such fuckin’ drama when we grow the fuck up.”
And then, her lips curl into a bemused smirk, and she arches a brow, slightly. “Maybe I already fuckin’ did.” Maybe.
The jury is still out on that possibility, most likely, but if he knew anything at all about the good Detective, he’d know she doesn’t tend to hold conversations any longer than strictly necessary… unless she wants too. She doesn’t examine said want, she doesn’t wonder why she’s out here smoking with a guy who’s bitching about young girls, she doesn’t seem to care. she also doesn’t seem to be heading inside and closing off the possibility, either.
“Come on. I’ll buy you a drink, and you can tell me your name, and regale me with stories, and I might just let you see my tits, afterwards – no drama attached.”
[C.J. Nash] He needs a psychiatrist, perhaps, not a beleaguered, burnt-out homicide detective, if he has any hope of getting to the bottom of why it is he is in this particular situation with this particular young girl. To say that it’s a pattern of behavior would be an outright lie, but Izzy isn’t asking him for his life story, whether or not this is something he has made a habit of doing with his free time. She doesn’t ask if he was seduced, or drugged, if this ethereal girl-young-enough-to-be-his-daughter lied about her age or if he just didn’t care.
He’s not a bad-looking man. According to a poll of heterosexual women, he’s actually somewhat attractive, and he doesn’t seem to be hurting for confidence, self-esteem or financial success. There are variables, in this as in anything else, but the majority of the population isn’t interested in variables or what makes this case different than any other thirty-something fucking a teenager. It is, as they say, what it is: he let this girl play mind games with him, and the only reason it occurred in the first place has to do with her age.
Men are idiots.
Izzy offers up a drink, offers to learn his name and hear war stories, on the off chance that he might be able to see her breasts without the drama. This is considered, along with a hefty drag off of his cigarette, and when he comes to a conclusion, he blows out that stained breath and drops the cigarette onto the ground, crushing it out.
“In that order?” is all he asks, before he steps towards the door. She’ll have to stop leaning on it for him to get through; should she, the tall Southern bastard has the manners to open it for her.
[Izzy Montoya] He’s not a bad looking man, and her beer goggles aren’t clouded, nor needed. He needs a psychiatrist, perhaps, but what he gets is her; the homicide detective that was gonna take someone home anyway, and it might as well be him. She’s picked up her fair share of drama whores herself, as women are not unique in that particular trait, and perhaps, if she talks to him first, she might even find a kindred spirit.
Or she simply wants to fuck and he’s closest. She’s not really complicated, Izzy, when one gets to know her.
Is that an order, he asks, and she arches a brow as she takes a final drag, than flicks the butt of her cigarette to the side to die a sputtering death in a puddle of something best left undefined. She exhales, and remains leaning against the door for a moment longer.
“Does it need to be?”
She waits until he’s almost at the door almost fully to her personal space before she pushes off of it, encroaching on his personal bubble before she allows hers to be breached. Sometimes it’s the illusion of control, it’s the decision to take the first step, the first move that makes it all right. She lifts a hand, rests it on his chest a moment, patting once, twice, absently, before stepping aside to allow him to open the door for her.
Order or no, she leads him straight to the bar.
[C.J. Nash] Ah, alcohol: the great unifier, and the great instigator of language barriers in people whose first language is shared and English.
Nash blinks at her interpretation of what he’s asked her, but doesn’t question it. Her lingering against the door, her chest rising and falling as she kills off her cigarette, gives the still-a-stranger a moment to hover nearby, his gaze focusing on her face rather than on her breasts or her midsection or her legs. When he’d let his eyes roam over the surface of her body on the way out the door, he’d been informed that they weren’t going to do any tricks for him.
This is a guy who probably only makes time between the sheets with prostitutes and girls who are young and stupid because he doesn’t want to put in any effort anymore. He put in all his effort when he was young and stupid, trying to impress older women. It’s a bell curve. The downward slope is the path of least resistance for someone who doesn’t consider gonorrhea and clingy, emotionally manipulative children with Daddy Issues to be something he has to worry about in the morning.
At least, that’s by appearance, by assumption. For all she knows, he could be a dedicated family man who’s just having a bad stretch.
Yeah, that’s it.
They end up in a game of Chicken, then, the tall drink of water waiting for the tough-as-nails detective to remove herself from the door. He does not end up in her personal bubble until she decides he’s damn well earned the right, and then her hand pats his chest. Beneath her palm, she finds his pectoral muscles firm but not rock-solid; he’s warm, but not burning up with Rage. This is a human she’s dealing with, at most a human. She can hurt him faster and worse than he can hurt her.
In they go, back to the bar, and he pulls out a stool for her, preferring, it seems, to stand his lean form between the stools and wait for her to join him. If and when she asks, he informs her whiskey will be just fine. He’s drinking some Canadian lager that they have on special tonight. It isn’t until after they’ve put away their first shot together, gotten their beers, whatever it is they’re going for, that he moves on to Step Two of Izzy’s plan for the evening.
He holds out his left hand, he being on her left side for this endeavor. There isn’t a ring on his fourth finger; there isn’t even a tan line, a dent, where one might have been recently.
“Name’s Nash,” he tells her.
[Izzy Montoya] He pulls out a stool for her, and she settles on it comfortably, without any need to preen or pose or posture. She’s an off duty cop, and this is her preferred type of off duty hangout – no one asks questions, and no one stops her from drinking big ass blokes under the table. There’s a reason folks ask if she is SURE she’s Fenrir and not Fianna, despite the battles written in her blood. But it’s practice, vs. natural ability, that allows her to drink for free most nights, just because it’s near impossible for a man to admit that a woman can drink more than he can…
He’s warm, but there’s no rage there. Part of her is disappointed, but that’s neither here nor there. She wants that, she has plenty of places she can get that, too. Tonight, though, it seems his perfectly natural humanity is enough.
They do the shot, which she takes without making a face, without commenting on the burn as it works it’s way, warms its way through her chest. She doesn’t need the beer chaser, either, but drinks it instead for the flavor. He offers his hand, and she takes it. Her grip is strong, without trying to overpower him. It’s confidence in a simple grip – born of years on the force and a comfort in her own skin. “Izzy.” She repeats, then adds. “Detective Izzy Montoya. A pleasure, Nash.”
and here, that little amused smirk reappears. “at least, it might be. Time will tell.”
[C.J. Nash] That name ought to ring a bell: he just saved it in his smart phone earlier this evening, had it double-checked and confirmed by the woman who gave it to him, yet he has learned, more than once, that shit shifts away from normalcy and idle banter when things like the Nation and tribe and duty are involved. He could tell her OH HEY JESUS I KNOW YOU DOCTOR SLAUGHTER SAYS but that would defeat the purpose of what it is they’re hoping to accomplish tonight. That would complicate things.
That would involve him not being at least two sheets to the wind and failing to give a single fuck about anything other than the fact that he’s not alone, he’s not being manipulated, and Izzy can take a shot as though it’s as simple and painless as drawing a breath. After they’re done, the taller creature looks impressed. He also knows he isn’t dealing with a college girl, with a woman who finds her worth and purpose in the approval of other people.
They both have the grip of warriors. She meets his gaze without giggling or dropping her eyes.
“Well, I ain’t makin’ any promises,” he says, a lopsided near-smile appearing on his lips, “but I ain’t had no complaints yet, neither.” There are their beers. He picks his up for a toast. “Cheers, Izzy.”
[Izzy Montoya] “Cheers.” She drinks – and then her brow arches, slightly, and she gives him a lazy once over, ending with meeting his gaze again. Her dark eyes are direct, intelligent even while drunk, and veiled in such a way that there’s the hint of great things behind dark orbs, of secrets better left untold, of a life well lived.
She never. ever. giggles.
In fact, some would go so far as to suggest that she doesn’t laugh either. Chuckle, on occasion, but never full out belly laugh until she cries. Oh, and she NEVER cries. Mostly, her gaze is simply one of someone who’s seen too much, knows too much, and still plugs on day after day despite it.
All she says, though, is this: “That so? Of course, if they’re all children, they likely don’t know any better…” Ah, a challenge, there.
[C.J. Nash] Nash’s expression immediately flattens out, though it’s purposeful, as though he can’t fully convey his disgust unless it’s with blatant, near-cartoonish obviousness.
“That is disgusting,” he says, and takes a segueing swallow of beer before using it to point at her. “I told ya, she was old enough to drink.”
To his credit, humor is staining his tone, his eyes. It’s a self-depreciating humor, the sort of tone of one who realizes he’s fucked up, and fucked up hard. There is no pity in it. There had been anger, before, but now he’s walked it off, it seems.
[Izzy Montoya] That is disgusting, he says, and she chuckles again. He’s walked off his anger, it seems, leaving humor behind it. Good. As much as certain people think she is nothing than a pain in the ass – she’s good for something. Usually, it’s just understanding. She’s far more empathetic than she seems at first glance.
She nods, slightly. “True. Imagine how much better it is with someone who knows what they’re doing.” Someone like her, naturally. “And isn’t afraid to ask for exactly what they want…”
She takes another long drink, and then smirks at him. “Besides, I’ve been drinking since I was fuckin 12. so.”
[C.J. Nash] “Twelve, huh?”
He’s from Mississippi. Or Alabama. Or Georgia. Somewhere in there, somewhere where the accents don’t so much sound like plucked banjos but dried-up riverbeds, somewhere where he’s left so recently that the vestiges of a winter tan still remain on his flesh though the seasons only recently turned over from winter to spring. He hasn’t been here long enough to have lost it, at any rate. This man doesn’t have the permanently depressed pallor of a person who is overly acclimated to long nights and limited amounts of sunlight.
Moral of the story being, a woman beginning to drink, or screw, or work at an early age doesn’t seem to either impress or horrify him. It’s as though she told him she got her first tetanus shot late in life.
“Well, hell, you didn’t say you were from the South, we might’a been neighbors!”
[Izzy Montoya] “Hush your mouth!” She says, as if she’s really offended, though it’s clear she’s not at all. “Chicago-bred. Born and raised and here all but for an unfortunate stint in Mi-fuckin-ami for the better part of a decade.”
It’s true, when one listens to her speech. There’s nothing that suggests any place other than Chicago being her home. She fits in here, the locals know her, she’s universally hated, occasionally loved… this is Home. She remembers things here that very few kinfolk do: She remembers the Sept of the Giving Tree, and those that tended it’s branches. She remembers when it had to be destroyed, though she was down south during that part of the City’s history. She remembers those that fought and died, her parents among them, just to give the new Caern a chance to open, to survive.
She remembers – but she rarely tells.
Then, she smirks. “An we mighta been – but then it’s likely you’d already know what my fuckin’ tits looked like, an’ I would have lost my only bargaining chip out there…”
[C.J. Nash] She is so brash, so blunt, that he can’t even laugh. It’s familiar. It’s what he would expect from the women to whom he finds himself attracted, were not for the fact that sometime during his formative years, he just stopped expecting a whole hell of a lot of anything. If he could at least expect that women–girls–were just going to use him, perhaps things would have turned out differently.
But, no: he expects nothing, neither mistreatment nor true love, and so that’s precisely what he ends up with. It isn’t a difficult equation, one that he can’t puzzle out with a decent eraser and a few minutes alone. If he’s expecting anything from Izzy, she’s likely begun to figure out, it’s little more than what she’s already given him: a drink or two, something to smash when he can’t articulate what it is is pissing him off about a situation he isn’t going to discuss at length, maybe some allusions to her breasts. A pretty face and a nice body, easy bantering without clear flirtation, without pretending to give a fuck about getting to know him.
It’s conversation with a woman. It isn’t novel, or something he’s forgotten about, but after whatever it is that made him break two perfectly nice beer bottles out back, it’s a nice change of pace.
“Shit,” he says. “You really are a cop, I’m havin’ flashbacks to bein’ in the goddamn service.”
[Izzy Montoya] She really IS a cop. “I really am. I got the handcuffs to prove it.” She could have said badge, she could have said gun, she could have said car. What she chooses to say is handcuffs.
Uncomplicated, Izzy.
That he expects nothing is likely the reason shes still here, still drinking, still bantering without being sickeningly flirtatious, without giggling and touching and hot whispering, blind groping. Every one else in this fucking sept expects something of her. Sometimes, it’s simply nice to not have to face that, especially when she’s in the midst of wondering just what else she has to give…
“Service? Don’t tell me. A motherfuckin’ Squid, right?”
[C.J. Nash] Izzy is conservative with her shows of amusement. The most he has gotten out of her tonight is some near-muted chuckling, the ones she’s loosed lost in the din of the crowd around them, and Nash isn’t exactly bursting with good cheer and gaiety, either. Neither of them are sad, necessarily. They aren’t depressed, wouldn’t be mistaken for the occupants of a day room on an inpatient ward, but they both have that weathered, hollowed-out look to them, as though what they’ve lived through in their thirty-odd years would have caused suicide in someone younger or weaker.
She accuses him of being a Squid, accurately guesses on the first attempt, and he coughs out a laugh.
“Shit–” There’s a barely-there pause as he has to stop himself from saying girl or darlin’ or anything else that’s going to make her get up and walk away. Maybe he’s hiccuping. “–now I gotta ask: what’s wrong with mother fuckin’ Squids?”
[Izzy Montoya] Ah, that glint in her eye, that’s outright triumph. It’s a hint of why she does what she does, why she became a detective, why she’s the most decorated – and most irritatingly often right – detective in her precinct. She’s good, and she knows it. Her guesses are better than most’s declarative fact, and her hunches are never ignored, because they are most often correct.
In short: Shes motherfuckin good.
And she’s not walking away. Likely wouldn’t even if he slipped up once or twice more, but she appreciates the stop, the hiccup, the question. She nods. “Ah, i thought you had that… damp useless look about ya.”
She gives in a second later, though, with that same little smirk, bemused. “Nothing, really. Cousins were Jarheads though – Ooorah and all that fuckin’ bullshit. Nothin really wrong with a love em an’ leave em, girl at every port sailor – not as long as he can drink and fuck and fight like a Marine. That’s what saved my cousin Dave, who was a squid. That, and he was a SEAL.”
Oh, family dinners must have been a riot at the Montoya household…
[C.J. Nash] Give him some credit: he just laughs when she tells him he looks damp and useless, laughs and lifts the mouth of his beer bottle to take another belt off of it. Without having to put forth much effort, he gets from her autobiographical information about her family. She had cousins in the Marines, they gave her the impression that there is nothing wrong with sailors who live up to the stereotypes so long as they can keep pace with the Marines.
Dave was a SEAL. Was. Either he’s dead, or retired. Like hearing the word ‘was’ in the context of the Nation, he knows better than to ask.
“I ain’t dumb enough to say I can keep up with no Marine in no fight,” he tells her, the alcohol finally beginning to loosen his speech, “but the rest of it sounds pretty accurate.” A beat, a steeling breath, and he says, “I was a Master-at-Arms for fifteen years. Nothin’ too exciting.”
[Izzy Montoya] She’s watching the reaction, and clearly that he just laughs is the one she was looking for. He gets some information from her – but nothing that is really all that important, in the grand scheme of things. He even admits that a Marine could likely best him in a fight. That gets a sound from her – approval maybe, or simply more amusement.
Dave was a SEAL. And he doesn’t ask. Point to Nash.
Master-At-Arms, he says and she arches that brow again. She chuckles, briefly. “Cousins thought I’d go into the service too. Disgruntled when I picked law enforcement instead, straight out of high school. Right up until I proved I could out shoot them, that is.”
Pride, there. A challenge maybe too. Foreplay comes in all sorts of forms, after all… “Grandfather was a Judge. Seemed fitting someone would go into the field… why not me?” The way she says Judge though – there’s more there, more under the surface to those who know the creatures that go bump in the night really do exist. Otherwise, it might simply be an affectation, a suggestion of respect earned by the old boy in his time. “Of course, I’m forever a disappointment, since I’m content being just a Detective.”
[C.J. Nash] His eyebrows lift, displaying something remotely like being impressed for the first time since they sat down and started talking, when she mentions that she can outshoot her Marine cousins. Given that he already has her number, both literally and figuratively, this doesn’t surprise him in the slightest. She’s Kinfolk. Beyond that, he can tell just from looking at her, from talking to her, from the way she carries herself, her confidence, that she’s Fenrir.
That part of him that thought, for a moment, that honesty might be more important than some semblance of a connection is extinguished with the next swallow of beer that he takes.
“I’ll tell ya what,” he says, as if he’s about to say something profound. Perhaps if he were sober, it would be staggeringly so. “Only person you gotta worry about disappointing is yourself. If you’re doin’ what you want to do, and you ain’t screwin’ nobody else over… fuck ’em. You’re a grown-ass woman.”
[Izzy Montoya] You’re a grown ass woman.
Oh if only he knew how often she’s said those exact fucking words. To members of her Tribe, to the Ahroun fucking Alpha Male Shadow Lord Dickhead, to True and Kin alike. Her well-being is her own damn concern. She’s a grown ass woman, who’s surrounded by teenagers determined to dictate the terms of her life. She’s gotten her ass beat more than once for standing firm on that thought, too.
But she remains firm in the belief, and will until she dies.
It seems to be an afterthought, an escaped murmur she had no intention of saying out loud – though it’s likely she wouldn’t have said it out loud were that the case. She has that much control – and this much confidence. “…I’m gonna fuck you so fuckin hard for that…”
And yes, that’s very much a good thing.
[C.J. Nash] There is more than one man within earshot of Izzy’s pronouncement, which–as luck should have it–is uttered between the end of one jukebox number and the beginning of another, who hears that and likely wonders what it is that tall blond-haired cock sucker did right to get her attention in the first place, let alone get her to say that. To his credit, he doesn’t gloat, or grow visibly aroused, or immediately slam down his beer and take that to mean that they’re out of here, pronto.
He clears his throat, rather than laughing at her pronouncement being tossed into the already heady bar air along with the sweat and the testosterone and the sexual frustration clinging to the majority of the population inhabiting this place.
“Should I call the cab now,” he asks, “or would you like to join me for another cigarette first?”
He couldn’t make it sound more like a euphemism if he fucking tried.
[Izzy Montoya] If she is embarrassed that the whole bar heard, it doesn’t show. Chances are, she’s not. Chances are she enjoys that every other fucking man in here is wondering just HOW he managed to get her attention, as they’d been trying steadily before he started flinging glass. A couple are wondering if they fling their bottles at the wall if it will get them even a glance.
All signs point to no. She’s made her choice of the evening – let the chips fall as they may.
She studies him a long moment after his question, lips curling at the corners into a comfortable, knowing little smirk. “They won’t let us fuckin smoke in the cab, now will they. Lead the way.”
[C.J. Nash] [PAUSE UNTIL I GET TO WORK]
[Izzy Montoya] (Hee! :) )
[C.J. Nash] [TONIGHT! WE DINE! IN GEN NIIIIIGHT!]
[C.J. Nash] His plan of attack involved remaining standing during the round of drinks, and it pays off: there is no disorientation or staggering as his blood pressure adjusts to the change in workload, and the intoxication doesn’t come crashing in unannounced or without warning. Nash is a tall man, appears taller than he actually is by virtue of his possession of a build that would have suited him well for basketball or surfing had he actually shown an ounce of interest in sports growing up. It’s that height, that wirey build, that makes it easy to peg him as a sailor versus a soldier.
So: he is standing, and does not waver when it becomes painfully obvious they’re going to have to change scenery in order to vacate the premises. Nash reaches into his back pocket, suppressing a smile when she cracks about not being able to smoke in the cab.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, pulling out his billfold, seemingly with the intent to pay for their drinks.
He won’t fight her for it. Lord knows he can pay for his own drinks, could probably survive just on his retirement if he didn’t have the looming, omnipresent threat of Garou company hanging over his head, but he’s dealing with an independent modern woman, here. She can take care of her own damn self, and likely him, too.
That had come through loud and clear: she can shoot like a Marine.
Either way, the tab is paid, and they start on out of the bar, Nash keeping close to her without grabbing her arm or looping an arm around her waist. There are no shows of possessiveness, no staking claim to territory, no real reason to let the world at large know of his intentions. Izzy had done a good enough job of that on her own, and her announcement will likely be the punchline of this story later on.
He holds the door for her as they step out the front door this time, moving past a bouncer who shoots Nash side eye the likes of which have not been seen since Claire Huxtable, and once they’re out on the sidewalk, he looks both ways to see who’s around. This section of town they’re in, last call nowhere in sight, they’re shielded by cars butted up against the curb, by empty space on either side.
Izzy only comes up to his shoulder, but any taller and he might have joined the rest of humanity in being utterly intimidated by her.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, as he’s reaching up to push hair back off her face, “it’s fuckin’ cold.”
Very romantic, Nash. Well done.
He leans the seven or so inches down, and kisses her on the mouth.
[Izzy Montoya] So, he’s standing, and has no need to wobble. She stands, and knuckles whiten with the grip on the bar as she lets the room spin a moment. Just a moment, for as drunk as she is, she isn’t THAT drunk. He reaches for his wallet, and she arches a brow. And then with a look at the bartender, she shakes her head, and with an exasperated sigh, the greasy looking fellow, shoves Nash’s money back at him, with a gruff. “The lady says ya ain’t paying. It’s taken care of.”
Izzy snorts. “Call me a lady again and it’ll fuckin cost ya another bottle, Jack. Say hi to the missus for me.” The bartender waves her off. Clearly, this isn’t her first go’round at this particular dive. And so it is, neither of them pay. She doesn’t explain.
They turn to walk out and he makes no move to be possessive, to prove to the bar he’s staked his claim for the night. Point to Nash. She, well aware of the punchline, waits until they get to the door, before she shoots a look over her shoulder and… winks at the room at large. All Nash knows is there is a sudden hoot and holler that follows them out the door.
And then, surrounded by cars, and hidden from all, he reaches to brush back her hair. She lets him, her chin lifted so that she can watch his face, his eyes, as he makes his romantic proclamation. Which is how he catches her with lips parted, laughing, when he bends to kiss her at last.
He swallows her laughter, and it fades into a soft sigh of delight as she lifts a hand to slide cool fingers along the back of his neck. She is no novice – he didn’t expect her to be, and she proves him correct. She arches her back into him, and fingers curl into his hair, muscles flexing to hold him there, against her, as she promises without words that she’ll make good on the promise inside.
Right here, if he wants – brazen hussy that she is…
[C.J. Nash] Neither of them are fumbling, insecure teenagers, never having known the touch of their preferred gender before in their lives. When Nash leans down to kiss her, it isn’t with an overwrought, contrite line about her eyes, or how glad he is he met her tonight, how beautiful she is. He has to know she’d like to hear that; he also has to know, at this point, that he doesn’t need to ply her, to convince her that the decision she’s making is the right one.
She’s made up her own damn mind, whether or not she’s drunk, with or without Nash putting forth any sort of effort. What’s attractive, to her, is, perhaps, that he is not obviously trying. He’s just here, and the fact that they made it back inside to talk about things of mild importance rather than breaking bottles for the rest of the night speaks of the power of her empathy rather than her persuasion or the pull of her sensuality.
It hadn’t been the promise of sex at the end of the tunnel that got him back inside. All it was was not being alone. That they’re standing out on the sidewalk in the frigid cold kissing instead of continuing to shoot the shit says something: the lack of pretense, perhaps, betrays an intent to continue the conversation in the morning.
Maybe they’re both just not all that complicated, for as battered as they are.
One set of fingers in her hair, the other hand moves to her hip, slides up around her body as she arches into him. Within seconds that kiss has gone from one of exploratory but not hesitant greeting to deep; for two intoxicated adults it would be easy to lose track of air and time kissing like this. They remain upright, likely because he ends up pressing her against the brick wall of the building, and it’s that slamming contact of her smaller body against solid structure that has him pulling back.
“Shit,” he gasps; in the darkness outside, in the dim light of the bar, it’s impossible to tell what color each others’ eyes are. His find hers anyway, a smile threatening to pull at his lips. “Better get that cab.”
[Izzy Montoya] She doesn’t hold back the reactions he brings to her in the rapidly deepened kiss. Where she is cool under fire, caustic at times, strong always, determined to a fault… when he kisses her, and she returns the favor, there is no doubt left as to where this is going tonight. Conversation will wait until tomorrow.
The thump against the brick wall brings an off to her lips, but she doesn’t push him away, doesn’t let him pull back at first – but only for a second before her hold eases. fingers curl in the hair at the nape of his neck, short nails scraping lightly as she lets the familiar smirk sliding over her lips fall into something more near an actual grin.
“Yeah.” She doesn’t move so much as shift her hips to press against his, her slender form lean and strong though trapped between him and the unforgiving brick. “My place isn’t too far from here.”
Translation – her place. Not his. Her comfort priority still.
[C.J. Nash] Her place isn’t too far from here.
He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t quail at the thought of going home with a woman he has just met. There isn’t a guidebook for one-night stands; there are entire rows of books dedicated to the subject of what comes after, of how to perfect the art of the relationship when relationships, as a rule, are long and rocky and nothing that anyone can possibly perfect because human beings, themselves, are not perfect. Neither of them, here, is remotely near perfect.
Were they not both drunk, were they not lucky to be able to make it from the building’s front door to the stairwell to the front door of her apartment, through the maze-like realm of her living space. It’s entirely possible they end up on the couch before they end up in the bedroom. It’s entirely possible parts and pieces will end up missing between yesterday and the next morning, when they wake up nude and entangled, Nash sleeping beside her, face-down, with his arm thrown over her chest.
When the bleary sun climbs in through the curtains, that may be when she sees the faded glyph on his right upper arm, older than his oldest child likely, put there by an inexpert artist.
He’s Fenrir.
Son of a bitch.
[Izzy Montoya] She is not the type to wake up quickly, snapping into coherence when the light starts to filter through her windows. No, she’s the type that is dragged grudgingly toward the waking world, forced to pry open her eyes, only to have them slam shut again.
…then peek through narrowed slits to see if the man who’s arm is currently thrown over her, is the same one she remembers bringing back home the night before. Usually it is. Sometimes it’s not. Today is, apparently, a usual day.
She lets her eyes close again, against the thud in her temples. Fingers, strong and smooth, slide over his arm as she rolls to her side to face him – which is when she sees the glyph. “…son of a bitch.” She snorts, then. She’s dangerously close to making Kora proud. That can’t be fuckin’ good…
She reverses her direction, and slips out of bed. She doesn’t bother with clothing – its her fuckin’ house, and well, there’s not an inch of her he hasn’t explored. Thoroughly. Instead, she stretches, muscles aching with the knowledge she’d made good on her promise announed to the entire bar the night before. Then, she’s making her way quietly to the bathroom. Moments later to the kitchen. Soon after that, the scent of coffee brewing follows her back into the room.
Where she simply climbs back into bed, and slips back under his arm, pressing her now cooled skin against him, stealing his warmth for her own. She made the coffee. He can retrieve it when he wakes. Her cold feet on his and chilled fingers along the small of his bac should help move that process along…
[C.J. Nash] “CHRIST–”
He had been dead asleep before that happened. While he doesn’t announce or even acknowledge this, seeing him by daylight, Nash doesn’t look as though he sleeps a whole hell of a lot. He doesn’t look brokedown exhausted, isn’t wearing every year of his age like a ring inside a tree’s trunk, yet his eyes are bruised. Exhaustion reveals itself in the stone-like stillness of his slumber, the fact that he sleeps deeper and sounder in her bed, without knowing much more than her name or her professional affiliation, than he has in weeks. Months, likely.
When Izzy slipped from bed, his arm, warm and still, had dropped onto the mattress with minimal protest. If she watched, she might have seen the way his hand followed the edge of the mattress, as though it hadn’t comprehended that she’d gone; he doesn’t stir, though, until her icy feet and fingers find his flesh. That’s when his eyes shoot open and he wakes up with that smoker-hoarse near-yell.
Then he realizes who it is, and laughs, burying his face in her shoulder. He’s quieter when he finishes his sentence.
“–on a whole wheat cracker. Met corpses got warmer hands’n you do.”
[Izzy Montoya] He laughs, his face burying in her shoulder, and she chuckles. It’s softer than those he was treated too last night, though not a full on laugh by any means. Perhaps the stories are true – she doesn’t smile. she doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t feel. Though, of course, those are all bullshit. She’s just careful who she shares them with.
She isn’t much for cuddling, really. He’ll never see her reaching to hold someone’s hand in public, or curl in under an arm for comfort. But here, morning after, it’s different, slightly. Here, she teases her hand along his skin, she works her fingers through his hair where he’s buried himself in her shoulder, she reminds herself what it feels like to wake up with a man in her bed – a man who wanted her, and hasn’t left. Yet.
“I made coffee.” Maybe it’s an apology. Probably not, as she’s still sliding those slowly warming fingers along his spine.
“And you didn’t tell me you were motherfuckin’ Fenrir.” Half amused, half accusing, but it must be all right, as she doesn’t pull away.
[C.J. Nash] To look at him, Nash isn’t much of a cuddler, either. He has soft patches, like every aging male does, though once she gets him in the daylight, his body still laid bare, she can see his soft patches are not prominent. He has a bit of extra weight around his midsection, yet to call it ‘extra’ when the rest of him doesn’t even hit the fiftieth percentile is just splitting hairs at this point. What makes the average person believe him to be good at hugging, at cuddling, are the ghosts of muscles in his arms, the warmth that pervades his body, that lingers in his demeanor like the dying embers in a fire that has long since gone out.
Still, he’s the one who wakes up half on top of her; he’s the one who’s nuzzling her, as it were, who’s content to lie still against her where a younger man would be in a fiery-assed hurry to collect his clothes and get his ass out of there before she dared ask for his number or found out his age was off by a few years.
Nash isn’t going anywhere.
She tells him she made coffee, as though to forgive herself the fact that she nearly freeze-dried his flesh, and he shivers, once, before deciding he will not be moving just yet, thank you very much.
And he didn’t tell her he was mother fuckin’ Fenrir.
With a groan, he lifts his head up out of her shoulder, resting his chin against the head of her arm to peer back at her with eyebrows lifted in cursory surprise, eyes half-heartedly pleading for forgiveness a second later. Quarter-heartedly. It’s a fleeting thing, and insincere besides.
“No,” he says. “No, I did not.” He clears his scarred lungs, keeping his mouth closed, and adds, “Didn’t seem too important last night.”
[Izzy Montoya] She watches the expressions dance through his eyes – eyes she can tell the color of now, where last night, they hadn’t even bothered to hit the lights. It was more important to feel than to see, to explore with touch and tongue and breath and voice than with sight. Now, in the morning light, what she sees isn’t anything that would have her shooing him off into the city, hastening his journey. If anything, that brief and barely there apology in his gaze gets his desired result.
“It wasn’t.” A beat. “Isn’t really now, either.”
She doesn’t ask if he knew who she was, what she is other than just a detective last night. It, too, doesn’t seem to matter. It’s as immaterial as the scar under his chin – bullet wound, should he look.
“Though you’ve gotten me dangerously close to making the Jarl proud of me, and that, fucker, is just not ok.” But she ruins it with the way her lips tug at the corners into a lopsided half grin.
[C.J. Nash] [PAUSE]