(no subject)

[headed4hell]

Grace saunters out of Captain Perry's office, already tapping a cigarette from her pack, and tries not to smile. The guys are all looking at her, thinking she's in trouble with their new boss. Quite the opposite. Perry's an old friend from Vice and if Grace loved laughter any less, she'd warn Butch about being all UT in her face, at least for awhile; but he’s been a big boy in a unit full of Sooner fans for years now. It'll be entertaining.

She shoulders open the door to Major Crimes, then the stairwell, and mutters a half-hearted curse. Milliways. A few days without Earl’s making her soft. Whatever, it’s still a bar. Better to smoke with a drink than without one.

When Bar gives her the note, Grace tosses back her head and laughs. She looks at it again; laughs again.

"Sure thing. I could use time to think."

Because pouring drinks in between drinking her own will help her figure out why the motel manager got dead in one of his guest rooms. Obviously. Pushing her hair back, she pulls some not-so-random drink ideas from the proffered book and goes to work on the specials board.

HAPPY HOUR!

Absolut Hell
Holy Water
Jack and coke
and
Shots of Yukon Jack

Dance with the bartender, get a free shot. Bartender's choice.

Smirking, Grace rummages around behind Bar until she finds the sound system remote and cranks the volume to almost too loud. The classic rock already playing suits her fine. Time to shake up this place, she thinks. Time to shake Earl loose.

"Belly up, people. What'll be?"

(tiny tags: Grace Hanadarko, Cal Chandler, Michael, the Pirate King)

Comments

[isaysimplewords]

The music grabs Cal's attention - for a number of reasons, not just the volume - and he grins when he sees who's behind the Bar. He gets up and makes his way over.

"Hey, Grace."

[headed4hell]

Well if that doesn't just start things out nicely. Grace beams over her shoulder at Cal and dances in a slow circle that manages to be provocative without too much conscious effort.

"Hey, handsome."

[isaysimplewords]

Cal watches this appreciatively.

"How've you been?" he asks.

[headed4hell]

Her boss died in her arms, she's inexplicably but unavoidably connected to a death row inmate and a freakin' angel has become a huge pain in her ass.

"Can't complain," she says. "You?"

The dancing stops so she can light her smoke, but she keeps swaying.

[mnt_raph]

"What's Yukon Jack?" asks the bald guy in black who just sidled up to Bar. Pay no attention to the Milliways Badge around his neck. He's not on duty yet.

[headed4hell]

Grace has yet to run into any of the bar's security force, but a badge is a badge. She notices.

Her own is on her belt, along with the glock.

"Dunno. Think it's a whiskey," she answers in short, rapid bursts. The Oklahoma accent is thick. Grace laughs and adds, "Canadian whiskey."

[mnt_raph]

His eyebrows go up at that. Canadian Whiskey. Huh.

"Guess that means it's nicer'n regular whiskey, but tastes like moose. Eh, what the fuck."

Time away didn't softened Raph's New York accent, it sharpened it.

"Eh," he says as an afterthought.

[headed4hell]

With a snort, she grabs the bottle of Yukon Jack she'd found, slaps two shot glasses on the bar and haphazardly fills them. Whiskey gets all over the wood, but seeing as how it's sentient, she just grins and leaves it.

Okay, she'd probably leave it anyway.

"Eh," she echoes, tapping the shot glasses together and handing him his. Her whiskey is gone before his is out of her hand; she turns the glass over on the bar, then chases the shot with Budweiser. "Damn."

[watching_you]

The voice is very, very faintly familiar, but the face isn't.

From further along the bar, Raph's got himself a watcher.

[3rdtimelucky.livejournal.com]

More through convenient timing than in response to the bartender's call, a gorgeously rich blonde saunters up in a low cut top, body hugging jeans and a well-worn pair of ankle boots. She gives the Specials Board an appraising look over and then does the same to the woman standing near it.

"Cute."

Her assessment is accompanied by a slight smirk.

[headed4hell]

The once over doesn't go unnoticed. Grace gives as good as she gets, while she dances a little closer to the blonde. Finishing a twirl with a stomp of her own worn cowboy boots, she replies,

"Thanks. Been working out."

At very odd hours.

"Nice hair." Great jeans.

[3rdtimelucky.livejournal.com]

Goldy's smirk broadens appreciatively at the compliment, and at the other woman's moves.

"Thanks yourself," she drawls.

"One hundred percent natural. Fairy tale guaranteed."

[headed4hell]

"Goldilocks," Grace surmises (sort of), motioning toward the woman's hair with a jerk of her chin. "Used to call my sister that when we were little."

It drove her crazy.

"Want a drink?" It's only fair, as she's helping herself to a bottle of Jack.

[mnt_raph]

"That's what they tell me," says Raph nursing his beer.

[3rdtimelucky.livejournal.com]

"They being the three blind mice?" Goldy replies, without looking over.

Now she turns, and feigns surprise.

"Oh. Hi there, Raph. Thought you were someone else."

He gets a grin and a good-natured elbow jab in the wake of all that.

[mnt_raph]

"Uh huh. Pull the other one, it's got bells."

Raph's not entirely sure what that means, but it's got the right sort of emotion backing it.

"How goes, Goldy?"

[agloriousthing]

The music brings the Pirate King out and he struts over as his own music adds another element to everything,

"Oh you tempt me so, fair lady. How may I please you?"

[headed4hell]

Grace laughs and leans over the bar, on her elbows, which means her feet are mostly off the floor.

"Please me? Shit, man. What're my options?"

[agloriousthing]

So he moves to join her, with his height soon his lips might almost touch hers,

"Gold to bedeck you, myself to satisfy you, all you need to do is ask for I am the Pirate King."

The music swells in the background.

[theunsmiling]

"Can I get a coffee? Black?"

There's a stick-thin woman leaning against the bar, hip cocked, flyaway dark hair falling into her eyes.

Her T-shirt is red. Bright red. It has Ronald McDonald on it -- or someone very much like that. Her jeans are torn.

She's not smiling.

"It's been one of those days."

[headed4hell]

Grace stops dancing and takes a drag on her cigarette. It, like everything else she does, isn't done halfway, and only after she exhales in a series of smoke rings does she answer.

"Sure," and her voice has gone gravelly, like the smoke singed the lining of her throat. "Tell me about it."

It's commiserating, not pushy.

"Seems to be going around," she adds, locating first a mug, then the coffee pot.

[theunsmiling]

Michael snorts. It's not a very attractive sound.

"It is, at that. You'd think people would get less -- intransigent with age. Or experience."

The twist to her mouth is just the littlest bit sour.

"Or at least learn patience. And forethought."

[watching_you]

There was a bar, not terribly far from the Academy. On Friday nights it'd play older hits, classic stuff: Zepplin, Dylan, the Beatles from Sgt. Pepper's on. And every week at midnight sharp, Livin' on a Prayer would come on and the whole bar would (drunkenly, terribly,) sing along. Mainly the chorus. By midnight, no one ever remembered the rest of the words.

Veronica never thought she'd see Milliways turn into that bar, but she doesn't entirely mind.

(She will if she has to shout for her beer, though.)

"Get me a Bud?"

[headed4hell]

See, Raph? Budweiser's good enough for some people.

"Comin' right up," the bartender -- short, blondish, compact and capable -- calls back.

She pulls two beers from the cooler, goes back for a third, and pops off the top just before handing one to her latest customer. She then relieves the other two of their tops and takes a drink from the one in her left hand.

"Want a glass?"

[watching_you]

"Uh --"

Okay. The bartender is playing Edward Bottlehands. Good times.

"I'm good, thanks."