(no subject)

[headed4hell]

Grace is mad.

She's pissed because her Aunt Cathy, the woman who taught her how to blow smoke rings, isn't who Grace thought she was. She's pissed that her brother Leo figured it out and never clued her in, sitting on the secret in his shrine of a basement for years. And damn, she's pissed because all this makes her feel for her perpetually disapproving mom.

There's more to it than that -- her Dad, that day, even Henry's poor cat Molly -- but Grace isn't big on self-reflection.

When she pushes the door open with her butt and notices she's in the bar, Grace's stormy expression doesn't change. There's a brief pause and surprised blink, nothing more, then she continues into the room like this had been her destination all along. Grace marches up to Bar, leans over and grabs a bottle of beer, flicking ash at the tab board with a grunt. The stool she'd climbed on to do so becomes her seat; the one next to it is savagely kicked out of the way.

Lashing out doesn't help her mood any. Turning her attention to people watching, she sits there with her beer and her smoke like a champagne cork about to pop its way free of a bottle.

Comments

[hallelujahpilot]

The kicking of the stool makes Trudy jump (not that she's jumpy, or that movements and noises out of the corner of her eye make her hand ghost by her handgun), and she looks over.

Someone's in a Mood, it seems.

[headed4hell]

If Earl happened to be here, he could share one of his pearls of wisdom with Trudy: Grace is always in a mood, of one sort or another. Part of her charm.

The beer bottle hovers in the air, partway to Grace's mouth. Her eyes are now trained on the younger woman's face. Eventually she takes that drink and seems to relish the hell out of it.

"Hey."

Grace doesn't apologize much.

[hallelujahpilot]

Easily enough, "Hey. Long day?"

[headed4hell]

"Yeah."

Holding her smoke between her lips, Grace shrugs out of her green jacket. Her tight shirt is tucked into even tighter jeans, her badge and gun clearly visible at her hip. She thinks about the question as she moves, trying to remember when she'd last slept, and snorts a little to herself.

"Family shit, work shit," Grace adds, her Oklahoma accent made thicker by the cigarette she's trying to speak around. "Couple a bad hangovers."

[hallelujahpilot]

Trudy, in contrast, is dressed in her flightsuit, which is loose enough for comfort, even if her gunbelt pulls in tight across her hips. Handgun on her right thigh, dark khaki singlet clearly seen with how low she has her flightsuit zipped, and there is a Bible locket at her throat.

Still, she looks entirely at home with it all.

At Grace's comments, her mouth pulls crookedly to the side. "Yeah, know the feelin'" Her own accent is something what you'd get if you take a Texan girl and then shove her into Peru, New Jersey, and in Marine bases all over the globe.

She is also totally not eying that cigarette with the longing of someone who has quit, damnit, totally quit.

[headed4hell]

Grace finally rescues the cigarette and takes a long pull, eyes narrowed, using the time she holds it in her lungs to better study Trudy.

"They got a miracle cure for 'em here?" she asks, words and smoke mixed together. "They should."

For all of the above, really.

She flicks a battered soft pack on the bar. "Want one?"

[hallelujahpilot]

"I quit."

[thursdays_angel]

This is a teammate Castiel has not seen in some time.

She had been in a better mood. When last he saw her.

Castiel watches the display in curious silence for several moments. Before retrieving the abused bar stool and carrying it back to its place.

"Hello, Grace."

[headed4hell]

It's true.

She hasn't seen him in ages.

The same cannot be said of Earl, unfortunately.

"Cas."

Both eyebrows go up. She smiles a little, but it's not up to her usual wattage.

"How the hell are ya?"

At no point does she appear to notice or care that he's replaced the stool.

[thursdays_angel]

"I am well."

Castiel lines the stool up carefully with the others.

"I have been conducting maintenance on the ball field.

Mowing grass can be fairly meditative.

[headed4hell]

"Maintenance, huh?"

Her eyes flick to the lake door and back to his face.

"This is a magical bar, man. You tellin' me there isn't some kind of spell for that?"

Not that she minds. Grace had a lot of fun with that baseball game and hopes another happens again soon.

[thursdays_angel]

"The grass had grown quite high."

Castiel watches as a couple of waitrats pass by with trays, and shrugs slightly.

"I find that I enjoy the work."

He looks back to Grace.

"Have you been well?"

[headed4hell]

Grace eyes him and mimics his shrug.

"That so? Well, you run out of grass to cut, I've got a jungle in my backyard. Bighead Gushead likes it short."

Does Earl do chores? She'll have to ask.

"Sure."

Beat.

"Real well. Still breathin'."

A certain belligerence winds through her tone, offset by the hurt and anger in her eyes that she can't quite hide.

[morethanprops]

The kicked stool hits Moist's leg as he walks up to the Bar and he glares at her biting back a curse,

"Gods, watch what you're doing."

[headed4hell]

"I was."

This is true.

"Didn't mean to hit you, man."

Also true.

"Won't happen again."

This is not.

[morethanprops]

"Fine, I just want a drink."

Some of the stationery he just stole from the bank is now floating to the floor and Moist stoops to pick it up and tuck it into his suit pocket.

[headed4hell]

"You and me both."

Prissy but cute, Grace decides.

"It's on me. Least I can do," she says, almost but not quite sounding like she means it, eyebrows raised as she tries to get a better look at the paper. This involves leaning sideways at a rate that would normally topple a person from the stool, but she straightens easily when the stationery is safely tucked away. "What'll you have?"

[morethanprops]

"Bearhugger's on the rocks, thanks."

The paper has an image of a cabbage on it and something about a bank. Once the paper's tucked away he smiles at her,

"Sorry, I've had a long day."

[headed4hell]

"Yeah," she replies tonelessly, "that's goin' around."

Grace doesn't return the smile, just stares at him in mild disbelief.

"Bearhugger's? That Canadian or something?"

[isaysimplewords]

Cal's been in the bar for a little while now, at a carefully-chosen table, keeping an eye out for Tom Riddle. Because he's actively watching the room, he sees Grace right away as she stalks in, and raises an eyebrow as she kicks over the stool.

"You all right?" The obviousness of a question has never in any way been a deterrent to Cal in asking it. It's still a conversation starter.

[headed4hell]

It is.

If the person asked is feeling talkative and not, say, like she wants to start throwing punches or better yet, curl up around her big lug of a dog and block out all the shit for a while.

Grace pins Cal with an unblinking stare, her breath puffing in and out, louder and louder, until she suddenly marches up to him and stops just short of a full on collision.

She looks like she might take a swing.

Instead, she throws her arms around him and holds on tight. As Cal already knows, there's a surprising amount of strength in that small frame.

[isaysimplewords]

Cal starts when Grace's arms go around him. He'd thought for a second or two that she might, in fact, take a swing, and that drawing her attention may not have been the best idea in the world (or may have spared an innocent bystander), so the embrace is a surprise and a relief all at once.

He reaches up, still seated, to wrap his arms around her without even thinking about it.

[headed4hell]

Bonelessly, Grace leans into it and him, almost landing in his lap, while her foot hunts for and finds a nearby chair leg. She drags the chair in close; pulls back a little without meeting his eyes. Her fingers form fists around Cal's shirt and tug, then gently push him away.

She lowers herself down in the recently procured chair and props her elbow on the table. Absently, she traces her bottom lip with her finger.

Still not looking directly at Cal.

"Yeah."

Beat.

"People can bite me."

[isaysimplewords]

Cal settles back into his chair and picks up the coffee mug that, luckily, he had not been holding a few seconds ago. He watches Grace with concern.

"People suck," he agrees. This isn't as true for him as it used to be, but that's hardly important right now.

[headed4hell]

"Damn straight."

Everything from his shoes to his coffee mug is studied before she finally looks up. Seeing the concern in his gaze, she takes it and serves it back to him with her own "You all right?"