Happy Hour

[student_of_impossibility]

It's apparently that time of year all over the multiverse, as evidenced by the Special's board.

Specials:.
Finals Night
Maestro
Nutty Professor

If you catch the bartender while he's stealing a minute or two to himself, you may notice the boy has several books piled up behind the Bar, one of them open. He also has some papers he's writing on. He also has a couple fading bruises and scratches and a split lip.

[ooc: sorry about running late; mun got a headache and may be slightly slow, but happy hour's open now, so.]

Comments

[headed4hell]

"Oklahoma City," is her rapid fire answer. "Earth."

Big brown eyes crinkle at the corners and look him up and down again.

"You know Max?"

The expression is interesting, but it doesn't change anything about how she interacts with him. He looks young, yes, but Grace has never seen any sense in talking down to kids.

If anything, it makes her wonder more at the bruises and split lip.

[student_of_impossibility]

Mentions of Earth always make him curious. He mentally sounds out Oklahoma--it's a bizarre combination of sounds, as far as he's concerned.

And then he blinks once or twice.

"I know a Max, although it's not exactly an uncommon name," he says almost cautiously. He doesn't know what she knows.

Besides, this is starting to hit dangerous ground. Max knows his future, to a point.

[headed4hell]

"Big guy," she clarifies, helpfully. "Real big."

Grace smirks.

"Said he was from Alera."

Luckily for Tavi, Grace and Max didn't do a lot of talking.

"What happened to your lip?"

Straightforward. Not at all condescending.

[student_of_impossibility]

"Broken nose, likes his ale?" Tavi confirms.

And women, he doesn't add--but he's guessing that already.

He shrugs, fluidly, in a shoulder-rolling sort of way. "Just a discussion that got out of hand," he says quietly.

Brencis manages to keep him fairly consistently bruised, even aside from the Cursor training.

[headed4hell]

"That's the guy."

It's faintly approving.

Grace is staring again, over the beer bottle. "Another student?"

[student_of_impossibility]

"He's fairly unmistakable," Tavi says wryly.

There's also a hint of underlying fondness. Max is Max.

He nods a little, shrugging again. "We're in a class or two together."

[headed4hell]

Good. She's glad she doesn't have to ask whether or not it was Max. He really is big, and she'd have trouble kicking his ass without whipping out her Glock.

"What's his problem?"

[student_of_impossibility]

Tavi shrugs a little, face and eyes utterly unreadable. An eyebrow has gone up ever so slightly, in what is an unconscious emulation of the imperious expression Sextus can get when he doesn't want to be communicative.

"You assume the problem is his."

After all, it's possible he started it.

[headed4hell]

"Yeah. I do."

Her gaze is steady.

"You don't seem like an asshole."

Nor a bully, though...

"You could've lost your temper," she shrugs. "Happened to me a time or two."

Lots of times.

[student_of_impossibility]

"I try not to lose my temper," he says quietly. "It's rarely productive."

It's more that very little truly leaves him in a rage. He's too cold-blooded for most things to bother him, but there are a few. Hurting his friends and family is one.

Besides, he knows he can't beat Brencis now, even going full-out. It won't be for another year and a half or so that Tavi losing his temper constitutes a few young Citizens beaten mostly unconscious.

[headed4hell]

Grace snorts. "I don't know. Makes me feel better."

She shakes another cigarette from the nearly crushed soft pack she keeps in her back pocket.

"So. What's his problem?" she repeats.

[student_of_impossibility]

"It doesn't make me feel better."

That he can think of, anyway. Throughout his life, he's destructive enough that the results of that rage always leave him rather sick inside.

And then he shrugs again, that rolling motion. "We have... distinctly incompatible perspectives."

On just about everything, really.

[headed4hell]

Grace is good at escaping that feeling.

Too good.

"On what? Not football," she tosses in with a quick smile. "What set it off?"

[student_of_impossibility]

Tavi never escapes that feeling, and it's a trait he values.

He opens his mouth to answer, then closes it--and suddenly he smiles, and it's the most normal expression that's been on his face yet.

"Nothing really needed to," he says ruefully. It's him and Brencis, that's all.

[headed4hell]

"Nice smile."

It is.

After commenting on that fact, however, Grace rolls her eyes toward the ceiling and blows smoke at the rafters.

Not smoke rings.

There won't be any more of those for a while.

"Sometimes I feel like that with my sister Paige. Never punched her for it." Not recently, anyway. "Okay. What was it about this time?"

She waves her cigarette at his face without looking down.

[student_of_impossibility]

Tavi starts coughing when she waves the cigarette in his face.

That is so very much not something he's used to, and he decides in that instant he doesn't like it. At all.

She also gets a momentarily startled and rather confused expression at her first comment. Tavi's not the one who gets complimented on his looks, after all. (Despite actually being quite pretty.)

"I don't have any siblings," he remarks almost absently before sighing.

With another fluid shrug he answers, "Truthfully? I'm not even sure. We disagree on just about everything, and there's... social reasons for him to dislike me on principle."

If either of them knew they've inherited their father's schoolyard feuding, at least one of them--and not Tavi--would be even more enthusiastic about the business.

[headed4hell]

She calls them like she sees them, when she doesn't have reason to lie.

"You can have Paige," she says, quirking an eyebrow at the cough. She takes a moment to determine if it's real or one of those annoying fake coughs non-smokers -- especially her mom -- do rather than ask you to put out a cigarette, then crushes hers in an ashtray. "I'll keep all my brothers."

Even Leo, as much as he rubbed her nerves raw today.

"What're those?"

[student_of_impossibility]

"I don't think I'd know what to do with a sister," he says half-heartedly. "Or brothers, for that matter."

Only partially true, really: he remembers Adie and baby Petra.

He gives her a little half-smile and vague, dismissive gesture which say absolutely nothing at all. "Again, simple disagreements, family, geography, history, friends, associates... anything and everything, really."

[headed4hell]

"Amazing," Grace comments. "Not a lot of people do that well."

She tilts her head.

"Say so much but not actually say a damn thing."

A smiles dashes across her face.

"Geography. Like us and Longhorns, I guess."

[student_of_impossibility]

Tavi looks at her, his expression genuinely puzzled. "I don't follow."

Beat.

"What are Longhorns?"

The confused look is utterly real--or it looks it, anyway. Tavi can lie to Isana and watercrafters of her skill; he can pull that off without trouble. He's utterly disregarding the first half of what she said.

[headed4hell]

"Football team. University of Texas," she explains.

Unhelpfully, no doubt.

Grace's eyes run over his face, then she taps her index finger against Bar and asks, "Ever seen a map of the US, on Earth? Texas and Oklahoma are right next to each other. Got a good rivalry goin'."

[student_of_impossibility]

"N-no," Tavi says, expression still puzzled and a little wary.

Yeah, she's being unhelpful in a special way. He almost admires it--or he would, if it weren't so irritating at the moment.

"And football's... a sport. And this matters enough to cause regions to have huge rivalries."

[headed4hell]

Butch, another member of the squad, played ball for Texas. Their captain calls him Benny.

For Benedict Arnold.

Yeah, it matters.

"Hell yeah it does. Trust me," she snorts, "drunk football fans are scarier than half the crap I see on the job."

That's a lie.

Especially since she's usually one of the drunk fans.

[student_of_impossibility]

That just earns her an utterly skeptical look.

Rivalries like that, in Alera? Tend to be resolved at swordpoint and often on a battlefield. With more dead, afterward, than were strictly necessary.

"Job?"

[headed4hell]

"I'm a cop."

Beat.

"Police detective."

Beat.

"Keeper of the peace."

She does what she can to make sure the football field is as close to that as they get, and busts those who think differently.