milliways_bar | Happy Hour

Entry tags:

Happy Hour

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.]

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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.

"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'."

"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."

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.

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?"

"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.

Tavi can understand that job. He's a great believer in enforcing justice and peace and Crown law.*

It almost makes him a little more charitable towards her.

He nods a little, filing the terms away in his head. His eyes flick to her badge and then to her gun, noting them and what they likely mean.

He may not have a coin yet, but he's already got a couple knives being stashed away sometimes. Not as many as Ehren tends to carry, but... well. He's got them accessible, anyway.

*And where the law is unjust or inconvenient, changing so he can keep upholding it.

She shifts on her stool a little, going up on one hip to give him a better view of both badge and service weapon. A weary look crosses her face and settles in; as if feeling it, Grace presses her lips together and nods at his books.

"What're you studyin'?"

Grace doesn't want to think about what she sees on the job, or off it. She doesn't want to think about the photo-

(There's a photo of you and your father that was published a lot. Did he say anything to you in that moment?

I... I didn't even know it was him.)

-or the fact that her dead father is having a firehouse dedicated to him today. She especially doesn't want to think of Earl.

(She is anyway.)

Tavi looks at her thoughtfully for a moment. He gets the sense she needs some kind of a distraction, and although--despite his tending duties--he is honestly loathe to help with that, he figures after a moment he might as well.

So it is that a pair of frank green eyes is studying her. "Modern literature," he says with a bit of a shrug. "We're sort of at the end of the semester, so some of the really recent works have come up. Things dealing with the last fifteen or twenty years, the changes in the Realm, that sort of thing."

Some Aleran writing has gotten a lot more depressing, with civil war on the horizon and their golden prince dead without an heir, Tavi has noted. Really depressing.

He sometimes feels it's like they're giving up the fight before it's started.

"I always liked the gritty modern stuff over the classics," she tells him. "What kind of changes?"

For her part, Grace gets the sense this kid doesn't like her much. Too bad. There have been moments when he almost reminds her of her nephew Clay. And Grace loves Clay. She'd do anything for him, even tell off an angel.

It's not that he dislikes her, it's just... he's not entirely in a mood to be friendly, and cop or not, she's not the kind of personality he entirely gets along with.

Honestly? If she were on the job and needed help, he'd probably like her better. He has respect for law enforcement.

He seems to be considering her as he watches her face. "Princeps Gaius Septimus died in battle fifteen, sixteen years ago," he says after a moment. "And he didn't have siblings, and never married. Even before that, the House of Gaius hasn't been... particularly numerous, in any of our history, but this last branch was pretty much a single line. There's been quiet undercurrents of unrest for a while, and it's been getting worse now that there's no heir to the Crown."

The narration can pause for appropriate laughter points in that whole statement.

Honestly? If she were on the job and needed help, she wouldn't ask for it anyway.

She's only asked for help once in recent memory, and just look where it got her. Or who, to be accurate.

"Any action or just a lot of talk?" she asks, her cop face on.

Tavi's eyes grow hard--clearly not at her, or anyone present. It's an odd expression on him: he looks young still, but the expression is oddly mature, and not one that'll change in the years to come.

"Not much action that I know of until recently," he says candidly, "and still all rather... covert and unprovable, where action has happened. People are moving into place."

"Hell."

That look in his eyes tells her something.

It says he's extraordinary; maybe in ways she can't recognize yet, but he is. It also says he's seen too much, and that is a look she recognizes.

"Your leader any good at playing chess?"

Which is, of course, her way of asking if he's staying one step ahead of the dissenters.

Tavi's first reaction is to give her a mildly puzzled look.

"Chess?"

No, he hasn't heard the term before.

"Yeah."

Eyes dropping, she sneaks another look at his clothes and appears to address her explanation to them.

"It's a board game. Uses a checkerboard. There's two players, each trying to out strategize the other. You start with a certain number of pieces and try to," she looks up, snapping her fingers, "capture them. Checkmate."

"Oh!" Tavi's eyes show instant comprehension. "Ludus, then."

And then he smiles a little, geeky eagerness patently obvious in him. "I only know a few basic rules, and I always wanted to learn how to play. I've picked up a little since starting at the Academy."

Where by 'a little' we mean that in another half year to a year he could probably try for Master status in the Real World and get it.

And then he smiles a little, faintly. "I've never played the First Lord, so I wouldn't know." But something in his eyes is sparkling oddly. He has a Sacred Right he doesn't really know about yet.

(There's an intriguing thought--but it's also really presumptuous for a page and Cursor-in-training. And not something that the First Lord would ever even want to do, or have time to do.)

"Sure."

Ludus it is. Grace laughs, amused and gratified at his enthusiasm.

"You ever meet a guy named Earl here, be sure to ask for some tips. He's gotta be good. Tell him I sent ya."

She grins.

"Here's hoping he is."

"All right," Tavi says agreeably enough. Chess won't exactly be ludus--and in fact, it'll be simpler, with fewer pieces and no skyboard. Tavi'll kick butt at it.

And then he smiles again, boyish and a little mischievous and for all the world like he knows things he isn't saying. "Mmm. Here's hoping."

He knows Sextus can make mistakes--Second Calderon springs to mind--but that he is, for the most part, highly competent and intelligent and protective of his Realm is never in doubt in Tavi's mind.

"All right."

Approval in her eyes -- mischief and playing your cards close to your chest being two approaches to life she tends to favor -- she slides off her stool and grabs her beer bottle.

"I'll drink to that." She does. "You have a good one, kid. Hope it all turns out."

And she's gone, wandering back to the pool table.

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Happy Hour

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