milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Grace is pissed.

For the moment she's hiding it well beneath her casual disregard for anything around her other than the Budweiser in her hand, but her friends would notice something simmering under the disinterest.

Good thing they aren't here.

She'd left the bar and the surprise family cabal only to find Earl sitting at her counter with the freaking brochures she'd just thrown away. Belching, she deleted her sister's messages and ignored Earl's latest attempts to impress upon her the importance of family values. It was a relief when he flashed the wings and disappeared to Vegas or the Titanic or wherever the hell he said he was going. She doesn't care. She never cares.

But she doesn't feel like being alone. These days, that means finding Mike and making some trouble, so here she is, lurking around the main bar with a beer and a somewhat vacant expression, waiting for trouble. Yee-haw.

[OOC: Also for car keys, all are welcome, slowtime likely, etc.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wouldn't it be more like going to door handing out copies of The Watchtower?

Either way, Scott and Stiles are totally not buying what Derek's selling.

"Sure. The hospital's got security cameras, that'll show Derek was there."

That part's easy enough.

"We can't prove he was on the bus when the driver was attacked though. I mean, Scott remembers it, but I'd rather not get into why Scott was there."

Grace snorts.

"Listen, kid."

Looks like he's destined to always be a kid to Grace. Good thing she likes kids.

"I get why your buddy Scott's involved." She mimes a toothy wolf snarl. "And I get that you're concerned. But."

Beat.

"You been formally deputized by the Beacon Hills P.D.?"

Meaningful eyebrow.

"I don't know if it was formal per se, but Tara did give me a deputy badge one time."

This is true. The badge is made of plastic.

"And I've spent more time at the station than some of the actual deputies."

Babysitters didn't really like Stiles so much, so he spent much of his tween years ~~annoying~~ hanging out with Tara and the other deputies.

He does note the eyebrow though.

"But, uh, technically? No."

He covers with another swig of beer.

"Huh," says a gruff voice just to Stiles' left. "You sure you're tall enough to be ridin' that particular ride, there kid?"

Oh look!
It's Raph!
And he's got his Security Badge hanging around his neck.

HAI RAPH!

Stiles turns. There's an unfamiliar bald guy with a badge. Well that's... awesome.

"I'm almost as tall as you, dude."

Which is perhaps not the actual point there.

"And Grace and I are friends," he adds, arm flying back and forth quickly between himself and Grace. "I've known her since I was kid—I was so much shorter then, you don't even know. Absolutely nobody riding anyone or anything."

THERE IS NO FUNNY BUSINESS HERE.

Edited 2014-09-17 00:22 (UTC)

Oh, there's plenty of funny business here.

"Speak for yourself, kid."

Grace lets out a husky chuckle, cutting her eyes at Raph in a way that could be construed as suggestive if it weren't so amused.

"Hey, Raph. Nice bling."

Raph is rolling his eyes even as he's nodding a greeting in Grace's direction.
There are too many snarky Graces in his life for his liking.

"I meant the drink, you knob."

Some people just don't appreciate their blessings from above.

"Just to clarify, who's the knob? Him or me?"

"Not me!" says Stiles, affronted by the suggestion.

He also grabs his wallet from his back pocket. He carefully slides out the ID that puts him just over 21, rather than his true age of 16.

"Tall enough for ya?"

(There's no way security at a Bar frequented by patrons from all of time and space could be an expert on counterfeit California IDs, right?)

"Jury's still out," he grumbles in Grace's direction as he swipes the ID from Stiles.

"Whoever made this did some nice work, kid."

It's a bluff, but...well, let's just see if the kid backpedals or dances.

"You mean the Department of Motor Vehicles?" Stiles asks.

Stubbornly feigning innocence is always Plans A through at least C.

"They got a brand new laminating machine this year!"

Is that taking it too far?

Is there such thing as too far?

"Jury's rigged."

Grace moves beside and slightly behind Raph, pretending to examine the I.D. along with him; hey, she's the real cop here. In reality, she makes a quick series of ridiculous faces at Stiles and opens her mouth wide in a silent guffaw.

Then, "Shit, man. The DMV's famous for their artistry."

Beat.

"But what the hell's your hair doing in this shot, kid? And who told you to smile?"

Stiles struggles not to laugh, he really does, but it's hard to keep a straight face with Grace being such a buffoon. It seems like security dude knows her, so he must be used to her quirks. Right?

"What the hell is... I'll have you know I like my hair like that!"

Stiles rubs a hand over his buzzed hair self-consciously. He cut it off for lacrosse season. It gets kinda sweaty and gross.

"And I don't know about Oklahoma, but California hasn't outlawed smiling."

Land of the free. Or whatever.

Raph's already giving a disapproving shake of his head.

"Anyone who's anyone knows you never smile for your license picture. I ain't even got one an' I know that."

As for Raph's reaction to Grace...years of dealing with his brother have left him mostly immune to tomfoolery.

Mostly.

Grace gets that. It's the brother thing. Brothers mean tomfoolery.

Sisters mean something else entirely.

Mostly.

Grace turns back to Raph, walking around so she's square in front of him, frowning down at the badge she scoops up in her palm; she smoothes the shiny metal with her thumb.

The badge gets at least as much scrutiny as Stiles's fake I.D.

"Huh. How come you ain't got one? Don't drive or don't care?"

Piercing look.

It's believed that samurai viewed their swords as the embodiment of their souls, and as such kept them clean and presentable at all times. If this is true, that a warrior's weapons are an extension of their souls, well then Raph's soul could use a good buffing.

He looks down at Grace, raising an eyebrow at her before he answers.

"Don't photograph well."

Grace would normally say that's not all of his that needs a good buffing, but Mike's told her about Abigail in detail, some of which was lost to laughter and marshmallow fluff.

The point is, Raph's got other reasons to be grumpy.

She raises an eyebrow back, face otherwise devoid of emotion.

"Yeah? I don't buy it. Maybe you just like livin' dangerous. Maybe you get your control freak brother to do all the drivin'. Don't know, don't care. I'll tell you what's really got my interest peaked." Grace drops the badge and turns to eye Stiles, presenting him with a united front of law enforcement. Or something like that, anyway. "This kid's got a real problem. The catchin' a killer kind. A weird killer. I bet you've seen some weird shit at the end of the universe, huh?"

With that she gives Stiles the subtlest of winks.

"You should tell him," pointing from Stiles to Raph, nodding.

Daaaaaamn. Grace is a freaking Jedi master of redirects. Stiles wants to learn her ways.

"Okay," he says, before launching into his furry tail. (Har har har.)

"You know how you start out thinking your world is one of the weird shit free ones? And then a werewolf starts savagely murdering the people in your town? Or, in the case of my friend Scott, biting you and turning you into a creature of the night."

There are claws involved. Big scary ones!

"I think it's Derek Hale, who we know is A) a werewolf and B) shady as hell. Grace has an alternate and frankly terrifying theory that there might be another werewolf out there."

"I've never thought that," says the ninja ex-turtle, who turns his attention back to Stiles...and the beer the kid is still holding.

But not for long. Raph reaches out and attempts to snag the beer from Stiles.
He's much faster than a dude his size strictly ought to be. It's kind of unfair, really.

"There's never just one werewolf."

Watching the bottle, Grace starts patting her jacket and pants pockets like she just remembered something.

Cigarettes.

She taps one out of her beaten up soft pack and lights it with a quick flick of her OU lighter.

"Pack animals," she says on the exhale, nodding knowingly through the smoke.

The beer was mostly gone anyway. And it sounds like the conversation might be well worth losing a few illicit swigs of beer.

"You've dealt with werewolves before?" he asks Raph, who has apparently always known his world was full of weird shit.

He turns to Grace. "You've dealt with werewolves before?" That would've been nice to bring up before.

"Those things'll give you cancer," he adds.

Raph pulls a face. It's not Stiles' place to police Grace's behavior, she's an adult. If she wants to get cancer that's her right to do so. He's just a kid, which means it's Raph's job to keep him safe until he's old enough to go to hell the way he wants to.

This time Raph leans over and cuffs Stiles on the side of the head.

"Show some respect. Lady wants to smoke, lady gets to smoke. When you're old enough to ride the cool rides you can do the same, or not. Your choice. An' yeah, I've dealt with werewolves. Ain't got many where I'm from, but the school was crawlin' with them the day of the attack."

The School being Hogwarts.

What the hell! Excuse a guy for caring. There's few enough people he likes, in his own world or this one, but sure, if Grace wants to coat her lungs in tar, he'll just sit back and let her smoke her way to an early grave. Like a cool friend would.

"Yeah, I can tell you're real big on 'respect', Mr. Police Brutality."

Stiles is used to sassing back cops—side effect of spending so much of his childhood around a police station—but there's a bit more venom in that statement than he'd use with his dad or the deputies.

His brain'll circle back to that thing about the school in a minute, but for the moment he's too distracted.

The second Raph starts in on Stiles about his death stick comment (what? It's not like she's unaware), Grace sees something pass over the kid's face. Something she recognizes all too well. She cocks her head to the side and narrows her eyes, taking one last drag before smashing her cigarette against the wall and tossing it in an ashtray.

"HEY!"

Grace steps between them. Tiny she may be, but the woman commands attention.

"Hey, hey, hey. There's no crying in baseball! Or lacrosse, or whatever hippie ass game you play in California. I appreciate your concern, kid, but Raph's got a point. I do what I want, and right now I want to figure this shit out."

Beat.

"As for the werewolves, hell no. I've never had the pleasure. But, damn. Everything I've ever heard or read treats them as the next best thing to actual wolves, and I know wolves. You wanna be a detective? Infer, man. Infer."

Suddenly Grace leaps forward, wraps an arm around Stiles's neck and starts rubbing his head just like she's done to her brothers time and time again, laughing about showing him real police brutality.

Raph learned long ago that when a lady tells you to back off, you back off, and so he takes a half step back from the situation. He taps on Bar's top twice and a bottle of water appears on her top just for him.

"Big difference there though is that wolves are actually smart, where as werewolves are half people."

Which says quite a bit about how highly Raph views the intelligence of most people.