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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.]

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"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.

"Lacrosse is an Iroquois game," Stiles protests as he futilely tries to slip out of Grace's grasp. He never had an older brother, so he doesn't have much experience.

Who let Grace be an authority figure anyway?

"Okay let's say werewolves are at least sort of like real wolves. Derek says Scott's his brother now, and we know his sister was a werewolf too. Logical inference? His pack was his family."

Not all people are stupid.

"Problem is the rest of his family is already dead. So who else is in his pack? Or if there are other wolves, are they from another pack?"

Honestly, another pack is the last thing Beacon Hills needs.

Grace grins and steps back as he starts to work it out. Yeah, Stiles is no idiot... for a teenager.

"There you go. Now you're askin' the right questions." She slants a look at Raph and his water. "Trouble is, they ain't questions we can answer here."

Or without Scott, probably, given the whole werewolf thing. Grace has a good nose for crime, but Scott's abilities in that regard are undoubtedly more literal.

What? his expression asks.

"I'm on duty," he says as he unscrews the cap. "An' where I live don't got no running fresh water."

The rest of this...well, whatever. He has his water.

"So I should go back home and start looking for more werewolves?"

Stiles still thinks Derek killed the bus driver. He was at the hospital. But it couldn't hurt to be extra cautious.

Now if only Scott would get back from his bowling double date so they could talk.

"No running water?" he asks, disbelieving. Raph doesn't look like a guy from a more primitive time. Maybe he's from one of those apocalyptic worlds. "Who are you, anyway, big guy?"

There's no vitriol behind his words this time, just curiosity.

He half shrugs.

"It's home," he offers nonchalantly, before wiping his right hand on the leg of his pants before offering it in greeting to the kid. "Name's Raphael. I'm the Babysitter."

He even has a t-shirt that says so, though he's not wearing it today.

He doesn't look like a turtle, ninja or otherwise. Or like a Renaissance painter, for that matter. Too bad.

"I'm Stiles," Stiles answers. "Stilinski. Babysitters used to hate me."

He always plays it off like it was he unique personality that drove them away, when in reality it was more that the average teen babysitter is ill-equipped to deal with a nine-year-old with frequent panic attacks.

For somebody who habitually vibrates with unrestrained energy, Grace does an exceptional impression of a statue. She does just that while watching this exchange, nothing but her eyes moving back and forth.

A small smile curves her lips at last: kids love it when Grace babysits. There's always a ride in the squad car.

"Mike's brother," she says to Stiles, gesturing to Raph with fingers itching to hold another lit smoke. "You know, the Barman?"

Raph should thank his lucky whatevers that she doesn't elaborate.

"Congrats," she tells Raph, "I hear you got hitched."

Best. Story. Ever.

Edited 2014-10-06 02:15 (UTC)

Raph flinches when she says that last bit, eyes sliding to look over at Bar.

"Thanks."

It's not that Raph dislikes being married, quite the opposite in fact. A very strong opposite. It's more that he still hasn't told his family and now it's getting to the point where having not told his family is making it harder and harder to tell his family.

And Bar? Well...she's about as family as a sentient slab of wood can get without already being his brother Leo.

"So werewolves."
It's like a smokebomb...

Ah, there's family drama in the air. An excellent distraction. Stiles is about to offer his own sincere, very heartfelt congratulations when Raph turns the subject back to werewolves.

Oh well, at least talking creatures of the night won't get Stiles in trouble for the beer.

"Yep, werewolves," he confirms. "I've got one back home I should probably talk to soon. You know, fill him in on the dead bus driver, possibly even more werewolves out there trying to kill us if Derek doesn't kill us first."

Scott's probably not going to like any of this.

Grace gets enough family drama at home, thanks. Ever more aware than she lets on, she takes note of Raph's reaction and files it away to pick at another time.

Back to werewolves.

What the hell, man.

"I'm not crazy 'bout you takin' all this on alone, kid." Grace's voice gets huskier with concern. "You're quick, I'll give you that, but unless you've got some major firepower in reserve, your soft teenage skin's no match for a werewolf's pointy fangs of death."

She does the accompanying hand motion. Of course.

Raph snickers at the pointy fangs of death remark.

"She ain't wrong kid. Bring back up."
It's important to be noticing here how he's not offering to be said backup, only that such a thing should exist.