“Bourbon. On the rocks,” Nika said.
The bartender gave her a dead-eyed look that suggested the tail end of a twelve-hour shift, nodded and stepped away. A non-conversationalist. This was fine. Whether it was the exhaustion or the woman’s demeanour, Nika could still appreciate it, so she gave the bartender a tiny nod of acknowledgement when she received her drink a short time after. She slid it towards herself along the bar, fingertips drumming on the glass, cold and already damp with condensation.
She took a very small sip, frowned slightly, then leaned back to let it settle. She wasn’t looking to dull her senses, only relax. Very slightly.
Gladstone’s disapproving voice still echoed in her mind. The British woman hadn’t quite said “Go home and and think about what you’ve done”, but the faint eyebrow crease that had accompanied her words might as well have screamed it.
Nika’s fingers drummed that little bit faster on the glass, the only external hint at her turmoil. Granted, she was still new to working in this… context. Only one month out of training. Still some kinks to straighten out. The kink of putting literal kinks into other people’s limbs, for a start.
Nika sighed softly and allowed herself another sip. Excessive force against hostiles was one thing. As for Dunwich… No permanent harm done. Dislocated limbs were easy to fix, these days. Still, she allowed for the possibility that Gladstone might be right.
Which had brought her here.
A bar seemed like an odd place to try to relax, but the longer she spent here, the more convinced she was that it was precisely what she needed. The odds of a genuine hostile in here were vanishingly low. The din was loud, and the presence of people was overwhelming. She mentally tracked the positions of people around her, by peripheral vision and by hearing, without fully meaning to. Thanks to her body language - ramrod straight on the bar stool with her eyes dead ahead and fixed on her drink - nobody had bothered her so far. Nobody had offered to buy her a drink or, in a voice that showed they believed to be incredibly perceptive, a vodka instead. Hopefully, it would stay that way. She needed to think.
She focused on heavy footsteps cross from her left to her right until they faded out of earshot, merged with a small, loud group by the vending machine. From the steps, she tried to gauge the unseen figure’s weight, build, and general level of hand-to-hand combat skill. She couldn’t resist a peek to see if she was right.
This was entertaining, in a way. Other people did people-watching. Nika did this.
She heard the doors slide open with a faint rush of air. Focusing on this new set of footsteps and ready to break them down, she took another controlled sip of her drink.
Time changes when you work as an agent, Draco thought as he observed a bar just across the street. Firstly, you have crazy not-quite-shifts and time literally changes, therefore it was not odd for him to walk into a bar before noon, considering it was open. Secondly, there was no “the” bar, only “a” bar, more precisely multiple bars as one avoided being a regular at one place with this line of job. On the other hand, having to do that over the years one could become a sort-of-regular at every bar in town and be known by some of the bartenders, if not for something else other than “the bloke who walks in at 8:47am and seemingly starts his day with a shot, don’t you have work in around 13 minutes?”.
Cernat was almost sure he was going to get funny looks walking into the place at a decent hour by pub-standards but he went anyway. He figured he could use a drink or two before his debriefing -- it was a successful mission, after all (he would be writing his will and leave just about everything to Mephisto if it hadn’t been) -- anyone who remotely knew Central would have given an understanding nod.
“Fancy seeing you here so early.”
“Gin Martini, wet, and shaken... with a twist, if you may.”
“Hello to you too, Rufus.”
“Mhm,” the man hummed in return, flashed a foxy little smile toward the otherwise quiet bartender. He has had his ways with people and he rather liked chatting and making up lives he never had.
“Who’s your new friend? Why wouldn’t you want to introduce me..?”
The bartender shrugged and moved on to prepare his drink with such expertise it would have been a joy to watch but such things lose their shine when seen a lot and the agent’s eyes have been glued to the blonde next to him. They, in fact, had been as soon as he spotted her and he could state two things: she was as far from charming as a penguin was from dashing through the sky and gracefully performing a three-sixty, and that she could easily have had a “Do Not Touch” sign on her back if the conditions weren’t already painfully obvious just by her mere posture. Altogether, it was his time to shine... according to Cernat anyway.
“Not often I see your kind in the area, yet I wouldn’t for a second assume you are lost,” His glance dropped on her drink for a moment. A confident choice. “A strange mixture, if you ask me. ‘I am having One Of Those Days’ is written all over you. Been there, done the same. A Bourbon-level day, is it? Could be worse, they always say. They also fail to admit it could be better, too.”
2087
blakekathryn
gamechangershow
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
izzy806
