Don’t Be Shellfish || Savannah & Dave
Timing: Current Location: The Codfather Parties: @savannah-lim and @seizethecarpe Content: Gore, violence, discussion of death Summary: Savannah and Dave go out for dinner and the food is a little bit more fresh than they anticipated.
Savannah could only have been more relieved if Dave had asked her to go for drinks instead of a meal, but she understood his reluctance considering the recent bar fight. There was nothing to stop them having drinks with their food, right? She hardly ever used her daily allowance for food and drink, so still reeling from her conversation with Felix, Savannah decided that fuck it; she was going to treat herself. What was the point of living in the East End and not trying out the best restaurants in the area? The FBI could foot the fucking bill.
Savannah had called ahead to make the reservation a few nights prior, and even upon arriving, she could tell this place wasn’t her usual setting. Maybe that was why it was so appealing though. For once, she wanted to distract herself with something that wasn’t leftover Chinese food or a burger and fries. Savannah arrived first, ordering some wine while she waited for Dave to arrive, hoping he had the sense to dress for the occasion.
Dave had been a bit hesitant about coming to the Codfather. He didn’t have the clothes for a place like this, never mind the money. But when she’d suggested this place, Dave could hardly say no to what he ate on the daily, but made fancy. He’d have to cut his food small enough that he wouldn’t need to chew with his teeth caps on, but he had plenty of practice with that. With his neatest plaid and a pair of jeans that were only scuffed and torn at the bottom hems, he walked in to the restaurant only mildly uncomfortable, quickly smelling Savannah out through the crowd, and using her scent to lead him to her rather than sight. “Evenin’. How’ve you been?”
Rather than be judgmental about Dave’s choice of attire, Savannah found it oddly amusing. There was a sort of cheap thrill that came out of debunking everyone’s expectations. Savannah herself hadn’t dressed completely fancy; just a plan navy blue dress and a little bit of jewelry, but some of the patrons wore what could only have been the most expensive garments. She could sense the entitlement around them. “I’ve been…” she started to answer, shrugging with a vague laugh. “Well, I don’t know. I’ve been fine, but I’ve seen a lot these last few weeks. I’ve learned a lot. How about you?”
“Yeah, Jesus, sounds like you’ve had a more exciting month than me.” Well, that was likely debatable - the bruises around Dave’s neck had slowly shifted into faint shadows, but they still ached. He wasn’t moving his arm as much as normal, where the cut was still healing around carefully practiced stitches. Still, contributing to the banishment of Bloody Mary was no small thing, but he wasn’t the one being chased by witches on broomsticks. Hell. He’d almost bought a vial of Nepenthe, he had stared at it on the counter with his dealer for a long old while before deciding he didn’t want to be that kind of guy, not when he had other options. “Been better, been worse. Fishing’s always a bit rougher in the winter, but I make do.”
“You’re not a very open person, Dave. You know that, don’t you?” Savannah ordered them each a drink, (whatever Dave wanted), a small, humorless chuckle leaving her lips. “Better and worse. Not very specific. You’re one of the closest things to a friend I have in this town, and I still know nothing about you.” She sipped her beer, shrugging. “Okay. I’ll go first. I’m from Boston. I’m from a Korean-American family, thoroughly upper middle class and very set on their kid’s achieving things. They expected me to be a doctor or lawyer, but this is close enough. I was married. Now divorced, but still keep in touch and have inappropriate conversations every once in a while. No kids. Don’t want them… No pets either, but maybe some day.”
Dave chuckled, tilting his head in in wry acknowledgement. “I’ve been told that before.” He thanked her for ordering the drinks, watching the waiter go. “Damn. I don’t know if that says more about me or you.” He said it teasingly, but listened intently, focusing on her lips as she talked, mouthing the words subconsciously to make sure he didn’t miss any of it. He smiled at her reference to inappropriate conversations. “Alright, then. Well, I’m from Texas. We travelled around the coast when I was young, not really sticking to any sort of place. Grew up exactly as my parents expected, athletic and charming. Still am, I’d sure you agree,” Dave laughed at himself there. The sands of time had worn away most of his natural charisma. “Was married. Three sons. Haven’t really lived in one place long enough to settle down in the last couple decades. I live on what I fish and what I hunt by and large. Sometimes I sell what I catch, sometimes I help folks find things they’ve lost in lakes and shit.” Dave smiled thinly. “That help at all?” Their drinks arrived, and Dave took a big gulp of his lager with enthusiasm. The problem was that he couldn’t tell her everything. Seemed shitty to be her closest friend here when his whole life had to be a secret, when he idly wondered whether the kind thing was to get someone to take her concerning memories.
As secretive as he was, Savannah enjoyed Dave's company. Maybe it was a fire-forged friends thing, an unspeakable feeling of kinship without rhyme nor reason, forged out of almost being human sacrificed together. "You're probably right. It does say more about me," she shrugged. "I've often focused more on my work than my relationships. Hence the divorce." She listened as he told her about himself. "Any of your sons close to my age?" she teased, shaking her head. "That right there is more about you in thirty seconds than I've learned in... weeks? Months? Time doesn't seem to exist in this town." She flipped the menu over, handing one to him. "Since you're the resident fisherman, what would you recommend? Fuck the price. I haven't spent my full FBI living allowance in weeks."
“Me too. Never been able to stick to a relationship since my first. Too distracted with other stuff.” Dave said. Too busy getting justice for his first family to be able to get justice for his second. “Hey, watch who you’re calling old,” Dave replied with a wry smile, but it didn’t last. “My sons died, decades ago. Hence the not talking about myself.” He shrugged, the wrinkles of his smiles not quite reaching his eyes. “Prefer to keep to myself. Work keeps me busy, and I’m usually out on the water in one way or another. Not much of a people person.” He flicked his eyes over the menu, looking it over. “I know these folks catch local and fresh, and the lobster in the area is good. That’s what I’ll be going for, either way.”
Oh, shit. His sons had died. Well, now she felt like a dick. “Sorry to hear that.” Savannah took a sip of her wine, as if it would cure the embarrassment of jokingly flirting with a man’s deceased children. “Okay, I won’t ask you any more personal questions until at least dessert.” She signalled the waitress over and ordered a mixed platter of starters to share and a lobster each for the main course. Savannah’s family were decently well-off, as you’d expect successful doctors to be, but she had reasonably simple tastes and rarely went all out like this. She asked Dave about generic things like fishing and hunting while they ate, keeping her promise not to delve into anything more personal. By the time their plates were clean, Savannah exhaled a massive, satisfied sigh. “Wow. I don’t even know that I have room for dessert after that. It was amazing.” It was just as well, because Savannah wouldn’t even have had time to reach for the dessert menu before the soft background music and casual conversations around them were pierced by the sound of dishes and pans clattering in the kitchen, followed by yelps and screams.
“Me too,” Dave said, sipping from his beer with the same vigour. Talking about dead kids always put a weird vibe in the conversation, but he had the feeling Savannah would have been able to tell if he had lied too obviously, and he couldn’t maintain the same straight face talking about family as when he lied about the supernatural. As the food came, they settled into easier conversation, the kind he could do while remembering how to eat lobster the fancy human way and not the crunch-the-exoskeleton-with-your-jaw way. He managed it, and by the time they were done he was more than satisfied, he wouldn’t even have to go for more later. Dave was about to wave away the dessert, happy to watch her enjoy, when he realised that the room was reacting to something he couldn’t hear. Everyone was looking over to the kitchen, including Savannah. When someone staggered out of the kitchen with a bleeding arm, hand dangling on by just a couple inches of flesh, Dave jumped to his feet, grabbing his bag before striding over to the kitchen to see what was up, without even looking over to see what Savannah was doing.
Savannah’s eyes widened in horror at the sight. They got out, someone was screaming. They fucking got out! “Call 911,” she demanded of the nearest person, knowing that giving the task to a specific person was more likely to yield results than letting the whole restaurant fumble and assume someone else was going to do it. Luckily, she’d finally realised she needed to bring her gun to literally every place she went in White Crest, and she followed Dave towards the kitchens, calling after him. “Hey! Hold up. It might be dangerous! Something got loose in there.” However, danger was unlikely to deter Dave, given they’d met one another while volunteering to be human sacrificed as a ploy. The kitchen door swung on its hinges, back and forth as Dave walked through it. Savannah did the same, gasping at the sight that befell her; lobsters the size of everything from cats to Golden Retrievers, running around the room, destroying everything in sight. “I don’t think--I don’t think this is gonna help,” she said, gesturing feebly to her firearm. Where was Kaden and his harpoon when she needed him?
Dave reached into his satchel, pulling a strange metallic device the size of his forearm. He stepped back from the Karkinoids, quickly unfolding the prongs of the trident and extending out the haft until everything clicked in securely. An imperfect weapon, but decent for driving between the chinks of a nearby Karkinoid’s armour. “No, it won’t. Get out of here!” He barked. He used the trident to fling the karkinoid across the room, looking for where the hell they’d come from. In the corner of the room was an extremely large bucket, that looked surprisingly sturdy for holding just lobsters. It had been knocked over. Unless, of course, they knew they weren’t. Dave groaned, jumping away from one little slash at his ankles. There were what, four or five? He couldn’t kill them with the trident, just whack them around. He’d be able to do more with his teeth, but if he could get them all back in the bucket, it’d be a hell of a lot easier. Dave swore, pinning down one of the nearby karkinoids with his trident while he tried to get something resembling a plan.
Savannah’s eyes widened in awe as Dave pulled what appeared to be a giant fork from his satchel. What kind of dinner had he thought they were going for? “I’m not--no!” was all she could answer when he told her to leave, and not having a trident to hand, she could only make do with spraying the creatures back with a fire extinguisher to give herself enough room to climb up on top of the counters. Rest in peace to this place’s hygiene rating, but that was the least of their problems right now. Dave was holding his own, and she gazed on, shocked and impressed, but they couldn’t just keep up this avoidance tactic forever. God, she was going to have so many words with the manager after this. “What do you want me to do?!” she asked. Should she call Kaden? No. They’d be lobster food by the time he even got here.
Dave tongued the covers off his teeth, his fangs descending. He moved spryly on his feet. “I want you to leave,” he growled, words not forming as easily around his canines, although he was careful not to show his teeth to Savannah. “They’ve got to get back in the barrel.” One of the karkinoids swung its giant claws for Savannah, and Dave moved with a feline reflex, grabbing it by the tail and hurling it across the room into the barrel. That was one, but the karkinoids were looking for freedom, and the two of them were the only thing holding the rest of the world from the karkinoids.
“I can’t leave!” Savannah called back to him. His voice was almost guttural. They’d kill her before she even got to the door, and she couldn’t just leave Dave to fight the things by themselves. “Why the barrel? Just--kill them!” As if it was that easy, or that obvious. There had to be some kind of weapon in here, something they used in the event of this ever happening or to get the things in there to begin with. Then she saw it, or rather, them. There were a pair of catchpoles on the wall. One for each claw. “There!” she yelled, pointing. “We can get them restrained!”
“How do you propose I do that?” Dave snapped back, clambering onto a bench to avoid being snipped at. Instead the claw of the karkinoid cut right through the steel drawers underneath the counter, and the rest of it began to groan as that support was taken out of the picture. This wasn’t his sturdy trident, it was his back up in case of emergency. In the water, this would be piss easy, but while they weren’t fast moving on land, nor was her, and it wasn’t so easy to get his jaw around them here. “Can we?” He repeated, following the line she was pointing at. “Great,” he growled, before jumping over to another counter, and then dropping back down to the floor heavily, rubbing his knee before grabbing the poles, throwing it across the room to Savannah. That was just enough time for a Karkinoid to pinch the flesh of his calf and cut into it deeply. With a roar, Dave caught its tail, picked it up - it was only cat sized - and with his teeth crunched through the red exoskeleton and tore off its pincer, before throwing it onto a counter where the hot top was still on, and it struggled to get off the heat. He checked whether his leg could hold his weight, before looking up to Savannah. They each had a catchpole to deal with the other two.
“I don’t know!” Savannah answered. Somehow this situation made her even more frantic than the mermaid. At least with Kaden, they had come prepared. “I’ve never killed a giant lobster before.” It wasn’t as if they could boil them until their shells were nice and soft. The catchpoles were all they had to work with. Dave quickly took care of one, though Savannah couldn’t fail to notice the rip in his pants and the blood dripping from his wound when she turned back towards him after grappling with her own. She tried to keep her grip steady around the handle as the lobster struggled to break free. “I think we know why our meal was so filling,” she said, using the pole to edge the creature back towards the huge barrel it had escaped from. “Keep the other one back,” she instructed as she struggled with the creature, clearly less practiced in this area than Dave.
Dave has killed giant lobsters before, as Savannah called them. But not like this, not in an enclosed space, not with his back up Trident that wasn’t very secure, not while above ground in his human suit. Definitely not, while trying to hide his true identity from an FBI agent. Every time he shifted his weight or tried to step away or towards one of the karkinoids, his leg threatened to give away underneath him. He nodded as Savannah told him to keep control of the Karkinoids that she wasn’t pushing towards the barrel, but even the split second he took to read her lips was enough to get another deep gash on his leg. Yelling, Dave kicked the lobster. He’d aimed for the joints of its exoskeleton. It bounced against a nearby table, stuck on its back for a second. Dave grabbed a nearby counter to take his weight off his leg. Jesus, fuck, that hurt. If nothing else, he was relieved that he hadn’t tried to dress up for today. With the Trident he pinned the Karkinoid in place, And managed to get the Catchpole that he was holding over one of its pincers. The other pincer sliced right through the table and a flurry of pots and pans clattered to the floor, along with a large piece of salmon that had been prepared earlier. Grimacing, Dave used the Catchpole to drag it over to the barrel and drop it inside.
It was incredibly frustrating to not be able to use her gun in this situation. She wished she had Kaden's harpoon or the other tools he was sure he had access to. "Shit, shit, shit--" Savannah repeated frantically under her breath as she tried to wrangle the creature, to get it under control. It was evident that Dave was badly injured, maybe not in ways that would cause permanent damage, but certainly enough to impair him in this encounter. She narrowly missed being grabbed by the one she was wrangling and finding herself in a similar situation.
Dave fought to get the creature back in the tank, and Savannah did the same. Once they were done, she let go of the catchpole, not even caring that it fell into the pot with them, and then she pulled the lid back on, sealing them inside. She collapsed onto the ground in the pile of recently fallen pots and pans. "Are... Are you okay?" she gasped, eyes widening as she saw the extent of the blood on his leg. "I'll call an ambulance..."
Dave lowered himself to the floor slowly, extending his injured leg out in front of him. “Been worse,” he said gruffly, the waver in his voice a clear sign that it was not great either. “Looks worse to you than it is,” he groaned, wrapping a nearby tea towel around his legs, staunching the bleed. All the same, this would take him out of the running for a few weeks at least. When she reached down, he pushed his teeth guards back into his mouth. Like hell was he acknowledging that he’d ever taken them off, to begin with. He huffed laughingly. “Think they’ll comp us the dinner?”