(no subject)

[sociallychallenged]

WHO: Hank Anderson | NPCs | Open
WHAT: A hunt for information and a desire for good whiskey. People can also find him at the boardwalk or drinking at the bar.
WHERE: A speakeasy on the boardwalk
WHEN: Towards the end of July
WARNINGS: 🎜🎝 Hank's mouth needs washing out with soap. Suicidal tendencies.

Hank usually tries to tie up his hair while he's at work. He's still not cut it. It's a holdover from years of depression. He didn't fucking feel like cutting his hair so other than some beard maintenance he just let that mane happen, and mentally he's still not found the place to chop it all off. Now he just keeps it in a half-ass high ponytail with half of it hanging out while he's on the job, like a heavyset loose samurai. Now he's just got it down, looking like his usual casually sloppy shaggy dog self in a bold shirt and a well-worn jacket. At least he looks like he belongs in a bar drinking.

The boardwalk is only mildly busy. It's a weeknight, people are off work, the food is cheap but everything isn't lit up like a James Cameron daydream quite yet. Give it a half-hour. There are rows of little restaurants and game booths and a few hole-in-the-wall establishments down little turn off side-streets. The places for grown-ups to go while the kids play.

That's when Hank first finds a bar that he's heard a couple of claims about. Maybe bullshit; a couple of the other bars he's also checked out have been bullshit. But fuck it, another place to get whiskey, right?

Another holdover from three years of depression.

The old detective (former detective, maybe future one) settles himself at a distant side seat on the bar, somewhere where he can see whatever the live stage performance is when it starts while he tends to a neat whiskey.

He draws the attention of a scaled woman next to him as he downs his glass without so much as a flinch and pushes it forward for a refill. No sign of the notorious whiskey face. He's scalded that reaction right out of his throat. He might as well have a fuckin' booze callous the way this nigh on toxic shit doesn't phase him.

Comments

[sociallychallenged]

Hank does overhear as he picks something up in his hands. An old Gameboy from back when he was a teenager. Jesus, there's a QIX game still in the back. Who the hell even remembers that.

He pops it out to look at it. Is that French French or Quebec French he's hearing under her voice? Not that it matters too much, but there is an accent. Trust is coming up here. But so is mention of death if she doesn't.

Does this involve him coming down here or something else?

He slips the game back into the back and turns it to dislodge the battery cover. Nothing inside. Good. He closes it back up.

He's got his suspicions. But that there's death involved is a real curiosity.

[uprisenheart]

"Look, Paranoid Patty, you asked me to join your little tea party here, not the other way around." Nick leans back in her chair and shrugs. "You said this was a team, and if you're not gonna trust me, there's no point to me even being here." The other woman scowls deeply, but offers no answer, because even though Nick is right, her pride won't allow her to admit to it. She shakes her head and begins to collect the papers spread out on the table in front of them, folding the larger ones along well-worn creases into neat piles.

"I am not going to have this discussion here," she finally hisses, sliding a scuffed black briefcase out from under her chair and opening it to place the items from the table inside. "We can talk about this later."

Nick scoffs loudly. "Yeah. Sure we will. We done here?"

"We're done. For now."

"Great. See you." Nick slides her chair back and stands up, then pushes the chair back in toward the table where it belongs, because she's worked as a bartender for way too long. She's irritated, but shakes it off and reaches for a friendly smile again as she makes her way back to wherever Hank is.

"Hey. Sorry 'bout that. You find anything good?"

[sociallychallenged]

"Work getting to your head?" he says about her pushing the chair in.

Black suitcase. Looks like it's seen better days. Something that's been around. He commits that to memory as well as he puts down the Gameboy. "Yeah, a few things. Depends on whether or not they got rechargeable batteries here. I don't expect a steady supply of the alkaline ones."

There's something going on here, but not enough for any definitive thoughts. After all, nobody fuckin' likes cops. They can like him after they get to know him, but he knows what he is. They could just not want this shit around 'em.

But there's that pulse monitor. And that Xerox machine. And people afraid that they'll die. Maybe he'll be more direct with some questions later. Right now, he'll let them pass their judgements.

cw mentions of childhood domestic abuse and alcoholism

[uprisenheart]

"What, the chair?" She shakes her head, almost laughing at herself. "Nah, my ma used to smack me if I didn't push in the chairs at the kitchen table. She was ... kind of a drunk. Kind of a lot of a drunk, and she'd trip on shit if it wasn't in its right place. So I learned pretty quick, and it's just second nature now."

Her smile's a little dry this time, and she casts a wary glance at the pair she'd spoken with at the table minutes ago as they file past her toward the exit without a word. The redhead clutches the briefcase tightly in her hand, her pace quick and no-nonsense.

"Batteries - yeah, Rick keep 'em behind the counter. You can find 'em sometimes in random shops around town, but you can't always find some, so they tend to get lifted otherwise. Hey - Zhiin," she calls to the small woman leaning against the counter, engrossed in reading a thick hardcover book. Zhiin looks up and blinks five luminescent green eyes at Nick, a nonverbal questioning of why she'd been called.

"He needs some batteries," Nick says, nodding in Hank's direction. Zhiin blinks each eye in succession and turns her gaze toward Hank, an acknowledgment that she's ready to assist him with his purchase.

"Just show her what you've got and she'll get you the right size," Nick says. "You're gonna need a universal USB plug too, unless you already got one."

[sociallychallenged]

"Then your job must be pretty rough." Dealing with drunks all the time. (Drunks like him.)

There's something he's already curious about in that case. He tries to remember how many times she folded one of those papers, in case it comes up again.

"Double As." He goes up to the counter with a CD player that had drawn his interest, a couple of CDs to go with it (of real jazz, not the watered-down kind), and he goes to the counter to make his purchase.

He has the passing thought that humans must find eye contact with her real confusing. So he just doesn't even try.

[uprisenheart]

"Nah, it's not too bad. I get to talk to people, hear about the places they're from. Gives me ideas for songs I'll maybe write someday." She grins and leans back against the glass-pane display counter, elbows lazily resting on top. "And believe it or not, I've only had to break up two fights the entire time I've been here. Back in Chicago, I'd have to break up at least that many every month."

If she notices that anyone finds her appearance strange, Zhiin doesn't seem to mind, or at least seems to be used to it. She retrieves the pack of batteries and corresponding charging kit from a shelf behind the register, and rings up the small stack of Hank's purchases. Nick leans in toward her across the counter and lowers her voice.

"Hey, Zhiin - give him the house special, yeah?" Zhiin blinks each eye in sequence again, which must be her species' way of saying yes, and taps in a sequence on the register screen that takes ten percent off Hank's total.