Think of all the luck you got.

[not_lost]

There were a lot of really weird and screwed-up scenarios that Fiona Gallagher could imagine herself in. Her involvement in these scenarios was usually begrudging and her father usually the cause, but picturing herself caught up in something beyond most people's limit of belief had officially became much easier after this past summer. (Finding yourself crouching in a hole in your backyard, covered in sweat and dirt, and ecstatic over having unearthed a dead relative's remains could do that to a girl.)

Despite that, she had to admit that the Nexus was pretty fucking crazy, even by Gallagher standards.

It had been just at a week hotel time since she'd opened the downstairs bathroom door and found the Nexus beyond, but having a magical luxury hotel where her toilet should be freaked her out a lot less than the fact that the place was essentially free. In Fiona's experience, if something sounded too good to be true, it always was, and she probably should've gone home, chalked the whole experience up to some bad seafood and never thought about it again.

She probably would have, too, if the people at the desk hadn't told her the bit about time differences and job openings.

Christmas was right around the corner, and she'd spent almost everything Jimmy had left her on that damned deal for work. (Not that she was complaining; the money had come at the perfect time, and now they'd have enough plastic cups in the house that they probably wouldn't need to wash a single glass for half a year.) Back home, it would cost her 150 bucks to get herself licensed to sell alcohol, and she'd have no guarantee of being hired anywhere. Here, they apparently only cared that you could mix a drink, and a lifetime with Frank had more than prepared her for that. The great hourly wage and tips she was earning meant she could actually afford to get everything out of lay-away this year and maybe even buy some extra stocking stuffers for the kids. The circumstances may have been weird, but for Fiona taking the position was a no-brainer.

Today was her third day behind the bar at the Smoking Room. She'd allowed herself to come through early enough to get a solid nap before her shift and was now practically chipper, turning a wide smile to the guests waiting for a drink.

"What can I get you?"

For the first time in a long time, she actually felt good about the future.

Comments

[malachai]

"Any recognizable beer behind the bar or is it all Nexus Ale or something?" Nick asked as he approached.

Yeah, he knew he shouldn't drink, but he didn't think one beer would incapacitate his mind that much. Besides, how else was he going to test his limits?

[not_lost]

"What's recognizable?" Fiona asked as she paused in wiping down the bar to grab a pilsner glass. "We got Guinness, Smithwick's, Newcastle, Sam Adams, Molson… and a shitload in the bottle."

Setting aside the glass, she reached for the lengthy beer menu and passed it over.

"Just about anything you could want, but I don't think any of it's from another planet."

[malachai]

"That would be the island version of home brew, but since you wouldn't have the first clue what that is, nevermind," he answered, the smirk indicating he knew damned well he was being confusing as fuck.

Nick took the list and scanned it. "Good thing, too. Other planets know fuck-all about good beer. Newcastle then," he said at last and set the menu down.

[not_lost]

"I keep forgetting that people here might actually be from other planets," Fiona admitted with an astonished smile. "You'd think just walking outside would remind me." Most of the time when she stepped out of the hotel, the view was beautiful but pretty normal. Sometimes, though, it was like the universe was about to spill out into her lap.

"So, have you actually been to other planets, or were you just being a smartass?" she asked as she slid the requested glass of beer across the bar.

[malachai]

"What do you think?" Nick said, with a devilish little smirk. "Never been to any other planets, but an old friend of mine had been. And she never had much to say about the food. And the way that girl put away food, she would have if it was any good."

[not_lost]

"It's hard to believe that there's nothing good out there, though," Fiona replied with a vague but emphatic motion of one hand. "I mean, statistically there's got to be another planet that knows how to cook, right? We can't be the only one."

God, she wished Lip were there. He'd have a field day with a conversation like this.

[malachai]

"I guess it depends on if the species in question eats," Nick responded with a shrug, smirk still in place. "Or maybe what it eats. Could be they find pizza repulsive but twigs and bugs are delicacies?"

[not_lost]

"True," Fiona allowed with a consenting nod. "But we eat twigs and bugs, too. Salad is pretty twiggy, and then there's cinnamon and other spices. And lobsters are like bugs, or at least they look like one." She shrugged with a grin. "If I was from some other planet, I definitely wouldn't think that would be good eating."

[malachai]

"I was thinking more of actual sticks and cockroaches," Nick smirked back, "but your point's taken. I also have no idea why we're talking about eating bugs."

He couldn't stop himself thinking about Wanderer even though she rarely talked about her other lives even in general terms much less what foods she'd eaten. Since that made him think about Melanie, too, he stopped that train of thought before it left the station.

"So, you said were in Manhattan before you came here?"

[not_lost]

Fiona's eyebrows arched and she paused, mentally flipping through their short conversation to figure out where he'd gotten that idea from.

"You gotta be thinking of somebody else," she said with a slight shake of her head. "I'm from Chicago, not New York. I've never even been to Manhattan."

[malachai]

"Must be," Nick said with a non-committal shrug. The fact that there was laughter echoing around in his head didn't give him anything close to warm fuzzy feelings. Instead, it put a shiver down his spine. He pushed the glass away from him. If the demon was close enough to make him say shit to make him look like an idiot, he was too close to risk alcohol. There was a spike of annoyance that followed and he closed his eyes in case some of that spike changed his control over his eye color.

"Never made it to Chicago," he said once he was sure his voice would be his. "Too much southern boy in me to survive in that kind of cold."

[not_lost]

"Oh yeah? Where in the South?" Fiona asked, politely interested despite that her instinctive, if not entirely conscious, reaction was to assume anybody who couldn't take the cold was some kind of pussy. Shit, Frank had slept out in the cold during the height of winter more times than she could count. Then again, Frank was weirdly resilient, like a cockroach. All that booze had probably pickled him so much that the cold didn't matter.

[malachai]

"N'awlins," Nick replied, as usual his Cajun only really coming out these days when he said his hometown name. "Born there, raised there..." he stopped because adding on the 'died there' felt too much like turning over a rock. Might look okay on the surface, but no way of telling what was hidden under there.

So he continued, "never had reason to leave."

Lame, yeah, but it would have to do.

[not_lost]

"I can't really say anything about that, I never had a reason to leave Chicago either," Fiona allowed with a slight shrug. It wasn't entirely true, she'd been prepared to leave for Michigan of all fucking places, but that had never been a real possibility. Better to forget about it and move on.

"What's your name, guy from New Orleans?"

[malachai]

"Hometown inertia can be a powerful thing," Nick agreed with some of the smirk filtering back onto his face. Then it broke out fully. "Here I am going on about being all Southern and I forget my manners completely. I'm Nick Gautier," he said, "and yours, lady from Chicago?"

[not_lost]

"Don't worry about it, I'm used to people forgetting their manners," Fiona replied with a knowing smile. "They're not as popular where I come from." Not that she minded, really. She'd much rather have brutal honesty than sunshine blown up her ass.

"I'm Fiona," she added. "Nice to meet you, Nick. So, what do you down there in the South? Do you work, go to school?"

[malachai]

"Pleasure to meet you, too, Fiona."

Nick thought about his answer before he blurted something out that he'd regret later.

"I was in law school at LSU before I...I guess you could say I got drafted," he said finally, nodding to himself that he hadn't exactly lied.

[not_lost]

"You know, people are funny," Fiona began, casually wiping down the back of the bar. "They'll be just dying to tell the truth, but they feel like they shouldn't, so they say something leading that you just have to ask about, so that when they fess up, they don't have to feel bad about it."

Smiling, she settled a hand on her canted hip and arched a knowing eyebrow Nick's way.

[malachai]

Nick smiled right back. "Or it could be their way of letting the other person decide if they're interested enough to ask for more information or give the polite 'oh, that's great' nod and move onto something else." Then, because why the hell not, he dropped a wink. "You're not the only one with a fair amount of time on that side of the bar."

[not_lost]

"Oh, come on!" Fiona said with a flop of one hand, her posture relaxing. "Who wouldn't ask about a statement as vague and odd as 'you could say I got drafted'? Nobody I know is going to politely let that one go by." Then again, the people she knew were by and large not interested in politeness in general.

"So, fess up, you've got me on the hook. What's the story there?"

[malachai]

Nick looked at the glass in his hand, then up at the bartender. "You want it short and sweet or down to the last ugly detail?"

[not_lost]

"It's your story," Fiona replied with a shrug. "I'm not going anywhere, but if you want to keep it short and sweet, be my guest. Then again, I do have a fondness for ugly details," she added with an arch of her eyebrows.

[malachai]

"No rambling but heavy on ugly, I think I can manage that." He took a breath and released it, gathering his thoughts into some kind of order. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of order to the fucked up mess his life had become.

"Starting at the beginning, I'm the product of an ancient high demon raping an innocent fourteen year old girl, which makes me half human, half demon, something I didn't find out until I died the second time at the hands of one of the Four Horsemen and my powers were unlocked. The first time I died," he said before she could ask, "was the night my mother was brutally murdered by a vampire masquerading as an ally. In my grief over not protecting her, I called to Artemis for vengeance. She denied me since the betrayal had killed my mother, not me, so I shot myself in the head. Artemis, knowing I'd been raised Catholic, captured my soul, kept it, and made me into one of her immortal vampire hunters. The tattoo on my cheek and the fangs are marks of her hunters."

He took a sip from the glass in his hand and raised an eyebrow at her. "How's that?"

[not_lost]

There had been so much information in Nick's little ramble, and every bit of it completely nuts, that for a lengthy pause all Fiona could do was stare dumbly back at him, eyebrows bunched together as she tried to parse whether he was fucking with her. On the one hand, it seemed way too out there to believe, but on the other, who joked about demons raping 14 year-olds?

"I don't even know what to say to that," she admitted, still staring. "That's a whole lot of crazy in one go, you know that, right?"

[malachai]

"Yeah. One person's crazy is another person's fucked up existence," Nick snorted. He wanted to drain the beer in front of him, but talking about the demon made it harder to fight, so he sipped at it instead. Keeping his head was seriously vital.

"S'why I tend to tell people I got drafted and that I've had a bad few years. The whole lot of it doesn't get me invited to a lot of parties."

This time, when he smiled, it was enough to show the fangs.