2012-09-12 S.H.I.E.L.D. Business

"Okay. S.H.I.E.L.D. business. If that's not code for havin' a drink, I'm getting back on the bus." Hellboy shortens his stride so that Pete doesn't have to huff and puff to keep up. "If it -is-, though..."

People are staring again. Damn. Getting a drink in this town is still going to be tough. You know, people staring--and Wisdom drawing on him--is enough to make Hellboy think twice about going into a closed space with them.

"This is always awkward. I'm NOT making a pass at you. It's just this one bar..." He slings an arm around Pete's shoulders and makes a sharp left into a convenience store... only when the door opens it's not a convenience store anymore, it's a bar. A beautiful, beautiful old pub.

And the fun of it is, Wisdom /didn't/ draw on him: he never aimed at his unbeknownst fellow agent. After all, trenchcoat and rucksack-- but! He gets that arm slung around him just as he's lighting a cigarette (with a match), and coughs in startlement. "What-- oh. You wouldn't be making a pass at me unless you wanted me to pay you, anyroad," he says, then trails off when he gets steered into a disguised pub. As soon as he's half-in the door, he plants one foot on the floor as a bracing measure (good luck against Hellboy's strength) and the other in the jamb between door and frame. "*HANG ON* you're not the Doctor and if not making a pass at me is code for you're a faerie it's in fucking poor taste, it is-- and I do not consent to enter the Otherworld." He's totally waving his cigarette around too.

"Hey, I'm not exactly welcome in any other bars. Unlike some people." Hellboy looks down on Pete from all seven feet of his height--plus boots--and scowls. "I want a beer before I sign myself over to that skycastle and I want it without someone calling the cops. Again. So either tell me a better place, Sparky, or sack up."

"Ha!" The Englishman seems /completely/ mollified by the retort; he sticks his cigarette in his mouth and slings his jacket off, then carelessly tosses it on the coatrack. A shoulder holster doesn't look nearly as good on him as it looks on Hellboy. "Sorry, I've had bullshit follow me here. Can't be too paranoid. Well," he interrupts himself thoughtfully, then takes the cigarette out after a drag, heading for the bat. "Can be too paranoid, but can't be too -careful-. And listen, fuck that noise, you go drinking with /me/ and no bloody superheroes will barge in and demand idiotic things of you. Or if they do I'll hit them with a gun in the face."

"Enh. Speak for yourself. Careful's not my gig and I'm too absent-minded to be paranoid. Oblivion works for me. The bar and the mindset." Hellboy rumbles over to a booth that's big enough for him to slide into. There's a step up for shorties like Wisdom. Hellboy slides his duffel in first before he sprawls into his seat.

"So, how'd you end up in S.H.I.E.L.D.? Everything I've heard about them makes them sound like a bunch of stiffs." Stiffs with good PR who get to walk around in the day and get air cars instead of garbage trucks, but Hellboy is being cool about that. Yeah. He's cool.

"Neh. Can't be a bunch of stiffs if the Director's a man who confiscates your vodka and smokes and parachutes off the fucking Helicarrier with them," says Pete, pausing at the bar-- and then deciding that Hellboy can order because /what the shit, magic bar/. So instead he just snags an ashtray and schleps over to the grown-ups booth, unashamedly taking the step up. It's just like church. "Signed up for SHIELD when MI-6 made it clear I wasn't welcome there anymore. What the hell do they take here? Extradimensional credit?"

"That and they respect the hand." Hellboy is using said hand to remove a gorgeous ebony box from his duffel. It's partly open, something wedged in the lid. He sets it down and opens it all the way. Looks like something you'd use to store the world's most pricey Christmas ornaments. What inside, though, are beautiful little ceramic pomegranates, glazed shades of indigo streaked with red. The thing he threw at the demon.

"Naft," Hellboy explains. "Persians used it. I like it better than Greek fire but it's a bitch to get out of things if you crack a grenade." He carefully sets the eleven remaining grenades back into their velvet hollows and closes the lid on them. "Okay. What's your poison?" he asks, sliding out of the booth.

"Scotch, neat, ta much," Wisdom answers, looking up from the box. The box! Professional curiosity. And notably, he /puts his cigarette out/. Because... 'I like it better than greek fire'. "I'm calling that shit in, just be a minute." He opens his phone and then stares. And then pinches the bridge of his nose. "Never mind there's no reception in Milliways," he mutters.

Hellboy is back in no time. He's an efficient guy. Scotch neat? Bottle. Two glasses. Let's just be honest about how much we're going to drink, shall we? "Jumping off the skycastle, ten points. Confiscating booze and smokes, minus a hundred." Hellboy sits down again and everything shakes. 400 pounds is a lot. "Don't suppose they let you have pets up there, do they?" He uncorks the scotch and pours a finger--of the Right Hand--for each of them.

That is an /excellent finger/, innuendo notwithstanding. Pete lifts the glass in a silent toast, then tastes it to see if it's good and worth sipping, or less than and worth getting drunk on /very fast/. If the latter, it's gone in a heartbeat, poured into the bottomless pit that is Peter Wisdom. "Fuck if I know," he says in a satisfied slouch. "Haven't had a pet since I found my sister disemboweling the neighbour's dog to read its guts the week after my cat disappeared. Mad, she is. I know you don't smoke on the flight deck, and I know you don't get caught drinking by Fury. No one else gives a shit."

It's good scotch because even if you're a demon, life is too short to waste on bad booze. Unless it's that or no booze. Which is not a crisis they have to face today. Now that would be so much worse than demons.

"Sorry about your sister. And the cat." Hellboy doesn't mention that he's more sorry about the cat than that sister. Priorities. He drinks his scotch and minds his manners. "Don't know why people--I mean theoretically sane ones--use domestic animals for hieromancy. They're not human, but too close to the human world. Either go with the anthropomancy or suck it up and go catch something. Of course, not believing in bullshit would be even better."

"I'm sorry about my sister, too." There's definitely a tone of disgust in there, though there's that hint of exasperated affection behind it that says she's still his sister, regardless of how batshit. Pete drinks slowly, sometimes not bothering to put the glass down between, and just talking into it. "Eh she was thirteen. She's gotten better. Now she just burgles and channels Atlantean priests and does ceremonial shit. And to be completely fair, the neighbour's dog was a jackhole and could easily have killed my cat." He waves his free hand, then makes himself put the glass down. "Most thirteen-year-olds believe in bullshit. But-- whatever. Why d'you ask? You have a pet?"

Hellboy pauses and looks thoughtful. Ten. No. Blackie had a litter. Sixteen. No, adoption weekend. "Right now, thirteen," he says, after counting in his head. "Cats. They like me." Even when no one else does. He drains his glass and pours himself another scotch, topping Pete off at the same time. "Dad made me leave 'em behind."

"Uh," says Pete after a second, obviously slightly nonplussed. "Thirteen." He pulls his glass back over, looking at Hellboy sidelong. "That's a lot of litter boxes." What he's not saying-- though all of these reactions he's having, at least none of them are the usual jumped-to conclusions-- what he's not saying is 'you don't look like a crazy cat lady, you don't have breasts; also, you have facial hair'. But the wary skepticism is written on his face. "They probably wouldn't be very happy in the kind of flat you can get on a SHIELD paycheck."

"I don't clean litter boxes. I have people for that." Hellboy tucks the naft-box away and pulls out a cigar box instead, offering it to Pete first. Some of those bands aren't printed in any language Pete knows. "I spend a lot of time in the sewers. People dump cats. I take 'em home, adopt them out. It's weird not to have 'em."

Oh yes, a cigar's taken, with another nonverbal indication of thanks. "Still got people for the litter boxes?" he asks wryly, lighting up after giving the Chrismas box of explosive's direction a long look. "Because if not, I know someone who can likely get you a volunteer spot at a shelter. And you could bring sewer-cats there. Somehow I don't think SHIELD's going to want you keeping thirteen cats in your quarters upstairs."

"Right." Hellboy takes a cigar and leans back. "I can do that now. I mean, be around people who aren't in the Bureau." He nods his heavy head slowly, sliding his cigar clipper over to Pete. "Yeah, that would be good. Guess I don't have to be down in the sewers so much either." He digs out his matches. "It's a whole new world, Wisdom. Well. Same old world, different vantage point. Same thing."

Lighting up... metaphorically. Obviously. Because now Pete -clips- the cigar, and lights it. With a match. Because fuck everything. "What, your Bureau keep you locked up? No, hang on, not drunk enough. Let us do this liquor thing more quickly, alarming agent of SHIELD. And then we can get righteously indignant over each others' respective stories. It's tradition. Then *I* will go sleep in the gutter, and maybe you should report in." He lifts the glass again, and this time the toast is out loud. "Iechyd da," he says. Because he's in a /magic bar/. Of course he'd pretend to be Welsh. Bran and all that. "And cheers I guess." Bottoms up.

Innuendo notwithstanding.