All the cops in the coffee shops

[femmejosephine]

It was a really slow afternoon, slow enough that she'd sent her one afternoon shift waitress home already to study for an exam at Barton University.   She herself was sitting behind the register, which had the dual benefit of giving her a look over the whole place and being near the money in case someone got a stupid idea.   It hadn't happened yet, but she was prepared if it did.  There was a baseball bat behind the counter.  Low-tech, maybe, but no one had to register baseball bats.  

The sticky notes for delayed coffees and pastries had been getting a bit ruffled as people ran their hands over them, so she was taking this opportunity to transfer some into the notebook she used to keep them organized.  Some of them she left out because they were decorated or had a nice message on them, but a lot of them she could just grab off the page when it was time to redeem them.

The bell over the door dinged and she glanced up with a customer smile on her face.

Comments

[femmejosephine]

He'd given her an out by pretending she meant not having talked to her mum since Darrow, but a year of not talking to her mum wasn't even the beginning of it.

There was a reason Russell was a good cop, even if he said he fell into it. He knew how to handle people and how not to treat them. It all came down to courtesy and decency, but they both knew that wasn't common anymore, if it ever had been.

"That's rough," she agreed. "I don't really have a place I'm from. Moved around a lot when I was a kid. And then more after I stopped talking to my mum."

[boo_fuckin_yah]

"You guys just lost touch or was it a pointed decision? Not talkin'?" he asks. Since she's given him that much information, he figures it's not information that she wants to keep completely closed off and that asking isn't the end of the world.

He can't imagine that, though. Not with his parents. He knows not everyone is like that, he knows not all parents deserve their children, but he's also pretty sure losing his parents, having them not want to speak to him, that sort of thing might kill him.

[femmejosephine]

"It got pretty pointed at the end," she agreed with a small, almost humorless chuckle. She wouldn't be sharing the details of that, but it had been fairly pointed. Knives were, generally, and Nikita had started carrying one around at a fairly young age. "It just worked out better for both of us if we didn't talk. Or live in the same province."

She deliberately left out her age for now, because she didn't want misplaced sympathy or pity. She'd gotten through it, hadn't she? No need for anyone to feel sorry for her now.

[boo_fuckin_yah]

"That's too bad," Russell says, because he thinks he knows Nikita well enough to imagine it wasn't her doing that had caused the rift. She might not be all that interested in nonsense and she might be pretty matter of fact, but he likes her and he knows it's a bias, but he suspects it's maybe her mother's doing.

"I mean, I'm guessin' you're pretty much used to it now, especially here. Not much can be done about it." But he still thinks people need their parents. Rather, they need good parents.

[femmejosephine]

"Yeah, it's been long enough that it doesn't bother me anymore," she replied, and meant it. It had hurt at first, it had made her a very angry kid, but anger took a lot of energy. She'd needed that energy to survive. The anger had to go. It left her with a whole lot of distrust in its place, but she wasn't angry. She could recognize that her mum had a problem with booze, that she'd had a kid she didn't really want, that her life in general had been pretty unfortunate.

"Dunno what I'd even do if she arrived here. Don't think we'd be best friends, though."

[boo_fuckin_yah]

Russell laughs a little at that and nods. "I figure everyone's got at least one person like that," he says. "That person they're not sure what they'd do with if they arrived in Darrow."

Most of his are college friends. Guys he'd gotten drunk with, gotten into fights with, caused problems with. He's never really had any enemies, but given the way those guys had screwed him over, he knows he wouldn't want to see them any time soon.

[femmejosephine]

She actually had quite a few of those, from people she'd known on the streets to her mother to people in Section. The list of people she would know what to do with was shorter. It was pretty much Walter and Birkoff, actually, with a possible secondary of Michael. Even Michael was complex, though.

"Well, if you have a list of people you'd really like to see here, makes sense you'd have a list of people you'd really like to not. Or even people that you kinda feel neutral about it."

She paused for a moment.

"I'd like to see my friend Walter again. He's an aging hippie, but I think he'd like it here."

[boo_fuckin_yah]

Russell smiles at that, glad to hear there's someone she'd like to see. Even his list is on the short side, most limited to his parents, and David and Judy. He hadn't had a lot of really good friends in Odgen Marsh, which is more or less what it's like here.

"I'd like to see my friends David and Judy again," he says. "I'd like to know how everything turned out. If they made it out okay." He'd like them to have somewhere relatively safe to live, somewhere they could have their baby and be happy.

[femmejosephine]

"To seeing friends again," she toasted, although it wasn't much of toast when he had a coffee cup and she had a carafe of the same. But it was safer than toasting to anything else, and it fit the conversation.

"And not seeing enemies."

She had more of those to avoid, and so did he, so she thought he could agree with that toast.

[boo_fuckin_yah]

"Hey, I can drink to that," Russell agrees, lifting his coffee cup with a bright grin before he finishes the last sip and sets it down on the counter. "I oughta get back, Katie's probably waiting for me to take over with Jamie."

But it's been nice, he has to admit that. Just sitting here and having a chat, knowing neither of them are in any pressing danger, at least for the moment. There's a lot about Nikita he doesn't know, but he can make some guesses and then leave it alone. Having some down time is always nice.

[femmejosephine]

"Yeah, probably a nice thing to do," she agreed, chuckling. "Thanks for coming in though. It's nice to catch up, especially since neither of us is bleeding this time."

All he'd drunk was a bottomless cup of coffee, so she wasn't planning to charge him unless he made a point of it.