The Broken Bottle Pub

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright led his new recruits into the one other place he spent all his time. He liked to think the pub was named after the state he usually left it in, but the name went back further than that. It used to be the place to go for pub brawls, before the station massacre that drove Wright and his fellow officers to Coal Mine Street.

Ever since then it had been a copper's pub, and oddly, a lot of the types that used to drink there now filtered to other pubs. Even with the hard times the E.H.P.D. had now hit, people still figured it was safer not to drink on the same street as the police station.

Which made it good for Wright. It was where you went to sit there and drink in silence. Nobody wanted to ask questions to a copper, in case he started asking questions back, and it was nice to take the police hat off for a while (not that Wright had it on in the first place) and be able to go somewhere where you didn't want reminding that you knew just how much human beings (and their less familiar, less friendly supernatural cohorts) sucked.

In other words, it looked like the exact kind of place Wright would spend all his time in. Run down, dark, dank, and covered with its namesake items all over the floor.

"New recruits." He told the barman who was slightly suprised to see two new people follow him in (especially Hadrian, who had an air of grace Wright's usual company didn't have). The barman just grunted in acknowledgement, poured Wright a beer, and then looked to the other two. He was waiting their word so he could assign them a 'usual'.

[Eleri Mortymer]

((God modding much? Jeez ))

Eleri followed Wright into the dark pub - funnily enough it reminded her rather a lot of the station - pretty empty, dark, and she suspected that if she could see properly, it would be filthy too.

She followed Wright to the bar and stepped on several broken bottles as she did so.
Good thing these shoes have a good sole on them. She thought.

She noted that the bartender didn't even bother asking Wright what he wanted. She watched him with a raised eyebrow as if daring him to pour her the same.

"Something non-alcoholic, out of a bottle if possible." She said bluntly when he looked in her direction. "And diet, if you can manage it."

The bartender looked faintly disgruntled and disappeared beneath the bar for a second. He resurfaced holding a dusty glass bottle of what was probably coke, although Eleri couldn't see the lable properly.

"Thanks." She said politely, taking the bottle once it had been opened. She rubbed the top of it with her shirt cuff and sipped it tentativly. It was definatley some sort of cola. It was also definatley not diet. She sighed and looked at Wright, unsure of whether to sit down or not.

[Nicholas Wright]

((I just wrote you guys following him in. I was waiting for you to post but you didn't, so figured it'd be okay. If you want me to change anything, just ask. Last thing I wanna do is god mod.))

[Eleri Mortymer]

((XD No worries, tis k))

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright gave Eleri a confused look. A look that said 'it's after work, we're in a pub, what's non-alcoholic?'. He gestured for her and Hadrian to take a seat at least, and sighed to himself.

He should have known this kind of place wasn't their kind of place.

"Look, I'll even buy you a drink." He told them. By 'buy' he meant 'put on my giant tab the bartender hasn't ever dared collect on' but he didn't point that out. "Just...stop being Officer Eleri for a bit and relax. That's what this place is for."

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri sat down in one of the rather rickety-looking chairs near the bar and placed her bottle on the corresponding table. She brushed her hair back from her face. I really ought to invest in a pack of hair-ties... she thought absently.

"A good officer is never off duty, sir." She told him seriously, but not sternly. She knew he believed in that statement as much as she did. She took off her jacket and hung it over the back of the chair before leaning back on it.

She could sense that Wright was starting to regret bringing her and Hadrian here. She looked around. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dim light properly, she could see that the pub looked all too familiar - it reminded her of the place she'd had her first bar job, the morning after it'd been trashed by students. She had a feeling, though, that this place looked like this all the time.

She brushed her hair out of her face again. Then, with sudden determination, she swept it back, twisted it into a rough bun and pinned it in place with a pen she produced from her pocket.

"But if it'll make you happy, sir, I'll half half a pint of whatever beer they do here." She said finally, making a mental note to find out how much his tab, which she suspected he had, actually was.

[Hadrian Beaumont]

Hadrian studied the bar with interest, dark, dank, musty, broken glass everywhere...

This was completely new.

The dark haired youth took a seat on the somewhat sticky barseat, ignoring the way the fabric and padding felt against his backside. Trust the Captain to local a place like this, he'd heard of the Broken Bottle before, the kind of place where bar fights broke out often and sawdust was tossed on the floor to soak up blood.

"Er, anything. Not fussed." He stated eyeing the Police-Woman's actions as she used a pen to pull her hair up. How in the hell did it disobey gravity? Everytime he saw Luciana try to do the same thing with her hair after five minutes it came loose, it drove her to distraction and Hadrian too. There wree times when he just wanted to shout at her to take a bloody electric razor to her skull and shave it off.

[Nicholas Wright]

"Two pints for these two." Wright insisted, despite Eleri's wussy request of half a pint. He wasn't letting her get away with that.

"Nothin' wrong with a good officer never bein' off duty." Wright remarked. Or, in his case, an exceptionally bad one. "It's just Officer Eleri scares the hell out of me." He added as clarification.

He very nearly said 'Hurricane' instead of 'Officer'.

To Wright, who never stopped being Captain Wright, the idea of being off duty was foreign. It was said if you took his badge away he'd grow another one, right there on his chest, but still. There was a difference between being on duty and being on duty. One was for sharp, eager, raw recruits (or hurricanes), and another was for people who were always relaxed and had the right balance.

Of course, in Wright's philosphy, the 'right balance' was what he had, and the wrong one was being sharp and eager all the time like everybody else...

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri was aware of Hadrian watching her and guessed what he was thinking. "Having thick hair helps." She told him. "Although if you do it tight enough, it should stay up." She smiled.

She gave Wright an appraising look as her pint arrived, but sipped it anyway, and cringed and the amount of froth on the top. Someone needed to teach the barman how to pour a decent pint.

She smiled and had to stop herself from laughing at Wright's comment.

"Can't imagine why, sir." She said innocently, scooping the head off her beer.

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright gave Eleri an confused glance. He hadn't really been paying attention through the drunken fuzz of being, and so simply heard her say;
"...if you do it tight enough, it should stay up."

He gave her an odd glance.

"She's talking like that, and it's her first beer." He sighed to Hadrian. He ignored her attempts at innocence. Mostly because he was terrified saying anything else would lead to more Hurricaness.

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri shook her head at Wright.

"I might be a woman, but I assure you, I'm not a lightweight." She told him. "You don't work in a bar for years without building up a sort of immunity to alcohol."

She took a large swig of her beer as if to prove her point and smiled at Wright.

[Nicholas Wright]

"Never said you were..." Wright grinned back, having, as far as he was concerned, been challenged. He eyed two shot glasses behind the bar, and the 'whiskey' reserved for drinking contests. No chance it was real whiskey, Wright always suspected it might actually be some kind of magical potion. It could knock you out faster than most actual magical potions, anyway...

"'course, if you wanna prove it..." He grinned again. Eleri might have worked in a bar, but Wright's blood stream contained more alcohol than the entire bar's stock put together (probably), and he had certainly had enough practice...

Of course, the fact he had had so many beers that day he'd forgotten not only how many he'd had, but when he'd started drinking, what he'd drunk, and why he'd done it, he did have the disadvantage of already being pretty drunk...

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri followed Wright's gaze and grinned.

"Are you challenging me to a drinking contest, sir?" The officer part of her screamed at her to be sensible - what if something happened? - but the rest of her, which was a suprisingly small but loud amount told her to go for it. Eventually her competitive streak got the best of her.

"You're on." She said against her better judgement, grinning. Taking in to account Wright already being pretty intoxicated, she was fairly certain she could... 'drink him under the table', as the saying went.

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright grinned, and nodded to the bartender, who wearily sighed.

It'd been a while since the bartender had seen this. There was a time Wright would take on anybody who bothered to try, usually for money. They'd then usually discover the problem with Wright was it was physically impossible to drink him under the table because he'd been born under the table and lived there ever since... The bartender actually had a fairly complex theory that Wright wasn't Wright unless he was drunk and it was the only way to make his brain work. This meant it was such a natural state for him, it was hard to push him over the edge.

Still, sooner or later someone had to beat him.

Wright poured the first glass, paused, finished off his beer (well, no point in wasting it), and took the first shot.

For a brief moment, his throat was on fire, but as someone who had been wailed on by a werewolf earlier in the day, he was pretty numb to pain by now...

[Eleri Mortymer]

Noting the way the bartender gave Wright the 'here we go again' look, Eleri guessed it had at one point been a regular occurence for Wright to challenge someone to a drinking contest.

She knocked back her first shot and chased it with a swig of beer to get rid of the taste. Her head spun briefy - it'd been a while since she'd drunk neat spirits and whiskey was not her spirit of choice - she couldn't stand the aftertaste. Her throat burned briefly and she set her beer back on the table, smiling cockily.

"Out of interest," she said mildly, "do you have to actually fall on the floor to lose?"