1964-11-19 - Chatting Over a Drink
Summary: Felix and Kai meet up and decide to go have a drink.
Related: If there are no related logs, put 'None', — please don't leave blank!
Theme Song: None
felix kai 


.~{:--------------:}~.


It's already dark this time of year, and Kai is wrapped up in a long wool coat, with a scarf covering his mouth and nose, leaving only a pair of bright blue eyes taking in the street around him. For a half-dozen or so years, Kai has been a troublemaker. Minor stuff. Loitering, busking where he ought not busk, a little light vandalism. He's never hurt anyone. He just has a casual relationship with naughtiness. Okay, maybe they're old friends. In any case, he's walking down the street, not causing any trouble. Yet.


He's run into formerly-Officer Ivanov more than once before. Never one of those cops who got off on harassing people because he could - pretty decent, for a pig.

Now, it seems, he's gone up in the world. For when he emerges from the local precinct office, the corner of an office building, complete with the mandatory green lamp over the entrance, he's not in patrolman's garb but in a decent suit with a better overcoat. His pace is slow, thoughtful….but he glances up at the sight of Kai, and smiles that supercilious, curling smile.


Kai perks up when he spies now-Detective Ivanov. "They promoted you," he says. "Wait, does that mean you can still arrest me? I'm not sure how that works." His steps slow to a stop. "Do you remember me?" As if he'd be easy to forget. "You were always one of the nice ones, regardless," he says.


His face is forbidding in repose - the cop's mask on those stark features. But the smile's all the more vivid for it when he does, taking off his glasses for a moment to wipe them with a cloth, before putting them back on and squinting through them at Kai. "I do. You play a mean guitar, if I remember right. Oten without a busker's license. Kay?"


"Kai," Kai says, "But you were close." He beams as his guitar skills are praised, his lack of license notwithstanding. "I'll have you know I haven't done that for weeks. I'm an artist now. I have a patron that keeps me in art supplies." Hey, he only sometimes uses buildings for canvas. "So what is it you're doing now? I'm not sure what the suit means. Detective? I've done some PI work." He still prattles.


"Kai," he says, with an upnod. No malice in him, no suspicion. Bitter sardonicism is reserved for the actual perps. "Good to hear. You're a painter as well as a musician?" Then he looks down at coat and suit….and the golden badge at his waist. "Yep. Made Detective a few years back. Just coming in on homicide." The mention of PI work makes him grin. "I don't envy you that - that can be a pretty bitter lesson in how bad human nature can be, if I remember right."


Kai waves a hand and says, "Humans have always been naughty. Catching them at it is like a game." He glances at the badge. "Homicide, now that's respectable. You won't be seeing me on that side of things." He sidles closer, lowering his voice. "Any good cases? You can tell me. I won't tell anyone."


Felix's smile is really too broad for that narrow face, but it lights his eyes, makes the mask dissolve. "Everyone asks me that when I tell 'em where I am now. Nah, confidential. And good. I didn't have you pegged for a murderer."


Kai does look briefly disappointed. After all, he and Felix have been through so much together. He doesn't stay miffed for long, though. He shakes his head and says, "Oh, no. I'm peaceful. Death is the kind of thing you can't take back. I'd hit a bloke, but I'd never kill him." He nods firmly, secure in his convictions. "Only if they were hassling me first, you know. I get harassed."


"Oh?" Felix asks. Not merely an idle question, it appears. He's putting his gloves on - it's definitely cold enough to warrant it, now.


Kai nods with a kind of morose acceptance. "People look at me and think I'm light in the loafers," he says, and he doesn't even try to make it sound like it should be any kind of surprised. "And you know how they treat that sort. Sometimes I have to clock someone because they think they're going to rough me up." He shakes his head, curls bouncing in the cold. "I don't like to do it, but a man has to take care of business, dig me?"


There's a very odd silence that follows that, Felix frowning a little as the autumn wind whips past them. Not annoyed, not the darkening of expression that follows such a revelation. Instead, in a voice just as strange, he says, slowly, "As a matter of fact, I do know."


Kai tilts his head, those bright blue eyes oddly canny. Whatever his suspicions, he doesn't pry. Instead, he says, "So it's self defense. I'd never take a life, though. Not on purpose. Even bigots have a right to live, I guess. I just hope they learn not to assume we small fellows can't hold our own. Just because you look like a fruit, doesn't mean you can't swing a fist." He doesn't look like he could put a dent in a custard let alone punch someone's lights out.


That grin….it's almost feline. But it's not mocking. "Self defense….that's a justification," he agrees. He's got his hat in hand, and only now remembers to put it on. "Just so long as it doesn't get to murder and I get called in."


Kai laughs and says, "I mean it. I almost never throw the first punch, man." He shoulder-nudges Felix, quite familiar, though in his defense, he's been cuffed by the man before. Without being bought dinner first. "I won't even be on the receiving end of a murder. I promise. Just for you."


"May it be so," the cop says, with solemnity in his voice, despite the laughter in his eyes. He even makse a little gesture with one hand, as if to ward the idea of.


"Do you ever get harassed in your plainclothes?" Kai asks. "I don't think you would. You've got a look on your face that says 'I'll mess you up.'" And Kai? Kai has the look of a doe about him, a rabbit. He's prey, sure as anything. It's no wonder he gets harangued. He just has this aura that he would break so nicely.


Felix admits, after a beat, "Cop face. You get it, if you're on the force long enough. Like a pokerface, but more. It's one of those things."


Kai nods. "I get it, man, I'm on the same wavelength here." He gestures between them both, indicating a bond. "I don't have cop face. I don't even have criminal face." He has doe-eyed, red-lipped, pretty-when-he-cries face. "Anyway, where were you headed? I'm just walking around looking for things to privately investigate. To keep my skills up."


"Nowhere in particular. A bar, honestly," FElix admits, on a sigh. HE shoves his glasses up his nose.


Kai says, "Okay, I'll walk with you," Kai says. "If you like. I've got nowhere else to be. Just clearing my head. I'm, like, so muddled sometimes." He settles into a pace to match Felix's. "If you don't mind. I know I am an undesirable element." Which he seems not at all sorry about. On the contrary, just look at that smile.


"I don't mind at all," Felix says, drily. "Just somewhere out of this neighborhood. I don't want to end up drinking with my co-workers." And then he gives Kai a sly, sidelong look. "I don't know about undesirable element," he says. ….is he flirting?


Kai grins, soaking up the words without shame. "That's awfully nice of you to say, Detective." He lets Felix set the pace and direction, for he is a boozehound, and all bars with beer and whiskey are alike to him. All right, that strictly speaking isn't true, but he trusts the lawful one to lead them somewhere safe-ish. Kai admits, "You're not so bad for The Man."


"Thank you, I take that as a high compliment. And I'm glad to not be dealing with the petty stuff anymore," he adds, as he leads the way with a long stride. "Homicide's as serious as it gets. I don't have to deal with bullshit like parking tickets, anymore."


"Loiters," Kai muses. "People trying to have fun." He side-eyes Felix, and he grins. Briefly, though. The topic of homicide is rather sobering. "I don't know if I could take it," he admits. "Dealing with that much tragedy. I mean it's got to be done, but I don't think I could do it."


Now Kai gets that cut-glass profile, as he heads down the block. "Someone has to," he says, simply, with no air of bragging. "And being able to take a murderer off the streets…."


"It's necessary," Kai agrees. "I would just get so wrapped up in the families and their loss, and all the lost potential of the victim. Every case would break my heart." It's true. Sometimes the news has to be turned off or he gets maudlin.


"YOu're definitely not a native New Yorker," he says, as they turn a corner. Then there's that ridiculous grin. "For that matter, neither am I. But….you harden to it, or you quit."


"I'm from London," Kai says, and it's not a lie, technically. "It's not the violence that gets me," he says. "Just the tragedy. The key is to learn how to function while you're sad." He smiles a little. "I learned how to do that. I'm sad right now because one of my housemates is gone to his girlfriend's and the other is just… gone."


"And you're a social creature," No judgement - people are who they are. He's got the cop walk, even though he's offduty and in plain clothes. A kind of habitual watchfulness, and a purposeful stride. "Well, you can drink with me a while, then. I actually don't live with anyone, thank god."


"Yeah, I used to live alone, and then you didn't have to wonder where everyone is," Kai says. "You get used to having people around, and when one of them's your best friend and the other is someone who's maybe more than that, and then you're all by yourself, except for your dog…" Ah, so the miscreant got a dog since Felix last cited him. "Anyway, when they're actually home, it's nice." His own stride meanders, his shorter legs having to jog to catch up when he wanders too much.


It's a hole in the wall, but it's clean and warm and the staff even seem friendly. A few gestures here towards 'Irish pub', but really….plain dive bar. He motions Kai towards a booth with a peremptory jerk of his head. Still kind of a bitch, really. "Yeah. If it's people you like, or good family…."


Kai slides into the booth and says, "Oh, I adore these guys. They're my rock. I didn't realize how used to having people around I'd gotten til they weren't there." His brow furrows. "That's a liability." He's quiet a moment, then asks, "Is that why you live alone?" He's so guileless as he watches Felix.


"I need my privacy," he says. "And ….peace and quiet, as much as you can find it in New York City." He takes up his own seat, takes off his glasses, and rubs his eyes again, as if dealing with tht headache.


"I love the noise," Kai says. "I love the bustle and all the people." He looks around the bar, like he's ever hopeful for something. What, God only knows. Then his attention fixes on Felix, and he gives him a warm smile. "You look so serious. Are you all right? Do you need anything?"


"I suppose I am too serious," he allows, smiling at Kai a little unevenly. He looks different with those glasses off. Less serious, and younger. He was pretty young when Kai knew him first….and it hasn't been so very long. "You? YOu're not serious?" Yes, he's teasing.


Kai shakes his head and says, "Nope." That comes quickly. "I'm an artist, and I honor my craft, but." He shrugs amiably. "I can't take life too seriously. It's ridiculous, isn't it? We're born, we live, we die, and in between there's just… time. Our time. For us to spend however we want."


They're apparently close enough together that Detective Myopic doesn't need his glasses. He leaves them off for the nonce. "Wise," he says, slowly, as the waitress comes up to take their order. "Whiskey, neat," is his. A gesture to Kai, and he adds, "I'm buying."


"Ooh, I'll take the same," he tells the waitress, then to Felix, "Thanks, mate." He grins at Felix, and up close, his eyes have silver flecks in them, like moonlight on water. They're large, lovely eyes, and if one didn't know better, one might wonder if he's quite human. But come on, he's a Brit living in New York. He's got to be just a guy, right?


Well, Fel's a mutant himself….and well-aware of the others. That's the convenient pigeonhold, for the moment. The cop finds himself smiling back, the corner curling up, a little shy. Then he glances down, as if realizing he's held the elf's gaze just a hair too long.


Kai's smiles broadens, and he claps Felix on the shoulder. "I like you," he says quietly. "I know I keep saying that, but you seem like the kind of guy who might need to hear it. I imagine working for The Man must be pretty thankless. Especially when you're working with murderers."


Felix lifts a finger at that. "Working against them," he says, quietly. "To catch them." It fits, somehow, that sighthound air and build he has. "I get paid decent, but you don't do it for the pay. No cop really does, at least to start with. It tends to be a calling, almost like a religious vocation." At that, there's that funny, uneven grin again. "I thought about it, when I was a teenager. Becoming a monk. Didn't stick. And thanks. You're not so bad."


"Right," Kai says, "working against them. I just meant, you know, with them in the mix." He furrows his brow as he listens to Felix talking about being a cop as a religious calling. This might challenge his thoughts about pigs being pigs. "I couldn't be a monk," Kai says. "The vow of silence alone would do me in." Then he grins again. "Thank you. I try for not so bad. Everything else is just gravy."


"Most orders don't take a vow of silence. Only a couple of the Catholic ones, I think," Felix says. The waitress comes by and sets their orders down before them. "It makes the stakes worth it, being in homicide. I'm never tempted to stay home sick, there's too much to do." He actually winks at Kai, before taking a slug. "You've managed," he says, mock-graciously.


Kai's grin gains dimples. He raises his glass to Felix, then takes a swallow. He takes it well, the little guy does, not even wincing. "Hmm, the Catholics. I don't think they'd care much for my lifestyle." There's no need to be in the closet around someone who has arrested one outside a known gay club before. "Though I've settled down, now."


HOw he hated that duty. Somehow, so many of those he picked up there could read it on him, and the scornful looks were especially sharp. Fel pulls a face at that. "I imagine not. Good thing we aren't Catholics, then. Me, I'm lapsed Orthodox."


"I guess I'm technically Astaru," Kai says. "Not lapsed, but not very reverent." After all, he's got a god at home he trolls all the time. He hesitates, then lays a hand on Felix's wrist. Maybe he has a sense of how Felix feels about that duty, and why. "You're doing good now, and if you had to walk a darker path to get there, I get that." Is it forgiveness? Maybe.


The mortal's pulse is aflutter. Definitely excited by Kai's presence….and he doesn't withdraw his wrist from beneath the elf's hand, or give it one of those fish-eyed looks. "What's that?" he says, with open curiosity. "I don't think I know it." A faint blush streaked across those high cheekbones.


Kai studies Felix's face steadily, and a small smile plays upon his lips. Happy, not teasing. Mostly. "Worship of the Old Norse gods," Kai says. "The Asgardians. Like I said, I'm not very reverent, but it's what I grew up with." He takes another swallow of whiskey. "I'm friends with a few of them."


He cocks his head, a funny, canine motion. "Friends with Asgardians? And that's their religion?" Clearly, he doesn't have much when it comes to either knowledge or experience with them. "How'd that happen?"


Kai shakes his head. "No, no, no. Humans worshipped them. They never really asked to be gods. It's just that people at the time didn't know how else to frame them, dig me, man? So they build this religion around it. It's the closest thing I could come up with religion-wise, but I don't worship them." He finishes his whiskey. Then he sighs quietly. "I'm Alfheimian. We're, ah, close to Asgard."


Now he's intrigued Felix in another manner entirely. The blue eyes have sharpened, and he puts his glasses back on, absentmindedly. "…..Alfheim," he says, slowly. "Right. I've heard of that. So…you're not human." The idea doesn't seem to repel him. Not in the least.


Kai shakes his head slowly. He still has his hand on Felix's wrist. "I'm an elf, not the North Pole kind, more like Tolkien. But I've been raised her on Midgard. Earth, I mean." He lowers his gaze and says very quietly, "I'm the consort of the god of mischief, Prince Loki."


Which he seems to've completely forgotten about, that hand, the narrow eyes widening in wonder. "Huh," he says, a little blankly. "What're you doing here? I mean….you guys called this Midgard, right?"


Kai says brightly, "Oh! I love it here. It's always been home. I love Alfheim, too, but I grew up here. In Scotland. It was a long time ago, but I've moved around as times have changed, and I dig New York so much. I mean, like, I feel like I'm from here. Loki's just hanging out. He's not the same guy from the Ed Sullivan show. He's changed, like, on a profound, cosmic level."


"…..how old are you?" Then he realizes he's defaulted to being nosy. "I'm sorry. Bad habits. I've just….never really met someone from one of the other realms before, and I was curious."


Kai grins and says, "Don't apologize. I've got a curious nature, too. I'm…" He squints. "Gosh, I forget. I was a young man during the American Revolution. It was the first war I ever fought in." Given his accent, he adds, "For the Americans." Just to be sure. "Served under Marquis de Lafayette in the battle of Yorktown."


Felix whistles between his teeth, shakes his head. A moment of skepticism, and then it's gone. Kai is Kai….and the cop can tell when someone's trying to sell him a lie.


Kai's features are guileless, his gaze steady. Then again, he's looked pretty innocent before when he's lied. There's a casualness there, though. What does he have to gain from lying? Rather, he ducks his head and says self-consciously, "I'm still a young man by the way they gauge this stuff back home, man, I'll be one for a long time."


He shakes his head again. "Man. How old isthat, then, overall?" It's definitely turned his perspective inside out.


"I'm under three hundred." Of that, Kai is sure. "I need to do the math sometime, but after awhile they're just years." He smiles weakly, and he awkwardly moves his hand, wrapping it around his empty glass. "Sorry, I should just tell people I'm nineteen. That's what my ID says."


Felix snorts at him. "That's crazy," he says, but his tone is admiring, rather than otherwise. "And….yeah, you should. Or at least twenty one, so I don't have to throw you out."


Kai waves his glass and says, "Ah, you're homicide now, Felix. It's not your concern anymore." He winks, then looks around for the waitress to bring him another whiskey, neat. "Just enjoy the night. We only have so many of them."


"Fair enough," says the mortal. Another whiskey for him, too. A little pink in the cheeks, but that's all.


Kai shakes his head and says, "There's got to be something you enjoy doing besides drinking. You know just about everything about me that's worth knowing. What about you? Spill."


He purses his lips at that. "I fence," he says, simply. "As a sport. When I've got the time. I'm pretty out of practice, relatively speaking, but I show up at the club a time or two per week. And I read. Just for fun."


"I read," Kai says. Ginsberg, Kerouac, Hughes. Believe it or not, I like the old Scottish poet Robert Burns." He then quotes, "O were my Love yon Lilack fair, wi purple blossoms to the Spring; and I, a bird to shelter there, when wearied on my little wing. How I wad mourn, when it was torn by Autumn wild, and Winter rude! But I was sing on wanton wing, when youthfu May its bloom renewd."


Felix grins that funny, tight grin at that. Bone structure just a little too raw for his face, it seems. "Burns is good," he agrees.


"You've heard of him!" Kai says. "He was great. One of the best. Pity his life ended so roughly, and so young." He shakes his head. "Never met the man, but he was well-known in the day." He sighs softly. "Those were good days."


there's another shake of his head. "What you must've seen," he says. "Me, I barely made it into the end of the war. Didn't see much fighting before the Japs surrendered."


"I was in Belgium and France for the war," Kai says. "Was part of the Resistance, and those Army boys were just the Ginchiest. I don't care how many of them had a girl back home, you'd be surprised how many were any port in a storm." The elf has no shame. None.


"And me without even a foxhole handshake, all that time," he says, mock mournfully. "So,"A beat and he touches the brow of his glasses as if tempted to fool with them some more. "Tonight. After this. What're you doing?" Not the smoothest pass, but hell, as Kai pointed out, who has time to waste?


Kai grins, and he ducks his head. "If I wasn't taken? I'd be all over you. That's the first time I've had the urge since I started with my fella. But I'm a good boy, now. I come home and, I'd like to think, make a passable wife."


Up goes one finely drawn brow. He doesn't mock or dismiss that response, though. "Shame," he says, mildly. The only way to take a kindly-meant dismissal is as politely as you can. And he's outed himself to Kai - handed the elf the keys to career, if there's even the smallest spark of malice behind those blue eyes.


There is none. There is only warmth and good humor, a little apology, because he really would like to take the nice officer to a bathroom stall and make his night. But. "You'll be proud of me," he says. "I hardly party at all anymore. I haven't been arrested in months. Months!"


Felix levels one of those looks at him. Searching isn't even the word for it. "Sounds like whomever you've got yourself has made you into a new, respectable citizen. Good on him."


"Oh, I still plan on making trouble," Kai says. "I hate to say it, but there's trouble that needs made. But…" He grins stupidly and ducks his head. "Anyway, I bet you'll find someone nice who isn't trying to take down The Man."


Felix lifts his shot to Kai, and intones, "May it be so." Not an iota of doubt there…..but then, he's been wearing double layers of masks for a long while now, hasn't he?


Kai raises his glass in toast. "Cheers, mate." He finds a little left in it to drink. Then he lowers it and says, "I like you. You should come over sometime for dinner. Meet the mister. It'll be good to relax a little, I think." A place where what he is is understood. Celebrated, even.


"I'd like that," he says. "Sounds nice. You like being domesticated, eh?"


"I kind of do," Kai says, and he sounds surprised as he says it. "It's the little things, like sitting down to a meal, bringing the day to an end together. I learned how to cook a little. Bacon, mostly."


Felix laughs a wheezing little laugh, knocks back the rest of his shot. "Nice," he says, and again, while there's humor….it's not really mockery.


Kai grins broadly. "I got the important stuff taken care of. He finally started to complain of eating nothing but bacon all the time so I learned eggs and toast, and I make a pretty groovy grilled cheese."


"If you have me over for dinner, you better be wearing pumps and pearls after you take off your apron." That dog - now he knows Kai is taken.


Kai laughs and says, "I just might. I'm not shaving the beard, though. I look like a kid without it. I don't want my man coming home one day and dropping me off at a babysitter's." He scratches at his beard. Even with it, he looks young. Still, only an adult could grow one like this.


The full grin is utterly wicked. Now that it's a fact he won't be dragging Kai off somewhere and telling him to assume the position, the stakes are different. He can be sillier. "Yeah. YOu still look like a kid. Just one old enough to shave."


Kai sticks his tongue out at Felix to show haw mature he is. "We age slowly. I can't help it." He lowers his voice and adds, "I lament how long it's going to take for me to stop being a teenager. I've fought in multiple wars already." He pauses, then says, "Oh gosh, I'm going to end up in Viet Nam. Things are happening over there."


Felix's lip curls at that, but he nods. "Yeah," he says, simply, and he's paled. "I was in the end of the big one, and I did some time in Korea. This one…this one's gonna be a clusterfuck." He rubs at his scalp - hair's barely out of a crewcut. "I don't get exempted for essential work, I'm gonna enlist. Have a chance to make some decisions of my own."


"I can't decide," Kai admits. "On one hand, wars are where history is being made, on the other hand I seem to have found myself part of a protestation movement." He laughs and says, "They'll make me shave. They'll never send me if I tell them I'm fourteen." He rakes his fingers through his curls. "Are you sure you want to go, man? Homicide's important."


"If there's no draft, fuck no, I won't go. I don't know if they'll make me, being police, even if there is one. I'm young enough, though. And if the draft comes in, well…. better to get it over with. Maybe I'll go Navy. I've been in the Army twice, and it was bad."


Kai says, "Maybe I'll just tell them I'm a fruit," Kai says. "They won't send you if you're fruity. I figure after all the times people have tried to beat me up, or it's cost me a job, or I've been called nasty names, it might as well come in useful." He considers Felix. "Yeah, go Navy."


Felix's grin curls lopsided. "Any port in a storm, like you said," he says, almost in a sing-song.


Kai laughs and raises his glass. Empty, alas, but the sentiment is there. "Then I should say good hunting." He sighs fondly. "Oh, enlisted boys. They would worth going to war for if I didn't have someone at home."


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