lightaffinity | [closed: derek]

Sunshine only realizes she's missed her birthday when the assistant chef asks what the date is. She's still having trouble adapting to the fact that she'd apparently jumped through time as well as dimensions - her birthday doesn't feel like it should be for another couple of months - and while most people probably handle this by checking the date on their phones, Sunshine isn't exactly most people. And it's not like she's big into celebrating her birthday, especially not when she's so far from home, but hell. This time last year she'd been pretty convinced she was going to be eaten by a vampire or kidnapped by the government before she could make it to 27. That she has (even if it's cheating by a couple months) is probably worth drinking to.

The sign outside the bar says Semele's, and it's mostly empty, which isn't really surprising for a Sunday night. Most people don't get Mondays off. It being mostly empty is also definitely a good thing, Sunshine discovers once she steps inside, because most of the patrons have something going on in the shadows on their faces. Unlike most of her shadow-vision things, the Other-spotting power doesn't usually give her problems, but if the bar was full of Others, she'd probably have developed a splitting headache in under an hour.

The sparse crowd means she gets a seat at the bar without having to elbow anyone out of the way, and she considers squinting at the menu over the bar before deciding that fuck that, it's hard enough reading black type on a white background in good lighting, and this is literally none of the above. So when the bartender heads in her direction, she just asks, "Do you have cider?" and hopes he's not one of the bitchy types who'll just tell her to read the menu.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

triskehale

Derek doesn't always tend bar, considering that he has employees for that, but sometimes he enjoys it. Sometimes, like tonight, it's necessary. One of his bartenders called out sick and Derek had to fill in, so he's already not in the happiest of moods when the woman speaks to him.

She smells like unhappiness and frustration, a sour note to her otherwise pleasant scent, and Derek plants his palms against the edge of the bar as he looks at her. "I assume you mean the hard stuff?"

From:

lightaffinity

Sunshine may be a brass-bound bitch at the best of times, and she may be less than happy about life at the moment, but more than a decade at Charlie's means she's not gonna take that out on the bartender. There's a special place in hell reserved for people who are assholes to their waitresses, and as far as she's concerned, the rule extends to anyone who has to deal with customers for a living.

So she swallows back the sarcastic remark that wants to come out and starts to say, "Yeah, I ―" at which point she looks up and into his face. And it's not really a surprise that in a bar full of Others, the shadows on the bartender's face are doing something she now knows, thanks to Luke, mean either were or possibly werewolf, more specifically, but it's been a long day, and noticing and identifying them distracts her for a moment.

"I mean the hard stuff," she finishes, hopefully before he can catch her staring.

From:

triskehale

Derek knows that it was a dumbass thing to say the second that it leaves his mouth, but he's tired and people can be uppity. He'd rather ask a dumb question than get bitched at because all they wanted was bubbly apple juice.

The woman cuts herself off as she looks up at him, and Derek subtly quirks one eyebrow as her gaze lingers on his face, but he doesn't think much of it. It's far from the first time that someone's stared at him. He makes killer tips on the nights that he tends bar, and there are more than a few people who frequent the food truck without seeming to have much interest in the actual food.

"Coming right up," Derek tells her, turning around and heading down the bar to one of the refrigerators. Semele's seems to have everything. Whatever Derek puts on the order and sends off, it gets delivered. Even his wolfsbane ale.

He grabs a frosty bottle of hard cider and pops the lid off, catching it easily and tossing it into the trash can without looking, and then he pours it into a glass before setting it in front of her on a napkin. "Can I get you anything to eat, or are you good for now?"

From:

lightaffinity

"Only if you've got something that doesn't involve meat or bread," Sunshine says, taking a sip of her cider. She should probably eat something - drinking on an empty stomach hasn't been her idea of a good time for years now - but eating inferior bread is only fun if she can bitch about the ways it's inferior, and there isn't anyone here she can do that to. She misses Mel.

"Kind of an interesting clientele you've got here, huh?" she says, which could mean any number of things besides the fact that they're almost entirely Others, so it's not really that risky of a thing to say. "It always like this?"

From:

triskehale

"Well, I sort of specialize in meat and bread. Burgers and sandwiches kind of dominate the menu," he says, huffing out a laugh and quirking a brow, leaning his elbows on the bar. "They're pretty good, but if that's not your thing, how do you feel about french fries?"

She mentions his clientele, calls them interesting, and Derek's other brow raises to meet the first. "Is it always what, full of good people looking to have a good time?"

He smirks, eyes darting over to a cute fae girl chatting up an awestruck looking guy in a booth. "Yeah, pretty much."

From:

lightaffinity

Rae laughs a little, mostly at herself. "I'm a baker," she says by way of explanation. "If I eat anyone else's bread, I'm pretty much automatically going to judge it. I can't deep-fry for shit, though, so french fries are great."

She follows his gaze to the couple, takes one look at the guy's face, and shakes her head. "Yeah, that's not gonna end well," she murmurs, then turns back to the bartender. "I get the feeling it's never really boring, working in a place like this."

From:

triskehale

"Well, I order the buns from somewhere else. I think they're good, but I take no responsibility for them," Derek says with an amused huff of laughter. "But what's inside them? That I'll take credit for."

He nods and turns to call out for his cook to make an order of fries before turning back to the woman. Derek hadn't implemented too many changes when he took over Semele's, but he did tweak the food menu. He added more freshly made items and expanded the menu altogether, hiring an extra cook and training them on the way he liked to prepare things. What they make isn't quite as good as when Derek makes it, but he's told it's a good second.

"Boring? No," Derek says with a smirk, resting his hip against the bar and looking at her curiously. She seems human, but she can obviously tell that most of the other people in the bar aren't. "You, for example. You're shaking up to be pretty interesting."

From:

lightaffinity

"Bet you say that to all the girls," Sunshine says dryly, and okay, maybe she'd been a bit too obvious with the noticing Others thing. Sue her. She's still trying to figure out the unspoken rules of Darrow, where Others exist and don't always bother to hide it, where the government either doesn't know or doesn't care. It's confusing. Things were a lot simpler back home, where the unspoken rule for what she can do was 'hide it or you're fucked'.

"Trust me, I'm probably the most boring person in this city. Unless you consider making cinnamon rolls interesting, which apparently most people don't."

From:

triskehale

"I really don't," Derek says with a chuckle, because if there's one thing he isn't, it's a player. He flirts aimlessly at times, but the few casual encounters he's had in Darrow have always been instigated by the other person. "But I'm a cook and my partner sells baked goods out of our food truck, so I have to think that making cinnamon rolls is at least a little interesting."

He leans against the bar and looks at her, one brow quirked curiously. "So, how did you know that this wasn't a normal bar?"

From:

lightaffinity

"Hmm, points for good taste, then," Sunshine says, tipping her cider in his direction before taking another sip.

There isn't really a good answer for that, so she arches her eyebrows and keeps a completely straight face, saying in her very best monotone, "With my super special magic powers. Obviously." Which is completely true, but you can usually get away with being honest about anything if you say it sarcastically enough. She tacks on a 'spooky' wave of her fingers for emphasis.

From:

triskehale

Derek just stares flatly at her while wiping down the counter, quirking an eyebrow as she speaks. Her voice is all flat and sarcastic, complete with wiggling fingers, but her heart remains steady. What she's saying isn't a lie.

He's encountered plenty of people in this city with powers, so he doesn't bat an eye. "What sort of magic powers are yours?"

From:

lightaffinity

Damn.

Either he's got no sense of sarcasm or he can tell that she's lying, and something tells Sunshine that this guy doesn't have any problems with sarcasm. She'd been playing with fire a little, letting on that she noticed there was anything weird about this place, and now she can either try to bullshit her way out of this, or she can just tell the truth.

What the hell. It's not like this gonna be like it was with that cop the other week, trying to figure out what he might know or not know without saying anything directly. She squints at him for a minute, then says, with a casualness she really doesn't feel, "So, the bullshit detector. That a were thing, or is that just you?"

From:

triskehale

Derek raises an eyebrow at that, tilting his head curiously as he looks her over. She isn't the first one in the city to know that he's a werewolf just by looking at him, but it never stops being slightly unnerving.

"A were thing," Derek says after a moment, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes just a little. "How'd you know?"