2020-01-10 - Coffee and sniping

(TXT to Joseph) Ruiz : Cavanaugh. You up?

(TXT to Ruiz) Joseph : I am. Whatcha need?

(TXT to Joseph) Ruiz : (...)

(TXT to Ruiz) Joseph : I know, baby. Thinking R hard 4 Marine. Take your time.

(TXT to Joseph) Ruiz : You want to fucking tell me that to my face, princess?

(TXT to Ruiz) Joseph : I am tempted. But ...probably better from way over here. But in all seriousness, what's up?

(TXT to Joseph) Ruiz : You're such a fucking prick.

(TXT to Joseph) Ruiz : Anyway, there's a place on the boardwalk that does half decent coffee. You want to join me?

(TXT to Ruiz) Joseph : Tell me something else I don't know. And sure. I still can't get used to coffee that doesn't taste like the barista doped it with a double shot of bilgewater and jet fuel.

(TXT to Joseph) Ruiz : Harbor Coffee. hole in the wall a little way down from the pier. Google it. I'll meet you there in twenty.

(TXT to Ruiz) Joseph : See you there.

Harbor Coffee is, as promised, a hole in the wall. Wedged in between a pawn shop and a place that sells refurbished boat engines, the place is tiny; though the smell of coffee mingling with fresh-baked pastries is encouraging.

Javier's hunkered down at one of perhaps three tables crammed into the narrow space. It's a chilly morning, and the space heater set up near the door is on the fritz, so he's zipped into layers today: a black hoodie and battered looking leather jacket over top. Dark, fitted jeans, hiking boots, ball cap with the brim pulled low over his eyes. He's pretty absorbed in his phone while he waits for his coffee to be made.

Joe, for his part, has the full greatcoat on, in dark blue-gray wool. No military insignia remain on it. He's peeling off his black watch cap as he comes in, leaving his hair in mild disarray, and unwinding the white silk scarf he has wrapped neatly around his neck. He orders coffee, gets a croissant, and ambles over chewing on his first mouthful.

The cop's eyes tick up from his phone at the sound of someone approaching, and find that tall drink of water with blonde curls all askew and a mouthful of croissant. His dark gaze trails him like a hunter's mark, steady and intent. Then drops back to his phone so he can finish sending whatever message he'd started. "Grab mine while you're up there?" almost comes out like a request.

"Sure," he says. Determinedly sweet-tempered, this one, outside of his occasional fits of waspishness....or when that self-destructive urge isn't riding him like a possessing demon. His own drink is dished up, and he comes over with a drink in each hand to sit down across from Javier, expectantly. Not quite smiling, but it's there lurking in the lines around his eyes, his mouth.

A few more swipes of his thumb, and whatever missive he'd been so distracted by is summarily dispatched. The phone's shoved into his pocket, and he reaches for his coffee once it's set down. Eye contact is made, but as ever, warmth from him is in short supply; there's no smile, just the expectation that his drink will be handed over.

He expected nothing more, and hands off the drink easily. Then he's doctoring his own with the usual unholy amounts of sugar and cream. It could be Kona's finest, it wouldn't matter, his palate was ruined long ago by shipboard coffee. Too early for him to be really chipper, but he's not sour-tempered in the morning, either, thankfully. Just looking into Javier's face calmly.

Javier, on the other hand, drinks his piping hot and black. No sugar, no cream; the intent is, and always has been, to jolt him into consciousness. Still watching those blue, blue eyes, he tips his head forward and his chin up for a swig of the stuff, then sniffs once. Like he's still trying to banish the cold from his nose. "You, uh." He sniffs again, eyes ticking away from Joe's. "How're you getting on?" Vague as fuck, small talk for days.

The smile's growing, like dawn light. Not the old mocking coyote grin that makes Javier want to disassemble it by hand, one tooth at a time, but that warmth. He'll take it, though, this small talk. Can they actually bear each other's company out in the light of daily life?

"I'm okay," he says, tearing off another piece of the croissant and chewing it. "Things are mighty quiet here.....though lemme tell you," Ah, there's ignition, the light coming on, as his voice drops low, "I was in a Dream the other day. Some li'l kid's dream of Godzilla. Man, it was fucked up. I couldn't do much but stare...."

That smile catches him unawares. Like he'd stumbled across an oasis in a burning desert, and couldn't look away. His dark, hooded gaze gravitates back to the older man's face; inexorable, the pull of that warmth. "Small town," he murmurs low, sipping again. Steam curls over his scruffy cheek and disperses into the cooler air. "Quiet until it isn't." He doesn't look over as someone else enters the coffee shop, and another patron leaves; this one watching them curiously like she knows.

"..Godzilla?" repeats Javier, deadpan.

Joe takes a sip from his coffee, bobs his head, and then lifts a long palm in a 'scout's honor' gesture. "My hand to God. Godzilla and Mothra and other monsters I didn't know. August figured it out, I think, that it was this child's. Other folks there I didn't recognize. No real harm done, I think." His eyes are shining with a kind of wonder. "I didn't....I'd heard you could be in a Dream with others, but I'd never done it before. Never had one that wasn't....wasn't bad, myself." He brushes the empty sugar packets aside with a lazy gesture. No rings on those long fingers, no ink.

He probably should be looking skeptical as all get out, hearing something like this. My hand to God, Joe says, and there's only a little flicker at the corners of his dark, narrowed eyes as he regards the other man over the rim of his cup. Drinks again, sets it down with a scrape of ceramic against tabletop. "Roen was there too, huh?" He doesn't seem surprised by that. After a bit more of a pause, he ventures, "Friend of yours?" His own hand bore a ring for the longest time; and for years, that groove persisted, like a stubborn reminder of what he had and what he lost. Just the ink, now. Unrefined, lower quality than the work on his arms; a fish, a few letters 'K', 'E' and 'H'. A heavily stylized phoenix, and something resembling an infinity symbol.

"Don't yet know him well enough to say. Just to rec'nize," he says. "Talked to him a time or two. He was in Bosnia, too, 'fore I got there, though. Saw the Siege - you c'n tell he don't wanna remember it." He downs half his coffee in a hurry, like it's suddenly imperative that there be caffeine in his bloodstream. "Don't know anyone in this town well, yet, 'cept you."

At the suggestion that Joe knows him well, a wry twist of his mouth. Not quite a chuckle, though he looks like he wanted to. For a moment there. Instead, he trails his gaze to the window, and the pier beyond that. Watches a pleasure craft being unmoored, and getting ready to pull away from shore. "Didn't know you were ever in Bosnia. But yeah, he doesn't like to talk about it."

"Well, I was over it," he says. "Flyin' Bombcats as part of Deliberate Force, pretty much my first real combat stuff. Only nickled and dimed a little, in Desert Storm. I was barely in time." Like the first Gulf War was a party he almost missed.

Vast swathes of life they don't know. All of it channeled into those narrow confines, the meeting of bodies in the dark, words exchanged in a whisper, when there were words at all.

Joe nods again, eats another bite. Doling it out like that's all the breakfast he'll have and wanting to make it last.

He keeps his eyes on the window, like this is one of those moments he dare not watch the man seated across from him. Too risky, talking about their time in the air and on the ground, "Fighting other peoples' wars." It's murmured into his coffee, and there's a sliver of something in his eyes. That old ferocity come to roost for a few taut moments. And then with a noise in his throat, and a sip of the bitter drink, it's gone.

"Won't be seeing Rosencrantz until tomorrow, most likely." He sniffs again, rubs at his nose with his knuckles.

"Yeah," Joe acknowledges, easily. American adventurism abroad, the empire unable to keep her fingers out of everyone else's business.

There's that tautness in his face, at that. "You mentioned he was out of town," he agrees, quietly. And leaves it at that. Look at that, he has learned some discretion.

A good many things he could say, there. A good many things he could do; the both of them sitting mere feet apart, but it may as well be miles. "Used to look up at night and see if I could spot the ISS overhead," he confides, quiet. Absently traces the rim of his cup with a callused thumb.

The smile brightens. "That's funny," he says, but his voice is tender, rather than amused. "All that time, I was up there in white-collar space jail wonderin' where you were, and you could look at me just about any time. She's due to come overhead here in a few nights. Maybe we can take Surprise out of the harbor and see her. I mean, it's never a long pass, ninety seconds or so, but..." Joe shrugs, takes a sip of his coffee.

White collar space jail makes him chuckle finally, though he makes barely a sound. Crow's feet at the corners of his eyes; the distant memory of laughter in each and every one of them. "Yeah, well, that's assuming I could tell it apart from all the other shit up there." He gestures toward the ceiling with his cup, and is in the midst of another sip when Joe talks about taking the Surprise out. It's held there a few moments, then he swallows, sets the thing down again. "Yeah, we could." Still refuses to look at the guy. "Tonight?"

His fingers curl around his coffee cup, gently. "I'd show you. Nothin' in the sky moves like her, not even the fastest plane. Well, maybe a few satellites, but they're not gen'rally visible to the unaided eye. She ain't out there tonight, though. I take you out tonight, there ain't much to see. Snow, snow, and snow, though there's something pleasant and strange about being at sea in the snow, if you aren't somewhere dangerous. Like you're suspended and time has ceased to run."

Then his voice goes more quiet yet, though he isn't whispering, "'sides, I get you out there alone, how much self-control you think I got, Javier? I'm older 'n things might not be what they were like they were when you were nineteen and I was twenty three, but I'm not dead yet."

He did. He did say a few nights, and Javier's mind was so busy with other things.. "I.. looked. Every night, at first." His eyes tick up a moment at being at sea in the snow, then back down to his coffee with a slight twitch in the muscle of his jaw. "Spotted something.. bright. Moving too fast to catch. Figured it might be you up there." One corner of his mouth melts into an almost-smile, though the motion's fleeting, and dissipates with Joe's last words.

"Right." The last of his coffee's tossed back, and he checks his watch briefly before tugging his sweatshirt's hood up over his head. "Never mind. Catch you later, yeah?"

"That's just about her, yeah. You gotta be lookin' the right way at the right time. I did my time, one in a long line of many," he says, smiling. "I helped build her, on one of my Atlantis missions."

But his own smile fades into that patient warmth, like a hearthfire. "Sometime soon," he corrects, gently. "I hope. But you're busy. Thanks for the coffee." No attempt to stop him, make him linger. Even if Itzhak doesn't summarily torpedo a chance of anything, at best he'll have to fit himself into the interstices of the cop's life, like a mouse surviving behind the baseboards.

"It's a figure of fucking speech," Javier feels the need to point out. "Catch you later. You fucking know that as well as I do." His fingertips press into the tabletop a moment, like he's resisting the urge to ball his hand into a fist and slug Joe in his smug, patient smile. Age has diluted his temper, perhaps. Or merely the fact that they're in a public place. Either way, he pushes to his feet with a grunt, shoves his chair back in a little too hard, and prowls off for the door. His to-go cup is pitched into the garbage before he shoulders his way out.