2020-05-16 - Payback

It's a Saturday night, and Vic has somehow managed to NOT be working at TiBS, bartending. She generally just picks her hours for show, but Easton has been kind of bitchy about her actually doing work when she's there, so she's avoiding the busiest nights. The low rumble of her vehicle can be heard coming up the drive to Ruiz' A-frame, the hemi-driven purr of a Dodge Ram 1500 truck, some fancy special edition from 2019, gray with black trim. She parks it and climbs out, hopping down off the running board, in a white wifebeater under a blue chambray workshirt left unbuttoned, and jeans with her usual tactical boots.

She pauses at the foot of the porch stairs for a few moments, still smoking a cigarette from the drive over, and gives the occupant time to react to her approach. She'd rather not surprise the cop and get shot in the face. She finally climbs the steps and raps her knuckles on the door.

Interestingly enough, the cop's not home. He is, however, just heading up the side of the house from the treeline; a sturdy figure dressed mostly in black, utilitarian clothing with a totally unnecessary ball cap pulled low over his eyes. And what looks like a modified AR-15 on a sling draped across one broad shoulder. He pauses at the sight of the truck pulling up in his drive, and the woman climbing out of it, and bristles ever so slightly. Then the cold's sniffed out of his nose, and he resumes his prowlish approach. "Help you with something?" he murmurs as he draws within conversational range.

Vic plucks the cigarette out of her mouth at the sniff, turning at the sound. She gives Ruiz a once over, because he's very armed at the moment. "Javier. I have your money, and a bonus for it taking longer than I planned," she explains with a slight shrug, blue eyes narrowed as they rest on the AR-15. "I'd ask if the deer are fighting back hard enough to need that, but after my jog into mutant bear territory, it would be a rhetorical question." She then scans past him, as if worried there might be something following him. Homerton really spooked her.

Nope, nothing following him. Just the rain and the dark, hanging about the man like a shroud. He continues raking his eyes over her slowly, like he still hasn't quite figured out why she's here, despite her very clear explanation. Then unslings his rifle from his shoulder, and digs his keys out of a pocket of his jacket to unlock the front door. It takes him a minute in the dark, but eventually the click of the bolt popping, and he shoves the door open with his shoulder. "Come on in, then," he murmurs. He could probably stand to offer something like a smile, but he doesn't.

The fact it takes him a minute to unlick the door tells her a few things. He hasn't lived in this cabin long. He's still learning his routines for it. Also probably why he was out in the woods with an AR-15, patrolling his patch of land, making sure it's safe. For him? Or him and who else? She watches him with narrowed eyes. "Am I allowed to smoke in there or will the missus object?" she asks with a faint smirk.

She doesn't crowd him at the door while he's working at it, instead giving him a bubble of space like cops are wont to do. Room to draw, space to let them address their surroundings. She still has that cop air about her, even if it's somewhat masked by the booze and the drugs and the occasional glint of 'crazy' in her eyes.

There's a slantwise look sent the younger woman's way, when she asks about smoking. A crooked curve of his mouth, and a hitch of his chin to usher her inside. "There isn't a missus. Hasn't been, in a while now. Have a seat, and no, you're not allowed to smoke in here." He tosses his keys atop the kitchen island, once she's inside and the door's been locked up and the security system re-armed. And it's true enough, that he has a bigger personal bubble than most. Gets tetchy about it being breached. "Get you a drink?" His tone of voice is taut, civil; hard to tell if there's much else going on. He sheds his jacket and tosses it across the back of a chair, revealing decently well-muscled arms under that ratty black tee shirt scrawled with ink for days.

There's that unremarkable black leather couch she might remember from her earlier stay here, cleaned of bloodstains. A chair or two, and a kitchen table with a handful more. It's hard to say if someone else lives here, though it seems at least likely that someone spends a good deal of time in residence. Unless Javier's suddenly developed an interest in violin concertos, as per the sheet music lying around on the couch.

Vic was always strong in forensics. It made her invaluable undercover, because she could find and secure evidence in the hardest to breach places. She marks his words carefully, as she crushes her cigarette underfoot. Littering. He can totally ticket her for that.

She follows him inside with her fingertips tucked into the front pockets of her jeans. You know the ones. The useless shallow things women's pants are inflicted with. What the fuck is supposed to fit in one of those? A lost button? Lint? Really! Her eyes sweep the space more carefully on this visit, since she's not light-headed from blood loss and in pain.

"A drink would be good," she says, carefully, a bit suspicious of the hospitality. There is a lot of bad blood between them, and she knows it's for good reason. She plucks up the sheet music and looks it over. "No girlfriend? What's this then?" She waggles the papers in one hand with an arched brow. "Did you become a violinist when I wasn't looking?"

He can. Ticket her. But he's not going to, because he's got way bigger fish to fry. There's a grunt when she consents to a drink, and who's to say he won't drug her with something and.. well, god knows what? He doesn't bother asking her what she'd like; he's drinking tequila, so she's drinking tequila. A bottle of Patron is collected along with two glasses, and he prowls back to the living room, hitching his chin toward the couch when he sees she hasn't taken a seat yet.

"You ask too many fucking questions," he grunts, reaching for the sheet music with a hard look directed toward her. The implication's clear; she can relinquish it, or he'll take it.

"I'm a cop." Pause. "Was a cop. Asking questions is what I do." Vic shrugs and hesitates a moment, meeting his eyes in almost a challenge over the sheet music. In the end though, she hands it over, because he's more likely to talk after he's got tequila in him, and his money. She settles on the couch, perching in a manner that indicates she is ready to bolt off it at a moment's notice. This man has every reason to want her dead, she knows it, and she is prepared to fight if it comes to that. Every muscle is prepared to slip from stillness to violent motion in a heartbeat.

She leans back on the couch, straightening her legs so she can dig around in her front pocket to pull out a wad of cash and a small baggie. "Three-hundred, and a bonus." The bonus is clearly cocaine. The good stuff reserved for Monaghan's people and the big spenders, not the lesser quality stuff that goes to the average street user.

The instinct's in both of them, truth be told. The instinct to fight and claw their way toward survival at all costs. At all costs. The couch shifts slightly with his weight settled into it beside her, followed by the soft scrape of the bottle's cap being unscrewed. Then liquid decanted into one glass, and the other. He pushes hers across before reaching for the payment offered. The cash, first, scissored between two inked fingers, it's turned over and examined briefly. Dark eyes flick from it, to her blues, then back again. And then he starts counting it out with the crisp, businesslike efficiency of someone who's done this plenty of times before. Which, as she'd know from their time undercover, he has.

"You didn't have to do this," he murmurs, setting the money aside, and holding up the baggie for a moment, jaw hard.

Vic watches him count out the money, looking utterly amused. For something she didn't have to do he still made sure it was all there. The glass of tequila is plucked up and sniffed a moment, as if she hopes she could suss out poison or drugs in it if her nose was that sharp. Considering all the coke she's done, they both know it isn't. She takes a drink of it anyway. She's more of a whiskey drinker, but anything with alcohol will do in a pinch.

At his words she snorts. "I'm not big on accepting charity. And you didn't have to clean me up and call that guy out here to fix me either. I can't imagine you'd do that out of the kindness of your heart for someone like me, Javier, so let's just call it even." Her own eyes glint a bit when they land on the baggie. She is still hooked, clearly.

Oddly enough, he doesn't argue it. The charity; her refusal to accept it. Probably because he'd do the same, in her shoes. Another glance as he opens up the baggie, dabs at it with a fingertip and wets it with his tongue. He's done enough blow to know the quality of the stuff by taste alone, and if she's trying to pawn her bottom shelf garbage off on him.. "You can believe what you want to believe," he murmurs, zipping the thing back up and shoving it into a pocket of his jacket.

Then a breath taken, and blown out his nose steadily. "Thanks," seems sincere enough, and is even accompanied by a beat or two of eye contact. Enough to make it clear that they are, in fact, even. Nothing owed, no loose ends. "Now get the fuck out of my house. I've got shit to do." Well, they might be in decent enough standing, but that doesn't make them friends, apparently.

It's the good stuff indeed. The dismissal doesn't seem to surprise Vic; in fact it seems to amuse her. She downs the last of her tequila and sets the glass down. "Right, we're square then, for now." She heads out the door, without a look back, and the sound of her truck rumbling to life and fading in the distance is the last he hears from her tonight.