2020-06-03 - Family History

Coffee – the great bringer-together of people from all walks of life, of all ages, and of all weird and whacky relations. Finch Celaeno is feeling more than a little bit of trepidation over this meeting, but she's at Espresso yourself nevertheless. Her car is parked outside, formerly her Grandmother's ancient 1961 Lincoln Continental, affectionately termed "The Land Yacht". The young woman is settled at one of the tables, wearing a black Ramones tee under denim overalls that have been cropped into knee-length shorts. Scrunchie socks and combat boots completes the 'look' if that is what anyone would call it. Her hair seems tousled, but that's how it always looks unless she grows it out.

In front of her is a steaming paper cup of coffee with white chocolate syrup in it and whipped cream on top. Her father is so gonna make a face when he sees it. Beside her on the floor is a messenger bag, and she has her phone out and is texting on it. Definitely her father's daughter.

Joe....well, Joe looks rough, truth be told. There's a bandaged wound at his temple, held together by butterfly strips, and he's got the pale, tired look of someone who's kind of fending off pain. No sign of trepidation in turn, though with him, it'd be hard to tell.

He's in jeans and blue dress shirt, a few shades darker than his eyes. The new ink on his hands is vivid and bright, beyond the initial healing.

He heads for her quietly. Apparently he didn't arrive with Javier, and is a few moments earlier than the cop.

He's late, predictably. Phone tucked between shoulder and ear as the cop pushes his way inside, he's in the process of pushing his arms into the sleeves of his hoodie, while trying to scan for where his kid might be sitting. And there she is, with a tall blond headed on an intercept course for her. If that isn't a disaster in the making, he isn't sure what is. "I've got to go, talk later," he mumbles into his phone, hangs up, and shoves the thing into the back pocket of his jeans. Then, "Hola," in greeting to the unlikely pair as he ambles on up, and tries to wind an arm around Joe's waist for a quick hug. Just that. No over the top PDAs from him. Finch gets a ruffle of hair and a kiss to her cheek, if she permits.

Finch looks up at the sound of her father's voice and she gives Ruiz a broad smile which only falters slightly when she realizes Joe is here too. She is SO bad at people things. So bad. The hair ruffle gets a snort but the cheek kiss is accepted and one is given in return. "Hey Dad, hi Joe," she greets the two men. "Glad you could make it." Her phone gets shoved into her pocket and she veritably sits on her hands so she doesn't do anything stupid with them.

Well, he's intercepted before he can get his foot properly into his mouth, for all that he has the look of someone on his best behavior. A pat for the back of Javier's shoulder when he's hugged. "Hey there," he says, amiably. No smile, not now, but he's at least trying to project good nature. There's just that wariness lurking at the back of the blue eyes.

"You, uh, going to sit?" Javier murmurs as he himself sinks into the only remaining chair at the table, then drags over another one with the heel of his boot. Riiiiight in between himself and Finch, though a little closer to himself, truth be told. He pats it a couple of times, then starts pushing up the sleeves of his hoodie to his elbows. Can't stand things touching his wrists, his throat. "What's that?" he asks of the girl's drink, leaning in for a sniff.

Finch is in a weird position. It's not like Joe is replacing her mother. She hates her mother with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns. The woman tried to kill her when she was 13. And it's not like her father needs protecting. He's a damn cop. But he is also dating her best friend, and that one, that one she is terribly protective of. Itzhak was one of the few people she became friends with after she came home from Cornell when her college money ran out.

She studies Joe for a long moment, taking in a steadying breath. Itzhak says it's ok, so this is ok. She has to trust her friend to tell her the truth. At the question about her beverage she chimes merrily, "White Chocolate Mocha. Your favorite thing." Or you know, his least favorite thing. You should have seen the text argument about whether or not white chocolate is chocolate, that even August got dragged into.

That particular Talmudic dispute he blessedly missed out on, and shows no consciousness of. Joe meets her gaze steadily. Older than Itzhak, older than her father, even. Gray in that dark blond hair, lines on his face even in repose. The only ink visible at the moment is HOLD FAST over his fingers, bright and new.

He settles down in the chair, a little gingerly. Perhaps he deemed it best that he do this sober, rather than out of his skull on painkillers.

Does Itz need protecting from this old sailor?

The only thing Javier needs protecting from is his own bent for self destruction, it seems. He scowls slightly as Finch elucidates upon what it is she's drinking, and drops back into his seat with a distasteful noise in his throat. "I'll go grab us drinks. You two.." An inked finger points from one to the other. "Talk." Is that an order? He brushes knuckles to Joe's shoulder, pushes to his feet, and prowls off to the counter while digging his wallet out of his jeans pocket.

Finch's dark eyes, notably their intensity, mirror her father's. In that respect it is most clear that she is Ruiz's child. There are other inklings of her parentage in the high forehead, disguised by bangs, and in her cheekbones. Their noses may have been similar had Javier's not been broken multiple times. And of course, in her temper. In the rest she clearly favors her mother.

"So," she starts, watching her father walk away before looking back at Joe, "You said you've known him longer than I've been alive. How did you meet?"

"Oh, look, we have our orders," Joe says, cheerfully deadpan, as Javier drops that command and then stalks away. He gives her a look of amused commiseration.

Ho boy, this story. It's a lucky thing that Javier is far enough away that he can't easily do it by merely physical means....and isn't a Physicalist, so he can't clap a virtual hand over the sailor's mouth from where he stands at the counter. "We met," he says, after a beat or so of a funnily reminiscent look, "In a bar on a military base in Bahrain. Your father was trying to commit suicide by rum, and the other Marines were egging him on. I'd never seen a man that drunk and still upright, and I wouldn't again until I lived in Russia."

"I can totally believe that," Finch notes with a snort. "He was preparing to ship out again and was in a bar in Seattle drinking himself blind with the other Marines when he met my mother. And never saw her again. Not his fault. He shipped out and she had no intention of telling him he knocked her up, or anyone else who had done it either, me included." She shrugs a little with a sigh and looks after her dad at the counter. "He's taking it WAY better than I expected him to. It was a rough start but it's getting better between us. He's a hell of a better parent than Wren ever was."

Javier is blissfully oblivious, of course. He's bellied up to the counter, placing an order for a black coffee and a salted caramel latte, shit, I mean mocha. Because fuck if he knows these new fangled names for drinks these days. A crumpled bill is slid across to pay for them, and he darts a glance at the pair as if to make sure they haven't killed one another, before ambling off to wait for his order to be prepared. Hands shoved into his jeans pockets, ink scrawled up his arms, and that ugly set to his jaw, nobody'd guess him for a cop who hadn't seen him around the precinct.

It is, perhaps, loyalty that has Joe biting back most of the comments that bubble up. "Well," he says, after another beat, searching for words, "Drinking is a very big part of Marine culture." Then, slightly more desperately, "What's your mother like?" There's obviously some serious weirdness there, if she claims Harpy lineage. Would a goddess be trolling for a pickup in a military dive bar?

Do you want demigods, because that's how you get demigods.

"Batshit insane," Finch replies, deadpan. "No, really. She's locked up in Western State Hospital, in the wing for the criminally crazy." She squints a bit, as talking about her mother still hurts. "She tried to kill me when I was a kid. She wanted to stop the curse the family is under. She's basically catatonic in that loony bin, alongside my Great Aunt who killed all the male relatives of her generation, related by blood or marriage." That is a lot to hear, probably. Welcome to Gray Harbor.

It is perhaps fortunate that Javier returns after they've broached the bit about Finch's mother, and his one-time sexual escapade, and her current whereabouts. There's a soft clunk as Joe's drink is set down in front of him and slid closer, with a very dubious look sent the ex-aviator's way. Then the cop drops back into his own seat, and takes a noisy slurp of his coffee while he orients himself to the topic of conversation.

It gets Javier a quizzical loft of brows in return. "Thanks. What's that look for?" he wonders, mildly. He takes a sip, apparently approves, and then looks back to Finch. "Why?" he says, simply. "What prompted all that? What kind of....reason leads to that?" There's no disbelief in his tone. He not long ago saw himself....well, a version of himself...summarily exploded by an alien. Suspension of disbelief is apparently 'by the neck, until dead' here.

Finch grimaces and sips her coffee, turning the cup around and around as she tries to figure out how to explain. She looks to Ruiz and chews her lip. "Well apparently, a long fucking time ago, my family ancestors lived in Greece. And some shit went down with the men in the family being total a-holes to the women. So one of the ladies made a pact with a Harpy, Celaeno herself, for protection and wealth and all that happy stuff, so their men couldn't hurt them anymore. Turns out those Greek myths? They were likely based on Veil creatures. Price was that every other generation, the first born female would have to kill all the men of her generation, to feed the Harpy. Last murderbird was my Great Aunt. So guess who is next in line? Mom trying to off me messed things up though. We're working on a way to end the curse entirely."

Ruiz starts to say something, seems to think better of it, and mumbles instead, "Doesn't matter," to Joe's mild confusion. He doesn't appear to have anything to add to Finch's abridged version of the murderbird treatise, so he remains silent on that front. Coffee sipped, the pair of them watched in turn like he's trying to accustom himself to the sight of them sitting like this, together.

Nonplussed. The opposite of plussed. Whatever it is, Joe is it. "What if you don't?" he asks, mildly. "I mean, don't fulfill the pact? Also, how direct does this lineage have to be? That's a lot of people dead every other generation, I mean." He's in scientist mode, clearly. "What about just ending the Harpy in question?" Because what he really wants is a trip to the Veil version of mythical Greece.

Finch listens to the barrage of questions and she seems to close down a little, looking at her father as if searching for some help there. She feels like she's being interrogated about the worst stuff in her life. "I don't think there's much choice in the fulfilling part. On the town Anniversary I watched the ghost of Piper Celaeno in the 1920s, stalk her brother through my house. She wasn't Piper, she was the Harpy. I mean feathers and bird legs and claws and all. Only once she killed the last one, then she killed herself and reverted to human. Auntie Starling shirked the last bit. She didn't suicide. I think she stayed alive to try and help me stop this, but I can't be sure. I'm hoping we can contact the Harpy over there and renegotiate somehow."

The young woman's knee bounces under the table nervously. Seeing that ghost a little while ago truly freaked her right the fuck out. She hadn't told anyone about it except Iggy.

It's perhaps occurred to him that he's being overbearing, and Joe leans back, just a little. "Well, let us know if we can help," he says, more quietly. Then, "Uh....any other questions I can answer for you?" Braced for god only knows what out of left field. A lot depends on what Itz has piped up with. Joe doesn't really understand the depths of gossip Itzil can get down to.

"So you two were involved, uh, while you were in the military? Wasn't that, you know...?" Finch asks, brow arching. She knows back in the stone ages when those two were younger, that shit was not legal for soldiers.

"Highly illegal? Absolutely." Joe doesn't even miss a beat. "Made worse yet by the fact that I was an officer and he was enlisted, which is the big rank divide in the military. If we'd gotten caught, we'd've both been kicked out, but I would've done jail time." He's completely matter of fact about it. "But we didn't. Dumb luck....and I suspect our own latent shine."

"Were you together for a long time? I mean, you were different branches right? You weren't deployed together the whole time?" Finch is curious how all this worked out between them. "Or was it like a once in a while thing whenever you crossed paths?"

"The latter, for the most part," He doesn't even have booze in him....but Joe's apparently in the mood to cop to this particular set of sins. "I was Navy, he was Marines, they tend to go together in a lot of ways. Mostly it was very rare meetings. The exceptions were....we had land-based deployment overlap in Pensacola, and then one on an aircraft carrier called the Vinson." There's not even an iota of guilt in his face. Not here, not now.

Ruiz seems to have gotten absorbed in his phone again while the pair talk. An animated conversation of some kind, by the looks of it, interspersed with sips of coffee and flicks of his dark eyes from child to lover. No particular shame as the matter of their past indiscretions are brought up, though he doesn't seem to be tripping over himself to weigh in on it either.

"So why did you lose touch? I mean, clearly you had something going on that meant something to both of you. Why weren't you here with him before he met Itzhak?" Finch frowns a little at that. She's trying hard to understand, but this puzzle is missing so many pieces from her perspective.

"Because we got caught up an incident in Afghanistan that left the identities of dead and wounded service members confused in a lot of cases," Joe says, more somberly. "I thought your father was dead - there was another Marine sniper killed in the incident. And my RIO - the officer who rides in the back of a two-seater fighter, was wounded and died en route to medical care. I was badly wounded and comatose for a while, and confused after that. It was a huge mess, and I didn't hear about the mistake until years later." He'll leave out the part about people deliberately abetting the mistake, for now. "By then, he," a nod to Ruiz, "Was out of the Corps, and I was in Houston."

"Oh," Finch says quietly. That sounds like that had to have been really emotionally devastating for both. She scrubs a hand through her hair for a moment, looking between them. "And you're ok with him being with Itzhak? I don't know if I could do that, share someone. Definitely wouldn't share Iggy. I am pretty sure I'd set anyone who tried to take him from me on fire."

"All the time I was with him, he was married," Joe's voice is very light. "I've never not shared him. At least Itzhak knows about me and is willing to try to be my friend. I like him. I don't want to hurt what they have. I won't pretend it's easy, but I think it's worth doin'."

"I take it his wife wasn't aware?" Finch looks over at her father at that, frowning. Cheater cheater. That seems to sit less than great with her.

At that, Javier does duck his eyes away from the incoming look, suddenly very interested in that text conversation he's got going on on his phone. "No," he answers for himself, scratchy-soft. "She wasn't. Not at first." Suggesting that somewhere along the line, that might have changed.

He can't really answer for Ruiz. Joe takes a sip from his drink. "I seduced him before he met his wife," he says, voice a dry murmur. Let's be frank about it all, apparently. "I was the one who persisted." Now it's ....not exactly guilt there, but a willingness to admit to culpability. To Ruiz, ".....did she ever know it was another man?" He's been curious about that for decades now.

"Did you love her? Your wife?" Finch asks Ruiz directly, fixing him with her dark eyes. "And your son?" she asks. If he couldn't love a kid whose mother he was married to, how can he possibly love her cursed and messed up self? For a moment, she looks more childlike, worried that she isn't really lovable.

It's a good while before Javier answers. He's never the most perspicacious man to begin with, and this isn't an easy conversation to have, especially given the people involved. His fingers are rifled through his hair as he blows a breath out his nose with a noisy grumble, then lifts dark eyes to Finch slowly. "Yeah," he murmurs. "Yeah, I loved her. And I loved my son. Very much." Another breath, a glance to Joe, then out the window. "Things.. aren't always black and white, like the movies, you know? You love someone, you don't. You want to be with them, you don't. I.. did.. love her. But not like I loved Joe. Not.." His voice dwindles to a near-inaudible whisper, face a mask of abject discomfort.

He knew it, all along. That it was a pendulum.....there and back, there and back. That there was something real there that his mere presence in Javier's life was poisoning, like a parasitic vine slowly strangling a living tree. That sense of a life just on the other side of the wall. Faces he never saw but offended against anyway.

He does go still, quiet. Doesn't reach to touch....but it's clear that it means something to hear it spoken aloud, finally, to someone else. Like it's brought it into a level of objective reality it's never had before.

Finch is struggling to understand, but she seems to be able to at the very least accept. "And Itzhak? You love Itzhak right? You're not going to hurt him?" That's her biggest worry. Itzhak can do something most of them cannot. He can just walk his ass right into the Veil any time he feels like it, and they'd be shit out of luck trying to find him if he didn't want to be found. Her friend is deeply emotional, and she worries. That may make her a good friend, but possibly a crappy daughter.

It takes him another while to come back from that recollection. From that little bubble of his wife and child, from the life that never really was, because he never let it be. His brows furrow and then smooth; his adam's apple tugs along his throat as he swallows thickly. Then a tip of his cup reveals the fact that he's out of coffee and needs a refill. "Not in any way he doesn't want to be hurt," is Javier's perhaps too-truthful reply, dark eyes cutting to his daughter's, and then away again. "Of course I love that asshole," he grumbles, and the affection in his voice would be impossible to miss. "Be right back, grab you anything?" And he's pushing to his feet and snagging his cup to go grab that refill.

There's a glint of something in Joe's face at that. Too dark to be mere amusement. Understanding, perhaps. He and Itz are kin under the skin, one way or another, and the unity isn't just their love for de la Vega. He glances down at his cup, which he's ignored for a while now, and takes a sip. "'m good. Still workin'," he says.

"Ok Dad, that was TMI. Gross." But there is real relief in Finch's expression at her father's admission, and his humor. That seems to make her feel better. "Ok. Ok I think I can deal with this. Not that it's any of my business I just, things are all connected in so many ways with all of us and I need to find my footing, you know?" She shakes her head at the offer of a refill, she's hardly touched her coffee. Too much talking. "I can't stay much longer any way. I have to drive Iggy to his physical therapy."

Yeah, well, it's not a real coffee anyway, far as Javier's concerned. Or at least, not real chocolate. "I'd.. I'm glad you both had a chance to meet," he settles on, somewhat haltingly. "You're both really fucking important to me. I don't want either of you thinking anything but. Entiendes?" Without waiting for a reply, the prowlish Mexican abandons his quest for the refill temporarily, once Finch announces she needs to head off, and lifts his arms. For a hug, awkward as it is. "Ven aqui, pajarito," he murmurs, crooking the inked fingers of his right hand.

Joe's eyes have gone suspiciously bright, and he looks away for a moment and swallows hard. Then he glances back, and there's a watery little grin. For once, sparing them any attempt at wit. "It was good to talk to you," Joe says, quietly. "I hope....I hope we can do more of it, soon."

No one's told her what he did in Houston, clearly. She'd've said something if she knew. It'll come up later.

Finch gets up and shoulders her bag, before she settles in to Ruiz's hug. It's been easier, the hugging and such, since that day in the ER waiting room after Iggy was hit by the bus. When he sang to his daughter to soothe her. It cemented something in their relationship, something she never received from her other parent. "Te amo, Papi," she murmurs. "Thanks for talking to me, Joe." She adds for the sailor. "We'll talk again soon." Then the girl is out the door to go tend to her gimpy Spanish peacock.