Playing the Game
Apr. 20th, 2020 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madimpossibledreamera license is required to be a PI in Colorado as of the time of writing, but not back when Buffy was set.
I’m not even sure what county the city’s in and am sure it’s not a real city, but I do remember setting this ‘verse in Colorado, mostly ‘cause a lot of Californians actually do go to Colorado and it made sense to me to have everyone flee California. Also might have been partially based on Dante’s cowboy look in 4.
The abandoned hotel thing was a happy accident that just sort of happened based on two things: the Hyperion, which is still awesome but it obviously can’t be the Hyperion as they’re not in LA, and the 1994 Shadow movie (which wasn’t great especially compared to the original source material [and I’m talking about the Shadow magazine here, not the radio show, which is still good but not as good even if they did have Orson Welles], but is still a fun experience). Particularly with the demon cloak thing.
I still haven’t played/seen DMC5. I still need to buy a PS4… (that or just rebuy the game on Steam and get a computer to play on I don’t have to borrow-either way moneys are needed /sadface)
Main Points:
Buffy/Devil May Cry
Chapter Summary: Xander has an unwanted talk with a cop, but learns something valuable anyway.
Word Count: 2675
Rating: Teen
Xander tries several times to just slip away, but Tristan’s butler just notices and pulls him back. It’s weird. Even demons are affected by his powers, but while these goons might not be able to tell exactly what he is they can clearly tell he’s not fully human, either. There are other servants that don’t ping as weird, the original Wellington servants, he’s guessing. It feels like Tristan’s brought more to the party, but that could just be the fact that they are so much more in your face about existing.
Tristan’s servants hold him until the police show up. He suspects that the staff told them about his attempting to leave, though there’s no trace on the woman’s face who pulls him aside. He’s glad that he decided to put at least a little effort into making his outfit blend, though. It’s not exactly uniform, and it unfortunately was kinda wrinkled, but the Victorian style blue-and-silver patterned waistcoat with silver buttons kind of makes up for the fact that his pants are a little more casual than would be strictly allowed and the fact that all he had to wear underneath was a long-sleeve black undershirt that he’s definitely worn and not washed and probably during a fight too, given the smell, not a button-up or anything fancy. His Hawaiian shirt definitely wouldn’t have held up under careful scrutiny. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” she asks.
“Starting early, I see,” he responds with a grin, and shrugs at her stare. “It’s fine.” He stretches out his legs. Honestly, he’s getting a little cramped sitting around like this for too long, though at least it’s getting toward night—his time to shine, really. He wants to just pace, but that’d made the butler nervous and might make her nervous, too, he’s not sure and doesn’t have time to play games around that.
“You don’t have a prior engagement, then?” And there it is.
“I was supposed to meet up with a few friends, but I’m sure that can wait. I’m sure a police investigation’s more important.” They probably are worried about him (well, Giles might be; he also might be saying ‘good riddance’), but it’s not like he can just blow off the police in his position.
“Oh, I’m sorry! Would you like to call them and let them know? I’m sure that’s allowed,” she insists, concerned. Translate that to: they’d love to listen in and possibly trace the call to find out where they went, because he’s ninety percent sure the butler mentioned that Buffy and Giles were here, assuming they weren’t caught and are now being interrogated in another room.
He waves that off. “Eh, it’s not the first time. They know I don’t really have a car.” He does, but it’s a hunk of junk that’s not really his and probably won’t be in the near future, given that he’s probably banned from driving again. Not that he got his license, either, but he thought he’d been doing pretty good. He hadn’t been in any accidents, which was pretty much all he’d been looking for. “I’ve been thinking about going for a motorcycle license, but…” He shrugs. Lack of a quote-unquote real identity probably was a killer on that one. His powers might extend to being able to forge a passable enough ID on first glance, but, well, for good reason he’d put that one off until he’d actually figured out what kind of devil heritage he had in the first place. He didn’t want to try boundary-pushing stunts like that until he had a better grasp of the range of his powers, and while he had a pretty good idea of how they worked day-to-day and in fights, he didn’t want to try anything that would draw unwanted attention. Which, oh yeah, duh. Good thing he’s playing this whole slacker thing to the hilt. “Duh. Should’ve introduced myself. Xander Davis.” Not the most common surname. Everyone going by a fake name tries to go with Smith, and it’s really kind of obvious. Still, it’s common enough he should be able to hide, for a bit at least.
She smiles back. “I seriously thought about becoming a motorcycle cop. There’s something very free and calming about it.” She holds out a hand for him to shake, which he does—carefully, because he’d hate to overdo it on the strength. Buffy had a few close calls of the ripping doors off their hinges kind, and was getting obviously visibly frustrated by the whole thing. Fortunately, he’d gone through his own issues months back, gotten over it, and understood. It seemed to help, a lot, when he just took it in stride and cheerfully announced it was no problem. He’d gotten pretty good at repairs after he’d decided to fix up the old place. “Alisha Sullivan. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise. I’d seriously have gone with it, but it’s been a little busy.” He knows the small talk is to put him at ease, to get him to drop something, to reveal something he shouldn’t. He thinks he’s doing a good job acting casual while being on guard, honestly.
“Work?” she asks sympathetically, and gets up. “Do you want anything to drink?”
“I wouldn’t say no to water,” he replies, letting his tone hop over to grateful from warm. “Yeah, kinda. Still doing odd jobs here and there. Five, ten years from now it’s gonna all be a gig economy, I swear. Mostly still moving in.” Even after months, he’s still fixing up plumbing, electricity, what have you. He’s gotten a few furnishings, but as much as he’d like to spruce up the place with awesome new rugs, he can’t. Sure, he could probably acquire what he needs, but it’s rare and specific and he wouldn’t even know where to get the stuff. He’s pretty sure it’s Roaring Twenties style, but even with some research he still doesn’t fully know what he’s doing. He was able to get through a bunch of the grime and make the old place shine again, at least a little better, with a giant bucket and rag. Willow had come into the room looking for him, heard the noises, and been confused until she glanced up to find him flying to reach some of those high corners. It’s not like he’d found a ladder tucked away in one of those storerooms in the basement, and believe him, he’d looked. She’d then started happily babbling to him as he worked. Sometimes he wonders about that girl, though he appreciates it too. Restoration on a budget is a hellhound and a half. He glances up with an appreciative smile, takes the glass from her and takes a sip. Fortunately, it tastes fine, but then, even if she’d tried to drug him or whatever it’d take a lot more than it would for a normal human to get through his half-devil constitution. He weighs his next words and settles on, “…There was a lot of screaming. What was all that about?”
“You didn’t see anything?” She’s still treating this like a normal conversation, which it obviously isn’t.
“Not much.” Which, if he was gonna get picked up by the police, he feels like he really should’ve gotten a better look for his troubles. Now, if she was asking something else, he would’ve been a little less honest with an answer like that. He can’t be sure, distance and all, but he’d still bet one of his nice jackets that the blood had come from the woman, and yet she was alive and presumably still had requisite blood flowing through her veins. He’s still not very familiar with Fae, but if he wasn’t mistaken, they didn’t seem to know what was going on either, and from the fact that the interrogation isn’t formal yet, they hadn’t thrown him underneath that speeding bus. If anything, they seemed, what, furious? Suspicious? Protective? Was the lady contracted with them, or something? She didn’t smell significantly off to be Fae herself. “I got a glimpse of blood, but the crowd was nuts. Did someone fall and hit their head or something?”
“Or something,” she sighs. “Well, you’re not one of the guests, so…employed by the family?” Hardball, huh?
Might as well. He might learn something anyway, and if not, well, fine. Worth a try. As long as he’s not out, he can still keep playing ball. “Not strictly for the shindig, exactly, but yeah, you got it in one. I can’t tell you too much about my investigation so far, client confidentiality, but I’m a private investigator and was hired by one of the family members.”
The air instantly changes, like an electrical current in a storm. “A PI, huh?” There’s the other half of this little dance. Wary, deciding how much information to share. “You licensed?”
He smiles wryly. Yet another thing he’d like that he’s not sure he can have. “Not yet. I wanna go for that, too, but not sure whether that or the motorcycle is more serving of the greater good.”
He doesn’t even have a shop, but through word of mouth the right kind of clients come find him anyway. Though he’s had the requisite ‘my dog has been kidnapped’ case, somehow, and it turned out that the dog hadn’t actually been kidnapped, just wandered off. First time he’d used his devil senses like a bloodhound, and he’d kind of been rolling his eyes at first but the way that lady cried when reunited with her little Appledorf, Dorf for short (okay, yeah, half the reason he’d been dreading it was solely down to the name) coupled with the fascination of testing out his powers in new and interesting ways had actually made that one of his more interesting cases. Plus the lady, rich (who else would have a ridiculous name for such a tiny dog) and that kind of prim and proper old, had come to the client meeting, sat on one of the terrible old chairs he’d used to have in the reception area he used as his sort-of-office, and as a reward insisted on unloading her old furniture. “I was planning on buying all new anyway,” she insisted, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. He suspects that she’d just hated sitting there, but didn’t complain beyond a few token protests—turned out the new furniture matched the period, was comfy, and well-maintained, sprucing up the look a lot, especially when he doesn’t know the first thing about retouching marble flooring. (The local public library has been a godsend and really he never realized how much he’d rely on that thing until, well, his entire life changed. Funny how that all works.)
He sits forward, maintaining eye contact, switching over, just a little bit, to on-the-ball mode. He’s not gonna get rid of the slouch completely, still wants her to underestimate him if he can, but also wants to communicate he’s taking this seriously, so…just a touch of that confusion and vulnerability, one professional to another, easy does it. “To be honest, I never saw that coming.” Another sip, stalling for time. He is actually feeling just a little bit parched. “Anything you could share would be of help. I’m gonna have to rethink this whole case.” He’d never really had a grasp the shape of the thing, but what he’d learned today, yeah they spun a new angle on things.
She smiles wryly back, charmed in spite of herself. Rapport goes two ways, which means he’s doing his job. “Not much I can tell you, I’m afraid. We’re in the middle of our investigation as well. I can tell you two things: we’re not looking at this as homicide yet, as the victim of whatever-it-was is being treated for their wounds,” not even giving away the gender of the victim, just in case he hadn’t seen and might give away that he had, nice, “…and it wasn’t one of the family, so it wasn’t your client. You’ll still probably be paid.”
“It’s always a good day when nobody’s dead,” he sighs, relieved (all right, so he’d been pretty certain, but still, it could’ve been a…who knows, blood teleportation spell and she just hadn’t died yet, he couldn’t have known). “Is there anything else I can help with, or…?”
“I don’t suppose you noticed a man twirling his mustache anywhere,” she suggests, and wow. That humor. He’s impressed.
“Sadly, I did not.” Maybe it’s a little much to share, but he’s still a little annoyed, even if this did turn out to be less of a waste of time than he thought. “I don’t think the butler likes me very much, but I don’t think this is one of those airport thrillers where the Butler Did It. In my experience, staff don’t like people like me because I’m poking my head around and might find a skeleton in a closet, and even if I’ve got this thing called client confidentiality in their eyes I don’t have the same years of experience of turning a blind eye to that bag of bones.”
She can’t hide the quick smile. “Well. You’re free to go.” He gets the feeling that she would’ve been a lot more frustrated by that conclusion at the beginning of the conversation than now. “Tristan Wellington vouched for you.”
It’s all Xander can do not to voice the thought out loud what the hell though he does blink a couple times. Is it…some kind of favor to put him in the guy’s debt? ‘Course, he could be doing it as ‘I am human don’t look at me’ PR for the lawyer nonprofit thing the family runs—Xander vaguely remembers having seen that in the newspaper. As he keeps mentioning, fae are not his area of expertise, and he really wishes he hadn’t ticked off the chaos sorcerer (well, okay, it was just by existing, but still) because he could really use some input right about now. He does remember a few stories about the fact that nothing fae do is for free, and a little of the story of Tam Lin, but that’s too vague of a memory to be of any help right now. Or maybe Kryvi. He’d proven to be knowledgeable and helpful, and honestly Xander’s getting a teeny bit twitchy from the lack of weapons…but on second thought the butler had managed to see right through his “do not see me” aura and pick him out of the crowd and draw attention to him, so maybe it’s a better thing he doesn’t have his army around to get confiscated. That would make him even more twitchy. He’s no completely unarmed, but Kalvul’s not the talkative type, and that’s a ‘just in case’ sort of measure.
“We might have more questions later,” she continues, and boy, this is gonna be a fun one, isn’t it? (And by fun, he’s conflicted, because he’s getting really curious about all these plot twists by now but also damn it all, he really hates not knowing what he’s doing and feeling vulnerable like this.)
“Well, unfortunately, I don’t even have any business cards yet, and my place isn’t really set up for visitors, but if you hit up the Gold Rush the bartender can get in touch with me.” He doesn’t want a cop knowing where he lives, partly because all the questions, but it doesn’t hurt to keep his lines open.
He stands and glances at her face, and there’s the eyebrow he’d been expecting. “How long ago did you move into town?”
He allows himself to look sheepish. “I got a place for cheap that’s pretty much a fixer-upper, plus I’m kinda easily distracted.”
She laughs, there’s another handshake, and he might as well head to the Gold Rush anyway because they have a phone that’s not tapped thanks to a spell (both the owner and bartender are witches of different varieties) and he’s got to see what Willow’s managed to dig up.
