fjordicswagger | An Irish Pub in Baltimore, Tuesday Night

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where: baltimore

An Irish Pub in Baltimore, Tuesday Night

Okay, so sue Tamsin, sometimes she liked to be reminded of home. Specifically, to be reminded of the Dal, with that wonderful vibe of a-bar-fight-could-break-out-at-any-minute coupled with our-drinks-can-probably-kill-you-if-you're-not-careful.

This place fit the bill. More or less.

She'd gotten sucked in here for dinner, wound up in an arm-wrestling match with someone shortly thereafter, and somewhere in between, she'd texted Jessica to meet her here.

At least beating that big burly dude at arm-wrestling had done wonders for her mood.

[[ for jessica! ]]

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"Hey," Jessica said as she approached. "I see you're playing nice with the locals." She had gotten there just in time to see the arm wrestling match. Sure, she knew plenty of people with enhanced strength, but she was still impressed.

"Turns out I speak the language around here," Tamsin said, tossing a quick glance towards the burly dude, who... lit up and waved at her excitedly. "I just hope he's not going to follow me around like a puppy."

She nodded at Jessica. "So what's your drink tonight?"

"If he gets skeevy, I can make his feet stick to the floor. A place like this, he might not even think twice about it," Jessica joked. "I kind of want to go super girly just to see if the bartender can pull it off. Think he can make a Blue Hawaiian?"

Tamsin eyed up the - also big and burly, but in an Irish way - bartender and clacked her tongue. "He seems like the type of guy to have hidden depths," she said. "And if he doesn't, we can laugh at him about it. I say we give it a shot."

"He's the bartender, he should be giving us shots," Jessica pointed out. Because that's the kind of girl she was, Tamsin, and you asked her out. You would have to live with your choices. She caught the bartender's eye and ordered, "Blue Hawaiian. The brighter the blue, the bigger the eventual tip."

Considering how much Tamsin's secret Fae urban fantasy world liked to use Buffyspeak, she could weather the storm of Jessica's terrible puns.

"So make like a Smurf," she said, immediately proving the narrative's point. "But without the little white hat."

She waved the bartender off. "... Though I guess I just cheated us out of finding out if he has little white umbrellas tucked away," she mused.

"He could go Papa Smurf and use red umbrellas," Jessica pointed out. "That would probably mean that he really appreciates our patronage."

"Good point," Tamsin had to allow. "He does have a beard. He could probably pull it off."

She took a sip from her own drink - Bloody Mary, of course, so it went through a straw - and looked at Jessica. "Smurfs aside," she said, "How've you been?"

"Focused on science," Jessica answered, making clever reference to her work post earlier in the day. "I think I have enough proof that my powers aren't going to drive me literally insane that I can stop worrying about it, so it's been a pretty good day. Not as good as tonight's looking, though."

Yeah, Tamsin, she was saying you were better than not going insane. So sweet!

Awww, Jessica was such a romantic.

"So I rank above nerdy life-and-death stuff," Tamsin parsed, sipping her drink. "I'll take it."

There was a lot of nerdy life-and-death stuff at Stark's.

"Do you even find time for a hobby with that stuff going on?" Half-joking.

"Science is my hobby," Jessica said as her extremely blue drink arrived. No red umbrella. Sad. "It's what I've always been most interested in, and it's something I continued to study back when law enforcement was my more active job. I might not be the type to sleep above a lab that's above another lab, but I have some stuff set up in my spare bedroom."

So, in other words, no.

"Hate to break it to you, but when they start paying you to do it, it stops being a hobby," Tamsin said. Okay, technically the science wasn't what Stark was paying Jessica for, probably. But close enough. "There's got to be something. Even something as stupid as darts."

She waved vaguely at the dart board.

"That kind of stuff's not fun for me. I have too much power and control, and the best marksman I've ever met gave me pointers after work one day without me asking. So anything even remotely athletic isn't that interesting," Jessica said. Respect to her Hawkeye. "I read a lot. Watch the occasional dumb reality show. But most of my energy goes into training and tinkering to make sure I'm the most ready I can be for anything that might come up." It was a valid way to be, coming from an Ultimate Earth.

"How about you? You have to be able to beat me when it comes to doing stuff in your free time."

"...Not that impressive. I hang out at the bar," Tamsin admitted. "A little bit of boxing or whatever if I feel like it."

Though sadly, this version of Tamsin had never gotten to knock-out punch a werewolf. Woe.

"Mostly I come home after work, grab a beer, and watch that bad TV you mentioned," she said wryly, dropping some of the attitude. "Super exciting."

"It's not so bad. Honestly, I kind of enjoy having a relatively quiet time around here," Jessica said, waving in the general direction of Fandom. "I've had plenty of excitement. I can deal with a lack of it for a while."

Said the 20 year old. Who had only actually existed for like five years.

Oh god. She was a baby.

"Yeah, I only get killed about every century or so," Tamsin said, which sounded distinctly like a joke but wasn't. (She was banking on it sounding like a joke, anyway.) "How did you get into all that stuff?"

"I was cloned from a superhero. Then I was a badass and helped save the world, so I got recruited into my world's top spy-slash-super-police agency. You know, the usual," Jessica admitted. Her tone was fairly even and it probably didn't sound like a joke. But maybe she was going super dry with the humor at the moment?

No, she wasn't. Of course not.

"The usual," Tamsin agreed, throwing enough sarcasm into that to make up for Jessica's lack of it. "And then someone blew up your planet and killed you." She shook her head. "Between you and Tony, I think whoever created your universe was on crack."

"Different universes. They're similar, but mine was objectively worse than his is," Jessica said. "A couple years ago, my America went through a massive civil war that split the country in several pieces, one of which was run by robots that had concentration camps for mutants."

"We actually kind of had our act together as a world before everything literally blew up."

"I'm going to have to go back on that question I asked you before," Tamsin said, eyeing her. "Does anybody in your universe have time to have hobbies?"

"Not the people I spent most of my time with," Jessica said. "For a while, one of them was President, so I got to bounce between fighting a war alongside the President and being a student here."

"I'm great at time management."

"You'd have to be," Tamsin said, considering her. "I mean, you found time to have drinks."

Which Tamsin appreciated, even if she wasn't terribly great at saying so.

"Have you ever thought about doing something else?"

Damn it, she was actually curious.

Jessica took a sip of her drink as she considered how to approach the story. "There's a mantra that I inherited from the person I was cloned from. A petty crime could have been stopped but wasn't, and the criminal killed somebody very important to us. It would have been absolutely nothing to prevent that, but... sometimes you make a selfish mistake. I didn't technically live it, but I'll have it in my memory forever. And that reinforced the mantra; with great power, there must also come great responsibility."

"I have the strength, the training, the intelligence... I have the legacy of truly great people on my shoulders. I'm not saying any of that to brag, not out of ego. I'm saying that so you get a picture of the kind of responsibility I feel. And I'm strong enough to bear that responsibility. I refuse to let that go to waste," Jessica said. "So, no. I do what I have to do. I'm doing it on a smaller scale than I have in the past, but I'm doing it."

That was a level of do-gooding Tamsin hadn't been able to work up the heart for in a very long time, which made her feel guilty. She tried to ignore it.

"So that's how career good guys are born," she said. "Cute."

That would've sounded more sarcastic if she hadn't sounded so subdued about it. Stupid guilt.

"Created in an evil scientist's evil science lab, technically," Jessica said. "But I am cute, so."

"True," Tamsin said, sipping her drink. "A very cute kind of evil science."

"Thank you. But what about you? I mean, you're the mayor, you spent some time at the Trooper Station. I'm not completely sure you like people in general," Jessica said, leaning into a jokey tone, even if she thought it sounded accurate, "but you've kind of carved a niche for yourself in the public servant sector in Fandom. Why that and not opening up a shop or something?"

"Because customer service is gross," Tamsin said, which was only partly to stall for time, really. "But really, I come from a battlefield, law enforcement kind of family."

Well, that was technically accurate.

"Most of my family growing up were military. Nurses or soldiers," she said. "So I went into service. Military first, then private sector." Which, again, was at least an accurate if misleading way of summing up the past over-a-thousand-years. "When I got the opportunity to join the police force, it just seemed more useful, I guess."

Somewhat to her. Mostly to the Morrigan.

"Makes sense. And then you naturally transitioned into local politics," Jessica noted.

"More like Bright Eyes decided she wanted me for the job after Swanson left and parked herself outside my house for days until I said yes," Tamsin muttered. "Sometimes I miss kicking down doors."

"You could always just kick down doors in Town Hall to see what kind of reaction that gets," Jessica suggested.

"It'd definitely be funny to see the look on Bright Eyes' face," Tamsin mused. "Bet she'd startle like a deer."

She took a sip of her drink. "I don't hate all people, by the way," she said. "My p-- family is just not very huggy awww-emotional. Tough love."

"I never thought you did. I know you like people like me and Tony well enough," Jessica said. "And I suspect that you kind of even like people like Ralph and Bright Eyes. But I'll never pressure you to admit that. Or tell them." She'll just always have her suspicions.

"Thanks," Tamsin said. She smiled faintly. "I've got a reputation to uphold."

"And I wouldn't want to mess with that," Jessica said. "Just curious, how'd you hear about this place? Do you come here a lot, or were the Yelp ratings just too good?" It had a certain charm, but probably not the type that would be well represented on Yelp.

"Sometimes I get bored of hanging out watching zombie limbs fall off," Tamsin said dryly. "Which I said out loud the first time I was here and it turns out they run into people from the island all the damn time. Unflappable's good in a pub." Beat. "It wouldn't surprise me if there were superhero meet-ups in here, actually."

"Well, that's just going to force me to look around and see if I can pick out any superheroes in disguise," Jessica said, turning around to do just that.

"Are they that easy to spot?" Tamsin asked. "Are there like, superhero tells I don't know about?"

"Some are better at hiding it than others. You'd be surprised how many talk openly about it and just figure nobody can overhear them," Jessica said as she scanned the crowd..

"That kind of ruins the whole Secret Identity vibe, doesn't it?" said Tamsin, tilting her head. "... Which you don't have, do you? Huh."

"I used to. But when your world blows up, there's not much need to keep all of your secrets anymore," Jessica said. "Although even before then, my job was with the government and all of my friends were either superheroes or people from Fandom who might have seen me fight during graduation. So I'm not the best candidate for a fully secret identity anyway."

Tamsin nodded. She looked towards the crowd. "So, any hits?"

"That's between me and them," Jessica said. "But I'll just say that if something crazy attacks, this bar will still be standing by the end of it."

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An Irish Pub in Baltimore, Tuesday Night

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