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Devil's Nest, Monday Night

Verity figured that there was a high percentage of the island's population that had started drinking yesterday and hadn't really stopped. So she made sure to get into work early, forbade the DJ from playing anything that had come out before 2010, and moved the good stuff off the high shelf to directly behind her.

If You Were A Teen This Weekend, Your First Drink Is Free!
(And a free shot for every embarrassing story you share with your bartender!)

Tiny was still dressing in some aggressively 1990s fashion, and she had to snap at him from trying to hide whole bottles of vodka in the pockets of his JNCO jeans.

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C'mon, stories for shots! This was a great idea, right?

Cristina wanted to repress the whole experience, or chalk it all up to a dream. She'd had really vivid, strange dreams before, like the one that detailed how her life would go if she stayed with Owen and either tried to make him happy by having kids, or stuck to her guns and put her career first. Or the one Meredith told her about, where her mother didn't die and they didn't become friends until fifth year of residency. Or when Callie's traumatic brain injury had her hallucinating everyone singing top 40 songs at her.

It would be super great to pretend that teen!edgelord!Cristina hanging around the island was just like all that, except that people kept doing things like offering drink specials to people who'd been randomly teenagers for a week.

"I hate this island," she told the blonde behind the bar when she came in and sat down. "Can an entire bottle of tequila count as one drink?"

"See, you're a fast learner," Verity said, grabbing a tumbler and pouring a generous splash of good tequila into it. "It usually takes people a few months to realize they hate the island."

She held up an ice cube to see if Cristina wanted it in her drink. "And, sadly, no. My boss might try to bite me if I was that kind of stupid and then I'd have to stab him and it would be a whole thing. But this is a good sipping tequila if you just want it straight."

Cristina took the drink with a deep sigh and shrugged. She had to restrain herself from tossing it back in one go, sipping tequila or no. "I must be extra smart then," she said. "I hated this place the moment I got here."

Mostly for not being Zurich.

"Stuck here?" Verity asked, sympathetically. "I know there are a couple of people who can't even cross the Causeway."

"Just drops me right back off in the parking lot," Cristina said. "But people still swear up and down that this isn't Hell."

"It's not," Verity said with unshakable certainty. "If it were, my grandma would be here with her damn grenades and yet another weird story."

Cristina was welcome to take that as a joke, if it made her feel better.

Cristina blinked at that.

"Man, all my grandma ever did was talk about how easy I had it growing up in America instead of Seoul."

"My grandma is special," Verity said with a wry smile. "Both of them."

The non-human one was the closest to normal, honestly.

"I'm sure they're lovely," Cristina said, taking a large sip of her tequila. "Well. Not the one who's apparently in Hell. You know, I don't even believe in Hell? I'm Jewish. And also an atheist. We don't really do Hell. And yet here I am, claiming to be there." She pointed at Verity with the hand holding her glass. "Which is just part of what makes this place Hell."

"If it helps, most Hell dimensions don't have any kind of religious connotation to them," Verity offered. "It's just easier to say 'Hell' than 'that dimension where entities we're conditioned to think of as demons live.' So you can be atheist and Jewish and still believe you're in Hell."

She poured herself a glass of rum and added some Coke, too. "And Grandma Alice isn't in Hell the way you're thinking. She's trying to find my Grandpa Thomas who is in Hell. But he ended up getting dragged there alive. Bad bargain at the crossroads to save her life."

"Huh." Cristina looked at her glass. "I think this conversation requires way more tequila."

"Well, tell me an embarrassing story from this weekend and you'll get a free shot at least?" Verity said with a chuckle. "A couple more of those and you might even be ready to hear about my family tree."

"I had bangs."

What? That totally counted.

And sure enough, Verity was pouring her a drink. "So did I," Verity confided. "You know, the two thin ones that framed your face and showed you were so cool?"

...The kind she still had sometimes, shh.

"Oh you are young," Cristina said, happily accepting the shot and tossing it back. "That wasn't in until I was in grad school. I had, um, let's see: those winged glasses?" She used her fingers to draw cats-eye shapes, pointing way, way out from the sides of her face. "And a nicotine addiction. I'm a cardiothoracic surgeon. I actually know exactly what smokers lungs look like from the inside. That should get me, like, two extra drinks."

She'd seen what an alcoholic's liver looked like, too, but that wasn't going to stop her tonight.

Verity laughed and lined up three shots; one for the glasses and two for smoking. "I'm still a baby in my early twenties," she admitted. "And a dancer, when I'm not bartending."

And a cryptozoologist when she wasn't doing either of those, but that was more a 'third conversation' thing, not a first.

"I'm Verity, by the way," she said, holding out a hand. "Welcome to the island, Doc. Try not to go crazy with boredom."

"Cristina." She tossed back another shot and nodded to Verity. "Dancer, huh? Like, 'exotic' dance, or. . . ?"

"Why is it that nobody ever guesses ballet or tap first?" Verity snarked. "Ballroom, actually. Argentinian tango, if you want specifics. First runner up on last year's Dance or Die reality TV show, currently looking for a paying gig because no one cares about second place."

"Your boobs," Cristina said easily. "Ballet dancers don't have T or A." She shrugged. "I haven't had time to watch TV in -- almost ever." Even during her 'sabbatical' during residency, she'd mostly just wandered around vaguely with no idea what to do. Television hadn't even occurred to her. "I guess I actually have time to watch reality shows now, don't I."

Good god, what a depressing thought.

Verity looked down at her cleavage. "Fair enough," she said. "Grandma Alice took potshots at the Boob Fairy to keep her from heaping too much attention on the family, but I'm not flat, either."

People always thought she was kidding when she said stuff like that. They usually thought she was kidding when she talked about the Tooth Fairy, too, but she could provide proof of that one, thanks to Great-Great-Grandpa's fondness for taxidermy and the family policy against throwing away anything that could be useful. It was amazing how quickly a stuffed and mounted specimen could shut a person up.

"They're very nice boobs," Cristina assured her. She was getting a little bit drunk. "Clearly present without being overwhelming. You should be proud."

"Well, I did grow them myself," Verity said with a grin. "So I think I am." She looked a little closely at Cristina. "You doing okay there?" she checked.

"I am getting drunk," Cristina said. "It's possible some rehydration may be in order."

"I'll get you a glass of water," Verity said, grinning at 'rehydration.' "Hey, at least on the island, you don't have to worry about me taking your keys. I can just call you a rickshaw and you'll be good."

"The little bicycle things?" Cristina asked. "How do they ride those up all those stairs?"

"I have no idea," Verity said promptly. "I assume magic. It's just easier than thinking about how likely they are to topple over and we all die."

"I'm a scientist," Cristina said. "We don't like 'magic' as an answer. As a general rule."

Jenkins would beg to differ.

"And you're free to ask them," Verity said, sliding a glass of water in front of Cristina. She'd be happy to offer more drinks, too, but they'd be spacing it out with water. "I'm comfortable in those gaps where science just throws its hands up and cries."

"Science doesn't cry," Cristina said firmly. ". . . Scientists do, but usually just because they're very, very tired."

Or traumatized. That happened too.

"You haven't seen some of the things I have," Verity said cheerfully. "Believe me, science can cry."

Like chupacabras. Were they reptiles or mammals? How did one classify something that looked like what happened after a coyote and a Gila monster loved each other very much?

Are you kidding? That would fill a proper scientist with utter delight. And clearly they were descended from paleozoic synapsids, who are sometimes literally described as "mammal-like reptiles".

"Nope, sorry. I'm going to need a sample size greater than one before I believe you."

"I argued with one of my roommates about never having been here before," Miguel said. "Does that count as embarrassing?"

And hey, this place was actually dark enough he could take off his sunglasses. Hopefully Verity wouldn't notice or wouldn't mind his red eyes.

"Not even a little bit," Verity said, pulling out a glass. "But I know you were a teen, so at least you get a free drink."

She did notice the red eyes, but other than marking him as a potential unknown cryptid species, they didn't faze her much. He was still a hell of a lot more human than the vast majority of her family. "What can I get you, Miguel?"

Oh, good.

"Anything really strong that a teen can't drink," Miguel said. "Hi, Verity. Were you pint-sized, too?"

Edited 2018-06-12 00:53 (UTC)

"In this bar, that's everything," Verity said, reaching for a nice scotch. That was something most kids wouldn't go for. "And yep. Blonde, perky, overexcited by boys and guns. That was me in high school, thanks island."

"Oh, you were the one with the guns! I don't think I got your name," Miguel confessed. Or if he had, he'd forgotten it in the overwhelming dorkiness of talking to a girl.

"I don't think so," Verity assured him with a laugh. "I just have a good memory for faces, so seeing you with your sunglasses off cinched it for me."

"Yeah, I didn't need them as much at that age," Miguel said. "Except to look cool, maybe, and I know enough to know I was definitely not cool back then."

"I'll tell you a secret," Verity said, leaning in close. "Even those of us who seemed cool? Definitely didn't think we were. Nobody is cool at that age. We're all freaking out about something."

Sure, Verity had been freaking out about keeping up her civilian identity and other cryptozoology-related things, but still. Freaking out.

"I was mostly freaking out about trying to do too much at once," Miguel said. "And about if my friend Xina was my girlfriend or not." He snorted. "Simpler times, right?"

Granted his were complex for different reasons than most, but he had a feeling the same held true.

At least on this island, that was a pretty solid assumption to make, yeah.

"Wasn't it great, whenever that time was when your brain realized you could just use your words and ask?" Verity said, shaking her head. "I'm pretty sure my epiphany was just last year, even."

"Yeah, I still kind of suck at that," Miguel admitted, rubbing his neck awkwardly. "Fortunately, she didn't."

"Past tense?" Verity asked sympathetically.

Miguel see-sawed his hand. "Long story short, I was a jerk. Also I can't go back home except for sneaking a couple hours here and there, so it doesn't make for relationships, really."

While shaking your head at his hiphop Loony Tunes. And his mushroom cut. And his--honestly, the list could go on.

If you have to ask if you can sit there, the answer is no.

I REMEMBERED!

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Devil's Nest, Monday Night

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