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“Drinks, ladies, gentlemen, and others,” Kenzi announces from on top of the pool table, “are on me.”
“Generally speaking, it's more impressive if you do that when there's someone besides Drunk Larry in the bar,” Trick says as he surveys the almost-empty room. Down at the end of the bar, Drunk Larry coughs, and shifts his head to a more comfortable position on his arms. He mixes a drink anyway, pouring something bright green and smoking over a sugar cube and sliding it down the bar. The glass stops when it hits Larry in the head.
"Doesn't matter. I can now say that I've bought drinks for an entire bar using my own hard-earned money." Kenzi kisses the wad of cash she's currently fondling and hops down off the table. "Pour me a frosty shot of vodka, my fine friend. Top shelf."
"Hard-earned?" Trick snorts as he pours her shot. "You repeated everything the Lightning Bird said for an hour, then collected a four-figure paycheck. And you used my bar, which I don't overly appreciate."
Trick's scowling. Kenzi doesn't care. She's earning her own, 97% legitimate money. The Lightning Bird, before she'd swept out in a crackle of ozone and feathers, had thanked her for driving a good bargain for her egg, and the Llorona who'd been buying had promised to spread the word of her services. If this worked out, she might be able to start socking some money away. Kenzi's floating on a cloud of cash and good will, and so she decides to go for a moment of honesty.
"I do. Appreciate it, that is."
"Excuse me?"
Kenzi knocks back her shot, starts playing with the empty glass. "I appreciate the job. You hooking me up with Her Featheriness, letting me do business in the bar. I appreciate it." She waves the glass at Trick. "Drink with me?"
Trick looks at her, and for a second, Kenzi thinks he's about to pierce her soul, like he can see all the things she's not saying, like "I'm drinking at noon on a Wednesday, and I feel a little like an alcoholic," and "I need this money, because I trust Bo more than anyone else in the world, but that's not saying much," and "I'm sorry I screwed you over bargaining for the egg, and even sorrier that I'd do it again, given half a chance." Trick would make an awesome police officer; he's got the "I'm disappointed in you, but I'm going to be enigmatic about it" stare down pat.
"Okay," Trick says.
"Huh?" Kenzi jerks up, whacking her knee on the bar.
"Okay, I'll drink with you." He pours her another shot of vodka, and gets himself a glass of scotch. "To your success, as long as you're picking up your tab."
"Cheers," Kenzi says, and takes her shot.
Tuesday is a shit day.
She and Bo come home from the crime scene, quiet as the grave. Bo is hunched over, her shoulders slumped. She's angry, Kenzi can tell, but she hasn't figured out what to do about it yet.
Kenzi doesn't want to figure out what to do about it. Let Bo try to save every damn human in Toronto from the Fae. Kenzi cares about herself, Bo, and the paycheck, and some days, she's not certain about herself. It's easier that way. Keeps her from getting ripped into a thousand pieces every time they get there just a little too late.
All Kenzi wants, as she passes Bo a glass and fishes for a corkscrew, is to sit down with her best friend, an Animal Planet marathon, and a glass of wine.
Not red.
The night after Kenzi almost gets eaten by a plant, she's drinking down at the bar when Hale sidles up to her, all contrition and three-piece suits.
“Listen, girl, I'm sorry for making a move on you. It was just the heat of the moment, you know?”
“Uh, Hale?”
“Yeah?”
“Your apology for macking on me during the stakeout would be a lot more convincing if you weren't currently trying to give me a back rub.”
“Oh. Right.” Hale takes his hands off Kenzi's shoulder's with exaggerated caution, tips his hat instead. “Can't blame a man for trying. Be seeing you, Kenzi.” He thrusts his hands in his pockets, smiles, big and a little sheepish, like a puppy that knows it's been caught but still would have knocked over the trash can anyway, and turns to go.
Kenzi sighs. "Wait a minute." Hale turns back too fast, pivoting on the balls of his feet.
Kenzi really needs to learn to leave well enough alone. "Why do you keep hitting on me?"
Hale shrugs. "You're cute, and life is short."
"That's it?"
"That's not enough?"
Kenzi thinks for a moment. She's bored, and horny, and pickings have been pretty slim since she started hanging out with Sex Incarnate on a regular basis.
"What the hell," Kenzi says. "For tonight, it is."
Hale's face lights up like someone told him Santa Claus was real after all.
So they go back to the loft and bang — make love, Hale insists. Kenzi knows better.
It's some of the most flagrantly incompetent sex Kenzi has ever had. She falls off the bed when they're switching positions; Hale kisses his way up her stomach too fast and whacks her in the chin with his head. Kenzi accidentally licks Hale's nose while they're making out, and when Hale tries to put on the condom, it rolls back up and hits him in the eye.
“Perhaps we ought to consider the possibility that we're just no good at this,” Kenzi says once she's stopped laughing.
“Are you having fun?” Hale asks.
Kenzi blinks. “Actually, yes.”
“Good, me too,” Hale says, smiling, and rolls back over on top of her.
This, as it happens, is the turning point. Suddenly, there's a lot less “OW!” and "Oh god,” and a lot more “OH!” and “Oh god.” Eventually, they even make it to a “Did you?” and “No, but I have a vibrator,” and it turns out that they are, in fact, pretty okay at this separately, if not in conjunction. Kenzi kicks Hale out of bed to go fetch post-coital booze, because she believes in maintaining a balance of power, and he comes back with martinis, because he's thinks he's way smoother than he actually is. They curl up with a laptop and put up a channel of bad SNL skits on Youtube ("We began with comedy, let's end with it"), and when "I Just Had Sex" comes up, they both sing along.
Kenzi never knows how Dyson found out about the banger from her old days who started blackmailing her regarding a few totally legitimate antiques. She just knows that she went out one morning to find him duct-taped to the lamppost outside their flat, babbling something about "fucking dogs with yellow eyes" and promising to have the security footage to her by Monday.
The next time they're both at Trick's, she comes up and hands him a beer. "Wanna play pool, oh hairy avenger?"
Dyson smiles. Kenzi can see every one of his teeth. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Whatever, D-man. Let's play."
"Alright."
When Dyson tells Bo he doesn't love her anymore, Kenzi does everything right. People who've had a relationship die on them go through the five stages of grief, just like people who've had anything else die on them.
She holds Bo while she cries through Depression and buys her Gatorade the next morning when she has a dehydration hangover. She gets a big printout of Dyson and sticks it on the heavy bag so Bo can take a swing at it when she's in Anger mode. While Denial is going on, she becomes an expert hider of cell phones, laptops, and stamps. During Bargaining, she convinces Bo that as a succubus, a vow of celibacy until Dyson comes back is not the healthiest option ever, and, as a roommate, neither is the twelve-man orgy that not only brings down plaster, but also a ceiling beam that she hopes wasn't doing anything important. She goes out to incredibly sketchy bars with Bo and makes her way home alone. This is what friends do, after a breakup; walk home alone through bad neighborhoods and get propositioned in Ukranian by homeless men who smell like feet.
At least if it was Latvian, she could yell back.
People never get that crap right.
It goes on for a month, until Kenzi is alternating between straining to remember why she and Bo are friends and feeling guilty for wondering whether a baseball bat to the head could be considered a valid form of psychoactive treatment. Then, one day, something shifts. Kenzi isn't sure what happened, but Bo's picking up more cases. She stops by the bar and says hi to Trick, instead of just harrassing him for leads on cases and Dyson. She smiles more, slow and happy, not just the quick “No really I'm fine” smiles that never reached her eyes.
That, Kenzi figures, is something like Acceptance.
So Kenzi buys a handle of cheap tequila, drives down to Niagara Falls, and and takes a night to get absolutely smashed in a parking lot that has a view of just a slice of the Falls, but which also has no cops.
Kenzi likes the Falls. She went there on a field trip, before she dropped out of school. Wandering the exhibit hall, with the roar of thousands of tons of water pounding the river below outside, she read about the idiots and daredevils who'd gone over the falls, in barrels and rubber balls and the clothes on their backs. She'd never understood why people would do something like that, throw themselves at a force of nature and hope to win for nothing more than personal glory and a thousand-dollar fine. The Falls are a gorgeous, all-enveloping wave of sound and mist, but nobody smart bets on a person over the Falls.
Of course, then she met Bo and Dyson.
Tomorrow, she'll have an enormous hangover, with tiny hangover-gremlins pounding spikes into her brain. Cheap tequila is not kind to her. Tomorrow, she'll tell Bo a lie about taking a hottie with his daddy's black card for all he was worth. The truth, “I was mourning the death of the best and most dysfunctional relationship I've ever seen” is both incredibly co-dependant and sad, considering, and also it'd probably make Bo worse. Tonight, though, is just for her. And tequila.