Seeing Red [D0 Night]

[Cal Arcton]

(expecting!)

Another evening had turned into night. And with it, the crowd of regulars reversed the path they'd taken earlier, exiting instead of entering. They didn't have to go home, but they couldn't stay here.

Cal sighed, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief before tucking it carefully back in his vest pocket. He felt a bit tired. Used to be he could stay up later than this, and drink a lot harder, and not feel tired.

Well, nothing to be done about it. It was what it was. Casually walking to the door, Cal flipped the sign from 'open' to 'closed', marking the end of the business day. And with that little ritual done, he turned back around to see who was sticking around to help him close up.

[Runi Vizsla]

Where he looked, Runi wandered from table to table collecting glasses to be washed and doing a quick wipe down of each one as she went. When he noticed Cal's gaze, she smirked and winked at him. "Something on your mind, Cal?"

[Cal Arcton]

If Runi was gonna smirk and wink at him, Cal was definitely gonna smile right back, chuckling softly. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, yeah, smiling at the gorgeous red lady.

"Something." Cal said, still smiling. He kept his eyes on her as he followed along after her, putting chairs up on tables. "I usually do, after all. It seems to me that don't make it too long in our line of work if you're not thinking most of the time." He made a face. "Old line of work, I mean."

Setting down another chair with a thunk, he grinned at her. "I guess I'm not doing a very good job of answering your question, am I?"

[Runi Vizsla]

She made a noise that might have been a snort as she finished collecting the dishes and he corrected himself. "You say 'old line of work' like you'd know how to quit it."

She looked over her shoulder as she started washing. "Nope. Trying to keep an air of mystery, are you?"

[Cal Arcton]

Cal chuckled, shaking his head. "Yeah, well, you're right about that. Maybe I'm just too old to learn any new tricks."

As Runi turned her head, Cal's eyes narrowed, his gaze following the motion of her neck. "Maybe I'm just trying to fit in with my company." He joked. Half-joked. He paused to regard her, smiling as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I'd say that I know you pretty well, but there's still a lot about you that I don't know."

His gaze lingered a moment longer before he moved to the counter with a shrug. He began to wipe it down; cleaning the bar was almost like meditation. "I guess I was just thinking a bit about how much some things change. And how much other things stay the same." He shrugged. "Sometimes it's hard to tell what's in the former group, and what's in the later. You know what I mean?"

[Runi Vizsla]

She laughed at the comment about trying to fit in with his company. "Well, we do have quite a few mysterious figures. Though you can just ask me whatever you want."

She hummed a little bit as she fitted the last dish into the washer and set it to go, then turned and leaned on the bar, avoid where he'd just cleaned. "Yeah, isn't that the truth. Thinking of anything in specific?"

[Cal Arcton]

Cal smirked. "Well, as mysterious as I may find many parts of you, I wouldn't say that about your figure."

He shrugged, smiling. "But thanks, I'll keep that in mind. Perhaps I'll avail myself of that opportunity sooner instead of later."

With a casual toss, Cal flicked the rag he was using up to his shoulder. "But this time you got the drop on me, so..." He shrugged. "I don't know. I guess things seem a bit slow lately. I was just hoping that it's not me. This business doesn't give a lot of prizes for being the second fellow to draw."

[Runi Vizsla]

"It's just a little bit of a slow season. You know how it is, things slow down and speed up as things go," she said. "Worst case scenario, we can do a few jobs to supplement our income."

[Cal Arcton]

"Yeah." Cal sighed. "Unless it is me."

After a moment, he smirked. "But I don't know. I'm still pretty quick, wouldn't you say?" Grinning playfully, he pulled the dish towel from his shoulder. In a smooth motion, he snapped it towards her, not too hard, but enough that it had a bit of a crack as it connected with Runi.

[Runi Vizsla]

"Hey!" She jumped a little at the snap, then reached over the bar, grabbing the towel and pulling him by it until he's nose to nose with her. "Don't forget, Cal... I bite." She smirked and let go. "Though I don't recall you minding too much last time."

[Cal Arcton]

Cal only had a moment to grin impudently before the tables were turned. With the towel wrapped around his hand, he didn't have any way to resist Runi's pull. Suddenly face to face with her, he noticed once again just how gorgeous she was. Those eyes, that nose, those lips...

And then she let go. Cal slid back the bar automatically, half reflex, half momentum. A little distance. That was... safe. Cal smirked. "Yeah, well, there was a lot about what happened that I didn't mind. You might even say that I enjoyed a lot of it."

Unwrapping his hand, Cal gave Runi a sidelong glance as he replaced the towel on the rack. "Seems to me that I wasn't the only one, either."

[Runi Vizsla]

"I sure hope so. I'd feel terrible if you didn't," she chuckled, still leaning on the bar without moving as she waited for the dishes. "And no, you weren't."

[Cal Arcton]

"Well, I'm glad to hear that." Cal drawled softly. He smirked, eyeing her confidently. "Speaking for myself, I might say that was the highlight of that particular excursion. Although catching the bad guy was pretty darn satisfying, too."

He paused in his work, his brow furrowing. "'Course, after that, we went our separate ways. I kept on putterin' about the sector like I always did. And you went off-" he waved a hand vaguely in the air, "-doin' your usual thing I suppose, wherever it is that you do that." He scratched at his stubble uncertainly. In truth, he wasn't quite sure where he was going with this.

[Runi Vizsla]

"All over the Outer and Mid-Rim," she said, shrugging. "I couldn't really stay in one place too long then, and I'd already accepted a job. Wasn't just going to renege on it."

She looked around the interior of the bar. "It's nice to be able to stick around somewhere for a while without the Empire to spoil things."

[Cal Arcton]

"Makes sense to me." Cal said, his tone cheerful. In fact, he'd done a bit of sighing the month or so after the red-skinned beauty had gone her own way. But, well, that was all in the past.

"Oh, yeah, that whole thing." Cal said dryly, shaking his head. "I remember thinking 'hey, Noventa's too small for anyone to give two shakes about, it won't matter'." He shrugged. "Got to see how wrong that was. I had to become a lot more selective with my bounties once they got into the sector in a serious way." He gave her a curious look. "What'd it look like from your perspective?"

[Runi Vizsla]

"Well... Did I ever tell you about my mom?" She asked curiously. "We weren't around each other that long last time, and it was mostly business..."

[Cal Arcton]

Cal smiled warmly. "The part that wasn't pleasure, yeah. But either way, it didn't leave much time for small talk."

He leaned casually against the edge of the bar, his expression obviously interested. "I'm all ears." He said, still smiling.

[Runi Vizsla]

She leaned on the bar. "She was a Jedi. I, uh... got some things from her. If they had found out, it would have gone bad for me. And you know I look pretty distinctive, and a lot of that is her."

[Cal Arcton]

Well, that was certainly a surprise. Cal, normally fairly unflappable, looked noticeably startled. "Oh." He said, blinking, his brown eyes wide.

Slowly, he walked around the bar, standing closer to her. "I never had any idea." He smiled. "Suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. I was good, but you could do some things that I couldn't quite understand. If she was a Jedi, and you picked up some of that..."

He leaned against this side of the bar now, one elbow resting casually on it. "I have had occasion to notice your distinctive looks." He said, smiling. "If you get a lot of that from her...?" He trailed off, but the question was clear. What did that make the two of them?

[Runi Vizsla]

"Yeah... She left to protect me..." She sighed. "Mom... She had my skin color and hair, but... sort of orange-gold eyes." She traced one finger along her jaw. "You can feel some little weird shapes along my jaw and eyebrows where she had a lot more prominent protrusions, and she had sharp teeth, a little more than mine."

"What all that means, I don't know. I think anyone else like that died out or something."