Title: Inapparent Points
Fandom: Due South; Arch to the Sky
Characters: Guy Laurent, Renfield Turnbull
Rating: PG
Words: 2221
Timeline: Early Nipawin, 1991
Summary: An early day in Guy's Nipawin.

I have already trained the bartender to the precise order of my drinks.

The bar was the natural place to gravitate; the town of Nipawin is notable for an inadvisable multitude of churches. It is not that I have a low opinion of religion. Everything is fine in moderation - I realize this sentiment is rather comedic coming from me - and whatever the indulgence, it should be balanced. It is a fine bar. I like to hope that what happens here will balance proportionately to the amount of religion going about.

For my part, I commune best with my creator over a bottle of Jack.

I'm slowly digging an ass-dent in the place. It was the luck of the draw, really, and I've quickly come to believe it was great luck indeed. I stuck around Regina after Depot. It isn't as though I had anything better to do. Renfield Turnbull caught my interest; now and again, people do that. Something radiates from him that suggests something interesting. I have no inclination to resist finding out what that shall be.

Admittedly, I did not count on the ragged edge that would take, back in Regina. Yes, I heard about that. Vicious people as a natural consequence of their disposition spread vicious rumors. Even I have my regrets in life; if I had known that was coming, I would not have dropped out. Even so, now and again a few select new Mounties will be in for intermittent surprises.

I hope Hawthorne enjoys his shipment of gay pornography. It's a pity my copy of his personal address is smudged; it had to go directly to his detachment house. A minor inconvenience, I'm sure.

I have no desire to be the patron saint of bent Mounties, but some things must be accounted for. I am not sorry to have followed him, and the time is near for me to map this town.

The time of the night to start mixing my drinks has arrived - not to be attempted by the unseasoned, I assure you - and I knock it back, wondering at the possibilities of the brunette on the other end of the bar.

--

The possibilities became probabilities until they were events.

She snores, however.

My place is mostly empty; we lay on a plain mattress on the carpet in my empty room. Twilight filters in, as I have yet to staple anything to the window to act as a curtain. I cannot get back to sleep so long as my companion sees fit to demonstrate the mating call of a wild woodchipper, so I straighten my sunglasses and pull on my clothes.

I have nothing to steal save the mattress, everything else is junk, so I leave her there and step out into the morning, thankfully still more toward drunk than hungover.

I shove my hands in my pockets and I walk. The light is slow to come this morning, as thick clouds drift across the sky, and the town smells different underneath it. Tinged with rain. I care little for where I'm going, though my stomach speaks to me for the ratio of alcohol to food that has been on it for the past few hours. I head in the general direction of a cafe that looked like it would not mind the new village fuckup taking up a table, but it will be some time before I reach there.

My stomach shall have to be satisfied with a nip from the flask in my pocket.

I can be prone to my own piques of reflection, and I think perhaps as I walk that this place, like the Mountie that drew me to it, has the air of possibility. There is a buzz of potential energy; not yet realized but always there. Even when it sleeps. Even in the half-dark, when only the restless, the drunk, the up-to-no-good and the truckers are awake. Perhaps especially then.

Speaking of...

If I did not know better, I would think that trucker was leering at me under that ridiculous mustache. He pulls up beside me, keeping pace at a slow coast, and takes down his window.

"Need a ride?"

"No."

He eyes the flask in my hand. "Want one?"

I eye the clingwrapped sandwich I can see on his dash. "Perhaps."

We share a look of understanding.

I hop in.

--

That was unpleasant.

I wasn't counting on getting out here, and I shall greatly miss that flask; I stole it from Andrew Longfellow a few years ago. Sentimental, you understand.

I am willing to accept flirtation in exchange for a sandwich, but interested in anything further I am most certainly not. A pity some people cannot take rejection without throwing a man out of his truck. Ah, well. Still, I have the rest of a sandwich. And a water tower to climb. What, do you believe I should have grown out of such things? Why would I want to do that, when I may see for miles from up here? My legs dangle over the side as the sun comes up. It does not burn off the cloud cover, so the light around me is muted, and I am pleased for this.

I chew leisurely, taking a rare moment in my solitude to push my sunglasses up into my hair and view the world in its natural colors. Life often takes me where it will, and as I sit up here undoubtedly against some silly town regulation or another, I consider once again the natural consequences of having befriended a police officer. 'Legal' has rarely been a concern of mine, and where it has been, it has only been so as far as necessary to avoid the consequences of the illegal. I have never been caught at something the RCMP would find distasteful. If I had, Depot would never have been a possibility.

In some ways, I may have traded freedoms for this flight of interest.

My sandwich is mostly gone, and I take a moment to spit a caper over the side, watching it fall.

--

I woke up from my impromptu nap with the grate of the water tower digging into my back and rain pelting off my sunglasses.

Several parts of me are still experiencing pins and needles even as I set off walking again, and I am not doing so for long before I get another offered ride.

This trucker has no leer, and I have no alcohol. He shares his coffee with me; a display of generosity that he asks only be paid forward. It is not long before I have that opportunity; I'm dropped off outside the cafe I'd wanted when I set off, and I settle into a table at the back, fishing money out of my pocket to lay down on two cups of tea. When the tired-looking waitress brings them, I tell her the second one is for her. She's seen much in her time in this job, I think; she does not object.

It is left on my table until her break. Mine is half-gone when she slips into the chair across from me takes it.

We do not speak much. My mother waitressed in her time, before the inheritance. Sometimes all a person truly needs before picking up to carry on with their work is quiet.

"Thanks," she mutters as she adds a little more sugar to the remainder of the cup, stirring it.

I shrug in response, half-grinning. All I did was pay for something she not only had to make for herself, but likely could have had for free.

"So, where are you from?"

I huff a laugh - my accent was clear, when I ordered - and she offers a wry smile back. It is the standard waitress line of conversation. She need not entertain me; I did not offer the tea in order to talk.

"Sorry."

"Don't worry about it."

"Haven't seen you around before."

"No."

We fall quiet again. It is contentedly so, despite the awkward flavor to her attempt to converse, and she seems to unwind for a few minutes until she gathers our teacups and goes back on shift.

Later, when I have lingered in vague and likely vain intention to wait out the rain, she sees me reading the back of a menu that I have no intention of ordering from. She brings me a newspaper instead.

Rain pours down the window as I flip through it.

Hm...

This part is interesting. You know, it's been some time since I've gone curling?

--

"You are soaked, Guy Laurent."

I smile widely at this.

My town-crawling has taken me by the detachment to lean against the wall outside, and it seems I have attracted the attention of Renfield Turnbull in a rare moment he is not with his FTO. I'm somewhat surprised not to be treated with more discouragement for hanging around here, but Renfield seems only mildly curious.

There is a lull in the rain, and Renfield is dry. Water drips from my fringe; the world is distorted through wet sunglasses.

"Fine observation, Constable."

He gives me the Eyebrow and I answer by bending and shaking my hair out like a dog.

He takes a big step back, and when I look again I am getting an expression of the same kind of annoyance one gives a vaguely annoying dog, so it fits. I smile in return; there are times when he and I have conversations consisting entirely of facial expression, and I greatly enjoy confusing him by answering with the unexpected.

I pull out a small package of saltine crackers I took from the cafe and give it to him like a gift.

He blinks and takes it; he examines the package as if trying to divine some great purpose to them.

"...thank you?"

I smile in answer. He pockets them.

Renfield seems...

I am not sure of the name for it. There is much I can pick up of his mood that he likely has no idea I may read; he is waiting, though for what, I am not yet sure. It is not long before he has to go back inside, no doubt to join his FTO on some other excursion, and even as I'm wondering if I will run into him during the course of the rest of the day I can see that the prospect holds complexity for him that he does not speak.

Hm.

He'll be pounding the pavement. I'll be keeping my ear to the ground.

--

I do not see Renfield again today.

I haven't the desire to go home, nor the inclination to do anything constructive. I merely walk, mapping the streets and the occasional person. Marijuana leaf sunglasses have a way of attracting looks, the types of which are very interesting to me indeed. Mostly vague disapproval. It's the curious and interested ones that I note carefully.

I'm mostly dried out when I find my way back to the bar. It is a bit early, but the bartender doesn't blink when he pours my favored. I decide that I really need someone with whom to drink. Suggesting alcohol to Renfield might be good for a scandalized look, but it would not be fruitful. The tender is rather dull company, and even for a man who doesn't tend to speak at length, I at least like to sit in the presence of someone who isn't totally checked-out when I drink.

I end up at a table by the window, my damp and ruined newspaper pulled from my pocket to sit in front of me. The evening sun has made itself known through the clouds, casting gold on the sky even as it still rains.

Patrons begin to filter in. Busier than last night. It is Friday, after all.

A large man with a criminal mullet enters with a rather exquisite woman on his arm; I share a look with her, and hers lingers.

I knock back the Jack. Possibilities.

--

Possibilities became probabilities that vaporized on Mullet-Head's thrown punch.

Ah, well. Probably for the better, as it would have been awkward flushing last night's companion out of my house, as for some reason she is still here. Unless we could have come to an understanding.

Damn it. The many ways my night might have been better if one man with poor fashion sense had been more easily distractable.

I'm in a mood, now, and I flop on my couch, letting Woodchipper Girl have the bed for another night. I see no reason to go to the effort of making her leave. My jaw aches. I click it as I flip channels, the narrow selection of that which come free and the static to tell me I need to cough up and get cable.

A day with no apparent point. This is not usually something that registers as detrimental, to me. I think I should probably smoke something. I feel strangely as though I've been holding my breath.

I wake up later, before twilight, to a half-static infomercial and the sudden certainty that I require Andrew Longfellow's phone number.

It hurts to smile, but I do so anyway.