Elliott sat with his back against the roof access door, listening to Shavian scream out her fear and frustration. He felt like doing the same thing but knew his presence wouldn’t be welcome. Even before the threats he’d known that.
It was far too late now, but he wished he had just left her in Washington. He’d led her into danger, not kept her from it. Sure, she seemed more than capable of taking care of herself but she shouldn’t have to. She was just a kid.
He was about to put his head down in his hands when a bottle of his favorite imperial IPA got in his way. Elliott looked up and saw Junie’s face, looking at him sympathetically. He said nothing, but took the beer and finished most of it one drink.
Roger roared with laughter. “That’s me boy, m’boy!” he bellowed. Elliott gave him a look and shook his head as another of Shavian’s screams could be heard from the other side of the door. “I wouldn’t worry too much about the ginger. She’ll be alright sooner-” he glanced at the door, “-or later. We aren’t going anywhere.”
Elliott looked past Roger and Junie at the darkened stairwell behind them: Higgins, Fipps, and Aubrey were all there and they had several wheeled coolers with them, full of ice and beer. Both of the dogs were lying there with them, content to be scratched idly and petted while the humans got completely plastered.
Two hours later, still in the stairwell…
Roger somehow managed to stumble up the stairs over Junie to sit down next to Elliott and fling a comradely arm around his shoulder. He held a beer bottle, the fourth or fifth he’d emptied, in his hand. With the index finger of that same hand, he poked Elliott in the shoulder. Shavian was still on the other side of the door, occasionally screeching.
“Tell me something, ‘Lliott,” Roger said, “do you like sleefin’?”
“Sleeping?” Elliott clarified, only slightly less drunk than his friend. “Sure, ‘course.”
“Too bad!” Roger guffawed, tapping his beer bottle against the roof door and breaking down in snorting peels of laughter. Elliott chuckled; the girl was making one hell of a racket, he had to admit.
Higgins, meanwhile, had managed to become even less talkative, only managing about a half a word at a time, the other half obscured by hiccups, which Junie and Aubrey thought was absolutely hilarious. Even the serious policeman was smiling and laughing. Junie had, of course, found coffee liqueur and was drinking it straight from the bottle. She had a girlish giggle when she was drunk, and was waving the bottle of liqueur, and telling a story about a weird coffee scheme she had once tried to orchestrate involving the illegal importation of some sort of exotic cat.
“What we didn’t know,” she was saying, “was that we couldn’t just feed the damn things any old kind of cat food!” This sent Aubrey into a fit of giggles. “And let me tell you, Fancy Feast doesn’t look so fancy coming out the back end of an incontinent civet!” At this Aubrey positively lost her mind laughing, and Fipps, who laughed quietly aside from a few snorts now and then, was shaking uncontrollably.
Higgins grinned and shook his head as Roger, still laughing at his own joke, moved away back down the stairwell to throw his arm around Aubrey’s shoulder. She leaned into him, and Elliott wondered what would come of that.
Higgins sat down next to Elliott. Higgins had taken on a fatherly role with Shavian and unlike most fathers he could actually shoot Elliott. Hell, in their current situation, Elliott would be just one more casualty and who would look twice at that? Not comforting thoughts, but Higgins looked anything but threatening at the moment.
“Do you think she’ll be alright?” Elliott asked. Higgins looked at him for a long time then, searching his face for something Elliott would probably never fully comprehend. He came to some sort of decision though as he smiled kindly at Elliott for the first time in days.
“Yes,” he said.
“She’s stronger than she seems, isn’t she?”
Higgins snorted. “Willful,” he clarified, but with affection in his voice.
“Yeah, that’s for sure.” Elliott paused, not sure he should ask the question he really wanted. In the end, the patronly attitude of the taciturn cop made him bold. “Do you think she likes me, Higgins?”
Again, that disconcerting, searching gaze and then he shrugged eloquently. “Women,” was his only response.