Jared & Garrison | Harry's

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Jared runs into Agent Kane at Harry's and considers applying for a job there.

It had been a week since Jared quit his job as a bartender in New Rochelle, and the feeling was already not the same. Being on the patrons' side felt weird. Sitting at the bar, he ordered a jaegerbomb. Never too early for a college drink. Turning to the guy sitting on his right, he raised his glass: "Cheers"

"Seriously? A jaegerbomb?" Garrison Kane clinked glasses with him and took a sip from his pint of Moosehead. "I am getting very old." The Canadian had come from work, still dressed in his dark suit. However, his tie was loose, collar unbuttoned, and the television switched over to the pre-game for the coming Boston-Toronto game.

Jared was not used to all-dressed-up guys where he used work, so the whole nice business professional style was highly refreshing. But the man looked familiar. "Don't mind me asking, but, do I know you from somewhere? I mean, I definitely saw you around..."

"You are..." He closed his eyes for a second and then re-opened them. "Jared, right? Newly washed up on the shores of Xavier's? I'm Garrison Kane. I live in the mansion as well." He offered his hand.

"I'd rather say 'washed out' but yes, that would be me". The man looked nice to him and it was nice not to have teenagers running around for once. Something was not right, though. "You live at the mansion, and you're a... businessman? What's the trick?"

"Actually, I'm an RCMP officer, currently seconded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Short form; I'm a cop." Garrison responded, curious just how much Jared knew about his new home. The bar at Harry's wasn't necessarily the best place to enlighten him on the X-Men. "I do some work for the Institute, which is why I have one of the room suites there."

A cop? Then again, Jared wondered where he landed. This place was so full of surprises that he didn't really know when the bewilderment would stop. He thought proper introductions were a good start. "Well, I'm Jared, 22, jobless and currently doing nothing of my time at the mansion. Thinking about it, lots of people are lying in the med lab for a reason I don't know so... What's your thing?"

 "My thing? You're going to have to be a little clearer than that, eh. Briar?" He waved her over and ordered a second round of drinks.

"You know, your... 'special' thing". You're not at the mansion by random luck. Like me... My thing is that I don't feel contact." Jared did not appreciate the way Garrison played with that. It was still way out of Jared's comfort zone to have such casual conversation, except for his first encounter with Yvette-but she is just a kid to him, so he didn't feel that threatened.

"Sorry, I'm not used to hearing 'special thing' referenced by anyone but my girlfriend, and her meaning is kinda different." Kane noted the discomfort. Interesting. Obviously Jared was used to keeping his powers as secret as possible. "My mutant abilities are pretty plain; I'm quite a bit stronger and faster than a normal person. My skin... well, it adapts to a hostile environment, protecting me or letting me move through it after a few moments." Obviously Kane's frank response underlined that here, this was not something that needed to be hidden.

"First: Gross! Second: Do you always talk about that out loud?" Being different was not mainstream where he used to work in New Rochelle. Neither was it in Ohio where he worked before, nor in Nebraska where he grew up. And now, he was having a drink with a super-cop in a five hundred dollar suit. Life has this way to surprise you sometimes. "To you, it doesn't sound like a big deal... some people get lucky..." Maybe the sad face would grant him an extra drink...

"I'm Canadian, Jared. We get tested in school and if you turn out to be a mutant, there's a program you take to identify what you can do, and what you need to do to control. So, yeah, I guess it isn't that big of a deal. Everyone in the area knows that the school is for mutants, and most of the staff are as well." He didn't mention that not all of Salem Centre was as tolerant, especially not the local police force. "It takes some time to get used to, I guess. So, when you're not unemployed, what do you normally work at?" Kane said, changing the subject to something hopefully more comfortable for the young man.

"When I work, I am on the other side of the bar, spinning shakers, getting beers to guys who are already too wasted to make it past the corner of the street. But I like it. You don't have to tell your story, you just shake your head and smile. And Canada sucks, by the way". That comment was more related to his brother Adrian, raised somewhere there. Maybe he had been tested as well. Maybe he was a mutant too. Maybe he had been taken to that program Garrison was talking about. But now was not the time to open up about that part of the story. "And if I had to choose between college and being a bartender again, well I'm telling you, there no place like a dark and dirty bar after last call."

Garrison's eyebrows rose a little at the non sequiter shot at his country of origin, but the bemused expression remained on his face. "Why don't you ask Harry for a job? We had a person from the mansion working here for a while, did alright."

Jared gave Garrison an awkward smile, then shaking his head, he added: "I don't think I have the references to work in here. I mean, the place looks way to clean, people look nice and patron actually behave... My usual strategy is to ask for a job and a place to stay in the worst place you can find. I don't ask for a lot of money, and I work all day, and night as well. Whatever I look like, it's still better than the average people in the room. Here, I don't know." Jared felt embarrassed. He wasn't used to people offering their help or guidance. "I'll give it a thought, I promise. Whatever it takes to spend some time out of the house."

"So you want to work in a dive? Geez, remind me to send you to Amanda and Jubilee. They can show you Silver. It's a mutant club in a heavily mutant district in New York. Decent enough, if you're into that scene, and they know the staff and owner well. That, my friend, is all the reference you'll need. If you want to try someplace quieter, like Harry's, just tell me and I'll get a good word in for you from the school. Harry knows most of us here, and he's a good guy. If you're honest, on-time and work hard, that's all he cares about you."

Jared was starting to like the guy. He had this aura, this coolness. He was quite a great man, still he looked young enough not to look all wise and judgmental. "You would do that for me? You don't even know me? Nobody does that, where I come from." Shaking his head again, trying to understand what could possibly motivate such kindness, Jared ordered another drink: "a blue devil, please"

"Jared, you're going to find that if you're at Xavier's, people try and look out for each other. It's not some kind of weepy-eyed hippie low philosophy or anything. It's just that we deal with things being difficult enough sometimes to begrudge giving someone else a hand." Kane looked at the drink being assembled. "Although if you keep drinking those lame cocktails, you'll also learn that the only thing that we do more than look after each other is to mock each other."

"There’s nothing lame in my cocktail! I just met this blue guy earlier, that's my way to celebrate that. And that's better than drinking it alone in my room, don't you think? And you can mock all you want. I was the frat boy with no hook up, gentle mocking is my life!" For a second, Jared tried to imagine what garrison was like in college-if he went there, anyway. Probably a cool guy. Definitely not in a frat, but still the guy to hang out with... "You probably don't know the 'no hook up' misery, right?"

"Not when I was in a frat, no. However, you'd be surprised how much the badge works against you getting dates. I mean, they love the uniform, but when they realize that you're working eighty hours a week, and their hip druggie friends can't invite you over without getting their gear confiscated, the shine comes off the relationship really quickly." Kane said, ignoring the drink comment. To Kane, the closest to a cocktail he ever got was a rye and coke, or the odd martini. Anything fruity and kool-aid colored were not for him. "The woman I'm with now - Adrienne Frost, by the way. She lives at the mansion too, teaches math. You'll meet her. Anyhow, we've been going out for a little while now. It's nice."

"I am not even a 'going out' guy either. Not that I don't want to. And you were in a frat? No way?!" His coolness level was getting higher at every sentence in Jared’s mind. The young man had been fighting to find anyone to look up to, but the fact that it was a cop made it even stranger. As he was done with his drink, Jared got up and said: "Well, it was really nice, talking to you, officer... Kane. I should get going, unless I want to end up really bad within the next two hours... But I’ll let you know about that job thing soon, if the offer's still on the table."

"It's actually Agent Kane, or Inspector up in Canada." Garrison snuck a look at the television. Top of the first. "Take care, Jared. I'm going to watch the ballgame and numb my forebrain here for a few hours, but yeah, just drop me an email and I'll make a few calls. Oh, and relax, eh? I don't know necessarily where you're coming from, but there are different rules here. Learn to enjoy them."

"I'll do that for sure, agent Kane", he said with a cocky smile as he walked through the door. Befriend a cop and almost get a job, that was hell of a day...