A/N: Not mine. I wanted to get the whole group together for one final Shot before Paradise Blues, and they naturally scattered like cats. Who says I can't write long bits?
Hige had dug out his old interview wear, praying that it still fit him well enough. It wasn't that he was afraid it would be too small - if anything, he'd lost a few pounds since meeting Blue, - but he couldn't afford to look like a complete schlub, either. Blue had insisted that her father and brother weren't all that frightening, but Doctor Lebowski knew the family, as well. It wasn't that Hige Wolfe trusted his mentor more than his girlfriend, but he figured that the woman he still thought of as Doctor D. could offer him a slightly more scientific and unbiased opinion.
Doctor Lebowski had an opinion on her husband's friend, certainly. She didn't hate the man, but she'd warned her intern to protect his head and be ready to run during their lunch hour, (in the lab of course; Doctor D. was loathe to leave her experiments,) and that was even before Hige had mentioned he was dating Quent's daughter. "Avoid any conversations concerning alcohol, weaponry, his job, fire, wolves, and vodka in any context and it should go just fine," Cher Lebowski had offered dryly. "Hopefully."
"Gee, is that all?" Hige said, scratching the back of his head.
"Well, you may get the rants on Ockham's Fifth Division and how useless the dome is anyway, so no sense in trying to stave off the inevitable," Doctor Degre-Lebowski said, looking over the printouts. Hige hardly ever checked more than the obligatory number of base pairs; the technology had been in place for over a hundred and fifty years, but his boss loved to have a hand in every part of the process. Hige admired her resolve, but sometimes he had to wonder when Cher Lebowski ever got any sleep.
Even their "lunch break" today had involved a large stack of papers placed on an empty lab table between Hige's paper sack and Dr. Lebowski's bagel, and Hige was pretty certain that she still hadn't returned home, even as the afternoon slipped into evening now. At least the senior doctors got to wear something a little more comfortable than those white scrub uniform jumpsuits for their trouble.
Or monkeysuits, Hige supposed, trying to straighten his collar. He had forgotten how much starch he had used on the thing. It had been sitting in the back of his closet for too long, he decided. Provided he survived the introduction to her family, Hige was going to have to take his girlfriend someplace nice more often. Even so, the tawny-haired man pulled out his favorite old hoodie to throw in the back of the car as well. Life was too short to miss out on whatever comfort you could find.
Hige crossed the street and worked his way over to the parking garage, his hoodie wrapped around the wine bottle and another small, important - although potentially dangerous - item stuck deeply into his pants pocket after he'd checked it for holes. With a long, sputtering grumble, the Nissan puttered to life and began to work its way through the congested roadways of Freeze City. Hige had been to this destination often enough that he wasn't worried about getting lost, but he would hate it if traffic made him too late. This was going to go like a dream.
"It's open," a gravelly voice called when Hige knocked on the apartment door. Hige heard something metallic clicking into place, but it didn't sound like the locks on the apartment.
Slowly, Hige pulled the door open. "I mean really, Pops, isn't that a little cliché? You're going to embarrass her to death -" The boy cut himself off mid-sentence, squeaking slightly as the knob turned. "Hi, I'm Toboe, Blue's brother. You must be Hige. She's told us so much about you." The lightly built youngster stepped directly in front of Hige and took his hand, cutting off a direct view of Quent Yaiden. The boy barely looked a thing like his sister, but she had told Hige that she'd been adopted. It had always seemed rather strange to Hige that he had seen no family portraits in the living room of Blue's home, but maybe they just didn't want to bring up any painful memories for her. That didn't make sense though; Blue kept several pictures of them in her wallet and was hardly ashamed of her "chosen" family, as she seemed to think of her father and brother, even if some of their friends were.
"Nice to meet you, Toboe." The tawny-haired man offered him an only slightly worried smile and squeezed the scrawny boy's hand. "Polishing the shotgun, sir?" Hige asked, peering over the redhead's shoulder.
"SKS-9 revolving hunting rifle," Quent Yaiden corrected him. "Less stopping power, but it's got a longer range and it's very accurate." Hige nodded as if any of the words meant anything to him. "You ever go shooting, boy?"
"I can't say that I have," the young man said, following Toboe's unspoken invitation to sit down. Hige's parents had always been more than a little fearful about guns.
"Well, that settles it," Quent said, snapping the loaded wheel of bullets back into place. "The kids and I'll have to take you sometime." The blocky, gray-haired man grunted and stood, tucking his rifle beneath his trenchcoat. Hige hadn't quite realized how tall the elder man was when Yaiden had been bent over his gun. "Why not today, since you're over here anyway? If you can learn to shoot in that, you could probably shoot in just about anything."
"Pops, we've got dinner reservations and you probably need to clean up first," Toboe reminded his father.
"Eh, we got plenty of time," Quent said. He had slipped the loaded gun into a holster beneath his long plain brown coat. It disturbed Hige to see how well it slid into the older man's profile; a bit of extra tension in the blocky left shoulder was the only tell that the weapon existed. "Blue?" the elder Yaiden opened a door and yelled toward the rear of the apartment. "We're hitting the range before supper."
The door at the far end of the kitchen opened halfway, and a familiar face peeked around the edge. Her hair was a fluffy mess and her makeup was only halfway finished, but their visitor thought she looked beautiful. "Have we heard from Hige yet?" The sandy-haired man in question waved shyly from the couch and those bright blue eyes softened. "You feeling up for it, honey?"
Hige shrugged and scratched his head, his eyes drifting back to the hidden holster slung beneath the older man's coat. "Do we have time?" Toboe asked for him, twitching restively on the couch.
Quent raised an eyebrow at his daughter, offering her a silent answer to her unspoken repetition of her brother's question. "May as well let them do what they have to, Toboe."
The skinny redhead sighed in defeat. "At least we can make sure Pops follows range discipline."
"I haven't forgotten how to keep the rifle from going off when I don't want it to," Quent assured him, standing and retrieving his hat.
"I don't think that's what Toboe's worried about, Pops." Blue gave her boyfriend a wink and disappeared back into her room.
"Should I be afraid?" Hige asked the boy in an undertone.
"He's always been a little… overprotective," Toboe told him. "He warned my last girlfriend that if she dumped me he couldn't hold himself responsible for what might happen."
Hige glanced towards the elder man. Quent Yaiden appeared busy with putting away his cleaning tools, but like that loaded gun of his, the young intern did not doubt that the eldest Yaiden was capable of offering a threat just out of sight. "Well? What happened?"
The boy looked towards the floor. "I don't bring home girls anymore, and my boyfriend drops me off half a block from the apartment."
"That bad, eh?" The small youth nodded reluctantly. Hige reached into his pocket, fingering the most dangerous item that he carried. "Well, hopefully I've got nothing to worry about, since I'm not intending to break it off anytime soon."
"Good." Quent picked up a soft-sided case that rattled slightly as he lifted from the ground. Blue reemerged at the sound, dressed in something more suited for knocking around the city than going to fancy restaurants.
"Let's make this quick then," she said, lifting something out of a drawer in the kitchen. "Do you mind driving, Hige?"
"No problem," he replied. The car might be a little tight, but with Blue next to him, it wasn't a big deal. "Can you point me in the right direction?"
"Sure."
It only took three twists of the key and some muffled cursing on Hige's part to get the old sedan running. The range was technically within walking distance of the Yaidens' place, but far enough out of the way that their suburban-raised driver was thankful to not be hauling that rattling duffle for five and a half blocks. A part of him feared that it would explode. Blue and Quent seemed comfortable enough around it, at least. Toboe, on the other hand, kept adjusting his tie and insuring that the wine bottle was safely balanced between his feet while seated next to it.
"It's not going to bite you, runt," Blue teased her brother as Hige hunted for a parking space. "As long as nobody's pointing it at you, you don't need to be afraid of it."
"Easy for you to say." The redhead crossed his arms, pouting slightly.
"Mistakes happen." Their father reached over the bag to touch the boy's head as Hige pulled to a stop, then lifted the duffel. "We can't linger over all of 'em."
"So, should I be worried?" Hige asked the teenager in an undertone.
Toboe pulled fretfully at the silver bangles about his wrist before answering. "I hope not. Blue'll keep Pops from doing anything crazy, but those things are harder to fire than they look."
Hige smiled at him and tugged playfully at the redhead's tie. "Hey, we'll let them shoot and we'll add in the charm, and between us, we could practically be a super secret agent like in those spy films."
The youngster smiled at the notion, brushing away Hige's hand and scratching at the back of his head. "And with your job, you even get to play with all the noble-designed gizmos." Toboe grabbed the metaphor and ran with it. Her old man was a bit aloof, but Hige had no doubt that he'd be getting along just fine with Blue's little brother.
"Well let's see what you've got up your sleeves, Agent Hige," Blue teased, setting a pair of ear protectors in their hands. "You might want these if you're not used to the noise." Toboe was quick to pull his on, and Hige followed his example. Neither of the elder two Yaidens bothered, the young man noted.
Shooting a bright, still dot looked easy, compared to some of the things Blue and Quent Yaiden were known to aim at, but both of them fussed over Toboe for even hitting the same sheet of paper. One try of his own and Hige understood why. Even with Blue's hands steady about his, the pistol jumped, sending him stumbling back into her. His would-be teacher barely maintained her own balance, avoiding falling over only through a lucky step back into the table they had used to set up. "Okay, James Bond, I'm not," Hige admitted. "I don't know that I could do the whole bed-hopping thing, either," he added as he passed the gun to Blue.
"Good," she said, smiling. "You ready to go, Pops? It's getting late." She glanced at the clock as her brother began to fiddle with his bracelets.
Quent Yaiden sighted down the rifle; his hands surprisingly steady as he squeezed off one final round. "Suppose it is, at that," the bearishly built elder responded once he had assured himself as to the accuracy of his shot.
He hung back, lingering over the equipment and motioning for Hige to wait as Blue and Toboe headed for the car. "I don't worry too much about my girl, Wolfe." At Yaiden's tone, Hige mentally ran through the forbidden topic list Cher Lebowski had given him and began to wonder if this meeting hadn't been doomed from the start. "I'm not going to make any threats or try to drive you away. I don't tell you this because I'm out to make your life particularly easy. The way I see it, Blue is perfectly capable of carrying out whatever she feels like. Whatever that may be, I'll support her decision."
"Understood, sir." Quent Yaiden nodded and turned for the car.
All in all, the proposal dinner didn't go quite as smoothly as Hige would have liked, but once all their weaponry had been tabled, Blue was willing to accept him.