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 Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 9:35 pm
Zia had a routine when things went to s**t and that was usually fall back on old, bad influences and party hard until the subsequent hangovers turned her gray matter into jelly.
She had hooked up with vague friends she hadn't spoken with since prep school and only slightly buzzed from a short pregame, it seemed like a pretty typical 'get ******** up' night.
Except for the part where Zia apparently wasn't game for getting as ******** up as she thought.
She thought they were going to a club, maybe they'd dance and drink and smoke a little weed, but someone pointed them to a 'great party' and that turned out to be a street crowd, not a club or a house party. Maybe she would've taken note of all the street racing if she wasn't so focused on wanting to leave.
At some point she ended up shoved at a guy who'd just finished up a race and endured some idle chit chat about his paint job before she turned on her heel to leave and find that friend she'd come here with, only to get pulled back.
"Not tonight," She cringed, fully aware she was being a tease about 30 seconds ago. But she wasn't into it now, and that was what mattered.
"Aw, come on, your friend said you were good for tonight."
"No, seriously, not tonight," She groaned, stumbling on her heels a little in response to the subtle manhandling, and glancing around hoping she hadn't been ditched for a hook up. The answer was unfortunate.
"C'mon, mama, celebrate with me. A little e, some champagne, you're gonna love it." Apparently her less than impressed rebuffs went unnoticed, but she did find herself staring at the colorful pills with more temptation than she liked. A little chemical escape did sound appealing right now.
"I-I... uhuum... Yeah, no, not tonight."
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Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 7:04 am
"I bet you're feeling like the c**k of the walk right now..." Around Zia, Realgar's voice didn't usually take on the particular timbre it did now. An undercurrent of threat like a long drawn out cello note, reaching around to grab for the open hand and cover them with his own gloved hand and a steadily increasing grip. "This is your chance to be lucky a second time tonight. Smile. Give me the pills, and walk away from my friend." He offered, reaching to put his other arm not entirely gently around the other mans shoulders in a mock display of camaraderie that was actually designed to steer him away from Zia. He'd have rather greeted her somewhat more cheerfully, but that plan had gone somewhat off the rails when he saw her rebuffs ignored the way they were. "Sound like a plan there, speedy?" He smiled, coldly, glancing briefly at Zia to make sure she was alright, and that the situation wasn't about to devolve into a short lived spat of combat. Civilians wouldn't be able to do much to him, but she was more vulnerable. He couldn't deal with it if something happened to her on his watch.
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Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 3:00 pm
Zia's feelings about being white knighted were mixed at best. Part of her knew she should be grateful, another part of her mulled over the paranoia that she was giving off the vibes of a helpless victim in need of rescue when she almost wondered if she needed the personal validation of dealing with street harassment on her own.
To her own internal dismay, she only stood there quietly while Realgar steered him away. She was sure she would have lost respect for herself of she was a bystander, watching some party girl turn meek and freeze. She had no concept that freezing up was a normal response experienced by normal people, though, and her self respect had already taken enough of a beating she didn't notice it diminish too much more.
"Hey hey hey man, you know it. You see that finish I just pulled earlier? I got the biggest d**k around, pouty lips here just couldn't wait to get a taste." The jokes seemed to cease when Realgar asked for the pills, though, and he stuffed them back on his jacket.
The first time Zia spoke up and it was actually in his defense. "Chill out, Real, they're just party pills."
"Hey, man, you want her, you can have her. My man said she was easy, and no body dresses like that unless they want it but I'm not in the mood for this hard to get crap anyway. Not even for that a**." He adjusted his jacket and started to walk away.
Zia stared, trying to figure out of she was more mortified she had basically been passed her off as 'that friend' or that it had happened in front of Realgar, someone she'd prefer had a more respectable image of her than an easy target. "This party's dead anyway," She sneered, and turned to walk in the other direction, pretending to be unaffected. But she did make a slight effort to pull her skirt down a bit after the hit to what little dignity she had left.
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Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 3:32 pm
"Sure man! It's alllll about your tackle! Let me know when it comes outa hiding cause I'll kick it back up into your sinus cavity!" He barked sarcastically, fists clenched. He was itching to go after the guy, do something to him before he decided someone else was 'asking for it', but he made note of him instead. It wasn't a good sort of note.
It wasn't until he lost sight of him in the crowd that he chased after her and made a mock swat at Zia, deliberately missing more than, perhaps, a light brush of wind on her hair.
"Party pills? Seriously? You're smarter than that!" He knew she was. "You're way to smart not to go 'hey, this guy is a slimy douche, what are the odds he's packing roofies!?"
'Victim blaming' were the words you heard a lot... which he didn't want to do... but also 'rape culture'. Guys like Neon who thought that their big engines and big entitlement were all they needed, and honestly, he felt a little lost, a lot confused. Was this really the same woman he'd joked with on a rooftop about flicking cigarettes at strangers?
"Zee, stop." His tone changed, became gentler and pleading. "Tell me you're ok." Challenge that, see if she'd lie to him, when he was sure she wasn't. See how well she could lie to herself.
"...I'm sorry. I'm not trying to say you can't handle yourself. I know you can. Just... please." He asked, trailing just behind her.
He knew something had gone wrong, he just... felt it... he just didn't know how to convince her to tell him. Had she lost someone to a starseed rip? Had he done it? No he hadn't in ages...
******** what about Avior? Maybe he was one of her friends... s**t! s**t. ********.
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Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 4:24 pm
Zia was trying to calculate how far away her car was and if she was still too buzzed from the pregame to drive or if she was still in 'call a freaking taxi, you drunk driving b***h' territory when the rush of wind alerted her to Realgar's smack and miss action.
"Hey, watch it," She barked and whirled around, shifting one weight to her hil and rolling her eyes. "Calm down, it was just a misunderstanding. My friend wanted to hook up with his bro and uh... Well I guess I'm not in the mood to get as ******** up as she thought."
In an overwhelming need to reassert some kind of 'cocky b***h' persona after her humiliation, she grabbed someone's beer and just dared them to not let her have it before popping the top and shrugging. "I didn't wanna roll tonight anyway, it's been a while since the last time. I probably couldn't handle a champagne supernova tonight."
She chugged down half the bottle and shrugged. "Look, I just got out of a pretty intense relationship, I just wanted to get wasted tonight, okay? And surprise! I'm actually pretty ******** up, even without chemical assistance," She wasn't even trying to hide the bitterness. But she was making a few attemptedly subtle adjustments to the club wear she had on. Now that they had ended up foregoing the club and she was standing in front of a friend, she was regretting these fashion choices.
"You collect a good haul tonight?" She asked casually attempting to turn the conversation toward his energy draining habits rather than her life choices.
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Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 5:32 pm
Oh. Well...now he had an handle on where this was going, the territory she was currently in, and he had an even better idea of where it could go. "You aren't ******** up, you're on the precipice of ******** up trying to decide how far down you're going to go before you put the brakes on." God he hoped she listened. God he hoped she put the brakes on. "Zee I've been there. There's a reason I don't talk to my family any more, and that reason was all me." He didn't want to talk about the haul, but he didn't think she'd let it go. "A bit. Enough to cover quotas." he glanced back in the direction Neon had gone with a meaningful scowl. "Wasn't in the mood to do much else." He didn't add the part 'until now'. He thought she could figure that out if she wasn't too fuzzy.
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Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:19 pm
"Calm down, princess," Zia snorted. Apparently when she was freaking out on the inside, the outside was smugly telling everyone around her to calm down.
She had said that phrase a few times, and never when she was in a good place, and even she realized that the second it came out of her mouth. "Shockingly, I am not even kind of drunk yet, my liver must have mutant powers by now," She said with a grimace at the empty bottle in her hand, which might've sounded a little odd since biologically she barely looked old enough to drink legally.
"Realgar," She said in a heaved sigh. "Sorry to break it to you, but this is nothing new. In fact, this is a very mild attempt to just forget things for a night, okay?"
There was a weird pause, though. Hell, even during the fight all this stemmed from she did some reflecting on the benefits of genuine friendship versus toxic relationships she selfishly clung to.
She didn't want to turn this toxic too.
It was true, this wasn't a new thing for her. Ever since Operation Rota kicked the naive schoolgirl out of her she had wallowed in this kind of behavior whenever she felt down or depressed or for no reason at all. ********, that's how she got intimate with her ex in the first place. That's how she ended up in the position she was in when he asked her to move in with him.
Her face kind of twisted into a vague cringe with a few hints of dismay as she cataloged these events in her head.
"...Hey. My car's a few blocks away. Will uh... will you come sit with me for a while?"
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Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 6:13 am
"Yeah, of course." He promised, furrowing his brow in concern as he did so. If he were in her shoes, he was pretty sure his response would have been more to the tune of kicking him in the knee and going off to find another fight to start, but thank god, Zia wasn't him from a few years ago. "Sorry, I swear I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life..." He paused, grimaced and added apologetically. "...Much." Because honestly that had been sort of a 'worried parent' sort of crap speech, even if he had meant it, and he still wasn't sure he wasn't somehow to blame.
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Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 6:30 am
"You kind of are," Zia snapped back, still a little bit of an edge to her tone. But she still looped an arm around his and started walking away from the party and towards where she was pretty sure she'd parked her car.
"You don't know me that well," She reminded him. "I'm not really a first timer. ********, I can't even remember getting that tramp stamp."
But she was still leaving with him, and without much of a fight. Maybe she was just tired or maybe she was tipsier than she thought. Or maybe she really just didn't want to do this as much as she thought.
"I dunno, man, I feel like s**t," She groaned, but a groan of relief when she saw her silver Implala and she could flop against it and groan. Those spiked heels were not made for walking.
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Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 6:44 am
"Like I said... much." Realgar pointed out, allowing himself a slight grin as she sprayed him with a dose of angry vitriol. That was better than what he'd seen earlier, uncertainty and temptation. He'd take angry. "Well let's sit down then. I don't know how you walk around on those things in the first place." He noted, eyeing the tall heels. "How can I help?"
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Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 7:17 am
"Iunno," Zia grumbled out passivly, but she did unlock the back seat and grab a zip up sweater to wrap up in and climb back into the seat. She did pull out her keys and wave them around before tossing them at Realgar. A hostile gesture, but one to preemptivly strike out any suspicions she might be planning on driving like this.
"I'm uh. I was actually planning on getting stoned and waking up in a stranger's bed when I left tonight," She said with an awkward laugh. "It's just... I got out here and it hit me. It's been almost three years since Ares went off the deep end. Longer since I got pulled into the matrix and in all that time? I've only been with one person. Or alone, but there was one dude, and it was like a chickened out or something. I don't even know what I'm doing here, it's not the same. I can't even do this like I used to."
She pursed her lips and rolled her tongue in thought. "Is it possible to have a midlife crisis at twenty-five?"
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Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 7:50 am
Maybe it was just because he wasn't in the focused zone of combat, but Realgar actually almost missed the keys, juggling them for a moment with a fair amount of jingling and muttered curses before catching them. Granted, gloves didn't really do a lot for your manual dexterity either, and he paused to consider even after he'd caught them. "I don't know if I'd call it a midlife crisis, but I would call it a shitload of stress looking for an outlet. I don't think you chickened out, I think you just... stopped and wondered if your current outlet was really working as an outlet." He shrugged, glancing over the car in semi avoidance of her gaze as he added. "Hell, worked for me. First time Camelot mentioned purification to me I think I just threatened him..." "...Obviously I've changed my mind about that. Doesn't mean I chickened out. Just means I took a long road to figure out things weren't working the way I was doing them." He almost wanted to poke that part about the relationship, but he was reasonably sure that was a bad idea. If she wanted to share details, she'd get there. He wanted to help but he also needed not to be the kind of person he knew he wouldn't have listened to. Damn this wasn't easy.
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Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 10:16 am
Zia stared at him, trying to think of what kind of person she projected herself as to get a lecture on appropriate stress outlets from an agent of Chaos.
His mention of bigger problems like his quest for purification added another layer of angst to her thoughts and she let her head lull to the side against her shoulder.
There was a lot of quiet pondering before she finally pulled her sweater tighter and muttered, "Take me somewhere." And added after a pause, "Somewhere with food, I'm hungry."
---
Zia didn't say anything of value or get down to the meat of things until she was half way through a chili burger she had disassembled, loaded up with fries, reassembled, and attacked in a deceptively dainty but unyielding way that didn't smear her lipstick by way of what could only be black magic.
"It's all your fault, you know," She quipped out of nowhere.
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Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 10:36 am
Realgar, who had been contemplating the posibility that Zia's powers over her lipstick may be some sort of Mirror-universe thing, blinked and put down his Soda, suddenly back on the train of thought that maybe he should have told her about Avior, maybe that was it... His fault? Had he beaten the s**t out of her boyfriend? He wasn't sure he knew who her boyfriend was, though "Let's be Friends" didn't strike her as the type. Especially with his desire to join the BMC. Zia would have removed his face with her pinkie nails without chipping her nail polish, and might have even previously made sure her choice of color matched the gore. "....My fault?" He considered reaching for ketchup for the remaining fries on his own plate, but this probably needed addressed first. "...What did I do?" That came out a bit more incredulous and wary than he'd actually intended, but he wasn't entirely convinced that she wasn't going to pick up her plate and hit him with it or something. What had he done and how did he fix it?
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Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 2:51 pm
Zia seemed to ignore the poor captain's question and just kept talking, occasionally stopping to carefully drench her next bite in mustard or reach for the beer she had actually gotten carded to order-- which helped her ego some but still annoyed her she had to stop and find her wallet-- and seemed to casually chatter on.
"I've been thinking about you, you know? You're kind of awesome, and hella fun. I don't feel like you're trying to use me or get in my pants or expect me to be a certain way or need me or anything. I mean, like, when we talked that night and you were telling me all these things and said we were friends it felt uh... I dunno, whatsit. Genuine?"
She shrugged and laughed. "Not that I'm tryin' to get all gross on you or anything. And I mean, I got other friends but. Maybe it's because of where you came from or because you're... I dunno. It struck a chord. And I was mulling this over when I came home and he had flipped the couch over and dumped cutlery in front of the doorway and started the usual screaming fit about being out late and suggesting I was off daring to have a life because I was cheating on him."
She had to stop and press down her sandwich with a little bit of elbow grease to avoid needing to unhinge her jaw. "And I realized maybe I don't ******** like feeling like complete s**t! This is stupid. I don't have to stand here while he calls me a filthy whore or pull his stupid physical intimidation bullshit. Things can change, people change, I don't want to coddle his depressed a** anymore. He tears me up and apparently I am not good for his mental health if he's going around punching holes in the wall on my account. So I walked out on him."
A brief intermission for chewing and swallowing was needed before she stopped focusing on her food and looked directly at him. "Be honest. Do I give off some kind of psycho bait vibe? Like hey, domineering control freaks, come get me?" But then she shook her head like she didn't want an answer. "I'm not a pet," She said firmly, but one hand slipped between the zipper on her sweater to subconsciously trace around the brand again.
"I want to be treated like a person, damn it."
She flopped back and heaved a sigh before very deliberately and viciously biting at a fry like she was envisioning it as someone's head. "So anyway. I am now jobless, homeless, and lonely and kind of tipsy and on the rebound so I know my judgment is not the greatest, but that bartender over there looks delicious."
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