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 Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:46 am
It wasn't a big, or particularly dramatic apartment, and although clean, it was definitely a bachelors place. The walls were just thin enough in the bedroom that you could faintly hear neighbors, like distant, muffled ghosts, and through the curtained window, cars honked and roared their engines. The partially open closet sported an array of old jeans and battered shirts, and the walls had a few scattered photographs of a blond young man standing next to a motorcycle, grinning like the sun. The bedroom door was closed, but from the other side of it, there were the sound of protesting cats (shut in the laundry room) and various clunks and thumps and pans rattling as quietly as pans could be rattled. Bacon and coffee perfumed the air. It was definitely not someplace she'd been before, but wherever it was, someone had put a glass... (more accurately it was a beer glass) on the side table, along with a bottle of aspirin, and beside it a container of TUMS. None of her clothes had been removed, and her high heels were sitting next to the bed.
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Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 4:59 pm
Zia's train of thought had been thoroughly wrecked and mangled, more so than usual. She remembered drinking a lot. A lot. But beyond that it was just flashes, blurs, and concepts for now.
She stirred with a soft groan, instantly registering the horrible pain in her head and decided now was not a good time to be conscious. So without opening her eyes, she pulled the blanket up tight over her shoulder and rolled over.
That was when she realized this was not her blanket and her eyes snapped open. She tried to throw off the blanket and jump up, not realizing how thoroughly she cocooned herself in and ended up hitting the floor with a loud, "WHAT THE ******** first and most obvious assumption was booty call with a side order of over indulgence considering she felt the clear after effects of lots of drinking and walking and she could vaguely remember the pregame with her girlfriends where hooking up was definitely a topic discussed.
But Zia was not a morning after kind of person, especially when all signs pointed to drunken coma before any fun was had, so she frantically got up and collected her heels and rushed for the door. Or was about to, when she got distracted by one of the photos and stopped to sate her curiousity and stare at it. "Huh. Nice bike."
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Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 5:34 pm
The man in the picture was somewhere in his late teens to early twenties, and the bike was clearly built for speed, confirmed by the race track in the back ground, and the trophy, nothing from the professional circuit, in his hands. Whatever the case, he looked intoxicated by the moment, caught on the brink of laughter and pride. However, there didn't seem to be any more recent photos, and this one was clearly out of date. The sound of the yell had brought some attention, and there was a soft rap on the door. "...Hey, you ok in there?" He struggled to find the right words and added. "...Realgar dropped you off. You needed someplace to crash, so...I crashed on the couch." Another pause before he added. "...I made coffee if you want a cup." This. Could. Not. Have been more awkward. ...No that wasn't true. It could have been a lot more awkward and a lot less dressed, but things hadn't, thankfully, taken that uncomfortable turn.
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 6:15 am
The door swung open with a hard jerk on the handle, and Zia looked like she was bordering on hostile when she saw Falco. Not for any particular reason besides instinctively risen defenses. She was in his apartment, and she had no idea who the ******** he was, so she was instantly suspicious.
The first questions probably should've been asking who he was, why had Realgar left her here, or something pertaining to her current situation but all that really came out was, "...Coffee?"
Without the frantic need to get out before she was noticed, which was botched the second she yelled anyway, the full force of her physical state managed to creep it's way in to her perception and she had to fight the temptation to go crawl back in to bed whether it was hers or not.
"....Okay."
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:12 am
"Coffee." He agreed, feeling a bit lame, and all too keenly aware she was distressed. (Not that he could blame her.) "I'll, uh, get you a cup... in the kitchen." He pointed vaguely in that direction as the laundry room door rattled and a white and black paw poked out from underneath, questing for flesh to hold hostage in exchange for freedom. "If you need anything just... uh... let me know. And uh, try not to let the cats out. They're kinda nosy little shitheads..."
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 7:13 pm
"I'm not here to stay," Zia responded with a slight edge to his polite gesture, but at the very least a moment after she'd said it she picked up on the fact that came out just a bit rude.
She spared the laundry room a glance and made a face at the thought of being stuck with a cat person and followed him to the kitchen, hoping for coffee. "Sorry. Uh... thanks for letting me crash. What'd you say your name was?"
And then a quick follow up in the hopes of small talk, "You know Realgar from motorcycle racing?"
Seemed like a logical enough conclusion.
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 7:30 pm
"...I hadn't yet." He admitted, raising an eyebrow slightly. She was defensive, but he couldn't say he didn't understand. "And yeah.... that's... pretty much how we met." Pretty much. More or less... if he hadn't been into racing... well... long and short Realgar wouldn't exist...good times. Sort of. "It's Falco. Falco Marks." He didn't figure she'd know the name, Zee.. well... she knew more than a lot of people did about the scene, but he was pretty sure his brief rise had been so brief that, even if she'd been paying attention, it would have been the flicker of a firefly in a field of lime lights.
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 7:49 pm
"Ooooooooooooooh... I don't really remember you," She stated passively and then pulled the picture she had totally stolen from the other room up. Yeah, sure, make yourself at home, Zee.
"But I think my dad sponsored you," She, at the very least, could recognize some of the logos in the photo. And Robert like races, whether they were ponies or people.
"Hi! I'm Zia Connolly," She introduced and held out a hand before getting distracted and pushing past him before even allowing him a chance to take it..
"Ugh, coffeeeee...."
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Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2013 2:29 pm
"...Kitchen" he repeated the direction, trusting her nose to lead her in the correct direction and then moving to try and get past her back to the kitchen. "I gotta make sure nothing is burning, 'scuse me." He let the rest of what she'd said digest as he went back to check the pan, putting strips of bacon onto a paper towel to soak up extra grease and putting water in the pan before putting it back on a cold burner for now. "...You're Connolly's girl? Really? Damn, small world." He had never put the two together, there'd been such a huge difference between the young woman trailing behind her father and the one he'd met on the roof... like two different people. Then again he was a rather different person than he had been then too. Maybe there wasn't really a good excuse for not recognizing her, but he hadn't. "Mugs are in the upper cabinet by the sink, help yourself." "How's he doing? I've been out of the game for a while..."
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Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2013 3:09 pm
Zia didn't need to be told twice to help herself. Or even once, but she did need directions to the cabinet.
Once a mug full of coffee was securely in hand she took a deep breath and tried to piece together last night, but gave a passive shrug at the small world statement. Robert was not the most subtle of human beings. He was massively tall, even in his seventies. He was loud, foul mouthed, infamously sexist and archaic in his politics, and even more infamous for overindulging in the pleasures of life. He liked entertainment and he threw his very available money at it freely, so there were some industries where he was a touch hard to miss.
That and Zia didn't know who else she could be. When Robert introduced the Connolly children, they were always 'my three sons and Zee', something Noah often bitterly mocked her for, being daddy's precious, special princess.
"Eh he's... Retired. Doesn't get out much these days." He was, after all, pushed eighty at this point. Zia took a ponderous sip and added what seemed to he a throwaway line. "Honeymooning in the Bahamas."
Completely unawares this was the explanation she had given Realgar for the absence of the Harley owner, and even if she did remember, she probably wouldn't have found it significant.
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Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2013 5:19 pm
If Falco had still been working with the bacon, instead of quietly choosing a piece from the plate, he might have done far worse than accidentally pinch a strip of still hot grease and hiss in surprise, sticking his burned finger in his mouth with a wince. He may not have necessarily been the brightest bulb he the lamp, but he wasn't so stupid that he couldn't put two matching stories together. That had been her fathers garage they'd broken into. WELL THEN. OK. "Bahamas is a bit less shut in than most people." He noted, offering her the plate of bacon with a raised eyebrow.
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Posted: Sun Oct 27, 2013 1:15 am
Yes, Zia had, in an attempt to show off and take a little bit of a jab at her father, enlisted a negaverser for a little B&E and vandalism action. Well, before she got distracted, at least.
Robert has wealth and connections in spades and aside from that was well known for being a large and angry man prone to irrational outbursts. There were more than a few times he had actually gotten up and thrown his chair at someone when he was fed up with talking business. But she thought nothing of it, usually being immune to his wrath and thinking a little fun with a captain was well off his radar.
She had been drinking the coffee black, leveraging her preference for sweetener against needing a solid of a dose of caffeine her brain could get ASAP, but she still had a little bit of a grimace on her face before she finally broke down and asked, "Do you have any sugar?" She didn't even ask or take note of the fact he'd burned his finger, probably because she was completely oblivious to the world as she stared into her coffee cup pondering the terrible pain in her skull.
Well, until she glanced up to notice he was handing her a plate, which she observed as if she was scrutinizing his work and then chuckled. "Aw, you made me breakfast and you didn't even get laid," And then she shrugged. "Well relatively, I mean. Taking a vacation is one thing, it's just, he's lost interest in a lot of things, doesn't even hardly maintain his collection anymore, he's only had one affair. He's slowing down in his own age."
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Posted: Sun Oct 27, 2013 6:44 am
"Well my motivation was slightly selfish. I wanted bacon, therefore bacon, and yeah sugar is in the incredibly tacky Harley Davidson thing on the table there." The one he had been waiting for the cats to break since he'd been gifted it, so that he could throw it away without guilt. Which of course meant that they danced around it like it was a holy feline treasure. Cats. "There's milk in the fridge too if you need." He wished he'd put together sooner that she was Conolly's daughter, he felt a little dim for not realizing it, but she'd just been so... different.
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Posted: Sun Oct 27, 2013 9:50 am
Zia was flouncing around his kitchen in total obliviousness to the multitude of things going on inside Falco's head, which was probably for the best because if she had an inkling she'd probably break the plate on it.
Then and now differences, and the fact he was actually Realgar playing dumb, were not good things.
The fact her sensory abilities were all on the brink of shut down or horrible, screeching pain thanks to the abuse of her liver last night helped keep her from being too observant, though, as evidenced by the fact she did not even judge his stupid tacky Harley sugar holder, she just poured copious amounts of sugar into her coffee cup to satiate her sweet tooth.
And then chugged. After inhaling bacon and coffee at rapid speeds, she did a quick mental inventory of where she'd seen her stuff by the bed and charted out her plan to detour back to get it and vanish.
"Well, Falco Marks, it's been fun. Well not really, this was horrible, but that's not your fault and for a crazy cat lady you're pretty swell. Thanks for letting me crash," She babbled as she walked away, throwing one hand over her shoulder in what was apparently supposed to be a wave before she left to go meld back into the anarchy of Destiny City.
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