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 Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2017 3:48 pm
Quota season meant no-personal-time season. Instead of spending nights in with Porsha, or practicing his much-neglected violin, or even just trying one of these lauded pumpkin spice lattes, Ochre was stuck spending the prime time hours looking for draining targets. The leg up he once had with a stockpile of energy was now depleted, and he was back to scouring sports bars and stadiums for proper draining targets. And unless he wanted to bust into college civil war matches where he'd stick out among the crowds like a creepy cosplayer, he needed to visit the bars.
All the bars. The Ravens bars, the Steelers bars, the bars for whatever Destiny City's team was, and probably the gay bars too. Drunk people weren't great on the energy spectrum, but they worked in a pinch and he could skate by with lame excuses about his clothes and hair.
The closest bar stood on the edge of the DCU campus grounds, on a street thick with businesses. Each shared a wall with one another, with charming old shop fronts and ancient brickwork. Some even retained the old painted sign style to try to preserve some of the stylistic architecture. The street itself was cobblestone, one of the few 'historic' streets in the area, with matching rustic lamps bearing bowls full of flowers. Sure, the street looked nice, but with a grand total of seven bars in two blocks, Ochre wasn't sure any of the university students would be sober enough to even recognize their surroundings. Which worked for him, really, but kinda not so much for a pretty street.
Some of the cacophonous cheers filtered out into the night air, and Ochre tried to glance through some windows to uncover the source. It wasn't the dive bar full of fogies, or the stupidly upper-class wine bar on the corner. His next bet was the University Store, as it was called (and Ochre thought it clever), that housed all the cheering.
Okay, walking in isn't such a good idea. Maybe if I wait around, someone will have to come outside to pee or something. That's what drunk college kids do, right? The stoop of the adjacent business, blessedly closed for the night, offered enough cover to observe the building. The adjoining alleyway held additional promise if any clever kid thought to cut through its confines. Stakeouts suck, but at least I'm getting energy.
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Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2017 9:55 pm
Ochre didn't have to wait for long.
A few minutes following the raucous cheers from inside the bar, a girl stumbled out of the doors in the middle of a snorting laugh, her orange hair barely contained in the bun it had been at the start of the night and her freckled skin as flushed as the grapefruit pink of her eyes. By all accounts she looked the part of student athlete in her cotton gym shorts and knee-high socks, paired with a hoodie in DCU colors. She continued to laugh her way to the sidewalk, wiping her eyes, then flipped her phone out of a pocket, yawning to herself as she began to text away.
Katie Catigern didn't usually drink like this, but then again, the volleyball team she was on didn't normally stomp their rivals from the next city over on the first scrimmage of the season. Now that she was 21, she finally had a chance to celebrate with the girls, and in the heat of the moment one drink had turned into five and suddenly the normally cozy bar had gotten just a little too warm for her tastes. She didn't think to tell any of the others that she was stepping outside for a moment to check her phone, or that it would be dangerous to do so--after all, she'd walked these streets hundreds of times to and from class, and if any monsters came spilling out of the alleyway, she could turn into Chauvet and just dash away like the warrior princess she was. She was fine, everything was fiiiiiine.
Now that she was out of the raucous going on inside, however, the rest of her drinks started playing catch-up, and she yawned again, leaning against the quaint brick exterior. Why hadn't she gone out and done this before? She was having sooooo much fun, and decided to make her assessment of the night eternal by posting it on Twitter.Quote: having THE BEST TIME out at @UStore w/ my baller fam!!! GO DRAGONS!!
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Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 11:56 am
Ochre found relief of his burdens when a brilliant redhead stumbled out, looking not-put-together-but-totally-put together, sporting that super satisfied look he saw in the eyes of people who actually accomplished things in their lives. For a time, Ochre wavered over whether to drain her — she looked young, and he couldn't rightly assume that she was over 21 just because she was Ouija-walking all over the damn street like a seasoned drunk. But on the other hand, she looked like someone who was going somewhere (maybe not literally going somewhere, but certainly going somewhere in life — more somewhere than himself, at least) and he felt an old, insidious bite of jealousy by simply laying eyes on her.
He had precious seconds to decide after she disappeared past his obscured corner, and Ochre wasted none of it. He'd make a scene, he told himself. Everyone expected scenes around bars. He'd make a scene, and he'd feel pretty damn good about draining the life out of Miss Sports Star over here. He'd get his quota, and she'd maybe learn to stop tottering around like the world was her oyster.
Or she'd continue to make the same stupid mistakes and get starseeded one day.
Whatever. It didn't matter. Ochre jogged from his shadowed position, crossing the street deftly, and made a beeline for the girl. He grabbed her roughly by the arm and towed her to the right, further from the bar, further from her success and freedom and celebration. "You're standing right in the middle of my shot, okay? Would it kill you to maybe not stumble around and drunk text your friends while someone's trying to take a picture of DC architecture?" In the interim, ochre focused on obscuring the ball of forming energy and his telling, star-stricken chest. "It's already bad enough that I have to take like, thirty seconds of exposure time for the shot, and like anyone could drive through, but then there's drunk college kids…" He sighed, and the orb grew ever larger.
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Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2017 9:52 am
Katie yelped, albeit on a delay, when someone pulled her like a ragdoll, and her feet sputtered under her in a desperate attempt to keep up. "Hey--ow, what the ********, dude--" she started to slur, but his voice was over hers and sharp and articulate in a way that made the rest of her world feel even blurrier. Sober Katie would have been pissed that some stranger decided to manhandle her in public because of some photo he was trying to take, but Drunk Katie totally got it. She was a journalist, and at times a photographer, and there was nothing more important than visual storytelling. She'd thought about manhandling a passerby or two once in a while when they got in the way of her stories, she was sure.
"--sorry, s**t, I didn't know," she mumbled, rubbing at her eyes. Why did her legs feel so heavy? Maybe she was just starting to feel the game a little earlier than usual. For the first time, she looked at the stranger who was hauling her towards the darkness of an alleyway, taking in the dark clothes and the hair, the fur and the glint of copper in the receding lamp-light.
"Whooaholy s**t, dude, you're like, really committed to the aesthetic," she wondered, giggling a bit as an aftereffect of her tired drunk fascination. "Are you, like...I don't even know, but you're so spooky, it's the best." She leaned forward, brushing her fingers against the fur of his collar. It felt real, not some cheap-o costume ordered from the internet.
"Like, no hetero but you look great," she drawled, even as her off-kilter grin began to fade. She felt like something was wrong? Her head was starting to swim, it was so difficult to keep her head up. But she was fine, she was fiiiiiiiine. "Issat real?" she asked, her hands slowly inching for the hole in his chest.
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Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 7:17 pm
Um. Crap. This is definitely not what I was expecting… Ochre lost some of his gusto in the girl's bubbly attitude and easy capitulation. Draining energy wasn't so much a thought anymore — keeping up charades demanded more attention — but Ochre found his concentration broken when the girl provoked too much thought.
Like should I really be draining her? And wow, what I'm doing feels really really wrong right now and I should go. Which going seemed like a good idea, since he already had a ball of energy in his hand and if she kept going he might end up in a conversation or something, and then the higher ups might get weirded out about that, and guilt might catch up with him, and yeah maybe don't fraternize with the poor kid that stumbled out of a bar.
Oh no.
Oh no. I'm starting to feel sorry for her. ********> Ochre chewed his lip, careful to divert his gaze from her. Oh no. She's complimenting me. Oh no, she's gonna touch my hole —
wait that sounds wrong —
oh my god what is wrong with me —
"Yeah, uh, it's kinda my thing? Like… Spooky. Yeah. Um, it's a tattoo, but don't touch it? It's still kinda sensitive I just got it done yep and thanks for getting out of the way of my shot. But it's probably done taking the picture now and I should check it and, uh, you should probably go back inside before someone starts looking for you or you catch a cold or so— uh, um, maybe don't touch the furs? You're kinda touchy-feely." And that reminded him of Porsha.
The oh nos returned.
"Yeah, no, um, totally no hetero. No hetero at all." And I totally mixed up the conversation. Go me. "But seriously, the camera." He let go of her at once, slipped the lurid purple orb into a subspace pocket. He flashed her a bashful, if guilty, smile. "Maybe I'll show you sometime when I get it developed. But, yeah, gotta check it now. Bye!" Ochre beat a hasty retreat before she got any further ideas — or inklings — into his real motives.
Energy draining was really becoming a trying affair.
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2017 9:19 pm
Katie didn't think of herself as being too close in this person's space, because what was personal space? He'd grabbed her first and made it physical, so it only made sense that she could return the favor. All the same, she had friends with tattoos and she recognized that touching a fresh one was a big no-no, and so her clumsy hands withdrew on instinct before she could cause any harm.
"It looks rad as ********, your guy did...a great job," she nodded slowly, leaning towards him more out of the need to stand than for comfort. But he was drawing away faster than she could lean forward, and so she stumbled just a step, shaking her head. "Yeah, I love old photos stuff..." she began, but by the time she reoriented herself enough to look up he was already whipping around of corner, out of sight and mind.
Katie frowned, but her legs lacked the ******** to give to chase after him. She took a step forward, ready to head back towards the bar, but was instead hit by a sudden wave of exhaustion and nausea. She leaned against the brick of the building and slumped, wondering thickly when the world decided to turn sideways.
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