(no subject)

[dieinpajamas]

Who| Alpha and OPEN
What| Alpha's pissy and drinking.
Where| A bar, quiet and focused on drinking.
When| Post Arena, Pre-Lockdown
Warnings/Notes| Standard Alpha warnings, in particular homicidal thoughts, otherwise none so far.

There was a part of Alpha, a few parts actually, that were starting to suspect that the Games were all some big plot to humiliate him for all to see. It would explain a lot. He pondered this possibility darkly, along with the problem of Ballard, not to mention the problem of Howard.

And, as always, the ever-present issue of not being where he needed to be. These problems and more, since multi-tasking was a necessary skill of Alpha's, he considered while he sat at the bar in the first dive he could find where nobody would bother him for autograph's or what have you, nursing a tumbler and glaring moodily at the rows of bottles on the wall.

Comments

Have a tipsy mentor.

[vissernone]

Eva generally prefers to drink alone, or at least, as alone as she ever feels when she's certain she's always being watched and monitored, but tonight she's been afflicted with a sort of sleeplessness that her plentiful stores of wine just won't hit. She needs something harder, and as such she's at a bar ordering something very similar to absinthe.

It fills her up with that familiar warm humming, the kind that if she just closes her eyes, she can feel like a giant puppet hand inside her, all hot fingers pulling her muscles and veins and palpating her heart. How does she ever get through the day without it? Animating her dry body every morning is such a task, burdened as she is with jadedness, with the lie she lives.

And no one around here seems to recognize her as the District 9 mentor. She's in a nightgown, but she has shoes on, and she didn't take her hair from the intricate clips before she tried and gave up on sleep, nor did she wash off her severe and perfect makeup. The nightgown is expensive and ornate enough that she can pass it off as a fashion only a few seasons out of trend.

"Howdy, stranger." She takes a seat next to Alpha, a little too drunk to recognize his face from the televised Games. She rests her chin on her fist and nurses her one-too-many of whatever-this-is. "You look familiar."

[dieinpajamas]

"Do I?" says Alpha sourly, sparing the woman little more than a glance. Mentor, not his District, not his problem. High-profile enough that people would notice if he was missing, so not a suitable target to expound his frustrations on (not that he could anyway with the damn cameras, but a man can dream). "Shocking."

[vissernone]

"Oh, be nice to me," Eva says, rolling her eyes. "I can't bother to keep all you people straight. Only the winners."

Of which Alpha is not, and Eva is.

Neener neener.

[dieinpajamas]

On the other hand, would anyone be that upset if she was found mysteriously carved to death in a dumpster?

Alpha takes a second to drain his glass then turns to Eva. He smiles at her, all teeth and none of his usual charm. "Oh, well, I'm sure it was different back when your worst opponents were teenagers with attitude. Out of curiosity, how many twelve year olds did you murder to win your Game?"

[vissernone]

Probably not.

She takes a sip of her drink and drums her fingernails against her lower lip. Acrylic polish, a design of golden flowers on deep red (it keeps her from chewing them off). She feels as if there's a comeback, something about this man and teenagers, but she can't remember if that was this or the other guy who got killed by a teenager. She's much too drunk to arrive at a conclusion herself without done jogging, so she just says "the teenagers and young people seem to be doing quite well these days. Plenty of kills under their belts."

Much too drunk to bother with the inconvenience of finding a better drinking buddy.

But she isn't too drunk to maintain her bravado, get air of callous indifference. "Two. Probably. I didn't exactly ask them for ID out in the field."

[dieinpajamas]

Alpha grits his teeth, starts seriously considering how much violence he can utilize before someone notices. Probably none, considering he's a Tribute and she's a Mentor, both under even more strict supervision than the rest of the population. Instead he gestures for another drink.

"Oh, but surely you watched the video afterwards," he says, stubbornly ignoring the jab about teenagers turned back on him. "Your greatest hits. Bet it'd look great spliced into a music video."

[vissernone]

Eva seems completely oblivious to how annoying she is.

"Oh, they spliced it into plenty. Advertisements, too. I was the first girl winner in a few years. They used my footage from the Cornucopia to sell tampons." She takes another drink and strokes the base of her throat to stifle a hiccup.

[dieinpajamas]

Alpha chokes on his drink a little, in a rare instance of absolute surprise. "There's a mental image that'll stay with you," he coughed out. "Nothing like girl power."

[vissernone]

"'For even the bloodiest situations'. I kid you not." She chuckles and drums her fingers against her glass. "They could you to sell antidepressants, maybe. You look like you're here to mope."

[dieinpajamas]

"I would be absolutely thrilled to be a spokesmodel for anti-psychotic drugs," says Alpha speculatively, and entirely sincerely. It'd pass the time, for one. "It's a terrible, disgusting bar. Moping and cruising are what it's here for."

[vissernone]

"Shame no one told me. I'm not here to mope or cruise, I'm here to get drunk." And from the way she hiccups, mission-freaking-accomplished.

[dieinpajamas]

"That's right," says Alpha with a nod. "The other thing, that one." He waves a hand a little unsteadily. He's playing up his buzz, almost instinctualy, especially since he doubts this woman would notice or remember if he recited the Declaration of Independence while standing on one leg. But it's a comforting obfuscation.

"Getting drunk. I can drink to that. Garcon!" he shouts, snapping his fingers until the bartender realizes Alpha's talking to her. "Another for myself and the lady," he says, though his glass is still half full

[vissernone]

Eva arches her brow and smiles. It's a reptilian expression, lips closed, teeth digging into gum just below the surface. "Well, your tune certainly changed fast."

She may be trashed but she's not entirely stupid right now. But she is stupid enough to keep drinking. "So remind me what it's like to kill, will you?"

[dieinpajamas]

"I'm very changeable," Alpha says, baring his teeth at her in a faux-grin once more. And he fully intended to stick her with the bill. He couldn't carve her up in the alley behind the bar, but he could at least be a minor annoyance. "Have you forgotten? Call up an Avox to your room if you're curious, nobody'll miss one less of them around, I bet."

He waits until the bartender had brought the next round and gone before he continues, thoughtfully. "That's a very broad question. Which part? The very end, when they've just let out the last breath? Or the part before that, when you stick the knife in their gut or the bullet in their brain, the actual act of killing? There's just so many aspects to the art."

[vissernone]

"Oh, no, I'm hardly the type to do it without a reason. Personal satisfaction doesn't really rank up that highly for me." She shrugs. "I think...how do you feel the moment you decide to go through with it? Before the act."

[dieinpajamas]

"Your loss," Alpha shrugs back. There's no point in trying to downplay his personality here, he doubts she'd believe it or, for that matter, care. "I don't tend to spend a lot of time thinking it over. My thought process is more 'this person's in the way. And now they're not.' If I'm feeling anything at that point it's usually...desire." Either for whatever they're keeping from Alpha or simply the desire to pass the time with a new toy.

[vissernone]

"Really." Eva licks the rim of her glass and frowns. "That's very pedestrian, almost."

[dieinpajamas]

"Hm," said Alpha. "Well, that's your opinion, of course. I tend to focus on the time in between the decision to kill and the actual instant of death. Deciding how to carry it out, that process. Far more interesting. Why, how did you remember it?"

[vissernone]

"Well, I just imagined a connoisseur like yourself would have something more interesting to say about deciding to kill than resorting to pure-" she hiccups, "pragmatism. It's so utilitarian. So...bloodless."

And then she laughs, because killing is hardly bloodless at all.

[dieinpajamas]

Alpha had mostly ignored the past Victors and Mentors. Now he considered keeping a closer eye on them, because, judging by Eva and what he knows of them, they're probably the most unstable group of people in the city.

"A connoisseur," he repeated, turning the word over in his head. "Flattering. I've never been called pragmatic, either, this is a night full of new experiences. I like to think of myself as a man of passion."

[vissernone]

That's putting it lightly, although it's not as if Sponsors are the most predictable either.

"I guess that all depends," she leans in close, not seductively but woozily, "on what it is you have a passion for, and whether it's worth even calling it a passion."

[dieinpajamas]

"Does it?" said Alpha, lifting a hand to push her firmly back towards her own seat. He was not in the mood to have drunken middle-aged women falling into his lap. "Are you the one to ask, to make sure I'm worthy of word 'passion'."

[vissernone]

Her tone changes there. Something steely and violent glints in her eyes. Muscles in her jaw tense. "Don't touch me."

And she takes another drink.

[dieinpajamas]

Alpha paused and a slow smile crept onto his face. "Not the cuddly type? And here I was hoping we could top off this lovely night with a snuggle."

[vissernone]

Eva reaches a hand over and places it on Alpha's shoulder. She tries to make it slinky but it's clearly retaliatory. "No, I'm plenty cuddly. But you're not understanding our relationship here. You're a Tribute, I'm a Mentor. I can touch if I want, but vice versa..."

She wags a finger.