(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

[kind_of_a_nerd]

Atticus had set out to get a feel for the city. He realized he probably shouldn't have gone on his own, but he didn't want to ask anybody to hold his hand either, so he was out and wandering.

He did get stopped once or twice for autographs, and it had been kind of a fun, novel experience the first few times. Right up until some kid, couldn't have been older than twelve, said, "The way you just ripped its throat out!"

The novelty wore off very soon after that.

So he wandered further and further from the brighter, more populated areas of the city and eventually found himself in a dive bar. He made his way up to the bar and said to the guy behind the counter, "I don't suppose you've got, like, tequila?"

[dieinpajamas]

Alpha's all set to ignore the rest of the bar and preferably the world for the rest of the night, but the voice sounded familiar enough that he glanced over on reflex. It was dim in the room so it takes a second for recognition to register. He smirked, remembering his last encounter with that particular face, and he's all set to let the kid wander off with his drink before something else about the face registered.

He frowned and darted out a hand to grab the kid--Blaine, that was it--by the chin. The skin is smooth and clear--the damn Capitol has erased his gifts.

[kind_of_a_nerd]

Smooth and clear, yes, but not quite like Blaine's. Mostly because it was marred by stubble, as Atticus' usually was. Other things which, on closer examination, might indicate this was not the boy he maimed, included his hair being longer and generally more crazily curly than the other boys, his eyes being a strange sort of amber rather than hazel, and the way he yanked himself out of Alpha's grip.

"Hey! Whoa! Stand down, buddy."

[dieinpajamas]

There are differences, Alpha noticed now, not that he got a terribly close look at Blaine thanks to the weather gear and Wyatt's interference. And he appeared older, which discounted the identical twin theory.

Interesting. "Your face," he started, then stopped, forcing a slur and wavering slightly. The balance was important, just drunk enough that the inappropriate touching was forgivable, not so drunk that conversation seemed pointless. "Your face," he repeated eventually. "Seen it before. But it looked different."

[kind_of_a_nerd]

Atticus wasn't completely pacified, but he was willing to let it slide, at least.

"Oh, yeah. There's...a kid here. Blaine? He looks a lot like me."

Pretty close to identical, in fact. At least close enough that it really unnerved Atticus when he wasn't doped up on chocolates.

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."

[greymatter]

Alpha wasn't the only one looking for a peaceful place to drink sans noisy fans and paparazzi. He doesn't notice the man right away, nearly sitting somewhere else entirely before he spots him. Grey recognizes him immediately as that odd man he'd killed two arenas ago. The one who spoke to himself as if he were speaking to multiple people.

He moves to sit closer to Alpha, oblivious to the other man's foul mood as he grins. "Hello!"

[dieinpajamas]

Alpha knows that voice extremely well. Most of that time in the Arena is blurred by illness, but the video is burned into his mind at this point. His fingers twitch and only the eternal surveillance keeps Alpha from breaking the glass in his hand, using the largest shard to cut into Grey's skin, his face, his wrists, his--

Alpha very carefully sets the glass down. Best save that for the Arena. Or the first camera-free space he can find. He grins back at the man, or at least, bares his teeth, and says nothing. Instead he just gestures for another drink.

[greymatter]

Grey himself requests a glass of whiskey, glancing sidelong at Alpha. "I couldn't help but notice a certain problem you seemed to be having the arena before last." He says, taking a sip of his drink. He never was the most tactful man.

[dieinpajamas]

"Which problem is that?" he said, once the bartender had dropped off their drinks and gone again. "The one where I was dying slowly because of the radiation poison or the one where I died very quickly because of you killing me?

[greymatter]

The scientist snickers. "And you weren't playing the Game yourself? Come now, don't take it personally." He takes another sip of his drink. "No. The one where you seemed to be conversing with yourself as if you were speaking to multiple people."

[itsananimalthing]

Bars were Riddick's bread and butter, especially these days. He sometimes got drinks for free, he could browse on the snacks that were laid out to lure in drinkers, and he could listen to people and keep an eye on other people.

Alpha was one of those people he wouldn't mind keeping an eye on, given the guy looked almost as well-built as he did and had that always-watching look to him. It happened to be coincidence that he wound up in that same bar that same evening, though, even if it was a happy coincidence.

Well. Not happy. You know what he meant.

He ambled up to the bar to take a seat two down from Alpha and held up a hand for one drink. "Surprise me," he added to the bartender when she looked at him with brows raised. "You know I'm good for it."

And she did, so she set about mixing.

[dieinpajamas]

"Generous with your blood money," Alpha couldn't help but remark, recognizing the man as a fellow Tribute. Richard Riddick, that was the name. Someone of mild interest, one of the few with previous combat experience for one, but not much else sparked Alpha's curiosity. But sulking got boring after a while.

[itsananimalthing]

"Hey, it ain't my money." Riddick shrugged, waiting for his drink. "Ain't made me pay it back yet." He imagined they probably would try eventually, but until then, he was happy to use it to some moderate amount.

And it technically wasn't blood money, since he hadn't killed a soul yet. Alpha might know that-- might not.

[dieinpajamas]

"Yet," said Alpha flippantly, as though the inevitable time when the Capitol came to collect on it's debts was of no concern. He planned to be long gone by that time, so it certainly wasn't his.

Alpha knew everyone's kills, though at the moment it was a little hard to keep track. Technically he counted everything the Capitol gave them as 'blood money' or whatever the term was for material gains of that sort, but not in a way that implied he was bothered by it. Money was money, Alpha only used it when he didn't feel like just taking anyway.

[itsananimalthing]

"I'll worry 'bout that when they come to collect." He sized up Alpha with a vaguely amused expression. Alpha might have planned to be long gone by then, but he was still here now, wasn't he?

Then again, so was Riddick. He hadn't found the escape route yet, but he was working on it. "Looks like you ain't to worried about it, either," he commented.

Sorry that it simply took FOREVER orz

[hartless_cowboy]

If it was there to humiliate him, then Lindsey was equally humiliated for having been killed so humiliatingly the first time in the arena. At least his second time was better, although it still bites that a harmless girl won.

The whole Valentines chocolate thing was a mixture of blessing and curse, and now that he was finally feeling a bit better from his 'chocolate hangover', Lindsey sat down at the main lobby bar.

If he was going to get a hangover, he might as well get it from the real thing.

"That tumbler must've killed your cat."

no worries!

[dieinpajamas]

"Killed it, skinned it, and turned it into a hat specifically to mock me," Alpha shot back automatically before he glanced at his new drinking buddy. He blinked. One of the twins, the ones who came in at different times. He remembers talking with one of them over the network, Lindsey--this one, judging by the hair.

[hartless_cowboy]

"Then you should be wearing it to mock it right back," Lindsey answered as he waved for the avox and asked for a whiskey. He dismissed the servant right after and didn't even acknowledge him when the drink was placed down before him. "Show it that it can't get you down."

[dieinpajamas]

"Didn't fit. Insult after insult." Alpha finished his glass and gestured for another. "We've spoken before, haven't we? Right around the time we started getting paid for our work, and about time too."

[hartless_cowboy]

"On the network, right?" Lindsey's smile was probably out of place, but he offered it anyway along with his hand for a shake. "Lindsey McDonald, District 5." It was strange how well that rolled off his tongue, his name and district number. It was almost like a title.