notfaking_it | (no subject)

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kaine

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It isn't so late that the streets are empty, everyone at home and tucked into bed, but it's late enough. The bars are still open, restaurant patios occasionally overflowing with people who, like Lily, aren't yet ready to go home. She's had a few drinks, danced for an hour or so at a club and now she isn't sure what she's looking for. No one in the club held her interest long enough to make her want to invite them home.

She's entertaining going to visit someone, maybe Eames, maybe one of the new friends she's made since her arrival here, but for the moment she stands on the sidewalk, indecisive.

The city's getting under her skin in a way the island never could. It's not New York, but she belongs here more than she ever did there. Even so she can't make herself forget the people left behind, she can't stop thinking about the way they made her feel, the things they did for her. She can't stop thinking about Sawyer and Faye and Jeff. She can't stop thinking about Nina and it's killing her.

"Hey," she says suddenly, turning to a passing stranger. "What time is it?"

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That's not a question I really expect to get asked. I thought pretty much everyone had a cell phone these days. I guess if you don't have pockets or a purse, not the easiest thing to carry around.

"Uh, 10:47," I say after glancing at my phone. I was just about to go do some patrolling for the night, but a lone girl out gives me pause. Maybe I'm sexist, but that sort of thing worries me. I've stopped too many would be muggings, or worse, to just move along without a second though.

"Need a cab or something?"

"I hadn't exactly planned on going home just yet," Lily answers with a grin for the guy who's answered. He's attractive enough to give her pause and while that's not exactly surprising in this city, the offer of a cab isn't what she expected. In a city like this with a population big enough that it's possible to be a stranger, people aren't often all that interested in what someone else might be doing.

"Besides, you don't look like a cab driver," she teases.

Her friendliness catches me momentarily off guard. People always don't respond well to offers for help I've found. New Yorkers are especially prone to responding with a "mind your own business" but again, this isn't New York.

"I'm good at getting them. Probably not as good as you," I offer, gesturing vaguely to her... well, everything.

"Well, I've never had much of a problem in the past, you're right about that," she says, still smiling up at him. "But it really is way too early to be going home." She has to be at the studio relatively early the next morning, but she's made an entire career out of arriving just in time and she's adjusted fairly easily to the way she wants to live.

"Especially now that I've made a new friend," she says, offering her hand. "I'm Lily."

Okay, apparently we're friends now. That was fast. Sometimes I wonder about just how trusting everyone in this place can be. Who befriends some random guy walking down the street?

"Kaine," I say, reaching out to shake her hand. "What's so important to do it would be a crime to go home now?"

"Anything," Lily answers with a shrug, looking up toward the sky briefly. "Why go home when there's about a hundred different things a person can do right now?"

And why go home when she's only going to think about the people who aren't here. It's easier to slip into the city at night and forget for a few hours than sit at home and think.

Edited 2012-08-09 21:40 (UTC)

"A hundred? Shit, you're more creative than I am," I say.

Granted, throwing on a costume and swinging through the city probably aren't options she would consider but I admit that I probably couldn't come up with a lot more than that. Suddenly my life seems very single minded, and not in an obsessive way, but a boring way. Not something I ever thought would happen to me.

Lily laughs and shrugs again, her gaze flicking over him briefly. "Just open minded," she says, which is true enough, but it's more than that, too. Maybe it is a bit of creativity, but she knows it has more to do with not wanting to go home than wanting to be out.

"I bet you could come up with at least a dozen things to do without my help," she says.

"Walk home, run home, get a cab home... and that's about it," I say.

Maybe that makes me a terribly boring person. Actually, the more I think about it, it's more that usually around this time I'm in costume patrolling. I'm fine with finding stuff to do during the day. Mostly.

"Not really used to having a lot of free time in the evenings."

"See a movie, go to a bar, have a meal with someone you like, go to a club, see a play, take a walk, read a book, play a sport," Lily says, listing things off one by one, because there really are plenty of things to do now that she's no longer on an island where most entertainment was found in the form of a rave.

"Meet a hot girl on the street and ask her if she wants to have a drink," she adds, head tilted slightly. "That's always a particularly good one, I've found."

"Alright, so there are a lot of things I could do. And if I meet a hot girl I'll keep that in mind."

I've lived most of my life without any sort of sense of humor so I can pull off dead serious without even trying. I probably couldn't come across teasing to save my life though, which is why after a moment I give my best attempt at a smile.

"Kidding. Would you like to go for a drink?"

Lily laughs, possibly only delighted because she's already had a few drinks, but she likes a guy who's willing to give her a hard time. There's something far more appealing about it than the men who don't challenge her at all.

"See? That wasn't so hard, was it?" she asks, turning on the street until she spots a sign for a bar. "We can go there," she says, hooking her arm through his. "I've never been there before, hopefully it's not a dive."

This night is taking a very different turn from where I thought it would go, but I'm going to roll with it. This is probably a bad idea because I'm not equipped to deal with this type of social situation at all, but the girl seems nice enough that it probably won't be too awkward.

"Nothing wrong with dives," I say. Most of the drinking I do is in dives. Looking over at her again though and I realize we are a completely different class of people. Possibly not the same species. Well, I know we're not but that's besides the point.

"I mean... if that's your thing. Which... it's probably not your thing."

"A lot of things are my thing, whether people expect them to be or not," Lily answers lightly, which is true enough. One of the nice things about not really caring what anyone else might think is that she can be comfortable almost anywhere, dive bars included, and when she pushes open the door with her hip, she smiles at the place in front of them.

"This is nice," she says taking in the bar. The lighting is low and it's casual, a jukebox playing near the back of the room. It's not so loud, though, and she can hear the clack of pool balls and the sound of laughter.

I almost ask her what she means but that, but then I realize it's not any of my business and the more you ask someone about themselves the more apt they are to ask you about yourself.

"I like it," I say in agreement. It's a casual place with good ambiance. Not trying too hard but well kept. She seems to have good instincts, at least when it comes to judging bars.

"What do you drink?"

The true answer is just about anything, but this place isn't going to be known for its fancy drinks, she suspects. "Just a beer tonight, I think," she decides, looking around for a place to sit before she directs them both toward a booth that's close to the bar, but still far enough away from the pool tables that they won't be interrupted.

"What about you?" she asks, sliding into one side of the booth as a waitress heads over to their table. "Anything in particular you'd like tonight?"

Generally my tastes run pretty simple, although I'm not adverse to something higher end. Tonight beer sounds like a good choice. I'm already not sure what the hell I'm doing and I don't need to compound any potential mistakes by getting drunk.

"I'll just stick with beer," I say, glancing around as I slide in across from her in the booth. I've started to get to know a few of the seedier characters of the city but I don't see anyone I recognize here, which is good since if I did, I'd probably have to ditch Lily to see what they do.

"Two," Lily says to the waitress who's come to their table, then leans forward on her elbows. "And do you guys serve food?"

"Bar food," the waitress says with a nod.

"I would kill for a plate of nachos," Lily said, then looks at Kaine. "What about you?"

Nachos and a beer. I'm pretty sure that I'm the envy of every guy in this bar with a girl this hot looking this classy ordering nachos and beer. And I'm not even looking for anything like this. Not that I know what "this" is exactly. Fuck I'm really over thinking this.

"Some wings?" I say to the waitress. "Spicy, if you've got it. If not, just... lots of barbecue sauce."

"We do spicy," the waitress answers, jotting it all down on a pad of paper before she heads back to the bar. It doesn't take long before she returns with their drinks and sets them down on cardboard coasters.

"Thanks," Lily says with a smile, then looks back to Kaine, appraising him for a moment. "So, have you lived here long?" It's the best way she's discovered to ask people if they arrived here like she did, out of the blue, without any idea what was happening, or if they think they've always been here.

"What do you mean? Where else could I live?"

Again, my poker face serves me well as I take a pull from the beer. It's good and cold, which is about all I need right now. I haven't unwound like this in a while and it feels nice.

"Just fucking with you," I add once I put the beer down. "Was in Houston before I ended up here. You?"

"You're good at that," Lily comments, watching him closely for a moment before she smiles again. "Keeping a straight face, I mean. It was never something I was very good at." That's an outright lie, but the person she is tonight is the fun loving Lily, the girl who doesn't have to keep a straight face for anything.

"I was on an island. Before that, New York," she says, then pauses to take a sip of her beer. "Which means neither of us are pod people, so score one for the both of us."

I'm thinking maybe one of the reasons she doesn't do deadpan well is because she has one of those smiles that makes you want to make her smile more, which seems kind of dangerous to me. The odds I'll do something stupid because of it seem pretty good.

I give a snort of laughter at the pod people comment. I have to, considering I did literally come out of a pod, even if that's not what she means.

"I spent some time in New York. You like it there?"

"Yeah, I loved it there, but I'm pretty much a city girl through and through," she says, leaning back in the booth a little and giving him a grin over the rim of her beer bottle. "I lived in San Francisco before that and moved to New York for work."

In truth, she'd move anywhere in the world if the dance company was good enough.

"What about you? Your kind of city?"

"Too many superheroes," I say with a shake of my head. Which is the truth, no way someone like me could live any kind of life with that many superheroes running around.

"Every other day some assholes in costumes were fighting it out in the street or fucking aliens were using it as ground zero for an invasion."

I shrug again, likes it's nothing more than an inconvenience. California has mudslides and New York has superheroes.

"What sort of work do you do?"