InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "It's gentle and effective."

katherine danvers 🌙 (lupas) wrote in colligo_threads,
@ 2009-09-27 00:42:00

Entry tags:

!open

Who: Katherine Danvers OTA, Maybe Marco or Cassie? Anyone!
What: Grabbing dinner, or a bad excuse for one, for now
When: Evening, around 5:45ish
Where: City streets
Rating: TBD
Status: Incomplete and open

Around every corner she saw her, the massive white wolf, just watching. Stalking. Waiting for her to mess it up, to slip, to kill. She'd long given up on the cage, at least during the day. Katherine hadn't returned home to sleep in a while, since the fear started. She went out during the day, kept herself busy, went to work, and then slept in the cage. A mattress, blanket, and she got herself a pillow. Kate had highly doubted she'd lose control while she was sleeping, but she wasn't going to take any risk. She could get out, she could hurt someone. So she slept in the cage. It wasn't a bad call either, three times so far she had woken up from vivid dreams, finding herself changing. Twice she had lost the fight, once she hadn't.

But this was something she had to live with. And she had heard you had to face your fear, so she did. She faced people, and kept herself in control while she was around them. There had been one close call at work, but Kate hadn't let it get out of hand.

Tonight, she didn't have to work. Her evening was free, and as usual, she was starving. She'd spent the afternoon book shopping, and then the smell of sausages, hot dogs and fries had hit her. Following that smell, she found a little hot dog cart, and chip wagon not far apart, both of them also selling drinks. Her stomach demanded, and so Kate gave in.

Two sausages, and a large fries later she figured this would last her for a bit, though she'd probably have to bring something back with her to the cage. She sat down on a small grass hill not far off from the vendor, food in lap and legs stretched out in front of her. The sun would be setting soon. She wanted nothing more than to either risk a run in the woods, or sleep in an actual bed. But, one problem at a time. Stomach first.

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pointatopointb
2009-09-27 04:52 am UTC (link)

Marco had turned off his PDA. He hadn't been able to face his fear. He'd been trying, and he'd been getting better, but in the end he was still relegated to living like a vagrant. He had realized one thing, though: Crazy just fed into more crazy. Marco didn't much care about annoying people, but those already afraid would probably end up even worse. So he'd just shut off the PDA, and so far he'd resisted the urge to turn it back on for any longer than his scheduled check-ins with Cassie. Even those didn't last longer than necessary.

He'd slept very little. He would stay up for as long as he could, and when he felt like his body was about to give out on him he'd find a place nearby and sleep there. It sucked, but it kept him away from the area he considered ground zero for his fear. This had the unfortunate side effect of leaving him with his one pair of clothes, and an even more unfortunate odor that his heavy clothes couldn't completely mask. Not that it would be hard to tell he was in a bad way. Bags under his eyes, messy hair, more growth on his face than he'd ever allowed before, and sloppy, wrinkled clothes.

It was hard to keep such a tight rein on your emotions when you were suffering from extreme sleep deprivation and varying stages of caffeine highs and crashes. And when his fear was exactly that, well... The water may have been muddy, but it was working. It was very likely that no one would ever find out if this was unintentional on his part, or his plan to force himself to give in to the loss of control and in doing so face his fear of it. It actually wouldn't be the craziest plan he'd ever come up with.

He intended to avoid sleep tonight. That was why he'd been heading to the nearest Starbucks, to get an espresso or four. But then he saw Kate, and he redirected his course instantly, not even considering what an absolute mess he was at the moment. "Kate!" He called pleasantly, and waved. "Hey hey hey!" Apparently this mood was perky. A little part of him hoped the crash didn't kick in soon. That would be one hell of a crash, considering he'd been relying on espressos to keep his body running for the last three days. Or four. He couldn't quite remember.

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lupas
2009-09-27 02:20 pm UTC (link)

Kate was a pretty common name, but still, when she heard it she looked up right away. Her clear blue eyes scanning the crowed of the street before the found the source. Marco. She actually had to do a double take, he looked like hell. He sounded happy, but he looked like hell. And as he got closer...yep, he smelled it to. Hurray for heightened senses.

"Hey!" she replied as he came over, before biting back a few fries. She smiled up at him when he reached her. "Wow, movie star, don't they have rules about having to look perfect all the time?" she asked lightly, though she could probably figure it out. He was having the same problem as she was, as many others were. Except she still showered.

"You look like you could use a nap." she added, and smelled like he could use a shower, but she kept that quip for later. "What are you up to?" This demon, it needed to get its ass kicked, and soon. It seemed to be affecting everyone, some way more than others. All things considered, she had it pretty easy. Her worst fear was something she already had to deal with. Now looking at Marco, she was convinced she had got it really is. He really, really needed a nap.

Patting the ground beside her, she offered him a seat beside her while she worked on one of her sausages. She hadn't seen him in a while. The only people she really saw were Oz, Xander, and then the people at work, who didn't seem to notice or care that she was on edge half of the time. Maybe if she killed one of them they'd start to notice the crap that went down in this city.

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pointatopointb
2009-09-28 01:01 am UTC (link)

"Perfect or eccentric and I figure I can make a case for this whole ensemble being the height of eccentric," Marco laughed as he plopped down next to Kate. He knew he didn't smell very good, and he gave her an apologetic smile. "Sorry about the smell but the apartment still kinda looks like a Kandrona Pool to me and that's just a no go even though I know I'm supposed to be facing my fear but I'm not really ready for that yet."

"A nap, no no no, I'm good, I've got another day before my body decides it can't run on espresso anymore and needs to sleep!" Okay, so maybe his sense of time wasn't quite as accurate as it had been three, or maybe four, days ago. But he was pretty sure he had another day before he had to hit up a park bench. "Besides I've already had like four espressos in the past, uh, I think maybe three, no wait two no hold on three hours." And maybe that wasn't entirely healthy, but it wouldn't kill him. "I've gotten a lot done! When you don't sleep for a couple days you can totally get a lot of stuff done! Like I've played a bunch of games of chess and okay maybe I lost a couple but I won most of them and I also played a basketball game with some kid and I drank a lot of espresso!"

He'd also nearly passed out during his morphing experiments, but he didn't include that. Partially because she was afraid he'd tell Cassie, and partially because he didn't want to worry Kate. "So how have things been for you?"

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lupas
2009-09-28 02:48 pm UTC (link)

Dear god, he was like a little kid on a sugar high, topped off with some extra cans of pop and pixie sticks. He just kept going, and going, and going. How long had it been since he'd slept, showered, or taken care of himself? He was really not dealing well, at all. Her face fell into a 'is this really happening?' look as he kept on going, and by the time he was done, she just had to stare at him for a moment.

"You're going to make yourself sick." she said flatly, shaking your head. "You do know that espresso's and chess are not ways to deal with demons, right?" just because demons didn't come from his world, didn't mean that shouldn't be obvious, or that was what she was telling herself. "You know they said if you didn't deal with it, it could kill you?" or something like that. You didn't face your fear, you could die. Maybe this was how. Death by caffeine and no sleep. When it came to this place, it wouldn't surprise her.

She shook her head slightly, looking out to the street. There, behind one of the cars, she could see her, blue eyes staring at her. And again in a side ally, and on the rooftops. Looking away, and back down to her food, she shrugged. "I'm dealing. Keep myself locked up at night, keep my mind occupied in the day."

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pointatopointb
2009-09-30 03:02 am UTC (link)

Marco focused on what Kate was saying. He grinned at her and shook his head slightly. "Well I don't know any Latin and besides I figure that doesn't work on every demon from every world plus I'm not old, young, or a priest. But who says I'm not facing my fear? I mean really the fear itself is losing control, it just happens to manifest as my ultimate form of loss of control, Yeerks!" He pantomimed a slug crawling into his ear and added what he hoped was a slurping sound. "But the Yeerks, I haven't been afraid of them in years so it got me thinking, and I realized that's not really what I'm afraid of and so now I'm risking it all on this plan because this is really the only other thing I could think of."

Of course, she was entirely right about this being a very unhealthy plan. His sleeping habits were going to be erratic for a good while, but hey. He could deal. He just couldn't go back to the apartment. Not yet. "'Cause I'm usually really controlled and logical and part of me has always been afraid of actually letting go of that and so I figure just go with it and that will do the trick and if it doesn't at least I'll have some hilarious stories!" Yeah, he was maybe a little addled at the moment. But there might have been slightly decent logic in there somewhere.

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