InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "The pants command me!"

noli timere messorem (defyuntildeath) wrote in paxletalelogs,
@ 2017-02-16 17:00:00

Entry tags:

fenrir, kali

But as sure as God made black and white [Open thread]
Who: Jayati and OPEN
what: Returning home after a scuffle (or two)
When: 2/16 5AM
Where: Outside of Pax Letale
Ratings: PG-13 for language, mentions of sexual assault, vague descriptions of violence and length. I'm a slut for detail okay, sue me.

Jayati Guerra, or more accurately, The Viper of the Triads had done a great many bad things for some very bad people. More than once, happily so and was well paid for it. Not that she was greedy, but she liked to eat and she didn't want to have to depend on anyone for little things like shelter from the rain or staying warm in the winter.

But doing good things for good people for nothing at all? That was not something she would have written on her resume before. But tonight just that thing had happened, around one AM a girl who was on a bar crawl with her friends (why the fuck they were doing this on a Wednesday night was still anyone's guess) was unceremoniously abandoned. They left her with a dead cellphone and already three sheets to the wind and honestly Jayati was just going to leave her there until closing and call her a cab, until someone else took notice of her.

It was AJ that caught it actually. That was her newest employee sent by Daniel, a good worker who kept her head down and didn't argue with the boss or stuff tips in her bra when no one was looking. Observant too, because she caught sight of the shithole who dropped a few pills in the woman's drink while she was swaying uneasily at the jukebox and told Jayati about it. By then it was too late, and she had already ingested some.

One sleazebag was nothing at all, when he tried to corner the girl as she stumbled towards the bathroom, probably hoping to usher her out the back where no one could see he got Jayati instead. He had at least a buck fifty on her, but when your arm is twisted behind your back and someone is pressing on your elbow it really doesn't matter how big you are.

See, the trick to owning your own place is you know every nook and cranny of it. She knew where the cameras were, and what they didn't catch. He got off easy; she took a picture of his phone and told him she was going to circulate it to all the other bars in a fifty mile radius, and then broke his wrist and nose for good measure. He threatened her of course, but it was her word--a business owner with a fairly good standing with the law, one witness and a camera or two in the bar to back her up--against his, an attempted rapist.

She checked what he had given her wand was unfortunately familiar with it, and knew enough to know that what she would need was hydration and sleep and shouldn't have taken enough to warranty a stomach pumping.

So she went back to work, feeling lighter and more giddy than she had in ages. They put the girl's phone on the charger and folded her into the comfortable chair in the office with a few bottles of water and a bucket with plans to put her in an uber as soon as she could give them her home address, or they could get it from her phone.

Closing time rolled around and instead AJ (bless her soul) offered to take the now passed out girl home once they got the address out of her phone. They had barely pulled out of the parking lot when things went sideways, the man was back and with friends. Five guys presented a bit more of a challenge, but they were cocky and armed only with glorified pocket knives, while she had a steel baseball bat she kept under the bar and a lot of pent up aggression. Jayati didn't try and keep it hidden from surveillance, though she did run to the back where people were less likely to see.

It ended with them all alive and on the ground, and her standing with a well earned smile on her face. There would be bruises on her neck in the morning where one of them got her in a headlock, and more on her stomach where another punched her, possibly a fractured rib. A small cut on her upper right arm and a slightly deeper one on her left shoulder of all places.

But she was conscious and would require no casts or stitches (most likely), and that put her better off than them. It dampened her mood a little when she realized that she couldn't deal with this the way she used to, she had been trying to be good-ish, and didn't want the scrutiny that would come from these men squealing behind her back. They also needed to be moved before the businesses on either side of her started opening up. After several minutes of deliberation she had gone back into the bar to come out with buckets of ice water and her shotgun. They were reminded, at gunpoint, that she had everything on camera, that they had no case if they tried anything, that they were beat by a 5'8 woman, and she had been holding back.

They left. She finished counting the drawers down, retied her french braid that one of the men had tried to use against her, stripped down to her wifebeater and pulled on a pair of gym shorts she kept for when she trained here. Her long sleeve shirt and jeans that had more than their fair share of blood on them would need to be soaked, but right now she was too restless. Might be easier to toss them.

So she went home, parked her bike in front of her window like she normally did and sat there for a long moment. Just breathing. That was the most intense fight she had been in since leaving NY, as much of a joke as that was. She felt giddy and a little high,a mix of adrenaline and excitement she still hadn't come down from even hours after. There was a restless energy pulsing through her veins but there wasn't a whole lot she could do about it now. She was under dressed, her tattoos and scars showing loud that she had been careful to hide since moving to California. In NY she would have found some more fights until she was too exhausted to do anything but sleep, or found someone to fuck. Battle relief sex, or something akin to it.

Except here, she was alone. It was almost enough to hurt the high she was riding from the feel of someone else's blood over her hands and breaking bones.

Almost.

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devourer
2017-02-20 03:07 pm UTC (link)

Abel was just coming in himself; he'd spent the better part of the night canvassing clubs, looking for something to stymie the metaphorical hole in his gut. He'd imbibed -- enough to the point that he stank of alcohol, and sweat, and other things -- but it was never what the thing in him wanted. He parked in the Pax Letale parking lot, sitting back in his seat with his eyes closed as he remembered the taste of one particular man; he'd spent his night in a gay club, his skin still faintly covered with glitter and saliva, and a dark-skinned youth had caught his attention more than anyone else. They'd danced, and Abel had taken the young man into one of the back rooms provided for that sort of thing, and fucked him. Sex barely ever did anything for Abel; it was the bruises, the bites, the rending of flesh, the undoing of another life that left him with some small modicum of feeling.

So now he waited in his car for a moment, just remembering the feeling, knowing that, if by some off chance he ever saw the young man again, he'd go running in the other direction. Sometimes Abel wished he had some sense of control, but then that would eat into the fun of it. He opened his eyes, sucked in a deep hiss of breath, pulled the keys from the ignition, and made his way into the lobby of Pax, weaving through the dead cars like headstones. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a woman on a motorcycle, either readying herself to go in or on her way out. The way she was dressed seemed like her impending or ending ride was an afterthought, and Abel slowed his steps so that the two would meet just in front of the Pax doors.

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defyuntildeath
2017-02-20 06:07 pm UTC (link)

Jayati's steps in her riding boots, old heavy and scuffed things that still managed to have several years left in them echoed around the parking lot when she finally dismounted from her bike and made her way towards the building. She still wasn't entirely sure what drove her to move to Pax, it was still within her budget but also more than she needed. The people there as well weren't exactly her sort.

Or maybe they were. There was a man there, just a few feet away as she approached the door that made her hair stand on end. It wasn't a thing that she could put a finger on, just instinct that made her take notice of him along with the hour of someone coming back at this hour who didn't appear to be coming from work like she was. Well. It had never stopped her before, and it didn't stop her from going into her own building now.

If anything, it piqued her interest, which probably said something negative about her. So she nodded to him as she approached, a few of her questions answered when she saw the faint but still there sheen of glitter on his skin, although seeing as it was a weekday that just made her more curious.

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devourer
2017-02-20 06:55 pm UTC (link)

He returned the nod, falling into step with her with the ease born of a white man who knows no fear when it came to moving around at night; the ease born of a thing who was more comfortable with the dark than with the day. He let his hands slip into the pockets of his windbreaker, unaware that his skin held the glittery sheen of evidence regarding his whereabouts.

"Out for a midnight ride? Surprised you're not wearing leathers. Bike accidents can be nasty."

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defyuntildeath
2017-02-20 07:13 pm UTC (link)

Her tact and niceness was reserved for work, or at least when work was the bar . It was not for nosy strangers with a thin veneer of false politeness and other bullshit clinging to their skin.

"Surprised you're asking so many questions, bikers can be nasty." A predatory grin to show that by bikers she meant her, it was a warning, like the rattling of a snake in the grass at the approach of a potential fellow predator.

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devourer
2017-02-20 07:19 pm UTC (link)

"You're a little short for a Hell's Angel," he replied, amusement curling the corners of his lips. Wasn't she mouthy? "And stereotypically women tend to be the smarter sex; don't know if you've heard of skin grafts, but they're not too fun." He changed tack, though his eyes wandered over her form, noting the scars and pieces of tattoo that slithered over her skin and under what few clothes she was wearing. "You look like you're trying hard, though. You just come from a bar, too?"

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defyuntildeath
2017-02-21 02:37 am UTC (link)

Jayati stopped walking abruptly, rationally her excuse was that she wasn't eager for this man to follow her to her door, but realistically it was because everything was so close to the surface at the moment she couldn't have stopped her mouth if she wanted to (and she didn't).

"Men tend to be the stronger ones, do you want to test that? And what the fuck is that supposed to mean, trying hard?" She ignored his questions, she smelled like a bar and she always did; sweat, cigarette smoke, leather, cleaning products and beer.

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devourer
2017-02-21 03:23 am UTC (link)

The grin widened, her posturing adorable. Abel wasn't looking for a fight, but it seemed it might be all too easy to provoke one. He paused a few steps after her, turning to face the woman once more. She wasn't bad to look at, scars and tattoos aside, and even those added some hints at a past laden with trauma and interesting stories. The defensiveness, though, said she'd be a difficult nut to crack when it came to intimacy.

"Does the term 'overcompensation' ring a bell?" The smell didn't disturb him; in fact, it was interesting, his nose parsing the various scents to find hers underneath. The sweat, the grime, the smoke all worked so very hard to hide the woman beneath it, which Abel found interesting. "My guess is you didn't take too kindly to other children on the playground teasing you, did you?"

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defyuntildeath
2017-02-21 06:36 am UTC (link)

The man was cocky for someone who only had a few inches and little bulk on her, it had been awhile since a sober person had stood up to her when she was obviously being testy. At least, she was fairly sure he was sober, she was pretty good at judging how far gone people were. It was tantalizing, made her wonder if he wanted her to try and hit him or thought she was all bark and no bite.

There was still that itchy feeling under her skin that said not to have this man at her back, it should have made her more cautious and instead it egged her on.

She wasn't stupid, she knew he was dangling a piece of bait and she was biting but that knowledge didn't stop her, her ability to resist being goaded was not one of her strong suits. With open hands she gestured to her body, "If this is overcompensating what do you call your running mouth then?" That thought was laughable, compared to the others back home, especially the ones who had properly grown up in The Families her ink was minimal and the worst of her scars were still hidden, "No, no I did not, " Another grin, "Your self-preservation instincts need work, don't they pal?" The yankee in her voice showed itself as clear as her history on her knuckles when she crossed her arms in front of her while maintaining eye contact with him, while keeping an eye on his shoulders with her peripheral vision where the first the first signs of an attack would usually be. Old habits and all.

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devourer
2017-02-21 04:06 pm UTC (link)

He shook his head, body canting to the side as though he were about to walk off. He couldn't have removed his grin with a crowbar if he tried; this evening was turning out far better than he'd hoped with this little surprise.

"Pretty sure society frowns on the idea of people hitting other people over snide comments, but I won't call the cops if you won't. I take it you live here, then?" He nodded in the direction of Pax. "Seems kinda like a posh place for a Hell's Angel."

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defyuntildeath
2017-02-21 04:37 pm UTC (link)

Jayati's instincts were torn between storming off in growing irritation at his attitude and complete lack of intimidation and keeping him where she could see him. She was also hesitant to let him have the satisfaction of letting him win whatever this was, and she told herself the excitement curling licking at her veins was just from earlier--not from encountering someone like him.

"Pretty sure people can't usually call the cops when I'm done, but if you just need someone to rescue you from the ditch you've been digging, I understand." False sympathy was not one of her best weapons, but it would do in a pinch to get a jab it when her ability to punch was limited, "You can stop calling me that anytime," She rolled her eyes, "They aren't what they used to be." They also had a history of treating women like shit, but that wasn't the point.

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devourer
2017-02-21 04:53 pm UTC (link)

Abel shook his head, swallowing back his laughter. She certainly had some ideas, and all of them were to his liking.

"Fair enough," he replied to her last statement. "Though calling you a gangbanger doesn't have the same ring. I suppose I'll see you around, then, since you so clearly want to be left alone." A shower was calling his name, and though he would have dearly loved to stay there all night harassing her until she actually hit him, showing up with a black eye to work would not go down well with his superiors. Any bruises or wounds needed to stay below the line, and this arena didn't offer him the chance to find out just what she'd do. He started to turn away, half wondering if she'd drag the conversation out due to some sense of loneliness.

"See you around, neighbor."

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defyuntildeath
2017-02-21 04:58 pm UTC (link)

Her lips lifted in a half irritated snarl, "Gangbanger sounds so trashy and disorganized." Which, granted, was not the best character defense anyone has ever seen.

"Hopefully not." She watched him leave, not willing to head in the direction of her apartment until he was out of sight. It was the closest she would get to any sort of security seeing as they apparently lived in the same goddamn building.

If actually she was a little curious about what would come out of him if she did swing, hopefully it didn't show on her face.

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