Re: Bar: Cat/Matt
The beer and whiskey weren't vodka, a rare and half-remembered treat, a reward for something gone well (an incidental toast - "give it a shot, it did all the heavy lifting" - before the routine of hygiene or the routine of needles or the routine of clarification or the routine of cold sleep) or incidentally imbibed undercover, but they did the trick.
He put away half the beer before a woman began approaching him from the right, moving slow and easy like she didn't have anywhere to be. He assumed that would be with more alcohol, so her approach didn't trouble him. He had a bad habit of watching people a little too long when they moved in his direction. He could not do it, if he really wanted to. But it took effort, and it felt better if he did. Not knowing who was on all sides and how close they were gave him a crawling sensation up the center of his spine that he didn't want to investigate.
He didn't put down the beer when she came close enough to look fully in the face. He polished it off, first, setting it aside.
He was a little more comfortable on the bar stool than he would have been three beers and three shots ago, not that it had put too deep a dent in him. Without them, her closeness would have made him itch for the knife in a holster at his waist.
He didn't know how to respond to her question. It didn't really require an answer. He was paying for booze, which meant he could sit there until the bar closed, and when bartenders tried to get social with him, silence usually put a stop to that immediately.
But there was...something. Not in the way she swayed over, not in her pretty dark eyes or her flush smile, but the way she smelled. This close, it cut through the spilled beer, sweat, and the vague tang of somebody's vomit and acrid cigarette smoke.
Unconsciously, he leaned in a little closer. If he could just -
He stopped. He didn't pull back
Recognition wasn't always a good thing.
"The cat," he said. There - any recognition she'd seen flit across pale eyes and disappear explained. He hadn't turned his body fully from the bar to look at her as she came up, but she did walk like someone who owned the place. Probably walked that way most places. He remembered her name from the forum, her boasts about her bar.
He remembered, and when he was this close to her, he smelled somewhere else, and would swiftly forget how to stave it off.