InsaneJournal

They were halfway through the 6 PM showing of Midsommer when she texted Five to let him know that she'd stopped by the liquor store on her way to work and, if he was feeling like a story, to let her know where to meet. It wasn't so much that she'd finally worked up the nerve, but that she'd had the thirty bucks burning a hole in her pocket and they happened to have her brand of bourbon there when she stopped in to have a look around. She took it for fate, providence, serendipity, some bullshit like that. She bought the bottle, sent the text, and an hour later she had a location. It seemed appropriate. She sat through Crawl at 9:30, programmed the Google Maps on her phone, and peered briefly into the lobby to make sure there weren't any kids messing around before going back to the man-eating alligators, letting the cheesy creature feature take her mind off the cold weight slowly sliding down on her shoulders. It shouldn't have felt so heavy, and yet it did.

By the time she'd gotten all of the chattering teenagers out of the theater and cleaned the sticky amalgamation of candy and soda off the floor, it was that ungodly time where time wasn't really real anymore. That also felt right. She was getting used to cabs and subway lines the same way she'd been used to trollies and busses back home. The same general idea, just a different map to follow. The fact that it was right about that time when all the bars were emptying out didn't really bother her. It was just noise, just bodies, and she'd always carried herself with a certain air of "fuck off". Anyone who tried something had to anticipate that she was going to bite back. She stuffed her vest down in her bag with the bottle of Four Roses Single Barrel and a pair of shatterproof glasses and headed straight for the subway station, her fingers wrapped the taser in the front pocket of her bag. One could never be too careful, after all. Even if it was fake New York, it was still New York.

It took a while, and it really was the end of the line. She was practically the last person on the train when the car emptied out and the last few tired (and some heavily inebriated) passengers made their way upstairs and into the night again. But Audrey went on, along the gently curving walkway and fluorescent lights, the graffiti, and occasional rat; her boots hollow and empty on the subway tile. Weird passageways jutted out from the walkway, some of them lit and some of the cast in total darkness, but Audrey kept glancing down at her phone, a little green dot slowly moving closer and closer to a little blue dot until the two finally intersected and she glanced around, walked ten feet further, and took an abrupt right into a closed-off stairway. Five was already there, waiting, and Audrey released her grip on the taser for the first time since stepping out of the theater to reach into her bag and pull out the bottle of bourbon with a smile instead.

"Nearly top shelf," she said. "Single barrel. Kentucky. Did you already do a surveillance sweep?"