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On Your Mark [closed] - Printable Version

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RE: On Your Mark [closed] - skiesofpurple - 09-21-2020

He hummed quietly at this new information, taking a moment to look at the lady in pink sitting next to him again. So she somehow had ties to the most successful assassin in the station? Or at least she had an information network wide enough to know about them. Plus, there was that talk about accidents. He was quickly picking up on how Kari favored using an awful lot of double-speak to discuss topics that probably shouldn't be discussed out loud. Could she be an assassin herself, arranging accidents? It sounded more like she just knew about them, but he had a feeling, this time. Now that he'd been made painfully aware of the situation.

He didn't know what to think anymore. He just wanted them to be safe.

Leon... couldn't really figure this one out. At this point, he wasn't sure if he was being flirted with or just teased. Scratch that, he definitely knew that he was being teased. Kari had been trying to embarrass him ever since they started talking. He just couldn't figure out if she was also lowkey trying to get into his pants, too. Especially since he had the feeling that Kari still thought he wanted to fuck his sister.

"Sure, go right ahead," He said dryly, eyeing the lipstick stain on the rim of his glass. This was something he was also used to, but usually it was Noel steal his drinks, not a stranger. He rotated the glass around so he wouldn't get any lipstick on himself before taking another sip of his own. He probably would have been pacing himself a lot better if he knew that there definitely was alcohol in this thing, under all that sweetener and lemon.

"I guess we should have known better than to think I could spend an entire evening here quietly," Leon mused, mostly to himself. It seemed that even if Grilka wasn't around, there were enough people who did frequent this establishment to make it interesting. Which wasn't a good thing. They had been hoping for boring. Best laid plans, and all that. "Thanks, I guess. I know it's not entirely for us, but we still appreciate not dying." Even if their time together was going to be a trial on Leon's poor conversational skills.

RE: On Your Mark [closed] - SolitareLee - 09-21-2020

"I warned you I liked to help myself," Kari said with amusement at Leon's dry offense at Kari drinking from his glass. "This is Farendajo. No one here manages to get a quiet evening. You come in one night for a few drinks and bam, next thing you know there's some bizarre alien obliquely trying to seduce you." Kari shrugged. If anything, he was upholding Farendajo tradition.

"It's just as well it's not entirely for you," Kari pointed out, instead of denying it. "It's not like you could afford me. That's the benefit of having mutual friends, you know? You're not stuck footing the bill." Well, they were. Always. But it was in ways they could pay. Although what that was, Kari couldn't imagine. His sister was with Grilka, and he wasn't, which implied he wasn't interested in eir particular charms--and was in fact so disinterested that he'd managed not to fall prey to em anyway, which took some doing. He wasn't stupid but he didn't exactly seem like a genius, either. Muscle, maybe? Kari tilted his head, looking Leon up and down.

"So what's your deal?" he asked, instead of just continuing to guess. "Are you secretly a biospace engineer or something? Really fast runner?" Doubtful, they already had one of those. "Or is your sister just that hot?"

His drink, Kari noticed, was getting pretty low. He was quite a drinker, huh! Well, Kari's drinks were always free at Farendajo--and many other bars--so he didn't mind sharing the good karma, so to speak. "Xotll, Xotll!" he called, excited calling her over. "Hey, it's slow today, can you make us two galaxy lemonade slushies? But with that renmal stuff in the bottom!"

Xotll tilted her head from side to side as she considered this, then nodded the affirmative. Kari clapped in enthusiasm, which in turn made Xotll excited. They were like a little idiotic feedback loop, which was probably what Grilka liked about them.

RE: On Your Mark [closed] - skiesofpurple - 09-21-2020

"Yeah, I'm beginning to see the trend," Leon admitted with a small grin, both referring to Kari's behavior and said traditions. He still couldn't quite figure out if the alien he was talking to was going to try and seduce him. Honestly? He didn't want to know, not when he was still mostly thinking about his sister. He'd let it lie until it was obvious, one way or another. He couldn't help but smile a bit, however, when Kari spoke of being able to afford her. They probably couldn't, yet. Had to wait for their property to become legitimized and then see what was still there's. "You're right about that."

Now, his sister? That was something Leon could talk about. Easily.

"She's that hot. And she's good. She's the spotlight. She handles the attention, the talking, the convincing people to do things. I'm her spotter. The support. Her literal support, we also dance. We're very good." Wait a minute. Why the fuck had he said all that? He trusted Kari not to kill him right now, but that was about fucking it. He'd wanted to keep most of the crap about them under wraps still. There could be anyone here listening. He had not meant to say all that. ....Shit. "...There's alcohol in this." Leon stared down at his once innocent-looking purple lemonade. "I shouldn't get drunk." Another moment of thought, then he downed the rest of the drink. Fuck it.

"Water, too, please, Xotll," He called out with a wave to the bartender, staring at his now empty glass. Whatever. He'd already exposed this much of himself, might as well finish himself off.

"Noel keeps the attention off me, I keep an eye out for the wrong type of attention being on her. Being here, it's going to have to be different. It's a less controlled environment, complicated in a different way. We'll find our stride if the adjustment doesn't kill us first." They'd known their chances when they'd come here. They hashed out everything that they could do to prepare. They knew that they weren't prepared enough. But, if they managed to live long enough, eventually, they would be. They learned fast.

RE: On Your Mark [closed] - SolitareLee - 09-21-2020

Leon wasn't doing a lot to convince Kari he wasn't fucking his sister, gushing about her the way he was, but Kari had at least enough manners not to point that out. It wasn't like really close, non-incesty siblings couldn't gush about each other. He was being polite.

"You dance?" Kari interjected, looking delighted. "Oh my god, you're literal snake-charmers! Wait, that's a really earth-centric concept, fuck, I'm not sure if it'd still be funny if I explained it." Being in Terran space, it was easy to forget. The culture still leaned towards human-centric no matter how mixed it was, and Kari had been a rich white boy raised on Earth, to boot. Just because the world seemed design for him didn't mean he had to be egocentric about it. "It would be a really funny joke if we were on Earth," he said finally, with a sigh. "I promise."

"We're in a bar," Kari pointed out. "There's intoxicants for like fifty different races behind that bar. Oh, have you guys tried the memti yet? I have no idea what it does to Rasmodians."

"You're shy," Kari marveled, with the tone of a revelation. "That's why she's off with Grilka and you're not." Kari considered it briefly. He was the opposite of shy, so it was difficult. "Dude, that must suck." He pushed his margarita down the bar towards Leon, since their drinks would take a hot minute for Xotll to craft. "Don't let Grilka know," he advised, perhaps his first genuine advice of the evening, although it had all been good. "Ey'll give you absolute hell."

RE: On Your Mark [closed] - skiesofpurple - 09-29-2020

"Snake charmers?" Leon seemed amused by the analogy, even if he didn't get the reference. He waved away Kari's assertion that it would be more funny if he was from earth. "It still fits, I guess. We all had to charm the snake to become 'friends'." Or something like that. Catch its interest, at least. Yeah. It was probably more funny if he understood the reference.

"I haven't. I'll find out later if Noel has." He certainly would be able to tell before then, not if Kari was going to keep him supplied with drinks. "I am not going to get drunk." He paused, considered, and then added, "Or high. Tonight." Buzzed? He was already there. That gelatin vodka was quickly greeting the purple lemonade to add up to a definitely-not-sober Leon. But he needed to pace himself. If only because he didn't know when Noel was coming back.

Luckily, Xotll was able to stop by with his water while she was otherwise preoccupied with the other drinks. Leon sipped at it gratefully, grasping at the chance to regain some of his cognitive reasoning before something else fruity and dangerous crossed his path.

Wait, what?

"What? I'm-" He paused, considering. He'd never thought of himself as shy before, but he'd never wanted to interact with anyone but Noel before. With her, it was easy. They were bonded, linked. They had their own language and he was down right chatty with her through that. Then came other people. And the more Leon considered it, the more he had to admit that maybe, "Fuck," maybe he was a bit allergic to interacting with anyone he didn't know. He sighed. This was a night of many revelations, apparently.

"It's fine. People aren't worth the effort." Noel thrived off the act, however. She came alive when she was selling it, getting someone to eat out of her hand. He liked watching her work, sure, but doing that himself? It really wasn't worth it. Especially not when she was so much better at it than him. "Yeah, we'll try not to. We can probably work the stoic angle." It'd match up, at least, what with all the utter lack of talking he'd done last time. He'd probably be fine as long as he wasn't caught alone.

RE: On Your Mark [closed] - SolitareLee - 09-30-2020

"Oh, you know snakes!" Kari said, relieved. He hadn't been sure he would. His brief research into his would-be 'targets' had confirmed that they hadn't been off-planet before. He'd been expecting rubes and... he hadn't really not gotten a rube. A cute rube. A cube? No, that was something else.

"Probably best to figure out what it does first," Kari said with a laugh. They might not have the choice, to be honest. Grilka could be careful about where ey breathed it, sometimes, but it didn't take much for em to get careless. Or, uh... deliberately careless. "It's just like, kind of a sedative for humans, and mellows the uuuuh, aggression, let's say, out of Krotazi, but it has some weird effects on some races."

"Did you not even know you were shy?" Kari pressed, sounding amazed and delighted. "Oh my god!" That was adorable. He was like, so dumb, but in a fun, new way! Oh, Grilka would love em once ey got to know him. Although maybe emotionally dumb wasn't the kind of dumb ey liked best? Hard to say. Would be fun to find out, though, and Kari was willing to bet if he lurked around Leon enough, he'd get a front row seat sooner or later.

"Let's see what other personal revelations you can be guided to with the help of copious amounts of alcohol!" Kari decided, completely ignoring Leon's decision to not get drunk. Kari knew all the most deceptively sweet and powerful drinks in Xotll's lexicon. Because they were his favorites. "Ooooh, speak of the devil! Or the angel in this case," he added as Xotll approached with two carefully held drinks. "Alcoholic angel of my heart, my one true love--"

"Oh, stop," Xotll said, blushing a furious dark purple as she set the drinks down. It was clear why they'd taken so long; they were a frozen slurry of ice and alcohol, blue on top, the glowing pink of a Relmal Sunrise on bottom, stained purple in the middle. Each one had a brightly colored straw sticking out of it.

"They look so good! Oooh, it's like a frozen Relmal Sunrise, but it's human, I love it so much, Xotll you are an artist and a genius," Kari said, enthused beyond what was probably reasonable. "Let's try it, let's try it! Come on, let's sip at the same time!"