#amarahollande

[amarahollande]

Baby, baby, baby, come back Can't you see I'm on a losing streak

[amarahollande]

So let’s find a bar so dark we forget who we are, where all the scars from the nevers and maybes die.

Drabbles: Drinking

The incomprehensible din of the bar washes over Amara and she is suddenly swallowed into its atmosphere. The low light. The noise. The glassy thud of tumblers onto solid oak. The scent of alcohol and smoky struck matches. The satisfying noise of darts finding their home in a bullseye. It's almost funny that such a hole in the wall place could be named as her favourite haunt.. The chaos of it all matches the frequencies that dance between her ears, and as she slides down into a chair and the barman twists off a bit of burnt orange into a drambuie and scotch, everything begins to balance. The Wolfe and Crossing and its old barstools, and peanut shelled floors sometimes felt more like home than her own house.

Her week had been a tornado of work: cleaning up other people's messes, sleeplessness as a by-product of eating ephedrine like candy (and not much else), endless trips through the underground, and more plane-flights than she cared for. She sipped at first, then tossed down the drink, enjoying how the fire of it ran down her throat and warmed her core. It was less personal than a hug, but far more satisfying. Leaning back, she let herself enjoy the eye of the storm, she felt calm here surrounded by interactions that did not involve her. Where she was no one. Calmer still, as she was passed another cocktail.

Amara rarely drinks to the point of intoxication. She is well-practised at holding her own in most circumstances and prefers the slow and lingering effects of a few strong drinks to obliteration. Those days and nights and ran their course long ago, plus, too much alcohol puts her straight to sleep and God knows how that turns out...

She likes a discerning scotch and she likes drinking it alone. Tonight is no exception. The bartender knows this well enough and silently, diligently pours out drinks when she motions for him and then leaves her to her own demons. Like a well-trained guard dog, he gives the men who approach her the most subtle of warning looks and they skulk back to their respective seats. She notices this, but barely, and slips him a weary and appreciating smile for his good work. He turns away to hide the red in his cheeks.

Sometimes the alcohol goes to her heart rather than her head and everything in her floods to the surface, but tonight she just feels blissfully numb. Blank. Amara speaks to no one. Tips well. Leaves before last call.

[amarahollande]

I live someplace else now. I don't know where that is.

Home

There are certain places where your soul just gets drawn into. It becomes a helpless thing, pulled along by its whims to a place that houses a feeling so necessary that you can't avoid it. That's what home is. 

That place is long gone. Home was family, it meant laughter and consistency and something to come back to. It meant the sound of a shower running in the morning, and the familiar cadence of feet on the stairs. It was the smell of hairspray, and a burnt frying pan in the kitchen sink. A ring of coffee on the counter, a favourite shirt gone missing and turning up in someone else's laundry. It was conversations that stretched into the night. Bad cable tv shows watched out of nostalgia. Secrets. Arguments. Leftovers in the fridge. Hair ties under the sofa.

The very sense of home snapped out of existence the first time Amara's feet stepped over her threshold into a dark house. The flip of a light switch revealed a room exactly how it was left and now, as if all the life had flown out of it, that once-home is just a place that houses things.

[amarahollandefaceclaim]

[amarahollandelinks-blog]

Head Cannon: Duality

At work, Amara is tough and sleek out of necessity. Her clients see her as capable, competent, and sexy enough to get the job done... And she always does. She's known for her precision and focus and ability to make relationships and gather information with her particular brand of masculine charm.

But, if she had the time to make friends, if she felt safe enough to make friends, they'd also know the Amara who takes the stairs to her her up-scale yet bare-boned flat slowly because she's so worn down. The Amara who takes baths until the water gets cold and then re-pours them. The Amara who has crumbs in her sheets because the comfort of having tea and toast in bed with a book is worth the mess. 

Her sister knew all about the threadbare stuffed cat that stays hidden under her pillow- she's had it since she was 7. She knew that Amara often felt guilty about the books she kept on the bottom-most part of the book shelf and sometimes rotated them up so they'd all get equal attention. She knew that when Amara was a child she would have intense conflicts about her fear of insects and her need to save them...and that this never went away, rather just got better hidden.

[glenmcniven]

+ amarahollande

Glen was sat on the tube home from work. Edna, his scooter, had given up the ghost that morning meaning he had to engage in this uncomfortable affair. Who knew travelling on a tube could be so... awkward? But, somehow, the English managed to make it so. No one talked. No one touched each other. Everyone was so anxious not to touch and not to be touched in one of the most claustrophobic environments in London. He could see them all having minor internal breakdowns just trying to avoid eye contact with everyone in the carriage. In Ireland he would have learnt the whole family history of the man sitting next to him by now, but not here. It was one of his eternal struggles; trying to keep in line with English stoicism. His iPod out of battery, Glen resigned himself to a long and dull journey home. The tube rattled into the next station. Idly, he watched a woman make her way along the platform.

[amarahollande]

Headcannon: Isolation

Nobody had the brass to say this to her face, but people talk. She knew it as well as the next person. Behind her back, they all called her, at best, a bitch. Stuck up. Ice queen. Once she had left a room and heard a client refer to her as “that fucking brown cow” before she was even out of ear shot. If she had been a man and just a few shades lighter the same assholes would have been falling over themselves. True, she had just walked out with a stack of cash at least a few grand more than her male counterparts ever got paid, but she’d be damned if they ever had to fuck some boring slime ball to bring back the necessary intelligence. The disparity in the way they treated her in comparison to the men in her field was so great and so infuriating that she couldn't even form the words to express it… 

Not that she had anyone to divulge to, anyways. Funny, how more than half of her job involved sleeping with people as a way into everything but their hearts. When her sister, Samantha, had be alive… before the headaches and hallucinations, before things got really bad… they had had their own private world. People might call her an ice queen now but they had never seen her laugh like she did with Sam. But who was there now? Informants make poor friends and courtesans even worse girlfriends… Not to mention the horrifying coincidence of the mutilated bodies that seemed to trail her when the migraines were at their worst the black outs began.

No… nobody had seen her laugh, really laugh, in years. But then, what was there to laugh about anyway?

[blood-of-the-hunter]

amarahollande replied to your post: [sms sent 6:58pm] i need confirmation that this assignment is going to go through. this isn’t what i signed on for and contrary to popular opinion, i’m not your bitch for hire. reply asap, or i’m out. -AH

[sms sent 7:17] that was supposed to go to someone else, and i doubt you could handle it. lose this number. -AH

[txt: sent:7:32pm] that sounds like a challenge that i could take you up on. number's mine now - finders keepers, all that. - DW