( inde navarrette, ciswoman, she/her ) Apparently [ ALBA RIVERA ] has been spotted sneaking around Halcyon Island after dark. The [ 26 ] year old normally resides in the [ SOUTH ] but the exact details are murky. It seems their alliance to the [ NEUTRAL ] has drawn them out of hiding, just in time for the annual meeting of the Faction leaders. Be cautious if you see them around, because whilst they are [ PERSISTENT ], they are also [ VOLATILE ]. Rumor has it that they currently work as [ SHOT GIRL ] and that they have the power of [ SUGGESTION ].
tw: domestic violence, abuse, car accident
basics
name: alba catalina rivera
nicknames: albie, optional 'baby' at the end if you're trying to get something out of her
date of birth: august 21st, 2000
place of birth: the south of halcyon island.
age: twenty-six.
gender: cisfemale.
pronouns: she/her.
sexuality: bisexual.
power: suggestion. in theory, she can make anyone do anything if she asks nicely enough. in practice, she's only capable of planting ideas in people's heads if they're tiny thoughts, if it is something they would've reasonably done, anyway. she often starts with an 'i want you to' or an 'i think you should'. sometimes she doesn't know if it works because of her ability, or because she smiles so sweetly when she asks. her ability is more powerful when she's emotional, but this is often to her detriment -- she doesn't think before she speaks.
occupation: shot girl, unsuccessful poet.
family: father, mother, two younger sisters ( luz rivera and tba ).
pets: none
aesthetics: a candle reaching the end of its wick, lipstick-stained teeth, a row of empty wine bottles with various dying flowers in them, a dimly-lit laptop hanging dangerously over the edge of the bathtub, starting a fire in a trashcan in the middle of the night, driving towards the sunset, the way orange and black blend in a tortoiseshell cat's fur, the way smoke curls around neon signs, the taste of cherries on your tongue, dark honey lipstick whispering an 'i want' into your ear.
talents: is weirdly good at simplifying information, can solve a sudoku in under three minutes, rains down glorious and righteous fury on men while making it look effortless, she would say she's really good at pool, but she's not.
habits: writes in the bath, she forgets to lock her door ( this is fine because she keeps a baseball bat under her bed ), she keeps a box of ribbons and she'll tie them around people's wrists instead of admitting that she loves them, she hangs around the smoking area on a night out but she doesn't smoke.
visual: there is this deliberation to every move of her slender limbs, she tends to look taller than she is because she refuses to stand down. her hair clatters down her back when she's angry, like it has a mind of its own.
style: mini skirt or death, mini skirt or death, mini skirt or death. she's a collector; bangles, keychains, stickers. she weirdly favours rainboots over most other footwear. most of her clothes have that faded quality of having been picked up after a three-hour searching-and-selecting session at goodwill. she loves frills on her clothes but despises bows.
quirks: she twirls her hair when she's impatient, she walks very quietly, she's very touchy with other people; she tends to brush her hand along their back as she walks past, she places a finger under people's chin when they whisper into her ear. she's an elbows-first kinda girl when she starts an altercation.
personality quirks: she tells people her middle name rather than her first if she's desperate to avoid introduction, there's this sparkle behind her eyes the moment she decides on a fight, she squares up on other people's behalf far too quickly, she ignores texts if she gets sent more than two in a row, she tilts her head dramatically when she's trying to think of an answer.
bio
alba rivera was born on a hot summer day; she came out of the womb screaming and hasn't calmed down since.
she was a hurricane, everything intensified, this zap of electricity that jolted her mother's life. when she was a newborn, she kept dropping weight no matter how much her mom fed her. she was this red, screeching thing that wouldn't settle and never tired of her own cries. it took her mother three months and several hospital trips to figure out alba had a cow's milk protein allergy, and at that point, her mom decided she wanted a do-over.
alba's sister luz was born a little after alba's first birthday. any love alba might've received before this, she doesn't remember. she didn't receive much love after. alba quickly learned that eyes only turned to her if she stepped out of line, and that her mother's gaze was scornful at best.
so maybe alba made luz the emotional regulator of their household, because alba wasn't doing any of the work on that, to say the least. alba never resented her sister, couldn't muster up more than what she thought to be the kind of sisterly annoyance she'd see on tv. alba was too busy fighting, too busy giving her mother a damn good reason to be mad at her. luz was this shield between these pillars of their household: their mom on one side, alba and their youngest sister on the other. alba never meant to make luz the person easing the tension; alba simply didn't know any better than to take any scrap of affection and pull on that thread until it became anger instead. she never backed down from a fight, she feared what would await her if she gave in.
( there was something off about the way she threw words around in arguments, though. sometimes, it was as though alba's awful thoughts only manifested because she spoke them out loud. when she was six, small, and for the first time voiced her worst fears to her mother, and she said:
"i think you hate me."
to which her mother's face deformed into these lines of disgust at the mouth, and the fighting in their home got three times worse )
alba only ever knew love as something she could lose, or something she spoke into existence despite itself.
she had a string of boyfriends and girlfriends throughout high school and beyond -- nothing ever lasted long for her. there would, inevitably, be a point where she showed teeth, where she got too ugly, where she'd pick a fight she shouldn't just to see if she'd be held instead of pushed away. and she would say, 'see, i was right, you don't love me at all' and suddenly that tended to be true. or maybe it had always been.
there was only one boy that truly mattered to her. a guy called tommy who worked at the local bookstore. he understood that alba couldn't see love as anything but violence, and loaded up her bag with poetry from angry women. she had never felt seen like this -- so when he awkwardly asked if she wanted to take their weekly over-the-counter conversation to a bar instead, she flustered and simply nodded.
he still had to deal with her as much as anyone else ever did, though. and she was a handful. despite this, he stuck around. he carried her bag whenever she stormed off in a huff, he made sure she got home when she had too much to drink. to be with alba wasn't to tame a beast -- it was to learn how to safely deal with fire, and tommy learned. and she loved him, even if she never ended up telling him that.
one night, after a night out during which tommy didn't drink and alba drank far too much, she picked a fight with him from the other side of an abandoned road. she told him to stop following her, to just give up on her already. he refused, as he always had, steadfast and this missing piece in her unsteady puzzle --
she told him,
"why don't you just fuck off and die already?"
he crossed the road as a car sped down the asphalt. she was pretty sure he'd seen it coming. he died instantly. the driver ended up with several injuries from alba trying to scratch their eyes out.
things stopped for her after that. she grew quieter. now, when her mother threw plates at her head, she only dodged. she no longer had the spark in her to throw something back.
as much as she hated to admit it, she wasn't spurred into leaving her home until she watched luz go. she had sat in a daze of grief and futility, had resigned to living out her life under her mother's pressing thumb, she'd lost the energy to try and pick every fight. when luz didn't return home, it took alba three days to pack her own bags and call it a day. this was probably for the better -- it would've been fucking awful if she'd decided to start arguments with her mother again without their resident shield there to jump in between them.
she never left the south, though. where luz skipped around town, alba could never be too far from the road where tommy died, call it a sick sense of atonement. she got a tiny little apartment near the old powerplant that she could barely afford. she travelled up and down to the north to make money, become a shot girl at a few different clubs. men always seemed to like her when she'd sweetly ask them to overpay for their drinks and buy her a shot too, while they were at it.
once, on the road from north to south, a man stopped her in her tracks and said, 'i want you to try something for me'.
this was the day when alba realised she had an ability, that all the trouble in her life, she'd brought upon herself. the man had noticed this spark about her and told her to test it out on him.
suggestion, they concluded.
she could make people do things only by asking.
she ran after that, and has made a conscious effort not to see the man again.
now, she spends most of her time being a nuisance to others. she's out all nights, tends to sleep till noon. she writes, still -- she performs spoken word poetry, but refuses to let anyone know she does it. most of her time is spent charming drunk men into buying shots or buying things for her, she'll grin and bear it until it is a venom she has to spit out in her sink. she has a tiny heart; occasionally, she carries it on her sleeve.
sanem may look the picture of proper now in her pristine clothes, her heels and her expensive bag. but she had grown up in a very different neighborhood. she could fight and take care of herself in ways that no one would guess now. she could feel the waves of warning coming off him. he wanted her to keep walking. to mind her safety and leave him to his business. the or else... hung silently in the air. but sanem wasn't scared and wouldn't be intimidated.
she stood there, raising an eyebrow as she waited for him to explain himself. " and why would I do that? " sanem sighed. " my billable hours are high, and this overtime will pay for plenty. the long hours are tiring but they aren't going to cause any true issues for me. " she pointed at his wrench. " you on the other hand... I suspect what you are doing here is going to lead to some mess for me to clean up. or worse, tampering with my things. "
he had wanted to exhale, but the breath left him in a stuttering flow -- he was laughing, first ever so quietly, shoulders shaking slightly, then louder, like a cough, a barking sound that almost seemed to pity itself. "no need to brag now," he said, shot her this look of genuine and utter amusement. "you get paid more than me, i get it."
some immature part of him wanted to find it utterly unimpressive, but apricot had to consider that his only stint of employment from youth right up until a few years ago had been drug dealing, so maybe he shouldn't be taking the piss out of someone who could say the words billable hours and mean it.
he spun the wrench in his hand, a little more easily than would be naturally possible ( there was a moment in which he let go of the handle, and it spun through his power alone ). "you must think yourself very valuable if you think i'm here to tamper with your things," apricot said, quirked a brow like he could read this from her if only he looked at her skeptically enough. "you're of no importance to me. and i doubt anything i do would be for you to clean up, unless you're their cleaner. in which case, honestly, i'm glad they're paying you that well. cleaners aren't often compensated fairly for the shit they go through."
before she'd sat down at the bar, she'd hesitated, and the times where hani could afford to falter had been long gone. dead and gone, if you will. six feet under and covered with copious amounts of dirt. she hadn't overturned her entire life to be the sort of person who let others see when she was torn about something. and yet, she saw the back of apricot's head and she considered walking right back out into the street.
if he saw her, though, he wouldn't let her live that down. running away like that. like him. what do you care, you haven't really talked in a decade, a voice snarked in her head. hani pushed it to the side, grit her teeth and sat down at the bar, three chairs between her and apricot. "tequila. neat." she spoke the order gruffly, and quietly enough to hang on to the foolish hope that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't notice her. god, she really needed that fucking drink.
he tended to feel eyes on him like bullets digging through his skull. if he was feeling generous, apricot would call it some side effect of his power, like there was some kind of trajectory involved in the way people lifted their gazes. any other day, he'd just stick with he was cautious, if not anxious, and hated people looking at him. the latter seemed more truthful.
so he'd known, maybe. or maybe he had expected it. not specifically tonight, not specifically in this bar. just at some point, just another regret coming back to bite him.
because her voice ( which had always been and still was so distinctly hers ) cut through the buzz of the bar crowd, three chairs away. and she had tried to hide it, he could tell, but she'd pulled up to the bar all the same.
and he could've left her be, but he couldn't, not really. he was always going to run into her, and he was always going to respond like this. he cleared his throat, pointed her way but couldn't bear to look at her. his eyes were on the bartender. apricot spoke, loudly,
dimitri had finished his work for the day and was looking to settle in for the evening. the day had been uneventful which most would be grateful for but he was not most. his brother had been too busy and yujin , for whatever reason , did not want to see him. he thought it was unprofessional from both men but alas , he had no say in the matter. he was simply roaming the towers , when he thought he saw something or someone caught in his peripheral. he could almost gasp at how the other spoke , but really all that translated was an amused expression. " one could say i'm looking at the guy with a --- , " he cocked his head before continuing , " wrench but that's neither here nor there. "
"it's neither here nor there because you hardly care what i'm out here to do, right?" apricot hummed in reply. he tilted his head, ever so slightly, eyes narrowing as he considered the kid in front of him, tried to place him into a mental image that made sense. of course he knew dimitri, that wasn't the problem. apricot was just trying to suss out if dimitri would care to tell on him or not. "it's just some lowkey vandalism, if you were particularly interested in knowing. i wouldn't worry too much about it, though."
despite her long hours, sanem was hardly ever at this building this late at night. but the case had involved boxes of files she had been shifting through stored here. the hour was late and once she got home and had some wine she'd slow down time so she could get a proper night of sleep. sanem had been a fool to think it was going to be so simple. coming out the front door sanem's face twisted up in confusion at the sight.
he certainly was dressed the part to scream suspicious. his attire and the wrench catching the glare of the lights illuminating the dark city were as bright as a neon sign.
" the suspicious person with a wrench. it's far too late to be doing any maintenance work. "
he sucked in a long, bracing breath. it wasn't as though apricot had truly given her an option to walk away from this, he hadn't offered. at the same time, though, he wouldn't have minded if she'd taken his words as a cue to turn around and head the other way. instead, her gaze had fallen to the wrench, and whilst it didn't particularly worry him, it just made him feel like his evening was about to get a little more complicated.
"okay, well," he said, "let me turn it around on you. you're looking at a suspicious person with a wrench. i'm looking at someone who could totally just ignore that and could just head home. they've got you working long hours in there anyway, right?" he nodded towards the tower. "if i were you, i wouldn't willingly be adding to my overtime sheet, is all."
"you haven't quit smoking yet, have you?" fransisco's cigarette case opened with a click. "can't imagine how, in these times, but it doesn't hurt to ask."
"i wouldn't just quit smoking on you, fran. how else would we bond?" but yujin did watch the click of the case a little closely, with this ever-present awareness that it could be the click of a gun next. but they were civilised people, and yujin wanted to think he'd at least get a courtesy warning before fran would try and pull any weapons on him. "i'm just surprised you have any cigs left in there. i feel like this surely is the best week for chainsmoking."
her ears were still ringing as she appeared out of thin air. the party had been so loud only moments before. sweat and glitter clung to her skin as the world tilted around callie. drinking and teleporting was always a risky combination. but a fun one. stumbling, she attempted to grip on to anything to steady herself. instead, callie tripped over a dip in the sidewalk and she heard the sound of her heel snapping. " shit. " a grin accompanied a series of giggles. " sorry. still a fun party though. " she spoke a little too loudly with her ears still ringing with a hint of slurring from the drinks.
he didn't often make a habit of patrolling the streets like it was in his job description. most of the time, if he was feeling particularly restless, he would stroll past the large windows of his apartment and watch all the city lights. like he was a superhero, almost. it gave him a decent enough vantage point and usually settled him down, made him feel useful. this week, though, yujin had found himself incapable of remaining in one place, had taken to lonely wandering as an alternative for pacing between his four walls. it allowed him a perspective he just couldn't get from high up, let him see things he normally couldn't -- like girls appearing out of thin air on abandoned streets.
"wow, shit," he said. in a reflex, he had leaned down to catch her as she stumbled, but he'd been two steps too far away to actually make a difference. other than that, though, he seemed relatively unfazed by a miracle in front of his eyes. his gaze wandered down to her shoes, the snapped heel.
"c'mon," he said, because he had a sister and he knew how to troubleshoot. "do you need me to snap your other heel so you can at least walk home evenly? or were you gonna..." he gestured vaguely. teleport.
open starter!!
location: near one of the glass towers, north of the island
there was no particular rule that said apricot couldn't be here. but there were certain circumstances under which he could appear that would make him look more suspicious, to say the least. firstly, the city had long welcomed the evening, the sky illuminated only by streetlights, the buzz of nightlife slowly awakening. secondly, there was the matter of his outfit-- his usual, sure, but noteworthy nonetheless; a dark hoodie, like he was trying to disappear into the setting night, the only part of him that caught any kind of light was the reflection on his ring.
oh, and he had a wrench.
that might've been the really suspicious part.
"the fuck you looking at?" he asked, nose scrunched, when someone finally appeared to notice.
There had been an off stillness in the island these past couple of days. Even the weather seemed unnaturally cooperative - clear skies and gentle breeze, not a single cloud daring the darken. With the meeting approaching, it seemed everything and everyone suddenly knew how to behave. "The silence is awfully loud this week." the man noted as he let his gaze drift down the street. "It's...unsettling."
"i mean, if the silence is loud already, i guess i don't need to try and speak any louder," rosa remarked, shrugged. "i'm simply overpowered by some great silence already." she was trailing the edge of the sidewalk, one foot in front of the other, straight-lined. she felt like she was walking on a cloud, like the impact of her feet was entirely absent. like the silence was so loud indeed that she might as well not be there. the meeting was this weirdly all-consuming thing, to the point where it felt hypothetical. and she couldn't get stressed about it anymore, could barely conjure the idea into existence. "it's-- it's gonna be fine, i'm sure," she said, though she said it with this tremble to her tone that begged to not be asked to specify. she wouldn't know what would be fine, or how, just that it surely would be. she turned on her heel, finally looked up from her feet, quirked a brow. "are you worried?"
She notices the way his eyes drift past her shoulder and she wonders what he's checking for. Buffy doesn't bother turning around because if he's checking for any trouble that may be following her, he'd find nothing. No one was coming after her. Not the police, not the reporters and definitely not a boyfriend trying to drag her back.
She's certain of it.
So, until his gaze is finally back on her, Buffy does nothing but keep her eyes glued to his and while her expression remains neutral, something quieter settles beneath the surface. Curiosity, maybe. For years, she's always wondered what the years would've done to him. She's tried to picture it nearly a thousand times, but standing in front of him now? He looked nothing like she imagined.
She doesn't have long before his demand cuts through the silence and in response, there's a soft chuckle that slips out. She doesn't argue though and instead does exactly what he tells her to do—brushing past him until she's inside.
"Hello to you, too." Her overnight bag falling beside the door as she slips the baseball hat from her head. "Can't say I expected a warmer welcome from you. It's nice to know I'm right about something."
he was still staring into the darkness when she slipped past him into the hallway. in this silent moment, right as they passed each other, he considered they might've been watching each other's backs. or at least, yujin had been watching hers. it was nostalgic, like this old dance he could remember the steps to if the right music played. only when he was satisfied that no one was out there, that no one had followed her ( and this could've been for her sake, or his own ), did he close the door. it was quiet, it was why he had chosen this spot to begin with -- there was always something happening when he was at work, cars racing and honking in the street, people everywhere. this place was quiet. it was why buffy's bag hitting the floor was such a distinct tear into the relative peace he had established here.
"can't say i expected you to be back unless you were gonna be trouble knocking at my door, so i guess we both still know each other. i'd ask if the other guy looks worse, but i've got a feeling..."
she wasn't a kid anymore. he hoped she wasn't a kid anymore, this young girl that he had stood up for so many times. he wouldn't know what to do with the guilt if she had still needed him after they separated. some sick part of him wanted to think she was just as capable of handling her business as he had been.
he turned, moved down his own hallway as though it was different now, like he didn't quite recognise it anymore. the whole house was bathed in soft orange lights. shadows were long, draped across dark wooden floors. the guilt still gnawed at him.
he didn't want to ask. he grabbed her bag where she had dropped it and slung it over his shoulder. he hung up her hat on the coat rack. he stared at the shadows on the wall like he was still looking for a problem to solve.
he didn't want to ask, but he was always going to.
Jia watched as Apricot tried (and failed) to be funny. Not that he had been funny before, but maybe he was really depressed, because that was a lame attempt at a joke. ❝ Well yeah. ❞ The brunette deadpanned as another shrug moved their shoulders. ❝ You didn’t do anything, man. ❞ They shook their head. Apricot had never stuck them as someone who talked about his feelings (or anything about himself) that freely, and maybe, just maybe, that was one of the reasons why Jia enjoyed keeping him company. What—because misery loved company? Well, yes. But mostly, because they too, understood the feeling. People knew them, both of them, but only few could actually say that they knew them. ❝ I’m not trying to psychoanalyze you, you know? ❞ The brunette said with yet another shrug as they were walking out of the old school the Grid had claimed for themselves. ❝ Don’t think I could’ve done that even if I wanted to. Numbers, grids and codes? Yeah. Send them my way and I’ll crack them open like it’s child’s play. People though? ❞ Jia didn’t continue. They simply shook their head, which could give Apricot an idea of what they meant. ❝ I’m just trying to look out for you, is all. ❞
It was the least they could do for Hani while the younger woman couldn’t be as around as she used to.
Once inside the cafe, Jia got the iced coffee for their friend and sat down across from him. Their eyes scanned the place, analyzing possible exit routes in case they needed. But then again, with Apricot with them, Jia doubted it would be necessary. ❝ Should I pull my ‘hey, we’re old buddies, cmere and tell me something’ card with Fransisco Russo and ask if they’ve got anything shady in the works for us? ❞ First, Jia wouldn’t say they were that close to a Russo in the first place, but they liked joking about it being with pretty, chainsmoke Fransisco Russo. From under their table, Jia gently nudged Apricot’s food to get his attention. ❝ What do you think would be our best choice, then? Expand at the wrong time, to look like we’re declaring war, or maybe… figure out another route and claim another spot? ❞
"no, i know i didn't do anything, that was the joke." but it was up for debate whether that joke was his deliberate lack of action, or if the joke was that he couldn't have coughed up something interesting to do in that moment even if he'd tried. he lacked something these days, he thought, specifically, openly. he always lacked something and rarely made up for it, but he had grown to think it was part of his charm. to manage to crack a joke while permanently wounded. now, it felt more like something to be pitied. apricot shrugged -- though it was more like a reflex, like a tensing of his shoulders that he couldn't quite stop. "i'm fine," he said. "you don't need to look out for me." which felt odd to say out loud, because he had often said it, but would've never condemned anyone else to that same type of fate. he tried to look out for people. he always looked out for everyone, would begrudgingly nurse baby birds back to health if required. and yet, he didn't want the same in return, it made him uncomfortable.
he was lucky that a cup of iced coffee was placed in front of him, it made his scowl less obvious when jia spoke of the current. "yeah sure, why fucking don't you? go buddy up with fran russo, everyone's just fucking off to other factions these days, anyway," he said, but the words were muttered, mulled over between his teeth to the point where they were a complaint more than an accusation. he just wanted to have something to whine about. he took a sip of the coffee then, his attention dragged back to jia when he was nudged and reacted a little too violently -- he banged his knee into the underside of the table, hadn't expected it. he let himself sink back down into the leather of the booth then, and sighed an awfully dramatic sigh. "i'm turning it around on you," apricot said, hummed, "do you think our best choice is to look inactive, by laying low for months longer while we plan that other route, or overeager by doing something now?"
Buffy watches the family disappear into the crowd and she can hear they way they're talking about her. Pretty. Nice. Those are always the words people seemed to settle on. Her attention lingers on them and once they're out of sight, the smile she'd worn so effortless disappeared. Not to something colder, or angry in a way, but it'd been unnecessary. The audience had walked away, so the performance came to it's end.
The coffee in her hand has gone cold, but she still takes a sip anyway. Her gaze now drifting through the streets she'd known far too well and while the faces may have changed, the town itself hadn't. It looked exactly as she remembered it twelve years ago.
The feeling of being watched came long before finding the source. When she finally does, the corners of her lips lift ever-so-slightly.
"You can come say hi," she says, glancing over the rim of her cup, "I'm not going to bite you'." Not if she doesn't have a reason to.
"you remind me of someone." this was a lie as much as it wasn't; there was something about her that seemed familiar, like he had seen her in passing, or like he knew someone that smiled in the same noncommittal manner. it wasn't why he'd been looking at her, though. it wasn't the upturning of her lips or the way her hair brushed her back when she turned to look from one point of interest to another. it was something more vague, something he couldn't have coughed up as easily into a sentence. an energy, maybe. she had caught his attention because she looked like she was holding something back. like a magic trick, like there was a deck of cards right behind her back.
"and for the record, you do look like the type to bite. i just tend not to be intimidated by that." as if to prove a point, he dragged himself closer, leisurely, with a distinct lack of care to his strides. he was trying to figure something out. he looked her up and down slowly, he scrunched his nose. "you got family in town?"
location: her brother's place, the night she returned.
When she first stepped foot back on the island, her first instinct was to drive past the house they'd grown up in as if there was any chance Yujin would still be there. If she were being honest, she hadn't even been sure he stayed on Halcyon at all. Twelve years was a long time after all. Long enough for people to leave. Long enough to disappear just as she had.
He hadn't.
Finding him hadn't been nearly as difficult as she expected because money always had a way of making things easier. Addresses stopped being private when you knew the right people to ask. It was almost ironic. All those years without speaking to her brother, yet it took less than an afternoon to find him.
Buffy stands outside a home she'd never seen before, an overnight bag resting against her shoulder. The blood on her skin had been the easiest to wash away before leaving, but the bruises had been less cooperative. Even the split in her lip was still red and tender—dried blood sticking to it with a refusal to go anywhere. The makeup had done what it could, but she knew it wasn't enough. She wasn't even sure she cared enough to do a better job.
A lock clicks from somewhere inside and once the door opens, Buffy simply looks at him. At what twelves years had done. The same way time changed her, it'd done the same to him and—from what she can see—for the better.
"Surprise," she says, a familiar smile finding its way to her face, "Long time no see, Jinnie."
sure, yujin had long come to understand the concept that everything he did was known to someone, somewhere -- paranoia deeply entrenched in his gut. whether it was one of the war-waging factions trying to dig for dirt, or even the glass themselves keeping tabs on a valuable asset, he had long come to understand that things sacred and secret to him were only that because someone else allowed it.
and yet, this place had been secret. until it wasn't. yujin had a skyscraper apartment somewhere in the financial district, but he also had this place, unassuming, smaller, the kind of house half the people in his faction wouldn't be caught dead in. now, someone had turned up outside, and they'd been lucky that yujin's confidence in his ability to take care of a threat had risen above his permanent sense of suspicion.
he hadn't been prepared for who was on the other side of the door.
or maybe he had.
maybe he had always known this was coming for him. destiny, bruised and broken at his door. this awful certainty that, if she ever were to turn up, yujin would know exactly why -- he hadn't really needed to look, hadn't needed to examine her fingernails for blood. they were twins, mirrors. maybe he had always waited for her to uphold her end of some violent fate he resigned them to years ago.
something in his gaze sharpened. he was looking past her, into the dark night, kept at bay by his porch light. he tried not to take note of the way his skin crawled at hearing her call him jinnie.
It didn’t take a genius to realize that Jia had crossed a line. They had known Apricot probably longer than they had known Hani and that was to say a lot. They should have realized sooner this was Apricot and not some random somebody they were talking to, but that realization came a little later. ❝ No bullshit or anything, but you sound depressed, Apricot. ❞ Jia knew a thing or two about depression. It had once wrapped its dirty, shadowy paws around their neck and pinned them to bed for months on end. It took them a lot of effort and hard work to survive it. Some days, it still visited them, but they didn’t own the truth. They knew Apricot’s marriage had ended, but they didn’t want to assume that was the reason why the other was slowly but surely, losing his will to leave his house. ❝ Besides, you can always disable your camera on Zoom, so no. I would not be able to always see your face. ❞ Jia pointed out with small shrug.
Following his lead, Jia also grabbed their jacket and although slightly confused with Apricot’s reaction they didn’t say anything about it at first. ❝ C’mon, I’ll buy you coffee. ❞ They weren’t the best at social things, but Jia figured it was the least they could do if they wanted to get some answers from the man. Or… at least show they were there. They weren’t an animal, after all.
❝ Black coffee, yeah? ❞ They asked as they pushed the cafe’s door open and stepped in, holding it open until Apricot walked past them. Once they’d gotten both their orders (Jia’s being their usual caramel latte with two caramel pumps and an extra shot of espresso), they made their way to the table Apricot was at and set his coffee down. ❝ So… why your building? Why now? ❞
he didn't seem particularly thrown by that suggestion. instead, he just tilted his head ever so slightly, as though assessing the situation from a different angle. "oh shush," he said, "could a depressed man do this?" he proceeded to do nothing. he just kind of stood there, for a painfully dragging moment, in silence and in an absence of anything he could've done to prove jia wrong. but then he shrugged, this dumb grin tugging at his lips for only a second, gummy and genuinely amused. "let's do one thing a day, okay? if you wanna psychoanalyse me, it's gonna have to wait for a day where i'm not also pulling my hair out at a board meeting." apricot had concluded he should've seen a therapist years back, and that he was now a few too many mistakes and cobbled-together routines into his life to even bother anymore. he got through his days relatively unscathed, and he'd consider that to be enough effort for now. they didn't also need to address the elephant in the room.
"yeah, make it iced," he had hummed when jia asked. apricot had needed to leave the walls of the old school, and sure, to be in a cafe was to be trapped behind another door, but he could stand to at least sit here and finish a coffee before he'd get antsy again. when jia sat across from him, he hummed as if that would suffice as a thank you, and just stared out the cafe's window instead, only catching jia from the corner of his eye. "fuckers are about to try something, i just know it," he muttered in response. "we're only buying the building because i'm trying to take away ground before the current can claim it. if we do it now, it just looks like we've incompetently expanded at the wrong time. and knowing our bureaucracies, that's at least half true. if we do it next week, it looks like we're declaring war."
With their hands then resting in their pockets, Jia leaned forward in a slight bow as well as they searched for Cottie’s gaze. A sarcastic smirk rested on their lips as they spoke. ❝ Well, fucking finally! Finally someone appreciates my observations. ❞ One of their hands clasped the other’s shoulder and Jia gave it a little squeeze. ❝ I knew I could count on you, Cottie. ❞ And in came the comment of them not sending the rest of the board members emails and Jia chuckled at the thought. While they could’ve made sure they all got the notice, it wasn’t exactly their job in the first place. It almost made them feel like an IT person, which they were far from. ❝ Damn, I should have, shouldn’t I? Maybe I just needed to see your grumpy face in person or something. ❞ It should have sounded more like a joke than it did, but truth was, Jia actually enjoyed spending time in Apricot’s company, despite the other’s constant grumpiness.
Emails, however, were usually sent whenever a decision had already been reached, not when they needed to vote on something. ❝ They could’ve sent an email, but would you have checked it? That’s the real question. My guess is no. I don’t think you’ve checked your inbox in months, Cotsbear. ❞ Immediately, the brunette scrunched their nose at the freshly-thought nickname. ❝ Ugh, that was almost as bad as your soda. ❞ Sadly, it was hard for Jia to ever be serious about anything in the first place, especially when around people they felt comfortable with, which made it harder for them to be taken seriously, they guessed. It was a defense mechanism at best. It was easier to keep people from coming in if they kept masking their lack of social abilities with dumb jokes and crass nicknames.
Lucky for them, the board had noticed they could be not only trusted, but also, reliable when it came down to it, so it was probably one of the reasons why they’d been recently appointed as a member. ❝ Apparently they do? Why else we’d be asked to be here to vote on this bullshit? What are we buying again? ❞ And even though Jia loved messing with money when it wasn't theirs, in this case, they'd rather not have a lot of saying on which building to buy or not. ❝ I’ve got nowhere to go, but I’m with you. Let’s just vote yes and get this over with. ❞ Grabbing their zippo lighter, Jia started flicking its cap open and closing it, trying to get themselves grounded. ❝ Want me to drop you off somewhere or something? ❞
"can't we just teach everyone how to hop on a zoom call or something? you'll see my face and my look of utter disbelief when someone says something fucking ridiculous, but i won't have to go outside. i'm tired of having to leave my house." his circle had grown smaller and smaller lately, the list of people he willingly engaged with had slimmed right down. it sat at an odd intersection with something else: he'd been wandering more. probably into streets he shouldn't, in directions that weren't claimed by the grid, just because he found it hard to sleep these days and staring at his empty bed was frustrating to say the least. when he said he didn't want to leave the house, he moreso meant he didn't like the effort it took. apricot was always leaving and wasn't home all that often now.
"oh--" it was this dull sound, assessing, rolling over the flavour of what jia had said in his half open mouth. then, a frown, a freezing, a beat that stretched a moment too long. "i don't like that." he fucking hated nicknames. he'd entirely forgotten about the email thing, so much so that he didn't even argue with jia about the fact that they were absolutely right, and he wouldn't have checked, and he barely remembered his email address to begin with.
then, a realisation. something that had slowly seeped into his skull in the time he'd been given to mull it over.
"shit," he said, the swear so low that it rolled off his tongue as a hiss. "it's my building we're buying. i asked if we could take it because it sits on an intersection with one of the current's routes. why the fuck are we voting on this?" the question rhetorical, the answer obvious: the board was nine people. any yes-or-no vote needed a majority, even if apricot was the go-to guy when denver was out. this only made him grab his coat, only made him more desperate for a real break.
"c'mon, we're out. meeting adjourned. we'll let the others think on it for a bit. i need a fucking coffee." because the coke had been flat and apricot was realising he needed to pick at any small thread to get through his day.
lately , it had seemed as if dami were spending more time within the sections of the north controlled by the grid , than within the west , where his own family had been hard at work. renewal was beneficial for the island , but dami had never been interested in real estate unless it came in the form of clubs , or in that particular moment , dive bars that eased the throbbing in his head.
though he'd stayed out far too late the previous night , it hadn't ( or wouldn't ) prevent him from going out the next. the alcohol , the feeling of bodies pressed against him , the drugs that would null the powers that found their way into his system. he could forget it all under the flashing lights , under the haze of a clouded mind. clouded , until the man joined him. screen illuminated on the phone that was held in front of him.
kid , dami wondered if apricot would tell him about the war.
❝ did you get any dick pics yet ? ❞ he asked , with that usual lazy smirk on his lips. ❝ are you messaging them back ? — do you not know how to flirt , is that it ? ❞
"what? no, i didn't get any--- fuck that shit, anyway." there was this moment in which he turned his phone back to himself, examined the empty screen, blank, no notifications. and he couldn't figure out if he was upset about that, or just relieved that the random messaging had stopped. "what happened to a good old 'you meet someone in a club and you exchange two words at best'? we don't need to be messaging people on phones, do we? trapping dicks behind screens and all that..." he might've been an old-school philosopher. or maybe he simply loved opposing any kind of stance thrown his way. and also, maybe he had forgotten how to flirt, and he couldn't muster up the goodwill to entertain random men and their alleged dick pics. but then again, flirting had never worked for him, anyway. he just tended to pull up with a nasty attitude and try to find some poor victim that would stick with him despite that. it had served him well enough, for some time.
then, something faltered in apricot. which wasn't to say that he was any less capable of picking the smallest hills to die on at a moment's notice, but maybe he had mellowed out a little. he let himself slide into the booth and sit opposite dami, this sigh escaping him as though he'd been forced into it, like dami had asked.
"i'd ask you why you're here," he said, "but you're always here, anyway. i'm getting tired of asking, kid. just don't let any shit get back to me, okay?" it wasn't truly a plea on apricot's part, just a change of topic. he liked to think he knew dami well enough to know he wasn't out to start fights on grid territory.
