A Drink (open)

[Alvah Akana]

"Excuse me, miss."

The young woman seated at one of the many tables in the cafeteria smiled darkly into her cup, mid-sip. She remained still for a moment, not bothering to turn around to speak with the person who had addressed her, as though she hadn't yet realized that she was the one the person was speaking to.

When the longest acceptable pause before the interloper would likely speak again had passed, she finally turned to face the voice, moving as little as possible. "Oh, me?" she said, with such a mockery of innocence that it was near impossible the Academy employee wouldn't see through it.

"Yes, you," said the older woman. The practice with which she pursed her aged lips to show her distaste suggested that she was a professor of a great deal of experience with young adults with attitude.

"Is something wrong?" the young woman asked, clinging to the feigned naiveté for reasons unknown.

The professor looked about to burst, but finally brought herself to actually address the issue, ignoring the game the girl was playing with her. "Is that alcohol?" she half-asked, pointing an accusing finger.

The girl followed the finger to the bottle sitting on the table, marked clearly with the words and logos one might find on a bottle of vodka. This also happened to be the bottle she had been supplementing the orange juice she was sipping on with ever since she had ordered the drink in the first place, an activity the professor had watched for a good few minutes before her refusal to believe it was happening lost out to the obvious truth. This, of course, much to the enjoyment of the younger woman, who had been carefully monitoring the professor's reaction in her peripherals.

"It certainly looks like alcohol, doesn't it?" the young lady said, almost curiously.

The frazzled old woman managed to somehow look even more terse. Clearly, she was not amused. "You can not have alcohol here. It is strictly forbidden on the campus grounds."

"I can't? Well, I guess this can't be alcohol, then."

The professor had heard her fair share of smart-aleck comments in her time, but this was just something she was not prepared for. She stared blankly at the student.

"What? Don't you believe me? If I can't have alcohol here, then this can't be alcohol!" said the young woman, with the tone, almost, of a five year old explaining her logic to her parents as though they were they children.

And yet, something clicked. The professor's world was logic, and suddenly she saw what the other woman saw; the truth in her argument. She believed her. It had to be true. Nothing else made sense. She began to wonder why she had even approached the girl in the first place.

"I guess I'll leave then," said the professor, some confusion evident in her voice.

"Have a good day!" said the student, with all the sunshine and smiles in the world, and only when she returned to her drink and saw the looks she was getting from other occupants of the cafeteria did the devious look from before her encounter return.

[Jared Howard.]

There were some things about Jared Howard that were clear as well as being simultaneously unclear. He was the oldest of all the Howard children, being 25, but his gift and an unfortunate mistake led to him looking like he was a little bit older, by about another five years. Also, despite being the eldest, he hadn't been a big, or any part of his family for the last three, and so the role of the eldest brother and child had landed unceremoniously on his youngest sister, due to a lot of skipping based on a bunch of reason and circumstance.

It was because of his sister, Peyton, that he was even still in Seattle. Not only was he not a fan of the city but he wasn't really a stickler for one location for a long period of time either. Campus was the only place he knew to find her because she had refused to give him her friend's address, and he had promised to respect her wishes. The semester had been underway for a good two months or so, already and he had only seen her a handful of times. Lately, he hadn't been able to get a hold of her at all, until she called him that day from a residential number with a distinctly Southern California area code, one he could recognize off the bat.

"You went to Cuba?!" he'd demanded, and then again, "what did your parents say?"
"They're your parents too you know. And you should come down for Thanksgiving."
"What did dad say, Peyton."
"Uhm, not much. They didn't really care. Mom's too worried about maybe being pregnant." He'd pulled a face at that and officially let the issue of Cuba drop. It was at that point that he'd noticed the encounter across the cafeteria.

Another thing about Jared was that he was almost completely different from his brothers. He was not a sleaze, a hero or someone with a possible case of attention deficit disorder. When he thought that the girl was pretty, it was because she was really pretty and he didn't have a problem with acknowledging that. However, that wasn't what prompted him to end his conversation with his sister.
"I need to call you back," he said, getting more distracted the longer he watched her; oh she was bad, which was kind of a turn off.
"But we never talk anymore, J!!"
"I'll call you, Pey."
"I'll block your number, asshole. Unless you come to Thanksgiving."
"Fine. Bye."

He kind of felt like a creep, since he didn't even have a visitors pass, though not like anyone used them; and since he really had no reason to approach the girl. It wasn't like he felt sorry for her either, having to be the sole recipient of pretty much every single person in the room's attention; that he wanted to be her friend or something. If he had to be honest, he supposed he just wanted to let her know that while she got away with her trick, and while everyone else might be willing to either let it go or ignore it, he'd seen what she did, and he couldn't say he was impressed.; twenty-three years of being a brother and having to gate-keep delinquents on crack, fools with guns, a criminal and a psycho generally meant his reaction was pre-disposed.

"You know, you could've just not gotten caught in the first place," he told her, inviting himself to her table.

[Alvah Akana]

Alvah did not at all mind having company (especially handsome company), and something close to a genuine smile crawled onto her face, leaving only a hint of the deviousness that had been there before. It was almost as if she was being rewarded for her cleverness.

"And you could have walked away like nothing happened. But I didn't, and you didn't, and here we are. Perhaps we're both attracted to a big scene, one way or another."

She took another drink from her illicit beverage, holding the bottle of vodka out to Jared in a generous sort of way with her free hand. The slightest twist of her wrist sent its contents swilling about, and erased any doubt that what she was doing was offering him a drink.

"Besides, to not get caught would involve hiding, and I like the attention far too much for that."

Very much the truth. Alvah saw no wrong in admitting she caused scenes intentionally; after all, the alternatives were that she was simply stupid (which she certainly was not), or vindictive (which, on its own, was just boring). And trying to hide the fact would simply lead to people trying to 'figure her out', and all that ever did was make them feel like they'd accomplished something. If that happened, the sense of superiority they always took from it always gave her a terrible headache.

"What about you? Have you come to chide me for my behaviour, or maybe to enjoy my company? Something else entirely?"

Hypocritically enough, one of her other favourite activities was to figure other people out. She liked to think it was different, though, as she could know a person like the back of her hand and not take any sense of accomplishment from it. It was just fun, and she was a curious being by nature, a trait she shared with her dear old uncle. Probably the only trait she shared with the lighter side of the family.

[Jared Howard.]

It probably had everything to do with the fact that Jared, intrinsically or just obviously, was a nice guy that he even approached her in the first place despite seeing her change in expression after the professor had left, and that he bothered to stay after she'd smiled at him like that. He was too used to people being up to no good to have it irk him anymore, and so when the girl smiled at him, he couldn't help but return it, laughing lightly in the process.

"No, you got me all wrong, Miss," he said, the grin still on his face, "the big scene's not for me."
Jared's grin didn't slip, but he did have to pinch himself to keep from laughing when she offered him her bottle of vodka, ducking his head to hide his amused and slightly surprised expression, glancing to spot some stares and then officially deciding that he generally just didn't give a damn. He accepted the proffered bottle, placing his phone on the table to start unscrewing the lid.

"I've got a three younger brothers and one sister," he began, "my whole life has been about telling them off," though it was more than that, clearly, "but they don't listen much, and I don't think you will either."

Jared raised his bottle to her before taking a quick swig from it; the vodka wasn't as nasty as he imagined it to be, so it must have been expensive and of good quality, but he pulled a slight face anyway because vodka in general was a terrible drink. Not caring, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and left the bottle standing on the table between them.

"God, I hate that shit," he revealed, the look on his face still rather repulsed but he fixed it almost right after; "don't know why I came here exactly. To tell you something maybe, but there's no point to it now. The drink was a good tip though."

[Alvah Akana]

Alvah's smile flickered to a more sly expression momentarily when Jared denied liking a big scene, and she said, under her breath but not at a volume that would suggest he wasn't meant to hear it, "Yet here you are." But she let the subject drop; why he was here was not as important as the fact that he was.

Still, she had begun to suspect his company might place on the lower end of the enjoyability scale - at least, until he accepted the drink. Were she a lesser woman, she may have giggled with glee; as it were, she simply flexed her smile and drunk in the sight greedily. She wasn't naive enough to believe she'd corrupted him or anything of the sort, but she enjoyed the looks from the other students when they saw another person drinking in the cafeteria, especially the envious ones. A small step for her, a giant leap for chaos.

She listened to his family story with well-veiled disinterest (even if they were as attractive as him, they were nowhere to be seen and thus irrelevant), but she tilted her head curiously when he acknowledged the futility in telling her off. It sounded as though that might have been why he came over after all, but he appeared to have thought better of it.

Smart man.

"Judging by the look, I'd say it doesn't feel too warmly about you either. It goes down just fine for me." Before he could point out that she was drowning hers in orange juice, she pulled the bottle toward her, and, in as womanly a way as possible, took a drink straight from the bottle, coming out smiling. To be fair, she was both half-alcoholic and half-immortal, so she had a certain advantage, but he didn't need to know that.

"Tell me anyway?" she pleaded, much closer to sultry than desperate. "Then we'll be even. Satisfy my curiosity, if nothing else, and then I shan't keep you any longer, if you take no pleasure from my company."

The hint of hurt was well-hidden enough to come across as genuine (as it was, perhaps surprisingly), if he cared to find it. Outwardly, though, all she did was smile and ooze confidence as usual.

[Jared Howard.]

Oh, did he ever notice the looks he was receiving from everybody else. Luckily, Jared was used to attention in general; he was undeniably attractive, had been since he was a kid, plus he'd been on the football team during school, competed in a few motocross competitions whenever he could and was all together from a brood that generated an unusual amount of interest from the public. He let her take the bottle back easily, as if they were in a bar and not the cafeteria.

His expression after was a mix of admiration for the strength of her stomach and one of polite bemusement that masked reproach. The only thing he could think about was that if he ever caught, or knew of Peyton doing something like this, he'd wash her mouth out with Windex and that shit did not go down well at all.

"Vodka's a Russian drink. It can hate me, I don't care," he commented, like Russia had anything to do with this, but it was clearly a family quirk to go off topic randomly. Not that she would know that, of course, and he was opting not to elaborate.

"Southern Comfort, on the other hand," he said instead, his smile indicating a certain kind of fondness only found between a man and his drink, which similarly, could include a man and his car/sports/fishing spot.
At her prompt to say what he had come to say anyway, Jared merely shrugged. There was really no point to it, she didn't care; those who did things for entertainment rarely did.

"I know what you did to the teacher before. I saw you. It's not always gonna work, you know."
His tone was mild and conversational, seeming like he wasn't stating a fact at all; which he wasn't, he was simply just imparting something that he thought was inevitable. Something always went wrong.

[Alvah Akana]

Alvah gave a slight laugh at hearing Jared's apparent opinion of Russia. She was not too fond of the place herself (it was far too cold for tanning, and having to speak the language made her gag), but she found their drink to be most enjoyable. She half expected him to go on some rant about Communists, but happily found out that was not in the cards after all when he moved on.

"Mmmm," she said, nodding her agreement with his verdict on SoCo. She picked up her orange juice plus and swirled it around. "Creamsicles in alcohol form, who could ask for more?" She wasn't sure if he would understand her, but she figured if he liked the liqueur as much as it sounded like, he'd be aware of the trick; chasing Southern Comfort with orange soda to get the orange creamsicle flavour she so enjoyed.

Her reminiscing and wondering was interrupted by his proclamation, vaguely "I see what you did thar" in feeling, but somehow not at all threatening. In fact, she simply shrugged it off, accompanied with the literal movement.

"If I thought it was going to work every time, there would be no fun in doing it," she explained. On top of this, but unsaid, was her belief that chaos will reign supreme in the end, order being a temporary thing. She played with order to further her own agenda, but accepted chaos fully in the end. If things went wrong, well, that would just make her day.

[Jared Howard.]

"I normally drink it straight or with amaretto," he commented, shrugging. This was in no way influenced by the Brand New song, 'Soco Amaretto Lime,' which he heard when he was 17 and subsequently spent the night before and of his graduation the next year, pissed as all hell from that particular combination, singing; 'I'm gonna stay eighteen foreverrrrrrrr,' at the top of his lungs at every given opportunity.

The moment of slight nostalgia passed quickly, and he spent another thinking about what she said.
Was she implying that she did things in order to get caught, but if she didn't, it suited her fine? Jared was unfortunately born with the affliction of being male; he was intelligent and particularly astute, but even something as simple as the motivations of a female baffled him still. Maybe it had nothing to do with him being a male and her being a female; maybe he just couldn't comprehend why someone wanted to cause trouble. Because it was fun, came to mind, and he snorted slightly because he still remembered a few years back when he could afford to be as young as he was, getting up to no good with the people closest to him. You didn't need a best friend with a family like his; he missed that, he realized.

"Hey, it's on your head," he said, tone not a brush-off.
"So what are you, a student here or something?"

[Alvah Akana]

Alvah lit up at the mention of SoCo and amaretto, and the gesture, for once, was genuine. If she had to pick one redeeming quality of the otherwise essentially flawed human race, it would be the fact that they revelled in music and alcohol.

"Passed out on the overpass, Sunday best and broken glass..."

Warmth that had nothing to do with copious amounts of alcohol prevailed, and there was stained-glass windchime laughter with no hint of spite; bright, colourful, and tinkling. She seemed to become aware of the oddity of this, though, and stifled the sound politely and with tact, going so far as to offer a barely-there apology.

She caught his snort, and having no other explanation for it, coupled it with his next utterance and came up with a brush-off in spades, regardless of intent. The subsequent question, though, convinced her it was more along the line of wanting to change topics, and she let him. More questions brought more answers she was sure he would enjoy hearing.

"I am not," she said, and nearly left it at that. "The Gifted ones are simply marginally more interesting than the normal ones."

Her summary of the entire human race, without even bothering to footnote her present company, was a large part of her personality. If the whole world were populated with powerful, chaotic immortals, she would have very few desires left unsatisfied. However, the mortal stain was not one she could simply remove with some chemicals and a little elbow grease — she had tried such things, and for once the humans managed to outlast her, their sheer numbers outweighing her impatience.

So, for the time being, she revelled in the small disturbances, the little joys in life.

[Jared Howard.]

Despite the negative response he received to his question, the girl suddenly breaking out into that song had him cracking his biggest grin. He even laughed with her and waved away the apology. He had liked Brand New since the very beginning; Jude Law And A Semester Abroad was still the song for every ex-girlfriend, especially the very first. The music brought about him a sense of sentimentality that he normally only reserved for the important days of his life, which honestly, were few and far in between. Her apparent appreciation for the song at least, was met with a candor in expression he hadn't displayed before, even if it was only for a moment.

"Okay, so maybe that's how I started drinking it with amaretto," he admitted, not sheepish at all but instead in good humor. He wanted to say more on the topic, like perhaps inquire as to if she'd ever seen them live or no, but something more pressing was on his mind; Jared was anything but a bad brother, a fact he always tried to live up to.

"Have you been here a while, though?" he asked her, nothing particularly urgent in his voice but something suggested there was a purpose about him. He wondered why it had never occurred to him before to ask around about his sister's whereabouts; probably because he had always preferred to give the benefit of the doubt in spite of knowing just what she could get up to.

"I'm looking for my sister, you see," he explained, in a way that was casual rather than revealing closet freak who was prone to arrests and trouble in general.