multiversallogs | i wrote this song while i was drunk

Entry tags:

i wrote this song while i was drunk

Who: Jae and you.
What: Sorting his head out, getting back to work.
Where: Various places around town, including bar hopping and slice of life activities in Creekside, at work at the Vault, Anarchy 99, and the radio station, and at a temple in Brock Marsh.
When: Over the next week.
Notes: Would you like to bump into Jae somewhere? Note the location/vague timeline in your tag and it shall be so.
Warnings: Unpleasant thoughts about rape culture, drug use.

In the aftermath of attempting to help Megan and his encounter with Hilmi, Jae has a difficult time processing the series of events as things that happened to him - because things haven't happened to him. Things happened to Megan. Sure, if you hit a vanity with a sledgehammer, it's not just the glass that's cracked, but he's still not the fucking mirror; Jae's reeling from the turbulence. So is everyone else who knows (well, maybe not Sonja) and everyone else who will know - and more people will react to what Jae did, and so on, and so on, like ripples, because every time anyone does something violent or cruel, the whole of their world feels it. Society didn't become soulless overnight. It took a hundred million weeks like these and now, even when people feel the backlash, they don't seem realize it.

It's normal.

(It's horrible.)

Jae buys a couple of tabs at the Vault before his shift and rolls all the way through it. If there's one thing he appreciates about Baedal, it's that so much more is perfectly legal (or at least, perfectly unregulated), and the ecstasy (or space ecstasy) he can get is pure, none of this shit cut with coke or speed like he had to worry about back at home. It's a good night for everybody, which is fortunate; it's always good when he works whether or not he uses any enchantments, but this week, he's not even letting his subconscious do anything - he feels like there's a great gaping wound somewhere intangible inside him, and the stitches keep splitting. He just doesn't want to bleed anymore.

While he's been made one of the floor staff family with ease at the Vault, his experiences at Anarchy 99 have been more - well. It caters to dwarven metal. Still, there's a fair amount of enthusiasm for his style ("Just put some more INXS on it"), and when one of the waitresses asks him what happened that one night with Hilmi (because he hasn't come back), he just shrugs. Jae isn't sure if he should be feel fortunate that she's the only one who noticed they walked out back together, but while some of the girls liked Hilmi, some of them really didn't, and she decides to interpret that shrug as him having done everybody a favor. The notion of it makes him uneasy - but it's not like he can correct her and not lie, so he just stays quiet, and thinks about the same thing he thought about that night. That if somebody comes to arrest him, he'll just go. The notion of being locked up is like a suffocating nightmare at the end of a long and dark hallway on his head, but what's even more terrifying is the idea of becoming the kind of person who wouldn't take responsibility for doing something awful. (He'll ask Ilde for Sonja's number, he decides. He'd rather apologize to her than the police, and he knows enough about the military to know speaking to someone's commanding officer is as good as.)

Too much liquor, long nights, and investing in a pill cutter; Jae almost feels human again, losing himself in work. The radio station is a hilarious disaster, but he likes his boss, as much of a lunatic as she is. That he's at the bottom of the ladder again makes him feel like even more a child, stumbling over himself and his magic and his emotions as he is in this strange place. But there, it's not as bad. He hits the bar across the way from his flat in Creekside, he buys groceries and a new pair of sunglasses, and then he comes home ("home") and lays on the floor and stares up at the ceiling and pretends his head spins because he's been drinking too much.

He doesn't sleep for two nights, and then spends the third up and reading the book that appeared in the arrival room with him. It's the first time he touched it since he shoved it in the back of his closet when he moved in. The next evening, he goes to one of Shada's temples in Brock Marsh, and doesn't do anything beside sit quietly in the back.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Steph has been all over the city in the last few days looking at apartments to rent. She's found a few potential places and narrowed the list down to two in Skulkford, one in Brock Marsh and one in Creekside, which is why she's there tonight. She'd headed over to check the place out after work and after deciding that Creekside is a little further out of the city centre than she'd like to be, she'd crossed the apartment there off her list.

Living in the room at the Inn has started to get to her, shifting between restlessness and loneliness even though she's got plenty to do and a few people that she likes spending time with. But she's never been good at just calling people and asking them to hang out so when she walks past a moderately busy looking bar in Creekside on her way to the El Train stop, she decides to go in for a drink and some socializing rather than heading straight back to the Inn.

She's barely inside when she notices Jae -- he's hard to miss with the white hair -- and she recognizes him from Megan's party. Normally she'd go over and say hi regardless of any ulterior motive, but right now she does have one. Or two. She'd tried to contact Megan earlier in the week and gotten no response, which had seemed a little odd considering that they'd discussed Steph coming to see Megan at the Vault; Steph had sent her a text to ask what time Megan went on. The second reason is that Jae looks kind of... sad, and Steph wants to do something about that, even if it's just giving Jae some company.

So she goes to the bar, orders a glass of white wine - because she'd feel out of place not drinking and wine is less likely to get her drunk than a mixer is - then heads over to where Jae is.

"Hi," Steph smiles, her expression something between friendly and that look of curiosity that comes from recognizing someone but not actually knowing them, "Were you at Megan's party the other week?"

Sadness is a subjective thing, from the outside - Jae doesn't notice Stephanie approach, lost in his own thoughts, and so when she gets his attention he blinks a bit, mildly startled to have someone approach him, and whatever fugue of a mood was upon him evaporates. Maybe he was just spaced out - not unusual for someone drinking alone.

"Hey," he says, smiling because he recognizes her. Jae'd gotten very drunk very fast at Megan's (something that lurks unpleasantly in the back of his head, now), but he's good with faces. "I was, yeah. I don't think we ever managed to cross paths - Jae Kim." He extends his hand.

"Steph Brown," she shakes his hand, her smile widening, "You must be the Jae I was supposed to ask about the blue alcohol."

It's unlikely Megan knows more than two people with the same name (even if they spell it different) and this Jae looks more likely to know about alcohol than the other Jay.

He laughs at that, because it's accurate and because of course that's the reputation he's earning already. "That's me," he agrees, amiable, and then stands up halfway to nudge the barstool next to him out a bit, so Steph can sit down without hauling around any furniture. "It's nice to meet you. And about the blue alcohol - I don't advise having any if you want to be functional for the rest of the evening, my professional opinion is that it's some kind of industrial-grade spacecraft fuel that just happens to have a sugar aftertaste."

"Thanks," she hops up onto the bar stool and takes a sip of her wine. "It's nice to meet you too."

"Good advice, I managed to avoid it at the party but I had the unfortunate experience of holding back the hair of a girl who did drink some." One day Steph will learn what is and isn't appropriate for public conversations, but it's not today.

"The requirements of the service..." Jae shrugs, gesturing in a c'est la vie sort of way. (What service, Jae? The galactic army of social drunks? Possibly.) "You'd think, somewhere, there would exist a culture against poisoning themselves for recreation. Bad decisions done in good faith are multi-universal, it seems."

Because every club, bar, and house party in Baedal is diverse as fuck, in his experience. It was jarring at first, considering his failing determination to stay away from the supernatural community at home - and he's still not totally comfortable with it, even if he's progressed leaps and bounds in his weeks since arriving. He's always been adaptable, even if the anxiety that coils in his chest every time someone looks at him like he might be different than normal hasn't alleviated. (He thinks about how he ended up having to tell Megan about his magic, and starts scheming his next cocktail.)

"Isn't that what straight edgers are? Although maybe Baedal hasn't kidnapped any of them, it seems fond of it's parties." She realizes belatedly that she has no idea if Jae's world is anything like hers - he might have no idea what straight edge means, but she figures she'll just explain if he doesn't.

Steph has mixed feelings on the party scenes in Baedal. Her initial reaction had been a Batgirl one, which was to attempt to stop the drug trade, but she'd realized things worked a bit differently here so she just resigned herself to trying to make sure no one got into too much trouble on her watch.

"People underage don't count," he says, bemused, and maybe in that thought there's a bit of a culture-clash, but it's more to due with Jae's experiences country-hopping than his entire world. (His accent is present, but puzzling - faint and hard to pin down to a region.) To his mind, 'straight edgers' are the particularly mean young teenage boys in the American high school he briefly attended, who wore skinny jeans and eyeliner and were awful to their girlfriends. "I live in London, at home. All the derivatives fail once you see the real punk rockers, you know? Though people like to say nothing is authentic, anymore."

Spoilers: Jae is not a hipster. He likes most everything, regardless of whether or not he heard it first or last.

"You're on our cohort, right?" Our meaning he and Megan, presumably.

"I've met one or two over twenty one," She wonders if Bruce counts; but that's more ~dedication~ to the mission than anything else, "I've only been to London once, and I don't think I saw any punk rockers, but I get what you mean."

Steph's taste in music isn't very developed, mostly she listens to riot girl with a not-so-secret fondnss for the crappy 90s girl bands she grew up on.

"Yeah, that's how I found out about Megan's party. I didn't know her before then." It'd been a first time in a while she'd just gone to a party, but it had been a good way to meet people.

Being a DJ who works both on radio and in clubs, Jae's tastes are broad, and his favorites are a bit more diverse than one might imagine, looking at him. After a strict childhood that focused on communist ideals and Confucian values, music (and art, and poetry, and...) has been something he's clung to, fascinated.

"How've you been doing, being here?" He takes a sip of his drink, maybe contemplative. "I don't usually see many other new people out this far."

It seems like they all cluster together near the arrival inn. (Which you could not pay him to go back to.)

"Pretty good, I guess. The person who let me outta the arrival room helped me get a job, so I've been focusing on that," Well, that and being Batgirl, but that's definitely not a topic for polite conversation, "I was looking at an apartment nearby, but I decided against it."

Because of the exact reason Jay said - it's too far out.

"I guess it's an acquired taste," he admits, of Creekside. "It's kind of a pain getting to work, but it's good for hangovers." The quiet area and easy access to all these little shops and markets, he means. There's breathing room, which he sometimes desperately needs - he keeps wondering when it's going to ease up, when he's going to fully relax after the horror of being trapped in the arrival room, or fix the turmoil in whatever metaphysical center of him is off-balance now. Maybe it's not going to happen.

"-Can I get you anything else, by the way?" He's already raising a hand, lazy, to get the bar tender's attention, having drained the drink he was working on by now.

"Normally I'd like it, but I wanna be more central for now," She's used to the quiet of suburbia, but Batgirl needs the high rises and dark alleys that the city centre supplies, "Where d oyou work?"

She shakes her head, her wine mostly neglected, "I'm good, thanks anyway." She used to drink a fair bit, when she was younger and more reckless, but since starting the vigilante thing she's pretty much given it up.

Jae nods, and just orders something for himself. Someday, he'll find a way to cope with his anxiety that is not 'dull everything with chemicals'. That day is not today. "I have nights at Anarchy 99 and the Vault, and I work at the KBS building in Kinken," he says - it sounds like a lot, but with his club jobs at one night a week each, it's actually pretty light. "Weekends, if you listen to classical 3am until the morning talk radio, that's me."

Riveting, truly - and a somewhat funny contrast, since as the clubs he's listed cater to dwarven metal and public sex, respectively. (Ah, show business.)

"You?"

Edited 2012-01-21 08:38 (UTC)

"That's a varied workload, I'll have to tune in next time I'm up at 3am," which is surprisingly almost... every night, considering she easily stays out that late, "Is that how you know Megan, through the Vault?"

She gives a little shrug, her work isn't nearly as interesting, "I work at the TMU library, and I'll be trying to start a bit of a seamstress business when I get settled in an apartment."

It might be a bit too much to take on, but she's kind of paranoid about running out of money.

"Mm, I actually met her when I first showed up." She'd been endlessly sweet to him, and hadn't given him shit about how nervous he was about the entire ordeal of coming to Baedal. Jae doesn't understand how people can pop into that room and just be calm about it - but clearly they're better at handling shit than he is. (He never thinks clearly they've never been a prisoner, because what the hell does he know?)

"Seamstressing? That's pretty cool. There's a lot of recycled clothing stores, I get the impression there's not much in the way of fabric production here." So: a good market.

"She'd be a good person to give the welcome speech," Steph's impression of Megan is that she's ridiculously friendly, and not everyone has experience with weird time travel and different universes, so having someone like Megan greet them would probably be reassuring.

"Yeah, my talent lies in making old and/or thrifted clothes look respectable, so I figure I'll at least get a little work," She'd taught herself to sew because she got embarrassed turning up to school in clothes that came from thrift stores; they never fit right and she'd wanted to fix that.

"She would." He smiles there, plainly fond, though there's an undefinable quietness to it, not quite bright and bubbly like one might associate with thoughts of her. Jae takes a significant pull from his drink before he begins again.

"Hey, I might have to hit you up once you start," he says, and means it - he sticks his arm out to show her the cuff of his blazer, which, on closer inspection, has damage that's been tacked up under his own skill. Not bad, but only efficient, versus flawless. "I'm only just kind of skating by on some of my pieces."

That sparks her curiosity, because it really isn't quite the reaction she'd expected and it reminds her of why she'd wanted to talk to Jae in the first place, "Speaking of, have you talked to her recently? I sent her a couple of texts last week, but never got a reply."

She does make a closer expection, spefically the color of thread used for stitching and making note to pick up a similar shade next time she's at the haberdashery store, "I could definitely manage that. I'll be making a network post once I'm set up, probably within a week. You can be my first customer."

Clearly that would be a great honor.

With the practiced grace of someone who's spent a significant chunk of his career being a professional conversationalist, Jae seamlessly buys himself some time by looking pleased over the notion of being her first customer (and it is a nice thought, because community is important) and taking another swallow of his drink.

"She's been under the weather," Jae says, of Megan. "She took a couple days off work."

He doesn't consider for a heartbeat telling Steph why Megan's really missing in action. If she wants to tell people, then that's her business; it isn't Jae's to tell. Not to anyone, not even the police, unless Megan asks him to, no matter what he might think or feel.

Still-

Jae rubs his thumb along the rim of his glass, absent. "Post-party hangover check?" Or was Stephanie texting her for another reason?

"Oh, that sucks," It's an explanation that makes sense, Steph wouldn't want to be answering CiD messages if she was sick, "I hope she feels better soon."

She might think about sending another message later, to ask Megan if she needs anything. Steph's never been much of a cook, but her chicken noodle soup is up to scratch, and it's the ultimate cure-all, in her opinion.

"I was gonna go to the Vault and see her dance, I'd wanted to check times and stuff." If Jae hadn't just given the explanation, there might've been a hint of disappointment there - no one likes being ignored - but as it is, Steph won't hold it against Megan.

The immediacy of Steph's acceptance and her lack of irritation makes Jae feel better; she seems like a genuinely nice person, and he's not getting any secretly an evil sociopath fae monster vibes off her. It's good.

"Her show's great," he agrees. "When she's back up to speed, you should definitely come see her." There's a dessert cherry jammed onto the end of the useless stirrer straw in Jae's drink, by now soaked through pleasantly with liquor - he eats it and sips the rest of the mix, ice clinking around pleasantly. "I've been trying to drop by often enough to make sure her cat gets fed and she hasn't fallen off the face of the earth," he continues. "She can be a little spacey."

"I'd like to. Clubs like that aren't usually my scene, but Megan made it sound like a lot of fun," Steph is... fairly vanilla, but not easily embarrassed, so while she wouldn't go to the Vault usually, she won't be uncomfortable there either.

Watching Jae eat the cherry reminds her of her own drink and she takes a sip, nodding in agreement at the spacey comment, but her voice doesn't hold any judgement, "That doesn't surprise me. Do you think she'd be up to company? I'm good at playing mom."

It's said with a smile, even though it's kind of depressing that she had to be the parent in her household.

Jae doesn't engage at anything at the Vault (both because he's an employee and it would be unprofessional, and because his privacy issues are so tweaked being here they're off the fucking chart and there's no way he's hooking up with anyone just yet), but he can appreciate the aesthetic and allure of it even without participating as a client. Art and entertainment comes in all forms. It's nice to see people enjoying themselves, too.

And then-

Well. Maybe it's disingenuous of him, to enable Steph to go see Megan under obscured pretenses, but some part of him is relieved that the blonde-haired girl volunteered. (And on her own, at that.) "I think so," he says, sounding thoughtful. "She might appreciate somebody poking their head in besides me - I'm probably getting weird by now."

It's a longshot, but maybe Megan could use a girlfriend.

"Are you the big sister?" At home, presumably.

"Sounds like a plan, then. I'll go grocery shopping and pick her up some comfort food," She doesn't even hesitate over the idea of spending her money to look after someone else; she's only tight with funds when it's something for herself. And she gives Jae a small smile at the self-deprecating comment, "I'm sure she appreciates you looking after her."

This time it's Steph buying herself time by taking a drink, although an easy lie comes to her, "My mom was sick a lot when I was younger, and dad was hardly around, so I had to look after her."

AKA her mom was a drug addict and her dad was in and out of prison, but that's not the sort of thing she tells new acquintances.

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