Katja tilts her head, still smirking. It's not an incredibly nice smirk, but it's hard to keep the nice in her face when she's not terribly practiced at doing so, and when something is telling her to stick him now, just do it do it do it do it. "What, no rebuke? No witty comeback? Tch, come now, clearly you've either had too much or not enough."
She hooks an arm around his shoulders, very literally dragging him into the street, other hand still wrapped around the syringe. Bit by bit, she forces herself to let it go -- she can find it again, later, once they're seated somewhere or at least not in the middle of the street. Car horns blare at them, she shouts a few Russian obscenities back, and flips a few of them off. Well. At least her hand's out of her purse, now.
"I know exactly where all my chickens are, Francis," she continues as they approach the other side of the street. "And they're out cannibalizing your chicken coop. My chickens are mutants. So perhaps instead of putting skates on your feet, your suggestion of a standard night is the better route for you to take. Sans hockey, because the fuckers have to take breaks and all." Katja knows she doesn't make sense. Whatever, her Mark's drunk as hell, so it doesn't really matter, right? She could say just about anything and he probably wouldn't remember it in the morning. Or, if he did, she could convince him it wasn't what it sounded like. Either way, she's banking on that to cover her current evening plans.
"More it is then," Francis says, raising his eyebrows at the woman. He's got no issues leaning on her. If she's going to enable him, drag him to another bar, Katja is his best friend right now. His drunk mind doesn't register the heat, but the closeness hits him so hard. He wants to write it off as being drunk; he's never really felt this way before, and her skin is so warm, and the scent of her perfume is alluring. It's hard to struggle or say no; he's entranced, and the sound of her voice... Her words are slipping past him, so fast. He's just listening, kind of lost. She really is beautiful. In so many ways.
He doesn't want her to let go. Francis wants to stay like this for a while, leaning on her for support. Which is bullshit because he shouldn't need support. Not from anyone. But. Still.
"Right," he says simply, not even sure what she said at all.
Francis has no idea what's going on. But it's such a clear distraction from his one-track mind that he will indulge himself for now.
Wow, he really is drunk. No banter back, nothing snarky, and he can barely stand up. Part of her is wondering how fun it would really be to stick him while he is, essentially down, because really, at this rate he's poisoning himself and that kind of takes the fun out of it. A little bit.
A larger part of her is screaming at the proximity, telling her to get her hands around his throat, get the syringe out of her purse, hold his head, sink it into the corner of his eye slowly...
She gets both of them to the other side of the street without putting her hand back in her purse to reach for the needle, and considers this a monumental feat. A feat to be proud of. After all, how many Charun can bodily drag their Mark around after not seeing them for weeks without having a go at snapping their neck? Not that Katja would snap his neck, really. That's just crude and brutish.
"More it is indeed, sir," she says, her voice perhaps a little too enthusiastic. Whatever, she can blame it on the drunk. "Maybe this time I'll even buy you the good stuff, even though you're in no state to appreciate it. Would you be able to tell rubbing alcohol from whiskey at this point? I wonder if that would make much of a difference, anyway, what it would do to a man. Maybe we should find out sometime, mmm? I think it sounds like a wonderful idea." Yeah, at this point she's just saying words to fill up the rest of the walk down the block. Even if it's more of a jog than a walk; by now she's pretty much powerwalking them down the sidewalk, jabbering away.
She swings him bodily into the bar, smirking a bit as they stumble through. "Honey, we're ho-ome!" she shouts into the bar -- it's not as if more than five people notice anyway, as rowdy and crowded as the place is already. "There, see, you sit there and I'll go get us drinks," she tells Francis, letting go of him and shoving him toward a booth. "Kick out whatever poor, unfortunate sap is already there, that's ours now. Bar brawl or no bar brawl, we are having a drink."
With that, she's stalking off to the bar with the desperation of those who've just lost close family, are alcoholics, or want to kill their drinking buddy. Guess which Katja's is? Three tries and the first two don't count.
He can't remember when they got near the bar exactly, but then she's talking about alcohol, and that's a conversation he can get into.
"I sober up quickly," he slurs. If he could just bring himself to pull away from her, that might be a much easier argument to defend. But right now, he's comfortable, and if she's willing to drag him around, he's not about to complain. Well, if he were sober he'd definitely be complaining. "n' if you're buyin' the good stuff, I'll sober up even faster to 'preciate it."
Especially if she's buying it. Francis can't even begin to imagine how lucky he is there there's no way he's going to remember this night in its entirety. It's just going to be one more night lost.
By the time she's manhandled him into the bar, the archangel's sobered up enough to take her directions properly and remove the man from the booth, pressing him (quite forcefully) towards a group of college girls. He's lucky he didn't start a fight; the last thing he needs is to get kicked out of yet another bar tonight. He gets comfortable in the booth, resting his elbow on the table, watching Katja saunter over to the bar.
Katja returns a moment later scowling, with a wet splotch of beer down one side of her shirt. If Francis had been watching, which he probably was, he might have seen that the guy what did that to her got a pointy-toed shoe to the junk, and is now curled up on the floor cursing Katja. And here she did that without spilling the drinks. Kind of. Okay, her hands are a little soaked and there's a bit less alcohol in the cups, but one has to keep up one's badass meter somehow, so she's just going to say she didn't spill a drop. She drank those, what are you even talking about?
"Well, here's hoping you've sobered up, шарик пера, because this here is the finest of Russian beers available in Amerca," she says, plopping herself down into the seat next to him and plonking the glass in front of him. "Oh, you could get better were you to take a short hop overseas and all, but I've not yet met someone who would do that sort of thing anyway. Not just for a beer. Drink up, drink up!"
Do it, Francis. You don't know how hard she had to resist slipping something in that. You may not be so lucky next time. ...or in the next five minutes.
Questioning the woman who just kicked a man in the crotch, Francis knows, is generally a bad idea. So Francis isn't going to mention the missing beer at all, nor the wet spot on her shirt. They're trivialities. He also really shouldn't've found that endearing. Not one bit. But the badassery is half of the reason he likes hanging out with Katja. He can't stand women who are pushovers.
"Sober enough to enjoy it, at least," Francis says, taking his beer from her. "And I'm not sure how serious you're being, but I think a beer is definitely worth the cost of plane tickets." He holds the glass up, giving her a grin before knocking a good portion of it back.
Katja smirksmiles at him, downing a good portion of her cup before replying. "See, this is why you're a good drinking buddy," she says, slamming the cup down on the table like it was a shot, never mind the amount of alcohol that's still in it. She leans over to Francis, the smirksmile now a full out, rather predatory grin. "Most people wheedle and give me the 'mighty expensive glass of beer' line like they're the first one that's ever said it or like they're even funny, you know? Besides, I don't find it funny unless someone gets hurt, anyway, and people don't tend to like that sort of humor." She waves the hand previously holding her glass over toward the guy on the floor.
Her other hand is straying back toward her purse. Soon. Very soon. Let him finish his beer and then he's done for the night. Or, well, perhaps not done completely, but he'll certainly be in too much pain to drink much of anything else. Or move for a good long while.
"One of those, 'heard it a million times' things?" Francis asks, raising an eyebrow at Katja. "Yeah. Those get old. Fast."
He knocks back more of his beer, grinning at her stupidly. Her company is really something incredible. She's just. So. Perfect. Only, totally not an archangel. Which is such a pity. She'd make a great addition to his family.
Hell. He must be drunker than he thinks to be thinking about stuff like that.
"And yeah, things are definitely a lot funnier when people get hurt," Francis muses, running his finger along the rim of his glass. "That, right there, was a comedic masterpiece, although it could have used some blood."
Poor guy. Buy him a couple of beers and some vodka and you've got a friend for life, judging by that grin. This is probably not true, but it's not as if Katja knows who else he spends his time with or anything. She doesn't stalk her Marks. She merely keeps an eye on their whereabouts -- and never mind that this one disappeared for awhile. She was in her lab. Doing experiments, and nobody informed her that her Mark decided to take off, other than that twinging feeling of need in her chest. Well, that just told her that she didn't know where he was, and she should, but if Katja is anything, Katja is not a stalker.
She is, instead, downing her beer again, a few more large gulps. "Could've, I s'pose," she says, looking at the guy staggering to his feet, then around at the crowd (who seem to have mostly lost interest), then basically anywhere that's not Francis because she's a little concerned that if she looks at him again he'll get a syringe in the eye. Besides, she wants to see how far her self-control can go before she snaps. Probably not much longer, really. "Though the old adage of he won't be able to have children after that is probably true for tonight, at least; can't see him wanting to do much with that with it all bruised like so. Sharp pointy things to the nads do wonders for a girl's self-esteem. It's why these ridiculous things are the best to wear to a bar." She might have plopped her foot up on the table, now, just to show off the ugly things she's wearing on her feet. These fuckers weren't even orthopedic. Just pointy.
Lots of people have bought Francis beer, Katja. Lots of people. But you are the first he's actually attached himself to. It's kind of cute, the way he grins at her, if he weren't so creepy, in his Francis sort of way.
The grinning has moved to the shoes at this point. There really is something to say about inventive weaponry. "That's brilliant," he says, nodding slowly reaching for his beer again. It's disappearing far too quickly, but he's at least sober enough to enjoy it. He's resting his weight on the table, not entirely able to support himself still.
"...I'm going out of town for a couple of days tomorrow, but maybe next week we could hop a flight to Russia," he says, nodding slowly. Dear lord, Francis is actually thinking this through.
Katja twitches her foot back and forth, admiring the shoe. It's a very green pointy shoe, at least, but that's about all she can really say about it. She just liked the pointy, and green was the lesser of a few evils; had they had the things in red, she would have been all over that, even if it did make her look like an evil Dorothy or something like that. Anyone who called her that would have gotten one of the ruby slippers to the FACE.
She gives Francis a very, very weirded out look at that, like he just sprouted fungus out of his eyes or something. Fungus out of his eyes that she didn't put there, that is. And really, after a brief moment of what the flying fucknuggets? she'd go into curious scientist mode at the fast-growing mushrooms and want to take samples, never mind how that would hurt her poor Mark's feelings or look incredibly suspicious to the police.
"Much as I'd love to go back to the motherland, ангел, work's got me tied to the lab except on nights and weekends," she says. Not that she doesn't spend her weekends in the lab anyway, and even some nights. If there's one good thing to say about working at the HQ to end all HQs, it's that her resources are nearly endless, and the lab is a biochemical terrorist's dream come true. If only it had built-in vending machines. The things she could do with candy bars. Other than eat them. Though eating them would be nice, sometimes, especially after five hours of separating chemicals.
Speaking of chemicals...
She slips her hand back into her purse, digging around for the syringe -- aha, there it is. That comes out of the purse to be set between it and her leg, and she takes another swig of beer, feigning contemplation. "But maybe I could persuade some friends back home to send me something," she adds. "We're quite good at getting unmentionables through the mail, especially if said unmentionables are illegal to mail. You'd be surprised what sort of things you can send through the mail given the right amount of money and the right sort of innocuous packaging." And a few other tricks of the trade, like using the O's couriers instead of the mail, but that's usually not reserved for beer or random homemade bombs that aren't business-related.
It's hard for Francis to notice the weird look. Because Francis right now is fixated on how adorable she looks weirded out like that. She's so spontaneous. He likes that. Then again, he hasn't found much he doesn't like about Katja. He probably wouldn't be into the whole poisoning Charun thing, but he's been oh so oblivious to all of that so far.
She's saying words, and he likes that too. He hears that she's available on nights and weekends, and naturally his thought is that they can go to Russia on a weekend. Drunk with Katja seems to have given Francis a very, very one track mind. He's going to regret tomorrow if he remembers any of tonight.
But then she's looking away, and he really wants to blame the alcohol. "Or we could just go on a weekend," he murmurs, reaching out to touch her chin, leaning in for a kiss. The heat doesn't register. It should, but Francis is so fixated. And so drunk.
And so in love with the woman who wants to kill him.
Katja is about to answer Francis for half-a-second before she notices exactly what is going on here. What. What the fuckery is this? Why the bloody hell do all the guys wind up trying this on her?
She doesn't really think, just reacts. Her first instinct is to grab him forcefully around the throat, shove him backwards, get him away. Her second -- and it's only second in that it came a millisecond afterwards, is to grab the syringe and jam it into the first part of him it comes into contact with. Which happens to be his shoulder.
In another few seconds the syringe is drained. Katja's now a bit farther away from Francis, still holding onto him by the neck and suddenly looking decidedly like she wants to snap said neck, all pretense of friendliness gone. She wants to crush his windpipe, wants to empty all the rest of the syringes in her purse into him, but no. No. Savor it, she's telling herself, watching the realization that something hurts dawn on Francis's face.
By now his muscles will have started seizing up -- not enough to immobilize him, but enough that it'll cause him considerable pain for awhile until the paralysis sets in.
She hooks an arm around his shoulders, very literally dragging him into the street, other hand still wrapped around the syringe. Bit by bit, she forces herself to let it go -- she can find it again, later, once they're seated somewhere or at least not in the middle of the street. Car horns blare at them, she shouts a few Russian obscenities back, and flips a few of them off. Well. At least her hand's out of her purse, now.
"I know exactly where all my chickens are, Francis," she continues as they approach the other side of the street. "And they're out cannibalizing your chicken coop. My chickens are mutants. So perhaps instead of putting skates on your feet, your suggestion of a standard night is the better route for you to take. Sans hockey, because the fuckers have to take breaks and all." Katja knows she doesn't make sense. Whatever, her Mark's drunk as hell, so it doesn't really matter, right? She could say just about anything and he probably wouldn't remember it in the morning. Or, if he did, she could convince him it wasn't what it sounded like. Either way, she's banking on that to cover her current evening plans.
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He doesn't want her to let go. Francis wants to stay like this for a while, leaning on her for support. Which is bullshit because he shouldn't need support. Not from anyone. But. Still.
"Right," he says simply, not even sure what she said at all.
Francis has no idea what's going on. But it's such a clear distraction from his one-track mind that he will indulge himself for now.
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A larger part of her is screaming at the proximity, telling her to get her hands around his throat, get the syringe out of her purse, hold his head, sink it into the corner of his eye slowly...
She gets both of them to the other side of the street without putting her hand back in her purse to reach for the needle, and considers this a monumental feat. A feat to be proud of. After all, how many Charun can bodily drag their Mark around after not seeing them for weeks without having a go at snapping their neck? Not that Katja would snap his neck, really. That's just crude and brutish.
"More it is indeed, sir," she says, her voice perhaps a little too enthusiastic. Whatever, she can blame it on the drunk. "Maybe this time I'll even buy you the good stuff, even though you're in no state to appreciate it. Would you be able to tell rubbing alcohol from whiskey at this point? I wonder if that would make much of a difference, anyway, what it would do to a man. Maybe we should find out sometime, mmm? I think it sounds like a wonderful idea." Yeah, at this point she's just saying words to fill up the rest of the walk down the block. Even if it's more of a jog than a walk; by now she's pretty much powerwalking them down the sidewalk, jabbering away.
She swings him bodily into the bar, smirking a bit as they stumble through. "Honey, we're ho-ome!" she shouts into the bar -- it's not as if more than five people notice anyway, as rowdy and crowded as the place is already. "There, see, you sit there and I'll go get us drinks," she tells Francis, letting go of him and shoving him toward a booth. "Kick out whatever poor, unfortunate sap is already there, that's ours now. Bar brawl or no bar brawl, we are having a drink."
With that, she's stalking off to the bar with the desperation of those who've just lost close family, are alcoholics, or want to kill their drinking buddy. Guess which Katja's is? Three tries and the first two don't count.
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"I sober up quickly," he slurs. If he could just bring himself to pull away from her, that might be a much easier argument to defend. But right now, he's comfortable, and if she's willing to drag him around, he's not about to complain. Well, if he were sober he'd definitely be complaining. "n' if you're buyin' the good stuff, I'll sober up even faster to 'preciate it."
Especially if she's buying it. Francis can't even begin to imagine how lucky he is there there's no way he's going to remember this night in its entirety. It's just going to be one more night lost.
By the time she's manhandled him into the bar, the archangel's sobered up enough to take her directions properly and remove the man from the booth, pressing him (quite forcefully) towards a group of college girls. He's lucky he didn't start a fight; the last thing he needs is to get kicked out of yet another bar tonight. He gets comfortable in the booth, resting his elbow on the table, watching Katja saunter over to the bar.
...he really needs another drink.
He's going insane.
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"Well, here's hoping you've sobered up, шарик пера, because this here is the finest of Russian beers available in Amerca," she says, plopping herself down into the seat next to him and plonking the glass in front of him. "Oh, you could get better were you to take a short hop overseas and all, but I've not yet met someone who would do that sort of thing anyway. Not just for a beer. Drink up, drink up!"
Do it, Francis. You don't know how hard she had to resist slipping something in that. You may not be so lucky next time. ...or in the next five minutes.
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"Sober enough to enjoy it, at least," Francis says, taking his beer from her. "And I'm not sure how serious you're being, but I think a beer is definitely worth the cost of plane tickets." He holds the glass up, giving her a grin before knocking a good portion of it back.
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Her other hand is straying back toward her purse. Soon. Very soon. Let him finish his beer and then he's done for the night. Or, well, perhaps not done completely, but he'll certainly be in too much pain to drink much of anything else. Or move for a good long while.
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He knocks back more of his beer, grinning at her stupidly. Her company is really something incredible. She's just. So. Perfect. Only, totally not an archangel. Which is such a pity. She'd make a great addition to his family.
Hell. He must be drunker than he thinks to be thinking about stuff like that.
"And yeah, things are definitely a lot funnier when people get hurt," Francis muses, running his finger along the rim of his glass. "That, right there, was a comedic masterpiece, although it could have used some blood."
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She is, instead, downing her beer again, a few more large gulps. "Could've, I s'pose," she says, looking at the guy staggering to his feet, then around at the crowd (who seem to have mostly lost interest), then basically anywhere that's not Francis because she's a little concerned that if she looks at him again he'll get a syringe in the eye. Besides, she wants to see how far her self-control can go before she snaps. Probably not much longer, really. "Though the old adage of he won't be able to have children after that is probably true for tonight, at least; can't see him wanting to do much with that with it all bruised like so. Sharp pointy things to the nads do wonders for a girl's self-esteem. It's why these ridiculous things are the best to wear to a bar." She might have plopped her foot up on the table, now, just to show off the ugly things she's wearing on her feet. These fuckers weren't even orthopedic. Just pointy.
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The grinning has moved to the shoes at this point. There really is something to say about inventive weaponry. "That's brilliant," he says, nodding slowly reaching for his beer again. It's disappearing far too quickly, but he's at least sober enough to enjoy it. He's resting his weight on the table, not entirely able to support himself still.
"...I'm going out of town for a couple of days tomorrow, but maybe next week we could hop a flight to Russia," he says, nodding slowly. Dear lord, Francis is actually thinking this through.
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She gives Francis a very, very weirded out look at that, like he just sprouted fungus out of his eyes or something. Fungus out of his eyes that she didn't put there, that is. And really, after a brief moment of what the flying fucknuggets? she'd go into curious scientist mode at the fast-growing mushrooms and want to take samples, never mind how that would hurt her poor Mark's feelings or look incredibly suspicious to the police.
"Much as I'd love to go back to the motherland, ангел, work's got me tied to the lab except on nights and weekends," she says. Not that she doesn't spend her weekends in the lab anyway, and even some nights. If there's one good thing to say about working at the HQ to end all HQs, it's that her resources are nearly endless, and the lab is a biochemical terrorist's dream come true. If only it had built-in vending machines. The things she could do with candy bars. Other than eat them. Though eating them would be nice, sometimes, especially after five hours of separating chemicals.
Speaking of chemicals...
She slips her hand back into her purse, digging around for the syringe -- aha, there it is. That comes out of the purse to be set between it and her leg, and she takes another swig of beer, feigning contemplation. "But maybe I could persuade some friends back home to send me something," she adds. "We're quite good at getting unmentionables through the mail, especially if said unmentionables are illegal to mail. You'd be surprised what sort of things you can send through the mail given the right amount of money and the right sort of innocuous packaging." And a few other tricks of the trade, like using the O's couriers instead of the mail, but that's usually not reserved for beer or random homemade bombs that aren't business-related.
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She's saying words, and he likes that too. He hears that she's available on nights and weekends, and naturally his thought is that they can go to Russia on a weekend. Drunk with Katja seems to have given Francis a very, very one track mind. He's going to regret tomorrow if he remembers any of tonight.
But then she's looking away, and he really wants to blame the alcohol. "Or we could just go on a weekend," he murmurs, reaching out to touch her chin, leaning in for a kiss. The heat doesn't register. It should, but Francis is so fixated. And so drunk.
And so in love with the woman who wants to kill him.
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She doesn't really think, just reacts. Her first instinct is to grab him forcefully around the throat, shove him backwards, get him away. Her second -- and it's only second in that it came a millisecond afterwards, is to grab the syringe and jam it into the first part of him it comes into contact with. Which happens to be his shoulder.
In another few seconds the syringe is drained. Katja's now a bit farther away from Francis, still holding onto him by the neck and suddenly looking decidedly like she wants to snap said neck, all pretense of friendliness gone. She wants to crush his windpipe, wants to empty all the rest of the syringes in her purse into him, but no. No. Savor it, she's telling herself, watching the realization that something hurts dawn on Francis's face.
By now his muscles will have started seizing up -- not enough to immobilize him, but enough that it'll cause him considerable pain for awhile until the paralysis sets in.
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