girlsolo | [For Auggie] Everybody's got a hunger, no matter where they are

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[For Auggie] Everybody's got a hunger, no matter where they are

It's the fifth night since she stole Will's baseball. Five nights and he still hasn't caught her, caught up with her, he probably doesn't even suspect her and she's bored of the game. Bored of stealing but not profiting and not interested in profiting at the expense of a bunch of random strangers as stuck here as she is. What good's profit when the drink the bartender serves her is free?

That's the problem with this fucking island. Even more than Will not being her Will and Magnus being just a woman instead of a legend. None of her skills are worth a damn. She's a thief on a commune. A gun in utopia. She's not even a misfit toy. She's just a useless one.

Fuck, that's depressing. She sighs, pulls her feet up onto the booth bench, leans back against the wall and scans the crowd while she sips her drink.
*
Title and lj-cut lyrics from Melissa Etheridge's Precious Pain.

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Places are starting to get really familiar to him. The Hub is one of them - someplace he usually visits nightly just for a drink or to meet up with someone. Tonight is the former - restlessness settling in enough to get him out of the Compound for the brief walk over.

He heads over to the bar before he does anything else, ordering up a drink as he rests both hands on his cane. He'd do his own version of scoping the area out once he gets a mug in hand.

Well, there's something that's not depressing. Auggie. She only met him once and she doesn't really know what he's like without the powers. But he's hot, and nice (since when does nice rate with Kate Freelander, jesus, she's made a mess of herself), and there's a lot more to him than meets the eye.

She's curious. Will he find her, now that he can't see again? It's not in her to be a dick about it. If he doesn't come over or he finds people he knows better, she'll say hi on her way out.

Over the course of two months, Auggie's learned to adjust. It's not really as easy as it used to be to recognize people, if only because the variety of smells (good ones, even) is limited compared to home. It doesn't stop him from still being damn good at figuring out if people he knows are around.

It's the same case here. He's walking to find a seat of his own, drink in hand, when he passes by the booth when he pauses, finding himself vaguely recognizing someone near him, but he can't quite figure out who it is. At the very least, it's certainly a girl, and from everything he can hear right now, she's alone at the moment.

If he's wrong, and he doubts he is, what harm will it do?

"Mind some company?" he asks with his usual, easy-going smile.

Kate sips her drink and watches him navigate. She's still sitting with her feet up, but there's a coiled tension in her body, readiness. Habit, from working with Will. It relaxes when she sees he's good at it.

Really good. Her gaze narrows a little at how good, but he's in great shape. A lot more there than just the blind guy.

She quirks a grin as he turns her way. "Yeah. I do. Mind some company." Her grin pulls into a slow smile, voice dropping, and eyelashes dipping even though he can't see them. "But not yours."

It's her voice that finally tips him off. He hadn't seen Kate since that one weekend, but she's the kind of person he makes a note to remember. He hears the shift of her tone, and a smirk replaces his smile.

"That's too bad," he says, casually, like it doesn't matter either way. "Because I've been told I'm pretty impressive at being company."

"Yeah?" Kate pauses like she's giving him a first time once over instead of icing that cake. "I could see that."

She swings her feet down and gestures for him to sit. Then realizes again that he can't see that. "I've been told I'm pretty impressive at being company too. Guess I don't mind if you sit."

"I'm flattered," he replies, wry, as he sits himself down. Once the mug of alcohol is safely on the table, he folds up his cane so he can put it aside. He pauses to take his first swig of his drink before speaking again. "Haven't seen you in a while. Literally and figuratively. How's it going?"

"Still hate this place." Kate's mouth twists, bitter, but she shrugs it off and puts a smile on it. A little smile, a little purr, "But it's looking better about now. You?" she asks, and part of her actually means it. Not just the polite thing to say, but she actually thought about him, after the powers went away. Whether it would suck.

"It could be better. It could be worse," he replies, honest, and smiles a little despite his words at the subtle tone in her voice. He didn't know how he'd react when the inevitable happened after that weekend. Only the first day or two ended up being hard, in the face of reminding himself what he gained from the experience. "Not doing anything is probably going to drive me crazy after a while, but it hasn't hit that point yet."

"I left that point a hundred miles back at a dive bar with Bored Out of My Mind doing shots and singing Bad Reputation." Funny how the snark's about the most honest stuff she says sometimes. At least it's less fetal curl and more fuck this noise this week.

"Glad the whole powers thing didn't fuck with you too bad, though." Okay, actually, that's pretty damned honest too. Huh. Kate shrugs to herself and shifts so she can appreciate the hotness and whatever else it is about him that makes her feel a little less like cutting a seam in her skin and climbing out of it without being a jerk about it. For all she knows, he's got someone.

"Good song choice," he comments, a twinge of a smirk lifting. He gets it, though - the same restlessness he knows he'll probably have to deal with one day. He considers the comment about the powers, taking another decent swig of the alcohol he'd brought over. After a moment, he just shrugs a shoulder. "When you have nothing to begin with, it's hard to be angry when you're given something back for a little while."

And because that's way too serious a comment, especially to someone he hardly knows, he does add, "Plus, I can't complain about some of the things and people I got to see."

When you have nothing to begin with, it's hard to be angry when you're given something back for a little while. Kate frowns into her drink at that comment, thinking about it. Because getting angry about what she'd been given back, that's pretty much what she's been doing. She thinks it might depend on what it is and how much you want it, but Auggie probably wants to see as much as she wants to make up for the shit she did before the Sanctuary. As much as she ever can.

She doesn't have an answer, she decides. It's something to think about. She lets it slide off her shoulders, smirks, and asks, "Yeah, anyone special?" but she touches her glass quietly to his in acknowledgment of what he's lost again.

"Maybe a few," he replies, eyebrow raising a little. Of course he did. Half the island apparently was comprised of extremely attractive women, which doesn't hurt his opinion this place can't be that bad. "Some stuck out more than others."

Kate just bets she sticks out, like a sore thumb or a cactus in a cornfield. Island's not as white as your average small town, but she still feels exposed all the time. She could help herself by wearing more island-friendly clothes, but she likes her denim and leather and kick-your-ass chic and she's not looking to get rid of it.

She's about to say something about it when she realizes even when Auggie could see he couldn't see, frowns, takes a long swallow of her drink and then asks an actual question, "What makes someone stand out, with how you were seeing. Or now?"

She's not really fishing. Kate knows what she looks like and she's confident in it. But if a blind guy uses other senses, like Hank and Biggie, maybe she's not hot or maybe she's giving shit away about herself she'd really rather not.

"All I could really see during the weekend was the shape of a person," he admits. Kate had a nice one, he remembers, with a nice voice to accompany it. Smiling over the mug he's holding, he adds, "But without sight? That's when things get interesting. I don't know if I should share my secrets though, they are pretty impressive."

"Go on," Kate says, voice picking up a hint of a purr where the 'babe' would go, but 'babe' doesn't want to stick to him, and she hasn't come up with a nickname she likes for him yet. "Impress me." She puts a wink and a flirt, a verbal shimmy, in the beat before she adds, "More than you already have, of course."

"Already? I'm just getting started," he says with a small smirk. Leaning forward a little in his seat, he pauses a moment, as if considering her. There's a lot of things he can already guess about her, actually, but he also knows prying too deeply, especially with a girl like he assumes she is, isn't the way to go with this. "I can tell a lot about people, you know - maybe even more now than I used to be able to when I could see. For example? If I had to guess, I'd say you are extremely athletic just by how you walk. Maybe even to the point of being able to fight."

People with that kind of stride - with that kind of control over their own body - usually did have some kind of background in combat, be it with weapons or not. If he has to guess, he's leaning toward with right now, but he isn't sure enough to pin it down.

Kate thinks about that, head cocked a little like she's listening to something. Maybe she is. Listening to the weight of footsteps she knows well, trying to think if she'd make those judgments. Maybe. She definitely does off of watching people walk.

"Not bad." She smiles, tapping the side of her glass with her fingertips. "I can hold my own." Another pause, another playback, another shift of the conversation, "I'm very flexible." It's unsubtle, but there's no push in it. She'd hit that in a heartbeat but she's not desperate, just playing. "What else you got for me?" she teases, lighting it again.

"Flexible too, huh?" he muses, like he's thinking about that. "You're more impressive than I was picking up on. And that's saying a lot."

And he pauses then, considering the question, and his smile is a little more mischievous when he adds, "You find me attractive. Which I don't blame you for, by the way."

"I don't find you attractive," Kate shoots back, but there's immediate laughter in her voice and a tease in the purse of her lips. "You are attractive, whether I find you or not. Then again, now that I've found you, you're a lot more attractive. Because I'm smokin' hot."

Kate takes a long sip of her drink and wonders how to translate flashing eyes and batted lashes into Braille.

"Is this one of those things where I look better just by associating with you?" he asks, smirking now. He doesn't need her to tell him how attractive she is - the confidence she practically exudes plus what little he could see tells him that. "Because I can believe that."

Kate grins, nothing sharp or angled in it. He plays and she likes it. It's not like Hank or Will or Biggie. They play, but they won't flirt. "Nope. This is one of those things where the hotness quotient of this bar went up by a factor of ten when you sat down with me."

"Only by a factor ten?" he asks, a brow lifting, sounding mock-disappointed. "Well, I guess we shouldn't make it go up by too much."

"Ten's huge, my friend." Kate takes a long sip of her drink and then adds, "This place was seriously easy on the eyes before we got here."

Even Kate gets tired of aimless flirting eventually. She props her elbow on the table and her chin on her hand, watching him. "So where was home, before you got here?"

"D.C.," he explains as he sits back, getting comfortable in the booth seat. It's about as common a question as you can get around here, and even so, he always forgets that people might not even know what D.C. is. She comes across as someone who probably would, so he doesn't correct himself. "2011, if you're really curious. You?"

His voice doesn't sound like the Eastern seaboard but his speech has familiar rhythms. Like Feds or the UN inspectors or military higher-ups they sometimes deal with. She puts him on the Hill. Maybe a staffer of some kind. Color her curious.

"Old City, near the Canadian border." She adds that because people don't seem to know Old City. It's probably called something else in his words. "2011, for me too. Tell me you're not a lobbyist."

No where he's ever heard of, but that isn't all that surprising. Not here, not anymore. Auggie laughs at the question, shaking his head. "Not a lobbyist. Never was a fan of government bureaucracy. Computers, though? Different story. I worked at the Smithsonian, in its' IT department."

"Smithsonian, huh? What's it like to work there?" Kate thinks Smithsonian and her fingers itch. She never pulled a big museum job, but she bets she could. If they needed to get an Abnormal egg out of there or something. Like the bank they took down.

Then there's the part of her that's looking at him and thinking that body's no desk jockey. Or if he is, he spends beaucoup time at the gym.

"Ever see those Night at the Museum movies? All true. Ben Stiller included," he jokes, even leaning in a little to act like he's telling her some big secret. He finishes off what's left of his alcohol before continuing, "Seriously, though, it wasn't a bad job. I was well paid, and the work I did helped keep things running. What did you do before here?"

"Sounded cool til you got to Ben Stiller. That guy is a freak." Doesn't matter if it's true or not, she guesses, so she grins and signals for another round for both of them. If he doesn't want it, she'll drink it. "Shit coming to life in the museum at night must've been wild." Maybe that explained the body. "Kinda like my job. Private security for a global NGO."

"Yeah, he really messed up the movies," Auggie grins as he sits back, nudging the empty mug aside before he does. The mention of being security pretty much confirms just how right he'd been about his guess, and he's immediately curious about what kind of NGO she's talking about. "Your job was wild? Or are you saying you actually dealt with inanimate objects coming to life? Because I was kidding."

That he isn't actually completely joking about the second question says a lot about the extent he's willing to believe at this point since coming here.

Kate watches his hand move the mug and wonders how long it takes to get that sure about moving without your eyes. Definitely a skill worth having. She's going to talk to Declan about that. Sparring blindfolded.

His question pulls a rough snort for her. "Not objects coming to life, but I wouldn't have been surprised. We work with rare and dangerous species." She really needs to talk to Magnus about what it's okay to say here. "Protecting them from humans. Protecting humans from them." Smithsonian or not, if he's from DC, Auggie ought to be able to hear the Classified all over that.

That went beyond classified and right into X-Files territory, actually. She's just vague enough for him to take a good guess she either can't or won't talk about it if he asks more questions. That doesn't meant they aren't immediately there, especially more about this apparent species she worked with.

"So what you're saying is I was really on the mark when I said you can handle yourself," he replies, the only indication of how curious he is is a slight lift of his eyebrow. Something about blatantly prying when he's lying through his teeth about most of his own background doesn't sit right with him.

"I wouldn't want to meet me in a dark alley," Kate says with a soft smirk and pushes her fingers half across the table to touch the back of his hand before flipping hers over palm up. It's mostly an invitation for him to "see" for himself from the calluses that haven't smoothed yet even after a month on the island, microscarring from gunpowder burns, strength in the curl of her fingers and her forearm.

"Unless it was pre-arranged and there's kneeling involved." That's sort of an invitation too, but there's something about Auggie that makes it lighter, more playful and less want to get the fuck out of here? She likes talking to him.

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[For Auggie] Everybody's got a hunger, no matter where they are

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