maskormenacelogs | 'cause i'm just holding on for tonight

[still a kid. but one with the smile of a piranha. you know, if piranhas could smile rather than having their faces fixed permanently in a toothy D-8. he cedes her space quite easily, letting his arms fall beside him.]

Filmed, [he says.] One time, man. [he flips a finger. just his forefinger.] For glory and the greatest cause of all. Hey.

[his eyes glitter. he juts his chin at the bag.]

[ Sarah doesn't particularly care whether he filmed Sarissa once or one hundred times. It's all the same.

She follows his gaze to her bag and frowns. ]

What?

[ She could be doing many things in this part of town, Kavinsky. ]

[indeed. backpacks are often favored by college students, couriers, hikers, hackers who target open wifi at starbucks, hipsters, and the list does go on. kavinsky smiles at her, serrated.

and lands on the wrong idea entirely, but maybe it's better than the right idea, technically?]

Got any x? Or acid? [he looks at her expectantly. hopefully.] I got some blow if you wanna trade. Or you can stay nipple-sore about whatever with Sarissa. But she doesn't give a fuck. [mild exaggeration. she might give half a fuck. slightly less. she might have at least preferred to conduct her experiments in private.] Not like she was gonna tell you about it if I didn't put that shit up on the Internet either. Check it. 'Pros' column getting longer.

[sarah no.]

Sarissa's an adult. She can do what she wants.

[ She can't help but scoff at his confidence in asking her for drugs. It's something she might have done at his age, so she can't even be that mad about it, just slightly amused, as she adjusts the bag on her shoulder and moves to walk past him. ] Oh, trust me, kid. What I'm carrying is too heavy for you.

[she could not possibly have said a more enticing thing. kavinsky had little self-preservation instinct even when he was in his homeworld, his superpowers confined to dream thieving. now, with invincibility in addition to everything else, he's uh.

crazier than ever i guess.

one skinny arm shoots out in front of her, his hand slapping up on the wall. it wouldn't be too hard for her to duck under. however, in that split-second that his arm brushes her shoulder, he lets off a brief shimmer of projective empathy. in general, kavinsky is incapable of real happiness. but he does occasionally get excited about things! like really, really unimaginably hardcore drugs. and there's a spurt of ill-advised adrenaline there just for her.]

Try me, [he says.]

[ Sarah's about to duck under his arm and keep on going, but then the adrenaline hits her and she stops, giving him a twitchy smile despite herself. It would be sort of fun to show this guy what she's got, but shit, there are rules to this kind of thing. ]

Piss off. What are you, sixteen? I don't play with kids. [ It's the one thing she won't do, and she knows Jesse wouldn't like it, either. ]

I'm nineteen, [kavinsky lies.] Got held back in school. [he smiles like a shark, crossing his arms on his chest. he studies the look on her face. he's like a hundred percent sure now that she's carrying fun pills. fun powder. something fun.

for a fairly creative person, he's not very imaginative. (she's right though: jesse wouldn't like it. but he's lived with kavinsky's dumb ass so far; he can live with a slight increase in the ambient stupidity.)]

Look. I'll share too. Be fun. You wanna see music or monsters, I got both.

[ That makes her pause, looking him over with a curiosity that she can't entirely hide. The smile's still on her face, but now it's fading a bit, because Sarah is suspicious by nature, and she's especially suspicious of this shark-grin kid whose idea of fun is showing somebody a monster. She's already dealt with enough monsters in her life. ]

What's that mean, then? You gonna make me hallucinate? That's your thing? [ Even after all these months, she can't bring herself to say power, but it's clear that's what she means. ]

[kavinsky watches the suspicion filter back into sarah's face. his eyes narrow with amusement, and he shrugs up a shoulder.] Relax, sweetheart. I leave that shit to Charles Xavier and whoever else the fuck. I just make my own product. Uppers, downers. Hallucinogens if that's what you're into.

[he usually doesn't, actually. but he'll try anything once, or five times. being invincible means that courage works different to how it does for ordinary people.]

How you Brits say it? [he squints.] 'Swap.' [optimistically, he reaches out to snag one of her bag zippers between forefinger and thumb.]

You make your own shit.

[ Sarah slaps at his fingers, not enough to hurt. She's a little impressed, a little nervous, but the nervousness feels more like excitement right now. She glances around, quick, to see if anyone's watching them, and then she unzips the bag herself. ]

Tell you what. I'll give you a sample size. Swap. [ She reaches in, feels for something, and then pulls out a single stick of gum, still wrapped in foil. ]

[the boy's eyes fall to the gum. one black eyebrow arches high on his forehead. skeptical. disbelieving. his stare cuts to her the next instant, suspicious. he doesn't mind being made fun of that much, as a general rule, but he doesn't like to be made a fool of when it comes to drugs. drugs is his thing.

but he can play it off. he puts a smile on, sudden. nonchalant. i give no fucks, the smile says. if this is the joke i'm in on it. and thus, in on it, he reaches over to grasp the stick of gum. when his thumb brushes roughly over the edge of her hand, there's another psychic thrill. messy joy, a safe haven to retreat to, away from anxiety and rage and everything else that makes bad children tick.

in the meantime, he haphazardly runs a quick, furtive psychometric scan over the gum. his control tends to be sporadic, though; he's as likely to get empty static as the truth.] And what's your poison, princess? [he asks, distractedly.] Pick a class or a color.

[ He'll notice that the gum doesn't feel like a stick of gum—it's the slightest bit heavier, and the foil wrapping feels more like plastic. He won't be able to sense much, since it's spent the last while in the safe under Sarah's bed and then in her bag, but there might be the sense of movement and the vague sounds of voices, Sarah's and other people's, though they're muffled and difficult to make out.

Sarah, meanwhile, is smiling, both because of the thrill she's feeling and because she can tell she's pissed him off, and that makes her... kind of happy. In an immature, punk-on-the-run way. Should be bad, but somehow it isn't. ]

Something that'll feel good, make shit not matter so much. And something that'll make me sleep and not dream.

[what the fuck is this, kavinsky wonders, interested. but also irritated-- mostly with his own powers, their limitations. he suddenly wishes he had telepathy. fyi he should definitely never have telepathy, that would be horrible for the entire universe tbh. but heavier than gum implies not gum, and that much is reassuring. kavinsky's expression smooths out into a smile, but it's only partly for that discovery, as he weighs the goods in his hand.

mostly, he likes her request. a woman after his own black heart.

he doesn't look at her backpack anymore. which probably means he's still curious, but going to put off prying for at least a little while.]

You wanna go somewhere right now?

[ Sarah answers him before she can think too much about it, because she's good at not thinking about things like this, but also because a low, animal part of her knows that if she spends more than a second contemplating her answer, it'll end up being "no". ]

Sure. What the hell, let's go somewhere.

[ She's assuming he knows a place. This isn't her city.

If Kavinsky checks out the stick of gum again, he'll see that it doesn't look like gum anymore, at all. It looks like a tiny plastic baggie, maybe dimebag sized, with bright blue meth inside. How classy is that? ]

[that

is so classy. kavinsky does look down for an instant, and then he just sort of goggles for the instant after that. that's brilliant. he reflexively clenches his hand shut on the bag the next moment, stuffing it into his pocket, managing to look pretty nonchalant about it. he still looks like a sketchy white boy because-- kavinsky's appearance is permanently stuck like that. but he's not half bad at getting away with the devil's work.]

Do strip clubs offend your sensibilities?

[his accent ruins it a little, but he tries for the affectation a moment-- a prissy twist to the words, laughter in his eyes. he takes a step back.]

Strip clubs?

[ For a second she's caught off guard. But she's already just agreed to get high with a teenager, and provided him with drugs, so what the hell, making this situation even seedier can't hurt. Too much. She shrugs and motions for him to go ahead. ] Lead the way, then.

[kavinsky does as requested. it's not so trivial a trip, as it turns out-- they're heading all the way out to maurtia falls. fortunately, one of the porter agents seems oddly amenable to letting them through with no paperwork. she might hear the name dropped: satya. it's not a connection that kavinsky takes advantage of often, but he's wont to show off, a little, and furthermore

he's curious as to what sarah's instincts will have to say about petyr baelish's establishment. kavinsky had heard when the club finally opened, more than a month ago now. however, he had been disinclined to immediately jump in, both feet, especially with something like an actual arms transaction. this seems like a nice way to test the waters. a couple pills and drinks from sarissa's paranoid twin-face mother-character sounds good.

they turn up at a strip club called the iron throne. judging from the height of kavinsky's eyebrows on his face, it's his first time here too.] The guy's kinda old school, [he offers to her, shrugging sidelong.] Alternative universe probably a psycho on a horse old school. Don't puss out on me now. [a wink, and then they push into the establishment.

which has a lot of velvet and candlelight, you will be interested to know! a very aesthetic skeeze.]

[ Sarah rolls her eyes when Kavinsky tells her not to puss out. A strip club might not be her first choice, but she's been around enough naked and nearly-naked people for it not to faze her. The interior of the place, with its velvet and candles, has her making a face, though. Aesthetic skeeze is right. Still, it'll be worth it if what Kavinsky's trading her does what she wants it to. ]

Nice place, [ she comments as she looks around, catches the eye of the woman working the bar, and holds eye contact for a few seconds before turning back to Kavinsky. ] You know the owner?

Yeah. [kavinsky is less interested in the women on display, at work, and more in the way that sarah looks at them. interesting. his eyes crinkle a little as he studies her profile, long enough to gauge the chemistry between her and the other woman. but then he's shrugging, nodding.] Guy named Petyr Baelish, [he says.] He's oldschool.

This shit is his aesthetic. [he jerks his chin at the floor. and then starts toward the private rooms in the back, waving at the nearest suit. he introduces himself-- a couple brusque words, and apparently he matches his description enough to warrant entry into a private room. a bouncer holds the door open for them and everything. kavinsky cocks his head at sarah.]

You want one of the girls? Or bottle service, some shit?

Bottle service is good, yeah.

[ She enters and takes a seat, watching Kavinsky carefully. This is so weird, and she feels off-center, not sure how she got to this place. Figuratively. She's too blunt for her own good, sometimes (a lot of times), so she comes right out and asks him about it. ]

So what the hell's with this, eh? Why do you get special treatment?

[kavinsky puts in their request for bottle service, and then surreptitiously checks his wallet. he isn't sure how far baelish's generosity extends, and it would be quite embarrassing for him to come up short.] Friends in low places, sweetheart. [satisfied that he has the cash, he heads into the private room.

there's a small stage, lit with light that simulates fire. couches draped in embroidered fabric, dense pillows. kavinsky drops his skinny frame down, and then pulls out a ziplock of lurid green pills from his pocket. he occupies himself digging one out.] You got an employer? [he asks.] Work for Jesse Pinkman, something like that?

[ Jesse's name catches her off guard, though she masks it fairly well and busies herself looking around the room, taking in the surroundings, and finally settling her gaze on the green pills Kavinsky's holding. She's glad she vetoed getting one of the girls in here. Having this conversation while a stripper watches them would make her way too uncomfortable. ]

Jesse's my friend, but you're out of your mind if you think I'm gonna tell you he's my boss. [ Which... isn't a denial of the fact that he's her boss. Technically. ]

'cause i'm just holding on for tonight

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powerpose, let me know if not OK and i'll go back and edit this!

a-okay!

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up to you if the psychometry works <3

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<_> do you mind if i play a little loose with timelines to make the pieces fit? +travel powerpose

not a problem!

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