99 Bottles of Beer {EVELYN}

[Trisha Morello]

A frequent sequence of events: Trisha feels depressed, Trisha sells some things, Trisha gets money, Trisha goes to bar, and Trisha gets sloshed. It had become a weekly routine - at least five times a week, she would make her way to the local bar and drink away her misery. Well, actually, she didn't quite drink it away. For some reason, her misery only seemed to intensify with each drink, encouraging her in some sick sense that she needed to drink more to feel better. What a vicious cycle. But it's not like she tried anything to change it. She just continued on with her meaningless existence, spending what little money she had on alcohol.

It had become such a routine that the different bartenders at Finley's tavern knew the girl's face well. They would see her come in with her shoulders slouched and they knew exactly what that meant. While she could sometimes be a handful if anyone approached her and stepped on her toes, they weren't exactly going to turn away her cash. Any money was good money, right? Even when it came from a miserable bitch.

Trisha had been in the bar for about an hour now and she was finally starting to feel the effects of her drinks. She usually just stuck to the cheapest beer in the joint - no point in getting all fancy when all she wanted was to get drunk. She wore her usual black, baggy, homeless-inspired attire and her hair was in an uncombed mess. But she didn't give two shits... obviously. Trisha was on her... maybe seventh beer when the bartender came over to her with a sympathetic smile on his face. She sneered at him as he offered her another beer on the house. She simply rolled her eyes and took it. She hated it when people gave her hand-outs, but she wasn't about to turn down a free beer.

"Don't you have, like.... school or something to go to?"

She looked at him like he was daft. "Do I fuckin' look like I go to school, Jimmy?" She scoffed and rolled her eyes again before taking a deep swig of her new beer. He sighed before walking away. "Mind your own fuckin' business," she muttered softly into her bottle. She rested her elbows on the bar and propped up her head with one hand, slouching with an unflattering waste of space.

[Evelyn van Buren]

It was early in the day, too early for her to be here, which was exactly what Evelyn intended.

As she pushed open the door and entered Finley’s, she was relieved she'd changed out of her previous attire into something cozier. Yet despite her tastefully frayed Seven jeans and grey hoodie, several of the bar's patrons looked her over with something like disgruntled curiosity. She took the attention to mean she hadn't completely succeeded in blending in.

It was difficult though, to keep up with human fashion trends. Evelyn's own taste had always been fairly feminine. She’d never understood the appeal of jeans. Not only were they uncomfortably tight against her legs, but they restricted her ability to run.
She wondered what would happen should she need to change forms...did denim rip? Or would her Lycan form end up suffocated and squished to death stuck inside a jeans leg?

She shuddered and moved toward the bar, reaching up to run her fingers distractedly through her hair and rumpling it up intentionally. Ordering a beer, she straddled a stool and glanced around while she waited for the barman to return.

It was fairly deserted this early in the evening. Evelyn was relieved. This was quite possibly the last place anyone would think to look for her. Just like her apartment - leased under a fake name. It was nice to be able to disappear entirely for a change, even if it was just for a couple hours.

She released a slow sigh, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the bar top and rest her forehead in her palms. Her head ached; in fact, her whole skull ached with exhaustion. She hadn't been running today. The ache came from constant waves of stress and anxiety and fear, always fear. Fear that at some point, her convoluted planning would crumble, that Viktor would find out just how ready she was for all-out war, fear that somebody would realize she'd been in constant contact with rogues and had taken risks with bribing them to cause chaos. Fear that the more she ensnared herself in this game of politics, the less likely she was to make it out alive. And above all, fear that her antics might get her kicked out of her own pack.

Not all of her endeavours had ended well. Just recently, there had been a shootout at the zoo, brought on by recklessness on the part of a gang of Lycan rogues she'd been meeting. They'd led a pair of hunters right to the designated meeting spot. The result had been disastrous. Half the aquarium exhibit had been flooded, the lions had been let loose and the only Lycan to make it out alive had been Evelyn. Less than two months before that, she'd been shot and wounded from yet another run in with hunters. The bullet had only grazed her side.

She knew her luck was running out. Sooner or later, the silver bullets she'd been avoiding wouldn't miss their mark. It was like a noose closing around her neck and she refused to die quietly. Yet again she'd started the hunt to find potential rogues she could use for her purposes. But she was being more cautious now. A reckless rogue was one she couldn't afford.

She knew it would be so much easier to just drop everything and give up the idea of a war. But every time she entertained the idea, her mind flashed back to those horrible moments in her past where she'd been cornered and beaten to near death by a coven of Vampires. Where she'd watched so many of her own pack - not Viktor's - die mercilessly. Vampires had little honour, she'd realized too late. Double-crossing and breaking peace promises came easily to them. Her former pack had had an understanding with a group of rogue Vampires - but one of the Vampires had leaked the Lycans' location to a band of outsiders. Her pack had been overwhelmed.

And so she'd dedicated herself to playing dirty. It seemed to be the only way to win.

The thunk of a beer mug on wood jolted her out of her tired stupor. She realized she'd been staring dully at the shelves behind the bar. She accepted her drink and took a long, slow swallow, choking slightly. She was a wine drinker and cheap beer was difficult to keep down.

"Do I fuckin' look like I go to school, Jimmy?"

Evelyn jerked in her seat, and her head snapped around. She hadn't realized shed been so caught up in her head that she'd missed the familiar scent. Her stomach dropped. Why, why of all the damn bars in New York, did she have to come to one with a Lycan? Couldn't she just get away for an hour?

Her eyes landed on the girl seated a few stools down. She looked like a college kid. A college kid gone severely bankrupt. Her scent was so obvious now, and Evelyn was almost alarmed at how distracted she'd been. She'd practically dulled her senses down to nil. That could have cost her.

This Lycan was a rogue - her olfactory sense told her that. The girl's blood reeked of the queer, bitter stench of too much alcohol. Evelyn's nose crinkled even as she wondered what would push a Lycan to this extent. As much as she didn't give a damn about Rogues, this one looked very young.

Despite her wish to detach herself of Lycan business, Evelyn found herself leaning slightly toward the girl. "Hey," she said warily. Her voice was brisk, unfeeling, simply matter-of-fact. "You know, he isn't paid to babysit you. You have somewhere to go before the leeches come out? Because they'd love a piece of you."

[Trisha Morello]

Trisha didn't even take notice to the woman who entered the bar and took a seat a stool or two away from her. She was left staring at her beer bottle. She was trying to figure out how many more it would take for her to get completely obliterated. How much money did she have? She didn't have too much, but she felt she had enough to get happily drunk. Of course Trisha wasn't a happy drunk. She was just a miserable drunk who aimed to make everyone else around her miserable, too, because she was too miserable to try and fix her own misery. But she wasn't at the point yet where she started shouting insults at everyone around her. So noticing the people who came and went was later down the line of drunkenness.

It wasn't until the woman said something to her that Trisha even registered her existence. The fact that the woman was a werewolf was lost on her for a few moments, her senses having been dulled from the alcohol and the fact that she was really only scraping the surface of her abilities. Her senses were noticeably stronger, but the main thing she noticed was her increased metabolism. The only reason she noticed was because it took her a lot more alcohol to get drunk because her body processed it so quickly. She used this to her advantage, too, when she was drinking with a bunch of burly men. She would challenge them to a drinking game and she would always win, getting about $100 out of it. And what exactly did she put that money toward? More drinks of course.

Trisha turned her head to the side slightly as she looked over the woman. She was really pretty and it made Trisha want to scoff and laugh at her. Little did she know it was just bitterness that forced her to feel such adversely toward the woman. Her eyes narrowed slightly in confusion as she tried to dissect the woman's words. She didn't quite understand them at first and she was certain, in an instance, that the woman was trying to insult her, but she then realized what she was referring to. So Trisha scoffed.

"Like they bother me..." she sniffed in emphasis. "From what I noticed, the only thing they are worried about is their hairline." Not that Trisha has had too many experiences with Vampires. As a matter of fact, she really hadn't run into any of them. She just drew on what she'd heard about them.