[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Lowering the Bar [Avalanche/Skystone/Cassandra]

[Cassandra Cassidy]

The Sherriff deflated. Butch broke away from staring in awe at Ava long enough to notice. She reached into her pocket with one good hand and slid a twenty onto the bar.

"Chin up," Butch said. "It can't be that bad if she took half of it. Leave the Jack Daniel's with us, please." The Sherriff frowned.

"But it's a full - "

Butch took out another ten, slapping it on top of the other bill. Her hand slowly pushed the money further onto the bar, eyebrows going up with a stern look. The Sherriff tried to say something, mouth opening and closing, and put down the whisky. "Okay then," he said, taking the money and gathering up his ingredients before walking away. Butch reached for the bottle and pulled the top off.

"I can't believe you drank half of that," she said. "Here, dump that out. You can't go wrong with Jack's." Passing the bottle over to Ava, Butch eyed her own drink, considering it. She glanced over at Ava's glass, then back to her own. Hesitantly, the cleaner reached out, picked up her shot, and tried to down it.

She ended up choking and gagging, some of the drink coming out of her nose. Butch fought back what she could from shooting up the way it came, putting her hand over her mouth. Gagging into her hand, the woman slammed the shot glass back down on the bar, trying to breathe. She gave a hard swallow, trying to snort out what felt like kiwi seeds at the same time.

Ava asked if Butch was dating anyone. Butch had to take a moment to smack her lips and clear her throat, hoarsely replying, "Nope. You?" before reaching for a napkin holder. She blew her nose and wiped at her face, blinking back tears. Some people were laughing in the background, probably because of her.

[Avalanche]

It was fascinating, the way the barman reacted. She knew that humans couldn't mass shift, but she'd have been prepared to swear he walked away several inches shorter than a moment before. The brief altercation over the bottle was wholly lost on her; they were in a place that sold alcohol, they wanted to buy the alcohol, what was the problem?

At least she understood that drinking the dreadful concoction without turning a hair had scored her some points, in Butch's eyes. That was a game she knew well. Pity that it was effectively cheating, but faced with the total impossibility of explaining why, she simply took the win and moved on.

The look on Butch's face, though. That described the taste in all the ways that Avalanche's own holo was inadequately equipped to. Oh, and humans could expel toxic liquid from the nasal openings! That was new. Though perhaps they weren't meant to; Butch sure didn't seem to like the experience. Avalanche grinned, as traditional drinking protocol dictated when a friend was suffering through a bad drink, and picked up her own half-glass.

"To the death of your throat lining," she said solemnly, then poured the remainder of her drink into the dry soil around a rather sad, yellowed cactus in a pot. Keeping an eye on the plant in case it actually reacted, she looked back at Butch, shaking her head.

"No, not for a while. Long while." And wasn't that understating matters. Still, there was one femme that had turned up in her memories lately... and she could probably translate the story safely. "There was this one woman," she began. After the farce that had been choosing her own 'human name', she'd taken pains to gather a better list of culture appropriate names, and drew on it. "Her name was-" Subcommander Rotor, "-Rebecca. She hated me. We were part of the same military structure. I outranked her by a step, but she was in a different command chain."

Avalanche picked up the whiskey, refilling her glass, and sipped from it. The vague impression her holo picked up hinted that the flavour was at least less muddled and overwhelming than the ill-fated cocktail had been.

"She thought I was a brute. I thought she was a priggish, stuck up pain-in-the-ass. She did everything she could to sabotage me. Blocked equipment requests, sent letters to higher officers questioning my capacity. But the worst thing about her was that I was really attracted to her. Slim. Elegant. Intense eyes. She had green-" plating. No. Hair? No. "-eyes. Every time we met, I watched to punch her and kiss her."

Avalanche shook her head, with a wry grin. "We got drunk together. Argued. Found out she felt the same about me. Shared a bunk, a lot of times. Never stopped hating each other. The things we called each other when we were together. But it was good. Intense. Never had a relationship quite like it. We lost touch. I still miss her, sometimes. Though I'd stop missing her the instant I saw her face."

[Cassandra Cassidy]

Butch propped up an elbow, curling her hand into a fist and leaning against it. She was still trying to blink and clear her eyes out, but Ava's story was followed well enough. Butch frowned as Ava described the tumultuous relationship, expectant whenever she paused. Though the awkward stilts weren't unnoticed, Butch didn't point them out otherwise.

"I'm surprised you managed to hide it," Butch said. "'Don't ask, don't tell' was a bitch, or so I've heard. Or was it an open secret, and you kicked the ass of anyone who made a complaint?"

Ava seemed like the type. There was no doubting in Butch's mind that the woman could break a man in half and fold him into a paper crane. The cleaner's thumb ran over the side of her lower lip, the woman dipping into quiet thought for a moment.

"I've had some...interesting flings in my time," Butch said. "Nothing satisfying. No one I'd want to settle down with. I'm married to my job - it wants me day and night, and who am I to say no?" She made an amused sound, then took her glass and starting pouring her drink into the cactus. She paused after the first few glugs, frowning, then dumped the rest back into the pitcher. The cactus looked like it couldn't take another hit of whatever the hell The Gulch was serving.

"If you met her again - if she'd changed at all, in that time you were apart - do you think you'd try again, with her?" Butch asked, once again propping her head up. Her eyes flickered over to a small, raised stage in the very back of a bar, where someone was setting up a mic. The stage had the backdrop of a barren desert scene, with barrels off the side and cow skulls mounted on the edges. Another, healthier-looking cactus sat at the right-facing part of the platform. Butch hoped it wasn't a real one, especially with all the booze flowing.

[Avalanche]

Hide it? What in the Pit was 'Don't ask, don't tell'?

Avalanche steeled her expression to avoid giving away her confusion as she tried to decode what Butch could be talking about. Were officers forbidden from having relationships together? Or was the rank gap the problem? The fact they were in different command chains?

Of the three, only the first sounded even half-way plausible. Don't ask, don't tell... some kind of institutional blindness where they wouldn't interrogate their soldiers about their relationships and the soldiers had to hide them? That was a terrible idea.

Playing along with the misunderstanding was just too risky. Selecting the native word for their governmental subdivision with care, she said evenly, "I wasn't in this country's military. Though you're right. We didn't advertise it, and anyone that thought they could cause me trouble over my personal life, I'd cause them trouble."

Avalanche took a small mouthful of the amber liquid in her glass as Butch went on, vaguely wondering how it tasted to the human, then nodded her understanding. "Mostly flings, too, for a long time now. Same reason. What I was doing always had to come before my personal life. Not that that's true anymore," she added, belatedly remembering that right now she was pretending to be a travelling dump truck driver, "but the habit of keeping yourself above it all sticks."

Glancing at the cactus with a small inward flicker of sympathy as Butch added to its alcohol poisoning, Avalanche's expression became thoughtful as she truly considered the question. Was Rotor still alive? Probably not, not by now. If she was, would she have been promoted by now? If they'd been the same rank, would they have gotten on better, or only butted helms more violently?

"Doubt I'll ever run into her again," she said after a moment, with a small shake of her head. "I'd fall back into her bed in a heartbeat. But it wouldn't work, not for that long. Without something else to keep both of us busy most of the time, we'd tear each other apart. I can't imagine her being so different that we wouldn't grind each other's nerves. It was intense because we truly couldn't stand each other. No idea what it'd look like between us without that tension."

[Cassandra Cassidy]

Butch didn't answer at first. She looked at Avalanche with a small frown, pursing her lips. Her bad hand came up to slide into her fist, Butch rubbing them together. Silence fell between the two.

"Reminds me of someone I once knew," Butch said. The woman then reached out, clapping a hand on Ava's shoulder. Her movement was a little wobbly - maybe the drink was kicking in? - but she looked at Ava with conviction. "You're not missing much. The rush was good, yeah, but you two would've ended up killing each other. Trust me."

She nodded, and went back to staring at the pitcher of doom that still sat in front of them. Butch gave it the stare of someone whose brain was trying to reset and continue the question. She pulled her hand away a few moments after, sharp and quick - a fog began to come over her brain. Her body was starting to forget where hands and feet were supposed to go.

Butch rubbed her face, pulling at the sides of her face and blinking. "Christ almighty," she muttered. "I haven't had something like that since I was twenty-three." She grabbed the whisky and poured herself a shot, then downed it. Butch made a small face and a sound of content.

"That's better. So, when you weren't breaking bedframes at night, what other interesting things did you get up to?" Butch asked. "I imagine Friday nights on base were a riot. One guy I talked to once used to chase people around with a whip while yelling, 'Yeehaw, motherfuckers!' in a parking lot. I'm assuming either booze was involved, or the MPs didn't care. Not sure if he was telling the truth or not."

[Avalanche]

It felt... odd, to have someone else tell her that she really hadn't lost very much by being parted from Rotor. Of course, she'd just said herself it couldn't have lasted, and wouldn't work if they somehow ran into each other again, but still...

Avalanche frowned slightly, gazing down into her glass, then sighed and nodded. Outside in the parking lot, there was a subtle hiss of air as she vented, drawing a glance from a passing trucker as he made his way back to his cab. There was a growing sloppiness to Butch's physical movements which slightly concerned the big femme, but seeing as the human couldn't be unaware of it, she didn't dare call it out in case it was too common to be commented on. Reminded her a little of the way some mecha took to high grade.

She cocked her head at the other woman's muttered comment, without the slightest idea of how to estimate her current age from her appearance, or even how much that stretch of time might mean to one of the natives. It was enough to guess that it was a significant amount of time to Butch, and she'd had a relationship as rough and disastrous as her time with Rotor. Her holoform met Butch's gaze, and she murmured, "Sounds like you've been through it, too."

Butch's next question was... harder to deal with. It had been a long time ago; the details had eroded with time, and almost all the things she could remember from that time in her life involved rack-smashing or active warfare. The anecdote about 'Yeehaw, motherfuckers' was utterly lost on her, and all she could do was nod in faked recognition as she took another gulp from her glass.

Swirling what was left around the bottom of the tumbler, she looked up and to the side as she thought. A story from back then...

"Back when Rebecca and I were at each other's throats and in each other's bunks, there was a regular game for officers. There were enough of us to drink a bit, gamble a bit." Of course, they were drinking high grade, and gambling shanix that were more or less worthless by then. "Ro- Rebecca and I didn't even try to hide how much we hated each other. We'd bid up the bets against each other, took bigger risks, pushed harder. Wasn't any good at gambling; never have been. She won more than she lost, utterly insufferable with it. Really pissed me off."

She shook her head, a smile touching her lips that was more fond than she realised. "Couple of people actually guessed we had something going on, just from watching the games. Anyway. One night, I was winning for once. And then the general alarm went off. Everyone charged outside, expecting the worst. Corner of the garrison was on fire."

Avalanche sighed, a little unsure of whether she'd used the right word, or whether she was successfully translating things to human norms. Her brows drew together in remembered annoyance. "Damn fools had decided to play 'explode the inflammables' with some mostly empty containers. Dragged them out one by one, leaving a lovely trail of liquid back to the fuel dump. Once they set off the fire, it ran back like a fuse, blew up two major storage tanks. Those-" she groped for an appropriate human word, "-assholes were from several squads, some from mine. They are still on my blacklist. Couldn't make them suffer enough, but I did try."

[Cassandra Cassidy]

"How were they still alive?"

Butch's eyesbrows had hiked high at Avalanche as she finished her story. The cleaner helped herself to another shot of whisky, tossing it back. A little voice in her head was screaming don't do it, but Butch brushed it aside. Even with company, the aim was still to get as drunk as fuck.

"I mean...the debris alone.... I can't imagine that an explosion of that size didn't blow out some windows or throw some bricks." Butch shook her head. "I hope you turned those idiots inside out. It sounds like you did. They are fucking lucky they didn't take out more than that bit of the garrison. I mean...I've heard of military boredom, but who the fuck - "

She shook her head, made a sound of derision, and rubbed her face. "God. I thought it was bad when teenagers play with firecrackers. That - I don't know how you would even explain that to whoever was in charge. 'Oh, the boys decided they wanted to blow things up today, here's your morning coffee and a bagel.'"

Butch adjusted herself in her seat, wobbling. One hand gently pressed against the bar to help steady the cleaner. The other went to the whiskey, picking the bottle up and offering Ava a pour.