Beer and Sympathy

Taylor hunched against the bar on her elbows, cradling her beer between her hands, and shrugged. Her downcast eyes said enough.

"I don't really want to talk about it, I think," she said, and after a moment's consideration she drained the second half of her beer all at once.

"You wanna point me to the bathroom?" She asked as she slid off her stool.

Angel wisely hushed up, her own shoulders drooping as she realized she had hit a bad spot.

She nodded when Taylor spoke up again, turning her in her chair, gesturing off towards the side. "That way. Straight back and to the left, chica." She lowered her arm, and offered the punk a smile. "Think you can make it on your own?"

"Yeah."

Taylor shook her head and started the walk to the far side of the room, where there was barely visible a little stick-figure-in-a-dress sign by the ceiling. Drinking was always a dangerous proposition for someone as tightly wound as her. Sometimes she thought she was a little bipolar, but that was just how life was for her. She felt things very strongly, and didn't hold back, and didn't want to.

She pushed her way into the bathroom, and once she made it to the sink she leaned against the counter on her palms and widened her eyes while she checked the mirror. She didn't look too bad... But minus the makeup, she imagined she wouldn't hold up as well. She felt tired, in a way that sleep wouldn't fix. It had been a rough few... whatevers.

She pinched the bridge of her nose while she closed her eyes for a moment. She just needed to shake it off so she could go back to having fun. She and Angel were getting along swimmingly, she couldn't let her troubles shoot them down.

"Fffffffffuck me, man..." She muttered.

Jocelyn had shown up looking quite pretty. She was dressed in a black cheongsam with a bit of gold trim. Her hair was spiked in a perfectly unkempt manner and her make up was subtle but refined.

However, after a couple of hours of drinking and fending off the grubby advances of some of the male patrons, along with the last few days had caught up with her.

She was now staring at the bathroom mirror with her make up kit off to the side swaying a bit when Taylor entered. She didn't pay much attention to the blonde until she spoke. She then turned her head and looked.

"Shite, I don't think I can handle a shag right now, mate." Her Australian accent jarring in comparison to her lithe, sleek, Chinese frame. She smiled and ran her fingers through her hair.

"But if I get another pint or two in me, I might end up goin home with one of them wankers out there grabbin me arse. Fffffffuck I'd take you over that."

The Chistralian's head slumped and she rapped her knuckles against her head. "Shite. Shite. Shite."

"What the f-" Taylor looked up suddenly to find the girl in black, looking like a rockstar and sounding like a back alley. That accent was not something you heard every day in Tokyo.

But after a moment, she began to recognize her. "Oh, hey!" Her face brightened considerably. She'd always been curious about meeting this girl, for whatever strange reason.

"It'd take more than a couple beers to get me in the sack, dude, sorry," she laughed lightly, and preened in the mirror, combing her hair with her fingers. "You're that Jocelyn chick. I guess you're kinda..." She trailed off and her eyes drifted over the mirror to the girl.

"Hey... Something wrong?"

Jocelyn raised her eyebrow at Taylor as she spoke. "The fuck? How the fuck do you know who I am?" She barked defensively. She then paused and looked at Taylor again.

"Shite. You're some AFW cunt, aren't you?" She asked. "Now you look kinda familiar..." She paused while she tried to come up with the name. "Just had too many pints tonight... And yesterday... and I don't want to fuckin go home right now. Why? What the fuck's wrong with you, mate?"

"That's me~" Taylor said softly. "Well then time to sober up, man."

She drew a breath and let it out in a huff. "My best friend is leaving Japan, and moving back home to Canada," she said. For some reason, she felt almost completely comfortable opening up to Jocelyn about it... Maybe because the girl's primary mode of communication resembled verbal abuse, much like Morrigan, with whom Taylor had also grown fully comfortable.

"And it really, really sucks. I've never really been so close to someone and had them leave. My dad died, but he was who the fuck knows where at the time. My friends are what keep me strong, and Cassie really... Like, I don't know if I wanna do this shit without her." She shrugged, and looked back at Jocelyn. "Ya know?"

"Holy shite. I know that Freckle. She's a real cunt. Put me in the hospital after our match, but I nearly had her. I shoulda." She clenched her fist but focused on the mirror. "I'm not shite like I was back then. That's rough, mate. I know I wanted another crack at her." Jocelyn shrugged and looked at Taylor.

"I don't have many mates." She said finally. "All I know is if there's something that's puttin a pisser in me, it makes me even more determined. I hate my fuckin' dad... that's motivated me enough to end up here, but all it got me was my ass kicked. Now I don't even give a fuck. I just wanna fuck some wankers up."

She began to rifle through her make up bag. "So, I don't know about that shite, but if my best friend just stopped doing the shit she loved just cause I left, I'd come back just to beat the shite out of her... Fuck!"

A stormy, dark expression quickly took over Taylor's face. Her jaw set hard and she drew a breath to keep from getting ahead of herself.

"Just so we're clear," she said evenly. "If you talk shit about Cassie, I will fuck you up. Understand?" She couldn't take that. Not now, not ever.

"I'm not just gonna quit. I do what I do for a reason, but things fucking change. And if that's all you want, man, when things get hard you'll break like the rest of 'em. Maybe you're still here because you can't go home to daddy or whatever, but I'd rather see you get your shit together."

She scowled back at the mirror. She felt a little floaty from pounding several beers in not much time, and the way the night was going now, maybe she should just call it there.

"Fuck you, cunt." Jocelyn spat back. She narrowed her eyes and turned to look at Taylor. No one was telling her who she couldn't talk shit about. "You don't know shite about me, so fuck off. I'm not going anywhere. If I was, I would have left when I started off oh-and-six. No one's going to break me and no one's gonna tell me what to do. Certainly not some drunk cunt in a fuckin shitehole bar."

Jocelyn hastily shoved her make up in her bag. "Thanks, though... I'm pretty fuckin sober now..." She growled and turned to leave.