can't shoot whiskey {rafi!}

[avery carina dawson]

outfit!

Avery was hungover. While she did drink a lot and often felt less than perfect upon waking up the next day, her level of hangover was rarely this bad. She had not wanted to get out of bed this morning, since the sun shining through the gap in her curtains was only serving to aggravate her pounding head further and the idea of walking made her want to throw up, but she had eventually gotten too thirsty to stay in bed any longer and so ventured into the kitchen for water.

She was still wearing her clothes from the night before and had some smeared eyeliner on her cheeks, though she had been home since about eight. The date she'd gone on had not gone well aside from the fact that he kept supplying her with booze, so by the time she got home, she supposed she hadn't cared enough to change out of her skinny jeans. At this point, without breakfast and proper awakening, Avery didn't remember much of the night before, just that she'd consumed her weight in Jack Daniels. There was an empty bottle in the sink, one she was sure had been half full the day before.

That, however, was not something she thought she should dwell on, since it would only remind her of how shitty she felt and that was something she really wanted to forget. The first step to healing was breakfast and the easiest thing to make without really opening her eyes was toast, so she poked around to look for some bread. Unfortunately, this reminded her that she'd been too busy drinking for the past few days to buy groceries and, no matter how hard she looked, she couldn't find anything resembling bread in any of her cabinets. She made a mental note to tell George to do something about this.

It didn't seem like it was worth it to even try to make breakfast after that disappointment and she was very close to just getting back in bed when her stomach gave a loud growl. With a sigh, she trudged to the shower and stood under the hot water for as long as her now-rumbling stomach would allow before getting out and wrapping her hair in a towel. Normally, she'd have blown it into the puffy state she liked it, but today, her main focus was food rather than intimidation, so she left it down and wet and tossed on the first clothing items she could find. She didn't think that driving was a good idea, so she grabbed her keys and phone and started the walk toward the first cafe she could think of.

The Tea Cozy was not the sort of place at which Avery would usually be seen, just because it was the sort of place that normal people went and Avery did not like to be considered normal. She'd have much preferred a darker place or even just a fast food restaurant, but even she knew that the cafe had good food and that she needed something in her stomach soon before it tried to eject all of the things that weren't inside. So, steeling herself for the possible embarrassment of being spotted at a place like this, she walked in and found herself a seat in the corner, where she intended to sit and pretend she was invisible.

[rufino león araya]

He never really understood tea. He didn’t understand how so many people enjoyed its calm, sweet properties and would spend hours mulling over a single cup of the rather earthy substance. It’s not that he didn’t like the taste—he liked it OK, but he treated it like a breed of coffee: the faster he drank it, the faster he’d have the caffeine. It was for want of caffeine that drove the young male to The Tea Cozy most days to get a cup of black coffee, no cream or sugar please. It was nearby, it was convenient, and it was relatively low-cost. Rafi never used to have to look at the price tags of anything and now he was looking at all of them. He was learning to budget, to be economical with his spending. Blessedly, he managed to land a job that he relatively enjoyed and was actually pretty good at. Lord knows, the boy never had to work a day in his life up until about three months ago and had the job not been at least semi-enjoyable, he would never find the motivation to do it. At least life was entirely wretched to him. Still, days on Orange Island were both tough and stringent and filled with challenges. On occasion, he still managed to lavished himself with certain luxuries: his morning coffee and certain alcoholic beverages.

“Thank you hot stuff,” the husky Spaniard noted as the barista handed him the mug of black, dark roast coffee over the counter. They exchanged a few words, asking about eachother’s day, doing a little casual chat before Rafi said his adieu and turned away from the counter. He looked as though he had just come in from a morning jog in the bright red Nike shirt and white sport shorts. At some point, he had taken off his gray converse and were holding them in his left hand as he strolled across the café in a barefooted prance, for lack of a better term. The locks of dark brown, almost black, hair were damp with sweat and sticking to his bronze neck, held back from his face by a black bandana. The twenty-one year old’s original plan was to quickly down a cup of coffee and return to the beach where he could join in a game of beach soccer with some strangers, but when he saw the familiar face oozing wariness, all of the young man’s plans promptly changed.

Had Avery any intentions of staying inconspicuous, Rafi was sure to disrupt that. “Avery!” he smiled, coming up to her with a little swagger in his step. The relationship with Avery had started out as rough one, but they seemed to both becoming around in these last few weeks. Perhaps it was out of necessity as they had many of the same friends and, of course, the fact that Avery just happened to drink quite frequently at Lucky’s. Nevertheless, after their rocky beginning, Rafi had begun to grow quite fond of the dark-haired pistol. Afterall, she had a little sass in her that he found endearing in a oh-look-at-your-wee-mouth-go sorta way. He sat down across from her, rested his elbows down on the table and took a long, refreshing down of coffee.

“So, pretty little thing, what are you doing here?” he asked, parading a pearly white, winsome little smile. It was unusual to find Avery in places like this and Rafi couldn’t help but point out the obvious. To him, she almost looked as though she was sulking, but he knew better. “Princesa, you look a little hungover, may I buy you a coffee? I promise it’ll make you feel better.”

[avery carina dawson]

Avery did not cry, but if crying were a thing that she did do, she might have done it right then. Of all the people that she didn't want to see in that cafe that morning, Rafi Araya was certainly one of them. The only way it could have possibly been worse would be if he had been with Caden and then she would have had to kill herself--or, really, they would have made her head hurt so much it would have just exploded and then she'd be dead anyway. As it was, seeing his cheerful smile made her want to grab another pair of sunglasses. Instead, she pressed the ones she was wearing closer to her head and averted her eyes.

"What the hell do you have to be so cheerful about?" she grumbled, reaching for his cup of coffee instead of waiting. Such were the chances one took when bringing soothing beverages to the tables of the hungover. She took a sip, glad she had brushed her teeth already, and tried not to wince at the fact that her throat wanted to reject swallowing anything. Even the first sip made her feel better, though, and she took another before sliding the cup back across the table to Rafi. She knew he was poor and, while Avery didn't exactly know the value of a dollar, she did know that not everyone could afford to just have their coffee taken by random hungover girls who were too lazy to get off their asses and get their own.

"Can you afford it?" she asked, wrapping her arms around herself and snuggling into her sweatshirt. It may have been a normal heat-stricken day on Orange Island, but Avery felt a chill in the air like it was winter and the fact that her sweatshirt was like a portable bed meant that there was no way she was taking it off. Figuring that Rafi would not take her quip about his money very well, Avery forced herself to remove one arm from her torso and fished around in her purse for a few minutes before coming up with her wallet. She forced herself to look down through the gap in her sunglasses, wincing at the flood of light, and then counted out ten dollars in ones.

"Here." She shoved it across the table at him. "Get me a regular coffee and a piece of chocolate cream pie." The joys of being raised by two men was that Avery had never learned the concept of not eating dessert first. Pie for breakfast was completely acceptable in her world. "And get yourself something, too. Also maybe get me something to throw up in." With that, she flopped her head forward onto the table, barely dry hair spilling all over her arms and back while she rested her forehead on her wrists.

[rufino león araya]

For one thing, Rafi had developed a much thicker skin in the past few weeks, especially while hanging around Avery. She had this very charming habit of digging her talons in to any exposed flesh she could find and, at their early stages of their relationship, every other word out of her mouth was both hurtful and offense to the young Spaniard. These days, however, he learned to just go with the flow and let the insults slide over his shoulder. He would often dwell on what she said, but would at least pretend as though he was unimpressed with the judgments. Sometimes they earnestly didn’t bother him and sometimes they burned him deep. Today, however, seeing the poor girl in such a pitiful state, nothing she said could have possibly bothered him. In fact, it mildly amused him in the way she took his coffee and set her head down on the table. When his coffee was finally returned to him, he gleefully picked up the mug and sipped it, staring at her from over its rim. He licked the corner of his lips and set the mug down on the table, nudging her foot with his own underneath the table. Now, normally it was Avery being the noxious, destructive one in their encounters, but now the tables had turned and it was glorious, glorious for Rafi!

His gaze adverted down to the money being shoved in his direction and he just uninterestingly sipped at his coffee, not even flinching when she began giving him orders of what she wanted. Now, he very well might not be able to afford another cup of coffee for the day, but he wasn’t going to jump at the chance to be serf either. No, he just sipped his coffee again and rested the mug down on his knee. “Oh my, will my controlling sadist please pass the sugar?” he teased, eyeing up the sugar on her side of the table. The black coffee was a little strong that morning, even for him, and it could use a little sugar. Plus, he just wanted a reason to inform her that he would not be doing her bidding without actually telling her no.

“You know Avery, I don’t know, but I think this hung-over look sorta suits you. I mean, you kind of look human right now,” now he was just having fun. For once he felt as though he had the upper hand on Avery, which he had never experienced before. He crossed his legs and draped himself back over the chair, still ebbing away idly at his beverage with a coy, little smile on his face. Who knew today could turn out to be so delightful?

"Maybe if you say the magic word, I'll get up and do your bidding."

[avery carina dawson]

Avery would have liked to have insulted Rafi more, but the only words coming to her mind were incoherent strings of noises and words. She couldn't just growl at him or that would give him license to mock her for the rest of the week, at least, so she settled for picking her head off her arms and glaring behind her sunglasses. Even if he couldn't see her eyes, he would know that she wasn't looking kindly on him. She wanted to take his coffee back, but she couldn't while he was holding onto it, so instead, she reached forward and grabbed her wad of cash, crunching it between her fingers. The two sips of caffeine had given her at least a small mental boost and she felt a little bit more like getting up and getting her food.

"Get your own damn sugar," she said, reaching for it and pulling it closer to her instead of giving it to him. If he wasn't going to get her pie, then she wasn't going to be polite. There was no way she was going to say 'please'--or any other 'magic word'--because showing that sort of weakness in front of someone she regularly picked on was equivalent to admitting defeat. Being so obviously hungover, she was already showing more weakness than she would have liked to, so she had to at least try to keep her game up in the verbal parts of it--though she wasn't exactly being witmaster of the year with her angry growly retorts.

"Glad you're enjoying the view," she said, starting to haul herself out of the chair as she did. Last night's boots had been a terrible decision on footwear, but they had been the closest thing to her when she'd had to put shoes on. At least, she reasoned as she wobbled upright, they matched her outfit and made her look good and tall. If Rafi stood up, she would still be able to stand up to him height-wise, which was really the only reason to ever wear stilettos.

"Just for that, you're not getting any pie," she said, pushing her sunglasses on top of her head and squinting at the light. She had to shade her eyes, but soon she was used to it enough that she could walk and she made her way over to the counter. She returned to the table a few minutes later balancing a mug of black coffee, a glass of water, and two slices of pie--one chocolate, one caramel banana cream--between her arms. Out of the kindness of her heart, she had gotten two forks, but she didn't hand one to Rafi immediately. Instead, she sat down and set both forks onto the pie plate, taking a sip of coffee and letting them sit there.

"They made a special pie," she explained, gesturing to the banana one. "I couldn't say no." She felt that leaving for a cup of coffee and coming back with enough pie for three or four people deserved an explanation.

[rufino león araya]

He grinned when she retorted in a growling voice, taking a long draw of his coffee. Realistically, he could live without the sugar and didn’t bother to reach over the table to retrieve it. It was most amusing to him that, instead of just showing some small sign of humanity, she had to burden herself with getting up and doing everything herself. In her debauched stupor, she seemed to oscillate on her feet for a moment and Rafi set his coffee mug down in order to catch had she actually taken a tumble from her feet. As much as Rafi would like to say that he didn’t like her and her rather brazen, harsh disposition, the matter was that he did and he could, and would, be mean to her, but he couldn’t find it in himself to dislike her. Furthermore, he didn’t want her to fall over and hurt herself either. Once she had redeemed her balance, Rafi returned to his now half-consumed coffee and rested the mug back on his knee, lounging around rather fruitfully.

“Oh yes. Princesa, I am quite enjoying the view,” he smiled smugly. Thankfully, he had already eaten a quite filling breakfast of left-over pizza that morning or he might have been a little more crestfallen than he currently was over the prospect of not getting any pie. Still, he wouldn’t allow her the pleasure of seeing him troubled and he merely continued to sip at his coffee. When she was away, his attention turned to the window. It was still relatively early and yet there were so many people out in the summer Floridian heat already. He could only assume that the beach was largely taken over by this point and a game of sand soccer would be rather novel. That being said, he’d have to find something else to do with the rest of his afternoon as he wouldn’t allow himself to be a pester to Avery all day, that would be too Avery-like for his own good.

When she returned, he could suppress the smile, “They had a special pie today, huh?” he mused in a quirky little voice, shooting her a vacuous facial expression with a quirked eye brow, “My goodness gracious, Princesa, are you trying to build up your winter coat for winter?” Now he was just being a little mean and he quickly realized it. There was a part of him that was feeling absolutely salvage and felt the need to be cruel; he kept himself in refined check. Rafi knew very well just how mean and heartless he could get and, quite frankly, he didn’t want to see that side of himself anymore.

He dipped three of his fingers in her glass of water and flicked the droplets at her, “Oh look, your water is contaminated with poor.”

[avery carina dawson]

Though it was always easy to rile Avery up, there was very little anyone could say about how she looked that would upset her. She was also currently too lethargic to get worked up and so all she did was make a pffft noise at Rafi and take the extra fork into her dome of sustenance. Before hiding it, however, she pointed it at him, trying to flourish it dramatically but not really having the motivation to commit to any sort of fancy gesture. Instead, she just let it flop around at him, tines wiggling in the light. "And now I'm not sharing any, so you'll just have to starve." She speared the banana pie with the extra fork and then went back to her chocolate pie.

The thing she was most upset about when he flicked the water was the fact that it might have gotten on to either of her pies and she could not have dealt with wet pie at that moment. She curled her arms around the air around her plate, shielding it from the violent onslaught of a few drops of water and glared at Rafi. "Your face is contaminated with poor." What might normally have been a relatively vicious snarl--and a wittier, more creative insult--was now more half-hearted and listless, though Avery tried to at least add some venom to her facial expression. This was much easier now that she was not wearing her sunglasses.

She quickly weighed the consequences of retaliating with her own water onslaught--on one hand, Rafi would get splattered, but on the other hand, her pie could also get splattered. She took a big bite of the banana before pushing the plate a bit to the left, a relatively safeish zone. Since she had nails [and spent most of her life doing annoying things like this to Evander], her water flicking skills were pretty superb and the fingerfuls of water that she flicked at him completely missed the pie.

"If you get my pie wet, I'm gonna buy a slice of something gross just to shove in your face," she warned him. She plucked the fork out of the banana cream pie and licked it clean before passing it over to him. If she was going to pie him in the face--because she figured there was like a 65 percent chance that he would fail and she would get to--she might as well let him enjoy himself first.

[rufino león araya]

He laughed when the prongs of the fork were pointed in his direction. His broad, happy smile that caused his eyes to squint and dimples to form in to his tanned cheeks. “You’re going to let your husband starve?” he inquired with a tail of a chuckle, shaking his head to let the slightly curled locks of sable hair fall back and out of his face. There was something in his facial expressions that were just incredibly benevolent and sincere and, even though he was interminably teasing her, there was something charming and sweet about it. His teasing was rather innocent, as he didn’t have enough vindictiveness to take it dourly. Plus, he adored Avery way too much to ever be truly mean to her, even though she seemed to dish out quite a bit of acridity herself.

“My face is contaminated, huh?” he chuckled, shaking his head with amusement, “Well, if that’s the case, you may have to kiss it better,” now he was just playing games, tilting his left cheek towards her and gently poking himself in the cheek to signify exactly where she should place aforementioned kiss. He squealed at the cold water and jumped back in sudden surprise, looking a bit spooked for a moment, but the dismay quickly faded away in to laughing. A few droplets of the moisture slid down his forehead and cheeks, dripping down in to the table below. He quickly yoinked his coffee mug away to save God’s nectar from the onslaught of water that was suddenly tossed his direction. Glancing at her with a quirked eyebrow and a sly, coy grin on his face, he slowly brought the mug to his lips and drank.

“Oh, please, if I get your pie wet? I flicked like… a little bit of water at you, you used those huge-ass fake nails like scoopulas to recreate Noah’s Ark and the great flood.” His own nails were quite worn down from all the physical activity he got in to in a day. He didn’t even really bother having to trim them; Mother Nature took care of that for him. He didn’t mind the water though and didn’t even bother to wipe most of it away. It dried quickly off of his skin in its own time. He was a little surprised, to say the least, when she reached over and handed him the fork. As a rule, Rafi hadn’t been expecting the sudden display of kindness coming from the otherwise gelid girl. He looked at her suspiciously before forking a small corner of the Banana Creame, sliding the bite between his teeth.

“Firstly, I am done flicking water at you. Secondly, I wouldn’t mind a pie to the face because there is no such thing as a gross pie, thirdly, thank you very much, love of my life,” he took one more bite of the pie before licking the fork clean and resting it back down on her plate. He didn’t want a lot, just enough to get a little of the sweet taste before returning to his one true love: coffee. “I knew there was a reason I wanted to marry you.”

[avery carina dawson]

Avery grinned, looking down at her pie and rolling her eyes. The pie and the coffee were making her feel marginally better and some of her good spirits were coming back--or, at least, as good as Avery's spirits ever were. "Maybe if you catch me next time I'm drunk," she said, flicking one more droplet of water of water at him before pulling her water glass back over to her side. She obviously wasn't going to drink it after both of their hands had been in it, but she wanted it out of the playing field.

"Hey," she said, raising her right hand and displaying her fingernails like a hand of cards. Her diamond-and-sapphire ring glinted off her ring finger, catching the morning light like a prism. "These are all real." She put her hand down on the coffee cup. "Acrylics don't scratch like real nails do." She wiggled her eyebrows at him before returning to her food.

Avery was not prone to openly flirting. As a general rule, she was either talking herself up or bantering with someone, but she rarely said anything that could be construed as her being affectionate or making some sort of move--it just wasn't how she worked. With Rafi, however, she could freely flirt because the idea of hooking up with him made her want to vomit and there was no need to yell at him for saying weird things because none of it meant anything. It was like an Evander without the familial feelings. The fact that he felt the same way--she assumed--made it that much better. Flirting, when there was no danger of someone getting the wrong idea, was actually fun.

"No problem," she said, taking her pie back when he was finished. She had been expecting him to have more, but she supposed that she should be happy that this meant more for her. "So what the hell are you doing at the Tea Cozy?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

[rufino león araya]

When it came to matters of Avery, he could understand why men were attracted to her. He could see her beauty, and understood it, but she just wasn’t for him. Sure, he liked to flirt with her and jestingly refer to her as the love of his life, but they had a very clear understanding between them, spoken or otherwise, that none of the joking and teasing meant anything to either of them. Rafi absolutely adored Avery as one of his closest friends, and it was this easiness between them that he was so partial to. He wasn’t really sure how of this all began, but somewhere along the line it had and that was all to say about the matter of his heart and Avery. When it came to flirting in all seriousness though, he wasn’t as much of a creep as he was with Avery. At least, he hoped he wasn’t, because if he was he was, for lack of a better way to put it, screwed.

He chuckled a little bit, shying back when the water splashed him. It was a quick notice just how pleasant she was being and it made the young man jocular to see her in such high-spirits, “I’m sure I will,” he pointed out with a lame shrug, “After all, we drink together six of seven nights of the week.” Perhaps that was a little imprecise, but certainly not by much as they seemed to be drinking together more often than not. Sometimes it was just the two of them, sometimes it was a small group of friends, sometimes it was at Lucky’s, sometimes at Avery’s mansion. Nevertheless, their friendship was on the foundation of drunken derangement.

“Oh, right, they’re real,” he lifted an eyebrow in her direction to give her the typical: stop-giving-me-bullshit sort of way before rolling his eyes, “I mean, you’re the love of my life and blah, blah, blah, but come on, those suckers are real? I believe you had those leopard claws imported specially from Africa and had them super glued to your fingers. They don’t scratch—HA!” he laughed, lifting his mug up to his lips to try and take a sip, but his smile making the matter impossible. The hand that was not holding his mug was drumming fingers against the edge of the table in an almost anxious-like fashion.

“I usually come here to get a cup of coffee before I start a shift at Lucky’s,” he explained. It had become ritual these days for him to get his coffee. So much so, his days’ outcomes had become dependent upon whether or not he managed to acquire his morning coffee. This particular morning, though, he had off all day and was just tooling around outside when suddenly coffee seemed like such a great idea. “But today I was out jogging on the beach and decided coffee would be OK,” shrugging it off. Unlike Avery, it wasn’t to his own horrors to be found in a place like this, “I was going to go play some beach soccer with some friends of mine, but my ankle has been really hurting me,” he wasn’t sure if he had ever told Avery about his rather grisly, bone-shattering ankle injury from several years back or not. From time to time, especially on particularly humid days, he’d get a ghostly pain in the screwed, nailed, and operated joint.

“And you’re here from partying too hard, aren’t you, Princesa?”

[avery carina dawson]

"Well, that's true," she said, shrugging. The only reason she had been drinking alone the night before was because she'd already been tipsy when she'd gotten home and had been too intent on putting more alcohol into her body to contact anybody. She didn't think she'd even gotten on the computer or her phone before attaching herself to her television--or maybe she had. She'd really been too drunk to remember anything other than drinking.

Avery was a little miffed that he didn't believe her about her nails and even more so because she couldn't tell whether or not he was kidding. She flattened her hand so that he could see the tips of her nails, bringing it closer to his face, like people do when they're making ghost noises. Except she wasn't making ghost noises, she was presenting him with her nails. "Look," she said, pushing them an inch or so closer. "See? They're thin like normal nails. Fake nails are retardedly thick. It would be like trying to scratch with a banana peel. I can scratch because I have my real nails and they're healthy, so they don't break."

She waited until he had had time to look and then pulled her hand back, pursing her lips in an I-told-you-so way after her nail science lesson. Obviously, calling her nails fake was a far bigger offense than calling her fat and so she had to let him know the gravity of his error.

Avery didn't understand how Rafi could be so unfazed by his own presence in such a cutesy, girly cafe. She wouldn't be caught dead here under normal circumstances, but it seemed like the best option under the circumstances, especially because she hadn't expected to see anyone she knew there. She didn't want to comment on his exercising, because the only exercise she got was walking to and from purchasing liquor, so she just wrinkled her nose and ignored it. "What happened to your ankle?" she asked instead, frowning. She didn't remember him telling her about hurting it--of course, it was possible that he just didn't think to give her every detail of his day.

She finished off the banana pie and then rolled her eyes, not so much at him but at the memory of the previous night. "I was on a date and it sucked, so I went home and got trashed." She shrugged. "I guess it was a good night after that, I don't fucking remember."

[rufino león araya]

Rafi never really drank alone. In fact, he’d probably never really drink at all if it weren’t for the influence of his friends encouraging him to take a beverage, followed by another, and another. It is important to note that Caden and Avery were of particularly bad influence on the young Spaniard. It was usually them that were also the puppeteers in everything doltish he had ever done. Perhaps it was that ability to convince him something was a good idea that made them such close friends; after all, they shared many vapid moments between them.

He couldn’t help but bend away from the sudden hand in his face, blinking and staring at the tips of her nails with a single, quirked eyebrow to express his mood. “I see,” he said rather off-handedly, glancing over to her face before back to her nails, “So, they don’t break because they’re healthy? Honestly, with the amount of alcohol we consume between us, I don’t know how either of us are even remotely healthy,” he chuckled a little. He was actually a little afraid to go to the doctor, he didn’t want to be told all the things that were going wrong in his body because the amount of booze he had been enjoying within the last year.

Rafi couldn’t help but roll his eyes rather toyingly in her direction. He still, to this day, didn’t understand what did and did not offend her. There were things he said at times that he was sure she was going to go ballistic over and she didn’t. Of course, the opposite of that was equally true. It was that volatile, explosive, and unpredictable behavior that he liked most about her.

He took the last sip of his coffee before setting the empty mug down on the table and sat back in the chair. “A few years back, I broke my ankle in four places, tore my Achilles’s tendon, so, I have arthritis in that ankle,” he explained rather nonchalantly—it did get sore frequently, especially if he exercised frequently or if it was humid. All the nails, screws, and corrective surgery had done him lots of good, still, with any invasive procedure, there was bound to be some trouble from time to time, “I used to play sports,” he explained. It had been raining, and he had collided with another player and the wet grass caused them to slip, and the other player’s cleat came down on his ankle.

He chuckled a little, “That’s why you shouldn’t go out on dates with sucky men,” he pointed out, “And why you should only go on dates with me,” he grinned a half-smirk rather devilishly, “But yes, bad dates—I’ve been on several as of late. Apparently, I’m on a losing streak with women.”

[avery carina dawson]

"Nail health has nothing to do with alcohol," she said, though she had no idea whether or not this was scientifically accurate. "And I have a liver of steel." It was true--they did drink far too often for it to really be a good thing. Avery, too, had a tendency to drink every night whether there was someone drinking with her or not. It often seemed like everyone around her was just obliging her in her alcoholic tendences, but whatever--she was invincible.

She hadn't realized, though, that Rafi had a legitimate medical problem. At his description of his ankle ailments, she frowned. Being relatively sheltered, it would never have occurred to her that she would ever have a friend with arthritis. "Jeez, what'd you do? Play sports with a bear?" Any time Avery had even tried to play sports, she'd ended up with bruises or cuts or scrapes, so she understood that people got injured when they did things. What she didn't understand was how someone who was clearly in better shape than her got hurt so much worse than she did.

Avery rolled her eyes, snorting out a small chuckel of amusement. She didn't go on dates very often, because she usually found them awkward and uncomfortable and, most of the time, she ended them as she'd ended the one last night--passed out, alone, on her own couch.

"If we went on a date, we wouldn't do anything different than we normally do," she pointed out, finishing off her coffee. "Although, I guess you probably wouldn't try to feel me up under the table before buying me booze." It had not been her date's only offense of the night, but it was one of the most egregious errors he had made. She shook her head at their parallel lamentations and leaned back in her chair. "Maybe we should go different places to meet people. Like, not a bar."

[rufino león araya]

“Okay,” he was wearing his quirky little grin that made the cute little dimples in his cheeks, “Okay, whatever you say, sweetheart,” dismissing the matter of her nails. Whether alcohol affected nail health of not, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to argue over it, especially with Avery because he'd lose. Rafi himself was much less of a drinker than Avery was—sure, he drank more than your average person, but he also had to spent a significant portion of his time working, a place where he had to be sober at risk of his job. He liked his job and didn’t want to get fired from it; so, he played by the rules set forth. That didn’t mean he didn’t frequently drink after his shifts, but that was another matter entirely.

He ended up laughing at her inquisitiveness, shaking his head, “No, gorgeous, I was playing soccer and someone stepped on my ankle with a cleat, wanna see the scars?” Rafi didn’t wait for a response before lifting his leg and pulling his jean pant leg back. Sure enough, the skin around his ankle was seared with scars. Surgical scars mostly, but also irregular dot-like scars, which could only be assumed as the cleat bed. It was no wonder he quit football when he did—a macabre injury like that would convince most people to leave. Besides his ankle injury, Rafi had actually gotten through life without hurting himself too badly or too often. He didn’t have many scars to speak of, except the ones on his ankle, nor did he have any tattoos or piercings.

He nodded slowly, considering the thought of them going on a date, “You’re right,” he dissolved in to laughter, “We’d go out and drink and I’d end up sleeping on your floor,” he teased lightly. Although Rafi did love her, it wasn’t in the way most people assumed. He loved her like the bitchy, catty, gamer friend that she was and he would do anything to support her when, and if, she needed it—but he loved her as a kindred spirit and nothing more.

“Yes, I’d be at least a polite male slut,” he informed her quite seriously, “I would definitely buy you booze and then feel you up, it’s all about order.” Rafi didn’t really go on dates all that often. Although people had attempted to convince him in the past, he hadn’t obliged. It really hadn’t been all that long ago that his ex left him and there was still a small throb somewhere deep within him that stung a little. Eventually, he shrugged, “Where do normal people go to meet people?”

[avery carina dawson]

Something that would surprise no one was that Avery thought scars were cool. She didn't like to be grossed out, but most violence didn't bother her, especially not just being told about it. Avery wasn't sure that she'd ever really seen a cleat, at least not enough to know that it was dangerous enough to cause scars like that, but one look at his foot had her wrinkling her nose and wondering what the hell was wrong with athletes. His ankle looked like morse code and she was tempted to trace some of the scars, but she didn't want to be a freak about it.

"Hey, battle wounds," she said, leaning back in her chair and wiggling her eyebrows. "Chicks dig that. Maybe you should show that off to meet people." As much as she went on dates or chatted at people in bars, Avery wasn't really interested in meeting people. She was happy with the occasional romantic interlude and would sometimes concede to go on more than one date with the same person, but in general, relationships were not for her. She was much happier having people like Rafi and Evander around--they provided everything she could want out of a relationship except for sex.

"Eh," she said, shrugging. "If you paid for my drinks, I'd at least let you sleep in my bed. Oh, wait." She raised a finger. "I guess I would have to pay for yours. But I'd still be nice and let you sleep in my bed, as long as you kept to your side." As much as she liked Rafi, she still liked giving him shit about what happened to him. After all, Avery's life circumstances hadn't exactly been all sunshine and frolicking through meadows, so she didn't feel guilty about rubbing things in his face. It was almost habitual for her to sink her teeth into any vulnerability, especially since she knew Rafi could handle it. If anyone else said it to him, she'd punch them in the face, but hypocrisy was an okay color for her to wear.

At his question, Avery frowned, tilting her head to the side in thought. "Huh. I dunno. I always meet people at bars." She snorted. "What do people do when they're not drinking?" It wasn't really a serious question--much.