wip wednesday
on wednesday, for once! thank you for the tag @hellektr0â and the excellent, enticing snippets. tagging @a-productive-manorâ @antarisâ @parera-zuul-jarâ @damejudyhenchâ @bitchesofostwick and anyone else whoâs writing? <3 hereâs more Max, thatâs my life now
Miss Holcomb was an innocent, just as she appeared. Max could extrapolate from her anxious enthusiasm, from the cluelessness which matched her eagerness, that she had never once considered stepping foot into an establishment like the Lost Hope. Before her rather desperate attempt at receiving counsel, of course.
The bar was a watering hole for sweaty spacers, stevedores, and sprat-wranglers, and smelled like it. The sawdust-strewn floor soaked up biological remnants best left unidentified. Tables sat sticky and stale with spills, and the din of drunken discord, of confrontation and camaraderie alike, was an endless, robotic loop of bedlam. A player piano strung with barbed wire.
Evangeline ushered Miss Holcomb in, and tossed her own bitcard to the bartender before anyone could protestânot that Max would have done so. Soon they each fisted short cups of straight Spectrum Red. The young mechanicâs threatened to overspill with her trembling before she knocked it back in full. The Captain insisted.
Max observed and sipped from his own. The shudder and retch from Miss Holcomb he expected, after such a display. Evangeline only poured more, unfazed and unaffected. Her fortification, when it came to spirits, was a sight to behold.
If he excelled at confessional listening, then Evangeline was a master. She never interrupted and frankly did not appear to process a single word. The now-less-innocent Holcomb talked her own way through her troubles. It was for the best. He could hardly imagine what advice Evangeline might conjure, and his imagination, when it came to her, was superb. Â
