haunted.

To say the very least, Audrey was reluctant about showing up at her older sister’s place unnannounced and clearly in need of assistance. Since her savings had run out less than a month ago, she’d been forced to hand over the lease of her shitty Hell’s Kitchen apartment to another sorry bastard with a higher income than her. As such, she’d returned home to Crescent Harbour, with her pride in tatters and her bank account in an even worse state.

Though she’d managed to secure a couple of unskilled part-time jobs and an apartment by the docks, she was still nowhere close to landing on her feet, which brought her to the downtown home of Harriet Baker.

After drawing a long, even breath, she straightened her spine and wrapped her knuckles against the hard surface of Hattie’s front door, half hoping the older woman wouldn’t be home, buying Audrey some more time to figure out what the fuck she was going to say to her sister about her situation.

His brows furrowed as she spoke. It was a lot. Ash was unsure of how to digest all of it. Most likely it was all jokes, but sometimes it was hard to tell with a stranger if it was humor or serious. Either way the woman seemed open, but not necessarily in friendly way. “Oh well, um..” He stumbled for words to say, for how to approach this. “Well, I certainly hope people aren’t assholes to you all the time. I don’t think Crescent is like that..” He tried to explain. “I’m Ash.” He extended a hand. “Where are you from? Not here I presume.” That was based on what she was saying.

She shrugged her shoulders, “Eh, just most of the time,” she supposed, though perhaps it had been a slight exaggeration. “Audrey,” she offered in return, taking the male’s hand and giving it a polite shake, though she couldn’t recall the last time she’d actually encountered a handshake. It felt too formal for the sorts of people she hung around with and it was only at professional meetings, introductions at classy orchestral events and the like that she felt right doing it. “Sorta,” she conccured, “Grew up here- been living in New York for the last-,” she realised it had been a long time now and it made her stomach twist a little, “For a while,” she assured him. “Are you local?”

***

Skylar leaned against the building’s exposed brick, looking supremely relaxed. The only thing she needed to complete the look was the leather jacket and sunglasses. “So, just to be clear, exercise is not your thing?” She inquired with a half-cocked grin, as if she hadn’t been rebuffed big time. The other woman’s dramatics made that evidently clear but she figured she’d have fun with it regardless. “Did you pay someone to carry you here and feed you grapes or….?” The grin was still plastered on her face, somewhat amused by the situation. “I was talking exercise in the bedroom variety but – since that’s not your thing…” She cocked her head to the side, pushing herself off the wall. “You can just sit there and I’ll tell you how pretty you are in six different languages.”

“Damn, dude. You’re just here to pick up? I respect that,” she had to appreciate the hustle if nothing else, though she was admittedly caught a little off guard and certainly not in her prime. Perhaps if she hadn’t been quite as hung over as she was, she’d have noticed the signals Skylar was so very obviously sending out a little earlier. She raised a hand, palm open in a submissive manner, “Hey- no, I am so not like that,” she insisted, though if she could afford to have somebody carry her there and feed her grapes, or at the very least the Gatorade she’d purchased, she wouldn’t have been against it. “I just mean I’m not like a gym girl- my exercise is walking home after a big night out,” she assured the other woman. “-but for real, you’re so welcome to compliment me in whatever language you want as long as I get subtitles but I’m not sitting here,” because she was worried she might fall asleep again or worse, puke in the gutter if she did, “I need a big, cheap, greasy breakfast inside me,” she gushed, relishing in the mere thought of an oversized serving of whatever the nearest diner could scrape off of the grill for under twenty dollars.

open to: everyone @crescentstarters​

location: nowhere and everywhere

Soreness settled into her wrists like a welcomed friend, having spent too much at the gym working out until she felt the burn. And then once the burn came, she ramped it up. She relished in the pain, because it meant feeling. Because it meant redirecting her focus away from things she was desperately trying to forget.  Skipping a day in her pain medicine regimen would likely throw her off balance, but she couldn’t bring it in herself to care. She pushed her thumb down onto her wrist as if she was giving it a deep tissue massage. Turning her attention on the person beside her, she picked up her beverage and downed it like nothing. “So I need a workout buddy and I’ve chosen you.”

“What?” Audrey chimed as her Gatorade hit the bottom of the vending machine’s dispenser with a loud thud. “No- fuck no,” she insisted, waving a hand in a dismissive manner and shaking her head to reiterate, certain that there wasn’t enough words in all the languages in the world to convey just how much she did not want to work out, let alone with a stranger. “I don’t do-” she gestured loosely at the external brick of the gym, “Exercise. Not my thing,” she assured the other woman, collecting the Gatorade and cracking it open. “I just wanted a drink,” she explained, she’d wanted a drink to help with her hangover before she started her shift at the hardware store, in fact and she’d happened across the vending machine outside the gym by chance. It was, she realised, the closest she’d ever come to going to the gym, as fate would have it. “-but you do you- and uh, kick some ass in there,”

who : @crescentharborrp​

where : farmer’s marker

 Ash didn’t enjoy grocery shopping, though he did like to cook. When he was younger, his father would send him to buy the produce. The man never liked what he picked. His father was picky in that sense, being the great chef he was. Ever since, Ash spent way too long looking over the produce to find the best of each fruit and vegetable he could. He always left feeling overrun. At least this trip he was alone, and not also having to keep track of Lotte while he perused.

Turning from one of the booths, he bumped into someone. “Oh sorry.” He shook his head as he scanned over the person to make sure they were okay. “I’m lost in my own world. I should really be more careful.” He explained, feeling bad.

Audrey couldn’t help the smile that decorated her face, a small puff of a laugh passing her lips as Ash apologised to her. She waved a hand casually in the air, politely dismissing his apology before she found the words to do so, “You’re good, dude, seriously- didn’t mean to smile at you like a total psycho. I haven’t been in a small town in like- shit- years, for real. I forgot what it’s like to have people apologise for shit- or just like, not be a total asshole to strangers,” she explained, amused by the fact. “I’m gonna have to get used to that, I guess but yeah, I’m good, don’t sweat it. Next time you should try and knock a tooth out or something- at least then I could score some insurance money or, sue you for assault and battery or something,” it was evident she was unfarmilar with such proceedings and mostly just spouting bullshit as soon as it came to mind.

Where: The Real Bean

Status: Open | @crescentstarters​

With three hours to kill between classes, Kate had decided to find a quiet corner in a café, flicking through her schedule and trying to bring some order to the chaos of her notes, random slips of paper with ideas for work that had dawned on her at some ungodly hour, and the occasional scribble of poetry she made sure was buried underneath all the other stuff. She had always been one of those people who liked the look of a tidy desk and belongings, but her reality was a stark difference. It spread to her work ethic, too, her creativity came in random bursts and could not be squeezed into a 9-5 – but she knew there was beauty in her chaos, for she could be pretty damn brilliant at three in the morning.

She had managed to gather most of her notes and work-related things into separate piles, checking her mails as she sipped her coffee and broke off chunks of her chocolate chip cookie at her leisure. A jolt went through her when a random guy knocked her table without so much as a mumbled sorry, her half-full mug toppling over and spilling across the table. “Seriously? Asshole.” She was quick to pull away her laptop, setting it down on her lap as she shoved the neat piles onto the empty seat next to her. Peering at the person closest to her, she gestured at the mess with one hand and held onto her laptop with the other. “Would you mind giving me a hand?”

“Tempted to give you a hand by knocking that guy’s head off of his shoulders,” Audrey commented, though as she spoke, she was already scooping up a soaked through napkin and using a dry one from her own table to mop up some of the mess. “-but I think his head might have been so far up his ass just now, it might not budge,” she commented, a smile decorating her lips as she spoke, making an effort to cheer the woman up, since her drink had been wasted and her work almost ruined for no good reason.

She turned over her shoulder to see the guy leaving with a take out cup in hand, steam pouring from the small opening in the lid. “Hopefully the barista spit in his drink,” she noted, thinking aloud before turning back to Kate. “Did all of your stuff survive the quake?”

Meet Audrey Baker.