#milvimurray

location: wolf & webb's

"Americano with oat milk please Mils," Cass' grin mismatching with the early morning, most of the people in the cafe giving grumpy and sleep deprived vibes as opposed to his more cheerful demeanour. He supposed since all of the irregular goings on - sirens dehydrating, vampires thirst increasing, apparently every supernatural being suffering with humans taking on powers far beyond anything they'd experienced before - nobody really felt up to putting on an optimistic facade. Cass himself would be lying if he said he didn't feel worse for wear, tireder, weaker. But that didn't stop him from covering it up, and he'd developed a good back and forth with Milvi over the course of his multiple visits to Wolf & Webb's, usually either when he was in a rush running late to work, or insanely hungover, or both. But today he had time, leisurely wandering to the counter. "Been busy here?"

"Milvi is such a dear friend oh, but so is Layne but she's about to be married have a baby so I'd give her a lovely kiss because I wouldn't want to take her away from dear Ollie. Then I would marry Milvi because she is so fun to be around! We'd have so much fun being married together and playing fun pranks around the town! Oh. That leaves Ryden. He seems like...he'd be...hmm.. well he wouldn't anyway because he's with dear Mars!"

       Letting go of some of her blood donors had been hard when Kemper and Bella had solidified their relationship. There were some she had to let go of entirely but Bella was uncomfortable with letting them all go because some she had been offering more than simply an exchange of sex for blood but money as instead. To rip that stability away from someone was not something Bellamy was emotionally capable of, so Bella had offered each that while she could no longer drink from them directly she would be still happy to purchase their blood as she did still need to drink more regularly than even a werewolf like Kemper could supply.

         Today was pick-up date, Bella going around to those who had taken her up on the offer to collect their blood. Milvi her first stop that early afternoon, stopping at the stunning red head’s door and knocking gently. She had flirted with the young woman, she was beautiful so how could she resist, but as it became clear that was not something the young witch was interested in Bellamy had let her intentions fade, especially as she became closer together. In those times, before Kemper and Bella were official, Bella would gossip about how infatuated she was with the wolf, how she hoped that eventually things would shift. Now that they had Bellamy was in a near perpetual state of bliss, or she had been until his ex had come to town, part of her feeling a need to confess so to Milvi like old times but as she waited at the door she figured she best wait and see what mood the young woman was in.

Matthew always tried to be careful leaving The Cage after work because every so often someone mad and drunk tried to take a swing at him, imparting the blame on him for the losses they had incurred as if it was his fault they bet on the wrong fighter but at the end of the night he was the one pocketing their cash and frankly that didn’t sit well with some people. A few precautions he took was to never walk out of The Cage with the money he earned on the same night. He kept it in the safe, locked up until the next morning when all the drunks were too hungover to leave whatever warm comfortable place they found themselves in so it was safer and smarter for him to retrieve the money then and then deposit it rather than take it home immediately. They didn’t know that though. So this night as Matthew walked toward his car parked in the lot, someone was waiting for him. 

“Where’s my money, bitch?” The man shouted, voice slurred and posture unsteady. Matthew already knew what was going to happen, the man would swing at him, Matthew would dodge it, his past years as a fighter in the very same cage gave him an edge over the drunken witch so he had every confidence in himself as he approached the other male with a threatening glare, “You really want to do this?”

There seemed to be a slight moment of hesitance as the drunken man swayed backward but the step he took forward to steady himself all but seemed to solidify his next action, he swung, just as Matthew had predicted, and the human grabbed him by the wrist and promptly twisted the drunk’s arm behind his back, eliciting a sharp grunt to escape him as he cried out something in a different language. Matthew looked at him confused and perhaps if he had been some other species he would have been able to react fast enough to avoid the surprise hit from behind him but he wasn’t and glass shattered around his head like crystal rain. He swore and felt two pairs of hands grab at him, pulling him off of the drunken witch. He drove into his heels, twisted his body, loosened one arm and swung, hitting someone just below the ribs, someone swept at his ankles and knocked him off his feet so his weight fell into the arms of one of his mysterious attackers and the wind knocked out of his lungs from a repeated hit to his abdomen. What a fucking bitch ass move. “Three against one? You fucking –” his words interrupted by a fist and blossom of radiating pain. He felt searching hands reach into his pockets, heard the clatter of his keys against the concrete and slurred speech as they turned his pockets inside out looking for some giant wad of cash that he wasn’t carrying. 

      A myriad of steel rings knocked against the wood edge of the door to Wolf & Webb’s in the early morning. The cafe already opened early but that day the owner had needed to ask one of his barista’s to unlock the place even earlier so some photographs could be taken for the website. It wasn’t too shocking the cafe wanted a bit of a rebrand after someone had gone missing from the cafe a few weeks before. People had gone missing a few times now, the town getting nervous, but it was still hard to be somewhere that it had happened. 

       Hastalik was certainly nervous about what was happening in town but he didn’t suspect it would keep happening at the same locations. It seemed like so far most of them had been random and so coming to Wolf and Webb’s he intended to be professional. In this case that meant wearing his black on black formal attire, making sure his curly hair wasn’t a complete mess and that he didn’t accidentally say the wrong thing to whoever was on the other side of the door.

         “Morning,” Hastalik offered when the door opened, drawing the strap of the large bag of equipment he had closer to his neck. 

If Min-Ji was being entirely honest, she didn’t particularly like the drinks from Wolf & Webb because they weren’t very aesthetically pleasing and usually came here for the atmosphere and comics, and the last time she’d been here, she’d gotten slapped in the face by some impatient older woman so it had kind of soured her last experience at the café. On occasion though, they did have a special drink or two based on a comic or event and right now they were having a game night which was a perfect opportunity to advertise and so Min-Ji arrived with her phone and DSLR to take some photos throughout the evening. She’d been there for a few hours already, mostly just taking pictures of other people, the décor, the games available, posting a few quick stories to her Instagram and was only just about to start sitting down so she could edit the photos before posting them, it could all be done with her phone, a Bluetooth link from her DSLR to her phone meant all the photos would be showing up in her Cloud Server. 

"I feel like a cake is a pretty standard thing to bake," Min-Ji said as she pulled a large mixing bowl out from her cabinets and set it on the counter, "or cookies. Cake or cookies, which would you prefer to learn?" Posing the question to her friend so she could decide what they bake. "I figured we could start the dessert first though because if it's cake then we need to let it cool down for a while and can cook during that time. Do you think so?"