#shae thread.

If it had been up to him, Eoin would be high in 'his' apartment right now, getting high beyond reason so he doesn't have to go into the so-called 'roaring 20s' sober. God, that would be the absolute worst-case scenario, and the thought alone is almost enough to piss him off. But it's not up to him. He stands on Navy Pier, leaning his forearms on the railing, because he's invited here by a certain wild-haired person. Well, not invited so much as he's lured; they claimed the invitation was passed because he's the 'best fighter they know' and something is 'bound to go down tonight'.

It's a New Year's Eve party, Eoin thinks, sceptical. What could possibly go down that requires my kind of fighting? But it's a question he didn't and doesn't ask. Instead, he looks out at the lake, into the nothingness beyond the lights of the pier. Shae is about thirty feet behind him, talking to people — Eoin doesn't know whether they know them or not and frankly, isn't quite that interested either; he can do without meeting new people today, which is why he promptly walked away when they were stopped.

A sigh escapes him and out of Shae's warming range, it crystallises upon the frigid Chicago air. The leather coat he's wearing blocks most of the winter's bite, and Eoin is equal parts thankful and uncomfortable by Shae's Christmas gift. He'd told them upon receiving it that there's no way he isn't going to leave it with holes, however; and surely, the edges of the sleeves already show signs of his corrosive nature wearing into it, and it's only been five days. No way they'd be able to return it.

With New Year a month in the past, Eoin knows, in his rational mind, that if ever he decides to develop a sense of caution, it's now. It's a new age, everyone's on high alert, it's the best time to keep your head down as a mutant. It's not business as usual for his kind, if there was ever something like usual business at all. Since the start of the year and the violence it brought, Eoin has found his world view changed once more; it seems like every decade brings that the things he knows, the attitude he's gotten used to, come crumbling down with violent revelation. Literal violent revelation. Every earthshaking shift in his worldly perceptions have been brought about by extreme violence. Perhaps next decade there'll be another violent shift.

But there's also things that remain the same. The consistent hollowness he desperately fills up with anger, violence, and drugs is still there, and he suspects it will stay there until his early demise. A violent life is a short life, after all. There are just some days, like today, where he can't bring himself to pretend to actually be a person. These are times where he just wants to transcend his entire being, leave it behind, dwell in higher dimensions, where his only responsibilities are to breathe and float. He's not a person there, he's nothing, and no one is there to break into him, to exert their demands onto him, to force him to function when he just wants to not do any of that.

It's the place he finds himself in now. A club with pounding music his brain isn't processing, in a nirvana of blood-shot eyes and unresponsiveness; the social part of the venue unable to reach him. He just exists in a crowd at different points on the sobriety spectrum, with Eoin at one extreme end of it. He stands at the bar — or rather, he hangs off it, arms folded on the counter with his face on his arms. There's a grunt as he's jostled, feels a pressure like someone bumps into him, and then a hand on his shoulder when he's pulled upright. His head lulls a bit, and there's something wet on his upper lip that he instinctively licks off.

His tongue registers bitter, a stinging, the taste foul, and then it's down his throat with a swallow. A word reaches his ears — mutant — but there's no additional cogs that turn to give it any meaning to him. And then a sharp, painful pressure to the face; and then the floor rushing up to meet the back of his head. Eoin blinks, once, up at the ceiling, at the faces above him looking down. A sharp pressure in his ribs, then his stomach when he turns on his side with a groan, his body curling instinctive.

The floor leaves him quickly, and Eoin vaguely wonders if it fell away. He isn't sure if he's falling, but there's a feeling like he's being held onto on both of his arms. Another sharp and equally painful pressure to his face knocks his head back; the same bitter stinging liquid fills his mouth, and without really thinking about it, Eoin forces the foul stuff out of his mouth. Less spitting rather than it is letting it drip out of his mouth.

@softlikelightning​ [ shae // eoin ]

Meeting someone for the first time, you’d want to present a good first impression, especially when the person you’re meeting is your future roommate with whom you’re supposed to share a house for the foreseeable future. You’d want to wear your good clothes, come across together and amicable, show them they’re not about to make a huge mistake.

Of course, none of that flies when your name is Eoin Dougherty. When you’re Eoin, your clothes are ratty, filled with holes from how worn they are. You won’t even have a bag because you don’t own shit, you’ll be stoned enough to tolerate people without the urge to slam their heads into a brick exterior the moment they so much as breathe in your direction.

That is what Shae Knox will be faced with as Eoin knocks on the door. The house is a decent enough house, but whatever good thing about it, it’s off-set by the quality of the neighbourhood it sits in. It’s the kind of neighbourhood where going out after dark is testing your luck, where alleyways smell a certain way. Drunk people in bushes, yelling from houses, a window shatters from the inside out because someone got angry. People on the street corners you don’t want to look at for too long or you might start something you’re not prepared to finish.

So all in all, exactly Eoin’s element. This might not be where he grew up, but it’s how he grew up, so it’s familiar enough for him to be comfortable despite being in a completely strange place, about to meet a stranger to live in a strangely decent house that is several brackets above anything he can afford.