Post by PHOEBE MURPHY on Mar 27, 2024 20:39:01 GMT
”We’re celebrating! Line ‘em up!” It didn’t matter that Lawrence wasn’t the one behind the bar pouring for them, or that he wasn’t even there to celebrate, just that she had a reason to start throwing those shots back. She had her brother back.
One of her kitchen cabinets still had no door. She’d plucked a glass out of it for some pre-loading with Kitty and Krista before they’d gone out, frowning faintly. There was no way Lawrence was fixing it, so at some point she’d have to compel the super to come in and do something about it. The truth was too fucking strange to work on him. I’m sorry, sir. You see my brother was forced to turn off his emotions by a demon w*ore, and the only way could think of to get him to turn them back on was to break his heart. What she hadn’t anticipated was the anger striking first. Lawrence had been an asshole of epic proportions while his emotions were off – rude, vengeful, heartless – but she’d never felt threatened by him until that night.
The clean up had been tear filled, at least on her part. Lawrence had rushed out of the apartment, presumably to pick up the pieces of the life he’d been busy shattering like the cupboard door, leaving her to it. She’d knelt there on the tile, sweeping up splinters of wood, straining her ears to make sure that it hadn’t been a false start and Lawrence hadn’t gone down to his old apartment to pay Teddy back for helping her out. God, she owed him for that. There wasn’t gonna be a fruit basket in Mystic Falls big enough to say thank you for saving my brother.
Once upon a time her thanks might’ve been given in shots, lined up on a bar somewhere – probably another first for Teddy. Something easy that didn’t require her tying her brain up in knots, but thanks to wounds inflicted long before she’d found her way back into her brother’s life, it wasn’t that easy to get Teddy to stop being suspicious about everything she did.
That was a problem for another day though. Phoebe had never counted herself as one of those maudlin drunks, sitting in a corner, spilling her life story and some tears in a corner of a bar to people who absolutely didn’t wanna hear it – and probably shouldn’t have done given the shit that had happened in it. She was a party girl, happy to be the life and soul of the party. Clutching another round of drinks in her hands and charging back onto the dance floor in search of Kitty and Krista.
Frothy pink drink, heavy on the rum, ran down Phoebe’s throat and buzzed in her veins. Maybe it took a lot more to get her drunk than it did Krista, but it still happened. She still lost minutes at a time as she threw her hands up and danced. Spinning through the crowd, losing the two of them at times before she came drifting back in with the offer of another drink or hollered comments about some guy in the crowd – as though Krista would look at any of them when she had Maaaaal.
Who needed an asshole like that when you could have practically anybody else here? A night without strings, someone who hadn’t seen right through your prettily made up exterior to what you hid beneath. Lights glittered overhead as Phoebe opened her eyes and swung herself around again, hips twisting to the beat of the music. Her gaze drifted across the crowd, latching onto the tall form towards the edge of it.
Her squeal was probably lost in the throb of the music, but Raik didn’t have a choice about avoiding her as she threw herself towards him. ”Hey!” Phoebe raised her voice, craning up on her toes like she always did with him as she threw her arms around his shoulders. ”I wasn’t so sure I’d see you in here again!” After you’d been left in a freezer in the basement of a place there had to be some bad memories lingering. ”Are you brother sitting or is this a night out for yourself?” Phoebe supposed he could’ve asked the same of her, after all the first time they’d met had been right here, her wanting to spend what time she could with Lawrence, Raik keeping watch over his brother in the crowd.