How Viperstream found herself here again was of no mystery to her, much as she wished it was. This was her place, her territory, essentially, to put it in cat terms, so she was obligated to defend her place, getting drunk as fuck; yes, this was her… not happy place, exactly (one is not exactly happy draped over a bar counter, especially when they are cat-sized, cat-shaped, and a cat), though Lydia, when she wasn’t busy talking to some poor sod all the way down the counter, might count towards some “happy points”. As a result, when she spotted Xander come sauntering in like he owned the place it only added to her growing list of grievances with the hyena. To add insult to injury, he spotted her right away and, in flagrant violation of the very obvious, in her opinion, vibes of “I don’t want to fucking talk to you” that she had been trying her damnedest to give off lately, he planted his giant doggy ass right in the seat next to her with a cackle. He waved off the woman glued to his arm whom he’d come in chatting fervently with, and she promptly went and took up a place in a far booth.
“What do you want,” Viperstream growled exhaustedly, one side of her face smushed up against the cold, smooth wood of the bar counter.
“I’m just here to like... chat,” Xander replied with a grin, in the douchey kind of loud but “casual” voice that was super fucking fake but also super-duper fucking annoying, at least to her. “Y’know. Like pals do.”
It wasn’t even a cool douchey voice.
Maybe all his groupies thought it was hot, but she just found it drove her into a mental blood rage. Maybe she also found it so annoying because she already just didn’t like him… which was also a possibility.
“Have you always been this bad at reading people?”
He cocked his head to the side. “I’m an expert in readin’ people, excuse me. What would you know about that, anyway? You spend all your days hangin’ at the bar and doin’ things you’re not supposed to.”
“Yeah, but at least I do things.”
“I do plenty of things, too,” Xander replied, with a smirk and a playful wink to boot.
“Gross.” Viper groaned, with a roll of her eyes so hard one might be surprised to learn they didn’t roll into the back of her skull. “Genuinely. What do you want?”
“Just to talk about some things, y’know? Like…” he trailed off, as if a sudden awkwardness had overtaken him. This was… intriguing, as a development, and very, very uncharacteristic, from what she knew of him. She resolved herself to checking the records later, perhaps to glean some insight into his strange behavior; she knew little of his past, but surely it couldn’t be that bad, right? Tarroque was full of people with less than pleasant stories, sure, but she was willing to give them a chance. It’s not like she made those choices, and they had a whole eternity to think their past over. And it really wasn’t that she so much as cared deeply about Xander, really, beyond the basic care she’d give for any life— far from it in fact, and this was part of the reason she’d not checked his own file before; he filled her with incalculable anger (it was something about his laugh, his general demeanor, his horrible giant posse he dragged almost everywhere… maybe sometimes even the way he dressed, but the other fifty percent of the time she had to begrudgingly admit his attire looked perfectly fine) every time he spoke and his constant teasing and taunting was getting old (how Wesker dealt with this constantly was nothing short of a miracle).
Xander twiddled his thumbs in an almost nervous fashion. “I mean, we’re friends, yeah?”
“In the vaguest possible sense of the word at this point, maybe,” she mumbled.
“Yeah, well, see…” he trailed off again, and this time Viperstream was starting to get a little more agitated at the hesitance. One day, she’d probably have to work on her anger juuuuuuust so she wouldn’t end up smashing a glass over his head…. but that day was not today.
“See what? If you have something to talk about, get it over with so I can go home.”
His prior hesitation was gone as he slipped back into a more comfortable role with a last nervous laugh; that role being the role of the giant demonic shit jester who was determined to make her afterlife hell. “Woah, woah, relax there, little buddy! I’ll get there when I get there.” he laughed. “See, this is the difference between us, Viper. When you’re drunk, like right now, you’re mopey and angry and sometimes you even get all philosophical… ugh.” he bemoaned mockingly. “And nobody cares for that stuff. You gotta focus more on the stuff that matters— like, when I’m drunk, it's fun and cool and I'm even more awesome than usual. Everybody loves me, and nobody loves you. You’re killin’ me, having to look at you like this!”
She chose not to respond to just about ninety percent of that, instead offering a reply of “...I’m always angry around you, dumbass.”
“Exactly! So you gotta saddle up, stop actin’ like an idiot, and get with it. Look, I’ve got the perfect deal for you.”
“You leaving me alone forever would be the perfect deal, actually,” she snapped, though he continued without acknowledging her.
“The perfect deal is…” he said, grinning, jabbing a claw into her shoulder, “We come to some sort of agreement, at a later date. Whatever you want. If you wanna be a friendless loser for the rest of time, that’s fine by me. But whatever you do, you can’t keep checking those records.”
“And why is that, exactly?”
“C’mon, man. Do I gotta give you a big reason for everything? Some things are better left in the past, that’s all. And not just for me? I’m bein’ selfless here. Maybe other people wanna leave their pasts behind? Hm?”
“Doesn’t everyone,” she laughed. “Unfortunately, the universe doesn’t tend to afford us such a luxury so much as torment us with the prospect of it. So no, I’m not going to stop just because you said to. Your instructions don’t mean jack shit to me, and you wouldn’t help me, anyway, because you don’t know what helping is, aside from stopping yourself short of calling someone a dipshit and calling them a dumbass instead.” With that, she pulled herself up off the counter, leaving behind her half finished drink.
Xander stammered, like he was trying to fill the void with noise to stall for time until he could come up with something to say, but Viperstream wasn’t about to hear it anyway. Just as soon as she’d gotten up she slunk off the stool, graceful despite her (relatively mild, for once) inebriation, and then, without so much as a look back, was gone as swiftly as she’d arrived.