Kara and Aria - Day 5 after OG arrival

[only_one_rule]

After several days of hard work the suite was almost liveable, especially after Aria had dragged up a selection of furniture from several of the recreation rooms - she was sure nobody would miss it. Her bed was just a pile of cushions on the floor and the walls still smelled of smoke and ash but she liked it that way; it gave the place an edge, reminded her not to get too comfortable in their new-found luxury.

The only thing left to do was to finish decorating it, which is why Kara went to seek her out she found her elbow deep in one of the closets on the second floor, a pile of lamps and other accessories slowly growing on the floor just outside. Aria looked almost embarrassed for a moment to have been caught doing something as mundane as rooting around in a closet, but she soon composed herself and gave Kara a friendly enough nod. "Thrace. Don't tell me you're looking to redecorate too."

Comments

[grabyourgun]

"Not so much, no." Kara had responded to withdrawal by taking an almost obsessive amount of care with her body-- she'd already run five miles that day, and was fresh from her second shower. It wasn't enough to hide the red rims to her eyes, or the way her hands couldn't quite be trusted not to tremble, but at least she wasn't sweating through her clothes. Yet.

"On my way up here, I was trying to figure out what the odds were that you wouldn't gloat if I came and asked you for a fix. Probably slim to none, right?"

Her smile was as unsteady as her hands, but she thought that might work to her advantage. Aria was no fool-- she wouldn't miss the fact that Kara hadn't asked her for anything, yet-- and the more she thought she had Kara at a disadvantage, the more Kara might learn about what her game was.

The fact that she might actually have the advantage wasn't something Kara let herself think too hard about.

[only_one_rule]

"Gloating's a bad strategy - pisses people off too much," Aria replied blandly, though she did turn and take in Kara's unsteady state with narrowed eyes. Frankly she was impressed the blonde had lasted as long as she had; most had already come crawling to her and she had sent them on their way without much hassle. She had no interest in grinding down the junkies. It was the ones who approached her with distrust and suspicion that she wanted to fuck with.

"So what is it you're looking for? Speed and Endurance are your usuals, aren't they?"

[grabyourgun]

"Oh, so you just gloat where no one can see you doing it, is that right?" Her smirk fell flat as a little tremor worked itself out through her fingers, her usual steady gaze fracturing, flitting over the pile of stuff accumulated outside the closet. A tall lamp stood nearby and Kara ran her eyes up it, lips pursed, waiting for her hand to stay in one place for more than two seconds before turning back to face Aria head on.

"I'm sure it's clear I'm not at my best right now," she said evenly, "just like I'm also sure it's clear none of us can afford to be off our game while we're down here. You think this is really the time to be holding out for the best trade?"

[only_one_rule]

"You must not have done business before - when demand is high is exactly when you want to push for the best deal," Aria told her matter-of-factly. Kara had always seemed more of a soldier than an entrepreneur but surely she understood the basic tenets of supply and demand.

"Besides, you don't even know what I'm asking. Unless someone's already tattled," she said, pursing her lips. She knew Kara was close with several people, several of whom might have told her about the deals she was striking. Only one of them would have gotten her worked up like this, though. "A shame. I never took you for the ungrateful kind."

[grabyourgun]

Kara's smile was thin and sour. "Ungrateful," she repeated, like the word was curdling in her mouth. "Unless my memory's going along with my hand-eye coordination, I'm at a loss as to what you've done for me lately."

A fresh wave of nausea hit her, and she pressed her lips together tight, looking down until it had passed and she could meet Aria's eyes without seeing two of her. "I don't have time to play around," she said, her voice flat with resentment that was only a little to do with Aria. "I need an injection, and you've got a stockpile. What'll it cost me to get you to part with a few?"

Just enough to get me through the next few days, Kara thought, gods, please let me off easy. She was grateful in a distant sort of way that she wasn't yet desperate enough to say that last part out loud... but if she couldn't get what she needed today, that time wouldn't be long in coming.

[only_one_rule]

"Well, you're hardly in the position to give me anything right now," Aria said pointedly, her smirk illustrating that Kara's shaking hands and other symptoms hadn't gone unnoticed. "And I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself, anyway. Perhaps we can just call it a favour for the future." Aria had an inkling that Kara was both the type of person to hate to find herself in someone's debt and the type of person to honour a promise if she gave it. Eking it out of her would be the tricky part.

[grabyourgun]

"A favor," Kara repeated dubiously. The impulses warred within her-- she couldn't believe she was getting off so easily, but at the same time a voice in her head (that might have sounded like Boyd if she'd bothered to analyze it) reminded her that where Aria was concerned, anything that looked too good to be true probably was.

"I may be laid up right now, but you know what I'm capable of," she pointed out. "There's gotta be something you want that I can make happen... something sooner than 'someday in the future'." If Aria was hedging her bets now, it probably meant there wasn't anything she wanted right now... or that she knew Kara would want the score to be even between them as soon as humanly possible.

[only_one_rule]

"I know what you're capable of, and if I need a ship piloted, alcohol drunk, or something dispatched in a suitably gruesome fashion you'll be the first person I ask." Aria sounded amused, which was possibly worse than straight-out condescension. "I think, however, that asking you to assassinate one of our new neighbours, entertaining though that would be, would earn us no small amount of distrust. So you can understand why I'd rather save your strengths for a time when they'd be more useful."