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Daycycle 113 [ October 23 - October 29 ]

daycycle 113

[Oct 23 - Oct 29]

[OOC Plotting for this Dacycle can be found here.]

[Specials can see a Specials Supporters Anonymous chat leaked onto the network in the wee small hours of the morning, here.]

Early Morning [0800 - 0900] — All Troubleshooters Report for Duty

Allison Argent and Peggy Carter, have been selected for today’s mission. Details are below:

‘There have been multiple reports of sightings of unregistered mutants near the south sewer entrance. Go investigate with caution.’

Please debrief the computer on the status of your mission by the end of the Daycycle here.

Morning & Afternoon [0900 - 1600] — Service Firm Positions
All Troubleshooters not assigned a mission should report to their Service Firm for their daily duties, unless specifically assigned a different shift.

Evening [1600 - 2200] — Citizen Improvement
All Alpha citizens are encouraged to better themselves through Alpha’s wide variety of educational, entertainment and cultural opportunities offered each evening. Attending these sanctioned events are not mandatory, but is highly encouraged by The Computer. Citizens choosing not to take advantage of these opportunities, have a growing number of other options available to them in how to spend their hard earned credits and free time.

Tonight’s event will be at 2000 in Warehouse 97 in the R&D Sector and will be hosted by the Alpha Fight Club. Martial Arts and Boxing are skills all Alpha Citizens should have. Join us as we demonstrate how to get started and how to fight properly.

Alpha Curfew Restrictions
All Alpha citizens should be in their quarters within the Wagon Wheel by 2200, unless they’ve been given permission from a GREEN or higher clearance level citizen. Sleeping Aid gas is dispelled each night in the Wagon Wheel at 2200 to assist citizens in getting a productive sleeping period.

Confession Booths
There are hundreds of confession booths available around Alpha Complex if a citizen would like to communicate directly with the computer. Please use these confession booths to report mission statuses, report treason or terrorist acts, unregistered mutants, confess your trespasses against Alpha Complex, request propaganda or speak with Your Friend, The Computer, at any time.

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She's been trying to tell him that they've been exploring.

That's a good thing. She can't imagine how awkward things would be if she were Derek's girlfriend and she'd slept with Alcide. It would have been far more awkward than it is right now, which is saying something because she's pretty sure they're drowning in awkward.

She lifts one shoulder in a half shrug. "He drank a lot of coffee. I think he was just restless and paranoid." He probably took things wrong. She can't say for sure that Derek was super keen on going out, but she doubts it was that big a deal.

Yeah, she's experience the same sick, roiling nervousness. She pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a deep breath. She hasn't actually seen anyone pregnant here and she knows the alphas are clones, but she's not sure what that means for the specials. She's convinced they aren't clones. They're brought here. Somehow. "Hopefully it won't be an issue," she says quietly.

Weird turn for sure. Not a turn she's used to discussing. Granted, she usually has sex with vampires so it's unsurprising that she didn't think of a condom until just now. Yes, her sex life is weird. Shut up.

"No. Not unless you were going to finish that sentence with snooping around after curfew and then yes, but that's all."

Okay then. Buffy and Derek really have been exploring the complex at night. Derek and Buffy are not dating or sleeping together or anything like that. Alcide did not sleep with his roommate's girlfriend. This is not as much of a soap opera as Alcide has assumed. Still a soap opera, just... tamer. He can work with that.

Also, maybe Derek really wasn't as put off by him as Alcide assumes he might have been. He can hope that that's the case, anyway. Alcide would like to be on good terms with both roommates. They have to live together, after all.

There's also an ease of the tension that has settled inside of him since waking up this morning. There's no reason for him to have been jealous of Derek and Buffy, even if they were more than friends. And yet... Now that's a non issue.

He looks over to Buffy and stares for a moment. He's having to try really hard not to think about how she looked in white and how she felt when he was inside of her and how the entire world had narrowed down just to the two of them. They were fire hot together. Buffy had wanted Alcide every bit as much as he wanted her. Alcide isn't used to two-way streets as far as the opposite sex goes.

"Look I don't like the way it happened either. But..." He shrugs a bit. "It was good, right? We were good together." He pauses again and then tilts his head. "Are you and me gonna be okay? I'd really prefer to get along with my roommates is all. Right now I know it's awkward but..."

She's glad that he's finally getting that. She's pretty sure that soap operas aren't quite that racy. She'd really like to not be on a Alpha Complex soap opera again.

Buffy doesn't think he was. Of course, she can't really speak for him, but she thinks it's worth giving him a second chance.

Buffy is refusing to think about yesterday. She doesn't want it to be a factor in her friendship with Alcide. She's not terribly successful in not thinking about it when he looks at her like that though. Yes, they were hot together and she had wanted him as much as he wanted her, but she never would have jumped the gun like that without knowing him better if it weren't for the coffee. She's been drugged before and she hates it.

She presses her lips together when he mentions it, stomach plummeting. Her cheeks flush as she nods. Yes, it was good. They were good together. She still feels fire in her belly when she does let herself linger on it a moment. Finally, she looks up at Alcide, cheeks still red. "Yeah, we're going to be okay. I mean--we are okay. Awkward is a form of okay. It can be, I mean. And we don't always have to be awkward. We can get over that hump--the awkward hump." She squeezes her eyes shut, wincing at her own words. "You know what I mean."

It's hard for Alcide not to think about yesterday when he looks at Buffy. That could be because it's still so fresh on his mind as well as entirely out of character for the both of them. Or it could be for other reasons that he's not letting himself get too involved in just yet. They just met. Alcide does have a habit of falling hard and fast for someone. But this right here is ridiculous even on that front.

Maybe Alcide shouldn't have brought it up again. But he's not the kind of guy to sweep things under the rug. He'd rather confront it and be done with it instead of letting it linger in the air between them without being acknowledged so that they can move forward.

He nods at her in agreement. "Yeah, I get what you mean."

Alcide gestures to the foot of her bed and waits for her to say it's okay for him to have a seat before doing so. She's at the head of her bed. He's at the foot. There's plenty of space between them. "So why don't we become less strangers and more... the opposite of that. Tell me somethin' about yourself."

Buffy is having a hard time not thinking about it either. Of course, when she does the awkwardness returns. She ends up blushing and wanting to crawl under a blanket. It is out of character for her and she'd acted out of character because she'd been drugged. While Alcide falls hard and fast, Buffy takes her time. Her past romantic relationships have been rocky so she's hesitant to jump in. Besides, back home she'd been in a good thing with Spike.

No, he's right. It has to be dealt with. It's good that he brings it up, that they don't let it fester and rot.

She looks through her fingers when he says he gets what she means and lets her hands fall.

When he gestures, she nods. "Yeah. Please." Having a seat is good. He's tall and she doesn't need a crick from looking up. She smiles at his offer. "In my glitches, I'm a barista. I have a younger sister named Dawn. She's going to Berkeley. " She tilts her head at Alcide, smiling a little. "What about you?"

"They aren't glitches. They're real." Alcide is quick to say, if just because he needs to believe that and maybe Buffy needs to believe that too. Her sister Dawn is as real as they are, as real as this is, as real as anything is real, just like Alcide's life back home is. For all the indoctrination of this place, Alcide will never buy that his life back home is a glitch.

He sits back against the foot of the bed and regards Buffy. "I got an older sister, Janice. She's... always all up in my business and protective of me the way older siblings are. She owns a hair salon and will probably be pissed at me when I don't come in for a haircut on time."

It's almost a subconscious move to push his hand back through his dark locks just then.

"Let's see... somethin' about myself. I owned my own construction company. Herveaux Contracting." He says. "My pops ran it into the ground, was in dept up to his ears when he handed it over to me. I got it out of debt and we're doin' pretty good now... or we were."

Buffy nods and casts her eyes to the ceiling where the cameras are. She knows they're real. She's believed they're real from the moment she woke. She's also learned that you shouldn't talk too much about 'home' or about the glitches being real. Those are things the computer will catch onto. "They feel real."

"Yeah, I think that's an older sibling thing. I'm over protective and Dawn. I prod into her life and her business." Her attention goes to Alcide's hair. She remembers tangling her fingers in it and her gaze goes right back down to the space between them on the bed. "It's probably nice though. I would think anyway, having someone that worried about you and was protective of you." She'd lost her mom several years ago and she still misses her every day.

"One of my best friends did construction," she comments. She vaguely remembers there being some conversation about construction and Alcide's tan. It's all a blur though. "Is that always what you wanted to do?"

Both Buffy and Derek do that. They look at the cameras anytime he says what he thinks to them. For having been here a few days, the both of them, they're hyper aware of the cameras. Alcide forgets they're there a lot of the time. He wonders what's been done to the both of them that they both seem scared of speaking in front of them.

In any case, Alcide could give a fuck. He knows what he knows. "They are." He assures her, albeit a bit quieter than before, but no less certain.

"I bet your sister's just as protective of you, even if she don't show it." Alcide says. "I know I am of Janice." He grins a bit. "I still tell her to go away and mind her own business a lot of the time."

He considers her last question, but waits for her to look back up at him from the bed before answering. "Wanted to do, I don't know about that. It's what I know though. Shreveport ain't swimmin' with opportunities. Plus I never did college. Barely finished high school. Just did what I know how to do, you know?" Alcide is definitely an ordinary joe from a lower class drunken household. Nothing spectacular about him.

"Guess I'm pretty underwhelming in the light of day, huh?" He only half-jokes. He couldn't be impressive if he tried. And with Buffy, he really wishes he could impress, that he had more to work with.

Funny enough, Buffy has simply heard what happens. She knows that sometimes people get arrested for treason and are never seen again. She can't do anything if they drug her or if they lock her up somewhere she can't be found, or worse. She's learned from others to be careful.

She nods a little, not willing to argue with Alcide for the sake of making a point that she doesn't even believe. It'll be even more conspicuous than Alcide's words.

"She is." She's seen Dawn defend her in the same breath that she gives her hell. She knows that Dawn loves her, that she's protective of her. "I think Dawnie does the same thing."

Buffy smiles a little at that. "I was in college for a year. I dropped out when my mom got sick. After she died, there was Dawn and I never went back." She takes a short, sharp breath. "When I was little, I wanted to be a super hero. I just never realized what being a super hero meant during the spaces you weren't saving people."

She shakes her head at that, looking at him a moment. "I'm still pretty whelmed." She likes Alcide and nothing he's told her has changed that. In fact, this conversation, the way he approached her, has only made her like him more.

To be honest, Alcide is still having trouble being afraid of a computer and whatever a computer might have its minions do to him. After seeing the horrible, terrible things that Vampires, Shifters, Fae and Humans can do to each other, he's pretty sure that anything else is a walk in the park. Add to that that Alcide has a hard time play acting anything, well... there ya go.

"Sorry about your mom." He says. "Was your dad in the picture?"

In the end, he thinks college is overrated and overpriced. He's done just fine with the company his dad tried to run into the ground without a college education, thanks very much. It might not be a glamorous job, but he's good at it.

When she says she's still whelmed, Alcide grins and ducks his head with a nod. "Me too." Everything. All of it. Right back at her.

She hopes that he never has reason to be afraid of the computer. She's been lucky that most of her vampires and demons just wanted to kill people. Most of the time, it was humans who did horrible things to each other.

She sighs and shakes her head a little. "About the time having a teenage daughter became difficult, he split. I haven't heard from him in years."

For some people, yes college is overrated and it's definitely overpriced. It wasn't ever really in the cards for Buffy, no matter how much she wanted it, but she's determined that Dawn is going to get to go to college. Dawn deserves college. She's smart and she's good. Buffy doesn't care that Alcide didn't go to college. He owns his own business. That's worth a lot. Most of the time, her job isn't that glamorous either, but she's good at it.

She can't help blushing and ducking her head when he says 'me too'. "Good," she finally says, looking up at him.

Alcide hrms his understanding of that with a slight nod. He knows he doesn't have the corner on deadbeat parents. As far as wolf families go, his is on the very fucked up end of the spectrum. "Yeah, some people shouldn't be parents. But then I guess there wouldn't be you and me if they weren't so... two sides to the coin."

He's never had a death wish, always been glad to be alive. His insecurities with women can most definitely be traced back to his mom leaving all of them high and dry though. Then Debbie did the same. Then Rikki. The, right before he got here, Sookie had run off with Bill. What was she doing?

Fuck that. Sookie's not here. She's probably sexing it up with her ex.

"My mom left all of us too." He finally says. "Found another wolf who wasn't a drunk. Decided she didn't need kids either. Dad wasn't much to speak of either cause... drunk." He shrugs as if it's no big deal, even though all of this shaped Alcide. "Janice and me, that's my family. Closest I got."

There's far too many deadbeat parents. No one in her little circle of friends had had great parents. Her mom was probably, easily, the best parent of anyone else that she knew. She smirks a little at that. "There should be a license required or something. However, you've got a point. Some really great people have had craptacular parents."

Buffy had struggled with the whole death wish thing for a long time. According to Spike, it's a normal thing for slayers. Her issues with men are probably very related to her father leaving, but also, in no small part, to Angel, her first serious boyfriend. Spike (this most recent time), strangely enough, had been the healthiest relationship she'd probably ever had.

Spike is probably helping to take care of Dawn and looking for her.

She reaches out to put her hand on his forearm. "Family isn't always something you're born with. You get to make your own."

"Yeah. Maybe even here." Maybe there can be family here. Family is very important to Alcide even when they drive him nuts, even when they hurt him. Maybe he's a masochist in that way. He keeps going back to his dad again and again. He keeps picking people who put him last knowing he'll hang around like an idiot. He keeps making the same mistakes over and over again.

And speaking of that, given what happened between him and Buffy, he feels he needs to put this out there too. Because Alcide is never one to let things remain unsaid if they need to be said. "I got a girlfriend back home. Her name's Sookie. I mean, she's sweet. She's fucked up but she's also the most normal girl I've ever been with."

He dips his head because it's his turn to stare at the space on the mattress between himself and Buffy. "Only right before I got here, she lied to me and ran off with her ex. I ran off, shifted and tracked her down. I was trackin' her when I showed up here. Got no clue what's goin' on. I always knew it. I knew she wasn't over Bill. Deep down, I knew it. I knew I loved her more than she loved me." Which sucks and hurts and he kept thinking he'd give it time and she'd come around.

Again, same mistakes over and over. He's always hanging on to less than he deserves with every woman he's ever been with.

"Anyway I thought you should know." He says. Because all that hurt he's feeling is not Buffy's problem. Maybe he shouldn't even feel guilty about being with Buffy. But a part of him does, because Alcide isn't that kind of guy who steps out on his girl. He has no idea if he still has a girl though, or if he should even want Sookie to still be his girl. And then there's Buffy and whatever is going on there. "Honesty is the best policy and all that."

"It'll take time, but...yeah." Buffy just needs people to care about, people to fight for, people that care about her. She's not sure if that makes a family or not. He's loyal and there are much worse qualities a person can have.

Somehow, he takes her by surprise. Her breath catches and her throat feels tight; jealousy simmers in her belly and she pushes it away. She's got no reason to be jealous and besides, she's got a boyfriend as well. She doesn't speak until he's finished speaking She scoots a little closer. He reminds her a little of Spike. Of course, his confession also reminds her of something that Riley once said to her.

"I"m sorry," she tells him quietly. "About your girlfriend." She takes a deep breath. "I've got a boyfriend back home. HIs name is Spike. He's a two hundred year old vampire so...not normal, but normal and me have never worked out very well." Honesty. Yeah. It's a good policy.

The reaction she gives him is way better than he could have hoped for. She scoots closer and Alcide feels like she's genuinely understanding how complicated his feelings for Sookie are right now, like she understands why he stayed knowing what he knew, why he needed to tell Buffy because he needed her to know that he isn't that guy.

Of course, then she mentions dating a vamper back where she's from and that reminds him of Sookie and Bill, Sookie and Eric, Sookie and Will - basically everyone that Alcide came a close second to. And isn't it just his luck? Here he is, having an undefined thing for Buffy and repeating the same stupid shit over and over again. God, he so dumb.

"Datin' a fanger, huh?" What is his life? He kind of wants to go to the wall and bang his head against it. "Maybe he'll show up here."

Alcide draws in a deep breath and sits up a little straighter, hands pressing into his thighs. "I've probably bothered you with my shit long enough."

If anyone understands complicated relationships, it's Buffy. She's also getting that he's trying to tell her he's not usually that guy. She wants him to understand she's not usually that girl either. She's told him that clearly, but still. It's important and maybe it's important because she likes him or maybe it's just that he's her room mate and co-worker. Either way, they both feel like it's important.

She'd simply been being honest with him. She'd tried dating a normal guy and it hadn't worked out. Normal guys get killed when they get too close to her or they can't handle what she is, what she does, what she can do. Werewolves weren't that common in her world, which is probably good considering the differences between the wolves in her world and in his.

Her eyebrows shoot up at that. She's not aware that it's a slur in his world though. It's not a word she's ever heard applied to vampires, but it's pretty clear what he's talking about. She considers his words a moment. "I'm not sure Spike would handle this place very well." He'd be human and Spike likes being a vampire. He'd hate who he was as a human.

It's obvious that her honesty with him hadn't gone over very well. "You know, you don't really get to be all angry face with me. You've got a girlfriend too."

She's not sure that her comment is welcome, but that's how she feels right now.

Well, he'd thought his saying that her boyfriend might show up here would be comforting, a stark contrast to the way he's beating himself over the head with a brick in his mind. But her response says that's not the case. He'd also thought his letting her get back to herself was a good idea now that they'd put their cards on the table. Again, apparently not the case.

Apparently his 'I'm so dumb' look looks... angry face? Who would have thunk it? Cause there's nothing about Alcide that's angry right now and he hadn't thought he'd been projecting that at all. Is he beating himself up? Yes. Is he angry? No. Most people have no problem knowing when he's angry cause it's very obvious and Alcide will let them know about it.

"Wait. What?" He asks, suddenly very confused. Hopefully his confused face doesn't look angry too. "Didn't say I didn't have a girlfriend. Think I just told you I did. Why do you think I'm angry?" He shakes his head. "I'm not. Thought I was helpin'..." He waves a hand at the space between them. "...this, between us."

Maybe she's feeling a little guilty, defensive and a tiny bit jealous, despite the fact that she's got no reason to be jealous. Defensive and guilty, okay sure.

See the above disclaimer. To be fair, she's never seen Alcide angry so she doesn't know that.

Okay, confusion she gets. At least this time. It makes her regret saying anything at all. "I know. That's what I'm saying!" Now she's confused about this too. "You have a girlfriend. I've got a boyfriend. We're terrible people and I don't--because you just...the whole I'm gonna stop bothering you with my shit, like it's not mine too now." She buries her face in her hands and scrubs her hands over her face and back through her hair.

"We're not terrible people." Alcide says quickly with a shake of his head. "We were... manipulated so that somethin' that was already there on my end got magnified and I took advantage of it cause of the damn drugs. You and me? We're not terrible. Whoever drugged the coffee is terrible." A pause. "And I kinda wanna kick their ass."

But he curbs that anger because he'd thought he'd been fixing what was between him and Buffy and now it feels like he somehow fucked that up without even trying to or knowing how he did it. "And I was just tryin' to get outta your hair and let you... y'know, be whatever..."

Alcide takes a deep breath and reaches out to curl his fingers at her forearm and pull her hand toward him. His fingers slide down her arm until he's gently holding one of her hands. "Are we really okay or are we just pretendin' to be okay? Cause I wanna really be okay with you and I feel like I am on this end. We can be friends. Good friends."

Somehow, it helps to hear him say that they aren't terrible people, which is why it takes a moment for the rest of what he said to catch up. "Wait. What? Something already there?" Confused Buffy is confused, but she also feels a little flutter of something in her belly. If he's talking about an attraction, maybe that's a good thing. At least it would be a mutual thing. "If you find an ass to kick, let me know. It can be a group activity."

He didn't fuck anything up. He really didn't. "Right. You're not--" she sighs. "You're not a bother, Alcide. I know things are weird between us right now, but..." her brow furrows. "You're not a bother."

She lets him take her hand and even scoots a little closer. She smiles at him slightly, nodding. "We really are okay." She squeezes his hand at that. "I want to be good friends too."

Maybe he hadn't really planned out how he phrased that. But that doesn't make it any less true. He'd felt something with Buffy the second they met, same way he had with Sookie. That's Alcide's M.O. He falls hard and fast and has to wait for others to catch up, if they ever do. Sookie never quite got there with him. Sure, they went through the motions and Alcide was all in, but she never was. And deep down he knew that.

At the same time, honesty is the best policy with Alcide. Now that he's already stepped in it, he can't pretend he didn't. "I'd be lyin' if I said I wasn't attracted to you, from the first time we met. I mean you're gorgeous, sexy as hell. You probably know that already. Anyway, that's what I mean by somethin' already there. So..."

Okay, now he wants to back out of the conversation and let all that ruminate. He also doesn't want her to think it's anything she did or to insult her in any way. He just feels like he's said too much and now. He almost feels just as raw as he had when his inhibitions had been stripped to their barest form in the hallway with Buffy. Only this time he's completely cognizant of that fact.

"Thanks for sayin' that. I'll try to keep it that way." He'll try to keep not being a bother. Alcide gently squeezes her hand in his and still holds on for a bit before finally nodding and letting go. "So we'll make that happen. Friends."

It's actually a good thing that he did phrase it that way. Unfortunately for Alcide, Buffy has had the same sort of problems with relationships, but she'd been in Sookie's role and not Alcide's. She hadn't wanted to or even consciously been that person, but it didn't change that she had been. However, she's grown a lot in the last few years. She's had some time to be herself and to figure out who she is. She'd just gotten into the relationship with Spike with high hopes that it could be good. She wants to be in a relationship where she's all in and she'd thought she was in a place to do that.

Honesty is the best policy. His honesty makes her flush. "Thank you," she tells him and takes a deep breath, looking up to him. She remembers that first day at work, when they'd gotten so close; she'd been trying to tell him a little about this place. "THere's definitely an attraction there," she finally admits, "and you know how you look." He's gorgeous okay? But she's trying not to lead him on. "But I'm all mixed up emotionally right now and I was just getting into my relationship with Spike and..." she trails off because she does like Alcide like that and she feels like a horrible person for it.

Ruminating is good. She needs some time to think about all of this, about everything.

She nods a little, squeezing his hand back. "Friends."

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Daycycle 113 [ October 23 - October 29 ]

daycycle 113

[Oct 23 - Oct 29]

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