[FIN] Vested Interest

[BlackFireKitsune]

Sera leaned back against a table, propping an elbow against it as she gave Nate a coquettish smile. "Wow, busy tonight isn't it?" She commented as she scanned the still growing crowd, the slender stem of a glass held delicately in her free hand. She much preferred the fruity girly drink to the vodka some guy had gotten for her earlier. Vodka was too heavy for her tonight; she really wasn't interested in getting drunk. At least not tonight. "Anyway, how's work been treating you? Boss still an a*****e?"  

[Suudonym]

Nate didn't mind vodka much, and so he had accepted the drunk with a shrug when Seraphine offered to pass it off to him. A free drink was a free drink, after all, and a single glass of vodka wasn't going to hit him harder than a buzz this time of night. Despite being more or less satisfied with his circumstances, though, he made a sour face in response to the question, "Never not. I could swear they treat me like a criminal half the time there." Well, not that there wasn't necessarily good reason for that...  

[BlackFireKitsune]

The brunette pouted her painted lips at his words. "Yeah, that sounds like classic a*****e behavior to me. They should treat you better," she added in pseudo-teasing tones, going so far as to nudge his arm with her elbow gently.

She raised her glass to take another sip of her drink, scanning the club as she did so. The handful of guys that had been bothering her all night had immediately left her alone once she found Nate to hang around, and for that she was grateful - not that she would ever say as much, especially since the topic hadn't even come up. Some guys just didn't know when to quit.  

[Suudonym]

"They don't gotta treat me any particular way and they know it," he said, raising his glass defiantly for emphasis. "They've seen my résumé." Keeping his arm in the air like that had a weird effect on his balance, though, and he lowered it carefully, blinking away the vertigo. "Wow, this is just vodka right? Kinda strong." Maybe she'd gotten some kind of mix without realizing it. Maybe that was the reason she handed it off to him in the first place; that made good sense.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Yeah," Sera agreed with a purse of her lips and a light frown, feigning knowledge of how people treat their employees. She'd never had a job in her life, she didn't know s**t about what went on behind the scenes in the business world.

His sudden question made her eyebrows raise a bit in mild confusion, and she turned to look up at his face. "Yeah, it is. Why?" That's what she'd been told when the guy handed it to her. He at least had been nice enough to tell her what was in it, unlike some guys; Nate, for example, the first time she'd met him. She didn't have a clue what was in the drink her gave her, except that it was delicious.  

[Suudonym]

He placed a hand on the nearest solid surface to steady himself, regarding the beverage suspiciously, "Not sure I buy it. I'm not such a lightweight that a half a glass of vodka would make me too dizzy to stand straight. You bought this, right?"  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Sera instinctively raised a hand to hold onto his upper arm in an attempt to help him stay upright, though her brows were furrowed and a growing frown was present on her face. His words started to make her nervous though, and she placed her current drink on the table in case she suddenly had to help him stand. "Well, no, I didn't," she replied hesitantly, then added, "but you know I can't buy my own - I'm not 21. A guy gave it to me earlier.. But I watched them pour it, it was fine." Or at the very least, it had been fine between coming from the bartender and arriving in her hands.  

[Suudonym]

"Right, yeah." He wasn't 21 either, so it was easy to forget. Also it was difficult to think clearly, so that was a major contributing factor. He set the drink down with a look of disapproval. "Well bad news bears, my friend." He raised his now unoccupied hand to his face, attempting fruitlessly to calm the waves of dizziness assaulting his consciousness. He'd never drugged anyone, never been drugged, never witnessed anyone being drugged - this was strange territory for Nate and he was quite sure he didn't like it.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

The girl still wasn't quite sure what was going on - just that it wasn't good. She'd accepted a drink she knew to be fine, and it had been fine when she gave it to Nate a little while later... Or had it? She was fairly certain no one had gotten close enough to tamper with it... But maybe they had. There were quite a few good looking guys out tonight she had been shamelessly watching. There probably were plenty of opportunities to slip something in - unless it hadn't happened until after she passed off the vodka to Nate, but who would drug a guy? That hardly made any sense to her, but the resulting truth was upsetting, unnerving, and made her more than a little afraid. "Maybe we should go," she suggested hesitantly as she watched his face. He didn't exactly look too well anymore.  

[Suudonym]

"Uh, yeah, probably," he confirmed, an unmistakeable annoyance to his words. The source of that annoyance, however, was unclear even to him. Was he pissed off that Seraphine had given him a drugged drink, angry that someone would be childish enough to drug a drink in the first place, or just frustrated that he could only barely keep himself upright and his mind active? The bottom line was that it didn't really matter and he hated everything.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Though she could easily detect the annoyance in his tone - she used a similar tone practically daily - she refrained from commenting on it, because why the hell would she? She would be similarly annoyed if she'd had a drugged glass of vodka. Well, she did, she just didn't know it until after she'd passed it off to Nate. Whoops.

"Okay," she affirmed, waiting for him to make the first move, but when she didn't, Sera took the initiative to grasp his upper arm a little more firmly before she started walking towards the exit. She wasn't exactly sure how quickly he could walk - or if he could at all - so she started slow.  

[Suudonym]

He drew breath raggedly, moving slowly at Seraphine's prompt towards the exit. He was reminded of that one time when he was younger and suffered a particularly debilitating fever: disoriented, unsteady on his feet, breathless, slightly nauseous - in short, completely shitty. He followed Seraphine's lead, distrustful of his own perception. All his thoughts were filled by angry four-letter words.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Well, he seemed to be walking alright, he hadn't stumbled or anything yet, so that was good. They passed through the remainder of the club without incident, and when they passed the exit Giselle faded into view, grabbed Sera's jacket, and followed them outside.

It was there that Sera ran into her first obstacle, and she stopped on the sidewalk to glance up at Nate. "Where's your car?" They couldn't very well get him anywhere without a car, after all. Well, they could, but Mordecai wasn't very big as a Metang and she didn't want him to fall off and get hurt.  

[Suudonym]

'Walking all right' was a subjective evaluation that was liable to change as they proceeded and Nate became gradually less capable of resting his weight on his own feet. "In the parking lot," he answered, his tone implying the 'duh.' "Silver four-door. Parking pass in the rear windshield."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

As Nate began leaning on her more and more, Sera quickly found that just holding onto his arm wasn't exactly cutting it. "Alright," she said as she held his arm up a bit so she could duck under it, then slid her arm around his waist. How many silver cars were there in the city? Holy crap, they were never going to find it. Regardless, she grasped his wrist held it to make sure his arm would stay over her shoulders, figuring that would probably be a lot easier to lean on and would hopefully prevent her from falling over too. Sometimes a lot of times she really hated being short and small.

It didn't take too terribly long before they arrived in the parking lot. "You're gonna have to help me out here and try to point it out," she said as they headed through it. There were a lot of silver cars, and numerous four-doors. Ugh. That, and she didn't exactly have his keys. That was also a problem.