I Always Bite • •

[phoenix austin mckenzie]

Life had definitely changed for Nix over the last year. Meg had moved out of state for her career, meaning he’d lost his best friend to nothing more than skype calls and text messages. Then there was Payton. Nix had really loved her, but things had fizzled out when he’d gotten his job at the crime labs. He didn’t know what it was exactly. He hadn’t changed a single bit, which could very well have been a problem. He still ran wild, he still acted like a big kid. The only difference was that his job paid well and when he was in the lab he had to remember not to jump a mile if someone tapped him on the shoulder because his music was turned up too loudly to hear them calling his name when they came in. He had stopped overthinking it though, knowing that there was nothing they could do. They had tried, it hadn’t worked, and such was life. Nix had been a bit mopey at first, but it didn’t suit him to be miserable.

He picked himself up and focused on making his future in the city. Just because his student days were done and dusted it didn’t have to mean his life was! Nix still had some friends who hadn’t run off once graduation had happened, and he was the type who befriended people easily enough. He buddied up with people in the labs, bonded with them over hobbies that existed outside of their careers. He met people at concerts and soon enough had his whole social life back the way it used to be before he was done with college and had a diploma hanging on the wall of his apartment, slightly askew if anyone were to look at it closely enough. It was at a concert that he met Elle. She was doing some of the more dramatic special effects for the night, but Nix met her afterwards when he was loitering at the bar with a friend from work who could not handle his liquor. The best thing Nix did for him was to put him in a cab and send him home. After that, Nix hung out with Elle a bit longer, getting to know her and being his usual hyperactive self until it came time to leave.

Since then they met up once in a while and let fate land them into trouble and fun. It usually took a while for them to have days off that matched up without worrying about early starts or having other things to do, but the wait was always worth it. Nix was pretty excited to see her today. He got up, showered and dressed and then sent her a text to let him know that he was ready and about to head out to meet her at their usual place. For some reason – one he couldn’t quite remember – they always met at the Warehouse District and often ended up on the other side of the city come nightfall! Still, they had some cool things around that way, and it was a good place to start. Nix walked the whole way, just like he always did. Even getting shot that dark night never deterred him from walking everywhere, though many people thought it would. He got there and sent another message to say he was waiting. Tick tock… He leaned back against the brick wall and slipped his phone back into his pocket, lifting his long leg to push his foot against the wall in a position that had become somewhat habitual for Nix when he was waiting for just about anything.

• • •

TAGGED! Elspeth Lenora Wayde
WORDS! 610!
OUTFIT! Wild Man!
LYRICS! Can’t Say No - - - April Smith and The Great Picture Show
NOTES!

[Elspeth Lenora Wayde]

Elle never drove when she was going out for a night. It was just so much easier to get around on foot or in the bright yellow cabs that were signature for New York. She didn't want to have to wake up in the morning and figure out, firstly, where she was and secondly, where she'd left her truck, though she did have an app on her phone for that. Since she'd moved to the city, she'd had her fair share of night's out with only two of them ending that way. Once was okay, twice was an issue and one she didn't want to have again. If her parents ever found out about it, she knew she would never see the city without an escort ever again. And Elle really liked the city. There was always so much to do and so many jobs to steal out from under the competition. Not that her number wasn't the first one called when there was a gig to be done; it was and she knew she did exceptional work. She had always strived for it.

And Elle loved those spur of the moment gigs, even if by spur of the moment she meant the prep time for it was a week. Like the night she'd met Nix. Her family's business had been called in last minute and the venue had been worried they wouldn't have anything prepared to show them before the gig on the Friday night. Elle had chuckled, whipped up a little something and had stunned, as she knew she would, that Friday night when her design and her very small effects display went off without a hitch. She was patting herself on the back for a job well done when she met Nix and the rest of the night was full of laughter and jokes and acting like fools, which was one of Elle's favourite hobbies. She didn't always mesh well with other people and she knew that. She was mighty and feisty and she blew things up for a living. It was intimidating but she and Nix just seemed to click wonderfully and any time after that night when they got the chance to hang out, they left everything up to fate and let the night play out as it would.

It was comical some times and some nights it was just downright strange. But it was always an adventure. And that was the best part of it all. She was running late, of course, having fallen asleep at her computer drawing up her latest ideas for a movie production. They wanted big and showy for some movie revolving around New Year's Eve and she was in charge of bringing the magic. And she'd woken up to her phone chiming with an incoming text from her brother, demanding she email him the formulas and designs so he could get started. She would be back home Sunday morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed to do the job herself but her brother wasn't like her. He was good at timing but not so great at the maths but he liked the practice. And it was only because of him she saw the time and realised she was going to be late. It was a rush to hop in the shower, find something she actually liked in her full wardrobe and hail a cab once she hit the street. She couldn't even be sure she locked her door and was all the more thankful she lived in one of those fanciful buildings with security. She stopped the cabbie a block away from their usual meet up and walk the rest of the way. It never hurt anyone to stretch their legs and Elle liked the walk around the warehouse district. Grinning at the text message, Elle rounded the corner and pushed her wrist into Nix's line of sight, showing him her watch. "Time's a-wastin'!" She said, laughing.

Tag || phoenix austin mckenzie
Words || 657
Clothes || Bright Brunette
Music || Dips --Kelsea Ballerini
Notes || <3!

[phoenix austin mckenzie]

After walking everywhere had resulted in him getting shot, people assumed Nix would start relying more on cabs and his own car, but he didn’t. Nix had spent his whole life in cities where violent crimes were an everyday occurrence, and he had made a decision long ago to base his own career on that. He couldn’t be scared of shadows in alleys, or start crossing the street just because someone looked a little shady. It wasn’t him, and it wasn’t going to benefit his life in any way. His mom asked him during every phone call if he was being careful, and reminded him that he had promised to take care of himself. That part of the conversation took twelve minutes alone – he had timed it once – and Phoenix reassured her that he would be home for the next promised visit and he would be in one piece, or as close to it as they expected Nix to be. He would spend the rest of his life with the scar the bullet left him with, and Nix already had an impressive collection of childhood battle scars from foolish accidents that his mom was convinced had shaved several years off her life.

It was for that reason that he had kept all antics since then kind of quiet. She didn’t need to panic and fly in to New York City to check that her baby wasn’t in a hospital bed somewhere. He told her enough to keep her happy, and enough to make her realise that Nix was still Nix, but he kept the rest of the details to himself. He might have been a grown man, but his mom was still a fearsome woman who could drag him home by his ear if she wanted to. She could do it to any of her sons and they all knew that she would if she had to. Nix would be walking on thin ice with her for quite some time after he got shot, which was why he edited so much out of his life when they spoke, just to make sure everyone involved in that call was kept safe and happy; himself included.

He liked his life too much to be carted off back to Las Vegas and put on house arrest by his own terrifying mother. He has no doubts that she might do it either. He didn’t want to give her a reason for it though. He loved New York, and his life was good there. He was building his career there now, and everything was starting to come together just like he had planned. He was still an oddball who stood out from the crowd, but Nix wouldn’t have it any other way. He liked being different, being weird and having strange stories as his ice breakers. Grinning at Elle when she finally appeared before him, Nix pushed off from the wall with too much force. He fell forward a few feet, long, slamming strides stabilising him with ease. “And I’ve wasted so much waiting for you to preen yourself.” He said teasingly, lifting a small amount of her hair between his thumb and forefinger before dropping it back down again. He clapped his hands together and looked around. “Where, oh, where, can we wreak havoc today?”

• • •

TAGGED! Elspeth Lenora Wayde
WORDS! 555!
OUTFIT! Wild Man!
LYRICS! Can’t Say No - - - April Smith and The Great Picture Show
NOTES!

[Elspeth Lenora Wayde]

Elle loved New York so much more than she honestly thought she would. She also managed to get herself so much work considering how difficult it was to do what she did in the city. She lost count of how many different permits that needed to be filed for a single firework to be shot off. At least back home, they had an running permit with the city because they needed to set them off to make sure the designs and styles worked. And they were far enough out into the country that no one was actually bothered by the pops and bangs of them going off. It was much easier to do what the family did out there but still, Elle loved the city. It took a bit more work and effort and she had to drive out to the business to test out her designs and plans before bringing them for approval to the movie guy's or the ones demanding perfection for the concert where the only thing that happens is one five minute flame show. She might have been a tech like that but she hated the flame shows. They bored the ever living hell out of her.

It was at one of the shows she'd put on for some local hot shot band that she'd even met Nix. Their meeting was the highlight of the night. Not even secretly hoping the flames would pop incorrectly and set fire to the stage had made that one more fun; probably because she was also hoping to whichever deity that was listening to her that it would all go off without a hitch; and it had. It always did because in work, she left nothing to chance. Everything else in life was totally up in the air for Elle. She didn't know what any given day brought to her. It wasn't the kind of life a lot of people wished for but Elle thrived with it. For her, it meant that she could spend her mornings designing new firework shows, spend her afternoons hanging out with her friends or running her errands and when she finally settled on colours and mixtures, she could head up to the family house and work on mixing them up. She had one almost ready now. She just needed to finalise one more and then she could set them off. She would have stayed home to do it but she had planned this night out with Nix and hadn't wanted to cancel on him; she hated that.

"I'm sorry, did you want me rocking up stinking of gun powder?" She asked, hip-checking him before grabbing onto his arm and keeping him steady, just in case he decided to dislike gravity again. "I mean, I know I like the smell of it but someone else might not. And then there's the questions and having to deal with people. Don't you want me all to yourself?" She asked, leaning her head on his bony shoulder and looking up at him through her lashes dramatically. She was over exaggerating but that was the fun. There was absolutely no reason to be precise about information unless she was working. All those measurements had to be exact otherwise people would be seriously injured. Elle hadn't had any injuries so far in her young career and she wasn't planning on messing up so badly she had one.

Tag || phoenix austin mckenzie
Words || 567
Clothes || Bright Brunette
Music || Dips --Kelsea Ballerini
Notes || <3!