Erin was in a bad way. In fact, to those who knew her, it was safe to say she'd gone of her own version of the deep end. Anyone who bought denim shorts so tiny that you could practically see what they had for breakfast was clearly going through some sort of personal crisis. And Erin never, ever, wore crop tops. Never. Like, not once in her life even as some sort of fashion experiment. Nor had she ever before possessed or worn what could only be described as kinky, diamante-studded suede boots. There was a very simple reason for this drastic change: she had never tried to dress to impress the general masses before, so she'd never been given a reason to expose all that flesh.
The thing is, desperate times call for desperate measures (and hair crimpers).
For the first time in her life Erin had made the executive decision to venture out Saturday night rather than hole up in her apartment watching Supernatural reruns. At first it had been a terrifying idea and something that would probably end up being the worst decision of her life but Erin didn't know what else to do. Regret haunted her every waking moment. She wanted to go back to Steve and apologise but she was too proud to admit she'd gotten out of hand. Besides, being humbled had never aided her in the past. Why would it have an effect now?
She had tried very hard to get him out of her head. She wrote, went to the gym, read, watched TV, completed nearly half of the many post-it notes that infested her kitchen but it was no good. She couldn't push him from the back of her mind. He distracted her from everything she intended to do. Steve had succeeded in infiltrating her thoughts in a way that didn't involve her disliking him and that made her hate him even more.
To be fair, Steve wasn't faring too well either. To Tony's surprise it was the Captain who had been the first to reach out to him for assistance, telling him about the incident.
"I warned you." Tony hadn't even hesitated to point this out but once he'd had his fill of 'I-told-you-so's he did try and help Steve out. Part of Tony pitied the soldier. Rejection was never easy and Erin… she was something else. He tried talking to her on Steve's behalf but she kept ignoring his calls. Had it not been for her semi-regular tweets and video surveillance footage JARVIS had pulled up from around the city he might have had cause for concern. If Erin felt the need to work through it alone though then he wouldn't intervene. Besides, his hands were full balancing Steve and his own problems.
The other Avengers and Pepper thankfully helped him out. Bruce aided Steve's quest to catch up with the world's progression and every so often Clint and Natasha would show up and take him out for the evening. They were trying to recruit him full-time to S.H.I.E.L.D. with no avail. Steve felt emotionally compromised – he couldn't throw himself into missions this way. It would risk the life of his team. He wanted to avoid danger at all costs.
Erin was the opposite. At the clubs and bars she was flirting with every guys going. Being several years out of practice it took a while to worm her way back into the game but Erin was young and attractive enough. It wasn't long before she was getting free drinks anywhere up from three times a night.
Being a solo socialite involved a lot more trial and error as Erin found out. There were a variety of things that she turned into mini rules almost to make herself feel better about the entire experience. For example: getting on the tube alone at 1am was not a good idea as it tended to induce severe paranoia, neither was splitting a cab with male strangers. Females were easier to trust but still shady; never be the first or last to get out of the cab. No one knows where she lives that way and Erin was not stuck with paying the entire fare. When choosing where to go to the night there were two real choices for Erin: either go to a new place where she wouldn't be recognised or haunt the same bar. She tended to do both, the first so she could experience new things and the second because she had begun to make friends with management which was always a good idea as sometimes guys got a bit much and in familiar places it was easy to get help. One of her number one rules was never to take anything that had been left unattended or not given to her directly from the bar staff. God knows what people had done to it.
There may have been a lot of rules but it kept her safe and allowed her to have what she thought was fun. It was a long time before she got into a situation she couldn't handle.
His name was Mitch. Or at least that's what he told her. Erin suspected he was lying but then again, that may have been because she was judging him based on her own standards and she was definitely lying about her name. Her reasoning was that in a new place surrounded by potential stalkers, one could never be too careful and "Lizzie" was always one to play on the safe side.
Mitch was (apparently) a British farmer on holiday. His father owned a large farm and rented out the lake to fishermen which was how he was able to afford the trip. When Erin quizzed him on things like the farm location he wasn't wrong at all. She knew from the years spent there growing up and that enabled her to know that the accent he sported wasn't fake either. Unlike many other men he wasn't lying straight off the bat which made her relax and let her guard down. Her mistake.
"Don't you miss London?" He asked her, paying for both their drinks despite Erin's insistence that she could pay for her own.
"Not at all. At the end of the day, western cities are all more or less the same." Erin shook her head as they meandered through the gyrating throng towards an empty table in the back corner of whatever club they were in. Erin had followed a hen party here, not really paying attention to where she was headed as it was already close to midnight and she wasn't the most sober person in the place.
"Hush now, we both know you're telling porky pies!" Mitch nudged her playfully with an elbow. "The culture is so different here!"
"Lies! Name me three differences between New York and London then." Erin laughed, challenging him as she slid expertly into the chair that had its back to the wall.
"Okay, for starters, in London there aren't food venders flocking practically every single corner! Americans sure do love their hot dog stands where as we Brits will actually go and sit down inside to eat if we're hungry. How you all walk and eat without getting indigestion is beyond me." Mitch began, poking out his tongue playfully as Erin accepted his first answer. "Secondly, there's the monuments which define a city-"
"Nu uh, that doesn't count," Erin giggled over the pulsing music, leaning in so that he could hear her cities him. "If you removed all monuments from all cities they'd be the same!"
"Fine but you're wrong. London is way more residential. We have real houses and are spaced out, not stacked up in tiny boxes on top of one another like people here." Mitch rolled his eyes dramatically as he adapted to her rules.
"Don't disrespect apartments! Houses take so long to clean and not all of us are rich enough to employ cleaners." She winked.
"Not yet you're not," He winked back which caused Erin's heart to start racing inside her chest.
"One last difference." Erin smiled, ignoring all potential roads his last statement led to.
"Ah, yes. The most important difference: people actually acknowledge each other on the tube." He grinned triumphantly.
"Not always." Erin stuck her tongue out at him.
"Maybe but it's way more than in England. Does that mean I win?" He asked, wriggling his eyebrows impressively.
"Maybe," Erin smiled.
Threading her fingers together, she looked Mitch up and down. He was certainly handsome if you were into pale guys with blonde hair and big muscles. He had misty green eyes and teeth that had definitely been clinically whitened. There was a male-model vibe to him that Erin couldn't miss. He was very pleasant to look out but he'd put a little too much cologne on. Erin stopped thinking about that though as he took her hand across the table and held it to his lips.
"Tell me why you left London and if there's any way I can persuade you to come back there with me." He demanded in such a way that Erin couldn't protest. He seemed so genuine and interested in her. It had been so long since someone was like that.
Steve hadn't left the gym since 7am. It was now nearing midnight but he wasn't tired. He was a super soldier, infused with special serum that magnified everything to the point where it was unbearable. He could punch the same bag all day, take only a handful of breaks to fuel and empty his body and he would be just fine. The anger was still present though. It was nothing compared to the rage repressed in Bruce but it was still significant to him. He hated himself for getting into this situation. He was angry at God that things had to get worse before they could get better. He wished that he didn't feel that way but he was struggling to reverse the process. In the end he just embraced it and began the long process of punching inanimate objects to try and rid himself of the negativity that consumed him.
"Jeez Cap', I hope that's not me you're punching." Natasha folded her arms as she walked across the floor to stand in his line of sight.
"Don't be ridiculous." Steve panted, not pausing in his activity.
"Heartbreak that bad?" She raised an eyebrow.
Steve didn't say anything.
"You need to give that a rest. Clint's outside in a cab. We need you to put these on." She threw a drawstring bag at his feet.
Steve stopped and finally looked at Natasha. She was in all black as always but it was a nice outfit, suitable for blending in with the general public. Steve sighed and picked up the bag. There was no point in arguing. He never won anyway.
Erin wasn't sure exactly how much she'd had to drink. All she knew is that Mitch was a great guy. He kept buying her drinks, they'd arranged to go to the movies the next day. They had so much to talk about and the conversation never lulled or got awkward. She was literally buzzing, though her head throbbed in the background. Part of her figured that it would probably be for the best if she stopped drinking but Erin was confident she could handle a couple more drinks. She'd never been a lightweight after all (something her aunt claimed Erin had inherited from her though how exactly that worked was beyond them both).
"So I was thinking about making a move from here," Mitch said finally, yawning a little to emphasise his point. "It's 1am."
"Oh really?" Erin took her phone from her shorts pocket and blinked a couple of times before the hour came into focus. He was right, it was. They had only really been talking for about an hour but it felt like forever. They had covered so much and Erin felt like she really knew Mitch now. It was so weird.
"Are you going to stay…?" He asked hesitantly, squeezing her hand slightly. He had been holding it pretty much all evening. His hands were warm and a little bit sticky with sweat but Erin didn't mind. She'd held worse.
"No," Erin shook her head and giggled a little as the world swished before her. "I ought to go too. Work tomorrow and all." She lied through the most beautiful smile. Or at least she thought she did. The perception of drunk people is very different to that of the rest of the world. She didn't remember that though, or that she ought to put her phone in her bag. Instead she slipped it into her pocket and grabbed her things with one hand.
"Okay, let's go." Mitch grinned and he helped her up.
They were able to walk to the door with relative ease this time. Many of the people had filtered out of the club as time passed, heading off to new places or trailing back home to their beds. Bed seemed like such a good idea to Erin, who became tired the instant she got to her feet. Once they walked outside and were blasted with cold air she changed her mind however. She felt so alert but oddly sedated at the same time. It was weird and she felt too exposed. Where was a blanket when she needed it? The skimpy denim jacket around her tiny frame wasn't going to protect her from the outside world.
"Hey, you remember that friend I was telling you about?" Mitch asked, shoving his hands in his pockets as they began to stroll down the sidewalk.
"The one you're staying with?" Erin asked, just to clarify. He'd spoken about a few friends that night. It was embarrassing because he actually had friends. She'd managed to avoid questions related to that area of her life. Too many lies and she wouldn't have been able to keep up the façade that she was in fact a tolerable person.
"Yeah," Mitch nodded, turning a corner to a quieter street. Still people but less cars and more spaced out lights.
"I remember." Erin spoke up after he was quiet for a few moments.
"Well he said it was cool if you came back with me. You know, if you wanted to." Mitch offered.
He slipped a hand out of his pocket and grabbed hers again. A shiver ran through Erin as she thought it over. The thing was, she knew her answer before she even considered it.
"No, I'm sorry. We'll see each other tomorrow anyway." She smiled apologetically.
She wasn't that girl.
"That's a shame. I know living by yourself gets lonely sometimes so I thought you might like waking up to some company," He shrugged. "My friend thinks you're really pretty by the way." He added casually.
"Wait, what?" Erin wasn't sure if she heard him right. How did he know? He apparently hadn't even gone out that night.
"I told him your name. I hope you don't mind; he looked you up on Facebook." Mitch explained quickly.
"Oh," Erin relaxed a little but her heart was still racing, just in a much different way to earlier.
"Like I said, he thinks you're really pretty. So do I." His voice slowed down and he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.
Pushing Erin backwards, he pinned her between himself and the wall, bowing his head to kiss her forehead. She felt uncomfortable and lightly pushed but he wasn't about to move that easy.
"Won't you come home with me? You could meet him." Mitch breathed in her ear, nuzzling her neck with his nose.
And suddenly super nice Mitch had turned into a dirt bag.
Erin was gutted. Her eyes shut and she sighed as his hands wrapped around her waist. She had really wanted there to be one decent guy out there. In reality she knew there were many and that they probably didn't go to clubs or whatever but she was still disappointed. It had been such a good night. Why did he have to spoil it?
"Yeah," She nodded. "I'd love to meet him."
"Really?" Mitch pulled back and looked into her eyes, seemingly disbelieving of what he heard. Bad sign.
"Oh yeah," Erin nodded, smiling as he relaxed.
"Great, I'll-"
He never got to finish his sentence. In one lightning fast movement Erin jerked her knee up and smashed it into his crotch, causing him to howl and double over. Before the bastard could blink she jabbed him in the throat, sending him staggering backwards and into a parked car that began to wail at the disruption.
Not daring to hang around for a second longer, Erin bolted down the street, idiotically in the direction they had been walking in. She thought it would be easy to find a place to loop around back to a main road but either she was more drunk that she thought or something was seriously up. The houses were transforming into warehouses, large looming buildings with high up, smashed windows. Erin was so confused and terrified. There was no way she could turn back. What if Mitch and his friend were waiting for her? What if they'd called the police? She couldn't spend the night in jail. She just couldn't. Who would she call? Who would bail her out? She certainly didn't have a powerful father to do that anymore.
She had been so stupid and now was in a terrible mess. There was no one else around so Erin decided it was safe to stop and call for help. The only issue was: who would she call?
