i come with two stories: a story of one of the best shifts casey has ever had, and one of the worst shift casey has ever had.
first of all: date night. there was a server-wide event at a nightclub for "date night", a speed dating event that involved writing about who you are and what you're looking for on a sheet of paper and taking seats at tables with suitors. the events of this round were kind of crude but not like, too salacious really, you could probably show it on an adult swim show.
![[+]](/images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
caseys really good roundcasey wrote down on their sheet that they're not looking for anything serious or committed at this time, but they're willing to chat and have a low-stakes nice time.
casey only really tabled once, with an Actual Literal Fucking Demon. at the start of the event casey handed the demon a self-recharging power cell for its translator. they actually met once before; during Satan Was An Angel Too's mad hatter round, it was at the bar looking for a word to rhyme with "precious" and casey volunteered "wretched", to its amusement. their conversation was nice, but not really a date; casey was wondering what the fuck "damnation" meant on the demon's suitor form. they both commisserated over the difficulties of being a very rare species at this company
after the tabling was over, casey shuffled over to a bar that some acquaintances and strangers were hanging out at. scrawl was there but strangely not his bouncer, a thaven named seeking ruin in seeking purity ("ruin"), a cybernetic human guy named xander whom casey thought was kind of hot, and the human bartender fran whom casey has seen around a few times. a few people coming in and out. there was also a certain human guy named David Ward.
dave is already friends with casey, though not very deeply so at this point. dave's a little weird, a genuine vampire-chaser. he filed his teeth down to be sharp and drinks blood recreationally even though he's not an actual vampire. his morals are really skewed and strange - fine with the idea of killing people as long as it looks cool (though dave has never done it himself). casey thinks the guy is fun to hang with but also finds this amoral shtick of his kind of tacky. this shift, dave also tried and failed to get a date, because he couldn't find any hot guys who were also evil. like dave was going all-in on looking for evil guys.
this shift, however, solidified casey and dave's friendship way more. there's one thing they can agree on wholeheartedly - the guys at this bar are hot. they legit got to queen out watching a hot guy pole dance in a bunny suit. it was such an incredible bonding experience for them.
also later casey pays dave $80 for mustering the courage to take his shirt off and get on the pole himself
then a friend of dave's (and fran's and ruin's and xander's) walks in, a guy named buddy. sweating from head to to, anxious, dateless. buddy is genuinely attractive to a certain kind of person but his lack of confidence is so strong it's a dealbreaker for a lot of people. the people at this bar rally together to help up buddy's confidence and sex appeal so he can get a date.
dave, who is not very good at thinking through the consequences of his actions, seizes this opportunity to attempt to turn buddy evil.
this horribly, horribly backfires as buddy's other wingmen, including casey, try to help buddy become as much of a dreamboat for dave as possible, because if buddy and dave can get together that technically counts as getting him a date. and dave realizes way too late and gets very, very, very scared. casey was REALLY not helping here. they kept egging buddy on to "Platonically" hit dave and everyone else was helping to make the whole thing incredibly unhinged. they described it as buddy morphing into a hot guy to dave in the same way a hungry person sees their friend turn into a giant steak in a cartoon
eventually people started filtering out of the bar and club, leaving just casey and scrawl. casey takes the opportunity to apologize to scrawl for not being able to keep satan under control during the mad hatter incident, which scrawl forgives simply because casey had the mind to apologize in the first place. their conversation is cut short by new faces coming in.
casey takes a break to return to the station and grab food, and they have a nice conversation with dave where they chat about gay bar culture and how they feel about dating and attraction. they also stumble into a certain Roy Alvarez (human guy, satan's partner), a friend of both of theirs. roy is apparently on work probation after an "episode" - deftly avoiding telling casey what actually happened. they express their sympathies.
evac arrives and fran escorts david to evac by picking him up, which they call "dave escort services"
What the... 
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casey showed up in their date night outfit, and began chatting up skye (7-foot-tall moth person that casey has a crush on) at the bar
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looker (a shadowkin, kinda. more like a shapeshifting alien pretending to be a shadowkin) runs into the bar asking skye for romantic advice; skye brings casey with them to the boxing ring to show looker how to Take Charge
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casey was having a great time watching skye and looker do "Romance Coaching" (read: skye was throwing and body slamming looker) until the courier rolled in and threw a fragile envelope at casey. it instantly exploded into a massive pool of blood, completely drenching casey right in front of skye and looker, in the nice outfit they wore to date night
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skye and looker finish their deal and skye tells casey he's too tired to hang out and do cute stuff; he cryos. despite being covered in blood, skye still finds them cute - the only silver lining for the rest of the entire shift
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casey, somehow still holding it together after this big of an ego wound, talks to and trades with dave for a non-blood soaked jacket
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they take a shower and head straight back to the bar to order slightly-stronger-than-their-usual alcohol and bitch to the bartender (parsons, arachnid) about the situation
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someone orders a blood drink from the bar, which parsons lacks the material for; casey, who just happens to have a syringe and beverage jug on them for unrelated reasons, volunteers their own
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looker then also runs in and SPECIFICALLY asks casey if he can drink their blood. they say yes, begrudgingly, under the condition that he does not actually put his mouth on them, and extracts more of their blood for this purpose
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they try to hand looker a glass of it but it ends up shattering. looker, offended, retaliates by grappling casey and throwing them (something they learned from skye earlier)
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this spills the jug of blood in their hand, covering them in blood AGAIN, which makes them actually genuinely pissed off
- they step outside to take a breather (and have a brief funny with addie fizz, a slime person who is <5 feet tall and kind of insane) before they finally step back into the bar and order even stronger alcohol
- they toss a skimmer discus with a sucker born every minute (thaven) for a bit before realizing sucker was the courier that threw the blood envelope at them in front of the guy they have a crush on
- in an uncharacteristic moment of "i'm gonna do something about this instead of grinning and bearing it and minding my own business" casey chugs the rest of their drink and tries to confront sucker to demand an apology. they get blown off
- casey vents to dave a little bit but decides not to pursue the issue, because evac just arrived
- dave arrives at evac and offers casey a sympathetic ear, before sucker shows up and pressures dave into huffing frezon (extremely psychedelic gas), thus killing any chance of conversation between dave and casey