(Don't) Lie To Me

Participants:

chris_icon.gif finn_icon.gif kara_icon.gif lang2_icon.gif

Scene Title (Don't) Lie to Me
Synopsis The harsh truth is unwelcome in the face of a comfortable lie.
Date February 18, 2020

“Lang!”

Chris’ voice cuts through the night like a dull knife through an expensive steak.

Finn!

Even muffled slightly by the walls of the old factory, it's easy to tell he's been drinking heavily.

“Fuckers.”

And that he's angry.

Jester paws at the ground with impatience while Chris fumbles with removing bridle and bit. It's a task that's interrupted more than a couple of times by shouted calls for his fellows. “If Sharrow’s still here, tell him… fuck.”

The tack hits the ground with a jangling thump. The horse snorts and sidles away from his rider’s hands. “Tell him…” Chris turns to stare at the building. He sways slightly. “Bring his ass out here too! Finn, Lang?”

Finn isn’t in the building. Or really, anywhere that Chris has been yelling. As the younger man stares at the building hollering at it, Shepherd’s Kawasaki Mule comes zipping up the road.

Finn isn’t driving. A petite, teenaged Asian girl is. (This explains why the Mule isn’t going far too fast endangering everyone in its path.)

“Right, pull over here,” says Finn from the passenger side, looking impressed when June does so easily. “You’ve got the hang of it. Head on home and I’ll catch up to you later, ’gator.”

The tall man hops over the side of the Mule, giving Chris an odd look. “‘S’matter with you? Shelly called, said you were hollering for me and Lang like our names were gonna go out of style.”

The growl of the motor isn't exactly what Chris is expecting at this hour. It's probably fair, since he's yelling and making almost as much noise. But it's clear by the vaguely sluggish turn of his head and the deer in the headlights look he briefly gives the other man’s response. What the shit’s Finn doing coming from there — never mind.

“I got a thing you need to know,” he explains. A finger jabs in Finn’s direction then stabs at the old factory, then yells, “Lang too.” He takes a step, then bends at the knees. “We got shit to talk about. What happened last August.”

It isn't a question, he slides a brief look to Finn that implies as much as he finds a small stone on the ground. Chris stands again, for a second unsteady, then throws the stone at the building. It bounces harmlessly off a wall. “Lang! You know where Sharrow’s hiding?” He directs that question at Finn, since there hasn't yet been any response from his other queries.

Finn just lifts a brow, looking from Chris to the building to the horse and back to Chris.

“‘Kay.”

He watches a moment more, noting the unsteadiness. Then waits a moment before. And then he speaks.

“You look like you might be a bit drunk, there, champ. If this is important, maybe it can wait until you’ve gotten a good night’s sleep and rid of whatever hornets are buzzing ’round in your boxers,” Finn says, pulling out his pocket knife to use as a fidget spinner. “And no, I have no idea where Sharrow is. I didn’t sign up for geriatric babysitting duty. I’ve been out of town.”

The front door of the factory opens and out walks Joshua Lang, shirtless and shoeless with a towel over one shoulder and the foam of shaving cream spread halfway across his face, a hunting knife in the other hand smeared with stubble and foam. “What in the Devil’s dick are you shoutin’ the fuck about?” Lang hollers as he comes outside, looking around with a mostly confused and put-upon expression as he looks from Chris to Finn and back.

Chris turns a slow look at Finn. Did he really just suggest sleeping it off? “No!” Not just no, but, “Fuck no.” Get a good night’s sleep so he can forget again by the time morning comes? “The only thing it's waiting for is Lang.”

Jester has moved off a ways, apparently content to be a witness. Or he might be ignoring the scene unfolding.

Speaking of the devil himself, Chris’ hollering just about resumes on the heels of Lang’s exit from the factory. The older man beats him to it with equally loud words. “Oh.” His tone shifts slightly. “Shit. Nope. We — ” He motions to himself then Finn and lastly Lang, hand movement somewhat exaggerated. “Need to have a chat. About last August and the shit you don't know. And do know.”

Jester’s escape earns the horse a covetous glance from Finn, who might be contemplating taking Jester and riding off to get far away from these loud people.

Instead he moves toward the building, leaning against one of the crumbling brick pillars as he looks at the man with a brow raised.

“Fine. We can chat, but only if you stop talking like a really bad fortune cookie. ‘What you don’t know and do know.’” Finn’s voice takes on a bit of a querulous quality, slurred as if he were drunk, and one hand comes up to pantomime a talking puppet.

“Out with it, Drunk Yoda.”

Lang fixes Chris with a look that might well end with a smack upside the head, if Lang were a less mellow man than he’s become in the last few years. Instead he just presses his lips together in a thin line and exhales sharply out his nostrils like a frustrated bull. “Y’all got a minute for me t’finish shaving and put on a fuckin’ shirt?”

Quickly, Lang looks over at Finn, as if judging his involuntary involvement with Chris’ shouting. He doesn’t so much as wait for an answer from Chris — because this isn’t a democracy and he wasn’t really asking — before turning back toward the factory and wiping a dollop of shaving cream off his shoulder.

Chris, who has definitely had a bit too much to drink, stares at Finn. Whatever the shit is happening tonight, it would seem, in his mind anyway, that it's Finn and not Drunk Yoda who's having the issues.

He dismisses it with a shake of his head. Lang too. Go put your fucking shirt on.

Turning a sharp half-circle, Chris hunts down a place to sit. He needs to sit, since the motion nearly tangled his feet. He takes a couple of steps, finds himself one of a few camp stools from the community fire pit, and takes a seat. Once sitting, he drops an elbow to his knee and rests his face in his hand.

At least he's not yelling anymore.

“Please do. I feel like I’m at AARP spring break in Daytona or something,” Finn says with a wave for Lang go to back inside. “Not that your six pack isn’t stellar. I just don’t need to see it without you buying me a six pack first, y’know what I’m saying.”

No, Finn is not saying that, really. He grins to let the other man know he is just kidding, on all counts, before flipping an empty bucket over to use as a seat.

“Did you drink some of Georgianna’s hooch or something? That shit’ll make you go blind if it doesn’t send you into immediate alcohol poisoning. She’s got a power that lets her process anything without it killing her,” he says, eying the younger man after Chris almost falls while trying to find a seat.


Not Long Later

The Sunken Factory
Providence


Lang took his time coming back to this conversation. It’s clear in the way his hair’s had time to dry, that he’s actually put on a shirt, and that he’s also halfway through a beer that he didn’t bring enough of to share. Not that Chris needed any more.

“A’right,” Lang says as he moseys up to the old wooden table in the meeting room, windows shut against the damp chill of February air outside. “Now, what’n the fuck’re you so drunk over you gotta come up here, shoutin’ at my windows like I’m your girlfriend and you just wanna make things work out?

Lang pulls out a chair, slowly settling into it with his beer in hand. Behind him, a small pot-bellied wood stove crackles and pops with freshly added wood.

“Started at Elisa’s,” Chris says. Finn gets the abridged cliff notes version. “Ended up at the Corral.” And there you have it. An uneventful turn of events that led him to where he's at now yelling and pitching a fit. He's disinclined to say anything else about everything else for the following minutes while Lang is gone. Although he does make himself sit up slightly better. Meaning instead of slouching forward he slouches backward.

Then Lang returns and Chris sighs like now he's got to explain why two plus two equals four. He could also use another drink, but determining the way of making that happen is too much damn work.

He tips his head forward, to fix the two men with a look. He very clearly isn't sure if he's trusting either of them, and he's definitely not trusting his ability to get up just now. Fuck.

“What fucking happened in August?” Chris leans forward, finger pointing at Finn then Lang. Like when your daddy catches you in a lie and wants to make you own up to your shit, he knows something. Believes he does, anyway. “Finn falls into some below-ground containment, Lang drags me and Sharrow down after just before some explosion shockwave thing hit.” His brows tick up, then drop into a frown. “Then next thing I know is we’re all back here like shit all happened with SESA poking around like the scavengers they are.”

Kwsh. Finn, in the interim, has found the beer and opened one for himself. He lifts it to catch the bubbling foam that threatens to brim over the top of the can with a quick sip that sounds louder than it should in the meeting room with just the three of them.

He also didn’t bring one for Chris.

When the youngest of the three points at him and Lang, Finn looks down at it, then up at Lang with a lift of his brow.

“First off, I was buried alive, not tucked away safely in a bomb shelter,” he says cheerfully to Chris. Finn came out of it alive and well, so he doesn’t seem too bothered by the otherwise disturbing event. Of course, it’s not the first time he should have been killed and walked away, thanks to his ability.

“I didn’t see what else happened,” he adds with a shrug. “I just have Joshy here’s report to go by, so I’ll let him do the honors, but, I mean, whatever it was, I figured you knew more than I did.”

Finn levels a look at Chris and adds, “You know, since I was buried alive and all.”

Lang wets his lips and squints at Chris, hesitating on taking another sip of his beer. “You,” he says with a motion of the neck of the bottle toward Chris, “saved all’a our asses is what happened. The big one came rollin’ at us with hellfire and brimstone and you put us in this yellow snow globe.” He says with a wave of one hand in the air in an arc.

“World ended,” Lang says with an angle of his head to the side, “then suddenly it wasn’t over no more. The blast wave of whatever the fuck happened passed us and turned the whole fucking forest into ashes and…” Lang’s expression unfocuses, he fixes Finn with a momentarily uncomfortable look, then looks back to Chris, “…and we made our way back to Providence.”

Sitting forward awkwardly, Lang pounds some of his beer. “Your trick fried my armor, permanently, but I suppose it saved my bacon. So we’re even. You were out cold, so we carried you back.” Lang takes another sip of his beer. “You… weren’t just playin’ coy, then.”

Lang’s eyes narrow. “You don’t remember anything?”

Neither of the older two men seem upset or even curious about the day in question. This could all be a discussion about last week’s rain, and it boggles Chris’ mind. In fact, if the gears that drive his brain could be given a sound, it would be something loud and full of protest. A grinding, metal on metal not unlike those terror-bots that haunt the world around their settlement. It temporarily drags him to a stop, leaves him sitting and staring while Finn’s pass and Lang’s cliffnotes echo in his head.

“No.” The answer, compared to the shift in gears without the clutch, is a quiet one. And what he means is not exactly.

Chris stands suddenly, animation renewed. His legs catch on the stool he'd been using, causing it to topple and his first steps to stumble. “Coy?” His volume returns with his energy. When has he ever been coy? Hell, when has he ever been subtle about anything? Another mystery, and it fuels his energy. He paces.

“No. I had no idea. I found out from Elisa in town.” He turns back, fixes the pair with a look. Do either of them realize how awkward that had been? He stalks past, aimless unsteady shamble turned hunt for beer. Or something stronger. “And now we’re all on the same page.”

Setting the beer down after a long draught, Finn raises his brows at Lang’s description of events. “That’s real poetic,” he nods, slowly, with admiration for the metaphors and smiles.

“Yellow snow brings some connotations that aren’t so pretty, but that’s probably more fitting of our boy here. I’m sure I’ve seen him piss in the snow before,” he adds.

He watches Chris pace, looking a little amused, but lifts his beer in the other man’s direction. “I guess I don’t know the proper etiquette and I maybe should’ve sent a proper thank you on personalized stationery or something, but thanks for that.” For his joking, the words are sincere enough. “Great timing for your ability to kick in, though. Lucky, even.”

Finn’s green eyes widen and he looks at Lang, mouth opening into a silent o. “What if I hadn’t been there? Would his ability have saved our asses? We’ll never know!”

He’ll take the credit. No one can prove it wasn’t because of him, after all.

“You tested anything out with it, or you think it’s only life or death armageddon scenarios that make it kick into gear?” he asks.

Should Chris's attempts to find more beer or escape the conversation lead him to the door, he'll find it occupied. Kara Prince stands leaning against the frame of it, hands tightly in the fold of her arms in the February chill. She looks like she wasn't getting any sleep anyway, but not with the same restless energy that had been building up in her in the weeks since Yi-Min Yeh's disappearance.

Now, it is what it is.

"I've been wondering about this story myself," she announces her presence quietly. "How it was you all made it out." Her eyes go from Finn to Lang rather than settle on Chris just yet. He needs to get his pacing and his pissing out of his system yet before there's a chance for any meaningful engagement there.

“Girl were you raised in a fuckin’ barn?” Lang says with a wave of one hand at Kara, “Motherfucker, knock. It’s only polite.” He flicks one last look at her, and though his words are peppered with profanity it has more of the tone of a southern mom scolding a child. And in almost the same breath he waves at a chair. “Go’n pull up a seat, ain’t got any more beer left though.”

Lang sighs, sitting forward. “Look, I ain’t one t’get myself into others’ business. I figured you wanted to keep what’s yours to yourself, an’ I didn’t blame you none for not wanting to talk about what happened after, before we ran into Elisa.”

Lang looks at Finn, a little haunted, then over to Kara and back to Chris. “But I suppose now’s as good a time as any.”


Six Months Earlier

The Black Forest, New Jersey Pine Barrens Outskirts
August 30th
2019

4:35 pm


Branches snap and crack in a deathly silent forest.

Joshua Lang can hear his breathing in his ears matching pace with the steady drum-beat of his heart. The world is dead, that much he feels certain of. The sky has gone from day to nearly night in an instant, blocked out by a haze of swirling ash. Every tree is leafless and dead, bleached in shades of slate gray and bone white, jutting up from the ground like skeletal fingers clawing at a dead sky.

And Joshua Lang is running.

Carrying Chris Ayers over one shoulder, Lang is running as fast as he can, occasionally glancing back over his shoulder into the impenetrable dark of the forest. He doesn’t know where Finn is, doesn’t know if he still has Sharrow with him. After what he just saw, he can’t get himself to stop running.

Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Lang exhales breathlessly with each galloping stride. His ratty tennis shoes feel every rock and stick through their thin treads. He’d had to lose the ANCILIA armor back at the enclosure, whatever Chris had done that saved their lives fried it beyond use.

But none of that mattered now, he just had to get away from—

Lang comes to an abrupt stop, the weight of Chris over his shoulder causing him to pitch forward. He trips over a branch and falls onto the ash-strewn ground, kicking up a plume of dust that swirls in the air like silt at the bottom of the ocean. Lang yelps, paws around in dead branches and the skeletal remains of birds, grabbing Chris’ arm, but pauses as he catches motion out of the corner of his eye.

Lang turns, and sees them: people. Or, what could be mistaken for people.

Shadows linger in the treeline, humanoid shapes slowly lurching closer; simply silhouettes, no mass or matter to them, no weight to their movements. They glide like apparitions, soundlessly approaching through the falling ash.

Hands trembling, Lang grabs Chris’ arm and pulls it over his shoulder, then slings the young man’s weight back over him as he rises to stand. The phantoms close in from all sides, hands raising as if trying to reach out to Lang. His heart skips a beat, watching these horrific things drift like living blind-spots toward him.

Backing up, Lang knocks over a tree about as thick around as his leg. The dead plant snaps off like brittle dough, crashing down through other trees as if they were made of sugar. The phantoms continue closing in, and among them Lang sees one that he recognizes. A shadow, a face, a man.

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No,” Lang whispers breathlessly, watching those blue eyes staring through him. The ash, the death, it all feels so horrifically right. “You’re dead, you’re dead.” Lang exhales, staggering backwards through the forest from the advancing shadows. “This ain’t real— this’s a trick. Fuckin’— a trick.”

When Lang feels something that isn’t a brittle, ashen tree at his back he startles and turns around, finding Finn just standing there carrying Sharrow. Lang swallows hard, looks back for the phantoms and

they’re gone.

Finn looks like he’s coming to, out of some sort of fog. Sharrow is draped over his shoulder, and Lang just nods at him, sweat one his brow causing it to cling to his face. The two silently agree to keep moving, and Lang looks back over his shoulder, seeing no sign of the phantoms that were — up until a moment ago — following him.

Lang gets a little bit of a lead on Finn, moving through this dark, dead world without any heed for what might come next. Without any understanding of what could have possibly done this. Without believing that anything he just saw was real.

“C’mon, keep it t’gether…” Lang whispers to himself. When Chris starts to stir, Lang stops and lets him down on his feet, looking at his halfway open eyes with fully dilated pupils. They move together, with Chris walking more on instinct than intentionally, the way a piss-drunk man walks.

Staggering through the treeline, he keeps one of Chris’ arms over his shoulder. Lang’s face is smudged with ashes and soot and flakes of ash drift in the air like snow falling upward from the ground instead of down from the sky. Everything is a shade of gray. It feels like another world, or like being underwater. There is no sound. No insects, no birds, no animals. Just the sound of Lang’s breathing and a ragged cough from having inhaled some of the ash.

“Finn!” Lang calls out, looking back and trying to find where Finn was a moment ago. He’d been carrying Sharrow. Lang sets Chris down, leaning him up against a tree that the younger man mostly keeps himself propped up at. “Finn!” Lang shouts back into the dead forest, his voice sounds like it carries for miles, but it echoes from the wrong direction, like it’s looping back on them from the other side of the planet.

“What the fuck,” Lang whispers, wiping ash out of his beard. “He was right behind me…” Stumbling backwards to Chris, Lang takes a knee and puts his hands on either side of Chris’ face. “C’mon kiddo, get your shit together.” He says, slapping Chris’ cheeks. “C’mon, stay with me…” he wipes blood away from Chris’ brow, unable to snatch the bleeding from somewhere in his hairline.

Seated, half propped against the skeleton of a tree and an elbow, Chris lets his head dip forward and rest chin to chest. The break in moving is a relief, it's too bright and his head is pounding. And he has no idea where Finn might have disappeared to. His eyes slide closed…

…Then crack open when Lang's hands lift his face. “Stop it,” he complains, flustering briefly with his hands like an adolescent awakened by an older sibling on a Saturday. He turns his face away from the slapping and prodding fingers, making sounds of protest. It's a small ordeal.

Eventually, Chris gets a hand under himself and musters enough to sit up again. “Fuck, you're loud.” It's the most he's said since the world returned to him. He places a hand on his face, eyes closing again. “I'm still here, just need a break.”

“Yeah, maybe not compadre,” Lang says with a pat pat of Chris’ cheek. Making him pissed guaranteed he’d at least stay awake. “We gots’ta…” the sound of a branch snapping nearby has Lang retrieving a handgun from the back of his pants. He trains it on the source of the sound but doesn’t fire, half expecting Finn to show back up.

It’s not Finn.

Woah,” comes from the opposite direction Lang and Chris did. Elisa comes stepping out of the forest with a half dozen other Providence residents. “Mr. Lang?” She asks, incredulous. “I thought— ” Most everyone who is with Elisa are armed, which at first seems normal. Lang notices their gear looks military, AR14’s, some of them hiding light body armor beneath winter coats. He doesn’t remark on it, just sticks close to Chris.

“Who’re you? Commando Barbie?” Lang asks out the side of his mouth, pretending not to notice the hardware the others have. The people who came with Elisa fan out, sweeping flashlights through the treeline. Elisa grimaces at the reference but doesn’t acknowledge it further. She instead comes to take a knee beside Lang and Chris.

“What the fuck happened out here?” Elisa asks, looking from Lang to Chris, visibly worried.

“Fucking stop.” Chris tilts his head away from those hands again and directs an annoyed flap of his hand at Lang. “Annoying shit,” he complains quietly, mostly to himself.

Arms fold against his chest when he feels that Lang might actually leave him alone for a minute, but the comfort of closing his eyes again is rudely shoved aside. Alertness cuts through the fog, like the sun breaking through the clouds during a storm. It's brief, a sharpness creeps over him as people who aren't Finn or Sharrow emerge from the trees that dulls when one of them calls Lang by name.

Chris half squints, one eye closed a bit more than the other. “I don't know, disaster?”

“It looks like a fucking nuclear bomb went off…” Elisa says as she looks up to the dead trees, “except— ”

Close enough,” is Lang’s approximation. He stands up beside Chris, fixing a momentarily concerned look down at him, then looks back up to Elisa. “He pulled our bacon out of the fire, big flashy forcefield thing.” It sounds like information, but Lang’s posture and tone — more familiar to Chris than Elisa — implies a threat. It becomes rapidly clear that Lang doesn’t know any of these people. His hand comes subtly to rest on his gun.

Elisa sees the gesture, looks Lang up and down, then over to Chris and back again. “We’re just being neighborly,” she says with a squint. “You see an old man in the woods?” She asks, motioning to the dead treeline with her chin. “Grandpa’s missing.”

Now, Lang has the context he was missing. He looks at the settlers with new eyes, sees them for what they really are. “We got him, he’s safe.” It’s not entirely a lie when Lang says it. But it’s close enough. “You tell Freyr t’keep on his side of the line.”

Elisa glances down to Chris, watching his eyes rolling back in his head again. “Your friend’s…”


Present Day


“…an’ then you blacked out again.” Lang explains, hands spread. “We found Finn up the road with Sharrow, an’ that was that. Eventually we got far enough away that we were outta’ whatever the fuck nightmare that was.”

Lang leans back, picking up his beer again to take a long swig. “Feds came in later that day, locked the place down. Either they made the weird shit stop or it stopped on its own. Hallucinations or… whatever. Everything’s still dead but… “

Lang shakes his head and looks over to Finn, then down to the table in silence.

"Death armageddon," is a muttered confirmation followed by a more animated "Elisa knew and she fucking shot me to prove it." Chris grinds his teeth and makes an abrupt turn. There's more to drink in his room. Only

Kara's standing there now.

Fuck.

One can almost hear the grinding of wheels and mental yelling of "Abort! Abort!" when he finds himself practically face to face with the munitions chaplain. He backs up a step. If she hadn't been there, he'd be missing story time with Uncle Joshie. He'd partly dismissed the retelling as old news, but the timing of Kara's arrival coinciding with with the parts Elisa couldn't fill in turns him in place to look at the old man.

"Ghosts." He couldn't deadpan the monosyllabic word any more if he tried. "Of the guy from that Wolves book." The young man makes an honest effort at disbelieving. He looks at Finn and Kara to rally support to his side. It's too absurd — the guy's been dead for years, dead people don't just come back and haunt the woods, ghosts aren't real and

he tested blue. So maybe it is possible. He lets that thought marinate and shifts into a rare milder tone. "Well, it wasn't supposed to happen at all. So… keep a lid on it."

Finn, for once, is quiet.

He stares down at the beer in his hands, brows drawn together as he listens, and each moment he seems to pull deeper and deeper inward.

When Lang finishes, he looks up, his eyes meeting the older man’s and he nods, once.

Eventually he looks over at Chris, telling them to ‘keep a lid on it’ after being angry they hadn’t spoken about it for months, and he snorts once.

His gaze returns to Lang, though, and he shakes his head. “I thought it was just me. Concussed or whatever, you know? I don’t…” he lifts the beer to take a hard swallow, and shakes his head again. “I didn’t recognize any of the ones I saw. Bad enough to see ’em, like something out of a horror movie.”

Finn shudders and tries to disguise the gesture by leaning back and running a hand through his hair, leaving the waves sticking up a bit in the wrong direction. “Fuck.” He glances at Kara. “As if your wacky shit wasn’t weird enough, huh?”

He looks to Chris, a little apologetically, for not being able to refute Lang’s words, and then at Lang, looking even more contrite. “I’m sorry we didn’t talk about it. I just thought I was hallucinating shit from the fall and didn’t want you to think I was losing my marbles, shit, and everything else.”

Talk of ghosts, then Kara appearing like one in the doorway. She arches an eyebrow down at Chris when he's startled from his skin. Boo.

Her mood solemns, severity in her eyes. The times were filled with too many old Vanguard for her to be comfortable. The Horsemen were her limit. Between Sharrow, and now tales of these ghosts… "We'd better hope the Feds properly buried it instead of putting a band-aid on it."

She finally shifts a look Finn's way to acknowledge his comment as much as his sentiment. Were she in as many drinks as Chris is, more might come from her, but instead she only echoes, plodding yet light, "As if my wacky shit weren't weird enough." There's no fault she can place for them keeping quiet about it, wondering only to themselves what the fuck actually happened.

Kara's done that enough herself too many times to pass judgment on others for doing the same.

"You win in this scenario, Chris, so get it together. You know what happened without a doubt, and that makes one of us. You survived, saved others with an ability, and you've proven at least one way to make it manifest. Keep working on your perfect defense, maybe you can save people on purpose next time." Her brow arches, head shaking well-meaningfully as she steps out of the doorway and into the room. "Sober up. Life changes, and us with it. Rocks fell, but you didn't die. Move on. Enjoy that… or something."

She knows she's verging on hypocritical territory telling him to go that far, and relents with a shrug before sitting down at the empty chair left for her. (Thanks, Chris.) Kara rests her hand on the back of her knee after sitting, glancing to Lang out of the corner of her eye. In different shades, maybe it's advice he could use, too.

Lang shrugs, slouching back into his chair. “Well now that we aired all that fresh laundry, unless you got in your head you wanna’ have a coming out party with your new shiny powers…” he eyes Chris, “sounds like we’re all gonna take a nice dose of Irish Medicine like Kara said, an’ keep this between us.”

Clapping his hands on the arms of his chair, Lang pushes himself up to his feet. “Since Christopher here’s got a head start on us, what say we go take our medicine an’ have a drink. All us weird, potentially concussed folks can get cuss-ass drunk before it gets any later.”

Sober up. “Fuck that,” the young man drawls. It's the side of him everyone’s come to know and… tolerate? Chris doesn't even think two seconds on the idea of getting it together. Not even one second. This is some serious shit that he'd rather drink into oblivion for at least one night.

And when Lang voices those same thoughts, he sends such a cautious side eye to Kara. Is big sister going to countermand bigger brother?

“That's all I'm asking.” His whole reason for carrying on like the world was ending. Maybe it is for him. “So let's fucking drink already. I know Finn’s holding out. And Kara… but she never shares anyway.”

“It isn’t 2011. No reason to fret your pretty little head so much over it,” Finn tells Chris, picking up a bit of a twang from his proximity to Lang, it seems. Or maybe he’s just subtly mocking the other man. “At least not yet. Very possible the government will go all Big Brother meets the X-Men on us again. History tends to repeat itself after all.”

To Lang he raises his beer. “Get the good stuff and none of this IPA horse piss, already, will ya?” Whether he’s holding out or not, he doesn’t comment on, but angles a grin over at Kara. If Lang’s going to supply, why should either of them offer any of theirs?

“The kid took the Mule back to my house, so it’s a long-ass walk just to pick something up for this little pot luck. I’ll buy next time,” Finn says.

Kara does in fact have a stash of the good stuff. At the moment, a good portion of it happens to have been already drank, but that doesn't mean it did not at one point exist. She leans back in her chair to think about it, head tilting to the ceiling. With a lift of her brow, she mentally notes that the bottle Finn rejected taking from her a few days back still had drink in it.

Lang hears what he wants to out of what she said, it'd seem, but she's in no mood to correct him. The plan for tonight might not include soberness, but she certainly hopes Chris's long-term plan does.

If he means to learn anything about that ability of his, he'll need it.

"Might as well get you warmed up before you go," Kara semi-agrees with Finn, and comes to her feet as well.

Lang watches Kara, Chris, and Finn for a moment, settling on the middle of the trio. “An next time, kid?” He motions with two fingers to Chris.

“Don’t come ‘round here shitfaced.”


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