Participants:
| Scene Title | Pub Siestas |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Silas just wants a beer, bro. |
| Date | June 6, 2019 |
With its scarred and stained concrete floor and mismatched barstools, this is a no-nonsense dive bar and doesn't pretend to be anything but. The only decorating theme seems to be "adhesive," as nearly every square inch of the black-painted walls has been adorned by a sticker, with no particular rhyme or reason.
Along the center wall is the bar itself, long enough to seat perhaps 20 or so patrons. On either side are two pool tables, totaling four. The back wall has a few small tables for those who choose to sit away from the bar itself, but there are no waitresses to bring drinks, so anyone wanting to drink will have to order at the bar before sitting.
Though the bar's always been a home to bikers in particular, tonight they seem overwhelmingly in the majority. They're crowded in groups around the bartop, noisy merriment bouncing off of the walls as if in an attempt to fill the whole space with their voices. Maybe they're celebrating something, all on their feet and full of energy. They're an intimidating folk to some, but tonight, like so many nights, they're just having fun.
It leaves the back section of the bar where the tables are a little empty-looking, all but abandoned save for one solitary figure. To say he's seated at a table is, perhaps, an exaggeration - he is a collection of personparts, the bottom half of which vaguely on a chair, the top half spread messily out over a table, face only barely showing under the fabric of the grey hoodie that he's got pulled up over his head. Around him… 9 pint glasses, empty. Zachery has been here a while. And he might be asleep, noise be damned.
The collection of personparts in the man costume gets a poke or two, a little on the intrusive side.
"I should have known." The small figure sliding his butt onto the tabletop, shoving some empty pints out of his way, is still giving Zach's hooded head a pat-pat. Hello in there? "They said you were back here but somehow I didn't assume you'd already be out." Rene has zero regard for if he gets heard. It's therapeutic to talk out loud, alright? At the very least, he doesn't stick out as badly as usual, with his torn black jeans and tight-fitted leathery jacket. Just… a miniature of the bar patrons.
"Don't make me do the water thing again." Rene's hand finds Zachery's cheek to give it a peeench.
The first thought through Silas's mind as he walks in the door of the Dirty Pool Pub is that this place is a dive bar. It makes no bones about it, either; hell, it wears the tag proudly. There's something in that that Silas finds oddly… reassuring. It fits his current mood. The crowd's lively, too… and also clustered around the bar like flies on a corpse. That's a little bit too much of a crowd for his liking, though. He slips past and around the bikers, heading to the bar and ordering himself a beer before making for the tables at the back of the room.
He plops down in a seat… and frowns as his gaze settles on the vaguely familiar looking blond man slumped over nearby, being poked at. "Your friend alright there?" he asks the one doing the poking, eying the two of them speculatively.
The initial pokes do little to stir Zachery from his sleep, and even the headpat elicits nothing but a breath that catches sort of gracelessly in his throat. Hhrk. Go away. Only when his cheek is pinched does he startle himself awake, body dragged halfway up onto his elbows. His left eye socket is missing the fake eye that's usually in there, eyelid sort of… unflatteringly droopy over the nothingness. He hasn't shaved in days either, and has very much not been granted the luck of this being a good look.
Rene's peenching hand gets a sluggish thwap, but somehow it's Silas that the drunk's attention settles on. "'Ffuck d'you mean." He doesn't even sound angry, not really. Good morning. Evening. Whatever.
"He'll be fiiine. Did you drop your eye?" Rene does Zach the service of glancing under the table between his knees, head craning back when he hears the new voice. At least he looked, even just for a second. "Like I said," Pale brows give a slight raise at Silas, blue eyes squinting back at him. Whatever it was Rene was going to add, he doesn't. Instead, a purse of mouth and a sideways look. "What's it to you?" Ah, the classic.
That slurred response draws a frown from Silas. There's something faintly familiar about that voice… but the other man interjects before he can devote any time to figuring it out.
Silas's eyes shift to the other one, the less drunk and less familiar of the two; his expression curls into a look of lazy amusement, and he lets out a snort. "Aw, come on. That's no way to be. You see someone lookin' that dead to the world, it's basic human decency to check and make sure that they aren't… you know. Actually dead."
He grimaces as he catches what he just said — poor taste — but covers it quickly with a grin, raising his beer and taking a drink. The drunk one still looks… familiar, somehow… but Silas can't place it and isn't really too worried about it.
Zachery's slack jawed, one-eyed stare at Silas continues for a moment… before his torso starts slowly to siink back onto the table top, his right hand coming up to gesture as sluggishly and as vaguely as humanly possible. "'M not planning t'be dead'nytime soon. Maaaybe next week."
The fingers of his raised hand form into the laziest fingergun that's ever existed, and his forehead thumps onto the table right before a muddled, "Peww," in Silas' direction. Maybe it's Rene acting as impromptu backup. Maybe it's But at least he sounds like he's having fun, despite the corpse-adjacent posture.
Posture aside, Rene seems less concerned than a friend could be about Zach's thumping drunkenness. And yet.
"I've seen him worse than this, my metric's a little more experienced in this department." One hand reaches out to scratch at Zachery's head through the cover of his hood. You do you, buddy. Faced with a new …target, Rene swivels some on his perch, small enough that the table has zero issues with him there. One boot swings lazily.
"Do you look out for other drunks often, then?" Rene cants his head, eyes sharp and long hair brushing against his cheek.
The fingergun seals it; Silas's eyes widen a bit, his grin taking on some genuine amusement. "Ah yeah… I remember now. World's Fair. Small world, huh!" he chuckles.
But then, again, the other man jumps in. Silas tilts his head; his smile returns to the lazy, catlike grin he'd had earlier, but there's a quality of… assessment, now, as he studies the other. "Now and again," he answers, toying with his beer bottle with one hand. "Now and again," he repeats affably, taking a small drink.
"'M not a drunk. 'M drinking!" This gets argued, with GUSTO, into the table. Zachery pulls his legs up a bit and then pushes the soles of his feet into the ground to get enough leverage to scrape his face up off the tabletop again. He manages to sit half upright this time! In an attempt to show - not tell - he instantly knocks several glasses over and onto his arm while trying to reach for a glass that still has enough in it to drink. And fails to find one. The empty pint glasses roll unceremoniously off of his sleeve and in lazy circular paths toward the edge of the table.
The not-a-drunk just ends staring sort of blankly toward Silas, but is probably telling Rene, "We w'inna videogame."
Rene keeps watching Silas after the answer, chin up and eyes slightly narrowed. The look of a skinny alleycat. Crashing glasses have the blonde turning back to catch some from rolling off of the edge. He's not here to make a ruckus, okay?
"You won a videogame?" Rene's response is a touch incredulous, brow arching and hands busy with glasses getting stacked aside. "I have absolutely no idea what that means." When Rene looks to Silas for clarification, he pauses visibly, glance turning furrowed, judging, waiting. "Have we met before…?" His voice eases, edging on something less brusque and more coaxing, almost sweetly.
At the momentary look of confusion, Silas grins. "At the World's Fair. Some kinda space age virtual reality thing. I'm not normally much for the vidyagames, but… it really was pretty impressive."
At that question, though, his expression shifts to a thoughtful frown, eying the blond man appraisingly as he considers the question and how to answer it. "I don't think I remember meetin' you before, no," he says at last. "But you… if you don't mind me sayin' so, you look kinda like you're seein'…" he starts slowly, then his voice drops a bit, his eyes narrowing as that appraising look sharpens. "…a ghost or somethin'."
He tilts his head, regarding the more sober man thoughtfully. "So maybe you tell me. Have we met before? Or do I just remind you of someone or somethin'?" He asks, giving the man his most earnest look.
Only now does Zachery seem to realise Rene was not there before he woke up, blearily turning his attention to the person daring to save glasses rather than to let chaos claim their shards.
Listen. Rene might not be there to make a ruckus, but Zachery's all out of fucks today. While the adults are talking, his face screws up into a tired look of sneery boredom, and he pushes a fist slowly against Rene's side. And keeps pushing. Get off the table, punk.
"Could be." Rene answers quietly at the mention of ghosts. For a few longer moments there is a pointed silence until Rene is disturbed by Zach's haphazard fist. "If you're going to insist on touching me, at least do open palm." He can make this weird. Don't make him do it. He plants himself firmly on the table before looking back to Silas.
"You have an uncanny resemblance to someone I knew. Peripherally." A clarification before Rene's jaw firms. "Did you ever work here before everything went to shit?"
Now it's Silas's turn to regard the other man in silence, though the drunker of the two's antics earn a faintly amused twitch of the lips; it only shows briefly, though, before it's gone again. "Here? Like, New York? No."
He takes a drink of his beer, using the moment's respite it buys him to weigh just how far he trusts this man who seems to recognize him, just how far he wants to press with this. There's an opportunity to learn more about his Hometown self, and a few days ago he'd have been all in… but now, knowing what line of work he'd been in, he's rather less sure.
"I've worked a lot of places over the years, but New York? No," he reiterates. "What'd this friend of yours do for a living, anyway?" he asks, confident in his ability to sell the question; being a world-class liar isn't a talent he's necessarily keen on bragging about, but it can be a useful one sometimes… and he can't deny he's morbidly curious how the other man's going to answer that one.
Touching? Zachery's not touching. He pulls his fist back and lets it drop on the table with a thud. His attention drifts lazily back over to Silas, as he leans all the way back in his chair, nearly lax enough to go sliding forward and off of it as he almost hits himself in the face pushing the fabric of the cheap hoodie off of his head. With some amount of annoyance. Like someone else pulled it on there.
Silas gets… a look, and a tilt upward of the one-eyed drunk's head.
Rene doesn't get the chance to be smug about the touching. He would be, otherwise. If he weren't watching Silas so closely. So Zach just gets a passive bap on the arm with the back of his hand; yeah, he sees right through you, buddy old pal.
"Not a friend. Just someone." is what Silas gets in return for his curiosity. "He ran a housekeeping service. Cleaned casinos and hotels. Fancy ones." Though a strange way to put it, Rene knows exactly which words he wants to use, blue eyes sharp and crystalline. No description of how he knew this person is forthcoming, and won't be at all.
"I'll be back. Don't gag up a pint." No time to follow up immediately, either, as Rene gives this warning to Zachery, gathers up the pint glasses, and sidesteps towards the bar. All with a seemingly distrustful narrow of eyes.
"Huh," Silas says politely at that, but the more sober of the two doesn't stick around for any further questions. Silas watches him go, shaking his head. "I don't think your friend likes me very much," he opines to the drunker one, sounding a bit glum. He shrugs. "Can't be helped, I guess." He takes another swig of his beer. "I just hope nothin' bad comes of it. I'm lookin' for a beer tonight, not a brawl."
He relaxes a bit though, now that it's just him and his fellow VR Cop; it's nice being able to drink without all the hostility in the air. He swirls his beer around a bit… then, abruptly, he snorts, glancing to the drunker of the two with a sort of subdued amusement. "He said the guy I reminded him of was in housekeeping, though. God. Can you picture someone like me running around with a featherduster?" he chuckles.
The amusement is only momentary, though; he looks back to his beer and sighs glumly. "I dunno. Maybe I oughta just head out."
"HhHHh." Zachery makes a noise in reply to the bap, but barely moves in his seat. He's like a melted candle, one arm dangling, blinking sluggishly over the table at Silas. The eyelid over that mostly empty socket plays along as though it's got an eye to keep hydrated. He seems to be listening as Silas speaks, almost a little too intently, cracking a lopsided grin.
"Yooouu're not. In housekeeping. You know why?" He asks, left alone with the stranger. He's trying not to slur now, overcompensating big time style. "They wouldn't let you…" His voice dips a little lower, gravely serious through the slur of too much alcohol all at once. Something else bubbles through, though, in the last of his answer — "… Because your face is… some'ing else. 'S really — " A chuckle surfaces, breaking his poorly constructed facade. He tries to fight it back but the rest of his sentence just ends up leaving him in a laugh more than words, " — really very much a fuckin' sight."
"Right?" Silas laughs right back. "God, if I went knockin' on doors and claimed to be housekeeping, they'd probably lock em right there," he snickers, stopping only to take a drink of his beer. He chuckles back at the drunk man, eyes gleaming a bit with sly humor. "'Course… hate to break to ya, bein' a fellow virtual reality po-leece-man and all, but… you're right up there with me." He grins broadly. "God. We could go into business together. World's worst housekeepers. Get paid to do fifty houses, only five actually let us in," he laughs, giving the other a grin and a raise of his beer bottle.
Zachery eyes Silas, attention lingering absently somewhere between the seen and unseen, before it pulls fully back to the other man's face again. A laugh escapes him before he has the time to notice it coming up, quietly draining his lungs of air in a graceless wheeze. "I 'nno," he gestures vaguely at his face, too wildly, facetiously skeptical even through a wide grin of his own, "th'call me Dr. Handsome at work f'a rreason, surely. Though— 've had more. Eye. B'I promise you, I clean up pretty good."
Probably better than he'd clean rooms, in fairness.
He scrubs his jaw with that raised hand, and eyes the beer bottle that is not currently within his possession. Cheerily, he adds, "Can't let you cheers by y'self, can I? 'S rude!" He plants his feet properly on the ground, leans forward to push himself up onto said feet, and gets halfway there before tumbling sideways like a pile of confused laundry.
While the bartender seems to appreciate getting all of the glasses back (he needs them, okay), Rene's attention is divided. He disappears between the other patrons well enough, so he always has a place to stand and spy. He murmurs something up to the barman, and proceeds to linger and stare between bodies at Silas sitting with Zach. Laughing, joking. Rene pulls his phone free, and even if there's no reception his camera still works.
Bikers make great cover for wildlife photography.
He doesn't linger forever; once Bruce slides him two glasses he's slipping off again, reappearing just as the laundry golem collapses. Wordlessly, the tiny blonde sets one down where Zach had been a moment ago. It looks watered down more (than usual). "Can you get up or should I just leave you there." Deadpan, Rene doesn't even phrase it like a question.
"Doctor Handsome, huh?" Silas echoes, eyebrows rising as he considers that. Personally he doesn't see it, but hey, no accounting for tastes… and admittedly, he's not exactly seeing 'Doc' at his best. Everyone can have a bad day.
Then he tries to get up, and… whoop. Silas starts to try to move when he sees the man going over sideways, but unfortunately there's no way he's gonna be able to make it there in time, not when he's behind the table; all he can do is watch the man go over sideways. "Ah, shit," he mumbles to himself. "You, uh. You alright there, buddy?"
And here's Mister Sunshine back. Well. Good. He's been giving Silas the evil eye the entire time; who knows what he'd do if, God forfend, he should try to actually help 'Doc Handsome' up. Might hit him with a chair or some shit.
… except…
Except Sunshine's not giving him the evil eye now, is he? Barely even lookin' at him; went right to helping out his buddy without so much as a single distrustful glance. Now it's Silas's eyes that narrow, regarding the more sober of the two with a coolly assessing expression; he can feel the fine hairs at the back of his neck prickling standing on end, and the little voice in the back of his mind urging him to leave gets just a tiny bit louder. The flicker of calculation is swiftly buried beneath a weary expression by the time the smaller man looks up from helping his drunker friend. "Welcome back," Silas says drily, taking another drink of his beer — a bigger one, this time, the better to finish it and get on the road again.
Zachery rolls onto his side, and up he comes again - this time a little more aware of the effect the drink's having on his ability to stand - steadying himself with a wobble. Okay. He's good. "'M fine!" He puts his arms up as if this proves anything, amused grin making its way back onto his face as he looks to Rene. Gaze lingering for just a moment.
Once he swivels his head to turn the one eye back onto Silas, he does so with a swipe for his new drink, sending some of it splashing over the rim of the glass and onto his sleeve. CHEERS. "Making friends'n'everything. Doctor Handsome and Rene who def'ly still needsa fucking nickname — and…" he pauses, as if realising he doesn't have the end to his sentence ready, and cheerily asks over the top of his watered down drink, "… 's your name, cleaner?"
Rene's brows lift one more time as Zachery sits straight again, turning right around to get at that watered down version of what he was into previously. Blondie does not argue with his assessment that he is 'fine'. Silas just gets a small nod of greeting, less abrasive but still a tad too distancing. Purposeful. Skirting like a coyote, all ears and no teeth.
"You can't just choose one, it has to come naturally, Doc Handsome." He isn't waiting for a cheers. He would like to start now. Which he does. Rene won't be drinking anyone under the table, but he can still look the part by going through a good portion quickly.
"John's the name," Silas says. "God knows there's a million of 'em out and about, but poor old me makes it a million and one." He tips back a swig of his beer, then turns his attention to their third. "And as for a nickname for your friend, here…" Silas says, eying Rene appraisingly.
"Mister Sunshine," Silas pronounces, gaze settled firmly on the man — Rene. On account of your warm and welcoming disposition, he thinks but does not say… then he tips back a swig of his own beer, glancing over to the third man. "Whaddaya say, Doc?"
Already halfway into getting his drink down his throat, Zachery ends up chokespluttering some of his beer back into the glass at the suggestion. It's set back down with a too-loud clatter on the table, as he resettles in much the same way he was sitting before, except now with a drink to pull behind the crook of his elbow, as if in idle protectiveness. Someone MiGHt TAKE it otherwise.
"'Sunshine'," he repeats, swiping a sleeve across the lower half of his face, turning the eye and empty socket toward Rene again. To say he sounds convinced would be an overstatement, but… "Plants do like 'm…"
Rene's initial reaction to the nickname is scorn, brows furrowing at Silas. And Zach sputters. He frowns more, turning his head back.
Buuut when he sees that it seems to please his friend he finds it harder to stay mad. Especially when he gets that pathetic upturned one-eyed look.
"Gggh. Fine…" Blondie mumbles his way through accepting it. "But don't push your luck."
Silas lets out a chuckle, giving Mister Sunshine a crooked grin… but after a moment he sighs. "I'm just here for a beer," he says, taking another drink. He's working his way towards the bottom of the bottle with gusto.
"Eyyyy," is Zachery's noise in victory, before he promptly grabs the edge of the table - fool me twice - and puuushes himself up while making sure he doesn't just tip over this time. "I'm'nna… roam."
This is apparently a thing he's come to just do, now, once his blood's got enough alcohol in it to sterilise a wound. Go for a WALK. Somewhere. anywhere. "John!" He wobbles forward with his eyebrows twitching, as if startled by his own voice for a moment. Let's try that again. "… John." Better. "Wwas nice to meet you."
And with that, he starts moving - slowly, toward the exit. "C'mon, Sunshine."
"Roam, huh?" Blue eyes follow Zachery in his wobbly ascent, and when he realizes that he should probably follow, Rene slides from the table. He looks to John, spending a moment staring, perplexed. Something gets decided in his head before he says anything more. Zach gets a few paces ahead, out of earshot.
"If you're not the man I think you are," For as small as he is, Rene manages to put off the aura of someone much bigger and much more dangerous. "Watch your back around here."
"Au revoir." Sunshine turns a heel to leave Silas in his wake. "Hold up, Handsome." Rene comes sliding up next to Zach as they move to escape the bar, no look back for Silas.
Silas tilts his head at that, looking puzzled, possibly a bit concerned; a normal reaction, surely, given the hilariously ironic and completely inappropriate job description Rene had applied to this world's Silas. He keeps that look until Doc and Mister Sunshine are out the door. It's then, and only then, that he lets some of the tension he's been holding roll off, lets the mask he's been wearing slip; a subtle sort of stillness comes over him, the expression of puzzlement giving way to a brooding, tired look.
It had been an exhausting conversation from one end to the other, and 'Mister Sunshine' had definitely been a hostile audience; he'd be proud of himself for managing to make it through that conversation without hanging himself, but a.) he's too tired for that, and b.) there's still the matter of Rene's little disappearance.
There's no doubt in his mind that Rene had done something aside from ordering drinks; there had been a definite difference in attitude before and after. A phone call, maybe? It'd have to have been a quick one, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. That warning he'd given implied that he probably hadn't pulled anything more direct, at least. Which is a relief. Throwing a fight to a bunch of bikers and hoping I didn't get my spine broken or my skull cracked isn't my idea of a good time. A good way to make contact with a good healer, maybe, but… I can do without that kind of introduction for now, he thinks, draining the last of his beer.
Silas checks his watch; he's given them enough time. Time to go. His drink's paid for; there's no reason to linger. With a huff of breath, he levers himself to his feet and starts for the exit.