suitably_heroic | Outside a Metal Bar and Beyond, Baltimore, Thursday Evening

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Outside a Metal Bar and Beyond, Baltimore, Thursday Evening

"Okay," Atton said, staring back at the door he'd just been thrown out through. "Okay, that could have gone better."

One of these days he was going to charm his way back into Linda's good graces. Damn it all. She'd yelled at him some more about being a jackass when he and Sparkle'd tried to come in acting like nothing had ever happened (what? It worked with Sia), but that clearly hadn't worked out for him all that well.

And okay, he did have some more aces up his sleeves if he wanted to use them, but he was... kind of trying not to do that.

"But hey, the night's still young, right?" Right.

The night was young! And cold. Very, very cold.

[[ for sparkle and misadventure. ]]

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Seriously, put an idea in Sparkle's head, and the guy wasn't going to let it go.

"Well, like I said, start by buying her a drink," Sparkle reasoned. "I can play wingman or whatever. I mean, it can't be that hard."

Helping straight guys pick up chicks. Had to be easy, right?

"Well, she's not Sith or anything, so I probably won't lose any limbs," Atton mused. "Probably."

A pause.

"What are you bringing the door up for again?"

"Nothing," Sparkle replied, wrinkling his nose. "You just looked like it was all weird that someone was going back there, when it was probably just that a bouncer needed to take a shit in a private bathroom or something."

All class, that Sparkle.

"What did you say to her to get her so pissed off? It wasn't, like, 'no thanks,' I'm gonna guess."

"That's not a private bathroom," Atton said distractedly. "Private bathroom's on the other side of the room."

Don't ask him how he knew that.

"And I told you, I don't know. I just explained to her that I like this bar and I didn't want to ruin it by sleeping with her."

"... You didn't actually phrase it like that, did you?"

See, Atton. There was your problem.

"Offices or something behind the door, then? They gotta do payroll or whatever somewhere, right?"

And yes, now Sparkle was completely fixated on that damn door.

"I said I didn't want to dump the bar." Because that made it better! Somehow!

The second comment... kinda threw Atton out of his whole distracted spiel there. "Uh, what? The door? I have... absolutely no idea. Seems too crowded to just be a broom closet."

And that was a whole different brand of 'don't ask him how he knew that'.

"What, you see more people walk in while I was getting the drinks?" Sparkle, Sparkle honey, don't ask. "... Anyhow, you know you, like, insinuated that her presence here was gonna somehow fuck up the whole bar from here on out, right? Please tell me you caught that?"

"It was a joke!" Well, sort of. Coming here would've been awkward after banging Linda. "And yeah, sure, I saw them head in."

That was a lie, but he was going to bury it with some whiskey.

Sparkle eyed Atton for another moment at that, and then he shrugged and took another swig from his own bottle.

"Well, doesn't sound to me like she took it as a joke. Maybe you weren't clear enough about that part?"

Or maybe Atton'd just made it worse by avoiding her for a few weeks, then trying to act like nothing was wrong. Whatever, it had been a weird day, what with Si going all funny on him.

"Yeah, sure, maybe," Atton said. "Damn it, now you have me wondering about that door. Maybe it's like in one of those movies-- you know, a poker room for bad guys."

"Hey, you brought up the door first," Sparkle pointed out, smirking a little. "You think bad guys really go to back rooms at clubs like this to play poker, Atton?"

He glanced back toward the door. Hmm.

"That's ridiculous. It's too loud in here to concentrate on the cards. They're probably shaking some poor schlub down for like a safe combination or something."

Sparkle was also very quick to pick up on interesting flights of fancy.

That'd make sense of that spike of pain he'd felt earlier.

"Hey, you'd be surprised what a guy can play cards through, if motivated right," Atton argued. He took another drink and then put the bottle down on the nearest flat surface. "Two bucks says it's a really spirited card game."

"Ten bucks says it's probably just some kind of office space back there," Sparkle countered. "But hey, I'll never turn down the chance to go poking around where I'm not supposed to be."

He shot Atton a shit-eating grin.

"I mean, unless you were just going to ask your lady friend what's back there."

"Nah, let's check out the back door first." Not that Atton was procrastinating or anything.

And he was even patiently quiet in case Sparkle wanted to use that to springboard a joke or something.

Sparkle was going to behave himself. Sparkle was going to behave himself. Sparkle was going to-

"Atton, honey, I've been checking out back doors around here all night." It needed to be said. So there. "But hey, I've been in need of like a new stapler or something lately. Sure, let's check out your sinister poker game, then."

Atton assumed the universal headtilt of aren't you glad I let you get that out of your system?, but didn't comment. "You head there first," he said. "If we break off at the same time, people are going to notice."

"...You know, in case it actually is a sinister whatever. Or a trap. Been a while since I walked into a trap."

"Yeah, I gotta say, walking into traps isn't something that I'm really in the habit of, myself," Sparkle replied. "But really, how bad could it be?"

He gave his shoulders a shrug, passed his bottle over to Atton, and then cracked his knuckles.

"Worst case scenario, I just tell whoever's back there that I got lost on the way to the can."

And then he was making his way off again, this time winding his way ever-so-casually toward that door in question. And possibly stopping to check out some other back doors on the way. So as to not be too obvious, and all.

Hey, the kid was a natural. Not that this surprised Atton to any degree.

Atton snagged his bottle for one last drink, then tried to shove it into a jacket he wasn't currently wearing. ... Damn it.

He took it with him as he vanished into the crowd, keeping his eyes on the door.

It took Sparkle a few minutes to get that far, but eventually he did wind up at the door, leaning against the wall beside it for a moment to continue checking out the crowd. And then, confident that the only one actually looking at him was Atton, he reached for the knob - unlocked, score! - gave it a turn, and slipped inside, shutting the door behind him.

This was a mistake. He had about enough time to process the thought, 'holy fuck it's totally not a poker game,' and spit out the words, "So, this isn't the way to the bathroom?" before he was clubbed a good one upside the head.

Atton owed him way more than two bucks for this.

Atton waited another half-a-minute before he slid easily through the crowd to the door. Something felt off - and he didn't mean the kind of off he'd felt a minute ago. (There was a scale for this stuff; he just chose not to think about it.)

"I have a bad feeling about this," he muttered to no one in particular, opened the door, took a step... and ducked.

A baseball bat buried itself neatly in the doorway behind him. "Hey, hey!"

"Throw him out with the other one. Or shoot him."

"No shooting, all right?!"

Sparkle's head hurt.

Sparkle's head hurt, and people were being loud in another room.

Sparkle's head hurt, and people were being loud in another room, and mostly he just wanted his whiskey back. Why couldn't he have his whiskey back? He couldn't even focus on things at the moment, so the jackasses that chucked him back here were probably just being cruel and unusual for denying him his drink.

And probably for tying him up, too.

Ugh, was that blood in his hair? He'd just fixed that hair. God damn it, Atton. You messed up his hair.

Stop yelling!

The heavy door fell shut behind Atton.

Well, there went one avenue of escape. Nothing to do now but power through, and hope they hadn't murdered the kid already. (He was fairly sure they hadn't. Call it a hunch. Please call it a hunch.)

The guy with the gun took a step closer. "Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?" he said. "Yeah. You look familiar..."

"Seriously?" Atton said, staring back at him. "If I'd met anyone as ugly as you, I'd have known--"

Instincts blared at him very loudly to move, but Atton didn't really need that to know a punch was incoming. He ducked, snagging the man's arm, planting his foot down on the guy's instep-- and shoved, causing the gun to go skittering to the floor as the man's other arm impacted against the wall.

"What the--"

Better hope his hunch was right and none of the other guys were armed...

"Shut up."

Sparkle wasn't listening to the guy he'd christened 'Beefy' somewhere over the span of the last thirty seconds.

"Shut up."

Sparkle was trussed up like a piece of poultry or something and he was laying on the floor and there was a big guy staring down at him and people were still being loud, and so help him, if he had to put up with that shit, he was going to amuse himself however the hell he wanted.

"Look, kid, if you don't shut the fuck up, I'm gonna..."

Some people just didn't appreciate Hello, Dolly! the way that Sparkle did. He managed to give Beefy another cheeky grin in what he hoped was the guy's general direction, and then he hummed another line of it, because, fuck it, he was probably dead anyhow. Might as well make someone else miserable, too.

He stopped humming at the kick to the ribs, exhaling sharply and trying to curl up in a tighter ball on the floor than he was already in.

Okay. Okay. No pestering the big guys. Noted. He mumbled something under his breath that was probably intended to be 'Fuckers,' but with the way it articulated, more like a 'ffffshngh,' even Sparks wasn't completely sure.

You know, the problem with these Earth gangsters or low-lives or whatever the hell they were? Apparently they didn't know how to handle themselves without a firearm or a blunt object or something. That was the only explanation Atton could come up with.

Well, that, or he was just that good.

He picked up Hey-Don't-I-Know-You-From-Somewhere's blaster - sorry, gun - checked the safety, then put under his belt. For now. Shouldn't have thrown his holster in with his jacket when he got changed... damn it.

He swiped his by-now half-empty whiskey bottle up off the floor before taking it to the kinda heavy-looking metal door at the end. What was that, the Earth equivalent of a digital lock?

... He was going to try knocking first. Sure, surprise entrances could really help a guy out, but with Sparkle space knows where, he wasn't taking any risks.

Oh, Sparkle did not like that knocking sound. Granted, he didn't like any sounds right about then. Really, with all said and done, he didn't like much of anything. He especially didn't like Beefy, who was muttering something obscene under his breath as he went to answer the door. He didn't like the overhead lights, either. They were too damn bright, and he kind of wanted to just sleep or something. Damn lights. Should be illegal.

Grumbling more incoherent whatever under his breath, Sparkle was going to just attempt to worm his way out of the glare of the overhead lights. In a completely dignified manner that-- Oh. Oh ugh that wasn't even his blood on the floor that he was writhing through.

"Thafuhk..."

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