Outside a Metal Bar and Beyond, Baltimore, Thursday Evening

[suitably_heroic]

"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. ]]

Comments

[myownface]

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..."

[suitably_heroic]

"Hey," Atton said casually. Damn, that guy had been taking something. Had to be. "I don't know what kind of operation you've got going on here, and I really don't care. I'm looking for a friend of mine. You just... hand him over and I'll be on my way."

He was strategically blocking the doorway. Nobody needed to see what he'd left behind there.

[myownface]

Oh... did Sparkle know that voice? Sparkle was pretty sure he knew that voice. It sounded like a voice that he happened to know, and he cracked open an eye to look toward the door, but all he really got was a view of Beefy's ass.

Say what you want about Beefy's bedside manner, he did have a pretty impressive ass.

"Y'owe m'too bucks," he grumbled from his very useful vantage point on the floor in some other poor fucker's blood. "S'not pok'r."

All of this was lost, of course, in Beefy's somewhat more coherent exclamation of, "Who the fuck are you?" as he launched himself at Atton.

[suitably_heroic]

Seriously, how stupid were these people? ... They could answer that later, when Atton wasn't at risk of suffering Blunt Idiot To The Face.

He practically flowed out of the guy's reach, snagging his arm as he came by and yanking it back hard. Then he kicked him in the back. Twice as hard. Sent the guy sprawling to the ground.

"Points for 'ask questions first, attack later'," he said, "But you lose some for 'poor sense of pacing'."

[myownface]

See, Atton? See how totally not poker it was in here?

... Sparkle was going to cling to that point as Beefy hit the floor beside him.

"Loudest rescue ever," he intoned, squinting as he tried to make out Atton under the glare of the overhead lights. "Next time, you go first."

[suitably_heroic]

"Is there anybody else around here?" Atton asked, ignoring that babble. "Because if I see another one of these idiots coming at me, I'm just going to start shooting kneecaps."

He knelt down by Sparkle's side.

[myownface]

"Dunno. Didn't get a chance to count," Sparkle grumbled, wiggling around a little on the floor in an attempt to free his hands. "Some poor bastard was in here before me, though."

He glanced down at the blood on the floor. Still fairly fresh.

"He's probably got someone dragging him around. No clue where they put him."

Probably wherever they had been planning on throwing Sparkle, too.

[suitably_heroic]

Because he was a nice guy, Atton reached out to help him with those restraints. "Well, going by the amount of blood on the floor," he mused as he freed Sparkle, "The guy won't have more than a few hours unless they patch him up. Two, maybe three?"

Not that it was their business.

"Sucks to be him."

[myownface]

"A bit," Sparkle mumbled, frowning down at the blood as Atton worked to free him. "Something tells me they're not gonna patch him up, either."

Call it a hunch.

"So I'm picking the club next time."

Just letting Atton know, here.

[suitably_heroic]

"There you go," Atton said. "You feel confused? Dizzy? Like you want to vomit?"

He'd ignore the club thing. Shut up, he still really liked this place. A little blood wasn't going to throw him off.

[myownface]

"Yes," Sparkle replied, to all of the above, as he gave his wrists a somewhat uncoordinated rub. "Feels like he hit me in the brain with a brick."

Or a baseball bat. One of those.

"Who're they? What'd we... you know? S'not poker."

The poker thing was going to be the sticking point today.

[suitably_heroic]

"It's not poker," Atton agreed. "And you probably have a concussion, so I'm hauling your ass out of here. Our friend splashed all over the floor down here can go save himself."

They might have to find somewhere to crash for the night. Atton wasn't sure either of them wanted to be caught hauling in injured on the island.

[myownface]

Sparkle made a bit of a whining sound at that. Because, in terms of summing up the whole situation, that was about the best he could manage.

"Gotta get my bag..."

See, Atton? That change of clothes would totally come in handy.

[suitably_heroic]

"Yeah, yeah, we'll get the bag," Atton promised. "Think I saw a door that opens out on the alley back there in the next room."

And with that, he was going to try to haul your ass upright, Sparkle. With a lot more care than he was going to admit to later.

[myownface]

And Sparkle wasn't going to admit that he was more or less hanging off of Atton as he was hauled to his feet, either. They could live in that merry state of denial together forever!

"N'if it doesn't lead out to the alley?"

What if they were trapped in the back room of the Random Heavy Metal Baltimore Mafia forever?

[suitably_heroic]

"I'll shoot someone in the kneecap. I already covered that, didn't I?" Atton said. "Pure pazaak."

Now just to get Sparkle out through the door and past that merry trio of passed-out gentlemen on the floor...

[myownface]

"Oh. Okay." Sparkle seemed to accept that as an adequate answer. Until a moment later, when he gave Atton a kind of bleary look. "Where'd you get a gun?"

This was all so new and novel to him, dammit.

[suitably_heroic]

This was so ridiculously normal for Atton - or used to be, anyway - that he'd already mentally plotted out his course to a just-in-case place he knew, and going by the looks of it, Sparkle was going to be fine by the morning, so--

"One of the idiots back here had one," Atton said casually. "I thought he'd be better off without it. I'll ditch it later."

He already had his blaster on the island. He didn't need more.

[myownface]

"Oh." Well, that answered that, didn't it? Sparkle returned his attention toward the floor, and the bodies that were strewn across it. "Ditch it far from here or the cops'll be all over it trying to place your prints."

If there was one thing Sparks could do, it was dodge the police.

"... Might call 'em anyhow." He nodded down to the blood that he was tracking across the floor. "Like anon... annun... anomin... without giving my name. 'Cause."

Nothing against the club, but he was feeling a bit of solidarity for the mystery guy with the blood smears everywhere.

"Not like they'll listen to me, but."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton tried the back door. It opened easily enough-- well, once he jimmied the lock a little, but that was child's play.

"How about we get a painkiller in you first and maybe some rest," he said, "Then when you stop stuttering, you can call the police."

Though the joy of being Atton was that nobody had his prints.

[myownface]

Sparkle fell quiet for a minute as he chewed on that statement, letting Atton drag him... wherever Atton was headed. He trusted him, by this point, to get him out of here in more or less one piece. He'd sent Sparkle in first, but he was also the one to come and get him again.

"... Think buddy'll last that long?"

Sparkle wasn't a big fan of getting himself killed for other people, and he wasn't a big fan of the cops, either. But just letting someone die when it was a matter of making an anonymous tip or something seemed...

... Seemed like...

Well, he didn't like it.

[suitably_heroic]

"Are you honestly worrying about this?"

Because this was the kind of shit that got a lot of Jedi killed.

Alleyway. Thank hell. He left Sparkle propped up against the dumpster for a couple so he could root around in it and drag out their backpack.

[myownface]

"Dunno," Sparkle grumbled, clinging to the side of the dumpster, amusing himself with the way the blood on his fingers froze to the cold metal of the bin. "Covered in blood an' some of it's mine and they were gonna kill me in there and my whiskey's still in the bar and some guy's gonna croak and like one of these things I can maybe to something about probably."

He wasn't going back for his whiskey, Atton.

[suitably_heroic]

"You're not dead," Atton pointed out. "You'll be fine in the morning. Maybe be rattled for a couple more days, but hey, who hasn't been?"

He rooted through Sparkle's backpack until he found his jacket and threw it on. "I got some vodka in here somewhere. How about we strike a deal, and you can have it when your brains aren't leaking out through your eyes?"

[myownface]

Sparkle put forth a valiant effort to not look too pathetic as he looked back Atton's way from where he was propped against the dumpster.

"What kinda deal?"

Because the vodka was sounding pretty good, too.