A Bar in Baltimore, Friday Evening

[suitably_heroic]

Right, Mical still wasn't answering Atton's calls, and frankly, he was happy with that. Atton had no classes set for the coming semester. Sparkle was getting better, and would probably be better off without a constant reminder of what happened anyway.

And Atton... needed a vacation. Bad. Just a chance to hang around the cantinas and pazaak dens that had given birth to Atton Rand to begin with. So... he was kicking this off with a nice, Atton-y lie: no, he wasn't going home immediately. He was parking the Ebon Hawk in a junk yard near Baltimore for a day and living it up in here.

"One more whiskey, please!"

... okay, so it'd been a long time since he'd actually gotten this drunk. He tended to play pretend, to keep a cool head. But that wasn't the point of the next month and a half, so: bottom's up. You go spin, bar.

[[ for a terrible life choice. ]]

Comments

[talentforlying]

"Yeah, but the kick's the good part," John sighed. "I see plenty of drunk yuppies slumming who could stand to loose some cash. Think you can manage to stay upright for a few games with that dragon-whatever whiskey kicking your ass?"

[suitably_heroic]

"I've done it under worse circumstances," Atton said, holding up an index finger because it was. very. important. that he made his point. "I'm good at cards. I have fast fingers."

Well, he did. He had an insanely high DEX stat. Of course, he could've worked on his phrasing, but eh.

"How about you? Think you can fleece some of these guys?"

[talentforlying]

"Fast fingers, eh?" JOHN, NO. "I can more than handle a cue--" REALLY, CONSTANTINE, NO. "--but I bet my fingers can keep up with yours."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton chuckled and took another hit of that whiskey, which was kind of like voluntarily taking a brick to the face, but whatever. He was trying to learn to be Atton Rand again, and that meant he was spending the next month or so making horrible life decisions just because he could.

Like drinking whiskey.

Or looking at the guy even his drunk ass could tell was hitting on him and saying, "Yeah? Well, we'll see. Pick a mark."

[talentforlying]

To be fair, John had a habit of hitting on anything breathing that happened to be sentient, legal, and hot. The fact that Atton wasn't opposed to trouble was like sprinkles on a tasty tasty Terrible Idea cupcake.

And John had always had shitty impulse control.

"Blonde in the shirt," he said, nodding towards a tall girl. "She's trying to run a con on the poor drunk sods in here thinking they're too busy staring at her tits to notice when she takes an extra card or pulls from her lap, and she's doing a shit job of it."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton was mostly just drunk. And presently messed up in the head. And a whole whopping one point on the Kinsey scale, technically speaking, but also in the frame of mind where he'd probably argue that scales did not leave enough room for colossal screw-ups in general.

"Aw, she reminds me of a Zeltron I used to know," he mused. "Thought she had everything fixed if she just kept pumping around enough pheromones."

He slammed back the rest of his brick-to-the-face and got up. "Let's do it."

Phrasing.

[talentforlying]

John snickered. "Phrasing, mate," he said because he's five, before following Atton's lead at killing off the rest of his drink and standing up.

"Fuck, why can't the squirrels stock this stuff, instead of that shite rum?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Because half the island would be on their asses in the morning?" Atton said. "I mean, it'd make it easier to round up whoever was sneaking squirrel booze, but still-- hello there."

He grinned at the tall girl. It went extra-lopsided. (On purpose.)

[talentforlying]

"Aren't you a sight for sore eyes, sunshine?" John greeted her, laying the accent on extra-thick -- and the tipsiness, too. "Here alone? Mind if we join you?"

[suitably_heroic]

The girl's eyes brightened, even if the rest of her didn't. She sat back. "I guess," she ventured. "My friends just left."

Atton sincerely doubted she'd had any, but he sank into a seat anyway. "We saw you playing cards," he said, "Me and my friend here were like, hey, we're good at cards, and the scenery's not bad."

[talentforlying]

"Scenery's better'n 'not bad.'" John, talk to her face, not her chest.

[suitably_heroic]

"Okay, a little bit better than not bad," Atton allowed. "What're you playing, gorgeous? And what's your name?"

"I'm Linda," the woman said, picking idly through her deck of cards. Somehow, she managed to do this with her arms lowered below her ample cleavage. "And we're playing Blackjack, boys. You are...?"

[talentforlying]

"You can call me Johnny, love," he said, tearing his eyes away from that lovely view to give her a wink. "'S a pleasure to meet you, Linda, and Blackjack sounds like a fine time."

[suitably_heroic]

"And I'm Simon," Atton said, lapsing into a random alias more or less out of habit. At least he didn't need any acting skills to look drunk. "Blackjack's the one with the... uh, you like-- twenty-one, right?"

"Are you asking about my age or the game?" Linda said dryly. "We're in a bar."

[talentforlying]

"He's asking about the game," John promised, giving 'Simon' a good-natured shove at the shoulder. "He knows better than t'ask a lovely lady her age."

[suitably_heroic]

"Sorry, sorry," Atton said, holding his hands up. "We had a, a whiskey. Whiskeys?"

He shook his head.

Linda made an amused noise, fixing a luminous smile on John. "Yes, it's also called 21," she said. "Me and my friends were playing some earlier, trading off on being the dealer. You know the game, right?"

"Yeah," Atton said, pausing just a second too long. "Yeah, I know the game." (Of course he knew the game. It was the closest thing this planet had to pazaak.)

[talentforlying]

John leveled a finger at Atton. "Whiskeys. Plural. Which are medicinal to deal with all the Brexit bullshit, you sodding lightweight."

He was not above making her think they were drunker than they already were, no.

"Pretty sure Blackjack is the same here in the States as at home," he said, taking a seat. "Why don't we say it's lady's choice as to the first dealer?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Ugggh, the Brexit," Atton muttered, groaning. (The advantage of being Alderaani by birth was that he could let just enough not-quite-British shimmer through to sound like an expat.)

"How about we start with you boys against me?" Linda suggested sweetly. "Just a friendly game for a few bucks, just to keep things interesting." She held up a fiver.

[talentforlying]

"I think we can manage that," John agreed, fishing about in his pockets for a moment to pull out his wallet and slap a five down on the table. "Though two on one don't seem quite fair."

Though if you thought it looked like he was thinking about a different type of tag-team... well, that was the idea.

[suitably_heroic]

"Aw, honey, we can always switch later," Linda said. She took the time to shuffle and reshuffle the cards, an effort that somehow managed to make her cleavage more pronounced.

Atton eyed it with an unsteady sort of interest. "I get a card, he gets a card, I get a card, he gets a card, right?"

Or boob.

[talentforlying]

That increasing-cleavage trick was a nice one, and if John snickered under his breath when she said 'switch,' well, he was playing the drunk card.

"Cards for everyone," he promised, waving down a waitress for more drinks. "What's your poison, Linda-love?"

[suitably_heroic]

"How about a Bloody Mary?" So she could pick at the celery and pretend she was drinking.

"I'll just go with more whiskey," Atton proclaimed. "Mm. All the whiskey." And while Linda was looking at John and the waitress and not his drunk ass, he'd give a little wave and Force nudge that nice card over there just... over here.