2019-07-07 - Drunk And Awkward

Itzhak had texted Ignacio, Finch, and August to come to the Pourhouse because 'I need to get drunk also I guess talk about wtf that was'. He's lounging in a booth, smoking to add to the years of smoke on the walls, with a couple of pitchers of beer on the table. And giving the stinkeye to anybody who strays nearby. His booth. Fuck off.

Finch comes in with Ignacio, because he is her ride. At least until Gran's car is street ready. She's in a black tee with the Punisher's skull logo on it, an aqua colored denim skirt, and black tights with combat boots. Her hair is still blue today. No goggles this time, but there's a lemony yellow star barrette in her hair on one side. She has her round star purse slung crossbody which she digs her ID out of because of course she gets proofed at the door.

Ignacio got home with Finch, well to Finch's home where he's crashing so she doesn't have to stay in a haunted house all alone. He sat up in the living room with his notebook, doped himself to the gills and wrote more than he meant to until he passed the ever living fuck out. No ghosts are getting through that living room, or if they are he's writing it off as a hallucination. The following day he slept in until the afternoon awaking blood-shot and bushy tailed and ready to take on the entire world. Really his kidneys might have super powers, or they're just resigned to their fate. He still has his brother's car and by the grace of God, or today Rafael, he drove the doombuggy out and promised himself he'll refuel it at least before giving it back later. He's walking casual... okay limping casual, but an entertainer never tips their hand. Like he said before no one wants the truth. I's damn ugly. He flashes his ID and swaggers inside greeting Itzhak with a handshake grabbing his thumb rather than doing business; it's familiar. "Sup, homes. Thanks for grabbin teh table."

Itzhak clasps Ignacio round the thumb, follows it up with a dap. "Yeah, sup." He doesn't look like he slept great, lines on his forehead and dark circles around his eyes. He didn't get carded, of course. The guy looks like he might have been born in a place like this. "Help yaself." Itzahk waves to the pitchers. There's also beer mugs. "How you two doin'." He looks between them, eyebrows up.

Finch slides in beside Iggy with a tired bonelessness that seems to say either she slept poorly, or she's still wiped out from going all Firestarter on that...thing in Murray House. "Hey Rosencrantz," she greets with a wan smile. Despite being over 21, she forgoes the pitchers and flags down a waitress to ask for a Coke. "Not a big drinker," she explains. Not surprising, considering she can light shit on fire.

Ignacio should follow suit. He does not. Finch sits down, deSantos sees to it there's a spot for her to do exactly that. How are they doing. He shrugs pouring himself a glass and shakes his head. There's an odd, impish half-smirk on his face that's telling, or leading them on. Hard to say but the truth surfaces in grim, tired amusement, "Funny enough? I've honestly been worse. How you holdin up, It-Z?" Looking around he asks, "We hear from Roen yet?"

Itzhak observes Iggy making sure Finch sits down okay. He doesn't say anything about it, just swigs beer. "Said he'll try to make it." He studies Finch and Ignacio in turn, then snorts. "I been worse too, de Santos, don't mean I'm good. That was some fucked up shit."

Finch snorts. "You'll get used to it," she tells the two men, folding her arms over her chest and obscuring the skull logo on her tee. "This shit happens all the time. Seriously. It's because of the...stuff. You know, what we can do? It's stronger here."

Ignacio pours more into Itzhak's glass to top it off giving him 'the look'. "What did I tell ya man?" One eyebrow goes up but he doesn't look. He's running on pure charisma and fake-it-til-ya-make it. It's evident, but that's Iggy for ya. "Noooo one likes the truth cause the truth sucks." He pauses and blinks to Finch, her words about 'what we do' putting a hiccup in his passive bravado. Quietly he nods, "Yeah. That." Now's a great time to jsut sip his beer and consider all of those implications. "Hey, we helped that kid. At least it wasn't for nada."

"Yeah, you tell everyone that and yet it don't mean anything. 'Course the truth always sucks, so what?" Itzhak's a mug or two in, and his social skills don't improve for it. He looks at Finch, mouth pulled down. "It happen in your creepy house, too? Any fuckin' dead guys in there?" Then he grunts. "We helped her. 'Bout the same age as my niece." Taking another drink is very important here. "...the song," he says, quieter. "It's the song I hear in you both. In those guys were there at the Murray house, too. In...almost everybody in this town. New York wasn't like this."

Finch stirs her soda with her straw and looks at her drink listlessly. "I'm not sure how to explain it. I don't fully understand it myself but," she looks between Ignacio and Itzhak. "It's like this. There's our world, then there's a place like it, but twisted. Like a dark Dream of our world. And they are next to one another in the universe." She digs in her purse and pulls out a little pokeball keychain, a lipgloss, and a packet of tissues. She grabs a tissue from the packet and folds one end, then the other, leaving a thinner area in the middle.

"So like, this," the pokeball, "is our world. And this," the lipgloss, "Is the other place. The place the Glimmer comes from. And this?" Finch slides the tissue between them. "This is the Veil that keeps them separate. But see this thin area? That right there is Gray Harbor. So shit happens here. People can do things here. And things cross over...both ways...sometimes."

Ignacio watches and pays as close attention as his addled mind held together with force of will is going to give him right now. Right. Parallel...worlds... He blinks at the napkin processing that without glib commentary. Finally he asks out loud, "Can people who get stuck over there get back?" He looks up to Finch and then to Itzy and back, "We know?" This he's got invested interest in

Itzhak eyes the little model Finch has made. "Not much material there to keep them sides separate." He almost says something else, doesn't, waits for Finch to answer Iggy's question.

August finally wanders in. He doesn't look irritated or annoyed, so whatever held him up, it wasn't a major problem. It doesn't take him long to spot the trio; he makes a stop at the bar first for a pint (lager of some sort, by the color) then moves to join them. "How good of an idea is it too discuss crazy shit in public?" He glances around, shrugs, and adds, "I guess somewhere that people are regularly wasted isn't too much risk." He's missed anything pertinent, and so eyes the Pokeball, napkin, and gloss.

Finch nods to Itzhak. "It's definitely too thin here and it's not a good thing. As for getting back, I'm not sure. Some of the legends say people got stuck, or people came back but I have no idea if they're true or not," Finch replies to Ignacio. "Gran told me some of the basics and," she grimaces, "my mom told me what my Uncle learned in his family research but," she wrinkles her nose, "That was it. Gran won't elaborate anymore for me. It's like she's afraid to tell me more. Maybe her sister, My Great Aunt, could tell us more." But she's locked up in the looney bin. She gives August a weary smile. "As long as we don't shout it to the rafters, it should be fine. Anyone who has lived here like more than five minutes has probably experienced something."

Ignacio arches an eyebrow up up. "Sounds like a bummer for your aunt. That's rough." Yeah that's definitely got him preoccupied in thought now. Taking a deep breath he nods and takes another long drink. "Hey boss." His shoulder nudges FInch's and he asks, "This ain't the only place though is it?"

"Risk of what?" Itzhak says to August, irritated. "Someone might think we're crazy? Fuck, let 'em." Irritated, also kinda drunk. He listens to Finch, scowl deepening. "Well, where's ya auntie? Bring 'er on out." With a sideways glance at Ignacious, he mutters, "It ain't the only place."

August settles into the booth, grunts an acknowledgment at Finch. "True enough." He studies her at the mention of her mother and aunt, toys with his beer glass. "Sorry. That sounds rough." Of course he knows the rumors, and he also knows that any time there's rumors, there's a real story behind them. In a place like this, that story is almost always worse.

He makes a low sound at Itzhak's declaration of craziness and accompanied muttering, says to Ignacio, "It's not," and has a drink of his beer.

Finch grimaces at the guys. "Auntie Starling is in Lakewood." The only thing of note in Lakewood is Western State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital. "So is my mother." She sips deeply from her soda to not have to talk about them anymore.

Ignacio leans over murmuring something to Finch, arches an eyebrow and sits back up looking to August and Itzhak looking unhappy and really unsurprised to hear that. There's some resignation for ya. "Had a feelin. Well... I dunno if that should make me feel better or not, but I guess it's what we got to deal with."

Itzhak grimaces, too, looking away. "Sorry." Awkward. His shoulders go tight. "...Sorry." Yes, more drinking all around. "It happened to me in prison." He comes out with it suddenly, out of a need for parity. "Then...I dunno, I guess I forgot about it? How the hell can I forget something like this? Came here, now shit's worse than ever. I didn't used to be able to do things so strong."

August grimaces as Finch says that, looks away and murmurs, "Sorry." He more means, 'that I didn't think to tell them to not ask about that' but, well, that's what a long day at work does to you. He lets out a long slow breath. "I could always feel a little something in certain parts of Portland, but it...didn't really hit me until Bosnia." He shakes his head, has a little more beer. "I got it to quiet down by taking positions out in the middle of nowhere. But then I drove through here, and..." His voice fades, and he shrugs.

Finch gives Ignacio a smile and squeezes his arm a moment, before she picks up her things and puts them back in her purse. She nods to Itzhak. "Thinner the Veil, the brighter we glimmer. Or something like that. Like what we tap to do those things comes from the other side." She looks to August. "And you felt like you had to be here, right? Yeah. Even when I was at school, I had to come home on breaks. It was always pulling at me." She stands up. "I'm gonna head outside and call Gran. Make sure she's doing ok visiting them." She needs some time to pull herself back together. Talking about her institutionalized family members is rough on her.

Ignacio nods faintly with that casual certainty he has like a ninja master of changing the subject. He asks with an almost upbeat energy, "Ooh hey, don't forget to ask her about the colour for the car." He pauses with a wry, half-grin, "Ask her about painting flames on the side of it." Becuase it's so absurd it's kinda funny. His beer gets drank and he keeps an eye on his temp roommate that she makes it out of the noisy part of the bar alright. Looking up to the waiter he makes a circle with his finger: Another pitcher here. Also one coke? which is picked up by pointing at the glass too so Finch has something to come back to. Growing up in a restaurant? Ya learn things.

Brown eyes on the guys again he just shakes his head, but fails to add his own story to it agreeing, "Yup. Wow, you in the army or somethin or Nat Geo scout you hard?"

Itzhak grumbles, "Don't you fuckin' start, de Santos. ...Silver flames would look badass. Think she'll let me do it?" He stubs out the cigarette which was burning down all on its lonesome and lights another. Through the smoke, he squints at August. "Bosnia. Huh."

August watches Finch go, sighs and folds his arms. He coughs a dry, humorless laugh at Ignacio and rubs at his eyes. "Army," he clarifies. "Joined up soon as I was out of high school, wanted to get my family some money. Got sent to Sarajevo six months later. And it was kinda like here, over there--I could feel things way stronger than I ever did at home." He falls quiet, had some of his beer. "Fortunately, that got me discharged, so I could go to college instead." He looks askance at Itzhak, nods. "Silver flames would be pretty nice, if we're talking that old tank she's got squirreled away."

Ignacio nods slowly. "Silver flames and white on that old classic ocean blue." He doesn't give a damn about the flames but it's something to have an opinion on while he processes everything. So much of everything. He asks as brazen as he does any smart alec comment but is genuinely curious. Sure we're keeping the casual ton, but it's giving him a ton to consider being that he's yet to share beyond broad commiseration. "Soooo you guys weird before that happened at those places or you find out alla sudden?"

"That's the one. I'm fixin' it up for her, but it hasn't been driven since 1976, if you can believe it." Itzhak is really more happy to talk about cars than any of this, but he lets out a rough sigh and eyes Ignacio. "Weird, yeah, but not weird."

August mmmms low in his chest, gives Ignacio and then Itzhak a slow nod of approval. "Sounds like a good project to have." He says this like a man with more than a few of those.

He takes his time answering Ignacio, thinking all the way back to Portland. "When I was young I could always feel...things. Hints of it, I guess they were. Portland's not like," he takes up his beer, gestures with it, "here, only some spots are...exposed. At least, I think that's what it was, those times I'd go somewhere and, I could feel, something. Everything was different. But only in those places. Until I was deployed. After that, well, anywhere it was, I could tell right away." Of his time in Bosnia making him stronger or anything along those lines, he says nothing.

Ignacio levels with Itzhak, "Don't go rollin your eyes at me. Had I not good taste, man, I wouldn't a tried t' date your cousin that time." With a wry grin he says to August, "Unfortunate for me, Itzhak's cousin also has good taste." Har har.

'Nacio turns his attention back to Roen as his need for answers is masked in idle curiosity out of consideration. "Sound like... how sometimes you wanna know what's wrong, and ya just... know, an you think ah yeah, I'm just really good with people. Lucky fuckin clevah me?"

Funny, out of everything, that's what makes Itzhak crack half a smile, is Iggy joking about that time he got swerved by Goldie. "More like fortunate for you, I'da had to take you out back if you broke her heart." He almost shoves Ignacio to make his point in a friendly yet inebriated manner, but--the vision of all that metal in the guy flashes back to him. That weird way he's walking now. The way his face doesn't work like it used to. Itzhak pours more beer instead. "Couldn't anything before I did time. After, it kind of...stopped. Now it's back, the fershtunken thing." He takes a drag off the cigarette. "So we got a lot of different data sets, if nothing else. I guess."

The story of Ignacio 'trying' to date Itzhak's cousin successfully pulls August out of the morose nature of how he found out about his abilities, even gets a chuckle out of him. He watches Itzhak's subtle misdirection from the smile to pouring beer, turns his glass on the table. "Yeah. Sounds like it's a thing can happen whenever." He grunts. "Lucky us."

He downs the last of his pint, leans back in his chair. He takes to looking over Ignacio, finally says, "When it was new, yeah. It was like that. But in Bosnia it was obvious." He shifts uncomfortably, changes tacks. "What I've sorted out so far is, I can't, ah, heal, myself. Just others. And things don't hit me as hard as other people. Like I'm," he makes a face, "tougher, somehow. And I can make other people tougher. And..." He plainly hesitates, shrugs. "I can feel how people are feeling. Make them feel certain ways, if I try hard enough." He can't help but look askance at Itzhak for a brief moment before focusing on the table. "Feel things people were thinking if I touch something and try hard enough."

Ignacio shakes his head with that half-grin that reaches his eyes briefly, "Man you wouldn't a /had/ to. She'd a tune me up without the help, trust me." He shakes his head sighing thinking back on better times, "She reeeally knows her way around a car tho." He almost goes to drink his beer and corrects, "I mean she really knows how to handle herself under the hood-" He stops again and his jaw tightens and he sighs. With a smooth transition he announces with the collected method of a TV Anchorman signing off, "I'll just be resigning my dignity for the night, if it's quite alright withe everyone." He finishes his beer and sets it down looking to Itzhak having too much amusement with it, "Your cousin has my respect as a mechanic and a driver."

Yup. That compliment got shot 14 ways to Tuesday thanks to everyone having been professionally 12 years old before. Fan-fuckity-tastic. And from 3rd base August comes with some sort of concrete example and Ignacio goes still, and for the life of him just a blank damn slate. Really he can't race anymore but poker might be in the cards for em. "That so?" Cuuuuurious. After a long pause he nods slowly. "See, Itzhak? Roen here can back me up. No one likes the truth. Knowing the truth? It sucks." Pure. Simple. He gets up and says with less casual interest and more concern, "Gimme a sec. I'm gonna see how she's doin, or what she wants so we can order food. Bee-Are-Bee." Be right back. Because it's the most convenient and yet erstwhile reason to get up and just take a walk and a deep breath there.

Itzhak says in response to August, "You guys saw what I can do." Light up a house? Rip down a roof while freaking his shit? Something like that. Then Iggy's really making him laugh; he snickers against the back of his hand. "She bettah have your respect. Quit while you're way behind, tateleh." Raising his eyebrows at Iggy then, he just says, "Yeah. I know the truth sucks. Go check on Finch." Less a request than a confirmation that that's what Iggy is off to do.

August snorts a laugh at Ignacio's struggle to compliment the absent 'Goldie'. He nods, accepting the provided reason for departing at face value. He doesn't need to touch that beer glass to know how Ignacio was feeling before he decided to leave the table.

He sighs heavily, looks askance at Itzhak. "Think maybe you don't get hit as hard too? I can move things, just..." His mouth flattens, "Not nearly as well as you," he admits. "But if we can both do that, maybe we can both do some other things the same too."

Itzhak's watching Ignacio swagger away. His own thoughts churn behind his eyes. "...I know I don't get hit as hard," he says after a moment. "That first time anything happened I was caught in a yard brawl." He pulls a face. "Now I'm tellin' you too much. Hell with it, right?" Tapping off the ash, Itzhak slouches around to face August. "Drunk enough I don't fuggin' care. I was melting the fuck down after we got out of that house. You did something. I heard it singing in you."

August squints at Itzhak, ducks his head and sighs. "Yeah," he admits after a second. A waiter drifts by and August gets himself another pint. "Figure if we're discussing this shit at length I might as well drink more too."

Once the young man's out of earshot, he says, "Sorry about that. I try not to do it unless things are serious. Seems like a...not great thing to do, you know? Making people feel something. But I didn't want that thing come tearing out of the door and tearing us to pieces or..." He shakes his head. "Whatever the fuck it was going to do." The waiter returns, August tips him generously. Once again, they have the booth to themselves. "I can do it with animals too. That's mostly how I use it. Makes it easier to make my point to them, I guess you can say." He sips the lager. "Not that they ever care."

"When I get a bad meltdown like that, nothing stops it. If nothing else, I know you did something because of that." Itzhak's gaze drifts off August to some random point beyond. "They don't happen so much anymore. Haven't had one so bad in years. Probably somethin' to do with crashing the roof in on a disgusting dead guy. That poor girl. I could see my niece, you know? My niece trapped in a wreck of an old house with some thing doing God knows what to her so she's hurtin' herself trying to get out."

Itzhak swallows, hard. "I had to make it stop. So that's what I did. I felt it coming, shit was too crazy, I knew I was gonna lose it. But I kinda figured, as long as everybody got out of the house, that, yannow. Everything would be okay as long as that happened."

He gives his head a short, sharp little shake. Sucking down the last of the cigarette, he stubs it out. "You did what you had to do. You an officer or something? Maybe a medic? Makin' calls like that?"

With the voice of experience, August says, "Yeah," to Itzhak's description of what he saw and felt. August had been exceptionally careful to not reach out, at all, inside the house; the ambient energies had been bad enough. Like feeling blistering heat on the other side of a door to a burning room, he'd not needed to open that door to know there was fire on the other side. "That's what happens, sometimes. It hits you right where it hurts the most, and no matter how long it's been, no matter how much you've been working at it, sometimes it pinches a nerve, and you react. You did good, though. Only thought in my head when I saw that thing was to grab her and fucking run--except," he grimaces, "then Finch and Ignacio got right up in it's damned face." He sounds decidedly unhappy about that.

August is midsip when Itzhak asks if he was a medic or an officer, and so almost chokes on his beer. He shakes his head. "Officer! Ha. My CO would laugh his ass off to hear that." He clears his throat. "No. And not a medic. I was just a grunt. Specialist, though I think my CO wanted to make me a Corporal, before I was discharged." He's looking down when he says that, and his eyes land on his shirt. After a second he asides, "Medically," just so it's clear it wasn't a Section 8, which would be a fair assumption considering. "Glad they gave me the boot, though, because I'd have figured out a way to fucking quit, jail time or no, if they hadn't. There was no way I was going back out on deployment after that." He taps the rim of his glass, using the action to distract himself from the unexplained 'that'. "It was reflex. I did it a lot, in Bosnia, without knowing what I was doing. Came right back, same as it did for you." He looks at Itzhak directly now. "I won't do it again, not without you asking."

Itzhak tips his beer August's direction. "You get it." Now it's his turn to nearly choke on beer when August says that about Finch and Iggy. "Stupid damn kids, de Santos tryin' to talk the thing down! He's just like that. You probably know that by now. Runs his mouth, gets outta anything because he's a charming little shithead. I dunno what the hell happened to him." He says that too drunk to think about it.

His gaze follows August's down to his shirt with the well-known gay artist who suffered from AIDS. "Yeah, well, look. I ain't holdin' it against you. You might have to do it sometime again. Been hearing a lot of stuff like that goes on in this town. And they say New York City is high crime?" He scoffs. "I should slug you for it, touchin' my brain like that, but eh. Queers gotta stick together, right?"

Tilting his glass in turn, August says, "Takes one to know one." He grunts about Ignacio, briefly annoyed before moving into resignation. "I've known more'n a few like him." He doesn't mean to suggest 'kids who had something Happen and it sucker punched them into a new reality' except it really is what he means. He was one of those kids himself; it's no doubt why he hired Ignacio (and Finch) in the first place.

He raises his eyebrows, not in surprise at the admission but its total frankness. Though, maybe he shouldn't be. This is what he gets for hiding in the woods for fifteen years. He lifts his beer in a toast. "That we do. And you'd be right to, I was kind of expecting you wanted to when you texted me. But," he has a drink, "I'm not going to without you saying I can unless it's so bad you can't tell me. Okay?" He can feel the beer's effect creeping up on him now. He'll have to leave it at these two pints if he wants to drive home before closing.

Exactly how much younger Itzhak is, it might be hard to tell. Hard times have aged him, put callouses on his hands and crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes. Young enough, or confident in his fists enough, to just come out with it like that. Then again, he is drunk. "If I wanna meet up with you to punch you, I'll tell you in the text," he says, laughing bitterly into the mug of beer. "Give ya that much courtesy. ...Okay. Can't ask for more than that, can I?"

August raises his glass in another toast. Okay, he's feeling these beers more than he thinks he is. "I guess we can't," he agrees. "Text before you punch, ask before you...think." He frowns, sure there's a better word than that. Well, he can't think of it, whatever the hell it even is. He has a good swallow of beer. "So. Are we sitting here and sobering up with ginger ale, or walking somewhere to clear our heads. Because I live," he points unerringly to the northeast, "way the hell off that way down a dirt road in the forest, and I am the hell not driving it until I'm sober." He pauses, adds, "Or we can wait until they come back in and eat," as an afterthought.

Itzhak pauses long enough to make it obvious he hadn't thought about it. "No taxis, no subway, how the hell are you supposed to get home from the bar?" he grouses. "This Godforsaken coast. Christ. I've sat here long enough. I'll tell 'em." He digs his phone out. A slip of paper comes with it, falling on the table and fortuitously not in a puddle of condensation. Itzhak's texting Ignacio and doesn't notice.

The paper has a phone number on it and a sentence. 'You're adorable when you blush.' That cannot POSSIBLY belong to Itzhak, can it? Since when is he a blusher? Let alone adorable.

As Itzhak texts, August peers around his beer glass at the paper. It takes him a second to put together what it is (a phone number and a note) due to the angle. And when he does--oh, it's tempting. If he touches the paper, he might see the situation that lead to it. That's happened before.

He doesn't, though. Weren't they just talking about trust in such scenarios? Besides, all he needs to do is point it out. Which he does, once Itzhak is done texting. "You uh...dropped something." He bobs his eyebrows, gives Itzhak a deadpan look, drinks the last of his beer.

Itzhak's phone blips back and forth between him and Iggy a few times, before he goes to slide it back in his pocket. He frowns at August, at the paper, picks it up--and there we go, that's a blush, a real good one too. Itzhak flushes red all the way down his neck. He stuffs the paper in a different pocket. "Not a word, Roen!" Muttering savagely he shoves himself out of the booth and stomps over to the register to settle up.

August continues with his deadpan appraisal of Itzhak. He's not had quite enough beer to assure Itzhak that whoever wrote that note was correct. Not quite. Though maybe some of that's visible in the smile he's holding back by his fingernails. He laughs softly to himself as Itzhak stalks off to pay. He pulls out his wallet, fishes out a twenty and waits for Itzhak to return.

Itzhak glares at August as he comes back, but it's really not as effective as it could be. He's still red. "...I didn't know that was on it." So he just took someone's number and shoved it out of sight without looking at it, apparently. "C'mon, it's nicer outside."