2019-07-07 - Drunk and Awkward Walk and Talk
Itzhak and August step outside to talk.
IC Date: 2019-07-07
OOC Date: 2019-05-16
Location: Spruce/The Pourhouse
Related Scenes: 2019-07-07 - Drunk And Awkward
Plot: None
Scene Number: 719
August holds up his hands. "Why am I getting that look, I didn't say anything." He gets up to join Itzhak outside, stopping by the register to finish out his tab.
Outside the Pourhouse it's a classic cool Pacific Northwest night, the air filled with the sound of chirping frogs and bugs. Bats and birds appear and vanish in the street lights outside on their hunt for insects. As they exit the side of the pub, August says, "So." Then waits, hands in his pockets.
"You didn't have to say anything!" Itzhak complains to the night at large. A lot of beer has gone into his tall frame but he's walking more or less in a straight line. One steel-toe workboot after the other crunches lightly on gravel and grass. "It was all in the eyes."
A moment passes quietly. Then August drops his 'so' and Itzhak snaps a glare around at him. "So WHAT. So someone gave me a number, it's so I can fix stuff."
August hasn't had quite as much, but two pints is enough to make him need to pause if he doesn't plan on sleeping in the back office. He's more animated with the alcohol buzzing in his system, even a little less reserved. "Ah, enjoying my eyes, were you," he says, mild and unconcerned.
"So 'someone' gave you their number--instead of asking for yours--so you could fix things for them." He arches an eyebrow and grins, his teeth flashing in the streetlight. He decides against further dissecting how bad of an attempt at lying that was, and cuts to the chase. "What's her name?"
"Got pretty eyes. All of you is pretty. You must have guys swoonin' at your feet, silver fox like you." Itzhak's tone is best described as scornfully amused. Here's Roen, all pretty and shit. Still, there's a playfulness not there at...well, any time previous to now.
His eyebrows fly up in surprise. "How'd you know--I mean. Who said it's a girl?"
August runs a hand over his beard. "Silver fox, is that what we're calling it now? Not 'old and gray' or 'over the hill'?" Oh yes, he's gotten that plenty. Still, he smiles, almost coy. He doesn't mind the compliments at all, despite (or maybe because of) how they're delivered.
Tone frank, he says, "The fact that it came with a compliment, and not a drawing of a dick, tells me it's a woman." He huffs a voiceless laugh at this unavoidable fact. "A guy would write 'nice ass' if he wrote anything aside from the number." His humor turns rueful, and he gives Itzhak a 'you know I'm right' look.
Itzhak snorts, caught completely off guard, and doubles over laughing. Just cracking the hell up.
"A dick," he gasps. "Well, you're not wrong!" Back into laughing he goes. He might be here for a while.
His entire attitude changes completely when he's laughing.
"You know I'm right," August says now, and begins laughing as well. "Sure, a guy like me or you, we'd just write our number. Most other guys, especially--especially--the younger ones? If they go beyond the 10 digits, it's to get 'creative' and that almost always means being cute and funny and what they think is cute and funny, is drawing a dick." His laughter continues as he says all of this, and he has to stop and wipe at his eyes.
As he calms down, he says, "Ah, I probably wouldn't have been any better at their age. But that's how I know, it's a woman's number." He holds up a hand. "It's fine if you don't want to tell me." He gets a glint in his eyes. "I bet if you let me touch that paper you wouldn't even need to. I might be able to see it."
"I have never drawn a dick on my number in my life." Itzhak, still grinning, wired and exhausted, shakes his head. "Maybe on a bathroom stall or two, but never my number. Not to say I never got one though."
That sounds distinctly like a dare to Itzhak. He narrows his eyes at Roen. "Oh yeah?"
He shoves his hand in his pocket (a tight pocket, on tight jeans), gets out the slip of paper with the compliment about his blushing. "Try it." Itzhak offers it over.
August mmmms. "Yeah, I bet you have received more than a few." He sounds almost sympathetic about it. But not too sympathetic. "It's not the worst problem to have; pretty okay on the good ol' self esteem, anyways."
Under normal (in as much as their lives can be called normal anymore) circumstances August wouldn't be daring someone to let him try out psychometry on the phone number they got from a womman he doesn't know. It's not the best idea; he's never sure what he'll get off things. It's why he's so deliberate when he reaches for any of those powers. The beer's here to help him out, though, as it usually is, and he accepts the paper.
He takes the paper, begins running it between his fingers. His eyes grow unfocused and his expression distant, like he's listening to something only he can hear. He narrows his eyes. "It's a...cafe, I think. Or a bakery. Yeah, bakery. Don't recognize it. She's..." He frowns. "Wearing a lot of black," he says, finally. "Black hair, long and, straight. And her makeup--she's a goth." He smiles, amused. "I guess every town has a few, right?"
He goes still, reaching in and back as far as he can. Then, "You're--" He stops, smiles. "Nervous. Kind of embarrassed. But also, there's this feeling of, acceptance. Finding a place and people like you're used to." He sighs, an expression stealing over him like he's just realized something. Whatever it is yanks him out of the reverie. He shakes his head, rubs at his eyes with one hand and offers over the paper with the other.
Itzhak hikes his eyebrows. "Not bad, for bein' old and gray and over the hill. Her family owns a Jewish bakery here in town." He takes the paper back, folding it over, studying it. "Her pop was complaining in Yiddish when I went in. Hearin' Yiddish, smelling the challah, it made my entire chest hurt." One hand drifts to press his palm over his heart. "Then she was kinda teasing me, and..."
He glances over, his expression gone melancholy, and he runs that hand through his hair. "She knows. About all the mishegoss. Told her we found that little girl, and that she's alive. I couldn't talk about the rest of it, but she's a social worker. She said to drop her a line if I needed. I really didn't even look at it, I was so embarrassed. If you wanted to know my kryptonite, there it is."
Something of August's mood is filtering through to him. "You okay there, old timer?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine." August sounds like he's shaking off a dizzy spell. He focuses on Itzhak again. "It's a little like coming out of a movie theater from the side exit into a bright day. Can be jarring."
His mouth twitches in an almost-smile. "People reaching out is your weakness? Eh," he takes to looking at the ground, "Guess I know how that goes. You get comfortable keeping yourself apart, eventually you forget how not to be." He flicks a glance at Itzhak, suggesting he doesn't just mean the romantic sort of reaching out implied by a number on a slip of paper.
He starts to go on, stops and winces, raises a hand to his left ear. "Sorry, just a second," he says. He shuts his eyes, focuses on breathing steady and even. He murmurs, "This tinnitus can be a bitch sometimes."
"I meant that I'm shy," Itzhak says, dryly, "but, yeah. Yeah, that too. Didn't make it through prison by being approachable."
Stopping when August does, his eyebrows tilt up. When he realizes August needs a minute, he looks away, finding something interesting like the bats diving through the streetlights to watch instead. He even turns his whole body away by a quarter-circle in a silent gift of privacy, like a soldier would, or a inmate.
Waiting it out, he gets out his pack of cigarettes, then thinks better of it with August having a dizzy spell, and just tucks one behind his ear instead.
Voice strained, August says, "Shy, withdrawn--what's the difference really, when the end result is the same." A couple more seconds of silence, then he opens his eyes, blinking. "Okay. That's better." He looks at Itzhak, notices he's looked away somewhat. He clears his throat. "Thanks."
He sighs. "No, I imagine being approachable is precisely the opposite of how you make it through prison." He returns to a much nicer and more interesting subject: the goth girl. "She knows?" He tilts his head. "Is she a local, then, or just been here a while?"
Itzhak shrugs, a quick roll of his lean shoulders. "Ain't nothin'." He fidgets with his Zippo, flipping it open and lighting it in one move, then clapping it shut and extinguishing it with the next.
"She knows. Her family's local. They've run the bakery for a while now. She said her parents know, too. They don't have the song, though, just her." Although Finch had called it the glimmer, Itzhak's already decided that it's the song.
"Huh." August puts his hands on his hips, studies a random spot on the ground. His brow's furrowed like he's turning something over in his head. "Isn't that weird, though?" He glances up at Itzhak, back down at the ground. Somewhere near by a toad makes a hilariously loud brap, then another, and August snaps, "Hey, do you mind? I'm thinking here," in response. The toad doesn't croak again.
Eventually, he says, "Yeah, so...I meet Finch, and Ignacio, who both need jobs. And there was a woman at the shop the other day, a new ranger out at the preserve. And I could've taken that truck somewhere else, but there was your place. And now you've met this social worker." He bites his lip, shakes his head. "That can't be coincidence, that we're all here. This place isn't just...this place. It's pulling people here, I think. Or--holding us here. Either way." Of course, what does that say about Sarajevo? But he doesn't want to consider that maybe he wound up there for the same reason he wound up here. The idea that there might be multiple such points of attraction, and that some of them could be so hellish, wasn't something he cared to dwell on.
The toad croaks again once August stops talking. He rolls his eyes at it, looks to Itzhak to see what he thinks.
Itzhak scoffs when August scolds the toad, but...the thing actually shuts up. "Joke's on me," he mutters, but not without amusement.
Standing there in a Pacific Northwest summer night, fidgeting with his lighter in one hand, the other with a thumb hooked through a belt loop, he looks like nothing so much as rough trade. Like his Grindr profile says 'masc 4 masc, no femmes no fats'. (Assuming he has a Grindr profile, but seeing as he made it this far through his life still able to blush when he reads a flirtatious note, maybe it's not a good assumption.) It'd be so easy to slap a label on him and not give him another thought.
"It's not a coincidence. It can't be--I know it ain't. I feel it in my gut." Itzhak finally lights the cigarette. "Like how I can feel what's wrong with an engine by the rumble. It's wrong here. Me bein' here, it's no mistake, either." He stops talking, but on the edge of a mental perception, his mind suddenly leaps like a solar flare. A lot is happening in his skull, very abruptly, very fast.
He only kind of winces, which could mean anything.
Hearing the murmur, August admits, "I can't really make them do anything. Just, if I push a little, with how I'm feeling? Some of them respond to it." And because he can reach out just a little and feel all this biomass--the grass beyond the gravel, the trees on the street, and that toad, that one that's about to croak again (*BRAWP*) in the bushes--he knows where to push that emotion, who to send it to. It happens so automatically now he's becoming afraid he's going to do something incredibly wrong.
He pushes that troubling thought aside for now, considers Itzhak again. In contrast, August has never not looked like what he is: a guy living in the woods away from other people because it's safer that way. He looks out of place, talking to Itzhak like this. One would be right to wonder if they're having it out, except neither of them is talking very loud, and there's all these pauses as they think.
Two very different people with a great deal in common: another thing that couldn't be coincidence.
"Yeah," he says. "I guess...maybe, we need to figure out what it is. If it's just one thing, or if it's a lot of things." He drums his fingers on his hips. "You should talk to your new acquaintance. We should both talk to Finch. See if we can...sort out what makes this place tick."
Itzhak winces again, much more seriously this time. "Owe Finch an apology," he mutters around the cigarette. "I'll talk to her and maybe I won't act like a complete asshole. Maybe. No promises."
August can surely feel the defenses Itzhak's built around himself, but you don't need to glimmer in order to figure out they're there. Being an asshole is probably just the first layer.
He kind of laughs, though, about talking to the pretty goth girl. "Yeah, I'll try not to send her off crying either." That number is burning a hole in his pocket. "You can tell I got a way with the ladies, yeah?"
"You don't have to make promises to me about Finch--if you run your mouth she'll just set your clothes on fire or break your arm." August gives Itzhak a 'so watch it' kind of look. "People like me and her, that's part of what we can do. Heal things, but also reverse it. And, fire. That's a little harder, though. If her control's not that good, well..." He shrugs at the possibilities there. "An apology would be good, though. What she's been through," which he only knows the town rumor versions of, but has to assume it was bad based on that alone, "this town's not been gentle to her about it." His mouth flattens in a suggestion maybe Itzhak could try to be.
"Your goth girl, impression I got of her, I doubt she'd run off crying. Might give you a proper lecture, punch a few buttons and make you cry." He smiles about that. "She didn't seem like a wilting flower." He waves a hand about Itzhak's lack of social graces. "It's not about having a way with anyone. It's about knowing the things you oughta improve about yourself so you're not hurting other people. The rest is just excuses society makes to tell us we're not good as we are, because what we are isn't," he makes air quotes, "'acceptable'." He snorts, shakes his head. "Fuck that. Acceptable and I parted ways in Bosnia. I'm over it. People can take you as you are, or not."
"Promises to you about Finch? Promises to me, I saw her light that thing up. I like having skin." Itzhak's eyebrows tilt up. "This town," he murmurs, and flicks off the ash from his smoke. "Hate to think of people treatin' Finch nasty because of her family. It been like that a while here?"
He reddens again and tosses a hand at Roen in a 'feh'. "She's not my goth girl, c'mon. She could flip those Jewish guilt switches real good, I bet." That much he has to admit with a wry scoff. "Her pop liked me, I fixed something for him while I was there. Just real simple, he had the crossover cable going into the Ethernet port. He gave me a friggin' ton of babka and rugelach and stuff. Nice old guy. ...Not sure how nice he'd stay if a guy like me went out with his daughter. Not that I'm gonna go out with her anytime soon, just, maybe hang out or something."
He's kinda rambling, realizes it, and shuts up. August has plenty to tell him, and he listens, weight canted on one hip.
"You know, if more shrinks talked like you, I might listen to 'em." Itzhak tips his head back to exhale smoke.
"Exactly," August says of what happens to people who mess with Finch. To the rest, "Long as I've been here, though she was at college for a lot of that. But that didn't stop the story from floating around, getting told over coffee and beer. I try not to propagate that stuff, but I listen. There's always something to take away from that stuff, even if it's 'the townfolk who don't have that special something are pretty big assholes to the ones who do'."
He smirks about Itzhak's goth girl. Sorry, Itzhak, that's who she is until August has his own interactions with her. "Thank the VA and my dad for me spouting shrink-talk. Spent most of my undergrad years talking to counselors and therapists at his insistance." He shrugs, somewhat helplessly. "He watched what happened to guys who went through Vietnam, wasn't letting tha happen to his kid. It helped a lot. Only reason I'm not a wreck. Cutting back on all that's what's fucked up a bunch of those kids coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. No mental health services, is it a wonder so many of them go off the rails?" He shakes his head, looks out into the shadows beyond the Pourhouse's lights.
Itzhak's expression goes kinda flat. His face is so animated that when it happens, it's obvious: all the lively curiosity and emotions sink away below the surface. His eyebrows, usually around a 9, dial back to a 2.
"I'm gonna walk home. It ain't so far." Itzhak drops his cigarette to the asphalt, grinds it out with the toe of his boot. A little emotion fades back in; his shyness, mostly. "Hey, Roen, listen. You lived around here a while. You know any..." he glances up the street, down the street, real casual. "Places guys like us meet up?"
Is he seriously asking for the local cruising spots? ...yeah, it sure seems like he is.
August watches that change in Itzhak's expression like a hawk watching a mouse. But he doesn't give chase; there's only so much honesty two people like them can expect to get done in any given time frame. Anyways, he's just been asked the question of the evening.
He can't help himself; he snorts, laughs. There's a flavor of 'ah, to be young enough to have the energy for that' in his humor. It takes him a second to regain his composure. "Christ, if only," he says, sounding apologetic. "I'd have to drive half way back to Olympia--shit, closest place I can remember when I was out that way was still clear on the other side of Capitol State Forest from here." He shakes his head. "Be just as good to go the whole way to Seattle at that point, you know? Olympia's," he grimaces, "Olympia." He's not impressed by what the state capitol has to offer.
Itzhak grins back, wry and sheepish. "That bad, huh?" He shrugs all ce la vie. "Ehhh. I ain't that desperate." An unspoken 'yet' hangs off the end of that sentence. He bumps August with a shoulder, rough and friendly. "I'll see ya. Take it easy, Roen."
And off he strolls into the warm dark, six foot one of tough guy willing to cruise, but too shy to make a Grindr profile.
"Yeah," August says, giving Itzhak a shove back. "Walk safe." He watches Itzhak go, eyes narrowed. He doesn't need to keep an eye on him for the few hundred feet before Itzhak's lost to sight, yet he does anyways. (Realistically he knows that Itzhak's far more dangerous than any local who opts to try and start shit with him.) After a minute he sighs, shakes his head, runs a hand over his face. Ten years hiding in National Parks, and he's as solo as they come; three years in a weird little town, and in a couple of months he's rounding up random people to hang out with left and right. He kicks at a rock, heads back in to wait long enough for driving home to not amount to suicide.
Tags: august itzhak social