2019-10-21 - Best Men

Cheapest scene-set ever: Graham lets himself in to the store sometime in the middle of the day on a Monday. He doesn't have a real job, so it's not like he has other places to be. "Knock-knock," while he shakes rain off his umbrella and figures out where to stash it. Umbrella stand? Outside? Right here by the door where people will slip and fall later? It's not relevant; he doesn't care as long as it goes somewhere..

Greg's not working behind the counter today, letting his staff take care of that mess. Instead he lurks by the door to the skate park, looking bored. So it is that his face lights up when he sees Graham come in, and whatever ends up happening with that umbrella doesn't seem to bother him at all, because Greg approaches his partner in crime with a brisk step.

"Yo, G to the M. I'm glad to see you, I think we got some shit to talk about. Uhh... we're fuckin' stupid as shit, by the way." After all this spews out, he grins and thinks to add, "How the hell are things bruh?"

"Speak for yourself." Graham is not stupid as shit, tyvm! He flashes a 'hi how are you' smile at whoever is manning the register, passing by them with all the concern one might expect him to give to an NPC he's never met: almost none at all. As for everything else Greg says, though, it's a cheerful, "Cool, let's get high and talk it out, sir. But not in front of," whoever the cashier is, he nods at that person and heads toward that skate park back door.

"Watch the shit, Karl," Greg tells Karl, who for his part visibly clearly resents every word Greg says. Scooping a couple of joints out of the preroll bin, he moves towards the back door. He makes his way over to one of the benches in the back lot and settles onto it; the small crowd of punks and street types that usually linger around here observe a respectful bubble around the bench, allowing for privacy of sound, at least, if not sight.

Without preamble, Greg sparks up one of the joints. He holds the unlit smoke out to Graham, looking over at him. "Foster." He pauses to see if that shakes out a reaction. "You remember that name?"

Graham settles onto the bench with a further glance around the area, shaking his head at whatever his thoughts are - which, honestly, just have to do with the weirdness of skate parks and dispensaries going hand-in-hand, he's just not hip enough for this world. 🙁

"Yeah, we used to have a Fosters Freeze in town when I was a kid, but it got shutdown." He takes that joint, rummages around for his lighter, eventually finds it (yay!), and settles back to cup a hand around the spark till it behaves and stays lit. "Or you're talking about the assholes that - " He leaves the words unsaid, making a finger-gun instead, pewpew. " - at us The Other Night?"

"Yeah dude," Greg says around his joint, puffing contentedly. For his part, he looks around the little impromptu skate park with pride. A very keen observer might note that his eyes are for the lowlifes congregating here, and it's an animalistic, wolf-like smile he wears.

Returning his attention to the matter at hand, he slides his dark gaze over to Graham. "Bro, I promise you, we're dumb as fuck. Foster Security. That guy told us 'do you know who you're stealing from? Foster's gonna be pissed.'" He puffs, coughs quietly, and continues. "Joshua Foster owns Foster Security, homie. That's who they were talking about. Joshua Foster who's also the guy doing the casino. You literally can Google this shit my dude."

In no particular hurry, Graham will probably spend a while with this one joint, slow enough that the drizzle is going to put it out at least once as he goes. For now, he just watches smoke wander off toward the skater-people, a quick crease crossing his forehead and Greg's appraisal for them - but who is he to judge, yanno? "Why would I?" LITERALLY or FIGURATIVELY Google this shit, he means. "He sounds like an asshole, and his casino's been sitting empty in the harbor for, like, a year now. Let him be pissed, it ain't like I left him my card." His shrug could care less about Foster, but it'd be hard.

"You worried about it or something?"

"Worried?" Greg asks, frowning at Graham. "...no, I wouldn't say I was 'worried'. I would say I was more curious and hungry. Five of his goons couldn't put us off the job... it seems to me like this fuckin' guy is a pushover. A pushover who owns a lot of shit, and turns out, ain't all of it in Elma."

He shrugs, holding his joint out to tap the ashes off the end. "I'm just saying, it worked out pretty good that we just so happened to pick a place owned by a guy who ain't really prepared to call the cops. He's dirty; that makes him fair game." He puffs on his joint, watching Graham. "I mean, wouldn't you think?"

"We didn't just happen to pick shit. Yours truly spent weeks casing that place." Graham does not mention that his weeks of prep-work still ended in a shoot-out, but surely that's because he's busy hitting his joint, not because he's trying to pretend that part didn't happen. Ahem. Tight-voiced on the exhale, he shrugs once more to answer. "Fair game for what? You wanna hit a casino that's got no money in it? Put a stolen slot machine in the front of your shop?" At least the idea makes him snicker.

But also, suddenly coughing, "Wait - hold on," choke choke, "I think he's the one that put the hit on Elly's parents." (GOOD FUCKING CHRIST, IT TOOK HIM LONG ENOUGH TO GET THERE.)

"I dunno man, I just think it's an opportunity. Just like... if we ever did want to do anything? Doesn't it seem like an open window to insert a little fuckery? Maybe prop a back door open somewhere, metaphorically speaking." He puffs on his joint, collecting his thoughts, and opens his mouth to share them along with his exhaled marijuana. But then Graham says that shit, and Greg follows the leader, dissolving into t a fit of coughing.

At length, pounding his chest and red-faced, he manages to draw the better part of a ragged breath. "Holy shit," he says, whether for the coughing fit or for the news, it works both ways. "Yo I had cops come ask me about that shit dude. I didn't know anything to tell and i wouldn't tell if I knew." He shrugs his shoulders, and his brows draw down. "So now I know you wanna hit this motherfucker."

Leaning forward, still coughing his lungs out, Graham takes a second to dab-dab-dab the cherry off the joint onto the edge of the bench. No point wasting perfectly good weed, even if he's just solved the murder of the people that should've been his in-laws. So it takes him a minute to shake his head hurriedly at Greg, strained voice saying, "Revenge is a cop's favorite motive, man. If I go fucking with whoever killed my girlfriend's parents? That asshole de la Vega will be kicking down my door in a minute."

Which isn't to say Graham doesn't tilt bloodshit blue eyes Greg's way, contemplating. "But you got a degree of separation on your side." So what is Greg thinking about specifically, asks his leading tone.

Greg scratches at his stubbly chin thoughtfully, and another stray cough racks his chest. "I guess I'm not sure. I haven't really gone beyond making the connection. There's a shitload of money in casinos, and maybe there's a trick to play there. It seems like this dude's got business interests in the area, though."

Not prone to learning from his mistakes when they're intentional ones to begin with, he raises up his joint to puff on it again. Admittedly more carefully. "But riddle me this, my motherfucker from a better mother. Why were they even there? Foster's boys. If the joint was on to us they should've stopped us at the gate. They didn't. They let us roll right through clean as shit, get where we wanted to go, and followed us right over there. It's like they knew the shit was going down."

Graham's head is going to pop soon. It's obvious in the way he sits there, frowning, and the way he takes about a year to get a cigarette out of the pack, tapping the filter against the box contemplatively, offering one to Greg as an afterthought. "I dunno," he gets around to commenting eventually, re: why were they there, etc. "I've been over that so many times, man. Who sold us out? Like, I even went down some dark roads with that - what if it was Joey? What it if it was you? What if it was Dre?" What if it was Felix?! He leaves that one unsaid, ahem.

"The only thing I've come up with? The guys on the gate must've told 'em we headed to that particular bay, and that particular bay has extra security, and dot dot dot." With a sigh. "It was my fuck-up. And apparently just a shitty, shitty coincidence that I decided to hit a guy that put bullets in my in-laws a week prior." He scrubs his face. "If this ever comes out, I'm doing time for sure. Fuck."

"Homie if that little adventure makes the paper, we're all going down," Greg says. He seems amused to find himself placed as the voice of reason here. He turns down the cigarette, but does keep on with his joint. "I got to say family, I've had some pretty creepy thoughts about that shit. It's a creepy fucking feeling. I'd rather it be Joey than..." Yeah. Greg leaves it unsaid too, and he grimaces darkly.

"I don't think we ought to leave it at that, probably, dude. Yeah, maybe we just had some shit luck mixed in with the good. Or? Somebody sold us out. Somebody." He shifts a shifty gaze toward Graham. "I never met that dude Joey before that night, but you vouched. That was good enough for me." He puffs on his joint one last time before tossing the roach towards a waiting coffee can half full of spent cigarette butts. It falls far short, and he shoots it an accusatory glare. "I dunno man. Loose ends left out to get chopped?"

Shaking his head hurriedly, Graham goes on to clarify, "I don't think Joey sold us out any more than I think you did. Not really. Just grasping at fucking straws here." And smoking like a chimney while he does so, getting that cigarette lit with another sigh.

Decisively, "We're not getting caught. That's all there is to it. I can't get locked up. Elly's..." Nope, just more head-shaking. "But if you want to get up to a little mischief against this asshole, I won't say no to helping as far as I can. You better run it by the boss, though. Nothing gets touched in this town without his say-so, you know that." No, but seriously; PEOPLE DIE when they don't get permission first, it is known. "Plus," exhaling, "I really thought he was the one that did for Elly's folks, I feel like running it by him is the least I could do, yanno?"

"See, it's that, my dude. That idea you got in the back or your head that it could've been him. That's exactly what the fuck concerns me." Greg's frown is dark and angry when he speaks of this particular bogeyman. "I'm tryin' to have a life out here. I don't need to be in jail, or dead. Frankie would definitely bury me in the animal sacrifice pit if I got myself killed." Bringing up her name doesn't particularly calm him, and he bounds to his feet as he digs out his own cigarettes, lighting one and beginning to pace in front of the bench.

He stops suddenly, and he fixes every bit of his attention on Graham over the top of that burning cigarette. "Dude, you've been around for a while here. You know the lay of the land." He chews his lip for a second. "Is there such a thing as playing by the rules and being okay in his game? Or are we all just on borrowed time until we're done being useful?"

Graham makes this point emphatically, really just stressing all the words. "I also thought it might be you or Dre." With less emphasis, "So just relax. You're fucking paranoid." He choke-laughs over the idea of trying to make a life, but he probably wouldn't have actually spoken to the issue - based on the sort of wry smile that he wears around another drag.

His shoulders lift in a shrug at the end of Greg's questions, though, and he looks off into the middle-distance, eyes tracking some skate-person, but only idly. "The way I figure, if you're in this, you know what you signed up for, right? So if you fuck up and take two to the temple?" He pantomimes this against his own forehead, having practiced this morbid gesture way too many times. "That's on you, not the boss. Do your part? Stay alive. Fuck around and become a liability? You get what you deserve."

"I didn't sign up for sh-" Greg starts to say, but the words die on his lips, standing on the property the Boss financed off the ground. For him. "...yeah man," he finally says slowly, once all the chemicals in his brain have a chance to align and figure it all out. "I think you're right, I'm just being paranoid." He drags on his cigarette, stepping over to pick up his roach from before and put it properly in the can.

He grimaces, shaking his head to Graham. "I think maybe I just never had anything to lose before and it fuckin' spooks me." He heaves a stress-laden sigh. "I dunno man. I've been kinda shook up since... since out of town." His empty hand comes up to rub at his arm through his shirt, at the memory of being shot there. "I never had to... I mean, I haven't been in a situation like that before."

Graham's so ready to clap back at what Greg doesn't finish, his brow hiking up and a 'first off' already forming on his lips. It melts into a half-smug grin and eases into a nod, yes, that. But also, "I know, I get you. But. Honestly. What's the alternative, man? You got a nice thing going here, but is it half as nice if you go legit?" Based on his skeptical tone, it's a safe bet that Graham is thinking nope on that one.

He's busy with his cigarette for a second or two, flicking ashes off with a brush of his thumb-to-filter. Finally, "You never shot anybody before, is that what you're driving at? 'Cause." Not that there's not sympathy here, but there's a hard truth beneath it: "You get used to it."

Greg's eyes go far away for a moment, holding his arm, and he draws himself back from wherever he went slowly. His voice has steel in it more in keeping with his trope as he lets it go and says, "I'll do what I have to do," He steps over to stub his cigarette in the can, not trying for the long shot this time. "I hope you're right. Maybe this is kinda fucked up dude, but when I tell myself it was me or them, it bugs me less. And it was, right?" He looks over at Graham. "I mean that dude opened up on us first." A grin slowly dawns across his face. "The situation could probably have been approached more, uh... diplomatically. I'm not sure but I think we offended 'em a little bit."

"As long as what you have to do includes what you're told to do." Graham sounds sad to have to say that, since Greg was obviously having himself a Moment, but he'd be sadder if Greg gets himself killed. 🙁

He's got an immediate response for the hopeful question. "Look, I didn't plan to go in there, guns blazing. The whole idea was to get in and out with no one noticing us. Those assholes decided to shoot us, we had no choice but to shoot back. Survival of the fittest." But he has to snicker. "I mean, sure, we coulda probably tried to talk them down first, but please. Who rolls up on a bunch of people in the middle of a robbery, talks shit, brandishes a weapon, and expects to not get shot? Those guys were fucking stupid."

THESE guys are obvs very smart because they are not dead.

The dubiously smart but undebatably alive Greg nods slowly to Graham. "I mean, it ain't like I have a choice. And you're not wrong, I do okay doing what I'm supposed to do."

He grins as the conversation moves to the stupidity of others, a topic he can really warm to. "I mean seriously, what the fuck did they think was gonna happen. And could they have been worse shots, by the way?" asked the gunshot victim. "Anyway man, you make good points. I appreciate you like that. The voice of rationality and shit." Turns out it was never Greg's cross to bear! Phew!

"Yo man, I think the wedding's gonna be pretty small. We don't want a whole big thing, just the whole right thing, ya know? Anyway dude, I know I haven't been in town a long time or whatever but I don't know too many people I'd really call 'friend'." He draws a deep breath before it all comes pouring out of him in a rush. "Anyway man, I guess what I'm trying to get around to here if I could ever seem to shut my enormously loud mouth and get to the goddamn point is... will you be my, uh, best man?"

Graham is appreciated. It makes him beam. "I'll talk you off a ledge any time, man."

And then it makes him bust out in a huge laugh. Like, this is just a full-on guffaw, the question so completely out of left-field. Hold on, he needs a second to get himself under control, giggle giggle. "Sure," he comes up with eventually. "Sorry, just. I will so be your best man. But you gotta pay the hospital bills when Elise beats my ass that we're at the wedding of some people who met, like, fifteen minutes ago. Deal?"

Beat. "Oh, also. I'm not hiring you a bunch of strippers. She's rip my arms off." (Have we covered that Graham is, like, super whipped? 'Cause he really is.)

Greg's eyes widen at the thought of Frankie's reaction to him having a party with strippers, and he shakes his head hard. "Oh fuck to the no," he says and makes the 'you're out' gesture with both hands. "Holy shit. I think she'd wear my face." If there's any doubt left as to which 'she', well, it's probably both. Elise and Frankie walking down Maple, showing off their fancy man-masks.

"That's a deal dude. I'm not about to get all emotional and shit but I didn't know anybody I'd rather have up there with me." He holds out a fist, ripe for the bumping. "Thanks man. Yo I got your back too, bruh. I hope you know that. Including stepping up to the line to help you make sure Foster gets what he deserves."

"It's cool. I get you. Plus." Fist-bump. Graham would never leave the man hanging. "I clean up nice." While he scrapes some kind of stain off the knees of his jeans with his thumbnail, so just take his word for it. "So I'd want me up there, too. Yanno, as a treat for your other guests." While he dusts off his very prettiest smile to flash at Greg; it's goddamn angelic, the only snag being the bloodshot eyes from all the smoking / coughing / giggling they've been doing out here.

Bracing his hands on his thighs, he pushes to his feet from there, patting down his pockets like he has a fear for forgetting something. "Thank you. For that." He means the Foster thing. "If it comes to that, I'mma remember you said that. Maybe I should tell the boss - " But he stops that line of thought, frowning, shaking his head. "Fuck that. If Foster had Elly's folks hit, Felix knows about it." Someday, Graham will stop having to go over and over and over and over and over this in his head. Alas for him, someday is not today.

"A'ight. I gotta get outta here." His girlfriend won't stalk herself, after all! "I'll text you my tux size." Ahaha, it makes him giggle more.

Greg snorts loudly at Graham. "Can you even picture me in a tux, dude?" He gives a lopsided grin just thinking about it. "Where do you even stash your piece and your drugs in those fuckin' things?" Greg starts to giggle too, as he imagines skating his way down the aisle in a tux. He moves to walk out with Graham, frowning as the conversation turns more serious. He pitches his voice low. "Now you're thinking man. I dunno if we're playing the game we think we are with this dude, G. I dunno man, it all just seems a little too coincidental." If only Greg knew about Occam's Razor, the insight he could provide here.

But he doesn't, and he keeps quiet while he walks Graham out. Holding the door open, he lightly punches at Graham's shoulder. "I'll keep you posted when we set a date my dude. Take it easy. Don't do anything stupid alone either."

Graham's parting advice, put with a palm held up toward Greg (stop): "Just. Watch what you say, man. Shit has a way of getting around in this town." Speaking of paranoid~!

"Sounds good," he says, getting his umbrella back in order. "Thanks for letting me shoot the shit, man." And off he goes, hopefully to not get shot or worse before Greg's wedding.