apocalypsehowcomm | (Open Log) You gotta know when to hold 'em

Entry tags:

(Open Log) You gotta know when to hold 'em

Who: George Milton, Nick Valentine, and anybody who shows up
When: April 22, starting around 6 PM until
Where: Apartment A-3
Summary: A night for playing cards, drinking beer or b.y.o.b. if harder, snacks and unwinding. Feel free to thread jack and jump all around, at least in my threads. This is just for some relaxed down time and catching up or introductions in a smaller, casual space.
Warnings: None expected. If your characters get to discussing anything triggery or get up to anything spicy, please CW in your individual threads.

Over the past week or so, hand printed signs drawn in sharpie on plain paper have shown up taped to walls around the apartment complex and on any easily accessible bulletin boards at ADI. A couple of them were also delivered to the flophouse with the request they be displayed somewhere the residents might see them.

They read:
Cards and Beer
Friday April 22 6 PM
Apartment A 3
George and Nick's place
You want more than beer
or chips and popcorn
bring your own.
Extra decks appreciated.

The night of, the door to A 3 is propped open. In addition to the dining table, a couple of card tables and cheap folding chairs are set up for games. Two bowls on the coffee table contain chips and popcorn respectively. There's a cooler on the floor in the kitchen filled with ice and cheap beer.

George or Nick will greet people as they come in and tell them to make themselves at home.

((OOC: Feel free to top level with your own character and make whatever prompts you like. George is generally easy-going, but if he catches anyone stealing, getting too hot and heavy in a bedroom, or otherwise being a general jerk about the apartment or the other guests, he will try to throw the offender out. If you want that kind of thread or want to succeed at something nefarious, let me know so we can work it out.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Cocoa." He's pretty sure it's not really an appropriate poker-night kind of drink, but it's all he knows how to make that's easy to bring along.

He can't well bring a dish of pasta or sandwiches or something.

But he does follow Ade inside. Looks like it's okay that he's here, after all. He looks around, chin down and eyes doing most of the moment, checking who all is here already. "I'm Winter," he adds, because he's trying to get better at this person thing, and people usually introduce themselves.

Ade's face lights up. "You brought hot cocoa?" He can't remember the last time he had chocolate, much less cocoa. It's one of the few bright spots of being unwillingly dragged back to Earth: the chance to taste things he thought he'd never taste again, like proper beer and chips—and chocolate. "I owe you one, mate. Thought I'd be playing pretend with this all night." He waggles the beer bottle in his hand. It'd been a nice dose of nostalgia, he'll admit, but like any nostalgia, it comes with a side of melancholy. Maybe something sweeter would be a better choice for the evening.

"I'm Ade," he says, bringing Winter to the aforementioned table. He pre-emptively grabs a plastic cup for himself. "Just got here a few weeks ago."

He notes the way Winter's eyes move around the room, gaze low, chin tucked down. He feels an instinctive burst of sympathy—he knows what that's like, keeping your head down and on a swivel, always expecting a good hiding. Maybe he's projecting a bit, but he doubts he's too far off; he can still smell the other man's nervousness.

He follows Winter's gaze around the room, pausing at the poker table. He nods to it. "You any good at cards?"

"Winter," he answers simply, and offers the thermos to Ade to pour if he wants some. Since he seems like he does. That's a bit of a weight off, that at least someone else wants what he brought.

"I've been here since July. I'm one of the ones who've been here longest." There's still a handful of them from those earliest days. He's a lot better now than he used to be, which is really saying something, given how noticeably awkward he is even now. "I think I'm pretty good at cards. It's been a while. But I at least know how."

Ade takes the thermos and pours himself a cup. The scent of chocolate fills his lungs, richer and sweeter than ever before. This is probably the point where Barencoin would start giving him crap back home, ribbing him about how they should start making room for him among the Christian colonists, and the ghost of a pre-emptively harried smile appears on Ade's face. Mart could be a real pain in the arse, but thoughts like that hit differently when he's light-years away not knowing if or when he'll ever see the man again.

Winter says he got here in July, which means he's been in this place for not quite a year. Ade supposes it's too early to tell if this is a life sentence for any of them.

"You got to watch yourself with this lot," he says about the other guests around the card table. "I swear some of them can read minds."

Which is rich, coming from the man who can practically smell if someone's got a good hand or not. He sips his cocoa, savoring the vivid sweetness.

"Seeing as you've been here for so long," Ade broaches, "You got any tips for a newcomer to this place? It seems pretty peaceful so far, but I've heard some horror stories."

Winter tilts his head at the idea of reading minds, glancing back at the table currently full of card players, and shrugs. He hadn't come across that, but then, he'd also played perfectly well himself.

He looks back in Ade's direction at the question, and his brows come down a little. He doesn't quite make eye contact, but he comes close. "Do not scare people," he advises. "No matter how much you feel like you should. No matter how much you want whatever powers you had in your world. The more you do, the worse it will be." He pauses, then adds, "And the more likely it will be that I'll have to shoot you someday."

Well. That's one way to kill the festive mood. Ade says nothing for a moment, taking another sip of cocoa to cover his own disquiet at the warning. He wonders what the man by his side, grim-faced and ill-at-ease, has done in this place, what he has seen. Has he executed any of his fellow abductees? Has he seen them turn into monsters?

"Right," Ade says, lowering the cup to his side. "Wasn't planning on it."

What's Ade going to do? Jump out at people from behind doorways? He's not entirely human anymore, but you can't tell it just by looking at him. The adaptations he does have aren't liable to terrify anyone unless they have a morbid fear of fruity-smelling perfume.

"Does that happen here a lot? Someone showing up and immediately jumping to terrorizing people?

Most of the missteps Winter's seen have been small, so far. No one has gone fully into evil, not that Winter's seen anyway. But even Winter himself has done it without thinking too hard about it. It's easy to start slipping, start rationalizing.

"Not immediately," Winter admits. "But a lot of people are used to having powers. Think their powers would be useful against the fear-entities. But using them feeds the fear-entities. Breeds more fear here. We need to resist."

Put like that, it sounds very simple. Powers feed the entities, so powers should be avoided. Still, if there's one thing Ade has learned since becoming a host to c'nataat, it's that things are rarely so straightforward.

"What about people with powers they can't control? Or people who were never human to begin with?" He asks it as neutrally as he can, as if it's a philosophical question rather than a personal one. "There's gotta be some people who can't just turn it on and off like a switch."

"That was me," Winter nods, tapping his metal fist to the middle of his chest. "Unless I was scaring people. Those powers didn't work. Don't work. I used to be strong, and fast, and I healed more quickly and hurt less. Now I don't. Now I'm only as strong as I can train myself to be. Unless I scare people. And I did, for a while. Not realizing. The strength would come and go. I didn't understand why for a long time."

This is so many words. Talking so much is exhausting. But he has to make sure the new people know.

Ade's gaze on Winter grows keener when he mentions his former abilities, particularly rapid healing. It's obviously not the same as c'nataat—as far as Ade knows, the symbiote hasn't made him any stronger or faster—but it's close enough to capture his interest. For a fleeting moment, Ade almost wants to tell the man the truth: that he, too, has been augmented, changed so innately that it's beyond his control.

But then he remembers the warning the man had given and thinks better of it. The uncertain possibility of solace or solidarity isn't worth painting a target on his back. Besides—there's something else the man had said that warrants concern.

"You scared people without realizing it?" The notion that feeding the entities could be something unintentional hadn't occurred to Ade. Perhaps he could understand if there was something visually frightening about a person, but Winter looks like a fairly normal bloke. Even the metal arm isn't something Ade would classify as scary. "How's that happen?"

He hitches a shoulder awkwardly. "By being what I am. A weapon. I didn't try to be like a person, and that was frightening to some people." His frown pulls down a little more and he adds, "Probably didn't help that I wear my tac gear and protective mask a lot. But just being very good at shooting or being able to ignore pain is scary to some people, and I kind of tend to. Loom a bit. Or stare."

He sighs a little. "I'm trying to be more like a person now. But it's hard. I'm not very good at it."

Ade winces when Winter calls himself a weapon. Even as a soldier—and, given the mention of tactical gear, that seems to be what Winter is as well—Ade has never thought of himself in those terms. If anything, the notion of existing only to harm others is just about Ade's worst nightmare.

Suddenly, Winter's threat to shoot him makes a lot more sense. Ade is silent for a moment, caught between his own uneasiness and that instinctive desire to help somehow or to at least offer some encouragement. Unsurprisingly, it's the second impulse that wins out.

"I've handled plenty of weapons in my day," Ade says quietly. "None of them brought cocoa to a party or gave enough of a toss to feel nervous about it. So you're not doing too badly at all."

"Thank you," Winter says. "But until I know I'm not scaring people. It's not good enough. People at ADI are sometimes... better about it." He looks around the room, noting people he actually considers friends. "But not always. There was a nightmare. We all shared it. Some other ADI employees turned into creatures and tried to hunt the rest of it, in the nightmare. I had to kill them. I didn't hesitate, because they were hurting people. Now those people are afraid of me and I don't know how to fix it. Besides avoiding them."

He apologized to some of them. It didn't help. He doesn't regret it, and maybe that's what shows.

Ade just shakes his head.

"They were causing fear. You put a stop to it."

Maybe supernatural shared nightmares are a little above Ade's paygrade, but those kinds of sacrifices are just part of being a soldier. You almost never want to put a round through someone, but there isn't always a choice, not when others' lives are on the line.

"Besides, just because someone's afraid of you doesn't mean you're not a person." Ade says. A pause, and then he shrugs, studying the cup of cocoa in his hands. "Personally, I think people are just about the scariest thing out there. Doesn't mean they're not people."

"That's not why I'm not a person," Winter says. "I'm not a person because." He has to stop and think of how to put it into words. "I wasn't a person. I'm trying to be now. But I don't remember much. I was a weapon. My handlers gave me a mission, set me loose to kill someone or sabotage something or blow something up. Then brought me back to base and put me back in cryofreeze. Or did experiments. Conditioning. There was. There was the wipe. For." He gestures vaguely at his head.

There, that's his whole horrifying backstory, or at least the bare bones of it. Hope you're glad you asked, Ade. He finishes with, "There was nothing in me to be a person with. There's more in me now. But I think I'm not there yet."

Even by Ade's standards, Winter's story is horrifying. He and his detachment may have been betrayed and abandoned by their command, but they'd never been used as brutally as the man describes.

"Christ," Ade whispers. "That's awful."

He supposes it makes more sense why Winter refers to himself as a weapon now. That seems to be exactly how he was treated by his handlers. And if his memories had been wiped, maybe he truly doesn't remember being anything else. Why would they even do that to someone? What kind of orders were they giving that they needed to create a soldier without memories, without any other existence outside of the mission?

Fucking grim ones, that's for sure.

"You're more of a person in my books than any of the bastards who did that to you," Ade says vehemently. "Memories or not."

Winter's probably heard it all before, but it still bears repeating. Ade isn't even sure how he himself defines 'person,' but even if his definition's not as all-inclusive as the wess'har's, he's sure Winter still counts. Fucking bastards. How could they do that to him?

Ade's eyes cast around the room, impelled as ever to help someone who's been cast aside, to pull them into the fold. Winter says he's not a person yet and Ade doesn't know if he can change the man's mind, but if there's the slightest chance he can make him feel as if he's added a few more points to his tally, then that's worth it.

"Come on," he says, gesturing Winter over to an empty card table, "There's a free deck over there. Dunno about you, but I think making bad decisions over cards is a pretty person-like way to pass the time."

Winter's heard it before. He appreciates the sentiment, but though he's admitted now that he might be able to be a person, with study and work and effort, he's not satisfied with where he is right now. Maybe he never will be, not enough to actually consider himself properly a person. But he's going to try.

Thankfully, before he has to try and be polite about it, Ade has a distraction. "I do know how to play cards," he agrees, eying the table with interest. He is, in fact, pretty good at poker. So he says, with maybe the barest hint of a smile, "I promise I won't win too much."

Ade grins. "Aw, don't go easy on me. I'm not too bad myself, you know." Really, he's just an average player, but again, being able to sniff out other people's reactions gives him a definite advantage. It's his own poker face he has to work on.

He takes a seat at the table and begins to shuffle the cards. His own scent is that of sandalwood, a signal of contentment. He likes being able to put people at ease—even if this particular person had implied he'd shoot Ade if given a reason. Ade doesn't mind; once upon a time, he'd shot at Shan. He can hardly take it personally.

"Right. Five-card draw?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(Open Log) You gotta know when to hold 'em

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

wrap?