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

[bindlestifflost]

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.))

Comments

[worthallthis]

"I never even thought about having. My own place." He looks around. The apartments are all basically the same, just sometimes decorated differently. This one feels homey, with all the people in it. He kind of likes that. It feels right, to have a bunch of people in a space like this.

"It still isn't, really," he adds. "ADI owns these. But it's okay. They don't spy too much on us and I have a lock on my door they can't get past." He's pretty sure. And anyway, he tends to shove the dresser in front of the door when he goes to bed, regardless.

[bindlestifflost]

That's something he hasn't encountered much in his life, anybody who didn't dream of a little stake of his own. He finds his curiosity intensifying but not quite enough to override his instinct that says to mind his own business. There's a little something of the curiosity in his expression.

"Yeah, I know they ain't really ours. It's more 'n I've ever had with work. Usually, it's a bunch a' men crammed up in a smelly ol' bunkhouse with communal bath troughs come cold or heat." Having a place just to himself and Nick? His own private bathroom? Luxury beyond reckoning.

"People do that a lot 'round here? Lock doors?"

[worthallthis]

That... is kind of familiar, too, come to think of it. Not as the Asset or the Soldier, no. He wasn't really supposed to sleep, then, when he wasn't in cryo-- let alone with other people in the room. But he doesn't know what else it might come from. Something Before, probably.

"Do people not lock doors where you come from?" Which is to say, yes. Winter, and his roommates, all lock their doors. So do at least a sizeable chunk of people in the ADI apartments and the flophouse that he's aware of. It just seems like good opsec. "You should lock yours," he adds. "It might not keep out the fear-entities and their instruments. But it might. And it feels safer." Which, frankly, is probably more important than if it really is safe. The less fear they feel, the less control the world-ending monsters have.

[bindlestifflost]

"Not usually, no. I guess they do up in the big cities. Out where I live, it ain't common." There were no locks on the bunkhouse doors, and even though he never would have gone traipsing up to the main ranch houses to find out, he doubts they locked up, either.

He nods, his expression going a little sheepish. "Yeah, Nick told me about that. I done it ever since. Locked myself out a few times afore I started remembering my key." At least Nick wasn't an ass about it. He didn't have to go telling on himself that way. He shakes his head and shrugs a little.

"Jes' one more thing to get used to."

[worthallthis]

That, Winter understands. His face doesn't really do gentle, but it does relax a bit, and he nods. "There's a lot. I know. I didn't even. Know how to pick out lunch, when I got here. Stood in the cafeteria like an idiot just staring at everything."

Which isn't to say he doesn't still have problems with making choices when it's little shit like that, but he's worked out how to get around the problem in most situations.

[bindlestifflost]

That's enough at least to give him a small opening for a question. He shifts his feet a little, never able to stand perfectly still for any length of time at all. "Must've been really different where you come from, huh?"

He's happy enough with the phrasing. It's not overly personal but not so vague as to be meaningless.

[worthallthis]

"Very." Winter is silent a beat, then he adds, because George is asking and it would help explain the whole "can't make choices" thing, "I was a thing. A weapon. Not a person. Owned, not employed. I didn't know how to make my own choices that weren't related to how best to kill someone." He doesn't fidget or toy with his drink, but he does look down at it. "I am trying to be better."

[bindlestifflost]

He eyes him for a few, because it's not the sort of thing that has an easy answer. Near as he can tell, he was a slave? A slave put to soul killing uses. "I think wanting to is a damn good step. You helped me the other day, an' you didn't have to. If I can help you, too, I will. I'm about as regular as they come. Jes' some guy."

[worthallthis]

"I wouldn't have wanted to get better. If I hadn't realized not being a person was feeding the Stranger." He wrinkles his nose. He's still not happy about that. Half of the new leaf is probably bound up in stubborn contrariness, a refusal to be used in that way again. "Didn't even occur to me. To be different."

He looks up, then, actually at George's face. There's a flicker of eye contact before it turns into looking at the space between his eyes instead. "What's it like. Being a. Regular guy."

[bindlestifflost]

He's read some of the training material. He knows a little of what he speaks. He'd be lying if he didn't say that wasn't a worry, that he could get latched onto. Corrupted in some way. Used.

The soft chuff of breath that follows from open mouth isn't humorous enough to be laughter. "Lotta hard work mostly. Gettin' by. Trying to keep a roof over your head and food on the table. Trying not to forget how to have a good time sometimes. Let loose a little. Lay down the... the hard stuff. Probly different for me than a lotta folks who grew up with more. I ain't never had nothin' handed to me I didn't have to earn. Don't mean I never have no fun. Jes' means when I do, I appreciate it."

[worthallthis]

Winter considers all this seriously, as if memorizing it. "Hard work isn't exclusive to people," he muses. He'd gotten things handed to him all the time, though. Usually guns. Sometimes gross nutrient drinks. But mostly guns. Nothing that wasn't related to a mission.

"And I'm not really sure how to have fun," he admits. "Is that necessary? For being a regular guy?"

[bindlestifflost]

"Naw, I don't reckon it is." At the same time, he wonders if his definition of people might not be a little wider than Winter's.

"It helps. When the stress builds up, an' it's either explode or kick your heels up a little, the fun takes the edge off. Is there anything at all you like doin' that don't have no big reason behind it? For me, one a' those things is playing solitaire. Jes' something to set the mind at rest, have a small goal to work at that don't mean nothin'."

[worthallthis]

If it includes Winter himself, then yeah, it's a bit wider.

Winter considers for a long moment. "I don't think training counts. That's an Asset thing. I guess... baths?" He does spend more time in the bath than anyone else in his apartment.

Somebody really needs to convince this guy to take up some hobbies.

[bindlestifflost]

"Well, that ain't a bad start. Figuring out what it is you like about 'em and maybe going from there. You might like swimmin' in a crick or something if you like being in a tub." He's not the fun police.

"I like swimming when you can find a good swimming hole. I'd go with you if you wanted. It ain't too smart swimming alone." Or he could seek out the swimming hole. He's been exploring the edges of town a little now and then.

[worthallthis]

That earns another moment of consideration. "Only if it's warm," he decides. "The creek or swimming hole." It's less the water and more the heat that he likes, he thinks. "Which means maybe not for another month. It's still kind of chilly."

[bindlestifflost]

"Yeah, I ain't wild about real cold water, neither. Another month or so, we'll take a trek. See what shakes out." Winter might be odd. It's no odder than Lennie, just a different kind of odd. He's fine with that, especially if it means helping him out.

Besides, a good swim sounds like a good time.

[worthallthis]

"I used to be frozen whenever I wasn't on a mission," Winter says, which he realizes after a beat is probably a piece of terrible backstory he probably should be more careful about sharing. Too late now. "So I don't really like the cold, now. Warm baths help. Maybe a warm pond would be okay. Something in sunlight?" Sometimes he'll find the sunshine coming through the apartment windows and sit in it, if he's alone in the room and won't be in anyone's way.

[bindlestifflost]

"Makes sense things are hard for ya when they never let you have no down time." What he's saying is awful, the sort of thing that makes George want to give the kinds of people who do the kinds of things he's talking about a licking they'd never forget. It's not the kind of thing to say that makes the other person feel any better. So he keeps his sharper edge of anger to himself, behind his more laconic words.

"Sunlight's good. Maybe a little sun and shade both in case it gets real hot out there." He's used to NorCal summers. The humidity here is probably going to be more than a little bit of an adjustment. He can already tell.

[worthallthis]

Winter isn't even sure what he'd do if someone from HYDRA showed up here. He really, really doesn't know.

Talking about the weather is easier. Hey look, maybe he's mastering small talk? "It doesn't get that hot here," Winter promises. "Kind of humid. Not not too hot." He doesn't know how he has intel on what "too hot" actually is like, but it's not this place. "Where are you from?"

[bindlestifflost]

"That's good. I don't like the heat all that much. I'm from California. Born in Auburn but been all over NorCal up and down. Wherever my feet or a bus could take me." He tips his head a little. "Been tryin' to place your accent."

[worthallthis]

"The last base I was stationed at was Washington DC, but I spent a lot of time in Russia. And I maybe. Spent time in New York, a long time ago." If Steve is to be believed.

He shakes his head a little. "I was trained to have as generic of an accent as possible in whatever language I was speaking. Less to be identified by."

[bindlestifflost]

"Guess that explains why it was so hard," he says. It makes sense. "Before now, I ain't never been out of California. Ain't never met a lot a' different kind a' folks aside from us bindle stiffs and the bosses." It sure is turning out to be an eye opener.

[worthallthis]

"I've been to California," Winter says, sure of it, though he can't remember much. "It's. Definitely hotter there."

A pause. "What's a bindle stiff."

[bindlestifflost]

He resists the urge to pop off a smartass, Me, since it's unhelpful and he's not sure this guy would track the humor. "It's what they calls drifters and migrant workers like me where I'm from. Bindle from our blanket rolls, stiff from...well, you ever heard the term 'workin' stiff?' It's like that."

[worthallthis]

He probably would track it, he just might not appreciate it.

Winter shakes his head, but he can pick up the meaning from context at least. "That's a terrible name. It sounds insulting. Shouldn't they call you something better."