manofmyword | (no subject)

(no subject)

There is a man in the bar, sitting alone at a table for four with the Observation Window directly on his left, close enough to touch. He has an enormous glass jar of jelly beans and he is methodically sorting them by colour into a number of smaller bowls laid out in front of him.

Other things about him that might come off as odd include: the fact that he is wearing a ferociously lilac button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows under a muted green vest; the fact that he is not wearing any shoes, and his socks don't match, one of them yellow with a black pattern of bats and the other black with little yellow smiley faces; and, finally, the scars on his face, extending the sides of his mouth into a permanent crooked smile.

He might welcome company. Or he might not. It's not always easy to tell.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Now you're gettin' the picture," he says, and kisses him.

--Oh hey.

The whole . . . scarred mouth thing makes kissing kind of weird. Not bad, but not really Tony's thing.

He laughs.

"Not into my face, huh?"

"I didn't say that," Tony says cautiously.

He pats Tony's shoulder affectionately. "It's okay, hon, most people aren't."

"How'd you get those, anyway?"

"Well," he says, and grins. "You really wanna know?"

"Sure."

He leans in close, dropping his voice conspiratorially.

"You ever get one'a those guys who just will not leave you alone?"

"Who doesn't."

"Yeah, you know the type. So this one guy," he pauses, licks his lips, "he keeps following me, you know? Really obvious. And it's starting to put people off; nobody wants a bite when this guy's staring at 'em from across the street. So I figure, maybe if I get it over with he'll go away." He sighs. "What can I say, I was young and stupid."

Tony's eyebrows go up.

"Went south, huh?"

"Really south," he agrees. "Really fast. One minute we're up in his hotel room gettin' friendly, the next he's got a gun in my mouth."

"--Holy shit."

"Yeah, that's about what I was thinkin'," he says, tilting his head so the scar by the left side of his mouth catches the light a little better. "He played around with me a little, I'm sure you can fill in the blanks. Too bad for him, though, he was a little slow pulling the trigger when he was all done."

"How the fuck'd you get outta there alive?"

"I was faster."

Tony rolls his eyes. Talk about an unsatisfying answer.

"Right."

"What, you want details?"

He shrugs.

"I want whatever you wanna tell me," he says, truthfully enough. "You wanna leave it at you were faster, fine, whatever."

He laughs.

"I took his gun away from him and shot him with it."

"See, was that so hard?"

Grinning: "Nnnot really."

Tony has the sneaking suspicion they're talking about different things.

Aren't they just.

Oh look, it's his room! He unlocks the door and shoves it open, against the resistance of a pile of loose clothing.

It's kind of a mess in there.