[Master Post – Glass]Â Â
Title: Making Mouths
Fandom: Viridian Legacy: Glass
Characters: Arkady, Baron, (Severen, Betty, Lir)
Rating: T
Warnings: Drugs, referenced violence, referenced faggotry
Notes: I don't even know. Too much coke in a cowboy bar. Baron's been up too long and he's saying stupid things, followed by insightful things, followed by even stupider things.
They were in Wyoming — some place that started with a 'J'… Juniper? Jackson? Jackass? Probably Jackass. Jackass, Wyoming and its epic cowboy bar. If there was one thing Arkady could say for the place, the bathroom was sufficiently well-lit that he could actually see to fix his face. And Baron? Well, he had no idea what Baron was doing away from his drink, except for the part where the kid was so wasted he couldn't see — and that was before he'd started on the booze. Four days up started to have that effect, no matter what you propped yourself up with. He opened his mouth to say something else of questionable taste and coherence, and Arkady braced himself.
"Ebony, man, I love the bass, but it's just not the kind of thing you can play in empty stairwells in the middle of the night, to pick up the chicks who can hear you through the vents. I mean, yeah, it's not like I have a problem picking up chicks, but… sometimes, I think it ought to be glamorous, you know?" Baron leaned back into the corner of the vanity, resting his head on the mirror and watching Arkady fix his eyeliner.
"Are you actually making this complaint to me? Bitch to Lir, man. He's the guitarist. But, do not come bitching to the drummer that you don't have a good instrument for that late-night staircase glamour." Arkady shook his head and laid the edge of a folded tissue on the greasepaint under his eye, to avoid smearing it as he touched up a line. "You don't have glamour? Jesus. I don't have glamour."
"Talking out your ass again, man. Of course you have glamour. You look like a fucking vampire. Chicks love that."
"Yeah, and for some reason they also love your cock. I don't even want to know what that's about. Must be all the speed. You're addictive."
"Can't be that. If it was that, they'd stick around after." Baron took a pinch from his repurposed snuffbox and snorted it off his thumb. "Not that I'm complaining, really. Could you imagine me with a girlfriend?"
Arkady pulled the pencil away from his eye as he started to laugh. "Jesus. Don't say shit like that. I'll smear something, and then this'll take even longer."
Baron just watched him, for a long moment. "Why do you do it?"
"What?" Arkady turned his head to look at Baron, confused.
"Girlfriends, man. Why do you keep doing that to yourself?" Baron sniffed and tipped his head back. "Every time you meet some girl, you take her out, you have a great time, and in like three weeks, she hates you, she's humiliated you in public, and half the time, she stole something on the way out. Why do you do it?"
Arkady laughed and shook his head. "When you put it like that…" He turned back to the mirror to check his paint, again. "I dunno. I just… Somewhere out there, there's some girl, and she's gonna be great, and if I stop looking, I'll never find her. And you know me, man, I'm a dick. I probably had it coming, anyway."
"Every time?" Baron raised an eyebrow in disbelief, even though Arkady couldn't see his face.
"More times that I took it for, that's for sure." Arkady capped the pencil and swept the handful of paints into the small bag that dangled from the tape wrapped around the top of his thigh. "You want to get back out there before Liz starts complaining that we take more time than she does, and Lir starts making fag jokes?"
"Hey, if Mike's making fag jokes, we should give it another five. I want to see Sev punch him, this time." Baron blotted at his nose with the edge of a finger and then sat up, leaning his elbows on his knees.
"You kidding me? Sev doesn't punch people. Hell, I probably punch more people than he does."
"Except for that one time in Barstow." Baron looked up, pointedly.
"Barstow? Why don't I remem— oh, was that the time I didn't go out because I thought my head was going to explode, and then nobody would tell me what happened?" Arkady cleaned a bit of greasepaint from under his nails.
"Yeah. Some guy, I don't even know what he said, but he was talking shit — could see it in the way he was standing. Anyway, he shoved Sev and yelled something in his face, and Sev just clocked the guy. One fist to the stomach and the other to the face, and then Betty finished the job. She's scary, man." Baron shook his head.
"Yeah, she is. Terrifying." Arkady leaned back against the counter. "That must've been the first punch he's ever thrown. He just doesn't hit people. Ever. I wonder what that idiot said to him. I mean, I've seen him take a lot more than a shove without even blinking."
Baron hopped off the counter. "Nah, he hits people. I heard it from Sin. It's just that he only hits people when they wake him up."
Arkady laughed and followed Baron back out into the bar. "Oh, yeah, way to give me the heads up. It's been what, a year now? How has this not gotten me punched yet?"
"It's cause you're too pretty to hit. Not even Sev hits girls," Baron joked over his shoulder, grinning wickedly.
"Hey, fuck you, man! Mushroom-shaped bruises. You will never forget how much a man I am." Arkady pushed Baron, lazily, squinting suspiciously at him. "A girl… Jesus fuck. Even you know better than that."
He muttered under his breath all the way back to the table, where Lir was, in fact, well into the speculations of faggotry, and both Betty and Severen listened in horrified amusement. The looks that passed between them said it all. I'm pretty sure that violates the laws of physics, and I tried that once, it didn't end well.
Arkady checked Baron to the side, with his hip and leaned over the back of Lir's chair. "Hey, you're the one who's gotta share a room with the kid tonight. And he's on an awful lot of speed… Sleep well!"
