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 Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2014 8:05 pm
Finally, somehow, they arrived at the bar in one piece.
Ripley barely had to flash his fake ID at the bar tender before he had a double shot of whiskey put in front of him - he blamed the white hair, which simultaneously made him look older and younger at the same time. He didn't even wait for Otto before he put the first shot to his lips, downing it without a single hesitation.
It burned. A lot. But it was a familiar, welcome burn, and certainly needed.
The second shot met the same fate, and he quickly waved for another round for himself.
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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 4:53 pm
Otto tentatively took a seat next to Ripley. Part of him wanted to drink too. However, two glaring problems arose; he'd be passed out after a minimal amount of drinks, and he worried Ripley would need a ride to a motel after this. The white haired man had obviously been deeply effected by what he'd seen today. For now, Otto just asked for a coke. He kept an uncomfortable eye on Ripley. This was awkward. Terribly so. Otto could do nothing. They'd talked already, and it hadn't been all that deep. Interrupting Ripley seemed.. pointless. "I'm gunna take a wild guess and say you ain't drivin' nowhere the rest of the night." Otto drawled with a critical eye on the second round the man had ordered.
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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:00 pm
Whether or not Otto had followed wasn't important to him. The fact he had even sat down beside him and ordered something - even if it was a coke - didn't seem to register in the slightest. When the next round was put in front of him he made quick work of them as well, and was about to order a third round when he finally realized that there was someone beside him, and that the someone had blonde hair, and the same voice as the boy who had blindly followed him to Canada.
"This is nothing." Ripley answered, finally, with four shots still fresh in his system. Then he shook his head, and waved him towards one of the booths lining the walls. "Come on, I imagine you're not done with me yet." He grumbled, imagining their conversation in the car wasn't satisfying. May as well handle them when he had access to alcohol.
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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:06 pm
Otto grimaced and followed. "Nothing? What, you load up on shots normally?" Or did he mean he'd done worse? Likely the latter. Otto didn't have room to say. He'd gone on a terribly heavy bender earlier in the year.
Otto sat down in the booth with his coke, staring ahead at Ripley. He contemplated what he wanted to ask and say. The man was older than him. A full adult. Otto's opinions didn't weight heavy. But he could voice them all he wanted.
"What spooked you most? Was it your own grave?" He asked first. He still wished to pry into Ripley's past, curious since he'd known his parents to be alive when he'd first met him.
"What happened to them?"
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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:45 pm
"Perhaps." Which, in Ripley terms, was a very thinly veiled yes. Most nights ended up with him drinking something, and though some nights were worse than others (like the one night he and Finn mixed Tequila and Whiskey), and others weren't bad (that night he had one shot by himself, because he could). Still, no matter what he had done on Deus, he had done worse in the weeks leading up to it. Much, much worse.
"All of it." He answered the first question with a frown, before ordering another drink from the waitress. Something with a little more substance this time, like a rye and coke. "Though one more than the other." Though which, he didn't say. But the question he had been waiting for finally came, and he stopped mid-drink as if frozen, his eyes lidded to focus dimly on the dark drink in his gloved hand. Though he had been expecting it, he didn't quite expect it so soon.
"I killed them." He murmured gloomily into his drink.
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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:49 pm
Otto felt breathing become a little difficult. Ripley didn't really kill them did he?
"Like... in cold blood or.. an accident?" Should he really be sharing a car with his old room mate or no? Otto had always assumed he knew what Ripley was all about. Yet here he was...
He wasn't sure what to think of it. Not until he got the full story.
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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 7:53 pm
Ripley just shook his head, slowly.
"I gave the order to pull the plug." His voice dropped, straining to say each horrible, painful word. "There was a fire..." He trailed off, instead downing one long, burning drag of his drink. Everything had burned. His work. His house. His things. His hands. His family. All of it had gone up in smoke. The Doctor had given him an entirely unfavourable prognosis, and he took the advice, and had them pull the plug - in his eyes, he killed them, and whatever semblance of life they could have still lived after that.
But no matter how sullen he became, or how much pain tried to worm its way into his expression, he never cried. He didn't tear up. He just stared down at his drink, his expression schooled into the same disinterest he normally viewed the world in, and buried everything else into that tiny, bursting lock box deep within the ice of his heart.
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Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2014 4:55 pm
The situation Ripley spoke of seemed alien. The stuff soap operas would use on a weekly basis. His parents died from wounds got in some sort of fire. That much seemed clear. But in the end, the decision to pull the plug came to Ripley. "Well, if they were askin' you, obviously they were too far gone for the doctors to go any further with treatn'em, right?" Otto expected Ripley to see it all logically. It just seemed to make more sense. "Unless you set fire to their car or some s**t, I don't think you killed your parents. Why bother putting that kind of weight on your shoulders? Ain't the pain of losin'em enough?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2014 5:45 pm
"No." He disagreed with a small shake of his head, being a little more ginger about the sips he took. He'd need it later, and he wasn't so sure he could flag the waitress down in time to save him from the next emotionally wrecking glimpse into his past.
"There was more they could have done. There was a chance." Which was no doubt where his hesitations came from. He paused after, appreciating what Otto was saying to him, because it only made him feel a little less crazy, and somewhat less alone...but at the same time...
"I know I made the right choice under the circumstances." He submitted with a great deal of stress. "Even if they made it, and lived, they'd never be themselves again, but..." It was a struggle to keep the pain from his voice, but he managed. Somehow, some way, he harnessed himself back into the same quiet, stoic voice he typically gave.
"Survivor's guilt, I guess." He held up his gloved hands to show gloved palms.
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Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2014 6:24 pm
Survivors.... wait. So then Ripley was in the same fire?
"Um.. Ripley? Why do you wear those gloves? I just been assuming you're a pompous germaphobe, but..."
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Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2014 6:46 pm
...Pompous Germaphobe?
Ripley laughed. An honest, amused laugh.
"Nobody can do what I did and be a real germaphobe, Otto." He chuckled out, shaking his head. There were several things he could have said, including denouncing pompous for vain, but instead he let his laughter die down as quickly as it had started. There was no point in hiding it from Otto, he supposed. Especially since he came this far with the truth. With a long suffering sigh, he closed his eyes and took off his gloves one at a time until, finally, he held both hands out, palms up, to Otto. Both palms bore the raised, shiny red marks of a vicious but long-healed burn, and a few of his fingers held at awkward angles as though stretching them out was a difficult task.
"I don't like looking at them."
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Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2014 6:56 pm
It felt better to hear Ripley laugh, even if it was rare and odd. Maybe it might have been creepy under some other circumstances.
"Scars..." From the fire. How he'd gotten them, Otto was terribly curious. Did he drag his parents out? Did he get trapped?
"I don't blame you.. they do look ******** nasty." Blunt and honest, Otto commented without skipping a beat. "But I dunno... there's so many people here with scars that look super fugly worse than you. Jerry's got gross burns on his face... but wearing a bag over his head would be pretty stupid, I guess."
Rambling aside, Otto took a sip of his drink and shrugged. "Whatever. If it makes you feel better." If Otto could be bothered, he might have gone ahead and used the girl's make up to hide the scars on his face. However, that would be going too far. He couldn't deny what was there. No point in the added effort, even if she wished his face was clear and normal.
At least everything else was covered with clothing.
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Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 8:38 am
"I'm not vain." He clarified, perhaps a little more shortly than he honestly intended. "It's not the appearance that bothers me." He frowned down at his raw looking hands, and began to put his gloves back on. Over time it had become easier to accept the gloves and forget what was underneath, and now they were simply there. They had to be. That was what was comfortable and safe.
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Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 4:35 pm
It was the memory attached, maybe. Otto left it be, and downed the last of his coke. Maybe less intrusive questions were in order. "Was the grave visit all you wanted to do in Canada?"
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