The second clue pertained to the amount ordered. This particular customer struck her as persnickety, and only ordered one drink at a time at measured intervals. She clocked him once - at maximum, he ordered every half hour. On the dot. As in, he probably set cell phone timers to ensure the exact thirty minutes passed beforehand. The fact that he would break these previously established behaviors to order two drinks at one urged an eyebrow to crawl halfway up her forehead. She did not offer an objection, however; the no-nonsense redhead turned about to grab the drinks of choice - a tequila sunrise and a shot of Tres Agaves tequila. She served the lime on the side, and coated the rim of the glass in salt.
Her final clue was his body language, in that this particular patron did not carry himself with the careful pomp that he managed at every visit. Almost as if he let himself go, his bony shoulder slumped to reveal his actual weight (or lack thereof) and he hunched forward with elbows resting on the bar. Both hands framed his neck, as if he either attempted to strangle himself or warm his neck. She couldn’t tell, but she knew to leave him to his troubles. More talkative patrons clamored for her attention, and tipped better too.
In truth, Isaiah knew not if he should continue with his carefully crafted fronts and personalities. He lost track, some time ago, of the portions of him that he considered real. In his mind, he saw himself as a surfeit of agglomerated fragments from entirely separate lives - broken glass from an addict he met in Chicago, splinters from a childhood friend, wraps of cardboard borrowed from a bum who fed him skag for a week, just to trade his way out of death. And now, he formed some fake construct, an automaton, that begged for legitimate recognition.
So he breathed his cancer-stricken sigh, stared into the vitriol he aimed to take, and considered pitching all of his farces to flames before he took the first shot.
Archer was not quite as on the clock as other patrons of the bar might have been, but he did like things to be orderly. His drink was ordered promptly upon arriving - a shot of Skyy, something simple, straight up, so that he could taste the burn of alcohol in his throat, not the added flavors of anything else. He tucked the napkin beneath the glass, and later he’d probably get something a little stronger, depending - but for now, he stuck with the vodka.
His eyes, dark and a little hooded, scanned the room around him for anything interesting that might crop up. Archer had only been there for less than a half and hour and already it was crowded with people, the bartender swiftly doling out drinks with practiced ease. She slid him a second shot when he gestured for it, unquestioningly ebbing him into a further state of relaxation with her efficiency, and Archer took a sip, not downing it quite yet.
He was not talkative - or at least not openly and brazenly vying for the attention of the bartender, Archer’s preferring to observe for a little while before deciding on a plan of action, a path to take. His gaze strayed sideways; there was a man sitting a stool away from him, and Archer had watched as the bartender dropped his drinks off without lingering, the man’s shoulders hunched, posture suggesting either a sense of unhappiness or maybe perhaps discomfort in some way.
Still, it was a bar; most people came here to drown their sorrows, but not Archer. He came here to watch, to learn, to have a good time, and his curiosity, however misguided, had fallen on this particular man, simply because of what little Archer could see of the look on his face.
He reached into his pocket, idly searching for the cigarettes he knew were somewhere, and downed the rest of his shot.
“Planning on drinking those through sheer force of will?” Archer asked mildly, brows lifting questioningly.
The comment drew shadowed eyes from his intended drink to the stranger speaking, and his naked expression suggested a mix of tired and perturbed. Dark circles only lent to the grunge look nicely, so his primary indicators for his growing disinterest in his own upkeep was, perhaps, the state of his hair. It lacked the meticulousness that he employed when straightening and feathering the layered portions. Even the patiently long sideburns lacked the telltale curl at the end as they rested against his chest. However, his outfit still suggested a keen awareness of how he looked and what manner of dress fit his body type - cotton grunge printed shirts loaded with eyelets fit snug against his body, as did the leathers he quite often wore.
“Do you always make conversation by insulting the person you’re trying to engage?” Isaiah let the question hang and returned to the drink in hand - the shot of tequila.
Taking tequila was an art form, he discovered, in his years of steady alcohol abuse. He found it imperative to take both salt and lime as chasers to soothe some of the strength of the drink. If not, he soon felt the telltale choke on broken glass that informed him of his throat’s paltry condition - and that he could expect to avoid speaking for the next half a week. But more than taking chasers for his own protection, it complemented the subtle flavours in a silver tequila. So when he took his shot, tasted the salt, and bit through the lime, he lingered on the lattermost portion to chew some of the citrus to slow the destruction of his throat and savor the lingering aftertaste.
“To answer your question, I’m planning on drinking these until I’m spitting up my gall bladder in the women’s bathroom, because the men’s bathroom happens to be six feet too far from my barstool. And then some impossibly sultry, albeit offended, woman would stop in to see if she could assist, we fall in love at first sight, I vomit on her tits and then we’re on our way to Vegas to get married. Explanation enough for you, Stranger?” He shot the man a dull look that suggested offense if he hadn’t started the slow drown through dysthymia.
And what would you be doing here. Straight vodka? You have no taste or you’re just looking to get drunk. And you must be one of those friendly drunken types if you’re talking to me about now. So what’s you’re story? Grew up in a home not particularly abusive, moved around a lot, found no real attachments to people. Sociopath is a s**t life but it sure makes good money, so you do… What, repo work to pay your bills. Take people’s lives away for companies that you relate to far easier. Don’t care what happens to these people. And you kind of like it when they come tracking you down.
The you have an excuse to break someone’s face, don’t you?
To Archer’s credit, he was not startled by the reaction, but he did raise his eyebrows further, head tilted curiously in the direction of the other. “Not an insult,” he said mildly. “Merely a curiosity I indulged in while sitting here.”
He watched with slightly lowered eyes as the man downed his drinks, from the initial toss back to the bite on the lime, wondering whether or not it tasted better that way; if he shouldn’t try and dilute some of the tequila in his cabinets at home with lime or salt. Archer supposed it was in bad taste to drink straight alcohol sometimes without all of the garnishes - but at the same time, it tended to be the way he liked everything. Straightforward, lacking, in his mind, the unnecessary frivolity sometimes associated with other people.
He would have laughed, if he’d been the sort, but instead Archer’s lips merely quirked up at the corner, hinting at a smile rather than exposing an outright one.
“Vomiting on someone’s tits seems a poor way to spend an evening,” he said instead, idly tapping his fingers against the side of his own shot glass. “I suppose if you like that sort of thing, then by all means - but Iit was merely a question, not an inquisition, not meant to impose.”
He found the cigarettes he was looking for, but didn’t pull them out quite yet, Archer instead shifting in his seat so that he was facing away from the bar, one arm draped lazily against the side of it, a leg crossed over the other. His own clothing style was the only thing about him that, oddly enough, didn’t radiate the neat and straightforward sense he applied to most other things. Relatively tight black jeans, ragged black boots, and a few layers of black and gray and red shirts, most thin, artfully torn or ripped in places, the sleeves of his jacket rolled up to his elbows, exposing the hint of a black banded tattoo on his inner arm.
“So in this metaphorical situation of yours where you head off to Vegas,” said Archer thoughtfully, not dismissively. “Does it - or rather, could it - include company other than the woman?”
Derision failed to stave him off - this black-haired boy kept up his questioning, and he seemed none too interested in it either. Features remained cool, and legs crossed - an indication that he distrusted Isaiah, or perhaps the rest of the world - and inflections implied idle interest as a means of passing time. The rivethead expected, then, that he was the focal point meant to entertain the man. His tongue pressed to the back of his teeth until he felt one of his tongue rings grind between, then ceased.
Fine. If this man wanted a show, he would have one.
“Maybe I like my evenings poor,” he shot back petulantly. Next he seized the scotch by the rim, bony fingers splayed outward, and measured a sip. It washed smoothly where the tequila bit. “You sit with your legs crossed, you take your drinks straight and you look at people with the most bored expression I’ve ever seen in my life. Puking on someone’s tits at least lets you know that they have a pulse. You look like you fell out of a morgue, Stranger.” No pulse, no bloodflow. No bloodflow, no boners.
His last question earned a glance askance. For the first time since their interaction, Isaiah’s eyes lingered on the man and scrutinized his dress habits and body language. Certainly he exhibited better posture than Isaiah did currently, and he held a youthfulness to his face that suggested late teens, early twenties. He looked legal, at least. And his dress habits held some aesthetic merit in the choice of color combinations. But perhaps most interestingly, nothing about him screamed ‘committed’. This boy, whoever he was, was a drifter.
“That’s a loaded question.” He took another sip and found his throat struggling to swallow the burn. “Tell me what you’re really asking.”
Throughout the man’s assessment of him, Archer sat, quite still, in the same position, his fingers idly smoothing over the rim of his empty glass. He couldn’t say that he was exactly wrong about things. Archer did tend to find the world extraordinarily tedious at times, more often than not, except for a few passing interests here and there. It was regrettable, certainly, that he could not find much more to entertain him, but such as it was.
“A morgue?” he asked, mulling this over. “An interesting observation. Can’t say I’ve ever really heard that one before, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything, right?”
It wasn’t given with a smirk or even a quirk of his lips up; instead, it was just pressed with a scrutinizing glance that was less warm than any the man had given him and held simple interest instead. Archer swiveled back around to face the bar and signal for another drink. “I will admit to being displeased with most people, but that’s only because most people have nothing to offer me. And I’d rather not waste my efforts on something that has no benefit to myself.”
The bartender swept by, depositing a second glass in front of him and grabbing one of the bottles of vodka behind the counter. She didn’t glance twice at him, just pushed the glass towards him when she was done and flitted off to the next customer. Archer took it between his fingers and rested his elbows on the counter, not drinking it just yet.
His eyes flickered sideways.
“You seemed interesting,” said Archer, with a little shrug. “I was curious - or rather, I suppose it should be present tense. And not bad to look at either, so it’s a combination of all three when I ask if you want the company, or if you’d rather just be left alone this evening.”
victim stranger. Unfortunately, such a scenario pegged Isaiah himself as woefully uninteresting, to which he took mild offense as he was most certainly barreling forth to the land of drunkenness. After all, he only became boring after reaching sobriety.
His drink was finished in a matter of moments, and he tucked bony fingers into the glass to play with the few donut-shaped cubes. One fit around his pinky finger nicely, and he tugged it out to roll against his lip. Is it flattery to be interesting to the uninteresting, I wonder? Or by being so, does that meant I am uninteresting to the interesting? I suppose Isaiah Zähne will need to take his game to the high class dinner parties to determine the answer to that one. I can’t imagine a pawn shop owner gets invited to such terribly often. Considering it produced a smile on his lips, one that looked almost absent considering the long stare he sent far past the edge of the bar. Questionable company or no company - those are my options.
I’ve settled for worse.
“So,” he started as he moved the ice away from his lip. “I prefer my company without words. It’s a little easier, for both of us, that way. No past or small talk or need to somehow assess each other beyond the superficial. There’s two choices here. We can either make out now or you can take me back to your place, and I promise I don’t stay the night. And if you need a name for me…” He reached toward the boy and slid the cube off finger effortlessly, and straight into the other man’s palm.
Archer did not prefer to talk as much as he preferred to act; which was perhaps why what he was not quite as fluent in speech as he was in bed. He disliked the games that people played, and yet here he was, trying to play a game instead of just coming out and saying exactly what it was that he wanted. It made him irritable, inwardly, that he had stooped so low, wondering if he’d somehow missed a step somewhere since coming back to the city. I
The man was playing with his ice cubes now; Archer wasn’t sure how far gone he was already into his drinks, but he seemed lost in thought for the time being. He lifted his own glass and took a swallow, downing the last of it before he dropped the glass onto the counter and eased into a better position, trying to work past the small aggravation of apparently losing his touch in matters such as these.
At the sound of him speaking, he turned his head to look at the man, eyebrows raised. “That’s how I like it,” said Archer, resting his head against the side of his hand. “I suppose it would have been easier just to come out and say it, though.”
A hum of thought escaped him.
“Back to my place, then,” said Archer decisively, and he glanced down at the cold suddenly against the palm of his hand, the ice cube wetting his skin as it slid across.
“Ice?”
Slicked fingers returned to the rim of the glass that he traced absently. Isaiah’s gaze strayed to the far wall where all the liquor lined up in their attractive bottles, and peered between two of the more ornate glasses to peer at the mirrored backsplash. He wondered, then, if he looked quite as washed out as the mirror showed. He wondered if Archer felt the same, or if the man preferred a particular pallor to his partners. Isaiah guessed the latter.
Isaiah withdrew a few bills from pocket to pay off the mounting bar tab before he stepped himself too far into alcoholism. Even if Archer offered to pay, it wasn’t his responsibility - if he intended to take Isaiah home, then proper host etiquette dictated that he provide Isaiah with proper cab fare. Would he, though? Isaiah shifted his gaze toward archer and paused, studying harsh features and a shark’s marked lack of interest in the world around him, and found nothing to indicate guaranteed cab fare. It wouldn’t matter terribly; Isaiah had enough on hand to cover a reasonable distance.
He considered Archer then, and whether Isaiah truly wanted to sleep with the man. He would try anything (or anyone) once, surely, but Archer marked a particular kind of questionable that gave Isaiah pause. Secondarily, though, his thoughts began to drift toward similar bad taste trysts during his time with Sidney James, and found every reason he needed to continue on this path.
“Well then, Stranger, let’s get out of here before the magic wears off and I find myself staring back at an empty scotch glass on a shitty bar counter.” Isaiah stood then, and measured his balance against the counter. He felt relatively clear, despite his attempts to get as trashed as possible.
A hand lighted on Archer’s shoulder and slid to the opposite shoulder before departing. Isaiah headed toward the door, then, and expected this mysterious stranger to follow.“Then I could dazzle you with all the ‘interesting’ you could ever need,” he added with a grin.
kuropeco
did you want to continue this?
