weird fishes

Unless he ended up back on meth, then forty-three would most likely be a stretch -- it was a hard one to call, which was most likely what made him a hard one to kill.

He picks up one half of his sandwich carefully, the contents already trying to slip out but he salvages a piece of tomato by gripping the bread tighter. It's tempting to let Mars keep guessing, but given the revolving door of death-suited folks who had been through the trailer park they had both once called home, they could be there for the next week.

"Jason, you know the one with the fucked up eye who got me that part for my bike when it was fucked. Said he came off his and click," He throws his head back and imitates the motion of a skull hitting something solid, stopping short of his own hitting the living room wall, "Brains all over the highway, cracked that shit like a melon. I don't buy it though. He was too good on those wheels to go out like that."

He watched Uly reenact Jason's alleged end attentively, but his hand still slipped in to steal the other half of his sandwich when his head was as far back as it could go.

Mars was talking around white bread, ham, and cheese when he said, "Yeah, no, that doesn't sound right. Only a bullet or alcohol poisoning would take that lucky asshole out. Who'd you get this info from?"

Where? Choose your own adventure

Imani had spent the day filling her suitcase. And her backpack. And her purse. Old shoes, old clothing, old jewelry, anything she could fit in on her person. It was one thing to pack them all.. it was another to walk herself to the thrift store carrying it all. The suitcase wheels continued to get caught on every uneven part of the sidewalk, flipping over ever few feet, making her stop to correct it. She was at wits end when it finally flipped over again, causing her to start kicking the bag. "What are you looking at!" She said snapping at the person who had stopped to look at her.

He shrugged, blowing smoke up. "You, I guess. Placing mental bets on how long it'll take you to give up and drag all of this shit back home. You've actually lasted longer than I expected so far."

"A challenge is a challenge, and life's too short to wait around and wonder about the consequences." Despite wishing that the consequence hadn't been smelling like the inside of a poorly cleaned stable. "You've got to make life exciting, right?"

For a moment, she did wonder whether he would insist she take the twenty. However, she was pleasantly surprised to see that he accepted her first refusal - although, it became evident very quickly that his money would be spent on her in some way tonight as he agreed to her proposal.

"Must be nice for you to have money to flush away, hot shot." She said, as if she hadn't had the same thought. Twenty, fifty, a hundred, she'd wouldn't have minded casting it to the wind if he meant she could have something her tastebuds actually enjoyed. "But okay, you lead the way, sir." She gestured towards the exit. Perhaps, this would be fun.

"I'm Cordelia. Some people call me Cordy, or Delia. You can pick your poison." However, she took a moment to lean in close with a devilish smirk. "Or you can wait and see whatever comes out of your mouth when I'm on top."

"I've always said that," he agreed, holding up his now empty glass in a toast to her. He hadn't, but it was a pretty decent summation of his general life philosophy.

"Well, you're lookin' at the proud owner of the Pinball Wizard Arcade, southern California's premiere destination for the oldest, stickiest arcade games this side of the Mississippi. I've got cash to burn," he said as he grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair and headed toward the exit, giving a two-fingered salute to one of the servers who turned to look at them, confused.

He paused as she leaned in and moved half an inch closer, and his eyes widened comically as his brain took a second to process what she'd just said. He turned his head to look at her, maintaining a somewhat inappropriate distance, and cleared his throat, the nonchalant mask he was wearing suddenly splintering a bit. Holy fuck. All he could muster at that was a weak, "I'll call us a car."

Though knowing all of what she did about him, which she would argue was too much, Delilah was confident that whatever had lead Marcus to the middle of a "girl fight" had at least been well deserved. She couldn't say that a small part of her didn't wish that she'd been there to witness it.

She's sure Joey would share a similar sentiment.

"Gary." She supplies their neighbor's name easily, though it's unclear whether he hears her or not as he barrels through the rest of his sentence. "I'm afraid to ask what it is if that I've done to be bestowed such an honor."

Whatever it was, it couldn't bode well for her--unless she somewhere in the future found herself in the need of eggs, apparently.

"I thought you've been trying to tell me for years that one day I'm going to wake up and realize you're the man of my dreams?" Her eyes rolled, but the joint is handed back to him at his request.

It was probably for the best, anyways. She really did have things to do today before Theo came home from Raf's, though what those things were exactly had already become difficult to recall.

"I take it your parents are still together?" It wasn't lost on her how rare it'd felt that hers had still been. Had her father not passed last year, next month would've been their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Delilah hadn’t even made it to five.

For a second, she considers her answer to Marcus's question, chin balanced atop her folded hands.

"Not balding." She says, definitively. "I guess it could be divorce, but it'd take a few generations to find out, since I'm the first to get one." Though what exactly she'd have done to bring that curse on her family before said divorce was a mystery to Delilah. All of her biggest mistakes had come only after she and Rafael had called it quits. "If it's what we have the most of? Then it's probably secrets."

The Wells were certainly plagued with them. Babies and cancer diagnoses and God only knows what else.

"Some kept better than others. I’d stick with the skinny calves, personally."

Gary, okay. That one definitely wouldn't stick in his brain. He shrugged and gestured vaguely at Delilah. "Well, you're, you know. Hot."

She was also a good neighbor and good company, though god knew that she didn't have to be. He'd never really had many friends, and although he wasn't sure if Delilah would necessarily use that word to describe their relationship, he appreciated good conversation, which she brought in spades.

"I've been trying to tell you a lot of things for years. It's not my fault that you never listen to me."

The joint was pretty much gone at this point, so he stubbed it out against the bottom of his shoe and pocketed what was left, only to retrieve a pen from the same pocket.

"Last I heard," he confirmed, twirling the pen between his fingers. "I haven't talked to them in, what, twenty years? But if they were gonna split up, they should've done it after Marcus 2. But they're Catholics. They made a very sacred pact in front of God."

It was funny that divorce and, for a long time, contraception had been beyond the pale for his parents when their entire lives revolved around other behaviors any deity or church would condemn. It was still confusing, but it'd been years since he bothered to dwell on it.

"Secrets," he repeated, intrigued. Though awful and destructive in their own way, his family had never really bothered with secrets. They wore every awful and destructive thing about them on their sleeves. "Interesting. Sounds like a couple of 'em have come back to bite you in the ass."

“Like what?” Aiden challenges without missing a beat. “My car is immaculate. Doesn’t look it, but I take care of it.” 

As best as he can. If Mars was to get behind the wheel of his car, the most offending thing would be the smell of stale cigarettes and the Monster can in the middle console filled with butts. The scattered burn marks in the seats aren’t the biggest issue.

Aiden opens his mouth to start some sort of verbal protest, but the yank of the collar of his shirt reduces it to a yell of sorts. It is accompanied by the pointless flail of Aiden’s arms until he’s sprung back to his feet, and he glare down his nose at Mars.

“Who ya calling a ‘little shit’, because if it’s me, that makes you a dingleberry on account of you being smaller than me.”

It’s not his greatest, but Aiden’s satisfied with it. He flees the scene to head out the way he’d come in.

With a roll of his eyes, he did a last, quick survey of the arcade before following Aiden through the storage room, picking up his backpack on the way. He fumbled with his keys to secure the back door as he watched Aiden's form retreat further down the alleyway.

"Hey, motherfucker!" he called, giving the handle a few shakes to make sure that it was locked. "If you want me to drive, where the fuck do you think you're going? You're real funny if you think I'm gonna chase after you then give you a ride home. Get back here and give me the keys or you're shit outta luck."

To put a finer point on it, he crossed his arms and stayed put by the door, tapping his foot on the concrete like a disapproving parent.

"Also, dingleberry? Are you fuckin' serious, man?"

Sam has been there, sitting at a corner table closer to the entrance, for what feels like eternity. He showed up early of his own volition, wanting to ease himself into the thought of meeting with Mars.

Here, and not the All Nighter, as per his request, as the All Nighter is his and Will's spot to meet. He doesn't need to taint it with any feelings of uneasiness.

The nerves that tangle beneath his skin now aren't for any ill feelings toward Mars, though. Sam is embarrassed. It's as simple as that. It would be irrational to hold anything against him, even if at the very beginning, his blame started there. As he'd been told, or rather, the answer he had been guided toward revealed it was a projection of his own lapses in judgment, but it didn't make him any less comfortable.

He draws in one deep breath, his eyes drawn to the spots of coffee in the lid of his to-go cup, the inside contents too cold to enjoy now. It's for the umpteenth time the bell at the front door commands his attention, and this time, the person he'd been waiting for passes through the threshold.

"I just got here early so you haven't kept me waiting." The smile that crosses his face doesn't reach his eyes. "You can order, I won't sneak out on you."

It wasn't that he was incapable of regret — god knew that he had a lot of things to be regretful about — but it was certainly an easy enough emotion to dismiss at this point.

But Sam was a different story. Mars had considered chickening out of this meeting multiple times, even though he'd been the one to propose it in the first place, because it'd been different with Sam. Mars had actually been pretty meticulous when he was dealing, keeping all of his pennies counted, making sure that everything was accounted for and then locked away. But the one time he slipped up...

He approached the table Sam had taken a spot at not knowing what to do with himself. Uncertainty — that was rare for Mars too. He raised a hand and shot a smile that probably looked more like a grimace as he neared, before shrugging off his jacket as he got the table.

"Oh, uh. Yeah, sure," he said quickly, leaving his jacket on the back of his chair before going over to the register and placing an order for a cup of black coffee, his fingers tapping at the top of his thigh impatiently as he waited.

Cup in tow, he returned to the table and sat down, looking at Sam hesitantly as his leg started to bounce anxiously. "Thanks for agreeing to this. It's, uh. Good to see you. How are you?"

"You don't get it." She scoffed around a fig cracker. "It's not just about the wine--it's the whole experience. The music and the scenery and the--the ambiance! You're already just, like, so determined to make fun of it that you won't even give yourself the chance to possibly enjoy it."

It not referring specifically, of course, to the glass of wine she couldn't even bring herself to swallow. Cricket would be a little more concerned about how perfectly he'd nailed the horse shit descriptor had she not been preoccupied with the disgusted looks suddenly turned her way.

"It's part of the process." She offered to the same table from before, batting Mars's finger away without sparing him a glance. "The sixth S, it's like...a super advanced technique." See, swirl, sniff, sip, savor, and now spit, apparently. "Really develops the palette...wouldn't you say, Mars?"

And in case he needed extra prompting, her foot found his shin beneath the table in a swift kick.

He looked around disdainfully at what was actually a pretty pleasant scene. The windows opened to a view of the ocean, a violin cover of some Ariana Grande song was playing lightly over the speakers, and the light, polite chatter of the other patrons was just loud enough that he didn't have to listen to the music.

God, he didn't belong here.

He was reaching for a piece of parmesan — that, he could get behind — when a sharp pain went up his leg and he yelped loudly, drawing even more eyes that before. He ignored her question and prompting entirely in order to level a glare at her, but not before tossing the cheese into his mouth. "The fuck was that for, you psycho?"

However, she wasn't really one to talk, when her mouth was about to be filled with the same vile liquid. Once she'd finished her 'challenge' and the taste slowly had started to leave her tongue, she was suddenly able to genuninely give him a smile. A proud one. "Told you. I'm not a wuss." She teased.

When he brought out the twenty, she could only laugh. "Oh no, you don't really have to give me anything. I mean, the satisfication of besting you is enough." She tilted her head. "But... you could use it to get me a drink in an actual wine bar, when we're done tasting hell in liquid form."

He turned his glass over into the spit bucket, shaking his head. "Nope, you're definitely not a wuss. I respect anyone with that kind of 'no one calls me chicken' mentality. You're a woman after my own heart."

A better person might've insisted that she take the money — a bet was a bet — but Mars took his bill back without hesitation. As he was stuffing it back in his wallet and the proposition was put forward, his eyes shot back up to her, his hands freezing in place. Alright, dude, be cool.

"Oh, yeah? Well, why wait until we're done? I only paid twenty bucks for this Groupon, and believe me, that's money I'm willing to flush right down the toilet. Just like this wine."

"I'm Mars, by the way."