Man Walks Into A Bar

There weren't many places in the world that Gideon liked, and Belgium was definitely not one of them. He could have blamed bad memories from the Forties. He could have blamed the fact that foreign languages gave him a headache. He could have blamed it's stupid tiny buildings with their short narrow doors and their floors that creaked and groaned in protest of his presence.

But he didn't.

He didn't blame anything, or anyone, because the heart of stone beating in his chest didn't bother with such things. No blame, no guilt, no gratitude, no joy; just a stony disassociated disconnection with the human race, everyone in it, and anything they had ever built.

He made it through the stupid mailbox door sideways; there was a scrape as his shoulder grazed the woodwork of the frame. Everyone turned and looked; stared, same as they always did. Fuck 'em, he thought, plus sized boots clomping against the wooden floor as he strode towards the bar. What's the matter, y' never seen a golem before?

The barman regarded him with a strange blend of emotions: fear and alarm mostly, but glossed over with a veneer of mercenary greed. That was the only redeeming feature about humanity, as far as Gideon was concerned: they could learn to tolerate anyone or anything if you gave them enough shit to make up for it, and right now the barman seemed more interested in the fact that Gideon was a potential paying customer than anything else.

He grabbed two stools, one for each cheek to spread the weight, and heaved himself into position at the bar. A collective intake of breath swept across the other patrons, no doubt waiting for the bar stool to buckle and break beneath him. They were in for a disappointment: a mix of basic engineering and decades of practice had taught Gideon exactly what he was capable of getting away with, no matter bullshit what Hollywood special effects fed to the general public.

"Three pints," he grunted, his voice exactly as gravelly as you'd expect it to be. He didn't even bother with a native language; if you own a bar in a tourist town and don't speak enough English lingo to work with lazy inconsiderate Yanks on vacation, then you deserved to go out of business. "I don't care what of."

The barman obliged in silence; Gideon noted with casual disinterest that he'd beelined straight for the most expensive beer on tap. That'd have earned a smile of mild approval, if Gideon could be bothered to make his facial muscles drag his clay-like skin into the right shapes. He couldn't be though, and instead maintained the same scowl as ever, downing the beers like shots when they arrived. He could barely taste it, and with his constitution he barely felt it; but when you barely felt anything, then barely feeling buzzed was better than nothing.

He dug into the pocket of the tent-like trenchcoat he wore mainly for the benefit of others rather than his own modesty, and pulled out a fat roll of banknotes. "Same again," he grunted, tossing the Euros onto the bar. "And you're gonna want to keep hold of that: we're gonna be here a while."

A little more of the alarm crept into the barman's expression, and he mustered his first word of the day. "We?"

The bar had turned quiet as every eye had remained on Gideon, whispered tones and music being played through old speakers only creating a small blanket of white noise that did nothing to hide the fact the barman's single utterance was filled with dread. As if on cue, the disquieted stillness was pierced by an annoyed scoff from the doorway.

Those expecting another impressive sight were either sorely disappointing or pleasantly surprised at the woman standing there, wearing a mask of disinterest that barely covered her overall disgust at the bar and it's patrons. Whereas it had been Gideon's mutation that had made him stand out from the rest, it was the woman's pristine appearance that drew attention. A dress more appropriate for an evening business dinner than a night out in the less than glamorous area of town clung to every curve, blonde hair cascaded around her shoulders with not a stray strand of hair out of place, if perfect was what Vivica Hodsson was striving for she certainly came dangerously close to hitting the mark. The viscous little smile she wore hinted at the rather volatile nature that was just under the surface and it came creeping out with her voice as she slowly walked towards the bar.

"Such a lively place you've found, Gideon." The sarcasm simmered for an instant before she came to a pause at the edge of the bar. She placed an elbow on the counter top and regarded the tender with the kind of appraising stare that either meant she was undressing him mentally, or envisioning his untimely demise. "Don't worry, the big bad monster won't hurt you... My friend here won't let me."

Gideon grunted out a single note of laughter. "Like anyone can stop you from anything," he muttered, knocking back another pint as if it were nothing.

Truth be told, the humour was there for his own protection, masking the intense discomfort he felt in that moment. It wasn't that Vivica's presence was undesired, or unpleasant: quite the contrary, when your hide was thick enough to withstand her cutting remarks and other damaging traits, she could be an extremely enjoyable person to be around. Not that kind of enjoyable, of course: at least, not with Gideon; but of all the people whose company Gideon found himself forced to endure, Vivica's was quite possibly the least objectionable.

The discomfort came from something else: from the fact that her presence had placed the attentions of the bar's patrons in conflict, divided between staring at the hulking thing in the trenchcoat, or ogling the blonde in the slinky dress. Ordinarily, Gideon would welcome anything that detracted attention from him; but when the alternative was subjecting a friend - or at least a close approximation thereof - to the leering lustful gazes of a room full of drunks, it just didn't sit right.

"No, wait," he contradicted himself, his ceramic brow folding into an almost frown. "It's your old boyfriend that's the unstoppable one, ain't it? My bad," he apologised, rapping a set of knuckles against his head. "I got a skull full a' rocks."

Her laughter filled the air for a moment and trailed off as she shook her head, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "Oh Gideon, that's not nice."

There may have been a time when Vivica would have attempted to say something in return, to defend the man in question, but time had calloused her and if anything she knew Gideon didn't really mean anything by it. When it came to people that Vivica could actually consider friends, the number was in surprisingly short supply. Of course there were associates she could spend time with, to be entertained by, but Gideon was one of the handful of individuals that had become more family than just another stony face in her life. There were times, like the one that was taking place at that moment, where she briefly wondered how things may have turned out if they had been different. The thought flickered away as quickly as it appeared as she directed her attention to the bartender and ordered a Gin Rickey, ignoring the the man's mildly amused look. Vivica was willing to bet it would probably end up being one of the worst ones she had ever tasted - not a simple feat, but the halfwit seemed like he would be capable of letting her down in spectacular fashion.

Gideon sighed and shook his head.

"I don't get it, Viv," he grunted, idly flipping his spent pint glasses upside-down. "I mean sure, you're a beautiful dame, I guess; and ya got them eyes and that smirk that'd probably get things stirrin' if it weren't already hard as a rock down there. But I swear t' God, Viv, -"

Another pint was necked, another head shake of disapproval thrown in Vivica's direction. His gaze settled on the glass the barman had just settled in front of her.

"- how can anyone be attracted to ya when you're drinkin' swill like that? It's a drink, not a fuckin' three course meal. It ain't supposed ta got a recipe: a real drink's got one ingredient, booze, and that's fuckin' it. None a' this -" He waved a hand dismissively. "- squeeze a' lime, twist a' bullshit business."

He grunted into his glass; took a brief moment to acknowledge that, to his credit, the barman was doing a decent job of keeping them filled.

"Grow some balls already," he muttered. "Or better yet, use Orlando's. Ya seem t' have his stashed in ya purse pretty good most a' the time."

His brow tried it's hardest to furrow into a frown again.

"Were is the little loudmouth runt anyhow? Normally don't see ya these days without him glued to yer ass."

Vivica decided it was best to not try and explain the fact that the beer Gideon was drinking took far more preparation, care, and fussing over to make properly than the cocktail she had in front of her. She simply arched an eyebrow as her gaze was knowingly cast from the empty glasses in front of him back to his stoney features as she tasted her drink with an air of shameless complacency. It made the victory far less satisfying as her theories about the bartender's skill were proven true. The comments about her lover, however...

While she genuinely found the statements to be amusing, and quite truthful, the question of where her little amusement was brought out an annoyed scoff. "He's with Oliver."

The one simple phrase would explain everything. Her shadow was always either Orlando or Oliver, but when you put the two together the men they were trying to be always faded back to the boys they actually were. It would have been endearing if it wasn't so bloody obnoxious.

"Eesh," Gideon muttered.

Oliver was a good kid, all things considered. That didn't mean that he was a Grade A student, that he was well behaved, or that he even had any skills or abilities that were even remotely useful or being worthy of praise. He wasn't successful. He wasn't a genius; not even borderline talented, really. He was just considerably less fucked up than he had every right to be, what with the life he'd led. If the lifestyle that he'd been raised into wasn't mentally and emotionally damaging enough, growing up with a mother who looked like Vivica and hadn't visibly aged a damn day that whole time was bound to have made a fair few scars.

Orlando on the other hand had precisely two redeeming qualities, amid a sea of annoying and detestable traits. Chief of those qualities was his usefulness: for all his failings, his ego, and his brash impatience, you could send the guy to do something and he usually did. Oh sure, he wouldn't shut up about it after the fact, but at least it would be done. His other redeeming feature was one that Gideon took on faith, but that Vivica was intimately familiar with and seemed to be relatively pleased by. Whatever; if the kid managed to take the edge off Vivica's attitude, and made her catty bad moods fewer and further between, he was worth having around.

"Oliver an' Orlando. Unsupervised. In Bruges."

His mouth drew into a grim line. Well, his mouth closed - the grim line was pretty much permanent.

"What could possibly go wrong?"

"We are so screwed."

It'll be fun he said, No one will notice he said, We'll be fine he said, Lighten up ya freakishly tall lumberjack he said. Granted the last one hadn't really helped in convincing Oliver that stealing a car would be a good idea but the fact remained that it was better than walking and taking a taxi in a foreign country where neither of them spoke any of the local language. But there had been a tremendous amount of vodka that had been part of the planning stage of this fiasco so that really was probably the only reason that Oliver had ever agreed to it in the first place.

Of course, that was before he learned that Orlando had been determined to break the window of the car his way. You could drag as many shadows around a situation as you wanted but his loud chirp had blown any cover they had hoped to keep all to hell. That and it left Oliver with a constant ringing in his ear that he just knew wouldn't be going away any time soon. Compound that with the fact that his cohort seemed far less proficient in hot wiring a car than he had claimed had given more than adequate time for someone to call it in and the nearest member of the Lokale Politie to mosey on over and catch the two of them right in the act - yep, totally fucked. Orlando was still in the driver's seat, his head under the dash as he tried to work his magic and that left Oliver standing out in the open.

He knew he could have made a run for it, turned it on its head and corrected himself so it was You are so screwed but well, when you didn't have much in the way of friends you learned to stick by the ones you had. Even if they were shacking up with your mother. But well, when your mother still looked like she was your age, you couldn't really blame a guy... you just did your damned best to not think about it.

Oliver watched the approaching officer with a look of mild horror that was probably only accentuated by the alcohol in his bloodstream. "Fuck. Lando, we got company."

This looked so easy in the movies: cut some wires, twist them together, and boom. What you never really noticed though was that there were all kinds of different wires in all kinds of different colours, all bunched together in a tight bundle with no labels or anything like that. They also didn't tell you that most modern cars had things like immobilisers and other security measures to make it even harder, but Orlando was either too drunk or too stupid to realise that right now.

He'd gone with the red wires, and twisted them together with a grin of triumph; about a foot above his head, the windshield wipers had begun to thunk across the screen. So much for their stylish get-away from right under some Belgian polizhole's nose.

He smacked his head on the bottom of the steering wheel as he tried to escape the footwell of doom, which didn't hurt nearly as much as it should have; kind of a bad sign as far as sobriety was concerned. That was a bad sign. Still half folded-over, he peered out over the dashboard, his bright blue eyes wide with mild panic. His hand fumbled for the door handle, a few struggled tries needed before he finally managed to get the damned thing open.

"Cheese it, Ollie!" he proclaimed, tumbling half-way out of the door before he realised his safety belt was still plugged in.

At the sound of his name he turned and watched as his cohort almost made it out of the car on his own. A quick flare of his powers and the buckle of the seat belt let go, sending Lando into a glorious face plant on the street. Admittedly if Oliver had been just a few seconds earlier with that then the getaway would have been clean instead of... downright hilarious. It would have been hard not to laugh if sober so naturally being drunk made it all the worse. He managed to keep most of it in, through probably looked like he was going to explode at any moment as the snickering overtook him.

Not to be a total ass about the whole thing, Oliver did take the risk of ending up on the ground himself as he lowered a hand to help Lando up. For the moment at least the only being who was interested in upholding the law was forgotten, that was, until the man began speaking to them in a rather authoritative tone. Not a single word was understood but it sounded an awful lot like Stop whatever fuckery you are doing and let me arrest you. Granted, together they could have taken the officer out, single handedly if sober, but Oliver figured they'd already pulled enough attention to themselves. Adding Assaulting a Member of Law Enforcement didn't sound like a really great thing to have to explain to his mother... or their boss. The thought of him was enough to at least stop the barely contained laughter for the moment.

"I told you this was probably not the best idea."