08. Take a look around baby, yeah my whole crew's ugly

[dogbane]

CHARACTERS: Sirius Black, William Tsang, Sally Malik, Charles Xavier, and others TBD
LOCATION: Level 4 Lounge
WARNINGS: PG-13 for terrible language, inane violence, etc.
SUMMARY: After the lights come back on, a mild-mannered wizard is going for a quiet drink in the lounge when a medical doctor goes apeshit on him. The punchline apparently involves mutants and ghosts.
NOTES: Now also includes William in the brig.


The fourth floor lounge is one that William has almost actively avoided before. Four is an unlucky number, and he lets superstition get away with him more often these days than he did before. One of the many odd and unusual developments, post-reconnaissance, that he does not dwell on. Still, eventually, dwelling in familiar territory gets old; even for William Tsang, who prefers to be afraid of anything new, anything too old, and most of the grey shades in between.

The whisky bottle is slimy with cold condensation in his fingers. He is already fostering a mild but novel hangover headache.

The Chief Medical Officer is off-duty when he stumps into the lounge, too drunk to care for grace or a collected air, but far from off-balance, something pleasantly dead-eyed about the stare he sweeps through. He squints at the cracked mirrors, the chic luster of carpet and the glitzy vertebrate of stairs leading up to the empty stage. Each of the passenger levels' drinking establishments have a slightly different aesthetic and layout, but there is a remarkable sameness about everything, generally. Not much to be afraid of at all. He swivels his sights to the bar.

Comments

[darkart]

William is definitely formidable and for more dangerous than a muggle and a not insignificant amount of others, but wizards can make people die from across a field by pointing a stick at them. It's a different class of danger. Severus doesn't believe for an instant that Black wouldn't use lethal force if he felt like he could get away with it - or just lost his considerably unstable temper.

He looks at William for a while.

"Good."

That he's sorry, that it's not happening again; maybe less good that he didn't mean to in the first place, but Severus has taken care of that. Temporarily, anyway, the CMO won't be able to go on any more drunken escapades.

[dogbane]

It's true. What is William going to do with himself now that he can't drink, now that there isn't even a network to read through? He will have to take up new hobbies, bother Heather some more, feed his fish, study pharmacology.

Or you know, go completely insane. That's an option too. William studies the tops of the wizard's shoes for a little bit longer, then swings his eyes up to like crotch height, before realizing what he's doing. Severus' face again. "I'm giving it a go," he offers, eventually. "Being good," he means. He has had ninety percent less near-death experiences in the past few months, he's CMO now, he's learned things, he pays attention more; not the most, but more. He knows that it's important to Snape for people to be useful. "Can't say I come by it naturally, so."

'Sorry' again seems redundant; he doesn't finish.

[darkart]

He could take up knitting. Severus knows how to knit-- it's one of those difficult-to-avoid skills via osmosis if you hang out with Dumbledore enough. Maybe one day he'll admit to that without dying of embarrassment on the spot.

(...Stop staring at his dick, William.)

"You're fine at it," is not quite snapped, but does sound a bit like he's gone into his impatient teacher voice by accident, like William should know all this already, like everyone else knows it and he's being frustratingly slow to remember. "Stop trying to nail yourself to a cross over it in your head."

ooOPS

[dogbane]

It takes William a moment, but he puts the metaphorical hammer down and looks rather pleased to get to do it, either that or pleased about other matters in the context. He looks up. Not at Severus' crotch ok, this time at his sort of face region, although his neck is getting tired. Finally, he starts to pull himself all the way up again, fingers on the barrier, a little discombobulated still but not about to fall over.

"All right. I'll do that too." He'll try, anyway; it's a rather long-standing habit to break.

[darkart]

William had better bloody try-- Severus isn't exactly a great motivational speaker, that's about all he's got. He stares at the other man for a long moment, either contemplating whether or not he's going to say something else or merely counting paint molecules on the back of the brig cell.

After a while, he huffs out a breath that's only partially annoyed, and turns to leave.

[dogbane]

The paint molecules will certainly still be here for future perusal. William watches the wizard turn around, thinking this went better than in the hospital room, a little. It feels less off. It's nice to think they're getting used to the way things are, as much as that's ever applicable aboard the Tranquility.

"Thanks," floats after Severus, after the squeak of William sitting down on his cot again.