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

[doggedly]

"Me?" Sirius snarls, incredulously, "exactly how have I been a tit, when you're the arsehole that came stomping in here--"

The loud pitch of his own voice makes his head ache, and he cuts himself off again with another sharp intake of breath, sagging back against Sally a little. He does not, as a note, appreciate the intervention, or the fact that she's holding him back. He especially does not appreciate Charles bloody Xavior shouting at him like he's some disobedient kid. And his head hurts, and all the little bits of glass prick at his skin, ow fucking ow, and he struggles, vaguely, to get free of Sally, to try and heave himself to his feet.

This somehow changes the angle in which he's looking at William, and it's then that he puts it together. "Oh, god--" It comes out more of a groan than anything else. "You're CMO."

As in, Remus' CMO. Love potioned or mad--absolutely mad, that's terribly obvious after this encounter--also made of stone, sometimes, and shrinkable, and-- "Get him out of here, before I-- nghfkh," and , argh argh argh, Sirius sinks back against Sally again, dizzy.

[forgodssake]

Glance with Sally settles those hackles, a minor nod of understanding and thanks, and Charles can concentrate downward while Sally keeps a hold of Sirius. There's glass and booze everywhere, the whole place stinking like paint stripper, all individual notes of subtlety washed out into pure chemical stench.

"Can you stand?" he asks of William, somewhat privately, shy of using actual telepathy to do so. "Careful--"

But he is admittedly distracted, a look sent Sirius' way, an icy, splintery sharpness in his regard that he usually reserves for more personal conflicts. He can see it plainly, that William attacked him like a crazy person out of nowhere, that William is very hammered, that Sirius could have done a great deal worse than he did. These are all points in his favour.

An image cuts through Sirius Black's dizziness -- it's a memory shoved to the forefront of his mind as abruptly as an open palmed slap. Black paint, white paint, the tip of his knife dragging lines through the face shape of Severus Snape's mural in deliberate crossing etches. On Xavier's end, he of course sees it too. He also feels it. Whatever steadying hand he has on William digs fingertips in, briefly.

"Before you what, exactly?" is sharp. Now that no one's hitting each other.

[unmakes]

She lets Sirius shrug free, decently sure by now that he's not going to do any more lunging. Not in the shape he's in. In fact, she's standing up just after him and she can already spot the blood in his hair - from the first mug to the head, though Sally herself has no idea what went down. Just that it ended up like this.

When he sags back into her, a foot slips back to brace against his weight, but she doesn't grab hold of him beyond setting a hand on his shoulder blade like 'I've got you' because if it's any kind of solid grip he'll just be an ass and shrug it off again anyway.

The brief telepathic exchange is lost on Sally, but Charles's sharp tone isn't. She gives him a look, like 'he can barely freaking stand up, are you seriously going to pull this shit right now?' (which, ironically, is probably exactly what he picks up from her head, little does she know). What actually comes out of her mouth is, "Not to undermine exactly how important half-drunk dick-waving actually is, but can this wait?" There's something a little sharp in her own tone, but it's less threat and more of a quiet urgency.

[dogbane]

William stands shortly after he's asked. He looks incredibly unsteady, and that would appear to be partly from trying to parse too many things at once (increasingly lumpy belly, also the thin rivulets of blood soaking through his shirt, not high-pressure enough to be arterial flow) as well as because he's drunk. Brain damage remains debatable. He does have regeneration, you know. Physical injury of any kind shouldn't really last very long, especially not as long as he's fancied Snape.

He stops examining himself after a few seconds. The pain is a dull, rhythmic roar beyond the fog of inebriation, and his hangover hasn't improved, in case anybody is concerned. "I'm the bloke who kicked your arse," he informs Sirius, not very informatively. "Kind of doubt the whole healing profession's got any relevance right now, you floppy prick." The look he shoots Sally isn't very kind either; has a curl of a sneer to his lip, offended by her lame hair and hard shoes and skeezy support of unequivocal idiots, a look which is terribly uncharacteristic for people who know William day-to-day. So is breaking bottles on cute boys' heads, though. Busting and cute boys' heads usually involves

i'M SO TIRED GUYS B U TI'M TAGGING ANYWAY. LIKE A HERO.

Fortunately for everybody, Charles Xavier is here. Onto you, Charles.