[MINGLE] Scout's Honor

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Hot Springs
WHEN: 21 Sept, after sunset
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn in your subject line as needed
NOTES: Details found here

---

It's been a strange, rough couple of months for our intrepid villagers — Bunkers, superpowers and clones, oh my! Perhaps the Observers are sympathetic to their plight, or maybe they just have a peculiar sense of humor. At any rate, they've set up a gathering space chalk full of summer camp goodness, no strings attached. Not that anyone knows that part.

Just before sunset, a cheery message pops up on wrist devices all across the settlement and beyond. The instructions seem simple enough, although one does have to wonder at what dubious gift awaits them all after everything is said and done.

Marshmallows are on the house, so grab yourself a stick, strap on a sash and get to roasting, villagers. Skinny dipping, sing-alongs and friendship bracelets optional.

Comments

[spoileralert]

Steph just raises an eyebrow as the man begins to strip. It's a hot spring, of course he doesn't want to be fully dressed. And while she doesn't like being used for a glorified ashtray, she's willing to put up with it for just a minute.

Then he pulls his boxers off and Steph feels like she's in an episode of the Office, staring into the camera.

"Not anymore I don't," she answers flatly.

[quinientos]

Vasquez laughs a little, reaching for the cigarette with one hand, the other going to cover up the more personal bits of him. "What, you'd rather I go dive into the water with my clothes on? That's not very hygienic," he clucks his tongue at her, as if he's expecting her to know better when he doesn't even know the woman.

He's quick enough to get in the water, careful to keep his cigarette out of it so it doesn't get wet, gesturing to the room around him. "I don't bite," he promises.

[spoileralert]

"I do," she warns darkly. She doesn't know this guy, and she doesn't know how big a threat he might be. And yet...

"And not in the good way. Try anything and I'll break your arm." She starts taking her clothes off, keeping a hand on the staff hidden behind her back and making sure it isn't visible. She only gets down to her underwear, keeping a highly suspicious eye on him the whole time. If he's looking and can make them out in the shadows she has dozens of scars across her whole body to back up her willingness and ability to attack.

She slips into the water, making sure her clothes (and staff) are within reach.

[quinientos]

He's not insulted or scared. If anything, he laughs warmly, because he never did learn self-preservation, so when someone who probably could beat the shit out of him makes a warning, he laughs. One day, it'll catch up to him, but right now, he's just going to enjoy himself.

"Don't worry, chica, your virtue is safe, I just want a good soak," he promises, hands up above the waterline so she can see that he's not doing anything inappropriate.

He even makes a show of turning his eyes because sure, it's nice to look at beautiful things, but not if they don't want. That's a quick way to get something broken. "Do I get a name?" he supposes.

[spoileralert]

The fastest way, probably. She sinks down in the water to her chin, doing her best to relax. It's exhausting being on-guard all the time.

"Steph," she supplies, a little less defensive.

"You?"

[quinientos]

"Vasquez," he replies, which is a half truth of a name, because it's not completely him, but he's not sure he plans to give that up to anyone here, not when he barely gave that to anyone back home since he left his parents and his sisters. She reminds him, a little, of them.

He watches the way she sits there and huffs out a laugh, shaking his head. "Are you going to stay that way the whole time? Bubbling under, like you might sink?"

[spoileralert]

She lowers her head until her mouth is submerged so she can blow some actual bubbles, then raises it again.

"Maybe. I'm not ruling it out." The water feels amazing, and she can't imagine a reason to get out even a little bit.

[quinientos]

He laughs at her motion, feeling strange to sit in still water like this. He's an adult, he knows, but there's something very childish and freeing about sitting like this in a tub. He sinks a little himself, though he doesn't go fully under. What's strange is how his arm doesn't pinch and hurt, but he doesn't pay that much mind.

"Before this place, I couldn't get a bath like this in so long," he laments. "This is a luxury, I don't think even half of everyone else understands how much."

[spoileralert]

"The wonders of the modern age," Steph agrees, though she realizes she's a little too low to talk and has to rise another inch.

"I missed electric lighting on day one. Not to mention microwaves."

[quinientos]

He gives her a slightly wary look, because that's definitely not his version of modern, so he thinks now he has to come up against this explanation (again). "Modern for me means the Gatling gun," he says, even if the thing brings dark memories with it.

"Electric lighting, we have some of that too," he boasts, even though he really had no hand in it, back home.

[spoileralert]

She frowns, searching her memory for a point of reference.

"That would put you... mid-19th century, yeah?"

[quinientos]

"1879. Probably," he adds, because the truth is that he'd been in hiding long enough to not really know what year it had been, because that's not the thing you care about when your life might be on the line.

"Why, what year was it for you?" he prods, stretching his arms out while still making sure not to prod her.

[spoileralert]

"2004," she answers simply. She's more interested in 19th century life than she is in bragging about modern technology... or even wondering why he isn't sure what year it is. It's not like they had cellphones with calendars in 1879.

"1879... America, yeah? What part?"

[quinientos]

"Rose Creek, California." At least, that's where he'd last been on the map, though he'd been in the mountains before that trying to hide away before Sam Chisolm had found him. "Shitty little dusty town that some shitty real estate asshole wanted," he says, a lot of English words considering he wants to swear properly in Spanish.

Lot of death, all for one man, at least Vasquez got to dispense of some of his men in the process. "It's not so nice, back then."

[spoileralert]

She nods, humming her agreement. California was not a particularly safe place to be in the 1870s, she knows.

"It's not gonna get a lot better any time soon. You should stock up on booze while you can." Prohibition was not a fun time for anyone.

[quinientos]

"Any hints on where I can find it?" Vasquez would much rather have cigarettes over alcohol, but at the same time, he doesn't want to say no to something being freely offered, so it would be nice.

"Because, a little dip in the hot springs, a beautiful woman, a good conversation," he lists, "it all gets better when there's alcohol."

[spoileralert]

Steph rolls her eyes, though she's certainly amused.

"I don't know. I'm 17, I don't drink."

[quinientos]

Vasquez squints at her, like he doesn't understand and there's something that's not computing. "So?" he prompts, because seventeen shouldn't mean anything. "I started drinking when I was fourteen. Most people do, if not younger."

He knows he's seen children at twelve with liquor, because it's a way to burn away some of the disease.

[spoileralert]

“Right.” She rolls her eyes, annoyed with herself. She knew the drinking age was a recent thing, really she did.

“In my time you’re not allowed to drink until you’re 21.”

[quinientos]

He squints at her, thinking that this is something that sounds very sad and awful to him, which he thinks shows in his face. "If you ever go back home to this, you should probably think about doing something to change it. It's not a very good rule, why shouldn't teenagers have it, learn how it affects them?"

[spoileralert]

Steph just shrugs.

"It's 18 in Europe. But the reason is that it can cause permanent damage to a growing person's brain. Also it's addictive and will destroy your liver."

[quinientos]

These are all things that Vasquez has never heard before, but now that she says it, he thinks back to all the liquor-soaked assholes he's come across. He'd always just thought it was a product of who they were, but maybe it's this alcohol.

He'd always been more partial to smoking than drinking, but then, that's him. "But it puts you in a good mood and makes you have a good time," he argues, like this is the most important thing to know.

[spoileralert]

"Technically what it does is lower your inhibitions, make your brain think it's getting something good and make sex worse all around. Which is a bummer, I guess, if you went out hoping to get laid." With a nurse for a mother Steph really knows a lot more about this sort of stuff than she needs to. And then there's her father's shining negative example.

"And it's definitely not good times for everyone. I doubt angry drunks are having a particularly good time."

[quinientos]

"I mostly drank to make friends and to see if I could win some gambling," Vasquez admits, because on the one point, he does agree. Sex with alcohol, it's not so good, but kissing? He thinks that kissing is extremely good, those sensations that make him flush and warm. Shame that the night in Rose Creek never led anywhere with anyone, but it is what it is.

"I'm a very happy drunk," he admits. "You get enough in me, it's all jokes, all laughs. I've seen angry drunks, though. Sad ones, too," he says, thinking of Billy the night that Goodnight had left.

[spoileralert]

"Well," she shrugs, more than happy to move the subject away from angry drunks.

"You can see why I'm not more gung-ho about lowering the drinking age. Not super excited about trying it myself, either. Seems like more trouble than it's worth."