♫ | ???
“Mmm…that would probably do it. Loyalty and all. I wouldn’t order anything if I were you, no telling what she’ll do to it before it gets to you. Spit might be the least of your worries.” Lorna watched the grin falter, attention shifting from him to the DJ momentarily. “Is he really that bad? I…” Can’t tell. She didn’t want to say that out loud, since she knew absolutely nothing about that sort of music. It wasn’t bad; it just wasn’t what she usually listened to when she got the chance.
Maybe she was missing something, and this guy could fill her in. “Look. The usual places that I hang out still play REO Speedwagon and Led Zepplin on a real, old-fashioned jukebox. People wear biker boots and black leather jackets and break pool sticks over each other’s backs. This is…a bit different.” And truthfully, most of them were mutant run, mutant safe bars – they didn’t have the means to make things fancy.
But…jackpot maybe. The guy seemed to recognize the kid he was looking for, or at least thought he might. “You’re a DJ too?” Casual, friendly conversation while he searched his phone. After that revelation, she was really glad she hadn’t said she anything negative about what the guy in the DJ booth was playing. Awkward.
Lorna watched his face while he scrolled through the photos, waiting on some flash of recognition that he’d stumbled upon the one he wanted. The kid she was looking for needed a lucky break, and then only way he was going to get it was if they found him before Sentinel Services did.
“Yeah, that’s him. When was this taken?” It had to have been shortly after the explosion at his house, because the kid looked freaked out in the picture. His eyes were too wide, face too pale, but it was definitely him. At least the rumors had been right, and this one was one of the places he liked to hang out. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but then shut it just as quickly.
Mutant involvement if the rumor’s right.
Eyes drifted from the picture on his phone and back up to his face, trying to gauge what sort of tone hid behind the words. Mutant involvement. Then a sigh, one that had Lorna chewing on the inside of her lip to keep from saying something she’d regret.
It didn’t work.
“You don’t like mutants?” The question was casual, tone not laced with the tension she felt on the inside. “This other kid… do you think the two of them were together?” If they were, it made sense. Probably trying to steal equipment to buy food or bus tickets. Lorna knew more than one mutant who’d had to resort to crime in order to live – or start new somewhere else. “Did they get away with anything?”
IT FELT LIKE a loaded question. You don’t like mutants? Hell, since 7/15 it was a loaded question. One that had to be answered very carefully because one wrong word and everything could go wrong - at least for someone in his position. Say he didn’t like them and he had the mutant rights people plastering his face all over their propaganda about how he’s a bad influence on the youth (he’d argue he already was, but still). Say he did and then there was the humanity first types digging into his past and it wouldn’t take much work to fit together the jigsaw - especially if they got hold of his medical records. So despite her casual tone, Rattle wasn’t going to rush headlong into answering that. “I really wish there was a clear yes or no answer I could give you for that.” It’s a swerve, a response a politician would be proud of, but it’s honest. He couldn’t say no - other mutants hadn’t done anything to him or his family. But he couldn’t say yes because his life was miserable because of just one mutant. Himself.
The smile he offers is apologetic and he pulls his phone back to zoom out on the whole picture, scanning the blurred faces for any that rang bells that might know more, but everyone present was a stranger. “It certainly looks like they’re together, they certainly weren’t payin’ any attention to me.” Normally when he got his phone camera out, the crowd were desperate to get into the picture, but the boys looked deep in conversation. Idly he thumbed to the next photo, taken the same night, conspicuously lacking the boys. “They didn’t hang around after that first photo either. They were gone by the time the set hit one-fifty.” A brief pause before fumbled to catch himself. “BPM, not… time. That’s about half an hour in.” A hand comes up to his jaw, blunt fingernails dragging through the stubble on his chin as he thinks back. “That puts that photo at two saturdays ago, around the 10pm mark.”
His train of thought is interrupted, however, by the bartender finally slinking her way back along the bar, shooting him a dirty look instead of asking him what he wanted. “Diet coke, in a sealed can, Lucinda. And if you shake that fuckin’ thing I’ll spray it over you.” It went down like a lead balloon.
The phone was slipped back into his pocket, leaving it unable to receive messages until he at least got back home. He knows he’ll have to deal with it all eventually, just not now. “They managed to snag a pair of headphones worth a couple hundred, but if they’re plannin’ on selling them he’s gonna have a hard time, they’re covered in traceable forensic water marks. No respectable pawn shop’s gonna touch anythin’ that hot, not unless they want the police breathing down their necks.”
A pause follows and Rattle chews on his bottom lip, wordlessly watching as the bartender slides him his requested drink - still sealed and not shaken (from what he could see) before she passes on by towards the opposite end of the bar from where she’d been sulking. “Look, I can put two and two together. Kid’s in trouble, ain’t he? I’m guessin’ there’s authorities involved and - no offence - but you don’t look like concerned family.” He holds the can at arm’s length, pointing it away from himself while pulling the ring just in case Lucinda did shake it. Nothing but a faint hiss and he brings it back, taking a mouthful. “And no, I ain’t gonna say anythin’ to anyone. None of my business.”