Mid-Life Crisis

[Gryle]

Irv parked his car in the front of the Bar None. He needed a drink, several drinks. Actually what he needed was to regain a grip on reality and his own sanity. Admittedly, drowning himself in alcohol probably wasn't the best way to go about this, but he didn't much care. If the world planned on unraveling, he'd damn well unravel with it. Steeling his composure he got out of his car and walked into the bar.

He glanced around as he walked to his usual stool at the far corner of the bar. There were a lot of new faces here, customers and staff. "Constants aren't, variables won't" he groused to himself as he sat down. He whistled the bartender. "Barkeep! Gimme a black and tan, house decides." Irv grabbed a handful of pretzels and munched on them. There, now he wasn't drinking on an empty stomach.

[BrennaLaRosa]

Nessa didn't like drinking alone. But, Ben was out with his real girlfriend and the Gumbies were lollygagging. So, she was going to have to, at least, start alone. She sat at the bar with a hard cider, starting small, and a notebook full of brief musings about her dreams.

--Spires. Really tall and sparkly. Crash, tinkle, no more towers.
--Three Daemon dreams in the past week.
--What the hell do peanuts have to do with killing monsters?
--Turn the lavender mead.
--Why do I keep seeing prisms?

They were getting weirder and weirder. None of them were as bad as the D-Day one, but it was costing her sleep. She had a reputation to maintain and she was losing it. She sighed and looked down the bar, noticing Dr. Barsama looking like hell.

"You look like I feel," she said, "How you holding up, Dr. B?"

[Gryle]

Irv looked up from his black and tan down to the young lady talking to him. "Knew I should have gone home to drink." he thought. She wasn't a grad student, not one of his anyway. Undergraduate? One his current students? She knew his name, but then again half the campus knew who he was after the sprinkler incident in the spring "Smile, nod, and guess her name later." he thought to himself.

"Long week. Planing on putting a couple of these away," he said, hoisting his drink, "then I'm going home to sleep off this entire week and tackle it again on Monday."

[BrennaLaRosa]

"Sleep," said Vanessa, "I used to know what that was. Look on the bright side, you have a home to go to. There's poor saps out there who have to sleep off hangovers in alleys." She reached over with a plum-nailed hand, "I'm Vanessa."

Nessa thought of prisms again. Clearly, she wasn't buzzed enough.

[Gryle]

"Just make it to graduation, then you'll find out what sleep is again." Irv shrugged his shoulders and shook Vanessa's hand. "I'd introduce myself, but apparently you already know me."

Irv turned back to his black-and-tan and took another large swallow. He eyed the alcohol level in his glass. Slumping over the counter, he whistled to the bartender again. "Barkeep, I'm gonna need another one of these. Maybe two."

[BrennaLaRosa]

"Only because you have my older sister in your class and she hauls me around campus on alternating high holy days," said Nessa, "You may or may not know her. Mohini Vemulakonda, dyes her hair with hazard cone orange streaks and wears way too much tie-dye."

One would never know it. Vanessa looked...downright normal next to Mohini. She had a face like she fell out of a travel brochure for Athens or Mumbai, the sort that pushed the nightlife and fine dining and casinos. Even in jeans and a t-shirt that declared herself a "code monkey", she was hardly anything to scare the neighbors.

She took a swig of her drink. "It's been a weird week for everybody, I guess."

[Gryle]

Irv racked his brain for a moment and then chuckled into his second black and tan. "Oh yes, I know her. I used her hair to explain atomic spectral lines to the class." He sipped his drink. "What will I do next semester? Maybe I could die my own hair. Something temporary or I'd have to cut it off. Maybe I could cover over it it over, or give it a solvent bath. Something weak enough to attack a binding polymer but not destroy the skin..." he trailed off, lost in thought, his eyes somewhere else. It was obvious that he was no longer speaking to anyone but himself.

[BrennaLaRosa]

Nessa blinked in utter confusion. "Well, if you wanted, the Sally's Beauty Supply down on Painted Lady Drive has these little clip in streaks for a dollar a stripe. No peroxide required, though they're a pain in the ass with curly hair. I think Mo tried to explain spectri-whatzits to me once, but I got a migraine. I've got no head for anything that can't speak binary or ferment into something intoxicating."

[Gryle]

Focused on his train of thought Irv became vaguely aware of someone talking to him. He scrunched his eyes together and turn back to Vanessa, blinking. "I'm sorry, I went somewhere else. What were you saying?" Apparently the beer was taking hold faster than he'd anticipated.

[Gryle]

Irv paused, as his conscious catches up with his subconscious and Vanessa's last sentences become coherent to him. "Clip-in, huh?" He grinned, a little lopsided. "I could do a whole hydrogen spectrum. Thanks, Double-V." Irv brightened with the artificial cheer of alcohol and hoisted his black-and-tan a little. "To Double-V and her brilliant hair clippy idea! To hair clippies! Coming through in a pinch." He turned around on his stool and leaned his back against the bar, slouching into his chair. He held his beer a-loft. "To the Bar None, the best watering hole in town," he announced. "Even when you lose your mind and hallucinate plastic monsters wrecking your lab, the Bar None will let you wash your delusions in lovely ethanol." He took a large swig from his black-and-tan and his lopsided grin broadened into a dopey intoxicated smile.

[Kol]

The door to the Bar None proved suspiciously resistant to Mara's attempts to open it; she fumbled with the knob and pulled with all her might, but the door remained closed, barring her from her rightful tithe of alcohol. These things never happened to Lynn, Mara was sure; it was on the back of her addled mind that she wasn't quite drunk enough not to be bitter towards her cousin, who could still be of use, even if she turned into a gigantic hairball in order to do so.

That image, complete with Reed running away in disgust and terror, got her giggling. And Mara giggling, particularly after two bars, was enough to trigger a curious lightening in her skull. Catching herself as she stumbled forward, she controlled the movement to leaned heavily on the door. And it magically sprang open, revealing the blessed sight of more booze to her half vision.

She was quite sure she had misplaced one of the contact lenses somewhere along the pub crawl, but who needed to see anything besides the next beer glass? 

"Deon," Mara slurred dramatically, one hand pushing her now brown curls back from her flushed face to better see (half-blurred, but with that shocking hair color, she knew the figure to be Deon, and that was all that mattered at the moment) her drinking accomplice and the other hold the door open. The door wobbled as she teetered forward, stumbling into the bar with a hazy grin on her face. "You have the best ideas ever."

[Sage]

"I know.  I do.  Always," her companion emphasized, speaking not only with smugness, but with the lingering smell of whiskey on his breath.  Deon clapped his hand over Mara's shoulder, moreso to use her to for support than for anything else.   

After the thick door swung shut behind them, he narrowed his eyes and gave the bar a quick once-over.  A sour grimace best conveyed his evaluation.  "What a dump.  Man.  Ditching you if we have to stay longer than ten minutes." 

[BrennaLaRosa]

Vanessa giggled and raised her glass. "To science!"

Then she caught the plastic monsters bit.

"Plastic monsters, huh? No shit. I get that sometimes." She glanced down at her notes. Peanuts. Daemon slaying. Oh, boy. Not here, not tonight, Mara was going to have a cow. "What'd they look like? Purely empirical curiosity on my side, mind. I don't mean to pry."

[Gryle]

Irv fell silent, somewhat sobered by what he'd just done. He had admitted, out-loud, to another living breathing individual, that he, Irving Barsama, was seeing monsters. He turned to look at his accidental confidant. A barely-discernible voice in the back of his mind said to trust this girl, but his self-preservation was telling him to play it off as a drunk's misunderstood ramblings.

"Oh they're not real monsters. They're, wassa word, analog...no, algeous...metaphorical!" he said, delighted at having found the right word. "I try to make better plastic, but they come out all warped. Can't control bond-angles or tensile strength. All monstrously difficult." He smiled at Vanessa. "But enough with the crazy drunken old man." Irv flung his hand out and pointed in a random direction. "You should be out livin' it up. So go!" He flashes what he hopes is his most charming smile.

[Kol]

The gesture only captured Mara's hazy attention. She made her way deeper into crowd, eyes latched onto a very familiar blob at the bar. "'Essah!" She slurred happily. Deon could leave if he wanted-- Vanessa always had good alcohol!

She abruptly ceased all motion five feet before the girl, realizing her friend was not alone. For a moment she stared at the man, wondering why Vanessa could be drinking with someone so out of their age group. Realizing she was rude, Mara raised a hand for a quick, timid little wave to this new man, pursing her lips as her mind sluggishly worked at why he seemed distantly familiar.

It wasn't so much the face, but how he held himself, as if she had seen him from afar many times. Perhaps he was a doctor she had seen visiting her dad in the hospital? It would explain why he was somewhat familiar...

Her eyes brightened as she latched onto that idea. Doctors could afford the good stuff. No wonder Vanessa was hanging out with him!

"I didn't realize you had company,"  Mara smiled, lips tweaking more mischievously than suggestively.  Her face, be it from the light of the bar or the relaxing effects of the alcohol, was far more approachable than the typical bitter scowl. "I hope I'm not barging in on anything interesting."