strangetrip | [GP/EP] Check-in Day

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[GP/EP] Check-in Day

It was a musical day at the Madonna Inn, both inside and out. Curnen had taken her usual place up on the roof and was singing charms to the sky to keep any wanderers from getting lost (though that part of it was not immediately obvious). Unrelated to that, Sunny was on the dance floor in the bar, summoning songs of her own with her knife to keep her moving before she went to do her shift at the library later. It was one of those days where if she thought about it too hard she’d start thinking about that empty bed in her shitty room and the person she most wanted to be there.

This of course eventually seeped into her magic. She knew better. Maybe she’d even wanted that to happen.

Because just once, between different pop hits and dance beats came a rather unexpected French love song. She sighed and rolled her eyes, but the exasperation didn’t last. Before the lyrics started up she was waltzing. By herself and not caring how it might have looked. And for those three and a half minutes, she dared let herself hope for the slimmest chance that Orlu might come through that door.

She didn’t let herself hope too hard, though. There was admitting to feeling things and there was setting yourself up for certain disappointment. She’d lived too long with disappointment to do that to herself.

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"We playing strip poker? Three-Dragon Ante? Gambit of Ord?" Scanlan sauntered up and climbed up on the chair across from Hurley. As per usual, his lute was strung across his back. Today he had a beret on.

All the card game names are utterly unfamiliar to Hurley. Minus poker, which he does know how to play. He's just not interested in the stripping part.

"Trust me, you don't want to see me naked," he says. "And no offense, I'm not sure I want to see you naked, either."

He had beaten Sawyer at cards before, but he didn't want to risk it if this guy was a better player.

"If we're not doing poker, you're going to have to teach me the others, 'cause I don't know them."

Hurley sets the cards down on the table. "Your choice."

"Don't knock it 'til you try it." He shrugged. Scanlan had covered all forms of the human make body in his early years of life. There wasn't many humanoids or things he wouldn't sleep with.

"Suit yourself though." Who was he to judge, really? " Let's play poker so I don't have to slaughter you too bad." He winked, a cocky expression on his face.

"Maybe some other time," Hurley says with regards to strip poker. He's pretty sure that time is going to be never.

Hurley starts dealing out the cards. "Let's keep it basic. No complicated rules. No cheating, either."

Hurley looks down at his card. Ace of Hearts, Jack of Spdes, Nine of Hearts, Six of Clubs, Six of Diamonds. Not a good hand, that's for sure.

Still, Hurley manages to keep a respectable poker face.

"Where are you from, anyway?"

Scanlan was not so good with the slight of hand stuff. He also had a terrible history with gambling and losing.

His own hand wasn't much better. Nine and Jack of diamonds, king of hearts, five of spades, and four of hearts. What was this?

"Exandria. Land of dragons and wizards and handsome Gnome bards - well, it was until I came here."

"I'm going to assume that's like, some Lord of the Rings stuff. Do you have hairy feet?"

Maybe this guy is a hobbit.

No way he was going to get a flush, so Hurley ditches the Ace, Jack, and Nine. Maybe he'd luck out and get three of a kind. He pulls three cards. Six of Hearts, Five of Clubs, Four of Diamonds.

Maybe his luck has changed.

"I was trapped on an island," Hurley says helpfully. "It was pretty crazy. Smoke Monsters, The Others, the Dharma Initiative."

"Hairy feet?" Scanlan made a face. "Uh, no. Though Halflings sometimes do if they're more rural. I'm just short.

Scanlan got rid of two and pulled out a Nine of Spades and and an Eight of Diamonds. He shuffled his hand around:

Two 9s was goof. A 8,9, Jack and King could be useful if he got a 10 and Queen. He also had three diamonds. Huh.

"Islands, huh. You defeat the monster?"

"Weird," Hurley says. He has no idea what Scanlan is. The only gnomes he knows of are the garden-type variety with the red hat, and Scanlan's definitely missing the standard hat.

"There's probably no defeating that thing. Just comes out of nowhere and does creepy stuff. I haven't seen it, but some other people have."

Hurley re-arranges his cards. He could easily go for a flush, but with two cards and only one draw left, it probably wasn't the best idea.

Hurley rummages through his pockets to see what he has to bet. 75 cents. Not exactly a high roller, but it wasn't like there was a lot of money on the island. Or any use for it.

He tosses it on the table.

"What were you doing before you got here? I mean, other than fighting dragons?" Hurley assumed he was fighting dragons based on his limited exposure to them from Lord of the Rings. What else did you do with them? Smaug seemed like an asshole.

Edited 2018-05-15 19:13 (UTC)

Scanlan looked at the coins. He had never really seen those kind before, but they looked like silver pieces, sort of, so he put three of his own with the Marquesian symbol on it.

He got rid of two cards and ended up with a 10 of diamonds and... a two a clubs. Great.

"Well, I guess it's now or never, huh?" Scanlan placed his cards on the table. A pair of nines and that was it. He had been close, though.

"Three of a kind," Hurley says, laying down his hand. He scoops up the foreign coins along with his 75 cents and sets it aside. Probably not the best win of his life, but it was still good enough. Good enough was really all Hurley needed right now.

Hurley starts shuffling the cards for another hand.

"Your girlfriend," Hurley begins, because he's pretty sure Pike's his girlfriend, even if neither one of them had said so explicitly. "She told me that where you guys are from there's curses. Do you believe in them?"

It took him a moment to figure out who he was talking about. Pike? Well, Scanlan wished Pike was his girlfriend. He was pretty sure he messed that up entirely, even if she said she wanted to go on a date with him. He didn't correct Hurley though.

"Yeah. I've seen enough of them in my day. Some can be pretty bad. Others are curable with a good cleric like Pike."

Hurley finishes shuffling the cards --

"I'm pretty sure I'm cursed," he says. "She said she'd look into it, but I don't know if it's like, a fantasy-world-curse-thing."

-- and then starts dealing them out.

"You have the lotto where you come from?" Hurley's not sure. He can't really see Legolas and Ghimli buying scratch-offs.

Scanlan looked at the cards: Queen of diamonds, King of Clubs, 9 of Spades and then a 4 and 7 of hearts.

...really?

"I've never heard of a lot-to before and I've been around the block a few times... what is it?" And how did it relate to curses?

"It's uh--"

Hurley has to think on how to explain this. Explaining things isn't exactly his forte.

"--a gambling thing. Like this but on a bigger scale. Everyone chooses a bunch of number, and puts their money into the pot. Then whoever's numbers gets chosen gets to keep all the money. If no one's numbers gets chosen, then the pot carries over to the next week."

He pulls up his cards. Better hand than it was before, that's for sure, but it's not gonna work without discarding a few of them.

Hurley discards two cards and draws another two.

"Where's the fun in that? Is there some sort of skill involved in picking the number? Can you get hints fro people?" Even with cards and dice there was some sort of feeling of skill involved.

Scanlan discards all the ones except the King and Queen.

Hurley discards only one card this time.

"No, it's all completely random," he says. Now that Scanlan talks about it...

"There's no real fun in it. The only real fun is imagining what you'll do with the money if you win, and I ended up winning. 114 million dollars."

Hurley throws in the money he won from Scanlan into the pot.

Scanlan had a lot of coin to spare so he matches it easily. "Did all your dreams come true?"

Scanlan decided to reveal his cards. He had... another pair. This time two Kings.

"No, all this bad stuff started happening to me."

Hurley lays out his hand. 8-7-6-5-4. All different suits, but still a better hand. It's annoying how he's sitting here talking about curses and still seems to have good luck.

"I'm pretty sure the plane crash happened because of me," he says. "A lot of other things happened though, like a meteor hitting this chicken shack I own."

Hurley pulls the pot back onto his side.

"You know how often that happens? Never."

"A friend of mine here was cursed. Percy. You should ask him about it." Scanlan had helped him become uncursed, thank-you-very-much. "And technically my best friend, too, but he's not here. But what I do know is everything has a solution. Sometimes the solution sucks balls, though." Like dissolving a cursed gun into acid. Okay, so that had been a little fun for Scanlan.

"Maybe you're just unlucky? Or maybe all those bad things actually led to better things?"

"Some people would say it led to better things," Hurley says. More money. "But I'd just say it led to worse."

Hurley starts gathering his cards.

"Why isn't this Percy guy your best friend anymore? You guys friend-breakup or something?"

"He's never been my best friend." He said it almost too quickly. Oops. "He's a friend. Like family. My best friend is Grog." And Vax, too. Grog was probably the reason why Scanlan liked Hurley so much almost just on prinicple alone.

"We're friends again, anyways." He had his stuff back, Percy had shot him. Things were back to normal now.

Hurley can kind of get that. He wouldn't consider Kate or Jack or Sawyer to be his best friend, but they were all kinda his family. You probably couldn't be stranded on a desert island with someone for two months without either becoming family or worst enemies. Thankfully, Hurley didn't make enemies easily.

"Is Grog here?" he asks, shuffling the cards.

"No." Sadly. "You'd notice him when he does get here though. He's over eight and a half inches tall and made of muscles. Plus he's loud and gets angry a lot. He'd be a hard guy to miss."

Hurley can relate to the whole being out of place thing, even if he's not eight feet tall and made of pure muscle.

"I feel like this place is a resort for supermodels and I'm just one of the people who got dropped off here by mistake," Hurley says. It's not an attempt to be self-pitying, it's really how he feels.

"There's a lot of hot people here. Looking not-hot is pretty abnormal."

"Not everyone can be as good-looking as me," Scanlan nodded as if to say 'it's hard, I know'. It was arrogance mixed with a lot of confidence. "But you're not too bad. Look at your -" Scanlan looked at Hurley and paused, gesturing for a minute and needing think on his feet. "Your beard is pretty sweet."

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