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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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."

"Yeah," Hurley says. He puts down the cards and strokes his beard. "It is."

Hurley starts doling out the cards again.

"So do you know anything about that Xavin chick?" he asks, trying to sound casual. "She's pretty cute, right?"

"I've seen her around." Scanlan had a bit of an amused smile on his lips. "Yeah, she's cute. Why? You got a thing for her?"

"No, I'm just asking about her," he says, looking at his cards and trying to sound Totally Not Interested In Xavin At All. Hurley is a terrible liar. "Do you know anything about her beyond her being cute and nice?"

Yep, he liked her. "She likes coffee." And she was a little weird, but who wasn't, really?

"You know, I make a great wing-man."

"Yeah, she's good at that, too," Hurley says. He's going to have to squeeze information from someone else.

"What, are you offering to help me?"

"Yeah, I am." It didn't hurt Scanlan was kind of bored. "I can find out whatever you'd like and talk you up - what do you want to know about her?"

He could be really persuasive when he wanted to be.

Hurley thinks about this.

"What she likes, what she doesn't like, where she's from, whether or not she likes guys--"

That one could be important because he'd be off the table immediately if she didn't.

"--her favorite foods, how she feels about music..."

Hurley feels like he can go on for another ten minutes, but he should probably cut himself off while he's still ahead. Scanlan had volunteered for the position. He couldn't expect him to submit Xavin to a full-on full life interrogation.

"So basically you want the full run-down. Got it." This wasn't his first rodeo, although maybe it had been a long, long while since Scanlan actually helped someone else find a partner. "You want me to try to find out if she has any baggage too?"

"Like, emotional baggage?"

A beat, and then:

"No, that stuff doesn't really matter. Everyone's got baggage, right?"

At least Hurley thinks so. He's definitely got baggage, so he can't go around expecting Xavin to not have any.

"Can you find out her favorite number, though?"

There's the real important question.

He blinked. "Uh... sure." Scanlan had no idea why a number, but he wasn't one to judge people on their kinks - his were wide and well ranged. "Into math, huh? Kinky." He smiled teasingly. He could poke a little fun though.

"Yeah, math," Hurley says, because it's not worth explaining it.

"I really owe you one, dude."

[GP/EP] Check-in Day

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