Once upon a December ...

[dont_go_west]

There's something in the air. Something like ... a sense of yellow tinted blur, with unusually high contrast between light and dark! There might even be cross-dissolves.

Could this be a flashback?

Comments

[latino_menace]

Ramon's outside and not in a particularly good mood. People in the bar are pissing him off just by being there, which is why he'd come outside for a smoke.

Seeing that he's not alone out here either kind of makes his mood worse.

[dont_go_west]

West . . . is unlikely to help him improve his mood.

"Uh, secondhand smoke?" he complains, taking a few steps backward, and lets out a dramatic cough or two for good measure.

[latino_menace]

Ramon looks at him. Well, glares. And very deliberately takes a long drag and blows it into the kid's face.

[dont_go_west]

West's dramatic coughing gets much louder!

In between hacks: "Okay, I'll just send you the medical bills for my lung cancer."

[latino_menace]

Ramon rolls his eyes.

'The price, I think, would be worth it to see you gone. What's your problem? Are you usually this annoying to complete strangers?'

[dont_go_west]

"It's not like my words are going to give you cancer," says West, who feels the life-threatening factor is not something to be ignored.

"I mean, if you're gonna walk into someone's space and start infecting their air, you don't exactly have tons of room to complain."

[latino_menace]

Ramon looks at the kid incredulously. Is he for real?

'I'm outside. You have a problem with space, fuck off to somewhere else. And your words are giving me a headache which, believe me, is more dangerous for you than it is for me.'

[dont_go_west]

". . . uh, I'd just like to clarify, are you threatening me?" West says, sounding more disbelieving than anything else.

There are rules against that sort of thing here! So West is given to understand.

[latino_menace]

'Give that kid a fucking medal.'

What do they teach them in school these days anyway?

'Yes. That was a threat. Well done for spotting it, I thought I might have been too subtle for a moment there.'

Jesus.

[dont_go_west]

"Okay," West says, taking a step back. "Okay, great, that's what I needed to know so I won't be overreacting if I tell a Security member that my life was threatened for expressing reasonable disapproval of a health-threatening activity, Jesus Christ."

[latino_menace]

Ramon can't help it; he laughs. Only not in an amused sort of way, it's more of a,' I've never met anyone so stupid and naive in my life,' sort of affair.

'You do that. Tell them Ramon Salazar said 'hi'. In fact, if you trot off and do it right now then you'll be out of my face and the smoke won't bother you anymore - everyone will be happy, see?'

[dont_go_west]

"Ramon Salazar?" West repeats. "R-A-M-O-N? I just want to make sure I spell it right in the written report."

[latino_menace]

A fist clenches at his side. This kid is trying his very last nerve.

'Do you like your teeth where they are?'

It would almost sound conversational, if it weren't for that murderous expression on his face.

[dont_go_west]

Well, yes. He had braces for years as a kid.

"I thought me reporting you was a win-win situation?" he says, instead of this. "And thanks, now it's two threats."

[latino_menace]

'You can count. Your parents must be so proud.'

Ramon has something to say about this too.

'It is. And yet, you're still here.'

[dont_go_west]

The compulsion to have the last word is also a genetic mutation.

"Yeah, speaking of proud parents, I'm sure yours are thrilled to have such a great guy for a son," West sneers. (His bravado is in no way compromised by the fact that he's at the same time looking around in search of a bouncer. Nope.)