Snippet #2517750

And lo, it was decided! In commemoration of the auspicious occasion, Cormy raised a triumphant fist into the air, raised himself up with one foot balanced on some random nearby chair, gazed off toward the horizon with the sort of bold, inimitable daring-- the intrepid explorer's courage if ever there had been such a thing-- unrivaled since Rurik of the Varangians himself had beheld the shores of the land from which he was to carve his domain, the ancient realms destined to someday through both great triumph and unimaginable tragedy become the Russian nation (at least if his understanding of Izzie's drunken history lessons was complete), and declared, "Then let it be so! To the record store!"

Then he had to get his foot down off what he'd evidently assumed was an empty chair and sheepishly apologise to the none too amused hotel goer whose lap had briefly hosted his filthy sneaker. Truly, it wasn't easy being a pioneer.





Fortunately for Cormac, he had one tool at his disposal that the legendary progenitor of the Russian cultural and historical saga could never have even imagined: namely, his phone. Rurik had come from a time when the extent of the available navigation technology was 'fuck it, let's go in this general direction for a little while and hope we don't sail right off the edge of the Earth'; Cormac, on the other hand, could punch in just about any establishment in the civilised world, any address, any point from the very centre of Boston, Mass, to the most remote dunes of the Arizona desert, and he'd have about fifty different routes depending on convenience and ease of access all mapped right out for him.

Unfortunately for Cormac, he was about as well-versed with that technology as Rurik of the Varangians would have been had he been alive now to witness it.

It took the poor lad several minutes to remember how to turn the thing back on; he'd made sure to turn it off the night before, as was his custom whenever he went drinking (you only had to drunk-text your sister thinking that she was an ex-girlfriend from five years ago once before you started makin' damn sure). He then wrestled with it for another ten or so minutes trying to figure out how to access the GPS system, in the process managing to not only snap a photo of his baffled expression but also send it to Izzie, who responded in short order with "Hey fuckface, it already pains me to have to look at your pasty white fuckin' mug in person". Then a few seconds later, she added, "And for fuck sake, the GPS function is on the second fucking page of your phone display. Swipe to the right, jackass."

After that, of course, came the struggle with the GPS function itself. Cormac led his troops with all the boldness and determination of a true captain, blazing the trail to unknown seas, except that these seas were pretty well known and the trail he was blazing was more of a clueless meandering through the city streets. They ended up at a modern art museum, which happened to be doing an exhibition on contemporary Irish artists; Cormac was quick to abscond the premises after somebody took note of his Irish flag back patch, approached him, and attempted to engage him in a conversation in Irish, leaving the poor drummer absolutely flabbergasted. Then he managed to lead them straight into a passing LGBT+ festival, where he thought he caught a glimpse of a really tall, really muscular Colombian guitarist and vocalist just before he realised this was not, indeed, the record store. The final straw came about when the drummer became convinced they could reach their objective by swimming across the East River, and only upon being talked down from this quest did he relent and surrender the captainship to somebody who actually knew how to use a GPS function.

After that, the journey was humiliatingly brief, in that it turned out there had been a record store just around the corner from their hotel. The whole way there, Cormac was grumbling and grousing away under his breath about 'goddamn technology these days' and 'nobody appreciates a true explorer anymore' and 'fuckin' great-grandparents had to move here from Ireland' and 'couldn't wait a couple fuckin' hundred years for me to be born, nope, had to take off right fuckin' then eh' and 'huh didn't expect I'd see Izzie today, at an LGBT+ festival of all places' and 'sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to be a couch'.

He fell silent as they strode on into the record store, and cast a glance about the place. "Where to first?" he mused to his fellow intrepid explorers.






No sooner had Alex finished rolling that last dreadlock than she nearly careened into a face first meeting with a whole lotta Christopher Addams, who appeared strongly as though he had been wandering the halls of the hotel for a thousand years under the weight of an ancient curse. Alex frowned as she stopped just short of running into him, and shoved a hand into the pocket of her jeans to withdraw a pack of bubble gum-- figured she could use at least that paltry stress relief. "Mornin'," she greeted cautiously, unwrapping the piece of gum and tossing it into her mouth to chew it away into a juicy pulp...

"Wild night?"

Alex immediately swallowed the gum, and spent several seconds sputtering and choking before it managed to get down her throat successfully. "W-- wild night? I-- no, I-- Lestari didn't-- did she say any--" she gasped, struggling briefly to produce some semblance of composure and eventually succeeding, her features moulding into a mildly shaken rendition of their usual dispassion. "I just... didn't get a whole lotta sleep," she grunted at last, shrugging her broad shoulders callously. "Cramps can be a motherfucker when you forget your... Well, needless to say, they can be a motherfucker."

Chris didn't exactly look to be at the top of the world at that moment either-- but Alex doubted there was any real secret to that. After all, he'd stayed out drinking last night much longer than she and Lestari had, and though Liam had accompanied him, ostensibly to prevent him from getting to out of hand, he'd clearly met little success in that regard. Whether or not their unlikely Casanova had managed to find himself some company for the night was none of Alex's business, so she certainly wasn't gonna pry after it; she merely added, eager to get back into her usual jive, "Well, you look like the corpse of Lenin on display in the Red Square, so how 'bout we go grab something to eat? I'm pretty sure Liam's already down there, and Lestari..."

She bit her lip just a bit. That could be dealt with when the time came.

The time came unfortunately quickly, as Alex swiftly espied the sprightly young drummer in the dining area engaged in silent but animated conversation with Liam. Well, she couldn't just avoid Lestari forever-- not least of all because the drummer would probably just end up tracking her down and forcing the encounter anyway-- so she set her jaw straight and hard, and traipsed over to where her two bandmates sat. "Howdy," she intoned; Lestari gave a little start and turned her head sharply to face Alex. Oh fuckin' A, the guitarist lamented wryly. We're gonna be playin' the awkward game now, aren't we?

Considering Lestari appeared to be caught between signing 'good morning', waving, and taking another bite of cereal, resulting in what Alex could only have assumed was a magical gesture straight out of one of Chris' fantasy video games... yep. They were gonna be playin' the awkward game.