[mid may, sam]

[sicparvasmagna]

He was probably supposed to give the gun back. Only, Nate has made a living out of not giving things back, so he doesn't. Solo's a nice enough guy and he'd had Nate's back when those damn toys were attacking, but it's not enough to make him feel guilty for pocketing the gun he'd handed him when things got dicey. It's a simple 9mm, and Nate can admit that it feels good in his hand, moulded to him, practically. That's definitely an exaggeration, but it's been a long time since he properly held a gun and he hadn't realised how weird it felt until he had one back in his grip.

Nate's been shit-talking Beth pretty much since the day he arrived about how much of a better shot he is than her, but it occurs to him that he's over a year out of practice. If someone had said to him before Darrow that he'd go an entire year without shooting a single bullet, he might have laughed. It's not that Nate particularly likes guns, but when it was a toss up between dying and shooting the other guy first, he thinks it's a pretty simple equation. It's not his fault people used to shoot at him a lot.

Well, it is, but he's not going to admit it.

The Hatchimals had been kind of fucked up but mostly not that dangerous, even if one of them had tried really hard to decapitate his brother. It's that sentence alone that has Nate deciding that he needs to get back into the saddle, so to speak, and practice. He's a natural shot and he knows he's not that close to retirement but it can't hurt to brush up a little.

He calls Sam, arranges to meet him at the shooting range. Sam has acquired a gun of his own, and Nate's pretty sure it was even legal. He has a damn permit, though Sam and a permit is an oxymoron if Nate ever heard one.

The place isn't overly busy, so Nate finds them a spot and hopes no one asks to see his. In the meantime, he makes short work of the first target while he waits, and if he imagines Marlowe's stupid face in front of it, no one has to know.

Comments

[sicparvasmagna]

Nate glances from the target back down to his watch. He's hardly late at all, it's just that Nate has never really counted patience among his virtues. Besides, he'd figured he'd blow off a little steam before Sam got here. He's not so worked up he needs to riddle a target with bullets to feel better, but it has been a shitty month.

Shooting at a target doesn't fix what's going on with Beth, but it's the closest he's got to an outlet. Besides, he talked about maybe taking Carl shooting, give him something else to focus on, and if he's going to teach a kid he better make sure he hasn't gotten too rusty himself.

"You're fine," Nate assures him, shaking his head. He steps back from the range for a moment to look at his brother, quirking a half smile. "It's not a face I want to see again, I admit."

If Marlowe ever, god forbid, shows up in this city, Nate's going to be pretty pissed. The last time he saw her, she was drugging him within an inch of his life and trying to get him to sell out his friends, so it's not like they're on the best of terms. Sam's told him enough of the future to know she got what was coming to her, in the end, but this city has a tendency to fuck him over.

"You know," he considers, reloading his gun and stepping aside a little to let Sam up next, "I can't decide which one I'd want to punch more: Marlowe or Rafe."

It's been years since he saw or even really thought of Rafe, but Sam's told him stories. He'd always been a smug son of a bitch, but the very thought that he'd even tried to get one over them, let alone tried to kill Sam, makes his blood boil. He can still picture his frustratingly perfect trust-fund-baby face, and Nate's almost annoyed that he doesn't remember watching him lose.

[seekmyfortune]

"Shit, that's a tough one," he admits with a laugh. Marlowe had tried to fuck Nathan over like it was her job, but Rafe had been a key part in ruining both their lives fifteen years ago.

He fiddles with his gun, making sure it's loaded and the safety is on, for now. He takes the spot Nathan's just vacated. This range isn't like the indoor range, where a simple button-press brings the old target forward on a pulley system so it can be changed out and sent back for another. They're gonna have to share the target that's set up until one of them decides they feel like taking the walk out to change it themselves.

Since Nathan picked a lane so far from everyone else, Sam's not even worried about getting shot while doing it. But he still doesn't feel like taking that walk yet.

"Tell you what," he says, lifting his gun to aim. "You've got two hands. Punch 'em both." He grins over at him, then thumbs the safety off and fires off a couple of shots. It's just far enough away that he can see he hits, just not exactly where. He doesn't need glasses, or anything. It's just the light.

"Or, hey, we'll take turns!" he adds.

[sicparvasmagna]

It's some kind of perverse game of Would You Rather, but Nate honestly can't pick between them. Marlowe's been chasing him since he was a fifteen year old kid who didn't know any better, and she didn't think twice about trying to kill him or Sully. But Rafe is the guy who ruined his life fifteen years ago, convinced him to leave his brother for dead. He knows that's just as much his own fault, but it's easier if he can pretend like it was Rafe's decision, otherwise the guilt would drown him.

And that was before the guy apparently tried to actually kill them. Nate's glad he doesn't remember any of that, because it would only piss him off more.

Nate watches while Sam fires off a couple of shots. He still shoots in that easy way like he was trained for it, never mind the fact that he was in prison for years. There's probably something to be said about that, the easy way both of them learned this kind of thing, as easy as they learned to pick a pocket. Some of it Sully taught them, some of it they worked out on their own, but Nate knows Sam's never seen Sully as the same kind of father figure as he has.

"Fair point," he agrees. They used to work well as a team together, he thinks. He wonders if it would be the same now, even with how much has changed between them. Hatchimals aside, he hasn't gotten into a fight with Sam there to back him up since he was twenty.

Nate eyes the target for a moment. They've probably put enough holes in the damn thing that he should go and retrieve it. Maybe it's a little odd for him, but he's not actually in the mood to keep score or track whose shots are whose. He's content enough to spend the afternoon with his brother. "We'd probably get arrested pretty quick for beating up an old lady," he points out. He imagines it would be hard to pass off to the cops that she's an evil cultist bitch intent on destroying the world.

[seekmyfortune]

"Oh, come on," Sam argues. "Most justified assault ever. It'd never hold up in court." Besides, they'd never get caught, anyway.

His clip still has some left, so he aims at the target and fires off a few more shots. And maybe he takes a page out of Nathan's book and imagines Rafe, or even Nadine, pasted against the target.

Well, maybe not Nadine. If things had been different, he probably would've fucked her a couple times. Maybe if she ever shows up, he still would.

Marcus probably wouldn't mind.

He tries to shake that thought off and empties his clip with a little cough.

"Aren't there, like, fight clubs and shit in this city?" he asks as he steps aside to reload his gun. "You've been here awhile longer than me. You ever been to one?" That's an interesting thought. Not unlike the prison brawls they'd gotten into before shit went south, but all in good fun, to blow off steam. He wonders if they'd be any good at that, if such a thing as two-on-two exists.

[sicparvasmagna]

Nate's seen the fight clubs around, but he's never attended one. He can hold his own in a fight, and he'd proven that plenty of times back home, but Darrow is something else entirely. The people who go to those things are literal goddamn superheroes, people from other worlds, people with magic, people with the ability to pulverise Nate in minutes. Sure, he can throw a punch, but he's only human.

He learned that well enough when he tried to punch Cassius, and landed on his ass a whole lot quicker than his pride will let him admit.

Nate shakes his head, watching Sam reload. "Wasn't too long ago I got my face all messed up, remember?" He screws up his nose in annoyance. "And that wasn't even Fight Club." It stands to reason that he could just not go picking fights with people ten times his size, maybe, but that almost takes half the fun out of it. Nate's spent more or less his entire life picking fights he shouldn't.

So has Sam, so maybe they should give it a go. At least then they'll be able to keep an eye out for each other, run interference if it looks like one of them is about to get his brain kicked in. "We could check it out," he offers, shrugging one shoulder. Generally speaking, Nate's fought to keep himself alive, not because he's the kind of guy who's into brawling. He can't deny the adrenaline rush though, and he could do with an outlet, some way to blow off the frustrations of this city. "Might as well see if there's anyone human-sized."

[seekmyfortune]

"We should check it out," Sam corrects. Gun re-loaded, he checks the safety, then holsters it. Might as well change out the target while they're talking. All the good spots have been blown out, anyway. He grabs the replacement target from a stack beneath a gun-shaped paperweight and gestures for Nathan to come with him on the walk.

"We can kick some ass, Little brother, it's just a matter of fighting smart, and not, y'know, cold-cocking someone who looks like they're a fuckin' statue." He smirks over at Nathan, even though he knows he would've done the same thing in his position. Yeah, well, do as he says, not as he does.

And, hey, maybe it'll just be another one of those messed up bonding experiences he and Nathan used to have all the time.

He passes the new target over so he can light up for the walk. So far, he hasn't seen any no smoking signs, and maybe he's cut back a little bit, but he doubts he's gonna quit any time soon.

[sicparvasmagna]

Nate falls into step behind his brother, and when things are easy like this, it's almost like he can forget the last ten years. He knows that's not the case, knows that Sam has spent all that time going through hell, but it's all too easy to slip into feeling like he's twenty again.

"He didn't look like a statue," Nate protests, shaking his head. He'd certainly felt like a damn statue the moment Nate's fist connected, but he couldn't have known exactly what he was dealing with. Darrow is full of people who are decidedly more than what they seem, it just so happens Nate found out the hard way, this time.

Nate takes the target from him, watching out of the corner of his eye as Sam lights up a cigarette. "Those things'll kill you," he mutters, knowing that it won't make a lick of difference. He should have known prison wouldn't do anything to curb Sam's smoking habit, but the idea of lung cancer taking his brother away from him again certainly rubs him the wrong way.

When they reach the end of the range, Nate unhooks the existing target, handing it over for Sam to examine while he hangs up the new one. It's fairly bullet-ridden and Nate knows even just glancing at it that neither of them have lost their edge.

[seekmyfortune]

Sam's never been worried about that, but it seems that he's been firing guns a lot more recently than his brother has, at any rate, so it's probably a valid concern of Nathan's.

"Looked, felt, was, whatever," Sam says dismissively. He holds the target up to the light so he can see the holes back-lit by the sun. "My point still remains: fight smart. And stop letting bullies get to you, huh?"

It's something Nathan's always had a problem with, and it's not a surprise to Sam that it's carried over into his adult life. He's heard Nathan's version of the meeting that ended with a broken hand and face, but it's not so very different from the bullies he'd faced at the orphanage, all those years ago. Different circumstances, maybe, and obviously a different bully, but the concept remains the same.

[sicparvasmagna]

It's said with a throwaway kind of air, like Sam's words just slipped off his tongue, but Nate knows better. He's heard that line before, gotten this lecture plenty of times when he was at the orphanage. He'd never been able to stop himself from getting into fights then, either. It didn't matter if the kid was three times bigger than him, Nate still threw himself into it with his fists if anyone dared to speak a word against his family.

Things hadn't gone exactly that way this time, though Nate's pretty confident Cassius would have wasted no time in insulting his family too, if he'd had the chance. Not a soul in Darrow besides Sam knows how Nate grew up, not even his closest friends, and he means to keep it that way. He buried all that when he buried the Morgan name.

"I'm not twelve anymore," Nate still argues, rolling his eyes at Sam. It's still a little weird having this kind of conversation at all. Sully knows Nate better than almost anyone, but there are details Nate's still never even told him. He's spent the better part of twenty years pretending like his childhood never happened, but his brother is back from the dead, and so is all that history.