{My world spins recklessly

[deadlycurves]

WHO: Diego + Anyone in Nonah, House #003
WHERE: Nonah, House #003
WHEN: Sunday, May 12
WHAT: Diego is investigating the house and milling about. Other people exist in the space. Come bug him. Basically a Housemate Mingle!
WARNINGS: None for the moment, will edit/add to a list if/as needed!

[OTA Housemates]

He's barely been in this world long enough to take a breath and there are roughly nine-thousand new things slamming into Diego from every side, half of which he doesn't even know how to begin to figure out how to process. The most prominent, and still headspinny thing out of all of it, despite now having seen him with his own two eyes the night before, is the decade-plus-dead brother that exists in a very alive kind of way here, suddenly. He still has to keep reminding himself that last night happened, that it was real.

His job doesn't start until Monday, which is fortunate since it gives him a bit to adjust and settle. A handful of days may seem like no time for either of those things to most people, but Diego is a minimalist when it comes to things like this; a roof over his head, a bed to flop into at night, he's good. That's all the settling he really needs, the rest is just luxury.

He's spent most of the morning in his room, but his curiosity is getting the better of him by early afternoon and he decides to go poking around the house to see what he can find. He'll avoid any bedrooms for the sake of privacy and not wanting to invite anyone to invade his own room without invitation first. Not that he has anything to hide, or really anything besides bare basics in it yet-- it's the principle of it, really.

Diego can be found rather easily nosing around any and all public areas of the house, though. He might be making lunch in the kitchen or rummaging through any movies or music that may be somewhere around the living room.

[For Rene Ramirez, specifically]

At one point, in his poking around in the living room, he finds a gun strapped to the underside of the coffee table. "What the hell?" His faces scrunches up in confusion. Who the hell keeps a gun in such a weird place?

Comments

[dawg]

The sound of duct tape being peeled off of any surface is pretty distinct, so Rene knows exactly what just happened when he hears the noise from the entrance foyer. He'd just walked in, home now from teaching the one Sunday class on gun safety he'd been scheduled for, having missed Diego's exploratory wanderings by leaving before midday. Immediately he's got his hand on the grip of yet another concealed firearm, this one stuck into a hidden holster at the small of back, beneath his baggy over-shirt.

When he peeks into the living room from the corridor and sees that it is only the new housemate, he relaxes enough to at least not shoot first and greet second, which would probably make one hell of a first impression. After a moment in the hallway he even talks himself into letting go of the gun at his back, stepping fully into the room. Growth!

"It's a gun, hoss," he says helpfully, and then holds out a hand for it like it's totally normal to have one taped under one's coffee table. Why would he even need to explain that? He just wants to put it back. "You got here yesterday, yeah?"

Meanwhile he's obviously a seasoned veteran at slightly under two weeks.

[deadlycurves]

He hears the door, and the footfalls after it shuts, but he doesn't move or look toward the sounds like he notices at all. He assumes it's one of the other residents of the house, and if it's anyone else, or anyone somehow deemed a threat, he's not exactly concerned about himself or his ability to keep people in line when necessary. "No shit, Sherlock," the snappy quip rolls out of his mouth before he finally turns toward the sound of the voice. There's a glance from the other guy's face, to the hand held out expectantly like a child waiting for dessert after obediently eating all of their vegetables at dinner. "Why the coffee table?" He breezes over that question because it really doesn't matter how long he's been here, does it? And he doesn't want to talk about arriving here, and the baggage that comes along with it. He decidedly has not put the gun in the other man's hand, either. He doesn't know him like that!

[dawg]

"Easy to flip for cover," take it from the guy who has gotten into a truly inadvisable number of shootouts in his own living room (two.) "Why you trying to make this your business when it ain't?"

It's a reasonable thing to express concern about, Rene... It's his house too now.

Regardless, a glance down tells him the gun's safety is still on, and Diego isn't holding it like he's ready to actually use it, so Rene doesn't reach for his own again but like now it's the principal of the thing. This dude is clearly an asshole, and Rene can respect that, but also instinct tells him to be the biggest shithead in the room at any given time of the day and he needs to be true to himself. Plus he's really not about other people touching his guns, especially not taking them from where he squirreled them away for a reason.

(A slightly unhinged, very paranoid reason.)

His eyes flick off the gun to actually look at Diego, the giant facial scar, the getup, the whole fuck-everyone and I've-got-issues vibes he's putting out there into the world like it's his job. Hmm, that doesn't seem familiar or anything... "Yeah, you can go ahead and square up or you can give me back my gun you nosy asshole, damn." Clearly Diego is being the unreasonable one here, after all.

[deadlycurves]

There's a facial shrug at that answer. Okay, he can take that. The question makes one brow arch in his direction, though. "I live here now, apparently," he doesn't sound real thrilled at that, and with Allison talking about getting a central place for the family, that may not be true for very long. "I think that means it's automatically my business if people are taping guns in weird places." Even if he can't actually hate the reasoning. Takes one to know one and Rene certainly isn't the only one that has paranoia stampeding rampant through his veins. He considers that demand for a moment, giving the other man a quick sweep of a once-over. He probably has weapons on his person, if he's anything at all like Diego himself, but overall he doesn't scream threat at the moment. So, he holds the gun out to him, almost like a peace-offering, without so much as another word.

[dawg]

Alright, well, this turned out less messy than Rene had any right to expect, and he makes an effort to take himself down a notch. Growth!

He reaches for the offered gun, flipping it to the side out of habit and checking that it's still in working order, popping the magazine out to account for the one bullet that he left in there. He can't run out while firing, and if someone else gets their hands on any of his guns, he is only going to give them one chance to make use of it before he kicks their entire ass.

"There's more, better safe than sorry," he says which is about as much of an explanation he's even capable of giving, and that squared away he ducks down next to the coffee table to feel around for the tape and then stick the gun back where it'd been hidden. "Don't move them."

He stands back up and shrugs. No apology for his entrance, or the name-calling. Whoops. "Got a name, hoss?"

[deadlycurves]

Diego doesn't even look remotely offended at the check over of the weapon when he returns it-- if anything, it only earns him another whole point in his favor for not being a complacent moron around strangers. "I'm not exactly empty handed." He says, producing a knife from god-even-knows-where that he's now flipping between his fingers with the kind of deft skill that only comes with way too many years doing it. He watches the other guy slip the gun back in its previous place and pockets the dagger again. He debates, for the briefest moment, which moniker to get him before deciding it really is just easy to go with, "Diego. You?"

[dawg]

Before Team Arrow, Rene would have scoffed at anyone choosing to arm themselves with something as esoteric as daggers, but knows an absurd number of archers these days, so knives seem downright reasonable. He watches the weapon wind around Diego's fingers, raising a not-unimpressed eyebrow, but honestly he is baffled by people who choose projectile weapons other than guns. Because, guns.

Well, not that he knows the guy is using it as a projectile weapon. "For throwing, right?" It's just that the one Diego had been showing off didn't have the sort of padded, reinforced grip one would expect from a weapon intended to be in the hand during a fight like, say, a military issue combat knife.

"Rene," he returns, holding out a hand, clearly for a shake this time.

[deadlycurves]

"Yeah," he nods and without so much as a warning, he grabs one of the daggers hidden on him again and flings it, effortlessly, directly past Rene's ear, to stick in the dead-center of the wall behind him. "Real men throw knives." A beat, and a smirk that, if he let it grow any further, might have actually been more like a shit-eating grin. "Guns are for pussies."

Ribbing aside, he takes the hand offered to him with a short nod. "How long have you been here, anyway?" He asks curiously, letting his hand fall away to his side again before wandering over to grab the dagger out of the wall. "I never miss, by the way. And that's always been true, not something weird from this place." He's had that rundown, same as they all get on their arrivals here, but-- well. he hasn't actually tested the new one they handed him, yet.

[dawg]

Jesus Christ! Rene ducks to the side, but the knife goes way wider than he expected and after cursing enough to curdle milk, the handshake is slightly more crushing than it absolutely needs to be.

Regardless, considering the crowd he is accustomed to running with, he at least doesn't take having a deadly weapon whipped at his face first thing too personally. Sorta a regular Thursday activity, in the Arrow Cave. "Couple weeks," he estimates generously, and then hurries on past that particular point. "What's that mean, anyway? You was meta, or some shit?" He's learned his lesson about mistrusting metas who aren't Dinah just because they've got powers, but like, also he's just never polite about anything so why would he be polite about that?

But also: "You know, guys who pick dumbass weapons always got some shit to say about how hard they are," Rene returns the earlier facial shrug, but with accompanying shoulders because he always does The Most, "I accepted a long time ago that it's just overcompensation."

Let the knife vs. gun war begin.

[deadlycurves]

He slips the dagger away again, turning back toward the other man, watching him and the way he brushes past the answer to his question. Diego doesn't expect people to count the days, so an exact number isn't amiss, here. Though, the question he throws back just brings a clearly confused look to his face. "Meta? Not sure I know what that means." He lets out a soft huff and tips his head back a little. "You're allowed to have your own opinion." There's a beat and a smirk slides across his lips. "Even if it's the wrong one."

[dawg]

"You know, someone who's got powers." Why did the nerds of the world go with the term meta? Who knows. There's probably an explanation, but those are always yawn-fests, so Rene never asked. "Not aliens. That's some other word, probably. The term is supposed to be meta-human." He waves a hand dismissively heading towards the kitchen, which luckily is in an open enough floor plan that he can be heard even if Diego doesn't bother to follow. Listen, he's hungry. (Always.)

"You said you don't miss," he prompts, head in the fridge. Since he specified before here, too, Rene assumes it was something at least meta-adjacent.

[deadlycurves]

"Oh." He frowns a little, not sure how to feel about having a word to put to it like that. He's never had one before, it was just...a skill, an ability, something... for Dad to experiment on he and all of his siblings for. Meta-human. It makes something under his skin squirm. "Well, we didn't have a word for it, where I'm from. But-- I guess." he shrugs a little. He very decidedly doesn't follow him into the kitchen, mostly because he's Having A Moment, here, and would rather not right in front of a stranger. By the time he does decide to move, or Rene wanders back--whichever happens first--whatever may be going on, on his face will be recovered anyway.

[dawg]

Rene stays in the kitchen, glancing up briefly as Diego makes his belated entrance before continuing to dump ingredients onto the counter so he can make a sandwich. "There's not a word?" he repeats, a touch incredulously. "What, were you the only one?" Granted, it's not like metas didn't seem to spring up very suddenly well within Rene's lifetime, but it they still feel like part of the fabric of the world now regardless.

And now he is one! Crazy.

He begins to pile meat up on a slice of bread, glancing over at Diego again, with a deeply smug look on his face this time. "Not that you need to be a meta to do any of this shit." He waves the butter knife in a vague sort of oval shape around his eyes; he may be sensible and wear an actual full-face protective mask, but most of the vigilantes that he knows still do the domino mask... thing. The song and dance that they got dragged to this crazy ass world and asked to do. "Unless you're, you know," his eyebrows go up, judgmental. "Not the type."

[deadlycurves]

"No," he leans a hip against the counter, watching the other man pile ingredients on a sandwich like it might be the last one he ever eats. "I mean, there were others-- I only really knew my siblings... there were- are... seven of us." Counting Ben had been something only Klaus could do until very, very recently, and... well, it's taking some adjusting, if the tiny crease in his brow is anything to account for. He laughs, a soft huff of a sound more than anything true, "Don't worry, I'm definitely the type. Born and raised to be, even." He says with a roll of one shoulder. He has no problems owning that part of his past, at least.

[dawg]

Eat every sandwich like it's your last, Diego!! Life lessons from Rene.

"What? Just one family?" The number of siblings doesn't surprise him, but honestly that must have been one fuckin weird neighborhood to live in. "Y'all's mom fall in a vat of chemicals or something?" Rene asks, not even sarcastically, because that is fully something that can and has happened in his own dumb comic book universe before.

[deadlycurves]

"No, I mean-- supposedly there were a couple dozen others. Freak, spontaneous births around the world with no connection to literally anything or any pattern." He'd looked into enough of it after he was old enough to understand some of the stuff tabloids and interviewers had asked when they were all parading around in those costumes as Dad's prized toys. Rene may not mean it sarcastically, but there's a tension in Diego's jaw at the question all the same. "No." His voice is equally tight, like it's an effort just to get that one word out of his mouth. "We're adopted siblings." There definitely is so much more to that story, but Diego isn't sure if, or how much of it, he wants to get into just yet.

[dawg]

"Weird." Rene is a very sensitive and considerate individual!! But he shrugs, perching the closing slice of bread precariously atop his towering monstrosity of a late lunch, and putting everything else back into the fridge from whence it came—so at least he's not a slob? "You really out there with those little daggers? How's that work out for you, hoss?" Seems either very brave or very stupid, when guns are in the hands of half the assholes who step outside every night, as far as Rene can tell. (He might have a slight sampling bias.)

[deadlycurves]

Diego will leap at that subject change because the rest is a lot of stuff he either doesn't have answers to or doesn't want to talk about. "Yeah, and it's worked out pretty well for me for the last nearly two decades, so I probably won't change it any time soon, either." He tips his head a little, "Is it really that hard to believe?"

[dawg]

Rene's mouth opens, then closes, his brow wrinkling. Two decades... He'd been guessing this dude was about his own age, but that would make him a preteen when he started, what, throwing knives at people? (Born and raised to be, he'd said...) Evie was real young when she joined the Team too, but seventeen is a far cry from ten. Seventeen is the age you enlist in the Navy, when you're a dumb kid that needs to support a family all of the sudden. The thought sticks in his craw: it'd be like if his baby girl were to mask up and grab a deadly weapon, right now, all tiny like she is. Every Dad instinct inside him rebels hard for a second.

He makes an effort to shake it: Diego just has to be older than he looks, obviously.

"Seems like more trouble than it's worth. Guns fire faster, got better range, carry more ammo..." He spreads his hands like come on, though he knows it's pointless—it'd be like trying to talk Oliver out of using his bow and arrows—but there's just something about Diego that begs to be needled. He can clearly give as good as he gets, which just makes it better. "Need I go on?"

[deadlycurves]

"Better range?" He smirks and shakes his head. "We're gonna need to test that someday, you may be surprised with just how much range I've got. I'm sure there's some kind of practice range around here somewhere." Diego's pretty sure this is going to become the kind of thing that happens a lot between them, if he stays in this house for very long at all; the kind of circular argument friends get into on purpose just to goad each other.

[dawg]

"Someday?" Rene scoffs, mouth full (sorry.) "You can put your money where your mouth is today, if you got the stones." He takes a set of keys out of his pocket, dangling them with the hand not doing the important business of holding his sandwich. "I work at a gun range that's got rifle courses, and I have after-hours access." Which, on a Sunday, will only in another hour or so.

[deadlycurves]

"Okay, Mr. Got-The-Hookup. Let's go." He can't help the half-hearted laugh that bubbles up for that one. This guy is a trip, but Diego is always going to be game for a little competition.

[dawg]

Rene is equally competitive (more competitive, he'd say!!!), but even more importantly... he's here alone. Oliver, the ass, has totally ruined him for doing the whole vigilante thing completely on his own, now that he is no longer a shambling self-destructive mess of a man. He wants a team again, and if this guy is really as good as he thinks he is, well.

He's cracked harder nuts than Diego, he's pretty sure.

So Rene finishes his meal, and leads the way back to the gun range, where he'd just been not much more than an hour ago. Management is still there, but they shuffle out quickly enough when he offers to take care of closing the place down for the night. "Long courses are out back," Rene says with a gesture towards the door that'll take them there, transparently smirking. "Unless you want to start small..."

[deadlycurves]

He hangs in the periphery as Rene talks to the managers about locking up for them and waits until he leads the way, making ridiculous remarks about staring small, as if that were ever anything like an option at all. "Please." he rolls his eyes, "Let's at least keep it a challenge, okay?"