Poker, Beer, and Bros

Why had Gabby wanted to do this? Well, his life as a bacehlor was becoming a mere shadow with this stuuupid marriage law nonsense, so being able to remind himself of his manly independence, even in the most cliche of ways, was incredibly important. As he had set about planning this poker night, he had come to a startling conclusion : he had very few manly, masculine friends. He had the poker chips, he had the cards, he had the empty suite, and he had the liquor - he always had the liquor. He just needed help with the guest list.

He had turned to the toughest, manliest person he could think of. Jack Dyllan. And after she punched him for his reasoning, she assured him that if he set a date and time, she could ensure people showed up. The guest list grew as people invited friends, and then it shrank as people rememeber obligations. Max had to drop out at last minute for a work emergency, as did Kip's friend Yuri. It was going to be an odd, mixed crowd, but Jack was excited for a little society. She had not felt connected to fellow human beings in awhile.

Nor had Gabby, which revealed his true intent on actually making people show up. Typically, his boredom was relieved by visiting Layabout Lane to annoy its occupants. But, for once, he wanted to feel like he was actually involved in a two-way situation with someone, rather than him forcing himself upon a victim. And if that meant inviting four strangers into his home, well, he could deal with that.

Kip was retelling what had happened in the aftermath of the riot thread. As Jack looked through her cards, a small curl of the lip revealed her pride at having secured this half-brother for herself, never minding the fact that she had practically given him a black eye on their first meeting. The riot story was told and chuckles and grunts were given. Jack reached for another shot of rum, tossing it back easily. She enjoyed rum.

"Gabby," she said, glancing at him. "What's your match like? I don't think I've met her. What's her name? Eileen Norwood?"

Gabby grumbled, setting two cards down and asking for two more. "Irene. And I don't want to discuss that. This whole law is bull."

Kip tilted his head. "I think we may be seeing more on it soon, with this Gideon fellow suddenly taking power. If I were Ana Levski, I'd be a bit nervous right now."

Jack lifted an eyebrow, throwing a chip into the pot. "You don't think he's going to save her if this thing blows up?"

Kip gave Jack a discerning look. "Would you? Especially before you've won the credit of the public? Not exactly clever to back a woman everyone hates."

Jack swirled a cup of rum and Coke, looking off into the distance. "He's gonna throw her under the bus the first chance he gets. Huh."

Kip turned, looking to Keiran. "I understand you were matched pretty early on. Besides Jack, I know very few people who have actually been paired, and fewer still who married the person they were supposed to." He gave Jack a snarky look, to which she responded by drinking half her drink. "Is it going well?"

((I think it'd make sense for Jack to have invited Keiran and Oliver, and Kip invited Darren))

Oliver was a lucky bastard. And he knew it, too.

Without his French citizenship, he probably would have been on the same boat as the people sitting around him. Darren, though, had ducked, and they somehow missed him. Someone who never used magic and attended a Muggle University could probably hide out for a while. Or so the older man assumed. Before the game started, during introductions, Oliver had asked Darren if he worked, and the man said that he actually worked for the Prophet, and that one had thrown him until it registered that his guy had planned for everything. Fake test results meant no need to actually get married off.

So, in the end, Darren was just as lucky as Oliver. Just smarter.

Keiran, on the other hand, looked rather like he had been hit by a bus a couple weeks ago and was still trying to recover. Not in the sense that he was bruised or beaten or anything like that. He just looked thoroughly trampled by life itself. He and Oliver had just been listening to the conversation, letting Darren slip in a comment or two.

“Word is that Pierce might’ve been the one who helped her in the beginning. Maybe he’s giving her a leg up. She wouldn’t have to worry about public distrust when the man in charge was backing her. She always told everyone that she didn’t make the matches – just held the meetings.”

Oliver’s eyebrow lifted at that, but soon enough a question was sent in Keiran’s direction. The man coughed in surprise, setting his cards face down on the table as his jaw clenched and he stared at the table as if he wasn’t quite seeing it. “It’s funny,” he began finally, “several months ago, we were called the Ministry’s first success story. Now I never even see her.”

“Mate, shouldn’t you be home, then?” Oliver asked, trying not to overstep any invisible boundaries.

“You’d think, right?” Keiran replied, looking over at the younger man. A pained smile grew on his face before he continued. “I mean, I love her. Which is crazy in itself. But I can’t-…”

“You can’t tell if she is in it fully.” Oliver replied knowingly, something dark crossing his features. Keiran nodded, lifting a hand to run it over the back of his neck.

Picking up his cards once more, Keiran seemed to decide that he was done trying to figure how to word it, and pushed a bet into the center of the table.

Jack was thoroughly amused by this game. Had she not always heard that a man's poker game was supposed to be an escape from the nagging of women asking after feelings? Every cheesy sitcom with a poker game was always men grunting and chowing down on junk food while they praised the opportunity to not have to discuss how their days were, or how they felt about this or that, etcetera. Here they were, discussing their marriages and their feelings. A small smirk played onto her lips but she continued to shuffle through her cards, raising her bet.

"Jack..." Jack glanced up, looking at her cousin who has said her name with a look of growing suspicion. Jack grinned a bit wider, shaking her head. "Nothing."

She took a drink as the conversation was passed on to Keiran. She glanced up, looking at him in surprise. She had been within his home and she would never have guessed that such problems awaited. She glanced back down, tapping her teeth together a few times, before setting a single card down and asking for another. Taking her new card, she said, "Silence rarely solves problems."

"Comes the sagely advice of the married woman who has never even touched a man," Gabby snarked back, meeting her gaze.

"I'm going to clean you out for that," Jack warned.

"You're bluffing," Gabby responded.

Now Kip was interested. He leaned forward, tilting his head with curiousity. "You and Max haven't done anything?"

Jack threw down her cards. "Straight flush. Queen high. Pay up."

Gabby and Kip threw their cards down, letting out groans, and Jack found that she had escaped the questions that she found much too pervasive. She finished off her drink and began pouring another. Kip turned his head, a small expression of surprise settling onto his expression. "That seems-" A warning look made him turn back to the cards that Gabby was now dealing out. He regarded them carefully, before venturing, "Oliver? I know how Darren got out of this fiasco, and I was just too curious to see what would happen if I disobeyed. How has this all affected you?"

"I mean," Keiran interjected belatedly, "you start worrying about who does what and work and all these things and forget why you worked originally.."

"But it's not like you wanted it to begin with," Darren pointed out unhelpfully.

Keiran lifted an eyebrow in warning at the teenager, even as Oliver's hand came up to smack Darren upside the head. Near-stranger or not, he was not okay with the bluntness directed at Keiran. Although he lost the hand, Oliver was fairly pleased with himself for whacking the curly-haired man. Even as Darren let out a "Really??"

His head lifted at his name, and Oliver glanced between Kip and his new cards while Keiran swallowed down part of his drink. For someone so down, the man wasn't drinking much, Oliver mused. Perhaps he hadn't long been a drinker, or had been through a bad experience with alcohol lately. Oliver decided that it was probably the latter and returned his thoughts to Kip's question.

"Well, technically I have dual citizenship. Here and France, but France first. The Ministry, however, matched me with some cranky Ravenclaw girl that bolted and they just gave up on re-matching me when I pointed out the fact that I wasn't technically included in their law. Annoyed what's-her-name I think." Shrugging, he checked Darren's bet, and then continued. "I'm not so much involved lately. I mean, my roommates were called in for refusing to obey, but I ended up bailing them out."

"You're well off, then." Darren mused aloud.

"Seriously, kid?" Oliver snapped, ignoring the fact that he wasn't so much older than the ex-Ravenclaw. "Yes, I'm from a wealthy family. But I actually sold my boat to ensure I had enough to get them out."

He tried to feel bad about his tone of voice, but even the Hufflepuff in him was not amused with Darren's prodding. The part of his mind that was very seriously obsessed with personal secrets and morals was annoyed and he couldn't hide it well. It seemed like his emotions hung on her sleeve most of the time. Except, of course, around her.

Kip had never had a serious relationship. He had dated women for a few months, but it always seemed to fall apart. The stories were mostly the same. The more conventional women though Kip was not spending enough time with them, that they felt like he was always talking down to them, and they never liked how much time he spent with his friends. The more unconventional, liberal women usually had affairs. Kip was passionate, sure, but he was distractable. And when his priorities changed, they usually met someone else. Once, that other person was Remy. That had been an awkward time.

Darren was smacked, rightfully, and Kip grinned, shuffling through his cards and offered up the ante. Kip glanced to Keiran. "It's strange how the title of marriage can add pressures that might be absent otherwise. Who knows if these problems would be plaguing the two of you if you weren't married. But who knows if you would have found each other without the law." He mused, taking a drink of his bottle of Firewhiskey.

He tilted his head. "I have to say - I find it very interesting that people have actually been falling in love after being paired. I mean, genuinely it is a statistical improbability. Psychologically, it was bound to happen with some. I just want to know how intimacy forms out of such strange circumstances." He looked to Keiran, hoping for the answer.

Oliver answered and, once again, Darren offended. Kip smiled and leaned forward, looking at his friend. "Hey, Isaacson. You can't talk so openly about wealth and marital problems. You need more tact and sympathy, respectively, according to social norms." He winked.

"You two sound like robots," Jack mumbled, tossing in her ante, before looking to Gabby to continue the game. Gabby dropped two cards and got two more, looking to Kip. As Kip looked at his cards, he said, "So let's see. Two marriages - one with two partners in love but with potential issues, the other with two who act like chums but are still fairly sucessful." He looked to Keiran and Jack, who was actively avoiding his eyes. "One pending marriage. Cheers, Gabby. One good excuse. Two who just stayed out of the way, but one that was just too damn interesting to be forgotten." He smirked at Darren, for they had both done pretty much the same to avoid the law but Kip had been trucked into the holding cell. "Quite a roll call we have here."

A disappointed frown arced across Darren's face at the continued discussion of Keiran's marriage. That is, until the man spoke once more, making the young man's eyebrows disappear behind the fringe of his hair where it fell across his forehead.

"We wouldn't have met properly, I'm sure of that." Keiran replied, fingers playing over the tops of his two cards as be waited for the bets to go around the table. "I've got nine bloody years on her, and the Ministry didn't bother to notice or care. She was a student of mine but I never even would have known it, since she rarely attended classes or made any move to participate."

Kip directed his question at Keiran, and Darren scoffed under his breath before ducking a little when Oliver shot him a angry look. Keiran seemed so trapped in thought that he didn't even notice the exchange. "I'm not sure I have the answer for that," Keiran started finally. "It wasn't supposed to happen, y'know? I was supposed to focus on the big picture and get through it until the law broke without forcing Melissa to comply with the second half of the law. But she's just... I don't know. She just burst in and made me notice all the little stuff. She seemed so set on making it work so that it wouldn't be lonely when we started out. And I mean, it worked, I guess. Because by Christmas I was convinced, and it didn't make sense. And maybe I shouldn't have said anything. Especially considering we don't even talk much anymore. It's like what happened to the Ivanovs but without the huge fight. It just happened. But, inexplicably, she won me over. So I may be cursed in that way, but she might not be."

Darren rolled his eyes at Kip, regardless of the man being correct, before laying down his cards to duck out of the round. "I like to think I have a decent reason, Parsons. For example, I would simply ruin whomever they matched me with. They might go completely mad."

"That wouldn't be much of a stretch," Oliver muttered to Keiran, whose lips quirked up slightly.

Jack did not often assume the role of the introvert, though she often preferred to remain within herself, but she was trying to get a feel for this strange compilation of company. Truly, she enjoyed the possibility of having a social group that were not solely bonded by political revolution or social anarchy or Quidditch statistics. To be able to talk about whatever topic struck their fancy was going to be a very nice change, and the simple act of playing a slightly competitive game have Jack the escape she needed from her hellish lifestyle.

But this topic also had some bearing on her participation. They were discussing love and marriage and, though Jack knew a little of both, it was not the sort of thing she wanted to discuss with new acquaintances. Hell, it wasn't the sort of thing she liked discussing with the involved parties. She knew that the more she invested herself, the more she would be questioned. Thus far, Kieran and Oliver seemed intent on talking without asking questions in return for the others - Jack would not complain. Better them than her.

Now she just had to worry about Gabby remembering her.

This was her first meeting with Darren, though she had heard of him through Kip, who seemed to greatly enjoy his time with the younger man. Jack could understand why. The Dyllan in both of them found amusement in people, and Darren was a highly amusing person. He couldn't help it either. Jack could see his own disappointment at having been cast out of the limelight thus far, save for his brief scolding, so she now brought him into it. "Darren, you seem to have a lot you want to say." Kip ducked his head to hide the laugh that had bubbled to his lips. "Is there a lady out there that you almost ruined the life of, then, if you had had the chance?"