people are strange when you're a stranger

[goodsoldier]

Who: Adam and Jason
What: gambli— hey it's that guy (that other guy)
Where: a den of gentle iniquity in Aspic
When: after fight, but before hanging out with Bruce
Notes: is poker even a thing in Baedal? LET'S PRETEND.
Warnings: boys

By the time Jason shows up in a late night poker game in Aspic, his hair is dark and haphazardly styled, and his eyes are brown and behind thin-rimmed glasses; his clothing is different too. Obviously he's not dressed to head into the ring, but he has the rakish, not-quite-professional attire of a criminal turned businessman or a businessman turned criminal (and isn't the line so hard to see sometimes, anyway). Pissing the wrong people off here is also possible, just less so, and not nearly as worrying. The day he can't kick over a gambling hall and disappear into the night, he should just retire. The whole point of trying to make money by taking it from other people via certain patterns of pieces of cardboard is the avoidance of physical labor, which is not to say there aren't people capable of doing both, or people like him. But then, that's the whole point of scouting a place out before going.

It's not exactly a gambling hall, anyway, more of a dive where cards have taken over a large part of the premises and its income. And while it's not exclusive, there are some signs, some right things to say with which one can indicate they know how this racket goes and they're good for the money. Jason has shown his face twice before to prove he's a good prospect. Tonight he hopes to get to one of the bigger tables and see what happens. Poker isn't just about picking up on tells. No one likes a card counter, but a bit of that is necessary, and it's also the tells he himself gives off. This Jason isn't the easy, confident fighter from the other night, but a demure, almost shy young man with good instincts, yet perhaps, not quite enough experience. Someone more like one of the spectators at the underground fights, one foot in, one foot out. He even looks smaller, somehow — the cut of his clothes and the way he holds himself, by turns nervous-excited and sly, a decent player who is cultivating a warm welcome among one of the table of regulars for his apparent mix of both challenge and manipulability.