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[everythinglost]

Call for a good time

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[crab_rangoon]

He laughs, but he understands. "That would have been my mother. She fucked off from London to Hong Kong and found my father, who did have money. So the late 50s weren't so bad for her."

He points to Fitz. "That was your probably. You needed someone like that. What do they call them? Sugar mamas? Sugar daddies?" He leans forward. "Is that what your doctor was?"

[everythinglost]

He nods, "That's the way to do it. The best I usually got was the woman who worked at the greengrocer's down the road giving me good exchange on the fruit and veg. Which isn't the most dramatic story of advancement in the world."

Since he doesn't have anything else, he throws his handkerchief at Pagan, proving his mother correct in it being good sense to make sure you always have one to spare. "Fuck off," he fails at sounding annoyed, if that's what he's attempting. "The Doctor's the guy that lets me be a total freeloader. Pretty sure there's a difference."

[crab_rangoon]

Pagan just gives him a long look, watching the handkerchief flutter down in front of him.

"No, my boy. I don't think there is at all."

[everythinglost]

"There is!" Fitz insists, he doesn't need anything to support him when he decides to sound certain.

[crab_rangoon]

"How?" he insists.

Better back up that bullshit, friend.

[everythinglost]

"We don't have sex, so that's basically the whole definition gone right there." He's not sure what the actual definition is, but he's still pretty sure he's right.

"Plus, it's not really like the Doc pays for stuff with his money, exactly. Don't think 'better at confidentially stealing shit' counts."

[crab_rangoon]

"I don't think it has to do with sex," he points out. "But you think what you want."

He also isn't completely convinced Fitz and the Doctor don't have sex. But that's not something he's going to get out of Fitz at all.

[everythinglost]

"If it's not sex, what's the point? If you're going beyond a single escort for an event or whatever. And even that seems to encourage blurred lines."

He makes a face, actually, no, not something he wants to think about. Permanently not thinking about Carmodi is always for the best.

[crab_rangoon]

Pagan holds up a hand. "That is entirely out of my experience, honestly. That's something that I was never into."

He shakes his head. "Even as a young man, surrounded by the other old men of my father's time? That was their business. Not mine."

[everythinglost]

"The money's usually much more worth it than other jobs. And I don't think it's just because I hate work, thought I definitely do. Man, status symbols can be kind of weird, can't they. I don't know if it's more or less when you're talking groups like organized crime."

He tilts his head.

"What did you want your business to be? I know you didn't want it to be like your father, be part of the future, but that suggests something before going off to be king of this different country."

[crab_rangoon]

"I was going to reform it. Expand. Fashion it more like the mafia instead of just a bunch of fucking thugs beating each other for power and money." He shrugs. "It was 1988 and they wanted to do business like we were still in the 60s. They wanted to invest in bullshit. They wanted to keep all the money in Hong Kong. But the place was opening up. They built the rail line. There were talks with the US. But they wanted to keep everything to their old friends and their old ways."

He shrugs. "They didn't think any of my ideas were worth considering. That and I spent a good portion of my father's money hiring mercenaries because I knew those fuckers would turn on me. They didn't seem to like that."

[everythinglost]

"I'm shocked they weren't fans of that. Amazed, really. Could even get to mildly surprised, but that would probably be pressing it."

He shakes his head.

"I'm not surprised, but wanting to do business like its the 60s is always a warning sign. And the older generation always seems to have a real problem with change. Which isn't surprising, either, but even if it always seems to be that way, part of me still feels that when things have changed enough that you can carry around a mobile telephone, then they've changed enough that people should have to admit it."

[crab_rangoon]

"But they didn't! Their minions had phones, but they didn't. I had a phone. Big fucking thing that it was. But it existed!"

He sighs. "Well, it doesn't matter. I left and I still got to keep my title. Just pushed the drugs from Kyrat to Singapore and cut them the fuck out of the deals."

[everythinglost]

"I'd hope you'd at least have a phone." Pagan had still been young, which, as Fitz had said, does sometimes do his head in a bit when he thinks of where he'd be in the '80s without time travel. "They clearly lacked proper paranoia." Personally, he doesn't think he'd be keen on not having a phone when his minions did. Seems like just setting yourself up.

"Are you still thinking of going back to Kyrat?"

[crab_rangoon]

"Yes." The answer comes out steady. "There is nowhere else for me to go. And I am too old to try for another world."

[everythinglost]

Fitz nods, seriously. "It's true. You are getting up there in the whole age department."

[crab_rangoon]

"Fuck off, 1950s." He waves a hand at him. "If you're not going to be supportive, then you can walk off." He grins.

[everythinglost]

He makes a face. "I refuse any association with the 1950s. Norton's from the '50s, and that's his burden to bear. I'm just in my prime, untethered from time."

[crab_rangoon]

"What is that like?" he wonders. "Not having a time?"

Not having a home, he can understand. Not having a planet, well, he hears that from Rawne. But not having time?

That's different.

[everythinglost]

"It can be a bit odd, sometimes," Fitz admits. It's not something he's often willing to admit.

"Don't always realize how much of a reference point it can be until it's meaningless. You're not quite linked to events the same way, which can wear on the mind when you're not really built to be outside of time."

[crab_rangoon]

"But you have your childhood," he points out. Not a great one. Not with his mother, but there is one. "Does that make it easier or harder?"

[everythinglost]

"That what makes it more complicated. If I'd always been outside of time, than anything but personal chronology would've always been meaningless. I mean, just say '1948' or something and it's not like that means anything. But for me it means being twelve and everything that happened then as followed by 1949 and so on. Right up until years stop having that meaning because now 1948 is also being twenty-nine and fighting aliens in Australia."

[crab_rangoon]

"So you don't skip outside of your own timeline, then. You go back to it, cross into it. So does that mean that, in 1948, when you were twelve, there were aliens in Australia that you didn't know about? Or was htat a different -- place?"

The whole thing gives him a headache.

[everythinglost]

"Yeah, and I helped stop them from taking over the world, except I knew they didn't except they still could've." He shakes his head. "I'd say that's why I drink but that came way before any of this nonsense with time."

He hesitates for a moment.

"And it's gotten a bit more complicated, recently. Because I'm not entirely sure it still happened. My childhood, I mean. What with, ah, certain troubles. And it's generally fine because I'm planets and or centuries out, but just before I came here I was in 1937 and either right across the channel I was also toddling about even as I was also getting involved with the war, or I wasn't."

[crab_rangoon]

"Best not to think about it at all, then," he suggests. "And perhaps just have more to drink." Which is always his answer when he gets too deep into this.

"There's a reason I stick to the easier endeavors. Like running countries."