But My Drink Is In There, Man
Leslie and Ray looked at each other. This was a knowing look that had encoded in it a sort of mental calculus. They each had reasons to not go back into the taco shop, a lot of them Viking related. Ray severely didn’t want to get the shit kicked out of them. Not that there was any specific reason for this to happen, but it could really happen at the drop of a hat with these guys. For Leslie, it was Lagertha. Or more aptly, whoever Lagertha was hooked up with at the moment. Leslie was pretty sure it was a guy named Magnus, but it was tough to tell. He tried to keep up with who Lagertha was hooking up with not because of any sort of jealousy, but because that guy typically wanted to beat the shit out of Leslie.
Lagertha had kind of been coloring outside the lines socially when she had decided to bring Leslie to bed. This, among the Vikings, was a faux pas. With her being their Yarl, whatever she did was law, so this was now Leslie’s social peccadillo to deal with. The fact that among real Vikings this would have been a totally acceptable thing for a Yarl to do was not lost on Leslie. These were not real Vikings though, these were violently delusional cosplayers who wore magic glasses and burned peoples skis. This was the world he lived in though, and his couple of nights with Lagertha had been worth it.
He bore her no ill will of course. She wasn’t telling these guys to try to beat the shit out of him as far as he knew, their fucked up social hierarchy was. He had a true affection for Lagertha. She was a strong and independent woman. She was funny and sweet, but if you got the wrong side of her you could find yourself breathing out of a couple of brand new holes. Fundamentally, she was a neurodivergent person who was prone to mood swings of a particularly vicious nature. Instead of taking a traditional therapeutic route to try to deal with these issues, she had chosen to lean into this personality trait and live in a culture that not only accepted her as she was, but venerated her for it.
This look between Ray and Leslie came to an end when Ray piped.
“But my drink is in there, man,” they said, finally bringing a voice to the silent conversation that they had been having.
Leslie sighed and looked up at the velvet and foam ceiling of the Neon. He nodded, dry swallowed a couple of the mushroom pills that he had just bought, and got out of the car. They walked across the now empty parking lot and headed for the taco shop.