as sure as eggs is eggs

McDonald's doesn't serve breakfast past eleven o'clock in the morning. Right? We all agree, it's a universally accepted fact? It may be stupid, but it is what it is. Anyone grown past the age of approximately twelve, given a certain level of privilege and socialization in absolutely any sociogeographic area, will know this.

(Now, some people with a certain alternative level and definition of privilege and socialization may know that it used to be half an hour earlier, and that on Fridays it goes half an hour later even now, but we're not here to quaffle on the machinations of late-stage capitalism's manufactured scarcity of a product that no one with that same privilege combined with any not-insignificant regard for their long-term arterial health should even consider wanting. What are we here for? I don't know. You tell me. I'm not getting paid enough to answer that particular question today.)

We return to our topic: the ever-timely chronologically-sound closure, as a fact, is not only universally known, but also universally accepted. Given, that is, to complete the parallelisms, a certain level of socialization.

But Malos, absent or at the very least emotionally distant and unavailable father (that is to say, which one of them sprung for the initial physical separation is as yet a mystery) and all, had not become generally apprised of this fact, or so it seemed. The idea of fast food for breakfast was both incredibly intuitive and incredibly unfamiliar to him; you can fry a potato fifteen different ways at any hour of the day, right? So long as you're not doing it at home, and likely creating grease-fire explosions as you're doing it, that is.

So, at 11:13 on a Saturday (or a Sunday, or a Thursday, or whatever other unholy not-a-Friday pick of the week), he, along with an oblivious - say, hapless? - Haze, a livid Lora, and a disbelieving Jin, trudged out into the dank, muddy, pothole-shodden parking lot towards Jin's humble four-door sedan, and while Haze quickly scrambled into the backseat to get out of the day's own inglorious muggy haze with precious nuggets at the ready, Malos parked his soggy, burger-laden paper bag directly on the roof and turned on heel to give Lora, shoestring fries well in hand, the staredown.

"You mind explaining exactly what the fuck was your deal in there?"

Ah. The bold, brutal offensive. Jin's typical first move in a situation like this is to bring palms to forehead or hands to hips or temples to elbows, but instead he sucked in a wince, let it out, and took a sip of his medium-sized medium-temperature (no ice) iced tea, as quietly as he could manage. Every other time he's tried to defuse an argument between his would-be daughter and would-be husband, it...well, it hasn't worked. So he might as well look a little less pathetic while he proceeds to do nothing at all to stop them from straight-up swinging fists.

Lora, meanwhile, was definitely going for hands on hips. "I think I do mind! Why don't you explain yourself, first?"

And why don't we zoom out a little bit? Maybe they went on an awkward double date the night before - maybe the not-so-stereotypical Chili's menu jokes weren't half as funny to those possessing of less of the stupidity that excess testosterone always seems to bring - and maybe Jin and Malos had taken a ridiculously pathetic amount of time to wake up in the morning, lounging uselessly in bed while Lora and Haze had gone for their regular morning jog, weather so clearly not a factor, matching headbands and jackets and all.

Likely, Lora had said that she wouldn't stand for Jin spending all that time lazing around with Malos only to get up and make him specialty-catered breakfast, of all things, heaven forbid brunch, and Haze had chimed in that they had wanted the two of them to get together to avoid such strangely layabout pursuits, and Malos had growled enough, verbally or not, that they had piled into the car and piloted towards a compromise that would satisfy absolutely no one.

"Tch. These places, all they have is punk kids working the registers. Anybody can get a job flipping burgers, and none of them are even any good at it." To prove his point, Malos popped open the cardboard canister holding his meal and took a bite, then made an appraising face to walk back his scathing statement. Eh, not terrible.

"Anyway. These people never want to let you speak to a manager," he continued with a deleterious wave of the suspect sandwich for prime gesticulatory effect. "They're always deflecting, acting like they're in charge just because they think you're too stupid to tell what's really going on."

In other words, they were drunk with power, right, Malos? Thrust into a position of even the slightest authority, they seized upon the tools they'd been given and wreaked havoc with them. Right? And that's what you're so annoyed about?

"And I suppose you know better?" Lora inquired semi-sweetly, bouncing up on the balls of her feet.

Oh, Jin knew that look. That was the look of a young lady who'd had just about enough of primly coughing as he exercised his boyfriend-bound privilege to extricate Malos from whatever embarrassing customer-service situation he'd gotten himself into this time. Yes, he wasn't proud of the fact that Malos had lunged over the counter to grasp at the polyester polo shirt collar belonging to a fifteen-year-old boy who looked like he was just shy of still having teeth to lose, and all over a breakfast sandwich, but couldn't that be the end of it?

"Yeah. I think I do. What about it?"

Did the cycle always have to repeat?

"You know, sometimes I really can't tell what Jin sees in you."

Ah. Right. So Jin, obligingly, turned away, covering his eyes with a well-placed arch of his palm as Lora wound up to give Malos the slap she'd very likely wanted to give him while on the inside of the brick-and-mortar establishment.

He wouldn't pretend that it wasn't a satisfying sound - he certainly hadn't enjoyed getting to know the side of Malos that would pick these petty fights with cashiers and waitstaff over such insignificant things.

Yes, Jin was a patient man. He was pacifistic, peace-abiding, and believed in the inward good of all no matter the sharp outward judgements he might make of their personalities and idiosyncrasies at first.

Thus, in Jin's most majestic estimation, Malos, part-time misogynistic misanthrope though he could be portrayed (more stretched) to be, probably wouldn't fight back. There wasn't really anything in it for him, if he was being rational.

Probably. Jin hoped. Maybe he prayed. He had never before considered himself a praying man, of course, but he considered it now all the same.

What he hadn't even begun to contemplate was the possibility that Haze would leap back out of the car to come to her lady's defense even before Malos had time to react. Amid the scuffling of engineer boots and fashion sneakers on damp, cracked pavement, there came several sounds of knuckles on cheekbones and vague "oof"ing sounds from Lora and Malos both.

So this was to be how it ended. A fistfight. A brandishing of arms on the basis of politeness. War was never waged on the basis of knocking sense into the other side; you could aim for striking fear or asserting dominance, but it was most certainly not a moral thing, not like these two (now three) were making it out to be.

Could anyone truly win in such a scenario? Should he throw his own lot in? Did he need to? Did he want to? Would it kill him, in the end?

What were the odds, on either side? Minoth would take them, if he were here, and probably squabble lightly with Mythra about it all the same, but Jin had never been quite so experienced at gauging. On the one hand, the girls had the advantage of size in the sense that the element of surprise favored smaller units. On the other hand, Malos was huge.

(Yes, he probably didn't need any help actuating his goals. It was more...direction he required. And Jin wasn't about to dither on that at this particular moment.)

Oh, god. And he was complacently spectating this event...why?

It was endlessly simple. It was endlessly complicated.

Moreover, it was simply endless.

Because McDonald's doesn't serve breakfast past eleven o'clock, and because, grimly enough, Jin should have known that only in a world where Lora had up and died would he ever have been able to find peace with Malos.

His Filet-O-Fish remained rotten in the bag dunked in a nearby garbage can for some hours after that, the sedan long since peeled away. After all, Jin didn't especially feel like tucking in to it over Lora's metaphorical dead body, Haze's prayers and Malos's curses lain politely to the side.