myownface | A Bar in Baltimore, Saturday Evening

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A Bar in Baltimore, Saturday Evening

If anybody were to ask Sparkle, he'd happily tell them that the last person he ever figured he'd be going for drinks with was Seivarden. Like. Ever. He'd also admit that he'd put more time than he had ever figured he would into picking a bar they could both probably enjoy, something with live blues music on Saturdays that still didn't get too rowdy. He had no idea what kind of music Seivarden liked if she even did, admittedly. Mostly he just wanted some sort of guaranteed background noise, in case whatever drunken conversation they had turned into something weird.

They lived on Fandom Island. That was always a pretty good possibility.

"Huh," he said as he stepped in and looked around for an empty table. "Cozy."

It was that sort of bar that always kind of felt like it was being lit by the streetlights outside, with the occasional neon sign or dim lamp doing the rest of the work, though the light on the singer at the stage was doing wonders to brighten it up the slightest bit, too.

"What do you think, Seivarden? How's this for tonight's drinking establishment?"

All the other places Sparkle knew were gay bars and dance clubs. So.

[OOC: For one!]

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Now Seivarden realized that this might not be a good topic. To try to sort it out, she said: "Yes, bodies. They are just part of the ship, they don't remember anything. Prisoners. Non-citizen prisoners."

This might not make things better.

"Anyway, One Esk liked choral music, so having twenty bodies made that easier."

Yeah, Sparkle's mouth was kind of hanging open for another second or three. He tried to hide it with another mouthful of whiskey. At this rate, he was going to need to be drunk, after all.

"I... guess it would," he agreed, finally.

Seivarden, your people were getting no less horrifying, here.

She was quite drunk by now, but Seivarden did notice that what she had just said bothered Sparkle. Since he didn't visibly react too badly, she just ignored it.

"I tried to look for the ship. Justice of Toren. When I returned, I mean. It would have been the only thing I'd know that wasn't gone. Oh, did you want some of this?"

She nodded towards the bottle of coke that she had deliberately ignored.

"If we're going to get home tonight, I'm gonna need some of that," Sparkle agreed, making a reach for the Coke. Though in light of the current conversation, he wasn't entirely certain he didn't want to be completely drunk right now after all. "So, you looked for your ship, but couldn't find it?"

Seivarden actually wanted Sparkle to manage to get them home tonight, since she definitely wouldn't.

"It's gone. No one knows what happened to it."

She shrugged lightly.

"Anyway, that's just one more thing at home that's gone."

"That and all the rest."

Sparkle could sympathize. Even while Seivarden painted a picture of a group of militaristic snobs who couldn't see the worth in lives or cultures besides their own... he could sympathize.

"I'm sorry," he said, topping off his glass with Coke before any more whiskey could end up in there. "Losing everything sucks."

"It does."

Especially if you were very priviliged to begin with.

She fell silent, staring at the table.

Sparkle watched her for a minute, sipping at his drink, before sighing.

"That's what it is, isn't it? You went from having everything to having nothing, and no idea how to wrap your head around any of it. And then you end up here, and it isn't like any of this makes any sense either, so you're just going to double-down on what you know, because that's all you've really got."

Which probably wasn't making her many friends. But again, Sparkle could get that.

"You never had to adjust to somebody else's way of doing things a single day in your entire life before you lost it all, did you?"

There were probably gentler ways to say all that, but Sparkle was leaning into drunkenness himself, and his mouth never had much of a filter then. Not really.

Seivarden looked at Sparkle.

"I didn't know you would share your insights when drunk," she said, stumbling om the words. She reached for her glass again.

"I have a big mouth when I'm drunk," Sparkle replied. "If you knew, I bet you wouldn't have kept topping up that glass, huh?"

He didn't seem to care much, one way or the other. Seivarden wasn't denying it, though, so he was going to go right ahead and figure he was right.

Seivarden figured that denying it would be just the same as a confirmation.

"I didn't ask you to come with me because I wanted to get drunk alone," she muttered. "But since you like being so sincere why not tell me something that's not your conclusions about me."

Sparkle just raised his eyebrows and grinned a little.

"Since I like being so sincere? You really don't know me at all, do you?"

Sparkle strongly suspected that Seivarden would have difficulty getting an accurate read on almost anybody she came across, mind. She seemed... a little too self-absorbed for that.

"Sincerity, I save for talking about other people. Nobody gets to know about me. Not without a whole lot more work than a few glasses of whiskey. I can tell you plenty of stories, though."

Not a single one of them would be true. Or perhaps there would be some truth in there, hidden tidily in all the lies. Just enough to make people wonder.

She had been mostly ironic but Sparkle was right in that Seivarden was too self-absorbed to to pay much attention to others.

"How generous," she said. "It doesn't sound like there's much truth to them though. Why so secretive? Do you think I'll judge you?"

She made a gesture with her hand. "And before you point it out, no, I don't think you would care about that."

"I mean... you've already judged me before," Sparkle pointed out. "Like, it isn't exatly outside the realm of possibility. You're pretty judgey."

"If you say so," Seivarden replied. "But I'm guessing you didn't care or you wouldn't be here."

"It's not a dealbreaker," Sparkle agreed, shrugging. "So maybe it isn't about you."

Sparkle was sure that would come as a surprise. That there were things out there that didn't actually revolve around Seivarden.

Surprisingly, Seivarden was aware of that.

"What is it about, then?"

"Maaaaybe," Sparkle drawled, "it's about me. Maybe I'm a survivor of abuse and talking about it actually causes me pain, or I'm a fugitive who doesn't want to get caught talking about it in public. Maybe the most important people in my life are murderers, or I don't want to tell you about how I'm dating royalty because I just don't think that's any of your business."

He shrugged.

"Or maybe it's all of it. Or none of it, it's something else entirely."

Seivarden might be an entitled snob and unwilling to admit it, but she had a lot of experience dealing with baby lieutenants who wanted to come across as interesting. Which, granted, was a lot more difficult if you were Radchaai and your senior officer had access to your records.

"I'm sure it's very interesting, whatever it is, but I'm also sure you didn't decide to join me tonight just to play mysterious."

She laughed and topped up both their glasses.

"Well, no," Sparkle replied with a grin. "I decided to join you tonight because there were going to be drinks."

Which he was still going to take his time with, but hell, if she was going to top him up again, he wasn't going to complain.

"The mysteriousnes is just half the fun."

Or the complete transparency, as the case actually was.

"I'm glad to hear that," Seivarden replied. "Mysteriousness gets dull pretty quickly, at least when you've had enough people try it. You could be worse at it, I grant you that, but it might be because I can't access your aptitude data."

She sipped her drink, grinning at Sparkle.

Sparkle laughed a little and shook his head.

"Yeah, for that you'd need to be taking out my professor for drinks instead," he replied. "And it isn't like he knows the first thing about me, either."

Except that Sparkle could sew, and had a good eye for storytelling and motivation.

"So, you're trying to be mysterious with everyone, not just me?" Seivarden tried to hold back a laugh. She was, by now, definitely drunk. "Who is your professor then?"

"Some guy on the mainland," Sparkle said, waving a dismissive hand and smirking. "And sure, there are plenty of people who know about me. But I've known them for, like, years."

For better or worse!

"I'm sorry to hear that," Seivarden said, laughing again, "I don't plan to stay around that long. But I'm glad you came along. I probably shouldn't finish this bottle on my own."

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