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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Sparkle shrugged. Hey. Suit herself, right?

"Sure I do," he replied. "I enjoy cooking because of Dr. Lecter. And I like singing and dancing. And acting, though there's not really anywhere on the island to do that anymore. I can sew, but that's more my job these days and less of a hobby."

Even if it was what he was going to school for. Sort of.

"Plenty of stuff."

He was leaving out the 'stealing things' one. Among others.

Seivarden found she almost envied him that. "I'd just want my job back," she said. "Can't see how that's going to happen."

She drank deeply from her glass this time.

"I can't even remember what plans I had for when I'd retire from active service." She frowned. "There must have been something." Then she shrugged. "That wouldn't be possible either."

"Guess not," Sparkle agreed, and then took another drink. "So what are you doing now? Things aren't likely to fix themselves, after all."

"Not much. Working in the flower shop." She frowned. "I'd never thought I'd do something like that. You know, there isn't really anything I actually want to do. Well, apart from kef, but I can't get that either."

If Sparkle had changed his mind about helping her to find a substitute he was welcome to mention it now.

Yeah, Sparkle was drunk, but he wasn't that drunk. He nodded a little in understanding.

"Yeah, drug withdrawls are like that," he said, instead. "It's hard to care about anything else. It fucking sucks. Distractions help, sometimes."

"So what did you take?"

Being drunk meant she really failed at being subtle.

That's fine. It meant much the same for Sparkle, which was why he was blinking at Seivarden, and then breaking into an incredulous laugh.

"What, don't tell me you wanted to go drinking so you could find out?"

Careful how you answered this one if you didn't want to find your drunk ass stranded in Baltimore, Seivarden.

"No. I really didn't think you would tell me. Can't blame me for trying though." It wasn't entirely truthful, but Seivarden really didn't want to have to find her way back home on her own.

And she was actually enjoying this.

Sparkle squinted for a few seconds, and then sighed, and shrugged, and decided that he was already too damn drunk to care for too long anyway.

"Can't blame you for trying," he agreed. "What, doesn't Dr. Lecter still have you on something to dull the edge or anything?"

"Yes, but it's not the same," Seivarden said. "I'm grateful for that though."

She probably shouldn't get as drunk as she was on those meds.

"Anyway, I'm glad you agreed to come with me. And not for that. I had an awful movie night last Saturday, and this is so much better."

Sparkle tilted his head a little.

"Look, I have some pot in my bag," he said, finally. "It probably isn't anything like what you're hoping for, it's not even like some of the shit I used to get into. It's just leaves that you smoke and they take some of the edge away. It's also, like, still fucking not legal in this stupid country, so we want to hold off until we're back on the island if we're going to smoke it, because I am not spending any time in a fucking prison cell just because you want to get high."

He took another mouthful of whiskey.

"Tell me about your shitty movie night."

Seivarden blinked, then laughed. "I didn't expect that. But thank you. Yes."

She laughed again.

"Peter's awful friend showed up with a movie about a sinking ship. He ate pizza with his hands and then they both lectured me about pronouns while people were drowning on the screen. And apparently everything was my fault."

Seivarden shook her head.

Sparkle was going to refrain from pointing out the obvious; that pizza was made to be eaten with the hands. Instead he wrinkled his nose a little.

"I mean, the pronoun talk is important," he noted. "But, like, it probably could've waited until after the movie. Do you figure any of it was maybe misunderstandings, the same way they were when we first met? I mean, different cultures, different expectations, and everyone's talking past one another?"

Sparkle didn't know who Peter's awful friend was, but he knew Peter. Peter was good people.

"I don't know!" Seivarden made a gesture with her hand. "All I said was that it made no sense, because the heroine couldn't rescue her lover, whom I apparently should have called he, and then I got an explanation about how all that works and it made no sense either!"

She snorted.

"I mean, Peter could have brought it up afterwards. I wouldn't have minded that." Much. But at least she respected Peter, even if she didn't always agree.

Sparkle nodded a little, looking thoughtful. Drunk. But thoughtful.

"Everyone goes by 'she' where you're from, right? So you have, like, no frame of reference? I can try to talk you through it sometime if you want. When we're both, like, way more fucking sober."

Because ahahahaha right now? Good luck.

"Yes!" Seivarden exclaimed.

"Because suddenly I was this evil person who used the wrong pronoun for people in an entertainment, and I should be able to figure it out just by looking for tits, and then, no, it's really complicated and there are more than two, and you have to ask and people get killed over it!"

Sorry Sparkle, Seivarden had just been really frustrated about this for a week.

"So yes. Please. When we're sober."

She sipped her whiskey.

Sparkle gave a low little whistle at that.

"Hookay, there's a lot to unpack there. When we're sober." That part was really important, yes. "So we'll do that. Not right now. But we will, and you can ask whatever questions you need until we make it make sense, okay?"

Because it sounded like they had tried, and either they weren't exactly on the same page while explaining to her, or someone was drunk, or both, but what he was hearing was nothing shy of a gender binary disaster.

He did pause and then offer, "But it is bullshit that Rose didn't get to save Jack."

That movie had come out when he was an infant. Like that ever stopped Sparkle.

"Yes, well, I missed most of that because of the lecturing, but I saw the ending. Really tragic," Seivarden said. "In a beautiful way. They had left by then, but it almost made me cry. You've seen it?"

"It's, like, as old as I am," Sparkle replied, "but I like movies that have been around for a while. I saw it for the first time a few years back."

He gave his shoulders a shrug.

"You like that kind of thing? Sad movies, or just beautiful ones, or...?"

"I like to watch a lot of different things," Seivarden replied. "We have historical dramas, romantic ones, adventures, all sorts of things. I've watched some TV here but I really miss the ones from home. Even the ones from when I left my universe. They made more sense and... I don't know. They're different."

She snorted.

"And you have a lot more options for who can rescue who."

"Wouldn't that be nice," Sparkle said, kind of wistfully. "Hollywood - where they make a lot of movies here on Earth - is really bad for that. But, like, Earth has been bad for it, going way back. People are just starting to make noise about it."

He took another drink.

"You ever want to watch something, though, and don't think it'll all make sense, I can try to explain that, too."

He had 'being from modern Earth' going for him, there.

"I... yes. Thank you." Seivarden said, blinking again.

"So, can I ask you one thing? That seems to come up a lot."

Heh. Confusing the hell out of people was one of Sparkle's favourite hobbies. Bonus points if he could do it with kindness.

"Sure," he replied with a shrug. "I can't promise I'll be able to answer it well right now," he nodded toward his drink, "but I can try."

Don't worry, Seivarden might not be sober enough to get the question across.

"So, the in the romantic entertainments the lovers often want to get married, and I understand now that marriage can be either romantic or for money. Like in the one we talked about, Rose was expected to marry someone who wanted her to have children and maybe not pay her for it." She paused here, trying to focus. "But either way, it's always upsetting if one of them have other people in their lives. Even if it's just for money. Or having children. But I understand the part about having children is mostly in the past?"

There was probably a point to this, somewhere. Sparkle might have to look for it.

Yeah, this one was going to take a few minutes to parse.

Sparkle squinted a little in thought.

"Uh," he said, because that seemed like a good starting point. "Are you asking about monogamy? I think you might be asking about monogamy. And the point of marriage?"

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