milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Mary Lennox is sitting in a booth, her legs tucked beneath her to give her extra height, poring dutifully over a list.

The first item is 'stakes'; the most recently added can be seen to read 'gloves'. It's somewhat of a long list.

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It's very early in the afternoon, and Dave is still bleary eyed. So you'll have to forgive him when he sits in the booth, along with curry and milkshake, before he notices it's occupied.

"Oh, hey, there."

Mary eyes the suddenly-appearing stranger, with more than a little wariness.

Well. First things first.

"You must not," she orders, pulling the paper back towards her defensively, "get any food on my list."

"'Ey," Dave says suddenly, very defensively. He does not deal well with children. "What kinda slob d'you think I am?"

Unfortunately, the curry stains on his London Jets T-shirt are actually quite fresh.

"The sort of slob who has stains on his shirt and sits down at other people's tables without asking," Mary says, rather primly.

"I do not know if there is another kind."

Dave looks down at his shirt defensively. "I didn't seeya there," he points out. "You're very small and should y'even be in a pub alone?"

Mary looks rather indignant.

"I am not so very small," she protests. "I have grown lots since I first came here - I am not half so skinny as I was. And I come here by myself all of the time in any case."

"Y'still small enough t'miss this early in the day," Dave points out.

"It is already well past noon," Mary retorts, "and that is not early at all."

With a rather superior look: "Besides, it should not matter how late or early in the day it is as to how easy to see I am. I do stay the same size."

"See!" Dave protests. "I mean, who's together enough by now? People with nothing to do in the evening but sleep, that's who."

". . . sleeping is what one is supposed to do in the evening," Mary says, patiently.

"That is why it is dark."

"The smeg it is!" says Dave, who prefers to sleep to hide from the cruel dawn. "'Ow come that's when all the best telly programmes are on, then? And when the pubs are busiest?"

Mary is now giving him a look of 'adults are, indubitably, absolutely insane.'

"I do not know," she informs him, "about telly programmes - but pubs are busiest because they are full of people who are drunk. And everybody knows that people who are drunk are not sensible."

Dave smirks back the smirk of 'yeah, but insane is fun.'

"Well, where's the fun in sensible?"

"I do not know much about fun," Mary says, prim again. "But it is helpful to be sensible if you wish things to turn out well.

One need not be sensible all the time - but it is useful most of the time."

"Nah," Dave says dismissively. "I've never been sensible and it's got me through the last three million years."

He gets a highly dubious look, at that.

"You do not," Mary informs him, "look as if you were three thousand."

"Hey, I look good for my age," Dave boasts, before correcting her: "Three million."

"People have not even been about for three million years," Mary scoffs, rather convenietly forgetting about the presence of people from the future in the bar.

"They had by the time I died," Dave points out. "I'm from your future, in'I?"

A brief pause, before Mary rallies, tossing her head with a wise and experienced air.

"- oh, well, why did you not just say you were a ghost the first time around?"

"I'm not a ghost!" Dave points out. "I'm just dead. Lots of people here are!"

"Yes," Mary says, patiently, "and dead people are ghosts."

A pause to consider.

"Well - unless they are vampires - or some other sort of demon."

"I'm not any a'them," Dave explains. "I can't do any of that cool ghost stuff or anything."

Mary shakes her head, a little.

"It is not as if all ghosts are the same. I have met many ghosts here - and most of them could not fade away, or anything like that - or at least I have not seem them do it. But you are dead - and dead people are ghosts."

"Meh," Dave just says, with a dismissive shrug and turns back to his curry. "It doesn't change anythin' anyway."