milliways_bar | Stomachache Wednesday

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Stomachache Wednesday

There was nobody in the bed other than herself when she awoke this morning, and there are no plastic bead necklaces around (the ones the Bar put on her are gone, and she figures if she'd earned some more, they would still be here). There is no evidence that she did anything really, blindingly stupid last night - except for a killer hangover and, well, the fact that she doesn't remember a large chunk of last night. She doesn't even remember where she stopped remembering.

After taking a shower so she looks and feels a bit less like death warmed over, she stumbles down the stairs into the Bar. "Grpmh. Fuckinell," she mutters as she emerges into what seems to her like a cruelly excessive amount of light, though in actuality it is no brighter than usual. She doesn't know what time it is, but she is dimly aware that there aren't many people around. Some are eating breakfast quietly, a few others are slumped on the tables, asleep. There is no mess from last night, although YT is sure that the patrons of the Bar must have made one. Either the waitrats or the Bar itself cleaned up good.

YT stumbles over to the bar proper and mumbles out a request for a glass of ice water. It appears, accompanied by two unasked-for aspirin in a small saucer. YT is not sure whether the Bar is trying to help or whether it's mocking her. She doesn't really care. She scoops up the medicine, drops it in her mouth and washes it down with the water, which is so cold it makes her teeth hurt and intensifies her throbbing headache. It also seems to clear the fog a bit.

She's always wondered if a Prairie Oyster actually works, and now seems as good a time as any to find out. But she'd better see if she can hold down plain water first.

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Ray glances down the bar from where he's just received his glass of blue stuff. "Big night last night?" he wonders aloud.

At first, YT doesn't realize that someone is addressing her: when she catches on, she turns to look blearily at the speaker, attempting to determine whether or not she recognizes him. After about five seconds of squinting and examination, she concludes that she doesn't.

YT starts nodding in answer to his question, but that makes her head hurt, so she stops that with a wince. "Think so," she croaks, "Dun really remember a lot of it."

Although she is not really in a mood to speak or be spoken to, and she has no idea who he is, there's a chance that they actually met last night during that stretch of time she's kind of fuzzy on, and so it might not be a good idea to ignore him or chase him off.

Ray smiles sympathetically. "Sounds like me this past New Year's. The way people get into Mardi Gras around here you'd think it was an extension of New Orleans. I sort of wish I'd been here for the party."

YT had lifted her head a bit at the beginning of this exchange, but that started the room spinning, so she curls her arm into a sort of pillow on the top of the Bar and lays her head on that. It stops the spinning, mostly.

"The Bar put people in funny costumes," she informs him. "Gave me a bunch of those beads. Y'know, the ones you get for..." A sudden stab of pain in her head cuts her off: she squeezes her eyes shut and massages her forehead with her free hand. "'Cept I didn't do that. I think."

"Yeah, she does that sometimes. Mostly on April first and October thirty-first. And I know the beads you mean." If her eyes were open, she'd see that he's got the grace to look embarrassed. "Well, Bar hands out stuff sometimes whether you do the deed or not. She was probably just contributing to the festivities that way."

Although YT can't see him, and her brain isn't fully up to speed, she can sense that he isn't having a private laugh at her expense. "She helped me out that way a little too much," YT grumbles. "Guess that's kind of my own fault. I was over here, and everyone was making toasts so I asked her to keep the glass full, and that made me lose track of 'zactly how many I had, y'know?" She takes a break from rubbing her forehead so she can tap her fingers on the bartop, to make sure she has the Bar's attention. "Bar, if I ever ask you to do that again, ignore me, 'kay?"

"If it helps at all, I've found that taking aspirin and caffeine at the same time makes the aspirin work a lot better," Ray says. "You might want to try that with your next round of painkillers. It goes a long way whether it's a hangover or being knocked ass over teakettle by a demonic taxicab loose on the streets of Manhattan."

YT just took her aspirin a couple of minutes ago, so she figures chasing it with some caffeine about now will still give her a beneficial effect. "Bar, one espresso, with...wait, did you say demonic taxicab?"

"Yeah," says Ray. "My New York is a little on the weird side, compared to some of the New YOrks represented here. Sorry."

YT's already encountered some pretty weird people in the bar, so this should not have surprised her as much as it did - but since she was out of it and the remark was tossed off so casually, it just kind of jumped her from behind. Speaking of jumping, she did that too, about a foot off her seat, and her head is now pounding like a fire bell. "Ow," she winces, closing her eyes again and pressing the heels of her palms against them. Then she picks up her glass of cold water - which she barely managed to avoid knocking over in all the excitement - and presses its cool surface against her forehead. "Just gimme a couple of seconds," she mutters.

Ray scootches back a little. "Sure thing. I'm really sorry, miss. I didn't- I forget sometimes about how conditions in my world compare to other people's. I'll just, um- I'm gonna be quiet over here, okay?"

Once YT has recovered sufficiently to open her eyes - or at least sort of crack one eyelid open - she looks balefully at him and says, "I'll only forgive you 'cause you told me hangover remedy," she says flatly. "Bar, an espresso with two more aspirin."

A small cup in a saucer materializes, accompanied by two white pills: YT quickly pops the pills in her mouth, then downs the espresso, before she loses the wherewithal to keep her head held up. That done, she crosses her arms on the bar and cradles her head in them, contemplating the idea of going back up to her room. But she doesn't think she can handle the stairs in her present state.

Getting to one of the booths at the periphery of the Bar - with padded seats and blessedly dimmer light - seems manageable, though. "I'm gonna go over there," she grumbles, pointing towards the nearest booth, "and stay there until I stop feeling like crap. Then maybe I'll be up to talking." Mustering her courage, she gets unsteadily to her feet, pushes off from the Bar and wobbles over to the nearest booth, where she collapses onto the cushioned bench and lays her head on the table.

Some time later, a glass of something blue appears on the table in front of her. It's only there, however, long enough for a man in a gray suit to excuse himself from his conversation with a man YT may recognize as the guy she was talking to earlier, come over and say "Excuse me, but this belongs to a friend of mine," and take the drink back to his friend.

After the two men finish their conversation, gray-suit heads back over to her. "Terribly sorry about that; largely my fault. I asked him what he was drinking and, well, it has some side-effects. Most of them on itself." A shrug. "The expression around here is 'fucking Milliways'."

"Fuckin' everything, right now," YT replies. She is still feeling like a semi rolled over her head. She is also pissed that this guy is talking to her, when she is a complete stranger to him and obviously in no mood to be talked to. She turns her face towards the wall. "Unless that stuff is an instant cure for hangovers, I don't give a rat's ass about it. Now go away and let me die in peace.

"To the best of my knowledge, there's no such thing as an instant cure for hangovers, but I'd think Bar could provide a reasonably quick one. If I went and got such a thing, do you think you could cope with continuing to live?"

If YT weren't feeling so sick, she'd sock the guy. Then again, fighting in the Bar is against the rules, and she doesn't know what the punishment is for breaking them. "Probably," she responds sourly.

"Very well then." He heads back over to Bar and returns with two single-dose packets. One identifies itself as Painaway, a trade name for "transcetamone" (something presumably as far beyond paracetamol as paracetamol is beyond aspirin, in terms both of analgesic efficacy and of not inducing nausea). The other is Purge, which bills itself as "the fastest and safest sobriety pill on the market today" (where "today" is a date well in YT's future).

"If you've got a hangover, you're probably no longer needing this," gray-suit says with regard to the Purge, "but Bar apparently wanted to be sure. And who knows? Even if you don't need it now, it may come in handy some other time." He shrugs. "And now, I'll leave you to it. If I haven't made too bad a first impression, look me up. If not..." He shrugs again. "...I'll live."

YT, feeling a little less snarky, gives him a barely perceptible nod (because she can't manage anything bigger than that). She then tears open the packets. Though she's got nothing to wash the capsules down with, she doesn't think she can make it back to the Bar or flag down a waitrat, so she just works up some spit to swallow them with. It works well enough.

She wonders if this stuff works faster than what she's used to: it's not instant, that's for sure. YT lays her head down again and waits for the medicine to do its work.

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Stomachache Wednesday

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