milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Lazy Lucifer, sitting on a barstool with supper and a piratical purring kitten curled cutely on his shoulder.

Okay, quitting the awesomely awful alliteration now, alas.

Anyway. The eyepatch is flipped up, and the pirate's hat is set at a jaunty angle, not least because Shreddie keeps batting at it fascinatedly. Sam is tolerating this for now, even smiling - well, it tickles. And besides, it's kind of fun.

You live here long enough, you get used to Milliways' quirks. Most of them, anyway. Come bother the nautical Lucifer.

[Tiny tag: Pomona, Cal Chandler]

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Cal shrugs, completely missing any double meanings Sam might be putting out there. "Some people don't. Some people do and it means you can't trust 'em. I'd rather be around people who don't smile when there's nothing to smile about." He's spent too much time smiling for no reason. Cal has a great smile.

"That's pretty much my point. Doesn't have enough to smile about, then. Although the last I heard he was seeing somebody, which may change things."

He'd seen the coffee machine go flying down the stairs, but wasn't aware it was Ianto's. Bar gossip has been woefully lacking for once.

Cal hesitates over that, debating for a few seconds.

"That may have changed. I talked to his boyfriend yesterday. He was a mess. And he wasn't really too excited when I mentioned being a friend of Ianto's."

Cal stops there, since ~~that thread is in slowtime~~ he does sometimes recognize details as not necessarily being someone else's business.

"...Well, shit."

Facepalm.

"Seen Ianto in the last few days? I haven't."

Cal shakes his head. "No, I've been keeping an eye out for him, though. But I guess I wouldn't blame him for staying away for a while." Who wouldn't avoid the place for at least a few days after that?

"Yeah."

Sam runs his fingers through his hair. "Poor bugger really doesn't have much luck."

"Yeah. He mentioned his girlfriend."

There is, if Sam is watching particularly closely at that precise moment, a brief flicker of pain and confusion in Cal's eyes before they go back to normal.

Cal, for his part, doesn't realize anything even happened.

Sam spots it and blinks.

"Yeeeah. I got the full story a while back. Not much fun."

It actually puts his break-up with Freya into perspective, and for Sam not much can do that.

"He didn't tell me much," Cal says. "Just said she'd been sick." He sips his coffee, expression betraying nothing more than concern for a friend.

Sam shrugs. "I suppose that's one way of putting it."

He doesn't elaborate, though. It's Ianto's to tell.

"Wasn't fun at all, anyway. And then he turned up in here one day a while back looking like he'd been tenderised. Turned out he had been - they run into a funny bunch, his lot."

This gets a curious glance, but Cal doesn't ask. If Ianto wants him to know, Ianto will tell him.

(And quite aside from all that, there's something pushing him away from asking. The subject of dead girlfriends is one that Cal is to be discreetly steered away from.)

The second item rates a nod of recognition, though. "Yeah, the alien thing. Sounds like something that'll get you tenderized every now and then."

"Oh, these were humans for once. They started investigating missing people and wound up walking straight into a load of cannibals."

Beat.

"No, I can't believe I said that straight-faced, either."

"Huh."

Cal looks blank. "I can. People do shit like that sometimes." Anything that involves actual humans is relatively normal in Cal's book.

Yes, cannibalism too. The narrative isn't really sure why.

"Tell me about it," says the immortal who walked through Europe in World War II.

"A family of crazy Welsh cannibals sounds more like something out of a truly awful soap opera, though."

Cal laughs, even though he probably shouldn't. "Soaps must be a little more adventurous on your world, then. Weirdest we ever got was this whole thing with a family trying to freeze the world."

What? Marijuana use does not a discriminating television viewer make.

Sam chuckles. "I don't watch much television generally, so I'm guessing here. Technology doesn't like me much - it has a habit of going boom if I'm around it for too long."

Cal looks interested. "Yeah?"

He grins. "Cinema's all right - I'm not there for long. But yeah. Magic's so much a part of me that it clashes with the technology, I suppose."

"Weird. Kind of like not being able to take pictures of vampires?" Cal pauses. "Uh, we don't have vampires. I saw a movie once. I think."

Another pause. Maybe that was mirrors. He's confused himself. He sips his coffee to cover.

A snicker. "No. You can definitely take photos of me."

He fishes in his back pocket and produces a dog-eared black-and-white photo out of his wallet, which he tosses to Cal.

"See, proof." It's faded with time, and shows someone who's clearly Sam with his arms around a pretty, unmistakably chic young woman in a beret and old-fashioned combat clothes. On the back it says in faded, elegantly-scripted French July 1942. To my Luc. Love Annette.

"Ex-girlfriend. Anyway. It's more like... chucking water on a load of live wires. That sort of reaction."

Cal studies the photo with interest. He can see how old it is, the blank paper on the back yellowed with age, yet the image of Sam looks the same as the Sam right in front of him. It's one thing to know someone is immortal, and quite another to see it demonstrated.

"Guess it's just as well I left my watch upstairs, then," he says absently.

"You were planning on annoying me any time soon?" Innocently. "It tends to happen when my emotions go off the charts a bit, that's all."

Cal looks up.

"Oh, I don't have to plan," he assures Sam, handing the photo back to him. "It just happens. It's kind of a specialty."

There have been a thousand times with Sam that he should have been annoyed but wasn't. Cal doesn't expect to keep getting lucky there.

There was also that time the first time they met, but Cal tries not to think about it. It's still embarrassing.

Sam tucks the photo back in his wallet again, putting it away.

"Pillock." He tickles him briefly.

That surprised sound Cal made was totally just a yelp, with absolutely no squeal-like properties whatsoever. He swats at Sam's hands.

"What?"