milliways_bar | bartending!

Entry tags:

bartending!

Tonight's Specials:
Absolute Heaven
Blue Heaven
Almost Heaven

Tonight's theme is probably not the hardest one to ever figure out, but the small smile on Tifa's face and the humming coming from her as she puts away her chalk and gathers her hair in a ponytail both say she's not so homesick that she's not content to do her work.

On the contrary, her shift's one of only times all those other thoughts fade away into background noise.

Her smile turns into a grin as she ties an apron around her waist. "Can I get anybody a drink?"

[ooc: Thanks for the tags, guys! A little later than advertised, we're taking these babies slow from this point on.]

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"I can make you something really strong."

She does have to do a little bit of a double take when she sees him, but if she can serve drinks to Wilbur, almost twice her size and tentacled, she can serve drinks to just about anyone.

And she does love her job.

"Sunflower seeds?" That's a request she's never gotten before, but she starts looking around behind the bar. "I bet we have some back here somewhere."

He leans against the bar, squirming a bit. This is why he normally wears casual clothes; he doesn't feel so self-conscious in them. Strange that the clothes do what the visible mutations do not.

"I think I'm the only one who asks for them here, but they're good. And yeah, the stronger, the better. Ever just have one of those days?"

Letting out a small noise of triumph, she produces a bag of sunflower seeds from behind the bar and pours some into a bowl. As she puts the bowl on the bar, she nods and smiles a little.

"I've had a few of those days."

She absently wipes her hands on her apron. "Have you ever had Atlantean? It's the strongest drink I've ever had anywhere, but I'd suggest you drink it slowly." Gesturing behind the bar, she goes on. "Or I could just mix you something, if you'd rather."

There was that blue drink, Adios Motherfucker. She never did tell Vincent the name of it, but she knows it was pretty strong. Definitely cheaper, too.

"I usually just get beer here," he says. "I don't think I've had the Atlantean. But I'd defer to your judgment--you're the professional. Whatever you'd recommend for wanting to forget things for a while."

He scoops up a handful of seeds. "It's never just one thing at a time. One thing starts going funny, and everything else looks over and says 'Hey, we should pile on too.' The world's funny like that."

"Tell you what: I'll pour you a small glass and you can see what you think."

She'll even make sure it's slightly discounted, if she can manage it. Taste tests are good reasons for cheaper drinks.

There's a bottle tucked away in the back, labeled simply but elegantly, and poured into a glass, it can only be described as golden. There's something lush about the smell that she can never quite put her finger on, almost a mixture of roses and berries.

She places the glass on the bar for him. "If the world's giving you a hard time, I can personally guarantee the Atlantean will take your mind off things."

He doesn't worry so much about money. The Bar might, though, since he insists on paying his tab in large bags of quarters.

He watches her pour the drink and, when it is placed before him, picks it up cautiously. "It's not... you know, one of those spiked drinks, is it? Just a really strong regular drink? I don't want to wind up having acid flashbacks or something on television. It might be hard to explain."

"Straight wine."

She holds her hands up in a gesture of complete innocence.

"Nothing tricky about it, I promise. It's just good." She pauses for a moment. "And very strong, like I said. If you're worried about doing anything you wouldn't usually do, you may not want to drink multiple glasses."

It's tough to predict how he'd react to Atlantean, but she thinks the small glass should definitely do the trick for taking his mind off things. He's definitely bigger than she is, and one glass wasn't enough to make her do anything objectionable.

"I'm not sure there are things I wouldn't usually do," he says, studying the contents of the glass. "Sing in public, maybe. Already did the awkward confessing-of-feelings thing, so that can't get worse. Whatever happens, it'd be something, at least."

He takes a cautious sip.

Not that he doesn't trust her--he is reasonably sure the rules of the bar would extend to prevent bartenders from trying to hurt customers--but he doesn't know whether it will burn, and wants to be prepared.

And it is good. Like drinking a summer day.

He leans against the bar and takes another sip.

There's always something so satisfying about giving a customer a drink they've never had before but end up liking. A grin spreads across her face, and she clasps her hands behind her back. "I told you it was good."

It's simply the best - and most potent -- drink she's ever had anywhere, and she can't say that lightly.

"I'm Tifa, by the way. Are you... some kind of superhero?"

She's starting to think there are a lot of those around here after all.

"You weren't kidding about that," he says with a dazed grin, leaning a little more heavily against the bar. "It's like... like every holiday all in one, plus birthdays. Minus groundhog day, though. There isn't really any celebrating there."

He crunches contentedly on a sunflower seed. "I'm Ryu, it's nice to meet you. And... well, it depends on your point of view, probably. Some people might think I'm a hero, and some people might not. It's a fine line sometimes."

There's no stifling her smile. She leans toward the bar without actually touching it, her hands still clasped behind her.

"What's groundhog day?"

It seems like a funny name for a holiday. And if there's no celebrating, it seems like a funny holiday to begin with.

She straightens, hands falling back to her side, but she's still smiling. "It's good to meet you, too, Ryu. Does that mean you're kind of a vigilante?"

"It's... a weird holiday," he says. "There's this groundhog in this one little town, and if he comes out of his burrow and sees his shadow then it's six more weeks of winter, and if he doesn't then spring comes early. I love groundhogs--they're sort of like my cousins--but you know, if somebody woke me up from hibernation and dragged me out into the cold to predict the weather, I'd be mad. They usually get it wrong, anyway."

He takes another slow sip of the wine.

"Not exactly a vigilante," he says, "but if people try to hurt the forest I live in, yeah, I will fight them. Mostly I'm trying to save people from themselves--from the soul-crushing modern world, waiting in line for things, filling out forms in triplicate, doing what you're told. Life is short. People don't need to put up with that."

"I think that sounds a little cruel to groundhogs," she admits. She wouldn't be wild about having her hibernation interrupted, either. Barret discovered that the hard way back when he tried to wake her up early on one of her days off. "Maybe they get it wrong because they're mad about having people disturb their rest."

She pauses for a moment, curious. "Aren't there people who predict the weather where you're from?"

There's been a weather report in the evening news on TV every night for as long as she can remember, and even though those guys aren't always right she's pretty sure hiring them to analyze data and give a report is better than bugging some poor animal.

"...And are you really related to groundhogs?"

"Oh, there's people, yeah. And for the general weather, the temperature and whether it'll rain or whatever, yeah, there's people for that. But the one day a year, to know whether there'll be six more weeks of winter or not, it's all up to the groundhogs. Which is stupid, because weather isn't their thing, and even if it were, like they'd be able to come up with a good report when they've just been asleep for weeks."

He's been woken up from hibernation a few times over the years, briefly. He is reasonably sure that, if he were hauled out of bed in the middle of winter he wouldn't even be able to keep his eyes open long enough to see the ground, let alone look for a shadow.

"Squirrels and groundhogs are cousins, yeah. Not in a 'my parents and some groundhogs were siblings' way, but the way humans and monkeys are related. Of course, I'm only half related to them, but I can understand them."

The idea puts a grin on her face. "That's a lot of unnecessary pressure for a groundhog."

She looks at him closely for a moment, but hopefully not too closely. Obviously, she can believe he's related to squirrels. And she's not entirely sure how that works, but... well, he hasn't produced any tentacles to drink his Atlantean and eat the glass. With that in mind, this conversation's almost normal.

"We don't have anything quite like that back home."

People would probably try predicting the weather with chocobos, but that would never work. Not even with a tame one.

He's used to being looked at--the side effect of spending his most awkward adolescent years in a circus sideshow is that it doesn't bother him, as long as it isn't done with mockery.

"It's really mostly for the tourist money," he says. "All the TV crews and tourists go to the one little town, and it's the biggest thing they have there all year. They don't care about the poor groundhog. They're just exploiting him for money. But that's how the world is."

He sips his drink. "What, no groundhogs, or no animals-and-weather holidays?"

"Well," she starts slowly, "no animals-and-weather holidays. We do have groundhogs on Gaia, but I'm getting the impression they're a lot more common on Earth."

Leaning her elbow on the bar, she hesitates a moment.

"You are from Earth, right? Most people I meet here are."

But now that she thinks about it, she's pretty sure she was just assuming.

"You should start a holiday, then. Make it a big annual thing--but don't do it in the winter. And make sure you feed the animals involved. They like food."

He grins. "Yeah, I'm from Earth. Probably not the same one as most other people here are from, though. Calling it Earth just gives you an idea of the geography. You're from somewhere else?"

"I have a friend with some contacts in urban development. I bet our local tourism department would love the idea."

She's smiling and joking, but there is a thread of serious honesty in it.

"I'd say about eight out of ten people I've met have been from one version of Earth or another." She nods to answer his question. "But you're right. I'm from a planet called Gaia, and I'd never even heard of Earth before I came here."

"In my experience, and I've been in a lot of small towns lately so I've had a pretty good range, you can make a successful festival or holiday out of anything. The weirder, the better. More people will come by just to see what's going on."

He sips his wine. "What's it like on your planet? Like Earth, or... well, have you been to Earth, would be a better question. Hard to compare it, if you haven't. And even then, it would depend on what time you were there..."

"I believe it."

Smiling, she can't help but think of how the anniversary of Meteorfall has become a city-wide holiday in Edge. But there's a better reason to make a celebration of that, she thinks, than of forcing animals to try to predict the weather.

"I keep hearing about Earth, but I've never been there. We have a lot in common with it -- right down to some identical mixed drinks -- but there are some big differences, depending on what Earth you're from." She tips her head to the side. "We don't have superheroes, for one thing."

"Be glad you don't have superheroes," he says. "They're the bane of my existence. Everything I do, they try to stop. I could just be trying to eat breakfast in my own house, and they'll come in and shoot me with tranquilizers, or have my house torn down and the land paved over. If they think you're bad, they can do whatever they want to you, and if you try to fight back you get depicted as evil. It's a messed-up system."

He has caused far less damage and trouble than his superhero archrival, but he's still considered the bad guy. It isn't fair.

"Where I come from, the world is out to get you. It's got a sadistic sense of humor, and an arbitrary one. You can't take anything for granted, it can all change."

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bartending!

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