milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Mike isn't so much seated at Bar as he is slumped over her. He hates days like today. You know the kind, where what you've been putting off all week just has to be done.

The concern du jour is the lack of writing on this week's Happy Hour schedule. There's just no amount of squinting that's going to make writing magically appear on the calendar before him, and he knows it.

It's just unfair the way the universe works, you know? That procrastination can't continue indefinitly.

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Mike pats him gently on the shoulder.

"You're awful vanilla, aren't you?"

". . . no." He just doesn't have the internet! "I, uh, just - hadn't heard of that one yet."

"Oh well let me learn you something! Furries are people who really like anthropomorphic animals. Like...really like them."

Cal absorbs this.

"You learn something new every day, I guess."

He just didn't really want it to be that.

"Just think of what you'll learn tomorrow!"

It could be worse.

"Suddenly I'm afraid," Cal says with a slight laugh.

"As well you should be, as well you should be."

"That's not as helpful as you think it is," Cal tells him, laughing for real now.

He blinks.

"I was supposed to be helpful? Where is that written?"

"I was giving you the benefit of the doubt," Cal explains.

"Oh don't do that. Bad things happen to those that tread down that path. Bad things. Bad spooky things."

"I'll consider myself warned, then," Cal says. "'Always assume the worst of Mike.' Got it."

"I can't help that I'm depraved with my mind constantly in the gutter. It's just how I was raised."

"I seem to keep running into people like that," Cal says. Well, mostly just the one, but Sam is so good at it he seems like more than one sometimes.

"Woah, really? Because most of the time it feels like it's only me who's like this."

"Yeah, but you never meet any of the Brits, either," Cal points out.

"You have yourself there a good point. Are all the British people pervs too?

...

Wait wait. They have dishes called Spotted Dick and Toad in the Hole. Of course they are. Never mind. Forget I asked."

Cal just laughs. "Yeah, no comment."

"So am I right in assuming that someone's given you The Talk?"

This gets a wary look. "Which one?"

"There's more than one? I'm just thinking of the rules of the bar. Which one are you thinking of?"

Cal ignores the question. As a former politician, he is good at this.

"Oh, yeah. I got that right off the bat. Hasn't been much of a problem." Even if Sam does occasionally seem bent on making it otherwise with one of them.

This seems to placate Mike.

"And someone's given you your first free drink?"

"Yep. I have been here since August," Cal reminds him. "I don't think I could have avoided it if I tried."

"Quality assurance, my man. Quality assurance. I figure if I'm out here doing paperwork I might as well do a bit of impartial polling as well."