milliways_bar | (no subject)

Now there's someone she's been keeping an eye out for.

Pushing herself off the table she was sitting on, she walks over to stand behind the seat to his right.

"Hey." She offers him a grin. "Get my note?"

Well. Hello, Kate. Turning just enough so he ain't got his back to her 'cause that's rude, he tilts that bottle her way. "Note?"

Oh, she must mean this one, the one that just appeared. The last time he was here was the time she followed him out, and he didn't see her back home -- she never called, she never wrote, never sent him those thank-you flowers he's been pinin' for: she technically did a hit and run and he's gotta admire that in a lady -- so he ain't had much of a chance to get notes. But he opens this one up 'cause sure enough it's got his name right there on it in her pretty handwriting and takes a look.

That's fair; he nods in her direction. "You're welcome. You want to take a load off? Sit for a minute? Tell me what kind of trouble you got in on my base of operations?" Shit, he's almost in a good mood. "Or maybe just tell me what the fuck's goin' on with all the costumes around here?"

That answers that question.

"Think I could sit for a while."

She puts her empty beer bottle on the bar and asks for a replacement, and when the unopened bottle shows up in front of her, she lowers herself onto the bar stool next to him.

"Apparently this is how the bar celebrates Mardi Gras." She hesitates, smiling skeptically. "It's an Earth holiday. Probably best known for masks and colorful costumes and beads." And drunken revelry, but maybe that's a given. "Most of these outfits aren't exactly voluntary, so I hear."

She stops long enough to grin again.

"And for what it's worth, I didn't get into any trouble in your home base."

"I know you didn't. The report would've come across my desk sooner or later." He ain't never at his desk, but it's a great friggin' line. It was bound to come in handy sooner or later.

Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras. Nope, they don't have that on Gaia, but they do have costume... things. Where people get dressed up, except it's usually 'cause they want to get dressed up. Not 'cause they ended up at some bar and it did it for 'em. That's just all kinds of fucked up.

"You glad the whole dress-up thing passed you by?" Smoothing down the front of his always-rumpled shirt and jacket never does shit, but it's old habit to try anyhow. It's probably pretty obvious to her he's glad to be in his usual shit.

And Kate's still kinda pretty. Shit, she'd probably look good in or out of a costume too.

One eyebrow and one corner of her mouth both rise in amusement. "I thought you were just a pilot."

Too bad he's not from Earth toward the end of 2004.

"You kidding?" As he smooths down his shirt, she looks down -- gratefully -- at the Janis logo on her shirt and the dark blue denim of her jeans. "I couldn't be happier. Costumes aren't my thing."

He should probably be pretty glad, too.

"Just a pilot. I oughtta be insulted." It's good-natured mock insult, though; he ain't so sure he's ever talked Turks with her. It ain't always the first thing he says. "I don't know, Kate. If you'd hung around a little more when you followed me out, you might've seen some of the other shit I get to do."

Or not. He's pretty sure most of what he did after she left was exciting shit like cleanin' his apartment and watchin' TV and drinkin'. But maybe it's better she didn't. Gives him a little air of mystery. And when she looks down at her own chest, his eyes follow.

Fuck it, he's only human. He doesn't stare or nothin', just... checks out the logo, which is one he doesn't recognize, and moves along. His sister would hop in from Sector 5 and friggin' kill him if he stared in any kind of obvious way.

"And yeah, I'm with you on the no costume thing. I never heard of anyone bein' forced to wear a costume against their will." That might be overstating things, but what he really means is he never heard of it on a wide-spread basis at a bar at the end of the universe. It's just that's way too many words to waste all at once.

"Like sit at a desk and get reports on trouble in the city?"

Makes it sound like he's working for the government or something, and she definitely wouldn't have guessed he did that.

"I could always sneak out after you again sometime." She grins, kidding.

Mostly.

"That's not all I hear people have been forced to do these last few days." Her grin disappears now, though, and with her nose a little wrinkled in disapproval, she shrugs. "Women being turned into men, that kind of thing."