milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

lorne,
puck

(no subject)

At around three o'clock in the morning, by magical Scotland-at-the-end-of-the-universe time, someone slips very quietly downstairs and into the main bar.

His hair is mussed, his expression sleepy (fairies do not usually sleep anywhere near as much as mortals do, but raising twin toddlers will take care of that one), and he desperately craves something with dairy in it.

After a moment's murmured conversation with the Bar, Puck takes a mug of cream and retires to a couch by the fire, where he yawns cheerfully and stretches out.

Midnight snackage FTW.

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Midnight snackage is indeed for teh win. But so is midday boozeage. It's a win-win situation, obviously, that you can get both from Bar.

Lorne thinks so, at any rate, and he's especially pleased to see a familiar face of the long time no see variety. "Puck, my darling little milk dud, I thought I'd never see you again!"

Saunter saunter, goes the demon.

Puck's expression manages to be, rather eloquently, both a cheery grin and a grimace at the endearment milk dud.

"Hardly a dud, sir," he protests.

But he gives up and sticks out his tongue.

"Lorne. 'Tis an unlooked-for pleasure."

"It's a type of sweets, darling." He helps himself to a seat on the couch. Puck's cute as always, the couches here are always comfy, and Lorne craves humanoid contact like...like... a craving demon craves things he doesn't get a lot of.

Except for when he does.

"You're looking good. Sleepy, but good. How are things beyond the door?"

Puck laughs, running a hand through his hair.

"I suppose that depends upon the door in question. Behind certain doors I could name, the children are safe abed, and I am allowed a brief reprieve."

"Oh, don't name them. I don't need to know." He smiles, some little remnant of his heartmeats flickering delightedly at the mention of kids. He's a softie, but hush, it's a secret.

"Very well-- I shall keep all such doors safely anonymous."

Puck leans back against the couch cushions, smiling secretively and taking a contented sip of his cream.

"In the meantime, how have you been keeping yourself?"

"All the better to keep the tiny darlings safe and sound," he agrees, then follows it up with a slightly self-conscious shrug.

"Same old, same old. Or, well, not quite. I had a rather unpleasant visit a while back. One of my patrons brought a fight and uninvited guests into the club. Not pretty."

And, of course, there was Angel.

Oh, look! A subject change! Right there! "But speaking of pretty: How do you look so ravishing on so little sleep?"

"I thought," Puck protests with a lopsided smile, "you were speaking of not pretty."

"Details, details." He makes as if to sweep that silly little notion under the rug, or the nearest decorative pillow.

"Details I should quite like to hear."

How can you say no to this face? His eyes are so darn blue.

"After all, I never had heard tell ere now of any being un-invited to this place." He makes a face. "Much though I may, upon occasion, wish it."

"No, not this place," there are more flimsy little gestures, and the flimsy is most probably due to his not being tipsy enough yet. "My place. You need an invite, or you don't even know it exists. Can't be too careful back home."

If there's a tinge of pride in him when talking about his club, it's the old, dusty kind that you cling to despite knowing it's trash.

"Ahhh."

Puck grins. His teeth are on the sharp side.

"In that case, 'tis little wonder I have never heard of it."

And such lovely teeth they are.

"No wonder about it at all."

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly, taking another sip of cream.

"I must confess, I hadn't taken you for a proprietor of such great secrecy. Have you mentioned it, and I simply fail to recall?"

"Didn't think I had it in me?" He doesn't blame the fae; he's been known to keep his heart smack dab on his sleeve, if...not quite so much, since moving to New York.

"I'm not in the habit of telling, see. I like keeping secrets, and what's more, I'm good at it."

Puck laughs.

"That makes a pair of us, and most well-matched. But I must quibble with you a little: it is not so much that I doubt your capacity as it is that I am in the habit of forgetting that any true worlds exist outside this place, save my own and a handful of others."

And in response, Lorne flashes a grin. "Quibble away! I don't mind at all, I'm just being a tease."

"Are you?"

He grins, faintly.

"Is that why you seem altogether determined not to tell me any more of your uninvited guests?"

"No. That isn't it. It's because I'm good at keeping secrets."

He shrugs, sipping his drink. Bright pink, very probably highly toxic to most humans. "My guests depend on me to provide for them a safe haven away from prying eyes. They expect me to keep their identities completely confidential."

"Secrets," Puck informs him, primly, "are but a tune of teasing, when their existence is revealed but not their matter."

He sticks out his tongue again.

This time it is a violent shade of violet.

Puck should know, what with being such a tease, drawing bright red eyes to the flash of purple tongue.

"I guess that means I'll just have to leave you wanting."

And he laughs at that, falling back against the cushions and endeavoring gallantly not to spill any of his cream.

"Oh, you are terribly unkind."

Cue cheeky twinkle in those red eyes; Lorne shows the palm of his hands in a show of mock-modesty. "I've been known to have a mean streak. But you have quite the nerve, my little sugar plum fairie, calling me a tease?

"Look who's talking!"

"What?"

Puck straightens, indignant. (And a little rumpled.)

"You surely cannot mean me, sirrah."

Oh, please.

He almost, almost say that very thing out loud, but he holds little malice. Most of all, he's wryly amused at how easily someone can tease him. If all it takes is a duochromatic tongue, you have to wonder how long it's been since someone made the slightest bit of effort.

"I'm just saying you should be careful with that tongue of yours. Love the purple, though."

He'd like to say something more along the lines of putting it to better use, but first of all he isn't that kind of demon, and second of all, you always need to respect the fae. Even when you're fondly yanking their chains. Even if they make you want to lean in and lock lips just to get a taste.

In short: grrrr.

In fact, Puck had almost stuck it out again, just out of reflex, when he gets the warning and retracts it sulkily.

He's gotten the 'better use' line about his tongue before-- but personally, while Puck is just waiting for the day sex is declared an Olympic sport, in his heart of hearts he doesn't believe there's anything better to do with one's tongue than use it for immature mockery.

He takes a slightly irritable drink of his cream, mollified by its comforting dairy presence.

And licks his lips absently, flashing Lorne a wry smile.

"So I have often been warned-- though I am pleased, at least, that its hue is to your liking."

"Oh, very much. I've always been fond of stark contrasts." See? No hard feelings at all, even if there are words for Puck that no self-respecting gent would so much as think.

Not that Lorne's self-respecting, but he considers himself a gentleman, and that will just have to do.

"I suppose it's something to do with my duochromatic gene pool."

Puck considers this for a moment, and is abruptly zebra-striped.

He glances down to a darkly dappled forearm, then to Lorne, and makes a face.

"Your palette is far more fetching," he decides.

"Flattery will get you everywhere. I know it's a cliché, but don't hate me too much for it." He picks up his drink, decides on a whim to pull his legs up on the couch and fold them neatly to the side.

"Thanks. Yours isn't half bad, either, but there wasn't anything wrong with your complexion to begin with."

He laughs, and the stripes drain away into his usual pale monochrome.

"As it happens, that is one cliche I frequently espouse myself." Another drink; he hasn't very much cream left at the rate he's going, but he can't quite bring himself to care. Perhaps it's the hour. "I find it is nearly always true."

"I like clichés. They never fail to amuse me, but maybe I'm a touch too cynical for my own good."

"Cynical?"

Puck tilts his head.

"Must one be a follower of Diogenes to take pleasure in a bit of oft-repeated nonsense?"

He shakes his head slowly. "Not necessarily. Cynical as in bitter skeptic, not Cynical as in virtue is the only good and self control is the way to go. Don't you just love how semantics change over the centuries?"

Puck grins, glancing down at his drink.

"Oh, quite."

When he looks back up, though, he's making a bit of a face. "I was rather under the impression it went the other way, however-- the bitterest among us cannot bear a cliche, while the downy-soft and dewiest is quite the connoisseur."

Semantics. Ain't nothing better under the sun, aside from hard liquor and sweets. "It's all a matter of perspective, blue eyes. The downy soft and dewy love clichés because they believe them to be true. Those of us who are bitter can appreciate clichés in a different way entirely."

He sips his drink delicately. Today is not a day for guzzling down booze. "You speak the same old line enough times, it becomes void of meaning, ludicrous. Clichés make me smile because they're such silly little things that claw their way through the times never giving up, never giving way to change. They're like cockroaches. Pretty little resilient parasites crawling through the sewage of linguistics.

"It's when you can use them, and mean them, make them shiny and new that I fall in love with them all over again."

Puck listens with a smile that brightens and sharpens as Lorne speaks-- he could almost laugh at his turns of phrase, they are just that preposterous.

He has always loved those who've a way with words.

"'Tis a pity, then, that I seldom mean anything at all," he grins.

"The parasites' rebirth under your tongue may be another matter."

Sometimes, Lorne would swear on his mother's grave that Preposterous is his middle name.

It isn't.

"Nah, not a pity. I've always been fond of bullshitters." Takes one to know one remains unspoken, because there's a limit even to Lorne's self loathing (or rather, how much he's willing to flaunt it).

He snorts. It's not an unkind snort.

"Have you? Whatever for?"

But it is a snort just the same, and it makes Lorne glance sideways at his intriguingly mercurial friend. You never know quite what to expect from Puck, and truth be told (though is it ever these days?) it is one of the qualities that keep Lorne coming back for more. Most people are just so damn easy to read even without his sixth sense. Puck always gives him a run for his money, and what better way to burn 'em.

"Maybe opposites attract. Isn't that what they say when they don't say that birds of a feather flock together?"

"And so will pigs and swine," Puck answers promptly.

He grins.

"They do say a great many things. I am a defter juggler than most, and even I should fear attempting to entertain them all at once."

Hear that?

That's a tangent coming on, oh Lawdy, yes it is, and the tune it plays is called wistful. "I've always wanted to learn how to juggle."

A beat. "...something other than bottles of booze, that is."

"Have you?"

Puck grins, brightly.

"I should be a terrible instructor."

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