milliways_bar | (no subject)

Enzo bursts out laughing. "Bar's pretty weird sometimes."

"Yeah, I definitely noticed," Cal says a bit dryly. He is smiling, though. No need to spoil Enzo's fun.

"It's almost Hallowe'en again, right?"

"I don't know," Cal says. He's said that a lot during this conversation. "I - don't even know what month it is here. It was May when - back home. Almost my birthday, actually. Doesn't mean anything here, though. I'll have to ask what month it is sometime."

It seems odd to think of Milliways going by an ordinary calendar. It would definitely be the first ordinary thing about this place.

"It's September here," Enzo informs him. "There's a calendar on the board, 'cause of the werewolves."

"Oh." Cal never looks at the board. "Thanks. I guess I don't have to ask then."

Weird. Almost like travelling in time; he is, as much as he'd bothered to think of it, still mentally in June. It's a little more disorienting than he would have expected it to be.

"No problem. So Hallowe'en's... October, right?"

Cal nods. "Yeah. At the end. The thirty-first."

He's still kind of caught up in the calendar thing, or he might be drawing certain conclusions by now.

"Cool. I wonder what I'm gonna be this time?"

- what?

Oh.

Oh, now Cal's catching up.

"Does she - do this - on Halloween, too?"

He is not paying close enough attention to mask the alarmed look on his face.

Which leaves him wide open for snickering!

"Yeah! Only it's not all pirates, and sometimes it's not just clothes!"

Oh god. Maybe Cal will just stay upstairs that day.

"Sounds interesting," he says lamely.

"It totally is! Last time, Sis and Matrix and me were these weird fuzzy things, I don't know what we were, and I had a magic bag of stuff!"

". . . a magic bag of stuff?" Cal repeats bemusedly, possibly establishing a record for how long he has been able to go without doing that during a conversation with Enzo.

"Yeah, it was this big sack, I found it inside my shirt, I dunno how it fit in there, and it had everything in it only it was hard to find anything I wanted."

"Huh," is Cal's brilliant response to this. ". . . did you have fun?"

"Yeah, once I got used to it. I had more fun than Bob. He was like a foot tall and he kept saying 'smurf' instead of real words."

Cal blinks, then laughs. "Smurf?"

"Yeah, I dunno what that was about!"

Cal just shakes his head, amused. Smurfs.

"Sounds like the Bar takes Halloween pretty seriously," he says.

Yep. So staying upstairs for Halloween.

"Uh-huh! What do they do for it on Earth?"

"Pretty much the same thing, except you pick your own costumes," Cal says. "And it's, uh, just clothes and makeup and stuff. Some people have parties, and kids go out trick-or-treating in their costumes and people give them candy."

His gaze drops briefly. He ordered a tiger costume for Calvin, to be delivered a week before Halloween. He wonders if Deborah will bother with it. No, Calvin's Halloween will probably be left up to Marisa to deal with. Marisa will use the costume.

"Dude, that sounds fun! I wish we had... hey, you okay?"

"- uh, yeah." Cal looks up with a quick reassuring smile for Enzo's benefit. "It is fun. Some people really get into it, spend months planning their costumes. My parents always used to throw a party. There were always great costumes. It was fun."

Running aimlessly at the mouth is hardly unusual for him, though this one sounds a bit more forced then usual. He hopes Enzo doesn't notice.

He does. He might not have if he weren't looking for it, but as it is, he catches an off note.

It's the mention of his parents that tips Enzo off. His mouth forms a small o, and then he looks awkward, wondering if he ought to say anything.