milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Without quite knowing how, or why, Olive has managed to find the bar again. She sits in a booth by the door--

(No, for your information she hasn't been watching the door whenever she comes here, ever since Chuck said "Ned's around, some days."

Or maybe she has. Whatever.)

-- Anyway, see the lonely heroine, yonder: sitting. sighing. Drinking a glass of lemonade, and looking generally desolate.

Say hi.

[open for all until it scrolls off the page]

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She stands, looking for a trash can for the lemony napkins.

"How's that?"

Ned straightens too, so as to avoid any possible collisions.

"I've been coming here since I was nine," he says slowly.

She blinks.

"... What, really? So... you must know this place inside and out, huh."

"More or less," he admits, looking a little embarrassed. "There was a nineteen year gap between my leaving and coming back, though. But I've had enough time to ... get used to it. The weirdness."

"Yeah?"

She makes a face. "Seems like it takes a while. I'm still not used to the bar being in my closet, or just inside the doorway to the Pie Hole."

"It's been getting random for me too," Ned admits. "It hasn't always been like that, but there are times when I'll find a door when I'm not expecting it."

Beat.

"There is ... a stable door in the storage closet, though. It's the one Chuck and I use most frequently."

"Wha--"

She gapes, rephrases.

"It's just... like... in there?"

Yes, she is so coherent.

Ned nods slowly.

"It's been there for a while now."

Since about the time he started going back to Milliways after that nineteen year gap.

"Why?"

This is hard to comprehend.

"And... why isn't it always in the same place for me?"

"You're welcome to use our door if you want," he offers. "As to why it isn't always in the same place for you, that's a question only the great gods of Milliways can answer. It's magic, isn't it? That's the general answer to most of the unknown."

"So, it's in the storage room?"

She muses. "I've never been in there. I'll have to take a look."

Beat. "Guess I do believe in magic, a little bit."

He nods - and then realizes, just at that second, that he probably shouldn't have even mentioned the storage room at all.

It's all this Milliways stuff. It's getting him far too comfortable with his whole ... alive-again thing.

If Olive were to go there, she would find shelves upon shelves of rotten, moldy, expired fruit. It would be green and fuzzy and it would smell far too sweet. Mostly, it would be disgusting.

"Actually. It might be closed," he says abruptly. "Probably best to use your random entrances. But - magic. Yeah. It's a reassuring, kind of nice thing to think about."

Cue slightly nervous, slightly guilty laughter.

She smiles, in that way that people smile when they're not sure what the joke is but they're damn well going to smile.

"Guess it would be closed, sometimes. The door, I mean. That's what doors do. They... open and close. So that means it's open sometimes. Right?"

She feels as if she's following along quite well here.

"Not if the door hinges are inoperable," he reasons. "Rusting, maybe. Or just jammed. It could do with an oiling. Or replacing."

Pause.

"But I'll take care of that. For now, uh - it's probably not a good idea to go anywhere near it. Safety precautions and all that."

"Oh, right," says Olive, only slightly dubious, then recovers:

"Good thing ya told me, or I'd be in a jam."

She coughs.

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