milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The other day, Jamie had an awkward encounter in the ladies' bathroom.

Unfortunately, the soap on use was not antibacterial.

The day after that, Jamie found himself developing a sore throat; the day after that, he started to cough. At first this was annoying because it was the first time in a century he'd had to deal with being ill. Today, it's annoying because he's supposed to be performing with the band in a couple of hours, and he's on the verge of losing his voice.

He swings himself into a seat at the bar and demands, hoarsely, "Cough drops!"

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"Y'know, tea and honey actually does do wonders for that kind of thing."

"You're probably right," Jamie says, wondering briefly why the idea of ordering tea felt so foreign to him a second ago (answer: because it is totally unhip for the member of a teenybopper group) and goes into another bout of coughing.

"- well, what the man said," he gets out, when it dies down, and shoots Epimetheus a rueful grin. "Oof! I'd forgotten how miserable this sort of thing was."

Also: how whiny it makes you.

"Can't say I've had much of a problem with it," Epimetheus replies cheerfully, sipping his whiskey.

Waaaaaait a minute.

"So," he adds casually, "Jamie, yeah? How're things? Other than the obvious."

"I hadn't," Jamie gripes. "Until now!"

He sneezes bitterly into his tea.

"I would've said decent, up to the other day when this started." He glances over at Epimetheus - oh, he remembers him very well all right, all right. Brother to a certain mythological gent who's got more than one thing in common with a good old pal of Jamie's. For a start.

Also, Helen's friend, which is possibly just as significant.

"I heard you had some excitement -- what, a couple-three months back?"

"Three months back, I was about as lacking in excitement as you can possibly - oh, but you mean by the time here, I suppose."

Jamie is a little slow on the uptake right now, thanks to his head being stuffed with fuzz.

"Ah, three months . . ." He looks towards the back door - what is it now, Elle had said November? - and then back at Epimetheus. "Sorry - it's harder than you'd think keeping track. I suppose you've been talking to Helen?"

What is Helen saying about him? This is a question of more than academic interest!

He waves a hand. "Yeah, the time thing's hell of a . . . thing."

Then, pointing: "Bingo. She was talking about a battle with Them."

"I thought you might be meaning that. I suppose it's too much to hope," Jamie says, heaving a tremendous (deliberately comical) sigh, "that she used the words 'noble', 'heroic', 'savior of the universe . . .'"

He considers.

"Weeeell, not explicitly."

Jamie shakes his head, looking mournful.

"I knew it. If she's going to be telling that story round, she might at least tell it -"

He interrupts himself with several decidedly unimpressive sneezes, makes a tremendous grimace, and goes on.

"- tell it the proper way where we're all ten feet tall and shoot demon rays out our eyes."

Epimetheus cracks up.

"I'll be sure to ask her why she left out the laser eyes next time I see her."

"Well, if she didn't tell the important things," Jamie says, with an easy grin, "then what did she tell you?"

"Weeeell," he drawls again, "she accused me of knowing a guy I'd never heard of, and she said something about you deciding to keep wandering."

"My old pal from the rock," Jamie says, the same easy smile on his face.

"I never could get into the habit of calling him Uquar. I can see why she'd think you knew him - you do have something of the same feel about you. You know - larger-than." He makes a vague gesture with his hand, encompassing the whole grand space.

"Between you and me, I think she's still a bit sore at both of us. She took the whole thing very personal."

"The wandering?"

"Can't think why," says Jamie, lying through his teeth. Of course he can think why.

"She didn't expect me to settle on her world - not with those dinosaurs!"

"You're passing up dinosaurs? Shit, kid, I can see why she'd be pissed."

"I'm passing up the kind of dinosaurs that try and eat you."

Jamie blows his nose and adds, stuffily, "Getting chomped in half hurts like a bloody mother, if you didn't know. Not my idea of fun."

"What, do you have experience with that, too?"

"Ummm. Half in half," Jamie says, lifting a hand and hovering it in a measuring way somewhere around his third rib.

"Not actually, you know, severed in literal two. That was a sword, too, not teeth. I think the most a monster's ever gotten is a limb."

He lets out a low whistle.

"Shit. I think you win this round."

"Well, I've got a unfair advantage," Jamie says, kindly. "Where I don't have any kind of phenomenal godlike powers. In contests like this, it's a surprising asset!"

"Just don't ever try it with Dionysus. He'd win, but just in case he didn't, he's kind of a sore loser."

". . . what, he'd rather have lost more limbs than me? I mean, I'm pretty happy not to win that fight, actually -"

Laughing: "No, no, he has lost more limbs than you. At least, I'm guessing. You ever been torn to pieces?"

"Thankfully, no," Jamie says, "knock wood," and hastily knocks on a table.

"Well, you can tell him he can keep the title; I wouldn't survive it these days anyway."

"Is that part of the wandering deal, or what?"

Jamie sobers, a little. "It's part of the Them being gone deal. Not being able to die, that was one of Their rules. Because if I died in one of those worlds, it would be entering play - affecting the master game, sort of thing, an extra corpse littering the landscape - and They didn't want that. They wanted us to keep moving. So we didn't get ill and we didn't die, which is why," he concludes, suddenly pathetic, "this bloody cold is so miserable. It's the first I've had in a century!"

He winces. "Bar, get the man a decongestant, can't you?"

Bar considers, and offers a bottle of DayQuil.

"You're a blessed saint," says Jamie thankfully, and pours himself a hefty dose.

(Does he know what it is? No. DOES HE CARE? No.)

"Ha! I'll make you a deal -- I'll tell everyone you defeated Them with your laser eyes if you tell everyone I'm a saint."

"It's a bargain," Jamie says promptly.

"I'd stick out my hand to shake but I'm likely contagious - not that it might affect you much!"

"I sure as hell hope not."

He cocks his head. "So you're okay with this wandering stuff? Aside from the occasional virus, I mean."

Jamie hesitates for a bare moment - someone watching closely would catch it - and then shrugs.

"Oh, well. I've got in the habit now."

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