milliways_bar | (no subject)

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ron swanson

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None of this pausing for shock. There's a bar. He sits at the bar. That's what you do at a bar. Nobody is behind the bar.

"Whiskey," he declares.

The glass appears before him. He picks it up. Looks right. Smells right.

What the hell. He drinks.

And, with a glimmer of something that might be a smile in an alternate dystopian universe, nods his approval.

(As the door closes, slowly, strains of "We Built This City" are audible, along with some truly horrific singing along. Five or six pieces of confetti blow in just before the click.)

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"... on rock and roll," hums the goddess who happens to be passing by. Did somebody leave the front door open?

"Ooh," she says, refocusing.

"Whiskey. I could use an Old-Fashioned."

Very slowly, he turns his head.

Tammy.

But Tammy would drink her whiskey neat.

There's something about him, isn't there?

"Sorry," she apologizes mellifluously.

"Just thinking out loud. And implicating your drink."

Ordinarily Ron Swanson tries to stay away from pretty blonde women (After Tammy, there could be no other.)

Ron lifts his glass to her, although not very much. "No apology necessary."

Aphrodite smiles, looking a bit like the cat who's batting its proverbial eyelashes at the canary.

"I think I will have an Old-Fashioned," she decides. "Bar?"

The drink appears, and she pats the counter with affectionate fingertips.

"Thanks, sweetie. Looks delicious."

"An automatic bar," Ron says, in an effort to make conversation. "That's new."

"Or you're new."

She seems pleased by the possibility.

"Most people get used to her awfully quick, all things considered."

Then again, Ron could well be different. Don't let her quash your childlike wonder!

"Reasonable people would find this preferable." Ron's hand is on his glass. "Cutting out the middleman."

Aphrodite laughs, raising the glass to her lips. The first sip strikes her as absolutely perfect.

"That might be your first problem," she says.

"I don't know how many of us go in for reasonable around here."

"That... doesn't seem wholly different from anywhere else."

"Mmm."

She takes another drink.

"You may be right. I've never been a very keen observer of humanity."

Except in one or two respects.

And those are the things that don't really change.

Ron's eyes very slowly slide in her direction.

He is not in the habit of calling beautiful women liars. And yet he finds it very, very hard to believe that a woman who looks like her isn't aware of the way men -- or women -- think about women like her.

Aphrodite would readily, if not-too-modestly, admit that she knows what people think of her. And of love, and beauty, and sex-- there's always some overlap.

But she's heard a pesky rumor that sometimes mortals think about other things, too.

Those are the ones she has trouble with.

In the meantime, she eyes Ron Swanson right back.

"Well," Ron says, after a long, awkward moment.

Nothing else appears to be forthcoming. He tips his glass to her.

(Tammy -- either Tammy -- would laugh in his face.)

Barbarella perches on a stool not to far away, looking contemplative.

"I would like..." she pauses and twirls a bit of her hair as she stares off into the middle distance. "I would like something from a planet I have never visited. With colors. Lots of colors! ...is that too vague?" she asks Bar politely.

A clear glass appears on the bartop. Barbarella tips her head, but when she touches the glass, the drink becomes a riot of colors that swirl and dance before the liquid settles into a single gold color.

She laughs and claps. "Oh, thank you! That was wonderful!"

And lets out a cough when she actually takes a drink. "And highly alcoholic!" she laughs again.

It's nice to see someone enjoying a drink, Ron supposes.

"That would be the default," he suggests, in a monotone that passes for friendliness with Ron Swanson. "At a bar."

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