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The specials show up on the board the minute he gets there. Bartending's fun -- at least he had fun the last time he was back here -- and if nothing else, he'll have paid off that new set of clothes Bar gave him after his trip to Ellen's world. The last thing he wants is to be known as some kind of freeloader. He's always paid his way, ever since he was seventeen and found himself alone, and there's no reason he'd stop doing it just 'cause he's stuck here.

Tonight's Specials

Easy Action
Between the Sheets
A Goodnight Kiss

The specials make him laugh but hey, they're kind of appropriate and at least they go in progression. He adds one more thing to the board before setting up shop for the duration:

Pyramid advice & info always free

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"Oh, my poor heart." All drama, he slaps his hand over his heart. "So much for our one motorcycle date." He's just kidding, though: Kara's almost as good a team captain as he is, he's sure. He's nothing but jovial as he uncaps a bottle of water for himself, takes a sip to stop himself from laughing out loud.

"Tell you a story, and it'll only make me seem like my head's even further up my ass than it really is. Back before our planet got nuked, when sports were still the biggest going concern of all going concerns and I was captain of the C-Bucs, there was a little bit of a mystery around my middle name. When I started out as a pro they just went with how I was listed in college days, as Samuel T. Anders. My agent decided I needed a manager too, so he hooked me up with this lady -- great manager, stayed with her and my agent my whole career -- and she decided she wanted to make people guess what the T stood for. So it became kind of a game, and on penalty of losing her as a manager, I was never allowed to tell people my middle name. So yeah, there were all sorts of guessing games. It was frakking crazy. T even became my nickname, it's what my teammates call me. Not that it's shorter or better than Sam. They just... just picked up on the whole thing."

It still doesn't match up with Easy, though.

"You can ask Kara. She's from Caprica, she can tell you how big a secret it was."

"Ha!"

Holding her drink up, Dinah takes a mouthful before she answers.

"Secrets keep people interested, I guess. I'm sure that's most of why Mom kept a secret identity. Before I came along and she had someone to protect."

"Says the florist-turned-superhero." He's still getting used to the whole idea, not that he's a slow study or any of those things. It's just that it takes a while for the impossible to sink in, thick-skulled or not.

"But yeah, they sure do. It's amazing how much a little refusal to open up brings people around with magnifying glasses. And it's not like I didn't talk about absolutely everything else. But that one little secret, man, it drove people crazy. I got piles of mail about it."

Speaking of crazy. Before he left for Delphi, he got a delivery of a whole box of fan mail, set it aside to go through when he got back. It's gone now, but so are the fans who took their time bothering to write to him. Yeah, he's had more than a few moments of silence for them by now.

Enough.

"So how've you been, Dinah? Keeping in and out of trouble?"

"In and out," she agrees. "Our team got really big suddenly, and we're working out the kinks. It's awesome, though."

In and out of trouble: that sounds familiar. Even for someone who was contractually obligated to keep his nose clean and stay out of trouble as much as possible, he still managed to find his way into it.

Not quite as much as some of his teammates, but he gave trouble a run for its money. He's still doing that wherever possible.

"Who's new on the team? What kind of shit are they causing?"

'Cause new people always make things different. Can't be any other way.

"Well," Dinah says, "there's the detective who doesn't seem to trust anyone. It took forever to explain that he had to trust us with his name if he was going to join the team. We've had trust issues in the past, is the thing."

"But you've gotta be able to trust your teammates, or they're not teammates." It's so godsdamn fundamental and he knows he's completely overstating the obvious, but what the frak.

And who hasn't had "trust issues" in the past? Or in the present? Everyone has.

"I'm guessing you were able to persuade his sorry ass?"

Either that or kick him off the damn team.

"Yeah," Dinah agrees. "It helps that he already knows me, 'cause we're based in the same city. And he's already friends with our new heavy hitter. He's just not a people person, and neither, really, is Hawkman. Who's my uncle and I love him, but sometimes I think he just wants to get into a fight.

"That your uncle who owned the gym?"

Idly, he wipes down Bar's surface. Something to do with those good hands of his while they talk.

"The same one who taught you to fight?"

Dinah shakes her head. "Not that one. That was Wildcat."

With a smirk, she shrugs. "I had a few uncles from Mom's Justice Society days."

"A few, huh?"

He had uncles and aunts and cousins but none of them lived on Picon, although he's got the vaguest memories of some big family get-together, some reunion or other, when he was a little kid.

"All looking after you, all turning you into the kickass lady you are now." It's just a little fond supposition on his part; he's got no idea what it was really like and that's exactly how it should be. They're not even from the same world. They only intersect at a place that shouldn't even exist and no, he's decided he's never gonna give up on that supposition, on the theory that all of this might just be some long involved dream.

"Just not kickass enough for your pyramid team to beat mine."

(He had to throw that in.)

"Are you kidding?" Dinah says, apparently unimpressed. Although that doesn't fit well with the laughter she's biting back.

"I've seen your team lineup. What, did you lose the coin toss and had to pick last?"

"Hey." His hands go out, generous, palms up. "Someone had to get stuck with me."

"It's true," she admits, heaving a sympathetic sigh. "Those poor jerks."

She lifts her glass, notices it's empty, and hands it to him.

"So how about Between the Sheets?"

He doesn't even miss a beat. "Oh, I'm good there."

Even for an older man. But he doesn't give her much time for rebuttal, just gets a clean glass and mixes up the second drink. Brandy, rum, Triple Sec, and a squeeze of lemonade, all shaken together. Because he can, he garnishes it with a pair of cherries linked by the same stem -- something appropriate about that -- and hands the glass over with a wink.

"Between the sheets."

He is, if she stopped to think, probably about the same age as someone who has been making lewd remarks like that for a while now. In fact, Dinah grins when the drink arrives.

"Some of my team would be devastated to miss this happy hour," she remarks.

"Well, you know, there's only so much of us to go around." He's awfully amused, thinks about telling her that Bar put the drink specials up there, not him, but ultimately he decides it's more fun not to protest his innocence.

Why start now when he hasn't done it his whole life.

"It's true," she says. "There's already one other who comes here. I think I like having it as my secret. At least until I catch up with all the future people who litter the place."

If he only had the ability, he'd open up that frakking door and usher in all 98 of his people, no question about it. That's one place he and Dinah definitely differ, on the whole secrecy thing, although he can see its appeal. He also knows just a tiny bit about future people littering the place, although Felix only counts as one and the guy's not exactly crowding him out.

"These future people, are they people you know from home? Like... future versions of them? Or did you meet them here for the first time and figure out about being from the same place after?"

"Mostly they are future versions of people I don't know yet," Dinah says. "I mean, Diana I know at home, now. But Batgirl, Charlie, um. Stephanie? You know her?"

Stephanie, Stephanie... nope. He shakes his head. "Should I?"

He doesn't know Batgirl or Charlie either. Shows how much getting around he still ought to do.

"No," Dinah says. "I haven't seen her for a while. But she's like, this teenage superhero from my world who thinks I'm the greatest person to ever step on to a rooftop. It's nice, but I thought my Mom's were big boots to fill. I didn't think I'd have to fill my own."

Filling other peoples' boots, that's something he knows a little bit about. He remembers the pep talk Coach gave him when he first got to Atlas Arena as a member of the C-Bucs, about how he was the franchise's hope, about how people were looking to him to bring the Kobol Cup back to Caprica for the first time in 48 years, but no pressure, Sam, no pressure at all, just get out there and do your thing. At least no one expected him to have superpowers.

Or maybe they did.

"So is there anyone in your world who isn't a superhero?" He can imagine if they all have superpowers, it might get pretty redundant. Then again, everyone's gonna excel at something, and it won't be the same all around. Aside from knowing flowers and being a hell of a fighter, he hasn't even asked Dinah what her special power is.

Personally, he thinks she's kickass enough even without knowing, but that's just one guy's opinion.

"Yeah," Dinah says. Clearly amused.

Just because everyone in her immediate acquaintance is a superhero, that means nothing. There's most of the entire world, for one.

"My Dad wasn't a superhero. He was a cop and a PI. Just the regular kind of hero."

Man, that makes him nostalgic. "My dad was a marine biologist. My mom, she was the hero in the family. A nurse." Really, they were both heroes. It's a discussion he heard them having over and over while he grew up, although he doesn't need to share that with Dinah or with anyone. They're gone and the memories -- like the one of that playful argument -- that's all he has of them.

That's all he has of most things.

"What was he like? Your dad, I mean."