milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Duck places one foot slowly after another, dragging her toes, as she slumps her way into the bar.

Pique won't talk to her; Fakir is expelled; Mytho is -- Mytho is she doesn't even know what, and she doesn't have any idea what's going on.

Sitting at a table in Milliways might not actually help with any of that, but it's better than listening to Lilie go on and on about how she and Pique are going to have a battle --

-- not that she's annoyed with Lilie! She's happy Lilie is having fun! Lilie is her only friend right now who isn't sad or upset, and that counts for something, right?

(Okay maybe she's a little tiny bit annoyed with Lilie. But she doesn't know what to do with that feeling, so Milliways it is!)

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If girls are going to squawk at him when he offers them food, Dick thinks, he really ought to change his game.

He looks away, sulkily and brings the sandwich up again.

"You looked hungry."

Hungry is Dick's new code for 'sad.' He's had enough of people telling him he looks sad.

"Oh!"

Duck lowers her hands, embarrassed to have been rude.

"Uh, thanks . . . sorry, you just startled me is all!

. . . but it looks really good!" she adds, hastily, and accepts the sandwich.

(. . . it really does look tasty.)

Dick shrugs. And shifts in his chair, bringing his knee up in front of him and wrapping his now empty hand around it. With the other, he puts the other half sandwich on the table, for later.

Generally he's acting like giving her a sandwich was simultaneously the hardest thing to do ever and also no big deal in the slightest.

"It's from Bar," he says. "I didn't make it or anything."

"But it was really nice of you to bring it to me!" says Duck earnestly -- and the thing is, it's very clear that she really means it.

She takes a bite out of the sandwich, to show how grateful she is to have it, and nods her head emphatically for good measure at the same time.

"Mmmph mmph mmph people eel etter!"

Dick shifts again, dropping one leg down and replacing it with the other, essentially changing his posture so instead of leaning slightly away from her, he's now slightly facing her.

"What?"

Another piece of bread disappears rapidly down Duck's gullet.

"I said" -- swallow -- "food always makes people feel better!" And she offers Dick a radiant smile.

"Does it?"

It does, but he's not sure.

(Actually, smiles make him feel better, at that.)

He quirks the beginnings of a smirk. "Guess so."

"Of course it does! Not just people, either. I feed the birds every morning, and they start out all CHEEEEP cheep cheep cheep CHEEP --"

(Duck can do surprisingly convincing bird-calls -- even when the bird in question isn't a duck.)

"-- 'cause they're hungry and impatient, but then by the end they're all quiet and happy and just a little chip to say hi!"

Those are actually pretty good birdcalls. His smirk gets bigger.

"Every morning? They must like you."

"They're my friends!" says Duck.

. . . is it weird to have bird friends? Maybe that's weird. Even though a good percentage of the people in Gold Crown Town are actually animals, Canary-Mama and the rest of them definitely aren't the people-kind of animals.

(Duck has come to the mournful conclusion that it's really hard to get a sense of what's actually weird in Gold Crown Town, but whatever she's doing, it usually is.)

". . . also they're really hungry."

Hungry as code for sad, he wonders, or just hungry?

He doesn't want her to think he's being mean by talking about her feeding them, so he offers: "I like feeding animals. At the circus - " he steels himself for the past tense - "I would help feed the elephant every morning."

"Wow! So you worked at the circus!"

(Duck is easily impressed.)

"I think there's a ballet for an elephant but we haven't learned it yet . . . so are you working or are you studying stuff? I mean I've never seen a circus or anything, but it's all performances, right? So I bet it's really hard! Do you have to go to school to learn stuff like that?"

If there's a school for ballerinas, there should be a school for acrobats and clowns and animal trainers too, right?

Aaand suddenly Dick is less interested in talking to her. He rocks back in his chair, addressing the ceiling.

"No," he says. "I just learned it."

"That's lucky," says Duck, a little wistfully.

"I'm really bad at learning stuff even with school and a teacher and all . . . so without all that stuff I'd be even worse!"

She says it pretty cheerfully, all in all. Duck's used to being bad at things.

"Maybe school's not where you should be learning it," Dick says. "What're you trying to learn?"

"Well, I'm learning ballet!"

Duck demonstrates by hopping out of the chair and performing a rather wobbly rond de jambe en l'air, using the back of the chair as a barre.

"I gotta practice every day if I wanna get good, but there always seems to be other stuff going on . . ."

Dick watches that, and then leans further back until his chair reaches the tipping point, then exits the chair by rolling over the back and landing on the other side.

Once there, he attempts the same maneuver just to see how it feels.

"What other stuff?"

He doesn't understand not practicing.

Duck drops her leg back down to the floor, so that she can raise her hands from the chair and bring them together in a clap of delight.

"Wow -- you got that really fast! You'd be in the advanced class in no time!"

(The technique is all wrong, since it's copied from Duck's own deeply imperfect technique, but . . . she's in no position to notice.)

She hesitates before answering his question, and when she does, it's a little evasive. "Well, you know . . . sometimes your friends have problems and stuff and you want to help them, so . . . it seems sort of like you can't go to a practice room and focus on yourself, you know?"

Dick considers the possibility.

"No."

He doesn't know. That would be like not finding time to breathe. "Do it afterwards."

". . . wait, which?" says Duck, scratching her head.

"Practice," he says, and stops trying ballet in order to fall back into gymnastics, treating the back of the chair as a horse.

"Helping friends can't take all day."

Edited 2013-05-24 05:09 (UTC)

Duck tugs on the end of her braid.

"Well," she confesses, "you're probably better than I am at that, too."

Dick, who is currently balancing on his hands, right-way-up, knees either side of his elbows, shrugs in that position.

"I don't..."

No, he does have friends, doesn't he?

But the only people who have ever needed his help?

He lowers himself to the ground.

"No, I'm probably not."

"Oh . . ."

Duck bites her lip. It seems like maybe she's said the wrong thing? (Even though she thinks it would be harder to be worse at fixing things than she feels, right now.)

"Well . . . you're really really good at that! -" Her vague hand gestures signify absolutely nothing intelligible, but are probably meant to indicate Dick's acrobatics.

SO THAT'S SOMETHING.

Edited 2013-05-24 15:58 (UTC)

"Yeah."

He crawls back onto the seat of the chair, both knees in front of him.

"I practice a lot."

Every day. In the same way that most people brush their teeth every day, and eat breakfest every day. And breathe.