milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"When the road's dark, we can both despise policemen and lamps as well--"

A cowboy walks into a bar. Well, not just any cowboy; this one's different. Cousin-a-few-times-removed of Charles Dickens (true story!), lapsed Mormon, ex-con, avid bicyclist; so very nice that people almost don't even mind being robbed by him ~~(he's got that played-by-Paul-Newman +5 charisma boost for sure)~~, and such a perfect gentleman (well, minus a few bad habits) that he's exactly the sort of man a god can trust with his robot girlfriend.

Oh, and he likes to sing.

"There are bright lights in the dazzling eyes of beautiful Daisy Bell--the usual, please. Thank you, Miz Bar, you're looking especially lovely today."

Glass of Old Taylor in hand, he settles in to drink. Totally botherable, if your pup can handle the niceness and good cheer and the possibility of more singing.

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Most of the day's baking has already been sold, but there's a few cinnamon rolls the size of human skulls and a few long, low wedges of chocolate cake as rich and dark as sin left on the tray, along with sundry other odds and ends.

"Evening," the red-headed baker, wearing a bright yellow t-shirt, green jeans, red sneakers, and a blue, sunflower-spotted apron, greets the cowboy with a smile. "Care for something sweet to accompany your drink?"

"I got a hard time saying no to things," he says with a grin. "You spend long enough out there on the trail, with nothing but burned coffee and bacon and biscuits you can't even tell what they're made out of, and... well, being here, around real food? If I didn't work so hard in the stables, I'd never fit through the door."

They'd had some nice desserts at the hotel in Denver, but nothing that looked anywhere near as fancy or as tasty as this.

"And so I swoop in to take advantage of your difficulty in saying no," she grins, utterly failing to look in any way nefarious. "Mwah ha ha ha."

"I had more, earlier this evening, but they tend to disappear quick. These are just what's left," the baker points out the pertinent baked goods as she names them. "There's two Cinnamon Rolls As Big As Your Head, three Meringuamania, two Killer Zebras, a Lemon Lechery, three wedges of Bitter Chocolate Death, and a Caramel Cataclysm."

"Here you've got a man who's lucky to get any dessert at all more than a few times in a year, and you're offering an entire world of choices--I wouldn't even know where to start," he says. "What do you recommend? What's your favorite, of all of those?"

She'd probably be the most qualified one to ask. Sure, everybody's got different tastes, everybody likes different things, but there's a time for trusting experts.

"Depends on what I want out of it. If I want something comforting and warm, it's gotta be a cinnamon roll. Want something more intense and not as sweet, Bitter Chocolate Death. Something all-out sweet? Caramel Cataclysms or Meringuamania."

"Cinnamon rolls are usually a safe bet, to start out with."

"Then that's where I'll start," he says.

Cinnamon rolls and bourbon may not be the best combination for everybody, but it's what he's going with.

"Do you make these yourself, or do you just sell them?"

"I bake them myself and sell them in the bar, so I can pay for my room and tab," she answers, serving up one of the gooey, fragrant, skull-sized cinnamon rolls on a plate for him, with a napkin. "I'm a baker back in my world, too, but a baker's salary isn't enough to pay for rent and bills back home and here."

"Paying bills in one world is hard enough, but two? I don't know how most people here manage it. Maybe they only come in for the day, or bring food from home, or sleep outside and live on lake-fish or something."

He's got his job in the stables, and the occasional bit of freelance law-bending in other people's worlds. He's not wealthy by any stretch, but he does all right.

"How much do I owe you?"

"I come here mostly to catch up on sleep, so the room's worth it," Sunshine grins. "No one becomes a baker for the hours, which are brutal, or the pay, which is meager."

One goes into it for the love of feeding people and making delicious food.

"Life's too short to deal with inter-dimensional exchange rates. I just ask people to pay what they feel they'd pay for something similar, in their own world. Then I let the Bar take care of exchanging one world's currency for mine."

It's lucky that the Bar can do exchanges, because what he's got is an 1895 quarter, which might not be all that impressive otherwise.

It's mostly silver, at least.

"I haven't had a door back home in a long time--I don't even know how long. And I miss some of my friends, but you know... it's nice being in one place. I get up, I go do my work, I have nice relaxing evenings in here, and the next day I do it all over again."

Sunshine looks over the coin with curiosity. The symbols are unfamiliar and the coin is surprisingly heavy. Independencian mints got really stingy with their metal after the Wars.

"You travel a lot in your world?" she asks, wondering about the remark about being in one place.

"I have a ranch," he explains. "It's not a very big one, and it's in the middle of nowhere--it's a good long ride to get to my nearest neighbors, let alone an actual town, so if I need to buy supplies, or have to go buy or sell horses, there's a lot of time out on the trail. I used to work other people's ranches too, and I did a lot of cattle drives. Beautiful country out there, but you miss people."

"I can hardly imagine what that'd be like," Rae replies. "I'm most definitely a city-girl. The furthest from New Arcadia I've been is the ocean, once or twice when I was little, and that's only a few hours' travel at best."

"I grew up on a farm," he says. "There was a town nearby, you could walk to it, but it was still a good ways away. You know, I like cities, I like being around people, but the only kinds of work I know how to do, there's not much call for in cities."

Well, maybe the bank robbery. But he'd rather live honest if he can.

"And I while like the country, I'd be absolutely useless out there," she grins, wry. "I've ridden a horse maybe... three times in my entire life, and all three of them have been here."

"What are your thoughts on the cinnamon roll?"

"I've been around horses my entire life," he says. "They're like cars or pets are to other people--they're just a part of my everyday life."

He hasn't got many thoughts on the cinnamon roll yet, largely because he's been too distracted by talking to eat. He gets like that sometimes. So now, with an almost apologetic grin--there was probably some rudeness there, standing around talking instead of trying the food she'd worked so hard to make--he finally takes a bite.

And it is good.

The reaction upon the first bite is always the best compliment, in Sunshine's opinion. It's not faked, and it's not measured. It makes her smile.

"Glad you approve," she grins. "My name is Rae, by the way. Though most people call me Sunshine."

"Mine's Butch," he says, once he's finished chewing and can speak again. "It's nice to meet you, Miss--uh, which one do you prefer?"

Sometimes, what most people call somebody isn't what they'd rather be called. It happens plenty among outlaws; they're given nicknames they don't like, but they stick.

"Nice to meet you, Butch," Rae replies with a smile. "You can call me Sunshine if you want. It's been my nickname since I was small, so it's as much my name as 'Rae' is."

And just as accurate.

"Nice to meet you, then, Miss Sunshine," he says.

There are maybe three not-related-to-him women in the universe he's comfortable addressing solely by first name, and none of them are in the bar. Even Kate's still Miss Barlow to him, and they've robbed a bank together.

It's just how he was raised.

"How'd you get it? Just by being a warm and cheery person?"

"My step-father always greeted me with, 'hey there, Sunshine!' when I was little, before he and my mother were married," Rae replies, amused. "I didn't know at the time that he called all little kids 'Sunshine,' but because I was the only kid who hung around the coffeehouse, soon the regulars picked it up and it became my name."

"The warm and cheeriness is totally just a coincidence," she grins at him.

The fact that sunlight is her elemental affinity is also totally just coincidence. Yes. >_>

"That's a good name," he says. "It's good to get them from family--I've known a lot of fellas who go by names they weren't exactly born with, and some aren't so nice. But if folks know you don't like what they call you, they just keep on doing it, and there's nothing you can do to get rid of it."

He likes his own name. It's not what his parents gave him, but it's not embarrassing.

"Nicknames can be frustrating like that. But sometimes, if you like them, they can be as much or more your name as the name you were born with."

That's the way of it, with her. She hasn't used her birth-name since she was six years old.

"You mentioned you have a ranch - what's your where and when?" she asks. "I'm from New Arcadia, Independencia, in 2004."

He's had a series of nicknames by now, but Butch is the one he uses the most these days. He's got a good reputation with it, for an outlaw anyway, and it doesn't embarrass his family.

"I came in from Texas, but my ranch is in Wyoming," he says. "In the United States. It's 1897 there."

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