milliways_bar | (no subject)

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As he suspected he would, Jim caught Sherlock's - heh, Rory's - stupid bloody cold. He went to bed angry, frustrated, and sick to the back teeth of this entire bloody bar.

He wakes up with a Welsh accent, a body that feels weirdly exhausted, and a whooooole lot of surprise at finding himself in a bedroom that is not wallpapered in Laura Ashley, cluttered with years' worth of books and theatre junk. Gethin has never set foot in a room so opulent, and so incomprehensible to him. He spends a good hour looking at the clothes, the books, the...frankly pornographic, yet extremely beautiful...photography on the wall of the library (the centrepiece of which involves his own face, and the blurred figure of a much taller man in the background. He doesn't look at it for long.) Everything is very, very weird.

In short, Gethin Roberts does not have a bloody clue what's going on. But at least there are clothes he recognises - comfortably 80s in style - and if the cold he's got means he can't go searching Jonathan out, at least there appears to be a...bar, downstairs?

What. The Actual. Hell.

[OOC: getting in under the wire! Open until the end of March. :)]

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'Just...ask the bar?'

He looks at it with an air of uncertainty.

'Then how does it-?'

Y'know. He makes a vague hand gesture.

"Magic," Harry says flatly. Sorry, he knows it's dumb.

That's not actually helpful, but okay. He asks the bar, and...it just appears.

'Magic?'

That is actually really neat! And incomprehensible, but still! Neat! Gethin's grinning a bit.

"I know not," Harry says, slightly irritated. "I am no magician, it simply-- is."

Wow.

'Sorry.'

The smile drops away, and he picks his pint up.

'You must know this place pretty well, then? Have you been here a while?'

Small talk! He can do this! He is a perfectly polite man.

Of course he likes magic. He's Welsh.

But still, he's better than Jim.

"A year and more, and still I can no better answer give than ''tis magic, and ''tis simply so. But if it is devilry, I will confess there is some good in it."

'You don't live here, though? A lad told me some people do.'

He can't imagine wanting to live in a bar always, but maybe it's different for people who don't have electricity and chocolate.

"For all I can be said to live in any place, ''tis here," Harry says dryly. "But I do not live: in mine own time, I have died, and so do but-- abide."

'You're- - oh.'

He forgets to hide his surprise for a moment, then quickly schools it away.

'I didn't know that was a thing.'

No, seriously, how is that a thing?

"What, death?" Oh, come on. "Ay, sir, mortal men do die from time to time."

'No, I mean-'

God, yeah, that was a stupid thing to say.

'You just normally can't talk to people after.'

"--no," he concedes. Okay, yes, fair. "But that, too, is the witchcraft native to this place. A man who hath died may walk and talk and--" (achoo) "--take a cold."

'You don't look dead.'

Sorry, but that's weird. Good though, maybe? Maybe not. He's a bit thrown, to be honest, for reasons he doesn't really want to examine.

'It's really just like being alive?'

Harry shrugs. "When first I came here, I did not know the difference. I thought myself alive, translated here as other living men are, by some means they know not."

'Oh.'

He dips his head, then covers his discomfort by picking up his drink.

'Do you like it here?'

"It..."

Ehh. Nnggh.

"--I would not choose it, had I the choice. But many like it well."

'Do you have to stay?'

Not that he's saying you shouldn't, Harry! Just...why would you put yourself through it if you hated it?

"I can find no means to leave," he says with a shrug. (If this were really Jim, it might occur to him to be suspicious of this line of questioning.) "But it is not all ill, I would not have you think so."

'No, well - I'm not dead, so I won't be stuck here longer than it takes for this cold to go away.'

He does look sympathetic, though.

'Not the same as having no choice to leave though, I bet.'

"Were it a choice in my power..." --actually, he's never considered that. "...I cannot tell if I would linger here."

And speaking of that cold: "The Bar will give you whate'er you would. You have, I learn, some potent medicines in your country. I doubt not she can provide them."

'Don't think there's much you can do for a cold. Just got to let it runs its course.'

But of course, he'll hurry it along as best he can. Vitamin C, paracetamol, and whatnot. He grins, properly amused.

'Wales in particular has potent medicines?'

"Your-- time, I should have said," he amends. "But these later days are as another world."

But speaking of Wales... "My wife's brother did marry a Welshwoman. Her father thought himself a great magician. He would doubtless claim to be the master of all manner of potions."

'Well, Wales has always had that sort of mysticism to it. Stories about-'

He breaks off, and looks a bit uncomfortable. it's weird to think about home, after so many years of trying not to think about it at all.

'-well, y'know. Just stories about magic, and dragons, and stuff. I suppose it's all rubbish, but they sell tourists on it.'

"O, I know it," Harry says, the tone of a man who has suffered long anecdotes at the hands of an in-law. "Devils, dragons, spirits of the vasty deep..."

'...yeah.'

He buries himself back in his drink so he doesn't have to look at him.

'I s'pose England's got just as much. In a way.'

But it's not the same. Only very few parts of England have the necessary Celtic connection for that.