milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

One ka-mai in the bar with coffee and a thoughtful look on his face. Have at.

[Summary: Cuthbert talks about Cort's visit to the bar with Roland, who seems a bit disappointed that Bert didn't get hit, with Lilly, who finds the idea of apprentice gunslingers having to prove their manhood by beating Cort up and taking his stick amusing, I can't imagine why, and with Susan, with whom he is angstily nostalgic about Gilead.]

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Cuthbert stares at her for another second--and then leans forward until his forehead's on the bar, and leaves it there.

Lilly pats him on the head cheerfully.

"Relax, Koosh, he didn't seem to mind. We actually had a great conversation once I found out we had friends in common."

Cuthbert snorts, and then straightens up.

"Cort was...is...not exactly the sort of person who has friends."

Lilly shrugs.

"Well, not you guys. You were his students, and apparently some of you," and she pauses to grin at him, "were not the best students you could be."

Cuthbert looks unassuming.

"Well, what's a teacher without an unruly student here or there? If I hadn't kept him on his mettle, he'dve gotten rusty."

Lilly tilts her head.

"I don't know, if he could figure out you were making faces by the reflection in another student's eyes, it doesn't sound like he was in any danger of getting rusty to me."

Bert rolls his eyes. "God and the Man Jesus...tell me told you some stories about the others, to be fair?"

"Oh, of course," Lilly replies, smirking. "We actually had a really good chat, me and Cort."

Bert snorts again.

"Well. For the record, what he probably didn't tell you, considering he was here from an earlier time, is that I kicked his ass good and proper when I was fifteen. So there."

Lilly blinks.

"Were you supposed to kick his ass when you graduated or something? Because I think that is a tradition that my high school was totally missing out on."

Bert grins.

"Oh, yar. Not when we graduated, precisely--we had a ceremony for that once all of us had done it--but it was how we became gunslingers. Where'd you think he got all those scars from?"

"I wasn't sure," Lilly says. "I thought maybe someone had told him that chicks dig scars and he decided that meant the more scars the more chicks."

"Nope. We had to beat him up and take his stick in order to prove ourselves as men."

And no, that's not Freudian in any way.

...Shut up.

Lilly tries desperately to stifle giggles for at least ten seconds before she gives up entirely.

"Ohhhhh, that kind of 'trial,'" she says in between gigglefits. "Why didn't you say? I understand so much more about you guys now."

Cuthbert glares at her.

"What? It was a tradition going back centuries."

"Kinda like the ancient Greeks?" Lilly asks innocently before collapsing into giggles again.

Eyebrow quirk. "The who?"

"Ancient Greeks," Lilly says. "Founders of my type of civilization, full of wise men... who liked the company of beardless boys, but that's incidental really."

Cuthbert blinks.

And then catches up.

"Your mind is going places it shouldn't, young lady."

Lilly looks at him, all innocent and blonde.

"What do you mean, Koosh? I shouldn't think about ancient traditions?"

Blonde innocence does not fool Cuthbert. Cuthbert met Meg on his first night here.

He just eyes her.

Lilly grins.

"Would you believe attempting to respect your traditions no matter how giggle-inducing they might be?"

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