Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Your bar was your baby. You’d worked damn hard to get the money for the deposit, you’d worked damn hard to refurbish it, you’d worked damn hard to get where you are today. Call it a sin, but you were understandably proud of the place you had grown to cherish.

The Astral. Your new bar. Well, not technically new – considering it was a café before being a bar and a government office before being a café, and it was already the second month of your running of it – but you still liked to call it new. Made it feel more special that way, and the furniture was new. The repainted walls were a deep crimson compared to the scratched beige they used to be, and the tables actually had legs to stand on instead of a propped-up broom handle. Admittedly, when you first visited the place, you were less than eager about your prospects. You should have realized something was wrong with it when the estate agent shoved the keys into your hand and booked it so fast that he left his car behind. Alas, by then, you had made your choice. You’d thrown all of your eggs into one basket, and you were going to have to reap the rewards if you wanted to survive.

The good news was that you had a plan. The bad news was that the plan would set you back $60,000. Your faith in your project was dwindling as fast as your bank account. But it wasn’t as though you could just not pay it – you didn’t have any other choice.

One thing led to another, more bills led to more expenses, and there you were, standing behind the counter of your very own bar, trying hard to not grin too much. You weren’t going to dwell on the past unnecessarily. You didn’t want your switching between smiling and grimacing to freak out the paying customers.

Of which there were nine.

Not that you were complaining. No, this was the best you’d had since you first opened. You would have preferred all of them be conscious, but, again, all your eggs in one basket, and you weren’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Luckily, they were also pretty quiet, letting you get to grips with your role and your atmosphere. The sound level was what you were aiming for. A lot of your money had been spent on painting a pebble yellow and calling it gold, and this speakeasy-esque aesthetic was the product of your labor. Ignoring the few spilled drinks and smoke billowing against the ceiling from one small group, you were happy to say you were getting there.

So, you watched the patrons sip at their drinks and talk, the light chatter interspersed with the gentle hum of music from your jukebox. Something classical fit the bill, and you often found yourself with waltzes and ballads comforting you when you had no other guests. Currently, with nothing else to attend to, you grabbed a semi-dirty glass and assumed the classic bartender stance with a pristine, white cloth. You silently joked to yourself that you hoped this wasn’t going to be the norm. The whole silent bartender schtick could only go so far, even with your black vest and cream shirt, with the attitude you so often towed around. According to your family, at least. Maybe you’d end up being exposition, that sounded better. You just needed to find a suitable small-town rumor to peddle…

A floorboard creaked in front of the door.

Sucker.

A flamboyant sucker, but a sucker, nonetheless.

The newcomer strolled up to the bar and quickly threw himself in one of the seats. Your smirk was getting harder to hide every second as he glanced around.

The only positive to the lack of a reputation, you’d discovered, was that nobody knew the little trick you had up your sleeve. Now, you weren’t a petty criminal looking to pick your patrons’ pockets while they had their backs turned. You were above that. Instead, you preferred a different tactic. Backhanded, but definitely legal, and that was the best kind of backhanded. You didn’t explain it immediately. The guy would find out when he got the bill, which would have an automatic ten percent of the cost added to the total of his drinks.

You loved your human behavior plank.

You forced your thoughts away from your business practices and turned them towards the man – sucker – sitting before you. It was in that moment that you really took in his outfit, his face and his, well, everything else.

It might have been an understatement to call him flamboyant; from head to toe, he was coated in a mass of garish colors that raged against the backdrop of your bar. You’d seen a manner of characters pass through, none of them quite the same, but all on the opposite side of the coin to the multi-colored suspenders and yellow shirt he sported. The moustache topped it all off, whether it was because it was bright pink or because it didn’t match his actual hair color. Either way, you couldn’t say you didn’t like it. Under the maroon lighting that lazily dragged itself over him, he wasn’t half bad to look at.

This sugar-coated prince smiled when you finally met his eyes, though that seemed to be his default reaction. He dropped one elbow onto the counter and placed his head in his hand, the other rhythmically tapping next to it.

“What can I get you, sir?” you began as you set the clean glass amongst the rest of them.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been called sir.” His laugh was strange. Not bad. In fact, it was lighthearted and genuine, if a little dramatic, but it seemed to echo through the bar as if there were no other sound. It ignored the classical music still streaming from the jukebox and the murmurs of the other patrons. As it slowly trailed off into the notes of a piano, he leaned closer. “Call me Wilford.”

You nodded hesitantly; nobody was considered a regular yet, but there were a few people who had been in there already, and you knew none of their names. Even though you had no doubt, Wilford was clearly a unique individual.

You restarted, “What can I get you, Wilford?”

The drumming of his fingers sped up for a second, before he stopped altogether and answered, “What do you think of a vodka martini?”

“I think it’s a good choice.”

Classic, quick, and easy. It was much better than the barely-adults who staggered in after looking up the hardest drink order possible, who asked for a Commonwealth like they’re five years old again, who laughed uproariously to their pals when you told them you wouldn’t do it. A vodka martini. That, you could do.

“Do you want to start a tab?”

“Oh, no, that’s quite alright. I’m not one for cards.”

To each their own, you guessed. Into a mixing glass, you poured the vodka and dry vermouth, then topped it off with ice. Wilford watched as you worked, peering intently at your hands as they dashed to-and-fro, stirred the drink, retrieved a cocktail glass from the underside of the bar. You felt his eyes on you when you turned to get the olives for a garnish, and, while you expected him to at least look away then, when you turned back. Like he was expecting you to do something other than prepare his drink.

After pouring everything into the glass, you slid it directly in front of him, the clink against the counter finally drawing his attention away from you.

You couldn’t say exactly why you were so interested in his reaction. Hovering while he took the first sip, expectations rushed through your head. Martinis weren’t easy to mess up, but they also weren’t easy to make exciting. A lukewarm response was the best you could come up with.

You didn’t expect him to lean back in his stool, almost tipping himself to the ground, and make eye contact again.

“How long have you been open?”

Shit. Did you mess up? Was he some kind of secret judge for a television show? Were you being made a mockery of? Who was he reporting back to?

You batted away the torrent of terrifying thoughts that threatened to send you spiraling, and you took a second to recover. He didn’t look put-off, his happy-go-lucky expression didn’t change, so you answered, “Two months.” You were biting back the venom in your tone just as much as the impulse to call him sir. He had told you not to, right? What was there to worry about? Nothing. Nothing at all. The tendencies went hand in hand for you.

Reassuring yourself that this was no formal chauffer looking to cause you trouble had never been so difficult, despite all the evidence that suggested he was just a weird guy in flashy clothes.

“I’m surprised I’ve never been in here before,” Wilford hummed back, returning his head to one of his hands. The other absentmindedly twirled the cocktail glass.

“I haven’t had the chance to really advertise it yet.” You were going to have to be careful with your words. The paranoia was getting to you, you knew and recognised that, but it didn’t stop you from looking over your responses with a fine-tooth comb like a script.

Your eyes narrowed at the man’s glances around the bar. He clocked the entrance, the bathrooms, the kitchen, and the backroom, the latter being the one unlabeled door behind the bar. His gaze swept back to you. “You’re the owner.”

“Yes, s- Wilford, I am.”

“And you’re the only bartender?” He leaned in even closer than he had the first time.

Your heart quieted down, and your shoulders relaxed. You should have expected concerns over your business practices. Inwardly, you brushed your fears away entirely. This was fine. He was exactly who he said he was, which, while not much, you could rely on. If he had any other intentions, you were sure the back room would have piqued his interest instead.

Suspicion lifted from your tone, you answered, “You’re correct. I think with the attendance as low as it is right now, I’ll be fine to be the only one working.”

Wilford nodded in understanding, focus drifting back to the drink that had gone woefully unattended to.

In the time that it took for him to drain the glass, you served another two patrons while another closed their tab. Thankfully, it was the guy who’d finally decided to wake up and greet the night. You didn’t want to try kicking out a drowsy drunk, and he was too blinded by sleep that he didn’t notice the dollar and eighty cents missing from his change. You stowed the cash in a drawer beneath the bar for counting later that week.

Wilford waving you over caught your eye just as you grabbed one of the pints to clean.

“Can I get you another drink?” you asked, pulling forward the empty one.

“Of course—” his hand reached out to the base of the cocktail and stopped you from walking away with it, “—though, I’d ask you some more questions, if you don’t mind.”

Fully returned to a comfortable role, you copied, “Of course.”

A sly grin overturned his curious look, while you turned to place the glass by the sink and get out a new one. You repeated the process for the second martini, slightly faster now that you’d had a refresher, and then handed it back to Wilford, who threw it back without a second thought. You couldn’t help but think it was impressive, and that was before he caught the cocktail stick between his teeth. The prideful twitch of his moustache let you know that he thought it was impressive, too.

With a new dirty glass and cloth in hand, you nodded. “Go ahead.”

“That classical music,” he started, “is that the norm?”

Currently, Infinite Ways was streaming gently through the air. “I prefer it,” you replied, “it stops people staying too long of they’re just looking for a drink and a fight.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Not as often as most bars—” You wouldn’t mention that you hadn’t really been open long enough to have many, “—but we don’t have the reputation to stop it completely yet. I step in if gets out of hand.”

You thought he might ask you more about them, maybe quiz you on proper techniques considering his line of questioning so far. Instead, he nodded and fiddled with the olive’s toothpick.

“What are your hours?”

“I open at noon; I close at two.”

“Is this your first time owning a bar?”

“My first time owning a business, in fact. I’ve got the experience of working at one, but I’ve never gone in alone before.”

You placed your next clean glass where it came from, looking for something to break the monotony. You don’t know how, but the dramatic stranger with a cotton-candy color scheme was managing to make the conversation a tad boring. If your suspicion from earlier had stayed with you, that would have been at the forefront of your mind, but now you only had confusion and tediousness to think about. It felt more like a job interview than a casual chat.

But you didn’t need to wait long for him to pick back up the flair again.

“When were you born?”

“If you’re asking whether I can legally sell alcohol, I can assure you that I am past the age limit.”

And that was that. His final question used on something that should have been obvious. Never mind the suspicion from earlier, you were getting a revised distrust of Wilford, as he looked you up and down, until you were blocked by the counter of the bar. He hummed.

Momentarily, you were pulled from the conversation by someone closing out their tab. It was getting fairly late, so you were likely to be hit with a wave of customers leaving soon. Hopefully, if nobody new walked in, you’d be able to have some time to yourself, even if it would be standing behind a counter.

When you returned to Wilford, who you’d seen poke himself with the stick out of the corner of your eye, you didn’t reach for anything to occupy your hands with. The glasses went untampered with, in favor of staring the man straight in the eye.

“Now, can I ask you a question?”

He shrugged. “It’s only fair.”

“What are you fishing for?”

Immediately, he looked startled, shaken out of whatever thoughts he had and into the present. One of his eyebrows rose while he leaned closer to you over the counter.

“Pardon?”

And you matched the distance. “You’re looking for something.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Half of those questions you’d already figured out for yourself. You wanted confirmation. Why?”

You’d hit the nail on the head, it seemed. Wilford spluttered as he tried to answer for his behavior, while you watched. The tables had turned, and you took pride in seeing him flounder.

“Well,” he choked out, “well, I simply wanted to know—”

“How long I’ve been open, what music we play, how old I am?”

You were well aware some of the questions made sense. You wouldn’t say it out loud, but you knew. But Wilford shot himself in the foot by panicking; you wouldn’t have pressed it had he reacted differently.

“Yes, but—”

“You’re either casing the place and looking for a way in, which I highly advise against, or you’re accidentally coming off incredibly unnerving. Choose.”

Wilford might not have been who you had suspected he was, but he certainly wasn’t the average guy looking for a drink after a shift. Something was up with him, and you were determined to get to the bottom of it, the chance at a regular customer be damned. He could sneak around all he liked in somebody else’s bar, but you didn’t want your first time owning somewhere, after putting in blood, sweat and tears, to be a catastrophic failure because somebody decided to play with you.

In the midst of your monologue, Wilford managed to regain his sense of self, enough to realise he wasn’t getting out of it without explaining. Besides, it wasn’t as though it was a problem. For once in his life, he wanted to avoid making a big scene, even if it was only because someone asked him to.

So, sighing, he looked unaware but you as he spoke, “I have a dear friend who has a terrible habit of shutting himself in his office, from dawn to dusk without a break. He’s not the type to go where I frequent, and this charming speakeasy has a similar aesthetic to him. I desperately need to get him out of that house, and this place seems like a good fit for a trail run.”

That was… not what you were expecting. Nosiness, boredom, any sort of criminal motive – but not wanting to find a place to bring a friend. After your blatant bull-headed challenge, you were surprised that he still appeared open to the idea.

Briefly, you wondered just who this friend was, that Wilford was willing to bring close a testy bartender in return for old music and a clean room. Whether he would end up showing with him was another question.

Turning around, you decided to take the risk. “Well, if that’s the case,” you muttered, as you grabbed the pad and pen from the corner of the wall before pushing them towards him. “Write down the details so you don’t forget. I’d hate to lose a potential customer.”

Wilford stared at you. You stared at Wilford.

A smile brought up his mustache from underneath, and you took the opportunity to serve some of the others milling about the bar. When you were attending a pair by the door, you noticed he was swinging his feet off the stool, just barely scraping the ground. You couldn’t help but grin lightly, which was bolstered when the undertone of his voice started humming underneath the music. Even if he was a little kooky, he was nice.

He was finished by the time you returned, the ripped-out sheet of notes sitting beside the pad and pen. You couldn’t read the handwriting, but the sketch of the bar was pleasant enough. You supposed you’d find out what he’d written if you ever saw him again.

Gently, he pushed both the pad and his empty glass towards you. “My thanks, dear Dionysus,” he drawled with a wink.

Dionysus, huh? Well, you weren’t going to be telling him your real name any time soon. Neither of your behaviors warranted it, and you doubted it would ever be used, given how, thinking about it, you were certain you’d screwed the interaction up with vague threats.

Nevertheless, you muttered, “Apt name,” and passed the glass over to the sink. “I hope to see both you and your friend in the future, Wilford.”

Getting up from his seat, the man fished an embroidered, leather wallet out of one of his pockets and threw down a twenty dollar note. He was supposed to have change, even with that human behavior charge, but he started waltzing away before you could reach for the drawer. Although, he very deliberately stepped over the plank on his way out, so you couldn’t guess that your shady practice went unnoticed.

“I’m sure you will!” he called out behind him. He tugged the door open and, with a final wave, escaped into the cold night. He disappeared from sight almost immediately, consumed by the darkness that welcomed in your own tiredness as you stared through the windows.

Only two more people left. You could close out their bills and be done before all the stars were out. You didn’t know if you would stay focused throughout it, however, as your thoughts drifted around your head like a haze of fog. It was weird to be as interested as you were in Wilford; nobody had caught your eye quite like him before, if only out of morbid curiosity. It wasn’t like you’d ever met someone like him before, though, so it was so be expected.

What a strange man.

Chapter Text

If you were being honest with yourself, you didn’t expect Wilford to come back. At least, not as soon as the very next night.

You were working behind the bar, pouring beers for a group of construction workers who were sitting in one of the booths. Overall, there were less people in the room, but they were clumped together in pairs or threes. There wasn’t a single person sitting alone, and you supposed that was just as well; it meant they were more interested in the people opposite them than the drinks below, or, in the case of Wilford’s entrance, their bartender. Still, you could only hope that you didn’t look too surprised, even more so when you saw the person who he was towing behind.

The creak of the door was the only thing that alerted you to their presence. With Wilford walking in first, his companion watched and learned to step over the plank. Underneath the bar, you snapped your fingers. You liked the guy plenty, but he didn’t have to go showing off that he got around your perfectly-legal-don’t-tell-anyone-though business practice.

They approached the bar together until they were close enough for Wilford to shove his friend into a stool. Immediately, the blank expression melted into distaste. He didn’t voice his complaints, however, and that left Wilford to drop into the seat next to him.

Your attention drifted to the two while you served the construction workers. The unfamiliar one was a complete juxtaposition to Wilford. You thought they’d work better as a comedy act than real people – if he weren’t grimacing at everything he looked at. Presumably, he was the one that was supposed to like the Astral’s kind of aesthetic. Classical definitely fit his suit, but he looked like he’d rather be anywhere else than there.

Bringing the tray back and slipping it under a counter, you returned to the bar and stood in front of your new patrons. You slapped on as simple a smile as you could muster for the man who looked like he’d stepped out of his own coffin. Hell, from closer, his skin seemed to reject the red tones of your lighting.

But weirdness suited Wilford. Maybe they weren’t an odd pair after all.

The candy-cane himself grinned when you approached, his mustache seemingly curling even more so to mimic his happiness.

“Another vodka martini for tonight—” Straight to business it was, then, “—and my friend…?”

His friend, who he gestured to politely, waved his hand in a way that got on your nerves. The design of the Astral was to cater to a slow and steady type of lifestyle, those who preferred the quality of their drinks over the quantity. Even though it was understandable, snobs were not your preferred clientele.

To ease some of the tension that immediately brewed at the bar, Wilford copied the motion with a confused grin and a small laugh. The other one didn’t react, but that was just as well. You were going to assume the safe choice of a red wine if he wasn’t going to put in the effort to even speak to you.

At least Wilford was easy. The simplicity of his order and the apathy of the first meant that it didn’t take long for you to serve their drinks. In the time it did take, though, a group had lined up to pay their bill, so you promptly moved towards them after you slid the glasses to the pair. You didn’t bother to watch their expressions, even though the small impulse to hear their opinions flashed through you. It was shaken off in favor of paying attention to your guests.

The pair didn’t stay quiet while you were away, but it was obvious the suited one waited until you were out of ear shot to start talking.

“I don’t understand,” he muttered, as if he hoped to use the cover of the classical music.

However, his efforts were disregarded. Wilford replied in his normal, jovial tone, “Well, you can’t stay in your office forever. It’s unhealthy.”

“So, you dragged me to a bar for my health.”

“You didn’t like the disco.” He tipped back his martini in one gulp and performed the same trick from the night before with the cocktail stick. Practice made perfect, after all. “I am not letting you rot away in a room. It doesn’t do anyone any good, not even you.” With the final words, he poked his friend’s chest, and either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the flair of his nostrils and the slight grimace that overcame his mouth.

You didn’t give it any weight when you returned to your station. You hadn’t seen a glimpse of happiness since they’d entered together, and you were silently betting on him not being able to express it. No matter: Wilford had enough pep in his step, and another wave towards you, for the both of them.

“Do you need refills?” you asked, stopping your hand from reaching to another dirty glass.

“Oh, no, not at all.”

Despite it being your literal job, he made you sound presumptuous, and then didn’t elaborate for the next few seconds. He was shot confused looks from all sides of the bar, including from beside him, as he propped up his elbows and fiddled with the stick.

You blinked.

“Ah!”

The wood clattered to the countertop, tak-tik-tak, before Wilford slapped a hand onto his companion’s back. He jutted forward but straightened up soon after. You might have laughed if you wanted to risk having the death glare pointed towards you. You settled on inwardly making fun of him, it was the least he could give you after having such poor manners.

“This is the man I was telling you about,” he announced. There was no suspicion in your mind about that, but you had to admit that it was nice to be introduced. “Dark—” You had some thoughts about that first part, “—this is Dionysus, the owner of the Astral.” But you had more thoughts about the second.

And so too did Dark.

Both of you questioned Wilford at the same time, “Dionysus?”

Wilford looked awfully proud of himself. “Dionysus.”

While he wouldn’t have gotten a real answer, he could have at least asked what your name was, rather than using that nickname from the night before. It wasn’t that you disliked it, it was just… off-putting to be given such a high-status label. Although, you supposed you knew why it made your shoulders tense up and your smile tighten.

Nevertheless, you accepted it, given the lack of other options. “Dionysus it is, then,” you confirmed, the name light yet full in your mouth, like cotton balls that stuck to the insides of your cheeks.

Dark, as you now knew him, glanced at you. Wilford had interviewed you when you met, but this was closer to an inspection. Just what you’d feared before, but you didn’t see the bubbly lollypop as a threat, so you only deemed this man as rude. It did give you the opportunity to inspect him back, though, so you couldn’t complain too much.

Dark lived up to his name. He was practically entire monochrome, but the detail that immediately jumped out to you were the faint red and blue lines that shimmered around the edges of his suit. Something to do with your lights and the texture, possibly? The very idea of asking about it left a sour taste in your mouth, so you just grinned and bore the finnicky trick. With his eyes examining you, you didn’t have a choice.

He let up when he spoke, though he didn’t complete stop his judging, “He said you are the owner?”

“Yes, sir, I both own and tend this bar,” you supplied, trying not to get distracted by Wilford’s rolling of his eyes. Dark didn’t refute your use of the term, and being on a first-name basis for the man was a step too far for you.

A waltz cut the conversation in two.

As if he could see the stagnation in your interaction, Wilford jumped to ask, “How’s business been?” Genuine interest was also laced with hurry. It was warranted; one of your feet was already poised to take you over to a table getting low on drinks.

But he was the kinder of the two, and you wanted to return the favor. “Well, since last night, it’s been good. Slow, but good.” Another group had come in after Wilford’s departure, having a few rounds of shots and then leaving a large tip – and the afternoon had been surprisingly lucrative given the lack of day-drinkers in the town. Overall, you were happy with it. A small smile wormed its way onto your face as you thought back on it, matched by Wilford’s pleased hum.

Not even two seconds has passed before you realized you’d looked a gift horse in the mouth, and it only took one more before you regretted it entirely. The floorboard creaked with the weight of the reaper when four men shoved open the doors and rushed in. They pushed and shoved and smacked each other forward into the bar, and, while you were wary of anyone too interested in the surroundings, you were commonly aggravated quickly by those who cared too little. These people were of such kind.

“Found a monkey’s paw, did you?” Wilford remarked, all three of you watching the show unfold. Circus act, rather – none of them stayed on both feet long enough to be called capable. Instead, they lumbered around the bar, invading every other patron’s space, before they collapsed into one of the booth seats next to another group. You sympathized with them as they looked at one another, shaky and unsure.

The conversation, if it could be called that, between yourself and the pair at the bar ground to a halt when you left to tend to some of the other patrons who had decided to get their bills. Great. Just what you needed, rowdy young men making a spectacle of your bar and forcing everyone else out. Inwardly, you groaned. It was bad enough they were making your patrons uncomfortable, but they were getting on your own nerves already, and, yes, you had learned to put up with the rabble at other places, but this was yours, dammit. This was not the reputation you were trying to build. The only problem was that you also didn’t want the reputation of kicking people out, and that left you in-between a rock and a hard place.

Back at the bar, Wilford turned around slightly, taking stock of the characters that had appeared. “Causing quite the ruckus, aren’t they?”

“You said that fights weren’t common,” was the only reply he got. Again, Wilford rolled his eyes and balanced his head on his hand.

“Well, they weren’t when I was here.”

Your return was welcomed by Dark with an unimpressed look and Wilford not having a care in the world. Although he likely didn’t notice you, you felt something ping in your chest when Dark sighed and looked away. The downturn of his lips, the avoidance of eye contact, the raising of his shoulders – he seemed disappointed, and you knew it wasn’t unique to him, but it had a knock-on effect on you, too. You didn’t like him, and he certainly showed no approval of you, but it had long since been ingrained in you to try and be on someone’s good side. While you learned to ignore the gut instinct, it was still there, and your opinion of his friend, which seemed to be improving every passing moment, meant you didn’t want him to think poorly of you. He could be neutral, let him and you would as well, but it didn’t sit right in you to be disliked.

“I am sorry about this, sir,” you started, almost immediately being met with surprise from Wilford and a glance from Dark, “they, ah, came in a few weeks ago before – I thought they’d left for good.” One expressed their interest better than the other, and it was no surprise which was which, but both only lasted a second. A brimming story was cut off by the skidding of a chair against the floor, that you bet left a mark, and a new bout of cackling.

“They’re only kids.” Wilford swatted his hand. “Exuberance of youth, and all that. If they’re anything like we used to be, they’ll settle down when they find something to talk about.” His elbow was firmly planted in Dark’s side, gaining no, or a veiled, response. The group of men were directing all of the attention, after all, even if people were avoiding looking at them.

In fact, given his dismissal, you were ready to ride this one out. The majority of guests had already cleared out upon their arrival, leaving one or two people scattered around besides Dark, Wilford, and the group at the adjacent table. You settled on keeping an eye on them. The first time they had visited your bar, they proved easy to get rid of, given that they were already half-drunk when they got through the doors.

Unfortunately, they got worse as soon as the thought passed through your mind, as though they sensed your hesitation and pounced on it. Laughing louder than the music and making rude comments, fine, you didn’t like it, but you would put up with it – but they crossed the line as soon as they got the other table involved.

The man with the denim jacket, seemingly the ringleader, was the problem. A showboat by himself, but he caught sight of a woman nestled into the corner of the other booth. You watched him from behind the bar. You noticed the first glance, and then the second, the smirk he shot to his friends, and then he slid next to her. That panic-stricken glint that poured over her eyes was all it took, even in the dim light of the bar, for you to circle the counter.

You passed by Wilford, who stood from his seat with something clasped in one of his hands. The guy opened his mouth to whisper something. You gave Wil little thought, no more than you did to Dark turning around to follow you with his eyes. The woman shook her head. The music faded into the background, keys clicking in time with your heels. He put a hand around her shoulder. You stopped in front of the table with as deadpan an expression as you could manage when unable to take deep breaths.

Getting a reputation for strangling a guest was also not something you’d like to gain, but you were more open to it in this case.

“You need to leave.” Voice level. You were handling this well.

“What!?” The indignant screech sent flickers of flame through your veins. “We weren’t doing anything.”

“Come on, find somewhere else to be. Leave the girl alone.” Getting a bit more agitated, but you were still diffusing so you couldn’t let it get too far. This was fine.

“Why?” On one hand, the diffusing wasn’t working, but, on the other, he left the woman alone. Jerkily, he shot out from the booth and took a step towards you. The rest of the two groups stared all the while. “We just wanna get something to drink.” His friends’ smiles turned to grimaces at their involvement. They should have gotten a better friend, then.

“Not in here, you’re not—” You refused to back down, no matter how close he got, “—You’re disrupting my bar; you need to leave.”

You remembered the first time you had to deal with someone like this. You were working in a hole-in-the-wall bar with barely a lockable door, let alone a bouncer. You were the only one working at the time, and the details were lost to you from the rush of bad drinks and worse patrons, but the feeling of someone’s nose cracking from a punch you threw had always stuck with you. The image presenting itself now was not a good sign.

The fire was hard to smother when he started poking you in the chest. “And who are you to tell us to leave, huh?” That relief on the woman’s face was gone, exchanged for the concern on the rest of their faces. You couldn’t get angry – of course, you wanted to, you had every right to be – but you were better than that. You had to stay calm. Running the risk of mockery, you inhaled and exhaled as subtle as you could manage.

Another poke.

“I’m the owner,” you answered. Irritation strangled the words you reminded yourself to say, the ones that you tried to force out. “Now, I’ll say it again slower so you can understand me.” The urge to grab onto the finger he poked you with, again, and bend it back was one you stifled, but the floodgates were already yanked open. You could rebuild the whole ‘professional’ thing later. “Get the hell out of my bar before I break something I won’t have to fix.”

He laughed in your face. Your jaw clenched tight enough that you thought you’d crack a tooth. When his obnoxious snickering trailed off and he gestured to his group, you assumed it was over, and that you could go back to the bar and serve the pair who had been sitting there the whole time. Their drinks were empty, you planned to refill them after checking on the woman and offering compensation—

A fist socked you straight in the jaw. It sent you stumbling a few steps backwards, you heard something click, not your jaw, that was good – it gave you the chance to lunge for the man who had struck you and wedge his neck in the corner of your elbow and pull. That was familiar. Not good familiar, but you knew the position of a headlock. One, two, three. He started to scramble for air, shoes sliding against the floorboard. Four, five, six seconds. He searched desperately for purchase until he slowed down. His limbs twitched and the hands that he had wedged underneath your arm lamely prodded at the shirt’s fabric.

You granted him some breathing room. He gave up fast. He wasn’t used to barfights, then. Hell, you had the impulse to give him some advice for how poor a challenge he put up.

“Now, you three,” you spoke plainly, eyes darting to the remainders of his group. They all stared back at you as their bravado from earlier seeped into the air. “You’re gonna leave my bar, and you’re not gonna come back, do you understand?”

Insistent if shaky nodding was a good enough answer for you, so you released him, caught the sight of a nearly blue face, and then stepped back. They edged around you like you might have bitten them, like some wild animal at the zoo. You didn’t take offence, too preoccupied with the looks of your other patrons to care as they sprinted out. One of them lagged behind slightly, their friend in a soldier’s carry that barely held them up, but it didn’t take long for the group to clear.

‘Suite No.7’ swam back into the air but the chatter didn’t return. Some of the remaining people scattered in the bar were draining the last of their drinks and sharing concerned looks. You felt anger, shame, guilt swell in your chest. It wasn’t even your fault this time – but that didn’t matter. The childhood excuse wouldn’t work here, where it didn’t matter if you had caused the ruckus. Your reputation was going to crash regardless, you just knew it.

The best you could do was damage control.

You shared sympathetic remarks with the woman and let her know that she didn’t need to pay for her drinks, before you rounded the counter and stopped in your original position in front of Wilford and Dark. The latter’s expression betrayed nothing about his opinion of you, but it wasn’t likely to have improved. Wilford, meanwhile, was only just sitting back down, hiding his face by glaring down at…

Was that a gun?

It wasn’t too outlandish to think he owned one, but he had brought that with him without knowing something would happen. You didn’t comment on it, suddenly wondering whether you should have been worried about him for a different reason.

“Hopefully this will be the last time they come here,” you spoke. The pit in your stomach deepened as you watched nearly all of the patrons left get up from their seats.

But your attention was diverted when a voice asked, “Are you alright?”

Dark didn’t look worried for you, but his words were surprisingly tender, and they were directed at you. You were confused, split in your opinion of the man. On one hand, he was a standoffish prick in a suit who had barely spoke to you in the last hour. Three parts of that made you wary of him, for good or bad reason. On the other hand, though, Wilford had brought him to your bar, and he himself was as weird as they came. You couldn’t expect him to have normal friends, so, just maybe, such a man as the one asking you gently if you were okay after a fight was the best you could hope for.

“Of course, sir.”

You decided to give him another chance. You wouldn’t deny the extra customer, either way.

Speaking of customers – you moved from your post to tend to the people standing at the bar, more likely to be closing out their tabs than ordering new drinks. With the flurry of cards and cash, you weren’t able to listen in on the small conversation between the pair you’d left behind.

“Some bar you picked, Wilford.”

The dramatic snap of fingers didn’t startle Dark as he pushed the wine glass further across the counter.

“And I was so sure it would be a good fit for you,” Wilford sighed, sounding immeasurably disappointed.

“I never said I didn’t like it.”

The raise of his eyebrows and twitch of his moustache was what you saw when you glanced over amidst stashing notes in the drawer and removing bank details. Wilford’s reaction put a barely visible smile on Dark’s face, one that you almost mistook for a grimace, but it was matched tenfold by his friend. You didn’t ask why, simply removing the empty glasses from in front of the pair.

“My apologies,” you tried to keep your voice level, “I understand that this was your first night out, I’m sorry if this has left a poor impression on you.”

“You have nothing to worry about.” Despite Dark’s assurances, you didn’t believe him; you weren’t about to get out of this situation with just a bruise on your jaw. “I can’t say I’m not used to it by now.”

That gave you pause, but he was done speaking, meaning your mind was swamped with questions that weren’t going to be answered. Someone who looked like the stereotypical 1920s railroad owner was supposedly used to bar brawls? You had plenty of suspicions, but that was too far.

He added, ignoring the doubtful glint in your eye against the dim lights, “The choice of music is an added bonus.”

“I’ll make sure to keep to the waltzes, then.”

The miniature smile he sported widened just a touch. The earlier embarrassment was cut in two by your own pride, so that you weren’t overly concerned about him rising from his seat and levelling his eyes with yours.

“Have a good night, Dionysus.”

Stupid nickname be damned, you were happy with the familiarity it gave you. You didn’t hide your own smirk, as you responded in kind, “You as well, sir.”

And, with that, he walked out, the clicks of his dress shoes dancing along to the rhythm of the music. As if to spite you, he avoided the plank of wood at the exit. How he remembered after such an eventful evening, you didn’t know, but he did, and it left you with Wilford. The only two still in the bar long enough for him to start speaking.

“Well, I’d say that was a rousing success.”

You choked on your laugh. “I think my jaw would say otherwise.”

“When your jaw learns to speak by itself, I’ll heed its advice,” He shoved the stool back and swung his legs around, glancing over his shoulder to continue, “‘have a good night, Dionysus’ – boy, aren’t you the lucky one.”

You didn’t see Wilford get out his wallet, but the money appeared on the bar anyway. It was enough to cover the bill and more, so you started to reach towards the drawer, until you noticed he was jogging away to catch up to Dark. Your mouth wasn’t half open when he darted out the door and disappeared just like the night before.

With the vow to catch him the next night he came in standing stark in your mind, you ran the faucet of the sink behind you. It wasn’t two yet, but it was close enough that starting to clean up now wouldn’t give the wrong impression. You’d done damage today; it wouldn’t matter if you dug a little deeper.

The bottle of wine you’d uncorked sat to the side of the back counter. Digging a little deeper, indeed; you grabbed a clean wine glass and poured a sizeable amount, the stinging sensation of your jaw coaxing you onwards.

A strange man, and his strange friend.

Chapter Text

Your hand swept across the counter as you opened up the bar. It wasn’t dusty or cluttered or holding a single speck of something to be removed, but you liked doing it. It made you feel accomplished. Proud of yourself. Over the last week, you’d taken the first hour after opening to think about where you were. It helped to ground you, you thought. It was never busy at one o’clock, so it was just you and the music in the front room of the Astral. You felt giddy, maybe too much for a fully grown adult, but you definitely enjoyed the feeling flowing through your veins. You didn’t think it would ever wear off. The early stage of an addict’s high.

You peeled back from the counter just as your first group of the day pushed through the doors, all of them stepping on the human behavior plank – your cherished pet that had you stifling a chuckle – and making their way over to you. You smiled as you took their orders, smiled as you directed them to a booth, smiled as you turned to get the various bottles that held the alcohols. Another good thing about it being early was that you got nearly no troublemakers. Of course, there was once or twice when someone came in looking for the hardest thing you could legally make them, but they would never stay long, and you learned over a few conversations that it was the brutality of a nightshift that drove them to it, not a brawler personality.

The people who came in for the early hours had one thing in common; they were tired. You ended up investing in a coffee machine for the number of people who requested the caffeine mixed with bourbon or vodka. It always made you grimace as you combined the drinks, but business was business, and you wouldn’t reject a customer over a moral disagreement, no matter how much the small made you want to.

The similar tiredness of your patrons let you take everything slow. You served a couple who quickly shuffled over to a double seat table, and then you took to people watching.

Red flannel shirt, trucker cap, varsity high school jacket that was well past its prime – that was the first group. The second pairing had a flowery dress and a purple cardigan, probably on a date if their lovesick stares were anything to go by. Aside from that, just in time for your inspection, another three people walked through the doors. White vest, sunglasses, and—

Wilford?

Or was it Dark?

One seemed as impossible as the other. The former had come in three times since he’d introduced you to Dark, and he never wore anything less fanciful than the first time he had come in. A simple shirt and leather jacket didn’t fit his aesthetic, but neither did it Dark’s. Once was he dragged through the doors with Wil and he wore the exact same suit before, not to mention his skin was as gray as a corpse.

As the group came closer, you realized the not-Wilford-not-Dark guy wasn’t associated with the pair. The one in the vest ordered two gin and tonics and then settled themselves in a booth. You expected to see that familiar face behind them, but he had seemingly disappeared into thin air after you typed in the drinks. Were you hallucinating?

Your gaze shifted slightly to the left.

Nope, he was just sitting down at a table. You almost kicked yourself for jumping to that conclusion so quickly, but you distracted the impulse by making those orders.

It didn’t take long, the simple request that it was, but you stuttered over pouring the gin into the glasses. The man caught your eye again. If he didn’t look like something straight out of a certain 1950s youth subculture musical, you would have guessed he was nervous. His hands were splayed out in front of him, exposing the myriad of boxy tattoos he had, while he pulled back his fingers in turn. The fiddling only stopped when he looked up at you, a look of shock splattering over his face.

You waved him over after you placed the glasses on the counter. Both him and the man who ordered them arrived at the bar, but only the lookalike remained.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” you offered.

Your thoughts almost drifted back to that hallucination theory. He looked surprised, but that couldn’t have been right. You had a bad habit of judging books by their covers, you recognized that, but it didn’t stop you from wondering how a guy with muscles big enough to throw an ox also managed to put up the front of a deer in headlights.

He scrambled to reply, “Oh, uh- what do youse have?”

Ah. You knew that tone well. The nervousness made sense if he’d never been out before. From your days working at other bars, you were no stranger to, well, strangers to bars. Your mind was made up within the next few seconds that you would give him a helping hand for his first experience.

“Well,” you started, “what are you in the mood for? It’s pretty early, so I wouldn’t recommend a heavy alcohol content.” You thought for a moment. Tattoos, leather jacket, what you recognised as a box of cigarettes tucked under one of his sleeves. Everything pointed to classics. “You could go for a beer or a vodka and soda?”

“Yeah, a beer sounds good.” Inwardly, you congratulated yourself, even if the guess was obvious. Outwardly, you waited for him to tell you what kind, but he didn’t continue. He just stared at you, a light blush struggling to show on his face under the red lights.

You kick-started him with, “I have Budweiser, Coors Light, Corona…?”

His uncertainty wasn’t clearing up. If anything, he looked worse than when he’d sat down. “The first one?” He sounded like a game show contestant who hadn’t even been told the question.

Gently, you chuckled. More blood rushed to his face, but you didn’t dwell on it, for his sake. “Okay, Budweiser it is.”

If you hadn’t already figured he wasn’t used to bars, his standing and staring straight ahead would have given it away. His eyes were locked on the rows of wine bottles on the shelf while you fixed him a pint glass from the tap. Once it was all done, you slid it to the stool he was next to.

“Tell me if you like it.”

“Will do.”

Gently, as someone would when taking a piece of meat from a wild cat, he brought it to his lips and took a sip. If you were being honest, you had never liked the taste of beer. It was always so overwhelming, and you could smell it as much as you could taste it, but a lot of people used it as their drink of choice. Like you said, it was a classic.

He seemed to be one of those people, though. He coughed once, thought for a second, and then took another swig of it. You guessed it being cold made it better, that had been your mistake the first time you’d tried it and the memory stuck with you every time you tasted that bitterness. You also guessed that he would sit down when he decided he liked it.

Which he did not.

He liked it, yes, but he stayed standing as he took another sip. You stared blankly at him, waiting for him to take a seat, but he didn’t, he just met your gaze.

He was somehow confusing you more than Wilford had.

To quench some of that confusion, you gestured to the row of stools in front of him. His eyes widened as he realized the awkwardness of the situation, and he quickly slipped onto one with a hesitant, little chuckle. “Right,” he muttered into the glass.

To give him some space, and also because you were still working, you went to ask the original tables if they wanted refills. It would give him time to destress himself and to hopefully stop him from bowing his head like he was committing some crime just by sitting there.

There were two trains of thought that streamed through your head: on one hand, military. The straight back, the adherence to orders, the out-of-place demeanor despite his outward experience. They pointed towards him having been kicked out of the army. You assumed a fight from his tattoos and his youth. If that theory were right, he wouldn’t have been there long enough to be broken in.

But, on the other hand, there was prison. It made the most sense out of the two, and that displacement added to this one, too. But he didn’t have the school of life quality to him. You’d had your fair share of ex-criminals and convicts, and none of them would have sat down with a wave of your hand. With them, you were more likely to lose it.

In fact, both of the ideas you had were negated by his sheer awkwardness. Being unused to public life was one thing, but he looked like he was going to implode if someone brushed against his back. It didn’t suit a prisoner or a soldier, and it didn’t suit him.

You were back behind the bar, after serving another tray of drinks, when you struck up another conversation. Maybe it would help him relax, and, more selfishly, maybe it would get you some answers.

“For someone who looks how you do, I’m surprised you’ve never been in a bar before.”

You briefly thought about going in subtly, but direct confrontation was a recent freedom for you, and you were getting your money’s worth, or lack thereof.

“What do youse mean?” Luckily, he didn’t sound offended, just interested, with his head cocked like a puppy’s.

“The tattoos, the hair, the scratches. I’d think you’d been in your fair share of bar fights, but you seem nervous.”

“Ain’t the saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’?”

You put your hands up in the air for a placating, if joking, gesture. “You got me there. I apologize.”

“Nah, nah, youse’s good—” A question about that accent floated to the forefront of your mind, but you weren’t going to stop him when his shoulders were lowering and his tiny grin was widening, “—They weren’t bar fights, but I’ve tousled with guys before.”

That was to be expected. That damage on his arms wasn’t from a cat, after all. “Oh, yeah?”

“Prison.”

In the space of the next few seconds, you could only blink. You tried to be a straight-forward person now, even if some considered it a new bad habit, but it was still slightly flustering to meet someone that up front, and he was the first to openly tell you of their conviction. Despite that, you still inwardly applauded yourself for getting it semi-right. Military was the weaker of the two options.

When you recovered from the surprise, you nodded. “How long?”

“Huh?”

It felt good to confuse him as well. Eye for an eye, and all that jazz.

“I know what you said about judging, but you don’t look that old to me. I’ve met people who’ve been in and out of prison for years, and they’ve definitely been to at least one bar before.”

“Oh, well, I… uh…” he trailed off. One of his fingers trailed around the rim of his glass, and you were suddenly aware of how invasive that question was. Damn it, and you had just gotten him out of his shell. You were terrible at this.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” It didn’t matter how much you tried to keep your composure; your words flooded out of your mouth anyway. “All my questions are completely optional. I won’t take offence if you don’t tell me.”

“No, it’s just- well,” he replied, that jovial tone gone, “I think I’ve spent more time in prison than I have out.”

He didn’t look that old. Of course, skin care routines and plastic surgery existed, and some people just tended to hold onto their youth, but you would guess he was sometime in his early thirties. And, if he was, that was troubling.

He cleared your suspicions up soon after seeing your furrowed eyebrows. “Got put in when I was sixteen,” he explained, “and just got out a couple months ago.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank youse.”

Your smile returned, the quiet conversation returned, and the easy-going atmosphere, thankfully, returned. Surprisingly, you were having fun talking to the ex-prisoner, but you were still on shift. Between his questions of your favorite drinks and what else you would recommend, you flitted to other patrons who arrived. An hour had passed with your chatter, and it was high time for the bar to start filling up. It was a curious detail you noticed that very few people liked to sit at the actual counter. It wasn’t only because of the guy who looked very capable of punching their lights out; it happened on other days, as well, but you never questioned it. If people squished themselves into booths or that couch near the bathrooms, you didn’t mind, as long as they paid for their drinks.

Still, when you returned to the bar from someone finalizing their bill, your ex-prisoner was the only one sitting there. Not that you thought it was a bad thing. With you being the only bartender, you had very few people to talk to in the interim of serving drinks and closing tabs. This was a nice turn of events.

“How are you finding it so far?” you asked, placing an empty glass into the sink.

“Stressful.” His answer was immediate but that diminished none of its truth. “I mean, in prison, youse got everything sorted out for you. You don’t gotta think about bills, or working, or what youse’s eating during the day. You focus on what’s right in front of youse—” He gestured around the bar with a wide sweep of his arm, “—but out ‘ere? Everything matters so much, all the damn time.” His head dropped to the counter on his folded arms. “It’s exhausting.”

It was a sad fact of life that it was tiring. Expending energy on every little detail wasn’t a nightmare only because it was reality. You could get away from it in dreams, no matter the nature of them, but you’d eventually wake up and rise and repeat and rinse and repeat.

But you didn’t want to dampen his spirits too much. “If life weren’t exhausting, I wouldn’t be standing here serving everybody drinks,” you joked, as one of your hands reached for his glass and another patted the beer tap. Wearily, he nodded, though you were happy to say it was with a smile.

“Nah, guess not.”

He seemed easy to cheer up, although you knew his background. That was good for someone new to society. There were a lot of bad parts to it, you had experience in so many of them, but it was helpful when someone could see the bright side of it all.

You returned his glass to him, filled to the top without a spill you might add, never mind that it was just for your ego. He picked it up soon but didn’t drink. Instead, he tilted his head towards you. “But what ‘bout youse?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, youse.”

“I’ve been in custody four times.”

If he had held off on drinking for another two seconds, he could have avoided spluttering, coughing and nearly choking on the beer. But his timing was poor, and you watched him helplessly try to cover his mouth in the midst of liquid seeping over his fingers. You couldn’t do much more than offer him a napkin when he had collected himself.

“That,” he managed to groan out, “that was not what I was thinkin’ of, but now I’m interested.”

You snapped your fingers underneath the counter. “Damn, I shot myself in the foot there, didn’t I?” You didn’t really mind sharing the story. After all, it was the part of your life that you chose. Your actions had consequences, and you were so glad that they did. That, and you were a firm believer in exchange, no matter what it was; being on unequal footing never sat right with you, and if this guy was nice enough, or uncaring enough, to offer up a story, who were you to leave him hanging?

“Well, I was fifteen, I think, the first time I got caught…”

It was a weird sensation to spin a yarn, as you’d heard members of your family call it. You weren’t much of an entertainer, nature or nurture, you had steered clear of that scene altogether. The closest you’d ever come was the few guitarists and singers who played in the old bars you once worked in, and the classical music from your jukebox. Nothing close to writing or acting, anyway. That was why you found it so confusing to be excited by your own words. The story you told this practical stranger – of how you and your cousin had snuck out with a group of friends to neighbors’ pools, eventually getting shot at by a father with a gun and scattering like thrown dice or rats in the cellar – was fun. You knew the events, you knew the details, the ones you didn’t let slip, so you were certain that the actual content wasn’t what amused you. No, it was definitely his expressions. They rolled around his face, appearing at each turn of the plot. He laughed with you about your cousin flopping over the fence, as stiff as a rake, and matched your grimace when you described getting bailed out by your parents. It was a roller-coaster of emotions that you watched. From an outsider’s perspective, you might have thought the story more interesting than it actual was, considering his reactions.

When you came to a stop, you finished the tale with, “It was the start of my teenage rebellion, y’know. Hasn’t ended yet.” The glass was empty once again, but you didn’t jump to refill it this time. He looked distracted enough to not need another one quite yet.

“But youse’s never been to jail,” he asked. That motion from before, where he trailed a finger around the rim, returned. He seemed to be thinking.

You shrugged. “My parents always paid my way out. Sometimes I’d pretend I was an orphan just so that cops wouldn’t call them.”

“But it never worked?”

“But it never worked.” And it happened over and over again, until the police decided it wasn’t worth the effort and just stopped arresting you altogether. “By the third time, they knew that the number was, so it was off to the naughty step for me.”

This time, his laugh was full-bellied, deep and gravelly. It burned a blush onto your cheeks, though you were unsure whether it was from the sound or from the embarrassment. When he started trailing off, still with a few giggles, you decided it was both.

“Naughty step,” he repeated. He made it sound, strangely, more childish.

“Better than isolation, or whatever it’s called.”

You couldn’t figure out whether you liked his laugh or not – it was a nice sound, of course, like a bell echoing in a monastery, but it was beginning to mean you had a poor choice of words. This time, he corrected, “Solitary.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“I don’t know, the naughty step was pretty bad when I was growing up. I’d take solitary over it any day.”

“You’ve been?”

“Only a couple’a times.” He paused as if to collect his thoughts, or to decide what he was going to tell you. You understood that. On your first day working, you would have never expected to get this far into conversations with patrons, especially when it was his first time there. Exchanging more than one word with him was a feat in and of itself.

You waited patiently as he milled it over in his head. Eventually, he came to a conclusion, and you barely noticed your body instinctively leaning closer in interest.

“Actually, there was this one time,” he started, “I, uh, really messed up. Started one of ‘dose fights I were talking about with a newbie. Got knocked straight onto my ass in the first two minutes. The Warden, the guy who ran the place, he stormed out and chucked me in solitary. I didn’t see what he did with the one I hit after that, but they were back in their cell like nothing had happened the next time I saw ‘em.”

“What was the fight about?”

That made him freeze. His hand stopped and his eyes darted away from you, as far as his skull would let him.

“Nothin’. Nothin’ important, anyways.”

And that was the end of that. He brought the beer glass to his lips, made to take another sip, and then realized that it was still empty. Ever so subtly, he put it back on the counter, the clink only slightly deafened against the surface.

“Sorry, I’m treatin’ youse like a therapist, ain’t I?”

“No need to apologize.” You avoided telling him that this was the most conversation you’d had for the last three days. “I’m a bartender. That’s what we do. The only other people who get spoken to like this are hairdressers, and I would not trust myself with scissors near somebody’s eyes.”

The expression on his face made clear that he doubted you, his words solidifying that notion, “Dangerous, are youse?”

It happened more often than you’d like, people underestimating you for the outfits you wore and the aesthetic to perpetuated. You liked the finer things in life, obviously, given the surroundings you cultivated for yourself, but that didn’t make you any less hesitant to put up a fight. Hell, if he knew about that situation when you first met Dark… well, now that you thought about it, you could do with a little boasting.

You turned around to grab some more glasses at the sight of another group of patrons coming through the front doors, but you spoke vaguely over your shoulder, “I put a guy in a headlock until he nearly passed out a week ago, so you tell me.”

One, two, three, four – that should have been enough, and it was all that you could carry. With them all stable in your grip, you called back, “Another beer?”

No answer.

For a brief moment, you thought he had left, or he was stifling a laugh at some other mistake you made, but, when you shot a glance over your shoulder, you only saw him staring intently at you. Not a threatening one, as you might have expected, but just curiosity. That was becoming a theme with this guy.

You barely had time to take a step closer to the new customers before he was pointing a finger towards you with a shocked opening of his mouth. “I know who youse is!” he announced, as if he’d found the final piece of the puzzle that had fallen underneath the couch, “youse’s the- uh, the bartender!”

You didn’t know how to respond to that. In the midst of your own confusion, you took the group orders and let them sit down in one of the booths – of course, where else would they sit – while you started preparing them and tried to prepare an answer to that strange declaration.

The words fumbled around in your throat, you tried to imagine him wearing a suit but came up short without your brain automatically adding that ashen skin, before you gave up and replied, “Was that not obvious?”

“No, I mean… Wilford called you somethin’ – damn, what’d he call youse?”

Oh. Oh. That made too much sense now. You wiped all suspicions from your mind, clean slate, complete do-over. He knew Wilford, that explained it all.

“Dionysus?” you offered.

“Dionysus, yeah!” Of course he called you that. “This is the Astral, then?” And, of course, he only told him your nickname and not the name of the place you owned. You hadn’t known the guy for more than two weeks, even less if you factored in that he was a patron at your bar and the most conversation you’d had was over a martini, but this seemed par for the course. Important or helpful information, pfft, what was that? Oh, but the dumb name he’d assigned to you as a joke was the best thing to use to recognize you.

Though, you couldn’t be too annoyed with him. In fact, you had to try hard to ignore the swelling of pride that Wilford was telling people about you.

With a tired smile, you asked, “Did you not look at the name before you walked in?”

“Nah.”

“Okay, sure.” Weird guy with weird friends, you reminded yourself.

“Wilford took Dark here a couple’a days ago, didn’t he?”

And by extension, he knew Dark.

“Oh, yeah, that was the bar fight that interrupted it all.”

“Wil told us about it. Said the guy didn’t even get to call uncle.”

You were distracted by three things – one, that group came up to grab their drinks and give you a card, which was the tamer of them all – two, he sounded almost entertained by the image he had made for himself, but that made some kind of sense given the whole prison thing – and three was what you proceeded to ask him.

“Us?”

“The rest of the guys, and, uh, speaking of which…” His trailing off was punctuated by him rolling up his jacket’s sleeve and checking the watch on his wrist. Your bar didn’t actually have a clock in clear view, but you could assume enough time had passed for whatever break he was taking to run out.

“You need to go,” you filled in for him.

Sheepish was not a word you thought would fit him, but it did in that moment. A tilt of the corner of his mouth and a squinting of his eyes did wonders for making him appear shy to answer.

“Yeah, kinda—” He pushed the beer glass closer to you, which you then took to the sink, “—but I’ll definitely be back later.”

“I look forward to it.”

And you were. Genuinely. All three of the men you had met so far were ones you were hoping to see in the near future. If nothing else, they were useful to pass the time behind the bar.

He pushed back from the counter, the stool dragging along the wooden floorboards until he was able to slip out again. You had gotten used to tilting your head down to talk to him, so you hoped your glance up and down wasn’t taken in the wrong way. He brought one hand up in a wave as he turned to head towards the front door.

“Hold on.”

While he’d missed the human behavior plank by half a step, he wasn’t getting out of the rest of his bill.

“First of all, you need to pay—”

Your words were cut off before you could finish as he rushed to get his wallet from his pocket. “Oh, shoot, yeah, sorry ‘bout that.”

Understandable from his lack of experience out and about, and you would have liked to give him a drink on the house to celebrate his first bar experience, but you had these terrible things called taxes and your alcohols didn’t pay for themselves.

Well, technically…

A pile of crumpled up notes appeared on the counter before he went, again, to waltz out, and you, again, started to speak, and he, again, spun in a circle, like a penny on its side.

“And second of all,” you spoke, eliciting a hum from him, “what’s your name?”

It was a habit of yours to forget to ask people’s names, and you wanted a level playing field if this man was going to call you Dionysus while you could only latch onto ‘that greaser from the 1950s’.

But his laugh was just as shocked that he forgot to introduce himself.

He acquiesced with his arm leaning against the counter, oddly soft in his introduction compared to his prior words, “Yancy.”

“Have a good afternoon, Yancy.”

This time, he was able to make it more than a step forward towards the door, but he didn’t forget to call over his shoulder his own, “You too, Dion!”

A warmth spread in your chest with the click he left behind. Relaxation, amusement, a little bit of pride remaining from being a topic of conversation that you weren’t going to actively dissuade. Even though the nickname of a nickname was slightly cheap, you didn’t mind it. You didn’t mind it at all.

You ended up wiping down the counter again – with all the other patrons nestled in their booths or at their tables, you had space and time to yourself, which you used to come up with your own little theories as to why your most recent odd-ball customers have looked eerily similar.

But, hey, it was all probably just a coincidence, right?

Chapter Text

The only time you ever went out of the bar, it seemed, was to go grocery shopping. Technically, yes, your apartment was a separate floor, but you were still in the same building. That was the main reason you chose that place; it was cheaper to live above the bar than to rent somewhere you’d hardly ever be. You assumed that the rate was down because nobody wanted to be kept awake at two in the morning by drunken chatter and spouts of incidental karaoke, but that wasn’t a problem for you. Instead, you had the problem of practical isolation.

You didn’t notice that there was an event going on in the town until you had your weekly visit to the local supermarket, outside which you saw posters that advertised some kind of guild. You scoffed when you read through them. A guild? What was this, dungeons and dragons? As long as they weren’t thieves, you didn’t care, but it didn’t look like that. Maybe it was a kids’ club, one of the ones used for parents to ship their adorable little parasites off to while they drank their sorrows away.

On second thought, you liked the idea of a guild. Business was business, after all. But you also had shopping to do, you couldn’t spend the day fantasizing about income. With your list in hand, you walked away from the streetlamp and through the sliding doors.

It didn’t take long to find all the things you needed. Most of it was the same food that you got every week for your home fridge, a third of it was refills for the bar for the more common things – wine was something you ordered separately – and the rest of it was the necessities that you were getting low on. All in all, not a drag. You were in and out within half an hour.

It was the journey back to the bar that took longer than normal. The supermarket was only so far away, and yet the traffic was awful. You were stuck at a red light for a solid ten minutes, slowly and painfully edging closer to the centre. It was hardly ever this busy, especially when it was getting closer to noon, and everyone was supposed to either be in schools or their jobs. It was more befitting rush hour, a fact that you groaned at as you imagined what it would really be like. Hopefully, you wouldn’t be out again after you were back safely stocking the shelves.

If you could get back, that was. Your first choice of parking lot was completely full, and the second had you going in circles until you spotted a space only recently vacated. That goddamn guild. You had no idea why it was so popular, or, better yet, what it was about. Unless there were a lot of parents who hated their children, your second assumption was wrong.

As you slammed your car door shut, you were greeted by the sight of another poster. It made you think it was haunting you. A dramatic thought, sure, but you were annoyed, and you were going to express your annoyance with theatrical ideas. It did let you see what it was for, though, so you shouldn’t have complained about it too much. Still, when did that ever stop you?

It was an adventurer’s guild. Scrawled on the top half of the poster was that title, like someone was being crushed under a boulder as they wrote it, alongside a date, time and location. Low and behold, it started just as you’d gotten back into your car and was held a block away from that supermarket. Apparently, adventurers weren’t known for their punctuality. How lucky you were to catch the rush at just the wrong time. You brushed the thought away when you spent your begrudging thoughts; you could only hope to also catch the rush as people left the meeting, and that needed you to be standing behind your bar when the dam broke.

You made sure to lock your car before you started the walk back. It wasn’t far, but it was further than your first choice of parking lot, hence the oh-so-amazing title you gave it. This one was also a tad more dangerous, given that there were no lights for when it got darker, but you weren’t going to fight apparent experienced adventurers for a space.

The keys swung in your hand, jingling in rhythm with the tap of your boots against the concrete sidewalk. It was a pleasant day so far. In fact, it was a pleasant week. After you’d met Yancy, there were three figures you were looking forward to seeing, if only because they were the most interesting of your patrons. That brought with it the confusion, though, of why they all looked surprisingly similar. You never mentioned it – you tried to convince yourself that you didn’t care, late in your bed at night when your mind was the wildest it would be – but the question was always in the back of your throat, regardless of who you were talking to. Wilford normally distracted you with other inane conversation topics, while Dark barely spoke to you at all besides his orders and a few goodbyes. Yancy was the one you had the most normal interactions with, but they were all weird in their own ways, and you got your fair share of it with how often they popped up. Wil was at the top with three times, without a pattern and Dark tagging along, or more likely dragged along, once, and Yancy the day before.

Besides them, however, the Astral was getting more business as of late, and it was far from the trouble you’d had before. You liked to think you were getting a reputation, and that prospect pushed your walk into a strut as you got closer to the bar’s doors.

The click of the lock welcomed you home. Time to get to work.

And get to work you did. When it finally came time for you to switch on the signs at noon, everything was restocked and prepped. All the garnishes organized, all the glasses in type order, all the bottles laid out by how likely you were to serve them. You stashed the old shopping bags in the backroom for you to sort out later and then promptly ignored the future work by waiting intently for any patrons who decided they would want an early drink.

There weren’t many of them who came through the doors when the sun was still high in the sky. Some of the local townsfolk came in before shifts later in the day, if only because you were the only casual establishment that didn’t require an order of food to sit in. You had been surprised to find out that you were the only bar in a five-mile radius. There were clubs dotted around, and a good number of restaurants, but you were a rare place. People weren’t flocking from the other side of a city, but the nearby residents liked to use you, if the gossip of some regulars was anything to go by.

That was partially why you weren’t set on that guild being a big break for you. Anybody coming from out of town was more likely to go to a well-known name, recommended by a family friend or something, than a two-month-old bar. And anyway, the classical music didn’t sound like it fit with rough and tumble explorers, so there was no chance they would stay if they decided to take a risk.

Or that was what you assumed.

And, as much as you didn’t like being wrong, you were pleasantly surprised that you were, when you watched a stream of people waltz through the doors in front of you.

Creak – creak – creak. Three out of the ten got caught. You almost laughed to yourself; they couldn’t have been good adventurers, then, if they got caught out by a plank of wood. But you weren’t likely to need saving from a ravine, so you thought it more positive that you would get more money out of it. Shallow, but why not look on the bright side?

In the bustle of new people, you didn’t bother doing your visual inventory of patrons. None of them were dressed up, anyway, one of them verging on shirtless with the way their vest hung off their body. You had no need to worry, and you expended what effort it would have taken up to hurry with their drink orders. The majority of them were simple. Life on the road never offered the chance to find a custom that suited them. Based on the traffic, hardly any of them lived in urban areas, regardless.

All in all, it was a surprising amount of whiskey, and you were opening a new bottle by the time everyone was gone. You took it from the wall behind you, letting another slide forward into its place, and then pulled off the top. If no one else was going to drink it by the end of the night, you weren’t above sampling your own storage.

Someone cleared their throat at the bar behind you before you heard the telltale clang of a stool against the floorboards.

As you turned around, you spoke with a bright enough tone for three in the afternoon on a Sunday, “What can I get you, sir?”

It was one of those adventurers, to be sure. Bag slung over shoulder, shirt darkened with dirt or dust, rolled up sleeves to showcase a myriad of cuts and scrapes. That wasn’t what caught your attention, though – and it wasn’t the cocky smile or the stubble, either, but it was closer. Had he kept his hat, the one that was laid out on the counter in front of him, on his head, you wouldn’t have seen that he looked strikingly similar to the last three men who had sat at your bar. Only one or two people who didn’t share those eyes and jawline came this close to you, as if they also shared a lack of survival instincts.

However, you had yet to see a smirk like the one he sported on a face like that.

“Well,” he sighed, leaning close on one of his elbows, “I think I know what’s on the menu today.”

You raised an eyebrow, one of your hands still gripping the neck of the whiskey.

“Me ‘n you.”

Oh.

God.

No.

You could deal with the flirts, the ones who thought they were slick enough to get by with a wink and a smile and a line, so they wouldn’t have to pay their bill. You could deal with the smooth talkers and the pick-up artists. You could deal with the creeps. But puns?

While your mind shuffled through your bills to find out whether you could afford to chuck him and the rest of the adventuring guild out on their asses, you blinked.

“Sir?” Your tone was as blunt as you could make it.

He didn’t look much deterred, if a little disappointed by the failure of a line that obviously had such a high success rate. “Too much, too soon?”

“Much too soon,” you responded.

“But not too much?” And there was that bravado. In any other of your stints as a bartender in your past, people trying to use lines on you would come in with a confidence to rival Don Quixote, and, when they would inevitably fall flat, they would back down some. But, because you were still working, you would have to talk to them, at which point they’d regain their spark like an epi-pen was jammed into their thigh. This guy was not different.

You continued with your job much the same. “What can I get for you?”

“An Irish coffee, if you don’t mind.”

You were almost proud of him for giving a genuine answer, but that was the baseline, so you rewarded him by fulfilling his request at a leisurely pace. A downside to being the only bartender and the owner of the bar itself – apart from the constant fatigue – was that everything you did reflected back on your business. You couldn’t look at a patron wrong, or you’d face public repercussions instead of the normal pay docking. You wouldn’t get any money because there would be no money, as simple as that. But if you weren’t outright rude, you could get away with it, so taking a few minutes longer than normal was going to have to suffice as oh-so-creative revenge.

He was lucky you had a container of Bailey’s and heavy cream that you’d combined the night before. An Irish coffee was a pain when it was only for one person, and you had barely begrudgingly agreed to serve it to the someone who ordered it. They tried to exchange a wink and a smile, but you weren’t so easily persuaded. The extra ten dollar ‘late-hours tax’ they pushed towards you, however…

Whatever the bribe, it let this adventurer get his drink with relative ease.

It also let you hear another line from him as you slid the mug into his hand along the bar. “We should go out for real coffee sometime.” The build-up. “Because I like you a latté.” And the punchline.

More puns. Great. Was that supposed to be a thank-you?

You didn’t get over to the other patron that stood at the counter before he threw you a wink. It was a welcome reprieve to serve someone else, but you returned just as quick as you left. In that short amount of time, you were able to weigh your patience against your bank account, while the adventurer drained half of his drink already. You wouldn’t have been surprised if he had thrown it back like a shot despite the cream on top.

“I’d say I recognize you, but I think I’ve only seen you in my dreams.”

It was best to ignore him. He bought a drink, so you were already going to get the minimum profit out of this. You didn’t need to interact with him anymore. The deal was done.

“Are you a time traveler? Because I see you in my future.”

Damn it.

You laughed.

The idea of completely shutting him out was still fresh in your mind when you automatically let loose a few chuckles. You cut yourself off after you registered it, snapping your mouth shut hard enough that your teeth ached, but the damage had been done. It wasn’t even a good line, that was the worst part of it. This was a profound betrayal from your own body, which was exasperated by the smug grin that overtook the man’s face. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all, because if there was one thing you would go through hell and back for, it was spite.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” You might have relished in the panic that replaced that smirk – worrying if he had taken it too far, opening his mouth to cover his tracks – but you were quick to finish your line, “You’re making everyone else in here look bad.”

Immediately, he was ecstatic. The remainder of his drink was gone within the next few seconds, and he barely gave himself time to wipe away the excess cream before he was blurting out a reply. “What’s your favorite drink? I’m asking so I know what to buy you on our first date.”

“I thought I’d just bought a bar, but it might actually be a museum, because you’re a work of art.”

“Oh, you came here recently? I actually need a real estate agent. I’m trying to make a move here.”

“I don’t know your name, but I’m sure it’s just as gorgeous as you are.”

“Are you from Tennessee? Because you’re the only ten I see.”

“Is your name Google? Because you’re everything I’ve been searching for.”

You would readily admit that harping on the name idea was cheap, but it got a laugh out of him like he’d been punched in the gut, so you took it as a win. Now, you were even, but you didn’t want to be even; you wanted to beat him. In your mind, you had been challenged, and you weren’t going to give up that easily just because someone called it a draw.

Though, it was his turn, so you waited for him to fake a checking of his phone and say, “Y’know, I have a couple roommates back home. They want to know if you think I’m handsome.”

“Do you have a sunburn, or are you always this hot?”

Hell yeah! Two in the space of twenty seconds. You would have pumped your fist if you weren’t in public and trying to win over the definition of the phrase cocky bastard. Instead, you crossed your arms on the counter as he leaned back, deliberately showcasing the sunburn that dipped below his neckline to his shoulder. Inwardly, you grimaced. Outwardly, your smile widened. You really were the best, weren’t you?

His mouth opened and closed and opened and closed, mimicking a dying fish in a truly unflattering way, until he sighed and dropped his shoulders. “Damn,” he muttered, “I was just trying to get a drink, but you’re very distracting.”

An imaginary bell rang out in the bar. You won, and you were proud. You could die happy – well, that was slightly too far, but it really did feel good to bite back against flirting patrons. Plus, it passed the time, and, with most of those adventurers starting to push their drinks to the centre of the table and fish out their wallets, it was excellent timing.

“What’s your name?” you asked, waiting for some of the people to come to the bar. The man himself showed no sign of leaving anytime soon.

The answer came just as someone pushed outward from their table. “Illinois,” he answered, surprisingly tamely given the challenge with that first pick-up line.

“Not Tennessee?” The chuckle you baited out of him was deeper than the others, gravellier and befitting of a tall, dark and handsome adventurer. Shame he wasn’t all that tall, dark or… well.

Illinois shrugged at you as you went to get your money from the customers who gathered at the counter. It was a good payout for a group who didn’t bother anyone, and you were sure the others would follow suit. You felt the distant satisfaction, coupled with a good dose of pride, that you would normally get at the end of a Saturday night.

“Well, Illinois,” you addressed him, turning the name around in your mouth with his figure in the corner of your eye.

“I like how that sounds.”

You lost him when you then rolled that eye, but it was when you cleared the patrons and saw them leave through the door that you really looked at him. Distracted as you were earlier by the battle, you didn’t think too much into the whole look-a-like situation, but you were in the calm period, now. You could afford to squint at him, as though giving yourself horse blinders would help you understand the magic better.

“You said you have roommates?” You didn’t bet on it not being for the sake of the pick-up line. You had to confirm your theory before you got too suspicious.

“Yeah, I got a whole bunch. Big house, y’know.”

You were getting closer. “And they don’t happen to look a bit like you, do they?”

“Yeah?” Illinois was the one to sound distrustful. With a strange level of severity, he matched the distance you had made earlier, risking being able to look over the counter altogether. “Where’re you going with this, babe?”

You didn’t have time to point out that pet-name when you were on the cusp of an idea. “Wilford, Dark, and Yancy?” you guessed.

His suspicion deepened, added by surprise. His lips pursed and his eyebrows furrowed. Your skin burned with his inspection, but you did the same back. There was no way it was all a coincidence. Two, maybe, three, that was pushing it, but four?

After ten seconds of air thickened with tension, Illinois dropped everything, like hitting the power button on a computer.

“I get it,” he said, that easy-going tone returned to its rightful place. “Interview, bar fight, therapy, right?”

You would have sold your business to know what was being said about you, but you settled for that vague description of the recent events. “I suppose so.”

“And here I thought I was the first to get to you—” He slapped his hat to make a dull thud, “—I should’a known Wilford would scout out all the bars in a ten-mile radius before I could.”

He sounded so regretful that you almost laughed at his distinct misery.

“They tend to call me Dionysus.” And by they, you meant Wilford. You hadn’t exactly given him an alternative, so that was partially on you. Still, you were drawn back to that nickname of a nickname Yancy gave you, and the way Dark never referred to you as anything besides ‘bartender’, on the odd occasion he would refer to you at all. It was slow, but it was progress from that first day. Maybe next time, you could try out a ‘good afternoon’.

You waved that lofty dream away to pay attention to Illinois humming, turning his head, and then saying, “Nah, I’ll stick with babe, if I’m not calling you by your real name?”

“Nice try.”

“But what’ll I be whispering in your ear when we get down to business?”

You unintentionally grimaced, not that you would have stopped yourself either way. “Now that’s too much,” you berated him, swiping the empty glass from in front of him that you had forgotten to take before.

To his credit, Illinois put his hands up in a placating gesture. “I’ll build up to it, then.”

You spun around to put the cup in the sink, shooting over your shoulder, “Try not to push your luck with the only bartender here.”

“Alright, alright. I’m picking up what you’re putting down.” Speaking of, he grabbed his hat and placed it on his head in one, swift movement. It was almost graceful. It had you wondering how he looked when he was exploring caves, or temples, or whatever it was that adventurers did these days. “Y’know, when I first came in, I wasn’t sure if this was my type of thing, but maybe I’ll be back sooner than I thought.”

A ten dollar note fluttered to the counter, dropped carelessly without a second glance. Given that it was nearly twice his total, you were hesitant to take it. A dollar or two was fine, but 100% seemed steep, especially when he was a new patron, who could very easily be influenced by your actions.

However, at his nod, you pulled it from the surface.

“Just make sure to get some new material next time, okay, Illinois?”

“I’d never reuse lines,” he declared before he took a few steps from the bar. You barely noticed when he stopped, too intrigued and too confused by the two belts he sported. A sharp intake of breath from him was what called you to attention again.

“Oh, and you don’t have to worry about me breaking your heart—” A wink tossed with even less care than the money, “—I’ll just steal it.”

If someone were to ask you after the fact, you would never have admitted to floundering at the final hurdle. Of course, in reality, you did. Your mouth gaped and your pupils shot around the milky white like a bee in a meadow, but you wouldn’t dare tell someone of that weakness.

You only just managed to collect yourself enough to mutter a dismayed, “Touché.”

You had half a mind to drag him back into his stool to break the tie, but Illinois was swaggering out of the doors before you came to a decision.

That man – adventurer, Casanova, bastard, just some guy, whatever you wanted to call him – was of interest to you, like the rest of his roommates were. The only difference between him and them was that Illinois had made a grave mistake. A long time ago, you had vowed to be so stubborn that you would stay on the Titanic if someone told you there was an infinitesimal chance you’d survive it. Maybe you had something to prove, maybe you were just a brat back then, but you carried that promise on your shoulders with pride.

And Illinois?

He had just waged war.

Chapter Text

The last week had been weird.

Since meeting Illinois, the bar had been strangely active. That wasn’t to say it had never been busy before – in fact, it was picking up the kind of reputation that you wanted. Some classy establishment that you could go to for a calm and pleasant drink, where the music was slow and the service was quick. Except now, you were thinking it was working a little too well.

There seemed to be the same crowd, day in and day out. You liked having regulars, but this was excessive. Unless you were going crazy. Maybe you were simply losing it. The pressure had gotten to you, and you were stuck hallucinating the same people over and over again, saying the same things and ordering the same drinks and arriving and leaving at the same time, and…

And taking a deep breath sounded like a good plan. So, gently, you inhaled, exhaled, and listened to the Vera Lynn record that plays from the jukebox.

‘We’ll meet again’.

This job was stressful when everything rested solely on your shoulders, but you didn’t know how much it would help to get more hands on deck. Was it selfish that you wanted to keep the Astral to yourself? It was your prized, well, everything. The thought of someone else being behind the bar left a sour taste in your mouth.

However, the most likely reason as to your bout of delirium was the stress. You just had to remind yourself that everything was completely normal, and there was nothing at all to worry about. That mantra got you through the Friday night, when there should have been an influx of people, but that was fine. Unexpected, but fine. Obviously, it was just an off day. Tomorrow would be busy; you knew that for sure.

So why did the little voice in the back of your mind whisper that it wouldn’t be?

You used shutting up shop as a way to ignore your doubts. You wiped down the tables that no longer had people at them, restocked the straws and the small container of umbrellas, and you managed to clean a good majority of the glasses that were left in the sink – but none of this helped you when you were doing the exact same things that you had been doing for the last week. The same splatters of vodka melding with the varnish, the same amount of missing stock, the same chip in the third highball that you had to throw away. It clattered in the trash can, which you swore you had emptied the night before.

‘Don’t know where’.

You could feel your breath quickening once more.

‘Don’t know when’.

You didn’t know what to do. Ideas were rushing through your mind, too quick to catch, too slow to ignore. What were you supposed to do? Was this really happening? How could it be happening? What were you supposed to do? Nobody told you what to do when everything was repeating, and there wasn’t a guidebook or etiquette or emergency protocol. Vision blurring, you felt like you were going to keel over. Deep breaths. You tried to remind yourself of that mantra again, but it was no use. You were stuck. Panicking. Flailing. Drowning.

And then it all cleared when the door burst open.

Good, that was what you needed. A distraction. Doing your job seemed like as good as any.

You snapped to your senses, like a soldier called to attention, by that eye-catching entrance of a new figure. The sight of your face appeared in the counter’s reflection, but it looked no different that it normally did. Although you knew on the inside that you had been on the brink of falling off a cliff, your exterior showed no such worries. Just a normal bartender in a normal bar.

‘But I know we’ll meet again’.

Before you could round the counter, however, a thought occurred to you; it was nearing 2 o’clock, the time you would usually kick everyone out. The sleepers, the drunks, and, once or twice, Wilford. Letting another patron in now would mean half an hour, probably more, before you could get them out again. You wouldn’t be paying anyone an overtime wage, but the weight of your mini freakout wasn’t getting any lighter on your shoulders. If the person had a group with them, you would have been more inclined to let them stay, but it wasn’t as though they were bound to order a lot of drinks, chug them, and then bounce. All of the evidence pointed to kicking them, and the two other people in a corner booth, out. Plain and simple.

But – and you thought this with the kindest sentiment you could muster – they looked an utter wreck, and you didn’t trust yourself not to immediately call them back inside if you did give them the boot.

That left the logical part of your brain glaring daggers into the emotional side as you went to take their order at their booth.

“Good morning, sir.”

‘Some sunny day’.

Although, it seemed your internal battle was unnecessary. He’d buried his head in his arms, leaned against the table and dead to the world around him, and he stayed that way while you spoke. Considering the manner in which he had arrived, specifically shoving your door open so violently that you wondered if there were splinters, the thought that he was genuinely dead did cross your mind.

You decided to shake his shoulder.

“What’s the problem!?”

You immediately retracted your hand and stepped back, breath catching in your throat. You weren’t expecting such a volatile reaction. His eyes were just as wide as yours, but you were stuck staring at him while his pupils shot across the whites like they were being chased by the red edges. He looked worse up close. Before, you had thought he was just some poor night shift worker who had been running off fumes for the last day. Now that you were eye to eye, though? You didn’t think he even had fumes, just a few weak puffs of smoke out of a dying furnace.

You put on a brave face to say, “You need to order something, or you’ll have to leave. We stop serving in ten minutes.”

It was then that he realized himself. There was a sudden sense of self sparking where there had been a manic derangement. He looked to the left, then to the right, and then settled back in his chair.

‘Keep smiling through’.

“I’m so- I’m sorry, I’ve been… ugh, it’s been a hard day.” Had you not been wary of getting your hand snapped off, you would have patted him on the back; the calm he developed was quickly exchanged for a disconcerting laugh. “Can you call it a day if it feels like it’s been a week? If- if it doesn’t just feel like it, it actually has been?”

This was a mistake. In your own insanity, you had accidentally welcomed another insane person into your bar. You should have just taken the easy out and went to sleep, but the one time you tried to be generous, it backfired on you.

He was still talking, but it had progressed into mutterings that were directed at no one in particular. “You know, it’s hard to keep track of stuff like that,” he addressed the varnish of the table, “because the clocks go back, too, so has it been a day, or has it been less or- or more?”

You were about to step away when his gaze shot back to yours, but that wasn’t the worst part – it was the grin stretched from ear to ear. It wavered as he spoke, a string pulled tight enough for the smallest strands to start separating, threatening to snap, pulling and pulling. “When do you think it’ll reset, huh?”

‘Just like you always do’.

“I’m not sure I follow,” you responded. The shake was out of your voice but the wariness was not.

“No, no, you wouldn’t.” He waved a hand through the air, mimicking a casual chat about the weather. “But if you had to guess.”

Okay, now was the time to think. This man, who seemed to be on the brink of madness or had already fallen off, was asking you when time would reset. That was easy to accept because he was sitting in front of you, his words fresh in your mind. The harder part came with accepting that you knew what to answer with. All the repeating patrons, drinks, that damn Vera Lynn music playing in the background. You could have told him that you didn’t know what he was talking about, but you would have been lying. At this point, was there a reason to not give him the truth?

“Well, sir,” you started after clearing your throat, “it’s been fairly the same in recent days. I’d only be aware of it if it happened after twelve hours or so.”

He didn’t react how you imagined he would. He didn’t startle or flourish or show a hint of interest. Instead, he chuckled. A scoff, as if he were entertaining a child’s imagination.

“Oh, yeah, what’s the same then?”

“The orders, the arguments—” You waved a hand in the air, “—this song has been playing non-stop today.”

‘’Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds’.

The collective voice of the soldiers cut through like an axe striking a board. It similarly cut through his expression of manic nonchalance and gave way to a very specific expression. Hesitance, amusement, hope. He wanted to believe you, but something was holding him back.

“You noticed that?” he asked, his tone of voice soft and his eyes holding a sense of the present that he lacked before.

“Should I not have?”

“No, no, I just—” He cut himself off with a crash as he slammed his fist into the table, “—wait, no! No, you shouldn’t have. Why do you remember?” That fist started to clench. “Who are you?” And he lost the awareness again. “Do you remember anything more dangerous, in the realm of life-threatening?”

This was getting ridiculous. You felt the hairs raise on your skin and a chill drip down your spin, but you tried your hardest to ignore them. You pushed the dread to the side in favor of saving face.

“Not particularly, no,” you answered. It didn’t seem to help him, though; he was glaring around the bar, as if he were looking for some kind of spy, but your assurance that there was none was sure to do him no good. A simpler offer, then.

“Do you want a glass of water?”

“No, I need to figure this out.”

You were unceremoniously yanked into the seat next to them, and your heartrate immediately sped up to unsafe levels. Your clothes under his hands scrunched together so much that the rest was completely flat up to where he had his grip fixed into a deadbolt. He seemed to pay no mind to the position he had put you in, but the other couple still in the corner of the bar spared you a curious look before returning to their conversation. Helpful.

“When you say that the orders and arguments have been the same, what exactly do you mean?”

‘Far away’.

Gently, you pulled his wrists back into his own lap. You were going to have no one grabbing you without asking – even if they were obviously going through the wringer – and that gently was the most leeway you were willing to give him.

He stayed completely silent as you removed his hands, but his eyebrows furrowed and a noise of confusion came from deep in his throat. He must not have noticed.

“They’re not perfectly the same,” you admitted, “but each of the patrons have been appearing here at the same time for the last three days. They get the same base drink with a small change. Lemon or lime, with or without ice, dirty or neat, whatever it is, it’s only slightly different. Then they drink, have the same topic of conversation and then leave at the same time.”

“While Vera Lynn plays in the background?”

“That’s only started this morning, except it’s one of the only jazz records I own.”

So far, you had seen a range of expressions from this stranger. In the last ten minutes, he had sported fatigue, amusement, desperation, and a constant wash of mild insanity. The only thing that had gotten you truly worried for your safety was being pulled close to him. Now? You were paralyzed by an emotion that glinted in his eyes.

Absolute enthusiasm.

‘So will you, please, say hello’.

His growing smile gave it away further, if his words didn’t. “And you remember all of this?”

“Would I be telling you if I didn’t?”

“This is great!” He punched into the air comically. “Well, not great for you, the whole looping thing, it could end horribly. But it’s great that you remember.”

While you were happy for his little revelation, you remembered something else. You still had those other two people to take care of, and it seemed from their glances towards the bar that they were getting ready to pay and leave.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve realized what’s going on, but I need to—”

“Wait, wait, I’m sorry, I just need you for a little longer.” To his credit, he kept his hands right where they were, despite him leaning forward like he was going to grab you again. As a thanks, you nodded for him to continue, though you kept one eye on the other patrons.

His smile lessened in extremity, but it was still genuine. “I mean, I don’t understand,” he continued, “why here, why you? It is looping so you’re not unaffected, but you remember.”

You yourself were stuck on that, too. You weren’t anything special, no matter how many people had tried to butter you up by saying that you were. Maybe it was just luck? A right-place, right-time deal, wherein you had nothing to do with the chance that you remembered. It was very much in the cards that it was a fluke.

But then you thought about the last few weeks as a whole. That was all random, just the same as this thing was. Meeting Illinois, Yancy, Dark, and… well, you supposed that, really, Wilford was the only one to actually be random. His choosing of your bar was a stroke of luck that led to the others finding you. And, to put it simply, Wilford was weird. Not shy, awkward kid in the back of the class weird – genuine weird. He talked about the laws of space and time like they were nothing but suggestions, he acted like he was straight out of the 1980s, and, half the time, he was sitting at the bar before he had heard the door open.

‘To the folks that I know?’.

You took in a deep breath and then tentatively asked, “This doesn’t have anything to do with Wilford, does it?”

Your suspicions were confirmed when he responded with a, “Wilford?” that showed both confusion and familiarity.

You held back a groan as he twisted his head like an owl to look around the bar. This time, he wasn’t trying to sparce the face of a secret detective from the wallpaper, he was actually looking.

“The Astral?” he asked when he turned back to you.

‘Tell them I won’t be long’.

At this point, you had half a mind to put out a neon sign in the middle of the room, add some arrows pointing at it and a little trail of petals so that people would actually realise where they were – and what did that say of their survival instincts. Apparently, it was a trait of those who all looked like the same guy to not where they’re walking. You were certain that some of them were dead at this point. Most likely Illinois.

Instead of indulging in that depressing thought, you sighed, “Do none of you read signs before you walk through a door?”

“In my defense, I was really out of it – but that does explain it.”

“How so?”

He pursed his lips and started tapping at the table. “Wilford’s always been—” He made an odd hand gesture, “—…odd. He isn’t affected by the loops. Dark isn’t either, you’ve met him, right?”

“Yancy and Illinois, too.”

‘They’re much better.” Nodding to himself, he sat back into the leather of the booth. Now that he had apparently solved the dilemma he was going through, he was much more relaxed. Not more energized – of course not, he looked like he’d been dragged through hell backwards – but he wasn’t on the edge of plummeting into complete madness, and you took that as a win.

After looking him over, you replied, “You’re not so bad yourself, even if you’re a bit stressed.”

‘They’ll be happy to know’.

And there came a more normal smile. More appealing, you thought, than the ones from before. Less unnerving, too. This suited your first assumption, the one of him being an overtired night-shift worker.

With a huff, he wiped his eyes and then extended one of his hands towards you. The minimal gap between you made it difficult, but leaning back let you shake it.

“I’m the Engineer,” he introduced himself, with a sense of formality you would have never expected, “people have been calling me Engie – you’re free to, as well, if you want.”

Weird name, but at this point, was it anything out of the ordinary?

‘That as you saw me go’.

You shook his hand once, twice, and then let go. It was practiced to the point of a formula, but you had no problem following the pattern. You’d done it so many times before, regardless of who initiated it. This was the first time it was done sitting down in a bar that you owned, though, so you gave it a little more weight.

When Engie let go, he chuckled quietly. “I might take you up on that water.”

You nodded in return and were finally able to slide out from the booth. You spent such little time sitting down normally that your legs felt stiff when you stood up. Stretching would have been unprofessional, especially as the other couple’s faces lit up at the sight of you. You answered their wave with another nod and quickly went to fetch their bill first.

A couple minutes passed, where they paid, left a tip, and left.

And then there were two.

Technically, you should have closed half an hour ago, but a water still cost money and you didn’t particularly want to force Engie out on the street. You still believed him – well, two-thirds of you did. The other part thought he was insane, and you were insane and this whole situation was insane, but you returned to your patron with the glass of water.

‘I was singing this song’.

“Thank you,” he said, handing you a dollar note. You didn’t remember if he stepped on the plank, but you weren’t going to risk asking if he did. “I appreciate it.”

“It’s my job.”

You were about to twist on your heel and get back behind the bar to finish clearing up, but you were stopped by his voice, tone growing embarrassed. He looked just as red as he sounded.

“I wasn’t talking about the drink, I mean… most people would have kicked me out already. I- just, thank you.”

The flustered smile was charming, you’d give him that, but a thought occurred to you before you could comment on it.

“Do you want to do me a favor? Just so we’re even.”

His eyes widened but he jumped on the opportunity all the same. “Of course, what do you need?”

Out of your dress shirt’s pocket, you retrieved a smoothened five-dollar bill and placed it on the table. Engie was understandably confused, so you explained, “Wilford keeps walking out before I can give it to him. If he’s not going to step on the plank, he’s not going to pay extra.”

With the hesitance of a man who did not know what the plank was, he took it and replied, “I’ll pass it along to him.”

“Thank you.” But now that the deal was done, you had something else to address. “Are you feeling better?”

He laughed to himself again and the blush didn’t recede. If anything, it got stronger the more he thought about his arrival. “Yeah, I guess I made a fool of myself there, huh?”

Both of you knew you were lying as you said, “Not at all.” Still, you added on, “You’re better than a lot of people I’ve had in here.” That part wasn’t as untrue as the former, if only because the faint outline of that bruise on your jaw still greeted you every morning in the mirror. Whatever ‘looping’ situation this had been hadn’t done it any good.

That reminded you of the time. Hopefully you would actually wake up the next day after the night you’d had.

“But it is getting late,” you prompted. Telling someone to bluntly get out wasn’t good for business, and Engie was nice.

Luckily, he got the hint. “Oh- oh, yeah, I get it. I’ll just…” He pushed away from the leather and stumbled out of the booth. “Thanks for the water, and I’ll see you later?”

It was awkward watching him try to recover from his fumbling, so you filled the silence with, “Don’t get hit by a car on your way out, or anything else in the realm of life-threatening.”

You were treated to a final, louder laugh as he walked towards the front door. You followed to lock the door when he was out, but he turned around to call, “See ya!” before he let it fall shut behind him.

‘We’ll meet again’.

You were left alone in the Astral, at 3:17 in the morning, having met another of that strange group who all had different aesthetics but looked completely the same.

‘Don’t know where, don’t know when’.

It was annoying not knowing what was going on.

‘But I know we’ll meet again’.

It wasn’t scary, wasn’t concerning, you were just plain aggravated because you were getting closer and closer to this, regardless of whether you wanted to be or not. However, you knew one thing for certain; if you were going to get wrapped up in all of this, then you were going to get some answers.

‘Some sunny day’.

And you knew just where to get them from.

Chapter Text

It felt like Wilford was intentionally staying away. You didn’t know how he found it out, but he had been vacant from a stool at your bar for long enough that it couldn’t have been a coincidence. He was somehow aware of the revelation you’d had – or, at least, he was aware of your want to talk to him – and the subject was bad enough that it stopped him from showing up altogether.

That was your theory, anyway; the last month hadn’t been normal enough for you to consider yourself fully stable, and there was a high likelihood that Wilford was just plain busy. Your paranoia was seriously causing you some issues in other parts of your life, so why wouldn’t it go all out and take over the business side too?

On the other hand, your general experience with the man told you otherwise. He had never mentioned a job, let alone anything about his life that wasn’t disguised under layers of smoke and shadows, and he was sat in front of you enough that you hoped he didn’t have to work in the morning.

You were surprised that the whole looping scenario didn’t have consequences, anyway; in your opinion, you handled the aftermath of it quickly and efficiently, and, also in your opinion, that wasn’t good. Something utterly insane like the day going in circles seven times over wasn’t supposed to be processed that easily. The human brain wasn’t built to comprehend things that messed with time and space, but yours decided that the best course of action was to make a bowl of pasta and then fall asleep for ten hours until your alarm told you to open up the bar again. You supposed bouncing from shift to shift wasn’t doing you any favors, but it wasn’t affecting your ability to complete orders. How, you had no clue. To your knowledge, your skills should have plummeted, but they stayed in tip-top shape, as proven by the dozens of people you were presently serving in quick succession. It wasn’t that you hadn’t been given the time, either, because there were definitely the slow hours that had you standing behind the bar like a mannequin in a showroom.

All in all, you were more confused by your lack of appropriate reaction than confused by the actual events in the first place. The only true problem laid in your lack of answers, which prompted you to devote every second that you weren’t actively interacting with patrons to scouring the area for the pop of pink you had become so accustomed to. Time ticked by, every second another square inch searched, until you looped the crimson walls and started back at the front doors.

It was a tedious endeavor, that was for sure, but there was nothing else you could do with your time, and you needed something to distract you from the growing numbness of your legs. A large influx of customers had passed you through, a tidal wave that battered the cliff face once and then ducked back into the ocean, around half an hour before. All of their drinks had been served, so you were simply waiting for calls for a refill or bill.

You didn’t tend to make conversation with the people sitting at the main bar – you only spoke to Wilford on that first night because you were young, dumb and broke. It had only been a month ago, of course, and two of those were still correct, but it was the dramatic thought that counted. Regardless of your current state, it was no less true that the only reason you took the leap with anyone else was because of that random choice to make conversation. In the more recent times, you strayed from building relationships with your patrons, the only olive branches you gave being the odd question about work to your night-shift regulars. You didn’t think you were on first-name basis with anyone who didn’t have suspiciously similar faces.

Your eyebrows furrowed and you leaned forward against the bar subconsciously as you desperately tried to remember that line. No matter how unprofessional it was, you couldn’t help but worry your cheek between your teeth. Catching the muscle on the pointier bits hurt slightly but were too focused to actively stop yourself. The shadows of the bar seemed to engulf the edges of your vision, and the music faded out, the end of a movie’s credits that trailed into nothingness. It was absolutely killing you that the common phrase wasn’t coming to mind.

But then you made eye contact with the man who had walked through the door, and it appeared in your mind like headlights in fog.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Because, with barely a glance needed to find an empty table in relative solitude, a very familiar face made you grind your teeth.

Was one normal day too much to ask for? Just one, just 24 hours of serving drinks, taking cards, and cleaning tables, that was it. The smallest indication that you were more than a higher power’s plaything.

Such a thing didn’t come, and so, instead, you began to inspect your new patron. The face was the same, obviously, but his hair was slicked back in a fashion that reminded you more of a yellowing family photograph than an actual living person. Paired with the small sketching of a mustache above his lip, you weren’t entirely sure he wasn’t from an album in your childhood home’s attic.

You might have made more mental comparisons had you not been slapped in the face by his outfit. The sight of a crimson suit knocked the wind out of you, made you breathless in the face of worries and fears and suspicions that bubbled to the surface. You desperately tried to force them back down, but the fancifulness was already buried under your skin. The face that you had seen on half a dozen other people suddenly became a comfort to you – the ones you already knew weren’t like that, the most likely culprit was Dark but you had long since dismissed him as an option, so this man had no real reason to be a risk, and if he was, it wouldn’t affect the relationships you had built, right? They didn’t have to be connected, not necessarily. Worst case scenario, best case scenario, okay case scenario—

You breathed in and then breathed out. You were making it a bad habit to spiral in the middle of a shift, and it didn’t help when you couldn’t even muddle through your own thoughts to find what you were really worried about.

Ignoring your thundering heart, you took your frozen body around the bar and up to the table that the man had sat himself down at.

“Good evening, sir.” The words tingled on the end of your tongue, frostbite overtaking the practiced greeting.

Not that it mattered, considering the response you got was hardly warm; a look tossed your way and then tossed the other way, followed by some vague gesture that you thought must have been in the terms and conditions for wearing a suit.

“Pauillac de Latour, thank you,” he spoke, just as smooth as his order. You could have benefitted from a please, but a brief interaction was a merciful one, and you were barely keeping yourself from scouring every inch of that jacket for a hint of its origin.

So, after a firm nod, you marched back to the bar and searched the shelves for the wine bottle. The 1977 wasn’t one you took out often – owing to its frankly ghastly price and a name that was pronounced even worse – but it was a big buck day when you did. Hell, with that order, you could have shut down the bar the second he handed you the money, and that thought terrified you. If you were distracted by the mere image of the suit, how were you going to serve him well enough that he would want to return? It was like getting a shark to bite at your bait, but the tug of the line threatened to pull you into the waters with it. You couldn’t let him get away, your personal grievances be damned.

You placed the wine bottle in a bucket of ice and carried it as carefully as you could to the table again. The little stand you saved for very important – very intimidating – patrons went with you, too, until you situated everything just as it was meant to be. You went through the motions, asked if he wanted to taste it first, poured the glistening burgundy into the glass in front of him, and spared as much of your mind as you could to keeping your breathing steady.

But something about your act was off. You didn’t know what it was exactly, but the man noticed that the façade you put up wasn’t the normal waitstaff formality. As you drew the bottle away from the wine glass, he curled his hand around the stem and stared straight into your eyes. Searching.

“Don’t you recognize me?”

The line snapped – you were in the water now – the shark was circling you. The shark, in fact, looked you up and down, smoothly bringing his eyes along the collar against your neckline, the lapel of your vest, the few creases on your shirt that stood stark against the crispness. Had you not been so occupied with appearing calm, you might have cracked a smile at the suspicion he was regarding you with, as if you weren’t the one on the edge of losing it.

To combat some of the tension, you replied, “Yes, sir, I do.” And it wasn’t a lie; you were seeing that face – that just so happened to belong to five other people – a whole lot. You weren’t going to admit that, though, because that would cost you a customer or your freedom, depending on how crazy he thought you were.

Nevertheless, the answer seemed to quell a portion of his suspicions. Not all of it was gone by the time he nodded and waved you off again, but, whereas his vision had been entirely clouded with doubt, some of it gave way to a certain… understanding? Acceptance? A realization that it wasn’t what he thought it was, but he still didn’t know what it actually was.

That was good enough for you, and he granted you a cue to leave, so you gratefully took it. You made your way back behind the bar as quickly as you could without raising more questions, just in time to take the order of the next person who walked through the front door.

You struggled through the interaction, incredibly thankful for your autopilot skills, as you made the drinks and surveyed the room. The darkening sky owed to a table or two packing up, and they arrived at the bar to pay their bills in quick succession. Pleasantries were exchanged, ‘come back soon’s and ‘have a nice night’, even a smile that you forced until the door swung shut behind the last group. Anything to keep up the image of a collected bartender while that suited man was watching you.

Back where you normally stood, you grappled for something to do, something to occupy your hands and mind with, and you found the ever-present collection of dirty glasses. It was roughly nine o’clock, but a Tuesday was never busy after the rush of after-work drinkers. Currently, the bar was draining of its occupants, with only a group at one of the booths, a couple along the wall, and the man you were trying to ignore.

Surprise, you weren’t doing a great job of it.

The biggest offender to your heart rate was his graceful scribbling. His hand covered what he was doing, but your brain lunged at the prospect of a notepad, refusing to let go until you found out what it really was. Every time he shifted, your eyes darted to him as though a gun had gone off, and you tracked the movement of his hand from his glass to his lips. When it was empty, he refilled to its capacity, a process he repeated until he placed the empty bottle upside down in the sloshes of melted ice. You were aware of each and every time this happened, and it only occurred to you to be concerned when his gaze finally drifted from you.

You were wary of him, and a less shameful person would have admitted to a touch of fear still lingering in your heart, but that didn’t mean you could have no other emotions. Worry was quickly becoming one of them, not of him but for him. This kind of behavior, it simply wasn’t healthy.

With that thought in mind, you stashed your suspicions in the back of your mind and walked out from behind the bar. You made towards him as though you were simply going to remove the bottle, and you were planning to make light conversation as you did so, but he beat you to it.

“Are you sure you recognize me?” he asked. His tone was less conspiratorial, this time, and took on more disbelief.

Although the concern was still present, it was pushed next to your suspicions; he didn’t look how he thought he had. From as far away as the bar, you supposed the dim lights might have made him seem more despairing than he actually was. It was probably some kind of media influence, going so far as to see him as a tragic, brooding soldier, reminiscing on his past through the window, instead of just a man getting lost in his thoughts.

Either way, the skepticism was more worthy of focus than your misunderstanding – and that meant you could experiment a little. After all, if Wilford wasn’t there to answer your questions, you were going to have to dig for them yourself.

“After the weeks I’ve had, I should hope so, sir,” you responded, angling for him to notice where he was. The others had taken some encouragement, too, and you hoped it would be easier this time.

Your idea seemed to be confirmed when he said, “You aren’t reacting like most people.”

Now was the time to engage in your favorite tactic: lying.

“It’s been explained to me.”

“The concept?”

His eyes narrowed, and he pushed the wine glass further away from him, the few drops of liquid still in there slipping against the wall.

“Well, I started to get suspicious after the third—” You had to keep it vague, in case you were wrong, but it seemed to be working, “—but only a few days ago was it explicitly stated.”

Surprise flashed across his face, and he sat back in his chair, crossing one leg over another. You were looking down on him, but that position gave him a control over the conversation that made you wonder why there was control to begin with. He stared at you like you had just spilled the secret to a crime. Briefly, you internally celebrated your oh-so-amazing guessing skills. What you had guessed, you didn’t actually know, but you were hoping for him to loosen up and drop some clues.

And then the corners of his mouth dropped, and he asked, “What are you talking about?”

While it was nice to be on the receiving end of mental doubt, you weren’t a fan of getting caught in a lie. You were good at getting into them, but getting out? That was a whole other skill set that you did not possess. Your only option was to take a stab in the dark.

“The others, sir,” you answered slowly. “Is that not correct?”

The nervousness that crept into your voice wasn’t helping your case, and you knew that, but it was difficult to save face when he paused with his eyes locked onto yours. He was going to call you out on your blatant lie, there was no getting out of this one. You really needed to stop ruining your chances with patrons, especially with the ones who paid for one of the most expensive wines you carried. It was going to be the end of you one day.

The man’s groan pulled you out of your thoughts – spiraling, again – but you were half sure it wasn’t against you.

“God, no!” he spat, absolutely disgusted with whatever he took your vague reference to be. “No, no, no. I’m talking about my celebrity status, not—” His eyes slid away from you, “—just no.”

With your theory half-confirmed, you let the subject drop and, in exchange, picked up a new curiosity.

“Celebrity?”

He floated his hand around his face, but the only reference you had for that was the five other people with that same face. Apparently, they were a touchy subject for him, though, so you were going to have to find something else to go off of.

You delved into the depths of your mind to find some recognition from earlier times – something less recent, and not tied to your patrons in any way. It was difficult considering you weren’t an avid socialiser, and most of your adulthood was spent working to get enough money for your own place. You didn’t have enough spare money or time to engage with celebrity culture.

The suit wasn’t an option to give you the hint you were looking for; you weren’t up to date on the world of the rich and famous, but you trusted yourself to recognise a red suit flashier than the sun itself had you ever saw one. Unfortunately, nothing came up under that. You moved on to his hair, but that only brought up the war-era photos again. There had to be some other defining feature.

It only took a second for you to fully realise, and it came not from his physical appearance, but the overwhelming smug aura that danced around him like a perfume.

When you were thinking back to your past, you stayed in the past five years, but, when broke through the mental barrier you had put up between the decades, you fished the memory that you were searching for from the murky waters and into the present.

You caught his comment of, “I’m surprised you didn’t confuse one of the others for me.” You also caught the unsubtle spite in his tone, but the roll of his eyes would have let you know regardless.

You had only ever seen a couple of Mark’s movies, owing to your family’s hatred of pop culture, so you were lucky to have recognised him from a short scene you just so happened to retain in the midst of unfamiliar accents and illegible subtitles.

“That French movie?” You paused to let the title come to you. “L’avernir.”

This was a moment of genuine shock for him, pure and alone. His eyes widened and he leaned back in his chair even further, adjusting his position as if to give himself time to react.

He nodded slowly, “Yes, that’s right—” Then he pursed his lips, “—but you don’t have an accent.”

“Oh, no, I’m not French, sir, I just grew up watching foreign media and then it bled into my adult life,” you explained.

“Can you speak it?”

“If I tried hard enough.” It definitely helped when you were dealing with tough customers and could curse them out without losing a tooth. You might have demonstrated the skill, but you were aware of conversations wrapping up at the group on one of the larger tables.

“I’ll have to check up on that,” Mark chuckled, a strangely velvety sound that made you wonder if it was an effect of the wine. “It’s uncommon for someone to recognise me not for my American movies.”

“You have a lot of them?”

“Of course. You don’t get where I am with a couple of knock-off Ghostbusters movies.”

You shared a smile at that, despite your cardinal sin of never having seen Ghostbusters, but you understood the sentiment.

“And where are you, for you to be in the Astral?”

Tentative with your question, you were half-expecting him to shoot up in surprise because he didn’t know where he was. It was sad, really, and the wave of relief that went through you when he didn’t was even sadder.

“I just left a shoot,” he answered, with a casual tone that you were grateful for. “God awful script, really, but I’m sure I can save it. The director wants sixty different angles for the same line, and none of them go together. I’ll go from angry to miserable to playful in the space of one ramshackle scene.”

Theatre wasn’t your forté, much less big screen acting, but he managed to make you frown from his words alone. You were suddenly glad you weren’t an avid movie-goer if that was how the good ones went down.

“And this is something you’re passionate about?” you asked, while you checked the other couple in your peripheral.

“Not at all.” The bluntness knocked you back into focusing on him, but he didn’t wear the grimace you expected. Instead, he grinned and answered your silent question, “It’s the money.”

It was shallow – utterly and completely shallow – but you would be a hypocrite if you berated him for it. The whole ‘don’t do something just for the cash’ thing was a nice moral, but it was a fairytale one. Unrealistic at best, dangerous at worst. That ideal had rotted away on your sixteenth birthday, and you thought you were all the better for it.

You thought you were.

You were.

“I hope it works out well for you then.”

With a respectful nod and most of your curiosity gone, you took a step back, but Mark stopped you in your tracks.

“Oh, before you go,” he trailed off, so you were left to interpret the swirl of his wine glass.

You acknowledged his request and returned to the bar, where you also took care of the larger group that had lined up to pay their bill. After they left and the door was closed behind them, it was only you, Mark, and the couple, the latter of which looked to be getting ready to leave themselves. Getting out the second bottle of wine was a quick task, made even quicker by Mark waving away your attempt to pour him another glass. Instead, he grabbed the neck of the bottle, handed you a credit card, and then adjusted the lapels of his suit. The elegant process surprised you, given he had drunk an entire bottle of wine in the space of a couple hours and, apparently, had no intention of stopping there. It also worried you; you didn’t know how he was getting home, but there was no way he was in a state to drive himself.

You kept your thoughts to yourself as you left to charge the card, though, not wanting to appear presumptuous, especially not to a patron who bought over a hundred dollars worth of wine. Just the idea made you balk.

Mark didn’t bat an eye at you handing it back, he just rose from his seat with the egregiously expensive bottle in hand.

“I think you’ll be seeing me more often,” he said. He smiled that same smile from before, seeming completely sober.

“I’m glad to hear that.” You joined your hands at your waist. “Thank you for coming.”

He waved over his shoulder as he started walking, and you could have sworn he was deliberately matching his footsteps to the beat of the music. He even managed to let the door swing closed on the final piano key as if it were his own little credits song.

You huffed to yourself. With an actor like him, you were probably more right than wrong. Almost as if to support your suspicions, a white square left on the table drew your attention.

This time, you didn’t stop yourself from chuckling, because what you had thought to be a notepad for him to nefariously scribble down your every move was, in reality, one of the napkins from the holder on the table. On it, in handwriting that struggled between a talent for cursive and the unhelpful texture, was a signature.

You pocketed it – if only to have something to laugh at when you were feeling down – and then continued to clean up the table until the couple left behind were ready to pay their bill.

When that time came, you sent them on their way with a smile. The quicker they left, the more time you had to prepare for the following day. The massive paycheque from Mark meant that you could afford to deliver less-than-perfect customer service in exchange for focusing on your lovely disappearing act, because you were going to get your answers from Wilford even if it killed you.

Or, if the need arose, the sugar-coated magician himself.

Chapter Text

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”

You had cornered Wilford the first chance you got. The moment he walked through the front doors – or, more accurately, the second that you noticed him suddenly appear in a seat at the bar – you dropped what you were doing and rushed over to him. Normally, your movements were poised and precise, so it was a shock when you abandoned your search for a specific bottle of wine to get to him.

It was even more of a shock when you leveled him with a glare and said your piece.

“What is your whole thing?” you asked, trying to keep a low enough volume that you didn’t catch the attention of any other patrons. With the lights low, music streaming, and everyone preoccupied with drinks, it wasn’t likely, but you watched your back too much to let it all go now.

You risked a quick glance around before you continued, “I’ve met five other people who look almost exactly like you, one of whom you introduced me to yourself. Normally, I wouldn’t give a damn about whatever you have going on, or I’d ask if I should send your mother a sympathy card, but you brought it into my bar and now I have to deal with it.”

By the end of your little rant, you were breathless. Puffs of air dissipated in front of you, but you felt them leave as though they were taking your patience with them.

“Ah,” was all Wilford said as he leaned back on the stool. He avoided your eyes for a moment, not that you looked away at any point; you didn’t want to risk him disappearing, regardless of whether he could actually do that.

After he gathered his courage again, he spoke, “You met the engineer. He built the Invincible, you know.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. What Invincible?” You ran your hand through your hair. “You all have some kind of gimmick that makes you different but you all look the same, and you all know each other, and you’ve been coming to me with your crazy whatever-the-hell you have, and either you’re going to tell me what the deal is or you’re going to get out.”

You were teased by him opening his mouth, but no sound followed. Instead, he twisted his lips into a pout, as if he could weasel his way out of your anger by biding his time, but that was a train of thought you pitied. He was doing nothing but making you more annoyed. As much as you hated to admit it, you had a short fuse, and you were not above following through with your threats, your wallet be damned.

Wilford looked not dissimilar to a puppy that got caught pulling apart a cushion. The way that his eyes flitted about, finding a place to land anywhere but your own. At one point, he cast a longing look towards the front doors, but you were quick to bring him back to the present with the rhythmic tap of your fingers.

You waited.

And, eventually, you broke him down.

“It’s a problem in the multiverse.” The words tumbled out of Wil’s mouth.

In response, you hissed, “Explain.”

When just a hint of him going back to the silent treatment arose, you whisked away from the counter to grab a bottle of vodka, dry vermouth, and a shaker.

How you wished it were for you.

Alas, after a moment or two – more time taken than usual just to spite him – you slid a vodka martini towards him. It was a bar, after all, and you wouldn’t begrudge getting an extra 6 dollars and 50 cents out of someone who had definitely gone out of his way to make the last week difficult for you.

However, first, he just blinked at you and slowly rotated the glass between his fingers. You made your way back over to him, equipped with the little, pink umbrella that, apparently, the drink wasn’t digestible without.

Wil grinned as you dropped it into the clear liquid, tiny droplets of alcohol washing against the side.

“Where do you want to start?”

“At the beginning?” you offered.

That smile, ear-to-ear, was starting to turn insufferable. “Which beginning?”

“Wilford.” To prove your point, you started up the drumming of your fingertips again, and that got him to put the drink down and wave placatingly at you.

“Oh, alright, alright—” He rolled his eyes, “—you’ve barely spent an evening with Dark and yet you’ve adopted his no-fun-all-business outlook already. Fine.”

For a moment, when he stopped talking and resumed his searching around the room, you thought he wasn’t going to continue. And, to be honest, some part of you wanted that to be true. It wasn’t a large part, not by a long shot, but you weren’t prepared to face the truth of this whole situation. You didn’t think you ever would be. You had been brought up without the childish imagination so many of your school friends had sported. Belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy? Your parents hadn’t let you entertain those delusions.

So, what were you supposed to do when an adult-you was faced with the prospect of doppelgängers and alternative universes?

Your mind was ready to collapse in on itself if the right pin was pulled.

On the other hand, the vast majority of you wanted – needed – to know, and it was a horrible dilemma you were put in the middle of.

The best you could do was hope Wilford would be careful.

A snap pulled you back to the present, wherein the aforementioned man was sat in front of you with a comforting smile and your heart’s thrashing was steadily speeding up.

“We’ll start with the crystal.”

The rest of the bar seemed to fall away. The dimmed lights overwhelmed the other patrons and rendered them meaningless, and the notes of a piano faded into nothingness.

“Now,” Wil began, “dear Engie built the Invincible and the Invincible Two.” He noticed your immediate confusion and explained, “Spaceships for interstellar travel, very clunky and very inefficient things. He used something called a warp core, but it fed off a crystal that he didn’t make. No, he found it and pulled a neat trick to jump through space and time with it. Find a whole new planet for colonization, live out his days with his captain and his crew.”

It was at this moment that something washed over Wilford. His peppiness that seemed to float about him like a stubborn perfume dropped away, granting you with a dozen and one questions that all asked the same essential thing.

What had happened to him?

Nothing simple caused a world-weary stare to overcome the vibrancy you had gotten to know as he said, “Except it didn’t turn out that way – never does.”

Wil didn’t give you time to talk before he was steadfastly moving on, like a tour guide who knew you were going to ask questions but didn’t know the answers to them.

“The instant he flipped the switch, so to speak, it dragged them through a whole lot of wormholes and rips in the multiverse and doors and hallways and so on and so forth.” He made the motion of a jazz hand in the midst of trying to get the martini to his mouth. “Not even Engie remembers them all, but there was one person who did: the Captain. They played their part and pulled tricks of their own to get both themself and Engie out of the different universes, right back to their original one.”

Regardless of the strange tinge of venom he spoke with at one point, he pulled a one-eighty and pretended to cover one side of his mouth to stage-whisper to you, “Don’t tell him it wasn’t actually the original.”

A dramatic wink was followed by a struggle to down some of the alcohol. Why he demanded an umbrella when it only impeded his ability to drink, you had no clue, but you were more interested in his story than his self-sabotaging methodology.

“What about the crystal?” you prompted. You’d taken to leaning your elbows onto the counter, only half aware of everyone else around you.

“Oh, that little thing, it was lost to time, so sad but life goes on.” A light chuckle bullied its way out of his throat. “Well, not for the Captain. While their crystal was thrown off into the near future or near past or distant present, they found the bigger one – some call it the mother crystal, much too alien sci-fi for me.”

You had to agree with him there. As outlandish as what he had already told you was, a mother crystal seemed just out of the scope.

“But find it they did, and they must have chipped off a little of the thing because they were shot back to another universe entirely, and one thing led to another, big explosion, shockwaves through the multiverse and—” Wilford raised his glass. “—Hello, Dionysus.”

You struggled to catch up with his words for the moment. He’d rushed through them so quickly that, had you not already been subject to half of the things he was talking about, you would have thought you’d simply misheard him. Of course, you knew that everything he said was real.

It was a weird sensation to not doubt him. There was not a single bone in your body that didn’t believe all the insane things he was talking about. That was a first, for multiple reasons, but you didn’t resist. You welcomed it, in fact – that weird sensation was also a pleasant one.

But his monologue didn’t clear up all of your questions, especially those regarding that rushed ending. He danced through the words like he was dodging bullets – but, as you caught the twitch of his hand that tightened around the still-full martini glass, you worried how inaccurate that comparison was.

Deliberately lowering your voice, you asked, “Where did they end up?”

“Who knows.”

“You do.”

Although you felt a pang of guilt for causing him to stop short of drinking his martini, you were put at ease by his sudden bout of raucous laughter.

“That’s all boring semantics,” he groaned lightheartedly. “Don’t make me get Dark to give you a lecture.”

And just like that, with the flip of a switch, the lights sketched out the furniture, the music returned to your ears, and the surroundings of your bar returned to you. The veil was lifted, and along with it went any hint of Wilford’s dip in enthusiasm. The way he swung his glass around made it seem ludicrous he had ever seemed anything else.

Your eyebrows furrowed.

Setting back your shoulders and sighing as subtly as possible, you tried to get conformable in the bartender persona again.

“I’ll get my answers sooner or later,” you warned, only half-teasing.

Wil balanced his head on the back of his hand, elbow pulled onto the counter. He appeared to have forgotten all about his drink, which sat a few inches away from his other hand.

“I don’t doubt that.”

“Why are you so casual about this?”

“I’m used to the multiverses, and there’s nothing to be done about our situation. We’ve been behind the eight-ball for months now.” He didn’t sound particularly upset about being ripped away from his home. “If there were any way back, we’d have found it by now.”

How long had they been here then? You opened your mouth to ask but his dismissal of the others rang through your head, so you bit your tongue. You did, however, pack the question in the back of your mind with the rest of them. He wasn’t getting off that easy.

“Besides—” His grin barely skimmed his ears, “—what’s life without a little madness?”

You didn’t stop yourself from rolling your eyes. Madness, sure, but he had his fair share of dramatics, too – and you wouldn’t have been dealing with the so-called madness had he not brought it into your bar. You were doing quite fine without multiverses and doubles and time loops wreaking havoc in your day. The best you were able to hope for was that the absurdity found its way to weave itself in between drink orders and business taxes.

Given how you had somehow avoided interrupting Wilford’s explanation to deal with other patrons, you were conflicted on how effective it would turn out to be.

Nevertheless, you took the opportunity to ask one last question, which, if you were lucky, was gentle enough to be blessed with a genuine response. “So, how many of you should I be expecting?”

“Roughly twenty.”

You choked.

Wilford’s eyes shot wide, but his attempt to pat you on the back was one you avoided by stepping away from the counter. You tried to cover up your spluttering away from where people could see you; bowing your head towards the sink, you grasped blindly for a towel to hold back the coughs.

Outwardly, you were just getting to grips with having air inside your lungs, but, inwardly, the acceptance you had built up around your situation was cracking. Meeting Wilford was an odd evening, meeting five others was a test of your patience, but you were met with the nearly-definitive future of fourteen other… what were you supposed to call them? You’d used doppelgängers and doubles, but they were too tame for this kind of thing. It wasn’t some Gothic Jekyll-and-Hyde, they didn’t represent Freud’s Theory of the Self or whatever the hell it was you were forced to learn about.

This was real life.

This was real life.

Copies, multiverses, timelines, loops, crystals, space-travel—

It was all real life.

You were definitely closing the bar tomorrow.

With that comforting thought in mind, you adjusted the edge of your vest, uncreased your cuffs, and spun back around to meet Wilford’s eyes.

“Twenty,” you clarified, taking a step closer.

“Give or take.”

“Give or take.”

You took another step forward, your repeated words still weighing down your body and mind.

“Anyone who interacted with a crystal was brought over. Given how many places that Captain went, I’d bet on the give part of it.”

His hands were held up defensively, not that he sounded any more sympathetic than a crooked smile led you to believe.

Deep breathe in, deep breathe out.

“Great, just great,” you muttered, “just what I needed.” It wasn’t as though you had a whole business on your hands, let alone your own reservations that had you watching people in vaguely formal attire like a hawk. Nothing like that at all. The most you could do was soften the inevitable blow.

Levelling Wilford with a look to keep him grounded and aware, you spoke, “If I’m going to be dealing with more people from other universes – because that’s a sentence I ever thought I’d have to say, and why wouldn’t I – you have to do one thing.”

Your turning around gave him time to come to his senses, his proper senses, and you an opportunity to grab a few glasses for a table that was getting low. You’d brushed aside the other patrons for a good ten minutes, so you were itching to take care of them and rush them out so you could wallow in your poor excuse for a reality in peace.

Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed Wilford perk up in his seat, a soldier called to attention.

“You’ll put up with us then?”

He sounded pleased, but it only served to worry you about the choice you had made – or, for a more apt metaphor, the bed you’d made, one that you would have to lie in.

To get him back on track, you tapped a finger against the counter with a quiet, “Wilford.”

“What can I do for you?”

There was something different about this tone, compared to the one he had entered with. Of course, there was your own change in mood; with your questions not quite answered but still addressed, the stuffiness of the air melted into classical music and the smell of old wood. Apart from that, though, you thought there was something different about him in particular. He seemed… more genuine? You couldn’t place it – that seemed to be a Herculean feat with Wilford – but there was a shift.

To welcome it, you allowed yourself a moment of informality. You leaned one elbow on the edge of the bar and tipped a glass towards Wil. A faint smirk made it harder to emphasize the seriousness of your order.

“Tell them where the Astral is and what it looks like because if one more person wanders in without reading the sign, I’m going to ban all of you.”

That sparked another chuckle from him.

“I expected nothing less,” he answered with a nod, his words coated in an amused glee. “Though, I am thankful you served us. I can’t speak for everyone, but your willingness is appreciated. I do hope this speakeasy takes off, it’s very…”

He trailed off but his eyes showed a glimmer nestled in his irises. It didn’t make it through to his throat, however, and you were left keeping that topic for another time. People in the bar were getting restless, you noticed a couple along the wall glancing around to the front of the room, which was your best indication that this chat was over.

You nodded at the words he had managed to get out and then raised one of the empty glasses to meet the air between you. Wil got the gist and guided his into a similar place.

“You and me both, Wilford.”

A clink rang like a bell in the bar.

“You and me both.”

He was finally able to toss back the alcohol, and when you said tossed, you meant it. The vodka martini was gone in a matter of seconds, liquid thrown against his throat while the glass was placed on the counter. You quickly scooped it up to keep it safely in the sink, but Wil used your redirected attention to disappear from the room entirely. You didn’t even hear the door click, but there were stranger things you had to deal with than the possibility of teleporting.

For starters, there was the definite. There were definitely multiple versions of the same man that had decided your bar was the best place to spend their time. There were definitely risks of screwing up the multiverse again or causing another time loop. There were definitely life-threatening dangers that you could no longer avoid or play ignorant to.

But there were also definitely some characters that made your first time owning a business – for lack of a better word – more interesting. You were thankful that they had entertained your long shifts, you were happy that you had gotten to know them over these weeks, and you looked forward to getting to know them more.

So, what else was there to do, but to continue forward along this winding and unstable path towards a future unknown and a past even less familiar? It couldn’t have been all bad, if, so far, things hadn’t gone completely horribly. What was a couple more months of uncertainty in exchange for possible life-long friendships? You had to trust it would turn out alright in the end.

But you knew it was definitely vain hope that made you think the men carrying weighty camera equipment out of an unmarked van had nothing to do with your new guests.

Chapter Text

It was a strange kind of normal that you assumed over the course of the next few days. It wasn’t the same as before – how could it be, when you were unaffected by people from different universes asking for a mocktail or bottle of wine – but it was comfortable. You weren’t breathing at a marathon rate when faced with the idea of doppelgängers anymore, you were simply having conversations with them as if this was something you were brought up on. As if it were normal. Although, as you gazed out over the bar, you supposed it was going to be your normal from then on.

That included the familiar strangers turning up whenever they wanted, the most intrusive being the pair of men who had set up recording equipment outside the front door on the night you spoke to Wilford. You’d shooed them away, far too tired for anymore introductions, and you had naively assumed they would heed your order. It only took an hour for you to realize they had not. It then took you another hour to chase them out from the back alley, where they had positioned their van and equipment just so that it would block your door. Even as they chucked everything haphazardly into the back and sped away down the main road, you were left with the distinct feeling that they would be back.

Never mind your previous thought, this was never going to be normal.

Despite your having to clear those two out like feral raccoons, you had to admit that dealing with them was easier when you knew about them. There was no doubt in your mind that you would have done something you would regret had it not been explained to you, no matter how lacking that explanation was.

Speaking of Wilford, he had quickly become your main regular; there wasn’t a day that went by without him showing up, whether that was for a full drink or just a shot of the fastest thing you could pour before he disappeared again. You never asked where he went, and he never asked about your own activities outside of the bar. It was an odd gentlemen’s agreement that you had, with you both deciding that those matters were best left unspoken of in the presence of alcohol.

That wasn’t to say you had no conversation. After all, much of the time Wilford was sat at your bar was spent trying out new martini styles, and that in and of itself gave you material to debate. The taste of a cranberry martini was going to be the subject of the day, for when he eventually – inevitably – showed up. In fact, you were in the process of getting the ingredients ready when a voice broke out over the relative quiet of the room.

“Dionysus!”

Your test was going to have to wait until after whatever Illinois had prepared for you.

Normally, hearing your ‘full name’, as full as possible given you were keeping the real thing close to your chest, meant you were in trouble, but the cocky smile on the adventurer’s face suggested something even worse. Your back involuntarily straightened up as he strutted towards you, slammed his hands on the counter, and demanded that you teach him flairs.

Your immediate response was a sharp, “No.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“It’d be fun.”

“Would it?”

“Of course!”

“No.”

Illinois heaved a sigh and dropped an elbow onto the counter, balancing his head on his fist, no doubt trying to use his ever-so-effective wiles to convince you.

“Think about it,” he pressed, “what’s better for business than a competition?”

You stared blankly back at him. “Doing my job instead of playing around with a knock-off Indiana Jones.”

His face drew into a faux-offended expression, but it didn’t deter him. In its place, he poked a finger onto the counter to accentuate his idea and said, “Ouch, but my point still stands.” He notably ignored your doubtful look. “It’ll draw in customers, people who’ll come to see my talent and good looks, and your talent and good looks, and my good looks…”

You were sure he would have continued if you hadn’t interrupted him by asking, “What talent?”

“The talent that I’ll get when you teach me.” He said this as though it were obvious, but you just crossed your arms over your shirt. It was unfortunate that neither of you were close to backing down, which would have made the situation a whole lot easier, but it seemed bullheadedness was a trait you both shared.

“Who says I even know any bar tricks? A t-shirt bump isn’t exactly…” You spared a glance around the bar, a room currently underpinned by Veslemoy’s Song and the chat of a dozen people in their 40s. Slowly, you finished, “…formal.”

Illinois, to his credit, nodded in understanding, but he still had the smug grin on his face, like he knew how this would play out, and it only grew as he lifted his finger to point at you. “Except Yancy told me you fought someone, and you don’t do things like that if you’ve worked here your whole life.”

You’d forgotten they all knew each other. That was your mistake, it turned out.

“Of course,” you muttered, mostly to yourself as you tried not to make a scene of your steadily decreasing patience. Luckily, you were able to hide it from the rest of your patrons, but Illinois definitely saw the drop of your shoulders, heard the sigh you let escape you, and you wouldn’t have been surprised if he felt your acceptance before you said it aloud.

“So?” he asked. The giddiness in his voice made you feel less embarrassed about giving in.

“One trick.”

“Two.”

Oh, you were not doing this. One cycle was enough, and it hadn’t turned out well for you the first time you tried to refuse him, so you quickly respond with, “Fine, none.”

The alarm that shot through his eyes made you chuckle quietly.

“No, no, I’ll do one,” he jumped to say, raising his hands in surrender.

He was fortunate that the bar wasn’t overly busy at the moment; all of your current patrons had full drinks, and none seemed keen to leave any time soon. You couldn’t account for new people coming through the doors, but teaching Illinois a simple flair didn’t sound time consuming.

You gestured him to your side of the bar, which he promptly followed. The smugness in his smile gave way to anticipation, a sight you preferred over his usual bravado. There were, of course, traces of his pride, but that was a given considering he had won the little argument between you.

You were going to have to fix that.

So, to begin, you took a spare shaker from under the counter and did your best to demonstrate a simple trick. After all, it wasn’t as though you had been prepared for an impromptu flair lesson, and you didn’t want to embarrass yourself by trying anything overly complicated. The urge to chase him away with something intimidating was in the back of your mind as you flipped the shaker onto your wrist, but you pushed it back. You were helped by the grounding chill of the metal that sprung from one open hand to the other.

When it was safely in your left hand, you twirled it once more between your thumb and forefinger, then held it out for Illinois.

You hadn’t noticed when his expression had changed, but, at some point, it had; his smirk was entirely gone for the first second after you stopped, and it wasn’t until he breathed in and out to prepare himself that it returned in full force. It actually surprised you to think he was taking this seriously. Flairs were precise things, easy to mess up if you weren’t paying acute attention, you didn’t think he would have wanted to do something that required no distractions. An adventurer who slid down cavern walls and played chicken with poisonous darts didn’t seem the type for exact sciences.

You stepped back to let him have more space, and you watched as he sized up the distance between the shaker in his right hand and his opposing wrist, eyes flitting between the two like messengers on a battlefield, every second another calculation that could afford no mistake—

He vastly overshot it and sent the shaker flying past his wrist. It clattered against the bottom of the counter, barely missing a shelf of cocktail glasses.

“Oops,” was the only thing Illinois said.

Trying to keep your sigh to yourself, you went to pick it back up, seeing as your little apprentice wasn’t making any movement to do so himself. You handed it back to him after making sure neither the wood it hit nor the shaker itself was damaged. Hell had no fury like a woman scorned, sure, but you were a sight to behold when you were pissed. Lucky for him, there wasn’t any sign that someone had just thrown a piece of metal into the paint job.

You resumed your position, saying, “Go on, try again.”

And Illinois did try again, and he managed to keep it within three feet of his intended target. You might have applauded him had that three feet not included your ceiling, which was where the shaker was headed after he somehow angled it so that it went vertical. There was less of a worrying noise, but you definitely heard the thud as it collided. The sound disguised Illinois’ mumbled curse before he reached underneath the point of impact. A millisecond later, the shaker dropped into his palm.

How he could catch the shaker flawlessly but lack the ability to pass it between his hands was beyond you. What you did know, however, was that this was going nowhere.

You took a step out of your safe zone and moved to take the container. “Here, let me—”

“No, no, I’ve got it,” he cut you off, waving his hand in a gesture that brought a scowl to your face.

Regardless of your growing want for him to drop it on his foot, you were forced to physically step in when he tried again, and it failed again. This time, he was preoccupied by an obvious pain when he slammed the shaker into his wrist, which would definitely do it.

“Okay, give it back.” You said this as an order, but you rushed to just take it before he could put on a brave face and make another attempt.

What was that quote? The definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Well, you’d had enough crazy people in your bar to last you a century, and you weren’t about to lose one of the only doppelgängers who made sense to another endless cycle. If he went, you’d only have Yancy left because there was something about Mark that put you off.

To dissuade that possibility, you cleaned the shaker of any debris it had collected while Illinois twisted the pain out of his hand.

“You’re not giving up that quick, are you?” he asked, with only a bit of discomfort shining through the teasing in his voice.

You rolled your eyes at that. If he was thinking that goading you into continuing a waste of time, which was also likely costing you patrons who didn’t want to disturb whatever silly performance he was making you do, was going to work…

Your scowl deepened. There was only one thing you valued more than money – as shallow as that was – and that was winning. Illinois really brought out the worst in you, but you weren’t about to back down now. Instead, you moved so that the man was just next to you and able to see exactly what you did when you performed the trick, slower and explaining every movement you made, even if it was a minute lowering of your hand.

“Your turn,” you said, putting the shaker onto the counter.

Illinois grabbed it but didn’t attempt the trick right away. You were almost shocked at that, but you were too curious in watching him to make a comment about it. It was interesting to see him take a whole minute to flip the shaker up and down, getting used to the weight of it, before he stepped back from the bar and squared his shoulders.

He passed it to his right hand. Starting position. He managed to bounce it back off his wrist into his still open palm. First step complete. He secured the upside-down shaker between his thumb and forefinger. Second step. He twirled the bottom so that it was upright again. Third.

You hadn’t realized you were holding your breath until Illinois slammed the shaker down on the counter to end the trick. Maybe it was a bit too hard, maybe some people looked over to see what the noise had been, but it didn’t matter, because he had managed to succeed at the flair without breaking anything!

You politely golf-clapped behind Illinois, prompting him to turn around and lightly bow.

“Well done,” you commended. He shifted on his feet at the praise, one hand going to his hips in order to lean back on the counter. He didn’t look at you, but the glint in his eye of pride was obvious.

You picked up the shaker and moved it to its original shelf. “Now go sit back down.”

“Seriously?” He sounded shocked. “That was good.”

“We agreed on one trick.”

“That was before I tried—” You made to walk towards one of the tables that seemed low on drinks, but Illinois stood in front of you before you could get around him, “—Do you want to change your mind?”

It didn’t take more than a second for you to reply, “No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m working.”

Case in point, a patron appeared at the counter, ready to pay their tab. It was one of the night-shift workers, so they were both quick at finishing their business and well-paying – your favorite traits in a customer, or you could have just been bitter that Illinois was taking up so much of your time.

You liked the guy, you did, but you liked him a lot more when he stuck to his side of the bar. Hell, you would have preferred him testing horrible pick-up lines on you than whatever this was, but you weren’t going to instigate that. You had done what you’d agreed to do, what more did he want?

“When do you finish?”

Your shoulders tensed up as soon as he finished speaking. It was a weird reaction, one that you yourself didn’t fully understand, but it happened regardless. It was a simple answer that immediately appeared in your mind. No.

Instead of thinking on it, you turned your attention to the man in front of you and searched his eyes. You could learn a lot from them. ‘Windows to the soul’ and all that, and, if it was true, he had no ill intent, and the alternative of arranging something outside of working hours was something you weren’t willing to choose.

“Fine.” You took a deep breath. “What do you want me to teach you?”

Illinois raised an eyebrow but apparently decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Frankly, you were glad he didn’t. You weren’t in the mood to answer any questions about non-bar topics.

“Show me what you got.”

With another lull in activity for the bar, you thought you could get away with a more complicated trick, as long as he could handle it. That was going to be something to

see for yourself, though, considering how the shaker had gone. There was also the chance that he would realize that he was biting off more than he could chew and give up, which, if you were to be more dramatic, wouldn’t have been the leading cause for your choice.

You turned to look at your collection of bottles, searching for your most expendable. It wasn’t likely to go wrong, but you didn’t want to risk a 1968 vintage for some dumb showboating, so you grasped the neck of a Pinot Grigio and stepped back from the rack. The advanced routine that you ran through needed the space, with all its twirls and flips, the weird hanging that you did between fingers and the timed throw into the air that tested how quick you could grab the wine glass.

It was a thing you had learned a year or two ago, back when you bothered to flair-bartender for the extra tips. You only stopped when you learned that drunks cared less about the how the drinks got in front of them and more about the fact that they were in front of them. Your performance just made that take longer, and, even though you had enjoyed chucking bottles around, it made more sense to drop the act.

With a huff, finally losing the tunnel vision, you watched the last few drops of wine fall into the glass. The perfect amount. Really, you were surprised you still had it, after so long out of practice.

Illinois seemed just as shocked as you. He nodded slowly, a motion of taking in the information that you hoped was genuine. You wanted to spare your bar for the rest of the night.

“Alright, give me a bottle.”

You barely managed to hide your mouth with your hand in time to cover your laughter – however, albeit muffled, your chuckles were heard all the same. Illinois leaned forward, pressing his arms into the counter as you tried to silence yourself. You weren’t trying to be mean, but his nonchalance made you think he had short-term memory loss.

If only he did, because you might have gotten away with your burst of laughter by stalling.

“Hey, what’s that about?” he asked.

“It wasn’t anything.”

“No, you laughed.”

The look of pure offense on his face nearly made you relapse. You turned away to save yourself, putting the bottle of wine from the trick back where it belonged. “I coughed,” you said over your shoulder.

“Yeah, to cover up you laughing.”

He had you there. You didn’t think you were getting out of it, anyway, with how stubborn he had proved himself to be.

With your back turned, you only heard him lightly scoff. “Your trick can’t be that hard.”

“Oh—” You shot him a look, “can’t it?”

“Nope.”

The spark of a challenge in those chocolate eyes of his waged war better than his words did, and he was starting to make it a habit.

But you weren’t one to pass up a chance to win at something, so you walked to closer to stare him down. “You have until the end of the week to learn and perfect that flair, as well as any others that you think will beat mine. Come back Sunday night, and then we’ll see if it’s as easy as you think.”

Although you held out your hand for him to shake, you weren’t fully expecting him to take it. He seemed like the ‘all bark, no bite’ type of guy from what little experience you had with him, and the tactic of forcing him to back down was still in the back of your mind.

He glanced down at your offered hand and then back up at you. You cocked an eyebrow in response.

“Deal.”

With those words, he sealed your bet and followed through with shaking your hand, up, down, once. It was a lot like the business deals that you were more used to, but this was no mere transaction of stocks or bonds. This was pride.

After telling him to wait, you retreated to the backroom of the Astral. Most of it was storage, the extra bottles of all the most popular drinks that you didn’t have enough space to store up front next to the ones that nobody ever ordered. There were wines and whiskeys, vodkas and the weird Parma Violets gin that had been sitting there since your grand opening, but you were aiming for none of those. Instead, you rifled through a messy cabinet and found the trio of trainee plastic bottles from your youth.

You retreated from the backroom with them in hand, memories of the distinct weight of them rushing back to your mind. A cousin had bought them for you on your sixteenth birthday, a time as distant to you as your first stint using them in public. Luckily, you weren’t overly sentimental about them, so you had no problem placing them in front of Illinois on the bar.

“Good luck,” was the last thing you said to him before he picked them up, tossed one in the air to test the feeling, and then shot you a final smirk.

You couldn’t wait to wipe it off his face.

You didn’t see Illinois for the next few days. This didn’t worry you, but you were surprised that he didn’t come in for a drink or two despite his newfound hobby. He was somewhat of a regular now, and you didn’t like wasting the cream for his Irish coffee that you kept in the fridge. It eventually went to a night-shift patron, of course, but you held the thought in the back of your mind to make more for when he returned.

It wasn’t a question of if he would return, solely because you had heard it from his roommates that he was busy practicing his tricks. You also heard from them how well it was going.

“He’s worked his way through our stash of bottles,” Wilford had told you, as he slid into his seat at the bar one Friday night. “Why do you think I’m here so often?”

It was framed as a joke, but you noticed the grimace that he tried to play off with a laugh. You hoped he wasn’t trying anything too hard. Showing off was, unfortunately, in your nature, and if he was anything like you, he wasn’t going to stop until he made sure he could beat you. Neither of you liked losing, and it always ended up bad for the people around you, no matter how unserious the situation.

It was exactly eight o’clock on the Sunday when your doors opened like a Western saloon. You could almost hear spurs and a gun holster rattle as the adventurer strolled up to the bar, but the empty thunk of your plastic bottles was actually real.

You, one hand steadying a beer glass and the other pulling the tap, nodded at him as a greeting. The woman you were currently serving spared him a glance before she looked back at you, her head tilted. He certainly was a sight, and it forced you to wonder if your little bet was the only reason he was gone for so long.

From head to toe, he was coated in ash. The edge of his hat was singed, and one of his belts was different from last you’d seen him. From his reputation and the context of your first meeting, this would have been little cause for concern, but there was an air of adrenaline about him that was new, as though invisible sparks were leaping from his very skin.

Absentmindedly, you placed the beer in front of the women and vaguely acknowledged her leaving to her table.

“Yeah, I get why you’re intimidated,” Illinois remarked. His voice was rough, the consequence of breathing in dust for longer than could be considered healthy – but, other than that, he seemed normal.

Your attention returned to your work, pouring whiskey into three glasses.

“You should have told me I was intimidated, I would have tried to look worried.”

“I like the confidence—” He slipped into his usual seat, “—fake it ‘till you make it, right?”

With him staking his claim at the bar, you assumed he wasn’t just there to return the bottles and was actually making good on the bet. It wasn’t often that people went through with that kind of thing with you. Empty promises were a sadly common thing, and, although he didn’t seem the type, you had apparently built it up in your mind that he would laugh it off, tell you that he was just entertaining you, he wasn’t going to do something so childish in public.

You swallowed the thoughts down. There was no use in perpetuating that outcome, because Illinois was currently sitting in front of you, ready and willing to try his hand against you.

After placing the whiskeys on a tray, you carted them over to a group of businessmen at a booth, a plan solidifying itself in your mind.

Invite Illinois behind the bar, perform one trick each, and then take a vote – or, as that unrelenting voice in the back of your mind whispered, wait for all the other patrons to leave and find someone to be an impartial judge. Maybe someone off the street, maybe one of his doppelgängers if Wilford or Yancy followed their usual routine.

“Your whiskeys, sirs,” you spoke quietly, glad that you had arrived in time for a lull in their conversation. It was easier to spread the glasses around without having to worry about getting in the way, especially with ‘high-class’ patrons, but you really meant the patrons who spend the most. You never liked intruding on them, for multiple reasons, but chief among them was for fear of making them leave early. Agitation was the top killer of your clients.

That was why your blood ran cold when you heard a commotion stirring behind you.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and variations thereupon.”

Oh, he was not doing what you thought he was doing.

“On behalf of the owner and bartender of the Astral…”

He was.

“I invite you all to watch and judge a very exciting competition between us.”

And you were going to kill him for it.

You turned around just in time, barely managing to stop yourself from hurling the tray at his head, to see Illinois hoist himself onto the counter. Although your blood had started frigid, it was seeing the specks of dried dirt flicking off his boots and onto your meticulously polished bar that made it boil.

It was only you who had objections to this, however, because the patrons were entranced by a trick that he was performing with a bottle of vodka. You hadn’t seen him take it from the rack, but his sleight of hand was not your main focus. The fact that he finished the flips and spins without damaging anything was.

The audience expressed their amazement with ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’, some whistling, some clapping, some raising their nearly empty glasses in approval. The latter was what caught your eye, and your thoughts bounced between refilling them and going to get your equipment. The tennis match ended abruptly when Illinois tossed a wink your way.

“The wager was that I would be unable to perfect their trick by this very night, but I can tell you, dear audience, I am very good with my hands, and I was able to master it.”

His boots thudded against the floor as he jumped and landed. He had something of a cat’s grace, but not pampered and perfected for shows, no, he was an alley cat, waltzing on the fence with perfect balance towards you.

“Now, all that’s left is to best the bartender.”

He came to a stop just a few steps away. There was enough space for him to hold out the vodka bottle by the neck.

“Isn’t that right?”

You breathed in, and then out again, feeling the rush of air in your lungs. He had wanted a competition to ‘draw in customers’, hadn’t he? Well, you’d give him one.

“Right.”

Taking the bottle was like shaking his hand – revising of your deal from days before, confirming that this was going to happen right there and then, in front of nearly fifteen other people, some strangers, some not, all whom you would hate to see you mess up because you were your business, and getting this wrong and showing them you weren’t as suave and collected as you presented yourself to be would be the end of you.

There was no going back now.

Illinois held his arms out in the direction of the bar, an ‘after you’ gesture that didn’t give you as much time to prepare yourself as you would have liked, but you were already walking forward with the bottle in hand. You were fine. You could do this.

You settled yourself behind the bar, acutely aware of where everyone was looking; most stares were directed at you, including Illinois’, but there were the odd one or two who were throwing back their drinks as though they wanted to get out as quick as possible.

You had to get this over with.

A shaker in one hand and the bottle in the other, you steadied yourself into position to perform the flair that you had in mind. You flipped the vodka so that you were holding the bottom, then reverse tossed it around your back, landing the neck into the shaker. With limited time before the shaker was too full, you scooped the bottle out in a smooth gesture before rolling it down one arm and onto the other. Your free hand slid it by the neck onto the counter – you held your breath as it rocked, you could almost hear the clatter and smash despite it stilling itself in milliseconds – and reached for the orange juice.

This bottle was one you were less worried about damaging so you took the risk of throwing it in the air with enough of a tilt to have it spin ninety – two-seventy – four-fifty – six-thirty – nine hundred degrees in the air before landing safely between your fingers where you could pour it into the shaker. You might have sworn it scraped the ceiling had a mark not already been there from Illinois’ first attempts.

Bringing an ice scoop to the shaker, you angled the metal so that the liquid lapped at the edge before quickly pouring the cubes in and slamming the second tin on top and tossing it up and down in your free hand. The scoop was returned to its holder so that you could reach for a normal highball glass.

I took only a few seconds to fill it, but you held your breath all the while.

Your thought stilled just the same.

It was quiet.

And then the patrons of your bar, the affectionately termed audience, burst into applause.

Your face burned with the power of the sun as you listened to the clapping and the excited chatter between groups at the booths. You didn’t dare look up from the Screwdriver in front of you, though, and you focused your attention on the warming condensation left on your hands from the shaker.

The rapid beating of your heart died down with the crowd, but adrenaline continued to flow through you. Being the center of attention again was a weird sensation, but getting enjoyment out of it was even weirder. People went to bars to drink and talk to their own company, nobody went to talk to the bartender – you gave them the drinks, they gave you the money, and that was it.

Or, you thought as you noticed Illinois getting closer, it normally was.

Without a word, to save you from flustering yourself further, you relinquished the place behind the bar to him, taking the Screwdriver with you to an empty table at the side of the room. From there, you’d have a better view of his form as he performed his trick, and you wouldn’t have to worry about idling in the background. You were already conscious of your heightened shoulders and your free hand, you didn’t need anyone picking up on your awkward shifting.

Luckily, Illinois was relishing the attention as you sipped on the Screwdriver. You weren’t supposed to drink on the job, but who was going to stop you? The patrons were too enraptured by the adventurer’s flairs to notice regardless.

You were surprised at two things; the first was that you recognized the trick. The first spin that merged into the second in the other hand was the first clue, and then the race to grab a wine glass the second one that told you what he was doing.

It was your trick. The one you had challenged him to learn. Of course, you had told him to ‘perfect’ it, but you hadn’t expected him to follow through – except he had already shocked you by showing up, so you supposed that it was ignorant of you to not expect it.

Even though, from your perspective, you were able to see him almost drop the shaker in a toss and then forget to slide it down the bar to his other hand, the audience had no clue. It felt like you were in the wings of a stage production. You knew the lines and the cues, but the audience didn’t, so it mattered little when something was missed. Hell, you felt the twitch of your hand when he poured the shaker into the glass, akin to mouthing the words to the actor’s dramatic monologue.

The second thing that surprised you was that he was doing more than one flair. When the wine glass was full and he had reached the end, he seamlessly transitioned into another. One hand dashed for a new shaker while the other retrieved a bottle of dry gin. He collected them together in the center of the bar by sliding them towards each other, and you grimaced instinctively at the sound they would have made had they not stopped an inch from colliding.

The rest of the trick continued with much the same feeling. While everyone else was able to enjoy the theatrics, you were forced to hold your own breath every time Illinois took a risk, and there were a lot of times. Not an ingredient he touched went without jeopardy, and, in the singular moment of relief you had when he combined everything, you swore he was doing it on purpose to spite you.

The gin, liqueur, and vermouth in the shaker, he started to toss it about, and the memory of his first time pulsed in the back of your mind. It was only pushed away when you reminded yourself that he was doing just fine. He hadn’t done anything wrong yet. You had to trust him.

And trust him, you did. All through the shaking process, you ignored the voice that told you he was going to screw everything up and tried to convince yourself that he had no reason to. He seemed to know the trick well, he had succeeded at the others, and he was going to finish this one with a well-made drink sitting in front of him.

Technically, he did.

It was just the one that he had already made.

Because, at the final hurl of the shaker, he must have either forgot his own strength or misjudged the distance between him and the ceiling – both simple mistakes to make for someone having started a week ago, but enough for him to stop his trick at the last moment by chucking it straight into the plaster. This time, it didn’t skim the pain and bounce back.

No, in front of more than a dozen people, Illinois actually lodged the shaker into the ceiling.

Your mouth opened in a silent gasp, and you hurriedly secured the highball glass on the table. You didn’t know why, because you were too paralyzed by fear to help him out, as much as you were ashamed to admit it. Worries of your patrons paying their tabs and leaving flooded you for just a second before you realized you weren’t the only one frozen. Were they angry? Upset? Regretting stepping foot in your bar in the first place?

Illinois was greeted not by sighs of disappointment, but by laughter.

It was a booming sound, more than a few customers choking on their drinks, which spurred more merriment in the air. The adventurer himself chuckled roughly, more focused on eyeing up the shaker and finding a way to extricate it from your second floor.

Slowly, you made your way back behind the bar to take a look for yourself.

Yep. It was in there, alright. It looked as though someone had cut out the ceiling and glued the shaker in.

“That has to be points for effort!” Illinois called out between huffs of quiet laughter.

You didn’t respond, too distracted by your patrons’ dying chuckles and the returning conversation. Nobody was leaving yet, which was the first good sign, and nobody seemed put off.

At your side, Illinois crouched down, sized up the distance more accurately than before, and then jumped to pull the shaker out. With his success came his own fall back to the ground, but he was able to land safely on both feet, not that he stayed on those feet for long. He handed the shaker to you, yourself only reminded by the weight that there was still a whole Iron Negroni in it, and then steadied himself with one hand to hop onto the counter. Again.

“Alright, everyone,” came his announcement, drawing the attention of the audience, “now’s the time to vote. We’ll do this based on taste…fullness, composition, and accuracy to the prompt.”

All he got were stares, to which he rolled his eyes.

“Or we can just say the bartender won, if we’re boring about it.”

That got the reaction he was going for. The cheering returned at full force, and so too did the heat to your face. The new part was your smile, a small grin that you tried to disguise behind your hand.

Illinois turned around, seemingly proud of himself despite obviously losing the bet. It was a good thing there were no stakes, otherwise you were sure you would lose another three hours and a good amount of alcohol to him trying to overturn the result.

Avoiding eye contact was the only hope you had to get away without your face burning clean off, so you moved away to get an old-fashioned glass for his drink and said, “Get off my bar before you permanently stain it.”

He did as you told, slipping off the smudged counter and into his original seat.

“I’ll win eventually, Dion. With my skills, it’s just inevitable.”

“I will admit, you were good.”

Had your back not been turned, you might have seen the way he perked up under your praise, barely able to bring his smirk back in time for you to hand him the negroni. He had made it, after all, and you had already reached your limit for the night with that Screwdriver.

You did, however, catch the playful spark in his eye flourish as he sipped at it.

“And maybe this will teach you to think twice before you get cocky again.”

“Or maybe I’ll just dial back my strength when I’m chucking shakers around.”

You sighed, a stray chuckle falling through it, and brought a cloth around to wipe away the dirt he had left behind, only for it to be covered by an elbow that Illinois propped up.

“So—” he shot you his last wink of the night, “—would that free entertainment pay for a couple shots in the future?”

That might have been the hardest you’d laughed the entire week.

Chapter Text

This was the first time Dark had come into your bar alone. It was a Wednesday night, a while since you had last seen him, and he had been accompanied by Wilford that time. As usual, while his extravagant friend entertained both you and the rest of the bar with his antics, Dark sat on his chair, sipping idly on a glass of wine that never seemed to drain. You didn’t know whether it was his cold demeanor, his monochrome palette, or his absolute silence, but something made him seem to blend into the background. It wasn’t that he was normal – again, cold demeanor, monochrome palette, absolute silence – but it was as though your brain was actively trying to filter him out. The red and blue lines that shimmered from his outline, like drops of oil dispersing in water, were what drew most of your attention, but they acted like a wall that stopped you from looking directly at him.

You supposed that was why you didn’t notice him enter the bar until he was sitting on his normal stool. There was nothing to make you notice him enter, and that was what surprised you the most. You hadn’t heard the door open or close, he – unfortunately – hadn’t stepped on the plank, and Wilford was not at his side. Even though he was obviously his own person, it unsettled you, like seeing too many crows outside your window.

“Good evening, sir,” was the first and only thing you said. Dark responded with a nod.

You had quickly learned that he didn’t like small talk. Or, rather, he didn’t like any talk, which wasn’t unappreciated. No matter how many times you got curious about him, it was easier to reign your thoughts in when getting anything out of him was a chore. That meant you could spend more time actually working instead of trying to entertain someone. You were a bartender, after all, not a jester.

Without another word exchanged between you, you left your position to find the bottle of wine that he normally ordered. It had some complicated French name that you never bothered to memorize because he was the only one to ever request the thing. Regardless of the formal atmosphere you tried hard to maintain, beers and martinis tended to be what your customers wanted, so it was a treat to pour a half glass of the wine for Dark.

You placed it lightly in front of him, trying to soften the clink that followed on the wooden bar. Another nod from him, and you were returning to your place to watch the room.

Neither of you interacted for the next few hours. It wasn’t uncommon, of course, but given the nature of his person, you chose to risk sending spare glances towards him. You didn’t not trust him, but there was something about him, something incredibly small and completely unnecessary, that forced him into the back of your mind. A primal reaction to the ‘dark’.

He was still a customer, though, and you’d serve him whether you liked him or not. Lucky for you, that was normally a one-and-done kind of thing per night, what with his magic wine glass always being in hand. Unlucky for you, this was not a normal night.

Someone else pushed through the front door late into the night. It wasn’t anyone you recognized, but your eyes unwillingly tracked every single movement he made as he got closer – as if looking away meant he’d pounce and slit your throat. Or shoot you. That style befitted the suit more than such a messy assassination. Time was money, and the way that he walked, swaggering, hands in his pant pockets, fabric stretching to accommodate for the rings, told you that he had a lot of both.

When they were halfway across the room, you made eye contact. You hadn’t meant to, but you did, and it struck a certain chill through your heart. You swallowed. The edge of his mouth perked up.

And, in the few seconds in which the exchange took place, Dark watched on. He only saw your expression, but he knew there was someone else. Someone who had stepped on that plank of wood that you cherished so much and hadn’t received the same reaction as the rest of the patrons. All the other times that he had witnessed it, your irises had seemed to glint with the prospect of profit. Now, though, there was a blankness.

You knew that Dark was paying attention. You were somewhat glad he was.

The newcomer slid onto one of the stools in front of you. Going off the immediate clench of his jaw, bars weren’t a frequent stop for him. He wasn’t here for a drink, despite him opening his mouth to order one.

“A glass of Sauvignon Vert to taste, if you would be so kind.”

His voice was smooth. Most of the people who looked like him all sounded the same. They all came from the same box, factory-made to lure their victim in. You were all too aware that poison went down just as easily as wine, so it didn’t matter how nice he sounded, you weren’t letting your guard down.

Stiffly, you nodded and acquiesced to his order. At least getting the wine, one you stored in the back with the rest of the expensive ones, meant a moment to prepare yourself.

That left just Dark and the other man seated at the bar. They looked eerily similar, like two colleagues talking business over a drink after work. Same color, same thread count, same stare fixed on the door that you just walked through.

“That bartender, do you know them?”

They did not share the same affinity for silence, apparently. Dark was a man of decorum, though, and quickly snatching that question out of the air meant he would be less likely to ask another.

“No,” he answered before taking a sip of his wine. It was a social cue he’d learned that meant he didn’t want to talk, but it didn’t work.

“Do you know their name, at least?”

Again, trying to be as blunt as possible, he said, “No.” Another sip.

“You know, that surprises me—” The man turned to look at him, a small smile slapped across his mouth, “—because I’ve seen you come in here quite often.”

Dark didn’t like him. Regardless of his cold demeanor, it wasn’t in his nature to decide against someone so quickly, certainly not in the first encounter, but this man was too much like the object of his hatred that it was unavoidable. A suit and a smirk. A liar.

And the tone was just as saccharine. “Oh, I’m sorry, where are my manners?” That annoying salesman laugh stifled the air as he held out a hand. “Rodger Patrice.”

Dark’s eyes wandered from the backroom to the hand just seconds before you returned, but both of your attentions landed in the same place.

You picked up your pace to cross that small distance back to the bar – the only person Dark seemed comfortable with touching was Wilford, and that was a thing to play by ear. Shaking the hand of a stranger? You didn’t think the tension could get any thicker.

When you let the bottle hit the wood, a little louder than necessary, Rodger turned back to you with no change in his expression. The mask stayed on as you poured the wine into the miniature glasses you reserved for tasting and the occasional shot after a rough day.

“Thank you, bartender.”

“Of course, sir.”

He brought it to his lips, let the smallest amount trickle into his mouth, and then dropped his hand back to the bar. He couldn’t have tasted it, with how quick the process was, and the way that he promptly continued talking as if nothing had happened.

“’Bartender’. That’s so rude, isn’t it? Reducing you to your service.” He chuckled, swirling the wine around in the glass carelessly and oh-so intentionally. “What’s your name, if you don’t mind me asking.”

Your shoulders raised in time with Dark’s grip tightening on the stem of his glass. You wouldn’t tell him, it was just a question of how you were going to get around this obstacle; if you were right about who this man was – suit, grin, laugh – he wasn’t going to let you go without a fight.

“The majority of the people I serve don’t call me anything.”

He glanced around the room and then shook his head slowly, as if he hadn’t cased the place as soon as he walked in. “There’s too many people in here,” he said, “I doubt you’ll hear me if I just say, ‘excuse me’.”

You didn’t have to look away from him to know that he was wrong; there were barely a dozen people in the bar, all of whom were either quietly chatting away or sitting silently with a drink in hand, and the jukebox laid out a gentle flow of music that never went above a whisper.

“I’m sure you’ll catch my attention.” Mostly because you were going to be watching him like a hawk until the very second that his heel left your sight.

“I don’t want to be whistling or snapping – that’s terrible manners, you know.” As he leaned forward, holding the glass by the rim between two fingers like it was coated with the plague, you leaned back. You had to force yourself to maintain eye contact despite the stirring of sickness in your stomach. This was a game that both of you refused to lose.

“May I order a glass for myself?”

You were both surprised that Dark was speaking up and overjoyed that Rodger’s smile momentarily dropped to a frown. It looked worse when he tried to put it back up, and that gave you just cause to follow his request. Ah, pettiness, how you loved thee, even when everything you had worked for was at risk.

In the brief moment that you reached for another miniature glass, you noticed Dark’s expression. It was completely blank, as per usual. He had brought his current wine to his lips, never taking his attention away from some distant point on the wall opposite, like he had never said anything. Maybe he didn’t know the favor he was doing you. Maybe he genuinely wanted to try the other wine. Maybe you were overthinking it.

When you placed the glass in front of Dark, he didn’t hesitate to copy Rodger’s gesture from earlier. It was almost mechanical the way that he cocked his elbow and tasted the wine, taking in the same amount down to the milliliter and removing it from his mouth not a second later. It unnerved you how similar they were, given the preconceived notions that you had tried to stamp out the night you had met him, but he revealed no sly smile when he put the glass down. He had the deadpan that you had expected, laced with pensiveness.

“Floral,” he commented, the clouds parting in his eyes, “a slight hint of citrus. Bitter aftertaste.”

You caught the smallest downturn of the corners of his mouth and raised an eyebrow. “I would have imagined you preferred bitter notes.”

He paused, blinked, made you think you had said something wrong, and then pushed the glass forward, saying, “In some cases, possibly, but not tonight.”

“You know what?” Rodger’s voice broke through the soft exchange of words, “You might appreciate a Carménère more.”

You looked over to him, having hoped you had overestimated his determination, and made to take the glass away. When your hand was wrapped around the stem, though, he held it to the counter.

“If you would be so kind?”

The gentlemanly shtick was a tactic that would have worked had you not noticed he had intentionally interrupted you to act it out. That got on your nerves more than you thought possible, so, without a word, you tugged it out of his hands and placed it behind you. You felt like a rabid dog caught in an alleyway with enough room to sprint in circles, frothing at the mouth, but unable to escape over the wall itself. There were still six more hours until you could justify closing, but would he wait that long? You didn’t know what he wanted specifically, and that was a problem. You couldn’t see a way out of this, and you were starting to panic.

Dark cleared his throat.

Startled out of your thoughts, you tried not to physically flinch, but he definitely saw the way your pupils darted from him to Rodger.

He tapped the glass in front of him, a silent reminder both of your job and of your moment to recover.

“I’ll be right out.”

“Thank you, Dionysus,” Dark called after you.

You were out of earshot, the door having clicked shut behind you, when Rodger turned to him, that smile pulled awkwardly to one side.

“I thought you didn’t know their name?” he asked with the air of catching someone in a lie.

“I don’t.”

“But you called them Dionysus.”

“I did.”

A short scoff. He was cracking, and while Dark didn’t make it a habit to spend his energy on people who didn’t mean anything, it was satisfying to watch the façade go down, a sinking ship barely keeping itself afloat on a lazy tide.

“Is there a reason why you called them that?”

“Yes.”

Rodger made a gesture for him to continue, but, considering that he hadn’t picked up on his social cue, he wasn’t going to give him an answer. Instead, Dark simply picked up his original wine glass and halved its contents. It tasted good, but his look of pure exasperation was better.

“Look, I’d really appreciate it if you worked with me here.”

“To do what?”

“My job.”

For the first time that night, the sides of Dark’s mouth rose into a smile, and he laced his fingers on the bar as he glanced at the other man out of the corner of his eye. “Your job to get information on the bartender? May I ask who that information is going back to, or is that not for the ears of a stranger?”

Rodger’s skin paled. Dark’s grin widened.

You returned to a sight that you chose not to question. As you poured the wine into two fresh glasses, you both relished in the fear that spread across Rodger’s face and tried to curb your curiosity for why Dark looked so happy. Hell, he wasn’t just ‘happy’, he looked downright cheery, a glint in his eye as the man next to him practically shook in his seat like a drowned cat.

You glanced between them as they drank, trying to think what could have happened. Each possible scenario was more improbable than the last. Your mind returned to that earlier internal debate; did Dark intrude on your standoff because he wanted to have fun – the mere thought was laughable. Dark wanting to have fun, not having to be pushed into it by a friend? You’d have to be stupid to think that a possibility, but you didn’t know what the alternative was. He couldn’t have done it for your benefit, after all.

He seemed to be getting enough satisfaction out of Rodger’s reaction alone. The man was barely holding his glass still, and, even though he tried to rebuild his confident demeanor, there was a wariness that stayed planted in his body.

“I was just having a conversation with our friend here,” he started, stopping to gesture vaguely to Dark with a quivering hand, “and it made me wonder how long you’ve been open for?”

A terrible segue, even without knowing it wasn’t related to what they had been talking about. His time was running out. He was getting poorer by the second, and that was making him hasty. A few more jostles and he would be running out of the bar with his tail between his legs – but you weren’t there yet. You were still in the danger zone.

“Long enough,” you said hoping to keep the details close to your chest, “to have gained some kind of a reputation.”

“And some regulars, I’d imagine?”

You tried to keep your eyes firmly on Rodger and away from Dark as you replied, “In a sense.”

“Are they the type of people you’re used to being around?”

You had to try even harder. “Many of them aren’t.”

“I can’t imagine—" The pit in your stomach grew, “—it’s easy to find a familiar face in this town—” He was leading up to something, but you didn’t know how to stop him, “—so is that why you moved all the way out here?”

“Cherries.”

In tandem, you and Rodger turned your attentions to Dark, who was, in turn, staring right down into his glass. The wine, which you assumed he had tasted, reflected back the red and blue rings that jumped around the edge of his body slightly more erratically than before.

A second later, he continued, “It tastes surprisingly similar to cherries. And leather. Possibly tobacco.”

Rodger’s aggravation was palpable, as if it fought to overpower Dark’s waves for control over the air. He downed his glass in one, swift movement, taking with it any leftover composure. A sense of resignation was all that was left – not to leaving, but to doing his job by force.

Dark beat him to it.

“Another wine, Dionysus.”

You blinked. “What would you like?”

“Whatever you think is best.”

You were quick to realize what he was doing and that you would be safer following through with the order. Despite having spent more time in storage than standing at the bar, you weren’t about to challenge him when you recognized the danger it posed.

Without a word, you slipped into the backroom, leaving the two alone and hoping that you would return to your bar in one piece.

Fortunately for you, explosive violence was not Dark’s style. No, he was not so explicit in his distaste for liars and cheats, but that didn’t mean he was going to let it be. If anything, this was a treat for himself, for taking himself out of the house without accompaniment.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

The words were so blunt Dark could imagine them coming from his own mouth.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You’re wrecking this whole thing. I don’t know who you are or what relationship you have to—”

Dark leaned forward, elbows planted on the counter against his manners, and he tilted his head slightly in Rodger’s direction. Small, calculated moves to get him worrying again. “On occasion, I order drinks from their bar.” His fingers laced together. “They serve me those drinks. To my knowledge, that is all they do.” He glanced at him from the corner of his eye. “Why are you so concerned with that?”

“Because that isn’t all they do. I-I can’t tell you why but you have to be wary of them.”

That was rich. Real rich. In fact, Dark was certain that he had heard those exact words, that script, before, though he wasn’t the one being spoken to. It was so familiar that he wondered if letting him leave was the best course of action. Even if the scenario had changed, he didn’t need to let go of his goal, and this man, who was painfully similar to the monster he was tracking, offered the possibility of that.

But your bar becoming a crime scene would cause more problems than he was prepared to deal with. His resources had been spread thin the last few months, and getting them back together was trouble that he didn’t need to be added to. You certainly wouldn’t appreciate getting closed down for investigation, either, and that led Dark to a more passive solution.

The waves flicked out at the curves of his form, like the sparks of a flame that lapped at the edge of a confined pit. They bit inside and out, taking the fabric of his suit and splitting the threads, peeling the red and blue away to reveal the raw, inky black muscle buried beneath, tearing and gnawing and threatening to do the same to the surroundings.

“Intruding here won’t do you any good,” Dark stated simply, “and your time is up.”

“Don’t- you don’t scare me.”

“I don’t?”

It was no secret that Dark wasn’t human. He hadn’t been human for a long time. Not many in the house were, but the features that he monopolized – the cold demeanor, the monochrome palette, the absolute silence – never failed to extinguish someone’s confidence. Where there was resistance, all it took was a glance, a crack through which they saw the void, for them to crumble.

The man pawed at his pockets, ripped a folded square of cash from his wallet, and then scurried out of the front door, not letting his gaze stray from his destination for a single moment.

A beat passed, cushioned by the curious chatter of the other patrons and the dull string of notes from the jukebox.

“He paid.”

You weren’t surprised that Dark noticed your loitering nor that he predicted the question you were poised to ask. You didn’t want to have gone through all that stress just to lose out on fifteen bucks and change. Luckily, you saw a twenty-dollar note in front of where the guy had been sitting, which you dropped into your drawer without a second thought.

For a brief moment, you made eye contact with Dark. You didn’t say anything but neither did he. Instead, you nodded and he followed suit, a silent ‘thank you’ and ‘you’re welcome’ exchanged in a few breaths. It didn’t matter if he knew what he’d done, but the fact that he had done it warranted a modicum of trust that you held back before this night. Your body maintained its hesitation – the uncanny valley feeling of gray skin and flexing lines wasn’t going to disappear just like that – but it would be an easy thing to control.

On Dark’s side of things, he didn’t know how to feel about you – or, rather, he did know what he was supposed to feel, just not what he did. It was a complicated thing that greeted him when he lost himself to his thoughts, sitting on the same seat he had been in for hours while you went about tending to the other patrons. In theory, nothing should have changed. You didn’t act any different, so his opinion of you should have been maintained. Dark wasn’t known for being capricious, either. Some called him decisive, others called him plain stubborn, nobody called him anything close to flexible. And that was good. He couldn’t afford to, especially when it opened him up to being wrong. When so much was unstable, he had to be constant.

And yet there was a switch in his mind that was flicked by the end of the encounter. He didn’t know when exactly, and, more concerningly, he didn’t know what it did. Something was different, and, while it wasn’t major, it would have consequences, he was sure of that much.

Dark’s eyebrows furrowed as he stared into the bottom of his original glass. Empty.

“I have something you might like.”

He hadn’t noticed that you’d stopped in front of him, and his head snapped up to see you faster than you could track. It was only your manners that stopped you from laughing at you getting the drop on him for a change. That, and your demonstration of your appreciation would have been slightly spoiled.

“Technically,” you started, laying out a multitude of bottles on the counter, “it’s a wine cocktail.”

Dark watched as you combined the ingredients into a shaker that was already clinking with ice, only leaving out the club soda for him to squint at. His suspicions brought a slight smile to your face, but you soon refocused your attention on stirring the concoction in your hand. The condensation was making your skin stick to the metal, so you were happy to strain it out into a highball glass and top it off with the club soda. Dark’s eyes trailed it until you moved the drink directly in front of him.

If nothing else, it looked good.

“A claret cup.”

“For what?”

With each hand gripping the neck of a bottle, you paused. “Drinking?”

“Ah, no—” Dark drew it closer to him and peered into the reddish pour, “—I meant as in why are you giving it to me?”

You had already thanked him, albeit silently, once, and both of you knew that. Only, you also wanted to thank him for not asking any questions, for not prying into why that man had dug so deeply for your name, for not giving into the suspicions that you of the shady dealings, which you imagined were obligatory. Giving him a drink that you thought he would like was your best way of expressing that because you had no other way to do it. Words were not your forté, but that remained true even as he asked you to explain why.

So, you simply reiterated, tapping the bar, “For you to drink.”

To his credit, Dark stopped for barely a second before he sighed and brought it to his lips.

You wouldn’t admit that you watched with bated breath.

“It is,” he stopped to place the cup back on the wood, “sweet. A hint of citrus but more fruit than I would have expected.”

You let out a breath that you knew damn well you were holding. Subconsciously, your shoulders dropped, and whatever residual anxiety from earlier fully faded into the air.

You explained, “You can garnish it with mint or berries if you want. I didn’t think that suited you.”

He took another sip, favoring it over telling you that you were right. When it was halfway gone, larger blocks of ice scraping the bottom, he nodded, partially to himself and to you.

“Remind me of this the next time I am here.”

“Of course.”

As you were about to step away from the counter to tend to your other customers, a thought returned to you that prompted you to let your foot fall.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Dark, and feel no obligation to answer…”

He made a sound of affirmation, a vague hum you were half sure was just the foundation shifting, and you swallowed before opening your mouth again – as much as you tried to stay away from invasions of privacy, Dark had made the mistake of talking to you tonight, and you still felt a spark of confidence left over, enough to ask one simple thing.

“Where is Wilford?”

A short exhale that sounded tinted with strange relief.

“He got arrested.”

Was it bad that it didn’t surprise you?