Let’s go have some drinks!

[healitwithwater]

Demyx is stumbling and carrying his sitar over his shoulder when he makes his way up to bar today. Too many people have waylayed him with important conversations, it's time to down enough antidotes to kill off a plague. That should take care of the Atlantean and the hangover

Comments

[isaysimplewords]

Cal, who wasn't really planning on checking out the bartending for the next couple of days, brightens when he hears singing. Funny how it should happen just a couple of days after he realized that no one sings here, not even him.

(For a person from a musical world, this is roughly like being someplace where no one shouts. Sure, you think you would notice the quiet, but how long would it take before you did?)

It sounds normal and real on a level Cal wouldn't even begin to explain, even if it's someone else's song (of course he can tell), so he decides he might have to go to happy hour today after all. He takes a seat with his ever-present mug of coffee and just listens.

[healitwithwater]

After the song, when people start showing up, Demyx starts dragging more chairs back behind the bar so he can maintain his little 'stage', playing to make the liquid dance and mix into the drinks because HEY, if you have water controlling power, what else would you use it for?

He does eventually get over to Cal, grinning like the loon he is.

"Hey man! Got a request for drink or song?"

[isaysimplewords]

"I could use a refill on my coffee," Cal says. "No other requests, though. Whatever you've got's fine." He smiles. "Hey, weren't you in here singing before?" He would have paid more attention if he'd realized at the time how unusual it would be here.

[healitwithwater]

"COFFEE FOR THE GENTLEMAN!" BAM! Coffee comes flying out of the pot and into the cup with a few notes of the Flash Gordon theme.

"Yeah man! I love the tunes, I try to spread them where I can. Life would be better if more people just sang, you know?"

[isaysimplewords]

Cal watches, impressed. He looks into his mug. Which - contains coffee, naturally. We're not really sure what he was expecting.

"Maybe," he says. "People sing more where I come from." It rarely made things better, though it helped him think sometimes.

[healitwithwater]

"Some people sing where I come from! A dream is a wish your heart makes! and the like. But in my Organization I'm the only one who sings. Unless I can blackmai- convince them to sing with me." It has the tone of usually taking a lot of embarrassing evidence or a lot of alcohol.

[isaysimplewords]

Convince? This concept is alien to Cal in a way that nothing else in Milliways has been. Some people are quiet, sure, they just don't talk much, but everyone at home sings. There's no convincing involved. There are some things that would just sound ridiculous spoken. He sips his coffee thoughtfully, not really noticing that it's still black.

"I can't believe I didn't notice it before," he says. "Look, people are even staring. They think it's weird."

[healitwithwater]

"I know, right?" Demyx says, so relieved to meet someone who understands what it's like when people give you weird looks for singing of all things. "Of course, I'm used to being weird anyway, so the singing doesn't get much of a different reaction than I normally get."

[isaysimplewords]

Cal grins. "You'd love my world, then," he says. "No one would look twice if you weren't singing to them. It'd be like eavesdropping. It is a little weird if you're singing someone else's song," he adds, "but that's usually just for albums and stuff." Sometimes someone else's song is the one you need, especially when you're younger and putting things to words is harder.

[healitwithwater]

Demyx's smile falters for just a moment before it returns. It's a weird thing to see, like a cigarette burn in the corner of a film, just there for three frames before vanishing and making you wonder if it was really there.

"Oh! Wait, one of my bosses sang with me once, without prompting." Demyx makes a very exaggerated pained face. "...Having the element of air doesn't mean you have any vocal control. Just an FYI."

[isaysimplewords]

Cal blinks, unsure if he saw what he thought he just saw, but is almost immediately distracted. Air. That sounds familiar.

- for that matter, so does the fact that the rest of the sentence didn't make much sense. (Cal's never heard of bad singing before.)

And that's about when Cal finally takes a look at the specials board.

Ah.

"That'd be Xaldin?" he guesses.

[healitwithwater]

That's the idea.

He beams - no, really, his smile is like pure sunlight with the way it brightens.

"Yeah! Xaldin! Number III - he's my boss! One of them, anyway!"

[isaysimplewords]

Cal can't help but smile back.

"I talked to him yesterday," he says. "Interesting guy." Even for this place. Cal hasn't met anyone in Milliways who was boring, but he also hasn't run into too many people who claim persecution from cartoon mice. He's kind of filed it away in a mental spot marked 'crazy people really are everywhere.'

But now there's the drink special.

. . . Cal's not gonna mention it.

[healitwithwater]

"He's great! He can be kind of a killjoy sometime, but I guess that's because he's gotta be den mom to us." Demyx says, mostly thinking aloud on this. Yeah, Xaldin kind of is the 'mom', Xigbar would most definitely be the dad.

[isaysimplewords]

"He said something along those lines, yeah," Cal says vaguely. Then, "I don't think I caught your name." Xaldin did mention someone by name. Cal's curious. "I'm Cal Chandler, New York, 1997."

[healitwithwater]

"I'm Demyx! Organization XIII's Number IX - The Melodious Nocturne!" yes, that introduction does include spinning the absurdly sized sitar and posing.