milliways_bar

[shortofcrazy]

When Riley comes downstairs, he's wearing a backpack, dragging a suitcase, and carrying a box, with a heavily-weighted paper shopping bag dangling from a forearm as he makes his swift, awkward way to and through the door, his head down

Comments

[howling_laugh]

"Leaving so soon?" It's rather quiet in the main room of the bar. It doesn't happen often, but at odd hours of late night/early morning, after happy hour and before breakfast...

Coyote is sitting at the bar, smoking a cigarette.

[shortofcrazy]

It's quiet. Coyote's voice carries even in a crowded bar.

Riley pauses, and then he turns around, his hands in his pockets. "Yeah," he says, and his voice is only a little rough. "Going home for a while." He doesn't take a step toward her.

[howling_laugh]

Her eyebrows raise at his expression. Her original tone was teasing, she now looks curious. "Who pissed in your cornflakes, Riley Poole?"

[shortofcrazy]

"I don't like cornflakes," he says, half-heartedly. He scuffs a shoe. "I'm more of a pancake man."

[howling_laugh]

"It is almost time for breakfast." It's not quite coaxing, but she's leaning more in that direction. Coyote disapproves of things that upset Riley! Unless she is doing them. Then it's funny.

[shortofcrazy]

Riley's waffling.

(The mental pun might ordinarily cause at least a slight snort, but today isn't exactly what you'd call ordinary.)

It's pretty obvious, too, as he glances briefly over his shoulder at the door, something of a hunted look on his face. In the end, though, he walks over to the bar, thuds down on the stool beside Coyote, rests his head in his hand, and says, "If anyone tries to say they know me, I'm a doppelganger named Rudolph."

[howling_laugh]

"Right," she says, rolling her R in a dubious manner. "If you would do us the honors, bar."

Coyote doesn't usually have a full breakfast- more like coffee and cigarettes. But that is exactly what appears before them. Pancakes and fruit and a drink for Riley, scrambled eggs, toast and a slice of melon for Coyote.

"You are not drunk enough to have a red nose."

[shortofcrazy]

"I'm not drunk at all, funnily enough," says Riley. He eyes the breakfast for a minute, then picks up the fork that came with it. He starts tracing a vague pattern (of nothingness; Riley Poole is not a designer) in the pooled maple syrup.

[howling_laugh]

"No? Perhaps you should be, you seem depressed enough." She shovels some eggs onto her toast and crunches away happily. "It is slightly gauche to drink with breakfast, but you could be excused, with a good enough excuse."

[shortofcrazy]

"I'm not--"

He exhales; starts over.

"My girlfriend had sex with her best friend," Riley says, and you bet your ass he's staring at the plate and not looking up. "We were, uh," and he smiles and then laughs, but it's not the real kind, or the steady kind. "We were talking about getting married."

[howling_laugh]

Her eggs have tomatoes and asparagus, yay!

Oh wait, was he saying something?

Coyote mentally rewinds, and makes an 'ewww' face. "Well, it is a good thing you didn't decide to get married then, isn't it?"

[shortofcrazy]

-- Riley snorts, a little bit. He starts carving a bite of pancake in an admirably perfect square.

"Yep. Faaaantastic." He adds, "Best decision I never made," but his heart isn't in it.

[howling_laugh]

"Riley," she says. "Stop playing with your food, or I will eat it too."

Coyote shakes her head. "And now I will give you advice you do not want to hear. Remember the good times and the bad times and the weird times. Remember what you shared together and what you went through alone. Then get drunk or have terrible rebound sex, and forget all of it that was not important."

[shortofcrazy]

"Well, you were right about one thing," says Riley, and he stabs the square bite of pancake and points it at her. "I didn't want to hear that."

In the mouth goes the chunk of pancake. So when he says, "I thought it was all important," it is rather difficult to understand him.

[howling_laugh]

"You are lucky this is too tasty to interrupt," Coyote says, pointing her fork at him. "Or else I would take you upstairs and make you have rebound sex with me. And it would be good, not bad."

[shortofcrazy]

Riley chokes on pancake.