[Location: Bar in Central] It's Crismas O'Clock Somewhere
When it came to Christmas, Sam Axe was no Scrooge. When it came to Christmas in a subterranean city after being kidnapped by aliens, he was no jolly elf. Hell, he was well below reindeer in the joy to the world stakes.
It felt stupid to try, too -- the Extras did the fa-la-la up at all the shopping malls and to all intents and purposes it was a good capitalist happy holiday, but it felt like the kind of thing they did to get you to revert to habit. Threw you a bone to encourage the numbness setting in. This was nothing new: they'd been doing it in prisoner-of-war camps since William Wallace gave himself blue facepaint.
Anyway, it was usually Maddie putting up the nativity scenes and strongarming them over; Fi sitting at Midnight Mass; his job to cut the turkey open in the spraypaint snow of a Miami Christmas. Mikey looking awkward as hell, like Christmas was something he hadn't been briefed on in years. It wasn't the holiday otherwise. Without the Westens, Fi, and even Jesse, Christmas reverted to what it had always been before: depressive, heavy drinking. The traditional kind. God bless us, every one.
Getting off the tram in Central, you had your pick of bars. There was even one hole-in-the-wall dive with a cracked TV set, thick with tinsel fug and beer, but in the end he made his way to the emptiest and least decorated bar he could find. The aliens, at least, knew what a depressing bar should be: cracked spray-on letters on the glass windows spelling "CRISMAS." That was beautiful. You had to have a degree in not giving a crap before you got that good.
When he sat down on the sagging seats and ordered a mojito, he discovered the downside of a perfectly godawful bar: perfectly godawful drinks. His mojito was mint slush and flat soda water. "Augh," he said, on the first sip. Then he took another. "Jesus christ. I had to be sure I wasn't hallucinating how bad it was."
"Sir?" said the bartender, which was how you could tell he wasn't real. "I can replace your drink."
"I've had better mojitos from grade-school lemonade stands." He tried to rub his tongue against his palate as a retreat. "Yeah, still tasting it, you guys should bottle that aftertaste and use it for crowd control. Damn. I need to shampoo my tongue."
"Sir?"
It was too bad. He'd gone to the bar that he'd found out John Casey had worked at, only to find that there was no John Casey there any more. Sam got up and with no preamble elbowed his way behind the bar: "Sir," the bartender said, but he paid him no mind. Neither did any of the other barflies, who in any case also weren't real and huddled at a booth. From there it was an easy step to commandeer the limes, the wilting mint, and the rum.
"Looks like it's time," said Sam Axe, "to get into the spirit... of Crismas."
[OOC: Totally open if you want Sam to mix you a holiday drink. Free puns, all past their use-bys.]
It felt stupid to try, too -- the Extras did the fa-la-la up at all the shopping malls and to all intents and purposes it was a good capitalist happy holiday, but it felt like the kind of thing they did to get you to revert to habit. Threw you a bone to encourage the numbness setting in. This was nothing new: they'd been doing it in prisoner-of-war camps since William Wallace gave himself blue facepaint.
Anyway, it was usually Maddie putting up the nativity scenes and strongarming them over; Fi sitting at Midnight Mass; his job to cut the turkey open in the spraypaint snow of a Miami Christmas. Mikey looking awkward as hell, like Christmas was something he hadn't been briefed on in years. It wasn't the holiday otherwise. Without the Westens, Fi, and even Jesse, Christmas reverted to what it had always been before: depressive, heavy drinking. The traditional kind. God bless us, every one.
Getting off the tram in Central, you had your pick of bars. There was even one hole-in-the-wall dive with a cracked TV set, thick with tinsel fug and beer, but in the end he made his way to the emptiest and least decorated bar he could find. The aliens, at least, knew what a depressing bar should be: cracked spray-on letters on the glass windows spelling "CRISMAS." That was beautiful. You had to have a degree in not giving a crap before you got that good.
When he sat down on the sagging seats and ordered a mojito, he discovered the downside of a perfectly godawful bar: perfectly godawful drinks. His mojito was mint slush and flat soda water. "Augh," he said, on the first sip. Then he took another. "Jesus christ. I had to be sure I wasn't hallucinating how bad it was."
"Sir?" said the bartender, which was how you could tell he wasn't real. "I can replace your drink."
"I've had better mojitos from grade-school lemonade stands." He tried to rub his tongue against his palate as a retreat. "Yeah, still tasting it, you guys should bottle that aftertaste and use it for crowd control. Damn. I need to shampoo my tongue."
"Sir?"
It was too bad. He'd gone to the bar that he'd found out John Casey had worked at, only to find that there was no John Casey there any more. Sam got up and with no preamble elbowed his way behind the bar: "Sir," the bartender said, but he paid him no mind. Neither did any of the other barflies, who in any case also weren't real and huddled at a booth. From there it was an easy step to commandeer the limes, the wilting mint, and the rum.
"Looks like it's time," said Sam Axe, "to get into the spirit... of Crismas."
[OOC: Totally open if you want Sam to mix you a holiday drink. Free puns, all past their use-bys.]