Difference between revisions of "Logs:Kibitzing"

>---< Snowasis, High Reaches Weyr(#555RJ) >----------------------------------<

  The Snowasis is rarely quiet, and even then, the high-ceilinged former    
  weyr is kept from echoing by the fantastical booths tucked into its       
  convoluted perimeter. The secluded seating spaces have been shaped from   
  the truncated stalagmites that escaped the smoothing of the main floor,   
  and are both softened and separated by colorful hangings that are thick   
  and opaque enough to make each corner its own private nook.               
                                                                            
  Some of the smaller stalactites still roam the ceiling, their jagged teeth
  tracing a bumpy, inverted spine to the hearth. There, a thick rug with a  
  low klah table and comfortable armchairs and couches sit, their upholstery
  and cushions changed sporadically to match the season: bright, light      
  colors in the summer, fresh greens and yellows in the spring, warm        
  autumnals in fall, and clear, rich hues for winter. Small tables litter   
  the rest of the cavern, enough to fit up to four people each, while stools
  stand along the smooth wooden bar behind which is the passthrough window  
  to the kitchen. Glass-paneled cabinetry behind the bar provides a clear   
  view of the available liquors, the many colors reflecting the soft light  
  of glows tucked into strategic niches around the cavern.

It's late enough in the evening that the bar has got a fair crowd going, but Everett's sharing the duties tonight with another fellow, and they seem to have lucked out--no complicated orders, no fights, nothing particularly noteworthy but making sure that patrons have their refills in a timely manner. Of course, also nothing interesting, which is how it is that the more experienced man is having some kind of excited conversation about politics down at one end of the bar, and Everett is at the other with a pack of cards laid out, playing a solitaire game with the arrangement slightly modified to account for the glass somebody left behind that he hasn't yet gotten around to clearing away. Trusting, to leave it there every time he goes to fill an order.

Yesia's been floating through the Snowasis for hours, unattached to any particular group despite there being plenty to choose from. The greenrider is bright with laughter and drink, and along with a bluerider who has been doting on her with intentions that are probably pretty transparent to any onlookers. Maybe they're transparent to her, too, but hey! People are paying attention to her, so who cares? It's not until that bluerider leaves to get a new bottle and is drawn into extremely animated political conversation that Yesia realizes she's been ditched, and she spends some time pouting prettily, generally huffing and puffing in a bid for attention before she finally gets up to go to the bar herself. The abandoned cards don't get much of her attention at first; she puts her glass right on the counter and shoves it forward, next to the glass that's already there while she waits. And looks at the cards. And then reaches over to move one of the cards to another pile. It's a sensible move, if only it were her place to make it.

Whatever cocktail it is that Everett has gotten stuck with, it's something that actually requires him consulting written instructions... and fetching some things out of the back of the icebox that seem barely recognizeable. Whatever it is, it takes him a minute, and it manages to earn some grumbling about the time, but not about the results. Then it's back to his cards. Two glasses? What two glasses? Fine, he'll take care of them--first the one that's been there, headed for the sink, and then this new one. "Buying our own drinks now, are we?" It's not mocking. Wholly sympathetic. Okay, at least ninety percent sympathetic. "What're you having?"

Yesia doesn't bat an eye at Everett's return, pulling herself onto the stool so she can see the counter and cards properly before reaching out a slender finger for another card, with a curious look at him, one that says she'd stop progressing his game if he asked, but not a moment before. "Your friend," the other bartender, "took my company. So I guess so. I don't know why everyone talks politics like it's so interesting. It's boring." It doesn't sound boring at the other end, but she digresses. "One of the red ones. The bottom shelf," sounds dour, but she's a weyrling, and her marks are short. "Until he comes back. If he comes back. Wait." Up goes a finger. "Does he have a tab?"

There is an appraising shift of eyebrows right back at her, but while Everett does glance down at his cards, he doesn't actually offer a word in protest. This should be odd, in itself. Kibitzing is, after all, an offense right up there with murder, armed robbery, and putting the toilet paper on the wrong direction, but the bartender seems disinclined to prevent the interference. "I am not putting your drink on his tab," firmly. "How would you like it if I put a stranger's drinks on your tab? No, I'm afraid it can't be done." Voice dropping a few decibels: "I should be convinced to pour you from the wrong bottle, though, if you'll sweeten the deal for me."

"I'm not a stranger," the greenrider says lightly, pointing at the glass. "He's been buying my drinks all night, there's no reason he should stop now. He just got distracted." There goes another card, and she pulls from the deck. His words catch her attention though, as she lays them down for her perusal, and her pretty mouth purses at Everett with something like concern. Yesia's eyes go big and innocent. "How do you mean?" doesn't sound like she's reluctant, just unclear on his terms. But there's something bright in her eyes, curious, and maybe a small smile is tugging one corner of her lips

"If you'd like to go get him and bring him over here to place the order, I'll be happy to put it on his tab," calmly. Everett is smiling a bit too much for this formality, though, slightly lopsided, tugging more at one side more than the other. "Or you could just give me a little sugar, say, right there." One finger indicates the spot in question, on one clean-shaven cheek. "I promise to be a gentleman about it, but there has to be a little something to look forward to on nights like this." He does flick eyes down at the cards again, but only for a moment; he's actually still looking at her when he moves the card she just played to the other possible move. His tolerance apparently doesn't extend to allowing her to do it wrong.

Yesia casts a look down the bar, where the bluerider in question has settled in for what appears to be the long haul, and another man has joined them to interject something about proddy queens and spying Igens. She sighs so very heavily the weight of the world might be pressing her own. "That's it?" sounds all unimpressed, but with her drink ticket all that distance away, she seems inclined to agree. "How many drinks will you give me?" She is tapping a neatly manicured nail on the newly revealed card, having not yet considered them; her attention is on him, wholly now.

His look follows hers, perhaps not entirely inscrutable, but under the circumstances at least likely unscrutinized, making the difference academic. His face doesn't seem to express much besides mild amusement. "That's it," Everett confirms, after a moment. Then, only ever-so-gently chiding, "I am working, you understand, and I'm given to believe that even in a Weyr, someone would have something to say about more than that. For that, you can have a drink. If you'll stay and talk to me awhile, I might refill it."

Edyis heads up a short flight of stairs from the Weyr entrance.
Edyis has arrived.

It's a standard evening in Reaches' bar, with a steady crowd and drinks flowing, despite what appears to be a lack of available bartenders. There's one down at the far end, engaged in lively conversation with two riders about politics, and Everett, who is being monopolized at the moment by a particular greenrider. Yesia clearly has nothing else to do, even after a glance around the room turns up at least three separate groups of greenriders she could probably easily meld with. "Fine," she says, and plants her hand on the bartop so she can stand on the rungs of the stool and lean forward. Most assuredly, those with keen senses of bottoms turn to look. She curls a finger at him to come closer. "I'm short," she explains.

Monopolized, that's a word for it. Anyway, though there appears to be plenty he should be doing--like at least one person making impatient noises and waving a glass about, and the fact that at some point he seems to have started a solitaire game on the bartop--who can blame an ordinary red-blooded young man for getting a little distracted by this? "I'm sure nobody minds," he tells Yesia, and then he's leaning across the bar towards her. Shockingly unprofessional, that's what it is, but then, his coworker has just noisily decried some notable figure as being an actual bastard.

It isn't that Edyis has an excellent sense of bottoms, really she's just detangling herself from a knot of Snowdrift riders, and making her way over to the bar and there it is. The arch of her brow is unmistakable, and that mischievous curve in her smile... well. She sidles up to the bar to one side of Yesia and clears her throat rather loudly. "Don't suppose I could get a refill on a pitcher and fresh glasses, after you two finish snogging or whatever it is you are about to do."

"Shut up," Yesia delivers to Edyis with all the scathing annoyance due the brownrider, right before she leans forward to plant a kiss on Everett's cheek, staying close enough to murmur, "Maybe not quite the bottom shelf," before she withdraws, to settle herself down on the stool again. No more bottoms, to at least one audible sigh. She turns her attention almost at once back to Everett's cards, with a sidelong look at the brownrider, her eyes daring.

If Yesia hadn't spoken up, there's a moment where it does really look like Everett might do the hasty apology thing. But he seems to take the admonition for a more general one, and so he stays shut up exactly long enough to extract just that from the greenrider, and then he's very quickly turning to get a bottle from, indeed, not quite the bottom shelf. But not so high as to be deeply suspicious. "How many glasses do you need?" Brisk, back to actually doing his job now, Everett is asking the question of Edyis while still delivering the glass to the redhead.

Edyis grins widely at Yesia's shut up, utterly immune to scathing looks. "Six, please. You seem to be settling right in, Everett." She notes before casting a glance over Yesia. "Oh quit pouting. It isn't like you really hate me, and you know it." She murmurs, leaning against the bar with her elbows braced. "Don't suppose anything new has come in drink wise has it?" This directed to the bartender as he works.

"No, but you're still rude." Yesia takes her glass with a grateful little nod and a, "Thank you, Everett," the use of his name experimental, having not bothered to ask for it before. She's watching the bartender now, though, and looking exceedingly smug with the sudden efficiency of his work. With one chin propped in her hand, she continues to play his solitaire game for him while he works, her head tilted just enough that she's not reading upside down. "Do you ever think you drink too much," Yesia asks Edyis absently when the other girl wonders about the stock. She flips more cards off the deck.

Six. Six glasses. One, two--you get the idea. Everett puts them out, then eyes them, then turns to grab a tray to put them on. "If this is getting split six ways, I think you may be exaggerating the situation just a bit. It's only a pitcher." Right, that, too, to be filled. "Since you've so kindly introduced me," he adds, to Edyis, "would you mind making the introductions in the opposite direction?" Talking like Yesia isn't sitting right there, but if one assumes he's not actually a blithering idiot, then it would probably be a safe assumption that this is intentional. Safer, after he gives a little look in her direction, and starts grinning. "I'm not sure what I'd have to give her to get a name, but I'm afraid I might not be able to afford it."

"Probably guilty as charged on that account." Edyis chirps of rudeness. "But, I don't have your curves to attract attention, so I make do." The brownrider teases lightly, her mood far too good for Yesia to tug it down. "Better make it two pitchers then." She replies with a sigh, "I am not entirely sure how much those guys are going to drink." Thumbing back at the table of riders. "Tell you what, you buy her next drink, and that introduction is yours," Edyis states glancing over with a crooked close-lipped smile at Yesia.

Yesia? She sits there looking pretty, as is her wont, with her fingertip resting on a card and her lips pursed thoughtfully. It's clearly for show. The gaze she cuts to Edyis is briefly suspicious before she removes her finger, plucks the card up, and puts it to the final stack with a thoughtful little hum. "I don't need your help," Yesia asides under her breath, but her voice is a normal tone when she says to Everett, "You never even asked."

"Done." On both counts, evidently, since there's a second pitcher quickly forthcoming. Very good-natured, Everett says to Yesia, "Neither did you. Only seems fair, doesn't it?" By some very strange standard of fair. "I could go ask your friend over there instead, but I'd rather he was kept safely busy and unaware, for the moment." Conspiratorial nose-tap. "Are you sure that's where you want that?" He lays a finger on the card where it's been played, but this time he doesn't dislodge it immediately, so that's at least more polite than his last correction. Although, Miss Manners probably never wrote anything on the subject of how to handle it when someone else is playing your game.

Edyis grins, "Everett, may I introduce the lovely Yesia, Weyrling to Green Aeaeth." There's a smile at the aside, and it is returned with an equally covert, "I know." Possibly that thought had never entered the brownrider's mind. She eyes the solitaire game a moment while she waits, amused.

Yesia snaps the card back up with a long-suffering expression that must encompass her entire day, since Everett's only played a very small part in it thus far. That amount of annoyance can't happen in that little time. "No," she says, tilting her chin up and really looking at Everett as she's introduced. The smile she gives him is somehow still bright through her annoyance. "It's very nice to meet you," she says, using her free hand to lift her glass and toast him. "I don't see any other moves," is of the game, but she puts the card back near the deck this time, not on the pile he's challenging. "Do you, Edyis?"

"Charmed." Everett can at least make a good show of sounding like he really is. Charmed. Despite the odd circumstances of the actual introduction. "No--maybe you're right. Edyis? That spot loses in three moves, no, four. But all good things, as they say, must come to an end." He doesn't bother playing out those next moves; he just leaves the card sit right there. "I was hoping perhaps you'd have sharper eyes. One of you, anyway. This game supposedly has a one-in-three chance of winning, but so far I've won four of the last eleven. Looks like it might be four in twelve after all." Wait for it. "Not getting lucky tonight, looks like. Maybe I ought to go actually wash some of these glasses."

"I actually... don't know how to play," Edyis states sheepishly when pinned between them for a judgement call. She's grabbing that tray now that everything is all together. Maybe it's the overall situation, but she offers; "At any rate, you two have a good night, I better get these drinks back to the table."

"You don't?" is terribly surprised, Yesia's eyes going wide. She seems ready to pursue the point and worry it, disbelieving that with all that time Edyis spends in places like this, with questionable company, she doesn't know solitaire, but...she doesn't. She looks between Everett and Edyis, opens her mouth to speak, and is interrupted by a call from the other side of the bar. That bluerider, beckoning her over. "Sure you do," is for Edyis, but Yesia's eyes linger on Everett slightly longer. "There's not another move there," she says, tapping the cards once more as she slides off the stool, "but good luck. Don't forget you owe me a drink. Not tonight, but...someday real soon." A wink and a smile, and the greenrider slinks down the bar, to the man with the real drinks tab.

"You don't?" So, Yesia isn't the only one surprised by this, and Everett is not the world's most effective echo. Unfortunately, the rest of it doesn't produce nearly the level of cleverness that he might be looking for in the way of parting. "Real soon," is what he manages to say to Yesia, and then there's a little cursing under his breath. "Let me help you get those," he offers to Edyis, a few moments of carrying pitchers a welcome break before he's back to the drudgery of being at work instead of the fun of being at a bar, even though both of those things might occupy very nearly same point in space-time.