[OTA] I Just Picked Me a Plum

[intotherough]

Friday nights were brisk in any bar, but at Ben's the crowd tends to thin out early with the younger people trailing off to more exciting places - be that the Four Suits more more drinking or the Wild Card for dancing - and by the time late evening rolled around, the place was limited to his regulars (it did kind of jazz him, honestly, that he had regulars other than Victor and the wife) and it was quiet enough that someone felt perfectly free to come and poke him if they wanted another beer.

So he took advantage of the time to go fiddle with the piano.

He started with traditional Scottish songs - both the bright and upbeat ones about death and execution and the melancholy ones also often about death before moving on to the rock music of his youth and that his mum had listened to when he was young; some Guns'n'Roses, some Queen, a little Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

Eventually, though, he started picking at a particular song. Sinatra wasn't his favorite, honestly, but you made allowances for your friends, even when they were thirty-five going on eighty.

Comments

[heartvestment]

She was having a drink and figuring out her schedule for next week, but the lure of the piano is too much. She just has to get up from her seat to flit over and rest her arms on top of the piano, listening to him play. After he's done, and after she gives him a little round of applause, she'll ask, "do you know Smile?"

[intotherough]

"I'm not actually an expert on crooners," he tells her, "but I think I know that one." And he shifts out of Sinatra and into Nat King Cole. His tenor is a good match for the song, soft and a bit melancholy.

[heartvestment]

She'll listen to him sing, a smile on her face before she joins in. "Too bad I didn't know you'd be singing," she says once the song is over. "Else I would've brought my guitar."

[intotherough]

"I'm practicing, mostly," Ben tells her, closing the lid on the piano so he can lean on it. "Figured Victor would vastly prefer a song to a drawn-out explanation of how they first met." Be a bit awkward, all in all, to explain to the Deck how he arrested Ciaran on a boat in the bloody North Sea.

And also that the groom's name is really Ciaran.

"I heard you're playing Zoe down the aisle? On the guitar, then?"

[heartvestment]

"Probably. I'm just glad Zoe didn't choose me for a speech. I wouldn't know what to say besides 'I taught this kid how to walk in heels and now she rocks them better than I do'." She steps back from the piano with a little snort of laughter. "Violin, actually. But on the guitar would be interesting. I'll have to try it out sometime."

[intotherough]

"I saw her sprinting down the hall in Spades once, in what had to be four inches. It was pretty impressive, though I was fair sure she was going to break her neck." But no, apparently not. He'll never understand women's fashion.

He stretches his arms over his head before getting up to head back to the bar. "Aye, well, there was no getting out of it once Victor asked me to be best man." Before he asked the lady in question, but Victor was all about doing things his own way. "Shan't be too hard, though, and I doubt either of them will be wanting much in the way of speaking."

[heartvestment]

"That's how we Huntly girls kick it. I wouldn't have it any other way." She grins happily, settling at the bar again.

"No, I doubt it. Knowing the two of them, they'll just be waiting until the moment they can leave and, ah, finish up with that pesky little matter of consummating the marriage or whatnot."

[intotherough]

"I can't say I mind the sight, myself." Of pretty girls running down halls in lethal shoes. Victor just shakes his head, but his best friend isn't one to put much care into those sorts of details.

"Some singing and some dancing," he says as he fixes her another Old Peculiar and slides it across. "I expect that we'll be serenading the bride, but after that, well." He expected them to slip out pretty quickly.

[heartvestment]

"I sincerely hope that you're looking at me or Kathryn. My little sister's already having enough boy trouble without a man over twice her age getting into the mix," she teases, taking a drink. "And there's definitely going to be dancing. I've been expressly told to not allow my date to wallflower the entire evening."

[intotherough]

And her cousin Jessica. Her aunt Olivia and her mother were actually closer to his age, truthfully. "Please. I leave the cradle-robbing to the groom, and the other groomsman. I'll have you know I haven't dated younger than twenty-six."

[heartvestment]

"Very good. I'm suitably impressed." She gives him a little grin. "Though Victor is quite the cradle robber, isn't he? I shouldn't talk, though - I might end up following his example. There are no cute ones my age." Pout pout.

[intotherough]

"I think I recall a slightly...well, he never looks panicked, but something of that nature on his face, when he found out she was only twenty." Closing in on twenty-two when October comes 'round again, but still acting more like thirty. "You could always skew older, you know."

[heartvestment]

"I can't imagine him being panicked. He's too charming and smooth." She laughs a little, running a hand through her hair. "I doubt it. Maybe I'll just become an old spinster."

[intotherough]

"It's the Irish in him," he says with a shrug. That wasn't as much a secret as it'd once been. "They learn the charm before they learn to speak, to my thinking.

"You can join me," he says. "Like as not, I'll be an old bachelor."

[heartvestment]

"Good. We can both try to reclaim our youth together." She giggles a little. "It feels so weird to know I'm nearing 30."

[intotherough]

"I'm nearing forty." His tone is dry, but he shrugs. "Not so bad, though, I suppose. I'm told gray will make me look distinguished."

[heartvestment]

"Oh, you'll be a great old grandpa type." She grins. "You'll look stunning with the cane."

[intotherough]

"I don't even want to be thinking on it," he says, and winks. "Talk to me in fifteen years, lass."