[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

[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."