Chapter Text
The Last Word *
gin || green chartreuse || maraschino liqueur || lime juice
combine equal parts,
shake violently,
serve up with an impaled cherry or two
“I mean…” Hapi is saying, as she twists the broad globe of her Belgian sour between her fingers. It’s an hour before her shift begins, and she’s sitting on the barstool with one leg bent under and the other propped on the foot rail. “I wasn’t expecting a fireworks first date. I wasn’t expecting to be bunnies between the sheets—”
“—eels fluorescing in the dark—” Byleth adds drolly from behind her bar battlestation.
“—wild, animal, feral—” Hapi ticks the words off on her fingers like she’s collating the search terms she’ll be using later to filter craigslist personals.
It’s 4 pm, thirsty Thursday, and the first wave of the college cohort is ducking through the fairylight-strung threshold of Pub Abyss, aka downtown Market Street’s worst-kept secret: twelve beers on tap, two pool tables (one with a faulty quarter drawer that gives out free games if someone were to jimmy it enough), midshelf wells, fresh flowers on the tables, and the school crowd brings the chatter.
“—limbs everywhere, mouths everywhere—” Byleth’s eyes are midori-green and mischievous as she pours happy hour beers for her grad student regulars. Broad side of the glass tilts against the spout until halfway to the top. Muscle memory, rinse and repeat.
“—teeth clamping, fingers pinching—” Hapi is still saying.
“—sheets so wet afterward you can’t sleep in them—”
“—so you both conk on the couch—”
All wide-eyed and shut-mouthed, Byleth grabs the four beers from her bartop and carries them to the happy hour crowd. Her green hair floats wildly behind. A frizzy liability, a hedge in need of a gardener. Byleth would shear it herself if there weren’t a direct correlation between hair length and high tips.
Every sip and the pub grows louder. It doesn’t take much to free the barflies from their course-schedule bondage. They set magnetic-tagged library books on the bartop, which they immediately neglect in favor of their favorite hobby: gossip. The loose lips and sinking ships of academic departmental politics.
Byleth tunes the gossip in and out like it’s the opinions hour of a public radio station. She nods to orders, makes a suggestion or two. (‘Hot day like this? Can’t go wrong with a whiskey sour. You don’t mind eggwhites, do you?’) When she returns behind the bar, Hapi is still talking about post-coital couch entanglement: “—uncomfortable as fuck, neck cricks, backaches, arms hugging your boobs too tight—”
“—never entering REM cycle—”
“—and yet, still somehow the best. Well, that’s not what this date was.” Hapi clamps her mouth shut, stifling a little sigh. Byleth is grateful. For some reason, every time Hapi sighs some obnoxious reply guy, some self-absorbed gym rat, some narcissistic David-Foster-Wallace-guzzling beat-poet jam-band hipster always seems to appear at her elbow to derail their whole conversation.
“He’s a tax-adjuster, By. But he was nice to me. And vanilla sex is still sex. Besides, a tax adjuster who agrees to a punk show on a Wednesday night can’t be all bad, right?”
Hapi’s fingers twitch the beer. A pale head of foam flirts with the rim of her glass, but Byleth knows she’s not nervous, just bored—just romantically, routinely, existentially bored.
Byleth pours herself a taster, a freshly tapped local amber, and rests her chin on her fist. “So what’d he do?”
“We had a couple of hours before the show started, so we ducked into this pizza place to grab a slice—” Just then, Byleth feels a gust push through the door, stirring the cocktail napkins on the bartop. “—behind you!”
Byleth squishes herself against the speed rail. “Coming through!” Alois calls jovially while wading past with a case of glass bottles on each shoulder. He pulls and kicks the cooler door with the kind of rote movements that would make a robot cry.
“So pizza,” Hapi continues, “You know the sort of place. Extra-larges sitting under heat lamps. They pull off a slice and burn it in the oven.”
“—the mismatched table tiles are grouted with cheap powdered parmesan—”
“—and every single staff member is high as ever-living fuck.”
“I love those places.”
“God, me too. But this tax-adjuster mook sits down to eat his pizza with a fork and knife—off the grease-stained paper plate.”
“Please tell me your date did not end there.” Byleth waves to an incoming group, all shorts and skirts and tank tops that show off their newly freckled summer skin.
Despite its rather stygian name, Pub Abyss is a bright bar. Fairylights hang from the glass racks, ceiling pendants, and lamps at each booth. Photons everywhere. And yet, sometimes, being tied to the drink rail feels like a waste of daylight.
It’s the season of patio drinks. Light liquors, bright citrus, tikis with their islander flavors. Byleth shakes a whiskey sour, all clenched lean muscles and controlled fury as the citrus and ice churn the eggwhite into foam.
“He was sawing into the cardboard-ass crust with a butter knife! He had to get a second paper plate when he ripped through the first one. It was embarrassing.” Byleth doesn’t know whether to laugh or cluck. “Who has got the time for some snobby motherfucker like that? I ditched him and went to the show myself.”
“Hapi!” Byleth strains the sour into a rocks glass. “He probably didn’t want to get grease on his shirt or something.” The taster straw is in her mouth when her phone vibrates: One message, two messages, that’s three messages blowing up her apron pocket, “—Oh! Hold on.” She taps the screen, “It’s probably dad.”
Byleth stands corrected.
<unknown>
you don’t know me. and don’t ask how I got your number.
help me settle a bet?
if a girl invites herself over to a guy’s apartment for a single-player videogame,
would you say that’s a sure thing?
asking for a friend
literally, I don’t joke
Byleth has questions: Who’s this bitch? What kind of person leads into a conversation with, ‘I don’t joke’? And who in the bumpy and be-mountained state of Fodlan couldn’t clearly see that the girl in question is looking to get some?
<Byleth>
Depends. Either she wants your friend’s D,
Or she’s broke and really wants to play that game.
<unknown>
those are the options, yeah
<Byleth>
How hot is your friend?
(do not send pics)
<unknown>
hot but thinks he’s god’s gift etc.
works out but doesn’t actually improve
decent muscle-tone though
<Byleth>
That’s a fairly detailed evaluation of your friend’s physical condition, unknown caller.
My gut is saying yes, that’s a sure thing
But hold on…
Hapi peers suspiciously over the dregs of her beer glass as Byleth plies her with the question. “Yeah,” she says slowly, “As long as the guy wasn’t wearing stripes at the time. If he was wearing stripes, then it might be a ‘well maybe.’”
<Byleth>
Was he wearing stripes at the time?
<unknown>
no
wtf?
“Why stripes?”
“They’re distracting. It’s like a bad power play,” Hapi explains rolling her eyes as if this detail was ontologically self-evident and not some grad student pseudo-psychology bullshit. “People lose their mind around stripes.”
“That sounds more like a personal problem.”
<Byleth>
Then yah, it’s a sure thing
Did you win the bet?
<unknown>
of course I did.
thanks.
<Byleth>
Why do you have my number?
<unknown>
my idiot friend hit on a girl who clearly wasn’t interested
she gave him this as a wrong number
<Byleth>
The same hot but conceited friend?
<unknown>
the same
<Byleth>
Did this girl have burgundy hair and a penchant for dumping guys mid-date?
<unknown>
apparently so
<Byleth>
Say no more. she’s been known to do this.
Byleth leans most of the way over the bar, torso stretching and collarbones jutting razor-sharp above the horizon of her off-the-shoulder black blouse. “Hapi did you give my number to a guy who was trying to pick you up?”
Hapi’s eyes flicker open all maraschino and surprised: “Oh! You know, Chatterbox, I forgot about that. Did he call you?”
Byleth looks back through her phone history. “Three calls, a week ago, missed them,” Byleth says. “Now his friend is texting me.”
“That’s weird. Block him.”
Byleth’s finger is hovering over the block button, when who should step through the door but Felix Fucking Fraldarius.
Felix probably has some sort of pretentious middle name. Byleth’s willing to bet it’s monogrammed into his pretentious fluffy towels and initialed into the back of his childhood undies, but she can’t be bothered to remember it. His personality is the black confetti that accidentally gets packaged into a rainbow variety pack. His face is permanently frozen into a pissy housecat grimace.
“What are you doing here, Fraldarius? Should I be hiding the menus?”
He knocks blue-black bangs out of his eyes, puts his hand on his hip in a swayed-back affectation of a total douche. Or maybe that isn’t an affectation, maybe he’s born with it—Byleth never thought to ask.
He eyes her cell phone on the bartop where her text messages with <unknown> are still open on the screen, and she sweeps the phone into her pocket before he can see anything.
“Please,” his stuck-up voice wanders sibilantly through the monosyllable, “like I have nothing better to do than to steal secrets from this old dive.” He glances disparagingly around the bar.
Felix is wrong. (No surprise there.) Pub Abyss doesn’t classify as a dive; it’s more accurately a ‘neighborhood bar.’
A row of TVs displaying three different basketball games has an enthralled audience of philosophy undergrads. Jeralt’s retired boxing gloves hang above the pool table where the applied mathematicians are calculating their winning angles. Board games are stacked in the corner next to two English professors who have claimed a six-person booth to vandalize essays with red marks and deflated grades, while their lagers tilt precariously between paper stacks.
“So you came for a rematch?”
“Tch. I could take you any time. But it’s not about that, either.”
He sits at the bar. Out of begrudging courtesy, she pours him a glass of ice with barely a splash of water deep down in the cup.
Then, she begins making him a classic. Frost glimmers on the outside of the steel shaker as she pours in gin, counting out her measure from the speed tap. Next is chartreuse, then in goes the maraschino liqueur. And finally, the startlingly fresh lime, squeezed earlier that afternoon.
“I came here to talk about what’s going on with my bar,” Felix says watching her every move.
“So you’re here to beg for help?”
Felix visibly bristles—scowling, frowning, pink in the face. “Normally, I would never ask. But, ever since you won that bartender competition, your business has been up and ours has been down.”
From the corner of her eye, Byleth sees Hapi don her apron to begin serving up the flannel-chested Thursday-night crowd with two ounces of scorn, one ounce of amusement, and a dash of orange-smoked bitters.
Byleth stirs her boozy alchemy, whirlpooling flotsams of ice as cloudy and confused as her inner thoughts. Then, she strains the drink into a shallow cocktail glass.
It’s a poisonous pale green that looks like venom milked from a serpent’s jaw, roughly Pantone 7485C, or, more aptly, the color of Byleth’s eyes. She stares him down while she spears two arterial-blood red cherries on a metal pick and settles them into the drink.
Refined. Instagram-worthy.
Byleth leans her elbow on the bar. “Last Word,” she says keeping him in her crosshairs until he takes his first sip.
“As in ‘this will be your…’? Or, ‘which one of us will have the…?’” He asks before drinking. Careful, almost dainty, like he’s nibbling a persimmon from a spoon. The drink is complex, bright flavors, a delightful bit of prohibition-era mastery.
“I’m not surprised to hear your business has been down,” Byleth says.
“I don’t see crowds banging on your door right now either.”
She shrugs. It’s a known problem. Business is slow and school’s about to be out for the summer which always puts the Market Street nightlife into hibernation.
“How down?” she asks.
“Way down.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “Under.”
“How under?”
“Closing our doors under.” He picks up the garnish of skewered cherries, wrinkles his nose at them, and sets them aside on a cocktail napkin. “And if we go under, you might too.”
“Is that a threat?”
Byleth doesn’t know why her hackles rise so easily. It’s something to do with Felix’s jupiter-sized ego taking up half her bar, while their bitter personal history permeates the room with all the stench and tragedy of a radioactive elephant.
She reaches behind herself for the ‘Weekly Specials’ menu, the one she had spent hours crafting on Sunday. “Here, take it, you anemic ringwraith.” She shoves the paper at him. “Copy our menu again. Is that what you came for?”
“Tch, you expect me to reverse engineer all of these drinks? What a waste of time.”
“Oh, that’s right, you didn’t steal my menu, you stole my personal notebook the day before the competition.”
Felix sips. In his mouth, the citrusy liquid mixes with something bitter, like the slightly noxious coating of an absinthe rinse. It tastes a lot like guilt.
“You beat me anyway. What are you crying about?”
“I don’t cry.”
He piteously sighs the sorrows of a thousand-year-old man and uses the metal pick to flick bubbles into the ‘last word.’ “This concerns you too, you green-haired nerd-goblin. A busy downtown is better for everybody. If we close, your business could dry as well.”
They cross blades, aka eye contact. Except, they aren’t so much looking into each other’s eyes as staring their unseeing eyeballs at each other.
Felix blinks. Byleth watches his stupidly long eyelashes flicker down and then up, and when he opens his pissy pilsner-yellow peepers, she can’t help but let the corner of her mouth rise a nanometer.
“I should have known it would be useless talking to you.” He drops cash on the bartop and leaves before Byleth can manage to phrase any of the hundred-thousand insults whirling through her head.
— — —
Spicy Devil
brandy || creme de menthe || ground cayenne pepper
keep it cool, yo
Hey, have you heard this one?
A guy walks into a bar.
His muscular forearms flash under the dim pendant lights. His black shirt is tight, buttoned to just below his collarbones. Service industry, clean-shaven, blue-black hair artfully pulled into a high ponytail, fine silver ring in an arched eyebrow, and lips set in a thin scowl.
The bartender is looking. She’s looking respectfully.
She’s the salt-rim sipping tough-love type who keeps a running tally behind the bar of the number of nazis she’s punched. She leans toward him—all deadpan beneath soft green eyes—plays it cool: what’ll ya have?
His glare is the color of rye but with double the ABV. I tend the bar across the street, he says.
There’s this immediate magnetism of stupid star-crossed bullshit. Kindred spirits, rippling muscles, and wondering if his face would get any less sour when she let him pound her into the sheets. Barebacked under the bar lights, interlocked fingers against the wood of the counter, his knee between her legs, and the smooth steel ball of his pierced tongue in her mouth.
But he’s so fucking composed. He flirts subtly. A game of well-timed eyebrows, and coy glancing half-compliments.
And that seems to mean something, too.
It means something the way he loiters just within her periphery waiting for after-shift drinks. And it means something that his mouth stays shut until he’s polished off two habanero gimlets, and even then he merely slams his elbow down on the table and points at her: You are several things. And her head is a liquor-lubed refrain of, I know I know I know…
It means something right up until he backstabs her on her big day. A fucking broadsword through the chest and he doesn’t even kiss the wound clean.
That guy who stepped into the bar? He doesn’t go there anymore.
How’s that for a punch line?
— — —
Stubborn as a Mule
bourbon || lime || ginger beer
don’t even think about stealing our copper mugs
you will be challenged to a duel,
and the loser (you) will wash dishes
Byleth’s routine resides just under the dermis, too deep to cut it out, not deep enough for it to be all that she is. Late nights and up at the crack of noon. Days off: unstable. Every night: the same.
When she opens her phone in the morning (a pernicious, regrettable habit on par with ashing a morning cig into a mug full of coffee rather than her pint-glass of butts), she already knows about the marketing emails, the bills, Jeralt’s texts asking if there’s anything special they need for their weekly supply order (passion fruit puree for frozen margs).
She expects: red flag notifications on her neglected bootycall apps. She expects: a few red herrings on her social media.
When she opens her phone in the morning, there is a thing she does not expect:
<unknown>
I need you to tie-break another bet with my friends
do you think two people who fight all the time are necessarily into each other?
can’t they just….. hate each other?
Sorry, she begins to write. I was still asleep, worked late. Fighting can be fun, sexy. But it’s definitely not ALWAYS attraction. Some people are JUST ASSHOLES. Take, for example, this rival I have…
Fresh messages tick into her inbox, all careful observations, sharp words, and astute opinions. Byleth is still in the throes of typing, waiting, reading, typing again when she walks past the flowering window boxes that overhang Pub Abyss’s patio tables. She barely glances up to see Jeralt breaking down boxes from the morning shipment. She settles the phone face up while she cuts citrus at the bar.
And by the first lull in the conversation, Byleth does something she never thought she would: she saves the number into her phone.
“Kid,” Jeralt says, “help me pull this keg in. How were last night’s numbers?”
“Not great for a Friday.”
Jeralt hefts the dolly. Byleth holds the door and leads him through.
“I’ve been afraid of that. The semester’s quieting down, and we can’t afford to rely on regulars.”
Garreg Mach University warps the entirety of downtown Market Street along its axes the way gravity curves time into a bumpy roadmap. There is a west end, sleepy shops of chocolate and high-end outdoor gear. There is an east end, rich restaurants and a used bookstore. And in the middle, two bars on opposite sides of the street do their best to keep the town alive.
They find Alois leaning an arm on the bartop with two of their regulars Cat and Shamir already halfway down the pint.
Byleth had been sixteen when Uncle Alois trotted in their house, waving his arms and yelling, “The time has come! Let’s open a bar!” Back then, Jeralt had been a construction consultant who ran riotous sports brackets on the weekends. He had the hookups, and Alois had the enthusiasm, and Byleth had suddenly become a barroom brat, shooting pool, and taking bets until she was old enough to serve liquor.
“Nerd jokes?” Alois is saying with gusto. “In this town, all I’ve got is nerd jokes. Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar.”
“Alois….” Shamir begins rolling her eyes.
“The first one is frantic, starts searching its pockets. Finally, it grins embarrassed at the second hydrogen atom, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The second hydrogen atom taps its foot. ‘Are you sure?’ it asks. ‘Yes,’ the first replies, ‘I’m positive…’”
Shamir looks around to see if anyone is laughing. But Cat is already spurting beer from her mouth and cackling, “OH MY GOD! positive.” Her beer tips and Byleth quickly grabs a towel from her apron to wipe the spill.
One silly stupid bar with its fairylights and fresh flowers happens to be the home of Byleth’s entire life. The thing is, she doesn’t mind it.
She glances at the shelf where she keeps her cocktail recipe notebooks. Their pages hold the careful records of every iteration and formula she has ever created. Beside them, Alois keeps his joke book. He adds a diligent tally next to the jokes that make people laugh. And, smooshed against the wall, is Jeralt’s…. Well, whatever you can legally call a bookie’s ledger.
The earmarks of a home.
“A neutron walks into a bar and orders a drink,” Alois says. “He gets his drink and intends to settle up when the bartender winks at him across the bartop, ‘For you, neutron, no charge.’”
Cat doubles-over cackling, “Fucking brilliant. I’m crying, Alois, I’m crying.”
Although a smile doesn’t crack Shamir’s face, she pats Cat’s back affectionately. Byleth watches them while draining the head from the first pours of the freshly tapped keg. “You know,” she says to Shamir. “I never asked how any of this happened.”
“Me dating this dork?”
Byleth nods and rinses out another glass of foam. “You two seem like such opposites.”
“Please don’t make a joke about opposite attraction or anything,” Shamir says drily. “We were navy rats, stationed together in Derdriu. It’s a nice city to be young in, more diverse than most of Fodlan, sailing for sport, and all that, but the seagulls are a plague. Well, I lost a bad bet, and I finally had to take her out because of it.
“We got some fried fish on the pier and were just about to eat when this fucking seagull in the throes of terrible gastrointestinal distress flies over and unloads on me. Just shit. Just shit everywhere. Best bomb I never dodged, because Cat was laughing and laughing. And she thought I looked so funny, she took me home to clean me up. Next date, we stayed in, watched a movie. At some point, I stopped hating her and started…”
Shamir’s face flushes bright pink when she realizes Cat is looking at her now, grinning like a… cat. “Just say it,” she boasts, “you love me.”
Byleth blushes and looks away. On the screen of her phone are four new messages.
<Byleth>
Dear unknown,
I’m in a little bind.
<charming stranger>
tell me about it
<Byleth>
That rival I mentioned is having a hard time,
and I think I could help them.
It would help both of us, actually.
But it would mean….. helping them, which I hate.
<charming stranger>
do you enjoy having a rival?
<Byleth>
Enjoy it?
<charming stranger>
rivals are useful, losing one could be detrimental
<Byleth>
I suppose they inspire me
to kick their ass.
<charming stranger>
then you should help them
because it helps you too
<Byleth>
That’s surprisingly insightful, charming stranger.
“Dad,” Byleth says when Jeralt joins her behind the bar. “What if this summer we host more events? Karaoke night and trivia and stuff like that?”
“That’s an idea, Kid, but events are a lot to handle.”
“I was thinking we could enlist backup, make it a joint effort with the bar across the street, a community-building thing.”
“You’re kidding,” Jeralt scowled through the window as if he could see the bar in question, and what he sees makes his hackles rise and his jaw clench. “This is a prank and Alois put you up to it.”
“No, I really think we can help each other out.”
He looks at her like she’s spouting incomprehensible equations from some theoretical physics textbook left at the bar by a TA who had three too many the other night. Then he shrugs, “I trust you.”
<charming stranger>
you think I’m charming?
— — —
The Last Resort *
pineapple-infused gin || green Chartreuse || lime juice || banana liqueur || cognac
“I'm an occasional drinker,
the kind of guy who goes out for a beer
and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”
—R. Chandler
The morning after a busy Saturday night shift is approximately the equivalent of an unprotected rough-fuck.
She’s dehydrated. Every muscle feels like it's been zapped by a man-of-war jellyfish. At some point, she lost her voice from yelling over the noise. She wakes up with unidentified bruises and her skin sticky from unknown substances (is that Midori staining her elbow green, or did she get intimate with an alien last night?). There are small burns on her fingertips from lighting overproof rum shots, then setting the cinnamon in a flaming baileys shot on fire, and then lighting a pitiful nubbin of a spliff during her five-minute break.
In the AMs of Sunday, when she collapses in bed, she can’t remember all the details. All she knows for sure is that for endless hours, she was hustling, and the next thing she knew she was lying on her back with a wad of bills on her bedside dresser. (It’s tip money, you dirty-minded freaks.)
Thus, Byleth wakes to an alarm set for 1 pm. She licks her elbow: Midori, it’s definitely midori and not alien spunk.
And this is when things get weird.
Her next move is to shoot off a “goodmorning” text to <surprisingly insightful charming stranger>. She smiles when he replies that it’s 1:30 pm, she laughs when he implies that she must be a terrible heathen for being out so late, and by the time she receives his text saying “good afternoon, instead”, she’s grinning like a dork.
<Byleth>
Rule #1: no reverse number searching.
<surprisingly insightful charming stranger>
what are you hiding?
<Byleth>
T-30 minutes until I send you a photo of Prime Minister Seteth.
<surprisingly insightful charming stranger>
I’ve never been cat-fished by someone pretending to be the Prime Minister
I’m on board, I guess
<Byleth>
Wish me luck today, I have to go meet my nemesis.
<surprisingly insightful charming stranger>
RIP your enemies
His text is a buff, and Byleth feels stronger, ready to face the day’s trials. She dresses hot-for-a-Sunday, gets her eyebags under control, and then she crosses Market Street and walks into the other bar.
The bar on the other side of the street is called the Blue Lion Lounge. But no one calls it that, at least not out loud. They call it the Blue Bar, or just Blue. And she can see why. Blue would love to be a speakeasy, but the vibe is too desperate. It’s dim, air-conditioned, like stepping into a catacomb with cool-spectrum lamps.
Framed against the LEDs illuminating the back bar, stands Felix ‘resting-bitch-face’ Fraldarius. Normally, he has a rote list of smalltalk topics memorized to ask the customers: Plans for the evening? Are you from around here? Here’s your usual, drink it and be grateful.
But he also tends to go off-book, especially when Byleth is around. “Ah,” he calls out to her across the dim bar. “Did the gates of hell release you? I didn’t know you could walk in daylight.”
The light framing Byleth narrows to black as the door closes behind her. She hones in on him. “So if I’m from hell, is this bar heaven? No wonder it’s boring and empty.”
Byleth doesn’t have the face that could launch a thousand ships. It’s round, and her eyes are huge, and they stare all day every day, which Felix finds unnerving.
He scowls and passes a coaster across the bartop. “Gin and tonic?”
“At 2 pm?” she wrinkles her nose. “No, give me wheat beer.”
Felix pours her a gin and tonic.
He relishes squeezing the freshly cut lime into the drink. He stares her down as his metal stirrer ttinggs loudly against the side of the glass, and he doesn’t break his aggressive silence as he hands it across the counter.
She looks at him over the horizon of the cocktail, sips it without flinching: a highly botanical gin, pretentious house-made tonic water, and much too much lime.
“I like it bitter,” she hisses spitefully. “Speaking of bitter pills to swallow, I think we should try working together.”
“I’d rather get locked in the walk-in cooler, stab myself in the stomach, and bleed out… slowly,” he says.
Byleth’s eyebrows fly into the fringe of her bangs. Clearly, he took her rejection a few days ago personally. But he’s still going…
“I’d rather drink suicide shots from the overflow mat, after Sylvain has made five rounds of those foul Bachelorette-party chocotini monstrosities. I’d rather go to dinner with my dad.”
Byleth almost laughs. She doesn’t! But she almost does. “So what I’m hearing is a ‘maybe’?”
Something is happening over her shoulder and Felix’s eyes narrow to even thinner slits. Byleth turns around, expecting the worst: an actual vampire emerging from the shadows of this grim-dark lounge, a flirting rake coming to torture her with the worst incantation she can imagine—small talk.
Instead, she finds the only pleasant and mildly happy face in that frigid tomb of a bar. As if spurred by a fairy godmother, Byleth knows exactly what to do. She holds out her hand to the older man with his mane of curling blue locks and twinkling blue eyes. “Hi, Mr. Fraldarius—”
“Please, call me Rodrigue,” Felix’s dad says warmly. “Byleth, it’s always a pleasure to see you. How is business?”
“It’s going well, but it could be better. I’ve come to propose a series of events between our two bars that might help improve both of our turnouts.”
“That’s an amazing idea!” Felix’s father proffers her an enthusiastic smile. “Just clear all the plans through the manager, Felix.”
“Will do, Rodrigue.” From the corners of her eyes, she glares over at Felix. She can feel the angry gears turning in his head, as his mouth pops open, exasperated.
Byleth: 1, Felix: 0.
“Fine,” he says. It’s like listening to a cat throw a hissy-fit at itself in the mirror. “Ceasefire?”
He reaches out his hand. His repulsive calloused palm meets hers. He wonders if she can feel the citric acid burned into his fingers from cutting garnish lemons that morning.
“Partners?” She asks tightly as they rub callouses.
He drops her hand like it’s a thick cobra rearing back to strike. His face a begrudging mongoose: “Yeah, partners.”
He grits his teeth, pulls out a stylish black notebook and a posh pencil with a too-soft lead that cost about 250% of a normal pencil. “Let’s plan.”
“Excuse me, first.” Byleth says. As she stands, the room spins slightly before righting itself. How strong was that drink? That bastard planned this.
She wanders into the bathroom. Shockingly clean; the staff here are all neat freaks. Blackboard paint covers the walls, and someone has written an inspirational phrase in blue chalk: greatness is the ground of infinite silence.
No kidding, Byleth thinks, somebody pass the bong.
Before she goes back out to meet Felix for what’s doomed to be the worst brainstorming in the history of public drinking, she indulgently sends out a text.
<Byleth>
Please tell me you don’t use douchey notebooks and pencils?
The reply comes almost immediately.
<surprisingly insightful charming stranger>
is this about your work rival again?
<Byleth>
Yes.
<surprisingly insightful charming stranger>
nothing wrong with nice stationery
but my work rival is being a pain right now too
<Byleth>
I’m sorry to hear that.
<surprisingly insightful charming stranger>
they’re acting so superior like they’re offering an olive branch
I’m just waiting to get stabbed
<Byleth>
Watch out!
I’d hate to lose such an enjoyable stranger to backstabbing!
<surprisingly insightful charming stranger>
no need to worry, I can take care of myself
<Byleth>
And if you don’t, I’ll avenge you.
Byleth returns to the bar where Felix is waiting. He’s smiling down at his phone and tapping that offensively expensive pencil against the bartop. The smile softens his features.
She hasn’t seen him this relaxed since that evening in the convention hotel. Feels like centuries ago. She remembers the tiny bottles from the ransacked minibar strewn across the desktop among the dubious cocktail mixtures in their plastic cups…
Byleth shakes her head and hones in on Felix lounging with his elbows on the bar: even subterranean eldritch horrors smile sometimes, she supposes.
“What are you grinning about?” she asks, perching on a barstool. “Your fangs are showing.”
He immediately shoots up poker-straight, arms crossed. “Just imagining what it would be like to poison your cocktail.”
She sips placidly at the now-watery gin concoction. “Keep that energy. I like it. So the first thing I’m putting on the table is a karaoke machine I found in the storage room.”
Felix rolls his eyes, trademark scoff. His stupid pencil makes stupid notes in his stupid notebook with stupidly clean flowing handwriting.
“And a barroom dancing event?”
His head raises slightly. Is that a flash of interest?
“Public dancing?” he drawls out slowly. “Must be difficult not to trip over your devil tail.”
Some strange and unwelcome mirth brackets the corners of Byleth’s mouth. “We’ll switch bars each event, offer gift certificate awards for both bars. The optics will be good.”
His pencil scribbles. Meanwhile, Byleth makes a mental note to tell <surprisingly insightful charming stranger> about Felix’s annoying handwriting and how her skin crawls every time he misspells liqueur as liquore.
The thing is, that night, once she finally has the chance to talk to <surprisingly insightful charming stranger>, Felix ‘preppy-handwriting’ Fraldarius is the furthest thing from her mind.
In the darkness of her room, she begins to type.
<Byleth>
Can I ask you a personal question?
<surprisingly insightful charming stranger>
fine, but pretend that you’re not
<Byleth>
Is there some terrible childhood trauma that makes you hate personal questions?
Or are you merely someone who enjoys privacy and dislikes busybodies?
Anyway, that’s what I would ask if I were to ask a personal question.
<surprisingly insightful charming stranger>
bored enough to invent a childhood trauma for me?
<Byleth>
It’s foreplay. Traumatic backstories are hot.
<surprisingly insightful charming stranger>
then both
Byleth doesn’t know what to say. She can feel his sincerity in her bones, it makes her want to tell him about everything she’s ever thought or done. Unfortunately, she also wants to come off as witty and clever and fun. And she’s not sure how to do that. So she sits in silence.
<surprisingly insightful charming stranger>
your turn
He wants to know! Her pulse races just thinking about it. And it’s like he’s broken the seal on an eighteen-year bottle of scotch that’s been distilled from all Byleth’s thoughts and impressions. She tips the bottle up and begins to pour.
Sometimes, she writes to him. I feel like I’m this loose collection of other people. They’re always telling me personal stuff—hopes, troubles, love, sex, everything.
She tells him about Professor Hanneman threatening to fail Lindhardt because he can’t stay awake in class. She tells him about Claude who’s hit his head on more glass ceilings than she can count with both hands. She even tells him about Cat and Shamir and their half-disgusting, half-adorable first date.
Sorry if I’m rambling, I think about other people more often than I like to admit…
It’s a relief when his next message begins with, ‘I understand completely.’ As he types to her elusive details of his day, the phone vibrations are a comforting purr in the bedsheets. When she can’t keep her eyes open anymore, she sends him a line full of zzzzz’s and a heart.