Chapter Text
It's Friday night and you've made it through another busy week, finally able to take the time to try and relax with your friends. You’ve made a habit out of trying new restaurants as a group, supporting small businesses and ordering the most recommended items on the menu.
This isn’t the first monster-owned business you’ve come to, but it is the most populated. Nearly every table is chock full of monsters, eating and drinking and talking, and it warms your heart to see it. You start with a couple appetizers to split and beers for the table, and everything so far has been absolutely delicious. This cozy bar may just be your new favorite place.
You’re surrounded by some of your closest friends, swapping stories and jokes just like always, laughter and alcohol flowing between you as you cut loose a little. It’s nice to catch a break at the end of the work week, and cracking everyone up with your jokes is always going to make you happy.
Well, that’s not quite accurate. Mostly you’re cracking yourself up and making your friends groan and attempt to make you shut up, but whatever. It still makes you happy. Some people might think you’re dumb for always telling such terrible jokes, and especially for laughing at them, but what's wrong with laughing when you're happy? Nothing, that’s what. Making yourself laugh is the best. Besides, no one’s thrown balled up napkins at you or poured water over your head yet, so you know they’re eager for more. Their exasperated protests are music to your ears.
“Okay, okay. Why did the scarecrow win the award?” You ask, drawing groans and laughter from your friends. Your grin stretches from ear to ear as you sloppily gesture with your beer and deliver the amazing, unbelievably perfect punchline. “Because he was outstanding in his field!”
You aren’t expecting the rest of the booth to join in, reluctantly delivering the punchline along with you, but you really should have. You’ve clearly told them that one way too many times.
You laugh, hard, completely failing to hold in your surprised snorts and cackles, carefully setting your beer down before you spill it again. The tabletop is sticky enough already, due to your clumsiness earlier in the evening. It really doesn’t need a second coating of alcohol.
Your friends are losing their shit, and even though they’re definitely laughing harder at you and your antics than at the joke you just told, you’ll take it. Laughter is laughter, and if anyone’s gonna say otherwise they can fite you.
Sal reaches past Amy to tousle your hair, yelling at you to get better material, and you shove him off, pushing him into Mei with an eyebrow waggle. You don’t have a verbal comeback, but he’s blushing and the group is laughing at him now, so you count it as a victory. Toni asks a question about something on the menus you grabbed for the table, clearly hungry and ready for a main course, but you aren’t able to focus well enough to hear what she says.
The bar is warm around you and you take a moment to just sit back and let your laughter run its course, soaking up the warmth and camaraderie filling your little booth in the corner. You can feel your shoulders loosening, you and your friends unwinding from another long work week. You’re already looking forward to tomorrow, sleeping in and waking up to a warm afternoon, surrounded by some of your favorite people.
The plan for the rest of the night is to finish your current round of drinks then order your mains and another round of water for the table to help you sober up a bit. Sobering up before ordering dessert is absolutely necessary, you’ve all learned that by now. Ordering dessert while drunk with this group is an experience you don’t want to repeat. Last time it took you two full days to recover.
Once you’ve ordered and eaten a reasonable amount of dessert, you’ll fight over how you’re splitting the check. And then at the end of the night you’ll all travel together to whoever’s house is closest and spend the night playing games until you pass out in the living room, like always. Tonight your place is closest, a few blocks walk and then a quick bus ride to your cozy little house, and since you’re the host you get to force everyone to play your homegrown version of gin rummy. It’s going to be an awesome night for sure, starting with a sure-to-be fantastic meal in what is swiftly becoming your new favorite bar. Perfect.
You zone back in to find that Brad is laughing about the menu. Apparently this place might only serve drinks and appetizers. Either that or you grabbed the wrong menus, but when was the last time that happened? Never, you’re pretty sure. You’re about to launch into another terrible joke to distract your friends from your mistake, ignoring their laughing protests and accusations, when you’re interrupted by an unfamiliar voice.
“hey there,” the stranger chuckles, slightly invading your personal space as silence falls over your table for the first moment since you all sat down. "you all seem to be having a great time over here."
His voice is deep, humming pleasantly in your ear, the sound reminding you of whiskey and gravel and the smooth glide of a hand across a polished bar top, and you can't resist turning to eye up the owner, bottom to top. The first thing you see is a pair of pink slippers with strangely bunched white socks, over another pair of taller, white socks. You blink a few times, slowly dragging your eyes up from the confusing sight. The stranger is wearing track shorts and an open blue hoodie over a simple white shirt, white gloves halfway-tucked into his hoodie pockets. When you finally raise your eyes all the way up to his face, you’re only a little surprised. You were expecting to see a monster, but you’ll have to admit, you weren’t expecting to see a skeleton.
Well that explains the strange socks. He’s wearing slouchy socks and what you thought were tall socks are actually his leg bones. Tibia? Fibia? Something like that. Not socks.
The pink slippers are still a bit weird though.
The short skeleton monster leans on your table, one gloved hand moving to prop up his grinning skull, bright white eyelights twinkling at you like he’s got a secret. It’s probably not a secret you’ll be learning any time soon, judging by the slight squint of his eye sockets and the tension in his grin.
Is he mad about the socks thing? It would kinda make sense, except that you didn’t actually say anything about it and monsters aren’t mind readers so. That’s probably not it.
Your friends already started talking with him while you were checking him out, you distantly hear Toni saying something about work and favorite dishes. He responds readily, his voice low and smooth and even as it issues from behind his grinning teeth. Sal comments on the way the skeleton’s permanent grin doesn’t seem to impair his ability to talk, but that’s the last part of their conversation you manage to pay attention to.
Usually you’d feel bad for tuning them out, especially with a new person joining the conversation, but you honestly can’t care in the slightest right now.
Your attention has been caught by the skeleton himself, and the words in the air are nowhere near as important as the sudden feeling of wrong wr ong w r o n g that’s swelling in your gut.
Well, in your soul, most likely. Gut feelings turning out to be messages from humanity’s underdeveloped souls had been one of the less-shocking revelations that had surfaced along with monsters, but yeah. Now that you know what’s happening, humans tend to pay much more attention to what their souls tell them.
You narrow your eyes, focusing on the skeleton intently to try to figure out what exactly his problem is. Intent is everything, with monsters, and right now your intent is to figure out what exactly about this guy is causing this feeling. And the harder you focus on intending to know, the more your soul is telling you that…
Something’s not right here, in this bar. Something’s… something is going on and all you know is that it’s really really bad. The skeleton guy feels tense and nervous, and for some reason you can’t pinpoint you know you’re the cause. You’re not sure why. Soul feelings don’t exactly come with manuals, unfortunately.
Well, if your soul isn’t gonna spell it out for you, you’ll have to figure it out on your own.