Dave had tried to go for the X-Eye Cauldron first, but everyone there was telling him they were temporarily closed in favor of this party, which, yes, they assured him, did have booze - so whatever, why not. Maybe Mia'd even find more people to challenge to fights.
And so, they ended up sitting together in a corner, him with a glass of whisky, Mia with a soda of some kind. She lifted the glass up and down with her scythe, no grip at all, just Cibus magitek. Her eyes narrowed to slits.
"This doesn't make any sense."
Dave chuckled, shaking his head. "I know, right." God, he'd missed Mia. (He still missed Mia. It wasn't her.)
A party. Yay. Zane probably liked those. His first two thoughts were if they needed a band, which he couldn’t make any sense out of, and then who was getting the beer, which gave him a sobering insight into his human life. Wasn’t he eighteen? Did he drink underage, or was that just his expectation of a party? No, wait, different places had different drinking ages, so maybe he had just turned eighteen, which was the drinking age in the place in his homeworld, so that kind of party was a new, fun experience for him, but that didn’t explain why he assumed he was too young to drink as a human, but he didn’t even know why he thought he was eighte—
He needed a drink. Curio at least partially convinced him to pretend to try being sociable. It worked out not terrible with Brisa. At least, until his shadow showed up. It hadn’t shown its (his?) face since taking over in the fight, though. Maybe it died when he exploded. The mere memory of that explosion hurt like hell, plus he was still recovering. The nurse told him to take it easy, and his sore everything agreed.
So, drinks. This place had to have a bar—no he wasn’t going to think about why he assumed that—so he looked around. It didn’t take long for his eagle eyes to spot the now familiar sight of spirits and a tender (why the overt alcoholism incited less self-reflection than vague memories of maybe drinking underage did, no scholar deigned to comment), and quickly made his way oh Goddammit Dave.
Little poochy prick talking to his stupid egg shadow whatever thing. This was fine. He could just act like he didn’t see him and take a seat at the only open stool five feet away from Dave fate really wanted to see Zane suffer.
Eyes on the prize. Straight forward. Pretend Dave wasn’t there. He made his way to the bar, smooth as carpet on stilts, sat down and definitely wasn’t thinking about Dave. Wave down the bartender. Wait for the horny mug frother to give the time of day to a girl who’d never give it back. Wave him down more aggressively, “Whiskey, clean, leave the bottle.”
Good. Mission accomplished. Home free. All he had to do was drink, then leave. A simple task too easy for him not to screw up. The back of his mind decided it’d be best to take a look and see if Dave was still there. The obvious answer “yes” unfortunately overloaded it, leaving him half-flinching away as if he’d just seen a ghost.
This was hell, and he was his own torturer. He flicked his gaze forward, faked a cough and mumbled, “Evening.” Good. That was probably more than Dave wanted out of him, so he could drink his fears away in peace. “How’re you?”
What the fuck I didn’t say t—
No, you didn’t. So his shadow wasn’t dead. Lovely.
I love watching you squirm. 
