Micah Callaghan is (apracticalman) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-02-25 22:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | greg lestrade, spider-man |
Who: Micah & Simon
What: A reunion
Where: A local club
When: Before the Doors opened
Warnings/Rating: None
The gig wasn’t much, just a job playing accompaniment for a local singer whose normal piano player had fallen ill, but it put a few bucks in his pocket and required little of him other than the ability to read music and keep rhythm, both of which were as natural to him as breathing. He would have liked to have told the woman that she was flat as naan, but he wasn’t being paid for his opinions, so Micah accepted his payment with a nod of his head as he gripped his cane and moved to take his leave of the stage and performance area. The money was needed, and he knew it, but a drink to finish out the night was almost a little more important at that point.
Moving towards the bar, every bone from the waist down aching and calling attention to itself, Micah hauled himself up on one of the stools to sit, hooking the edge of his cane over the edge of the bar before pulling out his wallet and waiting for the bartender to catch his eye.
Simon wasn’t at the bar to drink, surprisingly, he was there to listen to the music. Drinking had never been his favorite thing, not after growing up how and where he had, but music was a consistent balm to him.
There was supposed to be a hardcore band playing later, but Simon showed up early when some singer chick was still onstage backed by a pianist. Where normally the act would have passed completely under his radar for its middle of the road content, the pianist caught his attention. The music might not be his style, but the player was good. Was it him, or did the guy look kind of familiar? He had a hard time trusting his fucking eyes these days. Shit was too weird to take anything straight at face value, and he was trying to keep a low profile, so he didn’t immediately go over to the bar when the guy came out and sat down.Simon was seated at the back, at one of the private booths. He was still deeply uncomfortable spending his money, but privacy was a luxury he afforded himself, since there was so little sanity and quiet in his life lately.
Simon was wearing threadbare black pants that clung tight to him, worn by use and not by a designer. His black mohawk was currently brushed back. He didn’t look rich enough to afford the booth unless you recognized him from the news, and he wasn’t sitting with anyone, as most occupants of the private spots would be. No, no cluster of girls for him, just a good spot to watch the show from in a solitary way, a bland iced coffee making a ring on the table. He reached for the glass and looked over the guy at the bar again, reaching for a name and coming up empty. He didn’t hide his stare quickly enough, and inadvertently caught his eye.
An itching feeling bothered him at the back of his neck as the bartender settled his drink in front of him - whiskey, neat - and as he reached back to rub at his neck to try and brush it away, there was a moment there where his gaze was caught. It lasted for only a moment before he looked away, finger running over the smooth surface of his tumbler as he thought, pondered, because there was something familiar there. And given that Vegas was nothing close to his usual stomping grounds, or what his stomping grounds used to be, by all rights, there should be no one here even remotely familiar to him. But the face still nagged at him, gnawing at his thoughts as he took a mouthful of whiskey, enjoying the burn, the warmth, before swallowing it back.
Throwing caution to the wind, and figuring it wouldn’t hurt to find out if he did know the guy, Micah turned around on the barstool, glass in one hand, cane in the other, using the time it took to cross the space between the bar and the booths to think more over that familiarity. He was dressed in black, a narrow slash of white at his chest where his undershirt peeked through the unbuttoned top half of his black shirt, generic and nondescript. Approaching the booth, Micah let his weight settle against the cane, his left side favoured, openly studying the other man and making no effort to hide that he was doing so. “I know you,” he said simply, his accent thick, strange in this desert place, knocking back another swallow of whiskey. “But hell if I can figure it out.”
The accent jostled something loose in Simon’s head. Any other person and he would have assumed they’d seen him in a tabloid somewhere, but this guy, no, he was definitely familiar now that he’d heard his voice. “Yeah, I know you too,” he said. He glanced to the cane and scooted over in the booth, making space for him to sit if he wanted. “You Irish or something?” Queens was layered heavy in Simon’s voice and diction, no mistaking it for anywhere else. “I only went to Ireland one time,” he said. It had been with his band, before everything got fucked up and the whole thing imploded over a stupid breakup. Thinking of the band and their solitary, dirt cheap tour through the UK brought up a flurry of faces, pubs, and gritty mornings in gorgeous places he’d always wanted to go back to, green and quiet and misty. Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad place to run away to when this whole fucked up Vegas thing was over. The setting, though, when he placed it behind the face, clicked. He lit up suddenly, unable to hide what a relief it was to see someone recognizable, even if it had just been a brief interlude a few years ago. Everything was so foreign in his world now that even the vaguest remnants of life before were welcome. “You were with those other three guys. That band, right? Ah...what were you guys called?”
The offer of the seat was appreciated, and with a nod of thanks, Micah slid in to sit beside him, cane resting next to his leg, glass sat down. The accent was unfamiliar to his ears, at least insomuch as him being able to place it as belonging to anywhere without a bit of thought. “Born and raised,” Micah replied, wrapping his hands around the tumbler as he leaned towards the table, his gaze and attention on the other. “It’s a nice place. A lot different than here, that’s for sure. I feel like I’m going to dry out in this air.” He let out a sigh, fingers drumming for a moment just as the realisation dawned in the other’s voice.
Those other three guys. It brought a twist of pain to his features, brief and fleeing a heartbeat later, and after a swallow of whiskey, burning away the memories, Micah gave a short nod. “Down Prospect,” he said with a certain thickness in his voice. “You hear us back when or some such?” Brows lifted as he asked the question, the band an old memory, still warm around the edges despite the tragedy that surrounded it.
"Yeah, Vegas is gross as hell," Simon said, not caring who heard him say it. He was officially not into Vegas. The only good thing about it was that it wasn't the house Harry was living in. The East coast probably wasn't a good place for him to be right now. He would have rather gone to California to get away, but then there had been the insanity and the book in the mail, so here he was.
Simon watched the guy's face twist. Whoa. He didn't know what he'd said, but those guys clearly weren't sitting around here anyplace. Maybe the band broke up. He knew that feeling and it didn't merit a look like that one. "I think we opened for you guys once. 13th Floor?" Simon hadn't gotten to name the stupid band, or they would have had a better fucking name.
Simon’s frank opinion of Vegas brought a grin to Micah’s lips, shaking his head as he looked down into his glass of whiskey, amused. He had to admit to sharing a similar opinion; he was a creature of lush green and moderate weather, not this dry hell that made up the desert. And apparently, it was only going to get worse, at least according to all the information he had drank in while on the plane this way. When the conversation turned towards their connection, Micah looked up, recollection showing quite plainly on his face.
“I remember you now, yes, yes,” Micah responded, “Hard, not my style, but good.” He paused, shifting forward just a bit as the conversation eased towards something he was comfortable with, knew like the back of his hand. “Still together, or...?” It’d be nice to think that someone else had better luck than he had, a better story than his own, but he wasn’t optimistic enough to believe it possible anymore. Life was shit, end of story.
Simon flashed a small smile, reaching for his coffee and pretending he wasn’t totally pleased he’d remembered the band and liked them. “You guys were good and soft for me, so hey, we’re totally even,” he said. “Nah, not together. We had a chick drummer.” He shrugged, like that should explain everything. Such things were bound to end in sadness when the bassist couldn’t keep it in his pants. “You guys?”
Micah allowed a crack of a grin at that, thumb running down the side of the glass as he glanced back towards Simon. “Thanks,” he responded, then he went quiet as he listened to the rest of the story, nodding his head in condolences that he understood, even if he didn’t precisely share them. “Things happen, yes,” he added a moment later, and then things took that sharp turn, and there was no hiding the way his features darkened, the furrow that developed between his brows.
“Dead,” he finally said after a long moment of silence, knocking back the rest of his whiskey in a single gulp, hands curling tight around the tumbler before he looked back towards Simon, lips stretching in a wide, tight smile. “All three of ‘em. Except me.” It was blunt, but Micah had long since lost any desire to cushion the words; safe words did nothing to make it any easier.
Whoa, that had gone really dark really fast. They’d been reminiscing and now all of a sudden there were dead people. Simon could relate to that, though - there being dead people all of a sudden. He had a dead mother to worry about now that he’d never known existed, a picture of a murdered woman he’d never really known in a drawer in his bedroom. “Am I allowed to ask what happened?” Simon said. He didn’t want to press if Micah didn’t want to talk, but he’d liked the other guys in the band, all of them. He remembered them being funny, and having great accents, and mocking his own, and them all trading rounds of thick, black Irish beer. Them being dead was like slashing them out of the photo in his head. Disconcerting.
Micah didn’t say anything for a long while, the smile fading as he settled back against the booth, spinning his tumbler between the palms of his hands. Catching the attention of a nearby waiter, he ordered another whiskey before turning his attention back towards Simon, fingers lacing in front of him with the absence of his glass. “Car accident,” he said without pomp or circumstance. “Way home from Dublin, one night. Dom - you remember him, the drummer? - fell asleep.” His lips pressed together tightly before Micah exhaled, eyes on the top of the table for some time. “So, yeah. It’s been a trip since then.” Looking back towards Simon, Micah studied him for some time, grasping for those few scattered memories, the nights of drinking with the Americans with the strange accents, lighter memories and lighter times. “You still play? Music, I mean?” It was a way to change the topic without veering too far away from where they had been, to something that wasn’t so painful, so sharp.
The words ‘car accident’ sent Simon’s eyes briefly to the cane, then back to Micah’s face. That explained that. “I’m sorry, man,” he said, picking up his glass to give his awkward hands something to do. He had no idea what to say aside from the rote apology. Telling people what you were really thinking when they told you somebody died was always pointless. It wasn’t like it would change anything or make Micah feel any better to say he wished it hadn’t happened, so it was usually best to express condolences and move on, try to spin a positive out of it. The last thing he wanted to do was take him back there or make him dwell on it.
“Sort of,” Simon said, shrugging his shoulders. He’d found himself reluctant to relate the whole weird story of the past month to people if they hadn’t heard it already. It tended to become the focus of the conversation when he would rather pretend things were still normal. “I mean, I do, but not in a band or anything. I was putting stuff up on Bandcamp for a while though, it did alright.” He wanted badly to get back to his music, but he didn’t like the prospect of how heavy the scrutiny of his work was bound to be. Yeah, he’d wanted people to listen to his music, but not because of something stupid like how much money he had. “You playing anywhere other than here?”
Micah appreciated the fact that Simon didn’t linger on that bit of news, simply expressed his condolences instead of pressing and pushing, showing sympathy that just tended to anger him rather than do anything to actually help the way he felt. So he gave him a nod of his head, short and simple. “Thanks,” he said in response, glancing up as the waiter returned with his whiskey, something to occupy his hands, occupy his mind.
It was good to hear that Simon was still playing, that that ball hadn’t been dropped because of whatever had happened when his band broke up. “I’m just picking up what I can, where I can, here in the area. It’d be nice to get back in something more serious, but for now...” He trailed off with a shrug of his shoulders. “It’s enough. I figure I’ll advertise soon. See what I can find.” Micah paused, glancing back towards Simon, brows lifted. “If I hear about anything, you want me to let you know?”
“Yeah, absolutely.” The idea of getting back into playing professionally excited Simon more than he’d thought it would, which was probably a sign he’d been away from it too long. “That would be pretty fucking awesome, man. You’re sweet with the piano, and it’d be a cool style mashup. Be nice to do something different.” Simon’s heart was and always would remain in hardcore, but it couldn’t hurt to try something else. He caught the waiter’s eye and gestured to the whiskey - it was on his tab. “I miss playing. It’ll be good to do it again with people who don’t suck.”
“Glad to know you don’t think I suck,” Micah said with just a tinge of amusement in his voice. “It’d be good to get back into something. I haven’t played with anyone regularly since the accident, so...” He trailed off, taking a drink before he leaned back, shoulders settling against the back of the booth, his expression easy, eyes warm. “Good running into you, Simon. Familiar face in a strange land. Makes me not regret coming out this way so much.”
“Me too,” Simon said. Old faces cheered him up, though it was probably time for him to get going. A girl in the corner was eyeing him and nudging her friend - time to move before she thought to pull out her camera phone. He dug a piece of paper out of his pocket and picked up a pen the waiter had left behind, scribbling down his number. “Call me when you get some bites on the ad?” he said, and slid the number across to him. Then he slid out of the booth. On his way out, he told the waiter to let Micah stick around in the back booth as long as he wanted, and to serve him the good stuff from behind the bar.