Chapter Text
After years of idle observation and of days, bored, spent listlessly watching the environment he habitually resided in, Dave Strider could hesitantly conclude that he didn't particularly enjoy working at his place of employment.
There were few real, recognizable merits that came along with working at a popular, though covert and trifle small speakeasy. As with any sort of occupation that shadowed the grittier life styles of the city, there were some individuals who idolized the potential job position, who found baseless glory in the polished brass bar stools and the thick glass front doors, those who glorified the thought of living in a glittering and dangerous world of defiance and receiving a free pass into the excitement of it.
Dave Strider was not such a man.
He didn't like the overly chatty people that came in sometimes, the snobs or the arrogant, those who sauntered in with date on their arm and drink in their hand, cigarette holder hanging precariously off their lip and nooses of fine pearl danging around their neck. He didn't like how some thought themselves to be of some sort of higher class, worthy of the opportunity to have a drink in the age of prohibition when in reality, anyone with a few spare dollars could get a gulp. He didn't particularly care for the allure of the aesthetics of the place or any of the glamour that others so easily preceived in this life. In the early days, he had initially seen the contrast of warm, golden rum against the darkness of the bar face and saw beauty in it, even art, but the sight had lost its appeal over time. It was gradually reduced to nothing more than a dull object to him, or a means to an end. Mundane.
He didn't like the way the bar now had to run undercover from the authorities, wistfully missing the previous way that the store operated, when just anyone could walk in off the street and buy a drink and he didn't need to scrutinize them, didn't need to wonder if they were a genuine customer or a deceptive bundle of plain clothes and flat feet. The place had previously been a real, legally recognized bar, and much of the original infrastructure was kept intact. The main difference was that the sign out front now housed the words "R&R Club – Eatery and Entertainment" instead of it's previously proud title of simply, "R&R Pub." It was a technicality, really, that had made them change it, and if a police officer happened to wander in at any hour of the day, which wasn't at all uncommon, anyone behind the bar would be sure to quickly keep the sight of illicit alcohol out of harm's way.
He didn't care for the stiff collared shirt he wore either, nor his apron, nor his shined shoes that fit just a little off of perfection, their previous owner being the bartender that had worked this position before him. He might have made a fuss about this to one of the two satiric sibling owners of the bar, most notably Roxy, whom was the more approachable of the two sisters with her wide-mouthed disposition and affinity for bubbling, pink champagne. He might have, but Dave thought himself to be particularly well adapted to ignoring things that bothered him.
There was one thing though, that if hard pressed for an honest answer, Mr. Strider could always declare as the least irritating, and for the majority of the time, most enjoyable part of his job.
That thing was a man, simply enough. He was scruffy around the jaw and did not dress well, Dave thought, though that did nothing to discredit his opinion of him. He wore an oft patched and well stained tweed jacket, the ends of his suit frayed and pilled slightly on the right side, near where his hand swung down and brushed against the fabric as he walked. His gait was off kilter, a sort of comfortable limp that he had possessed ever since Dave initially saw him on his first day on the job, nearly three years ago. One leg would come up rather quickly, landing with a stunted thump, and then the other would follow at a slower, leisurely pace, gaining the lost ground with ease and a slight outward swing. Dave always thought that the man ought to have gotten himself a cane, but he never made mention of it, figuring that if it was important enough, the man would get one for himself. He was spry and quick to laugh at any of Dave's awful jokes, and in his opinion, that was reason enough to keep someone around for good.
Tonight, on a lonely Tuesday evening, the scent of freshly dried rain carried into the room from yesterday's thunderstorm and filled the atmosphere with lightness and buoyancy. The man clomped into the familiar bar with his usual boots, this time smattered in a light speckling of grey dust, the mud of the previous night still sticking to the sides of the leather and braided cotton laces. He sat in his seat, which everyone was very certain was his seat, for there was no one else that had occupied that position since the bar's opening. Right at the corner of the bar, second from the end and next to the stack of upside down, drip-drying glasses which sparkled from their time in the sink, he sunk his elbows on the glossed counter and looked inexplicably pleased with himself, which he usually did.
The middle aged man greeted Dave in his usual manner, a slight little wave sent his way and a wide beam, all of his dingy teeth on proud display from behind his stretched lips.
"Hey, Mayor," Dave greeted with an easy grin. "Was wondering if you'd even be showing up tonight – you're late." He offered his palm out to him, upside down and flat, and Mayor gave it a light smack in greeting.
The two of them were adapted to handling one sided conversations, Dave providing most of the comments and Mayor making gestures or hitting things or changing his expression to show how he felt. Dave found it all charming in a silly, childish sort of way, though he would never say that outright.
Speaking to a mute had initially been something new to Dave when he met this long time regular on his first few shifts on the job, but he soon found that he was particularly adept at speaking more than enough for two people and resultantly, the two of them had never encountered any real issues because of the barrier. Despite the fact that Dave had never received any explanation for the muteness, he knew it was possible that Mayor simply never had the ability to speak. He did have a funny, wheezy laugh so maybe it had been some kind of accident, a cosmic crime committed against him once upon a time in a land far far away. Dave had never asked. It had never been important.
"You're always here on time, you know. Let me guess why you weren't here on the dot, regular hour," Dave continued, already tipping a bottle of his favourite scotch into a glass for him, "Bus was late?"
The Mayor make a very unamused face, as if Dave's guessing was awful and a little embarrassing, and then shook his head.
"Yeah, thought so. Buses here don't really run late all that often. Huh. You saw someone you knew along the way and stopped to chat with them?"
As he spoke, he thought of the elder co-owner of the speakeasy, Rose, who possessed a characteristically curled lip and brandished sly, at times snide, remarks, her pen nib being leagues mightier than the average broadsword. She and Dave debated endlessly it seemed over his insensitivities aimed towards others, how he could be clumsy with his words, steering his comments into insulting territory at times. He supposed that really, she was right, as she was on most topics, but he had called her a nosey broad and let the conflict be dismissed at the time, claiming he could keep tabs on his own social interactions, thank her very much.
Mayor only rolled his deep set eyes at the suggestion and once again gave his bearded chin a wag.
"That one was a bit far out in left field, I know, but you knew what I meant," Dave excused, sliding the now full glass over. It reflected the crystalline lights above them, reaching an almost chandelier level of glitz when mixed with the warm honey colour of the drink. Mayor grabbed the glass with a small nod, and then took a few adventurously large gulps.
"So you're not gonna tell me where you were then?"
Mayor kept looking at his drink and he poked with one finger at the floating ice cubes, letting them sink and then rise up again and then poking them down once more. He shrugged.
Dave sighed and flicked his eyes away, not entirely irritated "Yeah, fine, I can take a hint."
Sometimes Mayor was stubborn like this, cryptic and annoying, but it never seemed to be about anything important, just small trifles, things that in the grand scheme of things, truly never did matter. Sometimes, admittedly, he did keep silent on things that Dave genuinely would have wanted to know, like for instance what Mayor's real name was. He had never been told, and when he asked around concerning the topic with the Lalonde girls, they had told him that they too didn't know his birth name. Apparently the term Mayor was given to him because once he had found a discarded newspaper heading, titled "New Mayor of Chicago Welcomed into Office", and had clipped the title and fastened it to his tweed jacket with pins and a few pieces of loose string. Allegedly, he had proudly worn the the pendant for weeks, pointing to it for all to see as he greeted them. The name had stuck, even though the paper clipping was now long gone, fallen off or perhaps weakened by the rain and elements.
It wasn't particularly hard to fall back easily into their usual conversation, Dave prodding and asking and carrying the direction of the topic, Mayor reacting wildly and gesturing and easily drawing the attention of the few people lingering in the pub. The both of them passed the rest of the evening like usual, burning late into the night till the wall clock chimed, once, twice, twelve times, midnight. Mayor was working on his third drink of the night by the time Dave stopped giving him a fresh supply of more, but he knew that it took much more than a few glasses to knock the burly man over. Dave, however, was well aware of his own rather embarrassing alcohol limits and didn't ever drink on his shifts. It was one of the girls' rules of the bar actually, though he knew that Roxy broke it on more than a few occasions during her solo shifts.
Everyone who had filtered into the barroom over the evening had by now drifted out, too mindful of the fact that Wednesday morning loomed over them like a rusted, skeletal bridge, moaning and straining in the wind and threatening a stressful day on the job tomorrow. It usually happened like that on weekdays, the entire place emptying out rather suddenly and leaving only the bartender and his companion in their respective spots, chatting till official closing time made itself known.
Sometimes, Dave wondered what Mayor did in the day, and why he never seemed to have any pressing matters to attend to in the morning that would require a good night's sleep. He had never asked. He probably just didn't get much sleep – the darkened yellow tinge pervading the skin around his eyes was proof of that. Dave knew the appearance of a chronically tired man well, for his own brother used to be something of an insomniac. He had always been staying up till the tiny hours in the morning, waiting till the dawn broke and the fresh streaks of sunlight coursed over the sky before he would turn in for a few hours of restless sleep. It had constantly confused Dave as to why a man would do that to himself, but he supposed that it was really none of his business.
It was starting to seem as if no one else would be finding themselves in the warmth of R&R's bar for the night, everyone off the streets to avoid the ghostly howls of wind and whipped up leaves that all cities seemed to house in the dead of a spring night, left over from the winter that had just now begun to thaw. Dave was content to stay inside for as long as Mayor wanted to though, not looking forward to the frigid walk to his small apartment. His elbows rested loosely on the counter, butt perched on his own wooden version of the streamlined bar stools that lined the other side of the counter.
"All I'm sayin' though, is that I just don't want to dance with some dolled up, powdered and pigtailed porcelain doll who'll get grouchy if I forget to kiss her hand after the song's done. I mean hey, you know I like music. And I like dancin' too. I just don't like the idea of spending that fun time with a stuck up broad."
Mayor was listening with something close to rapt attention, his hands up and cupping his ruddy and stubbled cheeks, the lines and wrinkles of his weathered skin creased into an absent smile. He nodded, once, to let Dave go on.
"Like see, last week? Went to that old club down past Main. I was just sitting and having a sandwich – it was chicken by the way –" Mayor nodded in consenting appraisal. "–and I'm just sitting there, and some girl, I don't even know if she was out of school yet, for chrissakes, she dragged me out to dance. I can't really just say no, can I? Now I go to clubs sometimes, right. But I don't go to dance with no glossed eyed girl with the gall to press up against me like I'm some kinda whore for rent. If I dance, it should just be a dance, just some movement and fun and nothing else. I don't want to go there for some damn penny romance novel to live through. Well, I don't know, maybe I'm just turning into some grumpy old man."
Mayor huffed a short, wheezy laugh at that and began pointing to himself. Dave could guess where he was going with it, that if he was getting old, then Mayor himself must be some kind of ancient relic. It was actually a little funny, since he was nearly double Dave's age, but Mayor didn't get to finish his miming before the front door to the bar cracked open.
There's something stalling about a door opening slowly, its hinges creaking and arresting attention as everyone in the room turns to see just who might be on the other side. Mayor put his hands down as they both glanced over, him with considerably more visible interest than Dave, who only looked minorly irritated that their private conversation was being infringed upon.
A man walked in, and for a moment Dave was halted in the sentence that was already formed on his lips, a reminder that the place was closed for the night.
A business of any kind with a store front edging onto a busy street saw all kinds of people walk through its doors in an average day. Sometimes men in stiff business suits, sometimes women in loose, tiered dresses, cigarettes daintily held in between their red tinged nails. Sometimes scruffy looking newspaper salesmen, sometimes even a few on-duty coppers, still in uniform and tight collars, regarded with caution and while they were in the vicinity, hidden away from the bootlegged alcohol.
This was the first time though, that Dave had seen a pilot walking through his doors.
The man was most obviously a pilot, or some kind of aviation worker, Dave assumed, if he could judge from his baggy coveralls and thick, leather boots. He had a pair of fur lined gloves, the outer side stained with dark smears of what he could only guess to be engine grease. At his collarbone hung a pair of aviation goggles, the thick back strap of them rubbery and supple as it bent around the curve of his neck.
To any other onlooker, the man might have appeared to be dressed ridiculously for a bizarre masquerade, or perhaps a sanitation worker or some sort of factory man. Despite that, Dave recognized the uniform style immediately, having spent far too long longing after one of his own. Compared to Dave's trim suit and neatly pressed shirt though, this man was an utter mess. Even his hair, wind torn and wild, framed his face haphazardly in a whirl of black.
He took clomping, relaxed steps in, smiled breezily at the two, and then sat in a stool one over from Mayor.
Finally, Dave found his voice, turned colder than it should have been.
"We're closed for the night."
The pilot shrugged and gave a glance over to Mayor's empty glass, the left over ice cubes pooling and melting in the bottom. On his coverall was a name tag, stitched and embroidered into the fabric in maroon thread. It read the name John. "You look open to me. And your sign still says open."
Dave felt his lips twitch irritably, ignoring the thumb John had jerked over to the front window. He was right, there was a sign still out front, but that wasn't the point. No one just walks into a barroom, no, an eatery, dressed in a god damn pilot's uniform, after midnight, and then –
"Do you serve chocolate milk?"
Cut from his inner rantings, Dave stared blankly at the pilot.
"You know? Chocolate milk. Like regular milk but just… a little more brown and… uhm, chocolatey. It comes from brown cows."
"It doesn't come from brown cows," he muttered spitefully under his breath, but they did indeed have some chocolate milk for some of the more flavourful drinks they sold, so he guessed he could serve it virgin. Despite the sign out front, they truly didn't sell many things aside from alcohol, but he did have it in stock, so turning down the request would be stupid. Reaching back into the small fridge under his side of the counter, he gave the pilot a short glare, but the man wasn't paying him a single iota of attention.
Mayor, the dirty, turncoat scoundrel, was waving at John, and John was waving back and beginning to make horrendous small talk. Dave kept his back turned as he prepared the glass and furiously tried to ignore the man's ramblings.
"Hey there. I like your jacket a lot. What, oh, you mean mine? Heh, yeah, it's pretty great, I fly planes and stuff. This is supposed to keep me warm during the flights in colder weather, but it doesn't always really work in the winter. It gets way too cold up in the air."
Dave's hand clenched around the plain glass in his hand as he turned, passing it over and catching John's attention again. The sight of the man was beginning to make his blood boil.
What a god damn fake. Waltzing around wearing a uniform on the streets and then going ahead and passing it off by saying he just "flew planes and stuff." He probably didn't even take it seriously, the idiot. He probably didn't even know or understand half of what had been the prelude to the planes he "just flew", the engineering feats and risks that were taken to create them, the fearless soldiers who had flown the earlier models of planes in the war, who died trying to save his ungrateful, pathetic excuse for a piloting career –
John took a sip at his chocolate milk and grinned. Dave had never wanted to strangle another human being so strongly in his life.
"Thanks," the man said, setting the glass down again. As he spoke, Dave noted the irritating tone to his voice, the slightly nasally, cheerful pep making him just barely wrinkle his nose in disdain.
"You do know that you can buy chocolate milk from other stores."
"Hm? Oh, yeah. I dunno, I kind of like it here. I figured why not give a new place a shot?"
Not pointing out the fact that this shop was closed and currently being used for a private conversation, Dave only rested his butt on the stool across from Mayor, but his elbows didn't make it to the counter top. In fact, he didn't loosen up at all, sitting stiffly and straight in his stool and making very fleeting eye contact with John every few seconds.
It was all making him rather uncomfortable. He hoped it was making John uncomfortable as well.
"So, uhm, what's new in town?" the manure-brained man asked.
"Oh, you know –" Dave was cut from his sarcastic quip by Mayor's flailing hands, grabbing, almost literally, for the attention of the two men.
He gestured in a large arc, everywhere, and then pointed to his rickety little sash, which once held the Mayoral sign but now only showed the last remaining paper clip, fastened and nearly woven into the fabric, the metal intertwined with the threads as if it had become a string of its own.
John gave him a very stupid look, not comprehending.
"He's the mayor," Dave supplied, though not helpfully and certainly not warmly.
Simply nodding benignly, John appeared to be waiting for Mayor to supply more information. He did not. After a few moments of staring at one another, the pilot looked away and then at his glass of milk.
"No, really," he continued flatly, "We call him Mayor."
Dave wasn't sure at all why he was making this any easier for him, why he was wedging him back into the conversation even after it seemed as though he might leave. He tried not to tell himself it was the uniform. It wasn't the uniform, obviously. The uniform was the dumbest thing he had ever seen in his life.
Perking up at the invitation to again be spoken to, John grinned. Dave wondered if he would get off without penalty if he tried throwing chocolate milk in his face.
"That is a pretty great name, if you ask me."
Nobody did ask him, but Dave refrained from saying that.
Mayor though, pleased and proud and smiling with all his teeth, seemed to lighten the mood considerably. He pointed to the goggles hanging around the pilot's neck, and John started to return the smile. The whole thing was making Dave feel sick.
"What, these?" John slid the rubbery goggles over his head, the straps making his hair momentarily stick up more than they had been upon entering the bar. The urge to flatten the strands down arose in Dave, to fix his horrendous mess of a self, but he didn't make any movements to help him once John corrected the mishap himself after passing the goggles over to Mayor.
He regarded them wondrously, as if some new, unearthed treasure, the metal parts of the eye frames looked clunky and heavy. The entire thing did, really, and when he held the thick glass up to his round eyes, the magnification they impacted on him looked ridiculous. Giggling, John didn't move to take them back, instead giving Dave a curious look. He stiffened under his gaze.
"So you're a pilot?" Dave asked, or stated. It was a little unclear, even to himself.
"Mhm! I actually used to fly in the end bit of the Great War. But now I just do testing and engineering kinds of things. You know, like making new aircraft? There are actually all kinds of things that need to be tested and troubleshooted and –"
"I know," Dave stated simply, though it was in a tone authorized enough to keep John quiet till he was done. "My brother flew for the war as well."
"Oh! That is really great. You probably wouldn't know all the stuff I was going to tell you, though. There is just a lot to know about planes."
John spoke on, endlessly it seemed, about the technical bits of new engines and plane models. He spoke, in rather painful detail, of how some people in an engineering team were leaning towards one new type of body mould while his own side was arguing for a different looking shape. He even got a napkin from the counter, clicked a pen out from under his inner pocket, and drew out the two contrasting designs. He explained how most people would think they looked exactly the same, but there were really some key differences. And then, he pointed them all out, one by one.
Dave didn't interrupt for a second, silently brooding and staring and trying desperately not to yell at a paying customer. The simple fact of the matter was he had already heard every single iota of information this idiot was spewing out to him and he did not want to sit around for a second more. He didn't know all of the factoids and tidbits of recent news from his brother, but instead from his own, personal research in the field. His intimate poking around in the topic was probably the reason he so easily recognized the air force uniform, for his own brother wore one that was very similar, but far out of date by now.
At last, John's presumptuous ramble grew to simply be too much, and Dave cut in.
"I know," he said again. It actually amaze him how well the older man stopped talking when Dave did, as if a teacher being scolded by a child. "I like planes. I do my research. None of this is news to me, really."
Mayor wagged his head a few times in agreement, his enthusiastic movements making the too-big goggles stuck over his eyes wiggle. John gave him a sidelong and faintly affectionate, amused face. When he did that, just for a moment, Dave thought he didn't quite hate him.
"Well, that's neat!" John enthused after a moment, beaming back at him in an impossibly irritating fashion. The urge to poison his drink him arose. "Have you ever been in a plane?"
Dave stiffened, not finding the intrusive question worthy of explanation. "No."
"Why not? You could have joined the air force ranks. Unless the whole getting shot and falling to your burning death isn't your kind of thing."
"It's no one's kind of thing. And a lot of people did die like that. Don't fucking talk about them that kinda way."
His outburst may have been a tad abrupt, but John had struck a tender nerve with him.
John looked a little taken aback at the words Dave spat out, but he nodded tentatively in agreement. "I know," he said carefully, "I lost some of my best friends. But war let me start flying, so I guess in some ways I'm grateful. It was really awful sometimes you know? Being in battle. They don't tell you that kind of thing in propaganda posters. All the death kind of gets to you after a while."
Quietly, Dave let his elbows rest on the counter top, giving John some time of actual silence. He didn't like the guy, not one single bit, but he could understand the pain of losing loved ones to war. He supposed as well, that being in the same battle when it happened would maybe be harder to deal with than waiting for news on the sidelines.
John stared down at his half empty glass, but his overly bright eyes were different now. They were hooded and haunted, but only for a second or two, just a glimpse. It was the same effect as a heavy cloud passing, only momentarily overhead, covering the sun and blotting out its light for a minuscule second. The sight made Dave look away.
Mayor slid off his goggles and passed them back. The motion caught John's attention, made him snap back into reality, and the creases around his eyes loosened considerably as he took the buckled headgear back and let it rest in front of him, beside the glass.
"It's ok, though," he said, too cheery and bright to be natural when he looked up at Dave. "I do a lot of flying now still and it is pretty fun work."
Entirely unsure now why he was even caring this much about a perfectly stupid stranger, Dave nodded to him. "I was actually going to join the ranks, you know," he confessed hesitantly, till John nodded and he carefully picked his way through his words in the same way a horse would pick its footing along a mountain path. "Turned of fighting age one measly month after Armistice Day. Just a little too late. My brother though, he was older than me by a good 5 years, served for three. Stupid bastard got himself killed before he could get the hell out of there."
Mayor, quiet as ever and careful, patted him on his hand. It was a simple gesture, but soothed the nerves that were welling up, unseen, in Dave's chest. Grateful that he had even noticed it, let alone acted on the knowledge, he harboured a ghost of a smile at Mayor.
"I am really sorry about that," John sympathized with drawn brow line and a pronounced frown. It was different hearing comfort coming from him, something bent out of shape and wrong, because he didn't deserve to be getting sympathy from a man who was on the front lines himself. If anything, it was the other way around.
Dave did the only thing he knew to do, and shrugged. "It's ok," he said, brushing the topic off. "Was a few years ago and I'm over it. Just kind of wish I could have kept fighting for him."
John nodded, thoughtful and slow. "I think we all keep fighting, one way or another."
No matter how awful he was beginning to feel at the sudden topic, Dave wasn't in the mood for some prepackaged optimism, embroidered words of pleasantry stitched onto a lady's pillowcase. He cast his eyes away, irritated, and fiddled with the damp rag in his hand. "Sure."
The conversation lulled there, the only sound in the nearly empty room coming from John, drinking the last of his milk up from his straw. The quiet little gurgles as he reached the bottom of it were a vicar's closing words at a funeral, and the conversation ended there.
"It's pretty late," John excused, looking at the wall clock behind him. "I should probably get going home, or my sister might have a heart attack from worry. She gets so uptight about these things sometimes, it's like she forgets that the streets aren't even as dangerous as flying in combat."
Dumping his coins on the counter, John hopped off his stool. Dave nodded and took the coins, cashed them in the till, and then swiped up his dirty glass.
"Better not keep her waitin'."
"Wouldn't dream of it! And hey, see you later. Both of you," John added, smiling widely at Mayor, who thumbed-up in return. The both of them, Dave and Mayor, knew that when people said that in a bar late at night, they really never meant it. Or maybe they did, but they never ended up returning.
Smiling in relief, Dave sealed the empty promise. "Sure. Catch you later."
Even as the door was swinging shut behind the man and Dave's eyes followed him out, he could catch the glimpse of Mayor, in the corner of his vision, waggling his brows at him. He did things like that sometimes, stupid and strange things that made no sense at all, but Dave only scoffed at him and washed up the final glass for the night.