holiday event

[fightfair.livejournal.com]

Bah RUMPAH Pum Pum

It's the end of the year, and Fagsona's throwing a grand, gay ol' holiday party! And boy, are they overdoing it. There's mistletoe everywhere, the spontaneous urge to break into carols, spiked eggnog, presents for everyone under a huge tree, and even someone in the corner over there dressed up like Santa, ready (even if unwilling) for anyone to come sit on their lap and spill out their deepest heart's desires! (Poor bugger, whoever that muse is.)

And believe me, with all that decoration and alcohol, you're definitely gonna spill.

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In response, Calibri only raised one refined brow - the only indication of surprise on his face. Not a finger past that twitched. His eyes didn't even waver, but they did glance once at the cup in Bentley's hand, watching as the liquid, still strangely thin, sloshed around in the flimsy container. Judging by the slight residue left on the inner walls, Bentley had, at most, taken a sip or two. That was hardly enough empirical data to go on.

Disappointing.

He raised a hand, slowly, but rather than shooting spontaneous poison syringes out of the sleeve, he only pointed to the eggnog. "Do you not enjoy that, doctor? You're shivering."

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"It's, ah..." Bentley paused as he made sure Calibri wasn't going to shoot venom at him. "Fine. Different. Just got a chill. That's all."

Another pause.

"Did you want to try it?" Bentley held it out warily.

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"No," Calibri answered, immediately. It was almost too immediate, and to the observant conversation partner, probably was not very confidence-instilling. This was, after all, a man who would ingest fatal poisons on a regular basis, but for some reason, he wasn't touching the drink.

It made one wonder.

After a pause, he added, "What is it?"

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That earned a well deserved stare, and while many suspected the good doctor of being spacey and not noticing something going on right before his eyes most of the time, something seemed suspicious to him. His hand lowered, the drink carefully held by his fingertips at his side.

"Eggnog," he answered after a moment. "It's rather... interesting."

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It looked, for a moment, as though Calibri was simply going to reach into his inner pockets and pull out a neon green vial of imminent doom, but no, the man merely stared for a second before pulling out...a oddly normal-looking notepad and pen. They were not new - the pen, with its clear body, was obviously half-used up, judging from the level of ink inside, and the pad was already turned to a fresh new page while older, frailer pages clearly filled with unintelligible scribbles were pushed behind.

"Interesting how, exactly?" he asked, in a focused manner that made it seem like Bentley was the patient, and he was the doctor here.

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Bentley hesitated, staring at the notepad and pen, its tip hovering just millimeters from the paper. With a nervous laugh, the doctor looked around.

"Am I being interviewed?" he asked, looking for a cameraman.

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"Just answer the question," Calibri replied, vague as they come.

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It suddenly struck Bentley that Calibri would make an exceedingly good reporter. The piercing stare ripped the response from him.

"It's, uh... very creamy. With a sharp aftertaste that kind of stings. Maybe even makes you tingle. I'm not sure. Not very eggy, if you ask me, but..."

Observant as Calibri is, he might realize this: Bentley had not tasted alcohol once in his life.

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Man, Bentley. Even Calibri had tossed back a couple in his time (more by coercion than choice, but still). To his professional credit, though, Calibri didn't react past the continued scribbling of his pen. He seemed to be writing down every word Bentley was saying, in addition to personal observations and then some. Occasionally, his eyes flitted up to Bentley's face, and every time he did, he seemed to have something new to write down. When, at length, he put down his pen, he tapped the side of Bentley's cup with his knuckles. "You are aware, doctor, of the traditional ingredients for this drink?"

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"Um? Hm?" The doctor glanced up from his drink, clearly unsure. "Eggs and... nogs, I suppose. Whatever those are. From another planet, maybe?"

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"Mostly Earthian-class planets," Calibri nodded, agreeing. It wasn't false - considering they lived on a space ship, it was obvious that natural resources like that had to come from another planet. It was a safe guess that Bentley made. Raising the notepad, he slipped the pen through its spiral bindings and dropped it into the black abyss of his right sleeve. How it stayed in there was an unfathomable mystery of the universe, and it was best not to ponder it, especially while drinking heavily-spiked eggnog. "I hadn't been aware that you partook in the drink, doctor."

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"Makes sense," he said, nodding, when in fact it really was just a guess. "Haha, well, I had never tried it before - so I thought, why not?" Bentley smiled, a little more blissfully and clumsily and usual. (Not that smiles were usually present when in Calibri's vicinity, much less Bentley's own, but that reddish tint in the doctor's face was hint enough.) "Didn't quite expect it to taste like this, though," he admitted, staring at his cup, perhaps expecting an answer to float to the top of the the pale yellow liquid's surface.

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Calibri canted his head, a miniscule ten degrees or so, and then shook it once - only just enough to convey what he wanted to say. "No, I meant, I didn't know you partook in the Drink." With a capital D.

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Given the silence of capitalization and his still recent addition into the mafia, Bentley would certainly misinterpret the word. Not to mention, the effect the Drink was beginning to have.

Bentley leaned in, giving a suspicious look around the ridiculously decorated room.

"Is that a code word?" he whispered.

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It was difficult to tell exactly what Calibri was thinking - there was nothing to belie his thoughts on his face, and not even the slightest of twitches or fidgeting to give any semblance of a hint in his stance. In fact, Calibri didn't even blink. It was as if Bentley's absurd question had stopped him right in his tracks, thought, time, molecular movement, everything.

"Excuse me?" Calibri clarified, after a full minute, but it sounded less like a request for clarification than a, What are you even talking about?

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Bentley clearly didn't comprehend that he had stopped Calibri's whole being in that one, single minute. He simply continued.

"Y'know," he mumbled, leaning in more, glancing around again. "'Partaking in the drink.' Issat some mafia code?"

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"It means," Calibri answered, enunciating slowly (he figured it was necessary for someone who was so clearly at a conversational disadvantage thanks to the drink in his system), "That you enjoy alcohol."

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This, of course, was only met with more staring.

"But I don't drink."

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Very pointedly, he looked down at Bentley's cup.

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Bentley followed his glance, silently watching his drink.

The following movements were carried out in a surprisingly calm manner: Bentley carefully turned around, set his drink on a table, turned back around, looked at Calibri, and didn't say a word.

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Flatly, "You were not aware."

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Slowly, he shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. A look of distress was starting to sink in.

"I... was not."

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That was absurd. Being acutely aware of the senses of smell and taste, it seemed impossible to Calibri that a person, especially one as learned as a doctor, would not be able to tell the difference between an alcoholic drink and a virgin one. Maybe everything just seemed virgin to a virgin. There was, after all, a huge discrepancy between the two. "I don't understand," he said at last, pushing his glasses up his nose. In the warm glow of the hall's lighting, they still managed to gleam with a sinister edge. "How could you not?"

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You're welcome to change that fact if you want, Cal baby- Bentley's brow dipped, and he looked away. (That gleam was getting creepy, too.)

"That is... I mean, I thought it was how eggnog was supposed to taste?"

Not a very convincing argument.

[fightfair.livejournal.com]

Wait, what happened to Evan-

(Getting? What, it wasn't intimidating enough before?)

"Eggnog," clarified Calibri further, tipping up his chin as he often did when recalling something from memory. Usually, it was a special ratio for some sort of fatal, paralyzing, painful concoction. This was, in fact, the first time he ever had to search his memory for a recipe like this, and it took him a moment longer than usual. It had been a long, long time since he had had even the faintest use for eggnog, and even the most recent memories were from near the brink of childhood, even before adolescence. "If I recall correctly, eggnog is a beverage that is traditionally alcoholic to some degree, though non-alcoholic versions are often made and sold."