Title: At The Cross Keys
Author: ML
First posted: March 19, 2006
Rating: Are you old enough to go into a bar?
Ep Reference: Pre-XF
Disclaimer: Not my characters, not making money from them.
Synopsis: Friday night in Oxford.
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At the Cross Keys
by ML
He was really, really drunk.
That wasn’t so unusual; most Friday nights found him in this condition, tearing it up with his mates in the local.
He was pretty damn proud of himself that he even thought in the local lingo. Harder to speak it, though. More familiar American phrases sometimes got mixed into his conversation and then he had trouble.
On the other hand, saying you were going to “knock someone up” in the States had a much different meaning than it did here. He got knocked up most mornings, which only meant someone came and pounded on his door to wake him up.
He grinned in his beer.
“What’s so funny?” Gerard asked. Always Gerard, pronounced “JER-ard,” never Jerry. There were still some parts of England where Jerry meant German, and not in a good way.
“Just thinking about linguistics,” he replied, proud of the way the word came out without slurring, despite the fact that his tongue seemed awfully thick in his mouth.
“You should be thinking about the birds, not the words,” Freddie scolded. “Logistics, not linguistics.”
“I can get any bird I want,” he said. “Any time. As easy as kiss your ass.”
That didn’t sound right. By the expressions on Gerard’s and Freddie’s faces, it obviously was not.
“As easy as kiss your hand,” he amended hastily, feeling his face flush from more than the overheated room.
“You can kiss my ass anytime,” came a sultry voice from over his shoulder. Elegant, long fingers slid around his chest and down his stomach, stopping just short of his belt.
Watching from a safe distance, Gerard nudged Freddie. “No hope for him now. Phoebe’s got him. What’s the phrase? Hook, line and sinker.”