The sketchiest bar in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday night

[vdistinctive]

Bangkok was a large, gorgeous, modern city, one of the most popular tourism spots in the world. It was clean and bright and vibrant, but it was still a city, and that meant it had an underbelly, and the portal Eliot had booked dropped him and Kanan off right in the middle of it, in front of a hole in the wall bar well off the beaten track catering to tourists.

"Spencer!" the bouncer called the moment they walked up to the door, then followed up with something in Thai that had Eliot grinning.

"Benny, my man!" Eliot and the bouncer exchanged a handshake/fistbump combo that had clearly been practiced a few times. "You still kissing your girlfriend with that mouth?"

"She's my wife now, and she loves it," the bouncer said, following Eliot's lead with the English and giving Kanan an obvious once-over. "Man, I knew you liked 'em younger than you, but come on."

Eliot snorted. "Don't even start, bubba. This here's my friend Kanan. Kanan, this is Benz. He'll help keep the authorities off our backs if we get into too much trouble."

Benz laughed. "Depends on what kind, man. Peach'll kill me if I come home with any more scars."

[for him's what's in the narrative. NFB and likely slow]

Comments

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan liked them a little more svelte than Eliot, anyway.

And a little more green, apparently. Who knew?

"I try to reserve scarring for people who really deserve it," Kanan offered, giving Benz an easy grin. "And even then, I usually try to get a few drinks into me, first."

Look, Eliot, you were taking Kanan to a bar, there was going to be drinking.

[vdistinctive]

Of course there would. Bar fights weren't as much fun if you weren't at least a little tipsy first.

"You've come to the right place then, my friend," Benz said. "We've got the finest beers in Bangkok!"

Eliot coughed.

"We have the cheapest beers in Bangkok!" Benz said, without changing his expression or tone in the least.

"And the most irritable patrons," Eliot said cheerfully. He offered Benz a final few words in Thai, slipped the man a few bills, and waved Kanan in. "Benz and I met back in my, uh, wilder days, after he ended up on the wrong end of one of the local gangs. Lucky for him, they were on the wrong end of my employer at the time. . . ."

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan gave an easy laugh at Benz's amendment, there, and then followed Eliot into the bar.

"He reminds me of some of the more pleasant bouncers I've worked with over the years," he shared, tone going fond. "Or this one guy I used to work for, drank more of his own stock than he sold. But sold plenty enough to keep his business open."

Until the Empire killed him, anyway.

[vdistinctive]

"Nice to hear your galaxy ain't all evil empires, then," Eliot said. "So, you got any fancy preferences on drinks, or should I just get us both whatever's on tap?"

[uncertain_dume]

"Cheapest beer around sounded pretty damn good to me," Kanan replied with an easy shrug. "I'm not exactly picky when it comes to alcohol. Especially when I'm somewhere I'm not entirely familiar with yet."

It was good to be open-minded, right?

[vdistinctive]

Eliot tended to have Opinions, mostly based on flavor palates, but you didn't come to the sketchiest bar you knew for snooty beer. "Cheap it is." He waved down the bar tender -- someone he also clearly knew by name, though the woman was too busy to stop and chat -- and passed one of the beers over to Kanan. "So I gather the patrons aren't as exciting as they might be where you're from, but how do bars where you're from compare otherwise?"

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan tilted his head as he lifted his drink and looked around.

"Well, for starters, this one is cleaner than most of the cantinas I've been in," he mused. "Music's different, too. Not that every cantina has a house band, but most worth going to will have at least a kloo player or a strummer off to one side."

The 'fewer aliens' part was a given, of course.

"Other than that, a bar's a bar," he replied. "If there's anything else, I'm sure I'll notice by the end of the night."

Fewer smugglers waving blasters around, maybe.

[vdistinctive]

"This is cleaner?" Eliot repeated. Really, Kanan's galaxy was all "we've had advanced tech for thousands of years" but a hole in the wall bar seemed clean? "Suppose they're spendin' all their money on musicians instead of barbacks."

[uncertain_dume]

"Honestly, most of Earth is cleaner than the places I've been spending my time," Kanan replied, looking around and then shrugging. "But then, I've been spending years bouncing from backwater to backwater. Things are probably at least a little cleaner in the bars on Coruscant or Naboo."

He was never going to Coruscant. Or Naboo.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot shook his head. "Your backwater must be real backwater. You're not going to get a lot dirtier than this without literal dirt floors. Which -- I know a couple places like that, but I said I'd avoid active warzones, so. . . ."

[uncertain_dume]

"And most of the places I've worked or drank never really recovered from when they were active warzones," Kanan noted. "There was the war, and then there was the Empire. The fanciest cantinas outside of the core worlds are usually the ones the Empire insisted be cleaned up for the sake of their own morale, and I tend to avoid those."

He shrugged, and then lifted his beer to take a swig.

"Now I almost want to take you to one, one of these days."

[vdistinctive]

"Could be fun." The best part would be watching Eliot pretend not to be completely out of his depth. "Yeah, Earth's got places like that, too. Most of the Middle East has been stuck in a cycle of war and poverty for decades now. Mostly thanks to places like the US."

One of the nearby drunks caught the term "US" and booed. Eliot smirked and threw him a middle finger.

He didn't disagree, but they were looking for a fight at some point.

[uncertain_dume]

Ooo, they were getting into rude gestures already? Kanan approved.

"The bigger, richer, stronger places, you mean?"

Places like that didn't often come by it honestly, Kanan found.

[vdistinctive]

"Ain't they always?" Eliot asked. "Europe got too good at fighting itself, so it had to branch out and conquer the rest of the world, too."

That got some more drunken booing from their new friend, who apparently understood more English than Eliot might have assumed.

[uncertain_dume]

"Of course it did," Kanan replied, turning a glance and a little smirk toward the booing guy. "That's what an Empire does, isn't it?"

Good to know that side of America. Kanan was going to have to read up on the history, he supposed.

[vdistinctive]

"Worst part of it is," Eliot said, gesturing with his beer bottle. "America started out as a colony that threw off an empire. It just wasn't the native people living there that did it, so we ended up a shiny new empire instead."

The drunk shouted something rude in Thai and Eliot cheerfully answered in kind. Two seats further down the bar, a couple other patrons turned to start tuning in.

[uncertain_dume]

And Kanan cheerfully took another drink from his beer.

"Do I want to know what they're saying? I think I want to know what they're saying."

He was sure it was rude. That kind of delighted him.

[vdistinctive]

"It loses somethin' in the translation," Eliot said. "But it boils down to something like 'go blow a dog'."

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan blinked. And then laughed. And then leaned back and shouted something equally rude in Huttese.

Hey, nobody had to understand it. Context was great for that sort of thing. And anyway, Huttese had a funny way of sounding rude no matter what you said in it.

[vdistinctive]

The drunks frowned, talking rapidly with each other as they tried to figure out what language Kanan was speaking.

Eliot sipped his beer, amused. "So what was that, then?"

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan just grinned a little bit more, taking another mouthful of beer before answering.

"I said something really uncouth about what they do with... well, nobody around here would know what one is," he drawled, "but the animal in question has tentacles and a tendency to vomit while copulating."

It was possible he was even telling the truth. Who knew?

[vdistinctive]

"Vomit while -- you're makin' that up."

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan shrugged his shoulders easily.

"Am I?"

Jedi mysteriousness was never meant to be used for evil like this.

[vdistinctive]

"You're kind of an ass. You know that, right?"

[uncertain_dume]

"I spent years perfecting the art, you know."

He really had, was the thing.

[vdistinctive]

"Yeah, that's pretty sad, man, I wouldn't let that get around."

[uncertain_dume]

"I'm trusting you with the secret," Kanan replied easily. He took another swig from his beer. "Believe it or not, being an ass has kept me out of trouble."

Well. Out of the sort of trouble he really couldn't afford to get into.

[vdistinctive]

"And how much trouble did it get you into?"

[uncertain_dume]

"More bar fights than execution sentences," Kanan offered.

Look, that was a big deal for him.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot actually totally got that.

"Speakin' of bar fights. More booze, or should we start pushing buttons?"

[uncertain_dume]

"Both." Kanan didn't even have to think about that answer, no. "Both is good."

If he drank enough booze, the other people in the bar might almost have a fighting chance, after all.

[vdistinctive]

Kanan and Eliot together? No one in this bar stood a chance unless they got blackout drunk.

"Jira, two more," Eliot ordered. He shot a glance at the drunks, and added a long string of Thai that had the bartender cracking up as she got the drinks. Eliot handed Kanan his with a smirk. "Basically I just insulted about seven generations of the men in those guys' families."

There was a lot of grumbling from the drunks. And no small amount of confusion about the American randomly showing up and insulting people.

[uncertain_dume]

"That far back, huh?" Kanan grinned. "Makes me sorry I don't speak the language. I can understand Huttese, some Shyriiwook, Ryl and Ithorese, you'd think at least one of those would share a common thread with some Earth language."

But no. Though native Ryl speakers did speak Basic with a surprisingly French accent. And Wookiees mostly just managed to sound like distressed bears.

"I don't even have enough mouths to attempt Ithorese, either."