Vodquila

"He was," Edward agreed, his voice surprisingly dreamy.

Schadel stared at him; she had never once heard him talk like this before. She hadn't even known he wasn't straight - she had her guesses, but they were nothing more than that. Edward just didn't make a point of bringing up the people he had loved in the past, or the people he currently loved in the present.

"We met just after I had turned twenty-one," he said, the tone refusing to leave. He rested his chin in his hand and leaned up against the counter "I wanted to enjoy my newly found freedom, so I snuck out with a bottle and a pack of cigarettes - I could already smoke, but I brought them because it was the perfect night for one. I was sitting out underneath the stars, and that was when I saw Nicholas~"

Schadel's eyes widened. Who knew Edward can make his voice sound like that?

"He was wandering around with a lost look to his eyes," Edward continued on, gaze rising up to look at the ceiling. "He always had that look the entire time I knew him, but it just made sense with him. He never told me that much about him - the most I knew is that he had an older brother named Owen, and that his brother had died when he was just a kid. I think he wanted to be a librarian. He never specifically said he did, but he just had a way of talking about books and authors. I remember bringing up Shakespeare once - I wanted to impress him - and midway through the conversation he was trying not to laugh."

He looked back at Boris. "Did you ever realize how many sexual jokes he managed to slip into his writing? I learned about Shakespeare as some fancy poet and playwright, but Nicholas said that he was far from dignified."

I rested my face in my hands, and elbows upon the table, smiling gently at Edward's story.

At the mention of Shakespeare and crass humour, I perked up immediately, scoffed, and began to gesticulate sharply in the air.

"Shlipped? Hah! You say't as though the jokesh were subtle.

That ish the one thing I reshpect him for, more than anything elshe. If there ish any truly great ezzample his legashy bequeathed upon ush, it was that.

Yer Nicolllish unndershtood the man. Good tashte, on your part. Bravo."

"Well, the way they taught it in school," Edward said, just a bit indignantly, "was by giving us one of his plays and saying to read and analyze it. But no one could ever understand half of what was being said, since it was written in a completely different form of English - and they didn't even bother to teach us that form ahead of time."

He took a long swig of drink.

Schadel hesitantly joined the conversation. "I was actually talking to Liz about school the other day, and Shakespeare came up," she commented, her mind lingering on Nicholas Drew - they would need to talk about him once they were back at the agency and Edward was sober again. "She started going on a rant about how unfair the school system was. Some of the classes received copies of the plays that had translations, while others - like hers - had to sneakily read them online instead because they were supposed to be able to understand that old English."

Edward took another swig of his drink.

"School sucks," he declared.

Kratzer raised his glass. "Yesh. Absholuteleh horrible. Shool ish very bad."

"Yes, yes, I'm sure we can all agree that school sucks," Wilson said with a smile, though she did look at James out of the corner of her eye. He looked a little too drunk to object to her statement.

"And Edward, well, with that said - Edward, how about you spin the bottle to see who goes next?"

Edward gave a slow nod and did as requested. The bottle nearly fell off of the counter when he spun it, but it miraculously balanced on the very edge and pointed at James.

James stared at the bottle with a lazed look of accusation, but forced himself to straighten up in his seat. He knew the current trend all of the 'truth' questions were taking and he didn't like it. He didn't want to open himself up to that sort of invasive prying, so he chose the option that his body actively protested against. If he was required to do a lot of moving, he was likely to fall.

"Dare," he said with a hard 'r'.

Strange, just how similar James' accent was to the ones from the former colony of America. I'd met few real Americans, I was more familiar with impressions from Englishmen who likely knew little better than I did, but there was some likeness there. Oh! Impressions.

"Do yourr besht impresshion of three of the people here."

James stared at Boris closely, squinting as the request processed in his mind. If he were to do accurate impressions of the fellows around him, they were probably going to be impressions of their drunk selves, and not their sober selves. That, and he was drunk himself, so admittedly, his acting skills were affected by his current inebriation.

Oh well. It's not like they knew what he was like on a good day. They only knew his younger self, who was a different person entirely. In any event, he was going to give it his best shot.

He looked Boris up and down for a second before he shifted to mirror Boris's posture. He calculated in his head how to replicate Boris's particular accent, and there was only a slight delay before words came out of his mouth. It would take a lot of work to keep from slurring.

"Do my best impression?" he said, mirroring Boris's accent flawlessly. "Hah! That's hardly a challenge." He scoffed, and in a moment, shed his normal, comfortably grumpy exterior like a second skin. He lifted a glass on the table with a loose grip. He couldn't recall whose it was, but it was just a prop.

"What was it I was saying before I was interrupted?" He pondered, swirling the liquid in the glass. "If there was any truly great example Shakespeare's legacy bequeathed upon us, it was his humor for being remarkably crass. But in other matters, he is below my taste. I'm partial to other stories - my heart is undeniably drawn to romance, as infuriating as some of the outcomes may be. There's nothing quite like a well-written struggle of love, how hearts are drawn together and apart, only to inevitably find one another, as it were. That's of course, if it's not a tragedy. Those are entertaining in their own right, but on my good days I prefer not to leave the theatre weeping. Unless, perchance, I'm with someone likely to comfort me... then maybe it might not be so unwelcome."

He finished off the phrase with a small, suggestive waggle of his brow. He held the expression for a few more seconds before the look faded, and he let out a long sigh. Two more to go.

"Huh." I said, impressed, and mildly spooked.

I broke into slow, clumsy applause, followed by laughter.

"Marveloush. I didn' know you had a gift for voices.

Hah, if you'n, an' Damashhhk...Damish... If you ever joined forshes, oh, the thingsh you could pull off. Heheh."

Damascus didn't press his ability to hold an applause, but he hoped that his uproarious laughter was enough. He looked over at James with a dopey grin and wiped an eye.

"Ohhh yesh, Jamesh, tha' wash- wash absoluly loveleh. Youhll have ta tell me how ya do it, onefh these days." As he had done earlier, he reached out and patted Boris' shoulder and neck loosesly, as if he thought he was appraising James.

James’s gaze lazily drifted from Boris to Damascus. Hmm... he could do Damascus next. That wouldn’t be too difficult. He’d pretended to be characters similar to Damascus before. Of course, Damascus had his own unique way about him, just as anyone else did, but - well, whatever.

He sat up straight again, with his shoulders relaxed, and he took on a friendly disposition. A small resting smile graced his face in the same way Damascus always wore one, and he gestured towards Damascus.

“I would love to do that, actually,” he spoke, mimicking the nuances to Damascus’s speech. The way his voice rose and fell: it sat in his normal register, but Damascus’s way of speaking was much more... fluid and sweet. “But of course, you’ll have to tell me how you do your impressions as well! I’d love to hear more about your different forms,” he said with a warm smile, reaching across Kratzer to pat Damascus’s knee. He brushed past Kratzer’s leg on the way, and after patting Damascus, gave Kratzer an apologetic pat on the shoulder, before resting his hand there a moment. “Sorry, buddy. Stay steady for me, alright?”

His smile held for as long as he held Kratzer’s shoulder, but when he pulled away, it dropped and he sighed. He threw up his hands in a lazy point at Damascus. “Voila. That was you.”

Schadel was really impressed by James's apparent acting ability. She could do a little bit herself - it was a useful skill for any grim reaper - but it was nothing like his abilities. If he had the ability to change forms like Damascus and her, he could have easily taken the place of the people he was impersonating.

"I've never seen someone act so well," Edward said from beside her, incredulous. He seemed to be so shocked that he couldn't take another swig of his drink. "Those impressions were flawless."

A confused, but delighted smile came to rest on Damascus' face as James did an impression of someone. Part of it came to clear as James pointed at him, replaced now with a confused smile.

"Oh! Tha'... tha' wash- me? Good job, Jamesh! I had no idea. D..ooo I really touch peohple tha' mush?" He slurred, still hanging off Boris' shoulder.

James let out a sharp “Hah!” as he looked at Damascus before following with a “Yes. Next person.”

He looked over to Schadel and Edward, who were staring at him. They had every reason to, of course. It was his turn. He briefly debated between the two of whom to impersonate, and decided to choose the easier of the two. He couldn’t get Schadel’s voice right, and he wasn’t about to break a good streak.

He pointed at Edward. “You’rb next,” he slurred, before grunting in frustration at his lapse in clarity of speech.

He pushed back the stray hairs floating around his face and pushed them behind his ears, and cleared his throat. Then he grabbed a glass once again and took a quick shot - for the character. Obviously. Not because he was feeling too sober.

“Magic?” he said in disbelief, making his voice much higher than normal, as if to imitate the voice of a young boy. Edward’s accent was a little harder to nail in doing so, but he managed quite well, considering. “Humans don’t have magic! That stuff’s just in stories! I don’t know what you guys are talking about. Witch burnings happened ages ago, that’s not a thing anymore!” He ranted with the innocent frustrated annoyance of a child faced with something beyond their comprehension. He pouted, and gave Edward an accusatory look for good measure.

And then he slowly slouched back into his chair. His normal resting frown returned to his face like a familiar friend, and he took a deep breath. That ended up requiring a lot more moving than he’d anticipated.

He pointed at Edward with a lazy waggling finger. “That was exactly what you were like when we were kids and I stand by it.”