A Small Karaoke Room Attached To A Dive Bar on Allen St, New York, Saturday Evening

[suitably_heroic]

In retrospect, planning a karaoke night right after getting up on stage in public to play some particularly loud material wasn't the best decision Jack had ever made. He just hadn't been thinking about it when Summer had asked about hanging out.

Oh well. At least it was a bar.

Which meant that, upon entry, the first thing he did was order a massive bottle of water. The second thing he did was collapse onto the mediocre couch in the tiny karaoke room. The third thing he did was chug the whole thing.

Then he said, "You're up first."

[[ for a summer ]]

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[somethingwithturquoise]

Whatever. Karaoke was never a bad decision, come on.

Summer's brows hadn't yet come down from her hairline after being fascinatingly captivated by all that chugging, and then she took a moment to estimate just how clear of a pathway they had to the restroom.

"You know," said Summer, pointedly, as she took a much more modest little tiny sip of her gin and tonic, since she had a feeling that was about as fancy as she could get in the cocktail territory in a place like this, "I could argue that, actually, the host should go first."

Did she mostly just say that because she hadn't really locked down on a song quite yet?

She definitely just said that because she hadn't really locked down on a song quite yet.

[suitably_heroic]

"You could, but that would be gross abuse of my very generous gesture," said Jack. His voice croaked a tad.

Yeah, he definitely needed more water.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer squinted a little bit at that croak.

"'Gross Abuse of Generous Gestures ' was practically my middle name, Jack," she stated, "but it was kind of long so they didn't bother trying to fit it on my birthday certificate."

She took another pointed sip of her drink.

"Just give me a second," she confessed, "I haven't landed on what I want to do yet."

[suitably_heroic]

"Well, we have time," Jack said. "Even after they kick us out, we can just hang out in the public karaoke area."

He reached over to grab a second bottle of water. He chugged that too.

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Dude," Summer said, "since when did you become a camel all of a sudden, anyway?"

But with that, she was now unceremoniously plopping down onto the couch next to him, phone already in hand and drink expertly balanced, as she started to idly scroll through lyrics and song ideas that she was going to be overly critical and overthinking of.

"That much agua at once seems like a bold choice at your age."

[suitably_heroic]

"Had an early show today," Jack muttered, looking at her. "My throat feels like hell."

[somethingwithturquoise]

Now Summer was looking up from her phone to pout at him.

"You booked a show knowing we had karaoke tonight?"

There was a pause.

"Or," she amended, "you booked karaoke knowing you already had a show??"

Either way....like, gasp.

[suitably_heroic]

"You wanted to come over, karaoke seemed like a good idea, I didn't think about it until like three hours ago," Jack muttered, "... and I didn't want to cancel the room."

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer looked at Jack for a moment, blinked, then let out a heavy sigh and a roll of her eyes back to her phone. Her thumb danced across the screen while she took a long and careful sip of her drink, and then handed the glass over to him.

"Hold my drink," she said as she got up. "I'll be right back."

[suitably_heroic]

"... Okay," Jack said.

He took the glass, though.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Thankfully, a great thing about New York was that you didn't have to go too far to find a drugstore, and when Summer returned, she returned with a bag of chips for herself and another paper bag containing cough drops, some OTC throat relief medicine, and a strawberry popsicle. She tossed the bag toward Jack's lap and repeated her plopping down beside him and reached to take her drink.

"And if anything," she declared, "i guess you can always lean on Tom Waits."

Were you impressed that she knew who Tom Waits was, Jack? Please clap.

[suitably_heroic]

Jack snorted. "If I want to fuck my voice up that badly, I might as well head straight into Dillinger Escape Plan."

But he dug gratefully through the paper bag. "Thanks," he said, and immediately shoved some cough drops into his mouth.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer did not know who that was, and was now determined not to ever look it up out of contrarianism.

"Yeah, well," she sighed again, for good measure and for emphasis, "if you're not going to take care of you, then that leaves just Dane, and it's clearly a multi-person kind of job."

Her eyes looked with a sort of forlorn longing toward the stage area.

"This is going to be a pretty one-sided karaoke night. You know that means I'm almost tempted to pull out the most obnoxious pop songs I can find," she turned to lift her eyebrows at him speculative, "right?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Trust me, I did not go into this expecting anything less," Jack said (after a moment, because cough drops). "But I'll bounce back in a hot minute and get you back, you'll see."

Ah, throat meds.

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Get me back?" asked Summer, her voice rising to meet that threat with a newfound apathy for whatever mat happen to his voice now. Like, she did her Good Friend moment. She paid her Nice dues. She snorted. "Oh, I can't wait to see what that means. And I demand at least one duet before you totally blow out your vacal chords for the entirety of the week."

[suitably_heroic]

Truthfully, Jack had no idea what that meant! It was just something to say. Hopefully she'd go full-tilt on a few songs and give him time to think about something appropriately horrible that was actually in the database.

"Fine, fine," he groused. "But nothing super poppy for the duet, all right?"

Like Summer didn't know about his secret weakness for slightly-edgy-of-center lady pop.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer's eyes narrowed at him.

"Define 'super poppy'."

She was pretty sure that knowledge bolstered her grand plan into the acceptable category, but it was good to know what parameters she was working with if she had to make a case for it.

[suitably_heroic]

"You know what I mean," Jack sniffed. "No Swift, no Carpenter, no Mars..."

Oh right, popsicle. He got to that.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer was going to point that one out before it turned into a wet melty mess in thr bag, so she was glad she didn't have to do that, but the look on her face after that list should worry him.

"But," she hedged, cautiously, "you have done Swift before....in a duet, too!"

Or he'd at least done a Taylor song that was a duet by himself, she couldn't remember, her player's memory was terrible.

[suitably_heroic]

"Sure, but one, we were at a Taylor Swift karaoke party, and two, Florence Welch co-wrote it, which makes it okay," Jack said.

Okay, the popsicle really was nice right now.

[somethingwithturquoise]

You're goddamn right it was! That kind of consideration for his comfort and relief surely had earned Summer a little leeway on poppishness, riiiiiight?

Summer's judicious squint was not going away, as she collected this information to potentially go back to later.

"Whatever," she demurred...for now. This would be so much easier with alcohol involved. "We'll see about that."

But speaking of alcohol...

"I'm going to refresh my drink," she decided, "and use that time to figure out if I've decided on something or not."

[suitably_heroic]

"Could you grab me another bottle of water while you're out there?" Jack asked, fixing her with the closest thing he had to 'pitiful puppy dog eyes' in his arsenal.

It was not a particularly good take on the genre.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer was going to meet that puppy dog look with a very skeptical one. "Fine," she said, after holding out for a little bit, "I will, but not because of that look, I was going to do it anyway because I'm a good friend. Or I just support you in this new mission of Slow Death by Water Poisoning."

Which was a thing!

The fact that Summer just plopped down on the couch again when she got back and handed Jack his water while sipping her second G&T was a good indication that, no, actually, that hadn't helped her decide.

[suitably_heroic]

Jack sighed, opened up his water bottle, took a firm sip, and said, "I can get up there and do one of the slower Nine Inch Nails tracks."

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Nooooo," said Summer, matching her sigh with one of her own, "I'll do it, I'll do it, you just rest your voice some more. Fine, I'll just go with a classic."

A big swig and she set down her glass and got up, closed her eyes and tightened her ponytail, because that was a necessity for tapping into that energy.

"Yeah, breakfast at Tiffany's and bottles of bubbles
Girls with tattoos who like getting in trouble
Lashes and diamonds, ATM machines
Buy myself all of my favourite things"

But really, as soon as that savage line hit, she was so totally on it.

[suitably_heroic]

"This is a classic?" Jack muttered, polishing off that popsicle as he watched.

But hey, Summer was getting into it, that was the important part.