Pip

[Continued from here.]


Somehow, they've gone from fisticuffs to a night out at a bar.

Pip isn't sure how, exactly... but that's often how it is with Jack. He could never quite keep up with the tempo of that man. Of when something was a joke or when it was serious, when things were stressed or when they were relaxed. Very possibly, it's his own fault. He tended to take seriously (and balk at) whatever Jack joked about, while imagining that some of the more outlandish tales Jack told about his life and London in general must be all folly (when in fact, time is more and more informing him, those stories were not.) Similarly, Jack always seemed to be rather too-relaxed about the things that Pip was rather too-stressed over. As a result, they moved to a very different beat of the drum, and Pip often found he was only halfway through the notes when suddenly Jack was dragging them both to a new page of music.

Case and Point: The dive-bar, the very night after his hangover, the very night after he'd sworn he'd never drink again. And drinking right beside the very man he'd almost taken to task over Estella's honour, at that.

He'd never really been to any of London's more reasonable drinking establishments-- he'd been told it was better to stick to shelling out money at member's clubs, 'seeing and being seen', whatever that meant.Hhe'd gathered, too, from Jaggers and from the general air of disdain for the common man his new social rung carried, that you didn't want to 'be seen' by the wrong people, which was what this bar was absolutely full of. Oddly, though, there really didn't seem to be anything wrong with the wrong people, just that they were rather more like Joe than they were like Estella: which meant, he'd feel much more comfortable here than he did at member's clubs, if he wasn't so uncomfortable with how comfortable it was.

...You can see why he'd be over-stressed, with thoughts like that.

Biting his lip out of a bad habit he meant to break, he'd take a seat beside Jack at the bar and peered over, for all appearances trying to hide himself in his coat collar, to avoid 'being seen.'

"Hello... ...are you sure that drinking more really cures the bad effects of alcohol?" Well, Nancy had said so, anyway. It just seemed like a hypocritical solution, to him.