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Sometimes, Rydel forgot that not everyone was as much of a pushover as he was. He’d do absolutely anything for Seven, no questions asked. Many people would call this unhealthy—Rydel himself acknowledged that it wasn’t much of an arrangement –but he had his reasons. And so the thought of busting in guns blazing and pulling both Seven and Will from the bar sounded like an impossible dream to him, and he returned Cypress’ wide-eyed stare with one of his own.

Of course, it all became a little more real when she grabbed him by the sleeve and tugged him into the bar. Ah well. On the bright side, she didn’t have Seven’s Grip of Death. This was actually pretty relaxing, considering what he was used to.

The size of the crowd almost paralyzed him. He wasn’t good with crowds. And he was even worse with noise! And this place had both! So he was a bit on edge while the both of them edged toward the drink-off, Cypress screaming her partner’s name as they went.

“Seven, perhaps we ought to…” He began once they got close enough to be within earshot, but stopped when he actually saw his partner—giggling like a wild woman at the other side of the bar while doing some kind of improvised tap dance on one of the tables. He blinked.
“Good lord. She’s plastered…”

Rydel was still a tad shell-shocked. This was farther out of his element than he cared to go. Even the casinos that Seven had frequented back as Vegas were less crowded, and less noisy than this. She liked the rich ones. The ones that actually vacuumed their floors and gave penthouse suites to big winners. Of course, as ten year-olds, they weren’t eligible, nor could they actually gamble. Seven would fake being the child of some high-roller to get in, but all their money would be made outside, playing quick fifty-fifty games on the street with random suckers. Seven always won. He always lost. After a while, Seven had requested he stop playing altogether and made him her official bag carrier.

He remembered being very nervous back then. And not like normal nervous either. Seriously nervous. He’d literally start shaking and hiding behind things, and he couldn’t speak without stuttering. In larger crowds, he couldn’t speak at all. Seven used to tease him back then, and say he acted like a mouse or a scared cat or something like that. He’d been too on-edge to care. But eventually as he got older, his eyesight improved and his stutter took care of itself, and he slowly became quite a bit more comfortable with actual society. But this was just nerve-wracking. As far as he’d come from being a spastic little bundle of nerves in the formative years, this was truly starting to bother him.

“Rydel!” Came a very familiar voice. A very familiar, very angry voice.
He turned to see Seven climbing down from the table, her face red as an overripe tomato.
“What are you doing here? You’re too young to be in a place like this!”

Says the girl of his same age, who had been drinking in the first place.

He blinked dumbly back at her.
“Y-you aren’t drunk?” He managed to stammer out after a long pause.

She rolled her eyes.
“No, of course not. Good gracious, Rydel, I figured that by now you’d be able to tell whether I was drunk or not. I didn’t hurl or anything!”

“Well, in my defense, you were tap dancing on a table…”

At this, she burst into thunderous laugher.
“Oh, you naïve little boy, since when do I need an excuse to tap dance on a table? It’s like you don’t know me at all!”

He didn’t respond this time, instead looking down at the floor. That tended to be his default reaction in situations like this. A look of recognition flashed across Seven’s features. Awww, she knew that look. The poor thing was nervous. All fidgety and stuff. Must be the crowd. He never had done well those. She frowned and gently took his hand—a nice little improvement over snagging him by the upper arm over and over again—and started to pull him toward Cypress, Will, and Zeke.

“We’re gonna leave soon.” She said, her tone oddly comforting for someone who was usually so energetic. She turned back to him, giving him an almost apologetic smile.
“I promise. Then we’re gonna get that Kishin. And then we're gonna go home, and you can read or knit or do whatever you want all day without any disturbance, okay?”

He gave her a faint smile in return, and nodded in response.