Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedfback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal
Title: Buy You A Drink
Characters: Gauche, Alit
Word Count: 500||Status: One-shot
Genre: Friendship||Rated: PG
Challenge: Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal Flash Bingo, prompt #070, Gauche
Summary: [one-shot, Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal Flash Bingo, #070, Gauche] Gauche has accepted drinks from many people, but a quasi-rock alien demon that mind controlled and killed him? That's new.

"Let me buy you a drink." The voice wasn't one that Gauche was used to hearing, and when he realized who it was, he stared down into the glass before him for a few seconds before he looked back up at the boy sitting casually next to him.

If 'boy' were even the right word; Barians, even former Barians who were no longer trying to destroy the world, were hard to define even by themselves. But Alit sat on the bar stool as if he had every right to be there, despite looking no older than the average junior high student.

"What did you say?" And how in the world had he even gotten in here? Didn't these people card?

Alit smiled, a bit of a weak one, but a smile nevertheless. "I said, let me buy you a drink. Figure it's the last I could do, after…" He shrugged, the body language somehow conveying 'after I mindcontrolled you' and 'after I killed you' in one expressive move.

"I wouldn't think you'd be old enough. Or could convince people that you were." Gauche said, still not entirely convinced that his previous drink hadn't had an extra ingredient or two in it.

Again Alit smiled, with a touch of a harder edge to it. "You'd be surprised at what we can still do." His eyes glinted. Gauche couldn't be certain if that were the light of the bar or something from within Alit. He decided right now wasn't the time to think about it. Instead, he shrugged, and Alit took that as the assent it was, gesturing toward the bartender.

Gauche couldn't quite hear what he told the man to bring, but when it arrived, he drank it anyway. It wasn't likely he was going to be poisoned, and after working for Mr. Heartland he was fairly immune to most of the common poisons anyway.

Liquid fire burned its way down his throat, leaving a pleasant warm aftertaste. "I could do that again."

"A lot of people say that." Alit grinned, taking one for himself and gesturing for the bartender to keep Gauche's glass full. "I've always had a taste for them."

"Didn't know you guys drank." It hadn't really seemed like something any of them would do, really. Not that Gauche spent a lot of his time wondering what rock alien demon creatures did in their spare time. Especially since they didn't have mouths in their normal forms.

Sometimes he wondered when his life had become so surreal he could think that without being even slightly bothered by it. Then he realized it was the day he'd become a duelist, and didn't worry himself about it anymore.

"Depends on where we are and what's going on. It's something we couldn't do there." Alit shrugged and knocked back his drink. "But I kind of have a taste for it when I'm here."

Gauche nodded; there was a lot he didn't know, and maybe now he had the chance to find out.

The End