Down the Rocky Road

He'd forgotten that technically anyone under twenty was a minor over here.

Luckily for them, some esoteric law change had decided that eighteen-year-olds could consume low-alcohol beer and wine only, so he didn't have to face a fine for attempting to drag a trio of minors into a pub. Lucky for him.

Then again, he hadn't exactly paid attention to drinking laws as a teen. And neither did anyone back in the village, so he could be excused for forgetting. At least the drink and driving law wouldn't be a problem with Ariake wrangling a friend in the Edo Guardians into coming by to drive them home later. Like a responsible adult.

Not that he hadn't had a plan for that, it'd just slipped his mind.

So he found himself scraping a chair back in a little bar down a narrow street that both Ariake and Drake insisted was the best in Edo, though Ariake'd seemed put out at a gaijin backing him up. A right pair of comedians, the two of them.

Smiling to himself, he threw an idle glance around at the nature-painted walls lit by genuine glimmer lanterns, a flutist playing off to the side and a little old TV propped on the corner of the counter, a low babble filling the room. Had a lot of patrons, at least. "Wonder what this black beer's like."

"Gaijin." Ariake sighed dramatically. "Why beer when you can have rice wine?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "You're not having rice wine. Low alcohol content, remember?"

The teen waved a hand dismissively. "It just makes it easier to outdrink you."

He couldn't help a laugh at that. "You'd outdrink a man from the Islans?" A pretty waitress came by with a tray of drinks in one hand and a plate of onigiri in the other, and he smirked at Ariake's almost flirtatiously polite thanks as he took his glass. "I'd like to see you try."

"Can the Wilish not get drunk?" Drake wondered.

Lachlan winked at him, taking a sip of a brew that tasted better than he'd thought it would. "Give me a few pints and I might start feeling it."

"From the sound of it, you already are," Eden said with a sigh, going for the onigiri before his fancy cocktail.

He wasn't the one laughing an hour later.

Maybe the two Nihonjin had overdone it, because only he and Drake still had their heads screwed on when King Ed lectured the room in general on the pointlessness of drinking songs, his cheeks flushed and his glasses lost on the table. To that, Ariake aggressively downed the last of his latest glass in his face, yelled at the flutist in the corner, and led a chaotic rendition of the sake song.

Oh this is gold. Lachlan laughed himself silly, cheerfully joining in to drown out Eden's protests and hijacking the next verse.

"I'll drink a sake to an old man

Drink a cup of sake

I drink sake to his health, to make up for the white hairs!"

Eden scowled fuzzily at the lot of them. "Barbarians, all of you. That noise would never be classified as singing."

"Well how would you feel about a sea shanty?" Lachlan humoured him.

"What in the seas is a sea shanty?"

Lachlan grinned, turning to the man with the flute. "'Scuse me, but if I whistled a couple bars of a tune, could you follow?"

The man listened keenly as he did so, and nodded. "Yes, it's an easy one."

"Fantastic." He turned back to his sceptical audience, a little extra tooth glinting. "This, lads, is called Drunken Sailor, as translated by me, and dedicated to Nokami here."

Without further ado, he launched into it.

"Oh what will we do with a drunken sailor

What will we do with a drunken sailor

What will we do with a drunken sai-lor

Ear-ly in the mor-ning?"

He'd never laid claim to singing well in key, but Da at least had given him credit for enthusiasm, and he'd made Anna and little James laugh and join in. That was all he could ask for. Shame only Rial had gotten Ma's talent for it, though.

"Wey hey and up she rises!"

Didn't matter in the middle of a pub, in any case. Took them a little while to catch on to the rhythm, but when they did, the "wey hey" almost made him forget he wasn't back somewhere in the Emerald Isle. Back where the wind scoured the moors and the taste of the sea bit sharp on your tongue along the coast.

Even Ariake got into the swing of it, squinting at him contemplatively as he smashed it to a close and gave a stunted bow in his chair to a couple of claps. "Your gaijin songs aren't bad."

He took a swig of actual rice wine. "Then I'll teach you a few more. If there's anything the Islans have, it's a good drinking song."

So he found himself going down the list, Ariake remembering somewhere in there that he didn't like foreigners and turning it into a competition with Nihonjin songs, which got a little heated. And wound up with Lachlan slapping his hand on the table, pulling out the stops.

"Alright then, I've got one that'll have you playing the fiddle." He hopped up out of his chair, stepping onto the table and forcing them to rescue their drinks, Eden snatching his glasses out of the way with a scowl. "This one's a classic that'll curdle your beer pitch-black and give your children red hair."

Spinning to the flutist, he gave him a wink and a grin. "Try to keep up if you like." And this song just about anybody could've sung in tune, a thrill boiling in his blood as he launched straight into it.

"In the merry month of June from me home I started

Left the girls of Tuam nearly broken-hearted—"

The flute sang a different tune to the kind back home, but it did keep up with him. Better than he'd thought it would as he flipped between Nihonjin and Angaelic, probably a little loud and a little exuberant for a Nihon audience, but maybe he'd finally gotten a bit tipsy.

Didn't affect his balance at all.

"—Started by daylight me spirits bright and airy

Took a drop of the pure

Keep me heart from sinking—"

Keeping time with him, the clapping spurred him on, boots stomping driving the rhythm of his heart. A couple voices even joined in on the second "whack follol le-rah!", Drake smiling and Ariake pounding the table dangerously close to the kick of his shoe.

"—Something crossed me mind, when I looked behind

No bundle could I find upon me stick a wobblin'—"

King Ed scowled all the while from his throne, but Drake joined in, forming as decent a melody as anybody could get out of a rusty flute and a fiddle missing a few strings. 'Specially with a roomful of drums and a few others trying to keep up.

"—From there I got away, me spirits never failing

Landed on the quay, just as the ship was sailing—"

Somewhere in there he'd dropped the Nihonjin translation entirely, but nobody minded, the flute dancing along with him.

"—Danced some hearty jigs, the water round me bubblin'—"

God, he hadn't felt this alive in years, a "whack follol le-rah!" nearly driving the breath from his lungs.

"—Called meself a fool, I could no longer stand it

Blood began to boil, temper I was losin'—"

A cold draft brushed in through the door, but he barely noticed, carried by the music and the warm blood singing in his ears.

"—Hunt the hare and turn her down the rocky road—"

A little out of breath, he hunted the song down to the end with a final scuff on the well-worn table, spinning towards the fresh breeze that carried the scent of gorse and salt in with it.

"—Whack follol le-rah!"

To see three tattooed men standing there, one with a snake biting up under the chin, its owner's cold eyes locking onto him.

—Oh hell.