Kings.

A makeshift circle. Cards, new and crisp. Beer. Wine. The same old, same old, same old, same old.

An attempt to disconnect, an attempt to view it all dispassionately but then someone draws a Queen and it's a waterfall and the wine slips so effortlessly down your throat, and your vision gets that much hazier, and your laughter gets that much easier. 

And it is genuine, you can't deny that. 

"Never have I ever done hard drugs." 

No one swigs their drink which is quite strange, because everyone is twenty at the very least and everyone smokes up - some more than others - and everyone drinks (hello, you're playing Kings after all) and some of them are what the people who speak the same language long dead critics do when they're sitting in the ugly cafe and looking disapprovingly at the length of your hemline would call, if this was twenty years ago, fast. 

Later, someone comes up to you and wonders in a vague, uninterested, just to pass the moment kind of way whether you're going to record this and you are, you knew you were going to even as it was all happening, but what is the point really? 

One evening is pretty much the same as another, they flow seamlessly: the same faces, the same jokes, the same music, but the truth is it doesn't make them any less fun, it doesn't make them any less welcome. Mindless moments of laughter are not to be dismissed, not to be allowed to grow old. Precious, useless, timeless.