Rush Hour at the Rabbit Hole

The bar that Morgaine worked at was nice. Quiet for the most part, with only the occasional rowdy bunch that turned up. It was a restaurant as much as a bar, rather than a club or your typical watering hole for those only looking to get drunk as fast as possible. A classy place, you know? He’d appreciated the homey, almost intimate atmosphere of it ever since he started working there.

The Rabbit Hole was the opposite of Morgaine’s workplace in a lot of ways. It was almost always hopping with activity (pun somewhat intended, and not apologized for). Hops… managed.

She did her best! Most of the time!

Morgaine liked to drop by regularly to see how she was doing, and there was usually only a small disaster taking place. It helped him appreciate what he had going on at his own place, made the trade-off in business and tips seem worth the more easygoing vibe.

He’d had an earlier shift this evening and decided to swing by The Rabbit Hole as usual, and boy howdy, tonight was not looking like a small disaster.

The line to get inside wasn’t too bad, but it was immediately clear that that was probably only because a lot of the buns that had been waiting in line at one point or another had decided it wasn’t worth the wait and went to look for their fix elsewhere. The inside of the bar was insanely packed for the relatively early hour; Morgaine held onto his hat with one hoof and curled his tail close to his body to avoid anything getting yanked or knocked loose from the press of the crowd. There was hardly any standing room, much less available seats.

Morgaine waded through the crowd towards the bar counter itself, almost knocked off-balance a few times as he went from buns making merry or just trying to make their own way from one side of the room to the other. He could just barely make out Hops’s voice, fast-paced and high-pitched with stress, as he approached.

As expected, there were no free seats and barely any other open space at the counter, but with some creative weaving and bobbing and liberal use of his elbow, Morgaine managed to squeeze his way in. “Hey hon-” He started trying to greet Hops, but was cut off by someone stumbling into him, squishing him against the side of the bar and making him wheeze. “Ow, excuse me-”

Whoever had run into him was immediately enveloped back into the crowd without so much as a “sorry,” so he didn’t get a clear look at them, but he did shoot a glare in that direction before turning his attention back.

“Hey, Hops!” His voice was swallowed up by the noise of chattering, laughter, singing, and clinking glasses, and Hops continued scurrying around behind the bar without even glancing over.

“HOPS!”

She did spin around at that, eyes wide and horn decorations swinging comically. The drinks on the tray she was holding sloshed dangerously, but she adjusted her hold unconsciously even as she spun, preventing anything from spilling. It would have been incredibly impressive if there had been even a spare moment to actually focus on it. Her eyes darted around before finally landing on Morgaine, and it clicked that he was the one who had called out to her.

“WHAT?” She shouted back over the din.

“EVENING! WHAT IN TARNATION IS GOING ON IN HERE!?”

“HI!” Hops shouted, evidently not catching the rest of what he’d said. Another patron at the bar caught her attention before anything else could be said, and she rushed over to dole out the drinks she was holding and take more orders.

It took several minutes for her to finish up with that, with more buns calling Hops back and forth before she was able to circle back around to where Morgaine stood.

“Hi,” she said again when finally at a distance where yelling wasn’t required. She seemed too out of breath to yell anymore, anyhow.

“Did somebody get married?” Morgaine asked, unsure what else could be the cause of such a wild crowd. His own bar had catered a wedding or two, and they were big affairs, all the more for how rare they were. Buns so inclined towards such displays tended to go big or go home, with few falling in between, as far as he could tell. “...Did somebody die?”

“No,” Hops said, putting a year’s worth of exhaustion and exasperation into the one word. “It’s the Major League Bunsball World Series. Half the buns here are celebrating, and half are drowning their sorrows, and they’re all going to need to be scraped up off the floor tomorrow morning but that’s not my problem right now. I can’t deal with any more problems right now.”

“Oh hell.” The bane that every bartender encountered at one time or another: sports fans. (Scare chord optional, but very deeply felt.)

“I am so sorry,” Morgaine said, deeply sincere.

Hops fixed him with a pleading look. “Look, I know this isn’t your usual gig, and you probably came here to chill, but I haven’t gotten to sit down all evening, and I’m going to be here for at least six more hours. Could you maybe, you know… just borrow a uniform and lend a hand?”

Morgaine grimaced. “Hon, I just got off work…” His protest was weak in the face of Hops’s obvious desperation and the overwhelming crowd.

“I’ll give you a discount the next time I’m offering special drink lessons,” she countered with zero hesitation.

“...Alright, give me the bowtie.”

***

“I’m having second thoughts.”

Okay, yes, it was a nice thing to do for a friend, and Hops most definitely needed the help, but Morgaine couldn’t help feeling patently ridiculous in the bowtie, cuffs, and bustle that Hops had helped him into before handing him a tray loaded with drinks.

Hops mercilessly nudged him back to the front of the bar, forcing him to walk in order to not risk spilling the drinks. “Too late for second thoughts! And really, thank you, you’re a lifesaver!”

“Yeah, yeah…” Morgaine squared his shoulders and steeled himself. “Whatever, I make this look good!” He declared over his shoulder before joining her in the mad dash to keep the drinks flowing and the patrons paying up. Honestly, if anyone was coming out of the Major League Bunsball World Series a winner, it was Angora’s wallet.

But, the bartenders made some pretty sweet tips too, in the meantime.