July won't give up without a fight.

There's a jarring jingle of knocking glass and heavy footsteps. Two bartenders rush down their apartment building's staircase. They carry two tote bags filled with bottles, large and small, their handles wrapped around their hands and held close to their puffed chests. Fruit juices, syrups, bitters are all sloshing inside.

Rodi doesn't slow by the entrance's doors, he kicks them open and reaches in his back pockets for his bike's keys. In one sweeping motion, he lifts his leg over its saddle, sticks the keys in the ignition, and swings his bag towards Olive, who's following in his footsteps. The taller inkling rearranges both bags on his shoulders, ensuring they don't slip during the ride.

"No way we'll be in time," Olive takes his seat behind his partner.

Rodi barks above the engine noise. Each break in his speech is a brief gasp of air. "We could've, if Eddy, that useless bonehead, would've answered! On the best! Fucking day! Too!"

"It's a late start, with or without the extra fins," Olive lengthens his neck to survey their road ahead. "You don't have to dump the blame on someone."

"I slept like shit last night," his palms roll on the steering handles. "So, I'm the least at fault here."

Olive's jaw unhinges. "H-How is it my fault you woke up after lunch?!"

"You're using me as your alarm clock," Rodi growls from the side of his mouth, "or lately, more as a blanket."

He pauses the blaming game with a rise in his gaze. Rodi makes the darkening zenith and traces the mauve and coral swirls behind the buildings. From where he stands, the light falls in a sharp, imposing way. He can't overlook how the shadows make shapes on the exterior windows and walls; his nerves fire incessantly to find patterns in the dark.

They lift-off from Blackbelly Street. Despite his grogginess, Rodi stays glued to the road, and doesn't get hooked on what's in periphery of his sight. Yet he keeps squinting, he turns his head more often. The stress dream that plagued him last night got stuck on the edges of his eye mask.

Every so often, rapid bursts flash from Rodi's imagination to his vision. Raining glass shards, unreadable ingredients, declined payments. Though a greater feeling lingered past the visuals: the sensation of an empty basement. Even the very few faces found inside it were empty, indecipherable.

Worst of all, he couldn't find his favourite face in any of them.

He's got something to be blamed for. Isandro dragged Anthos into this whole mess. Every misstep in this job brings his guilt to the surface. A dash of doubt follows each of Rodi's decisions. Sunrise always puts the last night into question.

It stems from the first day the heavy door opened under Mimosa's signage.

That version of their bar was missing most of the atmospheric lighting. They only had the shelves and fridges' illumination to guide them behind the bar. It was a happy coincidence; they never thought of how their workplace would be lit up while their doors were open. However, Mimosa's peculiar magenta haze has been there since day one. Around every inch of its walls, Olive made sure there were enough grow lights for his houseplants.

Olive's greatest concern during their grand opening was to align the spotlights and foliage as optimally as possible. God forbade any loose leaf not getting the maximum amount of illumination, as it was described on the lamps' spec sheets. He'd been at it for hours already, on his sixth lap of each planter. From his apron, instead of bottle openers and an ice pick, he had pruning shears and a misting bottle. His bar towel was going over each and every leaf, wide and thin, dusting religiously.

Remnant of his Kelp Dome work, Rodi brushed it off. Though the string at the base of his head kept pulling, and the self-suggestion didn't hold as the hours passed. Rodi was still attending their first proper set-up, alone.

His throat cleared.

"Come and finish wiping these glasses with me. They look very profesh without the droplets on them," Rodi came across encouraging, aware of Olive's first-timer jitters. To rest his own jitters for asking, he flipped a crystal-clear flute between his fingers, hanging it upside-down on the rails above the bar. His hand reached for the next one in line.

"Just a moment," Olive didn't turn to check how many glasses still needed their sparkle.

"You've polished those leaves enough."

Finally, Olive checked the bar, the actual purpose for being here. He blanked. He got off his knees, hooked the towel by his apron, stood still for a moment. He needed a last glance at the decorative and aromatic plants surrounding him, before he was doing as he was told.

Rodi yanked his gaze from Olive, to the obscure corner under the counter. He kept it there, so he could only hear the crystal's squeaks. Olive's hands were quick to rectify his negligence, proved once more how valuable they are with their uncanny precision, even in such menial tasks. But Rodi kept pretending to check glasses he'd already checked. He feared to question why he couldn't look back anymore.

Nobody really wanted to get the next word. Rodi knew that as soon as he would've opened his mouth, anything could've come out: a deluge of words that would sweep them both in a terrible current. Whatever raced his mind, it was nothing that had its place in the opening day. Yet, it gnawed and gnawed. His partner's voice was the only thing to pause it.

"Sorry. I lost track of time. I really like how everything's looking so far. First day... It's very exciting," Olive forced a smile, his own encouragements.

Rodi reestablished contact. He realised why he couldn't let himself look back. Olive's sheepish eyes have always disarmed him.

"You still want to bartend?" It slipped Rodi's lips, blunt and efficient.

Olive did a quick pass of his surroundings, looking for some vague confirmation in it. He made an effort to sound earnest. "...Oh, yeah, of course! I said I would, I'll help you as much as I can." After the squeak in his voice died down, he also put himself to question. "I don't know why you'd think otherwise. ...I'm here."

Rodi knew very well not to equate physical presence with actual investment. His nose puffed. His distaste for his dramas quickly took over. He put on half a grin, and switched to his most likeable attitude. "You've been caressing your green guys all evening. That makes a man jealous, you know?"

They chuckled, though it was short.

"I'll ink myself green next time. Let me know if you'd rather take care of the plants, though," Rodi waved his hand. "I need to sort out my staff if my other bartender's actually a gardener."

Olive's brows knitted. He couldn't keep wiping glassware. He took great offence, to the other's surprise.

"Who said I'd be that? I'm here as a bartender. You said since it's just the two of us, that I'd also do whatever's needed to run this place, not just the drinks. We went over it. It's on paper. ...You can't keep going back and forth on staffing, not on the opening day."

Rodi bristled. He was the one under the microscope, all of a sudden. The tide inside drew closer.

"I don't care what's on paper. I care for what's in here," Rodi pressed his index finger on the counter. "I'm not blind. I can see where your hearts really are. Not here." His brows dug a deeper shadow. He turned his head away, to subdue it with a stray grow light.

"Sorry? ...My hearts?" Olive became aware of his misaligned internal beats.

There was a brief quiet outside, yet a confusing polyrhythm inside. Olive went over his knuckles with his thumbs, staring at the foliage again. Within the silence between his beats, he could grasp the root of Rodi's frustrations here.

After all, Olive outright denied the job when Rodi first brought it up.

"Rodi... Sit for a second with me," Olive took a bar stool, waiting for Rodi to do the same. His eyelids guided his sight to the ground, as Rodi detoured the counter.

This wasn't about their jobs anymore. The bar was no longer separating them. They were in close reach, clear sighted, as they were on other nights on such seating.

Rodi rested his elbows over his knees. "...Don't say you're doing this just for my sake." Something in his voice was taut.

"I want to be here. I want to work on this. You'll have to trust me here," Olive's arms folded. Though that trusting wasn't there, Rodi's eyes were getting lost in cascading thoughts. Olive started seeking in the empty venue ways to convince Rodi otherwise.

But it didn't last more than a run of his hands over his side-swept tentacles. Rodi resurfaced with a stronger sense of his doubts. "You had your own plans before I entered the picture. Clear, sane plans, nothing like mine. I don't want you to end up dropping them for my own. This bar could go anywhere."

Olive was about to involuntarily scratch behind his neck, though his pose locked in place. "No... I'm still working on them. But I'm fine with having less time for my studies. I just want to pass and walk out with a degree."

"Really? That's all you signed up for? You didn't make it so underwhelming before."

"Hey, look at me. I'm trying to survive my second year as it is."

"Cut the bull," the snap was in a flash. "You want to hone your skills," Rodi's voice reaches the closest leaf, making it shiver in response. "You want to make it into research," his mind jumped to the heavy books now loading his apartment's bookshelves. "You better tell me you still want these things, before I go robbing all your time."

Olive's knees rose, his shoulders lowered, curling a bit tighter into himself. "Yeah... Yeah. I didn't give up on those," he could've added the yet under his breath. "I'm working on it, but I don't want to get tunnel vision. There's plenty of skill and knowledge to get from bartending, too. And... I'm not as keen on research anymore. That whole thing with June soured it for me."

June Maure, the postgraduate attending Inkopolis University. June, the first to worm through Olive's mind with loving words and caresses.

"Oh, come on," Rodi's outburst made his upper body jolt upright. Even the hydraulics in the bar stool needed to settle. He had to curb himself, with a cross of his legs. "She can't be the only one in there staring at plants all day," disbelief waved his pitch.

"Obviously not. But her group is one of the better ones, with a top-notch supervisor that secured some damn good funding for them."

"That's not a fucking reason to ditch it, either. God, imagine if I let every bartender I sucked off get into my head like this," Rodi's index finger drilled into his brow. "Like, if you have a dream, you should chase it and never fucking look back."

Olive did half a nod, though wasn't entirely on board, from the tilt of his lips.

"Rodi, look, I can't go all in on a single dream, like you do. I've got something at stake here."

"Like what?"

Like what, indeed. It took great effort to define it. It took dissecting it to the basics.

A dream is a mental suggestion. For him, it bordered fantasy and coercion. Olive wracked his mind to explain where this coercion could come from. It was impossible.

Instead, he sought something to pull them out of this rabbit hole of a discussion, any last-minute task they completely forgot about. The bar was pristine. The glassware they've been attending became incredibly insignificant at that point. He slipped deeper into his environment, and it took hold of him. Olive was surrounded by the harbingers of his confusion.

...Apiaceae, Apocynaceae, Araceae, Arecaceae, Aroideae, Asphodelaceae... This alphabet stretched endlessly. All these incantations blended together, tangled his tongue in the opaque language of bygone eras, yet it lived and breathed right in this room, with him. The more he looked at these specimens, the faster his dread swam to the surface. Olive's lips parted.

"I think... I might be scared. No. I'm terrified, actually. And it's nothing to do with bartending."

"What?" Rodi blinked. "Not to shit on your optimism, but you've got enough reasons to be scared of this."

"This doesn't freeze me in place," Olive blinked back, with a sterner gaze. "I've been making progress with the bar... more or less," he hesitated, "but I will figure it out, it's not rocket science. I'll become a proper bartender quicker than a botanist," he scoffed.

Concern was plastered over Rodi's expression. "Don't be so. You were pretty proud of your performance. You landed a summer job inside the greenhouse that makes all of Inkadia's damn produce. You can be both."

"The first year doesn't count, it's all introductory content. You know how Kelp Dome went, and you know second year's been giving me hell. I'm either getting out of this with a research project, or with a shoddy piece of paper. If I keep missing the mark, it'll be the latter. And I can't ever accept losing the dream. I can... adjust for it."

Rodi kept to himself, and from ripping the threads out of his bar cloth. Academics often pushed him out of his depth, so he allowed Olive to speak.

In contrast, Olive started gesturing in his speech, more than what was usual for him. He left less breathing space between his words.

"At this rate, I doubt my thesis will be any good. And that's the entry barrier for the serious botanists, some distilled document to gobble three years of blood, sweat and tears. All for a grain of respect... How will I ever find a gap in our wealth of knowledge? We're talking about aeons of science here. There's evidence of these studies from previous eras. The easy stuff got figured out already, now there's only the hard questions, and even the genuises are struggling there. ...Never mind me, why would we be the ones to answer?"

Two long sighs filled the air, each with its own load.

"I need this," Olive gestured at the bottles, "at least to take my mind off it."

While this dilemma sunk in, Rodi linked his arms and inspected them, he shook the pins and needles off his crossed leg, he wet his unusually dry lips. When the pieces fell, the carmine eyes raised.

"You're avoiding it, and I'm the fuel for your avoidance. Doesn't sound too good."

Olive's inhale through his nose was sharp, though dampened by his reply. "No, listen, this is the best you can do for me. At least in here, I'll have something real to share. I can share that with you," his hand went for Rodi's knee, "and everyone around me," the other hand stretched to the room's empty seating. "...Maybe I've just dreamed of something with some sort of reach. It doesn't have to be something made in a lab, or greenhouse, or whatever."

Rodi's eyes were wide enough to reflect the purple edges of the room. Olive took care with his tone, to settle the discussion once and for all.

"I can't afford freezing in my ambitions. I'll take anything to stay in motion. Just, please, put me in motion."

The nodding came naturally for Rodi, slow and bobbing like the rolling waves. He understood it perfectly. He could've asked for the same.

Though his fang still dug at the old bite scar behind his lower lip.

"I need your commitment."

Something shifted in the air, as soon as commitment was uttered. A trepidation was installed, which resonates to this day. It was the first time they've let that monumental word loose, out of its thick-barred cage. It keeps trembling in their chests. It reverberates in everything around them.

It resonates in the rumble of subwoofers and explosions, in the motorbike's engine and its tires rolling onto pebbly pavement. Their hearing and sight are assaulted into the present moment. Fireworks are littering the sky. Pink and lime. Glitter and rhinestones.

This is the signal.

Inside Inkopolis' greatest shrine, unfathomably ancient thoughts are etched into thermal paper rolls. The scrolls reach the news studio in the Plaza. The wishes for celebration, conversation, congregation are breathed out by the previous Calamari County shrine maidens, their glossy smiles captured by rolling cameras. Within their breaths, these sacred words regain life, such that they can travel over lands and seas. Festival grounds are set alight.

The closer the bartenders get to Mimosa, the more roads appear closed down. They'll need to run for Eelskin Street and ditch the motorbike. They leave it with one wheel atop the kerb, and let their legs work by themselves.

Upon contact, the ground boils with the world's anticipation, as lobbies are to open soon. In this mad dash, Rodi's smaller step makes him fall behind, though Olive frees a hand for him. He reaches his arm behind to let Rodi link on it, pulling his partner to his own gait. From their soles, bursts of ink propel their leaps, and become a quick treat for the microorganisms in the air. The invisible ink-eating critters glow brighter, they rise to the sky like ember sparks.

The now-pedestrian roads are entrancing, messages of support for both the idols' teams are hanging on cloth, sprayed on walls, shouted from the balconies. They're tonight's mantras.

Wristbands fluoresce under the artificial lights. The seatizens, some in traditional festival garb, others in their flashy gear, converge towards the Plaza, captured in excitement's whirlpool. There's no rhyme or reason to this flow. They brush shoulders, place themselves in the way of the rushing inklings. The entropy's too high. They're all becoming the microorganisms themselves in this larger spectacle.

Everyone, whether they know it or not, has picked a role to play tonight. Isandro and Anthos' part for this festival is clear. They will host and carry the night for others, a duty they won't question in favour of the fun surrounding them. But it isn't as clear how they're supposed to carry it. It's hard to know what will descend towards the basement after them.

A tingle makes its way from the cold stairs to their soles, then rises to their heads. The machinations of running this place are starting to show in the brick wall's cracks, growing deeper towards the metal door. Rodi is anticipating the scattered tools and unset tables, the empty ice box with nothing to fill it, that stubborn sticky spot on the counter that always catches the bar towel.

Although trivial, these issues are droplets in a filled glass. They ask for some caution. Unlike many things in his life, Rodi makes an effort to hold respect for this beast, his own business. He's got some pride for being capable of taming it, lest it eats him whole. There's always a soft warning, the pointy ridges of the keys grazing over his fingers, like a shark's fangs scraping at the hand reached in its mouth. Like an overzealous tamer, he lets himself get swallowed through the basement's metallic mouth, trusting he'll make it out at sunrise without a scratch.

It wasn't always so fearsome. Before Rodi got the keys to Mimosa, it was a stray. Beryl cleared it out and stripped it of all that was attached to Myrtle, its old name. During its short vacancy, it was a sterile cellar with four concrete walls, a large prison cell closed off with a reinforced door, no less. A century ago, back when Eelskin Street housed artisans, it was a storeroom for the businesses housed above it, an afterthought. Despite the sorry state of it, it became a banquet hall when Isandro entered. There was potential.

While scoping out the required works, his vision would've gone haywire with impressions of slick furnishing, dim lights, a lively clientele drinking from handcrafted glassware and thickening the air with conversation. Between highrises and industrial smog, a haven of greenery and velvet laid underground. This would be his sweet escape.

He could hear the music coming from the empty floor space, reserved for a set of speakers which haven't appeared to this day. Rodi's mind jumped to his connections in the music scene, all formed in the backstage and the interminable sound checks. He might have been more distraction than help, to the ire of the venue and event managers, though his hands worked wonders in the most pressuring times. When everything had to fall in place, just before the ticket holders showed at the door, Isandro always pulled it off. This would be his magician reputation.

Rodi made sure to leave the rest of the adjacent wall empty for a simple booth, for the DJs that would hold the night with him. He was already scheming how to advertise Mimosa's late night events, though the wires in his head never connected the artists's faces and their names, nevermind any means of following up with them. It didn't help how some of these artists would've kept to themselves in his presence, though Rodi could sense the rollercoaster ride behind their record selections and dancing eyes. That was enough connection for him to know swathes about them, enough to make him forget something as basic as asking for their names. This would be his sharpest skill behind the bar.

As vivid as his other senses were, the taste on his tongue was the strongest. Imagination stretched boundlessly when it came to the sort of drinks he could push over the bar mats. The best bottles kissed with carefully cut ice and garnishes. Just the emulation of their taste sparked the curiosity to delve deeper into the complexities of the craft, to find a new sensation that he hadn't felt before on a new region of his tongue. He'd bathe not only in his own reactions to it, though in others' as well. This would be his relentless fascination.

It was perfect behind his eyes. It all came to the execution. With sprawled hands waving in the air, Rodi drew out the positioning of the furniture; the seating and the shelving. His palms applied fresh coats of paint, scrubbed the old flooring clean, brushed comfort on Olive's dry skin, also victim of the construction materials. Their hands linked when the work was complete. They relished in their creation, the warm glow and buzz of Mimosa's newly mounted signage, as they'd do many times after.

Any doubts about commitment should've been washed long ago, yet Rodi is hung on the dirt under his nails, which hasn't left since renovations ended. It's the endless battle of upkeeping this place every night. It's the question of how much it's all worth. This basement will inevitably be empty once more.

The stainless steel fixtures multiply Rodi's image, and each reflection holds a different facade, one for each repressed feeling. Each one highlights his shortcomings as an bartender, manager, host, and as a lover. He's got a cramp in his jaw, so familiar when the atmosphere's pressure drills into him. However, there's no excitement to fuzz out the discomfort. The rush of euphoria from the opening day has faded. Setting up the bar was attractive to him when it was a new skill to gain. It becomes a drag, more so when it should've been done hours ago. They were supposed to be in the thick of the action, to catch the evening's start.

Olive's customary finger taps, ubiquitous gestures to make way to the storage and back, become telling on Rodi's lower back. The pomegranate inkling's hip movement, jagged and impatient to go back to its place, betrays as much in the bar as it does in bed: Rodi wants to be over with it already.

But when the door unlocks, there's a flood of stillness that belies the turmoil. The empty draft does its first lap of the room. It freezes Rodi with his hand on the door handle, Olive with his elbows on the counter.

A dream is when you can't back out of a decision.