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Ludwig Beilschmidt | Germany | One Two Three

seeeeees yes yes yes coffee and butterscotch if you want to send any my way...

@austria Sorry for delayed reply, I was busy LARPing Germany by doing all of my coworkers' jobs >:I Anyways, yeah, they would definitely still be friends! Better friends, probably, now that Roderich isn't preventing Ludwig from throwing out old clothes that are beyond saving -- absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. But it'd be fun to write either of those things (or both).

As Ludwig’s star had ascended, the man had found himself confronted by problems that he had never even considered when he’d begun his career. For instance, when he needed a place to hang out after work and relax, most places had become abruptly closed to him. The cozy bar near his university knew his face too well, and word spread quickly that an MP had been hanging out there, turning Ludwig’s attempts to unwind into a stream of chatty visitors either plying him for inside information or trying to ask favors. On the other hand, the man’s attempts to follow in the footsteps of his coworkers had fared just as poorly. After accepting a friendly invitation one Friday evening, Ludwig had ended up not at a bar but at a genuine old-school gentlemen’s ‘smoking club’, and the place had reflected its snooty moniker perfectly. Ludwig had easily been the only visitor under forty and the only individual without a Rolex, vacation home, or series of prominent ties to Britain’s upper class. The place hadn’t even served beer, for pity’s sake. The bartender had given him a disdainful stare when he’d asked.

Looking back at that night, Ludwig realized he probably should have commanded rather than asked politely, but he didn’t see that as the point. He wanted a place to relax, where he could put up his feet a little and enjoy the atmosphere, maybe catch a football game on the TV, say hello to the locals, and be promptly forgotten. And it had taken him half a year to find that place.

Ludwig had been leery of The Bunker mainly for the name (the half-German MP going to a bar called The Bunker to escape the work week? The jokes wrote themselves) but he’d crossed off so many other haunts and it had been next on his list. Surprisingly, however, the place had been utterly genuine. He’d grabbed a table in the corner, chatted with the bartender, ordered a few beers and passed the next few hours in peaceful reflection. It could have easily been a cramped, dirty, and suffocating little hole-in-the-wall but Ludwig found it cozy, comfortable, and friendly, and so he’d returned the following Friday, and the Friday after that. As he continued to advance his visits grew fewer, limiting themselves to a single Friday a month, but if anything, the MP had grown even fonder of the place, and he’d become especially fond of one of the bartenders, one Feliciano Vargas, who — aside from the manager — seemed to be the only person in the bar that recognized Ludwig as someone in a powerful position. Even better, unlike the manager, Feliciano had never seemed to care.

When he’d first met the man, Ludwig had been nearly overwhelmed by the enthusiastic Italian. Yet he’d quickly learned that Feliciano hadn’t been angling for a tip or looking for some kind of favor. He greeted all of his customers with the same effervescence. And while the chatterbox could literally talk about anything (Ludwig had once overheard him describing a particularly cute cat he’d passed that morning), Feliciano also proved to be a rapt and sympathetic listener. Feliciano had been an occasional fixture at his quiet corner table until Ludwig had been forced to admit that he’d made an actual friend of the man, at which time his presence had become permanent whenever the MP set foot in the bar. He looked forward to talking with Feliciano just as much as he looked forward to knocking back a beer or three.

This Friday had been particularly hellish, however, and Ludwig had honestly considered breaking his once-a-month agreement with the friendly Italian and the bar he worked for. He had been used to things going wrong during his workday; most of the time, he suspected that if he didn’t clean up the mess, nobody else would bother. But today… today there had been a data leak. And not a small one, either: a vast array of confidential information had bled out to the public, and Ludwig had been furious. With the criminal underground of London stirring and MI6 seemingly with their hands full (and not without their own bouts of incompetence) the last thing the government needed was to appear out of control. Yet the instant the leak had been discovered, Ludwig had learned that plenty of older MPs keep their computer passwords written down on sticky notes on their desk. Plenty more had given their confidential files passwords like ‘kittens’ or ‘password’, and a few had been caught downloading videos from certain websites without so much as a virus scan. Ludwig had genuinely lost his temper then and had promptly arranged for a Computer Security 101 seminar for the worst offenders, but most of that stupidity had already reached the newspapers, who would have quite the headline for tomorrow’s front page.

More ominously, not even Ludwig’s computer had been spared, although the most that had leaked out had been some photographs of his dogs he’d uploaded to a public file and shared with a few friends (those would still probably make it into the gottverdammt papers too, knowing his luck). But Ludwig took plenty of precautions, which meant that the leak might have been a genuine hacking or even some mole buried deep in the government’s own system. He ended up leaving work at half-past-eleven at night when he’d finally judged his damage control to be adequate, and he’d considered going straight home to sleep and forget the whole bloody mess. But then he’d remembered Feliciano and he’d caught a taxi to The Bunker instead.

Inside, the atmosphere perked him up just a bit, but even the warm greeting he received from his friend (or even the promise of Oettinger) couldn’t erase the haggard expression he wore. Feliciano spotted the weariness easily; even with his typical blank mask on, Ludwig doubted he’d be able to pull one over on the shorter man. The Italian had a strange knack for reading people. As he took a seat in his typical booth, he felt slender fingers link in his own. Feliciano loved touching: hugging people, kissing people on the cheek, holding hands, brushing here and there, patting… Ludwig had been extremely off-put by it at first and had veered away whenever Feliciano had come at him, but he’d slowly learned that it was just another way Feliciano expressed himself. He meant no harassment or discomfort by it, and that had caused Ludwig to make an effort to adjust.

”It’s just… been a very long day,” he explained, running his free hand over his forehead before pulling his glove off with his teeth and letting it fall to the table. ”I don’t know how much I can honestly say but you’ll probably be reading about it in the papers tomorrow so perhaps there’s no real harm.” The MP had always been careful not to run his mouth off, but he’d had a few slips, and to his shock, Feliciano had not betrayed his trust. He still kept his own secrets, but some matters could be shared without too much worry. ”Grab me a beer, and grab yourself one if you want. You’ve probably earned it just the same,” Ludwig mumbled, and then a thought occurred to him and he added, ”and I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I should have texted but… my hands were full.”