She’d been told, if you wanted to sing without being pelted with unmentionable things, this was the best place — the secret best karaoke place in New York. If nothing else, it looked like a great place to hang out and have a good time.
So the evening was by no means going to be wasted — and then Summer opened the door to a truly glorious male voice making perfect gold out of probably one of the worst songs currently popular in the world. It took her two tries to get her mouth to shut, and then she edged around and through people to get a glimpse of the singer.
Phil f-ing Coulson.
Dear gods and little fishes.
Snagging a seat as close to the mini stage as possible, Summer set her chin in her hands and prepared to enjoy a darn good show.
Phil was having a good time, swinging his head when the line about “the way that you flip your hair” and making the audience laugh. He was having a good time, not taking the song too seriously.
Since the mic was cordless, Phil moved out into the crowd and stopped, singing right to a young woman he’d never seen before. “So come-come on, you got it wrong. To prove I’m right, I put it in a so-o-ong.”
She couldn’t help but laugh when Phil moved out among the tables, headed right for her. Of course he had no idea how accurate the song was, but he was being a total ham, and it was awesome. Saluting, she sang the next lines with him, laughing so hard she could barely breathe.
Where in the world had this man been hiding when he was at SHIELD?
Winking at her, Phil moved along to other tables, even singing to Mick at the bar, who pretended to swoon and fall on the bartop. Phil was barely able to keep it together since Mick was every bit as much a ham as he was.
Shaking his head, he got the crowd to clap along with him during the “na na nas” and finished the song to applause.
Well, there was no way she could follow that act up, but Summer had come to sing, and by gods she was going to put her name on that list. She wended her way up to the machine and spent a few minutes paging through the book. It was really all show, since she was going to sing what she always opened with.
But maybe she could get a chance to congratulate Phil on what appeared to be a regular accomplishment, after he got done being celebrated by the crowd.
He was finally able to get free of the crowd and headed over to the bar to get his usual drink. As he did so, he noticed the young woman he had sung to. He flashed her a friendly smile as he passed by and gave Mick his order of a screwdriver.
Chance! Sliding up next to him at the bar, Summer hitched herself up on a stool, waved a hand at the barkeeper, and tapped Phil on the shoulder.
“That,” she said, “was amazing. It should be impossible to do a rendition of that song that does not sound stupid, and yet you did it.”