fandomhighdorms | Third Floor Common Room; Monday Morning (Daytime) [07/08].

Entry tags:

Third Floor Common Room; Monday Morning (Daytime) [07/08].

The fact that Wayne had bothered to take a quick glance outside first before heading down to the common room was showing some sort of progress, though he figured it didn't matter much what was going on outside exactly, because it would pretty much mean that the week was pretty fucked even if it did look normal, although, to be faaaiiirrrrr, last week's wasnt' too bad. He didn't care for the whole getting lost thing whenever he wanted to go somewhere, and he felt sort of bad kicking the asses of critters not even half his size, but, look, you don't go around trying to kidnap people and drag them into sewers and not expect to get your asses kicked because of it. You just don't, so he didn't feel that bad about it at the end of the day.

He was, however, glad to see at least the food in the fridge hadn't been messed with this week, so he could set about making his usual breakfast to start the week with. Because, no matter what wound up happening by the time Friday rolled around, at least Monday morning could be nice and normal, dependable and expected.

It was the little things in life that counted, after all.

[[ open breakfast is open, of course! ]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If it seemed as though Vette was growing increasingly more agitated as each week came and went, well, that probably wasn't anybody's imagination, no. Today she was sort of creeping her way into the common room, carrying her cat in her arms, looking wearily at the window like she was more or less resigned to something coming through it and trying to grab her right then and there.

"Morning, Wayne."

The time in the sphere hadn't actually done her any favors. The resulting dungeon crawl had been fine, but...

Eh. She was tired.

"Vette." Wayne looked up from the plate he was already fixing for her so he could nod, before going right back to it. "How are ya now?"

Sure, thanks to that look, he really didn't have to ask, but it was just impolite not to.

"Never better," Vette replied, in a tone that suggested that she could think of plenty of times when she'd been doing far better, but thinking too hard about them would only make her feel stupid for staying here when home was, in fact, actually an option again. "How about you?"

"Ohhhh...." said Wayne, seeming to drag it out just a little bit more than usual this morning, squinting a little as he considered it, though the answer was almost always going to be the same, "not so bad."

And it was true, too.

At the very least, there was a plate full of the usual breakfast offerings since Wayne felt no reason to deviate into anything but the usual these days, since no one seemed to complain or anything, and he was handing it over to Vette, asking "Breakfast?" even though he knew she was likely going to say yes.

Really, if Vette ever said no to food, either she'd been replaced by a pod person or there was something terribly wrong with her. She gave a little smile, shifted her cat around so that Miss Dozy was half draped over one shoulder, and accepted the plate with a nod.

"Hey, thanks," she said, smiling crookedly. "So, it's smoky out there today, huh?"

She didn't trust it. Even if it looked more like a Nar Shaddaa sky than most of the ones they'd seen so far. That radioactive one being the one possible exception, maybe.

"Seems so," said Wayne, simply enough, turning back to the stove to tend to some eggs in the pan, and decided to just leave it at that. He was leaning pretty heavily toward the fact that, it didn't really matter why it was so smoky, they'd likeleh find out about it soon enough anyway, and the less he had to think about it for the time being, the better. So he slipped those eggs onto a plate for the next person before they went and got themselves burned and added smoke to the inside as well as the outside, and then reached for his mug with the dog on it so that he could take a stiffly determined sip of his coffee. Then onto making another pancake.

Then a thoughtful frown.

"Don't s'pose it's gonna clear up anytime soon, either..." he added, with a small, efficient sort of sigh.

"Yeah, my guess is it's one of those week-long smokes," Vette agreed, with a faint air of exasperation. "Which is great. I mean, everyone loves that constantly smoky smell, right? If it's wood smoke, anyway."

This was not wood smoke.

"Still," said Wayne, who had absolutely no problem crushing a pack of darts in a disturbingly short amount of time, anyway, "prolly a bit of an improvement on last week's smell, I can tell you that much."

The improvement was slight, it was true, but no matter how bad this smoke smell got, it would have work pretty hard to beat something going around being called an Eternal Stench and not only completely living up to the title, but giving it a real run for its money while it was at it.

"Oh, yeah, I smelled that smell," Vette allowed. "Between that and rotting... what's that fruit? Peaches? I might never eat another peach again and I didn't know what they were until last Wednesday."

They were awful. Awful.

"Oh, yeah?" asked Wayne, tilting his head a little. "Something wrong with the peaches, was there?"

There shouldn't have been, he figured, since they were in season and all. Well, he supposed that'd depend on the variety, actually, but he had noticed a bit of an abundance of them. Hadn't really partaken himself, though, out of a sort of stubborn assurance that he'd just be disappointed because they wouldn't likely hold a candle to one from his own farm, and why even bother putting himself through that sort of disappointment?

Vette opened her mouth to reply, considered her audience for a moment, and then just shrugged and nodded.

"They were rotting. And full of bugs. Turns out, bugs don't agree with me after all."

"They looked fine," Wayne noted, since he never did see the after-effects of having actually bitten into one. "But, y'know, that just goes to show, now, doesn't it? Looks can be deceivin'. Gotta figgur, though, anything coming up from the ground in a place that smells like that has got to be a little off, guess its no surprise that the bugs'll really go fer it."

There was, briefly, a pause.

And there was, if you looked close, maybe a grin.

"So much for that extra protein, after all, then, eh, Vette?"

"Heh, yeah," Vette replied, smiling crookedly. "I spent the next few days in a little ball, miserable."

In basically every possible interpretation of that phrase.

"Which is a shame, because usually I have guts of durasteel."

"Must have been," Wayne noted stoutly, "some real bad bugs. Glad yer feelin' better, though. Shame it's prolly put you off peaches for a while, though. They're not so bad."

Pause.

"When they're not filled with bugs."

And he wouldn't sit there and claim Letterkenny peaches never had problems with bugs, because some summers were definitely more buggy than others, but he felt pretty confident that a Letterkenny peach ran a much lower risk of being...filled with them as well as not being handed out for people to be eatin' when it'd gone past its prime.

"Well, maybe I'll give them another try sometime," Vette hedged. "You know, I'll get you to give them a quality check first just to be sure."

And that way if she wound up at a magical ball, in a magical ball, she'd know who to blame.

"I'd offer to have my little sister check on how the crop back home's comin' in," Wayne mused. "We got a coupla peach trees. Nothing much, just a little to fill in the produce stand a bit. But I'm sure by the time it managed to get through customs and make its way down here, they wouldn't be nearleh as good. S'sort of thing you want right off the tree, if you can get it."

"You know," Vette mused, "I don't think I've ever actually had fruit right off the tree? I'm sure it's great, but... where I'm from isn't really much for agriculture."

What with having no accessible ground.

That could make things a bit difficult, it was true.

"S'best way to have it, realleh," said Wayne, though he was a bit biased, and it didn't make him sad to think that people could go their whole lives without ever having fruit right off the tree before, but it did make him feel even more convinced that big city degens really didn't even know just how bad they had it, now, did they? "Highly recommended! Just maybe not here. Fuck, I'm not sure I'd really trust much of anything that came out of the ground around here."

"Yeah, this whole place seems like it's been put together wrong," Vette replied, frowning a little and poking at a piece of bacon with her fork. "And I mean, it's not the first place I've ever been that I can say that about, but this one definitely seems to be putting some extra effort into it."

"I've said it before," said Wayne, "and I'll say it again, but I'm pretty sure this is not what my uncle Eddie had in mind when he sent me here to see a bit more of the wooooorllldddd...."

And he frowned a little, squinting.

"Though I s'pose," he allowed, a bit reluctantly, "it's definitely been...an experience."

"It'd be a hard one to match," Vette agreed. "But, hey, what doesn't kill you, right?"

...

"I regret saying that already."

Wayne grunted a little in agreement.

"Besides," he said, "statement like that is objectively untrue. Gettin' your dominant hand mangled up in a woodchipper, fer example, doesn't kill ya, more'n likeleh, but it sure doesn't make you stronger, either, because now you've only got one hand, and it's not even yer good one. Unless you're ambidextrous, I s'pose, but then you've just gone from ambidextrous to just..dextrous."

"... Okay, but what if you get a really cool cyborg hand?"

Just wondering. That was totally a thing back home, after all.

"Well, okay, sure," said Wayne, after a moment to think about that, "if yer bringing bionic enhancements into the mix, then I'd say that was doesn't kill you does, in fact, make you stronger, assuming that the following conditions are met. Number A: you can even get one in the first place. Number B: the craftsmanshp is more that a step up from decent. And Number C: it's not likeleh to malfunction on you too much."

Then, his head tilted slightly, the tilt of a small revelation.

"Just like any piece of equipment, if you get right down to 'er."

"Well, sure," Vette allowed, nodding. "I've seen some pretty bad cybernetics. But then again, I've seen some impressive ones too. It really all depends on how many credits you've got, you know?"

... That said, they weren't anything approaching pretty, in her time. Little more than metallic skeletal bits with occasional built-in blasters.

"Pancake day, pancake day, it's pancaaake dayyyy," Del sang as she skipped in, little sparkles twinkling to life in the air around her and fading out as she moved like some sort of prismatic fireflies. "I remembered!" She was proud of this. Barnabas trailed after her, also a little proud of her for remembering but mostly because Wayne was always good for bacon.

"That you did!" noted Wayne, also feeling proud of her for it and making sure it showed in his little declaration. He was glad to see she was feeling more herself again, too, and went ahead and made sure she had a few extra pancakes on her plate, just like Barnabas was getting a bit more bacon on his.

He gave them each a nod as the plates were handed over or set down, respectively. "Delirium. Barnabas. How are ya now?"

Little victories. Del thanked him and rolled a pancake into a tube and munched. Between bites, she answered him. "I am me today, and that's better than some days have been recently. Not everyone has headaches today, just some people and that's much better than when everyone does."

Well. It was.

Barnabas wagged his tail and said a polite and dignified 'thank you' for his plate of bacon. And stayed within range if the dog addict needed to pat.

Oh. There would be pats. There couldn't be such a good bo and have there not be pats. But it seemed impolite to get to the pattin' before some proper breakfast.

"Can confirm," Wayne agreed easily with Delirium's assement. "Though I suppose if anyone does have a headache, there's some aspirin on hand that might help."

He'd been through enough here to just assume that it would. He was mostly just glad that he himself didn't have one, though, even if he did, he'd not say anything and just tough it out, of course.

"Any exciting plans fer yer day, then, Delirium? What with you feeling all yourself today and everything?"

"Iiiii," she sang, "have a class today!" Classes were exciting. "Then I might go for a walk and see if the grey can't be made a different color because grey is kind of blah, don't you think?"

Beat.

"What's aspirin?"

Beat.

"Oh. Wait. I know this. The little icky white pills people take." She considered it and shrugged. "Might help."

"Not so icky if you need it and it works," Wayne pointed out. "And I'm alright with the grey, fer the most part, since it seems if the smoke was different colors, then that might be something to realleh worry about. What's the class you got?"

"Tastes icky," Del clarified, "Why would pretty smoke be something to worry about, please?"

Her face went a little blank for a moment while she looked for the answer to the question. She had the answer but answers were slippery things that liked to dodge and hide in her mind sometime but she was feeling pretty linear today and this one didn't run so fast and she caught it a moment later. "Adaptability and You!" she exclaimed proudly, "We're learning how to be safe! I'm always safe but not always everybody is and we're learning how to find things we can do to make other people more safe and.." She trailed off and looked at a wall for a second, "I'm.. not very good at it because I don't.. I don't think like people think? Sort of? People can get hurt and so they think 'oh ouch that could hurt me how can I not let the ouch happen' but I can't get hurt so I don't know what is an ouch thing and what isn't or when it's bad for people?" She brightened, "But I can make food happen!"

She could make snack cakes and juice boxes, at least. But hey, calories.

"If smoke's got bright colors in it," Wayne said, after a moment of thinking how best to explain it to Delirium, especially in light of her description of her class, "then there's a good chance that there's something in it that could hurt people. Toxicity, things like that. Not always, of course, some smoke could just be bright and colorful because of something mostleh harmless, but...way things've been around here? I wouldn't trust a cloud of bright colored smoke from ten kilometers away."

And as for the rest?

"And, oh, I'd say makin' food happen's pretty important," he noted, knowingly, "but I'll admit I'm a bit..." He glanced proudly at yet another successful breakfast, "...biased there."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Third Floor Common Room; Monday Morning (Daytime) [07/08].

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject