fandomtownies | The Perk, Sunday Morning

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The Perk, Sunday Morning

Harry had no idea who he was and his IDs didn't check out. He meant, they were him, if he'd been through Vietnam or whatever, ten years older, and built like a truck. Not that he wasn't built, but. Truck.

Between waking up with some crazy guy in glasses who had to be, like, special services or something, and running into a duck in a suit afterwards, he was feeling a little edgy.

And retreat-y. The coffee place looked normal enough, so he grabbed a seat, ordered a coffee, and flirted very, very nervously with the barrista girl.

Harry was not in top form, no. But being paranoid didn't mean they weren't after you.

[ ooopen ]

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Charlotte was taking absolutely no chances, knowing there was a weird blue thing in her apartment that kept eating things. Of course, she hadn't seen Dale since Friday, so she had that niggling little corner of her brain suggesting that something had happened and that blue thing was Dale but...She just couldn't take that right now. All she asked was a little bit of normalcy. She couldn't even sit in the gallery, worried that the blue possibly-Dale thing would come down and start eating the paintings.

So she was getting coffee. It might not have been the safest choice if that blue thing was Dale, but, so help her, she needed it, ordering up the largest skinny latte she could with at least two extra shots and looking around with an incredible relief that, at least so far, the population of the coffee shop seemed normal.

Hey, some girl had just walked in and she didn't look like a duck or something. Harry turned up the wattage on his charm (even if he was still completely thrown off by the impulse to keep checking over his shoulder) and made his way over. "Hi," he said, grinning, "Mind if I take a seat?"

This was desperation talking, but you wouldn't be able to get that from his face.

Charlotte looked up to see that the person was, by all surface appearances, entirely normal. Not blue and fuzzy, with easy that didn't roll around in ways that made your stomach queasy, and, better yet, he wasn't eating anything like a bulimic after the week before a big party.

"By all means," Charlotte said, smiling back and nodding to the chair across from her. "It'd be nice to have some normal company."

She threw in the normal just in case it might work as a keyword to send the man off if that turned out to not be the case with him at all.

Oh, thank god. He sat down with another grin that might've been kind of grateful. "Yeah, this place is kind of crazy, isn't it?" Harry asked, because yeah, that was enough to drive any sane man nuts.

"Understatement," Charlotte said, eyes widening a little, "of the century. I take it you're new in town."

"Yeah, I just woke up here yesterday," he said. Harry really hoped he hadn't been abducted by some kind of government organization, because what if she was a spy or something? "So, weird question--" he tried for another charming smile, "But where is town, exactly?"

"This is Fandom Island," Charlotte said, very prompt and informative, "just off the coast of Maryland, and quite possibly located over some sort of weird scientific anomaly that makes it impossibly weird, but I won't go into that because it makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, but I thought you should know."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," Harry nodded along. Maryland? How the hell had he wound up in Maryland? "It's nice of you to let me know," he continued, "I really appreciate it. I ran into some guy on the streets wearing a duck costume yesterday and I was wondering if it was just me." He looked at her coffee. "What're you having? That smells good."

"I think my boyfriend," Charlotte offered as consolation, "turned into a furry blue monster that eats designer plates. And it's just a latte. Nothing fancy. Extra shots, because I need it today, even though I'll probably regret it later."

Any other day, Harry probably would've been disappointed by the boyfriend thing. Right now the flirting came more out of a sense of coping than anything else. "Ah, yeah, I can't drink that anyway," he said, sitting back, "I have this sensitivity, I go into anaphylactic shock," he gestured at his throat, "My larynx swells up, it's-- well. A furry blue monster, you say? That must've been shocking. Did you know he was into costuming?"

"No, no," Charlotte shook her head. "Not a costume at all. But an actual furry blue monster. He's done this before! Last time, he was a rabbit. But at least as a rabbit he didn't eat my plates!"

There was a slight pause. "Is it the caffeine?" she asked. "Or lactose intolerant?"

"It's the lactose," Harry said, and grinned, because that question was way easier to answer than anything else she'd just said. Had he just woken up in a crazy bin? "It makes picking cheeses a real adventure, trust me. The goat's fine, but give me anything with lactose in it and I turn into a balloon."

Beat.

Beat.

"So your boyfriend turned into a rabbit?" he asked with a desperate squeak to his voice. "How's that worked out for you two?"

"Oh! He turned back!" Charlotte assured the man. "It took him a couple of weeks, but he did." She let out a faint groan, shoulders slacking in dismay. "I don't know what I'm going to do if he does this one for a few weeks, too."

"Is it too much to ask," she lamented, "for a man who just....stays a man? Is it?"

"Hey, I've never been anything other than a man," Harry replied. The smile on his face wobbled for a minute, but he managed to paste it right back on. "Maybe they should just eat more health foods." What the hell was he saying?

"Well," Charlotte reasoned thoughtfully, "he does eat an awful lot of pie. You don't suppose they put something in the pies, do you?"

"That could be it," he volunteered, "I mean, you can't really tell what's in these pies, right? They could be used for experimental trials, although I'm not sure that'd be sanctioned by federal." Harry really needed to find a way to get out of here.

"I don't know," Charlotte sounded doubtful. "Dale used to work for the FBI and they sent him somewhere where he had to deal with a lady who talked to a log."

In Charlotte's head, experimental trials and talking to logs were all in the same big, wide, too-weird-for-her category.

"Poor guy," Harry said, completely sympathetically. "I knew a couple of feds in my day. Real tough guys, but they are a little weird."

"Around here," Charlotte muttered, sounding unimpressed about it, "that's a good thing. But can I ask you something? If you've known a few of them, have you noticed any odd...we'll say...well....preoccupations with certain specific things?"

Harry thought on that one for a minute. "Coffee," he said, "Flashing their badges around. That kind of thing."

"So it is a fed thing!" Charlotte said, as if revealing some great truth, although she wasn't sure if it was really something to be as happy about as she sounded. "The coffee, I mean. I've never seen someone so obsessed with coffee."

"The Federal Bureau loves their java," Harry said, nodding. He might've nodded one time too much, but he figured she wouldn't notice.

Not in the slightest. Charlotte was, ironically enough, too busy sucking down her latte and thinking she shouldn't have gotten those extra shots after all. They didn't seem nearly as needed now that she was having a...slightly normal conversation.

"And, I'm sorry," she realized, "I don't think I caught your name."

"Oh! Right," he grinned, and offered a hand across the table. "Harry Pfarrer. And... you would be?"

"Charlotte York," she answered, taking the hand with a professional sort of shake. "I own the art gallery down by the docks. I'd usually be there on a Sunday, but certain circumstances just demand a day off."

Black Canary had spent the night in Room 312 again, in the hopes that she'd wind up back at the Watchtower in the night. Since that wasn't the case, it was time to do some surveillance of the local population.

To that end, she went to the local coffee shop, sunglasses on, and ordered a mochachinno while taking mental notes on the waitstaff.

Two of them seemed to have criminal potential, but only as henchmen. And one of the girls had a truly impressive set of tattoos, but none of them were gang-related.

She nodded to the man in the corner, on edge, possibly on the run. "Good morning."

Harry didn't jump. He knew better than that. He did almost choke on his own coffee, but he felt he recovered pretty well when he looked up and grinned. "Hi there," he said, cheerfully. Always keep things positive.

Black Canary sat down at a table nearby, but not his. He was far too jumpy for that. "Are you a resident here?" And because that sounded too close to an interrogation, she volunteered, "I'm enjoying my visit to your island. It's lovely."

And insane. But still lovely.

"Oh, no," Harry said, eying her warily because that really did sound like an interrogation. What had he just rolled into, "I'm just passing through." He was still smiling, though. Harry could smile through just about anything.

Definitely hiding something. Black Canary gave him an amused look over her sunglasses, and then looked down at her newspaper, taking a sip of her drink. "From where, to where?" she asked, keeping her eyes on the newsprint.

Batman enjoyed making people sweat more, but she could see the fun in it too.

"From, uh, New York," Harry said, "Just coasting through Maryland. You know. Roadtrip. A little post-high school, I know, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." He grinned.

What was he saying?

Whatever came into his head, apparently. Canary was finding this entertaining, and gave him a demure look as she crossed her legs. Sometimes that helped keep them talking.

"All by yourself? Seems a little lonely."

"It's not that lonely," he said, lapsing straight back into his flirting tone. "Well, it's a little lonely, but not anymore, right?"

Harry was so off his game.

He really, really was.

"Not right now," Black Canary echoed, letting her tone get slightly flirtier. "I'm Canary. And you're...?"

"Harry Pfarrer," Harry said, grinning (with a twinge of nervousness) and reached over a hand to shake. "Treasury Department."

"Really. Must be interesting work, Harry. Can I call you Harry?" Black Canary tapped her fingers on her drink, thinking that if he was an agent, he was likely a very, very unskilled one. Possibly crooked.

"Harry's fine, Canary," he replied, "That's a pretty name. Unusual, but I like it. Were your parents bird fans?" Nervous, nervous, but keep on keeping it positive, Harry.

"My mother was a singer," when she was undercover, "So, song. Birds. Canary." She shrugged one shoulder. "I've been known to sing myself." She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "There's a bar with a very unusual band here. Have you visited it? Caritas?"

"I'm sure you're a lovely singer," he said, his grin twitching with something that wasn't nervousness for once. Harry did need to get off the island, though, now that he knew where he was. "Nope, haven't heard of it. I went to bed early last night," don't ask him where, "Figured I'd get some good sleep, needed to get a run in in the morning."

"For chasing down bad guys?" Black Canary kept her voice teasing. "Or do you do something else for the Treasury Department? Stamp bills? Count money?"

Hmm. She was still getting a 'something off' vibe from him, but he was charming, give him that.

"I was a Marshall for twenty years," he replied, "Personal protection. Don't do much of that anymore, it's kind of a young man's game. My guy was up in state, so I got to travelling a lot and I guess I just never quite lost the taste for it."

Ahhh. Maybe a loner by choice, maybe cut off from his job; he seemed to be telling the truth about that employment, so maybe the jumpiness was residual from a career of looking over his shoulder? Canary's smile warmed a bit for a fellow law enforcement official, even if he wasn't aware of it. "My father was a cop. City. Missing persons, mostly." After he went into private investigations. "Hard work to do well."

"Ah, yeah. Tough job," Harry said, sympathetically, "Cops get a rough time around the block. PP seems pretty cushy in comparison. Never had to fire my sidearm. Not once."

Edited 2009-02-08 17:35 (UTC)

"I'd say that's rather admirable. If you never found yourself in a situation where you had to," Black Canary commented. Probably. It could be he was just incredibly cautious, but no way to tell. She took another sip of her mochachino, and smiled. "Well. I'll be around the island, Harry Pfarrar. Maybe I'll see you somewhere later, too."

Agnes found the coffee shop, and discovered they served tea that was somewhat better than that in the dormitory. She waved sweetly at the nervous young man. "Are you all right, sir?"

"Oh my god!"

What? She was really really old. Harry was completely in his right to jump.

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The Perk, Sunday Morning

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