fandomtownies | The Perk, Monday Early Afternoon

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The Perk, Monday Early Afternoon

Yeah, okay, so Kennedy had shown up early; she and 'fashionably late' didn't get along. It was a procrastination thing; why wait longer than absolutely necessary to do things she wanted to do? (While this reasoning worked perfectly well for her, it caused her Watcher no end of headaches. The pharmaceutical industry probably wouldn't complain.)

Thus, early, and seated at a window table, playing Text Twist on her iPhone while she waited for Tara. The longer words weren't that hard for her to pick out, but it was always the painfully obvious three-letter ones she missed. What was up with that?

[[she's here for

life_inshadow, but the perk is open for your non-beaver buzz caffeine needs. stupid text twist game. i completely blame it for why i'm probably gonna end up upgrading my phone this weekend. :p]]

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Tara was surprised Kennedy was actually there when she got to the coffee shop -- usually she was the early one -- and she stood in the door watching her for a second before rushing over to the table.

"Sorry for making you wait," she apologized, even though she was precisely on time. "Hi. How are you?"

The fact that you could pause this game so easily and come back to it later was a bonus.

"Hey." Kennedy set her phone aside and looked up, smiling. "Totally not a problem. I wanted to snag a good table. Quiet weekend, but good. How're you?"

"About the same," Tara said, shrugging out of her light jacket and hanging it over the back of the other seat. "Have you noticed weekends here are either crazy busy and there are a bunch of people running all over the place, or it's like nobody leaves their rooms?"

She suspected, as she finished talking, that it might just be her.

"Yeah." Kennedy leaned forward, resting her chin in one hand. "You know, I was wondering if my timing really sucked, because there was nobody in the gym whenever I showed up."

Tara grimaced slightly in sympathy. "When were you there? Maybe we both missed something."

"Right around lunchtime yesterday, and Saturday morning," Kennedy replied, poking at her phone with one finger to make it spin on the tabletop. "This sort of thing keeps up, and I'm going to start wondering if people are turning invisible on the weekends."

"It's possible," Tara mused. "Though then there'd probably be people running around shouting about how invisible they were."

"Oh, good point. Just because we couldn't see them wouldn't mean we couldn't hear them. Oh, well. Not like I had anything hugely important to do for most of it. So, coffee." Kennedy gestured toward the counter. "What looks good to you? I'm thinking something with caramel and whipped cream, personally."

"Coffee," Tara agreed. "I think I'll go basic and get a mocha."

That wasn't basic, Tara.

"And ... want to split some biscotti?"

That sounded pretty basic by Kennedy's somewhat skewed standards.

"I can go for that," she decided as she stood. "I don't usually go for the biscotti, but I can definitely make an exception."

"I just like 'em cause they have chocolate on them," Tara admitted, unabashed, then realized Kennedy was standing. "I probably owe you $5, huh?"

"Chocolate, huh? I shouldn't be surprised. You really like your chocolate." Kennedy grinned, then waved a hand. "Nah, don't worry, I've got it."

"I know, I'm way too predictable," Tara offered, joking. "And thank you."

"Liking chocolate has nothing to do with predictable," Kennedy assured her before heading to the counter and returning, a few minutes later, with drinks in hand and biscotti balanced somewhat precariously on the edges of the saucers.

"My dad gets kind of cranky about me spending his money on girls," she said with far too much relish as she put the cups down, "and that only makes it more fun."

Tara reached for a biscotti and used it to stir her mocha. "You told him?" she asked, unable to imagine doing the same. "That you like girls, I mean."

"Yeah, years ago," Kennedy said casually. "Well... a couple of years ago, anyway. He didn't believe me when I was ten. When I was fourteen it finally sank in. One of the upsides to boarding school that year, I have to say."

"Oh, wow," Tara said. "I didn't really figure it out until ... maybe seventh grade? Or eighth. I mean, I knew, I just didn't put it in words. I only started telling people, uh, here, but home is..." she wrinkled her nose. "Not a good place to be gay."

She shrugged a little. "Another advantage to boarding school."

It didn't frequently occur to Kennedy that she had things much better off than a lot of people, but she was getting a clue about it right now, and at least had the grace to look slightly guilty.

"Not all boarding schools," she offered, somewhat apologetically, her expression turning more serious. "People at my last one weren't so great about it either."

Tara shrugged, not really surprised (though now she looked guilty for making Kennedy look guilty). "Is that why you switched schools?"

And the guilty look shifted right into sheepish. "Does getting kicked out for getting in a fight about it count as switching? If so, then yes."

Tara looked genuinely shocked for about half a second before she laughed.

"I feel like I should ask if you at least won."

Okay, she was laughing. Kennedy relaxed, picked up a biscotti, and started drawing a smiley face (so lame) in the whipped cream of her caramel macchiato with it.

"I'm the one who got away without a broken nose, and I ended up coming here, which means I'm talking to you now, so yeah. I think I did."

Tara grinned for a moment, feelng vaguely triumphant for no particular reason. "I'm glad you didn't break your nose," she said, emboldened. "It's a cute nose. If you broke it, it might go all ... crooked-y. And that would be sad."

[Heading home. Back in three hours or so.]

Kennedy had gotten more sophisticated compliments. Those never made her lean forward into the table looking as genuinely close to flattered as she ever got, like she was now.

"So, broken noses, not sexy," she teased. "I'll have to remember that, and work my training around learning to protect my nose more effectively."

And that had Tara leaning forward without thinking too much about whether she should or not. It seemed to be Kennedy's gift. "You should. You could get one of those hockey guy plastic nose protectors."

Kennedy laughed and swirled the biscotti around in the whipped cream of her drink, a little more interested in looking at Tara than actually responding for a second or two. "Wouldn't that look kind of dorky, though?"

"Well," Tara began, "maybe? But you could look kind of dorky when you're working out and keep your nose unbroken forever. I'd take the trade."

Kennedy grinned and licked the whipped cream off the biscotti in her hand, an only partially calculated gesture. "What if some bad goes down here, and I end up with nose-crooked-y sadness? Does that mean all bets are off?"

It was a distracting gesture, anyhow. "Um ... depends on what we think we're betting?"

"Chocolate croissants," Kennedy said promptly, "or at least the chance to keep some around in case you drop by. I mean, it'd be kind of a bummer if you couldn't associate with me any more because of a crooked nose."

She was reaching across the table while feigning innocence (ha), and pretty obviously kidding.

Kennedy's innocent look wouldn't fool anyone, and the look Tara gave her in return said as much pretty clearly.

"Croissants would work as a bribe," she said, reaching across the table in return. "Or promise me a new book on magic and I'd totally forget the gross nose issues."

"Cool. That I can do." Kennedy was thoroughly unrepentant about that failed innocent look, which wasn't remotely stopping her from moving her hand to cover Tara's lightly.

Her coffee might be getting cold; she didn't really care.

Tara had kind of forgotten she even had coffee. Her cheeks went a little pink.

".... does this count as a date now?"

Stupid, stupid, stupid thing to say.

And yet it was about the cutest thing anybody'd ever said, if you asked Kennedy right about then.

"Do you want it to? 'cause I wouldn't have a problem with that."

She'd so counted it as one.

"... I would really, really, really like that," Tara grinned.

She wasn't going to point out it was her first one. Kennedy could probably tell anyhow.

"Okay, then." Kennedy just might allow herself the tiniest little-- okay, it wasn't that tiny-- bit of self-satisfaction at that, because yes, she could tell. "So it's a date, then. Especially if it gets you to smile like that."

"You like my smile?" Tara sounded giddy, now. "I -- thanks."

She took a bite of her biscotti to break the moment. "So in history class? Mr. Halpert was talking about how like half the presidents were cheerleaders. Isn't that weird?"

She had no idea why that had popped out of her mouth right then.

Hey, you learned something new every day. Sometimes by accident, and sometimes by accident and in pleasant company. That counted as a win in Kennedy's book, mildly disturbing mental image of Abraham Lincoln with pompoms notwithstanding.

"That's a little trippy, yeah," she conceded, taking a sip of her coffee. (This meant setting the biscotti down, since she wasn't about to move her other hand right now.) "If they'd brought up things like that, I'd have paid more attention in history classes."

A beat, and because she felt it had to be said, "And come on, yeah. You have a gorgeous smile."

Who needed segues?

"His class is kind of awesome," Tara said, squeezing Kennedy's fingers. "it's not real history, it's more ... different weird stuff. Like that."

She displayed said smile again. "Thanks. I like yours, you know that?"

The smile she got in response wasn't of the smirky variety, at all. "Guess that means I'll have to let you see it more often," Kennedy offered lightly. She would not be opposed to that, really.

"Sounds like a fun class. I used to spice my history classes up trying to guess which famous people were probably vampires."

Tara tilted her head to the side. "What did you decide? I always got a funny feeling about, um, all those bad Roman emperors."

"Caligula, totally." You probably couldn't change Kennedy's mind on that subject. "I mean, all that crazy stuff? He had to be a vampire, or some kind of demon. Rasputin, kind of a given. And I was never really sure about some of the Chinese emperors either."

"Totally Rasputin," Tara agreed. "It's the only way to explain all the stuff they had to do to kill him."

"I don't know anything about the Chinese ones."

"I don't know much about them either. I really wasn't paying attention that semester," Kennedy said conspiratorially. "I just remember thinking something had to be up with some of them. Academics, not really my best subject. I know you're shocked."

"Yeah, it's ... kind of possible I might have picked up on that," Tara said, then quickly backtracked. "Not that I think you aren't smart, or anything. Just ... you don't seem like school would, uh, really be your thing."

"It's cool. I knew what you meant," Kennedy told her with a quick squeeze of her hand for emphasis. "Because it's so not. Which is why I'm not planning on letting myself get kicked out of here, if that's even possible from what people tell me."

"In my whole four months of experience,m I've never heard about it happening," Tara said. "And you can't, anyhow. I won't let you."

"Oh, really?" Kennedy asked, laughing. "How were you gonna do that?"

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The Perk, Monday Early Afternoon

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