fandomtownies | Luke's Diner, July 5 (Monday)

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Luke's Diner, July 5 (Monday)

Lacey'd spent most of the fourth of July on the phone with the boys back in Dog River, which meant she'd gotten treated to an extensive (really, really extensive) and misinformed (grossly, grossly misinformed) diatribe from Hank on why exactly Americans set off fireworks on the Fourth. Hank's version, for the record, involved dud firecrackers from Canada Day that somehow ended up over the border, someone discovering them and attempting to light them, and this all logically (really!) leading to an explanation of why their fireworks celebrations were inferior.

At least, Lacey thought that was what he was leading up to before she'd hung up on him.

And maybe just for that, just to spite him, she'd do the diner up in a red, white, and blue theme today. So there.

Today's Specials
Double-Dipped Buttermilk Fried Chicken
Grilled Corn with Lime-Cilantro Butter
Maple Cake with Maple Syrup Frosting

NOW HIRING - See Manager for Details

. . . okay, she might have failed the theme there on that last special, but shh.

Luke's is open and, belatedly, a little bit holiday-themed? Maybe?

[OOC: OCD's going to the beach, because my brain is seriously on vacation today and this post took me three hours to write. I am not going to the beach, but I do have errands to run so SP is gonna be the thing.]

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"I can't tell you how happy I am to find nothing nutty going on with that," Angua, as she took her usual seat, circled a finger in the general direction of the specials board, "today."

"Was there something wrong with it last week?" asked Lacey, eyeing the specials board like now she expected it to sprout almonds. Red, white, and blue almonds, even.

"Hi! I--" Francine would remember that it was the last line on the specials board that drew her in... uh. Sometime. After she stopped salivating over the first line, and the smell from the kitchen indicating that the chicken, at least, was not a lie.

"--was wondering if you had fried chicken on Thursday?" No, wait. "I mean an opening! On Thursday. With or without chicken."

"Francine, hi!" No, Lacey didn't actually know Francine all that well, but anyone that made Katchoo go that goofy and almost soft-hearted had to be good in her book. "Oh, gosh, you guys are back? How'd the trip go? I think Katchoo left me a couple of messages, but it was hard to pick out anything in all the swearing."

Hey, Lacey, there'd been a question there, remember?

"Openings! Yes. Thursdays are free, if you want them, and aww. Is Katchoo going to come by? Do I get to report on you being adorable on the radio?" ~~All signs point to quite possibly.~~

Francine had trained with Dinah; she could handle Lacey-speak with one ear tied behind her back. "Some of us are back and some went on home after the trip. Which was fine except for the kidnapping and the tube rooms and the heat-vampire things. Katchoo... is probably gonna come by and whether you say anything about being adorable is up to you and how many more of those messages you want on your machine."

"I've spent almost two years in a radio booth with her; the phone messages? Pfft." Lacey waved a hand, but her breeziness wasn't entirely convincing.

Hang on a second.

"Kidnapping?"

"Just a little one! They were even kind of polite. Sort of."

"Oh, gosh. But everyone's okay?" Lacey had to check, of course. "So much for wondering if you'd miss the Fandom insanity while you were gone."

"I'd say I think it followed us, but from what I can tell, Dinah's hometown is usually like that." Francine dropped onto a stool and spun it towards the counter. "I did miss Fandom, though. Nobody else's crazy is quite the same."

"No, Fandom's crazy is a bit special, isn't it?" Lacey agreed; she started rummaging beneath the counter for the application form and handed it over the counter to Francine. "It might as well be stamped 'love and kisses, the island.' Oh, and there's the form. For you, that's more or less a formality."

And an unintentional pun, but mostly a formality lest the Wrath of Katchoo be invoked upon her.

. . . oh, let's be honest. She'd missed that.

"Aww, thanks!" Francine didn't mean to go through life on the merits of My girlfriend will yell obscenities at you if you don't give me a job. That counted for something, right?

As she rummaged in her purse for a pen, she added, "I missed fried chicken, too. You don't want to know how much rook-on-a-stick is not fried chicken."

That counted for more than Lacey's neurosis being easy prey for Katchoo's growlyface, at least? And it wasn't as if Katchoo was trying to pave Francine's way through life like that; when it came to Lacey, at least, it was just fun to make the poor woman jump.

"I don't want to know anything at all about rook-on-a-stick, actually," she replied. "What I hear from Angua about the cuisine in her world is scary enough."

What was she rummaging for?

"Oh! Pen!" Lacey blurted out, digging into the cash register and producing a run-of-the-mill Bic ballpoint that had been decorated with ribbons and sequins within an inch of its poor disposable life. "Gosh, you might need one of those, huh?"

"Ooh, that's pretty!"

Fear them if they go on a decorating binge together, Katchoo. Fear.

If you were really, really quiet for a minute, you could probably hear what sounded like a burst of static and was actually Katchoo expressing a sudden and inexplicable terror somewhere else on the island.

"Aww, you like it?" Lacey beamed. "I got really bored one day stuck in my apartment during an invasion and had to do something . . ."

Francine admired it for a moment before getting down to the writing-with-it part. "That's something we never covered in Support. Useful stuff to do when you're stuck someplace and you can't help."

She... probably should be writing on the job application, not her notebook, but hey, it was a good thought.

Well. Formality anyway, remember?

"I strongly recommend not gluing yourself to your TV," Lacey informed her. "It really doesn't help with the boredom."

"It might if you find a marathon of Bitterwoman!" F-r-a-n-c-i-n-e P-e----- "....You meant literally, didn't you."

"There was a glue gun accident . . ."

Oh, God, could she hide now?

"I glued my elbow to my thumb once," Francine said helpfully. "Fake fingernails glue sucks when you get it on your skin.

The next session hadn't started too soon for Scully. Free time was an evil she was trying to thwart. Which lead to going back to places she hadn't been in a while, like the Diner.

"Hello. Could I get the special? And a very large coffee?"

"Coffee coming up," Lacey said, giving her a wave... and a giant latte-sized mug full of steaming hot caffeinated goodness. "Which of the specials did you want today?"

Scully gave the menu board a longing look. "All of them?" She paused. "I can always take home what I don't eat, right?"

In her own body, at her own age, Scully was a salad girl. A sensible eater. But teenage metabolism was thwarting her. Then she drank the coffee and gave Lacey a sunny smile. "Excellent coffee." ~~Damn fine coffee. Somewhere, Agent Dale Cooper agreed.~~

Hey, if someone was going to buy a lot of food ~~and hopefully tip well~~ Lacey wouldn't argue.

"I can even box up some of it for you to go, how's that?" she offered, all cheer and eagerness to please. (It was a little sad.) "You'll probably want at least the corn now, because the butter's not as good reheated, and some of the chicken?"

And maybe a trip to the gym later. But Lacey was being nice and not mentioning that part.

Possibly a marathon. There had to be one somewhere close by D.C. or Baltimore, right?

"That sounds like a good plan," Scully decided. "Dessert can be to go." She took another sip of her coffee, and then said, "You were right about everything you told me about this place so far. I wanted to let you know that." Because Scully was conscientious that way.

~~Which did extend to the tipping.~~

"Oh, sure. Now you believe me," Lacey said, just a touch whiny as she boxed up a slice of the maple cake and signaled the kitchen for the corn and chicken. "Do you really think I'd have made all of that up?"

Wait.

". . . don't answer that."

Scully tried to hide her smile behind another sip of coffee, and said, "To be fair, I've been in your shoes, with no one believing me about something insane. But at least I've come back so you can say as much? On the Radio, even." Which was so odd, the broadcasts of everything that happened on the island. "How accurate are those broadcasts, anyway?"

"I can never be sure," Lacey admitted. "Given the squirrels', er . . . drinking habits, and the fact that they always get so upset with me when I try to give them tips on journalistic integrity? I'd take it with a grain of salt."

She nudged a salt shaker over the counter toward Scully. "Or more."

Scully picked it up and considered it, taking another sip of her drink. "I still find them hard to believe in. But I don't think I'll be shocked when whatever evidence comes to light that makes it possible to accept." She sighed and put down the shaker, then asked, "So what do you do during the invasions?" Doomsday class had her considering that now.

"Hide in my apartment?" Lacey pulled out a pen like the one she'd shown Francine earlier -- it could have been the same one, or it could have been one of the dozen of them she'd decorated. "What am I going to do, serve them all pie until they go away?"

"There isn't a central meeting place, or evacuation center?" Scully asked, looking worried. "I would have thought there would have to be." She blinked at the pen, and said, "That's... something my sister would appreciate." Then wanted to slap herself for mentioning Melissa.

Never tell Lacey people would appreciate her insane need to unnecessarily decorate random things, Scully. Only bad things could possibly come of it.

"There might be. Sometimes, I think there is," she explained. "But my apartment's below ground, so it's generally pretty safe. Wow, you know, I should really figure that out. I could be more useful."

"There's a meeting, on Wednesdays, that I haven't attended yet," Scully said, feeling some vague guilt for that. "Support Services, I believe. I could probably find out for you after I attend. And if you haven't been bothered during any of these things, I suppose you are safe enough."

"Well, I've survived so far," Lacey said thoughtfully. "I'm counting that as a success. I did bring food down to the town hall, once, when they had to take it over for use as a clinic."

"What happened that they had to use the Town Hall as a clinic?" Scully asked, worried. She tried to remember all the things Ino had mentioned, but couldn't pin down anything specific to illness.

"People were just . . . falling asleep and not waking up," Lacey began, shifting awkwardly. "It was a bad time for a lot of people; I haven't really wanted to pry."

It sounded bad, and reinforced Scully's resolution to go to the meeting on Wednesday. "Hopefully nothing like that will happen here again," she said seriously. "I find the singing flowers and random transformations much easier to deal with."

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Luke's Diner, July 5 (Monday)

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