Fixer-Uppers, Monday

[endsthegame]

Ender listened to radio every day, despite the large amount of mostly apocryphal information it provided. It wasn't in his nature to pass up on a source of information. As such, he'd managed to come to the conclusion something terrible had happened while Karla was gone.

And that she was grieving about something. He wasn't sure his presence would be the most comforting thing at the moment.

Still, it meant he was burying himself less in his work than he had been a few days ago. The sun was shining outside, which made it a little harder to dwell on anything, too. In the end, he might have even spent some time sitting on the steps of the store, looking up at the sky, and thinking.

[[ open! ]]

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[shyest-eyes.livejournal.com]

The fact that it was Ender's day at work, she thought, had terribly little to do with why Hinata found herself walking up towards the shop today.

It was a nice bonus, however.

"Good morning, Ender," she said easily, stopping a foot or two away from the steps he sat on. It was still morning, if getting rather close to noon.

[endsthegame]

Which meant lunch was due in about an hour or so, but Ender still had plenty of time. He greeted her with a friendly, if brief, smile. "Good morning, Hinata," he said, warmly. "What brings you here?"

[shyest-eyes.livejournal.com]

"I could pretend it was just your company," she teased mildly. "But I am afraid I have work for you, if you do not mind."

... It was his job, Hinata. He had to do it anyway. Sigh.

[endsthegame]

"It's what I'm paid to do," Ender pointed out. He sounded a little amused. "Whether I mind or not isn't really part of the deal."

[shyest-eyes.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps not," she admitted, flushing a little. "But I do hate to be a bother."

[endsthegame]

"What's the problematic appliance?" he said, refusing to even recognise that as an argument. "Or do you need something built? We'll need to head inside, either way."

[shyest-eyes.livejournal.com]

It wasn't really an argument to her, more of a statement of fact.

"My MP3 player," she said, with a bit of a sigh as she pulled the offending appliance out of her pocket. "It stopped working. I've tried charging it, changing my headphones, letting it rest for several hours before trying it again."

It just... didn't want to work.

[endsthegame]

Ender held up his hand to take it. "They tend to be pretty fragile, at least in this day and age," he said. "I'll screw it open and see what I can do about it. It just stopped working on its own?" He pushed up to stand.

[shyest-eyes.livejournal.com]

She handed it over to him, with a slight smile.

"Just on it's own--it wouldn't turn on yesterday morning, but it had been working fine the night before."

Of course, Hinata truly had money enough to buy another but--why waste the money?

[endsthegame]

He walked up the steps and into the shop, dragging his closed-up laptop with him in one hand. "Sometimes something just gives out," he said, "And needs to be replaced. Or it can just be a faulty wire."

[shyest-eyes.livejournal.com]

She followed him, smiling a little.

"Have you worked on MP3 players before?"

[endsthegame]

"Not specifically," Ender admitted. "Back when Stark still owned this place, he had me working on material that was a lot more sophisticated. Rikku mostly leaves us to our own devices, but we don't actually see that much business."

[shyest-eyes.livejournal.com]

"Too many mechanical geniuses around, I suppose," Hinata mused, then laughed a bit. "Otherwise I would be more surprised."

She glanced at him. "What do you tend to work on, if I might ask?"

[momslilassassin]

Ben walked through the door with lunch in hand. "Ho, Ender," he said, grinning.

[endsthegame]

Ender's head came up from behind his laptop as it usually did. "Ho, Ben," he said, pushing himself away from the desk. "About time."

[[ *TACKLES* WB!! ]]

[momslilassassin]

"You missed me that much?" Ben teased, holding out the coffee. "Or just the caffeine?"

[endsthegame]

"Caffeine," Ender said, without blinking, and took the coffee. "As well as the food. The sunlight is making me more active and I'm starving."

[momslilassassin]

Ben snorted. "I'd hate to see you pine away right in front of me," he said. "It'd be far too overdramatic."

[endsthegame]

"I can swoon, first, if it helps," Ender deadpanned, and then took a long sip of his coffee. "Normally I'd try to avoid talking about the weather, but we seem to have a Fandom event on our hands."

[momslilassassin]

"It's nice," Ben said with a happy smile, "or it's a portent of a vast planetary climate cataclysm. I think I'd prefer to just enjoy the warmth."

[endsthegame]

Yeah, Ender would still rather avoid talking about portents. Not that that was relevant. "I saw people setting up a party on the beach," Ender offered, "I'm probably not going, but it seems like a prime opportunity for you to bask in the sunlight."

[momslilassassin]

"Only for a little bit," Ben said with a rueful smile. "I didn't get Dad's ability to tan, sadly."

And he wasn't really one for taking his shirt off in public where people could spot his scars.

[endsthegame]

And if the narrative had been written around anyone but Ender, we might have made some kind of crack about shirtless Bens here.

But it wasn't, so this remained safely in the realm of the Deadpool.

"I suppose I'd rather not see you turn into a lobster," Ender agreed, offering him a wry smile in return.

[momslilassassin]

"Around here, it's not outside the realm of possibility that a bad sunburn could turn me into an actual lobster," Ben said, "which would be inconvenient."

[endsthegame]

"Don't go sprouting a carapace, Skywalker," Ender ordered, "Or we're going to have to set you up with an ice-cream IV."

He leaned back and set his coffee down on the counter. He wondered whether to breach the topic of Karla with Ben, or not.