The Perk, Saturday Afternoon

[furnaceface]

Right. So, here Jono was, with a day off. And people-watching seemed to be The Thing To Do on his days off, having been a Saturday afternoon tradition for... all of a week, now. It counted.

So he made his way to the Perk, trying not to make faces at the abundance of children running around the streets today, and mostly wondering to himself if they were the locals, or if they belonged to the locals. Or would, someday, anyhow. Around here it was important to make those distinctions, after all.

When he arrived at the Perk and was pertly informed by the young lady at the counter that she wasn't allowed to pour the hot water without her mommy around, that question was answered, at least. And, after walking the little girl through how to tell apart nickels from quarters and giving her a shiny penny of her own for a job well done, Jono finally managed to place his order and found a free table to settle down at and people-watch.

With apple juice. Ah, Fandom.

[Open!]

Comments

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

Kenzi stood in front of the pastry counter and tried to look pathetic, heaving a big sigh. And watching the strange man out of the corner of her eye. He might feel sorry for her and buy her some!

[furnaceface]

Really, now, it wasn't difficult to get Jono to feel sorry for little kids. He'd had a big, squishy soft spot for them since... just about forever ago. He was just usually somewhat good at hiding it.

"Are you lost, gel?"

Those were some pretty theatric sighs. And he knew better than to think that she had a mother around. Or even the knowhow to cook for herself back at the dorms, or her home in town, or wherever.

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

Lost, or not lost? Very quickly Kenzi decided, "Yes." She bit her lip. "And hungry. Mom's not here. Or Stepfather." And she'd only had a lollipop. That wasn't very filling.

[asgardcreated.livejournal.com]

The day was turning out pretty damn interesting, and Jon was really glad he'd been spared.

He grinned when he saw Jono. "I am so glad to see that I'm not the only one who got missed by the Fandom Crack Fairy."

[furnaceface]

Jono allowed himself a momentary, wry little smile.

"And you want something to eat, I imagine."

Hey, he knew the sad, hungry little kid routine pretty intimately. His parents had been ridiculously hands-off when he was little, and he'd managed to turn big sad eyes into an art form even before they'd been all he really had on his face to express with, later on.

"I'll tell you what. I'll let you pick something from that case and I'll get you a juice or a milk or something. Provided you pick one of those little salads or sandwiches or something, too. If you're hungry, pastries aren't going to be much more satisfying than that lolly you're wandering about with."

So help him, he was going to be all responsible-big-brother at all the little kids today.

[furnaceface]

"It's about bloody time it passes me by," Jono replied with a rather expressive roll of his eyes and a shake of his head. "Every time I visited this bloody island since my graduation, it seemed to take some sort of perverse pleasure into turning me into something or somebody else, it seems."

He was perfectly okay with waking up as himself-more-or-less, this morning.

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. This guy was helpful. And the make-up meant he wasn't a normal person. You couldn't trust them. He looked more like a clown or something. And he wasn't stupid. "I like sandwiches!" Kenzi volunteered. "Salad, boring, bleah." She took the lollipop out of her mouth and looked at it. "It tastes really good though. I traded my doll for it."

[furnaceface]

"Well, of course it tastes good, it's bad for you," Jono replied, and so help him, he was smiling a little as he said it. "It's been scientifically proven, and all."

Kind of. Maybe.

"Right then, one pastry, a sandwich, and a drink of your choice." He stood, reaching into his pocket for his cash. No wallet, yet. He'd have to actually invest in one of those sooner or later. But he had a few twenties on him, and that would be more than plenty for whatever it took to feed this kid. "What kinds would you like, Sunshine?"

[asgardcreated.livejournal.com]

"I don't envy any who got missed in the dorms." Because he really didn't. He actually felt a bit sorry for them.

"So, how creepy is it to go take blackmail photos of my former classemates?"

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

"It has? Cool." Kenzi gave the guy an approving look, and said, "Roast beef? With lots of cheese? And I really really like those apple turnovers? Pleeeease." She beamed at him. "I like your make-up."

Considering she had a purple triangle around one eye and way too much eyeliner around the other, that was probably a duh.

[furnaceface]

"For blackmail? Not all that much, I should think, so long as you don't go sticking them on the 'web' or whatever while they're still children."

Of course, Jonothon's own moral code was skewed a little sideways these days, so it was hard to tell, really.

"You know, I don't believe we've met." He twitched a bit of a wry smile at that, offering the other guy his hand. "I'm Jonothon. Jon or Jono if you prefer, I suppose. Lord knows, everybody else here calls me one or the other."

No, Jono. They just called you Jono. Jon was what you'd like to be called, because it didn't make you feel like a whiny goth-punk teenager that nobody took seriously.

[furnaceface]

"Er.... thank you. Spent all morning on it," Jono replied, after a moment of kind of uncomfortable silence. There was a moment that the image of a little girl with blue lipstick up the sides of her face flashed through his mind, but it was shunted quickly to the side with a cough and a nod at the kid at the counter. "And a milk to drink? Or would you prefer a juice or some sort, luv?"

She had options! Still!

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

"Juice! Red." Red was a mix of stuff usually. Tasty. "You're not going to make me go to school or listen to a prayer, are you? There's people downtown who'll give you food but you have to listen to prayers. Boooooring. You look too cool for that." Flattery, sure, but true!

[asgardcreated.livejournal.com]

The Jono bit ticked that little 'I think I remember this guy' switch in Jon's head, and he grinned as he shook the guy's hand.

"Jon O'Neill. I think we've met before."

[furnaceface]

"Oh?" Jono tilted his head a little, looking Jon over thoughtfully before shrugging and letting his hand fall back to his side. "Bloody hell, I wouldn't have been able to place your face, mate. It's been years."

A beat.

"For both of us, apparently."

Weren't time differences fun?

[furnaceface]

"None of the above," Jono sniffed. "It's Saturday, and I never was much for praying, really."

That, and he wasn't above accepting shameless flattery from kids. He placed the little girl's order, extra cheese and red juice and all, and then spent another few minutes explaining to the kid at the counter that the bill that he'd handed to her had a "Twenty" printed on it, see, and so this was how you counted change from a twenty and- Honestly, now, were there adults left anywhere in town at all?

"I just know I would have appreciated it if I'd woken up here without any family around and somebody fed me when I was hungry. There isn't always somebody making pancakes back at the dorms, after all."

Sookie had graduated and gone!

[asgardcreated.livejournal.com]

They were awesome things of awesome.

"Six for me. It was an interesting time. Fun of explosions and stuff. You?"

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

"Good," Kenzi said, reassured. She'd given the little girl behind the register a look of scorn. Who didn't now what twenties were? Or fifties, or hundreds? "I could do that," she muttered more softly, then tilted her head. "You talk different. Are you English?"

[furnaceface]

"Five," he replied. "Full of explosions and stuff."

Ah, the things they had in common!

"Also interesting. Not in much of a hurry to go back to it now that I'm here, mind. There's something to be said for some vague sense of sanity, really."

It probably said something about Jono's time back in his own reality when Fandom was still the saner place when most of its inhabitants were hovering somewhere around five years of age.

[furnaceface]

"I am," he agreed, with a bit of a smile. "Born and raised in London. I've been living in America off and on for most of the last ten years, though. I just keep ending up back here, it seems."

Which was funny. His opinion of America had lowered significantly since his time with Weapon X, but he'd sooner be in Fandom than London, all the same.

[asgardcreated.livejournal.com]

"Hell, yes. As soon as they told me to lay low, this was the first place I thought of coming. It's weird how this is more normal to me than the stuff going on back there."

He grinned as some kids went by. "And it's a lot more fun at times. As long as those times are giant reptiles who spit acid."

[regretiz4suckas.livejournal.com]

"That's cool. We're from Russia. But I don't remember it much. I was real little." Kenzi shrugged then said in Russian, "//Americans are stupid mostly.// Canada's way better." She took her food from the little girl with a smirk and a thank-you, then bit into the sandwich before she even turned away. "MMMmmmMPh! Thank you!"

[furnaceface]

"Oh, bloody hell, the invasions," Jono replied, almost managing a smirk at the thought. "If I'm going to be hiding myself around here for the rest of the foreseeable future, at least I know I won't have to worry about being bored. I'll take the occasional weekend of mass-babysitting if it means I'll get to box something big and nasty 'round the ears at least every month or two."

Giant, acid-spitting reptiles didn't seem like a terrible idea, really.

[furnaceface]

Jono's Russian was... rough, really. He had a small sampling from a fairly decent selection of languages, even before Weapon X had carted him off for super-powered brainwashed secret agent duty, though, so he was pretty certain that she was saying something derogatory about Americans.

And that is why he couldn't help but grin. Cute kid.

"You're welcome, luv. So, you're more or less Canadian, then?" Jono had opinions about Canada, too, but they mostly stemmed from things like 'Alpha Flight is completely absurd,' and 'Weapon X was created in Canada.' So his opinions really didn't carry well from one reality to the next. "Pretty far from home this weekend."

[asgardcreated.livejournal.com]

"Instead of every week?" Jon was used to that. "Or everyday for months on end." And he was used to that too.

"So what are you doing while you're on Fandom? Besides mass babysitting?"