The Perk, Monday Late Morning

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

April wasn't normally a wake-up-early-and-have-coffee-to-get-ready-for-the-day type of girl, and just because she was teaching a class starting this week didn't mean that was going to change. Just because there was this annoying banging noise coming from the pipes in her apartment and she'd slipped out to the Perk to not have her eardrums assaulted did not make her the kind of functioning adult who had coffee in the mornings. Really. It didn't.

That didn't stop her from glaring at her coffee like it offended her, though.

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Comments

[bitten_notshy]

Jack was taking a break from his paperwork to make a coffee run, but he paused on his way to the counter when he noticed the look on April's face.

"Sorry, have they decided to serve us all decaf again?" he asked in a low voice. "It's annoying when they do that."

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

"No," April said, casting one last nasty look at her coffee before propping her chin on her hands to look up at Jack. "That would be better."

Damn you, caffeinated coffee and your symbolic representation of maturity.

[bitten_notshy]

"What did they do this time?" he asked with a sigh, and slid into a chair so he wasn't standing in the aisle staring at the menu board. "I'm Jack, by the way. Hi."

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

"April," April replied, leaning her head back in a gesture used by the very exhausted. "They gave me coffee in the morning like I'm some kind of an adult."

Gasp. How dare they.

[bitten_notshy]

"Aren't you?" Jack asked skeptically. She looked his age or a bit younger, but Jack thought even most of the students should count as adults. "I've never heard anyone complain about being treated as such, either way."

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

"I'm nineteen." That was supposed to mean she had a few good years left, right? "And stupid and irresponsible. Basically the anti-adult."

[bitten_notshy]

"I'm 20," Jack volunteered, looking a trifle confused. "Aren't stupid and irresponsible bad things?"

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

"Yes," she agreed, sulking outright now. "Immature, un-adult things. Which I am." Another glare toward the coffee. "I don't want to be responsible."

[bitten_notshy]

Well, at least she wasn't from some bizarre land with upside-down morality. Not that that made her any easier for Jack to understand.

"So, don't be," he advised with a little shrug. "It's not mandatory anymore."

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, well, I'm teaching a class and drinking coffee before noon," April groused. "Seems annoyingly inevitable."

[bitten_notshy]

Jack wrinkled his nose. "I've never felt adult enough to teach yet. Why'd you do it?"

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

April shrugged one shoulder, because two was just way too much work. "My parents thought bartending once a week wasn't enough of a job for me," she explained boredly. "So... teaching."

Ugh.

"How long've you been here?"

[bitten_notshy]

"On and off since summer three years ago," Jack answered. "I graduated in 2010. What about you?"

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

"Like, July." Or something. She really should keep better track. "So you've probably been a pony like sixty times by now, huh?"

[bitten_notshy]

"Never that one. I was a terrier for a week once."

And a werewolf every month these days, but that wasn't exactly coffee chat. (Or no-coffee chat, since Jack still hadn't ordered.)

"I've been a girl twice, though. And myself at five."

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

"Gross," April said, pulling a face. "Like there aren't enough kids on this island already."

[bitten_notshy]

"I thought you wanted to be a kid," Jack countered. "But I didn't like it myself. I didn't speak English when I was five."

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

That was a really good point, Jack. You could tell by how April opened her mouth and paused for a second before closing it again.

"Yeah, well, not a tiny one," she finally settled on. Nice comeback there. "What'd you speak?"

[bitten_notshy]

Jack granted himself a point on his mental scoreboard for causing her weak comeback.

"Czech, mostly," he said. "Yiddish with my family, Czech in public."

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

"Huh." April mentally chalked it up to growing up in Pawnee that she never would have guessed any of that. "Couldn't tell."

[bitten_notshy]

"Most people can't. I moved to England while I was still young." April should be grateful Jack was still in a skip-over-the-complicated-bits sort of mood, unless she wanted to hear about childhood slavery and vampire adoptions. "Where are you from?"

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

April rolled her eyes in acknowledgment of the lameness of what she was about to say: "Indiana." Which was infinitely less cool, even factoring in Jack's childhood slavery and vampire adoptions, so. "All I speak is English and Spanish."

[bitten_notshy]

"I've never been there," Jack mused, not seeming to find it especially lame. "But I speak Spanish. My guardian was from Spain."

And Jack spoke every European language known to man. Aren't you impressed, April?

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

April sighed. "You're one of those annoyingly cultured people, aren't you."

She didn't mean it as an insult, though; if anything, the sigh had more to do with jealousy on her part. Stupid Pawnee.

[bitten_notshy]

"Nobody's ever put it quite that way before."

That meant yes.

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

"You speak a million languages and you've been all over Europe," April pointed out.

[bitten_notshy]

"...I don't have a good answer to that," Jack said, feeling oddly defensive. "Should I shut up about it?"

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

"Nah."

She shrugged. "Indiana sucks," she explained after a moment. "Easy to get jealous."

Which was sort of an apology? Maybe? If you squinted?