The Perk, Sunday Morning

[nookiepowered]

If Kenzi managed to venture into what passed for a kitchen today, she'd find a note on the coffeemaker that just said NO.

Testing that statement would be foolhardy.

Bo, meanwhile, would be hanging out at the Perk with the first of the November Nighte novels, checking out the human world's take on fictional Fae and trying to wash the taste of hot carbonated Clamato juice out of her mouth.

[Open. Unless you're a gnome.]

Comments

[fjordicswagger]

"Ugh, November Nighte?" Tamsin slid into the seat opposite her, cup of coffee in hand. She didn't seem to think this was a particularly strange thing to be doing without warning. "Talk about reaching for low-hanging fruit."

[nookiepowered]

"Said the detective about the detective novel?" said the woman who lived with Kenzi, so no, people randomly plopping into her personal space without warning wasn't particularly unusual.

[fjordicswagger]

"So you should know my opinion is an expert opinion," Tamsin confirmed, taking a sip of her coffee.

[nookiepowered]

"Are you a half-Fae P.I. with two cats who's addicted to coffee and spent the eighties and early nineties trapped in the body of a giant ornamental guppy?" Because that, in Bo's opinion, would be an expert opinion.

And also given Fandom, not completely improbable.

[fjordicswagger]

"I hate cats," Tamsin mused. She wrinkled her nose. "And guppies. All animals, really. So... no."

[nookiepowered]

Bo took a sip of her own coffee. Her matching nose-wrinkle was more about still being able to taste Clamato, though.

"I'm probably supposed to be offended on behalf of my co-kitten, Whatever Her Name Is This Week, but I'm way more interested in what guppies ever did to you."

[fjordicswagger]

"Do you have any idea how aggressive guppies are?" Tamsin asked. "You drop two males in one tank and it's a gladiatorial brawl."

Which was actually pretty entertaining, come to think of it.

[nookiepowered]

"And that's a change from humanity how?" Bo was being generous with her definition of humanity there, since it applied to a majority of sentient males she'd met from any species.

[fjordicswagger]

Another sip of coffee. "They're smaller and they don't really bleed." She shrugged one shoulder. "Kind of takes the fun out of it."

[nookiepowered]

Bo snorted, half in amusement at the statement and half at how male-of-any-species an answer it was. "So I'm guessing your second favorite entertainment option after fantasy detective novels isn't Cupcake Wars."

[fjordicswagger]

"I'm more of a Scandinavian psycho-drama kind of girl," Tamsin agreed. That might have been an honest answer, might've been sarcasm - considering the nose-wrinkle it could go either way.

[nookiepowered]

"Now I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to be picturing the Viking Chainsaw Massacre or those Chick With the Dinosaur Body Art books."

[fjordicswagger]

"Anything that's broody and full of people speaking very rapid Swedish," Tamsin said. She sipped from her coffee drink. "Kind of like your boss."

[nookiepowered]

"You'd call Eric broody?" Bo had to think about it. "I guess if you catch him at the right moment. Half the time he's looking aloof and inscrutable he's actually just bored, though. Or losing to his hot vampire daughter at Words With Friends."

[fjordicswagger]

"No, I figured," Tamsin said, making a vague gesture with her coffee cup. "Broody's gotten old, if even a vampire his age has given up on it."

[nookiepowered]

"Maybe they outgrow it? I don't know a lot of vampires, but Mitchell's way younger and he can pull off a brood that can't be beat outside of a henhouse." Not that he didn't have reasons for it, usually, but still.

[fjordicswagger]

"Well, kids," Tamsin said. "Maybe your friend is going through some vampire teen phase."

[nookiepowered]

"He's over a hundred!" Oh, Bo. Speaking of kids...

[fjordicswagger]

Tamsin barely repressed a laugh. She went with "Pfft," instead. "I bet you can throw a dart and hit a hundred-year-old vampire in some dimensions," she said.

[nookiepowered]

"Probably," Bo agreed. "Maybe even mine; I grew up not even thinking they were real, so what the hell do I know." She broke of a corner of the slice of pumpkin bread on the saucer in front of her and gave the other woman a considering look. "You seem to take all the weird shit in stride, though. Used to it where you come from?"

[fjordicswagger]

"Let's just say that if you hang out in my neck of the woods for long enough, you learn how to roll with the punches." She removed the lid off her coffee. "Especially if they serve better than Starbucks."

[nookiepowered]

"You gotta wonder how there isn't a Starbucks in Fandom," Bo said, not at all disagreeing with Tamsin's rating of the local coffee. "Maybe there really is a Jeff, God of Biscuits, and he's keeping the place invisible to the competition."

[fjordicswagger]

"Or maybe they just don't give a crap about a small island with a population of-- what is it, twenty?"

[nookiepowered]

More than that in the school alone, but choosing not to do the math on that because math, Bo went with, "Population, pfff. When have you ever known that place not to open a branch on every free corner that isn't taken up by a mailbox or somebody who does professionally what I do for love of the game?"

[fjordicswagger]

Considering that Starbucks as a company was only forty years old...

"Europe?" Tamsin offered instead. "I mean, this place does kind of resemble it at its most depressing."

[nookiepowered]

Bo laughed despite her disagreement; grumpyface wasn't exactly an unusual reaction to Fandom, even if she only shared it after certain weekends or when she woke up lacking body parts she didn't usually lack. "Fair enough. My continental experience is mostly limited to places with no indoor plumbing let alone decent coffee, and that weekend I missed Euro-Disney because I still had grey skin and claws."

[fjordicswagger]

"Claws, huh?" Tamsin didn't seem terribly concerned. "What did you eat that morning?"

[nookiepowered]

Bo made a face. "Possibly a gremlin; I put a lot of work into not remembering most of that week."

[fjordicswagger]

And... that, oddly enough, got more of a reaction. "You ate. A gremlin."

[nookiepowered]

"Maybe? Judging by the way my mouth tasted when I woke up, it was either a gremlin or feet. Or a gremlin's feet."

[fjordicswagger]

"I'd hope that's not your take on feeding," Tamsin snarked, "or we're going to have a problem."

[nookiepowered]

"Only when I'm a grey-skinned, black-eyed eldritch horror from beyond time." Bo took a slurp of her latte. "Which only happens every so once. So far."