The Perk, Thursday Afternoon

[newroutines]

It was a perfectly regular day at the Perk. Mike had been on a job on the mainland, and had swung by to grab a refreshing coffee on his way back home. He ordered, he paid for his order, and he was waiting for said order when he heard the voice. A woman.

"I just can't be around your lifestyle."

Wait, was that...?

"You can't be around my –– I'm not my lifestyle." Yeah, that had definitely been Brooke, because this incredulous male voice? Was his. From 2012. There was a long pause, then many false starts, then: "Am I Magic Mike right now, talking to you? I'm not my goddamn job! That's not what I do – I mean, it is what I do, but it's not who I am."

And then silence. Mike, who'd just kind of stood frozen listening to that, rubbed a hand over his eyes.

"... Well that's just fucking great."

Yep. Just a regular day at the Perk.

[ooc: Open place in town is open! If you want to have overheard a bit of that, go ahead.]

Comments

[beyonce_pad_thai]

Mindy didn't hear any of that, because she only walked into the Perk a minute or two after the fact. She ordered her drink and then paused for a moment before taking a seat.

"Hey, where do you stand on having a table-neighbor?" she asked with a wave of her hand in the direction of the table next to Mike's. "I'm just asking because I don't want to sit right where all the cold air is blowing in from the door? But then it's kind of like subway etiquette, where if someone sat down right next to me when there's all this space, I'd be kind of like, Whaaaat?"

[newroutines]

Even if it had been a few moments, Mike was still kind of reeling from having heard snippets of a rather life-defining fight, there. So she was going to have to forgive him for looking a little dazed when she pulled him away from his thoughts.

"Um –– yeah, no, sit wherever you like, it's cool."

[beyonce_pad_thai]

"Thank you," she chirped, taking a seat before she double-taked back at him. "Are you okay? Oh, no, is the coffee weird?"

[newroutines]

"Nah, I'm fine." Liar. But he also wasn't going to barf his feelings on a stranger, so that was what he was going with. "So's the coffee."

[beyonce_pad_thai]

"That's good to know," Mindy said. "As far as I can tell, there's no Starbucks for miles, and I totally broke my own coffee machine at home, so I'm glad we don't have, like, a crisis on our hands."

[newroutines]

"No, no crisis." Mike even managed a smile, even if it was lopsided. See, he was getting there. "Better not let the barista hear you pining after Starbucks, though, he gets jealous."

And there came the joking! He was fine.

[beyonce_pad_thai]

"Hey, Starbucks should be jealous of this guy, am I right?" Mindy asked, a touch louder than most people felt comfortable speaking in coffee shops. That was just Mindy. "He has a cool job on an island, he doesn't have to wear a green apron, he's allowed to kick people out if they just sit here and hog the wi-fi. Way better than a Starbucks gig."

[newroutines]

"Most Starbucks don't get the annoying stuff they do here in Fandom, though," Mike felt compelled to point out. For some reason.

He'd kept himself from raising an eyebrow at the volume.

[beyonce_pad_thai]

"I don't know," Mindy said, grinning pleasantly even as she scrunched up her nose. "Manhattan Starbuckses have to put up with some pretty weird stuff. One time, a guy was asleep in the ladies' room and the door wasn't even locked."

[newroutines]

"Yeah, but do they get like, flying fish and whatever?" Mike retorted. "Or random-ass bits of conversation from years ago? I don't think so."

[beyonce_pad_thai]

"Wait, huh?" Mindy's smile faltered. "I do not know anything about that."

[newroutines]

You poor girl.

"You haven't been here very long, have you?"

[beyonce_pad_thai]

"Like a month," Mindy confirmed. "Oh, I'm not disputing that this is not a normal town. But you said something about voice recordings? That sounds a little creepy."

[newroutines]

Mike scratched the back of his head. "They're not recordings." They couldn't be. He really doubted Brooke's yard had been bugged on a random summer day two years ago. "Although I don't know what the fuck they are. I also had a girl show up at the bar and then vanish when I turned around for literally a second."

[beyonce_pad_thai]

"Uh, creepy," Mindy commented. "You know, as a physician, ordinarily that would make me, like, refer you to a psychiatrist, but seeing as the only one of those in town also claims that this town is super weird, I'm gonna go ahead and just be alarmed that that's going on?"

[puppyinacup.livejournal.com]

Jess had just walked in to hear the end of that, and stopped, looking confused.

"Hello to you too, diseebodied voice?"

[newroutines]

Mike sighed as he claimed his coffee from the equally confused barista.

"That was... a blip." Yeah, that was one way of putting it. "It was an island thing. It's, apparently it's doing that now."

[puppyinacup.livejournal.com]

"Why can't it say something nicer? Like 'hello' or 'your hair looks really great like that'?" she wondered.

[newroutines]

Mike scracthed the back of his head with his free hand. "I don't know babe, I really don't know."

Trust him, if he'd had the chance, he would've chosen just about anything but lines from that time his life had tried to go completely off the rails.

[puppyinacup.livejournal.com]

"Well, it should," Jess said. "So, hello and you look very nice today."

[newroutines]

Mike managed a smile. See, he could distract himself.

"Thank you," he said, and nodded. "So do you."

[puppyinacup.livejournal.com]

"Thank you. See, that sort of thing makes everything better," she said, and looked up towards the ceiling as if talking to Fandom itself. "Is that so hard?"

[newroutines]

He chuckled, shaking his head. "I don't think the island gets the difference. I think it just enjoys being a fucking pain sometimes."

[puppyinacup.livejournal.com]

"Why's it a pain?" Jess wondered.

[newroutines]

Mike gestured –– okay, he really didn't know where to gesture, so it ended up being more than a little vague before he pointed at the ceiling. That was kind of like the source of the little voiceover blip from earlier, right?

"Because of that. Because it pulls little stunts like this."

[puppyinacup.livejournal.com]

"Well... it's an island, what does it know?" Jess said. "I can't get too annoyed at anything a place does to me. Just on principle."

She just made that up.

[newroutines]

Snort. "Well, that's admirable, but kinda hard to hold onto in the long run."

[puppyinacup.livejournal.com]

"That sounds like a challenge."

Oh, Jess.

[newroutines]

"It's... really not." Really. It wasn't. "I mean, good for you if you can keep that attitude up, but I'm definitely not challenging you into doing that."

[puppyinacup.livejournal.com]

"Well, I challenge myself then," Jess decided, "and I'll let you know how it goes."

[newroutines]

"Well, you do that," she said after a pause, nodding. "For what it's worth, I hope you're successful."