fandomtownies | Luke's, Monday

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Luke's, Monday

The kitchen staff were sharing stories of their crazy weekends full of wishes. The dishwasher had apparently spent much of the weekend enjoying a prehensile tail while the cook had had a brief and very quiet run as a rock star which had nearly ended in tragedy when he went overboard on the coke. The soda, mind you. Not the drug.

"Right," Eliot said, arms folded over his chest. "And which one of you guys wished for the puppy?"

The staff stared at him. Eliot stepped to one side, revealing a brindled labrador puppy sitting up at the lunch counter. When it saw them looking, its tail started beating a rapid tattoo on the stool.

"The wishes all went away yesterday," the cook said.

"Maybe it's a student," said the dishwasher.

"Has anyone seen the busboy?" asked the cook.

The busboy came out of the bathroom, wiping his hands on his pants. "Hey guys," he said. "I don't think that puppy's up to code."

The puppy yipped and wagged its tail harder.

Today's specials
Old-fashioned meat loaf
Garlic mashed potatoes
Now hiring!

Luke's was open.

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The puppy is not a waiter.

He's pretending not to like the puppy.

Brrr! Kathy entered Luke's with a grateful smile; it was toasty and warm in the restaurant, in marked contrast to the outside, and smelled delicious, even through the scarf that she'd wrapped around her face. A hearty meal of meat loaf and mashed potatoes definitely sounded good after her trek out into town to pick up her parcel.

Once she was seated at a booth and waiting for someone to come take her order, Kathy happily stripped off her gloves and tore open her package, dumping the contents on the table. Several padlocks of varying complexities and a book tumbled out. Flick had given her a set of picks and Kathy was determined--and excited!-- to learn how to use them, darnit. Getting to learn that in conjunction with eating tasty food was just a bonus.

Eliot was going to let someone else wait on Kathy -- he remembered how weird seeing your teachers outside of school could be, thanks -- but when he saw what she had to work on he changed his mind. He grabbed an order book, shot the puppy a glare when it looked like it was going to try to follow him, and headed over.

"You know, you picked the wrong teacher to show that stuff off to."

"Mr. Spencer!" Kathy looked up at Eliot in surprise. She'd never really connected the Eliot that ran the restaurant with her teacher. That was...pretty embarrassing, yes. "I wasn't trying to show off..." she tried explaining, because heaven forbid someone should think she was somehow trying to draw unwarranted attention to herself. "It's just that they arrived today and I was impatient."

"I was teasin', Kathy." Teenagers. Was Eliot ever that self-conscious? (No. No he hadn't been.) "That's good, it's a useful skill."

Please. Eliot's teenage years had basically been the dream of all straight teen boys everywhere.

"Oh." She offered him a small, still self-conscious smile. "I knew that?"

Good save, Kathy.

"I figure I can't always guarantee you guys'll give us air ducts to crawl through in class, so I should probably learn how to do this," she said. "And I thought maybe I could claim extra-credit or something if I could show definite improvement over the course of the semester."

Well, he was a good-looking, skilled football player in a southern town, after all.

"Aw hell, we're supposed to be gradin' you guys, aren't we." And he was the one who actually knew how traditional schooling worked, too. "Would it be bad for your GPA if we just made the thing pass-fail?"

Some kids were really into GPA, as he recalled. He didn't want her crying on him over it.

"Probably," Kathy admitted with a tiny smile. "My parents nearly had dual heart-attacks when Principal Winchester told them that the school gave the position of valedictorian to whoever wrote them an essay asking for it."

They would have been less horrified to hear that the school made the students battle it out in an arena somewhere. Then, at least, it would show they took valedictorian seriously.

"But my GPA is already over a 4.0 because of how AP classes are weighted, so it will probably be all right. At least for me."

Eliot nodded. "Good to know. Parker's pretty sure that food's better'n grades, so I'd be the one stuck trying to work it all out."

Everyone would get an A. Unless they happened to piss Eliot off, somehow. Or Zoe told him he wasn't allowed to give them all the same grade.

"Speakin' of. You want something to eat while you work?"

"Oh, yeah, can I?" Kathy asked, perking up again. Because she was a teenager with a super-fast metabolism and Eliot had just offered food. "Hot cocoa and the specials would be awesome, if that's okay."

Eliot was half a second from a smart-ass answer, but decided against it. She didn't seem real good at smart-ass or teasing. "Sure thing. This bein' a restaurant and all."

Well, okay. He couldn't help a little teasing.

She just had to, y'know, be eased into the concept of it, that's all. And be certain that it was friendly-teasing, not judgey-teasing.

"I just wasn't sure if I'd have to break out of a supply closet to get it," she said.

See? Teasing!

"That'd be tomorrow," Eliot said, pleased by the return teasing. "Though we've been leanin' pretty heavy on the sneak, lately. Might have somethin' more exciting this week."

He thought beating people up was plenty exciting. And he was pretty sure Kathy would at least enjoy the work out, as well.

Especially if he was going to offer more pointers on how to beat people up more effectively!

"More exciting, huh?" She darted a look over at Parker. "Is it going to explode?"

Because, well...Parker.

Eliot tilted his head. "Dunno. Can never really tell with Parker." He shrugged. "Probably not?"

Kathy tried not to grin. "So, basically class is as much an exciting surprise to you as it is to us?" she asked.

Eliot shook his head ruefully. "And this is Parker toned down a bit," he said.

Kathy...tried not to look horrified and somewhat succeeded, even!

Somewhat.

It wasn't that she didn't like Parker, it was just that she was pretty sure that their other teacher was only a half-step away from shoving them off of buildings with no warning on a good day.

"How, ahh, did you two meet?" she asked. "I'm pretty sure this is your first time teaching, I mean."

"Is it that obvious?"

Yes, Eliot, it really, really was.

"We were both hired on to work a, uh. Security job. Job went south, our team had to do clean up, and we've been workin' together pretty much ever since. That was, uh? Five -- six? -- years ago?" He shook his head. "Been awhile. We still take contracts on the mainland from time to time with our tech guy."

"Well, you did forget that we're supposed to be graded," Kathy reminded. And then there was pretty much every other aspect of class, but Kathy had been raised to be polite and wasn't going to mention that.

Besides, if she did, Mr. Spencer might think she wasn't having fun. And that was pretty much the furthest from the truth.

"What kind of security work?" she asked. "Like...systems testing and stuff? The physical equivalent of white-hat hackers?"

She'd seen Parker and those lasers, Eliot.

"That one was more of a case of anti-corporate-espionage," Eliot said. It seemed like a nice way to talk around 'we were hired to steal shit under false pretenses and got revenge'. "We're sort of a . . . general troubleshooting kind of organization."

That was a very vague description there, Eliot.

Kathy gave him a sharply questioning look before quickly ducking her head and smoothing her expression out. He was an adult and, moreover, her teacher. Therefore, it was no her place to question him. She could ask him questions for as long as he chose to indulge her, yes, but not question him.

"How did you end up running the diner?" she asked instead. "I mean, you already have two other jobs. Isn't that plenty?"

Yes, well, when what you did for a living could get you grabbed by bounty hunters after a half-million dollar prize in Myanmar, you learned to hedge and vague it up. It was automatic, these days.

Eliot noticed the questioning look, but Kathy wasn't going to get anything more out of him unless she ended up being an actual client, so he let it pass without comment.

"First off, I didn't have three until Parker signed me up for the teachin' gig. I kinda fell into the diner thing. Guy who used to run it went back to school or somethin', and no one else in this place seems to have any idea how to buy local." And no, Eliot had not yet given up on figuring something out for gagh.

"PUPPY." Parker made two of the chefs jump by just appearing, but hey, she was startled! There was a small fuzzy animal. "Whose is it?" She looked around as if the owner would materialize like she had.

The puppy yipped and almost fell off the stool. The kitchen staff weren't the only ones startled.

"Damn thing just showed up." If Eliot sounded any grumpier about it, he'd be unintelligible. On the other hand, someone had given it a piece of rib from their steak to chew on while it hung out at the counter. "Won't leave."

It might have, but then Eliot had thrown it that literal bone.

"Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww." Look, Parker was not about small children. Mostly they screamed or smelled. Or horses. Same thing.

But fuzzy things were fuzzy, and this one looked kind of sad. She crouched down on the floor by it, and looked up at the staff. "Make it some food." A beat. "Please." As if that were a word in an alien language and she weren't sure about the pronunciation.

"Hi puppy. Hi. Hi. I'm Parker. Hi."

The puppy yipped and stopped gnawing on its bone long enough to lean up to lick her nose.

"Dammit, Parker," Eliot said. "Don't encourage it." You know, like he did when he was pretty sure no one was looking. "Animals aren't supposed to be allowed in restaurants."

"He's-- she's?" Parker picked up the puppy to check, and continued. "She's not on the counter. She's on the floor. Are people going to eat off the floor? Is that a cuisine thing?" She put the puppy back down, and couldn't help smiling as she very carefully petted her head. "She likes me!... I think."

"She's a puppy, Parker, she likes everyone." Actually, she growled at the dishwasher if he got too close. "And she's probably lost, waitin' for whoever owns her to come and find her. Don't get too attached."

Parker had retrieved the bone now, and was letting the puppy gnaw on it. "She doesn't have a collar. They're supposed to have those. And intradermal tracking chips, Hardison told me about them. If she doesn't have a chip, someone doesn't care that much if they don't get her back." Parker gave him a fierce look. "And how will you know who the owner is?"

"She might'a slipped her collar, Parker. Dogs do that sometimes." Okay, Eliot was not anticipating Parker getting this intense over the puppy. Though in retrospect, he should've. "I'll put up posters," he said. "Check in with the shelter. Look on freakin' Craigslist. Wait to see if she turns back into a student. Animals get lost and found all the time."

"Are you a student?" Parker asked the puppy. "Bark once for yes, twice for no."

A lack of barking was somewhat inconclusive.

"...okay. Maybe." She ruffled behind the puppy's ears and said, "How old do you think she is?"

"On the mainland, I'd say maybe four months?" Eliot guessed, judging by the size of the puppy's paws in relation to the rest of her body. "Around here, I ain't even a hundred percent certain she's not some kind of immortal puppy-shaped alien."

Parker tilted her head side to side, looking for antennae, maybe. Or wings. Or possibly a third eye.

"She could still be four months, even if she's an immortal puppy-alien." Parker jumped to her feet and glared indiscriminately at the staff. "Chow! Puppy chow!"

The puppy took advantage of the extra space she had now to leap back up onto the stool she'd claimed earlier, leaving her bone behind on the floor. She then proceeded to look down at it, whimper, and look pathetically up at Eliot until he bent down and retrieved it for her.

"This is a diner, Parker. We don't stock Alpo."

"She needs more food though," Parker protested. "I don't think her little puppy teeth can actually break that bone." She looked speculative. "Although if they can, maybe I can teach her to bite people."

Like that Derek guy. HMM.

"What -- are you -- dammit!" It wasn't often that Eliot's actual angry face came out at Parker. The look he gave her as he covered the dogs ears with his hands was definitely rather a bit put out, though. "Do you have any idea what they do to dogs when they bite people, Parker?!"

The puppy mostly just looked pleased he was paying attention to her.

"Run away?"

That was what people did when Parker bit them.

"They put them down!" Yeah, Eliot was still covering the puppy's ears. And yes, he knew it probably couldn't actually understand him, but dammit, this was Fandom. You just never knew. "What this puppy needs is a nice, loving home with -- I dunno -- kids to throw balls or -- maybe an old granny to dote on her or --"

Not a couple of morally bankrupt thieves who might get killed on a job and leave it stuck home alone for god knew how long, was his point. He got rather distracted from it when the puppy tilted her head up and licked his chin mid-rant.

"She likes you more than me," Parker observed clinically. "Put them down where?"

Sure you want to go down this road, Eliot?

Well sure. Eliot had given her a bone, after all. Twice.

"In the ground, Parker." Eliot gave up on trying to cover the dog's ears, instead petting her head, his voice taking on a resigned tone. "Dogs who bite people are considered a menace to society. And they don't get nice long trials and years of appeals processes before hand."

Parker gave him a horrified look. "What kind of crazy people bury a harmless puppy alive?!"

Eliot let out a sigh and looked down at the puppy. "You see what I have to put up with?"

The puppy let out a cheerful yip, her tongue lolling out.

I would like a puppy, please.

PUPPY!

Also I am amused that now Hannibal has a cat and Eliot has a dog. :D

Despite their very bestest of intentions.

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Luke's, Monday

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Talk to Eliot

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OOC

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