fandomtownies | Luke's, Thursday Afternoon

Of all the things Hardison might have been expecting when he stepped into Luke's that afternoon. He'd been hoping for a quick, easy, and portable lunch he could bring back up to the apartment and lose himself in trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the Danger Shop, but upon stepping through the doorway, he soon saw how hopeless that idea was. The whole of the front dining area had been transformed into some kind of madcap...jumping puzzle. There was only one way through to the regular row of booths in the back and it involved finding a route through suspended chairs, tables, and all sorts of other nonsense the staff had found and managed to jumble up.

"Aww hell naw," said Alec Hardison, Video Gamer Extraordinaire. "I hate these things in games, ain't no way in hell I'm doin' one for real."

"No lunch for you then!" Cookie shouted from the kitchen.

"Yeah there will be, after I tell y'all to take this craziness down an' I walk in the kitchen like a civilized person!"

There was a hurried, whispered conference and then, "We don't take orders from you! You don't even work here!"

Hardison sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I will get both Eliot an' Par--" Wait, no. Parker would probably love this. "I will get Eliot so fast, so help me--!"

"It's exercise!" the busboy called out. "We did it for him, he'll thank us!"

Hardison didn't even know where to begin with those kinds of delusions.

Today's Specials
Murloco Taco Supreme
Rock Sirloin
Butterscotch-Cinnamon Pie
(Your choice heavy butterscotch or cinnamon)

[No OCD]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Raven wasn't planning to stop into the diner today, but she saw the chaos through the window as she walked by and was too curious to pass it by.

"Is this a new Fandom thing?" she asked. "Am I going to get back to the dorms and find the common room couches hanging from the ceiling?"

"Naww," Hardison said, waving towards the kitchen. "This is just them bein'...them. I think they sometimes just lose their damn minds an' forget this is a damn restaurant where people just wanna eat an' not have to climb no damn jungle gyms just to get service!"

The staff was ignoring his pointed, well, shouts in their direction as they had been all afternoon.

"I'd ask if maybe they just got bored, but this seems like it probably took a lot of effort," Raven said. "Can't you just tell them to take it all down?"

Hardison worked there, right? The radio made it sound like he was always there, ordering people around.

He was! Just...generally without any kind of authority.

"I tried," he grumped. "They've decided that sleepin' with the owner doesn't actually mean I'm in charge of nothin' though. Even though I pointed out that I own the damn buildin'!"

Except they knew he'd never actually evict the diner because, again, sleeping with the owner thing, so it was a fairly empty threat.

"Parker scares 'em enough they'd listen to her, but Parker'll see this an' think jungle gym an' have a great time." His life was the hardest.

"Quite a pickle," Raven said, and smiled deviously. "If only there was a way to get the actual owner to tell them to clean it up."

"They're convinced that he'll see this as a valid form of exercise an' actually thank 'em for makin' a mess of his--" Wait. Give Hardison a moment...

Wait for it. Waaaaait.

Hardison slowly turned to look at Raven and smiled. "Heeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyy," he said.

Raven grinned back. "Took a little while, huh?" Then she shifted and tossed her newly fluffy brown hair. "Close enough?"

Ooo, she forgot how growly this voice was.

"You need a little more drawl," he said, laughing. "Man, this is so weird. Your stance is also off. You ain't got that coiled energy that's just waitin' to come out."

Raven shifted her stance, improving it, but still clearly having nowhere near the sort of raw power Eliot had. Her personal style was less hammer, more whip. "He ain't that heavy on the accent, though," she said, shifting her dialect just slightly so her voice wandered into the uncanny realm.

She was really good at voices.

"Naww, he ain't at all. He does have a way of soundin'--almost smooth like honey on certain vowel sounds," Hardison explained. It's okay, Raven, you could gag. "But it's hard to explain unless you know what he sounds like already."

Are you kidding? Raven thought that was adorable. As evidenced by the little doofy grin she put on Eliot's face for a moment, and the "awww, you two are so in love."

What? Hopeless romantics were often the ones who could go the most horrifically dark. Just ask Lucille. . . .

No, TA! Stay good, TA, stay good!

"Course, now I kinda wanna watch him come in here an' try to cope with this," Hardison added, snickering. "Somehow it'd end up bein' my fault, but it'd be worth it just to watch him tryna react."

At least until he decided it was an evil doppelganger/pod person scenario and attacked Raven to keep her away from Hardison. That could get awkward.

If Eliot tried to attack her, Raven would turn into an elephant. (She was willing to bet he'd try to fight a bear.)

"You do encourage me," Raven pointed out, helpful TA that she was. She squared her shoulders. "Alright. Wanna see the staff squirm?"

He absolutely would, too. He'd already fought off an alot.

"An' this is why you're my favorite student," Hardison said, holding his hand out for a fistbump. "Hell yeah I do. Give 'em hell, TA!"

Raven beamed at him, then set her face into a scowl and stalked towards the kitchen. "The hell is all this crap?" she growled. "We runnin' a diner in here or a circus?! Who the hell is responsible for this?"

Hardison practically skipped along beside her, humming My Boyfriend's Back under his breath. "Toooold ya!" he singsonged. "I told you he wasn't gonna approve!"

The staff exchanged nervous looks, then began babbling excuses at the same time.

"You know what?" Raven said, throwing her hands in the air. "I don't care who did it. Just clean it the hell up!"

Eliot said 'hell' every other sentence, right?

Well, maybe not quite that much, but at this point, Eliot had the diner trained to respond to the tone of his voice. A little

Hardison just stood at Raven's shoulder and nodded. "We could have just handled this between us," he chided. "But naawww. Y'all had to play around an' try to be cute. Now look what happened. Eliot's all grumpy at y'all."

Hardison, stop overselling the role.

Eh, it wasn't like Raven noticed that's what he was doing.

She looked at the still sputtering staff and glared harder. Eliot had a good brow for glaring. "Well?!" she barked. "Move!"

This was fun!

The busboy leapt into action, though that action involved running into the freezer for some inexplicable reason. Cookie went over to a complicated pulley-system they'd rigged up in the kitchen and started double-checking diagrams they'd taped to the wall next to it. The dishwasher went back to doing dishes.

"He never listens to me," Hardison said, sighing.

"At least he's doing a diner thing?" Raven said. "Those dishes do need to be washed. . . ."

"Guess that's true, Eliot," Hardison said quickly, coughing into his fist. Eliot rarely spoke in ellipses.

Who let these two try to grift?

"Hey boss," Cookie called. "You wanna deglaze that pan while I pull this down?"

Luke's, Thursday Afternoon

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