fandomtownies | Dite's Decadent Delights, Thursday

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Dite's Decadent Delights, Thursday

Did gremlin venom cause hangovers? Because Kathy felt like she had a hangover. Or maybe it was an embarrassment hangover, caused by all the blood rushing to her face and staying there.

A Southern belle. She'd been some kind of antebellum Southern belle. That had been--something else. The next time one of these summer camp things involved gremlins, she was noping out of the activity entirely, just watch her.

At least today she had a task that would keep her busy and not thinking about asking the new Korean doctor about the 'mystical far East.' They'd gotten a new selection of books in and Kathy was going planning on giving the book shelves a whole reorg. She'd shelve by genre, then by pairing, then by potential kink. Or should it be by kink then potential pairing? Eh, she'd figure it out, right after she gave all of Chuck Tingle's books a prominent place on the endcap display.

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Feel free to look around without anybody bothering you! Because the only thing worse than dealing with an overeager store employee was dealing with one at a sex toy shop.

She's--ahem--working. Yes, it looked a lot like she was reading, but she would assure you that she was dusting each individual page.

You were welcome.

Hey, sometimes them pages needed a good dusting. Had to be, right? Though that wasn't what Reno assumed was going on when he sauntered his way into Dite's today, looking around with a smirk before looking Kathy's way.

"Find a real juicy one there, did you?"

Kathy glanced up in surprise. "Mr. Reno?!" she asked, bouncing up to her feet. "Hi! Oh my gosh, I didn't know you were on the island today!"

Way to instantly revert to fifteen again, Kath.

Reno blinked at that, and then laughed.

"Hey, hey, what'd I tell everyone about 'Mr.' before?" He broke into a little grin and shook his head. "I've been on the island for almost two weeks now, yo. Just now gettin' out and about, though."

"Right, sorry. Reno," Kathy corrected herself. Jesus Christ, Kathy, he was practically a peer now, chillax. "Have you come back to teach?"

Because she thought he should, she really did. There was a reason his classes were consistently listed as her favorites.

"Among other things," Reno said easily. "But yeah, I'm teachin' a workshop this term. Some thing about attitude. Ain't exactly..." He waved a hand around. What was it Paris had said? "... Hardvard material, or whatever. But it'll be fun puttin' students through their paces, yo."

Even if all of them already seemed to have plenty of attitude.

It was a rare Fandom student that didn't. Kathy had been a hell of an outlier for awhile--and look at her now.

Well, okay, maybe not this minute but in general.

"If someone here is gunning for Harvard, they'll be able to spin their classes into something that sounds legit," Kathy said, with all the authority of someone who had done just that. "Either call it an improv class and look well-rounded, or say it's some hot take on making, like, English accessible to Today's Youth."

That one earned a bark of a laugh out of Reno, who was trying to picture it.

"Ain't got no clue if Harvard's got that much imagination," he said, because who needed to use actual names when you could just glom on to the name of the school they'd tried to use in order to disparag him? "But it'd be fun to see her spin on it if she did, yo."

Edited 2018-05-30 10:28 (UTC)

"That's what I did when I was applying to Standford," Kathy said, with a small, wistful smile. "Bullshit 101 became a course about politics and propaganda. I'm pretty sure I turned your survival course became something about historical cultures. Leaning about how early, primitive peoples lived or whatever."

Reno pursed his lips as he considered that one.

"You know, yeah, that's close enough," he settled on, nodding. And then, with a little smirk, he gestured around. "So, Dite's, huh? Which class got you into this one?"

"Did I take a 'Rolling With Life?' course?" Kathy asked, trying to remember. "More like, I was back on the island and walking by just as the last manager quit. She threw the keys, they nearly hit me, I was looking for something to do with my life..." She shrugged. "It all seemed to work out. I tried getting in touch with the last owner, but no one can track down Ms. Adler, and eventually the deed ended up in my name."

She wasn't sure how and she half-blamed the office moose. Maybe it had a cousin that worked in the mayor's office or something?

"Yeah," Reno said after a moment, "I can think of worse reasons to end up with a room fulla dildos."

He reached over to flick the end of one of the big silicone display models. It wobbled about a bit.

"Heh."

"It's definitely not what I had planned, but it's not so bad," Kathy admitted. "Really helped when I needed something to focus on that wasn't my life."

Which had been, you know, a while there.

"How 'bout you? What brings you back to the island?"

Reno shrugged his shoulders.

"Official story is I'm a pain in the ass and the boss wanted me somewhere I'd actually be useful. Anyway, I missed this place. Got a few Rookies here. Could probably have a good time gettin' back into the swing of things here, yo."

"So now you're teaching another generation how to be a pain in the ass?" Kathy asked with a smile. "Is that to spite your boss or on his orders because he figures if he has to deal with the original flavor, other bosses out there can get stuck with Rookies that you personally trained?"

"Little of both," Reno decided. "Tseng ain't never denied he's a bit of a sadist."

He reached out and flicked the wobbly dildo again.

"Hey, Rookie. Question."

"Shoot," Kathy said. "...No, you don't get it half-off for making it fall down. That one's a display model."

...Because it was fun to poke.

Reno laughed and shook his head.

"Nah, not that," he replied easily. "Just wonderin' if you got some kinda employee discount? I ain't sure I'm gonna keep teachin' after this term is through, but I am hopin' to secure a job and stick around a while. Comparin' my options, yo."

Kathy's eyes got very wide for a second. Reno? An employee? Here?! She'd never had an employee before! God, could she even afford it?

Actually...wait, okay. She could afford another paycheck. The online sales were enough to cover his salary and hers, especially if Reno brought in some additional business. Like maybe finding a way to get her website on whatever Gaia had for internet?

Hmm, something to think about.

"We do," she said with a nod. "Condoms and dental dams are free for employees and we have an agreement with Hobby Lobby if you're interested in other kinds of birth control. Novelties, books, and costumes are 45% off, and actual toys and equipment are 25% unless they've been on the shelf for over a year. Discount applies to sales and clearance items, too, but not to any online services."

Online items, sure. But not online services.

"Huh. There are online services now, huh?"

Reno, most people looked into what a business did before setting off to ask for a job there.

"That's new. Tell me about that, yo."

"Well, in addition to offering most of our stock online, since we don't get a lot of foot traffic, there are streaming videos available to rent or buy, like Amazon Prime but for porn, there's a Toy-of-The-Month Club where people put in their preferences and get a novelty box once a month filled with toys and things that they might like, and a subscription-only access to err, amateur erotica, both writing and drawing. It's kinda set up like a Patreon? And we have several writers and artists and even a webcomic! And every few months, there are raffles and contests and things."

If she sounded a little proud of that, well, she was. She'd built a decent little internet community out of porn, dammit.

Reno's eyes went a little wider at that. And then he was pulling out his phone and googling Dite's immediately.

"Oh," he said, approvingly. "Oh shit, Rookie, I'm in love with this, yo. I might even pay to get past the paywall, but what I'm seein'? This is good."

"Thank you!" she said, beaming at him. "I knew I needed to do something, because nobody ever comes in, really, so I decided I'd build up our presence online. And I got some very good people I knew from around--" Porn Tumblr and fanfic sites, mostly, shh "--and offered them money to write smut to start and now they get shares every month."

It all worked out quite nicely, really, especially since Kathy was okay with them posting their stuff freely a few months after it was posted to Dite's.

"Smart," Reno mused, scratching his chin. "That's real friggin' smart, yo. I can't think of nobody else around here who went and took their business online. Makes sense to, considerin' people wanna buy sex toys, what, maybe once a year?"

"Exactly!" Kathy said with a nod. "Other than safer sex supplies and the like, you don't normally have to replace your toys or anything. Even the Toy-Of-The-Month Club, it's mostly the novelty of it that attracts people, not the need for new stuff. So I asked around the internet and got some ideas about what I could do instead."

"I knew I liked you," Reno chuckled with an approving grin. "So, how's that end work? You takin' care of the website, or you got someone on contract for updates, too?"

"Hardison does most of the techy bits," Kathy confessed, since she'd never studied anything more rigorous than XHTML. "Every few months, I'll ask about a new feature or a site upgrade and he takes care of it."

"Handy," Reno drawled. "Always good havin' the brainy ones around, ain't it?"

He looked around, lips pursed as he mulled the place over.

"So... are you hirin', or should I look elsewhere?"

"Oh! Oh yes!" Kathy said. "I am! Hiring. Uhhh...for pretty much any day? I usually show up every day for a few hours, but if you want a shift, I will happily let you have one? I think I put together a salary and benefits package once when I first got the keys to this place..."

"Benefits, huh?" He tilted his head a little. "You got Saturdays free? I like Saturdays, yo. People are lookin' to have more fun on Saturdays."

"You want Saturdays?" Kathy asked. "Please! Yes! That shift is yours!"

She didn't think she'd be able to pay him to take a weekend shift, and yet here he was, volunteering for one.

"...Err, do you think you'd mind starting in, like, two weeks though? I actually have the next two weekends booked for deep cleaning and yearly fumigation, mostly so I wouldn't have to work them."

"Two weeks?" Reno considered that for a moment, mostly ticking through the weekends in his head.

... And then counting on his fingers, because fuck math.

"So that's what, the ninth or somethin'? I can handle that, yo."

"I think so," Kathy said, nodding. "I, uhh, hadn't expected an employee when I was setting up the schedule. Hope that's okay?"

"I'll survive somehow," Reno replied, chuckling. "Ain't like you saw me comin', and anyway, I still got a few more weeks of that workshop before I gotta pin down another job for real. The wait's fine by me, yo."

"Great!" Kathy said, beaming. "You can start on the 9th and the store will even be spotless and one hundred percent bug-free!"

It was almost certainly bug-free now, but you know how you kept it that way? ANNUAL FUMIGATION THAT WAS HOW.

"See, an' that's what I like about this place," Reno mused. "If I'm buyin' somethin' that's gonna go near my junk, I like knowin' it ain't gonna be crawlin' in bugs."

It was important.

Thank you, annual fumigation.

"Believe it or not, that was nearly our store motto," Kathy deadpanned.

"And see, that would've gotten all my business just like that!"

Reno sounded entirely too delighted about that. But then, the whole situation was amusing him to no end anyway, so...

"Next time I'm thinking about a change, I'll make sure to solicit your input," Kathy said with a grin. "Unless I just go with 'Soliciting Your Input' because, wow, that works, too."

"That's it, put that one on a t-shirt," Reno said immediately. "You got a clothing section in that online merch of yours, right? You should."

He would get that shirt for everyone he knew. Everyone.

"...Well, I'm gonna now," Kathy said, snapping her fingers. "Jeez, you haven't even started working yet and I'm going to have to give you a raise for good ideas."

She had costumes and lingerie, but not T-shirts and the like. She could already imagine it; one with a picture of the giant rooster out front and the word 'Poppy' written over it to make the joke obvious...

Reno smirked a little at that.

"Hey," he said easily, "I do the job."

He was gonna love it here.

I have a fancy new bone growth stimulator! It is so much less cool to use than it sounds.

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Dite's Decadent Delights, Thursday

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