Caritas, Sunday

[suitably_heroic]

Atton was here.

Presumably, anyway.

... He'd pulled up a chair behind the bar and he was letting Tino take care of most of the work. His part of it mostly involved bellowing the name of classic metal songs at the zombies. They obligingly played along.

[[ open, no ocd ]]

Comments

[notconflicted]

This was absolutely a check-in happening.

Sia almost called, then decided if he didn't feel like talking, a text would let him ignore it if he wanted. How's work?

Assuming he was there and hadn't changed shifts in the last few months.

[suitably_heroic]

He was there.

Atton stared at the text for a good full five minutes. He wasn't really thinking about whether or not to answer it; most of him was running on autopilot right now, and he physically didn't know what to do with this.

Tino came over to ask for a bottle of some beer or another. That snapped him out of it.

Work is work. Fine.

[notconflicted]

Sia of course couldn't tell anything from that, so she went for, And how are you doing?

[suitably_heroic]

He nearly typed 'I'll be fine', but that was a tell, wasn't it?

Fine. Tino's being a pain in my ass.

Lying over text was easy.

[notconflicted]

"Fine" twice in a row certainly wasn't not a tell, either.

What's he doing?

[suitably_heroic]

Wants the zombies to play Taylor Swift all the time because he's decided she's the 'voice of his generation' or something. Isn't she like half his age?

[notconflicted]

I've never known how old either of them are. She does have some decent songs that the zombies can ruin, though.

Shhh.

[suitably_heroic]

Sometimes you are such a 16-year-old girl, empress, Atton texted, looking up at Tino for a second.

[notconflicted]

I just said some were decent.

In truth, she related to a lot of things off of Red, okay.

[suitably_heroic]

Oh sure, I believe you. Wink wink nudge nudge.

[notconflicted]

This from a man who refuses to listen to music that isn't screamed.

[suitably_heroic]

If you think Metallica is screaming, you haven't been paying attention, Atton retorted, rolling his eyes.

[notconflicted]

She didn't, but she also wasn't a fan, so this was what you got.

Was I supposed to have been?

[suitably_heroic]

They're only one of the best bands to come out of this planet, Atton argued.

Or at least the one band that kind of fit his mood a lot of the time.

[notconflicted]

And why is that?

[suitably_heroic]

Because they just are!

Forgive him, he was not at his best.

[notconflicted]

She'd have expected that answer even if he was, really.

I accept that you believe that.

[suitably_heroic]

Don't try to lawyer me.

At least he'd managed to drag them off into the wilds of another classic Atton Argument (tm).

[notconflicted]

But I'm so good at it.

And it'd been a while since they'd done this.

[suitably_heroic]

I know you're surrounded by sycophants who have to tell you these things, but sadly, it's a complete lie. Sorry.

[notconflicted]

That's part of why I keep you around.

And because that was too honest when she read it back to herself, she added, If I wasn't good at it, you'd probably argue less.