fandomtownies | Blackstone Foundry and Forge, Wednesday

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Blackstone Foundry and Forge, Wednesday

After missing last week due to an unfortunate case of the stupid (sigh), Fjord was more than ready to make his way in to work today and just throw himself into the work again. It was possible that he still felt bad for not being able to be particularly useful, to at least assist Amaya in making up for the time lost while she'd been a teenager, and so the first thing he did today, rather than getting right to his sword, was look around for any heavy lifting that needed to be done. The grunt work, so to speak.

And so if anybody were to come in, at least in the morning, they'd find Fjord, making good use of that strong back, rearranging crates to make room for a new shipment of steel that needed a home somewhere beyond the front door.

[OOC: Open!]

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There was a reason Amaya had moved all her big steel shipments to Wednesdays; she knew what was up.

She would, however, be entering the shop through the front door that morning, though, rather than her apartment upstairs, having spent the night doing a bit of damage control on what had seemed like a good idea at the time, but turned out to very clearly...not be.

....zounds, relationships were just bizarre.

But coffee wasn't, even if this meant picking up coffee at the Perk on her way back to the shop, which, in her estimation, wasn't nearly as good as what she made, but they did have those obscenely large cups to go, which sort of made up for it.

"'Morning, Fjord."

"Amaya," Fjord greeted, setting the crate down in the stack and dusting his hands together as he straightened up again. "Early morning, is it?"

... Or late night? He wasn't used to her coming in that particular door.

"Late night, more like it," Amaya admitted with a sigh, shaking her head slightly as she went to hand the coffee over. "Don't let anyone ever tell you Amaya Blackstone doesn't clean up her messes."

Even when those messes were completely bewildering.

...and not like she ever imagined anyone would try to tell him that, either.

"Everything good with the shipment?"

"Anybody ever tried to tell me that, I'd have to laugh at them," Fjord promised, grinning a little and reaching over to collect his coffee. "The shipment seems to all be in order, but I was planning on double checking one more time to be certain. Once I'm done with that, was there anything else in particular you wanted to set me loose on?"

"Well," said Amaya, with a thoughtful tone after a looooong sip from her cup, "if I'm not mistaken, you've got a sword around here that's been sitting there too soft to do anyone any good for a while now; think maybe it might be high time to get it good and hard."

You think she'd know about words that were coming out of her mouth right now, but then you'd be wrong.

Fjord wasn't oblivious, no, but there was definitely a pause, there, while his brain circled around everything that had just come out of Amaya's mouth like water circling a drain before he said, helpfully, "Time to start tempering?"

Because Fjord was nothing if not ~~a big awkward doofus~~ a gentleman.

Mostly.

And he'd probably never recover if he were to do something outright like say the word, 'phrasing.'

She was just talking shop, here! It wouldn't be helped.

But she did give a firm nod, a faint bit of a grin. "Time to start tempering," she confirmed. "But the real question is this: you think you remember how to do it?"

"Heat and quench, heat and quench, isn't it?" He answered her grin with one of his own. "That's the first thing you had me doing in here, I'd have to be ashamed of myself if I were to forget."

He nodded toward the forge.

"Which means I get to work the bellows and heat some oil, I believe."

"It has been, what, a few weeks?" Amaya tried to think a little. "Wow, actually, almost a couple months now!" Could that be right? Time was weird. She still was a little shaken by her realization earlier in the week that she'd been her for more than a year now, zounds, how?? "But it wasn't exactly the most complex process in the world, either, but that's right. Heat and quench, heat and quench, bellows and oil. And the real trick there is just getting a nice even heat on it."

"Just over two months, I believe," Fjord confirmed. "If my understanding of the calendar here is anywhere remotely accurate. Though I'm averaging less than one day here a week now. I'm going to have to work on improving that record."

Fjord, you'd missed one day.

Granted, it was due to bad life choices...

He made his way over to the forge to check the heat.

If wasn't that Beau had been kind of avoiding Fjord on account of little-kid awkwardness and conversations that probably should be had except she didn't actually know how to people, not to mention they weren't stuck together out of the necessity of being low level not-quite murder hobos. It was just -- no, okay, that was absolutely it.

Which was why she ambled in holding a large peppermint mocha from the Perk in each hand, nonchalantly, like nothing was weird at all, and half toasted him with one of them.

"So like, I went all the way over to the Perk and put up with a way too cheerful employee to get this for you," she said gruffly, and while it came out like there was a clearly implied 'so you better appreciate it' tacked onto the end of the sentence this was basically a profuse expression of concern from her.

And Fjord, who didn't know Beau well, did, at least, know Beau well enough that he figured she didn't generally go around buying fancy drinks for people at random. He set down the load he'd been hefting, and then gave a little chuckle, as though giving a wry apology for her troubles without actually saying as much.

"Why, that's mighty thoughtful of you, Beau. Thank you," he said instead, making his way over to accept the drink from her. "Should I ask what the occasion is?"

"They were going to bug the shit out of me untili I bought a damn drink so I bought two," Beau said, deadpan. This was a total lie. Also, she was relieved that he'd spared her the awkwardness of failing to manage a passable "you're welcome."

She took a sip from her own cup and shrugged. "And I didn't wanna drink both of them, so yeah."

"Well, then," Fjord replied, that little smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, "I'll be sure to enjoy the result of your frustrations."

He wasn't buying it, Beauregard.

"Annoying shopkeepers aside, how have you been?"

"Uhhhhhhh." That was a deer in headlights look if there ever was one. What even was small talk?

"Fine, I guess?" Sound less uncertain, Beau. "Kind of getting the hang of this place now. That's, like, cool, right?"

She was so bad at this. So bad.

Fjord... relented, at least, trying to cut her a bit of slack.

"That's cool," he agreed, sampling his drink and then giving it a thoughtful glance.

Well, it was a hell of a lot better than the pumpkin kind.

"Anything still giving you trouble? Ever figure out what that 'I.D.' deal was?"

This man worked in a bar.

"Oh, yeah, dude, I figured that out!" Beau snapped her fingers. "It's identification, right? Like official paperwork that confirms your identity and how old you are. Because there's laws and shit about how old you have to be to drink."

She paused to spread her hands, make a disbelieving face, and shake her head. "There's a drinking age? The hell?"

"News to me," Fjord admitted. "That's never come up in Caritas."

And now it occurred to him that perhaps these were things he'd have to ask Tino or Kitty about before his next shift. Or maybe he'd just... continue pretending he didn't know.

"Why in the world would they limit how old people are when they start drinking?"

Pretending not to know was the smart thing to do! Clearly!

"Hell if I know, man, it doesn't make any sense to me. I'm old enough, anyway, so whatever." Because no one was ever going to think she was underage again. Nah.

"Hmm," Fjord replied, "though that still won't get us into that club on the mainland."

It was a fun club, dammit. Maybe they could just wait until a different bouncer was on shift?

"Could probably get fake ones," Beau decided like the recent teenage delinquent she was. "Gotta be someone around who could hook us up, right? There's always demand for that kind of thing."

"True enough," Fjord mused. "I suppose we'd have to find somebody who can put together decent counterfeits. You'd think there would be a market for that around here, considering the number of people who end up on the island who aren't exactly from around here."

Get on that, Fandom.

"Oh man, I probably know a guy --" Beau started, then shook her head. "That I have no way to get in touch with now. Dammit. Seriously though, that would be a really profitable kinda enterprise here."

She rubbed absently at the back of her head and made a note to go get a haircut; she was getting fuzzy again. "Not even for shady purposes, either. I mean, those too, but."

"But it seems like there's not much functioning to be done off the island without some form of identification," Fjord noted. "Or at least not much drinking."

It wasn't like he'd gone to the island for anything but, yet.

"Which is a pain in the ass," Beau grumbled somewhat unnecessarily, as they'd already established this. "Good thing I can hit you up at the bar here, at least."

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