The Perk [Monday morning]

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie had arrived at the end of the causeway this morning, duffle bag slung over one shoulder and fairly sure there was some kind of mistake.

She became increasingly sure that there was some kind of mix-up as she wound through the town, hefting her bag up a little higher occasionally so as not to bump into anything in the narrow streets. When she realized she'd managed to wind back to a spot she'd already been before, it sunk in: this island was, like, not big. And despite the fact that she had left Des Moines with a bright smile and her eyes optimistically forward, she was starting to think she'd made a mistake.

This place seemed like it wasn't even a quarter of the population of Des Moines - Des Moines - which, okay, supported the idea that maybe they only needed one Supe?

Annie took a deep breath, heading into a coffee shop as soon as she spotted it. She needed somewhere to sit and think for a bit - she wasn't going to make sense of anything by wandering the town in circles and trying to piece together guesses about the new place she called home. She gently dropped her bag next to an empty table, got herself a latte, and settled in with her phone to compose an email to her recruiter from Vought.

At least coffee seemed to be the same in Maryland, even if hardly anything else was. Okay, wait, that wasn't fair. It was just different.

She'd keep telling herself that for now.

(And honestly, the coffee was kinda better.)

[open open open!]

Comments

[bookbeltof_love]

"Good moooorning!!!!!!!!!!" she chirped enthusiastically, to the shop at large, as she burst through the doors.

The baristas, used to her antics, were unperturbed as she bounced up to the counter to place her order.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie, who was not really used to such antics, but also didn't exactly find them unwelcome so much as a little startling, looked up from her phone and called out, "Good morning!" in return, waving at the newcomer.

[bookbeltof_love]

It didn't take long for her to get her apple cider and a couple of muffins (look, she'd seen the size of breakfast Wayne was offering and... no) and then, like, Nina had to go and see the new person.

"Hi!!!!!!" she said, beaming. "I'm, like, Nina Argentum and I'm guessing you just got here, huh????????"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Like, a half hour ago, yeah," Annie agreed, smiling and sipping her coffee. It needed to kick in soon here if she was going to keep up with this chick. "Nice to meet you, Nina - I'm Annie." She unlaced her hands from around her cup, offering out the right one to shake.

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina beamed as she went to shake that hand.

"Oh, wow, yeah, I think that's the newest you can be, except when the new semester starts," Nina said, with a big of a laugh.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Oh, right, there's a school here!" Annie had actually sort of forgotten that the island's population was mainly made up of students. "It's like, a boarding school, right? I didn't really know they still did those in America."

Annie had very much wanted to go to the boarding school in Barry Plodder as a little kid, and was a little put out in hindsight that she hadn't realized boarding schools weren't exclusively British. Not that she could have gone anyway, but still.

[firstofitskind]

Liam had been sitting at a nearby table with his own drink when Annie had wandered in.

“Oh, I know that look,” he commented as soon as she seemed to have settled at her table.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie looked around, sure that he wasn't talking to her. When she realized that yep, totally meant her, she gave a sheepish little smile. "The 'wow-what-a-charming-island-you-have-here' look?" she tried. "You must get it a lot. This place is pretty...pretty."

[firstofitskind]

“I was going to say the ‘I-knew-this-island-was-small-but-nobody-told-me-how-small’ look, but yours sounds far nicer.”

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I'm still in the 'tourist' stage," Annie replied with a small, surprised laugh. "I take it you're a resident? You get to be more jaded, then."

[firstofitskind]

"The Sheriff, as a matter of fact," Liam said. Which was totally a necessary job because of all the crime!

... Yeah, Annie was going to have to head out to Baltimore if she wanted to get any actual superheroing in beyond the invasions that seemed to happen on an almost quarterly basis. And even those weren't entirely reliable, since some of them weren't the type of thing you could physically fight.

[bookbeltof_love]

"Hi Liam!!!!!!!!!" Nina said cheerfully, as if radio hadn't totally outed her for having confronted Chelsie on her own.

Look, fortune favoured the brave, okay?

[firstofitskind]

“Nina,” Liam said, his voice curiously even. “Did you have a nice visit with... your dads?” And okay, there was just the tiniest hint of amusement visible on his face at that, if you knew how to look for it.

[bookbeltof_love]

Oh dear.

That... was not the voice of someone who was entirely happy with her.

Even if the dads thing remained funny.

"It was nice to see them," Nina said, nodding like nothing was wrong. Sipping on her cider. Totally not wondering if it would've been better to just pretend she hadn't seen him and had left without talking to him. Too late to change that now though.

"Even if, like, they had decided to be totally weird.........."

[firstofitskind]

She was a perfectly capable young spy woman spy, who totally ought to have known better. Even if deciding to follow Chelsie had been spur of the moment, move it or lose it, she should have texted someone to let them know what she was planning.

In case she hadn't made it back.

(Liam was really, really tired of people he loved not making it back, okay? And Nina had already had one far-too-close brush with that.)

"Ah yes," he said, content to dance around that for now. "Because if there's one thing Prompto Argentum is known for, it's being normal and boring." Granted, he didn't know Prompto and Nina's other friend, but he'd gone along with things, so.

[died8yearsago]

Rosa wasn't in the office today because something had come through on one of her mainland cases, which meant, ugh, actually having to spend the day over in Baltimore, which also meant stopping by the Perk before she left to pick up a very specific kind of muffin that she'd need to bribe one of her contacts since apparently, the Perk was the only place you could get it, go figure.

So she put in the order, then took a second to look around, spotted the blonde with the bag, checked her phone to confirm that it was Monday, so that meant all the guests for the weekend were gone, so this probably was a new face, and then got distracted from all that by the barista.

"What do you mean you don't have it?" she said, somewhat witheringly, before she just grunted in frustration on how much more difficult this was going ot make things. "Ugh, fine, do you at least have anything similiar?"

They said they'd check in the back, which Rosa didn't entirely believe they'd actually do, but whatever, she'd give them a few minutes while she tried to figure out a Plan B.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Tell me they're not out of pumpkin spice already?" Annie asked, looking up with a small smile.

Annie was pretty sure it was not that, no, but what else could be so serious at a coffee shop?

[died8yearsago]

"Oh, god, no," Rosa scoffed, shaking her head. "They pretty much have an industrial supply of that stuff and they'll start putting it in everything once October hits..."

And here Rosa had almost forgotten about a whole season where she couldn't get a black coffee to save her life, too, which is why it was all the better that coffee making was definitely something that had gone into the new place...

"It's this....weirdly specific," yet narratively general, "muffin that they used to only have here, but I guess now it's extinct."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Oh man, that sucks," Annie said with genuine sympathy. "You should see if they'll give you the recipe. Like, probably not, but then you could try to recreate it. Unless they give you some crap about it being a secret recipe or something - had that happen when this bakery by my old house stopped making their bearclaws."

What was the point of guarding a secret recipe if you were just going to discontinue the secret thing, anyway?

[died8yearsago]

"Yeah," said Rosa, quirking a brow at the other woman, "it's not that important."

That was more work than just going without the bribe and/or required planning, which...no.

"I'll just have to see if whatever substitute they have will work."

That, she figured, would be worth a try, and she found herself eyeing the bag again.

"You just get here?" she guessed.

[throughaphase]

On her way back from class, Kitty popped into the Perk and as she got her drink commented, "Hi. Are you new?"

Small town and all.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Sure am," Annie replied, getting pretty used to this and waving around the mug she was holding. Like, the duffle bag probably wasn't helping, but she was also getting the idea that people around here actually knew each other by sight. "Haven't even been here, like, a whole hour. I'm Annie."

[throughaphase]

"Kitty. Wow, you're brand new." And it looked like she actually meant to be here, which was novel lately. "What brings you to town?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Oh, just kind of needed a change," Annie said with all the conviction of someone who should have worked out a better cover story ahead of time but hadn't. "I'm from Iowa - going from land-locked to an island seemed like it'd shake things up. Have you lived here long?"

[throughaphase]

"Nine years," Kitty said. Yikes. "Don't ask me how that happened."

You got married and settled down, that's what happened.