Trooper Station, Friday

[firstofitskind]

Liam’s conversation with Annie last week had gotten him thinking, because while he was pretty much fine with this whole vegetarian thing, sometimes he really did miss things like hamburgers. And it had been a whole year since that... experience... in Wildemount, maybe it was time to give it a try again? So he’d picked himself up a hamburger and fries- from Luke’s, not Mooby’s, he wasn’t a savage- around lunchtime and brought it back to the Station.

He picked up the burger and took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. Not bad.

Managed to get halfway through the burger until those borrowed memories resurfaced, hitting him like a metaphorical freight train and sending him scrambling for the wastebasket. The burger (and that morning’s breakfast) was far less enjoyable coming back up than it had been going down.

The Trooper Station was open, if somewhat nauseous.

[ooc: am I tempting fate by declaring that my workday looks to be slow as I’ve finished nearly everything I needed to get done this week already? Possibly. But you should entertain me anyway.]

Comments

[weirderthanthou]

Jesse hadn't swung by the station in a while, and... she guessed she should fix that before the next mess started, right?

She walked in sometime after lunch and gave the troopers a quick nod. "Just checking in with you," she promised them.

Were they worried? Shit, I just assumed they might be worried.

[firstofitskind]

A little worried!

... Mostly about the moron currently sitting in the Sheriff's office, contemplating his life and his choices. At the sound of someone walking in to the Station, though, he looked up to see who it was.

[weirderthanthou]

Jesse waved at him. A little awkwardly.

I'm ridiculous.

"Liam?"

[firstofitskind]

"Jesse, hey," Liam greeted. The smile was... maybe not as wide as it might have been, typically, but it was genuine. "How've you been?" he said, gesturing for her to come inside the office and have a seat.

[weirderthanthou]

"I don't have much to complain about," Jesse said, walking into his office. "I mean, besides still being here, I guess, but... I'm trying not to linger on that."

[firstofitskind]

“There are worse places to be stuck,” Liam acknowledged. He, personally, liked it here, but then, his own inability to go back home was less about being physically unable to and more about his own ‘legally dead’ status over there.

[weirderthanthou]

Jesse liked it. She just... didn't like being this far away from Dylan.

"How about you?" she said. "Has everything been okay?"

[firstofitskind]

Which was fair.

A shrug, in response to that question.

“The usual. Raccoons causing mischief, that sort of thing.”

Things for him, personally, had been going remarkably well, which was probably why he’d gone and screwed it up with terrible lunch choices.

[weirderthanthou]

"Another brewery-related situation?" Jesse asked.

[firstofitskind]

“Tangentially,” Liam said. “The Bee Lady’s been experimenting with making mead. The raccoons took offense to this.”

[weirderthanthou]

"Please tell me this isn't leading to some kind of gangster war over alcohol like it's the 1920s all over again," Jesse said.

[firstofitskind]

“Oh, that’s how they got started,” Liam said, rolling his eyes. “I think they figured stealing people’s liquor would force them to buy from them instead.” He was honestly surprised they hadn’t tried breaking into the Devil’s Nest or Caritas yet.

[weirderthanthou]

Jesse rubbed her forehead. "Should... I go talk to them?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

And funnily enough, it was Annie's reflection on that very same conversation that brought her by the station today after class, holding two translucent cups with a greenish, viscous liquid inside.

Look, she couldn't cook like, at all, but she could blend up a nutritionally-sound smoothie with the best of them, and these even had kale in them. (The taste of which she had done her best to cover with pineapple and strawberries, because gross.)

Of course, now that she was here, she wasn't quite sure whether brandishing her gift at Liam proudly - as she had planned to do - was the right answer here. "Are you okay?"

[firstofitskind]

Yeah, speaking of kind of greenish? That was a pretty accurate descriptor of Liam right now. Along with 'pale'.

"I'm fine," he said, in that way that people who were totally not fine tended to do.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Liam, you don't seem fine," Annie said, concerned as she set her cups down. "Do you need some water or something?"

[firstofitskind]

"Lunch just didn't- agree with me, is all."

Massive understatement.

"... Water might actually be a good idea," he conceded, after a moment.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Give me two seconds." Funnily enough, Annie knew her way around the station pretty well by now, so it didn't take her long at all to return with a cup of water for him. "Here you go."

And you know what, she was both observant and discreet enough that she was also just going to quietly take that wastebasket and set it outside of his office, while she was at it. "Were you feeling okay this morning? Should I call Mrs. Sheriff?"

Hell of a way to meet her, if she did have to.

[firstofitskind]

He noticed that discreet wastebasket removal, offering Annie a somewhat wan but still genuine smile of acknowledgment at the action.

“Thanks,” he said, accepting the glass of water. “I’m fine,” he repeated, a little more feeling behind the words this time. “Or at least, it’s nothing to call Verity about. Lunch just didn’t agree with me.”

Understatement. Massive understatement.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie pursed her mouth, 'cause that didn't quite sound right, but she could go along with it, sure. "Get something weird?" she suggested sympathetically. "Sometimes the specials board at Luke's has some really ambitious stuff."

Like, seriously, for a diner they really classed it up sometimes.

[firstofitskind]

“Nothing too weird,” he replied. “Just... a hamburger,” he added, after a long moment.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie was just going to go ahead and help herself to a seat, here, because - "Am I nuts or did you tell me like a week ago that you're a vegetarian?" she checked, frowning.

[firstofitskind]

“You’re not nuts,” Liam acknowledged. “I just thought- well, it doesn’t really matter,” he grimaced. “It was a bad idea.”

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Seems like it," Annie noted lightly. "I brought you a smoothie, if you're feeling up to it later. It's a January special, which is a thing I just made up that refers to anything I make during the month of January."

She thought it was pretty clever.

"Anything in particular bring on this - experiment?" she added. "Or like, I can shut up if you don't want to talk about it." Always an option!

[firstofitskind]

"Technically I think you could get away with 'January special' any time of the year, but it does pack a little extra oomph at the moment," Liam acknowledged.

He sighed. "It's been a year since I stopped eating meat," he told her. "And I thought, well, maybe it's time to give it a try again?"

Yeah, the change had not exactly been voluntary, in case she couldn't guess.