fandomtownies | Caritas; Wednesday [08/18].

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Caritas; Wednesday [08/18].

Between making her jello, fielding a few texts from her parents about making another (likely disastrous) attempt at the whole 'invite the boyfriend over for dinner' thing like they were in any way, shape, or form some kind of normal family, following the ranty string of updates from Amaya about the whole situation with the Squishy machine at the store, and (of course) shenanigans, Summer had been good and distracted from the weird-ass dreams she'd been having and the apparent urge to go traipsing through the woods for something for most of the day before her shift at Caritas for the evening.

And then when she got in, she was distracted even more by Tino's decision to try to slowly work his way up to breaking the world record for the world's longest Jägerbomb train.

"I feel like I should do something to stop this," Summer admitted to herself, her eyes wide as she shook her head even at Tino's attempt to perfect even just four at a time, "but I just can't."

More like the world's most inevitable Jägerbomb train-wreck, am I right???

Wednesday Jello Shot Specials!

First one free for all Wednesday Activity Participants!

Atomic Jägerbomb
Peach Fizz
Pickleback

Caritas is open!

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"Atomic Jägerbomb? I hope it doesn't explode in your mouth," Seivarden said, slipping on to her usual stool.

"Only one way to find out!" said Summer brightly, setting one such jello shot in front of Seivarden triumphantly and without hesitation.

And the other two as well, because she was pretty sure she'd get around to wheedling Seivarden to try all of them at some point, so she might as well save herself the trouble of doing it later by just getting them all out on the counter, right?

"How's things, Seivarden?"

"No too bad," Seivarden said, reaching for the Jägerbomb." I found a couple of sequels to the entertainment we watched, so that kept me busy. Oh, and Issa is upset about some birds outside the window."

"A couple of sequels?" Summer asked, with a lift of her brows then a shake of her head. "Well, it's good to know that it's not just this universe that's prone to milking an IP for all its worth until it's bone-dry and gasping for air."

That said, she now had to ask, "And when can I borrow them from you to watch for myself?"

"I'm not sure they can be borrowed," Seivarden said. "You can't find them on your TV?"

She had to admit it wouldn't bother her if Summer couldn't.

"We can always have another movie night and, what is it you call it, 'binge watch'?"

"Yes," Summer confirmed, her grin going a little crooked and proud, almost. "Binge watch is exactly what it's called, and that sounds excellent, and I don't know, I wasn't sure if there was, like, a file to download or whatever, interdimensional cable is a very complex sort of thing, especially when you start getting into the various different versions of it, and, it's, like, god, why can't we all just settle on one different version throughout the multiverse, every dimension's got to have its own multilateral streaming service or whatever now? It's getting a little ridiculous."

A pause.

"But at least it's still a million times better than actual cable, gross."

"Is actual cable an actual cable?"

It could be. This was Earth. Seivarden wasn't going to be surprised by anything.

No, that was a lie.

Rey eyed Tino as she took her seat.

"Do I want to be somewhere else for this?" she checked.

And even though Summer had been doing plenty of eying and side-eying of Tino so far this evening, she added a little extra by following Rey's eyes for a moment and then shaking her head.

"No," she decided, "I'm pretty sure this is something you're going to want to see first hand if it all goes terribly wrong. Hearing about it second-hand just will not do the experience justice."

"That's one guarantee I'll be watching him all night," Rey told her.

At least he was a good distraction?

That was sort of why Summer was all for any of this right now, too, tbh. Plus, she knew that if he made a huge mess, he was going to have to clean it all up himself, she'd already warned him that she wasn't going anywhere near the chaos he was potentially going to cause.

Well, near enough to catch it all on video, of course, but beyond that...

"Maybe the performance pressure will make him crack," she mused, "and he'll just give up."

She watched him a moment longer, where it was clear that, even though four had failed, he was going to still go for five anyway, shook her head (she'd be doing that a lot tonight, probably) again and turned her attention more on Rey.

"But before disaster inevitably strikes," she said, "let's get you a drink, yeah?"

"Sure. Just a soda, please," Rey told her. "Feels like it might be a strange week."

And strange weeks meant no alcohol and keeping her head clear.

Summer nodded, going for the Dr. Pepper and feeling a little bit better about the fact that she felt a little weird about this week if Rey was feeling it, too. Because Rey was, by nature, just better about things like that, anyway.

"Yeah," she agreed. "And that tracks. Last week of the summer session. Blah blah blah, I know I don't want to tempt the island to go too off schedule too much, but..." She waved a dismissive hand. "You know the whole thing."

She sighed a little. "I hate when it's like this," she admitted. "Makes me get all....antsy."

And when she got antsy, she usually got in her ship to avoid it and made stupid mistakes, and she'd like to not do that right now, thanks? It had been a while since she barely managed to escape a brutal fate, and wanted to kind of keep it that way.

"Really? I've been feeling really okay about whatever it is."

Which could in itself be a trap but she trusted herself enough to be able to tell if it was.

Summer shrugged a little at that, trying to ignore that fact that her feeling antsy about it when Rey didn't only worked to...make her feel even more antsy.

"That's...hopefully a good thing, then," she allowed. "I think sometimes I get a little...you know...paranoid. Although maybe I shouldn't be. Fandom stuff really usually isn't that bad, and we did just have all that stuff with the holes."

"I mean, Fandom stuff can be that bad," Rey told her. "But... I don't know. Nothing's setting off danger sense. I suppose it's good I trust that sort of thing."

"Honestly," Summer said, "hearing you say that makes me feel way better about it already. I trust you trusting that sort of thing."

Unless whatever it was was doing something to throw off Rey's sense of--

--nope. Nope. Summer was not letting her brain go there. Whatever it was was going to be fine.

"It's fine," Rey assured her. "I don't know what it is yet, though. I wasn't sure it wasn't a Force thing on its own."

"Just out of curiousity," Summer said, her head tilted with genuine interest, especially since it might help her understand some of what she was feeling herself, "what does it feel like for you?"

Rey thought about it for a moment, and said, "Calm. I want to figure out the dreams, but I know I'll find out what they're about. Like I'm anticipating something coming but not anything I need to worry about."

But then, the relationship with her person was fairly straightforward and she'd been in the right on the things they'd argued about, so it was easy for her.

Meanwhile, Summer's was...

...well, it had to do with Summer, and her family life, so complicated didn't seem to even begin to cover it.

But she listened to Rey describe how she felt and she nodded a little. She wished it felt a little more like that for herself, but maybe that just meant that whatever they were each dealing with was actually different and unrelated entirely? Who knew?

"The dreams are a little weird, though," she said, wrinkling her nose. "They kind of....stick around. Linger. Most of the time, I forget that I even had a dream before I've even rolled out of bed."

Besides, who the fuck had dreams about their family? Weird and gross.

"So how do you feel about it?" Rey asked. "Besides antsy?"

And Summer took a moment to really examine how she felt...besides antsy....about it all, too.

"Like," she said, not sure how to explain herself, "...familiar. Like this is something that might have happened before? And then there's the whole, like, need to go out into the woods or whatever and find something? And that's just annoying, it's like, hey, chill, okay, I have a lot of stuff to do, okay, I can't just go running around the woods searching for a feeling. But also, I kind of want to, you know? It's like maybe I should?"

"Oh, I did that yesterday," Rey told her, casually. "It wasn't anything bad, and it didn't take long."

Seriously she'd gotten real matter-of-fact about this stuff.

Summer looked a little skeptical about the whole didn't take long thing, because she was pretty sure that Rey's experience was probably a little enhanced by the whole Jedi thing, but it did...put the situation into perspective a little.

"Maybe I'll check it out tomorrow, then," she said cautiously. "I'm definitely not about to go traipsing through the woods tonight, that just seems to be asking for it to be the opposite of anything bad. But maybe that's why I feel more antsy about it, because you've already gone..."

"Because I've already gone?" she repeated.

Summer nodded. "Obviously, I need to just see for myself. Like you said, it wasn't bad and it didn't take long, right?"

"Yeah. And I think seeing it was nothing to be concerned about made me feel better about all of it."

Not that Rey could remember where it was, now that she was thinking about it.

The odd feeling hadn't lessened at all over the course of the day, though shooting people (and being shot) with ink had proved a decent distraction earlier, along with trying to remove the ink from his skin after.

Stark spared a quick glance for Tino, decided it was best to avoid whatever that was entirely, and took a seat.

"Peach, I think," he said, after glancing at the specials. Pickles weren't meant for drinking (though he'd try it if asked, probably) and he had no idea what the first one might be.

Yeah, in general, avoiding Tino and whatever he was doing was a sound choice. He was mostly just there to set up the posts, anyway.

"Good choice," Summer nodded, unsurprised that that was where Stark would go, to the point where she pretty much had it on the way as he was sitting down. "How's it going, Stark?"

Stark's beverage choices were generally predictable. It was true.

"I think I've gotten all the ink off," Stark said. "From earlier. So that's good. This week feels odd but I think I'm all right." Just a little uneasy from whatever it was.

"And you? I've missed a couple of Wednesday nights."

"You have missed a couple of Wednesday nights," Summer agreed, allowing herself to let a little pout out so she could sort of play it off as dramatics even though it did sort of make her a little sad over that fact. But you know, whatever! People had things! "I've been good, though. I feel you on the whole 'this week feels odd' thing, though, and we're not the only ones, but Rey said she doesn't feel worried about it, though, so I think that helps. I just....I don't know. Whatever it is, I just hope it doesn't take too long, you know?"

"I was trying not to talk more than necessary last week," Stark said apologetically. Not too apologetically. He'd found some excellent ways to keep busy without talking, after all.

"This feeling isn't worrisome it's just...insistent. And vaguely familiar." He was trying not to think too hard about why it felt familiar.

And that seemed to spark something in Summer, too, and she blinked, drawing in a breath with the recognition. "Yeah," she said, emphatically, with an almost eager nod. "Familiar. That's what it is about it that I couldn't quite figure out, that it's familiar, that I've sort of felt this before, but I don't know exactly why. It's weird. Like....kind of deja vu-y."

Stark cocked his head, considering that. "I thought it was familiar for me," he said, putting his hand to his mask briefly. "You've felt it before?"

To that Summer could only lift her hands up and shrug a little helplessly. "I think so?" she said. "But, like, I can't remember when or why, or anything like that."

Her eyes narrowed on Stark speculatively. "You think," she ventured, "maybe...I mean, we've both been here long enough, you probably even more so, that whatever it is is something that's happened here before? I mean, this place does do reruns a lot, just look at the kid weekends, or when we're kids weekends, or the sex pollen, or that weird thing that happens with the phones sometimes."

Which she was still kind of mad about last time, Fandom, ngl.

The phone thing. Definitely not the pollen. The pollen was definitely fine.

"It feels a little like a planet I was on, once," Stark said slowly, because now he was thinking about it. "But more inviting." That was a low bar to clear, admittedly. "But still I'm not sure it's a good feeling? I don't know. It could be something from before."

"Maybe a planet we've both been to?" Summer asked, but that seemed...really unlikely. She knew she got around a lot, sure, but not that much. "What's this planet like?"

"Unpleasant," Stark said, opting for understatement and deciding that now was a good time to down the peach shot sitting in front of him.

"Closer to the Other Side than it ought to be. It's called Valdon."~~unless it's Valldon or Valdun there seems to be no consensus~~

"The Other Side," Summer's head tilted, but she felt like she already knew the answer to her question before she even asked it, "of what?"

"Life," Stark said, a little reluctantly. "This feels better than Valdon ever did. More inviting? But still like it shouldn't be here."

Those words started to make the little threads of familiarity prickle a little more on Summer's skin, and she just shook her head a little. "Well, that's encouraging," she murmured, not knowing what else to say because now she wasn't sure if she wanted to figure out why it felt familiar to her in an odd way.

"Is it?" Stark asked, not really expecting an answer.

"I'm not sure. I don't remember ever feeling like this here, before. Odd feelings but not this odd feeling." Because he hadn't been here during the build-up the one time he'd been around for this happening. Just the end result.

Miguel squinted at Tino and gave him a wide berth as he came up to the bar.

"Do I want to know?"

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Caritas; Wednesday [08/18].

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