fandomtownies | Devil's Nest

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Devil's Nest | Monday Evening

With Diego still out of town dealing with his dad's estate (or, rather, preventing his siblings from wandering off with pieces of said estate, it seemed), Annie was a little preoccupied at work today.

But not too distracted.

Fall Drinks Here Too:
Autumn Fizz
Honeycrisp Crush
Pumpkin Spice White Russian

"Don't knock it 'til you try it," Annie told Tiny, who had looked nothing short of disgusted upon reading that last one.

Though even she had to admit that was kind of a lot, yeah.

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Talk to Annie or mod Tiny at will!

Rey hadn't seen Annie for a minute, so she could pop in here today.

"I wasn't sure you'd be here today," Rey greeted her.

"It's a good distraction," Annie replied with a little smile. "Or do you mean 'cause I should be in New York?"

Annie felt kind of bad for milking the family emergency thing, since the funeral was done and over with, but she also wasn't going to argue when her boss told her to take a full week.

"Not should be, but I don't know how these things go," Rey said. "I heard about Diego's father."

"Yeah. Explains why he showed up a couple weeks ago with all the other dead people." Annie still kind of couldn't believe none of them had thought of that at the time. "Funeral was last week, but of course it's not, like, done, so Diego's dealing with stuff with his family right now. And he's one of seven, so." Annie's eyebrows were doing some talking here about how extensive stuff with his family might be.

"That sounds complicated?" Rey guessed. She usually dealt with things in small groups, and even that could get to be a mess. She could only imagine what happened when you threw grief in there.

"That is a very generous way to put it," Annie told her, shaking her head ruefully. "And they don't, like, get along great, so it's just...a mess." And Annie was going to worry until Diego was back in front of her and demonstrably not punching anyone in the face or anything.

"Drink?" she added, because Annie totally remembered she was a bartender, everyone! All the time! Always! "I can even get you something without, like, nutmeg."

"Sure," Rey said. "Are there any of those you like making?"

"They're all kind of easy, but I'm partial to the fizz," Annie decided, starting to get stuff together for the drink. "How've you been? Did you get, like, a visitor a couple weeks ago?"

"I did. One of my teachers." And now she had a fun personal crisis she couldn't do anything about. "I also got to watch him meet the woman who is his wife in an alternate universe, who I also went to high school with."

Okay, wow, that was a lot, and Annie had to kind of just pause to stare at Rey for a moment while she parsed that.

"But the version you know isn't married to her?" she said, trying to follow along.

"No. He'd never met her at all," Rey said. "It was kind of nice to see him thrown for a loop."

"Oh, wow, that's weird. That's like...Summer stuff, right there," Annie said, clearly still trying to make some sense of this. "Or like the kids that might exist, but also might not. It's so weird to think about all these universes that exist but we're slightly different in them or whatever."

What a great concept for a television show. Vought+, pay attention.

"I think I'm starting to get used to it. Is that bad?" Rey wondered.

"Probably just means you deal with it better than the rest of us," Annie said thoughtfully. "I'm coming up on a year here and that stuff still throws me for a total loop."

And she'd known Summer, resident expert on alternate universes, most of that year.

"Apparently my Galaxy is full of that sort of thing, at least here," Rey said. "I think you either adjust or spend all your time boggling."

"So like are you someone's great-aunt twice removed or something?" Annie teased, though she was curious. "Is, like, Chewie's first wife around here?"

"As far as I know Chewie's always only had the one," Rey told her. "Leia has a different family in one universe than another. I don't think I exist in the other. Or at least, I'm not notable."

"Maybe you are and you have a different name there," Annie suggested. "Like, okay, you know Steve Rogers, right? Captain America? There's a hero who's basically doing the same deal back home but under a different name. And Jessica knows someone back home with literally my exact face."

Knew, or perhaps even more accurately, had known, but still.

"That has to be stranger than anything I just said," Rey decided.

"No way, you win with going to high school with your teacher's alternate universe wife," Annie assured her, producing that drink and setting it before Rey. "That's way weirder than me sharing a face with some girl from Nebraska."

Though it totally was weird that she and Hope were Midwesterners. No matter what universe she hailed from, Annie's face was apparently well-suited to being around corn.

"I don't know. If someone else had my face it would definitely feel stranger to me," Rey mused.

Maybe it was a lifetime-of-isolation thing.

"There's an old movie about long-lost twins whose parents got divorced, and each parent took a kid," Annie told her, "and then they meet at camp? And I kind of always figure that if I met Hope, it'd be like that. Lots of comparing our hair and clothes and accents. I dunno, I think it'd be kind of fun!"

Aside from how Hope was dead but that was kind of Jessica's thing rather than Annie's, especially given what Annie knew now about the circumstances around Hope's death.

"Wait," Rey said, "they split up the children?"

It was problematic, yes.

"Oh, yeah, it's a horrible premise. Split them up and didn't tell them they each had a twin," Annie agreed. "That's not how real-life divorces go, for the record."

Even with twins? As far as Annie knew?

"I need to see this," Rey decided, fully ready to judge,

"So, there's two versions," Annie cautioned. "They're both good -- one's from the sixties with blonde twins, and one's from the nineties with redhead twins -- but the older one totally has a song."

And now 'Let's Get Together' could be stuck in everyone's heads for awhile!

(Not yours, though, Rey, since you probably didn't know it.)

"Which is better to see with others? Specifically a time displaced pirate?"

Sorry, Silver, this is what happened when you had the TV.

"Probably the newer one," Annie decided, "but look up the song from the old one on YouTube after."

Best of all worlds!

"I'll let you know how this goes," Rey promised her.

Jon needed a drink. He didn't make a habit of it, but honestly the last few days...a drink would be welcome.

Having a shower and at least a little sleep meant he now looked about as well as he ever did (so, scarred, tired, and older than he was, but not apocalyptic). And he had managed to acquire a neat button-up and slacks in lieu of an oversized shirt and sweatpants, so most of his scars were covered, too.

He checked out both bars, then decided that with nothing else to go by, fizzy drinks were more his thing than beer, and tentatively stepped inside and went to the bar.

"Tiny, look, it's like this -- okay, here is the church, here is the steeple," Annie was relaying to Tiny (who, it should be noted, wasn't even looking at her) as she touched the index fingers of her entwined hands together. "Open the doors, and -- oh hey, new person!"

Tiny didn't get to see how her fingers were the people, apparently! Your loss, Tiny!

"Hi," she added, again, to Jon. "How's it going?"

"Hi." Jon looked a bit puzzled at her hands, but honestly he'd ~~been~~ seen weirder.

"I'm fine, thank you. May I have that Autumn Fizz, please?" He wasn't sure what was in it, but alcohol and fizzy seemed a given, so that worked for him.

"You sure can," Annie said, already moving to get stuff together for the drink. "I'll tell you a secret -- it's the best one. Smart move steering clear of the white Russian. You should still try it!" she added, yelling indignantly down the bar at Tiny.

"Anyway," she continued to Jonathan, "hi, I'm Annie -- are you new? I've been kind of in and out of town lately so apologies if you've been here for, like, months and I just haven't run into you."

"I, uh...no, no, I just arrived on Saturday. Jon. Jonathan Sims," he introduced himself. "I thought the fizz sounded better than something creamy. Though I'm still trying to...apparently I've lost a season or two in addition to years. Between that and the heat, it's hard to believe that it's autumn already."

"What year is it supposed to be for you?" Annie asked, all sympathy. "It's still August, don't worry -- I'm just getting in on the, like, autumnal enthusiasm. Call it wishful thinking for a cold snap."

"Twenty...probably 2019 now. It was late 2018, plus...a while?" He shrugged. He huffed a laugh. "I certainly understand that wishful thinking. I've only been to the states once, in winter. Does it always...that is, it seems hot even for this time of year."

"You're kind of in the south, is the thing," Annie shared. "So until fall really hits, it's going to be really...muggy. I'm from Iowa -- it's slightly better this time of year, but not by much. I heard it just, like, rains all the time in England, though."

Which, honestly, she'd welcome at this point.

[notifs argh sorry!]

Edited 2021-08-30 18:27 (UTC)

"Not...not all the time, but quite a bit," John acknowledged. "And it does tend toward humid. But this time of year it would normally be about 21 or 22." He blinked, a bit of knowledge slotting into place. "Erm. Low seventies?"

[No worries!]

"Thanks for the conversion -- I'd have to look it up on my phone otherwise," Annie said with a grateful smile. "Low seventies sounds heavenly."

And right on cue, there was his drink! "So what brings you to our fair-but-muggy island, Jon?"

"Erm, well, I...uh." He stopped to take a drink. "Apparently I'm meant to be a teacher."

It was true, and it sounded better than "flung here by eldritch terror gods, probably".

"What're you teaching?" Annie asked, naturally. "I'm taking the semester off, but it's not a hard job -- the kids are really sweet and the classes are small."

And they let you teach things like bike-riding.

Oddly enough, Jon had heard about the bike-riding class from Summer!

"Are th- Oh, uh. That's...that's good. Um. I'm teaching literature, I suppose?"

"Oh, cool. Is that, like, what you used to do? English teacher? Librarian?" Annie supplied. "Or were they just like, 'that dude's English, he probably can teach Dickens and Shakespeare'? Because, like, that kind of thing happens."

Honestly, that would be downright logical as far as these things sometimes went.

"I...well." Jon laughed briefly and took another drink. "I'm not sure what they were thinking, honestly. I have never taught before in my life. Although I'm told that's not unusual here."

While holding a boutique, nutmeg-scented cocktail, what of it?

Hi Eric!

I already want to go back to bed.

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Devil's Nest | Monday Evening

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