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The Perk | Thursday Afternoon

It seemed that summer was extending its stay a bit, and while Irene had a homesick inclination towards cool and rainy weather, it seemed like a waste to not make the most of these last few warm days.

...by getting her pumpkin spice chai iced. It wasn't as though she was going to spend time outdoors, please. This was Armani. She found her way to a table with laptop in tow, and set about working on the Dite's bookkeeping. She could hire it out, in theory, but these days it felt just a touch too difficult to trust someone else with her money.

And besides, this gave her the opportunity to post up at a window and enjoy the late-summer sun while she worked. (And, as always, the people-watching.)

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Gladio had thought about going and crashing in his office to get some reading done, but honestly? That place was almost too quiet sometimes. It was almost a little eerie. And, sure, there was the apartment, too, but if he was on island that afternoon, might as well make the best out of it, be out and about, and hit up the Perk for a nice coffee to go with his book. He'd even try one of those Pumpkin Spice Latte things he'd been hearing so much about!

And, with that, he grabbed his drink, offered a polite nod of greeting to any of his fellow patrons that might have one, and found a good place to settle in and get comfortable.

As far as Margo knew, Eliot had’t walked into any freaky fear demons lately, so she felt kinda safe carrying her big tome of a sci-fi novel into the Perk this time. “Hot girl in Armani chilling behind a laptop at a coffee shop,” she called, as she leaned against the counter with a smirk. “Be still my heart, I almost feel like I’m back in New York.”

She was wearing a nice black-and-white jumpsuit herself. Not every day was skirt day.

Irene raised her own drink in a little salute to Gladio, eyeing him with interest as he found his seat. "What're you reading?" she asked, happy enough to mind her own business if he put her off, but naturally curious (read: nosy) enough to ask, anyway.

"Might even pass for Los Angeles if I said I was working on my screenplay," Irene teased, glancing up with a smile. "Though in my experience, hardly anyone talks to each other in cities, and it's a shame."

One of the things she really liked about the island, despite everything that she found frustrating. The friendliness might have been a bit of a joke by now, but it was still nice to be able to strike up conversations with people without, generally speaking, being told to sod off.

It would be a little counter-intuitive, wouldn't it, to pick a public spot to read and then get annoyed to be interrupted? Gladio definitely didn't mind, grinning back as he lifted the cover so that she could have a look.

"Brushing up on a little local history," he offered.

Look, when you were from an entirely different planet, Boston could definitely be considered local. Or at least local-adjacent.

"You familiar with Boston?" he then asked, because books were great, but personal testaments could be just as good, if not better.

“Ah, LA,” Margo sighed. “Now there’s some nostalgia for me.”

She looked at the barista. “Yeah, I’ll have a mocha frapp,” she said. “You can take it to that table over there, ’cause it looks like I’m talking to someone in a coffee shop today. Talk about old school, right?”

"I visited about half a lifetime ago," Irene offered, leaning over to peer at the cover with a smile. "But I remember it's a beautiful city. And just absolutely brimming with American history, if that's your thing. I'm an import myself, so I found it tremendously interesting."

Funny how that whole colonization-through-revolution period had been covered a touch differently in British schooling.

"You're going on the school trip, then?" she added. "Those are a lot of fun -- they'll probably have a whole itinerary of offerings figured out for you, if it's like the few I've been on."

And bookkeeping could wait, in light of that. The figures weren't going anywhere, and Irene even closed up her laptop and shoved it aside, her smile widening.

"Your book won't miss you?" she asked, nodding to that rather large volume. Ugh, be still her heart, because hot girls with big books were totally a thing.

“I took the day off. Unless you’re about to spring on me that you’re some kinda Terror Tuesday monster of the week in disguise, I figure I’m not gonna come out of this chat so pissed off I don’t wanna read for the rest of the afternoon,” Margo said.

She dropped her novel on Irene’s table, and grabbed the seat in front of her.

Classes were over for the week so it was becoming a habit for Jo to come by the Perk and get her usual hot cocoa. She had received a letter from her friend back home so she was planning on writing back to her.

“Hello,” she said in greeting as she made her way over to a nearby table, so she could start writing.

"Afternoon," Irene greeted her with a little smile, watching the girl head to her table. A moment later, she couldn't help herself. "Are you writing a letter? A proper letter, instead of an email?"

Look, not Irene's thing at all -- you would pry her gadgets from her dead (but still beautifully manicured) hands -- but there was certainly a hint of admiration in the question.

Ooh, though perhaps she was old-timey. Hard to say, yet.

"Not to my knowledge, but it wouldn't exactly be the first time the island's pulled something like that," Irene commented lightly, going ahead and spinning the novel so she could look at it. "You could prop a door with this thing. Sci-fi?"

A slight surprise, though it made sense. Probably held more escapist appeal than fantasy, all things considered.

“I got a soft spot for genre fiction,” Margo said, with a little shrug that said so yeah what if I am a nerd? I’m a fabulous one as well as she could without having to do something gauche like pay attention to it. “And what else is a girl going to do when she gets warped a couple years into the future and finds out James S. A. Corey is still pumpin’ out new books like they’re sucking all the energy outta George R. R. Martin?”

Considering that it had been the use of the word empire in particular that drew Gladio to this particular title, that perspective would be an interesting one, for sure.

"It'll be my first one," he said, his grin gaining somewhat of an almost boyish eagerness to it. "Though I've heard some stories, seen plenty of pictures, of previous ones. Don't get a whole lot of time for vacations, so it'll be a nice change of pace."

"He's never going to finish those things," Irene noted with a little conspiratorial wrinkle of her nose. "He only managed one book in the near decade I jumped forward. Ridiculous."

She had seen the end of the television show, too, and -- look, maybe some things were best un-looked-at. Irene had always had trouble with that lesson.

"I've heard these are good, though," she added, tapping on the novel with a finger. "More of a historical fiction girl myself, but I do love an epic."

"Are you a teacher?" Irene guessed. "Or the guest of one? What keeps you so busy that you don't even have time for important things like going on holiday?"

She did not remember teaching being especially time-consuming, but it had been a moment. Most of her time had been spent sifting through the joke questions in her anonymous sex ed question box.

“I try to avoid anything that involves people dying of dysentery, but I can respect that,” Margo said.

She’d liked her fiction escapist long before she ever became a magician, and she wasn’t the only magician on the planet who could say that. By far.

(And then there was Eliot, who managed to last maybe ten minutes in one room with a book.)

“But these are really good,” she added. “That whole found family slash meets sprawling storylines across space empires thing? Just hook it right up to my veins. Even better when not all of ’em are lily-white.”

"Definitely not the teaching gig!" Gladio answered with an amused snort. He'd had a more rigorous schedule of demands when he was six than as a teacher here! "But I'm Shield to the crown prince, back home. Kind of a full-time position, usually. Thankfully, Noct's been doing some extra training lately, so he's got his dad's whole Crownsguard on him when me and the rest of the team are here..."

He reached over to extend a hand toward Irene from across the way, which for him, wasn't much of a strenuous reach at all.

"Gladio Amicitia, by the way," he offered.

"Irene Adler," she replied, shaking that offered hand with a delicate but firm grip. "And I'm going to hazard a guess that your crown prince and home are in a very different, far-off land? I'll confess I'm not entirely caught up on the current royal families, but Noct doesn't sound like anyone I know."

Neither did the term Shield used as what sounded like a proper noun, and it just made her more curious.

"Diversity? In a fictional future?" Irene asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I'm sure the internet has opinions about that."

Some things didn't change between 2012 and 2021. Some things, in fact, got worse.

"And less dysentery, more Jack the Ripper," she noted, taking a sip of her drink with a smile. "The founding of your country is fascinating -- color me jealous of all these people going to Boston next week -- but once everyone starts venturing across those prairies I tend to lose interest." Which, you know, probably not shocking.

Edited 2021-10-07 13:59 (UTC)

"Different planet," and, no, Gladio would never stop marveling over that fact, shaking his head with the awe of it even in that moment, and he laughed, "so yeah, a bit of a trek. Called Eos, the kingdom is Lucis, jot that down," he smirked, "there could be a quiz later."

"How 'bout you?" he asked. "Where is it that Irene Adler hails from, and what does she do to fill her time, other clicking away at a laptop in a coffee shop?"

"Fans of Latin on this planet of yours, it seems," Irene commented with a lift of her eyebrows. It had been decades since she'd studied it well enough to translate, but it was still all quite familiar even just as common roots. And really, people from other worlds would never stop being interesting to her -- when your original best friend in Fandom is from Wonderland, it leaves a bit of a mark -- so don't mind her obvious, curious once-over, Gladio. He at least looked like he could be from Earth, so it probably wasn't that different?

"I'm from England." She pointed to the cover of his book, smiling. "The empire in question, actually, though it's a smidge diminished these days. And I run Dite's, 'cross town."

Edited 2021-10-07 14:48 (UTC)

And now it was Gladio's turn to give Irene a little bit of a closer, brow-slightly-arched assessment, because...not really much of a fan of empires, this one, no...

...a smidged diminished was a step in the right direction, though, and, really, the other part made for a much more interesting topic to go along with afternoon lattes.

"'Dite's?" he asked, finding it on the map in his head on the island from all of his morning runs and general reconnaissance to know the lay of the land in case he needed to, and grinned. "As in 'Decadent Delights'? Been meaning to maybe scope that place out."

Then, an idea that made him laugh. "Good timing, actually, now that I think about it. Prompto's got a birthday coming up."

He could practically feel the poor guy flailing already.

"Well, we have something for everyone," Irene commented lightly, smiling as she took a sip of her drink. "Novelty items abound."

She would be more than happy to find something hilariously dick-shaped or whatever for a fellow's birthday, sure.

"And gift cards," she added, a touch more kindly. "In case he'd like to pick something out for himself." A gag gift and something nice (and discreetly chosen on his own) sounded like a perfect gift to her, really.

Oh, you just know that if they had any of that novelty penis-shaped pasta, Gladio was absolutely sending a pic to Ignis and insisting he make something with it.

And he was also got to take a moment to not only enjoy a sip of his latte, but also the image of Prompto standing there with a gift card he had no idea how to use, his face glowing so red, you could see those freckles of his from space.

"We'll have to see," he decided, "if nothing manages to catch my eye on the trip. Gods know, it would probably do the poor guy some good."

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The Perk | Thursday Afternoon

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