fandomtownies | The Magpie Emporium, Thursday (3/24)

Another Thursday, another chance to see what the gremlins had decided to do for their Wednesday night game night. When Steph got upstairs to the gaming area to find every single one of her game library's copies of the Exit: The Game series was unshelved and laid out on the tables, at varying degrees of completion, she had a pretty good idea of this week's theme.

"Wonder if people would be interested in doing an escape room for real?" she wondered out loud, to the gremlins or maybe to no one ~~in true LiS protagonist internal dialogue style~~. "Could be worth looking into."

By the time she had everything cleaned up and the shop sign flipped to OPEN next to the "Now Hiring" sign, she also had several tabs of research on local escape rooms open in her browser. She also had a few other things to work on, and there was not enough room behind the front counter for her purposes, so one of the tables in the downstairs lounge was her designated workstation for the day. Her laptop was set up there, along with all her notebooks of game master ideas (had a few one-shots to work up, after all), a few minis she was in the middle of painting, and loose-leaf character drawings spread out over whatever spare bits of empty space were left after all that.

The shop was definitely open, though!

[OOC: And, indeed, it is! Usual SP applies. Good lord, I wish I had this amount of creative energy for real.]

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After some time to metaphorically lick her wounds, then more as a fucking kitten, Vi was finally game enough to show her face in the store again...kind of, there was a lot more awkwardly slinking into and lingering in the doorway than usual.

Yeah, that was understandable.

"Vi?" Steph peered around the side of her laptop screen and out toward the door. "That you?"

Well, Vi couldn't turn tail and run now.

"Yeah," she said, with less bravado than she'd like. "Hey."

"You can come in, you know," Steph said, gesturing. "How're you doing?"

Vi knew that. She just liked awkwardly lurking in doorways. Really. "Okay." For certain values of okay. "I guess."

She slunk into the store proper, glancing around for something, anything to talk about. "...you looking for help?"

Look, as hobbies went that was a totally viable one, and probably not even that weird in the grand scheme.

"Actually yeah, I am." Steph got up from her table and headed up toward the front counter. "Not that I don't have a pretty sweet job, but it's nice to not have to be here all day every day, too."

Did that make it less awkward?

Well, Vi'd now lost her excuse not to look directly at Steph, so not really?

"My...Vander used to let me help out at the bar sometimes," she offered, foot tapping out a nervous pattern. "With the books, mostly."

Whoops. But hey, she'd meant well?

"Previous work experience, a definite plus," Steph said, "not that I'm one to talk about that. Ever get to work the bar?"

She wasn't going to assume drinking age was a thing in other people's worlds.

She'd have to learn to look her in the eye again sometime, or else she'd be stealing Libby's ceiling staring deal and no one liked a copycat.

"Occasionally, on quiet nights. I think mostly so I knew how. It wasn't like a proper job." Hadn't been as exciting as the idea of a score, either, no matter how pleased she'd been that Vander thought she was enough of an adult to be behind the bar.

Not to mention the neck cramps would be the worst.

"Well, no beer taps to work here, sorry to say, since I don't want Kitty or what's his face coming after my kneecaps for stepping on their turf. Mainly you'd be working the register, checking in on the game room every now and then, unpacking new stock when it comes in..." Steph gestured vaguely around the shop. "Nothing super exciting, for the most part, but it is at least fairly low stress. Does that sound okay?"

Especially when she already had a messed up shoulder.

"More likely they'd try to torch the place," Vi said automatically before realising that Steph was probably joking. "I mean, it doesn't sound that hard."

Mostly because Vi still didn't know about things like credit cards and electronic payments.

Edited 2022-03-25 00:10 (UTC)

"Hopefully Kitty and I are cool enough that she wouldn't, but I don't know about the dude from the Devil's Nest," Steph said, snickering a bit, though Vi was going to get the tiniest bit of a concerned side eye for the comment. Just a tiny bit; that about lined up with what she knew about Vi's world so far. "But for real, job's yours if you want it. I'll make sure you get trained in all the basics... you know, unless you think it's more fun to figure it out as you go."

Which was a joke, yes, but also Steph's way of saying she'd be willing to make herself scarce if it was easier for Vi that way.

To be fair, Vander had mostly been concerned with strongly suggesting people not set fire to their competition, though prison scuttlebutt suggested Silco was all for it.

"I'd appreciate it," Vi said, finally actually meeting Steph's eyes. "The job and the help." Especially since any awkwardness not related to the agony of being seen stemmed largely from fear Steph was going to up and ban her from the shop. Maybe it wasn't all that rational, but the universe seemed determined ensure Vi knew that some people didn't get nice things.

That would probably not be surprising, about Silco.

"Cool," Steph said, and Vi would probably be able to pick up on the expression of relief on her face; she'd honestly been half convinced Vi was just going to avoid her forever. The universe's hobbies also included insinuating to Steph that she couldn't keep friends around for long. (The universe needed better hobbies.) "Pick a day that works for you and we'll get you all set up."

It would take a lot to get Steph to consider banning anyone from the shop, let alone someone who she figured could use it more than most.

Vi hadn't exactly had a lot of friends the last few years, so she wasn't much good at that either.

"I have classes most days, but Monday, I guess." It was perfectly reasonable to consider skipping the class she'd turned into an animal in. Also Aphra was a terrible teacher.

But an entertaining one!

"Hell yes." Steph grinned at her. "We can work around your class schedule if we have to, but Monday is completely fine."

And the actual most disaster lesbian on the island, which...there was some competition there.

"I guess it's Monday, then," Vi said, grinning back, maybe a little hesitantly, but still grinning.

The island must emit some kind of frequency only perceptible to disaster lesbians, like it needed to draw them here in order to maintain a quota, because there was definitely some competition.

Steph mimed a very dramatic air drum fill and pumped one fist in the air for emphasis at the end of it.

"Fuck yeah. I'll show you the ropes then. For now, if you want to just sort of lurk around and get familiar with what we sell here, knock yourself out. But figuratively. Please not literally."

The Magpie Emporium, Thursday (3/24)

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