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Trooper Station, Friday

It was Dominion Day, and Watts was working. Not that he seemed particularly bothered by the situation: on the contrary, throughout his career he was usually the one who volunteered for the holiday shift, having no family or friends to speak of to spend it with. On top of that, he was in a completely different country, whose holiday was on the other side of the weekend. And on top of that, there was a certain conversation he'd had yesterday that had gone exceptionally well, and so yes. Good mood. Great mood even.

Also, "working" was a bit of a relative term. One other thing he'd ~~handwavily~~ done yesterday was finally acquire a mobile phone. And promptly discover the joy of streaming music.

Though not, it should be noted, headphones. Ooops.

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Steph wasn't much of a classical music fan, which probably wouldn't surprise anyone who'd met her for more than ten minutes. Sure, she'd sold a decent amount of it back at the Record Traders, but that had involved a lot of bullshitting her way through the sales.

Still, you didn't hear many people cranking Mahler loud enough that bits of it could be heard out on the sidewalk, so it caught her attention.

The Trooper Station was always going to feel like a weird place for her to be, but she poked her head in anyway to see Watts with his phone. Aha. Must be the source of the music.

"Welcome to the 21st century for real now, man," she called from the doorway, indicating the phone.

Pardon you, Steph, but Mahler wasn't classical. Mahler was contemporary. At least, insofar as Llewellyn Watts was concerned.

"Isn't it marvelous?" Watts replied. Did he mean the phone? The music? Both?

Yeah, yeah, Romantic era music, whatever. As far as Steph was concerned, Ziggy Stardust was classical.

"All the music you want, and all you have to do is ask your phone," she agreed, smiling slightly. Not quite the charm and sound of vinyl -- yeah, she was one of those people -- but super convenient. "It's pretty awesome, but dude, I could hear that from the street. That's kind of not ideal."

"You may have a point," Watts admitted, wincing a little as the music hit a crescendo. "But I don't know how to make it any quieter."

For an island accustomed to dealing with people from all sorts of timelines and realities, whoever had sold him the phone had done a poor job of explaining things like where the volume buttons were. Never you mind that he was a detective and could've figured it out within a few minutes. He'd simply been too captivated once he realised this was a piece he'd never actually heard before.

Totally understandable. The other day Steph had discovered a (relatively) new Firewalk album that was a real throwback to their early sound, and promptly texted Alex that she should set a reminder in her phone to preorder it in a year and a half.

"Oh, dude, they didn't -- "

Steph came in from the doorway and approached the desk, one hand outstretched toward the phone.

"Can I?"

Watts made a hand gesture that could clearly be interpreted as 'go right ahead', swinging his feet down from where they'd been propped up on the desk and leaping out of the chair to come perch on the edge of the desk so he could watch what she was doing.

Ah, the queer people sit. Steph kind of couldn't help grinning a little bit at that as she picked up the phone.

"So it's just --" she rotated the phone in her hands until she found the volume control buttons, and pointed them out to him. "Volume up, volume down. Fairly self explanatory once you know where to find them, and there's a little bar on screen to tell you how close to top volume you are, see?"

She clicked the volume down button two or three times, showing him the onscreen display that went with it.

"Also, just as a word of advice? You really might want to look into getting headphones. Being able to listen to all the music you want whenever and wherever rules, but subjecting everybody else to it whether they want to listen or not is kiiiiinda a dick move." Steph shrugged. "I mean, you didn't know, so that's not on you yet."

Some things were timeless, really.

“Can’t believe I missed that,” Watts murmured. But again, distracted by the music itself.

Though now he had another question: “Headphones?”

Hadn’t been invented yet, in his time. No wonder he hadn’t thought to get any.

Few things were quite as universal as queer people's inclination to see a piece of furniture and say 'I'm gonna sit there, but not even remotely in the way the designers intended.'

"Headphones," Steph reiterated, setting Watts's phone back down on the desk. "They're --"

She reached into her pocket and pulled out her own phone, flipping through the pictures until she found one of Alex sitting in the armchair at the Record Traders' listening station with a big pair of white headphones covering her ears, giving the camera a dorky double thumbs up while Valkyrie sat on the windowsill in the background, glaring only the way a very cranky black cat who hated 99% of people in the world could glare at the interloper in her chair.

"Those." She indicated the ones in the picture, smiling fondly at it. "They're sort of like little soundproofed speakers you put over your ears, so you can listen to whatever you want to without everybody within earshot having to listen to it, too."

"Very clever..." Watts murmured. "I'll see to it."

Steph had actually been the first to complain, but in fairness, the Troopers likely had no idea Watts was responsible for the music and assumed it was like the other day with Footlose on repeat.

Hey, Steph hadn't really been complaining, exactly! It was just that years of band setup and live mixing had gotten her picky enough about sound that she couldn't hear a set of phone speakers being cranked up loud to the point of getting a little bit tinny and not try to do something about it.

... which probably looked a bit like complaining. Oh well.

"If you need recommendations, or help finding them, hit me up, bro," she offered.

“Hit… you up?”

Beat.

“… bro?”

He could take a reasonable guess as to what she was offering from context, but the phrasing was- new.

"Just let me know," Steph clarified, somewhat sheepishly. "Give me a call, or text, or come find me, whichever works."

She paused.

"Is 'bro' a problem? I don't have to call you that if it is."

"A shortened form of 'brother', I take it?" Watts said, having encountered that much in writing before. "Not meant to be taken literally?" he continued. "Why would it be a problem?"

Steph shrugged. "Some people don't like people acting too familiar with them?" There was also the gendered terminology issue, but she felt like she'd info-dumped on him enough for today with the headphones thing.

"Well, it's no bother." Watts waved a hand dismissively. He held his phone back out to her: "I understand it can make calls, without a switchboard operator needed? Would you- input your number, then, for me?"

"Totally." Steph pulled her own number up on her phone first, saying, "The downside to this is that a lot of people don't even remember their own numbers any more."

She was being nice and not mentioning that she'd never even used a land line phone in her life until she started working at KRCT.

With the number entered and Steph G plugged into the name field, she offered Watts his phone back. "All set. Uh... need a crash course in any other phone stuff while I'm here?"

While Steph was busy with that, Watts had pulled his notepad out of his jacket pocket, several loose scraps of paper fluttering to rest on the desk as he did so. He grabbed one such loose piece and scribbled ‘HEADPHONES’ on it, before gathering it and the others (amongst which were ‘WHITE CLAW’ and ‘TROUBLEMAN’) and stuffing them back into the notepad.

“I… think I’ll give it a go on my own, but I shall keep your offer in mind if any specific questions crop up.”

He’d absolutely be changing Steph’s contact information to include her full surname once he figured out how to accomplish that. Just sayin.

Steph caught a glimpse of the 'WHITE CLAW' one and grimaced.

We have got to get this guy caught up on all the booze choices of the 21st century.

"Yeah, man, just let me know," she said easily.

Hey now! Annie had been making an effort to do just that! Sort of.

There was an awkward pause for a few moments, and then:

"Your weekly radio broadcasts over the past month were- enlightening."

The closest he'd be able to manage to an outright thank you.

"Wait, for real?"

Steph was an upbeat person most of the time, that was true, but her grin in reaction to hearing that was full of genuine surprise and delight in a way most people didn't get a chance to see often. It carried over into her tone, too.

"I'm incredibly glad to hear that. It felt almost unnecessary in a town like this one, but... I was hoping to be able to do that for someone again."

"I am from a time where such desires are still seen as deviant," Watts reminded her. "Crimes, punishable by law. It is- heartening to learn that those laws do change."

"Yeah. We've still got a hell of a long way to go, but every little bit helps, right?" Steph made a face. "That had to be a rough transition, but I am super psyched that you get this opportunity."

"It was daunting," Watts nodded. "Still is."

"Yeah, I hear that." Steph put her phone back in her pocket. "There's no pressure to adjust right away, though. At least, there shouldn't be."

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Trooper Station, Friday

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