Devil's Nest | Thursday Evening

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie walked into the Devil's Nest tonight, and stopped in her tracks, frowning.

And then took a deep sniff, walking through the bar like she was letting her nose lead her.

"Do you smell --" she started to ask Tiny, feeling silly until she took another deep sniff, and said to hell with it. "Do you smell, like, pineapple and hot dogs?"

Tiny, of course, only smelled the pineapple -- and a hint of coconut, too, Annie was getting that now, too -- but then again, Tiny (and everyone else on this island, unless someone was hiding something well) did not have a fifteen week-pregnant nose, did he?

~*Specials*~
Whiskey Ginger
Pineapple Rum Cocktail
Chelada
Pineapple Margarita

[been a week, skipping the OCD, open!]

Comments

[sword_chocobro]

Gladio's eyes almost impulsively took a pass around the bar for any potential new meat-product architecture when he came in, now, on his way to his usual spot, where they then drifted to the specials board, and, finally, to the bartender as he settled.

"Annie," he said. "How's it going?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I'm good, Gladio. Maybe got more...pregnant in my nose, somehow, but good. How are you?" Annie replied, tossing a genuine smile his way, though she was clearly still a little distracted by this mysterious, confusing smell.

[sword_chocobro]

"Pretty good, actually," Gladio answered, with a faint grin and a little bit of wonder over how different his answer might have been last week. Of course, he'd really latched onto the whole idea of the swinging pendulum, because it really did feel like that, and while it hadn't swung as far as it could over to the positive side (it never really did, and he definitely didn't expect it to), it seemed pretty ready to stay over there for hot minute. But you never did know, really, what might give it that nudge back the other direction.

"...so, do I want to know how you get...pregnant in your nose, or what that even means? Or am I better off just ordering my drink and moving on?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"It means it smells weird in here to me," Annie told him with a despairing shake of her head, "but not weird enough that I want to throw up or anything, and actually it smells good, but I can't place it, and I think just have, like, extra-pregnant nose."

Or! Or, her fellow bartender was gaslighting her about whether hot dogs had been a presence in the bar this week, but two things could be true.

"And," she added, breezing past that to focus on the much more interesting thing Gladio had said, "do I get to hear why that's qualified with an actually? Something particularly awesome happen this week, Gladio?"

[sword_chocobro]

Which was a bold choice, really, on Tiny's part, considering Gladio had been in the bar when the offending hot dogs had been most ubiquitous.

He'd even complimented it! Unless he planned to gaslight them both, if the matter came up again.

"More like nothing particularly not awesome happened this week," he offered out, feeling a little bad about it being a more pessimistic answer, but it was kind of the truth. The little nagging things that threatened to rub him the wrong way about being stuck here were at a minimum. "It's kind of hit and miss with that kind of thing; this week's just been more hits than misses."

In a game he felt he couldn't really actually win, though.

"And that's really a thing, huh?" he asked. "Pregnancy nose? Wonder if it's good enough to outsniff even Iggy."

[hasaknightjob]

Marc came in after the usual amount of time after Steven got off work. He gave a dubious look at the specials.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie knew to expect a dubious specials look at this point, so she just wordlessly held up a rocks glass with an answering lift of her eyebrows.

[hasaknightjob]

"So how are you doing?" Marc asked, which was effectively a confirmation.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Good. I think it smells weird in here, but it might just be me," Annie confessed, making a little face as she grabbed the bottle of whiskey. "The joys of the second trimester, I think."

Eh. Half-right.

[hasaknightjob]

"It's always a little weird in here," Marc said. "Course so's the damn island."

Though at least the island didn't smell of dubious meat products... yet?

[sword_chocobro]

Well, since it'd been so long since Gladio'd seen Marc and everything, it would really be remiss of him to not at least offer a nod and a lift of his drink in greeting when he spotted him along the bar.

[hasaknightjob]

Marc could do a nod back. "Long time, huh?"

[sword_chocobro]

"...Mark," Gladio asked, with a wrinkle in his forehead, "right?"

[hasaknightjob]

"Definitely not Steven," Marc said. He held up his wiskey as a show of proof.

[pocketpretzels]

Neither Watts’s nose nor any other part of him was pregnant, but-

“Does it smell of fruit in here?”

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Pineapple, right?" Annie asked, seizing upon that because thank you, Watts, it was not just the babies' fault, then! "And something else, under the fruit."

Also, coconut? But she was pretty sure she might be imagining that one or conflating it thanks to the pineapple scent.

[pocketpretzels]

"Is that what that is?" Watts had tried pineapple, of course, but had not had it nearly enough to recognise the fruit by scent. "If there's something else, I can't quite place it," he admitted.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Whatever I'm getting under the fruit is kinda salty," Annie told him, frowning as the smell seemed to disappear on her again. "And it like, comes and goes. I don't know. Probably just pregnancy nose, honestly. How're you, Llewellyn?"

[hasaknightjob]

"Watts," Marc said, giving him a small salute with his whiskey. Since hey, if he was being social tonight it was weird for Watts to be the one guy he didn't say hi to.

Yanno, social for Marc.

[pocketpretzels]

“Marc,” Watts made a similar gesture with his own glass of whatever he ended up ordering. “How are you?”

[hasaknightjob]

"Can't complain," Marc said. "You?"

[two_idiots_one_body]

Arthur was here. And he was definitely drinking. Despite the fact he felt a bit hungover from the gremlin bite yesterday. And largely because of that gremlin bite, yes.

You sounded really good, Arthur! The pants were a bit much.

"Shut up," Arthur muttered.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Oh hey, former neighbor," Annie greeted him, wandering over and just giving that muttering a pass because -- well. In her experience, sometimes it was kind of just better to leave mutterers to their muttering, you know? "Get you a drink?"

[two_idiots_one_body]

"Several," Arthur said. "Do you know how to make a blood and sand?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"No, but Google does," Annie answered cheerily, fishing her phone out of a pocket. "It's like that, huh?"