Devil's Nest | Thursday Evening

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie still had that song stuck in her head that she'd woken up with yesterday, because last night's dream about Alex had been even more vivid than Tuesday's.

"I first saw you in my study hall, that's right," she sang under her breath as she got set up today, making herself a virgin margarita to kick things off.

But there was no accounting for taste, clearly, because while some people might find it funny to have the words, "I wanna love you just like Brad loves Jen; Like Megan Fox, you're my perfect ten," sung to them with what Annie felt was sort of hilariously intense boy-band eye contact -- millions of teenage girls had loved that, like, ten years ago, you know -- Tiny was weirdly not one of them.

Whatever, his loss. 'Rock My Kiss' continued to be a (bizarrely, heavily dated) bop.

~*Specials*~
Strawberry Margarita
Strawberry Mojito
Strawberry Bellini

[the OCD is still on vacation. open!]

Comments

[sword_chocobro]

Gladio nodded, in a way to say that he appreciated her gratitude for the teas, but it wasn't really necessary, before he had to smirk.

"You even have to ask? The one with strawberry, obviously."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Good choice," Annie replied with a bright smile and a wink she couldn't even help. And congrats, Gladio, since you were leaving it up to her, she was going to choose for you, and she was leaning Bellini mostly because making Gladio drink out of a champagne flute was funny to her. "So how's it going? Your class start off okay?"

[sword_chocobro]

Was Gladio going to be disappointed that he didn't end up with the margarita, since he always liked to get the blended drinks on Annie's nights? Yes.

Was that disappointment going to be assuaged for the same reason that Annie had gone with the Bellini? Absolutely.

"Pretty good," he answered. "Pretty easy start, we just had everyone sort of get to know each other, you know, since teams work best when you're not a bunch of strangers. At least in our experience. But it feels good....working as a team again..."

And if his voice got a little softer at the end there, well...sure, they'd been ten years without him, except in the end, but maybe it was the dreams,maybe it was just the teamwork class as a whole, but it was hard to ignore that their team was always going to be....incomplete.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Sometimes you had to change it up in the name of giving a giant man a very dainty glass. (And also, this way Annie was serving the whole set of her specials for once, amongst her patrons. A bar miracle, honestly.)

"'Cause all three of you guys are teaching it together, right?" Annie checked, clocking that softening as she poured strawberry puree into a glass, and offering out a sympathetic little smile of her own. "So that's kind of nice. You're like, modeling teamwork for them, too."

[sword_chocobro]

Gladio nodded. "That's the idea," he said. "Teach by example and with the lessons. Prompto's idea, really, and a good one, too, especially since Shoe Guy wasn't sure about teaching again. He won't admit it, but it's a lot of work when he goes into something solo like he did the last couple of times. Which, there's another teamwork lesson in action, too, accepting that sometimes, having a team on hand can be a big benefit."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"We can't all do everything," Annie agreed with a nod. "In my experience, that's a huge part of teamwork -- accepting help gracefully, and with acknowledgement that you're all stronger together."

A lesson she had not learned at all from The Seven, but in fact, from the Hargreeves siblings.

"But," she acknowledged, "for someone as -- independent as Shoe Guy seems, I bet that doesn't always come all that easily."

[sword_chocobro]

"You can definitely say that again," Gladio agreed with a snort, and a slight shake of his head. "You'd be surprised, back home, how much time could sometimes pass before we saw him again, he'd just go off for months a time, doing his own thing. We all kind of did, after a while..."

There was that softening again, a slight trailing off, and a few things unspoken. That he'd never really made it very easy for him. That, once Noctis was gone, it seemed harder and harder to find reasons to stick together...

"But the job at the diner's helping a lot. Glad that remodel finally got squared away. And so is Nell's thing on Tuesdays. I keep telling him he needs to get a bar night, and then he accuses me of taking them all for myself."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I don't think many people visit here on Wednesdays?" Annie offered thoughtfully as she placed the completed Bellini before Gladio with a little flourish -- and honestly, she felt kind of bad about the quietness of DN Wednesdays, considering that Octavia had to compete with the hottest jello ticket in town. (But -- and it's not like Annie really knew her -- she also wondered if Octavia didn't prefer the quiet, anyway.) "That might be a thought. And...I didn't know he was coming to Tuesdays at Nell's with you."

Third-wheeling, huh, Shoe Guy? Chaperoning, was it?

[sword_chocobro]

Shoe Guy would, for the record, like to maintain that he considered it more like reconnaissance, with a bit of...gentle goading and nudging on the side.

"Maybe I'll throw Wednesdays at him," Gladio nodded again, although that had its own issues, thanks to that hottest jello ticket in town being a major brain drain, "see if it sticks. But, yeah," here, he smiled softly, with a faint little amused huff to go with it, "it's been turning into quite the little shindig, which is good. I know she was hoping it might get her a little more used to having more people around, pretty sure we'll try to drag Prompto and Liz and the little squirt into it at some point, too."