Devil's Nest | Thursday Evening

[defenderofdesmoines]

When Annie came in today, she was hit with a wave of citrus. And while normally she took to the garnishes upon arrival, she could already see Tiny was working on them, and could also see why/

"So who ordered them?" Annie wondered, writing up her specials board. "Like, this is like all that scotch nonsense last year, remember that? Like, do we need a new distributor?" Or could they blame someone specific for this? (Like you, Tiny?)

~*Specials*~
Frozen Lime Daiquiri
Mojito
Gimlet

Free lime with every order! Enjoy at home!

And once she was done writing that up, there was...a reversal, of sorts, as Tiny brought over his phone to show her his child from the weekend. Which, you know, Annie had abjectly not asked for, but turnabout was fair play, and...you know, maybe she could go check on the kegs for once, if it got real bad....

[open!]

Comments

[sword_chocobro]

"A free lime?" asked Gladio, brows lifted in an expression that seemed unable to believe his good luck. "Looks like I picked a good day to come in!"

Actually, he was maybe a little weirdly excited for the free lime, if only because he could already hear the confused laugh out of Nell when he got home and presented her with it proudly, unless she did decide to come join him tonight, in which case, he looked forward to planning on what to do with their potential two free limes.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"A free lime," Annie elaborated with gravitas, placing her palms flat on the bar as though needing to brace herself due to the enormity of her announcement, "per drink. Your lime collection tonight, Gladio, is entirely in your hands."

Though like if he ended up taking them all home she might get in trouble with her boss or something, but at this point that just seemed wildly unlikely to ever happen.

[sword_chocobro]

"How am I going to hold all these limes?" asked Gladio, who better be careful with that meme, it was an antique. But he met that...offer? Challenge? With a grin and a glance toward the specials board.

"Well," he said, "that's a problem for future Gladio. Current Gladio's going to need one of those daiquiris, if you don't mind. And how've you been, Annie? Your kid total stick at the two you already got this last weekend?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Thank goodness, yes, it did," Annie assured him with an actual, visible sigh as she first and foremost set a lime right in front of Gladio before making to grab a blender pitcher. "Though I did kind of wonder if Five was going to show up to talk to us about paradoxes again if the twins did show as their teenage selves. They've been here a couple times before, but they skipped last year, too, and I always figured it was because of paradoxes."

And all of this talk was, genuinely, just begging for Annie to get a real alternate-universe whammy next year.

"You? Any little...Gladiolets or Nell-lings?" It sounded cuter in her head, for real.

[sword_chocobro]

"Nah," Gladio shrugged a little, and the faint grin on his face was a good indication that he thought Gladiolets and Nell-lings was still pretty cute, actually. "Pretty quiet weekend for us, too, except when we had everyone and theirs over for Monday. Probably worked put better for us that way, anyway. Not really sure we were ready to navigate through all that, you know?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I don't think anyone's ever really ready for it," Annie mused, and she was including herself and her intentional, planned pregnancy in that. "But I know when the twins showed up for us the first time around, Diego and I ended up having...you know, conversations."

And that got a sympathetic wrinkle of her nose as she threw ice into her blender, because -- yeah, conversations generally needed to happen, of course, but she could also totally respect not necessarily wanting to have them on the island's time.

[sword_chocobro]

"Oh, there was definitely a conversation even without any showing up as well," Gladio admitted. "Maybe not as much of one it could've been," there had, after all, seemed to have been some other issues that the weekend had stirred up that demanded more immediate attention, "but, you know, enough to sort of feel out that we were both generally on the same page. It's...kind of a rough spot for both of us, I think."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"She's mentioned some, like, stuff about back home, I could see that," Annie acknowledged vaguely -- both to not press too hard on that rough spot for Gladio, but also to indicate that she also figured he obviously knew way more about Nell's stuff than she did. Most of what Annie knew just indicated that Nell's oppressive religious upbringing had been really different from Annie's oppressive religious upbringing. "But hey, as an actual, full-time parent -- it's good you guys are on the same page, but I'm also jealous of, like, how much sleep you probably got this weekend."

Though admittedly -- for once, Annie and Diego probably got a little more shut-eye than some other parents, with louder and/or more mobile children, had.

[sword_chocobro]

"Oh," Gladio informed Annie, very serious and totally convincing, for sure, "don't worry. The kittens were very rambunctious, so, you know, not....too much."

He was, of course, disgustingly and horribly well-rested.

"And how are the twins, anyway? We got Noctra walking and talking now, and everything Prompto complains about it, I just remind him that you'll have that double-time coming up."

[single_man_tear]

"Annie!" Dean said as he took a seat at the bar. "I don't think I've seen you since you threatened to kill me. How've you been?"

Look, what's a few death threats from a confusing doppelganger situation.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Okay, okay, point of clarification," Annie said, holding up a hand (and willing her heart to slow down, because she still wasn't quite used to seeing that face in a friendly context.) "No one was going to kill anyone."

Beat.

"I was just gonna incapacitate you and call the colonel who's supposed to have you hidden in a basement somewhere to come collect you," she continued, as though that was a lot better -- though she was also already pulling out her phone, too. "Can I show you something freaky, though? Also, I owe you a drink."

Literally the least she could do, honestly, with the threats and all.

[single_man_tear]

"I'll take a free drink and anything freaky," Dean said amiably. "I mean in general freakiness. That's my business. What do you have? Poltergeist? Ghost? Ghoul?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Your choice -- or anything else, I'm pretty good at mixing drinks up these days," Annie offered, nodding to the specials board, before sliding her phone across the bar to Dean. "And how about identical strangers?"

On her phone was an image of a man who was the absolute spitting image of Dean -- maybe a little older, though, and with a beard -- wearing forest green tactical armor, and holding a shield. You know, something like this.

"That dude's the biggest asshole I know." Maybe second-biggest, honestly, but she was making a point.

[single_man_tear]

Dean frowned. "Well, I can see why you thought I was him. And that beard is super douche level," he said slowly taking it in. He'd heard of doppelgangers of course since his first day on the island but it was his first time taking it in.

"Yeah, okay, I can see why you thought I was him. What's this jerk-with-my-face do? Looks like a paramilitary reject."

[defenderofdesmoines]

It was totally one thing to be told you had a doppelganger, but another entirely to see it, right?

"Kinda-sorta on the money, there," Annie noted, leaning her elbows on the bar. "He's a propaganda artist, mostly. The first superhero, in my universe -- so mostly he did a lot of, like, unhelpful photo ops in Vietnam, stuff like that. But his actual power is that he can actually create nuclear explosions, which kill most people and de-power the really tough ones."

She moved to pull her phone back, made a little face, and offered, "He killed my best friend." Or she faked her death and Annie was sticking to the lie while still naming her daughter after her. The outcome was the same, either way, really. "So -- I really owe you an apology, but I wanted you to see, like, why I got it so wrong, you know?"

[single_man_tear]

"Yeah," Dean said, still frowning. "I mean I've met an alternate version of myself a couple times but never this far off the path. But just in case: If you see someone who looks like me in a sweater vest and driving a Fiat, he's a version of me. I'm okay with you blasting him though."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"A Fiat?" Annie scoffed in disgust, definitely more offended there than by the idea of a sweater vest. (Sometimes those could look very nice on a guy!) "You strike me as a guy who likes his cars American. Is this guy your, like, actual evil twin?"

It sounded like that kind of thing. Or, like, a mirror universe? Something something evil goatees?

[single_man_tear]

"Just a douche version of me. Not evil," Dean said with a small chuckle. "And yes, I am an American car guy. I have a '67 Impala that used to belong to my Dad and I treat it like my baby."

To the point of calling it Baby.

[sword_chocobro]

An entrance like that had definitely been enough to catch Gladio's attention a little, and realizing that he was pretty sure he didn't recognize this guy, he'd probably be getting a nod and a lift of his drink in greeting if he happened to glance in the direction of the big, scarred, shirtless dude sipping on a daiquiri down the bar.

[single_man_tear]

He is hard to miss isn't he?

Dean raised his glass of whiskey in returned. "How's it going? Dean Winchester. One of the recent new guys in the last couple of weeks."

[sword_chocobro]

"Gladiolus Amicitia," he offered back, and, yes, it was a mouthful, and, yes, it was also a pretty flower, and, yes, that's exactly why he chose to offer the whole name. "Good to meet ya. And, well, welcome to the island, I guess. You here by choice or otherwise?"

It was, he felt, personally, as a bit of an otherwise (it had changed a lot in the past year) himself.

[single_man_tear]

"Holy mission," Dean half-joked. "My boss doesn't want anything nasty from this nexus slipping into my reality. How about you?"

[sword_chocobro]

Gladio snorted faintly, looking like he really couldn't blame Dean's boss on that one, and then shook his head. "Otherwise," he said, "but that's all pretty complicated. Long story short is that our reward for saving our world about a year and a half ago was to get stuck here before we could even get to enjoy it..."

He shook his head again and almost wished he'd had a drink that lent itself to gulping better than a daiquiri, but, also, he did try to keep his drinking in check.

"So's that what you do? You in the business of handling nasty things?"

[single_man_tear]

"Yep. Kind of the family business. Hunting monsters, ghosts, demons, etc," Dean replied. "And what about you? Were you saving this world or another?"

[sword_chocobro]

There was a nod of....well, if not complete understanding, at least one of familiarity.

"Another one," he said. "World called Eos. With a good amount of daemon hunting for us, too. Maybe we can trade notes sometimes, although I've learned that 'daemon' means a lot of different things a lot of different places. But me and a couple of my friends, we used to split our time between here and tgerr, then left for a wedding, got stuck in an apocalypse, and then suddenly got stuck back here ten years later, although only about three months had passes by this calender..."

He snorted faintly into his drink.

"Don't know if you've gotten the rundown on that kind of thing happening."