fandomtownies | Caritas; Wednesday [06/04].

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Caritas; Wednesday [06/04].

When Summer came in, there was a happy birthday banner hanging over the stage and Tino greeted her with a blast of a noisemaker and put a pink sparkly birthday hat on her head. She promptoly removed it and gave him a withering look.

"Please don't tell me that it's allegedly your birthday again," she said. "You have, like, five of those a year at this point."

Luckily for her, Tino didn't tell her it was his birthday. It was his brother's birthday. Tomorrow.

Honestly, Summer would have preferred he claimed it was his birthday again instead.

"I don't believe you even have a brother," Summer declared.

But apparently he did! He just worked at a different bar in Canada, so Summer clearly wouldn't know him.

Featured Cocktail
Smash of the Titans

Featured Jello
Kumquat 75
Orange Creamsicle
Orange Maple Pecan
Cheese Fries

Caritas is open!

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Sing Happy Birthday to Tino's alleged brother!

Or don't. Actually, please don't.

Edited 2025-06-04 12:26 (UTC)

Nothing Stewart was doing tonight was his fault, obviously. The brownies were all Stark's fault for giving him the idea in class yesterday. The fact that he was coming up onto the stage was the stage's fault for being there; like he was supposed to just not use it? And the choice of music was clearly Charlie's fault for tempting him toward his metal tendencies so that when he got up there, it was a good deal of screaming into a microphone and headbanging in between the lyrics.

And ended with a member of the zombie band trying to tell him in zombie groans and growls to please not drop the mic like that at the end, it was very expensive equipment.

Jack was not going to do something as stupid as clap or even headbang or something. But he was, you know, respectfully nodding along with the vibe while he polished off his next pretentious soda.

"Okay, are you sure?"

Bassist zombie groaned. Two of the guitarists gurgled. Drummer zombie hit the snare with a palpable irritation.

"I'm just saying, the last time we did Tool, you needed a moment."

Two more snare hits. "Fine, fine, space, here we go..."

Jack leaned up to the microphone. "My drummer keeps threatening to start a Tool cover band with me," he said, while the guitarists behind him started a meandering little musical phrase. "So I'm just getting ahead of it now."

He took a sip of water and waited for the music to pick up.

"Black then white are all I see
In my infancy.
Red and yellow then came to be,
Reaching out to me,
Lets me see..."

Honestly? He didn't really mind the Tool thing. These kinds of songs in particular: he felt himself drifting into an almost Force-meditative space as he kept going. (It was nice. Feeling in tune. With the music and the universe. And shut up, he was not saying that to anyone in this room out loud.)

Tino won't try to put a party hat on your head, but he will look forlornly between them and you hoping you'll do it yourself.

"Whose birthday?" Stark asked, frowning.

He was ignoring the existence of cheese fries in jello. Yikes.

"Hi, Summer."

Those cheese fries were a masterpiece, how dare you disparage her art!

"Hi, Stark," Summer gave the sort of tired smile that went along with just working with who she worked with and sighed, shaking her head, before she started setting out a few jello shots for him, yes, magnificent jello fries in their adorable cardboard container included. "And probably no one's. Tino says its his brother's birthday tomorrow but I don't think he actually has a brother."

"He might," Stark said slowly. But was that something anyone really wanted to think too hard on? The possibility of more people like Tino?

"You have a birthday soon though," he said, looking down at the cheese fry 'art.' "I meant to ask. If you.... if you might want to do something? For that?"

"I...haven't really thought about it much yet," Summer admitted, somewhat awkwardly as she focused her attention on preparing Stark's drink, too. This wasn't entirely true, but it wasn't completely false, either, and she sort of chewed on her lower lip a little. "I should probably throw a big party or something for it, it's been a while since I've done one of those and, like, 25 is a milestone year, for sure."

"I thought it might be, a milestone, but I wasn't sure."

Birthdays still weren't an area of expertise for Stark or anything like that.

"I didn't...I didn't mean like last year." Of course not. How could he? Last year and this year were maybe worlds apart.

"But, you're you. My best friend. So I thought I should ask if you wanted to do something. A party would be good, you're right, you haven't in a long time. But I just I just wanted to ask. To see what you might like. Or... if there was anything I could do?"

He'd hoped this would have been easier to discuss but he was stumbling again and looking down at the so-called art rather than looking up.

Maybe he could start by not being such a critic over what was obviously a work of pure brilliance!

The bite on her lip turned into a sort of chew as she tried to figure out the balance between what was probably best for them right now and the desire to just put the poor guy out of his misery. But at least now there were a few garnished going into a glass and a nice boozy drink in front of one of them that should help!

"I mean," she offered, "you could throw the party if you wanted to, but I know that's not really in your wheelhouse."

Hey, Stark was studying it closely and not saying anything critical at all! He was just talking it in but not in an ingesting sense.

"I don't think," he said with a tiny grimace, "that a party i did would be a very good birthday. Or gift. Or party."

He took a breath, picked up his cocktail and took a long sip. Another deep breath and he set the glass down and looked up at her.

"May I try again? Summer. What would you like to do for your birthday in addition to your party?"

And Summer looked back at him with a worried frown creasing her forehead before the expression shifted into something more apologetic and she sighed and rolled her eyes away. "I don't know, Stark," she admitted. "I think just the party's good, you know? Just....solid, neutral ground, you know? You don't have to do anything special for it, it's...honestly probably better if we don't, you know?"

"I wasn't sure," Stark admitted. There was s flicker of something on his face that disappeared quickly. "You're my friend and I wanted to offer, at least. It would feel wrong not to. But..."

A frown, another long sip of his drink, "I don't have to come to your party, either, if that's easier. I don't want to make things difficult for you.:

Summer looked like she was about to say something, but then that last part came out of Stark and whatever that previous thing was got entirely derailed with a small, frustrated sound and she threw up her hands a little.

"Stark," she said, "where in any of that did you get the idea that you couldn't come to my party? I even suggested you could possibly throw one!"

Stark winced in a very 'yeah i screwed that one up' sort of way.

"I'm sorry. I know better."

But there was the worrying too much to contend with.

"That was unfair of me. I just don't want to do make things more difficult for you. I'm just not always sure how to do that. Or... not do it."

"You do know better," Summer agreed, and at least he acknowledged it, but it had her sighing a little again, folding her arms in front of her as she leaned them on the bar.

"And here's the real kicker," she added. "You say you don't want to make it more difficult for me, but that's exactly what you are doing. Like, okay, so...let's you came in here and were aal 'hi, Summer, your birthday's coming up, let me take you to dinner for it,' I would, like,be, hell yeah,fuck yeah, let's go. But you don't do that. You come in and you make an offer, but I still have to do all the work in figuring out what it is, right? And, maybe, that's a running them worth examining a little closer, that maybe it wasn't all just my aversion to commitment at play here, but also a certain exhaustion at doing a lot of the heavy lifting."

Sorry, Stark. She'd had a few sessions with her therapist since the break-up, and had professional introspection now.

"Don't get me wrong!" she added hastily. "The biggest part of it is definitely that I do not want a serious relationship right now, but there may be other underlying factors that were likely contributing to it that I wasn't entitely aware of."

Dr. Wong was very good at her job.

Just be glad that Summer was graciously leaving out the comparisons and parallel that had been made about her parents' relationship. Although she didn't want to relive any of that stuff either!

"I'm sorry," Stark said again. "I'm trying to be better."

He was not going to mention that the last time he'd tried planning something she'd turned into a squirrel and then broken things off and that had certainly caused at least a little backsliding. So maybe it evened out, the not mentioning of things.

"May I try one more time? Not the same thing. A different question."

Oh, sure, because that would totally discredit what Dr. Wong said, trying to slack off some of the responsibility by blaming circumstances!

So this mutual not mentioning of things was definitely a good thing.

"Sure," said Summer. "Go for it. What'cha got for me?"

"Summer, would you like cupcakes for your birthday? Strawberry?"

Summer just sort of looked at Stark for a moment before she shrugged.

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe you'll have to just make some to find out."

Stark nodded and gave her a hesitant smile. That was the response he'd expected.

"Maybe I will. There will be chocolate, too."

Stewart came into the bar that evening with something tucked under his arm; it looked like a glass pan with a rubber lid on it, and when he reached a stool, he slid himself onto the chair at a precarious angle, leaning back with overexaggerated casualness. He set the container on the bar.

"Summer," he greeted, and slid the container toward her with a lift of his chin.

Summer was staring down that container hard, fairly certainly that Stewart had just brought in something worse than gelatin cheese fries, and her gaze lingered there, as if worried that if she looked away, that was when it would choose to attack.

"Stewart," she said back, cautiously, carefully, drawing her eyes from the container to the man who brought it in. "What is that? Do I even want to know?"

"They're brownies," Stewart revealed, a slow grin matching the lean of his posture against the bar as he steadily kept his eyes forward on Summer and not shifting toward the person in the bar who had directly inspired this particularly gracious act of...baked goods. Then he nodded toward the container, lifting a finger to point one way and the other.

"Au naturall," he explained. "Psilocybin on the left, but the grass is greener on the other side."

When he saw her expression start to shift slightly into doubt, he hastily added, "No meth. No roofies. About as clean as clean gets when it comes to this kind of thing."

Summer was still looking at Stewart with the suspicion that she'd regarded his offering a second ago, but...goddammit, like how could she refuse free pot brownies when they were being offered to her? She narrowed her eyes a little, trying to figure out how to make sure this weakness did not get exploited.

Not too much, anyway. She wasn't going to say no to more in the future, either, unless, like, they gave her a really shitty trip, in which case, you'd be dead to her, Stewart.

"...Fine," she said, reluctantly, but she still reached for the container to bring it closer to her, and then considered where to put them so Tino didn't go poking around them and telling her to share because it was his brother's birthday tomorrow. And then, begrudgingly, "Thank you. What's the occasion?"

Huh. That guy.

Jack lifted his chin bro-style. Seemed like the thing to do.

Edited 2025-06-04 17:01 (UTC)

Oh, hey. It was...actually, Stewart didn't know. The guy looked vaguely familiar, but maybe just in that 'seen them around the island' sort of way? He squinted at him a little bit before his chin lifted back, and offered up a grunted, "S'up?"

Look, he'd been weirdly present this week, his social battery could only handle so much.

"Weird Music Store Guy, right?" What, like Jack could be assed to ~~admit that he knew~~ get to know everyone's names around here? "Nice show up there."

"....yes?" said Stewart, with the squinting uncertainty of someone whose other options were who wants to know? and what are you, a cop?.

"And...thanks..." That was said with the suspicion that went along with generally not knowing what to do with even the most basic of compliments.

"You, too." Confidence there, as that was kind of a given. "Tool. Ambitious."

A little respect laced in there, too.

Unless he was a cop.

"The drummer in my band is really into prog metal," Jack said dryly. "I'm just preparing myself for the inevitable cover request." He took a sip of his drink. "... But thanks."

See? That's how you dealt with compliments. You hid the 'thanks' in like, many other words.

"Summer," Jack said, as he sat down, "Seattle. We're going. Next week."

"Oooooh!" Summer perked up, feeling like each one of those clipped phrases just kept getting better and better. "Band stuff?"

"In a bigger venue than last time," Jack said, nodding. "Guy called Trent out of nowhere. Apparently he saw us on TikTok?"

He still had not checked their numbers on TikTok, no. For, uh. Manly reasons.

That was a fairly smart idea, that place was a cesspool.

A cesspool that somehow made Summer brighten even more, although this time, it was with a particularly smug flavor to it.

"Huh," she said, tilting her head and overexaggerating her cluelessness with a finger against her chin. "Wonder how in the world you guys could have even gotten that kind of traction on TikTok! Wow. Oh well!" She shrugged. "Guess it's just a mystery! But yes, that's awesome, I wouldn't miss it for anything."

Not even kaiju duty! If C-137 called her, she would tell C-137 to stuff it.

"You better not, it's your home turf," Jack said, bit down on a 'explain our TikTok numbers to me' because that would give the game away, reached for his drink, realized he didn't have a drink, and added, "I'll have a pretentious lemon soda and is there any point in asking you how you're doing or are we going to keep on not discussing the lurking sad sack in the bar? Because I can keep talking about Seattle if you want."

There were two of them in the bar now, Jack! They were multiplying.

"A pretentious lemon soda?" Summer asked, arching an eyebrow and a smirk and leaning hard into that for a moment to put off the rest of that. "Getting ready for Seattle already, I like it. Although maybe lean into something with coffee next time instead."

And now she was going to focus on a pretentious lemon soda which clearly required all of her attention in a way that didn't put off answer for even longer, how dare.

But when she set the drink down, she did state, giving him a very frank look. "And I'm fine," she said, and then, for the sake of honestly, sighed a little and amended, "Mostly. I don't know what all you've pick up on from radio or the last few weeks or whatever, but I'm fine. It's just..." Another sigh. "Awkward, mostly."

Jack picked up the soda, and took a sip, and used that time mainly to order his thoughts in a way that involved even a little bit of tact.

"Well, he's in here every week, of course it's awkward," he settled on.

"To be fair," Summer pointed out because her tact was much more readily available, at least when it came to this topic, "he was also in here every week before we started dating, too."

Should he say it? He should probably not say it.

Jack settled on somewhere moving around the edge of saying it. "Yeah, that was awkward too," he agreed, with a pointed look that said he wanted to say it, and he hoped she understood what 'it' was, but he also didn't want to be a dick and just, you know.

Say it.

The sucked-in breath and the slow sigh that followed was probably a good indication that, yeah, no, she had a pretty good idea of what was being said between the lines here.

"Yeah, well," she said, "not a whole lot to do around here on a Wednesday night."

"Yeah, well, there's probably more things to do than just sit here and make you feel awkward every week," Jack muttered.

What? He was a team player, and he was team Summer all the way.

Summer's brows lifted slightly. "And run the risk," she asked, with exaggerated incredulousness, "of missing out on gelatin French fries with boozy cheese sauce? Jack. Be serious."

Thank the Force. There, he'd had The Conversation, now they could move on.

"Well, that does it," Jack said, pulling a face right back at her. "You're going to pick a nice, normal, good restaurant in Seattle for Friday next week, and I will buy you a nice, normal, good meal without gelatin anything while I mentally prepare myself for my gig the next day. All right?"

Edited 2025-06-04 19:03 (UTC)

Hey, now, they could have gone their whole lives without having had a Conversation about it and have been tooootally fine!

Summer snorted. "Nice and normal, huh? Well, I guess there's always just Shoney's."

Do not let her just take you to Shoney's, Jack.

Look, Jack was good at pretending he wasn't seeing the things he was seeing, but he did, eventually, have to acknowledge he was seeing them. (Acknowledge he'd been worried about Summer on this one for the past couple of years? Not so much.)

"I'm not sure I trust a place with a name like Shoney's."

Because one of the bartenders keeps forlornly implying you should wear a hat.

Where everyone can leave the hats they were too polite to refuse.

It is my brother's birthday tomorrow, and his gift is being immortalized in this post, I guess.

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Caritas; Wednesday [06/04].

The Stage - 06/04.

Re: The Stage - 06/04.

Re: The Stage - 06/04.

Re: The Stage - 06/04.

The Bar - 06/04.

Re: The Bar - 06/04.

Re: The Bar - 06/04.

Re: The Bar - 06/04.

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The Lounge - 06/04.

The Back Room - 06/04.

OOC - 06/04.