fandomtownies | The Perk, Tuesday Morning

The twins had tutoring, which meant since they were being watched for the next few hours and Jaina could run some errands without them setting the house on fire. And you know what, she could stop at the Perk.

...and be kind of harassed into getting a pumpkin spice latte while she really wanted a mocha. It was a fight she won, and she rolled her eyes as she waited.

"I wasn't as stern," Don told her once she'd won her battle with the barista. "Good for you."

Also, they hadn't had what he really wanted. Hmph.

"It's not like everyone doesn't know about pumpkin spice lattes," she said, shaking her head. "If I wanted one, I'd get one."

"Maybe the enthusiasm will wear off after a while. You know, once it's actually fall."

"Oh no. This'll be going till December, when everything turns to peppermint," she said. "But in a saner way."

"I could have gotten one without leaving the building and walking all the way over here, even," Don said by way of agreement. "Still, I suppose the walk did me good."

"Then why'd you come here?" she asked, accepting her drink, and taking the lid off to make sure there was no surprise pumpkin.

Safe.

"I was hoping they had...something else," Don admitted vaguely. "They didn't, but apparently switching my order from that to a black coffee was too much of a swing, so they insisted on a compromise. And I'm not strong enough to argue before coffee."

"Do you still want black coffee?" she asked. Because she'd get it.

Don shrugged. "This is fine. Caffeine is caffeine in the end, right?"

"I suppose," she said, but added, "I have jumped this counter before."

Don looked over at the counter, then asked Jaina, "Do I want to know?"

"They were just not being helpful so I made it myself," she said with a shrug. "I still paid."

"Seems fair," Don agreed. "I may have been tempted to do the same once or twice, but...well, bad leg." And too mild-mannered, but mostly the leg.

"Bit of a hindrance there," jaina said. "That's when you get creative."

Or harass them.

Don shrugged. "As long as I get coffee in the end. They had an apple coffee last year, you know. It was weird."

Weird. Right, Don.

"An apple coffee?" she repeated, and frowned as she thought about it. "It doesn't affect sound weird. But the pumpkin's fine..."

Just fine, though. Don't get it twisted, it was just fine.

"You're getting pumpkin coffee next time," Don predicted. Whether you wanted it or not, Jaina.

"Only if I want it," she said.

Because she could mind trick the people behind the counter.

"You keep telling yourself that." Was Don teasing or not? The world may never know.

"We'll see," she said, raising her successful mocha in a toast.

Don raised his unsuccessful pumpkin coffee to tap it against hers. "Best of luck."

Her perfume reached him first, her signature scent of mulberries and cedar, followed, a moment later, by her voice, rich and thick as cream. "Hello, Don darling. Care for a bit of company while you enjoy your coffee?"

Liliana was walking towards him, carrying a coffee of her own (probably coffee? Definitely something sugary and ridiculous, with more whipped cream than was really necessary). She smiled at him and waggled her fingers in greeting.

"Liliana," Don greeted her with a smile. "Of course, please, have a seat," he said, indicating one of the chairs.

Some men might have jumped up to pull it out for her, but some men hadn't lived with Natasha Romanoff or the Lady Sif (even if that wasn't really Don), who would have either looked at him like he was crazy or stabbed him for trying.

Liliana didn't mind what Earth considered old-fashioned courtesies, but didn't particularly mourn the lack, either. If she were really fussed about her chair not being pulled out for her, she'd travel with a servant whose job it was to make sure that happened.

But courtesies varied by plane and by time and by culture, to say nothing of a girlhood where etiquette lessons had seemed utterly ridiculous when she was far more likely to meet an enemy combatant than a visiting aristocrat who cared about the degree of her courtesy or which fork she was using for fish.

"Thank you, darling," she said, pulling out her chair and taking a seat. "It seems they've convinced you into the pumpkin spice." She took a sip of her own coffee, running her tongue over her upper lip to catch any residual cream. "A willing convert or was discretion the better part of uncaffeinated valor this morning?"

Edited 2025-09-09 17:30 (UTC)

"There's only so much I'm willing to argue about before coffee," Don admitted. "What form the coffee takes is pretty low on the list, honestly."

Cruel, Liliana. The whipped cream maneuvers were just cruel.

Was she just supposed to sit there with whipped cream on her face, Don? Don't be ridiculous.

...Okay, the lounging was probably unnecessary, but also, she was far too bisexual to sit in a chair properly.

"Ah, see, I'm willing to fight at all hours of the day to make sure I get what I want," she said with a small laugh that showed her dimples. "To the surprise of absolutely no one, I'm sure."

"I have a raging caffeine addiction to contend with, so," Don shrugged. "I'm useless before some form of coffee."

So you admit to it.

"Of course I admit to it," Don said, since it wasn't like Liliana wouldn't know who he was talking to. "Show me anyone who survived surgical residency without a raging caffeine addiction." They did exist. They were freaks who got up early to run ten miles and do yoga.

He shifted his attention back to Liliana and said with a small smile, "I can't say that surprises me, no. But it's--not my style, I'm afraid. Still, the pumpkin spice isn't bad. It gets the job done." The job being preventing caffeine withdrawal.

Ugh. The only thing worse than early mornings was combining it with exercise.

"Have you considered, darling, that perhaps it should be?" She leaned towards him, chin propped on her hand. "Not necessarily about the coffee, of course - though, not a terrible way to start - but how often do you get what you want in any kind of meaningful way? When was the last time you did something selfish?"

She pursed her lips at him. "And Gaea help me, but if you try to tell me your existence is selfish, I will dump my entire coffee on your head and demand they put my replacement on your tab."

Don gave her a thin smile. "It's an existential question, isn't it? I was made to be--a certain kind of man." Keeping it extremely vague because they were in public. "How much of that can be changed? How much do I want to change?" He took a sip of his coffee, and wondered how much he could explain to her about Asgard, about the civilization that would remain dead until he sorted himself out, whether Thor admitted that was what they were doing here or not.

Instead, he said, "I got my job back. And you might wave that off as helping others, but it's mine. I worked for it. I earned my reputation. I wanted it back. Coffee is a trifle."

"Darling, I adore existential questions. That's where all the fun is. You get the shape of a person much more clearly this way."

It was a kind of a game. How much you could learn and at what cost to yourself.

She leaned back for a moment, drinking more of her undumped coffee, and smiling a bit. "So, how much do you want to change? Since you brought up the question and all."

"I don't know," he admitted. "You would think I would. I had nothing but time to think when I was dead, but I also had no real expectation of ever being alive again, so." He shrugged. "It's a work in progress. Honestly, I don't really have a problem with who I am, or how I came to be. It's the why that's a kick in the teeth, and also something I'm not interested in discussing in the middle of a coffee shop. How are you doing? I hope last week didn't give you too many difficulties." Or at least fewer than it had given Don.

"Glad to hear that you like yourself," Liliana said. "It's terrible, the number of people who don't." She considered that, then added, "...Or it would be, if most people were likeable."

She waved a hand at his question. "Being a pony remains undignified and obnoxious, especially when it occurs on the same day I am trying to teach a class, but I have some modicum of magic to make up for my lack of hands, and that keeps it from being absolutely insupportable."

But if she ever showed up as a pony at the head of a ravening zombie army, it was the island's fault, not hers. "Glitter remains everywhere, not being able to swear when I wanted to was frustrating but not particularly dire. I don't swear much, but on the other hand, if I'm intending to say Fuck, it's because Fuck is absolutely the best word for that scenario, and some mealy-mouthed, watered down replacement is not."

She sipped her coffee, and yes, did the whipped cream thing again.

"Yourself, darling?"

"Well," Don said delicately. "The transformations affected both myself and Thor, regardless of our, ah, current states. So that was interesting. I didn't have to worry about becoming a teenager, of course, but I was a pony." He didn't mention that he had been a pony in the void, because he had noted that Liliana seemed a bit put off by mentions of the void, and that was without his ever having mentioned the void beasts that had spent much of Thursday stalking his pony self. "And I'm happy to say I didn't have much occasion to break out the profanity anyway...being a surgeon, I do tend to save those words for when they're truly needed." Usually it involved arterial spray. "Oh, but the glitter...the glitter really is everywhere. I'm kind of looking forward to the next time I scrub in for surgery, actually, that'll get rid of it if nothing else."

And then he would come home, and it would be everywhere. He thought they'd managed to track glitter into the void, never mind that that shouldn't be possible.

Whaaaaaaaat? Liliana? Have a problem with the Void? Noooo! She was totally fine about it! Wow, Don's narrative out here suggesting that Liliana had someone waiting for her in it, planning to wrap his fingers around her throat again and keep her there with him in torment forever...

Or um. Whatever. Nothing. Anyway, she was totally fine! But like he could keep avoiding mentions of the Void, that was fine. Like for no reason or whatever, but if he wanted to not talk about it, she wasn't gonna push it.

#NailedIt

"I'm sure I would have entertained anyone who knew me well had we met when I was a girl," Liliana said. "Recognizably myself, but also very different."

Still pro-angel, for one thing.

"That was about a year or so before my spark ignited and I left Dominaria for good."

What did Warren Worthington III have to do with anythi--oh, wait, wrong Angel.

"Your spark?" he asked. "Is that a magic thing?" Very eloquent vocabulary, Don.

And Karla would be quite displeased to hear that anyone was anti-that-Angel.

"My spark is what makes me a Planeswalker, and why I spent most of my life an immortal goddess," she said, giving him a wink.

At this point, it was actually closer to half her life and boy was Liliana not pursuing that thought any further.

"So yes, very much a magic thing." And also a Magic^TM thing. *fingerguns*

Edited 2025-09-09 21:20 (UTC)

"Huh," Don said. "Back home you pretty much have to be born a god." Thor made a sound in the back of his head like he was about to say something, but then remained silent. "Or the child of at least one god." Usually.

"Are you defining a god as a being with divinity?" Liliana asked.

"How are you defining divinity?" Don countered. "In Asgard, there are Asgardians who are simply divine beings and those who are the god of something, which is a distinction that matters in ways I struggle to put to words. In some of the other pantheons, things work differently."

In Olympus, there were divine heroes, mortals who had ascended to immortality through their great deeds in life, but most of them had perished during the War in Heaven that had happened while Don and Thor were dead, and he didn't understand enough of how it worked to explain it, anyway. In Asgard those men would have been considered already dead and feasting in Valhalla.

"Fascinating," Liliana said, leaning forward again. "We were never gods of anything particular. Not the way Thor is, for example. We didn't have, hmm...purviews, one might say?" She glanced to Don to see if that seemed accurate. "But what would you call an immortal being with power beyond your comprehension that created the plane you live on and all the people in it?"

She leaned back, an expression of distaste flitting across her features. "It was quite a popular pastime amongst the Oldwalkers. I know one who used to create planes and populate it with people to worship him...at least until he got bored and hunted them all down for sport."

Nicol Bolas had always been an asshole. But then, what did you expect from a dragon?

"Some of the earlier generations of gods were like that," Don said. "At least, I--not I, but--have heard that Odin's father Bor was cruel, but Odin wasn't talking, so. Who knows?"

"It was never my cup of tea--or even my cup of ridiculously sweet coffee confections," Liliana said, absently running a finger through her whipped cream and bringing it to her mouth. Her gaze was distant; decades and dimensions away. "I was very young, as Planeswalkers go, and not particularly interested in creating new planes or populating them with people I would then be responsible for."

The Perk, Tuesday Morning

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