fandomtownies | Fandom Island Museum, Thursday Daytime

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Fandom Island Museum, Thursday Daytime

What had originally been intended to be a few days back in London had turned much longer when Khonshu had a request for his avatars to fulfill.

Well, all right. A request he wanted Marc to fulfill but Steven was part of the deal now and Khonshu could choke on it.

That had kept them all, Llewellyn included, away until yesterday evening. Which meant, between unpacking and making sure Midnight was all right, there'd been no time to catch up on what had happened while they'd been away. Such as why there were stray piles of glitter in the Museum lobby. Or why there was some sort of orange? Yellow? Originally a... fruit? Maybe? Rotted goop that had appeared in one of the previously empty displays in the museum's lower floor. Or the very clearly - which in and of itself was frankly suspicious - brand new and healthy tomato plant that had sprung up in the middle of the artwork upstairs.

Blathers was able to fill Steven in that he was pretty sure the glitter was leftover from the chaos of the previous week. The rest was anyone's guess. After some gentle questioning Blathers and Steven felt at least somewhat confident that the tomato plant wasn't an island resident having a day of it. But even so to be on the safe side they decided to leave the strangeness be. Hopefully whatever made these things appear would make them disappear as needed. No matter how tempting it was to try the tomatoes.

The glitter, on the other hand, had a known origin. So once Blathers went to bed for the day, Steven was left with a broom and dustpan to do the best he could to try to get rid of it.

Impossible to succeed, of course, but Steven gave it a go all the same. At least it kept him in the lobby and easily available to any visitors who stopped by.

[Sometimes real life provides Fandom inspiration. Anyway, open! Steven and Harley conversation NFB please.]

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"Hmh?" Harley hummed, confused this time, looking up from the way she'd been scooping up another bit of blueberry...y goodness. "Huh? What, like... whoever ordered this hated that old fart and wanted 'em to know it?"

It made sense if you knew the reality of how she'd acquired the cake!

"No," Steven said. He picked up his cake again so he could continue eating it. "Well, perhaps. Suppose there's no way of knowing. But haven't you ever wondered why some cakes get left on remainder? Sometimes it's obvious. Part of it got crushed or the like. But sometimes I think there must be a story there. Cake seems perfectly fine, so what happened?"

This wasn't a metaphor for anything. Steven really was just talking about cake.

Harley's confused look wasn't going anywhere.

"Re...mainder...?" she questioned, slowly. Trying to piece together what he was saying, not -- she knew what that word meany, okay.

Luckily Steven was used to words not always translating. "A shelf in the shop where things are on sale because something went wrong."

And now the scrunched up brows went up.

"You think I waited to buy you something no one else wanted?"

Offensive! Offensive in a casual way, but still!

"I wasn't holding it against you," Steven said. "If you needed to be frugal for - for whatever reason."

Needing to restock after setting all her things on fire, for example. But not an example that seemed wise for him to mention.

"No," Harley said, with a very serious shake of her head, "no no no, I stole this fresh for you."

And it had nothing to do with being frugal or money in general, either.

Steven needed a moment to process that. He wasn't unused to the idea of stealing. Marc and Layla did it, and Steven understood Harley to at least be acting as some sort of a fence.

The idea that she'd stolen a cake, though ~~was very Lex Luthor of her~~ needed him to wrap his head around. He didn't like the idea that someone might have lost out on joy because of Steven.

But, he reasoned, perhaps she'd taken it off a shelf from a bakery that had spares. All that was needed was to put the message on when the intended customer came in.

"Thank you," Steven said, once he'd worked that out and hoped he'd had the right of it. Accordingly, he wasn't going to be asking further questions about its provenance. He'd take it as Harley's unique brand of attempting to be nice.

Harley had definitely taken the cake right out of someone's hands. But she would also have pointed out the person it'd been intended for was still retiring and wasn't that really a joy in itself? Also since it had happened basically right outside the bakery, odds were the original recipient had ended up with a nice cake regardless.

... Also that there was now some sort of a police report about a cake mugger matching her description.

Anyway! "You're welcome!" she beamed, and did not wonder for a second what sorts of loops he'd had to travel through to land there. "I did my best to getcha somethin' nice!"

"I appreciate that you thought to do that," Steven said, since he was capable of zeroing in on where credit was due. "Thank you."

Harley shrugged one shoulder and made a vague gesture that in her head was pointing to something in the past. "Well, it was kind of a loose thread, yanno, just kinda uglily --" A word, sure. "-- hangin' there, without a proper apology? The whole... 'gimme Marc' thing. So I thought it deserved a gesture."

And then a more vague shrug, smaller.

"Sorry it's so late."

"Time can be very slippy," Steven said, since it certainly was for him, so he could sympathize with it being so for others. "I never held that part against you."

"Time is very slippy," Harley agreed, with a smile that was a little on the faint side, and lopsided to boot. And wry.

But she gestured down to her plate.

"But right now, there's cake."

"There's cake," Steven agreed. He took another forkful of it as a gesture of acceptance.

Once he'd swallowed, he said, "Thank you. For talking to me. It - "

Steven thought about how he'd tried to explain why that mattered and how the conversation had kept getting derailed from it (as conversations with two people with their own trains of thought tended to do). He decided to take that as a sign not to pursue it at this juncture.

" - it's nice when people want to do that," Steven said. Which was also true and important.

At least Harley had - or thought she had, at least - pieced together a thing or two in between the derailing.

"No problem," she said, maneuvering more cake onto her own fork. "It don't even take much more than time."

And the effort that she'd very much put into this, for her own reasons.

Steven suspected Harley's feelings for Marc - whatever those feelings might be at the moment - were behind her appearance today. But honestly that was all right. Part of his own emotions of the past year were tied to his confusion that she supposedly cared for Marc yet seemingly did not extend that care to the people who mattered to him. Which in and of itself had seemed like a message, particularly to Steven who had strong feelings about Marc's heart and well being. So even a selfishly motivated appearance at least made more sense to Steven than what had gone before.

"You don't - I'm not expecting - " Steven almost said friendship but remembered to avoid that word considering her past reactions to it " - much. Constant visits or anything. Just... I don't know." It was harder to offer suggestions when things with her and Marc were even more nebulous than they'd been while they were together.

"This was nice," he said, when he couldn't come up with anything better.

"It was nice," Harley agreed, simply, not attempting to offer anything to fill in what he hadn't been able to.

Not outright, anyway.

Because this bit was clearly just... promotional: "My store's re-opened, too," she added, after a bite of cake. A little brighter in tone again. "'Case ya got a need for a pretty little trinket for the house or something. We got all sorts, now."

"You'd like me to come by?" Steven asked. To check. He didn't want to assume.

Harley's smile was a little crooked, in a patient 'oh, you, I know where this is coming from' sort of way. (Not condescending, softer than that.) "Yes, I'm sayin' you're welcome."

She probably wouldn't even try to aggressively sell him anything.

Probably.

Edited 2025-09-13 20:02 (UTC)

"Thank you," Steven said with a smile. Genuine and also not condescending. "I'll be sure to stop by."

Then, to be clear, "Er - tomorrow I'm busy ~~and it would break the space time continuum now~~ but I will, I promise."

Harley waved a hand. "Whenever is just fine."

She might not even be there the next day, anyway! ~~Except for how it already happened, but, you know.~~

"Store'll be there, and me too."

"And I, of course, would be happy to see you at any time you felt like stopping by," Steven said, making a gesture of invitation across the lobby. "For museum things or to have a chat. Or both."

Harley shoved the last bite of cake into her mouth as she considered... the lobby. Sort of.

"I guess ya do still owe me a tour," she noted, after mostly swallowing.

Not that he knew he 'owed' her that - it had been her original plan for making things up to him, way back before she'd gotten distracted.

The wording didn't bother Steven. Giving tours was part of his job after all. "Oh! Did you want one now? Or - or next time?"

In this particular case Steven would not hold it against her if she forgot about that next time. At the moment, sentiment meant a great deal.

"Enh, next time," Harley decided. "Always leave 'em wanting more, yanno?"

A little joke, there. She drank the rest of her now decidedly room temperature tea, then dusted her hands off on the tops of her legs.

"Should get going, I got a hungry hyena baby waiting at home."

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