Fandom Island and Town

Since Troy didn't have any workshops on Tuesdays, it made sense to switch his shift at the music store, and that was what he did. He thought maybe being there on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday might be different, but he was a little disappointed to find out that it really, really wasn't.

That was fine, though. At least now he knew he hadn't been missing anything good on Tuesdays.

Unless...

Anything good that happened on Tuesdays now moved over to Thursdays!

...

He was going to try not to think about it. Instead, he was going to see about putting together a good summer playlist for the stereo system, even though he was pretty sure it would just play whatever it wanted regardless.

Groovy Tunes is open!

Although it may not have seemed like it at first, Troy was at work today.

He was the big lump face-down on the counter behind the register.

You knew it was a person there because, occasionally, a pained moan would emit from the lump in commisseration over the fact that the volume on the stereo for the store's sound system was clearly broken and playing too loudly, and Troy knew that he could probably fix it without too much trouble, but that meant having to actually push through a jello shot hangover and actually do that.

Eventually, though, he figured he could say he was productive by testing out just how 'noise-canceling' some of those headphones they sold actually were.

Look, at least he came into today, that meant something, right?

Groovy Tunes is open!

Troy came into his shift that day to find a note waiting for him from Tisarwat, saying she'd be in later to see how he was doing and to also teach him how to do some of the more techincal stuff around the store because she might be taking a trip home soon, and apparently time sometimes worked differently where she was from, so she had no way of knowing how long she'd be gone for in this timeframe, which was confusing enough as it was, but now he had to deal with knowing his boss was going to drop in at any moment and he would have to do real work and that put a major damper on his day.

So he had to make sure he got all his goofing off out of his system before she showed up, which involved a very rousing few games of waste-basket HORSE with...himself, discovering that he really wasn't good at playing guitar but that wouldn't stop him anyway, and then mixing up all the vinyls so that it really pissed off that annoying hipster guy when he came in looking for something really obscure that Troy was pretty sure he was making up on the spot, just to be offended that they didn't actually have it.

Look. Sometimes, you had to take your goof-off time at work very seriously, especially when it was being threatened to end at literally any moment.

Groovy Tunes is open!

Okay, so this was terrifying.

Troy got into the store that day for his shift, not really thinking much of it, kind of craving french fries after his shop class earlier, opened up the shop, got some sick beats thumping over the stereo, headed over to the register to do the opening till count, and then...

...he saw it.

Wires.

Black wires, in a tangled mess, creeping up from and spilling out of a vent that lead to the basement.

HE KNEW THAT BALL OF TANGLED HEADPHONE WIRES WAS ALIVE!!!

Thankfully, the counter might serve as a sort-of barrier for him if it decided to move any further, but, just in case, he took a hold of an electric guitar that he could brandish like an axe (ha, axe, get it??) in case it did attack.

And, in the meantime, he was definitely going to text Tisarwat so she knew about this because, yeah, yeah. Kind of an important thing for your boss to know!

As the day went on, though, it didn't seem to be making much progress into the store, which was a relief, but he was definitely feeling the stress and fear of the whole thing and decided he deserved to unwind and have a good time tonight, and, besides, it had been a while since he and Alexis had a date, right? So he was just going to shoot her a text now, too.

And after that presumably went unanswered after a while, Troy was now terrified, stressed, and kinda bummed out, but maybe there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and if Alexis was going to ditch him like that, he'd have better luck with Astrid?

And when it seemed that the one person he felt he could depend on as his best friend and radio cohost was going to fail him, too, he was going to make a last-ditch effort with Eleanor.

....this was going to be a very hard day for both Troy's heart and his ego.

Groovy Tunes is open!

When Troy got a text from Astrid earlier that day asking if he wanted to take her out for a pizza date when she was finished with work, he was pretty surprised, but there was no way he was going to miss up on an opportunity like that. He'd been trying to work in that angle with her when they got together for radio for a while now, with (in his own mind) mixed results, but it was good to know she was apparently just waiting for the right moment.

But remembering how things had gone at the end of his last date with Alexis, Troy figured he should get at least one thing out on the table before they got too far into it, although he was pretty sure pizza was going to be well in his budget.

The pizzas, after all, weren't MARKET PRICE.

"Hey, so, just to get this out of the way," he ventured as they settled into the table and Astrid had already picked up the menu to start pursusing it, "you can get this right? I'm, uh, I'm a little tight for money right now."

Because he wanted to keep dating Alexis and that girl was had taaaaastes.

Astrid blinked over the top of the menu at him for a long moment. Because the whole point of this was literally to have someone else buy you dinner. That was the assignment, and she was already late in getting it done.

"I can't," she said.

"But don't you have, like, two jobs? You've got to have more money than I do."

"I can't," she repeated, especially since the assignment specifically mentioned that you couldn't explain that it was part of the assignment. "I...have to save it."

She couldn't tell if Troy's expression was more skeptical or confused.

"For something really important," she added. "We...we could do Mooby's instead, if you want. They're cheaper."

And now something like concern was creeping into his brow. "No," he said, slowly, after a moment, shaking his head. "I totally got you, Astrid. It's the gentlemanly thing to do, right?"

Astrid breathed out a sigh of relief, smiling for the fact that he wasn't going to press the issue, and she nodded. "Exactly. It'll be a chance for you to show off your gentlemanly side, right? I mean, it'll be nice ot kind of get to know you a little bit better, spend some time outside of the radio station, right?"

And even though his grin grew easily with his "Totally" in response to that, Astrid figured she could push it a little more, leaning in with an interest she didn't feel in the slightest.

"So tell me about football..."


[[ mostly establishing that I'm a big dork, but open for all your pizza planet needs! Written with...me, me was modded with permission! ]]

At one point, early into Troy's shift, someone arrived at the store with a stack of pizza boxes said that it was supposed to be delivered at this address to a Trey Burns.

Troy considered those pizzas, he considered that he hadn't had lunch yet, and then decided, "That's me. I'm definitely Trey Burns, I will take my pizzas now, thank you."

And then once the delivery guy had left, Troy settled behind the counter, flipped open a box as he dived in to grab a slice, chuckling to himself as he dived in.

"Trey Burns," he said, shaking his head and grinning proudly. "Sounds like a nerd. Thanks for the pizza, loser."

...he had definitely been Trey Burns. He thought it was funny at the time. And then he just forgot.

Groovy Tunes is open!

So, Troy was in a little bit of a conundrum. Yesterday's date with Alexis had been great, except for one teeny, tiny, itsy-bitsy little problem at the very end, when the bill finally arrived and Troy discovered that 'MARKET PRICE' was actually very, very expensive.

What market were they shopping at?!?

Either way, even though Troy did have a job now, he literally only worked one day a week, and between Alexis's naturally expensive tastes and Troy's pointing at random things on the menu method of ordering, he did not have the money to cover the dinner, and since it was their first day, he definitely wasn't going to let Alexis know that, so after the bill had arrived, he'd suggested that Alexis go on ahead outside while he 'settled the bill' and then, after a moment and asking where the restroom was, he just...left, and was very, very grateful that Sushi Station was actually pretty close to the north gate of the school grounds at that point.

But then he woke up with his conscious pressing down on him and the fact that things could get a little tricky if he ever planned to use Sushi Station as a possible date spot again (which he may have been fine with, because the food was kind of weird, they didn't even cook some of it, how do you not even cook your food?, but also, it was a small town and the cops around here seemed pretty bored so did he really need that hanging over him?), so he went in the next morning, sans Alexis, so that he could plead his case without coming off as a loser in front of her.

They seemed generally unmoved by his explanation and his promise to pay them back as soon as he could, his boss seemed pretty cool, maybe she'd even give him an advance for something?

The management on duty that day looked at each other, looked at Troy, and then, without another word, one left and returned to shove a mop into his hand.

"Awwww, maaaan," he said, "come on! I'm supposed to actually work my actual job today! How can I pay you back if I miss work?"

By mopping all the floors, apparently. And doing all the dishes. And cleaning the bathrooms. And washing the windows...

And they didn't even ask him to fix the leaky sink in the back or the toilet in the women's room that hadn't been working. He just sort of did it without even thinking about it.

He definitely needed to ask Tisarwat for a raise if he was going to be dating Alexis now. Or at least convince his parents for a bigger allowance, before literally all the restaurants on the island wound up sparkling clean with all their little janitorial problems mysteriously fixed before too long...

[[ mostly establishing, but also quite open for any of your Sushi Station needs ]]

Coming in to work today to find the big pile of tangled headphone wires gone was one of the best things that could have happened to Troy...

...until he got to the counter and the register and saw the note from Tisarwat that informed him that it wasn't gone, it had just been moved to the basement.

You know. Where you couldn't even see what it was doing.

"That is a million times worse, Tisarwat!" he shouted, to no one in particular, since she wasn't even there, but it needed to be expressed and he was going to be on wide-eyed alert for his entire shift now and wondering just how thick this floor was and what kind of material it was made out of and how hard it would be for a probably monsterous ball of headphone wires to break through it...

Groovy Tunes is open!

When Troy got into work that day, there was a note from his boss asking him to try to pick up where she left off with the large tangle of wired headphones that she'd started trying to work through on Tuesday if he had the time.

He was pretty sure that no one would have time for a tangle of headphones that size.

And he was pretty sure at one point, he saw it move? And quite possibly make sort of hungry growling noises?

So Troy was definitely going to make sure he did not have time to work on the tangle of headphones today, and that everything he did have time for was far away from where the tangle was, and he was pretty sure, too, that, by the end of the day? It had somehow gotten bigger.

He didn't remember feeling like his life was threatened by audio equipment being a part of the job description...

Groovy Tunes is open!