milliways_bar | (Not even a pretzel, you guys)

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(Not even a pretzel, you guys)

[OOM: What happens when a shapeshifter of questionable morals and work ethic is in need of a lot of money very quickly? Crazy shit, man. Thrill as Loki demonstrates such god-powers as shapeshifting, opening things, a good sense of style and a high tolerance for pain--really, your average afternoon at the mall. Small warning for violence and mention of drugs. ~~PSA: kids, that's not how you rob an armored car. Also, don't do drugs~~]

Anyway, long story short, he's a Jersey boy now--don't judge--and one apparently in need of all the drinks ever, and probably some lunch too, since he didn't get so much as a pretzel at the mall.

Just act casual. Nothing weird here.

Dressed unremarkably in jeans and a t-shirt, and with his carefully-cultivated stubble not quite hiding his mouth-scars, he swaggers on up to the bar, handing over enough cash to pay off the past several months of his tab, and orders some pizza and a beer.

He's got some drinking to do, and some thinking. But mostly the beer.

Botherable.

[open until forever]

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Those last few cinnamon rolls are always the hardest to sell. Meaning, they're the ones she actually has to make an effort to sell - most disappear within the first hour of going on sale. (It helps that the smells of good, yeast dough, warm cinnamon and homemade icing waft into the bar from the kitchens a good while before they're actually ready to be sold. Rae is not at all smug.)

"Something sweet to go with your supper?" asks the baker as she approaches, carrying the mostly-depopulated tray of cinnamon rolls. Each roll is about the size of a human skull, gooey and moist.

He's had the kind of day to work up quite an appetite, and really, who can say no to some fresh-baked cinnamon rolls, even if they're not immediately straight from the oven?

Not this boy, that's who. He may be sort of possessed, but he's still human. So to speak.

"Sure wouldn't say no," he says, setting his beer glass down.

Sunshine beams at him. "Then I'll take it as a 'yes.'"

With long-practiced ease, she serves up one of the humongous cinnamon rolls onto a paper plate. There's even a fork and napkin provided, in case he's not the finger-licking type. "They're my best sellers both here and back home."

"I can imagine," he says. "If they taste even half as good as they look--and I say this as a guy from a neighborhood with some really good bakeries."

Mind you, he's still going to finish his pizza first. He doesn't like the mingling of stages of a meal like that, no matter how good the cinnamon roll looks.

"They taste better again by half than they look," Rae laughs. "And I say that as the only baker in Old Town, because all the others in my city know they can't compete on my turf."

Well, technically Charlie's turf, but it's no secret that Sunshine's baking was instrumental in putting the coffeehouse on the map.

"We've got a lot," he says, "but they've each got a specialty, there's no one bakery you go to for everything. Natale's got the best cookies, DiBruno's got the best coffee cake, and if you want the best hazelnut cake it's Fourth Avenue Bakery all the way. My ma, she loves that cake. Every year for her birthday, that's what she wants."

It is good cake, though. He's lucky he's still young enough and with a good enough metabolism to eat that much cake.

"The nearest place that's got a bakery of any decent size in New Arcadia is PrimeTime Deli downtown, but the chocolate they use is sub-par, their flour's only so-so, and they put artificial raising agent in their dough."

Prideful? Just a bit disdainful? Her?

Yup.

She takes her baking seriously.

"In my neighborhood all the bakeries are Jewish, Italian, or both. You can just about taste the generations of secret-family-recipe-tweaking that goes into everything they make. My family, we don't really have secret recipes. We don't cook, we just... assemble, you could say."

He doesn't cook at all. If it's not takeout it's microwaved.

"My family didn't have secret recipes, either," Rae grins. "Not that I got, anyway. Pretty much a first-generation cook. My father's family, well, I've not seen them since my parents divorced when I was six."

And cookery isn't exactly the Done thing in a family full of sorcerers.

"My mom is okay with cooking, but doesn't really need to feed people like myself or my step-father do. But I've got all my regulars' secret family recipes they've brought with them - they sometimes make special requests, as a lot of them were originally refugees, and don't have family to make the family recipes for - and everything from my years of experimenting in the kitchen. All my dessert recipes are originals, pretty much. Cinnamon Rolls As Big As Your Head, Caramel Cataclysms, Lemon Lechery, Bitter Chocolate Death, Killer Zebras, Chocoholia, Meringuamania, Glutton's Grail, Buttermost Limit, The Death of Marat, Hell's Angelfood..."

There are many. And there may be a theme.

"I lost my old man when I was four," he says, and sips his beer.

And now his kid's going to go through the same thing.
Stop it.
It's true though.
Might not be, if you do what you're told. Don't think about it. Be sociable.

"His family are pretty good cooks, but my ma, she's a beautician, and never really had time." He shrugs lightly. "You, uh... you come from an area with that many refugees? Did something happen?"

"I'm sorry," Sunshine says, though she knows what it's like to receive condolences long after the fact.

Something's... off, slightly, though that's not surprising in a place like Milliways. The man's shadows read almost like the Part-Blood Others back home, to Sunshine's Dark Sight, textured and red-edged with the deception of passing as a human. It's something she sees every day. Not enough to ask about - Rae doesn't like to pry, in any case; it's none of her business - but enough to register with her Sight.

"My mom was a florist," she smiles slightly. "Now she does the admin side of my stepfather's coffeehouse."

"The Wars only ended about ten years ago, and things are still pretty bad. We had a lot of people come over from Albion and Europa, since the Wars were relatively mild in New Arcadia." Meaning that most of the city is still standing and most of its citizenry is still sane.

Being told to act casual is like being told not to laugh--it just makes things worse. He's really trying, though. You know what would probably help? More beer.

He drains his glass and orders another.

"War is fucking horrible," he says. "It's good that the people have managed to put that behind them and move on though--at least, with sharing recipes and all."

The look Rae gives him upon hearing his second statement... suggests that she doesn't really understand what he's saying.

"The Wars... aren't something that people really have been able to move on from. Move, yes, but that was out of necessity. Moving on is completely different."

They carry it with them, and don't talk about it. They don't talk about Others, either. Talking about Others reminds them of the Wars. Thinking of the Wars makes them remember what it was like before the Wars (i.e. better) and see how bad it's gotten. Seeing their situation makes them think about the future, and thinking about that dark and silent future makes them...

"People don't like to think about the Wars at all, if they can help it," she shrugs. The movement pulls faintly at the scars that decorate her shoulders and arms. The only two that are anything more than scratches, bruises, or scrapes (or the occasional bite) are the wide, sickle-shaped knife scar over her heart, and the thin, necklace-like burn-scar that crosses it, loosely looping her neck. "My regulars share recipes because they need something... normal, something comforting, to remind them of home. And that's something I can give them."

"Maybe your wars are different," he says. "All I know is what we have back home. And for some of the guys I know, being able to go out in public and go to a bakery and talk to people like a normal person would, that is moving on."

Mmmm, beer. The more he drinks, the more he also talks with his hands.

"I know guys who don't leave home at all. It's just too much for them, too many people walking around and you don't know who might be trouble, you can't be that much on your guard all the time. But people have to move on--what good's surviving if you don't live?"

Once again Rae gives him something of an odd look. But it clears.

"Oh, um," she shakes her head, as though clearing it. "The Wars in my world weren't against other people. They were against vampires. People, even those who saw active duty-"

Those few that survived, Mel would add on a bad day. He still got angry when his biker friends started telling stories where Sunshine could hear of their time riding dispatch during the worst of the Wars, when communication lines broke down.

"-tend to be all right being out in daylight, and tend to actually prefer large groups of people." There's safety in numbers.

"We don't really have that," he says. "The upside is that we were only fighting other people, not vampires or anything like that--but that's the downside too."

Watch it.
What? I'm being sociable.

"Must be an awful lot of vampires though, if they've driven people out of other places--do they ever reach a point where there's just too many of them and they starve, or do they just keep moving to where there's still people to feed from?"

"Lucky," she mutters. Some worlds get all the luck.

"Some say the only reason the Wars ended was that the vampires realized they'd soon run out of their favorite food, if they kept on like they were," Rae replies, thinking she might need a drink. "But it does mean we've not had a war where humans were fighting each other for over a century and a half."

"People always need somebody to fight," he says. "It's just part of what we are, and we'll always find somebody. Even if you don't have a real enemy, but vampires would count as a real enemy, wouldn't they."
You're being weird.
You just do your demon thing, and don't tell me how to be human.
Don't push me, honey.

"Do you guys have like... video games? War video games, I mean."

"Having an enemy, an enemy to go up against... it's useful, in its own way, so long as you survive the encounter," she says, speaking from personal experience. Things had made sense to her, when she had the imminent death threat of Bo bearing down on her. Once she had survived that threat and left Bo's heart deliquescing through her fingers to sizzle upon the concrete, she had been left in pieces, not having an external threat to orient herself around. "Having a mutual enemy brings people together, yeah, and simplifies things, makes a lot of previously divisive stuff not matter any more. But there's no real telling whether it's worth the price."

"Some combox games are about war, yeah," Rae nods. "My half-brothers were into them when they were growing up. They depicted carefully non-specific war, though, since the Voodoo Wars were so recent."

"And there's no telling whether, once the enemy's been taken care of, everybody else stays getting along," he says. "Maybe they do, maybe they learned to work together and can see past their differences or whatever. Or maybe they don't, maybe their former allies become the new biggest threat or they just sit and whisper to their friends about how that other guy didn't pull his weight during the war, so you can't really trust his kind. Whatever they may be."

He wants to be hopeful, he really does. But somehow his cynical side keeps being proven right.

"Name's Nick, by the way."

"Gotta take care of the original enemy, first," she murmurs, shaking her head. Rae knows better than most the direction her world is heading. That the human world - the daylit world - has only a century left before the vampires are running the show. She's out there nearly every night, through bloody horrors not befitting a friendly neighborhood baker, trying to change the world's course.

"I'm Rae," she replies with a slight smile. "Though most people call me Sunshine."

"Do they call you that in a normal nickname way, or a 'hey, sugar, how about that cake' sort of way?" he asks.

He's known more than his share of waitresses who call everybody something like that, that's all. He doesn't cook, so he knows his local 24-hour diners.

Rae grins. "Y'know? Despite being a baker locally famous for her cake, it's the former. My step-dad started calling me Sunshine when I was tiny, nine or ten. The regulars at the coffeehouse soon picked it up, and suddenly it's my name."

Rae takes a seat at Nick's table, and may steal one of her own cinnamon rolls. Yum.

"So what about you, Nick? What do you do?"

"I'm a former Marine," he says. "I trained as a mechanic, though, and now I work at a shop that customizes cars. It's not the most exciting job, but it's stable, you know?"

Yeah, you get your excitement on the side.
That's for money, not excitement.

"Mostly I put stereos in. Haven't been there long enough for them to trust me on more involved things."

"That's cool, though," she grins, tearing off a piece of her cinnamon roll and eating it.

"My boyfriend rode dispatch with his motorcycle buddies during the Wars, when communication lines were down. Now he runs his own motorcycle repair and body shop on the side, when he's not being the head cook at my step-father's coffeehouse. I know what you mean about a job not being exciting - but exciting is overrated, sometimes."

"Sometimes all you need is nice, quiet and stable work," he says with a nod. "It pays the bills, and it gives you something to do with your time, so you're not just sitting around at home all day. They say people need structure. I'm supposed to stay away from excitement anyway--kinda got in a fight at my last job, that's why they don't let me talk to customers anymore."

"Is it okay if I ask what you fought about?" Rae asks.

"I don't get to spend as much time with the customers as I used to, but only because I'm needed in the bakery. There's always something needing doing, and I don't have an apprentice to pick up the slack any more."

"It was really stupid," he admits. "I was having a bad day, and the guy was just being an asshole--you know how sometimes when people are dealing with a situation they don't understand, they're kinda scared and they get pushier than they might otherwise because they don't want to be taken advantage of? People get like that with mechanics, they're afraid they're being cheated. And I'd actually done some things that I hadn't charged him for, just to be nice, and he gets in my face? It was stupid, though."

Rae nods. "We don't get that much, at the coffeehouse - apart from Mr. Cagney, but then he always has something to complain about - but I hear similar stories from a friend of mine who works in a bank, and from our local SOFs."

"It's even worse when you've gone and done something nice for them, and they're still assholes at you," she grimaces slightly.

"I'd be surprised if you had a lot of people like that," he says. "I mean, fancy coffee can be intimidating--the hell do I know about all those Italian words and specialties and things? It's almost as bad as trying to order wine in a restaurant--but you got baked goods, and people can't really be that upset around baked goods. I'm pretty sure that's a scientific fact right there."

Speaking of, with his pizza done, he picks up his cinnamon roll.

"It really is, I've found," Sunshine smiles at him, musing over what's left of her own cinnamon roll. "The saying goes 'an army runs on its stomach' - I tend to believe that it's true for people, not just armies. Good, delicious food can make the difference between a bad day and a good day. A little disagreement and an argument. Just in time, or too slow. It makes things just a bit brighter."

One sees a lot of humanity, in the feeding-people business. Gets to know what humanity needs to keep going. A smile, a kind word, good food. Hope.

And that's what Sunshine's for. Even with her nighttime activities that are not as clean and honest as good yeast dough, cinnamon and sugar.

"It's like when you're a kid," he says. "Well, it's probably not true for everybody, and I feel bad for those people, but for me--you know, you get special food for special occasions. It's your birthday, you get to go out to eat. It's a holiday, you go to your grandparents' house for the big family meal and you get all of your relatives' specialty dishes, their best work. We'd always just buy one of those hazelnut cakes, but everybody else would cook. Food's a special thing, and you can eat something that's been worked out in a lab to have all the nutrients that you need but it's just not the same as... as something special, you know?"

He takes a bite.

It really is very good.

Rae looks pleased at his reaction to the cinnamon roll - she practically lives for that moment when a new customer takes their first bite.

"There's a big difference between something that has had an individual's skill and effort go into it and something mass-produced by machines, nutrients aside. There's no soul to the store-bought stuff - and usually, in the case of baked goods, there's a lot of flour-improver and artificial raising agent, because they're working with sub-standard ingredients." Her tone of voice indicates that she feels store-bought bread to be carthaginian pig-swill compared to what she makes.

Sunshine takes the quality of her ingredients very seriously.

"But yeah, food brings people together," she smiles at him. "In times of joy or sadness, it's comfort and human contact. A small thing, perhaps, speaking to the most basic of needs, but important." For some of her regulars, it's one of the few comforts they have, in their darkened world.

"You'd probably be offended by my diet, then," he says. "Most of it comes from boxes in the freezer, just microwave a few minutes and you've got something hot that may or may not qualify as food, but at least it gives you your recommended daily allowance of food coloring and preservatives, and a whole lot of chemicals I can't even pronounce. It's pretty awful but it's easy."

It means he doesn't have to put any effort in, or deal with people at restaurants. He can just throw something in the microwave, put something on TV and that's it for the night.

"I think it's different as you get older though. I think that's why you see more old people eating out than younger ones."

"Not offended," she grins. "But there's a certain kind of smugness that comes from having something you've cooked turn out well. I'd assume it's kind of like the feeling you get when a customer is really happy and appreciative for the work you've done on their car. Something you've put effort into, and can enjoy - or share with others."

She feels that the effort put into making something makes it intrinsically better.

"We have a lot of older people who come to the coffeehouse. Some because they can't cook, themselves, like Mr. Cagney, others because they know they can see their friends there, and some so can keep up with what's going on in the neighborhood. Mrs. Bialosky is one of those - the booth nearest the door is hers in everything but official title."

"I don't know about that," he says. "I think cars are different--I think people don't appreciate it as much. Maybe the really custom work, but I'm just putting stereos in. Just assembling, not really creating."

Though if he works hard and behaves himself, maybe...

"When I go to the diner in town there's always old people there. They bring the newspaper with them, they just stay there all day. I guess when you get old you're either a diner person or a church person, but you need somewhere to spend your time."

"Most of the older coffeehouse regulars don't have comboxes, let alone a connection line to the globenet, so the coffeehouse is where they go to catch up on the news and events of the day. They're used to a more sociable time, I guess," she smiles slightly.

"And it's good to see them. Make sure they're still alive, that we haven't lost anybody."

It may sound callous, but sudden and unexpected death is a fact of life in Sunshine's world.

(ooc: Sorry for the delay in replying. Notifs were acting all screwy these past couple of days.)

"That's what they do. They need a routine--hell, everybody needs a routine. You need to get up and out of the house and actually do something, even if you're retired or unemployed or whatever and not going to work. And people are social, they need that connection with their friends, especially if your world's as bad off as all that."

His isn't that bad. The war's overseas and for the most part doesn't affect most of the people of his town, unless they've got friends or relatives serving.

"Trust me, my world is pretty shit compared to most others," she says, resigned but not bitter. "A friend of mine I met here, his world is just as bad as mine, though in different ways. We've formed an unofficial club for those whose worlds are horrible."

"Mine--well, I mean, everybody's life kinda sucks in some way, but that's just life. Bad things happen and you have to deal with it. Parts of the world are at war, and even places that aren't can still have problems with poverty and disease and things like that, but overall I think most people are relatively safe and healthy. I sure can't complain. Lots of people have it a hell of a lot worse than I do."

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(Not even a pretzel, you guys)

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