Brunch the Morning After (YT: Walkaway AU, and Cassidy, just himself)

[feminine_menace]

[OOC: Millitimed to the morning after this and a lot of strongly implied naughty stuff. Plotlocked.]

YT and Cassidy are having breakfast. Well, more like brunch by now. See, neither of them are really morning people to begin with, and then they (ahem) got kind of distracted.

They have quite a spread: pancakes, sausages, fried eggs, fruit, roasted tomatoes. One might notice that there are two coffeepots on the table. One contains actual coffee, and the other a synthetic substitute called coffium.

"See? It's like I said," YT asserts. "You can tell the difference between coffium and the real stuff even if you aren't, like, a total snob."

Comments

[irish_vagabond]

Cassidy is even more disheveled than usual, having just literally rolled out of bed, his short hair sticking out every which way and his t-shirt looking as if it spent the night bunched up in a ball. Which it did.

He drains his cup of coffium and pulls a face.

"Aye, well, it's like I say," he says, drizzling maple syrup all over his plate piled high with food, "you can't sell people shite an' tell 'em it's gold. I can understand the need for a caffeine substitute, but really, make yer own distinct fuckin' product, y'know?" He shoves a forkful of pancake into his mouth. "Not an obvious knockoff with a shite name that may very well offend the sensibilities an' intelligence of the average consumer."

His table manners are not the best.

[feminine_menace]

YT is only slightly disheveled, but she has the advantage of anti-wrinkle fabrics and hard-wearing makeup. She did brush her hair, though.

"You're underestimating the staggering degree of shit most people will put up with," YT says, spearing a roasted tomato slice on a fork. She takes a bite and keeps talking (her table manners are not great either). "Besides, most people younger than, like, thirty have never had the real thing. I've only had it here."

[irish_vagabond]

"Well, if it's the only thing they know, then it's the only thing they know, but they're gonna be pissed when they find out there's something better." The pancakes are followed by a chunk of sausage. "Or not. Maybe they're fine with bein' complacent about their coffee."

He then pours himself a cup of actual coffee, and offers to refill YT's cup as well.

"So, wait, you've never tasted the real stuff before you started comin' here?"

[feminine_menace]

YT holds out her cup for him to fill. "Nah. Coffee blight killed most of the plants. Now coffee is grown in, like, special greenhouses with major security. Only rich people can afford it." YT contemplates her cup. "They could probably engineer a breed of coffee immune to the blight or something, but zottas get off on having stuff that other people don't have." She takes a sip from her cup.

[irish_vagabond]

He takes a contemplative sip from his own mug.

"Wow. An' that's just the coffee," he mutters. "If ya don't mind my sayin' so, luv, that's a crap world you're livin' in. Not to say that mine's much better, but hey, I rarely have hope for humankind as a whole these days, so I'll take what I can get before the world gets blown to pieces."

Maple syrup on fried eggs is surprisingly good. Yum.

[feminine_menace]

"Well, aren't you a happy camper," YT says drily, snagging a sausage. She's on a mission to chop it up along with the roasted tomato slices to see how they pair together. "You're right, though. A lot of things about my world suck. The default part of it, anyway." YT stabs a piece of sausage and a bit of tomato on her fork to try them together.

This time, she chews and swallows before talking again.

"I don't remember a lot about living in default. Mom and I left when I was just a kid. But you hear stories from people who left when they were older, or new people coming in."

[irish_vagabond]

"Of course I am," he retorts with a smirk. "I love camping. Camping is awesome."

Despite his cheerful hedonism, Cassidy is far more cynical than he often lets on.

He helps himself to more pancakes as YT speaks. Wolfing down another mouthful or two, he washes it down with a few gulps of coffee.

"But it wasn't always like that, was it? Somethin' happened? A change in leadership, a war or somethin'?"

[feminine_menace]

"Pfft. Nope. Fuckin' income inequality and regulatory capture. Rich people basically bought politicians to stack the deck in their favor, so they could get richer and buy more politicians..." YT shrugs and takes a bite of more sausage and tomato. "So you end up with a lot of jobs automated out of existence, but they still tell you that you have to work, and the work that's available blows in various kinds of ways, so it's hard just to scrape by."

YT's glad she never had to deal with that.

"And it doesn't have to be like that, even. We have the technology to live like kings and barely work at all. But then the zottas wouldn't be zottas so, you know, God forbid we have a just and equitable society and all that shit." She rather savagely spears another bit of sausage and chews it with a vengeance.

[irish_vagabond]

"Sounds ripe for a revolution, but is there even a call for it or does that sorta thing get shut down by the powers that be?"

Revolution. An uprising. Such idealism, when he thinks back on it.

[feminine_menace]

"Well, in addition to the other suckage, there's mass surveillance. They've got a bead on any movement before it gets going. Some of the Walkaways who've been involved in stuff like that say that if it's a peaceful protest or something, they'll get agitators in to start some shit and then..." YT smacks one fist into the other palm. "Riot cops, tear gas, beatings with nightsticks, you get the picture."

And the legit protesters end up looking like assholes on the evening news.

"If people are planning violence it doesn't even get that far before federal agents or whatever break down people's doors."

[irish_vagabond]

"Jaysus fuck. Surveillance? Who've you got runnin' the country, a dictator? An' where are you in all o' this, then? You ever join these protests?"

[feminine_menace]

YT shake her head. "You're not grokking it. It's not a dictatorship - it's a corprotocracy. Or oligarchy or plutocracy or something. The zottas own everything - the government, the media, the cops." YT pushes around the food on her plate. "Everything in default anyway. But not the Walkaways. Default cares if you try to change it, but not if you leave." YT spears another sausage and tomato.

"But that's the ultimate protest. Living outside the system and doing it well."

[irish_vagabond]

"I get that, but the surveillance thing, though, that's some downright creepy Orwellian shit. If it isn't totalitarian now, then it very well might be in the future. If them billionaires can put whoever they want in office, who says they won't glom onto the next genocidal maniac?"

He huffs a breath and takes a sip of coffee before muttering, "How's that for breakfast conversation, eh?"

[feminine_menace]

YT's chewing on the last bit of tomato and sausage, so she doesn't answer immediately. "It's not that weird, actually, by Walkaway standards. The general feeling is that shit's pretty totalitarian as is. But we're gonna change it. It's just gonna take a while."

She gets a pancake off the stack, puts a fried egg on it, and drizzles maple syrup over the whole thing.

"When Mom and I went Walkaway, about....shit, almost ten years ago now? There were only a few thousand people doing it. Now there's a few million. It's hard to get an exact count," YT admits as she cuts up her pancake and egg, spilling yolk on the plate.

"Someday everyone's gonna be on our side, and the zottas will be sitting on their useless piles of money with nobody to boss around." YT smiles as she helps herself to a forkful of pancake-and-egg combo.

[irish_vagabond]

Cassidy listens as he continues to eat, slicing up pancakes, carving up sausages. YT's world sounds tough. And he knows how slowly the years can go by. For him, they're endless, but even the darkest times eventually pass.

"Well, here's hopin'," he says, lifting his mug to her. There's that word again, 'hope.'

"So you're still with your Ma, then? Livin' in-- what was it-- the Hobbit Hole?"

[feminine_menace]

YT nods. She has pancake and egg in her mouth. "Yeah. Mom was one of the early Walkaways. Helped build our communications network - her fingerprints are all over the protocols." She suddenly looks embarrassed. "Shit, Mom hates it when I say stuff like that."

[irish_vagabond]

"No kiddin'," he says, impressed. "Why would she hate it? Well, if it's the sort of thing that'd get her in trouble, but I doubt anybody relevant is listening in on us."

[feminine_menace]

"It's one of those Walkaway things. No special snowflakes, no 'first among equals' or 'meritocracy' bullshit. Nobody's ego is supposed to get too big." YT stuffs another bit of pancake and egg in her mouth. "Mom's really hardcore about that stuff," she says with her mouth full.

[irish_vagabond]

"Heh, snowflakes," he chuckles as he continues to dig in. It's a relatively new term for him and he finds it amusing. "Okay, I can understand that. An' by that logic, nobody else would try to claim credit for her work without sounding like a wanker."

[feminine_menace]

"Hadn't thought about it like that, but yeah." YT considers Cassidy for a few moments. "It's nice that you're still listening to me even after you've gotten into my pants," she remarks slyly.

[irish_vagabond]

The statement sort of takes him by surprise and he coughs as a bit of food goes down the wrong way. He chugs some coffee before he can speak again.

"What?" he sputters, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and then a napkin as an afterthought.

"Would've listened to you whether or not I got into your pants. But, since I did get into your pants, it doesn't automatically shut down my ability to listen. I mean, it's not that difficult. Besides, there's pancakes. All good conversations happen over pancakes."

He swirls a forkful in a puddle of maple syrup and shovels it into his mouth undeterred.

[feminine_menace]

YT laughs. "I was messin' with you," she says. Cassidy going bug-eyed with shock was pretty hilarious, although the almost-choking part was not so much. "Probably should have waited until you didn't have food in your mouth though. Sorry."

He's kind of sweet, in his way, although she won't tell him so. At least not yet.

[irish_vagabond]

"I know, I know, just sayin'," he chuckles good-naturedly, holding up a hand. "No harm done, I've had worse."

There are a lot of things people get wrong about him, but he doesn't try too hard to correct them.

With his plate clean, he leans back in his chair with a satisfied groan and stretches. He digs into his jeans pocket for a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

"Mind if I smoke?"

[feminine_menace]

"Go ahead." YT's about done with breakfast, but there's still coffee to be drunk, so she gets right on that. "So I've told you my life story, basically, but I don't know that much about you."

Which might be deliberate. YT is about to find out.

[irish_vagabond]

"Cool."

He sticks a cigarette between his lips and lights up using a match from a Milliways matchbook.

"Me? Well, let's see." Resting an elbow on the back of his chair, he exhales a plume of smoke. "I'm a 119-year-old vampire from Dublin city, but I've spent most of me life traveling. I'm a right-handed Sagittarius, I like Chinese food, single malt whiskey, an' reality TV."