milliways_bar | Yes I Know it’s Been A While

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Yes I Know it’s Been A While

If you’re an entrepreneurial young woman in the delivery service industry, one of the advantages of access to Milliways is having a safe, accessible, clean place to pee. Like, you really can’t take that for granted. Package recipients don’t always let the plebs use the facilities and even with the ones that do, sometimes it’s the kind of place or people where you don’t want to hang around long enough for that, you know?

Anyway, that’s what YT came in for, just so you know. That and refilling her water bottle at the Bar. But after she got done with that stuff she decided to stay and enjoy a Coke at the Bar and post dog-related content on Trollian, which she is currently doing.

rapidRadish (Yours Truly) signed on.

rapidRadish (Yours Truly) signed on.

CURRENT rapidRadish [CRR] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board DOGS I MET TODAY

CURRENT rapidRadish [CRR] sent file "Spaniel.jpg"

CRR: I don’t know about you but I love spaniel ears
CRR: anyway Cocker Spaniels were bred to hunt a specific type of bird, woodcocks
CRR: that’s where “cocker” comes from
CRR: but mostly these days the spaniels don’t hunt
CRR: they just look pretty

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There's a familiar face nearby, in front of the fire.

Wilford is quite a bit older than he was the last time they crossed paths. By at least a decade. He's no longer the scrawny little hothead YT once did time with. He hasn't got any taller, but there's definitely more bulk to him. His mohawk is gone as well, replaced with the sort of messy lack of style suggestive of a person who cannot be bothered to give a single fuck about what his hair looks like.

It's still Wilford though. Because who else would be rocking a pink handlebar moustache?

He is also not alone. He's sitting on the floor at the coffee table, surrounded by colouring books and crayons, and using both to bribe a small child into eating lunch. Every time the child picks a new colour for Wilford to use, he must fist take a bite of his chicken. The kid, who looks about four, doesn't seem very interested in feeding himself, but he does pluck it from the chopsticks when Wilford offers it to him.

YT’s noticed him from a bit of a distance. Far enough that she can’t tell whether it’s that guy with the pink mustache, or just another dude who coincidentally has the same weird ideas about what to do with facial hair.

(She doesn’t know that Wilford’s mustache is just like that and that in his universe it’s a thing that can happen.)

The small child makes her a little wary - YT is super-uncomfortable around kids between the ages of three and eighth grade - but eventually curiosity wins out, and she kind of ambles by the fireplace area to take a look and confirm her suspicions.

The two are having a very one-sided conversation, with the kid not saying much at all, and Wilford doing all the talking.

"Are zebras green?" he asks as he takes the new crayon. "I guess this one is."

He picks up his chopsticks, and hesitates for a moment before trying to offer a bright purple training set. "You want to try it yourself?"

The kid very sternly shakes his head, so Wilford picks up more chicken and lets the boy pluck it away with his fingers.

Neither of them have noticed YT yet.

Edited 2019-07-19 18:24 (UTC)

When she hears him talk, YT knows for sure that it’s that very specific pink-mustached guy. He looks different. Like, a decade or more of different.

YT wonders if Pinkstache remembers her. It probably depends on how often he gets into fights, she figures.

Well, some psycho superhero did just break his jaw a few days ago. Not that you'd be able to tell now, because he reset from that as soon as he was able to make a point about it.

While the kid happily munches away on his chicken and helps colour a rainbow zebra, he looks up and notices they're being watched! Michael gasps loudly and points, alerting Wilford's attention.

He turns, and finds they are indeed being watched.

"How long have you been there?" he asks.

“I saw everything,” YT says, as if she just witnessed Pinkstache killing and dismembering someone.

After a pause, she gives the honest answer. “Like, thirty seconds. Just to check if it was you. I wasn’t sure ‘cause you lost the Mohawk and got decrepit.”

"The mohawk was a bitch to maintain," Wilford explains, watching YT with great suspicion.

And he has more important things sucking up all his time, obviously.

"If there's someone else around here pretending to be me, I want to know about it."

He continues to colour some zebra stripes green, as if it's a perfectly ordinary thing for a grown man to do during a conversation.

That’s part of YT’s issue with kids. Not only do they do weird and unpredictable things, but they make grown-ups around them do really weird stuff too.

“Pfft. Who’d wanna pretend to be you?” YT asks. She looks at the kid. “Although it looks like someone, for some reason, decided to have at least one kid with you.”

"Who wouldn't want to be me?" Wilford asks.

He feels like he should be offended about... well, all of it.

"And why is that so surprising?"

Okay, the kid isn't technically his, but details. She's still not wrong.

“That’s a good point. By now I shouldn’t be surprised that there are, like, billions of people who convince themselves that insanely dumb stuff is a good idea, but somehow...” YT shrugs.

Of course, this is from a person who skateboards in highway traffic on a near-daily basis.

Rude.

"You hear this?" Wilford says, turning back to Michael. "I think she's making fun of both of us."

Michael looks back up at her and frowns. "Mind yur fuckin business," he says.

Then he decides, unprompted, that he wants to try the chopsticks himself. Probably to show off, but Wilford will take any win he can get. He holds back, letting Michael struggle on his own. It takes a lot of concentration, and a bit of twisting around, but he finally manages to get a piece of broccoli into his mouth.

"You hear that?" Wilford says to YT. "Be nice."

“Oh thank God if he already knows all the bad words it’s not bad if I say them in front of him,” YT practically gushes with relief.

She doesn’t swear in front of kids because, like, what if a kid learns a bad word from her and repeats it in front of the wrong person and gets in trouble? That would suck. But Wilford already taught this kid to cuss, so YT’s free and clear.

"I don't think he knows all of them. Do you know all of them?" Wilford says, asking Michael.

The kid shrugs dramatically and goes back to colouring the zebra.

"He better not. It's already going to be a nightmare getting him into school."

He picks up some chicken for himself, and goes right on colouring as well.

YT glares at Pinkstache. “Dude, he’s right there,” she says, gesturing at Michael.

Seriously, YT knows next to nothing about kids, but even she knows it’s not okay to say stuff like that about a kid where they can hear you.

"And he knows he's a pain in the ass," Wilford says.

"Yep," Michael agrees.

Wilford laughs. For some reason, the way Michael says it is hilarious to him.

“What’s the big hairy deal with getting him in school anyway?” YT asks. “You’re not trying to send him to, like, a fancy private school or something like that? You don’t wanna go to a fancy private school, kid,” YT warns Michael. “It’s a snake pit. That’s what happens when you get too many rich people in one place.”

Wilford sighs. Silly him to think he was past this.

"He's almost four and what you just heard represents about fifty percent of his vocabulary," he says, taking another crayon in exchange for Michael taking one more bite of his lunch.

Wilford knows Michael is fully capable of saying more. The trick is getting him to want to.

"And be careful who you insult to their face. Some people aren't as nice as I am."

“I know,” says YT. “I dated one of those people for a while.”

And if we’re just talking Milliways, well, there’s Moriarty. They both keep their distance from each other these days.

YT squats down, so she’s more or less level with the kid. “You don’t talk much, but that doesn’t mean you don’t understand stuff.”

Wilford worked hard to become one of them rich pricks. He won't let anyone use that against him.

Michael watches YT as she sits, mumbling nonsense to himself.

"Speak up," Wilford tells him.

The mumbled nonsense becomes rather loud nonsense, now directed at YT as Michael hands her a crayon. Then, he picks up a piece of chicken from the plate and holds it out in his fingers for Wilford.

"Oh, what is this loophole?" Wilford asks.

He eats the chicken though, because that kind of cunning deserves to be rewarded.

Edited 2019-07-20 16:32 (UTC)

The crayon is purple. The zebra’s all filled in. The next page is a depiction of hippopotamuses (hippopotomi? Whatever, hippos) in and around a watering hole.

YT looks at the crayon, then the hippos, and then the kid. “Seriously?”

It isn't clear what Michael says, but the tone and the way he points at the page suggests, yes. He's very serious.

"I don't think anybody's ever refused that before," Wilford says.

He eats more off the plate the two of them are sharing.

“Okay,” YT says. “But I want to make the hippos different colors” - because if there’s gonna be a purple one, why not - “so you gotta give me different crayons for different hippos, okay?”

"He'll give you different crayons for the same hippo," Wilford says.

As evidenced by his rainbow monstrosity of a zebra on the previous page.

With a bright pink crayon, Michael starts to colour the water. There's no ability to choose here. Michael is king of the crayons and the colouring book, and what he says clearly goes.

“Okay. We’re doing Lisa Frank Acid Trip Safari. That’s a bold aesthetic choice.”

Maybe there are rainbow hippos where they’re from!

There aren’t, but maybe there are!

“Just be glad he’s not making you play with his Barbies,” Wilford says. That gets brutal.

Michael quietly colours with YT for a few moments before abruptly losing interest and getting up. Before he can get too far, Wilford reaches out and grabs him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks.

“Uhm.” Michael looks around, clearly on a mission. “I...”

He can’t quite seem to find his words. They’re in there, but he can’t seem to put them into any order. Wilford waits for him to sort it out, not offering any kind of encouragement or prompting that might risk making him self-conscious and not want to even try.

“Uhh. I... Can I... Can I... bring Bailey?” he asks finally.

Wilford considers this for a moment, and then picks up the purple chopsticks. “Two more bites, on your own,” he says.

Michael sighs so hard he falls to the floor.

YT is still coloring. These hippos are looking trippy. "C'mon, kid. You're getting a good deal here."

Look, YT is being helpful.

Michael grumbles. Loudly.

Wilford completely ignores the outburst. Something seems to work though, because after a moment he sits up like a zombie and picks up his chopsticks. It is kind of an ordeal to use them, but he gets the first piece of broccoli in his mouth eventually.

"Haven't seen you around in a minute," Wilford says, still ignoring the 50% chance that Michael's struggles are just theatrics to get out of his side of the bargain.

“Probably because at least one of us got time-warped or something,” YT says.

She’s familiar enough with Milliways by now that this kind of thing is more of a cause for annoyance than alarm, at this point.

YT briefly considers asking about Buster, but if this much time has passed for Pinkstache, it’s unlikely that Buster’s still around. She decides not to ask.

"Guessing both of us," Wilford says. "I quit messing around with that a long time ago."

It was more trouble than it was worth, and caused more problems than it solved.

After much effort, Michael takes his second bite and slaps his sticks down onto the table. Wilford takes the hint. "All right, go get your dog," he says.

Michael doesn't need to be told twice. He's already on his feet and running to the door.

"You stay on this side," Wilford says sternly.

Michael doesn't respond. He gets to the door, throws it open, and shouts, "Bailey!"

YT puts her electric blue crayon down and looks up with interest. She thought Bailey might be just a toy or something, but no, Bailey’s a dog! YT’s always happy to meet a dog.

Bailey is not just a dog. An enormous Great Dane ambles through the door, stopping to give Michael a sniff and a lick. A moment later, someone else nudges past the two of them. Laughing, Michael steps out of the way of the speeding red and white bullet that comes rushing in after, a whirlwind of long tail and spindly legs.

Wilford does not take his eyes off Michael the entire time, and does not appear to relax even a little until he makes his way back to the table, Bailey and Buster in tow.

Buster immediately tries to stick his nose into the plate on the table, but is immediately thwarted. "In your dreams," Wilford says, shoving him away.

If a dog could exhibit sarcasm, this is precisely the attitude Buster would convey as he climbs up onto the couch.

“Hi Buster,” YT says. So he’s still around after all! Even with all this time and his weird food issues and everything! YT is genuinely cheered to see him, and it comes through in her voice just a little.

“Wow. Bailey is a lot of dog.” Even Stella, a full-grown standard poodle, would be dwarfed if she were here right now.

If this lady's talking to him, then she's probably going to give Buster ALL THE ATTENTION. He wiggles right back down and heads over to get all up in her business. She smells familiar! Fun!

Meanwhile, Bailey and Michael settle down so Michael can be sniffed at and licked while she gets a toy car driven all over her fur.

Was that toy car there before? It's kind of big. Might have been difficult to miss.

This obviously all means that Wilford is free from floor sitting, so he grabs the plate and settles onto the sofa to finish his lunch.

"I knew she'd get big, but nobody told me she'd get that big."

Despite owning two of them, Wilford really doesn't know much at all about dogs.

YT gives Buster all of the skritches and all of the belly rubs.

“Stella grew up to be a little bigger than I thought she would too.”

To be fair, when YT went to the pound, she was expecting to go home with a pitbull or Rotweiller or something, not a standard poodle.

Buster's long legs and tail are everywhere at once as he twists and turns to get skritches everywhere.

"I didn't even know what this one was until the vet told me."

Then again, he didn't exactly make any decision to get Bailey. She was dropped on him while he was drugged to the gills and not thinking straight enough to refuse another dog.

“Oh. So she was a rescue or something?”

Or something.

"No, some dickhead thought it would be funny to drop her on me for a birthday gift."

Or something.

He shrugs and shamelessly shovels more rice into his mouth, watching both dogs as they just dog about.

YT scowls. “Giving someone a pet as a surprise present is a dick move,” she says. “It’s almost as bad as getting accidentally-on-purpose pregnant.”

WELL THEN.

Uh-huh. Yep. Wilford would know nothing about that. Nope. Which is why he agrees by not saying anything at all, and just keeps on eating.

YT doesn't really register Wilford's discomfort because 1) she's busy playing with Buster and B) making people uncomfortable is kind of her normal social mode anyway.

"Hey kid," YT calls to Michael. "Can Bailey do any tricks?"

"Uhm," Michael says.

He looks up at Wilford, and then continues to drive his car over Bailey's side.

"You were asked a question," Wilford says.

Michael just shakes his head, and Wilford rolls his eyes.

“Okay. Do you want to teach Bailey to do a trick?”

“Shake” is always a good standby for larger dogs.

All this attention on him is starting to make Michael clam up again, and he shakes his head once more.

"The lady's talking to you, man. You just going to ignore her?"

Michael nods, and continues to just play with Bailey in his weird way.

Kids. Goddamn it.

Maybe Buster knows tricks.

"Hey Buster. Roll over?"

Buster knows roll over! Or rather, he knows what those words mean, even if he has never been taught a single trick in his life.

Still, he rolls over.

Right off of the sofa.

But not before his legs upend the plate Wilford's holding, sending chicken and rice and broccoli everywhere.

"Son of a bitch!" he says, trying to untangle himself from a dog that's just as surprised at this turn of events as he is. "Do you ever think?" he scolds the dog.

Hey! Free chicken! Buster doesn't care that he's being scolded, because he's too busy inhaling everything within reach.

"Ohshit ohshit ohshit," YT says, because she's learned the hard way what happens when Buster deviates from his rather strict diet.

She tries to pull on his collar to stop him from scarfing down the chicken, but he's freaky fast at eating stuff he shouldn't when he gets the chance.

For what it's worth, Michael thinks this is all hilarious. He's on the floor, cackling like a maniac at the mess and chaos that's befallen.

"Brainless assholes go outside," Wilford says, getting up and taking Buster from YT. He doesn't bother with anything as time consuming as trying to pull him away by the collar, or fetching a leash. Buster gets picked right up off the ground like a squirming sack of potatoes, and carried to the back door. Wilford rather unceremoniously dumps him outside and closes the door.

"Fucking idiot," he grumbles as he returns back to figure out how to start cleaning up this mess. In the end, he decides to use a napkin to get the worst of it off himself, and ignore the rest for now.

"And you," he says, pointing at Michael as he sits back down. "Irritating little boys get to go hang out with the nanny, so keep it up."

If this is meant to silence Michael, it doesn't work. If anything, Wilford's hilarious when he's pissed off.

YT stays (unusually) quiet, but gives Michael an approving grin and a wink while Pinkstache has his back to her.

Wilford may have missed it as he grumbles and complains about rice stuck to his jeans, but Michael doesn't. He takes it as a challenge to be as irritating as possible.

"No, Bill!" he says, as if his word is law.

Wilford doesn't even look up. "Bill don't want you. He's got more important shit to deal with."

"Bill!" Michael shouts.

Wilford does look up this time, and nods. "All right," he says, starting to clean up their crayon mess. "I'll take you to Bill's. And then you can help out with that baby."

Suddenly, Michael looks horrified. "NO!" he screeches.

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Yes I Know it’s Been A While

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