InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Tracy made me do it!!"

Seamus Finnigan (openbottle) wrote in finnigans_rpg,
@ 2015-07-06 17:57:00

Entry tags:

character: seamus finnigan, character: stacey rivers

Pride Wind-Down
Who: Seamus and Open (Also open to other threads)
What: Finnigan's is the perfect place to go for a more low-key Pride celebration
Where: Finnigan's
When: Sunda 6th July, evening [backdated]
Rating: SFW for now

It had been an incredibly hectic weekend - for everyone. Between the muggle Pride events and Wingbeat's multiple LGBTQ nights, Seamus hadn't felt the need to do anything in particular for the LGBTQ community in Finnigan's itself. The pub was, as always, gay-friendly but Seamus had decided not to put on any special deals or add events to draw customers in. The people who wanted glitter and noise and celebration would go to Wingbeat, and Finnigan's would collect those who were looking for a more quiet evening out.

By Sunday night, Seamus imagined he could feel the atmosphere of earlier in the week winding down, creating a pleasant breathing-space. He technically had the day off, but he was behind the bar nonetheless, wearing his own version of a Pride t-shirt. It spelled 'LOVE' out across his chest, the 'O' a shamrock that Dominic had charmed to flash between green and rainbow.

He leaned against the bar, straightening only slightly as someone approached. "What can I get you?"

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Seamus and Stacey

pinkyink
2015-07-10 07:13 pm UTC (link)

"Food!" Stacey answered as she flung herself onto stool at the bar, a little desperate. "I am starving, and I would have been over here an hour ago for dinner, but that last customer turned out to be more of a pain than I was expecting."

She'd given Meatball the day off, but couldn't quite justify closing the parlor completely, since there had been a steady stream of people on and off all day. After all the celebrating she'd done all week, it had been a more low-key day for her, and while she was wearing a rainbow shirt, she'd hadn't gone as all out as she would have earlier in the week. "How's business?" she asked, leaning her elbows against the bar and propping up her face on her hands to look at him as they talked.

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Seamus and Stacey

openbottle
2015-07-14 08:37 am UTC (link)

Seamus laughed - not unkindly - at Stacey's desperation. "Food I can do," he said, nudging a menu towards her. "Do you need this, or have you memorised it by now?" Stacey came in for food relatively regularly, which made sense what with her working right next door. He pulled back slightly from the bar, reaching for the bowl of peanuts he almost always had on hand. "We can share these to tide you over until Chef's ready," he offered.

Considering her question, he surveyed the pub. There was a gentle hum of talk, but nothing rowdy or raucous. It was kind of perfect for a Sunday evening, really. "Not bad," he decided. He was pretty sure Dean was off in a corner somewhere, and others of the Battlescars and LBB members had stuck around after their meetings as well so he knew nearly everyone in the room. "We had a lot of new customers this weekend, but not so much today. What did your last customer want?"

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Seamus and Stacey

pinkyink
2015-07-14 09:44 pm UTC (link)

Stacey stuck her tongue out at Seamus for a moment before shaking her head with a grin. "As long as it doesn't have fish or an abundance of lettuce, I don't really care. Whatever will be quick," she answered with a shrug. Reaching out for the offered snack with one hand, she asked, "Have I told you yet this week that you're a lifesaver? Because you are." Finngian's tended to be her source of lunch and/or dinner on multiple occasions during any given week, since it was just so much easier to walk next door than it was to go all the way home and come back. And here there weren't any kittens for her to get distracted by, so she would actually return to the shop when she needed to, rather than getting caught up in something else.

"Not bad is pretty good," Stacey said, then paused at her own mini-philosophical statement. She sighed and made a face at the question before explaining, "It was more that he didn't really know what he was getting into and wasn't really prepared. First tattoo, and he didn't seem to get he fact that it's a needle forcing color into being a scar - of course it's going to fucking hurt. So we had to keep stopping and taking breaks, so something that should have taken half an hour wound up taking two." She rolled her eyes before popping a handful of nuts in her mouth. "Disregard me, I'm grumpy from lack of sustenance."

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Re: Seamus and Stacey

openbottle
2015-07-16 10:36 am UTC (link)

"Let me go see what Chef has on the go, then," Seamus said, before disappearing into the kitchen. He emerged a few moments later with a minted lamb burger - something new he was trying for summer - and chips. "One life saved," he teased, depositing the food in front of Stacey. "Do you want to eat here, or at a table?" There were certainly plenty of tables still available, but Seamus knew that sometimes people who were eating alone preferred to do so at the bar.

He snagged a handful of peanuts for himself, popping them into his mouth one-by-one as he listened to her detail the problems with her customer. "It's not like it's hard to read up or ask around." Seamus had taken a fair few breaks during the application of his own tattoo - though not so many as to quadruple the amount of time it took - but he'd turned up earlyish in the day so he wasn't keeping anyone from home longer than they intended. "Was he happy with it, at least?"

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Seamus and Stacey

pinkyink
2015-07-18 02:39 am UTC (link)

"Oh my god, you're wonderful," Stacey enthused as Seamus returned with food. "Here, definitely. Less time to get it into my stomach," she answered, chuckling. She made a happy noise around her first bite, and said after swallowing, "This is amazing. It is officially my new favorite thing on your menu." Seeing as her favorite thing tended to change every other day, this wasn't an unusual statement for her to make.

She shook her head at the statement, trying to convey her confusion on the matter as well even with a mouth full of food. "He wasn't displeased, which by that point was all I was really going for. I really just wanted him out of the shop, which I know is a terrible thing to say about a paying customer, but I was running out of patience by the end."

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Re: Seamus and Stacey

openbottle
2015-07-20 02:17 pm UTC (link)

Seamus laughed, pulling his stool up to the other side of the bar so he could sit while he talked to Stacey. "Oh yeah?" he asked. "And how long'll this one last? I think the record is still the bacon cheeseburger - that was your favourite for almost a week!" Granted, it had been a week where Stacey was particularly busy and hadn't seemed to come in for meals as much as usual, so perhaps it didn't count. "I like it, anyway. I had to choose between muggle lamb-and-mint burgers or wizarding lamb burgers with actual mint leaves. I'm still not sure I made the right choice." He didn't have the contacts in the muggle world to buy things wholesale, but whole mint leaves might well have been overwhelming for anyone who wasn't used to chewing them as Seamus did.

He made a face at Stacey's description. 'Not displeased' wasn't a way he'd want to feel about something permanently inked into his skin - but then, he'd done days of planning and research and thinking before finally settling on his tattoo, so there'd never been much chance he'd have been disappointed. If a customer couldn't do that for themselves, they sort of deserved what they got. "Wouldn't work be so much nicer without the customers?" he asked, smiling.

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Seamus and Stacey

pinkyink
2015-07-21 09:32 pm UTC (link)

Stacey snorted her laughter at the question and comment, and couldn't find it in herself to even be the slightest bit embarrassed about the undignified noise. "That's because bacon cheeseburgers are a classic, and bacon is a good of the gods," she said with a grin. "And if my opinion counts for anything, I think you made a great choice. This is fantastic."

Returning his face with a pair of raised eyebrows and a smirk, Stacey paused to inhale more of her burger, and then chuckled again at his question. "Oh absolutely," she agreed, "but they do pay the bills. Even if they aren't always right, no matter what the saying is."

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Re: Seamus and Stacey

openbottle
2015-07-22 10:41 am UTC (link)

Settling forward on his stool, Seamus nodded. "Your opinion definitely counts. You're in here for food a lot, so if I'm pleasing you that's a good indication I'll please other regulars, and that's what I want really." He was glad he had a good chef again now, because there were quite a lot of people who came in for food on a regular basis and without a kitchen, Seamus wasn't at all sure the pub would have been as much of a success as it was. Plus, he'd likely have gone hungry himself with as often as he forgot to buy his own food.

"It was definitely a customer who came up with 'the customer is always right'," he agreed. "I had a guy in her a few days ago insisting we'd done something to his beer. Said it tasted different. I tried it, chef tried it, I got Dominic to try it - tasted exactly the same as the stuff we've been serving since we opened. I was so tempted to send him to St Mungo's to see if there was something wrong with his tongue."

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Seamus and Stacey

pinkyink
2015-07-24 08:55 pm UTC (link)

"You do feed me a lot, which I appreciate," she agreed, "because otherwise I'd have wasted away surrounded by needles and ink and sketchbooks." That was probably an exaggeration, but she had been known to be overly dramatic on occasion. "But, yes, I think it will go over well."

Stacey chuckled again at the observation, nodding her head so show she felt the same way. She listened to Seamus' story with an increasingly incredulous expression. "Are you serious?" she exclaimed when he was finished, which was a silly question, since she was certain that Seamus wouldn't have made something like that up, and there were customers that were that ridiculous. "What did you tell him?" she asked curiously.

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Re: Seamus and Stacey

openbottle
2015-07-28 11:55 am UTC (link)

Seamus chuckled, but shook his head. "I take no credit. It's all chef - and he feeds me too, more often than not." He glanced up, in the general direction of his flat over the pub. "My actual kitchen doesn't see a lot of use. Sometimes I wonder why I bothered putting it in, but then Dean comes over and makes tea and I remember that normal people like to keep food in their houses."

He rolled his eyes in response to her question and put a hand to his chest. "Hand on heart. He wasn't even drunk, is the thing. I feel like if you're going to waste my time with idiotic questions you should at least have got drunk off my wares first. I told him to go home and see if it tasted right the next day."

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Seamus and Stacey

pinkyink
2015-07-29 11:09 am UTC (link)

Chuckling, Stacey finished off her burger while Seamus spoke. "Well, you get credit for hiring him so that he can feed us both," she said with a grin. "And there's no such thing as 'normal', so if you decided not to have a kitchen, who is anyone else to judge?" She raised an eyebrow as if daring him to challenge her logic in that statement.

She stuck her tongue out at him when Seamus rolled his eyes at her, but nodded at his explanation. "It would have at least made a little more sense if he'd been drunk. Hopefully he was better the next day?" Stories like that one made her glad that most of her customers knew what they wanted and what they were getting into.

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Re: Seamus and Stacey

openbottle
2015-07-30 09:19 am UTC (link)

Seamus smiled. "Well, normal's the wrong word, but at the very least I need somewhere for Dean to make tea." Thinking about Dean's reaction if he found his usual tea-making facilities unavailable made Seamus chuckle. "That said, it would be pretty fucking funny to hide the kitchen and see what he did!" As long as it wasn't a crisis 'I need tea now' type moment, anyway. He wondered if Dominic could do that - maybe put up a fake or illusory wall so it looked like the kitchen was gone.

He nodded, popping a few more peanuts in his mouth. "Well, I didn't see him the next day - think he was probably ashamed to show his face - but I saw him earlier and he apologised. I really don't know what was up." Seamus hoped it was nothing, he'd feel bad making fun of the guy if he'd been hexed or something. "I think sometimes people just need to pick a fight, you know? And if they come back and apologise a few days later, and they don't hurt anyone, then it's something I can deal with. I think maybe he just really wanted to be right about something, if that makes sense." Maybe Seamus should stop amateur psychoanalysing his customers...

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