Entry tags:

!completed gdoc, may parker (aunt_may_parker), vaggie (exexorcist), ~2024 september

Who: May and Vaggie
What: chatting
When:Tues
Where: the game cafe
Rating: should be relatively low
Status: completed via gdoc


Vaggie was quietly cursing the espresso machine. While she could make a banger Americano, the damn wand in the milk still annoyed the fuck out of her. She really thought maybe they should get the milk steaming machines so that she didn’t accidentally rip the wand off the machine. This was the second latte she had to remake because of the coordination she apparently didn’t possess.

Finally finished, complete with a leaf design, Vagge brought the drink to the customer. When the customer nodded approval, Vaggie nodded and returned to her previous task: unboxing new arrivals. A task that annoyed her far less.

---

“You know, it’s not strictly required you make the drinks pretty. Though I will admit they like it when we do.” May saddled up beside her with a soft smile. She’d seen Vaggie getting annoyed and wanted to check in.

“You haven’t murdered the machine yet, that’s a plus. Sorry it’s giving you trouble today.” May wasn’t very good at it either, but she often had too much to do on a daily basis to get behind the bar. She was marginally better at drinks than she was at cooking.

---

“Making them pretty is the easier part,” Vaggie commented with a smirk. “I was thinking of trying my hand at edible glitter. See how customers feel.” She turned to face her boss.

“I promise if I reach the destroy phase, I will inform you.” She probably just needed more practice. Maybe the stabby barista would give her a pointer if she asked nicely. “I swear the YouTube clips make me feel more useless.” She shrugged. And visibly relaxed when a customer came up to ask for another bowl of candy for the table.

---

“Edible glitter huh? I’ll order you some and you can try it out. Sounds fun. And if it doesn’t work out, I bet we can put it in some of the mixed drinks. We can call them potions.” She’d have to get Ned and Peter to give her potion names so they were ‘real’ D&D ones. A lot of her clientele would be unimpressed with fake named ones.

“I think most of those videos are harder than they let on. I tried to do a few hair ones and they were a disaster. I decided to keep any of the fancy hairdos up to the professionals.” She pulled another box from the bigger box. “Soon we’re going to need to put up some Halloween decorations. I haven’t decided how soon is too soon. Maybe we should wait for October 1st.”

---

Vaggie found that she enjoyed making drinks look nice. The wand was the problem for her. Maybe she could convince someone in town who knew what they were doing to help. “The drinks look pretty.” Damn, maybe her girlfriend was growing on her. “I think the D&D crowd would love it and we could make a few seasonal drinks and use the glitter too.”

“That’s how I feel when I watch them. I need someone to walk me through the steps and correct me.” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t even attempt my hair.” Sometimes she straightened her hair, but mostly she just washed and towel dried. “I think Oct. 1st makes sense. What do we have for decorations?”

---

“Right now? I think maybe a few spiders? We’ll need to get more. We obviously don’t want anything too scary since we get kids in during the day, but I also don’t want it to look super lame.” She knew her age meant she didn’t always get what was ‘in’ but she liked to think she wasn’t too old yet to fully grasp it.

“Thankfully last year it was only everyone’s costumes that changed us. We didn’t have decorations running around. Otherwise I’d nix the giant spiders.” Because the idea of giant spiders was terrifying to her.

---

“We could save a few scarier ones for a couple special adult only nights in October?” Vaggie didn’t understand human customs at all, though she at least tried here in Madison. “But yes, definitely not lame.” Lame decorations would suck.

She blinked. “Say that again, like I’m five.” Would the Dome…it was the fucking Dome. Of course the Dome would make that choice.

---

“Right. You weren’t here, were you?” May looked a bit sheepish, but she was the sort of woman who admitted to embarrassing things after a while of it being in the past. “Some people who wore costumes last year turned into their costume. I thought I was a faerie. Which was very weird when I found my boyfriend who happens to be a Leprechaun. It took him a while to figure out I wasn’t just messing with him.” Not that Sweeney looked like what people thought a Leprechaun looked like anyway. “It was chaotic, but from what I heard, only some minor injuries and a lot of embarrassment. If I had to guess, some people are going to be more cautious this year in their costume choices.”

---

“No, this will be my first Halloween in Madison.” Not that they really celebrated in Hell for…obvious reasons. “Shit. Glad I missed that. But does the Dome ever repeat adventures?” Of this she had no idea.

“I could see a few people wondering if they were being messed with in that kind of situation.”

---

“I think it does, but not usually so close together. I’ve heard a few people mention that happened before, but they’re people who have been here for years and years. Which in and of itself is incredible. There’s someone here who’s been here for at least ten years.” For May, that was a positive thing to think about. She had Sweeney here and she had Peter and now that she knew she was dead back home, Madison would always be appealing, even when it did strange things.

“I don’t mind if I get affected, but I wish I could keep Peter from being messed with. He didn’t deserve the whole memory lane thing last month.” She sobered a little, but then smiled softly.

---

No thanks. Vaggie did not possess any interest in turning into a costume. Though, she supposed if dressing up interested Charlie she would. “Well guess we’ll see what happens this Halloween.” Hopefully nothing bad.

A nod. “I would feel the same about my girlfriend and a friend.” Vaggie didn’t know what to say, but she channeled Charlie. “That sucks and I get it. But unfortunately we live in a Dome.” They never had that sort of choice.

---

“Oh, I know. But it won’t stop me wishing.” May gave her a wry smile. “I feel like stubbornly keeping some optimism is a way to stick it to the Dome.” She joked, but there was some kernel of truth to it.

“Did you manage to escape last month?” The farther they got away from it, the less obvious it was that people had been affected, though May thought that also spoke volumes for how resilient people here were.

---

Vaggie smirked, her eyepatch quirking up just a touch. “You should meet my girlfriend. Optimism galore, let me tell you.” Which certainly summed up Charlie rather well.

“I did.” Thankfully. She’d been more of the drinking tea and minding her business at work type. “I may have wound up entertained more than anything.” Vaggie shrugged. Her outlook differed from most.

---

“I’d love to meet her.” May liked to meet new people even if sometimes the worlds they came from or the lives they had back home were troubling. She’d seen her fair share back in New York with the shelter.

“It’s always easier when it’s not happening to you. And I guess coming from your world, a lot of our troubles probably seem small or silly in comparison.” May couldn’t exactly picture what living in Hell was like, but she figured it made some of the smaller things in life seem petty in comparison. May wouldn’t fault Vaggie for that.

---

“I’ll bring her by next week when I’m not working,” Vaggie commented. She thought the pair would like each other, but who wouldn’t like Charlie? Really?

“Not silly.” Vaggie didn’t think anyone’s traumas were silly, but coming from Hell gave her a skewed perspective. “Just…different.”

A customer appeared and requested another latte. Vaggie sighed. “Back to work, it seems.”

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