Charlie (charlotteemily) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2019-10-02 21:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | !closed, !log, ~2019 october, ~25 points, ~~agent carolina (agentcarolina), ~~charlotte emily (chartlotteemily) |
Who: Charlie Emily, Agent Carolina, and Church
When: Wednesday Evening
Where: Freelancer House
What: Chatting and AI Things
Warnings: Language, et al.
Status: Closed/In-Progress [TBC in Comments]
Charlie didn’t do it often but there were times when she messaged Carolina about making the trip home together. It was dependant on Charlie’s shift at the arcade and when things fell into place, she also brought coffee with her.
With extra sugar.
The stars had aligned for them and Charlie sipped at her own coffee. “So, did I see Wash cooking the other day?”
***
Part of Carolina wanted people to not know that she was a sugar junkie with her coffee so she could look more like the bad ass she was. The other part didn’t want to drink shitty, bitter coffee so she dealt with it and took the coffee for a sip.
“You did. Barnes started teaching him how to cook and that’s why you can’t move anything in the kitchen without getting yelled at.” Wash called Bucky ‘James’ but Carolina tended to use his last name instead. And now that he was trying to cook Wash was putting diagrams in the drawers and inside the cabinets so he knew exactly where everything went.
The cooking was going okay but he wasn’t doing great with other things still. “I guess he ran into your boss at the store the other day.”
***
“That explains Tucker looking really flustered over putting away the cereal.” They weren’t that bad. Charlie didn’t have too much trouble with them. It would take a bit to get used to them, but once you had the hang of it? It would become second nature.
Maybe that was only the case for her, though.
“Oh, Tim?” Charlie hesitated for a minute, using the time to take a healthy drink of coffee. “I’m guessing it went okay?” No one seemed to be missing any fingers, eyes, or limbs. Charlie hadn’t heard anything from Tim, either.
At least not yet.
***
“It went okay. Other than apparently Wash wasn’t paying attention so he was surprised and you know how he is when he’s surprised.” Since just a couple of days ago Carolina hadn’t realized he was lost in concentrating on something and touched his shoulder only to end up having to block several punches and put him in an arm lock until he could calm down she’d been the most recent example of how not to approach Wash.
“I guess he helped Wash find what he was looking for and Wash gave him a recipe.” Carolina couldn’t help being amused by that. Any of them exchanging recipes that didn’t have to do with an MRE or ration bar was just weird.
”It wouldn’t happen if he’d let me go with him. I mean I don’t have to port in, we can use the storage unit from your armor or something.” Church’ s avatar showed up by her shoulder and he was in unhappy mutter mode. He and Carolina were like siblings but he and Wash were together first and they’d fixed it but now it was all fucked up again.
“No Church. Not until he’s ready.” Carolina was getting tired of this argument so she changed the subject. “Anyway I think we’re going to hire someone to help out around the house. Think you’d be okay with that?”
***
“He just needs some time, Church,” Charlie offered with a slight smile. She knew that was a difficult concept for him considering his time passed differently, but it was the unfortunate truth. “Maybe I can go with him next time and you could go with me.” It was worth offering even if it wasn’t the same. Charlie preferred trying to solve problems rather than making them worse.
Unless it came to attempting to confronting killer robots to save her friends.
“Really? I think that’d be great. Don’t get me wrong when I say this, but I think it’ll be good for everyone.” Charlie knew it had to be emotionally exhausting at times to see Wash in his state and not be able to help him. “I know picking up some more hours at the arcade hasn’t been helpful in the house situation, but it’s one of those weird comforts. And it’s good for that social thing I’m supposed to be trying.”
***
It really wasn’t the same at all which meant Church just muttered under his breath again and the little avatar winked out. Carolina knew that he was covering a lot of stuff by acting angry. He didn’t like to acknowledge the legitimate bonds that he had with people because they’d been used to torture Alpha to split him. But even feeling sympathy toward him when he was upset was asking to be told to fuck off so she pretended to ignore him and he pretended to ignore her.
“I know. We all want to just spend time together when we’re not working and that’s hard if you have to do things around the house. And the woman I was talking to apparently grew up with superheroes, and a chimp butler so I’m thinking there’s probably not much we can do that will surprise her.”
***
Physically stopping in mid-step at the mention of a chimp butler, Charlie gave Carolina a particularly incredulous look. It was brief and only lasted a minute before she shook her head. Picking up her steps, Charlie finally laughed.
“You know, you’d think that wouldn’t sound as strange as it does, but...yep. That definitely caught me completely off guard. The chimp thing. Not the superheroes thing.”
Being with Carolina meant Charlie didn’t do her normal announcement of being home. There were a handful of things Charlie had started doing in the hopes of being helpful to Wash. The last thing she wanted was to put him or the others in another situation that included a surprise attack from Wash.
“What’s her name? I wonder if I know her.”
***
“Hey it got me too.” Carolina had been a little stumped at chimp butler every time it was mentioned. She didn’t yell she was home but Carolina did her own version of routine where keys were dumped in a bowl making noise and Church went to use the projectors to make sure Wash knew she was there if he didn’t hear the normal noises.
“Allison Hargreeves. She lost her voice in an injury so don’t tell Wash but I thought that might go over better than just anyone coming in to help.” Another neck injury was kind of an odd coincidence, especially since they’re old Freelancer teammate Maine had been made mute after being shot in the throat. They just knew too many people that were injured that way. At least Wash hadn’t lost his voice.
***
"Oh yeah. She was putting together those food parties. I think she'll be good to have around for sure. She definitely seems nice." Accepting and understanding as well. They definitely all needed a lot of everything these days.
Tossing the now empty coffee cup, Charlie rummaged through one of the cabinets to grab a snack and a bottle of water. Odd as it was, these things remained normal for Charlie. Not drinking or eating felt weird. She would feel hungry and thirsty. Charlie was glad that no one seemed to make a big deal out of it.
Aside from Tucker anyway.
"Hey, Church? Would you want to help me with something I'm working on?" she asked as casually as she could. Truth be told, she'd been itching to step into the digital world despite the previous mishap.