Roxy Muñoz (sticksandrox) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2019-07-15 10:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | #december 2017, gavin, gavin x roxy, roxy |
Who: Gavin and Roxy
When: Early evening, Wednesday, Dec 27th
Where: The Back Porch
Status: complete
Christmas was over, so it was back to the working grind. The holiday had been as nice as could be expected, considering everything bad that was going on, so Roxy couldn’t personally complain much. She and Caden had gotten some good private time Christmas Day, and she was feeling a little more optimistic about this engagement. She hadn’t told her family yet, or even Mila -- who was still in the hospital -- but Caden’s family had taken it pretty well, so that was something. Roxy had taken the ring off for her shifts at the Porch, just so it wouldn’t get dirty, but she could feel it on the chain against her chest, and she kept fiddling with it whenever one hand was free.
Business was a little slow, considering the time of year and the weather, but they were ramping up toward New Years, and that would be a busy-ass night. It always was, and it was always an all-hands-on-deck situation. Roxy had already been missing having Mila around the bar, and she was going to miss her friend’s expertise even more when the big night came. But they would get through it, and until then it was the same routine shit.
That was at least until a little after five on Wednesday evening. Roxy had noticed quite a few of the scant patrons of the Porch frowning at their phones. It was already pretty dark outside, but she hadn’t noticed that the street lights had gotten very fuzzy until someone said something to her about it getting foggy out there. Roxy went to the front window to peer out, frowning herself. She could hardly even see the cars parked on their side of the street. Roxy made her way back to the bar and caught Gavin’s attention. “You seen anything weird on the news, weather-wise?” she asked.
It was December in Maine so Gavin expected the weather to suck pretty much always. He still kept up with it, mostly so he could avoid getting stuck in a blizzard somewhere or so he could warn his kids about being out and there had been no warning lately, just more of the same. He leaned against the bar and tilted his head to look past Roxy at the windows, furrowing his brows. It was hard to see anything from the bar but it didn't look like it was crazy out there or anything. "Nothing weird, no. Why, what's up?"
Weird weather was not something they talked about lightly in Point Pleasant, not after the fog that drove everyone crazy. Just the question made Gavin's stomach feel heavier, like there was a block of ice forming there.
“There’s just some really thick fog out,” Roxy said. She sounded mildly distracted as she took her phone out of her pocket to check her weather app. She wouldn’t have been surprised with snow or ice or even hail this time of year, but it seemed pretty cold for that kind of fog. The damn thing wouldn’t refresh though, and Roxy huffed out an annoyed sound at the little spinning circle. “My phone doesn't have any signal, does yours?” she asked Gavin, looking up again. “I think a tower’s down or something, somebody at table six said theirs wasn’t working either.”
The block of ice in his gut solidified and Gavin fumbled in his pocket for his phone to check it. No signal there either, even when he turned the mobile data off and on again. "The wifi's not working either," he muttered since he was always logged onto the staff-only signal at work. "Hold on, let me check online." The work computer was plugged directly into the router, it should work and he headed to the back. Weird weather might be a heavy topic but fog was even more so a sore one with the recent events in town.
Restarting the router didn't do a damn thing and he came back out with a sour expression, waving at Roxy to join him. The last thing he needed was everyone in there getting as antsy as he was feeling.
It wasn’t completely unheard of for their connection to fail, especially in the winter, but Roxy had the same bad feeling gnawing at her gut. While Gavin was in the back checking the computer, Roxy checked out a couple of patrons who decided it was a good time to leave. She was just glad they paid in cash, because if the internet was down, the card reader wouldn’t work either. Roxy wiped down the bar a bit, then glanced over and saw Gavin had emerged. She turned to hurry over to him, her brow furrowed with concern. “Didn’t work?” she murmured.
"No internet connection," Gavin said quietly. "I don't want to sound paranoid but I think something might be wrong, more than just shitty weather." It hadn't been that long since shitty weather had turned people violent so he didn't think she'd dismiss his concern but he still felt a little stupid saying it. "I think we all need to stay inside for now, until it clears. I'm gonna keep trying, can you try Caden and Aaron? Send them a message, tell them to stay indoors."
Roxy remembered the rage-fog very well, so she wasn’t taking this lightly either. It could just be a run of the mill fog, those happened too, but with no cell service or internet, things just felt weird. It was always more concerning when Gavin was outwardly worried about something too. Not much ever seemed to faze him -- unless it pissed him off, at least. Roxy nodded and shot a worried glance toward the door. “I’ll try. Some people just left, said they were going home ... should I turn the Open sign off and lock up? Just in case people are going nuts again?”
Gavin nodded, his expression grim. He was worried about the fog, yes, but there was also the prospect of spending the evening with his drunkard father and that didn't sit well with him at all. "I don't think we'll get more customers until it clears up anyway," he muttered. Alcohol generally wasn't priority for people when the weather turned like this, they wanted to get home or check on their loved ones. The exceptions to that were people who were already right there at the bar.
Roxy just hoped there weren’t poor people out walking or something. At least it was cold out, that meant most folks would be in cars. She nodded and turned on her heel to go do that, pausing to stare out the door’s window as she clicked the sign off and turned the deadbolt. If any of the people inside wanted to leave, she wouldn’t personally stop them, but if there were nutjobs out there again, Roxy wanted them to stay out there. She pulled her phone out again and tried to call Caden -- it didn’t go through, of course -- then tapped out a text to try and send him. Roxy nibbled on her bottom lip as she watched the little ‘sending’ dots, then huffed at the red ‘undelivered’ message. Fuck. Dodging a few questions from a couple of guys at the bar, Roxy went to find Gavin again.
Gavin was in the back, trying Amelia's phone this time. He'd tried Jasper and gotten 'call failed' a couple of times and now he was having the same rotten luck with his daughter. It was hard to fight that sense of panic that was overtaking him, visions of Amelia disappearing into the fog, of black eyed children lying in wait for Jasper. It was just fog and his kids were tough, or so he tried to tell himself. Still he looked a little panicked when Roxy came in from the bar and he wasn't succeeding at dismissing that wild-eyed look off his face. "I can't get through to anyone," he said and he wished he was home, that he could see his kids in front of him. Apparently worrying was the only parental thing he was really good at.
Roxy didn’t have any kids, but she knew exactly what that fear in Gavin’s face was about, and she figured that ‘anyone’ meant Jasper and Amelia. She took a deep breath and let it out through her pursed lips, tapping her phone against her leg. Besides the stress of the weather, an agitated Lucas was never a peach to be around, and Gavin looked pretty upset. “I’m sure they’re fine, they’re home and inside,” she told him, doing her best to sound confident about that. She glanced at the time -- it wasn’t late, so it was possible that the kids weren’t at home, but she didn’t need to mention that possibility. “I can’t either though ... my texts didn’t go through,” she admitted with a little wince. “It’ll be fine though, it’ll pass, they’re smart kids.”
They were smart kids but they hadn't gotten their protective tattoos yet and Gavin couldn't keep an eye on them. He was well aware they had been taking care of themselves for years, Amelia in some fucked up place she wouldn't talk about, but with all the misfortune that kept raining down on the family, he was getting antsy. "They're smart kids," he echoed as he thumbed in a quick message to send to both of them. Maybe it would get through - if not now, then later. "It'll pass soon enough," he added, looking past Roxy out at the door, as if he could see a damn thing from here. "It's too cold out for fog."
“Right? Just another stupid weather thing,” Roxy said, managing to feign some dismissiveness. Nevermind that she was worried too. She wasn’t sure where Caden was, just that he wasn’t working, and she hoped he was home and just hanging out with Aaron instead of driving around somewhere. But her man was capable and smart too, and he could hold his own. “This place doesn’t have a landline anymore, does it?” she asked Gavin, realizing she wasn’t even sure. “Maybe the fog’s just interfering with the cell towers or something and the internet’s just down ...” It was kind of a long shot, but Roxy would keep being optimistic until this bullshit passed.
"Not for a while, no," Gavin said. "Landlines are bullshit these days anyway, they changed something and all the damn phones run on electricity. Remember those big fuck-off phones that were the last to go in a catastrophy? Now they're the first to go, flimsy fucking things." Maybe he needed to justify it to himself why they'd let the landline go the way of the dodo a few years back because right now he really wished they still had it - except maybe for those reasons he had just angrily listed. He was going to end up buying a goddamn ham radio for the whole family one of those days, one in every house because shitty things just kept on happening to them.
Roxy wasn’t sure if that was logical, since the electricity seemed to still be humming along fine, but she wasn’t going to point that out. If things got bad out there, it would go out, that was how it always went. The point was that there wasn’t any old-fashioned communication device to try and reach anybody with. She sighed and muttered, “We need some walkie talkies or something.” Though the power was reliably dodgy when the weather was bad, Roxy couldn’t remember her phone ever not working like this, but maybe that was just selective memory. She slipped it into her back pocket and turned to head back through the swinging door. God only knew who was stealing beer already. “I’ll try to keep the rabble quiet,” she said to Gavin. “Let me know if you reach anybody.”
Gavin nodded and when Roxy was gone, he headed out back to smoke and keep trying. The fog was thicker than he'd thought and something about it made him step back and close the door immediately. It was so thick he couldn't see his car that was parked just a few feet away and it was so damn cold. "Fuck," he grumbled to himself, twirling his cigarette for a few seconds before putting it back in the pack. Nobody was going out in that damn thing and he headed back out to the bar, trying to smooth his expression into something a little less fretful and anxious.
"You see a ghost back there?" Joseph hollered from where he was sitting so Gavin guessed he didn't quite succeed at looking okay. He ignored the old man and made a beeline for the door, peering outside.
"It's too damn cold out there," he said over the few people still inside. "Can't see shit either, we should all stay in here and wait it out. Does anyone in here have a signal?"
There were only three other people in the bar now, one of them being Joseph Lucas, which wasn’t a surprise but was still an annoyance. Roxy couldn’t stand her future father in law, much like his actual children. She saw him all the time because he was always wanting to drink, but being stuck somewhere with him wasn’t appealing at all. Roxy looked up at Gavin from where she was wiping down glasses behind the bar, then out at everybody else. There was a lot of murmuring and phone-checking, but all the answers that came back were negative. Roxy tried to not let that make her nervous, but it did. “Anybody want another round?” she offered, glancing around again.
His dad predictably asked if that round was on the house and Gavin grumbled a 'no' as he got away from the door. Maybe some day they'd feel like it was the end of the world enough for Gavin to give away free drinks but it took a lot more than some cell tower outage and fog for that to happen. "Pay your damn tab, Joseph," he added and joined Roxy behind the bar again, grabbing a beer for himself. "I'll be in the back if you need me," he muttered, fully intending to run a quick backup of the system in case the power went out and fucked something up. "Call me if you need me."
Roxy thought the fog would lift eventually. Or at least lighten up enough to allow people to go home. They all thought that too. But it didn’t. It stayed, pressing thick against the windows, lit with an multi-colored glow from the streetlights and lit-up signs on nearby buildings. Roxy caught herself staring into it more than once, almost hypnotized and wondering if there were people stuck out there with no shelter from the cold.
One of the guys who had left earlier came back within the hour, freezing and shivering, with blood dripping out of his nose. Roxy hadn’t particularly wanted to unlock the door to let him in, but he seemed rational while he was knocking, and it was so cold out. He’d tried to drive home, he said, the fog was thick as soup, there was zero visibility, and even going slow he’d run into a parked car and hit his face on the steering wheel. He’d barely found his way back. Roxy gave him some ice. The TV wasn’t getting signal anymore so they couldn’t check the news, and nobody’s phone had worked for even a second, it seemed like.
The hours rolled on and they discovered through shouted words across the street that their neighbors were in the same situation. Roxy couldn’t even see who she was yelling to, and she couldn’t stay outside long. It made her feel sick to her stomach to know that nobody could contact anyone. Roxy was silently thanking God every hour that the power was staying on and they had heat. Around eleven o’clock, she went to Gavin again fidgeting with the tied strings of her apron. “I think we’re all going to have to spend the night here,” she said to him uneasily. “There’s some stuff in the back we can maybe use for blankets ... I can give everybody some water and peanuts, I guess ...”
Gavin's generosity toward strangers was hard to find but tonight he felt uneasy and like something bad was coming. Something worse at any rate. They'd gotten their weekly delivery that morning so they were pretty well stocked at least and there weren't a lot of people in the bar. "I'll get some fries and cheese for everyone," he muttered with a shake of his head. They couldn't survive on peanuts alone and people got cranky when they were hungry. Everyone was already on edge so adding to that was not a great idea. He checked his phone for the millionth time tonight, only to see his outgoing messages were still undelivered. "Guess it's a good night for charity."
“Hopefully it’ll all clear off by the morning,” Roxy said, though she didn’t sound very convinced that it would. It was hard to sound convinced of anything. Things kept going horribly wrong, and something in Roxy’s gut was worried this was going to turn out the same. Someone would get into an accident in the fog or ... something. She’d told herself a hundred times to calm down, just pray about it, not to be such a pessimist, but that was difficult with this town and this life. “Nothing?” she asked, nodding toward Gavin’s phone. It was a dumb, useless question, because of course he would have said something if there was something to say, but she felt compelled to ask anyway.
"Nothing," Gavin replied with a sigh as he pocketed his phone again. He had turned it off silent, something he rarely did, just in case someone got through and the ringtone was on a very loud setting to cut through any noise that might surround him. He hated doing that but tonight was an emergency. He had broken the 'no smoking inside the bar' rule a couple of hours ago since there was no way he was not smoking this long and a couple of the customers were now chain smoking at the bar so he was considering amending the rule to one cigarette per hour. It was getting stuffy in there. "Are you hungry?" he asked Roxy, giving her a worried little once over. She was holding up well, probably better than he was, but being stuck together overnight just made him fret a little. Caden hated it when she so much as visited him with food and he was probably twice as possessive now that they were engaged.
A similar thought had crossed Roxy’s mind, but she had quickly dismissed it. Surely Caden would understand the circumstances, and it wasn’t like it was just her and Gavin alone. He was stuck too, wherever he was. Roxy hoped it was somewhere safe and inside. If he got himself in trouble trying to get to them or something, she was going to kick his ass. “Yeah, kinda,” she said, giving a strained little half-smile. “But I kinda feel like throwing up too, so it’s a touch and go kinda thing.” She had been through several cycles of intense anxiety and then calm, and her stomach hurt from all the worry. “Maybe it’s stupid to fret so much about fog, but ... I dunno, something feels really wrong about all this, you know?” She knew he knew, she could see it all over her face, but part of Roxy still felt ridiculous about it.
"It's not stupid," Gavin said quietly. He had never been any good at comforting people and for all he knew he should be putting on a brave face and dismissing her worries, he just didn't feel like he could. He was scared and worried and it showed. There had been too much badness lately, this could so easily be just another thing for them to deal with. "Get yourself a coke or something. Beer even. It'll settle your stomach a little, I'll cook for everyone and we'll wait this out."
It was weirdly comforting, coming from Gavin. Roxy knew he would tell her it was stupid if he thought it was. You could always count on that kind of honesty from a Lucas, sharp as it might be. She nodded and gave him a grateful little smile. Maybe she would have a Sprite and a handful of peanuts, see how that settled. It was going to be a long night if this didn’t let up, and she would need her strength to not go completely crazy, stuck all night at the bar with Joseph Lucas and some other random assholes. Gavin usually wasn’t much company, but he felt like her closest friend tonight. “Let me know if you need any help or anything,” she said as she turned to go again.
"You yell for me if these assholes out there get out of hand," Gavin muttered and as much as he wanted to hide out in the back all night, he didn't think it was a great idea to leave Roxy alone out there for too long. He was already fretting about sleep, hoping against hope this damn fog would let up soon so that they could actually close up the bar and go home. For now he'd fry some food and then see what they had in the way of blankets. The last thing he needed was for someone to be sleeping on the pool table.