Difference between revisions of "Log:Busted Door"

10 November, 2017

A broken door at Alchemy becomes a open invitation

Alchemy

It's afternoon, maybe an hour or so before the bar is due to open, and Poppy is dressed pretty much for business, with her hair pulled up in a messy bun, her uniform spaghetti-top, and the usual pair of jeans and stilettoed boots. She's also holding a clipboard and pen and inventorying what's out for booze behind the bar, muttering occasionally to herself; the harmonics of her voice perhaps thankfully blurring the exact relationship of the people who may have been fucking each other to cause the bar to be such a mess at the moment.

Duncan drifts in from the back room, likewise dressed for work. Or at least wearing a black 'Alchemy' staff t-shirt along with his faded blue jeans and brown hiking boots. Spotting Poppy he changes course for the bar, where he props an elbow on top. "Jake should put in a swear jar." A broad grin accompanies this suggestion.

"Bite your fucking tongue," Poppy says, turning to face Duncan with a smirk. "I'd be goddamn broke, and you'd be out a place to crash unless you want to sleep in my car with me." A pause as she considers that phrasing. "Not /quite/ what I meant, but you get the fucking idea. You want to fucking help, or just Statler and Waldorf at me?" She tilts her head, opalescent eyes inquisitive.

A good, loud laugh is Duncan's answer to the outburst he provokes. "I'm gainfully employed," he reminds the Siren. "Plus, you have a car? Luxury." The phrasing doesn't faze him at all. Or was ignored. He makes a show of considering her question, then gives a shrug. "Okay, I'll help. Since you're asking so nicely."

Poppy sticks her tongue out at Duncan at his comment about being employed, then she laughs. "You, too, can buy a car. Fuck, if you want more money, it isn't like you don't have options." A sideways look at him. As he makes a show of considering her question, she gives a musical snort. "Fuck you," she says cheerfully, handing him the clipboard and pen and nodding to one of the barstools before turning to pick up a bottle off the shelf behind the bar, tilting it to gauge the contents. "Need more Jameson from the back," she says, apparently assuming he's going to write that down.

Tom enters through the frosted door leading into Alchemy.

"Sure. I /could/ shake people down to let them in without ID," Duncan names one of his options. "But that's not really my style. Plus whatever I get has to work for winter in Vermont." There's a smirk in return for Poppy's snort, and he reaches to take the clipboard and pen. "Jameson. Check." He writes down the brand name in a small, neat hand. The two employees are over by the bar, apparently just starting to take an inventory of the liquor.

"You start pulling that shit, and I'm pretty sure Rosa would punch you, even before Jake finds out," Poppy says with a grin. "So if you do, let me know, because I don't have any fucking popcorn down here." She pulls out another bottle, examines it, then replaces it, apparently satisfied with the contents. Another one seems okay, then she grabs one and makes a face. "Who the fuck puts back an empty bottle?" The offending container is placed on the bar and she adds, "More Captain Morgan."

So there's this guy who looks for all the world like he's probably only eighteen or nineteen, right, and he's wearing a bright red linen shirt with a mandarin collar and gold embroidery on it which is like Stick Outsville but also not as obnoxious as the hawaiian shirt he was wearing on Halloween, thank god that's just jeans and hiking boots, and he's got wooden hands and an evening-to-midnight sky, and he's waving his hands really really hard in front of his mouth as he runs full tilt at the doorjamb of the back door and clings there, panting and wide-eyed. "Help-- please-- water-- no, milk! Bread! Something-- mouth-- sorry, fuck-- please--!"

Though it's not quite the right time to be in Alchemy, that's not much of an obstacle to a cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. There's a back door to this place, and Tom knows where it is. Tom has, in fact, been sleaze-hiding by the back door as if he belongs, and his guitar case as his passport, only to find This Guy flailing there and calling for help. "My man," Tom says, and nudges that door open, "This bar is deliciously lax. Hey, yo, Poppy! There's a guy here who's losing his shit. By the way..." He reconsiders explaining the Captain Morgan empty bottle problem in two seconds, and leaves that aside to hover. Poppy will figure out where the rum has gone or she won't. She'll have someone throw him out or she won't...

"I'd flatten her in ten seconds," Duncan says off-hand to Poppy. "I'd feel right bad about it, though." He shrugs at her rhetorical question and dutifly begins to record 'Captain Morgan' on the stock list. The appearance of someone in bright clothes running across the room? That get his attention right away, and the bouncers head turns, tracking Edmond as he runs over to cling to the door. Both brows go up as Duncan stares at the guy, and then clears his throat. "You got ID?" he asks, as if he didn't even hear the plea for water. Then Tom chimes in and Duncan gives the newest arrival an even more dubious look. But Tom knows Poppy, so that's where he turns for answers. "Does this happen a lot?" he asks the bartender.

Poppy looks over at the flailing form of Edmond. "Literally, what the fucking fuck," she says, not /quite/ staring at the elemental. "Did you never learn the lesson of 'don't put every fucking thing you find in your mouth?'" Again, phrasing; apparently it's one of those days. At least it seems she knows the individual in question. And then Tom appears and the siren arches an eyebrow. "Thank you, Captain Obvious," she deadpans, although the corners of her lips twitch with humor at that. A look to Duncan and she makes a face. "Apparently nobody's in the kitchen right now and someone left the back door open, since it's clearly a fucking free-for-all."

The scent of Too Much Garlic follows waftily a moment later, and Edmond's legit flapping his wooden hands like ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS at Duncan, and PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD at Poppy, and he grips Tom's arm for a second before he processes the fact that he did just run through a kitchen, and he immediately turns on his heel and flails for the sink. There is the sound of running water a moment later. Should Tom turn to look, or Duncan follow him in search of ID, Edmond can actually be found with his head in the sink, on tiptoes, craned around so that the tap water is actually pouring into his mouth. Like he's Pauly Shore teaching Brendan Fraser how to weeze the juice.

"Fucking Free-for-All is my name on the Twitter!" Tom claims cheerfully, probably without a single trace of honesty. "And your guys leave your back door propped like it's a fucking epidemic of wander-on-by, Poppy, my love. This is not a complaint. I play Lady and the Tramp every chance I get, except I'm not a goddamn dog." He is, however, a cat, and utterly unable not to be curious. He will die curious. Hopefully not tonight. The Garlic Madman doesn't seem homicidal, a good sign. So of course he watches the guy trying to drown himself or the garlic, whichever comes first. "You know, it's a great night when I'm not the weirdest thing to sneak in your back door?" By his standards, maybe.

Decidedly bemused, Duncan frowns to himself and lets the bulk of the banter blow right by him. "Right..." he says for Poppy's explanation about the kitchen. In fact he does set the clipboard and pen aside and start after Edmond, propping the kitchen door open to see what the hell is going on back there now. He shakes his head, deciding the guy can flail in the sink without needing to be dealt with, and then gives a chuckle for Tom's comment. "You can say that again." Which draws his focus back to Poppy. "Something you forgot to tell me about this job?" he calls back to her.

Poppy blinks again as Edmond almost immediately bolts back into the kitchen before muttering something under her breath, the harmonics of her voice distorting it into something unintelligible and likely far prettier than the content of the words would contain. She looks over at Tom, then snorts musically before she informs the cat, "Careful, or I'm going to fucking dragoon you into back door guard." PHRASING. "Around here, there is absolutely no fucking shortage of weird," she says frankly to Tom, even as she sways her way after Duncan and through the kitchen door. "Apparently I forgot we're still fucking short on staffing," she says acidly to the storm-elemental before she reaches the kitchen and again, doesn't /quite/ stare at Edmond. "Are you /trying/ to drown yourself? We have better ways. I mean, really." Despite her words, she's moving towards the industrial refrigerator.

Kiril enters through the frosted door leading into Alchemy.

"Glublub," says Edmond, then coughs, and takes his now-dripping head out from under the faucet and shuts the water off, then wrings his mop of curlyish half-short hair out over the sink. Cough cough. "No, sec-- I'll show you-- worth it." He straightens up, and is now only dripping dark spots on his red shirt a little bit instead of all over the floor. He's still panting a little bit, and then he jams his hand in his pocket and comes up with a wrinkled twenty-dollar bill, triumphantly! "It was just a clove of raw garlic. Well, elephant garlic. So it was about the size of a head of regular garlic. But that meant it was supposed to be milder! But it was still raw. And now I smell like garlic. But thank you very much for the use of your sink, my mouth is no longer burning." His accent, for those who have not met him, is British-Malayali.

Kiril looks at you.

"I have never been dragooned, but if it involves the veterinarian, I don't know you that well," Tom replies to Poppy mildly. "No back door is worth it." He gives Duncan his best gotta-love-me grin, then swivels his head right back to Edmond. "You will do all that for a twenty dollar bill?" Tom asks, in what is sure to be an innocent manner. They say a sucker is born every minute, and 2017 would prove that true several times over a week, but it's not every day an entertaining one just up and introduces himself in this particular fashion.

The door being open and the sound of water is apparently an invitation. Because a furry head comes nosing in - a mask of white and gray, earnest brown eyes, and a twitching black nose. The dog, some sort of spitz, peers around in search of someone or something. HE's got a collar with a dangling ID tag, and some sort of vest on. A dog coat?

"You ate a clove of garlic the size of your fucking head for twenty bucks," Poppy says, pausing on her way to the industrial fridge and just /looking/ at Edmond for a long moment. "While I'm glad your mouth is no longer fucking burning, fucking seriously?" The blonde shakes her head, even as she finally remembers about the back door. As the dog pokes its head in, she sighs. "Hello, mister dog. We are not yet open for fucking business. Unless you want to chase a cat around." She smirks, opalescent eyes glittering at that, even as she changes direction to see why the door isn't closing properly.

"No kidding," is Duncan's reply when Poppy tells him about the short staffing. He too stares at Edmond, more quizzical than concerned now. "Well ... it didn't kill you," he says after the wooden-handed man has pronounced his victory. Tom's grin is met with an eye-roll, followed by a laugh. "I'll take your word for that, pal." Then it's time to try and sort things out. "Okay. Show's over," he says in a louder, deeper tone. "Everybody out of the kitchen." Which isn't directing them to /leave/ the bar, per se. The arrival of a literal dog at the door, even as Duncan moves that way, stops the man. He stares at the animal, then turns back to Poppy and lofts his brows. Are they an animal shelter now?

"Not the size of my head, the size of a head of garlic," Edmond explains, miming it with his hands. Maybe the size of a quarter of a softball. "And I really needed the twenty bucks." He pauses, eyeing Tom for a second, then eyeing the door in the doorway. But then Duncan's ordering everyone out of the kitchen, and he deftly slips into the bar proper and gives Poppy a cheerily evaluating glance. "You're short-staffed. I need a job. Obviously. I can't support my silk habit on odd jobs and monster-hunting. And I learn very very quickly! And I could learn even more quickly if we cheat~" he offers as he walks backwards.

"Let's get one thing straight," Tom says after a long look at the dog. "If we're both doing Lady and the Tramp, you have to be the Tramp. I get top billing." It might just be that he's trying to bring on a literal dog and pony show in Poppy's kitchen to see if she'll throw a shoe at him. Or he's just completely and totally amused that this is all happening WITHOUT him arranging it. Chaos is Tom's favorite flavor after all. "Hey, if we have to go out of the kitchen, does that mean we're going in the bar?" The tree-man is going in the bar! This means Tom is following. Did you know your bar is open, Poppy? This is really the trouble with serving Lost.

The dog looks at Edmond, looks at Poppy, looks back at her. He breaks into a doggy smile, tongue lolling a little. "I would like a little water, please," he says, in a deep, absurdly mellow voice. "Just a drink. Then I'll go away." He squeezes in past the door - attached to the vest he's wearing (which when seen in full declares him a working service dog who belongs to a veteran of Aghanistan), is a collapsible silicone dish, dangling from a carabiner. "I even have my own dish," he explains, brightly. The gray patterns on his fur seem to shift, like shadows on snow.

"I'm pretty sure you could come up with other fucking options for money," Poppy says dryly to Edmond, then she snorts musically in amusement at his offer. "Look, I'm /not/ the person in charge of the goddamn hiring and firing around here; that's Jake, and he's not here right now. You can talk to him when he's back. For now, into the bar and you can help me fucking inventory." She looks back to Tom. "I have a lovely blue collar for your neck, if you're going /that/ damn route," she informs the cat cheerfully. "You can also help with inventory. Inventory means /not/ drinking shit." Looking back to the dog, she gives it a wry smile. Apparently talking dogs don't faze her. "You look familiar. Weren't you in the bar with someone the other night?" she asks it, even as she grabs the bowl.

"Oh if you're going to talk," says Edmond in a faintly offended voice to the dog, and then lifts his hands up at Poppy in defense, starting to laugh. He gives Tom a sidelong look of relatively benign mischief, but then nods emphatically to Poppy. "Right-o, will do! Do you want me checking bottles or writing things down?" She's seen his handwriting. While it might lend a classily antique air of mystery and grace, it's probably not helpful for actually keeping track of shit.

"Oh, hey," Tom says, looking down benignly on Poppy. "Are you the Tramp tonight?" Phrasing, kitty. Phrasing. It's right on the line of dirty. It's not a party until someone hits him with a shoe. "Do you actually have to count the bottles if we drink them, though? It will make it so much easier," he suggests. It's clear he's willing to help inventory, though it may be more 'help' than actual assistance.

"Thank you," says the dog, still polite. "I appreciate it. YEs. I remember your smell. I was there with Kiril. He'll be along in a moment," he says, wagging a curled tail. And just like that, from the road beyond, presumably where the dog came from, is a half-panicked shout, "Beren!?" "Pardon," says the dog, sticking his head back out the door to bark back.

A moment or two and the Winter appears behind Beren in the door.

Poppy moves to fill the bowl with water before setting it back down for the dog, inside and to the right of the door, out of the way. "Checking bottles," Poppy says over her shoulder to Edmond. "But wait until I get there; an inaccurate inventory is a shitshow." She snorts at Tom's comment. "Fuck you," she says cheerfully to the cat before adding, "And if you drink it, you fucking bought it." As Kiril appears in the doorway, she sighs; the siren is starting to look slightly frazzled, even as Duncan moves to allow the Winter easy entry before the storm elemental goes back to trying to determine just why the door won't close, even after moving the object propping it open. "Hi. I'm Poppy. Feel free to join your friend, but I think you're going to be last person for the fucking pre-show I didn't know we were having today."

To his credit, Edmond just gives Poppy a double thumbs-up and stays quiet and out of the way until she arrives with the inventory sheet; he's not going to further add to the chaos. He says, when she does get over there, "I can go if it'd be easier, I'll come back when Jake's around. For the record, I do have an ID, and it does say I'm twenty-one. I mean I'm actually a hundred and fifteen, right? But that won't do at all." Then he crouches down to start checking bottles under the counter, but leaves a hand up on it just in case she does tell him to scram.

"At least the dog didn't lose his person. If that guy was in the pound, we'd really have some problems," Tom says. He just never shuts up. And it's clear he's not meaning to help, either; he scoops up a bottle and checks if there's a swallow left in it, only to come up empty. "It was like this when I picked it up," he tells Poppy, this time with sincerity that might be actually real. "Let's hope it's not the booze gremlins. I was just stopping in awhile," he says. "Not for work, but to be friendly." Not at open hours, but who's oounting?

Beren starts slurping eagerly, shoving his muzzle in the dish. "Sorry about that," Kiril says, apologetically. "Bear, you coulda waited," he says to the dog. "I was thirsty now," replies the Malamute, licking droplets from his short whiskers. "I smelled the water," Kiril rolls his eyes. "Sorry again," he says. "Uh, I'm Kiril, this is Beren. Who is a pushy furball."

At Edmond's comment, Poppy rubs her face, perhaps somewhat relieved that thus far the only employees present are Lost. "Right," she sighs, then gives Tom a sideways look. "I have this feeling I am going to fucking regret this. It's like a second sense, except it's a first sense, because I /have/ some common sense and right now it's screaming at me that I'm going to fucking regret this." Looking back at Kiril she offers him a hand. "Nice to meet you. How's your handwriting?" A lopsided, if somewhat sharp-toothed smile.

"Too many cooks," Edmond says with gentle amusement, and straightens up. "Sorry about complicating your day. Thanks for letting me put the fire out. I'll be back later, when you're open." He may be an elemental, but he can still read people most of the time-- and there really is too much going on with an almost literal dog and pony show before open. He slips around Poppy, then around Tom; he waves to them, then nods pleasantly to Kiril and Beren, and vanishes out back through the kitchen to bypass poor Duncan and his broken door problems.

Tom observes Edmond leaving, and remarks to Poppy: "I feel like I'm somehow not sufficiently weird enough for your bar after hours now. Did he seriously break in with a mouthful of garlic, drown himself, tell you to give him a job and then leave? And he almost got the job, that's amazing. I'm gonna try that at my next interview." Reason number 3928 why Tom has lost out on yet another job.

"Yeah, actually," Kiril says, puzzled, mismatched eyes on Poppy. "Uh, why?" Beren finishes his dish of water, and looks up, wagging his tail. "Thank you," he tells Poppy, as Kiril picks up the empty dish, pops it back out of shape, and refastens it to Beren's vest.

Poppy gives Edmond a somewhat bemused look. "Getting pretty fucking close, anyways; I'll catch you later." She then looks back over at Tom, holding up a hand and pointing a finger at him. "Do /not/ fucking try harder. Seriously." Turning her attention to Kiril, she blinks curiously. "'Yeah actually' what? That your handwriting is halfway fucking decent?"

Blink. Blink. Tom doesn't quite feign innocence. But he does master that particular empty stare that cats get when they refuse to comprehend simple concepts. No, don't try harder. No, don't eat your own butt fluff. Don't eat that. Don't hide that in my shoe. Are you barfing up a hairball? All these complicated things, like what Poppy tells him. "I wasn't applying at your bar,' he observes. "I can make sure if I do, I don't try so hard," he says. "But I can leave the inventory with the man and the dog here. One of them's sure to write better than I can." He works hard at dodging the work. Settinng that empty bottle somewhere it's not meant to be, he starts sauntering for the back door again. "I'll be back!" Promise or threat...

Oh, god, they're looking at him. Kiril steps out of the way to let Tom and Edmond past. "My handwriting's good, I mean," he says, all but stammering. "It is good," Beren confirms. "Very clear. He's teaching me to read and he writes things out for me to practice on."

The siren gives the cat a bemused look as well; apparently it's the night for that kind of thing. "Right," she says. "I will definitely fucking keep that in mind." Poppy then smirks as Tom clearly heads for the door as well. "I'll remember you said that," she says. Promise or threat indeed. Looking back to Kiril, she gives him a sympathetic look, perhaps sensing the chaos the poor Winter has stumbled into. "I was being /mostly/ facetious," she says with a grin, then blinks at Beren. "Well. Reading /is/ fucking useful," she concedes.

"Yes, yes, it is!" Beren agrees, curled tail wagging with fervor. "If you need to write something down, he's your man." As if Poppy weren't perfectly capable on her own. "Anyhow, we should be going," Kiril says, as he reattaches a leash to Beren's collar. "Sorry to, uh, wander in like that." He's contrite, barely able to look her in the eye. Beren, on the other hand, winks, before letting Kiril lead him out the door. Dog, not sorry.

Poppy grins at the dog, clearly entertained, even if Kiril gets another sympathetic look. "Right, then. Feel free to come back again when we're actually fucking open," she says cheerfully, adding, "Nice to meet you both." Beren gets a wink as well, even as the siren moves to help Duncan sort out the door so it closes properly, since clearly an open one is MUCH too much of an invitation. For everything.