bakerstreet | ( picture prompt meme )

-- Well. [Louise's very dignified snort is followed by an even more dignified cough as she chokes on a stray crumb. Momentarily dying and then she's fine, reaching for her cup of foam to sip at it. ] I didn't think people said bae. Out loud.

[Maybe she's wrong. Possibly, living a life of comfortable isolation has meant Louise has missed some incredible slang breakthrough. She takes another sip and in contrast to Lior's casual lolling, Louise sits upright, legs tucked under her chair. A little rigid, despite the coffee and the laughter.]

Only if they're as hip and with it as I am —

[ Lior tilts his cup at her slightly in a mock toast. ]

— I think you'll find.

[ He goes back to cradling the cup, the relaxed angles of his shoulders as easy as if this hard plastic chair is as comfortable as any seat. ]

Will you pay urn lady in iTunes gift cards? I'd love to see what she'd go for.

Edited (whoops html) 2016-11-03 00:28 (UTC)

You're putting a lot of faith in her finding her glasses in order to read them. [That is to say, Louise has been down this road before and has waited hours for Agatha to realise her glasses had been in her pocket all along. Her cup of milk foam will not last the entire time it will take for her to be ready with what Louise needs, but that's fine. She's found patience through being dry.]

Actually, she's paying me back for a favour I did for her. A while ago. I suspect she was hoping I'd forget.

No wonder she was moving so fast.

[ He's wondering idly if places like these would be worth keeping an eye on. The reasons he felt safe being here are equally as valid for people of interest to come around, no matter how small time or superficial these outfits appear. Louise seems willing to let a couple of details here and there slip loose from her relative self-containment, so Lior doesn't veer from the topic as he could and otherwise might. ]

I suppose favors can be a harder currency than legal access to music.

People do tend to conveniently forget that they weren't acts of charity. [This, too, perhaps says a lot about the kind of person Louise is when not sipping on coffee and indulging strangers in conversation to avoid the rain. Perhaps it doesn't. She places her mug back down onto the table and shrugs. ] I don't really like doing favours at all. But Agatha knew my grandmother.

[A pause, and then, wryly: ] She's already cursed me enough from beyond the grave without me offending her friends, too. [Reaching, she picks off another corner of the scone. ] Old people are very grouchy, especially the dead ones.

[ The fact she's saying it while indulging a stranger in coffee-and-avoiding-the-rain conversation is more meaningful to Lior than the comment itself. Not that he could lay all the meaning out. It doesn't do to draw precise conclusions immediately, no matter how clean the initial information looks. But it does count for something, for the internal and invisible calculations most people think of as instinct. He only listens, drinking every now and then as the coffee has finally reached what he considers optimal temperature, letting the information come in and settle without giving any appearance of mulling over it.

Which he isn't. Not right now, possibly not even in the near future. He's more than willing to leave his life's work and only purpose behind its neatly closed door, so long as it feels appropriate. ]

Well, yes. Nothing more galling than being literally decrepit and falling apart, on top of all the new music and slang and young people refusing to work for free.

At least they've got you to empathise with them. [Her own lazy and vague assessments of Lior can be expanded upon, later. If need be. It's not always easy to tell when an encounter might be significant, particularly when they're on a day partly set aside for not working. Or, mostly not working. In any case, later, while cleaning her urns with brass and aggravated huffing, she might ponder the minute things such as Lior's hollow eyes, his manner and the overall way he had been very easy to talk to. His casual acceptance of the absurd things she says and how that might just be a stranger being polite, but also. Maybe not.

She tries not to be so, but being a witch comes with a certain amount of genetic whimsicality and an attention span that is often occupied with a dozen or so things at once. Coffee, scones and achieving a new personal best at social interaction is a welcome, brief change of pace.

It is a brief, one though. She glances, subtly, to a clock hanging at the back of the service station and then back again. A little longer, she thinks, and perhaps the time spent hanging around Agatha's stall might be reduced to minimal bickering.]

At least!

[ Lior's tone both agrees and implies it should be enough for anyone, curse those pesky hypothetical (not so hypothetical) dead old people. He doesn't inquire after the barely noticeable diversion of her gaze in the same way he's been not-noticing so many things in their conversation. This is one of the more mundane ones, in any case. ]

But it rains on the curmudgeonly and the non-curmudgeonly alike.

[ So he sets the topic back to a path of disengagement, a circular route to the initial basis of their meeting. In which they have, without any discussion or tension, not exchanged names or anything other than very peripheral personal information. ]

Perhaps one day I will be gifted with the ability to change the weather on a whim.

[It is the kind of thing most people wish for at one point in their lives. A fleeting thought if, when looking outside, things are looking particularly grim. However, Louise, like eveyone else, is stuck inside waiting it out. Though slightly more advantageous than the common person, what with her now very dry clothes and slightly frizzing hair.

Perhaps she feels slightly bad about that, given that Lior has been very nice enough to sit with her very patiently and allow her navigate and stumble through being a regular person. Most people would not. ] If you promise not to clutch your pearls, I could -- dry out your clothes. [This, naturally, veers close to the kind impulses that Louise absolutely does not have.] As a thank you for making this very long wait less boring.

And be mobbed by petitions to single-handedly end global warming.

[ If that seemed like a quick response even for Lior's lighthearted rejoinders, it's because he and his siblings used to play that game a lot. One day I'll have this power, they'd say to each other, flashlights under blankets or hidden in closets and attics, and the next one has to tell them how badly it'll go.

He doesn't think about the game much, but all of the old responses remain. Like everything else.

As for the offer Louise makes, his smile crinkles up the corners of his eyes. Highly, possibly disproportionately amused, though he hastens to respond lest she think he's laughing at her or the idea. ]

You don't have to do that.

[ The smile gets a bit crooked on one side before smoothing out into something less knowing, and more glib, pretend prim. ]

I had a nice time, too.

[ With that, he steals the rest of the scone, popping more moderate pieces of it into his mouth. No overt sign of pearl-clutching, and yet, he did say no, even if it's not a hard no. ]

It did seem polite to offer, given I had an eighth of a scone.

[It's a no, but Louise tried and that's really all that matters. She's still a teenager under all her vague attempts at niceness, and trying once is exerting enough effort. A similar approach, perhaps, to offering to do anything that might be temporarily gadly. Once is just fine. And, to him having had a nice time too, Louise doesn't ruin it by insisting on moderate self-depreciation. ] You survived the coffee, though. That's good.

But the true reward was the friendships we made along the way.

[ The plural, hypothetical friendships, which may or may not include the nameless scone stranger and the nameless reluctantly kind teenage witch. Lior is always happy to leave any old thing up to interpretation. ]

Anyway, maybe the ulcer will only develop once I reach home.

I'll try to keep a bit more optimistic about the state of your insides.

[Probably she won't. Another glance at the clock, and then with some regret:] I think I should probably head back before Agatha sneakily closes up shop early.

[ Lior inclines his head in an understanding manner, perhaps also in mock gratitude for her kind thoughts regarding his digestive system. ]

Best of luck.

[ With Agatha. With the urn. With her kind impulses. None of it is definitely implied, he's such a strangely discreet person, and he toasts her with the remnants of his coffee froth. ]

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