Flan is having a great time, glass with some delicious looking sunset-coloured concoction in her hand, dancing up a storm in a Chucky costume. April is in the DJ booth, playing whatever suits their mood (Dancing With Myself), head down so their face can't quite be seen.
The moment Flan spots Edgar, she yells with delight and runs over to give him a hug (you can't cuddle a guy for hours without getting to the hugging stage). "You're heeeeeere! Hiiiii! Thanks for coming! Have you had a chance to go through Spirit Halloween yet? I'm like, so delighted that we know it's October now!"
"Yeah! Okay like, April filled me in on this one, apparently the store just like switches out for all of October, and then we get the TBs back!" She sips her drink and starts dancing a little as they chat, just wiggling her shoulders. "Did you have Halloween in any of the places you've been? It's like, my favorite holiday!"
"Not really," he admits. "In the fairy castle they had something called Samhain, and people there said that was sort of like Halloween? But it wasn't, like, fun."
"Ooooooh Samhain! Yeah that one usually isn't fun! And like, I hear things were fucked last year, but it seems okay this year! Anyway, modern Halloween basically involves just dressing up in costumes, and going trick or treating, which is where you knock on people's doors and they gotta give you candy or you can vandalize their house but like, in a chill way!" She grins and gestures to her bloody overalls. "I'm going to dress up all month in costumes! I'm Chucky today, which is a killer doll!"
He's grinning a little, again. "So if you're gonna dress in costumes all month, does that mean people have to give you candy all month? Cause --" He pats theatrically at his jacket pockets. "I haven't got any on me."
Flan laughs and leans in. "You can give me a kiss, that's a treat! Or if that's coming on too strong, then I'll settle for a really solid high-five! Oooorrrr I can play a trick on you!"
"I'll still make some promises!" Flan offers, flirting shamelessly. "I promise that it'll be one kiss - unless you wanna give me more! And I promise that it doesn't mean we have to do anything else, but if we're both having fun then I'm up for it! And most importantly, I promise that I like having friends even more than dating, so we'll still be chill no matter what!"
"Couldn't ask for better," he chuckles, and leans in to offer the kiss.
He's trying to make it something warmer and a little longer than a swift peck, but nothing too immediately aggressive either; something for which the word treat feels right.
It's the perfect treat-kiss - not too short, not too long, friendly with plenty of room to grow. Flan is more than happy to take it, and to beam at Edgar afterwards. "Perfect! Be warned, I'm totally trick-or-treating you the rest of this month!"
She also waggles her own glass at him. "You want anything to drink? They got everything here! I'm like, doing some fruity drinks tonight! This one is like, 80% tropical juices I think!"
"I'm making them!" She grins and heads straight to the bar. Flan's got her ingredients out, which includes some cartons of various juices and some fresh ones too. "It's basically just a Screwdriver, so it's sooooo easy!"
She starts with the shot of vodka, then starts adding a mix of orange, pineapple and mango juice, and then adds a few maraschino cherries to the top. "Ta-dah! Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy!"
"... Huh," he says with a faint curl of smile as he takes the drink. "Knew someone once who used to say that. Had to explain to us kids what a lemon was and why you squeezed it."
A sip of the drink, and his smile widens. "Oh that's good."
"Oh shit, no lemons, huh? You were were from a fruitless post-apoc world? Oh maaaaan, fucking RIP." She commiserates, but doesn't get too down about it 'cause hey, worlds are the way they are and also like, Edgar doesn't seem like somebody who enjoys being pitied or whatever. "I'm glad we've got lots of fruit here, and fresh everything basically!"
Flan finishes her own drink and starts mixing another. "Oh my god right? I love a fruity drink! Anything sugary honestly! I've got suuuuch a sweet tooth when it comes to all things drinkable!"
"Fruit drinks, fruit desserts, fruit anything." Edgar grins. "Maybe not fruit soap. Saw a shampoo once that had like, coconut and strawberries in it? And I was like, why would you put that in stuff to wash your hair with when you could eat it?"
"Because then you get to smell like something tasty too! Oh my god, when I was a teen, there were these body sprays that made you smell like vanilla sugar and creamsicles and all kinds of sweet stuff! I wasn't sure how much to use, so I used to spray myself down and there would be this just cloud of fruit scent following me around." She laughs to herself, and hops up on the counter to sip her own drink. "I was as bad as a teen boy with Axe body spray! Except I did actually shower so like, not quite as bad!"
"Oh, duh! Sorry, it's like a really, really strong men's deodorant that teenage boys use instead of showers! They spray it on them so and think it hides their body odour, and it super, super doesn't! ... I just realized I don't know if you guys had deodorant. Did you? How far into your apoc where you? If it bums you out, we totally don't have to chat about it, but it won't bum me out to hear about it!"
Somehow, the words Front and Tail trigger a memory, and Flan snaps her fingers, pointing at Edgar. "Wait, wait wait wait, were you on a train?? Was your world on a train in a like, endless snowy apocalypse??"
"Sorta! So, you know how sometimes something real in one world is a story in another? Like how Dr Watson is a real person on the ship, but he's also in a bunch of stories? Your universe is like that in my universe. We have this movie called Snowpiercer, and it's like, directly about the part in your world where guys left the Tail and headed for the Front to get back a kid who got stolen." Flan has to bring her voice down some 'cause it's always heavy hearing that your world is fiction in another, and also Edgar did say he got killed at some point and Flan is feeling bad that she might have saw that happen and totally didn't realize it was him.
Please forgive her Edgar, but Chris Evans was in it and he had a beard.
Oooooofff yeah okay, okay, he's learning this one the hard way.
"Fuuuck right, two kids, and- yeah." Flan gives him a sympathetic look and pats his shoulder. "I'm really sorry man. I totally didn't put it together until just now. And I won't say anymore about it unless you ask, 'kay? I know it's a lot to find out someone else knows way, way more about your world than you know about theirs."
He gets another pat on the shoulder and then Flan sets her own drink in front of Edgar. "Here, I'll be your personal bartender tonight and make sure you get home safe. It's the least I can do."
"It stopped when the train did." Bad joke but it's true...
Flan grabs the vodka and starts making another drink. "Okay so... stop me if this is too much but here's what I remember. Uhhhhh god I'm so sorry, I'm shitty with names, he was played by Chris Evans, the bearded guy who lead the Tail-"
(Curtis, Edgar supplies.)
"RIGHT, Curtis! So and the security guy- yeah Namgoong and Yona make it to the front, and the evil bald dude- Wilford! So Wilford reveals that it was all rigged from the start, and he was behind the rebellion as an excuse to kill a bunch of the Tail. This is also when we find out that the train's running out of parts, so they're replacing the parts with the kids, which is why Timmy and Andy got taken and like, Curtis sticks his arm in the machine to rescue Timmy but they can't rescue Andy, and then they blow up the engine and Curtis and Namgoong shield Yona and Timmy with their bodies, and the train derails into the snow. Yona and Timmy survive, and when they leave the train, they see a polar bear in the distance, so you know that they've got a chance out there and they won't freeze to death. And that's the end."
Edgar's quiet during her retelling, only supplying the names as she brings up the people. There's a short silence after she finishes speaking.
He knew most of this already, from meeting Curtis at Milliways. But Curtis couldn't tell him what happened after his own death; he had only hope that Timmy and Yona might have survived, that something could live in the cold outside when the train was gone.
And now Edgar knows, and has no way to tell him.
He wipes a hand across his mouth, rests his forehead against his knuckles. "Thanks," he whispers.
Flan slides off the bar and just pulls him into a tight hug. "I'm sorry. I wish you'd gotten to hear this from somebody who was like, really into paying attention to everything. That would have been way nicer."
And with a pat on the back, she adds- "Y'wanna just pass out in the pillow pit for a while? I feel like this is a pillow pit situation."
"Oh my god, absolutely! Here, you give me like, three minutes, I'm going to put your drink in a water bottle so you can drink while lying down. It's top-tier, totally worth it." He gets another tight hug and pat.
And true to her word, Flan fills two water bottles (and grabs some regular water bottles 'cause hydrate or diedrate) and teleports Edgar and herself straight to the pillow pit. It might not be the flirty little maybe-hook-up she envisioned when she texted Edgar but honestly, chilling out with a dude while he's processing a lot of emotions is pretty good too.
omg 🥺 i want some sooooooo bad r they in the kitchen??
im SO GLAD TO BE BACK urg it was so bad just like visiting the WORST of my uncles old evil guy friends!! some guy named number 2 💩 runs the place & hes a HUGE control freak & a bunch of ppl got brainwashed or smth idk i kept my head down! anyway expect everyone to be SUPER BUMMED OUT cuz there was a big fight at the end & i dipped but u know some ppl killed each other during it
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now ?
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It's more like five or six minutes before he cautiously puts his head into Rainbow Renly's, looking for Flan.
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The moment Flan spots Edgar, she yells with delight and runs over to give him a hug (you can't cuddle a guy for hours without getting to the hugging stage). "You're heeeeeere! Hiiiii! Thanks for coming! Have you had a chance to go through Spirit Halloween yet? I'm like, so delighted that we know it's October now!"
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"Spirit Halloween, that's the thing where the clothes store used to be and now everything's all black and orange and that? What's that about?"
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"See now, if this were Samhain I'd want you to make some promises about that kiss. But as it is ..."
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He's trying to make it something warmer and a little longer than a swift peck, but nothing too immediately aggressive either; something for which the word treat feels right.
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She also waggles her own glass at him. "You want anything to drink? They got everything here! I'm like, doing some fruity drinks tonight! This one is like, 80% tropical juices I think!"
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And, with a head tilt to look at her glass: "What's the rest of it, any idea?"
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If she's making them, he's going to watch -- mostly to learn how it's done, but definitely a little bit because he likes looking at her.
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She starts with the shot of vodka, then starts adding a mix of orange, pineapple and mango juice, and then adds a few maraschino cherries to the top. "Ta-dah! Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy!"
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A sip of the drink, and his smile widens. "Oh that's good."
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Flan finishes her own drink and starts mixing another. "Oh my god right? I love a fruity drink! Anything sugary honestly! I've got suuuuch a sweet tooth when it comes to all things drinkable!"
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(He has a very strong personal referent for axe and it is not related to personal hygiene.)
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A pause. "Tanya once said they for sure still had soap, cause anytime someone Front came back to the Tail section, they were always clean."
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Please forgive her Edgar, but Chris Evans was in it and he had a beard.
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"Two kids," he says, numbly. "Andy and Timmy."
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"Fuuuck right, two kids, and- yeah." Flan gives him a sympathetic look and pats his shoulder. "I'm really sorry man. I totally didn't put it together until just now. And I won't say anymore about it unless you ask, 'kay? I know it's a lot to find out someone else knows way, way more about your world than you know about theirs."
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He still sounds a bit numb; he's still staring at her, or past her, or through her, like he's not sure what he's seeing is real.
And then abruptly --
"A movie?"
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After a moment he remembers that he's got a drink in front of him, and downs about half of it at one go.
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And pauses.
"Did, uh. Christ," muttered even lower, "I got no fuckin idea how to ask this."
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He looks up at her. "The movie. How did it -- like, where did it stop?"
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Flan grabs the vodka and starts making another drink. "Okay so... stop me if this is too much but here's what I remember. Uhhhhh god I'm so sorry, I'm shitty with names, he was played by Chris Evans, the bearded guy who lead the Tail-"
(Curtis, Edgar supplies.)
"RIGHT, Curtis! So and the security guy- yeah Namgoong and Yona make it to the front, and the evil bald dude- Wilford! So Wilford reveals that it was all rigged from the start, and he was behind the rebellion as an excuse to kill a bunch of the Tail. This is also when we find out that the train's running out of parts, so they're replacing the parts with the kids, which is why Timmy and Andy got taken and like, Curtis sticks his arm in the machine to rescue Timmy but they can't rescue Andy, and then they blow up the engine and Curtis and Namgoong shield Yona and Timmy with their bodies, and the train derails into the snow. Yona and Timmy survive, and when they leave the train, they see a polar bear in the distance, so you know that they've got a chance out there and they won't freeze to death. And that's the end."
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He knew most of this already, from meeting Curtis at Milliways. But Curtis couldn't tell him what happened after his own death; he had only hope that Timmy and Yona might have survived, that something could live in the cold outside when the train was gone.
And now Edgar knows, and has no way to tell him.
He wipes a hand across his mouth, rests his forehead against his knuckles. "Thanks," he whispers.
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And with a pat on the back, she adds- "Y'wanna just pass out in the pillow pit for a while? I feel like this is a pillow pit situation."
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"Yeah," he mumbles into her shoulder, "pillow pit 'd be favorite."
A beat. "Can I bring my drink?"
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And true to her word, Flan fills two water bottles (and grabs some regular water bottles 'cause hydrate or diedrate) and teleports Edgar and herself straight to the pillow pit. It might not be the flirty little maybe-hook-up she envisioned when she texted Edgar but honestly, chilling out with a dude while he's processing a lot of emotions is pretty good too.
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did anything cool happen here?
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no nothn cool happend xcept max made a bilion cookies
what about u ?
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im SO GLAD TO BE BACK urg it was so bad just like visiting the WORST of my uncles old evil guy friends!! some guy named number 2 💩 runs the place & hes a HUGE control freak & a bunch of ppl got brainwashed or smth idk i kept my head down! anyway expect everyone to be SUPER BUMMED OUT cuz there was a big fight at the end & i dipped but u know some ppl killed each other during it
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want to meet there ?
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