totalwildcard | Midnight Manor (Office And Then) Kitchen; Monday Noon

Midnight Manor (Office And Then) Kitchen; Monday Noon

There had been a note ~~as provided by TBQ~~ on Midnight's admin office door all weekend long, in Steven's handwriting, that said that Marc, Steven, and Watts were gone for the weekend and to call them if any of the residents needed anything.

Come Monday, someone had upgraded it with a drawing of three stick figures: two of them identical to each other except one was smiling and the other was frowning, while the third one had a hat on his little stick figure head.

This much was obvious to anyone walking through the entrance hall. Behind the closed door, however?

Well, there was... more.

See, Harley had had a busy weekend. Sure, it had started with her nursing a giant hangover from going hard with the cocktails and the delicious shots and everything else at Friday night's party. But once that had cleared, she'd still had oodles left of what she'd decreed to be her extremely free and totally planless weekend. Getting started on and fast abandoning various projects had followed, creating a graveyard of discarded stuff around her apartment, before she'd landed on something that actually stuck: trawling her store for stuff she wanted to bring upstairs to up the interior decorating game around her place.

Which meant she'd looked through the inventory closely to find fun pieces. Which she had, and she thought the apartment was all the better for it!

But because she was Harley, she had also taken several happy hops and skips through her mental association chains and poor impulse control, and now Midnight's office was sporting a beaded curtain in the doorway, even more vintage rubber duckies guarding the booze in the cabinet, and some pin-up pens (too old to actually work, of course, but fun to look at!) in an absolutely horrifying novelty vase for a pen holder on the desk.

Oh and a disco ball in the ceiling! That one was a given, really, since Harley had so many left over from their surprise arrival to the store on Friday. It had unsurprisingly been the most pain in the ass thing to actually get set up, but she'd done it. And she thought she deserved a treat for all that hard work, and her own place was just so far away, so she ordered a pizza right to Midnight.

And then they delivered her like a dozen, so...

Now Harley was in Midnight's communal kitchen sorting through her dozen pizza boxes, trying to find the one she'd actually ordered and had been daydreaming about ever since.

She might be willing to share the others with anyone who happened to come by.

Maybe.

(office modded with kind permission, and like the cut says, anything under it is NFB, thank u! everything outside is fair game, and the post is open for both whoever else has the rights to be in the building, and-or texts and calls!)

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Congrats on your very first sighting of your extremely local stray cat, Arden! Harley, who had been peering into yet another one of the pizza boxes, looked up and flashed her a grin. "Hiya -" Yeah, absolutely no idea what this girl's name was. "- kid!"

But at least this time it wasn't because she'd once known it and then immediately forgotten?

Whatever, Harley gestured to the boxes. "Pizza? Anything's up for grabs that doesn't look Sicilian, 'cause that one's mine."

"Oh, um, thanks," Arden said, opening up a pizza box because it was that or continue to look at Harley, very confused.

Though, ugh, barbeque chicken. Sauce from a bottle and bird and Arden was closing that box and shoving it away hard enough that it nearly knocked another one onto the ground. "You ordered pizza for the whole house?"

"I ordered pizza for me," Harley corrected her, although her eyebrows were already up from witnessing that shove, "and pizza for the whole house showed up. I ain't that nice."

She could be nice, but definitely not that nice.

Also now she was pointing at the box that had offended Arden so. "And what did that poor pizza pie do to you?"

Arden took a second to figure out which answer made her sound crazier, the offense at the barbecue sauce or the chicken thing.

"I, ah. Eating poultry isn't something I can do," she said, trying to make it sound like an allergen without coming out and saying that. "It's barbecue chicken pizza, so I just wanted to get it as far away from me as possible. Sorry." She went and rescued the other one before gravity persevered. "Ah, this one is margherita, still not Sicilian, sorry."

She would likely come to learn that 'sounding crazy' was a non-issue around Harley.

And this one? This one Harley just shrugged off. "As long as you don't toss it onto the floor," she said, with a decisive nod, because this was serious business to her, "'cause even food you can't eat deserves more respect than that."

Then she made a grander-than-necessary gesture towards the four or so boxes she'd already checked. "Anyway, none of these ones were from things that go cluck-cluck or whatever, so ya should be good."

"Oh no, absolutely!" Arden said quickly. "I wouldn't! Not on purpose, I mean. That was just kind of a 'get it away' reflex, I wasn't trying to--"

She just hadn't wanted to puke. Chicken and bottled sauce? Ugh.

"But, uh, this one is fine. Thank you. Um, want some help finding yours?"

Between the four Harley had opened and the two Arden had, they were halfway there!

Harley gave a big shrug, returning her attention to the boxes. "If it's even in here," she said, as she opened the next one. "What is even the point of sending me a million pizzas instead of just the one I ordered, and then on top of that, making me hunt for it?"

And then a thought came to her, mid-grumble, and she looked up again, with wide eyes and extremely raised brows.

"What if it's a treasure hunt?" she asked, almost the whole sentence like a gasp, and 100% serious. "What if one of these boxes has a golden ticket?"

Golden ticket to what exactly, you might ask? Irrelevant.

And here was poor Arden, clearly not having gotten the memo. "Golden ticket to what?" she asked, like an absolute ninny.

"I don't know," Harley replied, but with a tone that suggested that was part of the thrill of it - and that the possibilities were now flashing in rapid succession in front of her eyes. And then she gasped. "Maybe a lifetime supply of pizza!"

Yeah, she was going to practically tear through the last few boxes, now.

Honestly, here on the island? Not the most outrageous thing that could happen.

For her part, Arden was gonna check the Margherita pizza again to make sure there wasn't a ticket in there that she hadn't noticed. "It could be under the pizzas, maybe?" she offered. "Like, for you to find only after you ate it?"

Arden, did you want to be able to take some of the boxes out to the beach or not?

"Do you think they would do that?"

Excellent point.

"I don't know if they'd do anything like a golden ticket at all," she confessed. "These came from Pizza Planet, right? You could probably call Mr. Raiden and just ask?"

Harley's entire face twisted with confusion.

"Who's Mr. Raiden?"

Entirely possible she'd never actually been to Pizza Planet, she'd only just ordered in.

"The guy who owns Pizza Planet?" Arden said. "I know his brother Gray."

Why was that detail important? Who could say.

"I don't even have any of those people's numbers!"

That was only two people, but whatever, Harls.

"But you have Pizza Planet's?"

Well, at least Arden was assuming she did. Maybe she'd used GrubHub?

"No."

Yeah, Harley was very fond of the ease of apps, and looking very grumpy about it.

But she was also opening the second-to-last box, and all of a sudden her deep frown smoothed right out into something much more bright: "Oh, my pizza!"

Arden, in her neverending quest to be helpful, had already started to pull out her phone to offer Harley Pizza Planet's number. And then was just sliiiiding it right back in because they seemed to have brought TicketGate to a successful conclusion anyway.

"Awesome!" she said. "Um. Is it okay if I take this one with me?" she asked. And, considering Henry said that she might come by... "And a veggie if there is one? I'm meeting up with friends on the beach."

"Just two pizzas for friends, plural?" Harley questioned, immediately, like Arden was being foolish.

She was also multitasking by grabbing a slice of the pizza she'd been waiting so long for. She could be sage and prepare to absolutely stuff her face at the same time.

"Take at least a couple more than that."

"Okay..." Arden said, looking around for a plain pepperoni one and maybe just a cheese. She had no idea what people liked. "Umm, how much do I owe you, though?"

Harley blinked at her.

"Owe me?" she asked. "For the pizzas I didn't even pay for?"

Arden nodded. "If you're offering me these pizzas for free with no expectations of debt or repayment, then that's really cool of you and I appreciate it? Otherwise, I'll pay for them."

"Sweetheart, I won't even remember this happened," Harley told her, eyebrows still raised. "You're good, trust me, take 'em."

"Umm..." Arden ducked her head, grinding her toe against the kitchen floor. "I'm sorry to be a pain in the ass since you don't need to share your pizza with me at all, but that only implies that there will be no debts or obligations between us? And, um, I'd really rather it be clear and specific, or just pay. Sorry."

The vaguest memory was floating up towards the surface of Harley's mind, something Marc had said about one of his residents being weird about money...?

Harley was willing to bet it was this girl.

She quirked her eyebrows, but said, "You don't have any kind of a pizza debt with me. Cross my heart and all the other organs, too."

She was weird about debt. Money just happened to be the easiest way to avoid debt.

Arden gave her a relieved smile as she finished collecting the boxes. "Thank you, Dr. Quinn. I appreciate that a lot."

Harley waved a hand in a way that could perhaps be called cheerfully dismissive. A 'pfft, don't worry about it' made flesh.

Although once that gesture was done, she did still point a finger at Arden, for another, very serious reason. "Please, you can call me Harley, you're makin' me feel old."

It was fine when people her age did it! But this was clearly a kid treating her like an adult!

"O-oh!" Arden said. "Okay, I can do that, Harley." And look at her, leaving off the instinctive ma'am, too. "I just don't like jumping to that right away without the okay."

"Weird," Harley decided, but not like she was judging, it was more... shruggy. She'd just been very anti-authority from a young age. (And then had tried to not be for a while, but it hadn't panned out great. Anyway.) "Also, you are...?"

Would she remember the answer? Time would tell!

"Not a 'Doctor' Something, I'm assumin'?"

Whereas Arden was a people pleaser who had tried very hard to mold herself into the perfect child so some foster family would want to adopt her. Hadn't worked out, but longstanding habits were hard to break.

"Arden Finch," she said. "Nice to meet you proper. I think I've seen you here and there doing laundry."

Which had raised some internal iiiiiiiiiiinteresting eyebrows, but Arden was Queen of Minding Her Own Damn Business.

Harley nodded firmly at Arden's name, like she was committing it to memory.

This gesture was not to be trusted, however.

Then she grinned. "That's pretty much why they let me in here!" she said, which wasn't not true? As much as Harley cared about lying, anyway. "I live 'round the corner and my place has all other amenities, but no laundry stuff at all. So I just borrow yours!"

Marc, so generally willing to help out neighbors and give them unfettered access to Midnight and his tenants, all of whom he felt very protective towards.

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

But again! Queen of Minding Her Own Damn Business (mostly so no one would look too closely into hers). "Handy that," Arden said. "Way better than having to lug everything to a coin-op."

Did they even have one of those on the island? Huh.

"Well, I should head out and get situated on the beach," she said, because she remained a very awkward hum--person. "So my friends don't show up and think that I fucked off. But it was good to meet you for real, Harley. And for the pizzas." And for not minding how weird Arden was about debts.

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Midnight Manor (Office And Then) Kitchen; Monday Noon

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