You Reject My Advances and Desperate Pleas [February 14]

[dead_black_eyes]

WHO: Lazarus Lawliet and YOU
WHEN: That loviest of days, February 14, pretty much all day
WHERE: Espresso Yourself
WHAT: Someone higher up on the management ladder saw an ironic valentine and thought it would be awesome if baristas handed out hand-made ones to customers on V-Day. As the shop's resident "writer," L was given some scissors and a magazine and tasked with this. The result... well. Tag this, if you really want to see the result.
WARNINGS: L would rather be detectiving. L's grasps on irony, humor, romance, and valentines are also tenuous at best, especially together. This could get dark.



Since hiring L, Espresso Yourself had been a very accommodating employer. Equal opportunity and largely catering to college-aged hipsters, their customer base and employees consisted predominantly of Millennials, and every stereotype had softly saturated much of the shop's attitude toward the generation. L had enjoyed leaning on crutches in the past, finding ways to pardon himself from the ordeals of living life and interacting with other human beings. He had used and abused diagnoses and disadvantages for this purpose, but Espresso Yourself, as a business, seemed determined not only to accommodate his needs, but to boost his self-esteem by making him feel important and necessary.

A young woman in a higher management position had beckoned him aside the day before, offering him an "important project" to keep such a "talented writer" busy. Following his most recent echoes, L thought he knew what actually comprised an "important project," but it had been awhile since his last echo, and it was beginning to frustrate him. He'd been a child-saver, a detective, and he'd been very good at what he did, and every day another pulse didn't occur was a day he was being denied and held hostage by his own life.

Excitedly, the woman had handed him a stack of magazines, some glue, some construction paper, and a pair of blunted safety scissors, explaining the project. Her over-bright eyes and too-wide smile told L that she knew about him, and had therefore dismissed him on an unforgivable level. The condescension was newly unacceptable to a man who knew that his preincarnation had been great, and he resolved to make the project uniquely his own.

Behind the counter, he has a stack of them next to the cash register. They resemble ransom notes more than valentines, but at least his standard look of utter contempt is dialed back a bit. You might actually feel like you can approach the counter today.

Comments

[dead_black_eyes]

"That's true. But everyone had emergencies or were off and no one could come in, so... the options were either allowing me to work a few hours alone, or to close the shop. But a manager will be here, not much longer from now."

[shiromadoushi]

"I call bullshit on that," Bakura smirked. "'Not much longer' in this case gives you at least an hour to bumble alone."

[dead_black_eyes]

"An hour's nothing. Even if it feels like it just crawls by, here, I'm not sure that time is actually relative."

[shiromadoushi]

"That is what relative means, when they talk about time," Bakura pointed out. "How it feels. If just feeling it change was enough to make it actually change, we'd have developed weird methods of time travel or immortality by now."

[dead_black_eyes]

"That's good, at least. If someone had invented time travel or immortality, it would just mean more time to be really, really bored."

[shiromadoushi]

...

"What, is there nothing that you're not ever bored at?"

[dead_black_eyes]

"...chess... and also being a detective. Those are much better than most pursuits."

[shiromadoushi]

"So? When you get out of here, go play chess. Hell, if someone had invented time travel, you could even go back an play chess with yourself. Your ultimate game, right?"

[dead_black_eyes]

"No!" L said, a little more forcefully than necessary. "Haven't you ever heard of the many implications of meeting oneself in a time-traveling scenario? It's never a good idea."

[shiromadoushi]

"That's why you pick a you from 5 hours in the future," Bakura pointed out with a smirk. "And lose because future you remembers what moves he made," he added thoughtfully.

"Besides. You hate your life enough that you'd fuck up your timeline just for a moment of epic because the new timeline couldn't be much worse than what you've got now."

[dead_black_eyes]

"Things can always be worse. Besides, I don't actually hate my life. Especially considering that I'm a detective, now."

[shiromadoushi]

The teen shrugged before taking a small sip of his tea. "Un, true enough. A month ago I'm sure you would have, then. Or give it two months, pre numbering."

[dead_black_eyes]

"I don't like to dwell. Two months ago might as well be ten years ago, for how I feel about it."

[shiromadoushi]

"Mmm..." Bakura agreed. "Same, really. Hell, everything from before April is like another life almost. Kinda weird, that."

[dead_black_eyes]

"Except mine wasn't really a life. It was just an existence. Like Limbo," L commented, taking another sip of too-strong tea that was, in fact, still steeping. "Now it's like there's actually something to work for, and I can get behind that. Especially if I'm going to be saving children, and since I know I can, I don't see what's stopping me from doing it."

[shiromadoushi]

Bakura side eyed the man a moment before shrugging. "Kinda woke you up, huh? Getting some of someone else in your head..."

[dead_black_eyes]

"When you'd rather be just about anyone else, isn't it a dream come true?"

[shiromadoushi]

A small snort. "Only if the douchebags you're remembering are better than you," the teen returned before taking another sip. "90% crap I could do without, 10% pure awesome."

[dead_black_eyes]

"Douchebags?"

[shiromadoushi]

"Do I stutter?"

[dead_black_eyes]

"Don't think so, but you seemed to imply that you're getting pulses from multiple people."

[shiromadoushi]

Bakura snorted. "One pluralization makes you think that? Pushing the detective thing a bit much, are you?"

[dead_black_eyes]

"Maybe. Does that even happen? Do people get pulses from more than one individual?"

[shiromadoushi]

"Who the fuck knows. There's enough shit that makes no sense that doesn't match up that half of us may as well could be."

[dead_black_eyes]

"Do you think you're getting pulses from more than one person? It shouldn't be so hard to give this a straight answer."