logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

Entry tags:

EVENT LOG: LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: november 5-7.
content: use that bonfire!
warnings: n/a. please cw tags appropriately.

maybe we can bring back the light

Shortly after Robin's network post, a magnificent display of fireworks will start to launch from the lighthouse! They're odd-looking, though, given that they glow but don't cast light. But still cool to watch! The best place to view the show is at the beach, but some of the bigger explosions can be seen just over the treetops from town, and they can certainly be heard from all over Beacon. Exciting! Maybe! Robin sure thinks so! The fireworks will continue for a couple of hours before a very colorful grand finale, after which the lighthouse beam will shine red again for the duration of the event.

Meanwhile, back in town, Rastus has set up a magnificent display of his own. Torches are set up in a wide circle around the bonfire (which looks a bit less bright, given how many torches he's pulled from it), ready for the taking. You don't even have to talk to him first! He's lingering nearby, though, and... has looked more excited about things in the past. This is gonna be a bookkeeping nightmare, he can tell.

In any case, the torches are free for the taking, but do remember to report any torch movement to the event header on the item requests page. Don't let Rastus's fears become reality!

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As long as he doesn't get his ass killed by hostile spirits, the Soldier can respect that. Just be careful, Bodhi. "As long as you know where the important shit is." And they're pretty sure he does, since they met him at the most important place, and the other two big ones are hard to miss. "Thank you for helping with the docks. By the way. I saw Arizaphale trying to shove tea at you."

Oh, right, the pale, overly friendly one. Bodhi shrugs a little, still unsure how he feels about that. But the docks themselves were absolutely soothing. "Was, um, just glad to have something to do. And, I--I like tea."

"You like tea? Bodhi. Please tell me that's cuz you never had coffee." For a moment, their voice goes a bit Brooklyn. They're teasing, of course. (But at the same time: tea? I know, Sergeant, I know.)

His attention is caught by the slight shift, but he hasn't clocked Soldat as nearly as weird as he probably should. At least he's been around humans from earth long enough to get the gist. "Caf--Coffee is fuel, tea is art." He is a rabid abuser of stims, not all of them as comfortably legal as caffeine. His blood vibrates. That doesn't mean it tastes good.

That actually earns Bodhi a laugh. Not a loud or long one, but still, genuine appreciative amusement. The Sergeant laughs a little easier than the Soldier. "Okay. Maybe I can give you that one. But coffee can be, too. I'm gonna hafta make you some and prove it to ya."

Even Bodhi finally cracks a smile. Most people just find that line pretentious. "I've had most of my caf in spaceport cantinas and Imperial canteens, what do I know." Which is a concession from such a tea nut.

It is pretentious. But sometimes pretentious fits. And is a little funny. "Come on. Tour can wait. I'm making you some really good coffee." The accent is gone again, back to the Soldier with a more sedate smile, but still amiable. They change course back towards Aziraphale and Crowley's house. At least neither of them are home, right now, so the Soldier's first time bringing literally anyone home can go unremarked. "Hand-ground beans and everything."

Getting shanghaied to make a point in the most absurd way possible, while slightly perplexing, is the normal kind of silly, strangely normal in the alien forest with no daylight in defiance of all planetary motion. And stranger still to Bodhi. This is the sort of thing that might have felt normal to him, well, a matter of weeks ago, really. Up until he decided to defect and blow up his entire life, the scraps of good with all the bad. He's prepared to have fun, but it feels a bit unnatural, easy to misstep somehow. The person who ran off with friends to do something silly is a distant stranger now.

He tries to hold his own, and only sounds a little stiff. "All it tastes like is tannins and being awake too early." Yes, this is how teasing works.

(The fuck are tannins? No clue.) "Not like this, it won't," they promise, and open the door, stepping in and doing the customary sweep to make sure nothing's changed, then pulling their lantern down to set on the kitchen counter and letting Bodhi come in behind them. The lantern illuminates the immediate area, at least, though the stairs up are lost in shadow.

The place doesn't look anything like somewhere the Soldier would pick to live. It's full of knick-nacks and plants and weird little bits of art on the walls. Everything is slightly over-stuffed. They even look a little awkward, all layered up and with the metal arm, in the midst of such alien decor. "You can sit. If you want."

Bodhi is inclined to keep being stubborn, but is distracted by his surroundings. He's very bad at inhabiting a space himself, and the disconnect doesn't strike him as how lived in it looks. He hasn't really had a home since he was a kid. He's very used to institutional, impersonal living space, temporary and unwelcoming. He has added absolutely nothing to his own cabin. It came functional, after all.

"Um, yeah, sure," he says, finding a spot. He actually shakes his head a little to chase off the surprise and get back to making fun of coffee. "Whatever you do to it, it's still caf."

"Caf-- like caffeine? I mean, sure, that's in it, but that ain't what coffee is." (Sergeant, you haven't been this chatty in weeks. I'm better at making coffee than you. Uh-huh. Shut up.) "You're from space, right? It's probably space-coffee you got. Not the same thing as Earth-coffee, anyway." They pour some coffee beans into Aziraphale's manual coffee-grinder and start cranking while the water heats up in Aziraphale's awful flowery teapot.

The phrase space-coffee shocks a laugh out of him that sounds odd and rusty in his ears. It cuts off just as quickly. "Well, I, uh, haven't m-made it myself a lot, no..."

The Soldier understands being unfamiliar with laughing. It's not like they do it much, either. "I hadn't in a long time. I'd forgotten what it tasted like," they say wistfully, Sergeant finally getting his dumb Brooklyn ass out of the conversation now that he's been called on it. "It was amazing to get it back. Why do you like tea so much?" Anyone who calls tea "art" must have a reason, right?

He feels that ought to be self-explanatory, but apparently not. The explanation falls into that very broad swath of things about his life neither he nor anyone else wants to talk about much. Unless he's quite careful. If he roots himself very carefully in the past, if he doesn't think about the home he'd lost all right to as it is--as it isn't... "Grew up with it. My family ran a tea shop."

That explains it. It came from his childhood. The Soldier doesn't even wonder what their family did-- didn't have one. (Come on, pal. Look, if you want to go chasing after memories again, you go bother Aziraphale. I'm good. You're an idiot.) "Are the teas here anything like your family's teas?"

He doesn't actually sigh in relief, but he's tempted to. No questions about the shop itself, or why he's a cargo pilot if he's a scion of tea servers, or why he used the past tense. "Not much. But, uh, tea's very different wherever you are, that's the interesting bit. Lot of ways to do it."

Well, it's past tense because they're all dead, right? Or possibly because the family is dead in whatever war Bodhi's military was involved in. Either way, it's not really necessary to ask about it. "Is the tea we have as good as your family's tea?" the Soldier asks, fully expecting the Bodhi-version of "hell no", if out of loyalty rather than actual agreement.

The teapot doesn't quite get to whistling before the Soldier takes it off. They could hear it start, too low for human ears, and takes it off before it makes a noise that would startle and/or irritate them both, pours that over the grounds and filter on two generously sized mugs, and leaves it steep. A percolator would be so much easier, but Aziraphale refuses to have one, of one could even be gotten, so handmade it is.

"Of course not," he says immediately, glad for the security of that socially acceptable loyalty. He doesn't think he could talk about the merits of Jedhan tea right now. "How does a person end up liking caf--coffee for its own sake?"

"I'm. Not sure." The Soldier frowns a little, looking down at the two cups. "I don't remember most of my past. The pieces I do have. Aren't really about coffee. Could be something like you. Fond associations that I don't have anymore. Could be I just really like the taste. It's not the caffeine, that doesn't affect me anymore."

Oops. Usually mirroring questions back is safe. He certainly wouldn't have brought up his end of things if he wasn't ready to answer the same question. He reaches desperately for an answer that isn't awkward. "It, um, doesn't effect you like high tolerance or..."

"I heal very quickly," the Soldier explains. At least they don't seem particularly uncomfortable talking about it. Just a little halting. It's one of the perks of not being a person: not a ton of discomfort talking about the effects of trauma, given they don't view it as trauma per se. "It affects my metabolism. I can't get drunk, either."

He supposes there's a certain rationality to that. He's never studied medicine beyond basic first aid, and actual Force usage is beyond him. But healing is chemical processing in a lot of ways, so if that's faster... "Pity," is all he says, still turning that over in his head but able to spare enough thought for a joke that easy.

"I know. There have been a couple times here. That I really wished I could get drunk." But they're smiling a bit, anyway. "But it's all right. I'm used to it." And honestly just happy, these days, to be able to properly eat whatever the hell they want, whenever they hell they want.

They push off from the counter again to find the coffee attachments. "So do you want milk or sugar or anything with this? If you don't like it too bitter."

"It'll still just taste like caf," Bodhi says, still trying to keep the teasing tone of what has somehow become a coffee vs. tea battle. But it's also his honest opinion. Add sugar, and the bitterness isn't cut at all, the sweetness just lies on top of it. And milk isn't really to his tastes most of the time. "Plain, please."

The Soldier adds some sugar to their own, mostly because it's extra calories not necessarily for taste (though the taste isn't bad with sugar, either), then brings both cups over to where Bodhi's sitting and offers his to him. "Moment of truth." (Are you going to be heartbroken if he doesn't like it? Maybe a little bit.) The Soldier will be fine, even if the Sergeant is a big baby about his coffee.

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