Waffles

[Riley] [On a scale of 1-10, how hungover are we?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8

[Chuck] Geeks on the loose! Except Riley is a hungover geek, and Chuck is an over caffeinated geek. This is a recipe for comedy gold.

"Hey, we doin' something tonight? I have a surprise for someone in my laptop bag, dunno who yet. I'll know when I come across 'em. Maybe we should go swimming. Do you row? I'm in a race this weekend, you should totally come."

And so it goes, the six foot four guy with the jew-fro and the similarly amazonian Italian walking down the street. Yeah, it's totally like the start of a joke.

[Riley] Riley is...not well.

It started Saturday morning, when she found a 22-oz. Smirnoff Ice taped to the door to her condo. It continued when she did a quick search and found http://brosicingbros.com/?p=262. She dutifully took her knee, which was the position her father found her in when he went to ask if she wanted to go to the movies.

It went downhill from there.

Cut to today, and Riley has a splitting headache, just finished a grueling eight hour shift attempting to fix people's technological defects while nursing a killer hangover.

And now Chuck is over-caffeinated. How could this day possibly get any worse?

She walks beside Chuck, not quite able to keep up with his pace, one hand to her temple. Her dark eyes are squeezed shut, she placing complete trust in her partner to keep her from running into a pole or a person or falling into traffic.

"I don't know, are we? I could go for some waffles." The rest of his questions and comments wash over her. She'll have to ask him to remind her of this stuff later. If he even remembers.

[Chuck] "Waffles it is," he says, and leads her into one of those themed restaurants . . . whose theme happens to be 'middle American diner', except way upscaled for it's location. Said restaurant happens to serve breakfast during the entirety of its open hours, and so it's not difficult to get waffles if she wants them - or hashbrowns, or eggs any style, or all those breakfasts typical of such places at a higher quality (and cost). It's brilliant, of course.

This late on a Monday, the place is fairly empty and a waitress comes quickly enough to ask for their drink orders (Chuck asks for coffee and water) - and flirts with Chuck, though he's refreshingly oblivious to it, and of course mostly concerned with the health of his friend and apprentice. After getting Riley's drink order, she wanders away to get them.

"Someone was out drinking last night. You okay?"

[Riley] Riley orders water, and waffles. Just waffles with butter and maple syrup. Please, just whatever on the menu fits the description the most closely she doesn't care.

As soon as the waitress wanders off to figure out just what it is the tall slim Italian woman wants, Riley finally gets to stop trying to look sober. Which, as Chuck and anyone who's spent two minutes in her company will know, is not something she was able to convincingly pull off. At. All. She should have called in sick, but she's already taken two days off this year, once when she had bruised ribs, and once when she lost it fighting demonic imps. So now of course when she's genuinely sick she dragged herself in, anyway. It had actually improved her ability to deal with customers. She didn't have the energy to get angry at them for any of the stupid shit they tried to pull with her.

And Chuck was there. Dear, sweet Chuck, the best partner she could have ever hoped to be paired up with. The man puts up with a lot when it comes to the women in his life, and he gets nothing in return.

As soon as she stops attempting to pretend she's not as hungover as she really is, Riley drops her head to the Formica table top and rests her forehead there. She mutters something that Chuck can't hear, because it's being said to her lap. Maybe she repeats it, because a second later she rolls her head to the side and says quite clearly, "It sucks."

[Chuck] "Of course it does, honey. I can't do anything for the actual physical part, but I can help you handle it a bit better if you want?" That's spoken quietly, of course, and he's already pulling out his blackberry and pulling up an app, just in case. "I programmed this thing way back when I was in grad school - the colors and the sounds help line things up properly so you can deal with the disorientation better, and . . . I dunno, ignore the headache and upset stomach a bit. Almost like hypnosis, I guess."

It's an offer, given freely - she's his buddy, and he doesn't like to see her (or most people, for that matter) hurting. If he can help, he will - dear, sweet Chuck, indeed.

"More icing? I think I might get Ashley. Or the place, you know the one. Like the cookies, 'cept Smirnoff Ice."

[Riley] "Noooooo..." she groans, and drags herself upright. And she promptly leans heavily against the wall making up a corner of their booth. She looks at Chuck, and her face is pale beneath the faintly olive complexion, but she's a stubborn woman, Riley Poole is. This here that she's showing now is the strength and fortitude she's learned in her twenty-seven years on this earth. It helps her overcome her horrid temper, but it also is what allows her to deal with the hardships life throws her way.

Like best friends who keep trying to shut her out. Or the bad things that she keeps walking into, like the disemboweled bodies and the imps and the zombies.

Right now, that strength and fortitude is keeping her from losing whatever makes up the contents of her stomach. She's been drinking a lot of water throughout the day, trying to rehydrate herself. But she got so, so very wasted yesterday.

"I mean," she stops, because it takes her a second to fixate on what he says. "That might be really helpful, thanks," she says, holding out her hand for the blackberry device. She stares down at the app for all of a second, then her eyes widen and she looks up at Chuck again. She tends to gesture with the hand holding his phone.

"No, I mean, you're such a good guy, Chuck. I mean it, you really, really are. It sucks that you're single, man. Someone should've snatched you up forever ago."

[Chuck] [There's totally an app for that. Coincidental, -1 practiced, -1 taking time, extended!]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 4) [WP]

[Chuck] [Roll 2!]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 4 (Failure at target 4)

[Chuck] "Someone did. She left me and kept the ring," he says, and there's no angst or depression about it; instead, there's a shrug and the same matter of fact tones with which he informs people that no, the DVD-rom should not be used as a cup holder, and shouldn't it really be an HD blueray drive anyway? It's just something that happened, and he's over it. Usually. More or less.

There is, of course, that feeling of rather secure progress, and of her brain syncing just right - the pain isn't gone, nor is the upset stomach, but he's right. It's easier to function through, and the disorientation is, in fact, gone. With food in her, she may well feel almost normal.

"So seriously, you wanna come to my race on Saturday? It's ridiculously early in the morning, though. Like, sun up. I don't plan on going to bed before it - never do before races."

[Riley] Sometimes, Riley is perceptive. Sometimes, she's attentive to the feelings of her friends, tries to look through the fronts they put up to show the world, No really. I'm okay. I'm totally and completely fine.

Maybe it's good that at first, Riley is still too hungover to try to read much into what Chuck says about his ex. After all, it's become a lesson in futility trying to hold a conversation with Emily these days, or even trying to get a hold of her. So Riley's taking her time again, letting the younger woman come to her.

Again.

After she tells Chuck that he's too good for singlehood, she tries to focus on the screen of his phone. And she finds that after a few seconds, it's easier to focus. The fog in her brain clears like the sun burns the occasional mist over the lake. Her stomach will still be upset for a while - she should probably go empty it, she'll probably feel better, but every part of her rebels against that idea. The ache in her body is still there, but it's no worse than when she was hugged by a zombie.

Heh. She was hugged by a zombie. That's an actual thing that happened to her. Focus.

Chuck's question startles her, and she looks up at him across the diner table. Handing back his phone she says, "Oh man, of course! And that really sucks. She probably didn't deserve you, though." She reaches up a hand to massage her temple, the headache still there. The waitress returns with her water, and Riley automatically tells her to just keep 'em comin'. And she downs that first glass in one drink.

[Chuck] (*puts a pause on it!*)