[IC]

[anemonene]

Tag this post with one of your characters and leave a number from 1-8. I'll reply back with the corresponding character and start a thread for us. If you wanna be really tricky, leave some other kind of prompt in addition to the number. Tone, quotation, setting, whatever you like.

Comments

[asianfail]

5!

[onemagictrick]

Victory was a strange place. First off, there was the weather. Somehow it was always raining, yet the sun liked to sneak in appearances without burning the clouds away. Most temperamental climate he'd ever encountered. And then there were all the non-sequiturs people lobbed at him about kids and french toast and bulldogs. Middle of Washington was a fucking illogical place for Captain to drop him off, but then, what was new about that?

Issac held in a sigh as he waited in line for a coffee at a local cafe. He glanced around. No dinosaurs, no dream-eating spiders, no skeletons hanging out by the refrigerator. Everything was relatively normal. All he had to deal with was the asshole in front of him who couldn't seem to place his order.

"Hey, man, some of us haven't had coffee in a very, very long time. So if you wouldn't mind getting out of the way?" He did his best to hold a smile, but the twitch in his cheek told Issac it was slipping.

[asianfail]

Cameron had, against his better judgment, offered to buy coffee for the rest of the IT department. Even worse, he had the other members write down their orders. All he wanted was some time away from Crow and Simon's dumb, instigating behavior, but he realized now he couldn't get away from it. Staring down at the slip of paper, he tried to read the handwriting. It was almost impossible. Was it because they spent so much time in front of the computer that they were starting to forget how to write properly?

Sighing, Cameron debated how much longer he should try to decipher scribbles or order something generic. He felt a line slowly forming behind him and glanced behind him just as Issac spoke. He hunched his shoulders. What was more responsible: getting out of the way or getting the orders for his coworkers?

"Sorry," he said, inching off to the side. "Go ahead." But the man could have had access to coffee any day her in Victory.... No, Cameron didn't care enough. Maybe he had been trying to ween himself off caffeine, and it didn't work. Whatever it was, it wasn't any of his business.

He went back to cracking the code of illegible handwriting. Java chip... Mocha... something.

[onemagictrick]

"Obliged," Issac said in a tone that suggested just the opposite. "Large- eh, Venti black coffee."

The barista seemed happy to take his order after the mess that had been the previous patron shuffled to the side. Issac pulled his wallet from his pocket, the feel of it in his hand strange after so long, and put a few bucks on the counter. "Keep the change."

He took his coffee and glanced over at the man who had been in front of him. Looked like he had the Sphinx's fucking riddle in front of him. "Let me see. Chickenscratch is my first language."

[asianfail]

The impatience surrounding Cameron rolled off his back easily. He knew he had been holding up the line; it only made sense.

There was a small pause before he offered up the slip of gibberish. "Good luck." He had seen lines of broken computer language make more sense than that. The more he tried to read it, the less of a hurry he was to go back to work. "Don't worry if you can't read. it."

[onemagictrick]

"Jesus H. Christ..." Issac took a long swig of coffee as he kept staring at the order. As a line cook, you had to be able to read shit like this- it wasn't like you could run out into the restaurant and ask the waitstaff what their abstract art was supposed to mean. Still, whatever was written on this paper was beyond him.

He scratched his jaw with the lip of his cup and sighed. "They must really hate the interns where you work. I'd get them all Kombuchas if I were you. That stuff tastes awful..."

[asianfail]

Kombuchas? "What is it?" Whatever it was, if it did taste awful, it was tempting. They paid his effort in buying coffee with scribbles. How much was worth the inevitable payback he'd get?

Cameron glanced at his watch before pulling out his Blueberry. No messages about how long he was gone (yet). "I should've asked them to e-mail me their orders. No way to misread that." He hoped his coworkers wouldn't be impossible enough to typo it or type it in Symbol or Wingdings. He grimaced; they would.