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what: office hours

Office Hours, Sunday

Thor, if he was honest, did not much expect to have the family of any of his students drop by, but nor did he entirely rule it out...and besides, he had all but been told to expect a visit from that valkyrie today, and he wanted her to be able to find him.

Jane might also want to see him, he thought, but then again she might not. Since that more or less summed up his feelings toward her as well, he could not blame her either way.

He should also go to brunch at some point, but he would worry about that when he got hungry.

(Open office hours are open!)

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MHA #18; Sunday Morning [09/28].

It would surely be no surprise to anyone who knew Ignis that he could, at times, be a bit...well, obsessive, when it came to feeding people. There was also a part of him that felt that, yes, Liliana, even though they were very much guests that were not invited, he couldn't very well just ignore the GateWatch's presence on the island this weekend. Furthermore, there was a brunch that day at the Park, and he was certain that voracious Planeswalker appetites will be continued to be satiated there later at some point as well, by making his own breakfast for them, he could at least mitigate the amount of time spent with them all chipping away at the privacy here that, clearly, they had been taken for granted.

Sure, sure, plenty of damage had no doubt already been done, but the more time spent in cultivated spaces, the less opportunity for chaos, disorder, or whatever else was making this such a hard weekend for Liliana to deal with.

And so there he was, back in the kitchen of his old apartment, where he had shuttled their visitors into for the sake of preserving at least some sanctity to their home before the mansion wound up going the way of the Ravnica townhouse and them taking permanent residence down in Argentina (and then where, after that was inevitably spoiled and breeched??), to surprise them all with a nice breakfast. Of course, Liliana had been more than welcome to join them, but he rather suspected she'd continue to prefer him to lean into excuses that she was far too busy with the demands of the actual purpose of the weekend. He was more than willing to do his best to keep them distracted, occupied, entertained, and, most importantly, out of her hair entirely.

And, okay, okay, let's face it. He may have just really wanted to dive into the excuse to just make a really big breakfast for everyone. Like the beginning of the post may suggest, it was....a whole thing.

He was absolutely going to continue to insist to himself that it was all just strategy, though. Ahem.

[[ for all the guests, of course, should they so wish, and anyone else who might want to swing by for breakfast or otherwise! ]]

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MHA #4; Late Sunday Morning [09/28].

So, Summer was having a great Parents Weekend; how was yours?

She didn't really need the confirmation, but that morning was definitely adding another point to the box that had waking up surrounded by limbs that weren't hers (not like that, ohmygod, but there had been that one Rakdos party....) was in the S-Tier category of Ways to Wake up. But the soft sound she made as she tried to stretch languidly without disturbing her guests did turn into a little bit of an uncomfortable groan as he stomach gave a gurgle of protest. And she frowned as her fingers brushed on a discarded cupcake wrapper that had somehow wound up at the top of her pillow.

"How many of these did we even eat last night?" she murmured to herself.

Lots, Summer. The answer was lots, there had been so many cupcakes. And that was, like, just the tip of that iceberg.

Heh.

^{[[ for thems that are in the bed with her at the get-go, of course, but certainly can be wide open after all that! ]]}

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Liliana's Office, Saturday

So. Jace and his little...Jacevengers (thank you Tony, Steve)...were here. That was fine. She had absolutely no problems with them knowing where she lives. Hearing about her life. Learning things about her. Gideon had actually looked at her yesterday with confusion (unsurprising, the man was a walking anotomical diagram, that didn't mean smart) and an almost glimmering of...respect?

Ugh, she hated that. Hated the idea that they'd see her as some kind of...poorly socialized do-gooder who secretly wanted to be good, just didn't know how. Or something. What was worse was that she had started that very idea herself by joining up with the Do-gooder Brigade to manipulate them into helping her finish off Raziketh and Belzenlok! But this was different. Somehow.

Double ugh.

So now she was pacing a furrow in her rug, trying to figure out how to get the other Gatewatch members off her godsdamned island and to never return. She could probably use lethemancy on Gideon and Chandra, but Nissa was more of a question and Jace...

Fucking telepaths.

Vessel of corruption... the Chain Veil whispered in her mind.

"Oh shut up," she snapped. "I have enough to deal with already today, I don't need a bunch of ghosts jabbering in my head as well."

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Midnight Manor Boarding House, Marc's Office, Saturday

Marc wasn't a teacher - a fact he was as grateful about as everyone else was - but he had an office. And he had residents who had guests on these weekends. And sometimes those guests were welcome and sometimes they weren't.

So yeah, there he was, in his office. Steven had set up the chalkboard sign outside to say Welcome Guests! which Marc had later erased the exclamation point and added to the island. Which Steven had pouted about until Marc reminded him more than one of their residents had people they didn't want to see and it wouldn't help to confuse Midnight into thinking any random asshole was welcome to wander in. You never knew if someone had a guest who could somehow bypass Midnight's abilities to prevent that kind of thing.

(Even though surely the odds of another sorcerer supreme being on the island had to be - what? Super small, right?)

Steven was mollified by the "to the island" addition and there they were. Or there Marc was, in his office. Just in case.

[open for residents, their guests, or those who want to sulk outside]

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The Office of Lady Ghanima Atreides. Fandom High School, Office #17. Saturday, September 27th

It was the weekend where family came to visit, which meant that Ghanima was in her office with Trebor.

"I know, beloved," she murmured, her fingers running through Trebor's red curls. "I asked for your father to come out this weekend, but apparently he could not be spared."

It was probably a good thing. If they had been able to spare Farad'n, that would mean he would probably be under orders to evaluate their son for his return to the Imperium, and time for her next child.

Tea was brewing, her windows were open, and the pillows on the large over-stuffed divans and chairs were freshly fluffed.

The office hours of Lady Ghanima Atreides were now in session. Welcome, parents.

Entry tags:

what: office hours

Office Hours, Saturday

Don hadn't listened to radio. Don probably should have listened to radio. But, well. It wasn't like he or Thor were expecting any visitors, so he'd had an afternoon of surgery after Thor's class yesterday, and then this morning they'd realized they'd need to hold office hours over the weekend and had to figure out how to make that work.

And now here he was, in his office, trying to catch up on some paperwork while he waited to see if anyone's parents would show up.

(Open office hours are open!

Honolulu, Hawai'i, Thursday afternoon

After almost a week back in Fandom as the security of their house got a complete upgrade to hopefully keep serial killers out of it, Steve and Danny were back on another case, with another dead body.

At least this dead body didn't have an ivory chess piece in her mouth, so hooray for a normal murder!

...Steve reflected after a moment that maybe his internal monologue had grown a little jaded for that observation.

"Okay, team, what do we know?" he asked, staring at the young woman, dead in her bed in prime-time-TV appropriate lingerie.

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what: supper club

Maiwand Grill, Baltimore, Maryland, Thursday Evening

Lydia had only remembered after making the arrangements for tonight's Supper Club that they had had Afghan food previously, but she was sure that wouldn't be a problem. They had new faces amongst them, after all, and maybe other people's memories were as bad as hers! At any rate, this was a different restaurant, and everything looked and smelled delicious.

Welcome to Supper Club, everyone!

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Liliana's Office, Thursday

Much like she'd spent her class, Liliana was sitting at her desk in her office. Rather than doing her nails, however, she was taking notes on the class, highlighting things to discuss in future lectures, suggestions to offer her students, both generally and on an individual level, aspects she should highlight or downplay in the future.

...And maybe an idea or two to incorporate into her own ghoulcalling in the future. Zombie media on this plane was absolutely ridiculous, but that didn't mean she couldn't use it for inspiration anyway.

Hmmm...

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A Restaurant in Baltimore, Wednesday Evening

Steven and Llewellyn hadn't needed to take days off work for the holiday - that would be next week, for Steven - but that hadn't meant they were idle. In addition to regular observances they'd wanted to cook for themselves to help make the changing of the year even more meaningful.

That did mean, though, that once things were over they were in the mood to not cook anything. And so for date night they headed into Baltimore to try out a new to them vegan restaurant.

As soon as they were seated at their table, Steven put his glasses on and took a look at the dinner menu. "Oh that risotto sounds tempting."

[for the husband, NFB due to distance]

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Parent Weekend Offer Redux!

Once again, Adrian's Aunt Muriel, the oracular Witch of the Future, will be visiting for PW

So, if you want a random person to pop up next to a character of yours to give some cryptic hints about the future or just know things no one should, drop a (screened) comment below! I can make it as vague or specific as you'd like, whether you'd like me to c/p something you type out exactly or you have a general idea and we noodle on it from there, anything works!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Tuesday, already in progress.

Entry tags:

where: nyc

Jack's New York City Apartment, Saturday Afternoon

It was a nice, chill, not-too-cold and not-too-rainy New York fall day. A good time to be indoors, on a very rare gig- and festival-free Saturday, listen to some music, drink some cocoa, enjoy being alive.

Or to be hanging upside down off the back of the couch, staring at an artsy black-and-white picture of yourself standing on a Chinatown street corner with the words INTERVIEW WITH THE BOXER printed on it in large letters in the corner.

"I really don't know how this happened," Jack muttered, as the blood out of his extremities and into his head.

"They noticed us at Metal Fest last month, called you, came over, interviewed you, then made you stand outside looking serious for two hours while a guy took pictures," Dane called from the kitchen, where he was desperately trying to unwrap a frozen pizza.

"Ha, ha." He squinted at it, at the answer below the opening question - why they'd called the album 'Boxer'. "'I realized, I’m a boxer. I’m the guy who gets knocked down and gets back up. But I’m also the guy who has trouble sharing my feelings - I almost said fee-fees -, who’d rather hit back than open up.'," he read aloud. "Did I actually say that? Space. I sound like one of those internet kids. But pretentious."

"You also told them that you got knocked in the head a lot," Dane offered, "So I feel like you've covered most of your bases."

"And I told them I meditate," Jack muttered. "They're going to think I'm alt metal Enya or something."

"I did appreciate all the nice things you said about me," Dane said brightly. "I'm definitely bundling that mag up and sending it to Lana later, so you can't get out of it."

And just like that, Jack immediately rolled up the magazine and tucked it into his jacket. Yes, upside down. "Absolutely not!"

The plastic around the pizza finally came loose. "It's hilarious you think that's the only copy of Grindstone I got this morning," Dane said brightly. "I already put hers in the mail."

"I hate you!" Jack bellowed.

"You said you were graaaaaatefuuuuuul for me," Dane sing-songed, and popped the pizza into the oven.

"With partners like you, who needs enemies," Jack groused, and pushed himself upright. He stared back at the magazine again. 'Glazed Windows'. It’s complicated to talk about this stuff, right? About being in that place where you can’t go on, but you also know that you can’t stop. Of knowing you can’t fix the former, so you wind up hoping that everyone else around you will finally stop keeping you from stopping. Grappling with that. That’s all I can say about that song.

"I talk too much," he said, quieter. He could feel Dane smiling from the kitchen, but he didn't look up.

[[ open for phone calls, texts, or visits from she who lives near here now ]]

Penthouse Apartment of the Stark Tower-ish, Friday Morning

Well, Tony didn't expect to wake up to a snake coiled up in the crook of his neck, tongue flicking out to taste the air.

A dog, sure. A cat, sure. But a snake was new.

"Steve?" he asked as the snake curled up tighter and made an annoyed sound that he didn't know snakes could make.

[for that husband!]

Stark Towerlet, Friday Morning

Thor woke up on Friday morning with a warm weight draped across his chest, a weight that gave way to the most familiar voice in the world saying, "What the--" and another, much tinier voice protesting, "Watch out!"

His eyes snapped open, and he found himself looking directly into an identical pair, wide with confusion and alarm. Donald Blake, in the flesh.

"This is not supposed to be possible," Thor said, even though what he was thinking was, as it often was, Your face looks wrong when it is not in the mirror.

"Excuse me?" the tiny voice said. "I think I can explain." In unison, Thor and Blake turned their heads to find...an ant, perched upon the pillow as if she owned it.

"The ant is going to explain it to us," Thor told Don. Perhaps saying it aloud would make it less insane.

Hmm. Didn't work.

"Her name is Gudridr," Don said, and then asked the universe, "How do I know that?"

(Elaine: 'Don is Thor's daemon' would totally be the big dramatic reveal in a daemons!AU fanfic.
Me: Well, now I have to do it.
Don: But I'm not an animal, though!
Thor: But I am not a human.)

Honolulu, Hawai'i, Wednesday morning [NFB]

Steve and Danny had caught a few hours of sleep in their office after Jerry had figured out the small carved ivory pieces were pawns from an 11th Century chess set, and Chin set their insane ~~McGuffin~~ database searching to see if something like that had ever been seen in Hawai'i.

(Steve didn't know how Jerry had figured that out about the chess piece. He suspected it had involved a reverse image search on Bing, then a lot of Antiques Roadshow binging.)

He rubbed grit from his eyes and was starting up the coffee when Chin finally called them in with a hit.

"A young Kahala couple--Steve and Marissa Blake--disappeared, along with several high-priced items including an 11th century-style walrus ivory chess set, about eight years ago," he said as the photo of the chess set flickered onto their computer screen. "Look familiar?"

"Yeah, those are identical to the ones we recovered from the mouths of our victims-slash-also murderers," Steve replied. "Were there any suspects in this case?"

"One," Chin said with a pleased smile. "A Pierre Shaw, 32 years old. Recently paroled for possession of stolen goods."

"Looks like we're going to pay a visit," Steve said. "Danno, with me."

Honolulu, HI - Monday Afternoon

One overpriced portal after Steve got his phone call from Chin and they were both back on the big island, heading through traffic to get to the hotel associated with the uniform found on their victim. Which was the less active part of the investigation to let Steve and Danny sort of settle back into it after the whole... liver thing.

Perfectly fine. Nothing could go wrong.

"We get anything from the M.E. yet?" Danny asked, trying to see if traffic would move anytime soon. He'd been spoiled with Baltimore, honestly.

[for the partner! nfb obvs]