2025-06-04 - Tongs and Tines

It is coming up Pride all over Spellbound, including in town. There are banners hanging, colorful balloons, colorful flowers that will blend in with the flower show coming up, and the like. Tonight, out on the beach, there are a group of residents making sand castles out of sand that has been colored with safe non-toxic dyes to create all manner of rainbow sand structures around the beach. Some of them are small, modest towers made with plastic molds. Others are more elaborate stylized fish, crabs, and other sea life.

There's a bonfire going and there are some coolers with both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to be passed around. There's also some black bean burgers, hot dogs, and grilled chicken with fixings to make sandwiches along one long low table. It's not a very fancy to-do, just something thrown together by some of the residents.

Not fancy, queer, and free is right up Cooper's alley. He's sitting on a log with a joint in one hand as he watches people around the fire. He takes a hit from the earthy-smelling joint (no skunk here) and then sips from a quickly warming beer. He's usually very personable at these sorts of things, but he's pleasantly stoned at the moment and thus a bit boneless. He smiles at people as they pass, his eyes half-lidded.

Michael is off-duty which means he is out of uniform and enjoying a bottle of beer, himself, as he crouches by one of the evolving sandcastles that is being built up by a couple of others. He adds little niches and nooks into the walls with a bit of wood found on the beach, careful to keep the sand out of his beer as he does so. He's got on a pair of comfortable sandals, some dark blue board shorts, and a t-shirt with the logo from his folks' horse farm back in Indiana very faded over a dark green background.

When a couple of guys nearby start to get into it a bit over who took whose beer, Michael gets up and wanders over, clasping a hand on one of their shoulders and nodding back toward the coolers. "Hey, there's more over there. Just grab a cold one. If we run out, we'll do another run." There's some grumbling, but eventually everyone settles and Michael makes his way back over toward the fire, shaking his head a little bit.

Cooper watches the whole exchange with a dopily amused loon on his face. As Michael walks up, he thoughtfully turns his head to blow smoke the other direction. Unfortunately, the wind decides at that moment to send it back in the other direction and right towards the person he was trying to avoid.

He waves uselessly in the air and nearly slips off the log he's sitting on. "Shit, shit, sorry, sorry." He holds the joint down and away from him. "That's the opposite of what I was trying to do."

Michael takes up a spot near the fire, lifting his bottle just in time to get a bit of a face full of pot smoke and he laughs, gesturing a bit with the bottle. "It's cool. The wind was working against you," he says as he takes another swig from it. "Appreciate the gesture though," he adds. Nodding toward the table he asks, "You get anything to eat? Want anything?" He seems to be contemplating just that, himself.

"Goddamn wind. Always working against me," Cooper drawls. Then he offers the joint out to Michael, as is only polite in stoner culture. Then he eyes the grill. "Have they finished a new batch? I went sniffing around a few minutes ago and I nearly got swatted with a spatula because they weren't ready yet."

Michael swaps the bottle to his off hand and reaches out to take the joint. He takes a slow drag off of it and then hands it back. Only once he's let the smoke curl away does he answer. "Yeah, think it should be ready now. I'll take my chances with a spatula. As long as they don't go after me with the meat pokers, should be fine," he chuckles. Do those thing have a formal name? Fork? Two-tined sharp pokey-thingie? Whatever it is, he begins to head over in that direction, calling out as he approaches, "Safe to grab a dog or am I gonna need to duel for it?"

Cooper snaps in the air several times as he tries to remember. "Tongs, tongs! That's the word!" He giggles and looks as gleeful as if he just won pub trivia. Then he shakes his head and it's almost like that gif with numbers flying around. "Wait. No no no. Tines! Or just a barbecue fork." He raises his voice to call towards the grill, "I'll have one of whatever is ready!"

The woman at the grill is part of the transportation team. She's got a short, severe haircut but a very sweet and high pitched voice. "Hold your horses! No one's getting food poisoning on my watch."

Michael shakes his head, "No, not tongs those are the grabby ones," he says, making a demonstrative grabby-grabby gesture as though he were operating a pair of tongs. "Barbecue fork works," he decides. As he makes his way over to the table, he slows his steps just in case Hannah from transportation decides to defend her territory with something a little more pointy than a spatula. With one hand in his pocket and the other on his beer, he seems pretty safe from stabbing, at least for the moment. "Hot dogs are already cooked. You can literally eat them raw out of the package. It's just tube-shaped bologona." The chicken? The chicken could probably kill you, though. Still, despite this, he holds back and waits, patiently.

"I swear I'm not an idiot. I'm just a few puffs into my second joint so I'm quiiiite high," says Cooper as he gets to his feet to get rid of his empty beer and snag a new one. He makes sure the joint is out for now and tucks it behind his ear. "You want a drink?" he asks of Michael.

The grillmaster eyes Michael and then just drops two not-quite-charred-enough hotdogs onto a paper plate and then hands it to him unceremoniously.

Michael grins over at Cooper and says, "Didn't think you were." An idiot. High, he can definitely tell. When asked if he wants a drink, he tips back the last dregs of his current bottle and nods, "Yeah, grab me one." He then deposits his empty in the collection bin and grins as Hannah very unceremoniously deposits two dogs on a plate for him. "Thank you, Hannah," he grins but doesn't push his luck. The dogs are done, just not completely charred, which is how he prefers them anyway. "Want one?" he asks Cooper. He then eyes Hannah. "Unless you want two, then I can brave a stabbing a second time."

Cooper scoops up two beers and ambled back to the log. He pushes his into the sand by his feet and sets the other on the log for Michael. He makes grabby hands towards the hotdog. "That'll do. Maybe by the time I'm ready for round two, they'll have more bean burgers. Those things are surprisingly tasty for a veggie thing. I'm Cooper, by the way."

"Yeah, King makes them a lot," he says. "My roommate. And they're spicy, and good, but I get a lot of those at home." Hence the hot dogs for tonight. He offers one over to Cooper and then sets about putting a little ketchup and mustard on his own. Once his dog is doctored, he wanders over to the log and settles onto it, grabbing his beer and says, "Michael. Think I've seen you around. You do maintenance, right?"

By the time Michael returns, Cooper has taken an unreasonably large bite of a hot dog with nothing on it. The weed munchies have claimed another target. So he's got a full mouth and has to chew for a comically long time before he can speak. "Yeah, that's me. Mr. Fix It." He thumbs up and squints one eye. "And you, uh, sorry. You do look familiar but I don't know from where."

"Security," Michael says when Cooper asks. "Mounted security. Most people recognize the horse before they recognize me," he adds with a chuckle, more than used to people paying very little attention to who he is when his partner's around. The kids love Cornbread and most of the adults do, too. He occasionally glances out around the crowd, just keeping an eye on things. You can take the man off-duty, but you can't entirely shake him loose from keeping an eye out anyway.

"Ahhh so that's why you were being Mister Peacekeeper with the dudes fighting over the beer," says Cooper with a grin too big for the situation. He ruffles up his hair and takes another bite of the hot dog. "And yeah, I've seen horses clip-clopping around, for sure. Me? More people remember me than vice versa because I can work on over a dozen tickets a day. I'm like a barista where all the customers remember me but I only remember some of them."

Michael glances over toward the two guys who seem to have forgotten whatever they were arguing about earlier and are busy throwing a frisbee around to a mutt that's taking off into the water and running back out every so often. There's a slight shrug of his shoulders and he says, "It's a nice night. No reason to just let things escalate when the beer is free." Free to somebody, though he certainly helped out stocking the coolers earlier. "Must be rough," he says to Cooper with a sidelong grin, "Being so popular. The hero. Making sure everything keeps running." Sure, he's teasing a little bit, but only good-naturedly, before taking a bite of his hotdog.

"Says the guy who rides to the rescue on a fucking horse like a Disney prince," says Cooper as he polishes off the last of his hot dog and washes it down with his (free) beer. "Generally people are not so much happy I fixed something than mad that it broke in the first place. I'm usually only the hero if they're the ones who broke it."

"Think you got me confused with the guys over at the Arena of Champions," Michael laughs, "But I'll take it." He lifts up his bottle and offers to tap it against Cooper's in a cheers. "Well, to situational heroes then," he says before taking a long swig and then tucking the bottle in the sand between his feet so it doesn't tip over while he finishes off his own hot dog.

Cooper clinks his beer against Michael's and takes a healthy swallow. Then he pulls the joint from behind his ear and re-lights it. He takes a few puffs, then offers it over to Michael again. "Y'know with how weird things are on these islands, I almost picture something called a Pri Demon popping up during pride month or something." He pauses and grins, realizing belatedly the joke doesn't work so well out loud. "Cause you know, if you remove the space between 'pride' and 'month'..."

Michael reaches out and takes the joint and takes another single puff off of it before handing it back again. He tilts his head just a little bit to the side and it takes him a second to get the joke. The explanation does actually finally cause him to get it and he snorts just a little bit. "Man, I hope not. The last thing we need is demons running around here. We've already got all the strange little critters and the giant loch ness monster."

Cooper looks more surprised than anything that the over-explained joke still got a laugh. "Wait, what? Nessie?! Man. I've only seen a couple of ghosts out of the corner of my eye or some weird things scuttling around in the dark. Seems like everyone I've talked to has seen much stranger."

"Oh yeah, there's a big rainbow lake serpent dragon thing that turned up after the earthquake, just sort of swimming around the waterways and out in the lake," Michael says. "I've seen it a couple of times on patrol. It's pretty chill, just sort of swims around and largely ignores everybody, but I know some folks from Magical Studies have tried to talk to it." He reaches down and grabs his bottle, standing for a moment to toss his plate before settling back down again, elbows on his knees. "There's a lot of strange and a lot of island. Even I haven't seen everything and I'm on all the islands at one point or another."

"This is the first time since I started that I've had real free time. I was picking up every shift I possibly could to start cause I came here with..." Cooper sucks air between his teeth, "...not...not much." He takes another pull and then offers the nub of it back to Michael to either finish or toss in the fire. "I guess I was too busy to see all the cool shit."

Michael takes the nub and finishes off the joint before flicking it into the fire where it crackles briefly and disappears into the flames. There's a curious glance when Cooper cuts himself off, but he doesn't ask, he just nods and says, "Well, maybe you'll get a little bit more time now to breathe, take in the atmosphere, run into strange critters all over." He then says, "I've got one as a pet, kind of an alien bunny critter. It's pretty cute."

"Yeah, and now I'm looking for them," says Cooper. He finishes off his beer and then gets to his feet, weaving a little as he does. "Thanks for fetching the hot dog, Benton Fraser. Next time I see a horse clip-clopping by, I'll look up to see if it's carrying someone I know. For now, I've got a shift in the AM so I should mosey."

Michael's gaze drifts upward as Cooper stands, enjoying the mellow that has settled over him, and nods, tipping his bottle in Cooper's direction. "You gonna make it back to your place alright or you want me to go with you?" He nods in the vague direction of the town center and the various apartment buildings beyond. He doesn't get up immediately, though.

"Careful, there are people who'd take that as an explicit invitation, especially at a pride event," says Cooper with a lazy wink. "I'm fine! A few minutes walking in the open air'll re-fire enough braincells to steer me home. But I appreciate it."

Michael smiles a little amusedly and then shrugs his shoulders, "Sorry. Didn't mean anything by it." Then he lifts a hand and waves a bit as Cooper goes to head off. "Walk safe," he says, and then settles in again, his attention turning back to the fire and watching the flames as they jump.