geniuswithasmartphone | Luke's Diner, Thursday

Ugh. That jerky white kid was back at the house again this morning. After the...issue...that had arisen when Alec, Jerkface, and Weird Girl had woken up sharing a bed, Alec had been more than happy to spend all of yesterday avoiding them, even if that had meant participating in the paintball thing. But he hadn't had any of his fake credit cards or IDs on him, so he'd ended up going back to the house last night.

To find Jerkface also there. Ugh. And he thought Weird Girl might have been around, too, but she was fast and kinda creepy, so it wasn't like he'd gone looking.

So Alec was out of the house as soon as he was up (at the crack of noon!), casually swiping one of the expensive laptops that had been lying around. Maybe if he could hack into that (maybe? HA!), he could get himself an ID and a cash stream and away from the house. Before Jerkface could decide to beat him up for, like, existing or whatever.

The sign on the restaurant's window caught his eye:

Today's Specials
Yeah, we know you don't have money. Come in and get a meal and pay us back next week. Unless you're Eliot, Hardison, Miguel, or ~~Kanan~~ Caleb. You gotta work.
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Crockpot Chicken Noodle Soup
Shrimp Fajitas (You're welcome, adults)

Free food? Ish? Alec was going to worry about why he was singled out later. He was going in to peel some potatoes and get a huge helping of spaghetti and meatballs.

[Content Warning for a physical fight in the Eliot/Hardison thread with underlying homophobic tones. Please practice good self-care when deciding whether to read, my dears.]

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It was entirely mutual.

"Not being an asshole," Alec shot back. "I see you still ain't figured that out."

"What's Narnia?" Parker asked, curious. "I just want to get to where the workshop and the life-size candy canes are."

[ooc: your PB continues to be adorable and ridiculous.]

"You sure about that?" Eliot asked. "'Cause you sure like look a dick to me."

Interesting word choice there, Eliot.

"... Shifts?"

Caleb squinted a little at the busboy, and then at the other boy that had been singled out, and then just kind of tilted his head.

"I don't work in a diner."

He didn't really have a job.

"You should be so lucky." Alec, please don't get yourself killed.

"Do you like pancakes" the busboy asked, while Alec just shook his head.

This whole place was weird.

"Excuse me?"

Eliot. Don't beat up the kid with glasses. That'd be tacky.

"You know, the magic land beyond the wardrobe?" Alec said, even though it was clear she didn't know. "Where it's always winter and never Christmas?"

[Thank you! He's Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle!]

Parker gasped in shock. Then slammed the fridge door shut. "No! Why? That's mean."

But Alec thought it was entirely in Jerkface's wheelhouse.

"You heard me!" he retorted, scared out of his wits but not backing down. "I wasn't the only guy waking up in that bed with no pants on. Just the most--" ALEC DON'T DO IT. "Well-endowed."

Was there anyone in the clinic this week? Asking for a friend.

"Uhh...cause the evil White Witch is, umm, evil?" Alec said, a little alarmed at how seriously this girl was taking it. "Once they start fighting against her, Santa comes."

Eliot as a grown-up was all about control, especially over himself. It was an intrinsic part of who he was.

Eliot as a teenager? Not so much.

He did still know how to throw a punch, though.

Parker yanked open the door again at that. "Then why are we still here?!" Clearly there were elves to be defending! And reindeer to save!

And Alec knew how to take them. Not well, like how to mitigate the damage, but more in the 'this wasn't his first run-in with bullying' way. He was a skinny black kid with glasses who played the violin and liked computers.

He took the punch right to the face, head snapping back with the force of it. His eye felt like it was on fire and the skin above it split open like an overripe melon. "Yeah," he said, a little dizzy. "You punch like a redneck, too."

ALEC PLEASE. STOP CHANNELING STEVE.

"Cause it's a storybook?" Alec said, frowning.

...But he couldn't deny, there was a whole, like, Arctic tundra in there. And the building they were standing in was not big enough to support an Arctic tundra.

Parker pointed significantly to the tundra. "Polar bears. Santa. Do you have snow shoes?"

"You don't know when to shut your goddamn trap!"

Look at that, Alec, you made Church Boy curse.

He threw another punch, throwing in all his pent up rage and confusion and fear behind it. He didn't have the surgical precision he would in later years, but that mostly just meant he wouldn't know when to stop.

"Why would I have snow shoes?!" Alec sputtered. "I came in for a plate of spaghetti, not to cosplay Robert Falcon Scott!"

And Alec just kept talking, because he had a smart mouth to go along with the rest of him.

"Not what..." he said, trying not to whimper, "you looked like...you wanted to say...yesterday morning."

He was going to die, but at least he wasn't going to die backing down from some homophobic, redneck bully.

Eliot was going to hate himself later. He kind of hated himself right now. He was too angry for words at this point, just letting out an abbreviated roar.

And he just. Kept. Punching.

Even Cristina couldn't be sustained on coffee and cigarettes alone, so she ended up at the diner after the coffee shop, looking for food.

"What. The. Fuck." She took a beat to just stare, then picked up her nice, big, heavy anatomy textbook and swung it at the angry white guy's head. "Get off of him! Oh my god!"

It was always the angry white guys, wasn't it?

Alec was curled up, trying to protect his head with his arms and his stomach with his knees, just waiting for it to stop. He'd run out of trashtalk to say and was mostly struggling not to cry.

You know. Out loud.

The commotion finally made its way back to the kitchen, where the rest of the staff made their way out to stare, horrified.

Cook tried to grab hold of Eliot. "You're gonna thank me for this on Monday," he grunted.

Eliot reeled from the blow to the head (he hadn't built up his crazy endurance yet, either) and let himself be dragged, even as he stayed spitting mad. "Lemme go! That son of a bitch had it coming!"

He would probably be too busy hiding to thank anyone on Monday.

"For what, being black?!" Cristina stood protectively over the kid on the floor and raised her book again. "Jesus, all I wanted was a snack, and instead I'm witnessing a fucking hate crime!"

Alec picked himself up a little bit, spitting blood onto the floor. "He jus' don't like me tellin' folks we were naked in bed together," he said, hoping people weren't noticing the tears rolling down his face.

Yeah, fuck you, Jackass, if you didn't think he wasn't going to make that sound as dirty as possible.

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Luke's Diner, Thursday

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