2020-09-22 - M-I-C-K-E-Y-S or M-I-C-K-I-E-S?

Mornings are the worst. There's this stupid sunshine, and blare of alarm clocks, and a seven-year-old staring relentlessly in that creepy way that only children under eight can really pull off. Lark bolts out of the bedroom with braids streaming behind her as she cuts through the upstairs hallway and then rapidly thumping down the stairs, all while shouting, "She's awake!" Behind that bouncy girl who has no right to be that fucking cheerful at 7 AM, Magnolia shuffles along; her thumps are less then bouncy, and more like the pace of a newly resurrected zombie. She diverts her steps into the kitchen, still dressed in her Frozen-theme pajama pants and one of Kevin's humorous t-shirts.

"Good!" Kevin calls back from downstairs. He then lifts the phone receiver back up to his ear, "Sorry about that. Coffee time." As Lark comes bouncing down, he points up to the coffee maker, giving her permission to start it up. "So you said that it's a red Taurus with a ding in the fender." When Magnolia zombie-shuffles into the room, he hefts the cereal bowl he's cradling in his off hand in greeting, settled into his favorite 'business spot' on the floor in the kitchen. He's repeating what the other person is saying so that she can hear it to, "And you can't go to the cops because you've got something in it you don't want them to see. And, um, that thing's not a felony, is it? If it's your porn stash, we don't care, but if it's hard drugs or anything violent, we can suggest another agency."

Lark snags a mug, and then the pot, and she carefully fills it with that liquid gold that is fragrant with notes of chocolate and caramel, or something like that. It says it on the bag. She turns over a bottle of chocolate syrup and streams Hershey's until the coffee is a medium brown. She steps over Kevin, not spilling a drop while she bounces past and shoves the mug into her mother's hand. "Kevin said he would make pancakes if you were awake before 7:15. You've made the cut off with eight minutes and thirty-six seconds wiggle room."

Magnolia shuffles into the kitchen. "You mean I could have slept in another eight minutes?" She smiles at Lark all the same, ruffling up her hair just enough to muss those braids. Then she's stepping over Kevin's legs, but not before giving his shin a little kick. "Do people even keep porn stashes anymore with the internet at their fingertips?"

"What's porn?"

"A type of adult snack." Magnolia sips her coffee while looking casually up at the ceiling.

Kevin tucks the phone into the corner of his jaw again, "Yup, I figured you'd roll over at least once. I'm impressed, Lia." He grins up at her, 'oofs' as he gets kicked for his trouble, blinking, and then looking at Lark a little wide-eyed as she asks her question and Magnolia answers so quickly. He winces at the response from the phone, and he lifts it to respond, "No, I'm sorry, we don't do that." He mouths 'meth' to Magnolia, "I recommend..." he considers a moment, then half-asks Magnolia, "Peters? Dirty Angel Investigations in Hoquiam." He nods through an angry response, and chirps, "And a good morning to you too!" Drawing in his legs, he pushes himself back up to his feet, hanging up the phone and adding, "Dad's already at work." The first of his three jobs at the moment. Kevin starts over toward the fridge, "And yes, they do. Some people like it old-school. Like pancakes!"

Lark is wrinkling her nose at Magnolia, and then she angles a look at Kevin questioningly. "It isn't, is it?" Then she's whirling back on her mother. "If you don't want me to know what you're talking about, then use codewords. Like... frankfurter or whimsadoodle."

Magnolia looks once at her daughter, and then looks to Kevin as she bubbles, "Tell the guy on the phone he can take his mollywobbles and shove them up his whimsadoodle." Then she sticks her tongue out at Lark, who is handing Kevin the chocolate syrup bottle to put away while looking unamused at her mother. The PI drops heavily into a chair at the table, and she rubs a bit at the side of her nose. She looks up at Kevin at the mention of where Burt is, and then she nods slightly. "Guess I should be glad that all these old school pervs let me pay the bills."

"Oh no. It's way more fun to get you all frustrated when we don't tell you what we're talking about, Ice Queen." Kevin takes the chocolate syrup and trades it for the maple as he gets out the rest of the pancake fixings, "Now, as the personal assistant for Sneakers Investigations, I did say that, just in way nicer words." Opening his eyes wide behind his glasses, he glances to Lark and then looks to Magnolia, "So did you clean up the figginswallop, Lia? Or do we need to keep the burdoo out of the toshnoggin for a while?" He's really just spouting words at this point, but there's enough there to make it funny, at least to him. "No new clients yet this morning, unless you want to go find a car with cyrstals in it. I mean, we could find it and turn it over to the cops, but then we don't get paid."

Lark scowls at Magnolia and Kevin with an equal amount of scorn. "You two both suck." But, the littlest Jones takes the bottle of syrup and tromps to the kitchen table to pull into a chair, and set the bottle next to the butter bell -- something they found at the pawn shop that Magnolia swore her mother had when she was a kid. Might be the same one. Who knows. The kiddo picks back up her book -- the first Harry Potter -- and opens to the last third of the volume. She promptly ignores the adults in the room in favor of witchcraft and wizardry.

Magnolia leaves her daughter to it while she hauls herself back out of her chair to cross to Kevin. She sighs out a breath as she sinks into the counter beside him. "My share of the mortgage is going to be late. I don't want to ask your dad to cover again..." She chews at her lip. "I'm not saying we take the job, but we're going to need something soon." She chews at the edge of her lip. "I put an ad in the, um... paper-that-shall-not-be-named." She slides a glance to Lark who hasn't taken a renewed notice of the adults in the room. "School supplies were more demanding this year."

"Yup!" Kevin responds cheerfully to Lark, and then winks at Magnolia. He starts to mix up batter, shaking his head, "I got a little ad revenue I can draw off early. It'll float us until we get another job." He lowers his voice, "I don't really wanna get involved with a meth dealer, do you? I mean, they're not all sunshine and rainbows like Walter White." Whipping the batter up, he nods slowly, "Stupid department of education racket. Big government draining money straight from hardworking parents and putting it back in government." His eyes narrow slightly, "And it was totally mutual with me and the Gazette." Mostly.

"Not if you listen to the half of town that thinks Alexander teaches high school. You realize that they think he's Levi, right? How do you confused my brother for Alexander?" There's some casual outrage there, but more for her history-teaching twin brother than anything else. Now she sighs, glancing toward Lark. "She needs that stuff for school, and she knows it was rough." But Lark always does. "She slipped me a recipe of how to melt old crayons into new crayons, and then asked if she could just use a couple of your old half-filled notebooks. I hate having a kid who gets it." Her blue-gray eyes trail over toward Lark again who is swinging her feet as she becomes engrossed in the adventures of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Kevin would know how badly Magnolia wanted to get Lark the books brand new, but battered thrift store copies didn't bother the kid as much as they bothered her mom. She crosses her arms at her chest, looking down. "No, I don't want the meth job."

"Half of town thinks that everyone I talk to is NSA. It's starting to get annoying. Half of half the town won't even talk to me because they're afraid they're going to get audited." Kevin pauses a moment, "A quarter the town then, I guess." He's whipped up the batter by now, and starts to heat the pan, greasing it and doing Mickey Mouse pancakes for Lark first. They're a whole lot easier than Olaf. Nodding slowly, the former reporter looks down at the pan, nudging the edges of the pancake as it cooks, "Would you like it better if she didn't figure it out, and talked about all the awesome stuff she wanted, and got upset if you wouldn't buy it for her?"

There's a tension running through her as they talk about the fractured memories of the town-- like not fully recognizing your reflection in a broken mirror. She licks at her lips, tasting dirt suddenly and rainwater. She rubs the back of her hand across her nose, half-expecting to pull it away to spot blood on her pale skin. But she's in the kitchen of Kevin's childhood home, not in that mud pit, digging a hole. She takes in a breath through her nose, her entire body lifting with that deep inhale. "No." The word dissipates the rest of that memory—false memory? She's not sure anymore. "No. But there's got to be some gray area where my kid can know things are tight, but doesn't have to be Googling solutions." She watches his work with the pancake batter, how the three-circles become a Mickey Mouse. "We will just have to hope that some jobs come in and then I can breathe a bit easier."

Kevin frowns as she rubs her hand at her nose. His own stomach takes a twist and a tumble like a cheerleader on speed. His breath gets a little short and for a moment all he can smell is copper. Impending poverty is a much nicer thing to think about. "There's always jobs. This month's hard. We'll make it work. I've got four articles out." No bites yet though, even from online sites that haven't heard of him losing his job at three papers now. "The blog's pulling in... a little bit. We'll make it work." He smiles just a touch, "And hey... the four of us all living here helps, right? I mean besides it being nice having you both here. Cuts down on costs." Kevin flips the pancakes, glances aside to Lark at her reading, and then sets the spatula down so that he can cup her elfin features between his hands and tilt her face up for a slow, light kiss, as delicate as if she were the finest of blown glass.

"Okay." The word is quiet, a murmuring of two short syllables that fills the empty space after Kevin's reassurances. She grabs a plate out of the cupboard for Lark's pancakes, and she holds it out for Kevin to pile-on. But then she is being turned toward him with the gentle cup of his hands, and her hazel eyes lift to meet his in this closeness. She starts to smile, but the smile loses some of its curve when he kisses her. Her eyes close, and she savors that softness that is shared between them. Then she sighs out a short breath, drifting back from the kiss. "It is real nice being here, Vin. I mean it. Lark loves being here, having a backyard and a family. She's comfortable here, safer here. So, yeah. We will make it work, get the money to make it work."

One Mickey, two Mickies, three Mickies get piled onto the plate, and Kevin pauses, looking down to the plate and having clearly counted just like that in his head, "Huh. Is it M-I-C-K-E-Y-S or M-I-C-K-I-E-S?" He only lets it sit for a moment, "That's why having an editor is nice. I-E-S." He casts a glance to the dining room, smiling softly and then looking back to Magnolia, "I'm glad she loves it here. And how do you like it here, Lia? I mean, I know you'd tell me if you didn't like it, so I think I'm just looking for reassurances, since I'm the one who's fallin' behind on the mortgage myself. It'd be a lot easier if I was still at the Gazette, I know. But I kind of like writing what I like, and helping out at Sneakers."

"Mickeys. E-Y-S." Magnolia takes the plate toward the dining room, and sets it down in front of Lark. "No syrupy fingers on the book, Lark Jones." Then she presses a kiss to the top of the girl's head. Lark wrinkles up her nose a bit, but otherwise smiles at her mother as she heads back into the kitchen to stand with Kevin. She hooks a hand into his back pocket as she leans into him, her head tilted against his arm. She lets him work through a couple more pancakes before she tugs him around to face her without risk of burning the batter in the pan. "I love you, Kevin Walters. I'm really happy here, with you and your dad. I don't even care that you're an NSA agent." Her lips quirk high with an easy, warm smile.

"You sure?" But Kevin doesn't question Magnolia any more than that, working on another batch. Magnolia gets Mickey Mice too, flipped right onto her plate. Before he can pour any for himself, he's captured by the PI and turned around to face her. "I'm glad you're happy, Lia." His hands come up to cup her cheeks again, fingers stroking along her jawline, "And I'm totally not an NSA agent. Don't you know, they're all watchin' me? Because I know everything that goes on on the Dark Net." He snorts and shakes his head, "It's kinda crazy, even for Gray Harbor, all of this memory stuff. You'd think it'd lead to more work for us. I kind of wish it would."

"Damn. I was hoping for some kinky sex. Surely an NSA agent has some naughty side." Magnolia delivers it casually with a quirk of a smile. Then she is looking back out at the dining room with her coffee in one hand, plate in the other. She sets both down so she can focus on Kevin. "Might still. Right now, my guesses is people just think something's off... but eventually, people are going to want to know the truth. And we're as good as any to figure that out." She sinks into the counter. "Maybe the ad will remind people that I'm here for that. I did add something about 'weird and creepy being totally cool.'"

"Haven't you heard? They're all nerds." Kevin runs his hands down her back to her waist, ignoring that the pan on the stove behind him is getting hotter and hotter, "What you want is the CIA. They go all in for the," he glances to the dining room and lowers his voice, "kinky stuff. I downloaded their Kama Sutra. Yes, there's a Kama Sutra just for the CIA. No, you don't want to know what I had to do to get a copy." Ducking down, he tightens his arms just beneath her backside, to lift her up to easy kissing range given their height difference. It's a moment totally calculated for an 'eew gross' from Lark. Setting her back down, he turns to prepping his own pancakes. He's on a roll, because he's getting Mickey Mouse pancakes too, even if these ones are totally cooking too fast and he hasn't noticed yet, "So we should expect all the creepy-pants people in town to come to us now? Well that's good, I'm pretty sure the creepy-pants people are the best people, right?"

Magnolia's smile is full of mischief and amusement as Kevin leans in to whisper to her all about the CIA Kama Sutra. "Spies do know how to do it. I've seen all the Bond movies. I know this for a fact." Now Magnolia's brows waggle up at him, though her expression softens into a warm, almost lusty grin as he picks her up so she's just barely on her tiptoes to kiss him. They do get an appropriate Ew! from the dining room, and there's the sound of Lark picking up her plate and book. "I'm going to read in Burt's chair!" And that leaves the two alone in the kitchen and its adjoining dining room. Magnolia smiles after her kiddo before she looks back up at Kevin. "Oh yeah, definitely expect that. Maybe I should just pin 'Paranormal' to my title. 'Private and Paranormal Investigator.'" She shrugs her shoulders then. "We're creepy-pants people, so I assume we're cool."

"Bond's British Intelligence," which she undoubtedly knows, but somehow Kevin's brain still makes him say. "CIA's got the goods." His grin flashes broader at the 'ew' and he adds, "I really like kissing you, but that's a nice bonus." His hands shift at the back of her thighs, settling her in against him, "Now, granted, most of the CIA's Kama Sutra is about getting information out of..." his eyes widen, "Oh shirt!" He's really trying to do better about the cursing, "Pancakes!" Letting her back down to the floor, he turns around, flips the pancakes to reveal... that they're burned to hell. Groaning, he sighs and nudges them around the pan with the spatula. It's not like he's going to throw them out. They're still perfectly good food, just a little blackened. That's a chef thing, right? There was a sort of a question there, though, so he plays the conversation back in his head until he can respond, "I wouldn't ever assume that I'm cool, but if I'm doing the same thing as you, you'd probably be okay. And I don't think that I'd do anything that Dresden does. Then you get the real weirdos. I mean, like us, but still. Not the ones who can pay with real money. You know, like us."

Magnolia is savoring that casual warmth that Kevin gives off. Her smile lifts higher and more full and bright at his proclamation of his adoration of her kisses, and the punctuation of Lark's ew. She is just about to start in on this whole conversation between CIA and MI-6 Kama Sutra when Kevin's attention is diverted—no, snared—by burnt pancakes. She lets herself flop back against the counter, resting into it while he deals with his damaged goods. "This is when we need a dog—"

"There's that whole litter of pit bull puppies at the shelter," calls Lark from the other end of the house.

Magnolia looks at Kevin. "How did she do that?" Then the PI huffs out a breath. "I think that I'll take any kind of paying weirdo right now."

"So that it can -- " Kevin cuts off as Lark puts her opinion in, "We're not getting a whole litter of pit bull puppies," he calls back, and then shakes his head in wonder, "She's got ears like her mom? You know how we could make her stop listening..." his eyebrows waggle as he flips his burned Mickey Mice out of the pan, turns it down, and pours some more in. He already had cereal, but someone will want the rest of them. "We're not getting a dog, are we? I mean, I just kind of assumed, but if you want one, I can totally backtrack on that..." that's not how he meant to get Lark to stop listening.

"Kevin says I can have a dog!"

Magnolia turns away from Kevin long enough to shout back, "He did not! And now I'm going to be kissing him for a while, so you should go back to Harry finding out that Voldemort is living in the back of Quirrell's turban!"

"MOM! SPOILERS!" There's the sound of a large ugh! and the stomping feet of a second grader ascending the stairs to her bedroom where she will slam the door like she's a tenth grader. It is so fun to have a mature-for-her-age child in the house.

Magnolia looks back up at Kevin with a rueful smile. "We're not getting a dog. She just wants a pet. I think it is because we could never have one with our leases." She looks up at him through the slight fall of her forelocks. "You don't have to change your mind."

"DID NOT!" Kevin yells back in unison with Magnolia, but her further words draw a bright smile to his lips -- which crumbles away as he yells in unison with Lark this time, "Spoilers!" He listens to the stomping feet, his lips brushing along the length of her nose in light kisses, and then nods, "We could probably talk Dad into a little dog. Or a sweet one. Or a goldfish. Just not a cat. He's allergic." There's a pause, and he glances up, "So you were going to be kissing me for a while? Does that involve helping you change your clothes?"

Magnolia's eyes widen briefly, but then she is smiling at the line of kisses up the flat bridge of her nose. Her eyes close, and she savors that touch that sends a little shiver through her. "Sure, yeah... little dog... goldfish. No cat." Then she is reaching to turn off the stove so he doesn't burn yet another pancake. Then she gathers up his cheeks and jaw in her fingers and palms, drawing him down to meet her lips in a slow, but no means shallow kiss. She murmurs against his lips, "Yeah. Change clothes. Sure." Then she is pushing up through her feet so he can catch her as she bounces up into his arms.