Charlie's Coffeehouse [Open to Multiple]

[rae_of_sun]

As if to make up for the previous evening's kali horror show, Sunshine's dream is warm and familiar. She's in a bakery - her bakery in her stepdad's coffeehouse, though elements of her new workplace sneak in here and there. She hardly notices the inconsistencies as she churns out trays of muffins and sheets of cookies. Charlie's working the register, Mel's in the kitchen, Mary's waitressing, and her mom is probably in her office giving someone hell over the phone. All is as it should be.

If she knew she was dreaming, she would probably think it fitting that anyone drop in, relax, and eat some cookies (well, okay, if she knew she was dreaming she might not recommend eating anything, but whatever, she breaks that rule all the time). Last night was rough, and people deserve a break - and a toxic sugar concoction or two. As it is, she's not paying any particular attention to the customers as she carries out a tray of Killer Zebras and transfers them into a display case.

Comments

[rae_of_sun]

That's a little disappointing. Actually, that's a lot disappointing, enough so that Topher can probably feel it pervading the air along with the general smell of fudge. Feeding people by proxy isn't anywhere near as satisfying as feeding them directly. If Topher can't come to the bakery himself, she'd rather make a delivery (which wouldn't technically be taking her away from the bakery because she'd be doing it on her own time; Glaser's doesn't officially deliver at all) than hand over the goods to a random lackey.

"Whereabouts are you?" she asks, folding her arms. She'll decide if it's out of her way. Depending on where he is in relation to her apartment, it might not be.

[brink]

Ah yes, he can feel the pervasiveness of the disappointment. And her stubbornness. Which, while nice and all, is also pretty inconvenient. If it had just a random delivery person, Topher could've have it delivered to a middleman and passed up to him. Sunshine herself might be a bit put off that Topher wouldn't meet her directly and.. invite her in for brownies she just brought, or something. Which is impractical when he's not telling people where lives.

"It's all the way downtown, don't worry about it. I'll come by sometime," he answers. To appease her, he eats more of the delicious chocolatey death.

[rae_of_sun]

Mollified, Sunshine polishes off the rest of her piece of Bitter Chocolate Death. "It's a nice little place," she says, "and there's a park nearby. Worth a trip."

A trip he apparently can take (no horns, then?), unless he's just saying he'll come by to shut her up. Well, whatever. She's not so invested in the idea of Topher coming by to push it any further than she has already.

[brink]

Topher nods. He probably will come sometime, he just won't rush out the moment he wakes up. Although he's tempted to, after the delicious tastes he's had here.

"Sooo, while I'm here, is there anywhere else you'd like to go?" he suggests. Her wish is his command and all, and it's nice to see new places when he can do it in the safety of the dreaming.

[rae_of_sun]

Sunshine considers the offer for a few moments. Thanks to his earlier demonstration, she recognizes the offer for what it is: an all-expenses-paid tour through her memories of her home universe. But the places she would want to visit are all so mundane that she can't really imagine showing them off to a near stranger. Like, we're in a universe where fictional monsters stalk the shadows, but here's my apartment. Here's a garden - no deadly nightshade or enormous beanstalks coiling into the clouds, sorry, just a normal garden. Here's the library where my friend works. Or, hey, if you really want to see some of the horrors, here's the house where a vampire and I were chained to a wall for a few days. Here's the smoking hole in Old Town where I dismantled a master vampire. Here's the Goddess of Pain's office.

Nope. No, thank you.

"I think I'm good right here," she finally says, turning away and dumping her plate in the sink. "Thanks, though."

[brink]

"Wanna see somewhere I like?" he offers with a smile. He might not want to travel much outside in the real world, but in here he has no problem hopping around as much as he feels like. And it's been a while since he's invited anyone into his playground.

[rae_of_sun]

Well, if he's offering. It's only fair she get to see some of where he's come from (though for all she knows, he might just end up taking her on a sightseeing tour of Manhattan). "Sure," she says, eyebrows raised in expectation.

[brink]

Neither, actually. But it is somewhere he likes, somewhere important to him.

The kitchen fades away, to be replaced by a much more airy space, with a domed ceiling. Large and beige and and rather 80s. The stool Topher's sitting on is replaced with a comfortable, large chair. One of several, but his is the one in the center. Near the back of the room, there are high-tech screens flashing. And on the wall the chairs are facing, a large screen showing the vast and beautiful expanse of space.

"Welcome to the Enterprise," he says with a bright grin, all of a sudden wearing Picard's uniform. He picks up a cookie, the tray being the only thing besides themselves that came along for the ride.

[rae_of_sun]

Sunshine turns in a slow circle, ending on Topher in full costume. Gods and friggin' angels, this might be the nerdiest thing she's ever seen. "Wow," she says before dropping into the chair on his left and leaning over to look at the little display screen. "So, assuming you're the captain, what does that make me?" Besides an impulsive pusher of buttons. But aside from changing the display on her screen, the ones she pokes don't seem to be doing anything.

[brink]

He has a Star Trek tattoo, what do you expect? He grew up with this. In some ways it was more welcoming and familiar than his actual home.

"I dunno, my second in command, maybe? Any preference? Are you familiar with Star Trek?" he asks, still with an air that can only be described as boyish glee. Just wait, he'll start reenacting things soon.

[rae_of_sun]

"I know it's a thing that exists," she offers with a shrug. And that the chairs of the fictional far future are pretty comfortable, aside from the unfortunate lack of arm rests. And that she feels kind of ridiculous sitting in a spacecraft while dressed in her bakery regalia, though a uniform would probably be worse. At the very least, she's grateful Topher didn't take the initiative to change her outfit; that would have been beyond uncomfortable.

[brink]

Hey, only the captain gets arm rests, clearly. And Topher doesn't like others trying to change his appearance, so he doesn't do it to others unless asked. Unlike certain other people who do that even in the real world, which is more than a little invasive, honestly.

"Not your thing, maybe? I've got others," he says, jumping to his feet as their surroundings change once again. Looks more post-2000 than 80s now, but still on a spaceship, still in the command section. His chair disappeared, but Sunshine's chair will remain as long as she's sitting in it.

"The Normandy?" he suggests, gesturing to their surroundings. Very glowy and sleek, lots of hologram screens everywhere. His outfit has changed to match too, black and white crew outfit. There are a few people standing and sitting around too, but they don't seem to notice their sudden appearance.

"Bit too shiny, maybe? How about something more grungy." Once again, the surroundings change, this time to a much smaller room, and now Sunshine is sitting in the pilot's chair of a much more worn a dingy cockpit. "Serenity? I love this one," he says, flopping down in the co-pilot chair, now wearing a long, brown coat. "I could do this all night," he admits excitedly.

[rae_of_sun]

"This one's fine," Sunshine says hastily, as much because the rapid-fire changes are playing merry hell with her eyes as anything else. (Can you get a migraine in a dream? She doesn't want to find out.) The weird controls here cast weirder shadows, but the overall darkness is nice, and the blackness of outer space is so complete that even vampire vision can't parse it. She stares out the windshield (or whatever the sci-fi fancy term would be) at a distant smattering of stars and finds a strange comfort in how unaltered it appears as compared to her pre-vampire vision.

"Are these all fictional?" she asks, leaning forward to pluck a toy dinosaur from the control panel. She sort of hopes so, though he could also just be collecting interesting locations from the sleeping minds of other rifties, for all she knows.

[brink]

"Yeah," he answers, playing with controls. He even flips the three 'magic switches', just for fun. He doesn't make it do anything just now though. "I'm from about the same time as we're in now, so space travel isn't a common thing yet. Only a couple hundred people have been out there, and only a dozen have even been on the moon."

He jumps to his feet, heading towards the door at the back. It's been ages since he played around in this setting. Ages since he had anyone lucid to play with him. "Want a tour?" he offers.

[rae_of_sun]

Sunshine considers just asking to be taken back to her bakery, but Topher seems so enthusiastic about the tour that she doesn't quite have the heart to shoot him down. Plus, she feels slightly less ridiculous in this spaceship than the others. It's worn enough to not make her feel like a complete troll in her flour-streaked clothes and apron, but not so grotty that she feels as if she's about to contract ten different kinds of space tetanus. She's probably not going to get a more enticing offer.

"Sure," she says, hauling herself out of the chair and setting the little dinosaur back where she found it.

[brink]

Hey, Topher doesn't mind being humoured. It's something he's very used to in a lot of different fields, both when it comes to his medical or technological expertise, or his geeky references.

He grins and bounces out the door and down the little stairs, walking backwards down the corridor and gesturing at the hatches along the walls. "Crew quarters," he informs - one of the hatches has a lovely hand-painted sign, even. He doesn't stop to elaborate (though he easily could), but continues straight into, "Dining hall."

He skips down the steps into the warmly lit room (again decorated with some hand-painted touches), with a large wooden table serving as the center, and swings into the little kitchen area. He stops for a moment to pick up a cookie (from that tray that seems to follow them) and shove it in his mouth.

[rae_of_sun]

Topher's enthusiasm might not be infectious, but it is pretty charming. She wanders after him, glancing around in appreciation of the detail he's conjured up. (How many times has he watched this show? Gods, what if it's not even a show? What if he extrapolated all this from a book or something? She's not sure if she should be impressed or terrified.) She does a double-take at one of the signs - this 'Kaylee' seems adorable - and wonders if they're going to run into any of these people.

But it seems not. There's no one in the surprisingly homey dining hall, anyway. That's probably just as well; it's one thing for him to give her a tour of a fictional ship, quite another for him to summon fictional people to populate it. It's sort of sad, imagining Topher exploring these elaborate dreamscapes on his own, but not as sad as the thought of him conjuring up some imaginary company.

Not that he'd need to. Maybe he just trolls the dreaming for willing participants like her.

"So, is this a show, or a movie…?" she asks as she runs a hand over the worn table.

[brink]

"Short TV show followed by a movie," he answers around the cookie, leading the way towards the second corridor slowly enough that Sunshine gets to take a proper look around. "The previous place was from a video game, for the record."

The next corridor isn't interesting it all, but it does lead to the engine room, which has a lovely little hammock in it. He continues naming the rooms as they move through them, but doesn't stick around in the engine room for long, heading down the stairs instead. This leads them to a little lounge, next to a few passenger rooms, and the medbay.

"What kind of stuff do you like, then? Which books, TV show, music?" he inquires as they walk. And yeah, it's definitely better to do this with actual company that can really surprise him. Making fictional people takes up a lot more thought process, at least if you want to make it interesting, and it feels a bit weird in front of Sunshine. Since it would basically be playing out improvised fanfiction.

Of course, what would be really great is if he found someone who not only had dream powers matching his own, but also had an actual interest in doing that together - they could play out scenes in proper settings and actually get to watch them or even participate, it would be great. But probably a bit too meta.

[rae_of_sun]

Sunshine shrugs. "Most of what I liked doesn't exist here," she says. And she's checked. Hell, even the genres need translating; her historical fiction is this universe's gritty urban fantasy.

Plus, her vampire vision has made both reading and tv viewing more taxing than they used to be, so she hasn't availed herself of as much of this universe's entertainment as she normally would have. Not that she wants to get into that - Topher doesn't need to know about the carthaginian sucker specs.

"Um." She scrapes back her hair. "Fantasy, I guess - or it would be classified as 'fantasy' here. That's what I like to read. I honestly haven't watched much TV since I got here, though." Frankly, hauling the television into a closet so she could watch it in total darkness is too much work.

[brink]

"That's a shame," he answers in sympathy for lacking her favourite kinds of fiction. Quite a few of his favourites are missing too, but there's still a large overlap, and then things that didn't exist in his own universe which are excellent and he's been making sure to consume.

"I've got recs if you wanna experience some highlights of this world's television," he offers, leading the way into the cargo bay, big and mostly empty. The giant doors are open at the other end, and they appear to be parked in a grassy field on a warm but comfortably breeze summer's day. Never mind that they were just flying through space a minute ago. Dreams don't have to make that much sense.