Apartment Above Luke's, Thursday Afternoon

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy was sitting crosslegged in her living room, surrounded by a truly staggering number of anatomically-shaped lollipops, hard candies, and other confections. It turned out that the company that had supplied Dite's with chocolates and candy had gone out of business and multiple other companies had sent samples to the store in hopes of scoring the contract. Kathy...wasn't sure what it said about the store or the island that it was considered a lucrative enough market for a number of stores to go to this much trouble.

But, she was determined to be a good manager and if that meant spending the afternoon trying a ridiculous amount of sexy candy to decide which she liked best, well, she was up to the task. As long as she took breaks for real food every few hours, she should be okay, right? And she had a pen and paper to record her observations (and had come up with several criteria to judge them on), making this all legit and aboveboard and not just an excuse to gorge out on penis-shaped candy all day.

So far, she'd noticed that the sour gummy boobs made the cut on her lip burn and the mold for one of the companies tended to make their chocolates look more like melted candles than anything sexy. Oh, and another company used cheap chocolate that tended to flake off which was just NOT attractive in something meant to simulate body parts. It was this kind of attention to detail that separated the good managers from the mediocre, see?

[Open! But probably slow as I'm still in training, so who knows what my schedule will be when this finally posts. Link to Anders' thread.]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

It wasn't particularly late, but still late enough that Kathy answered the door in person, rather than just yelling for whomever it was to come in. She likely made for an interesting sight, with a fading bruise on one cheek and a cherry lollipop shaped like a pair of breasts tucked behind her ear and clearly forgotten about.

"Oh!" she said, surprised, when she opened the door and saw Anders standing on the other side of it. "Anders, hi!" She stepped aside to make room for him to enter if he wished. "Come in, come in! Uh, forgive the mess in the living room. I was doing inventory. Sort of. Come in!"

[not_every_mage]

"Thanks," Anders said, giving her a slightly puzzled smile as he stepped inside. (Did the lollipop really look like breasts, or was his dirty mind getting him in trouble again?) "Inventory for what? It looks like a candy store exploded in here."

Give him a moment, and he'd notice the candy was slightly ... off.

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"Pretty close to what happened," Kathy said with a laugh, closing the door behind him and heading back to her pile of candy. "The main company that supplies candies to Dite's isn't doing that anymore. So I've got samples from a bunch of other companies to pick up the slack."

Because...oh right!

"I'm the manager for Dite's now," she added. "Maybe should have led with that."

[not_every_mage]

"It would have made things a little less confusing," Anders agreed, amiably. "Though it would've been funny if you just spent so much time there, they put you in charge of candy."

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"Hey!" Kathy protested with a laugh. "I haven't been at the store anywhere near enough to be promoted to candy! I only randomly got made manager. It was all very..." she waved a hand. "Fandom. Between the rain of beads and everything else, it was all very Fandom."

[not_every_mage]

"Sounds like it," Anders nodded, also smiling. "So, you got to be manager because it was raining beads?"

He knew that wasn't what she meant, but it was nice to be silly.

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It really was.

"Don't be ridiculous," Kathy sniffed, nose quite literally in the air. "It had nothing to do with it raining beads. It was because of all the topless people in the store, I had the nicest chest. Making a hiring decision based on what was falling from the sky is preposterous."

[not_every_mage]

Anders took shameless opportunity of that prompt to ogle her. "At least they had good taste," he remarked. "I wonder what they would have done if they'd had to hire somebody when it wasn't topless day?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Tumblr would probably have something to say about how good Kathy felt about being ogled by Anders. Tumblr could go fuck itself right off a cliff. His admiration warmed her right down to her toes.

"I probably wouldn't even have been in the running," she said. "I wasn't really thinking of Dite's as an option until the manager came storming out, pissed because the island was playing games again. She tossed her keys, I grabbed them to lock up, and then it all kind of clicked, I guess. I wanted a job, Dite's clearly had an opening, it all worked out."

[not_every_mage]

"That does sound like fate," Anders agreed, and remembered the beverage carrier in his hand. "Oh -- I have milkshakes. Do you want one?"

Yes, he would drink two milkshakes if she said no.

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"Have you ever known me to turn down a milkshake?" Kathy asked, giving him a warm smile. "Thanks, Anders. Can I offer you inappropriate candy in trade?"

[not_every_mage]

"I would be offended if you didn't," Anders joked, passing over the mocha shake. "How inappropriate is it?"

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Kathy took an experimental sip of her milkshake and that smile turned into a grin. "Oooh, caffeine and chocolate!" she joked. "You do love me."

For a second, the words hung between them as Kathy realized exactly what she'd said. The problem with being this flexible? It apparently meant she ended up with her foot in her mouth more often than not.

"Let me show you what types I've got," she said quickly, before Anders had a chance to respond to that. She was willing to ignore a stupid slip of the tongue if he was! "You have your choice between chocolate, gummy candies, hard candy, and the kinda weird stuff."

[not_every_mage]

... yeah, that was an awkward moment there. Anders was going to pretend he hadn't noticed it.

"Kinda weird stuff," he said instead. "It's all tempting, but I have to see what sex shop candy counts as weird when the normal stuff looks like body parts."

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"Just weird flavorwise," Kathy assured him, too grateful that he'd ignored it to be upset. "There's the hard candies with the fizzy fillings and the wax candies with liquid inside of them, and, like, candy necklaces with dicks on them. That kinda stuff." She nudged a pile of candy his way.

"But if you take some, you have to tell me what you think so I can make purchasing decisions using your--the customer's--valuable input."

[not_every_mage]

Anders snickered and popped a gummy dick into his mouth.

"Chewy," he said, as he swallowed. "No, do a lot of people buy candy at the sex shop? Can't say that's been on my mind when I was there."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I think it's kind of an impulse buy thing," Kathy said, pulling out inventory records. Because of course she'd grabbed those. Nerd. "Keep it by the register to catch people's eyes as they're checking out. No one comes in to buy candy from us unless they're specifically looking for dirty candies, but they're decent last-minute additions to a sale."

She glanced down again and added, "And Valentine's Day, of course. We usually get a spike in candy sales around Valentine's Day."

[not_every_mage]

"I can see that," Anders mused. "You get your partner the fuzzy handcuffs or the nipple clamps, or whatever, but if you give them the candy too you can pretend it was a gag gift. Safer that way."

Was he going to tell her what gifts he had exchanged on valentine's day? No. No, he was not.

[spin_kick_snap]

Probably for the best. At some point, she might find it amusing, but...not right now. Especially considering the way her Valentine's Day had turned out.

"Or just some candy you can feed to your partner while they're tied up and blindfolded," Kathy suggested. "If you already know your partner likes being tied up and clamped."

[not_every_mage]

Anders was going to pretend he wasn't blushing at that. He took an awkward sip of milkshake so he wouldn't ask Kathy how she knew.

"But if they're blindfolded, they won't realize you're feeding them strawberry vulvas," he bantered instead. "Seems like a waste."

[spin_kick_snap]

Well, they'd talked about Anders' fantasy of being tied up and blindfolded early on in Cyseal. That wasn't the kind of thing she'd forget, even if she hadn't been specifically talk about him.

"It saved you from having to make an extra trip to a different store?" she said, tapping a finger against her lower lip. "And maybe not strawberry vulvas, but you can probably tell a candy cock whether you can see it or not."

[not_every_mage]

"Depends on whether you're expecting it or not," Anders said thoughtfully. "And how big it is, like whether it's life-size or one of the little gummy ones."

He eyed Kathy curiously. "You're making me want to experiment."

With candy. Not the rest of it.

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy was going to assume he meant the candy. He wasn't giving off any signals to suggest anything more than that and if he meant with someone else...well, that would just be hurtful to say and that really wasn't his style.

She hmmed and started pawing through the candy pile. "Probably not gummies," she agreed. "But maybe the lollipops and a couple other things I've spotted. Wanna try?"

[not_every_mage]

"Sure," Anders said easily. "At least, if you try too. Do we have to be blindfolded for it, or is closing our eyes enough?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"We can take turns," Kathy said. "And I trust you to close your eyes. Though if I catch you cheating, we might have to deploy the blindfold option."

Shut up, her heart didn't speed up a bit at the idea.