The Apartment Above Luke's, Monday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

The lack of private function space was perfectly solved by the empty apartment above the diner. Kathy had spent the afternoon cleaning and setting up for dinner tonight. Her anniversary dinner, if you would.

A year ago today, she'd woken up in Eliot's house, surrounded by tight, worried faces. Her friends, pretty much en masse, had gone through a portal to LA and fought through hordes of exes to bring her home, in hopes that Nanika could bring her back to life. Or maybe just so she'd stop chanting Kathy's name. For whatever reason they'd done it, though, they'd succeeded. Kathy was alive again and had been for a full year.

A dizzying, challenging, terrifying year.

It seemed only right to hold some kind of commemorative dinner for it, somewhere between a celebration (which she still didn't think she'd earned, exactly) and an appreciation dinner. Not just for what they'd done, but for sticking with her this past year, for weathering the ups and downs, for reaching out and checking in, for reconnecting and promising to be better and stronger friends from here forward.

And, well, even if that didn't all come through, it would still be a delicious dinner cooked by Eliot and would give her a chance to just spend some time with the people she loved best, getting caught up with those she hadn't seen in awhile and offering an opportunity for them to get to know one another better, too.

If nothing else, they could all just stuff themselves silly with whatever delicious things the kitchen downstairs had whipped up and the super, extra, very chocolatey desserts Kathy had promised Alluka in her invitation.

[For those invited and up early for SP. No OCD, feel free to just ping in and around.]

Comments

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Anders!" Ringo smiled at him. "It has been forever."

"I'd say it's been up and down and stuff, but up at the moment?" She shrugged. She'd definitely had some bad patches, but it felt like she was in a good place at the moment.

"Going to classes, doing the AirTrek thing, so business as usual, I guess?"

"What about you?"

[not_every_mage]

"Business as usual," Anders echoed. "I have a couple jobs, and I'll be on the island as long as Dante is. I'm trying to keep things quiet and so far I'm succeeding."

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Quiet can be nice," Ringo said. Which probably wasn't a sentiment she would have voice a couple of years ago.

"And it sounds like you're enjoying it so far, at least."

[not_every_mage]

"I can think of worse ways to spend a couple months," Anders agreed brightly. "What about you, are you enjoying the routine?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

Ringo nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah. I wouldn't have thought I would? I mean, if you'd asked me this Summer, I would have said it'd be sooooo boring to just do the same things all the time, but," she shrugged and smiled slightly, "it's been really nice."

"I mean, I'm sure I'll get bored of it eventually, but not just yet, you know?"

[not_every_mage]

"That's where I am too," Anders agreed. "I'm sure I'll get bored and want to do something else sooner or later, but for now, why rush it?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"No rush," Ringo mused with a laugh. "I don't know that I would have said that until recently."

"But, yeah, I agree. As long as things are in a good place, you don't have to be in a hurry to change them, right?"

[not_every_mage]

"Right," Anders agreed. "I never thought I'd be the type to be content, but here I am."

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Well, here's to being content," Ringo said, raising a non-existent glass in Anders' direction.

"I really am glad that things seem to be going well." Her lips curled upward. "For both of us."