Couch Potato [2430-2-2-Mon-7pm]

[Tommy]

It had been a good, if rather typical day for Tommy. Alex had left for work bright and early, and when Tommy finally woke up, he was all alone in the apartment. Since it was a Monday, Tommy had gotten up and done the bare minimum of what he was expected to do. He stuck dishes into the dishwasher, and cleaned up the worst of his late-night snack attack messes, and then opened a few windows and aired out the apartment.

The afternoon was for working, and in quick succession, Tommy let a dozen men into the apartment to buy whatever their drug of choice was. Most of them were other Weres, since it was hard to find the good stuff on Terra, but there were also some humans who had their own vices. Tommy liked when he had clients over. They would hang out, watch some shows, and discuss product. He always made sure they went away happy, and that they paid Tommy so he could cover this month's rent.

It was easy, quick work, and by the end of the afternoon, he was ready to kick back and relax. He had his pipe stuffed with leaves, and the viewscreen was displaying mud wrestling, possibly Tommy's favorite ever sport involving females. Tommy lit his pipe and settled into the couch, taking a hit and feeling the smoke burning in the inside of his lungs in the best way possible.

[Alexander Riggs]

He was happy to finally have a night off, even if it had meant going in early in the morning to help oversee the new security system being installed at the bar. Rusty had decided being hit twice by the same hacker was finally a legit excuse for an upgrade, so he'd finally shelled out the cash to re-do the whole thing. Of course this meant it needed to be installed while the bar wasn't open, and that meant an extremely rare day shift.

Alex got home, feeling a little out of it, with his sleep schedule being severely messed up thanks to the shift. It didn't help now that the hacker girl had taken to harassing him, either. He hadn't even realized that she'd actually been in his home until he'd received the message earlier in the day, sender blocked, but clearly from her. Before that, he'd just assumed it had been a dream.

He wandered into the living room and greeted the Were-Koala on the couch with a swift smack to the back of the head. "Idiot."

[Tommy]

Tommy's pleasant afternoon of getting high and watching mud wrestling was quickly ended with Alex's entrance, and unexpected head-smack. "Ow! Dude!" He nearly dropped his pipe, turning around to look at Alex with a hurt expression on his face. For the life of him, Tommy couldn't figure out what he'd done to deserve the smack.

"Dude!" He repeated, and gestured to the house, as if that was enough to explain why Alex had wronged him. After all, hadn't Tommy cleaned up? Didn't Alex understand how awesome that meant Tommy was? Apparently not. His brain scrambled for something else to say, finally settling on, "That was not cool!"

[Alexander Riggs]

"The Pizza Fairy???" he immediately yelped at him. "That fiking... what the hell, man? You just let her into our house??? Do you let random strangers in here all the time, or just the ones who regularly screw me over???"

Alex wasn't quite sure where the sudden bout of rage was coming from. He was usually a pretty laid back guy. He'd certainly never yelled at Tommy before. Sure the guy was a complete doof, but he was generally a charming kind of clueless that made Alex just shake his head in amusement more than any sort of real annoyance. But this... this was too much.

[Tommy]

"Dude, she had pizza!" Tommy really couldn't understand why Alex was freaking out. "Free pizza! And she was totally cute! Did you see her hair? Her hair was awesome! Any girl with hair like that is totally going to be a freak in the sack!" He tried to recreated it, gesturing wildly at the front of his head. It had started to come asleep after she had conked out on his shoulder, and Tommy had been amazed to discover that her hair was just really long bangs, all shellacked together to make a pompadour.

Tommy suddenly remembered that he did have a defense. Maybe not a great one, but a defense none the less. And Alex was mad as hell, so Tommy had no problems using it. "And! I didn't know she was a stranger! She said she was your friend! Dude, you totally recognized her when she came in and you didn't say anything!" He paused, realizing that he still didn't understand what was going on. "Why, is she an ex or something? If so, dude, sorry for trying to hit that, but I totally didn't get anywhere so you can't get mad at me."

[Alexander Riggs]

"No, man, that was the chick who ripped us off at the bar. Twice." Alex found himself pacing now, pissed off and stressed. "Basically stole two whole paychecks from me. Do you know how much fiking work that is?? No, never mind, you have no idea what the fik work is, why the hell am I even bothering."

He headed for the kitchen, opening the fridge in search of something to eat. He sighed as he stared at a bottle of ketchup, something wrapped in tin foil that probably was alive, and a couple of beers. Great. And we're out of fiking food. He snatched up a beer. "She's up to something," he continued to rant as he cracked open the beer and headed back towards the other room. "I know it. She's fiking up to something. Messing with me now."

He spotted the box of pizza from the night before and cracked it open in curiosity. There were a few pieces left. He promptly picked up the box, and stuffed it in the garbage.

[Tommy]

"What? Dude, no way!" Tommy couldn't believe what he was hearing. Nobody who brought you free pizza could be all that bad. But Alex didn't lie about these sort of things. He tried to reconcile the idea of Alex's evil bar thief, and the cute girl with the rad hair, and his brain just couldn't put the pieces together. "Hey, dude, I pay my rent! I totally know what work is! Man... I can't believe it!"

Alex was acting super paranoid. It was almost funny because usually it was Tommy being paranoid and Alex telling him to calm down because all the things he was afraid of were stupid and totally not going to come true. Tommy wasn't sure he liked being on the other side. "Okay, woah, wait a minute. Maybe she felt bad about skipping out? Maybe she was here to apologize? I don't know man, she seemed nice to me, and she tried to talk to you, but you were all grumpy and tired and like snubbed her?" Tommy kept looking for the silver lining to Alex's big grey cloud, but he was having trouble finding it. He really couldn't think of the girl as a menace of any kind, but Alex seemed to think she was straight up evil or something.

And then Alex went ahead and took out his anger on the poor pizza. "Aw duuude, that pizza was still good!" Tommy looked longingly at the box stuffed in the garbage. "You didn't have to do that man. Maybe she's bad news, but that pizza was totally innocent!"

[Alexander Riggs]

"No man," Alex ran his hands through his hair, ready to start pulling on it. "She was messing with me last night. If she was here because she felt bad she would have gone 'yo dude, I'm sorry, here's some pizza and your fiking money back'. Instead she mocked me and let me believe I was so fikin tired I was dreaming her in here." He slid his hands over his face. "And I believed it like this idiot I am."

He glanced down at the pizza in the trash. "That's not innocent pizza. That's pizza dripping in mockery. That's pizza saying 'haha I stole all your money and now you can't afford your own pizza, so I'm gonna wave it in your face.' It's evil pizza, dude. We're not eating evil pizza."

[Tommy]

"Maaaaaaan." Tommy was bummed out now. He had totally fiked it all up and let some girl in who had been cute and funny, but was apparently evil, if Alex was right. And Alex usually was about these sorts of things. He'd been right about that guy who ripped Tommy off and tried to report him to the authorities, and his ex-girlfriend Tally, who had started out awesome but turned into a huge crazy ho-bitch. "Dude, I am so sorry. Like... I had no idea, but I am totally not going to let her in here ever again. I'm not letting her tempt me with pizza and cool hair, no matter how much I want it!"

He gave the garbage pizza one last sad look, knowing that there was no way he was going to get through to Alex that pizza had no control over who delivered it. Pizza was pizza. So innocent. So delicious. The perfect snack, espeically two days later, when it was just a little stale and greasy from sitting out. If he was higher, he probably would have wept a little, but he was pretty even-keel at the moment. Even enough to raise a question in his usually stoned gourd.

"Why's she all obsessed with you?" Tommy was already thinking up answers, well before Alex could come up with them. "Maybe she's got a thing for you? Only instead of like asking you out, she's figured she would... uh. scam you? Okay, maybe I'm wrong about that. That's pretty crappy flirting. Maybe she's your arch-nemesis!"

[Alexander Riggs]

It seemed Tommy was finally understanding the situation. "Good, because we can't afford to lose this apartment because she keeps stealing my paychecks. You should probably make sure all your shit is still here too, because seriously... no amount of cool hair would make me trust her."

He wandered over to sit on the couch, and sighed. "I don't know why she's suddenly got it in for me. Unless it was because I called the cops on her the other night. You know, because I was trying to do my fiking job for once, and cover my own butt. It better not be flirting. I mean, that's cool and all but... uh, I can find other girls who won't steal from me. Easy."

[Tommy]

Tommy took a quick inventory of his drugs, suddenly feeling very worried that maybe Synack had taken more than just what he'd given her. But she hadn't. Either she wasn't too interested in using or selling, or she didn't want to mess with Tommy. He gave a relieved sigh, settling back into the couch again. "My shit's all here dude. We are totally okay for rent this month. I'll just make sure to give out less freebies, and sell more. I can call up some of my old customers and see if they need anything."

He looked over at Alex, reaching out and patting him on the shoulder. "Sorry dude. Maybe it was the cops thing? 'cause, dude, cops are pretty much a total buzzkill. Not that stealing is okay or anything, but you know?" Tommy was not even sure if he knew, but there were certain truths in life, and one of them was that cops were the enemy. It was hard to wrap his mind around the idea that they might not be enemies. After all, they were always hassling Tommy, even though what he did was like 90% legal. Okay, 30% legal and like 50% loopholes, but only like 10% illegal and- wait, that didn't add up right. "Thirty plus fifty, plus ten is- okay, but then-"

He realized Alex was staring at him. He dropped his train of thought. "Dude, you know what you need? You need to go out and have some fun. I'll make sure not to let her in ever again, and I'll get us some extra money to cover rent, and until then, we can do do something totally rad, and get some girls." Tommy grinned at him, already thinking about pick-up lines.

[Alexander Riggs]

"Look, you and I have both had our fair share of issues with the cops, but that's just because sometimes we're idiots, and sometimes they're idiots. But when it comes to protecting my job, they're the good guys, and..." Alex trailed off, realizing Tommy was off in his own head and not listening to a word he was saying anyway. He shook his head, and waited until he snapped back to reality.

Finally, Tommy turned back to reality with a suggestion of getting out. He had a point. It didn't seem like such a bad idea, except for... "Where do we go that doesn't cost money? All girls do is cost money..."

[Tommy]

Tommy gave it a thought. Girls did cost money, and if Tommy had to make up extra for rent this month, then he couldn't afford to buy a ton of drinks for girls. But then he had a thought. A great thought. An amazing thought. His whole face lit up. "Dude. We'll go to the Square!"

The Square was fantastic. During the day, it was sort of a market where people could sell food and goods, but mostly it was full of people selling jewelry and some clothes, and paintings. But at night, it really came to life. Life bands played, and anybody could enter for free. The downside was that you had to pay for beer, but Tommy was already seeing a way around that. It was a great way to have a cheap evening up, and a good place to run into chicks.

"Okay, just follow my logic here. So when you normally go out, girls come up to you, and you offer to buy them drinks right? And that' s pretty expensive, and not even a guarantee that they'll go home with you. But what if we turned the tables on them? What if we gave them a taste of their own medicine?" Tommy held up a hand, indicating that it was time for his great revelation. He let the silence collect for a moment, and dropped a bit ol' truth bomb on Alex, "I think we should wheel them for drinks instead of the other way around. You're cute! I'm charming! We'll find a couple of girls who are like a little below us, and we'll get all the beer out of them that we can possibly drink! And this time, we'll be ditching them instead of the other way around! Unless I get drunk enough that they're cute looking, and then I'm going home with them. But! It's foolproof!"

[Alexander Riggs]

At first he was a little wary when Tommy suggested the Square. Usually when they spent an evening there, he spent more money there than he was willing to admit, and usually woke up the next morning with very little memory of what the money had even been spent on. But the more Tommy went on about his plan, the more he liked it.

"So... we get a night out and see some music, and possibly even get free drinks and chicks," he stated in awe. He was actually surprised that the plan even made sense at all. "Dude, you're actually a genius some times. Let's do this!"

[Tommy]

Tommy couldn’t have had a bigger smile if he wanted to. Usually Alex’s compliments were, at best, begrudging. Not that Tommy blamed him. After all, Tommy did have his boneheaded moments. A lot of them. A whoooole lot of them. But every now and again, the wheel in his head started moving, and something brilliant came out. It was just good to have someone else recognize how brilliant Tommy could be.

“Alright man!” Tommy slapped his friend on the back, paused, and sniffed his t-shirt. The shirt smelt like eucalyptus leaves. This was fine if he was bumming around the house, but not so much when trying to meet the ladies. “Okay, dude, I really need to go put on something clean, but as soon as I do, we’re going to head out and have a totally awesome night!”

Tommy got to his feet and headed to his bedroom, stripping off his shirt even before he was inside. He did shut the door before he took off his pants, since humans had weird hang-ups about nudity, and Alex had a tendency to throw things at Tommy when he didn’t. Tommy’s room was full of plants and lamps, and a closet full of somewhat-clean clothes that he promptly started sorting through, until he turned out an outfit that was passable.