anton and brian

Who: Brian and Anton
Where: Phonishness
When: Midday

The morning news had been good: what better a birthday present than the announcement, however tentative, that the rein of nightly terror was over? Brian actually felt like he could relax a little, maybe even celebrate a bit. He had a feeling that his birthday party would be a bit happier than a cook turning forty could actually account for, given that news.

Who: Brian and Anton
Where: Anton's house
When: 5:15PM

Under normal circumstances, if Anton hadn't shown up on time, Brian wouldn't have been worried. He'd instead finish up the last of dinner, wait another fifteen or twenty minutes, and then call to make sure the poor guy hadn't forgotten. The fact that he was coming over to learn more about a power that understandably frightened him maybe would have called a little earlier to make sure he hadn't just gotten cold feet and decided not to come.

In the wake of the disasters of the night before, though, Brian was too tense to finish dinner and wait fifteen minutes and then call. He'd had dinner done already and when ten-after-five hit, he called Anton's number.

No one picked up.

Brian was out the door five minutes later, dinner stuck under a moisture-confining heating spell, and driving across town far faster than he was wont to, normally, to get to The House of Note in record time.

Who: Anton and Brian
Where: le telephone!
When: early afternoon

Rain was such a killjoy. Anton was half-fiddling with the idea of unplugging the telephone, closing up shop, and calling it a day. He had only one brave and unfortunately soggy soul walk in today for an emergency repair—one that had been solved with five minutes, a bit of glue, and a walnut. All the rest of his appointments had chickened out on him, waiting for a drier day to come out of their rain-induced hibernation. Though something more subconscious was leading him to believe it had less to do with the possibility of damp shoes and a lot more to do with what he’d been seeing in the newspaper lately.

Well, perhaps it was for the better this time. He didn’t need clients slopping all over his nice carpets, after all.

Who: Brian and Anton
Where: Anton's place
When: A little after six

Though Brian was usually pretty on-time-- not early, usually, but certainly not late-- rain had a way of fucking with his schedule. He'd gotten out the door in plenty of time to find Anton's, but another of those brief, sudden rainshowers had sent him back in the door for a good ten minutes before he actually got on the road. He just hoped Anton wasn't a horribly punctual sort of person.

Finding the place wasn't hard-- it looked very Anton-y, and the sign was, indeed, hard to miss-- and he came up the walk thankfully during a lasting dry spell, shifted the grocery bags he'd brought onto the same arm, and knocked lightly.

Who: Anton and Brian
Where: Mya’s Diner
When: late afternoon

Anton was wholeheartedly determined to make this trip out the shortest ever. Just grab a quick dinner, and then head back to work, he mentally told himself as he nudged the door of the diner open, staring thoughtfully at his shoes. Right, right.

… all right, so, as of yet, he wasn’t winning any record-breaking ribbons. That ‘oh, it will take just five minutes’ peek into the corner bookstore hadn’t really taken five minutes. But blast it, that had been a good book. Hour well spent, if he did say—er, think so himself. Even if he had more work to finish in a week than he could possibly squeeze into the remaining one hundred and sixty-seven hours.