xp_logs | Meggan and Kevin, Sunday Afternoon

Meggan builds a Leaning Tower of Waffles at the Waffle House, and then she and Kevin work out a plan for her to learn how to safely drive on ice, just in case it’s sprung on her during her driver’s test. From there, it turns into them creating a God of Waffles, and a prolonged discussion of the sex lives of the Greek Gods.

With Kevin’s help, Meggan had managed to make a rather nice Leaning Tower of Waffles on her own plate. One more waffle, or blueberry, or even one more drip of syrup, and it would be one huge, sticky mess all over their Waffle House table unless she did something soon. She also had one small ulterior motive for being there, but it could wait one more minute, she decided as she managed to spear a blueberry that was in danger of being smashed as the waffles leaned just a little more to the left, before settling.

“We might have a disaster on our hands with that soon, but this is so good,” Meggan enthused. “A few more bites, and then I really, really need to ask you something.” As she said that, she also moved her plate a little closer to Kevin’s as a precautionary measure, should the waffles come near to toppling again.

Munching on a piece of bacon, Kevin watched her complete her masterpiece with amusement. It was one thing to talk about the leaning tower of waffles, but it was another one to actually make one. "If you can actually eat all that then Ah'll give you anything you want." And he really meant that. He was pretty sure Meggan didn't have Angel's metabolism so it would be impressive if she managed to pack away all that waffle and syrup and fruit. Really, even with the mutant metabolism of doom it was impressive to see a girl that small eat that much. Even if he had to be prepared to leave a really nice tip for the waiter in case it all came crashing down. Hell, it was probably a really nice tip already just because of how many waffles they'd ordered. He slid one of the empty plates a stack had come out on over to the towering plate as another precautionary landing spot.

“Maybe not every last layer of it, but oh, I’ll be trying,” she vowed. Meggan wondered if a handful of straws could keep the waffles from collapsing. They probably weren’t strong enough, but a spoon might be. Maybe even a spork if they had those.

Meggan took another couple of bites before deciding that it couldn't hurt to ask. She didn’t think she could ever get tired of Waffle House waffles. “Well...my driving test is around the end of February, you know? I was just wondering, really. Do you...think you’d be interested in teaching me how to drive on the ice safely? Just in case there’s a little ice on the roads when it's time for my test. If it’s Snowpocalypse levels with fifty feet of snow keeping everyone in one place, I’d change it to March.”

She couldn’t believe she had actually used the phrase Snowpocalypse, but that’s what people had called it for a while now, so she went with it. She just felt like she needed an extra person teaching her road things. With a mischievous grin, Meggan offered, “We could consider half of this leaning waffle tower a bribe, if you want? Right down the middle, if we can manage that without making it tip over. Please?"

She wanted him to what now? When did he turn into the guy being asked to teach people things? Sure, if she wanted to know how to not cut her finger off while cutting down sheets of meld or solder that was one thing, but driving? On the other hand, he was a decent driver and he was twenty-one which was basically the prerequisite for learning permitted people, right? It was just a very strange thing to go from the guy who holed up in one of two rooms and only spoke to about three people willingly to realizing he stuffed girls with waffles or offered himself as a human pillow or, apparently, helped teach them to drive. Kevin really felt like he should have been using his position to greater advantage, especially considering how attractive all the girls involved in these activities were, but he really just wasn't that guy.

"Ah thought the whole point was for you to down the leaning tower of waffle? Or was it just for you to build it?" Side-stepping the real question that needed addressing wasn't intentional. That tower of waffles was just really distracting.

“Build it and eat it, yes,” Meggan agreed with a grin. She ate another layer, before speaking up again. “It’s probably not possible to cut it down the middle right now unless you want a lapful of syrup to get you, but when it gets smaller, if you want? So a little less than half its size would be left, and it wouldn’t be leaning as much as it is now.” At that point, half could safely be moved to his plate, she guessed.

She obviously wasn’t that easily diverted. “So, again...please, Kevin? I promise I don’t zip around like a racecar driver.” She knew there wouldn’t be enough waffles in the universe for a bribe if she did drive like that. “I haven’t hit a single street sign or mailbox yet,” she beamed. Meggan was ridiculously proud of that fact, and hoped it would help him decide.

Kevin took his time chewing on another piece of bacon before answering her. Meggan just looked so sweet and hopeful and proud. She had to know that you more or less had to be heartless to say no to that face. Sucker. Yep. Stamp it on my forehead. After he swallowed Kevin seemed to deflate a little as he slouched against the back of the booth. "You don't really think Ah'm gonna say no, do you? But if you almost run over an old lady Ah'm grabbin' the wheel even if it does crash us into a mailbox."

“Thank you!” She was thrilled. “That’s fine, that's great, because I wouldn’t want to run her down.” Even if she would wonder why little old ladies were walking down the middle of the street to begin with when it was very, very cold outside. She realized she had almost forgotten the waffles, and ate another couple of layers.

Meggan swallowed her food, before asking, “Should we try it out in a iced over parking lot first? Start small there, gradually build up to a road.” Realizing she might be bumping into cars in the process, Meggan hurriedly added, “An empty parking lot at first, just in case I can’t stop in time--I’d just be bumping the empty parking place or those handicapped parking signs, and not dinging a really expensive car. If I skid, we can just go in endless circles there, figure out what I'm doing wrong, before we move to the road. Does that sound good?”

"Let's see, take you to an empty, totally shady parking lot or chance you crashing us and runnin' over old ladies?" Kevin pretended to consider the pros and cons of each of those scenarios. "On the one hand, there'd be fewer people drawin' social security so if you took out enough old ladies maybe when we retire there'll still be some left for us." He couldn't even manage to make himself sound all that serious about it. A smile cracked pretty quickly. "Yeah, Ah think Ah can find us a parking lot for you to spin out in. You know you turn into the spin when you spin out, right?"

“The learner’s manual said something almost exactly like that, so yes,” Meggan nodded. She knew what to do based on reading that manual, but it was another thing to actually try it out. “And then it said to avoid running over the road crews that were out, and deer. Only thing it didn’t mention to look out for was little kids running around on a snow day. Or maybe I just missed that page. So I promise I’ll be careful.”

She grinned, before teasing, “And I’ll watch out for all of them and all mysteriously appearing little old ladies with too much extra change once we get to the road. Without anyone else in that parking lot, I don’t think it’ll turn into a scarier game of bumper cars.”

"Kids are expendable," Kevin told her sagely. "And they've got good agility so they're worth more points when you hit 'em." Now he had images of an obstacle course that involved trying to run over bratty kids and grannies. Some day Kevin was going to actually go nuts and try to make good on some of those mental images and it would be all downhill from there. "You, me, icy parking lot. It's like my dream date. Forget all those walks on the beach, Ah just need me a girl who can't drive, a car that ain't mine and real bad weather. It's romance in the making." He gave her the most serious look he could manage and told Meggan, "You're gonna be madly in love with me by time we get home. Just be prepared for that, okay?"

“Aw, those poor kids were just trying to cross the street to play on a snowy hill,” Meggan joked. “It’s a deal. Got it, I’m sure I’ll be ready for it. No walking down a moonlit beach for you, just walking down road during a blizzard,” Meggan nodded with a small giggle. Glancing over to her leaning waffle tower, she pointed out, “And hey, looks like we’re down to six waffles left in the leaning tower, if you want me to chop down the middle for you? There won’t be any syrup splashing us or blueberries shooting off the table now.” Now it wouldn’t accidentally become a mess for the nice waitress to deal with. She hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to it while they talked, and ended up plowing through most of it.

After a sudden burp, and an ‘excuse me’, she admitted with a flourish, “I have room for two more slices, and then the tower will have bested me with just four to go. But I'll try again someday.”

Bested with four to go. "If we cut 'em in half you still have three to get down," Kevin pointed out. "And Ah really don't suggest throwing up while you're drivin'. It really obscures the view out the windshield, y'know?" He really was going to make her eat the whole thing herself. He'd taken a picture of her with the whole thing when she'd first managed to construct it for proof and everything. Without a word, though, he picked up his fork and used the edge of it to cut down through the slices so he could spear a triangular piece of waffle on it. "As far as Ah'm concerned, Ah didn't help you here and you ate it all yourself, right? Can't no one prove different." It was good waffle though and he was paying for it, after all.

That image made her wrinkle her nose in disgust for a second. “Ew. Don’t worry, I’m not getting sick from it, just nearing full,” Meggan was quick to assure him. She didn’t want to dwell on how you’d clean that up without the world’s best squeegee. She watched him start cutting, and nodded gratefully. “That works, yeah. Thank you. It’ll be a secret that I’ll always keep,” she grinned as she speared part of that smaller piece with her fork.

Hey, she would be eating each slice of it--how big the final slices were would just be something nobody in the world would ever know, except for her and Kevin. “They’re still the best waffles ever. And what do you say? Maybe we take forty-five minutes or so for the both of us to digest when we’re completely done, and then we get some practice in on that shady, ice-covered parking lot?”

"So you're trying to prolong things until you fall in love with me, huh? Resistance is futile, y'know." Kevin was smiling even as he spoke. He couldn't imagine being the sort of person who said stuff like that and meant it. That level of narcissism completely escaped his comprehension. But he was amused all the while. Plus, there was waffle. Nothing could be bad if there were waffles involved. He snagged another piece for himself. "It's okay. Ah'll let you play hard to get."

Meggan grabbed her last piece before he could think of trying to steal that one, popping it into her mouth. At least she had a napkin next to her. “Futile, huh? Pretty sure I can, silly.” Meggan, beaming victoriously at having finished, chose to bounce an otherwise untouched blueberry off his nose for that last comment instead of responding with words. It couldn’t hope to turn into a food fight with all the food inside them, could it?

The blueberry left a sticky residue on his nose, though it was only there for a moment before his mutation kicked in to decay it off. "Throwin' food at me could end really gross if you hit skin, you know." The berry itself was mostly unfazed, but the faint dusting of ashed syrup could be seen falling from his nose as he spoke. He brushed the rest of the ash off with a gloved finger. "Futile," he repeated belatedly. "Just you wait and see."

“At least I wasn’t crazy or dumb enough to try a waffle fight,” she pointed out. “I never would. That would be the worst waste of a perfectly nice pig out session...and rude to make them clean it up.” Meggan raised an eyebrow, feigning shock. “Oh, we’ll see, Kevin. We’ll see just how well I’m able to resist any hint of charms as we loop around the ice. Not so futile,” she giggled.

"Ice is very romantic," he insisted. "That whole near death experience is real inspiring." It was really hard to say that with a straight face, actually. If he kept going it was possible he wouldn't manage to keep it up. "And if you start a waffle fight we're breakin' up. You don't disrespect the waffle like that. The waffle must be worshiped and waffle worship involves ingesting." He sounded quite serious on the matter.

“I would never think to disrespect the waffles,” Meggan promised with was as serious a face as she could muster. A tiny smile still broke out, as she maintained, “You can only disrespect the blueberries. You’d be the one to set up a little waffle shrine, wouldn’t you? A secret closet, with tiny plastic waffles hanging from the ceiling in front of a mirror shaped like a waffle.” Waffle shoes would be a step too far. He wouldn't want to walk on the waffles.

"Ah'm offended," he returned indignantly. "Metal's my medium. How could you think Ah'd go an build a shrine outta plastic? That's like turnin' my back on everything Ah am for waffles. Waffles are only my second love. 'Sides, Ah decay plastic but little metal waffles Ah could stroke 'em and tell 'em how pretty they are even without gloves." Clearly all idols in a shrine required daily petting. It was something like making sacrifices to your household gods, only the God of Waffles required adoration alone.

“Right, right. So, tiny metal waffles hanging from the ceiling, too, sort of like wind chimes? You’d know if someone snuck in just by the noise caused by a passing breeze.” She wondered if they actually made chimes to look like waffles. With a laugh, Meggan pleaded, “Pet them and stroke them and squeeze them all you want, just please promise me you won’t try to name them all George when you’re worshipping them.” Visions of a certain cartoon character danced through her head.

Kevin was instantly sporting a pouty frown and looking as absolutely destroyed as possible. "What's wrong with George?"

“A character in a cartoon named all her pets George and squeezed them too much. It just seemed a little...strange for a waffle to be named that, but I guess it’s not as bad as Elmyra or Matilda,” Meggan explained. “You know what I think is better? I’d suggest...Buttercup." She succeeded in keeping a straight face, and continued, "It might sound bad for a waffley god to be named Buttercup, but aren’t waffles good with a little bit of butter stuck on top?”

He had gotten the cartoon reference, hence his reaction to not name them George, but Kevin was immediately derailed by the misuse of butter being implied here. "Little bit? Oh, you're more yankee than Ah was givin' you credit for. You don't just put a little bit of butter on top of a stack of waffles. You need butter on each waffle. You gotta fill their little waffle holes so it melts and there was tiny pools of butter. Then you slather 'em in syrup. Ah knew your waffles tasted funny..."

“Most of them were,” Meggan insisted, “But maybe you're right. It could have run out two or three waffles before the ones you helped me with? The syrup was everywhere the butter didn’t get into, though, on top of every single bit of the tower. Isn’t that just as good?” They were still the best she had ever had. After a moment, thanks to the comment about the butter, she had a better name. “Ooh, name it Butterpool? You’d have a pool of butter, instead of a cup. It kind of sounds like the name of a place, too.”

"Butterpool, god of waffles," Kevin said in his most epically sounding voice. He then fell silent for a bit and considered that. Waffle god Butterpool. All hail ye great Butterpool. Butterpool or death! It had a sort of ring to it. Kevin nodded. "Ah think you're onto something with this Butterpool guy."

Meggan may have been joking that name suggestion, but it still worked well. “It does work, huh? Butterpool,” Meggan intoned. “He’s the only god that leaves trails of butter wherever he goes, which is nice--and maybe a little messy--if he wandered by around the time breakfast started.” They were just having a field day with this, and she loved every second of it. “Maybe he splashed syrup, too. They just wouldn’t let him on Mount Olympus because they would have had to follow him with a neverending supply of towels and an old mop,” Meggan surmised with a grin.

"Nah, they'd just need what's his name, Poseidon, to follow him around. Or was there like a storm god that could make rain instead of just thunder and lightning? 'Cause that one could have been his, like, god nookie and clean up after him. You know how they're always all about the incest and the crazy and impregnating women as a gust of wind and stuff." He nearly told Meggan to be careful to never go commando with a skirt on windy days but thought better of it. Though, yeah, mental images of commando Marilyn Munroe over that vent in that one movie totally just invaded his head.

“I know Zeus was a very busy god, and threw around a lot of lightning bolts.” Meggan failed to notice the way that sounded until it was too late. Maybe Kevin wouldn’t catch it? “So maybe he could spray some rain without lightning, and wash away the syrup and butter that Butterpool left behind.” That would take a lot of rain...Poseidon and Zeus would have to team up. “I haven’t read the one with any of the gods trying that as a gust of wind," she admitted.

"But I did find the one with Zeus shapeshifting into a swan, and one into an eagle. And turning someone else into a bear?” She really didn’t want to know how that sort of thing worked for everyone involved. “Thinking you’re about to be eaten by a giant bear gets in the way of...well...anything like god nookie, wouldn’t it?”

"Ah dunno, maybe it's a fetish or somethin'. Like the adrenalin really sets the mood." And now he had really gross, vivid mental images of woman-bear hate sex going on. God, Kevin really hated his brain some days. "Ah don't really remember much 'bout the one with the wind, just that it was Zeus and he turned into the wind and totally knocked someone up that way. Seriously, that's like skill. No semen needed, just moisture in the air or something ...and, wow. That's a gross thought." Because the semen would be the moisture in the air. He prayed to God it wasn't windy out when they left. That would just be beyond gross to think about walking through. Covered in jizz and you wouldn't even know it.

“Ancient Greeks could have been afraid of their drafty huts because of that myth. Windy outside? You can always run indoors. Windy inside? And you’ve grown up with that? That might not have been fun for them. They would have had so many holes to plug,” Meggan said with some sympathy. “Yeah. Very, very icky,” she agreed. Kevin was to blame if she never thought of a breeze the same way again.

“Did any of the gods ever try being an anteater? And you know something? I can’t believe we’re having a conversation about god nookie styles,” Meggan said with a laugh. It was fun, but she hoped she wouldn’t be considering that the rest of the day. Wouldn’t be good to be distracted by that while Kevin was teaching her to drive on ice.

Kevin laughed. "We're just special that way. But Ah don't think there's any anteater nookie going on. Didn't the sky and the ocean get it on once? Maybe that was a different group of gods. But, really, the ocean and the sky don't really ever meet. That's like long distance nookie. It's the modern day equivalent of someone getting pregnant from phone sex. Can you imagine that conversation? 'Hey baby, what are you wearing?' 'Maternity pants.' 'What?'"

“They really, really don’t. Unless there’s a reflection in the water as the sun’s rising or setting? Could someone have seen it and made up the legend from there,” Meggan wondered. She shook her head as she realized something. “Ooh. Those places would be out of business in less than a day if that happened. Losing so much business from all those terrified guys,” she laughed.

Meggan glanced over her shoulder at the clock hanging on the nearby wall. Thirty minutes had flown by, she noticed with a start of surprise--just a little more than that in reality. “Look at the time, Kevin. Do you think you’re ready to start teaching me in shadowed parking lots?” With an impish grin, she continued, “Or do you want to stick with digestion and ancient gods for just five more minutes?” She really wanted it to be the former, but was okay if he needed some more time to get himself ready.

"You were the one who wanted to wait to digest, remember?" Kevin grabbed the check that had appeared at the edge of the table at some point and slipped the money inside. "'Sides, would Ah say no to you and slick, shadowy parking lots? Gimme some credit here." Kevin rose from the booth and gestured with an arm for Meggan to precede him.

“Could’ve, but I’m really, really happy that you didn’t. Now we can spin around icy parking lots as long as we feel like. And I do give you mountains of credit,” Meggan added with a grin as she dashed ahead of him and out the door.