1965-02-03 - Whyever Pancakes?
Summary: Lucian has a low opinion of pancakes as breakfast food. Or food, period.
Related: If there are no related logs, put 'None', — please don't leave blank!
Theme Song: None
bucky lucian 


.~{:--------------:}~.


Weekend nights are busy nights, this being one of the town's hotspots. But even long nights end in the wee hours. Last call's been called, the last inebriated guest seen out to sober up in the chill or bundled into a cab. 'Jack' had to do some actual bouncing this evening, not just tending bar, but that's done, and he's helping clean up. Always willing to turn hands both flesh and metal to whatever task needs doing, with neither demurral nor pride. So he's idly flipping chairs up on to tables, using only his left hand.


Cleaning up at Lux constitutes a fair few things. Putting away the debts, squaring the accounts, assuring the talent gets where it needs to go. For the supernatural set, oaths and other peculiar arrangements sometimes invoke different abilities: a man might vanish into the aether, a portal might open across the street in a curiously quiet drycleaner that never seems to steam up the windows and still delivers perfectly pressed suits.

One could almost — almost — hope the proprietor indulges in a like of cinema and alcohol, passing out asleep on a couch in front of a radio where voiced stories in foreign languages from a dozen commentators play on until dawn. A nice image, but for someone unlikely ever to sleep, the waning hours simply mark another transition. He need not learn a foreign language or cooking skills or frankly much of anything at all, so why consult the newspaper?

However exciting, he is not doing the New York Times crossword one-handed, slicing and shaping glass using a fine beam of light, and eating a piece of chocolate. Not only that, Lucifer might just be humming an old German tune too.


There are those nights where Buck falls asleep to the radio - classical music or pop, the old stuff he favors. Anything to drown out the echoes in his head - the creak of ancient pipes contracting in the cold, the drip of condensation, the echoes of boots on concrete. Scarlett's out of town, and Kai and Loki are away, so he's loath to go back to the silence of either flat. He whistles the tune back to Lucian, teasing - bars of what is surely Lili Marlene.


Prudence would have some kind of jazz in East Village, folk anthems sung by protesters in their marches around Washington Square, Harlem, ahd the Bronx. Fire up the old time rock and roll, the old world British Invasion, all of them have a place. Motown, Gregorian chant, somewhere on the dial satisfies need for distraction. Lucian fills in a few more squares with the pencil, easily dissecting one of the more elaborate 'two words, adj.' alternatives that stretch across the page in a march of letters. Precise, neat architectural lines answer the sharpest minds on the syndicated run. Glass collapses and melts into itself, convinced to turn by the occasional half-hearted spin now and then. Whatever he is fashioning, not even the former Devil knows. Something to decorate the place with, failing to fashion an interesting gewgaw. "I gave Sara an early break. Something about pizza for breakfast." He shakes his golden head. "You think a pancake would be possible."


"For her or for you?" Buck asks, as he sets the last chair up in its proper perch, and then goes to seek out broom and dustpan. No cavilling at the janitorial work, for all he sniffed at his earlier employment at Stark's place. "IF you want pancakes, I can make you some," he adds, mischievous. "I bet there are ingredients in the kitchen."


"What am I going to do with a pancake?" Lucifer versus the proper breakfast, good for the body, not for the soul. "For her. She complained about the lack of proper meals attuned to the appropriate hour." Spin a verse, and he thumbs his way through the next row of Down options on the crossword, rather than Across lines. Those are neatly arranged in letters of uniform size and spacing. One might as well have a typewriter. "Possibly worth a stack of them. Whatever could we do with those? Feed half the neighbourhood. Establish some kind of charitable activity."


"Eat them. If you like the taste of them," James retorts. "And I dunno. I'm not real fussy about that. I eat what's around in the morning, and if that's a sandwich, so what?" The idea of Lucian running a charity makes him chuckle, as he starts in at the front of the bar, sweeping up. He's hung up jacket and dress shirt, leaving only the usual white t-shirt. As he passes behind Lucian, he glances at the crossword, and offers, "44 down is Waltz."


"It beats kibbutz for fifty across," says the golden-blond. He reaches out to pinch the melting glass, reshaping its contours once again into something akin to a fluted spindle that lends itself to a helix. Building himself some DNA? Best believe the model is fully accurate, frighteningly so.

"Everything tastes good. The great secret of life, food is worth the experience. People should not deny the value of that." He does not smile wholly about this situation; he pencils in another line. Tick-tock. Scritch, scritch.


"Agreed," Buck says, quietly. "At least, in America." He resumes his work, the same faithful little coal of want and bemusement as ever. No smudges on the t-shirt. Both crossword and glass-shaping have him grinning ot himself as he turns away. Even the Devil has hobbies.


"Still delicious. Natto has a remarkably deep profile. Spiced, pickled, jellied, sugared, every last flavour has an excellent quality to distinguish it." Lucifer looks at his progress on the glass and, for no reason other than not, he squeezes and pinches some of the glass blobs into lucent petals. Give him a bit of work here or there, and he adds a rose blooming in light profusion, fire and heat cooling the bright orange-red embers into their final form. "Eat nothing but sand for a few millennia, you may come to appreciate the texture of a proper custard or a fish stick."


"I'm sure," Buck murmurs. Trying not to just watch Lucian's efforts on the rose - he does have real work to do. But he glances at it with each turn back, as he sweeps out the booths, paiently. "Four years of K-rations was bad enough."


"K-rations are not so bad. They at least pretend to be food." In his expert opinion, Lucian can talk about cuisine and culinary affairs all day, all night. Leaving glass standing on the tabletop, he sits back to relax against the padded back of the horseshoe booth. How unfair that he is not contributing his fair share. He could ash the place, it would be tidy. "Where did I let off? Ah, yes. Ere, and tho." Two short words but they fit in well, which counts.


God only knows what mood's gotten into him. Less of that fear trembling below the surface, because he's got enough humor to suggest, drily, "You should make a unicorn," as he nods at the rose. "And …..well, now that you say that, that's true. They were gourmet meals compared to what the Russians fed me on." Fair enough - he's the boss. Buck does what he's paid to do.


Make a unicorn. Of course. Because that mythical beast embodies something as unnatural as Lucifer Morningstar himself. "Flouting the rules on commerce will only antagonize the makers of such valuable creations. I imperil an entire industry of knick-knack sellers and artists," he answers, brows firmly slanted inwards and those inscrutably dark eyes burned. Genetic helix adorned by a rose. Now someone wants a unicorn. This is why they don't sell beer by the bottle at Lux. He has to find something else to cannibalize. Then what? Palm outstretched, he pulls one of the washed glasses to himself and looks over this acquisition, rotating it around, as the cup floats in the air to him. "As Sara would have it, compared to what I feed you, the Russians were giving you lobster thermidor and steak on a gold-embossed plate. Unacceptable for a meal to be displaced from its proper time and place. I believe the meals are fully wholesome, nutritious, and desirable whenever suits your fancy. So we agree to disagree. Always wise; knowledge is her forte. It certainly exceeds some of our associates."


This is why they've never ever seen Bucky drunk, even after hours. Nevermind the expense in drinks - he'd need far more than his comped allotment to get even the start of a buzz. Watching Lucian, he's grinning. "You don't feed me," he points out. "I bring my lunch. But yeah, she's a perfectionist." Then there's a frown of thought. If he can do that to glass, what could he do to the arm? Not that he doesn't have a team to maintain it, but…


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