It was weird, being with Rube and not being at Der Waffle Haus. I had to admit though, The Dish was cute. In an artsy kind of way. The walls were a nice, cheery yellow, the tables were dark wood with those little curliques on the legs, and there were flowers everywhere.

It so wasn't Rube's kind of place. There were no comfortable booths to lounge back in, and it definitely wasn't a restaurant where you could come, order six dollars worth of food and hang out for six hours without management coming by to throw you out.

Come to think of it, it wasn't the kind of place we could spend a lot of time in without management coming to throw us out either. Apparently Rube had either been gone too long, or heaven had completely fried his brain. Either way, it was only a matter of time.

I hoped he had a back-up plan. I was gonna wait until Mason got here, then I was starting the clock. Even money said we got kicked out before I had to go to work.

"Morning Rube."

"Morning Peanut." Rube passed me the menu without looking up from his waffle. "The hash browns are excellent."

"Yeah?" Interested, I stuck my head in the menu. Then I frowned. "Hey, wait a minute. If they're so good, how come you aren't having any?"

"Because I…" Of course, Rube being Rube he had to toss in a dramatic, finger kissing flourish like those creepy French chefs on those cooking shows Mom used to watch. "…am having waffles."

"Well then, I want waffles." At least then I knew if I died of food poisoning, Rube would go first. If we could actually die. Wait, could reapers get food poisoning?

"I'm having bacon too, you want some of that?"

"Extra crispy?"

"Is there any other way?"

You know, for a guy who'd just found out he was stuck back on earth indefinitely for something that totally wasn't his fault, Rube sounded downright chipper. I, on the other hand, was exhausted. Daisy had been so wired that she'd stayed up all night cleaning the freaking house. Which wasn't a bad thing, as a general rule, since it meant I didn't have to do it. But last night Daisy had decided she absolutely couldn't live without Pucchini, and she'd blasted it from the rooftop (metaphorically speaking) until four o'clock in the freaking morning.

It was apparently too much to ask Daisy to show a little fucking courtesy for those of us that had to crawl out of bed and go to work the next morning. Delores had just sent Murray into space. She was counting on me to be there for her. Ditching out to go do my reap was going to be hard enough. There was no way I could take the entire day off.

"Coffee for the lady. A waffle. Two orders of bacon, extra crispy"

Jerking awake, I looked from Rube to the waitress, who was standing there with her pad in her hand and a knowing smile on her face. Crap, when did I fall asleep? Oh man, had I drooled? A look at the table made me wince. Oh yeah.

I didn't even want to know what she was thinking. Whatever it was, it was probably a lot more interesting than the real thing. Everyone else always had these great fantasies of what my life was like. We were a team, me and fantasy me. One of us deserved to have a good time. The other one had exactly forty three minutes to eat her waffle and bacon and get her ass to Happy Time.

"Rube!" A blur of dark fabric, the creak of a well oiled gun belt. Roxy.

"Hey Roxy." Rube nodded at a chair. "Have a seat."

"I can't. I have to get to…"

"I said, have a seat." Rube's voice was suddenly hard. Reaching out without looking up, he pulled out the chair next to him, just in case she couldn't figure out what he was talking about the first time. I saw Roxy open her mouth to argue, then swallow it back down. Smart girl. Smarter than I was. I knew we were all going to be toeing the straight and narrow for a while, just to stay on Rube's good side.

I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to handle it. I'd never been able to go more than a day or two without pissing him off. Why mess with a good thing?

Then again, right now the bar for good behavior was about as low as it was going to go. If we could manage to not screw up the natural order of life, not kill a reaper and not make any more gravelings, we'd be all right. Maybe I ought to take a lesson from Roxy, sit back, keep my mouth shut and see how long it could last.

Nah. Where's the fun in that?

"Gonna give us a pep talk this morning, Daddy-O?" I grinned cheerfully in the face of Rube's withering glare. "Cuz I have to be at work in less than an hour, so if this is going to be one of those epic speeches maybe you should do a podcast instead. Then we could just download it and listen to it later."

"That's an awesome idea. We could call it…Rube's Rambles." Mason slid into the chair next to Roxy, leaving me sitting there next to the mad cleaner. Either he had no idea what had been going on last night or, more likely, he just wanted to see a cat fight break out. What was it with men and jello wrestling, anyway?

Although right then, with Daisy looking all pampered and pressed to perfection while I felt like something the cat dragged in, the thought of turning those prissy pants green was sounding better and better.

"I'm not making a podcast." Rube waited for the waitress to set down our plates, then reached over and started cutting my waffle. Ummm… "We're going to lay down some rules."

"Oh, I'm not very good at rules. Maybe we should make them guidelines. You know, just in case."

"Rules, Mason. With a clause that says I get to kick your ass clear out of the state if you can't manage to follow them."

"Ummm, Rube?"

"Not right now Peanut. Can't you see I'm talking here?" Scooping up a bit of waffle, he stuck it into my mouth. "I want to make this very, very clear. If you fuck up again, you are gone. Period. No second chances. And that's straight from Upper Management, so I don't want to hear anyone complaining about it."

"What the hell?" Mason stared at Rube, wide-eyed. I knew how he felt. When you got right down to it, fucking up was what our ragtag little group did best. Telling us not to do it was like giving us a big fat permission card to, like, go blow up a building or something.

I didn't want to transfer. Something told me Upper Management probably worked a lot like the military. If you were transferred, it wouldn't be someplace nice, like Barbados. It would be some cold, random post on some top secret base with, like, two people, frozen dinners and no cable.

We were so screwed. And what the hell was Rube doing to my food?

A/N: Thank you all so much for being patient with me. One more week of insanity, tops, then things should start getting back to normal and we'll see where Rube and George are going to go. In the meantime, this is for PillowDrabbler, who so kindly reminded me that every once in a while you have to wake up and smell the calendar! (And the stinkbombs in your front lawn) Thank you sweetie. Hope you enjoyed :)