Treat
M #$&'s sleeping over?
But it's a school night!
Can we stay up late?
And have popcorn and squiddymelon?
This is the best!
Nothing with Fortunate Betrayal until she flies out in two weeks. Legally Squid's filming will be finished just before then, but they're doing a bunch of scenes without her today. She has that variety show tomorrow, and a recording session in two hours; that will go on all day. Callie grimaces and stares in the mirror; she's pale, and... are those bags under her eyes?
Nothing for it. She doesn't need to look good to sing, and she can just do her tentacles simply instead.
Callie's smoothed cream into all her longest tentacles when her phone rings. She moves her tentacles far from her ear and keeps the phone a good distance away so it doesn't get gunked up. "Morning," she says.
"Try to sound more enthusiastic," her agent grumbles. "Have you seen that tabloid of you last week? You look harried."
Callie makes a face at the mirror. She saw it, all right: wearing shades she was too tired to remember putting on, her head down, exhaustion in the fold of her tentacles and frazzlement written all over her face. She bought this new tentacle cream immediately after, to try to perk them up. So far, all its done is made them feel greasier; they keep slipping out of their bow. "I may have glanced at it," she says, and fights back a yawn. Cod, maybe she should've skipped the shower and everything, just slept in.
"The reason I'm calling is a scheduling conflict," he says, grumpier than ever. "An attention shark, big enough name they wouldn't tell me, is going long. Your recording session for the day is cancelled."
Callie nearly drops the phone.
"I trust you'll spend the time networking," he says. "Or better, packing. Your plane to Inktopia leaves in just over two weeks." With that, he hangs up on her. Callie stares at her phone, then tosses it on the bed with a laugh. A day off. Not even anything planned for it, like she always has for her regular days off. She could go back to bed for a few hours, catch a movie, window shop through Arowana... she just wishes Mary could—wait.
Callie opens their scheduling app; her stuff is in pink, full of RECORDINGS and FILMINGS and SHOWS at least six days every week; Mary's are in green, with RADIO SHOW and MUSIC SHOW and RECORDINGS nearly as often. But today...
Today, there is no green on the schedule. Mary has nothing she absolutely has to do. Callie sets down her phone and tiptoes over to Mary's room: the door's open, the bed's made. She must be feeding DJ Octavio.
Callie runs down to makomart and gets them cinnamon rolls for breakfast—just gotta pop them in the oven. She spots Mary from the bus's window as she passes the plaza, talking to Crusty Sean, and smiles; good to see she's taking a moment to breathe. Callie hurries home and pops the rolls in the oven, then washes some berries and puts those out, too. And whipped cream.
Mary gets home just as Callie's pulling out the cinnamon rolls. "Wait, what are you doing home?" Mary asks.
Callie drizzles on more melted sugar. "Recording got cancelled," she almost sings. "Wanna go to Arowanna? We can wander the stores."
Mary plucks the first cinnamon roll from the pan and bites into it, sighing with pleasure. "Absolutely. We can spend the whole day together."
"Then we will." Callie takes the rest of the cinnamon rolls to the table before Mary can eat them all.
Mary takes a seat across from her with a happy sigh, and it's just like old times, Mary unwrapping her second roll to mash blueberries inside it, Callie burning her tongue and gulping down the milk.
They're going to make themselves sick if they eat the full dozen, but Callie doesn't care. She dollops whipped cream on her next one. "How in the world did you know I had today off?" asks Mary, and her voice sounds... off. "Did you use the scheduling app?"
"I did," Callie says, and takes a big bite of her roll.
Mary raises an eyebrow. "You did what?"
Callie swallows a mouthful of roll and whipped cream. "I checked our scheduling app," she says, "since we still share it."
Mary nods, a slight frown on her face. "Well, I suppose it worked out. This sure was a surprise."
Callie fidgets with her next cinnamon roll. "We've spent so little time together lately," she says at last. "I... missed it. And you."
"I missed it, too," Mary says. She finishes mashing strawberries into her next roll and takes a bite. "I'm just... we have such different schedules lately. And... our agent's been pushing for access to the schedule. So he can add things directly."
Callie's hearts squeeze. Their agent couldn't handle the self-check in a supermarket. She takes another bite of her own roll, the warmth and whipped cream a comfort even as she says what she knows Mary is hinting at: "Do you think we should have separate apps?"
"I..." Mary contemplates another cinnamon roll. "It would be easier. We're so separated these days, it's not like we can look at it and remind each other. And..."
Callie can fill in that 'and'. "It'll be easier for other people to look at our schedules, and add to them or change them, if they're separate."
Callie looks at her plate. The food is still good, but...
Mary reaches across the table and squeezes her hand. "We don't have to, if it makes you feel bad. It'll just be harder. I can deal."
Oh, forget that. She's not gonna make Mary's life be any tougher than it already is. "I'll make a separate account tonight."
"Thank you," Mary says. "But... how about we stop talking about work, now? We do that enough. Let's just spend the day pretending it doesn't exist."
Sounds good to Callie. And she knows just what she wants to talk about. She fixes Mary with her best smile. "All right, how about we talk about Drown, then?"
Mary blushes the color of her ink, and Callie revels in it. Some things never change.