TIMING: Current. LOCATION: The Black Lagoon. PARTIES: Clementine (@causefulmoon) & Daniel (@danielabrams) SUMMARY: Clem gets coffee, and gives a free one to Daniel! But oops! It's not just any normal kind of coffee. CONTENT WARNING: N/A
Somebody would look at Clem and assume she was a sucker for horror movies. That assumption, while taken as a compliment, could not be further from the truth. She was a wimp, really. She would practically skyrocket at any jumpscare, and when it came to things that went bump in the night, she was often watching them through slated fingers. Gore, on the other hand, wasn’t so bad. You had to be okay with gore when you were practically gored yourself. At least, that’s how Clem thought of it, and about it. In fact, she didn’t think about the process so much as she did the beast and its teeth, and the way she now shared those similarities. It was easier to focus on that than the other stuff.
So she stood in line, prepared to order the Clown, a fruity pebbles inspired latte, when the sold out sign was slapped over it. Only a little defeated, she turned to look at the ever growing line. She had stood in it for the better half of thirty minutes, so she’d be fucked if she was going to turn around now. Clem quickly ordered a Golden Goose, paid, and took a step to the side. It was the special for March, and she liked ClubWeigh’s macadamia nut cookies enough, so why not? She scrolled through her phone, only looking up to see if her order had arrived.
No matter the line, the coffee seemed to come out quick. “CLEM!” Her name scraped against her eardrums and she winced. “Fuck, right here. I’m here.” Instead of one coffee, though, there were two. Both with her name. “Hey, who–” The lady turned on her heel, clearly not wanting to give Clem anymore attention. With a huff, she grabbed both of the coffees, and went outside into the cold. Immediately, she stopped in her tracks, twisting around. “Hey, do you want this? It’s free. I got it for free, too. I didn’t do anything to it, promise.” She shoved it towards the scraggly looking man, blinking. He was at the end of the line, so if he refused, he was an idiot.
—
“Um, what?” Daniel asked, glancing up from his phone as he realized someone was talking to him—and as he suddenly sensed a shifter nearby. Some young woman held two cups of coffee, clearly having just come from inside the coffee shop. She shoved a cup towards him, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. He did want a coffee, and the line out the door for this coffee shop had him looking up other spots nearby so he could get to a shorter line.
He hadn’t really planned on stopping for coffee anywhere. Usually he made his own at home. But he had woken up earlier than usual to get to a house in Nightfall Grove to do a quick job for an older couple—they were nice enough to offer him cash for shovel their driveway, the sidewalk outside their house, and clean off the walkway and steps to their front porch. He preferred those easy manual labor jobs that only gave him cash—tax forms were far too complicated and annoying for him. After an early morning of snow removal, all he wanted was some coffee to rejuvenate him before figuring out what else to do with his day.
He pushed the cup of coffee back towards the woman. “I’ll take that one,” Daniel pointed at the one she didn’t offer him. What if the one she tried shoving at him was poisoned with something? (Also, what if that was her plan? Offer him the non-poisoned coffee so he would ask for the poisoned one instead? … Okay, there was a good chance the woman wasn’t trying to poison him. That’d be weird to do on a public sidewalk with people everywhere, right?). “What is it?” He wasn’t sure what was in the coffee, but he was not exactly picky about coffee. As long as it had caffeine, that’s all he cared about. Plus, he wouldn’t exactly mind a free coffee and not having to stand in this line.
—
Well, at least he wasn’t an idiot. Clem probably would’ve taken the coffee without question, too, truth be told. She hated waiting in lines. It was why she stuck to virtual queues. “This one?” She lifted the cup closest to her up, shrugging. “Sure, you can have this one.” She hadn’t taken a sip of either yet, so they were fair game.
He looked a little unsure, thus Clem was back to thinking of him as a little bit of an idiot. Though, she could hear Harvey’s voice in her ear– something about strangers, yada yada something about being careful, yada yada. She didn’t really care. This was coffee, and she was the one offering it. But even then, that should’ve made her understand the man’s indecisive nature a little more.
“Oh, right. I guess that’s important. What if you’re allergic?” She sniffed at the cup, immediately picking up strong smells of macadamia. “It’s… white chocolate something, with macadamia nut syrup. That’s what the sign said.” She pointed to the menu that was displayed on the window, facing outward. There were a slew of customers circling around it, probably trying to figure out what they wanted before they stepped inside. “It’s called the Golden Goose.”
She wasn’t going to wait for her company to take the first sip, so she lifted the cup to her lips and let the liquid wet her tongue. It took her a few seconds to register the flavor, but she nodded. “I’ve had like, way better, but it’s not bad.”
—
He took the other cup, but he still felt uncertain about drinking whatever was in it. He reminded himself that it was most likely not poisoned. Why would this random woman that he’d never met before want to poison him? “Yeah, don’t want an allergic reaction,” Daniel replied, even though he wasn’t allergic to anything (as far as he knew). He nodded along as she spoke, and he took a sip of the drink as he tried to tell himself that it was probably fine. He glanced over towards the menu, not really too concerned about what was in the drink. It tasted like what she said. It was coffee, and that’s all he cared about. It was sweeter than he cared for, but he could get over that.
He took another sip and nodded his head as the drink warmed him up after spending his day out in the cold. “Definitely had better than this too,” he agreed. The only reason he was going to bother drinking the rest of this was because it was free—and if he died from poison, well, what was he going to do about that? Nothing.
Daniel glanced around the area as he decided he could head out now. He had the coffee and no other particular reason for staying there. As kind as the young woman was to give him a free drink, he wasn’t in much of a chatty mood. He had other things to do now. “Well, thanks for the coffee,” he said, lifting up the cup and giving a polite grin. “I best be heading on my way though.” He took out his phone to look over the map to make sure he knew the best way home, but his hand tingled and for a moment, he thought he may drop his phone. Did she poison him? He was about to shove his phone back in his pocket and rush away, but his phone’s black case changed into a golden color and suddenly weighed heavy in his hand. “What the fuck?” he grumbled, shoving his phone into his jacket pocket but feeling the heavy weight there too.
—
Clem didn’t really care if he liked the drink or not, at least, not on some odd personal level, but she did care if he died from it. She could see her name in the newspaper: LOCAL GRUNGE-GIRL KILLS RANDOM GOTH-LITE MAN WITH MACADEMIA COFFEE. But he wasn’t allergic, so there’d be no article, and so she settled down, rocking back on her feet. She watched as he took a sip, watching his expression. The look on his face told her that he didn’t mind it, so she was satisfied. She’d done her good deed for the day, and so she could sleep well tonight. (When she started giving a fuck about good deeds, she couldn’t remember).
“It was around 7 bucks, but I got two, so… really, it was only half that.” Clem paused, not sure if she had seen the pricetag correctly. Maybe she did accidentally order two drinks and just didn’t realize it, but then she remembered the glaring 7 in the corner, beside the name of the drink, and she relaxed. “Bullshit for coffee. Like, it’s just fucking bean water.” With added flavors, but still.
He was getting ready to head out, and yeah, that made sense, Clem decided. She didn’t know him. All she did was give him coffee. She’d been so preoccupied with her own drink that she hadn’t noticed, or heard his expletives until it was too late. “What?” She looked up at him, and she realized that she did know him. “Holy shit. You’re mime-guy.” She looked back at her own cup, which had decidedly shifted into a warm golden color. “Wait, what?” She stuck her hand into her pocket, grabbing her phone, only to notice that that, too, had turned gold. “Uh…..” She looked up at him– firmly believing his name to be Daniel, and shook her head. “I didn’t do this.”
—-
Daniel nodded along as he took another sip of the drink. He didn’t mind all the added flavors even though he would have preferred something more simple right then. He preferred his tea blends, but this was fine. At least it would get the caffeine in his system. But also finding out this drink was seven dollars? Ridiculous to him. At least he knew to never come back here in the future because he was not going to pay that much for a fucking coffee.
But now he was stuck trying to figure out if this random girl poisoned him. And it was only made worse by her calling him mime-guy. He raised a brow at her even in his confusion about his now-golden phone, but somehow she knew him as a mime? Daniel never paid too close attention to all the profiles online, but now that he actually looked at her, she did look somewhat similar to that random girl editing photos of him and Emilio into mimes. (He couldn’t tell you her name though.) “I’m not a mime.” He had no idea why he felt like he had to say that.
The young woman’s phone turned gold this time, and Daniel just sighed as he looked at his coffee cup and watched it turn a golden color. At least this item wasn’t turning into actual gold, unlike his phone which was still way too heavy in his jacket pocket. “Yeah, sure, okay,” he grumbled. The only reason he slightly believed she wasn’t somehow behind this was because he guessed she was a shifter, and they weren’t exactly doing shit like this. He glanced down at the mug in his hand as the black sleeve of his jacket changed into a deep golden color, right in front of his eyes. The rest of his clothes slowly changed from black to gold. “What the fuck is this drink?” he asked, as he shoved his way past the people looking at the menu outside the coffee shop. (He rolled his eyes as he realized that even a brief touch from him to their clothes turned them golden.) “You said Golden Goose, right?” he asked her.
—-
“No, obviously not. I just turned you into one.” Clem flashed a grin, knowing well enough that he was probably not too pleased about being photoshopped for humor-sake, but did she give a shit? No. Emilio never got her those socks, either, but again, it didn’t matter. She got to make fun of men on the internet, so it was a win for her. And besides, she could turn it into a lucrative business down the road. People always had somebody they wanted to piss off by turning into a mime. She had a whole waitlist.
But did any of that really matter when the shit they were touching was turning to gold? She could’ve dreamt it, had the mime-not-mime-guy been there, because why the fuck would he be in her dream. Clem wasn’t even really sure why she had felt compelled to tell him that she hadn’t turned his phone case to gold, but it felt important.
Slowly, Daniel’s clothes transitioned from black to gold, and it wasn’t some slow, hypnotic thing, either. It pulled up and over the fabric like a sleeve. Clem’s jaw slackened as she watched. The urge to photograph it, or at least film it popped into her head, but her phone screen was completely plated gold. He was rushing to the menu, then asking her questions, and Clem’s brows furrowed. “What? Yeah, The Golden Goose.” This would have been way weirder had she not experienced something like this ages ago. It didn’t involve turning other things into gold, but it had involved every word coming out of her mouth sounding like a chirp. The drink had been called The Bluebird.
“Fuck, man. Is it every bird drink? Every single one?” The gold that’d rubbed off onto the neighboring people’s jacket stayed, even after the contact had ceased. They didn’t seem too concerned, though, still picking out their drinks. Clem set her cup down, looking around. “Is it everything?” She whispered, mostly to herself, before she dashed to a lamppost nearby, slapping her hand against the pole. Immediately, it turned gold. “Whoa.”
—
Daniel knew the people of Wicked’s Rest loved naming shit after the supernatural, so at first he thought little about a drink called Golden Goose. But now as he looked over the menu, he spotted other drinks like the Werewolf in London Fog, Cactus Cattuccino, Charming Chai Worm, and Green Treepy. He almost wondered if there was more going on here than simple names for all these drinks. “I think it’s everything,” he said, at first not realizing that she whispered the question. Whatever. They were both turning stuff into gold. If a golden goose looked gold, then that would explain why everything was changing. (Though he was not certain of how that happened from a drink.)
He rolled his eyes as he rubbed his mustache while thinking this all through. Why was this drink turning the two of them into some sort of weird gold … beings? Daniel caught his reflection in the mirror and sighed as he noticed golden hues in his mustache now. Great.
He turned around and spotted the shifter touching a lamppost. It shimmered as a wave of gold washed over it. Daniel wanted this entire situation over and done with, but he also didn’t want her going around turning everything gold. That would make too many people curious and lead to too many questions about the supernatural world. The coffee shop’s drinks probably already brought too much attention, and he crossed off yet another place he would never go to again. At least the stupid coffee shop never took his money. “Be careful about what you touch,” Daniel said as he walked over to the young woman.
He kept his hands to himself as he glanced around the area and considered how to make this all stop. He was taken aback when a random woman dressed professionally bumped into him. The papers she held scattered across the sidewalk. Except for one stack that seemed glued to the side of his pants. The woman tried yanking her papers off him, and Daniel mumbled a sorry as he tried to help. He spotted a paper clip attached to the papers. He yanked at the paper clip until it unattached itself from his pants. The woman said nothing as she continued on her way, as if she was accustomed to her paper clips getting stuck to random people on the street. “I think we’re magnetic too,” he said to the shifter as he searched for a nickel on the ground, as if that would prove his theory.
—
Clem was too mesmerized by her’s and Daniel’s ability to suddenly turn everything around them into gold to notice that he’d heard her. Even if she did get stuck on the fact, it was possible that she was talking a whole lot louder than she had originally intended. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Daniel reached up, stroking his mustache. What a manly thing to do, Clem thought. Instantaneously, the hair that grew an off-brown turned gold. The wolf couldn’t help but grin in response as she turned her attention back to the lamppost.
She wondered, very briefly, what kind of gold everything was turning into, and if she could sell it off at a pawn shop. Then, the voice of reason stepped in. (Not within her own mind, obviously.) Clem frowned, turning around to face Daniel. “Maybe you should take your own advice, dude. Your mustache is gold.” She was sure he already knew that, but she felt it important to point out. Maybe she could convince him to shave it, and sell off the hairs for a pretty penny…
Her thoughts of grand riches via hair follicles were interrupted as a pristine looking woman bumped into the rather un-pristine looking man next to her. Immediately, Clem noticed the way that the paperclip got stuck to him. He echoed her thoughts aloud, and all she could do was nod. She followed his gaze to the ground. “What are you doing?” She practically shoulder’d (forearm’d?) him in order to see what he was looking for. A few feet away from where they stood was a penny. “They don’t make those anymore,” she commented, hurrying over. She picked it up from the ground, with surprisingly no difficulty and immediately, the coin turned to gold. She held it up for him to see, offering it over, but realized she couldn’t shake it from between her index and thumb. “Oh, fuck. This is cool. Hey, do you have any change? Maybe we can turn it all to gold and sell it.”
—
Daniel sighed because obviously he knew his mustache was a golden color now. He tried to not touch too many things, and even as he attempted to help the woman get her stuff unstuck from him, he did his best to not touch her or her things. Except for the paperclip that turned a golden color as the woman walked away. “Looking for nickels,” he replied, always a man of many words. He knew he had some change in his wallet, but he didn’t want to touch his wallet and turn all of his stuff to gold. Just in case it was still normal right then.
As the woman found a penny, Daniel found a nickel on the ground. He hovered his hand up over it, and the nickel flew up and attached itself to the palm of his hand. The nickel changed into a golden shimmer. The shifter already found a coin of her own to experiment with, so at least she understood that they were magnetic too. He shook his head at her though. “No, I don’t think it’s real gold,” he explained. He knew the golden goose wasn’t actually gold, but he couldn’t just go around explaining all of that to the shifter. He wasn’t going to get into the weeds of the supernatural world with her. “I doubt that store is selling a drink for seven bucks that can turn things into real gold so we can make hundreds of dollars. Maybe if the drink was a couple hundred, then I’d believe it.”
With a nickel still stuck to his hand, he looked around as he tried to think about how to get out of this situation. His clothes were already golden, so he didn’t mind resting his hands on his hips as he thought about everything he couldn’t touch. “It ain’t real gold either because gold ain’t magnetic,” he told her.
—
“Wait, for real?” Clem pouted, jutting her lower lip out as she looked over the gold coin pressed between her two fingers. It looked real. They could get away with conning somebody, probably, but was that the right thing to do? She looked over at Daniel, noticing his choice of clothing (even before the gold takeover), and contemplated at least trying to get them both some nicer rags. Whatever. He was probably right. With a sigh, she tried to flick the coin from between her fingers with her opposite hand, but all it did was get stuck to those fingers. “What the fuck is the point of this, then? Maybe they were against the IRS and wanted to help the little people out. You never know.” She shot him a look before focusing again on the coin, trying to shake it loose.
“Somebody stupid wouldn’t know that,” Clem muttered under her breath. (She was the stupid one, considering she thought they could sell it to begin with, but that was neither here nor there.) With another heavily exaggerated sigh, she turned towards Daneil, the coin awkwardly sticking to her right knuckle now. Her whole left arm was gold from the number of attempts she’d tried to free herself of the coin.
Clem’s gaze wandered from where Daniel stood to the street, where a small box truck drove by, its back open. “Hey, uh–” On the side of the truck, PETE’S PAPERCLIPS: PAPERCLIPS FOR YOUR DIVORCE SETTLEMENT, YOUR MARRIAGE LICENSE, YOUR GRADUATION FILES! WE’VE GOT PAPERCLIPS FOR EVERY SITUATION! EVEN YOUR DEATH CERTIFICATE AND WILL! was written in all big, off-putting green lettering. “That’s going to be a problem, right?” Immediately, the truck began to shake, and it came to a halt. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of paperclips flew from their tiny little boxes, swarming like flies to where she and Daniel stood.
—
Daniel doubted that the coffee shop cared anything about the IRS or helping people out. If they were interested in that, then he doubted they would have all those drinks (like, what would the Werewolf in London Fog do to people? How would that be helpful?). Plus, how was turning everything into a golden shimmer helpful? Any legit pawn store would instantly clock this gold as fake.
He heard the rumbling of the truck driving by them, but it wasn’t until the shifter pointed out the truck that he looked up and saw PETE’S PAPERCLIPS written on the side. “Oy vey,” Daniel mumbled as the paper clips flew off the truck and towards the two of them. His first instinct was to duck, but he knew that wouldn’t do any good when the paper clips were attracted to the metal all over him. His second instinct was to keep the other person safe from harm, to instead take the attack and whatever that entailed. But the other person in this case was a shifter of some variety.
The first paper clip whacked against him and stuck to his shoulder. He stepped in front of the young woman (what was her name) as more of the paper clips flew towards them. He covered his face with his arms as—thwack, thwack, thwack—paper clip after paper clip hit him and stuck to him. He intercepted most of the paper clips, with the magnetic pull making him the first target. Daniel groaned as paper clips clung to his clothing. The truck driver slammed to a stop and jumped out to investigate the paper clips situation. The man shouted something about the paper clips, but all Daniel knew was that he was covered in thousands of paper clips. Great. He turned to face the shifter. “You good?”
—
It all happened so fast. Clem had been standing there, all gold and shiny like, coffee still in hand, as the paperclips struck. But she’d only caught maybe five or six of them against her shoulder before Daniel stepped in front of her. The sound of them thwacking against his body was as familiar as somebody throwing darts against a dartboard, and just as soon as it’d begun, it ended.
What room they didn’t have on Daniel, they had for her, and her shoulder had caught a lot more strays than she had expected them to, with Daniel’s interception. Clem tried to peel the paperclips away from her shoulder, but it was pointless. They just stuck to her hand. As the man in front of her turned around, she let out a loud laugh. “You look like a budget version of the Scarecrow from Wicked.” She couldn’t help but laugh. It was so fucking stupid!
“But fuck– god, you–” Clem shook her head, clearly tickled by the way he looked. He was covered in them. She could tell he was so not amused, especially by the way the paperclips covering his mustache twitched downward as he looked at her. “I’m fine, by the way.” She pointed at her shoulder. “Hey, maybe this is for the better, right? Do you have any paperwork that needs clipping?” She let out another snort, taking another sip of her coffee.
—
Daniel raised a brow at her comment. What was she even talking about? The budget version? “Yeah, thanks,” he responded as he tried to remove the paper clips that clung to him. The paper clips turned gold and stuck to his hands. He sighed at the realization that this was all pointless. If he was in a better mood, maybe he would laugh with her at how ridiculous he looked, but right then, he just wanted this entire situation to end. At least she was fine, though her shoulders were covered in paper clips.
“No, no, ain’t got no paperwork.” He wanted to smack that coffee out of her hand so she would stop drinking it. He guessed that the more she drank, the longer the magic would impact her. He threw away his own drink, wanting nothing more to do with this. If the young shifter wanted to keep messing up her body, fine. She could do that. But he wanted the magic to wear off of him.
“I think … I think I oughta get going.” Daniel just wanted to get away from this area and hide out until the magic disappeared from his body. As he spoke, he heard something metal hit the ground at his feet. He glanced down and saw a nickel. He turned over his palm and the nickel that had been there was gone. Could it be ending? He watched one of the paper clips faded back into a silver color before dropping to the sidewalk. (Oh, great, now he would have to pick up all these paper clips afterwards. The last thing he was going to do was leave out thousands of paper clips to litter the sidewalk.) “I think it’s stopping,” he said to the woman.
—
“Maybe you should find some.” A brief pause, “ooh, or what you can do is sell the paperclips to people who totally need them.” Clem wasn’t entirely sure why she kept trying to make money of off of the situation, but it seemed like the easiest thing to do when faced with such a clusterfuck like this one. He threw his drink away, and Clem frowned slightly. She hadn’t paid for it, per-sey, but hadn’t she, actually? Considering what was happening to the two of them now, she practically poisoned him.
“You’re leaving? So soon?” Clem wasn’t that sad to see him go– she had had her fun, and clearly he was annoyed, so maybe it was for the better. The last thing she wanted to have happen was to be yelled at by a grown ass man (even if she kind of deserved it for all of the jokes she was making), but before he could venture off, everything that’d begun to stick to him started to trickle off of his faux metal-made skin. “Oh, shit.” It probably would start wearing off on her sooner, too, if she stopped drinking the coffee, but she wasn’t that upset by the turn of events. It was kind of cool. If her phone hadn’t turned to gold, she would’ve taken a picture. “That’s going to be so many paperclips on the ground.” But as soon as the items started to fall to the ground, they started to tremble, finding their next target: her.
The nickel stuck directly to her arm, and then as the paperclips began falling from him, they made their way to every surface available that was on the metal-er(?) side. “Hey, fuck– come on.” The coffee cup she’d been holding fell from her grip as a hoard of paperclips smacked into the back of her hand. The coffee cup labeled Clem fell to the ground, the top popping open, splashing down at both hers and the man’s feet. “Fuck, man! I wasn’t done with that.”
—
Daniel shrugged his shoulders in response. He didn’t really want to stay in this situation with the young shifter who seemed to be enjoying herself. He preferred walking away and getting back home, but he also wasn’t going to just leave all these paper clips on the ground. “Ain’t leaving just yet,” he answered. He crouched down to pick up some of the paper clips, sighing as he realized how ridiculous and stupid this was. He didn’t really have anything to put them all in … He looked over in the direction of his truck and thought maybe he could use some of his reusable bags for this stupid fucking task.
As soon as he looked back at the paper clips littering the sidewalk, they flung themselves against the young woman. He stood up, but quickly jumped back from the falling coffee cup, not wanting any of that magical coffee to get on him—who knows how any of that worked? What if the mere touch of the liquid could turn him into a golden goose again? That shit was not touching him!
Daniel almost rolled his eyes at her being upset about the spilled drink, but he kept himself neutral. “You can always go buy another drink.” He glanced over at the coffee shop, which no longer had a line out the door. “Maybe try another one and see what that does.” He was feeling rather over everything right then. His primary concern was picking up all the paper clips rather than whatever this woman wanted to do. “Guess it’s your turn to look really stupid.” He motioned at all the paper clips and coins covering her.
—
“Ugh. I guess.” Clem stared down at her shoes, which were now covered in coffee. Why was it that there were so many voices of reason in Wicked’s Rest suddenly? She could’ve stood to grow up around those types, but instead she got stuck with whatever the fuck her dad was. But now he was talking her language. “Fuck. Wait. You’re so right.” She’d have to wait for the gold effect to leave her, probably. There’d be no using her phone until it did.
“Me? Look stupid?” She shook her head, turning to catch her reflection in the shop window. She did look a little stupid, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to admit that. “Nah, I look fucking great.” Clem turned back towards him with a grin. “I think it was your mustache that fucked things up for you.” The paperclips were sticking to her in a way that every time she moved, she could feel them shifting around. It was an odd sensation. One that she didn’t exactly like, but complaining about it would definitely make the grown ass man across from her think he won.
“Are you seriously going to pick those up one by one? Here.” She moved forward, hovering her hand over them, and they immediately made their way to make contact with her skin. Clem looked at him, then nodded towards the shop. “Get me a trash bag. I’m going to get into it, pull it up– you know, like a little coat. I’ll wear it for a few minutes, then by the time it wears off, all this shit will be in one place.” With a pause, she looked at him. “It’s like, the easiest way, right?”
—
“Ah, sure, yeah, my mustache really made the paper clips look ridiculous on me. That’s for sure what it was,” he deadpanned. He motioned at a couple paper clips that were stuck above her upper lip. “Looks like the paper clips decided you needed a stache of your own.” Daniel was glad to have the paper clips no longer attached to him, and at least she seemed to be taking her situation in stride, even as the paper clips moved with her.
It was a ridiculous idea of him to pick up all the paper clips by hand, and he was aware of that. He’d already been trying to think if he had a magnet or something in his truck to make this easier for him. He thought maybe he had one packed away in one of his containers, but he’d have to dig around for it. But the shifter’s idea seemed like it could work. “Yeah, I’ll be right back.”
He stepped into the shop, and lucky for him, one of the employees was removing a trash bag and replacing it with a new one. “Hey, there’s a mess outside. Can I have one of those bags?” The employee sighed and handed him one of the large trash bags. “Thanks.” They didn’t say anything in response, instead going back to the task at hand, so he ran back outside before the coffee’s effects wore off the shifter. He held up the trash bag. “Got it.” He handed the bag over to her, careful to avoid her touch, and then stepped back to let her step into it.
—
“And it still looks more grown in than yours, so.” Clem said it with a shrug. She should’ve probably been careful about insulting random people, especially when she was arguably the one who looked more out of place and ridiculous, but it couldn’t be helped. It was a reflex. However, she did reach up to swipe at the few paperclips that had made a home above her lip. She could feel the transfer of clips from her hand to her mouth. Oh, she definitely looked stupid now.
Not so surprisingly (because it was a great idea), he had agreed with her! She waited idly, careful not to move too much, not wanting to jostle any of the clips off of her and make the cleanup harder than it needed to be. She was surprised that the person who’d driven by in the truck had let them go without much of a look back. Maybe they didn’t know, or maybe both she and her company had done them a favor by taking the paperclips. Clem looked towards the direction the truck had gone, just in case it had decided to make its rounds back. But so far, they were in the clear.
When he returned, she took the trashbag from him. It was a little bigger than her– industrial. Clem climbed in carefully, barely losing any paperclips in her attempt, and tucked the bag overtop of her head, only her face poking out. There was enough space between her face and a small opening of the bag, that way the paperclips that had gotten stuck to her face wouldn’t fall onto the ground. “This’ll work.” She gave a determined nod, staring at the man across from her. “You’re not leaving, bee-tee-dubs. You’re staying here. With me. Then you’re taking these, and you can do all your adult things with them.”
—-
She looked absolutely ridiculous in the trash bag with only her face showing. But Daniel couldn’t think of an easier idea of keeping the paper clips from littering the ground. He folded his arms across his chest as he realized that, yes, he did have to stay there and wait until the coffee’s effects left her. “Okay,” he agreed. “And I’ll take them. I can figure out what to do with them.” What would he do with them? He knew he could possibly find somewhere to recycle them, or maybe he could find a way to reuse them. Daniel didn’t really have any reason for using paper clips, but he could maybe find someone who did.
The two stood there in silence, with her wrapped up in a trash bag and him waiting with his arms across his chest. Passerbys glanced at them with raised brows, while others sped along across the sidewalk, deciding that this wasn’t the strangest thing they’d seen in town that morning. It took a while, but the coffee’s effects wore off, and Daniel heard the paper clips dropping from her and into the bag. He held the trash bag as she shook off the last of the paper clips. He helped her out of the trash bag, making a mental note to look up the name of weird mime pictures girl when he checked his phone. Another thought hit him as he tied off the trash bag filled with paper clips—maybe someone in a school could use these paper clips. Maybe he’d see if Diana needed paper clips.
