Booze and Booty 2

Madeira was exhausted and her feet fucking hurt by the time she hit her break time and could go sit down.  It was a slow night at the bar, if not the restaurant she was working at in the Wonderland Casino, so she went there, and promptly just rested her face on the countertop.

Hops gave her a sympathetic pat on the head.  “It gets easier after the first week,” she said kindly.

“I don’t think I’ve ever walked this much in my life…” she complained.

“Probably not,” Hops agreed, leaning on the countertop.  “Your muscles get used to it after a while, though, and you learn ways to stand that make it easier.”

Madeira sighed, pushing herself up a little so she could rest her chin on her crossed arms.  “I…  How long have you been working here, Hops?”

Hops frowned.  “I don’t know, I haven’t really counted it in a few years at the least.”

Madeira swallowed slightly.  “How much debt did you have?”  Some of the other servers she was working with, and one of the cooks, were in similar boats - but even the longest one only had three years required to make up…

“It’s…”  Hops sighed, and went to mix some drinks.  “I’ve gotta drink something if we’re going to have this conversation.  It’ll probably add a few months to mine but…”

“...will it add to mine?” Madeira asked.

“No, I’m the one at fault on this,” Hops said, as she mixed carefully.  “It happens a lot, I guess.  I make drinks for myself or a friend, I break something, I slack, more time gets added.”  She shrugged, setting down an Angora Sour in front of Madeira and putting a Hopscotch to her lips.

“That sounds…hard.”  Madeira stared down at the Angora Sour before deciding to just drink it.  Even if it added another month to her time…  She was thirsty, and besides, the cook had told her after just two days that he thought she’d be lucky if Angora and Mercy thought she was fit for society after a whole year and that he was betting on it taking her ten years.  She couldn’t even fathom what five years was like, what was another month or two on that?

“Yeah, I guess it was at first.”  Hops gazed into the distance.  “But I dunno, I do like my job.  I like serving and mixing drinks, I like talking to all kinds of different buns…  There’s Angora…”

“There’s Angora?” Madeira asked, watching Hops’ cheeks bloom pink again.

“It’s- well- I uh- You’ll… probably see it eventually, I guess,” she said, draining her drink and immediately going to mix another set.

Well, the large amount that she had left seemed to be too much and clearly she was supposed to drink faster - one of the other servers had told her it was best to imitate what others did when she was unsure, so Madeira quickly drained hers to match, and soon had another in hand.  “What will I see?” she asked.

“You were raised alone, right?” Hops said.

Madeira nodded.

“Did your demon uh… Azgad, right?  Did he ever talk to you about sex?”

Madeira tilted her head.  “No?”

“Oh no, I’m glad I asked.  Or am I?”  Hops shook her head.  “February would have been so bad for you if I didn’t.”

“February?”

“Okay, so sex is like…  You know how you’ll see buns with their tits out a lot?” Hops asked, grabbing her own as an example.  “But everyone always covers their crotches.”  She grabbed that too, just to be clear.  Between the whole carrots thing and not knowing about sex, she really couldn’t just trust that Madeira would know what she meant otherwise.  “That’s because we have genitals, which react to stimuli and lust.  Like all those buns you see with the little heart shaped horns are lust buns, they tend to be really driven by sex, which involves doing things to the genitals to make you orgasm.  Which is just…  It’s a good feeling, you know?  And February is when well-  Sex is for fun most of the year, but in February, we can make baby buns.  It's called Matentine's, everyone's horny all month unless they take heat suppressants, and we spend March having the babies and giving them to the church before Murmur picks them up at the end of the month and all the now grown buns from the last year arrive here.”

Madeira did not know what she meant on a lot of that, other than the last bits kind of, but she nodded agreement, draining her drink when she saw Hops drain hers.  It made her feel kind of… dizzy and light headed, which didn’t make sense to her.

“So like…  Angora and I…  Sometimes, you know…  She likes to show me off, I guess, sometimes, and well…  She’s um, she’s nice, she’s good to me, my manager doesn’t yell at me because of her, it’s, like…  I don’t know how much time I owe anymore but it’s not… bad, owing it, I guess?”  Hops’ face was redder than the cherries and strawberries that Madeira could see across the bar.

“I guess it’s good you enjoy it then…?”  Madeira found it hard to keep her head up again.  “It seems so hard to navigate all these relationships everyone has going on…  The cook told me I’d be here a decade at this rate after I just asked what a friend was…”

Hops looked aghast at that.  “That’s…  Fuck, I think that’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.”

“I was happy before I came here,” Madeira said, and to her surprise, she heard her voice break.  “I knew what I was doing or, or, or I thought I did.  And now I just… feel so stupid all the time…  I don’t even know what else there is here besides the Church and here, and yet I don’t even know anything here either.”  She found tears sliding down her face, and tried to wipe them away, but her arm felt so heavy.  “I don’t even know what I don’t know and I just wish I could have stayed where I knew how things worked.”

Hops came around the counter to sit with Madeira, wrapping her arms around the much younger bun and pulling her into a hug.

Madeira buried her face in Hops’ chest and sobbed, as Hops gently rubbed her back.  She could feel it heave - and she was definitely going to have to change her uniform after this.  But she couldn’t just leave her like this, especially not hearing all that.  It made her feel lucky that Murmur had raised her, that she’d been born before the population booms that had forced him to seek more demons to help raise baby buns.

“I just…  Why didn’t Azgad tell me any of this?”  She wasn’t done crying yet, clearly.  “I- I thought he loved me, he was so- he was always proud of me- of my learning- he loved all the food I made and he- he always- he always encouraged me!  So why- why-”

Hops didn’t have any answers for her, of course.  She didn’t know either.  Demons were confusing and hard to understand.  The few times she’d served one at Wonderland, she’d found it a strange affair.  Murmur was as close to straightforward as a demon got, and even he was baffling.  All she could do was rub Madeira’s back and promise her that things would get better, that things wouldn’t be like this forever.

Eventually, she felt the sobbing stop - but it seemed like it had stopped because Madeira had fallen asleep.

She looked up to find Angora watching her, and mimed a ‘shh’ motion to her.

“I wouldn’t dream of disturbing her,” Angora said.  She gestured to the bouncer next to her.  “He can take her back to the Church, she’ll just have to make up the rest of her shift later.”

Hops nodded to the bouncer at that, helping to detangle herself from Madeira and get the young bun onto his back to be easier to carry.  “I didn’t quite realize that would happen, but I think I should have,” she admitted to Angora.

“Probably,” the other woman said.  “But it was probably for the best it did, though I’d recommend against repeating it again any time soon.”

“I… can’t disagree with that,” Hops said, taking one of the washcloths from behind the bar to dry her chest.  “Maybe when things are better she won’t be such a sad drunk…”

“I hope so,” Angora said.  She gestured to the bouncer to stand up, which he did, very careful to not disturb the sleeping bun.  “Hops, go with him to the Church, let Mercy know what happened, they'll have the morning's aftermath to handle.  When you come back, I require your attendance in my room.”

Hops’ face turned quite pink, hearing Angora’s tone - she must have sent someone for her wanting her to attend her at her table, and since she hadn’t noticed them and hadn’t been able to...  “Oh, yes, of course,” she mumbled, hurriedly moving to walk with the bouncer and get the door for him.

It was definitely going to be a while before she let Madeira have more alcohol, absolutely.