Man, Howard sucked at guessing. "I didn't lose anyone--thankfully. Very terrifying to wake up, as a child, in the middle of the night to very violent shaking and have your father carry you outside moments before the building collapses, is all. Twice." 

The Excadrill thing was a childhood, irrational fear, nothing more. No sob story, no thriller. Just a thing that June really wished she didn't have but also came up so infrequently that it felt pointless to try and 'fix' or 'help' it. Did mean this little excursion to Slateport might be the last one in a long while. 

"And don't apologize for anything. I'm not mad at you."

Yet.

Did the delivery girl really look that pissed off? She tried to imagine her own facial expression, but failed miserably. Very hard to translate what you felt in your stress lines into an actual, mental picture. One that made any sense, anyway. Sounded like she looked extremely pissed off, if how Howard acted was anything to go by.

It happened often enough: she got mad and calmed down mentally but not physically. People read her tense body language falsely and felt the need to be extra nice to her. That pissed her off again. Howard might've guessed right about one thing she 'probably hated'. Right enough to get her frown to deepen and her eyebrows to slant harder. 

And that was not a state of mind she wished to return to at the moment. Instead, she took a large swig from the cup and listened to the ice jostle around inside it. "So... I guess I'll pay next time then. And I'll choose the place. Speaking of, why here? Home away from home? Worked here while at school? Or is it really just because of the price? Cause you can just... make this at home for cheaper. I think so, anyway."

June whispered the latter end of her sentence as her eyes darted between Howard and the baristas that mulled behind the counter. 

---

howard slayte

"Don't mention it," June muttered behind her coffee cup. Hopefully the plastic wasn't clear enough to show how her frown did not disappear in the slightest after Howard showed one more time his uncertainty. She said she wasn't mad at him, yet that seemed to mean nothing. Her shoulders slumped while she took another sip of her drink.

The worst part? She couldn't even blame the man. Not like she didn't have the same apprehension or anxiety about this sort of thing. Like a popcorn kernel that got stuck in your teeth: no matter how much you worked on it, the sucker wouldn't come loose or pop out. An exhausting activity, but some strange mechanism in the brain said it could not cease until it was fully worked out.

So, she set her cup back down and tried her best to forget about the kernel. "So, you know all these history facts, stories, cultures, whatever-- but you don't know how to work a coffee machine? Put in filter, put in grounds, put water into a different part of machine, close it all up, turn it on and hit the 'brew' button."

"Or you just never owned one," she hunched slightly over the table and rested her head in a hand, "Sorry. Keep forgetting your financial situation. Here I am making the assumptions now."

June ignored the severity of the assumptions made. This conversation already felt needlessly complicated as is. No reason to throw yet another wrench in the cogs by comparing how one thought a parent had died and another forgot how not everyone could afford something as simple as a coffee machine.

Ugh. There was the second kernel. If she didn't change topics now, this would stay with her for the rest of the day. "So, you collect artifacts like you collect facts. Sounds tiring. Do you got a side thing to do, something completely unrelated whenever you start to get burnt out?"

What would that even be for a person like Howard? She couldn't even imagine him doing anything other than sit in his sad, stuffed apartment and stare at all his shit while he nursed a enriching cup of lukewarm tap water. Or be out in the field, hands covered in dirt as he sifted for the bajillionth fossilized tooth.

---

howard slayte

June raised an eyebrow, but decided to not push the situation further than necessary. It sure sounded like Howard had severe money issues, but it also wasn't a her problem. No matter how much she worried or thought about it, she would simply have to trust him to his word. "Guess I'll have to trust your word on that."

She did not.

Much how she decided not to press further into his slight pause upon her question of what his other 'activities' were. There was very clearly something more to it, yet the archeologist did the complete opposite of what the job entailed: he covered it up. Played it off as nothing super serious. Would she follow suit, or stick to what she did on a daily basis?

"Your secret is safe with me," she affirmed as she leaned backward into the chair. No reason to pry on this as well. "But... Brycen-Man? Seriously? That show blows chunks. Awful. Coffee isn't the only thing your taste is shot in, apparently."

The smile that slowly crept on her lips soon disappeared as the question turned back onto her. Replaced by the frown she sported for the last few minutes. "It says that on the ad so that when people beg me to deliver on Sunday, I get to double the fees. Whenever I'm not 'motorcycling' or flying on my Talonflame, I'm either at home or the library. Save money that way."

If Howard got to keep his secrets, then she could keep hers. Besides, how did one explain that they were saving up to by the mechanic shop previously owned by their now dead father that now sat abandoned and desolate in Mauville because he had been killed before he could put such a thing in his will and Team Rocket got some legal power to kick her while she was down, anyway?

Or that she had a childish urge to chase down a mythical pokemon only rumored to exist and recently confirmed to exist and the only thing she had to go off of was fourth hand accounts and whatever scraps of information she scrounged up from library books that she could probably read backwards from memory at this point?

You do not.

"In all honesty, your apartment is probably bigger and nicer than mine. It's just a place I can shower, sleep, and keep some snacks in whenever I'm in the area. Oh, and I get a small garage to keep my bike. Lot of nights spent there, rather than in bed..."

Howard could know about the Excadrill thing. If he found out the 'dead dad's shop' or 'childhood, silly dream', then she'd be able to move on eventually. However, he could not know how many nights she had fallen asleep on her bike in her garage, in some bus stop, or underneath a tree as she waited for another order to come through on her phone. That was the line. If he found that out, she'd either have to kill him or herself, and she wasn't about to die just yet.

---

howard slayte

June rolled her eyes into the back of her head. "Whatever you say, Howard. Whatever you say."

The quality of the Brycen-Man films was not the hill she would die on. Figured that an archeologist would be the one to do it, though. Maybe even ironic. She didn't have the time nor passion to figure out how, but it stood as a tempting thing to figure out for the next time the inevitably met each other. 

"The library might be good for a thesis, but it sure as shit isn't good for whatever I'm trying to... wait, you didn't pay your plumbing bill for a month? Is that even a thing you can do?" She asked, eyebrow raised. Numerous common situations and the logistics behind them played out in the front of her mind for all but ten seconds before the delivery girl shook her head. No, how the hell he could manage to get away with that with nothing but a library was not a task she stood ready to tackle.

Next time June ran into a second archeologist, she'd have to figure out if this was a 'Howard' situation or an 'archeologist' situation. 

However, the home situation was something the two of them shared regardless of background. "I'd be lying if I said I minded it most of the time. It's nice to be active and hands on. Job just means I get to make money doing it. Also don't blow it on afformentioned stupid shit. Too busy."

Sure, this might've classified her as a 'workaholic' or some other fancy word dreamed up by licensed professionals. Yet the alternative was to sit at home, stare at the ceiling and let her mind race as fast as a Talonflame and wreck havoc on her emotions. At least this way, the most damage it could do is get her lost somewhere in the region.

"Except on coffee. Those cafes might charge an arm and a leg for an espresso, but..." June tapered off. Maybe if she closed her eyes and thought hard really hard, this latte would magically become something better. She tried it out with another sip. 

Nope. 

---

howard slayte

June snorted. 'Hard to get comfortable'? It's hard to get comfortable when you weren't tired, sure. Wear yourself down hard and long enough and you'd fall asleep just about anywhere you could. Didn't he know that? She almost had it down to a science at this point.

She let Howard ask his two questions instead of responding to that particular point. Almost as soon as he had finished his sentence did she launch into her own. "One: eh? Can be fun to explore a bigger city like this with a partner. Can also be boring as absolute hell. Seen one small town, seen 'em all. That or terrifying because you have no idea where to go, what you're doing, wild pokemon, the works."

A symptom of the different types of work they did in the field. One got to deal with beautiful ruins and dig in the dirt for ancient artifacts. The other got to deal with people in just about every corner of the region. If there weren't heaps of wild between each of the cities, she wouldn't even have to venture out into them unless she had the desire. Which, most of the time, she did not.

"And two: wrong way you lug nut," she shook her head back. "Only reason I got a latte is because I had a strange feeling this place wouldn't have... the best coffee in the world. Usually I drink it black. Get the full, natural flavor from the beans that way. All that extra sugar ruins the experience-- and is comically unhealthy."

If Howard wanted to make fun of June, the least he could do is get right which end of the spectrum she sat on. The nerve of some people. That settled it, the next time they went out she would take him to the best place she knew and spoil him rotten.

"By the way, how the hell did you have something as complex as that on the top of your head? That your drink order? If I didn't know you any better I'd toss you to the coffee police for something that gross," she said. "Halfway tempted to anyway."

Seriously, pecha berry? People would do anything to get their fix these days.

---

howard slayte