Work Text:
On the table with the red plastic table cloth on the roof of the new office building, Thundercracker puts down the last of the glasses which, while ridiculously small in his enormous hand, are still comically oversized for a human being. Marissa suspects that they’re novelty props for Bachelorette parties. He has a dozen of them lined up on the table, with only minimal spillage around the bottoms. She hopes they’re food safe. One of them is actively smoking.
Down here to the south of the continent, it’s not so bad around the end of December, as long as you’re dressed for it. They’re holding the office Christmas party up on the top floor of the building, where the veranda pokes out into the chilly grey daylight, mostly—although no one came out and said it, during party planning committee—for Thundercracker’s benefit.
“Merry New Year, Marissa!” he says. Buster is rushing around under the table, barking excitedly, possibly because Thundercracker is about to accidentally knock over a pail of what appear to be jumbo shrimp. “I know there’s some kind of yearly ritual fight about what to call the winter holiday, so I thought I’d toss my shanix into the pool for the underdog.”
“Well that’s one way to solve the problem,” Marissa admits. “You’re running the drink table, TC?”
“Yeah!” he says, clacking a set of scaled up tweezers in his big fingers. “I volunteered! Hold on, I have the perfect one for you! Let me just—”
He pokes the tweezers down into a battered red cooler on the floor beside the drink table and comes up with one huge smoking lump of dry ice. Marissa’s eyes go wide.
“I studied the whole bar-tending catalog on tasty twist dot bev boss dot com,” he says, “and then I was really feeling it, so I read every single drink recipe on pinterest also. I think I’m picking it up remarkably fast, for an amateur!”
Marissa leans forward and peeks over the rim of the glass. There’s nothing under the huge lump of dry ice except more regular, cubed ice. Thundercracker haphazardly dumps some powdered sugar over the whole thing, and then delicately places one shiny pink shrimp on top.
“For you!” he says, nudging the glass towards her. “I’m gonna call it: The Restless Thumbtack.”
“Uhhh,” Marissa says. “I can’t… drink this.”
Thundercracker frowns. “What? Why not? Does it need crème de cacao? I knew it needed more crème de cacao, hold on a sec, I left the bottle somewhere—”
“It’s not a drink, is the thing,” Marissa says. “Why is there so much ice? Why are there two kinds of ice?”
Suddenly she isn't wondering why no one else is out here at the drink table, anymore.
“It’s fancy ice!” he says, like she’s very silly for not understanding this. “I got fancy ice for you! Not everyone is getting fancy ice tonight, you know.”
“Drinks are supposed to be liquid,” Marissa says. “Ideally, with one or more alcoholic ingredients. What is this, is this—ginger ale and milk?”
“It’s cream, obviously,” Thundercracker says. “Cream goes into drinks! I read it on the internet!”
“Yeah, but it goes into an alcohol, not another mixer! These won’t taste good together at all! And why did you pile the bottom with maraschino cherries!”
“There’s so many liquids,” Thundercracker complains, “how are you supposed to know which liquids go with which other liquids! They’re all just liquids! Now ice, ice is something you can really get your teeth into.”
“Thundercracker, that drink is just crushed up graham crackers in—” she pokes her finger into the glass and sniffs the liquid that sticks to her skin, “—in vermouth.”
“That’s a liquid!” he snaps. He digs his huge hand down into the display of glasses and yanks Marissa’s Restless Thumbtack up towards himself, clutching it to his chest in his palm the way he does to Buster whenever anyone suggests lighting off something explosive inside doggie running range.
“If you’re gonna be like that, maybe I won’t give you your special drink!” he says.
“TC,” Marissa says, putting her hands on her hips, “come on now, I wasn’t trying to insult you. Your drinks are just… very difficult to drink, in a word.”
He looks down at her, glass of powdered ice clutched protectively to his chest, looking as convincingly sad as a kindergartner who has been told his macaroni art is not supposed to be glued to the table. Marissa sighs.
“Please, let me have my special drink,” she says. “It’s Christmas, I’ll be good.”
After a moment of wing twitching, Thundercracker slowly lowers the giant novelty glass into her upraised hands. She pulls it down and gives it an appraising once over. She is extremely conscious of Thundercracker watching her, anxious and expectant.
Oh what the hell. Marissa plucks the jumbo shrimp off the top of the miniature glacier and pops it into her mouth.
The ice she can take or leave, but she’s always liked shellfish.