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 Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 4:25 pm
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"Meeting a girl," said Jesse.
Davies and Bryce had looked at each other until the third had said, "What," followed up by a "Well, what," when they had kept looking at each other and not broken gaze. The reason for going out with Dylan on the weekend had seemed pretty watertight. Been a matter of pride, even. But he had to follow it up with a "I said what," until --
"Well," said Bryce, chewing it around as though it had weird bits of gristle in it. "A girl."
"A girl," repeated Davies, and seeing the storm start to roll over had added lamely: "Hey, that's cool. A girl."
He'd folded his arms in a way that intimidated them both about nothing per cent, cocked one eyebrow and ignored the stray tennis ball hitting the concrete wall beside them. It was lunch. Some of the younger crims were playing handball listlessly with a ball completely denuded of fluff, a bald ball, pretty sad really if you thought about it. Given the silent treatment, Davies said: "What kind of girl?"
"A girl girl? What do you mean, tranny or not tranny?"
"Are we talking your little sister's birthday party pals or -- "
"Rasmussen's girlfriend," he said, emphasising it like they had hearing problems, "got a girlfriend," and when he saw Cleveland roll his eyes to heaven stabbed a finger in his direction. He had been stabbing fingers at Cleveland Bryce for years. It was easy on account of Clevo being about five inches shorter, you just jabbed downwards at his nose. "Don't give me that. You two are acting like I'm gonna go meet E.T."
"Must be nice having a roomie with all these girl connections," said Bryce to Davies.
"I bet."
"Girl connections that Jess wants to go and see."
"I'm not taking sass from the peanut gallery."
The peanut gallery had given him the mutual finger. It was in a disheartened, irritated mood -- irritated for reasons he could put his finger on but couldn't read the words under it, irritated for a multitude of reasons, irritated with his beat-up jeans and irritated with the hat Dylan was wearing and irritated with the world in general -- that Jesse Alvarez met Veronica Harvey.
It was not a good mood to meet Veronica Harvey in. It was not a good McDonald's to meet Veronica Harvey in. Cora and Dylan had met as they usually met, leaning in to kiss each other on the mouth, and she'd said: "Ronnie's just waiting. I was getting her a latte." Ronnie and Cora went to the McCafe part of any McDonald's, apparently.
"You want anything?"
"Nah," he said, because he hated Dylan buying him stuff -- he'd eat most of Marc's fries before he let Dylan get him a Big Mac and Marc stole money out of vending machines. "Let me get to it."
It was with that grim announcement that he trailed behind Corinna Grant, her blue hair in an elegant braid pinned up high on her neck, to meet the girl who was going to be his bonded partner forever and ever as long as they both did live. She turned out to be a girl with fat blonde pigtails and a silkscreened t-shirt with a picture of a panda on it, and when he slid into her booth she cupped her fingers around her latte.
They both focused on Cora and Dylan, who had given them 'space' by going to a table a little way away. Two tables, diagonally ahead. Dylan was reaching out to tuck a stray piece of Cora's hair behind one ear. He was aware that Ver-on-i-ca was also watching.
He didn't say anything. He tapped his fingers on the table and looked out the window and didn't look at Sailor Aphrodite at all: they should have just had them both meet while they were both taking a leak. It would have been less awkward.
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Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 5:51 pm
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The day had started off as such a good day.
She'd made plans to hang out with Cora, as most weekends typically went, but she knew from the moment she saw Cora's face as the front door opened that it was going to be a lousy day. A really lousy day. And the lousiness was only confirmed after Cora explained what she wanted Ronnie to do. What she needed Ronnie to do, for her sake. For Selene's sake.
If given the option, Ronnie would have preferred to have taken her own life with her custom-made zombie shanking stick. Or jump in a tank of sharks with a life vest on made of raw meat. Or have a face hugger implant alien spawn within her, waiting to burst out of her chest at the first opportune moment. Unfortunately, Cora had not given her any of those options and had told her to "cheer up" and put the shanking stick down when Ronnie had begun begging to let it be a Plan B.
Ronnie was normally a cheerful person. An obnoxiously cheerful person. One who would force you to see the silver lining in the storm cloud that just killed your dog with its lightning. There were only a few things in life that could successfully ruin Veronica's mood and one of those few things was making his way towards her booth, abandoning her best friend in the entire world with Dylan Rasmussen.
She had promised to try to be cheerful. Cora had asked it of her and when Cora made a request, Ronnie did what she could to follow through with that request. But as the Hillworth delinquent made his way over to her table, her half-smile began to turn downwards. As Cora and Dylan moved to their own table, any hint of a smile had completely vanished, replaced with a scowl.
Fingers rapped against the paper cup as her eyes narrowed in Dylan's direction. She wondered if he'd washed his hands before touching Cora's immaculate hair. "I thought she was joking when she told me. About it being a friend of Dylan's."
Eyes traveled back towards the boy sitting across from her. He didn't have to ask what Cora had told her. It was his life sentence as well, a ball and chain attached to his ankle by the name of Veronica Harvey. "You look like you're on the way to a funeral."
She'd seen victims of serial killers with more cheerful expressions on their faces than what Jesse Alvarez currently donned. It bugged her. In fact, there was next to nothing about Jesse that didn't bug her. The way he glared at her, the way his elbow was slumped on the table, the way his nostrils flared slightly when he exhaled. "What, did your boyfriend break up with you or something?"
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Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2010 7:10 pm
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He stared at her a little dumbfoundedly. Obviously he was stupid too. Maybe he didn't understand big words like 'funeral' or 'your boyfriend', because he was staring at her as though she were talking in another language entirely. A few tables up Cora was listening as Dylan described something to her, enraptured in the very same way her new bonded partner was utterly unenraptured.
If there was nothing about Jesse that didn't bug her, it was obvious she had sparked off something in him. He stared at her with flat, unfriendly eyes, sitting up straight as he leant over his arms. That she could understand and appreciate.
"You always been this big of a b***h," he said, through teeth a little gritted, "or you had to work at it?"
(His fingers drummed on the table. They were a little scarred, calloused. They also irritated her.)
"Whoa, I meant it by the 'big.'" Now she was staring. Jesse was looking at the puppy fat that Cora always described as 'womanly' when he added, "Do I got to keep you in Baby Ruth bars or what?"
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Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 11:27 am
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Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 5:53 pm
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Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 12:57 am
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"Well I'm not the one going to a school for troublemakers, so maybe I am better than you."
The urge to stick out her tongue was almost overwhelming, a sense of childishness growing within her the longer she sat in his presence. No wonder she already found him so obnoxious - it made perfect sense that Dylan would pick his roommate, of all people, to be his second in command. What didn't make sense (and was clearly unfair) was the fact that she was going to be stuck with this goon for eternity.
Eternity.
"And what I meant was that you're both sleazebags." Fingers moved to strum against the table, the moved up to fidget with one of her pigtails. She suppressed the compulsion to take a jab at his intelligence after glancing over towards the other table, catching Cora watching her. A wave of guilt washed over her as she stared at her best friend. Cora wanted her to behave. She needed her to cooperate.
Sighing, Ronnie shook her head as she broke off eye contact with the shorter girl. As much as she didn't want to, she knew she should at least attempt to salvage this horror of a conversation. After all, if she was going to be stuck with him for forever, shouldn't there be some possible way for them to get along?
"Look. I don't know why Cora even bothers with him. She could totally do so much better than that. But she likes him, which tells me he's got to be...all right, I guess. So maybe you aren't really as much of an a*****e as you're coming across to be." One hand moved out to be shaken, but she drew it back towards her cup on second thought. "I'm Veronica. Or Ronnie. Whatever works."
There. That was civil, right?
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Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2010 10:55 pm
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The expression on his face was still of eyebrow-cocked hostility, a sort of what the hell are you smoking? But he said, "I'm Jesse," and he put one hand on the table.
It took her a moment to realise what his hand was doing. It inched forward a little. Hers did too. When they had awkwardly slithered their fingers close enough, both wrists raised off the table to join in a handshake. They shook hands. Hands were shaken. They both did this slowly, as though the other might bite.
"I'm not actually the a*****e you think I am," he was saying, "just because I'm from Hillworth. All right?" Their hands were still shaking. They were looking a bit dubiously at their fingers now. "I'm a good guy, believe it or don't. You ready to stop, Veronica, or you trying to arm wrestle?"
Jesse drawled out her name with hard consonants: Ve-ron-i-ca.
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Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 1:22 am
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Her nose wrinkled as he said her name, a clear sign that she didn't approve of his pronunciation (or was it the fact he was even uttering it in the first place?). She didn't rebuke him, however, but instead slipped her hand out of his and returned it in front of her. Ronnie was tempted to assure him that if they had been arm wrestling, that she'd be winning. Or have won. Many times. Again and again.
"Fair enough, Jess." Two could play at the name-massacre game as far as she was concerned, "Seeing is believing, so I guess we'll see if you really are a good guy or not."
Her teeth clenched together and she gave him the same forced smile she'd always given her parents when told that Aunt Mildred (who smelled of moth balls) would be coming over for a week and staying in Ronnie's room for the duration. She didn't like the situation. She knew he didn't like the situation. But regardless of how either of them felt, both knew they were irrevocably stuck. "It'd be pretty cruel to be forced to be bonded to an a*****e for the rest of my life, huh."
Eyes flickered over to the other table, then back towards him. "So do you know how any of this is supposed to go down, Jess?"
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Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 5:45 pm
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"I did," he said. His elbows were crossed over the tables. He had given a little quirk of his shoulders in an exaggerated well! Who knows! I don't care! There was no sign as to visible anger, but something in him was flat. "I'm only going there if you stop calling me 'Jess', start having a little faith in me considering you met me what, five minutes ago and are judging me because of what school I go to -- I don't actually have to prove jack about being a good guy, Veronica Harvey. Rasmussen doesn't either."
His tone was arrogant, dictatorial. Unbeknownst to her it was also a little hurt. There was something locked about his jaw and hard about his mouth, snarling and worn-down and different to the initial aggression. It was more intractable. He looked back over at the other table where Cora and Dylan were still talking quietly; if they had any idea what was going on with their respective friends, they weren't giving a visual cue. For a moment Jesse had looked a little desperate.
That was gone. "I'm not gonna be the some a*****e you're stuck with. I don't take this from you, I don't take this from anybody, okay?"
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Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 6:45 am
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Ronnie was caught off guard and despite her attempt to act calm and collected, her face gave away her surprise. He wasn't supposed to react this way. He was supposed to continue being an a*****e or get over himself and start getting down to business. He wasn't supposed to make a point to call her out and worse, a point that he was actually right about.
"Okay."
The strawberry-blonde was speechless on anything else to say. She was feeling guilty. She was also feeling guilty for feeling guilty because there was absolutely no reason for why she should feel bad for the way she was treating a guy who'd only moments before implied she gorged out on Baby Ruth bars. She didn't even know what a Baby Ruth tasted like. So maybe she was... slightly larger than say, Cora. But Cora was small. Was she really that fat? God - what if she was and nobody was willing to tell her? Cora would tell her though, right? Cora never lied, Cora could be brutally honest.
Making a mental note to pull Cora to the side later and ask her opinion, she nodded her head in Jesse's direction. "Right. So. No a*****e from you, no b***h from me. I can agree to that."
The guilty conscience afflicting her thoughts kept nagging at her. Say it. Say it. Say it.
Her eyes broke off contact and her hands began to fidget again, the teenager now suddenly deciding that she found great interest in watching the McDonald's worker shovel fries into little white bags. She shouldn't say it, it was below her to say it, he didn't deserve to be t-
"Sorry."
It was curt, brief and forced her cheeks to turn a soft shade of pink. It was never a good feeling to admit to being wrong, but she'd be damned to let this guilt trip plague her for the remainder of her Saturday. Especially when she'd already scheduled in several campaigns of L4D2. Eyes flickered over to her booth partner and then back to Mr. Fry Shoveler. "You're right. I don't know you. It wasn't my place to comment. My bad."
She paused and a bout of pettiness flared up, as though to make up for her humiliation of being humbled. "My opinion on Rasmussen stays the same, though."
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Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 9:44 pm
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Something had changed. He was leaning forward, his look very intent and his hands still, eyes on her face. Jesse Alvarez looked her directly. It was worse considering she had flushed cheeks and would prefer now to look at Mr. Fry Shoveller, but in Jesse's mind he was damned if he'd let her do that: all the s**t he had ever heard about Dylan Rasmussen he'd heard a thousand times before.
All the s**t he'd ever heard about Dylan Rasmussen he'd heard a thousand times before, from his own mouth, so -- "Maybe it does," he heard himself say. "But I want you to have enough respect for him that you pretend, Veronica Harvey. He deserves more than you just pretending. I ain't gonna force you to."
This had all been said slowly, as though slow communicated less anger and more a party line of this is how it will be. When he spoke he spoke with the surety of someone delivering an order from on high. Moses bringing the tablets off the Mount. We the people. "I treat Cora like a Queen," he was saying. "You treat him like a Prince. You got that?"
Fry Shoveller continued to shovel. He continued to hold her gaze hostage. He had this one-track way of looking at you that was shared only by himself and homeless people drinking meth, though thinking about it homeless meth-drinkers weren't really top of the board for concentration awards. "If you don't," he said softly, "I won't take it out on her, that's not how I do things. I'll just break the bond."
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Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 11:52 pm
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"Did you just threaten me?"
Her mouth slightly gaped open as she stared, the guilty feeling fading away, replaced with a temper that was quickly rising.
"You couldn't force me if you wanted to, Jesse Whateveryourlastnameis. And for your information, I do pretend - for Cora, not because Dylan deserves it. She likes him so it means I have to put up with him. That's it."
She sat there silently for a moment, still bristling from his comments as reluctant eyes returned to staring at his. Two could play at this game, if he wasn't going to leave her be. She'd humbled herself to saying she was sorry and if this b*****d didn't accept her apology, then all bets were off and he could suck her -
"Prince Nuada. Prince John. Prince Arthas." Fingers returned to strumming on her cup, "Take your pick and I'll be happy to treat him as the sort of Prince he deserves to be recognized as. He'll get my undivided respect when he earns it and you won't be taking it out on Corinna Grant anyways because if you upset her, you'll be dealing with me, buddy. To hell with breaking a bond - I'll break you." More glaring, more finger strumming. "I don't need you any more than you need me, so you can take your threat about breaking this stupid bond and shove it where the sun doesn't shine."
She rose from the table, giving him the most patronizing look she could muster, "And that means up your a**, if you can't grasp the euphemism." Her hand moved to pick up her cup, which she tilted in his direction, "Now are we done here or do you feel the need to be a big guy and threaten me some more? If so, I'm going to need another coffee."
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Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 12:24 am
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He had risen to his feet as a mirror image. If Cora and Dylan were looking, they weren't looking to confirm. Both bristled, Hillworth to Meadowview, cavalier to senshi, boy to girl. Ronnie Harvey had done one fatal thing, and that was referencing Hellboy II. Aphrodite had done one fatal thing, and that was scorning the bond.
Their shoes scraped on the crappy McDonald's floor. People were looking. Their voices had raised. "You don't know him, you don't know me, you always do this -- "
"I know more than enough!"
"You want a go at me? Have a go at me. Come on."
Some poor member of the McDonald's team had drawn the short straw, or in any case had been watching them argue for a while. Shiny with dread and an order from on high, he came over and mumbled, "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"I'm a paying customer," said Jesse hotly, even though he really wasn't.
"I'm going to have to ask you to -- "
"I don't even like McDonald's coffee anyway," snapped Ronnie, and both of them stormed out opposite doors in the manner of you can't tell me to leave because I am already leaving. Good! Day! Sir! This fooled nobody. In any case they just met up by the dumpster outside and continued an argument that had, in all likelihood, started before they were born.
"He is a good man," said Hector. "So am I. Except when I'm around you, you possessive, jealous, judgemental b***h -- go on, break me! You want to settle like that? Let's do it right here, right now. Pretend you're Ares. Only Ares might've had a damned chance..."
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Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 3:16 am
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She slapped him.
Ronnie wasn't a physical fighter. She used words as her weapons (or else pixelated machetes and frying pans, but this was no zombie video game). She was not one to get into a literal scuffle. Had he stopped after calling her out, she would have let him call her bluff, could and would have walked away with a bruised ego and pride. But he hadn't stopped there.
"Pretend you're Ares. Only Ares might've had a damned chance..."
"You take that back. You ******** take that back."
Her words were practically spat out. She was shaking, her hands trembling as angry eyes attempted to burn holes into his skull. He knew he hit a nerve - he could see it in her expression. What he couldn't see was the hurt underneath the surface, his words having stung a deeper part of her, a part that recognized their partnership. While Hector and Jesse's souls were attuned to one another, Veronica Harvey's and Captain Aphrodite's were still struggling to understand each other. And, while Ronnie saw her new partner as anything but necessary, Aphrodite knew the importance and she remembered the sanctity of the bond.
She also remembered their history.
"You can insult my weight, Captain. You can insult my intelligence or call me names but you of all people know that I am more than capable of fulfilling my position and I am far more competent than Ares."
Her fist had balled itself up at her side, but her words remained calm.
"Take. It. Back."
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Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 3:39 am
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"Take what back?" They were hissing at each other. They knew better than to bellow to the skies that they were secretly Parallels, though it meant they were having to take out their aggression with white-knuckled fists and getting far too close in each other's personal space.
Her slap was a blossoming red mark on his cheek, a sting, an exclamation mark. "How she'd work with me? How she has respect for what I do? How she'd have faith in my Prince instead of -- making him jump through hoops -- " It was garbled, and he was throwing up his hands with his anger. "Nobody will ever be good enough for Helen. For you. That's all this is about, Helen!"
The name was bad enough. Formally she was Nehelenia, and formally he had called her that always; it wasn't correct any more. A sour note. Jesse and Hector were one, or at least so close that all you saw was a slight blurring between them, a reason Dylan had picked his roomie for the captain of his Cavaliers. "If you don't let go your resentment," he was grinding out, "your bullshit, your hating him, you're going to get us killed. Don't think I'd let you swap, I ain't burdening any of my boys with you."
They were both shaking with rage. "You call that a hit, anyway? Ares would've let me feel it."
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