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Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 5:13 pm
Summer in the city meant cleavage, cleavage, cleavage. As soon as the thermometer hit eighty degrees, sleeves got shorter and necklines got lower. This was especially surreal in the Scene, where all manner of tattoos and piercings and scarifications came out to play when people traded their cargo pants for cutoff shorts and sweaters for halter tops and bikinis.
Every little hole in the wall bar magically transformed into a sidewalk cafe, at which you could smoke a cigarette, eat a hipster sandwich, and watch the flesh parade walk by.
Fish took a long sip from his soda and rolled his eyes. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. A pair of girls in skirts barely larger than belts walked past, giggling to each other and texting on cell phones.
He put his soda down, looked over at his dining companion.
"Who the ******** do they think is looking?" he asked.
Fish: setting new records in cynicism every day.
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 3:23 pm
Quinn yawned and leaned back, finally more comfortable in his larger body. He felt more at home in its length, and was able to cross his legs and lean back with arms draped around the back of his chair without looking completely awkward.
"Apparently, you," He smirked, sipping from the straw he had demanded they bring for his lemonade. Luckily the waitress had no problem bringing one, because he was fully ready to enter tantrum mode had they not brought him one. "And every regular joe around here. Most of the girls are pretty hot, I mean, since they know how to flaunt the boobs they may or may not actually have." He eyed one girl with a sneaking suspicion that her bra was faking at least two sizes.
"Why do you always sound like you're whining, pretty much all the time? Just because someone you aren't attracted to is attractive doesn't mean you have to get pissed off about it." Quinn rolled his eyes and kicked his legs up onto the small table between them, flipping on sunglasses with a flourish.
"You need to get over this whole 'I'm gay' thing. It's sort of getting on my nerves."
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 3:35 pm
Fish groaned something unintelligible and rolled his eyes at Quinn. "It's not that," he said, picking the lettuce off his sandwich. "I swear to god it's not that."
He inspected the lettuce. Limpid, dull green, probably grown in a vat or constructed from algae. He flicked it onto the sidewalk, where it was promptly trod on by a platform sandal. "It's just, am I the only person who thinks it's indecent for a bunch of fifteen-year-old girls to walk around with their vaginas hanging out?" Never mind that he and Quinn were both, more or less, on a purely technical level, fifteen years old as well. Or that most of these girls probably weren't quite that young. <********, that does sound like whining, doesn't it?" he asked, and drank from his soda again. He chomped on the ice thoughtfully. Most of his brain power went to being bitter and broody these days, it made it easier to not pay attention to more important issues.
"I keep thinking about going back to the Harbor and seeing how my parents are," he confessed conversationally, rattling the ice in his glass.
He interpreted Quinn's bored look as a 'so what.'
"And then I chicken out and smoke another joint," he concluded.
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 3:43 pm
"You're not the only person, it's just that every other person who does is sixty five years old, balding, and working in the government." He shrugged. "And yes. It is whining." He crunched the ice in his glass while Fish continued, and sipped some more lemonade from the straw.
"Funny," he said, sarcasm dripping from every word, "I sometimes think about going home and seeing how my parents are. Oh, wait." He narrowed his eyes at Fish. "I have refrained from saying the words 'boyfriend', 'Dwayne', 'black', 'suits', 'Australia', and 'penguins' this entire conversation. It is surprisingly difficult. Show the same courtesy."
The lemonade was starting to make the roof of his mouth feel odd, so he swished it about with his straw before pushing it away from his hand so he wouldn't swish it anymore. It only lasted a few seconds, before he pulled it back to swish.
"Is this the part where I say, 'Oh! What a great idea! I'll go with you! And better yet, I'll hold your hand while you come out to them and buy some actual clothes on the way so I can pretend to be your stable, loving boyfriend that they should appreciate and approve of!'? Because, if so, you're paying for the clothes."
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 3:49 pm
"I wasn't asking for that," snapped Fish, in a way that was less snapping and more laconically opening and closing his jaws in a mildly aggravated way. "******** it, fine, I won't talk about parents or family anymore. We can play that game. We can not talk about our problems and pretend they'll go away-
He hesitated and looked at Quinn quizzically. "I do not remember there being penguins," he said, absolutely baffled. "When were there penguins?"
Had there really been penguins?
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 3:54 pm
"Great idea," Quinn snarked back, "but I'm sure dwelling on things and talking about them constantly works much, much better at making things go away." He sighed. "But I would like a new suit. That idea sounds fun, now. Can we please? You look like you'd have rich parents. I want to meet them!"
He shrugged. "I don't know. Five was too easy, I had to throw in a sixth word to avoid to make it more fun. Otherwise it was hardly even a game."
"I could make there be penguins, I guess?"
The small black shadow rolled off of his wrist and formed into a little black penguin on the table. Quinn smiled at it.
"Good job!"
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:01 pm
"My parents are career fisherpersons," said Fish, electing for a politically-correct gender neutral phrase in light of present company. He looked at Quinn with narrowed eyes. "We lived in a shack."
"Besides," he said, dragging his finger through the ring of condensation his glass had left on the table. "It's more complicated than what you're imagining. I was twelve last time they saw me, remember?"
He was about to say more, but then he just stared pointedly at the penguin-shadow instead. "What the hell is that?" he asked.
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:06 pm
"Yes, well, I'm sure it was a well-decorated shack." He rolled his eyes. "Sorry, I assumed you were a spoiled rich kid, with the way you whine. 'Everything doesn't go my way! Life is difficult and challenging! This is so unusual and is targeted only towards me!'" He stuck his tongue way out (which was a considerable amount) in a 'blah' face.
"Yes, well, tell them you hit puberty, took drugs, and, oh yeah, became a being of magical powers. I'll bring my camera. That'll be a Kodak moment."
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:20 pm
"I would really rather honestly not," replied Fish. It was not because Quinn was, well, Quinn, he assured himself. No, it was because if he was going to actually go home he was going to do it on his own terms and not because someone who he wasn't even certain he was friends with thought it was a good idea.
Wait. No. It was because Quinn was Quinn.
"Allow me to apologize for savoring the deepest depths of an exquisitely bad mood," he replied sourly, crossing his arms over his chest. "But, I mean- you would look weird in a suit, anyway. And," he gestured to the penguin, "What the hell is that thing?"
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:29 pm
"Fine." He sighed. "Whatever." He eyed Canster, who was waddling around in his best impression of a penguin.
"I was getting to him. Give me a chance. Have you never met Canster? He's a shadow...thing. I don't really know. Vale made him for me a while back. He can shift around but isn't really useful for anything else."
Quinn poked Canster, and he formed into a ring and slipped onto him. "He's really sweet. I'm not really sure how much he actually thinks, though."
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:36 pm
"Weird," said Fish, feeling unsettled. This was probably more from the creature's association with Vale than from the creature itself, but either way he didn't entirely like it. (This was much the same way he felt about Quinn.)
"Some days," he said, "I wish for an explosion, or a raid, or for the rapture to arrive, because at least then I'd know what I'm supposed to be doing."
Being a prophet got old fast when the gods stopped talking.
"We could always go try to kill each other."
This was unlikely. They liked each other too much.
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:50 pm
"You need a hobby. Like, calculus. Or underwater basket weaving. Something that will keep you occupied forever or get drowned. Because right now your only hobby is whining, which you continue to do." Quinn rolled his eyes.
"No thanks. Killing you would take too much time out of my day. And I'm way out of fighting practice. I'm kind of okay with being lazy. Most of my effort goes into conquering men, not conquering the battlefield." He shrugged.
"That's always an option. My bed is always open?"
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 6:09 pm
"You keep suggesting that and I'm just going to keep saying no," said Fish. To be honest, the way he had spent the last several months, if this prophet thing didn't work out he could always be a monk.
"While I appreciate your skills at knocking blacksuits unconscious, we're not meant to be."
His sandwich got picked at some more, but he didn't have much of an appetite. And offering it to Quinn seemed decidedly less thoughtful when he'd been pushing it around his plate for the better part of fifteen minutes.
"Are you still with Vale?" he asked.
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 6:14 pm
Quinn laughed. "I know. Doesn't hurt to try, though." He sucked up the watery lemonade left in his cup and frowned.
"No. I'm not. He got with that Tepin girl, and then something happened between them, and I don't even care anymore. He was insane, anyway. We're still friends, though," he said, pointedly, "and you're both still not allowed to kill each other."
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Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 7:23 pm
"You take the fun out of everything," replied Fish wryly. He pushed the plate away in resignation, finally admitting that no amount of prodding would make him want to actually eat what he'd ordered.
"No," he shrugged. The name Tepin didn't particularly mean anything to him, although he could agree that Vale was insane. "If I... If I could have it my way I'd never have to see him again."
"It's been way too quiet around here, though," he said, "You know what I mean? Since we broke in, they haven't done practically anything, have they?"
Well, there were the roadblocks. But those were just an everyday hazard.
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