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 Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 4:11 pm
When your boyfriend unexpectedly proposed to you, thereby freaking you out to the point of sleeplessness for the next night and resulting in the termination of your relationship, there weren't too many logical options for a sixteen year-old girl. Dani considered talking to her mother, but decided against that considering how tumultuous hers and Parker's relationship had always been; she didn't really need her mother to get the latest headline, anyway, though she'd already figured out something was up. Her father was absolutely out of the question and she didn't even really like Tate, not to mention she was close to Parker. That left Dani exactly one option.
It was probably a little suspicious that said option had her scaling the side of a house in the middle of the night, but she hadn't been able to sleep and she was pretty sure that Tallulah would still be up. Anyway, this was kind of a crisis, and she knew she could count on her friend if she really needed her. Maybe it would have been better to call, but hindsight wasn't really helping her just then.
Besides, every time she looked at her phone she thought of how she and Parker had nearly obsessively texted each other, and it made her want to burst into tears. She had no patience for how emotional she was lately, but she couldn't stop, either. Worse, she was starting to wonder if she'd made the wrong decision.
So she needed girl talk. Bad.
Rapping her knuckles against the window, Dani bit her lip and peered inside, hoping Tallulah was A) dressed and B) up for some talking.
If she wasn't, Dani would just have to throw a fit and show her exactly how serious all this was. Hopefully the fit wouldn't involve tears.
The prospect of going home and staring at her ceiling and thinking about Parker almost made her want to cry again, though, so that wasn't really likely.
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 4:28 pm
There was no one in Tallulah's room, and the lights were off.
Half a block away, the newly-minted Eternal Sailor Europa was leaping rapidly from townhouse to townhouse, heading home after a night of patrol. She'd forgotten what upgrades felt like - right now her body was singularly electrified and she felt terrific.
She skidded to a stop across the roof of her house, and then dropped silently from the roof and into the trampled bushes below.
There was already someone there. The senshi of the deep blinked owlishly at the face of her best female friend. "...Dani?" she asked after a moment. "What are you doing in the bushes?"
She reached back and detangled one of her trailing ribbons, careful to not snag it on any thorns. Maybe, thought Europa, if she kept this casual then she could avoid the obvious freakout. (This was honestly old hat to her by now. Unless Dani was secretly Lieutenant Danburite or something equally heinous. Then she would have to reluctantly battle her.)
"I mean," she said, sliding the window open. "I'm pretty sure we have a front door. And a back one. They work pretty well."
This was sufficiently less convincing when said when you were actively climbing into your bedroom window as you said it.
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 4:42 pm
To say that Dani was emotionally distraught lately would be putting it lightly. She had a lot on her plate and she was dealing with it as best she could. Still, when it came down to weird, powered up individuals breaking into her female best friend's house in the middle of the night and talking to her like they'd known her for her entire life, Dani could set aside her own issues to deal with the problem at hand.
The problem at hand was that, as far as she knew, the person breaking and entering Tallulah's house could be Tallulah or it could be Tallulah's arch-enemy in senshi form. The really annoying thing about glamour was that nobody could tell d**k from Joe unless the beans were spilled. All likelihood that the senshi currently heading into the window was actually Tallulah aside, Dani didn't want to take any chances. So, when her back was to her, Dani grabbed a fistful of her buttbow and held it taught.
"Hold it right there. Who the hell are you?" Her expression was pretty forbidding. Okay, well, it would have been more forbidding if she didn't look to be On The Verge Of Tears pretty much permanently, but she was frowning. "If you aren't Tallulah, you'd better power down and tell me who the hell you are, or I will like, bust your kneecaps. For breaking into her house."
Yeah.
She totally would.
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 4:53 pm
Europa stopped short, one leg in the window and one out, and looked back at the suddenly-furious girl behind her. Yes, Dani could be intimidating when she tried. And Europa knew as well as any senshi that you were effectively anonymous once you put on a tiara and frills. "Chill, Dani," she hissed. Her brooch and tiara stone momentarily glowed, and then the entire fuku seemed to draw inwards.
When the light faded, all that was left was Tallulah Cowden, in sweatpants and a tee-shirt, half in and half out of her house. "Inside, now," she added, flopping through the window and onto her bed. She reached back and pulled her friend in, and shut the window behind her.
Her brown eyes had been unrecognizable only moments before, but now they were scrutinizing every inch of Dani, looking for any kind of discernable reaction. "Are you one of us?" asked Tallulah, trying to keep her voice quiet and even. "I need proof."
The air between them was uncharacteristically tense. Right now, Tallulah was choosing to recognize but ignore Dani's nearness to tears: all that mattered was if she could still trust her best friend.
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 5:01 pm
Once Dani was assured that whoever had been outside the window was actually Tallulah, she relaxed a bit. The world was a lot smaller than she'd given it credit for if just about everyone she knew was actually a senshi. Then again, there were a lot of senshi running around, so she shouldn't have been too surprised. At least Tallulah was on the right side.
Following her into the room, Dani shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie, fingers curling around her own henshin pen. It went with her wherever she went, period; you never knew when you'd need to henshin up and fight crime, after all. Or save someone's a**. Or save your own a**. It just wasn't smart not to have it on hand.
Of course, she hadn't gone out since she and Parker had --
Forcing her thoughts away, she took a deep breath, pulling the pen out of her pocket. "This isn't proof enough?"
After a beat, she decided what the hell and mumbled her henshin phrase anyway, Tallulah's room filling with light and glitter as her clothes were sparklingly replaced with a skin-tight bodysuit and a long, trailing bow.
"Magellan," she said, resting one gloved hand on her hip. "Satisfied?"
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 5:13 pm
Tallulah, who figured she knew everything there was to know about running around in mini skirts because she ran around in half of one, nodded. She should have expected this - it was like if one person in a social circle was awakened as a senshi, it set off a chain reaction and soon enough everyone else was, too. And for a while, it looked like - Magellan, she could tell, had earned her Super stripes.
"Really?" she asked in exasperation, and flopped back on her bed. "It's like everyone I know. Our mothers must've eaten something funny. I'm a senshi, you're a senshi, my boyfriend's a senshi... What the hell. All my friends are senshi. Literally. All of them. Name a friend. They're a senshi. Poof."
Sarcasm aside, more people had not been outed in the span of thirty seconds since Joseph McCarthy had stopped seeing communists in his breakfast cereal.
Tallulah sat up and reached for her feet, leaning into a post-patrol stretch. Upgrades left you feeling wired. It was weird. She hadn't had one in a long time, after all. "Which still doesn't explain why you were hanging out in our bushes." she said. "Where you just met Europa, by the way," she then added. Since they were exchanging code names.
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 5:18 pm
Since it wasn't necessary to remain as Magellan and doing so actually made her feel kind of uncomfortable, Dani shed her magical skin and threw herself on Tallulah's bed, tucking her legs up against her chest. She only half-listened as her friend went through names, committing none to memory -- just then, she was too depressed and angry and all over the place to even consider patrolling, anyway -- and instead just sighed.
It was a heavy sigh. It was a sigh.
"Europa, huh? Nice." That was a moon or something, she remembered learning about it in science class once. However, just then? The last thing Dani wanted to do was think about being a senshi. If she did, she'd think about all the times she went patrolling with Taranis, and she'd --
Her eyes welled up despite herself, and she plucked at the hem of her jeans. Going for nonchalant, she said, "Parker and I broke up, s-so.."
Her voice trembled a moment, and she swallowed hard. "So I just wanted to talk to someone before I did something stupid like try to get him back or something." Even if that sounded like a good idea.
She knew it wasn't.
But god, she wished it was.
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 5:30 pm
Tallulah knew that sigh. It was the sound people made when they were just a little bit over their heads, the sound they made when they needed time to cry and piss and moan and have someone just listen to them cry and piss and moan and agree with whatever they said. So she scooted over to Dani and listened.
After they'd mulled over what a bad idea trying to get back together with the former-hooligan-who-was-really-much-too-old-for-her would be for a little bit, Tallulah heaved a sigh of her own. "Boys are stupid," she said. "Throw rocks at them."
She'd had that on a t-shirt once.
"But really," she added. "They are. I haven't talked to mine in weeks, really. And if you even think of trying to get him back right now..."
She glanced around the room, trying to think of a fair ultimatum. There was a nest of half-tangled scarves tossed in the corner. That was enough of a clue. "I will tie you to the bed."
It was a promise.
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 5:44 pm
The problem with reflecting on her relationship with Parker was that most of it was pretty perfect by Dani's standards. He was smart, older, more mature, decently attractive... she certainly found him more and more attractive as time went on, anyway. He was witty and responsible, he took the time to listen to her even when he didn't agree with her, and when it came down to the big things, he usually let her have her way. Which she liked. A lot.
Except this time, he'd gone and tried to pull the biggest thing and then he hadn't wanted to do it her way. He'd rather not have her at all than just be her girlfriend, which she thought was stupid and inconsiderate and just... hurtful! Things had been fine as they were, so why'd he have to go and change everything anyway?
Maybe it wasn't such a good thing that Parker was older and more mature, although she definitely saw herself as being the more mature party in this case. He wanted to move too fast and into waters too deep for her to follow just yet, and she wasn't going there. She'd still wanted to be with him, but he wouldn't accept that, and so she found herself single, which she hadn't been for a while, and really unhappy about it, which she'd never expected.
(Dani had always imagined, of course, that if she entered into a long-term relationship and it ended it would be on her terms and she would be satisfied and happy by its conclusion. Boy, had she been wrong.)
"I wish Parker would have been happy to just back off a little," she said, voice thick with the effort it took to keep herself from crying. "But no, he has to have everything at once."
Turning to Tallulah, fisting her hands in her sweater, she demanded, "Who wants to be engaged at sixteen years old? What was he thinking?"
And then, as an afterthought, "And don't tie me to the bed. I do not want to have to explain that to your parents."
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 6:36 pm
Tallulah... really did not know how to reply to that. Her time in Model UN interjected that this was perfectly acceptable in many, many parts of the world, although she bit her tongue to keep from saying so because it was absolutely inappropriate for right now. She frowned sympathetically at Dani. "That's not your fault," she said, wrapping an arm around her friend's shoulder. "You're at two different places in your lives."
Heck, Tallulah was eighteen and got nervous whenever Jaimie started waving rings around - like he had back in November. Which she was currently wearing on her right hand, like she was trying to prove a point. 'I'm choosing not to acknowledge your poorly disguised proposal as a proposal.' For god's sake, Leontyne! At least he hadn't gotten down on one knee. In the snow. Like a ******** Kaye Jewelers commercial.
She snorted involuntarily. "It wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've had to explain to my dad," she said. No, the weirdest thing was definitely 'my friends and I are all super-heroes.' After that, everything else went by easy.
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 8:51 pm
Dani was still brooding over the ludicrous idea of being engaged to be married at sixteen years old, so when Tallulah put an arm around her, she just snuggled up against it. She knew her mother would have petted and soothed her just the same, but it was nice to be able to talk to someone her own age and not have to deal with all the parental concerns and whatnot that came with it.
"Two really different points in our lives," she agreed. She sighed again, then sounded annoyed as she said, "He just, zero to sixty. And it is so not like him. I don't even know what to say, Tallulah."
She knew she had a lot of things she wanted to say to Parker, but he didn't really want to listen and she wasn't sure that she'd be able to express herself coherently if she tried. There was just too much going on inside her head.
Darkly, she muttered, "I'm just going to run away and become a lesbian."
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Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 10:01 pm
"So maybe he was too old for you," shrugged Tallulah, still trying her best to by sympathetic. But all this was doing was make her focus on that she hadn't talked to Jaimie properly in weeks... actually, if you were to ask her, right now, what her relationship status was, Tallulah would probably hesitate for a long time before replying, 'I guess...?'
"Well, while your boyfriend was proposing to you... I haven't seen mine in weeks and he refused to sleep with me. On New Years Eve. In a cabin."
Beat.
"In a snowstorm." In some cases, that would be enough to make you wonder if said boyfriend was actually gay.
"Becoming a lesbian is a totally viable option," she replied darkly. "Just, I mean, not with me. Because that would be kind of awkward."
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Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:01 pm
One could only wallow in their own problems for so long. Actually, Dani was exactly the kind of self-centered girl who could probably focus on her own problems until the end of time if she needed to, but that was because she would be spending the entire time figuring out a way to solve them and move on with her life. Eventually, she'd start doing that about the Parker Situation. Everything was still too fresh and enormous in her head for her to consider how she was going to move on, exactly, just then, but it would happen. In time.
For now, though, the prospect of focusing on Tallulah's issues was welcome. That bit about her being Europa aside -- monumentally less important given their boyfriend issues -- the news Tallulah had just imparted to her was interesting. Really interesting. Interesting enough to have Dani briskly rubbing her face and then giving her friend an incredulous look.
"Okay, joking about us being lesbians aside, seriously? Is Jaimie like, gay? ... Seriously." She narrowed her eyes, trying to imagine a time when Parker had ever said oh, no thanks about sex.
Yeah. No examples were coming to mind.
"Because in my experience, limited though it is considering my only serious boyfriend has been Parker, that seems really weird. Like. Tremendously weird. Have you guys slept together at all?"
Dani hadn't really thought about it, as she didn't often speculate on her friends' sex lives, but if she'd been asked, she probably would have answered in the affirmative. Now, though, she was completely skeptical.
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Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:50 pm
"No," groaned Tallulah, flopping backwards onto her comforter. "That was the first time I brought it up and we haven't really had a proper conversation since. I mean, I got a concussion last time I saw him for senshi stuff and spent the whole battle running around like an idiot, and then school, and things, and sneaking into Hillworth is kind of hard when you're wearing more ruffles than Deluxe Wedding Barbie, right?"
She rolled over and buried her face in a throw pillow. She let out a long moan of frustration and then propped herself up on her elbows. "I mean, seriously, I am an idiot."
Now that it had been brought up, Tallulah had no choice but to consider that she might have managed to turn her boyfriend into a homosexual. "Well," she said, after a bit of thought. Her lips twisted into a faint smile. "It would explain the crossdressing."
She glanced over at Dani, and, seeing the expression she wore, suddenly felt compelled to explain. If not for her sake, then for Jaimie's. "His sister made him do it, and they were ten."
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Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 9:34 pm
"First of all, at ten years old, you can scream bloody murder and get your parents to make your sister knock it off. So, that is totally illegitimate."
Tucking her issues with her own personal life to the back of her mind, Dani sniffled and pulled her sleeves over hands, wiping her face again as she did so. She hated to be the bearer of bad news, but with as long as Tallulah and Jaimie had been dating in addition to the newly gained knowledge that he had been offered sex and refused it, Dani was pretty sure he was gay. Gay, or just not sexually attracted to Tallulah, but if that was the case then why was he still dating her? Anyway, her mother had warned her that even if men didn't want to stay with you they'd probably still sleep with you, which was why she'd been so hesitant to get her V-card punched herself.
Dani gave her friend a sympathetic look. It was kind of pitiful, considering her eyes were red-rimmed and her skin was still blotchy, and she kind of hiccuped in the middle of it. "I am pretty sure you are a beard. That screams gay to me. Like, it screams it falsetto." She nodded, completely serious faced. "With strobe lights. Parker always--"
Uh oh. Parker.
Her lips trembled, and her eyes welled up again.
So much for putting him at the back of her mind.
"W-well Parker always. W-wanted it." She covered her eyes with her palm, groaning and asking, somewhat hysterically, "Why can't I stop crying?"
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