Welcome to Gaia! ::

Had the rest of the day been faster or slower than the first? Realistically, he knew neither was true. Time was a solid, but the perception of it was fluid, and now especially, it was confusing and often irrelevant.

What mattered was the clock ran out. And after a delivered dinner of steak and potatoes (he was not much of a cook and had enough money to eat out, after all), he was ready for a night of catharsis.

The unique facet of their meeting place was not lost on him. If he didn't know she'd be able to sense him coming, Penikisite might've snuck up and tried to scare her (he'd done that as the knifethrower, or tried, an ongoing game), but as it was, the game was rendered moot. "Ah - because it's showtime?" he said by way of greeting, gesturing upwards and snickering.

There was no reason to bite back a smile as the clown: the grin was literally etched onto his face for ******** sake. "And then some, " he added helpfully, delighted at the prospect that she was just going to play along with whatever game he chose.

The question was, where to play? The park? There were no major events tonight, as far as he knew - a bar, perhaps? Or a seedy area of town? That could be fun. Would it be as fun as a suburban neighborhood? The prospect of spending his birthday prowling those streets as children scrounged for candy had been the stuff of fantasies for longer than he wanted to admit, now. Just wait until October.

He shot her a look, and snickered, because they both had to know what the answer would be: "Boring. Would've been better if I had bit him, but I had to settle for cutting him with my words instead. Dull as dirt, " without her to color the place, although he didn't say that, and wasn't entirely sure the thought was his own. "Bar the geese. I might have flung them a few scraps, admittedly." Penikisite cracked with knuckles. "They asked about you, I threw out the 'she's an old and dear friend' line. Oh, the noise they made about that one." He crossed his arms. "How do people live their entire lives like that, honestly?"

“Not deep enough to cry, but enough that he’ll be feeling it later, “ the clown merrily supplied, summoning his balloon and toying with the string, half-winding it around his wrist simply because he could. He didn’t acknowledge her comment about the memories, but his grin took a turn for the smug.

The bump wasn’t unwelcome as he moved with her, although his smile - it didn’t exsctly falter at the suggestion, but it twisted a little edge at the edges at the girlfriend remark. Why, though? It was just a joke. He cackled, but there was a beat he hadn’t planned for. “Hmmm. First you call me hot, then you want to be my work girlfriend, mistress, whatever - should I be worried about you Lyon?” he teased, bumping her shoulder this time, more eager to play into the roughhousing now that he was in his other job.

He snorted and then made a face, wrinkling his nose. “All of the above? - a life where a woman eating lunch with one of your coworkers is the riveting highlight of your week?” Then, abruptly, he got s glint in his eyes. He grabbed Lyon’s forearm, decision made: “Office workers. Let’s go find some brown nosing office workers!”

Rather than fight it, Penkisite just laughed, hard, briefly laying a hand on his stomach until it subsided into snickers. "You're right -- I don't." The best humor was truth, after all, and rightfully, she had called it as she'd seen it.

He tilted as she shoved, and smirked as he pushed back, even if it was an ultimately futile effort. He was no puny little thing, no, but she was literally built like a chimney. The weak spot in the bricks surely existed to make it tumble, but he wasn't particularly interested in deconstructing it.

"I know 'scared' about as well as 'worried' though, " he quipped in rebuke, holding his chin a little higher.

Given the green light, he swelled with excitement, cackling to himself as he led the way towards a cluster of buildings he knew to be near, stuffy, tie-clad businesses taking up residence, "Like cockroaches, " and he wasn't really sure when he began to vocalize it, but, "They just spend all their days crawling around on their bellies in the dirt, waiting to be crushed, there'll just be five more." A little bit, it was nice to have a sounding board for these thoughts without being carted off to see a damn shrink. "See them? They're still there - ah, a few are streaming out..."

That was funny to him. Funnier than it had any business being, really, and the only reason he didn't give a full bellied kind of laugh was because he knew they'd hear and catch on too soon. "And prey, " he remarked, the laughter vibrant in his eyes if not in his voice, grin stretched tight. "Where'd we be without prey, right?"

He cracked his knuckles, and then waved a finger at her. "Little of both, kitty cat. - you get their attention, " she was tall and powerful and exceptionally good at that, "and then I'll give them a hell of a story to tell tomorrow." If they made it back. Biting back another laugh, he clapped her shoulder and retreated into the shadows.

Funny, really, how this whole thing was playing out - this chance meeting with a monster on the street, the most interesting thing (perhaps the first interesting thing) he'd ever seen in his life. Seemed like a joke, somehow. Man in a world without motion or color. Stands alone. He's given an outlet to smear that colorless world in paint, or to be literal and metaphorical in one, to 'paint the town red'. Then, and only then - well, it was more complicated than that, things were always more complicated than they should be, but he could hardly say he was alone. Whether it was reassuring or limiting or both would show itself in time, but in the moment -

- he had someone to set him up for the punchline, howling with laughter as he flung himself from the shadows at the men's unguarded, stiff spines. "IT'S SHOWTIME!" he finished, grabbing one by the back of the neck to slam face-first down onto the pavement with a wholly satisfying crunch.

This would not be difficult, but hell, it would be fun.