Jack knows better than to try anything with strange women -- after all, he did once accidentally hit on a warrior nun who promptly kicked his ass into the next solar system, and that lesson has stayed with him very, very well -- and if/when he ever finds out her age, his headdesk will be chronicled as worthy of being set down for posterity by the universe's worthiest poets, balladeers, and yellow journalists. He will, in fact, headdesk without a desk actually needing to be present.
She's given him a lot of information in that burst. Well, it's too dignified to be a burst; more like a steady flow of precisely dictated syllables. There's the Thing She Did Outside, and talk of doors, now the offer of a drink from a mecha-servitor. Mecha-servitor thing. He thinks.
"I'll...take one," he says, cautious and impulsive at the same time (if anyone can do both simultaneously, it's Jack).
He sits down next to her at the bar.
"So. I ask this for a drink?" he says, tapping the top of bar with a gloved finger. "Dear magic counter, a glass of your finest liquid courage that won't kill me. Please," he adds.
The glass appears, filled with something alcoholic and interesting. Fiona looked over at the drink thoughtfully, sniffing at it for a moment before leaning back.
"Does that answer your question?"
And if she sounded a little smug, well... she sounded a little smug.
'Alcoholic and interesting' turns out to be a Pink Flirtini. Very, very bright pink.
Jack doesn't realize the extent of the Pink Flirtininess, of course, until he nods at her and hazards a small sip. The reasons that Jack recognizes a Pink Flirtini have to do with Tigra, Moon Knight, the son of Satan, and a particularly ill-advised night out in West Hollywood that had Jack almost cited for flying while drunk at 3:00 AM.
"Very funny," Jack observes, dryer than the Sahara. His dryness could wither oceans. "Let's have a Mystery Men moment. Your power's matter transmutation?"
"Are you speaking to the bar counter or to me?" she questioned stiffly, completely unaware what 'Mystery Men' might be. She'd grown up in a rather unusual situation: a world without fiction, without music, without movies or plays, without other people except when she was to be working at a casual dining restaurant down the road. As such, pop culture was going to go RIGHT over her head, but reference obscure history or bizarre medical ailments and she'd be all over it.
Jack has a B.A. in poetry and he has alcohol. Sooner or later, if the natural course of events is allowed to unfold, references to obscure history are bound to be in evidence.
"Both," he experiments. "I'm Jack, by the way. Jack of Hearts."
Jack would gallantly kiss her hand, but he decided five minutes ago that she probably wasn't the shaking hands type. Or hand offering type. But he's dangerously close to offering her his hand to shake anyway.
Jack is nothing if not good at poking at his environment to see what it'll do. If Jack likes you, you'll know it right away. If Jack doesn't like you, you'll know it just as quickly.
"I believe you," he finally offers. He's not sure if he does or not, because not everyone with the ability to rearrange atoms and produce a Pink Flirtini would want that particularly ability to be made public.
"Del Sombre, California," she said with a touch of amusement, the smallest curl of her lips. She was certainly nothing normal, not human even if she looked it, but she'd grown up human. It was the only thing she really knew.
So many ways he could answer here. In fact, he's conscious of an almost giddy sense of being able to say whatever the hell he wants in reply. Like a lot of very public people back on his Earth, he can't escape his past, present, his mistakes, or his victories (Pyrrhic though some may be). He could say anything. El Segundo. Dallas. Rio. Osaka. The Turks and Caicos. The fifth moon of that one pretty planet near Hala.
"Lately of Connecticut, more lately of New York City. I'm an Avenger, and by the way, that's not a strange question at all to ask someone back where I'm from," he adds, in reference to her observation that his initial line of inquiry had been bizarre. "In fact, when people start making drinks materialize, it's the first question one should ask."
Oddly enough, the rakish grin got another curl of lip from her. Her... well, there was a young man who had a tendency to show up in all kinds of helpful ways, a Driver for her Family, who had a rakish grin. And, of course, her Uncle Henry had practically invented them.
"I wouldn't know what an Avenger is, other than one who seeks vengence.
"And it was the bar counter who provided your drink. As I said, I've seen no evidence of such gifts."
Well, her expression could cause the sweetest cream to curdle into something sour, couldn't it?
"All right, madame, the veracity of your words is obviously unassailable. I give. You win."
He holds up his hands, placating.
"You've never heard of the Avengers? We're a..."
What were they to someone who wasn't familiar with the concept of an organized fraternity of lunatics who played dress up and went looking for trouble?
"...a proactive law enforcement organization with a dedication to high-impact methodologies," he decides. "Where the hell's Del Sombre?"
She didn't reply to the description. She simply nodded, digesting his explanation for further thought.
"Southern California, wine country. There are vineyard just north of the town. Most of the business comes from tourists going to or from said vineyards; the whole town is on the highway, or very nearly."
She tilted her head thoughtfully.
"I've been a few other places, but for the most part, we didn't travel."
The trials she'd gone through on her fifteenth birthday most certainly didn't count. Especially as they'd involved largely horrific and terrifying ordeals and very little admiring of the countryside.
"Ah. L.A.," he says, with the slightly wry tone of someone that thinks anything south of Monterey counts as the greater Los Angeles area and is either insipid or irrelevant or, possibly, both. "I lived in Los Angeles for a few months. Good times. And by 'good times,' I mean 'wasted a perfectly good summer.' No one with an IQ over ninety in that town. There's nothing there. I did have good pancakes at Gorky's once, though. I went there one night with a volume of Akhmatova. They had Maria Callas, Etta James, and the Boo Radleys on the jukebox. I was in heaven."
Aside from the epic night getting drunk with the aforementioned son of Satan, that had been the best night he'd had in L.A.
From anyone else, the term 'cutting' might suffice. From Fiona, it fell perilously short. While she was a product of two very different parents, she took very clearly after her mother; she shared her bearing, her somewhat disturbing sharpness, and her temper.
Also, her gift.
"I can assure you that Del Sombre is some miles from Los Angeles," she said, each word clipped, the edges sharp enough to slice, "Further, both my brother and I would defy your claims, not to mention my g-great grandmother and mother."
She'd meant to say 'Grandmother' the first time, as some habits just didn't break easily, but she'd corrected easily enough.
"If your summer was a waste, I have little doubt the fault was in the landscape."
Jack regards her silently, then bursts out in laughter.
He starts to reply, thinks better of it (good thing, too) with a heroic effort of self-control, then rubs his chin, acutely self-conscious that he's somehow transgressed.
"Well, you did say that you were from Southern California. I'll revise my geographic estimation and say that there are parts of Southern California that aren't Los Angeles, and that you're from not!L.A. Okay? Want a drink?"
He's got no reason to be scared, no reason at all. He can survive unaided in space, fire up a dying sun, and fight the Hulk to a draw. He's thought of as quick tempered, fearless, passionate, courageous, and mercurial.
Yet he finds himself edging away from her, almost wincing.
She took the offer as an apology, though had the trouble of figuring out how to refuse the drink without dismissing the thought behind it.
...as he might have guessed, she wasn't very good with people. And the laughter was firmly placed in the 'stressed' category for everyone's sake.
"No, thank you," she said, her tone a great deal softer in a number of different ways.
"I don't drink."
Or eat. Having to cut out your own ability to hunger just to get free of a demonic temptation can be hell on your social life. Not to mention nearly killing her.
She's given him a lot of information in that burst. Well, it's too dignified to be a burst; more like a steady flow of precisely dictated syllables. There's the Thing She Did Outside, and talk of doors, now the offer of a drink from a mecha-servitor. Mecha-servitor thing. He thinks.
"I'll...take one," he says, cautious and impulsive at the same time (if anyone can do both simultaneously, it's Jack).
He sits down next to her at the bar.
"So. I ask this for a drink?" he says, tapping the top of bar with a gloved finger. "Dear magic counter, a glass of your finest liquid courage that won't kill me. Please," he adds.
Reply
"Does that answer your question?"
And if she sounded a little smug, well... she sounded a little smug.
Reply
Jack doesn't realize the extent of the Pink Flirtininess, of course, until he nods at her and hazards a small sip. The reasons that Jack recognizes a Pink Flirtini have to do with Tigra, Moon Knight, the son of Satan, and a particularly ill-advised night out in West Hollywood that had Jack almost cited for flying while drunk at 3:00 AM.
"Very funny," Jack observes, dryer than the Sahara. His dryness could wither oceans. "Let's have a Mystery Men moment. Your power's matter transmutation?"
He looks suspiciously at the bar, then at her.
Reply
Reply
"Both," he experiments. "I'm Jack, by the way. Jack of Hearts."
Reply
"Jack, then," as she didn't believe the last. It sounded like theatrics.
"My name is Fiona. And that seems a rather strange question to ask someone you've just met.
"You're wrong, however," she added after a minute, "as I've no ability to transmute anything, as far as I know."
Reply
Jack is nothing if not good at poking at his environment to see what it'll do. If Jack likes you, you'll know it right away. If Jack doesn't like you, you'll know it just as quickly.
"I believe you," he finally offers. He's not sure if he does or not, because not everyone with the ability to rearrange atoms and produce a Pink Flirtini would want that particularly ability to be made public.
"Are you from Earth? An Earth?"
Reply
"Yourself?"
Reply
"Lately of Connecticut, more lately of New York City. I'm an Avenger, and by the way, that's not a strange question at all to ask someone back where I'm from," he adds, in reference to her observation that his initial line of inquiry had been bizarre. "In fact, when people start making drinks materialize, it's the first question one should ask."
He grins. Rakishly.
Reply
"I wouldn't know what an Avenger is, other than one who seeks vengence.
"And it was the bar counter who provided your drink. As I said, I've seen no evidence of such gifts."
Reply
"All right, madame, the veracity of your words is obviously unassailable. I give. You win."
He holds up his hands, placating.
"You've never heard of the Avengers? We're a..."
What were they to someone who wasn't familiar with the concept of an organized fraternity of lunatics who played dress up and went looking for trouble?
"...a proactive law enforcement organization with a dedication to high-impact methodologies," he decides. "Where the hell's Del Sombre?"
Reply
"Southern California, wine country. There are vineyard just north of the town. Most of the business comes from tourists going to or from said vineyards; the whole town is on the highway, or very nearly."
She tilted her head thoughtfully.
"I've been a few other places, but for the most part, we didn't travel."
The trials she'd gone through on her fifteenth birthday most certainly didn't count. Especially as they'd involved largely horrific and terrifying ordeals and very little admiring of the countryside.
Reply
Aside from the epic night getting drunk with the aforementioned son of Satan, that had been the best night he'd had in L.A.
Reply
From anyone else, the term 'cutting' might suffice. From Fiona, it fell perilously short. While she was a product of two very different parents, she took very clearly after her mother; she shared her bearing, her somewhat disturbing sharpness, and her temper.
Also, her gift.
"I can assure you that Del Sombre is some miles from Los Angeles," she said, each word clipped, the edges sharp enough to slice, "Further, both my brother and I would defy your claims, not to mention my g-great grandmother and mother."
She'd meant to say 'Grandmother' the first time, as some habits just didn't break easily, but she'd corrected easily enough.
"If your summer was a waste, I have little doubt the fault was in the landscape."
Reply
He starts to reply, thinks better of it (good thing, too) with a heroic effort of self-control, then rubs his chin, acutely self-conscious that he's somehow transgressed.
"Well, you did say that you were from Southern California. I'll revise my geographic estimation and say that there are parts of Southern California that aren't Los Angeles, and that you're from not!L.A. Okay? Want a drink?"
He's got no reason to be scared, no reason at all. He can survive unaided in space, fire up a dying sun, and fight the Hulk to a draw. He's thought of as quick tempered, fearless, passionate, courageous, and mercurial.
Yet he finds himself edging away from her, almost wincing.
Ever so slightly.
Reply
...as he might have guessed, she wasn't very good with people. And the laughter was firmly placed in the 'stressed' category for everyone's sake.
"No, thank you," she said, her tone a great deal softer in a number of different ways.
"I don't drink."
Or eat. Having to cut out your own ability to hunger just to get free of a demonic temptation can be hell on your social life. Not to mention nearly killing her.
Reply
Leave a comment