Overland Park, KS to Kansas City, MO and then back to Overland Park, Friday
Yesterday? Had been a fucking catastrophe of epic proportions, and Kate really didn't want to even think about it, but of course thinking about it was unavoidable. Everything was completely fucked up, again.
And now there were ants in their fucking kitchen, again.
So, Kate wasn't exactly pleased when she was having to have breakfast with a deep-seated hatred of everything in her heart, and a flyswatter in her hand. Stupid ants. Stupid life.
Tara could've maybe picked a better time to walk into the kitchen.
"Hey Kate."
"Tara," Kate acknowledged flatly, without looking up. The sense of betrayal was strong with this one; last night was just further proof that people were full of shit.
"No more Mom, huh?" Tara (or whoever the fuck she was) asked. "Now I'm just Tara?"
Oh, when had she ever been 'just Tara'? Kate straightened up in her chair and crossed her hands in front of herself on the table. "I don't know why you'd be upset, Tara," she said, upbeat in a mocking way. "I've called you many names over our time together."
"... Okay."
Kate smushed yet another insect that was stupid enough to walk past her along the table. "Stupid ant!" Leaning her elbows on the table, her mother tried a softer approach. "I'm sure what happened last night was confusing --"
"Not to me," Kate replied firmly, quickly, before Tara got further, leaning forward a bit. "I'm used to it." The mocking in her tone got a lot more obvious, the expression on her face a little harder. She thought she had every right to sound and look like that. Nothing had gotten any easier since last night. "Is there a name you'd rather be called, Tara, than Tara?"
"That's fun, Kate," Tara replied dryly, giving her a thumb up. "Good stuff."
Before they got any further, Charmaine strode into the kitchen, quite possibly the only person in the whole house with any cheer left. "Morning!" Even that single perky word in greeting annoyed Kate. She got up. "I am off to deal with work stuff," she announced. "Someone around here needs to be a responsible adult. Also..." She glanced at her mother who was standing in front of the fridge, looking in. "You have grass all over your back."
Tufts of it, all over the back of her shirt. Classy. Kate needed to not be here right now.
.....
Not that it was that much better at Lynda's. Kate came there to pose again, and it seemed harder today than it had yesterday. The pose Lynda wanted her in was a little awkward, and the sword she was supposed to hold up weighed a fucking ton, and Lynda turned out to be kind of a slave driver when it came to treating her poor model.
But it was still better than being at home, she was sure. And eventually, she even managed to divert Lynda from yammering on and on about how she'd ended up painting the kind of stuff like the one she was working on right now.
"So, what are her superpowers?" Kate wondered. "Does she burn things with her eyes? Does she read people's thoughts? Does she, like, manipulate elements?" Oh, wait, there was a really obvious one too. "... Does she fly?"
Lynda looked up and smiled. "Oh yeah, she flies."
Ooh. Kate wanted that power. She wanted all the princess's powers. "What about sex?" she asked then, glancing down at her cleavage that was being accentuated pretty nicely by the way the breastplate pressed on her boobs. "Do I use my body like a weapon?" She wiggled a bit, to convey the idea of sexiness. "Like... meta for Poison Ivy on Ratman?" Oh, that was an exciting idea. "Y'know, pretty fuckable."
Lynda shook her head immediately, seeming pretty adamant on her point. "Oh no, the princess don't fuck."
Ohh, right. The princess was kind of anti-men because they'd been evil to her. Kate could get behind that. "Because she won't."
"Because she can't."
Ohhh. "Got it," Kate grinned. "Like Barbie. No holes."
Hey, at least here she could still laugh. They talked more about the princess and her story and her enemies, and for a few moments Kate could even forget the burn in her arm from holding up the sword, just by getting so into it all.
"I bet if you wanted to, you could make some pretty good coin off this thing and pay off your debt," she remarked after a while, getting her business brain on. "You know, mugs, and t-shirts, and keychains..."
"Sure."
Lynda didn't sound at all convinced, but that didn't deter Kate. "And hats and stickers," she continued, getting more and more into it, "and you could put out a magazine with pictures and a centerfold."
"Oh no," Lynda said again, shaking her head. "Not a centerfold. She's a subject, not an object."
Whatever that meant, especially considering the way the princess looked. Even if she did have no fun bits. As Kate picked up her sword again, she felt a little like letting her shoulders droop at having had her brilliant ideas rejected.
Except that they weren't, not completely. "But you know what?" Lynda asked after a brief moment, stepping closer to Kate from behind her easel. "You're right. I mean, who the fuck is gonna see the painting?" She tilted her head to the side and raised her eyebrows. "Let's make a movie."
... Oh sweet zombie Jesus, Kate was instantly in love with that idea.
.....
So, that became their project for the rest of the day. They decided it should be a music video, so obviously they had to first write a song and record it on Lynda's laptop, then come up with a concept for the video, and then shoot the damn thing. It was a lot of work to be done in a single day, but it was the most fun Kate had had in a while. And that was counting yesterday's non fucked up portion. Jesus, she got to be the star of her own music video, riding a toy horse and waving her sword around and dancing and pretending to fly and everything! What was more fun than that?
.....
But fun didn't last for long. If anything, yesterday had taught her that, and when she was meaning to leave, and she realized that her car was refusing to start, and that she had to call her dad to come pick her up. Which was fine enough, probably, only once he and Tara showed up, they were neither particularly happy she was in downtown KC in the first place, nor particularly impressed with the way she looked, dressed in jeans and her PVH armor and helmet. In her opinion they should've been glad she wasn't still in her hotpants.
And that was only the minor start of the troubles. Tara drove the Cadillac back, while Kate rode in her dad's truck, where they promptly got into a huge argument. And that was still going on after they'd gotten home and gone straight to the Hubbard house, because Max needed to keep doing his renovation thing.
And he was still insisting on playing strict daddy, even if Kate had never responded well to that. "Look, we're not talking about it anymore. End of discussion."
"You can't ground me, I was there for my job, and I don't even live here anymore!" Kate argued, for what felt like the hundredth time. This shit was just beyond ridiculous. "I've had it up to here with you guys!"
Max seemed amused by that. "Who's the parent around here anyway?" he asked, almost chuckling.
Oh, Max. That was so not the string to pull. "No one," Kate said, sounding petulant. She couldn't help a random thought of Mitchell flashing across her mind, him and his insistence on being 'the adult', and that just made her more angry.
"Jesus God girl, could you cut me some fucking slack for once?"
No. No she could not. "Maybe I'll move out for good," she threatened. And she was even half serious about it, too. This shit was getting old. "Maybe I'll move in with Lynda."
Tara walked in with paint cans then, and just jumped right into the conversation. "How come you never told us she was black?"
"What does that have to do with anything?" Kate asked, completely incredulous. If this was going to turn into a racism thing... "Wake up, Fox News, there's a new sherrif in town, his name is Barack Obama?"
Her mother just shrugged. "I think it's a cool thing."
What? Now Kate seriously could hardly believe her ears. "Oh, great," she said, throwing up her hands. "Now it's cool that she's black. That's even worse."
"Okay, here's the deal," Max started, apparently displeased with the sidetrack they were getting on. "You're done with the car, you're done with going downtown, you're done with that woman, having nothing to do with her being black."
"What do you guys even do together?" Tara wondered, but Max wasn't concerned with that. "Bottom line, you're grounded until we say otherwise."
But Kate wasn't going down without a fight. Or, technically, without prolonging the fight. "You know what Dad, if you're so desperate to ground somebody, you should be grounding Mom!" she exclaimed. "She's the one that's been pretending to be somebody else, with that crazy lady from the ice skating rink, doing God knows what!"
"Coming from the girl in the winged hat and the princess costume."
"Stop!" Max had to step in before it turned into a mother-daughter cat fight. At least that made him make his own tone a little less heated as he stepped closer to Kate. "Okay, look, Kate, your mom's getting help, found an expert in New York who's gonna help her."
That... seemed to cool some of Kate's anger. But not nearly all. She sat down on the edge of a table. "New York?" Sounded fancy. And unlikely. And... maybe there was a tiny flicker of hope, somewhere in her mind. No matter how quickly she stomped on it.
"Yeah, they don't know what they're doing around here," her dad continued. "Come on, let's just give the new doc a chance, all right?" He tried to pat her on the shoulder, but she pushed his hand away. The attempt to comfort still felt like bullshit to her.
And then, for the second time today, it was time for Charmaine to come in and mess with the awkwardness, this time with Nick in tow. "Hey kids!" she greeted them, as she and Nick stopped to stand side by side, like a tiny committee with something important to report. "So, we've got some big news--" Unfortunately for her, that was as far as she got before Nick announced, "We're pregnant!"
Charmaine immediately looked extremely annoyed with him. "What the fuck, Nick?"
"I'm sorry--"
"You fucking ruined it!" she complained, while the Gregsons looked on. "I was--"
Nick made a futile little gesture with his hand. "You go."
"Well, what am I supposed to say now?" Charmaine asked, but took a deep breath anyway, as if preparing to announce her big news. But no. "I... It's gone, the moment's gone." She looked forlorn.
"Hey, guys," Max tried, and started clapping, as Tara stepped forward to hug her sister. "Congratulations, Charmaine."
Kate was... not going to partake of this joy right now, no. What was supposed to be happy about another person joining this disaster? "If that baby knows what's good for it," she muttered darkly as she got up and pushed past everyone to get to the door, "it'll tie the umbilical cord around its neck and take a leap."
She exited the house, ignoring her aunt's confused demand of "What the fuck, Kate?" Couldn't deal with any of this shit right now. She just wanted to go back to Fandom. Or to Lynda's. Or anywhere.
But she only went next door. Grounded. Fucking perfect.
[ooc: NFB, NFI, OOC-okay! Taken and tweaked from USoT S02E04 'You Becoming You'.
In other news, I'm taking off to go to Helsinki for the weekend to marathon Firefly. I'll probably ping in to the HMD horror thingie tomorrow, but other than that, have a great weekend and I'll see you Sunday evening!]
And now there were ants in their fucking kitchen, again.
So, Kate wasn't exactly pleased when she was having to have breakfast with a deep-seated hatred of everything in her heart, and a flyswatter in her hand. Stupid ants. Stupid life.
Tara could've maybe picked a better time to walk into the kitchen.
"Hey Kate."
"Tara," Kate acknowledged flatly, without looking up. The sense of betrayal was strong with this one; last night was just further proof that people were full of shit.
"No more Mom, huh?" Tara (or whoever the fuck she was) asked. "Now I'm just Tara?"
Oh, when had she ever been 'just Tara'? Kate straightened up in her chair and crossed her hands in front of herself on the table. "I don't know why you'd be upset, Tara," she said, upbeat in a mocking way. "I've called you many names over our time together."
"... Okay."
Kate smushed yet another insect that was stupid enough to walk past her along the table. "Stupid ant!" Leaning her elbows on the table, her mother tried a softer approach. "I'm sure what happened last night was confusing --"
"Not to me," Kate replied firmly, quickly, before Tara got further, leaning forward a bit. "I'm used to it." The mocking in her tone got a lot more obvious, the expression on her face a little harder. She thought she had every right to sound and look like that. Nothing had gotten any easier since last night. "Is there a name you'd rather be called, Tara, than Tara?"
"That's fun, Kate," Tara replied dryly, giving her a thumb up. "Good stuff."
Before they got any further, Charmaine strode into the kitchen, quite possibly the only person in the whole house with any cheer left. "Morning!" Even that single perky word in greeting annoyed Kate. She got up. "I am off to deal with work stuff," she announced. "Someone around here needs to be a responsible adult. Also..." She glanced at her mother who was standing in front of the fridge, looking in. "You have grass all over your back."
Tufts of it, all over the back of her shirt. Classy. Kate needed to not be here right now.
.....
Not that it was that much better at Lynda's. Kate came there to pose again, and it seemed harder today than it had yesterday. The pose Lynda wanted her in was a little awkward, and the sword she was supposed to hold up weighed a fucking ton, and Lynda turned out to be kind of a slave driver when it came to treating her poor model.
But it was still better than being at home, she was sure. And eventually, she even managed to divert Lynda from yammering on and on about how she'd ended up painting the kind of stuff like the one she was working on right now.
"So, what are her superpowers?" Kate wondered. "Does she burn things with her eyes? Does she read people's thoughts? Does she, like, manipulate elements?" Oh, wait, there was a really obvious one too. "... Does she fly?"
Lynda looked up and smiled. "Oh yeah, she flies."
Ooh. Kate wanted that power. She wanted all the princess's powers. "What about sex?" she asked then, glancing down at her cleavage that was being accentuated pretty nicely by the way the breastplate pressed on her boobs. "Do I use my body like a weapon?" She wiggled a bit, to convey the idea of sexiness. "Like... meta for Poison Ivy on Ratman?" Oh, that was an exciting idea. "Y'know, pretty fuckable."
Lynda shook her head immediately, seeming pretty adamant on her point. "Oh no, the princess don't fuck."
Ohh, right. The princess was kind of anti-men because they'd been evil to her. Kate could get behind that. "Because she won't."
"Because she can't."
Ohhh. "Got it," Kate grinned. "Like Barbie. No holes."
Hey, at least here she could still laugh. They talked more about the princess and her story and her enemies, and for a few moments Kate could even forget the burn in her arm from holding up the sword, just by getting so into it all.
"I bet if you wanted to, you could make some pretty good coin off this thing and pay off your debt," she remarked after a while, getting her business brain on. "You know, mugs, and t-shirts, and keychains..."
"Sure."
Lynda didn't sound at all convinced, but that didn't deter Kate. "And hats and stickers," she continued, getting more and more into it, "and you could put out a magazine with pictures and a centerfold."
"Oh no," Lynda said again, shaking her head. "Not a centerfold. She's a subject, not an object."
Whatever that meant, especially considering the way the princess looked. Even if she did have no fun bits. As Kate picked up her sword again, she felt a little like letting her shoulders droop at having had her brilliant ideas rejected.
Except that they weren't, not completely. "But you know what?" Lynda asked after a brief moment, stepping closer to Kate from behind her easel. "You're right. I mean, who the fuck is gonna see the painting?" She tilted her head to the side and raised her eyebrows. "Let's make a movie."
... Oh sweet zombie Jesus, Kate was instantly in love with that idea.
.....
So, that became their project for the rest of the day. They decided it should be a music video, so obviously they had to first write a song and record it on Lynda's laptop, then come up with a concept for the video, and then shoot the damn thing. It was a lot of work to be done in a single day, but it was the most fun Kate had had in a while. And that was counting yesterday's non fucked up portion. Jesus, she got to be the star of her own music video, riding a toy horse and waving her sword around and dancing and pretending to fly and everything! What was more fun than that?
.....
But fun didn't last for long. If anything, yesterday had taught her that, and when she was meaning to leave, and she realized that her car was refusing to start, and that she had to call her dad to come pick her up. Which was fine enough, probably, only once he and Tara showed up, they were neither particularly happy she was in downtown KC in the first place, nor particularly impressed with the way she looked, dressed in jeans and her PVH armor and helmet. In her opinion they should've been glad she wasn't still in her hotpants.
And that was only the minor start of the troubles. Tara drove the Cadillac back, while Kate rode in her dad's truck, where they promptly got into a huge argument. And that was still going on after they'd gotten home and gone straight to the Hubbard house, because Max needed to keep doing his renovation thing.
And he was still insisting on playing strict daddy, even if Kate had never responded well to that. "Look, we're not talking about it anymore. End of discussion."
"You can't ground me, I was there for my job, and I don't even live here anymore!" Kate argued, for what felt like the hundredth time. This shit was just beyond ridiculous. "I've had it up to here with you guys!"
Max seemed amused by that. "Who's the parent around here anyway?" he asked, almost chuckling.
Oh, Max. That was so not the string to pull. "No one," Kate said, sounding petulant. She couldn't help a random thought of Mitchell flashing across her mind, him and his insistence on being 'the adult', and that just made her more angry.
"Jesus God girl, could you cut me some fucking slack for once?"
No. No she could not. "Maybe I'll move out for good," she threatened. And she was even half serious about it, too. This shit was getting old. "Maybe I'll move in with Lynda."
Tara walked in with paint cans then, and just jumped right into the conversation. "How come you never told us she was black?"
"What does that have to do with anything?" Kate asked, completely incredulous. If this was going to turn into a racism thing... "Wake up, Fox News, there's a new sherrif in town, his name is Barack Obama?"
Her mother just shrugged. "I think it's a cool thing."
What? Now Kate seriously could hardly believe her ears. "Oh, great," she said, throwing up her hands. "Now it's cool that she's black. That's even worse."
"Okay, here's the deal," Max started, apparently displeased with the sidetrack they were getting on. "You're done with the car, you're done with going downtown, you're done with that woman, having nothing to do with her being black."
"What do you guys even do together?" Tara wondered, but Max wasn't concerned with that. "Bottom line, you're grounded until we say otherwise."
But Kate wasn't going down without a fight. Or, technically, without prolonging the fight. "You know what Dad, if you're so desperate to ground somebody, you should be grounding Mom!" she exclaimed. "She's the one that's been pretending to be somebody else, with that crazy lady from the ice skating rink, doing God knows what!"
"Coming from the girl in the winged hat and the princess costume."
"Stop!" Max had to step in before it turned into a mother-daughter cat fight. At least that made him make his own tone a little less heated as he stepped closer to Kate. "Okay, look, Kate, your mom's getting help, found an expert in New York who's gonna help her."
That... seemed to cool some of Kate's anger. But not nearly all. She sat down on the edge of a table. "New York?" Sounded fancy. And unlikely. And... maybe there was a tiny flicker of hope, somewhere in her mind. No matter how quickly she stomped on it.
"Yeah, they don't know what they're doing around here," her dad continued. "Come on, let's just give the new doc a chance, all right?" He tried to pat her on the shoulder, but she pushed his hand away. The attempt to comfort still felt like bullshit to her.
And then, for the second time today, it was time for Charmaine to come in and mess with the awkwardness, this time with Nick in tow. "Hey kids!" she greeted them, as she and Nick stopped to stand side by side, like a tiny committee with something important to report. "So, we've got some big news--" Unfortunately for her, that was as far as she got before Nick announced, "We're pregnant!"
Charmaine immediately looked extremely annoyed with him. "What the fuck, Nick?"
"I'm sorry--"
"You fucking ruined it!" she complained, while the Gregsons looked on. "I was--"
Nick made a futile little gesture with his hand. "You go."
"Well, what am I supposed to say now?" Charmaine asked, but took a deep breath anyway, as if preparing to announce her big news. But no. "I... It's gone, the moment's gone." She looked forlorn.
"Hey, guys," Max tried, and started clapping, as Tara stepped forward to hug her sister. "Congratulations, Charmaine."
Kate was... not going to partake of this joy right now, no. What was supposed to be happy about another person joining this disaster? "If that baby knows what's good for it," she muttered darkly as she got up and pushed past everyone to get to the door, "it'll tie the umbilical cord around its neck and take a leap."
She exited the house, ignoring her aunt's confused demand of "What the fuck, Kate?" Couldn't deal with any of this shit right now. She just wanted to go back to Fandom. Or to Lynda's. Or anywhere.
But she only went next door. Grounded. Fucking perfect.
[ooc: NFB, NFI, OOC-okay! Taken and tweaked from USoT S02E04 'You Becoming You'.
In other news, I'm taking off to go to Helsinki for the weekend to marathon Firefly. I'll probably ping in to the HMD horror thingie tomorrow, but other than that, have a great weekend and I'll see you Sunday evening!]