xp_logs | Amanda, Mark - Dinner with DJ

Amanda and Mark go to the Life Cafe for dinner and talk. Funny how talking about someone else's life takes your mind off your own.

"Thanks for thinking of this," Amanda said to Mark with a grateful smile as she looked around the restaurant. "I can't believe we haven't been here yet - just around the corner and all. I'll have to drag Marie-Ange down sometime."

It had been a hectic week, but Amanda was finally starting to relax some of the tension that had built during Kurt's disappearance. Knowing he was back safe and sound helped. "Sorry if I've been a pain in the arse lately to work with."

"A little piece of hipster faux-'Bohemian' life right across the street," Mark said. "At the very least, seeing these wannabe Eurotrash will make you feel better about yourself, right?"

She snorted. "You should have seen Berlin. Some of the cafes there..." Picking up a menu, she grinned at the range of 'alternative' food. Hippie central, but it had a comfortable feel. A bit like Brighton. "And I'm doing better - less of the worrying myself sick about Kurt and more with the wanting to hug the poor bugger to death. Brothers, huh." She looked at him curiously. "What about you? Got any brothers or sisters to drive you balmy?"

Mark sighed wistfully. "We so need to backpack across Europe. Can you even imagine the kind of trouble we'd get into?" The thought sent a pleasing tingle down his spine, but his smile faltered ever so slightly at Amanda's question. "And no, I don't. Only-child here. Either my folks realized that they couldn't ask for a better child, or they realized they'd down fucked up and didn't have the will to try for another one."

"You so need to go to Brighton one day," she told him decisively. "Maybe next summer we can cadge some holiday time and take off for a bit." She didn't miss his reaction to her question, tho'. "I'm sorry, did I put my foot in it? You don't talk 'bout your history much, I should've realised that's probably for a reason."

Mark shook his head and offered Amanda a small smile. "No, it's nothing bad. I wasn't kidnapped or forced to grow up in the sewers or anything. I just . . . didn't leave my family on the best of terms." Oh look, water. Mark grabbed his glass and greedily chugged it down.

"What, someone in our fucked-up group of misfits who hasn't got the big traumatic history? Well, if you don't count Angie and Doug, that is." Amanda tried to make light of her gaffee, even if her curiosity - and her concern for a friend - was pushing her to ask more. "If it's okay to talk about... was it the mutant thing?" she asked at last. "The bad terms?"

"Pretty much," Mark replied, the gleeful spark in his eyes that everyone had grown accustomed to seeing every day now dulled. "It was a very pitchfork and torch experience. In a metaphorical sense, thankfully. Real pitchforks and torches would've ended badly." For whom, Mark still wondered.

Amanda bit her lip. "I'm sorry," she said simply, reaching over and touching the back of his hand lightly. "Didn't mean to bring it up. But it does mean I'm definitely dragging you to Brighton one day. Speaking of people appreciating your fabulous self proper." She offered him a small smile.

"I'm from Missouri," Mark said, as if that explained everything. And then he added, "They're done fucked up down there. They just can't handle my fabulosity and fantasticism." Or his regular butchering of the English language.

"Down South?" Amanda winced sympathetically. "Marie's told me what it's like down that way. Hell, I'm starting to think New Orleans is the only sane place in the southern part of the States, and that's saying something." She tilted her head at him. "So, after the pitchforks that weren't, you headed up this way?"

"Well, I'm not from Bumblefuck," Mark clarified, "And after seeing what happened in Seattle last year? I'm thinking it's not necessarily a Yankee versus Redneck thing. But that aside, yeah. Befriended a teleporter who popped me up here right before graduation." He paused and frowned. "You know, I don't know if I officially finished high school. I did all my finals and whatever, but I didn't go to graduation and I don't know if the 'rents ever got my diploma. Hmm."

Despite the seriousness of the conversation, Amanda giggled a little at his phrasing. Bumblefuck indeed. The waiter came around at that point and they ordered food, Amanda asking for a lass of red wine to go with it. Marie-Ange had certainly rubbed off on her. "I've read about Seattle," she said, colouring a little as she remembered just where she'd been during that time. Training to be the Black Knight of the HFC hadn't been exactly a stellar point in her career. "And it seems you get bigots everywhere, yeah. Came across my share in London, mostly wearing uniforms." She pulled a face. "If you wanted to check on the diploma thing, you could get Doug to chase it up. God of the internet and all that."

"Or I could, y'know, call my parents. God forbid," he added, only half-jokingly. After all, he could count on one hand the number of times he'd spoken with his parents since fleeing for New York. "Eh, who needs it, anyway? It's a silly piece of paper that says I know the quadratic equation and have read Shakespeare."

Amanda shrugged. "I dunno, I was bloody happy to get mine. Mind you, took until the start of this year to finish high school, so we're probably in different boats." She snickered a little. "If you want an idea of how far I've come, check out my journal from a couple of years ago. Or don't, if you don't want your eyes to bleed."

Mark's goofy and giddy smile came back. "I have. Oh my God, you guys are better than 90210, Dawson's Creek, and My So-Called Life put together. Drama with a capital RAMA."

She laughed, poking her tongue out at him. "Yeah, we were pretty full on with the drama in those days. Fuck, me make this current batch look positively dull and boring, and they've got the FOHer still knocking around. Tho' he seems to have mellowed a lot. Almost makes me feel like an old fogey, complaining how today's youth wouldn't know a good demon invasion if it bit them on the arse."

Mark grinned and took a sip of his recently served margarita. "A.) From the pictures I've seen, the FoH'er is hot, so who cares about his attitude? And B.) That's exactly what I said to Angelo a couple weeks ago. And I don't know about you, but I am no old fogey."

"I dunno, you're a whole two years older 'n me..." she began, grinning wickedly. "And you finally got to chat with Ange, did you? What'd you think? He's a good bloke, isn't he?"

"I am not old," he pouted. "Betsy is old. Remy is old. Wanda and Pete are positively ancient. So thbbpt." And maybe if he acted like a five year-old, then she'd believe him. "Angelo seems pretty cool, yeah. Couldn't tell by lookin' at him that he used to be a whore." He said this in a non-judgmental, almost reverential way.

She giggled at the pout and then broke into a minor coughing fit. "He told... no, wait, you've been reading the journals, yeah? That whole full disclosure thing we did." Mark's reaction was interesting, to say the least. "It was a long time ago and he's come a long way since - sometimes I forget that he used to do that. Still, when you're on the streets, you do what you can, and whoring's sometimes the only thing left. But you'd have seen that with your lot, plenty of times, yeah?"

Mark shrugged, as if this little bit of Angelo's past was irrelevant or unmeaningful. Or both. Which it was. "One could do worse. Not like prostitution is a bad thing, anyway, so long as you're safe. Sex is sex. Don't get me all into my psuedo-feminist-slash-queer sex is great yay rant. I'll be at it for hours, even if it is preaching to the choir."

"Sex is definitely yay," Amanda replied with a grin, although there was a slightly wistful edge to it - it had been close to a year for her now since any kind of yay. "Knew there was a reason we got on. Well, besides the whole being two incredibly gorgeous people."

Mark laughed. "I know, right? Look at us. We are HOTT. Capitalized. With two Ts. For serious." He liked this kind of talk much more than mentioning his family. His sex life was a much more comfortable and open subject, POSH training be damned.

"Comes with the genetics," she replied, enjoying this line of conversation more too - she didn't like seeing Mark's spirits dampened like that. "At one point there was talk of it being a side-effect of the mutant thing. Get a wacky power and be sex on a stick. Look at the school. 'S like a Hollywood soap opera there, between the lack of zits and the melodrama." She tilted her head a little. "I'm pretty sure you play for the other side, even if you do flirt horribly with us girls. Anyone catch your eye yet?" Her grin turned wicked. "Since according to Remy it's compulsory to have a relationship within six months of turning up, though you might be saved on account of being with the Trenchcoat Brigade. We're all too dysfunctional for relationships, except Wanda. And she's with my old magic tutor who puts a whole new face on 'stuffed shirt'."

Mark nearly snorted his drink. "Oww. Tequila. Nasal passages." He pulled out a tissue from his pocket to wipe his nose. "'Least I can breathe through my nose again." After a much more careful sip, he said: "'The other team'? I don't play for teams, babe. I only play for myself."

Amanda looked innocent as Mark finished getting margarita out of his sinsues. "So, equal opportunity player, are you?" she asked, grinning. "Knew we had a lot in common."

"Labels are just so dumb," Mark contended, banging a fist on the table in emphasis. "Of all the things for people to be preoccupied with. Sometimes I wonder what people feel more threatened by. The fact that with the right stimulation I could blow a whole city block . . . or the fact that with the right stimulation I could blow a whole city block."

Holding up her hands in surrender, Amanda said, laughing: "All right, all right, no labels. Or boxes, niches, shelves or any kind of identifying limits! Hell, I agree with you. And that's it, next time Clarice feels like jaunting over to Brighton for the weekend, you're getting kidnapped. Just your sort of place."

"And this is why I heart you," cheered Mark, clinking his glass against Amanda's.

Current Mood: amused

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

x-juggernaut.livejournal.com

And everyone fails Basic Geography!

Missouri is not South unless you're speaking from the perspective of someone in Minnesota. Missouri is smack dab in the Middle.