Lil and Jennie: Lunch (Backdated to Wednesday Jan. 21)

[x-diamondlil.livejournal.com]

Backdated to Wednesday, January 21.

Jennie and Lil go out for grub and girl talk.


"So, what do you think?" Jennie said as she settled herself into the cracked vinyl booth in the back of the small restaurant she'd taken Lil too. It wasn't terribly crowded today, and the there was more than enough space to accommodate her large companion.

"I don't know whether to smack or kiss you," Lil responded with a laugh, slipping off her leather jacket and tossing it on the seat next to her. "The legroom's certainly appreciated, that's for sure. And if the food's good, I'm sold." Not much of an atmosphere but she wasn't exactly a girl of high tastes, either. "How'd you find this place?"

"You know you love me," Jennie said and then made a kissy face. "This place is the result of many many months of exhaustive investigative work on the kind of food that will best cure a hangover. This place is a godsend, trust me." She opened the slightly sticky menu and perused the contents with interest. "So, how does it feel to join our merry band?"

"'Course I do. That's why I asked you out, obviously," the blonde responded with a playful wink before likewise turning her attention to the restaurant's offerings. Not as if she didn't know what she was going to get; a big greasy burger with lots of fries and possible a milkshake despite the weather. "I'm excited, actually. Did a lotta work back in Beta but never got out in the field beyond rescuing kitties from trees. While, yeah, it was doing good, always felt like a waste of my powers. How do you like it?"

"I enjoy hitting things for justice," Jennie said, making a decision and then setting it aside. "But my reasonings for joining up were something of the personal variety, so I think I get an extra kick out of beating the crap out of people in the name of good," Jennie smiled and took a sip of her water. "If you need any help with the gossip or the skinny on anyone, you just let me know." The waitress appeared at Jennie's elbow for their order. Jennie smiled and got her usual.

The mention of a 'personal variety' made Lil pause for a moment but she refrained from saying anything until after giving her order - complete with a chocolate milkshake - to the waitress who then sashayed off. "Could say the same thing about me; only reason I'm here is 'cause of Maddy so," the tall woman shrugged one shoulder absently before her eyes sparked with mirth. "Gossip huh? On anyone? I'm impressed by your resources and generosity, Jennie. What's it gonna cost me?"

Jennie raised an eyebrow delicately. "Payment? Moi? Non, my dear. All that i ask is if you've got something juicy to give you share it, spreading the wealth and all," her smile was slightly evil.

"That is something I can most certainly do though I don't have many people to go to it with yet," she pointed out. Lil was still new in the mansion and slowly forming friendships. "I'll have to work on expanding my social network to do any of your shared juicy tidbits justice."

"You'll be surprised at what people will tell the n00b, simply because they think they won't understand the people being talked about. Allow Auntie Jennie to fill in the gaps," Jennie said. "While not quite the hotbed of sin and sex as we used to be, there is still plenty of laughs to go around."

Lil's laugh rung out bright and loud. "I will strive to make such a wise teacher proud though I'm gonna tell you right now, you hear anything about me, I wanna know what people are saying. I'm a tough broad and can take whatever anyone's dishing out." While people would tell the newcomers things, certainly, they were also prime targets. Especially when one made their romantic status known. "And I can use all the laughs I can get. Anything especially tasty floating around right now about anyone?"

Jennie tapped a finger to her chin. "As of now? Nothing particularly delightful. You missed the bit where Kyle's ex-girlfriend propositioned him for sex on the journals and couldn't understand why his current girlfriend was displeased."

One brow rose at that. "Seriously? Wait - he couldn't understand why or his ex-girlfriend couldn't understand why?" Kyle was male after all so Lil could understand why it might have not seeped into his brain; boys only had enough blood to think with one head at a time and it rarely routed to the one on their shoulders. But the ex, she should have definitely known better. Wasn't that like some code of sorority or something? Or at least common sense?

"Nah, that would be Clarice, the ex. Clarice is... different," Jennie said. She wasn't being diplomatic either. It was like saying the sky was blue, water was wet, and Fearless Leader was utterly sadistic. "Keep an eye on Kyle during missions. The boy has been kidnapped a grand total of 9 times now. I am not even kidding."

"Ugh. She totally went on a little bender last night in the journals with the manhate," Lil said rolling her eyes. "I'll be avoiding her while watching my steps with Scott 'cause I think I managed to get his panties in a twist somehow when all I did was offer to help one of the students with her training." Part of the reason she'd needed to get out of the mansion and search out a break in the brewing storm. "Kyle's a Danger-Prone Daphne. Got it. Now, be honest," she said, leaning in closer. "I want the real juicy stuff. And you know, anything about me that's flying around."

"S'far as I know?" Jennie said teasingly. "Not a whole lot," she said, inspecting her nails.

The blonde actually pouted at that, a sincere little push of her lower lip forward but failed to make her look any more innocent or young. "Lemme guess; the estranged husband shit or the 'she got turned down from Alpha because she once punched the field leader's wife' story?"

"Well now, I was going to say a date with a certain tall dark and handsome, but that last one I did not know--" Jennie paused as their food was delivered, Jennie had gotten a sandwich and fries, and waited for her to depart. "So spill, you punched the field leader's wife?"

Smirking, Lil loaded up her hamburger with extra ketchup before dumping even more over her fries. "It was an accident during training. I didn't mean to hit Heather. She just... got in the way?" The milkshake was slurped through her straw and she gave Jennie another shrug. "It wasn't any big deal; she was only out for a few seconds. I had no idea word had gotten around about my date with Bishop." It had been one date - one real date, anyway; everything else had been just drives or shooting practice - and he hadn't even spent the night. Hardly juicy.

"Just so you know? Don't punch out Dr. Grey-Summers, she can kill you with her brain," Jennie said. "Plus she's also like ten kinds of awesome so I don't foresee that happening, but just in case. As for the date, I do have my ways," she added coyly.

"As long as she doesn't sneak up on me, especially during a training session, it's all good." Granted, Heather hadn't meant to sneak up on her but things happened when people weren't very vocal about their location while Lil was swinging. She pointed a french fry at Jennie briefly before stuffing it in her mouth. "The date was a makeup for New Years. We went to a Jazz club, had dinner and drinks and dances a little."

"Hey, knock yourself out there. Bishop seems like a really nice guy, so if you want to date him I say go for it," Jennie said, nibbling on a french fry. Jennie didn't know if Lil knew about Bishop's flirting and pursuit of Jennie, but she wasn't going to bring it up if she did. Bishop seemed like a nice guy, and he needed a nice girl. Not one that was prone to cheating.

Lil gave another of her one-shoulder shrugs as she sipped her milkshake. "He is. Which is why I'm trying to take things slow seeing as I do still legally have a husband back home." It made for a sticky situation; while she and Maddy were separated it had only been for a few months and the blonde didn't want to cause Bishop any pain. "I haven't done the dating thing in a really long time," she said, biting into her hamburger.

"I haven't done the dating thing in a long time either," Jennie said primly, "But that is purely by choice. Too much hassle."

"Well, after dating for three years, when the man popped the question with a big diamond, what was I supposed to say?" Lil replied, just a touch a sadness in her smile. She should have said no and made them wait until they were a bit older but hindsight was always 20/20. "And it is too much hassle, really," she agreed with a sigh. "That's why it's so hard to get back in the game after being outta it."

"I said nothing about being out of the game, I just took all of the complication out of it," Jennie said. "I don't do relationships. I find the human race entirely too undependable for anything resembling a relationship beyond the purely inconsequential. Therefore, I see what I want, club over the head, drag back to my lair and then release harmlessly back into the wild the next morning," the younger girl shrugged and took a bite out of her sandwich. "In fact," she added after she finished chewing, "The only thing that people can be depended on for is that they are undependable."

"Dating is the game. What you just described is the battle of the sexes." The blonde's nose wrinkled slightly as she sipped her drink and mused on the idea of just bashing Bishop over the head and just barely kept herself from snorting. "I wish I could just cut out the complicated shit," Lil said at length, "but that probably involves going back to Canada and serving Maddy with divorce papers."

Jennie snorted. "I say do it, but take my words with a grain of salt. From what little you've told me I say this douchebag needs to be cut loose."

The Amazon's expression darkened slightly an she shrugged again while focusing on her meal instead of looking the other girl in the eyes. "It's a little more complicated than him just being a douchebag but thanks."

"We do have time, you know, if you want to talk about it," Jennie said.

"With the girl who started off the conversation by announcing she's one of the biggest gossips in the mansion?" Lil laughed, her voice more amused than insulting.

"I may be a terrible gossip, but I know what secrets are worth keeping."

The taller woman frowned and considered Jennie's words for a few silent moments before heaving a little sigh. "Maddy's powers make him pretty much a genius with machines and because of that he started helping out with the Box program which was basically this robot power suit thingy that no one else could get to work right but him. 'Cept when we got married and swore we were gonna leave all that stuff behind us so we could live a normal life, he kept sneaking out to go work on it. He'd disappear for whole nights, days sometimes to tinker with that damned thing," she said with a bitter, dark laugh as she shook her head. "I thought he was having an affair, confronted him and was pretty pissed when I found out it was 'cause of some machine and threatened to leave if he didn't stop. Maddy said he would and things got better for a while... but then it started all over again. He couldn't stay away from it and would get twitchy like some kinda junkie when he did. So, after destroying our kitchen in a fight that almost got us both arrested, I went to the people in charge of Alpha Flight and told them I wanted back in. They sent me here."

"That's one way to do it," Jennie said after a moment, flicking her bangs out of her eyes with a toss of her head. "No one likes to be cheated on, be it with another woman or a robot. You did the right thing by kicking him to the curb. Dude has some seriously messed up priorities.

"Yeah. I mean, there's other stuff too, regular marriage stuff that caused problems and it didn't help we were both pretty young. I was 20, so..." She shrugged again and took a massive bite of her lunch. "I dunno. It's just a sucky situation. I haven't filed for divorce yet though 'cause if there really is something wrong with Box taking over his head, I feel like I should be there, you know?" Plus being the one to hand over papers meant it was over and she'd failed at yet another thing.

Jennie moved a french fry around her plate and thought for a minute. "There's being there yes, because you care. But at the same time, you can't keep pouring water down the drain. A relationship is both give and take, and if he's not giving you anything then you need to find someone who will give you the love and attention you deserve." Words to live by, Stavros, Jennie sighed to herself. Certain things weren't worth breaking your heart over.

Lil blew her hair out of her face as she sighed. "Yeah, I know. Just tough to give up your first love, 'specially when you've been with them for seven years." Another sip of her milkshake and the blonde leaned back in her seat. "Men suck," she said at length, though the corner of her lip tugged up into a small smile. "I do like Bishop though but I'm not ready to get into anything serious yet. Still seriously scorned and all that. You got anyone currently that you're dragging and banging?"

"Um. I've got a couple of buddies who I make out with. You know? No one serious. I don't do relationships very well," Jennie shrugged her shoulders. "I mean, yeah, maybe I'd like something more but the guys I tend to fall for wind up being seriously emotionally retarded, so..." the girl shook her head and ate some more of her sandwich.

"Emotionally retarded guys or brain-fried geeks, hmmm. Tough one," Lil snorted, drowning a fry in ketchup. "I'll say it again - men suck."

"Cheers to that," Jennie raised her glass of iced tea for a toast.