Vanessa & Callisto | Friday night

[x-copycat.livejournal.com]

A typical night in the flat of Vanessa and Callisto. A gun is pulled, food is eaten, brains are dissected, Not Talking about obvious things prevails and in the end Vanessa makes progress without realizing it.

Even over the low music washing through the flat the sound of the front lock clicking immediate caught and kept Vanessa's attention. Reflex brought her ducking down behind the kitchen's island to check that the safety was off on her handgun and a round was already chambered. Intellectually she knew that if someone had a key then they weren't a threat. Particularly since only one other person had a key beside herself. However she was also well aware of the fact that locks could be picked and no one coming after her would know how many of her locks were deadbolts that only locked or unlocked from the inside. Deadbolts, Vanessa realized with sudden clarity, she had not put on because Callisto wasn't home. Nothing said you were welcome in your fairly recently acquired living situation like being locked out.

The gun was already drawn and aimed at an appropriate height to make a very painful shot regardless of the height of whoever walked through the door. Only the hand coming into view was strikingly familiar. Still, Vanessa was held in place taut as a bowstring. She'd memorized Callisto's figure precisely so she could ID her before forcing the other woman to do something like dodge a bullet, which Vanessa was fairly certain she could pull off. After all, she'd dodged arrows before. The brunette wasn't even halfway through the door before Vanessa relaxed enough to withdraw the firearm. It got stashed at the small of her back as she stood and arranged a fairly placid smile on her face. "I've got a metric ton of Chinese if you're interested."

Callisto gave Vanessa that long look where you couldn't be sure whether she was staring at you because she was being astute and empathic, or because she was mentally trying to form a coherent sentence, or maybe had something stuck in a tooth or something. Eventually she gave a congenial shrug. "I'm interested," she said simply, slipping inside and turning to deadbolt the door.

Vanessa inched along a bit closer to the 'relaxed' end of the 'relaxed-to-paranoid-as-fuck' spectrum with the sound of the deadbolt sliding into place. She pulled another fork out and set it down on raised counter that lined the opposite side of the island. Cartons were laid out in a line except for the sesame chicken. Of that she wasn't going to be particularly selfish. "I put your books on the table by the couch. Found a few laying about and figured you might not remember where they were left."

Callisto glanced over at the slim textbooks with a grimace. "Thanks," she murmured, dumping her bag down on the couch before making her way over to the food. When it came to Chinese food Callisto was a 'bit of everything' kinda gal. Actually, that pretty much applied to all food. "Um. So how's it goin'?"

With a mouth full of chicken the response came in the form of a shrug. Apparently Callisto was rubbing off on Vanessa. "Alright. Work's dull and so is just about everything else for the moment. How's the shelter kids?"

A returning shrug. Life in the Vanessa-Callisto abode was beginning to resemble that of the vultures in The Jungle Book. "Shelter kids," Callisto said through a mouthful of noodles. "They are what they are."

"Sounds exciting," the blonde returned in a dry tone. It was funny how little one needed to speak to another person despite living with them. Vanessa recognized that may have been a particular bit of specialness simply because it was her and Callisto. When one person nearly never spoke more than three sentences at once and the other was busy avoiding the most obvious things in her life there didn't seem to be much more discuss.

"I've discovered a network that plays copious amounts of episodes of a TV show all about profilers and serial killers. If you feel like frying brain cells with me." Vanessa grinned. "I'm pretending it's research." Which was to say nothing of the newest books on her bookshelf all being about criminology.

Callisto nodded slowly, pursing her lips, still chewing. When she swallowed, she commented, "You're researching serial killers."

"I'm researching creative violence and profiling," Vanessa clarified. Then shrugged with one shoulder, head tipping to complement the motion. "Supposedly. Some people have put in the opinion that me and more violence isn't a great combination, so if they ask I'm doing research. I just like violence and the bad guys getting caught when they think they're slick. And the feisty tech girl." Grabbing an untouched carton of noodles, Vanessa headed off to the couch to try to find the show on some station or another. It would no doubt be a long night of not sleeping much again and violence was soothing. Maybe that should have concerned her.

Callisto flopped down on the couch beside her, having swiped a carton of her own from the counter. "Is that the feisty tech girl, then?" she asked as a likely suspect hailed on screen.

"Mmhm," she hummed around her fork, nodding her confirmation. "Aye, the redhead," she managed after swallowing. "Though sometimes she's blonde. I think she's actually blonde? Sometimes she's part pink or blue or what have you. Her hair, I mean. And she never matches. But she's feisty and I sort of half want one just for that. I've got a tech girl but she's both underage and far too polite to ever be feisty."

Callisto listened to Vanessa's mental meanderings on the topic of Feisty Tech girl with a faint smile. Vanessa knew, by now, that Callisto wasn't particularly bothered about television, but she did seem to enjoy Vanessa's musings on what they watched. Generally, in fact, Callisto preferred listening to Vanessa talk - about anything, really - to the passive consumption of media. But one couldn't talk all the time. Eventually one ran out of subjects, and then all one was left with were the things one didn't talk about.

Still, she wasn't one to complain, and seemed perfectly content to provide company for the metamorph while she watched any amount of television. Sometimes she just zoned out, mind wandering while the flickering lights passed before her eyes, thinking about her day, perhaps mentally sifting over some new dilemma involving one of the kids at the shelter or a thorny bit of paperwork (all paperwork was thorny when you were Callisto). The episodes would segue one into the other and if you asked her, she wouldn't be able to tell you anything that had happened in them, but then, she didn't much mind and if Callisto had to rank her vices her tendency to be overly accommodating was by far the least of them.

It was something of a comfortable habit. Most things with Callisto were like that for Vanessa whether or not the blonde cared to acknowledge or even think about that fact. For someone who had mostly been a vague acquaintance, the monosyllabic brunette had slotted easily into Vanessa's life around the flat. Perhaps it was because she was so easy going about everything. No, easy going wasn't it. Laid back wasn't quite right. Passive, perhaps, but that didn't feel accurate either. No matter what it was, the weeks of them living together had given Vanessa something she hadn't had since July: a semblance of normalcy. She wasn't the person she'd been by a long shot but lounging about the flat watching whatever movie or television show that could keep her interest for more than a minute with Callisto had given Vanessa an odd sense of comfortableness within the flat.

"Exactly how messed up do you have to be to completely black out the bits where you are going out and slicing people the fuck up and then drawing a comic about it without having any sort of recollection about it?" Vanessa wondered aloud while she went fishing for one of those little mini corn cobs in her noodle carton. "The brain's a complicated, strange weird thing but that's a bit fucked up, innit?"

Callisto was silent for a while. This was normal. When asked a question requiring due consideration, it usually took a while for her to answer. During this gap, she finished her noodles, got up to throw the carton in the recycling and retrieved a couple of beers from the fridge, twisting the cap off each in turn and heading back to the couch, and by the time she sat down, passing the second chilled bottle to Vanessa, it seemed as though she might've decided the question was rhetorical. But then she said, "I guess sometimes when you put something aside, in your head, something really big, it's got to come out somehow," she said evenly.

"Thanks." Beer would help her sleep just as much as Scotch without actually getting her drunk, which was better for everyone. Vanessa had been drinking a lot less Scotch since Callisto had moved in. Vanessa got tipsy, then she got flirty, then Callisto got more awkward than usual... They'd done that cycle a few dozen times during the span of their knowing one another already. Vanessa had decided the day Callisto had turned up with all two bags of her belongings that they didn't need a reprise when Callisto effectively had nowhere to run and hide if she so chose unless she left the place she was living. Thus, beer, which Vanessa took a long pull of considering the day she'd had. While boring, uneventful days were almost more exhausting. She was on edge all day with no release. Not until Callisto had set the deadbolt. "Aye, but I'm not saying it wouldn't need to come out. Just that I don't understand how you've no memory of it at all. Denial I understand. Black out ignorance where it still leaks through but you don't put it together? Not so much."

Callisto took a long breath in and back out through her nose, that thoughtful pout appearing, which she rewarded with a swig of beer before speaking again. "Denial, blackouts... it's not really one thing or the other at the end of the day, y'know? I mean, it's like..." She frowned as though wondering whether to go on. "It's like the kids who come in, who you just know they've been abused, like it's written all over them, y'know? But they claim not to remember and it takes weeks of talking and not talking and talking some more before you get anything you can use. You say you don't remember it, but you do. 'Course you do. Except you don't. You've decided not to so you don't. And they're the victims, they don't even have anything to be ashamed of, even though they think they do." Callisto sighed, shifting to slump a little further on the couch and taking another, longer swig of her beer. "Whatever. It's like you said. Brains are weird or whatever."

"Brains are amazing at shunting things off to the dark parts of one's memory to retain one's sanity," Vanessa returned conversationally. "I never met anyone who'd ever forgotten anything like that. Usually it's the thing they remember most vividly, aye? Details fade eventually. With time. But even then people remember odd things. A smell. The way they felt. The thing that was worst about it all. The most painful things, they don't fade. They get easier but they're sort of seared into you. You can't get that sort of thing out of you. Not really. Funny how it never seems to be that way for the people doing the abusing. Some of them forget about it entirely. Or with this fond sort of smile. Sort of thing that can really make a person get behind the whole eye-for-an-eye mentality of punishment and justice."

Calliso glanced sidelong at Vanessa, then, in that same even, careful tone she seemed to use at times like these (nowadays, anyway), she said, "Or it makes you glad you were the six year old kid who could break a fucker's arm. I bet that sticks in the memory."

Blue eyes slid to the side to peer at the other woman from the corners. Vanessa just barely kept an eyebrow from raising. "It's too bad more six year olds can't or don't do that. Or more teenagers, pre-teens..." A bare hint of a shrug on Vanessa's shoulders. "I'd rather destroy the arm than break it though. Breaks heal. Meat grinders don't allow such things."

Callisto shook her head. "You have to attack the... thing... that lets it happen. Culture. Going after people one by one's no use," she said, with the air of someone who'd taken some time to understand and come to terms with this idea. She shot Vanessa a somewhat wry smile. "Guess some of the stuff in those books is getting through. Slowly."

"So sleeping with them laid over your face is effective, is it? And here I thought that sort of osmosis wasn't possible." An amused sort of smirk graced Vanessa's lips before she brought her beer back to her lips. She had not, in fact, witnessed Callisto asleep with a book on her face. There was even reasonable confidence such a thing had not transpired. But when she left herself open for the joke it was hard to resist.

Callisto seemed to take the comment in her stride. "I'm a, y'know. Speed reader," she deadpanned. "I meant to... thank you, I guess," she added then. "I mean, I dunno if I'd've thought to start reading... stuff... if we hadn't talked about it that time. Kinda."

Vanessa waved a hand through the air, though it wasn't exactly dismissive. "I'm a big supporter of people learning stuff on their own. Self-education is more worthwhile than spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on a college degree or summat which may get a person a job but probably isn't teaching them much that's actually useful. Sounds like it's helping you with the kids, though. Since, you know, you've got a better grasp on... concepts?" She wasn't sure how to phrase any of this without somehow implying that Callisto was stupid, which Vanessa didn't believe her to be.

"It's actually for a couple of part-time thingy courses. CPD," Callisto said, frowning back at her beer and taking a sip, and there was the distinct impression that if she wasn't a 'perma-pale' kind of girl, she might be blushing right about now. "Got to pay for it myself, obviously, what with the shelter having jack shit in the way of funding. But I dunno. Apparently they might qualify for more stuff if they had... people with certificates in stuff."

After trying to figure out the acronym to no avail, Vanessa frowned and admitted, "I've no idea what CPD stands for. But it's good that you guys might be able to get more funding if you had people with certificates and the like. You guys ever do fundraisers or anything like that? The sorts who like to feel better about themselves by giving poor people money usually go in for that sort of thing. Or so telly leads me to believe."

Callisto shrugged. "Not my area," she said. "I guess they must do some stuff like that."

"Warren's rich and likes to throw his money around like he has no idea it has worth," which oddly did not sound like a criticism from Vanessa. "I wonder if he knows anything about people willing to donate money and the like to something like a shelter that's got a heavy but not exclusive mutant population." She scratched at the back of her head and frowned. "If I ever have an actual conversation with him again maybe I'll bring it up."

"Uh, sure. I mean, yeah. Thanks." Callisto seemed a little nonplussed at this turn in the conversation, which was fast wading into waters she knew precious little about. "You guys... don't talk much, then?"

"Not really." A shrug was followed by some slightly abandoned noodles in the carton hanging out in Vanessa's lap. "I get busy with work and he's got this new law office, firm...whatever. Keeps him busy. And things are...sort of awkward. I don't think he really gets why I called things off and I don't think he wants to ask and I'm not really volunteering that conversation. But there's not really any point in pretending anything is normal without it probably. So I just kinda...I dunno. Not 'avoid' exactly. I just don't seek him out." Another shrug. "But that's not really specific to him, you know?"

"Yeah." Callisto took another contemplative sip of her beer, eyes moving back to the screen, to the flickering lights of the story she wasn't watching. "Fake punches on TV just... piss me off," she commented then. "I know most people don't notice but sometimes they're fuckin' miles away, y'know? Fake punches and fake oral sex. It's like... I dunno, I thought TV was supposed to draw you in."

"You know what's worse? Those dicks who hold a handgun sideways." Vanessa shook her head and took a sip of her own beer. "They're trying to be bad ass and gangsta, apparently, but a real gun would eject the insanely hot metal casing out the side and it would hit them right in the face. Nothing says 'gangsta' like burns from bullet shells bitch slapping you."

Callisto tipped her head in acknowledgment, but said only, "I don't do guns."

Vanessa reached behind her and pulled out the one she'd tucked into her waistband. It was pointed at the wall just over the television set as she held it out turned to the side as she had been complaining about. She pulled the slide back to expose the round that was chambered. "When you fire the slide comes back like this and this shell pops out." She turned the firearm over so the bullet fell into her waiting hand beneath. "So when it's happening at high speed with the gun like that it's going to get you smack in the face. But that was a live round, obviously." The slide went back into place, the safety went on and the gun was returned to its previous position. The lone bullet went into her pocket. "It's a pet peeve, but I've used lots of guns for lots of years."

The brunette nodded, lifting her beer back to her lips, clearly trying to look casual, though she had been following the gun with her eyes the whole time it was out in a way that was more like her 'on guard' out on the street stance than her usual relaxed self. Callisto clearly really didn't do guns. "You know that... you don't need to carry that around when I'm here. Right?" she said - almost blurted, really.

"I don't usually." Vanessa tried to not think about the implication of that admission, which was surprisingly easy to accomplish. "I usually only keep knives on me when you're home. Unless..." Unless they were asleep. They, as in the collective for both of them. They didn't talk about that, though. Not since that one time Callisto had brought it up by accident. Vanessa brushed the near slip away with a shrug. "I had it on me before. Pulled it on the door when I heard your key. Easiest place to put it when I knew it was you was at my back. It's better there." Meaning she liked it better there. That was why she hadn't bothered to take it out and stash it elsewhere since Callisto had come home. While her not putting her gun away wouldn't have surprised most people, being that honest about why she had the gun on her still would have.

That level of transparency was something only Callisto had earned. One could have assumed it was out of necessity of living together. In truth, it had little to do with that fact so much as other things that came with them living together. Callisto saw more, knew more and pushed less than anyone else in Vanessa's life. That, Vanessa had supposed, had earned the woman as much honesty as Vanessa could give her when something came up like that. It wasn't like there was any hope of convincing Callisto Vanessa was okay in an objective sense. She was intimately familiar with Vanessa's booby traps at the windows, with her booby trapping the bathroom door when she was in the shower, with her penchant for being armed all the time and keeping weapons within easy reach of bed. Vanessa stashed knives under the pillow even when she crawled into Callisto's bed. The least she could do was cop to her paranoid 'quirks.'

Callisto pursed her lips a little, nodded, shrugged, looked back to the television - though not without a final glance in the rough direction of where the handgun was now secreted. "I don't mind texting ahead when I'm on my way home," she said casually, eyes trained on the screen, then on the lip of her fast emptying beer bottle. "So you. Uh. Didn't have to think about the deadbolt. About remembering to leave it unlocked."

It was Vanessa's turn for her eyes to drop to her beer bottle. She slowly drained over half of what was left, using the time to consider her response. At least pretending to have her mouth busy with something else for a bit was her preferred means of delay. It had become habit before answering questions or comments that she would have rather avoided entirely. "That'd be...nice. Maybe just when you're about near the building? So, you know...if you get distracted or detour or summat...so I don't freak out about what might've happened that you're not back yet." Vanessa's paranoia, clearly not reserved for Vanessa's safety alone.

"Yep." Callisto knocked back the last of her bottle, standing and returning wordlessly to the refrigerator for more for them both.

It was some time before either of them spoke again. Then, "Is that the Spaniard from that film?"

Head tilting despite the bottle currently at her lips, Vanessa squinted at the television. It was a new episode. Well, it was an older episode within the chronology of the series but it was a different episode than they'd begun with. "Maybe? I dunno. Which film?"

"The one with the man in black. You know, sword fights, true love, giant rats."

Vanessa's attention turned to Callisto. "'As you wish'? That one?"

"Um. Yeah, I guess. I was... really little. I mostly remember the sword fight."

"'You killed my father, prepare to die'?" The accent was dead on Castilian, but the delivery of the line itself was a little off in terms of inflection of timing.

"That's the guy - it is him, right? I'm crappy at film and TV stuff but I remember faces."

Now the blonde was back to squinting at the television. "I dunno. Maybe? I haven't seen that movie since I was like six or seven." Leaning forward, she ditched the empty Chinese carton that had been hanging out in her lap and grabbed her phone. "The internet will tell me," Vanessa reported, pulling up google on her phone so she could figure out the name of the movie first.

Callisto smirked a little, shaking her head in a look that very much said 'kids these days' - though she was only a few years Vanessa's senior.

Searching was not exactly Vanessa's forte. She wound up wrinkling her nose and scooting over a little to use Callisto's shoulder as a pillow while she searched around. There was an entire section of the episode and a commercial break before she got the brilliant idea to look up Criminal Minds on IMDB, then click on the actor's name and scan his credits. Because she was smart. "A-ha! Yes, it's him. He was all with the 'you killed my father, prepare to die.' Why do I strangely want to watch that movie now?"

"I'm not even sure I saw the whole thing at the time. Didn't have much of an attention span at that age."

Vanessa looked up at Callisto from her shoulder. "I'm not sure you've got the attention span to get through it now. Even with the sword fights."

Callisto just raised an eyebrow. She was remarkably unreactive to teasing, to the point where it became almost as amusing as if she retorted. Settling down a little on the couch, shifting possibly to accommodate the new weight on her shoulder, she trained her eyes back on the screen.

Perhaps to vindicate her own teasing point, Vanessa split her gaze between the television and Callisto. She was genuinely watching for when Callisto seemed to check out of the show. Obviously she knew there was the defense about not being that interested in the episode, but she was using it as an attention span measurement none the less. Wasn't there a video place somewhere in the neighborhood? Or one of those red DVD kiosk things? Maybe she'd do recon during her run in the morning and try to hunt down the movie. Just because she could and she vaguely remembered liking it back before her life had gotten all wonky to begin with.

Of course, Callisto did glaze over almost immediately, her gaze defocussing, expression growing distant as her mind wandered. Vanessa could feel the body beneath her relaxing - for someone who had the build of a nervous person, no one could just go loose like Callisto, as though the decision to release all the tension from her body really was one she could make at the flip of a switch - although, Vanessa knew, that tension could return just as quickly if the brunette saw the need.

It was with something of a smug satisfaction that Vanessa noted when Callisto checked out. Granted, if she was actually doing something her attention could be kept. Vanessa was well aware of that fact. Truth be told, Vanessa wasn't precisely in possession of the longest attention span in the world when it came to television either. That was why the TV most often was on the history channel or other channels prone to documentary series or movies. That's why she would be found reading with the TV on, half paying attention to the screen. And it was why she watched television insistently, out of the hope it would bore her enough that she would pass out like she used to do almost every time she attempted to watch something. Her brain had decided sleep was more interesting than most TV programs. These days it was just too busy being paranoid half the time to shut off with the numbing effect of the droning telly.

And so the television droned on, Callisto apparently quite contentedly lost in her own thoughts as the episodes once more began to blur together. She finished her beer, but didn't get another, merely stretching to deposit the bottle neatly on the coffee table without disturbing the woman leaning against her, and settling back again.

All that tension Vanessa had carried around with her all day must have been more exhausting than she had thought. It was a mere episode and a half later when Vanessa's eyelid began to droop, hanging heavily. Maybe it was just one of those days when her general lack of adequate sleep got to her, she thought while trying to figure out why she was trying to keep her eyes open anyway. Near simultaneously she let her eyes fall shut completely and Vanessa shifted a little so an arm could drape, as per usual, across Callisto's waist. The metamorph settled there, seemingly content as her body finally began to let go of all that tightly knotted energy that held her muscles so ready to react at any moment. The deeper she drifted off to sleep the more her body let go of until the only thing left to release was her disguise.

Curled up at Callisto's side, Vanessa's hair bleached out, moving from yellow to pure white as if someone had simply turned the lights back on to illuminate the shaft of each strand fully. Her skin, meanwhile, lightened from its pinky peach hue only to turn a faint greenish color and then continue its slide along the color spectrum to the icy blue she'd been since manifesting. Vanessa did not notice in the least. She never did. She only shifted on the other woman's shoulder to press her nose into the warm skin of Callisto's neck.

But Callisto noticed. She knew that Vanessa did turn back to her old blue, occasionally. Pretty specifically, actually, when Garrison was over. Callisto tended to leave them to themselves when they were hanging out together because Garrison and Callisto's friendship, well, it was a different thing, and she was never one to get in the way... In any event, she had on more than one occasion gone into the kitchen for something to see Vanessa's blue form curled up on the couch, head on Garrison's shoulder or lap in very much the same position they were now.

But it had, as far as Callisto knew, never happened before with just her. It occured to her, somewhere in the recesses of her rather slow-moving mind, that this probably meant something - meant something about Vanessa's state, about the nature of her 'stuck'-ness, about what might help her return to... well, damnit Callisto was all about mutants looking and identifying however they wanted but it was her natural form and she knew Vanessa felt that way too. But whatever clue she was seeing before her eluded her at present, pushed aside in the face of the flood of plain old wellbeing that she felt watching the arm wrapped around her waist turning into the cool blue of what used to be Vanessa's familiar form.

A part of her wanted to touch her skin, even though she knew it felt exactly the same - and indeed could feel as much as the other woman's cold nose tickled at her neck. She even raised a hand to do so before realising that she didn't want to do anything that might disturb this welcome and potentially fragile state. Maybe, as with Garrison, it would last until she left, until Vanessa slid that deadbolt home behind her and found herself alone again. Maybe it wouldn't even be that long.

But it feels like something.