Topaz & Clint | Sunday Afternoon (backdated)

[x-hawkeye.livejournal.com]

Topaz finds Clint in a tree and they have a talk.


Outside. Outside was good. There were people outside. It was the opportunity to be social without having to actually be social. Topaz leaned against the tree, head tilted up to the sky. She wasn't going to be allowed to get away with this for long, she'd take advantage of the opportunity while she could.

Clint was in the tree. His teachers used to get upset with him for climbing trees when he was younger, but he liked being up high where he could see everything. After Andre and Steve sent a permission slip in, though, the teachers had calmed down. A bit. Not all the way. He guessed it was something in teacher DNA that made them paranoid about kids getting hurt, even if the kids' parents were like, "Hey, no, it's totally cool."

So he looked down when he heard somebody coming and, once he realized it was Topaz, he decided he should probably let her know he was up there. "Uh, hi," he said, head tilted sideways. She looked... worn out. Not exactly tired, just sort of fragile. Paper-thin in a metaphorical sense.

It probably said something that Topaz didn't notice Clint until he called his presence to her attention. Her shields were actually holding out. Good. She jumped a bit and looked up, squinting a bit when she saw how far up he was. "Hullo. Did you want me to leave?" The words were quite mild - conversational, really. No point in pretending more than a few people would actually want her around - and Clint had been here first.

"No," Clint said as he began navigating downward, one arm catching around a branch to hold him steady as he placed his feet by memory. A moment later and he hit the ground a yard or so away from Topaz. "How're you doing?"

She watched him make his way down, faintly impressed - she had almost zero coordination, she wouldn't have even made it halfway up. Never mind getting down again. "M'alright. Alive." Still sane. "You?"

"I'm okay," Clint said, brushing his hands off on his jeans before sticking them in his pockets. "We never did go into the city. Somebody mentioned you'd gone with Matt? Did you guys have a good time?"

Well this was...strange. "Yeah. Eighteen miles of books." She squirmed, suddenly feeling a little bad. She'd forgotten about Clint's offer to take her into the city.

Clint quirked a smile at that. "Hey, nothing wrong with books. He didn't show you all the little nooks and crannies of the city, though?" He was trying to figure out how to work the conversation around to where he wanted it, but Clint wasn't the world's best speaker and he usually avoided awkward situations.

Topaz knew that feeling. "We walked around a little bit, but he had a hell of a time getting me out of the bookstore." There had been been a lot of books.

Clint nodded. He could sit in the science section at the local B&N and just not move for hours. They shouldn't put those comfortable chairs in there so strategically if they didn't want you do use them. Abandoning that train of thought, Clint took a breath and simply said, "Look, I don't know what happened and that's cool, you totally don't have to tell me, but I figured I should let you know that, since I'm pretty sure you didn't intend to do what you did, it's not like I'm holding it against you. And it'd be kind of ridiculous for anybody else to hold it against you. So you don't have to like. Hide in the woods or whatever to avoid people."

Blink. Blink again. Whatever Topaz had been expecting from this conversation, that certainly hadn't been it. But finally she actually met Clint's gaze (up to that moment she'd been looking around, trying to just be casual and hoping this conversation wouldn't inevitably go there). "I think hiding's just about the only normal thing I've done lately. But...thanks for that." They'd have to agree to disagree on whether it was ridiculous for people to hold it against her.

"You're welcome," Clint said, shrugging a little. "I'm sorry whatever happened happened."

She shrugged back. "I brought it on myself." She had to admit that much. As much as she hated it, it was the truth.

"Still," Clint said, not really sure how to finish the thought. "Anyway, I was thinking I'd go fix something for lunch. A sandwich maybe. You want one? I can bring it back out here so you can keep hiding if you want."

It was so very tempting to say yes. "I'll come with you," Topaz said instead. "If you don't mind. I'm actually not really supposed to hide." What had Mr. Haller called it? Exposure therapy.

"Cool," Clint said, nodding. He tipped his head toward the mansion and waited until Topaz was even with him before he started walking. "Do you eat cheese? I mean, I know you're a vegetarian and everything. But sometimes vegetarians eat fish or... other stuff that's not actually very vegetarian."

She caught up with him, shoving her hands into her pockets as they started back towards the mansion. "Yes on the cheese. I think that's more of a vegan thing to avoid. No to fish, but that's personal." She wasn't the biggest fan of things that could stare back while she ate them.

"Yeah, the vegan thing means no more gummi bears, too," Clint said, frowning a little. After their trip to the animal farm place, Maddie was all about giving up animal products but Clint really liked cheese. He wasn't sure he could give it up. And he didn't want to give up Skittles. "If you don't mind me asking, are you vegetarian because of, like, culture or because you wanted to be?"

"Really?" Topaz asked, raising an eyebrow. "Strict lifestyle. And culture - I lived in India until I was eight." The orphanage had been run by Hindus, all the kids had been raised vegetarian - or learned to deal with it. Luca and Alice had let her keep that even after they'd adopted her.

"Really," Clint said, smiling again. "Do you miss India? Or England? I bounced around a lot when I was little. I don't really remember a lot of specifics."

"I miss England sometimes." It felt strange to admit that, especially since it wasn't the country she missed as much as the life she'd had. "India was too hot," she added dryly.

"I'd like to travel. Y'know, after college or whatever. I've never actually been out of New York. What's England like?" Clint tipped his head back so he could look up at the sky overhead.

Traveling would have been nice. Topaz already knew the first place she would go. "It's nice. We lived sorta on the outskirts of the city, so it was quiet." She'd liked that.

"Which city?" Clint asked, looking back toward Topaz. "Or is it like San Francisco or New York where it's just The City and everyone's supposed to know which one you're talking about?"

"Oh - London. Sorry. I...guess a bit, yeah?" Topaz shrugged. "Never really thought about it before."

"No problem," Clint said, giving Topaz a smile even as he opened the door for her. "What's it like over there?"

"London's a bit like New York." She nodded her thanks as she stepped into the mansion, breathing a bit easier at being inside once more. "It's busy, I mean. Always somethin' goin' on, always people runnin' around goin' somewhere. Good place for people watchin' though." She'd done that a lot when she'd wanted to get out of the house - hopped on a bus and spent the day in the city.

Clint didn't say anything for a moment, letting her description sink in. Then he smiled a little. "I can see that. You strike me as a people watcher. I don't watch so much, I think. But I don't jump in head first, either, y'know? It's kind of like... do you feel like you have to get the lay of the land before you're comfortable somewhere? I always feel like that - like I have to know who's who and who does what and how things are supposed to be done before I can actually like. Breathe or relax."

"Sounds familiar," Topaz said with a small nod. "I think I might watch too much." It was a realization she'd come to, though she wasn't sure how to change it. She never quite managed to get to that "breathe or relax" part of the process Clint had described. She was always too busy waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Making it into the kitchen, Clint didn't respond immediately. Instead, he started pulling out things to make sandwiches with, eventually asking over his shoulder, "You think getting more comfortable here would help?" He wasn't really sure, but he figured maybe she hadn't been letting herself get comfortable. He could understand that - it'd taken him a long time to get used to the fact that Steve and Andre actually wanted him around for real. And even then, he still hadn't entirely believed they wanted him around permanently.

It took Topaz a long moment to answer as well. "I...don't know. Maybe?" Except she didn't know how to comfortable anywhere - mostly because she never had been. Even with Luca and Alice, she'd always been afraid that she would do something wrong, that they would try and send her back to India. That fear had only begun to fade when her mutation had manifested and they'd still kept her. Of course then it all went to hell anyways.

"Well," Clint said, tone reasonable, "Let's say our working hypothesis is that getting more comfortable would help." He paused to open the bread, pulling out several slices and laying them all out flat on the counter. "We should work on proving it." He glanced over at her and grinned. "How much of the mansion have you explored?"

"During the day...not much." Most of her explorations had been in the dead of night, dodging in and out of the other mansion insomniacs. "Why?" Though she had a feeling she knew where this was going....

"Billy and I found these weird, yellow suits upstairs in the attic. I'm pretty sure they're spandex. And not like. A suit you wear with a bow-tie. They're definitely like. Weird cosplay suits or something. But there were a lot of them," Clint said, finishing off Topaz's sandwich before grabbing a plate and sliding it over to her. "We should see what else is up there - if you want to. It'll be a new experience for you, seeing things in the light of day."

"Yellow...what?" Topaz was stunned enough by this not to notice the sandwich at first. "Oh -- thanks," she said quickly. "Really?" There were some things that just really shouldn't be questioned. "Yeah, sure. We should do that." All though now she was a bit afraid of what else was waiting up there for them.

Grinning, Clint fixed his own sandwich and said, "Awesome. There was this weird purple thing, too. It looked like it might've been made out of suede. Or velvet. But neither of us wanted to touch it." Then he took a massive bite of his sandwich.

"That might've been for the best," Topaz said with a nod. "We'll just...keep avoidin' that. Sounds like this place used to be a costume shop or somethin'."

"I dunno about a costume shop," Clint said, eyeing his mostly finished lunch. "But there's definitely a ton of really interesting stuff around."

"Well." Topaz looked down at her sandwich. Not nearly as finished as Clint, but she wasn't that hungry anyways. "Let's go see if we can find some of it then."

"Finish that up," Clint said, shoving most of the remainder of his sandwich in his mouth. He started making himself a second. After swallowing, he said, "I'm not in a rush."

Looked like it didn't matter if she was hungry. "Alright, alright," she said as she picked up her sandwich again, taking a bite.