xp_logs | [Paul, Clarice] We have all day... (moved)

Paul takes Clarice out on Sunday - sans image inducer. A nice, uneventful day full of fabric and colour and being social, which is the really weird part.

Clarice ran down the stairs to meet Paul for shopping, it wasn't often she got to go, much less with someone willing to pay FOR her. Despite her love of color and crazy prints, she had tried to dress more like she knew fashion and less like the kid she usually felt like. This time she had chosen her Aladdin Sane David Bowie shirt with a jean skirt, her new geometric tights that looked almost like she wasn't wearing them and black flats with a giant star cut out of them. "You have an image inducer?" she asked, reaching the bottom.

Paul couldn't help smiling as he saw Clarice come bounding towards him. Her words made the smile fade to a frown though, and he looked at her for a long moment before responding. "No, of course not. Why would I need one?"

She rolled her eyes as if to say 'you're joking?', "I meant for ME. Y'know, the Purple Pixie?"

"You don't need one either," Paul said flatly. His blue eyes were dark and stormy. "Who on earth gave you that idea?"

"Everyone..." Clarice started, shocked he'd even suggest not having one, "I mean, before I came here my parents didn't let me leave the house for three months. My school expelled me. And others here have been attacked for being mutants, like, at the mall. I don't want to end up in a coma."

Paul was verging on being outright angry but kept it contained so that Clarice didn't think that it was directed at her. Damn Americans. Fourteen years of working to keep peace, ten of public speaking and negotiating, and he was face to face with the fact that it hadn't made a damn bit of difference. Lovely. Just lovely. "If anyone attacks us, they will be extremely sorry they did," he said coolly. "You don't need it."

Clarice looked at him doubting, but something in his eyes made her keep quiet. She had never gone out much once it had become obvious that she was a mutant, so she didn't know something would happen, but then again, she'd also seen Angelo and Doug after their fight at the mall. And after yesterday people would probably be on edge, especially against mutants. "Okay..." she agreed hesitantly. No one had ever told she didn't need an image inducer because they'd keep her safe, either.

Paul smiled at her, pleased, knowing that it wasn't easy for her to agree to leave the house without the shield to hide behind. "You'll be okay," he said gently, almost as kindly as he'd speak to Delphine if she were skittish, and gestured for Clarice to follow him to the garage. "You're a teleporter, aren't you?" he asked as they walked slowly in that direction.

"Yeah," she replied, back on more even ground, "Strange appearances go with teleportation, I think. Except for Illyana, but she's a whole other bag of marbles. What about you?"

"Energy manipulation," he replied. "Speed, flight, light, all that kind of thing." He looked over at her, his keys in his hand. "Have you got a keyring with you?"

"A keyring?" Clarice dug into her purse for a minute before coming up with one. It had a plastic fob on it that said 'Keep Music Evil.' "Will this work?"

"Perfect." He handed her a key as they entered the garage. "Put that on there." He unlocked the passenger door of a very classy little cream-coloured Mercedes convertible with a lush, dark red leather interior and gestured for Clarice to get in. "That's the spare key to my car. Your profile indicates that you have decent range with your teleportation. If there's trouble, what you're going to do is go back to the car immediately and drive straight home. Okay?"

"Okay, except I can't drive," Clarice said, trying not to break a nail while putting the key on the chain. "I only turned 16 last month."

Don't do it, said Paul's better judgement. Stop. Don't do it... Mentally, Paul stepped on his better judgement with a satisfying crunch. "Well," he said, sliding into the driver's seat. "That can be fixed. Easily." He pushed the button on the garage door opener and then started the car.

"I'm taking driver's ed this fall with Mr. Summers," she told him, settling back into the soft leather. "But I can teleport at least from here to my mom's house, so driving it's such a big deal, I guess."

"Well, if I get thrown in jail for defending your honour, make sure someone comes and gets my car, will you?" Paul asked, only half-joking. "Someone who won't drive her like it's the Indy 500?"

Clarice didn't quite respond, not knowing what to make of the comment. "So what're we going to go see?" she asked, changing the topic.

"I thought we'd try midtown Manhattan. That's the garment district. A lot of warehouses and a few small couteur houses, some very nice art galleries as well. But what we want are the fabric shops, and we'll find some good ones in that area. Anything in particular you need?"

"Mmmm...not really, I'm almost out of usable fabric and most notions, especially zippers, but I dunno what I want to make. I want to do something for the school, but I haven't decided what yet," Clarice had been experimenting with bodysuits for the past few days, but that hadn't worked out so well. "I definantly want some more plaid fabric though."

"Anything you want," Paul said, hitting the highway and accelerating to comfortably past the speed limit. "We have all day."

Paul looked over at Clarice who was curled up in the passenger seat, happily petting a heap of faux-fur that she'd dragged out of one of the bags in the back of the car. The girl looked a little tired but it was hard to tell in the dusk, especially with her skin-tone. "So, how do you like being out without the image inducer?"

"Mmmm," Clarice yawned considering, "It was good, except for that stupid couple at the cafe. I liked actually being able to see how I would look in a color without having to guess, I just shouldn't wear some colors no matter how much I like them."

"Some things do look better on you than others," Paul said carefully. You never could be too careful with women about these things. "But it's like that for most people. And yes, that couple could use some educating. The worst thing is, they'll probably breed. If I could have ordered a nice vasectomy for Mister Tolerance there, I would have. I'd pay for that out of my own pocket." He shook his head. "Are you warm enough? You look pretty cozy there, guess it's a good thing you bought all that."

"Oh, I'm fine, just happy. Thank you. Mr. Tolerance...I should get used to people like him. I mean, sticks and stones, right?" she blew air at her bangs, "It shouldn't bother me, but it does. I mean, we didn't ask to be mutants."

"No, we didn't. It can bother you, but how much is really the issue, and what you're going to do about it. I don't think you should get used to people like that in the sense that you should accept it, I just think you shouldn't take it as any reflection on your rights or value." Paul changed lanes into the right-hand one and settled for an easier pace, not hurrying home.

Clarice considered this, wondering what would happen now that Columbia had been attacked. It was just another incident in a long line of them that was making the world a much darker place to live. "I don't accept it, but at the same time, there are a lot more humans than mutants. So they could take away rights if they wanted to. And I couldn't hide like you."

"I can hide some, yes," Paul flipped back his hair to expose his pointed ears. "I can pass. And there are more of them, but that's hardly the point. We /are/ more powerful than they are, if we worked together. The question is, like I said, what you'll do about it. Will you be afraid, or angry, or will you act? And how will you act? Being a mutant isn't fair for more reasons than just the obvious. Everyone should answer those questions. Humans can afford not to. We can't."

"Yeah. Have you heard about Helix?" she asked, continuing at his nod, "That's kinda what we're doing, out in the community type stuff, but peaceful things. I mean, I want to make things better. And I'm in Red X too, the disaster relief program."

Paul smiled at her. "Good choices," he said quietly, pleased. "There's probably a time and a place for that image inducer, I'll admit that easily enough. But there's a time and a place for you to leave it behind. Some day, most times and places will fall into the latter category. Maybe sooner than you think."

"I hope so," Clarice replied, thinking about a life without an image inducer. She did that a lot acutally, but rarely with a happy ending.

Paul glanced over at her, hearing the distance in her voice. "It's like that other places, you know."

She nodded agreeing, "But Brighton isn't exactly around the corner."

"Brighton, eh?" Paul shook his head, amused. "You don't have to go that far. Try Toronto some time. Maybe Yonge Street. Or out in Vancouver. But Brighton's a hell of a party town." He flashed Clarice a brief grin.

"That it is," she agreed smiling, briefly touching her eye, "and Frank is still bugging Amanda to get me back there!"

"Frank?" Paul wracked his brain. He didn't know any students named Frank. ...maybe he was finally getting senile. Too many concussions.

"The tattoo artist in Brighton Amanda and I went to," she explained, "He's cool."

"Ah, I see." Paul felt old all of a sudden. It had been over a decade since his last tattoo. The Gemini symbol on his chest had faded out to nearly nothing. Rites of passage were a thing of the past, it seemed. "So, why not go back over, then?"

"School," she replied matter-of-factly, "I never thought I'd be able to graduate high school and college is still iffy. So I'm going to get as much as I can, especially practical courses like first aid. I like it and it means I'll have some sort of skill if I can't go to college."

Paul nodded, taking his sunglasses off and tucking them in the glove-box. It was quite dusky out now. "There's a fair number of trade schools around. With your skill, I'm sure you could get into one of them. But then again, you might not want to do that with your life. What do you want to do?"

"Do?" Clarice repeated, feeling ten. She remembered only a few years ago when she had wanted to be a Broadway dancer. How long ago and silly that seemed now. "I want to help people. Medicine if I can."

Paul reminded himself that people were not cats and even if there was something about the way he felt about Clarice that was similar to the way he'd felt about Delphine when he first saw her in the cattery, sitting apart from all her littermates and looking very small and aloof, neither of them were likely to appreciate the comparison. "That's a noble idea," he said. "You're young so, that means you have a lot of time and resources to get what you want out of life. You have a head-start. If you know what you want, I'm sure you'll be able to achieve it."

"What about you? Secret agent, Olympic medalist...what's next?" she asked, turning the conversation away from herself, most people laughed and called her immature when she told them things like this, she didn't think Paul would do that, but she wasn't entirely comfortable with the conversation either.

The question startled the hell out of Paul and he stared at the road for a long moment. "Well, I was kind of aiming for lonely, old, gay eccentric," he said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his tone. "Thus the cat and all. She's just the start. I hadn't really considered that there was much of a next."

"You're what...30, maybe? That's not old!" Clarice scoffed, "Old is Nathan or Prof Xavier. I mean, Nathan has to be close to 50! Besides, you can't be a crazy cat lady, you're a guy!"

"What, you're going to discriminate against me because of my age and gender?" Paul teased, laughing in spite of himself. "Well, if I find something better to do besides crazy cat lady, I'll look into it. Maybe I just don't know what I want to be when I grow up."

"'Aging is inevitable, maturing is optional.'" she quoted sagely. "And you'd look really silly with boobs. So being a catlady is out. Besides, at least for the moment, you're at Xavier's, which isn't terrible. Just a non-stop soap-opera."

"I noticed." Paul was still laughing. He'd look terrible with breasts? Oh, Aurora would love to hear that one. He resisted the urge to ruffle Clarice's wind-blown hair. "It already feels like home."

From: [info]x_rahne
Date: July 27th, 2004 - 05:12 am
Really and truly, my first thought when she said "Frank" was along the lines of "...the iguana...?"

From: [info]x_lavendarswirl
Date: July 27th, 2004 - 05:28 am
lol, nope, long ago and far away Frank was a tattoo artist with a penchant for young girls. fortunantly, Amanda is responsible

From: [info]x_empath
Date: July 27th, 2004 - 06:24 am

I am SO GLAD...
that I'm not the only one whose brain Went There.

Redhawk

From: [info]x_crowdofone
Date: July 27th, 2004 - 06:30 am

Re: I am SO GLAD...

Oh, trust me, you're not.