Glitterbugs - Clarice & Carlie

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Carlie finds a dress for the dance and there is Plotting Without Glitter. Much girliness ensues.



Clarice laid on her bed, head dangling off the side and her feet on the wall. She absently waved her hands around, waiting for her nailpolish to dry. "So what're you wearing?" she asked Carlie, who was sitting on the floor looking through a magazine.

Carlie looked down at herself. "Right now? Jeans and one of Jubes' t-shirts since my last clean one got covered in nacho sauce last night. Oh wait, you mean this thing on Saturday? Well considering a certain sister forgot to tell me there was a semi-formal party on my last night here, I don't have a clue. I was thinking of raiding Mad's closet - there's some stuff there I don't remember her having that isn't half-bad." She looked up at Clarice. "You?"

"I have lots of dresses, if you want to look. You're taller than me, but it shouldn't matter," Clarice eyed her critically upside down, "I'm wearing the black and green one on the door."

"Green? With your colouring?" Carlie made a bit of a face, although the cut of the dress was rather nice. "Let's see what you've got," she announced, getting up and flinging open the door of Clarice's closet. "Wow, looks like Glitter Central in here," she remarked.

"I am the Glitterbug!" Clarice flipped over so she was laying on the bed, still careful of her nails. "But that long purple one is what I wore to the last dance. And there is a black and blue one in there too somewhere. I have a bunch."

"Ooh, the purple's pretty... Damn, I'm too tall for it, but something that's not meant to be floor-length might work..." Flipping through the hoarde of clothes, Carlie glanced at Clarice. "What was this last party? Do you guys make a habit of dressing up?"

"We have them every so often, 'cause we can. Last one was this big to-do, parents and locals and all sorts of people were there. Mine went. Was torture," she groaned theatrically, rolling her eyes. "Never again."

"Did they cause a scene or something?" Carlie asked, pulling out the black and blue number and holding it up against herself. Hmm, possibly too short, as fun as it would be to make various male eyes bug out. Especially Kurt's... With a twinge of guilt, since he was supposed to be _Mad's_ Prospective Love Interest, she put the dress back and pulled out another. Pale green, halter top, nice and clingy and possibly long enough to not expose herself overmuch... "What's with the green, Glitterbug? Favourite colour or something?"

Clarice sighed theatrically, "It works pretty well with the purple. Otherwise I end up wearing all blue. Because no pink, no purple, orange isn't the best idea even though I wear it anyways. You're really limited if you want to look decent."

"Don't forget the black - that goes with _everything_, even if it is horribly depressing. And I think pink would work if you had the right shade. Something darker." Carlie held the green dress up against her. "What do you think? Not too short? I don't want to either make the nerds have heart attacks or have Manuel groping me all night. What is it with him, any way? He's _got_ a girlfriend. Too bad I hadn't met Jubes earlier, I would have warned her well away. Love her to death, but no taste in men at all."

Finally satisfied that her nails were dry, she got up and rummaged through a drawer, she pulling out her hairbrush, "I tried the all black thing. Made me look like a Jono-wannabe. He's the little Tinkerbell light you might see floating around. But Manuel is a horny-toad, end of story. He'll grope anything. Makes me wonder why Amanda still dates him, but I guess she loves him."

"Or she's got worse taste in men than Jubes..." Carlie muttered mostly to herself. "And Tinkerbell light? You have someone who's a glowy ball of light? That's just... wow." She indicated the dress. "Okay if I try this on?"

"Knock yourself out," Clarice rummaged in a box, pulling out matching earrings, "Jono went boom. Now he's a glowy light. It sucks, but it happens. The doctors are trying to get his body back or something."

Carlie stripped off her t-shirt and jeans without a second thought and wriggled into the dress. It was a little tight, since Clarice seemed to have the whacked-out metabolism they all had, but it wasn't unworkable. And the colour suited her hair rather well. "Wait a minute, your friend blew up? And they're trying to get his body back?" Carlie blinked. "This place just gets weirder and weirder. Next thing you'll tell me is you've been invaded by leprechauns or demons or something."

"Demons," Clarice looked Carlie over critically, "I can probably take the dress out a little in the waist..."

"I'm starting to understand why Mad wasn't keen on me coming to visit..." Carlie said wryly. She nodded at Clarice. "Do you mind? Seeing how it's your dress."

"Nah, it's all good," taking a piece of chalk from her sewing box, she marked where she needed to split the seams, "It can be crazy around here sometimes. Fall was hell, but we got through it."

Carlie waited until Clarice was done marking the dress before stripping out of it and back into her street clothes. "I think Mad has a pair of shoes I can wear with that," she said thoughtfully. "Good thing we're the same size. And yeah, I'm getting the impression things are nuts around here sometimes. Mad looked awful at Thanksgiving. Like she hadn't slept or eaten for a month."

Sighing, Clarice made a mental note to work on the dress later that night,
"Fall was...bad. No one did well. I think she ended up tranqing most of
us... unfortunantely we couldn't tranq her. I tried to make her eat though, but we were pulling 24-hr medlab shifts with two doctors and three helpers for
weeks."

"It's better now, though, right? I mean, I wouldn't be here if things were still insane, and there's Doc Hank back, even if Doc Moira's away..." Carlie flopped back onto the floor, leaning her back against the other bed. "You know, I haven't met half you people, but it feels like I know you. Mad talks about you all every time she comes home or I talk to her on the phone. Well, some of that's me asking questions, but still. She likes it here, even with the crazy. Much more than the FBI, even if they did let her carry a gun and that nifty body armour stuff."

Smiling, Clarice sat down on the floor, seam-ripper in one hand, dress in the other. Carefully, she began ripping the seams around the dresses waist, "Stalker wannabe," she teased good naturedly, "but it's good that she's happy. Sometimes...I dunno. Sometimes she gets this look on her face when she thinks I'm not looking. Kinda says she's happy but not and not sure what to do? Does that make sense? And I have no idea what she wants really, or I'd try to get it."

"You've seen that too?" Carlie asked, poking her tongue out playfully for the stalker comment. She picked idly at the chipped polish on her nails - she and Jubilee had gone nuts with the cheap glittery stuff that only lasted a few days - before speaking again. "I think she's lonely, sometimes," she said at last. "Did you know she hasn't had a boyfriend - that I know of, any way - for nearly five years? And he was a bit of a doofus." She pulled a face, remembering Charles. "A total doofus, actually. One of Mad's medschool people. And it's stupid, 'cause she's pretty and
smart and all the rest of it. But the problem is strong women make men run screaming - they can't handle the idea of their girlfriends being able to cope just fine without them or something. I don't think she's even dated for a year or two now. She's given up."

"That sucks," Clarice commented, not mentioning her own lack of dating, even though it was no where near as bad as Madelyn's, "I think you have to like strong women here, or else you're in trouble."

"The place is definitely crawling with them, that's for sure," Carlie agreed. She'd already noted the lack of specific boy-ness in Clarice's life, and was trying to run through options for her. Not easy, since she hadn't met everyone and those she had weren't exactly available. Or were Manuel. Although Forge was kind of cute... "She did talk about Kurt a lot at Thanksgiving, but not so much lately... What's with that? Did they argue or something? Or are they just being big dopes? And I noticed Hank flirts with her a lot, and he definitely likes strong women, since he said so..." She grinned. "Blue is her favourite colour."

Jumping up, Clarice teleported away for a minute before coming back with a large piece of silky midnight blue fabric, "What do you think?" she twirled, wrapping it around herself, "Bathing suit!"

Carlie blinked, not so much at the teleport as the sudden topic shift, but nodded. "For Mad? Perfect. She'd love it." Her grin grew calculating. "And I know she has a blue dress tucked in the back of her closet, still brand new, since I made her buy it last time she was home. What do you think? Blue dress for the party, to match the nice blue men? I can get her to wear it easy enough, tho' I might need you to blink the rest of her clothes elsewhere for a while."

"That's easy. Just put the things you don't want somewhere not in the closet," Clarice grinned evilly, thinking of Madelyn's hippy dress "And there are a few things you don't want to be returned..."

"And some things we could add!" Carlie said,brightening. She liked
this idea. "Not everything, since I don't want to piss her off that
much - you might not have noticed, but Mad is downright scary when she's pissed. But we could add a couple of essential items, get rid of the
really awful stuff..."

"Y'know, get her in touch with the new millenium," Clarice agreed, "I'm all
for the 80's glam, but even I realize what century we're in. I think it's because she mostly wears scrubs."

"I think we have a Devious Plan," Carlie declared, with a trademade Evil Laugh.