moreofaponchoguy: (CK1020018 copy)
Cal Kestis ([personal profile] moreofaponchoguy) wrote in [community profile] fandomtownies2024-07-09 08:30 am

Midnight Manor Rooftop, Tuesday Morning

A while back, Marc had asked Cal to get some speakers set up for the outdoor areas of the manor, and Cal had agreed because it sounded easy.

It had, in fact, turned out to be harder than expected, but Cal was nothing if not stubbornly perseverant.

Between things he'd foraged from the junkyard and the magic of Amazon, Cal had put together four speakers, two for the roof and two for outside the first floor. (If the building grew more floors, well, he'd figure out what to do when the time came.) He had planned on getting things set up over the weekend but... nope, he wasn't going to dwell on what he'd spent his weekend doing instead, and was just going to focus on getting things finished now. Two of the speakers were working just fine and playing one of Cal’s playlists with BD-1's help. He was pretty sure the third speaker just needed some of the wires switched, but the last speaker was proving to be ornery.

“If you don't do what you're supposed to do, I'm going to take you completely apart, put the parts in a jar, shake them, and then put you back together again.”

Was threatening inanimate objects the best way to deal with his feelings? Probably not, but it was happening anyway.

[Open!]
afraid_of_marshmallows: Nathalie Emmanuel in 4 Weddings and a Funeral (Scoff - Leering)

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-09 04:57 pm (UTC)(link)
"Treating me like an low-rent hookup is your idea of not making things worse?" Arden asked with a laugh that hurt.
Edited 2024-07-09 16:58 (UTC)
afraid_of_marshmallows: Nathalie Emmanuel in 4 Weddings and a Funeral (Sad - Furrowed Brow)

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-09 05:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Arden looked like she might be on Team BD here.

She sighed, adjusting her grip on BD so she could pinch the bridge of her nose. "Look, Cal, I know you're not really...into...this kind of stuff." And she was very much ignoring all evidence of the contrary from the weekend that suggested he most certainly was interested in it, this weekend had all been lies, anyway. "But like. When you wake up tangled around someone and neither of you are really, um. Dressed. Trying to sneak out is probably a bad idea even if nothing happened." Which it hadn't! To them, anyway. Real them.

"...It's also pretty impossible to do without waking the other person up, as an fyi."
afraid_of_marshmallows: Nathalie Emmanuel (Random - Hands On Hips)

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-09 06:08 pm (UTC)(link)
She shrugged again. "Leaving seemed really important to you. So I didn't say anything."

And had instead just watched the entire process.

"What was there even to say?" she asked with another casual-really-definitely-not-awkward laugh. "Fandom did a weird thing again. It turned everybody's future into a happy fairy tale. Graham was king. Kamala was a major superhero. You had peace. Lydia had five kids." Weird flex, but hey, she was from the olden days, so maybe that was her jam. "I had a family. Just, like. You know. Entwined happily ever afters. I'm sorry you got caught up in mine again."

Enough this this time he'd felt he'd had to put distance between them.
afraid_of_marshmallows: Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey in Fast & Furious (Looking - Sideways WTF)

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-09 07:56 pm (UTC)(link)
"What's he saying?" Arden asked, because Cal smiling at her like that and telling her he was happy was something she couldn't focus on if she wanted to maintain even a shred of her composure. Her voice was already a little unsteady. "Is everything okay?"

afraid_of_marshmallows: Nathalie Emmanuel as Evie in The Invitation (Surprised - Sloooowly Processing)

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-09 08:25 pm (UTC)(link)
"Why would I have been disappointed?" Arden asked, confused and hugging BD tighter still. "Embarrassed and apologetic maybe, for dragging you into it again, but not really disappointed about what it was."

Just that it wasn't possible in reality.
afraid_of_marshmallows: Nathalie Emmanuel from Army of Thieves (Angry - Lips Pursed Determined)

NFB, pls!

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-09 08:47 pm (UTC)(link)
"Cal," Arden said, exasperated. She nudged BD up on her back like she'd been doing it her whole life because she could tell she was going to need her hands for this. "I already have a bounty on my head! Remember? At least in your world, I did something to earn it, rather than just being born wrong!" And look, there she was throwing up her hands in aggravation, just as she'd expected she would. "Who's to say you dragged me anywhere? Do I seem like some helpless maiden who doesn't have a say in her own life?"

She marched forward, closing the distance between them, her finger poking him in the chest. A breeze picked up around them as her eyes sparked gold, and her drawl intensifying with her aggravation. "Do you honestly think you can make me do a damn thing I don't wanna? And put my future on hold? I held a fucking doctorate. I was helping people! Tell me where the pause is there, I fuckin' dare you!"
Edited 2024-07-09 20:48 (UTC)
afraid_of_marshmallows: Eldritch Sparks Book Cover (Magic - Glowing Fists)

Re: NFB, pls!

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-09 10:47 pm (UTC)(link)
"I can't have kids if I stay here, Cal," Arden said. "Ignoring for a hot second that I don't even know if I want them, but if I stay here? On Earth? It's a non-starter. You think I want them to have the same life I did? Afraid to use their powers? Pretending as hard as they can that they're human? Debating whether I have to teach them to be afraid of themselves and everyone else around them, or don't teach them to be afraid of everything and run the risk of us getting found out and executed? What the fuck is twenty years compared to never? What the fuck is 'we're in too much danger to make a kid feasible' compared to 'they're in danger just because of what they are'?"

Ugh! He was too tall. Without even thinking about it, she solidified a chunk of air and stepped onto it so they could be eye-to-eye. "You keep talking about what you maybe took away from me. Did you, even for like five seconds, think that maybe you're the only thing that made any of that possible?"
afraid_of_marshmallows: Nathalie Emmanuel from Army of Thieves (Surprised - Okay Gonna Need A Sec)

Re: NFB, pls!

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-09 11:43 pm (UTC)(link)
"I'm pretty sure I'm the one who gets to weigh the odds and decide which one is worth betting on," Arden said. "Me. You don't get to make that decision for me, nobody does. Not you, not Kamala, not Callista or Duke or Grim or Lydia or anybody. And if I decide that I wanna live, really live only for the next twenty-five years, over surviving the next sixty alone and miserable and hiding everything about me from everyone who knows me, then that's my prerogative to choose!"

Another moment of fiercely glaring at him and then her brain tapped her on her shoulder and whispered something in her ear.

"...Wait, did you say the best thing in your life?" she asked, belatedly.
afraid_of_marshmallows: Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey in Fast & Furious (Sad - Disappointed)

Re: NFB, pls!

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-10 01:40 am (UTC)(link)
"Danger is always going to be part of my life! But at least in one, I get to actually live! With someone I care about! How is that ruin?" Her hands came up to grab his shoulders and shake him, but they just settled there, fingers curling around his arms. Her voice dropped from strident to almost pleading for him to understand. "Would you rather live for twenty-five years fighting for freedom of the galaxy? Or fifty hiding away and hoping that nothing and no one ever sees that you were born wrong? Why do you get to make that choice, Cal, and I don't?"

afraid_of_marshmallows: Nathalie Emmanuel from Army of Thieves (Brow Furrowed - Ew)

Re: NFB, pls!

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-10 02:44 am (UTC)(link)
"Deserve isn't the same as going to get, Cal," Arden said. "Maybe, maybe you'd have a point if I was gonna get some kind of magically idyllic life otherwise. I'd still argue, because it's my life and I get to decide what's best for it, but for ten seconds we'll pretend that isn't true. But I don't get a safer future! That's what I keep telling you! I get to live my life either as a hunted rabbit, or under the thumb of someone like Callista who might be willing to try to keep me safe, so long as they can make use of me somehow. So tell me all about this safer future you've decided I get and then tell me where I get to find it, because it's nowhere I actually get to live."
afraid_of_marshmallows: Nathalie Emmanuel from Army of Thieves (Angry - Lips Pursed Determined)

Re: NFB, pls!

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-10 04:02 am (UTC)(link)
"No thank you," Arden said as soon as Cal mentioned Lydia's world. "I'd rather not go back to a time where people would assume that I was Lydia's slave and not her friend, thank you, never mind having no rights because I'm a woman, too. And if I went to Kamala's world, you think it would be long before I was heroing along with her and how safe do you think I'll be then?"

And then she sighed. "Because, Cal. Because I care. I care about the people you're saving. Because I care about your galaxy, and the people you lost. Because I care about you. And because I don't think you'll ever hurt me."

Beat.

"Well, like that anyway."
Edited 2024-07-10 05:40 (UTC)
afraid_of_marshmallows: (57) Nathalie Emmanuel from Army of Thieves (Looking - Over Shoulder Have My Attentio)

Re: NFB, pls!

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-10 03:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, she had so many answers to that, especially with him standing so close and her hands on his shoulders and--

Focus, Finch.

"I--I want you to get it that if I'm with you somewhere, even if it's scary and dangerous like your galaxy, even if it's in some kind of happily ever after Fandom thing, it's because I wanna be there," she said. The tenor of their conversation had changed now that she was no longer yelling at him and she wasn't sure why she suddenly felt to off-kilter, like she might fall off her block of air and--wait, she'd made that?

Focus, Finch.

"And to respect that choice, even if you wished I was doing something else. To respect that I did the math in my head and maybe you don't like my choice, but it's my choice to make."

Her fingers came up to hover over his cheek a moment before falling back down. This wasn't that happily after future and she felt weird touching him like she would have then. "And to not just bail on me. You can go if you need to, Cal, but maybe just... don't sneak out like you're ashamed?"
afraid_of_marshmallows: Nathalie Emmanuel as Evie in The Invitation (Looking - You're Joking)

Re: NFB, pls!

[personal profile] afraid_of_marshmallows 2024-07-10 05:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Dammit, Cal, that was cheating.

"I don't think the me from the weekend really wanted to be in your universe, Cal," she said. "I think she just wanted to be with you. The fact that it was also a place where she could use her powers and not be afraid was just a really big bonus."

Re: NFB, pls!

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