"Soph! You fucked me!" I yelled into the apartment the second I got home after my shift at the PRT. It was three or so in the afternoon, owing largely to the summer vacation making morning shifts feasible for Wards, and I was less angry and more yelling for the sake of venting my distress with the situation.
Gerard - who, like he basically always was, had been sitting in front of the television like the useless ass he was - turned to eyeball me as I yelled, but didn't immediately move to say anything about the profanity, which was new for him.
I liked him better as set dressing than as a person anyway, so obviously, this was fine with me.
"The hell? Why are you yelling?" Sophia asked me in an apathetic tone of voice, stepping free of her bedroom in a pair of extra tight black jeans, and one of the nicer crop tops Vicky had baited her into buying at some point.
I squinted at her, further noting the presence of way more makeup than usual on her face - re: any at all - and carefully filed my confusion at the sight of my cousin all dressed up like she had somewhere to be or someone to impress into a corner of my mind for later consideration.
Hell, she looked like she'd even gotten her braids redone at some point today - they lacked the slightly frizzy look they tended to get when left in for too long by someone who was constantly sweating from exertion.
"Because! Why did you tell Vicky I was free to go see her family tonight?!" I complained to her, trailing behind her when she pointedly slipped around me in the narrow hallway that led to our bedrooms and into the kitchen.
"Cus you are, dumbass," She opined, yanking the fridge open and pulling a can of soda out that she opened and took a single sip from before realizing it was messing up her lipstick, at which point she growled and shoved it towards me.
When I didn't take it, she plunked it on the counter near me with another annoyed growl, slamming the fridge shut behind her.
"Yeah, but, come on!" I complained.
"The hells the problem? Didn't you say you were trying to sell New Wave your dumb crap or something?" She snapped at me, the surly expression on her face telling me that I was pushing my luck with her temper.
Sophia had mellowed out a lot since I'd gotten pushed into her life, but she was still, at her core, a vehement rage-bag of a person with almost no tolerance for being bothered. I think me, Terry, and her own mother might be the sole exemptions to that surliness of hers, and even then, only up to a point.
…also maybe Amy and Vicky? I dunno, she was still kind of a bitch to both of them even when we were ostensibly hanging out. She clearly liked them well enough, but that could really mean anything for my cousin.
"Yeah- I mean- yeah, but- look, that's different! That's supposed to be a cape thing, that I set up on my own terms, in a professional environment where I can wear my armor and everything! This is just… this is just going to be an awkward dinner with a bunch of people I don't know!" I blurted out.
Now, to be clear. I could do this. I could even weather it gracefully. I'm not an idiot. But that didn't mean I would enjoy it, and really the last thing I needed was to spend multiple hours waiting for my blood pressure to get high enough for me to start making excuses to leave. I know myself well enough that I know I can get stupid when my discomfort reaches a high enough point that it starts to engender panic.
I could spend hours getting my skull caved in by Mister Laborn. I could weather a storm of gunfire from the worst this city had to offer. I could adequately handle having my leg almost amputated.
I could not deal with social situations, mostly because the longer one went the more out of my depth I tended to feel. I'm not completely asocial, I liked having friends, and I liked being able to bitch about the nazis with Vicky or bitch about the world at large with Amy or Soph, but that was different. Those were people I felt comparatively little need to be 'on my best behaviour' around.
Meeting the New Wave adults in a semi formal fashion for an extended period of time was way beyond my normal tolerance, and while I'd weathered worse in the past, I absolutely had a tendency to become dumber, more direct, and less accommodating of the people around me as the event in question wore on.
"Then just tell them I was wrong," Sophia says bluntly, eyeing the fridge again as though hoping it might contain something she could eat without messing up her makeup and then scowl at it when she came to the obvious conclusion that it wouldn't.
"That'd be rude," Gerard chimed in, having - at some point - stood to lean on the kitchen counter near us with a wary expression on his face, like he couldn't believe he was opting to speak to us any more than we could.
Soph and I shared a dazed look for a second before I tilted my head in his direction to acknowledge the point.
"Uh… yeah. That. Carol is a huge bitch most of the time, I doubt she'd appreciate the snub," I explained. At this, Sophia shot me a strange look and Gerard spoke up again.
"You need to manage your language," He started in what would have been an angry tone if he hadn't remembered who he was talking to about halfway through the sentence and then walked back the attitude.
Man. I should threaten more people. Gerard was being downright personable.
"I manage it just fine when I have to," I answered dismissively, still not entirely sure how to interact with the man. I'd basically only ever seen him at his worst. Admittedly, his 'worst' was seemingly also his default state of being, but still. My standing method of dealing with him was mostly just to ignore him. I'd probably have done the same even if I didn't dislike him. It was how I treated auntie after all. Just… more politely.
It was hard to be rude to someone who insisted on doing your laundry and making you meals.
"You keep talking like that, someday you're going to be making a big speech or something and drop a curse word by mistake," He chided me. Sophia had gone utterly silent by this point and the two were just kind of staring at each other while only partially acknowledging that I was even present. It was tense, and it was awkward, and I had no idea what to do with it until Sophia spoke up finally.
"What do you want?" She asked with a restrained kind of growl that might, if I squinted at it, count as polite. Gerard flinched slightly at the accusation, but forged onwards.
"I… was thinking I'd drive you to your… date, thing." He offered.
I whirled towards Soph at that.
"She doesn't have a date, she's gotta come meet New Wave with me," I corrected him automatically. Sophia twitched her head towards me without letting her mom's boyfriend out of her line of sight, like she was keeping an eye on a dangerous animal, and countermanded my point.
"Nah," She said archly, before turning her head towards Gerard with a suspicious glare and repeating herself.
"Nah. I'm good," She said, before - with a speed that was kind of disconcerting - she retreated to her room.
"Little girl I-!" Gerard began, and I could see the fury start to fill his expression before he paused and exhaled strongly through his nose, relaxing his posture. The telltale sign of Sophia's window opening so she could jump to the fire escape on the opposite building below rang out, and I resisted the urge to wince as she inevitably made use of her powers while wearing her civilian gear just so she could avoid the ol' G man.
The ol G man, who was, might I add, acting really fucking weird compared to his usual behaviour.
"Did someone Master you?" I asked him abruptly, tempted sorely to have Detect Thoughts wound up and pointed at him but refraining from wasting spells on something that was - probably - ultimately trivial.
Gerard was a human being, as much as I preferred him as human furniture, so acting like he was incapable of even trying to make nice was, perhaps, kind of dickish of me. I was always dimly aware it could happen, I just didn't care enough about the guy to bother trying to make it so.
Gerard jerked away from me as though stung, and I got a better look at his face this time as he visibly suppressed his urge to bark at me for the statement.
"...No. Do you need a ride?" He asked me in a much less conciliatory tone. I got the impression that the guy was - however late given his theoretical involvement in Sophia's trigger event - trying to be better than he was, but didn't really consider me a huge component of that. Sophia was the daughter of the woman he was dating. He evidently had some attachment to her, because he helped her pay the bills and feed us and all, and I'd never seen him beat or hurt her - which was good for his health to be honest - so it wasn't a huge stretch that once 'getting his way via violence and anger' had been taken off the table, he'd been forced to do some self examination.
I mean, it was easy to bully kids when they were just kids. Knowing those kids had superpowers and could have, at any point, demolished you for fun, probably put a bit of a dampener on that kind of thing.
Still, I wasn't that kid. I was just the random kid that had shown up well after the fact to take up space in their house. I wasn't under any illusion that Auntie really cared too much for me - I was in her care, and she cared about me in the sense that I was her sister's son, but that attachment was a far cry from one's own children.
It would probably hurt my feelings if I was, you know, an actual child in need of affection. But since I wasn't…
"Your biochemistry would heavily imply you are incorrect in that thought, sir," Merlin pointed out, which I handily ignored. Puberty was a lot more manageable when you had nearly no sexual attraction to your peers and could use magic to pop zits.
"'Nearly'" Merlin quoted me, which I also ignored.
"Sure… so… working on yourself or did you actually need something from one of us?" I asked suspiciously.
The man's face screwed up as though he'd just bitten into a lemon, but he shrugged and gestured at the door instead of answering me directly.
"When are we leaving? I have to pick up your aunt from work," He asked, standing back up to return to the couch.
Ah. So he did want something. Just fucking scrap the last five minutes of thinking he was trying to be a better person or something I guess.
Not that the two were mutually exclusive or anything, but well. Knowing there was something for him to gain from being nice to me did actually make me feel kind of better.
At least that I could understand.
"I… dunno? Hang on," I said, eyeing the can of soda with Soph's dark lipstick on it and tentatively using my t-shirt to wipe the stain off of the rim before grabbing it and walking back to my room with it. Once there, I grabbed my phone and called Vicky.
"Hey, sup?" Vicky said chipperly into the phone the second the call connected.
"You told me to come for dinner but didn't tell me when dinner is," I informed her with a shrug she obviously wouldn't see.
"Yeah, but no biggy right? Just come over and hang out, dinner is whenever Mom makes it," She said blithely, and I had to restrain the urge to scream because if I actually did that I could end up hanging around at Vicky's house for way longer than I had originally expected.
Then again, I guess if Carol was actually as successful a lawyer as you'd expect from a minor celebrity who also happened to be a lawyer, her office hours would be pretty weird. Mark - Vicky's dad - had clinical depression so I had my doubts that he'd slide into the homemaker role to fill that position, which meant Carol was probably coming home from work and making dinner whenever that happened to be.
Huh. When I think about it that way, the image of New Wave as the quintessential nuclear family of capes with dinner at six pm and all that, sort of started to fall apart. That sounded dysfunctional as shit. One person doing literally all the work while their partner… I dunno, I have no idea what Mark did for a living honestly. Possibly nothing if I take all my fanfiction at face value - which I think I probably won't.
"O…kay. I guess tell me when you're home and I'll come over?" I offered weakly, once more trying very hard not to just hang up, have Merlin monitor everyone involved, and then show up as late as was humanly possible without actually missing dinner.
But only just barely. It was… really tempting.
"I'm home now," Vicky pointed out dryly, evidently having picked out the tone of discomfort in my voice and chosen to dismiss it as me being, well, me.
Vicky was many things, but among them, stupid wasn't one of them. She was clever and observant enough that I could occasionally forget she was only sixteen when she got to talking about subjects she was passionate about.
So she was aware that casual social interaction wasn't exactly in my wheelhouse. She was also aware that I'd work until I died if left to my own devices, which lent itself to a kind of easy dismissal of my concerns in that area on the basis that I didn't know what was best for myself.
She wasn't necessarily wrong in that opinion, but it did tend to result in her literally ignoring me when I didn't clearly say I didn't want to do something.
Like right now.
"Right, I'll just… get a ride over, I guess," I allowed sullenly, eyeing the lipstick stain on my shirt and idly wondering if I should ask about a dress code before realizing that if Vicky wanted me to just come hangout, that suit and tie probably wasn't the intent.
"Nice! I'll let Dean and Amy know!" Vicky crooned.
"Wai-" I started to say but she bulldozed over me.
"See you in a bit John! Dean-" She cheered before obviously turning away from her phone to speak to someone else and hanging up.
I stared at my phone for a bit before, with a sense of utmost horror, it dawned on me that I had never actually told Vicky that Dean hated me.
A low keening noise emitted from the back of my throat, and I considered just… not going, for a moment, before the gnawing guilt and anxiety over the inevitable, unknowable, repercussions for doing so nixed the thought in its infancy.
'Okay, okay I have a plan, Merlin if you can detect every crime between here and there, I can get so tied up handing thugs off to the police that-' I began, figuring that it would be well within my AI's abilities to do so. I mean, active crime might be hard to scope out, but there was bound to be some kind of stash house or other such location along the way to Vicky's so-
"Sir, you are overreacting. Please, just go see your friend, eat, and come home. The world will not end because you used one too many curse words in polite company," He chided me, clearly viewing my vehement dislike of the situation as childish and surly.
'I mean, the world could end at any time! Scion could do it!' I whined.
"Per your information on the topic, that is stupendously unlikely for several more years yet," My AI noted dryly.
'Yeah but-' I tried again.
"Sir," Merlin cut me off, his mental tone becoming decidedly annoyed.
Ugh. I'd never actually annoyed Merlin before. Was I really being that petty? Now I felt even worse.
'Fine, I'm going. Do we have Comprehend Cultures? Is that a spell you bothered with? That would totally help right now,' I asked, grouchily shucking my shirt and digging around for one of the ones Vicky had made me buy - a black tee with the emblem for some hero I'd never heard of on the front - before tugging it on. I'd stick to my baggy pants over the profoundly uncomfortable super tight ones Vicky had forced on me. They needed me to cinch my belt way too tightly to stop them from falling down, but I'd pass on being in an awkward social situation while my clothes did their damndest to crawl up my ass.
'No, sir. You deemed the slight optimization of social interactions a waste of a spell,' Merlin informed me primly.
I groaned again.
Yeah, I guess I fucking would, huh?
— -
"Listen, I don't have the mental fortitude to pretend I don't know already, and not knowing is going to bother the shit out of me so, if you wanna just tell me what you actually want-?" I put forth to Gerard as he pulled up outside the cute little suburban home the Dallons apparently lived in.
The house wasn't palatial or anything. It wasn't, as so many depictions I had once read about might imply, 'upper middle class', or particularly fancy. It was just… a house. It was a nice house, with a dinky little picket fence in obvious need of a new paint job, a small front garden that had obviously seen better days, and a fairly spacious backyard, but ultimately… it was just a house.
I didn't know how to feel about that, because in my head, I had mentally tacked the label 'entitled' onto the Dallon kids, and New Wave in general.
"I don't-" Gerard started irately, his grip on the steering wheel in front of him tightening enough that the creak of the leather was audible in the otherwise silent car.
I eyed the house again, but didn't get out just yet.
"Gerard, come on. I'm weird, not stupid. Don't make this awkward, I'm not gonna have you put to death for asking me for something," I said dryly.
I pointedly left out that I would be highly annoyed if he was about to ask me to do something stupid, like beat up a guy for him or something. It was an unfortunately likely scenario in this stupid city. If this were Daniel Hebert we were talking about, and the man asked me for help warding the Empire away from his dockyards or… whatever the guy was actually in charge of, sure I'd be in. I loved punching Nazis - it was the most guilt free flavour of violence there was.
But Gerard? Call me biased, but I had this sneaking suspicion that anyone the ol' G-man might ask me to rough up would just be some guy he didn't like.
I looked at Gerard then, and seeing him staring back at me, I realized that maybe that wasn't what he wanted, because he seemed to be visibly fighting back a surge of fear at having to tell me whatever it was he wanted.
And people didn't usually work through fear for stuff that was ultimately trivial.
"So? Look, I'll even sweeten the deal, I actually don't even want to be here so if you can give me an excuse not to-" I started, aiming for a cajoling but not threatening tone of voice in an effort to lighten the mood.
"You threatened to ruin his life for annoying you, sir," Merlin pointed out helpfully to me.
"Advertising. I need advertising. My firm-" Gerard paused, like he was expecting me to punch him or something over just that handful of words, then continued when I obviously didn't do that. "I need this promotion. They stuck me with this shit cereal to sell, supposed to be a health food, it'd help your Aunt a lot, and I-"
"Don't care. What do you actually need me to do?" I cut him off.
Another pause, though this one was clearly more a result of the man trying to reign in his temper at being cut off.
"You're… in?" He asked me suspiciously.
"Sure, you pay Auntie's bills and stuff, it's not like I do my own groceries," I responded, unsure of why he thought I wouldn't help when he couched it as having more money to help my extended family out.
I didn't interact with or pay a lot of attention to my Aunt, or to Terry given he was no longer even in the city, but that didn't mean I was against being helpful to them. Heck, advertising shit as a cape wasn't even really work, I just had to go in to see the PR guy, tell him the name of the cereal, and then leave. They'd have my face on the box within a week.
I watched Gerard's face light up, and he started licking his lips before speaking again. It was super creepy, but I didn't say that.
"Alright… alright, yeah. You… you're an okay kid. I'll… talk to you more about it later," Gerard said, glancing at the house we'd been idling in front of for a suspiciously long time. He lifted a hand like he wanted to pat me on the head or shoulder or something, but my raised eyebrow at the motion must have communicated how unenthused I was about that, because the hand went back down and his expression twitched back into his usual unpleasant glare.
"Go see that white girl you're always with or whatever then," He said grumpily, flicking the switch to unlock the doors on his Volkswagen, some model or other. I dunno, I never learned the breeds of car, and that went doubly so for Earth Bet's particular selection of the things given the damage to most industries the presence of capes had created.
I refrained from pointing out that the 'white girl' could probably throw this car from here to the shoreline with only minimal effort, because he probably already knew that, just like I knew that he was punishing me for being cheeky with him in the most obtuse way possible; he was taking away my excuse not to go inside.
"That's kind of racist you know," I grumbled at him, pushing the door open.
"Uhuh," He grumbled at me apathetically, peeling away from the curb the moment I slammed the door shut.
Then I turned towards the Dallon household again, and debated my options. I could still probably run away. It wouldn't be that hard. I could just leave before anyone noticed I was out here and then-
"John! Up here!" Vicky called to me from one of the second floor windows, dangling precariously out of it in a way that would be incredibly concerning if I didn't know she could fly. She had a baggy sweatshirt on with the New Wave logo stenciled across the front, and I could just barely see someone standing behind her, holding one of her hands as though she actually needed the assistance avoiding a swift drop to the ground.
I didn't respond - because the idea of yelling up to the second floor in the middle of this otherwise totally quiet suburban neighborhood made my spine tingle with embarassment - but I did wave weakly in her direction, before sighing and starting the painful trudge towards the front door of her house, which I promptly knocked on.
It opened a few seconds later to reveal a grumpy Amy in the doorway.
"Oh, thank god, you're here. Maybe now I won't have to hide down here while they make out," She snarked, turning and walking away from the door, leaving it open for me to step through without so much as inviting me in.
It was very casual, and the slight rudeness of it actually served to calm my nerves somewhat.
I could do this. It was just Amy and Vicky being the way they always were while we were out doing cape shit. Sure Dean was here, but I'd already written off trying to be his friend anyway. Maybe if he saw how little I cared about him and Vicky being all touchy feely with each other he'd finally get it through his head that I had no interest in her.
So thinking, I stepped through the door, closing it behind me, and shucked my shoes off, panning my head around until I spotted a rack near the door with five pairs of running shoes in it. I quickly slotted my own pair into the sixth spot on the rack, and then meandered inside behind Amy, who had turned a corner and vanished from sight while I was busy taking my shoes off.
"You can't just wear headphones or something?" I called after the biokinetic as I followed her into what looked like a living room.
It was about what I'd expect, a decent sized space with a couch, two love seats, a small central coffee table, a really big television screen, and a kitchen island separating the room from what looked like a kitchen. The walls were covered in your typical happy family crap - pictures of the kids and parents in various combinations at various points in their lives, and there was a single bookcase against one wall full of what looked like a weird eclectic mix of 'whatever someone thought was okay'.
Also there was a whole adult man sitting in one of the loveseats, but he was so still and unobtrusive that my gaze passed right over him twice before I registered he was there.
"Growl can still hear them," Amy grumbled, settling back onto the couch and grabbing a book that had been left open lying face down on one of the cushions, before tucking her legs up under herself in a way that said 'the couch is mine, sit over there'.
"...Growl?" I asked uncertainly, awkwardly shifting over to the only remaining seat in the room and slowly lowering myself onto the chair. In response, Amy pointed a finger past me at a corner of the room where I hadn't noticed a small furry cat bed that currently contained a totally mundane looking black cat.
"..Ah," I conceded, realizing that she must be talking about her minion. I dunno how healthy it was that she named the thing, but I honestly had no idea how this new version of her power even worked, so calling it mindless was something I couldn't guarantee was true.
"So…" I said, glancing over to Mark - I assume the slightly potbellied guy who was staring dazedly at the television like I wasn't even in the room was Mark - and then turning back to Amy with an expression that I can only hope conveyed how phenomenally out of my depth I felt.
"Dad?" Amy called out, seeming to realize for the first time how quiet the man was being given the presence of a stranger in his house. When he didn't respond, Growl swiftly stood from where it had been 'asleep', and marched over to jump into the man's lap, jolting him slightly as it landed and causing him to finally notice I existed.
"Dad, this is John, John, this is Dad," Amy said dryly, feigning apathy but - I noted - continuing to observe our interaction instead of going back to her book.
"Oh," The man said, still visibly dazed, before blinking a few times and then really taking the time to focus on me. A forced smile spread across his face that I could easily identify as 'I don't really want to do this but I have to', and the expression on my own face must have mirrored his own because there was just the slightest tinge of mirth in his voice when he followed up.
"Nice to meet you. I'm Mark, I'd prefer you not call me Dad," He joked, and Amy made a choking noise followed by a shrill, "Gross!" that I heartily agreed with.
"I doubt you have to worry about that, sir. Vicky is with Dean and I'm pretty sure Amy is-" I stopped, realizing belated that I was about to say 'extremely gay', which would have been… extremely rude.
At least, I'm pretty sure suddenly outing someone to their parents was in poor taste.
"-n't interested in relationships," I finished lamely, unable to find a better way to cover the awkward pause between the two halves of the sentence.
"It's for the best, I don't have the energy for the shovel talk nowadays," Mark mused aloud, in a somewhat self deprecating tone. Honestly, I was starting to kind of like the guy. We had similar senses of humor - mostly in the form of messing with Amy.
"Dad! Just- ugh!" Amy groaned from near us, though I could see a slight crinkle of relief in her expression now that she'd gotten the man talking. I got the impression Mark wasn't always so personable.
"I could probably build a hologram or something for that. You could record it once and just have it ready to play anytime a boy comes into the house it's never seen before," I offered, ignoring Amy's scowl visible out of the corner of one eye. Mark lifted an eyebrow at that, and took on a genuinely considering expression at that, one hand absently lowering itself to stroke the cat that was still sitting eerily still in his lap.
I guess Amy wasn't so great at faking the normal idle movements of a house cat yet.
"Pleaaaase don't, I've been trying to get Amy a date since foreverrrr," Vicky whined lazily, drifting into the room and dropping onto the couch on top of Amy's feet with absolute zero care.
"Vicky," Mark said sternly, turning his gaze on her.
"She'd like it if she tried it!" Vicky complained.
"Vicky," someone else said in a similar chastising tone to her father as Dean meandered into the room behind her, eyeing the couch where the Dallon sisters were sitting and taking a single step towards the loveseat I was sitting on before noticing I was sitting on it. The momentary pause was enough for us to make eye contact, and I could see him restraining a frown before he waved at me.
"...hey John," He pushed out, glancing at Vicky as though seeking approval for… saying hi to me?
The fact that she nodded pleasantly back at him was not lost on me, and suddenly I was drastically less sure that she was unaware that he hated me.
"Dean. A-anyway, Vicky, you can't just throw random dudes at your sister until she likes one. I don't think that's how love works," I pointed out to the blond, doing my best to just… ignore the empath in the room.
"She doesn't have to love them! Dating is like, taking a relationship on a test drive! You can totally date and then decide it's not working!" Vicky whined, directing most of her statement at her own sister, who rolled her eyes at the implied accusation and lifted a hand to push Vicky's face away from her.
"Yeah, because 'the entire roster of the football team' would definitely be my first through fortieth choices," She bit back sarcastically.
"They're hot!" Vicky protested.
"Things I never needed to know about my teenage daughter," Mark grumbled, which seemed to remind the blond that he was even in the room with us.
"They are!" Vicky insisted.
"Sudden unrelated change of topic! What uh, what did your Mom want to talk to me about anyway Vicky?" I asked, tilting my head in her direction to acknowledge Amy's thankful look as I spoke.
Mark frowned as I spoke, and turned to eye Vicky in turn, like this was the first time he was hearing about this.
"Oh, uh, you know. Tinker stuff I think?" She said with a shrug. Something about the way she said it made me feel like something was wrong, but Merlin didn't comment, and her Dad looked like the answer satisfied him, so, I just shrugged it off.
"Some.. warning would have been nice? I could have brought samples, or come up with some stuff ahead of time?" I grumped, momentarily, allowing Vicky's natural ability to force conversation out of me to draw some of my discontent to the surface.
"Yeah that's… that's Mom," Vicky said with an embarrassed smile on her face. Dean was looking at her oddly now, but I was actively trying not to pay attention to him so, I moved on.
"Whatever. Let me think for a second, I think I can probably rig up some simpler stuff for you guys in a day or two, are your aunt and cousins also coming or-" I started to think, thankful at least to have a solid reason for being here that I could focus on in lieu of the extended social torture session I had been expecting.
God knows the last thing I needed was to find out Carol had called me here to give me shit for some perceived moral failing or other. That was a thing she was known for right? Being kind of a nosey bitch?
"Whaaaat if instead of you nerding out, we go out back and play frisbee?" Vicky interjected. "We can do you and Dean versus me and Amy!" she chirped.
"I guess we have some burgers and hotdogs in the fridge. I could get the grill going," Mark offered, much more proactive and much less of a mindless depression zombie than I had originally been expecting.
Then again, I had no idea what the progression of his depression had been, or if it had been affected by constant exposure to Vicky's aura, which she was now much more conscious of controlling.
"...I… how do you even score frisby?" I asked in confusion.
"You don't! You just throw the thing around," Vicky said chipperly, popping up from her seat on the couch to glide past Dean, wrapping one arm around his shoulder and dragging him towards me, where she all but forced him to his knees so she could wrap an arm around both of us in just about the most uncomfortable group hug I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. I shot a pleading look at Amy, but she mostly just snickered at my discomfort. She seemed to be taking my presence as a fun way to break up the monotony of being a perpetual third wheel without having to do anything herself.
I briefly wondered how hard you could hit someone with a frisbee before real injury became a problem.
"Come on, it'll be fun!" Vicky insisted, shifting her grip on me to halfway drag me to my feet. I turned my head to check on Dean as she all but forced the two of us out through the kitchen and into her backyard, and found him staring back at me with an expression somewhere between constipated and depressed. I could vaguely hear Mark calling after her not to fly in the house as we moved.
"Is… it always like this?" I complained as she let go of us to swiftly move to a shed at the rear of the yard - presumably to grab the frisbee.
"You see her as much as I do, shouldn't you know already?" He grumbled at me.
"That's cape shit, my overlap with Vicky is purely that we both like punching Nazis, and that tinkering and teenage girl mall hopping are weirdly synchronous activities. Plus she's like, frenemies or something with my cousin," I said blandly.
"Guess you aren't a very good friend then," He joked - at least, he made it sound like a joke, but I don't actually think he intended it that way.
"Can we not do this? Please?" I begged, pinching the bridge of my nose.
"Do what? I get that you hate life outside your lab, but frisbee's like, the most mild thing you could be getting forced to do right now. You know there's a mall like three blocks away, right?" Amy pointed out, coming up behind us.
"I'm curious to know where you think you're getting money for the mall," Mark chided, emerging from the house carrying a foil tray full of buns, burgers, hotdogs, and a variety of other grilling tools.
I never quite got the 'men are obsessed with barbecuing things' thing before I got dropped in this hell hole, so the care and obvious pleasure the guy put into lifting and pulling his out from beside the house, then starting it up, was just bizarre to me.
"I'm sure moneybags here wouldn't mind sponsoring some of us," Amy snarked. She was… much less overtly fucking miserable than I recall her being. Still clearly not best pleased by me or Dean existing, but not on the edge of a mental breakdown either. It was cool, in a 'that's one bomb defused' kind of way, but disconcerting in another.
I didn't know Amy all that well when she wasn't miserable.
"I'd… appreciate it if you didn't call me that Ames," Dean said with a sigh.
"Eh. Heads up," Amy responded, stepping behind me as though seeking cover. I turned away from her and back to Vicky just in time to find a bright yellow disk made of plastic hurtling towards us at a speed that seemed distinctly unhealthy for the windows. Thankfully, Merlin's enhancements to my proprioception and reflexes were available, and my hand snapped up to catch the thing with a meaty thwack as it hit my palm. It… actually kind of hurt, if not in a bone break kind of way, and I realize that Vicky must have thrown the frisbee with a not inconsiderable amount of her super strength by mistake, if the way she was sheepishly drifting towards us was anything to go by.
"You know, if you float everywhere, you're gonna get fat," I pointed out to her, flipping the piece of plastic to my other hand and gently tossing it back to her at a much less painful speed.
She caught it easily enough, and then seemed to be visibly considering throwing it at my head until Dean interjected.
"No way, she's only gotten fitter since getting her powers. You look great!" Dean said, first to me, then to Vicky with a charming smile on his face.
I rolled my eyes but didn't comment, happy to let him flirt in peace as all four of us ranged out to the four corners of the yard to start passing the frisbee between us.
– -
Maybe thirty minutes later, just as Mark was beginning to plate the majority of the food he'd been cooking, we heard a car pull up outside the house, and Vicky caught, then held the frisbee instead of immediately tossing it at someone else - more often than not Amy, who would often use her throw to try and hit me or Dean in the head.
"So… I maybe, lied about why you needed to come over?" She said eventually, and I froze, mind instantly going to any number of worst case scenarios and how to avoid them. I didn't have my armor, but I did have access to my spellcore, so I should be able to rig a combination of Personal Gravity and Flight to-
"I just- I knew you totally wouldn't come over if it wasn't for business!" Vicky whined, earning a wooden stare of horror from yours truly.
There was no way…
"And you two get along great right? I don't know what's up but you two can totally be friends!" Vicky continued clumsily, her aura leaking out slightly for the first time in a while to splash at the edges of my rapidly growing annoyance. Dean didn't look all that pleased either, but he managed to look at least partially amused by the topic - though that might just be because he could see the look on my face and decided my misery was worth it.
Had… had this woman seriously put me through all that stress and anxiety so that I'd be friends with her boyfriend? Is this my life now? Did filming for that stupid drama show start without me paying attention?
"Vicky," I began, just about ready to tear into the blond for trying to trick me into a play date with a guy who hated me, when the back door of the house slid open, and an older blond woman in a business suit stepped out to see what everyone was doing out here.
My words caught in my throat as I saw Carol Dallon, and unfortunately, not for the reasons I might have preferred.
Carol Dallon looked like Vicky, but as an adult woman, close in age to, if not slightly older than, what I would have been before I ended up a teenager again. She had short, neatly trimmed blond hair in what I would describe as a cute bob, a pronounced nose, and a figure clearly meant for athletic pursuits only barely obscured by her well fitted suit.
'No, no, no-'
Now, if you're wondering why that description is so distressing for me, it's for one reason and one reason only.
'Absolutely the fuck not, I refuse this, I refuse it with every fiber of my being,'
"Vicky, what have I told you about bringing people over without telling me first?" The stern woman said, turning to eye me critically.
"...not to?" Vicky answered sheepishly.
"S-sorry? I can- I thought- I'm…" I trailed off, still staring at the woman.
I felt Merlin take pity on me and gently take over long enough to avert my creepy staring elsewhere, but at that point the damage was done.
I was a hormonal fourteen year old, and the first person I had ever met that I had any degree of attraction to was Carol fucking Dallon.
I wanted to fucking die.
