InsaneJournal

Who: Jackie Frost (JACKIE FROST) and Dani Storm (PERFECT STORM)
What: BFF phone call. Now with 100% more pet names.
When: BACKDATED to Sunday, April 5th. 1 pm Neopolitan time, 5 am Tokyo time. Also after a to-be-posted log with Cole, so the references aren't totally random, I swear.
Where: Jackie' dorm room, and Tokyo, Japan.
Rating: R for language?
Status: Completed log



After Cole had left, Jackie sat down at her desk, knees drawn up to her chest. She picked up her cellphone, metallic ice blue, and stared at it hard, frowning. She hadn't called Dani yet to tell her what happened. She could have, but by the time she was free to make a phone call, she was far past being capable of calculating the time difference between here and Japan, where her best friend was exiled for her grandfather's birthday. Now she did know what time it was there - around 5 am. Not really appropriate calling time... but, Jackie shrugged, as she hit 'send' on Dani's number, the other girl probably was suffering jet lag and was up anyway. Besides. This was important.

Dani grumbled as her phone vibrated somewhere in the vicinity of her head. She let out a steady stream of curses as she groped around in the dark through mostly shut eyes. Who the hell was calling her right now? Jet Lag had her up at the strangest hours, and she had just managed to fall asleep an hour ago, only to be woken up by the muted sounds of Foreigner.

Her eyes snapped open as the familiar melody registered. Jackie? Danie frowned and began to toss the pillows of her bed. Jackie knew the time difference between California and Japan, and knew better than to wake Dani up for no reason. This had to be important.

She finally found her phone, stuck in the crack between the bed and the wall. The screen flickered to life with a touch of her hand. "Hello?"

"Oh my god, your grandfather could not have been born at worse time," Jackie's voice came over the ocean, pretending at indignation when really, she was just relieved that Dani had picked up. "Seriously," she emphasized, the tiniest wobble in her voice that would alert her friend to the fact that yes, this phone call was worth being woken up at 5 am for.

"I tried to convince him he was actually born in June, but no dice unfortunately." The joke came easily, but Dani's heart was quite obviously not in it. "What's wrong, Leelee?" They had been able to see straight through each others facades since they were twelve.

"...I got in a fight with Theresa." A beat. On the other line, Jackie sighed, rolling her eyes heavenward. Why her? "Last night. ...at Nate's party." It sounded just as ridiculous as it was, which really didn't help, at all.

The sound of shuffling could be heard on Dani's side, as she shoved the covers off her legs. "Why? What happened?"

"Oh, who the hell knows," Jackie said irritably, stabbing a finger at a glass paperweight on the desk and covering it with whorls of frost. There was a long silence on her end. Obviously, she knew exactly what happened, but the whole thing was just so upsetting it was taking her a while to say.

Eventually she sighed, loud and staticky on the phone. "She was being catty about the fight between Johnny and Tony, and I stood up for him. He is my boyfriend, after all! I can't just let her get away with that!"

Dani blinked in surprise in the dark. "But Jackie, I've given you flack about that too. Did she say something in particular? Something else to piss you off?" It wasn't like Jackie to lose her cool (Dani mentally snorted at her own pun) over a few catty remarks.

"Well, you know how she is!" Jackie retorted, turning her irate fingers to her hair, tugging and twirling on the blonde locks. "With you, or any other sane person, a remark like that will just be a catty little exchange of words until we call it a draw. But Theresa is just so sensitive that I trade one insult for another and get a slap in the face. I don't even remember what I said." There was another pursed-lip pause. "After that it was just self-defense! She's fucking crazy, Dandan."

"Wait a minute. She slapped you?" Dani's jaw dropped, and she felt her quick-to-rise temper starting to flare up. "She honest-to-fucking-god slapped you?"

"Or pushed, or something, it got physical, okay, and it was all downhill from there," There was the sound of a chair groaning against the floor as Jackie pushed away from the desk and got up to begin to pace the room. "She just fucking snapped, like she always does, and then it's wind and rain and hail all over the guests, and I tried to keep it, you know, localized by moving it onto the pool but there isn't a whole lot you can do to minimize a fucking hurricane when some bitch is clawing at your face!"

"Jesus Christ, Jackie!" Dani pushed herself off the bed and began to pace the dark room. "I can't believe she went crazy all over you." She let out a small frustrated sound. "I wish I had been there. I can't believe you had to deal with that shit alone," her voice dropped, until it was barely audible over the static, "again."

She fell quiet for a moment, before finally speaking up again. "You okay, Leelee? She didn't hurt you, did she?"

"Cole and Rob and Nate broke it up before there were any more accidents," Jackie reassured the other girl, voice dripping acid on the last word. "So, yeah, I'm okay."

"Ugh." Dani's disgust was audible. "I'd have thrown her ass across town or something."

"I know, Dandan, I know! I wish you were there, too," Jackie stopped pacing, and there was a soft thud as she flopped back on her bed, staring at the ceiling, her free hand to her temple, rubbing out an imaginary headache. "And then - of course! - Nate has to take me aside and go all, 'What the hell?' at me. Because it wasn't bad enough already, making an ass of myself in front of the entire League population of the Academy."

"He was probably just fulfilling his duties as host or something?" Dani offered with a shrug. "It's not like you wanted to get in a fight anyway. She's the one who brought it on." She walked to the window, peering out between the blinds to see how bright it was outside. "If anything, she's the one who should've been given a talking to."

"That's what I said! But no, Theresa isn't a traitor to the League, is she?" Jackie stopped herself, taking a breath to clear out the bitterness. "...anyway, we ended up arguing too. But..." she faltered, suddenly uncertain of the import of her conversation with Nate. "I think that was probably for the best."

"What?" Her brow wrinkled in confusion. "How are you a traitor?" She caught the uncertainty in Jackie's voice, and given the pair's history, it didn't take much to figure out why. "You and Nate arguing was for the best?"

"Well, right, 'cause it's just you that knows this whole Justice thing is just a means to an end. Everyone else thinks I'm halfway to totally switching sides," Jackie rolled her eyes at the ceiling. As if she would ever jump the fence to the Band. "But it all sorta... came out, with Nate, so... he knows now, technically. I don't know if he fully believes me, but since it's his own mother that's been puppeteering this, I don't think he has much choice." She chewed on her lip for a moment, and shrugged, an awkward move against the mattress. "So that's a relief, I guess. Don't have to cope with the thinly veiled disdain from him as much." Which was a relief, because as much influence as she had, Nate had just as much, and it would have only been a matter of time before all of her peers started to turn away from her and echo Nate's doubts.

"Oh right," Dani blinked, "I guess that makes sense. I'm surprised Nautica hadn't clued him in earlier." Dani rubbed the remnants of sleep out of her eyes. There was no way she was going to be able to sleep now. "Are things awkward between you two?" It had been strange when Nate and Jackie had decided to date back in Insidious, especially since they had all been friends since they were old enough to have play dates. The break-up had been as messy as she had feared, and the lingering sexual tension had taken a long time to dissipate. "I mean still?"

Jackie's face scrunched at the question, unwilling to confront that can of worms. "You mean do I still want to jump him if he so much as smirks at me? Yeah, not so much lately!" She switched tacks quickly to cover the tracks of her fib. "You know, he actually said that I was making an enemy out of him? He said that!" Her free hand formed a fist and pounded the pillow next to her, remembering how angry she was at that point in last night's 'discussion'.

"Okay." Dani was skeptical. "What? Was that before or after you explained the situation to him?" What the hell was going on? She was away for one weekend, and the whole world had decided to explode in her absence. "Yeah, I'm never leaving during the school year again," she mumbled under her breath.

"Before!" Jackie clarified. "But still. He'd better fucking recognize that all this... I'm doing it for the League. And it isn't easy, okay, not like riding on my daddy's coattails to the top." There. Hurl enough disdain in that direction, and maybe she and Dani can both forget that she can't get any from Johnny even with magical aid, and how that was never a problem with her last boyfriend. "Whatever, it's done." A sigh. "How is Japan, anyway?"

"He will, Jackie. In time, he will. Politics aren't easy, and he, of all people, should know that." Dani sighed, glad that she didn't have to deal with politics and duplicity. She was smart, she was strong, but she definitely wasn't as patient as Jackie. Keeping up appearances tended to just tire her out. "Japan is good. Everything is rushed and crazy, my grandparents' sense of humor is as warped as ever."

She shrugged. "Basically it's a classic Shimazu gathering."

Jackie laughed, more for need of some kind of levity than anything Dani said. "Sounds good. ...uhm. It's really early over there, isn't it?" Jackie asked, sounding ever so slightly sheepish. Sure, she'd needed to talk to Dani right away, but... now that she'd had her catharsis, she could see past her self-centered need to talk to her best friend and realize that maybe early-morning phone calls weren't the best thing to impose on Dani.

"Yeah, around 5:20," Dani grinned, as she surmised what must have been going on through her best friend's head,"it's no big deal though. There's no point in trying to beat the jet lag at this point. I'm flying out tomorrow anyway."

"Thank god. I can't wait for you to get back."

"One twelve-hour flight, and I'm all yours, love." A brief pause, as Dani climbed back into the bed. "Call you when I get back?"

"Sounds good, Dandan. Thanks for picking up," Jackie said softly, rolling over onto her stomach. "Have a good flight, okay?"

"Anytime." Dani closed her eyes, and her voice grew soft. "I will. Love you, Leelee."

"Love you too."

Then, silence on the line. Jackie lay on her bed for a long moment staring at the small screen in her hand. Best friend catharsis achieved, but that didn't necessarily mean she was ready to wrestle the lions on the network. Maybe she'd just take a shower and work on school stuff instead. Put it out of her mind, and the energy to some good use.

Setting the phone aside, the League girl got up and out of bed, and prepared to face what was left of the day.