Greed (truthorfiction) wrote in commandhq, @ 2018-06-01 17:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | danny costa, p: mena, p: mj, sandy jameson |
Who: Danny Costa & Sandy Jameson
What: Danny finally meets Sandy
When: 31st May [Backdated]
Where: Cafeteria
Rating: Low
It had been a few days since Danny had been given the pills by Dr Russel and he wasn't sure if there was any noticeable difference. He did feel more... settled if that was the right word? His inner monologue wasn't so constant nor was it so, well, disaparaging. He also found he was picking at the skin around his thumb less and all those small jumpy moments he normally associated with being taken by surprise were less extreme. He was alone for a change, both Clara and Grey were visiting the small garden Clara had set up for herself in the greenhouse, and he had decided to go in the search of food as he hadn't eaten much in the past week or so. That wasn't surprising though, Danny barely ate enough to keep a fly alive. Today however he had helped himself to a few slices of pizza, a good selection of salad, large glass of soda and had even gone so far as to pick up a slice of chocolate fudge cake. His hair was looking neater than it had in a long time, mostly because his hands weren't in it every thirty seconds and as he sat in the fairly busy cafeteria he looked and felt almost normal, whatever passed for normal anyways. What was normal, anyway? Sandy, with her hair still pink at the bottom, had been playing around with different things recently. Cassidy calling her beautiful had thrown her for a loop, his thoughts even more so, and she didn't know what to do with that. She hadn't avoided him, because as far as she was concerned he was just confused, wasn't he? That was what he'd thought. And his confusion wasn't her thing to fix. Or maybe it was. She didn't know. Either way, she'd resolved to try and make herself some friends, like Orla had suggested, get to know people that weren't part of her group. She didn't think it would go anything but horribly wrong because people didn't like her, but still. She was thinking about trying, and that had to count for something, didn't it? She'd grabbed herself some food and tried to find somewhere to sit that wasn't too busy, but there were people everywhere and she was feeling self-conscious as it was, so she moved towards the back of the cafeteria where she saw someone sitting on his own surrounded by food and not looking like he'd mind company too much. She drew her lower lip between her teeth and walked over, able to see in her peripheral vision the mascara that she'd put on that was on her lashes. She hoped she'd get used to that. She was... trying something different. "Uh," she started, stopping opposite him. "Do you mind if I sit here?" Danny looked up as a pretty blonde with pink in her hair approached his table and asked if she could sit. He briefly considered saying no but he was supposed to be trying to make friends outside of his very small very insular group of Chesire. Couldn't do that if he turned away the opportunity to make a new friend. "Go ahead," he offered with what he hoped was a friendly smile though he didn't always understand if the expression managed to make it onto his face. Sandy smiled and put her tray down, sitting opposite him and slightly off to the side because Cal had a habit of stretching his legs out under the table and she always ended up in the firing line of his boots so it was force of habit to just move to the side so that the other person opposite her had some room to stretch out, but when she looked at him she thought that maybe he wasn't like that, so she shifted back across and took her food off her tray. He had a nice smile, even if he looked a little unsure and a thought pushed at her, that he maybe wasn't sure if it was a friendly one or not. But it was. But people didn't like it when she spoke their thoughts aloud. Briefly, she thought about her conversation with Grey, all that time ago, and then she realised that his face looked familiar and why. He was one of Grey's friends. "Thanks," she mumbled, taking a sip of her drink and then looking at him. "I'm Sandy," she offered. Because she wasn't good at conversation at the best of days. And this... this was harder than she'd thought it would be. Sandy? Wait, he knew that name. Why did he know that name? Danny scoured his memory before he alighted on a conversation with Grey who had mentioned a girl called Sandy with whom she had been making friends. That immediately relaxed him because if Grey liked Sandy then Sandy was good people. "Danny," he offered as he stretched a hand over the table as that was the polite way to greet people, right? Sandy broke out into a smile and took the offered hand with her own, ignoring the way her mind wanted to just reach out and wrap around Danny's, poke about for information. It was difficult. But she refrained. Even so, the thoughts of the facility were still pushing at her mind. She reached out to Cal, just drawing from him briefly, pulling herself into a calmer place before she refocused her attention on Danny. "Nice to meet you," she said, and it was mostly sincere. "I- I'm trying to make more friends." So he wasn't alone in that? Well that was good to know. "Yeah, me too." He took a sip of his soda before he turned the ring on his thumb over in a smooth fluid movement. "It's not always that easy." Especially for those who weren't as well socialised or adjusted as the rest of the population. "You know Grey, right?" Sandy grinned and watched Danny turn the ring around on his thumb before she rubbed the back of her neck and took a sip of her drink. "Yeah... it's real hard 'cause... no one else sort of understands." She shifted uncomfortably, not knowing how to talk to others was a huge problem for her despite the fact that she was trying. She nodded. "I do, she's really nice. She helped me out a little while ago." "Exactly," Danny said with a nod of his head as he picked up a slice of pizza to take a mouthful, wondering why he'd never really picked it up from the cafeteria before. "Everybody thinks it's easy but it really isn't." Making friends might be easy for others but not for people like Danny and he was guessing Sandy. He glanced up when she made the comment about Grey. "Mm, she is nice." "It's not!" Sandy agreed, "Making friends is really hard. Especially since I'm- I've got some and I didn't really want more." She wrinkled her nose and then picked at her pasta, pushing it about to find a piece of chicken. The food here was so good. "Some people make it look so easy, I don't get it." She tipped her head. "She's got a nice quiet mind," she told him. Her eyes flicked across to Danny, the pizza, and then back to meet his eyes. "So do you." "That," Danny said with an expressive hand gesture towards Sandy, "Is the exact same situation I'm in." But it seemed that he was probably the only one not making friends outside of their small insular group. Clara less so than the others but that was because she was shy and Vic, well, he didn't count capturing and tying up that poor man's clone as making friends. The remark about his head being quiet took him by surprise, he wouldn't figure he'd have a quiet head. "I do?" Sandy laughed, it made her feel better about her situation knowing that someone else knew how hard it was. Everyone here had difficult times in their life, but some people just found it so easy. She heard an idle thought about his friends, meeting others and how he hadn't done it as much as the others and she bit her lower lip, resisting the urge to talk about it, to bring that up as something they shared. "And people don't get that it it's impossible to meet new people when you haven't... haven't done it in ages." She tucked her hair behind her ear and took a sip of her soda, using the straw, eyes on Danny's face. She wondered why he looked so surprised. "Mmhm, not like Grey's, but it's still quiet." She looked at him, her expression suddenly a little shy, "I- it's nice." "Thanks, I think," Danny said as he pushed a hand into his hair and rubbed at the back of his scalp. "I guess because I have a loud inner voice I always figured my head would be noisy." Vic had never commented on the sound of his head so it was definitely a surprise to him. He peeled off a piece of pineapple and popped that in his mouth before catching his thumb in his mouth to clean it up. "You would think it would be easy though considering we're all in one place." "I'm not reading your mind or anything," she said quickly, watching how Danny's hair moved through his fingers, falling forward to obscure his face. Her eyes dropped to his hands as he picked up the pineapple piece and smiled a little, watching his hand still. She sipped her soda again and then bit her lower lip. Was this right? She sort of was regretting the promise she'd made to herself that she wouldn't actively snoop in people's minds. She couldn't help what she heard, and she heard a lot but at the same time she was doing her best not to take an advantage from any of it. Because that didn't put people at ease. And if she wasn't in people's heads, maybe they'd like her for her and not because she could read their minds? Tucking her hair behind her ear, she wrinkled her nose in response to his statement. "Yeah, you'd think. Doesn't seem to be the case, though. I mean, people seem to make their friends and then that's it. I'm guilty of that. But they're the people I came with, so it makes sense. But they're making new friends, so I'm gonna try and do the same." She drew in a breath, lower lip between her teeth again. "You're more considerate than my friend Vic," Danny answered with a small snort as he twisted a few of the leather bracelets around his right wrist. "He says it's my fault for thinking too loud." Or at least that's what he said. He helped himself to a tomato from his salad and nodded. "Mm, totally. I mean if they're doing it then why not you, right? Fair is fair. Just as long as you don't forget about them when you know you're enjoying your time with your new friends." He was still for a moment before he pushed the plate containing his selection of pizza across the table. "You want a slice?" "Everyone thinks too loud," Sandy told Danny, not quite like it was obvious, but her face showed just how she felt about that. "I can't tune it out ever but I'm trying to... let them bounce?" She didn't know how to describe it, but since he knew Vic he probably knew the struggles that telepaths had. And Vic was like her; he heard everything. And it was really noisy here. In the base, and off the base. She always struggled to hear herself think. Someone was humming, and it was offputting; she didn't know the song and it was going to get stuck in her head. She nodded, "Right, that's how I think about it. And you too, with your friends. I think I've met most of them? Grey and Kat, anyway. And Vic." Kat had helped her with make up, she was still learning but the impromptu lesson from the other woman had been so helpful that Sandy wanted to learn more. Get her eyebrows 'fixed'. When he pushed his plate towards her, Sandy looked surprised. Sharing food? That was generous. She struggled with that, when they'd had to fight for every meal and gone hungry more times than she could count, food was still considered to be a precious commodity. But he was offering, and she would never turn down food so she nodded. "If you don't mind," she said with a smile, reaching over and helping herself to a piece of pizza. After a moment, she shifted her plate and pushed it towards the middle. It was loaded with fries. "You- uh, help yourself." Danny nodded his head because whilst he was not psychic he could understand the plight especially as he knew how much Vic struggled. Not helped by Chesire and how they had seemed intent on driving him crazy and had sadly managed it would seem. He did wonder what Vic would have been like if not for Chesire. "Only person you haven't met is Clara," Danny said as he took just the one fry rather than a whole handful because that might seem rude and appearing rude would be in complete opposition to trying to make a friend. "But she's really shy and nervous around new people." He popped the fry into his mouth and chewed. "But you should, meet Clara that is." Sandy picked a piece of pepperoni off the pizza slice she'd taken and popped it in her mouth, tongue swiping over her lip, and then her thumb to collect the grease a moment later. "Mm, maybe," she said, "I wouldn't want to make her uncomfortable." She knew she could be a bit... intense sometimes. She nudged the plate again, fighting her urge to snatch it back, just trying to tell Danny without words - because that was difficult - that he could have more than one. He gave her an entire slice of pizza, after all, and fair was fair. Danny took a further fry with an appreciative smile before he secured a bottle of ketchup from the empty table to their right and brought it back over to squeeze some out as fries tasted better with ketchup. That much he knew and that much he remembered from before Chesire. "But for now you're getting to know me." Sandy tilted her head a little at the smile and the rather confident statement. She had taken a bite of her pizza while he was away getting ketchup and nodded, swallowing and catching stray sauce with her thumb, making sure she didn't have any on her face. "Looks like it," she said with a nod and a small smile. "So far I know your name, and your friends." "Not too bad for the first meeting," Danny shared with a smirk. "Probably more than you're supposed to know in a first meeting." But then he wasn't the best judge as he didn't have the most normal approach to friendships. Stuff before and during Chesire didn't exactly give you the best... skills to be honest. "It's less than I normally find out," Sandy shared, dipping a chip into ketchup and then popping it into her mouth. "So... I think that's a good thing?" Danny tilted his head curiously. "Why is that a good thing? Is it because you're psychic so you can't help but hear more than you should?" He reached up to tug at his pierced ear before he just finished up his slice of pizza. "But I suppose if people are particular about their innermost thoughts remaining the innermost thoughts I can see how it would be difficult to make friends." Sandy nodded, pushing the pizza crust on her plate, looking a little sad. She'd had okay luck so far, she thought, but she'd only spoken to a few people without using her powers; Danny was one. Kat was another. And there was the movie night with Aidan, but she'd already been in his head. So she didn't think that counted. "Thoughts are private," she told Danny, eyes wide as she looked at him, "I don't mean to listen. I just can't help it." She shrugged. "People just don't like it when you take stuff out of their head before they've said it." "I get it," Danny said with a nod of his head. "Helps that I know Vic and he doesn't mean to listen in but he does. Just how he is." Sure it was annoying at times but Danny had enough sense to know that Vic wasn't doing it on purpose so he couldn't really hold it against him. He picked up a napkin and wiped his hands off on it. "I don't think I could handle hearing everybody's thoughts all the time." "I don't like it when it's quiet," Sandy said softly. "This is how I'm meant to be, so this is how I am, y'know? Besides, I have people that help when it gets too noisy." She sipped her drink and saw that Danny had finished everything except his cake and a bit of his salad. She'd eaten most of her food, too. Which now meant that the conversation was over, right? "I- um- can leave you to finish your cake." "Or you could stay and help me eat it," Danny offered instead as he confidently cut the cake in half with the edge of his fork before twisting the plate so that Sandy had access to one half. Both were even, he'd managed to get the cut right down the middle. He took the first forkful and washed it down with soda a moment later. Once again, that look of genuine surprise crossed Sandy's face. She'd picked up a fork to eat her food with but had actually ended up using her hands - because she was, what was that word she'd overheard the other day, oh- a heathen - but that did mean she had a fork clean and untarnished by her lunch. "Are you sure?" Danny nodded his head. "Yeah of course. Help yourself." He ducked back in to take another forkful of cake, arms crossed over the table and weight braced there. Besides Grey liked Sandy and she seemed nice so why wouldn't he share? |