ciɳɗy (ciɳɗɛʀɛʆʆɑ) ѵɑkɑʀiɑɳ (silvershoes) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-09-20 16:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !partner thread, cindy cendrillon (cinderella), commander jane shepard |
Who: Cindy & Shep
What: Taco Tuesday! And some girl talk
When: See above
Where: An OC bar
Rating/Warnings: Mostly low
Status: Complete
Most dive bars exhibited a certain kind of personality, and they differed. This particular one was pretty lively, with music escaping into the parking lot every time the door opened. People were generally friendly and chatty, but you could also walk in anytime before closing at 2 in the morning and order a few drinks without talking to anyone if you wanted. With Boilermakers for only $6 and Taco Tuesdays, it seemed like a good place for Cindy to take her space hero of a friend - no one would bother them. With the bonus of that did come tacos - she had it on good authority that Jane could pack it away. It seemed like the redhead was in need of some girl time, just a night out to relax without worrying about much. At least for an hour or so - and there was a lot to worry about. Cindy had been keeping up with the Reapers saga, but she was here to listen if Shep wanted to talk - about that or anything else. Free therapy. Maybe it’d do some good. “So, Garrus is officially turian now,” she said, biting the cherry off its stem - the fruit had been a garnish of her rather frou frou cocktail, but she was a fabulous enough lady that she could go to a no-rules bar and order something ‘girly.’ It tasted good, what of it. “Woke up the other day and he’d literally shed his human skin all over the bed. Still, I’ll take that over waking up dead like I did that one time.” Shepard really needed a good drink. With the apocalypse coming (probably), she needed to find ways to relax that weren't overly self-destructive. Tacos weren't self-destructive, right? Right. As long as she didn't eat too many of them anyway. Free therapy was also good. There were stupidly mundane things bothering her including one that had stepped up and smacked her in face when she'd thought it had been long buried. "He changed over all the way?" She wasn't surprised, she'd known it was coming, just not when it was coming. Shepard was torn on the idea. Garrus was now Garrus but he wasn't Garrus any more. Which only really made sense in her head. "Way better than waking up dead." “Yeah, he did - we had been preparing for awhile. You know, dealing with all the growing pains and getting the right kind of food for him, figuring out with the sciencey people at the Agency how it could be replicated,” Cindy shrugged. Garrus felt better and so did she - it had been a really long transition; she was just glad he wasn’t in pain anymore. And that he could be who he really was. “He’s got a glamour a friend made for him. It actually does kind of turn him back into someone who feels human - not so ridged and scaly?” She didn’t claim to know how that magic worked. Just that it did work. Tacos were indeed not destructive, yet delicious - beef, chicken, fish. Well, the last three for the carnivore. Cindy had a whole basket of non-meaty tacos delivered to her, filled with vegetables, cheese, guac, a shit ton of cilantro. Maybe she’d order a beer to go with all these, hmm. “I guess it’s fitting, giving everything that has happened in, uh, space. Lately.” Shepard needed her drink. She feld the oddest sort of disconnect from people, particularly Garrus. Though that was probably her own fault. "That's good, it can't have been easy." Getting biotic implants and then the pain from the resurrection surgery was bad enough. Actually changing shape and size? She couldn't imagine. "Magic and science are the same thing, just one is something we don't understand yet." She'd basically dated a space wizard. "It is fitting. At least things have quieted down since then. Feels like... waiting." Which was something that drove her nuts for other reasons. There was only so much busy work she could do. Cindy supposed that was true - her own dreamworld, one she was glad to have left behind, sort of married the concepts of magic and science. Unhappily, but still - they were Fables attempting to hide in a modernized world, and that really blew up in their faces. Sometimes she wondered if it would happen here, too. “It makes you nervous?” she asked, taking a bite of some taco delight and trying not to let anything squish out the other end. “The waiting, I mean. For the other shoe to drop. Because that wasn’t the last of them, was it?” And despite preparations, and the work being done, there really was only so much you could do - her job as a spy, even, a lot of it was waiting. An unfortunate truth. “That was really just a scout. Wasn’t even a big one. Like a little ant before the wasps come.” Shepard reached for her first glass and knocked back the glass. “You don’t know when the shoe drops. So you have to always be on alert, even now.” It made it hard to date, even if she hadn’t been dating. “It’s difficult to be on alert all the time,” Cindy frowned, the fretting mother hen in her rearing its polite, hospitable, southern head. That side of her didn’t come out very often, but she could make an exception for Jane - she got the sense that the woman was lonely, which was a shame. She deserved plenty of nice things. “As soon as the wasps come, we’re going to handle it. I don’t know how it’ll go - “ Honestly, she doubted anyone could predict that. Maybe a psychic? No shortage of them around here. “But damnit, we’ll defend our weird-ass home like we always do.” When the beer she’d ordered to go with her tacos arrived (liquor before beer, you’re in the clear?) she slid the glass toward her and took a long ship, changing gears a little. “How are you otherwise? Besides fretting about dropping shoes.” “Being alert at all times can drive a woman crazy,” Shepard replied, smirking over her glass. She swished the liquid around inside it. “Got stuck on thinking about could have beens and should have done differents.” Seeing that picture of Regina had dug up something she’d thought she’d gotten past. An unexpected punch in the throat. She was over her. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t still some nostalgia that she most definitely didn’t want to feel. Being attracted to Carolina didn’t help at all either. What was with her and straight women she couldn’t have? She was reminded suddenly of Miranda. “I should know better by now, I’m an adult, I don’t have time for that.” Cindy chuckled a little, tucking one knee over the other as she settled her compact self (okay, maybe her husband was right, she was short) on the stool. “You’re an adult but even adults have feelings we can’t control sometimes - or regrets, I guess. Is that what this is? I kind of think they keep us grounded. Prevent us from making the same mistakes.” She had a few too, and there were some things that were difficult to let go of - but you could make peace with them, you could learn from them. Everything could be a learning experience, technically. “Regrets, that’s a good word for it.” She gave her regrets a mock toast, and knocked back the rest of her glass, then signaled for more. Cindy had a point. Regrets did help prevent the same mistake from happening again, but on the other hand hand it was possible for regrets to have the opposite effect. “It all seems so stupidly mundane. Lack of relationship drama, inter-personal conflict. There were people bleeding out of their eyes.” She made a mental note to check on the girl she’d helped. She kind of wanted to bundle Abigail in blankets and adopt her. “People’s drama tends to be relative to their situation,” Cindy sipped her beer, which had a light caramel flavor to stand up to the bursts that came from things like cilantro and cayenne pepper. “I mean, it’s not like you can turn off the shit storm going on in your head just because people are bleeding from their eyes.” And she’d been one of those people - no doubt about it, the whole thing sucked some big fat donkey balls. “Tomorrow, who knows - there could be people bleeding out their ears?” she grinned. Wouldn’t put it past this place. Sometimes she just had to laugh about it, despite feeling like living here had sent her to hell and back. “I keep my eye out for you, Janey. For the single types. Pretty soon, someone will be driving you crazy and leaving crumbs in your bed, or their socks everywhere.” For some reason, bleeding out the ears sounded worse than the eyes. Shepard shuddered a little. You couldn’t shoot a disease. She took a bite of taco and chewed as she thought it over. “Crumbs and socks seems like a really strange thing to suggest as a positive, but I can’t actually disagree with you on that.” It was all that endearing shit, that made putting up with someone’s quirks (like crumbs and socks and probably flatulence) that much easier. Things that were sappy, and being happy, and everything else that came along with dating someone. Saying ‘it’ll happen when you least expect it’ was kind of cliche, but there was some truth in it too. “Yeah, see?” Cindy went for another taco - shit, she was on her sixth or so by now. Packing it away. “You just never know here. In the meantime, we’ll maybe have to make Taco Tuesday a regular thing.” A form of relief, a drop of normalcy when it rained weirdness around them. A couple that could fart will never be apart. Or something silly like that. Cindy was so genuinely in love with Garrus that Jane couldn’t help but leech some of that off. It buoyed her mood and she found herself smiling. She’d like to find that some day. She’d just never felt like she’d really deserved it. “I think I’d like to make tacos a regular thing. But we’re gonna have to order a bigger basket. Are you eating for two or just really really hungry?” Shepard had one of those teasing, evil grins on her face. “I thought the only one calling Garrus Daddy was you.” At that, Cindy nearly choked on her beer. “God, no,” she both coughed and laughed simultaneously. Jane, you almost killed her! Well, at the very least, Shep probably knew the Heimlich maneuver. She waited until she got ahold of herself - because that daddy joke was also terrible but it was a good sign that Jane wasn’t so morose anymore, so Cindy would take it. “I pledge you’ll be the first to know, after Garrus, when I get knocked up,” she promised, right hand held up like she was swearing on the Good Book. “But it’s definitely not now. I’m just a pig.” Because either way, yeah, they’d definitely need a bigger basket. Garrus would probably kill her if she accidentally killed his wife. “I’m not actually sure he could knock you up, without some kind of gene splicing medical help.” She gestured at the basket. “Lets order another one. I’m still starving and you can some how pack… more… into your tiny frame.” “He froze some penis pudding,” Cindy stated, still coughing, eyes watering. Whew. “Before he transitioned entirely, I mean. So his swimmers can still knock me up but it’ll have to be in a clinic and not exactly during a night of passion.” In case Jane was wondering about how the Vakarian’s did in fact intend to have children one day - it was going to happen, but it just had to be at the right time. Probably post-alien invasion, less stress all-around that way. Ordering another basket sounded good though, and Cindy would show off her prowess at packing it away (yeah, dirty jokes aside). Then again, there might be more dirty jokes too. Couldn’t rule those out. |