(ง •̀_•́)ง (ember_celica) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-09-01 19:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, blake belladonna, yang xiao long |
Sunrise and sunset. Dawn and dusk. Sun and moon.
Who: Yang and Blake
What: Dinner and a sunset
When: Mid-late August
Where: A cliff with a view
Status: complete
Rating: PG-13 for talk of past abuse/trauma
Yang had come up with the picnic idea on a lark, but the more she thought about it the better it sounded. It would be quiet and out of the way, something she knew Blake liked. She wanted to ask her about the book she’d gotten her and if she’d learned any French too. And she wanted to know where Blake was in the dreams.
Maybe they could even do a little training, too.
She’d prepared the picnic herself, a mixture of her own favorites with things she knew Blake liked (tuna, obviously), and strapped the basket to Bumblebee for the ride to first pick up her friend, and then the drive out towards the ocean.
Blake thought that her dream abilities were finally starting to cross over. She wasn’t faunus yet, but she felt some physical changes, some more lean muscle and better reflexes, starting to come. And it wasn’t just the training with Yang that was helping that. Blake felt like she was progressing a little faster than she probably should with the training.
After getting dressed, Blake let Logan know she was heading out. She didn’t know how long she’d be gone for, but she didn’t want him to worry too much. Logan really seriously reminded her of her dad, though her dad was quite a bit taller than Logan was, but that was besides the point.
She headed out and sat on the steps, waiting for Yang to arrive.
Yang had certainly noticed the lean muscles. All in all, she was in a constant state of holding some part of herself back around Blake, but hopefully never in an obvious manner. Mostly, she didn’t want Blake uncomfortable, and she didn’t want to scare her off. But it terrified her how quickly she’d started to rely on Blake just being around. (and Weiss and Ruby too, for that matter. She’d literally cried for five minutes when Weiss started dreaming too)
Yang wasn’t sure she could handle Blake abandoning her in both worlds. She probably shouldn’t be so dependent on Blake and her team, but part of her always had been in her dreams.
She pulled up to the curve, flipping her visor up and probably staring a second too long before speaking. “Hey! So I got a basket full of goodies and a special picnic place all lined up. Ready to go?”
While Yang was enthusiastic about the team all being here, Blake was very reserved about it. She was just waiting for the other shoe to fall, knowing that something would have to come along and screw things up because that’s what the world did. Of course, Blake had a bleak start to life, having grown up in Scientology and being brainwashed, and then abused by her ex-boyfriend. She couldn’t exactly imagine things going well without them crashing down around her in flames.
But she’d just take it in stride, and take what she could get. Friends was a new concept for her, and she didn’t always think she did well at it, but Yang and Ruby seemed to like hanging around her. Perhaps she was doing something right.
Blake wasn’t wearing anything special, jeans and a slightly baggy t-shirt basically. Hot or not, she wasn’t comfortable showing skin today. When Yang arrived, she got up and walked up to her. “I am, yes.”
Yang handed her a helmet. She’d searched long and hard for one that would be eventually comfortable enough for Blake to wear with ears. Any that involved her ears poking out would be structurally unsafe. She wouldn’t know for sure if these would leave enough room without being too uncomfortable, but she supposed they’d find out eventually.
She’d even spraypainted Blake’s emblem on it. Purple on black.
She barely waited for Blake to get on before taking off.
The fact that Yang had spray painted her emblem on the helmet did not go unnoticed. The helmet felt a little big currently, but she’d much rather wear it than not. She held on as Yang took off. She hadn’t really seen herself as the type to ride on a motorcycle before, but times changed!
Yang always liked people on her bike. She liked the closeness and the trust and generally showing off. Which this was all three, at the least. While she obeyed most traffic laws, she did squeeze through the occasional car as they drove down the highway. Instead of heading more towards the ocean, she took an earlier offramp. This took them through a quieter neighborhood, the smell of the sea growing stronger when the road started going up.
There was small little parking area, and some trees obscuring the view. Yang wasn’t worried, she knew exactly where to go and they’d get there with plenty of light left in the day. She’d timed it for sunset. She hopped off her bike and took her helmet off, hair fluffing up once it was free of the helmet.”Enjoy the trip?”
Blake could probably have lived without Yang squeezing through the occasional car, but she didn’t freak out at it. Though she might’ve just held on tighter for a few moments. But she was pretty fine the rest of the ride. Upon arriving, she pulled the helmet off, shaking her hair out. It was nowhere near as gravity defying as Yang’s, but she still had quite a bit of it. And no one wanted helmet hair anyways.
“Yeah, I did. Thank you for mostly obeying traffic laws.” Blake responded, though it was more a tease than a critique.
Help, Blake was hot.
Yang nodded, grinning even more brightly. “Getting pulled over isn’t high on my fantasy list.” Hanging her helmet off of her bike, she grabbed the basket and started down a trail. This was probably a more romantic setting than she’d really meant for it to be, but she hoped Blake wouldn’t notice. “How’ve you been, Blake?”
Also hanging her helmet off the bike, Blake followed after Yang. She wasn’t having the best day, but it wasn’t the worst day either. Hopefully the day would end on a better note, though.
“I’ve been okay, I guess. Good days and bad days, some days somewhere between good and bad.” It was to be expected. It wasn’t easy working through her issues, and it would take a long time to make them better. But she would keep working at it because she didn’t want her ex to win. She didn’t want Scientology to win. Part of her would always be broken, she would always be triggered now and then, but she’d find ways to deal with it and still live a full life.
Slowing so that Blake didn’t have to rush to keep up, Yang stuck her free hand in her pocket. “That’s...believe me when I say I get that. It’ll never really go away forever, but like…” She rolled one of her shoulders. It was easy for her to hide her own problems, but she wasn’t trying to protect Blake the same way she protected Ruby. Yang thought that Blake needed to see that she could get through the suffering. “You’ll learn to deal with it, and you’ll find things that make you happy and things that make life worth living.”
She could joke that Blake was something worth living for, but that wasn’t fair to put on her shoulders, and it wasn’t 100% true either. Making one person the thing to live for wasn’t healthy.
Besides, when the joke was more or less ‘the hope of kissing you keeps me going’ that was even more no beuno.
Still, she had to go for something like it. “Like a hot guy or pretty girl are nice things to think about. Shouldn’t be the only thing, but…” She winked at Blake. “But there’ll be good and bad days. Just it’s been more good than bad lately.”
And maybe understanding that Blake couldn’t be ‘fixed’ would make Yang a better friend than she could have been before losing her arm. Which was one way of saying she’d found meaning in her own suffering.
When it came to finding things that made her happy, a hot guy or pretty girl were not high on that list. It just wasn’t how Blake thought. She was more focused on finding things to do that made her happy, which tended to be reading, having the reading picnics with Ruby, and things like that.
“I know. It’s always going to be a rollercoaster. I just need to remember it’s not always a rollercoaster going down.” Which is what it had been up until she’d gotten kicked out of Scientology. She crossed her arms as they walked.
For all of her problems, it was probably a miracle that Blake wasn’t suicidal. Had the thought crossed her mind? It would be a lie to say it hadn’t, but she had never seriously given it much thought. She never would, either. She preferred to just sit in her room and read until she felt like being social again during those times.
Yang missed some of the times at Beacon, where Blake would be reading and she’d be on her scroll and it would just be them together but not. There was a word for that, but she didn’t know what it might be. But Blake’s reading had never bothered Yang. If anything, Blake tempered Yang’s energy.
“Well, there’s this kind of thing too, for the upswings.” They stepped out of the trees and onto a small clearing atop a cliff. The ocean stretched out below, and the sun was still an hour or so from setting. “I found this like a year ago, before my accident. Just kind of driving around until I found that road up.”
She’d never had the chance to take Evie, and now she was glad she hadn’t.
Yang opened the basket and pulled out a blanket. “Oh. Crap. I forgot to pack tuna sandwiches for you.”
But she was grinning too widely to be serious.
It was strange for Blake to dream of Beacon. On the one, she had similarities to her dream self, but on the other, she was very different. This life had been far more traumatic. In the dreams, she seemed to be more well-adjusted, and a bit more able to move past her trauma. Or maybe she just hid the trauma a lot better there, it was hard to tell. In the dreams, she had school work and the like to focus on that took her mind off of the bad things in her past. Here, she didn’t have that.
Perhaps she should look at going to school, but she didn’t even know what she’d want to study. Or if her “schooling” while growing up would even be accepted by any college as being legit. Really, that was just opening a can of worms that she couldn’t deal with right now.
When they came out into the clearing, Blake had to stop and take in the view. The sight of the ocean was gorgeous, and it was an endless horizon. She just stood there a bit mesmerized by it for a minute before she heard Yang’s comment about the tuna sandwiches.
“In that case I hope you packed a fishing pole since clearly you’re going to make me catch my own dinner.” She quipped.
"I'll use my hands." She made a grabbing motion. "Dad and I once did that. In the dreams, I mean. Total fish grabbing agility training."
She'd mostly gotten wet, but she'd caught one whole fish so she considered it a success.
Blanket in place, Yang plopped down and patted the space next to her. "Lucky for you, I did all the fishing earlier at the grocery store."
She handed Blake one, then pulled out a ham and turkey sandwich for herself. They both looked homemade and Yang had even fancied the tuna up as more than just fish and mayo.
“That’s a thing?” Blake asked, looking at Yang. Catching fish with one’s hands was not an easy thing to do. Even as a cat faunus, Blake would never dream of doing that. Sure she might have the reflexes for it, but that would involve standing in water. She wasn’t exactly a fan of that.
Blake sat down and took the sandwich. It definitely smelled good. “I think you did a good job fishing.” She took a bite of the sandwich, then she had to look at the tuna in it closer. “What’s in this?” It was really good.
“Yep. My dad had all kinds of weird training methods. Though he mostly focused on the basics after I got…” Yang cut herself off by taking a bite of her sandwich and looking out to sea. That was not an admission she was ready to make. She swallowed, “There’s tuna and mayo, some celery and onion, a squirt of lemon juice. There was a seasoning but I forget what it is.”
It was not lost on her that Yang completely left that sentence hanging, but Blake didn’t question it. She well knew not to push such things considering she didn’t like people pushing her. “This is really good. Where did you find the recipe?” Blake was assuming that it was a recipe and the tuna hadn’t actually come like this.
“Food Network’s website. I think it was a viewer submitted recipe. I’m so happy you like it!” She hadn’t known if it would be any good or not, but it had gotten good reviews so she’d picked that one. “Finding lemon juice was the hard part. Well, I found a lemon, and then squeezed some into my eye.”
Yang found it funny now, but at the time… She suffered for that sandwich Blake Belladonna!
“So you became a casualty attempting to make me a tuna sandwich. I thank you for your sacrifice, and it shall not go unforgotten.” Blake declared before taking another bite. She also made a mental note to check out the Food Network website. Perhaps she could find some recipes on there to try herself. Not that she could cook, but she could teach herself to do some simple things at least.
“I really don’t recommend the lemon juice in the eyes.” Yang leaned back on one hand, munching on her sandwich in the other, and looking between the view and Blake. Both were beautiful things, and she sighed. “You know, this is kinda nice. Fall is going to be really hectic, with school and all. So I’m gonna enjoy the peaceful times while I can. Especially when they’re with you.”
“I shall remember that recommendation.” Blake looked out at the ocean. There was something calming about seeing that vast horizon stretched out before them like that. She looked back at Yang. “I can only imagine. You and Ruby are probably going to be very busy.” And she didn’t know if Weiss was in school or not, but considering they were still strangers, Blake didn’t ask things like that about Weiss.
“Haven’t decided what you’re going to do yet?” Yang reached into the basket and pulled out some chips. She tossed a bag at Blake. “You can take some basic classes until you decide, too. Stuff that’ll apply to literally everything, like math and english and stuff. And French.”
“I’ll just keep working at the bookstore. I don’t even know if my so-called ‘education’ is actually enough to be credible to any university or college.” She totally did finger quotes around the word education. She really didn’t think what Scientology called school was actually school like normal people had. She caught the bag of chips, then set them in her lap while she finished her sandwich.
Yang frowned, then looked down at her food like it somehow held all the answers in the world. “You could work on your GED, right? Pass that test and you’ll have a degree! And I think there are some programs that might be able to help you too. And if all else fails we can help you study!”
Or ‘study’ as the case might be.
“I’ll look into it.” Which she would, but she was obviously too late to do anything about it for the upcoming school year. Though Blake supposed it could also give her time to try and figure out what she wanted to do. After all, there was no point in going to school if she didn’t have at least some idea of what she wanted to study. Sure she could take general courses, but she would still need to eventually make up her mind. And she would rather go into it with a sense of what she wanted to study.
“And thanks, though I don’t really study well with others. Scientology’s version of education is we teach ourselves and give ourselves grades. There’s no actual teacher like you’d think of them. Basically they’re there if we have trouble with something and to give us the outline of what we’re supposed to accomplish. I actually finished school when I was fifteen because school moves as quickly as you can learn. So some finish before they’re eighteen, others not so much.” Seriously, Scientology was so fucked up in so many ways.
“...That’s kinda fucked up. But if they taught you the right things you’ll pass the GED test really easily.” They just needed to find out what was on the test and find what Blake needed to brush up on. Yang didn’t sound like she thought Blake would have a hard time of it. Quite the opposite, she was pretty sure it would be a breeze. Yang very much believed in others. Much more than she believed in herself, at least since losing her arm.
The sky started to dim, turning orange and yellow and red. The colors reflected off of the ocean like a warm kaleidoscope, and cast their faces in the same shades.
Chewing on her lip, Yang sighed. A part of her had hoped that when or if her sister dreamed, and Blake and Weiss had come too, that things would be like they’d been in her Dreams, before the Fall of Beacon. She knew it wouldn’t ever be the same after, and they’d all have to find a new way to be a team. But she’d hoped to find that camaraderie and closeness, even though she knew it wouldn’t be that easy and she’d have to be patient. She just needed to give it time, and also not blurt out her feelings for Blake.
She’d always kept that to herself anyway, so she was used to it. “I used to sit on the roof and watch the sunrise, when I was little. And I’d take Ruby up there sometimes.”
“It’s the least fucked up thing about them, which is saying something.” After all, who let children be in charge of their learning? Sure there was an advantage in that but there needed to be actual teachers doing some teaching. The teachers in Scientology also weren’t exactly licensed to teach. “I’ll see. Pretty sure what I was taught was in some way skewed propaganda because everything else was.” Blake was extremely bitter about that. The more she learned just how absolutely fucked up Scientology was, the more bitter and angry she got about it.
The bitterness and anger was new, and it was probably a good thing. It meant she was coming out of the haze she’d been raised in and was seeing the world for what it actually was, just as she was seeing Scientology for what it really was.
Blake watched the colors change as the sun began to set. It was intensely beautiful. “Sunrises are beautiful, though I prefer to watch sunsets.” There was always something calming about sunsets. Blake had always been more of a night owl, more attuned to the night. In the dreams, it was perhaps because she was a cat faunus and had night vision. Here, night was the one time when she could actually be alone with her thoughts.
Yang felt angry on Blake's behalf, her eyes flashing red for a split second, before she reached over to take Blake's hand and squeeze it. "Whatever else they did, you're still a great person, Blake. They didn't screw up your moral center. You still know right from wrong. You just... need to remember you're not a bad person."
A smile flickered across her lips and she winked. "Sunrise and sunset. Dawn and dusk. Sun and moon. Or the night."
Yin and Yang.
She giggled, and added, “Dragon and cat.”
“Sometimes I wonder, not about whether I’m a good person or not, but about the moral center. Before I was thrown out, I thought I knew what justice and goodness was. But now that I can see the world for what it really is, and not what Scientology wanted me to see, I really have no fucking clue on that. I’m learning more each day that I didn’t know previously. Fuck, I’ve had a completely different vocabulary from everyone else my age simply because of Scientology. I have to learn to speak to you without sounding like I’m an alien from another planet.” Which it really was such a cult, that terminology and other such things that were commonplace among those who practiced it didn’t actually exist outside of it.
This was the main reason Blake tended to not talk to many people because she’d sound crazy simply because she didn’t know how the typical American actually spoke in day to day conversations.
At the comparisons, Blake eyed Yang, refusing to say a pun involving Yang’s name. “We are opposites, yes. Though I do not understand how a dragon and a cat are opposites.”
Flashing a smile, Yang said, “Complementary opposites.” Since Blake hadn’t let her hand go, Yang chose to pretend she hadn’t noticed.
“You’re learning how to have fun, though. Finding out that there’s exciting things in real life just like your books. You’re the hero of your story. Guess that makes me the sidekick!”
“I’m not really a hero, I’m just trying to live.” It was a fact, and Blake wasn’t putting herself down. It was just what she was trying to do, figure out a life for herself. It was intensely jarring when she’d been dictated a role in life by people her entire life, then suddenly she had no one telling her what to do. It was strange and frightening, but it was her new reality. Even if she sometimes wanted to run away from the new reality. Not because she was afraid of her new friends (which she wasn’t), it was just insanely frightening to have to make all her own choices in a world that she had very little actual knowledge about.
A part of her actually wanted to track her parents down and run back to them. Yes she was twenty-one years old and an adult, but she could really seriously use her parents being around right now. Except the one thing stopping her from that was thinking they hated her for the hateful things she’d said to them the last time she’d seen them. She hadn’t forgiven herself for that, and if there was a chance that she ever could, it would take a lot of work on Harley’s behalf to get her to that point.
It would take a lot of work, but Harley was willing to put it in. Not everyone was able to make amends with their parents, but part of Blake’s healing would be to get to the point where she was willing to try, and then accept the outcome, whatever it might be.
Yang would support that too. There was so much she wanted to help Blake with. But she also knew first hand there was only so much other people could do. Blake had to get through some of that trauma on her own. Yang just wanted her to know there’d be people at her back when the time came.
“Maybe I worded that wrong. You’re the protagonist of your own story. In the end, you control your life and your destiny.” Yang patted her chest with her free hand. “Even when it seems like you’re not in control. Believe me, I know what that’s like.”
Blake had a lot of work to do. There was a lot of trauma to unravel and try to heal. One thing about growing up in Scientology was learning to internalize everything bad that happened. Blake had seen a friend deal with issues similar to her own, but when the friend tried to report it, it was completely swept under the rug. So when her ex had abused her, Blake had kept her mouth shut and internalized everything.
“That’s a concept that I’m really new to. It’s...weird.” And frightening, but Blake didn’t vocalize the frightening part, but it was undoubtedly implied. Or perhaps Yang had picked up on that in the time that they’d known each other here. Sometimes Blake really wished the confidence that her dream self had would carry over to her, she could use some of that.
Scooting over next to her, Yang reached over and turned Blake’s face back toward hers. Her touch was gentle, almost painfully so. “I can barely imagine it, and I’ve even looked up videos and other things to try to understand what you’ve been through.” She wasn’t a therapist, but Yang thought that having a friend’s ear was still a good thing.
“But I’m here to listen. And be a very comfortable pillow sometimes. Or just a silent presence. Anything you need.”
She hadn’t meant it to be any kind of peptalk, and she bit her lip and looked back out to sea.
Blake looked at Yang, the tenderness of her touch and words touched her. It wasn’t easy to come to grips with the trauma that she’d suffered through. It was even harder to find the right words to talk about it. Scientology wasn’t something easily explained to those who had never been inside of it. And the abuse suffered by her ex wasn’t easy to talk about ever.
“Thank you,” she responded softly, a little more emotion in her voice than she’d intended. It was strange how such gentleness could bring out such a reaction in her. She looked at Yang when she turned her gaze back out to sea. There was a twinge of emotion that she couldn’t quite place, something that was mixed in with the other emotions she felt in that moment. Taking a slow breath, she looked back out at the sea.
“It’s entirely fucked up to explain. Scientology is weird and fucked up. And I am willing to bet that what you have read and seen is not the half of what it was to be in it.” Blake hadn’t really poked around on the internet much about Scientology. She wasn’t quite ready to delve into that. But one day she might.
“I’m sure. It’s like a cult, isn’t it? They hide things, and when you’re in it you can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s kind of like a fight, when you’re all tunnel vision and not taking in the big picture.” The way she’d been before her injury, before her dad had helped her see the forest. A lot different from a cult but she thought it made sense in her head.
It was kind of weird. She felt less damaged than she’d been in her dreams, and Blake seemed to be more so. They could balance each other out still. Or at least try to.
“Yeah, pretty much. It’s horrific though you don’t really know how horrific until you get out and see that the world isn’t the terrible place they make it out to be. And in fact, they are the lie.” It was going to be a struggle to understand the world around her and come to peace with everything she’d been through. But she’d come this far, which was something.
“Do you want a hug?” Yang asked. She thought it was better to ask most of the time, rather than trigger an unwanted reaction in her friend. And sometimes the only reaction that Yang had was the physical kind. She just didn’t think they were on ‘impulse hug’ level yet.
It was definitely a good idea to ask. Blake didn’t like being so touchy about the subject, but it wasn’t as though she could help what she’d been through. All she could do was deal with it and move on as best as she could.
“I think I would, yes,” she responded. Hugs were kind of foreign to her. Ever since her parents had left Scientology, she hadn’t really been hugged much.
Yang felt like her heart had been on hold until Blake answered. She slipped her left arm around her and pulled her into a gentle hug. She was careful not to be too crushing, especially with her mechanical arm, but it was obvious Yang could give the best bear hugs ever if given half a chance.
As Yang pulled her in, Blake slid her arms around Yang, returning the hug. Sometimes, Blake could really be like a cat with not wanting to be touched. But other times, she relished it. Currently, the hug was very nice, and it helped release a little of the tension she hadn’t really realized she’d been holding. “Thank you,” she said, referring to the hug. But she didn’t exactly need to thank someone for a hug.
“You’re welcome.” Blake smelled nice, and Yang let herself savor her scent and the closeness. And like with the hand earlier, she left it up to Blake to end the hug. She didn’t need to say that any more than Blake had needed to thank her, but it felt important that she did.
The sun slipped beneath the waves, and Yang added something else, though she only mouthed the words.
Blake let the hug linger a little, taking it in a bit before she pulled back. As the light started to fade, she looked out at the sea, though it was getting harder to see. She wondered when, or if, her faunus abilities would crossover. She kind of really missed that night vision she had.
No matter what happened, Yang would treasure this evening. A grin crossed her face. “I feel a little recharged. I think I needed to get away from everything for a few hours.”
“Something that everyone needs now and then, I think.” Blake said. Always going at things without taking a break wasn’t exactly the best thing, and it only led to people burning out. And, well, the worst things happened at such times.
“We should make this a thing. Like a monthly thing. Tuna sandwiches and the sunset,” Yang suggested. “Could even pack a flashlight and a book.”
It was almost like she knew Blake’s weaknesses.
Blake looked at Yang, eyes narrowing slightly as she knew exactly what Yang is doing. “Are you trying to bribe me?” She asked. “Because it’s working.” There was a teasing note in there. Blake wouldn’t have really said no even without the whole book thing being thrown in.
“Me? Bribe you?” Yang affected a really bad southern accent. A really bad one. “Perish the thought! Whyevah would ah do such a thing?”
“In that case, perhaps I give in far too quickly.” Because she was curious what Yang would try to add in to ‘sweeten the pot’ as it were. Blake cringed a bit at the accent. “Though please don’t attempt a southern accent. It doesn’t sound good on you.”
Thinking she might have caught Blake, Yang teased. “What would sound good on me? French? German? British?”
She went through increasingly ridiculous accents, culminating in a cockney that would make Dick Van Dyke cringe.
“Oh god,” Blake said, cringing again. “You’re ridiculous, Yang.” She stated, wondering if her ears were bleeding from all those terrible accents. Especially the last one.
“That’s my middle name. Yang Ridiculous Xiao Long,” Yang said. She leaned back, and gave Blake fingerguns. “Don’t wear it out!”
The stars had come out by then, and she shifted and laid down, resting her hands over her stomach as her hair halo’d her head. From goofball to serious in 3.5 seconds. “I wonder if we’d get kicked out of here if we stayed all night.”
Blake just shook her head at Yang in response. She shifted a bit, recrossing her legs camper style. “I suppose it would depend on how frequently people in authority come by.” She had no idea on that, but Blake was also used to being watched at all times. It had been harder to find time to herself before.
“So we could probably stay here all night,” Yang decided. She didn’t think rangers came out here and a cop was about as likely as the solar eclipse coming a week early. She propped her head onto her arms and glanced at Blake. “Wanna? I’ll tell you another story.”
“I’m fine with that,” Blake responded looking over at Yang. She hadn’t ‘camped out’ like this before. So first time for everything. “I don’t mind hearing stories.”
Yang could tell stories all night. Or lay there and kiss Blake all night. Either was good. Or both. She closed her eyes, trying to envision a scene that wasn’t kissing. “Okay. So there was a spaceship, and the engines had failed…”