Gaz Membrane will destroy you. (gameslave2) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-03-13 20:26:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, gaz membrane, kitty pryde (shadowcat) |
Who: Gaz and Kitty.
What: Pizza!
When: Tuesday afternoon.
Where: Kitty's and a pizza place.
Rating: R for language.
Trigger warnings: Mention of selfharm, suicidal ideation, NPC murder, NPC character death.
Status:Complete!
Kitty brushed her hair out, then styled it a bit so it resembled a pixie cut again, before pulling on a tight sweater and jeans. She grabbed her phone and wallet, and made her way to the door, hoping to avoid anyone on the way out. She opened the door!
(A wild Gaz appears!) There was already a purple haired woman sitting on the stoop. She was wearing jeans in an attempt to not make Kitty nervous, but since the only pair of jeans that Gaz owned were skintight and slashed to hell. She was wearing a men’s undershirt that was a tank top, seethrough, and a bright pink bra underneath that went with her hair. That was accidental.
“Hey,” Gaz muttered gruffly, though it wasn’t out of malice, just surprise.
"You're early," Kitty said, stepping outside and closing the door behind her. She made a conscious effort to look at Gaz's face. "Let me roll my crotch rocket into the garage and we can get going!"
“I like being early. I brought the car instead of my bike.” She stood up, wiping her hands off on her thighs and sighed. “What kind do you have?”
Kitty showed her the bright red souped up Japanese bike. "The engines and shocks are custom. She's as silent as silk." She was proud of it. "Present to myself on my first job."
Gaz wasn’t a mechanic - she was good with electrical things, not things like this - but she could appreciate it. “Goddamn,” she murmured. “Can we go for a ride sometime?”
“Whenever you want,” Kitty replied, trying to not sound as flirtatious as she was. She rolled it into the garage, then came out, stretching. “Okay so do you want pizza or do you want Pizza?” She flashed Gaz a cocky grin.
“Is that another penis metaphor?” Gaz blinked. She usually missed those.
“Uh. No.” Kitty smiled at her. “There’s pizza, and then there’s the really good awesome pizza of awesomeness. I don’t know where you’d get a penis metaphor. To be honest, the last one I had was about the size of my forearm.”
“The really good pizza, then. Do you want to drive?” Gaz drove a smartcar, but she’d painted it black and put in a sound system that rattled fillings.
“Are you okay with that?” Kitty stepped towards the car to get a look at it. It was tiny compared to her pickup. For some reason, she thought Gaz would look cute in it.
“I say things I mean.” Gaz tossed her the keys. “I’m fine.”
Kitty caught the keys without looking, and then jumped over the top of the car to the driver’s side door. She opened it and slid in, then popped the lock for Gaz. She seemed excited.
Gaz got in and turned down the knob on the stereo. She’d had her metal on high, and something told her Kitty wasn’t going to be a fan. Snapping the music off, she couldn’t help but ogle, trying not to be overt.
Tight sweaters are best sweaters. “I don’t mind, but that was a little loud.” She glanced over at Gaz, and grinned. “I’m more of a fan of like..the Ramones and stuff. Bet you’d never guess that.”
“Yeah, I kind of souped up the stereo,” Gaz murmured. She rifled through her iPod, found the few punk songs she had. “I wouldn’t have, but I’m glad.”
“Yeah?” Kitty put the car into gear and headed out onto the road. “Okay I’m afraid we’ll get smushed, but this is kind of fun to drive.” She had this urge to put her hand on Gaz’s leg. She blamed habit.
Kitty navigated to the pizza shop she knew of, that did traditional Chicago pizza. Which was the best, damn it.
“It’s zoomy.” Gaz smiled, biting her lip and pretending not to notice how close she was to Kitty. “We won’t. When you hit seventy, she’ll have problems shifting gears, but that’s an issue with the car. Think they don’t want you to go faster than that anyway.”
"I know a guy. He can probably soup her up to break a hundred." Kitty laughed, and took a turn sharply. She liked the drift on the little car. She liked the little car a lot. She'd never let the twins ride in it, but that was besides the point. "Mechanical genius. He can do to an engine what I could do to a computer, or you do to a canvas." She patted Gaz on the leg.
Gaz bit her lower lip hard, closing her eyes. “You ... you have the dreams. You can do the thing with the sticking yourself through things. I can ... fix stuff. Besides the healing. I can fix electrical stuff. Easy.” Gaz wanted Kitty to touch her again, but she stopped talking for fear of sounding stupid.
"Really?" Kitty reluctantly pulled her hand away, and gripped the wheel tighter. "That's amazing! There was a guy like that, in my dreams. We called him Forge." She didn't seem particularly bothered or put of about electronics. "I know who to call when my TV breaks."
She kind of wanted an excuse.
“Even the alien stuff, I think I could do it. I can in my dreams.” She sighed, biting her lip when Kitty moved her hand away. “You can call me when you want.”
"How about what I want?" She bit her lip. "Sorry."
Smooooth, Kitty. Smooth. "So besides healing, electronics and painting, what else do you do, Gaz?" It was a weird name, but Kitty liked to say it.
“Call me then too.” Gaz was looking out the window, and she hoped that kept her from being entirely audible. “Video games. Naps. Booze. Horror movies. Concerts. Boring stuff.”
“I like sci-fi. The really corny stuff, and the really sciency stuff...really, just all of it. I like some horror movies, it depends. Other than Halo, what’s your poison? And favorite booze?” She looked at Gaz, “..actually, how old are you?”
“I like sci-fi too, and pretty much every horror movie is awesome. Video games - I play all of them, even the crappy girlie dating sims. I can’t not. I beat them all pretty quick. I like whiskey and scotch. Port too.” She blinked when Kitty looked at her. “Eighteen. How old are you?”
"Twenty-four," Kitty replied, obviously relieved about something that she wasn't quite ready to say out out. "I'd say you're too young to drink, but you're old enough in England and that's good enough for me. Warcraft?"
“There’s a guy who owns a liquor store who sells to me.” Mostly because she’d threatened him, but hell. “Yeah, old school and MMO school. Raiding guild, blah blah blah.”
Kitty nodded. She'd have been surprised if it was anything but, with Gaz. She seemed to go after anything she wanted to do with a hardcore mentality. The brunette just wasn't sure if Gaz actually had fun while doing it.
She pulled into a little shopping center,and parked in front of a pizza parlor.
Gaz didn’t have fun doing much but her art. She hopped out of the car once it was parked, smiling lopsidedly and almost shyly at kitty. “Thank you. For bringing me.”
“I don’t mind!” Kitty tossed Gaz her keys as she got out of the car. “I need to get out more, and I really wanted to talk to you more.”
Blinking, the keys fell to Gaz’s feet. “You did?” She couldn’t remember the last time someone had said that to her.
"Earth to Gaz?" Kitty stepped around the car (really, that wasn't hard) and knelt to pick up the keys. She took Gaz's right hand and put them in it, then closed the girl's fingers over them. "Yeah, I do."
Shaking her head, Gaz blinked. “I - don’t know if anyone’s told me that before.”
"That they wanted to talk to you?" Kitty stared at her, then wrapped her arms around Gaz and started to walk into the building like that. "Okay seriously, your friends suck."
“I don’t ... have friends,” Gaz muttered. She wanted to flinch at first - it was instinct, and those died hard - but instead she let her shoulder rest against Kitty’s shoulder. “You smell good.”
"You have a friend now. Two really." Kitty was counting Logan in that. She kissed Gaz's cheek and then stepped away and towards the counter "What do you want on what I guarantee will be a sinfully delicious pizza?"
“Huh.” Gaz smiled a little to herself. “Good.” She couldn’t help but grin when she felt Kitty kiss her, and she squezzed her hand as they went to the counter. “Meat, please.”
"Okay." Kitty ordered a Chicago deep dish with 'all the meats' and extra cheese. "Not kosher but I won't tell if you won't. She liked to joke about that. She wasn't orthodox in the slightest, and some customs amused the hell out of her.
Only after she'd ordered and turned to find a seat did she notice they were still holding hands. Kitty reluctantly let go, wondering if she was being tested and if maybe she should go kosher again.
“You can pick off the non kosher ones.” Gaz smiled a little to herself, wishing that she still had Kitty’s hand. She put her own into her jeans pockets, biting her lower lip.
"It's okay. I'm not that religious. Technically you can't have meat and cheeses together anyway." She slipped into a booth, after getting some soda, and leaned on the table. "It isn't just no pork and stuff like that. It's this whole...thing. I didn't have my first cheeseburger until my parents got divorced."
“You can be religious and not keep kosher. What movement are you?” Gaz sipped her soda carefully, folding her legs underneath her torso.
“Nothing in particular.” Kitty shrugged a shoulder. “I’m not a secular jew but I’m not...all that concerned with ceremony or anything.” She tugged her sweater out a bit and pulled out her Star of David. “Though I feel naked without this.”
The purple hair girl nodded thoughtfully. “One of my friends in high school was Reform.” She had a friend in high school, dammit.
“See, you had friends,” Kitty replied, picking up on that. She nudged Gaz’s foot with her own and smiled. “You don’t have to be all...Loner.”
“Had friend,” Gaz murmured. “They moved.” She just hadn’t gotten another one. She’d had Zach at one point, but that wasn’t ... a thing anymore. She didn’t want to bring him down.
“Want to talk about it?” Kitty put her hand on Gaz’s arm, brown eyes studying her face. She was, in a way, latching onto this girl. To help her, maybe. Or help herself. It didn’t really matter to Kitty, what it was. She wanted to see Gaz smile and she wanted to stop feeling so angry all the time.
She shrugged. “My dad beat the shit out of me on a daily basis, my mom pretended it didn’t happen, I took care of it, and I’m bad with people as a result. What did the doctor call it? Antisocial personality?” She couldn’t help it. She’d been made into an angry little girl, and that girl had grown up.
"Oh." It was all that Kitty found herself able to say. Gaz was too far away to hug so she squeezed her hand instead. She'd always felt lucky to have a dad like hers, and now she felt extra lucky. "Most people would have that problem coming out of a situation like that." Even Kitty. "I mean, I can't say I've ever been there, but I'm sorry. I wish it hadn't been that way for you."
“It is what it is.” Gaz shrugged her shoulders, leaning forward to blow bubbles in her soda. She did, however, squeeze Kitty’s hand in return. “Thanks. I don’t tell many people. Everyone thinks my dad was this sweet little old man.” She wrinkled her nose. “I mean, he was okay when he wasn’t doing coke.”
"Obviously he wasn't okay enough to not beat a kid." Kitty's hand tightened on Gaz's. She wanted to cart Gaz off and cuddle her. There were several things that triggered her protective instincts and that was one of them. Her tone shifted as she tried to find something less upsetting to talk about. "Is that where the darker parts of your art come from?"
“Don’t know. I don’t really think about it. I like the dark parts of life. I think if you don’t notice them, if you don’t touch them, you won’t really appreciate the good bits.” Gaz blew bubbles into her soda, drumming her fingers on her thighs.
“Darkness tends to be in places you don’t really think to look,” Kitty replied. “When I was younger, I used to use my imagination to ‘paint’ far off lands and fantastic adventures. It was bright, and colorful, and so incredibly naive. Now..I don’t know. I think I can still do it. I told a story to a friend a few weeks ago, but it was...it wasn’t innocent anymore. The brightest fairy tales can have the darkest underbellies.”
“Oh, all of them do. You have to have both. All dark makes no sense, same with all light.” Gaz smiled a little secretly.
Kitty tilted her head, her eyes studying Gaz’s lips and trying to decide what that smile meant. “You’re probably right. It could just be the bitter coming through. My entire dream world is nothing but one danger after another, and the Katherine Pryde in that world is very angry and very bitter. I thought I was gonna be okay here.”
“Kitty’s your nickname? When did people start calling you that?” Gaz blinked. She liked that they both went by nicknames.
"As long as I can remember. I think it started with my parents. Makes me feel a little young sometimes. Like I've not grown up yet." Trying to get people to call her anything else never worked.
“Do you want me to call you Katherine?” Gaz figured she’d only just met her. She’d call her whatever she wanted.
“What sounds better rolling off your tongue? Kate, Kat, Kitty, Katherine....Just anything but Kathy.” Kitty made a face. “That one grates on my nerves.” Though Katherine made her feel too old.
“You pick.” Gaz smiled. “Really, it’s your name. Katherine’s better than my name, promise.” Gaz wrinkled her nose.
“That’s not fair.” Kitty laughed, then lowered her head shyly, her hair falling forward to frame her face. “..Kate maybe?” Only one person ever called her that, and Rachel wasn’t going to be coming. Kitty thought that Gaz was special enough to warrant the privilege. “What’s your full name?”
Gaz went bright pink. “Gazlene. My dad thought I was kind of incendiary, I guess.” She liked Kate, and she tried it out. “Kate. Yeah, that suits you.”
"Gazlene," Kitty repeated. She laughed, then covered her mouth. "Sorry. Just, he named you after fuel. Is your middle name Cole? What a jerkass."
The brunette pulled her hand away as the pizza arrived. She liked hearing 'Kate'.
“Nope. I don’t even have a middle name. Gazlene Membrane. That’s it.” She leaned back, sniffing the air excitedly at the pizza.
Rubbing her hands together eagerly, Kitty picked up a slice. She guessed she could feign normal well enough, except she wasn't sure she was actually faking it right now. Putting that thought aside, she took a bite and groaned.
Gaz did the same. Really, since most people she shagged tended to suck and be boring, Gaz loved that pizza never let her down. And this had sausage. She closed her eyes, utterly blissed out.
“Best pizza you can get outside of Chicago,” Kitty assured her. She took another bite, then washed it down with some coke and watched her new friend. “God this feels good. Uhm. Going out with someone. To eat. Hanging out. Uhm.....smooth, Kitty...”
“I knew what you meant. Kate.” Gaz gave her a half smile, a conspiratorial thing. She squeezed Kate’s hand in a familiar, comforting way, not even trying to flirt. “It shouldn’t be awkward, but it is.”
"I'm sorry." Kitty sighed, her expression falling. “I don’t want it to be awkward. There’s nothing...I just need to …. okay I can be a little awkward sometimes in general? Sometimes it’s easier to act than to talk.”
“I don’t mind the awkward. It’s worth it if we get to hang out, right?” Gaz hadn’t let go of Kitty’s hand, and she was still eating. “So, what do you do?”
"What do I do?" Kitty asked, curiously. "You mean as a career? I'm a hacker. I get paid by people to hack their systems and put measures in place to make it harder for people like me to get in."
She took a bite, chewed for a moment, then added. "And at night..well have you heard about the Shadowcat vigilante?"
“Yeah. Oh, that’s you.” Gaz blinked, realizing how much that made sense. “Huh.”
Kitty put a finger to her lips like ‘shhh’. “I’ve been laying low a bit. Had a couple of close calls, and then the wedding and plane crash and everything. Too tempted to really...cut loose and do more than break noses. Too busy trying to find answers.”
“About the thing? About who did it?” Gaz blinked. “I wonder if you could.”
“I think I can.” Kitty put down her pizza to pick up her drink. Her other hand was still occupied by Gaz’s. It was often difficult to express how much physical contact mattered to Kitty. She drew a lot of comfort from it.
Carefully, Gaz let her thumb stroke around Kitty’s knuckle. “I wonder if I could live through getting shot.”
Kitty shivered, closing her eyes as her breath hitched. Gaz seemed to make her body react with just a touch, but her mind and her heart were arguing about emotions and appropriateness. “Depends on...how fast you heal. Logan could get incinerated and he’d come back from it.”
“Pretty quick.” Gaz took the pizza cutter and ran it under her wrist under the table. Pulling her
arm up, she watched as it heal even before she had it out from under the table. “Eh. You want me to stop touching you?”
“Body is willing,” Kitty murmured. She opened her eyes as Gaz brought her hand back out. “I wouldn’t go out of my way to get shot if I were you, but you’d probably be fine.”
“As long as it’s not in the head, I should be okay. Logan’s claws didn’t kill me and they went through my wrists.”
Kitty started choking on pizza.
Gaz blinked. “Are you okay?”
“Uhm..yeah.. “ Kitty drank to clear her throat. “Just..wasn’t expecting that. Wow. I’ve been cut by those before, it hurts like a bitch. Hell, he hurts to phase through.”
Remembering the burn, Gaz closed her eyes. “It was nice, actually.” She figured she’d probably better not tell Kitty why she’d been cut.
Kitty exhaled, lifting Gaz's hand and placing her other hand over the top of it, as she leaned forward on the table. She wanted to understand, and she didn't want Gaz to think she...hated her for that, or anything. "Why was it nice?"
“Because when I cut myself now, I don’t even feel it. It heals too fast.” Gaz shook her head. “I could feel it when he did.”
“I know, but why does it feel nice to cut yourself? I just..want to understand, you know?”
“I don’t really feel anything with people. I guess I just numbed myself up. I guess I just ... I really only feel anything when I paint, or when I’m in a mosh pit or when I hurt. I feel real then. Connected.” Gaz didn’t really know how to explain it. “You know how people feel good when they do what they love? That’s how I feel when I paint. Or when I hurt.”
“Huh...I know it felt kind of nice when I was sore after sparring with Logan. Or beating up some human traffickers. And it always felt nice when I get sore after sex. But I don’t think that’s the same. I wish I could do something. To help you feel less numb.” There had to be less destructive ways.
“This is ... I’ve been feeling okay here.” Not a lot, but a few prickles here and there.
Kitty had a sudden realization, that she might just be holding onto a very fragile young woman, and she didn't know what to do about it. Harmless, fun flirting seemed a lot less harmless. Shit. It didn't decrease a desire to sob all over her. Double shit.
Gaz took another dainty nibble of her pizza, still holding Kitty’s hand, unwilling to let go. She wondered how she’d deal with it when she finally had to let go of her.
Kitty watched her, brown eyes a little wider than normal before she looked down at the pizza. For some absurd reason, Xi’an’s face swam before her eyes and she squeezed them shut, biting her lip to try to bring her emotions under control. “You..know this would be a lot easier if I didn’t like you so much.”
“Do you want me to go? I can go.” She didn’t want to hurt Kitty, and she’d be okay with leaving even if it would hurt herself. She was okay with that.
"What? No!" Kitty shook her head, quickly. "I just mean...we're obviously attracted to each other. We could have hot, meaningless sex and I could get it out of my system. But I like you. And it hurts. And I don't want to hurt you either..."
“I’m good at hurting.” Gaz smiled sadly at that. “Truth.”
Kitty sighed in dismay. “You’re lucky I’m stubborn. Lets pack this pizza up and go back to your place, huh?”
“Okay. Leftovers are best.” Gaz hopped up, beaming to herself, excited for the chance to show Kitty what she saw when she looked at her.