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thejusticelounge2015-01-04 10:54 am
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2015-01-04 10:54 am
mushroom
Kyle spent half of the rest of the gala brooding in the room in the back, then finally getting mostly dressed up again and looking for Zee out among the other people. When the gala is cleared out and Zee’s no where to be seen, he sends her a text and then sluggishly heads back to New York City. It’s pretty late; but he hopes Mar’i is home. And awake.
Mari is wearing her totally awesome roommate sweater but seems to have forgotten pants as she and Miss Meow cuddle on the couch with a massive bottle of champagne. In front of her, the television plays the episode of Friends where Ross screeches ‘PIVOT! PIVOT!’
Kyle is still sorta buzzed when he gets home, enough to be self-centered and needy. So he shuffles around till he finds Mar’i, not really caring whether or not she is asleep because, he’s gonna wake her up. “Mar’iiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee,” he wheedles, voice echoing in the hallway. He flops onto the couch face first next to Mar’i, still in his tux. Or, well, partial tux. Mostly just the shirt and pants; the tie and cummerbund have been long lost. “Frggmhhtthsdlsewugh,” he says into the cushion. Miss Meow stares at him and this hisses.
Mari isn’t quite asleep, but still jumps when Kyle whines down the hallway. “NEEEEEEEEHHHHH—” Mar’i replies in sleepy Korean, before she cranes herself to the side, watching him enter the living room and proceed towards the communal couch, burying himself into the cushions. It takes her a second to register his clothes and position, before she repeats: “Neh? Did you have one too many highballs?”
Kyle remains in place until Miss Meow decants from the couch, tail high as she walks out of the living room. Kyle worm-wiggles himself up to prop himself up on his elbows, looking up at Mar’i. “Aww Mar’i. Were you asleep? Awwww…” he sounds all sympathetic, like he wasn’t the one who woke her up. He smiles, shifting his weight so he can pat Mar’i’s thigh. “Lookat you, look how cute you are. You shoulda gone to the gala, man! You woulda - ” Kyle stops short and blinks, his eyes flashing momentarily bright green. “Wait. What? ‘I’m away’? ‘I’m away’???! Wha- what the - what the hell is that supposed to mean??”
Mari stares at Kyle blankly for a moment before she gets up and fetches a glass of water from the kitchen. “Don’t drop this, the plastic cups are all dirty,” she instructs as she settles back down on the couch a moment later, pushing the cup into Kyle’s hand. “I saw some of the press stuff on the TV. Looked reallllll Gatsby-like. The Leo one, not Robert Redford, of course.” She frowns at him and tilts her head slightly. “I’m away?”
Kyle rolls off his stomach, crawling himself into a sitting-up position. The cup of water only sloshes slightly once he’s upright, and he drinks deeply from it. “Gracias,” he says thickly, then watches as Mar’i crosses over him to sit back down, before setting his gaze on his glass. “Zee. It was her gala. And…we got into a fight, and she left the party to god knows where and - and - now she’s just texted me to say ‘she’s away’.” Kyle raises one hand to use air quotes. “And okay - maybe, just maybe I drank a little too much. Maybe I got a little rowdy at her fancy-schmancy hoity-toity upper-class richie rich gala business and…maybe I’m just…maybe…” Kyle tugs at his open collar, then looks down at his cuffs. He lost the expensive cufflinks that Zee got him, and now the cuffs are like white fans around his wrists. Kyle sighs slowly.
"Rowdy?" Mar’i repeats, quirking an eyebrow and pushing a stray chunk of hair away from her eyes. "Did you get into a fist-fight with someone?" She pushes her mouth to the side, settling back against the arm of the couch and swinging her legs up onto the cushions. "Well, maybe that’s good? Give you guys some time to cool down?"
Kyle shakes his head, fully settling into his tipsy misery. “We were fooling around in one of the backrooms, me and Zee.” He looks up at Mar’i, blinking slowly. “Give us time to cool down? You think that’s it? That’s…incredibly sensible. Sure. Time to cool down, yeah. Let’s go with that. That’s the smart thing.”
Mari squints a little, still confused. “You got rowdy…while you were fooling around? Like, rough?” It’s obvious she’s trying not to assume what it sounds like he’s saying in his drunken state. “Well, if it’s not a chance to cool off, which—” Mar’i levels a glance at Kyle, “—it doesn’t sound like you believe that, then what is it? A punishment?”
"No - well yeah but she - argh it’s so -" Kyle rubs his face, but when he looks up at Mar’i, she is peering back at him with that frowny look, so. He finishes the rest of his water and tries to make more sense. "No, we were - were you know, messing around in the back just like. A brief interlude, if you will, from the party." Kyle adjusts, sitting up more as he struggles to sound coherent. To the point where it sounds like he’s trying to put on a British accent.
"Just an intimate encounter, you know how it is. And well I…" Kyle looks over at Mar’i, clearly sheepish. "I whooped. You know, like…" Kyle pumps his fist in the air and does some manner of ‘sexy’ cheer. "Like that, but, like, louder. Zee was totally turned off and told me so and went off on how hard she worked for this gala and how I was - how she didn’t wanna be…embarrassed…and then it all just went downhill from there. I got pissed off - just literally just hopped off the disco stick like halfway through, Mar’i! - and put on a new dress and left. She just…she left me there, at her gala. She just, I was just that much of, and she, she - she, she she - " Kyle starts to sound like a broken record as he casts about, trying to complete the sentence.
Mari ’s frown fades quickly, and she leans over, patting Kyle on the shoulder gently. “We are totally going to have a good laugh over ‘disco stick’ in a little while, but X’Hal, Kyle, that’s really awful. I’m sorry. Was it out of the blue or had she seemed aggravated beforehand?”
Kyle eyes get wide and earnest as he opens his hands out, sitting up more to face Mar’i. “No! No that’s the thing!! She was like a hundred percent into it! All getting all ‘yeah, get in there’ and ‘you know you want it’ and I was like ‘oh yeah I totally want all of it’ - because that’s how we talk during sex - er. During drunk sex. And. And then I was all ‘woohoooo’ and she was just like ‘Kyle you peasant, what will my rich friends and the catering staff and all the people I worked so hard to impress think?!’ and I was like ‘wahhh wah god it’s hard to not be hard anymore, thanks Obama’. Except not Obama. You know. More like ‘thanks Zee’.” Kyle quiets, then adds, in a slightly hopeful way. “I don’t - fantasize - about the President, like that. Just. It was more a figure of speech. So you know.”
Mari makes a soft shushing noise at Kyle as he continues on about the admittedly old-dude-fine president. “Did she…I mean, was that the actual content of what she was saying?” She leans back, rubbing her cheeks. “X’Hal. That’s…” Mar’i twists her mouth. “I know she’s your eternal love, and my friend, but that was kinda shitty of her. Kinda massively shitty. I mean, not the calling off the sex thing, of course. The sentiment.”
Kyle is quiet for a long while, nabbing the glass off the coffee table to drain it, before setting it back down. Then he says, in a gravelly soft voice, “Eternal love? That’s…very eternal.” He sits back, curving his hand like a globe. “When I think eternal, I think, like. Eternity. That’s like…like the world spinning. Like an eternal globe…that’s like heaven. Or hell. Both, I suppose. Eternal…love. I guess with love in there, it’d be heaven then. I suppose.” He squints at Mar’i, heaving a watery breath. “Love can’t be…hell. Can it?”
Mari lets out a derisive little scoff and takes a long sip from the champagne bottle. “Love can definitely be hell. That’s way so many people convince themselves things will work out in relationships where things really are not going to work out, or where one or both of the partners is going to be miserable.” She snuggles down further on the couch, scooching against the back cushions and patting the sliver of couch beside her for Kyle to lay down as well. “That’s probably where so many people get tripped up. Equating love with only the positive.”
Roy knocks on the door of the MaLe apartment with a big canvas bag in both hands.
Kyle immediately takes her cue and scoots in to wedge himself into the bit of couch and lean on Mar’i. “So you’re saying maybe if we know love is heaven and hell, maybe love can actually work?” He mulls it over for a bit, taking a hold of one of Mar’i’s warm hands and wiggling each of the knuckles on her fingers in succession. “But Zee’s right, you know. She doesn’t think I’m a peasant, but. I don’t…fit in her world. I try - I try on an earnest level, I try on an ironic level, I try it as kitsch, I try it as reality, I try it as an outsider, as a spectator, as a participator, as a himbo, as a artisan…but all I am is a poor half-latino kid from North Hollywood, in the end. Who gets drunk and hollers way too loud during backroom sex. Ay dios, oy vey.”
When he hears the knock, his ring identifies Roy and so he yells out. “Door’s open, come on in!” Kyle looks up at Mar’i. “It’s just Roy.”
Roy enters the apartment, and begins to unload what he’s purchased on the countertop: an extra large pizza, boxes of different kinds of popcorn, bags of a few different kind of potato chips and a six pack of Coca Cola. He walks over to Kyle and Mar’i, and, clapping a hand against Kyle’s shoulder, leans over and kisses Mar’i’s cheek, fanning out a stack of Redox discs in hand like playing cards.
"So maybe," Mar’i shrugs, wiggling her toes against Kyle’s dress shoes, "you should stop trying? You don’t have to be part of her world any more than she has to be part of yours. Do you want to be, or does she want you to be?" She looks up at the knock, blinking as she looks up at the clock. When Roy enters and lays out the goods, she raises up onto her elbows and surveys the scene. "Just Roy and like, a shit ton of pizza and snacks," she murmurs, eyeing the box marked as ‘mushroom.’
Kyle makes a sweeping, scooping motion from his comfortable ensconced place between the couch and Mar’i’s bare thigh. “C’mon down, c’mon down,” he says to Roy with a crooked smile. “We’re just discussing love, in all its forms and facets. Mostly about love being hell and heaven.” Kyle tilts his head to look up at Mar’i, then back at Roy. “Mostly my love. Not your guyses or ‘nything. Did you know that the champagne Zee and your father bought for that gala that neither of you showed up to - did you know it cost, like, $200 a bottle? I’m wasted on like, $1000 worth of booze. I literally got money running through my veins right now.”
Kyle raises one of his shiny patent black shoes and taps one of the movies fanned out in Roy’s hand. “Put it in,” he says, and then bursts out laughing.
Roy snickers, and chuckles as he settles down on the love seat next to the couch. “Funny, I got a combo of love and hell right here—” He gestures at the romantic comedies, comedic romances, buddy flick, war drama. He catches Mar’i’s gaze and rises up to grab the pizza and some plates, coming back to set it on the coffee table. “Things okay with you and Zee?” Roy adds, as an addendum, “And that’s cheap for some of Ollie’s shindigs, wish I was kiddin’.” He pulls a slice and places it on a plate, handing it to Mar’i with a wiggle of his eyebrows, does the same for Kyle before he rises up, “Which movie?”
Mari takes the offered plate of pizza and begins eating it in large bites, careful not to let cheese or grease drip onto her sweater.
"Lemme tell you—" Kyle starts and roughly explains the same thing he did to Mar’i about the events at the Winter Gala, ending with Zee going away and - "—here I am. With my two bestest friends. Friends are forever. Girlfriends, never. Amirite. So right." Kyle holds his hand up for a high five to Mar’i, then to Roy, then doesn’t seem bothered when it’s not returned by either. Using his ring, he summons a Coke from the table, cracking it open and slurping it.
"And if I’m not part of her world and if she’s not part of mine then…that’s all there is to it? The relationship just sorta stops short right there, Mar’i. And what’s the point of that? I’m not in it for stunted relationships. I’m in it to make it work. I want growth, baby. And not just the in-my-pants growth, I want like, full-on flowers blossoming rose bush taking over the garden kinda growth." He slurps his Coke again, trying to suck off the little dregs caught in the gutter. "An’ I figure she wants that too, or she wouldn’t dress me up and take me to these rico shindigs."
Roy puts in the war drama, for good measure, and walks over to grab himself and Mar’i and coke, also a bag of popcorn, before he settles back down to grab his own slice. He listens to Kyle, making the right attentive noises at the right parts, and doesn’t stop his eyebrows when they lift over his brow at the fact that Zee has gone off. Eating and chewing slowly, he glances over at Mar’i, reaching out his free—grease-free, too—hand for hers as he listens.
"That’s not what I mean," Mar’i grunts with a mouthful of pizza as she whomps Kyle’s arm softly. "I mean like, there’s a separate circle for the relationship, and that’s the circle you work on. It’s not always a Venn diagram. I’m not saying that you should just stop going to fancy galas or whatever, just that you shouldn’t expect to fit in or to be happy there just because you love Zee. Or, hell, that she’ll perceive you as fitting in or being happy, even.”
"Oh," Kyle says passionately, as he gazes up at Mar’i. "It’s always a Venn diagram. It’s a thick - thickly layered diagram of Venn. Not like…thick enough to be co-dependent but still…thick. Giving. Like…round….and /firm/," Kyle emphasizes the word with gusto. He is frowning in deep concentration as his hands paint some sort of curvaceous shape in the air above where he’s sprawled out.
"Strong and, like, opening petals….a beautiful ample oval with little pointed pink tips on either end. A generous, growing pulsating oval of love and incorporation…." Kyle drifts off, then turns his head slightly and sniffs curiously at Mar’i’s leg. "You smell real nice. Is it - ? Is that your new shower gel? I saw you got a new shower gel. S’nice! It’s so nice."
Roy pulls his hand back from where it had rested near Mar’i, and reaches for the remote, moving through the previews to get to the main menu, setting the captions on and lowering the volume, before setting it to play. He takes another bite of his pizza and looks over at Kyle. “Did she say when she was going to be back?” Watches as Kyle sniffs Mar’i’s leg, and grins at the two of them. “Like a bunchacats.” He finishes his slice in a few more bites, before opening the popcorn.
Mari gives Kyle a dry look for the innuendo in all that, not sure of whether or not he actually means it that way, and returns to her pizza. She hauls the box closer, taking another slice of the mushroom pizza. “You want I should grab your sketchbook? It’s rose and lavender. My shower gel, I mean.” She glances over at Roy, snorting. “The only two cats in this house are both girls, thank you very much.”
Roy grins at Mar’i, and munches on his popcorn, taking sips of his Coke as he looks over at Kyle, waiting to hear more on the Zee sitch as he contemplates another slice of pizza.
"I can be a cat…" Kyle protests mildly, quieting for a moment while he watches with some interest as Jake Gyllenhaal gets trounced by Jaime Foxx on the TV. He eventually turns back onto his stomach, laying flatter in his niche between Mar’i and the couch so he can look at both Mar’i and Roy. "She didn’t say." Kyle muses this for a moment. "But if she stays away long, Miss Meow is gonna steal my soul, according to Zee’s mother, soooooo yeah let’s hope Zee returns soonish. Ayyyyyyyy…." Kyle raises his torso up more so he can cover his face with his hands. "What is my life."
He peeks through his fingers, looking at Roy. “How’d you get through it? Alla that…rich lifestyle?” Then, he looks curiously at Mar’i. “And…you too, I’m guessing? I’m guessing you were exposed to the, ah, Wayne lifestyle.”
Mari blinks and looks up at the cat, holding up a flattened palm. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. The cat is going to steal your soul if Zee doesn’t keep reading the diaries? That’s the leverage it has on you???”
Roy looks over at Kyle, eyebrows rising high.
Kyle pulls his fingers down his face, giving him a hangdog look. Especially with the slightly bloodshot eyes looking from Roy to Mar’i. “I. Oh. I forgot to mention that part? What did Mommy Dearest tell me… Something how Miss Meow will enter my soul and diminish my spirit both mentally and physically. Something like that. Magic, I’m telling you. Magic!”
Roy sucks up a mouthful of coke. “And there’s no way you can.. I mean, I’m sure she’s gonna be back before that, but is there like a.. magic contingency plan Zee came up with before she skedaddled?”
Mari sits up violently. “SKIN THE CAT, THEN, OH MY GOD!” she shrieks, then pauses a moment and eats the rest of the pizza crust in her hand at double-speed.
Kyle scrambles up as well, sitting back on the back of his heels on the couch. “No, no we can’t skin the cat! And do’t say it so loud, she’ll hear it might…hurt her feelings or something! I’m the contingency plan! I mean, I’m the one who’s supposed to make sure Zee is here, reading her mother’s diaries. If I don’t, /then/ Miss Meow tortures my soul. And if Zee doesn’t come back soon then…” Kyle rubs his mouth. “Then I guess I’m just gonna hafta go fetch her myself.” He looks at Roy, eyebrows raised so high they look like they’ll disappear into his hair and Mar’i looking like she’s on the verge of googling ‘how to skin cat’.
Kyle sits back on his haunches even more and spreads his hands out. “Guys - in all honesty, tell me something, honestly: if I was - pretend my tux was like with the bowtie and the jacket and everything. Would I look…do you think I look good? Like. Like…good in a tux? Not like an idiota?”
Mari settles back, not necessarily deadset on skinning Miss Meow but certainly not taking it off the table if things go awry, as horrible as it would be. Bros before magical soul-eating cats, after all. She quirks an eyebrow at Kyle’s question, before she snorts. “Of course you’d look good in the full ensemble. You look good now, in that sort of messy rich boy way.” She leans over to ruffle the front of his hair a little, pushing it back so that it lays voluminously back to one side. “Has no one ever told you that you look good in a tux?”
Roy grins at Kyle. “Yeah, like one of those tux models, in fact.” He glances down at his phone, reading his messages, before he rises up and clears his space. “Lian’s got the last part of her winter project to complete, so I’m gonna head out. Enjoy the pizza and uh.. keep me updated on the spiritual evil cat thing?”
"No, no no, stay! Lian’s got five thousand people to help with her winter project. You need to help with Project Rayner," Kyle pleads. He leans into Mar’i’s grooming, enjoying the feel. "Keep telling me I look like a model. Check it—" Kyle makes a Blue Steel face. "Right? And we can laugh over the word ‘cummerbund’, I mean. What /is/ that word? Right? And no - I mean - Zee tells me all the time that I look great in a tux, that’s why she always puts me in one, but it’s just…I just…I dunno." Kyle settles back, taking hold of Mar’i’s hand as he looks over at Roy. "You guys’d both look great in tuxes, honestly."
Roy’s grin remains, even as he kisses Mar’i’s cheeks, smoothing his hand over Kyle’s hair. “Daddy duty calls!”
Kyle also accepts the hair-smoothing (since his pomade has gone awry) and watches Roy leave, before looking back at Mar’i. “Huhuhu. ‘Cummerbund’.”
"Of course I’d look good in a tux," Mar’i snorts, sinking back into her resting place once Roy leaves. "Cummerbund," she repeats, reaching for another piece of pizza. "Kinda funny of him to bring a bunch of food and a movie and then to leave," she muses, stretching her fingers until she finds the edge of the box and then slowly, carefully pulling it back towards her. "It’s just what though? Why’d you ask?"
Kyle drinks some of his Coke. “Ahhh you know Roy. Literally a Ranger - always ranging and roaming, in and then out, never stays for too long in one place.” He is in the middle of reaching for pizza, when he pauses, realizing through his tipsy haze what he’d just said. He looks sidelong and wide-eyed at Mar’i, still paused. “Uh. With his friends, I mean. He’s a rangy kinda friend. I’m used to it by now, as a friend of his.”
Mari retrieves the desired slice of pizza and begins eating it. “Uhh, okay. Weird clarification there. And answer the question, Kyle Rayner.” She gives Kyle the significant roommate look.
Kyle sits back, dragging a slice with him. He doesn’t really eat it though, and just sort of picks at it. “Okay, as long as you know that…okay. Anyway. The question. I just mean, like. It’s just, it’s Zee. She wants me to look great and so that’s what she sees, but. Sometimes I wonder if other people think I look as ridiculous as I feel getting all dressed up in clothes more expensive that some of my paycheques. Zee said that - she said she cared a lot about what other people think. And I know the high-minded thing to say is that no one should ever care about what anyone else ever thinks, ever. And that like, fuck ‘em and fuck other people’s opinions and you go girl and all that but…”
Kyle rests his slice on his napkin and looks at Mar’i. “That’s not realistic, is it? No, of course not. I care what other people think, too. I sometimes care what strangers think of me. Call me irrational or low-minded or shallow, but I do, so. I get it. I get why she got angry at me. Just because I didn’t give a damn about what /those/ people thought of me, doesn’t mean she shouldn’t.”
Mari shakes her head. “I’m not gonna call you irrational about that,” she agrees, washing down the pizza with a large gulp of champagne. “You know why I had to get out of San Fran. But…” Mar’i cocks her head to the side, no longer even pretending to watch the movie now playing on their television. “But I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough importance in this situation, you know? Yes, of course there’s nothing wrong with her wanting you to keep up appearances around her crew, but only up until the point at which you are punished for not doing so or seeming to not do so in her opinion, or whatever the exact situation was.”
"Yeah." Kyle twiddles his fingers on his lap. "Well, maybe I was right to be angry at her being angry at me, but. I wasn’t right to be all Sarcasmo at her. That’s…because that’s what my villain name would be, if I was a villain…" Kyle says though huffing laughter as he looks over at Mar’i. "Beware Sarcasmo…! And then as Sarcasmo I’d be like ‘Oh yeah right, /beware/’…and then I’d roll my eyes sarcastically. Heh…anyway. Uh. Anyway. All I want now is for Zee to come back and then we can yell a lot and then apologize a lot and then have really loud sex in a place where no one who matters can hear us. I can ‘whoop’ it up all I want while she rides…the disco stick."
Mari rolls her eyes at the mention of the disco stick, accompanying it with a high-pitched snort as she picks hardened pizza cheese off the inside of the box and eats it. “It’s just that simple for you, huh? You two have a fight, over something like this related to sides of yourselves that you can’t—and don’t want to, I’d guess—change, and she leaves, and you’re still ready to move right along in the relationship?” Mar’i chews quietly for a moment. “Must be nice.”
"I’m in it to win it." Kyle confirms, taking a big bite of pizza before immediately saying, "Sorry, I got no business using sports slogans. I just." Kyle looks over at Mar’i. "Relationshipping inn’t easy for anyone, I don’t think. Frankly, I don’t think it /should/ be easy. As much as me and Zee disagree and argue and get…really freaking pissed off at each other sometimes, I wouldn’t want it any other way." Kyle looks at Mar’i for a long time, chewing slowly. "But I get that sometimes it’s also hard to know when to let go, too. I’m tenacious as hell, but. I’ve been told I was delusional for trying to make things work…hoping we can keep going and all that. If that happens with me and Zee, if one day she tells me to take a hike then…"
Kyle thinks and then concedes with himself, “Okay I’d be freaking crushed, but. I’ve been through it before. Heartbroken, people falling outta love with me. Alla that. I’m rambling. I’m just hungover. Don’t mind me.”
"No," Mar’i answers, shoving more pizza into her face. "Keep ranting. I’m beginning to like when you rant."
"Boy, well I was born a rambling maynnnnn," Kyle sing-songs in an abrasive country twang at Mar’i, leaning close to her.
"I will shove you off this couch," Mar’i warns.
Kyle looks shocked. “You’d push me, a man in desperate need of love and friendly comfort, offa our /sharing/ couch? While wearing your official MaLe sweater, no less??”
Mari nods stoutly. “If you keep singing at that pitch, I definitely will. I will break the bonds of friendship before I will be bested in a caterwauling contest.” Nevertheless, she puts the pizza box on the coffee table and snuggles down on the couch, wrapping her arms around Kyle’s neck as she nestles into the side couch cushion. “Keep ranting,” she requests again.
Kyle doesn’t really complain about the settling down, looping his arms around Mar’i as well. And he does enjoy being so pillowed on her chest, which he informs her of. “But I dunno what else to rant about, really. But can I ask you something? Bringing up the whole - I mean, when I asked you and Roy about experiencing the rich life, you know, like. When you were growing up. Was that tacky? Like was that a trailer park thing of me to ask? Because I did live in a trailer park once, you know. That was a great year, I thought living in a trailer was the coolest.” Kyle squints up at Mar’i. “But wassat like. Haute couture? No wait, wait no. I mean faux pas. Wassat a faux pas?”
Mari shrugs lightly. “It wasn’t to me. But I don’t know how Roy took it. I don’t know how he takes anything, to be completely honest. But it wasn’t to me.” She nestles her face into the top of Kyle’s head for a moment, then mumbles, “I didn’t answer that question, did I?” If he can’t understand, Mar’i trusts that his ring will understand for him. “My dad liked the ol’ chap portion of it, not the glitter and glitz side. By the time I got old enough to party, we didn’t want to have rich kid parties. So I didn’t have to deal with that much.”
"Oh good. If anything I figure Roy just tries his best not to answer questions, heh. Slippery like an eel." He pulls idly at some of her sweater wool on Mar’i’s shoulder as he absorbs her experience. "Glitter and glitz and rich kids parties. And yeah, I mean. I guess things like wealth and class would’ve been kinda different for you, in that world growing up. I never really thought about all of that, till now. Until Zee. Y’know…I still think about that whole…well I know it fell through because of crazy stuff, but. I still think about that whole idea you guys had. You being Zee’s magical assistant on her tour." Kyle debates internally with himself for a moment, but allows the last vestiges of alcohol in his system to keep him confessing,
"Well and by ‘I still think’ I mean sometimes ‘I still fantasize’. Sometimes. Just…just to be above board here."
Mari hums against Kyle’s hair. “Yeah, that was before about eight hundred crazy magical and alien things happened, wasn’t it? X’Hal, that all feels like so long ago.” She snorts, mussing up a tuft of dark hair, then elbows Kyle in the side lightly. “Fantasize, huh?”
"Yyyyyeah…" Kyle grins, finally relaxing enough to raise his legs enough so he can toe off his shoes. He’s so glad the couch they got was one that easily fit two prone people. "I know this is the point where I should say ‘oh but now you’re like mi hermana’ and all that, but…you’re really not. You’re my friend, yeah, but you’re like. My hella sexy friend. Not that I wanna get perverted with you or anything, I’m just really aware of you being very…oh jesus." Kyle shuts his eyes tightly, grinning more and half-laughing. "I’mma sooooooo gonna regret this in the morning. It’s drunk-talk, just remember that, Mar’i Son."
Mari chuckles lightly at Kyle’s continuing drunken roundabout. “Okay, I’ll remember,” she sing-songs teasingly. “And yeah, don’t call me your sister. That’d definitely be creepy.”
Kyle squeezes Mar’i in a pretend-threatening way. “You bastard!” He relaxes his grip and burrows vigorously for a while against the couch and Mar’i. “Mmmmkay, as the sweaters say. More talk later. Sleeps.” He raises his head to look up at her with tired-hooded eyes. “Thanks, amiga. I needed…yeah. Just thanks.”
Mari is wearing her totally awesome roommate sweater but seems to have forgotten pants as she and Miss Meow cuddle on the couch with a massive bottle of champagne. In front of her, the television plays the episode of Friends where Ross screeches ‘PIVOT! PIVOT!’
Kyle is still sorta buzzed when he gets home, enough to be self-centered and needy. So he shuffles around till he finds Mar’i, not really caring whether or not she is asleep because, he’s gonna wake her up. “Mar’iiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee,” he wheedles, voice echoing in the hallway. He flops onto the couch face first next to Mar’i, still in his tux. Or, well, partial tux. Mostly just the shirt and pants; the tie and cummerbund have been long lost. “Frggmhhtthsdlsewugh,” he says into the cushion. Miss Meow stares at him and this hisses.
Mari isn’t quite asleep, but still jumps when Kyle whines down the hallway. “NEEEEEEEEHHHHH—” Mar’i replies in sleepy Korean, before she cranes herself to the side, watching him enter the living room and proceed towards the communal couch, burying himself into the cushions. It takes her a second to register his clothes and position, before she repeats: “Neh? Did you have one too many highballs?”
Kyle remains in place until Miss Meow decants from the couch, tail high as she walks out of the living room. Kyle worm-wiggles himself up to prop himself up on his elbows, looking up at Mar’i. “Aww Mar’i. Were you asleep? Awwww…” he sounds all sympathetic, like he wasn’t the one who woke her up. He smiles, shifting his weight so he can pat Mar’i’s thigh. “Lookat you, look how cute you are. You shoulda gone to the gala, man! You woulda - ” Kyle stops short and blinks, his eyes flashing momentarily bright green. “Wait. What? ‘I’m away’? ‘I’m away’???! Wha- what the - what the hell is that supposed to mean??”
Mari stares at Kyle blankly for a moment before she gets up and fetches a glass of water from the kitchen. “Don’t drop this, the plastic cups are all dirty,” she instructs as she settles back down on the couch a moment later, pushing the cup into Kyle’s hand. “I saw some of the press stuff on the TV. Looked reallllll Gatsby-like. The Leo one, not Robert Redford, of course.” She frowns at him and tilts her head slightly. “I’m away?”
Kyle rolls off his stomach, crawling himself into a sitting-up position. The cup of water only sloshes slightly once he’s upright, and he drinks deeply from it. “Gracias,” he says thickly, then watches as Mar’i crosses over him to sit back down, before setting his gaze on his glass. “Zee. It was her gala. And…we got into a fight, and she left the party to god knows where and - and - now she’s just texted me to say ‘she’s away’.” Kyle raises one hand to use air quotes. “And okay - maybe, just maybe I drank a little too much. Maybe I got a little rowdy at her fancy-schmancy hoity-toity upper-class richie rich gala business and…maybe I’m just…maybe…” Kyle tugs at his open collar, then looks down at his cuffs. He lost the expensive cufflinks that Zee got him, and now the cuffs are like white fans around his wrists. Kyle sighs slowly.
"Rowdy?" Mar’i repeats, quirking an eyebrow and pushing a stray chunk of hair away from her eyes. "Did you get into a fist-fight with someone?" She pushes her mouth to the side, settling back against the arm of the couch and swinging her legs up onto the cushions. "Well, maybe that’s good? Give you guys some time to cool down?"
Kyle shakes his head, fully settling into his tipsy misery. “We were fooling around in one of the backrooms, me and Zee.” He looks up at Mar’i, blinking slowly. “Give us time to cool down? You think that’s it? That’s…incredibly sensible. Sure. Time to cool down, yeah. Let’s go with that. That’s the smart thing.”
Mari squints a little, still confused. “You got rowdy…while you were fooling around? Like, rough?” It’s obvious she’s trying not to assume what it sounds like he’s saying in his drunken state. “Well, if it’s not a chance to cool off, which—” Mar’i levels a glance at Kyle, “—it doesn’t sound like you believe that, then what is it? A punishment?”
"No - well yeah but she - argh it’s so -" Kyle rubs his face, but when he looks up at Mar’i, she is peering back at him with that frowny look, so. He finishes the rest of his water and tries to make more sense. "No, we were - were you know, messing around in the back just like. A brief interlude, if you will, from the party." Kyle adjusts, sitting up more as he struggles to sound coherent. To the point where it sounds like he’s trying to put on a British accent.
"Just an intimate encounter, you know how it is. And well I…" Kyle looks over at Mar’i, clearly sheepish. "I whooped. You know, like…" Kyle pumps his fist in the air and does some manner of ‘sexy’ cheer. "Like that, but, like, louder. Zee was totally turned off and told me so and went off on how hard she worked for this gala and how I was - how she didn’t wanna be…embarrassed…and then it all just went downhill from there. I got pissed off - just literally just hopped off the disco stick like halfway through, Mar’i! - and put on a new dress and left. She just…she left me there, at her gala. She just, I was just that much of, and she, she - she, she she - " Kyle starts to sound like a broken record as he casts about, trying to complete the sentence.
Mari ’s frown fades quickly, and she leans over, patting Kyle on the shoulder gently. “We are totally going to have a good laugh over ‘disco stick’ in a little while, but X’Hal, Kyle, that’s really awful. I’m sorry. Was it out of the blue or had she seemed aggravated beforehand?”
Kyle eyes get wide and earnest as he opens his hands out, sitting up more to face Mar’i. “No! No that’s the thing!! She was like a hundred percent into it! All getting all ‘yeah, get in there’ and ‘you know you want it’ and I was like ‘oh yeah I totally want all of it’ - because that’s how we talk during sex - er. During drunk sex. And. And then I was all ‘woohoooo’ and she was just like ‘Kyle you peasant, what will my rich friends and the catering staff and all the people I worked so hard to impress think?!’ and I was like ‘wahhh wah god it’s hard to not be hard anymore, thanks Obama’. Except not Obama. You know. More like ‘thanks Zee’.” Kyle quiets, then adds, in a slightly hopeful way. “I don’t - fantasize - about the President, like that. Just. It was more a figure of speech. So you know.”
Mari makes a soft shushing noise at Kyle as he continues on about the admittedly old-dude-fine president. “Did she…I mean, was that the actual content of what she was saying?” She leans back, rubbing her cheeks. “X’Hal. That’s…” Mar’i twists her mouth. “I know she’s your eternal love, and my friend, but that was kinda shitty of her. Kinda massively shitty. I mean, not the calling off the sex thing, of course. The sentiment.”
Kyle is quiet for a long while, nabbing the glass off the coffee table to drain it, before setting it back down. Then he says, in a gravelly soft voice, “Eternal love? That’s…very eternal.” He sits back, curving his hand like a globe. “When I think eternal, I think, like. Eternity. That’s like…like the world spinning. Like an eternal globe…that’s like heaven. Or hell. Both, I suppose. Eternal…love. I guess with love in there, it’d be heaven then. I suppose.” He squints at Mar’i, heaving a watery breath. “Love can’t be…hell. Can it?”
Mari lets out a derisive little scoff and takes a long sip from the champagne bottle. “Love can definitely be hell. That’s way so many people convince themselves things will work out in relationships where things really are not going to work out, or where one or both of the partners is going to be miserable.” She snuggles down further on the couch, scooching against the back cushions and patting the sliver of couch beside her for Kyle to lay down as well. “That’s probably where so many people get tripped up. Equating love with only the positive.”
Roy knocks on the door of the MaLe apartment with a big canvas bag in both hands.
Kyle immediately takes her cue and scoots in to wedge himself into the bit of couch and lean on Mar’i. “So you’re saying maybe if we know love is heaven and hell, maybe love can actually work?” He mulls it over for a bit, taking a hold of one of Mar’i’s warm hands and wiggling each of the knuckles on her fingers in succession. “But Zee’s right, you know. She doesn’t think I’m a peasant, but. I don’t…fit in her world. I try - I try on an earnest level, I try on an ironic level, I try it as kitsch, I try it as reality, I try it as an outsider, as a spectator, as a participator, as a himbo, as a artisan…but all I am is a poor half-latino kid from North Hollywood, in the end. Who gets drunk and hollers way too loud during backroom sex. Ay dios, oy vey.”
When he hears the knock, his ring identifies Roy and so he yells out. “Door’s open, come on in!” Kyle looks up at Mar’i. “It’s just Roy.”
Roy enters the apartment, and begins to unload what he’s purchased on the countertop: an extra large pizza, boxes of different kinds of popcorn, bags of a few different kind of potato chips and a six pack of Coca Cola. He walks over to Kyle and Mar’i, and, clapping a hand against Kyle’s shoulder, leans over and kisses Mar’i’s cheek, fanning out a stack of Redox discs in hand like playing cards.
"So maybe," Mar’i shrugs, wiggling her toes against Kyle’s dress shoes, "you should stop trying? You don’t have to be part of her world any more than she has to be part of yours. Do you want to be, or does she want you to be?" She looks up at the knock, blinking as she looks up at the clock. When Roy enters and lays out the goods, she raises up onto her elbows and surveys the scene. "Just Roy and like, a shit ton of pizza and snacks," she murmurs, eyeing the box marked as ‘mushroom.’
Kyle makes a sweeping, scooping motion from his comfortable ensconced place between the couch and Mar’i’s bare thigh. “C’mon down, c’mon down,” he says to Roy with a crooked smile. “We’re just discussing love, in all its forms and facets. Mostly about love being hell and heaven.” Kyle tilts his head to look up at Mar’i, then back at Roy. “Mostly my love. Not your guyses or ‘nything. Did you know that the champagne Zee and your father bought for that gala that neither of you showed up to - did you know it cost, like, $200 a bottle? I’m wasted on like, $1000 worth of booze. I literally got money running through my veins right now.”
Kyle raises one of his shiny patent black shoes and taps one of the movies fanned out in Roy’s hand. “Put it in,” he says, and then bursts out laughing.
Roy snickers, and chuckles as he settles down on the love seat next to the couch. “Funny, I got a combo of love and hell right here—” He gestures at the romantic comedies, comedic romances, buddy flick, war drama. He catches Mar’i’s gaze and rises up to grab the pizza and some plates, coming back to set it on the coffee table. “Things okay with you and Zee?” Roy adds, as an addendum, “And that’s cheap for some of Ollie’s shindigs, wish I was kiddin’.” He pulls a slice and places it on a plate, handing it to Mar’i with a wiggle of his eyebrows, does the same for Kyle before he rises up, “Which movie?”
Mari takes the offered plate of pizza and begins eating it in large bites, careful not to let cheese or grease drip onto her sweater.
"Lemme tell you—" Kyle starts and roughly explains the same thing he did to Mar’i about the events at the Winter Gala, ending with Zee going away and - "—here I am. With my two bestest friends. Friends are forever. Girlfriends, never. Amirite. So right." Kyle holds his hand up for a high five to Mar’i, then to Roy, then doesn’t seem bothered when it’s not returned by either. Using his ring, he summons a Coke from the table, cracking it open and slurping it.
"And if I’m not part of her world and if she’s not part of mine then…that’s all there is to it? The relationship just sorta stops short right there, Mar’i. And what’s the point of that? I’m not in it for stunted relationships. I’m in it to make it work. I want growth, baby. And not just the in-my-pants growth, I want like, full-on flowers blossoming rose bush taking over the garden kinda growth." He slurps his Coke again, trying to suck off the little dregs caught in the gutter. "An’ I figure she wants that too, or she wouldn’t dress me up and take me to these rico shindigs."
Roy puts in the war drama, for good measure, and walks over to grab himself and Mar’i and coke, also a bag of popcorn, before he settles back down to grab his own slice. He listens to Kyle, making the right attentive noises at the right parts, and doesn’t stop his eyebrows when they lift over his brow at the fact that Zee has gone off. Eating and chewing slowly, he glances over at Mar’i, reaching out his free—grease-free, too—hand for hers as he listens.
"That’s not what I mean," Mar’i grunts with a mouthful of pizza as she whomps Kyle’s arm softly. "I mean like, there’s a separate circle for the relationship, and that’s the circle you work on. It’s not always a Venn diagram. I’m not saying that you should just stop going to fancy galas or whatever, just that you shouldn’t expect to fit in or to be happy there just because you love Zee. Or, hell, that she’ll perceive you as fitting in or being happy, even.”
"Oh," Kyle says passionately, as he gazes up at Mar’i. "It’s always a Venn diagram. It’s a thick - thickly layered diagram of Venn. Not like…thick enough to be co-dependent but still…thick. Giving. Like…round….and /firm/," Kyle emphasizes the word with gusto. He is frowning in deep concentration as his hands paint some sort of curvaceous shape in the air above where he’s sprawled out.
"Strong and, like, opening petals….a beautiful ample oval with little pointed pink tips on either end. A generous, growing pulsating oval of love and incorporation…." Kyle drifts off, then turns his head slightly and sniffs curiously at Mar’i’s leg. "You smell real nice. Is it - ? Is that your new shower gel? I saw you got a new shower gel. S’nice! It’s so nice."
Roy pulls his hand back from where it had rested near Mar’i, and reaches for the remote, moving through the previews to get to the main menu, setting the captions on and lowering the volume, before setting it to play. He takes another bite of his pizza and looks over at Kyle. “Did she say when she was going to be back?” Watches as Kyle sniffs Mar’i’s leg, and grins at the two of them. “Like a bunchacats.” He finishes his slice in a few more bites, before opening the popcorn.
Mari gives Kyle a dry look for the innuendo in all that, not sure of whether or not he actually means it that way, and returns to her pizza. She hauls the box closer, taking another slice of the mushroom pizza. “You want I should grab your sketchbook? It’s rose and lavender. My shower gel, I mean.” She glances over at Roy, snorting. “The only two cats in this house are both girls, thank you very much.”
Roy grins at Mar’i, and munches on his popcorn, taking sips of his Coke as he looks over at Kyle, waiting to hear more on the Zee sitch as he contemplates another slice of pizza.
"I can be a cat…" Kyle protests mildly, quieting for a moment while he watches with some interest as Jake Gyllenhaal gets trounced by Jaime Foxx on the TV. He eventually turns back onto his stomach, laying flatter in his niche between Mar’i and the couch so he can look at both Mar’i and Roy. "She didn’t say." Kyle muses this for a moment. "But if she stays away long, Miss Meow is gonna steal my soul, according to Zee’s mother, soooooo yeah let’s hope Zee returns soonish. Ayyyyyyyy…." Kyle raises his torso up more so he can cover his face with his hands. "What is my life."
He peeks through his fingers, looking at Roy. “How’d you get through it? Alla that…rich lifestyle?” Then, he looks curiously at Mar’i. “And…you too, I’m guessing? I’m guessing you were exposed to the, ah, Wayne lifestyle.”
Mari blinks and looks up at the cat, holding up a flattened palm. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. The cat is going to steal your soul if Zee doesn’t keep reading the diaries? That’s the leverage it has on you???”
Roy looks over at Kyle, eyebrows rising high.
Kyle pulls his fingers down his face, giving him a hangdog look. Especially with the slightly bloodshot eyes looking from Roy to Mar’i. “I. Oh. I forgot to mention that part? What did Mommy Dearest tell me… Something how Miss Meow will enter my soul and diminish my spirit both mentally and physically. Something like that. Magic, I’m telling you. Magic!”
Roy sucks up a mouthful of coke. “And there’s no way you can.. I mean, I’m sure she’s gonna be back before that, but is there like a.. magic contingency plan Zee came up with before she skedaddled?”
Mari sits up violently. “SKIN THE CAT, THEN, OH MY GOD!” she shrieks, then pauses a moment and eats the rest of the pizza crust in her hand at double-speed.
Kyle scrambles up as well, sitting back on the back of his heels on the couch. “No, no we can’t skin the cat! And do’t say it so loud, she’ll hear it might…hurt her feelings or something! I’m the contingency plan! I mean, I’m the one who’s supposed to make sure Zee is here, reading her mother’s diaries. If I don’t, /then/ Miss Meow tortures my soul. And if Zee doesn’t come back soon then…” Kyle rubs his mouth. “Then I guess I’m just gonna hafta go fetch her myself.” He looks at Roy, eyebrows raised so high they look like they’ll disappear into his hair and Mar’i looking like she’s on the verge of googling ‘how to skin cat’.
Kyle sits back on his haunches even more and spreads his hands out. “Guys - in all honesty, tell me something, honestly: if I was - pretend my tux was like with the bowtie and the jacket and everything. Would I look…do you think I look good? Like. Like…good in a tux? Not like an idiota?”
Mari settles back, not necessarily deadset on skinning Miss Meow but certainly not taking it off the table if things go awry, as horrible as it would be. Bros before magical soul-eating cats, after all. She quirks an eyebrow at Kyle’s question, before she snorts. “Of course you’d look good in the full ensemble. You look good now, in that sort of messy rich boy way.” She leans over to ruffle the front of his hair a little, pushing it back so that it lays voluminously back to one side. “Has no one ever told you that you look good in a tux?”
Roy grins at Kyle. “Yeah, like one of those tux models, in fact.” He glances down at his phone, reading his messages, before he rises up and clears his space. “Lian’s got the last part of her winter project to complete, so I’m gonna head out. Enjoy the pizza and uh.. keep me updated on the spiritual evil cat thing?”
"No, no no, stay! Lian’s got five thousand people to help with her winter project. You need to help with Project Rayner," Kyle pleads. He leans into Mar’i’s grooming, enjoying the feel. "Keep telling me I look like a model. Check it—" Kyle makes a Blue Steel face. "Right? And we can laugh over the word ‘cummerbund’, I mean. What /is/ that word? Right? And no - I mean - Zee tells me all the time that I look great in a tux, that’s why she always puts me in one, but it’s just…I just…I dunno." Kyle settles back, taking hold of Mar’i’s hand as he looks over at Roy. "You guys’d both look great in tuxes, honestly."
Roy’s grin remains, even as he kisses Mar’i’s cheeks, smoothing his hand over Kyle’s hair. “Daddy duty calls!”
Kyle also accepts the hair-smoothing (since his pomade has gone awry) and watches Roy leave, before looking back at Mar’i. “Huhuhu. ‘Cummerbund’.”
"Of course I’d look good in a tux," Mar’i snorts, sinking back into her resting place once Roy leaves. "Cummerbund," she repeats, reaching for another piece of pizza. "Kinda funny of him to bring a bunch of food and a movie and then to leave," she muses, stretching her fingers until she finds the edge of the box and then slowly, carefully pulling it back towards her. "It’s just what though? Why’d you ask?"
Kyle drinks some of his Coke. “Ahhh you know Roy. Literally a Ranger - always ranging and roaming, in and then out, never stays for too long in one place.” He is in the middle of reaching for pizza, when he pauses, realizing through his tipsy haze what he’d just said. He looks sidelong and wide-eyed at Mar’i, still paused. “Uh. With his friends, I mean. He’s a rangy kinda friend. I’m used to it by now, as a friend of his.”
Mari retrieves the desired slice of pizza and begins eating it. “Uhh, okay. Weird clarification there. And answer the question, Kyle Rayner.” She gives Kyle the significant roommate look.
Kyle sits back, dragging a slice with him. He doesn’t really eat it though, and just sort of picks at it. “Okay, as long as you know that…okay. Anyway. The question. I just mean, like. It’s just, it’s Zee. She wants me to look great and so that’s what she sees, but. Sometimes I wonder if other people think I look as ridiculous as I feel getting all dressed up in clothes more expensive that some of my paycheques. Zee said that - she said she cared a lot about what other people think. And I know the high-minded thing to say is that no one should ever care about what anyone else ever thinks, ever. And that like, fuck ‘em and fuck other people’s opinions and you go girl and all that but…”
Kyle rests his slice on his napkin and looks at Mar’i. “That’s not realistic, is it? No, of course not. I care what other people think, too. I sometimes care what strangers think of me. Call me irrational or low-minded or shallow, but I do, so. I get it. I get why she got angry at me. Just because I didn’t give a damn about what /those/ people thought of me, doesn’t mean she shouldn’t.”
Mari shakes her head. “I’m not gonna call you irrational about that,” she agrees, washing down the pizza with a large gulp of champagne. “You know why I had to get out of San Fran. But…” Mar’i cocks her head to the side, no longer even pretending to watch the movie now playing on their television. “But I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough importance in this situation, you know? Yes, of course there’s nothing wrong with her wanting you to keep up appearances around her crew, but only up until the point at which you are punished for not doing so or seeming to not do so in her opinion, or whatever the exact situation was.”
"Yeah." Kyle twiddles his fingers on his lap. "Well, maybe I was right to be angry at her being angry at me, but. I wasn’t right to be all Sarcasmo at her. That’s…because that’s what my villain name would be, if I was a villain…" Kyle says though huffing laughter as he looks over at Mar’i. "Beware Sarcasmo…! And then as Sarcasmo I’d be like ‘Oh yeah right, /beware/’…and then I’d roll my eyes sarcastically. Heh…anyway. Uh. Anyway. All I want now is for Zee to come back and then we can yell a lot and then apologize a lot and then have really loud sex in a place where no one who matters can hear us. I can ‘whoop’ it up all I want while she rides…the disco stick."
Mari rolls her eyes at the mention of the disco stick, accompanying it with a high-pitched snort as she picks hardened pizza cheese off the inside of the box and eats it. “It’s just that simple for you, huh? You two have a fight, over something like this related to sides of yourselves that you can’t—and don’t want to, I’d guess—change, and she leaves, and you’re still ready to move right along in the relationship?” Mar’i chews quietly for a moment. “Must be nice.”
"I’m in it to win it." Kyle confirms, taking a big bite of pizza before immediately saying, "Sorry, I got no business using sports slogans. I just." Kyle looks over at Mar’i. "Relationshipping inn’t easy for anyone, I don’t think. Frankly, I don’t think it /should/ be easy. As much as me and Zee disagree and argue and get…really freaking pissed off at each other sometimes, I wouldn’t want it any other way." Kyle looks at Mar’i for a long time, chewing slowly. "But I get that sometimes it’s also hard to know when to let go, too. I’m tenacious as hell, but. I’ve been told I was delusional for trying to make things work…hoping we can keep going and all that. If that happens with me and Zee, if one day she tells me to take a hike then…"
Kyle thinks and then concedes with himself, “Okay I’d be freaking crushed, but. I’ve been through it before. Heartbroken, people falling outta love with me. Alla that. I’m rambling. I’m just hungover. Don’t mind me.”
"No," Mar’i answers, shoving more pizza into her face. "Keep ranting. I’m beginning to like when you rant."
"Boy, well I was born a rambling maynnnnn," Kyle sing-songs in an abrasive country twang at Mar’i, leaning close to her.
"I will shove you off this couch," Mar’i warns.
Kyle looks shocked. “You’d push me, a man in desperate need of love and friendly comfort, offa our /sharing/ couch? While wearing your official MaLe sweater, no less??”
Mari nods stoutly. “If you keep singing at that pitch, I definitely will. I will break the bonds of friendship before I will be bested in a caterwauling contest.” Nevertheless, she puts the pizza box on the coffee table and snuggles down on the couch, wrapping her arms around Kyle’s neck as she nestles into the side couch cushion. “Keep ranting,” she requests again.
Kyle doesn’t really complain about the settling down, looping his arms around Mar’i as well. And he does enjoy being so pillowed on her chest, which he informs her of. “But I dunno what else to rant about, really. But can I ask you something? Bringing up the whole - I mean, when I asked you and Roy about experiencing the rich life, you know, like. When you were growing up. Was that tacky? Like was that a trailer park thing of me to ask? Because I did live in a trailer park once, you know. That was a great year, I thought living in a trailer was the coolest.” Kyle squints up at Mar’i. “But wassat like. Haute couture? No wait, wait no. I mean faux pas. Wassat a faux pas?”
Mari shrugs lightly. “It wasn’t to me. But I don’t know how Roy took it. I don’t know how he takes anything, to be completely honest. But it wasn’t to me.” She nestles her face into the top of Kyle’s head for a moment, then mumbles, “I didn’t answer that question, did I?” If he can’t understand, Mar’i trusts that his ring will understand for him. “My dad liked the ol’ chap portion of it, not the glitter and glitz side. By the time I got old enough to party, we didn’t want to have rich kid parties. So I didn’t have to deal with that much.”
"Oh good. If anything I figure Roy just tries his best not to answer questions, heh. Slippery like an eel." He pulls idly at some of her sweater wool on Mar’i’s shoulder as he absorbs her experience. "Glitter and glitz and rich kids parties. And yeah, I mean. I guess things like wealth and class would’ve been kinda different for you, in that world growing up. I never really thought about all of that, till now. Until Zee. Y’know…I still think about that whole…well I know it fell through because of crazy stuff, but. I still think about that whole idea you guys had. You being Zee’s magical assistant on her tour." Kyle debates internally with himself for a moment, but allows the last vestiges of alcohol in his system to keep him confessing,
"Well and by ‘I still think’ I mean sometimes ‘I still fantasize’. Sometimes. Just…just to be above board here."
Mari hums against Kyle’s hair. “Yeah, that was before about eight hundred crazy magical and alien things happened, wasn’t it? X’Hal, that all feels like so long ago.” She snorts, mussing up a tuft of dark hair, then elbows Kyle in the side lightly. “Fantasize, huh?”
"Yyyyyeah…" Kyle grins, finally relaxing enough to raise his legs enough so he can toe off his shoes. He’s so glad the couch they got was one that easily fit two prone people. "I know this is the point where I should say ‘oh but now you’re like mi hermana’ and all that, but…you’re really not. You’re my friend, yeah, but you’re like. My hella sexy friend. Not that I wanna get perverted with you or anything, I’m just really aware of you being very…oh jesus." Kyle shuts his eyes tightly, grinning more and half-laughing. "I’mma sooooooo gonna regret this in the morning. It’s drunk-talk, just remember that, Mar’i Son."
Mari chuckles lightly at Kyle’s continuing drunken roundabout. “Okay, I’ll remember,” she sing-songs teasingly. “And yeah, don’t call me your sister. That’d definitely be creepy.”
Kyle squeezes Mar’i in a pretend-threatening way. “You bastard!” He relaxes his grip and burrows vigorously for a while against the couch and Mar’i. “Mmmmkay, as the sweaters say. More talk later. Sleeps.” He raises his head to look up at her with tired-hooded eyes. “Thanks, amiga. I needed…yeah. Just thanks.”