ic Getting to Know You

[Avenger Assembled]

"Not every gay person has seen Rocky Horror," said Ashley, sounding vaguely annoyed. "Some people don't like musicals."

 

"Oh, don't be that way," said Judy, "Ah'm sure it's a perfectly lovely film. But if we're gonna watch that one, you have to watch Grace Unplugged with me." She figured if Mia liked comedies, she probably wouldn't like the Fault in Our Stars or I'm Not Ashamed. "Ooh, maybe we can invite Leroy over to watch that with us..." 

Ashley looked deeply disgusted, but didn't actually say no to the idea. "Long as you're chaperoned. As for me, it's, uh..." What the hell's family-friendly!? "I like Varsity Blues, I guess. I don't know, I don't go to a lot of movies." She considered for a moment, then asked, "You play any sports?" 

[Shofet]

Mia giggled. "Awesome! You won't regret it. I love movie nights and watching stuff with you guys seems like it will be a lot of fun. You're both really cool, you know that?" she said, the internally chastised herself. You couldn't just tell people they were cool. It made you sound desperate and clingy. Thankfully, Ashley had given her an out.

 

"Uh! Sports. No," she said, producing her inhaler and laying it on the table. "I have asthma, and while it's not super bad... It's enough that I didn't really like gym time all that much as a kid. Eh. Well, I like baseball enough but I need a pinch runner. Unless I can use my powers but that seems like cheating. Seems like? It is cheating. It is super cheating."

 

"What about you guys? Do you play anything?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Judy shook her head. "No, Ah'm not really one of those field hockey girls. When Ah was really little Ah thought it would be fun to ride horses in shows and stuff, but Momma said that'd be too dangerous."

 

"Not really a team player," said Ashley with a smirk. "I can bench a lot more than I look, though, and I'm a fair hand at most styles of fighting. How about you, you ever learn anything that isn't based on your powers?" 

[Shofet]

"Aw," Mia said sympathetically. "You know, it's never too late to learn. And hey, Ash, you know... If you don't like teams, there's... tennis, I guess," she said with a shrug. She didn't really know what non-team sports were out there. Never really in her zone of interest, since she couldn't really play them and her parents didn't really care about them. Her grandparents on both sides seemed to like soccer but that seemed super boring.

 

"Well, I am a musician. I can play electric guitar, bass, regular guitar, drums, and can sing. Mom and dad are musicians, so I learned from them. Got a knack for that sort of stuff, really," she said, thinking it over. "Oh, and I learned how to take apart a computer and fix it from my dad. Her runs a computer repair shop. I can do a little bit of butchery but I really don't like blood, so..."

 

"Yeah... What did you guys do for Halloween?"

[Avenger Assembled]

The two of them started slightly, and exchanged what looked like a guilty look. Ashley reached up and patted her hair, which come to think of it had turned pink the Monday after Halloween as far as Mia had been able to tell. It was Judy who finally spoke, a little sheepishly. "Ah don't really celebrate Halloween, Mia, it's not really an...appropriate holiday." She blushed slightly, then continued, "Ah mean, there are real demons and stuff out there, and if you go around dressed like one or talking about evil magic and stuff, you're just inviting that sort of thing down on your own life. Last year we did trunk or treat with the youth group, this year we just...did our own thing." 

[Shofet]

Mia stared, and then hung her head and laughed slightly. "Honestly? Before this Halloween, I would have disagreed with you, but uh..." She paused. "I'm gonna show you something and it's partially blackmail material but you're like, a perfect human being so I am going to trust that you will not use it against me and will keep Ashley in line," she said. 

 

She reached into her bag, and produced a series of photographs. Shuffling through them, she went with perhaps the most egregious one and laid it out on the table. It portrayed a much younger looker Mia, in a dinosaur costume, running away from an obscured looking blur, her eyes wide and her limbs clearly flailing.

 

"We, ah... The Orange Squad went to a haunted house this Halloween and it turned out to be evil, and used weird pocket dimension-y stuff. One of the things it did was turn us temporarily into kindergarteners, among other things. They gave us photos of our worst moments on the way out. So... Just a word of advice. If you ever get offered to go to a place called the Black House? Don't go. It sucked. It really, really sucked."

[Avenger Assembled]

"...you have something from a demon?" Judy's voice went up so loud that several people turned to stare - at least until a hard glare from Ashley made them go back to what they'd been doing. Surely this group activity couldn't last forever. "Mia, things like this are evil!" She held up the picture. "That thing could come out of here at night and whisper lies to you, or try and suck your brain and climb inside you. People need to take this kind of thing more seriously! Even a little thing can let a demon get inside you." 

 

"...excuse me?" Ashley had noticed the instructor step out to the bathroom - and the boy at the other table getting up to glare at them. Ashley and Judy didn't hang out with Owen much; his ruddy skin and faintly visible horns offering a clue to his powers. "What did you say about demons?" Ashley's face was flat and implacable as she considered what to do, even as a mortified Judy stared at the demon boy. 

 

"Ah'm sorry, Owen," she said after a moment, "Ah should have said evil demons, not-" 

 

"They're all the same to you, aren't they?" hissed the boy. "You fu-" 

 

"Sit down." Ashley wasn't getting up, but she was glaring at the tiefling teen with a laser-like intensity. "Sit down now." The two had a standoff of the eyes for a moment; and then, about the time the teacher stepped back into the room and told them five more minutes, he sat back down again. 

[Shofet]

Mia watched in horror as the scene unveiled before her, the stand-off almost happening. She had forgotten, for a moment, just how religious Judy could be. Part of her wanted to correct Judy, inform her that the house probably wasn't evil in that way but the oxygen had been sucked out of the room in such a way that she was afraid of reigniting anything, so she just dropped it. Rather than put the photo in her bag, she put it off in the pocket dimension, making a show of it to show that she was at least being careful with it. She knew people freaked out when you burned ouija boards, so she made sure to not actually just destroy it in front of everyone. 

 

After that long silence, Mia felt the need to speak up again. "I... Sorry," she said in a very quiet, small tone as though she had been personally chided. "I thought maybe you'd find it amusing, or... Something. I... I was very scared when it happened, and you know, maybe if I could get you to laugh at it, or at least a part of it, I thought that maybe it'd..."

 

She looked over at Owen, then at Judy. "Judy, you're a good person. I like you. Sorry I wasn't thinking," she said, rubbing the back of her neck. "Let's just get these questions done."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Ah'm sorry too," murmured Judy - she looked like she wanted to say something else, but she didn't push it. The two teens traded some innocous questions about their favorite fashion choices, still dancing around their little collision. Finally, it was more than Ashley could take. 

 

"...what was it like?" she asked Mia. "Growing up in an LGBT-positive household?" 

[Shofet]

Mia looked over at Ashley, and thought about her question. She didn't have to think very hard. "You don't really notice it, at first. It's just sort of normal, the... expectation that you'll be accepted no matter what... At home, anyway. Mom always had gay friends, bi friends... My godmom was trans so I understood that pretty young. They were just... accepted. It usually feel any different than any other house."

 

"But it's mostly just been normal to me. You really notice it more when you're dealing with other people. Back when I was about six, mom got fired from her waitress job at this diner because her girlfriend came in and they shared a kiss and some of the customers complained. She tried to file with the labour board but it never... Yeah. I also had my friend Joey. He was gay, and his parents were really religious, so they didn't... know.  But he could be himself at our house. He could talk about that stuff. Yeah, I wasn't really into it but it made him happy," she said. 

 

"I sometimes check in with him. They still don't know, but he's a lot more comfortable with himself. He really... liked having a place where he could go and he'd be accepted. It helped him get over stuff. He often joked about my mom being his gay mom... He's a little older than me, so he's planning to move cross country to go to school and cut contact with his folks. His boyfriend's going to the same school," she said.

 

"So... yeah. Accepting, I guess."

[Avenger Assembled]

"That sounds nice," commented Ashley reflectively. 

 

"Ah'm sorry," Judy whispered again. "...that must have been hard." Judy closed her eyes for just a moment, thinking of words said without thought, or worse, said with thought - because it was what everyone around her had told her it was true. Shifting uncomfortably in her seat, she said, "Ah never really thought about that stuff growing up, because it wasn't anywhere Ah could see happening. My parents wanted to protect me from the world so much, they didn't teach me about everything about it. And now Ah'm here." She began rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, the closest she could get to crying. "Are we still on for movie night?" she whispered. 

[Shofet]

Mia's eyebrows flew up, and she didn't hesitate, extending a hand across the table and resting it atop Judy's free one. "Judy, Judy... Of course we are," she said quietly. "Look, if you think... Judy, like I said, I like you. I wanna be your friend. Okay? So don't worry."

 

She looked over at the duo, and gave a half-smile as she tilted her head. "And hey, if you guys ever wanna hang out in any other way, I'm probably down. Unless I'm doing homework, I'm probably just hanging around watching anime or whatever." She took out one of her notebooks and tore off a piece of paper, scribbling down her phone number along with the word BubbleGuns followed by a string of numbers

 

"If either of you have cell phones, well, here's my number, and that's my Discord ID. If you don't, uh... I dunno! Just knock on my door or message me on Discord or whatever. I don't really sleep much so if you need to talk late at night, I'm down for that too," she said with a smile.