Cal and Illyana | Backdated to 4/18/15
Apr. 18th, 2015 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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om_mainCal takes Illyana for a night out after her breakup with Vance
The only thing that sucked about this little trip to a Canadian club - beside the massive suckage of the reason why they were here at all - was that Cal was, obviously, the designated teleporter. But the club was cool, although the music was a little too poppy for his taste, and he'd never been to Toronto before. Why here? Why not, and he hadn't wanted to go too far.
Besides, he easily passed for nineteen.
They'd gone and grabbed some food from a street vendor, eating and walking around the city center before it was a good time to hit a club. They'd been here for about an hour or so, and Illyana was currently dancing her pain away with a couple of guys, while Cal sipped his beer, leaning back against a wall and watching the crowd, and his friend. He hadn't particularly dressed up for the occasion, in a RATM t-shirt and jeans, but he'd made sure to wear his boots instead of sneakers, so that counted? He looked like your regular teenager on a night out in the city, really, and tonight, that was absolutely what he was. On a night out in the city, supporting his recently heartbroken friend.
Spinning. Illyana was spinning - on the excitement, on the crowd, on the drink she'd talked some guy into buying for her, not willing to chance the bartender asking for ID. She wasn't drunk - honestly, she didn't even really want to get drunk, she'd rather do that back at the Institute - but she wasn't thinking about anything but the beat and the music and the chest of the overly tall guy she was dancing with. She wasn't sure she could, which meant she'd hit the perfect level of everything.
The song ended, and she waved a goodbye to her partner without ever having learned his name and made her way over to where Cal was leaning against the wall. "Why aren't you dancing?" she asked, making a "gimme" gesture towards his beer.
"I'm not dancing 'cause I'm having a beer," Cal replied, very logically he figured, and giving her a half-smile as he surrendered the beer in question to her. And okay, so the beer had been an excuse not to go and dance when that really cute girl asked him to.
Illyana took a quick sip of the beer, then handed it back, along with a skeptical, apologetic look. "If you didn't want to dance, we could've gone somewhere else. It would've been okay."
"Dude, I've been dancing," he pointed out with raised eyebrows, and took a drink from his beer. It was true! Although dancing wasn't his favorite thing ever, it was still fun and he knew how much she liked it. Of course he didn't want her to feel like she was the only one having fun, so yeah, he'd been dancing. He'd just - stopped for a while there.
Illyana laughed. "Okay, okay. Jeez, I got distracted. The last time I saw you, you weren't dancing either." She pouted a little at his beer, despite the fact he'd just shared it. "I need one of those."
Cal smiled, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders to kiss her forehead. "I'll go get you one. Just a beer?"
"Beer's fine." Not her favorite, but she'd had enough of things already that it didn't really matter. Beer always tasted better when she wasn't 100% sober. She turned and slipped an arm around his waist. "I'll come with, though."
"Easier if you don't," Cal pointed out, smiling down at her. "You kinda don't really look nineteen?" He was less likely to get carded if he wasn't with her.
"Hey, my dance partners haven't been questioning it," Illyana protested. She wrinkled her nose at him, though, and dropped her arm from around his waist. "I hate being fifteen," she grumbled very quietly.
"Don't worry - it'll pass," Cal told her with a half-smile. "I'll be right back." And he slipped away towards the bar, where he managed to score a second beer. He was back five minutes later, and held it out to her. "Here. Cheers."
"Thanks." Illyana pushed away from the wall where he'd been standing earlier to take her beer and offered a crooked smile.
"You doing okay?" Cal asked, leaning back against the wall and slinging an easy arm around her shoulders. His own beer was still half full, and he was nursing it, making the most of it, since he was the designated teleporter.
Illyana shrugged crookedly and took a sip of her beer. "Yeah. Better when I'm dancing." She turned her head a little and offered a half smile. "I really do appreciate this, y'know." She glanced at his still half full beer, and grinned a little more. "Also, I'm really good at teleporting drunk. You don't have to do the whole designated thing."
"Yeaaaah, no offense, but I'd rather do the whole designated thing," Cal replied honestly. He wouldn't trust anyone telling him they were good at driving drunk either.
"Hey, your choice." She took another drink and looked out at the crowd. Now that she wasn't dancing, everything was flooding back, and her smile slowly faded away. "You mind if we cut out early?"
"Um, sure," Cal agreed, but he was frowning. "If you're certain?" It had been her idea, after all. But hey, if it wasn't actually taking her mind off of anything...
Illyana shook her head at Cal's frown, and gave herself a kick. He'd been really good about bringing her all the way to Canada - the least she could do was stick with it. "Nevermind, it's fine." She smiled crookedly. "My brain's just all over, I guess."
"No, I mean - I didn't mean -" Finish a freaking sentence, Rankin. Cal grimaced at himself. "If it isn't helping, we can totally go."
"It's helping," she assured him. "I just...I don't know." Illyana took another sip of her beer and shrugged. "It's like, fake it 'til you make it. And I'm making it, but then it kind of crumbles?" She frowned. "I think I mixed metaphors." Which was scary, actually. She may have actually learned something in English this year.
"I gotcha," Cal told her anyway, and squeezed her briefly with the arm around her shoulders. "I'm here for when it crumbles, at least?"
Illyana smiled crookedly and leaned into him, slipping her arm around his waist to return the hug. "All ready with the dust pan and broom?"
"And the glue," Cal confirmed, tilting his head to kiss her hair.
*****Sometime Later*****
"So, I knew he wasn't going to be thrilled, y'know?" Illyana rested her head on her hand, her elbow on the round table between them, and offered Cal a wry half smile. "I mean, I'm not an idiot. He wasn't thrilled with the idea when I told him I was going to do something, and I figured he'd probably forgotten about it or just chalked it up to me being drunk. But he got really pissed off. And not because I didn't tell him or I could've gotten hurt. He was all worried about what we'd done to the guy and whether or not he was alright."
Cal rubbed at a half of his face with the one hand, wincing a little. "So, what, he didn't think the guy deserved it?" He'd known Vance was a good guy, but he figured even good guys would want to hurt assholes who had hurt and meant to kill their girlfriends.
Illyana shrugged. "Apparently, we should've just called the cops when we found him. I'm still not sure what that would've accomplished." She reached for her beer and took another sip. "I just - I don't get it. I keep running through it all, and it doesn't make sense, y'know? We were going out, and he was actually seriously considering turning me into the cops if I couldn't tell him the bastard who'd tried to kill Nico was alright."
Cal's eyebrows rose, and from sympathetic, he had moved on to worried as fuck. "He won't, right?" But seriously, what the fuck.
"No. If he was going to, he would've already. Besides, I told him about the article with the moose and stuff, so he knows the guy isn't bleeding out in the middle of nowhere, Alaska." She pushed her hand back through her hair and sighed. "Anyway, we got into a big fight over justice vs vengeance and how what I'd done was fucked up and how I didn't get to play judge, jury, and executioner. Which I'm not sure made sense either, considering I didn't kill the guy." Her eyes slipped down to the table, and her finger toyed with the condensation left by the bottle. "And then he said he had to go take a walk, and walked out."
Shit. Cal hadn't really known any of the details of what had happened, but he hadn't expected to think that Vance had been an asshole. And yet, here it was. "And that was it?"
"Pretty much? I mean, I went to Kitty's for the night and hung out with Sharon. I guess he took his walk. And then he started texting, but..." She looked up from the table and sighed. "He kept saying he wanted me to stop acting. That he liked me, and I didn't have to put on an act for him. And mostly I didn't anyway, but...I couldn't always tell, y'know? I mean, I know when I'm pissing you off. I know when Kitty's annoyed. I couldn't always tell with Vance, because he's afraid to get mad. And I get tha, but..." She bit her lip and shrugged awkwardly. "Anyway, I was kind of busy for a few days after that. I had homework, and Mark called in sick to work."
"Have you talked again?" Cal asked, a sympathetic frown back on his brow.
"Yeah." Illyana took another sip of her beer. "And big surprise, that ended up in a fight, too, with him saying I was pissing him off on purpose just so he'd react. And okay, I did that sometimes, but I wasn't. Not then. But he kept talking about how he didn't owe me a hissy fit, and how he needed to stay calm and he needed time to go and cool off and I needed to understand that, and..." She swiped her hand over her eyes before she could start crying again, and shrugged. "I can't deal with that. I just - I can't, Cal. Because whether he promised or not, eventually he'd have had enough and he just wouldn't come back. And I'd go nuts trying to figure out every time if this was going to be the time. Or I'd just start lying to avoid it altogether."
Cal was trying to work out what it was that had really happened there, and it sounded as if... "So it wasn't about the Alaska thing, in the end?" He also found her foot under the table, and rested his against it - silent support. He was shit at this. He bet Kitty was way better.
"I...honestly, I don't know?" Illyana admitted. "It was, and it wasn't. I mean, he just...he asked what'd make me happy. And I thought about it, and..." She looked back up at Cal. "I just wanted him to understand, and I wanted him to like me. And I don't think he can."
"You don't wanna risk giving him the chance, maybe?" Cal offered thoughtfully. Since she didn't think he could.
Illyana rubbed at her forehead. "I don't know. I don't think so? I was trying. And I asked him, y'know? If he thought we could work. He said he didn't know." She chewed at her lip and met Cal's eyes with a faint, crooked attempt at a smile. "I really wish that he'd have lied to me. Just that once. But he didn't."
"It's probably better that he didn't," Cal stated, although he didn't sound like it. "I mean, you can hurt, and then you can move on, or something?" Seriously, shit at this. But he wasn't shit at hugs, so he moved to a seat beside Illyana instead, and wrapped his arm around her, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. "You deserve someone who'll like you for you."
"Yeah, because everyone's in the market for a slightly crazy, possibly demonic girlfriend, right?" She sort of snuggled in against him. "I thought maybe he loved me. So much for that, huh?"
"Maybe he does," Cal stated. "I mean, people are stupid." Possibly he had been spending too much time with Sharon. "And I like my slightly crazy, possibly demonic friend, so get ready for a fight if you're gonna diss her."
"I could take you," Illyana retorted, grinning a little. "I've got a sword, and I'm not afraid to use it." She paused and made a face. "Except, y'know, transporting you to Alaska so that I can diss myself? It seems kind of weird. Even for me."
"Let's just agree you're awesome, it's way easier," Cal confirmed, nodding with a small smile.
Illyana smiled back and wrapped her arm around Cal to give him a half hug. "You're not too awful yourself." She grinned. "Though if anyone asks, I'll deny I ever said it." Pulling back, she finished off the last of her beer and set the empty bottle back on the table. "Ready to dance?" Because in the end, Cal was right. Time to move on. There really wasn't a whole lot else left to do.
"Let's go," Cal agreed, standing up and holding his hand out to her. This music really didn't do it for him, but he wasn't doing it for himself. He was totally doing it to make Illyana smile, and that would make dancing to pop worth it, and then some.
The only thing that sucked about this little trip to a Canadian club - beside the massive suckage of the reason why they were here at all - was that Cal was, obviously, the designated teleporter. But the club was cool, although the music was a little too poppy for his taste, and he'd never been to Toronto before. Why here? Why not, and he hadn't wanted to go too far.
Besides, he easily passed for nineteen.
They'd gone and grabbed some food from a street vendor, eating and walking around the city center before it was a good time to hit a club. They'd been here for about an hour or so, and Illyana was currently dancing her pain away with a couple of guys, while Cal sipped his beer, leaning back against a wall and watching the crowd, and his friend. He hadn't particularly dressed up for the occasion, in a RATM t-shirt and jeans, but he'd made sure to wear his boots instead of sneakers, so that counted? He looked like your regular teenager on a night out in the city, really, and tonight, that was absolutely what he was. On a night out in the city, supporting his recently heartbroken friend.
Spinning. Illyana was spinning - on the excitement, on the crowd, on the drink she'd talked some guy into buying for her, not willing to chance the bartender asking for ID. She wasn't drunk - honestly, she didn't even really want to get drunk, she'd rather do that back at the Institute - but she wasn't thinking about anything but the beat and the music and the chest of the overly tall guy she was dancing with. She wasn't sure she could, which meant she'd hit the perfect level of everything.
The song ended, and she waved a goodbye to her partner without ever having learned his name and made her way over to where Cal was leaning against the wall. "Why aren't you dancing?" she asked, making a "gimme" gesture towards his beer.
"I'm not dancing 'cause I'm having a beer," Cal replied, very logically he figured, and giving her a half-smile as he surrendered the beer in question to her. And okay, so the beer had been an excuse not to go and dance when that really cute girl asked him to.
Illyana took a quick sip of the beer, then handed it back, along with a skeptical, apologetic look. "If you didn't want to dance, we could've gone somewhere else. It would've been okay."
"Dude, I've been dancing," he pointed out with raised eyebrows, and took a drink from his beer. It was true! Although dancing wasn't his favorite thing ever, it was still fun and he knew how much she liked it. Of course he didn't want her to feel like she was the only one having fun, so yeah, he'd been dancing. He'd just - stopped for a while there.
Illyana laughed. "Okay, okay. Jeez, I got distracted. The last time I saw you, you weren't dancing either." She pouted a little at his beer, despite the fact he'd just shared it. "I need one of those."
Cal smiled, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders to kiss her forehead. "I'll go get you one. Just a beer?"
"Beer's fine." Not her favorite, but she'd had enough of things already that it didn't really matter. Beer always tasted better when she wasn't 100% sober. She turned and slipped an arm around his waist. "I'll come with, though."
"Easier if you don't," Cal pointed out, smiling down at her. "You kinda don't really look nineteen?" He was less likely to get carded if he wasn't with her.
"Hey, my dance partners haven't been questioning it," Illyana protested. She wrinkled her nose at him, though, and dropped her arm from around his waist. "I hate being fifteen," she grumbled very quietly.
"Don't worry - it'll pass," Cal told her with a half-smile. "I'll be right back." And he slipped away towards the bar, where he managed to score a second beer. He was back five minutes later, and held it out to her. "Here. Cheers."
"Thanks." Illyana pushed away from the wall where he'd been standing earlier to take her beer and offered a crooked smile.
"You doing okay?" Cal asked, leaning back against the wall and slinging an easy arm around her shoulders. His own beer was still half full, and he was nursing it, making the most of it, since he was the designated teleporter.
Illyana shrugged crookedly and took a sip of her beer. "Yeah. Better when I'm dancing." She turned her head a little and offered a half smile. "I really do appreciate this, y'know." She glanced at his still half full beer, and grinned a little more. "Also, I'm really good at teleporting drunk. You don't have to do the whole designated thing."
"Yeaaaah, no offense, but I'd rather do the whole designated thing," Cal replied honestly. He wouldn't trust anyone telling him they were good at driving drunk either.
"Hey, your choice." She took another drink and looked out at the crowd. Now that she wasn't dancing, everything was flooding back, and her smile slowly faded away. "You mind if we cut out early?"
"Um, sure," Cal agreed, but he was frowning. "If you're certain?" It had been her idea, after all. But hey, if it wasn't actually taking her mind off of anything...
Illyana shook her head at Cal's frown, and gave herself a kick. He'd been really good about bringing her all the way to Canada - the least she could do was stick with it. "Nevermind, it's fine." She smiled crookedly. "My brain's just all over, I guess."
"No, I mean - I didn't mean -" Finish a freaking sentence, Rankin. Cal grimaced at himself. "If it isn't helping, we can totally go."
"It's helping," she assured him. "I just...I don't know." Illyana took another sip of her beer and shrugged. "It's like, fake it 'til you make it. And I'm making it, but then it kind of crumbles?" She frowned. "I think I mixed metaphors." Which was scary, actually. She may have actually learned something in English this year.
"I gotcha," Cal told her anyway, and squeezed her briefly with the arm around her shoulders. "I'm here for when it crumbles, at least?"
Illyana smiled crookedly and leaned into him, slipping her arm around his waist to return the hug. "All ready with the dust pan and broom?"
"And the glue," Cal confirmed, tilting his head to kiss her hair.
"So, I knew he wasn't going to be thrilled, y'know?" Illyana rested her head on her hand, her elbow on the round table between them, and offered Cal a wry half smile. "I mean, I'm not an idiot. He wasn't thrilled with the idea when I told him I was going to do something, and I figured he'd probably forgotten about it or just chalked it up to me being drunk. But he got really pissed off. And not because I didn't tell him or I could've gotten hurt. He was all worried about what we'd done to the guy and whether or not he was alright."
Cal rubbed at a half of his face with the one hand, wincing a little. "So, what, he didn't think the guy deserved it?" He'd known Vance was a good guy, but he figured even good guys would want to hurt assholes who had hurt and meant to kill their girlfriends.
Illyana shrugged. "Apparently, we should've just called the cops when we found him. I'm still not sure what that would've accomplished." She reached for her beer and took another sip. "I just - I don't get it. I keep running through it all, and it doesn't make sense, y'know? We were going out, and he was actually seriously considering turning me into the cops if I couldn't tell him the bastard who'd tried to kill Nico was alright."
Cal's eyebrows rose, and from sympathetic, he had moved on to worried as fuck. "He won't, right?" But seriously, what the fuck.
"No. If he was going to, he would've already. Besides, I told him about the article with the moose and stuff, so he knows the guy isn't bleeding out in the middle of nowhere, Alaska." She pushed her hand back through her hair and sighed. "Anyway, we got into a big fight over justice vs vengeance and how what I'd done was fucked up and how I didn't get to play judge, jury, and executioner. Which I'm not sure made sense either, considering I didn't kill the guy." Her eyes slipped down to the table, and her finger toyed with the condensation left by the bottle. "And then he said he had to go take a walk, and walked out."
Shit. Cal hadn't really known any of the details of what had happened, but he hadn't expected to think that Vance had been an asshole. And yet, here it was. "And that was it?"
"Pretty much? I mean, I went to Kitty's for the night and hung out with Sharon. I guess he took his walk. And then he started texting, but..." She looked up from the table and sighed. "He kept saying he wanted me to stop acting. That he liked me, and I didn't have to put on an act for him. And mostly I didn't anyway, but...I couldn't always tell, y'know? I mean, I know when I'm pissing you off. I know when Kitty's annoyed. I couldn't always tell with Vance, because he's afraid to get mad. And I get tha, but..." She bit her lip and shrugged awkwardly. "Anyway, I was kind of busy for a few days after that. I had homework, and Mark called in sick to work."
"Have you talked again?" Cal asked, a sympathetic frown back on his brow.
"Yeah." Illyana took another sip of her beer. "And big surprise, that ended up in a fight, too, with him saying I was pissing him off on purpose just so he'd react. And okay, I did that sometimes, but I wasn't. Not then. But he kept talking about how he didn't owe me a hissy fit, and how he needed to stay calm and he needed time to go and cool off and I needed to understand that, and..." She swiped her hand over her eyes before she could start crying again, and shrugged. "I can't deal with that. I just - I can't, Cal. Because whether he promised or not, eventually he'd have had enough and he just wouldn't come back. And I'd go nuts trying to figure out every time if this was going to be the time. Or I'd just start lying to avoid it altogether."
Cal was trying to work out what it was that had really happened there, and it sounded as if... "So it wasn't about the Alaska thing, in the end?" He also found her foot under the table, and rested his against it - silent support. He was shit at this. He bet Kitty was way better.
"I...honestly, I don't know?" Illyana admitted. "It was, and it wasn't. I mean, he just...he asked what'd make me happy. And I thought about it, and..." She looked back up at Cal. "I just wanted him to understand, and I wanted him to like me. And I don't think he can."
"You don't wanna risk giving him the chance, maybe?" Cal offered thoughtfully. Since she didn't think he could.
Illyana rubbed at her forehead. "I don't know. I don't think so? I was trying. And I asked him, y'know? If he thought we could work. He said he didn't know." She chewed at her lip and met Cal's eyes with a faint, crooked attempt at a smile. "I really wish that he'd have lied to me. Just that once. But he didn't."
"It's probably better that he didn't," Cal stated, although he didn't sound like it. "I mean, you can hurt, and then you can move on, or something?" Seriously, shit at this. But he wasn't shit at hugs, so he moved to a seat beside Illyana instead, and wrapped his arm around her, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. "You deserve someone who'll like you for you."
"Yeah, because everyone's in the market for a slightly crazy, possibly demonic girlfriend, right?" She sort of snuggled in against him. "I thought maybe he loved me. So much for that, huh?"
"Maybe he does," Cal stated. "I mean, people are stupid." Possibly he had been spending too much time with Sharon. "And I like my slightly crazy, possibly demonic friend, so get ready for a fight if you're gonna diss her."
"I could take you," Illyana retorted, grinning a little. "I've got a sword, and I'm not afraid to use it." She paused and made a face. "Except, y'know, transporting you to Alaska so that I can diss myself? It seems kind of weird. Even for me."
"Let's just agree you're awesome, it's way easier," Cal confirmed, nodding with a small smile.
Illyana smiled back and wrapped her arm around Cal to give him a half hug. "You're not too awful yourself." She grinned. "Though if anyone asks, I'll deny I ever said it." Pulling back, she finished off the last of her beer and set the empty bottle back on the table. "Ready to dance?" Because in the end, Cal was right. Time to move on. There really wasn't a whole lot else left to do.
"Let's go," Cal agreed, standing up and holding his hand out to her. This music really didn't do it for him, but he wasn't doing it for himself. He was totally doing it to make Illyana smile, and that would make dancing to pop worth it, and then some.
