[JIL] Laser Show, part 1

“How do you eat that crap?”

Well, that was one way to start a conversation.

Jack had a habit of lounging around his little brother’s apartment. It was closer to all the important things, he reasoned: all the good clubs and the Fresh Mart grocery where he worked-slash-slaved away all day, and it was a halfway nice pad, too.

“It’s not crap, you moron. Spinach is better for you than any of the shit you call food that you cram down your gullet.”

…On the other hand, there was his brother's roommate. “Whatever.”

“I swear, if you’d just try some…”

“Yeah, no.”

The redheaded woman stuffed a giant wad of spinach leaves, mandarin slices, and fake cheese curd into her mouth huffily, shaking her head and rolling her eyes like he was the crazy one.

Psh, right.

“You’re not going to poison me with your damn rabbit food, Sea Hag,” he continued, gesturing to the vegan entree dismissively while she somehow managed to make chewing leaves look almost menacing. “You can stop trying now.” He glanced down at the salad, plucking an exposed orange slice from the top and popping it into his mouth just to spite her. She swallowed, opening her mouth and closing it again, repeating the process once, twice, and pointing at the bowl and then to him.

“I don’t speak fish, hag.”

“Why are you even here? Taylor’s at work.” Oooh. Sea Hag angry!

“Only because I just love your company so.” He flopped unceremoniously onto the couch, giving the woman a few inches of space lest she do something evil like stab him with an eating utensil. Granted, given the subject an act of malice would eventually happen no matter what precautions he took, but the brunette man liked to prolong the inevitable for as long as he could manage.

In all honesty, Marisa Hayes, the Sea Hag was not nearly so terrible a person as he had been lead to believe throughout his high school years. Despite her technicolor hair and the absurd amount of holes in her face, hidden underneath all the snappy sarcasm was an intelligent, moderately interesting woman who somehow managed to almost go shot for shot with him when they seemed to (more and more often) end up at some bar or club together, indulging in one of the lowest forms of poor-man’s entertainment (aside from heckling the drunk skanks and assholes already in attendance, that is)... the keyword there being almost, naturally. She was a hell of a lot nicer when she was drunk anyway; he could almost grit his teeth and admit a grudging friendship with a drunk Risa.

Again, the operating word being almost.

He grabbed the remote off the coffee table and kicked his feet up, making himself at home on the good ol’ couch he swore he was going to steal one of these days while she and Taylor were both at work, busying himself with flipping through channels and ignoring the green-eyed deathglare burrowing into his skin from his right. Or, maybe he’d just leave it here, considering it was where he slept whenever he crashed at this apartment rather than his own… an event steadily increasing in frequency. That, and trying to move it meant work, exertion. And he would be having none of that unless he was paid handsomely for it. On the other hand, it could be argued that technically if he tried to steal the couch, having said couch would be like a kind of payment...

The slight ring of glass on glass brought him back to reality and alerted him to the fact that the less-than-amiable company he was currently in had finished their sparse and wholly unsatisfying meal (perhaps, it occurred to him just then, the vegan diet was the reason why she was eternally cranky), though it did not prepare him for what was about to happen next.

“Hey, uh... you wanna go do something, other than just sit here?”

He tore his eyes from his channel surfing to give the redhead a bewildered gaze. Was she trying to be... nice? The apocalypse was nigh! Time for a snappy comeback, a way to get back at her for all the shit she dished out to him regularly and... “W-what?”

Well... that worked too.

“Jeeze,” she mumbled, crossing her arms across her chest and folding her feet underneath her thighs. “I was just trying to be cordial, no need to be a dick about it...”

Shit, she was; the world really was coming to an end. Or... “Are you dying or something?” he questioned, brain still trying to compute what had just happened.

“God, forget I said anything.”

It was only then that he realized that he had, in fact, fucked up; even still it took a few seconds for the synapses in his brain to fire as he watched her snatch the bowl from the table and begin to stalk away into the kitchen. After what seemed like an eternity, brain and mouth synchronized and he managed an entirely too late “No, wait!”

...She didn't listen of course; when did she ever actually listen to him?

Sighing, he stood up and followed her, bare toes sticking to the linoleum floor as he walked. He leaned nonchalantly on the dishwasher, acting like it wasn't a carefully positioned ploy to get in her way and force her to address him again while she rinsed the dish out, turned to him, and scowled.

“Move,” she said acidly, the timid, uncertain tone he had heard in her voice just seconds ago replaced with her usual air of snide disdain.

He didn't. “You mean like a club or something?”

She sighed, resting the bowl against her hip. “Move, please.” The 'please' wasn't to be polite so much as to point out that she wasn't going to say another damn thing to him until he did as she requested. She was tricky like that. He side-stepped and watched as she pulled the door open with a little too much force and crammed the dish into the already filled-to-capacity machine, busying herself with starting the wash cycle on rather than looking at him.

“Don't you get tired of doing nothing but drinking with your free time?” She asked after a moment, filling the soap receptacle and starting the machine. “It's Friday, there's bound to be more interesting things than bars open.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Got something in mind?”

Risa nursed her lip for a minute pensively. “I dunno,” she mumbled, letting the words hang in the air while she tried to think of an actual destination as opposed to 'somewhere'. “I think... They do light shows at the IMAX dome on the weekends still, don't they?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?”

“Yeah, I think they do.” She wasn't even talking to him anymore.

He bit his lip, stroking the imaginary wizard beard he definitely would have grown out already if facial hair wasn't against Fresh Mart dress code. “You blither on about this shit incessantly, but I don't think I've ever actually been to one,” he admitted.

For the stare he received, one would have thought he had just admitted to having never eaten Chocolate, which was rather interesting coming from a woman who refused such glorious life necessities as bacon and cheeseburgers. “Are you serious?”

“Damn, maybe I've had better things to do than figure out where the hell these things are shown and at what time!” Jeez, this woman and her scene, underground, et cetra et cetra whatever shit. “Just because you're one of the six people who has ever actually been to one of these things doesn't make you cool.”

She snorted. “Right, well, I guess making you the seventh is no big deal then either.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Hey, I never said I wanted to go.”

Another snort. “Fine, I'll just go myself then, damn.”

The redhead pushed past him and into her room, re-emerging from what could be mistaken for an international disaster zone with her laptop and a bright pink Hello Kitty blanket. Bemused, he watched as she pulled the thing around herself and flipped the lid of the computer open, checked the bus schedule, and snapped it shut again. “You can stay here and vegetate on the couch watching infomercials all night if you want.” He could tell by the way she slammed the laptop down on the coffee table a little too hard and snatched her keys that apparently he had pissed her off... again. Christ, for all her blabbing about how she didn't care what other people did, she was so touchy when it came to this shit... He watched her antics with a ghost of a smirk on his face.

Oh, hell no, he wasn't going to let her get away with a half-assed dramatic storm out this time. There would be no female Jedi mindfucks tonight, he mentally assured himself, before grabbing his keys and wallet from the counter and slipping them in his pockets while she made her own hasty preparations. Not that she didn't try, though it was hard to take her little haughty display of stomping out the door with a huff seriously when she was wrapped in a bright pink Hello Kitty blanket. Catching the nearly-slammed door with his hand while he secured the shoes on his feet, he closed the door much more gently than Risa had intended and followed hot on her heels. “You're not getting rid of me that easily,” he said loudly, following a safe distance behind lest she take her perceived slight out on his person after all.

Risa had decided to ignore him, apparently, because she continued walking without acknowledging his words. Damn, the Sea Hag was a moody bitch sometimes. Even now, when her hair had been redyed a bright red rather than the green that had originally spawned the nickname, the brunette man couldn't help but feel the title was apt. He could always wax philosophic with epic similes comparing her wild moodswings and irrational behavior to the ocean...

“You know Hello Kitty is super hardcore.”

Or he could make fun of her choice of... well, not really clothing, perse, though the way she had the blanket draped around her shoulders almost counted.

“Fuck you, it's fuzzy and warm.” It was always amusing to try and figure out the sort of comment that would get the woman to break her silent treatment. Apparently hating on fuzzy blankets was one of them, regardless of the corporate mascot emblazoned all over the fabric. And the fact that it was pink, of all colors.

“You know, you really oughta wear pink more.”

“The irony does not escape me, Asshat.” Ah, so it was an ironic display?

“How very scene of you,” he smirked, letting the disdain for the term drip from the words. How long 'til the physical abuse for pointing out the flaws in her ideology? It really couldn't be more than a few seconds; he began to count mentally. One, two, three...

A clenched fist slammed into his shoulder, and the redhead kept walking while he was left to ponder his similarities to the Tootsie-Roll owl. “How many seconds does it take for Risa to get pissed off and mistake me for a punching bag?” he mumbled aloud retroactively, soliciting a slight head twitch and an extended middle finger raised from over the woman's shoulder, complete with a neon yellow fingernail. It really was almost too easy.

Oh, but wait! Risa had something else up her sleeve, or rather in her pocket, to combat his button-pushing ways. He watched as she pulled the iPod from her jeans and unwound the earbuds from around the device, pushing one into each ear and running her finger around the track wheel to turn the volume up. He had been shut out, and was left to muse in relative silence while she bobbed her head slightly to whatever poser-pop crap she decided was cool this week, until she denounced it in three days and moved on to something else.

The bus stop was only a few minutes' walk from Taylor and Risa's apartment, and Jack was already beginning to question why he had bothered following Risa out to this thing. If there was a good band being shown though, it might be worth having to deal with sober bitchy girl. If he had more than five seconds to prepare, he would have suggested pregaming; that more than likely would have made the whole experience more enjoyable all around. As it was, he was starting to regret his decision.

As soon as the stop came into view, Risa made a beeline to the blue-painted enclosure and flopping on the bench, while he shoved his hands in his pockets once more and wondered why he'd ever quit smoking – it was the best way to pass the time in situations like these.

Jack sighed, glancing at the information listed on the bus stop pole. Waiting for the bus was, as one of his friends would put it, such a drag, and he was already getting tired of standing around. He pulled his phone from his pocket and flipped it open, comparing the time on his cell to the ETA for the next bus. "Eight minutes," he mumbled, snapping it closed again and re-pocketing the antiquated piece of technology.
"Yeah, that's about how long it took," Risa muttered back, glancing over to him and giving him a slight smirk, a finger raised to her lips in mock-thoughtfulness. Apparently, she had taken one of the earbuds back out when they had reached the bus stop without him noticing.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “How long what t-” Oh. The meaning of the joke hit him as he recognized the widening grin on her face while she tried not to laugh at her own witticism. Sex joke, ha ha. “Oh, you're mature. Last night, in bed, with my mother, right?”

“Oh, I'm pretty sure Colonel Mustard was involved in there somewhere as well.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “I had no idea you were into older guys. Goddamn gold digger.”

“Oh come on, if if I was a gold digger why the fuck would I be hanging out with you?” She pulled a tube of bright orange lip gloss out of her pocket and smeared it against her bottom lip, maneuvering around the labret ring that bisected it. Jack noted with a small twinge of disappointment as she smacked her lips together that, despite the color, they hadn't actually turned orange. As much as he hated to admit it, she had a point; Fresh Mart salary was hardly conductive to millionaire status. “Because I'm sexy and you recognized my potential entrepreneurial-ness, of course.”

It was Risa's turn to roll her eyes. “Oh, of course, how could I forget?”

“I don't know, hag. Maybe you should get checked for early-onset Alzheimer's or something.”

“I'll show you Alzheimer's,” Risa muttered darkly, though in all honestly Jack had no idea how that was supposed to be at all threatening or insulting. He smirked over at her, debating asking if she had forgotten how to make a proper rebuttal or if her class hadn't gotten that far in Satan's School of Soulless Litigation yet.

~~~

A short story written with the characters from Millennials. I didn't write this in order, for some reason, and so there are several parts that are incomplete that need to be pieced together. I'll post them separately, in chronological order and link to all of them at the bottom. If I ever finish it, I'll consolidate it into a single post.