13 👶 WELCOME TO REALITY

[pillz]

WHO: Raven Reyes & Joseph Kavinsky
WHERE: De Chima, a salad bar
WHEN: BETWIXT Christmas & New Year's
WHAT: Kavinsky gives Raven her Christmas present and asks weird questions about Murphy while having no idea that concern with dietary fiber and baby corn is weird.
WARNINGS: Nothing these children are very pure



[behold: the salad bar.

here you have chopped beets, their vivid color bleeding gently into the container. there you have kernel corn, and in another you have the slender tiny ears of baby corn. edamame, lima beans, chickpeas, other random bean variants-- beans galore. various and sundry leafy greens.]

Have you tried arugula? Every time I tell Murphy about arugula, he pretends we've never had the conversation before and we get into some fight about how life in space sucked donkey's. But you should try some, keep you regular.

[he's a far cry from the notorious dick he used to be, who'd plagued three import cities with a nightmare plague, terrorized clone club with false corpses, adding sentient fireworks to a highly public july the 4th burglary, and directly responsible for the world's most stupidest boy bullshit reality tv show. these days, he's all about picking the right kind of pepper and dropping it onto raven's plate while talking about poop i guess!]

And you should try it before they ship you out to space again. Assuming you're on for that. All the new TV, space station ambitions.

Comments

[specialise]

[ the more he says "arugula", the more raven feels compelled to laugh. she narrows her eyes, trying to understand what he's referring to — the leaves can't possibly have more than one name! spinach leaves, baby leaves ... isn't that all the leaves? she's getting ahead of herself here. she knows what he's talking about, she's just choosing to make life complicated. ]

[ her mood turns sour, only for a moment. ] Yeah. [ she rolls her eyes. kavinsky can drop as many fruits and vegetables onto her plate. she isn't picky. being on the ark hadn't allowed her to be picky. ] They aren't even doing it right. Who the hell sends people who have zero experience up into space? There should be exams. Tests —

[ raven realises she's on the verge of a rant, so, she takes a breath. ]

[ picking up a carrot stick, she points it towards kavinsky like it's a grounder's blade. ] Murphy sucks ass. Remember that.

[ except, ladies and gentlemen, it's not said with malice. there's a first time for everything. ]

[pillz]

[there's a dirty joke in there somewhere. it's probably actually really close to the surface-- easy pickings, if kavinsky were himself from a year ago. instead, he's kavinsky from now. rehabilitated by dr. chilton, and holding one hand up in surrender because the world's foremost space engineer is threatening him with a carrot. sucking ass isn't always bad when you are a man in a homosexual relationship, just saying.]

You say that, but your tone betrays you, [kavinsky says.] Either he sucks less ass than he used to, or you got used to it. Or there's less ass to suck here, now that you guys aren't tied up in some kind of apocalypse.

[here have cherry tomatoes. plop plop. he puts two on her plate.] My money's on the latter. Going to assume that bad circumstances pushes people to do shit they regret in your world, just like mine. Whether or not you think it 'should' take more than a push.

[specialise]

[ she arches her brow at those cherry tomatoes, but says nothing. raven's almost tempted to shove her plate under his nose and demand he pick the best fruits and vegetables to suit her. but she's not as needy as some people from space … and she has no idea if vegetables or fruits even have personalities. she doesn't want to know what represents her. ]

[ god, the places her brain goes these days when she isn't worried about the world ending via technology in a red dress. ]

Murphy is okay. [ she says it grumpily, like this isn't something to be overly amused about. ] He's still a pain in my ass. While bad circumstances shouldn't define who you are, sometimes the shit you do in those bad circumstances should.

[ raven shrugs her shoulder, pausing as she looks over some eggplant. she frowns when she sees the inside isn't as purple as she had expected. ] But sometimes things are different on the inside to how they look on the outside.

[ she's clearly talking about the eggplant. ]

[pillz]

[do any vegetables or fruits have spikes on them? he'd probably pick gingko nuts. they're supposed to make you into a genius, and she's certainly always had that going for her. something spicy too, probably. raven reyes, the face-melting ghost peppers of the 100 salad.

he steals an olive out of his own plate and eats it. then he picks a dressing. but make no mistake— he's definitely listening. and then he's definitely looking at the eggplant, and thinking about murphy, and -- smiling, despite himself. partly because an eggplant is a good analogy for murphy, and partly because it's a good analogy for a penis, which is why it's an even better analogy for murphy.]

You ain't totally over the bad shit he did to survive? [he asks.] I get it. I feel like the people who get fucked over ain't the ones obligated to make you feel better.

[a beat.] That one's sour, that one's milky, that one's sweet. [dressings. he means the dressings.]

But what would you say to some guy who was uh. Thinking kind of long-term? Assuming the Porters don't get us. You know? We might start to get serious about sharing our lives and all. You know how you'd talk to him about it?

[forgive him. he doesn't know how that Sounds. and he's also really bad at helping people make friendly. this is quite possibly the first time he's ever tried, in his life.]

[specialise]

[ this time, raven forgoes the dressings. her head's elsewhere — not with eggplants anymore, but with the nuts that were on the ground that made the kids a bit loopy, like monty believing he could be a beautiful broom. a part of her forces herself to believe that this is what it must've been like to consume them, as it's strange to think of murphy as anything but someone who she has an extreme distaste for. any of the kind words she has spared him has been a result of those crazy-making nuts. ]

[ she's quiet for a while, making a show of looking over her options and yet adding nothing to her plate. she seems content with what she has — what kavinsky has placed on there and what she has picked up out of curiousity. ]

Has he told you anything? [ raven looks at kavinsky, and for the first time, the arch of her brow isn't meant to be an arrogant sort of challenge. she's truly curious. where can she place her feet? what land mines has murphy already planted? can the strategy she uses back home — remain quiet, don't tell anyone out of some desire to be a good person (and it's no one's fucking business murphy shot her) — work in her favour here? ] About home.

[ she doesn't want to protect murphy. like the eggplants in salads, she wants to cut him up and serve him. ]

[pillz]

A little, [he says. kavinsky does a pretty good job not looking like a deer in headlights or slowing down so much that it seems super suspicious and obvious he's wary of having walked into a trap. mostly!! of getting murphy in trouble. the fact is, he is entirely aware that murphy has an extremely complicated relationship with the people of his old life, in a way that makes kavinsky's relationships with the raven boys look terribly simple and hilarious.] He said he did a lot of stuff to survive. A lot that he wishes he hadn't had to.

[he'd said a lot more than that. but they're at the cash register now, which seems!! like! a good excuse to shift his attention to another person— namely, the checkout lady— and he pays her enough to cover both their salads. their delicious earth salads, with earth plants&mdahs; his gift to her, which will hopefully uh, like, magically cool some of the historical heat between her and murphy? so they can just sort of, talk about it? without i don't know

causing some kind of horrific backslide in the relationship between her and his boyfriend. because-- and this is the weird thing that he isn't quite sure how to broach. but the fact is, he knows that murphy values his relationship with her. despite everything.]

C'mon. Buy you your salad, try not to torpedo how things is here in this softer, kinder new world than yours used to be.