You wake up with your face shoved against a wall.
"Good morning starshine." There are ice cold fingers on the back of your neck. Sharpened nails scratch at your pulse. "At least make the effort to control your drool. You're getting saliva all over the nice clean floor and frankly it's disgusting."
You attempt to snap your jaw shut. You fail at this attempt. "Mphmha."
"What's that?" She leans in close and you can smell her now, clove cigarettes and curry and cheap hair gel and something else that smells a little like decay. Like dry rot or something, under all that spice. (You don't think you want to know why.)
"Whaareyoudoinhere…"
She snorts. You can feel her breath on your face. You can confirm that she still uses cinnamon toothpaste. "And the great orator arises for the day." She exhales and suddenly she's gone, out the door and into your kitchen with a "Each time we meet you slay me anew with your rapier wit Flash!" thrown behind her. You're left in heap, half on your bed, half on your floor, all in a state of absolute jackassery.
If there was a pinnacle to suaveness, you'd be at the polar opposite end right now. If there was a dude somewhere that embodied all of cooldom, they might as well go ahead and cross another suspect off the list because as of this moment you're sure as hell not him.
You pick yourself up and slouch into the kitchen after her and there she is - sitting on your countertop, sucking grape jam straight out of the jar. "I like your new look. Capes are in this year, did you know that? For some inexplicable reason." She grimaces like this is the greatest tragedy to ever strike mankind.
You grit your teeth and tighten the bed sheet around your shoulders and proceed to defiantly fish out the Lucky Charms from the cupboard under her feet, defiantly get a bowl from the sink, and defiantly pour your cereal out onto the table in completely intended defiance.
"Are you seriously going to ignore me now? I can see your hands shaking." You swipe the split cereal back into your bowl.
"I have a proposition for you, you know." The milk is in the fridge and the fridge is next to her. Being next to her automatically increases the chances of you falling into whatever scheme she's cooked up, ass backward, by at least ninety-five percent.
So you commit to eating your cereal dry. (Immediately this proves to be the second most terrible commitment you have ever made.)
"Well, not a proposition really. More like an order." She continues, coquettish as all fuck. She thinks she already has you, you know by the way her lips quirk up.
" Oh yeah?" You say this around a mouthful of grain. (It's awful. You attempt to not make a face.)
By the glitter in her eyes you know you have clearly failed at this attempt. "Yeah. From the top banana himself," She pauses. "Leader of the pack? Ruler of the roost? Jump City's premier crossing guard? You still like really lame and obvious puns, right?"
"My puns aren't lame and obvious, they're specially crafted packages of purely concentrated beauty and style sent down-"
"-from the sweet Valhalla of the comedy gods. Yeah!" Her laugh is bitter like coffee with three packs of sugar is bitter. Kind of sweet but not really. "And here I was thinking you had lost your sense of humor entirely. Such a grump that Wally West is now, they had whispered about you from within the dark corners of a comically large letter T. If only a beautiful and bewitching stranger might appear, so that we may give her the Herculean task of helping him not be such a lonely bore who drools on his floor and eats his cereal dry. Seriously, who does that?" She nods her chin upwards towards your bowl.
Awesome winners at life and the universe is what you want to say but she'll tear you to pieces for that so instead you go: " And by what luck have they found such a beautiful and bewitching stranger! Have you been sent by the big bird to whisk me away to gross amounts of shenanigans and high adventure?"
"That one was so bad and you know it! It didn't even make any sense! Package from the comedy gods alright-" She sticks out her tongue at you. The inside of her mouth is a collage of wiggly purple.
"Hey, not every one can be a keeper."
"La di da, more like none of them are keepers. But yes! Something like that. High adventure and copious amounts of shenanigans are both prominent on the to do list for this particular mission, if I have anything to say about it."
"This mission what?" You forgot what talking to Jinx is like. Speed-rap, no stops, no breaks, you and her thrumming along having a nice little conversation about puns or whatever, when you happen to casually glance back and realize you've left a ten car pileup in your wake.
"You didn't think I was here on the pure goodness of my heart right? Bewitching strangers are famously swamped with mandatory Shit To Do. Besides, that particular ship sailed long ago, if you'll excuse the cliché." Somehow she has brought the party to you, jackknife arms framing either side of you against the counter, boots crushing down hard on your bare toes. (Fuck this the exact opposite of what you wanted right now. As predicted, your capacity for bullshit increases exponentially.)
"Cliché excused." She's got you where she wants you, played you like a chump from the beginning; she's grinning wide and wild and you can only say: "So then, what does the Wind-up Toy Wonder want me and you do?"
"Ha ha! Good one, surprisingly. Knowing you, you probably didn't mean the biting undercurrent of that, but who even knows anymore?" She shrugs her shoulders. "Mysteries abound."
"I like the way you neatly dodge all of my questions. Perfect triple parry back flip, ten out of ten, gold star for you."
If condescending looks could kill you would be bleeding out on the linoleum right about now. "Your questions will all be answered in time. Or not at all! Like I said, mysteries abound." This makes no sense. She throws her jam jar in the sink and tells you to go get the least ugly sweatshirt you own and to maybe comb your hair, you look like you just rolled out of bed.
"I'm going to ignore the irony that you're so clearly delighting in in that statement." Cheerfully she flips you off.
A/N: These two are so weird to write now. Huh. Three more chapters to go, give or take. I'll try and make this short.