The slow song finished to soon for the liking of both, and the lively tunes soon resumed. After the previous moment, though, getting back to that felt incredibly awkward, and thus they decided to take a break and walk off toward their friends.
"Just for a while, don't keep me waiting, ok?" Diana beamed, her mood now livelier than ever before.
"I won't, don't worry" Archer answered, as they parted away at the moment.
"How Diana date going?" Java said, lightly teasing the teenage agent, who responded by narrowing her eyes in mock anger.
"It's not a date, Java! We are just... 'hanging out', as people say" the blush on her face betrayed her, but the lighting in the room helped her conceal it.
"Yeah, right, sis. You and that guy have been very tight up until now" Martin chimed in, trying to not let his annoyance creep into his voice.
"So what, Martin? I can't spend time with a mature, serious person? You are gonna go around making sure I only hand out with people you like?" while she was not completely serious, she did mean that to a certain extent. Martin and Billy, as good friends as they were, were very immature people. Not that she minded too much, but at times she really just wanted to be with people that thought just a little bit like her.
"Oh, no, don't mind me, queen of maturity. It's ok if you want to hang out with your new boyfriend. Go ahead, we don't mind at all" the sass and sarcasm in the sentence threw Diana off-guard, and made her blood begin to boil.
"What is your problem? Why do you care? You are always giving me hell about not having somebody I care even a bit about, and now that I'm actually trying you are even worse of a cry-baby for it! Who the hell understands you?!" she said, having dragged the blonde to a less-populated area of the room, only to storm away as soon as the last word was out of her mouth. Martin could only stare at her retreating form while she headed for the exit. He hadn't meant to day what he said, at least not in the way he had said it. Sure, he was always teasing her and everything, but that was because it was the only way he knew to show that, deeply in his heart, he cared about her. And perhaps that was his whole problem: he just hadn't found an appropriate way to show how important she was to her. That's why she always complained about his attitude and his pranks. She just couldn't see through his actions and understand his reasons. And he certainly wasn't helping her at all. The agent finally gave a sigh and decided to just let the issue aside for the night. Maybe he would get lucky and one of the girls in the room wouldn't swat him away.
Diana fumed all the way to the exit, and a bit more too when the door had finally closed behind her. It took her a full minute to cool down, not before muttering what would appear to be gibberish to any passer-by.
Damned Martin... how dare he tell me what I can or can't do?! I'm nearly an adult, for Christ's sake! Who I relate to and how much is my business, not his...
While she could understand her brother's -STEPbrother- natural instinct to protect her from danger (what else could it be?) sometimes the blonde could be very rude and annoying, specially towards her. She was about to decide to just leave it at that and return to the party when the door opened again, this time opened by a very familiar person.
"M. O. M.?" Diana wondered aloud, the thought of seeing the manager away from the center of the action being... well... alien... to her.
"Agent Lombard... I mean... Diana. I wanted to talk to you in private. Do you have a minute?" the woman asked. In all honesty, Diana did have a minute to spare, but the memory of what Billy had told her at the beginning of the party still caused her an internal conflict, and she frankly didn't know what to think about the woman that was now in front of her.
"Err... actually, there's somebody waiting for me inside, so..."
"I know, Diana. That's what I wanted to talk about, actually. I guess Bully told you the story..."
"Yes, he did. How could you do that? To someone you claim to love like a son of your own blood? You can't seriously expect me to believe tha..." she was interrupted by the manager, who simply raised her hand as a signal for her to stop. Diana did so, out of reflex, expecting her to begin making up excuses for it. Instead, M. O. M. just stood there, silent for a couple of seconds. The teenager could see the hints of internal conflict in her, but decided to wait until the manager decided to speak.
"I... I don't expect you to understand the reasons behind my decision, Diana. You are young, you haven't seen or lived through even half of what I have. I know that what I did wasn't right, but I did it for him, to keep him safe and to give him a chance at earning each and every one of the milestones in his life. Maybe it wasn't the right way. Maybe it was. But it's done, and we have to deal with it. The only thing I ask from you is that you never tell him what happened."
"So you are asking me to lie to him... why do I even try to pretend I'm surprised?..."
"I can turn that into an order, agent Lombard.."
"No need. I won't tell him. You will. Not today, nor tomorrow, but one day he'll want to know, and you will have to face the consequences of your decision." with that final word, the auburn-haired agent went back to the party, leaving M. O. M. to wonder: since when do her agents lecture her about decisions?
"There's the man of the hour!" Max cheered when Archer got near the couple. Surprisingly enough, Annie wasn't in full swing at the party, instead sat with the team-leader talking about God-knows-what while sipping into their drinks. Archer sat across her and to Max's right, a small glass of... something in front of him.
"How's the date going, sweetheart?" Annie teased, her lips forming a devilish smile.
"It's not a date... I'm just hanging around with a girl" Archer defended, later realizing how lame his argument had sounded.
"A girl that likes you, I might add. Come on kid, loosen up a little bit from time to time. It will do you some good."
"Even if that were true, I'm not just gonna jump at her. We barely know each other."
"So what? Ask her out! No girl in her right mind would reject a handsome guy like you!" the redhead beamed, giggling when Archer's face picked up a shade of red.
"Yeah... no. I'll take things slow. IF she likes me, then I'll find out along the way." he said, shrugging the matter off.
"Nice plan, kid. Woops, act normal, your girl is coming!"
"Not my girl!" he muttered, before facing in the direction in which the teenage girl was arriving. However, he turned his smile upside down when he saw the unpleasant frown in her face, instantly deducing something was wrong.
"Hey, are you ok? You look like someone kicked your cat..."
"What? Oh, sorry. I just... had an unpleasant argument with my brother... You mind if I sit with you and your friends?"
"Err... sure, if you think you can tolerate us then go ahead" he invited, despite being slightly worried about the eccentric attitudes of his team mates. Despite his worries, Max and Annie behaved rather calmly during the rest of the party, Annie going as far as to establishing what could be called a friendship with Diana.
It all ended some hours later, with everyone leaving gradually until only Max, Annie, Archer, and Diana remained in the room, still chatting and laughing.
"I think we should get going, it's kind of late." Annie said, stealing a glance at her simple wristwatch.
"I agree, although there's nobody back at Torrington to tell if I'm away..." Diana mused, obviously ignoring the fact that her annoying brother was probably skulking around the college looking out for her.
"Still, I think we all need to get some rest, right, Arch?"
"Yep. Come on, I'll take you to the Academy" Archer finally said, getting up and then helping her do so too. Both agents headed for M. O. M.'s desk, pressing one of the buttons that activated the portal-transportation system and sent them to Torrington Academy.
"What do you think, boss?" Annie said after the couple disappeared into the portal.
"I don't know, she seems like a good girl, but it's too soon to tell for sure. She's got him under her thumb, though."
"Come on, you know Archer, he's not that kind of guy."
"We can't say for sure, today he did a lot of things that he hadn't before. Maybe the kid's changing." the man concluded, reflecting a little on the night's events, "Come on, I'm dying for some sleep."
Diana felt a tingling sensation in her stomach, the proverbial "butterflies in the stomach", but she blamed them on the trip through the portal. Meanwhile, the young man by her side looked around in silent fascination, doing his best to keep a neutral face expression.
"Wow. The outside world is quite... impressing", he said, intrigued by the green areas of the campus and the strange construction that he assumed to be the famous Torrington Academy (after all, the only kind of edification he knew for sure was The Center metallic structure and all of the alien constructions he regularly visited while on duty).
"I told you it would grow on you" the brunette joked, finding his attitude quite amusing and endearing. She was seeing him as a real person, not the combat machine The Center (and life, for that matter) tried to turn him into, and that fact alone made her extremely happy, for a weird reason.
"It's ok, I guess. We don't think much of it because we get to be out here as much as we please. But you... well... I did say I was going to bring you out here more often, didn't I?" they reached the top of the stairs and stopped, acknowledging each other for a moment.
"I'll be looking forward to that" was the only thing he could say, before the conversation turned awkward.
"Well, I better get inside. Thanks for everything." she said with a wide smile.
"Not a problem. Good night."
"Good night"
The girl went through the doorway, leaving John behind. He decided to not stick around and opened a portal back to the facility they had come from, leaving the school grounds back in an eerie quiet. What none of them had realized is that Diana's brother had been watching over them from his concealed position among the bushes., from the moment they appeared from the portal together to Archer's disappearance through the same way. Martin could still make no sense of Diana's liking to the guy, and he found it slightly obnoxious that she was suddenly all to clingy to him. Maybe it's just a temporary thing, like that Angus guy in Nova Scotia. Yeah, probably only that. Once she overcomes the whole thing she'll be back to normal. With those final thoughts he decided to stop worrying about the issue at hand and go to sleep, deeply hoping it was what he was thinking it to be.
So there's that... Wasn't very active lately because of holidays and college, but it's all good now. If you like the story don't forget to review, some feed back is always appreciated.