BETTER DAYS
By Sapadu
A/N: Another little selection from Princess. Kendalina and Triclops again.
Story 4: Differing Values
It started with a conversation with Medic about the various things couples did. Normally, Kendalina didn't take much initiative, given that Triclops was so much better at the whole romantic bit. Also, she didn't really understand why Triclops was such a sucker for the sappy moments. She just didn't see the appeal.
Kissing? Why not call it swapping spit? And the horrible breath and dental issue. Gross.
Holding hands? What if she NEEDED her hands? What'd she do, then?
Hugging? Just plain pointless.
Love songs? The lyrics were usually pretty cheesy, hardly ever original, and mostly about some sort of tragic background until this magical person comes along and makes everything better. That? Was absolutely nothing like either of them.
Sex on the other hand, Kendalina was very fond of. Hell, why not? So long as she didn't get herself planted with an embryo-sized, soul-sucking parasite or a bacteria, virus, or fungus to eat away at her reproductive organs, life was good.
What Medic suggested was that romantic moments usually helped set the mood for more carnal pleasures.
Thus, Kendalina had buckled under, swallowed her pride...
And rented a holo projector and several dramas.
By the time Triclops came back from his shift in the nursery, Kendalina had wrestled herself into a mess of chords, wires, and plugs.
"Stupid, kriffing electronics!" Kendalina snarled, just in time for their apartment door to slide open.
Triclops wisely didn't say anything, instead just setting down the take-out meals he'd gotten for their dinner. Kendalina continued to fight with the chords and plugs, attempting to connect everything into the right circuit without breaking any of them.
"Um... Kenda...?" Triclops finally spoke, backing up when Kendalina looked up from her labors to scowl at him.
"Do something useful and... I dunno, hand me a pliers or something."
Triclops picked up the pliers, but didn't hand them to her.
"Could you not just... read the manual... or something?" He asked, cautiously.
This was a mistake as Kendalina threw something in his direction that would have been most unpleasant to be hit with. Fortunately for Triclops, his mate was both distracted and not really aiming properly.
"Manuals are for losers." She snapped, finally getting a chord to fit into a socket. From there, she managed to work out which plugs were supposed to connect with which wires, finally hooking the projector to the screen, and then the projector to the file-reader.
When she was finally finished, Kendalina got to her feet and grinned, victoriously, up at Triclops.
"Whaddya think of THAT! And it only took me three hours!" She bragged, ignoring that Triclops hid the manual behind his back. She'd kind of figured he'd read through it while she mucked around with the chords. What the hell – she'd gotten it done in the end.
"In impressive feat, indeed." Triclops observed, somehow managing to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, entirely. After a moment, though, Triclops cocked his head and frowned at the holo projector, "... But... why?"
Kendalina grinned as wide as she could, before she held up a handful of discs in their flimsiplast envelopes.
"We're gonna have a date, tonight!"
The look on Triclops' face was well worth the effort. He looked as though Kendalina had just smacked him in the groin with something, it was so funny.
"You were getting your hair all in a knot over how we never do anything romantic... so..." Kendalina let the syllable hang, before Triclops finished,
"You went out and rented a few holodramas that we could watch on a night in?" He sounded positively ecstatic at the idea. He wasn't even looking at the discs Kendalina was holding between her fingers – his whole face was lighted up, just looking at her. If Kendalina wasn't so used to it, she would have been freaked out by it.
"Sure, why not?" She finally finished. Triclops grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her as close to himself as was physically possible. Kendalina went, willingly, but exasperated.
"Kenda..." Triclops breathed in her ear.
"Yeah, I love you, too, you big lump. Now, let go – Imma get the first one cued up." Kendalina muttered, pushing away and pulling out the first disc and feeding it into the reader. Triclops was still grinning like an idiot as he slowly lowered himself down onto their mattress, idly thumbing through the other holodiscs.
"Kenda..." Triclops said, slowly. Kendalina swiveled her head back around, eyebrows raised. Triclops was no longer smiling. In fact, he was frowning.
"...'Sup?" She asked. Triclops looked up from the discs.
"'Saw?' 'Nightmare in the Third Quarter?' 'Evil Dead?' 'Night of the Walking Corpses?'" He asked.
Kendalina grinned.
"I've seen 'em all – they're REALLY good." And they were. And, anyway, it wasn't like she hadn't seen spookier stuff in HER lifetime. It was always fun to watch a good screamer.
"...They're all horror." Triclops finally pointed out, completely at a loss for anything else to say.
Kendalina crawled up right next to him and curled up.
"You'll like them. Trust me." She assured him. Triclops gave her a very worried – very untrusting – glance, but finally curled back up, letting his head drop to her shoulder.
– Five Minutes Later –
Triclops had retreated to behind a pillow, as though it would protect him from the monster on the screen. Kendalina, on the other hand, was leaning forward, completely engrossed in watching the stupid – and admittedly rather slutty – teenage girls on the projector getting their insides torn out.
"Ugh..." Triclops muttered, legs curling up. Another girl screamed.
"Yeah, she's a goner." Kendalina agreed, sounding altogether too delighted with it.
Not a second after she said it, the character's head was sliced clean open, fake blood spurting from the open wound and gleaming on the monster's weapon.
"Called it."
– Forty-five Minutes Later –
The next holo was very much the same as the first, albeit a slightly different plot and a different monster. Triclops was, by this point, hiding under the covers while Kendalina continued to enjoy herself by shouting at the screen.
"He's RIGHT BEHIND YOU!" The monster swung his arm down, slicing off a few arms, "Ha ha, these kids are MORONS!"
"Kenda..." Triclops mumbled from under the sheets. More fake cutting sounds and teen actors screaming. Kendalina even jumped at one point, pulling Triclops out from under the covers.
"Trike, look!" She pointed at the screen, "The guys who made this one actually did their research! All the other scenes, you just see gallons of fake blood going everywhere – I see this guys' kidneys, and there's his liver, and, ew, look at those GUTS!"
-Differing Values-
The next morning, Kendalina couldn't understand what Triclops was so upset about. Nor did she understand, for a whole week, why he refused to speak to her.
A/N: Yeah. Kendalina likes slasher movies. Ha ha.
