Author's Note: I'm frankly terrible at updating everything, but I've been played Secret of the Scarlet Hand recently and got inspired. Enjoy the ridiculous banter.
Sonny wiped the sweat from the back of his neck and pulled at the collar of his dull blue polo—it was standard issue for all "regular" Beech Hill employees, the ones who didn't get the cushy positions like 'curator' and 'glyph specialist' and whatever the hell else people did at that museum. The heavy shirt was already sticky with sweat, and he had only been outside for five minutes. He tried to compensate for his general grossness by trying to make it seem deliberate, popping his collar up to his ears and mussing his hair so it stood up in a vaguely mohawk-ish shape. Poppy watched his preening with a tiny smile.
"I just realized I've never seen you in anything but that uniform," she commented. Unlike Sonny, the heat seemed to have no effect on her. She strolled casually beside him, long skirt rustling around her ankles, the sun brightening her fiery curls. He wished she would trip or something, just to even the scale a bit.
"Wait a few more minutes and you'll see me in nothing at all," he said. He pinched the front of his shirt away from his skin and fanned himself with it. "Jesus Christ, this is hell. What happened to that it's-a-rental car of yours?"
She shrugged. "It's parked at the coffee shop."
Sonny raised his eyebrows. "Well now. That was awfully presumptuous."
Poppy flashed a smile. "Well, I was gonna drag you kicking and screaming if you ended up being too stupid to come."
"I could still change my mind," Sonny said quickly, rolling his shoulders back. "It's too hot for coffee, anyway."
"They sell ice cream. And frosty lattes."
"I'll just walk right by it and catch the bus on the corner."
"Or iced tea."
"I probably won't even have to wait."
"Or you could just take your shirt off."
He scowled. "If it weren't so hot, I'd say you have to buy me dinner first. But I already offered to strip for free, didn't I?"
Poppy waved a hand. "You were delirious. Most people wouldn't hold you to promises made under duress."
He paused, shoving his hands in his pockets. "…Would you?"
"Most definitely," she smirked. "But I can take a raincheck. We're here." She nodded at the coffee shop, the same one she'd been stepping out of when he'd nearly run her down the other day. "I'm pretty sure they won't serve you without some kind of sensible attire."
He opened the door for her, smiling as she skipped inside. He had forgotten how much fun flirting could be, especially when you didn't intend to follow through with any of it.
Poppy was already at the counter, rattling off an order she must have made every day. Sonny didn't usually come here (it was a little too hipster-ish, even for him), so he took a minute to squint at the menu, written on a blackboard above the counter in colorful chalk calligraphy, before stuttering out an order for a tall frozen latte.
When it came time for him to pay, he felt a moment of sheer panic. He had spent the last of his cash the night before tipping the pizza guy, and he hadn't gone near an ATM all day.
"Shit," he hissed under his breath. He turned his pockets inside out—there was nothing in them but a few pennies and some ticket stubs that had been through the washing machine so many times they'd alchemized into an entirely new substance. He grinned sheepishly at Poppy. "Um…"
She rolled her eyes. "I got it, I got it," she said, pulling a $5 out of her wallet and handing it to the cashier. "You're lucky I'm not your typical starving artist."
"I'll pay you back tomorrow," he said. "I think I still have to pay you for that coffee I spilled, too. Tomorrow. For sure."
Poppy only smiled—in a lazy, knowing way that made him suddenly fear a catch. One way or another, he felt like he would always owe her something after this.
She found a tiny table for them over in the corner. It took Sonny a couple of seconds to climb onto the impossibly high stool, which he stupidly tried to do while still holding his cup. By the time he'd settled down, Poppy was already in the middle of stirring sugar and milk into her coffee, leaving gutted paper packaging strewn across the table. She looked like some mad scientist in the middle of an experiment. Sonny just tapped his fingers on the table and sipped in silence.
And the silence just stretched on and on, neither of them quite willing to break it. It was stubbornness on his part; he was sure some small part of his soul would shrivel up if he ended up enjoying himself, so he was at least going to hold out for as long as he could. He didn't know what was up with her, since she'd been the one so eager to get him into her lair, but she remained fixated on her drink, occasionally pausing to glance out the window. It took him several minutes to come to the conclusion that she might be nervous, and at that moment, she finally spoke, words spilling out in a weird, frustrated jumble.
"Um, so, why don't you tell me about the aliens again?" Something about her tone sounded off, and Sonny immediately smelled a trap. He frowned.
"You don't have to keep humoring me—"
"It's not that—"
"—Because no one ever really wants to hear about them, I know that," he said, rolling his eyes. "I've been obsessed with them my whole life, and no – one – cares."
"I do. I mean, I'm not teasing you. I'm curious." She tilted her head, propping her chin up with one hand. "Come on. You said your whole life? What got you interested in them?"
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe I just like the idea that there's something else out there that's got it more figured out than we do. So if I can understand them, even just a little bit, I'll be pretty on top of it." He grinned. "Also, I just like being right."
She raised an eyebrow. "And you are right, huh?"
"I didn't just pick this up from some sketchy History Channel documentary, dearie," he said, slipping into Henrik's clipped consonants without being fully aware of it. "I've got the evidence to back it up. It's just a matter of piecing it all together."
"'Kay. Hypothetical question, though. Do you honestly think any real university is going to accept a thesis on aliens?"
Sonny snorted. "Extraterrestrial or extrasolar species are a valid scientific probability. I've got a background in biochemistry and astrophysics, okay? I know what I'm talking about." He sipped his coffee. "True, not everyone is going to automatically jump to my conclusions, but that's just because they're content to assume that the universe is the most boring possible reality that they can imagine. I just explore the other options."
Poppy nodded, still looking a bit skeptical. "Biochemistry and astrophysics, huh? Correct me if I'm wrong, since I have yet to grace the halls of an institution for higher learning, but doesn't that seem a bit… tough?"
He waved a hand dismissively. "Okay, I might not have majored in both of them. I may have just sat in as many lectures as I could for classes I wasn't properly enrolled in. But the piece of paper doesn't matter if you're actually learning. Listening to things, paying attention to the stuff you want to use—"
"…wasting your parents' money…" Poppy chimed in.
Sonny's eyes flashed. "They didn't have to pay a goddamn dime, all right?"
"Oh," Poppy said quickly, biting her lip. "Do you… not get along with them?"
"Ugh. Well enough, as long as I keep my distance. They're not convinced I'm applying myself enough to 'things that matter.'"
She smiled. "You're preaching to the art student choir over here."
"Yeah, but it's apparently worked out real well for you."
"It has, actually."
He sipped his latte, tutting his lips in the way adults always did when they broached the subject of money. "So when you say you're not a starving artist… just how above that curve are you, exactly?"
She raised an eyebrow. "I could buy that museum of yours if I wanted to."
"Jesus." He clamped his teeth down on the ice cubes in his mouth to keep from swallowing them whole.
"It is kind of disgusting, yeah." She sighed, swishing her feet through the air. "To be honest, it makes me feel real damn disingenuous. I'm an artist, right? I'm supposed to see the world differently, not care about any of that … stuff." Her hand jerked as if she were shooing flies. "There are so many people—in the art world, which is nuts—who think you gotta come from, from nothing, you know? But I'm not some hip child of the streets; I'm a Midwestern Daddle. I come from money, and now I'm making more."
He nearly snorted out his drink. "What the hell is a Daddle?"
"It's a name." She coughed. "It's my last name."
He reeled back in his seat. "You mean you don't come from a long line of illustrious Dadas? Color me shocked."
"Like I said. I'm desperate to make myself sound legit."
"You have definitely succeeded in making yourself sound like a pretentious infant."
That seemed to strike a nerve. For a moment, she stared at him, some wavering, unnamable expression on her face, but it broke with her sudden laugh.
"I'm so stupidly afraid of being thought of that way, but like. Honestly. It's ridiculous, I know. I'm ridiculous. Sometimes I think I have to bury myself in ridiculousness just to be taken seriously. Art, man. What the hell?"
He pressed his lips together. "I don't know what to tell you, but I think I did have you pegged as a … a Daddle, or the East Coast equivalent. Your hippie shtick wasn't fooling anybody."
"And I don't want to," she said quickly. "Fool anyone, I mean. It's just… I hate being billed as, like, this voice of the downtrodden millennials when I've had it so easy. I think my art matters, I think it has substance. But me? Me, the privileged teenager from South Da-ko-ta—" Her voice hitched into the nasal lilt of the Canadian border. "I start feeling bad about who I am, and then I feel bad for buying into the whole art is pain nonsense. I'm cheapening my own statement."
He flexed his fingers, wishing he had a pen in hand. It was easier for him to think with something tactile. He feared his appropriate response arsenal was dwindling.
"Well, art stands on its own, right?"
"Right? It should. It absolutely should. But I keep apologizing for me, and I just—" She groaned, stretching her arms across the table and letting her head fall between her elbows.
"I feel you," he said, even though he didn't really. In response, she raised her clawed hands and pretended to rake them across her face.
"People, though."
"Awful, aren't they?" he said.
She looked up and smiled, and—like clockwork—he started noticing things again, that her teeth were white white white against the olive shade of her skin and she had a little scar on her chin and she was somehow, overall, the textbook definition of adorable.
"You know what else is awful?" he said quickly. "The word adorable. Any time you say it out loud, it's just—ugh. It literally sounds like you've fallen into a barrel of puppies, like you're flailing helplessly around and you can't even pretend like it's a scary situation."
Poppy only paused for a moment before catching on. "You can't even scream for help."
"Right!? You're surrounded by puppies, no one's gonna take you seriously, even though they're probably mean and can definitely bite."
"Adorable," Poppy spat. "Can't sound tough saying that."
He shook his head. "The worst."
Poppy laughed and hid her smile in her arm. It was totally unfair of her, and Sonny knew he would hold her personally responsible for every dumbly fascinating expression her face made.
"Hey, Sonny?"
"Mm?" He wasn't looking at her anymore—too risky.
"You know that day you sat with me, and I said I knew Joanna would catch you?"
"Uh-huh," Sonny mumbled.
"That wasn't it. That wasn't what I meant."
"Oh? What, then?"
"I meant… I knew that you'd be interesting."
He snorted. "Don't you mean odd?"
"Do I look like the kind of person who has a right to call anybody odd?"
As she said this, she threw her arms up in the air and leaned back, balancing her chair on two legs. Her hair looked even wilder than usual, flaring up away from her head, and sometime during the day, she had gotten a wide splotch of blue paint on her neck that made her look like she'd been half-strangled. He choked out a laugh.
"Point and match."
Half an hour later, Poppy slammed her empty cup in the trash can by the door, then proceeded to do some kind of victory dance around its grave.
"Are you finished?" he asked.
"Yes." She smirked up at him. "So I'm thinking that went pretty well."
Sonny shrugged. "As these things go. Perhaps."
"Tomorrow, then. Same time?"
He groaned. "Again?"
She raised an eyebrow at him. "You just said you had a good time."
"Maybe, but—" He leaned heavily against the wall. "You just … exhaust me."
"Hmm," she said noncommittally. "I've heard worse. First dates have never been my forte."
His shoulders stiffened until they were hunched into a straight line. "We weren't on a—"
"Save it, Joon," she said, holding up a hand. "Call it what you will. I'm just recommending the idea that we—being two people who have just shared a lovely conversation and who are mutually interested in continuing it—should do this again some time."
She was trying to be casual, innocent, but she was standing much too close to him to be believable. She was hovering only inches away, and she folded her arms (on purpose, surely) so that her skin brushed against his for the briefest moment. He wished he could say he was immune to all these (frankly desperate) ploys, but his heart hitched when she touched him, and he found that he was more than a little preoccupied by the slope of her collarbone. It seemed suddenly ridiculous to him how the outline of a skeleton against skin could make him blush. He tried to stammer his way out of it, wrenching his gaze away from her and staring at the ceiling instead.
"Well, maybe. I might be busy, you know…"
She leaned in even closer, and his eyes snapped down to meet hers. "That thing about dragging you here if I have to? That still stands." Her lips curled into a smile.
His eyes widened. "Why do you care so much?"
She blew out a sigh of frustration. "Because I generally make a habit of spending time with people I like. And I'm not going to sit here and waste my time with someone who's trying way too hard to prove that he doesn't care at all." She glared at him for a moment longer and then abruptly shifted away, her voice going softer. "I kind of want us to be friends, if that's not too inconvenient."
"All right, all right," he said quickly. He was suddenly afraid she was going to start crying on him. "S-sorry, okay? I'm sorry. I don't mean to be an asshole. I just am. Ask my roommate.
She shrugged. "I may have also been an asshole recently. To you, especially."
He nodded sagely. "You have been."
"We're all guilty of it."
"Some more than others."
She rolled her eyes. "All right. Bye, Sonny."
He waved as she left, watching her until she had climbed in her rental car and driven off to some luxury hotel Sinclair had no doubt found for her. He counted down slowly from ten, letting the weird buzz that came from being around Poppy wear away. Then he started walking toward the bus stop.
He went home, careened onto the couch, and tried to fall asleep.