AUTHOR'S NOTE: A gay bar near a church...I have a thing for quirky settings. **shrug** Anyway, in this chapter we get to meet a character who's going to turn out to be rather important. Yay, the second character I've made up so far (for this story)! And unlike Candice, we actually get to learn about this girl, much to Ax's annoyance. Oh, and when I mentioned turning this into a C/J fic, I think I was a bit misleading. It was going to mostly be the sort of thing where Cassie and Jake still love each other, but they won't get back together. Angst-filled stuff if I do it.
Oh, all you people care about is the M/A, why do I even bother? But another thing...Ax can somewhat control his tendency to play with sounds now, after all, the guy has morphing human for years by this point. Now he usually does it when he's nervous. (I'm too lazy to type "Ax speech" =P) Okay, I'm going to shut up so you can read the story...
Be Stupid Chapter 4 - When Ax Talks
So it hadn't been the best decision he'd ever made.
If you asked Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill at the moment, he would certainly back up that opinion. This was most obviously not his best decision. He was standing out about five blocks from his apartment, all of his Earthly belongings shoved into a pastry box, and he was nearing the two-hour morphing limit. No, this would not be his best decision.
But what to do now? He could go back to the apartment, perhaps...but Ax didn't want to take the chance that he'd run into Marco again. Not yet. He was not ready for that yet. Ax had to admit he wasn't sure what he would do if the two crossed paths soon...it wasn't likely to be pretty. So that was not an option.
Neither was becoming a nothlit. He had to find some place he could demorph in...someplace, someplace...
Then Ax saw the perfect place. It was a bright, multi-colored bar...all right, so it looked very odd, even by human standards. But the place was sure to have a bathroom, and that was the important thing. Ax did not want to attract a crowd by morphing in the street. After the war, there had been the large amount of rich Andalite tourists, of course; but many people were still not accustomed to have aliens possibly roaming the streets. And Ax was not really interested in drawing attention. Not in his mental state. He'd started to calm down a little, but he was still plenty angry enough to be bad news for anyone who got in his way at the moment.
So, without thinking about it (or noticing the rainbow colored banner above the bar), Ax ran in.
What the churchgoers across the street would've thought...
What kind of place was this? Ax thought as he entered the bar. The walls were painted in multiple colors -- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple. There was some word for it, Ax recalled. Tobias had told him. But he couldn't remember the exact word...he knew it began with 'rain'. Ax personally could not see how a mixture of colors had anything to do with rain. Humans were so strange sometimes...
But Ax put aside his musings over what a rainbow had to do with rain as he came to what he assumed were the bathrooms. He entered the men's bathroom and checked to see if it empty. Fortunately it was. At least one thing hadn't gone wrong today. So Ax went into one of the stalls and took off all of his clothes expecting for a morphing outfit that he'd bought himself recently. Then he demorphed back into his Andalite body and then quickly remorphed to human and put his outfit back on...yes, he had finally learned to dress himself. After all of these years morphing human, he had to learn how to do it on his own eventually. Rachel, if she were alive, would have been proud.
Rachel... Ax was surprised that he was thinking about her now. It wasn't as if he had tried to forget his fellow Animorph, but he didn't constantly think of her like some of the others. Like Prince Jake, judging from the media reports of how he still moped over his cousin to this day. Ax was quite certain that Cassie would never forget Rachel, they were at least as close as he...had been...to Tobias. Tobias had gone into complete reclusion after Rachel had died. That had dented Ax's relationship with his shorm/nephew for sure. Even Marco had his own may of moping for her, though it wasn't something blatantly obvious. Ax may have been a lot of things, but he was not blind. An overwhelming amount of Marco's various 'starlets' had a striking resemblance to Rachel. Even Ax had noticed that.
Which is not hard to notice when you have a near obsession... The voice in Ax's head reminded him. Ax shoved the thought to the back of his mind, as he was pressed with two more urgent realizations as he left the bathrooms.
One, he had only some pocket change and some changes of clothing. Nothing else.
Two? Now he remembered what the color on the walls was. A rainbow. He also recalled what it symbolized. Aximili-Esgarrouth-Ishtill was in a gay bar.
Irony gods indeed.
With a sigh, the morphed Andalite sat down in one of the seats. It was in the corners, somewhat cut off from all of the other people there. Which was good, because Ax was really not in the mood to deal with anyone.
Now that he had calmed down a bit, Ax realized how stupid he was acting over what had happened. There was no need to overreact like he had. Right?
Ax just dropped his head on the table. He hadn't really gotten any sleep last night, thanks to a certain unmentionable idiot. Maybe that's all he needed, some sleep to clear things up in his mind. Maybe he could come up with some logical idea of what to do. With a long a sigh, Ax shut his eyes. It'd be nice to not think for a while...
"You look like you could do with some cheering up." Ax heard a woman's voice say. His eyes snapped open and he looked up at her, genuinely uninterested. She wasn't exceptionally tall or beautiful. She was actually quite short, and attractive; but not drop-dead gorgeous. Her shoulder-length hair was died a shocking shade of bright blue. She was wearing a denim jacket three sizes too big for her and it was coated in buttons and pins. Her eyes were a sort of jade green.
Ax didn't respond, instead he just turned his gaze away from the young woman. He wasn't in the mood to be friendly, to say the least.
What, boyfriend dump you or something? Ax heard a teasing voice unexpectedly echo in his head. The young woman grinned at him in an annoyingly superior manner.
"Didn't expect to be talking to an Andalite, Mr. Morose and Miserable?" Without asking or anything of the sort the woman sat herself down next to Ax, who appeared stunned.
"My name's probably a bit hard for you to pronounce..." The young woman said thoughtfully. "So call me Tilopid, okay?"
Ax smirked to himself as he answered this mysterious (or crazy) girl. Try me.
"You're an Andalite too?" Tilopid shouted in surprise, causing almost half of the bar to give the duo curious and not entirely friendly glares. Tilopid looked around for a moment at the crowd. "Oops." She whispered.
Giggling, she turned back to face Ax. "So, what brings you to this neck of the woods, Mister Andalite Boy?"
Ax raised an eyebrow. "You're not exactly a traditional person, are you?" He commented. Tilopid shook her head.
"If I was what do you think I'd be doing here?" She asked. "And besides, you haven't answered my question."
In the corner of one of her green eyes, Tilopid noticed that she and Ax were still the main focus of the bar. She frowned and sighed. "Oh, get a life! Can't you have a conversation in this place with everyone listening in?" Tilopid shouted, glaring daggers at the crowd. "Geez, people." She muttered, rolling her eyes.
"So what was it? Your guy kick you out of the house, or was he a total jackass to you?" Tilopid asked casually, as if she hadn't unleashed her temper on a bar of innocent people.
"Neither one of those, really. Ally. Eee..." Ax mumbled. He had not been intending on talking to this girl, but there was something appealing about the fact that she did seem concerned -- or at least interested. And she was persistent. Ax had a small hunch that if he didn't open up, this girl was going to force him to whether he liked it or not. Her cockiness reminded him, if just a little bit. of Rachel...it was an odd feeling.
Ax found that he didn't really mind, though.
"Then what? It's not everyday you see some guy come running in here and then just mope around."
Ax slouched down in his seat and closed his eyes again. He sighed deeply. "I guess it isn't-tuh..."
"I am not really sure what happened." Ax said, more to himself than to the Andalite girl. "One of my friends had come over during the night, and the next morning..." Ax bit his lip as he considered what to say. "Well, I'll just say that something happened and my friend ended up running out of the house." Ax sighed deeply again.
"You slept with him?" Tilopid screeched, staring at Ax in shock. For a moment Ax didn't say anything, he just gaped at her. "No!" He protested the moment his mind kicked in. "No, no!" Ax repeated, his face flushed.
"Then to be blunt, what did happen?" Tilopid asked, giving Ax a look that clearly said she didn't believe what he'd just said. "Nothing like what you just suggested." Ax muttered. Tilopid laughed at Ax, but she smiled.
She almost missed what he said next. He mumbled, as if embarrassed, "We just kissed."
"That's it?" Tilopid asked, looking surprised. "Is your friend a homophobe or something?" Ax shook his head. "Not that I know of. It's just that..." he started to say before he got interrupted. "He didn't know about you?"
"Something like that." Ax said, smiling. Tilopid sighed and placed a hand on Ax's shoulder, much to his surprise.
"I'm sorry." She said, sounding genuinely empathetic. "I had an experience like that once." Then Tilopid put a finger to her lips and she suddenly looked thoughtful. "Though I have to admit, it almost sounds as if this friend of yours is hiding something, if you catch my drift." She mused aloud to Ax, her expression changing to a grin.
What? Ax said, staring up at Tilopid, too shocked to actually speak. "I'm just guessing." She admitted. "Hey..." Tilopid said as she completely changing the subject, "what's your name, you never told me."
Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. Ax answered, not at all surprised when Tilopid's hand flew to her mouth.
"The Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill?" Tilopid choked out. Ax nodded. Tilopid practically wilted into her seat.
"You have got to be kidding me..." She whispered. Ax smiled. "I am not."
"Then..." Tilopid said to herself, and then let out a victory whoop. "I always knew that guy was gay!"
"Jake Berenson, leader of the infamous Animorphs, is gay. How ironic..." Tilopid said. Then she laughed.
"Um, I think you are mistaken..." Ax whispered, but Tilopid completely ignored him. However, she did pull him up out of his seat. "Come on, we've gotta go find this 'friend' of yours, buddy!" She declared enthusiastically.
Tilopid had already started to run out the door while poor Ax grabbed his stuff. Rushing to the window to catch up with the enthused girl, Ax saw her suddenly crash into a guy who had been running past the bar. That was when he gasped. Not because of Tilopid crashing into someone (though he was worried for her safety) but it had much more to deal with the fact that he had recognized the guy she'd bowled into. It hadn't even taken Ax a second to realize who it was, who it could only be...
Marco.
Note: Just thought I would clarify...yes, Tilopid is a human nothlit. And she does like girls, if anyone wondered.
