Here comes a new chapter! More very needed Thunderblink, a little Lorna and Marcos, a deep conversation... Enjoy!
Clarice doesn't know what to expect when she walks into the café on Tuesday morning. She immediately looks for John, because she's been thinking about nothing else since the other night, but he's not there. Shaking her head, she remembers that he usually shows up about an hour into her shift on Tuesdays. The only reason he was there last week when she came in all rattled was that she was late.
Clarice smiles at Marcos and nods at Lorna, who smirks at her, looking far too much like she knows something. Has John told her about their kiss? Or is Clarice seeing things? She's so obsessed with it that it might simply show on her face.
"Had a good weekend?" Lorna asks her, that smirk still at the corner of her lips.
"Quiet," Clarice answers. "You?"
"Just fine. You recovered from the party?"
Clarice frowns. Does she mean the kiss, does she know about it? Or just staying up late? Or… Could she be making fun at Clarice's social blunder with their group of friends?
"I−" she starts, wringing her hands in discomfort as much as annoyance.
"Relax," Lorna raises her hands. "I didn't mean anything by it. Just that you seemed a bit flustered when we dropped you off."
"Oh. I'm just not really used to parties," Clarice says. It's not a lie if she just leaves out how it ended, right?
Lorna nods, though doubtfully. "You didn't go out, wherever you lived before?"
"It's been a while since I've been in a place where I can−" Clarice gestures toward her face. She's not sure why she's sharing this with Lorna. They aren't friends, not like with Marcos, and Lorna often comes off as cold and uncaring. Clarice is pretty sure by now that it's a mask, but she has no reason to trust her.
"I see," Lorna says. She softens a bit, leaning against the counter. "That's where your anxiety comes from?"
"John told you that?"
"No. It wasn't hard to figure out."
Clarice swallows. "I don't really want to talk about it," she says.
"Okay. Just know that there are plenty of people around here who've been through the same thing at one point or another. If you need someone to talk to."
"Like you?" Clarice asks on a whim.
"Passing as human is not as hard for me," Lorna says, playing with a strand of green hair. "But the mental health stuff...I've had my fair share. And being shunned because of it too."
Clarice nods. She hasn't missed Lorna's intensity, the strength of her emotions, the way she carries herself. The way everyone shies away from her, just a little. She'd thought it might just be her pregnancy, but there's obviously more.
A few patrons come in, and the two women have to stop talking to take their orders. Clarice can feel Lorna's eyes on her for a while, but soon they settle into their work.
Even after John walks in, still limping slightly, the day goes at a snail's pace for Clarice. She watches him out of the corner of her eyes, seemingly perfectly calm and composed in front of his computer. He doesn't give anything away, but he smiles at her when their eyes meet. Clarice doesn't know what that means for the conversation they're supposed to have later.
She's agonized all weekend over the kiss they shared, and the talk they promised each other. She liked the kiss. There's no way around that. But she also hasn't had a relationship since her last crappy boyfriend left her running from a bunch of Purifiers while they burned her car.
And then there are all the crappy boyfriends she's had before that. She doesn't have a great track record. John is nothing like anyone she's ever dated, but that makes her worry more, not less. At least familiar is comforting. This is a jump into the unknown.
But maybe, she keeps thinking as she watches him interact with different people who come to see him at his table throughout the day, maybe it's a jump she's willing to take.
John joins her in the backroom on her lunch break, but Marcos is there too. Clarice and John look at each other uncomfortably and try to pretend everything is normal.
"So, Clarice, what did you think of the center?" Marcos asks, oblivious.
"It seems great for the mutant kids," Clarice answers with a shrug. The center is honestly one of the best places for mutants she ever seen, especially if what John has told her about it is true, but she's not ready to admit it.
"For some of them, it's the only place they feel safe," John nods.
"I can imagine," Clarice says.
John glances at her, as if reading more into her words than she meant to share, but he doesn't comment. Clarice doesn't meet his eyes. She suddenly wonders what it might have been like, to have someone like John as a teacher when she was a teenager being bounced from foster home to foster home.
She shakes her head to get rid of the thought. It's far too late for her. Maybe that's why she feels so uncomfortable in the center, maybe it's resentment that she didn't get that as a kid. Maybe she's jealous of the children.
"It's a safe place for adults, too," John says. There's something different in his tone, like he's got a glimpse of her thoughts. Maybe he has. He's so perceptive that Clarice still isn't sure he isn't a telepath.
"That's good," she nods vaguely.
"I'll get back to work," Marcos stands up, now the one who's uncomfortable. "You guys need anything?"
"I'm good," Clarice says, also standing. However much she wants to have that conversation John promised her, now is not a good time when she has ten minutes left on her break, and she doesn't want to spend them in awkward silence either. She smiles at John to soften her abrupt departure, while he's still eating his lunch. He laughs back at her, silently, like he knows exactly what's on her mind.
Hell, he probably does.
Clarice feels both Lorna and Marcos's eyes on her as she goes straight to John's table at the end of her shift. She'd like to say she doesn't care what they think, but it would be lying. Yet right at this moment, she's not concerned about them.
John looks up at her when she sits down and smiles.
"You done for the day?" he asks her.
"Yes. You ready to talk?" Clarice asks, giving up all pretense that it hasn't been weighting on her mind.
John laughs. "I did promise you that, didn't I?"
"You did."
"So...that kiss."
They look at each other in embarrassment for a second, and burst out laughing.
"This is awkward," Clarice says.
"It is," John nods. "I guess we need to figure out if we want to go any further."
"I'm..." Clarice hesitates, but she can't hold it in anymore. "Okay, I'll go first. I've thought about it a lot, and I think I'd like to try, but I have baggage, and then there's the anxiety thing, and my last relationship didn't end well, and it would also be totally fine if you didn't want to go further and I would completely understand," she rambles, too fast, so fast that she runs out of breath.
"Wow," John stops her. "I'm, uh...I'm really glad you...but−" he hesitates.
"You don't want to," Clarice states, disappointed. She's almost angry he let her simmer all day just to tell her that.
"No, wait, I do! I think. It's complicated."
"How complicated can it be?"
John sighs. "You said something about baggage? Well, I have plenty of my own. And, uh...before we make any kind of decision, there are things you need to know."
"Okay," Clarice says doubtfully, hoping he's not leading her on. But her heart says he's not, and the anguished look on his face tugs at her.
John looks around him. "Not here," he says. "Would you be okay with going up to the apartment?"
"Are you inviting me to your place?" Clarice raises an eyebrow, more in humor than flirting, but the implication is there.
"It's more Marcos and Lorna's place than mine, I'm just borrowing their guest room," John says. "But they're working here until six, and I don't think they'll mind."
"Okay then."
John closes his laptop and puts it and his papers back into his backpack. "Come on," he says, standing up.
Clarice follows him through the back room and into the building's lobby beyond it. She's surprised that John leads them straight to the elevator and not the stairs, since she knows the apartment is just above the café on the second floor, but she doesn't comment on it. She has noticed him limping several times in the last few days, after all. Maybe he's got a knee injury or something.
John unlocks the first door of the corridor, and he's immediately attacked by a large black and white dog.
"Hey, girl," he says, petting the dog's head, trying to get her off him. "This is Zingo," he tells Clarice.
"Hello, Zingo," Clarice smiles, extending her hand to pet her as well. The young dog is feisty and adorable, with her long ears falling around her face.
"You like dogs?" John asks.
"Isn't that a first date question?" Clarice asks playfully.
"Or a question to ask a friend I want to know better," John answers more seriously.
"Then yes, I like dogs," Clarice says. She doesn't know what to make of it, if John is trying to tell her he doesn't want to be more than friends, but she doesn't ask. He obviously has something he wants to talk about first, so she'll hear him out.
"Good. Zingo will leave you alone if I ask her, but she likes to play."
"She's yours?"
"Yes," John nods, putting down his backpack by the door. "Let's go sit over there," he indicates the living room table.
John watches Clarice sit carefully, a little uncomfortable in the strange environment.
"You want to drink anything? Coffee?" he asks.
"I had four coffees today, so I don't think that's a great idea," Clarice says.
"Tea? Soda? We threw out the beers when Lorna learned she was pregnant."
"No, I'm good. But you can get yourself something if you want."
John gets a can of soda from the fridge, if only to give himself something to fidget with. It also gives him the opportunity to turn away from Clarice and breathe through his panic.
He made the decision to tell her everything two days ago, after Marcos scolded him, but he's gone back and forth on it a hundred times since. What if Clarice runs away? What if she can't stand the thought of dating someone that's so much trouble? He'd rather be friends with her and keep hiding this from her.
Even if she takes it well, how much should he tell her? Some of it is inevitable, but some still makes him choke up every time he thinks about it. Is he ready to spill it out to a near stranger?
She did. Clarice trusted him enough, for some reason, to tell him about her anxiety, to talk about private things with him, when they barely know each other. It's only fair that John returns the favor, regardless of whether they decide to pursue a relationship.
Taking a deep breath, he sits down, opening his soda, and looks up into Clarice's eyes.
"The other day, you noticed I was limping," he starts.
Clarice frowns, confused. "Yes, but−"
"I didn't lie to you when I said it's from an old injury acting up. Except that it's not very old. And it has a...story attached to it."
"What are you saying?"
"I told you I was discharged from the Marines eight months ago," John says slowly. "I didn't tell you why."
"John, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to−"
"I want to. It's just...complicated. Please just let me talk?"
"Of course," Clarice nods.
"I did two tours in Afghanistan, and I got...injured over there."
"I thought your power−"
"I'm not invincible, just harder to hurt. It was an IED. My unit and I, we walked right into a trap. I-I led my brothers onto a bomb."
"John−"
"The minute we went in, they didn't have a chance of making it out. I only lived because...well, I'm really hard to kill, and I wasn't inside when it went off. I'm the only one who survived."
John looks up, away from Clarice, to keep the tears filling his eyes from coming out. The knot in his throat is almost too big to get the words out.
He's talked about it a hundred times with his therapist, he's far from where he was at the beginning when he couldn't even think about it without slipping right into a flashback. He can still see it, the explosion, the screams, but it's only a memory.
It's easier, in a way, to talk to Clarice. In the eyes of the people who knew him before, Marcos and Lorna and his friends at the center, he can see nothing but pity. Clarice is compassionate, understanding, but she doesn't feel sorry for him. It's refreshing.
She also understands instinctively when to speak, and when to wait for him to get his emotions under control.
"There was another unit on the way, and they pulled me out," he manages to say after swallowing. "I woke up in the field hospital about a day later. They were getting ready to evacuate me."
"You were badly hurt?" Clarice asks softly.
"I had my back to the building when it went up, and I got hit by a lot of shrapnel. It was complicated by the fact that my body is too dense for any kind of surgery, so they couldn't get it all out. And, uh...I had a piece of metal embedded in my spine."
"Oh," Clarice frowns, obviously trying to reconcile whatever she knows about spine injuries with what she's seen of John. "What does that mean?"
John doesn't look at her when he answers. "There was some damage to my spinal cord, so I couldn't move my legs."
"You were paralyzed?" Clarice asks, shocked.
"Yeah. I started physio as soon as the swelling went down enough, and I was really lucky 'cause I got some function back pretty quickly, but everything else takes a while. I'm still going there three times a week, still wearing leg braces to help me walk. That's why I haven't looked for a job yet."
"I was wondering about that," Clarice says slowly, trying to process the rest of it. "Can I ask...you said braces?"
John nods and bends down to take off one of his boots. Lifting up his pant leg, he shows her the thermoplastic brace on his lower leg.
"And that helps?" Clarice asks. She still looks bewildered, overwhelmed by too much information.
"I don't walk very well without them," John says. "I was still mostly using crutches six weeks ago."
"Not long before we met," Clarice says. "How did I miss it completely?"
"You weren't looking. And I didn't show you. I guess I enjoyed having one person who didn't see me as disabled first."
"But it's...temporary, right?" Clarice hesitates. "You're recovering?"
John sighs. "It's a bit more complicated than that. I was making good progress before, but it's been slowing down. I don't know if I'll walk completely unaided again, but it's unlikely. And even if I do, I still have about two pounds of shrapnel in my back, including some around my spine, so it's always going to give me trouble."
Clarice nods slowly. "Okay," she says. "Thank you."
"For what?" John frowns.
"For telling me."
She actually sounds grateful, not about to run away. John thinks about everything he hasn't told her yet, and the weight that was starting to lift from his stomach comes back full force.
"You said I should hear this before we made a decision," Clarice says after a while. "But you know it doesn't make a difference, right?"
"How can it not?" John asks, surprised.
"Did you think I would think less of you because of it?" Clarice asks back.
John sighs. "I don't know. Maybe not the...disability part, although some people do. But−"
"All I've learned is that you're even braver and stronger than I suspected," Clarice interrupts him.
John shakes his head. "I'm not. Not really. There's other stuff you don't know yet."
"Do you want to tell me?"
"I don't think I can," John chokes out. "Not right now."
Clarice watches him as he tries to rein everything in once more.
"John...I know we haven't decided yet, not really, but...can I hug you?"
John looks up in shock, unable to answer. Clarice stands up and comes closer, holding out her hand. He takes it and stands up in turn, and suddenly finds himself with purple hair in his face and a hundred-something pounds of Clarice in his arms. He sighs softly, closing his arms around her.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this rather pivotal chapter. So John was a stubborn fool for thinking that Clarice would reject him over his history and disability... but what is it that he still hasn't told her?
Please tell me what you thought!