Belle slouched behind the counter, headphones on. She was working, just not very hard. But then again, the owner didn’t care. Belle was here for her music knowledge and because she was a whiz at the accounting and inventory. As long as the place stayed neat and nothing was stolen, he let her do whatever she wanted. Considering that music was going more and more to digital with most people, they sold to more a specialty crowd. They carried vinyls, cassettes, CDs, and any number of ways to listen to the music. But the real selling point was, as the boss man said, was the knowledge of their staff.
With her coffee beside her and her large headphones covering her ears, Belle used her sunglasses to block everything else out. She was watching the shop, but she was mostly listening to Missy Elliot with her feet kicked up on the counter. Her dyed blue hair stuck up around her headphones, the only color she was wearing besides the dark poison green lipstick. Her studded leather jacket hung off the back of her chair and her t-shirt proclaimed her to be an Alien Sex Fiend.
Glancing up from the tome in
her hands, Hestia dared to stare at the mortal in close proximity to her. They
weren’t going anything to bother her at all, but the young goddess was uneasy
around humans, purely because she wasn’t used to them.
Belle chewed on her lower lip as she stood before the woman, twisting her fingers in nerves and looking down at her toes. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. Trying again, she managed, “… hello?”
❝ Jewel tone? What does that even mean? ❞ Caspian asked with a smirk, licking those plump lips clean from the curry sitting on their edges. Amusement and curiosity sparkled in those golden hues, watching her as she explained how emerald might bring out her eyes. He laughed gently, turning attention back towards his meal as he began to work the naan into the paste and rather up some of the rice and food he had brought for lunch.
He knew himself, the fear of judgement and of being seen for what you were born as. How crippling and awful such a feeling could be. To creep inside you chest and grip you so tightly your only relief was to curl in on yourself and pray it might end soon. There was no relief from the eyes that stared at him either. The boy who didn’t fit anywhere. The boy who was strange and unpredictable. Who would burst and break at the drop of a hat and who was stupid. Gods he knew they all thought him to be an idiot. It came with the Jock territory no doubt. Captain of the soccer team who got awful marks was the most cliche thing about all those terrible high school movies his friend made him sit through. Every time he saw them he thought ‘thats me, the jock that goes nowhere’.
At least he had his music. Whenever he sang at the parties, it seemed everyone forgot about his grades and focused on him. Focused on the words and the tune –– ignore the boy before them who’s flesh was broken and torn. Focus on the voice he still had… It was the only thing that hadn’t broken from his past-life. It always made him feel more whole, much like how Belle felt about this elaborate princess tale.
❝ Is it still in true Princess fashion to use glow bugs for the lights on the dress? I think I saw that in a movie once. ❞ He quipped as he brought another handful of his meal to his lips. Chewing for a few more moments before he licked his fingers noisily, and his lips along with it. He liked encouraging her. Knowing that she was a little different from everyone else just made her more fun in truth. In Caspian’s mind… These chats, whether they were real for her or hypothetical for him, it didn’t truly matter.
“Oh. My. God. Caspian. Jewel tone, it’s self-explanatory,” Belle waved she hand widely, “Ruby, Emerald, Saphire, dark and more saturate. Those bright pastel pinks and purples, I’m soooooooo over it.”
Finally remembering that she should eat. Her meal was far less glamorous than her friend’s lunch. Her dad had been busy again, his time split between his evening security job and his new passion writing. But that meant he was sleeping most mornings and writing most afternoons. So Belle had made her own lunch, which always took too much energy. So she’d just thrown anything into her sack that sounded okay. A pudding cup, snack crackers, a PB&J, baby carrots (the whole bag), and a partial bag of baking chocolate chips. She broke into the carrots, crunching loudly.
“You know, your skin tone in right for some really lovely greens… or maybe a metallic copper…” she hummed and tapped a carrot on her chin, “Would blue be too much? Either way you tots gotta let me do your makeup next time you sing. OH! Smokey eyes and blue lips!”
She grinned widely at him, vibrating with energy. She loved makeup, the louder the better. She’d been sent to the principle’s office many an occasion for her makeup in the first months of the school year. Finally, she had relented and kept it toned down to natural colors. With great reluctance. She loved the color theory, the application. The way it transformed the face. The way it was a mask against the world. The way she could make her face say what she often didn’t have the voice to say herself. How she could say ‘fuck you with a spoon’ with a perfectly winged point. Instead of looking in the mirror and just seeing a sad sham, a scared girl who was too dark and too male and too wrong to be wanted. A sad thing that had spent her whole life struggling and failing to make friends.
And god… part of her was still terrified about how Caspian would look at her if the mask was gone. She thought she knew him. Was nearly positive she could trust him. That he’d never reject her… but it had happened so often in her life. She’d thought again and again that she had made a new friend… only for her heart to get ripped out. But this was different, wasn’t it? Please… please… let this one stick. She needed more people in her life than her father and her childhood best friend, Mingan.
She barely gave Cas the time to speak before she slapped the table, standing in her excitement, “AH HA!” realizing what she did, her dark skin flushed and she collapsed back on the bench. Her smile lit up her whole face. Leaning in she tried to whisper, but was still far too loud, “That’s it Cas! You’re the music! All the best Disney movies are musicals. You should totally do all the songs! I can’t sing for shit but you’re amazing!”
Belle bounced on her toes, “It’s sweet, right?” she clapped her hands together, gladly gloating over one of her pride and joys, “It’s an YZF-R1, an ‘06. Normally they only got a 172 hp crank but I rebuilt most of this from scratch and got it up to 190. Better suspension and rear stabilization too. I could own a race in this bad girl,” she patted the side of the bike lovingly, “I gave it a metallic electron blue pearlescent paint. It’s also equiped with the de-regulator and a earlier vision of the invisibility generator for evading the cops. They always insist that 120 mph is too fast,“ she laughed.
Checking over the bike one last time to get a closer look at the paint job, Lucy looks away and toward the older blue woman with a wide smirk. “It’s a great bike. If you like being stuck on the street,” she trails off, dropping that little lure to see if Bell would pick it up.
“I-” Bell narrowed her eyes at Lucy, “Noooooo… no you DIDN’T! I haven’t gotten the balance figured out yet! It kept corkscrewing anytime I got above 10 feet!” she turned to the other girl, practically vibrating, “Tell me you didn’t! Hooooooooow?! You gotta shooooow meeeeeeeee.”
She grabbed Lucy’s shoulder and steered her to get on the bike, swinging onto it herself, “Come on, come on come on! I gotta see it too!”
She was almost there. Almost. It was a harrowing adventure but at last she’s almost reached the ground safely. Her hands scrapped raw, a tear in the knee of her pants from the occasional slip up on the way down, but all in all she figures she’s done quite well in climbing down the giant redwood she was in. There were less than a dozen branches to go now and a little bit of a drop till she reaches ground level and relative safety.
Xhuuya looks down awkwardly from where she’s clutching at her tree to gauge the best way down and carefully wipes sweat from her forehead. Taking a steadying breath she lets go of the tree to shimmy herself carefully off the branch and swinging slightly from it to reach the next branch below. On the last swing just before she lets go though, the branch she had been hanging onto snaps with a loud crack. She flails at her lost momentum and hits the next branch wrong, landing hard on it and driving the air from her lungs before bouncing off it and towards the ground.
Comically almost she falls through several more branches and bounces off other more sturdier ones until she hits the ground, face down, with a muffled thud thanks to the heavy blanket of moss and pine needles. Several deer bound away, startled by the ruckus.
Xhuuya groans painfully, but does not move from her spot aside from turning her head to the side enough to breath more easily, and glares at the deer disappearing deeper into the forest. She blows some stray strands of hair from her face irritably.
Not one of her proudest moments.
Bell had no choice but to slow clap. The blue woman had been on her way back from visiting the Scott Manor. She always took the long deer trail through the pine forests that bordered Metro City and allowed the rich gated community of the ‘Lord and Lady’ lived in the be utterly secluded. Normally Bell’s walk home was nothing but peaceful nature and the loud music streaming through her headphones.
Walking towards the fallen woman, Bell pulled out her headphones and crouched, “You alive? If so groan painfully.”
Having just spent the last four hours with her secret girlfriend, Belle was quite a sight. Besides generally being disheveled in her tight leather pants and skull tank top, her face was covered in sharpie. The drawn on villain mustache at odds with her glittery gold eyeliner and deep purple lipstick.
“Well it hasn’t stopped them from existing,” Bell laughed bubbly, “Some of us just love to live dangerously,” she purred the last word and rolled her hips. It was far too enjoyable to tease and flirt. It was almost a shame he was taking it all in stride. She winked at him and grabbed her crotch, one last try to make him squirm, “And yes, they do go aaaall the way up.”
Brows creeping upward, Ulric finally breaks out into laughter. It’d been a while since he’d dealt with this outside of Mira, and even with his own amusement he knew he wasn’t really interested in responding. “Must’ve taken a while to get all that inked, huh?”
Bell pouted, she’d really been hoping to make him squirm or embarrassed rather than laugh. Still, it was something.
Though the question did give her a chance to bring it back around to her seemingly non sequitur she’d started with, “Oh yeah, a day per tentacle. So, seven,” she bit her lip and raised a brow, “All total.”
RP backup 