If We Were Strangers
Jul. 16th, 2009 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kolcharacters: Mara & Deon
prompts: 31_days: If I didn't know you, I'd rather not know & fanfic100 Strangers.
Special note: This is the companion to Sage's piece.
So this aint the end
I saw you again today
Mara carefully hit the ignore button, her gloved hands unwieldy against the phone’s smooth face. Lynn, for once, would have to settle for being astonishingly low on Mara’s priorities. After all, a phone just didn’t go with the costume she was swathed in.
She tucked the phone into the pocket Loni had thoughtfully hidden at her hip, unaware the flustered excitement had bubbled to her face and she was blasting everyone in the crammed courtyard with a particularly dorky grin.
It was a good thing she was running solo this first day at Pacificon. Less of a chance someone might see her wandering around dressed as an arrancar from Bleach. Lynn thought the whole convention thing totally stupid— which was why she’d changed in the car. Which had been an exercise in frustration and a sore back, as she’d stubbornly refused to venture into the volvo’s spacious backseat.
But it had been worth it. Only Loni knew of the dress up, but Mara was already bribing the part time seamstress’s silence with a weekend of unlimited car rides.
Leaving Mara free to unleash the inner dork she hadn’t realized she’d been harboring until that fateful discussion with her father, weeks before.
Working her way deeper into the crowd, Mara was struck by how normal the majority of the fans were. She’d thought the convention would be filled with stereotypical fanboys, but underneath the costumes were people just like her.
Well, mostly.
She doubted any of them were Hunters-- she was surrounded by a sea of cheap wigs.
Adjusting the costume Loni had made, Mara blinked when she came face to face with a camera.
"Ooh, nice costume! Can you pose with the Ichigo over there?" Though Mara swore she’d never seen the girl before, there was something familiar about her. She felt the frown settle across her forehead, and watched as the girl took a hesitant step backwards. "I haven't seen any Kon's yet, but-"
Ah. That was why the girl was so familiar-- Mara had run into this girl at the Pacificon forums, where they had engaged in a short volley of contrary opinions on various Bleach characters. The familiarity was explained by the girl’s avatar— a shot of her cosplaying as Orihime.
But there was no tension in the other girl, just a shy smile. Mara wasn’t familiar with convention etiquette, but was quick enough to pick up on a cardinal rule: online disagreements stayed out of conventions.
Mara's smile was tight. She hadn't dressed up like this to have her picture taken, but she could always ask the girl for a copy of the picture to show her father.
She stepped up to the Ichigo, not impressed by his generic duds. She wondered if his get up had been purchased online. It wasn't terribly authentic and was crowned with an obviously cheap orange wig. But the guy seemed pleasant enough, inviting her and the photographer for the Bleach Karaoke that night at a nearby bar.
Mara had seen an ad on the forums, but didn't think of going. Boozing with Deon was one thing, but with complete strangers?
But standing there wearing the clothes of a villain in a sea of fellow cosplayers, Mara found the offer aggreeable.The costume made her anonymous in this crowd-- no one knew her in real life, so who cared if she made a fool of herself?
And anyone would think her purple hair was dyed for the convention!
Smiles came easier for her as the next half hour swiftly passed. She had her picture taken beside all sorts of cosplayers, even managed to track down two Doctor Who’s, just for her father. She hadn't thought to bring a camera, but her phone would have to be enough. Even if the shot cut off one of the Doctor's faces.
And she looked like the biggest dork alive. But it was okay, because her father would be the only other person to see it.
She was about to make her way into the con proper when a flash of yellow-orange caught her eye. At first she dismissed it as just another Ichigo, but there was something familiar about that stance…
Mara blinked, hand reaching up to re-center her contacts, because there was no earthly way Deon Barros was at Pacificon, dressed as an anime character. Her eyes had to be playing tricks on her. But he was still there, shoving his frown at the crowd.
A slow smile spread. She never, ever, would have taken Deon for a Bleach fan.
Maybe it was the fan ladden atmosphere or maybe it was just the first sign of heat stroke, but Mara flung her arms round his shoulders and hollered in his ear. "ICHIGO!"
Immediately she knew giving into her impulse was the worst thing she could have done. His muscles tensed beneath her hold. The air grew stiff and laced with an awkwardness she hadn't felt since high school. But before she could linger on just what was so familiar about that feeling, Deon jerked free of her arms, walking away.
And he didn't even look back once.
Standing there abandoned in the brassy sunlight, she had to give it to Deon.
It was a pretty good Ichigo impression.
I had to turn my heart away
"Isn't that... the guy?" The timid photographer jerked her head towards the awful haircut she'd been pointedly ignoring. Mara hadn't bothered to learn the girl's name-- she wasn't going to speak with her ever again, after all.
Mara pointedly moved her eyes in Deon's opposite direction, as if the potted fern was more interesting than the over muscled jerkface in the corner. But her eyes disappointed her, sneaking a glimpse and behind rewarded by Deon looking every bit as miserable as she had hoped he felt. "It might be."
"Aren't you... going to go over and try and talk with him? Again?"
Mara couldn't help but snort. After the disastrous encounter in the courtyard, Mara's con enthusiasm had taken a sharp nosedive. Just when she felt the joy bubbling to the surface again, she'd run into his jerkface again. And him refusing to acknowledge her. This was the fifth time, and still no hint of recognition.
Well, two could play at that game.
"I take it that's a no?" The girl's voice was loaded with relief. Mara managed a shrug.
"I don't know why I'm still here." Mara admitted, looking down at her hands. The arrancar outfit was mused, and she could feel the headdress was slipping. No one was asking for pictures now; she probably looked like a wreck. "The Bleach meet up is over with, and the GKMMORPG panel isn't until tomorrow."
"Oh, there's tons of stuff to do!" The girl gushed. "The convention is twenty four hours, after all!"
It was on the tip of Mara's tongue to dismiss the girl. Any other day she would have wandered alone, content with the best company available. She never would have engaged with a perfect stranger, much less wandered the convention with a nameless civilian. But this was con, and it was as if all the rules she lived by had been turned on their head. She was caught in the grips of something exhilarating, a liberation from the identity she'd walked in for five years now.
Stepping outside that shell of expectations, she finally had enough room to breathe.
She felt more normal here, dressed like an anime villain beside a shutterbug fangirl, than she had all the week without her power.
"I just... I'm not feeling like running into him anymore. I'm tired of, I'm tired of him being like that." The words tumbled out. It should worry her that Mara hadn't stopped the confession, but she was too busy being lifted by the release. Her shoulders straightened, and she stood tall, taller than she had for a very long time.
Timidly, the girl smiled, eyes crinkling into sharp, arching folds. And Mara didn't stiffen when the girl's hand brushed her own. "You shouldn't let him ruin the convention for you. I'm sure we can distract you. There's a dagger workshop starting in an hour, and-"
Mara glanced at the corner, but Deon was lost to the crowd again, and for the first time that day, Mara was thankful. In his absence, that thrill, that addicting rush, was spiraling round her once again, fueled by the return of her ruthless determination. She was going to enjoy the con, damn it, and push his jerkface out of her head.
Lynn would be so proud.
"So that guy from before mentioned Bleach Karaoke?"
Maybe not.
You’d have me down (sic) on my knees
They'd stopped by the volvo so Mara could change. She wasn't about to go to a bar dressed as an arrancar, especially with the outfit in near tatters. But the clothes she’d worn before now sported grape Gatorade stains. The discoloration wasn’t as noticeable on the jeans, but the white tee was a definite loss.
Rummaging around in the trunk, Mara unearthed her tire iron and blinked at the shirt that was wrapped around it. The shirt was obviously not hers— it advertised a tennis shoe company that, by the vintage logo, had to have gone out of business in the 70s— but it would have to do. There wasn’t anything else she could wear in the trunk, unless plastic grocery bags had become all the rage.
“I’ll guard against anyone seeing,” The girl promised, turning her back to face the parking garage.
Mara eyed the girl’s stiff back before turning to the car and frowning. She’d look incredibly foolish trying to change in the front seat. It wasn’t like anything racy had happened in the volvo’s backseat, anyway. Mara crawled into the backseat, breathing through her nose before her heart settled down.
It wasn’t that hard to push the memories away, now.
But once again, a guy and his baggage had intruded on her weekend of release. It wasn’t fair, she thought, pushing the arrancar outfit off her shoulders. Why do guys have to be such, such dicks.
The dress ripped as it was shoved rudely off her hips, but she didn’t care, kicking the garment off and reaching for her jeans.
It wasn’t as if she’d wear it ever again.
But the moment she shoved the shirt over her chest, Mara was confronted by an awful truth.
The shirt did not fit.
It was built for a man. Her own shoulders too narrow to hold the material up, leaving one shoulder bare, save for her bra strap. The shirt was stretched uncomfortably over her breasts, especially to a woman who always preferred one size up.
And no matter how she tugged at the fabric, it refused to settle across her hips, bunching uncomfortably around her belly.
“Damn it.” She hissed, glaring at the offending garment. What was she going to do now-
Her eyes fell on the scissors abandoned on the floor. Well, that could work…
You lying so low in the weeds
I bet you gonna ambush me
Mara was never leaving the bar.
It was crammed with a colorful assortment of characters, spanning anime, television, and even the world of GKMMORPG. That brawler was carefully navigating a bottle of Bud Light passed the jaws of his helmet. The celebration had begun around Bleach, but with each new person, it had taken on a different air, everyone just enjoying the hell out each other.
It didn’t hurt that she’d caught three guys checking out her chest. Far from being pissed by the attention as she might normally have been, after each catch Mara had sent a mental thank-you to the shirt’s owner. There was something in the atmosphere that changed things, that blessed anonymity casting a daring sheen to every encounter.
No, Mara was never leaving this bar. It was positively magical.
“Are you going to go up there?” Mara saw the round of shots being dropped on the table before she linked them to the camera girl’s return. She claimed the seat next to Mara, sitting so close their hips touched, and her arm brushed Mara’s as she reached for her tequila.
But Mara said nothing, because it was beginning to bother her the girl was nameless. It was too late to just turn and ask her. There were rules to these sorts of things, after all, rules she wasn’t buzzed enough to ignore.
Yet.
“You mean the stage? No, no I couldn’t.” Mara shook her head, grabbing the closest shot. The stage was claimed by a Vulcan grinding against the microphone as he sang about touching himself— nothing Mara did could top that.
The girl’s face turned wistful, and Mara was reminded at once of Jane. “You can’t sing either?”
The shot burned as it rolled down her throat, the edges of the table already cast in fuzzy shadows. She’d have to slow down if she wanted to remember what a great time she was having. “That’s not it. I’m okay, but...”
“You can’t have stage fright at a convention!” A guy— dimly, Mara identified him as the crappy Ichigo from before— reached across the table to hit her arm. “Go up there before Leonard does something we’ll need bleach— REAL bleach— to erase the bad images with!”
Mara pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose, glaring at the karaoke machine. “I don’t even know what to sing-”
“I’ll buy you the rest of your drinks for the night if you go up there.” The guy promised, and Mara did not miss where his eyes traveled.
“You have a deal.” Mara slapped his hand, the roar of their table drowning out the Vulcan. He surrendered the microphone to Mara before sheepishly making his way to the table she’d left.
The karaoke machine was already launching into the next song, leaving Mara no option but to raise the microphone to her lips and start belting out along with those crazy ladies of Heart.
It was a good thing Deon wasn’t there to witness this, she thought between the chorus, but the euphoria of booze and the cheers of her table as she totally nailed the lyrics overpowered that small voice, and she was lost in the performance.
Dive down deep down to save my head
You... I think you got the blues too.
Something was different, Mara realized, watching as he ventured outside. Something different between them. Half deafened by the alcohol and adrenaline still roaring in her bloodstream, Mara was at a loss to fix it.
There’d never been this awkward tension between the two of them. Mara should be glad he was at least talking with her now, even if the words he said made no sense and he was hiding behind Hunting. Which was stupid, because she hadn’t heard about anything going wrong at the convention.
The door swung closed, and Mara wished she had the power to brush all of this aside. To go back, back to that morning, to stop herself from hugging him. Because everything had gone to shit after that gesture.
But she couldn’t, and there wasn’t a Hunter who could make time his bitch. Mara was stuck with fixing this herself.
Mara wasn’t drunk enough ignore that they were on the edge of something. But as she pushed the door and caught sight of him on the bench, as lost as she’d felt earlier when he’d walked away, Mara realized she wasn't drunk enough to change the status quo.
If the real thing dont do the trick
No, you better make up something quick
Pleased that things were back to normal if Deon was belching and joking again, Mara decided it was time to go. It wasn’t too late to call for a ride back to the Fortress. She pushed herself off the bench, rubbing at her bare arms as she made her way to the door.
But once there, something inside snapped. She turned back, eyes cool and surprisingly sober. “I wonder about if I didn’t know you,” Mara admitted slowly. “If this was the first time we’d met, none of this Hunter freakshow going on.”
A hint of a smile tugged at her lips, a sheepish edge beneath the bar's neon sign. “This convention’s got this great anonymity thing going, making everyone acting crazy. You make your own identity at con, become whoever you want to be. Karaoke’s small fries compared to what’s going on in that hotel. But… anonymity only goes so far, especially when there’s someone like you there. So… thanks for pulling me off that stage, I guess. Not that I’d remember it in the morning.”
She didn’t look back as she ventured back into the bar.
This will be edited into something decent later on. Consider this Draft #2 XD.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-17 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-05 07:33 am (UTC)