noteful | Birthday Party for Laura/X-23

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Birthday Party for Laura/X-23

It's a pretty low-key party, all things considered, and not significantly different than the one Parker or Meg would have thrown in a dorm room for a friend at home, not-exactly-traditional menu not withstanding.

There's music, low enough to talk over (and maybe with a little more folk in the mix than one expects to find a party). Balloons and streamers in purple and blue and red. A place to leave presents. People to meet or catch up with.

And, most importantly, a chance to wish X-23 (or Laura) a very happy birthday.

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"Not yet," Cal says. "I was always taught not to eat spaghetti in public. Too messy."

It doesn't really matter here, but sometimes small matters of habit are hard to shake.

Medusa stares.

. . . which is briefly alarming, until Cal realizes what the glasses are for.

"What?"

"Messy."

"Yes? . . . have you had spaghetti before?" Cal asks.

"Yes. X introduced me to it."

When she was psychotic, but that's a story for another time.

". . . it's messy," Cal says, just in case that might somehow clarify things. Then he shrugs. "I don't know, it was just one of the rules for public behavior. For my family."

Medusa snorts at that.

"Children are messy eaters. If adults are, it just means that don't practice. It's..." She holds up one of her slender hands (patterned with henna). "We eat with our hands, in my culture. In polite society, you use only three fingers."

Cal is pretty sure it's not possible to eat spaghetti politely, but he can tell when a subject has hit its expiration date. Usually.

"Sounds a lot easier," he says.

"Actually," she says, "only three fingers is hard. And ladies only use the fingertips."

Beat.

"But then, in Milliways, everyone seems to use cutlery. It's very odd."

"Well," Cal says. "Pretty much everyone in Milliways is somewhere around my time, give or take a few decades. Or a couple centuries. Way after cutlery was invented, anyway. 'Swhat we're used to."

"Like having sex with your clothes on," Medusa mutters (mostly) under her breath.

Not quite under enough.

Cal blinks.

"- What?"

Her smile dimpling slightly,

"Eating with cutlery. It's like having sex with your clothes on."

"To be done only when you're so desperate you can't wait another second?"

No power on any earth could have stopped him from asking. Or the sly smirk.

"That...wasn't quite what I meant," Medusa admits, turning ever so slightly pink.

"First thing I thought of," Cal says. With complete innocence. Except for the smirk that's not going away, but it is more friendly teasing and less slyness now.

"Clearly. What I meant was you miss out on most of it."

"You think so?" Cal asks doubtfully.

"Yes."

Cal continues to be doubtful.

"I dunno," he says. "Mostly after finger foods I just feel greasy."

"You've just had bad cooking, then."

Cal laughs.

"Probably. Finger foods mostly just happened when I was too stoned to care what I was eating, anyway."

"Stoned?"

"Oh. Yeah. Uh. Drugs."

Medusa's just learning all kinds of exciting things today, isn't she?

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