Apartment Above Lukes, Friday Afternoon

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy was prepping for Pride over the weekend. Most of the merchandise she was planning for the booth had already been boxed up at the store, but she was folding pamphlets and making bracelets out of embroidery floss and beads that she'd picked up from Hobby Lobby when she'd taken a trip over there to discuss which store was going to hand out the birth control. The bracelets all corresponded with the various Pride flags; it was like an eighth grade craft project up in here.

But it was fun and relaxing and made for nice breaks between constant pamphlet folding while still letting her feel like she was being productive. Win/win.

Comments

[vdistinctive]

Eliot shrugged. "Guitar lessons, I think."

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"You still up for a lesson on Friday?" Kathy asked. "I'll try to be less ranty. And emotionally all over the place in general."

[vdistinctive]

"I'd be up for it even if you were," Eliot assured her. "Pretty sure that's part of the whole 'trying to be a good father' deal."

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Kathy smiled when he said 'dad' which was an unfamiliar reaction. When the word had come up before, she'd had to try to control a grimace.

What would she have been like if she had been raised by Eliot? Or, at least, this Eliot?

"I'm sorry to be such a trial of a daughter," she said. "I really am trying to do better."

But he'd been the shoulder she'd cried on from the beginning.

[vdistinctive]

"You kidding? This is nothing. Your cousin apparently dropped out of school to be a blacksmith."

[spin_kick_snap]

"That's so cool!"

Probably not going to win you any points with the fam, if that was your reaction, Kathy.

"You should invite her to the island for a visit. I bet she'd love to see some of the weapons people have here."

[vdistinctive]

"If I ever figure out how to reliably predict when this place is going to go insane, I definitely will. Not sure I can look Tru in the eye again if I get her daughter turned into a pony."

And that would be basically the best case scenario.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Right after the last one is usually a good bet," Kathy said. "It's been awhile, so we're due, but it's probably not going to get super-crazy until August."

[vdistinctive]

"Pretty sure the aliens were mid-July," Eliot pointed out. "And I was definitely a griffin shortly after the fourth last year. . . ."

Aren't you sad you missed that, Kathy?

[spin_kick_snap]

"You were a whut?"

[vdistinctive]

"You know, head of an eagle, body of a lion? Had wings and everything. It rained bubblegum or something one day and I could not get it out of my feathers. . . ." He shook his head. "Apparently the pony's big nemesis came to town or something for a week. Hardison was a pony. Parker was the only one of us to actually keep her fingers."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Okay, so there are just some things I did not miss about this island," Kathy said, shaking her head. "Waking up with four legs is one of them."

[vdistinctive]

"I'll take four limbs over gettin' pistol whipped by Hardison any day."

Because let's just review everything Kathy had missed while off-island in one go, shall we?

[spin_kick_snap]

"What?!"

[vdistinctive]

Eliot winced, hand going up to the tiny, mostly faded scars along his temple. "In his defense, he'd been taken over by a parasitic alien bent on world domination at the time."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I need you to think about the phrase you just said because what?"

[vdistinctive]

Eliot sighed. "Because Fandom. That do ya?"

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"You know, I don't know if it's comforting or terrifying that an ex-dead girl wandering around the island is barely weird enough to earn a mention," Kathy said with a sigh.

[vdistinctive]

"Who says it can't be both?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Porque no los dos," Kathy mumbled.

It was a meme, Eliot, one of those internet things. Never mind.

"Is this what you used to think about doing with your kid when you were younger?" she asked. "Teaching them to play guitar and talking them through teenage crises? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you never pictured adopting a zombie orphan."

[vdistinctive]

"You kidding? That's just what I always dreamed."

A joke answer was easier than admitting that the last time he'd pictured himself as a father was back when he was still a kid himself.

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy had pretty much guessed that herself. You didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the next generation when you thought you were going to die young.

"So you thought about kids around the same time you were debating being a fireman and an astronaut?"

[vdistinctive]

"Cowboy or pirate," Eliot said. "I read a lot of old adventure novels when I was a kid."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Settled on cowboy, huh?" Kathy asked.

Look, daughters were supposed to tease their dads about their, well, everything.

[vdistinctive]

"I'm pretty sure you could argue I became both."