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The Perk [Friday morning]

You know what was both sort of calming and...oddly off-putting? A coffee shop filled with candles.

The baristas didn't seem to think it was as weird as Irene did, and no one even laughed when she said she felt like she was in that one Sting music video. (Maybe she was just old. Oh, god, that was probably it.)

In any case, she took her laptop to the corner along with her coffee, curling up to poke at next semester's syllabus.

...okay, so that was what she started with, anyway. It devolved into belated Christmas shopping fairly quickly. Because Irene.

[totally open, trying to actually play this week, whoooooo]

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Kitty got as far as the door and asked, "Are we having a religious ceremony in the coffee shop?"

"If we are, I'm going to need to leave soon," Irene said, looking up. "Religion and I don't play nicely together."

For some weird reason.

"I figured there was a power outage imminent, or something."

"No one ever lights the candles before the power outage," Kitty said. "It has to go dark and then there's cursing and stubbing of toes while you're trying to find matches for half an hour."

"Then perhaps we're in the midst of something very romantic," Irene suggested, raising a brow as she looked around. "Do you think this is maybe one of those very staged proposals? We might end up on YouTube!"

"It's probably a Fandom thing," she said. "Though I would not mind watching a staged proposal."

"Probably for the best. I don't have a clever disguise with me, if we were to end up on the internet," Irene mused. "And I'll take candles over rain of fish or sea monsters or ghosts, thank you. It's a nice break, even if it's a touch...fire hazard-y."

"Good thing we have a fire department on island?" Kitty tried, taking a seat. "So how've you been?"

"Decent," Irene decided, closing her laptop because leaving it open was just rude, okay? "I didn't get haunted last week, which I've never had to specify before. You?"

"A lot of offisland drama, but no hauntings, so at least there's that?" Kitty said. "Pretty okay, though."

"Drama?" Irene asked, a little worried. "At the other school, or something else?"

"At the school. I had an ex-boyfriend come back from the dead," Kitty said, alarmingly casual about that.

So yeah, she was getting a little bit of a stare for that. "Like...a zombie?" Irene asked, unsure of whether that was an insensitive question.

"Oh, god no." The zombies were an entirely different universe. "He was thought to have died three years ago and it turns out someone switched him with someone else and kept him underground for gross anti-mutant experiments."

"Oh my god. The poor thing," Irene winced, eyes going wide. That sort of thing sounded a touch more familiar, though at least she'd had agency in faking her own death. "Is he all right now?"

"I think so, mostly. He's even quieter than usual, and hopefully I didn't freak him out too much by being all 'I have a boyfriend' right away," she said, because she'd been kind of worried about that. "Mostly it seems like he's trying to catch up."

She nodded, digesting that. "You two were together when he 'died'?" she asked. "How confusing and weird for you, too, then."

"Oh, no, we'd broken up years before that," Kitty clarified. "But we stayed close, and there were some... confusing things before he died, and I didn't handle it well when he was gone for a long time, and it was kind of a mess."

"You must've been quite young when all of this was happening, too," Irene noted, frowning a little. "No wonder you're not fazed by things here. He's somewhere safe now, though, right? No danger of being recaptured for gross experiments?"

"Yep. He's back at the school now. On my team and everything."

Yeah, a little weird. And yet not the most uncomfortable setup they'd ever had with that.

"How's Clint taking it?" He didn't seem like the jealous type, but then again, this wasn't exactly a normal situation, either.

"Okay, I think? We talked it through when it first happened." When she had to tell him no, she wasn't going to leave him for Peter. "It hasn't really come up since and I'm trying to be open about things without being all 'Peter this and Peter that.' But like, I'm pretty sure he wasn't sorry we didn't spend Thanksgiving there."

"Well, that begs the question of where you're spending Christmas," Irene said with a small smile. "But it's probably just an adjustment for him, anyway, to have an unforeseen possible-rival in the picture. Has Peter made any indication that he'd even want to get back together?"

It sounded as though he might have other things on his mind, as it was.

"Nope. And he wouldn't be a rival anyway. But literally the morning after he came back I had the 'by the way, you know that guy here with me' talk with him. Probably bad timing on my part," Kitty admitted. "Things have been... not stilted, really, but we're not really having deep discussions or anything."

"He might need a minute to get to a place where he even could," Irene pointed out quietly. "It sounds like he's been through a lot."

She couldn't even imagine how traumatized he might be, and she'd been kept in a Pakistani prison for awhile. "How are you handling having him around again? I mean, Clint and his reaction aside, it's got to be...confusing to see someone you've already mourned."

"I'm handling it okay, but it's so weird. When Peter 'died,' that was what got me to quit and in a roundabout way was how I ended up here," Kitty explained. "So I'll be walking in the halls or go to get coffee in the morning and there he is. And that's like months of crying totally invalidated. Sorry I'm making you play therapist."

"Consider it payback for all my ex talk," Irene assured her. "...and for that matter, for all the not-really-dead talk." Huh. "And it's not months of crying invalidated. You still mourned the version of him that you lost, since I'm sure he's changed by the experience."

"Maybe. Honestly, he doesn't seem a ton different," Kitty said. "Quite, but he's the introvertiest introvert already. Angrier, but he saves that for battles."

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The Perk [Friday morning]

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