fandomtownies | Atlas Gym, Thursday Afternoon

It was Thursday, and Beau usually expected to find Liam at the gym. Today was no different, and she hung around quietly watching him for a few minutes until she couldn't stand still any more.

"One of those weeks, huh?"

Which, you know. She got that.

Liam's reply was really more just a grunt of general agreement as he parried another thrust from the training program hologram. After a bit more back and forth, the match ended and the program began reading out its analysis. That done, Liam could actually turn his attention to Beau.

"That obvious?"

Beau shrugged and headed toward him, flexing her fingers before balling both hands into fists.

"Well, I have these memories of waking up as someone else for a few days, and it's not something I asked for, and I can't actually punch the fucking island for pulling that shit, so . . . yeah."

"I almost would've preferred being someone else entirely," Liam said.

... No he wouldn't have, that would've touched on some completely different issues he had rattling around in his brain. But shh, let him have this.

"Wanna swing a sharp object around?" he asked, nodding to the collection of practice fencing swords.

"Yes fucking please," Beau replied immediately, and go figure, this was when she'd remember to say please. "I was somebody totally different. Karolina looked like herself and . . . really, really wasn't."

Which had gotten to her more than she was anywhere near willing to admit, though the way she stalked over to grab a practice sword might suggest it.

"It's all bullshit, man, just different varieties."

"I was- me, sort of, but a kid," Liam shared. "Very was herself, at least. Except she had to deal with a kid who'd never even been to this planet before."

She had somewhat fuzzy impressions of Stephanie's father being as much of a piece of shit as her own was, but that Stephanie's mother at least loved her. Which kind of stung.

"Yeah, I don't know if that's better or worse," Beau grumbled. This wasn't a competition, Beauregard. "Wait, were you that kid at Luke's?"

The kid-Liam, thankfully, hadn't said too much about his human parents. Liam really, really didn't want to know what his other-self's relationship with Sandoval was. And his mother... well. That would've stung, too, though for different reasons than it did for Beau.

"Yeah," he nodded. "That was me. Him?"

"Ha." Beau twirled the practice sword in her hand a couple of times and squared off opposite Liam. "I was the one eating waffles like my life depended on it or something."

Looking like the half-elven kid with the antlers. What the actual hell.

"Well," Liam said, bringing his own sword up. "Waffles are pretty good, I hear?" He'd never managed to actually try them, himself, but hey, he had other people's memories to go on!

"Yeah, that was probably one of the better parts of the weekend," agreed Beau, and lunged at him with more aggression than actual technique, but hey, this week could you really blame her? "Try 'em sometime, dude."

"They're on the list," Liam replied, easily parrying that particular lunge.

It was fine. Beau wasn't looking for an easy win (not that she was likely to get one against a much more practiced opponent, not on a piste) anyway; this was all about getting lost in the exertion.

"Bump 'em up a few notches maybe, then," she replied, dancing back a couple of steps before lunging at him again. "So -- you, but not really? Like . . . if things had turned out differently, or what?"

"Yeah," Liam said, after a silence that was just a bit too long to be comfortable. Another parry, and then he'd apparently had enough of being on the defensive, lunging at her. "If things had kinda... zigged instead of zagged, you know?"

Beau . . . wasn't good at being on the defensive, and she was a little too frantic and sloppy about backpedaling, leaving herself open for an easy hit.

"Shit," she said finally, thinking about all the ways that might have gone if she'd been in his place. "Shit. That's . . . fuck, man. Maybe I didn't have such a raw deal."

"I don't think it was a contest," Liam pointed out, seeing that opportunity and going for it. "I am glad I fell asleep on the couch on Friday night, as weird as that sounds."

Beau conceded the hit with a sigh, and went back into her starting stance.

"Yeah, you uh. Probably lucked out there," she said, clearing her throat. And then advancing on him again to maybe cut that line of thought off at the pass.

Yeah, waking up somewhere unfamiliar with someone unfamiliar was unsettling enough, as not-Beau had likely discovered. Given that the other-him had been a child would've just added a whole new level of uncomfortable to the experience.

"You and Karolina okay?" he checked.

"Yeah, man, yeah. We're good," Beau assured him. She was absolutely not grinning for a split second there, shut up. "Like it was weird, but not total catastrophe weird?"

She'd had worse morning afters, honestly.

Aww, but that not-grin was so cute!

"Glad to hear it," Liam said. Not that he'd met Karolina ~~even though they should, because go team 'glowy aliens raised on Earth' or something~~, but Beau liked her, so. His concern extended to her, because he was one of those people that was basically overrunning with empathy.

It was not. You take that back, Liam's narrative.

"It's all good," Beau said with a shrug, as if it wasn't too late to act totally nonchalant about everything. "So by the way, Verity's pretty badass."

Liam's narrative would not take that back. At all.

And Liam himself being an absolute head-over-heels dork for his girlfriend meant his grin was anything but split second.

"Isn't she, though?"

Beau rolled her eyes at him, the expression exaggerated but also paired with an indulgent half-smile.

"Stop it, dude, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit," she complained like she wasn't capable of being just as much of a dork. "But yeah, we kinda bonded over beating up on you? It was cool."

You might have made a grave mistake there, Liam.

Liam sighed. The sigh was... mostly exaggerated, to be honest. Because he actually had hoped they'd get along.

"Of course you did."

Beau shrugged broadly at him. "I mean, you had to know that would happen, right?"

"I had an inkling or two, yeah," Liam admitted.

"Look," Beau said, and went on the attack against him again. "Just saying, there are worse life choices you can make than surrounding yourself with women who can kick your ass."

Which said as much about her as it did about him, really, but shh.

"Trust me, I know," Liam said.

Parry, dodge- and oops, he was just a fraction too slow with that last parry and one of her thrusts connected.

"Honestly it's basically the story of my life at this point."

"Heh." Beau took just a second to do a little fistpump of victory and reset for the next attempt. "It's a pretty good story, though, am I right?"

"That part of it," Liam said, something uncomfortable flickering across his face for just a moment. Because the weekend sure as hell had done a good job at picking open some old wounds.

That split second of discomfort didn't escape Beau's notice, though she only filed it away for future reference and didn't comment on it.

"Sure, I mean, there's always a downside to shit," she said offhandedly instead.

"Can't have an upside without a downside, I guess," Liam said, tone matching hers.

"I mean, it's mostly downside, right?" Beau was such an optimist. "But it can't all be, or you wouldn't know which side was down . . ."

"Last month aside, been having more of the up than the down, myself," Liam admitted.

Which was why it was so weird to him that this last weekend had hit him as hard as it had.

"And then this shit all happened. Like, just in case you were getting too comfortable with it," Beau suggested. Just . . . looking right on the bright side there, Beauregard. Good job.

And, you know... he'd been in Fandom nearly two years. He'd even more or less gotten comfortable with 'this shit' just being stuff that happened sometimes. Or so he'd thought.

"Yeah, speaking of," he sighed. "And speaking of you and Karolina, actually. There's, uh. Probably something you should know. About something that seems to happen every year around the time the kids at the school have Prom."

". . . I am not having this conversation with you, Liam," Beau said immediately.

So much side eye. So much. Look, it just sounded like it was going to be That Kind of Talk.

Edited 2019-04-05 19:51 (UTC)

"I'm just saying. You might want to talk to her about it."

She'd been a student at the school before coming back as the counselor, after all ~~because despite the earlier narrative, the player forgot that they HAD actually met, oops~~. She would probably have some idea of what was likely to happen.

"Uh. Okay, sure, dude," Beau said dubiously.

Whether she would was up in the air, because the idea of being in a relationship hadn't even fully set in for her yet, let alone how you were supposed to communicate when you were in one.

Because she was a disaster.

"This is getting to be, like, uncomfortably about me here, so can we just, like . . ." She poked lazily at his sternum with her sword.

Atlas Gym, Thursday Afternoon

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