souffle_girlek | (no subject)

(no subject)

Oswin is not really up for 'socializing'.

And she didn't want to report that she spent her day (sensibly) in her rooms either, because then she has to talk about it, and she doesn't want to talk about it.

Really not.

So she's in the garage, deconstructing a car's engine (mostly with skill, sort of with brute force and mechanical aid). It's active, it's not in her rooms, and she can threaten anyone she feels threatened by with the electric drill.

It's a win-win, really.

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"Yeah, well," Clint says, and falls silent. Therapists aren't exactly his favorite topic at the moment.

"I got the all-clear," he adds, and forces a grin.

"Yeah? Told you you're an idiot, you're fine." So she's a little jealous, she's not even going to touch that emotion with a ten-foot-pole. Examining that leads to her ending up endlessly monitoring the bot feeds.

Again.

Ugh, not again.

"Sure," he says, and swallows. "Got vacation out of it, too. For a few months, at least. So-- if you're ever bored with," he waves a hand at the car she's leaning on, "there's a whole world out there."

Pause.

"You can't dismantle my car."

"... Soooooo..." She's trying to think of a way to say this that doesn't sound perfectly desperate.

She gives it up as a bad job fairly quickly. This is just going to have to sound ugly desperate and she'll have to live with that.

"Were you thinking of start times for this vacation? Because I'm particularly fond of now."

He relaxes, a bit, like he didn't even know he was holding himself still. "Sure. Just -- "

He hesitates. He's thought about this, but he still hesitates.

"I'm not saying you can't hack anything. But there's -- groups who you need to agree not to."

"... Can you assure me they're not... Daleks?" The last word is bitten off, spit out, and hastily distanced from.

"Because really, all bets would be off in that case, I don't think that's actually a binding promise really, and I'd practically be honor-bound to burn it all right to the ground."

"They're not Daleks," Clint says, and he sounds as confident as a man who's work at extremely high levels of intelligence gathering for decades.

(There are things he doesn't know but he doesn't yet know how far that extends.)

"I can't say they don't exist in my universe, but SHIELD would have noticed if they'd ever been to my Earth. They're paranoid like that."

"I approve of paranoia." This is... part of the reason she now has someone helping her not stay in her room all the time, but that is completely besides the point.

"Fine, I won't hack your buddies."

"Thanks," he says, dry. "No banks, either, while you're at it."

He straightens. "Do you want to pack, or pick up clothes from the Bar?"

"Awww, take all my fun." She rolls her eyes at him - what does she need with a bank? More to the point, she snaps her fingers and points at the floor in front of her. A minute later one of the spiderbots scuttles into view.

"Hey, you guys take care of the cat, alright? And fry anyone who tries to take him." Since Oswin didn't exactly program her bots to talk back, we're all just going to have to take it scuttling back off again as agreement.

"Picking up clothes from the Bar, I don't know what your crazy fashions are but damn am I going to rock them."

He laughs, low and brief.

"Yeah? Maybe we'll go dancing some night."

"Sold." She hops down from her car, dis-engaging the prop and letting the hood slam down behind her.

"Err... it's not... all like... snow, where you are, right?"

That could be problematic. Very problematic.

"Nah," Clint says. Once she's off the car, he starts heading for the entrance to the garage. "It's summer. I'd bring layers -- it cools off at night -- but it shouldn't get below...," he trails off, glancing over his shoulder. "Do you know Fahrenheit measurements?"

She gives him a wide-eyed look of incomprehension - she sees her oven temperatures as gas marks ~~because the future is British, doncha know~~.

"I'm good with 'not snowing' though, that's brilliant, let's stick with that."

Edited 2016-07-01 13:40 (UTC)

He laughs, still quiet. "Yeah, okay."

When they arrive at the Bar, his description is: "Probably Southern California through the Pacific Northwest. Maybe some of the Southwest, whatever. 2012."

He glances to Oswin, waiting for her to chime in with what sort of clothes she wants. Otherwise, he's just going to ask for a British passport. One fewer thing to do once they go back to his world.

From that description, Oswin assumes there's a region of his world named '2012'. To be honest, she's heard worse.

"And cute. Definitely cute." There's the decided impression that Bar is rolling her wooden eyes at the pair of them, but a packed suitcase appears, with a separate small bag packed with an outfit to leave wearing. She takes that and bolts for the bathrooms (of course she's avoiding her rooms don't be silly she doesn't want to think of a reason to not come back out).

A short while later she comes back, wearing an outfit Clint has seen before, though not on Oswin. Not... really.

"Right, so, how do I look?" She asks with a 'show off the outfit' twirl. "Did I get it all on right?"

He recognizes it. He's good at stuff like that. Still, his mouth quirks up after a moment, dismissing the weird and staying with the entertained.

"Yeah, though you might want to ditch the tights. It's n-- very not cold." He wouldn't go so far as to call ninety hot, but what can he say. He's acclimated.

She eyes her legs, scrunching her nose.

"Too bad, they're kinda cute." Oswin decides with a shrug, and heads back to the bathrooms. She's learned by now that taking them off out here might cause drama.

She's... working on anti-drama, at the moment.

Oswin's back shortly, sans tights, finishing tying her hair into a braid with a tie she found in the jacket pocket.

Clint would've dealt.

Everyone else, though... townies.

His smile quirks up at her. He's got the passport tucked into his back pocket, and her rolling suitcase propped next to him by the front door.

He pops the door open, and walks through, holding it open behind him. In front of them is his main room, from through the bedroom door. It's -- very clean. Not unlived in, by any means, but neat in a way most people don't quite manage. The living space of someone who went from the carnival to the military, and never quite figured out the art of having more than you could pack into two suitcases.

Oswin ducks through the door, her steps light, almost tentative, as befits stepping onto a new world.

Who cares if this new world looks like an apartment? She's done worse.

"So I'm on another planet." She chirps, bouncing on her toes. "I'm going to do all of the stupid touristy things, I hope you know. All of them. Get the list out."

Clint laughs, letting the door close behind them. He walks towards the kitchen, talking as he does. "I, uh -- kind of mapped out a roadtrip up the coast, then back down through the natural wonders section of this side of the country," he says. He kicks a chair out for Oswin at his kitchen table, while he swings past it towards the fridge. There's a thick guidebook open, with the start of a planned route drawn in pencil, and an open laptop. "But I figured we should Google -- do a web search -- of tourist attractions outside of San Diego. That's where we are," he adds. "But maybe we should do the city when we get back."

He's just -- itchy. He wants to move, to get the fuck out of places where people know him and look at him with concern.

Clint pulls the fridge open, grabbing a can of beer. "You want anything? I've got water and juice, too."

Her fingers itch to explore his computer, but she resists. She hopes Bar packed her tablet - she supposes Bar would, Bar is highly sensible most of the time.

"You're the native, I'm following your lead here. Oh, is it near Christmas? I heard there's an avenging spirit that people leave cookies out for as offering so it won't take their children in the night." She reports with a sort of cheerful fascination. "And, um... juice?" Earth juice!

In another mood, Clint would splutter theatrically. Still, he's grinning as he comes back out of the fridge with a jug of pineapple-orange juice.

"Christmas is during the winter, here," he says, pulling a clean glass out of the dishwasher and pouring the juice as he speaks. "Santa Claus -- well, I guess he's kinda creepy, and who knows what happens to the story between my time and yours -- but mostly he just has flying reindeer and goes around giving kids toys. It's a good excuse to send the kids to bed early, so the parents can wrap them in secret."

Or so he hears.

"I guess we could just go without a plan," he says, handing her the juice. "Maybe hit the major national parks, and if we see any roadstands or interesting signs we can take off to check them out."

"I'm excellent without a plan, tend to do my best work without a plan." Oswin agrees cheerfully, taking the juice. It's... welp, she doesn't exactly know what kind of fruit this came from, but it's tasty and she can stand by that. "The last time I was on an Earth I pretended I was a French teacher at a German school. Somehow that worked."

"-- Really? How'd you make that work?"

Is Oswin magic?