strangetrip | [EP] Just chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool

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[EP] Just chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool

Unlike others at the Inn, Clarice didn't get a ghostly visit and she was very much okay with that. She had enough ghosts in her head without visits from home telling her how much she screwed up or will screw up or whatever. Even though the weather had been mild, the sunsets coming later meant that spring was on its way. The nights were still freaking chilly but it was warm enough out now to enjoy the pool. At least a heated one and if it got too cold there was always teleporting to her room. Alcohol helped to keep you warm, too and since the pool had a bar, it was win/win.

Clarice did a few laps in the pool while she waited for her lunch to be delivered. As she came to the end of one lap, she saw Molly with a plate of food. "Perfect timing." Clarice said as she pushed herself out of the pool to eat the chicken and fries with her Manhattan. "Thanks!"

There was a quirk to her lips when she pulled the cherry out of the drink and popped it in her mouth to make a knot with the stem. It was a fun reminder of Thor and she made a mental note to see what he was up to.

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"I'll be happy to be your bartender for this." Clarice stated as she slipped behind the bar. "I'll even add the pretty umbrella." She reached behind her and grabbed the small jar fully of bright umbrellas to put in drinks.

"Red," he says, taking a seat at the bar. "The umbrella, I mean. The drink can be whatever you want."

"Glad you clarified." Clarice said with a laugh. "I was going to point out that my hair is actually magenta." She reached for the little red umbrella and set it down on a cocktail napkin before grabbing the alcohol for the same drink she had, Manhattan.

"Hope you like whiskey."

"Like it well enough," Thor says with a half-smile. "Could be stronger, though. Doesn't quite beat Asgardian drink."

"You know, if one of the inn's weirdness lets you go to Asgard, bring back some of that ale you keep talking about. I want to try it." Clarice teased as she made the drink.

With a flourish she put the umbrella in the glass, and brought out three cherries with stems and lined them up on a small plastic sword and placed it on the opposite side of the umbrella.

Thor smiles to himself. "We don't have to wait, you know," he says. "My brother and I managed to brew some here."

Thor is visibly proud of this. Thor plucks the sword out and gently uses his teeth to drag the cherry along the sword's long, plastic blade.

He holds the cherry carefully in his front teeth. "Allow me to demonstrate," he says, though it comes out considerably more mangled as he does not move his mouth to speak.

But he does move to shut it. Immediately, Thor gets to work, neatly plucking the stem from its cherry. Teeth and tongue work in tandem as Thor begins to knot the stem.

"And you didn't think to share with your best teleporting buddy? I'm hurt." She teased him as she watched him tie the knot, or at least try to until she saw the results.

Thor extends his tongue out of his mouth, revealing a perfectly-knotted cherry stem on the bed of it.

He reaches up and removes it, looking all-too-proud of himself; he'd managed it dozens of times already (the last thing he wanted was to say he could do it, only to find he couldn't manage it during the live demonstration), but he still felt a smug sense of self-satisfaction every time he managed to get it right. It hadn't been easy.

"Our first batch was a test one," he says. "Still getting everything right. Neither Loki or I were distillers."

"Great job!" Because she knew exactly how hard it was to do despite Hollywood making it look easy. Clarice picked up the stem and winked, "maybe I'll have it framed. Think someone could make me a small wood frame to put it in?"

She was kidding, sort of.

"I'm sure we could find someone," he says, setting it down on the bar table. "I think most people would be grateful to have a project to work on."

Thor had definitely been grateful to have the distraction of knotting cherry stems, anyway. He takes a long swig of his drink.

"I would be happy to give someone a project." Her smile grew wider as she poured herself a small glass of whiskey straight.

"So, was Tony impressed that you could tie a knot with your tongue?" Clarice paused, "or have you shown him yet?" She was pretty sure that he had.

Thor grins to himself at the question.

"He asked me if I had improved my tongue game with it," he says, shamelessly. "Naturally, I told him I had."

Clarice raised her glass in a toast. "There you go. That is the reason most people learned to tie the cherry stem." She winked and took a long sip of the whiskey.

"I never would have thought to do something like this," he says. "Makes you wonder who thought it up and why."

Thor takes another cherry, but this time, simply eats it. No more cherry stem-tying. There's no need to show off more than he has already.

Clarice snicked, "probably some guy that got a drunk dare and determined to do it and then the next person wanted to prove that they could do it... and so on, and so on."

"What was your reason?" Thor asks, taking his glass in-hand; it's slick with condensation.

Clarice was going to give a flippant answer, but decided against it and told him the truth instead. "I wanted to be able to do something that was normal and I could fit in with."

Thor always stood out; even though he fit in socially with just about anyone, there was always God of Thunder or Prince of Asgard separating him from anyone who was halfway normal.

It didn't particularly bother him, but he did understand how it might bother other people.

"You seem to fit in well enough here," he says. "But I guess this place is entirely different from Earth."

"Yeah I fit in with other freaks." She said with a smile, the word freaks was said affectionately. "But when most people look like you instead of me, I can't really hide what I am."

Which she was okay with at the inn, but back in Georgia, it was deadly.

It's hardly drinking conversation (or maybe it's appropriate conversation for drinking -- Thor hasn't yet decided), but after Thor takes another swig of his drink he asks: "You ever miss it?"

"Home? Hell no." Clarice didn't even have to think about it. "I'd stay here forever if I could. Well, maybe somewhere where mutants were a thing. This place will probably get stagnant in forever." She smiled slightly.

"I'd like to go back and avenge my family's death. I'd like to go back for a visit, I miss my friends, but not the place. Not even a little bit."

"I love you guys, but I really don't want to be stuck here forever, either." Stagnant was right. "I'm pretty sure you'd be okay on our Earth." A beat. "Maybe." Another beat. "You think you'd have any interest in being a superhero?"

That would probably be the big factor in acceptance on Earth. His Earth, anyway.

Edited 2019-02-22 04:52 (UTC)

"Depends." Clarice said as she actually gave it some thought. "If it's like it was with you guys and the flying skull, I'm down for that. But, how do people react to people that can't pass for 'normal'?" She did little air quotes around the word normal.

"I suppose I could have passed for normal years ago --" Thor does look human enough, aside from the not-so-obvious biological differences between humans and Asgardians. "-- but lately my face is pretty well-known on Earth." It was pretty much common knowledge he was not human and also not from Earth. "Since my heroic deeds are well-known enough, most huamns love me. I was barely on Earth for fifteen minutes before two women asked for a selfie with me."

There was no guarantee they'd respond the same to Clarice, but if she too did heroic deeds, whatever strangeness that separated her from "normal" humans wouldn't be a source of strife.

Clarice of course thought of the X-men and the hatred of mutants that being a hero didn't stop. Her lips curved upward at his comment, "the two women asked for a selfie with them because you're handsome, not because you're an alien hero." Her amusement was clear when she added, "but I'll keep that in mind. Maybe I'll get a leather superhero outfit. That should distract from my ears and eyes."

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