The Ice Cream Shoppe
Walking into the Ice Cream Shoppe is like walking into another era. Designed to have a small garage-mechanic theme, the shiny chrome and metallic red leather seats look like they've been remodeled based on the backseats of hot rods from the 50s and 60s. Each corner is taken up by a booth large enough to seat at least eight people comfortably. More booths line the walls, and several tables are in the center of the room. Black and white checkerboard linoleum covers the floor, accented by white walls sporting a checkerboard trim. The decorations on the walls ranges from old traffic lights and signs, to a three-dimensional hull of a bright-red 1957 Chevy Bel-Air that juts out from the back wall. With a Wurlitzer jukebox in one corner playing 'American oldies', and smaller radio controlled boxes at the booths, this is definitely a place for the younger crowd. Though famous for its milkshakes and ice cream floats, the Shoppe also has a long counter with a glass shield around it to keep patrons from contaminating the wares. Ice cream in every color and flavor imaginable can be found from one end to the other, interspersed with the occasional yogurt or sorbet.
Everyone needs to treat themselves from time to time. Hana has decided it's one of those days. The snowy weather outside generally does not make many people crave cold treats, so there's not the usual density of people in the parlor. Hana sits at a booth by herself, working on polishing off a huge glass bowl full of ice cream — some sort of strawberry sundae with banana slices and chopped peanuts, covered in strawberry topping. In front of her are a few ordering catalogues from companies that specialize in gardening tools and various shop accessories. The blue jeans and cashmere baby blue sweater she wears, along with the Ugg-ish boots are enough to make her blend in as just another college kid doing a stray bit of homework or catching up on her back issues of Vogue.
STUPID BITCH WHO MAKES THE BED AND /LEAVES/. After waking up and finding that her abductee had flown the coop, Sloane almost tossed the bedside lamp in the loft at the wall. A day later, however, she's calmed down quite a bit and assumed that Hana just doesn't like her enough to say goodbye. Even in winter, she finds herself still a bit overheated because of her body's strange tendency to stay feverishly hot, and so Sloane is due for a bit of ice cream. Comfort food, and all, after being ditched. She moves into the parlor with her hand over her forehead, pressing down on the gauze that she changed just a few hours ago. Her head injuries have already begun to heal nicely because of her swift metabolism. The girl places herself in line for the counter when she spots Hana through the corner of her eye, head slowly turning so that she may regard the blonde easier. To Sloane, Hana doesn't blend in all that well. She lets a beat pass, then steps across the floor to where the enlightened woman sits. Another pause while she stands beside Hana's table, before she takes the liberty of installing herself on the seat across from the woman, slumping forward and crossing her arms on the surface so she can rest her chin on her forearms. Her eyes narrow. "Where'd you run off to?"
Hana is definitely surprised when Sloane sneaks up on her. She reaches up to nervously smooth her headband'd hair before smiling at the other woman. "Hi, Sloane! I had some things to do at the shop before I went to church… I didn't want to wake you up since you said you liked to sleep in late. Sorry." The blonde's fair cheeks turn a rosy bright pink. There's a pause as Hana regards where the injuries on the brunette's head were. "Wow, you really do heal fast," she murmurs very quietly before closing the pages of her magazine and wrapping her arms around her chest. "Look, I'm really sorry, Sloane. It was just… I don't know. I started to feel a little strange about having asked to spend the night at a near perfect stranger's house. I felt like I was losing my grip on my virtue. I just… the whole thing was strange, Sloane. Not you. For me, I mean. I am sorry." Hana looks down at the table, seeming somehow ashamed of herself before she slides the bowl over to Sloane. "Want some? It's called Strawberry Splendor." With good reason. The thing is positively drenched in strawberry syrup and little strawberry slices. It's very hard to even consider it remotely healthy in that light.
"Ah, yeah… make time for Jesus and all that shit," Sloane says, popping her lips as her eyes roll in mild irritation. Sloane's not so wary towards Hana as she seems to be with the concept of religion in general, and how 'God' has the blonde so completely engrossed. Her nails tap against the table gently, starting from her pinky finger and moving up to her index slowly. "It was a good sleep, anyway," she says with a grin over at Hana which quickly fades as the other woman speaks again. Her head tilts towards the side gradually, a perplexed expression appearing on her face. "How's it weird? We're friend. Friends help each other, you know," Sloane tells the other woman, her brow waggling. As if to reassure Hana about their friendly status, she begins grinning once again. "I think you're just overreacting," she eventually says, shrugging her shoulders dismissively before returning her chin to her folded arms, using them as a pillow. "That… looks like I'd give me a toothache," she murmurs, looking down at the frozen treat. Yet, the werewolf opens her mouth up and hangs her tongue out, waiting to be spoon fed. She's got a thing with being fed, or something.
That brings another pause. "We're friends?" Hana asks, seeming a little surprised by the other woman's categorization of their relationship. Her words come out barely above a whisper. She looks downward at the ginormous bowl of ice cream for a few moments before looking back towards Sloane. "Wow. It's been a while since I had a friend who didn't attend the Fellowship or wasn't even particularly religious." Like junior high, maybe? Hana marvels at the mere idea. The fact that they're opposites in such a big way gives her pause. "Thank you for letting me stay there. I really do appreciate it. I had such a long day and it was so far back into town." When she looks back up again and sees Sloane waiting to be spoonfed, she can't help but laugh a little bit. "You are incorrigible, Sloane Young." The blonde does a quick look around to make sure that no one is watching too much before she swirls her spoon around a glob of ice cream and strawberry topping, putting it in Sloane's mouth. "Are you happy now? I don't want to have to end up calling you Baby Sloane." The comment about making time for Jesus isn't commented upon directly by Hana, though she wears the smile of a perfect little angel.
"No, we're pet and master," Sloane says sarcastically, promptly tugging at the leather collar around her throat, as though to indicate its purpose. Her joke may be lost on those who don't pick up on her sense of humour well, especially when her face remains stoic after she speaks. Releasing the dogtag, it jingles when it bats against her neck again. "Do they tell you you're not allowed to have friends outside your church or something? I can assure you, I'm a helluva lot more fun than any of the people you've met there," she tells Hana, making a noise from the back of her throat that is rather akin to a 'nyeah'. "It was my fault, though. I purposely brought you to my place. I knew you wouldn't agree to go there willingly, so I kidnapped you." Her nose scrunches up as she chokes back a laugh, her tongue still hanging out until Hana brings the spoon her way. "Thank you," she grins. Her mouth comes around the ice cream, swallowing that frozen desert almost whole without any worry of getting a brainfreeze. Her teeth clamp down as well, and if Hana tries to pull back, she'll find that Sloane's got the spoon firmly trapped in place. From there, all she can do is grin devilishly.
For a long moment Hana has nothing to say to Sloane. She just raises a brow and watches the other woman carefully. "No, they don't tell us we're not allowed to have friends outside the church. Unless they're deviants like you, talking about pets and masters and kidnapping." It's muttered very quietly so that no one else can hear before she starts to pull her spoon out of Sloane's mouth. Or tries, anyway. A few genteel tugs later and Hana pulls her hand away, sighing at the other woman. "Incorrigible." With that, Hana stands up and moves over towards the area where the plastic utensils are at. She grabs an extra spoon and moves back over to the booth, sitting where she had been previously. She lets Sloane have her spoon, unwrapping the new one and digging it into the ice cream. "For the record, there are all sorts of people at the Fellowship. Not all of them are straight-laced do-gooders. We have bikers there who hate vampires just as much as the rest of us." Hana won't even bother to dignify the kidnapping comment. Instead she fixes her eyes on the dogtag, squinting a bit. "Who's Molly?"
Sloane looks pleased with herself when she wins over the spoon. She keeps it in her mouth, chewing at it absent-mindedly, though not in a manner that would be considered rude in public. "If they tell you not to hang out with deviants, then why are you hanging out with me?" she says, moving the plastic spoon up and down in her mouth in a catapulting type motion, somehow managing to speak coherently around it. "You must like me as much as I like you, if you haven't run away yet," Sloane says, her face growing more and more facetious and teasing by the second. Just as she says that, Hana stands up and begins walking away, which is cause for alarm in Sloane. When she realizes that the other is only fetching a spoon, she breathes out in relief, then quickly ducks under the table, coming out on the opposite side. She hasn't stolen Hana's spot, but she's taken up the room rest of the space on that side of the booth. "You know," Sloane says, propping her arm up on the table, elbow supporting her leaned weight as well as her head, which she rests in her palm. "I can protect you from vampires. Not that there are tons of them that will go after you; I think the Fellowship are somewhat presumptuous in that sense. I'm magic, you know," she says, her tone almost casual as she lifts her eyes from the ice cream and her gaze meets Hana's. When her dogtag is noticed, Sloane, shrugs her shoulders. "Molly's me. That's my vanilla name."
"They call that a joke in some circles, Sloane. Don't get so defensive." Hana shrugs her shoulders and takes a bite of her ice cream. She seems unphased that Sloane is now sitting next to her. If anything, she looks mildly annoyed. After a moment of contemplating Sloane coolly and nomming on her ice cream, she turns to look at Sloane. "Don't you know anything about the Bible? Magic is evil too." It's said in a light, teasing tone. Hana is unable to keep the grin off of her face however. She reaches out for a napkin from the dispenser on the table, having to lean past Sloane to do so. The closeness doesn't seem to put her ill at ease, although the warmth that radiates from Sloane's body gives her pause. "Are you always that hot? I'd hate to see how warm you get when you run a fever." Hana dabs at the corners of her mouth with her newly acquired napkin very lightly before using her hand to push the bowl towards Sloane a little bit. "It's more than the threat. More than feeling unsafe. It's the fact that they're unnatural, Sloane. They should have died when they were meant to. It's not right for something to keep on going after it's heart has stopped." Sloane's final comment gives her pause. "Vanilla name?" She asks.
Sloane sticks her tongue out at Hana once again, though that proves to be a challenge with the spoon also in her mouth. She finally removes the plastic, putting it on the table beside the bowl of ice cream as she snickers at Hana's annoyance. "Was magic evil when Jesus performed it?" she questions the other woman, her brows lifting with curiosity, as though it's an actual inquiry rather than another attempt to poke fun at Hana. "All the time," she nods, when Hana comes in close. For a fleeting second, Sloane uneasily leans back, her tan face gaining colour and flushing red suddenly. "… I don't get sick that often. When I do, it's for a pretty short time. Immune system's pretty tough, I guess," Sloane murmurs, taking a few bites from the ice cream when it's pushed her way. "What if my magic made me kind of like a vampire?" she asks. It's purely hypothetical, of course. "Except I didn't drink blood, and I didn't die at any point. What if I only got to change into something else that was already a part of me… genetically?" Sloane wonders to Hana, averting her eyes away from the blonde's. Her focus returns to the ice cream they share. "I changed my name a few years ago. 'Molly' doesn't really suit me, does it?"
Sloane's question about Jesus being magic makes Hana's brow furrow. She does little but eat her ice cream and mull the question over. "I'm not the expert on it. I'd have to ask one of the reverends." Not that she didn't ask a long time ago when she was a kid, which led to a lot of stammering on her minister's part and a half-assed answer. She eventually lets out a sigh and leans back in the booth, turning her head to face Sloane. "What if magic made you like a vampire?" When she hears the rest of Sloane's 'hypothetical' question, her brows raise before furrowing again. Whatever anyone has said about blondes being easy to confuse must be true, because the poor dear looks like she's all but going to start frothing at the mouth as she considers these hypotheses. "I don't know about that. That's probably evil too. Almost everything in the Bible is, don't you know." It's said again light heartedly, in jest. She lets out a quiet laugh after that before shrugging her shoulders. "Things like that don't exist. It's bad enough that vampires already do. I'm not sure what to think about that hypothetical question, Sloane. What goes on in your head?" After a few more bites of her melting ice cream, Hana dabs her mouth with her napkin rather daintily again. "I don't know. I like Molly." There's a pause. "Are you adopted? I mean, since you have two fathers and everything." There's a vague air of disgust in her voice as she spits out the words 'two fathers', but she doesn't start to prattle on about how they're sinners and are going to Hell.
"There are no experts on mystery," Sloane says to Hana with a disdainful frown that turns slowly melancholic. 'Mystery' meaning God, as there's a definite line between belief and solid proof, in Sloane's unenlightened opinion. "No one will ever really be able to answer that. I have a feeling that I need to figure it out for myself…" she says, suddenly sounding drained and unenthused as she runs her hand through her thick, dark hair. Breathing a weary sigh through her nostrils, Sloane stands up from their booth. "Do you want to know why you don't have any friends outside the Fellowship?" she says, her face beginning to show signs of tension and indignation. "It's because you're wholly, completely, and entirely INSOLENT. Just because something is different, doesn't mean it's evil. Your prejudices make you more evil than the majority of vampires. And did you know that the Catholic church accepts homosexuals now? Racism and irrational hostility like that were supposed to be abolished when black slavery was made illegal," Sloane snaps, her teeth baring as she makes a snarling expression. And this is why she doesn't have many friends; her quick temper and harsh words. "And YES, I am adopted. My parents are gay. I'm just one big ball of SIN - my 'magic', and my sexuality…"
Like many people with Hana's set of mind, she can dish it out, but she can't take it. She recoils with alarm as Sloane starts to rip her apart verbally. Hana slinks down in her booth both in embarrassment and for fear that Sloane might actually try to slap her or throttle her in some other manner. The blonde's eyes widen as Sloane goes on and on about why it is that Hana's a bigotted bitch with no friends. More to the point, Sloane isn't exactly wrong. Not that Hana is going to admit it any time soon. Her eyes fill up with tears and she slowly gets out of the booth, her hand shaking. She grabs up the magazines she was looking at beforehand and holds them to her chest like a shield. "That's just fine, Sloane. Just lash out at me 'cause you're ashamed of what you are! If this is the way that less judgmental, uptight, non-Church friends treat each other? I don't want to be part of it." Hana pauses as she starts to head for the door. "Don't bother coming back to the flower shop. Go terrorize someone else, Sloane Young. I didn't ask for this." Hana walks away quickly to make sure that no one can see her tears as they fall down her cheeks, digging her car keys out of her pocket.
Once she's done screaming, the ice cream parlor seems to be suspended in time and the silence slowly chips away at Sloane's own resolve. The dangerous, choleric glaze to her eyes disappears with the feral, snarling expression, softening into an ashamed, concerned frown. Her hands at her sides turn into tight fights, knuckles turning white, then releasing. Hana's retort hits her like a bag of cement bricks, causing Sloane to deliberate as she stands beside their abandoned table, watching the other woman begin to quickly depart. Sloane may have hit the mark, but she hit it with way too much force that Hana was undeserving of. It's not until the blonde woman has made it to the parking lot and is standing beside her car that Sloane budges from her once staid position in the restaurant. Hurrying, she bolts from the parlor and briskly jogs down to where Hana is now, calling, "Hana!" Whether or not the woman turns around to acknowledge her, Sloane catches Hana up in a hug around the waist, desperately. Her warm body against the other woman's is tense, but also folded in on Hana's form protectively to keep her in place.
By the time Sloane finds Hana, the poor girl is having a very unladylike crying fit next to her car. A few of the patrons just going into the shoppe have stopped to gawk although the blonde is none the wiser. She sobs heartily against the door of her car, the keys stuck in the ignition. It's her noises that draw attention from people. There is nothing dainty or feminine about her crying. She sounds like a wounded, dying animal. Her arms are raised up and thrust onto the hood of the car, her tears flicking against the window of the driver's side. When Sloane wraps her arms around Hana, the other girl does nothing but shake and sob for a long few moments before she tries to turn around and raise her hand to Sloane. She doesn't quite make it though. Sloane's a little too strong for Hana yet. "I don't know any other way to be!" She pronounces loudly. "Why would you keep comin' around if you knew what I was and how I acted? Is this a sick game to you?"
Sloane has a heart to break, surprisingly. Someone like her, who tends to be emotionally detached and purely insulting to others wouldn't normally feel remorse in the face of a crying girl, but Hana's sadness is the exception, and it brings Sloane almost to the brink of tears. Almost, but for Hana's sake, she remains calm. When the other tries to turn around, Sloane allows her to, but quickly resumes the embrace once they're facing each other. Her head settles in the space between Hana's collarbone and the side of her face, purposely pressing her skin against Hana's so that she feel's the comforting heat coming off her body. The vibrations from her low "Ssshhh" sounds can be felt. "But that's not your fault," Sloane tells Hana, speaking quietly rather than using her harsh voice. "It's not a game. This is me apologizing. I don't think before I say things."
"I don't even get it!" Hana says loudly, turning to look at Sloane. "Why do you want to be friends with me? We're nothing alike, I hate…" She won't say 'you'… she just won't. In the end, she ends up not being able to say anything at all. She's confused in one of the worst ways. She's always hated people like Sloane, and here she is, being strangely comforted by someone who should command ALL of her hate. "I don't think before I say a lot of things either. That don't give you the right to scream at me in an ice cream shop where God and everyone can see! Even I wouldn't have screamed at you about what a sinner you are…" Hana trails off there, when she realizes how sincere Sloane's apology is. She lowers her eyes to the ground and grimaces. She just doesn't know what to say to Sloane, so instead she returns the woman's embrace, her arms and hands still shaking with something between rage and fear. "Maybe we'll work on becoming better people together," is what Hana ends up murmuring in the end.
"Uh… well," Sloane murmurs, pausing to consider Hana's question. She's got a point - their friendship makes no sense at all. While she mulls it over, collecting suitable words for which to respond to Hana with, she rocks them back and forth in a swaying motion. Her arms curls up from Hana's waist to place her palm over the woman's fair hair, where she strokes comfortingly. "If it's one thing that God got right, it's that he teaches you guys to forgive unconditionally. I might not agree with how you think, but I do like /you/," she says, taking her face from Hana's shoulder to look back at the blonde, lips curling upwards into a warm smile. "I think we kind of need eachother. I don't have very many friends, either," she admits, averting her eyes briefly to scan around the parking lot, making sure there aren't any on-lookers watching the show. "That's better," she says, when the hug is returned, and she leans her head in, titling to so that she can press her mouth over Hana's cheek. "No more crying. Tomorrow, you should come horse back riding with me. During the day. You'll have fun, I promise."
This sets Hana off on another crying jag. She reaches up to wipe at her eyes and she shakes her head. "Sorry, sorry. It's not your fault this time. I have PMS and today is my birthday… not the way I wanted to spend it." She sniffles quietly and pushes the button on her car key remote to unlock the car. The blonde blinks when Sloane kisses her cheek, although she's just far too out of it now to even give a good God damn. "Well, I don't agree with some of the things about you. But you're not a vampire for one, and you do make life a little more excitin'. I'll give you that." She reaches up to wipe at her eyes. Most of the onlookers seem to have dispersed and gone inside the shop after all. "Alright, I might like to go horse riding. I did it a few times as a kid." Hana moves away from Sloane in order to get into her chair, reaching first for the hood and her discarded magazines. Once they're in hand, she tosses them into the back seat. "By the way, we do have one thing in common. We're both adopted."
Sloane takes a tissue packet out of her pocket and puts that in Hana's hand so that she can wipe her eyes. Afterwards, she steps away from Hana and lets the woman gather her magazines from on top of the car. "Happy birthday…" she says awkwardly, scratching at the side of her neck and jostling the metal dogtag there. "I might be worse than a vampire. I don't know yet," Sloane sighs, dropping her gaze to the ground as she begins to pivote away from the vehicle, preparing to take off. "I'll be around the shop at… around 2PMish. Wear something comfy," she tells the other girl from over her shoulder, casting Hana a concerned, yet brief look. Sloane's about to break into a jog down the street when Hana speaks up again. So, she turns around again and smiles amusedly, but no words escape her. Without a car or her motorcycle, Sloane resorts to taking the next best thing home; her own four legs. As she runs into the bushes, her body begins the phasing process, a quick and painful thing for Sloane, yet the result is blocked by the thick foliage leading into the trees.
