(no subject)

[madesomenoise]

Girl's never had friends before. She had Cat. She had Dr D and Cola, but they were ancient. She had the memory of her family, but there had never been anyone her own age. Never anyone close. In the city, she's sort of spoiled for that, but it's Ellie that she feels closest too, Ellie that she feels confident calling her friend. Poison's at Jack's for the evening, which means they've got the place to themselves. She's going to dye Ellie's hair. They're going to get pizza. There's alcohol.

So is what it feels like to have friends.
Girl could get used to it.

Comments

[and_survive]

One day Ellie figured she should meet Sunshine's dad, but given her complicated feelings about her own protector, she was fine with keeping it a one day, for now. She'd rather hang out without the supervision, not that she knew what the supervision would be like. At any rate, just them seemed just fine to her.

She whistled on the way up, trying to get the hang of one of the tunes Poison and Sunny had played at their gig, keeping at it even as she knocked.

[madesomenoise]

Girl's dressed for dyeing hair, denim shorts that are more holes than fabric and one of Poison's old t-shirts, hacked to death. She's got a scarf wrapped around her own hair. When she sees Ellie, she smiles in a way that makes her name seemed made for her.

"Hey," she says. "C'mon in. He's out."

[and_survive]

"Well, shit, we could get up to all kinds of shit," Ellie said, mostly kidding. It wasn't like she had adult supervision where she lived, either, any more.

Or at least partly. It wasn't like they'd entirely behave, either.

[madesomenoise]

"Well, I mean, we could get up to all kinds of shit when he's home." She huffs a laugh. "He's like, twenty three and a revolutionary. So...not your average dad." She grins. "Want to get colour on your hair first and then order food? I'll give you the tour. Technically, I've got a whole apartment of my own, but I've never really been in it."

[and_survive]

"Color, then food," Ellie agreed, peering around the apartment. "Shit, you should use it for- I don't know. There's gotta be something you can do with a spare apartment."

[madesomenoise]

"I got like, four shades of purple, because I didn't know which one you'd want." She walks in the direction of the bathroom. "My room. P's room. Jack's drafting table." She points, her bare feet padding on the boards.

[and_survive]

"Good, because I have no idea," Ellie said, lifting her hands in a slightly exaggerated gesture of mystification. She wasn't sure it would matter, in the end -- doing it was sort of a point all in itself -- but if it ended up being really good, that was an extra benefit.

[madesomenoise]

"Do you mind getting dye on what you're wearing or do you want to borrow a shirt?" asks Girl, glancing over her shoulder. "I can always lend you one to pt on afterwards, if you want?"

[and_survive]

She thought about that a moment, looking at her shirt. She supposed she should have figured on that, but it was a new kind of thing. It hadn't crossed her mind.

"Borrow a shirt, maybe," Ellie said. "So this is about to get messy, huh?"

[madesomenoise]

"I'll try and keep it neat and it probably won't be as messy as when I do Poison's and it looks like someone's died in the bathroom." She detours into her bedroom, rooting through her dresser and plucking out a t-shirt that's already stained with dye and paint. She holds it out.

[and_survive]

Ellie let out a short, "Ha," imagining that, because it probably would, with the red.

"It'll have to look like an alien died in there or something, instead," she said, taking the shirt, hesitating for a moment before doing the buttons on her own. It was less about modesty and more about the realization that she wouldn't have to hide her arm, the usual problem if she had to change around people.

[madesomenoise]

It occurs to Girl, as Ellie undoes her buttons, that she probably shouldn't watch her undress. She blushes a little and turns, wandering otu of her bedroom.

"Maybe we could do, like, a few shades of purple."

[and_survive]

"Does that work?" Ellie said, shucking her shirt and efficiently pulling on the spare, swinging her arms for a moment. It had been a while since she'd worn short sleeves without anything under to cover her arms. It felt oddly bare, but at the same time she liked it. She headed out of the bedroom.

"Like, and then it's the different colors?"

[madesomenoise]

"Yeah," she says, nodding, as she walks into the bathroom and grabbing one of the towels that they use for hair dyeing, some clips. "It should work if we section it. Two colours. Three?" She perches on the edge of the bath. "Sit on the floor for me?"

[and_survive]

"Three," Ellie said, sitting where indicated, crossing her legs and shifting herself on the spot until she was situated comfortably. "Two? Let's go with two, first time."

[madesomenoise]

"Two," says Girl, arranging herself so that she's got a knee on either side of Ellie's shoulders, resting against her gently as she drapes a towel around her shoulders. The boxes are on the floor next to them, a variety of purples. "Pick two, then."

[and_survive]

"Leeet's see," Ellie said, arranging the boxes in front of her and bending close to peer at them and try to imagine herself with hair that color. It was tricky; she didn't exactly look like the girls on the boxes, she was pretty sure. And, too, she didn't look at herself that often.

Still, it was more about what she liked, surely. She picked a couple of likely candidates, one brighter, lighter shade and one a richer deep purple she thought would work.

"Two," she said, holding them over her shoulders.

[madesomenoise]

"Good choice." Girl drops them in the bath for now while she starts combing through Ellie's hair, twisting it into sections and clipping it. It's longer than Poison's, but that's okay. The method is still basically the same. She hums to herself while she's working, her fingers slipping through Ellie's hair. She's had 'Sing' stuck in her head a lot since the gig.

"I'm really going to have to introduce you to P eventually. I don't think he really believes I've made friends."

[and_survive]

It was a new kind of feeling, having hands combing through her hair, although certainly not a bad one; it made her bare arms prickle.

"Okay, but I gotta know, do I call him Mr Poison, or what?" Ellie said, lips pressed tight because she amused herself.

[madesomenoise]

That makes Girl laugh and she takes her head.

"Just Poison will be fine," she says, still laughing as she twists another section of Ellie's hair. "We're not formal like that and, anyway, Poison's not, like a family name or anything. Party Poison started off as his call-sign during the war and it just sort of...stuck. They all did."

[and_survive]

"So they were- soldiers? Or was this when they were revolutionaries?"

She didn't know if music-playing revolutionaries had call-signs. Quite possibly they did. She'd been through a lot of things, but never a war, for all that they'd called it a military prep.

[madesomenoise]

"Soldiers first," she says. "During the Analog wars. But BLI won and they started focusing on bringing down the system."

She shrugs, taking her hands away from Ellie to start mixing up the dye. She snagged a pair of latex gloves out of Jack's backpack.

[and_survive]

"What were they fighting about?" Ellie said, turning to rest her arm on the side of the tub and her chin on her arm, watching Sunshine work on the dye.

She wondered it she should be concerned that something that needed gloves was going in her hair, but she really wasn't.

[madesomenoise]

"The Analog wars were to do with tech - too much tech, not enough humanity." She shrugs. "And then after that, it was BLI wanting to control how everyone lived. "Better Living Industries, right?"

[and_survive]

"Better Living Industries," Ellie said. She'd heard the name before, but she tried it out all the same. "Yeah, they sound like assholes. Like the people who wouldn't fix my walkman, only blown up a thousand times, yeah?"

Maybe it was a trivial example, but she liked that walkman, and every place telling her it was obsolete hadn't gone down well. She was glad she'd gotten it fixed, and purposely made sure her pickup had a tapedeck and not anything newer.