Momoko's place, El Paso, Texas, late Monday night

[lovemykilt]

Priestly tended to go a little extra scruffy in times of emotional stress. Especially ones like now, where he decided a good way to deal with it was to spend a long weekend out in a national park living in a tent and "communing with nature".

It seemed like a Trucker-y thing to do, okay? And when he tried to kill his best friend, following the presumed example of a former assassin turned hippie-peacenik seemed like a good plan.

Alas, he did not find peace in the desert. He found sunburn and a lot of sand and some spiny lizards and what he was reasonably certain was an old coyote campsite and very, very little water. Which, okay, yeah, desert, but. California had deserts, too! Admittedly, not very near to the coast, where he spent 98.763% of his time. There'd been a school trip to the desert once in middle school.

He hadn't much liked it then, either.

"Momo!" He called, hanging out in the doorway as he tried in vain to get a little more of the dust and sand out of his boots. "I'm back!"

[ooc: mainly for one, but also open to phone calls/emails/etc.]

Comments

[heromaniac]

"That's what he says," Momoko giggled. "Both things, actually. That walking away gives him time to clear his head and that you would win in a fight. He thinks everyone can beat him in a fight, too."

She shrugged. "I like to get everything out in the open when I'm mad. When people walk away from me, it makes me feel like they don't think what I have to say is important. That makes me madder. Or sad, when it comes to him. So I don't really calm down."

[lovemykilt]

"Yeah, there is no way I could beat him in a fight. At best I could --" Priestly's eyes went wide as his brain caught up with his mouth, and he scrubbed a little harder than necessary at the pan he was washing. "So that's a tough one, yeah. Hard to balance the two. Would writing it down help? So he could still do his storming off for space thing but you could get some of it out, too, so you don't implode while you wait for him to come back?"

[heromaniac]

Momoko raised an eyebrow at him. "Now I want to see you two in a fight."

"I don't know if I could do that. Writing it down, I mean. I can try? But writing totally isn't the same as yelling. It doesn't feel as good."

[lovemykilt]

"Yeah, you know I don't know how to fight, right? Occasional punches at dinosaurs aside." Dinah tried, but Priestly honestly didn't really want to be the kind of guy who knew how to throw down. It wasn't his style. "And yelling feels good to the person yelling. Not so much the one getting yelled at."

[heromaniac]

"Yelling feels good because it gets everything in the open, not just because I'm yelling. I don't understand how that can be bad, I guess."

"And you totally know how to fight, Priestly. It's a natural reflex when you're threatened." She paused a moment, looking up at him as something occurred to her. "Hmm. Unless... Maybe not. Maybe for you and Jaime, it's only natural when someone else is threatened?"

[lovemykilt]

That was, in fact, an extremely accurate assessment of Priestly's lack of fighting instincts, yes.

"Except when you yell, the other person just gets defensive. They're not going to really listen to you properly. That's why space can be good. You can calm down and figure out what you actually need to say, not just what you want to say in the moment." Priestly shrugged. "I know how to run away. I'm getting pretty good at that." In no small part because Dinah kept insisting on him going running.

[heromaniac]

Momoko was going to have to think about that. "I don't know how I can do that, but I'm going to try. I want to try anything that can help make 'us' work."

She reached for another dish to dry. "You do know that the only reason I ask you to you run away when something attacks is because I know you'll come running back when you can, right? I mean, it's to keep you safe, sure, but it's not because I think you're a weak link or not important or anything. If you were, I'd totally make sure you weren't there in the first place." Or fly him out.

[lovemykilt]

"Don't worry," Priestly said. "My manly pride can absolutely handle having to run away while the superpowered people do the fighting."

[heromaniac]

Momoko bumped him with her shoulder. "Silly. Even if I didn't have powers, I'd be a hero. That's how I got my powers, trying to save someone. That's just who I am."

"You're a steady hero. Like a paramedic instead of a policeman. You rush in when you know you can help and you stay away until then." Momoko smiled to herself. "And you help everyone. Even those of us too stupid to run."

[lovemykilt]

"If I ran in before then, I'd get killed," Priestly pointed out. "Which Dinah has informed me in no uncertain terms I'm not allowed to do any more."

[heromaniac]

"Oooh! I'm totally seconding that," Momoko nodded. "It's totally traumatic to go through, you know!"

[lovemykilt]

"It's not exactly buckets of fun on my end, either."

[heromaniac]

"You don't have to keep feeling it." Momoko pouted slightly. "And you don't have to try to convince yourself it's not your fault."

[lovemykilt]

Priestly actually laughed at that. "The ones I remember? I definitely do."

[heromaniac]

"What?" Momoko stared at him. "What do you mean?"

[lovemykilt]

"I remember dying, Momo. You think I don't wonder what I could have done to avoid it? That I don't still dream about looking down and seeing an arrow head sticking out of my chest?" He shook his head. "I mean, right now I'm mostly dreaming about those goddamn cookies, but I'm not dumb enough to think the other ones are gone completely."

[heromaniac]

Momoko was going to have to buy Mrs Wilson a new casserole dish, because she was dropping it to the floor and reaching to hug Priestly tight.

"I didn't know that! I'm sorry! I thought you just forgot, or had fuzzy memories like when it's one of those weird weekends!"

[lovemykilt]

Oh that poor casserole dish.

"Some things stick in your head," Priestly said. "I'm pretty sure Dinah and I have both died at least one other time. . . ." He frowned. "At the hands of a pony who was my mother? That one might be an actual dream. But yeah, the arrows I remember. And the Nothing. Not the vampires, though. That one I never actually experienced."

[heromaniac]

She clung a moment, then dropped back to her feet. "That's horrible, Priestly. I didn't know! I'm sorry!"