[Rafael Durante] (123 not it! Hah!)
[Danny Jones] 123 not me! (see? no cheating! *L*)
[Danny Jones] (YOU BASTARD! *LMAO*)
[Rafael Durante] (::raspberries::)
[Danny Jones] (harumph.)
[Danny Jones] Bronzeville. Even worse then her homeland of the Green, really, as at least there they tried to fix things all the way until the money ran out. But it just doesn’t seem to bother her, as she wanders through, moving from one place to another without going around as so many folks do.
Her backpack is on her back, she’s wearing her favorite cargo pants and a purple t-shirt with Rainbow Brite on the front (and glitter!) and her beat up ole army jacket over it all since the weather in chicago is constantly in a state of bi-polar indecision. One hand is tucked into the pocket of her jeans, tugging them a little lower on too-skinny hips, and the other plays idly with the ring threaded on a leather thong tied around her neck. She’s not actively lookin for anyone? But keeps peeking around corners anyway, just in case.
[Rafael Durante] Rafael is absolutely miserable.
Back home, the temperature dips into the 50s during the winter. Winter. Back home, the temperature approaches the 50s at night. Night. There is no such thing as cold springtime. There is no such thing as dreary, blustery springtime, and it is for this reason that he is wearing half of the sweatshirts he owns, that he had contemplated throwing sweatpants on over his jeans, that he has two pairs of socks nesting the feet jammed into his battered black Converse sneakers.
While Danny is not consciously seeking anyone out, as luck would have it, she is on someone’s mind, and that particular someone is hanging out on the fire escape of a rather downtrodden building, condemned and marked, collapsing in on itself.
“There’s the fucking blushing bride!” he yells when he catches sight of that hair.
[Danny Jones] Blinks. And then she’s laughing – outright and without reservation as she looks around for the origin of the voice, and finding him up on the fire escape above her. She eyes him and his multiple layer of clothes that make him look heavier then she knows he is, and the grin widens as she spreads out her arms and calls back up at him.
“There’s my fuckin Brother in Law! Come down an’ give ya Sis a kiss, won’tcha?”
Course, she’s completely, 100% ready to run if she needs too. But it was one HELL of a prank… it was!
[Rafael Durante] “I tell you what, man, you don’t want no kiss from me.”
It’s an idle threat, an amused one. Were he to shake his fist she might have been privy to the entire connotation, the true meaning of what was rolling around in that skull of his, but he does not. Rather than go for threatrics, the miniscule Mexican hauls himself to his feet and scampers down the half-cocked ladder, getting himself to the last rung before dropping the last five feet to the concrete.
Once they are at eye level with one another, Rafael hooks his thumbs into the straps about his shoulders and looks at her with slightly narrowed eyes. It is hard to tell whether he’s dicking around or whether he’s still pissed off.
“Thaz the last time I hook you up with one’a my brothers, man, you gonna use the poor kid just to fuck with me.”
[Danny Jones] She tips her head to the side, watching him, her gaze narrowing a little bit, trying to decide if he’s really mad at her, and with a little wicked grin. “Hey, YOU told him to call me, an’ what, ya think I shoulda just used him for sex and sent him home again, instead? Was ya just tryin to get me laid? Do ya think ya succeeded? Do tell, Rafi, dear…”
Oh her grin is wicked, though she has no idea how much Santi actually told his brother about their night of….watching movies… and then she’s just laughing. “The look on your face man… it was fuckin’ priceless..”
[Rafael Durante] Normally, Rafael is very, very good about keeping his trap shut while other people are talking. Deviant though he may be, Isabel raised him up well enough so that his usual transgressions are limited to repeated droppings of the F-bomb and jabbering on in Spanish when he becomes incensed or astonished.
This time, he doesn’t quite let Danny get past “Was ya just tryin to get me laid” before he’s talking over her.
“He tell me you two gonna go get fuckin milkshakes and ‘hang out’–” The phrase is said in a stereotypical American accent, although Rafael’s leans more towards the Surfer Dude archetype than anything else. “–and he doan show up home that night… doan need my help getting laid, man, he do that all his own. He’s a big boy.”
[Danny Jones] He’s a big boy, Rafael says, and that grin? that grin slides completely wicked as she tips her head and moans a soft. “Preachin to the choir, Rafi… Preachin to the mother fuckin choir… You ain’t know how much my muscles ached when we went to pull that little prank…”
And she’s scootin away from any well-deserved swipe before coming back to slide her arm though his and lay her head on his shoulder, with a lil pout. “Ya ain’t really mad, are ya? I wanted to prank someone special for my first No-Moon funny… ya see why I choose you, right?”
[Rafael Durante] “You ain’t know how much my muscles ached…”
Exaggerated disgust blows across Rafael’s face, as if he has just seen something he’d had no intention of witnessing, and he waves his hand as if to push back the words she had dropped just now.
“Thaz fuckin’ nasty, man.”
Then she’s moving away in a preemptive strike against being hit, and he crosses his arms over his chest while watching her next, waiting for her to say something else completely repulsive. That’s his buddy, and his brother, and… blech!
“I ain’t mad. It’s just… I didn’ know milkshake was code word for cópula, man, Jesús.”
[Danny Jones] She laughs and looks up at him, her head still on his shoulder. “It ain’t – even though mah milkshake brings all the boys to the yard..…” She chuckles and shrugs as she lifts her head, but keeps her arm looped through his.
“We really ain’t planned on that part anyway – we was jus’ gonna watch movies, so’s we was out all night. We called an’ cleared it with ya Mama and everything. I wasn’t gonna go doin nuthin with my head still all wrapped around my broked heart an’ the Capt’n, ya dig?”
She grins up at him again. “Sides, I like Santiago. He’s fun to talk too, an’ hang round with. Jus’ like his brother.”
[Rafael Durante] ((Pausage fest.))
[Danny Jones] (Le pause!)