The garage, Monday evening

[solo_sword]

Jaina wasn't the most romantic girl in the universe by a long shot, but she was actually trying today. After all, today was John's eighteenth birthday (and she could stop committing felonies in all the states), and she'd figured that the best way to celebrate was to do something nice.

So she had the blanket laid out, and the Chinese food and candles, the big details she could remember from that one date. Which, by the way, she could remember that, but had to keep reminding herself of when their anniversary was. That hardly seemed right.

Once she had everything set up, there was nothing else to do but wait for her date to show.


[For the birthday boy, and up early for SP. And yes, it's a public place, but you're gonna pick now to come down here finally? Really?]

Comments

[solo_sword]

"How?" she asked. And she was trying not to look like she was looking for abnormalities she might have missed in all this time.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"You know, the gene thing. I turn stuff weird tech stuff on, make it glow." He had mentioned this before, right?

[solo_sword]

"I have no idea what you're talking about. What gene thing?" She was pretty sure she would have remembered that.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Oh. It's no big deal, really," he shrugged. "Right before I came here they found that I had this weird gene that let me interact with some sort of old technology my Earth's military found or something. I didn't get many details, because who cares what a 16-year-old says, but the guys working on it were really excited and something about it helped get my dad to send me here and not to a regular prep school." And really, he liked the result so John wasn't questioning it too much.

[solo_sword]

"You still never fail to surprise me," Jaina told him. "I'm a little surprised I didn't hear this before."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Guess even now I'm full of surprises," John teased. "But seriously, I don't really think about it that much since it doesn't seem to mean anything to normal life."

[solo_sword]

"I can see that. I mean, if I hadn't picked up on it in all this time, either I'm really unobservant or it doesn't come up much."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"I'm going with the second thing," he said. "The first would make you a pretty sucky girlfriend."

[solo_sword]

"Yeah, I'm going to go with the second thing first," she agreed. Because really, she was pretty damn focused on him most of the time.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Good, because you're a great girlfriend," he nodded. "I can't imagine better."

[solo_sword]

She went a little pink. "All because of my great boyfriend, I swear."

Aww. Look at the cute.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"I don't know if I can accept that sort of credit."

[solo_sword]

"You're not allowed to be modest on that front."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"That doesn't seem very fair," he argued.

[solo_sword]

"I'm sorry, are you arguing that you're not a good boyfriend?" she checked.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"No, I'm a good boyfriend," John agreed. "But I take no credit for you being the best girlfriend."

[solo_sword]

"Now you're being flattering on purpose."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Am not," he started to argue but thought better of it. "Well, maybe a little."

[solo_sword]

"That's better." She smiled, but she meant her words. "I don't think a lot of guys would have stuck with me through this last year. You deserve credit for that."

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Maybe, but that just means there's a lot of guys who would've missed out on a few good days mixed in there." No matter how bad some of her stuff was, he would cling to the good times of the past year as much as he could.

[solo_sword]

"All four of them," she teased.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Hey, no discounting based on number," John decided. "They're still good."

[solo_sword]

"You don't regret it at all?" she wondered, against all better judgment.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

"Sure I regret some stuff that happened that I caused, but overall, nope." Life wouldn't be the same.

[solo_sword]

She gave him a slow smile and said, "You really are the best boyfriend ever."