Jackson is not, this semester, enrolled in classes at Cooper Union, but this does not stop him from taking full advantage of the art school's expansive studio space. This afternoon he looks /presentable/, as compared to his usual -- tattoos covered by a long-sleeved black button-down shirt, jeans -- well, jeans, but at least not frayed or full of holes. Piercings are minimal, in his earlobes and one eyebrow. The room he waits in right now has seen a good deal of him, lately, but at the moment he is not working. He is sitting on a stool in front of a blank canvas, and his leg bounces restlessly up and down on the rung. The glow around him is quite noticeable, in the well-lit studio, a haze of blue around him that shifts with motion as restless as the bouncing of his leg.

Zenith might as well have a neon sign above her head, flashing 'public persona'. She has on dangly earrings, and a knee-length skirt that swirls with her steps, a long flowing top over it. Her hair is half-caught up with a hair stick, and her smile is all for the cameras, rather shallow. She knocks, looking around, and then checking her watch to match it with her memory of the appointment.

Jackson hops off his stool at the knock, fingers scuffing briefly through his jet-black hair before he crosses to open the door. "Hi!" is his initially cheerful greeting, the next tempered by uncertainty, as he gestures her into the studio. "-- Miss McMillan? Zenith?" He offers a glowing hand (the last finger missing) out towards her. "Jackson Holland. I 'ppreciate you meeting with me."

The metaphorical neon flickers dark for a second when Zenith sees the missing finger, but she covers resonably well, shaking the hand after the intial hesitation. "Well, my agent brings the stuff from other mutants to my attention."

If Jackson notices the hesitation, he doesn't show it; his grip is brief, but confident. He pushes the door slightly to once Zenith is inside, but he doesn't close it all the way, leaving it ajar without inviting too much nosiness from passersby in the university's halls. "Well, thank you. I've been working on this project for a while now, and -- well." His head tilts slightly to one side. "I ain't sure how much your agent explained to you about what I'm working on --?"

Zenith makes air quotes. "Some art thing. I'm afraid she doesn't really have long to pitch things sometimes." She offers him an apologetic smile, following him in.

Jackson waves away the apologetic smile with one hand, his own smile warm as his head shakes. "That's alright. It's a series of portraits. Of mutants. I'm putting together an exhibit, together with -- short essays of whatever anyone wants to say about themselves, really." His right hand slips into his pocket as he crosses the room, lingering at the side of his blank canvas. "I mean, people's ideas of what we are get so defined by the -- worst of the news, y'know? I'm trying to let people tell their stories in their own words, and show them for who they are." His nose crinkles, a faint blush tinging his cheeks. "-- I mean. You're already -- I'm sure /you/ know. I guess I'm just trying to -- help with it, too. The visibility."

Zenith nods. "I have to write something?" she teases. "I'm shit at writing." She frowns at the blank canvas, but it obviously remains blank, and doesn't really offer anything to her thoughts.

Jackson laughs quietly, his head tipping downwards. "Only if you want to," he says easily. "It feels kind of weird saying I want to /humanize/ us, like -- like we ain't already. I'm not sure that's even what I'm trying. I think I want to show us for who we are, mutations and all, if that's what the people in the pictures wanted to show." It's only then that he heads past the canvas, to the back of the room -- there is a row of paintings here already, not blank! They are portraits, all of them; some have open displays of mutations. A young man viewed from the back has a harpoon of bone projecting from one arm; a slim dark-skinned girl sits with hand upturned and a small statuette of a Hindu god floating over her palm; a somewhat heavyset middle-aged man has small sparks of electricity crackling between his fingers. Some are plain! Some are not. "I work with people to see how they're most comfortable being shown. It's really about how /they/ see themselves. I'm hoping to help the world see 'em the same way."

"Well--" Zenith hesitates. "I'm not sure I'm the one you want, then. All I've been dealing with lately is how I present myself. I mean, I can give you a good pose, but--" She shrugs one shoulder.

Jackson's head tilts to one side, thoughtful. "-- But?"

Zenith frowns, struggling in her non-articulate way to find the words she wants. "Well, I thought that's what this was. You wanted the face of a famous mutant to help with the publicity, right?"

"No." Jackson's head shakes, brow furrowing slightly. "Well, not -- exactly. I wanted the face of a mutant, to help people stop looking at us with just terror. I approached you because you're already so public with it, and so -- I mean, coming out is really dangerous, y'know? But people who're already there, at least --" One hand turns up in a shrug. "I'm sure the publicity will be great, but it wasn't the whole point."

Zenith goes back to looking at the paintings. "So what is the point?"

Jackson's hand drops to his side, and his gaze skips from painting to painting. "Helping make it easier for all the people who can't be open about it, yet. These things may be small steps or -- hard steps, but they're -- /steps/. Progress." His smile is lopsided and a little sheepish. "I'm hoping."

"Yeah." Zenith nods. "They're really beautiful." She puts out fingers to the paintings but is polite and gets nowhere near touching. "But it stills sounds like it's not me you need."

"But why not you? I mean, you're already -- there. Already doing it. What I need is /people/, and their stories, and --" Jackson shrugs, his tone hopeful. "Yours is one that's important to tell. Ain't many people out there doing what you do."

"Well, my boyfriend is required to listen to me being that self-absorbed..." Zenith half-laughs at herself. She takes a few steps to look at another painting. "I still can't write for shit."

Jackson laughs, quietly, his head shaking. "I don't think it counts when you're doing it to help," he says. "I mean, I think it would be really awesome to get someone involved who -- /knows/ the challenges of going public and is --" He blushes, and his nose wrinkles in time with a sheepish smile. "I just think it would be really powerful. And -- the writing don't have to be Shakespeare or anything, really, just -- but like I said, if you don't want to write, I could just do a portrait. They say a picture's worth a thousand words anyway, an' I'm only asking people for five hundred or less."

"Well, I'd run it past my publicist, but he'd just spin it out of recognition." Zenith goes back to stand in front of the blank canvas. "What pose?" Some of her Persona has faded in her interest, and the more Jackson talks about wanting to know her story, the more interested she seems.

"That'd be a shame. I don't want what your publicist thinks people should hear. Just however little or much /you/ think they should." Jackson's gaze flits over Zenith thoughtfully. "It's about capturing what's important to you," he says. "Your dancing, if that's it --" He scrubs at his cheek with the heel of his hand, and shakes his head. "But I don't want to assume jus' cuz that's what I've seen on a show."

Zenith makes a thinking noise under her breath. Her hair and skirt begin, inperceptibly at first, to float. "I don't think you can paint the feel of gravity," she jokes.

"It would be hard," Jackson agrees with an easy laugh, interest growing in his expression as he watches the change in her hair and clothing. "I do my best to capture different feelings and emotions in my subject, but -- I mean." Both his hands spread, now, though he returns the scarred right hand to his pocket afterwards. "Harder still with things I haven't experienced. Uh. Not that I haven't experienced gravity but --" He grins sheepishly. "You know. What's it like?"

Zenith holds out a hand absently, and then sighs. "No. I wasn't allowed, on set." She rolls her eyes and drops her hand. "People are such babies. It's just like being on a roller coaster."

"You ain't on set, now," Jackson says, his grin stretching a touch wider. "I'd like to claim it in the name of my work and say that it would help me understand what you do better, but -- honestly I just think feeling it could be cool."

Zenith's lips curve. Maybe Jackson will regret this, maybe not! It couldn't be more clear Zenith simply has no conception of what would bother someone about it, though. His stomach is abruptly not...quite where it should be. The sudden lack of gravity is quick enough that he doesn't move off the floor.

The initial expression Jackson's face registers is surprise, and the glow that surrounds him flickers erratically as his breath draws in in a sharp gasp, a tiny squeak sounding at the end of the breath. The back of his hand presses knuckles to his lips, but though his face pales slightly, a beat later his lips curve into a bright smile. "Skydiving," he decides.

Zenith claps for him. "I made a camera guy throw up once. But he was making the jokes about filming me and my boyfriend for the sixtieth time."

Jackson winces, though his smile remains. "I love rollercoasters. An' skydiving. -- I promise not to make jokes about filming you an' your boyfriend, though. Just in case!" His arms cross loosely over his chest, right hand tucked beneath the crook of the opposite arm, and he looks from Zenith to the already-finished portraits and back. "Weightlessness might be hard t'catch on canvas, but -- I like challenges!"


Portrait meeting.


Jackson /is/ officially enrolled in classes again, in the summer semester, and this means -- well, that when he takes advantage of Cooper Union's facilities, he at least doesn't feel guilty about it. The studio he is in is the same that he always uses, organized and well-lit; today the collection of other portraits from his project have been set to one side of the room. So has his easel -- his oil paintings far too much to handle in one sitting, he opts instead to subject the people he draws only to sketches and photographs from which he can later paint the finished product, and so these are the tools he has today: a rather expensive camera, and his sketchpad. Today he is casual, extremely baggy jeans that fit over his cast, and a Rainbow Brite t-shirt. Today he is, also, not glowing. Today he is far more relaxed!

Zenith is heavily made-up over poorly-hidden illness. She looks like someone who just got out of bed after having the flu for the week--or someone who got shitfaced and stone last night. One of the two. She at least doesn't wince from the light, so it seems her hangover has faded. She has an energy drink in her shoulder bag, and swigs from it every so often. She's dressed in a stripped down version of one of her costumes, the drape of a gauzy skirt and a trailing scarf looped over an elbow. She peeks inside the room, looking for Jackson.

Jackson looks up with a bright flash of a smile that quickly shifts to a look of concern. "Hi, miss! -- You feeling aright?" Someone, clearly, does not read tabloids. He gets up stiffly from his stool, one crutch employed to aid walking as he moves to open the door properly.
"Well, I should be glad someone hasn't seen the pictures, at least." Zenith blinks at the crutch. "What--?" Then she hurriedly opens the door for herself.

"Pictures?" Jackson blinks in mild confusion and shakes his head. "Sorry, miss, I'm kinda -- out of the -- loop with things at the moment. Something happen?" Her aborted question elicits a glance down at his leg, a crooked smile. "Tornado."

"Oh. That." Zenith grimaces. "Fucking government robots." She shrugs. "Google me." She drops her bag with a thump, and catches the end of her scarf as she almost drops it at the same time.

"Yeah. Was sorta creepy," Jackson says with a slight grimace of his own. There is still a slight measure of concern in his gaze as he looks Zenith over, but as she shrugs it off, so does he. He thumps his way over to pick up his camera, looping its strap around his neck. "So -- it'd be cruel and unusual punishment to make people sit still for as many days as it takes me to finish a painting, so I tend to just -- photograph and do a few sketches and that way," he informs her with a slight quirk of a smile, "it's possible you'll leave here without wanting to kill me."

"Can you just do the sketches? I don't want you working off my fucking hangover, or you might as well get the pictures off the internet." Zenith's face grows a bit dark. She fidgets with the scarf.

"Ohhh - oh." Jackson, about to take the lens cover off the camera, leaves it where he is, instead blushing and tipping his head in a nod. "'course, miss." He sets the camera aside, trading it instead for sketchpad and pencils. His teeth drag slowly across his lower lip, gaze flickering thoughtfully over her. "I don't know if -- if you're actually /using/ your ability how long could you stay in one place?" His nose wrinkles, somewhat apologetic: "-- Speed is sorta where cameras win over my pencil."

"I can stay up indefinitely, but weightless, you have to not throw yourself off all the time by moving even a hand--" Zenith looks sour, and goes for her sports drink again. "How much can you fix?"

"I'm an illusionist," Jackson answers lightly, smile twitching briefly again. "When it comes to appearances, I can fix anything. -- The preliminary stuff is mostly for reference when it comes to form, anyway. But if you can stay up indefinitely --" One hand turns up in a shrug. "I could stick with sketches if you don't mind a whole lot of not moving much."

"Better not. I don't want to fall on my ass when my powers suddenly cut out. I haven't done a lot of practice with them hungover." Zenith steps up into the air, trailing her scarf languidly behind her fingers. "The pictures from the promotional stuff for the show are good too."

"Are they?" Jackson picks up his camera once more, toying with it absently. "I mean, that's the stuff your PR person chooses to represent you. I'm looking more for what -- /you/ choose to represent yourself."

"I don't--" Zenith bites her lip. "Jesus Christ. That's a loaded question right now." She looks away, voice getting a little sharper. "The public persona gets me through the day, all right?"

Jackson holds up a hand, palm out in a typical gesture of surrender -- it would be both hands, were his other not holding his camera. "Okay, miss. Whatever you're comfortable with." His head tilts slightly to one side, thoughtful. "Dancing, then. Can you show me?"

Zenith twirls, one foot slightly raised behind her, one down in an approximation of en pointe, though it's a good six inches above the ground, so no weight is on it. Her scarf swirls with her, glittering as scattered threads catch the light, and when she stops, freed from the tug of gravity, it settles lovingly into a caress of her thighs and the slight belling of her skirt. She closes her eyes, and settles there, seemingly caught in time.

"Perfect," Jackson murmurs, the smile that touches his face now quieter but more genuine, no longer the courtesy offered to a near-stranger, but an artist already slipping into creative mode. "That's just perfect." The click of his camera follows, and then repeats -- many times. Jackson circles Zenith slowly, capturing her pose from a number of different angles, pausing only to adjust his focus, to shift to a new position, to repeat.

Zenith's shoulders drop as she accustoms herself to the position, getting more of a sense of repose into it, rather than arrested movement. She opens her eyes after awhile. "Can I--?" She shakes herself without waiting for the permission. "I had an idea for a pose, and I couldn't hold still much longer--" She waits before posing, however.

"'course, miss." Jackson's finger pauses in its clicking, and the camera lowers from his eye. He tugs briefly at the strap of his eyepatch, adjusting where it sits over his ear, and rocks back slightly on his heels, watching Zenith expectantly.

Zenith fliches a little at the reminder of the eye-patch's existance, but she loops the scarf over one wrist. Then she leans back, tugging gravity at the other end, so it's like she's hanging while someone holds the scarf fast, feet standing on an invisible floor as she tips back, hair swinging free, body at a 45 degree angle.

Jackson has no response to this -- not verbally, at least, but his smile is appreciative, and he renews his picture-taking happily. A number more clicks before he asks, a hopeful note in his voice: "How long d'you think you can hold /that/, miss?"

Zenith closes her eyes, destroying any vestige of illusion that the pose is just a pose and doesn't mean anything to her. "Long as I can, I guess," she breathes to herself.

At this, Jackson abandons camera once more in favour of his sketchpad. Flipping it to a blank page and perching on his stool, he begins working, his focus purposeful and intense. His eye flicks between Zenith and his paper, hand working with sure motions, practiced skill, none of the crippled stiff uncertainty that dominate his somewhat broken movements when on his feet. A faint smile touches his lips at Zenith's expression, and his pencil captures her on the page in intimate detail.

(In his sketch, she does not look hungover. Cameras may not lie, but his pencils have no such qualms.)

Zenith's hand clenches around the scarf. One can't tell if it's holding her up, or if she's straining to get away from where it's dragging her, whether she clings to the support or resists it with everything she has. There's a balance, anyway, hanging there, and maybe she doesn't know herself.

There is something in Zenith's pose, as Jackson's gaze travels to her hand, to the scarf, that makes his breath catch -- just briefly, a twinge of something achey stirring briefly in his expression and pulling him out of his drawing semi-trace. His hand stills in its motion, and his tongue flicks out to wet his lips before he shakes his head abruptly and returns to what he was doing, focusing on the details of lines and form and shading with renewed intensity. "I lied, before," he says at length, quiet. "That last pose wasn't perfect. This is."

Zenith lets the scarf go as she folds down into a cross-legged position. The scarf, still knotted around her wrist, flutters to her lap. "It just came to me," she says in a ragged voice, and then looks up, trying to see in Jackson's face a reflection of how she'd looked.

In Jackson's face there is still a trace of whatever ache was touched upon before, but mostly there is longing, a wistful and faraway expression in his eye. He tips the sketchpad up to show Zenith the drawing, and if the photographs were meant to capture form, the more personal touch of his pencil does that with emotion. The Zenith on the page clutches the scarf and the same dichotomy is there in his picture: clinging for support or straining for release, it is perhaps both or neither. "It --" he begins, and then closes his lips firmly before saying anything further, shaking his head instead. "What d'you think?"

Zenith regards the picture in silence for a long time. "You know the feeling?" she asks, a little line of confusion appearing between her eyes.

A blush floods Jackson's cheeks, and his head tips in a nod, spilling black-and-blue hair down into his eye. "Reminded me of --" He catches himself, and a professionally bright smile pushes the longing from his expression, manufactured cheer well-practiced. "Another painting I did once. While back. Not the pose, but the feeling behind it."

Zenith huffs a breath, and touches down so she's actually sitting cross-legged on the floor. "You ever introduce us, I'll buy him--her? A drink."

"Just a painting," Jackson replies with a lopsided quirk of a smile. His gaze drifts away from Zenith, moving towards his blank and empty canvas; a picture begins to form on it, two figures, human, one poised half over top of the other -- but it is vague, and the incipient image vanishes before ever resolving. His blush doesn't fade, and he looks from the canvas down to the image of Zenith on his sketchpad.

Zenith frowns, apparently drawing a conclusion about what was pictured immediately, however vague. She looks rather put off. "Ah," she says, and then can't find anything else to say.

Jackson stands, rather stiffly, wincing somewhat as he gets to his feet. "I'll let you know when the painting's done, so you can see the final product. -- And, of course, when the whole exhibit is showing." His smile twitches a touch wider, wry. "Provided the gallery doesn't freak out about the mutant thing at the very last minute, like the /last/ one did."

Zenith pulls her scarf off her wrist, gathering it up to stuff into her bag. "Well, you throw any kind of opening bash, I'll be happy to come, assuming I have any kind of happily-monogamous charity-supporting celebrity cred back by then."

"Awesome." Cheer only slightly forced, Jackson extends a hand towards Zenith. "And thank you, again, miss."

"Sure. Thank you." Zenith accepts the hand, and gives a smile, a little professional, a little still hungover. And with that, she heads out.


Later appointment.


Zenith's slightly messy and cluttered apartment is more of a testament to her arduous climb back to semi-humanity today. Her shoes and purse of the night before are on the floor by the door, tossed blindly, and there's a bowl of cereal poured out, next to the bottle of ibuprofen, knocked over where it had been placed by the sink while she got a glass of water for it. The cereal looks lonely, a tribute to a more optimistic period, but it has no milk and might have been sitting there for a quite a while. Zenith is in the bathroom, mostly dressed in tank top and knee-length skin, communing with the cool tile floor. Cool, cool tile floor. Feels nice!

Somewhere between a fire station on the edge of Harlem and Zenith's apartment, there are teeny-tiny pieces of torn up paper that used to be a cheekily-captioned photograph with an additional query in scrawling black pen: So she's THAT kind of dancer, huh? Matt, as they say, was ill-amused. His key turns in the apartment's lock, and in he shuffles and clomps, leaving his boots on and looking exactly like he's just come off of the night watch. There is a small plastic pharmacy bag being crumpled in one of his hands, and after surveying the disarray of painkillers and abandoned cereal he sighs, looks distinctly grumpy, and removes a bottle of alka-seltzer tablets from the rustling bag. Placing them beside the cereal bowl, he places himself in a chair opposite it, and waits.

There's a slightly confused and worried sound from the bathroom, and then Zenith apparently figures out who has a key and could just get in, and relaxes somewhat. Sounds of her getting to her feet, and splashing water on her face. When she comes out, she's at least decently put together, hair brushed, etc, but nothing can hide the rather white, nauseaous cast to her skin. "Hey, babe. Overdid it last night."

"I saw the pictures," says Matt somewhat flatly, a Matt who has spent the interim first eyeing the untouched cereal, and then foraging for milk to add to it. Thus, by the time Zenith has emerged, her cereal is now being eaten by someone, if not by her. He gestures with the spoon towards the bottle of tablets. "Figured you'd probably still be feeling like ten miles of bad road."

"I--" Zenith thinks, hard. "Oh. There was a photographer when I was going in." She goes and fiddles with the bottle's top for a moment before finally getting it. She closes her eyes every so often like her head is pounding. "Didn't think I would have rated with everyone else at the party, though."

"When you were going out, too, apparently," says Matt, and crunches away at his co-opted cereal with extreme prejudice.

Zenith blinks at him, not too sick to tell something's wrong. "...what? I don't--" Remember, very clearly.

The bag rustles again, and a tabloid joins the alka-seltzer after Matt's put down his cereal. "Made the entertainment section. The guys at the station -really- all want to meet you now," he sums up, lips quirking, and then grabs for the cereal again as if to keep his mouth from aquiring too many feet out of sheer grouch.

Zenith leaves off struggling with the bottle to flip through the magazine until she finds herself. She blanches, and touches the page disbelievingly. "That can't--I didn't--" She frowns /hard/ at it. "I don't remember--"

"I figured," says Matt. Crunch. Crunchcrunchcrunch. He sighs, looks across the table, and finally states "I need coffee. You want some?"

"Yeah." Zenith turns vaguely towards the cupboards, though Matt should know perfectly well where it is, having stayed over enough nights to want it in the morning. Her attention is drawn back to the photos before she can complete the motion, however. "Matt, I didn't--I didn't touch another guy." She is intense about it.

"Yeah." Zenith turns vaguely towards the cupboards, though Matt should know perfectly well where it is, having stayed over enough nights to want it in the morning. Her attention is drawn back to the photos before she can complete the motion, however. "Matt, I didn't--I didn't touch another guy." She is intense about it.

Matt rises at the turning, waving her to her seat and rummaging around with his back turned. "Thought you just said you didn't remember," he points out, mouth running ahead of his brain. Not -too- far ahead, of course, as evidenced by the full-body pause and stiffen that soon follows. He carefully continues the hunt for coffee.

"I--" Zenith scrubs at her face. "Not the /whole/ night, but--" She looks down at the pictures again. "They'd have printed that too, wouldn't they?" She is begging at this point. She flops into a chair, and finally takes the alka-seltzer.

"Yeah," Matt admits with a sigh and the rather unnecessarily firm closing of a cupboard. "Probably. If they'd had a photographer there to see... the hell -happened-, Zenith?"
Zenith sniffs. If Matt has at all developed boyfriend radar, it should be going off. "That's what TV stars do, isn't it?" Her tone is rather dead.

Matt's boyfriend radar is currently incorrectly calibrated, knocked out of alignment by coming off a long shift, and a long shift full of aggravation at that. A long shift that didn't even feature any fires to put an end to the razzing, no less. Thus, his back remains turned as he delivered a clipped "Dammit, no they don't-- or you don't. I mean, what the hell?" he repeats and dumps coffee grounds into a clean filter.

Zenith sobs, folding up into a little ball over her knees.

"Oh... crap. Shit. Fuck--" Cue a downwards spiral into profanity as the sobs hit Matt's ears and he hurriedly clatters the coffee pot into place, the better to turn and look at the ball of weeping girlfriend that has ensued. "I didn't--"

Zenith makes some kind of explaining denial. It is almost completely incomprehensible, though she doesn't seem to realize it is, speaking through the sobs. One might gather that the gist is that it's nothing Matt should worry about.

Matt scrubs both hands against the short crop of his hair, stares at Zenith in mild panic over what to do, and finally settles on crouching beside her chair and trying, tentatively, to pull her into a wordless hug.

Zenith clings. Words gradually work themselves out from between the tears. "They don't want me--any bodyguarding gigs, ever--my only real friends, probably don't want to talk to me anymore--"

"Whoah, hey..." From the round-eyed look on Matt's face as he tucks Zenith's head beneath his chin, this was not what he was expecting to be at the root of the weeping. Carefully, he pats her shoulder. "It can't be that bad, can it? I mean, lots of people lose jobs but keep friends."

"--said I'm too stupid to hire--" Zenith fights her way through the flood of tears, and starts to clamp down on visible signs of emotion at least. "I--just figured I might as well--"

"And you -listened- to that shit?" Matt's arm around her stiffens, and the wide-eyed worry dissolves into a more familiar protective grumpiness at Zenith's nameless employers. "Is this the same bunch of jackasses that told you it was your fault you got hit in the face?"

"I'm not really a genius, Matt," Zenith says, with a tentative little candleflame of humor, flickering and then going back to embers. Her arms come out to twine around him, trying to calm some of the stiffness.

"Yeah, but neither am I. 'Too stupid to hire'. What the fuck?" says Matt, grumbling and squashing her a little closer, the frozen horror at the tears melting as it appears it is a) not his fault and b) tapering off. "Fuck, you're better off without 'em. And if your friends are gonna stop being friends just 'cause you're not working for the same company, were they really -friends-?"

"Made for each other," Zenith murmurs, humor flickering up and then back. "I guess you're right." She closes her eyes again, a headache grimace. "I can't do this every week anyway."
"Considering the boozing I put in after Sabby," says Matt, with a more cautious tone and one hand lifting to pet at her hair. "I'm not going to tell you off for getting shitfaced... but you wanna do it with me, next time?"

"God. I don't need to do that to you." Her tone, though, says '/Please/'. Her next words support it. "Keep me away from the pot. I think that's when the evening kinda went off the rails. I think." Again, the frown of memory loss.

"Yeah... I think I can do that," says Matt, stiffening with concern again, and squashing Zenith accordingly. "Hell, given the whole War on Drugs thing, you probably might wanna give that a pass in general. Famous face. Famous -mutant- face. There's gotta be a couple DAs out there that'd love an example."

"I avoided the E." Zenith's voice is rather small, and apologetic. "Fuck. Oh, God. Oh, God. I haven't--they're not making this a mutant thing, are they? Like in the news?"

"Eh," says Matt. It could be an answer. It could be indigestion from the cereal. "More just going all 'Hey, guess she was tired of the -human- starlets behaving badly'. Unity in bad behavior, I guess?"

"God. Now I can't do a thing about the CPAM thing, though." Zenith sniffs again, but no tears appear. "It--it was good to forget, Matt. I just wanted to escape for a while."

"You could still spin it a bit, if you wanted, I bet," suggests Matt, and manfully ignores any sodden qualities to his t-shirt, although he shifts a little bit to stop the tops of his boots from digging too much into his thighs as he crouches. "I mean, party-girl-gets-serious has been done before. Just don't try and adopt kids from every continent like Angelina."

"Or married and pregnant with twins." Zenith gives Matt a damp kind of smile, and then clings a last time before pushing him away. "That can't be comfortable." She pushes to her own feet. "Coffee. I'm--hungry. What time is it?" She pulls open a drawer full of takeout menus. "I guess I missed breakfast."

"Just about 12:30," Matt reports, and eases himself to his feet somewhat more slowly once Zenith is up and at 'em. "I did 12-12 last night... and are you sure you want take-out grease?"
Zenith looks nauseaous. "Not when you say it like that." She looks at the half-empty bowl. "You ate my cereal." She laughs, unsteady and too much for the quality of the joke.

"It looked lonely," is Matt's explanation, although he does have the grace to look sheepish. A stretch of his arms and shoulders prompts popping noises from his spine, and he casts a glance towards Zenith and towards the kitchen cupboards, lips pursed thoughtfully. "Sit," he decides. "And get some water and painkillers in you. I'll make food."

"How's your back?" Zenith asks, with a guilty jerk of remembering. "You're too good for me." She drags the chair so she can put her head on her hands on the counter. "Water." She says it with the dawning surprise of someone who has just realized they are ragingly thirsty. "I think there's still stuff to make food with from the last time my sister was here. She was really annoyed at me."

"Really awesome shades of green and purple, but the black's gone," Matt reports, with a reassuringly dismissive wave of a hand. "It's been two weeks, so really, I'm about all healed up. Got the stitches out and everything, they just want the two punctures closed over better before I'm off desk duty... how old are these eggs?"

"Carrie said I don't have to throw them out just because of the expiration date," Zenith notes. She lifts her head to frown eggwards. "Not /that/ old." She twitches the magazine towards herself and starts to look upset again.

"Well, I guess if you get food poisoning, you probably wouldn't feel any -worse-..." Matt logics, and decides in favour of the eggs, setting them on the counter and clattering around for a frying pan. He turns up pancake mix in the course of the hunt, and sets that out too. Absorbed in the art of Making Stuff, he fails to notice any by-play with the magazine.

Zenith moans, a little theatrically. "That's why the celebutantes are so thin, they can't face eating at least half of the mornings." She goes silent, fingering the pictures, and actually reading the text this time. "For a mutant who can fly--" she murmurs.

"Reading that crap?" Matt wonders, rattling around and finding a large bowl originally designed for holding popcorn that appears to be workable for mixing in. There's the crack of an egg.

"I crawled into the blogs at one point when the show first aired. When I felt ready to slit my wrists, I crawled back out and didn't look back. It's better when I don't look at it--" Zenith shoves the magazine away. "I wonder if I have a lighter somewhere." She cranes her head over her shoulder.

"Check my jacket pocket-- wait," Matt interrupts himself, midway through measuring out pancake mix. "I'll get it. You sit."

The jacket ruffles under invisible force, but then it stops when Zenith makes a noise of agony. "No powers with hangover," she repeats to herself a couple times, mantra-like.

"Guess you'll just have to be mortal for a day, Supergirl," Matt teases, but not unkindly, as he tips the pancake mix into the bowl, pours in milk to go with it and empties the carton in the process, and -then- goes to get his lighter.

"'m lucky I didn't use any last night. That can be...interesting." Zenith looked panicked for a moment. "I mean, I don't think I did--" Then she looks at the magazine. "They'd say if I did." She offers out the magazine to Matt.

"Definitely. I'd probably be bailing your very cute ass out of one of MA's nice little cells," Matt predicts, and accepts the magazine with a thoughtful look. "I think we may wanna do the ceremonial burning outside," he suggests, after a glance around the enclosed room that spots a smoke detector. "I mean, fire safety and all."

The idea of a cell doesn't really dissipate Zenith's panic, but the idea of burning things does, and she gets gingerly to her feet. She giggles at 'fire safety'. She comes to wrap herself against Matt's back for a second, not pressing too hard. "Owe you one," she says against his shirt.

Matt's back does not object to being wrapped against, muscles flexing beneath it as he sets the magazine and lighter aside for later. He turns and pulls her into a hug, pressing a kiss to a forehead pale and clammy beneath his lips, before guiding her back to her seat. "Just call me, next time," is his answer.


Matt comes to check up on the photographed girlfriend.