ax_main | Cal and Molly

A late night snacking encounter.

It was a little late, but Cal knew he wasn't going to get to sleep any time soon, anyway. He hadn't been sleeping very well lately, to say the least. So what it was was time for a snack, and he found himself in the kitchen, sitting on the counter and eating a grilled bagel with cream cheese and ham. Every once in a while, he tore off a small piece of ham, held it up for Abs, and told her to sit. Only once she'd done it did he drop the piece of ham for her to happily swallow.

He had just dropped another piece for her when a very purple figure walked into the kitchen, and then Cal wasn't just a guy with his pup, but a Right survivor. He gave Molly a small smile, and a quiet, "Hey."

Molly's sleeping habits were often suspect at best, and the insanity of the past few months had not improved things much. He wasn't thinking much of it as he made his way into the kitchen, not expecting anything in the way of company. Which is probably why it took him a moment to register that there was in fact someone there, and a beat later to realize exactly who it was. Someone he'd been putting some effort into avoiding, of course. It figured.

He didn't quite twitch, though he wanted to, tail flicking a bit before he settled and continued his way over to the fridge. Avoidance or not, he wasn't about to simply leave the room just because Cal was there. That felt like cheating.

"Late, isn't it?" He said instead.

"...yeah," Cal answered, sounding mildly confused by the painfully small talk. He wasn't all that surprised that he'd never seen much of the other guy, even if he mostly expected the other Right captives he had met there and mimicked to avoid him. (Most of them didn't, though, and fuck, was he thankful for that.) Still, it wasn't all that farfetched that the mere idea of Cal, his mutation, and what he had done in there (never mind what had happened with Pam here) would put somebody off of wanting to know him.

Still, small talk was... not what he expected from one of them.

The seven-month-old golden retriever puppy didn't pick up on any of that, however, and trotted over to the newcomer to sniff his shoes.

Whatever mindless inanity Molly had intended next was rather abruptly derailed by the small dog that suddenly appeared to find great interest in his footwear. Molly may not have been the most intense of animal people, but it was still a bit hard to find issue with a dog that small.

"Hello there," he directed towards the animal itself. "You're not going to find anything too interesting, I'm sorry to say." That accomplished, his red eyes flicked back briefly in Cal's direction, the look of slight amusement on his face not quite slipping, though it did go just a touch more forced.

"She's mostly after some petting," Cal admitted, and took another bite of his bagel.

"I can appreciate that," Molly said with a teasingly thoughtful tone. Though he did have to step around the puppy to get to the cabinets. "If you give me a moment, dear, I'd be happy to oblige you."

"Probably also after any food you'd like to share," Cal amended, and tore another little strip of ham off. "Yo, Abs!" He threw the ham her way, and she caught it in mid-air, tail wagging happily as she ate it.

"You have her well trained, I see." Just a touch dry, though Molly did find himself leaning back against the counter instead of grabbing anything, just watching the interplay between the two of them.

Cal made a small, noncommittal noise. "She's at that stage where she's testing me as often as she's obeying, so. We'll see, I guess."

One of Molly's eyebrows quirked upwards. "Is that a thing dogs do? I thought it was mostly children."

"Apparently a thing adolescent dogs do," Cal confirmed. This conversation was oddly... normal, but perhaps because Molly was one of them (and tight with Caleb and Clint), or perhaps because they were discussing Abs... or both, Cal wasn't feeling very awkward, when he normally would've been looking for an excuse to leave, these days. "I've been reading way too many blogs about dogs."

"Oh yes? And what sort of things do you find on dog blogs?" Molly looked oddly entranced by the idea, one side of his mouth curling up a bit as his tail swung lazily behind him.

"All the fucking advice," Cal replied. "All of it. And a lot of it contradictory. What do you feed them, how do you train them, dog behavioral stuff, and then there's the weird this breed is better than that breed shit that I stay far away from."

"That sounds like more trouble than it's worth, for a pet." As lovely as she was. But Molly could barely be trusted to look after a houseplant, let alone anything that needed feeding, so there was only so much he could say.

Cal was quiet for a beat, and then said, with a small smile, "Nah, she's worth every blog spiral I got sucked into."

"Fair enough." And if Molly sounded just a touch dubious, he clearly just didn't understand. But he did continue to turn and fetch down the snack he had come for in the first place. "And is she the reason you're up in the middle of the night?" He asked over his shoulder.

Cal shot Molly a skeptical look. "I'm the reason she's up in the middle of the night." He paused, then answered the question Molly had probably actually been asking, "I haven't been sleeping well since they took Caleb again." Insomnia had come back with a vengeance. It didn't matter that most of them were now behind bars - at least, for now. It didn't matter that Sandra was never coming for him again.

Ah. They were done dancing around the elephant in the room, apparently. Red eyes flicked over towards Cal for a second, before shifting back to the depths of the cabinet. "Because you're worried about him, or?"

"Yes, or, both," Cal offered, finishing his bagel. Of course he was worried about Caleb. But there was more to it than that. It was difficult to articulate to somebody who'd been there, never mind to Molly, whom Cal didn't actually know. "It didn't throw you for a loop?"

"I only heard about it after everything had been taken care of," Molly said with a slight shrug. "So much as I'm concerned about him, there isn't anything else I can do about it." And Caleb only allowed a certain amount of fussing at a time, generally speaking. Molly was trying to dole it out smartly, but it was hard to out-clever someone intelligent.

That sounded a lot like a no. It seemed so foreign to Cal, so unexpected. "You really don't care that they were able to track us down and try and catch us again?" It seemed so weird. He knew he didn't know Molly, but how could he sound so distant from that?

"I mean, I don't love the idea. And obviously, I'm worried about Caleb. But it's done now, so why obsess over it? I'd rather focus on picking up the pieces." Always keep moving forward, that was Molly's philosophy.

Cal got off the counter, crouching down to meet Abs. "I guess the pieces are harder to pick up for me." Fuck, he wished he could be like Molly, although he figured it was a front, like with Clint. But Cal sucked at getting out of his own head, and seeing past his issues.

Molly just shrugged again. It was an unusual reaction to have, maybe, but it had kept him going so far. He hardly expected anyone else to have exactly the same thought process, similar experiences or no. "We all manage in our own way."

"Some of us are better at managing," Cal replied, scratched Abs behind the ears, then stood up with a half smile. "Anyway. I should get out of your hair." And go run with Abs a bit, probably. A pink portal appeared behind him, and already Abs was trotting through it, and onto the school grounds. "I'll see you around."