Dinner for Three (Sasha and Clement)

[Jesse Adams]

This... was a situation Jesse hadn't thought he'd find himself in even a week ago. Sure, he'd thought about Clement meeting his family. ... Okay, his mom and sister. If he could help it, he would keep his boyfriend and his father as far away as humanly possible from each other. But to have Sasha and Clement together now was something... interesting. He felt a weird rush of protectiveness towards each of them, which was... confusing.

After taking Sasha on a tour of the town with Clement in tow, they'd finally settled into finding somewhere to eat. Letting Sasha dictate, they ended up somewhere Jesse hadn't ever been before.

About five minutes at the table with the menu, he was starting to doubt his sister's decision. Flopping his head onto Clement's shoulder, he pulled a face. "'s all rabbit food."

Because after reuniting with your sister after a few years, this was how you behaved. Yep.

[Clement Evans]

As the years had passed, Clement had only become more unrufflable, mostly due to Jesse and his job. The blond could turn the smallest thing into something unbelievably huge and unwieldly (and in a very short amount of time), and one could not be skittish when working around horses. That, and Clement had had some pretty bad stuff happen to him before Hammel, and most of the stuff that came up now was nothing. Also, his store of life experiences hadn't increased that much since arriving in Vermont, and he often didn't know what was a Big Thing and what wasn't.

Jesse's little sister arriving at Hammel was a Big Thing, and Clement would've known it just from having to watch his boyfriend nearly fidget through the floor for three days. All of what he knew of Sasha was hearsay, but she seemed pretty normal. No delinquency, being held back in school, or tendencies toward extremist fringe groups. Clement had wanted them to have some time to reconnect, but Jess had included him right away. Cool.

Not cool was the hissed list of things he wasn't supposed to say or talk about, added to on an hourly basis. Nothing about sex, no cussing, no euphemisms for sex or drugs or whatever else there were euphemisms for, and for god's sake keep his hands to himself. The younger boy had argued that she was fourteen and had access to the internets, but Jesse was completely convinced his baby sister was pure as the driven snow and not to be defiled. Clement immediately felt really bad for Sasha's first significant other.

He'd been to Abe's before; Lahja had taken him many times and he liked their tea selection. The soups were good, too, and those two things made up 90% of what he ate in the winter to keep the frost from forming on his organs. It was a weird, given what Clement knew about Jesse's diet, that he should agree to a place that was vegetarian/vegan. Clement wasn't sure if he'd seen the older man eat more than six full servings in the last three years.

The second that shaggy blond head found his skinny shoulder, he thought, 'Oh, here we go.'

"Ty's a good example," he replied. "You eat pizza like it's a food group." Looking at Sasha, Clement's face relaxed a bit into something less bland and more pleasant, the closest he could come to a smile for someone he'd just met. "The soup here is good. I like the vegetable barley."

[Sasha Adams]

Sasha had chosen the restaurant almost at random. It had been nearby when she was hungry, and then she had looked on her phone to check ratings on Yelp and they had seemed decent enough that she was willing to give it a try. She hadn't, however, looked at the menu, or read the specifics of any of the reviews. 

She offered Clement a small smile. "I'll try that," She decided. Recommendations were always much safer than trying something new when it came to meals, she thought. If she liked the soup she might branch out and try something else some other evening. 

"I hear you speak Korean," She offered, "How did you learn? Was it very hard?" 

Some of the other girls in her dance classes back in LA had been thoroughly enamored of Korean pop music, so she had heard a song or two. Catchy, but not enough for her to try to learn Korean to understand any of it. Still, other languages were interesting, and it wasn't often that she met another white person who was fluent in a secondary language that wasn't European in origin. 

[Jesse Adams]

No, Ty wasn't a good example. Ty ate too many veggies, among other things. Like bedsheets. Good example his ass. Without moving his head, he just smirked. "If he's a good example then the next thing you'll be telling me is to chew on my sheets if I'm hungry." Which sounded just as fun as anything that was on the menu.

Maybe he'd just starve.

But he couldn't keep pouting with Sasha around. He was supposed to be being a good big brother, and pouting wasn't being a good brother.

Sighing, he sat up properly and looked across at Sasha, who was now questioning his boyfriend. He just hoped he didn't need to step in and silence Clement. They'd already gone over things he could and could not say to her. Of course, he didn't think that Sasha would ask about things like their love life, but he had to plan for anything in order to keep her as innocent as possible.

"What else is good aside from soup?" Cautiously, he poked at the menu in front of him again, as if it might bite.

[Clement Evans]

Clement didn't know if mentioning chewing bedsheets was healthier than candy or cigarettes would be offensive, so he just shrugged his shoulder to make Jesse's head bounce.

Placing his menu on the table, since he knew what he was getting and Jesse could hold up his own menu as he was a big boy with working arms, he nodded. "My best friend in California was Minho Lee. He'd just come over when we met, from Seoul, and he didn't speak any English." On difficulty, he thought for a moment and said, "Learning wasn't hard, exactly. He was a better teacher than I was, and his mom didn't speak any English either, so it was like... forced immersion."

This was both a disappointment and a relief for their teachers. On the one hand, Minho wasn't going to get English help from a friend, but on the other, most of what came out of Clement's mouth was so filthy it was more of a blessing in disguise.

...Well, Clement liked most of what was on the menu, but he also liked vegetables. "Um... they have a vegetable lasagna. And one of the omelettes has cheese in it besides spinach." Pushing the menu towards the blond, a brown eyebrow rose. "You can like, read, you know."

Unused to making smalltalk, he looked awkwardly between brother and sister, and finally said, "Hope you're okay with snow. Really okay."

[Sasha Adams]

"They have veggie lasagna? That sounds delicious!" 

Unlike her brother, Sasha liked vegetables. Perhaps she had begun eating them all in an effort to please her father, but she had learned quickly that they could, in fact, be wonderful when prepared right. 

"Once one of mom's friends cooked pumpkin lasagna and I really liked it," She explained to Jesse, just in case he decided to question her taste in food. After all, he was still her big brother, and she didn't want him to think she was weird or anything. 

Then she turned her attention back to Clement. "Oh. Does he go to Hammel? Can I meet him?" 

And then, "I don't know. It didn't snow a lot out in Los Angeles." 

[Jesse Adams]

Clement's shrug didn't do much to deter him from leaning on him. He just smirked a little and stayed put once the bouncing stopped.

He knew how and why Clement had learned Korean, so for that part he simply zoned out a little, eyes roaming his boyfriend's menu for something that didn't look like rabbit food. Note to self - research before he agreed to a place next time.

"Pumpkin needs to be in pie, not in lasagna." Seriously, what was wrong with people?

As Clement pushed the menu back at him, he picked it up and huffed out his breath in vague disappointment. "I guess lasagna doesn't sound so bad." But he was totally going to grab pizza before they went back, because otherwise he might starve. Now he'd committed to this act, he supposed he had to keep up with it.

"Don't scare her about the snow." He'd probably have to take Sasha winter clothes shopping too in the fall, before it froze completely.

[Clement Evans]

The veggie lasagna was good, Clement had had it before, but it had a tomato-based sauce rather than a cream-based one (not that he'd known the difference before he'd been told) to make it more healthy. Since then, he'd had the cream-based one too, and he preferred the tomato. Listening to the siblings, he managed to not roll his eyes at Jesse throwing shade yet again at unfried foodstuffs.

"Sounds okay," he said, "you know what kind of pumpkin they used?" For all the different words Koreans had for soups, it was a little puzzling to him why they only had one word, hobak, for everything in the squash family. Kabochas and zucchinis were very different things.

He shook his head. "No, he's still in California." A hint of a smile. "I'm from L.A. too."

Clement pressed the worn toe of his sneaker over Jesse's instep. "I'm not trying to scare her. There's just a sh... lot of snow here in the winter."

An understatement in the best of years. Clement had privately wondered during his own first year if Vermont imported snow from other states or had a sort of snow hoarding problem.

Luckily the waiter came and took their order and brought a round of waters. It would've been very amusing for Jess to order a beer, since Abe's carried alcohol and he was legal, but there was probably no drinking in front of Sasha. He'd ordered the soup, which came with a chunk of homemade bread, and just drank water.

[Sasha Adams]

Sasha shook her head at Clement's question; she did not know beyond that it had been pumpkin, and it had been delicious. 

Finding out that Clement, too, was from Los Angeles was a bit of a shock. L.A. was a huge city, so it perhaps wasn't surprising that it would boast multiple meta humans at the same time. Still, she hadn't expected to meet someone else from there while here on the other side of the country. 

"Oh! You didn't tell me that!" She pouted at her brother. Or if he had mentioned it she had managed to overlook that entirely. 

After their orders had been put in she looked from one boy to the other. "So is it hard here? To learn to, you know?" 

She wasn't sure how much she could discuss powers training directly, not when she was off campus. Her recruiter had explained that people in town weren't supposed to know the true nature of the school, and she didn't want to mess that up.

[Jesse Adams]

Yes, there was a shitload of snow in the winter, but being fresh from LA? Clement didn't need to scare her right away. Biting his lip, he slid his foot away from Clement's and gave him a sidelong look.

At least Sasha provided a distraction. The blond flicked his attention back to his sister. "I didn't think about it... sorry Sash." He didn't think it mattered much, but apparently she had other ideas.

He sipped at his water and cast a quick glance around the restaurant before answering. "Depends. Some trainers are better than others. And some powers are harder than others." He offered a small smile to her. "But you can practice on me anytime you want to." It could be handy, having a sister with tactile anesthesia. If she could put him out hard enough that even his dreams were kept at bay... that could be nice.

"Zeb could probably help you too. He has a sleep based power. And he's nice, right Clement?" They'd both had their run-ins with the dorm monitor.

[Clement Evans]

Not mentioning Vermont's snowfall to someone coming to live there for most of her adolescence was hardly a brain fart, but Clement wasn't going to press it. Here there'd be a much better selection of winter clothing for a lot cheaper than in LA... though it wasn't hard for most things to be cheaper than there.

Powers training was a mixed bag for sure; Clement had it easier than most except for the dietary requirements. Most kids would be delighted that they could not only justify but need a significant amount of added sugar to their daily meals. But Clement had always disliked sweet stuff, it tasted like tar to him. He couldn't think of anything to add to the conversation, everything he could say would likely be construed as more 'scare tactics'.

"But you can practice on me anytime you want to."

"Dude. And you told me not to be a sleazeball." After shooting an annoyed look at his boyfriend, he looked back to the namja chingu yeodongsaeng with a more relaxed expression.

"Zeb's cool. He doesn't make a big deal out of stuff, but he's good help." High praise from the guy who didn't talk much about others. "You met Ty and Gambit?"


*namja chingu yeodongsaeng - boyfriend's younger sister

[Sasha Adams]

Sasha shook her head quickly at Clement's question. "Not yet! Jesse had better show them to me after dinner, though." She threatened just as the waiter brought over a plate of sliced bread with butter for the trio. 

"But it was more important to meet you." 

Animals were nice enough, but Clement was The Boyfriend. She thought this was especially important given how much difficulty her brother had in getting close to anyone else. 

[Jesse Adams]

Jesse gave Clement the side-eye, resisting the urge to step on his foot. "I'm not a sleezeball," he grumped at him. "Using her power on me doesn't make it sleezeball." They were brother and sister. Seriously.

Right. Pets. He pulled out his phone to look at the time. "... We might have time to see Gambit after dinner." If Jake was home and could deal with having visitors, that was. "If not, we can see him another day and you can meet Ty instead."

He was sure his bunny would like Sasha. He was a little shy, but a good little guy. He'd just have to bring him to common area. Maybe it was time to invest in a leash or something.

[Clement Evans]

"Saying it like that does," he shot back. Then he turned surprised eyes to Sasha. "More important to meet me?"

Honestly, Clement didn't think he'd ever place first in a popularity contest that involved a dog and a rabbit, even if there was a quiz portion.

"You shown her pictures?" Jesse was like most pet owners and had an almost unhealthy number of photos of his animals in his phone. Clement had a few pics of Ty on his own phone, but since he didn't really care for the gadget he didn't make use of it the way most of his generation did.

Before Jess could find the correct albums, their food came. His soup steamed invitingly, and he placed his hands near the underside of the bowl to warm. And then, as Ajima had taught him, he whispered, "Jal meokgesseumnida."

Usually it was said much louder, with clasped hands, but Clement didn't want to make a big deal of things. The literal translation was 'I will eat well' but its meaning was more to acknowledge his gratitude for the food and whoever made it.

[Sasha Adams]

Sasha dipped her spoon into her vegetable barley soup, then jerked back as she tasted it -- it was hot. 

She decided to stir a bit while she waited for it to cool down. She wanted to know what Clement had just said, because she hadn't understood it; perhaps it had been in Korean. Would it be rude to ask him about it? 

Maybe she would ask Jesse for pointers on what questions were fine and which ones were rude. He had to have some idea. 

So instead of asking Clement anything she returned to the topic of pets. 

"Sure, he's emailed me a few pictures." 

Or more than a few, really, but who tired of looking at pictures of cute animals?