((OOC: for cameos in the Cafaya  speed dating thread))

Zinnia had apparently been studying too hard (according to her housemates). They hadn’t seen her dating anyone in months (because she hadn’t found anyone interesting enough to bother with). She needed to get out more (apparently). Take more risks (or so they said). It was for this reason they had signed her up for a speed dating night. Put money on it even, and by that they meant they had bought her a ticket.


She fidgeted in the cab the whole way there, smoothing her  purple dress spattered with large white butterflies. Her shoes were too daft to walk in for a prolonged period, and she didn’t want to be late. For something that was more or less forced on her, she was partly looking forward to it. She had been having some trouble nailing down her type. And what better way than getting a cross-section of a bunch of available males. A heterosexual partnership would be easy. A homosapien heterosexual partnership easier still. No need to try and juggle mutations, a high chance any future babies would be x-gene free and no judgements from random passers-by. Yes, if she could just find someone she was interested in, that would be ideal.

She had had boyfriends before, a couple of girlfriends too, but none of them had really stuck. She had liked them well enough, enjoyed her time with them. But they just hadn’t meshed well enough to be ‘serious’. Was she ready to be serious?


The taxi arrived and she paid and tipped the driver. She paid careful attention to the gutter and the footpath before she exited. Falling on her face and skinning her knees was not an option. Her heels clip-clopped on the pavement with purpose. She was going to do this thing.


After the instructions had been given Zinn moved to the closest available man’s table. At first glance he was reasonably good looking, on second he was a little gangly. He smiled nicely, though, and Zinn smiled back and started on the napkin questions to get herself rolling. She tried not to ‘umm’ too much, and he laughed pleasantly whenever she did. Nice guy. Not her type.


Bzzt.


Sweaty guy (well dressed) was up next, and she dipped her head and introduced herself. He was pretty blunt, she was good looking, but his parents would kill him if he brought home anyone less than napkin-white. Well, that was awkward. The two minutes seemed to drag at this table, and when the buzzer sounded she was grateful to move on. She didn’t even consider leaving her number, and he didn’t offer his.


The next table was occupied by a man with very pink hair. Not her type either, yet she felt like she knew him from somewhere. She introduced herself as Zinnia, with a smile, and tried to place the face. Had she stitched him up some time? Served by him in a café she frequented? Perhaps he had given a bystander’s viewpoint on the news? Ah, picturing him on the TV did the trick, and she had a flashback to a night filled with popcorn and alcohol and movies. He was from the Dusk movies, the girliest girlie movies ever.


“Before the first question- can I take a selfie with you? My housemates will lose their minds.”


Good payback for them sending her on this stupid trip in the first place, her meeting their swoon-maker.


"Sure. Thanks for asking first, you'd be surprised how often that doesn't happen."


Well. Rude people were rude.


She snapped the photo and tucked her phone into her clutch. She wouldn’t waste the two minutes trying to send a group text, she would save that for intermission, if they had intermission, or for the time swapping between tables. Besides, she should give it enough time for him to escape afterwards unbeset by her housemates coming and fangirling all over him, offering themselves as the perfect girlfriends. He could probably have gone on some celebrity dating show and been treated like that, a piece of meat to be haggled over with promises of footrubs and the like. He had chosen to do this quietly, without a song and dance, which meant that her housemates were almost certainly terrible matches for him. On to the first question.


“So, where are you from?”


She was sure she remembered something vague about ‘accents’ and ‘foregin guys being so hot’ from the movie night, but his accent wasn’t that strong, as far as she could tell. He sounded a little like her dad, just a little, could be British? South African maybe.


“I was born here, my Dad is British, but my Mum lived here all her life and now so have I.”


He commented on her accent and she glanced down at the napkin. She was New Yorker, walked like a New Yorker, talked like a New Yorker. Occasionally she would pop out a British-ism, but on the whole she was rather vanilla like that, living in the same city she was born in her whole life.


“I’m guessing whoever wrote these questions didn’t know they’d have a movie star in their mix, so let’s skip ‘what movie role would you like to play?’, and go straight to ‘What is your favourite movie?’, if you say your own I’m obliged to punch you, just so you know.”


Not that she would. He was a pretty big dude. Not the biggest person she had seen lately, but the biggest in skin. Was that a weird thing to think?


"Damn that's a hard one. I'm going to have to say 'Guardians of the Galaxy'. Heck of a blend of comedy, action, and sci-fi. Artistically 'Lord of the Rings' is pretty brilliant, great score, stellar acting, perfectly shot. Off the top of my head those are my picks, what're yours?"



Ah yes, Guardians was much more up her alley than Dusk had been. Lord of the Rings was alright, but she had never made it through the extended editions, she always fell asleep.


“Guardians had definite space-explosion appeal, I’ll give it that. I like the newer Disney Princess movies, yay black princess!”


She gave a mini fistbump to the air. It had been a sad moment in her childhood when she had gone to a birthday party dressed as Cinderella and been told she was too brown to be her. She was glad that had now been rectified for future generations.


“Ok, last question- why are you here tonight? I’ll go first – my housemates think I’m a sad sap who can’t get a date for herself, and needs to be set up with a total stranger that she met for 2mins.” Wry grin. “You?”


Maya must have been his friend, equally as tricksy as her housemates. She couldn’t see the woman through the dimness, but she believed him. An open mind was a peculiar promise to be making, and the ghost of a memory of the girls sighing about him being gay flickered in her mind. Perhaps he too was trying to figure out his type.


Despite not being a person whose bones she immediately wanted to jump he seemed interesting enough to be a friend candidate, she jotted down her full name. If he added her on BookFace there were a bunch of pictures of her housemates which he could browse if he found no one that suited him tonight. She felt no qualms about treating her housemates like pieces of meat in this way. They would be thrilled that they even had a glimmer of a chance.


“You should add me, I think we’d be friends.”


That was all that was expected at these things – right? Make some acquaintances, go on a few real dates to figure out if you really liked them. Surely nobody was expecting to go home with someone tonight…


"Will do. Nice to meet you Zinnia, catch you round."


“Nice to meet you too.” And she was telling the truth.


The ten second buzzer sounded and she took the opportunity to send the selfie with a bunch of emojiis to really rub it in their faces.

Over the years, a certain Manfish never really had any sort of luck with the ladies. He knew why, but that didn’t make it suck any less, and he just decided that there wasn’t a woman out there who would be able to look past his appearance and love him as he was. Being the scientist that he was, he recently decided to put this to the test, to gather evidence and support his hypothesis. Test one: Speed dating; a lightning round and maybe a good preview of what was to come over the course of this experiment.

So, that explains what a six foot fish-chimera was doing on the speed dating scene, wearing a full black wetsuit with a blue dress-jacket and a black bow-tie. So far…it was a nightmare, though it went exactly as he’d sort of expected it would. The thing was, he was only being himself; after all, he wasn’t about to taint the data of the experiment; that was a cardinal sin in his book.

No, for the most part, he didn’t even have to say or do much. He was always, without provocation, met with rejection in the form of looks: amusement, disbelief, and disgust. And then...there were the ones that actually spoke.

“Hi, my name is Kat. I’m a sushi-chef.”
“Have you ever like…considered shaving that beard?”
“Something smells like fish. Oh, right.”
“Wouldn’t you have better luck in an aquarium?”

Before he’d set out on this journey, he thought the buzzer would be the bane of his existence, something that would haunt him for weeks to come. But…no. In reality, the Bzt! was a welcome paradise. An oasis in a desert of dry jokes. He had heard some sort of commotion, but…he didn’t pay much attention to it because he was caught up in his own thoughts at the moment. His left hand reached back, adjusting his goggle-glasses. They didn’t need it, it was just something that…well, he didn’t do it that often, but he wasn’t always this nervous/frustrated. He’d been prepared for letdowns, but this was just ridiculous.

Bzzt!

“Hi. I’m Maya…”

At first he was shocked, but it didn’t take his fish-senses long to detect the scent of booze on her. Great, the one woman that shows a remote interest in me is drunk…Ah well, take what you can get, I suppose. If nothing else, he guessed he could at least humor the both of them. After all, he desperately needed a confidence booster right about now, and from the smell of her, her evening didn’t seem to be going so great either. And…she wasn’t bad looking, by any means.

….Crap! He hadn’t thought of an introduction! Manfish wasn’t exactly appropriate for this sort of function. And he felt so weird dropping something like his name…then again, ‘Fishman’ is what birthed the name ‘Manfish’ in the first place.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said calmly in his surprisingly deep, thick, maybe even charming voice, if one could get past the look of the one saying it. “I’m Caleb. Or Cale, whichever you prefer.”

"N-nice to meet you as well. Did you...? Cale? You said that.” Heh…he had to admit, she was quite amusing. Not that he was picking on her. This was honestly the best part of his night so far; and it probably would remain so.

"I-Forgive me if this is forward, but... do you have a tail?"

…Well, that one was new. So new, in fact, that it actually made him grin a little. Drunk woman gets points for originality, to say the least. And then, the poor girl started stammering. It was almost as if she actually cared about his feelings. This...was actually going...not disastrous. Not on his part, anyway.

"No offense taken, don't worry about it. That's nothing compared to the lame attempt at jokes I've already heard, anyway. No, I don't have a tail. But I do have two sets of fins, plus a dorsal fin, if that's any consolation?" He gave a slight shrug with his--he thought--lame excuse at a joke.

"I— My last— I mean to say that tails aren't the end of the world, you know. I have a son. He's part dog."


"Part dog, hm? I actually fancy myself a spokesperson for visible mutants. So if all goes to plan, before he hits high school, people won't see mutants like us as monsters or giant fish-men, but functioning members of society. With feelings, dreams, PhD's..." Yeah, totally just dropped the not-so-subtle hint there. But hey, Manfish didn't have gorgeous looks to fall back on, only his brain. And that, he planned to use.

"You should come speak at the school where I work. Xavier's Sister School? We would love to have you. There are anxious ears that would love to hear what you just said to me."

"Small world," he replied, flashing another smile. "If all goes according to plan, I'll be teaching there soon." His black eyes softened behind his goggle-glasses; though he could tell this had much more of a professional vibe than a romantic one. Though something in the air told him that the only chance this had of being romantic was if it became one of those weird phone-relationship things. Ah well, it was still refreshing, especially compared to the women he'd met before her.

"Do you sing? You have a remarkable voice."


Bzzt!

"That, my dear..." he said as charmingly as he could, "is a mystery to be solved another day." He chuckled one last time. This time, the buzzer had been more of the nuisance he’d expected it to be all along. He almost hated to see her go.

"Be-uhm-be sure to stop by the library some time to say hello." That he would. Even if nothing romantic became of this date, at least one had promise to be a friend. Too bad friends weren’t the subject of this experiment. Maybe another time, another place, another mutation, they could have been something. But dreams weren’t Caleb Fishman’s cup of tea. After all, there was no science to support dreams or fanciful what ifs.

So for now, another table, another date, but hopefully not another string of giggles, “Oh my God’s” or worse yet, bad fish-jokes…