Bailey's lip had been ready to wibble their way off of his face when the man came to confront them. He wasn't a fighter! He was a talker! Unfortunately, the man didn't exactly look ready to talk. He looked ready to put some dents into the teens.

Before Bailey could do or say anything, though, Emily stood up. She began to spout off things about how the man was embarrassing his boyfriend, and yada yada. Honestly, most of it just sort of washed over Bailey. Perhaps it was a mix of being scared and relieved at the same time, or the fact that Emily just looked so darn cool when she did that, but either way, he didn't actually hear most of the words that came out of her mouth.

The teen's mouth was wide open as the man left them alone. How she had just done that, he would probably never know, but he was thankful nonetheless. He watched her sit down silently, probably the only time all day that he would be without words.

And it seemed he would be without words for a while. Emily leaned over and kissed him, and he had absolutely no idea what to do. His mouth remained open, and he stayed completely still. He didn't have much experience with girls kissing him. Was he supposed to do something? He didn't know. "Th... thanks?" He said after a second.

Luckily for Bailey, the commercials came up on the screen a second later. The noise covered his awkwardness, and he had something to focus on.

Emily grinned as his stunned reaction. Damn, she was good. The cinema quickly and quietly turned back into a normal level of activity and attention. A few people occasionally glanced up at the two of them, Emily noted. She wondered why they were still glancing at her and Bailey.

She chuckled at Bailey's awkward stammered reaction, he really was bad with physical contact. She smiled at the thought of their first meeting and how hard she threw him off of his balance, metaphorically and literally once she found out what he'd thought and worked out the situation. He was pretty unique as far as people went, and she didn't mean that in the way that he had an adaptation, he was cool as a person. If oblivious as a freaking plank.

It took a few moments for the reasons for the staring to dawn on her, once she picked up on the emotions that often went with the glances it made her feel uncomfortable. It was almost all guys, and maybe a girl or two. But they were all teenagers, probably around her age group. And they were feeling some kind of attraction that made her entirely uncomfortable. She settled further back against her seat, drawing herself in.

Scanning the rest of the room there was a very uncomfortable tension between the two men who they'd harassed. Emily let out a little sigh as the commercials started and people started to get distracted and quietly converse, she leaned closer to Bailey, gently pressing her shoulder to his and taking solace in his bubble of no emotions. She shut her eyes for a few moments.

The screen displayed a guy talking about technology changes, then a car commercial, and finally a pre-show quiz. They were all pretty lame, but Bailey didn't mind. He actually liked lame things. Perhaps that said something about him as a person.

He dipped his hand into the bag of popcorn and pulled out a handful. He shoved it into his mouth with one hand, dropping kernels all over his lap. With the other hand, he offered the bag to Emily, his eyes fixed on the screen in front of him. It hadn't dawned on him that she had a bag of her own.

After a second, he began to dig around in the sack of sweet things and pulled out some Starbursts. For a few minutes, he switched between those and popcorn at a nearly inhuman rate.

Finally, he looked at Emily as she put her head on his shoulder. She looked a little funny, he realized. "You alright?" He asked her curiously. His voice was a little bit louder than usual in order for him to be heard over the loud bass coming from the trailers.

It took her a couple of minutes to calm everything down and relax again, she smiled at Bailey when he offered her popcorn, she still had her eyes closed but the familiar rustle of the popcorn along with the movement of his arm was more than enough for her to put two and two together. She listened to the silly commercials that went on and on before the trailers for other films would start.

Her smile deepened a little at his concern. "Mhmm. I will be in a sec." She stayed like that for a bit, and tun sat up a little, her head still gently resting on his shoulder. "Still not used to my power turning on and off depending on how close I am to you, being in a room full of people and having it turn on and off is a little stressful sometimes." she responded, wanting to give him a clear understanding.

She perked up a little bit when the commercials ended, taking nibbles of her popcorn. Emily was fairly skinny. She wasn't unhealthily so, but just tittering on that edge. It wasn't because of image or anything, she didn't give a flying crap about most of that. She just didn't generally have a big appetite. In most normal situations anyway.

If she'd been drinking for example, she could eat more than her share of fast food in the blink of an eye. She smiled as the trailers began, still leaning her shoulder gently on Bailey, not minding the contact much.

"Oh, okay," Bailey nodded, taking her answer at face value. He wasn't about to pry any more than that while there were other things going on in front of his face.

The trailers drew to an end, and the pre-movie credits began to appear on the screen. Bailey settled into the back of the cushy seat, knowing that the movie would be starting soon. It was a good thing that the seats were so comfortable.

The movie started, opening with creepy music and an eerie shot of a man standing alone in the field. Bailey grinned at the scene. He wasn't scared in the slightest. If anything scared him, it would be the fact that he could still feel the eyes of the angry bald man on him. 

The movie's trailers took a little time to get through as usual, there were mostly thrillers and cheap horror movies on display, she found herself snorting and chuckling at a few of them. Muttering at one point. "I don't know why people still try horror movies with zombies, they're just not scary anymore. Like, I can't look at vampires without expecting them to freaking sparkle now."

Okay, so generic opening. That didn't mean the entire movie was a crapshoot. She smirked at it and turned to see Bailey doing the same, catching his eye for a few moments, sparkling with amusement.

The scene went on for a few moments like that, until it got closer to the man, and revealed that he was tied to a long wooden blank, bleeding all over, and with his mouth mangled by some kind of a blade. Not to get into too many gory details, but it looked more realistic than Emily had expected, she shifted in her seat slightly.

Bailey snorted at the image of sparkling vampires. It was true; Twilight had ruined vampires for most people. They had been so great when they were evil and scared of garlic and just wanted to suck peoples' blood. Darn Twilight. He and his brothers had spent an entire night watching the entire series one time. Most of it had been spent making fun of the acting and dialogue, and then some of it had been spent consoling Bailey's youngest brother. Apparently he had actually enjoyed the movies. 

He pushed aside the thought about how much he missed his youngest brother and tried to focus on the topic at hand. "And werewolves too. Now they're all attractive and stuff. They were supposed to be scary!" Bailey added. 

He forced his eyes to look back at the screen where there was a man covered in blood and other gory effects. He snorted aloud. "That looks so fake," he announced. It didn't really, but he liked to pretend that he could see stuff that other people couldn't. It also made the movie way less scary. 

The teen received a few glares from the people around him, but he ignored them. He wasn't about to let a few other people cramp his style.

The movie moved forward, blissfully unaware of the fact that it wasn't scaring Bailey. The next scene showed an actually rather scary villain approaching the man, primed to finish him off. 

Emily smiled and just glanced over the comment about the werewolves. God, she'd hated those movies when she'd seen them. She remembered her Mum reading them, and her friends forcing her to try it and just being mildly revolted at the writing. They were just... Bad. She couldn't even hold it against the actors in the movie, having read the first couple of books the writing was actually just that bad. 

Emily looked at him and flashed an amused smile. "Really?" She replied in a very low tone, no higher than most of the people speaking in the cinema. Emily braced herself and returned to the screen as it progressed. The man was murdered in a brutal and slow way. It was a little disconcerting to Emily, and extremely uncomfortable for the rest of the cinema, this was a little much this early. She saw one or two people get up and leave straight up. 

It faded to black after a snuff film-esk display of gore and then shifted to a scene of what she assumed was the main character and her family. It was a college student being lectured about boys by her father in somewhat typical horror movie writing. 

"Yeah," Bailey nodded, puffing out his chest as he feigned bravery. He definitely hadn't seen that the effects were fake, but he could definitely pretend.

The movie moved along at a usual pace, becoming more and more like a usual cliché horror movie with every scene. Bailey watched it with a yawn, bored with the premise. The reviews had been right; it was a bit of a waste of money.

Somewhere near the end of the movie, he placed his feet up on the seat in front of him. His legs were starting to fall asleep, and it was way more comfortable to sit like that than with them flat on the floor. Unfortunately, he didn't really watch where he was putting his feet, and ended up kicking the woman in front of him in the head.

"That is it!" She shouted and put her popcorn down on the floor in front of her. "I've put up with talking, laughing, snorting, yawning, and throwing snacks, but I will not put up with being kicked in the head. If you two don't leave, I'm going to talk to someone who will make you leave." 

The woman was clearly fuming. She had gotten out of her seat to turn around and face the two teens. The rest of the theatre had turned to look at the scene, finding it far more interesting than the movie.

Bailey shrank in his seat. 

Generally speaking, Emily was pretty good at avoiding toxic social situations or problems. She could feel most problems coming before they actually arrived, and duck her head or swerve around them appropriately. But nestled into Bailey's adapted field her power was obviously off, so she couldn't tell that people near them were getting annoyed as quickly as they were. She wasn't the best in the world with body language either.

Emily winced when the woman stood up and spun around with a furious expression. She hadn't really done anything, it was all Bailey. She'd been pretty focused on the movie. It hadn't really been a big scary film as the posters had suggested. Though normally, Emily would have been a little more wound up than she actually was. It was kind of awesome to get to experience a horror film without getting the backwash of emotions from everyone else in the room.

It now looked like that was at an end, which kind of sucked. But Emily didn't fancy getting kicked out, so they'd walk out under their own power instead and find something else to do. 

She grabbed Bailey's hand and tugged him out of the chair, leading the two of them out of the cinema screen with a "Come on, lets get out of here." And shortly thereafter, they were standing outside in the lobby, Emily's fingers still on Bailey's. 

>>"Come on, lets get out of here."

Bailey nodded and allowed himself to be pulled from his chair. He didn’t want to be chased after by some sort of authority, or worse - arrested! That couldn’t happen, could it? Probably not… he hoped…

With Emily pulling him the whole way, the two teens exited the auditorium, and by extension, the movie. He looked down at the ground carefully as he was forced to take the stairs at an extreme rate, nearly tripping over his own feet at least twice.

Soon enough, they were back in the lobby. Emily’s hand was still in Bailey’s. Was she… holding his hand? Was it on purpose, or had she just neglected to let go? The whole situation was reminiscent of his time with Elke. He could even feel his hands getting sweaty in the same way.

“So what now? Do we just leave? I forgot all my candy in there,” Bailey frowned slightly, rubbing the back of his neck as he thought of all that wasted sugar. At least he hadn’t been enjoying the movie.

Emily had kind of been enjoying the movie. Okay so it wasn't a great horror movie, but at the same time she was more than a little irked that they'd been thrown out. She wished that Bailey could reign it in a little bit. Still, the way that the woman in front of them had reacted was just annoying, she had some serious nerve. But Emily didn't actually fancy dealing with the staff being aggro with them.

Once they'd led out, she noticed she was still holding Bailey's hand and let go. Shrugging. She supplied. "You still have the ticket, you could run back in and grab it. If it's that important to you." 

"I might just do that," Bailey decided. He'd spent money on that candy. Lots of money. He wasn't about to just let all of that go to waste! That would just be stupid. No, he was going to get his candy. "Stay here, yeah? Wouldn't want you to get kicked out because a' me or anything."

With that, Bailey raced off in the direction of the auditorium they'd just left. He didn't bother to look behind him to see whether Emily was following him or not. He moved quickly, trying to keep from disturbing people for too long.

The auditorium doors swung open and the teen raced inside, doing his best to minimize the sound of his footsteps on the floor. He moved up the stairs, feeling the heat of people's eyes on him as he disrupted their movie yet again. 

As quickly as he could, he gathered up his snacks and tried to move back out of the auditorium.

"I thought I told you to get out of here?" A shrill voice yelled at him.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm leaving," he mumbled and ran back down the stairs. Within a few minutes, he was back, standing next to Emily and catching his breath. His arms were filled with the candy he'd bought before the movie.

"Want some?" He asked her, leaning down a little bit so she could grab some of the candy in her arms. 

Emily tapped her foot impatiently as Bailey shot off to collect his things, not giving him much of a response. Her implication had been pretty clear, if he valued those sweets more than her, or her mood then she was not going to be terribly pleased with him. Of course, Bailey had shot off to collect his sweets. She supposed he had paid for them, but he'd also gotten the two of them thrown out of an admittedly (bad) movie.



She was quite interested in how he managed to get back in and out without too much trouble, and he seemed to be a little out of breath, so probably he just got his things and came back out fast enough that nobody actually kicked up much of a fuss.



She sighed and accepted his offer of a little candy. "Sure." She grabbed some gummy sweets and chewed on them a little, not giving off a terribly impressed body language.

Bailey's face fell a little as he watched Emily take some gummies from his supplies with a grumpy expression. He knew that he'd been a bit of a jerk, but he hadn't realized that he'd made her so angry. That really hadn't been his intention.

"Sorry about, uh, everything, I guess," he mumbled as he pushed the doors to the movie theatre open and held them open for her. "Especially the movie. I'll have to work on my... sitting quietly abilities..."

He glanced at his feet awkwardly, leaning against the door so that he could use both of his hands to carry the candy again. Their movie experience really hadn't gone as planned.

[End]