Juniper frowned at her friend. "Dude, you've been frowning through the last two songs. You never frown like that unless somethings wrong. I told them I have a stomach ache so I could leave."

She was phased to the point that people around her couldn't bump into her, but they kept jostling her jo'.

"I'm not just gonna stay up there while your upset at something. Where's your girlfriend?" She resumed tugging slightly to try and get him to leave again. She'd get seriously yelled at if Xander caught her lingering in the audience when she was supposed to be suffering in a bathroom.

"They are gonna flay me alive and turn my hide into a guitar strap if I'm caught though, so..."

Xavier was still flabbergasted as she explained why she'd left the stage. "Juniper, you're in a band, you can't just... leave the stage!" He whispered urgently, looking about and sighing. "Fine, okay, let's get out of here..."

He turned to walked out of the exit she'd pointed out, walking a safe distance before turning and staring at her. "You have a female bandmate. What are you going to do when she goes to check on you?" The tall blonde looked about nervously, and sighed again.

"Elke thinks you have a crush on me... I guess she... got upset and wanted to leave. But I didn't want to leave your show... She got mad and left."

Finally! Once he agreed to leave she scrambled out of the bar as fast as possible. She was equally as flabbergasted by him bringing up the drummer. "Leena?" She blinked, glanced around, and then blinked again and finally shrugged. "Are girls supposed to check on each other like that? I just figured they would have figured that I had gone home or something." It was true, too. Juniper was unaware of a lot of social norms for people her age because she never really hung out with people her own age, or at least not any that would care enough to check on her. Heck, she didn't even know if any of her bandmates were that type.

"Xander usually just bounces after shows are over anyway to go party with fans, so it's not like I'm gonna miss anything fun."

He explained further and a weird mix of panic and guilt welled up within her. So... Elke had let, and she had gotten mad at X, and to her absolute horror, it was apparently because the scary woman had seen right through her and her weird feelings for her best friend.

....@#$%.

Her expression went carefully flat as she battled back the feelings and settled on just... not addressing that particular problem right now. "You didn't have to do that..." She looked around awkwardly and scuffed the toe of her sneaker on the cement. "Shit, i'm sorry.... I was worried about this. I knew something like this was gonna happen because it always happens." She paused, hands stuffed in the pocket of the stolen hoodie.

"Do you know where she went? You should go find her again. You know, make amends and all that jazz. I'll apologize to her later or something since I messed it all up for you."

Xavier raised an eyebrow as she asked if girls looked out for each other. "Uhm... Yeah, Juni, people tend to look out for each other." It was odd. Sometimes Juniper seemed like... an alien, trying to learn human culture. Still, it was admirable. He vowed to help in her quest to find out more about the humans to take to her alien overlords.

"Huh. Yeah, He does sort of seem like the life of the party, doesn't he?" He looked down as Juniper had her freak out, looked up just in time to see her expression flatted. He raised an eyebrow as she stated that this always happened. "Huh?"

She asked if he knew where Elke was, and he shrugged. "I-" His phone chimed "Oh... she's at the appartment? I... Don't remember giving her a key..." He paused for a second before realizing that she... likely knew how to pick locks, or jimmy a window.

"Are... You sure about this? I feel bad leaving you.."

"You and I have met two entirely different groups of people, then." Seriously, she'd been left face-first on a bathroom floor before by people she was supposed to be at a party with and someone stole her shoes.

...Why had that become like, a lifelong trend for her?

"He is. He can have it though." That wasn't weird, was it? That she didn't care if her boyfriend was off doing who knew what by himself? She... wasn't great at this whole relationship thing yet.

"Nothing." She ran a hand through her hair and huffed, "Listen, we're friends, right? I'll always understand if you need to bounce for whatever reason. Even if..." The words got caught in her throat for a moment and she had to clear it, "...not many people have ever said that to me. Like, that they were... there. For me."

Her whole face went red and she waved her hands at him animatedly. "Just go, will you?! Go on! Git! I'm just gonna head home after this anyway, so it's not like there's anything left for you to stick around for."

Xavier chuckled. "I guess so... I always encouraged everyone around me to be better than that, though, I guess... People tend not to want to let me down." He shrugged, and listened as she gave her boyfriend permission to do what ever.

"You never mentioned you had a boyfriend!" He spoke, suddenly remembering the point of contention.

He paused, however, when she mentioned that no one had told her they were there for her. "Well, I am, aren't I? That's what friends are for!" He paused as she bid him go, and his face lit up a bit.

"Really? Thanks Juni! I owe you one!" With little else said, he turned and bolted toward the apartment complex, running over what he would say to Elke in his head countless times as he went.

People had a hard time letting him down. Nooo waaaaay. It wasn't like he was the perfect mix of kicked puppy and disappointed auntie if you did let him down or anything. Nope.

She just shrugged lamely at him for not having mentioned who she was dating. It was new and she still wasn't all the hyped about it, really. It also just wasn't something she felt the need to bring up in normal conversation.

Her expression didn't shift much as his lit up until she forced a big ole grin on for him. Was it? Was that really what friends were for? Until she had come to the city she hadn't really had friends like that. Even as kids they all just used each other to get through whatever crappy thing they were currently going through... Herself included.

She watched him turn and hurry off, literally sprinting to go be somewhere else with her, and didn't bother fighting back the frown that settled on her lips. It didn't matter that she had just told him to leave; it still hurt. She didn't know why.

So... what better way to get rid of unwanted pain?

~~~

She didn't get home right away like she had mentioned and she was half tempted to lay down right outside of her own door and go to sleep on her welcome mat when she did get there. Did she even have a welcome mat? Yes she did! She'd totally stolen it from three floors below on her way up! It said WELCOME in big letters, and at some point, she was gonna scribble on a nice big UN at the front so that people could know to piss right off.

She was a little drunk, admittedly, and going by the very nearly empty bottle of vodka in one hand she was determined to get 100% drunk before the night was over. It had been a long day. Between the stress of getting ready for the show, dealing with Xander being a control freak over just about every detail of said show, and then having to deal with Xavier and his drama, and the feelings, and then the drama that had popped up all over again after she'd gone back inside the venue...

She was ready to have a long-awaited reintroduction to Mr. Vodka and all of the poor life choices that came with him.

Stumbling into her own apartment loudly she was greeted with silence. No cats. No Blue. Just darkness and muffled sounds from other residents and the city outside.

She dropped her Banjo on the floor carelessly, slammed her front door shut and fiddled with all of the locks for a moment before giving up, and headed into her living room to flop face-first on her sofa. Xander and her had gotten into a pretty heated argument over stuff she couldn't really remember. Something about him making out with some other chick, and then yelling, and then she'd somehow ended up making out with him in a far corner of the bar and now she had massive aching hickeys on both sides of her neck.

She hated hickeys. They looked too much like bruises.

"What a @##$%ING ASSHOLE. UUGH." Why was she still dealing with that sh*t head?

Elke was still up and waiting by the time Xavier hauled his ketchup scented butt back home. She was flipping through one of his comics, completely bored out of her mind, with an orange ball of fluff curled up between her neck and shoulder on one side.

"Freakin' finally." She didn't wait and give him a chance to fumble out any lame-ass excuses either. She stood, set the comic and cat aside, and marched into his bathroom. The door shut with a snap behind her.

Ten minutes later the door swung open again and there she was, one hand on her hip, one hidden behind her back, and in the full Amazing Amazon costume once more. "I got so bored I almost fell asleep."

In fact, she had gotten so bored that she had snuck on over to investigate his neighbor's apartment while she was away, and hooooboy. The things she saw in there. Pretty much all of them worked to reaffirm the beliefs Elke had already had about the girl and added a few more onto the pile. Who had a full-on stripper pole in their bedroom? Who put Valentine's day cards on their wall like some kind of creepy shrine? 

With a confident smirk on her lips, the Native crossed the room to her ketchup suited boyfriend and made extra sure he could get a gander at just how well her costume fit her well-toned body.

"I need to apologize." She locked eyes and stared with her dark, arched brows pulled together seriously. "You were right. I wasn't acting like myself back there at the show."

Wanna know what else she had found over there at his ratty little neighbor's house? In her bedroom at the base of her bed and folded up neatly on top of an old battered trunk.... was a pair of superhero-themed PJ bottoms. Size XL.

Elke brought the pair of pants that she had clenched in the fist behind her back into view, and grinned at him.

"Because if I had been acting like myself I would have strangled you to death. ... You get one chance to explain. Why were these in that little @#$%'s bedroom?"

There was a great measure of trepidation the tall blonde felt as he placed his hand on his door knob. Never the type to shy away from the inevitable, the young man took a deep breath, and opened the door, stepping through, mouth already open to explain himself to his girlfriend.

She beat him to the chase, and marched into the bathroom. He stood there, staring at the bathroom door for a moment before shifting uncomfortably, and walking into the kitchen to lean against the counter, the open floorplan not obstructing his view of the bathroom door.

Ten minutes was a long time when you were nervous.It was funny how such a stretch of time could fly by in a blink if it was a break, but take forever when it was torture.

Maybe that was a bit of an exageration. He stood up tall again when she walked out, and his eyes widened. Oh... Oh, that was what was going on? Was... Was he not in trouble still? What? The corners of his mouth perked up a bit as he tried to find words. He was cut off, however, by her sudden apology. "Oh, uh, well, that's oka-" She produced a pair of his PJ bottoms, and a look of confusion popped onto his face.

She told him to explain, an he furrowed a brow for a moment, before realization crossed his features. "Oh!" His finger lifted up as he smiled widely. "Yeah! Those are my limited edition Next Gen Heroes PJs! Juniper randomly stole them from me one night. Woke me up and said she really needed them. I was bummed because she never gave them back. Wait, why were you in her bedroom?" Now, Xavier didn't have any knowledge of this, but a certain, shorter and much grumpier, person in Elke life had taught her how to look for signs of lies in speech and facial features.

If Xavier wasn't being honest, he was being very good at covering it up.

A shorter, grumpier person had also tried and failed at teaching her how to curb her temper. It didn't matter if he was telling the truth or not because a few things stood out above the rest of the details. Juniper has stolen them from him in the night and had woken him up to do so. Elke ignored the question about her being in the girl's room for the moment.

"So let me get this straight. Your friend popped on in like she always does, walked into your bedroom while you were asleep, woke you up, and asked you for this specific pair of pants because she needed them? And that didn't strike you as being weird? Especially after she didn't return them?"

He was just SO thick-headed sometimes. "You do realize that in cases of stalking the stalker often steals items from the victim, right? Do you know exactly long she was in your bedroom before she woke you up? Did she never explain what she needed them for to you?"

It was maddening. If it were her with some friend who was pulling all of these tricks, she would have cut that relationship off without batting an eye. Xavier was apparently just too @#$%ing nice to see past the lies and into the gross truth beneath.

"I got bored and your friend doesn't keep her window locked. Bad habit, that." The Native tossed his own pants at him and crossed her arms.

"Lets roleplay for a minute here. I'm in your situation. A male friend of mine makes a routine habit of letting himself into my apartment whenever he feels like it, feels entitled to enter my bedroom when he feels like it, and feels entitled to my personal possessions. He hangs around me constantly, worships a card I made him, stares at me all the time when he thinks no one is looking, and one day he asks me for a pair of my underwear. I let him borrow a pair," One of her eyes twitched in anger, "...and he runs off with them. I never see them again and he never explains what he needed them for."

She made sure to lock eyes with him, "What would your opinion be then, as my boyfriend, if our roles were reversed."

The young man stared at his girlfriend for a long moment, listening as she framed up the situation, before stating plainly. "No. The pants were on me. She grabbed them with her powers from through the sheets. I talked with her about boundaries after that." He kept the same look on his face. "No. I assumed she really needed them. Juniper isn't stalking me. I'm her first friend in a long time. She's awkward when it comes to how to be a friend, but she's a good person. I have seen her charge into danger to save innocent lives, and put herself in danger in the process."

He caught the pants, and eyed them curiously as he noticed a burn in the left cheek of them. Quietly fretting, he walked over and set them down on his bed... THEY WERE LIMITED EDITION! JUNIPERRRRRR!

"That's an invasion of her privacy." He frowned still, taking a seat on his bed next the ruined pants. "Elke. I am here because Juniper noticed you had left, and left her show to tell me to go after you."

He didn't say anything else. He didn't speak to her roleplay session. He just looked her in eyes, and stated that plainly.

"You don't have all of the information. I... I am happy that you care enough to be angry. I am. I like you, and I can see how you would be angry with the information you have. Juniper is my friend. Nothing more. Does she like me? I don't know. It doesn't matter. I chose you."

She stood with her arms crossed,frowning, listening to him reply. It didn't matter to her if he didn't care. She did. Once she chose to include someone in her life she didn't take kindly to people seemingly taking advantage of them.

"The discussion about boundaries didn't seem to stick then, seeing as she still pops over unannounced whenever she feels like in. I would have broken her legs if she had barged in while I was still naked the first time we here here."

Still, she softened up a little with how he had explained it. Only a little though, since he had also explained that she had literally ripped the pants off of his body while he slept. ... It just kept getting better.
"I know you feel about her, and I have nothing to currently disprove it so I won't try, But you are entirely too soft on her for only being friends. Who cares if she's not great at it? She'll learn or she'll go back to not having any. I think you coddle her, just like you try to coddle everyone else. I think she uses it against you to get away with what she wants. I didn't hear a single comment from you about her being drunk before the show."

Well, maybe drunk wasn't entirely correct. She'd need drinking for sure, as had her band mates. The empty bottles and cans littered around the edges of the room were proof enough of that.

"I don't mind her popping over. She's my friend. Though... she hadn't been coming over a much lately... Said she doesn't want to get in the way of our time..." Juniper was trying, and it felt upsetting that she was getting attacked in such a way.

He stared at the wall as she spoke at him about him coddling her. Was she wrong? Maybe, maybe not. He did look up at her as she mentioned Juniper being drunk. "Huh? I... Didn't notice anything." He wasn't good at noticing those sort of things. Was she drunk? He'd seen her very inebriated before, and he didn't think she'd been acting the same at all.

"Elke, I'm not her dad... If anything... She's like my dad. Something's hurting inside them, and they just need a little help, is all. What kind of person would I be if I didn't help my friend when she needed it?"

"Uh-huh. Lemme guess, you probably said something along the lines of 'What? Nonsense. You don't get in the way of our time at all. You're my friend!" Her impression of him wasn't meant to be accurate and might have come across as slightly mean. Or funny, maybe, depending on how he took it.

"I'll bet she likes to mention how depressed she is a lot, too."

The Native huffed loudly, breathing through her nose. It didn't feel like she was getting anywhere with her point. They were just running in circles in her opinion. "Sometimes helping people means cutting them off, too. My mom would have remained addicted to pain pills if I hadn't had actively destroyed all of her methods of getting them. Everyone else in the family just hemmed and hawed at me about how it was her choice and I just needed to understand. I chose not to and she's still alive and kicking today instead of buried six feet down."

Elke was aware that she had various ingrown biases that might not be considered fair in most cases. She didn't care though. "Your friend is twitchy like an ex-addict. Jumpy like she's constantly doing something wrong. She-"

Enough time had passed by then that the sound of Juniper's door swinging shut with a bang, and then eventually her loudly bemoaning about Xander, was heard through the thing wall.

Elke crossed her arms again, which had fallen back to her hips during the argument. "... A grade A, attention-seeking drama magnet. Who, should I add, gave my dad some serious things to think about when she tried to track ten-year-old me down to think about. He apparently had to threaten her at one point because 'She didn't know what she was gonna do when she found me.'"

Xavier kept calm. He always kept calm when his parents were yelling at each other. He kept calm now. The quiet voice of his father speaking in a quiet mumble in response to his mother screaming rang through him as he calmly stated. "What time? I spent a whole month waiting to hear from you, Elke. My friend was avoiding me, and I didn't hear from you at all."

He leaned forward to place his elbows on his knees as she went on. "No, she doesnt."

His expression softened a bit as she mentioned her mother. "I'm sorry about that...I don't know that I could do that. I work differently. I try to help people up, and let them learn to walk beside me." He frowned deeply when she compared Juniper to an addict.

The telltale sounds of Juniper arriving home... loudly were heard. It sounded like that time she was really drunk. Amazing timing.

He listened to Elke as she went on, looking at her with a facial expression that was starting to border on concern. "Elke... She was upset because you stabbed me... If your dad actually thought she was gonig to hurt you, She'd be in the hospital right now." He obviously had some of his own opinions. "I don't understand why you hate her so much... I don't get it. I don't get you. Do you even like me, or are you doing this to make your dad mad? Why hate her so much if you are so indifferent about me?"