magician's apprentice | we've come a long way from where we began (rp for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_death_card)
The place Miranda picks for their lunch date is meant to be neutral ground, Dylan is sure. She has them come out to Chicago, and while she is doing a show here, sometime this weekend, if her website is to be believed, it's still not home, not for either of them. It's also not one of the dozen places around town that might have required a reservation and no escape, if either of them thinks this is going south. No, it's just a diner, a literal hole in the wall, in a strip mall between a chiropractor and -- something else, Dylan's not sure, as he misses the sign, etched into the wall as they head in, but either way, the effort all adds up to a massive relief. He's not sure this will go badly, that he needs to think in terms of advantages and disadvantages as if he was playing chess, considering he's changed in the last twenty years, twenty months, twenty weeks, but still. He lets out a breath of relief, as they step into the building and he takes a look around.
It's a little less reminiscent of a dive bar, inside, even if the floors are bare, the ceiling open, and Dylan takes a certain amount of comfort in that, too. He glances to Jack briefly, to gauge his impression of all of this, and then steps up to the hostess's station as he looks out over the tables, trying to spot Miranda in the dwindling late-lunch crowd. When he doesn't see her, he's not surprised (she never could be on time for anything), and so he gets them a table for three, by the window, and settles into a chair. He expects Jack will take up his side of the table, too, and that's fine with him.
Once he's settled, Dylan pauses a beat, before, "Have I mentioned the part where she'd be late for her own funeral?"
It's a little less reminiscent of a dive bar, inside, even if the floors are bare, the ceiling open, and Dylan takes a certain amount of comfort in that, too. He glances to Jack briefly, to gauge his impression of all of this, and then steps up to the hostess's station as he looks out over the tables, trying to spot Miranda in the dwindling late-lunch crowd. When he doesn't see her, he's not surprised (she never could be on time for anything), and so he gets them a table for three, by the window, and settles into a chair. He expects Jack will take up his side of the table, too, and that's fine with him.
Once he's settled, Dylan pauses a beat, before, "Have I mentioned the part where she'd be late for her own funeral?"
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And now it's Dylan's turn to look between the two of them. Rather than hold his silence, however, with a shake of his head, he mutters, "The two of you are never allowed to be in the same fucking zip code ever again." You're really not helping, Miranda, Jesus.
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This is all your own fault, Dylan.
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"Good luck, honey," Miranda tells him, nixing that idea. A pause follows, and then she tells Jack, "You know, he stole my last name." Or, well, her birth last name. She's been Vale for years, now, legally.
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"I don't know where he got 'Dylan' from," she continues after a beat, wrinkling her nose, as she's clearly not a fan of the first name he picked for himself, "but 'Rhodes' was my legal name, when I was born." Her mother, also legally a Vale at the time, hadn't wanted to inflict her stage surname on her daughter, so she'd gone with her maiden name. Miranda had taken her mother's stage surname as her own, later, all on her own, despite that.
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He's not going by the name he was born with either, after all.
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And, after a minute, he's still kind of at a loss for what to say next.
/fade
And so the bullshitting continues throughout lunch.