Happy Birthday to Meeerrrrrreeeeeeeeee [Open Mingle]

[abrightboy]

Who: The residents of ADI Apt B1 and YOU.
When: January 18th, from early evening onward.
Where: Apartment B1 at the ADI complex.
Summary: Tim Drake discovered Meredith Idlewild's birthday is today (by snooping in her stuff) and her boys decided to throw her a little surprise celebration since she, you know, looks after them and shit. Ofc neither of them knows how to do that, really, so Malcolm has recruited Neal Caffrey as Party Planner.
Warnings: To be added as necessary but none to start.


Thanks to Neal's intervention, the party Malcolm and Tim are throwing for Meredith is very nice, with tasteful decorations and good wine, alongside fancy finger foods and even fancier cocktails. Neal mans the 'bar' personally, mixing drinks for anyone who'd like to try one.

Malcolm and Tim will try to be social. It's for Meredith.

They did use Tim's connections, too. He recruited Jeff to slip invites onto people's desks if they work at ADI and take some over to Bonnie's. Meredith deserves maximum appreciation. The invites instructed everyone not to say anything to Meredith. When she comes home, it's meant to surprise her.

Early evening: SURPRISE!
When Meredith gets home, get ready to shout!

Mid-evening
Mix, mingle, eat and drink.

Late-evening
Your hosts will arrange a cab if you can't make it home; they already have a police lieutenant sleeping on their couch and tonight has been a lot of peopling for them. If they need to carry you down there... they're more capable of it than their slight frames would suggest.

Comments

[henchgal]

"Table that part of the discussion for later, it's not the point right now. I told Tim I'd be careful, though, so I'm also telling you I was careful. Anyway..."

She pauses, looking Malcolm in the eyes.

"I've told you about my world being one where superheroes and supervillains are a thing. Right?"

[abrightboy]

"Yeah. You... mentioned that." He chews his lip a moment. "Has something happened?"

[henchgal]

She shakes her head slightly.

"No. Nothing here. It's just...I think you ought to know. My boss, Michael Belcora? He was a supervillain, in addition to being a tech CEO. I knew that for most of the time I was working for him, though we didn't talk about it until I was...'detained' by an anti-hero who wanted to do a big reveal, and Belcora rescued me. In costume, as the Dastard."

[abrightboy]

“Oh. That would be… a weird day at work. Um. What sort of villainous things did he get up to?” Malcolm asks delicately.

[henchgal]

"Mostly, he believed that unregulated vigilantes were a menace on society, so he'd try to draw the Global Guardians out to fight them in a powered suit of high-tech armor. Sometimes he'd do that by threatening people or places...um. You know, 'show up here and fight me or I'll destroy the dam' sort of things. I would hold down the fort at Belcora Innovations and cover for him while he was out doing those things."

She shrugs. "I wasn't exactly in a position to just quit, especially once he knew I knew."

[abrightboy]

“So he didn’t… he didn’t kill people,” Malcolm guesses hopefully.

[henchgal]

She is silent for long enough that it’s an answer in itself. And then she elaborates. “Killing civilians was never a primary motivation for him.”

She knows Malcolm will see how vast a gap that is.

[abrightboy]

He considers her for a long moment.

“But you didn’t kill people.”

There’s more conviction in that one. She’s not a killer.

[henchgal]

"Right, I never killed anyone. I was never directly involved in his supervillain shit. Just Belcora Innovations, as his personal assistant. I sent flowers to his mom for her birthday when he forgot because he was trying to make a heat ray, you know?"

But she's braced for Malcolm to judge her, or for him to ask the questions she has unsatisfactory answers for.

[abrightboy]

"I don't. But. I guess it's kind of like my father's receptionist. She kept everything organized for him so he could do bad things, but... she didn't do them. She even covered for him with my mom sometimes, because she thought the same thing my mom did: that he was having an affair," Malcolm acknowledges.

[henchgal]

Meredith takes a deep breath. It's an apt comparison. Fitting, really.

"So now you know my deep dark secret. That's...the biggest thing I've been hiding from you. Anything else you want to know about me, I'm an open book."

[abrightboy]

"You're a good person," Malcolm tells her. "You haven't had anything nefarious to gain by looking after us."

[henchgal]

"Not nefarious, but it is at least a little bit self-serving. Or it was, in the beginning, before I started liking you two for yourselves, as people."

But they grew on her quicker than she ever expected. Perhaps it was after the selkie problem, when she couldn't sleep and realized they weren't sleeping either. Perhaps it was when they were watching the video after the circus, when she realized what these two men would put themselves through for their sense of duty. Whatever the cause, she hadn't been able to keep them out at arm's length.

[abrightboy]

“I’m not I’d call basic survival ‘self-serving’; we’re fundamentally designed to prioritize it,” Malcolm points out.

[henchgal]

"Yeah, I know Maslow's hierarchy, but...mh. Doesn't mean I don't sometimes feel guilty about how I approach it sometimes."

She pauses. "And maybe this place is changing me a little. How I view people."

[abrightboy]

"For the better?" Malcolm ventures.

[henchgal]

She pauses for a moment, as if trying to do calculus about it.

"I'm not sure what objective-better is, in these circumstances."

[abrightboy]

"Do you miss trying to take over the world?" Malcolm asks cheekily.

[henchgal]

"What makes you think I'm not still trying?" She smirks at him, gaining some of her swagger back.

[abrightboy]

"One file at a time? Knowledge is power, so you could," he concedes.