bakerstreet | THE KISSING BOOTH MEME

She sits at her kissing booth, wearing a yellow sundress. She sees that the Tamaranean is next in line. "Oh, hello! You have such nice eyes! Have you come for one of our Special Offers?" There isn't a Special Offer, but Clarice is prepared to improvise.

Kori looked down at the pretty girl behind the booth, raising her eyebrows in surprise. She hadn't heard anything about special offers! What luck!

She had already been in the process of opening her clutch to pay the fee, but she paused.

"Thank you, you have nice eyes as well. What is this about 'Special Offers'...?"

Kissing for a cause was already fun--kissing for a cause with a Special Offer involved sounded even more fun!

"Well, let me consult my list," Clarice answered smoothly as she picked out a piece of paper that had something else written on it. "For an extra ten dollars, you'd be able to kiss one additional body part of your choice. For twenty, you can kiss two of my body parts. Three for thirty, and so on."

She paused for effect. "And I have to admit I made all that up, so anything extra would actually be entirely optional, and only because you would want to." She couldn't bring herself to continue conning the alien woman. She'd probably have been tossed out of the booth if she'd kept up the pretense.

Kori narrowed her eyes a little. Kissing sounded fantastic, but dishonesty was decidedly less so. She crossed her arms and scrunched her nose distastefully.

"I don't know if I would like to kiss someone who tried to trick me in the first place..."

And now Clarice felt like a complete jerk, and deservedly so. She had to remind herself that her brand of humor wasn't always understood or appreciated by other people. The orange woman seemed to carry an open honesty that would cause her to dislike being deceived, even lightly.

"I'm sorry, truly. I was completely out of line with that, and I hope it doesn't ruin your experiences at this event. I thought I was being funny, but it didn't work, and I don't want to be hurtful." She held out a hand for the woman to shake -- or not -- if she chose. "No hard feelings?"

Kori eyed the other woman for a moment, but she was never one to pass up an apology when the slight was minor. Besides, she did seem actually sorry, which was hard to refuse.

And, honestly, Kori knew she had a tendency to miss jokes.

She took her hand and shook it firmly, grinning.

"No hard feelings!" She pulled out her clutch again and put down her money. "Now, I would like to make my purchase."

Whew. Clarice was genuinely relieved that there were no hard feelings. "Okay, in that case, a purchase of any dollar amount goes to support Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in North Salem, New York. This charity goes toward scholarships and genetic research for mutant children who would like to make the most of their education, and who experience unfortunate setbacks due to their mutations." Clarice was one of the lucky mutants; some people she knew were handicapped by their own gifts.

"So yeah, that's what you'll be buying with your money. And you're about to get your money's worth." After depositing the money, she stood and leaned toward Kori for a kiss befitting the amount that Kori had paid.

"That is a wonderful cause, and I am happy to support it!" Where would Kori have been, after all, if she had not been met with the support of the Titans when she had first come to Earth?

She leaned down, gathered the woman's face in her hands, and kissed her full on the mouth.

"Glad to hear it!" This woman's infectious enthusiasm rivaled Jubilee's, and that was saying something.

So they kissed. Clarice couldn't help but moan as Kori downloaded at least one language Clarice's had a grasp of: English, French, and Spanish, as well as ASL and at least one programming language.

"Whoa," Clarice gasped when the kiss ended. "Is there a way we could do that more often?"

Kori grinned at her brightly. That was a typical response. And now she'd gained a couple of languages she hadn't had before, so she really had gotten her money's worth.

"Bueno, sería un placer pero--" She stopped and laughed. English, they'd been using English before. "Kissing you is lovely, but I am afraid I couldn't afford it on a regular basis."

Clarice grinned when the woman ended up speaking Spanish. There was something adorable about that. "Well then, good news. It's free when I'm not working the booth. I don't usually charge for my services. The experience is more than enough."

"Oh! You are asking me out!" Kori laughed at herself for her belated realization. Goodness, and people called her too bold! "I don't mean to be shy at all, but perhaps we ought to begin with names? I am Koriand'r, but you may call me Kori."

She nodded, smiling at the alien woman catching on in the most adorable way possible.

"Kori. I like it." The taller woman's full name sounded like a kind of spice, but Clarice wasn't going to comment. "My name is Clarice; you could call me that or Blink."

"Clarice, that is very pretty!" Kori smiled and pulled a pen and scrap of paper from her purse. She wrote down her name and number and passed it over to Clarice. "Now you may call me anytime."

Somehow that joke sounded funnier when others said it... she grinned anyway.

"For when you are through with your kissing business."

"I dunno," Clarice replied, tapping her chin as she made a show of giving the matter some thought. "I kind of like the name 'Kori' better than 'Anytime'."

She stuffed the scrap of paper in her pocket, making a mental note to transfer it over to her phone when she had a chance. "I'll be done in a few hours. After that, definitely expect a call. Or a text."

Sure enough, a few hours later Kori received a text on her phone:

-Hey Kori. It's the purple girl. How are YOU doin'? ;)

THE KISSING BOOTH MEME

Clarice Ferguson | Marvel Comics

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