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a week of unmitigated almost-loathing part TWO!!!
AHEM. SEE TITLE.
so, the second part of a week of unmitigated almost-loathing, aka fwoosh, aka fwooshie.
It came as a complete and utter surprise to Buttercup when she arrived at the statue of the Mayor in the park and Butch was already there.
“You’re kidding,” she said incredulously, unable to mask the surprise in her voice.
Butch looked up and flashed an encouraging grin. “Who’s kidding?”
“You’re early,” she replied, lip twitching a bit.
Butch checked his watch and shrugged. “Looks it. So are you.”
“Yeah, but… ” She was very reluctant to say it was her job, and henceforth did not.
“Oh, well—so you wanna get started early, or you wanna wait till 6:45 actually rolls around?”
“You haven’t even told me what menial tasks I’m to set about doing tonight,” she said, suspicious.
“I’m going to assume you mean wait till 6:45, then.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the pedestal, whistling casually.
Buttercup blinked in confusion and, after a moment, stepped forward, leaning back against the pedestal next to him.
The only sound between them was Butch’s whistling as they waited for 6:45 to roll around.
Friday evening, 6:45 pm.
“6:45,” Butch said suddenly, breaking the silence. “Let’s get started. Follow me.”
Buttercup looked at him tensely. “What exactly do you have planned?”
“Things. And if I recall, I’m not under obligation to tell you anyway. Get a move on.”
Five hours and fifteen minutes to go, Buttercup reassured herself as she grit her teeth and grudgingly obliged.
Friday evening, 7:59 pm.
“Out of all things, I had never imagined Lasertag would be on your list,” Buttercup admitted honestly as they watched the monitors for their scores.
“Hey, it’s been a busy week for me, ordering you around. I wanted a break.” Butch shrugged off the dirty look she shot his way, crossing his arms behind his head. “That, and I wanted another chance to prove I’m better than you in any and all respects,” he added, watching the monitors intently.
Buttercup followed his line of sight and looked back, sticking her hands on her hips. “Oh, yeah? Well, how about we make a little bet, then?”
Butch snorted and glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “That right? You don’t seem to have much luck with those, you know.”
“That’s Blossom you’re thinking of. Me, it’s an entirely different story.”
“Alright, alright. But I get to decide what the stakes are.”
“Within reason.”
“Well, how about if you win—which you won’t—you get to choose what we do next, provided I am not humiliated. If I win, well… I get you for another hour tonight.”
Buttercup immediately cringed. Another hour? Could she really take another one of those? “Somehow, that doesn’t exactly seem even. I can’t humiliate you?”
He considered. “… Well, does it involve nudity?”
“Oh, God, I want to humiliate you, not make myself sick,” Buttercup gagged, clutching at her stomach.
“Fine, fine, if you think I’ll be humiliated, I’m all for it.”
The monitors flashed just as Buttercup muttered, “That’s better,” and the two of them snapped their attention to the glowing screens.
Friday evening, 9:14 pm.
“Butch, I’ve beaten you five out of seven games now.” Buttercup crossed her arms, a triumphant smirk on her face.
“Best nine of thirteen,” Butch replied instantly, not skipping a beat as he riffled through his wallet to buy another round.
Buttercup intersected him as he tried to hand the cash to the girl behind the desk. “That’s it. You lost the bet. I decide what we do next now.”
She could hardly keep the ecstatic grin off her face.
Friday evening, 9:38 pm.
Eight minutes into Buttercup’s activity of choice and she was still grinning like a maniac.
She nursed her hot chocolate and kept an eye on the far corner of the ice cream parlor from her perch at the counter. Butch was seated in the booth with a handsome looking stranger, laughing and talking up a manly storm.
Well, Buttercup thought to herself, allowing a sinful smirk to tweak the corners of her mouth, that’ll change soon enough.
At that moment she faked a loud sneeze, and she saw Butch’s lips press into a thin line. A few moments later he leaned a hand on his boothmate’s shoulder and said something in a low, quiet voice to him. Instantly the guy coughed, eyes wide, and shook his head, muttering something as he slid out of the booth.
Buttercup turned her eyes devoutly to the counter surface and focused on her eyes on her mug of chocolate just as the guy took a seat two stools away. As the waitress came to take his order he said to her, “Man, this has been one weird night.” In an undertone, he added, “You know that guy over there? He just asked me for my number—”
“Is that right? My God, you know that kid is—”
Buttercup polished off her hot chocolate and left the money on the counter, whistling to herself as she walked out the door.
Friday evening, 9:40 pm.
The glass doors to the parlor swung open, and Buttercup spun her head around to greet the swinger. “Hey, stud.”
He gave her a dark glare. “Well, I’m glad at least one of us is enjoying this.”
“I’m just glad you agreed,” Buttercup said, stretching. “Didn’t ever think I’d get you to agree to anything I’d want to do that would have the potential of tarnishing your stellar reputation.”
Butch faked a gasp. “How could you think I would be so callous as to not uphold my word? Moi? I operate on a highly honorable standard of—”
“Don’t b.s. yourself, alright?” Buttercup growled, but the next second a wide grin had spread across her face. “You’ve got about twenty minutes left of the evening before you’re heterosexual again, so I suggest you make good use of your time.”
As Buttercup grabbed his arm and tugged him onward he said loudly, “I’m beginning to think my ‘honorable standards’ could use a little revision, you know!”
Friday evening, 10:12 pm.
“You know, the look on that guy’s face was priceless.”
“To whom would you be referring to? The guy I tried to pick up at the bookstore, or the employee I tried to pick up at Pottery Barn?” Butch said in a dull voice.
Buttercup skipped along the sidewalk. “I was actually referring to the guy who saw you singing along to I’m a Sweet Transvestite in the video store.”
Butch slapped a hand against his face and groaned.
“And was it just me, or was that the flash of a camera I saw off in the Horror aisle?” Buttercup jumped onto a lamppost and swung around, reveling in the euphoric bliss of a justice well served. Maybe there was hope for the world after all.
Her harmonious thoughts were interrupted when she bumped into something else on the lamppost, which, upon opening her eyes and looking up, turned out to be Butch, hanging off the post as well. He gave an encouraging grin (which looked deliberately non-encouraging) and chirped, “Well, you’ve had your fun. The rest of the night, however, is mine.”
The smile on Buttercup’s face weakened considerably, and she dropped back down to the sidewalk. “Let’s get on with it, then,” she sighed.
“Beg your pardon? ‘Let’s get it on?’”
“Cut that out!”
Friday evening, 10:28 pm.
“Two to see OMG, please?”
“I didn’t think you could sink this low,” Buttercup said, a look of sheer horror upon her face as she stared at the movie poster for OMG.
“You know I only live to make you suffer, honestly.”
“Yes, but… OMG? Good Lord, you’re going to suffer too!”
“Hey, I might actually be a cheesy teen romance flick freak, ok?”
Buttercup’s shoulders slumped and she gave him a dry look. “You expect me to believe you enjoy movies with lame-o titles that take an aggravating acronym and make it even more aggravating by changing what it stands for?”
“I happen to think Order Mail Girlfriend is a very clever title.”
“‘Order Mail’ doesn’t even make any sense!”
“This is the movies, it doesn’t have to make sense. By the way, you owe me for that ticket.”
“Like hell I do.”
“Oh, on second thought, just buy me a large popcorn, candy, and a soda. Unless they serve coffee. Do movie theaters serve lattes?”
Buttercup was overcome with the insane urge to laugh, and used all of her willpower to shoot it down. Laugh at something he said? Never. “Popcorn and soda it is.”
“And candy.”
It wasn’t until she turned and started for the concessions that she permitted a small smile to curl the corners of her mouth. “And candy! Fine!”
Friday evening, 11:09 pm.
“That,” Butch wheezed outside of the theater between bursts of laughter, “was soooooo awful.”
Buttercup was practically on her knees, rolling from side to side. “I can’t believe you paid money to see that!” she cackled. “Oh my God, that was just… wretched, vile stuff! Oh my God!!!”
“Don’t you mean OMG?”
Buttercup rolled onto one side and stayed there, laughing till it hurt. “Oh God! You did not just say that! That was awful! Awful joke, bad! Almost as bad as the movie!”
“Can you believe they had the balls to kick us out? Since when is it illegal to throw popcorn at the screen?”
Sitting up and rubbing at her watery eyes, Buttercup said, “I don’t think it was the popcorn throwing so much as it was you standing up and shouting at the projectionist, ‘This movie SUCKS!!!’ and throwing the rest of your popcorn at him. Followed by your soda.”
Butch offered her a hand up and she took it before she had a chance to give it a second thought. “There’s that too, yes, good point.”
She took a step back, still grinning, and wiped her hands on the seat of her jeans. “Well. That was a rough half an hour of suffering. Amusing at the same time, though. Shouldn’t you be—”
Buttercup clamped her mouth shut. Shouldn’t you be ordering me to do stuff that isn’t quite so entertaining, she had almost inquired, but there was really no need to go about putting suggestions in his head.
Having taken no notice of her unfinished question, Butch stretched and asked, “So. What next?”
“What are you asking me for?”
“Your next order. Come up with something amusing that I would enjoy.”
“… That’s it?”
Butch wrinkled his brow. “I like to think I’m rather picky about what I enjoy. This could be a very difficult task for you, you know.”
Buttercup sputtered. “Well, but, um, but, huh?”
He sighed the sigh of exasperated folk, stuck his hands behind his head and said lightly, “Ok, for starters, I’m hungry. Work with that.”
Friday evening, 11:32 pm.
“I’ll bet that bowling alley was weirded out,” Butch commented as he polished off his fifth frito pie. The light from the streetlamps pooled in dim yellow spots on the sidewalk, alternately illuminating and shadowing them as they walked.
“You think? How many people go to a bowling alley just for the sole purpose of ordering the food?” Buttercup watched him crumple the tray one handed and toss it into the air. Naturally it landed in the nearest trash can. He hadn’t even been looking.
And why are you? Her brain poked and prodded and she pretended not to know what it was talking about.
“Hey, it was your idea.”
“Bite me.”
“No thanks, I’m full.”
“Yeah, five frito pies’ll do that to you.”
“Hey, I hadn’t eaten dinner.”
“I’ll have you know I hadn’t either.”
“Yeah, and you only had three. What’s the deal? I thought you ate like a hoss.”
Buttercup squinched her eyes and tried to ignore that last comment. “Please shut up.”
“Watch it. I’m still the man in charge here.”
“Good to know you’re keeping track,” she muttered, and felt dull pangs of shame for having entertained the notion that she was actually enjoying herself.
Butch’s eyes flicked in her direction briefly, just as the window on her other side exploded in a shower spray of glass. He instantly wrapped his arm around her shoulders and twisted away towards the asphalt, shielding her from the debris.
“Holy—” he started to curse, but his foot hit the edge of the curb and he lost his balance, and they both toppled to the street. He heard Buttercup “Umph,” followed by a series of indeterminate muffled noises. Butch sat up and gracefully extricated his shirt from her mouth. “Beg pardon?”
“I said, ‘Ow,’” Buttercup informed him with a rather bored look on her face. “You know, seeing as how I hit the ground one instant, and the next you landed on me.”
“Forgive me, I’ll work on dieting,” Butch sneered as he stood and shook his head to make sure there wasn’t any glass in his hair.
Buttercup straightened herself up just as a guy in a ski mask leaped out of the jewelry store they’d been in the process of walking past right before he shattered the glass.
She cringed. “A ski mask? Real original.”
The robber stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her, a look that probably said something like Well… shit written all over his ski mask clad face.
Buttercup stuck her hands on her hips and said, “Getting late, isn’t it?”
Ski man stood there another second before hurling the bag of loot at her face (“Hey! That freaking hurt, you bastard!”) and taking off in the opposite direction. Buttercup looked up just in time to see the man running around the corner as Butch watched him with a bemused expression on his face.
“What the hell?! You let him walk right past you?!”
Butch turned to her and said, “Actually, he was running, if you were paying attention.”
“RRRGH!” Buttercup groaned through clenched teeth. “Forget it, I don’t have time to argue with you!” She leapt into the air and took off around the same corner, pushing the Asshole out of her mind and instead focusing on how stupid the guy had to be to think that he could outrun her when she could fly—
“Honestly,” she muttered as she could make out his running form, and she sped up, closing the distance sure and fast—
All of a sudden he disappeared, just as she shot her fist forward for a punch, and she yelped in surprise as the momentum threw her off balance and she tumbled to the ground. She opened her eyes to the world upside down, her back against a lamppost and her legs dangling in front of her.
In the distance she saw the robber sprawled against the concrete sidewalk, knocked out, with a green clad figure looming over him. With that same stupid bemused expression on his face as he looked at her.
She glared at him as he ambled up to her, legs askew and neck at an unnatural angle. “What, decided to help after all?” she snapped, livid.
“I wouldn’t call it that so much as he wasn’t looking where he was going when my foot wound up in front of him.” Butch shrugged and crouched, managing a curious yet still bemused expression as he returned her glare with a grin. “You know, I’ve seen this position before in a magazine—”
“Getting up now,” Buttercup announced sharply, voice climbing an octave. She tumbled to her side and somehow wound up with her left leg on Butch’s right shoulder.
Before she could readjust, the Awful Person said with a wide grin, “I’ve seen this position before too—”
She kicked him in the face.
Friday evening, 11:48 pm.
“I’m suing you for that, you know.”
“Shut up. You didn’t even bruise.”
“Maybe not physically, but think of the mental damage you’ve done. Now I’m going to have hideous flashbacks of dark, painful memories every time I’m with a girl and her leg winds up around my—”
“Enough!!! Thank! You!” Buttercup jumped ahead and whirled to face Butch. “I would prefer not to have to listen to your deepest, darkest fantasies about… ‘nocturnal activity’ from now on.”
A smug look crossed his face, and he tilted his head back, adopting a very diplomatic air. “Well, you don’t really have a choice in the matter, do you? If I wanna discuss indecent behavior—past, present, or future—with you, you can’t help but listen.” Butch checked his watch. “At least for the next twelve minutes.”
The left corner of Buttercup’s upper lip hitched up and twitched spastically.
After a thoughtful moment, Butch reconsidered. “Though we could always strike a deal—”
“Deal,” Buttercup said immediately. She could be incredibly prudish when necessity dictated it be so.
Butch flashed her a wide grin. “I knew you’d say that.” He bounded forward through the park entrance, heading back for the Mayor’s statue. “C’mere!”
Buttercup inhaled deeply, and followed him at a much less enthusiastic pace. When he reached the statue, he turned his head back to her and called out, “Admit you had a good time tonight!”
She stopped right in her tracks. “… What?”
“Aaaadmiiiiit youuuuu haaaaaad aaaaa goooooood tiiiiiiime tooooniiiiiight…” he enunciated, exaggerating each syllable in a most annoying manner. He swayed from left to right, his back to the statue’s pedestal.
Buttercup just glared. “What do you mean, ‘admit?’ I ain’t got anything to admit.”
“Oh, quit lying to yourself. I’ve caught my fair share of smile slip-ups from you tonight.”
“Well, maybe you should look into getting your eyes checked,” she snapped, placing her hands on her hips.
“Hm, so you know, when I was in Biology the other day reviewing the reproductive system—”
There was a sharp squeak from Buttercup’s general area that halted his reminiscing, followed by a garbled mish-mash of words. He put his hand to the side of his head and leaned forward, yelling, “A little louder, please?!”
Her shoulders drooped, and instead of shouting she started trudging to the statue. Once there she turned her back to the cement pedestal and grunted as she leant against it. “I admit: I had a good time tonight,” she muttered.
Butch smirked. “That didn’t exactly sound sincere—”
The smallest tweak of the corner of her mouth, and he immediately lost whatever he’d been about to say. “Yeah, well… I’m afraid… I’m afraid I might actually mean that.” She gave him a purposeful look and managed to cringe at the same time. What talent.
His mouth malfunctioned for a brief second, then continued its normal behavior. “Really? Can I hold that against you?”
She sighed heavily and closed her eyes, but the tweak in her lips was still there. “No.”
… Its normal, vulgar behavior. “Then can I hold—”
“No,” she stated firmly, cracking an eye open and directing its attention at him. “You may not hold anything else against me either, least of all yourself.”
His eyes widened and he pulled back. “You know me too well.”
Buttercup groaned and buried her face in her mitts. “Please don’t say that. That is the last thing I want to hear.”
“I am shocked and amazed,” he gasped, clutching at his chest. “It’s only been a week!”
“‘Only’ isn’t exactly the word I would’ve used,” Buttercup said devoutly.
Butch noted the tweak in her mouth was just so far away from becoming a small smile. “So, uh, Buttercup,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and staring at the ground. “I, er, uh, well,” he deliberately stammered, and dug the toe of his shoe into the ground as if he was six. “Like, it’s been a week or somethin’, and like, you’re soooooo groovy, and—”
He noted the movement of her head as she tilted it forward to let her hair curtain around her face. She didn’t want him to see the grin.
“—I thought, we were like, um, maybe at that point where we can share toothbrushes and stuff, which is cool, you know, because it’s been like a week—”
“Please shut up,” Buttercup said in a strangled voice. She looked up, sans smile, but with her eyes sparkling. “And drop the dorky twelve year old valley wannabe speech.”
He stuck out his lower lip and adopted a very penitent look.
She sucked in her lower lip between her teeth and snorted, trying to hold it in, but exactly 2.092 seconds later she was pounding her fist against the statue’s base, cackling hysterically.
“So is that a yes or a no to the toothbrush thing?” he queried with a grin.
“Ok, man, that’s… that’s enough,” Buttercup panted, taking a deep breath to regain herself. She looked up at him, and the smile on her face looked reluctant. “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”
“Mmmmm… In all honesty, probably not.”
“Well, that makes two of us, then.” She sighed and glanced up, noticing the outline of Townsville’s clock tower between the trees. Carefully stepping around the statue’s pedestal, she strode up a bit to get a clearer look.
“It’s 11:59,” Butch answered for her, and she tilted her head back to see him clambering atop the pedestal to perch himself next to the Mayor’s bucking horse.
With a very hesitant smile on her face she hitched one shoulder up and down, saying, “Yeeeep. And I’m probably going to regret asking this, but seeing as how I’ve already done the unforgivable and admitted to enjoying myself, it couldn’t hurt.”
Butch leaned forward with interest. “Oooh, a proposition?”
“Any last minute requests?” Buttercup said firmly, ignoring him.
His face crinkled with the effort of thought and when he spoke, he spoke slowly. “Well… I suppose there is one—”
“Clock’s ticking here, better order while you have the chance—”
“Ok, ok, get over here.” He beckoned with one hand and hung his legs off the side as she dubiously stepped forward. “Ready? Ok, get this: stand right here. Perfectly still. Can you handle that?”
“For Christ’s sake, I’m not five.”
“Hey, perfectly still, I said.”
Buttercup stiffened and waited. He only leaned back on his hands and tilted his head from side to side, looking at her.
“… Yeeees?” she ventured, thoroughly puzzled.
“That’s all,” he said, and shrugged, right before resting his elbows on his knees and tipping forward to press his lips to hers.
Buttercup’s eyes widened just as the clock tower started chiming twelve.
Her shoulders tensed and untensed and tensed again, and for the moment she was utterly and completely baffled as to how she should react.
The knee-jerk reaction, she knew, was to give him a good smacking around. God knew he was certainly deserving of one. In fact, that was the first thought in her head. Or, um, should’ve been. Because it certainly shouldn’t have been thinking that his lips were kind of scratchy and he needed Chapstick if he wanted to keep them healthy.
It threw her off, just a bit, and so the knee-jerk reaction wasn’t really making much progress in getting through to the front of her head.
Her eyes darted nervously from random object to random object, settling on park benches and tree branches and the buildings off in the distance before settling on his face, uncomfortably close and kissing her.
She could still hear the clock chiming dimly in the background, and when her eyes finally started to flutter closed and she leant forward it stopped, and she twitched back as he pulled away.
Butch had a detached smile on his face as he looked at her. Blinking, she averted her eyes in several directions and said decisively, “Um.” She felt a tug at her hip and looked down just in time to see Butch pluck the pager he’d given her from her jeans. He crushed it in his hand and reached for one of hers, turning it upward and setting the remains of the device in it.
“See you around, Buttercup,” he said affably, and took off.
Sunday morning, 2:07 am.
Butch was on the final stage of his latest bootlegged Japanese import game when his pocket started vibrating. Shooting it a glare—his character hadn’t taken to the interruption well and wound up plummeting to his death off the cliff’s edge—he yanked his cell from his pocket and paused as he read “Slave Monkey” flashing on the screen.
“I should probably change that,” he mumbled to himself as he flipped it open. “Um… hi?”
“Hey.” Buttercup’s voice crackled on the other end, and he set his controller down.
A couple of seconds of very awkward dead air took over the conversation for awhile.
“Uh, calling a little late, aren’t we?” he chided, more to kill the silence than anything else.
“Yeah, sorry. Did I wake you up?”
“No, no, I was—I was actually playing a game, so… no.”
“Oh, ok. That’s… good.”
More dead air. Butch stared at the blinking “PAUSE” on his screen. “So… what are you doing up?”
“Um… actually, I was playing a game, too.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, funny coincidence.”
“What game?”
“It’s… um… you know, I don’t… I don’t know.”
“… Oooook.”
“Yeah, whatever, it’s late. What about you?”
“Me what?”
“What game are you playing, dumbass.”
“Oh! Um, it’s some Japanese import. I can’t read it worth a crap, but I managed to get to the end level.” Butch plucked uselessly at the carpet threads.
“So you beat it?”
“N… no, not yet, but almost. I think.”
“Ah. Um, I see.”
“… Yeah.”
“Are you doing anything tomorrow?” Buttercup suddenly blurted, and Butch ripped out a sizeable portion of carpet from the floor.
“Crap.”
“Huh?”
“No, not you, I’m… sorry, it isn’t anything.” He patted the piece back into place, where it stuck out at accusing odd angles.
“You know, it’s stupid, never mind—”
“No, wait! Hold up, it’s just… ” What the hell had happened to being smooth and suave? “Hey… look, I’m sorry about earlier—”
“So you’re not busy tomorrow?” Buttercup interrupted, and Butch took the hint.
“… No. No, I’m not.”
“Ok, because I was thinking, you know, if you weren’t busy… because you said ‘See you around,’ and, well, tomorrow’s ‘around,’ I thought, you know… as long as you’re not ordering me to do stuff for you, obviously.”
The corner of his mouth peaked and he smiled into the phone. “Aww, but where’s the fun in that?”
“Hey, shut up. Just, are you busy tomorrow or what.”
Butch paused before shaking his head, then realized she couldn’t see him. “Or what.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Dead air again. Buttercup broke it this time. “So… I should let you get back to your game.”
“Uh… I guess, yeah.”
“Ok.”
“Ok.”
“… I guess… I’ll see you tomorrow… then.”
“It’s a da—” He caught himself and clamped his mouth shut. “Um, sounds good.”
“Nice save,” she said, and he could practically hear her grinning into the phone. He wondered if she could hear him grinning back. “Good night, Butch.”
“Yeah… you too.”
The line went dead, and he lowered his phone. After shutting off his game without finishing it and changing her entry in his contacts list, he called her back.
“What the hell, Butch.”
“Were you asleep?”
“… No, but still. You asshole.”
“Look, I just realized we hadn’t said where we were going to meet.”
“Oh… you’re right.”
“Of course.”
“And that’s the only reason you called.”
“… Of course.” He walked over to his desk and fiddled with the drawers, unable to keep himself from grinning as he skimmed his hand over the strip of photos.
“Liar.”
“Slave Monkey.”
“… Do I have you or Blossom to blame for that?”
“Just me, actually.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when I get her to scribe your epitaph.”
-fin-
if there's anything that looks like crap, please tell me so i can fix it straightaway. and remember, comments very much appreciated, peeps :D
so, the second part of a week of unmitigated almost-loathing, aka fwoosh, aka fwooshie.
It came as a complete and utter surprise to Buttercup when she arrived at the statue of the Mayor in the park and Butch was already there.
“You’re kidding,” she said incredulously, unable to mask the surprise in her voice.
Butch looked up and flashed an encouraging grin. “Who’s kidding?”
“You’re early,” she replied, lip twitching a bit.
Butch checked his watch and shrugged. “Looks it. So are you.”
“Yeah, but… ” She was very reluctant to say it was her job, and henceforth did not.
“Oh, well—so you wanna get started early, or you wanna wait till 6:45 actually rolls around?”
“You haven’t even told me what menial tasks I’m to set about doing tonight,” she said, suspicious.
“I’m going to assume you mean wait till 6:45, then.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the pedestal, whistling casually.
Buttercup blinked in confusion and, after a moment, stepped forward, leaning back against the pedestal next to him.
The only sound between them was Butch’s whistling as they waited for 6:45 to roll around.
Friday evening, 6:45 pm.
“6:45,” Butch said suddenly, breaking the silence. “Let’s get started. Follow me.”
Buttercup looked at him tensely. “What exactly do you have planned?”
“Things. And if I recall, I’m not under obligation to tell you anyway. Get a move on.”
Five hours and fifteen minutes to go, Buttercup reassured herself as she grit her teeth and grudgingly obliged.
Friday evening, 7:59 pm.
“Out of all things, I had never imagined Lasertag would be on your list,” Buttercup admitted honestly as they watched the monitors for their scores.
“Hey, it’s been a busy week for me, ordering you around. I wanted a break.” Butch shrugged off the dirty look she shot his way, crossing his arms behind his head. “That, and I wanted another chance to prove I’m better than you in any and all respects,” he added, watching the monitors intently.
Buttercup followed his line of sight and looked back, sticking her hands on her hips. “Oh, yeah? Well, how about we make a little bet, then?”
Butch snorted and glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “That right? You don’t seem to have much luck with those, you know.”
“That’s Blossom you’re thinking of. Me, it’s an entirely different story.”
“Alright, alright. But I get to decide what the stakes are.”
“Within reason.”
“Well, how about if you win—which you won’t—you get to choose what we do next, provided I am not humiliated. If I win, well… I get you for another hour tonight.”
Buttercup immediately cringed. Another hour? Could she really take another one of those? “Somehow, that doesn’t exactly seem even. I can’t humiliate you?”
He considered. “… Well, does it involve nudity?”
“Oh, God, I want to humiliate you, not make myself sick,” Buttercup gagged, clutching at her stomach.
“Fine, fine, if you think I’ll be humiliated, I’m all for it.”
The monitors flashed just as Buttercup muttered, “That’s better,” and the two of them snapped their attention to the glowing screens.
Friday evening, 9:14 pm.
“Butch, I’ve beaten you five out of seven games now.” Buttercup crossed her arms, a triumphant smirk on her face.
“Best nine of thirteen,” Butch replied instantly, not skipping a beat as he riffled through his wallet to buy another round.
Buttercup intersected him as he tried to hand the cash to the girl behind the desk. “That’s it. You lost the bet. I decide what we do next now.”
She could hardly keep the ecstatic grin off her face.
Friday evening, 9:38 pm.
Eight minutes into Buttercup’s activity of choice and she was still grinning like a maniac.
She nursed her hot chocolate and kept an eye on the far corner of the ice cream parlor from her perch at the counter. Butch was seated in the booth with a handsome looking stranger, laughing and talking up a manly storm.
Well, Buttercup thought to herself, allowing a sinful smirk to tweak the corners of her mouth, that’ll change soon enough.
At that moment she faked a loud sneeze, and she saw Butch’s lips press into a thin line. A few moments later he leaned a hand on his boothmate’s shoulder and said something in a low, quiet voice to him. Instantly the guy coughed, eyes wide, and shook his head, muttering something as he slid out of the booth.
Buttercup turned her eyes devoutly to the counter surface and focused on her eyes on her mug of chocolate just as the guy took a seat two stools away. As the waitress came to take his order he said to her, “Man, this has been one weird night.” In an undertone, he added, “You know that guy over there? He just asked me for my number—”
“Is that right? My God, you know that kid is—”
Buttercup polished off her hot chocolate and left the money on the counter, whistling to herself as she walked out the door.
Friday evening, 9:40 pm.
The glass doors to the parlor swung open, and Buttercup spun her head around to greet the swinger. “Hey, stud.”
He gave her a dark glare. “Well, I’m glad at least one of us is enjoying this.”
“I’m just glad you agreed,” Buttercup said, stretching. “Didn’t ever think I’d get you to agree to anything I’d want to do that would have the potential of tarnishing your stellar reputation.”
Butch faked a gasp. “How could you think I would be so callous as to not uphold my word? Moi? I operate on a highly honorable standard of—”
“Don’t b.s. yourself, alright?” Buttercup growled, but the next second a wide grin had spread across her face. “You’ve got about twenty minutes left of the evening before you’re heterosexual again, so I suggest you make good use of your time.”
As Buttercup grabbed his arm and tugged him onward he said loudly, “I’m beginning to think my ‘honorable standards’ could use a little revision, you know!”
Friday evening, 10:12 pm.
“You know, the look on that guy’s face was priceless.”
“To whom would you be referring to? The guy I tried to pick up at the bookstore, or the employee I tried to pick up at Pottery Barn?” Butch said in a dull voice.
Buttercup skipped along the sidewalk. “I was actually referring to the guy who saw you singing along to I’m a Sweet Transvestite in the video store.”
Butch slapped a hand against his face and groaned.
“And was it just me, or was that the flash of a camera I saw off in the Horror aisle?” Buttercup jumped onto a lamppost and swung around, reveling in the euphoric bliss of a justice well served. Maybe there was hope for the world after all.
Her harmonious thoughts were interrupted when she bumped into something else on the lamppost, which, upon opening her eyes and looking up, turned out to be Butch, hanging off the post as well. He gave an encouraging grin (which looked deliberately non-encouraging) and chirped, “Well, you’ve had your fun. The rest of the night, however, is mine.”
The smile on Buttercup’s face weakened considerably, and she dropped back down to the sidewalk. “Let’s get on with it, then,” she sighed.
“Beg your pardon? ‘Let’s get it on?’”
“Cut that out!”
Friday evening, 10:28 pm.
“Two to see OMG, please?”
“I didn’t think you could sink this low,” Buttercup said, a look of sheer horror upon her face as she stared at the movie poster for OMG.
“You know I only live to make you suffer, honestly.”
“Yes, but… OMG? Good Lord, you’re going to suffer too!”
“Hey, I might actually be a cheesy teen romance flick freak, ok?”
Buttercup’s shoulders slumped and she gave him a dry look. “You expect me to believe you enjoy movies with lame-o titles that take an aggravating acronym and make it even more aggravating by changing what it stands for?”
“I happen to think Order Mail Girlfriend is a very clever title.”
“‘Order Mail’ doesn’t even make any sense!”
“This is the movies, it doesn’t have to make sense. By the way, you owe me for that ticket.”
“Like hell I do.”
“Oh, on second thought, just buy me a large popcorn, candy, and a soda. Unless they serve coffee. Do movie theaters serve lattes?”
Buttercup was overcome with the insane urge to laugh, and used all of her willpower to shoot it down. Laugh at something he said? Never. “Popcorn and soda it is.”
“And candy.”
It wasn’t until she turned and started for the concessions that she permitted a small smile to curl the corners of her mouth. “And candy! Fine!”
Friday evening, 11:09 pm.
“That,” Butch wheezed outside of the theater between bursts of laughter, “was soooooo awful.”
Buttercup was practically on her knees, rolling from side to side. “I can’t believe you paid money to see that!” she cackled. “Oh my God, that was just… wretched, vile stuff! Oh my God!!!”
“Don’t you mean OMG?”
Buttercup rolled onto one side and stayed there, laughing till it hurt. “Oh God! You did not just say that! That was awful! Awful joke, bad! Almost as bad as the movie!”
“Can you believe they had the balls to kick us out? Since when is it illegal to throw popcorn at the screen?”
Sitting up and rubbing at her watery eyes, Buttercup said, “I don’t think it was the popcorn throwing so much as it was you standing up and shouting at the projectionist, ‘This movie SUCKS!!!’ and throwing the rest of your popcorn at him. Followed by your soda.”
Butch offered her a hand up and she took it before she had a chance to give it a second thought. “There’s that too, yes, good point.”
She took a step back, still grinning, and wiped her hands on the seat of her jeans. “Well. That was a rough half an hour of suffering. Amusing at the same time, though. Shouldn’t you be—”
Buttercup clamped her mouth shut. Shouldn’t you be ordering me to do stuff that isn’t quite so entertaining, she had almost inquired, but there was really no need to go about putting suggestions in his head.
Having taken no notice of her unfinished question, Butch stretched and asked, “So. What next?”
“What are you asking me for?”
“Your next order. Come up with something amusing that I would enjoy.”
“… That’s it?”
Butch wrinkled his brow. “I like to think I’m rather picky about what I enjoy. This could be a very difficult task for you, you know.”
Buttercup sputtered. “Well, but, um, but, huh?”
He sighed the sigh of exasperated folk, stuck his hands behind his head and said lightly, “Ok, for starters, I’m hungry. Work with that.”
Friday evening, 11:32 pm.
“I’ll bet that bowling alley was weirded out,” Butch commented as he polished off his fifth frito pie. The light from the streetlamps pooled in dim yellow spots on the sidewalk, alternately illuminating and shadowing them as they walked.
“You think? How many people go to a bowling alley just for the sole purpose of ordering the food?” Buttercup watched him crumple the tray one handed and toss it into the air. Naturally it landed in the nearest trash can. He hadn’t even been looking.
And why are you? Her brain poked and prodded and she pretended not to know what it was talking about.
“Hey, it was your idea.”
“Bite me.”
“No thanks, I’m full.”
“Yeah, five frito pies’ll do that to you.”
“Hey, I hadn’t eaten dinner.”
“I’ll have you know I hadn’t either.”
“Yeah, and you only had three. What’s the deal? I thought you ate like a hoss.”
Buttercup squinched her eyes and tried to ignore that last comment. “Please shut up.”
“Watch it. I’m still the man in charge here.”
“Good to know you’re keeping track,” she muttered, and felt dull pangs of shame for having entertained the notion that she was actually enjoying herself.
Butch’s eyes flicked in her direction briefly, just as the window on her other side exploded in a shower spray of glass. He instantly wrapped his arm around her shoulders and twisted away towards the asphalt, shielding her from the debris.
“Holy—” he started to curse, but his foot hit the edge of the curb and he lost his balance, and they both toppled to the street. He heard Buttercup “Umph,” followed by a series of indeterminate muffled noises. Butch sat up and gracefully extricated his shirt from her mouth. “Beg pardon?”
“I said, ‘Ow,’” Buttercup informed him with a rather bored look on her face. “You know, seeing as how I hit the ground one instant, and the next you landed on me.”
“Forgive me, I’ll work on dieting,” Butch sneered as he stood and shook his head to make sure there wasn’t any glass in his hair.
Buttercup straightened herself up just as a guy in a ski mask leaped out of the jewelry store they’d been in the process of walking past right before he shattered the glass.
She cringed. “A ski mask? Real original.”
The robber stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her, a look that probably said something like Well… shit written all over his ski mask clad face.
Buttercup stuck her hands on her hips and said, “Getting late, isn’t it?”
Ski man stood there another second before hurling the bag of loot at her face (“Hey! That freaking hurt, you bastard!”) and taking off in the opposite direction. Buttercup looked up just in time to see the man running around the corner as Butch watched him with a bemused expression on his face.
“What the hell?! You let him walk right past you?!”
Butch turned to her and said, “Actually, he was running, if you were paying attention.”
“RRRGH!” Buttercup groaned through clenched teeth. “Forget it, I don’t have time to argue with you!” She leapt into the air and took off around the same corner, pushing the Asshole out of her mind and instead focusing on how stupid the guy had to be to think that he could outrun her when she could fly—
“Honestly,” she muttered as she could make out his running form, and she sped up, closing the distance sure and fast—
All of a sudden he disappeared, just as she shot her fist forward for a punch, and she yelped in surprise as the momentum threw her off balance and she tumbled to the ground. She opened her eyes to the world upside down, her back against a lamppost and her legs dangling in front of her.
In the distance she saw the robber sprawled against the concrete sidewalk, knocked out, with a green clad figure looming over him. With that same stupid bemused expression on his face as he looked at her.
She glared at him as he ambled up to her, legs askew and neck at an unnatural angle. “What, decided to help after all?” she snapped, livid.
“I wouldn’t call it that so much as he wasn’t looking where he was going when my foot wound up in front of him.” Butch shrugged and crouched, managing a curious yet still bemused expression as he returned her glare with a grin. “You know, I’ve seen this position before in a magazine—”
“Getting up now,” Buttercup announced sharply, voice climbing an octave. She tumbled to her side and somehow wound up with her left leg on Butch’s right shoulder.
Before she could readjust, the Awful Person said with a wide grin, “I’ve seen this position before too—”
She kicked him in the face.
Friday evening, 11:48 pm.
“I’m suing you for that, you know.”
“Shut up. You didn’t even bruise.”
“Maybe not physically, but think of the mental damage you’ve done. Now I’m going to have hideous flashbacks of dark, painful memories every time I’m with a girl and her leg winds up around my—”
“Enough!!! Thank! You!” Buttercup jumped ahead and whirled to face Butch. “I would prefer not to have to listen to your deepest, darkest fantasies about… ‘nocturnal activity’ from now on.”
A smug look crossed his face, and he tilted his head back, adopting a very diplomatic air. “Well, you don’t really have a choice in the matter, do you? If I wanna discuss indecent behavior—past, present, or future—with you, you can’t help but listen.” Butch checked his watch. “At least for the next twelve minutes.”
The left corner of Buttercup’s upper lip hitched up and twitched spastically.
After a thoughtful moment, Butch reconsidered. “Though we could always strike a deal—”
“Deal,” Buttercup said immediately. She could be incredibly prudish when necessity dictated it be so.
Butch flashed her a wide grin. “I knew you’d say that.” He bounded forward through the park entrance, heading back for the Mayor’s statue. “C’mere!”
Buttercup inhaled deeply, and followed him at a much less enthusiastic pace. When he reached the statue, he turned his head back to her and called out, “Admit you had a good time tonight!”
She stopped right in her tracks. “… What?”
“Aaaadmiiiiit youuuuu haaaaaad aaaaa goooooood tiiiiiiime tooooniiiiiight…” he enunciated, exaggerating each syllable in a most annoying manner. He swayed from left to right, his back to the statue’s pedestal.
Buttercup just glared. “What do you mean, ‘admit?’ I ain’t got anything to admit.”
“Oh, quit lying to yourself. I’ve caught my fair share of smile slip-ups from you tonight.”
“Well, maybe you should look into getting your eyes checked,” she snapped, placing her hands on her hips.
“Hm, so you know, when I was in Biology the other day reviewing the reproductive system—”
There was a sharp squeak from Buttercup’s general area that halted his reminiscing, followed by a garbled mish-mash of words. He put his hand to the side of his head and leaned forward, yelling, “A little louder, please?!”
Her shoulders drooped, and instead of shouting she started trudging to the statue. Once there she turned her back to the cement pedestal and grunted as she leant against it. “I admit: I had a good time tonight,” she muttered.
Butch smirked. “That didn’t exactly sound sincere—”
The smallest tweak of the corner of her mouth, and he immediately lost whatever he’d been about to say. “Yeah, well… I’m afraid… I’m afraid I might actually mean that.” She gave him a purposeful look and managed to cringe at the same time. What talent.
His mouth malfunctioned for a brief second, then continued its normal behavior. “Really? Can I hold that against you?”
She sighed heavily and closed her eyes, but the tweak in her lips was still there. “No.”
… Its normal, vulgar behavior. “Then can I hold—”
“No,” she stated firmly, cracking an eye open and directing its attention at him. “You may not hold anything else against me either, least of all yourself.”
His eyes widened and he pulled back. “You know me too well.”
Buttercup groaned and buried her face in her mitts. “Please don’t say that. That is the last thing I want to hear.”
“I am shocked and amazed,” he gasped, clutching at his chest. “It’s only been a week!”
“‘Only’ isn’t exactly the word I would’ve used,” Buttercup said devoutly.
Butch noted the tweak in her mouth was just so far away from becoming a small smile. “So, uh, Buttercup,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and staring at the ground. “I, er, uh, well,” he deliberately stammered, and dug the toe of his shoe into the ground as if he was six. “Like, it’s been a week or somethin’, and like, you’re soooooo groovy, and—”
He noted the movement of her head as she tilted it forward to let her hair curtain around her face. She didn’t want him to see the grin.
“—I thought, we were like, um, maybe at that point where we can share toothbrushes and stuff, which is cool, you know, because it’s been like a week—”
“Please shut up,” Buttercup said in a strangled voice. She looked up, sans smile, but with her eyes sparkling. “And drop the dorky twelve year old valley wannabe speech.”
He stuck out his lower lip and adopted a very penitent look.
She sucked in her lower lip between her teeth and snorted, trying to hold it in, but exactly 2.092 seconds later she was pounding her fist against the statue’s base, cackling hysterically.
“So is that a yes or a no to the toothbrush thing?” he queried with a grin.
“Ok, man, that’s… that’s enough,” Buttercup panted, taking a deep breath to regain herself. She looked up at him, and the smile on her face looked reluctant. “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”
“Mmmmm… In all honesty, probably not.”
“Well, that makes two of us, then.” She sighed and glanced up, noticing the outline of Townsville’s clock tower between the trees. Carefully stepping around the statue’s pedestal, she strode up a bit to get a clearer look.
“It’s 11:59,” Butch answered for her, and she tilted her head back to see him clambering atop the pedestal to perch himself next to the Mayor’s bucking horse.
With a very hesitant smile on her face she hitched one shoulder up and down, saying, “Yeeeep. And I’m probably going to regret asking this, but seeing as how I’ve already done the unforgivable and admitted to enjoying myself, it couldn’t hurt.”
Butch leaned forward with interest. “Oooh, a proposition?”
“Any last minute requests?” Buttercup said firmly, ignoring him.
His face crinkled with the effort of thought and when he spoke, he spoke slowly. “Well… I suppose there is one—”
“Clock’s ticking here, better order while you have the chance—”
“Ok, ok, get over here.” He beckoned with one hand and hung his legs off the side as she dubiously stepped forward. “Ready? Ok, get this: stand right here. Perfectly still. Can you handle that?”
“For Christ’s sake, I’m not five.”
“Hey, perfectly still, I said.”
Buttercup stiffened and waited. He only leaned back on his hands and tilted his head from side to side, looking at her.
“… Yeeees?” she ventured, thoroughly puzzled.
“That’s all,” he said, and shrugged, right before resting his elbows on his knees and tipping forward to press his lips to hers.
Buttercup’s eyes widened just as the clock tower started chiming twelve.
Her shoulders tensed and untensed and tensed again, and for the moment she was utterly and completely baffled as to how she should react.
The knee-jerk reaction, she knew, was to give him a good smacking around. God knew he was certainly deserving of one. In fact, that was the first thought in her head. Or, um, should’ve been. Because it certainly shouldn’t have been thinking that his lips were kind of scratchy and he needed Chapstick if he wanted to keep them healthy.
It threw her off, just a bit, and so the knee-jerk reaction wasn’t really making much progress in getting through to the front of her head.
Her eyes darted nervously from random object to random object, settling on park benches and tree branches and the buildings off in the distance before settling on his face, uncomfortably close and kissing her.
She could still hear the clock chiming dimly in the background, and when her eyes finally started to flutter closed and she leant forward it stopped, and she twitched back as he pulled away.
Butch had a detached smile on his face as he looked at her. Blinking, she averted her eyes in several directions and said decisively, “Um.” She felt a tug at her hip and looked down just in time to see Butch pluck the pager he’d given her from her jeans. He crushed it in his hand and reached for one of hers, turning it upward and setting the remains of the device in it.
“See you around, Buttercup,” he said affably, and took off.
Sunday morning, 2:07 am.
Butch was on the final stage of his latest bootlegged Japanese import game when his pocket started vibrating. Shooting it a glare—his character hadn’t taken to the interruption well and wound up plummeting to his death off the cliff’s edge—he yanked his cell from his pocket and paused as he read “Slave Monkey” flashing on the screen.
“I should probably change that,” he mumbled to himself as he flipped it open. “Um… hi?”
“Hey.” Buttercup’s voice crackled on the other end, and he set his controller down.
A couple of seconds of very awkward dead air took over the conversation for awhile.
“Uh, calling a little late, aren’t we?” he chided, more to kill the silence than anything else.
“Yeah, sorry. Did I wake you up?”
“No, no, I was—I was actually playing a game, so… no.”
“Oh, ok. That’s… good.”
More dead air. Butch stared at the blinking “PAUSE” on his screen. “So… what are you doing up?”
“Um… actually, I was playing a game, too.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, funny coincidence.”
“What game?”
“It’s… um… you know, I don’t… I don’t know.”
“… Oooook.”
“Yeah, whatever, it’s late. What about you?”
“Me what?”
“What game are you playing, dumbass.”
“Oh! Um, it’s some Japanese import. I can’t read it worth a crap, but I managed to get to the end level.” Butch plucked uselessly at the carpet threads.
“So you beat it?”
“N… no, not yet, but almost. I think.”
“Ah. Um, I see.”
“… Yeah.”
“Are you doing anything tomorrow?” Buttercup suddenly blurted, and Butch ripped out a sizeable portion of carpet from the floor.
“Crap.”
“Huh?”
“No, not you, I’m… sorry, it isn’t anything.” He patted the piece back into place, where it stuck out at accusing odd angles.
“You know, it’s stupid, never mind—”
“No, wait! Hold up, it’s just… ” What the hell had happened to being smooth and suave? “Hey… look, I’m sorry about earlier—”
“So you’re not busy tomorrow?” Buttercup interrupted, and Butch took the hint.
“… No. No, I’m not.”
“Ok, because I was thinking, you know, if you weren’t busy… because you said ‘See you around,’ and, well, tomorrow’s ‘around,’ I thought, you know… as long as you’re not ordering me to do stuff for you, obviously.”
The corner of his mouth peaked and he smiled into the phone. “Aww, but where’s the fun in that?”
“Hey, shut up. Just, are you busy tomorrow or what.”
Butch paused before shaking his head, then realized she couldn’t see him. “Or what.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Dead air again. Buttercup broke it this time. “So… I should let you get back to your game.”
“Uh… I guess, yeah.”
“Ok.”
“Ok.”
“… I guess… I’ll see you tomorrow… then.”
“It’s a da—” He caught himself and clamped his mouth shut. “Um, sounds good.”
“Nice save,” she said, and he could practically hear her grinning into the phone. He wondered if she could hear him grinning back. “Good night, Butch.”
“Yeah… you too.”
The line went dead, and he lowered his phone. After shutting off his game without finishing it and changing her entry in his contacts list, he called her back.
“What the hell, Butch.”
“Were you asleep?”
“… No, but still. You asshole.”
“Look, I just realized we hadn’t said where we were going to meet.”
“Oh… you’re right.”
“Of course.”
“And that’s the only reason you called.”
“… Of course.” He walked over to his desk and fiddled with the drawers, unable to keep himself from grinning as he skimmed his hand over the strip of photos.
“Liar.”
“Slave Monkey.”
“… Do I have you or Blossom to blame for that?”
“Just me, actually.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when I get her to scribe your epitaph.”
-fin-
if there's anything that looks like crap, please tell me so i can fix it straightaway. and remember, comments very much appreciated, peeps :D
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You PPG fanfiction goddess!
You goddess in general!
I read this fic from start to end after a horrible day and you cannot believe how much good it has done for me. Thank you, and I love you. <3<3<3<3