Happy birthday to @genovah! She is always inspiring me to come up with more PPG content, a true hero. I’m back with another entry in the ongoing Shooketh, Not Stirred high school AU Reds series for your entertainment. As always, this can be read alone, but it happens in the same universe as part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. This is also posted on my AO3.
Summary: Brick and Blossom hunker down in the library to study for the upcoming regional spelling bee.
***Reblogs are extremely appreciated, since this probably won’t show up in the tags due to cursing. Thank you! <3
xxx
In fairness, Brick had come to the library during his free period with the pure intention to learn. And he was certainly learning something. But somewhere between sliding into his seat opposite Blossom and watching her lips move around insouciant as if it were a strawberry slathered in ganache, his purity was torn from his weak, teenage boy fingers and there was absolutely no going back.
“Brick, are you listening to me?” She touched his hand across the table.
“Yup.”
“Did you need me to repeat the word?”
“Yup.”
“In-SOO-see-uhnt.” She sounded it out slowly, and hand to god, that dominating SOO went straight to his cock.
This, of course, was fine.
“Origin?” he asked.
She twirled her hair around her finger and puckered her lips. “French.”
Fuck.
“I…”
Blossom mistook his increasingly horny stupor for plain old stupor and sighed. “Are you even trying? Because if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were completely fine with Darla Dimpleton going to regionals instead of one of us.”
“I am not fine with that.”
Darla Dimpleton was an unassuming, unthreatening nobody with the personality of plain oatmeal. Brick would never have even bothered to learn her name had she not committed the cardinal sin of scoring so much extra credit while everyone else was busy having lives that she stole the number one GPA right from under him. Which meant she stole it from under Blossom too. Which meant Brick was no longer a respectable silver medal to Blossom’s gold, but currently ranked third and therefor merely happy to be on the podium at all (and for the record, no one has ever been happy merely to be on the podium, just like no one has ever been happy winning Most Improved: you sucked, and now you suck a little less. Except this time, you actually suck more because Darla fucking Dimpleton decided to Quaker Oats her way to the top of this rat race that doesn’t actually matter, but it’s the principle of the thing, i.e., the only thing that matters.).
All of this to say, Darla Dimpleton was the Worst™ and she was one hundred percent going down.
“Are you sure? Because you’re being awfully cavalier about this. Some might even call you insouciant.”
It was a testament to Brick’s powerful fondness for winning and being seen doing it that he spelled insouciant in one Darla Dimpleton-shaped cock blocking breath.
Blossom smiled like she knew something. “Much better.”
Yeah, she knows a lot of things.
The problem with dating, Brick was convinced, was that suddenly the mundane became extraordinary. Everyday experiences that he had previously taken for granted—flying around Townsville, enjoying a cup of coffee, thwarting his sometimes murderous demonic overlord from distributing incriminating polaroids, that sort of thing—were suddenly exciting, thrilling even. Because now he got to do those things with Blossom, and Blossom was cool in a smarmy, elitist sort of way that both softened his heart and hardened his dick all at the same time, and that was kind of A Lot to deal with at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday.
“All right, do me,” Blossom said, and Brick coughed so badly his aforementioned weak, teenage boy fingers shook to stifle himself.
Mercy, he thought, probably. But all his blood was rushing south and it was going to take a supernatural willpower to get through these words so that one of them could beat the upstart porridge peasant to this year’s regional spelling bee.
“You’re the boss,” he said, because it was true, and also because he liked the way she looked at him when he said it. Like he was now the ganache-coated strawberry in this overextended metaphor that he was too laden with Homeric concupiscence being in her general proximity to unpack.
Concupiscence, there’s a ten dollar word for you, you horny genius.
He made a mental note to brag to Blossom about this later.
“Okay, let’s see…” Brick made a show of organizing the flashcards so that she wouldn’t see him discreetly re-situate his pants under the table. “Your word is cymotrichous.”
Blossom tapped her lips, and Brick found himself sympathizing with the Puritans in their absolute befuddlement over the libidinous effect of women having lips. Witchcraft, surely. “Could you use it in a sentence for me?”
Compelled entirely by black magic and therefor not responsible for his imminently questionable choices, Brick obliged her with: “Thinking about how I’d rather run my fingers through your cymotrichous hair for the rest of free period instead of sit here spelling words no one’s ever heard of.”
Blossom, who he was dead certain was extremely thirsty for him and had been for years long before they ever reconciled their rivalry, leaned over the desk separating them. Her hair, long and loose and indeed quite wavy today, was tempting. “Brick, are you flirting with me?”
It was a well-known fact of being a Weak-Fingered, Teenage Boy that one must never reveal such weakness, especially not in front of one’s girlfriend. On the other hand, co-opting said weakness and rebranding it as the suave truth was galaxy brain levels of flirting. And Brick, as has already been established, was a horny genius. “Yup.” He leaned in to meet her, and he twirled her hair between his fingers because they were weak for her, indeed. “How am I doing?”
Blossom, too determined to let her thirst deter her from her goal of sweet, academic retribution and bragging rights, tapped a finger to his lips. “Great. But we have so many words to spell, and only thirty minutes left to do them all. So get shuffling, stud.”
Well, he could work with that. One thing that made his relationship with Blossom work very well was their insatiable competitiveness. Whether they were whaling on each other over an empty parking lot, debating the efficacy of post-its as a note-taking device, or combining their powers to Captain Planet a cornmeal know-it-all back down the leaderboard where she belonged, they were relentless glory chasers. And the greater the challenge, the more they enjoyed the experience and each other.
Blossom spelled her word perfectly, by the way. She stretched out the o-u-s at the end in a bewitching little whisper as she pulled away and her hair slipped through his fingers. That moment when the light changes and the temperature shifts and you’re weightless in a state of existential anticipation of something monumental about to happen, but not quite? That happened. Thirty minutes to explore the shape of that anticipation was enough time to taste it but not enough to savor it. Which, Brick supposed, was about to make this the best thirty minutes he was likely going to get all week.
“Are you ready?” Blossom watched him from behind the card she’d drawn. She had a glint in her eyes that told him she was smiling behind that card.
“Anytime.”
“Your word is eudaemonic.”
That fucking gorgeous ooh again.
“Define it.”
Blossom flushed as though he had just ordered her to bend over. She bit her lip (it must have been a ten Hail Mary’s kind of day when the Witch-Finder General caught a flesh and blood woman doing that with her improbably sorcerous lips) and grinned. “It means producing happiness. Based on the idea of happiness as the proper end of conduct.”
Producing happiness, which is proper, much like how Blossom came off as proper and even prim around adults, when really she was the most fun, most confident, most person he’d ever met, especially when she was spelling in that chiffon top (son of a bitch, that was a great top on her), and the only conduct he was interested in was of the happiest kind.
“Oh.” His throat clenched, and then his stomach twisted, and then his pants grew little too tight again in a full-body chain reaction that began and ended with a fierce determination not to give in first even though it would mean release because release would be meaningless without this etymological tête-à-tête.
Don’t think about tête-à-têtes.
Seventeenth century, noun, borrowed from the French meaning literally “head to head” (please, please stop hurting yourself like this).
“Brick?”
Brick cleared his throat. “Yup. Got it. E-u-d…”
Crisis averted, Brick picked the next card and promptly choked on his own tongue. Blossom made a show like she was concerned and are you all right? and please drink some water. Brick drank her water, which of course she had had her anatomically heretical lips on earlier, which was just fantastic for him. Tuesday fucking morning.
Milieu was her word.
“Milieu, hmm.” Blossom’s smile was spellbinding, which was a pun because he punned when he panicked. “Origin?”
You bitch, he thought, and be cool, and also, witchcraft.
Brick leaned back in his chair, slipped his trembling hands in his pockets, and squeezed every ounce of anything you can do I can do better into a winsome grin. “French.”
Blossom’s adult-facing façade cracked like an egg, and he got a glimpse of the raw delight she felt for this game, for the words, and for him for making it happen. For cultivating the electric milieu, if you will, currently driving them both into a state of impassioned, competitive euphoria at 9:42 a.m. in the library.
“Right, um…” She stumbled over her words, and Brick had to restrain himself from crowing for joy and risk the rheumy-eyed librarian coming to scold them.
By the time they got through another set of words, they were each visibly frustrated and doubly turned on by the other’s masochistic resolve not to throw in the towel.
“Okay, ready for another round?”
She wasn’t even trying to hide her intentions now, and that was just fine with Brick. “Of course.”
One more.
If it was another French word, he was fucking done.
“Really?” Blossom truly had ice in her veins for the way she was able to school her face then. He couldn’t read her, and that was very bad.
If it’s another fucking French word…
He could be over the desk and on her faster than you could say concupiscence.
“Okay.” Blossom set down the flashcard she’d drawn and folded her hands on the table. She looked him dead in the eye licked her lips. “Succedaneum.”
The bookshelf shook but Brick’s fingers didn’t as they pinned Blossom’s over a Dewey Decimal-stamped spine and he kissed her with all the horny passion of a teenage genius who would make a note to thank the devil for giving women lips. One of his better ideas.
xxx
“Hey, has anyone seen Blossom? I’ve sent her, like, four texts!” Bubbles shoved her phone, open to the ignored texts in question, in her sister’s face. “She was supposed to help me with Chem homework.”
Buttercup ducked. “No, and watch where you’re swinging that thing.”
“I saw her earlier,” Boomer said. “She was with Brick coming out of first period.”
“Oh, yeah.” Mike slung his arm around Boomer’s shoulders. “Don’t they both have a free period right now?”
Buttercup rolled her eyes. “What a scam. Whoever decided to give the A-students free periods while the rest of us mere mortals gotta slave away is a straight-up Supervillain.”
Boomer snapped his fingers. “Hey, I just remembered! They both decided to compete for the spot at the regional spelling bee this year. I bet that’s what they’re doing.”
“God, that’s the saddest thing I have ever heard in my life. That’s a new low even for Blossom.”
“I heard there’s a cash prize for the regional winner,” Bubbles said. “It’s like twenty thousand bucks! Remember, everyone in school signed up and we had to have that assembly to narrow it down?”
“Twenty thou— How the tits did I miss that?!”
“I mean, it was all over the school,” Mike said. “We signed up too.”
“What? And no one thought to tell me I could’ve won the lottery?”
Boomer chuckled. “Dude, come on. You wouldn’t have stood a chance in hell against Darla Dimpleton.”
“Who?”
Bubbles cast Boomer a not worth it look, and he just sighed. “So, if they’re studying for the spelling bee, do you think they’re in the library?”
At that moment, Butch came bursting down the hall a little too fast to be human. Open lockers rattled on their hinges as he passed, and a Sophomore girl’s binder went flying, scattering looseleaf papers everywhere. Buttercup looked ready to punch him in the dick for breaking the no powers in school rule. “Guys, you’re gonna shit!”
“Calm down before you blow a load, Jesus Christ.” Buttercup yanked him back down to the floor so he wouldn’t spontaneously float.
Sensibly, Boomer asked, “Why?”
“‘Cause Brick and Blossom are making out in the library right now!”
Mike cringed. “Oh, come on.”
“The hell they are,” Buttercup said.
Bubbles smiled. “Good for them.”
“I’m serious! There were books everywhere, and the noise—”
“Oh look, there goes my dignity. Better catch it before it gets away. C’mon, moron.” Buttercup dragged Butch down the hall over his protests. “What were you even doing in the library? I didn’t think you knew where it was…”
“Like that could ever happen,” Mike said. “Those two wouldn’t waste a minute of study time if it means beating out the competition.”
Boomer did not look so convinced. “I don’t know. I mean, they’re officially, for real dating now,”—“Finally!” Mike interjected—“so it’s not that unbelievable.”
The bell for the next period rang. Bubbles groaned thinking of stewing for an hour of Chem. At least she shared that class with Boomer and would not have to suffer alone. They parted from Mike and walked together through the throng of students rushing to get to their next period.
“Hey, do you think…”
“I mean…” Boomer shrugged.
They rounded the corner and nearly ran into Blossom dashing to her next class with a rushed “Got your texts talk later bye!” before she disappeared into the crowd.
Bubbles whirled on Boomer. “Did you see her buttons—”
“Completely uneven—”
The late bell rang and made them jump. Among the last stragglers, they both dashed a bit too fast to get to class and made it to their seats just as Mr. Micelli finished writing a problem on the board.
Boomer winked when she caught his eye a couple desks away from hers, and it took everything she had not to laugh.
“Good for her,” Bubbles said to herself.
“You are late,” Mr. Micelli said.
Everyone turned to watch Brick sink into his seat, his short hair totally askew and looking healthily flushed for a Tuesday morning.
Boomer burst out laughing and needed a whole minute to calm down.
He’d tell her later that the detention was worth it.
A new cute one-shot in honor of @carriedreamerx birthday! In the same high school AU as part 1, part 2, and part 3, but can totally stand-alone. Also posted on my AO3. Tune in for some laughs and some Reds cuteness!
Summary: Brick goes deodorant shopping. It doesn't end well. (Or does it??)
xxx
Brick squinted at the nine-foot shelf packed with a full color wheel of deodorants and antiperspirants. The sheer surfeit of brands and scents was as daunting to behold as it was absolutely batshit insane—how many ways did people need to not smell like a dirty gym sock?
He picked a random stick and scowled at the label as if it had offended him and all his future progeny. Who the fuck would want to smell like mango lassi?
The squeak of a shopping cart rolling down the aisle sent Brick into a febrile panic for a hot second, and he shoved the saccharine deodorant stick back onto the shelf. A geriatric woman with a hunched back, a bright head scarf, and eyes so folded over with wrinkles it was a miracle she could see anything at all wheeled her cart slowly past Brick, who froze where he stood. She smiled politely at him, and he nodded out of sheer self-preservation instinct. The moment she passed him, he yanked the bill of his red cap lower over his eyes.
“Get a grip,” he grumbled. He was an eighteen-year-old guy buying deodorant, not stool softener. He was totally casual and had absolutely no reason to be so fucking paranoid. Nobody who might recognize him was coming to Cooper’s Market at 8 a.m. on a Sunday.
Brick wiped his clammy palms on his jeans and searched the shelves for what he’d come for so he could hurry up and leave. There it was, fifth shelf in a sea of sleek black and edgy, neon letters: Axe Ice Chill.
“Okay, do you consider yourself more of a music lover, sports star, gaming guru, or style icon?” Boomer had asked as he sat cross-legged on the sofa with his laptop open to the Axe “Find Your Magic” test a few months ago.
“Sports star,” Butch had said on his left, and poked the screen that wasn’t a touch-screen.
“That’s you, moron,” Brick had said, totally above this stupid test. “Pick style icon.”
Boomer grinned. “Oh yeah, your hoodies are so stylin’.” He clicked the next question. “Signature scent? Huh, maybe warm and aromatic?”
“Sounds like one of those Yankee holiday candles,” Butch had said.
Unfortunately, he had a point.
“Well, you're not exactly woody and earthy, and you’re definitely not fruity and sweet—”
“Just go to the next one.” Brick clicked on “fresh and cool” and waited for the screen to load. “Smellin’ good!” the loading page flashed at him. Jesus fucking Christ.
When the quiz presented a true or false statement, Butch moved like he had a bug up his ass and slammed the touchpad before Brick or Boomer could do anything about it.
Boomer tried not to laugh. “Dude, come on.”
“Please, he’s a punk-ass dweeb who’d never make the first move in a fight, let alone on a girl—” Butch had taunted.
Brick punched him in the throat with his Super speed and smiled at the sound of his asshat brother gagging. “Choke and die, motherfucker.”
Butch wheezed as he laughed through the pain, and Brick and Boomer breezed through the more generic age and appearance questions: under 18, long hair (“Mane Man!” the quiz gushed, and Brick almost melted Boomer’s laptop right there), and natural look. After an artificially anticipatory loading screen, a picture of a dude with a clown nose crowd surfing in a sepia Instagram filter appeared on the screen with the generic “Be your best self!” encouragement in blocky letters superimposed upon it, and finally the expert, personalized recommendation for Brick’s body spray needs.
“Because you’re hotter when you’re chill.” Brick had cringed when he read that idiotic tagline the first time, and he cringed reading it again now in the deserted personal hygiene aisle where he prayed no one would find him buying this cry-for-help vanity spritz.
However.
He sprayed a bit of mist in the air and reveled in that cool, icy scent that wasn’t a scent so much as a feeling. Six degrees chiller in a bottle. The first time he’d tried it (under great duress), he’d griped and bitched and slammed his bedroom door to get away from his howling brothers. Settled on his bed with a frown, he had to admit it did cool him off. It was almost pleasant. The smell wasn’t overwhelming like that tiger piss Butch bathed in on the daily. But it wasn’t out of this world compared to the generic shit he’d been using before.
It wasn’t until Blossom sneezed on their way out of AP Lit that her ice breath—and understanding—hit him with the force of a cold snap to the balls.
“Sorry, did I get you?” she’d said, abashed as she covered her mouth with one hand and fished out a bottle of Purell from her messenger bag with the other. Her ice splatter fast melted on his shoulder as his too-warm body absorbed the cold with a bizarre, but extremely pleasant, shiver down his spine.
Son of a bitch, but he had a kink.
Which, of course, spiraled way the hell out of control when he found himself here months later with a recycled shopping bag he’d brought so he could carry the three bottles of Axe Ice Chill he planned to purchase home, because Brick planned ahead and liked to keep his bathroom well-stocked.
Which also, of course, was why at that very moment, fate decided to punch him in the dick.
“Bubbles, you have, like, fourteen bottles of shampoo at home! You don’t need another one,” Buttercup groused at 8 in the goddamned morning on a Sunday.
“Those are all different products, not just shampoo. Honestly, Buttercup.” Bubbles zipped into the aisle with Buttercup on her tail just at the moment Brick had his second panic attack in the span of five minutes and completely lost his shit.
He launched the bottle of Axe Ice Chill so hard into the ceiling that it lodged in there tighter than a prairie-dogging turd.
“Brick?” Blossom’s hand on his shoulder nearly sent him yeeting after his abused body spray, if the sheer mortification didn’t rob him of further motor function and exactly one hundred percent of his brain cells.
Like her sisters, she wore a jacket over her pajama pants. They must have just popped over for some last-minute breakfast staples and a side of peer humiliation. But even in those criminally hideous Ugg boots and five boxes of pancake mix in her shopping basket at 8 on a fucking Sunday morning, her smile glowed.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he returned lamely, because that was all she was getting from him until his neurological functions rebooted.
“Hi, Brick,” Buttercup said, suspicious like usual and searching for some excuse to bust his balls for a laugh. “What’re you doing here?”
The Super sisters had cornered him in front of the Teen Spirit, which came in an absolutely frightful eighteen scents because there was nothing pubescent teenagers needed more than eighteen reassurances that their social survival depended on smelling like a potpourri candy bar.
“Shopping, obviously,” Bubbles said. “Ooh, Brick, you have straight hair. What do you think?” She held up two bottles of brightly colored free-range, organic hair shit.
“I think I was just leaving,” he managed.
“Empty-handed?” Buttercup peered at him like he might transform into a literal dick with ears if she only managed not to blink for long enough. He could smell the threat of a joke on her.
“They didn’t have the brand I wanted.”
“Oh, that sucks,” Bubbles said, genuinely stricken.
“Girls, let’s get going. I really want those pancakes,” Blossom said.
“We better grab more syrup. Buttercup finished it all,” Bubbles said, already moving away. She dropped both hair products in Blossom’s basket, not bothering to choose between them.
“Oh please, everybody knows you and the Professor are the syrup fiends in this house.” Buttercup floated after her and waved to Brick. “Hey, tell that shithead to answer my texts. He owes me $20.”
“Uh-huh,” Brick said, fully intending not to mention anything about this conversation to Butch at all.
“Sorry about your favorite brand being sold out,” Blossom said.
It’s fine, he would have said had she not caught his cheek in her hand and pressed a frosty kiss to the corner of his lips before he could do anything about it. Frozen fernlings crept over his cheek and chin, down his neck, and slowly absorbed through his now flushed skin, and he shivered. Without even thinking about it, he reached for her, but she was already walking away to catch up with her sisters.
When she got to the end of the aisle, she shot him a cheeky grin over her shoulder and had the nerve to wink at him. “Stay cool, Brick.”
Red in the face and high on her, Brick just stood there like an idiot gawking at his kind of unofficial girlfriend and the singular dominating object of his fantasies, be they sexual or otherwise. What was dignity when she smiled at him like that? What was a paltry imitation in a bottle when she kissed him like that?
The paltry imitation fell from its hole in the ceiling and exploded on the tiled floor at Brick’s feet with a winter ferocity that, in that moment at least, rivaled Blossom’s in the heat of battle.
When Brick got home later that morning and Boomer asked him why he smelled like a snowman’s asshole, Brick burned the clothes on his back and spent the next half hour in the shower thinking about how he was going to convince Blossom to make the first move and finally make them official.
xxx
Y’all better appreciate the research that went into this fic. That Axe quiz is real and I took it pretending to be Brick, and it literally does spit out a photo of a dude wearing a clown nose in a club. If that’s not a sign from the Daddy that I’ve chosen the righteous path, then idk what is. Sacrifices to my Chrome search history were made for this fic in the name of celebrating Carrie, ergo, worth it.
PPG One-Shot: You Going to Todd’s? (Brick/Blossom)
My Powerpufftober fic! Still rocking the high school AU for this, so consider it a part 5 to the Shooketh, Not Stirred series. As always, can be read alone, but happens in the same universe as part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. This is also posted on my AO3.
Summary: Brick and Blossom go on a Halloween scavenger hunt. It sucks.
xxx
Blossom checked her watch for the fourth time in ten minutes. It was already a quarter past 9 p.m., her Frankentini was going flat in its plastic neon martini glass, and she was starting to regret coming to Todd’s overhyped Halloween party at all.
“Oh, hey Blossom,” said Harry Pitt, ferrying three bright glasses of the same watered down mixed drink Blossom was too preoccupied to enjoy. “You hanging out?”
Blossom smiled politely. “Hi, Harry. Just waiting for someone.”
Harry’s extra padded shoulders slumped in his pinstripe mafia boss costume. “Oh, let me guess.”
Blossom frowned, a reply on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it when precisely at that moment, Brick stormed through the front door like he was running from a zombie horde and desperate for a weapon. Todd himself spread his arms with a “What, your hairdresser keep you late?” and was almost mowed down with a cursory “Shut up, Todd.” Curiously, Brick made a beeline for the unpopulated second floor. He didn’t even see the other high school Seniors who barely dodged his path. Todd grimaced in his fake vampire fangs and chugged the rest of his beer. “Cool, catch up with you later, bruh!” he said, but no one was listening.
“Sorry, I have to go.” Blossom didn’t have time to feel bad about Harry’s dejected sigh as she ditched her drink and followed Brick upstairs. The Spotify Halloween playlist booming in the speakers faded to a low bass din as Blossom rounded the corner in the upstairs hallway. “Brick?” she called, a little annoyed.
No text, no call. He could have at least told her he’d be late so she could have timed her arrival better. With a mouthful of grievances and a heart full of him, she pushed open the lighted bathroom door at the end of the dark hall. “Brick, did you hear me calling—”
A fluttery and spine-chilling laugh slithered past the crack in the door and sank into her flesh like a snake bite. It arrested her where she stood halfway over the threshold, shackled in the throes of a very specific terror she could never forget.
Brick stood at the pedestal sink, his fingers attempting to fuse with the porcelain as he gripped it hard enough to crack and stared with manic focus at the mirror. All around them, the lyrical voice reverberated:
“Poor, angry boy, there’s yet no end to your suffering!
For this next task, I want you on your knees groveling.
Hide your tears
And sharpen your shears—
To save your brothers, make me a true offering.”
Brick snarled at his reflection, as if his demon might appear there in the mirror to throttle. But there was only him in the glass, furious and frothing under his red hoodie. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”
It took only a moment for Blossom to shake her stupor as instinct and training took over. “Brick,” she said, crossing the small bathroom to touch him.
Red eyes narrowed at her approach until the moment he recognized her beneath her smeared costume lipstick and dark eyeliner. “Blossom?” he rasped. His surprise made sense when she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the mirror. Crop tops, fake bloodstains, and fishnets weren’t her normal style, but in a parallel nightmare universe perhaps they could have been.
The blushing eighteen-year-old boy in him went straight for her midriff, but his distress stayed his hand. “Fuck.” He rubbed his eyes.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
“Nothing, just— Let me get in there.” He reached around her to pull open one of the drawers next to the sink in search of something.
“It’s not nothing.”
He didn’t answer as shut the drawer and checked the one below it.
“Brick, hey. You could have called me—”
With a snarl, he slammed the drawer closed and glared at her. “I was a little busy.”
“Talking to Him?” Blossom held his glare like a hand grenade with her thumb through the pin, ready to pull. “I’d never forget that repulsive lilt. Tell me what’s going on.”
He chickened out of answering her and dove for the drawers on the other side of the sink, where he found what he’d been looking for. Blossom barely had time to question the large scissors he’d pulled out before his hood was down and his man bun toppled into the sink with all the finality of a guillotined head.
Blossom gasped. “Brick!”
Somber as a corpse, he fished out his shorn bundle of hair from the sink, and Blossom watched as it burst into flame in his palm. Smoke curled through his fingers and rose high above them in an angry, red miasma. Its stink was saccharine and brought tears to Blossom’s eyes.
And then, it moved. In swirling, bloody tendrils, it slithered through the cracks above the bathroom door and down the hall as though it had a destination in mind.
“Oh, shit.” Brick dashed after it, and Blossom dashed after him down the stairs. His hand was hot in hers when she caught it and yanked him back. The split second in which their eyes met was an eon of understanding, bone-deep and cauldron-brewed. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. He looked like he needed a friend.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
“Blossom,” he tried to argue.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Blossom, hey babe, wanna flip some cups on my team?” Todd sidled up to Blossom with a stack of solo cups. Then he noticed Brick’s serrated haircut. “Buddy, what the shit happened to your hair?”
“Please go away,” Blossom said at the same time as Brick said, “Choke on my dick.”
She grimaced at Brick’s vulgarity, but Todd took a step back. Before he could snap back, he noticed the red smoke wafting through his house out the open window. “Oh shit, fire?”
“There’s a fire?!” someone else exclaimed, and panic ensued.
Blossom was about to intervene when Brick snatched her hand and dragged out the front door. “Where did it go?” he said, squinting in the dark.
Blossom swallowed her instinct to calm down her fellow partygoers (there was no fire, they’d be fine, surely…) and looked around for the demonic smoke. “There! It’s heading east.” She rose into the air to fly after it, but paused when she noticed Brick hadn’t followed her. Instead, he jogged down Todd’s cul-de-sac toward the main road. “What are you—hey!”
She landed on the ground in front of him, cutting off his dash. He tried to go around her, but she easily blocked him. It was like he wasn’t even trying to move past her, unless…
“You’re powerless,” she said.
That was the wrong thing to say. “It’s just a temporary setback,” he said in the same choke-on-my-dick tone he usually reserved for Todd.
When he tried to get around Blossom again, she put her booted foot down and cracked the asphalt. He didn’t try to pass her again. “I’m not going to ask you again.” Then, more gently: “Please, let me help you.”
The last of Brick’s petulant pride dissolved to ashes just like his ruined hair she knew he loved, and yet he’d viciously cut it off anyway. Hesitant, yet stubbornly determined, he held her gaze. “It’s Him. He’s fucking with me. Sapped my powers and said my brothers and I will pay the ultimate price unless I solve this idiotic scavenger hunt by midnight.”
“…Wow.”
“Yeah, so it’s not like I have much of a choice.”
Blossom cupped his cheek. His chopped hair was not a total disaster, but it needed cleaning up. All that time he’d spent growing it out again…
Brick sucked in a sharp breath at her tender touch. He was as rigid as a pole, gritting his teeth hard enough to shatter. Blossom’s gaze hardened, and an old but fierce fire ignited in her Super-powered veins. “We’ll beat Him’s game. I promise you. Nothing’s going to happen to you or your brothers.”
Brick let his eyes fall closed as he touched his hand to hers, and that was probably the most intimacy she was going to get out of him in the middle of a murder-y scavenger hunt on Halloween. Maybe after they booted Him back to whatever pit he’d been living in all these years she could salvage what should have been a fun, romantic date with her sort-of boyfriend.
Blossom cleared her throat. “So, evil limericks?”
Brick just groaned from the bottom of his tortured soul. He took her hand and led the way after the demonic smoke before they could lose its trail. The smoke led them to Townsville High School a few blocks from Todd’s, specifically to the annual haunted house experience the Senior class spearheaded every year. Plenty of students dressed in their ghoulish finery crowded in the lawn socializing and lining up to take a turn through the haunted house.
Bubbles was on duty as part of the social committee in charge of managing the exhibit. When she spotted Brick and Blossom headed for the cafeteria door that had been transformed into the haunted house’s black-curtained foyer, she bounced over to them. “Hey, I didn’t expect to see you guys here tonight! I thought you were going to Todd’s. Wait, Brick, did you cut your hair?”
“It’s a long story,” Blossom said.
“Whoa! Slow down. You can’t go inside without a costume.” Bubbles blocked Brick’s single-minded steamroll inside after the last of the curling, red smoke slithered past.
“Bubbles, move,” Brick spat.
“No way. You can be a party pooper at Todd’s all you like, but you’re not bringing any of that into my super scary haunted house that I spent all day decorating.”
“I swear to god—”
“Bubbles, do you have any eye liner?” Blossom interrupted before Brick could say something to her sister she would make him regret for the rest of his life.
Bubbles, dressed in glam trash Powerpunk solidarity with her sisters for the night in fishnets and glitter, grinned as she dug in the pockets of her spider web-patterned black tutu. “Great idea, Blossom! C’mere, you.”
“What—hey!” Brick was literally powerless to stop Bubbles from manhandling him into a quick makeover. “There, it’s purr-fect!”
Despite the possibility of Brick’s gruesome end by satanic evisceration looming at the end of the night, Blossom could not help but laugh at the cute nose and whiskers that transformed Brick from grumpy boy to grumpy cat.
The flash on Bubbles’ phone went off.
“Hey!” Brick was redder in the face than his ruined hair.
Bubbles preened as she easily danced out of Brick’s reach before he could nab her phone and delete the evidence. “You look so cute!”
Brick turned to Blossom as his final saving grace, but there were tears in her eyes as she tried to pull herself together. “I’m so sorry, but she’s totally right. You look very cute right now.”
“Fuck this,” he grumbled, bright as a tomato as he shoved past a floating Bubbles and stormed inside the haunted house.
“Oh no—Brick, wait!” Blossom tried to tone down her giggles as she ran after him. “Bubbles, come on, this is actually serious.”
The sisters headed inside to a spooky banshee screams playlist past Ms. Keane’s bubbling cauldron and the football team zombified in a cardboard graveyard, until finally Mr. Green welcomed them to the final stop with a frightful flourish. “Step on up, boys and girls. See your future, if you dare. Mwahahahaha!”
Brick took one look at the over-eager demon teacher and tried to leave. “Maybe I should just let Him kill me while I have some dignity left.”
Blossom caught up to him and slipped her hand in his before he could turn back. The sobering reminder of why they were even here sent a chill all the way to her fingers, and she squeezed his hand in what she hoped was reassurance. “I’m not letting that happen.”
“What’s going on?” Bubbles asked, peering around Blossom’s shoulder.
But Blossom was too preoccupied by the unnatural red smoke swirling around the final, purple-draped room and its sole occupant: Robin Snyder in a truly rocking dead fortune teller costume. “Come in, come in! Let the spirits foretell your Halloween future!”
Bubbles giggled and skipped inside. She planted a very loud, very adorable kiss on Robin’s head.
“Bubbles, what’re you doing in here? You’re supposed to be on welcome duty!” Robin complained, but she reached for Bubbles’ hand and pulled her down into the chair next to her.
“I wanted to see you, obviously!”
Brick’s hand in Blossom’s squeezed uncomfortably tight, and she soon realized why: the red smoke had descended upon the ouija board set up on Robin’s table and absorbed inside it. Bubbles and Robin did not seem to notice it at all.
“All right, let’s get this shit over with,” Brick said, taking one of the empty seats across the table.
“Wow, such enthusiasm,” Robin said flatly.
Blossom took a seat next to Brick and asked their costumed host, “How does this work?”
“It’s a séance. We’ll ask the spirits what we want to know, and the board will do the rest. Everybody put a hand on the planchette.”
The moment everyone’s hands touched the plastic planchette, red smoke bubbled up from beneath it and swirled around them. In a panic, Robin tried to pull away, but found that she couldn’t. Everyone’s hands were stuck to the planchette.
“What—” Bubbles sputtered, but Him’s cotton candy creep show voice slithered from the smoke and stole her breath:
“This clue is not for the fainthearted:
Unearth your next destination uncharted.
Absent any confession,
To the board pose your question
And divine who among you just farted!”
“What the hell was that?!” Robin said at the same time as Bubbles wailed, “Oh nooooo!”
Before Blossom could respond to Robin’s very reasonable question, her arm was yanked across the board still stuck to the planchette: “B”.
Brick’s smoky cat-eyes were wide and slightly manic as he looked at Blossom, and she looked at him. She flushed so badly that she nearly swallowed her own tongue to say, “It wasn’t me!”
“Well, it sure as shit wasn’t me,” he shot back. And then, understanding dawning, they both looked across the table.
“Bubbles?” Blossom said.
“I DON’T WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME ANYMORE!” she screeched.
“Bubbles definitely farted,” Brick deadpanned. He dragged the planchette and everyone’s hands still stuck to it toward the “U” and then back to the “B” until the board spelled out Bubbles’ name. As soon as the planchette settled on the “S”, it released everyone’s hands in time for the heady, red smoke to engulf the board entirely.
Bubbles, distraught, shot out of her chair and covered her eyes in shame.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Robin tried to coax her back down from the high corner she’d flown to. “Come on down from there—Bubbles, really, I can’t even smell anything!”
“You’re just saying that because you love me!” Bubbles complained.
“Oh my god,” Blossom said, too preoccupied with the board to worry about her sister’s mortification. “Is that—”
“A map of the city?” Brick finished her sentence.
The ouija board was transformed into a mini map of Townsville, if a preschooler had drawn it in crayon.
“Here we are at THS.” Blossom pointed her finger to a collection of buildings scribbled in blue crayon. “And here…” She followed a crosshatch path to the edge of the map where a horned, red, devil face sticker grinned up at her. “The cemetery.”
Brick stood up so fast his chair fell over. He stood there for half a second, his face screwed up, and then: “Goddamnit!”
He’d forgotten he couldn’t fly.
“I can carry you.” Blossom held out her hand.
“Is everything okay in here? Robin, the next group is waiting.” Mr. Green poked his horned head through the thick drapes and sniffled. “Ew, what’s that smell?”
“Oh my god!” Bubbles turned beet red and disappeared in a flash of blue, knocking down the rest of the chairs and Brick too, if Blossom hadn’t caught his elbow before he could break his nose on the tiled floor.
“Bubbles! Sorry, Mr. Green.” Robin dashed after her.
“Wait just a minute—”
In the chaos, Blossom let Brick slip out of her grip, and he stormed out the opposite door back outside.
“What are you doing?” Blossom asked when he stopped at the sidewalk.
“Calling a Lyft.”
“I just said I can fly us both.”
“Hard pass.”
Blossom crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s wrong with it? Flying would be faster, and it’s free.”
“I’m not letting you carry me like some damsel in distress.”
“Honestly, Brick. There’s a demon threatening to kill you and you’re worried about your masculinity?”
“No, I mean—look, this isn’t your problem, okay?”
“You did not just say that to me.”
He scowled so deeply that it should have given her pause, but the painted whiskers somewhat ruined his menace. He clenched his phone hard enough to crack if he’d still had his powers. “I didn’t mean it like I don’t want you here.”
Blossom materialized inches from his face in an unnecessary display of power that nonetheless felt fantastic. “That’s better.”
Brick flushed, but not from anger. When she slipped her hand over his, he eased his grip and relinquished his abused phone.
“That’s better,” she said again, more honey than venom this time.
Like hell was she going to send him off to his possible doom alone, powerless and with a really bad haircut painted like a cat.
“Blossom, I’m—”
Her kiss shut him up, and with it any further excuses to go it alone. And despite his increasingly desperate situation, he kissed her back like he’d never get the chance to again.
A car horn honked. “Hey, are you Brick?” asked an older guy in a Honda Civic with a fuzzy, pink mustache attached to the front bumper.
Brick very briefly broke their make-out session to reply, “No,” and then tightened his arms around Blossom’s waist and got right back to it.
The Lyft driver squinted between the profile picture on his phone and Brick. “Wait, really?”
“Never heard of the guy,” he mumbled against her lips, proving that if she wanted to get something done, she’d have to do it herself.
Blossom rolled her eyes and removed his hands from her. Before he could do anything about it, she hoisted him onto her back and hooked her arms under his knees. “Come on, let’s go thwart your imminent murder.”
The Lyft driver watched them take off in a blur of pink. “Goddamn teenagers.”
He canceled the Lyft order and left Brick a one star rating, which was probably fair.
xxx
When Blossom touched down near the entrance to the graveyard, it was back to business. “How much time do we have?”
Brick checked his phone. “About an hour and a half.”
She jogged to keep up with his longer stride as they made their way deeper into the graveyard. “Okay, that’s plenty of time to figure this out.”
A peal of laughter stopped them in their tracks on the gravel path for the split second it took them both to recognize that particular manic cadence.
“Butch,” Blossom said at the same time as Brick said, “Motherfucker.”
Beyond a small hill near the base of a huge oak tree, Brick’s brothers, Buttercup, and Mike Believe sat among the granite tombstones with a pillowcase full of candy passing a joint around. Buttercup had just blown a smoke ring in the shape of a star.
“Bitch, I’m too stoned for this fucking tongue witchcraft,” Butch said. He made an appropriately chilling sight all in black with his face painted black and white in the design of a skull.
“Hey, can you blow a heart?” Boomer asked.
“You sap.” But Buttercup took another drag and hopped off the tombstone she’d been sitting on. Moonlight glinted off the spikes on her black leather jacket as she reeled back and blew three perfect, concentric hearts from her red-painted lips.
Boomer sat up from his place under Mike’s arm and snapped a picture on his phone. “You officially have the greatest special power out of all of us, no contest.”
Mike laughed and accepted the joint when Buttercup passed it to him. “I’m gonna have to agree with that one.”
“That’s because you’re one hundred percent whipped,” Butch said.
Mike shrugged. “Eh.”
“Buttercup.” Blossom approached her sister. “You’re smoking here? What if someone catches you?”
“Somebody just did,” Boomer said under his breath.
“Damn, Blossom, you girls doing a three-way theme tonight?” Butch slipped off the tombstone he’d been draped over to admire her fishnets and then Buttercup’s matching set. “I like it.”
“Give me that.” Brick took the joint from Mike and snuffed it out under his foot.
“Whoa, whoa,” Mike said. He stood up, and at his full height in a 1920s-style adventurer’s costume, he was a Sight™ to behold, if Blossom was being completely honest.
“Brick, what’s the matter?” Boomer peered around Mike in his homemade mummy costume. “And why the hell are you wearing cat makeup?”
“Oh shit, he is,” Buttercup said with a snort.
Before Brick could lose his temper, Blossom said, “Brick, the clue. We don’t have all night.”
“What clue?” Boomer asked. He peered at them seriously. “What’re you two doing here, anyway?”
“Yeah, I thought you were going to Todd’s,” Mike said.
“Todd’s parties blow,” Buttercup said.
Blossom ignored them. “Something about unearthing a destination uncharted. What could it mean…?”
Brick made for quite the adorable pensive cat as he considered. He seemed to come to the answer at the same time as Blossom.
“No,” Blossom said. “There’s no way.”
“We’re going to have to,” Brick said. “What else could it mean?”
“It’s extremely illegal.”
“Yeah, well, I’m fucking cursed!”
“We can’t dig up a bunch of graves!”
“Wow, so that’s what that creepy limerick meant?” Robin approached the group with Bubbles looking windblown and totally ready to get her hands dirty digging up some goddamned graves.
“Bubbles,” Blossom said. “Look, I’m sorry about before—”
“This is Him’s doing,” Bubbles said flatly. “I recognized the voice when I calmed down and we followed you here. Just tell me what the plan is.”
“Did you say Him?” Boomer said soberly.
Buttercup put her hands up. “Okay, what the fuck is going on?”
Brick pulled down his hoodie and revealed his ridiculous haircut. “This is what the fuck’s going on.”
Boomer looked close to tears at the sight of Brick’s mangled hair.
“Him cursed Brick, and we have to solve a scavenger hunt before midnight or he and his brothers will pay the ultimate price,” Blossom said.
“The ultimate price?” Mike said, aghast.
“What the fuck.” Butch advanced on Brick. “What bullshit did you get us into this time—”
Blossom materialized in between Brick and Butch before the latter could carry out whatever violence he intended. She tapped him hard on the chest, and he stumbled back, probably too stoned to hold his normal balance against her Super strength. “Not today, Butch. Him took Brick’s powers.”
“Shit,” Boomer said. Blue sparks jumped in between his toilet paper-wrapped fists. “Okay, what’s the plan?”
Blossom looked to Brick, who was clearly outnumbered and they both knew it. With a groan, he ran his hands through what was left of his poor hair. “We’ll split up,” he said.
“And do what?” Buttercup said.
“Somewhere here, there’s bound to be a clue left by Him. I know that’s not a lot to go on, but it’s all we’ve got right now,” Blossom said. “Split up and cover as much ground as possible.”
“And what are we looking for?” Robin asked.
“Red smoke, demonic laughter, a general feeling of imminent disembowelment,” Brick said.
Bubbles cracked her knuckles and tightened her pigtails. “The usual, then.”
“Fuckin’ right.” Butch began to crackle with pent up green power.
With four other Supers plus Mike and Robin helping cover ground, Blossom hoped they could at least glean some inkling of what Him’s last clue meant. She stayed with Brick since he didn’t have his powers anymore, and together they wandered deeper into the graveyard. Lampposts along the gravel path cast a saturnine glow amidst the trees, fey and eerie on this most eerie of nights.
“Blossom,” Brick said softly. “If we don’t figure this out before midnight—”
“We will,” Blossom said.
He stopped, and Blossom turned to look back at him. Even powerless, there was a presence in his red eyes, beyond mortal and brimming with fire. Even as enemies, even when she couldn’t stand to breathe the same air as him, she had recognized that counterpoint in him, that tranquil confidence that there was nothing in this world he couldn’t overcome. It was a part of him and no one, not even Him, could take it away.
“But if we don’t,” he pressed.
Blossom’s throat wrenched to see him so calm. Not much scared Brick, not truly, but his softness spoke volumes here where only ghosts could hear them. Go, his eyes entreated her, forget about me and go before it gets you too.
She marched up to him and placed her hand on his chest. Ice froze her breath to mist as her anger clawed its way out of her, and she let him see it. “Then Hell will tremble to watch me drag you back out.”
Brick said nothing. He slipped his hand over hers and curled his fingers. Even now, he was far warmer than anyone she had ever known, and she clung to that certainty.
“Come on,” Blossom said, pulling him along after her. “Let’s solve this so we can go home.”
They followed the floating lamp lights east. Fog gathered at their feet, heavy and strange, but Brick held her hand, and secretly she was grateful not to be alone in such a creepy place. When a laughter they both wished they didn’t recognize reached them on the wind, Blossom’s heart leaped into her throat and she took off running with Brick hot on her heels.
The cachinnation petered out when they came across a man in a grey uniform and hat with a flashlight. “Hey, what’re you kids doing here?”
“We were just—” Blossom began.
“Enough,” Brick said, stepping forward. He put an arm out to block Blossom’s path. “I know it’s you.”
“Brick,” Blossom said.
“Son, I don’t know what you mean,” the graveyard worker said.
Brick ignored him. “I played your shitty game. This is the end. Stop hiding behind that pathetic mask and show yourself.”
The portly graveyard worker dropped his flashlight with a heavy crunch on the gravel. Watery, blue eyes bled to baleful red, and his pasty cheeks stretched to accommodate a smile far too wide for his human face. A low chuckle built deep in his chest like termites in a kicked mound, bubbling up through his throat to bursting.
The booming, sinister voice came from that mouth full of teeth, but it seemed to grow out of Blossom’s bones. She felt it in her lungs, her fingertips, as a tingle on her lips Brick had kissed. And she remembered he was vulnerable, under attack by this very thing standing before them now masquerading in a meat sack.
Well, screw that.
Blossom lowered Brick’s wrist and stepped around him. No matter how hard he pushed against her, he was no match for her power—power she leaked now like gasoline fumes hungry for a spark. The gravel at her feet froze, and her eyes faded to ghastly pink as she faced her childhood nightmare. “Hello, demon,” she said.
“Y̹o̬͟u̢̡̳.”
The lampposts flickered and popped, plunging the earthly ossuary into chilling shadows, but Blossom did not fear the cold. Her fists frosted over as she clenched them, and her step summoned an ice floe in the gravel that bridged the crevasse between her and the coward who dared to haunt Brick and his brothers on her watch.
“Well?” she said. “I’m waiting.”
His meat sack shrank back. This was no child Him was taunting, but a fully realized Super who was no longer afraid of his mind games. He closed that heinous mouth and cleared his throat with a dainty, sausage-fingered hand over his heart, and recited in Him’s more lyrical pitch:
“You’ve served all night at my gracious pleasure.
Now the final test to determine your true measure:
Find the lady who slumbers
In her crypt sunk in umber.
X marks the location of my precious treasure.”
No sooner had Him given them their last absurd clue than the graveyard worker seized and fell to his knees. Blossom dashed to catch him before he could injure himself. The man coughed and wheezed as if he’d held his breath for too long.
“What in tarnation…?” he muttered, dazed.
“Sir, you had a dizzy spell. You’re all right now,” Blossom said, clinically calm as she discreetly checked him for signs of blood or other wounds. She found none. “Maybe you should take a break.”
“Who… Hey, you kids shouldn’t be here!”
Brick growled and grabbed Blossom’s elbow to haul her back up. “Let’s go.”
“Take it easy, sir,” Blossom said, and let Brick drag her along before the man could think to call security on them.
When they were out of earshot, Brick whirled on her like he was about to get scary, but she held up a hand for silence.
“Before you get mad, I was just trying to—”
His kiss was not as unexpected as she once may have thought it would be. Feverish, frantic, like a boy about to die in twenty-odd minutes, sure, but not unexpected. “Fuck, Blossom,” he panted when they parted for a breath.
Blossom’s heart swelled at his raw emotion on full display, as rare as it was true, and she almost lost herself in it. But they had work yet to do. She tucked his too-long bangs behind his ear.
“So, a lady who slumbers,” she said. “I’m guessing it’s a special statue.”
“A crypt sunk in umber,” Brick said, licking his lips. “A mausoleum, maybe.”
“That narrows it down, for sure. Must be older if it’s sinking.”
“I saw a map of the cemetery at the entrance.”
Blossom grinned and put her fist in the air. She fired a pink blaster that lit up the night sky and would summon their siblings soon. “Let’s check it out.”
He didn’t complain this time when she carried him on her back for a speedy trip back to the entrance and a quick check of the map. There were four mausoleums in the cemetery.
“Found something, Leader Girl?” Buttercup, Butch, Bubbles, and Robin were the first to catch up to the Reds, and Blossom filled them in just as Boomer returned with Mike.
“Four mausoleums? Sounds like we need to split up again,” Mike said.
“If you find anything, send a signal,” Brick said.
Chance. Brick’s and his brothers’ lives were up to the one-in-four chance that they would find the right crypt. All around them, Him’s lollipop laughter followed them like a demented poltergeist.
“This isn’t it!” Brick slammed a fist against the innermost tomb in their chosen mausoleum. “There’s nothing here.”
Blossom was about to respond to that when a bright, blue spark crackled in the air. Boomer and Mike had found something. “Hurry!”
The mausoleum Boomer and Mike had picked was guarded by a lichen-infested statue of a woman with angel wings in a bed of grassless, brown soil, so dark it could have been umber in daylight. Bubbles, Robin, and the Greens arrived soon after Blossom and Brick charged inside.
“Check it out.” Boomer indicated the innermost tomb carved with two crossed sabers.
“X marks the spot,” Mike said grimly. “Oh crap, it’s almost midnight!”
“Move!” Brick tried to push the crypt open, but it was too heavy for him, so Blossom helped. The heavy stone slab groaned when she pushed it, and a plume of foul, red smoke burst from the opening.
Him’s maniacal laughter rose with the smoke that swirled on the domed ceiling and opened two glowing eyes and a cheshire smile. “My my, cutting it a bit close, aren’t you?”
Bubbles shoved her phone at the unholy miasma. “It’s midnight! We beat your stupid deadline, see?”
“Bubbles, please don’t antagonize the ancient evil,” Robin whispered nervously.
“Technically, Blossom met the deadline since Brick was too weak to open the tomb,” Him crooned.
“You took my powers!” Brick said.
Him’s sinister smile fell. “Oh…did I? My bad. Here you go.”
The red smoke converged on Brick and passed through him with the force of a sword through the gut, and he collapsed to his knees in a circle of fire, gagging. Bubbles and Boomer were lightning fast as they swept Robin and Mike as far away from the conflagration as possible.
“Butch, shield!” Blossom commanded, and Buttercup shoved him so hard he tripped and crashed against his own hastily-erected shield bubble. It contained the explosion of power well enough to keep the mausoleum standing.
“Tsk tsk tsk, this won’t do. All I wanted was to play a little father-son game with you, and you had to drag your girlfriend into it. Parenting is so hard these days. I’ll just have to teach you boys a lesson.”
Blossom’s heart twisted. If Him was truly serious about killing Brick and his brothers, he would have to go through her first.
“Like hell,” Buttercup spat, her fists glowing green.
Brick got to his feet groggily. He looked like he just survived a bad case of seasickness.
Him burst out laughing. “Choice words, Buttercup. Now boys, time to pay the ultimate price!”
The tomb lid slid to the ground on unseen forces, revealing the horror within. Blossom readied her pink blasters, and her sisters did the same. Brick took one look in there and recoiled. “What the fuck—”
When no hellspawn burst from the tomb to attack, Blossom approached and peered over the edge. Inside were hundreds of polaroids of young children in dresses with their hair styled as they posed like Victorian paintings. Blossom reached for one.
Buttercup burst out laughing. “Holy shit, is this you?!” She had two polaroids in her hands as she flapped them in Butch’s face.
“Give me those!” Butch snarled.
“Wow,” Robin said, torn between hysteria and horror as she gawked at a picture of six-year-old Butch with bunny clips in his hair wearing a frilly white dress. “Wait until my therapist hears about this.”
In the picture Blossom had selected, Brick’s hair was expertly braided over his shoulder as he sat on a stone throne surrounded by candelabras and horned skulls in a flowing, white dress. He did not look happy to be there. He looked even less happy to behold this childhood shame years later.
“I burned those,” he said in a voice from beyond the grave to no one in particular.
“I made copies!” Him sang. “And now, all of Townsville will get to see you in your pageantry finest!”
“I’m gonna fucking kill you!” Butch screeched as Buttercup took off flying with a fistful of polaroids laughing her ass off. “Get back here!”
“You know, I think I look pretty cute in these, actually,” Boomer said.
Mike laughed. “Yeah, you totally do.”
“This is what you meant by paying the ultimate price?” Blossom asked the incorporeal demon head floating above them.
Him grinned. “Why, of course. Oh! You didn’t think I would murder my own sons, did you?”
The sinister glint in those yellow eyes told a very different story, one that may have ended poorly if she hadn’t forced Brick to involve her in whatever was going on.
Or maybe Him was just bored of his perpetual existence in a hellish void where a cute photoshoot with his re-spawned Super sons was the most exciting thing that had happened in a millennium, and he was feeling nostalgic.
The tomb erupted in flames all of a sudden when Brick breathed fire over all the polaroids.
Bubbles gasped. “Brick! Those were a work of art, how could you?!”
Brick glared at her with glowing, red eyes. “We’re never speaking of this again. Give me those.” He snatched the photos Robin was holding and burned them too.
Blossom hastily pocketed the picture she’d nabbed of baby Brick before he could notice.
Him disappeared in a swirl of smoke and laughter. “Happy Halloween! Remember to brush your teeth…”
“I can’t believe I came all the way here for this,” Robin said. “Literally, the weirdest shit is always happening to you guys. Can we just have a normal Halloween, like, one time? Just once?”
Boomer laughed. “Tall order, Robin.”
A loud explosion outside told Blossom the Greens’ fighting was going too far, as usual.
“Brick? What’re you doing?” Blossom asked as she and the others followed him outside.
“Helping Butch destroy the evidence your sister stole.” He took off in a blaze of red.
“What a killjoy,” Bubbles pouted.
Blossom bit her lip and revealed her pilfered polaroid. Bubbles’ smile turned downright sinister as she greedily snatched it. “Blossom, I love you.”
“That’s for emergencies only. I mean it, or he’ll kill me.”
Boomer threw an arm around her shoulders and grinned. “Nah, he’d never turn on his girlfriend.”
Bubbles gasped. “Oh my gosh, you’re right!”
Blossom flushed. “But we’re not exactly—”
“Him said it, so it’s gotta be official by now,” Boomer teased.
“Ooh, true. There’s nothing more official than a primordial force of chaos acknowledging your relationship status,” Mike said.
“Hey, you damn kids! You’re not supposed to be here!” shouted the no-longer-possessed groundskeeper from before. He had a shovel that he shook at Brick, Butch, and Buttercup locked in a game of cat and mouse as the brothers tried to reclaim the evidence of their dignity.
“Time to go,” Blossom said.
“Hey, party at Todd’s?” Mike asked.
“Great idea!” Bubbles chirped as she gave Robin a leg up onto her back.
As Blossom found herself back at the same party where she’d begun the night on the sofa next to Buttercup regaling everyone who would listen with the story of Butch’s child beauty pageant past (sans evidence because Brick had managed to burn it, unfortunately), she found her gaze drawn back to Brick. He was up getting them drinks, his haircut cleaned up thanks to Boomer, snickering at something Mike had said.
“Blossom, where are you going?” Bubbles asked when she got up.
“Just going to talk to Brick,” she said. “Officially.”
Bubbles lit up and grabbed the nearest hand to crush her feelings into, which happened to be Butch’s. “What the—ow, woman, let go!”
Brick saw her coming and stared at her growing smile like the baffled teenager he was underneath it all. With all their friends’ eyes on her, she walked right up to him and kissed him in front of everyone.
Let them see, she thought. Let anyone who was watching and biding their time to strike see, and let them try.
Lyrical laughter echoed somewhere on the edges of hearing over their friends’ laudatory cheers and loud calls for celebratory shots, but Blossom tuned it out as she smiled into her kiss.
xxx
Like Boomer, I am a sap who loves a happy ending. Reds are finally official in this AU?! Took us long enough. Also, I always saw Him as this weird dichotomy of ancient murder-y evil and chaotic good mom. I feel like trolling the Boys would be a favorite past time of his. Might write more Him in the future and explore that more.
Written for the inaugural challenge prompt on PPG Challenge Hub on AO3 for the prompt “things you said under the stars,” hosted by @kiebs, @carriedreamerx, and me. Also functions as a Part 3 to the Shooketh, Not Stirred series. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here on Tumblr or on my AO3.
Summary: In which Blossom decides she is definitely girlfriend material, and so does everybody else.
***We are welcoming more submissions for this prompt for the month of July! If you want to participate, please check out the PPG Challenge Hub collection on AO3.***
xxx
Nothing short of witchcraft could have held Buttercup’s 1997 Ford F-Series pickup truck together as it ambled over rocky switchbacks and through dense, Redwood forest to the Vista Lakes campgrounds for the Townsville High Junior and Senior classes’ biannual end-of-semester party. Blossom kept a stranglehold on the passenger door and hissed her displeasure over every dip that lurched the old truck too close to the edge of the road. The drop to the bottom of the mountain was a good thousand feet, a death knell for the Normies riding along with them.
Mitch and Harry, however, did not seem to mind as much.
“Oh shit!” Mitch whooped when Buttercup went over a particularly deep crag in the road and rocked the whole truck.
“Buttercup, please slow down,” Blossom pleaded.
“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” Mitch said through the sliding window that opened up onto the truck bed, where he and Harry rode with the sleeping bags, food, and extra blankets.
Harry laughed. “We’re cool Blossom, don’t worry.”
“Yeah Blossom, don’t worry,” Buttercup drawled. “Besides, it’s not like a fall from this height would kill us.”
“I’m sure Mitch and Harry feel super reassured to hear you say that,” Blossom said snidely.
“Super duper!” Mitch said. He flashed the rearview mirror a sign of the horns and winked.
Blossom forced herself to ignore his goading and kept her eyes firmly on the road ahead just in case. “I should never have agreed to this.”
“Well, tough shit, Leader Girl. You could’ve gotten a ride with Bubbles earlier if you’d left your Winter Break homework until the last day like everybody else, but noooooooo.”
“Not everybody waits until the last minute to get the homework done, for your information.”
“They totally do.”
“They totally don’t.”
“Do.”
“Don’t—ugh, no, I’m not arguing like this with you.”
Buttercup smirked like she’d won the argument (she definitely did not). “Whatever. We’re basically here and no one’s fallen to their death yet, so you can chill.”
The road emptied out onto a clearing overlooking the side of the mountain. Three deep, blue lakes sat still and tranquil, each surrounded by clusters of gnarled Redwoods and camp sites. A lot of people were already here considering the late hour, and a few campfires blazed bright along the shorelines. The gloaming crept over the horizon, casting the valley below in shadow and the skies in dusky, bleeding streaks of red like spilled wine. High above, blues deepened to blacks, but it was still early for stars.
Buttercup parked off the main campsite and the boys began unloading the truck bed. When they struggled with a cooler crammed full of ice, Blossom lifted it effortlessly and floated it over to join others that had already been packed with cheap beer and grill meat.
“Eyyyy there she is!” Boomer opened his arms and pulled Blossom into his letter jacket for a big hug. “I’m glad you decided to come.”
Blossom returned his hug with a smile. “Me too.”
“I told you she would,” said Bubbles, and she nudged Butch who was busy putting away a plate piled high with four hamburgers. He took one look at Blossom and grinned.
“Hey, Highness,” Butch drawled.
Blossom shot him a withering look. “Hi, Butch.” Ever since she’d beaten him in a not-so-friendly spar while Buttercup was out of commission, he’d mellowed out and taken to nicknaming and weirdly friendly ribbing.
“Comin’ down from that pretty throne to hang with the cool kids, huh?”
He stuffed an entire burger in his mouth, while Blossom threw up a little in hers.
“Shut up, Butch. You sound like a creepy old man.” Buttercup arrived carrying two twenty-four packs of beer that she dropped in Butch’s lap. He caught them with a grunt, and Bubbles caught his plate of uneaten burgers.
“Bitch, you love every glistening inch of this.” Butch stood up shouldering the enormous beer crates like they weighed nothing, because they did.
“I love cold beer, so move your glistening ass.” Buttercup snatched one of his uneaten burgers and stuffed it in her mouth.
Somehow, Buttercup got Butch up and helping, and when Mitch and Harry joined them, it was short work to unload everything from Buttercup’s truck. Blossom rolled out her sleeping bag on the grass amidst all the others, but no one would be sleeping tonight. It was merely a courtesy for the too high or the too passed out.
Around the campsite, Juniors and Seniors lounged with beers and blunts, enjoying their last night together before Winter Break. Among them, Wes had his arm around Kim as he flipped hot dogs on a standing grill and chatted up Mike and Robin. Blossom watched them a moment, debating whether to interrupt the conversation to say hi.
Bubbles slipped her arm around Blossom’s waist and squeezed affectionately. “You look a little lost.”
“No, just hanging out, you know.” She returned the half embrace, and they stood there a moment enjoying the cool night air.
“Hey, Blossom! You wanna sit with us?” Harry called. He and a few others had set up some lawn chairs by the shore and were passing beers.
Bubbles giggled. “You know he likes you,” she said.
“What—He does?!” Blossom sputtered.
“For sure. And, you know, since you’re totally not with anybody else, you could have some fun talking to him.”
“You mean, flirt with him.”
Bubbles was as innocent as a lamb. “I mean, be nice to him. That could be fun, right?”
Blossom had nothing to say to that. She was not, in fact, “with” anybody else. And she had every right to talk to whomever of her friends she wanted, so technically Bubbles had a point, but…
Blossom searched the faces gathered. In the encroaching darkness, it was getting harder to pick out profiles and bright colors to see who was here and who hadn’t yet arrived. “I don’t know.”
But Bubbles was already dragging her over to Harry’s circle and waving back to him. Seated in between Harry on one side and Kim on the other, Blossom was handed a burger and a beer and encouraged to participate in the conversation.
“My folks’re taking me to our cabin in Tahoe to go skiing over the break,” Harry was saying.
“That sounds fun,” Blossom said.
He shrugged. “Yeah, sure, if you count me eating snow every five feet when I can’t stop falling.”
“Come on, I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”
“Oh, yeah? I bet it’d be a cake walk for you, Miss Snow Queen.” Harry grinned, and the corners of his dark eyes crinkled cutely.
“Just because I have ice powers doesn’t make me a Winter sports maven. I’ve never skied in my life.”
“Psh, can’t be that hard, right? You start at the top of the mountain, and you end up at the bottom.”
Blossom bit back a smile. “I mean, I think it’s a little more involved than that.”
Harry laughed and leaned over the armrest closer to her. “Well, consider us both noobs. Anyway, most of the time’s spent hanging out at the cabin drinking hot chocolate anyway, right? Best part.”
Blossom tugged on her long, red ponytail as Harry continued to smile at her. She imagined the scene: a cozy ski lodge surrounded by snow, and a smiling boy content to ignore the blunt their friends were passing just to talk to her some more. She would like that. It would be easy, simple, and soft. Normal.
“Um, you know, I was thinking of inviting a few friends for a weekend. Just, like, a small group, and uh, well, I was wondering…” Harry stumbled in the dark looking for the question he meant to ask.
She could say yes, and she could have fun. With him, with any nice boy, it could be fun. How silly that just a few months ago, she had let herself believe she wasn’t the desirable type just because some mean girls said so. It all seemed so absurd now, and yet Blossom could not bring herself to give Harry the easy, simple, soft “yes” he wanted.
“Oh hey! You can have my seat, I’m grabbing more food,” said Kim on Blossom’s other side.
“Thanks.”
Like a hand to the stove, that voice hit her with a searing demand to be acknowledged. Old habits perhaps, or new ones. He wasn’t one to be ignored, not by her at least. Not these days.
“Brick,” Blossom said, half a question, half a sigh. She pulled back from Harry to look at him properly.
He’d taken Kim’s vacated seat directly next to her and nursed a solo cup of beer. Like her, he was dressed for the December chill in long sleeves, and his trademark red cap sat backwards over his short hair, as always. Red eyes held hers in a look that lingered.
“Blossom.” He spoke her name like a secret.
He was late. Why was he late? It wasn’t like him. She hadn’t seen him since third period yesterday. Was it only yesterday, or years ago?
“Hey, Brick,” Harry said, leaning over so he could see around Blossom. “Butch said you might not make it tonight.”
Blossom worried her lip between her teeth, and Brick took a long sip of beer as he slowly averted his gaze to Harry on her other side. “Here I am.”
“Uh, yeah, so Blossom,” Harry said. “About Tahoe…”
xxx
Blossom tugged on her ponytail as she turned back to Harry. Brick watched her twist her anxious fingers through her hair and narrowed his eyes.
“Hm? Oh, right,” she said.
“Yeah, so like I was saying, my parents’ cabin has a few extra bedrooms, so we could make a whole weekend out of it. Skiing, hot chocolate, the works. It’d be cool if you came. What do you say?”
“You throwing a rager?” Brick interrupted.
Harry leaned forward to see Brick again like he’d forgotten he was sitting there at all. “Nah man, just a couple friends for a weekend trip.”
“Cool. Who’s going?”
“Uh, I mean, I don’t have a list or anything. Sorta just came up with it now, so…”
“So you still have space. Count me in,” Brick said.
Blossom and Harry both looked at him like he’d suggested they all go jump in the lake.
“You want to go skiing in Tahoe?” Blossom asked.
Brick shrugged. “Sure, if it means a weekend away from my idiot brothers. Thanks for the invite, Harry.”
Harry gaped, and Blossom ceased pulling at her ponytail to stare at Brick.
“I mean,” Harry said, and nodded super obviously towards Blossom while she wasn’t looking.
“How many others could we invite?” Blossom asked. “If it’s okay with your parents, I mean.”
Harry looked at Blossom, and then he looked at Brick, who sipped his beer like the oblivious, teenaged simpleton he one hundred percent was not. Giving up, Harry sighed and rubbed a hand over his buzz cut. “There’s room for two more if you’re both going to be there.”
Blossom lit up. “How about Wes and Kim? Or Pablo and Hanout?”
Harry sat back in his chair and nursed his beer. “Yeah, fine, whatever you want.”
She was smiling now.
“Wes and Kim,” Brick said. “Pablo snores like a motherfucker.”
“That’s true,” Harry said forlornly.
“Well, either way,” Blossom said, clearly torn between telling them both off and the desire to finalize plans.
Brick got up. “Let us know what weekend. I’m free whenever.”
Pleasantly yet unsurprisingly, Blossom got up too. “Me too. Thanks Harry, this’ll be fun.” She smiled genuinely at him, and he returned it.
“Yeah, the best,” Harry said dejectedly.
Blossom followed Brick as he led her away from the main campsite along the shoreline in the direction of the drop-off.
“Okay, what was that?” she asked when they were away from the roar of the music and the campfires.
“What was what?” Brick asked. It was dark now, and the farther they wandered from the center of the party, the harder it was to see the shoreline as his eyes adjusted.
“You invited yourself to Harry’s. Are you even that close?”
He paused and looked at her. “Are you?”
Blossom clutched the ends of her jacket as she blinked up at him. “We’re friends,” she hedged. “He’s a nice guy.”
Brick smirked. “Uh-huh. Real nice.”
“What does that mean?”
“You tell me. Am I intruding?”
Blossom studied him through the gloom. She was close enough that he could smell her perfume, silken and subtle. “No,” she said at length. “There’s nothing to intrude on.”
He watched her walk along ahead of him, her long ponytail a bloody lash under the cover of night. He chucked his beer and went after her.
“This way,” he said, breaking from the shore and heading into the trees.
“Where are we going?” Blossom drew close. “It’s so dark tonight.”
“I think it’s a new moon. Here.” Brick found her hand so they wouldn’t get separated in the pitch black of the canopy.
Blossom’s hand was cool in his, and she slipped the other one around his arm as he walked deeper into the forest. The walk wasn’t far, and soon the trees thinned as they emerged onto the shore of the lake nearest to the precipice overlooking the valley below. Brick had set up his sleeping bag in the grass far away from the rabble where he could have the best view undisturbed.
“Wow.” Blossom approached the black waters, so still they reflected the night sky back flawlessly. Flurries of stars as far as the eye could see scattered above and below like snowflakes frozen in flight. The Milky Way ripped through the firmament, bleeding more stars clustered so closely together they glimmered ice-bright. “I feel like I just stepped into another world.”
Brick jammed his hands in his jeans pockets and drew up next to her. “Consequence of being away from all the city lights for a change.”
“Mm.”
They lapsed into silence for a bit as they watched the nightscape unfold above and upon the water. Brick’s eyes fully adjusted to the lambent starlight, but it was a cold light, and he wore only a thin, red hoodie to stave off the chill. Blossom noticed him shuffle beside her.
“Do you want my jacket?” she teased.
“Ha ha,” Brick groused. But it was fucking cold out here, now that she mentioned it. He had always been particularly sensitive to it in a way she wasn’t. “My sleeping bag should do the trick.”
They retreated to his makeshift camp, where Brick shimmied into his sleeping bag and Blossom sat on the mat next to him, perfectly at ease in the cold. She leaned back on her hands to admire the stars, content like she could watch them all night. Their gossamer light draped her like a veil, softening her edges and igniting her colors. Brick had the sudden urge to touch her, to prove she was no pearlescent dream, that the cold cornering him now was hers and not just the darkness.
“Why were you late tonight?” she asked out of the blue.
Brick lay back on the mat and looked up at the jeweled sky. “Finished the homework.”
Her laugh was as soft as the starlight, and she grinned at him over her shoulder. “Me too.”
Obviously. He wouldn’t put it past her. It didn’t matter, only, he didn’t want to have one more thing to worry about over the break while also spending way more time than usual around his brothers with nothing to keep their focus for eight hours of the day. But the knowledge seemed to please her, which was just as well.
“I told you I was coming tonight,” he said.
And yet, Boomer had blown up his phone texting him all evening wondering where the hell he was, why wasn’t he here yet, and didn’t he realize people were waiting for him? The last text was one he received when he’d touched down at the edge of the campsite and it was already dark: a candid picture of Blossom talking with Harry by a campfire, and she looked happy. Brick had not responded to it or to any of the other annoying texts. Kim had been more than happy to give him her chair the minute she saw him approaching.
“Here you are,” Blossom said, hushed and half-lidded.
Here we are.
Brick curled an arm under his head. “View’s better from down here.”
She worried her lip—did she even realize she did that? That he noticed?—but ultimately lay down next to him on the mat. “Oh, wow…”
The starscape shimmered far and above, and Brick began to pick out patterns in the cosmos. “There, Cassiopeia.” He pointed to a cluster of stars.
“You know your constellations?” she asked.
“A few.”
He could practically feel the aura of challenge she exuded like a pheromone.
“All right. Perseus,” she said.
Brick pointed to a long line of stars near Cassiopeia. “Right next to Andromeda.”
“That was a freebie to test the waters.”
Brick chuckled. “Sure.”
“Okay Star Lord, show me Gemini.”
Brick swept his hand south and west of Perseus to a pair of star lines facing each other. “A couple of gossipy bitches.”
She shoved him playfully, and he caught her with his free arm, pulling her close. “You’re terrible.”
“I’m right. Next?”
“Let’s see… How about Leo?”
With one arm anchoring her to his side, Brick traced the patterns she called out with the other. Dead heroes and their monsters rose from glittering graves with every sweep of his fingers and kept them company in the dark.
She tugged at his sleeve as he searched for the elusive Pyxis constellation. “Hey, we should probably get back to the party.”
Brick let his hand drop. “Why?”
“Because we’ll be missed, obviously.”
He chuckled. “I bet someone’s missing you.”
Blossom rolled onto her side to face him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing.”
He’d taken her to breakfast. It wasn’t a date; he hadn’t technically asked, and she only came because she was hungry and didn’t want to go home yet. It was the first time he’d ever seen her cry—no, sob because of what some dumb girls said to her at a party. Just the normal high school bullshit, and she’d fallen apart. Breakfast was the fucking least he could do after the ignominy of seeing her like that. It just turned out that it wasn’t the last.
Too many breakfasts and long hours spent prepping for finals turned into expectation, expectation turned into anticipation, and anticipation became the new normal. They weren’t together no matter what rumors Bubbles and Robin started and stopped. They weren’t not together either, considering they usually were, in fact, together. It had only been a few months since she’d handed Butch his balls wrapped up in a pretty pink bow and left Brick speechless to behold her, a few months since he’d found her insecure and vulnerable on that rooftop and called her beautiful because she was, holy fuck she was, and so much more.
Blossom was old wounds that should have healed long ago, that he should never have opened again, but she was still so new and he didn’t know, he didn’t know.
She slipped her hand over the cover of his sleeping bag and curled her fingers in his shirt. “Brick,” she said in a voice full of galaxies and longing.
He’d always liked the sound of his own name, after all.
When he kissed her, she tasted like starlight, cold fire. He pulled her closer, kissed her deeper, a step into the unknown, but the unknown was where she was and she was everything. Her breath hitched and she opened for him, just like that day on the rooftop, but he didn’t look away this time and she kissed him back like it had been her idea all along. Chemical X crackled on their flushed skin as he rolled onto his back and brought her with him, her weight on his chest a warmth and a fantasy.
Blossom’s long bangs fanned his cheeks as she hovered above him and he held on to her. He dreamed she might fall back into the sea of stars and he would dive in after her should he let her go. He didn’t let her go.
“I don’t actually want to go to Tahoe,” Brick said.
She laughed, light as a moonbeam. “Neither do I.”
He threaded his fingers through her hair, pulled her down again. “Good.”
She smiled into the kiss and wrapped her arms around him.
xxx
No one took much notice when Blossom and Brick popped up at the campsite after a protracted absence. No one except Bubbles, who passed Butch her perfectly roasted marshmallow, which he wolfed down right off the stick without waiting for it to cool. She discreetly got out her phone and snapped a few pictures of Blossom leading Brick by the hand to a couple empty chairs near Wes and Kim. When Brick leaned back in his chair and put his arm around the back of Blossom’s so she could lean into him, Bubbles had to work very hard not to squeal.
Clearly, Boomer sending Brick that picture of Harry chatting up Blossom had had the intended outcome.
She fired off twenty pictures to Robin.
[Bubbles: Yearbook?? 👀]
Robin, who was on the other side of the large campfire with Buttercup, Julie, Mitch, and the Floyjoydson twins, spat out her beer when she saw the pictures.
Bubbles snickered to herself.
“What’re you so happy about?” Butch said halfway through a game of Chubby Bunny.
Bubbles poked his mallow-stuffed cheek and winked. “It’s a secret.”
He rolled his eyes and stuffed another marshmallow in his mouth. “Laaaaame.”
Bubbles stole another glance at Blossom and Brick. She was laughing at something Kim had said, and he turned to whisper something to her. Bubbles bit her lip to hide her smile.
“But not for long,” she sang to herself.
Boomer came up behind Blossom and Brick and threw his arms around them both, laughing and pulling them close. Brick didn’t even try to push him off.
Not for long at all.
xxx
Thanks for reading! If you enjoy my writing and are looking for more PPG/RRB content from me, please check out my ongoing multi-chapter over on AO3 called Beyond This Morning. 😊
For the wonderful @carriedreamerx, a fellow Reds die-hard and all-around A+ lady. Also can be read as kind of a part 2 to an earlier one-shot called Shook.
Summary: Blossom is having a bad day. Brick accidentally makes her feel better.
xxx
The four most dreaded words in the English language haunted Blossom after Julie’s party on Friday. They’d ruined the night, causing her to leave at nine p.m. alone, she didn’t want to drag Bubbles home early just because of her. They’d ruined her weekend plans—movie night with her sisters and Robin, studying at her favorite table at the public library, and Sunday family brunch. Through it all, Blossom was quiet and morose, and no one could get her to talk about why.
Why.
Those four stupid, little words.
They were just words, sticks and stones, as she often would tell Bubbles whenever she got upset about teasing that went too far.
“You’re not girlfriend material.”
Just four words.
xxx
Monday’s alarm went off at six a.m. sharp, and Blossom rose on autopilot to brush her teeth and get ready for school. She was halfway through applying a bit of mascara when she realized Bubbles wasn’t awake, and the Professor hadn’t called up to announce breakfast. And then she remembered.
Fall Break.
Blossom slumped over the sink, heavy and lethargic, the tube of mascara limp in her hand. How could she forget they had a whole week off from classes? Where was her head?
Her reflection was washed out and pale in the morning gloom through the bathroom window, and she looked ridiculous with only one eye made up. Sighing, she hastily did the other one, put the mascara away, and went to get dressed. Bubbles slept like a rock on her stomach even through Blossom’s alarm. The girl could have slept through an earthquake, no doubt. Buttercup, however, shifted in her bed.
“Going somewhere?” she called in a raspy, sleep-addled voice.
Blossom smiled and smoothed her sister’s mussed bangs. Even though there was no longer any visible trace of the many injuries she had sustained fighting Butch on Friday, Buttercup would need a couple more days of rest to get back to her regular shape. The IV drip next to her bed held a bag of Chemical X, nearly drained as it fed her through the night little by little.
“I forgot we’re on break,” Blossom said softly so as not to wake Bubbles.
“You nerd.”
Buttercup’s eyes drooped, but a smile tugged at her chapped lips. Blossom grabbed her half empty glass from the nightstand and refilled it in the bathroom sink.
“Go back to sleep,” Blossom said, leaving the fresh glass of water on the nightstand.
Buttercup turned over in bed and pulled the covers over her head. “Way ahead of you.”
That was that. Blossom floated to the window and quietly unhooked the latch. The Professor was moving around downstairs, but she didn’t much feel like talking to him right now. No doubt he would press her about Friday again, as he’d tried several times this weekend. The sun was rising steadily in the distance, casting the suburbs in a strange, dewy glow.
“Hey,” Buttercup called.
Blossom paused.
“Whatever it is, it can’t hurt you. You’re a badass.”
Blossom bit her trembling lip. It was suddenly hard to breathe. She glanced back at Buttercup, but she was under the covers with her back to her. Even so, Blossom could not bring herself to speak. If she did, she might say too much.
She slipped out of the window, pulled it closed behind her, and flew towards Townsville.
xxx
Logically speaking, the sun rises in the east, days turn to weeks, and nothing lasts forever. Not thunderstorms, not youth, and not even pain.
“You’re not girlfriend material.”
Blossom flew over Townsville waking up. It had rained last night, and the fog was thick over the bay as it battled the encroaching sun. She’d read a short story once about monsters in the mist. Gruesome, Lovecraftian horror, the type she never sought out but couldn’t refuse when it was a recommendation from her English teacher. There were no monsters in the mists shrouding Townsville of course, but she imagined them all the same, lurking voyeurs.
One day, she wouldn’t even remember this morning, this feeling, the quiet so high up insulating her from the city sounds far below, tires screeching and jackhammers crunching and a thousand feet scuttling. Logically speaking, none of it mattered.
But it still hurt.
She wasn’t hungry, and she wasn’t cold. She was rarely cold, being a block of ice herself. The ice queen. An unoriginal and lazy moniker, but one that stuck among her peers. Smart, studious Blossom. Commander and the leader, it’s lonely at the top. Come down from your snowcapped throne now and again to walk among us poor plebeians, why don’t you?
They weren’t all like that. The ones who mattered, mattered. Usually it didn’t bother her anyway. Sticks and stones, as they said, but they also said the pen is mightier than the sword. So which is it?
“You’re not girlfriend material.”
Logically speaking, people told themselves what they needed to hear to make themselves believe everything was fine.
“You’re not girlfriend material.”
Just four paper-thin words.
“You’re not girlfriend material.”
“You’re not girlfriend material.”
“You’re not girlfriend material.”
Just four soul-crushing, little words.
xxx
Logically speaking, there were no monsters in the mist.
xxx
Brick wasn’t sure why he went.
Up at the ass-crack of dawn because his alarm was set to repeat and he’d forgotten to turn it off for the Fall Break week, there was no going back to sleep now that the damage was done. Boomer flung his pillow at Brick’s bed to try to kill that screeching alarm, hit him in the face, and suffered a very hard, very warranted shove off the sofa.
“Dude, what the fuuuuuuck?” Boomer whined from the floor in his boxers.
“What the fuck do you mean, what the fuck?” Brick demanded. “Why are you sleeping on my couch?”
Boomer rubbed his tired eyes. “Butch’s snoring is so loud since he started that X drip and I can’t take it anymore!”
“Not my problem.” Brick went to his closet to pull on a fresh shirt. Fuck, it was cold this morning. He grabbed a hoodie from a hanger.
“Briiiiiick,” Boomer whined. “I’m so tired.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
“I’m going out. You better not be in here when I get back.”
Boomer was already crawling back onto his couch as he left his room to use the bathroom though. Whatever, it was too early to deal with Boomer’s crap. The two-bedroom apartment was claustrophobic this morning, like the walls were closing in on Brick, and he had the immediate urge to get out.
After he cleaned up, threw on his cap, and grabbed his keys, he took off into the early morning sky with no destination in mind as long as it wasn’t home.
Fall Break. What was he supposed to do for an entire week? At least Butch was out of commission paying for the consequences of his hormonal jack-assery. Boomer had his friends to hang with, but he could get clingy when the brothers were confined to home without a schedule. And Brick was pretty sure he remembered Wes saying he was going to be out of town with his folks, so that left Boomer best friend-less for the foreseeable future.
Hence, Brick wasn’t sure why he went to the ruined Shankaplex lot. Only, his head was full of all these useless thoughts and he wasn’t thinking straight and anyway it was hard to miss with that enormous fucking crane they’d brought in to help clear up the remains of the movie theater parking lot Butch and Blossom had completely demolished in their fight.
She was already there.
Her red hair cut through the grey of the broken asphalt and concrete like the sun through the rain-cold fog, but little about Blossom was warm. Brick frowned at the thought. He hadn’t seen her since Julie’s party, and even then only for a few minutes. She’d left really early.
She sat alone on the roof of the neighboring Cooper’s Market watching a team of construction workers in orange vests slowly working to clear the mess of tree trunks forcibly uprooted during the fight. They were scattered like dominoes on the asphalt. Brick’s eyes traveled from the back of Blossom’s head to a particularly deep crater where she’d stood towering over Butch, cowed like Brick had hardly ever seen him before, her eyes red with power as they lifted to meet his.
He barely touched down when she sensed him and turned. Her eyes were red, like before, but not with power.
Blossom hastily wiped her puffy eyes and the few tears wetting her cheeks. “What are you doing here?”
Brick froze where he stood. Every instinct in him told him to flee, get the fuck out of there, her tears were not for him to see. Heart pounding in his ears, he clenched his suddenly clammy fists because he couldn’t think of anything else to do with them. “Nothing,” he said, like a total idiot.
Fuck, she’s fucking crying, what the fuck?
“What are you doing here?” he asked, still in full-on idiot mode.
Oh thank god, she’d turned away. He couldn’t see her crying anymore, but that little sniffle sent a chilling pang down his spine that was almost painful. He suppressed a growl at the sensation.
“My alarm woke me up,” she said glumly. “I forgot to turn it off for the week.”
Brick stood petrified behind her, and it was a wonder that she couldn’t hear his heart hammering loud enough to give him a headache. Her banal words were a lifeline he clung to through the noise, and he swallowed hard.
“Me too,” he said. “Habit.”
She nodded, as if the effort to respond was too great, and it was the respite he needed to calm the fuck down. He considered just leaving, but she’d acknowledged him, and leaving now would look like running. Brick didn’t run, especially not from her.
Feet leaden, he shuffled to the edge of the roof and sank down a respectable arm’s length away from her. She said nothing, and their legs dangled over the edge overlooking the red and white striped awning. A big, neon sign advertising the grocery store buzzed and glowed yellow at the other end of the roof. Brick took off his hat, ran his fingers through his hair, and put it back on. Still, she said nothing, so he glanced at her.
She was in jeans and a plain, white tank top, no frills and not even her usual pearl studs she always wore. Her hair was long and loose, draping her shoulders. Brick shivered just looking at her. Wasn’t she cold?
“How’s Butch?” she asked.
It took Brick a moment to comprehend her question. She was looking right at him. Despite a little residual puffiness, her eyes were dry as a bone.
“Sleeping it off,” Brick said.
She nodded and went back to watching the construction workers.
Brick racked his brain for something to say to her. “It’s actually kind of nice having him out of commission. Everything’s quieter.”
She hugged one knee to her chest and shrank in on herself, and he bit his tongue.
Great.
He’d never had a problem talking to Blossom before. She was just Blossom, the uptight, annoying, micromanager he had to put up with in all his classes and at some social functions where their friend circles overlapped. She was just always there, always shrewd, always ready to shut him down if he so much as breathed at her funny. But this was like pulling teeth. What had changed?
Well, he knew exactly what had changed. Right there in that crater, in fact. He could picture it so clearly, could hear the pride in her voice as she exuded her total and absolute control like she’d been born to do it, and he’d never quite noticed before. How had he never noticed before? She was always right there.
“Can I ask you something?” She tugged on her hair. Nervous habit.
Why is she nervous?
Brick dug his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Am I girlfriend material?”
He stared, waiting for her to crack, but Blossom never cracked.
Oh.
She was serious.
“Girlfriend material?” he repeated. It took every ounce of his incredible self-control to keep his voice neutral as he studied her impassive face.
“Girlfriend material,” she confirmed.
And damn, could she be cold when she wanted to be. Not even her tears could shake her now as she watched him, waiting on his answer like they were at war and it was go or get out of the way.
“To a specific person?”
“Objectively speaking.”
“That’s not an objective question.”
“Sure it is.”
He frowned. “No, it’s not.”
“Western beauty standards would suggest otherwise.”
“So you want to know if you’re hot?”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“But it’s the standard you’re basing your question on.”
She wrung her fingers in her hair. “I guess it’s related. But that’s entirely my point. There are certain traits or standards that inform what makes someone girlfriend material.”
“Objectively speaking.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Brick considered her. She was nervous, fucking crying when he’d found her. It didn’t take a genius to deduce what had probably happened, even though he was, in fact, a genius and she was completely transparent right now, besides.
Is she messing with me?
If she was, the crying was some Olympic level acting he’d never known her capable of. Blossom was many things, but she wasn’t duplicitous.
How was this nervous, self-conscious girl the same one who had completely dominated Butch in a fight and loved every minute of being seen doing it?
Brick cleared his very dry throat and sat cross-legged to face her. “You mentioned traits and standards. What are the others?”
“Others?”
“That make someone girlfriend material. We already established that number one, she has to be hot.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t say super model hot, but probably conventionally attractive.”
He waved her off. “Fine, whatever. Next?”
Blossom thought about that. “Well, I guess she should be nice.”
“Fine, but she can’t be boring.”
“Being nice doesn’t mean you’re boring.”
“It does if that’s all you are.”
“Of course that’s not all I am.”
Brick snorted. “No, you’re a hell of a lot more than that.”
Blossom narrowed her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. She should be smart.”
Blossom looked like she wanted to press him, but she refrained. “I agree. Intelligence is attractive.”
“But not too smart.”
“Excuse me?”
“And social, but not annoying about it. She should be able to keep up and complement you in any situation, but not overshadow or steal the spotlight.”
Blossom flushed in anger. “You realize how incredibly misogynistic that is, don’t you?”
Brick shrugged. “You said objectively speaking.”
“Oh, and you think all guys want is a party girl with above average looks and below average brains to stroke their egos?”
“No, I think your premise itself is flawed and I was proving my point. There’s no such thing as the objectively perfect girlfriend. That’s bullshit, and anyone who says otherwise is an idiot.” He watched her avert her gaze like a timid little bird. “Anyone who tries to meet such a bullshit standard is also an idiot.”
That got her attention, and she turned angry, pink eyes on him. “I’m the last person on the planet you should be calling an idiot.”
“I was speaking objectively,” he sneered.
Okay, that was petty, he could admit that to himself. But it was worth it to see the indignation on her pretty face. She got up in a blaze of pink. He was not far behind.
“This was a mistake. I don’t even know why I’m talking to you of all people.” She began to walk away.
He followed. “That makes two of us.”
The sun was up now, and more construction workers had shown up to operate the crane. Even up on the roof, it was beginning to get a little noisy for anyone with sensitive Super hearing.
Nonetheless, they remained on the roof.
xxx
Conceited jerk, Blossom fumed on the other side of the roof with her arms crossed. Why do I even bother?
The conceited jerk didn’t know how to take a hint.
“You’re not actually upset,” Brick said.
Blossom glared back at him. “You don’t get to tell me how I feel.”
“Why?”
“Why don’t you get to dictate my feelings?”
“No, obviously. I meant why are you upset?”
Her lip trembled, but she bit down on it hard enough to hurt. No way was she going to cry in front of him again. Bad enough that he’d surprised her. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend like you care.”
Red sparks crackled on his skin. Blossom felt the sudden push of his choleric power like a punch to the gut, but she held her ground. It was over so fast that it left her breathless.
He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. “This is so fucking stupid.”
For once, Blossom was inclined to agree with him.
“Who was it?” he asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“At Julie’s party. Whoever told you that you’re not girlfriend material. Who was it?”
Blossom shook her head, stunned. “That’s not… You weren’t even there—”
“You ran outta there like the place was on fire right after I got there,” he interrupted her. “So who was it?”
Blossom continued to stare at him. Angry Brick she could handle. Smarmy, arrogant, crass Brick she was used to brushing aside, loudly challenging, or ignoring completely depending on the mood. But this—no, not concerned, certainly not, more like curious Brick—was a subtle beast.
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“Just tell me.”
Without Blossom realizing how or when, something had shifted between them. She had never been afraid of Brick, not even when they were kids and literally trying to destroy each other to no avail, and she wasn’t afraid now. But something in his countenance, in the casual way he rested his hands in his hoodie pockets, the power to crush mountains kept at bay with frightening ease, gave her pause.
Logically speaking, there are no monsters in the mist.
None that could hurt her, anyway.
“Just…some girls,” Blossom said in a voice she hardly recognized. “Just some mean girls.”
Just four little words that hit like bullets.
“Uh-huh,” he said.
Blossom could not begin to understand why, but standing there on the roof with him as the construction workers hammered away below, she was struck with an overwhelming sadness as bleak as the fog that settled in the streets. If he were anyone else, his pity would have shamed her. But Brick had never once pitied her.
“I don’t get it,” she said. She was bullet proof. She’d faced monsters and demons and nightmares alike. Buttercup may be the toughest, and Bubbles may be light in the darkness, but Blossom was always in control, and control was power. It was everything. She could even face Brick’s chaotic brother on a Chemical X bender, and it felt good. She’d felt good. But this, these four damning words, hit her where she was weakest and most vulnerable, and she just couldn’t help it.
For all her power and control, she was just a seventeen-year-old girl who wanted to fit in.
She hugged herself close, wishing someone else would. “I don’t get it all.”
“I know.”
Blossom looked up. She’d forgotten Brick was even still there, but there he remained, stock still and staring off into the distance, his jaw set.
“You…”
“I mean, I get it,” he snapped. He scowled, but not at her.
Bewildered, Blossom could only stare as Brick became even more uncomfortable than she was. And then, it hit her.
“Are you trying to make me feel better?”
“I’m just saying.”
She stepped closer, unsure if she was hallucinating. “Why?”
He took off his cap and roughly carded his fingers through his short hair. “Because it’s fucking stupid. Not you, but you being so upset. Not like that—” he preempted her protest that never came, “—just that they could make you feel so shitty when you’re so…” He gestured to her.
“So what?”
His face flushed in anger. “You know, you.”
Blossom frowned. “I don’t understand—”
“You’re you. Class president, smart as fuck, you know, future Time Person of the Year type of shit—”
“That’s not—”
“—so beautiful and you know it. Hey, don’t make that innocent face. You’ve always known you’re gorgeous, you’re just too busy being nice to the morons in this city who couldn’t tie their goddamned shoes without whining for help to make a big deal out of it—”
Blossom matched his flush. “Just because people need my help sometimes doesn’t make them morons—”
“—and it just pisses me the fuck off because you’re this force of nature who can make my psychotic brother eat a dick one minute—”
“Oh my god—”
“—but then you fall apart because of what a bunch of obnoxious high school girls say to you drunk at a party? Jesus fucking Christ, Blossom.”
Blossom was so livid that she didn’t hesitate even a second to get in his face. “Don’t speak to me like that.”
Brick leaned down so close their noses nearly touched. “Like what?”
“Like you’re so above it all when you just admitted to me that you’re not.” Pink sparks materialized upon her skin as her temper flared to match his. How dare he try to play her for a fool? He of all people knew better.
Brick’s fingers on her cheek were the last thing she expected, and she recoiled with a gasp. Her power danced between his fingers, caught and mingling with his, and he made a slow fist one finger at a time. Blossom watched, mesmerized and unable to fathom why, but her eyes were blown wide and her lips parted.
Brick’s gaze flickered from his fist back to her, and she bit her lip. He had never looked at her like that before, except…
Except when she shoved Butch into the ground, exhausted and sore, and found Brick watching her like she was all that was worth looking at in this world. Shock and awe, she’d chalked it up to surprise at her actually beating Butch. Of course he’d underestimate her just like his brother, like everyone else. But no, that wasn’t right. This close to him, that heated look was unmistakable now.
The moment passed like the sun dipping behind a cloud, and he pulled back. He slipped his hand back into his hoodie pocket and smiled in that subtle, diabolical way he’d perfected years ago. “Much better.”
Blossom swallowed hard. Had she… Had she imagined it?
She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but her stomach growled, excruciatingly loud to her Super hearing and his.
Brick burst out laughing.
Mortified, Blossom blanched and covered her mouth and wished she could just disappear. “Oh my god,” she groaned. “I’m leaving.”
And she would have flown right out of there if he hadn’t grabbed her wrist. Still grinning, he tugged her back. “No, don’t leave.”
Blossom squeezed her eyes shut and wondered why the universe hated her so much. “We’re really done here.”
“Then let’s go somewhere else.”
The initial embarrassment faded, and she was left to wonder at his very odd choice of words. “What?”
“There’s a 1950s style diner I like a few blocks from here. I skipped breakfast too.”
He wasn’t laughing at her anymore as he waited on her acquiescence.
His hand was fire around her wrist. For the first time that morning, she started to feel the chill.
“All right,” she said.
“All right.” He let her go and began to float. “This way.”
Logically speaking, the sun rises in the east, days turn to weeks, and nothing lasts forever. Not thunderstorms, not youth, and not even pain.
Especially not pain.
Blossom sipped on the best vanilla milkshake she’d ever tasted as Brick rattled off dish after dish to the flabbergasted waitress who could not be blamed for not knowing the curse of Chemical X-induced inhumanly high metabolism.
“Hey, Brick?”
Brick looked up from their feast of eggs and bacon and pancakes. “What?”
Logically speaking, he’d only called her gorgeous and smart and amazing because she was those things, objectively. But there was no such thing as the objectively perfect girlfriend.
She smiled. “Thank you.”
He flushed and played it off like it meant nothing. “Yeah, you’re welcome.”
Logically speaking, nothing lasts forever, but they took their time anyway. What was the rush?
Summary: When Butch and Buttercup’s fighting goes a bit too far, Blossom takes it upon herself to intervene. Reds.
xxx
Brick woke up with pinprick pain in his temples this morning, a sure indicator that today was going to be a bad day.
His headache only progressed throughout the day, and by the end of sixth period AP European History, he was fantasizing about how good Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI had it with that guillotine. Quick, painless, and blissful freedom from the squabbling peasants who would never have let them off easy anyway.
“Dude, you’re doing it again.”
Brick could feel his brother’s big, blue eyes on the back of his head as he unloaded his books at his locker. “What.”
“The resting serial killer face.”
Brick glanced at his reflection in the small mirror he had affixed to his locker door. Tired, red eyes stared back at him, mouth in a harsh, thin line, and his trademark red cap backwards over his red hair. His bangs were getting a little long.
He slammed the locker door. “Maybe take the hint.”
Boomer, unlike most of the plebeians at Townsville High School, didn’t cower in fear at his brother’s bloody glare. He smiled and threw a letter-jacket-clad arm over Brick’s shoulders. “Lighten up, man. It’s Friday! Julie’s party is tonight, remember?”
Shit, Brick had forgotten. He vaguely remembered agreeing to go to that.
“Someone say party?” Wes Goingon, a guy so pale he looked like he’d been bleached at birth, approached them hand in hand with his girlfriend, Kim Chan.
Kim smiled brightly at Brick. “Oh yeah, Julie’s! You guys are going, right?”
Boomer dragged Brick into step with their friends, and he was too tired to resist. “For sure.”
Brick sighed. “I don’t know, I’ve got a migraine. I might sit this one out.”
“No way, you gotta come!” Wes said. “It’s not a party without you.”
Kim nudged Brick affectionately. “He’s right, but if you’re not feeling well, you should stay home. I noticed you were kind of quiet today.”
“Shh, Kim, don’t give him a way out. Everybody’s gonna be there,” Boomer said. “It’s the last party before Fall Break!”
Fall Break, yes, that was an appealing prospect. A whole week off from school to do what he wanted without having to deal with all the bullshit of high school daily life. Brick didn’t hate it as much as he’d thought he would. Even with his reputation as a Rowdyruff Boy following him, there had been some brave souls who’d given him and his brothers a chance to be normal seventeen-year-old boys, something he hadn’t had back in Citiesville before transferring. Even if many were wary of him, there were a few like Wes and Kim who were so used to sharing the halls with Supers that they barely noticed the difference.
The four of them were approaching the west exit when Brick came across the last person he wanted to see. His migraine flared at the mere sight of her and the suspicion in her gaze that was as ubiquitous as her red hair ribbon whenever they unfortunately crossed paths.
“Hey Blossom!” Kim said, bounding over.
“Hi Kim,” Blossom said, bypassing her to approach Brick, but it turned out it wasn’t him she was looking for. “Boomer, I’m glad I ran into you. Have you seen my sister anywhere?”
Brick watched her talking to his brother like he wasn’t standing right there and felt his blood pressure begin to rise. No matter how much time he spent breathing the same air as this girl, he couldn’t get past his dislike of her. They were no longer arch enemies looking to grind each other into the ground, their childhood enmity mostly behind them now that they were older and more interested in living their lives in peace. But even so, Brick had never had any desire to befriend Blossom or her Super sisters, Bubbles and Buttercup.
Still, she didn’t have to ignore him so obviously. She was always doing petty crap like that. So juvenile.
Boomer, of course, had no such qualms about mingling with Townsville’s resident heroes. Brick wasn’t sure how it had happened, but somehow Boomer had befriended Bubbles, played sports with Buttercup, and was even on amicable terms with Blossom.
“Which one?” Boomer asked, running a hand through his short, blond hair like he was thinking about how it looked in front of her.
The fuck, Brick thought.
“Bubbles. She was supposed to meet me after class, but she’s not answering her phone.”
“No, sorry. I haven’t seen her since lunch.”
Blossom tugged on her long, red ponytail, something she did whenever she was troubled by something. Brick hated that he knew this about her.
“Oh, all right. Well, if you hear from her, can you let me know?”
“Sure thing.”
Her rosy gaze finally flickered to Brick, and she matched his frown. He told himself to ignore her and her unwarranted suspicion of him—it wasn’t like they were twelve anymore and he was going to rob a convenience store, for fuck’s sake—but he also was not about to look away first.
“Brick,” she said curtly, but she might as well have told him to go jump in a lake.
“Blossom,” he said just as clipped. And, just because he knew how annoyingly hyper-alert she got when they were around each other, he let his eyes flicker briefly over her figure, today clad in casual capris and a sleeveless top.
Just his luck that one of the hottest girls in school had such a frustrating personality.
Of course, she noticed him briefly checking her out and crossed her arms. Her pretty eyes narrowed, and the air around them charged. Boomer noticed her subtly spiking energy levels and shrank back instinctively. Brick held his ground, wondering if she’d tell him off. He kind of hoped she would if only to distract him from his pounding headache.
Wes and Kim, oblivious to the electrifying tension, were still talking about Blossom’s missing sister.
Or rather, sisters plural.
“Yeah, I think I saw them leave together. They were in kind of a hurry,” Wes said.
“Really? Since when are Butch and Buttercup so chummy?” Kim asked.
At the mention of his trigger-happy brother, Brick tore his gaze from Blossom. “What about Butch?”
Blossom also forgot her rising annoyance and focused on Wes. “What are you talking about? They left together?”
Wes looked between Brick and Blossom, and it was his turn to shrink. Friends or not, being on the receiving end of both Reds’ glares at the same time was enough to make a guy quail. “Uh, yeah, like I saw them both dash out after sixth period…”
“Together?” Blossom demanded.
“Kind of?” Wes put his hands up like he was trying to placate a pair of wild animals. “More like he dragged her out? I mean, not violently or something!”
Blossom paled, and Brick rolled his eyes. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened. Butch couldn’t seem to go a full week without fighting the only person on the planet dumb enough to rise to his challenge every time. Mostly, Brick didn’t care what his brother did as long as it didn’t blow back on Boomer and him, and for the most part Butch behaved. But lately, he’d been hitting the gym twice a day and even pestering Brick for spars more often than usual. As if fighting Buttercup wasn’t enough of a challenge for him already.
“Oh, so they probably went to fight. Hey, maybe Bubbles is with them?” Boomer said.
Blossom was still white as a sheet. “They can’t fight right now. She’s in no condition.”
Brick was about to tell her to calm down, she was overreacting about every goddamned little thing as usual, but Blossom dashed off in a flash of pink before he could get a word in. Kim was knocked over with the force of it, and Boomer was forced to catch her when she bumped into Wes and they both almost went down.
“Jeez, what was that about?!” Kim griped.
“You okay?” Boomer asked.
Brick scowled deeply. What was she thinking using her powers in school? Of all people, Blossom would never. What had crawled up her ass today? He had half a mind to find out.
“Come on, Boomer,” he said.
“Wait, where are we going?”
But Brick dashed off in a blinding blaze of red in much the same fashion as Blossom before him, knocking all three of them down in his haste to catch up to her.
xxx
Buttercup heaved and spat blood. The Chemical X in her system was sluggish as it depleted so much faster than usual, and she felt Butch’s punches like a ton of bricks. He came in fast and hard again, and this time Buttercup dodged the brunt of his punch and sent him spinning away.
“C’mon, BC! Enough of this cat and mouse crap,” Butch taunted. “Fight me! Unless you’re too much of a pussy.”
“Fuck you,” Buttercup spat.
Trash talk had always been a part of their clashes, and normally it added to the fire she felt beneath her skin at the prospect of handing him his ass. But their last fight had been particularly brutal just a few days ago, and while Buttercup would never admit weakness, she was not fully recovered from it.
Should’ve listened to Blossom and taken that X supplement…
Buttercup silenced that traitorous thought. She didn’t need help. She was the toughest fighter for a reason. A little roughhousing didn’t merit all that coddling. Then again, she hadn’t expected Butch to be raring to go again so soon.
“Guys, really! I think you should just call it quits for today!” Bubbles said, hovering close but not close enough to get in between them. She was not suicidal.
Butch glanced at her askance. “Hey, no one asked you, Blondie. I don’t mind an audience, but this is between me ’n your sister, so be a good girl and mind your own fucking business.”
Buttercup seethed. “Don’t talk to her like that!”
“Oh, yeah? What’re you gonna do about it?”
The taunt was transparent, but Buttercup fell for it all the same. She always fell for it, her body screaming to meet his blow for blow even if her mind knew better. It had always been that way with Butch, supernatural. He’d been created to destroy her, and even now that they were older and grown out of that artificial good versus evil bullshit, sometimes she felt like he really was out to obliterate her. She lived for that challenge, that push to the limits of fear and fatality, knowing in her bones that no one could get her as close to the edge as Butch could.
And so, reckless in pursuit of that special high only he could give her, Buttercup rocketed toward him, her fists crackling green with power. Butch caught her fists in his, and their power exploded between them.
Buttercup was invincible for all of a half second, and then came the pain. She was blown back with such force that she went flying and landed hard in the parking lot of the Shankaplex movie theater, totaling two cars and ripping a crater open in the asphalt. Her body ached, and when she opened her eyes, she saw double.
“Buttercup!” Bubbles screamed.
But it wasn’t Bubbles who pulled her out of that crater. Butch’s rough hands had her by the collar of her shirt, and he lifted her like a rag doll. His arms smoked where Buttercup’s power had burned him, but his X was healing him fast, and pain had never bothered him anyway.
“Tsk tsk, taking a nap? Am I boring you that much?”
Buttercup could feel that he was about to throw her, and she made a grab for his wrists, only to find that her hands were bruised and cut, and her palms were slick with her own blood. Chemical X was barely healing her at all anymore. A brief flicker of panic petrified her, and Butch smelled it like a shark scenting blood in the water.
“Guess it’s time to finish you off,” he said, grinning.
But he never got the chance, because Bubbles swooped in and tackled him into a movie poster display at full power. Buttercup fell to her knees, coughing and shaking in pain, but her thoughts were only of Bubbles. That inkling of panic she’d felt before blossomed into full-on fear for her baby sister. Bubbles was no match for Butch, not when he was raring to go like this.
As if to prove her fears true, Bubbles went crashing into the asphalt next to Buttercup seconds later, having taken one of Butch’s punishing punches to the stomach dead on. Buttercup stared at her fallen sister and shook with rage.
“What the fuck, Butch! You leave her out of this!” Buttercup screamed at him.
Butch cracked his neck. A horrible gash on his face where Bubbles had injured him sealed before Buttercup’s eyes as the X in his system came to his aid.
“I’m okay,” Bubbles said, sitting up and clutching her stomach. “Just a little winded…”
“Hey, she threw the first punch. Don’t be jealous, BC. You know you’re my main squeeze.” He grinned salaciously at her.
Excruciatingly, Buttercup forced herself to get up. Her limbs were on fire. Logically, she knew she could not take Butch in her state. She had no idea how he had recovered faster than her—fucking teenage boy hormones—but he was in top form and she couldn’t hope to face him fairly like this. Fear faded to fury at her own shortcomings. They were supposed to be equals, but nothing she threw at him could bring him down today.
Still, Buttercup had never forfeited a fight, and she wasn’t about to start now.
“Buttercup, no! You can’t fight him like this! Let me—”
“Shut up, Bubbles,” Buttercup hissed. No way was she going to let Bubbles clean up her mess. Butch was and always would be her problem. She wasn’t going to let him near her sister.
Butch laughed. “That’s more like it. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, here!”
He shot off again, and Buttercup braced herself for a world of pain. If she could just tire him out enough to call it quits, that would be enough without having to forfeit, surely.
A blinding blast of pink energy intercepted Butch before he could ram Buttercup, and she was blown back into Bubble’s arms before she could eat concrete again. When she came to, she saw Blossom’s long ponytail fluttering past her waist, her bare arms sparking with raw, pink power and a deep crag in the concrete leading from her to where Butch now kneeled, smoking and breathing heavily.
Manic jade looked up at Blossom, and despite herself, Buttercup shuddered at the sight. He was good and pissed off now. “And then there were three, huh? I’m in high demand today.”
Blossom ignored him. “Buttercup, are you okay?”
Buttercup’s ire flared again. “I’m fine. What’re you doing here?”
Blossom shot her a glare over her shoulder. “Cleaning up your mess, as usual. What were you thinking fighting him in your state? You know you’re not recovered.”
Pride told Buttercup to defy her imperious sister, but shame and guilt knowing Blossom was right held her back. But it wasn’t like she’d had a choice! When Butch got it in his head that he wanted a fight, there was no stopping him. Before Buttercup got a chance to snap back at Blossom, they were interrupted again.
“What the fuck is this?” Brick landed next to Butch.
Butch rolled his eyes and got to his feet. “Nothing. This is between me and Buttercup.”
Brick’s creepy eyes scanned the ruined parking lot and the few civilians who had poked their heads out of the movie theater to gape at the Supers like fish out of water. “You, Buttercup, and the Mayor’s office when I have to make a case to the city not to fine us for all this property damage.”
An admiring whistle drew everyone’s attention to Boomer hovering a short ways away surveying the damage. “Damn, Butch. You got something against Frozen 2?”
Sure enough, the new kids’ movie advertisement poster was totally destroyed thanks to the explosive fight.
“Huh?” Butch said.
“Enough,” Blossom said. “Brick, take your brother home. He’s done enough damage for one day.”
Brick glared at her, and Buttercup braced herself for the spat she knew was coming.
“We’re not finished here,” Butch said before Brick could get into it with Blossom. “So why don’t you march that fine ass back to chess club or whatever the hell you do after school?”
Brick turned his glare on Butch, and Buttercup felt its departure like the cruel summer sun dipping behind the clouds.
Bubbles gasped. “No! Buttercup, you can’t fight him anymore! I told you this was a bad idea!”
Blossom somehow looked even more incensed. “You came here willingly? I rushed over here thinking Butch had forced you into a fight. Buttercup, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking this has nothing to do with you,” Buttercup said petulantly.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” Blossom growled in frustration. “Why is it always a fight with you? You know what, I don’t care. We’ll talk about this later. Bubbles, take her home.”
Bubbles moved to do that, but one look from Buttercup stayed her hand. No way, no fucking way was Buttercup going to let her big sister swoop in and embarrass her like this. Butch would never let her live it down.
“Hey! Are you deaf? I said this is between me and Buttercup. I’m not gonna tell you again, Blossom.”
Butch bared his teeth, and Buttercup felt her skin crawl. He was seriously not done yet, and a very small part of her began to feel the fear creeping back in. She was not in any condition to fight him, she knew that, but he was in no condition to stop.
“Butch,” Brick warned.
But Butch smacked his hand away. His whole body sparked with green energy, ready to snap. Despite herself, Buttercup swallowed hard.
“Fine,” Blossom said. “You want a fight? I’ll give you the fight of your life.”
Buttercup gaped open-mouthed at her sister, not sure if she’d heard right. Blossom never fought unless all other avenues were exhausted, and she certainly never fought Butch. Even Brick looked momentarily stunned at her challenge.
Butch was quicker to recover and burst out laughing. “Good one! Now seriously, get the hell outta my way.”
Blossom didn’t budge. “No.”
All traces of humor left Butch as he regarded her, and then he glanced at Brick. “Hey, I’m not gonna tell you again. I’m not here for you, so move.”
Blossom was busy removing her pearl studs and bracelet. When she held them out, Buttercup was still too stunned to do anything but accept them without protest.
“This won’t take long,” Blossom said, tightening her ponytail.
“Brick,” Boomer said warily, landing next to his brother.
Brick bristled. “Forget this. I’ll fight you, you fucking masochist.”
“No way bro,” Butch said, stepping forward. “Ladies first. She wants me, can’t you tell?”
Blossom actually laughed, stunning Buttercup for the second time in as many minutes. “Honestly, Buttercup, how do you take this boy seriously?”
Buttercup wanted to be mad, but Butch’s reaction was so sudden and so visceral that it gave her whiplash. He began to shake as his power leaked out of him and clogged the air like noxious fumes. That little, emasculating laugh got him more worked up than any number of Buttercup’s punches had today.
“Hey.” Buttercup reached for Blossom and they locked gazes. She shivered at the cold look in her sister’s eyes. It was one she had not often seen, but one she knew better than to question. The instinct to shrink back was so overwhelming that Buttercup felt her stomach turn, and it was not even directed at her.
She remembered a fight many, many years ago when Princess Morbucks had pushed Blossom too far in her pursuit of power. It was the first time Buttercup had ever seen that remorseless look in her sister’s eyes, and she would never forget it.
Butch was no longer grinning. “I’m gonna enjoy putting you in your place.”
Blossom cocked her head. She was still smiling that eerie, cold smile. “I’m waiting.”
That did it. Before anyone could blink, Butch was coming straight for her, fists blazing.
xxx
“Oh shit!” Boomer flew up to join Bubbles, Buttercup, and Brick in the air as they watched Blossom and Butch collide in a conflagration of pink and green. Butch’s punches, delivered hard and swift enough to break the sound barrier, carried like thunder. “Should we, like, do something?!”
Brick was eerily silent next to him as he followed the fight with a calculating eye. “If he hits her, she’s done for.”
“Like hell,” Buttercup spat. “She’s strong. You should know.”
“Wait, I thought you were the one who was against this?” Boomer asked.
Buttercup grimaced, but she stubbornly refused to let on how much pain she was in. Now that Boomer got a good look at her, she really looked trashed. Jesus, had Butch really done that to her?
“Doesn’t mean I don’t know my sister. She can take him.”
“Except she can’t,” Brick said, watching as Butch fired a green energy beam at Blossom that sent her careening high into the clouds. “I know her too. She’s a glass cannon.”
Blossom’s pink streak came flying in faster than Boomer had ever seen her fly, and Butch was waiting for her with a welcome punch that connected with her ribs. But Blossom swerved with his force and rammed her elbow mercilessly against the back of his neck. Her blunt force was so great that he went cashing into the woods beyond the Shankaplex, where he landed with a monstrous crack. Blossom waited for him to reemerge, a hand pressed to her side but otherwise masking her pain.
Bubbles gasped, and Buttercup shot Brick a scathing grin. “You were saying?”
Brick’s eyes were glued to Blossom. “Butch hits like a freight train. She won’t be able to absorb his punches indefinitely.”
Buttercup laughed, but in her injured state, it came out more like a wheeze. “Dude, you don’t know this Blossom.”
Brick glanced at her askance, and Boomer wondered. What did that mean?
“That tickled!” Butch shouted as he came flying back ready to go again. “Do it again!”
Blossom was silent as she waited for him to come to her. He came in hot, but this time she didn’t let his punch connect. More elegantly than Boomer thought her capable of, Blossom avoided him entirely, grabbed his hair, and kneed him in the stomach.
Boomer gasped—gasped, because holy hell—as Butch hacked up a lung and clutched his stomach. “I think she broke some ribs!” Chemical X or no, that one really had to hurt.
Blossom put some distance between Butch and herself and took a deep breath.
“Incoming!” Bubbles dashed away with Buttercup, and Boomer shoved Brick out of the path of danger just in time to avoid getting caught up in Blossom’s powerful ice breath.
Butch didn’t even try to avoid it, and soon he was covered in a layer of thick ice. Not one to be restrained, however, his eyes glowed red and his eye beams burst through the ice. Blossom avoided the laser that wasn’t really aiming at her anyway and came in from behind to catch him unawares.
Unfortunately, Butch was not bothered by the ice and burst out of it just as Blossom came in close. He managed to grab her ponytail and reel her in like a fish. The punch he landed on her jaw sent her spinning, and she hit a billboard advertising pet food right through Talking Dog’s face.
“Ha!!! Take that!” Butch dashed after her, and Boomer watched as Blossom peeled herself off the destroyed billboard and narrowly avoided a second pummeling. Butch hit the billboard and knocked the whole structure over like a falling domino. It was only Bubbles’ timely intervention that kept it from crashing on top of a Cooper’s Market.
Pink and green sped around each other as Butch chased Blossom. He fired his eye beams and his green energy beams in the hopes of hitting her at a distance, but she was quick and extremely precise in her movements in a way Boomer knew he himself was not, and Butch was even less coordinated than him. It was like watching Brick, he realized. Brick was so in control of his body, of every single minute movement he made, that it didn’t matter that he wasn’t physically as strong as Butch or as fast as Boomer. There was no surprising him or tripping him up, and Blossom was no different.
But did Butch know that?
“Stop running! I thought you were gonna give me the fight of my life, what happened? You scared?” Butch taunted as he tried to catch Blossom.
She was stony-faced as she avoided his grabs and his eye beams alike, but made no effort to return fire or respond.
“That’s risky,” Brick muttered.
“What’s risky?” Boomer asked.
“She’s trying to tire him out, hoping he’ll burn up all his X. But Butch has more reserves than you or me. His stamina’s even better than Buttercup’s.”
“That’s not what she’s doing,” Bubbles said.
Brick shot her a withering look like he couldn’t believe she dared to contradict him. “Oh, really?” he said sarcastically.
Bubbles didn’t even flinch. “Really.”
Brick scoffed and returned his attention to the fight.
“What’s the matter, Blossom! Get over here and fight me!”
Butch threw another punch that she artfully avoided. Pissed off, he shot at her with his eye beams, but Blossom swerved and struck him with the heel of her hand under the jaw. His eye beams went awry.
“Shit!” Buttercup said.
Brick was paying closer attention than Boomer, however, and intercepted the stray eye beams before they could strike anyone. His jacket sleeve smoked and sizzled where a new hole had opened up.
“Tch,” he said.
Butch shook himself out like a wet dog. He was bleeding from his mouth and his eyes were dilated, but he was still fighting fit. If he was wearing out, he was hiding it well. Boomer glanced at Bubbles.
“So what is Blossom doing?”
Bubbles looked more concerned than grim as she watched. “She’s feeling him out.”
“She’s making him mad,” Buttercup said.
Boomer winced. That didn’t sound like a good idea facing Butch. The guy was an unstoppable force when he was mad.
“But why—”
Crack!
Boomer whipped around just in time to see that Butch had finally landed another hit on Blossom and sent her flying out of control. She clutched her side as he sped after her, no longer laughing or taunting; he just wanted to finish her off now, it seemed. Beside Boomer, Brick sucked in an audible breath as he watched.
Butch wound up a punch. Blossom wasn’t moving to avoid. Boomer lost his mind.
“Watch out!” he screamed at her, unable to help himself.
Buttercup and Brick looked at Boomer like he’d grown another head. Butch caught up to Blossom, but just as his punch connected, she grabbed his wrist, spun gracefully behind him, and unleashed her eye beams at point blank range on the back of his neck.
Even Brick winced at that one.
“Fuck yeah!!” Buttercup shouted. “How’s that taste, Butch!”
Butch staggered in the air, his hands clutching his smoking neck. They came away bloody. Boomer didn’t miss the filthy look he shot Blossom.
“Forfeit,” Blossom called to him. “You can’t win.”
“Fuck you,” Butch spat. “I was going easy on you. No more.”
With a crackle of energy, Butch’s signature shield materialized around him. And then, he was after her again.
xxx
That’s it. She’s done, Brick thought to himself.
As soon as Butch brought out his shield, there was little and less to be done about it aside from waiting him out. Even Brick had trouble against him when he donned what was essentially impenetrable armor.
It was kind of a shame, really. She’d surprised him in this fight. Brick couldn’t recall her taking hits so well when they’d clashed in the past. Granted, that was years ago, but still.
He glanced at her sisters. They were still watching the fight, but they didn’t seem particularly deterred. Brick narrowed his eyes, and he considered.
Could she really…?
“Hiding behind your shield? How predictable,” Blossom taunted him, something Brick had rarely known her to do.
“I predict you’re about to eat shit!” Butch hurtled after her, but she danced ever out of reach.
His shield was truly something. It molded roughly to the shape of him, extending with his punches and folding with his blocks. It was a drain on his X reserves, but it was his best and only real defense.
Blossom couldn’t know this, though. Blossom had never fought Butch. But then, she was fast learning him with every punch, every dodge, every overreaction to her baiting.
Despite himself, Brick’s attention was fully arrested as he watched them. Even his migraine had subsided to a dull ache as he ignored it in favor of following the fight.
Blossom got in a good punch, but Butch’s shield was truly impenetrable, and all she got for her efforts was a crackle of jade sparks and a hurt fist. She immediately pulled back.
“That shield is so strong!” Bubbles said.
Buttercup grunted. Blossom didn’t try to hit Butch again, but he did his level best to strike her.
“Hey, is this what they call playing hard to get?” Butch sneered as he lobbed another punch at Blossom.
“I’m right here, Butch. Come and get me,” she taunted again.
What the hell is she playing at?
The Blossom Brick knew was not one to joke and jab, but the more she did it, the more riled up Butch got. She couldn’t possibly be trying to make him mad. That was suicidal for anyone who wasn’t Brick himself. And that shield…
“C’mon and give us a hug!” Butch sped after her, his only goal to grab her and crush her under the force of his shield. Sloppy and uncoordinated, but if he managed to grab her, that would be the end of it.
“What the—?!” Boomer sputtered.
Brick barely had time to be shocked as Blossom stopped her flight and spread her arms as if to hug Butch like he wanted. Brick was moving before he could process it, a command on the tip of his tongue, because no matter how much he despised Blossom, he couldn’t very well let his brother literally kill her.
Butch grabbed her before Brick could reach them, and Blossom flexed as she braced herself, her pink power manifesting like a second skin as Butch wrapped his meaty arms around her smaller frame with every intention of snapping her in half. Buttercup shouted something, but Brick couldn’t hear her over the racing wind in his ears as he tore after them, and then—
“F-F-Fuck!” Butch groaned.
His shield, his whole body was engulfed in preternatural ice as Blossom hugged him tight enough to break. Her arms were covered in ice that would not shatter no mater how much Butch struggled. He tried to fire off his eye beams, but she had ducked her head under his chin, safe from his fire. Impossibly, his green shield began to collapse as the ice and Blossom herself crushed him like a soda can.
They crash landed well away from the Shankaplex and any civilians just by the edge of the forest. Brick swooped down after them, the others not far behind. When he landed, he found Butch face down eating dirt and covered in chunks of ice, his shield completely dissipated, as Blossom towered over him. She had his wrists in her hands and her boot on the back of his head, grinding him further into the ground. Ice coated her arms like armor, and there was no mercy in her eyes.
“B-Blossom, babe, c’mon,” Butch said in what was meant to be a playful tone, but came out sounding like a whimper.
Blossom leaned down over him. “Call me babe again.” She drove her heel harder into the side of his head, sinking him deeper into the earth.
Butch struggled against her. He fired green energy beams from his palms, but Blossom pulled harder on his arms and sent them harmlessly awry.
“Let me be perfectly clear, Butch. You’re going to leave my sister alone for the rest of the month while you both recover.” She peered at him over her knee until his green eye swiveled to see her. “Tell me you understand.”
He grinned, and his teeth were a red ruin. “I don’t take orders from you—ah fuck!”
Blossom yanked his left arm back and dislocated it with a severe pop. She twisted the other one behind his back and hauled him up by his hair. “You do now.”
Her eyes glowed red, her hair was a windswept mess, and she had Butch—Butch, the fiercest fighter—on his fucking knees under her absolute control, and it was single-handedly the most beautiful sight Brick had ever seen in his life. It was perfect, and she was…
For a mad moment, he imagined her pinning him on his knees, her hand fisting his hair, exerting that control he had always pursued but never from her, until this moment.
“Brick, shouldn’t you…?” Boomer said.
Realizing she and Butch had an audience, Blossom looked up and locked eyes with Brick, and he shivered.
Oh hell.
“Hey, I like you on your knees,” Buttercup said, approaching Butch and Blossom. “Definitely your best angle.”
Butch spit blood and a piece of broken tooth. Nonetheless, he managed a smirk for her. “Next time, just ask.”
Blossom shoved him back into the dirt, and he promptly shut up.
Boomer sighed and floated over. “C’mon, dude. Let’s get you home.”
“I got it,” Butch complained, but he struggled to get to his feet.
“You seriously don’t. Can you even stand? Jesus.”
“Blossom!” Bubbles hugged her sister, who winced at the pressure.
“Bubbles, not so tight! I’m a little sore.” She smiled and brushed her bangs out of her eyes.
“You were amazing!”
Blossom grinned. “I know.”
“Serves you right, moron,” Buttercup said to Butch. “You’ll be pissing sitting down for a week.”
Boomer snorted as he looped Butch’s arm over his shoulder. “You got that right.”
“Ha ha, hilarious. Fuck you both,” Butch groused. His eyes flickered to Blossom, guarded.
“Brick? You coming?” Boomer asked.
Brick rubbed his mouth. He felt woozy. Bubbles shot him a curious look that he chose not to dwell on. “Take that idiot home. Make sure he doesn’t bleed all over the place.”
“Uh, right… What’re you gonna do?”
“I’m right behind you.”
His brothers flew off—or rather, Boomer flew and Butch dangled precariously from his shoulder. Finally, Brick turned his attention to Blossom.
“Blossom,” he said, his voice tight.
She looked up at him. “Brick.”
He swallowed, the image of her dominating Butch while she looked at him burned into his mind’s eye. So that was never going away… “Butch is my problem. Next time, you leave him to me.”
She regarded him, and so slowly he may have imagined it had he not been hyper-focused on her every movement, her lips curled in little smirk. “There’s not going to be a next time.”
In that moment, Brick had never felt so bewildered and so attracted to another person in his entire life. It was over all too soon as she showed him her back and spoke to her sisters. They were heading home. Like a fucking idiot, he just stood there, mind blown.
Did that really just happen?
Oh god, she was talking to him again. He blinked and tried to focus.
“What?” he said, fucking idiot that he was.
“The repairs. Look, I know you would rather chew glass than be around me, but you know the Mayor appreciates an in-person explanation and apology for this kind of damage. Are you coming, or do I have to tell him once again that you couldn’t be bothered?”
“No, I’m coming. I’ll talk to the Mayor with you.”
She peered at him like she didn’t quite recognize him. “All right… Thanks.”
xxx
That evening, after all was said and done and Boomer was showered and ready to go to Julie’s party, he gave Brick one more chance to come along instead of languor at home with a passed out Butch. The guy was out cold and would likely remain so for the next day after the beating Blossom had dealt him.
“You sure you don’t wanna come?” he asked.
Brick was lounging on the living room sofa where he had his nose in a Kurt Vonnegut novel. “No.”
“Everyone’s gonna be there, you know.”
“Great.” Ignore.
Boomer shrugged. “Wes and Kim, Mike, Robin, Bubbles, Harry, the Floyjoydson Twins.”
Brick grunted noncommittally.
Boomer adjusted his jacket and pretended not to watch Brick like a hawk. “Blossom too.”
Pause.
Brick’s gaze flickered over the top of his book to catch Boomer’s eye. “This isn’t some themed shit like that last one, is it?”
“Nope. Just friends, drinking games, the usual. But if your migraine’s still bugging you, I’d get you wanting to go to bed early—”
“I’ll go for an hour.” Brick closed his book and got up off the sofa.
“Cool. Cool cool cool…” It took every ounce of self control Boomer had in him not to smile at his brother’s expense.
Brick when to change his shirt, and Boomer pulled out his phone and texted Bubbles.
[Boomer: I think you’re right. He’s finally seen the light.]
[Bubbles: I told you! Did you see the way he was staring at her??? Shook.]
Boomer laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Brick asked as he reemerged in a button down shirt. Had he brushed his hair? Christ, he’d actually brushed his hair.
Shooketh.
Boomer grinned. “Nothing, man. Just looking forward to a fun night.”
“Whatever.”
They headed out, and Boomer trailed his brother’s red streak.
