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Just Curious

She grinned at the reply.





And though America was often held, rightly so, as a person who liked to put others to good use (often for herself) the smile she gave the message was less for the promised labor, and entirely for the thought that maybe he'd be here for it. Maybe he'd actually try to make a home to come back to time and again.

Take Two

Take Two

Retrieval

The girl made a small, unhappy sound, either at the trading card comment or her hair, which, despite her efforts, would be poufy the rest of the day, until she got time for a shower. But she had minipet duty in a half hour, and there was no sense in cleaning before that. A messy braid followed, which she then pinned up, out of the way of tiny hands that liked to grab and pull and climb an unwary Rapunzel.

"It's a nice picture of you," she repeated, insistent. Spinning toward him she raised her eyebrows in challenge as she passed by and went to her dresser. "If you don't want that one up, give me another to replace it."

America pulled out a pair of cargo pants and hooked her thumbs into the band of her running shorts, clearly intent on finishing the process of changing her clothes as well.

Retrieval

"I'm already trying to navigate one photo-related negotiation with you, I don't want to--"

He realized what she was doing, the words cut off abruptly in his throat, and he made a disgusted sound and turned for the door with his arms full, averting his eyes so hard they might actually pop out of his head and roll across the floor.

"All right then. Have a good morning. Notice," he added from the door, "that I didn't whip out my camera. Because I am a ******** gentleman." This was accusatory, as though she'd taken a picture of him in his skivvies, instead of sending Mark to snap a photo of him leaning fully clothed in a doorway.

Not a Lie

The cake was chocolate, and it was frosted with an extremely inexpert hand that indicated it was not store bought this time (partly out of a lack of luck bribing leave-goers and partly out of an unfounded idea that making the cake might make it more real this time) but he'd ringed it with strawberries since that had been her first answer and then, in an unexpectedly jokey move, he'd clumsily but meticulously iced "happy birthday" onto it.

He summoned her via text, the evening after their ill-fated spar, a day he'd spent quiet and pensive and avoiding talking to anyone but especially to her. And he found the party hats in the top of his closet, tucked away with the relocated photos of Tuesday and a pair of red boots, and the fact that they existed was an inexplicable relief. He arranged them on the desk with the cake, and folded himself up with a book, not on the chair, but on the edge of the bed--and waited.

Not a Lie

Some ounce of tension loosened rather than tightened out of his shoulders when she sat next to him instead of claiming The Chair in that way she had of making it seem like a throne. He turned the hat over in his hands before placing it with dignity on his head, and then he reached out and stole from one corner of the cake a strawberry that wasn't too much swimming in frosting.

"Not so huge this time, so don't feel the need to go proving your iron stomach," he said. "And no liquor, which I guess might help." He hesitated, clearly on the edge of saying something else, and chased off the words by popping the strawberry into his mouth and letting his eyes drift over her shoulder to Quint and Jessel's snoozing shapes in their cage. Eating in front of her felt profoundly wrong. "No repeats of the possum incident," he said sternly after the few seconds of bought time.