#mvdrabble

“Do, too,” Jefferson said. He pushed himself off the wall they were leaning against and swung himself to face his friend directly, folding his arms across his chest with a triumphant grin. “And you always chew your lip like that when you’re caught at it.”

Nat swore and folded his arms across his chest, frowning deeper. “Fine,” he said. “I lied. I don’t have a crush on Mina.”

“So…?” Jefferson prompted, grinning broader. He waited, but was met only with a silent frown. “Who do you have a crush on?”

Nat grumbled and slouched a little lower against the wall, his scarlet eyes breaking away from Jefferson’s blue ones to glance over the other boy’s shoulder. “Your sister,” he grumbled, unfolding his arms to allow his left hand to creep up the side of his face.

Jefferson reclaimed his previous spot against the wall and glanced out at the benches lining the edge of the playground. Sure enough, he spotted Ellie sitting on the closest one, her nose stuck in a book. “My sister, huh?” he asked, turning his head to give Nat a pointed look, but his friend was determinedly looking in the other direction.

“Yeah, your sister.”

“Uh-huh… well this—” Jefferson reached up and grabbed Nat’s hand, pulling it away from his ear. “—says you’re still lying to me.”

Nat dropped the hand to his side as his bottom lip found its way between his teeth. He looked down at the hand his friend was still holding, his gaze following the length of Jefferson’s arm until he was looking at the other boy’s face. He let his fingers slip between his friend’s and gave his hand a squeeze. “Okay,” he said. “Maybe not your sister.”

“Yeah, didn’t think so,” Jefferson said, and leaned forward, pressing his lips to his friend’s. As quickly as the kiss began, Jefferson pulled away, keeping a firm grip on Nat’s hand. “Ellie!” he yelled. “I was right! It’s me! You owe me twenty bucks!”

His sister responded with a rude hand gesture without glancing up from her book.

Jefferson turned back to Nat, grinning, only to be met with an incredulous look from his friend. “You two had bet going on who I liked?”

“Yeah, ‘cause I knew I was right,” he said. “‘Sides,” he went on, “this way I’ve got cash to buy popcorn on Friday.”

“…popcorn?”

“Didn’t you wanna go see Spider-Man? I was gonna take you — I mean, if you wanted to.”

Nat grinned at Jefferson as the bell rang, signaling the end of their free period. “Sounds great,” he said, and the two walked back to class, hand in hand.

He hadn’t called her when it had happened. She hadn’t expected him to, she supposed, but when she’d arrived at the hospital later that morning and asked how long he’d been sitting in the empty room, staring at the empty bed, he’d given her little more than a shrug. She’d seated herself on the sofa under the window, and they’d sat in silence for a long time, until a nurse had come in and politely asked them to leave.

Take care of him for me, when I’m gone.

Gretta had promised, hadn’t she? She had. And she was determined to keep her promise. She’d taken him home and fed him, found him some of Dil’s old pajamas and put him to bed in Cadence’s old room — and all the while, he hadn’t said a word, until he’d given her a quiet thank you as she’d turned out the light.

“What can I get you?” she asked. She waited, but her question didn’t seem to have registered, just as none of her questions the past several days had registered. She reached out and lightly touched his elbow. “Taz?”

He jumped at her touch and raised his grey eyes to look at her for a moment, and then turned his gaze back to the carpet. That was more than he’d given her since it had happened; it was something, at least.

“Taz,” she said again, but this time he didn’t even bother to look up.

She stooped down, half-squatting, half-kneeling, and tried to angle herself to peer into his face, but he didn’t flinch. She let her hand run down his arm and took a firm hold of his hand, squeezing it tightly.

“It’s been a hard day for all of us,” she said. “Try and get some sleep, Taz. Let me know if you need anything.”

Buck opened his mouth to protest, but Nick beat him to it. “Too easy,” he said. “Way too easy. The accent’s way over the top. Takes all the fun out of it.”

“Gonna be honest, ain’t sure if that’s a compliment,” Buck said, frowning. “But I’ll take it.”

“You, on the other hand,” Nick said, jabbing a finger into Taz’s shoulder, “are more of a challenge. Those clipped vowels, that subtle, nasally whine—”

“Nasally whine?” Taz repeated

Buck nearly choked on his beer. Coughing, he raised the bottle in a salute to Nick as he recovered. “Hit that one right on the head, Nick,” he said.

“See? I knew I liked this guy. He gets it.” Nick raised his own drink in return.

“Who even is this guy?” Taz demanded, swiveling on his barstool to squint in Buck’s direction. “Come on, strutting in here with this ‘country boy’ aesthetic—”

“See, that’s another reason why you’re better to make fun of,” Nick interjected. “Who the fuck uses words like ‘aesthetic’?”

“Sona uses words like ‘aesthetic,’” Buck said. “Our first tour together, she was hatin’ on my bus, and she told me—what was it, now… Oh, right — exposed industrial lighting ain’t her aesthetic. Guess I know where she got that one from, huh?”

Nick and Buck both looked pointedly at Taz, who made a point not to look at either of them as he stirred his drink some more.

Nick quickly counted the number of limes littered across the bar and glanced down into Taz’s mug. “I’m pretty sure that’s like eighty-two percent lime juice at this point,” he said.

“What’s the other eighteen percent, then?”

“Ten percent backwash, six percent ginger beer, two percent vodka.”

“Shows how much you know,” Taz said with a scoff. “It’s gin.”

“My bad,” Nick answered, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. He exchanged a glance with Buck and rolled his eyes as Taz took a sip of his drink, immediately spitting it back into the mug.

“Ugh, that’s disgusting. You were right. Nothing but lime juice.”

A loud chime sounded from Taz’s other side, and the two of them glanced over to see Buck checking a message on his phone, his face instantly splitting into a grin. “Gotta go, y’all,” he said, tossing back the rest of his beer. “It’s been great, we should do this again sometime—”

“Woah, woah, where are you going?” Taz asked as Buck threw a wad of cash onto the bar and slid off his barstool.

“Yeah,” Nick added, in a near-perfect imitation of Taz, “you were supposed to buy the next round!”

Taz turned to argue with Nick as Buck threw a few additional dollars on the bar. “There’s y’all’s next round,” he said. “Now I really gotta go — we’re havin’ a baby!”

“What? Right now?” Nick instantly dropped the imitation of Taz as he began fumbling for his own wallet, Taz doing likewise on the stool beside him. “The baby’s coming now?”

“Yep — well, babies. See y’all around—”

She glanced up from the limes she was cutting to frown at the mug and give him a pointed look. “Literally,” she repeated. She gestured to the mug with her knife before returning to her limes. “You know where the gin is.”

“You gin-uinely wound me,” he said, and grinned as he narrowly dodged half a lime as it came sailing towards his head. “See? Figuratively.”

She frowned at him.

“Gretta, babe, you make the best mules. I wouldn’t dream of trying to make a drink as good as yours—”

“Now you’re just trying to flatter me, and flattery will get you nowhere,” Gretta said without looking up from what she was doing. She dropped a freshly-cut lime into his mug, sliding it back across the bar to him. “Make your own mule.”

He frowned, glancing down into the mug, then looked back up at her. “This is just half a lime,” he said. “I can’t make a mule with just half a lime.”

“You know where the gin is,” she said again.

He glanced back down into his mug and frowned at it again, then slid off his barstool and walked around the end of the counter. He rummaged around under the bar for a moment until he found a bottle of gin. He unscrewed the top and poured a measure into his mug, considered the amount he’d poured, and then doubled it.

“That’s going to taste terrible, you know,” Gretta said.

“You taste terrible, you know,” he grumbled back. He realized he’d left the lime in the bottom of is mug when he’d poured in the gin, briefly considered trying to extract it, then settled for helping himself to another piece of lime from Gretta’s cutting board.

She slapped his hand away with the flat of the knife. “You’ve already got a lime.”

“It’s covered in gin,” he said.

“It’s going into the gin anyway.”

Taz frowned again and looked back into his mug, reaching into it with two fingers to fish the lime out. After managing to do little more than just push the lime around the bottom of the cup for nearly thirty seconds, he made an irritable noise and set the mug back down on the counter.

“Would you like some help, dear?” Gretta asked, fighting back a smile as she saw the pout on his face. She held out her hand for his mug, and he obliged. She dipped her fingers into it and deftly extracted the wedge of lime, quickly squeezing the juice into the cup of gin before throwing away the peel and handing the mug back to him.

He mumbled a quick thank you and looked down into the mug, but still frowned. He eyed the small pile of limes on the cutting board he reached out for another one, but she swatted his hand away again. “But, Gretta! The gin-lime ratio isn’t right!”

“That’s your own fault for putting too much liquor in there,” she said. “You have to live with the consequences of your actions.”

“Would you say this drink is… bad and boozy?”

Gretta groaned loudly, her face contorted in a pained expression. “Oh my God, Taz, that was so bad,” she said. “I told you, I am literally going to stab you if you make one more stupid pun.”

“So would that be my… pun-ishment?”

She reached out to give him a playful swat, but he caught her by the wrist and pulled her into him, grinning broadly as he leaned in to give her a deep kiss.

“You know,” she said, after he’d pulled away, “your kisses are truly… sub-lime.”

For a moment, he struggled to keep a straight face as she held up one of the halved limes, but an instant later the both of them were laughing.

“But seriously, if you make one more stupid pun, I will literally stab you,” she said, suddenly serious. “Not kidding.”

“Okay, okay,” Taz said, holding his hands up in a placating gesture as he took a step back form her. “You’ve made your… point.”

He laughed again at the look of exasperation on Gretta’s face and dodged out of her arm’s reach as she went to swat at him again, snatching up a few limes and the bottle of gin and returning to his barstool, safely on the opposite side of the counter. He squeezed another lime into his drink and then frowned, looking around for his third ingredient.

“Could you pass me one of those ginger beers? I forgot to grab one before I sat back down.”

“No,” she said. As he opened his mouth to protest, she elaborated: “Your puns are too un-beer-able.”

He groaned and buried his face into his hands. “I did this to myself,” he said. “I did this to myself, I’m never making another bad joke again—”

Gretta laughed as she popped the top off a bottle of ginger beer and slid it across to him. “Now you’re just lying to yourself,” she said. “All your jokes are bad.”

“Not all of them.”

“All of them.” She glanced at the copper mug as he poured in a measure of ginger beer. “They’re almost as bad as that drink is about to be.”

“Well, if you’d just made it for me—”

“Consequences.” She waited for him to swirl the contents of his mug and take a tentative sip, laughing at the grimace that instantly appeared on his face. She pulled a second mug from under the bar and quickly mixed a fresh drink, sliding it across to him. “Here,” she said. “I can’t watch you drink that.”

“No, no, consequences.” He took a breath to steel himself, then tossed back the rest of the drink he’d concocted for himself, giving an involuntary shudder as it slid down his throat. “Too much ginger,” he said. “I think my mouth is actually burning.”

“Maybe you should pour a little more ginger-ly next time?” she offered.

“Okay, now I will literally stab you if you make one more stupid pun.”

She folded her arms in front of her and leaned across the bar toward him as he took a sip of his fresh drink, smirking.

He eyed her skeptically over the rim of his mug. “What?”

“Figuratively,” she corrected. “You will figuratively stab me.”

Gretta shook her head, half smiling, and carefully picked her way through the debris scattered across the carpet toward the cardboard box that Taz had turned into a makeshift trash can and shoved into one corner of the room. He watched her pick through the plastic bags and styrofoam peanuts at the top of the box, and a moment later she’d thrown a packet of illustrated papers at him. “Here,” she said. “These should help.”

“I don’t need directions,” he said, frowning as he unfolded the instructions. “I can do it.”

Gretta gestured to the debris spread across the floor. “Yes. Clearly. It’s been, what, four hours? You’ve made such great progress.”

“These don’t even have directions written on them,” Taz said, turning the instructions sideways and squinting at them. “Just pictures of little stick figures. This one’s not even doing anything, he’s just holding a hammer and looking sad.”

“You’re supposed to follow the pictures,” Gretta said. “A child could do it.”

Taz rolled up the instructions and used them to gesture toward Gretta’s middle. “Then when that child gets here it can build its own damn crib,” he said. He lowered the rolled-up paper as a slow, sheepish grin spread across her face. “What? What’s that look for?” he asked as she stepped over a pile of screws and lowered herself to sit on the floor beside him. He eyed the box as she held it out to him. “What’s this?”

“Remember how I had the ultrasound tech write down the sex but not tell us?”

He opened the box and saw a nondescript cupcake inside. “A cupcake?”

“I took the note from the ultrasound tech to that little bakery downtown. The filling inside is colored. Pink for a girl, blue for a boy.”

He pulled the cupcake out of the box and looked at it. “Just take a bite?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

He looked at the cupcake for another moment, glanced at Gretta, and then unceremoniously shoved the whole thing into his mouth.

“Taz!”

He gave her an apologetic shrug. “Guess it’ll just have to be a surprise,” he said around a mouthful of cupcake. He swallowed with some difficulty and then gave her a broad grin, pulling her into a tight hug, planting a kiss on her forehead. “I never do follow directions.”

She extricated herself from his embrace and clambered back to her feet. “I’ll leave you to your mess,” she said, making her way toward the door. She paused in the doorway to look back at him over her shoulder. “You’ve got some blue frosting in your teeth, by the way.”

She took a moment to laugh loudly as he clapped his hands over his mouth to shield his teeth.

“Just kidding,” she said, and he lowered his hands, giving her a look of mock-hurt. “It was pink.”

“C’mon, shug, why’re you always tryin’ to get rid of me?” he asked. “Don’t tell me your folks’ve still got a ‘no boys allowed’ rule for you.”

“It’s not my parents, it’s — ugh, just shoo!”

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere, sunshine,” he said. “At least, not without a kiss first.”

She set her guitar down on the porch beside her and stood as he closed his eyes and puckered his lips. She closed the short distance between them and planted a quick peck on his lips. “There’s your kiss,” she said. “Now get out of here!”

He caught her wrist as she made another shooing motion. “C’mon, shug, that ain’t a kiss.”

She frowned at him and glanced over her shoulder again. Satisfied that no one was peeking through the living room curtains, she turned back to him and kissed him again, letting her mouth linger on his this time as his teeth grazed her lower lip, his hand releasing her wrist to rest briefly just below her ribs before sliding down toward the waistband of her cut-off shorts and into her back pocket while his other hand wound itself in her long grey hair.

She had just let her own hand come to rest on the side of his face and was savoring the feeling of his stubble under her palm when the sound of someone clearing their throat startled them both, shattering the moment as Sonata’s head whipped around to see her grandfather frowning at them, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

“Oh, um — hi, Grandpa. We were just—”

Taz’s frown deepened. “I literally could not be less surprised.”

“Um, sir,” Buck started, “I can expl—”

“I expected this from your mother, but come on, Sona. Just — please tell me he’s not a musician.” A beat passed. Taz unfolded his arms long enough to throw his hands into the air. “Typical! Typical! I give up! Fucking musicians, I swear to God—” He turned and stalked back inside, grumbling indistinctly under his breath, slamming the door behind him.

“Sorry about that,” Sonata said, turning back to Buck once she was sure Taz wasn’t about to reemerge. “Grandpa Taz — he, uh, doesn’t really like musicians.”

“I, uh, figured that much out.”

She glanced over her shoulder again long enough to see her dad and grandfather frowning through the living room curtains. “Maybe, um — maybe you should go,” she said.

“Um — yeah. Yeah, um. I’ll call you tonight? Thinkin’ about heading down to the Toad for a few drinks around eight.”

“I’ll see you there,” she said, leaning across the porch railing to give him a kiss goodbye.

“I know as much as Envy told me,” she said, dabbing at the scrape on his blue cheek with a damp cloth. “I know your name is Tzuriel. That’s something, right?”

“My name was Tzuriel,” he corrected. “Envy said I probably shouldn’t hang onto it. She said it sticks out too much down here.”

“It does kind of scream ‘Overworld,’” she conceded. “It’s not so bad down here, though. Think of this as a fresh start. You can make yourself into whomever you want to be.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, rolling his eyes. “No house, no car, no job, no money, I’m fucking blue—”

“And I’m red. Envy’s green. That spoiled prick sitting on the throne in the citadel is dandelion yellow. That’s just how it is down here. No one’s going to think twice about you being blue, trust me.”

“Okay, being blue aside, how exactly am I supposed to make myself into someone new if I can’t even afford a hot meal?”

“Let me worry about that,” she said, unscrewing the lid from a tube of ointment. “I’ll get my brother to help you out. He’s got a pretty cushy desk job; I’ll get him to put in a good word for you at his company, and get him to let you crash on his couch for a while. I’ll take you to get some new clothes—”

Tzuriel winced as she dabbed the ointment onto the scrape on his chin. “I can’t let you do that,” he said, pushing her hand away. “I’m not going to rely on handouts—”

She swatted his hand away and resumed dabbing the cream onto his chin. “It’s a loan, then. Not an act of charity.”

“Why would you do that?” he asked, eying her suspiciously. “Why would you help a complete stranger like this?”

She sat back on her heels, replacing the cap on the ointment and fishing for a bandaid in her first-aid kit. “What, you were expecting all doom and gloom and death and darkness? Fire and brimstone?”

“Honestly, yeah.”

Her golden eyes flicked up to meet his grey ones as she peeled the adhesive backing from the bandaid, and she gave him a half-smile. “Well, surprise,” she said, sticking the bandage over the cut. “It’s not all death and despair down here. So do you want some help or not?”

He considered for a long moment, and finally sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I need some help. Not like I’ve got anything to lose, right?”

“That’s the spirit,” she said dryly.

“Look, I don’t even know your name. I’m just going on complete faith that you’re—”

“Allegretta Delaforte,” she said, thrusting out a hand for him to shake. “Just Gretta’s fine, though. And you are…?”

The coils of the mattress creaked in protest as the demon sat beside her, and she found herself wondering just how they’d ended up here. They should never have been able to even see each other in the first place, and yet here they were, years later, sitting in a human’s apartment in the Middleworld, and he — smelling faintly of gin — was telling her she was his best friend.

“Overworld,” he was saying now. “Underworld. Middleworld. Otherworld. Take your pick. I’ll pick you every time. I’d do anything for you. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know that,” she said. “You’re my best friend too, I guess.”

“You guess? Wow, thanks.”

“I’m only teasing,” she said. “You’re — I don’t know. Something like a best friend.”

“That’s not really any better,” he said. “Sometimes I’m not even sure you like me at all.”

She laughed. “I do like you,” she said. “A lot, actually. You’re… something different. I don’t know. Something special. Is that what happens when you save someone’s life?”

He didn’t answer, but made an odd sort of motion, as though he were about to take her hand in his but thought better of it, and as he quickly looked away to stare at an indistinct spot on the ceiling, it struck her suddenly that, through all the years they’d known each other, they had never touched. Could they touch? They’d never had reason to, really — but it struck her as odd, that in nearly three years of unexpected meetings and impromptu coffees at the local café and, lately, his frequent midnight visits to the tiny apartment she’d been living in, not once could she remember stepping on the heel of his shoe or bumping his elbow or grazing his hand while passing him the sugar. She’d saved his life, but they’d never shared so much as a handshake. For a moment, she wondered if they would just pass through each other like a couple of ghosts, or if they would be able to feel each other — and then she found herself wondering what he felt like, if his blue skin would be warm under her fingers, or if it would be cool to the touch, if his manicured hands were really as soft as they looked, what the grey stubble on his chin at the end of the day might feel like against her cheek, what his lips—

She felt color rush to her cheeks as her train of thought came to an abrupt halt, and she buried her warm face in her hands, thankful that it was dark in the small apartment.

“Adia? Everything okay?”

“Great,” she answered without lowering her hands. She could feel the mattress shift beneath her as he leaned forward to try and see her face through the darkness.

“Are you sure?” he asked, and she could hear the trace of a laugh behind his voice.

“Yep. Great.”

A beat of silence passed between them.

Well aware that he was still looking at her, she kept her eyes firmly shut behind her hands.

“Mm-hmm,” he said. “So what are you thinking about over there that’s suddenly got you so sheepish?”

She cracked one eye open just wide enough to peek at him through her fingers and saw him grinning at her, his grey eyes glinting mischievously in the dim light from the streetlight outside.

“Oh, go on somewhere,” she said, and then they were both laughing as she pulled her hands away from her face to give his chest a light shove.

And suddenly, their laughter died, and a silence passed between them as the they each registered what had happened. Her fingers trembling slightly, she reached out and lightly touched his cheek. He covered her shaking hand with his own steady one and closed his eyes, leaning into her touch for a moment before bringing her hand to his lips and lightly kissing her fingertips.

And the next thing she knew, he had pulled her into his arms and was kissing her — really kissing her — and she was breathing in the heavy scent of his cologne and the gin, and she could feel the scratch of his stubble against her cheek as he nipped at her ear and kissed down her neck, and his fingers wound themselves into her long hair, and—

“Adia?”

Her eyes shot open and the moment was gone, the demon vanishing as soon as the hall light came on. One hand instinctively flew to the back of her head to smooth her hair down as she cleared her throat. “Jason,” she said. “What are you doing up?”

“I thought I heard you talking to someone,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he peered blearily around the room, confirming no one else was in the apartment. “Must’ve been a dream. Did I wake you?”

“No.”

Jason gave up on rubbing the sleep from his eyes and yawned hugely. “Well, good night again, then…” He turned and shuffled back down the short hallway to the apartment’s only bedroom, pausing just long enough to click off the hall light and plunge the apartment back into darkness.

No sooner had the light gone out than Adia felt the mattress sink beside her and one of Taz’s hands intertwine with her own. “You’re something special,” he said, and kissed her again, gently this time.