five times kissed [winks loudly]
send me five times kissed for a drabble about five times our muses kissed
1.A joke; a dare from a dumb teenage game around a campfire on the beach late in the evening, with the radio tuned to their favourite station and a blanket of stars in the sky. It was either that or truthĀ about their grades in high school, but a dareĀ was something everyoneĀ could laugh about afterwards.
2.An accident; the unbelievable comedy clichĆ© of slipping on the stone steps of a haunted castle and landing on top of one another. With a boy and a girl it might be romantic; but with two boys thereās only the yelp of pain when foreheads smack together and teeth clack and Shaggy turns out to beĀ muchĀ heavier than he looks from a distance.Fredās lower incisor chips, but he always smiles with his upper teeth anyway.
3.Saving their skins, when an experimental split-up in a different formula than usual leaves them at a disadvantage to make themselves inconspicuous when the suspect theyāre trailing walks right by them. Shaggyās the one who thinks fastest, shoving Fred against a tree and smooching him like theĀ most lovesick of teenagers, and they go unnoticed in the darkness as detectives on the trail of a monster.Shaggy wonders - out of pure curiosity - how often he does this with Daphne, but thereās no trace of her strawberry lip gloss in Fredās mouth.
4.In panic, when theyāre trapped in a cave-in which doesnāt have enough oxygen for the both of them, and when Fred finally shoulders the collapsed stones away Shaggy still doesnāt wake up.Ā Heās only seen CPR in movies, but movies seem to be accurate enough for it to actually work.Another One Bites the DustĀ is the new chart-topper this year from Britain, and he thinks of that to keep time when he compresses Shaggyās chest - one, two, three, four; until his best friend finally gasps.
5.Intentionally, when they finally move out of their parentsā places and into their own house (and the girls, of course, do the same). Theyāre twenty, give or take, knowing thisĀ is where they want to be - that Mystery Inc. isnāt just a passing fancy, itās here to stay. Itās late evening when Shaggy kisses Fred on the couch in front of the TV, some low-budget horror movie playing, and he can feel the chip in his lower tooth from when they were just meddling kids, only thereās no panicĀ or accidentĀ or jokeĀ or self-preservationĀ spurring it this time.Maybe theyāre not sure if they did it because the prospect of staying a gang forever was so much more realĀ suddenly, or because of something more, but it didnāt really matter. They had the rest of their lives to figure that out.