Author's Warning: Like everything else, this takes place in my series, set up by the events in my first story "More Than My Friend" where the big event is that Frankie adopts Mac as her "little brother". If you haven't read that story yet, I strongly suggest you do so now, or else you might get confused.
Okay, now that the usual disclaimer's out fo the way...
This is just a little piece I did on the side some time ago and just found while rooting about in my computer, and I decided to revise and post it after I realized it's been a bit since I did something besides a humorous piece.
Beware, this does have blatant MacxGoo fluff (not full-fledged romance), so if you're not exactly a fan of the couple, then I think this may not be the story for you.
"…Aw, c'mon! No fair-"
"Nuh-uh-uh!" Frances "Frankie" Foster swiftly cut off the whiny azure blob with a wag of her finger and a stern glare. Immediately Bloo tried to protest yet again, but all he had to do was take one glance into her icy stare, and immediately the blood froze in his veins as all desire he had to continue remonstrate against her iron will was obliterated. Cowering under her harsh glare, the little imaginary friend was quick to scamper off into the corner like the caretaker had demanded earlier.
"Do I…d-do I gotta stay here very long?" he whimpered softly, making extra care to keep his gaze plastered dead ahead upon the wall.
"Give me some time to clean up that your little mess in the kitchen, and then maybe we'll talk." The redhead growled fiercely, causing her miscreant to shudder violently.
"But-" he attempted to argue.
"No." Frankie refused flatly. "Not another word, Blooragard Q. Kazoo, you hear me? You are to stay right here until I get back, or so help me, you will be sorry. Kapeesh?"
"But Frankie-"
"And if you think I'm through here with you, then you are severely mistaken!" she snapped. "An hour or two standing here isn't nearly enough, you got me? TV, video games, I'm taking away one of those things, at least."
"No! But you can't!" the little creature whined. "You can't! Frankie, c'mon, I just-"
"Hey!" The young women snarled. "Didn't you just hear me? Not another word-"
"This isn't fair!" Bloo wailed miserably.
"Not fair?" Frankie scoffed incredulously. "Listen bucko, if you even knew about just one of the things I wanted to do with you the second I saw the kitchen floor, you wouldn't be able to sleep for a week. Trust me, what I'm doing now is plenty fair-"
"Frankieeeee!" The little creature continued to beg shamelessly. "C'mon, you won't this harsh about the closet incident!"
"Bloo, you're wasting your breath, I'm not….wait, what?" Frankie inquired confusedly. "Closet incident?"
"Huh?" Bloo mumbled, looking just as bewildered as her. "What'd you say?"
"No, no, what'd you say? That…that thing you mentioned now, what closet incident?" Frankie mumbled bewilderedly. "What are you talking about-"
"What do you mean "what am I talking about?' The closet incident!" The imaginary friend only reemphasized, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Don't you remember?"
"Bloo, I don't-" she began to protest.
"Oh come on! Remember? Mac and Goo? I locked them in one of the closets by accident, and then I forgot what closet it was when I tried to go find a key? Don't you remember any of this?"
Frankie just gawked at him blankly, staring with a gaze so vacant one wouldn't be able to find such an expression on a corpse.
"…What? Bloo, I don't-"
"AUGH!" Bloo tossed his stubs up in the air and yelled in exasperation. "Are you serious? Frankie, it was only like, one hour ago! How could you forget about it when I…I….I-I…wait…uh oh…"
"WHAT?"
THUMP!
"Hello?"
THUMP!
"Hey! Anyone out there? Hello?"
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
"Helloooooo! Anyone? Anybody there? Please? Anyone?"
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
Realizing that the hallway was completely devoid of so much as a single house resident, Mac groaned in despair as he slumped dejectedly against the wall of the small, cramped closet into a clumsy sitting position. Although he wished for nothing more to be free of this veritable prison tucked away in some God-forsaken corner of the expansive Victorian mansion, the eight-year-old felt like his voice would go hoarse and his hands would becoming nothing but large aching messes of flesh on the ends of his arms if he pounded upon the door any longer.
Nursing sore knuckles, Mac sighed heavily as he glanced up at his companion, or at least where he assumed she was. Other than a negligible sliver of light peeking out from between the bottom of the door and the floor, the closet was completely pitch-black inside. It was so depressingly empty of any luminosity, the boy couldn't even see his own hand in front of his face.
"Well….I guess we're gonna be here for a while…" he muttered bitterly, waiting for his aching throat and throbbing hands to recover before his next desperate attempt to draw attention to their plight.
It was then that an extraordinary thing happened – dead silence.
It took Mac a good full minute to realize that not a single word had been uttered in reply to his pessimistic comment. There was no burst of incessant chatter, no babbled encouragement for him to lighten up, no random bursting into song to try and break the somber mood, not even so much as one fearless giggle.
Considering specifically whom it was of all people he was trapped with, it didn't take too much longer for the eight-year-old little boy to realize that something was terribly amiss.
"Goo?" he whispered softly, peering out into the bleak emptiness of their private little cell. "Goo? Are you okay-"
The moment the poorly muffled sob rang out, the little boy's suspicions were soundly confirmed. Worried by his friend's most unusual self-imposed silence, Mac began to search about frantically in the darkness.
"Goo? Goo, are you-"
While feeling about wildly, his hand finally brushed up against what felt like a pigtail seemingly dangling out of nowhere in the pitch-black gloom. The instant he tried to touch it again, Mac was nearly frightened clear out of his skin when a sharp squeal of terror instantaneously rent the darkened atmosphere, followed by the unmistakable sounds of someone scooting fearfully out of reach.
"D-don't do that!" Another voice finally called out in a definite quaver, much to Mac's absolute puzzlement.
"…Huh?"
"W-when…w-when are we g-gonna get out of here?" he could hear Goo inquire anxiously in a barely-audible whisper before another dead silence descended upon the duo, broken only by the distinct sound of sniffling every couple seconds or so.
"G-Goo?" Mac gasped concernedly, unable to believe what he was hearing. "Wait-"
"It's nothing….n-nothing, I just…j-just wanna get out of here…that's all…" she clearly lied, sounding as if she were either on the verge of tears that or had already been silently crying without his knowledge.
The worried little boy immediately began to grope about helplessly in the darkness, speaking softly to his distraught companion in the gentlest tone he could muster.
"Goo? Are you okay?" he murmured, striving desperately not to betray himself and the gut-wrenching anxiety that seemed to be twisting his gut up into a triple knot. "What's-"
"I told you, it's nothing!" she snapped in what seemed to be a peculiar combination of fierce snarl and heartrending sob. "P-please, let's just wait 'til s-someone finds us….r-really, I'm okay-"
Goo however quickly betrayed her blind terror with the sounds of her stifled weeping that began to fill the tiny closet. Mac nevertheless continued to feel about helplessly in a frantic attempt to relocate her again. Finally, only after what felt like an eternity of fruitless searching, his hand accidentally struck the leathery toe of a cowboy boot.
"C'mon, Goo." He persisted gently. "It's ok-"
The words had barely rolled of his tongue when like magic, as if she could sense his presence, a badly shaking hand suddenly emerged from the gloom and latched on tightly to his in a vice-grip, catching him off guard.
"Mac…" she finally confessed in a hoarse croak. "I…I don't like the dark…."
With this surprise confession, the chatty little pigtailed bundle of boundless energy and constant joy he knew seemed to vanish from existence. Goo seemed to break down completely at this point, as her harsh sobs seemed to fill the entire closet from floor to ceiling within a matter of seconds.
The astonished Mac was totally stunned at first by her rare display of terror. He could recall with ease that he had seen her cry before, but try as he might, he couldn't ever remember seeing the same child genuinely frightened by anything in all his life. It was so shocking, he felt like he had never even met this hysterical eight-year-old little girl he found himself trapped with.
For a few horrendously tense moments, he found himself unable to do a single thing other than sit there in the miserable gloom as his petrified companion clutched his hand so tightly he thought his bones were about to be crushed into dust.
"I-I was playing h-hide-an-go-seek w-w-with my c-cousins t-two years ago…" she suddenly began to moan out between her ragged sobs. "I…I-I though it'd be a g-good idea to hide in the…the b-b-basement but…but the d-d-door…the d-door….l-locked behind me…I couldn't find the l-light switch…j-just couldn't…..s-so dark in there, a-and they d-d-didn't find me until…until…I was in there s-so long…so d-dark…"
At this point, her fright seemed to reach a record height, performing the difficult task of robbing her completely of speech, if one excluded her woeful squeaks of distress that broke her friend's heart to listen to.
Still clutching her hand tightly, Mac chewed vigorously upon his lower lip and nearly drew blood as he desperately searched for some way to alleviate his friend's distress. Now was not the time to mull over her rare display of fright, now was the time for action of some sort. However, With every tense second that passed, the boy found his thoughts becoming more and more frantic as he strove to find some sort of solution. After all, he couldn't just sit here in the dark and continue to silently hold her hand as she went mad with blind fright, but how could-
Suddenly, inspiration struck him with the force of a mighty thunderbolt. Mac immediately cleared his throat, and broke out into an awkward rendition of
"Y-you are my sunshine, m-m-my only sunshine…"
Even though at first the tune came out in nothing les than a hoarse croak, nevertheless the song's effect was almost instantaneous. No sooner had he begun to nervously warble when the intensity of Goo's weeping seemed to be almost halved, as she became more confused than anything. Looking up to where she judged her friend was sitting in the gloom, the puzzled child sat back and waited patiently for her companion to continue.
Nervously licking dry lips, Mac took her abrupt silence as the encouragement he needed, to continue his song in a husky whisper.
"…Y-you make me happy when skies are gray…you'll never know dear, how much I love you…please d-don't take my sunshine away…."
He actually had to force out the last few words of the stanza as he slowly realized with a sense of dread that this was all of the song that he knew. Never skipping a beat, he gave Goo's hand another gentle squeeze before quickly going back to the start of the refrain, singing as softly as his limited musical ability enabled him.
"You are my sunshine….m-my only sunshine…."
Again and again, he trilled out the refrain over and over. By the end, Mac had absolutely no idea how many times he had repeated himself, nor did he exactly care. Persistently he continued, battling against the dark gloom with his voice until finally Goo herself suddenly had to force him out of it with a sharp tug on his shift sleeve.
"You are my – huh? G-Goo?" he sputtered anxiously.
For a few moments, again, all he received was dead silence in reply. Instinctively, Mac could feel his heart plummet into his stomach in despair, feeling horrified that this was nothing more than a mere pause before the unmistakable sounds of weeping began to echo throughout the tiny cramped cell of a closet yet again.
"My…m-my mom used to sing that to me when I was little…" Goo suddenly whispered incredulously, with barely so much as a sniffle. Although of course she couldn't see it, Mac couldn't help but crack a wan grin as he reached to tenderly pat her hand.
"F-Frankie...Frankie sang it to me a few times when I was sick…." he chuckled weakly, as an indescribable sense of relief washed over him.
Much to his sudden surprise, his friend actually managed to titter softly along with him, probably the first time since they had been trapped. For a few moments, not a single sound could be heard in the pitch-black gloom other than the sounds of their own gentle merriment, as they shared a good, light laugh between one another before-
WHAM!
The entire closet seemed to reverberate after what felt like a battering ram tried to unsuccessfully batter the door down, forcing the pair to break out into squeals of fright. A shrill yelp of pain immediately emanated from outside, followed by a stream of inaudible murderous mumbling.
"OW! No good son-of-a..." Their would-be-rescuer grumbled as she limped about, mere moments away from cursing a blue streak right there in the hallway. Although it wasn't exactly proper etiquette, it instantaneously revealed her identity to the immensely relieved children.
"Frankie?" Mac cried excitedly, pounding upon the door. "Is that you?"
"…I swear to God, I'm gonna – huh? What the? Oh right, MAC!" She nearly shrieked with joy, abruptly followed by a hideous scraping clamor as if the young woman was actually trying to claw the door down, which sadly enough, it was exactly what she was doing.
"It's okay, it's okay guys, it'll be alright!" she burst out babbling in reassurance, wrestling furiously with the immobilized doorknob and simultaneously scratching away like some gigantic redheaded feline. "Just hold on, everything's gonna be fine, I promise! Oh God, I don't know what I would've done if I hadn't heard you just now, I…mmph, stupid door…urgh ….aargh, stupid piece of….why won't….grrrrr…why don't you-"
"What?" Mac yelled in bewilderment over the mountain of difficulty she was running into. "Y-you can't get it open? Frankie, didn't you bring your keys or something? Y'know, the big set you use to open up every-"
"…Oh, son of a-" The twenty-two-year-old nearly swore before hastily muffling herself with her hands, lest she went off on a vicious tirade right in front of the children. Wasting no a single moment, just a second later all that could be heard was the squeak of sneakers and aggravated muttering as Frankie sprinted off pell-mell down the hallway, once again leaving the duo just as helplessly trapped and alone as they were before.
"Something tells me we're gonna be here for a little longer than we thought." Mac murmured with a light moan as he listened to his guardian rapidly vanish downstairs in a hysterical frenzy.
Suddenly, his pessimistic mood was suddenly interrupted by a peculiar sensation of soft warmth tickling the side of his face, and it took the befuddled child a good ten seconds or so before he realized he was being nuzzled. As Mac's cheeks began to glow with such bright crimson he nearly lit up the entire closet, the little girl tittered as she tossed her arms around her dumbstruck companion.
"Y'know, to tell the truth…" Goo giggled contently as squeezed him in a tight hug, "Frankie can take as much time as she wants…."
The End
(Whimpers) I can't help it, I like the pairing!
Anyway, a big thanks to those who read. All feedback is much appreciated!