Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Love's Joke
"Myka Ophelia Bering will you marry me?"
As Myka stared into the soulful brown eyes of her love, a silly smile on her face, she can't help but think about how they had arrived at this point.
"I'm in love with Pete," a nervous Myka told her friend. HG, preoccupied with her latest invention, just chuckled without looking up. "What's so funny?" Myka demanded, growing annoyed that one of her dearest friends wasn't taking her announcement seriously.
"I'm sorry, darling. I thought you said that you were in love with Pete," Helena replies. When she finally looks up, she is met with a serious look on the younger woman's face. "Bollocks! You're not joking are you?"
"No, Helena. I'm not sure how or when it happened, but I love him."
As Helena listens to Myka tell her about her love, something catches her attention. "Look at me, Myka." As she stares into Myka's eyes, she realizes what captured her attention. "Oh thank goodness! Myka, you're not in love with Pete. You're being affected by an artifact."
"What are you talking about, Helena?"
"Your eyes, darling, your eyes. Where's your Farnsworth?"
"What about my eyes?"
"They're sparkling." Upon seeing that Myka is about to ask another question instead of getting her Farnsworth, HG quickly continues. "It looks like they are full of glitter."
Helena is saved from continuing when Artie finally answers the call. "Oh thank goodness! Artie, Myka has been affected by an artifact!"
"Pete and Myka have been affected by Tucker James's Joke Book. Over time, it causes intense love between friends."
"Oh thank God! I knew something weird and artifacty had to be going on. You two would be way too weird as a couple. It would be like incest or something," Claudia exclaims with a sigh of relief.
"Hey, hey, hey! Why does everyone think it's so weird that Myka and I are in love?" Pete asks, trying to cross the room to sit by Myka but having his efforts thwarted by Steve and Claudia. Helena was having a similar exchange with Myka.
"I don't know Pete. Maybe because you once knew that it was Alice Liddell and not Myka because she kissed you," Claudia quickly answers.
"Or that she called you 'the brother she never had' and until a few weeks ago, you always acted and treated each other more like bickering siblings than two people with any sort of romantic or sexual chemistry," Steve adds, remembering finding Myka's resignation letter when he first started and not wanting to be outdone by his quirky friend.
"Or that when you needed something that seemed impossible so you would retrace your steps to unbronze Steve, you made it appear that you had slept together," HG chimes in, with a look of disgust on her face just from contemplating them together.
"Children! Can you please focus?" Artie yells trying to get everyone's attention on the problem at hand.
"Wait. How does a joke book cause love?" Jinks asks incredulously.
"Tucker James was given a joke book when he was in the seventh grade by his best friend, Becca Fisher. They had been best friends their entire lives. They started dating their junior year of high school and remained together until Tucker's death at the age of 92; Becca passed away a few hours later.
"On their 50th anniversary, Tucker was recorded as saying that that gift was where he knew that Becca was truly special because even though his pranks tended to annoy her, she still accepted and embraced all sides of him."
"But it causes love, so the side-affects can't be that bad, can they?" Claudia asks, not sure if she wants to know how badly this can end for her friends.
"If this was the way their love naturally developed, then the side-affects aren't that bad, but you all just went on about how 'weird' you think it is that they want to be in a relationship. If a friendship that has been affected was not going to naturally develop into romantic love, then the love that develops eventually becomes incredibly unhealthy. Obsessive, untrusting…their behavior may become may degrade into stalking each other when one of them has to be away from the other." Artie responds gruffly.
"When were they affected?" Steve asks, again having to push Pete into his seat.
"There's no way to know. Depending on the relationship it affects, the book can take anywhere from a few weeks to over a decade to develop the needed level and type of love."
"Where can we find this book?" Helena asks, watching Myka out of the corner of her eye.
"The Warehouse gathered his entire collection of joke books the year before Myka and Pete joined. Pete catalogued them about two months after joining."
"Why do we have the entire collection?" Myka finally tore her gaze from Pete long enough to ask.
"At the time, we were unsure which of the books was the artifact and bought them all at the estate sale. Several others turned out to be artifacts; although, they are actually prank or joke oriented."
"Righty ho then. Let's find this book before I have to castrate Pete."
"So which book are we looking for?" Claudia asks, as she looks at the aisle so full of books it would put a library to shame.
"Damn it, Claudia! Can you Tesla them already?" Steve cries exasperatedly, trying to keep Myka and Pete away from each other. "Preferably before HG decides to help me keep them apart."
Claudia turns and sees how much trouble her best friend is having keeping the two love struck fools, whose eyes are now blatantly glowing, apart, and more importantly how agitated the time traveler is becoming, quickly grabs her Tesla and knocks them unconscious.
"The book is called The Youngster's Guide to Pranks and Jokes. It should be right around here," Artie gestures to a section of ten bookshelves.
Claudia shoots Jinks a glare. "You had to tell me to shoot Myka, the woman who eats books for breakfast and clearly helped Pete shelve them."
"Why do you think she helped Pete?" Artie asks gruffly.
"Because it appears that these books are in order by their Dewey Decimal Number," HG starts to explain.
"And these are in order by Pete's preferred sport and favorite topics," Claudia finishes the explanation.
"You're right. This would be much easier if we knew if Myka or Pete had shelved it," Steve adds with a groan.
Several hours of searching had turned up a lot of spiders, but not the book in question; furthermore, the two debilitated agents were of no help. They didn't believe that an artifact could cause their feelings and they were too focused on the other to pay any attention to what the others were doing.
It eventually took Claudia bribing Pete with a an amount of cookies that even the Cookie Monster would think excessive, and Helena telling Myka it would prove her and Pete's love is pure and free of artifact influence before they were any help. Once Myka recalled that she had seen the book in Pete's room, Pete realized that he had neglected to ever shelf the book in question after wanting to read it.
"Oh God! I think I'm going to be sick. I kissed him!" Myka screamed in disgust.
"I know darling."
"No, Helena. You don't know. I kissed him. I wanted to do more than kiss him! I would have done more if I hadn't wanted to break up with you first and you hadn't realized that I was affected. Oh God. I need mouthwash!"
Meanwhile, Claudia and Steve were going through a similar experience with Pete.
"Ugh. I hate being whammied. I feel so dirty."
"It couldn't have been that bad. We did stop you before you did anything too bad. Didn't we?" Steve asks a horrified expression appearing on his face.
"What do you mean not so bad Jinksy? They're practically brother and sister! That would be like us falling in love," Claudia shouts, before quickly turning to Pete, her face mirroring Steve's. "We did stop you in time, right?"
"Yes, thank God. Oh man, I kissed Myka. What's next? Is an artifact going to make me cop a feel on my mom? Sometimes this place just sucks. I need to brush my teeth." As Pete storms out of the room, he shouts "I just wanted to learn a few new jokes. This is what comes from reading anything besides comic books!"
"I thought you said that she was dating someone named Giselle," Pete questions Myka after catching her kissing HG.
"I told you it was a stupid idea to use a code name," Claudia says with a smirk.
"Wait…you knew! Claud, how could you not tell me? Mykes, how could you tell Claudia but not me?" Pete asks, not able to keep the hurt out of his voice.
"Chill Pete. It wasn't my place to tell you, and Myka only told me because Steve caught her in the lie."
"Why wouldn't you just tell me that you two were dating?"
"I wanted to keep you from imagining us for as long as possible."
"Come on Mykes! You're like a sister to me, that would just be wrong," Pete says before a silly grin slowly appears on his face, "although…"
"Damn it Pete. Stop imagining it!" Pete is saved from further berating by a smack from Claudia.
"Seriously Pete, you just said she was like a sister to you!"
"Sorry! Sorry!"
"Peter, next time you start thinking about Myka and myself, remember that I am a master in kempo, and while I haven't had to use that knowledge recently, I still possess it."
"Yes Helena! Of course I'll marry you! I love you," Myka cries, tears of joy streaming down her face as she pulls Helena into a passionate embrace.
The two women were blind to the world, lost in the feeling of their lovers' arms, until "Fine Mykes, I'll be your maid of honor, I mean MAN of honor, but I will not wear a dress, even though I could totally pull one off with my legs." Two smacks interrupt Pete as both Claudia and Steve hit him to shut him up, leading to laughter from Artie, Vanessa, and even Mrs. Frederic who knew that even in a world filled with endless wonder, nothing is quite as wonderful as finding your soul mate.
Myka just chuckles at her family before pulling Helena closer so she can finally kiss her fiancé.
A/N: This is the only way that Pete and Myka make any kind of sense to me; the two of them together is like some kind of cruel, unfunny joke (hence the joke book artifact). And if anybody recognized where I got the names for the artifact's original owners…Yay you!