Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me and it never has!
Author's Note: While I am still in the middle of writing a full-blown novel, I find myself missing Brick and Blossom, so I decided to quench my thirst for them here and there by starting an on-going series of oneshots, instead of posting them separately. I can promise you right now that there will at least two written out, and ready to be typed, this being the first. The next one will be a lemon, woot woot! But yeah, so I can't promise you more than two mini-stories for right now. We'll see if I feel like writing more in the future.
Author's Note #2: Shout out to cupcake28 for suggesting the idea!
Author's Note #3: 'I'm Gonna Love You' by Jennifer Love Hewitt.
It didn't start this way
It happened just one day
You smiled at me
And I saw you differently
To most of the world, Brick Jojo was a grade A rebel-rouser, the leader of the Rowdyruff Boys, the world class ladies man, the school screw up who frequently bribed Mister Jefferson with ham and cheese sandwiches to get out of detention early—the classic, untamable, unattainable bad boy. He was the sort of guy everyone counted on to use his heat vision on flammable chemicals in the science lab in the middle of a mundane day, putting forth the effort to add a little spice to routine life. It was simply in Brick's nature to cause all sorts of mischief, like when he would mouth off to a boring teacher, or sneak into the teachers' lounge to put a stink bomb in the vending machine.
Yeah. There was no questioning it. Brick was a troublemaker.
But there was a gentler side to Brick most people didn't get to see, least of Blossom Utonium, but she stumbled upon Brick's human side entirely by accident.
On weekends, Blossom enjoyed taking mid-morning walks through Townsville Park, just some exercise to balance out Friday nights' regularly scheduled four-cheese, pretzel crust pizza with everything on it, with four liters of soda. Monster fighting kept her adequately in shape, but the extra exercise couldn't hurt. Blossom enjoyed the freshness of the day, when there was just enough wind to carry her thick, ponytailed tresses of copper while there was just enough heat to tenderly touch the tops of her shoulders.
Yep. Just a typical Saturday morning.
All of a sudden, the pink Powerpuff Girl's enhanced, super-powered ears caught the strong burst of saddened wailing from the opposite side of the park. In the next second, Blossom located the source of the distressed crying, leaving a pink flash of light behind her. But Blossom stopped dead in her tracks the moment she saw Brick, her Rowdyruff counterpart, kneeling in front of a weeping, little girl, who kept pointing to a particular part of the tall tree adjacent to them.
"Hey, hey, calm down," the Rowdyruff Boys leader said in attempt to get the tiny girl to quiet down. He gently dragged the girl's fisted hands away from her tear-streaked eyes, just in case she rubbed them too hard. "What's wrong?"
"My-my-my-my..." The young girl trailed off in frustration, unable to form more than a single syllable without violently hiccuping.
"Can you count all the way to thirty?" Brick inquired patiently, not a single hint of his characteristic agitation anywhere on his handsome face...
"Ye-" hic "Yes," the little girl answered.
"Good. I want you to hold your breath and count to thirty in your head, okay?" he instructed, exaggeratedly puffing his cheeks to mimic the face of someone holding in their breath, which made the little girl giggle and comply with his request.
Baffled by what she was witnessing—Brick, the infamous bad boy being a decent human being for a change—Blossom stood frozen in place, mere feet behind him. She must have entered a bizarre, parallel universe, because there was no way that guy and Brick could be the same person, but...
There was a soft pounding in Blossom's eardrums, the sound like a clock's secondhand ticking back and forth. When she felt her chest grow tighter, she realized the unfamiliar noise was her heartbeat galloping like Seabiscuit.
Blossom knew that she should have left since Brick had everything under control, but her strawberry ice cream-pink irises could not redirect their enamored fixation, nor could she force her feet to move. Her hands, however, reached into her back pocket, grabbed her smart phone, and started recording the rest of this weird, oddly wonderful moment.
"Puuuuah!" the little girl exhaled after a full thirty seconds of holding her breath. "Hey! My hiccups are gone!"
"Alright! Good job, squirt!" A wide, proud grin spread across Brick's face like butter, easily one of the most inspiring sights his Powerpuff Girl enemy ever beheld. He lifted up his hand, exchanging a high-five with his new, miniature fangirl. "Now, can you tell me what's wrong?"
"My cat is stuck in that tree. I don't know if she can get down all by herself and I'm too small to get her," the little girl replied, her bottom lip jutting out to give Brick the most agonized, pathetic pout.
"Oh... Psh! Piece of cake," Brick replied, standing upright as he folded his arms confidently over his chest. "I can get your cat, chibi-human. Wanna help?"
"Yeah!" she exclaimed with several elated nods.
The Rowdryruff Boy scooped the young girl, barely older than a toddler, off the ground and carried her protectively in his arms, careful not to let her fall. Slowly, Brick began to levitate, gently flying to the branch where a white-furred cat mewed in distress. The little girl beamed ecstatically at her furry friend and cautiously plucked it from the tree, cradling her cat like a newborn baby. Brick lowered them back to the ground, setting down the tiny girl and her pet on the sidewalk.
"Safe and sound?" Brick asked, scratching the cat's head only to receive an ungrateful hiss.
"Thank you!" And with that quick, appreciative exclamation, the girl and her cat ran off, probably off to find more trouble to get themselves into, reunited at last.
"Kids..." he muttered with a roll of his eyes, shaking his head back and forth.
Blossom's heartbeat stammered when Brick started turning around, facing in her direction. Caught in an awkward staring contest, Blossom coughed. "Uh... Hi!"
"How long have you been standing there?" Brick questioned, his tone colored with curiosity and embarrassment.
"Long enough," she answered with a nonchalant shrug. "It was very sweet of you to help that little girl get her cat, Brick."
"It was no big deal," the school bully grumbled, sheepishly scratching the back of his neck. "Just some stupid kid and her dumb cat."
"Nevertheless," she began with a slight nod, "I'm impressed." As well as pleasantly surprised.
"Good for you," Brick retorted, feigning disinterest.
"I enjoy seeing a gentler side of you." Blossom slightly tilted her head to the side as a sugary-sweet smile sat upon her scarlet mouth, her expression delighted and warm. "I wish you could be that way all the time."
"Yeah, well, that's not gonna-" Brick stopped mid-sentence and gestured to the rectangular device in his female counterpart's hands. "Wait. You actually recorded that? What are you, the freakin' paparazzi!" he shouted, his world-famous temper shining through as he marched straight toward her.
"Awww, come on, you big party pooper! It's time to show the fans at home you've finally conquered your phobia of girl cooties!" Blossom giggled, extending an arm behind her to keep her cellphone out of Brick's reach.
"Gimme the phone, Powderpuff!" Brick demanded.
"No way! This is going to get way more hits than any of those goat remixes!" Blossom exclaimed, trying to push him away.
"I'll give Boomer a nosebleed just for you if you delete that damn video!" Brick pleaded desperately between clenched teeth, repeatedly reaching for the elusive cellphone. "C'mon, just give-"
In the next instance, Blossom wasn't sure what made her do it, but she instantaneously decided that she needed to do something a smidgen drastic in order to get Brick to let up, so slenderly puckered her cerise lips, and gave him a small, fleeting kiss on the cheek—an action she had not repeated since they were kindergartners. She pressed her petal-soft mouth to Brick's cheek for no longer than a nanosecond, the girlie tactic effective. He retreated immediately, touching two fingertips to the spot where the sensation of mint-fresh breath lingered upon his skin. There was a stunned expression draped across his face, both of his auburn eyebrows furrowed in disbelief, though he didn't seem repulsed, as a fiery red blush managed to stain both cheeks.
"Whatever!" Brick spat in defeat. "Make me a viral sensation for all I care." In the blink of an eye, he took to the skies like a jet.
Blossom never shared the video with anyone else, putting the three minutes of footage in a password protected file on her phone. By the end of that weekend, she had watched it more than a thousand times for some reason, spellbound by the mysterious decency Brick displayed to a crying girl. She observed the dashing smile written on his face, the brilliancy of the feature giving her stomach butterflies, while her heart raced in reaction to his gracious chivalry.
To the rest of the world, Brick was a typical, teenage delinquent.
To Blossom, she was someone she could picture herself falling in love with.