I am a Skico shipper myself; so please, my fellow penguin shippers, please do not be offended by the strict expression of 'no relationship between us' thing you are about to read. In this fiction's AU, they just don't have to possibility, that's all.
(...)
"Skipper, I need to borrow- Wait, where is Skipper?"
Even if Kowalski was startled with the intruder's voice, he didn't show any sign of it. Not that Marlene expected one; only times she had seen him going excited were rather about science, fish, or a specific dolphin.
He raised his head from the tools he apparently had been working on to welcome the sea otter with an unimpressed face. "I guess that means I should double check the alarm system.
"Thanks for your eternal hospitality," Marlene replied with a sarcastic voice. "Where are the other guys? On a date altogether or something?"
"Recon." Kowalski said without any reaction to other question which was obviously just a joke.
"Without you? I thought you four would do anything together, especially your paranoiac commando stuff."
"Self-destruction module had a problem. Until I fixed it, of course." Kowalski snickered proudly, with an attitude that told there was no way it could be otherwise. "What do you need to borrow, Marlene?"
"Not actually what, who. I thought Rico could take care of that big stone in front of my entrance with joy."
Kowalski raised a browline. "Why do you need that rock to be destroyed?"
"It recently started annoying me. It blocks my view to lemur habitat."
"Why do you care about your view to lemur habitat?"
"No reason," Marlene quickly said as she scratched the back of her neck. "It's just that… Umm… I'm kinda tired of seeing a big grey circle instead of the rest of the zoo." She let out an uncomfortable chuckle. "But since Rico isn't here, I guess it can wait one or two hours more."
Kowalski didn't dig it; it would be surprising if he cared anyways. "Sure then, I'll tell Skipper you came by and why." Without intent to waste any more words, he waddled towards his lab.
Despite she knew Kowalski wouldn't care enough to think about, or even remember her little blunder; she felt like she needed to distract him. "Wait, Kowalski…"
The tall penguin turned to her, not bothering to hide his irritated expression.
Luckily, Marlene remembered something she said earlier and decided to ask him about it. "I've never seen you guys interested in other females, except for that Kitka falcon…"
Kowalski looked even more irritated. "So?"
"I wonder… if any of you guys ever been in a relationship before, like, a romantic one." Although she had said it just to hide her blunder, she realized she was really curious about that; Skipper didn't seem interested in anyone but animals who has a hunger for getting themselves almost dead, all Rico cared was his doll, she'd think Kowalski was asexual if she hadn't heard of Doris and she hated to admit it, but she thought Private was probably gay.
Kowalski crossed his flippers. "What reason do you have to even care?"
"Common sense?" Marlene replied. "Is this a 'classified information' or what?" She had used air quotes while saying "classified information".
"Since when common sense includes shoving an oar in others' personal life?"
"Since you guys are close to me enough to call 'friends'."
"Close? Please, Marlene. You sure are our friend, but no hurt feelings, we penguins prefer to stay away from everyone other than our teammates."
"It's a little late for that." Marlene rolled her eyes.
Kowalski narrowed his eyes with annoyance. "Marlene, we're all mature penguins; even young Private is 26 penguin-years-old. We were all teenagers once; can you imagine none of us had his hormones working whole this time?" He turned towards his lab again, just to be stopped by Marlene's voice one more time.
"No offense Kowalski, but there is no way I can ever imagine you guys as teenagers."
Kowalski hit his forehead with his flipper. "What do you think; we all hatched our eggs as 30 year olds?"
"Well, that seems more possible." Marlene replied honestly, causing Kowalski hit his head to the metal wall of penguin headquarters.
"What do you want to know?" Kowalski finally said, he apparently had given up on hurting his skull which protected his precious brain over a stupid woman.
"Don't dig too personal, just… Okay, who am I kidding, tell me everything you know."
Kowalski mumbled "And here I thought I could finally solve Einstein's lost paradigm without those barbarians around…" before adding something about women and their curiosity that Marlene couldn't hear well.
She followed the scientist to penguins' multipurpose dinner table.
"For your information, I won't tell 'everything I know'." Kowalski mimicked Marlene from half a minute ago. "I'll just tell enough to expect you to be satisfy your hormonal curiosity."
Hormonal curiosity? Marlene knew what to say pretty well; but she was damn curious about what Kowalski was going to tell.
"Let's take Private for example. Private is the youngest of us, but he was also the first one to get a girlfriend." Kowalski nodded to Marlene's raised eyebrows. "He's undeniably cute. It's scientifically proven that second X chromosome comes with cuteness vulnerability."
Marlene wondered how long she could take Kowalski's priggery.
"He has a relationship rule: he never dates anyone he doesn't fall in love with."
"Aw, how cute." Marlene couldn't help but get dreamy. "I wish every guy would be like Private about that."
But her expression was reacted with a sly grin on the penguin's beak. "Really? Then I think you'd be interested in how many girlfriends Private got this year."
"What do you mean?" Marlene frowned with concern. "How many?"
"Twenty-seven."
"Wha-" If she was drinking something, she would have spitted it all. "Private? Our cute little Private?"
"He's the type we call susceptible. He doesn't date anyone he isn't in love with; but he also falls for any girl who shows interest in him and he finds cute. Besides, he's good at getting girls as much as Skipper or Rico is."
"Let me get this straight… Only this year, Private got twenty seven girlfriends?"
"That's what I just said."
"And I thought he was gay!"
Her shocked voice must have amused Kowalski enough to make him laugh. "I don't suggest you to tell him that. Because of his naïve nature, he's often taken for homosexual and it drives him really angry. Trust me; no one wants to see an angry Private."
"Whoa… Twenty seven… This is more than the boyfriends I ever had all my life!" Marlene knew she was overreacting, but she couldn't help it. "How many girlfriends he had so far?"
"Oh, Marlene, even I don't have enough patience to list them all."
"I'm not sure I really want to know anyways…" She mumbled.
"Back in Madagascar, he even fell for a reindeer of Santa's. A mammal! I guess now you have an idea about his boundaries."
"Yes, I have an idea that he has no boundaries at all!"
"He was much worse when he was teenager. He could become a playpenguin if he didn't have manners not to do that. He fell for every beautiful penguin he saw, he was like, dating five girls at the same time. Johnson had to forbid him going out of our dorm except for school hours for a while."
"I don't think I'll be able to see Private as an innocent cub anymore."
"He's Private, who thinks Lunacorns is the best TV show and thinks words can fix anything rather than fights. I don't know about you, but there is no possibility we can see him more mature than our innocent chick; even though he is only four years younger than me."
"Let's change the subject please… What about Rico? He's always been interested in dollies? How many girlfriends he got?"
"Girlfriends? Rare. He's rather a, technically speaking, ladies' man. Until Skipper districted him being outside after midnight without us, he had a different female bird in his flippers every night… Well, usually more than one even."
"I would be surprised, but after what I learned about Private, it's kinda normal."
"Rico knows what to give a lady to take what he wants; I suppose you've understood what I mean with that. There is no female animal on this planet that could reject him if he wants something… Considering he's bisexual, maybe saying 'female' was unnecessary."
"Rico's bi?" Marlene felt like she was supposed to expect that, but it didn't make it less astonishing.
"Yes; but like 90% heterosexual and 10% homosexual rather than 50-50 like most bisexuals are. That's why Skipper prefers to call him bicurious; he always prefers females and had been interested in only three males before."
Marlene's jaw opened with shock as she realized she could still get surprised after Private fact. "Don't tell me you guys-"
"Curie's cauldrons, no!" Kowalski's voice rose a bit with the shock of realizing which way Marlene misunderstood his words in. "I didn't mean us, I meant an eagle that was homosexual and two other penguins that even we barely knew."
"Oh…" Marlene sighed with relief. "For one second I really thought-"
"I know exactly what you thought." Kowalski crossed his flippers as he frowned at the otter. "Our bounds are deeper than any blood related brothers, and I'm sure of that because both Skipper and I would choose this team rather than our brothers. Would you be sexually interested in your brother, Marlene?"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You said three, and you guys are four penguins, I just couldn't help it."
Kowalski sighed irritated before he changed the subject. "Rico had been actually in love two or three times, and no, not with immobile objects. He had to leave the last one because she's in a team on duty in China. After her, he went back to his one-night-stander life until it affected his sleep and Skipper forbid him- I guess I had mentioned this part."
"And Skipper?"
"I have one word to summarize Skipper's, how do you call it, love life: egoist. He's also a ladies' man, but in a different way than Rico. He loves watching females getting attracted to him, and I know he hates it as much as I do, but he has no limits. If the female bird is physically attractive and her personality is acceptable in Skipper's standards, he tries his shot with her, and I've never seen him failing. He starts to date with her until he's bored; he's rarely as attracted as the lady is to him."
"That… sounds kinda cruel."
"Not really. Skipper has never been a one-night-stander. He knows how to win a girl's heart, but unlike Rico, he never smashes it. He becomes the ideal boyfriend in the female's heart, and when he decides to leave, he gently drops it. You can't find one lady who regrets dating Skipper. He's been in love four times -you've witnessed the last one-, but anyone would think he really loved every single girlfriend of his past."
"I can imagine that…" Marlene confessed. "But I still think it's cruel; acting like you're feeling something strong towards someone who you actually don't."
"Actually, he would never admit that, but I think all Skipper looks for is adventure; although it's hard to say with his caring lover image. He even dated Doris just for that."
"He did what? I mean… You mean the same Doris you talked about before, right?"
"Yes. And I figured that little adventure of his out only three months ago." Kowalski sighed. "I've told he has no limits when it comes to attracting women, and this is why he dated Doris, he later confessed that he did it just because it felt exciting to be with someone whom he wasn't ethically supposed to."
"How did you react?"
"Fairly, not well. I kept loving her until just two months ago, when I finally made it up with Skipper. I know I am as handsome as I'm smart…"
Marlene rolled her eyes.
"…and I can't deny I've been attractive for girls even as the nerd of my class, I don't find females interesting easily. I have the highest standards, there is no way I can be with a girl who lacks at IQ. But if that was all mattered, I'd fall for the blue hen or someone from army laboratories, wouldn't I? She needs to be good-looking too, and it's not easy to find a girl with this combination. It took long enough to make the rest of my team think I'm asexual to find a girl to fall for. Yes, Doris was a mammal, a sea mammal even; but I had believed that I could never find a girl who is smart, beautiful and normal for a long time that I didn't have a luxury to criticize that. Maybe it was an irony because I was strictly against mammal-bird relationships which were popular amongst teenagers on those days, who knew? We dated for longer than a year, I loved her so bad that I really believed she was the one. If there is one decision I always regret to have made, it was thinking she cheated on me and breaking up with her."
"Wait, you were the one who dumped her?"
"I can see why you thought otherwise, but no, I was the one who left. When I understood it was a misunderstanding, I tried to get her back; but she refused."
"Not surprising, actually. If my boyfriend blamed me for something I didn't do and then he came back, I wouldn't accept him either."
"I knew she was right, but I still believed she was the one; and it was my fault so I was determined to fix it. But five years later, I found out one of my best friends already took care of her!" Kowalski's voice rose with the last sentence; it wasn't hard to guess why.
"I don't get it… Why would, how could Skipper do such thing?"
Kowalski sighed before he continued with a normal voice. "Skipper and Doris; it was something happened over four years ago and I only learned it three months ago. I sure went furious, how could he do this to me? I stopped talking with him except when I had to as his lieutenant; until he proved our bound is too tough to be broken by an unstable bitch."
Marlene was so close to jump in shock but she controlled herself; it was the first time she heard Kowalski using a rude word, let alone using it for a girl! "But… Everything you said…"
"I won't go into details; I'll just tell what you are allowed to know: she was acting like she loved me but was too proud to accept me back while she was with Skipper. Enough to understand she's not the one, am I correct?"
"But-"
"I said I have high standards, and they involve honesty. If she weren't such a liar, I would have accepted that she no longer loved me back long ago. Besides, she's a mammal. A bird and a mammal? Please. I'm not Private, crack pairs are his thing!"
"Wow." Marlene sighed. "I guess I was happier when I thought all of you were asexual. Now everytime I look at you guys, I'll see a susceptible boy who went through more relationships than whole zoo did total, a Casanova who needed a third force to stop partying, a jerk who even ignored his friend's feeling for his pleasure, and a lovestruck who wasted his best years over a girl."
"Then I guess I shouldn't say Skipper and Rico are together and I'm dating with Private…"
"WHAT?!" Marlene yelled so loud that she almost screamed.
Kowalski burst in laughter. "This was the very first time I ever made a joke, and it was hilarious! You must see your face right now."
Marlene could kill Kowalski right there. Considering he never joked, she thought he was serious and was almost getting a heart attack.
Kowalski kept his sly smile; apparently Marlene's angry face didn't bother him at all. "After everything I said, you still thought I was serious?"
"I don't know… I thought… Ah!" Marlene face-pawed. "I hate you."
"Besides, Skipper isn't a 'jerk'. Only thing he has ever done wrong was being with my ex-girlfriend, and I know he regrets it as well as I know Newton's laws."
"I think I need to digest all these… Forget about the rock, we'll handle it tomorrow or later."
"If that means I can finally study some algorithms, great."
"Oh, hello there, Marlene. Would you like some snowcone?"
Kowalski jumped in his seat as if Private's voice was the most terrifying one on Earth. "But I thought… I… The perfect, rare opportunity…"
"Shut the mumbo jumbo and enjoy snowcones. That's an order." Skipper passed a double snowcone to his lieutenant with a slight smile on his face. "And hey, Marlene."
"I… I have something to do…" Marlene climbed up the ladder as fast as she could, leaving six eyes confused behind her.
(…)
"What happened to her?" Private asked curiously.
"I have no idea." Kowalski lied. "I heard shirtless ninjas coming to NYC next week, so, how are we sneaking in?"