Pointless ANs: Rated T, for Gwendolynn's occasional potty language and unpleasantness of the perverted variety. Some Rocketshipping by default (there aren't any hugs or kisses or compromising positions, but mild hints have been scattered here and there).
It's been revised, too! And by revised, I mean expect the customary thesaurus abuse throughout.
---
A Dish Served Raw
"Do you hate him for it?" he whispered and sent one of several brief glances over his shoulder.
She paused, midway through placing the shoebox at the foot of the oak door, and turned her head ever so slightly, enough to catch the expression of anxiety cast upon his features, before raising a hand to scratch the side of her nose thoughtfully.
"James, dear, I don't hate anyone except for the people I hate."
"That isn't an answer."
…
Thirty-eight minutes earlier.
…
"Just look at him, Jess."
She raised an eyebrow and sighed in exasperation. James didn't wait for a response before he hissed again under his breath.
"Him and his bloody …" - he fumbled desperately for the appropriate phrase, and found it buried in his memories of last night's television-watching session - "wiggle of Judas (1). It makes me sick."
Jessie could only nod mutely in reply. What they were doing crouched behind a bush, binoculars in-hand, spying on Meowth's goings-on with a certain black-division squadron without resorting to gratuitous violence was beyond her. She tore her eyes away from the scene reluctantly and watched him with a frown. Her azure-haired partner reached down to pluck a ham sandwich from his backpack and peeled off the cling-wrap, all in one fluid motion and without moving his binoculars from the bridge of his nose. She was inwardly impressed. He always displayed a great deal of resolve whenever food was involved.
"What do you think?" he asked with a mouthful of bread, his eyes still turned straight ahead.
She reflected on this for a moment.
Jessie had always considered herself to be somewhat vindictive, if in the most covert way, with the manner in which she dealt with matters like this. She lived and breathed Newton's Third Law: 'for every atrocity there is an equal and opposite act of cruelty due'. If one Cassidy O'Doyle is promoted for no reason whatsoever, she would conveniently find herself in The Boss' secretary's swivel chair and the bimbo in question is suddenly deemed redundant. And for one in every ten botched attempts to capture Pikachu, she could take solace in the knowledge that at least one of the twerps has had the contents of their backpack strewn across a nondescript dirt road and replaced with rocks. And … nobody was ever any the wiser.
Even James wasn't exempt from her needlessly vicious plots for revenge, and the seat of his favourite pair of white uniform trousers still had the chocolate stains (2) to prove it. Given the ten or so years she'd known him, he was the closest thing she'd ever had to a significant other, but it wouldn't be in her nature to grant any hint of preferential treatment to every rose-wielding man who threw themselves at her mercy.
Then again … Her gaze fell, landing instantly upon a certain area of his person that was being accentuated only in a way that kneeling in white cotton trousers can. She had always had a penchant for those kinds of hee-haw private schoolboys who congest public transport playing pocket billiards and looking up girls' skir-
Heat swarmed to her neck and face, and she bit her bottom lip broodingly.
Erm … no.
No. Anything on that level with James was completely out of the question, let alone acts of shameless perving.
The one and only time they'd even come close to forming any kind of union, she'd convinced him that he sincerely wanted be their designated driver on the night of the last company Christmas party barely a month ago. And in her intoxicated state, she attempted to reward him with fellatio upon arriving back at headquarters and stumbling into their room. Within seconds, she had succeeded only in vomiting into his lap and on her duvet before promptly falling asleep. In the late hours of the next morning, she awoke to the sounds of his regretful bemoaning and the odour of laundry detergent, in a foreign bed with an equally foreign pillow streaked with makeup and retaining the alien scent of aftershave.
She might have been manipulated by her pounding headache, coupled with the general feeling of utter shit that can only be associated with getting mighty pissed on a night previous, when she allowed her hands to spike his tea with salt and laxatives. Jessie couldn't dredge up the exact memory, but she certainly didn't feel a scrap of remorse for anything she might have done. Since then, their friendship never advanced to anything more than the occasional flirt and sharing of beds.
It was a pity, too. He was rakishly handsome for a feller from Nobsville, and she'd always fancied him as a potential scapegoat.
A husky cough wrenched her back to reality.
Jessie's gaze shot up at once. A faint blush had begun to rise in James' cheeks and she was sure that she, too, looked as flushed as she felt. The crust of his sandwich in one hand and binoculars in the other, James cleared his throat once more with a weak, accommodating smile. Dread instantly clogged her veins. She knew it, and she was sure he did, too. It killed her to display any sign of weakness. Jessie tore her burning eyes from her partner and his buttocks as haughtily as she could manage to look straight ahead once more.
"Jessie? What do you think?" he inquired hesitantly in a small voice.
She didn't bother to turn her head when she replied. "What do I think about what?" she barked hoarsely, waving her hand in a hurried, expectant gesture that caused him speak abruptly.
"Meowth," he said quietly into his bread crust.
"Oh. That."
The redhead's demeanour changed instantly. Her expression softened into a grimace and once again, she brought the binoculars to her eyes to focus on the third, most furry member of their team only to find that Meowth had disappeared. And Cassidy was making her way back across the lawn. She inwardly kicked herself for not positioning herself and James in a place where they could hear the exchange.
Despite the sweat dousing James' brow, cool relief swept over him when he realised that she wasn't about to brandish a frying pan, but he kept his senses close until he was sure that it was deliberation and not irritation with which she pursed her lips.
The muted sound of footsteps on grass caught her ears. As the male half of their rival team stalked past alone, James gasped in alarm. Jessie dropped her voice an octave.
"I think that can be easily dealt with."
-----
Butch was irritated.
He had been awoken at six that morning to receive a nasty sermon from The Boss for last week's slipshod mission, thereafter found that no one had taken this week's round of uniforms to E Block and had been insulted twice today by a talking cat wearing a walkie-talkie. What's more, it was almost noon and he had had no chance to savour either his eight o'clock or his ten o'clock cigarette breaks. And before he could enjoy more than a bite of a late breakfast, Cassidy had agreed to meet with Meowth, goodness knows why, and that brought him here: eleven forty-three, ante meridiem, behind D Block, the amenities block.
He raised his eyebrows, staggered. He hadn't been expecting this.
"You want us to what, again?" Cassidy asked incredulously.
"I would like for you two to pick up a cake for me," explained Meowth. "You see, it's Jessie's birthday in two days and -"
"And why can you not do it yourself?" she interrupted.
He heaved a sigh of supreme annoyance; the scratch-cat wasn't known for his patience. "Because I'm going to be with Jess and James, making sure they're at our cabin at five on-the-dot and not meandering about doing whatever idiotic things they do when left unsupervised."
There was a pause in which he gave them a knowing look. Despite Meowth talking about his team mates as if they were a pair of four-year-olds, Butch was sure that these 'idiotic things' had to do with a certain organisation-wide power outage. He opened his mouth for the second time during the exchange. "Why can't James do it?"
"James," Meowth said slowly, "isn't exactly the most responsible person I know. Chances are, Jess will find out before the day's up, whether she bullies it out of him, or he flat-out tells her. I mean, they're around each other practically twenty-four seven. No, not like that, though I've had my suspicions, especially after a certain workplace Christm-"
"Tell her what?" Butch inquired before his monologue trailed too far and they heard things they'd rather leave undisclosed.
"It's a surprise party." The cat's tone suggested that he had made this point clear several times. Which Butch was very sure he hadn't. The Rocket was taken aback, and made a mental note not to say anything else for the rest of the conversation if he could help it.
"A surprise party?" Cassidy repeated flatly, her expression contemptuous.
"Yeah, you know, with party-poppers and 'surprise!'es and presents and-"
"Oh."
Neither Butch nor Meowth were pleased at the amount of delight dripping from her voice. She combed fingers through her fringe in thought.
"So, if we were to collect this cake," she reasoned, more to herself than anybody else, "I could plant a surprise present of my own inside, right?" Cassidy regarded Butch, who appeared bored and was fumbling through his pockets. "You know, seeing as how it's a surprise" - she momentarily waved her hands about ludicrously - "party and all."
"I, umm … guess so, but …" Meowth began uneasily.
"Alrighty then," Cassidy cut across him again.
"What?"
"We'll do it," she affirmed. "We'll get your stupid cake (3)."
"Okay, but -"
"But we'll need reimbursements."
Meowth looked too flabbergasted to manage a reply, and Cassidy's words were instead met with burst of static from the transmitter strapped to his waist. Mondo's voice erupted from the cat's backside.
"Miss Jessica? Mister" – crackle - "James? I've picked up" – crackle - "your laundry."
Her lips formed a wide grin.
"Your radio for a week," she said smoothly. At her side, Butch had since produced a packet of Marlboros and lit up, despite the cat's look of disgust.
Meowth rotated his cream torso to the side slightly, obscuring the item in question from her view, despite the black band around his waist, visible by all no matter which angle he turned. "My radio?"
She looked down at him sternly through thick lashes. "No radio, no cake."
The scratch-cat, visibly torn between the responsibility he had been given by Mondo to organise the collection of the birthday cake and the sense of control he had over his bumbling partners that was tied to having possession of a certain transmitter, hissed beneath his breath. Despite his desire to keep all channels of communication into and out of the team's radio for his discretion only, he unstrapped it from his round stomach, forced it into Cassidy's waiting hand as hard as he could and scowled.
"Thank you," she crooned, in an almost malevolent tone.
Butch took the opportunity to blow a generous amount of smoke in Meowth's direction. The cat understood this as sign to take his leave, though not without giving the teal-haired man one last look of displeasure. Once the cat was well out of earshot, Cassidy leant against the blanched wall of D Block and said, "Treacherous, little thing, isn't he? I wonder what poor Jess would do if she caught him talking to us."
He opened his mouth to reply, but decided this must have been a rhetorical question: Cassidy had already thrown him a brazen smirk and was beckoning towards headquarters with a slender shoulder. "Lunch?"
She turned slowly, eyeing him valiantly for a long moment, and slunk away behind the pale amenities block adorned with a huge, red letter 'R'. All the while, he could hear scheming whispers being fed to the radio. He sighed deeply and, verifying no one could see him, savoured one last draw.
As he trailed after his partner, he tossed the butt into some nearby undergrowth. He could have sworn he heard the bush gasp, stomp on the ground several times and mutter the word 'bastard'.
Cassidy's last words pounded his eardrums. What the short-tempered redhead would do, Butch didn't want to find out.
-----
"What are you looking for, Jess?"
"Never you mind."
"I can help you look if you like."
"I'm fine," Jessie called.
She brought a plush Pikachu to eye-level and scrutinised it for a moment before muttering a quick "oh, God, no", throwing it over her shoulder dismissively. It landed atop the untidy heap of clothes, half-used cosmetics and over five years worth of accumulated keepsakes at the foot of her bed.
James leant rigidly against the doorframe with an irritated expression staining his features, his head cocked and arms crossed firmly, while Jessie rummaged through her belongings. The items usually kept in her cupboard were strewn across the floor of their tiny bedroom, a sight that displeased James very, very much. He chewed on his bottom lip in distress when she found her way to the set of drawers they shared and shuffled through them desperately. By the time she reached the centremost and third drawer, Jessie had perched herself precariously upon a footstool, her legs folded neatly beneath her.
"What exactly are you looking for?" he asked tensely. His bottle cap collection lived in there. When James was answered with nothing but a shooing wave, he turned to fiddle with their broken bedroom door handle compulsively. She pulled out the pine drawer, unceremoniously tipped its contents onto the floor before her and continued her rummaging.
James winced at the sound of cheap metal on wood.
"There you are, pretty one."
The pure glee coating her voice grabbed his attention immediately. He craned his neck to its full length in a feeble attempt to see what she had grasped, though to no avail; his eyes had yet to adapt their poorly lit dorm room and the clutter surrounding her had reached a ridiculous level. She sprang to her feet at once and found her way to the short corridor after a number of carefully taken steps over the mess, careful to keep it hidden from his view. Her bare feet slapped against the wooden floor determinedly as James called after her.
"Hey, Jess, how about first clea …?"
James stopped in his tracks abruptly, his words wedged in his larynx (4) and sock-clad feet tingling with a sudden onslaught of pins and needles. He wasn't sure what initially made his blood run cold. It might have been the shrill, melodramatic cackle that echoed down the hallway as she made her way to their kitchen; then again, the sound of their cutlery drawer being thrust open and the many, many sharp things inside could also have been a cause for concern.
She emerged from their tiny kitchen after an agonisingly long while, wearing a very smug smirk and clutching a shoebox. Apprehension crossed James' features as he bent down to examine the box, approaching it gingerly. He fully expected the lid to be ripped off, allowing an obnoxious smell of sorts to spew from inside or even an unidentifiable liquid to be dripping from the base. At a single glance, however, it really did seem like an ordinary, everyday fuchsia shoebox from Pikachu Podiatry with the exception of … He squinted.
The words 'To our most wonderful-est team mate, Meowth, with much due love, Jess and Jim' were scribbled in permanent marker on the lid alongside several crudely drawn hearts and stars.
Oh … my.
As he returned to eye-level, he scratched the back of his neck broodingly and began to say, "What's in -", but Jessie grabbed his hand, tossed him a clever grin, and interrupted him hastily before he could voice any concerns.
"Let's go and ruin some lives, shall we?"
…
Eighteen minutes later.
…
The pair had heard the screams of outrage only moments ago. It was hard not to; they were seated in the cafeteria, barely a hundred metres away from their shared dormitory. James' back visibly had stiffened in an odd mixture of shock and self-disgust. She, however, didn't even blanch. None of their fellow Rockets appeared to have acknowledged the shriek; pain and suffering of all varieties were far too commonplace in an organisation like this, and business went on as usual in the dining hall.
"It's like scratching a cat because the cat has scratched you," she murmured at length, dispersing the cloud of silence that had hung over them for the past few minutes. James looked up, but couldn't find anything to offer in return. The phrase ran loops through his psyche like a watchdog. He was certain that Jessie was submersed in the same thought, but the words looked as though they had yet to succeed in leaping over the barrier to her conscience. In fact, it seemed to do nothing more than fuel the content disposition she'd adopted.
Jessie stared at her pumpkin soup, her cheek nestled in the palm of her propped up hand, while James slurped his in a peculiarly slow and vigilant manner. He kept his ears open for the rant in an appalled Brooklyn accent that never came.
Did he deserve whatever he got? James almost answered himself with a firm 'no' before reconsidering. Meowth should know better than anyone that Jessie's wrath knows no boundaries, especially concerning a certain blon-
As if almost on cue, the woman in question meandered into the cafeteria, closely followed by a teal-haired Rocket, the very moment the thought came to mind. Instantly, violet eyes found his partner's and for a fleeting second, James could have sworn there was a degree of alarm in the gaze. In a matter of nanoseconds, however, the blonde's composure returned. After a few words with her teammate, who appeared to rather sit elsewhere, the duo sauntered through the rows of tables and halted before their rival team, Cassidy with a determined gait and Butch bringing up the rear with an air of defeat hanging about his person.
For the three years they had been under the employ of Giovanni, there existed an unspoken rule that if one team was within a fifty metre radius of the other, a number of terrible insults and remarks about one another's mothers were to be exchanged, regardless of where they were and who was in their vicinity. Today was no exception.
"Jessica, James," Cassidy sighed dismissively, refusing to make further eye contact with either White Rocket and instead glared determinedly somewhere above their heads. Butch simply stood at her side looking uncomfortable.
While James nodded very slowly and warily, Jessie regarded them with heavily hooded eyes, an apathetic grin and a dash of swagger in her voice. "Cassidy, Botch."
Butch folded his arms at once and stubbornly turned his gaze elsewhere with a scornful grunt that would have otherwise been a retort if certain variables weren't being respected. James, meanwhile, relished the moment and beamed on the inside. Finally, his day was starting to look up. While Jessie attempted to catch Cassidy's fixed stare, he spotted Mondo strolling into the cafeteria, a good part of his face obscured by the enormous, gift-wrapped box he was carrying. James waved at him animatedly, but the moment Mondo saw him and his partner, he darted back into the corridor from where he entered wearing a mortified expression and a thick layer of scarlet on his cheeks.
The redhead continued. "So …?"
Cassidy narrowed her glare and spat, "So what?"
"What do you want?"
Her features contorted with indignation. Then revelation.
"Nothing that the unfortunate victim of a brother sister union could possibly comprehend," she muttered, staring at Jessie's soup. Butch elbowed her side at once, causing her to turn and glower in his general direction. They exchanged a series of meaningful glances, almost like voiceless banter, triggering a derisive snort from Jessie's direction.
"We can help you out if you like. Which way did you come in?"
At this, the Black Rockets stopped abruptly and abandoned the conversation at once. Neither Cassidy nor Butch could find an obligatory insult that was relevant, and took their leave with nothing more than a weakly hissed "Never mind". They had barely taken two steps, when, in an action that startled James, Jessie stood abruptly, hands planted defiantly on her hips and a cruel smirk staining her lips.
"You can keep it," she called scathingly, attracting more attention than was needed.
Cassidy, also taken aback, turned slowly on a heel to face her. A rare display of confusion had struck the blonde and she found herself speechless. Butch, too, had stopped in his tracks, following her lead, though he chose instead to cross his arms and lower his gaze to his boots.
"Taking into consideration recent events, it," Jessie declared pompously, putting as much contempt as she could into the last syllable, "no longer belongs to us." She beamed toothily at James, who offered a feeble, baffled nod in return. Bewilderment continued to hound Cassidy and Butch, which proved to be contagious as it spread across the faces of several other Rockets who had also heard Jessie's unnecessarily loud proclamation, even as they left the dining hall with raised eyebrows and scattered thoughts.
It was an occasion Jessie would inwardly deem victorious, even with James' complete lack of acknowledgment. She took her seat once more in an elegant fashion, crossing her left leg complacently over her right and tittering to herself. When he eventually chanced a glimpse, she was sipping her soup daintily in what he considered to be an almost feline manner.
His train of thought instantly brought Meowth to mind.
Then, the shoebox.
And its contents.
Only to derail moments later.
For a few seconds, he watched her eat, twirling his spoon between his fingers and hopeful to catch her gaze, but Jessie was too entrenched in her musings to notice him.
A minute passed.
James dropped the spoon abruptly into his bowl in resolution.
"Jessie?"
"Mm-hmm?"
"Why did you -?"
"Because I can."
The sudden poise she had assumed unsettled him, causing him to regret opening his mouth in the first place. Jessie's smile told him that she was under the (devastatingly correct) assumption that what he had begun to ask wasn't the question that plagued him most. She scrutinised him through those large, cat-like eyes, daring him to ask the all too predictable. "Wha … what did you …"
"You've got soup running down your chin."
"Oh, thank you. What exactly did you put … nmm, put in that box?" he asked tentatively, subduing his nerves, and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. He watched for her reaction warily.
She set down her spoon charily, without a word, and her gaze followed her action. The smile playing upon her lips didn't falter, though the eerily cool composure in which she sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap was too disturbing for his liking.
He took a huge gulp of air and readied himself to hear something sinister.
"So, -"
"Can I trust you, James?" she inquired in what could have been an offhanded kind of tone, though he was quick to note that her gloved hands had been placed flat, palm down, on the white table. He had learnt from experience that this meant that her intentions were far from blasé, and swallowed anxiously before replying.
"Can you … what?"
"Can I trust you?"
"Of course you can. We're best friends."
Jessie bent low over the table and thrust out her hand abruptly, her fifth finger held up expectantly. Her lips were pursed and her eyebrows tapered sternly. "I want you to pinkie-promise me never to mention this again."
James recoiled immediately with a look of incredulity.
From the corner of his vision, Domino was openly pointing in their direction from across the cafeteria, mouthing what looked suspiciously like the word 'idiots' and chortling to another female Rocket who didn't hesitate in mimicking her actions.
"No, Jess. This is ridiculo-"
"James."
The sudden growl that Jessie's voice had adopted was unmistakable and he knew better than to argue if he wanted to hear what was responsible for Meowth's distress (and walk away with all four of his limbs attached). But, then again … the malevolence that flickered in her eyes forced him to wonder whether or not he really wanted to be told after all.
It wasn't as if blatant ignorance had ever reversed anything. Until the other week, he knew nothing about the situation in Saffron, but that doesn't deny it ever happened. As he mulled this over, James reasoned that to turn back now would be cowardly, even if the cat was his friend. What had been done was … well, done. There was no doubting that.
He maintained the firm gaze. Curiosity had won him over.
"Erm - alright."
She leaned in even closer. The tip her nose was mere centimetres from his own, and he was suddenly very aware of the salty liquid dotting his upper lip. He could have even chanced a kiss if he wanted (5), but the occasion didn't call for such actions. She'd also probably hit him very, very hard.
"You tell anyone, especially him - and you are lost-dead-buried-gone forever and I'll not only hack off your pinkie, but I'll rip out every phalanges you've got. Yes?" Before he could even nod mutely and raise his hand to a reasonable height, her finger caught his. He could feel the amount of sweat in the creases of his palms manifest in proportion with his heightening unease.
So Jessie told him, in a whisper so uncharacteristically low that he could barely hear her. All the while he sat there, stock-still and silent, absorbing every gory little detail.
And James didn't tell a soul.
----
end
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Mooore ANs: I have presents for you, you (un)lucky reader, you: in the form of (inappropriately used) footnotes. Excited yet? I knew it.
Edit: the document uploader is being a 'tard and won't let me use superscript-ed-er-rised font, so you'll have to settle with numbers in brackets.
(1) James was watching television that night, and, in doing so, received his weekly dose of Black Books (Ep 3.1: Manny Come Home), from where I … erm, I stole this quote.
(2) Umm … He sat on an ice cream. (Aaargh! I don't know. He just did.)
(3) A la Vendetta of Making Fiends fame.
(4) For the sake of context, I hope this is somewhere near your throat.
(5) YES. Please do.
Soooo, until I suck it up and write something else (or 'revise' Insomnia) …
Love and llamas,
Gwendolynn.