Disclaimer: I don't own the properties contained within.
Starring: Penny/Seaweed
Author's Note: Seaweed? Really? People name their children Seaweed? That is beyond cruel. Also, Penny and Seaweed are impossibly cute – probably more so than AangxKatara or AangxToph or SakuraxLi (and somewhere out there a die hard shipper is plotting my demise: please don't go for the face).
Summary: But then where do we come up with vanilla sundaes with hot fudge sauce?
He'd never looked at a white girl before. It had just never occurred to him to pass his view from chocolate to vanilla. That, and it was Not Approved by the city of Baltimore, the United States, the North American continent, his side of the hemisphere and quite possibly, the world in general.
(Vanilla just doesn't mix with chocolate, you see. It's always vanilla or chocolate ice cream.)
The first white girls to enter his life that made him stand up and look around was that harpy Von Tussle who made his mama's life living hell. Just being in her presence made his skin crawl but he was a proud son so he made sure to stand close to mom. Just in case. Amber is a nasty, nasty little girl with absolutely no dancing ability and she is lucky that Inez has never been in hearing range of her snide remarks about Negro Day.
(You never see blackberries in cream.)
Then he laid eyes on Tracy. The girl with the dancing shoes and the heart of spun gold. The first white girl he's ever heard of who can look him in the eye and see that he's a person – as he has a name and a birth certificate and goes to school – and values his existence. He's proud to call Tracy a friend of his and is now quite ready to spring her out of jail, paint her steps and do whatever it is friends do when one is black and one is white.
(Black soot is always wiped off the white picket fence.)
Seaweed's never looked at a white girl the way that he's looked at Penny. She's tiny, especially when compared to Tracy, and the sweetest thing that he's ever laid eyes on. He can't believe that an angel like her is related to that witch of a mother and it wonders how Penny's stayed to strong when she gets tied up with jump ropes and sprinkled with holy water. He knows that fairy tales, the girl is locked up in a tower and while that certainly applies, Penny's got some sort of armor somewhere that enables her to withstand her mother's strange parenting method and the criticisms about her loving a black man and being friends with a fat girl.
(Black bruises are unsightly blemishes on pale white skin.)
He doesn't understand how she keeps smiling, how she simply brushes off the anger and the judgemental attitudes of others. It's something that confounds his mother, inspires his sister and gains the approval of all of his friends. She's never once needed to cry on his shoulder but she's always holding his hand when somebody wants to start a fight. He's beginning to think it's the damn lollipop she's always got on her to keep the bitterness of the world at bay.
(But then where do we come up with vanilla sundaes with hot fudge sauce?)