Happy and Toby for whatever reason are at the grocery store at odd hours of the morning, so there aren't many people. Toby starts causing some trouble, gets a reluctant Happy into it (maybe through a dare or something), but they end up having fun, being silly, taking a few more risks than necessary (interpret risk in any way you choose), causing annoyance/frustration, possibly causing a mess of sorts. Whether or not they get in trouble is up to you.
- established quintis
- grocery store shenanigans
/
"You're an idiot."
"We've established that," Toby nods, and takes the next turn extra slow, just because he knows it bugs her.
She shoots him a glare that lets him know she noticed. "It's two-thirty a.m., Doc. What sane person needs pickles at this time of night?"
"Technically, it's this time of morning – "
Happy punches him, and he almost hits a street lamp.
"Watch it, Hap, unless you want to spend next weekend fixing Walter's car."
"This piece of crap is almost beyond fixing, even for me."
"Touché." He can't really argue with her there, and since Walter stubbornly refuses to trade in his clunker for a semi-decent used car, it's either put up with duct-taped seats or walk the fifteen blocks, since Happy refused to take her bike for some reason.
Why there's not a convenience store closer than this to the garage, he has no idea. This is Los Angeles, the second biggest city in the United States. He should be able to aim a spitball off the roof and hit a convenience store.
Imagine his dismay, then, when they pull into the parking lot and notice the lack of any lights on inside, whatsoever.
"What is this?" he demands, leaning over the dash. Happy raises her eyebrows at his outrage, but remains silent. "What respectable convenience store closes? What about the needs of the people? What is our world coming to, Hap?"
She just stares at him – which, okay he can understand that maybe he's freaking out a little too much over a jar of pickles.
But he gets cravings, okay, and Paige threatened them all with bodily harm if they don't get their case studies caught up before she gets to work Monday morning, and since neither he nor Happy want to come in on Saturday or Sunday, they're powering through the wee hours.
"You know what? Fine," he throws the car into reverse and peels back out onto the main road. "Desperate times call for desperate measures."
"Where are we going now?" Happy demands, in the closest thing to a whine he's ever heard from her.
"To the one place that won't let me down." He takes a sharp turn, smirking when Happy gets thrown against the window a little and swears under her breath. "Walmart."
/
Happy likes to think of herself as an open-minded person. Maybe a bit of a short temper, but that's mostly with Toby when he's being stupid.
For example, when he drives to Walmart at almost three in the morning for a jar of pickles.
"I can't believe you're doing this," she grumbles as she follows him inside. The greeter is sitting in a grungy plastic chair in the corner, playing on his phone but his head jerks up when the doors slide open. He looks flat-out shocked to see someone in here. Not that she blames the guy.
"This way, c'mon." Toby marches down the aisles, and to her dismay grabs more than just pickles off the shelves. A box of Little Debbies, two bags of chips – of the same flavor, she's not sure Toby should even be driving back to the garage at this point – and a two-liter of Mountain Dew, which she somehow ends up carrying.
"Doc – "
Toby screeches to a halt, right in the middle of the aisle.
"Happy." He looks excited, which honestly scares her. Only illegal, dangerous, or awkward things excite Toby.
(Except if it's the sight of her fixing a bowl of cereal wearing her underwear and one of his Harvard t-shirts. But that doesn't count.)
She glances warily down the aisle he's transfixed by, and rolls her eyes.
"Seriously, Doc? How old are you, twelve?"
"You already knew that," he chides, and runs forward to tug a bright pink bicycle off the rack. He dumps his food into the white basket mounted on the handlebars. He's about three feet too tall for the bike. His knees knock into his elbows whenever he tries to pedal. It even has training wheels.
He's downright giddy, and it's stupid and immature and it's so annoying how she can't stop smiling. The bike has glittery, hot pink streamers on the handles and white tires with glittered hot pink rims.
Her smiling abruptly stops when he starts to pedal forward.
"Whoa, hey," she takes a step back, adjusting the bottle of Mountain Dew on her hip. She vaguely thinks that she sounds a little like Paige, whenever Walter wants to do something ridiculous that would probably piss off the director of the FBI. "You can't ride that in here. You'll hurt somebody."
Toby quirks an eyebrow, makes a show of looking around at the deserted store. "Yeah, I could easily run over one of the hundreds of people thronging the place."
She narrows her eyes, but three o'clock in the morning must be Toby's form of liquid courage, because he doesn't even flinch.
"C'mon, Happy, live a little. Who's gonna get onto us?"
Happy considers. She knows it's likely that they really are the only ones in here, and that one greeter didn't really look like he cared all that much. Statistically, there's just one cashier, maybe a handful of grocery stock clerks, and hopefully minimal security.
She sighs, dumps the soda into Toby's basket, and surveys her options. She'd prefer, of course, one of the black mountain bikes, but they're way too big. She sighs irritably, moves down the line until she comes to the kids' bikes. Toby is smirking, she can hear him from ten feet away, but she ignores him as she passes all the smaller pink bikes.
All of a sudden, she spots it, on the very end, and she wastes no time in mounting it. She's actually very proud of this bike; the kids in one of her foster homes loved the Power Rangers and Happy would always scoff and pretend to hate it, but secretly she loved it. She's still not sure why.
"Blue?"
Toby isn't smirking anymore; he's just smiling, big and carefree and like the world could stop turning right now and he wouldn't care. She just shrugs, uses her feet to walk her bike up next to his, and starts to say something, when –
"Race you to the paint aisle."
And just like that, he's gone, glittery streamers fluttering behind him. She snorts, and takes off, trying to find a shortcut.
The dumb stock clerks have pallets out in the aisles, but she manages to find one in the freezer section that's relatively free of obstacles. Right as she blitzes out of the end, she spots Toby cruising past the cash registers, one hand clapped over his hat.
She very nearly barrels over a guy who's cleaning out the fitting rooms, yells an apology over her shoulder as she pedals faster through the bra aisle.
When she skids to a stop beside the swatches of paint samples, Toby is nowhere to be seen; she takes a moment to enjoy her victory, but her phone goes off.
where r u
It can't be safe to speed through Walmart on a kid's bike while texting. Still, she replies.
paint aisle?
dont see u
She rolls her eyes and sends him a picture of the empty aisle. Seconds later she hears his bike, and when he comes around the corner she's all prepared to gloat but –
"I win."
She blinks. "Uh, no. I got here first."
"Uh-uh. You came to the wrong aisle."
"What?"
"Spray paint, Hap," he says, like it should be obvious.
She glares at him. "Spray paint? You said literally nothing about spray paint, just 'the paint aisle."
"Well, it's not my fault you misunderstood – "
"I didn't misunderstand, you just suck at communicating – "
" – clearly meant spray paint, who even uses regular paint anymore?"
She swats his head. "Regular people, stupid. With regular houses and stuff."
"What do they use it for?" Toby sounds almost offended that regular paint is even a thing.
Happy shrugs. "I dunno, redo their kitchen? Paint their front doors obnoxiously bright colors? Paint the baby's room?"
"Daniel paints Mr. Miyagi's house in the first Karate Kid movie," Toby says absently.
"Side to side." Happy loves those movies, okay. Any movie where the bully gets the crap beat out of him by his former victim earns an automatic spot on her movie shelf.
"Okay," Toby nods. "I guess I could have been a little clearer about which aisle, specifically. But does this mean it's a tie?"
"Sure," Happy says. It's been fun, but she's tired and cranky and hungry and just wants to go back to the garage so she can finish the stupid paperwork so she can go home. "Yeah, fine, it's a tie."
"Hm." Toby frowns at the floor, thinking, and she sighs.
"What, Doc?"
"Nothing, it's just…I had it all worked out, what the winner's prize was."
She quirks an eyebrow, but then he shoots her a sly grin and she understands.
"Okay, so since we tied, doesn't that mean we both win?"
"I like the way you think," he murmurs, before leaning over and kissing her.
She gives as good as she gets, and by the time they pull apart he's flushed and looks like maybe he doesn't want to race anymore.
"Let's buy your stuff," she suggests, "and get back to the garage so we can go home."
He grins, slow and easy and she hates him for being so smug but she kinda loves him for it, too.
"I really like the way youthink," he says again, and doesn't stop smiling even when she punches him in the shoulder, hard enough to make him fall off his princess bike.
(Luckily, she's already turned away so he can't tell she's smiling, too.)
She waits until she's facing the opposite direction, with her back to him, and then she says, "Last one to the bike aisle buys everything."
Toby swears behind her, but she remembers which aisles have the least number of pallets on the floor, and just as she comes out of the juniors section, an almighty crash sounds behind her and she almost loses her own balance as she turns around to see Toby lying on the floor, an entire shelf of brightly patterned leggings collapsed on him.
She sniggers despite herself, and when he sits up and reaches for his hat immediately, she knows he's okay, so she turns back to face the front end of her bike again; she spots something out of the corner of her eye, and freezes.
"Um…Doc?"
"My spleen…" he whines.
"Doc."
"Oh, I'm fine, thanks Hap."
She'd feel bad if it weren't for the feeling of impending doom that's currently making her hop off her bike, and run over to where Toby is still trying to stand up.
"Tell you what, Doc, you hurry up and don't get us caught by Walmart security, and I'll make sure you don't have time to think about your stupid pickles until afternoon. Deal?"
Toby blinks at her. "Well when you put it that way…"
"Shut up, we gotta get out of here," she mutters, grateful for once that she's short.
"So do you mean what I think you mean? Because – "
"Keep your voice down, and – no, don't stand up all the way, hunch over. Follow me."
She ducks a little so she can see underneath the clothing racks, and makes sure they avoid the khaki-and-sneaker-clad legs that are wandering through this section. It's tricky, since the employee could just do the exact same thing, but if they're lucky this is just that zombie greeter, and he won't care enough to actually try and look for them.
Somehow they make it out into the main aisle, but from there it's a good sixty feet to the doors, with nothing to hide behind.
"We'll just have to run for it."
Happy nods, counts to three, and sprints for the door. Toby's right behind her, and when she starts to slow down outside, he grabs her hand and makes her run the rest of the way to the car. She tries to let go so she can open her door, but suddenly finds herself leaning back against it.
Toby leans in close, his hands on her waist. "Did we tie again?"
She smirks, and scrapes her short fingernails over his ribs the way he likes. "I don't know, I think I technically touched the car first – "
He cuts her off with another kiss, one that she feels all the way down to her toes, and doesn't pull away until they're both breathless and using the car to support their weak knees.
"I like it when we tie," he breathes against her skin, "But I gotta say, I don't mind when I let you win, either."
Happy just grins, and thinks that maybe midnight pickle-runs aren't so bad, after all.
/
Thanks for reading!