Note: Written for my very good friend, who just recently reminded me how much I love this pairing. It's my first attempt at writing them, but I feel pretty good about it. 3
'Passionfruit'
It wasn't as if they'd never experienced rain before; of course not. They'd even made it through a hurricane once, in the time since they'd been accepted as a part of the little Earth family. And, therefore, Jumba was thoroughly befuddled at this particular rain, and could do nothing but stand in confusion at the front door and watch his scrawny little friend flap about aimlessly in the yard, shrieking at the downpour.
"Stop it!" Pleakley pleaded with the gray clouds overhead. "Please, just stop it!" From his distance, Jumba couldn't quite tell, but it seemed that tears were falling from Pleakley's big eye as he shouted.
After watching the scene continue to play out in much the same way for a good four or five minutes, Jumba sighed and called out the door, "What are you doing?" The question, however, was lost to the torrential water, and so he resigned himself to what he must do. With a fluid motion, he snatched up the extra-large umbrella that hung on the peg by the door, flung said door open wide, and stepped out onto the porch. A pause and a frown later, he walked into the rain. It only took him a handful of steps to cross the yard (squelching into the mud as he went) and join Pleakley, who was holding a drooping plant and sniffling.
"I say again, what are you doing?" Jumba asked, still shouting to be heard.
Pleakley looked woefully up at him. "My passionfruit!" he cried. "It's all drowning!"
"Eh?"
"Passionfruit!" Pleakley yelled. "I heard it attracted butterflies, and I so wanted to examine some butterflies, so I... I planted this! But it's getting all drowned out by the rain! There goes my whole project!"
With that, Pleakley dissolved into tears, behaving for all the world as if life as he knew it was over forever. Jumba blinked twice at him, then looked up at the sky. It was raining even harder. Pleakley's tacky Hawaiian floral-print shirt (adorned with flowers suspiciously resembling the ones on the water-logged passionfruit plants) was soaked through, unsurprisingly. Jumba took a long moment to consider his next course of action and finally decided to stretch out his arm and hold the big umbrella over Pleakley's head instead of his own.
Pleakley's attention was drawn away from his gardening disaster by this, and he said, "What...?"
"Just making sure you aren't catching a cold," Jumba answered, all four eyes shut as if he was professing great genius by this statement. "Now. Time to go back inside."
"But--my plants...."
"Well! Better plants die than you!" Jumba laughed, and began to walk away, forcing Pleakley to follow along under the umbrella and wonder to himself what on Earth could have prompted Jumba to say something like that.
-end-