They had burst out of the drop ship doors like one collective exhale of joy, running into the great unknown with wild abandon. They didn't run to get anywhere, they simply ran to feel the way the ground came up to meet their feet.
And God did it feel good.
There was no way to measure the pure euphoria that coursed through their veins, but perhaps one could simply measure the speed of Jasper's bouncing. The entirely too energetic teen was hopping from person to person as his best friend, Monty, hopped from plant to plant, each picking up a new and tantalizing piece of information with every new encounter. As Monty plucked a five-pronged leaf from a bush, Jasper clued in to a small group's conversation.
"We're in a forest, so I bet there's one of those hot springs around here. We should go find one," a blonde boy declared with misplaced confidence and his circle of equally naive friends agreed wholeheartedly.
"Yea, let's go!" Jasper chimed in, hovering over their shoulders in an unconvincing attempt to look like he was being included.
"Go take a hike, Goggles," the boy responded with annoyance. It turned out even the outcasts had outcasts, but no amount of stuck-up eye rolling was going to take Jasper down from this high.
"Ha, yea, will do," he called after them with an endearing but unrequited friendliness as he rocked back on his heels again. Suddenly, however, their retreating forms didn't matter. A realization had dawned on Jasper that would change everything. He turned to the only person who could possibly understand the repercussions of such an event: Monty.
"I mean, we can," he emphasized with half-crazed excitement, holding Monty by the shoulders to brace him for the incoming truth bomb. "We can actually go take a hike."
Jasper waited for the earth-shattering revelation to sink in, and as it did, Monty's eyes lit up with the new world of possibilities they had stumbled upon.
"I don't know man," he replied, lips curving up in a mischievous grin, "It's a real jungle out there." Jasper let out a giggle more befitting of a young girl than a teenaged boy as he struggled to gather himself for his rebuttal.
"Don't worry," he began, snickering between his words, "I think we're out of the woods now." He gave an utterly unnecessary nod towards the forest behind him just to remind his friend that for once, all of these stupid sayings actually meant something.
"You're right, I'm overreacting," Monty said with fake solemnity, "Thank goodness you're so down to earth."
And with that they both lost it. They couldn't care less that they were attracting the attention of at least a dozen people, or that the attention was anything but good. They had just unlocked a treasure trove of earth-related humor that had been under lock and key for a century; no one was going to ruin this for them.
But eventually someone did ruin it, roughly grabbing them by the shoulders to haul them off on a mission that, ironically, meant they actually had to take a hike. A hike with the most beautiful girl on Earth, literally, so the two boys didn't put up much of a fight. After crashing and burning once, Jasper took a second shot at wooing the goddess, plucking a fluorescent pink flower from an overhanging branch. It was certainly more dazzling than any poison sumac.
"Wake up and smell the roses?" he offered, twirling the gift between his fingers with an optimistic grin.
"I don't think that's a rose, buddy," Octavia laughed, looking down at the wild flower with a dubiously raised brow. "Nice try though." And with that, her attention was gone, flickering back to the expanse of greenery around them, and of course, to the Space Walker in front of them.
"Dude, I don't think girls get puns," Jasper whispered to Monty, frowning down at the flower before tossing it back to the ground with a defeated sigh.
"I don't think we get girls," Monty corrected. Noticing Jasper's downtrodden expression, he tried a different tactic, nudging him in the shoulder with a coy grin. "Maybe we should try taking a leaf from Finn's book?" Jasper's snort was loud enough to garner even Clarke's elusive attention, and the group looked back at the two chuckling boys in utter confusion.
So perhaps they were still outcasts and perhaps they still didn't understand girls, but for now, they had each other. And everything was coming up roses.
Author's Note:
Anyone else miss Monty and Jasper being idiots? I do. I could write for this broship forever.
But really now, imagine how annoying it would be to have all these old sayings from Earth that made no sense in space? The grass is always greener on the other side, kid. WHAT GRASS, MOM? WHAT GRASS?