I'm on two sides of a personal shipping war. Seriously, even moral dilemmas were never this hard. :| Anyhow, this is jumbled and sloppy. But I've been working on it for a week with no success. And I don't want it so sit on my laptop, glaring at me every time I open it. So I am posting it. To assuage my guilt about the fact that I ship Kevin/Macy just as hard as Nick/Macy. Maybe Macy needs a twin. It would just make things so much easier. Also up ahead, blatant abuse of italics. ;)
Literal Misunderstanding.
//
"So Macy, you coming to the New Year's Eve bash with me?" Macy whirls around, her eyes huge and her mouth open and Kevin can't help but grin widely. She looks so adorable when she's surprised. Hold it brain; she looks adorable ALL the time. He reprimands himself severely and then realizes there has not even been a meep out of Macy. Now Kevin starts sweating. Could it be possible that adorable and darling Macy Misa thinks he's the vilest scum on the planet and doesn't want to go out with him?
He frowns. Macy can't think of him as vile scum right? She spends the weekends with him in the parks, feeding anything stray - that is mostly the ducks and a dog or two and once in a while a random kid too - and then she helps with Math on Mondays and Bio on Thursdays and he's not a egoistic guy but he's fairly certain that they have gotten along well all those times together.
So hopefully vile scum should be out of the question. Just when his brain has finished meandering over the vagaries and the horror of Macy thinking of him as vile scum is just when Macy utters her first word. In his presence that is. He means, ever since he asked her the question that is. Oh you know what he means!
"Ohmygod!"
And she faints in his arms. Thankfully Kevin can credit the muscles in his arms AND Pilates for being awesome and they step up to the plate and do an admirably good job of holding up a currently limp Macy Misa.
"Macy?" He shakes her gently and taps her soft cheek. With a start Macy wakes up and all at once there some noise and shuffling and Kevin flails as he goes down with Macy somehow ending up under him. Sadly, his legs don't hold him up. He figures it must be a reaction from smelling Macy's lovely scent of oranges and cloves.
Now Macy is the one scrambling and peering concernedly over him.
"Oh are you okay Kevin?" The concern in her voice is washing over him in warm fragrant waves and Kevin feels like floating away on his clouds of cotton candy.
"Haummm…" he has no clue as to what he's even saying. Except that he feels pretty awesome.
"Oh my, have I damaged you Kevin?" This time Macy's voice is wobbling like she is going to weep buckets and buckets of tears, so Kevin comes galloping out of dreamland and sits bolt upright. The relief on her face is palpable and she smiles prettily and Kevin smiles back goofily and blushes.
Seriously, this is turning out to be a day of AWESOME.
"And er, by the way, I totally will go with you. Sorry for the fainting. I felt so happy that I think the force of my emotions overwhelmed me and I fainted." She is blushing and trying to look him in the eye but it is evident to him that it's hard to do both at the same time.
"I am so glad you don't think of me as vile scum." Kevin heaves a humongous sigh of relief. Seriously, that would have been the death knell to his day of awesome.
"Huh? But you are perfect Kevin. Why ever would I think of you as vile scum?" She looks at him confused and tilts her head to one side enquiringly. Kevin sighs. Where is his brain to mouth filter when he needs it. Capricious thing, leaving him to mutter nonsense while it waltzes away in la-la land.
"Never mind that Macy. But I am so glad you are coming." He's going to smile at her in utter delight but then he notices her looking a little off and he at once holds the smile. Like literally. Thankfully, his brain to lips co-ordination is still working.
"What's wrong Macy?"
"Oh nothing. I'll have to wear a dress, wont I?" And she looks at him a little wistfully.
"I guess. But you can wear whatever you want. Even your jammies. Just tell me ahead of time. So we can co-ordinate." Kevin grins at her. Problem solved right?
"That is so sweet of you Kevin. But I am going to wear a dress. I just may have to work extra to buy one, seeing as I kind of blew up my Christmas allowance on gifts." Macy tells him ruefully, a determined light shining in her eyes though.
Kevin at once wants to offer to pay for it but something tells him - oh hi there brain to mouth filter! - that that would not be a good idea. So he just smiles and nods and then panics realizing he's late for Mrs. Scary Martin's class. Not that her first name is Scary. But Kevin finds her scary with her hairy mole and clomping shoes.
"I've got to go Mace. See you around and good luck finding a dress. And remember, you don't really need one. I'll be totally fine with whatever you wear." Kevin hastily says this and gives Macy a peck on the cheek before preparing to run. But Macy seems to be saying something so he waits.
Macy smiles, "You are such a doll Kevin." And Kevin grins before racing away when he realizes a horrifying thing.
If he's late, Mrs. Martin just might turn him into a puppet with her glassy glare of doom.
Then he will be a doll!
//
Over the next few days, Kevin keeps randomly meeting Macy in the halls but it's never for more than a few moments cause she seems busy and he's busy trying to finish up on school work before they close for winter break.
In this moments of snatched conversation, which are the best five or seven minutes of his day, Kevin one day learns of something that sort throws him into a tizzy. Like a wild rage fuelled tizzy. Here's what happens.
There are the lockers, and there are the students milling around them. In the midst of all this cacophony, Kevin stands alone with Macy in front of his smoothie locker and tries to sip a smoothie and talk at the same time. In conclusion he realizes, do not do both at the same time he realizes. Because smoothie dribbling down his chin cannot be a pretty or even a manly sight.
"So Mace, how's the hunt for the dress going?" To tell you the truth, he's probably worrying about it more than Macy because he does not want her to feel pressured about the fact that she needs to wear a dress to look appropriate. But since she feels the pressure and refuses to be convinced otherwise, like a decent would - be boyfriend Kevin worries about the toll that the dress searching is taking in on her. Can there not be a way in which in he can whip out his shiny platinum credit card and just hand it over to her and ask her to go crazy? No strings attached?
"It's going pretty good. I have this really amazing dress picked out and Stella is loaning me her wonderful Jimmy Choos and after a few more favors for Van Dyke, I shall have enough to buy the dress."
Picture this. You are merrily skipping down the road going, 'tra la la, I am so happy, the skies are blue, the grass is green,' when suddenly you skip on an artfully placed banana peel and totally land on your behind painfully. That's how Kevin feels when he hears the words, 'favors for Van Dyke'. And he feels so horrible that he does a smoothie spit-take and in his gallant bid to avoid spraying Macy – which he totally avoids by the way – he sprays Mrs. Scary Martin who at once fixes upon him her glassy glare of doom.
But Kevin has more pressing problems at hand now. Like the fact that his chin is frozen thanks to smoothie dribbling down it. Or rather the fact that Macy is doing FAVORS FOR VAN DYKE.
AHEM. Which begs the question, 'what in the HELL kind of favors are these?' Because Kevin will have you know he was not born yesterday and he has a pretty good idea of how sordid the world can be. And he even knows that dogs which are supposedly being sent to live on farms are actually no longer alive and have gone to the Great Big Juicy Bone in the sky. Kevin knows it all, he assures you.
Macy looks at him confused to Kevin hurriedly wipes off the smoothie and tries to question her in a super stealthy ninja manner.
"So what kind of favors are these?" Okay, that isn't in a super stealthy ninja like manner at all but Kevin at the moment is feeling a little TOO frazzled.
"Oh this and that," Macy mentions vaguely. "I don't really like it but one's gotta do what ones gotta do."
Kevin's heart is bleeding. Yes, it's literally bleeding like someone took it and put it through a paper shredder which leaves it all messy and bloody and you know, bleeding.
What has he caused Macy to do?
Because he wanted to take her to the dance, she had to work and give favors to Van Dyke. And Van Dyke. Kevin thought he was a good guy. Especially when he concurred with Kevin over the severe lack of information on vegetable gardening in the school library.
Kevin thought Van Dyke was a stand up guy who appreciated the importance of organic farming. But clearly Van Dyke isn't that. As it turns out, Van Dyke is right royal wicked especially if he is making Macy do unpleasant things.
Kevin's blood is boiling. Those unpleasant things had better not involve any sort of touching or feeling up. Otherwise, Kevin here is going to rip out his 'equipment' and then beat on him some more. To take advantage of a lovely young girl like Macy, that is just CRUEL.
Kevin is looking a little spaced out so Macy is a little worried.
"Kevin, are you okay?"
Kevin snaps out his soon to be indignant rage blackout and notices Macy in front of him chewing on her lip as she gazes worriedly at him. Kevin's heart is doing this weird flip flop thing, where at one moment, it is swelling and at the other moment it is deflating. Okay, he has some business to take care of. You know, parlance for shit to go down.
"I have a situation Macy. I'll attend to it and be back right away." Kevin says grimly before stalking off. He's going to make Van Dyke wish he was never born. Macy stares after him and wonders what thesituation is. And then enlightenment dawns.
It must be the wedgie his tight pants are giving him.
She assures you, she very much enjoys the view that Kevin's tight pants provide but really it must make the poor boy chafe in really uncomfortable places, if you get her drift. Still, the dedication he has to his music, his fans, his fashion, it all warms her very much, Macy thinks as a warm glow suffuses her face at the thought of Kevin.
To her, he's perfect.
//
Van Dyke is sitting in the library and doing his own thing. Which is checking his reflection on the cell phone screen and smiling in good-natured approval. Van Dyke doesn't like to boast but he is a pretty awesome guy.
Like seriously, he is awesome.
He's just about to get started on his painfully NOT so awesome Math project when someone descends on him like the avenging furies. And Van Dyke vaguely remembers them as being Greek cheeks who extract revenge on anyone who angers them. Van Dykes thinks back hard as to which chick did he anger, so much so that she wants to smack him down in the library. However he draws a total blank because usually Van Dyke doesn't irritate anybody, not even chicks. He's confused and he's even more confused when he turns around and he finds a furious Kevin Lucas glaring down at him.
Wait, Kevin is so not a chick.
"Sup Kevin?" he asks amiably and he's a little bemused as to why Kevin is choking with what seems to be indignant fury.
"You cad. How can you sit there and greet me when you've been hiding your true face from me all this while! I mean, dude, we bonded over vegetable gardening. I thought we were in it for the long haul." At Van Dyke's look of horror Kevin realizes the ambiguity of his statement and immediately straightens it out. "I mean as friends. And then you go and make Macy do stuff for you? Man, you are evil. Like even worse than Mr. Crunklemeyer."
Van Dyke gasps. He's even worse than Mr. Crunklemeyer, the creepy school janitor? But that is like not awesome.
"But dude, what did I do?"
Here Kevin achieves a sardonic laugh. He's seen those cowboy anti-hero movies you know. Kevin has got it down.
"What did you do? You are making an innocent and wonderful girl like Macy do all sorts of things for you. That's what you're doing."
"But she said it was no problem. And it's only for a short while. Till I get the hang of things at least." Van Dyke says as he frowns. Seriously, Macy was only helping him perfect his baseball stance so that he doesn't strike out easy. That is not wrong is it? But Kevin here seems to think so. But Van Dyke is pretty sure he's not doing anything wrong. Besides, like he's paying Macy good money to coach him. Maybe Kevin wants him to pay her more money?
"Do you want me to pay her more? Cause I sure can. Except she may have to increase her hours because I prefer bang for my buck."
This gets Kevin even more riled up.
Seriously?
What in HELL is the world coming too? Is it sinking into a morass of sin and debauchery? Van Dyke here sure seems and example of that.
Kevin clenches his fists and advances towards Van Dyke. "Dude, if you make Macy do even one more thing, I will rip out your balls and feed them to the dogs. Or to you. Cause Hannibal Lecter makes his victims eat their own flesh."
Poor Van Dyke is blubbering by now. "She was only helping me with my baseball stance. But never mind. I'll ask her to stop. On second thoughts, you tell her. I've gotta go some...place." He practically mumbles because he's shaking so hard from fear and then he takes off before Kevin can advance any further.
Kevin smiles and then frowns.
Wait, Macy was helping Van Dyke with his baseball stance?
But what was so wrong about that?
And then he gets it.
Macy has the best baseball scores in the district. Teaching Van Dyke is like helping the competition. And then Kevin sighs with happiness. She was willing to forgo her number one position just so that she could buy a proper dress to go out with him to the ball? That is so sweet. And it also reminds Kevin of something. Thanks to his hair trigger temper as far as seemingly exploiting Macy is concerned, the poor girl has no means to buy a lovely dress. And she's not going to accept charity from anyone either.
So he basically sabotaged himself. And Macy too.
Oops.
//
In the afternoon he finds Macy sitting in the atrium looking like a very sad panda. Kevin gulps guiltily. It's his entire fault that she looks like a depressed panda who has just found out that panda population in the world is steadily decreasing despite concentrated efforts to save them.
"Hey Mace."
"Oh hi Kevin," she says morosely and then goes back to staring at her patterned shoes.
"I am so sorry Macy," Kevin mumbles as he flops down next to her and stares at his patterned shoes. See, they were meant to be. They both wear patterned shoes. He just may have blown up the most awesome day in his life to smithereens though. How idiotic of him.
"But Kevin, you have nothing to be sorry for. You did nothing wrong." She throws and arm around and him and hugs him close. And then she finishes a tad bitterly," It was that stupid Van Dyke who bailed on me. Never trust a guy wears chapstick. Seriously, they are very untrustworthy."
Kevin feels like an extinct panda now. Miserable.
"It was my fault Macy. I misunderstood what you meant by favors and took a different view of it. And then I may have threatened him into stopping. But only because I thought he was taking advantage of you and that made me very angry because you are so sweet and pretty and I don't like guys taking advantage of you."
Macy gasps at his revelation and then blushes at the connotation of favors.
"I am sorry Kevin. I should have explained myself better. I didn't mean to get you all bothered. I was just coaching him in baseball." Macy says in a small voice and wringing her tiny hands.
This time it's Kevin who throws his arm around her and draws her close. "It's not your fault Macy. It's all mine. I think I may have jealousy issues as far as you are concerned." Macy looks horrified and for the second time today Kevin hastens to straighten out his statement.
"No no. I'm not jealous of you. I love you. I'm just jealous of that Van Dyke got to spend time with you. And then I got angry because I assumed he was making you do things. By the way I know you wont do stuff like that. I thought he forced you and then I felt guilty because I felt I brought it around by asking you to the ball for which you needed to buy a dress and practically threw you in Van Dyke's evil hands. And now I know I just made a mess of it all." He then sighs sadly.
And then he thinks, anytime now Macy's hand will come swinging at his face in a well deserved punch. Oh well, he really does deserve it.
"That was sweet in it's own way Kevin. And I appreciate the fact that you are looking out for me. But you needn't worry you know. Chuck Norris has praised my roundhouse kick. I mean, I can handle myself in case shit decides to go down. But the fact that you stood up for me and were willing to fight me is just so nice of you." Macy says with a warm smile.
Okay, to be honest, Kevin can find himself sort of melting now. But he still needs to fix one more thing. And this time he's doing it the right way.
"I don't fight for you because I'm nice. I fight for you because I really, really, like—no love you." He's blushing so hard now because that is such a filmy dialogue but apparently it seems to throw Macy into a tizzy of delight because she plants a toe-curling kiss on his lips.
Kevin is now up, up and away floating on clouds of cotton candy with Macy at his side.
Life is blissful.
"By the way, why do we even need a new year ball? You could just come home and we'll watch dozens of movies and eat tons of cookies and er, make out. Only if you want to that is." Macy says shyly.
Kevin can hear the heavens opening and angels singing and Macy is bathed in golden light. He cannot believe he got so lucky.
"That would make me a very happy panda." He says beaming before drawing her closer and planting one on her smiling pink lips.
Well that's two happy pandas and one scared panda so far in the New Year.
Oh well, Van Dyke should get over his fear eventually.
I'm weeping now for lost causes like this one. ;_;
But ZOMG! my first story post of the new year. Standalone that is. On that thought, happy face. :D