A/N: So I am so so so so so excited for this story! Many things lined up and planned for you.
Thanks for the reviews! Please keep them coming!
Alright, let's get to it, shall we?
Mermaiding out.
Ch 2: Normal
"Hey," you quietly say as you walk into the HQ charging room. Mercedes is busy hooking up tubes to the machine Mike is lying on. Titans heal by absorbing more energy over a period of time, depending on what the injury is.
"Oh thank god it's only you. If I had to spend another second with Rachel Berry I think I would self-combust," says Mercedes.
"What did she do this time?" you ask as you look around the room.
"Oh she wouldn't stop lecturing Kurt before I put him under. Kept on going on and on about how she should've been paired with you and yadda yadda. You know how she is. Over achiever with a big mouth. She says if she was paired with you, Kurt wouldn't have gotten hurt."
You roll your eyes. "So you went all 'aw hell-to-the-no' on her and she's now cowering in a corner somewhere?" you ask.
"Nah, I told her that you probably don't expect the titans to go help out the medics and warriors with cleaning up, hence-",
"She got up and did exactly just that," you finish. "What a twerp. I love her, but she really needs to relax, I don't have favourites."
"Yeah, tell that to her shrine of you in her room," says Mercedes. "I'm glad you're okay though Brittany. The guys got it handed to them."
You're in the middle of the room looking at three chamber pods occupied by Mike, Kurt, and Ryder. They were sleeping while the inside of the chambers were releasing light blue-purple energy to be absorbed by their bodies.
"How long are they going to be out for?" you ask. You're not worried because you know that the life-energy will heal them. It just takes some time. You're still upset that they got hurt though.
"Kurt should be out tomorrow. Ryder too. Mike had it the worst. He got a blast right to the head and I'm pretty sure that he got whiplash bad enough for a concussion. If those things happen to titans, that is."
You're so grateful for having Mercedes and Tina around. "You're doing a great job Mercedes. You're the best medic in the whole universe," you say as you give her a hug.
It's important to be a supportive leader. You have to show them you know what you're doing, but also encourage them when they're doing things right.
With her eyes trained on a holographic screen, Mercedes starts to push some buttons on it and you hear a new rush of energy flow into the chambers the guys are strapped into.
"Don't tell that to Tina," Mercedes chuckles. "We always fought over who got the better performance score back in medic training."
"Where is she?" you ask.
"Oh she's out in the Dust Bowl with Marley and Rachel. I told her I can take care of these guys and that the warrior medics probably could use all of the help they can get."
Tina was Mercedes' partner in crime. Who wouldn't want two divalicious medics on the titan team? You felt lucky for not being medic at this moment. Tina was in the Dust Bowl meaning she's on the battle field that you saw, and that is not a sight you want to encounter again. Humans killing their own kind is something so wrong.
"Right, and I wanted to ask about Kurt's injury…" you begin. "Did Ryder and Mike have similar damage to their lattimuses when you got to them?"
"Now that you mention it, yeah. Actually, I've never seen your lattimuses damaged like that before. Even when you guys fight each other for combat training," says Mercedes, still watching the holographic screen.
You look at Mike. You feel a pang in your chest. Mike is your battle buddy. Both of you are the most skilled in combat and he's probably better than you in some areas of fighting too. Whatever got him must've been strong.
"Okay. I'll see you later," you say as you turn to walk out of the room. Just as you start to sprint around the corner of the hall, you run right into Sam.
"Woah! Where's the fire?" Sam laughs.
"Sorry!" You walk on by but don't miss how that hallway you came from only leads to the medic's wing.
/
As you enter the control center, you see one of the carbon black cylinders from the camp you had destroyed standing in the middle of Kitty's lab area on the right. Artie is floating over the top of it peering inside the cylinder as Kitty is furiously micro pipetting a glowing dark purple substance into multiple tubes as if her life depended on it. Both don't even notice you entering as they work alongside each other. You walk over to the coffee table and couch that is by Artie's hologram control wall and smirk. You pick up some of the spare magazines lying on the table.
You prep, aim, and fire.
"Hey! What the-" shouts Artie. "Cut that out!"
You hear the whizzing sound of his chair and not much longer, Artie has zoomed to the spot in front of you waving his arms.
Artie looks down at you with an unimpressed facial expression. A wad of spit is dropping down the side of his cheek coming from the giant spitball you shot at him.
"Brittany, those magazines are for reading not chewing!"
You finish molding the ball in your mouth and blow it out at Artie's head as if you were blowing out a candle. Super strength has its perks sometimes.
You burst out laughing as he flies over to you with the spitball stuck onto the center of his forehead.
"What do you want?" he says.
"I want to get a picture with you, hot stuff," you wink jokingly.
"Would you actually?" Artie switches from annoyed to hopeful in a heart beat he quickly takes a glance at Kitty who's glaring at her micropipette so hard that you would think the micropipette just broke up with her. "Maybe Kitty will get jealous and realize her love for me."
"Anything for you little B," you smile. "But first things first. I need you to load up the visuals from Mike and Ryder's lattimus helmets. I need to see who they were up against."
If there were more titans out there that could damage you guys the way the Red soldier did to Kurt, you need to know. Artie rolls his eyes.
"You heard the woman, Beiste. Load 'em up!" shouts Artie.
Artie's Beiste operating system opens up a large holographic screen in the center of the room. It looks like a movie theater.
"Loading, Ryder Lynn," says Beiste's robotic voice.
The screen buzzes to life.
"Start from the 0500h," shouts Artie.
The screen cuts to a first person view of a small camp. The base of the energy-beam cannon is being set up by two soldiers in lattimus-like armour. Like your camp, there were four black cylinders forming a square around the cannon. There was also a tent set up on the outskirts of the cylinder.
The screen blurs as Ryder takes off into the air and you see green lattimus arms stretch out and shoot energy beams at one of the soldiers. You see a beam coming from your left that hits the other soldier right in the face.
"Nice work Marley," you hear Ryder say from the screen.
The screen jerks to the left as you see a giant lattimus flying your way from the tent. Right before the giant dark purple lattimus gets too close to your screen, you tell Artie to pause the shot.
"Beiste, rewind two milliseconds and pause," says Artie.
The dark purple lattimus looks like the Red soldier's. A sinister looking helmet with a dark metallic colour. It had no weapons on the armour and yet this guy could shoot energy out of his feet to fly.
Eyes squinting at the screen, you think you recognize him.
"Artie, I think fought him at Mike's camp," you say. "Can you let the video roll?"
"Beiste, play in slow-mo," says Artie. The movements typically get too fast when we get fighting.
What you see next is a mixture of flying, punching, blasting, while you get glimpses of Marley taking down the cannon below Ryder as keeps checking up on her. Just as the cannon is destroyed, the dark purple lattimus punches Ryder in the chest and blasts an energy beam right at his left shoulder. You see Marley's pastel pink lattimus cover the screen in a second and the screen starts to shake and show you the firey colours of the sky.
"That's probably when Marley took him back here to Mercedes," says Artie. "This happened right before you called Sam over to help you."
You nod at him to agree. "Beiste, load up Mike Chang."
Similar to Ryder's and your camp, the layout of Mike's camp was the exact same. Mike had taken out three lattimus soldiers and while fending off a black lattimus. The black lattimus was the big goon that you crushed with one of those large carbon cylinders but still got back up when you were at Mike's camp.
Again, he also had the ability of a titan.
Mike's screen suddenly spun violently and then all you saw was the dust red ground. The screen turned around to face the sky as Mike's orange lattimus shot out energy beams from both hands at two lattimus foes now. One was the large black one and one was a dark grey one. One of the beams hit the dark grey lattimus in the face and the helmet was temporarily powered down. You caught a glimpse of a guy with a mohawk but it was quickly covered back up with his helmet once he regained his balance. The fight goes on and Mike is handling the two foes rather well, but like you, he couldn't get them to stop coming at him. It wasn't until another large dark green lattimus came flying out of no where and blew a cheap shot to Mike's head that the visuals went dark.
"Do you know if Sam fought that dark grey lattimus?" you ask, turning to face Artie.
"Yeah, all three of those latimusses fought you at Mike's camp didn't they? I bet you fought them after their camps' cannons were destroyed so they tried to protect this last one."
So there were five known titans from Narpollo, definitely all classified as threats. Well maybe except for the Santana now that you guys have got her. The question was, did they know that our planet had titans as well? And also, why was the other human planet attacking us? The planets don't normally interact, so what gives?
"Is there anything else I can do for you, Britt?" asks Artie. You see him glance back at the cylinder, probably wanting to get back to work. It's time you stopped ignoring the knowledge part because yes, you are good at fighting, but you feel that there is something else going on here. You need to understand the big picture and the only way to do so is through fitting the pieces together.
You don't want to sound stupid so you hesitate.
"Umm…" you stare at the floor. "Did you know that there are titans on Narpollo?"
"No, neither did Kitty," says Artie, sounding very deflated.
You're shocked. You look up to see Artie looking disturbed.
"This is our first interaction with Narpollo and Kitty and I think that these cylinders will bring us closer to understanding the life-energy," says Artie.
"Could you explain to me what you think that is?" you ask.
"Come over here, let me show you," shouts Kitty from the opposite side of the room.
You and Artie head over to Kitty, who's now taken a break from her date with the micropipette and is now staring at a beaker full of energy, except it's not what your energy looks like. It's the same half gas half liquid state but a dark purple-black colour whereas the life-energy you're used to is a light blue with a purple tinge.
"Kitty and I got Sam to haul one of these back while you were in the detainment room. Turns out, these cylinders are full of this substance," explains Artie.
"I managed to get it out with some of my lab tools and have been trying different chemicals with it," says Kitty, pointing to the meticulously pipetted samples that were now sealed shut in tubes.
"It kind of looks like our life-energy," you say.
Kitty immediately smiles, "that is exactly what I thought too! Blondie power," she laughs as you high-five her. "So naturally I ran tests that would deduce whether its properties are similar to our life-energy."
Kitty stops and brings the beaker up to your eye level and swirls it around.
"The only thing is that I can't get it to reproduce any of the things you titans can normally do with it. You know, the whole exploding hot laser beam thing. It just stays like this," she says.
"So is Artie trying to figure it out by analyzing the cylinder?" you ask.
"No I'm just looking at it. The black material is something I've used in blasters before to help concentrate the energy-beams but I've never thought of using it to actually carry energy," says Artie.
"So, I don't get it," you admit. "What's the point of this?"
Kitty smiles, clearly excited to step into her comfort zone of academia. "Brittany, this could change our whole understanding of the galaxy. There might be not one source of life-energy, but two! That's my hypothesis. What I don't understand is two things. One, why can't I recreate the reactions like I mentioned just one moment ago, and two, why would the galaxy need two sources of energy? Especially if they are of the same chemical structure? It just seems pointless!"
You wish you were smarter and could help out but you really don't know anything about the whole life-energy topic.
"I wish I could help you but this is the first time I've encountered such a thing," you say, pointing to the swirly purple mystery.
"Don't worry, most likely no one on this planet has ever seen this," says Kitty.
"Maybe we should let our brains rest. We've been up almost 24 hours straight with this battle," says Artie.
"Oh boo hoo, what a tough life. The best never rest. 24 hours is nothing. Try being a scientific researcher, Abrahams," retorts Kitty.
"You hear that?" says Artie.
"Hear what?"
"That's the sound of a tiny violin playing," says Artie while making a gesture with his index finger and thumb. Kitty slaps Artie lightly on the shoulder with her free hand.
"You're lucky I can't get this energy to explode because I really have no problem dumping this all over you."
Meanwhile, you're lost in your own thought.
-Wait, no one on this planet…-
"Kitty, wait. What did you say?" you ask.
"I was just joking about that," she says.
"No, before that."
"Being a researcher is tough?" she asks quizzically.
"No before that. You said no one on this planet has seen this.. thing?" you gesture towards the beaker she's holding above Artie's head.
"Probably not. We are the most important research facility being part of the titan team and all," she says. "I don't see a reason why anyone else would get their hands on this."
"I'll be right back," you say with a smile. You leave the two to their banter and start to get excited.
/
-1... 2... 3... -
You push and try to send energy to your palms. Your eyes don't even feel like they're glowing, which they normally do. Your stare at your open palm as you try for the upteenth time to send some waves of energy out but nothing happens.
"UGH!" you groan as you roll over onto your stomach. You rest your head on your hands.
You close your eyes and listen to the soft humming of the sphere cell you're in. As bored as you are, this is kind of nice from the chaos that typically ensues back at home.
You know that too much time has passed by without seeing anyone, meaning that Puck, little Puck, Dopey, and Gassy probably managed to get back to Narpollo without being caught.
How are you, the toughest titan on your team, the only one that got caught?
You're fighting with yourself and it's driving you nuts. Why are you even bothering to try to escape? This place seems nice. Brittany seems nice.
- I wonder if those morons have realized I'm missing. I bet they're not even bothering to look for me right now. Dopey Finn is probably stuffing his face right now with Twinkies and Gassy Karofsky is probably somewhere blocking a hallway with his beer belly -
The problem being the most trained titan is that you always get stuck with the most important projects. You're also the laziest titan though. That's why when at the camp, you were pretending to be busy and made your soldiers set up the cannon while you were really just lounging around inside the temporary tent, thinking about the ten thousand ways you were going to give hell to Carl for coming up with this stupid plan in the first place.
What are you going to say to him though once you're back? He's going to pull out the whole 'I'm disappointed in you' speech and he knows you can't take that sort of bullcrap. There was nothing you could've done differently. These titans outnumbered us. If only Quinn would stop being such a baby and do combat missions for once. But nope, instead, she got to play with the warrior weapon toys and fly hovercrafts. What a waste of her skill. You don't blame her though, she did get really injured that one time...
Still, you could've even used Motta as a side kick, regardless of how useless she basically was. You could've at least used her as a shield. Motta might have even been able to talk Pierce to death.
You sigh. You would rather have you be captured than Motta though. If anything happened to the youngest of your crew, you would've never heard the end of it. You guess it is a good thing that Motta stayed back at HQ. Carl didn't even care when Motta said she "didn't wanna go because she didn't wanna". He probably knew that you and the boys could get the job done on your own.
Hell. Except you didn't and you're so going to get roasted. Whatever, you're Lopez. You're hot, you'll show him what you've got. He won't be able to see the fear and self-doubt with your poker face on.
- No he won't be able to. Can't read my, poker face. Can't read mah -
The classic Ga Ga tune starts to pop into your head.
- Muh muh muh mah... muh muh muh mah -
You stand up and start to tap along to the imaginary beat in your head.
"Carl won't get me cause he can't read my, can't read my, no he can't read my poker face," you belt out singing. You wave your hand out in front of your face and spin around with your back facing the door. You raise one hand up with a finger pointing to the sky, shaking your booty with the beat. "She has got me like nobody, can't read my, can't read my poker face, oh whoaohaoha, P-p-p-poker face p-p-poker face-"
"Muh muh muh mah," comes a voice behind you.
Your eyes widen and you feel the immediate heat on your face. Slowly, you drop your arm down and turn around to face the blonde who's walking towards you from the door. You must've been singing too loud to hear the doors slide open.
"Fuck," you mutter.
"You sing really well," says the blonde.
She's looking up at you with a cute smile. Except you're in panicking Santana mode which means you snap and get mean.
"I don't know what you're talking about. What do you want? You're kind of interrupting precious me time. I've got important things to do."
Her smile doesn't falter and it's like her blue eyes see right through your facade and right to the ocean of embarrassment.
"Clearly..." she says. You probably look ridiculous, dancing in your lattimus in a hovering, glowing bubble.
"You're right, I didn't hear or see anything, I don't know what I'm talking about," she says as she sits down on the couch. "How are you holding up?"
You mirror her and sit down cross legged in your little bubble prison cell of hell.
"Well I think I'm holding alright. My bladder though? Not holding up. Although, at this point, I think I might have been a camel in another life," you say.
You've been stuck in this bubble for a long time.
"Oh stop being so dramatic. It's only been a couple of hours," she says. "I do feel your pain though. Once, Sam and I dared each other to sit in the cell and see who could get out of it first. We were both trapped in there until Artie managed to track us down with Beiste once both of us were missing for family brunch."
"Who's Beiste? And what? You guys have family brunch?" you ask with a turtle face. You make an effort to seem judgmental but you're honestly surprised at how close this titan team is. Even though having "brunch" sounds a little pompous for you.
"Beiste is the operating system that controls stuff around here. And yeah, every Sunday. We go out on missions a lot and we're not always home at the same time as everyone so this forces us to make time for each other."
"Why do would you want that?" You think back to how the only time your team gets together is for Carl's training sessions involving full out combat on each other.
"Why not?" the blonde responds.
Your stomach makes an unpleasant grumble. You hope it didn't pass for a fart.
- Strike two for you, why you gotta be so embarrassing Lopez? -
"Listen. I'm here to offer you a proposition," she says.
"I'm listening," you say, ears perking up.
"We've got some questions we're hoping you can answer. You have to answer 100% truthfully and in return, you get to not be in that," she says, pointing to your sphere cell.
Your heart starts to beat just a little faster. Being down would mean being closer to her.
"So if I agree, I can come down from this hell hole?"
"Yep," she smiles. "Only if you promise to be honest. Otherwise you're going back in there. And don't even think about doing anything funny. I am pretty deadly out of my lattimus too," she says with a straight face.
You really don't doubt that.
"I will do anything just please get me down from here," you say excitedly.
/
Walking through the HQ is much more pleasant than being carried around like a rag doll by Trouty.
It's got such a nice warm feeling to it. The walls and floor are made of some sort of opaque white glass with lit up floors. You can tell that the HQ is in a simple cross layout with the detainment room below the main level, the control center you whizzed by on the left, lounge center at the top center, and some room with chambers on the right.
You follow the blonde through the the hall after exiting the elevator, located on the opposite end of the lounge room.
You're not sure how close you should be walking to her, so you hang behind just a little. Your lattimus clanks as you walk, sending the sound vibrating down the hall.
"You know, you can power down. Unless you've actually got a baby Valerie and are self-conscious about it," says Pierce.
"I don't wear clothing underneath," you admit. You get super sweaty when you fight or are stressed on missions so you waltz around in your sports bra and spandex shorts in your lattimus.
"Oh."
"...yeah."
You mentally slap yourself in the forehead.
- What is wrong with you? You are way too eloquent, Lopez -–
You thank the heavens that you reach your destination before you have to further explain yourself.
"This is our control center," she turns around to face you. "I need you to tell me some information about your planet and what you know about that," she says pointing to the large black cylinder standing upright in the middle of a giant makeshift laboratory on the right side of the room.
"Oh, the harvester? Yeah okay. It just holds energy that's all. What do you want to know?" you respond.
"Come."
She gestures you to follow her to the lab area where you see another blonde, who's as short as you, and a guy with glasses sitting in a high-tech robot chair that's floating above ground. They're both animatedly talking to each other and pointing at several beakers full of life-energy on a lab bench.
"Hey guys, this is Santana," Pierce says as she walks towards them.
Both of them look at you. You take in the dweeb with glasses in a robot suit who looks utterly petrified at you, and then look at the shorter blonde with a ridiculously high pony tail who's not giving you a very pleasant look.
"Brittany... what are you doing?" says the blonde, not taking her eyes off of you.
"You said no one on this planet has seen this stuff so I thought Santana here could help us since she's not from this planet!" she excitedly says.
You're not liking how the other two were looking down on Pierce earlier so you immediately chime in, defending her.
"That's sheer genius. I'm secretly smart. What do you want to know?" you say.
"Okay, wait, why are you helping us?" says Artie.
"It's either this or going back to being envious of specs of dust flying outside the bubble hell hole being more free than me."
"Good point. Okay," says Artie. He takes the beaker of life-energy and shoves it in your face. "What is this?"
Oh boy. If these guys don't know what that is, it's going to be a long one.
"Let's get comfortable shall we? This might take a while," you say.
You all head over to the couches. This is such a weird room. It was open-concept with three rooms mushed into one. On the far left is a glass wall with tons of holographic screens. There's also an area with three white couches and a coffee table. You guys were on the far right where the room became a laboratory of sorts. In the middle was holographic map of what you assumed to be Predastar's layout.
You take a seat on the couch with Kitty on another, and Brittany on the last one. Artie floats directly across from you, and starts asking you questions.
Turns out, these guys seriously know nothing about your planet. It takes you about what feels like a whole day to enlighten them. You tell them about how that substance is the life-energy on your planet and that's what you're partially made of and connected to. The cylinders carried them so that our cannons could blast through the force-field and then the four titans would bust into Metropolis and take over. You don't miss the way Kitty rolls her eyes and scoffs at that part. You don't blame her.
You also explain that there are seven titans on your planet, excluding Carl, and that you didn't give two shits about what he wanted. Of course they inquire about that so you have to explain that whole shebang as well.
Carl is an energy-hoarder. He has a room in which he stays in all of the time back at HQ, and he tells us it's for the future that he keeps as much energy there. Our HQ is located underground so he's got plenty of storage space. Basically, Carl send us out on missions to take energy from other planets and so far, we've done just that. Except now, we can't take anymore energy from those planets because otherwise they would die, so he's turned to Predastar, and hence the attack on the planet.
"Okay wait so let me get this straight. Carl says he's the first titan on your planet?" asks Artie.
"Yep. He's like a hot older man-father figure to us," you say.
"Right. Okay but if this is life-energy from your planet, and it's got the same properties as our life-energy, how come we can't do anything with it?" asks Kitty.
You have no idea. You flip your palm facing towards the ceiling and feel the rush and buzz of energy appearing at your palm while simultaneously sucking the dark-purple energy in the beaker into the air and molding into the ball of energy that you've created.
"Woah!" both Kitty and Artie jumped away from you and you see Pierce sitting to your left, unphased. She's staring at the ball of energy in your hands.
Pierce mimics you and creates a ball of energy in her palm, roughly the same size as yours and holds it up so that they're adjacent to each other.
"They look different, but really, they're the same," she simply states.
"Britt, can you use that dark energy?" asks Artie.
"Hey now! Who's dark over here!" you say offended.
"Sorry! So-sorry just physically, colour, dark, that's all," stutters Artie. "Could you turn those off, I can't see."
You realize your eyes are glowing. Whoops. You blink and they go off.
"I tried to just now, but instead I made my own energy ball," says Pierce.
"Fascinating. Okay, awesome for bringing her Britt. I'm going to keep working on this. Skedaddle," says Kitty as she gets up to walk back towards her lab.
"Nice meeting you, Santana," says Artie as he swerves around and follows Kitty to the lab area. You're surprised at how nice they are.
"Thanks," you say awkwardly.
You look over at Pierce who's staring at you.
"So... now what?" you ask, diverting your gaze to everything except for the being sitting by you.
She shuffles so she's facing you.
"Do you really not care about what your boss wants?" she asks.
- No I don't give a rat's ass -
"He raised me so I guess it's natural to follow orders," you respond.
"But this taking over other planets to steal. This whole ordeal. After meeting your supposed enemies in person. Does it still feel right to follow orders?"
-Now that I've met you, hell no. -
"Well when you put it that way. But no, I mean, we're just borrowing energy," you defend, although not entirely sure why you are. "I'm sure Carl has a reason for doing so otherwise we wouldn't be going through all of this trouble."
"Join us."
You do a double take.
"Excuse me?"
"Join us. I've seen you fight, I know what you can do. I think you would be a lot happier if you were on our team. We're like, unicorns and rainbows compared to the land of Carl," she says.
You can't think straight when she's looking at you like that. You would've never even thought about abandoning your team until now. For her.
"I-" you start. "It's not that simple."
"Yes it is."
"Look, this is a lot to process. I can't just flip sides like that."
"We're both titans, we're not really flipping sides. Just changing our... outlook on life."
You twitch your mouth nervously. She has a point. You weren't exactly the happiest back on Narpollo. These people have been far nicer than anyone you've encountered there.
"I need some time. To think about it. Is that okay?" you ask.
She looks at you for a second longer and stands up. "Yeah," she says. Her eyes light up and she flashes you her pretty smile. "I know! How about we get you settled in? Let you feel what 'normal' is around here. Maybe you'll make your decision easier once you get the feel of it."
"Okay, I could roll with that" you smile.
She smiles in return. "It's nice to see you out of the p-p-p-pokerface."
Your cheeks blaze up immediately and you glare up at her.
"P-p-p-piss off," you retort. She starts to laugh.
"You know," she says taking a breath as she tries to stop laughing. "Now that I've seen you do that in your lattimus, I really don't think I could be scared of you ever again."
"Is this how 'normal' is around here? Poking fun at your new guests? 'Cause if so, Lopez is not down for that," you pout, crossing your arms in front of you like a toddler.
She's still chuckling when she starts walking towards the doors.
"Come on, Alejandro, time's a tickin", she calls over her shoulder. "And yup, get used to it. This is as normal as it gets."
You're still scowling as you follow her down the hallway towards the lounge area but inside, you're beaming.
You think you're going to like this normal.
A/N: So this might have felt like a filler chapter but TRUST ME! Everything I put in my story will come back and serves an extremely important purpose. I can't stress enough that this is a STORY, not fluff.. so little interactions... just like a normal, real-life relationships have in the first stages is what I'm going for here.
Please review!
I'll try to write some more before I leave for my conference in a few days.
Thanks for reading :-)
Flopping out.
