Special shout-out to jcforever19, who gave me a very general challenge. I'm gonna try to use as many of these words together in a story: God, Tesla coil, dinner date, sweater and shield. It looks pretty tough. Let's get this party started.
The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron belongs to Nickelodeon.
Jimmy could feel butterflies in his stomach as he paced around his lab again; he stopped whenever he got close to the table setup to check on the details again and move the utensils by a few millimeters. If it wasn't the table, he would fix the tie he was wearing to try and get it a little more centered. If he didn't know any better, he would say it was robbing him of breath instead of the nerves.
"Visitor approaching."
"Thank you, Vox. Permit entry if she identifies herself as Cindy Vortex."
"Affirmative."
At that point he debated whether he should wait at the door of the elevator, or stand where he was next to the table so he could pull the chair out for her. The former won over, and he got to the elevator just as it dinged its arrival. The doors opened, and his heart skipped a beat at seeing Cindy with her hair down in a beautiful green sundress and light blue sweater.
"Hi." He said quietly, taking in as much of the sight as he could.
"Hey," She smiled at him, thoroughly impressed at seeing him pull off a semi-casual look. He had never worn a button down shirt around her before today, and with the red color against a black tie with a fitted pair of jeans, he looked great.
Offering her his arm, he walked with her to the table in the center of his lab, lit by candle light. Chivalrously, he offered to put away her sweater as he pulled out her chair, and took it to a nearby coat rack as she sat down. Along the way, he caught that familiar scent of jasmine from her hair on it.
Jimmy took a seat across the table from her, just as the handy robots around the lab came with the appetizer and wine.
"I gotta say, Neutron, this is much spiffier than the last date we had here." A chuckle escaped her as the memories came back of a Valentine's date gone awry in a very similar room back home. "I'm glad you redecorated."
"What exactly is wrong with the way I decorated last time? Given, I know I was ten, and I had taken that particular room design off of a popular style for entertaining women." The fake outrage was obvious to Cindy and made her laugh more.
"Yeah, it was from porn from the 80's! C'mon, Jimmy, only an act of God could get a guy lucky in a setting like that!"
"If I recall correctly, it appeared to be working on you. And I didn't exactly rely God for a favor that day."
They both laughed at the joke before digging into the food. It wasn't very fancy, just salad and a roast chicken with vegetables Jimmy claimed to have prepared himself. Conversation was light and humorous, each person taking every opportunity to gently jab at the other jokingly with words, while they slowly allowed their feet to rub the others' legs underneath the tablecloth. When they were finished, Jimmy got up and helped Cindy to her feet, inviting her to go for a walk through his lab with him.
"Really? You're gonna let me look at your work?" Eyes wide at the prospect of maybe playing with them, they returned to normal at his words.
"Not unsupervised, but I think I can show you a few of my completed and current projects." In a show of momentary courage, he grabbed her hand and led her down the large central hallway, opening the door to the first room after putting a long numbered combination into the pin pad.
Immediately, the room lit up and showed a multitude of gadgets and tools scattered around different table and some so big, they were on the floor. The biggest caught Cindy's attention and she walked over to it, placing her hand on the large coil around the top of a large cylinder.
"What's that?" she asked, admiring the intricate wiring with her fingers and eyes.
"My Tesla coil. I've been struggling with that one for a while."
"What's it for?"
"These days they aren't for much more than musical youtube videos and just looking cool, but I ran across an article a few weeks back that tried to fix the errors that aren't allowing the high voltages it generates to be used successfully in more modern applications. I've been trying to incorporate those and have been working on my own repairs to try and mimic the work Tesla himself did that was lost with his death. It's non-operational at the moment, but in a month or so, I should be able to get it running well enough for you to come back and see me experiment with."
Her eyes sparkled at the last sentence, and she smiled shyly up at him."So you're saying that you're going to invite me back?"
"It's a possibility." Jimmy smiled back at her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders to continue the tour.
They went through that room, stopping at little things Jimmy thought would impress Cindy, refusing to turn on any half finished product. In the next room, he left Cindy play with anything she liked after he explained what it was for. Only completed gadgets were held there, and most were harmless or only to be used in defensive needs, like shield projections contained in rings that protected against everything from bullet shots to poisonous gas.
While Cindy fiddled with a mirror that had two screens and stop motion, Jimmy came at her from her left to lightly kiss just at the corner of her mouth. They shared a quick, passionate look, before delving into deep kiss. Arms came up to pull each other in closer, and run over their back and shoulders as the kiss became more and more breathless.
After several minutes that felt much shorter, Jimmy ended the kiss, keeping his hands firmly along her waist and hips, trying to read the emotions running through her beautiful green eyes.
"This is much better than the last date we had here."
This was a lot of fun to write, and I am very glad I think I got all of them in there, even if only in passing. So thanks again to jcforever19.
Thank you to everyone that posted some prompts for me, but I'm afraid of this becoming more of a request service instead of just us writing and reading about characters we like together. So I'm going to only think about challenges in reviews that come with an actual review on my work. Quid Pro Quo, as it were.
Thank you for reading. Please leave me a review and a challenge below, these are fun to write.
