Author's Note: Gah! I am SO sorry! The Writer's Block Demon got me so this chapter was hanging around my files for ages and every time I tried to sit down and write the Real Life Monster kept knocking me unconscious.

Still, here it is. Enjoy.

And I'm still handing out baseball bats for those of you who want to beat up Kid Muscle.

Kevin: Can we PLEASE just get on with the story?

Author: alright, alright…demand much?

So, without further grumbling from Kevin…here is the next part.

"Kid," Kevin started with as much patience as he could muster, "What are you doing here?"

"Singin' Karaoke, duh!"

"I MEANT here in London."

"Oh…Christmas shopping! The girls wanted to come here so me and the guys came along too!"

"Then why aren't you with them?"

"Uh…they didn't want me to know what they were buying…they're gonna call my cell phone and we'll meet up afterwards" Kid paused, then announced, loudly, "Man, I'm thirsty!"

Theresa blinked and gasped softly in surprise and affront as Mantaro snatched her mug from her unresisting hands and downed it in one gulp, then yelped loudly, attracting the attention of the patrons that weren't already staring at him, as it struck him that the beverage had still been boiling hot.

"That stuff was gross!" he said afterwards, "you should ask for your money back. Tasted like it'd gone bad."

"You…drank my tea…" Theresa said softly, almost tearing up as she looked into the now empty mug that'd only seconds before held her favourite drink, complete with a shot of Echinacea.

"Well yeah…I was thirsty. You guys didn't get me a drink and you weren't drinking yours so I thought you didn't want it."

"…you…drank…my tea…"

She'd barely had two sips of it and now it was gone.

What Mantaro probably had no idea of was how seriously the Brits took their tea; you certainly never drank someone else's mug of tea.

You especially didn't do that without even asking them first.

"So," Kid Muscle continued, oblivious to the glares the café customers and Kevin were giving him, "What are we gonna do now?" He thought, or looked like he was trying to think "We could get some food!" and would've launched into his cow and rice song but was interrupted by the scraping of a chair as it was pushed back.

"Kevin, will you take me home now please?" Theresa asked, standing up

"…Yes, I will." He nodded; standing also and, after only a second of thought took her hand again, drawing her close to his side.

"Great!" Mantaro enthused, standing also and pushing between them, dropping an arm around both of their shoulders, "I'll call the guys and tell them to meet us, so we can order cow and rice on the way to Kevin's Girlfriends house and watch movies and sing karaoke to the music channels all night! That's a great idea! It'll be fun!"

Theresa turned to him, forcibly removed his arm from her shoulder, fixing the Prince of Muscle Planet with a freezing glance as hell fires raged in her eyes. Her voice, when she spoke, was so cold that it gave him and everyone else close enough to hear it the most horrible chills.

"If you even walk down my street, I will set my dog on you."

And with that, she let Kevin lead her out, leaving Kid to quake at the threat of his least favourite animal being set on him.

"How did you know he's afraid of dogs?" Kevin asked later, when they were a good distance from the café.

They were leaning against a wall, just looking upwards at the sky, which was clear.

"I didn't," Theresa shrugged, she was half under his coat, hugging his side as protection against the cold "I just threaten to set Banksy on anyone who annoys or scares me."

"You've never threatened to set Banksy on me, save when I gave you back your music and you thought I was stalking you"

"Well, there'd be no point in setting him on you."

"Oh? Why not?" He was genuinely curious about that

"Banksy likes you, so unless you're afraid of being covered in dog slobber I don't think you have much to worry about."

"The dog likes me?"

"Yep and he's a good judge of character"

"So…what about you?"

"Me?" she blinked and then smiled a little, "I'm just a simple girl who's hooked to your sweet charm"

Underneath his mask, Kevin blushed. No one had ever accused him of being 'sweet' before…unless you counted fangirls and he didn't.

There was more silence as they both tried to work out what to do with themselves now that the 'go and people watch in a café' plan had been fouled up and Theresa was pretty certain that she wouldn't be able to show her face there again for at least a fortnight. (Kevin was also trying not to think about how nice it felt to be cuddled together with Theresa like this but kept that to himself)

"Do you want to go home?" he asked eventually. He didn't want to drop her off yet but if there was nothing else, nowhere she wanted to go then he didn't have much of a choice.

"…No." she stood quietly for a while longer, just listening to the now low buzz of traffic, and then something occurred to her, "I know what we can do for the next two hours."

"I wait with baited breath,"

"I'm not going to tell you if you're going to be childish about it." And for some reason that made her laugh, he could feel her ribcage vibrating with it. It was an odd feeling, but not a bad one.

"Go on, tell me your idea."

"Well…you're the one who didn't have much of a childhood…we can make up for it a little bit."

"How do you propose to do that? I am an adult by most legal standards of this country"

"So? It's easy, we'll go back to the park, find the playground part of it and play on the swings. I'll even buy you something to eat that has absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever on the way there."

Kevin considered this. This wasn't what he'd heard people did when they went out. What was the point of acting like a child when you were an adult?

Then again…she was trying to be nice…

"No nutritional value?" he asked

"None," Theresa confirmed

"Not even a little nutritional value?" he held his thumb and index finger an inch apart.

"No, no nutritional value whatsoever. Nutrition is for adults."

"And what is in this for me, exactly?"

"You get to do something childish without people telling you off, games without frontiers, some food that you eat just for the hell of it…and I'll give you another kiss"

"How do you open these things?"

He stared blankly at the vacuum-sealed, plastic wrapped tube of…something that the packaging proclaimed it was a Jelly Pen, pineapple flavoured and completely fat free (of course, that didn't mean it wasn't pure sugar and as such it had the 'no nutritional value' that Theresa had promised). The only problem he could see was that there was no way of opening it so he could actually eat it.

He and Theresa were sat on a swing each, Theresa watching him to see how he took to the sweet stuff. She started when he asked her how to open it then nodded understandingly.

"Easy. You use your teeth, it's half the fun," she told him and demonstrated, ripping the plastic packaging of her own 'Jelly Pen' (sour green apple flavour, apparently it was her favourite) open at the top with her incisors and front teeth…that sight giving him some mental pictures about…something completely different…

It got worse when she sucked the slick sugary item out its packaging as if she were slurping up spaghetti, swallowed it in one go and then licked any residual sugar from her lips.

"Your turn," she told him afterwards, tucking the plastic debris into the pocket of her jeans.

Kevin looked from the sugary confection to Theresa and back again.

It was stupid to be afraid of trying it…Theresa'd assured him that if he didn't like it, he didn't have to finish it.

So it was with a deep breath, which he just about managed to pass of as a sigh of inevitability, he took his mask off and set it at his feet on the floor then copied how he'd seen Theresa open the packaging.

…

……

………

"That was revolting…are there any more?"

"That bad, huh?" Theresa seemed amused as she passed him another tube of the sweet confection and then started to swing herself slowly back and forth with the ease of someone who'd been practicing since childhood.

"You really weren't allowed to play when you were little?" she asked eventually.

"No…" he finished his second tube of sweet stuff, "too ungentlemanly"

"Rubbish!" Theresa snorted, "I thought being a gentleman meant being able to interact with other people…my grandmother always said that sort of thing starts in childhood when you play with other kids"

"Your grandmother was just full of insightfulness, wasn't she?"

"She was one third angel, it was what she did."

For a while the only sound was the slight squeak…squeak…squeak of the swing as it went back and forth.

"Tell me about you," Kevin said, watching Theresa carefully; fully aware he was throwing her own question back at her.

"Not much to tell," she shrugged, a difficult thing to do when in mid-swing, but she managed it quite well, "You know most of it already. You already know that I'm illegitimate, music obsessed, I play in a very odd rock band and that I'm part angel but not enough of one to be of much significance in the grand scheme of things"

"Yes but…" he floundered slightly trying to think of a question, "…tell me what do you want to do when you leave school?"

That made her pause, though the swing continued to go back and forth gently. She considered the question and for a while, Kevin thought she wasn't going to answer.

"…I want to teach," she said eventually, her tone was soft, almost a whisper, as if she were waiting for his reaction.

He didn't see what was so bad about wanting to be a teacher. OK, so he wouldn't have thought of that as a career she'd want but why be that way about it?

"What's wrong with that? I don't see anything wrong with wanting to teach music

"I don't want to teach music. I want to teach disabled children," Theresa scuffed her shoe gently in front of her and continued, "People usually laugh at me when I say that. They think I'm joking.'"

She shook her head, as if to dispel the low mood and smiled mischievously before starting to swing in earnest.

"Come on, I'll race you! We'll see who can swing highest!"

She pushed herself, managing to make herself swing high and fast in what seemed like seconds.

And then she did something unexpected…

She jumped!

Simply let go of the chains and jumped from the swing at it reached the highest point in the forward motion.

Kevin felt his heart stop in his chest.

She was going to kill herself!

She was going to break her neck!

He watched as she landed on her feet, wobbled from the shockwaves, lost her footing and then fell backwards, hard, in the grass and lay still and unmoving.

Author's Note: Now what'd she go and do that for? (blinks) Also, Jelly Pens are real. They're cheap, brightly coloured and full of sugar...also apparently only available in bags of 25 from £1 shops in the UK

Theresa's choice of career suprised me too, tbh…I could've sworn I wanted her to be a music teacher in the first draft…Then again, she's an angel and working with the less fortunate IS something an angel would do…Eh, oh well, she's still young, there's time for her to change her mind.

Theresa: I'm not going to change my mind. I'm going to work with disabled children.

Author: You're sure about that?

Theresa: Positive. I'm not afraid of hard work…I hang out with Kevin after all. (giggles)

Kevin: Hey!

Author: that's true…

Kevin: Is this international 'pick on Kevin' day or something?

Musical References: Duct Tape My Heart by Freezepop, Can I Play with Madness? By Iron Maiden, Games Without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel and Love You Promised by Casceda