36. Precious Treasure
It was hard for Brick to pinpoint the exact moment when he realized he cared about Bubbles.
She danced through life, always glowing with the light of innocence and sparkling like sunlight. Brick kept to himself and hid in the shadows. He liked it that way.
Of course, she wouldn't have that. She was too sweet for her own good. She couldn't exist in a world where she didn't at least try to include everyone, to make sure everyone around her knew she cared about them in some small way.
She did it for Brick by dragging him on the dance floor their freshman year at Homecoming, kicking and screaming.
For one glorious moment, his hands awkward on her waist and her chatter creating an annoying buzz in his ear, he felt…important. Maybe it was because her smile was particularly wide when she looked at him that night, or maybe he was just fooling himself. Whichever it was, when she sat by him at lunch the next Monday he was secretly glad.
For three years he tried to get rid of her. He snapped at her, insulted her, pushed her away, took to eating his lunch on the roof, tried skipping lunch altogether. She followed him everywhere, her blue eyes wide and curious. He stopped trying so hard eventually.
He asked her to Prom their senior year, with many a stammer and glare at his shoes, crushing the rose he'd brought for good measure in his fist. She had to tell him no; someone had already asked her. He nodded and walked away.
That day she didn't eat lunch with him. Not because she didn't want to; she couldn't find him.
Prom came. Brick didn't go. He sat in his room, staring at a spot on the ceiling, twiddling his thumbs, thinking of all the ways he could have asked better and plotting a hideous revenge for her date. There was a tap at his window. He didn't get up.
The window slid open, and the scent of warm vanilla perfume wafted in as Bubbles slipped inside, still wearing her elaborate Prom dress. Brick sat up, a snarl forming on his mouth. She smiled sweetly at him, holding out one of her hands.
"Come on," she said, "there's something I want to show you."
Whatever possessed him to go with her Brick would never know. She pulled him outside, floating effortlessly. He floated along, noticing that she was also barefoot.
She landed in a gazebo strung with lights in the middle of a pond in Townsville Park. The lights were blue and red and he knew she'd done it herself. He didn't know why he knew. He just did, the same way he knew what she wanted when she put her arms around his neck.
There was no music. She didn't need any. She danced, pulling him along with her, the way she'd pulled him along all through high school. There was moonlight shining on the smooth surface of the pond, and birds singing, and crickets chirping, and Bubbles, Bubbles with her blue eyes and golden hair and sweet laugh.
She didn't say anything this time. She just smiled.
Incredibly, Brick found himself smiling back.
His hands gripped her a little tighter and vowed to never let her go.
But he did let her go. He had to. Because he yelled at her a few short months later.
It was over something stupid, and he hated that he did it, but guilt cared not for these things as her eyes filled with tears and she took off, leaving him to wallow in his angry misery. A part of him was content to have his privacy back. He was glad, he tried to tell himself, that she wasn't sticking her nose where it didn't belong anymore.
He left a dandelion in a vase on her windowsill and hoped she knew he was sorry.
If she did, she didn't show it. Graduation came and went. College was approaching. Still no word, no smile, no laugh.
It was the night before he left Townsville for good before she told him she forgave him. He was back in the gazebo, the lights gone, throwing rocks at the moon's reflection, when she appeared. Brick stared at her for a moment. She gave an apologetic smile and held out her hand.
They danced for a third time. Brick felt like a tenth-grader all over again. He said he was sorry and she said it was okay.
The fourth time, they danced across the surface of the pond, floating above the gently stirring water. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, just to see what it felt like. To his satisfaction, it felt great.
The fifth time they danced, she was dying.
She called it chemical poisoning. He called it the end of the world.
Brick danced one final time. It was not with Bubbles. It was with the wind. He left a half-crushed dead rose on her grave, along with a string of broken red and blue lights and a shingle from the old gazebo.
He lived on, became successful, gained riches and power and all the other things he tried to fill his heart with. Without her, it was too empty. He sealed it away in a box where he kept a faded picture of a pretty blond girl in a blue dress and smooth chunk of wood her feet once grazed over.
He labeled this box "treasures" and kept it in a vault, far away from his office and anywhere he'd have to look at it.
The day he died, an old man, he heard music made of the wind and crickets and the creaking of wooden planks underfoot. For only the sixth time in his life, he felt loved.
A/N: UGH. This could have been done SO much better. Anyway, felt like continuing the mix-it-up trend for the next couple of stories. It's forcing me to think of the characters in different ways. Brick sucks it up this time around. X( I'll just have to try again later.
Anyway. Something sad and sweet for Bubbles/Brick that should probably go die in a hole, but whatever.
Review, and this time, tell me what you think about the characterization and the fic as a whole. I will bite you if you say "THIS SUX NEVAR WRITE ANYTHING OTHER THAN REGULAR PPG/RRB AGAIN."
EDIT: Everyone thank Tim the Paperclip; she(?) helped me fix the fourth dance and make it more awesome. THANK YOU, HUNNY.