37. Eyes

Blossom woke up with a pounding headache and the most foreboding sense of déjà vu.

She could feel another body in the bed; his cold feet were pressed to the back of her legs, his heels digging into the curve of her knees. He was also snoring. Loudly.

She looked groggily at the clock on the hotel bedside table. 10:23. She scrunched a hand through her hair, letting a calm sigh escape her nose. Now or never, she thought, her stomach clenching as she rolled over. Who she saw there made her swear (and she didn't particularly care this time; under duress even the most civilized of people had to let one loose).

Butch grunted and rolled over in his sleep just as she did, clutching one of the pillows to his chest. He'd drooled on it for what appeared to be half the night, Blossom noticed, crinkling her nose at the sticky wetness. The exposing of his wet cheek to open air seemed to rouse him; he yawned, blinking sleep away slowly. He saw her. He cursed. He rolled over so quickly he fell out of bed, scrambling to get to his feet. She tossed him the comforter, keeping the sheets wrapped tight around her torso.

"Say what you want, princess, that time was completely your fault," he cried, knotting the comforter around his waist. "I was minding my own business."

"And how is it," she asked acidly, "that you minding your own business tends to land us here more often than not?"

"You're the one who goes to bars you know I'm at," Butch shrugged, grinning and sitting on the edge of the bed. "Well, what do we do now?"

"I suppose we'll just have to—" she paused while pushing her hair back from her forehead. Something cold and metal brushed her skin. Closing her eyes tightly, she thrust her hand at Butch.

"What exactly is this?"

"Uh…a ring?" he offered.

"What kind of ring?"

"Looks like a blinged-out Ring Pop. What're you—?"

Blossom opened her eyes and looked down, then shrieked. Set on a metal ring painted gold was indeed a large candy gem; it looked as though it'd been licked a few times and possibly knocked against something; it was cracked and had some of her hair wound around it. She covered her eyes with her hands, rocking back and forth. Butch watched her, only mildly concerned, until she took off the ring and threw it at him. The metal pinged off his eye and caused him to swear again.

"What was that for?"

"A Ring Pop?" she suddenly screamed at him, uncovering her face and throwing a pillow at him. "Of all things, you had to pick out a Ring Pop?"

"Pick out a Ring Pop for what?" he yelled, throwing his hands up in the air. She pointed her finger at his bedside table. Immediately he saw the problem.

"Certificate…of…Marr—oh," he gaped, looking back at Blossom with wide green eyes. "Well, crap." He saw a matching Ring Pop hanging off the lamp. "At least I have taste." He waggled his eyebrows at her, but she was glaring so ferociously he quailed and shut up.

"There's got to be a way to fix this," she said, more to herself than anything. She reached for his shirt, lying a short distance from her side of the bed, and pulled it on. She threw his pants, which she found stuffed at the foot of the bed under the covers, at him. Then she started pacing. "A quiet divorce, that's what we need…I think I can pull some strings and get one drawn up by the end of this week, nothing long or drawn-out…"

Butch watched her pace, then picked up the ring she'd thrown at him (lime, he noticed, pulling her hair off of it). He pulled on his pants and went to his side of the bed, picking up his own ring (cherry, he thought amusedly, sneaking a lick) and sliding it on his finger. He then stood off to the side, watching her pace and mutter, noticing the fabric of his shirt fluttering around her legs and errant strands of her hair sticking up at odd angles.

"Blossom," he grunted. She didn't appear to have heard.

"—long as the newspapers don't find out, they'll have a field day—"

"Blossom," he insisted.

"—leave town for a while, call it business leave, they'll never suspect—"

He grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to halt. "Blossom."

"I don't want to talk to you," she pouted childishly, squirming. He took brief but great pleasure in the fact that he was the only person he knew who could make her lose her composure like that.

"Well, I have an idea," he said. "What if we stay married?"

She didn't speak for a full minute, her rosy eyes wide, mouth ajar. He picked up her hand, sliding the Ring Pop back on and grinning a mile wide.

"I've lost track of how many times we've done this. Just hook up and then wake up and get all flustered and say it'll never happen again. I'm sick of it." He shoved his hands in his pockets, unaware of the pocket lint collecting on his ring. "Figure it'll be easier to explain if we stay hitched. Know what I mean?"

She still didn't speak, but she was blinking, as though processing what he'd just said. She took an absent lick on her Ring Pop then glared at it, putting her hand up to wrench it off. Butch felt that desperate times called for desperate measures, grabbed her face, and planted a smacking, wet kiss on her.

She kicked and struggled, making muted, enraged sounds Butch found absolutely adorable, to tell the truth. The taste of lime in her mouth melted with the cherry flavor in his, and after a fierce moment he slitted his eyes open.

It wasn't a very clean kiss; he could feel their faces smooshed together like awkward thirteen-year-olds. Her eyes were wide open, but…softer, somehow, as she watched him kiss her. He released her, wiped his mouth, and sighed, shrugging.

"I dunno. I just…" he bit his tongue, feeling more than he thought he'd ever felt before and unable to put words to it. He shrugged again.

She slapped him across the face, chunks of lime flying in his hair as the candy finally broke. Without missing a beat he unstuck his own ring from around his finger and yanked her forward by the hair, wrapping the ends around the stickiness. She shrieked and punched him in the chest, but—and he thoroughly believed he was hallucinating for a moment—she was laughing.

"Oh," she gasped, hiccupping as she calmed down. "Just…Butch…" she sat down on the bed, and with no other explanation promptly began to cry.

"Um—what?" he asked weakly, squatting down by her. "Oh, man. Uh…there, there," he said meekly, patting her shoulder. "We can get the divorce if you want, I was just—"

She grabbed his arm and pulled him up on the bed next to her, then with very little ado kissed him so hard they both fell back onto the bed. When she was done she pulled back and rolled off of him, lacing her fingers over her stomach as Butch crossed his arms behind his head.

"So…what now?" he asked casually. His lips tingled. When he smacked them they still tasted of cherry-lime candy. She sighed.

"Butch," she said very slowly and evenly, "to not get a divorce would be idiotic. Even if we waited, the marriage would be as far from happy as possible. I'm smart and orderly and I like my peace and quiet. You are not smart, not orderly, and as…rowdy…as possible."

"That's how it is, toots," he said, feeling curiously numb. "I like who I am. Ain't gonna change it just for you."

"That's the thing," Blossom replied, and he looked over at her; his suspicion was confirmed when he saw the blush stealing across her cheeks. "I really don't want you to."

"Um…?" he quirked his eyebrows at her. She glanced at him and chuckled.

"Butch," she said, rolling back over on top of him, "you are chaos incarnate, you know that? Nothing you do has rhyme or reason. I can't figure out how someone could be so stupid and so ingenious at the same time." She smoothed his hair back from his forehead, running her fingers over his skin. It was a motherly gesture, made less so when her fingers tightened and then started mussing up the rest of his hair. "I went to the bar last night half out of stress, half out of desperation. Because, Butch," she put her finger over his mouth when he went to ask, "you are the only cure I know for stick-in-the-mud old me."

When she finished kissing him this time, he felt like he should say something, so he gave it a try. "Um…well…you're boring," he said, and when her eyes flashed he laughed. "I mean…you never change. Ever. You're just this…stable…thing. The only steady thing I know. So," he said, grabbing her legs and flipping her off him, crawling up next to her and planting awkward, sticky kisses over both of her eyes (he saw it in a movie once; apparently chicks loved that stuff), "I'll keep being stupid if you keep being there. Deal?"

"And I'll keep being boring if you keep being you," she nodded. "Deal."

The papers made every bit a sensational story out of Blossom and Butch's shotgun Ring Pop wedding as Blossom predicted. The funny thing was, she didn't much care how many burning eyes she had on her. Not while Butch kept telling lame jokes and poking her anger and being every bit as distracting as she knew he'd be.

A/N: Hey, guys. This SHOULD be the last in the mixed-up PPG/RRB series UNLESS I go and do another rotation. Y'know, Buttercup and Brick, Blossom and Boomer, Bubbles and Butch (actually, I think I might just do that...8D).

I'm actually semi-proud of this one. I started out just going, "How in heck am I supposed to figure this out? They're complete opposites! How would they-?" And then I thought of the movie "What Happens in Vegas." And it all clicked (but this is not exactly like the movie). A series of one-night stands, a less-than-cordial friendship springs up after the first few times it happens, and after a few years they get so smashed that they inadverdently get married. And don't ask me about the Ring Pops; my brain sometimes...

Review, because this Crazy Train ain't stopping for another three updates. VIVA LA WEIRD UNORTHODOXNESS!