Disclaimer: Buena Vista owns the Power Rangers. Cam's remark at the end of "I Love Lothor" was too good to pass up: "If this is a love hangover, I hope I never fall in love again.
by Starhawk
"Since when does homemade food come in a bucket?" Tori wanted to know. Blake noticed that her supposed indignation didn't stop her from taking advantage of the chicken, but it was only a detour on the way to confronting Shane and Hunter.
Dustin chuckled, catching on far too quickly for someone who had looked as innocent as he had on arriving. "Busted!" he crowed, dropping the boxes by the table and helping himself to the chicken.
"Okay, so maybe it's not homemade," Shane admitted, holding up his hands to ward Tori off. "The class kind of got interrupted, remember?"
"And we've had enough of that 'from the heart' stuff today," Hunter added with an unrepentant smirk. "But we paid, so you might as well dig in."
"Hey," Dustin interrupted, tipping one of the empty boxes toward him. "Don't they include ketchup in the order anymore? Cause you know, you can't really eat fried chicken without ketchup."
Hunter took one look at Tori's expression and didn't miss a beat. "I'll go look for some," he suggested. The offer was a little too convenient to be altruistic, and Blake caught his brother's wink as Hunter backed away.
"Great," Cam put in with a sigh. "Someone else to turn the refrigerator upside down while missing what's right in front of their face."
"Dude, the mayonnaise was all the way in the back under that creepy tofu stuff you eat," Dustin objected. He somehow managed to sound defensive even around a mouthful of chicken.
"Not you," Cam answered. "I was thinking of Shane's adventures in salad preparation."
"Hey," Shane exclaimed. "Anyone can make a salad!"
"So you said," Cam replied dryly. "Too bad 'anyone' can't clean up from making the salad afterward."
Wisely, Shane chose not to respond. "Dustin," he said quickly, heading for the table where the plate of chicken had come to rest. "Save some for the rest of us, all right?"
"I thought it was a peace offering," Tori reminded him. "Why should you get any of it?"
"We were there too," Shane declared, taking a piece of chicken for himself. "Just because some of us didn't get tied to a stage prop doesn't mean we didn't suffer."
"Yeah," Dustin agreed. "We almost got run down by this, like, swarm of girls."
"I'm going to go make sure Hunter doesn't rearrange the refrigerator," Cam remarked to no one in particular. "I'll get some aspirin while I'm back there. Blake, you want any?"
Blake roused himself, tearing his eyes away from Tori and nodding in Cam's general direction. "Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks, Cam."
Cam waved it off, heading out of the room without a backward glance. Blake watched him go while the argument at the table resumed. Tori could hold her own against the other two indefinitely, and although the entertainment would be worth watching even if there weren't food involved, the timing of Cam's disappearance was not lost on him.
Cam was going to supervise Hunter's search for ketchup? Yeah, that made sense. To a second grader. And with the number of times Hunter had disappeared recently, with no warning or explanation? Times when Cam just happened to turn up missing as well?
Maybe the Wind Rangers didn't see it, but Blake was beginning to get suspicious.
He sidled over to the table. He didn't really want to get involved in the "who had the worst day" argument, since it could very quickly turn into a "how much can we embarrass Blake before he kills us" competition. But if he left without explanation someone would come looking, and while one person might be able to sneak up on two ninjas, four people definitely couldn't.
"I'll just throw these away," he offered, as casually as he could. Collecting the buckets from the floor, he gave Tori a "you tell 'em" grin and turned away. Shane's recital of his own trauma in cooking class barely paused.
He made his way through the door as quietly as he could, deliberately shifting the boxes into as solid a position as he could manage. He slowed just out of sight of the control room, around the corner from the kitchen alcove where Cam was forever stopping for lunch. It was no wonder he was possessive of the refrigerator, Blake thought. He practically lived out of it these days.
At first, Shane's voice and Tori's indignant response were the only sounds in the hallway, drowning out the quieter or maybe nonexistent conversation in the kitchen. Maybe Hunter was the only one in there after all, and he would come around the corner any second, ketchup in hand and genuinely surprised to see his brother lurking in the hallway. Maybe Cam was just being sarcastic, and he had actually gone to get aspirin as he'd said.
Then there was the sound of bottles clinking against each other, and a muffled thump that had to be the refrigerator door being slammed. "Look," Cam's voice said irritably. "It was right there on the only shelf tall enough for ketchup, okay? You don't have to shove everything out of the way to find something in plain sight."
"The Gatorade was in plain sight," Hunter's voice answered. "The ketchup was behind five water bottles and a six-pack of juice. Whatever freaky organizational system you have, it only makes sense to you!"
Or maybe Cam was being literal and he actually had come back to supervise. The guy was weird, no doubt about it.
"That's because other people keep taking things and putting them back in the wrong place!" Cam sounded more annoyed than usual. Blake figured it was just like him to get upset over condiments when Lothor turning him into a bug had provoked little more than shrug and a roll of his eyes.
"Maybe if you'd leave other people alone they wouldn't mess up your stuff so much!" Hunter didn't sound too happy himself, and Blake winced. Telling Cam that the others rearranged the kitchen on purpose might not be the best idea.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Cam demanded.
"You know what it means," Hunter retorted. "You and Tori?" Blake froze, wondering what his brother knew that he didn't. Why would Hunter keep something like that from him? Unless it was to keep him from getting hurt--
"You wanna explain that?" Hunter continued, oblivious to Blake's presence or his confusion. "Or should I just draw my own conclusions?"
"There's nothing to explain," Cam said testily. "I was under a spell. I fixated on the first person I saw. Just be glad it was Tori and not Blake!"
Cam sounded far too defensive for Blake's liking. He knew there was more to that spell than just random chance. Did Tori know how Cam felt? She would have told him, right? Unless she liked Cam, too, and didn't want anyone to know...
"Blake saw you before he saw Tori." Hunter sounded oddly sullen, and Blake frowned. What was he talking about?
"So Blake doesn't like guys," Cam snapped. "What does that have to do with anything?"
Okay, he was officially not following this conversation. Were they still talking about Tori? What was Hunter so upset about, if it wasn't that Cam was after his brother's girlfriend?
"Are you saying you don't have a thing for Tori?"
That was a typically blunt, Hunter-style question, and if he hadn't wanted to hear the answer just as much as Hunter apparently did, he would have rolled his eyes. Socializing his brother was a slow and arduous process. Sometimes he wasn't sure it was worth the effort, since Hunter seemed determined to regress at the worst possible times.
"Of course I don't--!" Cam broke off, and when he spoke again his voice was noticeably quieter. "Of course I don't have a thing for Tori. That's ridiculous."
"You didn't have to watch you chase her all day," Hunter informed him. "It didn't seem so ridiculous from where I was standing."
"Obviously, you were standing too far away," Cam said dryly. "You didn't hear us? We were like fifth graders fighting over the first pick on the kickball team."
Hunter couldn't let that one go. "Since when do you use sports analogies?"
"I don't have at thing for Tori," Cam repeated. "You really think I'd be going out with you if I had a crush on her?"
There was a pause, and Blake just stood there staring at the doorway. The hug in the control room. The extra ticket for the film festival. Hunter's sudden interest in zord technology. Cam's motocross lessons. He was right about them after all.
He was right? How could he be right? What did his brother see in Cam? The only one of the Winds more annoying than Dustin--what had Hunter called him that first day? An arrogant nobody with family connections and a lot of luck?
Just like Hunter, a little voice whispered in the back of his mind.
"How do I know what you'd do?" Hunter asked at last. "Maybe you're just messing with me; I don't know. I can't figure you out."
"The feeling's mutual," Cam told him. "But if you're going to flip over a stupid spell, maybe you're in the wrong line of work."
"Hey, if it was just the spell, I get it. That's cool." Hunter actually sounded uncomfortable, and Blake found himself trying not to smile. Big bad Hunter, intimidated by a computer geek? "I'm just saying, if it was more than that..."
There was no reply. Cam wasn't exactly leaping to reassure him, but Blake was convinced. Hunter and Cam explained a lot of little things over the past few days, and really, who was Tori seeing? Him. She was going out with him, and Cam clearly had other interests. Blake could picture Cam staring the Crimson Ranger down right now.
"Well, I'm just saying I'd want to know," Hunter finished awkwardly, when it became clear that Cam wasn't going to help him out. "But if you're not interested in Tori, then fine. I believe you."
"Good." Cam's tone was curt. "I'm going to go find some aspirin."
Damn. Blake deliberately shuffled the cardboard boxes as he stepped forward, trying to make as much noise as possible without being overly intrusive. He pushed open the trash in the corner and dropped the buckets in, making a show of squashing them down before he let the trash close again. At least they'd given him some warning.
"Hey, bro," he said, looking up as Cam slipped past him without a word. "You find that ketchup yet? You won't get any chicken at the rate Dustin's going through it."
"Yeah." Hunter sounded distracted, but he held up the ketchup as if to prove he'd fulfilled his mission. "Cam was giving me instructions on proper condiment placement."
His tone held just the right amount of sarcasm, and if Blake hadn't overheard their entire conversation he might have even bought it. But as it was, he just folded his arms and gave his brother a smirk. "Yeah, I bet he was."
Hunter narrowed his eyes, probably trying to figure that out.
"You were gone a long time for someone who was just getting ketchup," Blake told him.
Hunter looked uneasy now. "Cam has a lot of refrigerator rules," he said evasively.
"Right." Blake decided to make it easy for him. "What about dating rules? He have a lot of those, too?"
"How much did you hear?" Hunter demanded. He threw up his hands in disgust when Blake just grinned. "Great. That's great. I can't wait to hear Shane's opinion on this."
"Hey!" Blake feigned injury. "Who said I was going to tell Shane?"
"Tori will tell Shane," Hunter said with certainty.
That was true. He hadn't thought of that. "Well, maybe I won't tell Tori," he said, rolling his eyes. "Come on, bro. You can't keep it a secret forever."
"It's not a secret," Hunter grumbled. "I'm just not going to shove it in their faces, that's all."
"Blake." The rattle of a pill bottle warned him, and as he turned Cam tossed him the aspirin from the doorway. "Take two; it doesn't work very fast."
"He knows," Hunter said from behind Blake.
Cam didn't so much as blink. "You've been using my aspirin all this time?"
"No--" Hunter paused, then added, "Well, yeah, but that's not what I meant. He knows about us."
"I don't even know about us," Cam retorted automatically. Then his gaze flicked back to Blake. "I thought we weren't going to tell anyone."
"Didn't tell him. He was listening outside the door."
Cam snorted, but he didn't look particularly surprised. "It figures," the Green Ranger muttered. "And you thought the no-kissing-at-Ninja-Ops rule was stupid." He turned and left without waiting for a response.
Blake snickered, ignoring the glare Hunter turned on him. "Guess that answers my question about dating rules," he chortled.
"Shut up," Hunter growled. "Bet you don't even kiss Tori."
"I can't believe you kiss Cam!" Hunter gestured at him to lower his voice, and Blake chuckled again. "Come on, bro. Cam? I don't even have to tell the others--you're never gonna hear the end of this!"
"Trust me," Hunter said, a resigned look on his face. "I knew that from the beginning."
fin