Kico? Miley cyrus? Well you asked for it…
I still don't own the penguins of Madagascar. I wished for it from Santa, but I somehow wound up with some kids front teeth? On that note, If you see a bewildered six year old running around with the right to the penguins of Madagascar singing 'all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth' send them my way.
But in other news: You may notice some changes to this story, but hopefully that'll be all A-Ok :)
Also requests are closed and I do not own 7 things I hate about you by one Miley Cyrus.
Enjoy :D
The day honestly could not have been more miserable if it decided to make an effort.
Another day another dead end and with every passing day he could almost see Johnsons impatience grow. It had been 8 months since the last sighting of the elusive Doctor Ara Logan and the longer they went without one the more dangerous she had the ability to become. After spending the whole day scouring abandoned subway tunnels looking for any signs of dangerous experimentation they had come up with less than they had started with and where now forced to make the awkward trip home with absolutely nothing to show for both their leads and for their efforts.
To make it even better it was raining. And of course in true melodramatic New York Fashion this was no light drizzle, it was pouring down in sheets. The large freezing droplets were sparking against the road, blurring the fogged city line and saturating the already dull greys that made up the concrete jungle. Rico was freezing, the rain already soaking through his clothes to slide down his skin and drip from his finger tips and soak into his shoes. His hair was plastered to his head and he the cold was starting to bite at his nose and fingers in a way that was nowhere near comfortable. He would complain if he wasn't so sure that if he even opened his mouth Johnson would hack out his spinal column out with a plastic spoon out here in broad daylight.
The rain seemed to be burning off her even as she walked, the heat of her rage evaporating it as it rested against her skin. However she clearly wasn't angry enough yet to remain completely dry and as it stood she was just as soaked as the rest of them, her blonde hair laying limply against her shoulders and her hoodie sinking closer to the floor with every step she was taking through the puddles littering the footpath. The only reason they were walking in the first place was the fact that Johnson was pissed and Skipper was too spineless to stand up to her and tell her that walking home is the pouring rain was a terrible idea. And as lieutenant that was kind of his job. But if Skipper wasn't then no one was going to, so he had to suck it up and deal with the cold and with the wet.
Even as they walked he was suddenly hit with the realization that he was one person short to be complaining about, and craned his neck back to catch a glimpse of the resident brain walking ten paces back with his hands in curled up in front of his face as he tried to breathe some warmth back into them. He could see the hot plumes of air rising from where his breath coiled in the air and he stopped to let his long legs finally match the pace and catch up with the rest of them.
"'Cek?" Kowalski looked up with heavy eyes. His face had sunk recently into a constant look of frustration and barely there flickers of anger and Rico had given up trying to pry loose the reasons why. Let the guy brood a little, it made no difference to him.
He rubbed his chest at the sudden spark of discomfort curled up behind his lungs. "Keep walking Rico." Kowalski muttered, hands still cupped around his mouth as he tried to scrounge that last bit of warmth from his words.
"No. Rico stay put."
That was Johnson, her eyes hard chips of acid green and her hands coiled into fists at her sides. "I'm sick of this wounded puppy shit Kowalski, Now fucking sort it." and without another word or threat she turned on her heel and stalked off into the rain, letting the unspoken threats she didn't need to make hang in the air and add to the already crushing mood. Skipper hesitated for a moment, and Rico could see the split second deliberation that went on behind the blue eyes as he finally shrugged and turned to jog after their leader.
Kowalski watched them go with a dark expression, one that suddenly made the day seem a little brighter by comparison. It was one that Rico found himself unable to read, and it put him on edge as well.
"'Cek?" He tried again, honestly not sure what he was expecting.
"We wait ten minutes and then we go home and pretend there was some deep heart to heart or whatever she wants."
There wasn't a question, and there wasn't an explanation, just the sudden sharp bite of his words slamming harder than the doors he had been shutting in him face for months now.
And it had been months. Or it had felt like months. Kowalski had suddenly just shut off and it was starting to dig its claws into his head more with each passing day because the last place Rico wanted to be with Kowalski was right back at the start. Back when the Scientist had been nothing but this cold quiet figure who never cracked so much as a smile. He hated that side of Kowalski and he hated being around that side of Kowalski because there was nothing there. It felt like there wasn't a person under the ice king exterior and if you so much as touched him he would concave and crumble into angry bitter nothing. And in the last years he had known him; and it had been years, or it had felt like years, something had changed. Suddenly there was a warm figure with feelings and thoughts and dreams and crazy ideas, and it was the person he could trust to know what he meant and what he was trying to say with nothing more than a look. He was the person who never expected any more than he was willing to give and he couldn't lose that now. There just wasn't that option.
"No." He growled, deliberately forcing himself into the scientists bubble. "Talk to me! Say me what is wrong!" And he knew he was slipping and his words were lost but he didn't have time to untangle them or trust his face because Kowalski wasn't going to listen the way he usually listened.
And being in his space was putting him on edge and he could see it in the way his shoulders were hunching like a bird about to take flight and the way his mouth was twisting in the corners to make some sort of bitter sneer. "Nacek!"
"No." and the hard edge in his words made him take a step back. "I'm not talking to you ok? I'm not talking to you. Just do me a favour and get away from me before I start swinging." And it was definitely a threat and it was a threat that was dripping from his rain soaked lips and from the tension laced inside his muscles.
"I can take it." He growled, and immediately had to dive to the left as Kowalski's fist came out of nowhere and moved to slam into his jaw.
"Are you going to drop it now." He hissed, and it was like the flood gates had suddenly opened because for the first time in months and it had to have been months, there was a full honest emotion captured on his face, and it was rage but it was better than nothing so he didn't bother to think and lobbed his first wildly back.
Kowalski ducked, narrowly avoiding a bloodied nose as he did. "What is wrong with you, you Psychopath?" He shouted, and something told Kowalski he wasn't talking about the impromptu fist fight. But he was shouting and Rico wasn't sure whether to be excited or frightened by this development. "You're so damned flawed and you don't even see it through your vanity and although I guess I can't say that because you're really not are you? No you're something stuck between and you'll use whichever suits you to get what you want!"
Rico didn't bother trying to sort it, he head the words but he didn't latch on and he didn't let them stick. It was like being back in Clearview and blanking the psyche's before their words actually started to string into sentences and they started to try and pick him to pieces. Instead he swung a fist and he wasn't sure why but it probably had to do with the irritation he could feel starting to pool in his gut. Kowalski twirled out of the way, moving to crunch his elbow up into his face, and he had to swerve backwards sharply to avoid it. His shoes were slipping in the rain but he didn't even have time to right himself before more words were flying at him in sharp angry bursts.
"I don't know who you're trying to be but if it's those brutes from basic then count me out! Or maybe it's any member of the female species because you seem so intent of getting to know every woman we run into and I don't understand it because all you do is behave the way you do with me and it's driving me insane because I don't know what you want from me!" He wasn't trying to hit him anymore; he was just hunched slightly in the rain with this chest heaving and eyes of a cornered animal, desperate and angry. "Just tell me what you're doing so I know I'm not crazy!"
He didn't need to speak this time and he was so thankful for it because the already weak and spotty link from his thoughts and his mouth was stuck in a low signal zone.
Kowalski raked his hands though his rain slicked black hair and shook the water that was dripping down his face loose. "Tell me…" And there wasn't any anger now, just desperation. "Tell me I don't love you."
And without his hair in his fog blue eyes and with the rain running rivulets down his face he looked his age for once. He looked like the lost 21 year old that he actually was underneath everything built on top of it.
And then there was silence, muted by the rainfall that had yet to even try and slow its assault on the pavement. Rico realised he should have been freezing, the cold gnawing on his bones and icing his skin but he just couldn't feel it any more. He couldn't feel much of anything really besides the sudden drop in his stomach like his insides and given out and fallen into the black hole that had opened inside him. Asking someone to tell you that they don't love you is different from asking someone if they love you. There wasn't any pressure here on him and he didn't even know if Kowalski was doing that on purpose but he suddenly couldn't take it.
The blow hit him square in the gut and Kowalski doubled over gasping and wheezing and Rico rationalized it that he kind of deserved it for shouting like a petulant teenager. But screw apologies because right now he didn't need one.
"Seriously!" He shouted. And he shouted it because he had it in his mouth now as he didn't need to think about it or try and force it out. "Seriously!" and he wasn't quite sure why he meant it but he did know it didn't matter anyway because neither of them were exactly themselves right now.
"You... You blame me for... for... for your ideas?!" and Ideas was the wrong word, but the one he was looking for was gone. Lots of things were gone he realised including everything he and Kowalski had been before this moment and it was here in the rain where they were shouting and throwing the blame around and feeling all too much and at the same time not enough that he suddenly understood why he didn't want Kowalski to fall back in on himself and go back to being what he had once been. And it was because he loved the Kowalski he knew now.
"Oh." He breathed. His words condense in the air around him like he could reach out and touch his feelings and thoughts. "Oh..."
"Oh?" Kowalski hissed. "Oh? What does that mean!"
And he was going to have to say it because there was no way to make his face explain this. His thoughts were tripping over one another and it took him several tries in his head to get his words in the right order and make sure they were the right ones. "I... I love you Nacek."
And that was all. That was all he had to say to the scrawny too pale figure in front of him that couldn't throw a punch to save himself or work through his feelings without going off his nut at someone because that's just who he was and it was awful and tragic and messed up but at the heart of it they all were, weren't they?
Kowalski, with his stupid worn out skinny jeans that hug his ass like they were made too and his corny shirt with some dumb science pun on it that always made him crinkle his eyes in that cute contented way when someone mentioned it, reached out and for a moment he was sure that those idiotically long fingers that he would chew on the tips of when he was anxious were going to wrap around his throat and try to strangle the life out of him.
Instead they grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled, yanking him forward and his dumb all too soft looking lips that could run a mile a minute making conclusions no-one else could understand and be nipped on until bruised and swelling and curl into endearing pouts and know-it-all smirks, met his own and he couldn't think or breathe because there wasn't any room for it inside his head beside the realization that he was kissing him with those dumb lips.
He pulled away, pupils dilated and panting between bruised lips. His hair was falling into his eyes again but he didn't seem to care as his hands tightened their grip on his collar and pulled him close again to the point their lips brushed as he growled in his over-rated smooth as silk baritone voice that could give the queen of England palpitations, "You… You ignoramus!"
He felt his knees buckle slightly at the fierceness of the kiss, returning it in kind and reaching for Kowalski's hips and pull him as close as he could manage as the hands on his collar turned into hands on his jaw, almost bruising in their intensity. It was violent and desperate and he could feel their teeth clacking together between the puffs of hot air. Kowalski's nails digging started into his skin, so he responded in kind, slipping his fingers under his soaking shirt and scratching his nails across the hot skin.
He let out a soft hissing noise and started squirming, his back tensing under his scraping as he simultaneously tried to pull away and press himself closer. Then there were hands on his neck and shoulders, trying to force him down and tilt his head back even further. He resisted, fingers digging in until he was just shy of breaking skin and it dawned on him that they were practically fighting even as they kissed.
And the whole notion was so ridiculous he started laughing.
And he wasn't sure why, but the moment he started he couldn't stop. Everything, the whole situation, was just suddenly breaching the line of hilarious. There they were two people who had faced death multiple times and seen things most people couldn't cope with, making out like teenagers in the rain and yelling because they just didn't know what to do.
And Kowalski somehow understood this because he was laughing too. And they stood there in the freezing rain and laughed until they couldn't laugh anymore but at that point it didn't really matter.
With his head canted upwards towards the sky he finally understood why rain could be good sometimes. The cool droplets hitting his face were refreshing and had taken up the task of gently nudging his hair off his forehead. Letting his eyelids slide open he tilted his head lazily to look at Kowalski to see him with eyelids closed and lashes fanning over his smooth milky skin and lips parted to let hot puffs of air escape with each breath and he suddenly really understood how rain could be good sometimes.
"Kowalski?"
"Hmm?" He opened one eye slowly and gave him a small quirk of a smile.
"Nothing." He shrugged finally. He couldn't even remember what he had wanted.
"I should probably apologize for what I said." Kowalski murmured, hands coming down off the railing they were leaning on to twiddle in front of him mindlessly. "I'm sorry for what I said I was just... Mixed up I guess... and for that I apologize. I took my emotions out on you and that was terrible of me."
Rico shrugged and pulled a face he hoped said something along the lines of 'I really couldn't care less at this point.'
Because yeah, he was a flawed individual just like Kowalski had screamed at him. More so than most probably, But so was Kowalski. And if pressed Rico could probably tell you seven things he hated about Kowalski without blinking. But he could tell you seven of the things he loved in a fraction of that time and he supposed it took him far longer than it should have to see it, but it was somewhere in that process of recognising the flaws and accepting them because there were better things to mull over than those tiny imperfections he had fallen in love with a stupidly wonderful idiot. And he had done it without realizing; the way he managed to do most of the things in his life.
And sure he was an idiot who had kept the lid to his problems screwed on so tightly he had shattered the bottle and sliced people with the shards but a few scratches never killed anyone.
Kowalski was still looking at him and it had morphed into a worried sort of frown so he slid along the dripping railing until he was pressed snugly into his side and pressed his lips against Kowalski's till he felt the frown dissipate into the cold and away from the warm spaces where their skin brushed.
Besides, Like Rain, Shattered Glass could be pretty wonderful.
