Reviews :

Burgie : I agree! It's not said often, and Gideon's not totally brave enough to stand up for himself in that way just yet, but as the author I'm about to explode, so I'm just living vicariously through Lash at this point lmao


Song Listened To :

Bloom by The Paper Kites


*Chapter 67*

"Alright, my guy," Lash's voice uttered through a hefty sigh as he dusted his hands free of flour.

Muted yellow eyes that were caught with the intense, lovely Turbotime afternoon sunshine, Lash glossed his eyes across the back area and parking lot he had designated for his workers, as well as Gideon. In a swipe of paint from his air can, Gideon was lost in his own world, splaying the whole of his heart against the white wall Lash had gifted him. Two of Lash's workers were sitting at the concrete lounging table, underneath the huge oak, and as his eyes caught with his two male workers, they grinned in surprised delight and gestured to their ears in a lazy motion to quickly make clear to Lash that Gideon had ear buds in and couldn't hear him. Lash grinned, took off the thick, hefty waist apron about his hips, lofted it over his shoulder and crossed his arms. He wore a tight black tank and work pants; although he had relieved Mara for the day and was due to contributing to the rest of their office work, Lash always found himself getting his hands dirty in the kitchen, alongside his workers.

"He's in his own world, boss, we gave up trying to talk to him," His team lead's deep voice grumbled with a smile, all three men patiently peered to Gideon as he worked.

"Holy shit," Lash hissed as he finally scuffed to a halt at their table, they all ogled the gorgeous artwork Gideon was seemingly pulling from thin air.

Gideon's deep voice just barely hummed along to his music, unaware that he had an audience behind him. He wore a loose gape of a dark red tank, one of which that had much larger arm holes that typical. Although not nearly as cut and sculpted as either Ace or Theo, with similar body types, he still was blessed with a lean and muscular body, his obliques and arms flexed as he maneuvered his right arm with ease, the press of the endless spray paint can he occasionally would yank back to himself and shake. The marble clacked about in a reverberating noise of echoey goodness as he cued his purple coding and continued to manifest airbrushed color with all the ease in the world, as if he could do this with his eyes closed. Gideon was in the process of painting a gorgeous, artistic rendering of a tiger. Pops of orange so enchantingly kissed with the vivid pop of his favorite color, turquoise flecks of goodness for the tiger's eyes. Fangs bared, whiskers delicately detailed with droplets of water, Lash firmly rubbed his temple, grimaced in whole entire disbelief that this was even happening right before him.

"Alright, I'm headed back, let me know if he ever comes back to Arcade," Lash's team lead muttered with a cute smile as him and the other worker grunted to a slow and easy stand.

"Yell if you need me, I'll be in in a minute," Lash ushered as he gave his team lead a friendly, firm few pats to his upper back as he passed, and as his two workers escaped back into the building, Lash inhaled a readied breath and lazily sat down at the table. He grinned in a cocky way, cued his own glitching powers and, in a painless little swipe of garnered attention, Lash shivered his own coding from the soles of his feet, through the grout of the concrete and straight into Gideon's soul. Gideon perked up, yanked his hand and paint can from the wall, whirled around and peered his boggled eyes tight to Lash's, "You're so dug in, man."

"I'm what?" Gideon's voice suddenly barked at a louder decibel, due to the blaring music in his headphones; this caused Lash to sharply flinch, grin and gesture his hand to cue Gideon to cut his music. With a turn of his pointer finger illuminated with his sneaky purple coding, his music paused as he softened and gave Lash a sheepish grin, "Oh, sorry."

"I said, you're so dug in," Lash grunted to a stand, Gideon shyly held his trusty paint can with both hands and looked back to his creation as Lash assessed the sheer height of it and put his hands on his hips, "Damn, dude... Where is all of this coming from?"

"Tigers are my favorite animal," Gideon mumbled assuredly, not understanding Lash's notions, "Well, like... Really any of the big cats. They're really fascinating to me. You know cats used to be worshiped by humans?"

"No, no, I mean like... Where is all THIS coming from? Did you blueprint this first, or sketch it even? Like... HOW did you make this happen?" Lash eyed Gideon in grinning, loving delight, to which Gideon's facial expression sagged to a further slope of knowing humility.

"Ohh, oh... No, no outlining or anything, I just started with some shapes here, see?" Gideon confidently stepped forward, pointed to the tiger's head and motioned a circle about the skull and to the ears, "See, like... Basic shapes. These started as circles, circles of the eye sockets. I mean I guess I did brief outlining, but..."

"This ain't shit you can just LEARN at Academy, is it," Lash mumbled sweetly as he crossed his arms, Gideon heaved a shaky sigh and shrugged.

"... I mean, Academy does have art courses, but," Gideon looked down to the paint can in his hand and shrugged, "It's easier for me to create when I can use my coding. Painting the lighthouse, during my Pre-A art show, was actually really hindering to my creative process."

"Still turned out really cool, though, you still have that, right?" Lash wondered, Gideon rolled his eyes and smiled.

"Yeah, it's in mom's art studio, she forbid me from getting rid of it," Gideon started through a sigh.

Although he had revisited Pebbles' lovely lighthouse at the beginning of this very second day of ditching, he gently reached up to his sternum and touched the lighthouse charm necklace he had, securely tucked under his thin shirt. Desperate to get back and really claim the lighthouse and make it his own, his eyes glossed the gorgeous oranges and blacks of the tiger he had just painted. Happy that said lighthouse was finally all his, and the painting he had done months ago was now realized, he was worried for just how long he could keep said lighthouse a secret. Eager to have a landing spot that no one really knew about, Gideon also was starkly aware of the fact that Lash was a User, and picking him out on the map of Turbotime was as easy as cake. Knowing it wouldn't be the end of the world if Lash knew just where he went during Lash's smaller game day, he was excited to keep it a secret for as long as he could. His own little bachelor pad, manifested and realized all for himself, protected by his very own castle gargoyle.

"Yeah, I also forbid any of you guys from getting rid of it, that thing fucking rocked," Lash muttered tightly in the clench of his teeth, he finally smiled and swat Gideon's strong core in a brotherly fashion, "Hey, I was gunna order us some food. Y'hungry?"

"Yeah, man, I can just manifest it, if you want, make life easy," Gideon mumbled as nonchalantly as ever, Lash furrowed his eyebrows and reeled at the notion of Gideon's easy existence; Gideon moseyed over to the shady table, set his paint can down and ran his bigger hands through his sweaty scalp, "Sometimes it's hard to conjure up like... Items that I'm unfamiliar with, or things I've never eaten, but, hey. No sense not trying, y'know?"

"Cool cool, yeah we can do something easy, lemme check on my team real quick," Lash stated in very forced nonchalance. Excited that Gideon was now open to sharing the ins and outs of his manifestation powers, Lash knew now to do everything in his power to not scare Gideon away with potentially overzealous anticipation. Although he wanted to jump up and down like a little boy on Christmas Day, he tossed Gideon an easy smile and began to step over to the hefty back door of his shop, "I can spare a half an hour, or so."

"Sounds good," Gideon's deep voice volleyed in temporary departure

Alone with the gentle breeze that managed to squeeze into the pocket of space behind Lash's shop, between scattered sky scrapers, the single oak tree that jut from it's proper planted sight surrounded by asphalt of the parking lot, Gideon's eyes glossed the place in an easy sweep of finally feeling relief. After the anxiety of attempting to find his way at Academy, he was happy to know that he now didn't have to worry about any of that mess that made him so wrought with guilt and worry. He lulled his eyes closed as sunlight glinted through the leaves of the oak he stood by, and as he welcomed the hug from the universe, the assurance that he was well on his way to catering to himself, and no one else, he finally smiled and began to feel this fresh, new reality of his become just a little more real. Happy to have a buddy to hang out with, after his hangout, cleanup, lighthouse home of a project, he finally grunted to a sit, at the concrete table, and scratched his scruff-covered chin in contemplation.

"Alright, so I've boiled it down to three options," Lash mumbled as he came back outside, the hefty back door sealed shut with a thud. He approached the table and slowly joined Gideon in sitting across from him, his boyish demeanor carried on as he listed said options on his fingers, "Pizza, wings, or burgers."

"Hmm," Gideon rubbed his chin again and eyed the table in between both boys, though as he set his much bigger palm to the cold concrete, between the two, his coding illuminated all over the palm of his hand, sprawled into a gorgeous little show of a circuit circle in a perfect radius underneath his palm, and as Gideon lifted his hand away, he grit his teeth and materialized a proper, sealed, hot pizza box. Gideon double-took to Lash's shell-shocked expression of whole entire delight and widely grinned, "What! What's that face for?"

"I don't know man, I... If I were you, I'd be manifesting pizza and donuts and all sorts of bullshit at two in the morning, I'd be RUINED," Lash exaggerated his voice the second he peeled open the pizza box. A perfect, steamy pepperoni pizza caked in the gooiest, yummiest looking cheese, Lash sealed the box shut and gave Gideon a dramatic, gaping smile, "Are you fucking kidding me..."

"I've just lived with it my whole life, it doesn't shock me anymore," Gideon choked laughter as he peeled the pizza box open for Lash and began to take out a hot slice for himself. He eagerly brought the gooey pizza above his face and took a big, smiling bite. Upon the relax and sighing chewing, he watched as Lash helped himself, "What do you want to drink?"

"Uhh... A Coke," Lash rattled, Lash sharply flinched as Gideon lazily manifested it into his big grip and handed it to Lash with ease. Lash cocked an eyebrow, delicately took the frosty, ice-cold can of soda from him and did everything he could to try and not act way too surprised. Gideon caught eyes with him, once more, and rolled his eyes in mild, smiling annoyance, "Okay, so like... Please tell me what else you can manifest, y'got hundred dollar bills up your sleeve?"

"I mean, yeah, I can manifest money," Gideon shrugged, he took another big bite of his slice of pizza and sagged into himself in pure, blissful ease, "I can manifest the things I've come into contact with, the things I'm familiar with. I wouldn't be able to manifest, say... Something foreign I've never come into physical contact with."

"Not even something small?" Lash prod, he was well aware Gideon was opening up, he lazily ate his hot slice of pizza, as well, and was desperate to keep Gideon down this track of cutely baring his soul to Lash. Lash shrugged and looked about in contemplation, "Like... Maybe flowers you've only ever read about?"

"I can dig into my imagination and really attempt to manifest something I've never actually had time to get my coding on, but," Gideon chewed politely, he shrugged his big shoulders and gave Lash his youthful, golden eyes, "It would be difficult. But not impossible."

"Well, thank you for your, erm... Coding pizza," Lash wrinkled his nose as Gideon choked on his bite of pizza and shot Lash a wildly immature grin of irritation, "Yeah, sounded gross coming out, too, I don't know what to call it!"

"Coding pizza," Gideon's deep voice repeated in a husky fit of cute, boyish laughter.

"Surely your siblings were climbing all over you, with this knowledge," Lash muttered as both boys continued to go through slices of pizza, Gideon easily manifested himself an energy drink; Lash was almost grateful it wasn't alcohol, "Y'know? Like, the way you can just manifest food and shit. They never pinned you down and tortured you until you made a huge-ass ice cream cake appear?"

"No, my childhood trauma came from psychological warfare," Gideon rattled in numb, smiling delight, easiness that nearly had Lash recoiling. Gideon choked a chuckle and shook his head as he set his slice of pizza down on the closed pizza box, to which he dusted his big fingers of crust crumbs, "Tessa really is the only one that took even so much of a mild interest in my skill. She gave me that slab of palace wall to paint on."

"Oh! Great minds think alike," Lash prided himself, he was relieved Tessa at least saw the good in Gideon, as well.

"Oliver, well... I don't know," Gideon frowned, he looked to the label of his favorite energy drink, a small modest can of carbonated, hyper-goodness, "He's an awesome big brother, very friendly. I just wonder if he doesn't know how to brother people younger than him."

"I mean, he has you and Koko, what makes you say that?" Lash eased, the golden aura between both boys assured Lash that this was his ticket in, this was his route to fully understanding just what made Gideon tick.

"Well, mom and dad told me Koko was raised in really hard times," Gideon gently peered to Lash in a swing of understanding; although Gideon likely didn't have all the dirty details of his family's past, which unfortunately included Lash as the villain, Gideon still held his gaze tight to Lash's in a weird swing of very brief frustration that heavily swung into cute, loving, forgiving understanding, "I don't think Oliver was focused on the idealistic norms of having a little sister while in the middle of a crisis."

"... How old are you again?" Lash hissed quietly, both boys erupted into laughter as Gideon shyly grinned and looked down. Gideon was very well aware just what Lash was about to say, "You're sitting here with all these intellectual smarts as if you've known these people for decades. You JUST turned one, right?"

"Last Friday," Gideon's mature, masculine voice rasped in a reverberating bass of bittersweet love.

Gideon frowned and felt safe in Lash's bubble. Although he was aware Lash's loose-half an hour was coming to a close, the sun laid over both boys in a bubble ladened in dark understanding. Although Gideon picked his slice of pizza back up and continued to eat, he could feel Lash's concerned, brotherly eyes hold fast to Gideon's figure. Gideon finally long-blinked in nervous readiness and gripped his youthful eyes tight to Lash's eternally creepy gaze. Although hard to stare right into, Lash's still, sponge-like aura was prickled with almost tense sorrow, a strange, bittersweet kiss of warm, loving camaraderie, Gideon raised his thick eyebrows after a moment and pressed Lash a husky notion of continuation, well aware Lash was dug in to this soul-baring conversation and there was no off-ramp to a subject change, any time soon.

"Koko's great, always smiling," Gideon sighed, he took one last bite of his pizza before it was down to the crust. He chewed for a moment before continuing, "But, you know how it goes. Tessa's Queen, she has the whole kingdom on her shoulders. Not to mention, Ace and Berri, and all the branches that expand from them. Oliver has Theo, Koko and Nox are now tying the knot. There's a lot more important life-events going on, around them, that obviously thwart my party tricks."

"Party tricks," Lash hissed with a chuckle as he opened the pizza box and eagerly went for another slice of pizza, "I hate to say it, but you've been done dirty."

"What makes you say that?" Gideon mumbled in genuine interest, Lash furrowed his eyebrows and sharply looked off in concealed frustration.

"I don't know, man, I have brothers, especially a little brother," Lash argued, "Sure, our brotherhood and sibling life looks WILDLY different from your clan, but..."

Gideon frowned and peered into Lash's face as Lash shook his head and looked up into the oak tree above them, as if to be now defeated with the rush of swirling, frustrated emotion lofted his way.

"Each of my brothers has the coolest powers, the most unique personalities, each one of them is so different, and we each do everything we can to lift each other up, on a daily basis," Lash mumbled sorrowfully, now feeling as if he was the one to be exposing his soul to Gideon, and not the reverse, "Surely Tessa, Oliver and Koko do the same for you, in some way...?"

"I think..." Gideon started through a heavy, mentally exhausted exhale as his sorrowful eyes looked off in aimless defeat, "They show love in their own little ways. I know they love me. I'm just weird, and... I think I was an annoyingly sensitive child. I wonder if they just didn't know how to treat me."

"Yeah, I know nothing about the notion of 'growing up'," Lash mumbled, he blurt a laugh and rubbed the back of his head, "Hell, I know absolutely NOTHING about children. I was never a child. I was just programmed with all my faculties, as an adult. I didn't have to hope that the people about me treated me well, because I could just TELL them how to treat me, and that was that."

"Yeah, I... I was thinking about that, the other day," Gideon stated with a nod, "I sometimes wish I was just plopped onto Arcade as an adult. I'm left with all this hurt... I was a child. Hell, I still feel like I AM a child. There's a lot I still have no clue how to navigate."

"Well, you discovered one thing about yourself," Lash sighed as he took a hefty swig of his frosty soda, Gideon narrowed his gaze in curious wondering.

"What?" Gideon prod.

"You don't take shit lying down," Lash mumbled, he tossed Gideon a proud smile, "Hell, you didn't even get in the DOOR on your first day and you recognized you were on a path that didn't resonate with you. Gideon, I've been alive for almost forty years and it's taken me until meeting Mara, almost two years ago, to really have that realization. You may think you're still 'just a child', but... You need to start giving yourself credit. Respect and credit from others will follow after."

Gideon nodded and tapped his thumbs against the can of his energy drink in soft pondering. He sighed Lash a conclusory notion of warmth, "Thanks, man."

"Family sucks sometimes," Lash mumbled, "My brothers and I aren't perfect. We have our fights, hell, even our swapmates get involved. We all live together, drama is unavoidable, but... The key there is to sink yourself into a group that will show care."

"Is this you inviting me to an Archived Chaos concert?" Gideon mumbled with an annoyed smile, knowing, full well, that both boys had obviously been to countless a concert and rehearsal; Lash erupted in soft laughter.

"I'm saying, you're welcome to hang with my crew any time," Lash chuckled, "I know it includes your family, like Berri and Theo, but... Offer stands."

"Thanks, I... I'll think about it," Gideon sighed, though he frowned and didn't look too hopeful on the matter, "I've been hurt by the lot of nearly everyone, and... I'm sure it all wasn't intentional, but I'm just not ready. I'm enjoying just... Being alone."

"Well, you have me, nonetheless," Lash assured, to which he added a notion before he took another sip of his soda, "And Novus."

"Novus," Gideon eased with a smile that was all love, Lash assessed Gideon and took note that there wasn't even a hint of contempt with the way Novus's name eased from the depths of Gideon's lovely, deep voice, "Yeah, that... Silly bat is the one."

"He's a good one," Lash grumbled cutely, "Y'gunna start bringing him to hang out with us? Surely he knows what you're up to?"

"No, I haven't told him, yet," Gideon stated, Lash flinched in soft surprise, to which Gideon took note of, "I know, shocker. I tell the guy everything. I just am... Truly enjoying being alone, I'll end up bringing him later in the week. I don't know what's gotten into me."

"Well, clearly there's no rush," Lash sighed, and though Gideon knew exactly just why he wished to be alone, due to his lighthouse secret, he was glad Lash breezed past it, "Not like it's homework, or anything."

"Yeah, thank User," Gideon huffed as he bugged his eyes in gratitude and looked off.

"You're welcome," Lash mumbled nonchalantly, to which Gideon grinned and wrinkled his nose in playful annoyance, "Alright, dude. I gotta go pretend to do shit."

"... Run your shop?" Gideon choked a laugh, to which Lash stood.

"Yeah, yeah, while you manifest us more pizza, yeah?" Lash urged as he gestured down to the near-empty pizza box, "Y'gunna spoil me like this everyday or do I gotta start payin' yah?"

"You don't need to pay me," Gideon guffawed with a grin of wider, happy annoyance.

"Eh, you say that now," Lash mumbled as he began to walk away with his can of soda, "One hundred pizzas in and you'll realize you can capitalize on it. I'm shocked you haven't thought about that, sooner."

"You can send me off with a cinnamon roll, if that'll make you feel better," Gideon cutely grumbled as he picked up his trash and began to follow Lash.

"Fine," Lash muttered, both boys fell into step with each other, the sun coat them in the humble, embracing beginning of solid, brotherly love.


A/N : hey guys, sorry for the slow updates. My husbandgave me likely the hugest birthday surprise of my life and treated me to a trip to DisneyWorld! It's been a blast. We even visited a bakery titled 'Gideon's Bakehouse' - the location in Disney Springs even has a gargoyle on the building! I'm having a blast, and though I'm exhausted, I haven't forgotten to be present here lol. I'll be updating my IG later this weekend with some of the artistic photos I've taken of our trip so be sure to follow me for more! My username there is Vyntastic - thanks guys! :D