Hello and Happy 2003 everyone! We've diverted disaster again it seems, as every crazy person alive is determined that the world will end or computers will take over the world, or something to that effect every time a new year begins. ^_~
And here is a belated Christmas gift for you all! A HUGE chapter of Peter Pan Forever. Smile! Heheh. Sorry updates take me so bloody long, but college is a bitch, as is work, and free time is harder to get than gold, it seems. But Christmas break comes around, and my mind is free of all things academic! Therefore, I write! Brilliantly! Er, I hope anyway. Let me know, will you? Please review and enjoy!
~Dilandra
"Absolutely not."
"Yes, dammit."
"No. That's disgusting. I refuse."
"You can take care of it when we get there. Now come on."
"Let's get something straight," I growled. I curled my fist around Teaken's shirt, and yanked him closer. "It's you who needs me. Therefore, if you truly value the little Island paradise you call home, then you will do what I say and you will not argue because I've used up all the patience that I am capable of having and am this close to swallowing a few of my aunt's prescription sleeping pills and letting unconsciousness convince me that this is all just an in-fucking-sane dream! Got it?"
Teaken rolled his eyes and removed my hand from his shirt with unnervingly little difficulty. "Fine, drama queen. Go take your bloody 'shower'. But I swear to God, Mary, if you take longer than ten minutes…"
"Thank you," I grinned angelically at him.
As the hot water hit my face, I lost the last ray of hope that I would indeed wake up. Teaken had convinced me otherwise with his earlier theatrics and the circus stunt of flying without wires. Finally resolved to believe him and buy into his whole 'save my island' plea, I'd begged him to let me return to the apartment and pack some supplies. And after that, I'd refused to leave without a shower. I mean, I'd been cleaning all day. Yuck.
He'd reluctantly agreed after I'd threatened all of his equipment that he owed to his 'Y' chromosome with a swift acquaintance to my knee if he refused.
By the time we'd returned, Aunt Wendy and brother dearest were already snoozing comfortably in their nice, warm beds.
God, I resented that.
I also resented the flippant note that my aunt had left on the counter snidely remarking that since I had taken so long getting the groceries, I could then take my own time to put them away as well.
Bitch.
Now, don't judge me on my behavior, you all know what kind of a day I've had. Cinderella work from morning until evening, then…Teaken. Enough said.
Christ, I didn't even want to think about the night ahead.
So it's completely understandable that I swear at my aunt, and sneer at my brother as I quietly walk into the room, towel tightly wrapped around me and begin to toss items of clothing and bathroom toiletries into a large backpack. I'm concentrating so hard on being silent, and not forgetting my favorite pair of jeans, that when I turn around and Teaken appears directly in front of me, I forget to be silent any more.
…I also forget to hang onto my towel.
He quickly covers my yelp with his hand, but can do nothing about the dropped towel, except look his fill and laugh his head off, which, surprise surprise, he doesn't hesitate to do.
I rip his hand away from my mouth and snatch up the towel, covering my front side as well as I can while my knee finally does what it's been threatening to do all night.
As Teaken keels over on the floor, his hands clutching his crotch as if he's afraid it may fall off, I quickly pull on my underwear, bra, jeans and a tank top. I pull a sweater around my shoulders and slide my feet into a pair of clog-tennis shoes. As I apply my deodorant, I hear him begin to get his breath back as he wheezes a bit. I can't help but grin.
Finally packed, I grab a water bottle and shove it into my backpack as I zip it up. Teaken has recovered himself and glares daggers at me as I walk past him and out into the hallway. I wave him out of the apartment, and smile sweetly at his enraged face. The door clicks shut and I feel it's safe to talk.
"That's what you get, pervert."
"Pervert?! You dropped the towel, I didn't do a thing!" Teaken hissed indignantly.
"Shhh!" I hissed back over my shoulder as I made my way to the elevator. I stopped in front of it and pressed the button. "You shouldn't have laughed," I grumped as he leaned against the wall next to me, arms crossed. "Or looked," I added, shooting him an accusatory look.
He smirked at that, causing my face to flush with embarrassment all over again. "You're right," he said quietly. "Probably shouldn't have."
Now what the hell was that supposed to mean?
I didn't have time to voice this question, however, as the elevator doors opened and Teaken brushed past me and through the waiting doors. I rolled my eyes and followed, reaching to push the lobby level button.
Teaken caught my hand before I could. I gave him a half annoyed, half questioning look.
"Wrong way," he explained. "We're leaving from the roof." He grinned at me again, and pressed the roof level.
"Oh," I gulped. "Right."
I nervously pulled my long, damp hair over my shoulder and began to braid it into a single plait. I finished it and tied it off with a hair tie just as the elevator reached the roof. I took a deep breath and released it, resolutely tossing the braid back over my shoulder and walking out onto the roof after Teaken.
*Thirty minutes later*
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
"You'd better be."
"I am."
"Because if there is one tiny doubt in your mind, now would be a good time to pull me off of here."
"I haven't a single doubt. It's your glass that's half empty."
"Oh, mine's half full all right, it's just someone probably poisoned it."
"Are you insinuating that it's me who doesn't know what he's doing?"
"I'm not insinuating a thing. I fully believe you don't know what you're doing."
"Ah. And I suppose the fact that you've seen me do it with your own eyes doesn't count for anything?"
"Looks can be deceiving."
"Whatever happened to 'seeing is believing'?"
"Ever heard of schizophrenia?"
"Schizo-what?"
"Exactly."
"Whatever. Listen, if you don't do this under your own power, and in the next ten seconds, then you'll be receiving considerable help from me…when I shove your ass off of this building."
"All right! All right, ok? Fine. God. Relax. I'm going."
"I'm waiting."
"Ok, three simple steps, right? Go over it again quick-"
"Mary, for the love of all that is magical…"
"Fine! Here I go, ok? Happy? Jesus. Ok, just believe. Just have faith."
"Trust yourself, that's all you need. Faith, trust, and-"
"Pixidust!! Teaken! You forgot to give me any pixidust! My god I would have fallen to my death!"
"…"
"TEAKEN!?!?"
"Details, details…"
I nearly killed him. It took him ten minutes to restrain me. This was probably owed to the fact that he was laughing too hard to really fend me off, but I didn't find the fact that I was nearly the newest street cake on the nine-o'clock news nearly as amusing as Teaken obviously did.
When I finally decided to allow him to live (or when Teaken finally tired of me repeatedly hitting him in the stomach and succeeded in getting me to say 'uncle' after putting me in a rather uncomfortable and smelly headlock), Teaken dragged me back to the edge of the building's roof. He reached inside a small pouch and pulled out a white circular pill, about the size of a dime. It shimmered a bit in the moonlight.
"I didn't ask for a sedative, Teaken, although that might be nice too-"
"It's your pixie dust, genius. Take it so we can go already. I'm starved, and we're going to miss dinner and breakfast if we don't get going."
"That's pixie dust?" I said incredulously.
"Yes." Teaken answered impatiently. "Take it."
I took it from his hands and brought it closer to my face for inspection. "Do I crush it up or something?" I asked, confused.
"What? Just put it in your mouth!" Teaken ordered, frustrated. "You've already had it once."
"What? No I haven-" I stopped and thought back to the night before, at the dance club. The drug he'd slipped in my mouth when we'd-oh. "Pixie dust? You gave me pixie dust last night?"
"Yeah. What'd you think it was?" he scoffed.
"Yeah, hmm. Wonder why pixie dust wasn't the obvious solution," I cracked, giving him a cold look. I then quickly remembered how the drug had affected me. I didn't think the edge of a building's roof and that light headed feeling would blend all that well. I stated this to Teaken as I moved to toss the pill over the side.
He caught my hand, rather urgently, and pressed the pill back into my palm. "The reason you felt that way was because you were fighting it. You take gravity for granted, and just assume that it will hold you down. So when a chemical is introduced to your system that creates the opposite effect, your body doesn't understand, it can't comprehend the effect, so it fights it off, causing the sick, dizzy feeling. You have to let it do what it's designed to do."
"And how do I do that?" I sighed, not really wanting to hear the answer.
"You've read the stories," he half grinned. "You know the answer to that."
"Think happy thoughts?" I slanted an eyebrow up at him.
"If that's what it takes. Some use that because it helps them focus on something they believe in. You have to believe."
I smirked and made a gagging motion with my hand.
He laughed lightly and nodded. "As corny as it sounds, it works. And you won't care that it's corny once you're up there," he said, smiling as he lifted his eyes to the stars. "It's the best feeling there is, the freest you'll ever be."
"Hmm." I bit my lip and searched for a happy thought to focus on. I tried to use one from when my family were all together and my mother was alive, but that just reminded me that we weren't together, and she wasn't alive. No luck there.
A recent memory flashed in front of my eyes quiet uninvited, but vivid all the same. Teaken's kiss at the dance club. I could feel my face flush as I remembered how it had felt. As annoying as the boy was, he certainly could use that mouth of his for more than insulting and sneering at me…
"What's the matter with you?" I heard Teaken's voice and the teasing edge to it. He must have noticed my blushing cheeks. "Tsk, tsk, Mary. I said happy thoughts, not naughty thoughts.."
I opened my eyes (when did I close them?) and glared at him. "You're one to talk. Tell me this, angelically pure boy, why couldn't you have just pulled me out of the dance club and given me the pill, hmm? Why'd you have to slip it to me with your tongue?"
He gave a slow smile that only proved to intensify the flush on my face, and infuriate me at myself. "Now what fun would that have been?"
I fought to get my hormones under control. "And what did you expect to do if it worked, huh? Just nonchalantly float up over the crowd and out of there?"
He rolled his eyes at me and pulled another pixie-pill out of his pouch. "Obviously not. The effects of the pixie dust last longer in this condensed and concentrated form. It was still in your system when you woke up the next morning, and that, m'dear, is what gave you the lovely hangover you awakened to. Your body was still fighting the effects. That's the reason we use these pills now, instead of the dust. Plus it's easier on Tink" He grinned and winked.
"You bastar-wait. Tink? As in, Tinkerbell, the faerie?"
"The same."
"Wow. She's still around?"
"Peter's still there, isn't he?"
"I wouldn't know."
"Well he is. Take it from me, his second in command." Teaken said with not a little pride in his voice.
"Really? Well, at least I feel better knowing some flunky kid isn't responsible for my delivery to Neverland."
"Good. Now take your pill."
I stared down at the small disk in my hand, and steeled my nerve. I took a deep breath, hitched my backpack up into place on my shoulders, and popped the pill into my mouth. "You'll save me if I'm terrible at this, right?" I asked, waiting for the dust to take effect.
"But of course," I heard Teaken answer, but he sounded a bit far away, the drug began to spread through my system.
My first reaction was to throw out my hands and fight for balance. I felt Teaken rush to my side and steady me with his hands on my waist. I gripped his arms tensely as my head felt like it was spinning faster than the Earth on it's axis.
"God," I gasped, beginning to feel sick.
"Relax," I heard Teaken's voice echo from nearly every direction. "Focus. You need to focus on your belief. Whatever it is. Get it in your mind's eye and don't let it out. You can do it."
Belief, my thought, my belief. What was it? Had I ever decided?
My head had to slow down, had to slow down, stop…
I reached up and gripped my temples with both hands, trying to stop the furious pace at which my head was flying. I grit my teeth and held on, trying to focus.
"Don't fight it, gravity can't hold you down if you believe it can't. Let go, stop fighting to stay," Teaken's voice came and went threw my head with the tornado winds that tore around between my ears. I felt his hands on my arms, caressing and trying to get me to relax. That brought back into vivid spotlight the one thought I'd focused on before.
Well, to hell with my ego. It's all I had.
I focused on that thought with all my ability. I put myself back into that place, that outfit, that music, his arms. I remembered the smells, the tastes, when he'd slowly brushed his lips against mine…
My head began to slow, my arms went lax at my sides, and my breathing slowed.
"That's it, that's good, good, Mary…" Teaken encouraged somewhere behind me, but that didn't matter, all that mattered was that he was kissing me harder now. Not quicker, or sloppier, just…deeper, and longer, and softer, and…
"Yes, Mary, yes! You got it! Keep it up!" Teaken's hands pulled at mine, and I stepped forward, allowing my body to do whatever it felt necessary, my mind was busy.
His hands in my hair, on my face, his chest against mine, god his tongue…
"Mary!"
My eyes snapped open as I stopped the memory right there. I could feel a funny tingling in my stomach that I knew would only lead to foolish feelings later on, so I forced myself out of that memory and back into the present.
In which I was floating high above the expressway.
I screamed and plummeted down.
Teaken caught me and hoisted me back up to the altitude I had been at before I'd lost my grip on my thought. He was laughing and smiling widely at me.
"Shit, Mary that must have been some memory! You shot up in the air so fast once I let you go that I thought you were going to bang your head on the moon before I could catch up with you!" He laughed again and steadied me in the air before him. "What was it that made you so incredibly happy and focused?"
Dammit all anyway, I blushed again.
Teaken smirked and quirked an eyebrow at me. "So it IS the naughty thoughts that make you a believer. Well, well, well, Mary Lynn Darling Bennington. I had no idea you were such a-er-worldly girl."
"Once we're on solid ground again, I promise to make you regret saying that for the rest of your life."
"I don't doubt it. However, in order to get to that solid ground, you'll have to start flying again. Think nasty thoughts, Mary, get floatin' again." He grinned at me wickedly while all I could do was scowl in return.
Like I said, egos aside, I had to fly.
Four major blushes and a blackened-eyed Teaken later, we were finally on our way. And wouldn't you know it, I already knew the directions. The second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning.
"More like afternoon after all your stalling and whining," Teaken grumped.
"Oh shush. You're just angry that you got beat up by a girl." I shot back.
I grinned triumphantly at the slight blush I discerned upon his cheeks.
**
There you have it! Good Lord it seems to be taking them forever to get the Neverland, doesn't it? Well, they'll be there soon…I think…heh. Please review!