If he stayed still enough, no one would notice the neon green polar bear cub in the Kori's amassed collection of stuffed animals - assuming that her handmade creatures were actual animals. His neck craned forward, and Garfield jutted his fluffy bottom out to seem more artificial. The thought of being caught and the need to check up on his dear friend motivated him to continue the act and swallow the pain of keeping his eyes bugged out.
The chunky particles of glitter body spray flew by his snout, almost causing him to let out a tiny sneeze. Twirling bare female bodies danced around him, laughing and shoving together. To dull the sting of boredom, Garfield attempted to count up all the giggling titans in the room.
There was Kori, of course, who shot up into the air and boasted about her wonderful experiences in highschool. Karen resides just under Kori's feet, petting her silky pillow as if it were a cat. Josephine was skillfully painting Kori's toenails standing up, keeping a keen eye on the animated girl's sudden movements. Kole and Argent pretended to be invested in Kori's darting words but clearly couldn't keep up; they nodded their heads every few seconds like ceramic doll eyelids. Unfortunately for him, Pantha was scouring through the mass of stuffies, making her way down the impressive line up.
Her fingers weaved through each nook and cranny of the unicorn beside him. Garfield feared that she'd hear his gulps when she leaned closer towards the mythical creature to inspect its glass eyes.
He comically stared into the soulless depths of the unicorn, imagining its squeaky and terrified cries as Pantha prodded it with her retractable claws. As her attention flew to his fuzzy face, Garfield fought the urge to turn into a cicada, but it became more appealing as the pointy dagger inched closer.
The tip of the claw was a milky ivory that faded back into a dark grey from the lights. Possibly from overuse, a nick in the lower left of the tip shaped out an uneven prong on the terrifying nail; the image of his eyes being forked out almost made him yip. The predator inched closer, and closer, and closer, and-
"I'm looking for Garfield." He recognized that voice anywhere. Unsheathing his babyish head from his paws, Garfield turned around to face his saviour.
"The fat cat on paper or in real life?"
"Uh, real life." Rachel gave her a blank stare. Garfield wondered for a split second what she would look like if she were ecstatic, until stubby fingers pinched the fatty skin of his back.
His limbs straightened out like a frozen house cat falling from a great height, only he had been dangling off of Pantha's fingers. Dropping him into the open palms of Rachel, Pantha zanily snorted, "Peeping tom is a bear now unfortunately."
"You never cease to surprise me, Garfield." His holder smoothed the fur under his eyes, affectionately petting his head as he nestled into her chest. "I never took you for such a fuzzy, little creep."
"Yeah Garfield, you hear that? Better stay away or I'll poke one of your eyes out." Pantha couldn't hurt him in the clutches of Rachel. She broke into a light sweat in the face of a complete stranger, unlike Rachel whose skin felt taut and chilly in the heavily air conditioned room. Garfield drowned himself Rachel's sweater as the two girls conversed about him.
"I'm sure he was just waiting for me. This room is the nearest to the main entrance after all."
An apprehensive voice entered from left. "You're Rachel, correct?" When he jerked his head to the side, he caught a glimpse of Kori's emerging scowl. "Why are you here?"
"I was invited by Beast Boy." Rachel's carefully wrapped arms unravelled as she lifted his furry body up, into the bright lights. He squirmed uncomfortably at Kori's pinnacle gaze.
Her soft eyebrows were pinched into a knot that ruffled up her wide cheeks and soft nose. Kori's lips were flat across her face, zipped up and sealed away. He dared not to provoke her and sat flaccidly in Rachel's arms. The face of a lioness about to strike made the fur in the back of his neck warm. As Kori continued to ask - interrogate - Rachel, he held his breath in his young lungs.
His held in sneeze was let out as Rachel tickled the underside of his belly, scooping him up onto her shoulder like a baby. She rocked him side to side, swaying her hips to the subtle tune of the pop music, clicking her tongue to the beat as Kori fixated her gaze into the teen.
Garfield felt the need to break them up, but when Josephine beckoned everyone closer to his dear friend, he clutched harder to the back of her neck, terrified for her life.
"So you were a teddy bear?"
"A polar bear, a fat and cute one."
"And Pantha almost skewered your eye out?"
"Man, it was like being approached by a frickin knife."
"So then your friend came in?"
"Her name's Rachel."
"And then Kori did what with Rachel?"
"She asked her why she kept stalking me."
"And now they're painting each other's toe nails."
"Haha, yeah about that," Garfield gave his comrade a wide, toothy grin, stretching his cheeks across his face like a rubber band. "The girls were all over her, and I couldn't stop them."
"What the hell, Garfield?" Richard slid his reading glasses off the bridge of his nose and pinched its bridge, grunting as he stared blankly at his sheepish friend. "Why did you even invite her in the first place? I thought we had a rule."
"Yeah, but she's cool about the whole secret identity thing. And she was kinda my friend before she found out." Garfield couldn't understand why his leader felt so apprehensive. An abandoned knot in his stomachache recoiled as Richard continued to 'school' him; he felt as if the days when the team doubted his abilities returned, and Richard was still hounding him everyday during training.
He felt knocked out after that. This feeling of floating through a cloud and being weighed down by elevation felt familiar to Garfield every time he scoped the skies of the seaside. Every syllable his leader stressed felt like small jabs in his skull that numbed his mind the more he fell. And when Garfield fell, he heard nothing; the wind moving past his ears was far too fast. None of Richard's words passed through his mind, and Garfield couldn't help but feel aloof about it all, until something his leader said hooked his attention.
"She's the goth version of Terra."
"She's nothing like Terra."
"Don't get fussy at me." Richard's eyes were out in the open for the first time in forever. They were pools of watered down blue raspberry kool-aid, something Garfield thought was particularly obnoxious. Although he knew there were dark pupils and light irises staring back at him, he couldn't help but think that his leader's eyes were still blank. "Rachel looks like she knows you very well."
"No shit."
"But have you seen her around other people?"
"Well, no-"
"And she became your friend because?" Richard looked like he caught Garfield in a checkmate. He had a minuscule grin on his stupid mouth like Garfield's whole social life was all just a game. Garfield wondered if he thought of him as a pet snake who he fed rats and other critters just to get a laugh out of it. "You should stop seeing her."
"No way." Garfield stepped closer to Richard's face, huffing as his eyes bore into another blank stare. It was nothing like Rachel's. "Stop trying to get all up in my life."
"I'm just looking out for a friend."
"What about your girlfriend? Huh? Is she all sunshine and rainbows too?" His eyes were watering and hot. There was a numbing rage that resonated inside his chest, and it grew monstrous the longer Richard's words settled into his mind.
Garfield knew that out of all the Teen Titans, he and Richard didn't get along the most. Even Aqualad and Speedy's petty quarrels couldn't match up to the tension Garfield felt whenever he followed Richard's instructions.
He hated how hypocritical and dishonest Richard was to the team. These white lies that grew into something more than just lies were what tumbled his trust down. Garfield had a particular hatred to liars; he sometimes feared that Richard's obsessiveness would create more tall tales and eventually become his downfall. He had seen too many people fall from the heights because of this.
But no matter how many times Garfield tried shooting Richard down, his leader was adamant on climbing straight back up the shaky ladder. "Me and Kori are perfectly fine. You shouldn't concern yourself with this."
"Then stop trying to shove your way into my business! I'm no different."
Garfield thought Richard couldn't think of a lie fast enough. The problem with lying was consistency and creativity. Lying was like story telling; the cat couldn't be a dog, and the cat couldn't just be a cat. It had to be more. He fixated his eyes in the soulless pupils the boy wonder, searching for another eureka moment, another lie.
"Me dating Kori isn't reckless. You compromising our secret identities is."
"I didn't have a choice! If I didn't jump, Rachel would be headless and five feet under! Dead Richard, she'd be fucking dead."
"You dont know what you're getting yourself into."
"Yeah, yeah, I got all the bullshit. I can protect her, you know?" The inferiority complexe left long ago.
"But what about you?"
"What about me?"
"Garfield, you can cut up whoever you want. You can leave scars and even kill. But none of that will help you if you let yourself fall easily. Terra is just an example of that. You attract bad attention, Garfield. You're vulnerable. Every stranger is an angel in your eyes. But you have to understand that the toughest villains are always lurking in the shadows. No idiot would kick you in the front when they could stab you in the back. And that, that's what scares me the most. That is why I don't trust your judgement."
Garfield figured out what he hated most of all about Richard. When he wasn't lying through his teeth, everything he said made stupid sense. He observed too much, knew too much and felt more like a stalker than a leader. And he was always right.
I legit woke up because I forgot to post this. I didn't have much inspiration to write this chapter until earlier today when I was reading text messages in a groupchat. Hopefully the next update will be faster since its a chapter I'm far more excited about!
-Catisa~Orsilla