CHAPTER TWENTY: Story Time

"So, what do?" I ask. We just wrapped up the stream, after about two hours.

"I don't know," he says, stretching back in my desk chair.

"I'm gonna go eat some ice cream," I say, getting up and heading towards the kitchen. Mitch follows like a lost puppy.

"You're eating ice cream in the middle of winter? You were complaining just like five minutes ago how cold it is in here," he says as he watches me get out a bowl and a soup spoon.

"Ice cream is sacred."

"That bowl is tiny."

"And you're a master of the obvious. Do you want some?"

"What kind is it?" he asks, walking over to the fridge and standing next to me.

"Um… chocolate chip cookie dough."

"Are you sure you're willing to give that up?" he asks, smirking. I stick my tongue out at him and grab an extra spoon. I put the bowl back in the cupboard and throw away the container lid.

"No bowls?"

"There's only, like, a third left. I'm pretty sure that between the two of us we can finish that off."

"Okay, if you say so."

"I know so. D'you wanna watch a movie?"

"Whattaya got?" he asks. I laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"You think you have a choice," I reply, smiling. "We're watching El Capitan Dos because Lizzie never wants to watch it and she's not here."

"El Capitan?" he asks.

"Captain America. I don't really know why Belle and I call it that, but it stuck."

"I – okay."

"Here. Go sit down, I'll put in the movie." I hand him the spoons and the ice cream and go over to the console to pop in the DVD. Once it starts playing, I plop down next to him and take a spoon.

"I don't know why I just thought of this, but when I was in high school, my friends and I ran a 'carrot clinic' at lunch," I say.

"Carrot clinic?" he asks, giving me a strange look. I giggle.

"Yep. We – well, I guess really just me – used spoons to cut off the funny-colored parts of carrots. We had a 100% accuracy rate with our diagnoses. Diagnosises? I don't know."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"You're strange."

"Hey, I had a PhD in carrot biology. I was the surgeon, one of my friends was an analyst, one was my lab tech, I had a mortician, a receptionist, AND a vegetable psychologist. Get on my level."

"No thanks."

"You're just jealous of the fact that I diagnosed many carrots with cancer. And gangrene. Once we even had a really gross one that we diagnosed as rabies."

"You're the strangest person I've ever met."

"Yes, but I'm giving you ice cream, so my strangeness is irrelevant," I reply. We sit in silence for awhile, just watching the movie. We get to the point where the creepy senator guy from Iron Man 2 is talking to that one SHIELD official from the boat with the pirates and stuff.

"This guy pisses me off," I say. The empty ice cream carton is sitting on the coffee table, us having finished within ten minutes.

"Why?"

"He's a complete dumbass. What kind of idiot just whispers the name of a secret organization out loud in a crowded environment to someone who may or may not know what he's talking about?"

"This kind."

"Very funny. Seriously though, that would be so creepy."

"It wouldn't be that bad," he replies.

"Yeah?" I say. I hug him (somewhat awkwardly, as I'm sitting next to him on the couch) and as I back away, I grab the back of his neck. I somehow manage to keep a straight face and not break eye contact as I stare at him and whisper "Youtube" very quietly. I withdraw all the way, shake his hand, and turn back towards the movie like nothing ever happened.

"Point taken. He is a dumbass," Mitch says, laughing slightly.

"I should know. My other high school PhD was in Dumbassery."

"Oh my god," he says, laughing. We sit quietly for almost the rest of the movie, until we get to the very end when they're standing around Fury's grave.

"They are so colossally fucked," I say.

"Yep."

"The life of El Capitan is not an easy one."

"Nope." His arm is around me again. We seem to be incapable of watching movies together any other way. Which is totally fine with me. Half the time when I watch movies with Lizzie, I'm practically in her lap from hysterical fangirlyness.

"Mitch, I think he have a problem."

"Yeah?"

"I wanna watch another movie, but I don't wanna get up. Do you see my dilemma?"

"The struggle is real."

"The struggle is more real than The Winter soldier's metal arm."

"The struggle is more real than Jerome's nose," Mitch says.

"That's pretty real."

"I know. I have a Phd in reality."

"Oh. Well, in that case, Dr. Hughes, what are we going to do about the struggle that is more real than Jerome's nose?" I ask.

"Well, Dr. Ross, I think that, um, we should… consult someone else."

"Magic Conch or Helix Fossil?"

"Both."

"That requires getting up, though. Are you suggesting that we solve our problem by solving our problem, Dr. Hughes?" I ask.

"Yes…? Yes. Absolutely."

"But I don't wanna," I say, slinging my legs over his lap and curling farther into him. He yawns.

"Me either," he says, bringing his other arm up to close me in a hug. We stay in that position for a few minutes, me almost in his lap.

"You're really too big for this, you know that, right?" he asks.

"Preposterous. That would be logical."

"Oh. Right. My bad," he replies. More silence.

"Tell me a story," he says.

"A real life story or a made-up one?"

"Real life."

"Hmm… Alright," I say. "How about the story of the one time in my life ever that I was grounded?" I ask. It's not all that interesting, but it's kinda funny.

"You've only been grounded once?" he asks, looking at me incredulously.

"Yep," I smile. "Want to hear why?"

-oO0Oo-

*MITCH'S POV*

I can't believe she's only been grounded once. How does one be a teenager and only be grounded once?

"I was… I dunno, six or seven maybe, and my sister and I were over at my neighbors' house. There were two of them, a boy who was a week older than me and a girl who was a couple of years older. She started kinda beating up on him, and my sister and I joined in because we were terrible evil senseless children. One thing led to another, and… I bit him," she says, laughing.

"You WHAT?!" I ask, my eyes widening.

"I bit him. On the shoulder."

"Why?! Why would you do that?" I ask.

"I don't know. I was six. 'Rational decision' was not in my vocabulary."

"How hard did you bite him?"

"Hard enough to make him cry."

"You little bitch," I say, laughing.

"Yeah. His dad yelled at me to go home, and then my parents grounded me for a week. I had to formally apologize. It was not one of the brighter moments in my life, I can say that much."

"I – oh my god. That was not what I expected."

"It sucked even more because it was summer, and all I did during the summer when I was little was play outside with my neighbors."

"How did you not get grounded again?" I ask.

"Well," she begins, " A) I was a well-behaved child unlike some people, B) grounding me would have had no effect because I just stayed in my room all day anyway. It would have been a punishment if I'd been forced to, like, go out and talk to one new person each day."

"You are a strange, strange human being," I say.

"Don't you ever forget it," she says. She yawns and settles her head more comfortably on my chest. There's a couple more minutes of silence.

"Tell me another story," I say.

"Why don't you tell me a story?" she asks.

"All my good stories are ones I've already told during bYd podcasts and streams and stuff," I reply. She's probably seen all those already.

"And you're just assuming I've seen all of those? I have a life, you know."

"Yes," I reply.

"Okay. Just checking. Do you want to hear a made-up story or a real story?"

I think about it for a second. "Real one."

"Any specific topic in mind?" she asks. I think for another couple seconds.

"How about the story of your first kiss?" I ask. She smiles.

"I'll do you one better. How about the story of my first boyfriend?"

"If you wanna, J," I reply. I've just started calling her J all the time 'cause it's easier.

"Why not? I don't know where I should start… um… I guess I'll start the summer after my sophomore year of high school, when I met him.

"We met during a student-run musical revue thing the theatre people in my town do every summer. It was both of our first years. That's not important, I don't know why I said it. ANYWAY, we never really talked until the final week before our shows, but we spent most of those rehearsals together. To give you an idea of how much time that is, our normal rehearsal were two hours long. For the last week, it starts out with about twelve hours of rehearsal on Sunday –"

"Twelve hours? Are you serious?" I ask. How can you do something for twelve straight hours? Especially something like performing that takes so much energy? Holy crap.

"Yeah. Twelve hours. It didn't stop there, either. For the three or four nights after that until our show, we had six-hour rehearsals every night. And then with our shows, we were there for about four hours. It was semi-painful, but it provided a great opportunity to get to know someone.

"He went to a school one town over, so I didn't see him on a daily basis during the year. At this point, he had a girlfriend still. We kept in touch every couple days until February, when I saw him at one of my forensics meets. He'd confessed that he had a crush on me back in August, but he still had a girlfriend, so that never mattered much. When I saw him again in February, it kind of just… changed everything. Like, literally everything."

"So then you started dating?" I ask. I'm having some trouble following her story.

"No, not then. We started talking a lot more, but now the whole romantic thing was a lot more obvious. It was weird, but not necessarily a bad weird. Just, like, a new weird. I gave him my address for whatever reason. That was my first big mistake."

"Why?"

"Because he showed up randomly at my house, with no warning whatsoever. When I was doing homework. It was really weird. We talked for like half an hour – well he talked, I listened – and then he left. And I finished my homework."

"He just showed up at your house?" I ask.

"Yep."

"No warning?"

"None. Can I continue my story now?" she asks.

"Sorry. Go ahead." This story is getting weirder by the minute.

"So. That happened two more times –"

"Two more times?!" I interject.

"Yes. Pay attention. That happened two more times, and on the third time he showed up at my house randomly when I needed to do homework, he asked me to go to prom with him."

"So what did you say?" I ask.

"I told him to give me a few days."

"Why?"

"I didn't want to go. Like, REALLY didn't want to go. I wasn't gonna go to prom at all until he asked me. Prom just isn't my idea of a good time. I did say yes eventually though. Everyone seemed really happy about it."

"Except you?"

"Except me. I went to his prom, not mine, and it remains among the worst three hours of my life. There were less than forty people in a tiny gym. I didn't know anyone, and to be perfectly honest I didn't really like him at that point."

"I'm… sorry?" I say, not sure what the appropriate response is.

"Nah, it's okay. He took me home, and that's when I got my first kiss. I've never been so underwhelmed in my life."

"If you didn't like him, why did you kiss him?" I ask. She is just making less and less sense.

"A forensics bet that I never technically accepted and he never technically won. He suggested that I had to give him a kiss if he got a higher score than me at a forensics meet, and if I got a better score he had to give me a piggyback ride."

"A piggyback ride?"

"I love piggyback rides. Don't judge me. Anyway, I won the first two meets, and we tied at the last one. To this day, he still owes me two piggyback rides. That's not part of the story though."

"There's more?" I ask. This is more in-depth than I thought.

"Ohhhh, you bet. I'm even sparing you some details. I told you I'd tell you the story of my first boyfriend, remember?"

"Oh. Right. My bad. Go on." This is gonna take awhile, I can tell.

"I didn't talk to him for, like, a week afterwards. I started having anxiety attacks whenever I heard a car door shut outside my house because I thought it was him and I'd have to tell him that I didn't like him as a boyfriend anymore. It was really bad 'cause he really, really liked me. It didn't help my case that he was literally the first guy to ever be anything other than a friend or a relative.

"I ended up sending him a video to tell him how I felt. I think it was "I Would Never" by Garfunkel and Oates. To give you an idea of how THAT went, the chorus starts with "I would never have sex with you" and just… yeah."

"I don't even know how to respond to that," I say. She has to be one of the most socially awkward people I've ever loved.

Wait, what?

"Neither did he. He told me that when he showed it to his counselor, he said it was the most unique way of friendzoning he'd ever seen."

"He showed it to his counselor?" I ask.

"Yeah," she replies. "I guess I messed him up pretty good. His mom and his girlfriend messaged his friends from the summer show to come to his birthday bonfire about three weeks later. I couldn't go because I was busy with auditions and casting for the next year's show."

"Wait, he still had a girlfriend?" I am totally confused.

"Apparently. He told me they were on a break, but when she messaged us, she introduced herself as his girlfriend, so…. I dunno. Anyway, my junior year of school got out, and we were both in the summer show again. I was the choreographer, but that doesn't really matter. I'm just proud of that. We didn't really talk for most of the summer, because I'd moved on and he clearly hadn't. I'd occasionally wonder why I let him go, but most of the time I was convinced I made the right choice.

"On the day of our final show, at the cast party after strike –"

"Strike?"

"Theater term. It's when we take down the set and clean up and stuff."

"Oh." This is way more complicated and in-depth than I expected.

"Anyway, at the cast party, he cornered me on my way out the door and asked me for another chance. I took a second, then said yes. I mean, why not?

"Let me tell you, it didn't take me long to remember why not. I became really stressed, always trying to be who he needed while still doing all my homework, plus doing the fall musical, plus making videos. I was just… waiting, I guess. To fall in love. By the time I did, it was… I dunno, mid-April, maybe? I was in a relationship for over six months without getting anything out of it. but eventually, I did. There was one summer where everything was great. We were in the show together, and it was just… nice. And then I moved here for college and he stayed in Wisconsin. We tried a long-distance relationship, but it just kind of faded into nothing after awhile. I haven't spoken to him in a year and a half, ever since he told me that he'd gotten a new girlfriend exactly one year after we started dating."

"Aw, that sucks, J. I'm sorry," I say. And I mean it. One boyfriend her entire life, and he screws her over. That just sucks.

"I'm over it by now." She laughs. "Sometimes I refer to that relationship as 'The Waiting Game.' Because I waited to feel more, then I waited to feel less. But whatever, I've moved on. And that's my story. Hooray."

"That's quite a story," I say. Because it is. No other way to put it.

"I've never told it during a stream, and I never will."

"Why not?"

"I don't want my fans to think that you should settle for your only option."

"Oh," I say. We sit in silence for awhile, maybe five or ten minutes.

"Tell me a story," I say. I could listen to her talk about her life all night.

And then, somehow, I do. I carry her to her room around midnight for the second night in a row. She's actually asleep this time. I think. I walk over to Lizzie's room and flop on her bed, my thoughts on Lily's past as I black out.

IT'S A/N TIME, YEAH YEAH! : Hey guys! QD here, and may I just say OH MY GOD. This is the longest chapter I've ever typed in my life, at about 3,000 words. You beautiful individuals have put this story at 43 views over 13k, which is utterly astounding to me. I love all of you guys so much! I wish there was more I could do, but all I'm able to do is say thank you so much. That said, on to the facts!

-I do cram ice cream into a tiny bowl so I can feel like I'm limiting myself. Yup.

-That carrot clinic thing? Yeah, it's real. My good friend Forever the Optimist is my analyst, with and extended PhD in matriarchy. If you want to know what that means, take it up with her. Love you girl!

-Most of friends don't like the Avengers like I do. Sadness.

-I really do hysterically fangirl on peoples' laps.

-The grounding story is true. I was a weird child.

-Grounding would have no effect on me. I stay in my room all the time anyway, and only come out to eat or type. Hooray.

-The boyfriend story is also true up to a certain point. I'm just about to go into my second year of the summer show as one of the choreographers, which I'm super excited for. Don't worry, though! I'll still have plenty of time to update my stories :) I'm currently not speaking to the boy in question, and the mere thought of talking to him and making the whole situation worse makes me really depressed.

Moving on, here's the fictions:

-The friendzone does not exist. If you want to argue that, take it up with me in a PM :)

-One does not simply consult BOTH the Helix Fossil AND the Magic Conch. Period.

I think that sums it up! As always, don't forget to review, follow, etc. because you beautiful individuals are my inspiration. Y'all mean the world to me, and have made me almost-cry happy tears on many occasions. I'm always happy to hear from you guys if you want me to read your stories, so don't be afraid to send me PMs. Thank you for everything you've done! Much luv!

-Quiet Defiance

PS – as always, Mitch, I'm sorry. *whispers * hey it'd still be cool if you read fanfictions in a video or stream or something

PPS – If you also follow my Merome story, I'll hopefully be able to update that this week, otherwise it's probably not gonna happen until after my school gets out on June 10th.