The Morning After
It was finally Friday. This had seemed one of the longest weeks the Utonium family had endured. None of them even remembered that last Sunday, less than a week ago, the girls had celebrated their collective eighteenth birthday. On Monday, Buttercup had broken down and come forward to her sister. On Tuesday, Princess had blanketed the school yard with that damned photograph and the media began to stir. Wednesday the girls enjoyed some time away while they made emergency repairs to the international space station. Yesterday their father had gone public, admitting that Buttercup had issues and neither confirming nor, damningly, denying the authenticity of the picture. They tried not to think of what today might bring.
Again Professor was up early, scrambling eggs, frying bacon, and toasting bread. For a change, Blossom wasn't the early riser. Instead, Bubbles, having slept contentedly and drawn down by the tempting aromas, arrived first. She made the expected sounds of appreciative, eager hunger, bid her father good morning, and politely asked to dish up for herself some of the goodness in progress. Bubbles, optimistic by nature, began to think that maybe today would indeed be a good day.
She set her plate on the table, contents steaming, and turned around, ready to grab a glass and pour some juice. She stopped short, surprised to see Blossom standing in the kitchen archway, still in her night dressings as well.
Bubbles smiled. "Morning, Bloss. Want some juice?"
She assumed Blossom was still tired, as she answered "yes" in a decidedly distracted manner. Professor had looked over his should at her and nodded in silent greeting. He returned to his cooking duties immediately, however.
Bubbles turned to grab some glasses, about to ask Professor if he also wanted some orange juice and debating whether she should just pour Buttercup a glass or go wake her up. But Blossom stopped her with a gentle hand on the shoulder, encouraging her to turn back.
Blossom wasn't looking at her sister's face. Her gaze was closer to her neck line, but it seemed she was staring through rather than at Bubbles. Her mouth gaped momentarily, and Bubbles couldn't tell if she was trying to say something or trying to breathe. Then Blossom's eyes met hers and she surged forward, wrapping her arms around Bubbles and trapping Bubbles's right arm against her side in the process.
Bubbles's other hand rose into the air and her fingers spread, as if the member felt rather certain it should be doing something and letting her know it was just ready to be told just what that might be.
For the second time in a week, Bubbles was shocked to find herself on the receiving end of an unexpected kiss from one of her own sisters.
Blossom quickly stepped back, and Bubbles's eyes were still wide. Her reaction wasn't as bad as it had been when Buttercup had done the same, Somewhere between Monday and today, it seemed, she'd become an expert on this sort of thing.
But that didn't stop a surprised "Blossom--what the hell?" from escaping her smiling mouth.
Blossom blinked, seeming to return to reality as she turned to confusion. Professor glanced over his shoulder, still unaware of what had transpired.
A few houses away, a small professional surveillance team, the equivalent of information mercenaries, gawked and smiled at each other. They'd set up shop Wednesday and all had seemed lost when the family managed to grow paranoid and keep their lips tight.
Last night, however, had yielded a gold mine in audio. Now they'd acquired their first useful visual through the kitchen window, from the tiny but powerful camera mounted to the overlarge but otherwise nondescript television antenna on the roof. It peered over the roof of the house behind them, past its and the Utonium residence's front lawns, and it had finally earned its due. Spying on a household almost full of people who could find bugs hidden inside their own house easily incurred extra expense, but at least Princess's purse strings were loose for this assignment.
Only one of them had been manning the equipment during the night. All four of them were awake now and watching, and they simultaneously groaned, inwardly or outwardly, when an influx of static masked Bubbles's response to the kiss. From that point they would catch only snippets of conversation through the static, which would shortly become a high-volumed presentation of The Devil Went Down to Georgia.
Two of them would scramble to track down the source of the interference while the others tried desperately to man the equipment and try to get what they could.
But back at the Utonium residence, Bubbles took her sister by the wrist and led her out to the living room. She leaned in close and whispered, her face a mixture of surprise, confusion, and some strange sort of elation. "Blossom, where did that come from?"
Blossom, still confused and a little insulted, started to respond, "But you said..." She then shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs. Wondering if it had been a dream.
"Glad to see you two talking," Buttercup called from upstairs, smiling as she leaned on the railing from the hallway overlooking the living room.
"That's not the half of it," Bubbles blurted, smiling back. She looked at Blossom, not sure whether she should continue.
Blossom shot back a decidedly Buttercup-like scowl and said, "Forget it."
Bubbles giggled, shrugged, and let it go. She assumed they'd work it out later. After everything else, that wouldn't be so hard, would it? No sense pushing the issue.
"Hey, Cuppo," Bubbles called up, "Wanna come get some breakfast? Dad's cooking."
Buttercup cocked an eyebrow. "What's with the 'Cuppo' stuff? Did Bloss get you started on that?"
Bubbles scrunched her eyebrows and tilted her head. Blossom did likewise and then cocked an eyebrow heself.
"What do you mean?" Bubbles asked. "Don't you remember last night?"
Buttercup smiled, "Yeah. I see she's talked with you about it."
Blossom was very confused. Had Bubbles talked to Buttercup about her visit last night? But that wasn't right. Didn't Buttercup seem to think Blossom had talked to Bubbles about something.
Bubbles was also starting to wonder. "What do you mean? I called you Cuppo when you came to see me."
Buttercup's eyes widened in an expression that clearly said, "The hell you say?" Buttercup herself, however, said, "I didn't see you last night. Just Blossom when she stopped by."
Blossom, growing worried, replied, "I never left my room last night either." She turned to Bubbles again. Already worried about the response, she asked the obvious. "Bubbles, you didn't come to see me either, did you?"
All Bubbles managed was to shake her head.
The three of them shared an uncomfortable moment as they took turns looking at each other, each trying their best to remember exactly what had happened last night.
Bubbles was the first to speak. "I don't think it was a dream. I remember Buttercup waking me up and wanting to talk...about..." She trailed off as her eyes widened in horrified realization. Figuring the damage had already been done last night, she just said it, "Basically about whether I thought we'd rushed into having sex."
Blossom winced at the word. Days later, now, still winced at it. She supposed that wasn't too long, though. She was justified in being upset by it, at least in this context, but all the same would have preferred Bubbles dance around the topic.
Buttercup spoke next. "What I thought was Blossom woke me and asked me to talk about when I first realized I was falling in love with Bubbles. She said you," she looked at Bubbles, "wanted to be sure we all understood each other. Like we've always understood each other, you know?"
They turned to Blossom. She blushed.
"Well?" Bubbles eventually asked. Her sister's sullenness, scowling at the floor, and this morning's surprise kiss told her a lot but left her wondering. Bubbles tried very hard not to smile, even invitingly or comfortingly. Now was not a good time to do that.
"Just forget it, I said," Blossom muttered in a very un-Blossom-like way.
"Blossom?" Buttercup asked worriedly from the railing, floating down to stand next to her sisters. "Are you all right? What happ--"
"Just shut up, okay!" Blossom snapped, turning her scowl to her sisters. The sudden motion flung a tear away from her eye, and Bubbles felt it land on her arm. Blossom snorted, already fighting back mucus as well. "Just shut up! Just shut the--" Blossom stopped, batting away Bubbles's arm when she tried to comfort her.
Blossom turned around, trying to stop the flow of tears. Bubbles was really worried now. What if whoever...whatever it was in this house last night had...
"Blossom," Bubbles asked softly from behind, resisting the urge to touch her sister or hold her close. "Are you okay? Did something happen to you?"
Professor was watching from the kitchen archway now. The three girls caught his gaze. Blossom sniffed again and lifted her head, turning her nose up at the situation. Her eyes on her father, she answered in the tone of someone whose rage was checked only by righteous indignation. "Oh, yeah, something happened all right. Last night what I thought was Bubbles came into my room and... And..."
Her confident demeanor faded again. "And told me to kiss you in the morning and see if I still liked it."
Bubbles sighed. Almost smiled. She was pretty sure now it had been nothing worse than a kiss. But a kiss, it seemed, could be just as--
"Still liked it?" Buttercup asked.
Blossom laughed. She was teetering on the edge of a very long drop. "Yeah, I liked it. So what?" She spun around, glaring at Bubbles again, her steady demeanor returned for the moment. "It wasn't you! It wasn't you, all right?"
But Blossom's face softened again. Her eyes wavered with the coming flood of tears barely held in place by the magnificent power of cohesion. "All right?" she asked again, voice faltering. She had the look and sound of a child asking if their favorite pet dog they'd had and loved since their earliest memories, just recently hit by a truck before their very eyes, was going to be "all right."
Blossom dropped to her knees and let the tears come. She made no effort to mask or muffle the sobs and chokes. Could not, even if she'd tried. This time both her sisters wrapped themselves comfortingly around her. This time she did not withdraw. In fact, she grabbed Bubbles's nightgown over her shoulder, bunching up the cloth in a deathgrip that said, "Please stay with me right now." She was rocked gently back-and-forth as her sisters rocked side-to-side in unison.
Professor joined them, knees popping as he descended to them, behind Blossom, adding one large, comforting hand to the mix. Tears flowed from his eyes, too, but his expression was one of stony sadness. A sadness only one who understands that true pain, while not yet reached, lies just ahead along the road all the same.
After they had again discussed the strange events of the previous night, just after they took flight for school, their breakfast now cold and forgotten, the surveillance team would find that the man next door had just that morning powered on a pirate country radio station.
When questioned, this neighbor seemed to struggle to answer, claiming he'd just last night had the inexplicable urge to set up the illegal broadcast and had spent all night scavenging parts and hooking things up.
To that point, he'd no electronics or broadcast experience that anyone, including himself, was aware of.