All right, so I apologize if lately things seem to be going in such a fluffy direction to the point it seems like filler, but I swear this all pays off in the end. I just can't resist these kids bothering the heck out of Turbo lol. This was actually supposed to be the Valentine's Day chapter but I was having a bit of trouble with it, so it's late. Enjoy!
Save Me from My Dark Side
Chapter Eighteen
When he felt a pair of hands from behind him covering his eyes, Turbo jumped forward instinctively to escape them and twisted himself around to view his attacker. After seeing who it was and hearing the familiar warm laugh of the person it belonged to, he relaxed considerably, yet the aftershock was enough to keep his heart racing.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying to kill me," he said, putting a hand over his heart in a futile motion to make it stop pounding.
Rosie giggled at him and reached her hand up to rock his helmet forward over his eyes playfully. "Well, if you weren't so jumpy..."
He tugged his helmet back upright on his head and gave her a sweet smile, more than happy to see her. Her attention was diverted to the flora they were surrounded by and she tapped one of the half-opened husks with corn showing through.
"Wow, these things are really candy corn!" she softly exclaimed with amazement. "And I thought the peppermint trees were bizarre!"
It dawned on him that this was her first trip here and the childlike fascination that she had for everything reminded him of his own first time here. He felt disappointed that he hadn't been able to see her initial reaction to the place when she first saw it, which he chalked up to having at least a little bit of pride at once having ruled over the place.
Or perhaps he simply liked to see her smile.
Swizzle popped up in between them and whatever good mood Turbo had been in disappeared. The young lad took Rosie by the hand and said in the most charming voice that a nine-year-old can muster,
"Hey, honeybun, how 'bout you ditch Pops here and run off with me instead?"
He threw in a playful grin for good measure. Turbo facepalmed himself while Rosie just chuckled at the boy, patting him on top of his hat.
"I'm a bit old for you, I believe," she informed him with a smile of her own.
The Swizz jutted his thumb backwards towards Turbo and replied, "If I'm not mistaken, I don't think you have a problem with age."
Turbo tapped the kid on the shoulder, prompting him to cooly turn his head around. "Listen, Malarkey, go chase someone else's tail. Sticky's still wandering around here somewhere, go after her."
Swizzle smiled slyly and shrugged. "Ahh, she's cute and all, but I prefer the ones that play hard to get. It's more fun."
"Then go chase Taffyta, she should keep you entertained for the rest of your life."
He never dreamed he would have to stake a claim on his own wife against a minor. Things only got better when, Candlehead skipped along again, who had went to talk to Vanellope and Snowanna when they had entered the field along with Rosie.
"Ooh, is this the queen lady?" she asked with an open-mouthed smile as she looked up at Rosie. "You know we tried to set him up one time, but he wouldn't let us."
Turbo felt hot from embarrassment and Rosie gave him a playful smile.
"Is that so?" she asked the child, wondering at the same time how the little girl's candle stayed lit on her hat.
Candlehead shook her head emphatically. "Yep, sure did. He said he was too old for that stuff."
"Told ya!" Swizzle declared victoriously as he strutted off.
Rosie tried to hide an amused grin behind her hand when she saw the insulted look on her husband's face.
"Why does everyone think I'm old around here?" he asked to no one in particular.
Naturally, Candlehead thought she had to answer. "Welllll, you were bald...except for what little gray hair you had."
Rosie had to turn away for a moment, her shoulders shaking a bit due to keeping her laughter in. Turbo's face turned redder, trying to count slowly in his head to keep from blowing up at the kid's unwelcome (and unappreciated) answer.
"Okay, okay, enough with the story time," Turbo cut in before anything else that was mildly humiliating was said.
Candlehead pouted sadly. "Aww, but I wasn't done yet!"
Rosie could tell Turbo was going to lose his temper if this kept up any longer, so she forced her giggles down and told the little girl, "How 'bout you tell me the rest later when we can have some ice cream?"
That perked her up. "Yay! I loooove ice cream!"
She turned her attention back to Turbo, who had to admit he was a little jealous that Rosie was able to get them to listen to her when he was unable to do the same.
"You can come have some ice cream with us too, Mister Turbo! I have plenty of chocolate!"
Candlehead skipped away with a "la la la la" in her voice, obviously in a cheerful mood.
"Sweet mother of spark plugs," Turbo sighed tiredly when he was finally left alone with Rosie. "They're like ants, you can't rid of them!"
"Well, ants do like sugar," she replied with slight sarcasm in her voice before grabbing his hand and pulling him along for a stroll. "That cute kid with the pumpkin hat said you could take a break, by the way."
He scoffed at that. "Trust me, there's nothing cute about any of them. Their heads are too big and their features are disproportionate to each other."
Rosie shook her head but she had a small smile on her face regardless. Personally, she found them all to be adorable.
"Which reminds me," Turbo continued as they exited the fields. "You know what that candle girl asked me?"
"No, but I have a feeling you're going to tell me."
"She asked me if my eyes glowed in the dark!" he exclaimed, saying it as if he still couldn't believe he had even been asked the question. "How rude is that?"
Rosie couldn't help but laugh. "Geez, you are grumpy."
He gave her a withering look. "Why does everyone keep saying that?"
"Because you are," she answered, giving him a crooked smile to show she was just playing with him. "Besides, there's really no reason to get mad at her for pointing a fact out."
Turbo halted as soon as she said that, causing her to lurch back since she had kept on going without him and their hands were still together. She looked back at him with puzzlement etched on her face.
"What did you just say?" he asked her in a disbelieving tone.
Rosie continued to look at him strangely, one of her brows raised up and her eyes narrowed slightly at him. "That there's no reason to get mad at her for pointing out a fact?"
He suddenly looked rather panicked, if not embarrassed. "You mean...they do?"
Her confused look turned into one of surprise, followed by a nervous smile. "Oh...you didn't...know that...did you?"
Obviously.
Turbo shut his eyes and dropped Rosie's hand so he could use both of his to cover them, turning away from her at a slight angle.
"Oh my God! Why didn't anyone ever tell me that!" he exclaimed dramatically, in absolute horror that the claim was true. "That's embarrassing!"
Rosie honestly wasn't sure whether to stay in shock or laugh at the absurdity. "I...thought you knew."
"How could I possibly know that?" he asked, feeling extremely self-conscious (and perhaps a bit vain). "It's not like I go staring at myself in mirrors while the lights are off!"
"I thought maybe...they were...programmed to do that," she suggested weakly. "Honestly, I can't imagine you not knowing something about yourself."
"You didn't know you were pretty until I told you, so what's the difference?" Turbo countered back, though he used a gentler voice when he said it.
She couldn't help but smile at that; he had been the first person to say that to her, and she had legitimately been surprised to hear it.
"I think that's more a matter of opinion, sweet as it is," Rosie told him. "In your case, it's an actual fact."
Feeling guilty for causing his minor meltdown, she went and rubbed his back to calm him down. "It's not like they shine bright or anything; it's more like a faint glow. They don't emit light like a flashlight would do."
"Oh good, at least I have that to be thankful for," he remarked dryly, still refusing to look at her. "They're just normal creepy cat eyes, if such a thing existed."
Rosie pulled his hands down from his face to hold them both and forced him to turn back towards her. Regrettably, he didn't have much choice but to crack his eyes open at her. He knew he was being a tad ridiculous, as she had looked at them thousands of times before.
"I like your eyes just fine, champ," she assured him sweetly, squeezing his hands in hers and pulling him a little closer to her so she could affectionately bump noses with him. As usual, the gesture made him blush, and this time even more so since she was gazing at him with half-lidded eyes that only served to enhance her adoring expression. It seemed like forever since she'd looked at him like that (it really had only been a couple days) and he momentarily forgot about everything that had been happening to him of late as he looked back at her.
He felt disappointment when she pulled back suddenly and, returning to just holding one hand, spun around and tugged him back into walking with her. Reality settled back into his mind, though he had to admit he didn't feel quite as grouchy or upset as he had been a few minutes ago.
"So where are we going?" Rosie asked bouncily with a pearly white grin.
If memory served him correctly, there was a hot chocolate spring nearby with wild sweet tea flowers growing around that was rather picturesque. He hoped she hadn't seen it yet on her way over to the Candy Corn Fields, but since she had mentioned seeing Candy Cane Forest, he figured that she hadn't even gone in that direction at all. He steered her off at an angle so they'd be going the right way.
"You'll see when we get there."
Flowers made up of all the different colors of a pastel rainbow grew wild in large scattered bunches, filling a whole meadow. The closer you got to the Ice Cream Mountains, the closer you reached the Hot Chocolate Spring, which was exactly what you thought it would be: a large hot spring cratered into the dark chocolate ground and filled with piping hot chocolate milk, the steam rising into a steady fog that gave the mountainous backdrop a fantasy world feel.
The flowers themselves would have looked like either lilies or daffodils in the Real World, but these had little teacups growing in the centers and the nectar was a small pool of sweet tea. The petals could be broken off to be put in the cups to add extra sugar if the recipient so wished. There were also patches of lollipop grass growing about and a few sprigs of peppermint daisies, which looked like regular ones only these were red-and-white striped.
Turbo felt pretty proud of himself for being able to show off something impressive to Rosie, who was absolutely enamored with the place. Just when she thought she'd seen everything, now she gets shown something like this.
"You can pluck the teacups right off the plant," he was telling her as she inspected one of the flowers more closely. "I used to dump the tea nectar out and use it to fill up with the hot chocolate instead."
Rosie cocked a brow and gave him an amused smile. "You and your chocolate."
He grinned bashfully and shrugged his shoulders up, silently saying that he was unable to help himself.
"I used to come here a lot," he confided as the nostalgia grew on him. "The kids didn't come around here too often because it's not the most exciting place to play at, so I'd take a break and sit out here for a spell to watch the clouds."
Turbo's voice slowly trailed off at the end, his eyes growing dull; back at TurboTime, he and Rosie had sometimes laid on the hood of his car to look up at the clouds there. It was the one mundane activity from the past that "King Candy" would allow himself to do during his reign.
Rosie sensed he was mentally drifting off, as of course she had the same memory he did, so she yanked at his sleeve to bring him out of it.
"We can come by here more if you want to," she offered sweetly. She wrapped her arms around his neck and peered at him with her big green eyes. "You know, just me and you."
He smiled appreciatively at the thoughtful suggestion, but his eyes still had a hint of sadness in them. It was difficult to be here in Sugar Rush, a place that he had once tried to think of a second home yet it never could be due to the circumstances surrounding his attempt to settle in. "King Candy" hadn't been as happy as many people thought he had been and being here only served to remind him of that.
"I really did miss you all those years," Turbo told her quietly as he put his own arms around her small waist. "I'm glad you're here."
Rosie's heart warmed up at the feeling of being wanted, now feeling even sillier that she'd ever doubted that he loved her all that much.
"That makes two of us," she said as she leaned forward to press her lips against his in a kiss.
Turbo felt a flutter in his chest at the touch and he pulled her in a little so he could kiss her back. It felt like a long time since they'd even done that, and it admittedly made him feel like crap that he hadn't been too nice to her as of late. Then again, she hadn't given up on him either so that made him feel a little better about the status of their relationship.
His paranoid and/or cautious nature activated when he heard something that sounded suspiciously like...whispering. He cut the kiss off abruptly (Rosie was rather disappointed) and snapped his head to the side where he had heard it, his brow scrunched down with a deep look of concentration etched in his face.
"You hear that?" he asked as he scanned his eyes across the meadow for any signs of danger. He couldn't imagine what could be lurking there, but then again he himself had lurked there for fifteen years so anything was possible.
He heard it again only this time there was the unmistakable sound of giggling with it. His eyes narrowed when he suddenly saw in the distance the two forms of Jubileena and her twin Citrusella high-tailing it in the opposite direction, laughing their little girlish heads off. He swore he heard one say something about kissing looking like fun. Rosie tried poorly to stifle a laugh and rested her head on Turbo's shoulder as she hugged him to her.
"Those...little...spies," he growled out. "Those little color-swapped berry brats have a lot of nerve!"
Rosie really was trying to keep from laughing but it was coming out in bouts of compressed giggles. Her reaction was a big tip off to Turbo that she found this amusing and he didn't understand why in the world she would think that.
"It's not funny."
"Champ, they're kids, for cheer's sake," she reminded him, giving him a squeeze. She felt another round of laughter coming and she literally had to bite her tongue in order to suppress it. "They're probably just curious."
He huffed in disagreement. "Yeah, well they can be curious somewhere else. I can't believe they resorted to snooping on me."
So much for having a moment, Rosie thought wistfully.
The arcade opened at last, and it was bedtime for one exhausted racer. They had been out in that cornfield for hours, roping off sections of soon-to-be harvested stalks that would make way for paths in the maze. As Gloyd had said, however, they had covered a lot of ground with all the kids helping in shifts...well except maybe Candlehead, she didn't really "help" as much as just hang out and follow Mister Turbo around yakking his ears off about random things. Regardless, one-fourth of the field was done and it was estimated that it would only be a few more days to do the rest.
Turbo saw the two snoopy sisters from the meadow at another point in the day but they didn't say anything, just looked at him and laughed, to which he rolled his eyes. Kids apparently thought it was hilarious to see grown-ups doing anything slightly mushy. Other than that, the kids were...being surprisingly nice to him. To verify what Vanellope had told him earlier, the Sugar Rush-ians all liked to pick on each other but it wasn't mean-spirited, they were the best of friends.
Seeing that kind of camaraderie made him remember how the twins had never wanted to hang out with him, despite his best efforts to friendly. From the day they were plugged in, they never wanted anything to do with him and he never understood why. He sort of wished he had asked them, but it was too late now. Maybe they'd had a good reason; maybe somehow they had foreseen that he was going to be the cause of their undoing and just opted to keep their distance.
A lot of good that did.
Still, he had to wonder why the kids were, as annoying as they may be, letting him into their little private personal world like this. True, he hadn't been mean to any of them when he had been the king, heck, he never even so much as held a five-minute conversation with one before he made up an excuse to either go back to the castle or do some "royal errand". He had, however, brainwashed them into forgetting their true selves and their rightful ruler, making them believe she was a criminal and allowing them to bully her. That was reason enough to hate his guts. And he certainly didn't understand why Vanellope herself was being so forgiving, she was quite a puzzle to him. It made him dizzy trying to understand it so he just gave up trying.
Gloyd had been one of the winners in the roster race the previous night so he was going to be gone all day, much to Turbo's relief. He could have uninterrupted sleep and not have to worry about the little sneak performing pranks on him during his free time. His muscles ached and cramped, the hot shower giving him temporary relief. He wished Rosie had stuck around for bedtime so she could give him a back rub, something she used to do back when he was still racing; being the star of the most popular game came at a price, as you were bound to not catch any breaks between games, and it really wears on the body after a while.
Turbo rolled over on his side in the little bed, pulling the sheets over him to snuggle into. It was a small bed but it wasn't uncomfortable and just big enough for him to maybe roll on his side the other way without falling off. Certainly not big enough for two people. The curtains were closed so it was dark in the room and the silence of the house really crept up on him. He sighed, wondering if Rosie had gone to bed yet and if she was having trouble going to sleep. He had missed her considerably when she had left from her visit and if he hadn't been kept busy the rest of the day, he might have stayed depressed about her leaving.
But she'd come back tomorrow, Turbo had to remind himself as he closed his eyes and tried again to sleep. She had promised before he left to come here that she'd visit everyday and she wasn't one to break a promise. He only had her word to go on and her word was good as gold in his book, so with that in mind he finally managed to get a good day's sleep.