As Ronaldo and his father walked up to their family owned business, they took a second to really inspect the damage that happen to their shop.
"Jeez, this is gonna be a real hassle to clean up ain't it." Mr. Fryman told his son, referring to the piles and piles of broken glass scattered all around the fry shop. "Well son, we better get started, this mess is not going to clean it's self." Mr. Fryman said as he walked into the damaged shop.
"Yeah, yeah dad." Ronaldo said with an annoyed groan.
"Hey, it was worst yesterday, it would have been finished if you had stayed and helped instead of going around town and picking up trash off the ground." Mr. Fryman said scolding his son.
"Hey! It was for science." Ronaldo said defensively.
"And your blog son?" Mr. Fryman asked, a smug grin spread across his face.
"…and my blog." Ronaldo said in a defeated and embarrassed tone.
"Sure it was son." Mr. Fryman said under his breath with a slight chuckle. "Anyways, we better get started or we'll be here all day." Mr. Fryman said as he grabbed two brooms from the corner of the room and tossed one to Ronaldo. Around a good ten minutes of work had gone by before Ronaldo's father broke the ice and began to ask questions.
"So Ronaldo, what's the deal with that girl Perry, are you two dating or what? It's ok, you can tell me." Mr. Fryman asked his son, not caring if whatever he asked made his son uncomfortable.
"Wh-what! N-no, I mean…we're just friends dad, jeez." Ronaldo stuttered, the question catching him off guard.
"Hey now, how many parents would let some stranger that their teenage son just brought over one night, out of the blue, stay at their home, without asking any real questions? I trust you son so I'm not worried that you brought over some psychopath to our house, I'm just saying that since I'm letting them stay as a guest, you could at least tell me honestly what's the relationship between you two." Mr. Fryman explained. "Is she an old friend of yours you don't talk about?, are you both dating?, or are you two just…you know. He added.
"Know what?" Ronaldo asked with a little bit of embarrassment in his voice, not completely sure on what his father was trying to say.
"You know, friends with…."benefits". Mr. Fryman explained, a little unsure if his son was understanding what he was saying. Realizing what his father was trying to say, Ronaldo found himself taken aback.
"Ah! Dad! Jeez, Perry and I haven't even known each other that long and we….I mean-I…uh-just stop asking these questions." Ronaldo said,red in the face. "All you need to know dad is that Perry is a friend from out of town and she's here to collaborate with me on a project that we'll both be working on, alright?" Ronaldo told his father, his words still having very heavy traces of embarrassment in them.
"Alright son if you say so, all I ask is that you use protection, needless to say I don't think you're ready to be a dad and I'm not ready to be a grandpa." Mr. Fryman said to his son in a teasing manner. Ronaldo, only feeling a mixture of anger and embarrassment, stared back at his father bitterly like any teenager would who was being teased by their parents.
"Ha ha dad, really funny." Ronaldo sarcastically said as he crossed his arms in annoyance.
"Ah don't be so mad son, I'm just messing with you, I'm your dad, I'm supposed to tease you about stuff like this." Mr. Fryman said trying to justify himself. "But seriously son, what kind of project will you two be working on?" He asked, genuinely curious on what his son and his maybe maybe not girlfriend would be doing.
"We're uh…"building"something." Ronaldo reluctantly told his father, not wanting to tell him the "truth" in fear that his father would become worried or he'd unintentionally warn the crystal gems.
"Building something eh? Like, for that blog thing you do?" Mr. Fryman asked his son.
"Uh…y-yeah! We're building something for my blog." Ronaldo lied. "It's gonna take us a few days so…yeah." Ronaldo added, hoping his father would believe his lie.
"Well in that case, are you gonna need your old man to help out, I'm pretty good with tools." Mr. Fryman asked with a slight bit of enthusiasm in his voice.
"NO!" Ronaldo shrieked. "Uh…I mean…uh Perry and I were hoping to build it together, alone." He said, not wanting his father involved in this anymore then he had too.
"Alright if you're sure, I won't bother the two of you." Mr. Fryman said understandingly. "I mean I wouldn't want to get in the way of you two love birds bonding now would I." He added in a teasing manor, much to his son's annoyance. But before Ronaldo could reply back to his father's teasing the two of them heard a truck parking outside in the back. "That must be the glass guys, Ronaldo do you mind finishing up here while I go talk to them? Mr. Fryman asked his son.
"Hmm, Sure dad." Ronaldo replied, a hint of annoyance still audible in his voice.
"Ah don't be so mad son, after we're done here I'll give you a few days off so you can hang out with your friend." Mr. Fryman told his son in an attempt to cheer him up. Hearing his fathers offer Ronaldo immediately perked up.
"Really?" Ronaldo asked, unsure if his father was for real.
"Yes really." Mr. Fryman responded, ensuring his son he wasn't bluffing.
"Oh that's great dad, thank you." Ronaldo said cheerfully.
"You're welcome son, now hurry up and clean the rest up while I talk to these guys." Mr. Fryman said as he walked out of the shop threw the back door.
"Yes sir." Ronaldo said as he began cleaning up the last pieces of glass that were still around the shop. As Ronaldo quickly finished the rest of the mess, he took out his phone and began to text someone. As Ronaldo was finishing up typing the text, his father walked in along with two men that were both wearing some generic repair company logo on their shirt.
"Alright son, these are the repair guys, the glass is gonna be pretty heavy so we're gonna need your help carrying it." Mr. Fryman told his son.
"Ok dad." Ronaldo responded as he put his phone back in his pocket. As one of the repair men began unscrewing some bolts that where holding the old shattered glass, Ronaldo, his father, and the other repair man made their way out back to get the brand new pieces of glass. After finding out the exact size of the glass, the three men slowly and carefully started carrying it to the front. Finally after having to walk around the shop extra slowly due to the weight of the glass, they finally were able to install the new glass windows, much to the delight of Mr. Fryman.
"Finally now the shop is back in business, thank you for your help." Mr. Fryman told the two repair men as he handed the both of them a large tip.
"Anytime sir." One of the men said.
"Now if you can excuse us sir, we have to be on our way." The other man said as the two of them got back in their truck and began to drive off, most likely to fix up other shops across beach city.
"Alright son, a deals a deal, you have the next few days off." Mr. Fryman told Ronaldo. "You can go home now, I can work the shop by myself, it's probably gonna be a slow day so tell Peedee he can stay home for the day." He added as he made his way back in the shop to set up.
"Thank you dad, I will." Ronaldo replied to his father as he started to make his way back home to begin construction with on her new ship. As Ronaldo was around half way home, he heard the voice of someone calling his name.
"Yo Ronaldo, wait up!" Said the voice of a short blond girl Ronaldo knew relatively well.
"Oh hey Sadie! What's up." Ronaldo said as he walked up and high-five'd short his friend.
"Eh, Lars and I got the day off due to the big donut needing some more repairs. So that was pretty cool." Sadie explained. "Also I got your text, here's the makeup you asked for. Sadie said as she handed the little makeup container to Ronaldo.
"Oh thank you Sadie, I owe you big time. Ronaldo said gratefully as he stored the makeup in his pocket.
"Hey don't mention it, what are friends for?" Sadie told Ronaldo. "But I would like to know what do you need girl's makeup for? She asked, curious on when someone like Ronaldo would need something like makeup.
"Uh…well I told you in the text, it's for a friend of mine…she really needs it." Ronaldo said shyly.
"Yeah I know, I was just clarifying that you have a girlfriend that needs makeup." Sadie said in a slightly teasing manner.
"Ugh, she's not my girlfriend!" Ronaldo exclaimed. "She's just a friend from out of town that's visiting." Ronaldo tried to explain with a little bit of embarrassment still in his voice. "Is the whole town gonna ask me this freaking question?" He asked himself, annoyed that not only his father was asking this but now his friend Sadie.
"Oh…about that." Sadie quietly muttered under her breath.
"What, what do you mean?" Ronaldo asked Sadie, concern heavily present in his voice.
"Well you know how with beach city being a small town, rumors spread really fast, even if you don't want them too." Sadie tried to explain.
"Sadie, don't beat around the bush, just tell me what you're trying to say." Ronaldo told Sadie, wanting to know what she was trying to tell him.
"Look, don't get angry but, Lars may have seen the text you sent me and may or may not have already started a rumor that you have a girlfriend visiting as a joke." Sadie explained, sounding as if she was trying to apologize for Lars.
"HE WHAT!?" Ronaldo yelled. "Why that scrawny, big eared little, son of a-" Ronaldo mumbled under his breath as he tried to calm down.
"Oh don't worry Ronaldo, he was just joking, besides people would have probably asked you that anyways, no sense of beating up Lars over something inevitable, right?" Sadie told Ronaldo, sounding a little apologetic in her explanation.
"Ugh, I guess." Ronaldo replied back.
"See Ronaldo don't worry about it." Sadie said as she put a hand on his shoulder in a comforting manner. "People may crack a few jokes and give you funny looks, but hey, that's the price you have to pay if you have a friend of the opposite gender. She explained.
"Oh, you mean like you and Lars?" Ronaldo asked with a smug grin, mischievously pointing out that Sadie and Lars probably share that misfortune.
"Uh Sh-Shut up." Sadie said as she gave Ronaldo a playful shove.
"Ha ha, anyways Sadie I gotta be heading home, there's something I have to get started on." Ronaldo said as he started to walk back in the direction of his house.
"Is it something to do with your new girlfriend?" Sadie asked in a teasing manor.
"No, it's a plan of revenge to get back at your boyfriend Lars." Ronaldo replied back. Sadie not having a clever comeback to Ronaldo's comment simply replied with a blushed face and playfully flipping Ronaldo the bird before she started to walk back in the opposite direction. After walking a few more blocks Ronaldo finally made his way back home, already full of excitement, Ronaldo wasted no time opening the front door, but to his slight surprise he saw Peridot, just laying back on the couch staring at the ceiling. Her hoodie still on, she looked as if she was in deep thought, as if she was contemplating something.
"Hey Peridot, you alright?" Ronaldo asked, wondering why Peridot was just on the couch doing nothing.
"Oh Ronaldo! You're back." Peridot said, only realizing Ronaldo was there due to the sound of him shutting the front door. "So um….how was it." Peridot asked, trying to sound as not awkward as possible.
"It wasn't that bad, I got the next few days off so I can help you build your new ship." Ronaldo replied in a whisper, in slight fear that his brother Peedee would over hear their conversation and start asking unwanted questions. "Speaking off which, you know you could have started building without me right?" He asked Peridot, a little unsure why she didn't just start on construction while he was out.
"Huh? Oh…of course, I was just going over different schematics in my head and cross referencing all the ones I know that could work with the materials we have access too." Peridot explained as she stood up from the couch in an attempt to get herself to focus on what's important. "If you have anything made of steel, such as rods I could use that to build a frame of the ship." She added.
"Steel rods huh? Well lucky for us, yours truly has a large stock pile of steel rods in a shed in the backyard." Ronaldo said with a confident smile.
"Really? Why is that?" Peridot asked Ronaldo, curious on why he would have a stock pile on hand.
"I…uh wanted build a ship of my own but my dad said if I did I'd get grounded big time." Ronaldo said as he rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment.
"Well then in that case, let's be sure to be discrete when building." Peridot said with a slight smirk, finding it somewhat amusing on how Ronaldo was constantly being told what he can and can't do by his father. "So, shall we get started?" Peridot asked.
"Of course, I was waiting for you to start, let's go!" Ronaldo excitedly said as he quickly ran to the door which led to his backyard with Peridot slowly following behind. "Well, here they are." Ronaldo said as he opened up the shed which contained the first batch of materials they needed. "So uh…this good?" Ronaldo asked, not completely sure if what he had was what Peridot needed. After Peridot got up close and examined one of the rods she responded with a simple.
"This could work."
"Really? awesome!" Ronaldo gleefully exclaimed as a feeling of confidence and self worth rushed threw him. "Well in that case let me grab all these so we can start building that frame." Ronaldo said as he went to grab a pile of the steel rods before he was stopped by Peridot.
"No need, I can handle that." Peridot said as she used her hand to create some sort of green tractor beam which she used to carry the entire pile of steel rods right before Ronaldo's eyes.
"Holy cow! I didn't know you could do that!" Ronaldo exclaimed, completely taken aback and amazed by Peridot's abilities. Peridot however, looked as if she was concentrating her hardest to move all the steel rods from the shed to the backyard. After moving them to the center of the backyard, Peridot's beam of green energy that was holding the rods up started to shake until the point Peridot unceremoniously dropped them out of exhaustion.
"Grrr, dame it!" Peridot cursed out loud, frustrated that she had carelessly drop the rods.
"Wow, Peridot is everything alright?" Ronaldo frantically asked, concerned on why Peridot just dropped the rods and started cursing.
"It's…it's nothing I just…didn't think the rods would be so difficult to move, that's all." Peridot said in a mellow tone, her voice giving the impression that there was more to it then that.
"Are you sure?" Ronaldo asked with sincerity in his voice, generally wanting to know if his green space companion was alright.
"Y-yes, everything's fine." Peridot lied. "What do you say we finally start building this." Peridot asked Ronaldo, trying to sound as enthusiastic as she could so Ronaldo would stop asking if she was ok. Luckily for Peridot as soon as he was ask that question Ronaldo's face went from concerned and genuine to thrilled and excited. Noticing the look on his face was a yes, Peridot decided to show him the blueprints. "Alright Ronaldo, we seem to have just enough steel rods for the frame of the ship, so I'm going to need you to hold the pieces in place while I wield them together." Peridot explained as she used her floating fingers to create a screen which showed the frame of the ship that she planned to have built and showed it to Ronaldo.
"Whoa." Ronaldo said in an amazement. "You just gotta show me all the cool gem stuff you can do before you go." He said as he started to pick up a few rods and began holding them in place for Peridot."
"Yeah, I'll be sure to remember to do that." Peridot said sarcastically as she used her other hand to create a sort of wielding tool and began wielding the rods together as Ronaldo held them in place. After an hour passed and the two of them had finished two thirds of the frame, Peridot thought it was time to ask Ronaldo the question that was scratching at the back of her mind.
"So uh…Ronaldo, you would consider the two of us friends, right?" Peridot timidly asked as she stopped her work, a little unsure on how she was going to go about asking the following question.
"Of course Peridot." Ronaldo said reassuringly. "We are both tech experts, looked on by our peers as outcast when in reality without people like us our societies would crumble into nothing but pure anarchy." Ronaldo said, sounding as if he had been waiting to recite that little speech of his for awhile. While normally Peridot would just agree with Ronaldo's lecture on how nerds like them are the most important kind of people, she was too pressed on knowing if he'd say yes to helping her with a little "experiment".
"Yes, and friends help friends when they need it." Peridot said, trying not to sound awkward. "Like how you are helping me build a ship so I can get back to home world." She added, not really finding the right words to explain herself.
"And to save the earth from the crystal gems." Ronaldo enthusiastically cheered, unintentionally reminding Peridot that he wasn't just helping her out of the kindness of his heart but rather the fact that because of her he was under the false impression that the crystal gems were a threat to earth.
"And I'm sure that the earth will appreciate your contributions to helping me get back home once this is all over, it's just that I need you to help me with something else as well." Peridot said, a little unsure if she was over stepping her boundaries and was asking too much.
"Geez Peridot, I'm already helping you build a space ship, what more could you possibly need?" Ronaldo said in a jokey manner. "In all seriousness though, of course Peridot, anything for a friend." Ronaldo said with a reassuring smile, giving Peridot the sign that he was willing to help her with whatever she needed. "So what else is it that you need help with?" Ronaldo asked, eager to lend a hand.
"Well, it's just that I've recently realized that I'm not exactly the happiest I could be, socially I'm mean. And I think I would like to change that." Peridot sheepishly tried to explain. Ronaldo, having an uneasy feeling in his stomach as Peridot spoke, due to the fact that he felt he knew where the conversation was going, tensed up a bit. "So I've come to the conclusion that what I could do to fix that is getting into a relationship, you know…umm find someone." Peridot said with a stutter on that last part. As she finished her sentence Peridot found her face turning a slight darker shade of green and her eyes not being able to make contact with Ronaldo's ", much to her embarrassment. Ronaldo somewhat knowing Peridot was going to ask him something like that she started talking about happiness, still found himself completely frozen in place and nearly unable to speak a word.
"Uh ha ha really now? Why would you need someone like me to help with that?" Ronaldo stammered, barely able to speak without completely freaking out.
"Well…uh it's just that I'm not a 100% sure that I would want to be in a relationship, so I want to know if you be been in…um….a "pretend relationship" with me so I know what I'm getting myself into with romance." Peridot said, still green in the face. "So…uh…would you?" She asked, a whole lot of uncertainty and fear present in her voice. After Ronaldo had registered what Peridot had said he felt a wave of relief wash over him. When he had noticed how attractive, smart, and down right amazing Peridot was, let alone the fact that she was sent to earth to "save" it from the crystal gems, the thought of a romance with her had popped in his mind a few times threw out the small window of time he knew her. Although whenever that thought popped in his head he quickly tried to ignore it, mainly due to the fact that he felt an attractive alien from outer space falling in love with a nerd like him from earth was just something that only happened in movies and books and would never happen in real life.
And as an extra incentive, he also thought that earth's fate was on the line and they were building the ship to get her back home and to get reinforcements, it would be down right idiotic to get distracted with something like romance. However this would only be a "pretend romance", completely and utterly different. The minute things got weird, they could just stop and get back to focusing only on the ship. Plus, who's to say that after the crystal gems are taken care of and the earth is safe, their little "pretend romance" wouldn't turn into a "real romance". Seeing more positives then negatives, Ronaldo felt a surge of confidence rush threw him.
"Uh s-sure, I'd love too, I'm mean not real love but uh…you know what I mean." Ronaldo said with a mixture of pure confidence and pure teenage male awkwardness.
"R-really? Th-that's great." Peridot said with a small smile and large blush, a little surprised that Ronaldo actually said yes. "So um…what now?" She asked, completely unsure on where to go from here.
"Well, I guess we can just finish this part of the ship and then do stuff that people in a relationship would do, and we just do that until we're finished, sound good to you?" Ronaldo asked, excited and yet still a little flustered.
"That sounds...nice."Peridot said with a huge blush still on her face. Although oddly enough this didn't bother Peridot like it normally would, she just didn't care. For the first time since she been on earth she isn't worried about her mission, if the crystal gems find her, or even if she's disappointing yellow diamond. For the first time in along time, she just doesn't care about that stuff at the moment. right now she only cares about her and her needs.
AN: Hey guys back with another chapter sorry for the wait. Anyways I just realized I'm going to past my goal with this fic of 20,000 words and probably will go to 25,000+ to 30,000+ which means more fan fic for you guys to read lol. Anyways School has just started for me so if there is an even longer delay between chapters for this story than normal blame the school system. Anyways Remember to favorite and Review if you can especially Review, it really helps me out more then you think.