Hedgehog was never the biggest fan of the heat or hot weather in general. It was uncomfortable and cruel. It brought on excessive sweating that led to clothes sticking to the body and an awful stench to accumulate if anyone were left out long enough.
Being in the heat was never a good time, she can attest to that. More often than not it was miserable, and yet today she found herself traversing the outside alone with no particular goal in mind. Being on her own was all she could really think of if she wasn't with Oscar.
Hedgehog feels it's strange to think that. She had never needed Oscar for anything before. The boy always just so happened to be there with her. Not today apparently and that was maybe for good reason.
Hedgehog never meant to hurt him and never meant for her actions to be taken the wrong way either. A combination of spending time with Oliver and keeping Max at arm's reach from him was taking up more time than she realized and not to mention the work she was doing with Betsy.
She got that he was mad at her for not acknowledging his existence and his being alone was something he needed right now. Even still he had been acting strangely. Oscar had never shrugged her off so viscously before. He never expressed resentment of that magnitude toward anyone. What really gets to her is when he brings up her and Oliver.
"Oh, don't worry about me. I wouldn't want to take time away from you and Oliver." She could still hear his words so clearly. They had been following her around all morning, sticking to her worst than the heat ever could. His words were crass, unforgiving. Nothing like Oscar at all.
"Jeez, Oscar," Hedgehog mutters under her breath. "You didn't have to say it like that." She figured all she could do was stay out of his way and wait for his temper to blow over. Though she wasn't sure how long the boy would stay bitter. Oscar was becoming more and more unpredictable as of late and for the life of her, she doesn't know why that is.
It doesn't matter. Oscar never stayed mad for long. All she had to do was kill time until he was less angry, and she only has one clear option in mind.
She knocks on the door to Oliver's cabin. Only silence replies. "Oliver?" Hedgehog calls out and knocks again then slowly transitions into banging on the door as hard as she could muster. "Oliver?" She calls again though still nothing.
Was he not home today? Or did he just not want to answer? Strange. She had no Oscar, no Oliver, she didn't want to try seeking out Max. What else was there to do then? "Hmm." She thinks for a bit, the sun beating down on her like a softball bat. It was too hot to formulate any kind of thought. She'd need to find a better place.
She starts walking aimlessly. The sun had already been making it hard for her to think, she would have guessed that moving wouldn't have made her scrambled thought process any clearer. She realizes that she wasn't really going anywhere. Hedgehog only needed to find a spot to recover. The shade of a tree or inside an air-conditioned space perhaps.
The only air-conditioned place she could think of was Susie's cabin and she was not going to stoop to begging Susie for a smidgen of cool air. There was too much pride at stake. What else was there to do though? Where to go?
"Oh?" Once again her train of thought is derailed. This time, not due to the overwhelming heat of the sun, but by a thunderous rumbling in her aching stomach. Hedgehog had been up for a while now and she has yet to eat anything. "Well, that could be a start." Her thoughts shift to the mess hall. The perfect place to recuperate herself.
The hall wasn't too full that morning. Like most mornings really. Hedgehog was more than happy with the lack of children. She did her best thinking alone. Well, that's not entirely true she thinks. She always did her best thinking when Oscar was around but other than that, she works better when she has a space all to herself.
"Hey, Hedgehog." A voice that wasn't her own internal monologue jolts her to life. She didn't recognize the voice initially until they speak again. "You gonna eat that or just look at it till they kick you out of the mess hall?"
"Pepper?" She looks over to where the boy's voice resonated. The young panda was standing beside the table with his blanket dragging across the floor. "Y-yeah, yeah..." Hedgehog brings her eyes back to her sunny-side-up eggs. She hadn't eaten a bait since sitting though she was not sure if she wants to. The eggs looked too cold now. "How long have I been sitting here?" She turns to ask.
"Oh, I dunno. For about an hour, I'd say." Hedgehog winces. Had she really been sitting there doing nothing for that long? "Honestly I was starting to worry."
"Oh yeah?" She picks up a fork and knife that lie beside her lunch tray. plants her fork into one of the eggs and takes a knife to cut a pace. She slips it past her lips. The eggs had been cold, not to her surprise. Hedgehog figured there was no use in wasting perfectly good food and she was just hungry enough to look past just how cold they were and how awkward it felt to chew.
"Don't get me wrong, not actually for you," Pepper said, stepping around the table to sit in front of Hedgehog. "It would have been a shame to let those eggs go to waste."
She glares at him while taking another bit. "Jee, Pepper. Thanks for being so considerate." She slips another cold piece into her mouth. Chilly eggs weren't her idea of great food, defiantly on the level of gourmet. There was a strange texture to the whites and it was strangely hard to chew. Not difficult but with the non-existent warmth, she hardly wants to try.
"Just looking out." The smile he was carrying up until that point drops from his face. All there was left was a sort of concern. Hedgehog isn't particularly sure for what, however. "But seriously. Something got you down?" Hedgehog freezes up when he asked. The fork with some of the last bit of her food on it insensibly hoovers before her open mouth.
She thinks for a moment. Was she alright? "I don't think that's any over your business, Pepper." Hedgehog bit. Whether she was or not, it wasn't for Pepper to know. Her problems were her own and she didn't need some small child to lecture her about it.
"You say that, but I'm still here, aren't I?" Pepper smirked at her.
She raises a brow. "What do you mean by that?" Hedgehog drops her fork onto the tray. "Is that a trick question?" She said somewhere between confused and afraid. The girl was already going through mental unrest with everything that needed to be done. Pepper was doing nothing more other than adding on to that.
"Not a trick." His small smile fades again. "If you were so set on keeping to yourself, I mean, you wouldn't have stuck around for so long. You wouldn't have let me set for so long either."
Hedgehog realizes a breathless gasp. "Oh... really?" She didn't realize he'd been watching her so closely. Makes her wonder if anyone else had as well. "And...? What's it to you if I wasn't feeling good?" She stares at him.
Pepper stares right back, his cheek resting in one hand. "You know Hedgehog. You don't have to act like the whole world's against you. No one's judging for the things you do and no one's going to judge you for asking for help either." Judge her. Wouldn't anyone judge her for not living up to expectations? Oscar and Oliver clearly were. She always set herself up as this larger-than-life figure who was going somewhere. She was supposed to be the smartest, the best, if not good, at everything. "Is there anything on your mind?" Pepper asked again.
She takes another glance at the panda across from her. "No." She spoke immediately and grimaced at her quick answer. "...Y-yeah. Yes honestly." She sputters a bit. She couldn't believe she was going to spill her guts to Pepper. "I... I think Oscars made at me and I'm pretty sure Oliver is too."
"Hmm." He hums. "What makes you say that?"
"Because I may have been ignoring him. Not on purpose though." She says. "I've just been caught up with..."
"With...?"
"Oliver..." Hedgehog hid her eyes behind a hand. "And because of that, Oscar thanks I don't want anything to do with him, I think." She leans back on the bench of the lunch table. The cold eggs seem less like an unpleasant meal now and more of what she deserved.
"Oliver...?" He mutters. "What makes you think Oliver hates you now?" He asked.
"Because... I wouldn't stop bothering Max, I think." She said. The blame falls on her, all she ever did was isolate herself and push others away. Even after the moment she and Oliver had shared the night previous, maybe it wasn't enough. Or maybe it was too much. "I think I also might have been putting too much pressure on him."
"Right, and he told you he's mad I assume?" Pepper continues. There was an awful lot of hounding from a kid so young.
"Well, no... not exactly." Hedgehog chuckles and rubs her neck.
"So how do you know?" Pepper asked, hand still against his face and one eyebrow cocked up in wonder.
"Because." She leans forward in the seat. "I knocked on his door and just didn't answer. He's always in his cabin every morning."
Pepper looks at her, into her eyes, past the worrying optics, and nearly into his soul. Then he smiles. "So, you think he hates you right now because he didn't answer when you knocked on his door?" Pepper doesn't move an inch, the smirk still plastered on his face and cheek in hand. "Even though he wasn't even there."
"Huh?" Hedgehogs' eyes shoot open. "Was he not there?"
"Oh, you poor Hedgehog." Peppers's smile grows more prominent. "I seen him running around camp all morning. He's been in and out of his cabin with a different instrument each time."
"Oh." Hedgehog felt relieved that Oliver hadn't been avoiding her but why had he been running around. There had been an even bigger question still fresh in her mind, however. "How do you know that?"
"Because I was stalking- I was watching him..." He wears a strange look of confidence and a little embarrassment past his indifferent smile. "And just so happened to be following him." Why would he be following Oliver? He resumes before she could question. "What's more important is, I'm pretty sure he's not avoiding you, and last I saw he was heading back to his cabin."
"Now?" Hedgehog jumps in her seat.
"Yes." He replies. "So, I don't think it's more of a question if they're mad at you. I think it's more like, why do you think that." He said. She was at a loss. Never once had it occurred to her why she would assume the worst right out the gate. "Yeah, you say Oscar's mad at you, which I don't think is true, but if it is, it's Oscar. Even if he really was, it wouldn't last long. I think you're just overthinking all this."
Hedgehog snickers. "Really?" She takes a quick moment before leaving the table. "I should probably go see what Oliver's up to." She walks by, stopping and turning to the panda with an amused glare. "You know, you're pretty smart for your age Pepper."
"What, no." He waves off Hedgehogs complement. "I'm just a cutie who likes to be babied. Don't read too much into it." His smile declines, returning to a small smirk.
"Sure." Hedgehog shakes her head and leaves the mass hall. Overthinking things. She hadn't considered she'd been doing that. With Oscar, Oliver, and even Max. She was blowing things out of preparation. For the first time in a long time, Hedgehog feels she was in the wrong.
Not only with Oliver but with Oscar and Max too. All she ever wanted was to keep the boy she saw as her brother safe. It never mattered how he felt or what she had to do to keep him. He was growing up and there was no stopping that slow march. She thinks that it would be best to take his feelings into consideration.
That didn't mean he'd forget about her, and she wouldn't either. A little more privacy would be best for both of them. After all, they couldn't do everything together. Not anymore.
She thinks about Oscar on the walk back. The heat hardly registers on her fur and the sweat doesn't bother her as much as it did before. She comes to a stop at Oliver's cabin, there was a small racket behind the door she could just barely hear.
Hedgehog gets closer to the door and puts her ear to the wood. It sounds like music and singing, followed by frustration once the lyrics get jumbled up. After a short time, the music would start up again.
Oliver singing and playing music was no surprise. She came to expect something like that from him. What shocks her was the subject of the song he was composing. She could barely make out the lyrics but there was one word she does pick up on, as clear as she could hear it. Her own name.
Hedgehog steps away from the door with a smile and knocks. Everything behind the door goes quiet. She puts her ear back up to the door. She could hear him moving, along with the rattle of instruments as he does. The door opens and he peaks his head out. "Oh- uh..." He steps out past the door and closes it gently behind him. "Hey, Hedgehog."
"Hey, Oliver." She flashes a soft smile and lifts her brows at him. One of the many maneuvers she used that never failed to make Oliver's knees weak. "How's it going?"
"Uhmm..." He looks back at his door. "Just, you know."
"Just what?" She eggs him on.
"Just..."
"Yeah?" She steps close, one single brush of her fingers over his chest was enough to break him down. Of course, he would snap like a twig for her.
"I-I was working on something." Oliver breathes a withered sigh. He could never hold his own with Hedgehog, especially when her eyes drew on him with saucy intent. "It was supposed to be a surprise but..." He closes his eyes, thinking up solutions and coming up with excuses that could aid him then. Sadly nothing. "Come in." He opens up the door for her and she walks in, happy to be out of the heat she had begun to pay no mind to.
"Woah." Hedgehog gasped as she entered. Oliver's cabin was a mess, though not in the traditional sense. His floor was racked with crumbled sheets of paper and instruments from all walks of life. She thinks it must have taken a bit of effort to amass such a collection, only to leave them laying, discarded, on the floor. "What's going on?"
"So, I..." Oliver veers off. "Heh, I was..." He stops again, swallows down his discomfort, and comes out with it. "I was trying to write you a song." The boy sighs. "At first I thought I'd use my piano because it was no big deal, I use it all the time. I wrote songs for girls before." He accidentally let the words slip out. Hedgehog doesn't say much, only humming with a smirk on her face that turns Oliver red. "Then... I started getting stuck. Vocals wouldn't formulate correctly, and the tempo was either too fast or too slow. It wasn't working for me. So, I tried something else."
"Oh please, do tell." She said, carefully maneuvering through the river of musical instruments, weary not to trip and fall.
"So, I thought, it was just the piano. It didn't suit you. Don't get me wrong you're beautiful on a piano- I mean with a piano. You're good on a piano-" He removes his hat and covers his face. Hedgehog chuckles. Despite their status together Oliver still couldn't properly conduct himself around her. "I figured a harp would be better, cause your like an angel..." It was Hedgehogs turn to fluster up. At least he always knew how to recover. "But that didn't sound right either. So, I went for a violin." He points in one direction to a discarded violin. "But that wasn't right. Then I went for the flute." He points in another direction. "But I couldn't exactly sing and play at the same time, then I went for viola." Then another direction. "Then the trumpet." Another. "Then saxophone." Another. "Then the lute." And another. "The French horn, the sitar, the drums, the xylophone," He points in multiple directions, all while still covering his face up with his hat. "Until I settled on the ukulele." He removes the hat from his face, returning it to the top of his head, and walks over to his bed. He picks up the instrument lying there and sits afterward. "It's easy to play, easy to sing to. Has that feeling I think I can express myself with. The only thing is, it's not finished yet."
Hedgehog looks at him, she looks at all of the instruments and papers scattered across the floor. She didn't smile, there was no laughter, only hesitation, ebullience, delight, love. "Oliver..." She carefully steps over the instruments and over to the bed, taking a seat next to the boy. "You don't have to write a song to show me love me, dude." Her voice became shaky, and her eyes start to water up. "I could already see that... I could always see that." She puts one hand on Oliver's arm and places the other on the ukulele. He tightens his grip around the instrument nearly to the point of breaking as she gets closer and closer to him until their lips connect for the first, real, time.
It was intoxicating, stimulating and so very close to overwhelming. If Oliver didn't fall to the floor dead from such intimate contact, she's sure she would have.
"Woah." Oliver spurts out once Hedgehog retracts from his lips. His eyes were still closed, and he was still caught in a state of delusion. He opens his eyes only after realizing he was no longer kissing the girl. "Oh."
"Wow..." Her laughter begins to rave up. "Was it good enough for you or what?" She falls back onto his bed in a full fit. "Didn't you say you had girlfriends before?"
"Yeah." He lies down as well. "But no of them were you, by a long shot."
She turns on her side to face him. "Well... I can't wait to see what the finished product of that song looks like." She reaches out a hand to poke and prod at his rosy cheeks. "No pressure of course."
"Yeah..." Oliver's eyes roll over. "No problem."