Gumball's Honda began to pull into his parking spot, avoiding the cars lined between it with care and precision. It inched forward a little more, the wheels turning to just barely avoid nicking Masami's Ferrari- he sweated a bit at the idea, picturing her and her all-powerful dad cooking up a lawsuit to sink Gumball's life into oblivion. The prospect made him take extra caution in his driving, rapidly looking back and forth between the parking lot and her car. It was rather unfortunate that she parked next to him that day, and he rolled his eyes as soon as he saw its vibrant red exterior shining in the parking space that morning.
Penny rolled down the window, leaning out to check his handiwork. She was well aware of Masami's temperament, being on the cheer team with her, and so wanting Gumball to avoid her indignation, made sure he took time to leave her car unscathed.
Her head leaned out the window, her arm resting on the leathery rest below. She glanced down at the white lines marking the boundaries of Masami's car, her long brown hair being swept into the face by the wind as she took note of the distance between Gumball's car and Masami's. Penny's forehead tingled from the sensation, and she moved her hair back into its place. Her eyes squinted in concentration and annoyance.
"Just a bit more," she said as his front tires slowly passed Masami's car, turning into the spot.
"Did she really have to park it so close to the edge?" Gumball grumbled, turning the steering wheel with his left hand as his right felt over the edge of his seat, his head turned to look through the right window of the car.
With just a few inches of space between them, he managed to park and straighten out his car. Gumball breathed in relief, the tension from the maneuvering being released from him in an exhale.
"Tell her not to park there again, please," Gumball said. Penny opened the passenger door, balancing the bags of Joyful Burger the two had eaten between her arms as she climbed out of the car. She stepped back to haphazardly shove the door closed with her elbow, before looking at the idiot she called her boyfriend.
"How do you imagine she'd react to that, huh?" She playfully laughed, emptying her arms over a garbage can in the parking lot to dispose of their trash.
"...true," Gumball replied. He locked the car as he walked around the front to meet Penny.
"I mean, I can always try," she smirked. He felt his stomach knot; being teased by her always gave him butterflies, and it didn't help when she looked at him with vividity swimming in her eyes. That gaze, he felt… it was a knockout.
"Probably not worth trying, we'd both end up broke from a defamation suit," He chided as he snaked his arm around her, leaving his hand above her chest. She took it into hers, leaning into him. Penny giggled, at both his wit and the way her body felt nudged between his.
The final bell rang throughout the school, signaling liberation for most of Elmore High's student body. The key word being most, as for the school's athlete population, it meant another two hours of training in the August heat.
"...definitely, I'll pick you up at…?" Gumball trailed off, his voice slightly raising in pitch as its volume decreased, hinting at her to fill in the blank. His arms were wrapped around her, enveloping her in a hug.
"...oh, eight works for me!" She picked up on his signal, and with the time now set for their date, her head raced with excitement at seeing him later.
Penny tilted her head back to face him, her face sporting a small, seductive smile meant to reel him in for a kiss. He leaned in before she pressed her thumb against his chin, slightly lowering her gaze to his lips.
"Uh-uh, not until tonight," she teased before tussling his hair. Gumball blushed. "Understood," he replied in a low, baritone voice.
She giggled. "See you! And call me when you're at my house!" He heard her voice trail off as she made her way to the girls' locker room. Gumball stared at her silhouette, wiping his chin with his thumb.
His body stood, stiff with the pain of a badly wounded ego, watching them.
Them.
Her and him.
His muscular, broad shoulders sporting warm up gear tensed, the blood constricting in his large arms, run with a poisonous green liquid that writhed and slithered up his being.
He knew it. He knew it from the second he saw them in that first period class, her laugh imbued with an authenticity and comfort he never drew from her. He knew it from the news he had heard last week, the news he had desperately tried to play off in his head as baseless rumors. He knew it from the way she was increasingly absent during lunches from the cheer table. He had known it all along, of course, but this moment was so different. He had seen it. With his eyes.
There was no more denying it.
Gumball had stolen what was his.
Tobias lurched with anger, envy and indignation striking at his fuse like a match. He watched her leave, Gumball staying behind, before he began his march towards him.
His vision blurred with tones of a bright, blood red as Gumball grew ever closer. With each step, the flame on his fuse climbed up its length, building the inevitable explosion inside of him. It was all consuming, and Gumball unknowingly stood at the center of its blast radius.
And just like that, he burst.
"HEY!" Tobias shouted as he drew closer to Gumball, standing roughly at his eye level.
Gumball snapped out of his whir and faced Tobias. Oh shit, he thought as he inched backwards out of instinct. He was not keen on being beaten to a pulp. His mind raced to manage a response.
"Tobias? What's up?" He said, a tinge of nervousness lacing his words. Tobias closed most of the space between them, puffing up in front of Gumball. Tobias may not have been much taller, at most only by an inch, but his raw physique intimidated the shit out of him. Gumball's heart raced with anticipation, sharpening his mind and slowing time down to the second.
Gumball felt his feet shift as his left hand sunk into his hoodie's pocket. He did his best to keep his gaze with Tobias.
"What do you think you're doing fucking around with my girl?" Tobias's voice twinged with bitterness at that particular word, his glare burning Gumball with its intensity.
"Your girl?" Gumball stood straighter now, mustering the courage to meet his challenger with some dignity. "She chose me, dude, get over it already."
Tobias sneered as he looked at Gumball with malice in his eyes. "You really think she 'chose you' retard?" He snickered, his arms flexing as his form drew inches away from Gumball's. "You're nothing. She's just using you for the rides, should probably cut it off now while you don't realize you've been led on." Tobias's smile turned into a low, bitter contempt as he lashed out at his enemy.
Gumball paused. What's this dumbass talking about? He had to laugh mentally. But something about the confidence in which he stated that… Penny was popular, after all, and so sure of herself. He banished the idea from his mind at once, returning to the present.
"Maybe you'd think that- after all, that's the only reason anyone's ever sucked your dick." Gumball's wit delivered a powerful blow to Tobias's ego, bruising his chest as he felt an inflammation rise in his upper body.
Tobias balled his fists, keeping them to the side of his waist. "Shut up you fucking virgin. She doesn't want you." His voice sunk low and the words tasted bitter spitting off his tongue.
Gumball glared at him. "You go up to her every day spitting absolutely zero game. You really she wants you of all people?" His lips curled into a smile. "Fucking seethe."
Tobias met his smile with his own. "I got everything, bitch. You have nothing."
It made perfect sense to Tobias. He was popular, after all. He was the varsity wide receiver. He pulled any girl he wanted, he thought, except for her. The truth of his failure struck him deeply. He felt his eyes intensify at the feeling.
Gumball laughed. "I don't care. She doesn't either, bro." He felt his voice waver at that last line, and a small knot formed in his stomach. Tobias jumped at the opportunity like a viper striking its prey.
"You sure fool? I'll call her up like I used to and pound that shit out." He felt his pride return to him, inflating him, soothing his wounded image as he lashed the whip of his words at Gumball again and again. Tobias gave him no room to talk as he continued the assault.
"Oh shit, you want a video? I'll make sure to get her moaning my name." Tobias leered at him, his eyes narrowing on his injured victim, going for the throat.
"Ay don't worry though, I'll let you buy her food and shit, but you're never tapping that." He couldn't let go; the venom sunk into Gumball's bloodstream.
"She my hoe, you're just borrowing my leftovers."
"Fuck you." Gumball's voice slit Tobias like a knife, its tone sharp enough to cut damascus steel, the edges serrated with a tactical precision.
"Watch it, bitch." Tobias straightened up, leaning slightly over him with a livid, wounded look in his eyes. The veins on his shoulders rippled with the fuel of mismanaged testosterone.
"Or what?" Gumball smirked, a cocky demeanor overtaking where nervousness once was.
Tobias flashed in rage and shoved Gumball, forcing him a few steps back before he collected himself. "God damn dude, chill!" Gumball's voice rose.
"YOU DON'T HAVE SHIT ON ME!" Tobias shouted, glaring at his enemy with a raw, unfiltered mix of envy and hatred. The fuse in him welled and exploded, his pride pouring its blood from every pore of his body, the sinking pit in his stomach coalescing into an anvil that weighed onto his guts.
Tobias looked at Gumball. The latter moved a few feet away from where he once stood, his body shifting in discomfort. They stood silent for a few moments, Gumball balling his fists and setting them to his waists as he gazed at Tobias, a deadly ice laced with fear stabbing Tobias's eyes.
Silence overtook them. The late summer breeze kicked in; the heat from the summer months was starting to disappear. Even now, a few leaves on the oak and maple trees planted in the school campus turned a bright shade of greenish yellow. One fell from its branch, floating like a star in the wind, guided between the two boys by the breeze, meeting its landing on the hot asphalt below.
The sun stood lowered in the sky, casting a golden tint on them. And this silence still wrapped around them, a lingering miasma, choking their throats, suffocating them with an overwhelming desire to say something, anything, to break this. It was as if the invisible rope between them had snapped from a single shove. Something had changed. It was unexplainable, neither could even articulate it, but a bitterness grew where rage once overflowed like magma from the rocks.
"...This isn't over, dick." Tobias felt himself spit the words from his lips like acid as Gumball watched, still smothered in that silence. Tobias backed away, his breathing slightly ragged from exhaustion, as he walked to the football practice he was now late for.
Gumball still stood. He was paralyzed, his mind racing in a jarring series of thoughts and flashes and questions. His chest burst with unarticulated emotions, swelling with the red welt of a whip, the spot where Tobias shoved him ice cold, drawing life and pride out of the surrounding tissue.
His left hand searched his pocket for his car keys, finding something tangible to cling to. He felt the smooth metal, roughened by inscriptions and serrations, and took the keys in his fingers. It grounded him, almost. He walked back to his car in the same, numbing silence, too overtaken by thought to say anything at all.
Eight O' Clock.. His date. Gumball looked in the mirror, getting ready, his head still racing from the events of today. With Darwin out for Mr. Small's environmental awareness sessions (hey, it looked good on college apps), he had no one to vent to. He checked himself out.
Gumball's eyes narrowed at himself. Tobias's words just couldn't escape his head, the echoes repeating in his mind. She doesn't want you.
That's ridiculous, Gumball chided, she's dating me. He continued washing up.
… but what does that change? God damnit, here it was again. I mean, she's only saying that she likes you.
"Ugh! Get out of my head!" Gumball smacked his hands into his face, moving the palms over it. He rubbed his eyes.
He felt his stomach knot again, just as it had when Tobias shoved him. This nausea stirred in him, sending spikes of heat up to the middle of his chest, before climbing back down to scrape the edges of his gut. It dully gnawed at him, the feeling so small but so noticeable.
His phone buzzed. She was ready.
Gumball clambered down the stairs, pulling the long sleeve shirt down from his neck, fixing the belt wrapped around his baggy jeans. Lead seemed to drip from his arms, a plastic unease squirming in his body.
He drove to her house in silence.
She ran out of the door, dashing between his arms. He felt the warmth of her body spread like rejuvenation through his mind. It cleared in the bliss of such warm affection. She allayed the venom Tobias had left in his body.
"Ugh, I missed you!" She grabbed his chest, looking up at him. He returned her loving gaze with a glowing smile. "Well, hop in the car, so you don't have to miss me much longer."
She giggled as she whirled around the front of his vehicle, sitting in the passenger seat. Young love cast from her eyes.
She'll never want you.
Gumball drove to the bowling alley, his eyes shifting a hue down as the venom balled into a seed that now buried itself in his mind.