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How the Pieces Fit Together

Chapter Text

How the Pieces Fit Together

Six short stories written with tongue in cheek and mind in the gutter, for 42_souls.

Part One: Criminal Masterminds

Prompt: Flippant

"Check it out," Liz said. "To the left."

Kid tried to discretely look without turning his head, but Patti blatantly turned and gawked. "Wow!" she said.

"What? What am I looking for?" Kid asked.

"The bent-over hottie drawing in chalk on the sidewalk."

Kid frowned. "There's no chalk-drawing allowed out here. That's totally against the rules. Let me go talk to--"

"Don't be a douchebag," Liz said, grabbing at Kid's arm before he could march over toward the offending student. "It looks like he's just having fun. He's not hurting anyone."

"Whoever he is, he's ruining the symmetry of this entire area!" Kid huffed.

Patti was momentarily distracted from her gawking long enough to laugh at Kid. Then she turned back to stare some more at the student that her sister had spotted. Patti thought that her sister had good taste.

The three of them were standing right in the center (naturally) of the enormous brick plaza in front of Shibusen. They were waiting for Liz's friend Charlene, for some reason. Patti wasn't sure of the reason, because she hadn't been paying all that much attention when Liz had been talking to her during breakfast. But Patti was paying attention to Liz now, and she was glad that she was. The boy drawing on the bricks with his chalk made for great staring material. Whatever he was drawing, he was going about it in the silliest way possible, bent over at the waist with his ass in the air. Patti wanted to laugh at his ridiculous posture. She wondered how anyone could make a decent chalk drawing while bent over at the waist like that. Experienced chalk drawers knew to squat or kneel as they scribbled their masterpieces. Patti would know; she had spent years perfecting the art, especially on the sidewalk in front of Kid's house. Kid didn't mind her chalk drawing experiments, as long as she made the drawings symmetrical. Kid never played hopscotch, but Patti knew that he liked to admire her expertly-drawn, eight-square grids from afar.

On the other hand, however, if the boy hadn't been drawing in such an impractical position, Patti and her sister wouldn't be able to admire the very, very visible shape of his ass.

"Hey Patti," Liz said. "On a scale of one to Black Star, how hot is that guy's ass?"

Patti giggled.

Kid glared at Liz. "Oh, so Black Star is the standard, now?"

"Black Star has always been the standard against which all hot asses are judged." Liz shrugged flippantly. "Duh."

"So, what, you look at his ass all the time?"

"Don't you?" Liz smirked at him. "You're the one who gets to take showers with him after gym class. Don't tell me that you guys never check each other out when you're naked."

"Of course we don't!" Kid looked horrified. "Liz, there are rules about these sorts of things!"

"Dude-rules?"

"Yes. Dude-rules. That is an excellent term for it. For example, if you're talking to someone in the shower, there has to be eye contact. No looking below the nose. And if you--"

"All right, all right, all right," Liz said, waving her hands to shut him up. "God. I never knew that guys could be so anal-retentive about those things."

Patti laughed, because Kid and Liz's conversation was making her think of all of her guy friends naked in the shower and trying not to look at each other. Boys were stupid. But they were also funny, so that was all right.

"Li-i-iz!" Charlene called out as she crossed the plaza toward them. With her French accent, it sounded like she was saying Lee-ee-eeez. Patti had to force herself not to laugh. (Her sister had once told her that laughing at Charlene's accent was Bad Bitchy, the type of thing that you weren't supposed to do in front of a person because it would hurt her feelings. As opposed to Safe Bitchy, which were the funny things that you could say about a person when she wasn't around to hear.)

"Hey, Charlene." Liz waved as the other girl approached. "Did you bring it?"

"Of course I have." Charlene handed a folder to Liz.

"What is that?" Kid immediately demanded to know, whether it was his business to ask or not.

"Nothing," Liz said quickly. "My French homework. I left my French homework at Charlene's place after our tutoring session last night."

Kid glared at her suspiciously. "If it's your French homework, then why did you say 'nothing'?"

"Ah," said Charlene, glancing from Kid to Liz and back again. "He is as insufferable as you have said, Liz."

Patti laughed at that, especially since Kid was now getting really indignant. "Liz," Kid said, "did you get Charlene to do your French homework for you?"

"And what if I did?"

"That's cheating! And you already got caught doing the same thing in chemistry class last year, remember?"

"No, see, this is totally different," Liz said, smoothly. "Last year I paid Harvar to do my homework. This year I didn't pay anything to Charlene."

Charlene smiled at Kid, coyly. "I do not accept money for my services. A service in exchange for a another service, however…"

"We bartered," Liz explained.

Kid glared daggers at them both, while Patti clutched at her stomach and laughed, and laughed. "What service?"

"This service," Liz said. "Charlene, show him your nails."

Charlene held out her hand toward Kid, waving it in front of his face, her fingers spread apart. "It is a travesty," she said. "My nails, I have broken them."

Kid grabbed at her hand, suddenly utterly absorbed – and utterly horrified – by the state of her fingernails. "Good God," he gasped. "Let me see your other hand."

Charlene gave him her other hand, and his face darkened with disgust. "Charlene, this is terrible."

"Oui, I know."

"Completely unacceptable."

"Yes, yes."

"Your hands would be perfectly symmetrical if not for the mess you've made of your nails," he lectured her, disapprovingly. "You will join me in the Death Room at precisely five p.m. this evening, and I will personally fix the sorry state of your hands. I will not accept 'no' for an answer."

"That sounds wonderful," Charlene said, smiling sweetly at him. "I have many times heard of the legendary manicures given by the Reaper's honored son. I am humbled to be chosen to receive one myself."

Patti clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle her giggles. It was a good thing she was so mature and self-restrained, or else she would have been rolling on the ground with laughter at that moment.

Charlene finally managed to pry her hands away from Kid's grasp. "Later, Liz," she said, waving as she walked away from them.

Patti said nothing, but watched Kid's face, waiting to see how long it would take him to figure out what had just happened.

As usual, it took him a few minutes. Finally, however, his eyes widened with belated realization. "Liz!"

"Huh?"

"Did you just… Did you just…" He flailed his arms with ineffectual anger, choking on his words. "Did you just whore me out in exchange for Charlene doing your homework?"

"Yes," Liz answered. "That is exactly what I just did."

"I don't believe you!"

"You don't have to give Charlene a manicure, if you don't want to anymore," Liz said, casually.

"No, I promised her – I can't go back on a promise – and her hands are so symmetrical that I can't leave her nails looking like that, it would be a travesty – and – and – goddammit Liz arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!" He balled up his fists and pressed them to the sides of his face, seething with fury. "I feel so used! And dirty. Used and dirty."

Patti managed to stop laughing long enough to gasp out, "Kid is stupid!"

"I'm not stupid," Kid snapped at her, angrily. "I just got stuck with a criminal mastermind for a partner."

Now it was Liz's turn to laugh. "Me? Really?"

"Take it as a compliment," Kid said, grudgingly. "For the record, though, I strongly disapprove of you cheating on your class assignments, and I object to you deceiving me for the sake of paying off your co-conspirators with manicures. I morally object. Understand?"

"I understand. So if you morally object, then what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing," Kid said, holding up his hands. "I voiced my moral objection. As a reaper, I'm not obligated to take any further action unless there's a demon-egg involved."

Liz looked smug. "Oh, really now. Well, as long as I know that you're not going to stop me, maybe I should be a little bit more of a bad girl, a little bit more often." She twirled her hair around one finger, coyly. "I think you're lying through your teeth when you say that you don't have to stop people from being bad. I've seen you put your foot down plenty of times. Which makes me think, hmmmm, maybe you're lying right now because you like me when I'm bad."

"That is absolutely not the case."

She tilted her head at him, smiling wickedly. "I used to be a villain, you know."

"Believe me, I know."

"It was fun."

"I've heard that it usually is." He gazed at her steadily. "I am extremely angry at you right now," he said, very calmly. "Fortunately for you, we have to drop this conversation right now."

"Why?"

"Because I just realized that I can't remember whether I properly checked the alignment of the picture frames in the hallway behind the kitchen this morning. Now I have to go back home and double-check, just to be safe." He turned and stomped away from her angrily. "I'll be right back," he said.

Patti knew that this was a lie – he'd be gone for hours, of course – but he still made it sound like a viable threat. Patti watched Kid leave, then turned her attention back to the boy drawing with chalk on the ground. He was still composing his masterpiece. From Patti's perspective, it looked like he was coloring in a fairly accurate drawing of the sun itself. The sun grinned down at them from overhead. The boy's drawing of the sun grinned right back up at the sky. Each was a mirror of the other.

Perfectly symmetrical.

The boy's ass was still up in the air. Liz sidled up next to Patti and said, "Enjoying the view?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Kid had better be back before five o'clock," Liz said. "I don't really want to get on Charlene's bad side."

"He'll be back," Patti said. "Kid doesn't break promises." She looked up at her sister. "But you made him really, really angry."

"I know. I'll deal with that part later." Liz swung her arm around Patti's shoulder. "So. Patti. On a scale of one to Black Star…"

Patti frowned and carefully considered the shape of the drawing boy's butt. Nice, but not completely symmetrical. She had to dock him at least two points for asymmetry. "Eight," she said.

Chapter Text

How the Pieces Fit Together

Six short stories written with tongue in cheek and mind in the gutter, for 42_souls.

Part Two: It Started as a Joke

Prompt: Stay

At first, Liz had meant it as a joke.

Of course her mounting frustration hadn't been very funny. Are you sure you turned the stove off? he would say, or I know there's an unlocked window downstairs, somewhere, I can feel it and also Stop knocking over the candles, what are you trying to do, set us on fire?! There were a million reasons why he would hop off the bed, usually right in the middle of the good part, and go running off to soothe the needling anxieties pinpricking his brain to distraction. (Admittedly, fine, maybe the candles had been a legitimate concern. But only the candles.) Of course he would come back in a minute or two, he always did. Not to be rude or anything. But there was little that Liz hated more than coital interruption. She could unplug the only phone in the house, turn around all the mirrors, and lock all the doors, but it still wouldn't be enough to prevent interruptions. She couldn't exactly turn off his brain, after all.

So she joked. "One of these days," she said, as he extracted himself from her and ran for the bedroom door, "I'm going to have to tie you down to the goddamn bed."

"Be back in a minute," he muttered, as a non-response. And he was back, a moment later. "You're right, I'm sorry. The stove was off." The he tapped his chin. "Or was it? I was in a rush, think I might have looked at it too quickly. Let me go check again."

Liz buried her head in a pillow and screamed. Then she started seriously thinking about where she could procure some comfortable rope. Or hell, uncomfortable rope. He deserved to have scratches on his wrists. Maybe she'd go with handcuffs instead.

At some point, her jokes became a tentative plan. Then a definite plan.

As it turned out, he rather liked the handcuffs. Which worked out well for everyone.

Chapter Text

How the Pieces Fit Together

Six short stories written with tongue in cheek and mind in the gutter, for 42_souls.

Part Three: Not So Very Innocent

Prompt: Carry

Liz glanced at her watch, then sucked in her breath sharply. "Damn. It's already ten until four."

"So?" Patti asked, momentarily distracted from the cuteness of the dog being walked in front of them by the sound of her sister's voice.

"So we promised to meet Maka at the library at four, and that's on the other side of the city, and if we're late then Maka will be angry, and if she's angry from the get-go then I won't be able to talk her into giving us all of the answers for the stupid math homework."

"Oh," Patti said. And then, "Well, that's your fault."

Liz winced at the truth of this statement. Okay, so maybe it was her fault that they were about to be late. She was the one who had spent hours trying on shoes that afternoon, and she was also the one who had lost track of the time. (She could hardly expect Patti to keep track of something as crucial as the time of day, after all.) But she could also fix things, too. Liz rummaged around in her purse for a mirror, then pulled one out and said, "I'm calling Kid. We can hitch a ride on him."

Patti suddenly laughed.

"I mean, er, on Beelzebub," Liz corrected herself, quickly. "I mean on him on Beelzebub... Oh, wow, that really does sound dirty."

"On him on Beelzebub in his pants!" Patti shouted.

"Patti, they're called holsters."

Patti laughed so hard that she had to lean against her sister to keep her balance.

Chapter Text

How the Pieces Fit Together

Six short stories written with tongue in cheek and mind in the gutter, for 42_souls.

Part Four: The Most Unfortunate Name in the World

Prompt: Shout

"So who's Tom?" he asked, angrily.

"Uhm… Tom Cruise." Liz coughed, embarrassed. "Sorry about that."

Kid rolled over on his side, away from her, trying not to seethe. He wasn't succeeding in not pouting, though. Well, fine. He felt that he deserved a good pout. "Why do you have to shout every time we--?"

"It just happens! I can't help it!" She elbowed his shoulder angrily. "Like I haven't made you shout before."

"Yes, but I don't shout other people's names." He was pouting good and hard now, legs curling up to his stomach. "Only you and Patti. Only you two."

"Oh, geez. You don't think I was… er, fantasizing about someone else, just now… Is that it?"

He rolled over again, and glared at her. "I know you were," he said. That was why he was pouting.

"No way, baby." She draped one arm around him, pulling him close. "Trust me. When I'm with you, I'm with you." She touched his cheek. "We have good resonance. When you make me shout like that, why not take it as a compliment?"

He refused to let himself be melted by her words or her touch. "Because you never shout my name."

She sighed through her nose, pulled back her arm, and then it was her turn to roll away from him. "Oh, get over it," she said. "If this is some stupid manly ego thing, then that's your problem, not mine."

Kid stared at her back, and stewed silently. Eventually he fell asleep.

But the issue didn't resolve itself.

"So who's Brad?!" he snapped at her, the next night that they were together. And then: "What kind of a name is Ewan?!" And some time later: "Tom again?! Oh, come on, Liz!"

She sighed, brushed a sweaty lock of hair off her forehead, and said, "I am far too tired to get into this with you right now."

"No. No, Liz, we need to 'get into this' right now or else I won't be able to sleep because it has been bothering me for far too long already!"

She stared at him. Something in her eyes seemed to soften. "You're really bothered by this?"

"Very."

"But it's sex. People make stupid noises during sex. They shout stupid things. It doesn't mean anything."

"No, I think it definitely does mean something," Kid said, unable to hide the hurt in his voice, "when I've heard you shout the names of just about every guy on the planet but mine." He sat on the edge of the bed, trying not to look pathetic in his nudity. "It's like you're always thinking of someone else. Not me."

She scooted over to sit beside him. "I've told you before, and you know that that's not true. I only think of you, baby."

"Then why…?"

She was silent for a moment. Then she said quietly, "You really want to know why?"

"Yes, I do."

"Okay. Think about this: Do you really want me to shout out 'Oh, Kid!' while we're banging each other?" She scratched her arm uncomfortably. "I… I just can't. It would make me feel like a giant pedophile. I mean, more of a pedophile than I already am."

Kid stared at her. "That's really it?"

"Yes. That's really it. I swear to God, Kid, I'm not fantasizing about other guys when I'm with you. I just… Your name is so unfortunate. So I have to say something else."

Kid tapped at his chin, thoughtfully. Then he nodded, slowly. "All right. I guess I can see where you're coming from, there."

She looked relieved. "Oh, good. I was afraid that you wouldn't… Oh, never mind. Thanks for understanding."

He reached for her hand. "So how about 'Death'?" he suggested, helpfully. "That's my real name anyway."

She looked aghast. "No! No, I can't shout that during… That would be horrible!"

Kid frowned, frustrated. " 'The'?"

"This is a stupid manly ego thing for you. I knew it!"

"It's not stupid. This is important."

Liz rolled her eyes. "Oh my freaking God---"

"Yes, that's IT!" He snapped his fingers three times, excitedly. "That works."

She looked thoroughly amused at the suggestion, although Kid didn't understand what was so funny. "I suppose it does work," she said. She wrapped her arms around him and whispered breathily into his ear, "Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god! Like that?"

"I'd like it better if you didn't sound like you were trying not to laugh."

"Baby, I'll try."

Kid was greatly relieved to have her cooperation in resolving the issue. Or at least, he thought he had her cooperation, until the end of their tumble in bed three days later.

" 'Charlene'?!" Kid echoed her, aghast. "Seriously, Liz?!"

Chapter Text

How the Pieces Fit Together

Six short stories written with tongue in cheek and mind in the gutter, for 42_souls.

Part Five: How the Pieces Fit Together

Prompt: Space

Kid had a perfectionist's approach to sex: It was a skill to be learned, a spacial puzzle to be solved, and a matter of control and timing. It was a problem of making the right pieces fit together, or rather investigating all of the ways that the right pieces could fit together, trying out different combinations one by one until he found something that they all enjoyed.

He let them decide the sleeping arrangements every night, however. That was the Rule, and the one and only aspect of his life in which he handed over complete control to someone else. He deferred to their desires. Some nights he slept in Patti's bed, some nights in Liz's, some nights with both of them in his own bed, some nights alone. He let them call the shots. They were sisters, and sometimes he sensed complicated (and often unspoken) negotiations going on between them. There were times when they wanted to be together, times when they needed space apart from each other, and times when they needed space away from him. He submitted to their demands at night because he felt it only fair. After all, he was always demanding so much from them during the day. They let him be a control freak because he needed to be a control freak, as long as at night he could give up some of that control, because that was the only way that he could truly be a gentleman about things, anyway. That was how they balanced. And he didn't mind the nights that he spent alone, because he knew that where it really counted he wasn't alone, not anymore. There was a reassuring inevitability about the way that they always eventually ended up falling back into each other's arms. Sometimes hungrily so.

He liked the way that Patti tasted. He liked the way that he could feel the rumbling vibrations in her stomach when she laughed. (Okay, he liked the way that her breasts bounced when she laughed, too.) He liked the dreamy, sated look in her eyes when she rested her head beside him afterwards, the way that she let out a long, slow sigh of pleasure as she settled her head into her pillow, the way that her smile left perfectly symmetrical dimples on her cheeks, and the way that those dimples would slowly melt away as her face relaxed and she drifted off to sleep.

He liked the way that Liz would lace her fingers with his, pressing against his hands, balancing herself as she rode him. He didn't like the way how, when she was beneath him, she would claw at his back with her long, sharp nails, leaving asymmetrical scratches all over his skin. Fortunately, that was largely a moot point anyway, as most of the time she preferred to have him on his back beneath her. That position worked out much better for both of them. A spatial puzzle solved. It was just the way that he and Liz fit together.

He absolutely refused to admit that he found it sexy when she fell asleep with her hair tangled up and lying asymmetrically all over her pillow.

He felt absolutely zero sense of embarrassment about the fact that he took studious notes while carefully researching, via reading nearly a dozen books about the subject, how to better perform at oral sex. Liz had laughed at him for that, but he didn't understand why. Of course he wanted to learn how to do it perfectly. He couldn't stand the thought of failure in any area of his life, including even the most intimate of tasks.

Perfection, of course, could only be achieved not just through study, but also through necessary experimentation. Both of them seemed to have enjoyed the latter, although Kid still had the sense that they found something amusing about it. Patti had kept laughing at him.

That was all right, though. He was more than used to Patti laughing at him, about pretty much everything that he did.

As long as the pieces fit together, as long as their spaces were balanced, he was content. That was why he could give up control of the sleeping arrangements to Liz and Patti. Even if he couldn't quite let go of his drive to make sure that, no matter what they decided to do on any given night, he would have to make sure that he performed his own role perfectly. That was his part of the puzzle, the way that he fit into their space.

And even if sometimes they laughed at him about it, he never once heard either of them complaining.

Chapter Text

How the Pieces Fit Together

Six short stories written with tongue in cheek and mind in the gutter, for 42_souls.

Part Six: The Coyote and the Roadrunners

Prompt: Freefall

Waffles were good, because Kid could use the waffle iron to make them, thus ensuring that each waffle would turn out perfectly symmetrical. His attempts at making pancakes or french toast, however, only ended in frustration and tears.

"I want nanners on my waffles!" Patti demanded. She sat at the kitchen table and watched him work, swinging her legs back and forth impatiently.

"Bananas, Patti. Say it properly."

Patti grinned at him. "Does nanners really sound more silly than bananas?" she asked him.

He paused in the midst of stirring a bowl of waffle batter. "Huh," he said. "I suppose you have a point."

It was Saturday morning, they had no school and no missions to worry about, and Patti was in a bouncy good mood. She was always in a good mood after she had Kid all to herself, all night long. Liz had left them early in the evening yesterday, because she'd had a French tutoring session over at Charlene's house. She had come back sometime around three or four in the morning, smelling of alcohol, with glitter from some inexplicable source left smeared around her eyes and tangled in her hair, laughter still on her lips, wearing one of Charlene's borrowed dresses. Her drunken stumbling had briefly woken up both Patti and Kid. Kid had asked where she'd been, and Liz had answered that she and Charlene (and the names of some other girls that Patti didn't even know) had been "tearing up the town." Kid had accepted this explanation and gone immediately back to bed. Patti had been jealous for a few minutes, as she always was whenever Liz did something fun that Patti and Kid couldn't do because they weren't old enough yet, but the moment had passed quickly. Now, Patti still felt warm and happy from her night with Kid, and as for Liz, well, she was currently upstairs in her bedroom, nursing a painful hangover.

Patti bounced up and down in her seat and watched Kid trimming the asymmetrical edge off one finished waffle. "Are they ready yet? Are they ready yet?"

"One is," Kid said. "And this one's for Liz. Invalids first."

Patti laughed as she watched Kid carefully position the waffle on the center of a plate. "Are you going to take that up to her?"

"In a moment." Kid pondered his creation thoughtfully. "What does she normally like on top of her waffles?"

"A smiley-face of chocolate syrup!"

"No, Patti, that's what you like."

"Do it anyway!" Patti said. "Liz is sad because her head hurts. It will make her feel better."

Kid shrugged. "A reasonable suggestion," he admitted. Then he set to work very, very carefully drawing a smiley-face on top of the waffle. Two drops of chocolate syrup in two perforations for the eyes, then a series of carefully-placed filled perforations forming the mouth. When he was done, he stood back and admired his own work. "Perfectly symmetrical," he said.

Patti was pretty sure that Liz wouldn't care about the symmetry of her waffle, but she applauded him anyway.

Kid arranged the rest of Liz's breakfast on a tray: waffle in the center, two forks and two knives on either side (for symmetry's sake), and two cups of coffee. "Perfect," he declared again. Then Patti followed him out of the kitchen, up the stairs, and into her sister's bedroom.

Liz lifted her head off her pillow and regarded them both blearily. "Aw, no," she groaned. "Don't look at me, Kid, I'm a mess."

"I've seen you look far worse," Kid said.

She sat up fully, and glared daggers at him. "Gee, thanks." Then she winced. "Ow. It hurts to move."

"And that is entirely the fault of your own irresponsibility and overindulgence," Kid pointed out, self-righteously. "But as Patti and I do indeed have sympathy for your predicament, here," he said, handing the tray to her, "we brought you breakfast."

"Pity-waffles. Great." Liz balanced the tray on her lap. Then her eyes widened when she saw what Kid had put on top of the waffle. "Kid, what…?"

"It was Patti's suggestion."

Patti sat down on the bed beside her sister. "It's a smiley-face to make Liz happy," she explained. Then she peered at Liz carefully. "Sooooo… Are you happy yet?"

Liz stared down at the waffle in her lap. She didn't look happy at all.

Then, suddenly, Liz burst into tears.

"What? What?!" Kid demanded, impatiently. "What now?"

"I don't deserve a smiley-face waffle!" Liz sobbed.

"Why not?" Patti asked.

"Because I slept with Charlene!"

Kid's jaw dropped.

Patti felt her mouth hanging open with shock, too. Suddenly, her mind was a numb blank. She wasn't even sure if what Liz had just said was supposed to be funny.

"When?!" Kid spluttered.

"Last night," Liz sniffled, miserably. "And six times previously."

Patti stared at her sister. And stared. And stared. Normally when Liz started crying, especially when she did the stupid-looking crying that left her cheeks bright red and made boogers drip from her nose, Patti thought that it was hilarious.

But this was something different.

This was something that Patti hadn't expected.

Which didn't make sense. It couldn't make sense. Patti knew Liz inside and out. They didn't keep secrets from each other. Even when Liz tried to keep a secret or lie to Patti, Patti could always see right through her. Nothing that Liz ever said or did could possibly surprise Patti. Nothing.

But—

But—

This!

And—

And Charlene was a girl!

A girl!!

"No way," Patti said, "No waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!"

"I did," Liz said, her voice still choked with tears. "I'm sorry, but I did." She raised her red eyes toward Kid. "And, for the record, I called it off last night. I mean, permanently. It's over."

Kid stared at her. Then he snapped, "Why did you not inform me of this earlier?"

She blinked at him. This was apparently not the reaction that she had been expecting. "Excuse me, what?"

"I feel it only fair that I be kept aware of your extracurricular sexual liaisons," Kid stated, calmly.

Not it was Liz's turn to have her jaw drop. And for some reason Patti still couldn't laugh at that, no matter how funny Liz's face looked. "Are you kidding me?!" Liz asked, aghast. "I-- I-- No, Kid! That's not…" She flailed her hands around, helplessly, as if she couldn't find the right words to explain things to him. "That's not how an affair works!" she finally said.

"That was an affair?" he asked.

"Yes, you idiot. I was cheating on you!"

He looked confused. "But… with a girl."

"Yes, Charlene is a girl."

"So…" Kid still seemed completely baffled, not so much by the situation at hand, but by Liz's sudden anger. "So that's not technically cheating," he said. "You with another girl. That doesn't count."

Patti clapped her hands over her mouth. What? What?! Now both Kid and Liz were doing and saying totally weird things that Patti would never, ever, ever have expected either of them to say. Patti began to seriously contemplate the possibility that her sister and her partner had been replaced by aliens.

Liz looked furious. "Oh. My. God. I can't believe that you just said that. That is the most horrifically stupid and – and – and offensive thing I've ever heard you say!"

"Offensive?" Kid still looked bewildered.

"Yes, offensive. I am offended over here! Seriously offended."

Patti realized that offended was one of those words that, if you said it over and over again, started to sound very, very silly. But for some reason she still wasn't laughing. She squinted at Liz, wondering what signs she should be looking for in case of an actual alien replacement. Maybe a zipper down the back of her sister's neck?

"I don't understand," Kid said.

"You just told me that me sleeping with Charlene doesn't count as real sex, or whatever, and do I really have to explain why that is a horribly, horribly offensive thing to say?" Liz still looked completely horrified. And completely furious.

"I said specifically that it does not count as cheating," Kid clarified. "Please stop trying to read additional layers of meaning behind my words, Liz. I mean what I say and nothing more. Also, I am quite correct about this matter."

"Oh, Lord." Liz groaned and clutched at the sides of her head. "I am far too hungover to deal with Kid-logic right now. But okay, fine, I'll ask anyway. What the hell are you talking about?!"

"I think the logic should be quite obvious, actually," Kid said. "When the three of us are together, and you and Patti touch each other, you certainly wouldn't count that as cheating on me, would you?"

Liz stared at him, still horrified. "Good. God."

"Would you please stop taking Father's name in vain?" Kid requested, a bit snappishly.

"I just… Wow. Wow. Okay, um. Let me spell this out for you," Liz said, slowly. "I did things with Charlene last night. I did things with Charlene that I would never do with my own sister. Got it?"

Patti nearly fell off the bed. She wanted to fall off the bed, just fling her arms out and crash to the floor. At least that would have been funny. This? This should have been funny, Patti felt. Maybe it was supposed to be funny. But she still couldn't laugh, for some reason.

Kid's brow wrinkled with confusion. "Things… like what?"

Okay, Patti thought, that was definitely funny. But she still wasn't laughing.

"Like the things that you and I do together," Liz said.

"But that's impossible. Charlene is a woman. I'm not." Then he threw up his hands in frustration. "You know what? Never mind. I don't have time for this. I need to start checking the picture frames downstairs. And your waffle is getting cold."

"Never mind?!" Liz spluttered. "Never mind?!"

"Oh, wait. I did that wrong." Kid squared his shoulders and then declared, "I forgive you."

Liz looked taken aback. "No you don't."

"Yes I do."

"No, you don't. You don't forgive me because you don't actually care. I cheated on you, seven times actually, and with another woman. And you… don't… care."

"I do care," Kid insisted. "I'm quite upset about this. As I've already indicated. Liz, I'm very upset about the fact that you did not inform me of your relationship with Charlene earlier."

"Arrrrrrgh!" Liz tore at her hair melodramatically. "No, no, no, no, no! You're supposed to be upset about the fact that I cheated on you in the first place, not upset about the fact that I just didn't tell you about it!"

"But you should have told me," Kid insisted, stubbornly. "You completely concealed this affair from me. So of course I couldn't have known about it, unless you had had the consideration to tell me about it. You did a quite excellent job of hiding it, by the way."

"No, I didn't!" Liz wailed.

And as soon as her sister spoke those words, Patti understood. Patti understood that those three words were quite possibly the funniest things that her sister could possibly have said in that moment. Because Patti understood what those three words meant, even though Kid (judging by the shocked look on his face) clearly didn't.

Boy, but this was getting funny.

And yet Patti still wasn't laughing.

Patti remembered, then. She remembered all the times that Liz's "tutoring sessions" at Charlene's house had extended long into the night. She remembered the boxes of French chocolates and gaufrette cookies that Liz had shared with Patti, boxes that she'd said were all gifts from Charlene. At the time, Patti had thought that Charlene kept giving them yummies because she'd simply liked Patti and her sister. Patti hadn't made the connection, not at the time, that chocolates and cookies were the types of things that you gave a person when you like-liked them. And there had been other things, too: all of the times that Liz had come home wearing Charlene's clothing; the times that Liz had up and disappeared in the middle of a school day, only to reappear sometime later claiming that she had been in the library and smelling of Charlene's perfume; and the week that Liz had taken to wearing a silk scarf around her neck, to cover up the hickey on her throat, and at the time Patti had just assumed that Kid had been responsible for that. But looking back, Patti now realized that that was impossible. Liz had only had one mark on one side of her neck to cover up, and when Kid left a mark, he made sure to leave one on both sides.

Looking back, Patti suddenly felt incredibly, incredibly stupid.

Patti thought of cartoons. She liked to watch the cartoons where the poor hungry coyote would try to drop anvils on the speedy little roadrunner. And the roadrunner managed to dodge the anvils every single time, not because the roadrunner was particularly wily or clever, but because the roadrunner was somehow saved by the grace of its own stupidity. Every. Single. Time.

Patti thought those cartoons were hilarious.

It was less funny in real life, however. Patti realized now that her sister had been dropping those anvils for weeks, and somehow Kid had been dodging them and dodging them, over and over again. No, wait. Maybe that was the wrong way to think about it. The anvils had been hitting Kid in the head, over and over again, but the thickness of his skull had saved him every time. The sheer power of his stupidity had protected him to the point where he hadn't even felt the anvils striking him. And the way that he always kept his eyes focused straight ahead, his stunning inability to see past his own nose, meant that he hadn't even seen the anvils as they were falling through the air all around him.

Then Patti realized that her brain was going to a stupid place. An embarrassing place. Because if Kid was the silly roadrunner, then that made Patti the silly roadrunner too, because they had both managed to completely miss the anvils, hadn't they?

Patti bit back a groan. She should be laughing, she supposed. The thought of both her and Kid running around cluelessly like that funny cartoon bird should have been funny. Really funny. But instead, that thought just kind of hurt.

Patti didn't like feeling stupid. She never felt stupid. She knew that other people thought that she was stupid, and that was fine by her, she didn't care. But she wasn't supposed to actually be stupid. Not like Kid.

Being as stupid as Kid. That was a new low.

Patti finally giggled. Not much, but a little bit. Now there was a funny thought.

Kid was glaring at Liz, now. "What do you mean, you didn't?" he demanded.

"I just… I just…" Liz momentarily flushed with shame and embarrassment. Then she found her anger again. "I cannot freakin' believe you, Kid! You seriously didn't notice? You didn't notice anything?!"

He still glowered at her. "What was I supposed to have noticed?"

"How about the way that Charlene flirted with me at Gustav's party? She was throwing herself all over me."

"Gustav's party? Are you kidding?" He stared at her, aghast. "Of course I didn't notice. I was distracted when Black Star got drunk and then got his dick stuck in the margarita mixer. Everybody was distracted by that. Nobody was paying attention to you and Charlene!"

"Okay. How about when Charlene and I came down with mono at the same time?"

"Why would I even know about Charlene getting mono? She's not even in our class!"

"Oh, for the love of--!" Liz threw her hands up in the air. "You're a complete idiot. A complete idiot! I don't even know why I bother."

His eyes narrowed. "You're the one who claims to have cheated on me. So why are you getting angry at me now?"

"Because you're being a complete douchebag about this!" She returned his glower. "Don't you even care enough to ask why I did it?"

"Oh," Kid said. Clearly he hadn't at all pondered the question of why Liz would have cheated on him, at least not until the moment that Liz herself had brought up the issue. But suddenly, immediately, he seemed to be instantly consumed by the question. "Tell me," he said. No, practically ordered. "Please explain to me as clearly as possible why exactly you initiated this affair." Then his mind apparently leapt to the obvious conclusion. "Is it because of me?" he asked. "Is it something that I did? Have I not been satisfying you sexually? Is it because I can't make symmetrical pancakes? It's because I can't make symmetrical pancakes, isn't it. It's because you'd rather have pancakes than waffles, isn't it. Can Charlene make symmetrical pancakes?!"

"This has nothing to do with breakfast foods," Liz snapped.

"Then why?!"

"It's very complicated, actually," Liz said, in a suddenly much quieter voice. Then she added, somewhat more loudly, "For the record, though, Charlene made all the first moves. She seduced me."

"How? How did she seduce you?!"

"What, you wanna hear explicit details? That's-- Oh, great. Kid, now what are you doing?"

Kid reached over, carefully picked up Liz's breakfast tray, and handed it over to Patti. Patti took the tray, momentarily confused. Then Kid crawled onto the bed, solemnly and business-like, and positioned himself on top of Liz, legs straddling her lap and hands placed on her shoulders. "How did Charlene do it?" Kid demanded to know, again. "Did she kiss you like this?" He leaned forward and kissed a very, very startled Liz right in the center of her lips. Then he drew back and asked again, still deadly serious, "Or did she do it like this?" He pushed Liz's shoulders down and leaned in for a much, much longer kiss.

Patti, still holding the breakfast tray, took that as her cue to get off the bed.

Liz reached up and pushed at the center of Kid's chest, pushing him right off her. "Charlene doesn't kiss the way that you kiss," Liz explained. "That was kind of the point. One of many points."

"Then show me how she kissed you!" Kid demanded.

"Wow, this is getting weird," Liz said.

Patti laughed.

Kid glared down at Liz, his hands still on her shoulders. "I only desire to please you," he said, somehow – incredibly – managing to actually sound haughty about it. "Liz, if you find that my performance is unsatisfactory in any way, the please inform me directly. Likewise, if you ever, under any circumstances, experience something with someone else that you find pleasurable, then--"

"Stop it, Kid. I don't want you to kiss me the exact same way that Charlene kissed me."

"Then tell me how you want to be kissed."

She smiled up at him, apparently amused by his brusque request. "Fair enough," she said. She reached up, encircled his shoulders with her long arms, and pulled him down into another long, slow kiss.

Patti stared at them both.

Finally, Liz broke the kiss long enough to mutter, "Patti, go away."

"But your waffle--"

"It's your waffle now."

"…Okay."

Patti left the two of them alone, being sure to close the bedroom door behind her.

Back downstairs in the kitchen, Patti decided that she didn't want to eat the waffle anymore, because it was cold, and that made it icky. So she made herself another waffle. She considered making two more waffles, one for her sister and one for Kid. Then she decided not to, because she didn't know how long it would be before she saw either of them again, and Patti didn't want their waffles to get cold, either.

Patti cut up a banana to put on top of her waffle. Nanner. Banana. Whatever. She sat at the kitchen table and at her waffle alone, listening to the sound of furniture breaking upstairs.

Patti finished half of her waffle. Then she thought, Charlene?! And then she nearly faceplanted in the middle of her breakfast.

Charlene.

Charlene!!

And Liz had been dropping the anvils and Kid had been dodging the anvils (or rather letting them bounce right off his head) and Patti hadn't even noticed that the anvils were falling, and they all would have gone on like that forever if Liz hadn't finally managed to hit Kid directly, not so much over the head with an anvil, but more like in the center of his face with a balled-up fist.

Patti, for her part, felt as though she'd been punched in the stomach.

This was all so complicated. And stupid! Stupid and complicated. Patti's sister had been playing stupid headgames with Kid, and doing stupid sexy things with some other girl, and Patti hadn't even had the first clue that any of this was massively stupid stupidity had even been going on in the first place.

Punched in the gut, indeed.

Kid was supposed to be the blind one. Not Patti.

It was much later in the morning by the time that Patti heard Kid's frantic footsteps pounding back down the stairs. "Patti, did I forget to turn off the waffle iron?!" he asked, panicked. His hair was a mess and his shirt was still unbuttoned. So was his fly.

"Yep. But Patti did that."

"Oh… All right. Excellent." Kid ran his fingers through his hair, frowned, then declared, "I have to straighten the picture frames now. Somehow I completely forgot about that."

"You did."

Patti left Kid to his urgent task, then went upstairs to find her sister.

Liz was in her room. She was sitting in front of a mirror, and brushing the tangles out of her hair, when Patti barged in. "Hey," Patti said.

Liz put down her hairbrush. "Hey Patti."

Patti didn't say anything for a long moment. She just scowled at her sister, sticking out her lower lip in a truly spectacular pout, and watched Liz squirm.

Finally Liz looked away from Patti and said, "I know, I know. I'm a whore."

"No," Patti said. "You're a bitch."

Liz stared up at Patti, shocked.

"Don't get mad at Patti," Patti said. "But. Um. Ummmm. Kid was kinda-sorta right. Patti is sad that you kept a big secret from your sister, too." Patti teared up. "It's okay if you like Charlene! It's okay if you really really really like Charlene! But you're not supposed to keep secrets from your sister," Patti sniffled. "Don't you trust Patti?"

"I do, Patti. I really do. I just… Aw, come on now. Please don't cry." Liz stood up, and wrapped Patti in her arms, pulling her into a tight embrace. "I trust you to keep secrets, Patti. I was just too cowardly to tell you about this one."

"Because you knew you were doing something icky?" Patti asked. "But… But… But you wanted Kid to find out…" Patti corrected herself. "You wanted him to notice."

"I did and I didn't."

"Do you really really like Charlene?"

"I really really do. Did. No, do."

"But you dumped her."

"I did."

"So Charlene isn't going to give us any more cookies?"

Liz laughed. "You're awful, Patti."

"What? What?" Patti blinked up at her sister, confused. Then she scowled. "Grown-ups are complicated," she huffed.

"You're a grown-up, too, Patti," Liz said, pointedly.

Patti stuck her tongue out at her sister. "Never." Then she paused, reconsidered her words, and finally amended her statement: "Not like you, anyway."

Patti pulled away from her sister's embrace, and went back downstairs. She cleaned up the kitchen, because apparently she was the only one left in the house who was grownup enough to remember to do so.