MHA #2 | Wednesday Evening

[knife_bender]

So the idea had been to go out to eat after spending time in a haunted corn maze (benefit of your anniversary being near Halloween), but by the time it was all over both Diego and Annie were too covered in dirt and straw to really be allowed into a place that wasn't Denny's.

Of course they could have had some self-restraint and not have gone so hard racing through the maze, but they wouldn't be Diego and Annie if they didn't.

That was fine. It had been a fun time, and pizza was always good. Especially when it was timed perfectly and dropped off at the apartment door just as they were getting back.

[For the person who's been his girlfriend for 365 days]

Comments

[defenderofdesmoines]

"At least he's not alone?" Annie offered. "Either of them. They're probably together now."

Not that it seemed like Klaus, like, listened to Ben-the-presumed-voice-of-reason all that often, but she did like the idea of a...buddy for Klaus, and a less-lonely afterlife for Ben.

"But yeah, Ben's probably seen some things." Annie winced exaggeratedly as she took a bite of pizza.

[knife_bender]

"Horrible, horrible things," Diego said with a fond smile. "It was pretty cool to see him. Just this blue ghostly Ben came out of Klaus' chest and then he brought out the tentacles and started kicking ass."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"That must have been so surreal," Annie said sincerely, still kind of in awe over the whole thing. "Did he, like...." She debated with herself how to phrase it, and landed on, "Is he like, your age? Or does he look like he did before?"

Did ghosts age? Was that even the right term?

[knife_bender]

"He did look older," Diego said, frowning like that just occurred to him. "That's so weird."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I don't know whether that's weirder than a teenage ghost who's been, like, mentally aging along with the rest of you," Annie mused, "but I've also gotten used to a pretty new scale of weirdness over the last year."

Like, honestly, given the Five thing that almost made more sense?

[knife_bender]

"I can't believe I haven't scared you off yet with this shit," he joked.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Please, it's a mutual scale of weirdness." Annie leveled a look over at him. "I have no business being scared off by ghost brothers when I'm bringing, like, prehensile super-dicks and exploding heads to the party."

[knife_bender]

"You know what? Fair," Diego said before finishing up his first slice of pizza. "Dick thing made for a great story, though. I could never repay you for that."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"It's one of the better stories we have," Annie agreed, and that in and of itself was a great hallmark of being a longterm couple -- Annie felt totally comfortable characterizing something that had happened to Diego (really, that had happened to MM in front of Diego) as a shared story. "Up there with the hand thing and the time you threw knives at me."

Really, the only unusual thing there was that there was still only the one time that that had happened. Annie credited her own total inability to be sneaky, more than anything.

[knife_bender]

"Man, imagine what kind of crazy shit we'll get to tell stories about in a decade." Would they really be able to beat the penis story though? Probably not.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Who knew what insanity awaited them in just the coming year? Time travel. Alternate universes. Maybe something called 'herogasm.'

"Maybe we'll get really lucky and, like, our first year will just be really front-loaded," Annie suggested, absolutely doubting that. "Things on my end are pretty calm," for now, "and once we find everyone, maybe things'll be settled down on your end, too, and we can go back to, like, fighting morons in Baltimore and maybe the occasional string of Christmas lights."

[knife_bender]

"That would be nice for a short period of time," Diego said. "But it'd be a shame to deny us that crazy shit completely. We're too good at handling it."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"We are good on our toes," Annie had to agree. "And, like, we're just going to get better at dealing with it all, too. Like, we now know how to handle a -- how to fight a super-dick."

Phrasing, Annie.

"And what to do if one of us falls into a hole for a week," she added, "and how to fight marzipan together...."

[knife_bender]

"What to do when your future in-law throws you through a wall?" Too soon?

[defenderofdesmoines]

That statement shouldn't have made Annie smile like that, but it did. (It wasn't the 'through a wall' part, of course.) "How to break your future mother-in-law out of jail and somehow make her love you in the process," she supplied, her smile turning a little shy.

It was still so new to talk about. She didn't want to somehow say the wrong thing and have him change his mind.

[knife_bender]

Judging from Diego's smile, he was more than okay with it. "That was totally my thinking at the time. I'm going to marry this woman, better make sure her mom likes me."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Wouldn't change anything if she didn't, for the record," Annie assured him, her smile widening. "But now she's, like, asking if I'm bringing 'that nice young man with the hand' home with me for Thanksgiving."

Which was a sort of roundabout way of getting it out there that he was totally invited home with her for the holidays this year, too.

[knife_bender]

"Didn't you almost go crazy when you went there for Thanksgiving last year?" he teased.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Well, a lot of that was that I had finally had sex with this really cute guy, like, right before I left," Annie pointed out, coloring a little in spite of having had sex with that very same really cute guy literally probably hundreds of times by now. "But I also won't have to work, and my aunts and cousins are coming so it might not actually suck?"

And also she could maybe have sex with that really cute guy in her childhood bedroom! Or maybe a very cold cornfield!

[knife_bender]

"That sounds a bit better." And he had put her through a lot with his family, so he definitely owed her here. "What are the chances your mom lets us sleep in the same room?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie considered that, finishing her pizza, and landed on, "Slim, even if I tell her I'm gonna marry you someday," and cue her just beaming all over again, "but I also bet we're both sneakier than she'd expect."

And honestly if Donna went prowling around to see if her almost-twenty-four year-old daughter's thirty year-old boyfriend had found his way to her bed, then she deserved whatever clutching of her pearls ended up occurring over such a thing.

[knife_bender]

"Oh for sure." Diego knew he was sneakier than most, anyway. "I'm sure we'd manage. We usually do."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I sleep away from you half the week, anyway," Annie said, moving over to loop an arm around him now that pizza was accomplished. "Unfair to demand I get worse sleep in my own house. And on a holiday."

[knife_bender]

"That would be a tragedy," he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. "Hold still, you've got more straw..."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Still?" This was what you got when you took corn mazes seriously, clearly, though Annie took the opportunity to not hold still, instead opting to tilt her head up to press a kiss against his jaw. "I guess taking some straw home with us is a better alternative to being brutally murdered with a chainsaw."