Perdita (A Peter Pan OUAT Fanfic)

CHAPTER TWELVE: Date Night

The day drifted by uneventfully, though when it ended I was glad.

Fruit picking was usually one of my favourite jobs; it required very little physical exertion and was quite soothing on the mind.  But the headache I developed throughout the day, coupled with both mine and Felix's painstakingly obvious attempts to avoid the so called elephant in the room and my ugly-looking still-puffy eyes put a damper on my mood.  I was sorely looking forward to collapsing back into bed.  So that meant when Felix asked me to accompany him for a walk on the beach after we'd delivered the buckets of berries to the kitchen boys, it took a lot of effort not to pull a sour face at him. 

We walked down through the forest to the sand side by side, talking of nothing but light-hearted superficial nonsense that both of us could have done without. 

By the time we were approaching the border where the greenery met the beach, the idle chatter had slowed, along with the speed of our footsteps.  The closer we got, the more strenuous it seemed to be for Felix to continue walking and I, not wanting to cause a scene about it, moderated my pace to match.  The moment his toes touched the sand, however, he sped up with sudden tenacity and rounded on me, so that we were now stood face to face, staring at each other.  I was reproachful.

"What's up, Felix?"

"I- uhh..." The confidence from moments before immediately receded as he stumbled and stuttered.

"C'mon, spit it out," I snickered.  "Whatever it is I don't mind, you know."  Though that wasn't true in the slightest, it seemed the most appropriate response.

"I just- uhhh... So, umm, how do you feel about having that date tonight?"

All traces of humour vanished from my face.

It was just like last night over again.  Surely it wasn't fair that I have to go through this same embarrassment twice, that's just not how it's supposed to be.  When I'd agreed to the date, I'd never thought about the prospect of planning it and just how awkward that would be.  Well, I guess was invested now.

Repressing a sigh, I glanced down at the floor to avoid his gaze and nodded my head.  That seemed rude though, so I followed it up with a quick mumbled "sure, yeah, sounds good" to brighten it up.

"Meet here at sunset?"

"Sounds like a plan."

"Great."

After a multitude of intensely blundering moments of ogling had passed, I took the silence as an opportunity to extricate myself from the situation: "Well then, if we're gonna do this, I'm gonna go clean myself up first."  I added in a very pointed gesture to my sullied clothes for emphasis.  "Do you wanna come back up to the camp with me?"

He considered for moment.  "Naw, I'll stay down here for a bit I think. "

"You sure?"

He grinned.  "I came down here for a walk and that's what I'm going to get."

I rolled my eyes at him but smirked nevertheless before fleeing back into the trees without another word.

~~~

When upon returning to the camp, to my relief I didn't see any of the boys.  They all must have been still doing their jobs - Felix and I, having one of the easier tasks, had finished early.  Peter was also nowhere to be seen.  This allowed me to go about my business of bathing (really just dipping myself into the stream that ran beside the camp and scrubbing at my skin until the water stopped running brown) in peace.  I didn't do this nearly as much as I should have because I tried to avoid coming into contact with any of the Lost Ones with the exception of Felix as much as possible.  And as both the stream and the camp were usually teeming with them, between washing with them and just going smelly, the latter was usually the preferable option.