Tobias Dean
Ben and I leave the office in a stream of irritated curses and Alice walks off laughing at us the entire way.
"Mom this is punishing me too," Ben whines.
"It should, I hope it teaches you to be more responsible," His mom nods, "You have today off while they re-make Toby's schedule,"
We shuffle forward with Ben's newly taped glasses on his face. I mean one of the arms is missing but they seem to do a good enough job.
We all get in the car and this time I remember to brace myself and tense my entire body so I don't fly through the windshield or something. This time the red lights are slightly less terrifying and more only mildly fear-filled, but nonetheless dangerous.
"I should be driving," Ben groans the whole way.
We pull into the driveway semi violently and Ben hurls himself out of the car kissing the ground dramatically.
"I'm not that bad," Mr. Richards jokes in exactly the way you would expect a dad to joke.
A fuck you is clear in Ben's eyes but instead, he just frowns brusquely before running up the stairs and collapsing on his bed.
I smile and follow him up barely resisting the redundant urge to sprint. When I get out there he's already pulled out his laptop and is clicking away at the keyboard on his bed.
"Whatcha doing?" I question sliding in next to him on his bed.
"Emailing our teachers," He deadpans.
I nod. I'm not a hundred percent sure what I'm supposed to do but I can't leave. Soon his phone starts ringing. He checks the caller ID before and frowns answering it.
"Aren't you supposed to be in class?" He questions the person on the other end of the phone. He doesn't say much apart from that the rest of the call other than some hums of acknowledgment and occasional mockery of the person on the other line to me.
By the time he's done he seems tired of talking to the poor person.
"I don't wanna deal with her anymore already," he half-jokes.
I roll my eyes at the lame attempt at humor and assume he's talking about his "girlfriend".
"Then break up with her," I suggest.
He just groans and changes the topic, "What do you wanna do we're free today."
I roll my eyes at the subject change and think about what we could do.
Speak of the Devil, "Boys, I have laser tag tickets if you want to go?"
"Thanks, mom." Ben calls back and then turns to me, "I'll be right back,"
He runs downstairs and I stretch across his bed, he's back up in the blink of an eye.
He clutches the tickets in his hands excitedly, "Can you drive?"
Once I nod he hurries downstairs excitedly. I run after him and he starts to trip but I don't let that happen. I catch him just before he gets too far away. His already damaged glasses slide off his nose and crash to the ground quietly.
"Careful princess," I warn still pressing him against me,
He blushes, embarrassed, before continuing to the car this time more slowly,
The skies are starting to look a little cloudy which is unfortunate but I guess laser tag is inside so it doesn't matter.
We plug the address into the car's built-in GPS and pull out of the driveway.
It doesn't take long to get to the laser tag place which also happened to be the mall (which we didn't realize until after we got here because we were using the address on the coupon). We walk in and are immediately given looks from the security guards I can't quite place but assume it's along the lines of 'What the fuck are these kids doing out of school at like 10 AM'.
"Which store is it in, Princess?
Ben frowns at the nickname, "The arcade obviously,"
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the security guard wrinkle his nose and make gagging motions to his coworkers. I decide to address it.
"What is your problem." I spin around to them.
He coughs a slur and his buddy laughs.
"What- We're not dating?" I say confused.
Ben barely lets me finish that thought, and glares at the security "But what if we were, what would you do,"
He grabs my hand and pulls me even closer to him; we were already close so now our sides are touching. I stare down in shock at him but he's staring straight ahead with a stubborn frown.
"You spent like an hour claiming you weren't gay," I point out quietly.
"Doesn't mean I shouldn't put a bunch of homophobes in their place," He finally looks up at me, "Which is hell might I add."
He drags me along with my hand in his towards the arcade near the front of the store. The mall security stare at us open-mouthed. I probably look similar to them in that manner.
We enter the arcade and he still doesn't let my hand go leaving me to overthink it.
We walk to the back of the arcade and a lady who looks like she hates life stands at a ticket booth. Ben hands it to her with his free hand. According to the coupon, it's buy one round get three free meaning we'll get to play two sets. He also hands her his card. She swipes it and waves us through.
The first round we play, we end up on the same team. Other than us our team has a girl whose about seven, whose mom just happens to be on the other team, a kid of around eight whose mom isn't even there, and then one kid around our age with poorly dyed green hair.
The green-haired kid looked like he'd rather be anywhere else and after watching him talk for a while it was apparent that the eight-year-old was his little brother. Even after trying to talk to him he just answered with monosyllables.
Eventually, we give up and the game starts. We consider trying to make a strategy but our team is full of children and instead decide to take the easy route.
No Plan.
The place is dark with occasional neon signs hinting to us which way is out and the weird den things they keep the player in once we exit our den thing the first thing I notice is the truck right next to the ramp. Which, in the dim light, I can't tell whether it's a gorgeous mock or the real thing.
We both run in the same direction and start to destroy the other team. Other than the mom which kept evading us and at least one other person that we hadn't seen. We're about halfway done with the mock battle and standing next to the truck when we see the girl on our team running down the ramp. She's grinning like a crazy person and sprinting-
But apparently, it's to her doom because she loses her footing and crashes headfirst into the truck, and starts wailing. The 8-year-old on our team takes the most initiative and runs up the ramp while we're left with a crying girl. She's clutching her head with one hand and wiping her tears with the other. We approach her and start to try to comfort her but I don't think it does much good.
It doesn't take long for the eight-year-old to speedwalk down the stairs with the mother.
"Oh, my poor baby." An employee walks out with an icepack and someone says time out over the speakers.
We're all ushered out of the arena.
On our way out we overhear the mom say to her child with a chuckle, "You are the one person I know who can get a concussion in non-contact laser tag,"
After the woman and her child leave we are immediately told we can start a new round. This time we had a new party with younger kids who didn't want to be split from their parents so Ben ended up on the other team.
"It's on Princess," I say in mock seriousness.
He laughs condescendingly.
This time I make a game plan with the kids on my team.
Benjamin Richards
I immediately attempt to organize my plan with my teammates.
"PLAN:
Start with the adults.
Then the kids you'll be evenly matched.
Leave the weird one to me."
I explained to the kids which one the weird one was by saying 'It's the tall one with the blue hair' and they saluted me before holding their guns very uniformly.
I help eliminate some of the parents but leave the kids to each other. After longer than I would have liked I find Tobias.
"Hey, Tobias." I say casually.
He snaps three times and I hear footsteps.
"You shoot we both die, Princess" Tobias circles me with another kid behind him ready to avenge his death.
I don't want to shoot a kid. I look at the scoreboard. There are fifteen minutes left and 2 adults on the other team are left. I ponder this and instead decide to play it risky.
I approach him and get uncomfortably close to him before backing up and pressing my gun into his chest.
He just kinda looks confused which is what I was hoping for.
"The sky is purple and made out of hedgehogs,"
He laughs and it surprises me when he states the full quote, "The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs."
Realizing their Que my teammates jump from behind me and shoot their back up out. I shoot Tobias and Tobias shoots me at ht same time, I barely have a moment to register im dead when I hear my username on the screen.
I collapse dramatically, "Avenge me, young warrior, I may have fallen but we mustn't fall together," The kid giggle and salutes me.
"I shall old master,"
"Hey, who are you calling old kid." I kid, the kid makes a mock salute towards me and I loll my head back and stick my tongue out ignoring Tobias who was just watching the whole thing
After the child leaves I sit back up and help the kid who got shot up, who was being a surprisingly good sport about this, and just laughing. Or that was what I thought until I realized Tobias was laughing too.
Tobias Dean
The final step in our plan of absolute superiority over the other team(Its a big word I had to teach them to say it but I think it just added to our superiority)-
Laugh, act like there's a trap waiting, and if they ask why, go completely blank. Fantastic payback for killing you.-
Ben looks at us suspiciously, "What are you two laughing at?"
I and my teammate go completely blank. The kid had a rather impressive poker face.
We wait for that game to finish and to Bens surprise, my team won.
"How f-" He breaks off rephrasing his sentence when he remembers there are kids around
"-lipping dare you," He exclaims after recovering from the filter he had to put over himself.
I wrap an arm around his shoulder and wink, "Dare me be a better laxer tag strategist?"
He tries to shake it off but he should know by now not to try to escape my arms. He hasn't succeeded once. In his struggle, his glasses start to fall off but I save the day and slide the poor thing back up his nose before deciding to piss him off.
I hoist him onto my back and he makes a startled noise and slams his fist into my upper back. But after a close call, he clings tightly to me.
After he gets over his frustrations he asks me a question.
"Do you want a pretzel," Ben continues before I can answer yes, "Too bad I wasn't asking I was telling you, we're getting pretzels."
A/N
The girl in the lazer tag who bonked her head into a truck, that was me... I was the one kid who could get a concussion in non-contact lazer tag I over exaggerated my reaction a little but other than that entirely true.
Thats all...
Byyyyyyyeeeeeee <3
Word count: 2027
Pages:6