Chapter Text
“You guys,” Joel proclaims loudly, sitting himself down in the last seat of their booth, “are never going to believe what happened to me this morning.”
“You got a girlfriend?” Grian asks without looking up from his laptop. Jimmy laughs from next to him.
Joel blushes. “Shut up, you—“ He reaches over the table to smack Grian on the head. Grian yelps.
“If it’s something gross, I don’t wanna hear it,” Jimmy says. He wags a finger at Joel. “I want to enjoy my pasta, thank you very much!”
“You’re getting pasta? Loser,” Joel teases. Jimmy rolls his eyes with a smile.
fWhip clicks his tongue. “You gonna tell us, or?” He asks. He’s drumming his fingers against the table, looking at him with a half-smirk.
Joel waves his hand vaguely in fWhip’s direction. “Yeah, yeah, I will,” he says. “Have you guys ordered yet?”
“Nah,” Jimmy shakes his head. “We’ve only been ‘ere a few minutes.”
Joel nods.
“So, you guys—“ he starts his story, but cuts himself off. “Wait, fWhip. You were there.”
The man in question raises an eyebrow from next to him. “I was?”
“Yeah. Well, I mean—“ Joel sighs. “Last night. D’you remember Scott’s house?”
fWhip laughs, leans back in his seat. His glasses fall somewhat down his nose. “Yeah, I do. I’m kind of surprised that you do, buddy.”
“Shut up,” Joel says, very nonchalantly. “Anyway. We went there yesterday, and there were, like. These weird books. Y’know, the weird stuff that Scott likes.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy nods thoughtfully. “Scott’s always been into weird stuff.”
Grian snorts from beside him. “You’d know, Timmy, wouldn’t you?”
Jimmy blushes. “Oh, stop it, you!” he laughs, hitting Grian on the arm. fWhip snickers at him.
“Anyway,” Joel continues, ignoring them. “Yeah, weird stuff. They were in that bookshelf next to his TV—you know the bookshelf, the brown one—and they were all about, like. Gods, and goddesses, and stuff like that.”
“Oo,” Jimmy coos, while fWhip nods.
“Yeah. Well, we were makin’ fun of him for it all night. What a nerd, right?” says Joel. He fiddles with his sweatshirt cuff. “And, well. We started screwing around. Right, fWhip?”
fWhip nods, laughs. “Yeah, sure. Good way to put it.”
Joel nods too. “Yeah. Or, I mean, I assume we did. I don’t... remember much?”
Grian furrows his eyebrows for a moment before his eyes widen suddenly. “You were drinking?” he asks, and when Joel nods, he sighs and closes his laptop. “Oh, great. Because your drinking stories always ends well.”
Joel’s face heats up. “Will you stop making fun of me for one second and just let me finish my bloody story?” he sputters, voice squeaky. Everyone laughs, besides him.
“Anyway,” he says loudly, for what he thinks must be the millionth time already, “we started screwing around. There were some real wacky names in the book, so we picked one, and, well—“
“Joel, shut up, the waiter’s here to get us drinks,” Jimmy says, watching someone approach their table. Joel groans.
-
“So,” Grian says, rubbing his face. Jimmy is trying and failing to stifle a laugh, and fWhip is looking at Joel with wide eyes. “You—an ocean goddess. The ocean goddess.”
Joel nods solemnly. “Yes.”
Grian sighs. Jimmy laughs even harder.
“And—and you told her, what? ‘No, sorry, that was a mistake’?” fWhip asks. He seems like he can’t decide between laughing and grimacing. “‘Wrong number’? ‘Sorry, I was drunk’?”
Joel shrugs, taking a sip of his Coke. “Yeah, basically.”
fWhip’s eyes go impossibly wider. Grian groans.
“Oh my—jeez, Joel!” fWhip murmurs with a laugh. “I mean, I thought I had an idea of what you were gonna tell us! I didn’t predict a goddess!”
“If I’m being honest, I expected worse,” Grian sighs. “This is a tame story.”
fWhip raises an eyebrow. “This is a tame story?”
Grian shrugs, although his face looks defeated. He takes a sip of his sprite. “No one died. I expected death.”
“Fair enough,” fWhip nods. “Death is characteristic for a Joel story.”
“You—oh, my god,” Jimmy says, in the way that he always says it, and laughs even harder. Joel glares at him. “You know, I don’t even—I don’t even doubt it!”
“You shouldn’t doubt it! It was one-hundred percent real,” Joel says, even though he’s only 80% certain that he didn’t dream it. Grian begins to rub his temples.
“Wait,” fWhip says, a smile in his voice. “Is—is that where the seashell crown is from?”
Joel stops. His face flushes.
“What?” he says. He touches his own head, and—oh my god, the shells are still there. How are they still there?
That’s when fWhip explodes into laughter.
“I—I didn’t want to say anything, but—“ he stutters between giggles. Jimmy and Grian both start laughing too, and, okay, Joel thinks that this is really uncalled for.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Joel mutters, face red. He pulls up his hoodie in an attempt to hide it. “Can—can we order our food now? I’m kind of hungry—guys, stop laughing! It’s not that funny!”
-
When Joel gets home that afternoon, there are puddles on his floor that smell of sea salt and sand, and the blanket on his futon has been neatly folded. He has a feeling that he won’t be seeing the last of Lizzie any time soon.
(Later that night, a goddess will tell her favorite cyan-haired mortal about her strange encounter, and he will promptly freak out.
“I liked him, though,” she’ll say, as the other puts his head in his hands. She’ll turn to him with a smile. “He was funny. Strange, short man—just this tall, he was—but he was funny. I liked him.”
And the mortal will just shake his head and laugh.)