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“I can’t believe they’re doing this to me.” THUD!
“I know. Cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Don’t laugh at me, Jace.” THUD! “This is no laughing matter.” THUD!
“It’s not? Are you sure? Because you’re sounding a little ridiculous to me.”
THUD! “I can’t believe you’re making fun of me.” THUD! “What am I saying? Of course you’re making fun of me! That’s just like you.” THUD!
“Ouch! Goddammit, Alec! Stop kicking the bed, will you? It’s not its fault.”
“Well, you’re lying on it, aren’t you? Maybe it’s you I want to kick.”
“Why? You and I are on the same boat here.”
“Except you don’t care. You’re probably looking forward to this folly.”
“Maybe? Sorry if I don’t get the appeal of being a workaholic.”
“I am not…”
“Yes, you are. And come on, you’ve gotta admit it’s really bad if even Robert and Maryse can see that you’re running yourself into the ground.”
“I don’t need a vacation!”
“Well, tough. You don’t get a choice on the matter.”
“They can’t force me to rest!”
“Which is why they’re giving me time off, too. So I can strong-arm my stubborn parabatai into taking a fucking break. Should be fun.”
“What are you going to do? Pin me to the floor and keep me from moving for a week? Don’t think I won’t kick your ass.”
“I was thinking more in terms of tying you up to the bed…”
“Really, Jace? That’s your plan? Mollify me with promises of sex?”
“Is it working?”
“…no?”
“You don’t sound very sure. Come on, Alec, lie down with me. I’ll let you be the little spoon.”
“I don’t want to be…”
“Yes, you do. Come here.”
“…fine.”
“That’s more like it. Now could you please try to relax? Just a little? I feel like I’m cuddling a statue here.”
“This was a bad idea…”
“Ah, ah, ah! Lie down. You’re not going anywhere. You’re stuck in my arms, and I’m not letting you go.”
“…okay.”
“See? This is comfy.”
“Humph.”
“Now hand me my phone, will you?”
“Hmm?”
“Bedside table, right in front of you.”
“Oh. Here. Who are you calling?”
“No one. We need to do some research.”
“On what?”
“Spring break.”
“We’re not on…”
“We’re taking a break from work, and it’s spring. I say it qualifies.”
“God, you just want to go to a beach town and get stupid drunk, is that it? I am not going with you.”
“As much as I love the prospect of seeing you parade on the sand in nothing but tiny swim briefs, tipsy and clumsily flirty, I was tasked with helping you relax, and battling hangovers and obnoxious mundane college kids is not the key here.”
“What are you typing? ‘Spring break activities… for adults’? That sounds sleazy.”
“And you accuse me of being one-track-minded. Let’s see what we’ve got here. ‘30 Fun Spring Activities’.”
“A checklist? We’re supposed to do all of those?”
“These are suggestions, Alec, not a chores list. Get with the program.”
“What’s the first item?”
“‘Plant something green’. We could do that.”
“You mean a tree?”
“Or something small up in the greenhouse.”
“Hmm. I don’t know. The greenhouse is meant for medicinal plants and for native species from Idris. We can’t just decide to plant a fern up there without authorization. But if you want me to, I can draft the paperwork and…”
“Seriously, Alec?”
“Well, there’s a proper way to do things!”
“Exactly! And the proper way to vacation, for starters, is to forgo all mentions of paperwork.”
“I don’t know. Chances are we’d need a permit to plant a tree in this city anyway.”
“If we were mundanes. We can go to Central Park after hours and plant our own clandestine tree. What do you think?”
“The Seelies might not like it. We might have to negotiate an agreement with them.”
“Why would they not like it? Seelies love trees!”
“They might see it as us overstepping.”
“They don’t own the whole Park.”
“Still, it’s close enough to their borders that they might get suspicious.”
“Of us planting a tree sapling?”
“Yes.”
“Argh! Politics is too complicated. No wonder you need a vacation.”
“What’s the next item?”
“‘See the cherry blossoms’.”
“Done. Next?”
“Wait. What do you mean, done?”
“Three weeks ago, when we had to deal with those sprites attacking kids at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden? It was right in the middle of the Cherry Blossom Festival. Pink trees all around, which made it really hard to find the damn sprites.”
“Oh. Yeah, right. But we weren’t on vacation then.”
“Well, I’m not going back there now. We got them to leave the mundies alone, but I doubt they’ll roll out the welcome mat for us.”
“We could go someplace else. Those are not the only cherry trees in New York.”
“The blossoms don’t last that long, Jace. Forget it. Check that one as done and move down the list.”
“Okay… ‘Have a picnic at the park’.”
“Is that list actively trying to get us in trouble with the Seelies?”
“We could go to East River State Park. They don’t like it there. Too much concrete and not enough trees.”
“Hmm… We could pick our food up at Bagelsmith, and eat on one of the picnic tables. Or do you prefer the proverbial blanket on the lawn?”
“Any excuse to get you on the horizontal position, Alec.”
“Hah-hah. Next?”
“‘Find the first crocuses and snowdrops’. Hmm. Too late in the season for that.”
“How would that even work? The first in the city? The first in Manhattan? The first in the country? The first within a two-mile radius? How could we even be sure that they were really the first?”
“You truly take over-thinking to a whole new level, Alec.”
“Not my fault if your list doesn’t think things through. Next?”
“Uh… ‘Jog outside’.”
“You mean, training? Sure, why not?”
“No, that does not count as relaxing. ‘Take a hike’, though. That sounds more promising.”
“As in walking without anywhere to go and with no other purpose besides walking?”
“It does sound kinda awful, I agree. ‘Play softball’?”
“We don’t know the rules.”
“We could make them up.”
“I’m not falling for that one, Jace.”
“What?”
“I’m well acquainted with your habit of changing the rules mid-game to make sure you win.”
“You gotta admit it makes things much more interesting.”
“For you, you mean.”
“Fine, no mundie games. ‘Ride a bike’?”
“…no.”
“Why not?”
“Just no. Next?”
“What could you possibly have against riding a bike?”
“I’m just not interested. Next?”
“…oh my God.”
“Shut up.”
“You don’t know how to ride a bike?”
“Jace…”
“How could I not know that you can’t ride a bike?”
“Well, apparently I’ve managed to hold on to some mysteries in our relationship.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“No.”
“Come on…”
“Not gonna happen, Jace.”
“You’re not afraid of falling, are you? We could get you a pair of training wheels.”
“I’m not afraid of falling! I’m horrified at how ridiculous I’d look, and at how you’d laugh at me the whole time, and training wheels would certainly make it way worse, so no thanks.”
“What if I promise to laugh only with you?”
“Not a promise you can keep. What’s next?”
“Okay, I’ll drop it for now, but we’re not done with this subject. ‘Sit outside at a café’.”
“Like a stakeout?”
“Like sitting. And drinking coffee. And talking. While looking into each other’s eyes.”
“What if someone takes the opportunity to attack us?”
“We fight back. It’s what we do.”
“Hmm. I’m not sure.”
“We can’t stop having fun just because bad things might happen, Alec!”
“Fine, fine. Bryant Park Café?”
“Works for me. Now… Ooh, this is trickier. ‘Visit a farm to see the animals’.”
“A farm? Can’t it be a zoo?”
“I guess at a farm we could… touch the animals?”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“Okay, let’s put down zoo as a maybe. ‘Walk on a deserted beach’?”
“Deserted? This really doesn’t sound like a New Yorker-friendly list.”
“‘Fly a kite’?”
“Do you know how to, Jace?”
“No.”
“Then pass. Next?”
“‘Look for four-leaf clovers’.”
“We have them up in the greenhouse. Apparently they have medicinal value.”
“‘Jump in puddles’.”
“What? It does not say that!”
“Look.”
“…that’s stupid.”
“And the next item is ‘Get dirt under your fingernails’.”
“I can do that. Just let me go back to work.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening. How about… ‘Blow bubbles’?”
“…why?”
“…because?”
“That list has seriously taken a turn for the weird.”
“‘Climb a tree’.”
“By the Angel, enough with the fucking trees!”
“‘Find a playground and swing on the swings’. Uh, no way we’ll find a swing high enough to accommodate your lanky legs. ‘Wade in a creek’?”
“Ooohh, how about a nice swim in the East River?”
“Ew, nope. ‘Feed the ducks at a pond’? Nope, nope, nope. I’m not getting anywhere near any ducks.”
“Is that even allowed anyway? I thought there was an ordinance against it.”
“‘Skip stones across a pond’.”
“And scare off the poor ducks?”
“Ducks are evil. We can pick a pond without ducks. We could have our own stone-skipping competition.”
“Sure, arguing with you and throwing stones. Sounds totally relaxing to me.”
“Awesome. I’m checking it as a yes.”
“Was my sarcasm too subtle for you?”
“‘Listen to the rain’. Uh…”
“It’s not raining.”
“Right. ‘Watch bumblebees at work in a garden’.”
“You’re allergic to bees, Jace.”
“Just mildly so.”
“You can have a mildly bad reaction once and a severely bad reaction at a later date. I’m not risking it. Besides, do you really want to watch bees at work?”
“‘Listen to the birds singing’.”
“Done. Every single morning. Hard to sleep when they’re really going at it.”
“‘Spot a… rainbow’?”
“Again, not raining!”
“‘Notice the trees budding’.”
“Please kill me now…”
“‘Buy a fun umbrella’. Yes! Let’s do that!”
“What for? What is a fun umbrella?”
“An umbrella with bright colors or an unusual shape. I’ve seen so many in the city. Like the umbrella shaped like an octopus, or the umbrella with the print of a hand flipping the bird to the sky. Or like the one that has a water gun on the handle, which is loaded with the rain water that falls on the umbrella.”
“For someone who’s supposed to be my soulmate, you really don’t get me sometimes. Do you actually see me using any of those?”
“No. Which is exactly why we should do it. We’re taking a vacation, Alec. That means a break from things as you usually do them.”
“And you think water gun umbrellas are the solution?”
“Absolutely.”
“I think I’d rather learn to ride a bike.”
“Then we’ll do both.”
“Not what I meant, Jace!”
“Too late. Both items checked as yes. What’s next? Uh… Okay, not this.”
“What is it?”
“Never mind. It’s nonsense.”
“Let me see… ‘Wear open-toed shoes’?”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“Heh. Poor Jace. You really shouldn’t be ashamed of your crooked toes. They have so much personality.”
“Ahem. Moving on. ‘Go bare-legged’. Hmm, now that I like.”
“Oh, you’d like to see my bare, lanky legs now? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I do love your lanky legs, Alec... Love to see them, love to touch them, love to feel them around my waist…”
“…stop that…”
“Hmmm… I vote for making this item our priority and removing your pants right now.”
“Pretty sure the list means wearing shorts.”
“It doesn’t specify. I think we can interpret it in any way we like.”
“Oh, really?”
“And more to the point, the last item is ‘Get caught in a spring shower’.”
“Still not raining, Jace.”
“But it’s spring… so if we catch a shower now… technically…”
“…it’d be a spring shower?”
“Together. You, me, my crooked toes, and your lanky legs. What do you say?”
“…I guess I could get behind this spring break idea after all.”