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You had a good day today.
You hung out with Pit, mostly. He was showing you a bunch of Vine compilations, as fourteen year olds often do, and they were honestly pretty funny. Sure, you weren't in hysterics like the angel was, but you got a couple giggles out of it. You’d lost track of time from all the half-hour long compilations, and the next time you’d treated the window to a glance the sun was setting.
So now you're heading back to your room in the Smash Mansion. You never really believed in the Smash Mansion trope, but boy, is it convenient for situations like this.
And by “situations like this,'' I mean that while you're walking through the hall with your eyes glued to your phone, you walk straight into a certain blue penguin.
“Oh crap, sorry -- Dedede?” You pocket your phone and look up at him. “Where’ve you been all day?” you ask. You haven't seen him today, which is really unusual; most days, he's always hanging out in your general vicinity.
“Oh, nothin’,” he says. His hands are clasped in front of him, and you're pretty sure he's holding something. “What about you?”
“I was marathoning YouTube videos with Pit,” you reply with a shrug.
Dedede laughs. “You really like watchin’ stuff with people for hours on end, huh?”
You grin. “You're never gonna let me live down the time we stayed up all night watching SpongeBob, are you.”
“Course not! That was quite a day. Educational. I had no idea you were that passionate ‘bout Squidward.” He looks at you with the cheekiest grin and you feel a couple butterflies doing their thing in your tummy.
“He’s a good character,” you deflect with a giggle.
“Ya know, I still need to see the movie. We should watch it sometime.” Now his smile is a little less teasy and a little more genuine.
“You haven't seen the SpongeBob movie? Oh my god.” You laugh a bit to communicate you're jesting (surely), and he laughs too. He squeezes his hands together a bit tighter and you realize you haven't seen them separate since you bumped into him.
“Whatcha got there?” you ask.
“Oh -- um -- well…” Suddenly, Dedede is very embarrassed, which you don’t see often. “It’s nothin’, really.”
“Can I see?” you ask, batting your eyelashes.
Okay, you win. Batted eyelashes always win; they're either too cute or too funny to say no to.
He tentatively opens his hands and holds out a… pebble. It’s a small, round, speckled pebble. “I was lookin’ for somethin’ I could give you, y’know, and, uh, this just seemed right.”
You accept the rock into your hands and study it, a smile spreading on your face. It’s smooth under your fingers. “Is this where you were all day?”
“Yep,” he replies with a wheezy chuckle. “Scoured every beach within a fifty mile radius.”
“Damn.” You pause and return your eyes to him. “...why?”
The sheepish grin on his face is legitimately kind of adorable. “It’s just a gift, I guess. Penguin tradition.”
Gears start turning in your head, pulling up all the information you know about penguins (why do you have so much knowledge about penguins? seriously, i dont know. who burdened me with this knowledge) and suddenly it clicks. “...don't penguins give pebbles to their mates?”
You don't know how Dedede is blushing through a face full of feathers, but it's an adorable sight. “...maybe they do, maybe they don't, it ain't your business.”
The smile budding on your lips erupts into a huge grin. “Are you, like, asking me out?”
“Uh… well, I was gonna say somethin’ stupid just now, but that rarely goes well for me. So I’ll just tell ya, yeah. I am. That’s what I’m doin’. ...are you gonna answer me or are you just gonna stand there? Starin’s rude, you kn-”
“I’ve had a crush on you for the longest time, goofball!” you manage to exclaim through a fit of excited giggles. It took a second to really process that your crush has asked you out, but now that it's sunken in you're thrilled.
Without thinking, you throw your arms around him in a hug. You've hugged him before, platonically, but with this new context you don't feel weird admiring how he's so round and soft like a pillow or a giant teddy bear. He laughs -- he's probably ecstatic too, you realize, much to your own delight -- and you can feel it rumbling in his chest, and wraps his wings around you to return the hug.
When he lets you go, you see he's… a flustered wreck. Again, not your usual Dedede. But it's cute as heck.
“...now what happens?” he asks. “I’ve, uh, never done this before.”
You get an idea. “This, probably,” you say before getting up on your tiptoes to plant a kiss on his cheek.
He brings one gloved hand to his cheek, eyes wide with amazement. He lets out a nervous, happy laugh and oh my god you're definitely in love with him.
“I really need to go to bed,” you suddenly realize. “...I’ll see you tomorrow, right? You're not gonna spend another day looking for rocks?”
He smiles. “Course not. Already gave the prettiest pebble out there to the prettiest person out there, didn't I?”
There's a sly grin on his face. You're blushing and he's clearly very amused by it.
You give the pebble in your hand another look. “Any preference on what I do with this? I was planning on just setting it on my nightstand, but I dunno.”
“That’s perfect.” There’s a slight pause in his voice, like he's debating whether or not to say this next part: “You're perfect.”
“You're a dork,” you laugh. You're only laughing because otherwise you'd be making weird flustered noises.
There’s a moment where neither of you say anything, both basking in the schoolgirl-level euphoria of falling in love.
“Well, sleep tight, babe!” Dedede says. He looks very, very proud of himself for using this nickname, and you can't blame him because it makes your heart skip a beat. “See ya in the mornin’.”
“Goodnight, ‘Dee,” you breathe.
You turn around and walk off, and you just can't wipe the smile off your face. Excitedly screaming into your pillow is probably in order once you get to your room.