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"Would you still love me if I were ugly?"
"…What?"
"You heard me."
"You are ugly."
"Be serious! I want a serious answer!"
He sighs, "Of course I would."
"Really?"
"I don't love you for your face, poof."
"Oh that's nice!"
"I mean not only for your face, stupid."
Mike came home looking particularly dejected. He sighed heavily as he came in through the entryway, and sighed again as he entered the kitchen.
"Hi Mike," Neil said, "How was it?"
Mike sighed again, "Significantly worse than anticipated. Have I still got spaghetti in my hair?"
Neil inspected him, "Not that I can tell. Oh, hang on," he pulled a noodle off Mike's shoulder, "That should do it. What happened?"
"She stormed out."
"I sort-of gathered that. I was wondering why."
"Well, I don't know that it could have been helped," he sat down at the table, "I suppose it was inevitable."
"Don't be discouraged, Mike. It seemed to be going pretty well there for a while. Did you stop following Candi's advice?"
"Nah, I was a perfect gentleman. Not one word about her tits OR her arse, not a single suggestion to skip dinner in favor of my lap, nothing."
"What then?"
Mike removed his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes, "She found out about Candi."
"…Oh," Neil nodded understandingly, "Another victim of the outdated concept of monogamy. That's really too bad, Mike, I'm sorry to hear it."
"Ah, that's all right Neil, we had a good run," Mike took a cigar out of his pocket and lit it, looking wistfully out the front window, "It was probably one of the better weeks of my life."
"Would you still love me if…I were a hundred years old?"
"Am I also a hundred years old?"
"Sure!"
"Then yes."
"Wait, then you're not. You're the age you are now and you wake up one morning and I'm a hundred years old."
"I'd make a potion to make you go back to your real age."
"But it is my real age! I've been through a time vortex and aged all the way to a hundred and come back home."
"…Do you still love me?"
"Of course I do!"
"But you're a hundred years old! You've lived your own age nearly five times over! You're wise and learned and mature-"
"And in my wisdom and learned maturity I've discovered the universal truth that I still love you."
"Fine! Then yes, but I’m not sleeping with you, you'd be all saggy and wrinkly."
Mike and Vyvyan paced in opposite directions in the waiting room. Rick sat comfortably, watching and judging them from the little row of chairs.
"Ugh, the two of you are so incredibly sexist, it's disgusting! Let me guess, the moment Neil comes out here with the news, you're going to pass cigars 'round? Well I'll remind you that there's a 'No Smoking' sign right over there, and I'll thank you to be respectful of others!"
"Says the guy who still reeks of the smoke he just sneaked in the stairwell," Mike said. Rick rolled his eyes and waved him off.
"I don't see anything sexist about it anyway," Vyvyan said, fidgeting.
"It shows a complete lack of trust in the competence of the modern, feminist woman, Vyvyan! It's a perfectly normal, natural facet of life, there's nothing to be nervous about! It's not as if it ever killed anyone, is it?"
Vyvyan shot him a disapproving, irritated look, and had just opened his mouth to answer when Neil burst through the door.
"She's here!" he said, excitedly, "And she's beautiful! Come and see!"
They all followed him dutifully to the viewing window looking out on the nursery. They huddled together and peered through the window, Neil beaming proudly.
"Which one is it?" Rick said, "They all look the same!"
"Second on the left, the first row along - you can see her name tag. Hello Winnie!" Neil waved into the window, "It's your daddy! We just met a few minutes ago!"
"Éowyn Galadriel Wheedon Watkins Pye Alexander Moore," Vyvyan said, reading the tag (which was really more of a placard), "That's a mouthful, isn't it?"
"Yeah, well we all agreed on her first and middle names, but we didn't want any of her parents' surnames left out, so we drew lots and ended up with mine and then Meadowlark's and then Summer's."
Vyvyan nodded, "Huh. How's Summer?"
"Oh, she's fine! She's just really tired, you know, natural childbirth and all. Meadowlark's a wonderful midwife, though, it was a pleasure to watch her work! They're both going to be such great mums!"
"So, are you going to make an honest woman out of her, Neil?" Rick said.
"No, we don't believe in traditional, Judeo-Christian bonding rituals."
"Oh. I don't either, I was only asking."
"Besides, the three of us have been handfasted for over a year now, that's good enough for us. I'm surprised you haven't noticed. Don't you remember when I was gone for a week over the summer?"
"Wasn't that the week the kitchen sink held that uprising and tried to take over the sitting room?" Vyvyan said.
Rick nodded in vague remembrance, "Oh yes…you had to admire their pluck. Pity about the fire hoses…I wish we hadn't had to buy all new crockery."
"Well, it couldn't be helped, Rick," Mike said, "It was that or leave the entirety of the first floor to the salad bowls and hole up in our bedrooms."
"I suppose you're right. Huh. Handfasting, interesting," he shot several sidelong glances at Vyvyan, "What does that entail, exactly?"
Vyvyan glared at him, "Don't even think about it."
"Well," Mike said, "I guess we'll have to childproof the house…"
"Don't bother," Meadowlark said, joining them and putting an arm around Neil's waist, "Neil's welcome to visit as often and long as he'd like, but Winnie's staying with her mother and I. No offense, but our baby's not going anywhere near that house. It's disgusting." She smiled sweetly as she said this, and Neil smiled back.
"None taken, I wouldn't want her there anyway. Vyv's always about five minutes away from blowing something up, and I'm pretty sure there was some sort of child-stealing gnome or something in the bathroom last week. He kept pestering me about spinning things into gold and asking pointed questions about my firstborn."
"I take umbrage to that first part," Vyvyan said, in the midst of lighting a firecracker behind Rick's back.
"Well, you're not even going to move out or anything?" Rick asked, then jumped and gave a little shriek as the firecracker went off. They all made somewhat disconcerted faces at the window as every single baby in the nursery began crying at once.
"Why would I do that?" Neil yelled over the din, "I couldn't leave you lot to your own devices! Somebody's got to do the washing up, haven't they?"
"Would you still love me if I were horribly disfigured?"
"Isn't that the same as ugly?"
"No, no it's completely different. Ugly's just ugly, I mean if tomorrow I'm in some sort of horrible accident and I live, but I'm hopelessly disfigured for life."
He pauses an uncomfortably long time before answering.
"…Depends."
"DEPENDS? That's awfully shallow of you, isn't it Vyvyan?"
"Well, would your equipment still work?"
Another uncomfortably long pause, "…Yes, I suppose."
"Fine, then sure. Why not?"
"It wouldn't then! That was the part that was mangled beyond all recognition!"
"Well, love wouldn't be my main concern at that point, would it?"
"How's that?"
"You'd kill yourself."
The spotlight lit on the little makeshift stage in the corner of the cafe, and Rick stepped into it, attempting to look important and poetic, but really just looking a bit maniacal. He stepped up to the microphone and blew into it. The feedback made everyone in the cafe cringe.
"Oh, sorry," he said, then composed himself and pulled the slip of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it and held it in front of him, squinted at it, pulled it closer to his face, pulled it away again, then crumpled it up and put it back in his pocket. He leaned into the mic.
"Ahem. This one is entitled, 'A Meeting of the Minds'. It's rather more traditional in metre than my standard work, but I thought it best an an introductory piece. Ahem."
"I see you're just as smart as me,"
Said Oscar Wilde to Morrissey.
"But there's someone who's clev'rer still,
His name is Rick, he's simply brill.
He knows all sorts of clever rhymes,
You know, he's ahead of the times,
Let's go and meet him and you'll know it,
That bloke called Rick, The People's Poet."
And so the two went off to see
The People's Poet, namely, me.
They knocked and knocked, they had no key,
Not Oscar Wilde, nor Morrissey.
And pretty soon I answered, for
I've always answered my own door.
And so I had them in for tea,
Two lumps for Wilde, one Morrissey.
"Come Rick," the singer said 'fore long,
"You simply must write us a song!"
I wrote it quick, and never wrong,
(My gift for verse is rather strong.)
And through Morrissey's dulcet cries,
He sang the song in moans and sighs,
And tears of joy dropped from our eyes,
Into our meatless, mincemeat pies.
"'Twas lovely," said Wilde, "Simply grand,
This has gone better than I'd planned."
We left the kitchen hand in hand
And liberated all the land.
And so this meeting of the minds,
Created more enlightened times.
This blessed union of we three,
Of Wilde, and Morrissey and me.
When he finished, there was dead silence for about ten seconds, then a smattering of polite applause. Rick smiled, and gave a little bow, and skipped off the stage. He sat down next to Vyvyan, who was sitting with his feet up on one of the little tables.
"Did you hear?" Rick said excitedly, "They applauded! They actually applauded me!"
"Humph," Vyvyan crossed his arms, "There's no accounting for taste."
"Would you still love me if I were a girl?"
"You are definitely a girl. Case in point, this entire conversation."
"Come on, Vyvyan I'm not really a girl."
"…"
"So would you?"
"…I don't know."
"YOU DON'T KNOW!?!"
"I don't know! If you were a girl you'd be a completely different person! You'd have had entirely different life experiences, and your mind would work differently, and you'd be shaped differently and you wouldn't even look like you! You're basically asking me if I'd still love you if you were somebody else entirely! How am I supposed to know that?"
"…So you're saying…"
"I'm saying you can't take away all the reasons I love you and then ask me if I still love you, it's pointless. If you were somebody else, you wouldn't be you, and you're the one I love, so no! Probably not!"
Rick seems perfectly satisfied with that answer.
Vyvyan sat at the back corner table in Murphey's Pub, scanning the room. There was no sign of him yet, and he was getting impatient. He sat back in the booth and watched the crowd. Nothing to see, really. Finally he saw him come through the door - at least, he thought it was him, Balowski's family all seemed to look the bloody same sometimes.
"Alright Vyv," Jerry Balowski said, and sat at the table. Vyvyan leaned in.
"Have you got it?"
Jerry nodded, "Aye, but it wasn't easy."
"I know, that's why you're getting three bloody grand for it. How'd it come out?"
"You'll find it'll hold up in any court. They won't be able to touch you with this baby," he patted the manila folder he'd placed on the table in front of him.
Vyvyan reached for it and Jerry pulled it back, "Ah ah, Vyv, come now, you know better than that."
Vyvyan rolled his eyes and pulled the envelope from his back pocket. He tossed it at Jerry, who opened it and counted every single bill.
"Don't trust me, Jer?" Vyvyan said, amused. Jerry looked at him out of the corner of his eye, still counting.
"You trust my brother, Vyv? Like, really trust him?"
Vyvyan didn't dare answer a question like that - but he got his point. Jerry seemed satisfied, put the envelope in his jacket pocket and slid the folder across the table. Vyvyan opened it and inspected the contents.
The first thing in the folder was relevant paperwork - he'd have Mike put it in the safe when he got home. He was more interested in what was behind it. He picked up the slip of paper and inspected it in the light. Well, it certainly looked official enough. A real medical license (well, nearly real in any case) - obtained without having to graduate or go through residency at all.
"What d'ya think?" Jerry said. Vyvyan shrugged.
"It'll do."
He put it back into the envelope and headed out the door, nodding a goodbye to Jerry as he went. He wanted to get it framed and displayed in the lab as soon as possible. He'd feel much more official with it hanging there.
"Would you still love me if-"
Rick's question is cut off quite abruptly by a chair breaking over his head. He glares at Vyvyan, picks up his biro from the table, and lunges at Vyvyan's eye. Vyvyan dodges and tackles Rick to the ground by the waist. Rick struggles free and manages to stand, skirting away and kicking at Vyvyan's grasping hands. Vyvyan crawls after him, and Rick begins grabbing things from the curio cabinet and throwing them at him.
Vyvyan gets to his feet and tries to overturn the curio cabinet onto Rick. He escapes, but falls backwards over the sofa and crashes into the coffee table. Vyvyan leaps atop him and starts pummeling. Rick knees him in the groin. Vyvyan rolls over in pain, and Rick starts to get up. Vyvyan catches him by the ankles and manages to pull Rick's trousers down. Rick falls forward over his own trousers and Vyvyan gets up again, laughing and running up the stairs. Rick glares after him.
"VYVYAN!" he yells, trying to stand up and fumble with his trousers at the same time, "VYVYAN YOU GET BACK HERE! WHEN I'M THROUGH WITH YOU, YOUR HEAD'LL BE SPINNING SO FAST YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO REMEMBER WHETHER YOU LOVE ME OR NOT!"