Work Text:
the crunch of gravel startled fun ghoul out of his afternoon nap. he stumbled out of bed, his foot crunching into an old box of vietnamese takeout that he and party had… forgotten to finish. whoops.
he ran a hand through greasy black hair, tugging the stray strands back into his ponytail. he glanced over his shoulder at party, sprawled out in the bed, their hair violently red against the dull colors of the room. he debated whether to shake them awake, then decided not to.
ghoul would throw things at them instead! it was party’s favorite way to wake up. ghoul picked up a pair of wadded-up jeans and tossed them at party’s chest.
party poison groaned and rolled over, only to be pegged in the back of the head with a hairbrush.
“poison, wake up,” ghoul hissed.
“what’s happening?” party sat up, rubbing their eyes. “is it five already? did you order pizza?”
“no,” ghoul whispered, “someone’s here. i heard them in the driveway.”
party snorted. “‘s probably just the dogs, ghoul. you put them out, right?”
ghoul glanced over his shoulder. “i heard a car, party. d’you think it’s child services?”
“why’d they be here now? gracie isn’t with us, she’s with kobra an’ cherri.” party rolled over, burying their head in their pillow. “ghoul, it’s nothing. c’mere.” they rolled over a little bit, arms held out, waiting for ghoul to crawl up against them.
ghoul’s ears were prickling, but he let party wrap their arms around him anyway. “are you sure it’s nothing?”
“the dogs’ll take care of us if we wind up gettin’ robbed, ghoulie. and it might just be jet or kobra comin’ to visit again.”
“jet lives like, hours away,” ghoul muttered. “he’d do better to take the train. and why would kobra be here? he’s probably with gracie and cherri at rafferty’s or someplace.”
“you’re just frettin’ again,” party reassured him, running their hands through his hair (which was a dangerous endeavor, since ghoul hadn’t brushed his hair since their wedding last october). “it’s nothin’ to worry about. you were probably dreamin’.”
ghoul sighed, “you’re probably right. sorry.”
“don’t apologize, darlin’. and hey, if we do get murdered in this bed, you get to tell me ‘i told you so’.”
“damn right i will,” ghoul said, his voice low and steady. his pulse slowed, and a small smile crossed his lips. he was with party, and everything was okay.
“tell me a story,” party whispered, their voice slow and slurred with either sleepiness or another bottle of tequila, ghoul couldn’t tell which. “th’ one where we got honey, maybe?”
“you were there,” fun ghoul let out a sigh, but begins to tell the story anyway. “it was a quiet sunday afternoon.” ghoul said “sunday” like “sundy”, and party almost made fun of him, but closed their mouth. they wanted ghoul to keep talking, and ghoul wasn’t going to do any of that if party teased him. “jet an’ pony had just left, and they’d given us a fridge full of ‘healthy’ food and a bunch of pies. you were eating your way through a pumpkin pie, and i was pokin’ the salad trying to remember what pony had told me the ingredients were. gracie was in the living room watching the princess and the frog, and singin’ along to tiana and that alligator.” ghoul’s pulse slowed: he was good at storytelling, and party was listening intently, holding onto ghoul’s every word.
“and then what happened?”
“you boxed up the rest of the pie and put it on top of the fridge, then you went into the living room with gracie. she asked you if she could have a pet alligator, or maybe a little frog.” ghoul smiled, his eyes resting on the photo of gracie holding up a dog that was about her same size to the camera, a giant grin on her face. “you laughed and said no, cause alligators didn’t make very good pets, and you were sure that i would wind up cuttin’ that poor frog open to look at its insides. so she asked if we could get a dog, and i gasped and said hell yes we can get a dog, and what should we name it, and do you want to go the animal shelter now, and you were honestly pretty steamrolled by me an’ gracie’s excitement over getting a puppy.”
party poison’s eyes were drooping, but they raked a pale hand through their hair and propped themselves up on their pillow, determined not to fall asleep before ghoul finished his story. “i was,” they agreed, “an’ i had no chance to tell y’all what i thought.”
“we both knew what you thought, which is why we didn’t let you talk,” ghoul replied.
“we could hardly keep gracie from wanderin’ out the back door, ghoulie. that dog woulda got into so much trouble because we didn’t know what we were doing.”|
“we still don’t know what we’re doing.”
“yeah, hey, at least we got rings to show for it now.”
“and thousands of dollars’ worth of debt.”
party laughed, their eyes crinkling. ghoul loved party’s laugh like nothing else in the world. he would go out of his way to make party laugh, just so he could hear it. and sometimes it didn’t work and ghoul looked like a fool, but party was just as much a fool cause they’d married fun ghoul, for christ’s sake. fun ghoul, full of misguided anger and the urge to blow stuff up, with an aversion to taking showers and eating anything that wasn’t drowning in grease, and his weird love of cartoons and playing the guitar just a fraction too loud in their garage until party wandered out in their silk pajamas telling ghoul to shut up or they would make him shut up.
“you want me to keep going?” ghoul asked. “cause we’re not even to the good part yet.”
“no,” party grinned, “i’d much rather kiss you.”
“far be it from me to stop that from happening,” ghoul leaned in, afraid that party’s hands were gonna get tangled in his hair again (it happened way too many times for comfort, and would probably be prevented if ghoul just ran a comb through it occasionally).
party smiled again, and their lips met. it wasn’t the first time they started making out in the middle of ghoul telling a story, and it certainly would not be the last, as long as party kept requesting stories and ghoul kept on indulging them.