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Things on the Skullship were finally back to normal.
It had been four weeks since the defeat of Lord Dominator. Lord Hater, as undeterred as ever, had gone back to his eternal quest to defeat his supposed archenemy (who was equally undeterred in his quest to befriend him) - and his commander, who was both relieved and frankly exhausted by this, had gone back to managing the mess left in his wake.
Or at least, that’s what he should’ve been doing. Instead, Commander Peepers was quickly realizing that things were anything but back to normal.
Whether Hater wanted to acknowledge it or not - which, predictably, he didn’t - things had changed since they’d defeated Dominator. They’d saved the galaxy, and that came with both pros and cons alike; ones that Hater would need to take into account as they moved forward with their goal of galactic conquest. In any ordinary case, Peepers would need to mentally prepare himself for the ordeal that confronting Hater about this would inevitably cause.
But that was just the thing - he didn’t need to.
Hater was more than willing, albeit with the expected back and forth, to listen to what Peepers had to say on the matter, to take into account the pieces of the plans he’d so carefully devised. He asks Peepers for advice, a genuine sort of interest in his voice that causes Peepers to do a double-take the first time he hears it. He’s still the same old Lord Hater, with his shouting and immaturity and self-importance, but he’s also someone very much different from the Lord Hater he’d once grown familiar with.
Still, that part of the situation isn’t what tugs at Peepers’ subconscious, not really.
He’s never quite been able to pin down the exact nature of his and Hater’s relationship - though in the past, he’d been able to set that particular case aside. Conquering the galaxy, or more frequently, getting Hater to focus on said conquest, always took precedence over any kind of personal affair.
Now, though, the question carved its way into every crevice of his thoughts.
It was harder, now, to ignore the way that his heart raced when Hater grinned at him, when they fell into step with each other as they bantered between themselves, full of some sort of affection that Peepers couldn’t put a name to. It was harder to scoff and brush it off when he was abruptly reminded of Hater’s less endearing quirks (which, somehow, had twisted into being endearing despite themselves). It was harder to ignore the way Hater filled his thoughts, even when he was alone in the empty halls of the Skullship.
He’s still inclined, as he often is with these things, to push it back despite himself - to keep it hidden away in the periphery of his mind, where he’s kept every unspoken thought about Hater. It shouldn’t be difficult, he muses; after all, he’s done so for years.
But he’s changed, too. There’s been an impulsivity sparked in him; one that he can’t quite pinpoint the origin of. He’s grown bolder, more confident, more sure of himself in ways he could’ve only dreamed of back when he’d first taken up the mantle of Commander.
Perhaps that, too, is Hater’s influence.
“What are we?”
Lord Hater shifts in bed. “Huh?”
Peepers is tucked up against the skeleton’s chest, watching quietly as Hater blinks awake. It’s become a nightly routine; yet another unspoken change that had all-at-once been brought to the forefront of Peepers’ mind. Hater’s eyes glow green in the darkness as he blinks, Peepers having to shift a little himself to adjust to the light.
“I’m Lord Hater, duh, and you’re -” Hater grumbles a tired yawn, confusion in his voice. “- you’re Peepers.” However, it doesn’t take long for him to process his next thoughts, and he gasps, awake in an instant. “Did you get amnesia or something? How many fingers am I holding up?” He exclaims frantically, shoving a bony hand in Peepers’ face.
Peepers sighs, taking Hater’s hand in both of his. At least that aspect of Hater hadn't changed. “No, I didn’t mean it like - I don’t have amnesia.” He clarifies, still slightly drowsy with the residue of sleep. "I mean, us. Our relationship."
“Oh, yeah? What about it?” Hater asks, and Peepers winces internally at the genuine interest in his voice. It’s not since ceased to strike him as unfamiliar, a stark contrast to the usual scoffs of indifference or self-assured remarks that were once all too irritatingly common.
“It’s,” Peepers trails off, searching for the right words. He really should've planned for this, he thinks as he runs his fingers along Hater's knuckles, but it's too late to go back now. “I’m not sure what it is - and that’s why I - augh!” He groans in exhaustion, letting go of Hater’s hand to bury his face in his pillow. He doesn’t want to admit to asking Hater for the answer to something he doesn’t know, nor does he like the idea that he might not be sure of such a thing in the first place. “You know what I mean, don’t you, sir?”
“Uh,” Hater sits up in bed, wrapping his arms around his legs. “Well, yeah, of course!” The tone of his voice is familiar; overconfidence only slightly tinged with uncertainty. Something about that in itself is comforting - the thought that Hater, for all his bravado, is just as unsure as Peepers is.
There’s a silence, then, as Peepers waits for Hater to elaborate. When said silence hangs in the air, Peepers’ expectant gaze fixed with the skeleton’s, it quickly dawns on him that Hater’s not planning to.
“Well?”
“Well,” Hater echoes, rocking back and forth as he drags out the word. There’s a genuine pensiveness in his expression, and Peepers watches him, not entirely minding his stalling. “We’ve known each other for-ever,” he starts, “so that’s gotta be important, right?”
The questioning tone of Hater’s words throws Peepers for a moment, but he quickly gathers himself. “I’d say so, yes.”
“Well, duh, of course you would!” Hater smirks, as if this was some sort of victory, and Peepers rolls his eye with a small chuckle in turn. “But, uh,” he continues - back to the topic at hand, Peepers figures - “I guess, we’re like, friends? But not in a lame way, obviously,” he quickly amends, before Peepers can even register his own shock at how casually the word leaves Hater’s mouth. As if looking for affirmation, he turns towards Peepers, a brow quirked.
“Oh - uh,” Peepers flounders, cursing himself internally for his unpreparedness. He feels like he’s been thrown back to when he’d first met Hater, when he was young and wracked with anxieties; stammering, struggling to find words. “What do you mean by that, sir?” he asks.
“It’s like, uhh...” Hater thinks for a second. “It’s not gross and sappy and blegh like how Wander does it.” He sticks out his tongue, as if to punctuate his distaste. His sour expression doesn’t last, however, as he gestures back to Peepers. “You’re actually fun to hang out with!” He grins, confidence slowly but surely returning. “Like, remember that time I was all ‘ehhh’ and you took me to that planet full of losers to mess with ‘em?”
“Oh, do I ever,” Peepers nods, shuddering far less enthusiastically at the memory of having his brains zonked out by the seemingly defenseless aliens they’d terrorized that night. Still, the nostalgia isn’t lost on him, and the unnamed feeling he'd come to associate with his thoughts of Hater only strengthens in his chest at the reminder. “We used to do that kind of stuff all the time, so I figured it was worth a shot.” He laughs, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.
“See, that’s what makes you so much better!” In one sudden scoop, Peepers is eye-to-face with the skeleton, whose excitement seems to have only doubled. “Well, not as great as me, obviously,” Hater asides, suddenly smug. “You are still a nerd.”
Peepers crosses his arms with a huff. “And I’m still proud of that, thank you very much!”
“Anyways,” Hater interrupts to continue, and Peepers rolls his eye again at the skeleton’s expression. “You actually get what I’m all about, y’know?” There’s a pause, then, as Hater’s gaze slowly averts from Peepers’. “You’re actually, uh,” he lowers his voice, almost sheepishly so, “pretty cool when it comes to the whole super evil villain thing. Way cooler than Dominator, or Awesome, or any of those other guys.”
Peepers is about to puff out his chest, prideful and petty as he’s always been - it’s about time Hater wised up, after everything they’d dealt with. It was, after all, Peepers who had stuck by him all this time; who Hater had learned, time and time again, was there for him when the others weren’t.
But the admission, unpracticed as it is, is earnest - and Peepers, who was only slightly starting to forget what this conversation had stemmed from in the first place, can’t help but feel a familiar fluttering in his stomach. It’s an odd relief, he thinks, to hear Hater say aloud a part of what had been lingering in the unspoken strangeness between them.
Another silence fills the space that follows.
“So, uh,” Hater speaks up again, still tentative, “why’d you wanna know, anyways?”
Oh. Peepers feels the fluttering in his chest double in its intensity. He hadn’t thought to come up with an answer for that. “That,” he looks away, feeling sheepish, “is a very--”
“Oh, I get it.” A self-assured grin spreads across Hater’s face, and he reaches forward to pat Peepers on the back. “Don’t worry, if you had to deal with me having a thing for Dominator for a whole season of our lives, I can totally put up with whoever you--”
“What? No, sir, I don’t--”
Wait.
All at once, it all makes sense - too much sense. A fierce blush rises to Peepers’ face, both from the realization itself and from his embarrassment at not putting the pieces together sooner. The elevated heart rate, the inability to get Hater off of his mind, the fact that no matter how much he knew of Hater’s shortcomings, he couldn’t help but be starstruck by him - it all pointed to one conclusion, one that Peepers should’ve known was obvious from the very start.
“HA! I knew it!” Hater points to himself victoriously, before Peepers can get a word in to retract his earlier statement. “So who is it, huh? One of the Watchdogs? Emperor Awesome?” He frowns, then, pulling a face. “It’s not Wander, is it?”
“Of course it isn’t Wander!” Peepers exclaims, grabbing a pillow to once again bury his face in it as he lets out a long, labored sigh. “It’s,” he swallows, clutching the pillow closer to his chest and gathering his resolve. Might as well be frank. “It’s you.”
Hater blinks; once, then twice. The fluttering in Peepers’ stomach turns to an uncomfortable twisting, and he instantly wishes he could take back his words - the whole conversation, even.
"Well, uh," Hater hums, drumming his fingers against his knees as his eyes dart around, looking anywhere but at Peepers. "I mean," he clears his throat, attempting to regain his confidence, "of course it’s me - I am the Greatest in the Galaxy and everything." After a pause, he adds, “Duh.”
“You most certainly are!” Peepers replies with a nervous titter. Hoping to ease his nerves, he takes a deep breath. Then, matching Hater’s gaze as surely as he can, he gestures with a hand, offering for him to go on.
“So,” Hater begins, “That’s, like, a thing? You can do that?” As if for emphasis, he points to himself, then to Peepers, then to himself again. “I can do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
As if on a cue, electricity begins to spark around the skeleton, his expression instantly shifting to a familiar frustrated grimace. Peepers, who knows Hater well enough by now to know exactly what this entails, tucks the pillow closer to his chest once more and takes a deep breath in. Hater, for all he'd changed, still had a temper - and the glower the skeleton had fixed the other pillow with was not something to take lightly. With a sudden growl and a flash of bright green energy, Hater exclaims, “UGH, WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME THAT SOONER?”
The side effects of the blast send Peepers, pillow and all, flying off of the bed and onto the bedroom floor before he has a second’s time to react. With a small ‘squeak!’, Peepers lands atop the pillow, rubbing the top of his head as he tries to make sense of Hater’s response. “I- What?”
Hater throws his hands in the air with a dramatic groan, tossing his own charred pillow into the air. “I could’a figured out why I always feel all weird around you like, a whole week ago! C’mon, Peepers,” he crosses his arms again, looking down at Peepers from the bed, “aren’t you supposed to be the smart guy and everything?”
“Well- yes, I am, thank you- but,” Peepers huffs, pulling himself back onto the bed to fix Hater with a stern glare of his own, “you’re telling me I could’ve avoided four weeks’ worth of worrying about exactly what was up with you - with us- if I’d had just asked sooner?”
“Uh, yeah,” Hater scoffs, “that’s what I just said.”
For a moment, the pair stare each other down with frustrated scowls, the green glow of Hater’s eyes reflecting in Peepers’ own. Then, the realization of what should have become obvious not minutes before hits with all the subtlety of a particularly hard punch to the gut.
The aforementioned crush was undeniably mutual.
Hater is the first to react (though Peepers quickly follows suit); each scrambling to the side of the bed opposite the other and exchanging quick glances. Peepers opts to cover his face, having only been able to stave off his blush for just long enough to carry their petty argument. Hater, on the other hand, has curled himself up into a ball, and seems intent to stay that way.
Silence, for what feels like the millionth time that night. A strange sense of unfamiliarity takes up the space in the air between them, hanging heavy like a force of added gravity.
Again, Peepers takes a deep breath - in, then out - before he slowly turns back towards Hater. Sitting down and crossing his legs, the Watchdog pats the space on the bed in front of him, offering Hater an understanding glance. The pounding in his chest echoes through the whole of him, and Peepers can feel the skeleton’s gaze fix instantly on him as Hater turns over his shoulder to look back at him, wide-eyed.
Scooting forwards on the bed to take the place across from Peepers, Hater wraps his arms around his legs once more and rocks back and forth with a sort of anxious uncertainty. “So, Peepers,” he starts, and only then does the watchdog notice the blush that had risen to Hater’s cheeks. The skeleton takes a second to clear his throat, adjusting his posture, before he continues. “Do I have to, like, do a musical number or something? ‘Cuz I can definitely do a musical number if you--”
“What?” Peepers can’t help a laugh, and if he had the ability to, he knows he’d be grinning like an idiot. It feels, for the first time that night, like the weight of the situation has been lifted off his chest, dissipating at the comfort of finally having a clear answer to his worries. “Sir, that’s… oddly sweet of you to offer, but you really don’t need to do anything that extreme.” Reaching forward to give Hater's leg a reassuring pat, he adds, "at least, not this soon. What do you say we take things slow, at least for tonight?"
"Slow--” Hater stammers out, reminding Peepers of his ineptitude in anything romantic with all the subtlety of a slap in the face. Still, it’s nothing if not part of his charm, and a warmth rises to Peepers’ cheeks at Hater’s awkward reaction. “--yeah, I can do that. I can totally do slow." He nods, trying to play it cool to very little avail. After a pause, however, his gaze turns quizzical. “Uh, what does ‘slow’ mean here, exactly?” he asks, head cocked to one side.
“Well,” It’s Peepers’ turn to adjust his posture, standing up on the bed to be as eye-to-eye with Hater as he can get. There’s a renewed sense of confidence in him now, and his heart flutters once more at - well, all of it, really. “It could refer to a number of things, but in this case, I was thinking you could introduce me to that movie you’d--”
“Grocery Slaughter: Clean Up On Aisle Vengeance!” Hater instantly jolts upright with excitement, the force of his exclamation alone nearly sending Peepers flying off of the bed for a second time that night. “That’s only the greatest horror movie ever! Man, you’re gonna love it, Peepers--” The skeleton cuts himself off, a lightbulb going off in his head as he smirks, egotistical and obnoxiously flirtatious. “-- I mean, babe.”
Peepers feels himself go bright red. There goes that short-lived bout of confidence. “I-It’s a date, then?” He manages.
“Well, duh.” Hater remarks, scooping Peepers up with an arm and throwing him a wink. “Just one more question--” he asks, pointing back and forth between himself and Peepers, “how exactly are we gonna, like, smooch and stuff?”
Peepers laughs, reaching up to take Hater’s free hand in his own. “We’ll figure it out.”