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Kid and the Thompsons are spending the afternoon at a skatepark. Liz took Kid and Patty there after Kid got too focused on work and Patty got overly rambunctious. Liz brought her roller skates, and Patty brought a Razor scooter. Kid, of course, brought his skateboard. After a very short while of being there, Kid stands still in the bowl, letting his foot rest on top of his board to keep it still.
“Alright, Liz, Patty, let’s head home.”
Patty tilts her head to the side. “Huh? We’ve been here for ten minutes.”
“Yes, and I have a lot of paperwork to do.”
“Don’t you have secretaries?” Liz asks.
“I like checking everything over.”
“Come on, Kid, we just got here, and you should relax.”
“I can’t relax just by being told to.”
“Then skate! You like that, and exercise is good for you. It gets the blood flowing.”
“I’m immortal, I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, immortally a pain in the ass!” Patty drops into the bowl on her scooter and circles around Kid.
Kid lets out a hum of distress, though Patty’s comment isn’t what bothers him (that’s normal for how they speak to each other). What upsets him is the image of the stack of paperwork he needs to double check burned into the forefront of his mind. He scratches his head. His hands are starting to feel weird.
“You good?” Liz rolls up next to Kid. She can tell he’s getting nervous.
“You’re right that I should take a bit of a break, but ah...” He rubs his hands on the sides of his pants. That doesn’t help. He flexes his fingers. That just feels worse. He can’t stop the viscerally wrong sensation of unevenness. “Give me a moment, please.”
He wants to move to the center of the bowl. He knows he needs to stop giving into compulsions in order to help them improve. Kid decides to climb out of the bowl instead, but it’s a few seconds before he can force his legs to move in the opposite direction of the center of the bowl, so strong is the urge to fulfill the compulsion. Once he’s sitting at the edge of the bowl, he places his hands on either side of his head and squeezes lightly. Out of the corner of his eyes he sees Liz and Patty sit on either side of him.
“You left your board down there, dummy!” Patty sets Kid’s board, which she’s carried up with her, down with a clatter.
“Oops.” Kid is not paying almost any attention to the board. He’s thinking about how one shoe is tied tighter than the other, and how he might have left the two paper stacks on his desk at different heights, and how his bangs need to be trimmed since one side is starting to get a tad too long, and how--
Liz leans over so that she’s in his direct line of sight. “Earth to Kid? Get out of that noggin of yours.” She’s using one of the grounding strategies they worked on. Sometimes Kid likes having someone to help pull him out of his thoughts. One of the early methods of doing so was having Liz or Patty tap him on the shoulder, but that usually made his spiral worse because of the lack of symmetry. Touching in general he doesn’t care for when he’s like this, anyways, so double taps weren’t enjoyable either. They decided to try other methods of making Kid more aware of the Thompsons’ presence. This was normally achieved by being somewhere Kid could see them, or by talking to him firmly but clearly if his eyes were closed.
"Mmmm, I feel like I want to tear my skin off." Kid presses his hands harder against his head. That feels bad, too. The right is pressing a little harder than the left, but when he presses more with the left then the right isn't pressing hard enough. He feels like he’s going to start crying.
"Aw hey now," Patty says, also leaning into Kid’s field of vision. "Didn't your brother say that's a super awful feeling?"
This actually earns a huff of a laugh from Kid. He’s so caught off-guard by the comment that in a few more moments he’s full-on giggling. "I--yeah, I guess he did! I shouldn't laugh, that isn't funny--" He covers his mouth with his hand to try to hide the laughter, but intentionally or not Patty’s distraction is helping him a lot. It was very effective in grounding him.
"Oh my god, Patty!" Liz yelps. "You can't joke about that stuff!" She's also trying not to laugh, just as surprised as Kid is.
"BAHAHAHAHA, you're laughing though, aren't you? Hey, Kid's technically our god, should we say 'oh, Kid!' instead?"
"Wh--no, don't do that--" Kid waves his hands in front of him, looking embarrassed. He barely even notices that they aren’t equidistant from the center of his body while he shakes them.
Liz chuckles and decides to give into the line of questioning and tease Kid a bit. "Would Kid have to say 'oh, me' or 'oh, Dad'?"
Kid buries his face in his hands. This time it's out of joking distress rather than genuine discomfort. "About that..."
"Wait did you actually say that???"
"Well, my father and I were sort of arguing about something trivial. I think I did poorly on a school assignment or something. Anyways, in response to what he said, I said 'oh my god' and he retorted with 'Don't you mean oh Dad?'"
"HOLY SHIT, SHINIGAMI-SAMA HAD THE SAME SENSE OF HUMOR AS ME?" yells Patty.
"SNRK--yes, apparently, though it's not a particularly good sense of humor." He actually finds it funny as hell, he just wants to jokingly tease Patty.
"That means my humor is...god-tier! BAHAHAHAHA!!" She rolls onto her back as she laughs, but tips sideways too much and ends up rolling down into the bowl. "Shit!"
Liz calls down "You good?"
"Yeah, I didn't bump anything! Just rollin'!" She takes a running start and scampers back up the bowl, sitting down again next to Kid. "You're so lucky that you have such a comedic genius in your life, Kidney."
"Kidney????" Kid tilts his head to the side, confused.
"Long form of your name." Liz contributes.
"My name is Death the Kid?"
Patty nudges his arm lightly. "Well, that didn't have quite the right ring to it, and Shinigami-sama was too formal, sooo Kidney it is! Y'know how Syd can be short for Sydney? It's like that."
Kid looks over at Liz, baffled. She just nods, like this is a wholly logical train of thought. "You're both insane," says Kid, deadpan.
“So are you!” Patty shoves him into the bowl. He’ll be fine, he’s a god.
“Patty! Screw you!!” Kid yells from the bottom of the bowl. He’s smiling though as he says it. He loves these stupid siblings like they’re his sisters, too. “Send my board down here, please.”
Patty pushes the board into the bowl. She grins at Liz before rolling down herself. Liz follows suit. They’re relieved to see Kid smiling again.