Work Text:
“Ha-ha! Yes! The Mmmm-ollie lives!”
“I love a happy ending!”
It may not have been the "grand gesture" Libby Stein-Torres and Scratch had hoped for, but they were now overflowing with joy knowing that their mutual best friend Molly McGee had finally expressed her feelings to Ollie Chen.
The catalyst for the confession came courtesy of the couple’s younger siblings, Darryl McGee and June Chen, who had recently been added to the Ghost Friends after the latter learned that ghosts weren’t the enemy. Their only plans for the day were experimenting on Scratch’s ectoplasm and seeing where that took them.
They certainly weren’t expecting to create a giant electricity-sucking monster in the process, but when the two forces of chaos hung out, it wasn’t like things would stay normal for long. It worked out in the end anyway, since when Junior calmed down he convinced Molly to make her move.
They were happy for their older siblings, but at that moment June was a little more interested in the immediate aftermath of her and Darryl’s creation ascending to higher celestial planes.
“Wait, how did you two holding hands restore all the electricity?” June asked, bewildered.
“Good question,” Molly and Ollie said, simultaneously. They had a habit of speaking in unison whenever they both got excited.
June wasn’t able to ponder about the restoration of Brighton's electricity for long, as Scratch and Libby seemingly appeared out of thin air to congratulate Molly and Ollie.
“Molly! Ollie! Congratulations!” Libby said to her best friend and her now-boyfriend.
“I didn’t think you could pull it off on your own, but I’m proud of you Moll,” Scratch said as tears of joy began to well up in his eyes. “You and Swoopy Hair make a good couple.”
“Scratch and Libby!” Molly exclaimed as she went in for one of her famous hugs, to which both parties gladly reciprocated. “Thank you both for helping- wait, were you guys watching us this whole time?” Molly questioned.
Libby and Scratch froze with fear. They were about to speak up and offer some kind of bogus explanation as to how they knew Molly had confessed, but then Molly spoke again.
“That’s so thoughtful of you guys! I’m glad I have friends like you making sure I don’t make a complete fool of myself,” Molly said, without an ounce of negativity or sarcasm in her voice.
Libby sighed, grateful that Molly was so understanding. Scratch felt the same, but he wasn’t about to admit it, so he decided to make one of his usual snarky remarks.
“Yeah, *sniff* you do that sometimes,” Scratch said, to which Darryl snickered and June smiled.
Admittedly, June wasn’t as invested in this discussion as the others, but she was attentive enough to notice that her older brother wasn’t getting as much attention. She decided to walk over to Ollie to right this wrong.
“Hey, Ollie?” June said to her brother, hoping to get his attention.
“Hey June, what’s up-” Ollie attempted to reply before being cut off by a hug from his little sister.
“I’m proud of you Ollie. I think you and Molly are a good fit for each other,” June said as her arms squeezed tightly around his waist.
Ollie was slightly caught off guard by June’s sudden embrace, but he quickly returned the hug and decided to put an unbridled truth of his own into the world.
“Thanks June. You’re the best sister I could ever have,” Ollie replied.
Realizing she had been at this whole romance scheme all day, Libby pulled out her phone to check the time. It was 7:30 PM.
“Oh shoot, look at the time! I think we should all start heading home,” Libby said as she showed her phone to the rest of the group.
“True that. Let’s get moving,” Darryl replied.
“Hey Molly, now that we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, would it be okay if I walked you home?” Ollie asked as he extended his arm out to her.
“Ollie you goofball, you live across the street from us!” Molly said as she giggled at how corny her new boyfriend was being. “But with that being said, I would appreciate it very much,” Molly said as she gripped his hand once again.
The group walked for a little while before reaching an intersection. Book Marks the Spot, the bookstore that doubled as the home of the Stein-Torres family, was in the other direction of the McGee and Chen houses.
“Well, looks like this is where I split off. You all have a good night!” Libby said as she waved goodbye to her group of friends.
“See ya Libby! Thank you for everything!” Molly said as she waved.
“What are you thanking her for? Last time I checked, I did most of the work getting you and Swoopy Hair together. Didn’t that jolly green giant come from my ectoplasm in the first place?” Scratch questioned.
“That’s a bit of a long story,” June said.
“Well start telling it to me because I need to embellish my resume in finer detail,” Scratch replied. He secretly knew that Libby was the real romance expert between the two of them, but he wasn’t about to admit that, especially while she could probably still hear him.
“Ooh, I wanna know too!” Molly added.
“Me too! I’ve never seen June make something so huge before,” Ollie added. Before Darryl came around, he was the closest June had to a recurring lab partner.
“Allow me to tell you,” Darryl said as the group began to walk again and he shined a flashlight that he conveniently had onto his face. “It all started in a dark basement, hidden deep below the floors of the McGee household-“
“I don’t remember the basement being all that dark,” June interrupted.
“I’m trying to give the story some dramatic elements,” Darryl clarified as he shut off the flashlight.
“Oh really? Are you sure you’re not setting up an excuse for knocking over all of my chemicals onto my half of the ectoplasm sample?” June said with a little smirk on her face.
Darryl’s face turned tomato red after getting exposed like that, while Scratch’s face morphed into a smirk just as devious as June's if not more.
“Ok so I might have thrown my chunk of the ectoplasm right into June’s setup while she was electrocuting the other chunk causing the chemicals to spill everywhere, BUT in my defense, we did find out that ectoplasm makes a great bouncy ball alternative,” Darryl explained.
“Did the sample react to the electricity? Scratch once flew into an electric fence and he was all wacky for the next couple of hours,” Molly recalled.
“I had no idea ghosts reacted to electricity that way! Could that explain why he went on a rampage throughout town?” Ollie wondered.
“Are we all just ignoring the fact that that monster was partially the result of electrocuting my cutie bit? Hair expands and gets crazy when it gets electrocuted in cartoons, surely the same applies here,” Scratch said as he crossed his arms.
“Scratch, this isn’t a cartoon,” Darryl replied. Unlike his sister, he had very little 4th wall awareness.
“I appreciate everyone’s comments,” June said as she giggled. “I think today has left me with more questions than answers regarding ectoplasm, but I think if we all keep working together, we’ll figure things out soon enough.”
“Agreed!” Molly, Darryl, and Ollie all said in unison.
“Eh, I’m on board as long as I get some more sandwiches out of it,” Scratch said, perpetually hungry as always. Everyone laughed after he said that.
Just as the discussion of Junior began to wind down, the group made it back to their neighborhood and began to say goodbye to each other.
“Looks like this is where we part ways for now,” Ollie said as his hand detached from Molly’s. “Fare thee well, Lady Lemming!”
“But of course, Lord Lemming! I bid thee farewell, um, as well!” Molly said, hoping she sounded cool in front of her new boyfriend. The smile on Ollie’s face was proof that she succeeded.
“See ya later, June!” Darryl said.
“Bye, Darryl! Oh, and thanks for your help Scratch!” June replied, with Scratch offering dual finger guns in response.
And with that, the group had officially split up for the night to attend to their normal nighttime routines.
Libby was immediately greeted by her mother Leah upon entering Book Marks the Spot.
“Turtledove! You’re home late today, did you do anything fun?” Leah asked, unaware of what Libby was up to for most of the day.
“Well, do you remember that piece of ‘friend fiction’ that I was writing at the dance? The YA novel about Molly and Ollie?” Libby asked.
“Oh yeah! I thought it was adorable,” Leah replied.
“Well, let’s just say it’s not fiction anymore,” Libby explained.
“Molly got together with Ollie after all?” Leah asked.
“Yep! I’m happy to report that Mollie is now official!” Libby exclaimed with excitement.
“That’s great news! Ollie seems like such a nice person from the way his parents talk about him, I bet he and Molly are gonna be great together,” Leah said. Libby decided to respond with a quote from the ending of the novel.
“And they lived enhappify ever after.”
Molly, Darryl, and Scratch had a very uneventful remainder of their night. Pete and Sharon were very proud of Molly for getting herself a boyfriend, and the three slept happily after their successes that day. Molly was happy she finally confessed to Ollie, Darryl was happy he got to help June, and Scratch was happy to have eaten that sandwich. He was happy for Molly and Darryl of course, but that was one good sandwich that he basically got for free.
The rest of Ollie and June's night was fairly uneventful as well. Ruben and Esther were very proud of Ollie as well, and they were careful not to mention anything that happened with Junior. After they finished their dinner, the Chen siblings went upstairs to their rooms.
As June entered her bedroom and changed into her pajamas, she realized there was something else she wanted to tell Darryl, but forgot to in the moment. She grabbed her phone and sent Darryl a text, and Darryl being Darryl, responded to the message within seconds. He needed to respond quickly to keep up with his many connections.
Today 9:55 PM
Hey Darryl, I know I called you out earlier, but I just wanted to say that I’m grateful that you were my lab partner today. I’m not sure I would’ve learned as much as I did if I was on my own.
im happy i could help :)
(~‿^)
Expressing her honest feelings in that message made June remember something: she hadn’t written in her personal journal in quite some time. The journal sat on the desk in her bedroom, basically untouched ever since the move.
“You know, maybe it’s time I got back on track with my journal,” she said to herself.
Before she decided to call it a night, June opened her journal and wrote a new entry, which began with the following lines:
November 22nd, 2022
Dear Journal,
Today was certainly… interesting, to say the least.