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To an outsider, the group of people sitting on the grass didn’t make sense. Well, they did, but only in the commonality they all shared: their visible scars. A man with what looked like claw marks across his face and one arm missing, leaning against another man wearing a white cape and sunglasses on. A young woman laid in the first man’s lap, scars marking one of her arms and tattoos and symbols marking the other. This pair had eclipse glasses on, gesticulating wildly as they pointed towards the sky.
“BECAUSE, Dante, if you could harness the power of the moon, you could decide when day and night happened! Dante, we could fix fucking climate change if we controlled the moon!”
“EXACTLY, see Dante, she gets it!”
“What exactly would be the point of deciding when day and night happened?”, Dante chuckled, moving his hand to ruffle Agatha's hair. His chuckle broke into a laugh when she smacked his hand away. Sometimes, that girl reminded him of a cat. For gods sake, she practically hisses at people. He moved his hand back to her head and continued to mess with her hair, realizing probably too late that combing his fingers through her hair got him a better response than ruffling it. Dante thought he should just apply cat rules to her: don't mess up their grooming, approach carefully, and when given the go-ahead to give affection, give it without abandon. But be cautious to not overstep the already-laid boundaries, or you will live to regret it.
Dante liked when they sat like this, though he'd never tell the other two. Arthur on his right, so his arm is free to gesture rather than pressed up against Dante's side. Agatha in front of Arthur, angled just so most of her weight was against Arthur, with her hair barely brushing Dante’s knee.
Arthur rested his hand on Agatha’s shoulder, being careful to not touch her scars. He knew she wouldn’t get upset with him for touching them, but he also knew that a human touch brought back memories she didn’t like remembering. And Arthur couldn’t bear that tiny shiver she did when she was forcibly reminded of the source of those scars. He loved seeing her confident and happy, not the way she became small.
“Okay, but what if I looked at the sun? It can’t be worse than getting the skin torn off your back. It’d be cooooool!” Agatha slowly raised her hand towards her eclipse glasses before getting smacked by two hands. “Rude. Why can Dante look at the sun and I can’t?”
Arthur whipped his head to his left and saw Dante’s head tilted up and his eyelids open. "DANTE!” He reached over and grabbed Dante’s own right arm, covering his eyes with it. Why would Dante do that? Veríssimo had told them maybe 20 times to not look into the sun, with Ivete reinforcing the idea another 15 times before the trio had walked away to set up on their own. Wait, why was Dante shaking? HAD LOOKING INTO THE SUN GIVEN HIM A SEIZURE???
Arthur felt a hand on his wrist, guiding him away from Dante’s face. “Arthur,” Dante said, trying to contain his own laugher and failing miserably, “look at me.”
Arthur turned towards Dante and looked him in the eyes.
“Oh.”
“Tutu, did you actually forget?” Dante’s laughter finally was stifled as Agatha’s bubbled to the surface. The phrase ‘howling with laughter’ wasn’t enough to describe her as Arthur stammered to try and come up with a better response than the truth.
“Agatha, stop! Stop laughing! It’s not funny! I was worried he-”
“THAT HE’D GO BLIND?” Agatha’s laughter kicked off again, forcing her to roll in the grass, clutching her sides as she cackled.
Arthur continued to stammer for a few seconds until Dante took pity on him and wrapped his arm around him. “Just look at the eclipse, Arthur. We live on a pretty cool planet, don’t we?” He squeezed a bit harder to give Arthur that pressure he enjoyed.
Arthur’s muscles loosened as he relaxed into the embrace. He closed his eyes and laid his head in Dante’s lap, knowing he was safe there. He felt the cardboard slip around his face as Dante placed the eclipse glasses over his eyes. But Arthur didn’t want to open his eyes. He knew Dante would nudge him when totality happened, and if not, Agatha would drag him up. He felt Dante’s lips press against his forehead and then his fingers began carding through his hair.
If Arthur could pause time, this is where he’d pause. He was safe, he knew Dante finally felt like he was in control of something in his life, and Agatha was being a kid. Sure, she wasn’t technically a child, but Arthur met her when she was a kid, and she never got a chance to be a dumb teenager. He’d give her that ability, no matter what it took.
Listening harder, Arthur could hear Balu being scolded by the tag-team of Ivete and Rubens, Carina and Carla discussing next moves for the Leone family, and the kids from the mansion gossiping about some teenage drama. He couldn’t hear Veríssimo, but he knew he was just watching. Arthur didn’t want to say goodbye to his mentor, but that wasn’t something he needed to worry about right now.
Right now he just needed to be happy. And how easy that task was.