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“Can we order food?” Rosie asks, her pigtails swaying with her as she steps into the kitchen without looking, to talk to whoever can answer her question that she happens to find. Tiny, the incredibly tall redhead is reorganizing the cabinets, emptying them out onto the counter and Ace sits on the one empty spot on said counter, on his phone.
Ace looks up from his phone to squint his eyes and look forwards, “...No?” He phrases it like a weird, slightly rhetoric, question.
“Why not?” She asks.
“Didn’t you guys already get food this week?” Tiny takes a break from his label reading to look at them.
“I mean yeah, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get more.” She reasons with them. (Not that she should when it comes to Ace, he has hair covering half his face. What’s gonna happen to his depth perception? That’s not a sign of a reasonable person.)
“Yes, it does?” He narrows his eyes theatrically and she tilts her head. “Okay, first off,” He starts, putting down his phone to use his fingers to illustrate his points, “We only order food when Tiny isn’t here,” he points to the boy staring at them weirdly, “and clearly he is.”
“Mm, you’re kind of making that sound like a bad thing.” The redhead laughs a little as he talks.
“Meh.”
“And secondly,” Ace continues, “How much money do you think we have?”
She looks around the kitchen, processing the cracked floor tiles, the squeaky cupboards, and the mostly past their expiry date foods/ingredients. “Ehhh, I mean… we have enough?”
“Most of us don’t have jobs.”
“Correction: most of our freelance jobs haven’t been getting customers.” A light voice chimes from the living room and through the open, doorless, door frame sits the dark haired boy on the couch watching them. “King gets all of our big jobs for us.” Jack tells the group.
“Yeah! S’not our fault!” Rook, who’s flopped over the back of the couch to join the conversation.
“I’m not saying it’s your fault??” He shakes his head lightly as he rubs at the bridge of his nose, “Tiny! Did I say it was their fault?”
Tiny shrugs his shoulders.
Ace rolls his eyes at him.
“It’s kind of your fault.” Jack mutters to himself, opening up his book to resume reading his latest book obsession. Something about body mutilation and detectives, Ace remembers him saying when asked, Jack doesn’t go into much detail if you don’t pry it out of him; something King is very skilled at and something he’s lacking in ability.
“What’d you say?” Ace asks him and Rosie purses her lips tightly.
“You’re substituting for King,” he starts with a sigh, “so isn’t it kind of your job to do Boss’ job?” He tilts his head in an imitation of something innocent to ask that ‘question’. It feels like a dagger in their hearts.
“Well.. I-” Ace groans into his hands, “I’m not explaining myself to you.” He stands from his spot on the counter to properly stretch his arms over his head, “Point is, we have a chronic lack of money so we can’t get stuff all the time.” He points at all three of the younger members in the room (and attached room) “Control your urges, you heavens.”
“Boo!”
“Lame!”
“Can’t we just get it free?” Jack asks him, “Or discounted?”
“Ooh, like stealing it?” Rook asks, all too delighted.
“Your funeral ‘ll be spent in jail.” Ace tells them, sighing and crossing his arms. Anymore and he'll get wrinkles, Rosie thinks, Boss’ll think it's a riot!
Rook pouts. It's a little unnerving how they all imitate each other to a degree, if one of them has a habit at least one other member will have the same one. It's also a bit sweet, Tiny thinks.
“I meant more like how King gets stuff,” Jack explains but he shrugs his shoulders and adds, “but that works too.”
The light brown haired boy gives Rosie a glare as he sees her raise her camera to his face and he shoves her away, putting his hand on her forehead.
“Contrary to popular belief I'm not actually magic! I can't just wizard up some cheap stuff!” Ace exclaims like it's some universal truth they’ve all decided to ignore.
“Boss gets us free stuff all the time.” Jack mutters glaring meanly at his substitute boss who's begun gripping at his hair from the stress.
“Look, what do you want?” Ace hisses out, turning to the young boy, “Do you want me to apologize for not being King?!”
“Yes.” he replies without a smidge of empathy.
“Commit seppuku out of shame!” Rook throws in from his place reclined half upside down on the couch.
Tiny pokes his head out to look at the two youngest from where he was standing in the kitchen right out of view of the couch, “By that logic,” he says, voice full of mirth, “You guys would have to do it too, y’know.”
“Absolutely.”
“I would but you guys childproofed the knives.” Rook points past them to the knife block wrapped in the contents of an entire roll of plastic wrap and three padlocks attached to heavy chains.
“Not ‘you guys’’ Ace stares at them insulted, “It was Tiny and Simon.”
“Can you even get anything out of that?” Rosie asks. She's rocking back and forth on her feet, her hands to her sides like a penguin, “Ace! You should try!”
“Yeah! Wrench it out!” Rook throws his arms up and grins at him. Jack looks up from his book to watch him.
Ace scans the block; there's ten serrated knives at the bottom packed so tightly together it would be impossible to get just one and impossible to pull them all out. On the upper half there are five, three on one side, two on the other. He goes for the enclosed handle of their (currently only) chef’s knife. (Where are the other two? Who knows.)
He wraps his hand around the handle and all he feels is the distinct texture of spongy plastic squished against his palm. He gives it a small tug and the entire block moves but not the knife, it stays frozen in place.
He puts one hand on the block and he yanks with the other, there’s the sound of crinkling but it stays in place. He tries again and gets the same result.
“I can’t even tell where the plastic wrap ends.” Rosie says, watching as he tries with steadily and fastly increasing physical strain.
“Why did you wrap it?” Jack directs his question at Tiny, who’s watching Ace’s futile effort with amusement.
“Because no one was using them safely!” He defends himself.
“Really? How?”
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The dangling pink and purple fairy lights in the hallway threaten to hit him in the face as he walks to the room acting as a DICE workshop, looking for a certain one of his fellow checker wearing agents. It’s approaching evening, the sun has started to set on the horizon he sees through the window and he’s decided to get a start on making dinner, preferably something that lasts in the refrigerator and easily reheatable for the people who are too busy to eat at the same time as everyone else.
Hoping to ask Diamonds for a dinner recommendation (he likes to give people a say when he decides to make food for everyone and he never asks the same person twice in a row.) he’s left the kitchen in search, having checked his room first, not because he thought he was in there, really, just because it was close, and finding no one he moves to the place he hangs out in the most.
Reaching the door he can see shadows beneath it so he knows he’d guessed right. He opens the door to see Diamonds working at the desk, his sewing machine off to the side and his fabrics pushed up against the sides, out of the way of the one he’s working on.
The younger boy is mapping out a pattern onto the purple tulle with a jagged piece of white chalk when he looks up to greet him with a nod.
“Got any dinner ideas?” The redhead asks him, leaning against the door frame.
“Mh,” Diamonds opens a drawer to return the chalk to safety, having learned from experience that leaving a fragile cylindrical object on a flat surface can lead to it breaking, “I’m not sure… maybe a fried rice or something?”
Tiny nods and then repeats his affirmation out loud when he realizes he isn’t looking. His gaze drifts to the mannequin dressed with the purposeful holes in the jeans and the plain tank top standing just behind the office chair.
“What are you planning to do with this?” He gestures at the mannequin. Diamonds turns just enough to see what he’s asking about and replies, “I’m going to fill the holes with this,” he raises up a strip of his purple tulle, “and I think I might put some at the bottom as ruffles. Maybe on the side too, like waves.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Thanks.”
Tiny starts to walk back to the door when he turns around to say goodbye and sees something that makes him do a double take, “Is that a knife?”
Diamonds looks up from his cutting and flashes him a sheepish smile, “Umm, it is.”
“Why are you cutting fabric with a knife???” Tiny asks him, “Are you trying to cut your fingers off??”
“What? No?” Diamonds argues, “Somebody used my fabric scissors and now they’re too dull to cut anything!”
“Use another pair!”
“I can’t find any!”
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.
.
“Okay? That was one time.” Jack shrugs his shoulders.
“Still! I don’t see why you would do that,” Rosie points to Ace who’s sitting with the knife block between his legs, still trying to get one out, “just because Diamonds was using one wrong.”
“Mhm!” Rook nods, now sitting criss crossed on the couch alongside Jack.
“Oh, it was not one time,” Tiny puts his hands on his hips, “Simon told me about all the other times,”
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.
He’d just gotten back home from a shift at his part time job late into the evening. The weather outside was hotter than it had been that morning when he’d decided to bring a sweater which left him having to either carry it or wear it back home, and he’d chosen to wear it despite the sun because it had deep pockets to carry all his stuff. He’d been slowly regretting the decision as he kept walking as he’d forgotten it was not just the sun against him but also his own body’s heat.
He takes his shoes off at the entryway, placing them carefully off to the side and he empties out his pockets of his phone, notebook and keys before removing his hoodie to fold it over his arm.
The tv is running in the living room, playing a catchy intro to a show he can’t remember but he knows Rosie likes. He heads past the living room to drop his stuff in his room and shower to get the smell of the day off him.
He returns back to the living room once he's done to find the previously mentioned high schooler sitting on the floor, facing the table and holding a can sideways in her left hand and a large kitchen knife raised above it in her right hand.
“What are you doing?!”
Rosie looks at him all innocently and says, “I just did my nails.”
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.
“I couldn't pull the tab while my nails were drying!!” Rosie puts her hands on her sides to pout at him, her pigtails bouncing with her body.
“K, that's two people though, just ban them.” Ace has stopped trying, instead resigning himself to scrape the dirt out from under his nails. “Also,” Ace adds after a moment, “why did you two get to make that choice and not me or King? I'm his right hand.”
“Simon says he saw you doing your eyeliner using one-”
“I needed a straight line?”
“-and King lost his knife privileges after cutting his hair with one. Which left me as the one who had to make a decision.”
“Really?!” Rook exclaims, “When’d Boss do that?!”
Rosie makes a sound of interest.
“I didn't know that..” Jack murmurs to himself, and looks at Ace and Tiny with an interrogative curiosity. Ace is trying to recall the memory and Tiny laughs, “Well,”
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.
It was sunny while raining.
He and his much shorter boss were walking along the cracked sidewalk, side by side.
The rain was light, it sprinkled on their heads lightly and there was a very slight breeze that tickled their cheeks.
Tiny's hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, letting the water droplets hit his ears and the back of his neck. The rain was warm in contrast to the breeze that chilled to little drops that clung to his skin.
Oma's hair was starting to grow longer, his bangs were falling heavy over his left eye and covering it completely. Exactly like Ace’s but that's not his story to tell.
They get glances in their direction. Perhaps from their looks, maybe posture, maybe they focus on the differences between them. They get glances in their direction but neither of them care.
He looks down and watches his boss twirl a strand of hair away from his face, watching it curl around his finger delicately like a flower growing up around a fence pole.
Pale, snow white, crystal skin, too delicate but too durable. An enigma only He can be.
His hand stills as he catches Tiny staring and he smiles at him. When he doesn't pull his eyes away he shakes his hand in front of the redhead’s face.
“You have a scar,” Tiny points out like it's a crack on fine china that no one had noticed, “on your hand.”
He looks at his left hand and gasps, “Oh my god! I never noticed that!”
It's tiny, so small and already so faded, it can't have been deep. So barely there it’ll likely be gone the next time he looks, like a paper boat down a stream.
“How'd you get it?” He asks, and he jokes, “Did you lose a fight with a mouse?”
“Nah,” He laughs, “Cut my hair.”
Then they droned on into a conversation about what animals they could take in a fight and by the next time he’d looked it was gone. Like footprints in a snowstorm.
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.
“...it’s pretty self explanatory, he cut his hair, that's all.”
“Oh, come on!” Rosie stomps her foot, “the others get stories and this one doesn't?! That's so not fair!”
“Yeah! Boo!” Rook sticks out his tongue and Jack gives them a thumbs down as he resumes reading.
“What? There wasn't anything to tell!” Tiny laughs gently. He looks to Ace whose head is resting in his hand and he's smiling just slightly into it. He's sure he's reminiscing about some kind memory he won't speak.
“What about the others? Can we get stories on them?” Rosie asks him.
“Uh,” he says, eloquently, “Jack ate cake with a knife,-”
“I didn't feel like doing dishes.” Jack offers like it's pyrite to a royal.
“-Lady took her toast out of the toaster with one because it was ‘too hot’,-”
“Fair.”
“I've done that.”
“-Rook tried to juggle two,-”
“I saw King juggling and decided to try!”
“Why would you start with knives? Anyway, lastly Knight was carrying one around, put it down somewhere and then couldn't find it. Spoiler, she left it in the bathroom cupboard.”
“Wowww.”
“We are all terrible with knives.”
“Yikes.”
“Well, enough of that.” Ace says, rising up from his seated position and clapping his hands, “Let's get to the real problem at hand…”
They all send him confused looks.
“Does anybody have a knife to get the knives out?” He says and they all return to their own things. “... No? Nobody? Somebody has to have one hidden somewhere! Not gonna answer? Great.”
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As expected of anywhere King's staying, it's a mess. The phone is propped up on the desk to face him but from the limited view of the surface it's covered in papers and little trinkets. Typical of their crow-like boss.
He's listening as his two oldest subordinates (oldest as in they've been with him the longest, not oldest in age,) talk through the video call, just about their days and the newest news their supreme leader should know about when something comes to their attention, “Hey Boss?” Ace asks before Tiny gets the chance, “What happened to your finger?"
“Hm? Oh, this?” King holds up his hand, it has a bandage on the side of his ring finger, “OMG, it's the funniest story- so basically-”