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"Pacha, I'm in love with your wife!"
Striking pose number 271: 'I am the Emperor of the World and very cool (with extra hip hip thrust)'.
"Pacha, I think we should get married!"
Striking pose number 104: 'I am the Emperor of the World and very cool (with bonus groovy arm movement)'.
"Pacha, I ... I don't know what to do!"
Striking pose number what-does-it-even-matter-no-really: 'I am a miserable human being (with additional slumpy shoulders)'.
Kronk sniffled and blew his nose. "That is just so sad. Oh, the pathos."
"I think you mean 'pathe' there, buddy. But hey, did you like it? Do you think it will work? What's for dinner, I'm starving."
"Oh, it'll never work," Kronk said cheerfully. "And dinner's going to be a surprise."
"Spinach puffs?"
"Aw."
The thing was: when you got right down to it, Pacha was actually sort of - well, let's be completely honest here, but also still a little bit nice and say that he was ordinary. As in: nothing special. As in: not the Emperor.
He wasn't like Kronk (thank Kuzco he wasn't like Kronk) but probably, if you really looked for them, there would turn out to be lots and lots of people like Pacha. Kuzco just hadn't met them. Yet.
"So uh hey," Kuzco said, all casual and cool-like, "how did you and Chicha meet, anyway? Was it love at first sight?"
"Are you all right?" Pacha asked, looking totally suspicious.
... Okay, make that totally worried. Concerned. Sticking his nose where it didn't belong.
"Me?" Kuzco said, making a show of looking around. "Were you talking to me?"
"Yes." Stubborn, that was what Pacha was. Annoying. "You look awfully red. Are you getting enough sleep? When's the last time you ate?"
Subtly trying to change the subject, too: don't think Kuzo wasn't noticing that. "I'm fine. I'm totally, perfectly fine. Boy am I fine. Wooh."
"I'm glad to hear it," Pacha said, looking completely unconvinced.
"So you were saying? About you and Chicha?"
"That is so sweet," Kronk said, and this ... this thing where the only person Kuzco could talk to about his problems was a guy who was, well, to not put too fine a word on it, kind of a total idiot?
Not good. Definitely not good.
He wasn't expecting any sort of intelligence to match his own, obviously - gotta keep it real and reasonable, but still. "Yeah. Sure. Whatever."
"I had a childhood sweetheart, too." Kronk sighed dreamily.
"Sure you did."
"Lovely brown hazel eyes."
"I don't want to hear this."
"Great sense of humor."
"Not listening. Lalala."
"Soft bushy tail."
"Wait, what now?"
"You said you weren't listening," Kronk said, frowning slightly.
Totally unfair, how people kept using his own words against him. "Fine. I lied. But, seriously, a tail?"
"You lied?"
Whoa boy. Time for some serious damage control, before Kronk blew this thing all out of proportion and made potato salad for dinner. "Tell me about the tail, Kronk."
"Well, she was a squirrel. Of course she had a tail. Really, Kuzco, if you'd become a junior chipmunk, you'd know these sorts of things."
It only seemed fair to complain about Kronk to Pacha, especially since - well, come on. A squirrel?
Pacha didn't laugh, which was a bit of a letdown, even if Kuzco figured he probably did it on purpose. All part of his 'let's make sure Kuzco stays properly humble and modest' supposedly super-secret (but guess what?) and doomed to fail plan.
"And who were you close to, growing up?"
Not the question Kuzco'd been hoping for. "Well, I mean, there was that one guy. And that other guy. And that other other guy. And that other other other guy. And so on, etcetera And uh, you know. Yzma."
He was pretty sure she'd spent a lot of time sitting on his throne.
"Yzma," Pacha repeated hesitantly.
"Yeah, so I guess my childhood pretty much sucked, huh?"
Pacha looked around the throne room. Kuzco'd had it redone a while ago, and then again two months later, and then one more time last week, because it got boring to look at the same paintings all the time, and he did spent about two hours here every day so.
So just because he was the Emperor and totally cool, that didn't mean his life was easy or anything.
"I think you should get out more and meet new people," Pacha said.
"Ouch," Kronk said.
"What do you mean: ouch?" Kuzco snapped. "Hey, this is pretty good."
"It's that extra bit of cinnamon. Face it buddy, you got dumped. Turned down. Rejected. Sent on a one-way trip to the blue hotel."
"That's 'Emperor Kuzco' or 'Your Brilliant, Awesome Majesty' to you. And you're wrong."
Kronk lifted his spoon to his lips and closed his eyes. "No, it's definitely the cinnamon. Trust me, I'm never wrong about these things."
In the end, Kuzco figured he'd just have to come out and say it. Spit it out. Keep some guards within shouting distance to jump Pacha and toss him into a dungeon or something in case things would go wrong. (It wasn't as if he was going to keep Pacha there forever or anything; it'd be just for a couple of days. A year, tops.)
"Look, I love you, okay?"
"I ... love you, too?" Pacha said, looking puzzled. "We're friends, right?"
"Yeah, but - and I love your wife."
"You - " Pacha looked like nobody'd ever said that to him before, which nicely proved Kuzco's earlier theory about there being lots of people like Pacha and Chicha out there. "What are you saying?"
"I don't want to meet new people." Okay, that had come out sounding all wrong.
"Oh," Pacha said, his expression relieved now. "Is that all."
Kuzco decided that tone Pacha was using on him right now was really pretty insulting. "Well, you know, I'm supposed to be getting married one of these days."
"Lots of hopeful candidates out there, I'm sure," Pacha said cautiously.
"Ugh."
"You ... still don't want to kiss me, right?"
"I was a llama!" Kuzco said.
"So that's a no?"
"I was half-drowned!"
"A yes?"
"I thought you'd kidnapped me!"
"A clue?"
"A hug," Kuzco said determinedly. "You can give me a hug."
Pacha looked pensive. "Well, I suppose I could. If I felt like it."
"Hey, you want Tipo to be Emperor one day or not?"
"You - " Okay, so maybe that had been a bit too much, too fast, but really, what had Pacha thought they'd been talking about?
Personally, Kuzco thought it was genius - a given, of course, seeing as how it was his idea.
"What about Chaca?"
"Girls can't be Emperor." Everyone knew that. Girls weren't smart enough to be Emperor.
Apparently, Pacha hadn't known that. Typical. "Really. All right, I'll make a deal with you."
"A deal?" That sounded very suspicious. The last time he'd made a deal with Pacha - well, but he'd been completely right about it not being an agreement you'd 'shaken hands on' if one of the people involved didn't have hands. And Pacha'd probably been intending to wriggle out of it, too. "What kind of deal?"
"You explain to Chicha why girls can't be Emperor, and I'll give you a hug. But you have to really convince her."
"Piece of cake," Kuzco said.
"Someone called for dessert?" Kronk asked. "I've got chocolate cake, apple and cinnamon cake, lemon creamcake, strawberry creamcake and, for that nagging sweet tooth after dinner, vanilla mini muffins."
"These are good muffins," Chicha said.
"Uh," Kuzco said.
"So, was there anything else you wanted to talk about?"
"Ah," Kuzco said. "Well."
"I feel like everyone's staring at me," Pacha said. He was wrinkling his poncho (again). Plus, he wasn't wearing the heavy golden thing you were supposed to put on your head when you were very important.
"Naw," Kuzco said. "Why'd they be looking at you when I'm right here? Don't worry about it; you're just imagining things."
"Keep smiling, honey," Chicha said. "You got through it the first time."
"There were a lot less people watching the first time."
"O-kay, can we get back again to me now?" Kuzco asked. "Everybody, listen up. I'm getting married over here, to these fine two people, who I love very much in spite of everything, and so the next person who nags at me about when I'm finally going to get married will get tossed straight out of a window, thank you. Oh, and there's food. You can, you know, eat it. It's pretty good."
And that, Kuzco thought with great satisfaction, was that.
... Well, aside from one last tiny, small thing. Barely worth mentioning, really.
"Also, your next Emperor's going to be a girl. Get used to it."