Chapter Text
“Obviously it’s Keaton.”
”It’s Bale! It’s got to be!”
”You’re just saying that cause he’s the newest one.”
”Nuh uh! I’m saying it ‘cause it’s true.” Black Star proclaimed, his eyes sparked up when he noticed familiar pink hair come into his line of sight. “Crona! Help us settle this!”
It wasn’t uncommon for Black Star to drag Crona into some stupid argument or rather, usually if he caught them unaware enough they would agree to whatever just out of panic. Occasionally this would just leave them saying they had no opinion and scurrying off. The most common thing to happen is what ended up happening, Maka snapping at Black Star not to freak Crona out.
”I’m asking Crona their opinion!’ Black Star seemed exasperated, before turning to Crona. “Favorite Batman, go!”
Crona blinked owlishly at Black Star, eyebrows starting to knit in confusion as they turned to Maka for any kind of clarification. Soul, the other half of Black Star’s prior argument, chimed in first with a shake of his head.
”You can’t ask them that, what if they have another answer?”
"What, like Clooney?” Black Star and Soul both snickered at the idea of suggesting such a thing.
“What’s a… Bat man?” Crona tilted their head curiously. All snickering stopped and the two boys seemed to freeze for a moment. Soul was to recover.
“Right… Forgot about your mom.”
“You’ve never heard of Batman?” Black Star exclaimed this with the same amount of infuriated concern, fear, and shock as someone else might ask a question akin to: Who ripped your arms off of you?
Crona shrunk inward, more at the noise and Black Star getting in their face than anything else, they shook their head slowly but still had to mull the question around in their head. Had they heard of a bat-man? They’d definitely heard both those words separately but never together.
“We have so many movies to watch,” Black Star looked almost giddy at the idea before turning to Crona. “You know what a movie is right?”
“Yeah…” Crona nodded slowly. “I just haven’t seen any-”
“You haven’t seen any movies?” Black Star shouted, the words were more something one felt rather than heard.
“They grew up with Lady Medusa, I don’t know what you’d expect.” Maka defended quickly, not wanting Crona to feel bad even though she was surprised herself
“We have to fix this immediately!” Black Star proclaimed, not bothering to hear anything anyone else had to say. He gripped at Crona’s shoulders to make sure they were paying attention to him. “You’re going to come to me and Tsubaki’s tonight, okay? I’m going to get everyone there and you’re going to watch the best movies ever!”
“You don’t have a Surf’s Up DVD to back that up.” Soul drawled, Black Star didn’t pay him any mind- he just started his mission to find everyone else to inform them.
“I have a Hoodwinked DVD!” Black Star shouted from far off as if Soul’s words took a few paces to really sink in.
Soul scoffed, following after him, “That’s so not a better movie!”
“You’ve seriously never seen any movies, Crona?” Maka asked, watching Crona stand up a bit more now that Black Star wasn’t being loud and in their space.
“No… is that such a bad thing?”
“No, just surprising!” Maka was quick to assure and smiled encouragingly at Crona. “Plus It’s an easy enough fix, you’ll have fun tonight!”
Several hours later, Crona and Maka found themselves inside of Blackstar and Tsubaki’s apartment. Tsubaki and Liz were in the kitchen standing protectively in front of the liters of soda, Blactsar wasn’t in the apartment yet but it was best to be prepared in case he or someone else decided to try something before the movie. Kid was fussing inside the pillow fort, trying to perfect it before letting anyone else inside.
Patty, Soul, and Blackstar arrived five minutes later. Soul shook off his umbrella by the door waiting a moment to close it since Patty and Blackstar decided to shake the water off of themselves like dogs, he let some of their rogue droplets hit the umbrella before closing it.
“It’s raining out?” Maka tilted her head and glanced back towards the window.
“No.” The three of them spoke in sync, but none felt the need to elaborate on anything. It took another few minutes for them to shuffle out of their shoes and then split off into different rooms to get out of soaked clothes.
Everyone, courtesy of a gift giving splurge Kid had at one point, had matching pajama pants. All identical striped pajama pants, each person having a different color accompanied with black stripes. When Blackstar re-emerged he was carrying three DVD cases in one hand and a small birthday themed bag in the other.
“Okay! Crona, it’s up to you.” Blackstar started spreading out different DVD cases in front of Crona, he seemed to do so with an uncharacteristic amount of care- like he was laying out ingredients to a sacred ritual. “Pirates of The Caribbean or Batman?”
“I thought you wanted to watch Batman?” Crona blinked, trying to recall if they were misremembering the conversation from earlier that day.
“Yeah.” Blackstar nodded. “That was before I found out while setting this up, that Tsubaki hasn’t seen a single pirate movie. The best ones ever made included.”
Blackstar indicated at the DVD trilogy he had laid out when he said the last part.
“Haven’t you seen Princess Bride?” Liz asked.
“Yeah, but that’s not really a pirate movie…” Tsubaki trailed off, glancing at Blackstar as if the two had a similar discussion earlier.
“I guess Batman.” Crona sounded more like they were asking a question than a statement, but it got Blackstar to beam up excitedly as he scurried to take more DVDS out of the old birthday bag and present the pros and cons of each version.
“You don’t have Adam West.” Liz pointed out, looking down at Blackstar’s DVD collection.
“I’m not going that far back!” Blackstar scoffed.
“I like the really old ones.” Maka offered, giggling to herself. “They’re really cartoony.”
“Oh yeah, like Batman Forever isn’t really cartoony.” Soul rolled his eyes.
“I liked Jim Carrey in that.” Patty added on while she started making her way into the pillow fort.
“Don’t come in yet!” Kid admonished from deeper into the fort.
“Kid, it’s fine, don't worry.” Liz waved her hand, even though Kid couldn’t see the motion. “We’re all probably gonna mess it up again when we get inside.”
“You’re probably right…” Kid’s voice came out muffled, but the disappointment was still loud.
“She’s definitely right. Blackstar’s gonna ruin it within the first second.” Soul said, amusement evident in his voice and even more on his face when Blackstar nodded enthusiastically at the statement.
“Alright, you all may enter.” Kid sounded resigned, but that only lasted for a moment before Blackstar and Patty rushed to get inside.
It takes four minutes for everyone to finally get settled into the fort and under various covers and another two minutes for Crona to realize the problems with this movie night.
Crona is very often grateful for their friends. They love and appreciate the friendships they’ve made, but they’re not good at peace or quiet.
“Which one is this again?”
“Michael Keaton.”
“Danny DeVito’s in this one, right-”
“No, that’s the next one.”
“We totally need to watch Beetlejuice sometime-”
“Oh Crona would love Beetlejuice!”
“This should have been a Tim Burton night. Surprised Kid didn’t suggest that.”
“Kid’s not too caught up on movies either-”
“What?!”
“Isnt Batman gay?”
“I don’t know, ask Tsubaki. She writes him and Superman kissing I think.”
“I thought Tsubaki only wrote vampire fanfiction?”
“That’s not all I do…”
“All I know if you’re really into that Edwin guy.”
“Edward…”
It’s all whispered and hushed but really to no avail. It’s hard to listen, everyone’s shuffling around and moving close together, Crona can’t figure what or who anyone is talking about, and Blackstar keeps periodically shouting at everyone to be quiet. He’s the only one properly engrossed, but keeps throwing popcorn to reprimand everyone- which encourages more snacks and pillows to be thrown.
Crona looks over at Maka, who is miraculously able to tune it all out. She’s drinking out of a Rainforest Cafe souvenir cup and squinting at the screen intently through yellow silly straw glasses. It makes them giggle a little to watch the cream soda flood through the glasses.
When they look over to their other side they can see Kid, clearly having a similar disruptive experience. Kid, for his part, does seem to be trying a lot harder than Crona to tune everything out and focus, but it seems to be frustrating him more by the second.
If Crona or Kid thought for a moment that things would get better as the movie progressed, they were surely mistaken. To be fair, the chatter does die down at one point- not completely, but it becomes more like a buzzing background noise. By the time it goes completely quiet, it’s too close to the end to ask what’s going on and then Blackstar immediately pops up to put the new DVD in.
The small intermission causes a new wave of talking and Patty reminding everyone that they left pizza outside of the fort. There’s arguments over toppings while Soul and Tsubaki get out to pull the pizza boxes in. Soul starts flicking pineapple pieces off of his pizza into Patty’s mouth- she’s catching them like a dolphin. Blackstar looks like he wants to join in, but is too busy stuffing his face with pizza.
“Alright, everyone good?” Blackstar looks around making sure no one’s moving. “No more getting out for the next three movies!”
“How many movies are we watching?” Maka asked, tiredness is just starting to kick in and she’s now feeling the full weight of a long movie marathon. Crona’s head picked up while awaiting the answer.
“Four more?” Soul offered. “We don’t need to watch Batman & Robin.”
“We don’t need to watch them all tonight though, right?” Crona asked.
Blackstar immediately started shaking his head, “It’s now or never!”
“Blackstar-” Kid started to say, but was cut off by Blackstar gripping his shoulders.
“Now or never!”
Crona doesn’t know how much later it is, but they find themselves drifting asleep shortly after. A loud bang on the TV startled them awake and they feel bad for falling asleep until they noticed they weren’t the only one who fell asleep. Maka’s asleep against their shoulder and Tsubaki is asleep curled tightly against Liz’s side.
Kid still looks disengaged but he has Blackstar seemingly trying to explain everything he’s not getting. It doesn’t seem to be working and just seems to frustrate the reaper more.
Well, despite Crona gaining nothing from the experience it wasn’t a terrible sleepover. They also feel comforted that they’re not the only one who had a hard time retaining any of the movie or its information.