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LiFS Chapter 33 - Freaking Breakfast
🕑 Added 2024-06-10 21:59:44 +0000 UTCHi! I'm back. Its been a hot sec, sorry about that. Next chapter (hopefully) shouldn't take nearly as long. Bit of a slice of life chapter to get us back in the swing of things!
For the second time in as many nights, I woke up with a beautiful girl cradled in my arms. My nose was pressed into her messy blonde hair and she was spooned against me, her body a warm weight pressed tightly against my chest.
And that was about where the similarities ended. For one, she was actually wearing clothes this time; an oversized t-shirt that had ridden up around her belly and a pair of bright-red boyshorts that had been hidden from my sight the night before. It was also clearly not five in the morning––there was sunlight streaming in through the narrow gap in the curtains––and, unlike last time, it was Crystal and not me who’d woken first and was now trying to wake the other up.
There was something tickling my palm. “Percy!” Crystal hissed for what probably wasn’t the first time, and I sleepily shifted my head a fraction of an inch to peek down the front of her body.
Ooo boobies. The wide collar of her oversized sleeping t-shirt had ridden down, revealing both one pale, smooth shoulder and the fact that she very clearly wasn’t wearing a bra. I could see just a hint of one puffy pink nipple leaving a visible bump in the thin fabric covering her chest. One of my hands was resting lightly on one luxuriously soft peak and I squeezed gently.
After a too-long pause, my gaze continued downard and I found her futilely clawing at the hand resting lightly on her bare belly. She’d managed to hook a single finger beneath my palm and was straining to move my hand to no real effect. Wedge-shaped red force fields appeared and shattered over and over again as her powers failed against divine strength.
I blinked slowly, not quite registering what I was looking at. Before I could really figure out what she was doing, Crystal let out a long, exasperated sigh and her body relaxed, prompting me to pull her more tightly against myself. I had one hand on her bare belly and another on her shirt-covered breasts, and Crystal was very soft and warm. And squishy. Squish!
“Damn it,” Crystal mumbled. I closed my eyes and buried my face in her hair. It was silky smooth and smelled vaguely earthy and floral, like some sort of big tree covered in beautiful, flowering vines.
Crystal said something else, but I didn’t really register it. And then, out of absolutely nowhere, Crystal pulled her head forward…and then slammed it directly into my poor, innocent nose.
“Gah!” I yelped, more out of surprise than pain.
“Jesus christ!” Crystal swore simultaneously, “I forgot you’re made of fucking steel, god damn it!” She reached up to rub the back of her head. “Okay, bad idea, bad idea. Damn it, that’s going to leave a bruise and I’m definitely going to be late to class…”
I blinked slowly, more and more awareness returning to me with each passing second as I finally drifted fully from Hypnos’ grasp. I yawned hugely, my jaw briefly feeling like it was going to crack, then hugged Crystal again. “Wha–at was that?” I asked, yawning again.
Crystal sighed heavily. “Good morning, Percy.”
“Good morning, Crystal.”
There was a pregnant pause, Crystal’s hand rubbing circles on her head and thoroughly mussing her already messy hair. Then she sighed again. “Percy, could you please let go of me? I have class this morning and I can’t even reach my phone like this.”
I blinked, having not really noticed how exactly I was holding her. “Oh, uh. Sorry.” I quickly let go of Crystal and she slipped out of my arms and sat up, grabbing her phone off the bedside table. She stared at the screen for a moment, then groaned and collapsed back onto the bed. “Fuck, how late did we stay up yesterday? It's eleven freaking o’clock. I guess that’s what I get for not setting an alarm. I guess corporate finance isn’t a real class anyway.”
“Sorry?” I tried. I pushed myself partially upright with my elbows and scooted backwards until I could lean my shoulders against the headboard. The varnished wood was cool and smooth against my skin and I put my arms up into the air, stretching broadly.
Crystal waved her hand dismissively before letting it drop back down to her side. “Eh, it's whatever. The professor doesn’t take attendance or anything. My own fault for staying up so late. I just hope no one noticed that I wasn’t in bed.”
Oh right, that was why she’d woken us both up so early yesterday, wasn’t it? Even though we hadn’t, uh, done anything last night, I wasn’t sure Sarah and Neil would see it that way. I felt bad about deceiving them in such a way––they’d been nothing but good to me and had welcomed me, a stranger, into their home––but the teenage boy inside me absolutely rebelled at the idea of saying anything.
“Is that going to be a problem?”
Crystal exhaled loudly. “I really freaking hope not. Mom doesn’t usually check on me before she leaves for work, but it's happened before.”
The room fell silent. I continued stretching while Crystal stared up at her phone, her thumb lazily swiping up and down the screen. Eventually, she huffed and dropped her phone on the bed beside her before rolling onto her side to face me. “I guess no classes for me today! So uh, I guess I should do something productive today. Shopping?”
“Still broke,” I reminded her gently.
“Blagh. We can just windowshop or whatever. I can afford to grab you a few shirts and some new jeans––you can just pay me back later or something.”
“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to impose.” I sucked in a breath through my teeth. I was already staying in their house and eating their food. “More than I already am, I mean.”
“It's totally fine, Percy. Helping people, it's what we do. And anyway, what you did yesterday more than pays for whatever help we’ve given you. I know how to read between the lines––you took down like, a half-dozen Empire capes while the Protectorate sat around and twiddled their thumbs.”
“The heroes helped!”
Crystal stared at me flatly and raised an eyebrow. I looked away. After a moment, she shoved her phone at me. “There isn’t any footage of what happened inside, but some guy uploaded this last night.”
I looked down at the screen and almost instantly recognized the scene. Fenja and Menja were fighting Assault and Battery, wildly flailing their weapons around and absolutely tearing up the surrounding street. Then the camera shook and panned around, taking a moment to focus before showing me crouched in my armor on the edge of the building, close enough that you could clearly see every detail Hephestus had worked into the surface of the celestial bronze.
I knew what was coming next. This must be the video that guy behind the AC had taken. I watched myself wave at the camera, then leap from the roof. The camera followed me, but there was a slight delay. The next thing I could see was me slamming into the closer valkyrie and her collapsing, Battery’s contribution completely invisible from this angle.
Crystal pulled the phone away before the video could continue. “People were already talking about you after what happened with Hookwolf, but that time there was barely any video. This guy captured like, the whole fight. You tore them apart in like, thirty seconds. If I hadn’t seen you sparining with Vicky, I would have been terrified for you.”
I felt a need to defend the other heroes’ contributions. They were just mortals, fighting monsters that would give plenty of campers pause. Those two giant villainesses had been tougher than anything a normal demigod could expect to run into on a day-to-day basis. “Battery was a huge help. You can’t see it in the video, but she knocked out Menja’s knee. That’s why she went down so hard.”
Crystal waved her hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah, there’s another angle that shows that bit, though it's a lot blurrier. Not every day a gang attacks the PRT headquarters. A ton of people stopped to record the action. Anyway, that’s not what matters. The PRT put out a press release and they actually went out and publicly thanked and acknowledged you for your help. They hate doing that for independants, so everyone knows you must have basically done all the heavy lifting yourself.”
I considered what had actually happened and nodded slowly. I’d need to take a look at that press release, out of curiosity if nothing else. I’d just been thinking about how demigods never got any publicity, I guess it was time to pay the piper on that one.
Crystal tried to sit up, gave up, and then floated up out of bed kinda like that one possessed girl from that horror movie, except she looked a lot better doing it. She floated horizontally out of bed, her long hair dragging across the bed sheets, then rotated ninety degrees and dropped lightly onto her feet.
“Do you need the bathroom? I want to go take a shower.”
“Go ahead. I’ll make breakfast then.”
Crystal pumped her arm. “Fuck yeah! Breakfast!”
Even though she had her back to me, I did my best to raise an eyebrow. “So almost getting caught my your mom is only worth a ‘freaking’, but breakfast is worth a ‘fuck’?”
“Only if you don’t burn it this time,” Crystal fired back instantly.
“It sounds like someone doesn’t want pancakes.”
“It sounds like someone doesn't want a fu––” Crystal slapped her hand over her mouth, cutting off the rest of the sentence, seemingly in shock at her own response. She took a deep breath. “I’m going to go take a shower now.” Then she literally flew out of the room, her toes only barely brushing the floor in her haste to flee.
It took a truly godly effort, but I managed to hold my laughter until the door slammed shut behind her.
Nearly half-an-hour later, Crystal walked into the kitchen, her hair wrapped in a towel. She was wearing a simple t-shirt and short exercise shorts that hugged her butt and thighs in a way that drew my eyes like a siren’s call, and I could feel drops of water from the shower glistening on her bare neck and arms that she hadn’t quite managed to dry off.
She’d spent nearly half an hour in the shower, only to rush down here almost as soon as she got out, drawn by the alluring scent of pancakes drifting up the stairs. She barely seemed to notice me, her eyes fixed on the plate piled high with freshly-cooked, golden-brown deliciousness.
I looked up from my own phone and watched with amusement as Crystal walked right past me and leaned down over her plate to take a deep breath, an almost loopy smile on her face. She blindly groped for the maple syrup which I’d set out for her, then poured a…very generous portion of it onto her plate.
She set the bottle aside and then waved her hand around looking for something else. Only after nearly ten seconds of failure did she finally look over and realize that there was nothing else there. Crystal finally turned to me, a pout on her lips.
I shrugged from my spot by the fridge. “I didn’t know what else you liked on your pancakes.”
“Nutella, the cranberry jam, and butter,” she listed off.
“As you command.” Thankfully I’d gotten well-enough acquainted with the Pelham’s kitchen to know where everything she wanted was. Her toppings of choice were quickly assembled beside her, and she proceeded to bury her plate until only tiny spots of the fluffy pancakes remained visible.
Once she was done, she dug in with gusto, by some miracle managing to avoid smearing her face with toppings. Wait no, not a miracle. She was using tiny force fields around her mouth and lips to make sure not a single spec of sugary goodness could escape. It was an inspiring sight.
“Do you want me to take care of your hair?” I asked after a moment.
Crystal shoved another bite of pancakes in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and looked up at me. “Can you do that without like, messing it up? My hairdresser told me I should dry it slowly so it doesn’t get frizzy.”
I grimaced. “I can. My powers are…convenient like that.” That had been a harrowing fact to discover, no matter how popular it made me with a certain portion of the camp’s population.
“Then yes please!”
I flicked my fingers in her general direction, focusing on the water I could feel soaking her hair and commanding it to gently move into the towel.
“Ooo that tickles!” Crystal unwrapped the towel from around her head and tossed it onto the stool beside her. She ran her fingers through her hair, brushing it back away from her face. “Very handy. Maybe I’ll have time to brush it before we leave.”
“Oh, right. Do you think we’ll have time to stop by your aunt’s house? Carol said the PRT finally finished processing all my paperwork and they delivered some stuff to her house this morning. The apartment is apparently going to take a few more days, but they delivered my new card to her this morning. Looks like I’ll be able to pay for my own clothes today.”
“Huh, that’s a lot faster than I would have expected.”
“That’s what Carol said too.”
Crystal grinned at me, her teeth stained with a little bit of nutella. “I guess saving their collective butts really got the ball rolling. How much money are they giving you?”
I looked back down at my phone, scrolling up to Carol’s messages from earlier this morning. “Uh, I’m not quite sure, but Carol says it’s enough to live off of, especially since the apartment is paid for separately by the PRT. There should be exact numbers in the papers they sent her.”
“Nice! Yeah, we can totally swing past their place. I don’t know where mom keeps our spare key, but uncle Mark should be around.” She floated up off her stool and spun in a circle. “This is going to be great! It's been ages since I’ve gone shopping!”
A cold shiver of dread ran down my spine. There was something deeply sinister about the gleam in Crystal’s eyes.
Comments
X Blade
facts
ThatGit
Glad you liked it!
Alex Woll
This was a fun little chapter
