Promptly Penned

Prompt: S/he showed up at his/her door, soaking wet, bruised, and covered in glitter.

“I hate you…” he said as soon as I opened the door.

I looked at the somewhat frightening, and totally hilarious sight in front of me and immediately began laughing. “Oh. My. God.  What did they do to you?”

He was soaking wet from head to toe, had a bruise on his cheek like someone had punched him in the face, and most interestingly, was covered in glitter.  He shuffled into the apartment, leaving drops of water and glitter on my floor.  

I giggled again when I noticed glitter and puff balls on the butt of his jeans.  He shot a glare at me and I tried, but mostly failed, to stifle my giggles.  “Let me get you a towel…” I mumbled between giggles and dashed off to the bathroom.  When I returned and began scrubbing the towel over his wet, glittery, hair he stood there gloomily.  “Oh honey,” I said with a chuckle.  “Seriously.  What happened?”

“First graders, that’s what happened.”

I had to bite my lip so not to giggle again. “Okay…”

“First graders who you said would be so much fun and easy to handle.”

“Well actually I said they’re usually easy to handle… I technically didn’t make any promises.”  He aimed another look aimed at me that would’ve killed me if he had super powers.  “Sorry…” I mumbled and continued trying to dry him off.  I pulled him by the hand toward my fireplace and pushed the button that turned on the instant gas heat.  I also grabbed a throw blanket from my couch.  Before wrapping it around him I hesitated.  “You might as well take the shirt off.  Pants too.”  He obliged quietly and once stripped of the sopping wet clothes down to his boxer-briefs, wrapped up in the blanket with the towel on his head.  I picked up the horribly wet, cold, lump of clothing and threw it in the bathtub.  

When I returned to the living room he was sitting on the floor in front of the fire.  I joined him on the floor and ran my hand up and down his back hoping to help warm him up.  There was so much glitter in his hair that I shuttered to think what had happened to him.  All he was supposed to do was take my place on a school field trip with my niece.  

I’d signed up to chaperone the trip to the art museum  across the street from my apartment building, but then had been called for jury duty.  So while I sat on day two of a horribly boring case about a chick who was bitten by her neighbor’s dog, my wonderful boyfriend went on what I assumed would be a pretty easy field trip with my little Peanut.

As he started to warm up, he pulled the towel off of his head and looked at me.  “They put me in charge of five girls.  Everyone else had three or four but I had five.  And apparently all of these girls, except for Peanut, were members of the Hyperactive Club.”

I covered my smile with my hand, “Oh no…”

“Oh yes!” he said and nodded.   “At lunch, they all had to have their afternoon does of meds.  I thought, ‘Sweet! They’ll calm down…’ Oh no… no no… the meds don’t actually kick in until about 15 minutes before the school day is over.”

“Oh, honey… I’m so sorry.”  I reached out to gently touch his bruised cheek, “How did…”

“How did I get the shiner?  Oh that’s easy… Little Fancy Pants decided that she wanted to climb one of the art sculptures, you know… like you do.”

I giggled, “Who is Fancy Pants?”

“I lost track of their names.  They were all named similar names so I gave them nicknames.  Fancy Pants, Sassy Pants, Cranky Pants, Mildred, and Peanut.”

“How in the world did you come up with Mildred?”

“She looked like a little librarian in her little glasses and her hair up in a bun.  I dunno, but she did not act like one… she was the worst of the bunch.”

“Okay, so Fancy Pants decided to climb?”

“Yeah, and I’m like, ‘Please get down… we’re not supposed to climb the sculptures!’ And she’s all, ‘You’re not my dad!’ And I was like, ‘You’re going to get us kicked out, please come down.’  And she’s like, ‘You suck! You can’t tell me what to do!'”

“Where was the teacher?!”

“Heck if I know.  Every time there was a disaster she was conveniently not around.  She was probably like, ‘Yeah, this sucker can take all of these crazy kids and I’ll get a day off!’ So I’m looking around in panic and the other chaperones are literally no help because they’re all with their own kids and sweet little angels who wouldn’t dare do anything crazy.  And I’m like, ‘Fuck it…’ and I reached up to try and pull Fancy Pants down.”

“Oh…” I said and winced waiting for the rest of the story.

“She KICKED me in the face!  Thankfully her shoe had fallen off in the climb but she KICKED me!  The museum security had to step in and pull her down off of the sculpture.  By then I was seeing stars and the teacher finally showed up.  She took Fancy Pants off of my hands and someone got me an ice pack for my face.  We moved on to the next exhibit and things were okay for like ten minutes.”

“Was Peanut being bad too?”

“Oh gosh, no… She was her wonderful usual self.  She looked at me a few times like, ‘Please don’t hate me because of these people!'”

“Aww… my poor girl.  I bet she was mortified.”

“Yeah well, this exhibit was all about water and waves, and how if you add coloring to the water you can see different patterns blah blah blah…”

“Yikes…” I said and reached for his hand.  Thankfully his skin was warming up and he didn’t feel like he was going to wind up with hypothermia anymore.  

“Little Mildred and Sassy Pants decided that it would be hilarious to trip me every chance they’d get all day.  Every so often they’d stick out a foot and trip me up and then laugh like it was the best thing ever.  Hell, even Crabby Pants smiled a few times.  I was this close to losing my shit, but I kept telling myself that we were almost done.  That is, until they tripped me and I fell into the part of the exhibit where the kids were encouraged to experiement by adding things to the water.  I went in ass first and fully submirged.  It was basically like a big dunk tank.”

“I’m so sorry…” I said with a chuckle.

“But no, it doesn’t end there!  So a class of thirty kids are around this tub of water and pushing sixteen billion buttons to add things to a vat that would then be stirred into the water.  The instructions are actually like, ‘Push the buttons until the container is full!  Then watch as it cascades down into the water and mixes around!'”  He shook his head and chuckled, “I’m literally up to my armpits in water but I can’t get out because the sides of the tank are slippery.  The teacher’s running around like a chicken with her head cut off, the other chaperones are looking on in horror, the kids are all laughing, and the staff are freaking out.  But the exhibit is automated, so once the vat is full, it will automatically dump into the water and then get stirred around with air jets.”

“The glitter?”

He nodded, “Yeah.  Glitter and more glitter. Plus some sequins, some puff balls… anything bright and annoying.  It comes pouring down into the thing and pretty much pours directly on my head and then the water starts swirling around and their air jets are plastering the glitter to my skin.”

“Baby…” I said and giggled again. “I owe you so big.”

“Uh, yeah…  So they pretty much kicked the class out of the museum while staff helped me out.  By the time I was back on my feet, the kids had all been loaded on the bus.  Except for Peanut who refused to leave me because she’s amazing.  I walked her to the bus, hugged her as best as I could without drenching her, and put her on the bus.  I told the teacher that I would not be riding the bus back to the school with them since you live right across the street.  She started to complain and tell me that as a chaperone I had to return to the school but I think I must have scared her with the look on my face and she quietly told me that she would let the principal know that I would be picking up my car later.”

I leaned in and kissed his cheek that wasn’t bruised. “I’m so, so, sorry.  But just think of the Hero Points that you earned from Peanut today.”

He chuckled and shook his head, “She’s lucky I love her so much.”

“I love you too…” I said with a smile and another kiss. 

“You better…” he grumbled but then laughed.

I ran my fingers through his damp hair and came away with glitter stuck to my hand, “I actually kind of like the glitter, it sparkles like your eyes.”

“Oh you do, huh?” He said and pushed me onto my back on the floor and hovered over me.  I squealed as he tickled at my sides.  “You like the glitter? I’ll totally share with you…” He shook his head like a wet dog and both water and glitter sprayed down on me as we laughed.

“Okay, okay, I give up!  I’ll never ask you to chaperone for me again!”

He stopped tickling me, “Promise?”

“Promise.” I said and reached up to cup his face in my hands.  “At least until we have our own kids.”

He grinned and lowered his body down toward me and placed a kiss on my lips.  “Deal.”

~~~~~

Now let’s see what the other girls came up with! 🙂

Bronwyn | Kris | Jessica | Gwendolyn | Paige | Deelylah