VIII-Nice Melons |open|

[Dutch MacKay]

"All life is a riddle
and the key to a riddle
is another riddle..."
-Emerson

...Dutch MacKay...July fifth... Los Angeles...

---

Dutch was pouting. His lips were pursed in displeasure, dull blue eyes dark. His life was ruined and it was his control freak little sister's fault.. He had been perfectly happy playing video games in the living room, had reached level nine in DIE RISE, had just built the Sliguifier... And Cynthia had pulled the plug on his Xbox. So he was yelling at his teammates, and it's possible he had been a little enthusiastic, but that didn't give the evil blonde overlord the right to just barge in with her stupid face and stupid words and UGH! She kidnapped the power cord and ordered him out of the apartment. She had to study and he had chores or no more zombie killing. It was with great resentment and much complaining that Dutch put on pants and a shirt that didn't smell entirely of sweat and cheese doodles and left to do the tedious chore of grocery shopping. To add insult to injury, Cyn had stapled a grocery list to his shirt to ensure that he didn't come home with "nothing but Code Red and Big Mac breath".

The ACME was crowded and Dutch was bored the minute he finished playing Jedi with the automatic doors. Cynthia's list was long and he didn't see the words gummy or snack anywhere in that obnoxiously loopy handwriting. He was also being stared at. Obviously it was because he was Dutch MacKay. Possibly because Cynthia had made the mistake of stapling the list to his shirt right side up. That meant the pretty boy had to remove his shirt to properly read the dictator's demands. He was a unexpected sight, nudging the squeaky grocery cart whilst utterly bare chested, a perplexed look on his face as he scanned the produce for Cantaloupe. Was that the wrinkly tan one or the smooth green one? Dutch always got that fruit crap confused. It wasn't one of his major food groups.

He was holding both melons, one in each hand, scrutinizing them as though their rinds held some sort of sage wisdom. "Fuck it. She gets both." With savage disregard for the fruit he tossed them into the cart without a backward glance. He let out a wail of despair and mushed his face into his shirt. "What the hell is a kiwi?!"

This was harder than Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon's Keep.

[Archie Cane]

Going up when coming down
Scratch away, it's the
Little things that kill
Tearing at my brain again

Archimedes Cane had no business shopping for himself, he realized. It was something that he had taken for granted, when Sarah had done it all. In the months since they had been apart, things hadn't felt quite right. He couldn't place the feeling, the nagging doubt that wore at him day and night. It was the way he had been accustomed to living, he had argued to himself. He was born to be a bachelor...if that were true why did he feel so lost all the time?

It was not a good state of affairs, to say the least. He had been a total workaholic, and that was fulfilling in a way. But it wasn't enough. There could be no end to progress, but he would know that something was missing. Standing on the shoulders of giants alone, it wasn't what it was cracked up to be. Truth was, he was missing her. That would have to be remedied.

But for the moment, he was faced with going through the motions of bachelor life again. So it was that he had found himself at the grocery store, buying ingredients for meals made for one. Pathetic, really. He had gotten himself a nice new bachelor pad since parting ways with Sarah Murphy, but he was hardly there. Ark was his mistress, and his lover. For now. He had a feeling that there might be something to rekindle, if he still felt that way, so must she.

Archie looked around the produce section first. He was going to pig out on BLT's tonight, that was a definite fact. Avocado, tomato, Iceberg lettuce, and turkey bacon. All organic. This was California, after all. He was a true child of California, coming from affluent parents who insisted that their children eat the healthiest food possible. Well, it had rubbed off on him. It wasn't the task itself that he wasn't suited to, as much as he didn't want to be doing it. Not when other things demanded his attention. Things like particle accelerators.

"What the hell is a kiwi?!"


Archie overheard, and stifled his laughter enough to inform the kid what a kiwi was. Now here was a hapless dude, if Archie ever saw one. Used to be, Archie wasn't so different.


"The brown fuzzy thing..." He said pointing at said fruit, " Very tasty, I assure you."