Sky High Fic - Auction

[rahmi]

Fandom: Sky High
Pairing: Layla/Will, wiffs of Will/Warren/Layla
Summary: How do you become friends after that?

"This is a stupid idea," Will says, shifting from one foot to the other.

Layla smacks his arm. "This is a brilliant idea," she corrects.

"In what world is this a brilliant idea?" Will demands. "We're standing outside Warren Peace's house with a fruit basket and an edible arrangement. Who does that?"

"We do," Layla says decisively. She'd grown all the fruit from scratch, so she's kind of proud of it. Will is kind of completely horrified by all of this.

He waves an arm unhappily and scowls; he almost drops the edible arrangement he's got. "Which is why this is a stupid idea. He hates me!"

"He doesn't hate you. You guys had a perfectly civil conversation in the Paper Lantern, didn't you?"

Will twitches guiltily. "Yeah. I guess. I mean, we were talking about you."

"That's cute," says Layla. She tilts her head and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, juggling the fruit basket as she gives Will a deeply unimpressed look. Will is getting better at identifying those expressions, so, yay, go him. "Cute. And creepy. Mostly kind of creepy, I'll admit. You shouldn't talk about people when they aren't around."

"You went to the prom with Warren to make me jealous!" Will sputters. "That means you were talking about me. You don't get to say I'm creepy for doing the same."

His girlfriend rolls her eyes. "But that just highlights how awesome Warren is," she says, "He let me babble about you and helped me figure out a way to ask you to the prom. It wasn't his fault you were a jerk and messed up the plan."

This entire conversation is making Will's head hurt. He rearranges the watermelon flowers in his fruit bouquet to avoid looking at Layla. If he looks at her, he's going to have to fly away. If he flies away, Layla will probably drop poison ivy on him in the middle of the night like she did that time he told her she had cooties.

"This is still a stupid idea," he says.

"You mean brilliant. Stop stalling." Layla knocks on the door before Will can come up with another excuse.

It opens almost immediately. Will jerks his basket of fruit up in front of his face in the vain hope that it'll hide his identity long enough for him to fly away if Warren decides to set him on fire. Again.

Warren leans one shoulder against the doorjamb and scowls at both of them, even though Layla's smiling brighter than the sun. Will wouldn't be able to scowl at that. "You guys have been arguing on the stoop for five minutes," Warren says.

"You could hear that?" Will blurts.

"Yeah, Stronghold," Warren says slowly, "I can hear when people are yelling at each other on my porch. The windows are open, moron."

"Oh."

"We brought you fruit," Layla says brightly.

Will takes that as his cue to shove the edible arrangement against Warren's chest and back up two steps. "To say thanks for helping," he says. His mind catches up as Warren starts scowling harder, pokes at the way that sounds and who Warren's parents are, and then it's like he has verbal diarrhea as he tries to correct it.

"Not for helping stop Royal Pain, because you're a hero and of course you'd help stop her, even if you hate me, but for, you know, wanting to help me and Layla get together, even though I was a major jerk to just about everyone in the school, including you, and her, and I ditched her at the Paper Lantern." Warren's still staring at him. Will takes another deep breath and tries again: "So it's to thank you for talking to her when I ditched her and for talking to me when I realized how much of a jerk I was even though you didn't really have a..." Will trails off and shrugs helplessly.

Warren's eyebrows have been steadily climbing.

"So we brought you fruit," says Layla. She's still smiling when Will looks over, but it's the kind of smile that means Will is in for it later on. He hunches his shoulders and tries to remind himself that he has superpowers now.

"You guys are insane," Warren finally says. He turns away from the door and stomps back into the house. He doesn't throw the fruit bouquet on the ground though, so that's sometimes.

"I told her that," Will mutters, letting out a breath.

Layla shrugs and follows Warren in, regardless of the fact that she hasn't been invited. That's his Layla. "I thought it would be nice," she says. "I'm usually the babbler, not Will. I didn't realize I'd have to coach him on how not to look like an idiot."

Warren's shoulders shift under his shirt. It's kind of cool, because he's got this black tank top on that has wings and it looks like they're flexing every time he takes a step. If Will tried to wear something like that, he's pretty sure it would look ridiculous.

"Nice shirt," he says before he can stop himself.

Warren throws him a weirded out look over his shoulder and nods to the kitchen. "You can put that on the counter, hippie," he says, setting his own basket down.

"I grew them myself," Layla says. "The kiwi taste the best, but you should give the apples a try too. I've always been good at apples."

Will shuffles his feet before he points to the basket on the counter. "Chocolate covered strawberries," he says, feeling his face heat, "Watermelon flowers, and, uh, cantaloupe hearts."

"Will dipped the strawberries and found the cookie cutters for the melons," Layla says, helpfully making sure Will's embarrassment is utterly complete.

"That's not totally weird at all," Warren says. He leans against the counter and crosses his arms. "Why are you guys even here? Shouldn't you be off doing lovey-dovey couple things now?"

"This is a couple thing," Layla says, "And a friend thing too. It's like killing two birds with one stone! Not that I ever advocate the killing of animals."

She leans against the island opposite Warren, smiling. It leaves Will kind of floundering in the no-man's land between them; does he lean against the counter next to Layla and have to stare at Warren or does he have to stand next to Warren and look at Layla?

He settles for standing off to the side, between the both of them so he can watch Warren's hands and Layla's face.

It's an awkward few moments. Layla purses her mouth and shakes her head at the both of them, but Will just keeps standing there. He doesn't know what to do with his hands. Warren keeps flicking glances at him too, which just makes him more nervous.

He told Layla this was a bad idea.

Finally, grudgingly, Warren uncrosses his arms and puts both hands on the edge of the counter. "I like strawberries," he says.

Will almost sprains something grabbing a strawberry stick out of the bouquet. He has to be careful not to crush the stick in his haste (everything is so fragile now), but he manages to hand off a strawberry without too much trouble.

He's sure he looks pathetically grateful when Warren eats it without saying a word, but what can you do?

Layla touches his elbow. "I told you this was a good idea," she says.

"I can hear you," Warren says around his mouthful.

"So?"

That's Layla for you.

Will sighs. "Can I have a piece of your fruit?" he asks.

Warren points at the cantaloupe heart and shrugs his shoulders. "I'm not big on cantaloupe," he says, "And the heart shape is just weird." He chars the stick in his hand without any kind of warning, but Will manages not to jump to badly.

Fire's not going to hurt him at this point, but it's still weird to see it flare like that. Warren drops his handful of ashes into the sink and reaches around Layla to grab another strawberry skewer.

Layla's staring at the ceiling when Will looks over at her. "Do you take all the batteries out of your smoke detectors?" she asks.

"Yeah."

"That can't be safe."

"I'm a pyrokinetic," Warren says, "It's not that big of a deal if a fire breaks out. Mom got sick of them going off whenever I needed to blow off steam."

"Hah," Will says, then has to stuff his mouth full of cantaloupe when both Warren and Layla stare at him in confusion. He thought it was funny, alright? A pyrokinetic blowing off steam? Come on, that's funny. He chews on his cantaloupe meekly and avoids Layla's eyes.

"How's Heroic Sayings going for you?" Layla pulls a watermelon flower out of the basket and delicately nibbles the edges off. "I'm having problems with phrases for battle because--"

"They're stupid," Warren says. "Who wants to say, 'Crime doesn't pay, bub!' every time they catch a criminal robbing a bank?"

Layla laughs. "My personal favorite was 'Holy jinkies, Hero! What are we going to do now?' when you've been captured."

"I'm on Hero track. I don't have to ask the hero stupid questions. I can rescue myself."

There are pictures on the wall, but none of them are of Warren. Will skips his eyes along them, looking, but it's all of a smiling little girl, sometimes with a woman and a man holding her. He wants to ask.

Instead, he says, "'If you do the crime, you gotta do the time.' That one doesn't even make sense. I mean, with all the lawyers who come out of the woodwork to defend villains after they've been caught, it's a wonder they do any time."

Layla shoves a cantaloupe stick at him so quickly that Will barely has a chance to get his mouth open. "What Will means to say is that he's having problems with it too," she says, sweetly.

Warren looks amused. "Dad had an awesome lawyer," he says, "Which is why he only got four consecutive life sentences instead of Mindwalker."

"We haven't gotten to the lecture on villains yet," Layla says.

"Yeah, Villains 101 is a sophomore class."

Will finishes chewing and ignores Layla stomping on his foot to say, "Why is it okay for Layla to bring up villains but my head almost gets bashed in when I try to apologize for my dad being... my dad?" Maybe he should just stick to eating and staring.

"She's not a jackass."

Will thinks about that for a second and has to admit it's a little true. Magenta had called him that a couple of days ago. "Fair enough," he says.

"We brought fruit to make up for that," says Layla and holds out an apple. She wiggles it enticingly. "The apples are delicious."

Warren sighs, takes the apple, and bites into it. He smiles at them suddenly, around the piece of apple in his mouth, and, oh, wow, okay, Will can totally see why Layla started blushing when he asked why Warren. Thankfully, he manages to keep that to himself.

"You guys want to watch a movie or something?" Warren asks after he swallows.

Will could hug him right now, he's so grateful. "Sure," he says, "What've you got?"