An 'Iron Chef'-themed 'Daria' fan fiction by Brother
Grimace
"My dad told me about this pizza place he went
to when he went to school over in Illinois. Saluki Pizza. Their big boy was the
'E.B.A.' - Everything But Anchovies'. The thing was huge - at least twenty
toppings - and you could get a 12-inch for seven-seventy-seven, two Cokes
included, or nine-ninety-nine for a 14-inch with four cans of Coke."
"Sounds good."
"Too good. They barely lasted the school year -
but the memory lives on."
"Your dad remembers it every time he gets a
pizza?"
"I actually had a dream about a pizza, and my
father showed up in it."
"That's not good."
"No, actually it was. The pizza ate him, and
the pizza place came up with a new pie. 'Everything, Including Dad."
Brittany Taylor tried not to spill her cola as she
bubbled over in laughter, and Michael Mackenzie caught her hand and eased the
glass to the table. "You've got a
sick sense of humor, Mack!"
"It's not sick at all. It's in perfect shape -
that way it can do all sorts of things."
Brittany rolled her huge blue eyes at the young man
sitting across the booth from her, and she gave him her warmest smile. She and
Mack had always been the best of friends, ever since they had been dumped into
the same playroom while their fathers watched Jordan, Pippen and Rodman
obliterate their opposition in the NBA Finals.
This was the first time in almost a year that she'd
seen Mack, not since the big graduation blowout that her father threw for her.
He stayed for all of fifteen minutes, and the next week, she'd heard that he'd
left that night to immediately start summer classes. She left for her school
two weeks later, to go through 'cheer camp' and afterwards, try out for the
squads...
She'd been driving along Dega Street when she saw
Mack, standing in front of 'Haus-to-Haus', that creepy second-hand furniture
store, and looking at that huge handcrafted full-length mirror that they had in
the front display window. She'd have stopped to talk even if she hadn't seen
the strange look on his face as he looked at it; minutes later, she's gotten
Mack into her brand-new Mustang convertible with the promise of a slice of
pizza. He'd missed Pizza King; as it just so happened, so did she.
It didn't hurt, either, that she wasn't wearing the
ever-present LHS cheerleader uniform from their days as inmates in Li's prison.
Gone was the skirt, ribbons and pom-poms; Brittany was wearing a stylish,
snug-fitting garnet-and-white pullover sweater, matching pressed white slacks,
and a tiny emerald pendant that she wore outside her sweater when she wanted to
drive some guy to distraction.
"By the way, nice pendant," Mack told her, as they were
zooming along. "Thank you," she replied, somehow managing not
to smile. "Glad you noticed."
She would never dream of telling him, but Brittany
had always had a huge crush on Mack. She never did anything about it, though.
Jodie Landon was a really nice girl, although she never treated Mack the way he
deserved, and sometimes, it seemed as though she really didn't care about Mack...
Now, of course, with them all going to different colleges, and Jodie going all
the way to Atlanta, well, maybe, Mack could find a girl who would really
appreciate him, and treat him nice, and could just talk to him, and she'd,
like, really listen, because he actually had interesting things to say, and
sometimes, he'd talk about important stuff - and of course, he had the most
perfect brown eyes that just made you warm when you looked in them...
"Who are you wishing dead over there,
Brittany?"
"HMH?"
"That look you just had on your face - if
someone looked like that and they were just THINKING about me, I'd stop running
only when I got to the Canadian border. Are the girls on the cheerleading squad
THAT bad?"
"Almost as bad as the guys on the team with
you," she teased, swirling the ice in her soda around as she averted her
eyes from Mack. She wasn't sure what he'd say when she told him... "Mack, I
was just wondering..."
"No - I haven't seen him lately."
That shook Brittany out of her malaise. "Him -
who?"
Now it was Mack's turn to be slightly shaken.
"Kevin. I haven't seen him since Thanksgiving break, when I went over to
his house to watch the games with him on -"
"The Pigskin Channel," she spoke in unison
with him. "God, what do you guys see in that station? It's just lots of
guys hitting and running after and rolling around with other guys and grabbing
balls - if you want to see THAT, just go to Fire Island during the
summer!"
"Brits, you're an evil, evil girl," Mack
smirked, demolishing half a slice in one bite. "There's a lot of good
stuff that you can say about Pigskin - "
Brittany sat back and folded her arms under her
breasts. "Go ahead."
"Maybe I should eat some more pizza. We can
talk about football channels some other time."
"There's a good idea."
Mack sighed inwardly - but Brittany smiled at him.
"You didn't dodge anything, Mack. I LET you off the hook."
"Not gonna do the same for you. How come you
never talked to Kevin after we graduated?"
At that moment, Mack would have given out a
time-share on his soul for Brittany to have the same cup size as Calista
Flockhart - or at the very least, worn a baggy shirt. A VERY baggy shirt. A pup
tent with sleeves would have been nice. Women the world over hated nothing as
much as a guy who looked at her chest instead of her eyes when he talked to
her, and Brittany Taylor was a doctorate-level test in self-control. Thank God
for four years of science classes with both Brittany and Miss Barch in eyeshot,
he thought, deliberately not noticing as Brittany yawned and stretched, making
the garnet-and-white pullover she wore contort in the most distracting of ways...
"I can't catch up with him," she finally
admitted. "He's graduated from LHS - I asked Ms. Li when I came back to
town last week - but I can't pin him down. His parents won't even talk to me -
Mr. Thomphson acts as though I betrayed Kevin by not flunking along with him,
and Mrs. Thomphson just sits there sniffling - when she's not mumbling about the
'floozy tramp blow-up doll that kept my baby busy following around so that he
didn't get his work done' under her breath... all one-hundred-proof of it. Jeez.
It's not as if he died or something, but they act like it."
'"That bad?"
"As I left, his mom came to the door, screaming
as loud as she could how she's glad that at least Kevin didn't get me pregnant.
As if I'd let him get that far!"
That bit of news rocked Mack. "Wait a minute.
Are you saying that you and Kev never - wait a minute. NEVER?"
"Mack, please! YOU'RE supposed to be a
gentleman about things like that!"
Brittany actually blushed as she spoke, surprising
Mack - as long as he'd known Brittany, he'd never seen anything that could make
her skin flush rose-pink like that... not that he'd mind, he thought to himself.
It suits her, with just a touch more color in her cheeks...
"Kevvie's fun, and he's a good kisser, I guess,
but THAT? With HIM? Ohhh, I don't think so, no matter what he says!"
"But Kevin wouldn't lie to me..."
"We didn't - I don't care what anyone says or
tells you, even Kevin," Brittany replied, a bit more forcefully and a
touch louder than she's meant to. No. Not once. Under the bra - open bra -
loads of play - that's it - Mack, are you BLUSHING?"
Mack downed half a soda, shaved ice and all, hoping
that the burning sensation would go away. "No. I'm not. I don't
blush."
"Yes, you do."
"Black folks don't blush."
"Then you need a stronger suntan lotion,
because I can see that blush right through that excellent tan!" Brittany
laughed. "Anyway, no. Never. I'm waiting for the right guy to ask me - I
mean, I'm waiting for the right guy. First time's supposed to be special."
"Yeah," he agreed wistfully, "they
say to be careful and choose wisely, because you never forget your first..."
Something about the way he spoke made Brittany's ears perk up, and her eyebrows
rose slightly.
"You haven't done it," she said quietly, a
note of surprise and almost awe almost masking the touch of relief that
suddenly flowed through her from out of nowhere. "You haven't... but I
thought that you and Jodie-"
"Oh, we tried," Mack said, his grin
becoming lopsided. "We definitely tried. Just before Christmas, our senior
year. Her parents had to go to this thing for the Twin Counties United
Minorities Business Alliance, and she got out of it because she had to study
for her exams. She finished way early, so she called, I went over, we watched
'Mahogany', and we tried..."
His voice trailed off.
Brittany didn't know what to say, and she couldn't
explain the sudden rush of happiness through her; she took another huge bite
off a cheese-stuffed crust, chewing slowly to avoid being the first to speak.
To avoid saying the wrong thing. Not now, please,
not here; I don't know why, but please don't let me be stupid or silly right
now...
"The funny thing is, Jodie actually thought it
was her - that we didn't go all the way because she wasn't ready, or she was
afraid of getting pregnant, or whatever else she said, I don't really remember.
All I know is that I couldn't have made it with her even if I'd tried, or if I
wanted to."
"I don't get it."
Mack didn't seem to notice that he'd placed his
elbow right into his slice of pizza. "When we - I mean, when Jodie and I
were sitting on the couch, she was wearing this huge Crestmere sweatshirt her
dad had gotten her, and when we started making out, she was trying to get out
of it, and she got stuck - we got stuck. One of the buttons on my letter
sweater got caught on her blouse button underneath, and one thing led to
another, and there we were, playing 'Teenage Twister'. Hands everywhere,
something's spinning and eventually, somehow, we landed on the floor."
A lump of something very large and very cold seemed
to choke Brittany and send ice through her. "I thought that you and Jodie
hadn't - you said -"
"After a minute of two, we managed to get the
button uncaught - Jodie finally calmed down and realized things would go faster
if she stopped thinking about her folks walking in at any moment," he
continued. "She finally pulled loose and her head popped out of the
sweatshirt - her eyes were so big, and her hair was all over -"
"She had her hair out of the braids?"
"Another thing for the Crestmere kick that they were pulling on her - let
your hair down and take the braids out. Too ethnic, they were saying."
"The Landons were always tough."
"Yeah. Jodie starts saying that this just
proves that she's not ready - if she really wanted to do this, she wouldn't be
fumbling, and doing stupid things, and basically self-sabotaging herself. I let
her say that, because I know why I couldn't do it."
"How come?"
Mack lifted his eyes from the table and fastened his
eyes with Brittany's own, and he noticed, and not for the first time, the girl
behind the pom-poms, the cheerleader sweater, or the little girl that he played
odds-and-evens with for cookies.
It was time.
"When Jodie's head popped up, all I thought of
was how much I wished that it was from beneath a Lawndale cheerleader sweater...
and when I saw her eyes and just how big they were, all I could think of was
how much I wanted for them to be blue."
The lump in Brittany's throat had suddenly
evaporated, and she could breathe again. She couldn't quite trust herself to
speak, however; she was quiet for a long time.
"Mack..."
"Brittany."
"Why didn't you ever say anything to me
before...?"
A thick moment of quiet.
"Kevin."
"Huh...?"
Mack took almost five minutes before he could find
his voice.
"When Kevin and I were little, his dad and my
dad had a copy of this old movie called 'Brian's Song'. It was about two
football players, Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers. Every weekend, up until we
went into the 'Pint-Size Pigskin League', we'd watch 'Brian's Song,' and we did
everything together, just like they did."
Brittany's eyes were wider than he'd ever seen them,
but with a new softness that made her look even more beautiful than ever before
- did he just think of Brittany as beautiful?
Did he actually think of her in... that way?
You always have, he told himself, you
just never acted on it. Now tell her why.
"I don't ever want to hurt Kevin," he
said. "He's closer to me than a brother could have been, and I don't want
to see him suffer. I can't explain it any more than that."
Mack looked back up at Brittany again. "Yes, I
can. I love him, Brittany. He's my family. Through all the stupid stuff, all
the dumb stuff, it doesn't matter. He's always going to be family to me."
For a moment, he thought that Brittany was going to
cry.
"But I've wanted to say... I want, I mean, I've
wanted to tell you things for so long, but Kevin decided that he liked you, and
I couldn't hurt him by competing with him and taking the girl that he's crazy
about-"
"Confident, aren't you?" Brittany said,
blowing a wisp of hair out of her face as she sat back, a brilliant smile on
her face. "Typical captain of the football team. No matter what happens,
he's sure that he's going to win."
The spell was broken; Mack actually felt himself
relaxing.
"Coach Juntunen noticed that I wasn't really trying
to date. He said that I'm good - that I'm REALLY good - but that this year, my
mind wasn't in the game like it should be. Before I left this year, we had a
meeting in his office, and he said that I need to get my head clear. Go off and
take the summer to do whatever I have to do - and then, if I don't come back
committed a hundred-and-ten-percent to the Firestorm football program, he's
going to run my ass up and down the stairs of Hille Stadium so many times that
the only relationship I'll have is with seat 276VV, all the way up in the
nosebleed section. His quote."
Brittany smiled a tiny, knowing smile as she dabbed
at her mouth with her napkin, and then wiped her hands with another. "What
else did he say-?"
"He said that... he said that if Kevin was my
friend, then he wouldn't stand in my way. Not even if he's not coming, and he
knows that he's not," Mack continued. "Juntunen said that I needed to
remember that sometimes, I need to be selfless for others, and sometimes, I
have to be selfish for myself..."
"He
sounds like a smart person," Brittany said, and at that moment, Mack
realized that Brittany had dropped the kewpie-doll tone she normally spoke in.
In fact, he suddenly realized, she hadn't spoken like that since they had sat
down to eat. "Well, then. I guess that I'm just going to have to help you.
It wouldn't be right for you to do all that running..."
Mack gave a start as Brittany lifted herself from
her seat and slid over into the booth next to him. "And I'm actually doing
this for... for football!"
"Brittany - personal space..."
"Oh, shut up."
Without so much as a warning, Brittany pressed close
and pressed her lips gently to Mack's, feeling his warmth, his form, and the
rightness of how it felt as she felt his hand come up to cup her face as they
kissed. "Well," she said, an eternity later, after their lips had
parted, "for someone who's so confident in himself, you are an awful
kisser."
Mack still had the semi-dazed look on his face of a
man who's just been missed by a speeding train. ""Oh, I am...?"
"Oh, you are," she told him, draping her
arms around him. "Now... if you'll let me... I can help you learn. It'll help
you with your concentration... that way, you won't have to run so much... and that
way, you'll have enough energy to help me with my problem..."
Mack decided that the feel of Brittany in his arms
was something that he could probably get used to. In time. After a lot of
practice. "Which is...?"
"I'm horrible at 'Twister'," she informed
him. "I just don't have anybody to practice with."
"Maybe I could help with that."
"Maybe you could."
Brittany kissed Mack again, and this time, the
feeling was warm, and soft, and it was right.
They parted after a time, and Mack brushed at a wisp
of Brittany's hair. "Brittany... before this goes any further-"
"I know," she finished. "We have to
talk to him, and we will. Right now, let's not talk any more."
"Don't you think I can talk?"
"Yes, you can talk," she smiled, "but
not as well as certain people."
"I can talk as well as anybody - Jodie! I can
talk as well as Jodie, or, or - Charles! Daria Morgendorffer! I can definitely
talk as well as Daria Morgendorffer!"
Brittany stroked Mack's brow, and looked him
straight in the eye. "Mister Mackenzie, I went to school with Daria
Morgendorffer. I invited Daria Morgendorffer to a party. Daria Morgendorffer
was almost my friend. Michael - you're no Daria Morgendorffer."
"I should smack you for saying that."
"Wait until we're alone."
+++++
Staring out into the dining area of Pizza King from
behind the one-way security mirrors installed in the walls, Kevin Thomphson
watched as Brittany and Mack kissed once more.
Dude, I'm sorry I lied to you, he thought. I thought
you'd think I was a loser if I didn't score with Brittany - everybody knows we
made out enough all over to think that we went all the way. Hey, and I actually
DID bag all those other babes - once they thought I knocked boots with Brit,
EVERYBODY wanted to come and say hello to my lil' friend!
I know you're gonna be big someday, Mack
Daddy... Michael... Mack. You get to be Gale Sayers, and I'm Brian Piccolo. I can't
be around you just yet, man, but I know you're gonna rock, man. You're gonna
ROCK!
And put in a good word for the babes for me.
I might need that. And a loan. Not much.
I know you'll treat Brit like a lady. I
didn't know that you liked her when I saw her, or I'd have said that YOU should
go for it! Hey, I'M the QB, but YOU'RE Captain of the team - you SHOULD get
first pickings!
Kevin wiped pizza sauce and crust off his hands with
his apron, and put his hand up to the mirror. I love you, bro. You're my
family. Go get it all.
THE END
3 February 2004
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