Title: Grown Ups
Pairing: Buttercup/Butch
Rating: PG (but G, really)
Parts: One-shot
Disclaimer: I own nothing except crippling writer's block when I finally have time to write.
Summary: What's the difference between being five and twenty?
Notes: Throwing a bunch of old stuff from the past couple of years on . Written for mathkid's birthday, back in 2008. Extremely short. Un-beta'd.

Grown Ups

-sbj-

"So what are you going to be when you grow up?"

Buttercup turned away from the TV and looked back at a semi-conscious Butch as he propped himself up in bed.

After a long moment of silence, he shrugged and said, "I dunno. It's like Saturday morning and there's kid's stuff on, and you were sitting there hugging your legs and you looked all kid-like, you know? So it made me want to ask."

He yawned and rolled back over in bed, and Buttercup's attention drifted around his cluttered bedroom, painted in the types of boy things that wouldn't look out of place in the corner of room she shared back home.

"Besides some crazy person that sneaks into other's houses while they're sleeping, I mean," Butch elaborated, voice muffled against his pillow.

Buttercup didn't recognize any of the shows they were airing now. Why was it that the older you got the worse the cartoons did?

She shifted back fully onto the bed and stretched herself out, suddenly feeling lightheaded and breathless as her head hit the pillow not two inches away from Butch. He cracked open his eyes and looked at her.

Sunlight was burning white against the wall, and with the glare of it bouncing off the television screen she couldn't make out what was going on. Even though she didn't recognize the show, back here it sounded like her childhood. She hadn't been up this early on a Saturday in ages, and it was already past ten.

If Butch had asked her back in those days, which wouldn't have happened anyway because they would never have stopped punching each other long enough to talk, she would've felt the same trapped feeling she felt now at being caught off guard with a question, a world-weighted question that she couldn't possibly answer, even nearly fifteen years later.

But he hadn't asked her back in those days. And now, instead of punching her, instead of bulleting out of bed and flinging her through the wall, he laid there underneath his covers, bleary eyes slowly focusing on her as she sank back on his pillow.

Like his eyes coming into focus, Buttercup gradually saw the answer.

"Yours," she said, her own voice suggesting she was more surprised at the answer than he was, and the grayness in his eyes dissipated as his gaze, clear and steady, bore into her.

-fin-