A Friend

A/N: OK, you may as well tattoo "NERD" on my forehead for this. Wreck-it Ralph comes out in a month... what am I doing writing this?

Please review, suggestions and constructive criticism are welcome!

Minor spoilers for the trailers, but other than that, enjoy!

There's a hint towards Lilo & Stitch 2, by the way~ see if you can find it :)

Wreck-it Ralph (c) Walt Disney Pictures

"And there's the Sour Milky Way…oh, and the Swiss cheese Man…" Vanellope glanced over at the massive man beside her with a playfully wry expression. "Can you find any?"

Perplexed, Ralph looked heavenward once more, only finding the constellations that had already been ingrained into Sugar Rush's night sky. Twiddling his thumbs over his stomach, he hedged, "uh…there's a cupcake right over there…?"

Vanellope responded with a fierce shake of the head, her smaller hands mimicking Ralph's as they folded over her stomach, "no, you need to look for the stars that aren't already there…the glitches."

At this Ralph blinked, quickly looking over at his the child he had begun to tentatively calling friend. The brunette was looking down at her hands now, pointedly avoiding his gaze.

They both laid on a floor of hardened taffy, not much more comfortable than his bed of bricks back home, though he didn't know how late it was, or if the nine-year-old should have already been asleep, but with a cursory glance to the child's shack he let it go with a mental shrug, admitting he didn't know much about kids anyway. How right he was.

"What's your game like?"

Startled by the sudden wish for conversation, Ralph turned his head to make contact with the brunette's own hazel eyes, her features soft, innocently curious, and her protective walls gradually (carefully) fell. There was no more sass, no more insults—simply a child asking a question. He felt himself shrug, looking back up at the star-speckled sky. "Well…it's not as complex as this game, or Hero's Duty." He paused to twiddle his large thumbs again, connecting a group of stars in the shape of a hammer. He was avoiding the subject, and the girl surely knew it, but she was silent as he collected his thoughts.

"In my game, I was the bad guy."

Ralph didn't look Vanellope in the eye, but in his periphery he saw her blink. "What?" she demanded, her young tone incredulous. Ralph knew was what next, having already gone through it one to many times—she wouldn't want anything to do with him, shun him; his first friend, 'tell him to get lost, jump off a cliff, we don't need his kind here, not in Niceland'—

"But you're, like, the nicest guy I've ever met!"

This time Ralph did turn towards Vanellope, his eyes as wide as proverbial saucers as the child huffed at his injustice, arms folded petulantly over her chest. By the time the girl had glanced at him he had already wiped the look off shock from his features, but in the cavity of his chest, a small bit of his heart mended. He smiled slightly, a real smile for the first time in a long while, though they seemed to appear with more frequency when in the company of Vanellope.

"Thanks, kiddo," he sighed, and felt the child lightly punched his arm, not that it would do him any harm if she hit him harder.

"Have some faith in yourself, Ralph," she yawned, shuffling closer to him until she was practically curled up around his shoulder. The bags under her large eyes looked darker than before. "Thanks for helping me with my race car, by the way," she murmured sleepily, her exhausted innocence making up for whatever pain he had gone through during the construction of said vehicle.

Alarm bells went off in his head as Vanellope made herself comfortable on the hardened taffy floor, and before he could suggest that she moved to her significantly more comfortable sponge cake bed, she spoke again, clutching at his shoulder as if it were a pillow. "You won't…you won't leave…right?" she mumbled, her eyes inexplicably wide, though they were neither terrified nor demanding, looking up at him with the most mournful expression he had ever seen.

'Everyone here says I'm just a mistake.'

"I won't leave. I promise."

Ralph watched as the unbidden fear in Vanellope's features settled and her entire form relaxed against him. In moments she was asleep, expression peaceful, though not once during the night did she let go of him.

With a small huff of false exasperation, Ralph placed one of his massive hands over her as a replacement blanket, wondering if this was what it felt like to have a best friend.