Chapter Text
Wise was hanging around one day, completely bored out of his mind. Belle was busy with the store and they had no commissions for their other job as a proxy. Slow days are usually a blessing to workers such as him, but he’s been spoiled by proxy work to enjoy them. It doesn’t help the fact their investigation is slowed to a crawl, so he can’t even preoccupy himself with that. He walks out of the staff room carefully and into the empty floor.
“Oh. Hey, Wise. What are you up to?” Belle asks.
Her usual bubbly tone is dimmed. She’s bored, too. Lack of customers does that to you. Wise sighs and scratches his head.
“Nothing really. All quiet here, huh?”
“Yeah. Really bad day for business. Both here and back there.”
They both lean against the front desk as they proceed to scroll aimlessly.
“Master, I may have to remind you that my power intake has increased by 27% over last month. Perhaps you should raise your sales to continue to keep me functioning. In fact, forget my previous suggestion. You need to do that if you wish to continue your smooth operation for commissions.”
“Shut up, Fairy.” The siblings say in unison as the AI cuts out.
“So… why don’t we just go eat noodles?” Belle says, perking up at her own suggestion.
“Well we got nothing better to…”
*BEEP-BEEP*
Wise’s phone goes off, receiving a message from whoever. He thinks it’s probably just a spam email or something, considering how full the day has been.
“Oh. It’s from Ellen”
Belle gasps a bit.
“Ellen? She never texts first. Wonder what it is.”
They stand there awkwardly staring at each other. Belle waits expectantly as Wise tilts his head.
“What, want me to read it out loud?”
“Obviously! Come on bro, don’t leave me hanging!”
Wise smiles a bit and shakes his head, finding her nosiness endearing. He clears his throat and does his best impression of the shark girl,
“hey. im bored. can i come over and hang with you? ill evn cook if your hngry or smth.”
Belle gives a little clap at Wise’s impression and gets giddy to finally have something to do.
“Hey, looks like we’re not the only bored ones! Come on, say yes already! She’s even gonna cook, so we can ditch the noodles!”
“Calm down Belle, I'm going…”
Wise: Sure! Me and Belle are free so come on over and can’t wait for lunch!
He puts his phone aside
“Alright, now we wait.”
“Yes! I can’t wait! I’ll go buy some stuff from the store for ingredients. I wanna make sure she cooks something amazing!”
Belle happily skips out of the store, the bell chiming on her way out.
Wise smiles, knowing his sister can’t sit still for two seconds. He retreats back to the staff room and sits on the couch, starting to doom scroll while he waits for the girls.
He gets a message back from Ellen, one that makes his eyes squint.
Ellen: oh. kinda wanted you and me only. shoulda just said so first.
Ellen: oop
Although Wise has no idea how to interpret girls' emotions, anyone within a 15 meter radius can definitely tell how Ellen is feeling.
—————————————————————————
Ellen yawns as she wakes from her slumber, her tail jerking awake at the sound of her alarm. She lifts her head and reaches out to stop her alarm and slowly rises, her blanket falling off her. A Shark thiren may see shark paraphernalia as cultural appropriation and offensive, but Ellen is not one of them as she stretches in her Shark onesie in her baby blue room.
As she slips off the onesie and puts on her school clothes she’s bombarded with messages from her friends.
“Ugh, what now…” She groans as she looks at the constantly lit screen.
It’s all a bunch of the same from the last two days. Just girl talk on guys, and theorizing who’s Ellen’s type thrown in the mix.
Lately, they’ve been going non stop about cute guy this, hot guy that, and honestly she’s getting tired of it. Why bother with all the annoying boys at school? They’re just straight annoying.
She puts on her makeup quickly and perfectly, a practiced ritual of a teenage shark. She’s seen some thirens be more animal than human, and feels a tiny bit sorry they can’t wear makeup or proper fitting clothes without exuberant prices.
The day at school is normal as always, with Ellen falling asleep in every single class. Lunch roles around and Ellen sits with her friends on the rooftop, being bombarded by the chatter of boys.
“Ellen, you’re being too quiet! Come on and say something.” One of them asks
“Huh, like what?” Ellen asks as she sucks on her lollipop to stay awake. Her tail is completely flaccid, completely uninterested.
“Oh I don’t know, maybe the fact that you’re still single?! How can someone as good looking as you be so hopelessly alone?”
Ellen’s nostrils flared. It’s not a sore spot really, but she still doesn’t like being ridiculed. Being teased takes being tough. And being tough takes energy
“I just don’t really care. It’s too much effort.” Ellen replies.
Her friends scoff, refusing to believe she has no interest in anyone.
“Come on, Sharkie! There’s gotta be someone, at least one, out there you like!”
Ellen’s eyes narrow as she bares her teeth. She’s starting to get annoyed. Nonverbally it’s obvious she’s trying to say “No” but her body betrays it. Her tail stops resting and starts to sway left and right, slowly becoming more exaggerated as she thinks more.
She did like someone, and she liked them a lot.
“Ha! I knew it! Our little Shark friend does like a boy!”
Ellen can’t help but blush, her tail now shrinking a bit. She’s usually indifferent about her thiren blood but now she’s furious.
“C-come on, it’s not like that.” Ellen says while looking away, clearly showing a lie.
“Who is it? Is he cute? Does he like you, too? Is he someone you met here? Is he from work?”
The questions go on and on until she’s had enough and bites down, cutting the lollipop in her mouth clean with a loud crunch. They all step back and get the message to calm down.
“Ok, ok… but you know we won’t let this go. We gotta at least know something.” They say.
Ellen sighs. She knows her friends, and that they’re not lying.
“Ugh… if I bring you to see him, will you stop?”
They all nod in unison as Ellen’s eyes fall downcast. No way out of this one now.
———
The clatter of multiple footsteps on asphalt fill Ellen’s head. She’s only ever come by on her own, and now she’s bringing a small entourage. An entourage of teenage girls with loudmouths.
As they all step in the front of the video store, Ellen turns around with a serious expression. The girls, who were all giggling, stood at attention at the foreign expression.
“Alright, since we’re ditching only lunch, we have about 10 minutes only. You guys better not say anything, or else I’ll get mad.”
As if to exemplify her point, her tail hits the ground. The girls flinch at the complete 180 their friend’s personality took. To think that someone always fighting to stay awake can get so scary…
They all nod in their stiff forms.
“Yeah, we get it Ellen…”
“Good. Then let’s get this over with.”
As they walk in, the bell chimes and so does Ellen’s heart. Wise was there, luckily. He was manning the counter, his chin resting on his palm as he leaned over it. The bags under his eyes looked a bit worse than usual, so Ellen couldn’t help but imagine him hard at work. She would totally help him relax with a movie and maybe cuddle and if it gets even better they would…
She’s knocked out of her delusions after her friends run past and look at the movies that line the wall. Wise gives a friendly smile towards Ellen, inviting her over. She doesn’t even think about it as her legs walk up to the counter subconsciously.
“Oh, Miss Ellen, are you here for a movie? I thought that school was still going on at this time.” Wise asks
“Er, I was telling my friends about the store and they wanted to come over. We’re only here for a bit, it’s our lunch break.” She says nonchalantly in her usual tired tone.
Truth is, her chest is thumping. Whenever she got close to Wise this happened. Luckily, he somehow doesn’t notice.
One of her friends bumps up next to Ellen, taking a look at Wise and amazement.
“Wow… Ellen wasn’t lying, he’s super-”
She’s suddenly interrupted by a rough texture tickling her leg. She turns to her left and sees two blood red eyes burning into every pore on her body, boiling every cell alive.
“Er… uh, I mean the store is super cool! It has a lot of movies I wanna see, haha…” her friend whimpers out
Ellen’s tail retreats and she sighs
“Thank you, that means a lot. If you want, we could set you up with our membership program. Would be better in the long run for all those movies you want.” He says with his usual neutral face, his mind always going to business mode when pitching a movie.
“Oh uh really? If it’s alright, I wouldn’t mind having an excuse to come se-”
“No, we were actually just leaving. Right?” Ellen says while she stares into her friend's soul.
“U-uh yeah… gotta get to class, ha…”
“Oh, really. Well I hope all of you return. You too, Ellen.”
Ellen looks away and drags her friends out with each stomp, hiding the faintest of blush.
———
The rest of the day was torture. All day and in all classes she had to deal with constant teasing from her friends. “He’s so cute” this, “Just ask him out” that.
As she grabs her bag and gets ready to head home, her friends once again jump her with the teasing
“Hey, lover girl!” One said while they giggled.
“Come on, it’s not that serious…”
“You should just text him! Say you wanna have alone time. Any guy would get that, and any guy would fall over themselves for you!”
Ellen sighed. Of course she thought of it, way too many times in fact. She just could never bring herself to reach out first. Not only is that out of character, she’s just nervous if Wise would even pick up the hint.
“He’s a dummy half the time, so I don’t even know how he would get it.” She finally says as her excuse.
“All the more reason you have to go first! Geez, you’re so lazy sometimes.”
Ellen scoffs and lets the conversation lull. She has no idea how to refute that, really. She should do it, but just can’t. It’s not even the fact she’s too nervous around him, it’s just that his head is full of bricks half the time when it comes to people.
They walk together until Ellen parts ways to her home and plops face first on her bed. All this running around and talking has her more exhausted than usual. She’ll deal with her day later…
———
The next day comes the same as the last. She wakes up and grabs her phone. It’s late morning, around 10.
To delay her wakefulness, she scrolls aimlessly through her phone. The usual activity for a lazy weekend. She gets the urge to scroll through her photo album.
Pictures of sharks, Victoria Housekeeping, her friends, and random pictures of cats fill her vision. She also sees pictures of someone. Of Wise.
She had collected a small collection of pictures of Wise, obviously on the sly. The random request to Belle, her happening around Wise when out and about, sometimes even the back of his head. She didn’t like the fact how head over heels she was, but it was always comforting either way to look at them.
Her friends' voices come replaying as she looks at his face through the screen. “Just text him,” as if it’s that easy. She can’t help but let her mind wander what could be, then is reminded with the fact Wise would most likely not try anything as bold as asking her out.
“AARGH! I give up, I’m doing it.”
She opens up InterKnot and opens his DM’s.
Ellen: hey. im bored. can i come over and hang with you? ill evn cook if your hngry or smth.
Her hand shakes as she presses send, her tail coiling around her for comfort. Why was a simple text so nerve wracking?
The wait is agonizing, even if it's only been 20 seconds before he actually responded.
Wise: Sure! Me and Belle are free so come on over and can’t wait for lunch!
Ellen’s eyes narrowed at the message. Him and Belle? Did he not see how obvious what she really wanted? She even offered to cook for him! That’s practically asking to marry him!
Ellen takes a breath, stopping herself from crushing her own phone, before sending out her response
Ellen: oh. kinda wanted you and me only. shoulda just said so first.
Ellen: oop
She tosses her phone to the side and stretches. Might as well go anyway. Not like she has anything better to do. Her mind wanders to what could have happened, not knowing fate has something cooking for her. Something that may spark her keg of feelings.