Peanut Butter Banana Sandwiches

It had taken a lot of paperwork and time and more sitting still than Sportacus could stand. But it had been worth it, he thought, as he watched Stephanie smile for the first time in days. He hugged her again and told her to go say hi to her friends after so long. She smiled again, though weakly, and went off to do just that.
Sportacus sighed in a tired way, but he still smiled as he watched her run off. It would take some getting used to, being a parent. He hadn’t expected this ever, given various factors in his life, being a hero as one. Heroes didn’t typically have children. Or significant others. They could have friends, close friends even, but to connect someone directly to a hero was to put that someone in direct peril. That was the paradox of being a hero: you promoted strong ties between other people, but made sure to keep all ties to you only loosely knotted. It was almost hypocritical.
Never the less, he was glad. The burns on her arms and legs were healing quickly, and the slight bruising on one cheek had almost disappeared entirely. He smiled dreamily to himself. He wasn’t father of the year material… but to help Stephanie so much made him feel like he was doing something more important than just rescuing kids from bumps and scrapes. It made him feel like he was a real hero.
With that thought, he turned to the person who made it possible. Robbie Rotten was hiding ineffectually behind a tree nearby, watching. Sportacus smiled and waved and Robbie cursed before sulkily coming out from “hiding” and joining Sportacus at the wall. Sportacus was moving slightly, rolling his shoulders back and forth and stepping from foot to foot slowly. All this standing still was unnerving him.
Robbie rolled his eyes at the action and leaned against the wall.
“Well, Sportakook? What did you want?”
Sportacus smiled.
“Thanks, Robbie.” Robbie looked at him doubtfully, one eyebrow raised. “No, I mean it,” Sportacus continued. “I… I wouldn’t have been able to save Stephanie like this if you didn’t help me with all that paperwork stuff… so, thank you.”
Robbie shifted and mumbled, unused to praise or being told by his rival that he was appreciated.
“It wasn’t like you couldn’t have found anyone else to do the job,” he finally said, not looking at Sportacus. “Besides… it’s not like I had anything better to do. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep in peace if Pinky was left there.” Sportacus fairly beamed at him, and Robbie looked startled.
“See? I knew you cared! You’re just a softie, Robbie!”
“I am not!” Robbie yelled, looking scandalized. “I meant that, if she was in trouble and you couldn’t” he sneered “save her, your pathetic wailing would’ve kept me awake all the time. Don’t read into things that aren’t there!”
This only caused Sportacus to smile wider, and before Robbie could stop him, enveloped him in a hug that nearly cracked the taller man’s back.
“Thank you!” Sportacus said again, finally releasing a bewildered Robbie. “Thank you for being such a good friend.”
“Friend?!” Robbie scoffed and pulled a disgusted face. “Whatever gave you that idea? Blech.”
Sportacus chuckled and told Robbie he could go back to his cake (he shuddered) eating if he wanted to, and with that, he leapt over the wall and went to check in on Stephanie and the other children. As much as it pained him to admit, she couldn’t play many sports until her arms got better.
Robbie stood there for a minute more, fighting with himself. Finally, he stalked off back toward his lair, and steadfastly ignored the warm tingling around his torso where the blue sports elf had hugged him. It just meant that he was exuberant as always, like a large puppy.
It didn’t mean anything at all.


A week had passed, and everyone could see that Stephanie was getting better. Her arms were very nearly healed, and she ran around and played with the other children. Robbie Rotten had been relatively quiet, and that worried Sportacus slightly, wondering if maybe he had pushed it too far when thanking Robbie.
Of course, that thought was shoved violently aside when Stephanie came back to their designated pick-up spot, sans smile.
“Stephanie?” he asked, pushing up off the ground from a set of pushups and rolling onto his feet. “What’s wrong?”
He held her when she didn’t say anything and simply tried to hide herself against him, like she was trying to make the world disappear. When he felt tears start to soak through his shirt, he rubbed her back lightly and guided her back up the ladder into the air ship.
He had an extra room added onto an unused part of his airship when he adopted Stephanie, so that she could have her own room, even if it was small. An air ship mechanic had had to come out and see to its construction and make sure the air ship wouldn’t be unbalanced by it, and everything checked out okay. But when they climbed back into the air ship, Stephanie didn’t go for her room, despite the tears still evident on her face. Sportacus hugged her and asked again what was wrong. She sniffled, and her shoulders jerked when she tried to kill a sob before it began.
“We… were playing…” she muttered into his shirt, still trying to stay strong. “We were racing… and we passed by the house…”
Sportacus frowned for a moment in confusion before it dawned on him. The house.
Her uncle’s house.
He rubbed her back again as she broke down and started crying silently again, and he crooned little ineffectual comforts to her. He pressed a panel on the wall that caused the nearest bed, his own, to come out from the wall, and he sat her down on the edge and sat next to her, still holding and muttering that it would be okay.
Eventually she fell asleep with her head on his lap and Sportacus gently running his fingers through her hair. He was getting uncomfortable staying still like that, but he forced himself to. Stephanie wasn’t okay, and if sleep would dry her tears, he’d let her sleep for however long she wanted to.

The next day found him knocking on the lid to Robbie’s underground home. His lips quirked upward as he heard the man’s complaining about interrupted naps get closer until finally Robbie shakily pushed the lid open and glared at Sportacus
“What do you want now?”
“I wanted to ask you to babysit Stephanie.” he replied quickly. He knew this was a risky idea. Robbie could easily say no. But…
“Why in the world would you ask me of all people to do that?”
Sportacus took a deep breath.
“Because I trust you, Robbie.”
This completely halted the tirade that Robbie had formed in his head, and the town villain was left speechless. Sportacus continued.
“I haven’t told anyone this, because I don’t want people to worry. But Stephanie is still upset, and… and the only adults in town are all too busy to watch after her, and I don’t know them as well as you. So… please, Robbie? I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I know I already owe you from before, but I need someone I can rely on for when people need saving and I can’t leave her alone in the air ship, and I have to meet the contractor for the air ship company to sign some more forms for her room on my ship, and-”
“Alright already!” Robbie snapped. Sportacus had begun bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet as he counted off all the reasons why, and it was making Robbie feel tired just watching him. Sportacus’ eyes lit up and he hugged Robbie, almost knocking the man back down into his own house.
“Thank you thank you thank you!” he cried joyfully. Robbie sputtered and tried to pry the man off, blushing furiously, but the difference in strength didn’t give him a chance. When Sportacus finally let go and stepped back, his grin dropped slightly at the redness in Robbie’s face. Did he squeeze him too hard and cut off his air? He had thought he was being careful, but maybe not… maybe Robbie was getting weaker? His eyes widened at that thought and he looked Robbie over again. The other man wasn’t gasping for breath, he was breathing normally, but his face was still red. Was that blushing?
Sportacus shrugged it off. As long as Robbie was still… relatively healthy, it was okay. Though, a deeper part of his mind that the hero often tried to not listen to, wondered just what it was that Robbie was blushing about.
“Can you come at about four this afternoon then?”
“Fine!” Robbie snapped again, one hand over his face in an attempt to hide his blushing. “But… but you’re gonna owe me big for this.” Sportacus nodded, not even caring. He thanked him again, waved, and flipped off.
Robbie leaned against the cold pipe and tried to calm down. This was the second time that flipping blue elf had hugged him. And… he trusted him? That didn’t make any sense when Robbie thought about it. He frowned. He must be desperate if he was coming around asking the one person in town who hated children to babysit. A fragile charge, at that. Robbie sighed and started descending back into his house.


“You came!”
Robbie glared sullenly.
“Yeah yeah… where’s the pink little sprite anyway?”
“In the air ship.”
Robbie paused for a whole three seconds.
“In… the air ship.”
“Uh-huh,” Sportacus replied, looking confused at the face Robbie was making.
“… fine.” Robbie finally muttered, and allowed Sportacus to hand him the ladder and rattle off all sorts of mundane things about taking care of a little girl (“You can’t feed her lots of sugar Robbie.”) until he finally waved Sportacus away and started climbing.
“I won’t kill her,” Robbie called down. Sportacus went from vaguely worried to soft right before his eyes.
“I know. Just be careful.”
Robbie continued climbing and tried to banish the flood of warmth seeing that look on Sportacus’ face had given him.
“Stupid Sportakook,” he grumbled.


The afternoon-evening was spent rather calmly. Stephanie was putting together a puzzle on the floor, and after Robbie had complained about there being nowhere decent to sit in the air ship, Stephanie managed to get the bed out from the wall, and Robbie was sitting on that, reading a large manual that Stephanie suspected had something to do with machines. It seemed large enough, and she thought she caught glimpses of diagrams when he turned the pages. Dinner had been an interesting experience, and Stephanie ended up just making herself some soup and a sandwich, while Robbie sneered and poked at various things suspiciously. She had gotten him to eat a little bit of soup and a sandwich too, but the sandwich had to be peanut butter. She slipped a couple of banana slices in there as well, and as far as she knew, he hadn’t noticed.
She turned back to her puzzle and frowned. She was stuck. There had to be a piece missing somewhere, because she just could not find the right one to continue on. She sighed for the millionth time and flopped over onto her side dramatically, playing dead. Robbie glanced up from the book and raised an eyebrow at her.
“Something wrong Pinky?”
She huffed and sat up again.
“I can’t find the right piece.”
Robbie’s eyes shifted down to the puzzle laying in half-finished pieces on the floor, and he frowned. Leave it to her to put it together the difficult way. He always did it from outside in, like sensible people. No wonder she couldn’t finish it. He folded a corner of the book and closed it, setting it down on the bed, and got up. Walking over and sitting on the floor next to her, he sighed.
“What piece do you need?”
Stephanie looked highly shocked, but she recovered quickly (almost as quickly as her “parent”, Robbie thought) and smiled at him. It unnerved him, but he was determined to not let it show. He had to get used to people smiling at him without hidden intentions.
“The one that fits here,” she pointed to a larger chunk of puzzle, a spot in the corner. Robbie studied it, and studied the cover of the box, then glanced at all the other chunks of puzzle. After a minute of comparing, he pointed at a small clump of pieces.
“That one,” he said, and Stephanie reached over and slid it closer. She frowned.
“Are you sure? It doesn’t look like it…”
“I’m sure, alright? Now just put it in place.”
She put it where it was supposed to go, carefully shifting the pieces to fit into each other, and she gave a little cry of happiness when they all did in fact fit together. She turned to Robbie.
“You see?” he said arrogantly. “I told you that’s where they went, but you didn’t want to trust me, and I was right.”
She smiled a deep smile, the kind that makes you close your eyes, and giggled. Robbie stopped talking and just looked at the puzzle, finding two small pieces and snapping them together.
Stephanie scooted closer to him and found another piece that fit with the one he was working on, and picked it up and placed it in front of him. He blinked for a moment before wordlessly taking it and attaching it to the rest.


Sportacus climbed into the air ship after night had fallen (but not too late- he still had a bedtime after all) and looked around, half-expecting cake to be smeared all over the walls and robots to be lurking behind his piloting console and messing with it. But what he found was something that made him wish he owned a camera.
There was one of those giant jigsaw puzzles he found out Stephanie was fond of (he didn’t care for them unless he could do back flips over the puzzle and put pieces in place while in mid-air) laying on the floor, completed. And next to it lay Robbie Rotten, sprawled out and snoring lightly, with a mop of pink hair across his stomach. Sportacus was trying very hard to not make any noise, but it was difficult when he wanted to bust out laughing.
Robbie Rotten, town villain. Robbie Rotten, laziest man in LazyTown. And Robbie Rotten, pillow for an eight year old girl.
It was too good. He chuckled lightly, but it didn’t wake either of the dreamers on the floor. Stepping carefully over to them, he gently gathered Stephanie up in his arms and carried her to her room, tucking her into bed. He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and exited the small room to see Robbie’s normally peaceful- in a word, slack- sleeping face furrowed in some kind of disturbance. A sleepy hand flopped in the direction of his stomach, where Stephanie’s head had been resting, and Sportacus realized that Robbie, even in his sleep, was missing the warmth that had been there before. As Stephanie had told him before, his air ship got rather chilly sometimes, though he didn’t notice it.
So, not really thinking about it, Sportacus kneeled next to Robbie and put his hand on the spot where Stephanie’s head had been. The other man’s restlessness stopped, and after a minute his face relaxed again and the snoring resumed. Sportacus chuckled silently, but then yawned. It was getting close to his bedtime. He was faced with a dilemma. Wake Robbie up and send him home, or let him stay? And if so, stay where?
The thought of Robbie staggering home half-asleep and going to curl up in that fuzzy orange chair of his, all alone, made something in his heart twinge. That was out. And if Robbie woke up, he’d go back to that place by himself. Sportacus frowned in concentration. He didn’t want to leave Robbie on the floor, but he also didn’t know if he would wake up if moved, so he’d have to not take the chance. He stood up, ignoring the muttered protest when his hand was removed, and pressed a button on the wall. Retrieving an extra blanket and pillow, he carried them back over to Robbie and very carefully put the pillow underneath Robbie’s head and laid the blanket over him. Thinking for a moment, he went back to the opened wall panel and selected a small stuffed animal, laying it on Robbie’s stomach before he climbed into his own bed (he wondered what the book was, but he just set it on the floor) and falling asleep. Robbie clutched the stuffed animal tightly and slept deeply.