Peanut Butter Banana Sandwiches

“… What?” she whispered, trembling but trying to smile through it. It was a joke. She should be laughing, because it was a joke.
It couldn’t be real.
“It’ll be okay kiddo. We’ll take care of you.”
She stared dully at the police officer in front of her, who was trying in vain to get her to take a cup of hot chocolate.
Dead.
They were gone. Parents, uncle, all gone. It didn’t matter why. She dully remembered something… something on the edge of her memory, maybe about a trip, a grown-ups-only trip, but it skittered away under the force of her tears.
There was nowhere else to go. They wouldn’t let her return to LazyTown. She sobbed in between sobbing for her family, when she realized she would never be able to return to that place again. There was no reason to, logically. She wasn’t going to be sent to stay with her uncle over the summer anymore.
There was no one who could save her from this.


“You’re Stephanie?”
She nodded slowly, looking up at the woman and her husband that would be her foster parents until someone adopted her. She felt slightly ill, dizzy, like she would fall over at any second. But she stayed on her feet.
‘We’re really glad you’re here,” the woman said sweetly, and bent over and picked up one of Stephanie’s suitcases.
The man and woman smiled at her, and she tried to smile back out of politeness. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe everything would be alright.


Of course, it wasn’t. It never would be. Her family was dead, she was alone, and…
“Didn’t you finish the dishes yet?”
Stephanie cringed, though she knew not to by now.
“The water in the sink was too hot, so I was letting it cool down a little before I started,” she answered quietly, and she shivered involuntarily and scooted away as they stalked past her and to the sink. They glanced at it and said, “It looks fine to me.”
Against her will, the words spilled out of her mouth.
“It looks like that, but I checked it just a second ago and it was still so hot and-”
Abruptly, she was grabbed and her hands arms were forced elbow-deep into the water.
The still scalding hot water.
She screamed and was cuffed in the back of the head for it.
“Who do you think you are?! We took you in out of the goodness of our hearts, and give you everything you could want and you won’t even do a simple thing like washing dishes when I asked you!”
“Please stop, please it hurts!” She was trying to struggle, trying to get her hands out of the scalding water. They were going numb, and tears ran down her face. She received and hard yank on her bubblegum pink hair before she was released and allowed to remove her arms. They walked away, but paused in the doorway.
“You’ll never get adopted if you keep that attitude. It’s no wonder you’re all alone.”
Stephanie turned on the cold water tap and tried to put her arms under the water, silently. The water only made her arms sting more ferociously, but she tried anyway. A tiny voice sneaked past her lips as she looked at her reddened arms.
“There is always a way… ya gotta believe you can make it…”
She looked at the steaming pile of dishes and shifted nervously. There wasn’t any way she could do those without dropping something from the sensitive sting now present on her hands and arms. She blinked back more tears, carefully using a rag to wipe the salty trails on her face away.
Later that night she lay in her bed, trying in vain to keep her arms from hurting in any position she was in. She started crying silently, despite her best efforts not to. She wanted her mom and dad. She wanted her uncle. Ms. Busybody, Trixie, Pixel, Ziggy… Sportacus. She’d even take Robbie Rotten at this point.
She sniffled and looked out of her window at the moon hanging in the sky and tried to focus on its quiet light rather than the hurts of her body. She murmured to herself in a sing-song voice.
“There’s no use in crying… you gotta keep trying…”


Sportacus’ crystal had been ominously quiet all day. Almost all through the autumn and winter, into spring. Save for the occasional disruption from the kids of Lazy Town and Robbie Rotten’s half-hearted attempts at kicking him out (he had fallen into a sulk when he lost the position for new mayor to Ms. Busybody), the days were long. And they were boring.
He found himself wishing more and more for summer.
But as summer rolled around, he began to realize. Without an uncle to stay with, the little pink girl would not come back. Without parents to send her there, she would be… where would she be? As the first week of summer drew to a close, he made a decision. It had been an impulse, a loophole, but he was taking it. The one who had called him to the town in the first place was no longer there. Technically, he was no longer bound to protect the little town unless the one who called him there was in that place and requested it.
She had never asked him to look after it forever.
He let Ziggy in on what he was doing, so that the other children wouldn’t panic, and because he trusted Ziggy with his secrets more than anyone else.
And with that, he steered his air ship away from the town.
There was a little mop of pink hair that needed to be found.


Stephanie tucked a lock of hair behind her ear again as she gardened outside. The sun hurt her burn, which luckily wasn’t disfiguring in any way, but still hurt. But it was one of her chores to make sure the garden was nice looking.
“There you are!”
She startled and shrank into herself before turning to look over her shoulder.
It was like a dream.
There he was, standing with fists on hips and grinning under that ridiculous mustache. If she could have seen his hair under the hat, she was sure it would have been reflecting the sunlight that hurt her arms, like… like Sportacus. Her thoughts were a jumbled mess. He pouted.
“You’re not gonna say hi to me?”
She cried out in a wordless expression of joy and sorrow, leapt up, and ran straight into his arms and clung to him like he was the last thing in the world. He laughed lightly and spun her around once, hugging her fiercely. She winced as he brushed against her arms and he noticed.
“Stephanie? Are you okay?” he said, concerned. She looked up at him with large sad eyes and he instantly felt his heart hurt. There was something wrong.
At that moment, a man came out of the house, and after inquiring suspiciously as to who this odd-looking blue-clad man might be, he nicely told Stephanie that lunch was waiting, and without waiting for her to say goodbye to her friend, grabbed her by the arm (again, Sportacus noticed her flinch of pain and his worry increased twofold) and led her back into the house. At the last moment, she twisted around, waving to him.
Sportacus stood there for awhile, fear racing through him for one of the surprisingly few times in his life, for being a hero. He ordered his ladder to go up, and left it hovering just above the clouds. He wasn’t leaving.
As she had waved, she had mouthed the words that he couldn’t have ignored even if he wanted to.
‘Save Me.’


It was later that evening when the commotion happened. He had been doing pushups behind an adjacent house when his crystal abruptly blared to life, glowing brightly. He immediately leapt up and dashed for the house. He was going for the door to leap in, but on the way there was a window. He stopped abruptly when he saw the scene inside, from between the slats of the blinds.
Stephanie was sprawled on the floor, one hand to her cheek, and curled up. The man from before was yelling, Sportacus could not tell what over the rushing in his ears, and a woman was getting up with a pot of coffee, a disgusted look on her face, and saying something… she dangled the steaming pot over Stephanie’s curled body.
The door broke abruptly, and startled both man and woman. The woman dropped the pot of coffee, but it landed on the floor instead of on Stephanie, and shattered. Stephanie yelped as some of the hot liquid splashed onto her legs, and she crawled away, hiding under a table.
She had her eyes closed tightly, and hands over her ears, so she didn’t see how when the man stormed over to Sportacus, he simply grabbed the man by the shoulder and tossed him into a wall. She didn’t see how Sportacus’ normally happy blue eyes, like the eyes of a puppy, had turned furious and dangerous, and she didn’t hear the foster mother’s scream as she fainted from the sheer fright of it.
Sportacus glowered at the two people laying unconscious, but when his gaze traveled over to the huddle quivering underneath the dining room table, he softened immediately and stepped lightly over to her, kneeling down.
“Stephanie,” he said gently. She had her hands over her ears. He hesitantly touched her shoulder and she jumped, eyes flying open. It tore at him that they were so full of fear and panic, but he kept the façade of calm and happiness up, and smiled at her very slightly, gently.


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.


AN: The sex isn't until a little later, but in the meantime we have some bonding going on and little fluffs throughout. I posted this first on FF.net, but because of the later sex scene (mild though it is), I decided to post it here too. My first story on AFF.net! I feel like a big girl now.
If you want more extended author's notes, too bad. I'm keeping this short and simple.