In terms of ‘Brian Helmsley plans,’ this one was about as basic as it could get. While he typically had grand plans, with many moving parts and elaborate possibilities for things to go wrong. This, though? This was simple: stand outside of Parker’s class, and ask her out when she leaves.
He’d initially wanted to wait until he found out who the Weekend Warrior was, but with the unlikely help of Hailey, that mission had been completed. The next mission was to discredit the Weekend Warrior, but that could take a backseat, and he could try and court Parker. He’d asked Henry before doing it, to make sure that Henry wasn’t worried about Parker, and with that complete, he was now executing his plan.
The final bell rang, and the students poured out into the hallway, with Brian waiting patiently. When Parker finally did come out, he tapped her arm to get her attention, and when she was looking at him, he shot his shot. “Hey, Parker. My name is Brian. I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me and get some ice cream?” Henry’s idea, not his. But, Henry knew Parker better than anyone else right then, so Brian figured he could be trusted on the matters. Now, all Brian could do was hold his breath and hope for the best.
The last class of the day was the longest one to get through, but at the same time the first class of the day was even longer...really all the classes were too long and Parker had a tendency to zone out and get absolutely bored with them after about ten minutes. Teachers had considered she might suffer from some sort of concentration debility but Parker just thought it was boring listening to people with similar voices all talking about old people or numbers or words. This class was no different and Parker was on the verge of falling asleep were it not for the fact that high school desks were super uncomfortable and she was amusing herself when she learned that her desk squeaked whenever she moved in it, much to the annoyance of really the whole class.
Fortunately the bell rang and Parker would have been first out the door but she had to shove papers into her bag first which took up some additional time. Her backpack was like a warzone. No folders to speak of, just loose papers shoved in and wrinkled which made doing homework a damn near impossibility. Outside of class she was ready to make her way down to the parking lot to find Henry and Mincy but she was stopped in her tracks by a hand on her shoulder.
She didn’t recognize the face, but she didn’t even start to remember Mincy until at least two weeks after seeing her on a semi consistent basis. As he spoke his introduction and proposition, Parker merely blinked along until he was finished. “I’M SUPPOSED TO MEET HENRY AFTER SCHOOL.”
This might turn out to be harder than he thought it would be. Parker was different, he had to remember that. It wasn’t her fault, and in all honesty? It was part of the reason that Brian found himself to be so… enamored with her. She was innocent, naive, and had an air of sweetness about her that was wholly unique. It was nice, compared to the people he normally associated himself with. “I’ve already spoken with Henry, he said it’s alright if you come with me!”
If those words were spoken by someone older, someone not a student, Parker would have considerably more of a pause; it was incredibly possible that Henry had already talked to this guy, Henry talked to so many people that Parker was surprised he even remembered all of them. She still didn’t know the name of her student counselor and she had been seeing her since she enrolled in school, and twice as much now that she had to have a fifteen minute meeting right before lunch. Something about the beach or something. Parker looked up at Brian - because she was rather short and thus had to look up - studying his face like she was trying to read his mind or something. “CAN I GET THREE SCOOPS? FOUR?”
For a brief moment, it crossed Brian’s head how it might have looked weird that he was just inviting someone out to get ice cream, but whatever. It wasn’t that weird, because he wasn’t like an old man or anything; even if it was weird, did he really care about his image around the school? Not particularly. Brushing the thoughts out of his head, he chose to instead focus on Parker, nodding in response to her question and giving her a smile. “You can have however much you want. C’mon.” She was staring at him with a rather speculative look in her eyes, and he had… no idea why that was happening. He turned and gestured for her to follow him, “you can have a banana split if you want. Those are pretty tasty.”
Henry always complained if she had more than two scoops, something about sugar or bouncing or something that didn’t make much sense. Humans didn’t bounce off the walls, and Parker only bounced if she had a trampoline or a bouncy ball or something - like at a birthday party that had a bouncy castle. Parker didn’t know anyone at the party given that it was for a middle schooler but she fit right in anyway. That was a fun day. That she was going to be able to get as many scoops as she wanted was as good a sign as any to accept this generous offer. “BUT I DON’T WANT A BANANANA” Was it intentional when Parker called it a ‘ban-nah-nan-ah’? It was hard to say, but she didn’t seem to think she said anything wrong. “I WANT THE ICE CREAM PART. CAN I RIDE ON YOUR BACK?” Parker was told that it was nice to ask, otherwise she would’ve probably just jumped on Brian’s back and expected a free ride.
Whether or not it was intentional the way she said ‘banana’ was irrelevant. It’s effect was still the same on Brian. When she asked if she could ride on his back, he didn’t even have to think about the answer. Of course she could. He paused and knelt down so she could more easily jump on, “sure you can.” He said, while waiting for her to jump on. This was easier than he’d thought ti was going to be! At first, he’d sort of felt a little nervous, like approaching Parker would have been impossible. It had been a valid fear in his head; she wasn’t unapproachable, no, but Brian was only human, and a teenager on top of that. He’d assumed the worst would happen, and he was relieved to see it was far from that. This was almost easy.
Brian might not have been as tall as some of the others who had given her back rides, but that didn’t matter; what mattered was the simple fact that he allowed it without really any second guessing. Parker jumped, almost literally, onto Brian’s back, gripping onto his shirt before adjusting herself so that she was holding onto his shoulders like the reins of a horse; she was even bouncing, kicking her feet like they were in a saddle but it was from excitement rather than any malicious or harmful intent. “ICE CREAM STALLION!”
Brian didn’t have much to say, so with a smile on his face he charged onward and toward the parking lot. Once they were there, he unloaded Parker into the passenger seat of his car — a Honda Civic, for the record — and then got into the driver’s seat. He started the car and pulled out of the lot, before he looked over at his blonde passenger (and hopefully, soon-to-be girlfriend), and posed a question, “have you ever had frozen yogurt, Parker? Now, we can still do ice cream instead! But there’s a pretty nice frozen yogurt place nearby.”
Almost as soon as she was sat in the passenger seat, Parker started pressing buttons on the door, trying to fiddle with the mirror or the window or the power locking like she was at the helm of a spaceship or something. She at least settled in enough to put her own seatbelt on when the car hummed to life and didn’t immediately start to fiddle with buttons again; it was possible that she could do damage to the car or something and Parker didn’t want to do damage to the car - it was taking her to ice cream after all. “FROZEN YOGURT? SILLY! YOU PUT YOGURT IN THE SAME PLACE WITH MILK AND EGGS AND CHEESE, NOT THE FREEZER!” Honestly, who didn’t know that? That was something they taught you in, like, at least fourth grade.
Brian watched as Parker stopped fiddling with the buttons, before mentioning: “if you want to mash on the buttons, be my guest. If you break it, I’ll just buy another one.” What kind of man would he be if he robbed her of a toy she wanted to play with? Not the boyfriend material kind, that much was for sure. After she gave her concerns about the frozen yogurt, Brian’s mind was pretty much made up. Anyone that hadn’t had froyo really needed to. “No, no, you see if you freeze yogurt, it pretty much becomes ice cream, right? So if you go to a place that serves it, they have these big levers that you can pull, and it’ll fill a bowl up with a flavor of frozen yogurt. There’s like chocolate, and vanilla, and peanut butter, and cake batter. Stuff like that. Then, you can go put toppings on it. There’s a lot of toppings. There’s usually like chopped up candy bars, like Snickers or Kit Kat, and then there’s chocolate syrup, and Oreos, and even gummy bears. It’s up to you, but I think if you’ve never had it? We should go try it.” Brian spoke with his eyes glued to the road, very different from the other person that Parker typically rode with; Henry would often watch videos that Parker was while driving. Brian was much more… safety centric.
Brian might in time regret letting Parker press all the buttons she liked - she started opening and closing windows at random intervals, clicked and unclicked the lock on the doors, turned on the seat warmers, the air conditioning, the heat, the radio, the bass booster for the radio which she promptly turned down, and even the glove compartment popped open in her lap. It was a byproduct of her being in a car new to her - she’d done the same with Henry’s car - fortunately she got bored of buttons and knobs rather quickly. She was barely listening to Brian’s upsell of frozen yogurt up until he said the final magic words.
“GUMMY BEARS?” Parker immediately stopped fiddling with buttons and turned towards Brian, placing her hands on the middle divider - safer than grabbing the driver’s arm and tugging the shirt - and widened her eyes. “I WANT THAT! CAN I? PLEASE?”
That was easy. “Sure. I think you’ll like it.” He took a turn, and they were in downtown L.A., which Brian hated. It would have been easier to just take her back to his place, but he had two issues with that. Issue one, his parlor didn’t have the same vibe as an actual froyo place would, and issue two, he didn’t know if he and Parker were at that level yet. It was questionable which one was more important to him, but the result was the same. They were in L.A., which tended to mean that parking was impossible to find… but today? It just so happened to be Brian’s lucky day: the lot with the froyo place in it had a couple of free spots, and he snagged one before parking the car. “Okay, when we get in there, you can have as much as you want. Don’t worry if you end up not being able to eat it all, everyone over does it their first time.”
Who was this guy and why hadn’t she known him sooner? No one she hung out with regularly, that was to say Henry and the people that hung out around him, ever let her get ‘as much as she wanted’. Even Henry’s cool dad that bought her a cat didn’t let her order the biggest burger she wanted. Her excitement was such that it was almost a miracle she didn’t hop out of the car before it came to a complete stop, which was something she’d been known to do - she was still stuck on the part where she got to have as much as she wanted. “WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?” Parker got out of the car and practically sprinted around to the driver’s side - her Froyo Frigate was being such a slowpoke!
Geeze, she was suddenly very excited, wasn’t she? Brian watched as she tore out of the car at supersonic speeds, and when she bounded over to his side, he brushed with his hand a bit to get her to take a step back, before he opened the car door and walked outside. With a big smile on his face, Brian shook his head and laughed lightly. “Okay, okay. Let’s go” He said, before he took her hand and led her into the frozen yogurt place, and over to the containers, “okay, you just take one of these — whichever size you want — then you go and fill it up with your yogurt, all the toppings you want… and then they weigh it and I’ll pay! Just don’t eat the toppings before we pay, that’s against the rules…”
Parker didn’t have time to listen to the full explanation, she immediately grabbed not one but two of the largest containers they had. The first container she filled to the absolute rim with nothing but gummi bears. The second one she struggled with because she had to hop to get to the lever that released the yogurt. She opted for the one that had birthday cake on the picture, and that she filled about halfway before pouring cookie crumbs and more gummis on top - which she then covered with a chocolate yogurt that was in danger of tipping over the side and making a big spill. She needed more hands because she wanted another container to put vanilla and cake batter with chocolate covered pretzels on top. ”CAN YOU HELP ME CARRY THIS?”
Brian watched as she zipped around the room and filled her containers. First with gummy bears; Brian wasn’t sure that was allowed, but before the person behind the counter could say something against it, Brian slipped them a fifty dollar bill, which seemed to satiate matters for the time being. When she jumped for the lever, Brian watched her hop twice, before he walked over and reached up, pulling it down for her until she was satisfied, as well as helping with the chocolate stuff. “Parker, you don’t have to get as much as you can possibly carry right now. We can come back another time, you know?” He asked, reaching out to grab the containers from her either way, and set them on the counter. While he was staying true to his word, and letting her get as much as she wanted, he did seem slightly concerned that she might not eat it all. “I had other stuff I was hoping for us to do today, and I don’t really want you to have a tummy ache while we do it.”
What she was hearing now was slightly different from what she had heard back in the car. The words were that she could have as much as she wanted, and she wanted two containers with four different yogurt flavors and a side dish of gummi bears. Parker simply blinked at Brian while holding an empty container, which would have been her third container in total. She looked at her small mountain of yogurt being rung up and back at her empty container before reaching out and offering the third container to Brian. ”...YOU GET SOMETHING TOO, OKAY?”
Brian reached out and took the container from her and nodded. “Sure, okay.” He was glad that it went better than he’d thought it was going to. He had worried that his gentle suggestion that Parker watch how much she get and not over do it might have upset her — not to mention he was completely contradicting himself; smooth, Brian. However, it seemed like it worked! Besides, he was going to get some eventually, anyway, he just wanted to let her finish first. Brian took the container over to the yogurt fountains, and filled it up with half chocolate yogurt, then scooped in a little bit of crushed up Kit-Kat, before he topped it off with peanut butter yogurt and brought it to the counter. He handed it over, and when the total was rung up, he paid and gestured for Parker to take hers, after grabbing a couple of spoons. “We can just sit down outside.” He suggested, before leading the way to an outdoor table.
Paker handed her gummi bear cup to Brian for carrying as she needed both her hands to carry her yogurt to the outside table. In less tiny hands it probably wouldn’t have been such a Herculean effort but for Parker, the recorded shortest girl in school as of the last physical, it was quite a daunting endeavor - especially if anything spilled to the floor. She set her yogurt down on the table before sitting down, finding that the outdoor seats let her feet actually reach the sidewalk which was a nice little comfort. ”HEY, HOW COME YOU BROUGHT ME HERE? IT’S NOT MY BIRTHDAY...IS IT?”
Brian took a spoonful of the yogurt and put it in his mouth, though he flinched a bit at how cold it turned out to be. Yikes, he’d have to make sure neither of them ate too fast, or they’d both be subject to brain freezes soon enough. “Oh, no. I don’t think so? Don’t you know when your own birthday is, silly?” He raised a curious eyebrow, but ultimately shrugged it off. Parker was not without her nuances, and this was simply another one of those. “I just brought you here because I like you, and I know you like this sort of thing? So, I thought it would work. An easy way to get you to spend time with me, I guess. Let me know what you think about the frozen yogurt by the way! I’m excited for you to enjoy it for the first time.”
The spoon dipped into the yogurt and went for a side visit down to Gummi Bear Borough, which left the container of gummies with some yogurt spillage while the plane landed in Parker Airport. It was, true to its name, freezing Parker closed her eyes to rub her temple from how cold that first bite was. Cold, yes, but with a crazy blend of flavors thanks to her strange concoction of flavors. It was like putting every flavor of soda in the cup only with froyo. Naturally she went for a second scoop. Then a third. Then quickly a fourth. ”IT’S COLDER THAN ICE CREAM. MY HEAD...FEELS ALL...COLD.” A brain freeze was all but par for the course.
Well, shit. He should have said something before she began to tear into it. That was his own fault; he didn’t think Parker would attack it so violently. For how small she was, she did her best to plow through the treat in front of her. When she first dipped her spoon in the gummy bears, he thought about warning her how tough they would get if they got cold, but… she could learn. She wasn’t a child, after all — she just happened to stay true to a sort of childlike innocence. He liked that.
When she complained about how cold she was being, Brian offered the only remedy he’d ever heard for the dreaded brain freeze. “Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth. That should help, a little bit..”
Parker had nothing to lose by trying the anti-brain freeze technique; the problem came with the fact that she tried it after scooping more yogurt into her mouth which, of course, meant that she was pressing yogurt against the roof of her mouth. Now the roof of her mouth was cold! And she was laughing about it! About her easily made mistake. ”IT ALMOST WORKED! YOU’RE KINDA SMART!” Coming from anyone else that might’ve sounded like an insult instead of the genuine word of praise she meant it as.
“Well, it works a bit better if you don’t take a bite of the cold stuff first, y’know? Try again! And thanks, I think I’m pretty smart myself.” It certainly wasn’t taken as insult, Brian seemed to enjoy the praise that came from her. Taking another, large bite of the chocolate and peanut butter cup he’d made himself, Brian wondered if it was time to shoot his shot. It was basically now or never, right? What was the worst that happened? She said no and then he had to take her home? “Hey, Parker. I have a question.” There, he started his attempt.
She certainly did try again, this time making sure to leave her spoon away from her mouth; to her great surprise the trick worked - her brain didn’t feel like it lived in a blizzard anymore which, of course, opened her up to taking another scoop guilt free. Because of the size of her scoops, her yogurt was starting to look a bit lopsided, but she didn’t seem to mind as she continued picking away, albeit with smaller scoops. Like with the hamburger the other night her mouth, and eyes, were bigger than her stomach. ”IT’S NOT A MATH QUESTION IS IT? BECAUSE MINCY ANSWERS THOSE FOR ME.”
Brian quickly shook his his head in response, “No, no. Not a math question. On Friday, at Captain Cuddles, there’s… a movie that’s being shown? It’s like a date night. So I was wondering if you wanted to go with me?” The question hung in the air for only a second, before Brian quickly clarified, realizing that it was probably in his best interested to be exact. “Like a date. As boyfriend and girlfriend.”
Parker would have dropped her spoon if she hadn’t just taken another, smaller bite. It was probably for the best that she hadn’t. Much like she had when Brian asked her to ice cream, Parker was staring towards him, blinking, her mouth moving like she was a fish gasping for air out of water. There was nothing wrong with her hearing but the question asked of her needed a question as a response all the same. ”W...What?”
Oh man. Had he done something wrong? Did she not like him? Was he too forward? Oh geeze. Brian’s heart was rapidly falling, and he could feel himself getting uncharacteristically anxious. For someone who let everything roll off of his back, and who ran with the Elite… the shortest girl in the school was able to have quite the effect on him. “I was hoping that we could… go to the movie night at Captain Cuddles. Uhm, like a date? Like… boyfriend… and girlfriend. I’m sorry, if you don’t want to, it’s okay.” No it’s not. “I can just take you home.” Not the ending he wanted.
Parker continued to blink as her yogurt melted slowly. Hearing it again didn’t make it any less strange to hear. No one had ever asked her out to anything. Ever. She didn’t think anyone ever would - she wasn’t exactly tall or graceful, half the time she showed up with dirt on her knees and a distinct lack of an indoor voice. That explained the ice cream...why he was being so nice to her. ”O...Okay...YEAH.” Parker nodded her acceptance and even though she was being loud once again...it was a bit more muted than what she had been known for. There weren’t any cherries in her yogurt, but that didn’t stop her smile from turning her cheeks red.
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