How Green Becomes Wood

"Everybody likes pizza." Dark replied simply. There was something about the questioning that bothered him a little bit, but he had decided to give the man the benefit of the doubt, so he was keeping to that. After a moment, he decided to offer up a bit of information on his own, he wasn't sure exactly what compelled him to do so, "Alec has really bonded with my wife. I think one day they will be very close."
 
"Yeah, I'm not surprised they have mother issues after everything they apparently went through. I'll have to actually sit down and talk to somebody about that eventually. Probably not them. They don't need to rehash all that," Declan said.

Xander won the race, and the pair of them came over to Declan and Dark. "Hey, ready to go check out the prizes?" Alec asked brightly.

"We could play a game of skee-ball on the way," Xander grinned.
 
Dark furrowed his brows and stared long at Declan, "Bonding with her does not mean he has mother issues." They did, certainly, but forming a close relationship with Daizi did not strike Dark as symptomatic of anything. She was good to him, that was all. But he brightened when the twins scrambled back to them, "Absolutely, I hope they have good ones here. And are you challenging me?" He asked Xander, bending slightly. So often it seemed they were on the cusp of a contest which never came, and there was something in that which he liked.
 
Xander grinned at him, eyes sparking. "Yeah, why not? Let's see who can get the most tickets."

"We got a lot already!" Alec said proudly, holding up the string of five tickets.

Declan snickered. "That's not a lot, kid, but skeeball is a great place to get more than a lot! Let's see what these two got."

Xander jerked his head. "It's right there on the way to the prize booth."
 
"Five tickets is not bad, though, for someone who has never been to an arcade before," Dark murmured to Alec, not wanting him to feel poorly about what he had done. But he met Xander's eyes willingly, his intense gaze burning a little brighter, "Yes. Let us."

As he walked with the twins... and Declan... to the skeeball machines, he couldn't help but think about how much more fun it would be if Declan wasn't there, and it was just himself and his boys. Or, if instead of Declan, it was Cooger. But he wasn't sure he would ever think to bring them to the arcade, since really the only thing he had an interest in playing was this one game. There were two machines, neither in use because although it was the game that took the least amount of tokens to play, it was also the least, well, video-game-y of all of them, except for air hockey, which meant it wasn't extraordinarily popular.
 
"So, how does this work?" Xander asked, frowning at the machine.

"You see those balls down there?" Declan asked, pointing to a rectangular hole in the side. "You get the balls from there, and you roll them like a bowling ball up the ramp. See that top bit there? It's just enough to bounce the balls up into those rings. Each ring has a different amount of points."

"The points are the numbers on the rings, right?" Alec asked.

"Right!" Declan praised.

"It seems easy in theory but hard in practice," Alec said.

"I think it's not too bad," Xander said with a shrug. He turned to Dark and nodded to the machine. "Okay, Professor, let's see what you got."
 
"You will be glad to know I am a gracious winner," Dark replied coolly, but good naturedly as he put his tokens into the machine. He was a bit too tall for it, so he had to take what looked like a somewhat awkward stance, but it didn't seem to bother him much, and he adjusted to it. Before rolling his first ball, he turned it over in his hands, as if he was examining it.

Then, he rolled, and rolled well. He never aimed for the tiny 100 spots... except for once, and he hit it, and then it was clearly just showing off. He aimed towards the 40, and more often than not landed in the fifty--which was his intention, because if you aimed for 40 and went a little high, you landed well. If you aimed a little low, which he did once, you're still liable to earn 20 or 30 points, but if you went for the 100s, you ended up with a 10. At the end of the 9 balls, he had a solid score of 460, but it didn't show if he was satisfied with himself or not.
 
Alec clapped heartily, the sound slightly muffled by his fingerless gloves. "That was great! Truly phenomenal! That was truly astounding!"

"Yeah, that was alright," Xander agreed somewhat grudgingly. "But how come you didn't aim for the hundred points? You can hit it if you want."
 
"Can I?" Dark asked, splitting the amount of tickets in half and one string to each of the boys, "or did I just take a chance and get lucky? Come on, we can go look at the prizes, now." He had impressed the twins, that was enough. There was no need to showboat.
 
"Yes! Let's see what they have to offer!" Alec cheered. He started skipping off, almost literally. "But I'm not going to forget that these are your tickets!"

Declan lagged back, watching Dark and Alec go. "Hey, Xander, you wanna see a trick?" he asked softly.

Xander hesitated, glancing toward Dark. It wasn't very crowded, and while there wasn't a clear line of sight between the prize counter and the skeeball, it was close enough that Dark could reach him in a flash if anything happened, or vice versa. "Yeah, alright," he agreed, turning back toward Declan. "What is it?"

Declan winked. "It's how to beat even his score without breaking a sweat."
 
"I won them," Dark replied, following Alec with his long, steady strides, "but I gave them to you. I would rather you have them than me."

He did not immediately realize Xander and Declan were not still with them, because the noise of the arcade disguised the sound of footsteps. Had he, he quickly would have turned back to fetch the other twin, but he was chatting with Alec.
 
Alec looked up at Dark curiously as they approached the counter and started looking over the prizes. "Do you not like any of the prizes at all? None of them?" He pointed to a glow-in-the-dark fidget spinner you could wear on your wrist like a watch. "Not even that?"

~~

"Alright," Declan said, standing at the side of the machine. "Most of these are on timers, meaning you can go through as many balls as possible in a set time. This one seems to be set to only a certain number of balls. I like the timed ones better, you can get a ton of tickets from those. Now, with this one, I can see the little sensor there on the ramp making sure you actually roll the ball. Older ones don't have those. So what you do is roll the ball up like you normally would, and when it jumps off the ramp, I catch it and drop it into the right hole."

"That sounds a lot like cheating," Xander said shortly.

"It's a rigged system, supposed to make it as hard as possible for you to win, and most of real life is rigged that way. The only difference is that in real life, you're rewarded for thinking outside the box, so why not here?" Declan pointed out. "It's just a game and just nine balls. We'll do it once for the novelty, split the tickets, and then go do a bunch of other games the way they intend you to play them. Does that seem fair?"

Xander hesitated a moment longer, but he was curious to see if Declan's proposal would work. What was the worst that could happen? They'd get kicked out of the arcade. That wasn't a big deal. It wasn't like he spent all his time here. "Alright," he agreed. "Just once."

Declan patted his shoulder in a manly way. "Good lad! Alright, quick now, roll them up!"

It took only a minute to roll the nine balls up the ramp. Declan caught each one smoothly and plunked the first four into the 100 spot, one in the 50 spot as a perfect score would raise suspicion, and the last four in the 100 spot. The machine dutifully spit out a long string of tickets that spilled out onto the floor. Declan took the tickets, split them with more on one strand, and gave Xander the longer one.

"Nicely done!" he praised. "And well aimed. You would have gotten a really high score even without my help. What'd you think?"

"It was fun, but not as rewarding as doing it myself," Xander decided.

"Totally fair," Declan agreed. "This is just for fun. Doing it all the time ain't cool, but just once, what's it going to hurt?"

Xander nodded in agreement and headed over to join Alec and Dark. He didn't notice that Declan was careful to check for cameras before the game and now held his tickets folded so others couldn't see exactly how many he had.
 
Dark shrugged his shoulders, looking over the prizes, "It makes me happier to make sure you can get anything you want, rather than pick something for myself. You decide what you want, and I will help you get it, okay?"

He glanced over his shoulder, then, and saw that Xander wasn't there. Anxiety knotting him up again, he took a few steps away from the counter, still keeping Alec in his sights, and was relieved to see Xander and Declan walking up to them, "Where have you two been?" He asked, trying not to sound suspicious or concerned.
 
Alec made a face. "Okay, but if you were going to get something for yourself, what would you get?" He realized Dark wasn't listening. Realized further that Xander wasn't there. He had time only for a slight rise of panic before spotting his brother walking up and coming to stand next to him.

"I wanted to try out the skeeball thing," Xander said. "Not as good as you, but not bad, yeah?" He held up his ticket string as an example.

"He's a natural!" Declan said proudly. "So, what are we thinking of getting?"
 
"If you had wanted to play we would have waited," Dark said, but was mostly just relieved that was all that had happened. He didn't trust Declan, but he doubted Xander would lie to protect him, so he took them at their word, "I do not know what Alec has interested himself in, but I do not myself intend to get anything."
 
"I'm not five, you know," Xander said mildly. "I was alright, and I didn't want to interrupt you two on your prize hunt."

"I was thinking of maybe one of these," Alec said, pointing to a plush dog with its tongue hanging out. There were several toys of different types hanging along the wall near the ceiling.

"Are you sure you don't want anything?" Xander asked Dark. He pointed toward a pink My Little Pony plush near the end. "That's totally your style."

Declan laughed and Alec smiled. "I was thinking of maybe trying to aim for one of those shirts there in the bin."

"There! That one's for you!" Alec told Xander, pointing out a large, garish sign on the wall that read, "I'm kind of a BIG Deal." The word Big was outlined in lights that could blink.
 
"I know," He murmured, and knew if Xander had been with nearly anyone else, he wouldn't have been concerned at all. He let it go and rolled his eyes at the pony, "No, how could I possibly? Pink is more so your colour than it is mine. I was already telling Alec I plan to simply split my tickets between you both, I would rather you earn something you really like."

It was his plan from the moment he knew they were going to the arcade, but now that he was looking at the prizes, it wouldn't be difficult to hold himself to it. The only thing he was particularly interested in were some squishmallows: there was a blue deer he thought would be nice for the nursery, but they were keeping the pregnancy secret from Declan. He could easily lie and say it was for Daizi. After all, she did genuinely own a few, but he could also easily buy a squishmallow with his own money.
 
Xander nudged Alec and pointed up to a different sign. "Be Yourself Unless You Can Be A Unicorn" with a rainbow over the word "unicorn." "There you go, that's the one for you right there."

Alec grinned at the bright light. "Except if you get one, and I get one, we'll never be able to sleep! I do like it, though."

"Alright, there's a load of good stuff here. Why don't we go get some more tickets and see what we can afford at the end?" Declan suggested.
 
"Hang them up in Daizi's office," Dark joked, "She would never know. Well..." he paused, standing a bit closer to the sign, "She may hear the hum." He hated the idea of destroying her decor that way, but he did, on occasion, like to prank her back.

Following Declan's suggestion, though, he walked back out onto the game floor, taking a longer look around, "Oh," He hummed, and nodded towards a sign hung up on the backwall, "they have bumper cars."
 
"Let's do bumper cars!" the twins said simultaneously.

"Wait, you don't get any tickets, I don't think," Declan grinned, following them.

"Totally worth it!" Alec said, hurrying forward and following the signs.

"Way worth it!" Xander cheered, following Alec.

"Alright. I'm totally going to dominate the pair of you, then!" Declan warned with a laugh.
 
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