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“Whatchya lookin’ for?”
Gigi freezes, casting a quick glance over her shoulder. Quietly, she relaxes.
“I’m…,” she turns her attention back to her drawer, messy and full with treasures, like gumballs, and tapes, and a box of chocolates. Miserably, she sighs. “I’m looking for my lucky coin. I don’t know where I put it.”
Connie floats closer, the tail of her spiraling with her lazy, slow movement. The moment she’s close enough, her hands rest on the edges of Gigi’s open drawer. She tilts her head down at it. “And you left it in there?”
Gigi stares, too. Then, she shrugs. “I dunno.”
Connie stares at her like she told her she’s started a passion rooted in philanthropy. “You dunno?”
“Nope.” She shakes her head. “Why would I look for something if I knew where it was?”
In response, Connie snorts, pushing off the cluttered desk drawer and vaporizing into the air. A moment later, she ripples into being next to Gigi’s vanity, halfway across the room.
Her dubious eyes on the display items—the ones Gigi is most proud of, mostly stolen goods from Dandy or the others—she responds, voice suave, “Touché. Did you…,” a short pause, where Connie pulls an exaggerated face, “want some help?”
Gigi giggles, failing to muffle it behind her thick cotton-draped hands. Connie’s face twists into a smug smile, self-satisfied.
“Sure! Let’s make a day of it!”
The response is quick. Easy.
“Sure thing.
“Are you sure this is worth it?” Connie asks Gigi, at one point, the both of them a mere moment away from tipping Gigi’s bed over to look underneath it. “I can always, y’know,” she releases the bed-frame to make a wiggling gesture with her hands, “materialize under it.”
After a moment, Gigi pauses.
“Huh. That would be smarter, wouldn’t it.”
They snicker together.
“Oh! Connie! There’s ’gullible’ written on my ceiling!”
Connie turns, elbow-deep into the bed-frame, to raise an eyebrow in Gigi’s direction.
“No, it’s— it’s literally there, Connie, look.”
With a heavy sigh, and a smile she has to force down with a vengeance, her eyes slowly drag upwards, to the ceiling.
And, what do you know. ‘Gullible’ is written there. In purple glitter glue.
“Mwehehe…”
Connie is going to show her up for this one somehow. She vows it.
“Y’know,” Gigi starts with, staring at the absolute crime scene her room has become, “I’m glad you’re here for this.”
Connie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, so I can see how much of a mess you really are?”
Gigi turns to her and winks. “I’d be so paranoid about anyone else stealing my stuff!”
They spend over an hour turning Gigi’s room upside down.
They can’t find it.
Coming to that conclusion, Gigi stands in the middle of the wreckage in deep thought, worn cotton thread against her face as she holds her chin in her hands, contemplative.
Mildly impressed with the chaos, Connie struggles to voice, “…is there… anywhere else… that your coin might be?”
Gigi takes another fifteen seconds to contemplate things.
“Uhhh… maybe I left it on floor six?”
“Floor six?” Connie asks, in mild distaste. “We’d have to go down there?”
Shrugging helplessly, Gigi answers, “…I guess?”
The light fixture in Gigi’s room has the same godforsaken hum as the rest of them. Old and acting like it. The sound is a constant, everywhere in the building.
When they click the light off, it finally stops.
Connie has thought about possessing the lights, just to get them to shut up, but she’s concerned that if she does, she’ll just be overwhelmed by the sound, the electricity you can almost taste in the air of old back rooms with stale air.
Gigi is a hoarder and a klepto. This is not new news.
On floor one, Gigi digs an instruction manual from the openable storage capsule in her head. The thing is so cluttered that it’s impossible for her to pick what she needs, only whatever her hands can grab.
“Isn’t that tiring?” Connie asks, not for the first time.
“Nope! It’s kinda fun!”
Connie only asks because the only thing worse than Gigi’s habits is her memory, and she tends to switch answers on the less important questions.
“Mwehe, I don’t even remember what’s in there half the time.”
Floor two.
“…why do you keep stashing those things?”
“Mwehehe, only a fool would underestimate the usefulness of gumballs.”
“…right.”
On floor three, Gigi waves Connie over.
“Connie! Connie!”
“What?”
Gigi points, up, at the top of a doorway. “What if it’s there!”
“What if what’s there?”
“My coin!”
Connie takes a moment to understand. “What, there? That little space? Those three inches? Seriously?”
Gigi, grinning like she’s hit the jackpot, nods fiercely. “Uh huh!”
Connie blinks, almost dumbfounded.
Then, indulgently, she floats up to take a look.
“Gigi,” she says, flatly, “there’s nothing but dust.”
Gigi blinks. “Oh really?”
“Gigi, why would it ever be up so high?”
Her smile too wide, Gigi looks away, picking on the edges of her sleeves inconspicuously. Her voice is resonant in the bare room. “No clue.”
A moment of silence.
“Gigi.”
“…yes?”
“It says ‘gullible’ on the ceiling.”
Floor four. Connie buys an eject button from Dandy’s shop.
Dandy’s lemonade stand contraption—or whatever it’s meant to be—lowers, and the trapdoors slam shut with a resonant clang. Then it’s just the two of them again.
Immediately, Gigi shoves her own eject button, as well as a chocolate bar, into her head.
In the peaceful silence of the elevator before the doors open, Gigi asks, very sweetly, “Can I have your eject?”
Connie squints. “You just had yours.”
“I don’t understand how that means I don’t deserve anything.”
They stare at each other. The elevator rumbles as the door is dragged open on old hinges.
“…if you can catch me,” Connie wagers, “you can have it.”
They spend the floor with Gigi chasing Connie and Connie spinning circles around Gigi, flying upwards, straying just out of reach, whenever Gigi’s hands grow too quick and honed to Connie’s movements.
Near the end, though, Connie’s caught off guard. Having just avoided a twisted, and having both in her sights, she hadn’t expected the ambush, Gigi’s hands wrapping around her stomach with a gleeful giggle in her ear, mischievous and downright evil, definitely.
Not to mention how much noise the twisteds made. Noise which Gigi didn’t.
That’s why Connie freezes. The surprise. It’s also why she hands it right over, to Gigi’s delight. Connie had been in shock. That’s it.
It’s also why she grins, and calls for a rematch. This time, over a bottle of pop Connie had stolen from under Gigi’s nose.
“Wha— you traitor!”
Floor six.
They search the whole floor, top to bottom, left to right. They find nothing.
They’re there so long that Dandy opens the elevator to check they haven’t been killed, sheepish as he clasps his hands together, “You’ve got this one handled, right?”
Obviously. They just can’t find Gigi’s coin.
The machines are finished, the last one primed as they look.
Frustrated, Gigi huffs, “maybe it’s somewhere else?”
Connie shrugs. “Maybe.”
“Another floor?” Gigi asks, outstretching a hand.
Hauling her to her feet, Connie shudders. “Maybe not? This place gives me the creeps.”
Gigi grins, holding tighter around Connie’s hand when she tries to pull away, until she stops. “Really?”
“Yeah. Last machine?”
“I don’t see why not.”
On the elevator up, Connie sweats. Their hands are still clasped together, the fabric of Gigi’s sweater bunching up against their skin.
“Hey, so, I have to tell you something, but you have to promise not to be mad.”
“I have to promise?”
“…yeah.”
Gigi shrugs. “Why not.”
“Okay, so.” Connie holds her free hand to Gigi, curled into a loose fist. Slowly, she opens it.
On the palm of her hand, Gigi’s lucky coin glints in the dingy yellow light of the elevator.
“Oh!” Gigi exclaims, “my coin!”
“I found it under your dresser,” she admits.
“You’re my hero!” Gigi grins, taking the coin into her own free hand. And, quickly, so quickly Connie can’t react, she leans in to plant a quick kiss on her forehead, within reach because of how Connie had been slumped, her posture consistently horrible.
Quickly, Connie blinks. Repeatedly.
Gigi is back to admiring her coin, like it’s something strange and extremely interesting. Like she’s never seen anything like it.
The elevator door to their living quarters rattles open.
“Oh. Right. Your hero. Yeah. That.”
Connie’s mind is melting from her ears.
Gigi slips her coin into her pocket, pulling on their connected hands to drag her into the living space, as rundown as the rest of the place.
On the way to her room, Gigi starts, “Okay, time for my secret. You have to also promise not to be mad.”
“Uh huh.”
“I didn’t think my coin was on floor six. I had no idea! I made that whole thing up! We spent a lot of time together because of it, though, right?”
A pause, where Connie can collect herself enough to nod, almost impressed with Gigi’s cunning plan. Mostly the plan. Gigi isn’t the best at planning. “Oh, yeah.”
“Also, I stole your ghost snakes in a can first floor.”
“Oh. Well, I knew that one.”