“Still…mad about that shoulder thing, huh?”
“Hmm, now that you bring it up… YES! Iamstill mad.”
Harlow sighed. “Didn’t we work it out, you know…with Wes?”
“Yes, but you complaining about being here, when I’m pretty sure you realize WHY our date is here, after the first two animatronics that you broke, has renewed my anger. Let’s look at the bigger picture, shall we? In case you haven’t looked at a calendar recently, it’s May 15th. Meaning, it’s been almost twomonthssince your change, Harlow! It’s time for you to put up or shut up. Get your strength under control, orelse.”
The vampire glared pointedly as he gently hit his ball through the tiny hole at the bottom of the mountain of ice cream, and started walking around it to see where it had stopped.
Sighing again, he picked up the bucket full of extra balls and followed. It’s not like he didn’t want to get it under control. That shoulder thing hadn’t exactly been a picnic for him either… Not that he’d ever say that to Foxx out loud. But it definitely had been one way to go from hard to limp and panicking in a flat fucking second.
As he came around the large plastic mountain of ice cream, he eyed the vampire while he putted his ball into the hole, before bending down to pick it up.
“I mean, it’s been like two weeks. You can only be mad for so long, Foxx. I am trying… And I really didn’t do it on purpose.”
The vampire’s eyes narrowed at him. “I know you didn’t do it on purpose. And yes, it has been two weeks. Two weeks with very little progress. Which iswhywe are here destroying Wacky Jackie’s Putt-Putt Palace, instead ofmedestroyingyou!”
“More like we’re about to get kicked out of Wacky Jackie’s Putt-Putt Palace,” Harlow grumbled.
The vampire shook his head, and with a huff, his boyfriend started down the path to the next hole.
Grimacing, he…smartly remained quiet as he kept up.
“We are not going to be kicked out,” Foxx said when they reached the end of the path.
“I don’t know, I’ve pretty much broken every hole so far.” He eyed the new one, which happened to be not as large and domineering as the previous one, but possibly more annoying, with gumdrops sliding over the course, and gingerbread men randomly popping up out of the ground.
“It’s fine. In case you didn’t notice, we are the only ones here. Because I bought out the place for the next month, and told the guy that if he left us alone, any damage would be covered, with an extra bonus of money added for upgrades. I signed a contract and everything. The human had bloody dollar signs in his eyes, I swear.”
“The next…month?” Harlow choked.
Foxx ignored him and set his ball down in the slight dip that was at the start of each course. He gently tapped it, sending the ball rolling past multiple gum drops, and it made it halfway before being stopped by a gingerbread man.
The vampire squinted at his ball for a moment, before turning to him, his expression was not…friendly. “Yes, the next month. We are getting your strength under control. And this place is perfect because it’s in the middle of fucking nowhere, with a buffer of woods between it and the closest towns. To add on, three weeks from now, I booked us a week at a cabin situated on a large swath of land, so we can begin trying to bring out your blood burn state. Because Daydric is not going to wait forever for you to get that under control, and he is no doubt correct that your bloodline powers will appear when leastconvenient, and likely stronger than we want right now. And we really don’t need to be dealing with out of control blood burn, out of control strength, AND unpredictable bloodline powers at the same bloody fucking time! Now, putt!” The vampire pointed towards the dip.
Fucking hell… Glaring at the dip, Harlow dropped the ball down. After taking a deep breath, he eyed the hole in the distance and hit it, wincing as it took the head off a gingerbread man, and kept going until it was out of sight.
“Have you…never ever tapped a ball before?” Foxx stared at him, clearly baffled. “Harlow, if that is as lightly as you can tap it, you’d have broken every single thing and person you’ve come into contact with since turning!”
“I have…just… I mean, I don’t always think when I do things, and I guess sometimes I naturally hold back… But you are… You’re staring…and…”
“By the Goddess, are you seriously trying to tell me that I’m making you jumpy?!”
He grimaced. “No… It's more…I may be overthinking it.”
Foxx rolled his eyes. “Fine,I’lllook away soyoudon’t overthink!” The vampire spun away. “Try again!”
Harlow let out a heavy sigh and…put another ball down.
“Oooh.”Foxx winced when the bright red clown nose that Harlow’s ball had just plowed into started to spark.
Over the course of the last three hours…Foxx had come to a conclusion about Harlow’s strength issue. He figured that ninety percent of the time, the man managed to function withoutbreaking things. But the only reason he did, was because he mostly didn’t think about it at all.
While sure, some of that ten percent of destruction wasn’t because he’d thought about it, but due to him forgetting about his strength, as he tried to do something with the same amount of force as he used to… But the majority of it was definitely due to the dhampir thinking about it. Harlow had been correct, he did in fact overthink, and either adjusted too much or…misjudged. But they had made progress…
Harlow groaned. “Foxx…I think…we should stop for today. It’s been hours…and I don’t seem to be any closer to having this under control.”
“No! That’s not true! See if this was earlier in the day, you’d have put the ball straight through the clown, but instead you only embedded it!” Foxx slapped the dhampir on the back. “Be proud, old man! You’ve lessened your destruction! And that is the point of us coming here… Progress! Though we may need to find someone to take care of that sparking.”
