Beauty and the Geek Ch. 29

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"There's no way Hawkman could take the Flash," Theo was arguing.

"Have you even read Hawkman?" Chip asked incredulously. "The guy is a total badass."

"He's just a guy with wings," Theo countered. "Hawkman would never be able to lay a hand on the Flash, he's way too fast."

Chip looked ready to explode when Brian interjected, "Theo, five minutes ago you said Batman would defeat the Flash in a fight. But Batman's just a normal guy too, even more so than Hawkman."

"Batman is wicked-smart though," Theo replied, justifying his earlier statement. "The guy is fucking crazy, too. He just sits around in that cave of his thinking up ways to take people out, even his buddies in the Justice League. He's thought up ways to take everybody out if he has to."

Chip questioned his best friend, "So you're saying Batman could defeat anyone?"

Theo lifted a shoulder, "Basically... yeah. If he had enough time to plan."

Brian snorted, "C'mon, are you saying Batman would defeat Superman in a fight?"

"Of course!" Theo gestured emphatically with his hands. "Batman probably keeps an entire stock of Kryptonite on hand just in case Superman ever goes rogue. That would be the shortest fight in history."

"You've gone completely off the deep end!" Chip announced. "There's no way in hell Batman would win in a fight against Green Lantern."

Standing just feet away, flipping through a teen fashion magazine off the rack, Stacy sighed at the ridiculous argument between the three boys. How did she ever end up falling in love with such a geek? Stacy had remained silent for twenty minutes as Chip, Theo, and Brian talked endlessly about superheroes. She didn't even know what Chip was doing at The House of Spandex and wondered if he ever left -- day off or not. It was pointless trying to inform them how silly they all sounded. Stacy had tried that many times before, usually during conversations between Brian and Charlie. So if she couldn't beat them, she decided she might as well join them.

Replacing her magazine on the rack Stacy spoke up, "What about Wonder Woman?"

All three boys turned towards the curvaceous blonde.

Stacy sauntered towards them, "I think Wonder Woman would kick Batman's ass."

"Um..." Theo considered.

"She doesn't have any real weaknesses Batman could exploit," Chip reasoned, staring longingly at Stacy whom he still carried a torch for.

Brian scratched his head, unable to argue with his girlfriend's statement.

"Plus," Stacy added, "her ass looks, like, totally amazing in those star-spangled shorts."

"Who's drawing Wonder Woman right now?" Theo wondered.

Chip answered, "Jim Lee, I think."

Brian's eyes lit up, "Damn, he draws really hot asses."

Stacy watched as all three boys rushed towards the racks of new comic books to find the latest issue of Wonder Woman, rolling her eyes. Only a half hour to go before she could drag Brian to the department store.

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"Charlie?" Miley called out over the sound of spraying water as she stood in the shower. "Can you bring the bottle of conditioner from my suitcase?"

"Yep," Charlie yelled back and looked to the corner of their hotel room. Miley's suitcase lay open in a confusing mess, clothes and feminine products scattered in and all around it. It was not an easy task to find one small travel-sized bottle of conditioner amidst the chaos but he eventually located it beneath a pair of satin panties.

Peeking around the shower curtain Charlie offered the bottle, "How long are you going to be? I'm starving."

"Just a few more minutes, okay? All the sun we've been getting has dried my hair out something awful."

Charlie nodded and let the shower curtain fall back into place. If he had a nickel for every time Miley told him she'd just be 'a few more minutes' in the bathroom...

"Where do you want to go eat?" Miley asked through the shower curtain, lathering her wet dark tendrils.

"Anything but Mexican," Charlie answered, bending to pick up some discarded clothing from the bathroom floor. "We've been eating Mexican for a week and a half."

Miley giggled, "Baby, we're in Mexico. Remember?"

"There's got to be a McDonalds on the strip," Charlie reasoned, placing their dirty clothes into a make-shift laundry basket fashioned out of a waste bin.

"Oh my god," Miley exclaimed, "I'd kill for a vanilla shake and some of their salty fries right now."

Moving to the sink, Charlie replaced the cap on their tube of toothpaste and tried to organize Miley's various hygiene products into some kind of order. He noticed the plastic pregnancy stick left behind from earlier and picked it up to discard it. He happened to glance at the indicator window before tossing it into the trash.

It was baby blue.

Charlie wasn't sure but he thought that was the color of a positive test. How many times had he read those damned instructions on the side of the box? He should have memorized them it was so many. Looking around frantically for the box he couldn't spot it, "Miley, what'd you do with that package?"

"Huh?" Miley asked, confused.

"The pregnancy tests," Charlie clarified. "You know - the box with the directions on the side? Where is it?"

"I don't know. I didn't do anything with it. Why?"

"Do you remember what color is positive?"

Miley poked her head out of the shower, "Don't start this again, Charlie. I can't keep track of the positive/negative thing."

Charlie was throwing clothes and towels about looking for the box. He simplified his question, "What color means you're pregnant?"

"Blue," Miley finally answered. "Blue means baby. Pink means pee again. That's how I remember it."

On his knees, Charlie looked up to Miley.

"What is it?" Miley asked, wondering why Charlie looked so stunned -- like he just found a million dollars on the floor.

He held up the test stick, "It's blue."

"What?" Miley squinted.

"The test, the one we did earlier. I told you we didn't wait long enough!" Charlie smiled broadly.

Miley blinked, "What? You mean...?"

Charlie nodded excitedly, "Miley, I think you're pregnant."

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Standing outside her ex-husband's condominium door, Victoria began wondering if Jack was even home. She pressed the doorbell button one more time just to be sure. Finally, after several more long seconds, she heard the deadbolt opening.

"Hello, can I help you?" Haley asked after opening the door, not recognizing the woman.

Victoria snorted at the sight of Haley - a blonde bimbo half Jack's age, wearing nothing but a men's tee-shirt. She should have expected as much. "I need to speak with Jack," Victoria replied curtly. "Is he here?"

Haley didn't like the short tone of Victoria's voice and looked the older woman over, thinking she might be one of Jack's business associates the way she was dressed in a pants-suit.

"Can I tell him who's here?" Haley asked, her voice matching Victoria's cold tone.

"Let's just say that twenty years ago I was standing where you are, though I didn't look quite so sluttish. Now, are you going to let me in or not? I'm bored with standing in this hallway."

Haley was about to reply with a stinging comment when Jack suddenly appeared behind her.

"Victoria," Jack sounded surprised to see his ex-wife. It had been years since they had spoken face to face. "What are you doing here?"

It was obvious where Haley got her shirt, since Jack was without, wearing only a pair of jeans. Victoria noted he still looked good without a shirt, even at forty. "I need to speak with you. It's about Millicent."

"Okay," Jack agreed with a reluctant sigh. "Uh, Haley, could you...?"

Haley nodded, "Yeah. I need to take a shower before work, anyway." She gave Victoria an icy stare before moving towards the bathroom.

"Come on in," Jack invited. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"It's a little early in the afternoon for that," Victoria answered dryly as she stepped in. "Don't you think?" She watched Haley disappear down a hallway, "And aren't you a little old to be dating someone who still works second shift?"

"Haley work's at a jeweler," Jack explained, shutting the door. "They get busy during the holiday season."

"Of course," Victoria smirked, glancing around the tastefully decorated condo. She had to admit that her husband had style and the money to show it off.

"You said you wanted to talk about Miley?" Jack asked, needing the conversation to move past Haley before he got angry and began yelling. That's usually how his conversations with Victoria went since their divorce years prior.

Victoria set her purse down and sat on an expensive leather couch, crossing her legs. "She's making poor choices," Victoria stated, sensing the small-talk was over. "This fiasco of a marriage is just the latest in a long line of bad decisions."

Jack found a hooded sweatshirt draped over the back of a nearby chair and slipped it over his head, "Don't you think Miley's old enough to make her own decisions, good or bad? Besides, she loves Charlie. How can that be a bad thing? Don't you remember when we were young and in love?"

"We're divorced," Victoria reminded him plainly.

Jack chuckled and sat in the chair, across from his ex-wife, "Yeah, but Miley isn't a money-obsessed witch like her mother."

Victoria frowned but let the insult pass, "Miley may be twenty years old but she's still a child. She'd still be living at home if you weren't paying for her apartment -- which is just a sex den, by the way, for her and that lower middle-class nerd of a boy she's with."

Jack couldn't help but chuckle as Victoria proved his insult correct, "You mean her husband?"

"My point is," Victoria stared at Jack sternly, "is that you're enabling Miley to make these poor decisions by continuing to provide her with money."

"She's a hard-working student, Victoria. I give her money so she doesn't have to work a job while going to school. As long as she continues to get good grades I'm going to support her."

"And what about her unemployed husband. Will you be supporting him, too?"

"Charlie's never asked me for a thing," Jack answered, "Except for Miley's hand in marriage."

Victoria scowled, "Which of course, you granted."

"Actually, I turned him down. I told him I didn't think he and Miley were ready until they could support themselves."

Victoria raised a surprised brow, "Way to stick to your guns, Jack."

Jack lifted an indifferent shoulder, "That was eight months ago. Charlie and Miley had just gotten back together and I wasn't sure about them, but ever since I've seen how much Miley loves him and how good he is to her."

"He's a moneyless vagabond," Victoria countered. "He's taking advantage of our daughter and your generosity."

Jack stood up and turned towards a small table near his kitchen, "I'm pretty sure you're wrong."

"He's just squatting in that apartment of theirs," Victoria huffed. "If you were to cut Millicent off and force her to move home, I'm sure Charlie would leave her and we could have their ridiculous marriage annulled."

Jack mostly ignored her, opening his briefcase and searching inside.

"What are you doing?" Victoria answered, annoyed at Jack's lack of attention.

Jack found what he was looking for and moved towards his ex-wife carrying a comic book in his hands, "Here, take a look at this."

Victoria accepted the comic and looked upon its glossy cover, "Why are you giving me this childish nonsense? I'm trying to talk to you about Millicent and --"

"That's a draft copy for the first issue of Captain Darkness," Jack interrupted. "It comes out next month. I've got a friend in the company's publishing department and he sent this to me, knowing Charlie had just become my son-in-law."

Victoria took a second look at the comic book with a bewildered expression.

"Charlie wrote that," Jack told her. "His best friend did the artwork. They're talented, and my publishing buddy tells me this is going to be the next hot property in comic books."

Victoria didn't look impressed as she flipped through the comic, "So our son-in-law writes about... super heroes? Is that what you want for our daughter, Jack?"

"Do you know that movies based on comic book properties grossed over two billion dollars this past year? Movie studios are paying out millions for the rights to make movies based on books just like the one you're holding in your hands. If that book sells as well as my friend thinks it will, Charlie's going to become a millionaire by the time he turns twenty-two."

Victoria looked up with a doubting expression, "You're not serious?"

"I'm dead serious," Jack stated. "And I'll help him. I like Charlie, he's helped Miley grow into a wonderful young woman and I don't think there's anything he wouldn't do for her. He's exactly the kind of man I want for our daughter."

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Stacy browsed through racks and racks of jeans hoping to find something that would fit her the way she preferred. She liked her jeans tight in the ass and thighs, but slightly belled around the ankles. It was difficult to find ones that fir just-right, with her curvy hips and narrow waistline. "Brian?" she called, "Can you come hold this bag for me it's starting to get heavy." When no answer arrived she looked around, "Brian? Hon?"

Spotting Brian outside the store in the mall's wide hallway Stacy rolled her eyes. He was already shirking his mule duties to talk on his cell phone. She wondered who he was speaking with. It was probably Chip or Theo, Stacy guessed, wondering who urinated with the most force -- Thor or the Hulk.

"So you're cool with giving her a co-plotting credit on the first twelve issues?" Brian was asking his phone as Stacy walked out of the clothing store.

Stacy silently listened to Brian's half of the conversation.

"Yeah, dude. She says she'll drop the lawsuit completely if we do that and cut her in on the profits from the initial dozen."

Brian began nodding, "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah I thought it was pretty fair, too. Okay, I'll let her know and set it up with Marvel."

Stacy set her bulging bags down on a wooden bench next to where Brian was standing.

Brian grinned into his phone, "I know; I can't wait either. It's going to be so cool to go to see our comic book on the shelf right next to Captain America. Okay. Okay, yeah. See you in a couple days. Say hi to Miley for me, tell her we miss her."

"Was that Charlie?" Stacy asked when Brian hung up.

"Yeah," Brian said as he pushed his cell into his jeans pocket. "He called from their hotel. I guess he was bored waiting for Miley to get out of the bathroom so they could go to McDonalds."

Stacy's face twisted, "McDonalds? They're in Cancun, shouldn't they be having Mexican?"

"It's not Mexican, there," Brian noted.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, they're in Mexico," Brian explained. "So it's not Mexican there. That'd be like us going to have cheeseburgers and saying we're having 'American'."

Stacy held out a palm and rolled her eyes, "Whatever. So how's their honeymoon going?"

"Sounds like they're having a great time."

"That's good. So, Charlie was cool with your proposal to Sam?"

Brian nodded, "Yeah, he was totally fine with it. I figured he would be."

Stacy grinned, "You two are starting to get pretty excited, aren't you? About your comic book coming out?"

"I'm really excited," Brian admitted. "It's going to be so awesome. I know it'll sell well, too. Especially with a major published like Marvel behind it."

"I'm so proud of you, Brian. You and Charlie worked so hard on this, going all the way back to high school. I just know it's going to be a big hit."

"I hope so," Brian nodded, picking up Stacy's bags. "So where we off to next, more jean shopping?"

"I can't find anything that fits," Stacy complained. "But we need to go to the department store, there's this crazy blender my mom wants for Christmas."

"Sure, okay. Oh, by the way, I guess Miley's pregnant."

Stacy blinked, "What?"

"They don't know for sure, but Charlie said their home pregnancy test just came out positive."

Stacy stopped in the middle of the mall and slugged Brian in the shoulder, "Why didn't you tell me?!"

Brian clenched his arm, "Ow! I thought I just did?"

"You should have told me as soon as you got off the phone! Don't you think I'd want to know that my best friend is pregnant?"

Brian shrugged helplessly, "I didn't think it was that big of a deal? We both knew they were trying...?"

"Oh my god," Stacy beamed. "This is so exciting! Do you think they'll name us as godparents?"

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"Who should we name as godparents? Do you think it'll be a boy? A girl? Oh my god, we still haven't decided on a name. I mean, I still really like Electra if it's a girl but is that too flashy? How about Bryce? I know it's a boy's name but I think it makes an awesome girls name, too. You know, like Opie's daughter?"

Charlie reached across their booth at McDonalds and squeezed Miley's hand, "I think you need to slow down, Miley. We don't even know if you're pregnant, for sure. There'll be enough time to think up names and godparents when we get back home -- after we visit the doctor's and confirm."

Miley's eyes widened to saucers, "What's if there are twins inside me?"

"Twins?" Charlie sounded doubtful.

"Yeah, I mean I was already pregnant went we went to the beach today." Miley joked, "What if you humped another one into me?"

Charlie grinned, "I don't think it works that way."

Miley nibbled on a slender French fry, "I know, but it would be cool. Twin boys."

"Not twin girls?" Charlie wondered.

"Oh god no," Miley shook her head with a sour face. "Every guy within three states would be trying to have a threesome with them as soon as they turned seventeen."

Charlie snorted, "Your mind works in strange ways, Mrs. White."

Miley beamed, "I love it when you call me that - Mrs. White. I love being your wife, Charlie. I can't believe I have your baby in me, I'm so happy right now..."

"Calm down," Charlie urged with a smile. "Like I said, we don't even know for sure if you're pregnant or not. Those home tests aren't definitive. But if you are pregnant, you need to eat."

Miley frowned when Charlie pointed at her Big Mac. She had only taken one bite out of it, "My hamburger tastes funny."

"What do you mean?"

"It don't taste like they do in the states. I think they put a different sauce on them down here."

"Probably," Charlie didn't argue. "Do you want to go somewhere else?"

Miley shook her head while sucking some milkshake through a straw. She licked her lips after, "I'm fine. I'm too excited to eat. I know I'm pregnant, Charlie. I just know it. I can feel it. I can feel your baby inside me."

Charlie smirked, "You can feel it?"

"Yeah. It's like motherly instinct, you know? Oh god, Charlie. Can you believe it? I'm going to be a mommy."

"You're going to be a terrific mommy."

Miley bit her lip around a perpetual smile, "I think it's going to be a girl."

Charlie wondered, "If it's a girl, do you think she'll be into comics?"

"Probably." Miley reached across the table and stole one of Charlie's fries, "You'll be her daddy, after all. And, of course, Brian will baby-sit and read her all kinds of superhero stuff. Chances are she'll want to grow up to write the See-Thru Woman."

"You mean the Invisible Woman," Charlie corrected with a chuckle.

"Whatever. My point is, she'll probably want to be just like her daddy because you're going to be the most awesome father ever."

"Let's ask Brian and Stacy if they want to be godparents," Charlie suggested.

"Okay," Miley nodded, munching. "But if they turn us down can we ask Brock and Darla?"

Charlie nearly snorted Mountain Dew out of his nose in amusement, "You don't want to ask Brett?"

"Oh my god," Miley covered her eyes in embarrassment. "I'd almost forgotten him." She giggled, "We shouldn't joke. Brett almost raped me and Brock nearly killed you."