#rico you need to wake up and realize just how 'in' with kowalski you actually are

[drawbauchery]

The Inherent Eroticism of Clowning

fic by cartoons-tothemoon

At some point, Rico realized that Kowalski wasn’t a smiler.

He wouldn’t call the guy happy or well-adjusted, but, then again, could he even call himself that? And he smiled all the time!

But Kowalski…

It wasn’t like he was an especially angsty guy, he was just…moody. Emotional. Maybe even more so than Private. Private had two modes that he volleyed through, and otherwise remained at a middle point of the emotional equilibrium where he was just…fine. Skipper’s emotional state also seemed to be apathetic unless under great stress. But Kowalski? Kowalski bounced back and forth between that spectrum, it might as well been like watching a tennis game.

It fascinated him on some level that their resident nerd seemed to share many of the same instabilities as he did, and on some level, he was able to find a kinship in that.

Of course, Kowalski was never receptive of such a friendship, and why would he be? It would mean, on some level, admitting to being some sort of freak. An overly-emotional basket case with some unexamined problems here and there.

Sure, it was fine to BE like that, but admitting to it meant some form of culpability. The only reason Rico usually didn’t have to deal with consequences like that was because Skipper didn’t usually bother over-examining the issues that laid before him or the little discipline he gave him was harsh and swift enough to be a simple slap of the cuffs for five minutes before Rico could go on with his life.

Kowalski wasn’t the type to receive a slap on the wrist. He was, for lack of a better word, good. Not morally good, but, good by the standards of the team. He could be building his third edition of a death ray, but as long as he stayed out of Skipper’s way in the morning he might as well be a saint.

Come to think of it, Kowalski stayed out of everybody’s way, pretty much. Sure, they ate meals together and watched movies, but unless Skipper called them together or he had something to show off, he mostly kept to himself. He was usually in his lab or in Private’s greenhouse…

These were the facts as Rico knew them. Kowalski was a paradoxically over-emotional logical man of science, who gave off the vibes of being a gifted student in grade school, and kept to himself.

And he wasn’t a smiler. Over-emotional, yes, overly positive emotions? Not quite.

Rico figured it was his job to change that.

———

Over breakfast that morning, Private and Skipper went through their strange morning charade of being simultaneously open and loving and incredibly repressed, which, made for good entertainment on slow days.

However, this was not going to be one of those slow days. He had the lofty goal of trying to make Kowalski not only smile, but laugh. Laughter was easier to gain without just simply asking than smiling. It was sudden and explosive, while smiling was quiet and demure. Not his style, but he was looking for something of the same effect.

And besides, to get a genuine smile out of him in the first place, what was he really going to do? Complimenting him would feel weird, and anything else felt like uncharted waters for a reason. He might be known as the impulsive and weird one, willing to dive into anything, but, that came to violence and action. Those things made sense to him. Social things, even benign ones like these with people who he has known for years, had their own rolling tides associate with them. He didn’t know if these seas would treat him unfavorably, but he would never truly know until he took the plunge.

As plates were set down on the table of some weird sort of Russian pancake that Private had found on the internet and had wanted to test out in the kitchen, a thing that seemed to make him rather proud, enthusiastic to try something new, Rico dropped a line in Kowalski’s direction he had found on the internet.

A spoon was dropped.

Private looked scandalized, his palms practically super-glueing themselves to his face in shock. Skipper looked a little horrified, eyes briefly flittering to Private to read his reaction. Yeah, he saw that. Kowalski seemed to share in this same look of horror, jaw agape, blinking once or twice to get a read on the situation before letting out something of a confused scoff?   - He was guessing that was what it was - before he wrapped a hand around his mouth too and turned to the side to cough.

He couldn’t guess what his own face looked like, but he guessed it was a little vacant, at the least. didn’t see anything wrong with what he said, but he probably should’ve guessed he’d be wrong about that given his track record.

And that was how Rico once again found himself forever trapped in the ‘too horny on main’ corner that seemed to exist only because of him, with cold blintzes and an empty kitchen to return to.

He was forced to acknowledge it. In the event of being given the choice to sink or swim, he sunk. And everyone knew he did.

———

Upon reflection, Rico was starting to think that Kowalski might have been a happier person than he thought he was. He knows that whenever Private tells him a lame pun or joke, he gives a small laugh or two to keep him from getting discouraged. Not to mention, whenever Skipper praises an invention, be it an actual “good work, Kowalski!” or a back-handed “I like that it hasn’t killed us yet” seems to make him rather excited, though that could just be the pure enthusiasm he has when it comes to his work carrying him through a demonstration.

Come to think of it, Kowalski doesn’t smile a lot around him. He might if they’re in a group, when they’re all celebrating something with this big mob mentality thing going for them, but, otherwise. Nah.

Maybe this is because they don’t hang out a lot? He WAS banned from the lab. There was a sign and everything.

Maybe he just didn’t like him all that much? It’s not like he ever SAID anything really, but who could be for certain?

These were the things he had to think about while he braided Julien’s hair. Well, tried to, anyhow. He didn’t exactly understand how it worked, and no matter how many times Julien explained it to him, even that day, he didn’t think he was ever going to get it. However, on some level, it was their “thing” to do together, on days where they didn’t feel like doing anything but lounging around, but still wanted to do something more than watch TV. So, that seemed to be their afternoon, trying to figure out a French braid while he contemplated the emotional state of another man. It would sound almost scandalous if Julien didn’t know.

“You are like, the funniest guy on the planet,” Julien stated. “The idea that he can’t even shine a smile at you is a thing that is preposterous.”

Rico hummed at that, giving him a small head scratch that had Julien reaching for his hand to keep at the motion, but his mind was still somewhat elsewhere.

Julien probably only thought such a thing because he already liked Rico, and this love  of his had made him dumb. Just yesterday he read online that he should microwave a metal spoon before having ice cream, so it’s easier to scoop out of the tin, and Kowalski had to save what he referred to as his “souped-up electromagnetic baby” from such an act as soon as the sparking had drawn his attention.

Yes, truly it was love that had made him dumb. Nothing else, be it circumstances nor his general careless nature, could be the cause of such a thing.

At least the microwave thing had made Julien laugh. Watching Kowalski scramble from his seat at the kitchen table to wrestle a uranium-powered microwave off the counter, forgetting in his panic that he could’ve simply unplugged the thing. Such an act toppled him over, almost crushing him underneath the device. Julien found the erratic movement funny enough to laugh, even if it turned Kowalski three shades of a flustered red in the face afterwards.

Rico was also there. He knew what was going to happen when Julien had suggested it, and wanted to watch the sparks fly with him. He should’ve expected Kowalski to prevent them from absolutely destroying his creation, but he didn’t expect that.

Perhaps Kowalski was full of surprises like that. Multi-faceted. A puzzle.

That almost frustrated Rico more. He HATED puzzles. He liked things direct. To the point. Muddling through ambiguity was just such a weird and fussy thing to him. There was a reason he was the only one in the group with a functional romantic relationship that was able to stand more than three months of time, but it wasn’t that easy.

For one, Julien had asked first.

For second…what was he even supposed to say? “Have you secretly hated me this entire time or are my jokes just simply that terrible that you can’t even smile in my presence out of principle?” That was too direct. That got to the heart of this weird insecurity that had only popped up in the last week, and Kowalski seemed like the type to be frightened by that kind of thing.

And besides, the last thing Rico wanted was to look insecure. The second last thing Rico wanted, though, was to BE insecure, so those two conflicting thoughts sort of kept him from taking action. Or, at the very least, taking action at this point in time.

He was considered sort of an absolutist in his own right. An all-or-nothing sort of guy. However, that didn’t mean he was incapable of walking the thin line of gray that lined the black and white.

He just wasn’t capable of doing that right now.

After all, he was trying to learn how to braid a French braid.

———

Rico decided to lay relatively low for the rest of the day. Nothing during lunch, no weird comments during dinner. Nothing.

Sure, he still talked, but, it was a casual sort of thing. All very shallow stuff like “hey, how was your day?” Or “hey, dinner was pretty good tonight.” You know, normal things that sounded so utterly strange out of him. He might as well have been flying a kite at night, that’s how unsavory he guessed it came off given the ire that Skipper gave him during dinner, though Private seemed to welcome it.

It was a movie night tonight, though, and it was Rico’s turn to pick, so he figured he’d take advantage of the situation he was in. Especially since Private and Skipper were busy making up the popcorn (why there needed to be two of them when they weren’t even using it as an excuse to make out, he’d never know) and Julien and Maurice were chilling in the other corner of the room, reading or looking at their phones or something of the sort.

He had to seize the opportunity that he had so carelessly squandered earlier.

Rico flickered through a bunch of action movies, a few catching his eye for later viewings, but none of them really appealing to him at the moment.

He turned to Kowalski and shrugged.

“Y-You got any n-nature docu-documentaries you’re lo-looking to watch?”

“Are you feeling alright?”

“O-Only if they’re, if they’re cool.”

Kowalski seemed a little surprised at this. He shrugged. “There’s one about anacondas I’ve been looking to watch.”

“A-Are you s-sure that isn’t m-meant f-for pri-private viewing?”

Kowalski had to take a second to think about it before returning slightly scandalized, though more mad than anything else really. “It’s the REPTILE. That’s a dated joke even by your standards.”

Rico laughed a little to himself before sobering up. “I g-guess I ha-have been acting, acting weird t-today.”

Kowalski regarded this at first dryly, but then with a touch more compassion than Rico thought he was capable of showing towards him. “Oh, uh,” he began elegantly.

Rico sighed. “There’s-there’s a lot of el-elements t-to how I’m f-feeling, ya know?”

It looked as if Kowalski was about to put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, but he seemed to hesitate for a reason Rico didn’t understand that well, but also didn’t want explained.

“Yeah. L-lots of el-elements. H-hydrogen, Ox-oxygen, RadoN, Yttri-yttrium…The lot.” He sighed once more, trying to keep the smirk from sliding onto his face.

The hesitant hand that was at first drawn to Rico’s shoulder found a place under his chin as Kowalski slowly thought about what he said and how he compiled it together. When Kowalski realized, his eyes widened and Rico received a punch in the arm as Kowalski laughed, genuinely LAUGHED at such a stupid, corny science joke! He could’ve sworn Kowalski would’ve called him a son of a bitch as he did if he was that type of a guy. Seeing him laugh made Rico laugh too, with a sense of camaraderie that came with it, which kept Kowalski laughing as well in a sort of self-perpetuating cycle.

Rico let out a heavy breath as he had finally gotten it out of his system, and out of the corner of his eye, saw something he had never really picked up on before.

When Kowalski laughed, perhaps for too long, or maybe a little too much, or he just didn’t want anyone to pick up on it, he went to cover his mouth with his hand. It helped to mask the emotion somewhat, and it wasn’t the first time Rico picked up on the motion as a way to maintain a pokerface, but he saw it in a somewhat new light, so to speak.

He just had to be casual about it.

“Y-you do that every time?”

“What? Oh.” Kowalski said, hiding a smile behind his fist, though to call it hiding was generous in its own right, if not inaccurate. It was more of a self-soothing gesture. A comforting gesture, more than anything else. “Well, we can’t let you get too egotistical, huh.”

Then it took Rico a moment to think, and Kowalski used the time to grab the remote and select the documentary. When Kowalski pressed play, that’s when he realized it, “you mean this morning you-!?”

“Shh! It’s starting.”

———

“They didn’t even wait for the popcorn.” Private pouted, his arms wrapped around the largest bowl they could find in the kitchen.

“Did you hear how they were dancing around each other? Get a clue, am I right?” Skipper muttered as he grabbed a handful of popcorn from the bowl.

Despite their misgivings and their grumblings, they too soon could be found in front of the television for a movie night, even for a movie like this.

(I didn’t want to genuinely write out some sort of ass-clapping joke, but that’s probably the kind of joke Rico told. I know it in my heart, but with the ambiguity there you can kill the author who killed the previous author, so to speak and say what kind of joke he made. I capitalized the parts of the elements that spell out the secret message. You learn something new every day, but nobody ever said you learned something useful every day. You just happened to today. )