Mr. Cupcake and the Rat: Park
Ren - Real World AU
Ren - Real World AU
Ren was still pretty sure that Mr. Cupcake was a serial killer.
He kind of had to be, didn’t he? Otherwise, why would anyone avoid him? Oh, sure, he was tall and absolutely terrifying to behold... but he also wrote facts about otters on paper bags, paper bags which contained a different meal every single day. And he wore all that pastel and aprons with hearts on them and one time Ren had been on the roof when he came out to put her lunch down and she’d noticed he had a flower in his hair.
Who put flowers in their hair?
Probably just people trying too hard to convince other people they weren’t serial killers.
She had decided she wouldn’t mind, though. He probably could have killed her the first time he found her in his dumpster and hadn’t. Instead, he’d given her food. So either he wasn’t going to kill her or he liked to feed people for a really long time first. In which case, hey! She wouldn’t starve to death! Whatever he did probably wouldn’t be worse than starving to death, unless he was like, a really mean serial killer.
The park he had given her directions to, drawn on the side of a paper bag, did nothing to dissuade her from the inevitable conclusion, because Ren had never seen such a wholesome park in all her life. What was it doing on this side of town? There was a place for people to run their dogs, and children playing in a sand pit and a group of mothers chatting and idly watching their children run and play. What did he even do here? Climb trees, really? Why did someone as big as him need to be taller? If she climbed him, it would be the same effect as climbing a tree.
Ren was aware of eyes on her. She wasn’t sure why. It could be because she looked weird. She tried to look normal, but she always had on too many layers of clothing that was too old. And she was dirty. She was never not dirty, pale skin with yellow undertones stained mottled brown in too many places.
Did it count as loitering if it was in a park? Parks were for loitering, yes?
Although from what she had been able to decipher, the crime of “loitering” was defined as “being homeless in public” so she might still get in trouble. It was a nice looking park, but they were on the poor side of town still. The poorer the area, the darker the populace, the less likely anyone was to call the cops. The more likely cops were to show up anyway.
It was a coin toss, as were all things in life, like living in serial killer’s attics eating their sandwiches. And, as with the serial killer attic, she’d already come this far. Might as well keep going. She meandered through the park, searching for the oak that Mr. Cupcake had written of. It wasn’t hard to recognize it once she saw it. An old tree, clearly, probably had been when someone as big as Mr. Cupcake was still small enough to go climbing trees in parks. There were a lot of assorted benches nearby, most of which didn’t even have people on them. There was someone with a dog at one of them, and she paused to gaze at it longingly. Dogs. The domain of people much higher up on the food chain than her.
Rather than go to the benches, or towards the dog--she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to pet it, so why bother calling attention to herself?--she beelined for the tree, scrambling up the rough bark effortlessly. Even with her overly-worn sneakers, she was able to get traction, mostly because she seemed to move too quickly for gravity to catch up with the fact it should be pushing her.
She climbed about halfway up the tree, finding a branch still thick enough to support her weight and be comfortable for her bony ass to sit on for a while. She settled in, back against the trunk.
Mr. Cupcake had been right. The oak was on a hill of sorts, and she could see very far from up here. She wasn’t even as high as she could have been, settling for a mere fifteen feet or so. High enough that people probably wouldn’t notice her up there right away, but low enough that the branches were thick and comfortable.
She pulled the sack lunch out from between her teeth, where it had comfortably hung while she climbed. What was she getting today? She was eager to see; waiting to open it had been sort of like a fun little game. Building up anticipation. She had a box of somewhat-improperly-baked goods in her backpack, as well, but she was always thrilled to see what sort of food he’d packed for her. There were overarching themes, like the little boxes of “soy” milk, but overall, it varied. She often wondered if they were his leftovers, or what.
A saran wrapped sandwich, as always, but also a little plastic container. She wiggled excitedly, pulling the plastic container out first and spinning it in her hands. He was not getting this back. He probably had no idea how useful one of these things was. You could put anything in it! Even liquid!
The contents were a mystery to her. They were sort of green and sort of brown and the steam on the sides of the clear plastic implied heat. She glanced back into the bag, then pulled out the sandwich. She was immediately as enamored with it as she had been with the plastic container. Just looking at it made her start salivating heavily. She could see the meat, so much of it, practically falling out of the sides. Little flecks of red and green and white, too, and smothered in what she took to be melted white cheese.
It looked like it was going to be one of the best things she'd ever put in her mouth, and given how many nice things were going in her mouth lately, that was saying something. She was practically tearing up at the prospect, sheer excitement.
She was just starting to unwrap it, too eager to save it for later and discover what the green things were, when she heard something from below. Floating in on the breeze. She paused, perking her ear.
Music. Some kind of music. Just one instrument, an airy sort of sound. Curiously, she glanced down and around the branch to see if she could see where it was coming from. The music was a strange sort of airy wailing, that made her almost immediately start wiggling her foot to the rhythm. She found the source, a man sitting on a bench very close to being underneath the tree, just maybe ten, twenty feet away from the base. He appeared to be blowing on something in his hands--whatever it was, it was making a pleasing, reedy sort of sound.
It was considered a bit rude to hang out near street performers--they wouldn’t take kindly to you possibly absorbing some of the cash in the crowd. But she wasn’t here begging--she was sitting politely in a tree. No one could possibly give her money. They would have to throw it. So that meant she could just stay up here and listen.
He thumped on the ground with his foot to keep time, and played a slow, sorrowful sort of tune, and she leaned back against the tree and unwrapped her sandwich. She took a whiff. Heavenly. Then a bite. She let out a low, pleased noise in the back of her throat.
If he was going to feed her like this, she didn’t even really mind if he was fattening her up to kill her and put in his cupcakes, or something.
The plastic container’s mysterious green contents turned out to be some sort of... vegetable. Green beans, she wanted to say, but they weren’t like the ones she’d seen, which generally came out of a can and were fatter and shorter. They’d been... she didn’t know, made crunchy somehow. Salty and crunchy and snappy and good. She munched on them and the sandwich and enjoyed the music from below, which had picked up into a more jaunty sort of tune that had her whole leg bouncing.
The sun was warm on her skin. The tree was beautiful, the sky was so blue between its leaves. The music made her brain hum and her body hop like an excited rat. The food was delicious, a constant pleasure on her tongue and then in her stomach.
When she died--whether from Mr. Cupcake or other circumstances--she thought she’d like to come here. To this sort of place, warm and full with good smells and tastes and sounds.
She stayed in the tree for a while after she’d finished eating, half-laying on the branch, enjoying the sun and the music and the sensation of being full. This was why street musicians worked so well. They could make the brain happy. She got it now.
It was generally considered polite to give money to a busker, she knew that. But she didn’t have money. Still, she’d been sitting here enjoying his sounds for what felt like an eternity. Taking without giving was what you did to those who could afford to throw things away. So she climbed back down the tree, slowly, leisurely, swinging from branch to branch, enjoying the slower, melodic tune the player had switched to. She hit the ground feeling like a hundred dollars, and she meandered over towards the man as she pulled her backpack off. She didn’t have money, not even spare coins, but she had something she figured was just as good.
She sat down on the bench next to the man, who she could now see was dark and old with silver-grey hair stark against his earth-colored skin. Just for a moment, so she could pull out the box Mr. Cupcake had given to her and rummage through it. It all looked good, but she spotted a single cupcake. That seemed appropriate. Cupcake from Mr. Cupcake. She would have liked to eat it herself, but it was definitely the best thing in the box, and she liked his music. So she pulled it out and set it on his leg.
The man paused briefly in his playing to look down, then over at her. She gave him a hopeful sort of smile. He looked sort of amused, then shrugged, and set down his harmonica briefly to pick up the cupcake and unwrap it. She grabbed a somewhat misshapen muffin for herself, and sat next to him while he ate Mr. Cupcake’s cupcake, feet still swinging back and forth with the memory of the music that had stopped. When he finished eating, she handed him the box of soy milk she was drinking. Wordlessly, he took a sip, then handed it back.
He started playing again, and she sat there on the bench for a while, eating muffins.
She couldn’t just hang out here all day, unfortunately. She had things to do. But she stayed for another long twenty minutes or so, and she left a scone on the man’s knee when she finally got up to leave, a cheerful bounce in her step.
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