Archive of Our Own ^beta

The bus was cold, and it smelled. These two descriptors could also be applied to (at least) two of its passengers. They were currently in an argument to the death, and reading their body language, it might not have been very figurative.

“Elaine,” George said, leaning as far back into the aisle as possible, “I can assure you that, had I known the consequences, I would never have done that.”

“George,” Elaine said, leaning forward and mimicking his placating tone, “one wonders how you could be unaware of the consequences of killing someone’s heirloom fish.” She maintained her disgusted expression as George performed a decent impression of the late goldfish. His face finally settled on something reproachful.

“Well, how was I to know he would react like that? I didn't think he could lift twenty gallons of water, let alone throw it," he said, making one of the worst attempts at a joke that Elaine had ever heard, topped only by a shaky clip of Jerry's routine in high school. Needless to say, George was losing ground quickly.

“We wouldn’t have had to know if you could’ve managed to take ten minutes out of your immensely hectic life to feed his fish.” Elaine managed to more invasively invade his space and George could tell that there was no winning this argument.

“I’m sorry, ok? I messed up,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “Did you get what you wanted?” he added irritably. Elaine purposefully looked away so she would miss George’s long-suffering glare.

“I’d also like my clothes dry cleaned, if that’s not a huge inconvenience,” Elaine said, with voice still sharp as the corner of a coffee table but body finally leaning back.

“Fine, fine, I’ll pick them up tomorrow.”

They stayed like that for a bit, George nursing his dignity and Elaine glaring at the seat back. It was only when the bus stopped that Elaine moved. She stared in horror at a well-built man with a bad floppy haircut standing outside the window, waiting to board the bus.

“Oh my god, that’s Manny Cambell. George, give me your scarf,” Elaine muttered, already lunging for his neck.

“Like the soup?” George said, hurriedly taking it off so that Elaine wouldn’t (hopefully accidentally) choke him.

“No, there’s no ‘p,’” Elaine said, wrapping the fishy cotton around the bottom of her face. She grimaced, but stoically finished the knot and shoved George. “Lean forward and pretend to look at something interesting outside, it’ll hide more of my face.” George grumbled, but he started examining the overcast clouds that mimicked the conversation’s current atmosphere.

“No, forward more. You’re bad at this.”

George muttered something about honey and flies.

“You’re on thin ice, Georgie,” she retorted, and he conceded that so far she had been catching flies regardless of bait.

“What’d he do, anyway,” he asked, trying to steer the conversation away from said thin ice.

“We used to go out-” Elaine whispered, before hissing, “Ssh, here he comes.”

Elaine stopped breathing and stared out the window. George tried very hard to stop his face from twitching at the all-encompassing fish smell.

“-he’s gone. We used to go out but then, it turns out, he wanted me to marry him so I could change my name and help him with a copyright infringement case with Campbell soup-”

“Did you say Campbell soup?”

Manny loomed over the back of their seat. George thought of vultures. Elaine startled like she’d almost fallen asleep in class.

“Hmm, what? No,” she said, trying very hard to act normally while refusing to turn toward Manny.

“Elaine?”

Elaine made a face of such pure regret and hatred that George was almost glad for Manny that she hadn’t turned yet.

“Hi,” Elaine said scratchily. She swallowed and began again. “Hi, Manny, it’s been a while.”

“Yeah, it sure has. What are you guys doing?” Manny was so far over their seat that, from the angle of their necks, they could have been bird watching.

“We’re, uh, we were just, um,” Elaine said, gesturing incoherently.

“We were just going for a swim!” George butted in and gave the best fake smile he could muster. Manny looked at him and then glanced outside. It was November. “We, uh, fell in, as you can see,” Elaine continued. The muscles responsible for George’s smiling began to tremble with the length of the pause. Manny finally responded:

“Yeah, anyway. Elaine, I never got an answer out of you about my Campbell lawsuit idea. What do you think?” Manny’s cologne was so strong it was olfactible even over the fish.

“Oh, Manny, I really couldn’t, because…” Elaine looked around desperately, settling on George.

“Because she’s already married to me!” George stared straight at Manny and smiled as hard as he could. It took Elaine two full seconds to wipe the look off her face.

“Yeah,” Elaine said, snaking an arm around his shoulders and shaking him a little harder than friendly.

“Yeah,” said George, and looked at her pointedly. She desisted and they turned back to Manny in time to see his features so contorted with disgust that it was a wonder his head hadn't turned inside out.

“Okay,” he said, and left as quickly as a six foot two man can maneuver in a cramped bus.

Elaine stared at her hands like a dead fish had suddenly appeared there. George wished he was on a different bus.