"Incoming!" Shouted Peter as he and Nibs flew up to the Imagination Tower, hefting a large panel of glass between them. As they brought it up to the empty frame, Curly immediately noticed the panel was a little too big.
"Hold on," Curly ordered, studying the large sheet of glass hovering in front of him. With one glance he could tell that it was half a centimeter too wide. He took his razor string and expertly trimmed off the excess, nearly cutting into Peter's thigh.
"Whoa!" Peter exclaimed, drawing his leg back. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were trying to incapacitate me!" He joked.
"Oh, of course not," Curly replied, his tone rich with sarcasm. "Who would want to hurt you? Everybody loves the fantastic Peter."
Peter's smile faltered, but he didn't say anything as he fit the panel into the frame and flew off to get the next one.
Curly sighed and massaged his neck. He'd been feeling this irrational jealousy ever since that night, but he knew he shouldn't blame Peter for his miserable predicament.
Yes, he had a huge crush on Tink. He'd always liked her, from the day he'd arrived in Neverland and she'd punched him in the arm for being too tall. So he didn't hesitate to rescue her that night when the Crocodile had cut off her air supply. And then she had kissed him, and he had nearly lost his senses. That was probably the best moment of his life. The next moment, when he realized that Tink thought he was Peter, was probably the worst.
He'd never been jealous of Peter. Even though he was generally the best at everything and was always at the top of the leaderboard. Even though he'd known Tink liked Peter all this time. Curly had usually been too scared to go see Tink, so mostly he saw her as an unattainable dream. But now he'd had a glimpse, and knowing that all of that wonderful emotion was meant for Peter ignited an envy that Curly had never experienced before.
On top of all that, Tink was being incredibly hostile to him. He hadn't seen the real Tink since he'd kissed her, but her robotic fairy avatar seemed ever present. He had thought she would just go back to ignoring him like usual, but to his dismay, she'd been talking to him more than ever before, and her comments were all negative. In the last two weeks that they'd been rebuilding the Imagination Tower, she had criticized all of his work, accused him of being lazy and worthless, and had yelled at him on numerous occasions for wearing the wrong color. A small, weird part of him enjoyed the attention, but mostly he became more and more embarrassed with every irate remark she directed at him. He'd tried numerous times to explain himself, but there were always other people around.
Curly didn't know what he was going to do about Tink, but for the present, he focused on clearing his mind of the thoughts that involved punching Peter in the face as he flew up with another panel of glass.
*****
"Dinner is served!" Slightly announced, pulling a tray of meat pies from the fire. The lost boys and pirates descended upon him at once, grabbing the pies off the tray before he had taken two steps forward.
"These are delicious!" The twins exclaimed, each with their mouths full.
Slightly beamed. "Thank you! I started with a savory roux, and then added in the meat and pineapple..." he explained, but nobody was listening, except for Wendy, who was politely nodding at him even though Peter was trying to pull her towards the cove. Curly was glad that Wendy was back, although it seemed to put Tink in an exceptionally bad mood.
They were all eating dinner together on the beach by the lagoon to celebrate the reconstruction of the Imagination Tower. Tink had spent most of the time flying around shouting insults at no one in particular, but now the robotic fairy was in an animated conversation with Captain Hook, and Curly couldn't help eavesdropping.
"I told you," spat Tink, "your preliminary data was easily accessible, but your criminal file is in a secure network, and I'd have to plug directly into it in order to erase those records."
"So, when can you do that?"
"Are you kidding me? I'm not going to go cavorting around in the dirty legal system of the Grey World! Why don't you just kill me now?"
"But it's got to be done, and soon!" Hook insisted, wringing his hands in an uncharacteristic manner.
"Well, I'm not going," Tink replied. Then she raised her voice and said: "why not send somebody useless, like Curly? He won't be missed."
Curly sighed and turned his head away. Nibs chuckled next to him. "What did you do to her to make her so mad at you?" He asked.
Curly shrugged, trying to act ignorant, but he could feel the redness rising in his face. He'd be mortified if everyone found out about the incident between him and Tink. But before Nibs could press him further, their dinner was interrupted by a loud whistling sound. Curly looked over just in time to see a massive object fall into the lagoon, sending a large wave of water out to the beach and extinguishing their fire.
"Oh, come on!" Slightly whined. "Dessert was going to be legendary!" He gingerly pulled some pudding-filled coconuts out of the wet ashes and mumbled something about the price of milk, but everyone else was staring up at the hole in the Neverland sky.