Right Up Artists' Alley

"I swear, if I see another dang Deadpool, I'm chucking him into the sea."

The four of us all gave a hearty, exhausted chuckle as we crashed bodily into the hotel room. It was day three of the Emerald City Comic-Con, and our group, myself, my husband, and our friends Felix and Zach, had spent the past seventy-two hours sharing a table in Artists' Alley.

I didn't mind the Deadpool cosplayers, personally, though they did have a tendency to ignore the designated photo areas and clog the walkways.

"Man! I...long for home. Real food. Our cats. I miss our cats. Not as much as I miss not paying twelve bucks for a hot dog, but still." Ian said, flopping down on our bed. I sat down next to him and started rubbing his shoulders.

"Ohhhhhh, thank you, Pip," he groaned. I just chuckled kissed the back of his neck. Poor guy. At least we were in it together.

We'd been married for three years or so when we decided to start our webcomic. It was a silly little thing at first. Just a little story about anthropomorphic vegetables in a fantasy world. Ian always just doodled funny little vegetables on grocery lists and things like that, so one day I decided to make up a little story for them. Two years later and, to the continued surprise of both of us, we had a few thousand regular readers and had made a little book that we could sell at conventions.

It was at one of these conventions that we became friends with Felix and Zach. They were the husband-and-husband team behind a slice of life drama strip, and, even though they had been in the game a few years longer than us, were around our age. When we started going to conventions, it seemed like most of the crowd was either in their early twenties, and would go out for drinks and partying after the shows in a way we couldn't keep up with, or were older comics professionals who could talk your ear off about the good old days before this all became so commercialized, but maybe weren't super relatable. Finding another mid-thirties, kid-less couple was a godsend for our convention season socializing. We'd struck up a conversation after seeing them at a couple of different cons, and, eventually, we became pretty close. So much so that, when Emerald City came around, we decided to just share a table.

"So, how'd we all do?" Felix asked. Leave it to him to still have any sort of brain left in the tank to talk about bookkeeping. He had a way of assuming a sort of natural group leader or mentor role. In fact, he'd helped us out when it came to setting up the Kickstarter campaign for our first book. Which was great, because, while I could write some adorable little tomatoes and Ian could draw pretty pictures while having a great butt, we were both kinda disasters when it came to...like...Business Things.

"Not too bad," I relied, checking the notes I'd made on my phone. "Lots of people bought books, those stickers sold like hotcakes. I mean, Seattle is always a beast in terms of cost, but it looks like we made a nice little profit this year."

"Not bad, Penningtons, not bad," Felix nodded in approval.

"Plus, there's always one benefit to making the trek out to the Pacific Northwest," Zach added, holding up the small bag of little chocolate marijuana edibles he'd bought on our way back to the hotel. "You guys want any?"

"Yes, please," I said, holding my hand up.

Ian raised his as well. "Thanks, man. How much do you need for 'em?"

"Nah, dude, don't worry about it. We're doing alright," he flashed a charming smile at us that had just the barest hint of braggadocio.

"And how did the Garcias do on this particular con?"

The two guys exchanged a conspiratorial glance. "Oh, you know..." Felix teased. "...triple." He mimed shining his knuckles on his shirt for effect.

"No way!" Ian exclaimed.

"Three times cost?!" I added.

"What can I say!" Felix shrugged. "That plush, man. That duck plush really did it!"

That fucking duck. I mean, fine, there was nothing wrong with the duck. It was a really cute character design and it was integrated into the strip well, but fuck was it hard not to get jealous of all the attention that thing got. It wasn't fair! Our whole cast was cute things! So we couldn't add a cute mascot character. That's gilding the cute lily!

"I thought you said the margins on the plush were terrible."

"They are," Zach said, popping the edible into his mouth before tossing us each one. "But it gets people to come by the booth. Then my boy here charms them, and bam, we've got a sale."

Felix downed his edible. "Next year, we'll have enough strips to put out a whole book of just duck comics. You watch; that shit'll buy us a car. Like, a shitty car, because it's webcomic money, but a car nonetheless."

"Fair, fair," Ian conceded.

I grabbed the TV remote and surfed channels until I found that apparently a Psych marathon was on. Yes, good. That would be quality resting high times.

"I'm hitting the showers," Zach said from the other side of the room. "Gonna try to get the con funk out."

"Ooh, solid plan," Felix chimed in. "I've got next."

"Ditto," said Ian.

"Yeah, I think we all could use a go," I admitted. Hygiene aside, just a nice warm shower to relax and decompress sounded like heaven.

By the time the other three had their turns, we were already one episode into the marathon and I was starting to feel the effects of the chocolate. I was kind of spacing out when Ian came back into the room.

"You're up, Pip."

I stared at him for a bit, just kinda lost in how handsome my husband was. He had a very unassuming charm about him. So utterly dreamy, and yet with this peaceful air that just made me feel so safe and comfortable with him. A huge grin spread across my face.

"What?" he chuckled, having obviously noticed.

"Oh, I'm just being all lovey at you," I sighed.

"Oh, is that all?" he laughed, leaning down to kiss me. "I'm a damn lucky guy, you know that?"

"Hee..." I contentedly chuckled, before climbing out of the bed and making my wobbly way toward the bathroom.

"Aww, look at these two, Zach. Aren't they the cutest?" Felix called after me.

"So cute," Zach replied.

"You two are cute, too!" I insisted. It seemed very important in the moment. "We do not have the cute monopoly. The cuteopoly, if you will."

"I will," Zach agreed.

"Heh," I chortled, pausing for a moment before ducking into the bathroom, then quickly shooting back out of the bathroom, digging for my comfy clothes in our suitcase, then going back in.

Yep, definitely high. This would be a good shower.