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Disclaimer: I don’t own Fairly Odd Parents.

Author’s Note: Concrit welcomed, particularly on characterization, though it can be on anything else that I’m doing wrong. Norm and Timmy will not fall in love immediately. If either of them doesn’t like the pairing, that is just an attempt to keep them in character. They both will probably like the pairing by the end of the fanfic. Thanks for all the wonderful reviews!

Chapter 14: No Air

On the surface, Turner appeared to fully hate him again, but Norm found, as he looked closer at Turner, listened more closely to the words he said, that Turner still felt something … different.... than hatred, something…. more… than hatred.

Norm reminded himself that he was trying to get revenge on Turner, not trying to identify his emotions. Not that it mattered anymore, since now that Turner remembered his previous encounters with him, he couldn’t try to learn about him so he could plan his revenge. Well, technically, it would be hard, though he could do it if he really, really wanted to.

But he didn’t. His feelings also… went beyond hatred, were different than hatred. He would have called it love if he believed in love, but love was a fairy tale for him, something seen on TV and never in real life. It wasn’t something he felt, and no one had ever felt it for him. Believing in it would only leave him vulnerable to exploitation by his masters, and that wasn’t something he’d risk. Ever.

But, Norm couldn’t help but notice that he was feeling it. He had tried to deny it for days, but now Turner remembered, and hated him again, all the mental blocks separating him from knowledge of his feelings collapsed.

He was in love with Turner. He. Was. In. Love. With. Turner.

Norm had almost guessed that for a while now, but now it was no longer an almost-guess. It was a fact. He was not going to let Turner find out though. That would just become another thing to use against him if Turner couldn’t let go of his grudge from eight years ago.

“Yeah, I did,” replied Norm flippantly, in an attempt to hide what he had realized from Turner. “Eight years ago. Twice.”

He floated over to Turner’s mild purple couch, and sat on it casually. He stretched out across it, and rested one of the cushions behind his head. That position was so much more comfortable than floating in the air while his half-ex-worst enemy, half-ex-lover-but-more-than-that accused him of stuff that he did eight years ago.

Turner approached him, his face darkened by anger.

“Yeah, but that’s not what I was talking about,” responded Turner. “Ever since my eighteenth birthday, you tricked me into falling for you so you could… I’m not sure what exactly… but you get the point.”

Norm rolled his eyes. He knew what Turner was talking about, even if, as he now realized, very little trickery had gone into getting Turner to fall for him, and vice versa.

“Sorry, Turner, but you fell for me on your own – alright, I may have nudged the process on a bit, but it was mostly you. Revenge and freedom, originally, you know, my usual motives.”

Oh right,” replied Turner, blushing. “Whatever your motives are, it doesn’t matter, since I’ll stop you, like I did when I was ten.”

Norm GONGed up a nail clipper, and pretended to concentrate on his nails, which he was really only partly interested in at the moment. His primary concern was keeping Turner from finding out about his feelings, and using the stuff he ordinarily did as a façade achieved that objective well.

Tim glanced around the room, from the blue-tiled floor to the green walls, looking for Norm’s lamp. He did not see it, and wondered if he had lost it. He then recalled that it was in his bedroom. His bedroom. Just what he needed to think about when the only person that he had ever been banged by was revealed to be evil, one of his worst enemies, only pretending to love him so he could get his revenge or freedom.

He ran up the blue stairs, up to his room, not caring about the mess his shoes were making on them. Saving himself from Norm was way more important, though he couldn’t help but think of other better, more enjoyable things that he could be doing with the genie, and those that he had already done. He also couldn’t stop himself from thinking about how sad Norm seemed to be now. He had never seen Norm sad before, and it worried him, despite that he now knew that Norm was evil. Or was he?

Sometimes he didn’t seem so evil. Sometimes he seemed just to be a genie desperate for freedom – and Tim realized that Norm had tried to hide that from him when they were together. He wondered why, though he guessed that could be part of tricking him, somehow.

“Stop daydreaming, Turner,” he muttered bitterly to himself. “Norm’s evil. Evil. That’s all. Evil. He doesn’t love you.”

His own words only partly convinced him. If only Wanda could be there, and warn him against Norm, so it would become a matter of listening and taking advice, not asking himself to overrule his heart and do what needed to be done.

The floor was streaked with dirt, but he didn’t care about that anymore than he cared about the door or the stairs. He slammed his light blue door open, not caring about what it would do to the door, since saving himself from Norm (who he thought of with both love and hate), once again was way more important. Nothing was more important than that right now, as far as he knew.

He saw the purple lava lamp on top of his blue dresser, and snatched it quickly. He darted back downstairs, messing up the floor even more, but he continued to not care. Floors could be cleaned after all, and if he didn’t save himself from Norm (who he didn’t entirely desire to save himself from), the issue of cleaning the floor would be completely, utterly moot.

Turner walked up to Norm, and got out the lamp. He took a deep breath, preparing to wish Norm back into his lamp. He hesitated. Did he really want to lose Norm? Was Norm really evil? Did he love Norm? Did Norm love him?

He wanted to answer ‘yes’ to the first two questions, and ‘no’ to the second duo of questions, but he knew that his answers would probably be reversed or a combination of the two.

His grip on the lamp loosened. Then, he clutched it firmly, telling himself that regardless of how he felt, he had to get Norm back in his lamp.

Head Pixie wondered why Turner wouldn’t just wish Norm into his lamp already, or defeat him by other means. Why was he hesitating so much? Why wasn’t he just doing it?

If Turner did not wish Norm back into his lamp before Jorgen Von Strangle saw, and came to wipe his memory, the Pixies would have to do their plan all over again. They could do it again if Jorgen wiped Turner’s memory again while Norm was still out of his lamp, theoretically, but Head Pixie had no desire to repeat his plan. He did not want this time to only be a dress rehearsal; he wanted it to be the final show. Something had to be done about Jorgen.

He just needed to decide what. He did not want to come up with a lazy, ninety-nine-percent-likely-to-fail plan in five minutes if he could come up with a better one, even if it took longer. Jorgen was wise to their tricks by now, and would be able to see through any lazily crafted plan..

For now, until they came up with a satisfactory plan as far as stopping Jorgen from erasing Turner’s memories went, both Norm and Turner would be entrapped in the Pixie prison. If Norm agreed to leave Turner and never come back to him (he’d have to sign a binding contract, of course, to make sure that he would not ignore his agreement), Turner wished him into his lamp, used all his three wishes or did something else that caused Norm to leave him, they would PING Turner back to Earth and inform Jorgen that he regained his memories, without mentioning their part in it, of course.

Head Pixie focused on the TV showing Norm and Turner. Turner still was not wishing Norm back into his lamp, despite what he now remembered about him. Yes, he had to PING them both to the Pixie’s prison.

Norm wondered if Turner would just get it over with. His hopes were raised by seeing Turner’s reluctance to entrap him in his lamp, but it was rather boring and anxiety-inducing to wait for minutes, maybe half-hours for Turner to do the inevitable.

PING!

They both appeared in a prison cell, transported there presumably by the PING. Pixies PINGed. If the Pixies had PINGed them somewhere, something was definitely up. But what?

Whatever it was, stopping it could be a nice distraction for Turner, and if they stopped it together… maybe Turner wouldn’t believe he was evil anymore. That was an idealistic, naïve, never-going-to-work hope, and Norm knew it. However, it was reassuring, and Norm was unwilling to give it up.

The Pixies PINGed them into separate cells, with see-through walls and bars on the sides of each. Norm wondered what purpose those could possibly have, and if the Pixies had chosen the cells deliberately. His lamp was put in his cell, which Norm considered odd, since that meant that he could go into it whenever he needed to – even if he hated his lamp, it did contain his stuff.

Tim didn’t remember these cells from his previous meetings with the Pixies. Were they new, or did he just never see them before? Weird. In order to defeat their probable plans, he probably needed Norm. Crud. He’d have to convince Norm to help him, and he’d have to deal with his confused emotions about the genie. Crud. Even if his confused emotions did contain love, when combined they did really hurt.

Whatever. If he ever wanted to have fun again, the Pixies needed to be defeated, and he needed Norm’s help doing so – regardless of how confused he felt about the genie.