#cricket + mack 005

[cricketcampbell]

Hearing her words reflected so plainly back to her, Cricket's reminded of a time where he might have let her get away with talking around what it was that she'd really meant to say.

It seemed somehow both so long ago and like yesterday that he'd accused her of doing exactly that, even though Cricket knew it'd been around this time last year that she'd walked away from Mack not knowing if they'd ever speak again.

(She also knew that allowing herself to slip back into the old habits that'd been partly to blame for them having reached that point in the first place was not the way to make sure they never did again.)

Having said it best himself, she simply nods and confirms, "Mavis is here."

She does however reach for her phone from where it'd been tossed onto the coffee table, quickly unlocking it and navigating back to the notification that'd sparked this shift in conversation. With Mavis's Instagram profile pulled up, it's held out across the cushions that separated them for Mack's taking and viewing.

It was the first time Cricket's ever had an actual picture to be able to show him.

"So the time it takes for you guys to get there," because if Mack believed they would, she wanted to believe that for him as well, "isn't, like, totally wasted. It's just kinda part of putting in the work?"

Cricket thought that made sense to her, at least conceptually--time as the solution rather than the problem. It was applying the idea to her own situation that was a bit harder to wrap her head around, but she'd already known when she asked that Mack's relationship with Trevor wasn't exactly the same as her nonexistent one with Mavis.

(She didn't need it to be. Something about him being the first to know about it just felt right.)

"I don't know." Cricket sighed, hands wringing in her lap. "It's like...sometimes I think it is, but then there's, like, this voice in my head reminding me how easy it was for her to find me and how she just chose not to for so long. The only reason she even bothered now was because she ran into our mom, which--" She shook her head. "I can't even start to think about or I might actually lose it."

Coincidentally, that voice in Cricket's head did sound suspiciously like Libby's southern drawl...

"It's just...I can't stop thinking about how things could've been so different. And then I feel guilty for maybe wanting them to have been different, because I love my life here and obviously wouldn't change it for the world, and then I'm pissed that she's making me feel guilty for having a life she didn't even know the first thing about until two months ago, but then I'm still, like, weirdly worried what she thinks about it? Or...what she thinks about me, I guess."

@mackmontgomery

"I know, I know, but the identify fraud."

That had been something he thought would be a more pressing worry in life given the way his mother ominously warned against it, but there was little Shannon didn't do with a little ominousness. His joking trickles off there at the mention of Trevor, never a topic he could approach or discuss lightly, which Cricket knew well.

( Just by evoking his name, he knows what's on her mind is nothing frivolous. )

"So Mavis is here?" Mack asks for clarification, both his words and his tone careful like he was speaking of a ghost.

In a way, it felt like he was. Cricket's older sister had only ever been a mythical being to him, someone she had occasionally spoke of but not someone who had ever materialised in her life for the length of it he had known her.

It had always made him sad to think about and now was no different.

"With me and TJ, I don't think it'll ever be too late. Not for me at least. We butt heads and we don't always see eye to eye but no matter how long's passed, he's still my brother. He's the only one I'll ever have and I love him, but it's work. For the both of us," He explains, the blame for the issues between him and his brother unable to be assigned wholly to just one of them though he tried to on the days when TJ managed to truly piss him off, "Sometimes neither of us are willing to do that work, or one of us is and the other one isn't. And it sucks. But I think there'll be a time when we're both there and willing to do the work and we'll fix it."

He has to think that. The alternative didn't bear thinking about for him.

"Is that something you want with your sister? To fix things?"

@cricketcampbell

[cricketcampbell]

"You know I still don't get why it's called that."

But that old chestnut, unlike the music playing in the background, does at least get a smile out of her, something she also knew she could always count on him for.

"Okay, so maybe not social security level personal. It's a little fucked up that you don't think we're there yet, but whatever..." Her smile fades though as she shifts to face him completely, legs criss-crossed in front of her. "But it's, um...it's about Trevor, actually."

Cricket could only imagine how out of left field that must've felt to hear, so she gives Mack a second to adjust in case he wanted to amend his ask me anything but my social security number policy before continuing.

"Which I know is, like, super random, but if it makes you feel any better, it's probably not as random as coming home on what you think is just a totally normal Tuesday only to find your long-lost sister waiting for you in your room?"

She laughed as if it was meant to be a joke, but it sounded hollow even to her own ears. It'd never fool Mack, who knew the real thing better than maybe anyone else.

"Anyways, um, so I've been thinking and I guess I'm just wondering if you, like...I don't know. If you maybe ever feel like...it's too late? For you guys to fix things, I mean. Like too much time has passed or just too much has happened or if like at this point there's any part of you that even wants to want to try?"

@mackmontgomery

Mack let the kick slide in the name of benevolence and respect for the Disney classic they were failing at watching, but once a small cluster of gummy bears are weaponized against him, he instant springs forward to make a grab for Cricket, failing to her faster reflexes as his fingertips barely graze her and instead land on the pillow that had been behind her as she scurries away from his wrath.

He contemplates jumping the couch in pursuit, but the animated movie and the array of fallen gummy soldiers on the floor distract him momentarily, contorting instead to reach into the popcorn bowl for a handful to refuel -- with a guarantee that this would make it to his mouth.

Moving to sit back in his original spot, his head tilts back as he makes it rain popcorn pieces like salty snowfall, his head bopping along to his favorite song from the whole thing before it bops to a slow stop as Cricket rejoins him and takes a serious tone that neither of them had the best track record with when it came to each other.

"You can always ask me something personal," He tells her, given she knew him on a level that most didn't which was also why he's sure she knew what was coming out of his mouth next, "Unless it's my social security number. I'm not falling for that old chestnut."

@cricketcampbell

[cricketcampbell]

"Because you keep moving your head!"

Clearly it was because of that, rather than the fact that Cricket was basing her aim off the smaller version of Mack (who therefore had a smaller mouth!) currently centered and being recorded on her phone screen, that her last two throws had managed to miss her target.

"I'm literally not missing!" A sock-clad foot kicked out towards him as she rummaged through the bag of candy with her free hand. "I'm focused! Your teeth are inside your mouth, that so counts."

And just in case it didn't, statistically the small army of Sour Patch Kids she then launched towards his face should've guaranteed at least some amount of success, though unfortunately her Instagram followers would never find out. The video cuts off abruptly with the sound of Cricket's laughter in her hurry to scramble off the couch before any retaliation attempts could be made against her.

Well that, and she needed another soda.

She's still laughing as the Instagram story uploads, tapping back to view the one posted before it--a selfie featuring the very real tears that'd welled up, as they always did, during Reflection. It's second nature to swipe up to take a quick peek at her views, unsurprised to find many of her usual suspects there: Sola, Paxton, Summer...but before she can click away, a username towards the bottom of the list catches her eye.

It's the same username and picture combination that'd been haunting the top of Cricket's activity bar for weeks with the request to follow back. It wasn't exactly unreasonable; she'd certainly stalked maviscampbell's grid enough that following her would surely just have been easier at that point, but something stopped her every time.

She returns to the couch empty handed, her fear of any candy related mutiny forgotten as she tosses her phone onto the coffee table and flops back down onto the cushion to resume their movie watching in hopes that I'll Make a Man Out of You could at least salvage her now soured mood.

Things feel pretty bleak when the opening line doesn't even manage to get so much as a smile out of her.

Cricket bit at the inside of her cheek as she debated her options before ultimately turning to face Mack. "Can I ask you something kinda personal?"

@mackmontgomery

closed for: @cricketcampbell

where: cricket, lori + [redacted]'s

"You hit my front tooth twice," Mack says in an accusing tone from the other end of the couch, once was an accident but twice skirted too close to a pattern and now he finds himself wondering if the launch of sour patch kids towards his face area was more than friendly fire.

The animated version of Mulan on screen had now embraced her life as Fa Ping, deceiving her way through training as the pair of them got distracted by candy.

( Nothing new there. )

"Focus. My mouth is huge, you couldn't have more surface area to work with. Missing is the definition of a skills issue."