#i grew up in california so it looks like what i imagined kids wore on snow days like in pictures books

[wateryrealm]

i’m making a sweater out of all my scrap yarn right now and i was a bit nervous about it all melting into a really ugly mess of color but it’s actually turning out pretty cute! hehe :-)

[starforsharon]

Sexy Little Me

This is how Hollywood turns a pretty Texas girl into Sharon Tate, the star.

By John Bowers for "The Saturday Evening Post"

1. Two of Sharon Tate's three pictures have been produced in Europe. Although Texas-born, Sharon spent her adolescence abroad, and much prefers London to Hollywood.

2. Sharon will be shown off to American audiences for the first time in DON’T MAKE WAVES. On the set, she reacts prettily to a compliment from co-star Tony Curtis.

3. At 6 months Sharon won Dallas’ “Miss Tiny Tot” award.

4. Portraying a Las Vegas showgirl who becomes a superstar in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, Sharon had to wear a 10-pound jeweled headdress which “gave her a headache.”

5. This picture of Sharon and her father, Maj. Paul Tate, at a 1965 Fort MacArthur party is from a large “family events” scrapbook that Sharon dutifully keeps.

6. Relaxing on the set of YOUR TEETH IN MY NECK, Sharon listens attentively as the Polish-born Polanski explains how she can improve her performance in the next scene.

May 6, 1967 – Sharon Tate had finished her last scenes for The Vampire Killers (later to be called Your Teeth in My Neck), and had no film work for the moment. At 95 Eaton Mews West, London, she moved about in the late afternoon looking for something to do. She sat Buddah-style on the living room floor and put on fake eyelashes, one eyelash at a time. She worried that a sunlamp treatment, taken a few hours before, was going to make red cracks in her face. “Doesn’t it seem to be getting all red on the cheeks? Look close now.”

She wore a gray sweat suit and furry boots, having been to her daily gym class that afternoon. She didn’t like the gym class, but Roman Polanski, her director, had told her she must go. She frowned into a hand mirror, thinking she saw a red streak. She started to bite a fingernail, but stopped. Roman had forbidden any more fingernail biting; she had a tendency to bite them down to the nub. She went to the refrigerator, and amidst Wyborowa vodka and Carlsberg beer, brought out the makings for a salami sandwich. She would not drink a beer because it might bloat her, and Roman was taking her out for dinner.

There was no place in the apartment for her to settle back and relax now. Everything inside had a transient look, as if the tenants would only be there a short season. A complicated stereo set sat on crates; Bach on top of a stack of records, Cannonball Adderly on the bottom. There were no pictures, no pets, no cozy heat. Upstairs on the wall was a framed citation stating that Knife In The Water under the direction of Roman Polanski had been nominated for an Academy Award. As Sharon reached for a folder of still photographs from The Vampire Killers to show a male visitor, she stuck up her bottom in a way she has; as she went through the photos, she pooched out her bosom. But she did it by reflex. Her thoughts were totally on her director, who was not there. She had been in three unreleased films – 13, Don’t Make Waves and The Vampire Killers, all with different directors.

If she caught the public’s fancy in any of these pictures, she would become a movie star. And she was pleased with her work in The Vampire Killers. She was in a nude bathtub scene in it, and in a brief sequence in which she got spanked.

The phone rang; it was a strange female voice with a French accent. “Is Roman there?”

“No, I’m sorry he isn’t,” Sharon said, in her accent of the moment, which was English. “Who shall I say is calling, please?”

“Oh – I just wondered if he were in. Tell him Barbara. Thank you very much..”

The dull London afternoon turned dark, and still no Polanski. He could be cutting The Vampire Killers, or he could be tied up in London traffic or he could be sitting in a café. She took off her furry boots and put her feet into his house slippers, which rested at odd angels by a mammoth bed that cost over $600. The slippers were far too big for her. She wondered if tonight she would be thrown with people who would overwhelm her with their wit, their awesome knowledge, their self-confidence. When she was out in public with Roman, she never felt adequate enough to open her mouth. She could only talk to him alone. Her problem was that she had always been beautiful, and people were forever losing themselves in fantasy over her – electing her a beauty queen, imagining her as a wife, dreaming of a caress. Most people had fantasies. But a few people, like Polanski, took charge.

At the age of six months Sharon Tate was elected Miss Tiny Tot of Dallas, Tex. Her mother had sent in photos of the beautiful baby to contest officials. Sharon’s father was (and is) in the Regular Army, and was then stationed in Dallas. (Both her parents are natives of Houston.) As Sharon grew up, the family moved around in Army style, her father frequently absent from home. She remembers that when her father would return from an overseas tour, and she had reached a nubile age, her mother’s first command would be, “Now you, Sharon Marie, button up that night gown when you come out of your bedroom. Daddy’s home.” Her father was very strict with her as she budded through adolescence, turning thumbs down on potential boyfriends and making her stay in nights. He was very strong and knew how to take charge.

But most people continued to do things for Sharon without her lifting a finger. At 16 she was elected Miss Richland, Washington, and a short time later named Miss Autorama. At the age of 17 she was in Verona, Italy, where her father was stationed, and the prizes mounted. At Vicenza American High she was a cheerleader and baton twirler, and was chosen Homecoming Queen and Queen of the Senior Prom. The Vicenza yearbook for 1961 shows her as a very pretty, large-eyed girl, with hair somewhat darker and hips a little broader than now. She daydreamed at this time about becoming a psychiatrist and a ballerina, and had little to do with her classmates. Yet if any far-out stunts or fads were proposed, this terribly quiet girl was ready to lead the way. “If miniskirts had come in then, ” she says, “I’d have worn the shortest one.”

Today the fad among young girls in cosmopolitan circles is to use the old Anglo-Saxon words in everyday conversation, and Sharon Tate leads the way. But back in Italy at 17, she was just starting her worldly knowledge. She watched the on-location shooting of Barabbas, a film about ancient Rome, and the family scrapbook now includes still pictures of Jack Palance and Anthony Quinn in the movie costumers they wore in Italy. As she walked in Venice one day, she was spotted by the choreographer for the Pat Boone Show, which was being filmed in Italy. She next appeared very briefly in one of Boone’s TV shows, and his glossy smiling face now rests in the album with a fond inscription for Sharon.

When the Tate family moved from Italy to Southern California, Sharon decided it was time to live on her own. She was 18, and she paid a visit to Harold Gefsky, then agent for Richard Beymer, a young actor she met in Rome. “She was so young and beautiful,” Gefsky, a softly-spoken man, said in his Sunset Boulevard office, “that I didn’t know what to do with her. I think the first thing I did was take her to a puppet show.”

He also got her work because her father, in Calvinistic style, had only given her a few dollars to sink or swim. One of her first jobs was dressing up in an Irish costume and handing out Kelly-Kalani wine in Los Angeles restaurants at $25 a day. She also appeared in TV commercials for Chevy cars and Santa Fe cigars. People who knew her during this period agree on one thing. She was the most beautiful girl in the world. “Everywhere I took her she caused a sensation,” Gefsky said. “I would take her into a restaurant and the owner would pay for her meal. Photographers kept stopping her on the street. I’ve lived in Hollywood since the mid-Forties, but I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.”

But at this point no one, except perhaps Sharon, knew if she wanted to be an actress. Then one day Gefsky took her by to meet his friend Herbert Browar, who was connected with TV’s Petticoat Junction. He thought possibly Browar could fix her up with a minor role, something to tide her over. Browar took one look at her and rushed her in to see Martin Ransohoff, head of Filmways, Inc.

Ransohoff has a strand of hair combed over his bald dome. He wears loose sweaters, torn windbreakers and breeches that are baggy in the seat. He first started producing TV commercials in New York when food particles were glued onto Brand X’s plate to show the differences in detergents. He branched out into TV programs with such commercial winners as Mr. Ed, The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction. He then tackled movies on the order of The Americanization of Emily and The Loved One, which got mixed reviews but generally made money. He founded the company in 1952 on $200, and today it operates on a budget of over $35 million. He will talk about Oswald Spengler or H. L. Mencken and then croon into his ever-present phone, “Helloooo, Bertie, baby. Where’s the action, kid?” He chews gum till his head rings, smokes two packs a day and sends everyone to the wall with his adrenaline. He can be gratuitously cruel in speaking of others – “She’s got a lunch pail for a mouth,” he said of an aging actress, “and if we take out insurance on her, it’ll have to be that she’ll die.” Then he can take his twin sons to a football game, clean up a dog’s mess in his Bel Air living room, and talk to anyone in the world who has guts enough to call him. A rich man’s son, he sold pots and pans from door to door while going to Colgate and claims the experience taught him what the public will or will not buy. He had little interest in films before he became involved in them, and his favorite actress in the old days was Deanna Durbin – who, coincidentally, was also Polanski’s favorite. Both vividly remember her pedaling a bicycle down a shady street and singing through a dimpled smile. Not everyone has had pleasant dealings with Ransohoff in Hollywood, but all agree he is a super salesman.

When he first saw Sharon Tate, he squinted his right eye and did something that was very impulsive, even for him. “Draw up a contract,” he shouted. “Get her mother. Get my lawyer. This is the girl I want!”

He had not seen a screen test, not even a still photograph. She had hardly opened her mouth. But Marty Ransohoff, like the rest of us, has his fantasies – and Sharon Tate walked into one of his fondest ones. “I have this dream,” Ransohoff said, “where I’ll discover a beautiful girl who’s a nobody and turn her into a star that everybody wants. I’ll do it like L. B. Mayer used to, only better. But once she’s successful, then I’ll loose interest. That’s how my dream goes. I don’t give two cents now for Tuesday Weld or Ann-Margret..”

“I think he’s just trying to pull one over on the public,” Gefsky said.

Sharon signed a seven-year contract, and Ransohoff took charge. Gefsky, a nice man, bowed out. At first she lived in complete fear of Ransohoff, and did as she was told. “She wouldn’t even eat a hamburger if he told her not to,” a friend from that period said. If Ransohoff said she was to appear on The Beverly Hillbillies disguised in a black wig, she appeared. If he told her to go on a moments notice to Big Sur, New York, London, she went. Off and on she studied acting.

Jeff Corey, one acting coach, said, “An incredibly beautiful girl, but a fragmented personality. I tried to get reactions out of her, though. Once I even gave her a stick, and said, ‘Hit me, do something, show emotion’ ..If you can’t tap who you are, you can never act.”

Charles Conrad, another acting teacher, said, “Such a beautiful girl, you would have thought she would have all the confidence in the world. But she had none.” Among her friends, however, she began to refer to herself as “sexy little me.”

Ransohoff tried to place Sharon in The Cincinnati Kid – his own movie – but failed when the director demanded Tuesday Weld. He packed her off to New York to study under the personal direction of Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. “She was only with me a few weeks,” Strasberg said, “but I remember her. She was a beautiful girl.” In New York Sharon had a romance with a young French star, who offered her relief from her Texas style, Puritan upbringing. The actor was tall, dark and very nice. When they broke up, the actor bungled a suicide attempt.

Sharon continued to fear Ransohoff. Once, while driving at a high speed near Big Sur, she turned her car over four and a half times, but somehow managed to crawl out with only minor injuries. Her first thought was that Marty would be mad. The first picture he finally placed her in was his French made 13, in which she plays a chillingly beautiful, expressionless girl who goes about putting the hex on people. Completed many months ago, ’13’ still rests in the can waiting for a 1967 release date. Ransohoff flew Sharon back to Hollywood for her second film, Don’t Make Waves, in which she plays a beautiful, deadpan skydiver. Sharon’s first two directors were older men. Britishers – very polite, very nice and understanding with a novice actress.

And then Ransohoff began dickering with Roman Polanski, the Polish director living in London, to make a picture. Polanski, a tiny, baby-faced man whose explosive manner and Beatle-like appearance belie his much-admired skill as a maker of art films, wanted to do something with Ransohoff called The Vampire Killers, a spoof of horror movies. He wanted to play in it himself, and, as in all his movies, he wanted a beautiful girl in a supporting role.

“How about Sharon Tate?” Ransohoff said. “I was thinking more in terms of Jill St. John,” Polanski said.

At Ransohoff’s instigation, Sharon and Polanski had dinner together. He looked at her from time to time, but said nothing. On a second dinner date he was painfully silent once more. Real weirdo, she thought. What’s he waiting on? She found out shortly. Walking in London’s Eaton Square, he suddenly put a bear hug on her and they fell to the ground, Polanski on the bottom. Sharon clouted him and stormed off. “That’s the craziest nut I ever saw,” she said. “I’ll never work for him.”

But Polanski apologized, and they saw each other again. One night he took her to his apartment which had even less furniture than it has now and no electricity. He lit a candle and excused himself, flying upstairs to don a Frankenstein mask. He crept up behind her, raised his arms, and whinnied like a madman. Sharon turned and emitted a terrible scream. It took over an hour for her hysterical weeping to subside. Not long afterward Polanski informed Ransohoff that Sharon would do fine for The Vampire Killers. On the set he treated her as if they never saw each other at night. He cajoled, flattered, got angry – which ever worked – and never had lunch with her. During the nude bathtub scene, he snapped still pictures of her. Still enthusiastic, he had her pose all over the set in the altogether, and then sent the results to Playboy. She plays a gorgeous redhead in The Vampire Killers – and she shows

Roman Polanski walked into his apartment in a sharp blue blazer and high-gloss shoes, carrying a briefcase. He had a good-sized nose and searching, deep-set eyes, and he nodded briskly to Sharon. “A Barbara called,” she let out daintily. “Do you know who that could be?”

“A Barbara?” he called from the kitchen, out of sight. A pause. “You didn’t get any last name? Always get last names. I don’t know any Barbara that would be calling. Sharon, Sharon. There’s no liquor here. Always see to it that we have enough whisky. Can’t you do that?”

Sharon went on the phone to order some, worrying about which brands to specify. She didn’t want to be embarrassed by asking Roman – although he would certainly tell her. He knew the correct whiskey brands in London, the good pastrami places in Manhattan, and the right topless spots in Hollywood. He learned a country’s customs and its language in a couple of weeks. He took a bath now upstairs, calling down for Sharon to fetch him some tea. Later he descended the stairs in a cowboy outfit and boots, ready for dinner. Some movie friends had shown up, and he led the party on foot toward Alvaro’s restaurant.

At the restaurant Sharon basked in the eyes that roved over her. She listened big-eyed to Polanski explain the difference between the sun’s heat and that on earth, apropos of Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451. The only trouble was that it was difficult to digest pasta in such a giddy atmosphere, and she complained of her stomach. After Polanski figured out how to work the waiter’s ballpoint pen, he signed the check.

In a dreamlike state, Sharon began slipping into her fox fur coat in the foyer. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a tall Englishman with a prep-school tie and large teeth popped up and put his arm around her. “Ummm, you have a sexy feel, love. Don’t we all love to touch you now..” She squirmed away.

Out on the street, she said, “Roman, a complete stranger began hugging me in there.”

“Yeah? Really?” A short distance away he suddenly spied a blond in fox fur who had the same duck walk that Sharon has. “Hey, there goes Sharon,” he said. “Let’s get her and put the two of them together!”

“Don’t you dare,” she said, her anger flashing. Another day, away from Sharon, Polanski said, “I’m trying to get her to be a little meaner, She’s too nice, and she doesn’t believe in her beauty. Once when I was very poor in Poland I had got some beautiful shoes, and I immediately became very ashamed of them. All my friends had plain, ordinary shoes, and I was embarrassed to walk in front of them. That’s how Sharon feels about her beauty. She’s embarrassed by it.”

Sharon has a quarter-inch scar under her left eye and one beside the eye, the result of accidents which she keeps having. As Polanski drove with her one night in London, meticulously keeping on the left in the custom of the land, an Englishman with a couple of pints under his belt hit him from the right. The only one hurt was Sharon, whose head bounced off the dashboard, spraying blood on slacks, boots and fur. An angry red wound appeared at the start of her scalp, and it will leave another whitish scar on her head. With blond hair combed down over her forehead to hide it, she skied at St. Moritz. And then she caught a jet for Hollywood because Ransohoff had called. She must redo a few scenes for Don’t Make Waves. She grumbled a little. She found she could grumble to Ransohoff now. She hated Hollywood, and she didn’t want to leave Polanski. Also, she hated to fly. She had to be drugged to endure it.

And then she appeared beside Ransohoff at La Scala restaurant in Beverly Hills. She had a black costume that looked more like a slip than a dress, and her blond head caught glints of movie-star light as she turned this way and that. “Oh, there’s David! David Hemmings. David, David!”

David Hemmings, who had been featured with her in 13 and had gone on to star in Antonioni’s Blow-Up waved. Other celebrities flicked glances her way, at each other, to the door to see what majesty might enter next. Occasionally they looked down at food or drink. The place was as crowded as Alvaro’s in London, the customers practically the same. Ransohoff wore an open-neck sport shirt and shapeless coat, and he talked business. “Listen, sweetie, I’m going to have to cut some stuff out of The Vampire Killers. Your spanking scene has got to go.”

“Oh, don’t do that. Why would you do that?” “Because it doesn’t move the story. The story has got to move. Bang, bang, bang. No American audience is going to sit still while Polanski indulges himself.”

“But Europeans make movies differently than Americans, ” she explained to the producer she once feared. “Blow-Up moved slowly. But wasn’t it a great film!”

“I’ll tell you something, baby. I didn’t like it. If I’d have seen it before the reviews, I’d have said it’d never make it. It’s not my kind of picture. I want to be told a story without all that hocus-pocus symbolism going on.”

“But that one scene, Marty. When the girl show’s her, ah –” (only Sharon said the Anglo-Saxon word). In Hollywood, New York and London they all talked now about Blow-Up, dwelling on that scene.

“Yeah, I got to hand it to the guy for that one.” Ransohoff said, chuckling. “He pulled a good one off there.”

“Oh, I want to do a complete nude scene,” she said. “Say you’ll let me!”

“OK, OK,” Ransohoff said, bored, looking toward the door. “Yes, yes.”

“Do it now. Don’t just say it.” Then Sharon got bored.

Early in the morning Sharon appeared before the camera at Malibu Beach, redoing a scene for Don’t Make Waves. The sun had a hard time getting through the wisps of fog, and strong klieg lights helped out. In a sequence with an undraped David Draper, “Mr. Universe”, Sharon stuck out her backside and shot out her front. Magically, a button or two came undone on her polka-dot blouse, and after close examination of camera angle, director Sandy Mackendrick decided to leave it that way. He gave Sharon guidance in rubbing mineral oil over Draper’s bare back, as the scene called for. “Treat him like a horse,” he said. “Pat him just as you would an animal. That’s the way..”

She lovingly went over Draper’s muscled back, and then went “ugh” when the camera ceased to roll. The scene was done over and over. In her tiny trailer dressing room, she took a break and smoked daintily. “I’m happier when I’m working,” she said. “I don’t have time to think to much that way.”

One thing to think about was a visit to her parent’s home in Palos Verdes Estates, an hour’s drive away. (Her father was stationed in Korea, her mother and two younger sisters were at home.) Driving to the house one night in a heavy seaside fog, she became quieter and quieter, her words less Anglo-Saxon. A passenger beside her remarked, as the car neared its destination, that the fog reminded him of snow. “You know what it looks like to me?” she said. “Vomit.”

Her mother – a pleasant, plump, dark-haired woman – turned Sharon’s face this way and that. “Have you had your blood count recently, honey? You look so pale to me.” What did she think of Sharon’s becoming a movie star? What did she think of Roman Polanski? “You know,” she said, in the voice of every middle-class American mother, “I don’t care – just as long as she’s happy.”

Back in Hollywood Sharon moved from hotel to hotel, from one friend’s home to another. She talked to Polanski by phone. (It embarrassed him to try to write letters in English because of his mistakes.) So many things were unresolved, shadowy. Ransohoff was sore at Polanski because Polanski had gone way over the budget on The Vampire Killers (“Very un-Hollywood of him,” a Filmways executive said; another only referred to him as “the little–.”); Polanski was mad at Ransohoff because Ransohoff was cutting away at his film and postponing its release in the States. (Ransohoff had also had difficulties with Tony Richardson, the English director, over the budget and the cutting of The Loved One.) “The thing is,” said Sharon, “that Roman is an artist.”

At night Sharon went to The Daisy, a private discotheque in Beverly Hills. She wore an aviator’s leather jacket, slacks, and tinted Ben Franklin glasses. Seated near the dance floor, she silently watched young actresses her age go through their gyrations. Suzanne Pleshette and Patty Duke did subdued turns; Linda Ann Evans, in a miniskirt, did a much more spirited fling. Carolyn Jones, who only yesterday had played the ingénue, now looked like a chaperone. Sharon gave Linda Ann Evans the once over and said, “I’ve worn a much shorter mini in London. That’s nothing.”

From another table a slim, bronzed young man with a pampered black hair ambled confidently past Tina Sinatra, Patty Duke, Suzanne Pleshette – and hovered over this strange blond beauty in an aviator’s leather jacket. He had the air of a football star in a small town high school, who was used to having his pick. He showed his beautiful white teeth and said, “Let’s dance.”

“No,” she said, “let’s not.”

He kept the smile on his face as he backed away. He was now another who had tried to bring Sharon Tate into a private fantasy – but he didn’t know that she had passed his type long ago.

She was going to fly to London and get engaged to Roman Polanski. Then she was going to fly back to star in Valley of the Dolls. Ransohoff was lending her to 20th Century-Fox to play a sexy bombshell who goes to Europe to star in nudie movies and who bewitches the world with her improbable lushness.

[catharrington]

@harringroveweekoflove day 2: magic au

Special Responsibility.

Magic wasn’t for the weak of heart. Steve learned that the hard way after his heart was shattered by one Ice Princess. But even with a broken heart and a desire to never practice his mother’s old spells again, Steve still found himself jumping at the call to protect someone. Especially if that someone is Billy Hargrove.

(2.2 k words. Sorry I’m a little late on the day. I might have started writing today while on the clock at work whoops. This is a short one slightly inspired by The Craft but mostly inspired by my wish to see Billy feral.)

***

Steve had balled up and thrown away all his occult things years ago. All the candles and dried flowers, chalk and bleached bones, mushrooms, crystals, even his book that his mother gifted to him first day of high school.

Her long fingers rested over its dark bound cover like a birds claws around a tree branch. “Are you sure, Steven?” She asked without disappointment in her voice and somehow that hurt worse.

“It’s just not...,” Steve wanted to say his cup of tea but that was immature. More than anything he wanted to be mature, and wise and powerful but in time he realized he didn’t need his mother’s blessings or spells for that. “I am sure.” He steadied his eyes with her and for a moment her slim fingers looked like the claws of a demogorgon but only for a moment.

She simply nodded. And walked away.

Now Steve was walking alone down a gravel covered drive way to a Halloween party he didn’t want to attend. But Nancy had just gotten off the phone with him and the collar tight on his neck still pulled for her.

“I didn’t know who else to call. Who else to ask?” Her words turned up like a question in a cute way. She quickly explained that she went to the party for the live band, Jonathan was a big fan, but something didn’t seem right. The air was static charged. She felt in her bones the same way she felt that day in the woods she accidentally crawled into another dimension. 

Cold. 

“I didn’t know who else.” She repeated again. “I’m sure Chief Hopper would just shut the whole place down. And the kids? What? There’s alcohol!” She scoffed at Steve’s question.

“Sorry I asked,” Steve dragged his words and his hand over his face. Then he agreed to be there as quick as he could.

At the end of the road there was a barn holding up against the will of nature. It’s red wood melted to one side asymmetrically and it’s roof was missing on the other side. That hole allowed the glowing lights of the party to dance across the sky. They flickered and Steve’s grip on his bat tightened in his hand.

Nancy and Jonathan were standing outside They were wearing matching lab coats and bright blue face masks pulled down to their gaunt collar bones. Steve could laugh at the idea of them in matching surgeon costumes but he held it in. “Doctor,” he greeted cheekily.

“Steve,” Nancy was happy to see him. “We have another problem.”

The two surgeons rattled on about all the quirky things that happened at the party. Steve wasn’t fully listening as he held his bat hard against his shoulder. But the last part about a certain Billy Hargrove made his ears perk up. 

Nancy explained how he was on stage playing the drums actually decent, part of the band, I know I was surprised too, then he just wasn’t. Only Nancy would notice something that small. But Billy Hargrove was never one to let his presence be small. Jonathan explained that he tried to go into the back to look around but it was locked up tight. Very suspicious.

Steve did agree it was strange, but it wasn’t otherworldly. Nancy pulled his collar again.

“I felt it.” Her words were cryptic but serious. “The same quietness, the same gross feeling. It was like it was just beyond that door.” Her thin fingers worked hard at the material of plastic gloves being wrung out in her hands.

It went unspoken. The upside down.

“And you want me to what? Knock down the door?” Steve watched them. Their joint yes also went unspoken.

Inside the party was loud, painfully so. Steve kept his bat pulled tight to his side as he snaked behind Nancy and Jonathan. The door was in the far corner to the left of the stage. Before Steve even got to it he could feel the energy pulsing from its heavy metal frame. 

This wasn’t the same upside down energy, however, this was far more familiar. This was a black ink staining everything it touched. This was candle smoke heavy in the air rolling out from under the door like a wet bog. Steve thought he had given all this up. 

“I’m going in alone.” He demanded before he even considered the words in his head.

Nancy was aghast, “No!” But she didn’t last long under Steve’s half lidded eyes.

He walked up and pressed his hand against the cold metal door. It was locked, but that didn’t mean much to him. With a little prayer they didn’t notice, Steve casually lifted his finger and the heavy latch unlocked on the other side of the door. He pushed it open easy then closed it softly behind him, blocking out Nancy’s endless questions.

A narrow hallway lead into darkness. Steve held forward his bat as he followed it all the way down to a cellar. The walls were still mud, freshly dug, and the music of the party was still loud. But from center of the cellar steady moaning hung like a lure on the water. 

Steve’s eyes adjusted to the soft light of a few candles burning in a circle around a blackened spot. Steve didn’t need his eyes to completely adjust before he realized what he was walking into.

“This isn’t happening.” Was all he could gasp.

In the middle of the cellar was a painted white circle interwoven with spirals and intricate ruins. Candles dotted along each ruin, black as the inky darkness, and burning red hot. Inside the circle stood a locked cage and inside the locked cage stood a man. Steve felt his breath catch in his throat as he found Billy Hargrove.

Another needy groan ripped the cold air and caused Steve’s cock to give a kick. Billy was standing up and holding the bars of the cage with both hands, his forehead pressed between them, those golden curls darkened from being dripping wet. Steve noticed he was once wearing a shirt and now it was rags torn around the belt at his jeans. Cuts and lettering criss-crossed his tanned glistening skin, Steve didn’t need to come closer to know what they were. But he stepped closer.

Steve walked cautiously into the drawn circle. Billy gave another long moan as if he could feel the other getting close. Lifting his open hand to the cage bars, Steve felt the energy coming off in tendrils, thick and wet, like the lines of drool going down Billy’s chin to his chest. 

That mess of blonde hair lifted and Steve had to stop a gasp as he saw once bright blue eyes turned a ghostly white. Teeth opened from a heinous snarl and they were a matching holographic glow. Steve let his fingers press against Billy’s wet cheek, and trace softy to his wet lips where pressing into the skin returned him a growl. Billy turned slightly to try and bite his finger but was much too weak.

“What are you doing here, Harrington?” A voice rang out in the darkness, but Steve already knew he wasn’t alone.

Two cold pairs of eyes stepped out of the shadows to glare into Steve. A boy and a girl and they held a heavy bound book between them. “Thought you out grew us, Harrington.”

His family name was a mockery on their lips.

“Let him go, please.” he said simply. Steve kept his palm on Billy’s cheek.

The boy laughed from the darkness. “Right when the fun was staring? No. This is our night. This is what we can take.”

Steve shook his long hair. “You can’t take this.”

“Why! Why do you get to tell us what we can do!” It was the girls turn to speak. Her voice was shrill and other worldly. “You left us to rot for your fucking Princess Nancy! You can’t lead us anymore!” She swallowed hard and shook out her head of tight curls. “Enslavement is the word I summon!”

Steve turned his head sharply. He saw the two right outside the candles with lights illuminating their cowardice. Tommy and Carol wanted to kill Steve, and sure they had a right to try, but they had no right to touch Billy.

Billy who was quickly loosing a battle of wills inside a metal cage.

Billy who’s mane of California curls was limp from sweat.

Billy who looked right at Steve but couldn’t see him.

Billy who moaned for Steve but couldn't speak to him.

Billy who had done a lot of shit and talked more shit but didn’t deserve this shit.

Steve didn’t think as he moved his palm from Billy’s cheek to the heavy lock on the cage door. He pressed against it and the metal gave way obediently. Billy let go of the bars and fell hard to his knees. 

Steve wore a sharp glare as he spoke. “This ain’t right and you two assholes know it. Magic isn’t a game.” He pulled his eyes from the positively burning pair to Billy’s snarling face. He had become like a wolf, crouched low, his fingers dug into the mud and his teeth were still glowing. Rabid almost, he struck out and bit at where he imagined Steve’s hand was. So Steve knelt down softly and hovered his hand above Billy’s carved up chest as he started.

His mother’s written words fell out of his mouth easily, like he hadn’t gone years without practice. A foreign langue once not foreign at all that held so much power. Especially powerful from the tongue of a Harrington. Carol was almost screeching from the distance and he heard the telling slam of a book into the dust.

Steve could remember his mothers voice as she gave him his book first day freshman year. “With our name and power comes a responsibility. How you balance it. How you use it. All up to you. But know everything comes back around in a circle. Magic has a reaction, Steven. We who use it have this special responsibility.”

And that’s why Steve threw away his magic. He had seen the darkest side of it, the cruelest side. A white haired man who stole little girls from their mothers and ripped monsters from the walls. Steve knew the physical way a failure of that responsibility would manifest into a creature with elongated arms and a mouth for a face who hunted the blood of teenagers for food. From that day he had thrown away his magic and swore to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.

Billy was looking right up into Steve’s eyes now. One of his hands had wrapped around Steve’s thigh, pulling heavy on the fabric, and ripping it.

Then, as quick as a blink, the blue in Billy’s eyes was back. He looked around wide eyed and without understanding. Confusion looked really good on him, Steve thought fondly.

“Hear me,” Steve’s voice was low and casual as he spoke. “What is done cannot be undone. With my power I lay claim. Protection is the word I summon. Protection.”

Billy shook the cobwebs from his head. He was never one to take long to recover, but he allowed himself the small weakness of using Steve’s arms to brace himself as they stood. 

There inside the circle of black candles Steve held his new responsibility in his arms. 

Only for a moment, however, before he stepped away and demanded answers to where he was. What was happening to him. “Pretty boy?” He leered in a reassuringly familiar way. “You rip my shirt off?”

Steve just rolled his eyes and looked away. Thankfully the room was dark and the designs carved into his skin were already disappearing. “Yeah,” he responded. Pointing down to his thigh where the denim was ripped back and bloody. “Just a little pay back.”

They didn’t notice how Tommy and Carol ran from the room or how the noise of the party seemed to dissolve. Steve lifted his bat again and shrugged as Billy’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline.

Outside Nancy and Jonathan we’re sitting on the hood of his car. The party was cleared out by an electrical failure and even though Nancy swore it was the upside down, and what was going on behind that metal door, they had to flee with the crowd and wait like good teenagers in safety. 

She lifted her head from her hands as Steve casually emerged followed by a shirtless Billy. Standing to run to them she wasn’t as quick as the glare on Billy’s face, or the way he turned and walked away from Steve before she even got close. 

Stopping by Steve, Jonathan in tow, she was filled to the brim with questions. Just boiling out her ears with what she wanted to investigate. But Steve just waved her off. Silly, gross party games he explained shortly. You wouldn’t be interested. He held his former status over her head like a cat reaching for a feather on a string, then he kept walking. Not in the direction of his parked car. But in the direction of a steel blue Camaro roaring to life. 

Nancy noticed but she kept her mouth and fists tightly clenched. Questions for another time.

[the--blackdahlia]

It’s So Easy (And Other Lies) Chapter 10

Title: It’s So Easy (And Other Lies) Chapter 10

Summary: Stevie Adler likes Duff McKagan. She has for a while now, but she is convinced Duff doesn’t like her that way. Duff likes Stevie, but so does their new bandmate Axl Rose.

Chapter Warnings: Smut (18+ please), language

AN: Thank you for all the feedback!

Duff woke up first. He was a little confused as to where he was at first, until he looked down at his side and smiled. Stevie was asleep by him, her hair framing her face. He had seen her early in the morning, especially here recently with being on the bus. But he thought this was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. He laid there for a few minutes, just watching her.

But soon, she started to stir. She opened her eyes and looked at him. A smile spread on his face as she woke up.

“Good morning beautiful,” He whispered.

“You’re still here,” She had a soft smile on her face.

“I told you I wasn’t going anywhere,” He laughed a little and pulled her close to him. He started to kiss her again, almost like he was trying to make up for all the times they could’ve been doing this and hadn’t been. He moved on top of her, deepening the kiss.

And that’s when the door flew open. Because while all of Guns n’ Roses knew how to knock on Stevie’s door, her male counterpart from Motley Crue did not.

“Stevie!” Tommy called as him and Nikki walked in. “We can’t find Duff and we…” Him and Nikki froze as they saw Duff and Stevie staring at them. “Found Duff and Stevie.”

“About fucking time!” Nikki shut the door and walked up to Duff, giving him a high five.

“I should’ve put up the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign,” Duff sighed.

“It doesn’t matter. Tommy just wants to see me naked,” Stevie rolled her eyes. “Boys, can you turn around so I can at least put a shirt on?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure.” Nikki and Tommy turned around, standing right in front of the mirror in the room. Stevie and Duff looked at each other.

“Are you looking in the mirror?” Stevie asked.

“Nope,” Tommy answered proudly. Duff got a smirk on his face as he climbed out of bed so his reflection was in the mirror.

“Oh god!” Nikki covered his eyes. “Let’s go look out the window.” He dragged Tommy to the window. Duff laughed and passed Stevie his t-shirt. She slipped it on and found her discarded underwear while Duff pulled on his pants. At least they were covered now.

“Okay boys, you can turn around,” Stevie told them. She was sitting on the bed, Duff next to her. “So…”

“How was it?” Tommy asked.

“Oh my god Tommy,” Stevie shook her head.

“Don’t worry, we let Vince have it because he stood you up,” Nikki told Stevie. “But apparently, Duff let you have it too.”

“We need new friends,” Stevie groaned.

“Hey, you guys are stuck with us for awhile,” Tommy told her. “Doc told us last night that our tour and your tour are on the same path. You’re our band for like the next fifteen shows at least.”

“Does anyone else know about you two yet?” Nikki asked, looking from Stevie to Duff.

“Probably not,” Duff shrugged. “They’ll figure it out eventually.”

“I don’t know about that one,” Tommy told them. “I thought you guys were together for like the first few months I knew you. No matter how many times princess over here told me that you two were just best friends and roommates.” Duff was holding Stevie’s hand as Tommy spoke. He ran his thumb on the back of her hand.

“Don’t tell anybody,” Nikki told them then. “Let’s see how long it takes both our bands to just figure it out.”

“Well, Mick will have it in a heartbeat,” Stevie told them.

“And Vince isn’t a dumb slut, he’s just a slut,” Duff laughed a little.

“Come out to the bar with us tonight and we’ll see if he can catch on,” Nikki laughed.

“And no giving him a heads up,” Duff told the other bassist. “Let’s see if he can figure this out on his own.” Nikki smiled and nodded. He liked where this was going.

****

Duff and Stevie left Axl, Izzy, and Slash up to their own devices. They were going to meet the Motley Crue boys over at CBGB. Duff walked with Stevie to the venue, an arm thrown around her shoulders, pulling her close to him. She had snagged his tank top from his bag and wore it proudly. Duff couldn’t help but smile at how she looked with it on.

“Duff! Stevie!” Tommy called out to them from right outside the club. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Sorry, enjoying the sights,” Duff laughed, placing a kiss on Stevie’s head. Her smile got bigger when he kissed her.

“By that, you mean a little…” Tommy starting motioning with his hands, and Stevie knew what he meant right away. Stevie slapped his arm.

“Oh my god, you are such a fucking perv Lee,” She laughed. “Can we go in already?” Tommy led the two of them into the club. There was already a band on the stage, playing away. Nikki, Mick, and Vince were at a table, waiting on them. Vince could tell instantly something was different since Stevie wasn’t pissed at him. Duff sat down in a chair and pulled Stevie into his lap.

“You two look happy,” Mick pointed out, chuckling a little.

“Well, you’re welcome,” Vince raised his drink. Stevie and Duff looked at each other.

“Thank you?” Stevie asked, confused.

“If I would’ve gone on the date last night, you two wouldn’t have hooked up,” Vince told them. “You did hook up, right? Or is this some weird, very close friendship thing?” Vince felt someone hit him in the back of the head. “Ow!”

“Call a lady when you’re going to cancel on them!” Tommy yelled at him.

“Shit…” Vince looked at Stevie with a sheepish grin. “Sorry…”

“Hey, I think it worked out,” Duff laughed, planting a kiss on her cheek.

“Glad you crazy fucking kids found each other,” Mick smirked. “Now, who’s going to bring me some vodka?”

****

“Goodbye New York!” Slash called out as the five headed towards the bus. Stevie was half asleep as she walked along with them. Her and Duff didn’t get back from CBGB until very early in the morning, and she had only been asleep for a few hours when management made her get out of bed.

“You okay sweetheart?” Duff asked, wrapping an arm around her as they walked towards the bus.

“Tired,” She yawned. Duff chuckled. He had told her not to go to sleep when they got back, but she looked so cute when she was like this, so he was going to keep his “I told you so” to himself.

They boarded the bus and Stevie dropped her bag by the couch and tossed herself onto it. She didn’t feel like making her way to the bunk. Being the only girl in a band full of dudes usually granted her her own room at hotels and bunk on the bus. But right now, she just wanted to sleep and the couch was right there.

“Sweetheart, let’s get you to your bunk,” Duff laughed, sitting on the floor by her.

“Screw consciousness,” She told him. “This is comfy.”

“How am I supposed to cuddle up next to you this way?” Duff asked, playing with her hair.

“You’re skinny, you’ll figure it out,” She told him. He laughed and stood up, reaching down and picking her up bridal style. She rested her head against his chest and he could feel his heart swell. Duff carried her back to the bunks while Izzy made a gagging motion, which caused Slash to bust out laughing.

“What are you laughing at?” Axl asked, getting on the bus, late as usual. He flopped down on the couch where Stevie had just been.

“Nothing,” Izzy shook his head. “Glad you finally decided to join us.”

“Oh, shut up Stradlin,” Axl shook his head. “I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up when we get to...wherever it is we’re going.” He stalked to his bunk and flopped down, falling asleep.

****

“Do you miss LA?” Stevie asked as her and Duff laid in his bunk. The bassist looked over at her. She had been super tired a few minutes prior, but now that she could go to sleep, her body decided she didn’t need to.

“I mean, yeah,” He shrugged. “Honestly, I really miss Seattle more.”

“I don’t remember living in Ohio,” Stevie told him, feeling him play with her hair. “I was so young when my dad walked out on us and it wasn’t long after that mom packed me up and went went to California. I don’t really remember a time where my dad, uh Melvin, wasn’t well, my dad.”

“Asshole,” Duff told her. “Who just walks out on his kid like that?”

“He beat my mom,” Stevie told him. “My grandma told me things he did to her.” Duff heard her sniffle. “Supposedly, he told my mom that he was leaving because of me.”

“What?” Duff turned onto his side so he could look at her. “You were just a baby…”

“Apparently I cried too much,” She wiped at her eyes. “So I try not to let anyone see me cry.”

“Sweetheart,” Duff cupped her face. “You never have to worry about me leaving you because of something like that.” She closed her eyes and relaxed into his touch. “The sperm donor was an asshole, and he was not your dad. And it’s his loss, because he didn’t get to see the amazing woman you grew up to be.” He moved forward and gently kissed her.

“When we’re done with the tour, I’m taking you to Seattle,” Duff told her after a couple moments. “I know you’ve been to see them before, but you deserve a family who loves you. And my mom adores you.”

“She does?”

“Yep,” He smiled. “Every time I talk to her or my sisters, they ask when I’m bringing you back over. They also kept asking me when we were actually going to go out.”

“Well, next time you talk to your mom, you can tell her you took me out,” Stevie’s smile had returned, but Duff could tell that she was actually getting tired now. He continued to play with her hair, knowing that it would put her to sleep. He smiled as her eyes fell closed.

“Night Stevie,” Duff whispered, kissing her forehead before falling asleep himself with her right up against him.

Forever Tags: @anathewierdo​ @dekahg​ @marvel-af-imagines​ @feelmyroarrrr​ @nanie5​ @imboredsueme​ @gemini0410​ @aiaranradnay​ @babypink224221​ @mogarukes​ @xxwarhawk​ @sandlee44​ @shatteredabby​ @caswinchester2000​ @supernaturalwincestsblog​ @lauravic​ @mrsambroserollinsacklesmgk​ @teller258316​ @horrorpxnk​ @tommyleeownsme​ @marvelismylifffe​ @mrslogansixxpixx​

Guns n Roses Tags: @duffshairdye​ @slashscowboyboots​ @hauntedapricoteggsclam​ @bitter-13-suite​ @arianareirg​

It’s So Easy Tags: @str4nge-haze​ @viralwolf02​

[whatshockey]

there’s a reason why - b.b.

A BROCK BOESER IMAGINE.

in which summer returns and so does the exact boy a girl managed to avoid for the past year

song: “there’s a reason why (i never returned your calls)” by blossoms

word count: 3,742

warnings: mentions of alcohol, nudity (skinny dipping), and past sexual encounters. and the cliche edgy girl who’s super angsty and just wants to run away.

a/n: i’m from the midwest and i got carried away thinking of a summer with my favorite midwestern prince instead of writing my final paper for my anthro class lol whoops

-

Many would say that Minnesota was the most useless state there was. And frankly, there was little support to argue against the claim. Although the seasons changed, nothing much else did. Routine was set into play, and the residents grew comfortable in it. Not to mention that the state was dry in every aspect - the weather, the humor, and above all, the lack in things to do. Teens graduated high school with the same kids they joined kindergarten with. Mountains of snow granted forts in violent snowball fights, and the town’s single bowling alley proved a better atmosphere than any major city nightclub could. But finally, after what felt like decades of the worst winter yet, the sun rolled out in near defeat, panting but managing to stay up for just a few more hours than the last day, leaving Minnesota’s inhabitants continuously begging for a chance at adventure. Just one juicy pear to bite into, with sweet nectar dripping out of the corners of their mouth and pooling down their chests on a hot, humid summer day. Instead, they were forced to dodge potholes on back roads framed by cornfields that seemed to take them nowhere, the occasional messy hook-up after shotgunning a few beers, and a bundle of fireworks to set off in their backyards when they were simply bored. But she was foolish to think this summer would be any different than the rest.

Perhaps this is what eventually drove her away. After moving as far as she could for college, she’d avoided the general midwestern region as if it was the plague itself, only returning once a year for a swift appearance during the holiday season and an equally prompt return back to the urban and chaotic coastal southern California. She cringed at the mere mention of her home state’s borders that appeared closer every time she blinked, and groaned as she once again found herself trudging through the airport only six months later, now a recent college graduate and wishing she’d been moving into her downtown apartment instead of staring out of the passenger window of her mother’s SUV.

She’d known she always stuck out amongst her family, or at least in terms of hobbies and interests. They all had the unfortunate blessing of a rather large nose in comparison of their otherwise petite foreheads. But as she peered down at her appearance, sitting with legs crossed and thumbs dancing along her phone screen, she noticed her difference now more than ever. It was as if their judgmental glares replaced her own, and she realized how much of an influence the mere switch of light wash jeans to tight black ones and a pair of oversized sunglasses could make. Or rather how chopping off her long, now highlighted, locks to rest on her shoulders could transform her entire face, skin stretching to fit over her sharp cheekbones and painted lips.

Her cousin was the first to comment on her appearance, with an arm drunkenly thrown around her shoulder and an obnoxious laugh in her ear. She’d watched her wave her third finger around the remainder of her relatives, squeezed and wrapped by a golden band and small diamonds placed in an intricate design. The wedding hadn’t come as a shock to anyone, and a bitter taste arrived in her mouth as she dwelled on what hideous and unflattering bridesmaid gown her cousin was set on forcing her into. Her cousin had known her fiance for years, claiming they were soulmates after meeting as camp counselors their sophomore year of high school, and began dating only a year after that. The rest of her family constantly praised their relationship as they dragged each other along to every event, and she’d bite back a response that brought unnecessary attention to the fact that he’d cheated on her twice during their freshman year of college. But ignoring the terrible had become normal, and it proved almost too convenient for her to feel comfortable.

One event, however, that never failed to disappoint anyone with actual standards was the annual state fair, where she’d found herself refraining from yelling at her niece who insisted on winning a stuffed animal that sat far too out of reach for her short frame and outstretched chubby hands. She’d changed into an old crewneck she found stuffed away in the back of her childhood bedroom with walls still covered in pictures of her old friends and arguable lover. Rolling the sleeves and moving to tie her hair up as the air grew thicker in humidity, her legs coated in sweat as they rubbed together under her denim shorts, otherwise recognized as the unofficial uniform of the general region. It had been her sole attempt to blend in, hands moving to swat mosquitoes away that decided to awaken and join the ruckus on the cool evening.

She’d just brought out her phone, foot bouncing impatiently as her niece attempted once again to win the toy after refusing the help she’d been offered five minutes ago, only to hear a high pitched gasp come from beside her. She achingly tore her eyes away from the screen, eyebrows raised only to tense as she immediately recognized the dane her niece had been excitedly pointing at, giddy and beginning to take off in the same direction with her little feet stumbling into the same arms that also held her nights before.

His biceps flexed as he kneeled to catch her, effortlessly lifting her so her legs dangled and a squeal left her lips. A handsome smile adorned his lips, and a deep laugh pierced through the air as he rubbed her back with a “Hey, kiddo!” and sat her gently in between his legs again, leaning down with elbows resting on his knees, large and dominant, and nearly blocking her frame from view.

Her niece hesitated to let go of her tight lock around his shoulders, giggling an enthusiastic “I missed you!” as she kept jumping up and down, to which he responded with a much more smooth and charming “I missed you too!”

The sky bled orange and pink hues, yet all she saw was red. How did he have the nerve to just stand there, without a flaw in sight? With eyes so blue, and so kind, that she imagined they must be made out of glass, she was convinced that he must be made out of glass, carved as a masterpiece specially made for a pretentious art museum exhibit. While other times, he resembled a lion, with a beautifully groomed mane and ready to attack his prey.

She wondered if he had even seen her yet, or if all of that camera time made him as good of an actor as he was a hockey player. Perhaps she could make a run for it, knowing that he’d get her niece back to her family safely by the time she makes it onto the next departing flight out. Yet her feet remained cemented into the grass beneath them as his gaze briefly met her, allowing himself to get dragged by a soft, adolescent grip that he could easily break out of. And whether he was amusing her niece or himself, she didn’t know. Her stomach clenched, a brick dropped onto her chest, and she struggled, but couldn’t find a way to breathe. She watched his eyes trail along her frame taking her in, first to her ankles that stayed trembling under his harsh stare, to her thighs that he once gripped so hard with his face buried in between them that they had bruised, to her eyes that he’d looked into countless times before, with a calloused hand at the back of her neck and another wrapped around her waist.

For the first time, his expression was unreadable, and a brief flash of what could only be registered as shock crossed over. And just as fast, so quick that there was no way she could even make sure it had truly happened, he managed to replace it with the same smile he wore just seconds before. Except this time it appeared far more pained and forced, the edges of his eyes crinkling as the two approached her.

His mouth moved to greet her, but she didn’t hear anything as her niece demanded attention once again, showing him the prize she’d been attempting to win for the past twenty minutes or so. He chuckled, and she caught his eyes moving briefly to her own face, possibly knowing that had she attempted the easy carnival game, they’d surely have won. Nonetheless, he offered his hand, squeezing past her so that their arms just barely brushed against each other, leaving her buzzing and taking a shot of his own. And of course immediately winning her niece the trophy prize. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and instead opted to fidget with the fraying edges of the sweatshirt he had seen her in, and taken her out of so many times before. But his eyes hadn’t gone unnoticed. His burning stare left her skin itching, and she suddenly felt even warmer while others around them began putting on their light jackets. And she so badly wanted to slap him away, push him and pretend that none of that awkward interaction had even occurred. And instead, allowed him to find and greet the remainder of her family, with her niece gripping his fingers in one hand and her new toy in the other.

The little girl had taken off once her family came into view, excitedly showing off the toy and praising Brock’s godlike athletic abilities as if she owed her own life to him. And to make matters worse, everyone’s ears perked upon the mention of his name, standing to embrace him in warmer hugs than she had received earlier that day. However, this hadn’t been all too surprising. Brock had been the best thing that could’ve ever happened to her, and had been seen as her greatest accomplished, even after she’d gotten accepted into a top university. The small town’s celebrity had been liked by everyone, even by those who didn’t support the Canucks in the slightest. And she didn’t blame them. He made everything seem effortless, and it took her the most effort not to thread her fingers through his hair and bury her face into his neck, refusing to let go.

The conversation had gone unheard for the most part. With all circling around him to ask questions about the big NHL life, she’d known his generic, but attractive, answers would captivate even the most strict and unapproachable beings in existence. He was just that damn good, and always has been. But somehow the conversation dragged on into the sunset, darkness closing in on the bunch, and the vendors began packing away, signaling that it was indeed time for everyone to go. And before she knew it, she’d been coerced to climb into an all too familiar Jeep, one she’d spent hours making out with its owner in the backseat before. Her dad had invited him back to their home, promising him a beer just as he’d walk through the door. And left little room to argue.

Fortunately, the car ride hadn’t been as awkward as she had prepared for, with her niece constantly talking about her dramatic social life in the first grade and Brock glancing back in the rearview mirror, witty and playful responses at the ready. He held a loose grip on the steering wheel, confidently reclined to fit his entire bulky frame into the car, and his right arm thrown over the back of the passenger seat she’d sat in, arms crossed and eyes trained on the road in front of them. She allowed her mind to wander back to the days where this had been normal, her niece only three at the time it had first occurred, where the three  of them would sing songs and play I Spy as they filled their time with long road trips into the city. The summers had been easy, and felt like summer. But she quickly shook the feeling as they’d pulled up to her home, him helping her niece onto the ground and her moving swiftly inside, grabbing a beer of her own.

Everyone had moved into her backyard, sitting around a bonfire that her brother had managed to light up with his little experience in boy scouts. In fact, he’d gotten on really well with Brock, playing hockey with him in their free time as little boys until he sought after a career in college baseball, giving the two a strong bond that gave her a run for her money.

As if the universe had been out to get her, the only seats available were the small bench that barely fit the two of them, and she almost opted to sit on the ground. While the rest continued sharing jokes and catching up, her eyes remained trained on the lake that frame her backyard, a light breeze coming in as more blankets had been brought out, which happened to be the same ones they’d used when he took her to surprise dates to the town’s drive-in. Her mind drifted back to the hours she’d spent on water with him, racing in jet skis or skinny dipping in the dead of night, jumping off of his family’s boat as his dogs looked on at the couple as if they were crazy. And they were, or at least about each other. But still, no matter how clear those days were and how bright the sky had been, the water was still not as blue as his eyes as they crinkled up in amusement, laughing as he splashed her with water.

As the moon rose higher and its reflection could be seen shining brightly in the water, the adults had finally bid their goodnights, with the children doing so long before. She hadn’t noticed at first, and wished she had followed suit as she began to realize she had been the only one left out there with him, although it had not been the first time. And she stayed frozen, not daring to speak first, and not knowing what to say if she had been forced to.

“You look good.”

It had been the first words he had directly said to her that night, and the first ever exchanged in about a year, not including the numerous voicemails that lessened as the weeks dragged on. She met his eyes and gave him a small smile. It had been a while, but he still managed to make her flustered, and he’d clearly known his affect on her as he did a smile of his own behind his beer bottle.

“Thank you,” it came out as a whisper, but she didn’t know if her voice could even go louder as it began wavering at the mere sight of him. “You too.”

The two fell into a silence once again, and she could see him looking at her with more heat than the actual fire before them held. She turned to look at him, expecting him to continue, but instead his jaw clenched and he moved his eyes back to the pit, allowing her to take note of his features as his face was illuminated in the dark. Stubble lined his jaw, eyes trained and his lips pursed, and she cursed herself as she realized he had grown even more handsome than the last time she saw him.

“Why didn’t you call?”

His voice was hard, and sounded almost angry, even if he wasn’t one to yell.

No matter how hard he wanted to, she knew he’d never tell her that she’d at least owed him that much. She so desperately wanted to tell him how had she heard his voice muffled behind the call, she would’ve ran to kiss him over and over for every word that slipped past. Or how it hadn’t been as easy as she made it seem, with every ring her phone echoed, to let go of everything that she ever found comfort in, and to run away from it all. He’d been the last thing she wanted to say goodbye to, but he had already let Minnesota go. He had let her go.

“Just one text is all I asked for. You just had to tell me you weren’t interested anymore, and I would’ve moved on somehow.”

It had almost been an insult, with the way he casually moved his hand that rested around her head to push back a few stray strands of hair that fell into her vision, delicately tracing the curving of her face, to her lips and down her arm. She was well aware that there wasn’t much to move on from, and it was only a matter of time when he’d realize it too.

“But that doesn’t mean I have.”

The way her voice rang in his ears was almost dangerous, one so broken, fearful, and vulnerable that had once been full of so much life. And it left him scared, and almost angry with himself. And begging to hold her even closer to him.

“What are you saying?”

His voice quivered, and the man who normally was so sure and certain of his surroundings was left confused.

“I just can’t keep going back to this every summer and then pretending that it never happened.”

She sighed, pulling out of his grip to then pull at her hair, looking at him with pleading eyes that read “Please, let me go.”

“I can’t keep changing my feelings when the seasons do, Brock.”

Their romance never was never heavy or burdening. It was always so simple and easy, and perhaps that had been the reason it had been so easy to jump back into it every year and last so long, stretching from their senior year of high school and far into his career in college and the league. Yet despite how much the both of them had changed in these years, they’re feelings towards each other didn’t. And they both knew this loud and clear, even if neither dared to voice it.

“You would know that wasn’t the case for me if you listened.”

He’d pulled her back to him, this time closer so she stayed against him, pulling her legs to rest over his knees, and he was so close she could smell his musk, wishing to just drown herself in the scent.

“You’re only acting like this so you have someone to sleep with over the summer.”

It might’ve not been the case, but as she voiced her concern, it was clear that this was how it was coming across. He could have any woman he wanted, and already had the city of Vancouver kissing the floor he walked on. And she had moved to remind him of this, but it was almost as if he read her mind, cutting her off before she could continue with a squeeze at her hand.

“But I always come back to you?” he questioned, turning to lean his body over her’s, causing her to strain her head as they kept eye contact. “And I only want to come back to you.”

He waited for a response of any sort, feeling how heavy his words felt in the thick air. He had always made every move so calculated and precise, with confidence emerging from every inch of his body. And yet he had said that with no hesitation or fear for what may follow, prepared that she may run like she always did.

So he had been extremely surprised when he felt her press her lips against his, pulling him into her by his shirt collar. She’d pressed her lips so hard against his that her lips hurt, breaking for air as he pulled her fully into his lap, legs wrapped on either side of his waist and his arms around her’s, hands moving up her back to feel every part of her he missed.

The two felt like teenagers again, sitting in her backyard in the midst of an act of desperation. Except this time they were kissing out in the open instead of in the dark edge of the sidewalk, knowing very well that her parents could walk out any second and catch them. And she couldn’t find any reason to care, as she felt him holding her so close to him, moving as she did and kissing her with such a fierceness that she wondered if he, too, was pleading for this moment to never end.

“I won’t come this weekend if it makes you uncomfortable,” he murmured into her neck, her chest rising and falling sporadically against his throat.

She closed her eyes and shook her head as his arms flexed while he tried to continue, always wanting to be the good guy in every situation. However, she had been unfair to him before, and destruction had seemed to be what she’d known best. Of course he’d been invited to the wedding, and probably hadn’t expected to see her there anyways, knowing how much she loathed her extended family.

Nonetheless, she moved to squeeze his hand, rubbing a thumb over his knuckles as she raised her gaze into his own, preparing to regret her next words as soon as they left her lips. But the feeling never came.

“Be my date?”

It had only been 48 hours later, and the two stood swaying to the beat of yet another love song that echoed through the speakers, and his heartbeat pulsing against her ear as she laid her head against his chest. The rest of the guests remained inside, congratulating the couple and mingling amongst their own. The two, however, were quick to move outside, sneaking away as if they were sixteen and ditching math class to spend just a few extra minutes with each other.

She gave it her all to change and leave behind her life in Minnesota, the routine of balancing on branches and dancing around traps bored her to infinity. Yet for the first time, she indulged in this tradition the couple had going on. And didn’t worry about what would happen in a few months when they left yet once again.

All that mattered was the man holding her, promising her that he wouldn’t let her go again.

And she believed him.

[southboundhq]

MEET HARLOW,

FULL NAME › Harlow Vulpecula Belle AGE › twenty two GENDER › Cis female (She/Her/Hers) FROM › Upper West Side, New York LODGING › Copper Cactus Motel PRIOR EMPLOYMENT › Ballet Dancer (Soloist) NOW PLAYING › ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ by Edith Piaf

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger warnings: death, injury, mental illnesses, suicide / contemplation of suicide, substance abuse, implied abuse and emotional manipulation

The rise of the curtains meant the show is starting. When they fall for the last time, it means the show is over.

A life in four acts (and counting), one for each loss.

ACT I. BELLE

She was her mother’s daughter; the same laughter, the kindness, the eyes.

The gentleness of her mother’s touch, the honey of her voice. Her delicate fingers brushing through Harlow’s hair, the warmth radiating through every room in their small home, right in the heart of Paris. The smell of the evening wind. The sight of it all. Harlow, in her best dress, her legs swaying, as her mother took her to watch Swan Lake. The first time she had ever held onto something.

An angel loved and doted on.

Memories of her golden childhood, from a time she wishes had never ended. It was the only thing that Harlow Belle could do: cling to the innocence and the wonder that her mother blessed her with— even as her mother’s health quickly deteriorated. For they were things she could not understand; she had never known loss. A ghost in the night, taking away the color from her mother’s cheeks. Her mother whispering I love you, but it had sounded so much like Farewell. The man standing by the door the next morning, one she did not really know, but was familiar only because it was his face in her mother’s cherished photograph. He wept at her side and her mother ran her hand through his hair, planting a kiss on his head. His hand was warm, his voice gentle, leading Harlow away.

The universe had shown her paradise, and it burned it down infront of her.

You’re not coming with us? Harlow had asked.

Her mother smiled, I will be with you, my love.

But her mother never came, no matter how long Harlow waited. She was alone.

ACT II. LACY

She never really understood why her mother never came. Or why she had to leave. Was her mother dead? Did her mother not love her anymore? There wasn’t an answer that Harlow wanted to hear, so she simply never asked. Entangled in her own little world, where she blurred the lines between her reality and her memories.

On some days, it was as easy as breathing. It meant formally studying ballet. It was the white dress she wore on her father’s wedding day. It was listening to the affection in their voices as they spoke to her. As if she belonged. It was her hand on her stepmother’s belly, waiting for their unborn son to kick from the womb. It was a future where the ache left by her mother was the size of the pendant of Harlow’s dainty necklace.

It was easy, too, when she was twelve, one the eve of her first real performance.

You’re coming to watch, right? The excitement in her voice.

Her stepmother tucked hair behind her ear, Wouldn’t miss it.

It was the heartbreak and the fear, a distant memory replaying in her head. Harlow, watching the empty seats her parents couldn’t fill. The tears that followed, the apologies, the sobbing. The car accident that happened that night, claiming the lives of her stepmother and her unborn child. Her father, paralyzed, spending his days in a wheelchair and looking out into the window.

Sometimes, Harlow thinks he’s asking to be taken, too.

He did not look at her. He did not speak to her. Not that he could.

Harlow found herself alone again. And this time, it was her fault.

ACT III. PRIMA

Her grandmother, as she had learned, was an esteemed and respected Principal Dancer, known for her completely control over her body and the tantalizing performances she brought. She was eloquent, with a dignified walk, the air around her had always seemed so.. perfect. But Amanda Lacy, in Harlow’s experience, was a distorted mirror—her reflection was crooked, and every inch of her cruel.

The first time Amanda Lacy used violence on Harlow was a week after the accident. Harlow had refused to dance so adamantly, and she remembers the thunder and lightning that sounded as Amanda Lacy’s hand collided with her small face. It was my fault, Harlow would repeat her grandmother’s words, It’s because I didn’t want to dance. It’s because it was my fault that dad can’t dance anymore.

It was easy, too, to fall back inlove with ballet. Too easy.

Dancing as the sun rose in the morning, until late at night. Under fluorescent lights. Her body in full view. Drenched in sweat. The tears on her eyes as she pushed her body to its limit, to bend until she almost breaks. Almost. Until every muscle ached.

Until her grandmother was satisfied.

Harlow, who had loved ballet, grew afraid of it. It was a constant game of hide-and seek. A push and pull between her passion and her fear. Escaping. Craving. The chill that ran down her spine, the way her blood ran cold. Amanda Lacy would only ever call her “Prima”, followed by the ache of a wish that she would one day be worthy of being called such a name.

It meant drowning out the praises of strangers, growing blind to the eyes that landed on her, the expectations they had. The anxiety that drowned out the adrenaline brought by the stage lights and the music. The numbness. The collapse and the caving in. Attempting to put an end to it all. The doctors she had to meet with, who only ever gave her pills. though none of them ever really fixed her, a hollow porcelain doll. The slashes on her wrists.

More pills.

More, more, more, until she couldn’t count them anymore.

The empty seat she wished her father would fill, if somehow reality had been kinder to him. To them both.

At the age of twenty-one, Harlow had laced her shoes for a production of Swan Lake. It had been her dream, her turning point, her one last hope to be freed from her mother’s memory, of her grandmother’s presence. There she was, a mess of blood and tears, hunched over the sink, her consciousness fading, the strength leaving her body. Amanda Lacy stands by the door, though Harlow couldn’t gather enough of her thoughts to think about how she had gotten in. There is a look of anger and disgust as she pulls at Harlow’s clothes, her palm coming down on her face in a hard slap.

Compose yourself and dance, Prima. Do not embarrass me. Words, stone-cold.

Stellar form. Control. Grace. Precision. An expressive, electrifying performance. One could not look away.

Harlow Lacy, the prodigy.

IV. HARLOW

The smell of his cigarette followed Harlow even hours after they had parted. The mischief in his smile. His hand, taking Harlow’s own. His fist colliding with a stranger’s jaw, the one who touched her. The way they made a run for it after that. The kisses they stole from each other. The skies when she and the other lost kids snuck into the city pool, the way it painted everything purple. The kisses they gave back.

He called her Prima, too, but it did not carry venom when it left his lips. She should know, he had always tasted sweet for her.

Harlow was fifteen when she met him. The childish trouble they would get themselves into, she and all the other kids who she learned was just like her, the hungry and the desperate.To numb the ache, or to take away the numbing.

Over the next few years, Harlow would have gotten herself through all sorts of troubles. Disappearing for days without so much as a word. She had learned that Amanda Lacy did not really care about her whereabouts, just that she was able to deliver a performance. Harlow made sure to make full use of this knowledge. She would end up coming back, anyway.

It didn’t matter to her at twenty-two, when she put all of her belongings into suitcases and a backpack, and a suitcase filled with all of the money she had made from dancing, and every transaction in the backwaters, everything she could steal from her own family, and all of the money her mother had put in her name (which, Harlow had learned, was a lot).

Her pointe shoes. The necklace her mother gave her. Photographs. Memories. Saying goodbye to her father, though he did not really answer. Even though he may still despise Harlow, she knew he would understand. An apology. And then another. Lying with a straight face, every alibi and every answer perfectly crafted. Pulling all of her strings and sneaking out in the dead of night to find herself on a flight from New York to California, then driving to Las Vegas.

Or anywhere, really.

Anywhere was fine.

She would end up coming back, anyway.

She had been hung-over when she drove into Boot Hill, going straight to a motel to sleep off the exhaustion, stay for a few days, then head back on the road. But there was something endearing about Boot Hill that Harlow couldn’t pinpoint. The way it was everything she never thought she wanted, a remote place where Amanda Lacy would never even imagine her to hide in. Where she was not haunted, seemingly plucked off from the grasps of her grandmother. The poison that dripped from every word that left her mouth. The sharp pain on her body as it collided with the wooden cane. The bruises. The ache.

But right now there is only Harlow, and her three-legged pug, Poppy.

Occasionally, she watches the town’s sign and the open road ahead, thinking she’ll have to go soon. She’ll have to come back sooner or later. She cannot keep running away.

Then there is the heaviness.

I’ll leave tomorrow, she says, but tomorrow never really comes.

❝ i wonder what’s in store if i don’t love it anymore; stuck between the having-it-all and giving-it-up. ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Zendaya Coleman AUTHOR › Fey

[vgregss]

Dear Kobe.

I have to let this out somehow.

The death of Kobe has me real down. It’s crazy because I personally don’t know him, never met him. Seen him at a couple of games and taken pictures of him from a far. I have never had a conversation with him. Nothing of the sort to say we were ever even acquaintances. This man was a professional athlete, a celebrity, a legend. Someone I admired from afar. 

I became a fan as soon as I moved to California at 11/12 years old. I noticed his fight and dominance in basketball at a young age. He was incredibly fun to watch. I instantly became someone who looked up to him. My first hero in sports. Living in southern California and still mooching off the cable of my parents, I was able to watch almost every single game. I witnessed him winning championships and watched games with my friends, or just flat out watched by myself in the living room yelling and screaming at the tv. I can still hear my mom from the other room, “Vanessa! That’s not lady-like.” I’d get so upset sometimes as if I were a Laker. My parents, though, would always ask after I watched a game, whether it be home or out with friends, “did the Lakers win?!?” They knew my love for the Lakers and Kobe at a young age. One of my, if not first, jersey’s was Kobe’s gold 8. I still have it. It’s in my closet and I plan on wearing it this week. I wrote one of my college papers on Kobe. I grew up with him. I watched him become more of a man over the years, a fierce and loyal competitor of the game, and an icon. One of the GOATs and THE GOAT of my generation. I didn’t grow up watching Michael, I grew watching Kobe. Just as he had struggled and became frustrated when father time came knocking and the Lakers weren’t building around him any longer, we as fans were right there with him struggling and getting frustrated. We felt his pain. We were so used to seeing him succeed, we wanted more for him, more OF him. I have gotten into heated altercations with friends and even strangers about Kobe. Debating about whether or not he’s the greatest to ever do it. I could go on all day sometimes. It would bring me joy to defend this man and his talents that I so believed in. Then the time came. He retired. I will never forget watching that game at a bar screaming “Kobe! Kobe! Kobe!” as if the whole bar was suddenly the Staples Center.  I cried a little that night after he walked off the court, in somewhat disbelief that this was his last game. That I will never see a fade-away jumper from him or crazy under the basket dunk ever again; unless I youtube it or ESPN decides to show highlights. The Kobe I grew up with, grew up, too. He had to move on from the game, he had to live the next chapter of his life. And I as a fan, had to respect that. We want to keep them there in those wonderful moments forever because the memories bring us such joy. We don’t want to believe he isn’t bringing us new stories or “did you watch that game last night when Kobe did this...?!” moments. We had to move on too. So, we did. Kobe went on to create a short animated story of his love for basketball, win an Oscar, have 2 more baby girls, did Detail, Muse, become a coach for his daughter and so many other kids. He was happy, we were happy for him. The game must go on and so must our lives. But yesterday, January 26th everything stopped. Nothing went on. It’s probably silly to some, probably most, to get heartbroken over a “celebrity” passing, but this was different. It’s indescribable. 

I was at brunch with my boyfriend celebrating our 2 years of dating at the restaurant we had our first date at. We were pretty much finished with our meal, paid already, so we were just drinking the last of our mimosa flights. I didn’t want to be on my phone much, for obvious reasons, but my phone kept vibrating. I looked at it and a I had 3 or 4 texts all asking about Kobe with sad emojis. I was confused, wondering what it was they were talking about, because I had yet to receive anything from my ESPN or Yahoo Sports apps. I was like hm, they’re probably trippin on something stupid. But the fact that both my mom and dad texted me, was weird. So, I went to Twitter. I go to Twitter for most of my news and know it’s always pretty live. I see devastation. Lots of denial type messages. I see fellow athletes in disbelief, many saying “No, not Kobe.” Not Kobe, what?! -- I said to myself. Then I saw it. Kobe killed in helicopter accident along with 8 others. Nah, this is fake. Someone is playing a sick joke. I kept scrolling and scrolling and I started to shake and began to believe everything I was consuming in the palm of my hand. I put my hand up to my mouth in shock and denial, and started to cry. I was shaking and had chills. I have never felt that for someone whom I had never met. The impact he has had on my life since I kid was powerful in that moment. A shock of childhood memories flooded me. I could not fathom that my athlete hero is dead. I couldn’t believe it. I was in complete shock. He isn’t supposed to die, right? I had to keep reading everything that was coming in about it and then I read that his daughter, GiGi, was also with him and had died. Just weeks ago, we watched her and Kobe court side at a game. My heart broke even more. I was angry. I wanted to scream! I seriously could not process it.

I didn’t know Kobe, I didn’t know his family. I was truly just a fan, like so many. I knew the love and joy he brought to my life. He reached and touched so many lives. He taught me to be resilient, to fight through anything. The Mamba Mentality is a thing that transcends sports. It is something I have admired about him since I was that 12 year old kid. As I got older, I realized that mentality isn’t just about a game. It’s about life. He taught the world that, he inspired so many and it is unreal that he is no longer on this earth with us. He was a legend, IS a legend. He was a god to so many of us kids who grew up watching him and who wore his jersey 82 days out of the year. He can’t die. There is no way. But he is human. A human who reached millions of people, who made people believe in pushing through any obstacle that was in your way. There is just no way that this man is no longer breathing. 

In the last 24+ hours or so, I’ve found myself constantly scrolling through social media, to hear another story about him. I think it’s to keep him alive somehow. To help me remember that he was incredible to everyone and that everyone is also feeling how I am feeling. But he is gone. All we have left now are the stories the highlights, and the fond memories he brought us. Whether it be in our own living rooms, a bar or at a game itself. He brought more than basketball and that could not be more clear after learning this tragic news. 

If we are feeling this heart broken and saddened, it is only imaginable what his wife and other daughters must be feeling. It truly breaks me to think about what they are going through. I pray that God lifts them and comforts them during this difficult time. I pray they take their time in grieving and that they don’t feel the need to share what they are going through with the world until they are absolutely ready to share it, if at all. His family meant more than anything in this world to him and we must support and send love from a far. 

The sports world will never be the same. The world itself will never be the same. Kobe Bean Bryant can never be duplicated. I am grateful and honored to have watched him over the years. I am a proud fan. I will truly miss him.

I love you, Kobe and I will never forget you. Thank you. 

[amarauder]

green with envy {benny rodriguez}

prompt; "you can't just waltz in here and –"

"i would've died for you. i think that gives me leeway for a little waltzing."

word count;

warning; none, maybe a few minor cursewords

a/n; this is a terrible imagine. I'm so sorry, I really don't feel like I captured Benny's personality right in this peice. But I've been working on this for far too long and if I hav to write anymore on this stupid story then I'm going to scream.

                                     "You jump, I jump. Remember?"

The tennis ball shot back to the other side of the court and the opposing member of the team Y/N was playing, missed. Cheers and Screams of happiness from the h/c haired girl's team bounced around the tennis court. Y/N laughed as everyone on the court crowded her and thumped her on the back.

"Wow, Y/N, you're so good!"

"So when are you going to become a professional?"

"Golly, I wish I was as good as you!"

Y/N grinned at all her friends and thanked them, "Give her space girls! Giver her space!" Y/N looked up to see her coach beaming at her.

"I'm sure glad I recruited you on the team!"

"Me too, Mrs.Gillfird. Me too." Y/n smiled and looked at the stands. She saw her younger brother, Tommy and her Mother cheering at the stands. But one face sparked her curiosity.

'What was Phillip doing here?' The last time she checked, he hated her guts.

An hour later, Y/N was heading over to the malt shop across the street from her high school; Valley High School.

"Hey, Y/N." Nancy grinned, "What are you thinking about?" Nancy had bright red hair that was quite curly and was currently styled into perfect ringlets inside her ponytail. Nancy had light hazel eyes, that reminded her of Benny's eyes constantly. Nancy was the type of girl who could be all innocent and cherry then break your nose in a spilt-second.

"Nothin' much, Nanc." (pronounced Nance with a silent e)

The truth was Y/N was thinking about Benny Rodriguez, her ex-best friend. The pair of them had gotten into a huge fight when Y/N didn't tell him that she was moving to the East Side until the day before. It had been about a year since that event had occurred and it was understandment to stay she missed him. God, her heart ached to see him again.

"She's probably thinking about Phillips." Sarah grinned mischievously. Sarah was a petite girl, with dark black hair that was pin straight, paired with blue eyes. Sarah was one of those girls who had a heart bigger than god and a personality bigger than life. Y/N felt that she was the closest to Sarah out of the four girls.

Y/N rolled her eyes, "Trust me, Phillip feels nothing for me except for maybe a lot of hatred."

"Well, don't look now, but he's coming out this way." Mary grinned, Mary was very tall. She was around 5'11 and had short blonde hair that went about midway from her chin to her shoulders. She green eyes that seemed to match the grass in spring. She was the shyest of the group. Mary was one of those girls who everyone knew how gorgeous she was, except for her.

Sure enough, all three girls did the exact opposite of what Mary had told them to do. Phillip was coming this way and strangely was looking directly at Y/N. She met eye contact with the idiot and watched as a giant smirk grew on his stupid face.

"Ugh," Y/N crinkled her nose up and started to quicken her pace, "Let's go into Roger's, quickly."

The bell rung on the door of Roger's Milky Way and the quadruplet quickly all piled into an empty booth. It was quite packed inside the Diner, this place was the prime hangout place for all Valley kids.

This Magic Moment played softly in the background, as they picked up the menus and started teasing Y/N about how Phillips was making goo-goo eyes at her.

"Y/N, he's so dreamy," Nancy smiled, "He's an amazing baseball player."

At that comment, she snorted, "Trust me, I know better...a lot better actually."

Sarah raised her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes in a teasing manner, "Oh yeah, who?"

"Benny 'the jet' Rodriguez."

The three girls rolled their eyes and groaned, "Y'know, I'm starting to wonder if this guy exists, all you do is talk about how in love with him you are! We've never actually met him."

"I can't happen but to overhear your conversation, n/n. So, who is the lucky guy?" Y/n turned around to see straight into Phillip's eyes. They were the color of mud.

"Hmm, funny." The h/c haired girl snapped, "Last time I've heard, it's rude to interrupt, Phillips."

"She's in love with this imaginary guy names Benny 'the jet' Rodriguez."

Phillips' eyes grew huge, "You like him?"

"No! I do not!"

"He exists?" Nancy asked, shocked.

"Yes, he does. He sucks at baseball."

Y/N laughed, but then stopped when she realized no one else was laughing, "Wait, I thought that was a joke."

Phillips ignored that comment, "So, L/n, I can help you get over Rodriguez if you help me get over you."

Y/n rolled her eyes and was about to reject him when he said, "Just remember, I wouldn't hang onto him so long. You know he hates you more than me now, don't you? What the hell did you do to him?"

"Shut your trap, you idiot! Mind your own business! I will never ever go out with you! You need to stoop down back to your league, chump." Y/N paused to catch her breath, but then smirked as an idea quickly formed in he head, "Tell you what, the day you stop playing baseball like a girl, is the day I'll go out with you." The h/c haired girl sassed and used Ham's line.

"You are a girl!' He threw his hands up in outrage.

"Ya, but at least I don't play like one. C'mon, Phillips, we both know I can beat your ass. Do you really want a girl that can do that?" Y/n made a mock concerning face.

"I think it's hot as hell, L/n. Why don't you just go out with me? The rest of your gang is going steady with mine? Why don't we just make it official?"

"I'm standing my grounds, Phillips. Not until you stop playing like a girl." Y/N raised her eyebrows at him.

It was starting to get dark outside, so Y/N decided to start heading home, "I'm going to go home, I'm really tired."

Sarah smiled, "I might head out with you too."

"Okay, Sarah, let's agitate the gravel."

"Let me just grab my sweater." Y/n wrapped her own sweater around her tennis outfit; which consisted of a white collared shirt with her school logo printed on her left breast and a white pleated tennis skirt with a navy blue stripe at the bottom. Her Varsity Sweater was Nazy Blue and it was possibly her favorite thing to wear.

They waved at the two girls and shivered at the night's cold air, "Jeepers, it's cold." Sarah whispered.

"I know, I just want it to be Summer already."

"At least it's not Winter."

"Oh, please. We don't even have a Winter."

Sarah laughed, "True. Why won't you go out with Phillips."

"You don't understand. My old gang, before I moved here and met you all... We were enemies with theirs. I was so different then. I was practically a boy. I wore overalls all the time or jeans and a baseball jersey. I looked like a badly groomed boy. Anyway, we were the best baseball team out there. But they would constantly terrorize us. This one time, they threw a rock through Benny's window and it almost hit his Mother. Golly, t think that was the scariest for me. The worst part was, Mr.Rodriguez had died 5 years ago from that day. So, I was there comforting Benny..." Y/N trailed off as she started to recall the horrendous memory, "That's one of the main reasons why I won't go out with him."

Silence settled between them, "How long ago was it?"

"What?" Y/N asked confusedly.

"When did they throw the rock?"

"About three-fourish years ago...I think."

"As much as I don't want to say this, it needs to be said. I will never ever think that what Phillip did was right. Ever. I love you, Y/N. You're my best friend. But you need to get your head out of the past. If Benny and your squad missed you as much as you miss them, then they would have visited you by now and it's been almost a year now. You need to get over him. You don't have to go out with Phillips, but everyone deserves a second chance. You were the one who taught me that, Y/n. Now, you need to go do it reciprocate it."

Y/N bit her lip and looked down at her white sneakers, "I know, I do... I'll go tell Phillips tomorrow. But if he does anything that I don't like, then I'll drop him."

The next day was Saturday. Y/n got dressed in a red dress paired with a blue scarf tied around her neck and white heels. A knock on her door interrupted her morning breakfast.

"I'll get it!" Y/N hollered to her Mother who was currently doing the dishes.

Y/N opened the door and saw Phillips standing there, "Phillip? What are you doing here?"

Phillip smiled shyly at Y/N which only caused Y/N to be more confused. Phillip was never nervous. Even when he knew her and the boys were going to beat his toushie.

"Umm, I-I wanted to show you something."

Y/N's eyebrows furrowed but she nodded, "Alright, let me just put my dish away and let my Mother know I'm gone. You can come in if you'd like." She mentioned with her hand.

Phillip laughed nervously, "Good, I was scared you were going to let me bake in this heat."

Y/N gasped in fake horror, "In 70-degree weather! Why I would never do such a thing!" {a/n; that's cold for California. lol, I'm so spoiled}

The two surprisingly made great conversation despite their differences, but what shocked Y/N the most was how much she was enjoying herself.

Y/N shut the door to her house and followed Phillip to their bikes that were leaned against the wall, "Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

Y/N started to whine, "I hate surprises."

"Sucks for you," Phillip said and hopped on his bike. "Now, hurry up. We've got things to do, places to see, people to meet."

Y/N laughed, "Since when have you ever liked people."

"Oh, I like people. Just not your old friends."

"Because we were better at you at baseball."

"Yes, exactly-...Wait! No!" Phillip started to stumble over his words as Y/N almost fell off her bike from laughing so hard.

The two started to slow at the top of the hill, Y/N couldn't see the top of it and it was driving her mad. "Where are you taking me?!?"

Phillip laughed at her impatience, "Would you relax?"

"No. Now tell me!" Y/N exclaimed annoyed, but her anger was shortlived as the two finally made it to their destination. The place was beautiful. The gorgeous field was a lush green and was spotted with pink and reds from flowerbeds. Butterflies and birds twittered around through the hunter green trees. Y/N couldn't speak. She was in such awe of everything around her, she just looked around with her jaw slightly ajar.

"Do you like it?" Phillip asked a small smile dancing on his lips as he watched Y/N's facial expressions.

"How did you find this place? This is nothing like I'ver ever seen before, especially here."

Phillip smiled shyly and put his hands in his pockets, "My Father and I used to come here a lot."

"Used? If I knew about this place sooner, I would be here all day, every day."

Phillip kept smiling but shrugged, "We just grew apart, I guess."

"Oh." Y/N nodded along like she was understanding everything he was saying, but in reality, she was entranced by the meadow she was surrounded by.

An hour later, Y/N felt guilty for how she and the gang had treated Phillip. He was most likely one of the sweetest boys she's met in a while. He didn't try anything with her and had shown her around with the most upright respect she's gotten in a while.

As the pair were watching the stars and lying on the blanket that Phillip had brought for their eventful picnic and 'baseball' game; that he had supposedly won.

"Phillip?"

"Hmm?" He hummed in reply.

"Umm," Y/N sat up slightly causing Phillip's eyebrows to furrow and for him to also sit up, "I was just wondering why you're suddenly being nice to me."

Phillip groaned and put his head in his hands, "Truth is... I've always had the biggest crush on you. I've just never known how to show it."

Y/N felt a ball of stress release in her chest, "Oh," Y/N laughed, "Good."

"Good? I've treated you like shit."

"No, good, as in you also like me."

Phillip's eyebrows shot up, "Also like?"

"Ya, well, wasn't this a date?"

"Princess, this was a way for me to show you that I was a good person. My dates are going to be much better than this. Golly, if you become my girl, I'll spoil you so much."

Y/N blushed, "I don't need to be spoiled. I already have plenty."

"I think you deserve everything."

Y/N didn't know what to say after that, so she kissed him.

Within the next week, Philip and Y/N were inspirable. They went on dates almost every day and kissed many times. It was finally Summer Time and the couple were beyond ready for the warmth to bloom over them.

Y/N's doorbell rang and she blushed but hurried down the stairs, "Hey Mom! I'm going out!"

"Who with, honey?"

Y/N gulped, she knew her Mother was starting to get suspicious. Y/N and Sarah hung out every day, but Sarah would never ring the doorbell, she would just let herself in and shout, "Everyone! I'm home!"

It drove her Mother crazy, but Y/N always felt that her Mother secretly liked it, even if she would never admit it.

"Umm, I'm going out with Sarah and some friends." Now, that wasn't a complete lie. She was going out with Sarah, but they weren't all just friends. They were both going steady with the guys.

"Who are the guys?"

"Guys?"

"Yes, honey, the two boys standing next to Sarah?"

Y/N groaned silently, "Well, there's Johnny and Phillips."

"Phillips? Boy, I haven't heard that name in a while. I thought you didn't like each other."

Y/N gulped and decided to tell the truth, "We're jacketed, Mama."

"Jacketed? Oh, sweetheart, why didn't you tell me? It's rude to him and I for us not too meet."

"Sorry, Mama. I'm still new at this."

"I know, honey. Now let the poor boy in."

"Alright, Mama."  Y/N opened the door and plastered a fake smile on, "Hey, Phillip? Would you want to come in? My Mama wants to meet you."

Phillip looked surprised but nodded anyway, "Alright."

"Johnny and I are going to hit the gravel. We'll see you both later." Sarah grinned at her boyfriend, who smiled right back.

"Okay, bye, Sarah."

Y/N showed Phillip around the house, hoping to stall, so Y/N could think of a quick way for her Mother not to talk too much. Mrs.L/N was a known chatterbox. You could never get the woman to stop talking. Although, Y/N and her closest friends thought it was endearing occasionally. Many others thought it was quite annoying and she often used to get teased from it.

Phillip smirked teasingly, "When are you going to introduce me to your Mother? She's not a troll is she?"

Y/N smiled slightly from his joke, "Something like that."

Phillip's brows furrowed and he flung his arm around her and squeezed the girl around him, "Hey, I've heard the rumors about your Mother and personally I don't care. I'm dating a chatterbox myself."

"I'm a chatterbox?"

"Yes, you are. But you know what? People like it. After all, you're a queen."

"I'm not that popular."

"Umm, excuse me, you are our Sophmore President, Tennis Captain, and you won Homecoming Queen last year. I think you are the top Queen."

Y/n blushed, "You always know what to say."

"I know, I do." He smirked, causing Y/N to roll her eyes.

"Now, I'm starting to regret saying that."

He chuckled, "No you don't."

"Yes, I do."

"Y/N! I want to meet your suitor! Get down here!"

"I'm coming, Mama!"

The pair raced down the stairs to meet an impatient but beautiful looking woman, whose eyes softened at the sight of her daughter and Phillip.

"Phillip, this is my Mama. Mama, this is Phillips."

"It's sure nice to finally meet you, Mrs.L/N."

"And me you, Phillips. Although, I've heard plenty about you. So much, it's like I already know you."

"Really?" Phillip smirked as her eyes widened and she blushed scarlet. Y/N's stomach growled uncomfortably and she glared daggers at her Mother and wondered when she would be done torturing poor Phillips.

"Hey, Paulie?"

"What's up, Babe?"

"Mom, Phillips and I should really be going."

"Okay, you make sure you don't lose this one, Y/N. He's a real keeper."

"Okay, Mama."

"Phillip make sure you come around for dinner sometime. I'd love to have you over again."

"Alright, Mrs. L/N."

Y/N's Mother opened her mouth to say something again, but Y/N beat her to it, "Bye Mom."

Y/N hurriedly shut the door and sighed, "Sorry about that."

Phillip laughed, "Don't worry about it. I like your Mom. Say, look at the time. Do you want to head to Rosie's Diner?"

"That sounds great." Y/N grinned but stopped short.

"Isn't that on the other side of town? That's a long bike ride, Phillips."

"Good thing we won't have to ride. I got my own flip top."

Y/N's jaw dropped in surprise, "Golly. That's one tuff mustang."

"Tell me about it, Baby. Hop in."

Y/N smiled and admired the car, "It's gorgeous."

Phillip smiled and started the car up, The radio turned on and Y/N squealed, "This is my favorite song!"

Phillip laughed, "This song?"

"Yes, Then he kissed me!" Y/N sang along to the song.

Phillip smiled and put the top back causing Y/N to shout with laughter as her hair flew crazily with the wind. Phillip looked over at her in awe, he swore he had never seen anything so beautiful before in his life. She was an angel descended from heaven.

"You're gorgeous." Phillip smiled and glanced over at her.

Y/N didn't hear she just kept screaming and laughing.

Y/N went to unbuckle her seat belt, but Phillip quickly scolded her, "NO! No! Y/N you could get really hurt. Plus, we have like five minutes until we're there."

Y/N looked surprised, "Usually it takes me like 15 to 20 minutes."

"It has been you've just been so busy yelling and screamin'" Phillip laughed.

"Oh, oops." Y/N smiled sheepishly.

"Don't say oops. I thought it was cute."

Y/N giggled but couldn't help but feel guilty. She liked Phillips, but Benny will always be her first love. Unfortunately, for Y/N, you never get over your first love.

"Hey, daydreamer, we're here." Y/N got her head out of the clouds and took in the place they were at. Y/N's grin widened immensely. This had to be one of her favorite places on Earth. Rosie's Diner was one wild jig. Her old gang and herself had many old but fond memories here.

"Why'd you take me here? It's so far, compared to all the other diners." Y/N asked.

Phillips shrugged, "I knew you grew up with this one. I thought you'd enjoy the change of scenery."

Y/N nodded but she couldn't convince her mind that he was telling the truth. The doorbell rang as they stepped into the diner. Phillip went to talk to the hostess as Y/N quickly scanned the tables and everything around her.

"They can't be here. God, please don't let them be here." Thankfully, they weren't here. The hostess lead them over to their table and sat them down.

"I'll be back to order for drinks." She smiled.

Y/N grinned back, "Thank you..." Y/N glanced at her name tag, "Sally."

"My pleasure."

Y/N smiled at Phillip and took his hand, "Thank you for being so thoughtful this past week. I'm so sorry I treated you that way before. If only I had-"

"Hey, hey. I acted like a jerk. It was only right for you to hate me. Plus, It's not like I stopped when we got older. I just hit on you all the time. Which sometimes, can be worse."

Y/N laughed, "Tell me about it."

A small voice interrupted their conversation, "Y/N?"

Y/N looked over to see squints gaping at her wide-eyed. Y/N copied the gang's look and looked around for Benny. After not finding the attractive boy, she relaxed.

She cracked an uneasy smile, "Hey gang." The boys all rushed over for a hug.

"Hey, girly, where've ya been?"

"Hey, girly, where've ya been?"

"Shut up, Timmy!"

"Aww, Bertram you got glasses!"

"Yeah, yeah, he sure did Y/N!"

"We really missed you, Y/N." Kenny said while hugging her tightly.

"I missed you so much. You don't even know, Ken."

"Aww, I don't get a hug from my favorite girl?"

"Come here, Hammy."

"Ugh, you know I hate that name."

"Why do you think I use it?"

"Just because you're finally visiting us, I'll drop my sassiness."

Y/N fake gasped and clinked a glass cup and spoon together, "Everyone! Everyone! Ham said he's going to stop being sassy!"

Everyone gasped causing Ham to growl, "Whatever!"

Everyone gasped again, "Ham, are you feeling alright? When's the last time you've said whatever?"

Ham rolled his eyes at everyone's antics.

"Who're you?" Y/N looked in the back to see a small boy holding a baseball glove, looking quite confused.

"This is Y/N L/N. She's been on our baseball team ever since... we can all remember."

"Yeah, yeah," yeah yeah said, "She's also Benny's secret lover. Benny and Y/N are on the hook more than Squints and Wendy Peffercorn!"

"Then why is she with Phillips?"

A growing silence made Y/N shiver, the boys were looking at her like she had betrayed them.

Ham suddenly grinned and punched Y/N in the arm, "You sly dog. You were luring Phillips over here to us, so we could give him a knuckle sandwich."

The boys started to get rowdy again, but Y/n closed her eyes, "No, I wasn't. Phillips and I are going steady."

"What about Benny?"

Y/N laughed, "He didn't tell you? Hmm, funny, Why don't you go ask him? He's coming out now."

Y/N froze as she registered what she had just said, Y/N made eye contact with Benny. She felt her body go numb and the world seemed to stop spinning. Benny smiled at her which made her insides melt. If it was possible Benny had gotten hotter. He was taller and more muscular, but still had those kind, sparkling eyes which she loved.

"Hey, Rodriguez!" Phillips shouted.

"Uh oh." Y/N whispered.

"Hey, Y/N." Ham whispered, "We should get you outta here, before things get messy, ya?"

Y/N sighed, "I'd love too, but I have to make sure things don't get messy."

"Things are going to get messy, Y/N. Benny's a jealous guy. Especially with you because he's so in love with you. Now, you finally show up with Phillips-"

"Benny told me to never show my face again. So, I'm truly sorry that I show up with Phillips."

"So that's why you haven't visited me."

Y/N's eyes softened, "Oh, god, Ham, I've wanted to see you for so long. Personally, without Phillips."

"So, you don't like Phillips."

"No, I do. You would too if you got to know him."

Ham laughed, "Oh, that wasn't a joke."

"No, it wasn't. So, Squints is still in love with Wendy Peffercorn?"

"What guy isn't, Y/N? If they're not in love with her, then they're in love with you."

Y/N's eyebrows raised, "I don't think so Ham."

"It's true. Benny's in love with you and he doesn't even take a second glance at Wendy. She's one hot fox."

Y/N rolled her eyes, "Of course, she's one hot fox."

"Hey, nosebleed! She loves me!" Benny pushed Phillips who was glaring daggers at Benny.

"She's mine!" Phillips threw a punch.

Y/N quickly stood up just in time for them to wrestle on the ground, Y/N ran toward them and attempted to get Phillips off of Benny. Phillips accidentally elbowed the poor girl in the eye. She screeched and fell down. Benny pushed Phillips off of him and ran to Y/N's aid.

"Y/N! Y/N, are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

The manager came over to Benny and the gang and Phillips, he rested a hand on Y/N's shoulder. "Here's an ice pack. I think it would be best if you guys could leave quietly."

"Alright, Mr.Flowebed, we understand. I'm sorry we caused trouble in your diner." Y/N apologized and took the ice pack.

"It's alright, sweetheart. I already kicked the other guy out."

Y/N groaned she had completely forgotten about Phillips. "Thank you, Mr.Flowerbed. Let's go boys."

Y/n was about to stand up when Benny swept her off her feet. She laughed, "Benny, what are you doing?"

"Carrying you. You're badly injured, Ms.L/N."

Y/N rolled her eyes and smiled, she didn't feel like mentioning that the only thing hurting was her eye. Y/N snuggled against Benny's side and felt like closing her eyes. It was pretty late, almost dinner time. The sun was starting to set and Y/N felt calmer than she's felt in a long time.

A sharp voice cut off her calming thoughts, "Y/N! Let's go!" Y/N felt herself being lowered to the ground and her eyes focused in on a very angry Phillips. Phillips grabbed Y/N's hand and dragged her forcefully over to the car.

Y/N waved to her gang and caught one shout from Ham, "Come back Loser!"

"What did you say!" Phillips marched over to them.

"I said 'Come back Loser!', it was directed toward Y/N, but I can understand why you'd think it was for you with 'loser' in the sentence and all."

Phillips laughed darkly, "Didn't know you knew what a sentence was, Ham."

"Didn't know you knew how to play baseball, Phillips. I mean swinging a bat around is not the same as playing."

"I don't care about Baseball, Ham. What I do care about is Y/n. She's mine, Rodriguez, whether you like it or not."

Benny looked at him calmly, "She's not a thing, Phillips."

For some reason, that made Phillips angrier, "Then stop treating her like a thing Rodriguez."

Benny punched Phillips square in the nose, they were on to each other again. Y/N's eyes widened, she was about to get out of the car again when the boys pulled them apart.

"Get out of here, Phillips!" Ham spat and shoved him away from the gang causing him to stumble and fall.

"How about we settle this once and for all, Rodriguez. We play baseball in my field, tomorrow at 3 o'clock, sharp. Winner gets Y/N. Deal?"

Benny glared at the hand in front of him, "The Loser also has to leave Y/N and the winner alone and respect her decision."

"Deal." They shook on it.

The next day, Y/N was a nervous wreck. She hadn't slept at all that night, she had called Sarah at least 5 times in the last hour, and everything seemed to be getting worse.

The dumb baseball game was in about a half-hour and Y/N decided to grab her sweater and start heading over to the pitch. Y/N personally didn't see the point of this game. Shouldn't she be the one to be able to decide?

God knows who she'd choose. It was Benny, it's always been, Benny. If Phillip hadn't told her to "Fuck off. It's all your fault you slut," then maybe she'd have put up more of a fight for who she wanted to stay with.

"Hey, Mama! I'm going to head over to the baseball game!"

"Okay, sweetie. Be back by the time the lampposts are on!"

"Will do, Mama!"

Y/N locked her front door and was about to walk over to her bike when she tripped over something. Y/N groaned, her stockings were ripped.

"Damn it!"

"Y/N! Language!"

"Sorry, Mama!" Y/N looked over to see what she tripped over. It was a huge bouquet of flowers and chocolate.

"What on Earth?" Y/N touched the flowers gently. They were positively the most beautiful flowers she had ever seen. No, not beautiful, beautiful was a poor and boring word to describe those flowers.

Spontaneously Breathtaking.

"Do you like them?" Y/N turned around to see a guilty looking Phillip standing on her second porch step looking mighty awkward.

"Yes, I love them. Where'd you get them?"

Phillip smiled, "Our special place."

Y/N smiled, she quickly got off the ground and playfully glared at him, "I'm still mad at you, so the chocolates better be the best chocolates I've ever had or you're in trouble."

Phillip smirked, "What kind of trouble?"

"No kisses for a week." Y/N deadpanned while trying to hold in her laughter at his reaction.

"WHAT?!?! Y/N, sweetie, don't you think that's a little harsh?"

"You called me a slut. Need I say more?"

"No, I think I'm good."

"That's what I thought. I'm going to put these flowers in a vase and then we can head to the game together."

"What about the chocolates?"

"I'm bringing them to the game."

"So, you're not going to try them now? You're going to make me wait?"

"Oh, honey, you are going to wait a very long time."

Phillip whimpered but opened the door for Y/N hoping to get some sort of reaction out of her. He didn't get one.

They had won. Phillip had won.

"How the hell did that happen?" Y/N whispered to herself in her hands. She had been pretending to be happy about it all of yesterday and now almost all morning, but all she wanted to do was find Benny and kiss him. She knew she had a high chance of marrying Phillip, especially with her Mother still alive.

"Hey, babe, you alright?" Y/N looked up to see Phillip drinking some water and leaning against the batting cage that Y/N was currently sat in.

"I'm fine. I don't understand why I'm not allowed why I can't play with you guys."

"Because I don't want you to get hurt sweetheart."

Y/N stood up angrily, "Bullshit. You won't let me play because you're embarrassed by me playing in front of your friends."

"Hey, baby, that's not true."

"Don't you baby me." Y/N spat and stomped out of the batting cage.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know. Away from here."

"Okay, come back when you cool off." Phillip shouted and got ready to batter up.

When she was out of sight from the boys. She started to run, Y/N didn't know where the hell she was going, but it was away from her disgusting pig of a boyfriend and his gross friends. She shivered, gawking at herself.

"How did I get here?" Y/N was tough, she was one of the toughest girls in LA. However, she was one of the sweetest also. It was merely a matter of how you judged.

Y/N walked along a random path, she had gotten a ride from Phillips and didn't bring her bike. A loud car drove past her and Y/N almost jumped from the music. She wanted to curse at it but held it back.

Y/n sighed and kicked a pebble that was sitting innocently on the ground. "Sorry, little pebble."

"Hey! Y/N! Watcha' doin' talking to a pebble?" Y/N looked up to see Ham grinning up at her inside a van.

"Hello, sweetie. What are you doing walking alone? Do you need a ride?"

Y/N smiled, she hadn't seen Mrs.Rodriguez in a whole year.

"I think she's good, Mom," Benny said. Y/N gulped, she knew Benny was mad at her but there was no other choice. She needed a ride home.

"Actually, Mrs.Rodriguez, if it's no trouble. I do need a ride home." Y/n looked up guiltily.

"It's no trouble dearie, hop right in." Mrs.Rodriguez gestured.

"Thank you, Mrs.Rodriguez." Y/N said politely before getting in the car. Surprisingly, the boys didn't really care about yesterday's events. The only one who was being stony towards her was Benny, but Y/N understood his reasons.

The boys and she joked around till they were almost at her house, "Why were you walking home?" Mrs. Rodriguez asked.

Y/N sighed, "Phillips was acting like a jerk." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Benny stiffen and all the boys hide their smiles.

"Benny tells me the two of you are jacketed, yes?"

"Correct." Y/N sighed.

"Do you see anything more than just going steady with him?"

Y/N wrinkled her nose at the thought and was about to reply when Mrs.Rodriguez did it for her, "I'm going to take that wrinkled nose as a no."

Y/N giggled lightly and the boys finally let out their laughter that they had been holding in for way too long.

"Boys, boys, calm down now. I know you want Benny and Y/N to get together but that's no reason to laugh at Phillips"

Y/N's eyes widened at Mrs.Rodriguez comment and she quickly looked down to attempt to hide her blush. Everyone laughed at Benny's and Y/N's very obvious blush.

"Y/N, would you like to join us at the lake?"

Y/N grinned, "I'd love to Mrs.Rodriguez. Do you mind if I just grab my suit?"

"Sure, sweetie."  

Y/N went into the house and grabbed her suit and threw it on before rushing downstairs again. Y/N locked her front door again but stopped short when she saw Mrs.Rodriguez and her Mother chatting it up. Y/N started to giggle lightly at the boys annoyed expressions. The whole gang knew how long it was going to take for their conversation to end.

"Heya, Mama." Y/n  kissed her Mother's cheek and hopped into the van.

"This is going to take a long time." y/n said and looked out the window. Surprisingly, it didn't take that long.

"Alright, bye M/n! We need to catch up!"

"Definitely! I'll see you kiddos later!" Y/N's mother headed back inside.

The trip to the lake was rather uneventful, Benny still wouldn't talk to Y/N even after her comment on Phillips. It frustrated her like no other.

Y/N hopped over a rock and was giggling with Yeah, Yeah, "So squints is really in love with Wendy?"

"Oh, yeah. He even kissed her!"

Y/N gasped and burst into laughter, "Did he kidnap her?"

"Nah Nah, he purposely drowned and then when she performed CPR on her, he gave her the tongue."

"Wow, didn't know he had it in him."

"Yeah, yeah... Hey, Squints!" Alan shouted squints looked over, "How was necking with Wendy Peffercorn?"

Squints groaned as the boys and Y/N all laughed, "Shut up idiots. Y/N and I are the only ones who've kissed something other than your Mother's asses!"

Y/N gasped, "Squints! Language!"

Squints blushed and drew something in the dirt with his shoe, "Sorry, Y/N."

Y/N smiled and ruffled his hair, "It's all good, Squints. Golly, you've sure changed."

"Hey, Gang! We're here!" Benny shouted as his Mother set down the picnic basket.

"Wicked!"

"Sweet!"

"Far out!"

Y/N grabbed her PB and Marshmellow Fluff sandwich {a/n; if you don't know what that is, I pity you immensly} and sat down next to Benny and Ham.

"So, Y/n what's necking with Phillip like?" The boys all sniggered at Ham's question.

Y/N shrugged, "Nothing special."

"Aww, c'mon Y/n you've got to give us something more than that." Bertram teased.

Y/N stuck her tongue out at the bespectacled boy but continued on, "I've had better. He needs to keep his tongue shoved down his own mouth, not mine."

"Eww." The boys all shouted and clamped their hands over their ears. Y/N smirked, she got them. No more talking about make out sessions with Phillips.

   "Cannon Ball!" Ham shouted and hopped into the water, shortly followed by everyone else. They all played in the water for about two hours before Mrs.Rodriguez announced a suggestion.

"Hey, guys! Do you want to go on a hike?" She asked everyone and looked at the clear sky.

There was a collective amount of 'no's' or 'I want to go in the water, Mrs.Rodriguez.' However, after Mrs.Rodriguez death glare everyone was on their feet except for Benny and Y/N who she'd forced into staying.

The second they all left, things went from awkward between Y/N and Benny to God Awful, kill me now awkward.

 Y/N got out of the water and started to dry off. She drying her legs when she heard an annoyed cough behind her.

"What?" Y/N snapped, she was tired of Benny's rude behavior.

"Why didn't you come back?"

Y/N laughed, "You'd think you would remember, wouldn't you?"

"No! I don't Y/N!" Benny stepped closer to her.

"You told me to never show my face in this town ever again!"

Benny looked down guiltily, "Why'd you date Phillips?"

"Because he cares about me."

Benny's anger flared up, "No, he doesn't. He doesn't care about anyone but himself."

"Maybe if you gave him a chance then you would-"

"I GAVE HIM A CHANCE Y/N!"

"BUT YOU NEVER GOT TO KNOW HIM DID YOU?"

"WELL, GUESS WHAT Y/N? I HATE TO BREAK IT TO YOU BUT HE'S ONLY WITH YOU BECAUSE HE WANTS TO GET ON MY NERVES!"

"IN CASE YOU FORGOT, RODRIGUEZ! THE WORLD DOESN'T REVOLVE AROUND YOU!"

"I KNOW IT DOESN'T! BUT IF IT'S NOT THAT THEN HE JUST WANTS TO GET INTO YOUR PANTS Y/N! IF YOU WERE SMART YOU'D BREAK UP WITH HIM!"

Y/N felt tears spring up, so she did what she thought was best. She smacked Benny Rodriguez hard, "Guess, what Rodriguez! I'm the smartest in my damn grade! I have honors roll as a sophomore! I won the Science Fair twice in a row. But the smartest thing I think I've ever done was follow your advice and not talking to you for a whole freaking year."

"Y/N, Y/N, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean what I said. Honest." Benny went in for a hug, but she only pushed him away. Benny wrapped his wet self around Y/N to get her to laugh but she only pushed him away again.

Benny groaned but knew he had to go to extreme measures for this. Benny picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.

"Benny, NO!"

"Benny, YES!" He threw Y/N in, then jumped in right after her.

Y/N surfaced quickly and glared at Benny, she was so frustrated with him! God, he was so annoying. Y/N was almost out of the lake when she felt her body being pulled back in by her arm. {a/n; i am so sorry this is the cheesiest thing ever}

Y/n surfaced the second time in Benny's arms, "Damn it! God, I hate...mmph." Benny kissed her. The creases in Y/N's forehead from her frustration slowly melted away along with everything else until it was just her and Benny.

Y/N quickly broke away from the kiss in shock. Her eyes were wide and her lips were slightly parted with slowly evening breaths flowing out. "Benny," she started, but all she could say was his name. His name seemed to be the only thing running through her brain; it seemed to be a mantra pulsing around her brain.

"Y/n," Benny gulped nervously, he knew it was time to spill his guts out no matter how she reacted, "I love you. I have for a while now. Even though you never noticed, when you left I would go out and look for you. I-I just needed to hear your voice. God, if I spent any more time away from you it was going to drive me insane. Anyway, I know that I made the deal with Phillips about not messing with your relationship with him. But, I know he doesn't treat you right. I know I could do so much better. Even if he has more money than me, Y/N. I know he would spoil you with gifts. But I would spoil you with my love and I know you feel that's more important. So please, please take me instead. Take me back."

Y/N was frozen, her heart was pounding painfully in her chest, her mind was going haywire begging her to say what she wanted too. But all she could do was gape at him like a blind fish.

Seconds ticked by, seconds that turned into minutes, which lead to Benny whispering, "So what do you say?"

Y/N's mind betrayed her heart, she ran away as fast as she could.

Y/N's heart felt heavy in her chest as she ran, a little while away Y/N stopped to rest but only got blown over by someone. Thankfully, she didn't fall over, she just stumbled a little.

Someone spun her around by her shoulders and grabbed onto her arms, "Tell me you don't love me."

Y/N's eyes widened, "Let me go, Benny."

Benny didn't let go. "Look me in the eyes and tell me you don't love me."

Benny felt Y/N's arms tremble in his hands, but she looked him the eyes anyway, "I-I don't lo..I don't love you, Benjamin Rodriguez."

Benny forced his eyes shut and tried one last move, he had to get her with this one. He kissed her. He kissed her hard and long and passionately and lovingly.

Without opening his eyes, he broke the kiss and rested his head on her forehead, "Look me in the eyes and tell me you don't love me."

Benny opened his eyes just in time to see Y/N open hers, "I-I can't, Benny."

"Thank God."

They kissed again.

A week later, Y/N's arm was wrapped around Phillips as they entered the dance she's been working really hard on. Y/N's Mother was a member of the Valley Country Club. The Country Club was hosting a public free event to try and gather more members and Y/N was partly in charge of it.

"Hey, babe? I was talking to you. Are you alright?" Phillips waved a hand in front of her.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Just worried about the event." Y/N's mind was nowhere near the event that was taking place. Instead, it was wondering why the hell she rejected Benny.

It was the next morning after her and Benny's get together and Y/N was curling her lashes when a doorbell rang throughout the house.

"I'll get it!" Y/N's Mother hollered to her.

"Oh, Hello Benny. What a lovely surprise. Come in." Y/N almost ripped out her lashes in shock. Phillips was supposed to be here in five minutes. The poor girl was already running late for a date and she didn't need any distractions at the moment.

Y/N heard a knock on her bedroom door and hastily pulled a random shirt over herself and opened up the door with messy wet hair and close to no makeup.

"Hey, Y/N. I got you these," He held out a bouquet of flowers.

"Thank you, Benny. Listen about last night..." Y/N trailed off. She needed to end it quickly, like ripping off a band-aid. "I need to stay with Phillips, I really hope you understand."

Y/N quickly closed the door in his face and cringed into her hands. God, what was she doing? She was probably the stupidest girl alive.

"Ladies and Gentlemen! Now, I need to gather up the final contestants of the annual Valley Pagent! We have Sarah Berman, Daisy Sparks, Nancy Parker and last but certainly not least Y/N L/N."

Y/N stumbled up to the stage with Sarah holding her hand tightly, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

"Oh, shit. Benny's here." Nancy whispered to them.

"Really? I didn't notice." Y/N whispered sarcastically.

"So, that's why you're freaking out."

"I'm fine!" Y/N whispered harshly and shook off their grips on her. She shut her eyes and took in a deep breath. Y/N scanned the room to look for Phillip and her Mother. The H/C haired girl found her Mother, but Phillip seemed to be missing.

"And the Pagent Award goes to... Y/N L/N!" The man sang and held out a sash with a bouquet of flowers. "And final words to everyone."

"Thank you for voting for me, I really appreciate it and I hope you like the event and have an amazing Fourth!" Y/N smiled and wondered how the hell she could be doing this right now. Her head was spinning violently and she just needed to get out from all the stares it was overwhelming.

The second Y/N was let off the stage she raced to the girl's bathroom. Sarah, Nancy, and Mary were all running after her, worried about their friend.

"Y/N Wait!"

"What's wrong?"

"How the hell do you run so fast in heels?"

Y/N threw the door open and quickly ran over to the sink. Y/N heard the door slam open then noises from their shoes hitting the tile. The h/c haired girl quickly splashed water on her face and calmed herself down.

"Y/N are you alright?" Someone asked behind her.

"Yes, I'm fine. I just needed to get away from everyone for a second." Y/N said and looked at herself in the mirror.

"Then don't look behind you," Sarah grumbled. Y/n furrowed her eyebrows and her eyes shifted to the left. She screamed. Phillips and Sherry Williams were holding each other in a compromising position looking at her terrified.

Y/N whipped around her, her emotions running wild. At first, she felt so mad she wanted to smack the shit out of him, but the realized she felt relieved. She was so relieved that she could break up with him.

"You know what?" Y/N laughed, "I don't even care. I wanted to smack the shit out of you five seconds ago. But honestly, I just want to thank you."

"Thank me?" Phillips asked, his eyes searching her as if making sure she was alright.

"Yes, thank you so much for showing me that Benny has always been the right one." With that said, Y/N walked out of the bathroom and headed over to the dance with a newfound confidence inside her.

"Hey, Y/N." Sarah smiled, "Thank goodness you dropped him. He was getting on my nerves."

Y/N burst out laughing, "Honestly, me too."

"Hey! Y/N!" A very high voice said behind her, "Let's get out of here, shall we?"

Y/N felt two pairs of hands guiding her over to the doors of the country club and heard whispers behind her.

"Wait, I need to find Ben..." Y/N found Benny alright. He was kissing Sherry. "That Bitch! What the hell is her problem?"

Y/N felt tears prickle her eyes, so she did what she did best. She ran for it.

Y/N woke up with a dry mouth and a pounding headache. The girls had slept over at Y/N's house and all shared gallons of cookie dough ice cream and watched Splendor in the Grass over and over again.

Y/N had to admit that was the most romantic and saddest movie of all time. {a/n; hey! they didn't have the notebook yet!}

"Hey! Y/N! Wake up, Sweetheart!" Y/N's Mother popped her head through the crack in the door.

"I'm already awake, Mama." Y/N's voice cracked as she saw her Mother's worried face.

"Honey, what happened?" Mrs.L/N walked over to Y/N and brought her into a warm embrace. Y/N tried to explain everything, but even she knew it sounded like a load of codswallop. No one could hear a word she was saying with her sobbing.

"Alright, alright honey. This calls for a major break up kit, doesn't it?"

Y/N hiccuped, "The Biggest."

"I'll call Sarah up and have her come over while I'm gone. I'm going to go get chocolate and ice cream and all those goodies. I'll be right back."

Y/N nodded and hugged her Teddy Bear tightly. She cried and cried into the stuffed animal until her Mother came back in.

"I'm going to go get everything at the Grocery Store. Sarah will be here in five. Will you be okay till then?"

"I'll be okay, Mama. It's only a breakup."

"A very messy one at that." Y/N's Mother kissed her forehead and walked out of the room. Y/N sighed to herself and willed her eyes not to cry for another ten minutes.

She looked around for something to do when she heard the car start signaling her Mom was gone. Y/N groaned into her pillow and just sat there for a while.

Y/N felt the bed dip and looked up. It was Benny. She rubbed her eyes quickly to make sure she wasn't dreaming. When she realized she wasn't she grabbed her pillow and hit him with it as hard as she could. "What are you doing here? You can't just waltz in here and-"

"I would've died for you. I think that gives me a little leeway for waltzing." Benny raised his eyebrows at her.

Y/N glared at him but didn't say anything, especially when he kissed her.

                                            Eleven Years Later

"Honey! Mails here!" Y/N shouted as she stirred some cake batter. Benny smiled and kissed his wife on the cheek before sticking his finger into the batter.

"Benny! What did I say about eating the cake batter!"

"Since when have I ever listened to you?"

Y/N put her hands on her hips, "When I'm a pregnant lady with raging hormones. Now, go get the mail!"

"Alright, alright. I'm getting it! But since I'm being such a generous husband, do I get a reward for getting the mail?"

"BENJAMIN RODRIGUEZ! DON'T MAKE ME SMACK YOU!" Y/N shouted and smiled satisfactorily when she heard the screen door slam.

"Bills. Bills. Bills and more Bills. Let's guess the next one? Bil-. Nope, not bills."

"Well, that's a shocker." Y/N said and threw the cake batter into the oven and dusted her hands off on her apron.

"It's a Wedding Invitation."

Y/N furrowed her eyebrows, almost everyone in her family and Benny's family had gotten married already... or were dead. "Who's it from?"

Benny burst out laughing, "It's fro Squints and Wendy Peffercorn. Do you remember her?"

Y/N's eyes widened, "No way. Squints got the girl."

Benny put the invitation down and walked over to Y/N. "I also got the girl."

Y/N rolled her eyes, "You will really do anything for a kiss, won't you?"

"No, I'm just showing you my love."

Y/N gave him a look which he caved into, "Fine, but I really do love you Y/N."

Y/N smiled and wrapped her arms around Benny's torso, "I know. I love you so much, Benjamin."

Benny gave Y/N an Eskimo kiss, "You know I hate when you call me that."

"That's why I do it." Y/N kissed Benny this time on the lips.

"I'm so glad you both could come." Squints said, "The whole gangs here! Even Ham!"

Y/N smiled and laced her hands through Benny's, "We wouldn't miss it, Squints. So, you really did get the dream girl, eh?"

"Yes, I did. I can see Rodriguez did too...Whew, And you two got busy."

Benny rolled his eyes, "Shut up, Squints. You're just jealous."

"Mmm, no. Not really." Squints grinned, "Now, go say hi to the gang, I need to go meet Wendy for the First Dance."

"Bye, Squinty."

"Bye Rodriguez, Y/N, and baby Rodriguez."

An hour later, Y/N took another sip of water and watched the sunset. The peace and quiet was so nice. She hadn't had it in quite a long time. Ever since Y/N had broken the news to Benny, he was constantly hovering over her, making sure she was alright an comfortable at all times. When he wasn't with her, he made sure Smalls was. Which was quite exhausting.

Loud shouts made Y/N groan into her glass of water. One by one the gang started to pile around her, Ham sat to her left, Yeah Yeah to her right, and Benny pressing behind her. Y/n smiled and closed her eyes as she leaned against Benny.

"Hey, babe. You look gorgeous tonight." Benny stamped a kiss next to her collarbone.

"Thank you, love. You look pretty nice too."

"Hey! Lovebirds! What are you going to name the baby?" Ham asked, knowing he shattered the moment.

Benny glared at Ham and playfully pushed him, "Thanks for ruining the moment, man."

Ham put his hands up in surrender, "The baby better be named after me, Rodriguez."

"Oh, please we all know it's going to be named after me." Yeah yeah disagreed.

"Hell, no. It's me." Squints said.

Everyone turned to look at Squints, "What are you doing out here?"

"You really think I was going to let you all have your fun without me?" Squints raised his eyebrows at everyone.

"I'm thinking we should name the baby after Benny or my Father." Y/N said and reached back to run her hands through Benny's hair. Benny hummed happily into Y/N's neck and drew circles on her swelled tummy.

"I like that idea, baby."

"The baby's going to be so loved, Ben."

"Well, obviously, he has like 10 uncles."

"Shut up, Ham."

Y/N giggled at the gang's antics and cuddled into Benny more. She took a quick whiff of his jacket when she felt something wet flow through her legs. She quickly sat up straight, "Benny! I think my water just broke!"

Word Count: 9017

[becuzpurple]

Father’s Day

(an Ed & Kate one-shot)

21 June 2016

Lucy brushed some dirt and debris from the surface of the stone, clearing it for me to place a half dozen red and white tulips across it.  Nathan staked 3 mini Cubs pennants into the soil at its top.  Then we sat, mostly quietly, surrounded by a sea of trees, flowers, and grave markers.  It was a beautiful first day of summer - the peaceful setting lending itself to quiet contemplation.  It was Father’s Day.

When I was a child, and my parents took us to the cemetery to pay respects to our deceased relatives, we’d clean up the gravestones, plant flowers, and say some prayers.  Since Jason’s passing, though, I’ve found that reciting prayers at his gravesite just doesn’t work for me.  It feels almost forced, as if it’s expected, but it holds no actual meaning for me - they’re just empty words.  I completely understand and respect that others find doing this to be very meaningful and comforting, but it just isn’t for me.  

I talk to him instead.  Sometimes I’ll talk to God, too, but more often I talk to Jason - not out loud, but in my head.  I tell him about our lives - stuff with the kids, our family...and I talk to him about Ed, too. As weird as that sounds, I find it to be therapeutic.  It gives me a way to sorting out my joys and worries, my hopes and fears, all without judgement. Sometimes I can imagine his reply.  

It helps.

On that Father’s Day, I shared a secret with him - a big one, that no one but I knew, yet. That would change soon enough, I supposed.  It was strangely comforting to think that I no longer held the secret entirely alone, even if it wasn’t with anyone currently alive.

“Do you think he can see us?  Or hear us?”  Lucy was pulling random weeds and dandelions from around the stone as she spoke, eyes focused downwards.

I paused before answering her.  It’s something I wonder about, too.

“I don’t really know.  But I like to think so.  You know, sometimes, in my head...I talk to him.”  She did look up at me then, and I grimaced in a self-deprecating way...trying to keep things from getting too heavy.  “Is that weird?”

“No, I do that, too.” 

Nate had been quiet, but was nodding in agreement, as well.

Oh, my babies

“I guess...it’s comforting to think that he might hear us.”

“Yeah…”  Lucy nodded and resumed weeding.  

I glanced at Nate, who watched us curiously, also nodding.

“I think he does,” he added softly.

---

We didn’t stay much longer - cemetery visits tend to be emotionally exhausting for us. From there we met my parents at The Pancake House for a Father’s Day brunch.  Filling up on family and sugary, carby comfort food helped us transition from our melancholy moods.  

My dad is the best.  I’ve literally never met anyone who didn’t love him.  He’s smart and funny, yet on the quiet side.  He’s a hard worker and a devoted family man.  He loves baseball, sci-fi, and giant jigsaw puzzles.  He’d do anything for us.  He really stepped up to be there for the three of us after we lost Jason, and I’m so grateful for that.  There is no better father or grandfather out there, so celebrating his awesomeness (on Father’s Day, fur sure, but at other times of the year, too) has become very important to me.

“When does Ed get back, Kate?”  I have to smile at how my mom’s face lights up at the mention of his name - even when she’s the one saying it.  She loves him, and it’s adorable.

“Today, in a few more hours.”

“Ah, good.  I hope things went well for him out there.”

“Yeah, he said they got a lot done,” I shrugged.  “He sounds pretty happy with everything.”

He’d been away for a week, in southern California, working on the next album. From how he described it, it sounded like they were in an absolutely beautiful setting - a gorgeous chalet in a wooded area, a river nearby, and distant mountains.  He’d been with some of his favorite people in the business - people he considers dear friends - and they seemed to have had an abundantly creative and productive week.  He was really pumped about it.

He’d wanted me to go with him, but my schedule just wouldn’t cooperate. The kids started their summer sports and art camps, I had a few looming deadlines for work that couldn’t wait, and I had a doctor appointment mid-week that I didn’t want to put off.  It’s too bad, too - I would have loved to have witnessed their collaborative songwriting in action.

---

That night after the kids were in bed, we’d finally caught each other up on everything - his stories of the last week were much more interesting than the mundane details of my suburban mom life, but, lovely man that he is, he wanted all of them, anyway.  Ed genuinely loves things like that - anything involving family.  Which is a good thing, considering what I was about to drop on him.

“So, I have something for you, but I left it in the bedroom.”  I stood and wagged a finger at him, grinning at his curious, wrinkled brow.  “Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”

I left him there on the family room couch while I jogged to our room to grab the small, gift-wrapped box I’d been keeping hidden away.

Without a doubt I was dying to finally tell him, but at the same time I almost felt a little sad that it would no longer be my secret.  I laughed to myself at the idea of being possessive of it.  But I’d had a whole week for that - it was time to spill the beans, and giving him the little gift was how I planned to do that.

As soon as I re-entered the room Ed’s eyes zeroed in on the small, prettily-wrapped box in my hand.  Before I even reached the sofa I could see that he was starting to look a little freaked out.  Maybe he had an idea of what this was about.  He knew what day it was, and there I was with a gift for him - it wasn’t a difficult jump to make.  But I know him well enough to see that he was trying not to psych himself up, in case he was wrong.

But he wasn’t wrong.

I re-joined him on the sofa, mirroring his pose by sitting with one leg tucked under the other, our knees touching.

“What-what’s this, then?”  He tried to appear calm and casual, but between the stutter and the wide eyes, it was clear that he was not feeling calm.

My plan had been to not give anything away before he opened the gift, but that all went to pot because I was way too close to falling into a fit of nervous giggles. This was more than obvious to Ed, who was eying me dubiously, waiting for me to say something.

“Umm, this is for you.”  I gave him the neatly wrapped present, about the same size as a watch box.  But there wasn’t a watch inside, nor any other jewelry.

He held it in his hand, just staring at it, eyes wide.  He glanced at me a few times, finally asking, “What is it?”

He was nervous, watching me with barely reined-in wide-eyed excitement.

A few giggles finally spilled loose from me, and I couldn’t stop smiling - I was just as anxious as he was.  Attempting to calm the both of us, I placed my palms flat on his lap, just above his knees, tapping my fingers before murmuring, “Ed.  Open it.”

He took a calming breath and looked down at the box in his hands, again.  Smiling to himself, he began pulling off the ribbon.

“I - I might know what this is about...maybe?  But I also have no idea what’s actually in here.”

“That’s...probably completely accurate.”

“Jesus…”

“Open it.”

“Yeah.” He wore the cutest little grin, and kept shooting small glances at me as he carefully unwrapped the paper from the box.  How he wasn’t tearing it apart I’ll never know.  Maybe he wanted to savor the feeling of anticipation.  Maybe he was a little scared, too.  I know I was.

He removed all of the paper and turned to me with a look of pure bewilderment, holding the unopened box.

“I - I’m nervous to open it...fuck’s wrong with me?”

I gently shook my head, unable to stop grinning. “Nah, you got this.”  I gave his leg a little squeeze, as my hand still rested on it.  “Please open it, though, because I can’t take this much longer.”

He laughed, and then finally opened the lid.  He just stared for a few seconds - no response whatsoever.  I’m not even sure he remembered to breathe.  He blinked several times, and then he smiled - a slow-growing, tentative expression of stunned wonder.

“It’s a pick.”  His eyes lifted to meet mine, his voice barely more than a whisper.

I nodded.

“A ba- we’re gonna...you’re pregnant?” His voice broke on the last word.

I nodded again, my heart pounding with nerves.

“Bloody hell, I knocked you up?!”  He found his voice again, and his accent was much more pronounced than usual.  He looked at me in complete astonishment.

I hiccup-cry-laughed all at once.  “Yeah, you did!”

He glanced down again at the custom-designed guitar pick I got for him while he was away.  “January...”

“My due date is January 12th.”

“January the 12th.  Holy shit, this is for real...”

“This is real, Teddy.”  We shared a tender look at my use of the phrase he’d once used to reassure me when we first started dating.  “We’re going to have a baby.”

We’re gonna have a baby.” He repeated the words slowly, trying them out for the very first time, himself.  “I…I’m going to be a dad.”

There was a sweet shyness in the way he said it, a self-consciousness in saying the words out loud - I’m going to be a dad.

Nodding again, I cupped his jaw in my hand, bringing his earnest, deep blues back to me. “You’re going to be an amazing dad.”

He was quiet, eyes still on mine, listening.

“Your parents did good raising you and Matthew, right?”

“They are literally the best parents, yeah.”

“You’ve been learning your whole life from the best, then.  And I’ve seen you with kids - my kids, your godchildren...Ed, you were meant for this.”

His tentative smile grew, his eyes lit up, and soon his entire body was practically humming with hyper energy.  It must have been contagious, as I was nearly vibrating with giddiness, myself.  I’m sure we looked completely ridiculous beaming at each other like that. Or just deliriously happy.

He tilted his head to the side, eyes on me curiously and gave the sweetest, closed-mouth smile.  “You’re happy Kate?”

“Oh, yeah!  I - well, I’m feeling a lot things right now, but ‘happy’ is definitely at the top of the list.”

My thoughts had been going in so many different directions over the last few days - I was absolutely over-the-moon.  I never thought I’d have any more children, and I was thrilled to get this chance - and with Ed!  It made my heart feel whole and complete.  

But I’d be lying if I said I had no worries.  I’m older now, and that brings more risks to a pregnancy.  Also, there was the fact that Ed and I aren’t married - we’d only been together for six months at that point.  I didn’t know if that would be an issue or not, but I knew it was something we should probably talk about. I also worried that he might not be thrilled with the timing of the pregnancy, relative to his career.

“Me, too!  It’s crazy, right?  I can’t even keep up with everything going through my head right now.”  He huffed out a breath, surely still trying to wrap his head around the news.

“I know.  I mean, the timing isn’t great, like with your work, and-”

“-Oh, no, no,” he interrupted.  “this is everything, and it-it’s perfect.  Like, work is well and good, but this?  Family?  Is what we’re all really here for, right?  To love, and to teach our children to love.  I feel like I’m finally about to really start my life, now - the most important part of it, and I get to do it with you?  I'm - I’m so fucking in love with you, and I'm just...really chuffed right now...”

His voice caught as it trailed off.  He took off his glasses, wiped at his eyes and cleared his throat, and that’s when I started to lose it a little bit, too.

“Baby, stop.”  I sniffled as I shifted closer against him.  He pulled me in even more so that my legs were across his lap, his arms secure around my waist.  

I don’t know how he does it - he has a knack for saying the very thing I need to hear, and even better - he means it every time.  I sent a quick word of thanks to the universe, or maybe it was God (I’m not entirely sure there’s a difference), for somehow bringing us together.  “How’d I get so lucky?”

He pulled back just enough to see my face and wipe a stray tear from my cheek with his thumb.  “I ask myself that same question every single day, sweet girl.”

“I love you, Ed.”

“I know,” he answered, grinning cheekily.

I couldn’t even pretend to be annoyed.  I adore him and I’m happy to say it for the rest of my life.  But there was something else I wanted to say, too.  

“Oh, and one more thing…” I grinned.

“What’s that, love?”

Happy Father’s Day.”

---

just a friendly reminder that I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!  Send me likes, or reblogs, or send Anon questions/comments - these are the only ways I know what you like.

Thanks, guys!

[tozier-boy]

Is there somewhere

Chapter one: Colors

Summary: Richie didn’t belong in boring, old fashioned, small Derry, that was for sure. Richie Tozier wore leather jackets and ripped jeans. Richie Tozier had his ear pierced and he painted his nails black. Richie Tozier wore combat boots and let his curls grow wild and messy. Richie Tozier always had headphones around his neck and sometimes he wore eyeliner. Richie Tozier smoked weed on the school ground and told teachers to shut the fuck up. Richie Tozier was tall and skinny and he wore bands tank tops. Richie Tozier was the reason why Eddie had started biting his lower lip way more frequently than he did before. 

Hey everyone! I know I still have my Hogwarts AU in progress, but this idea came to my mind and I just had to write it down. 

I’m not tagging anyone because there will be smut in this (there is already, kind of), so I don’t want to make uncomfortable anyone who’s not okay with that.  If you want to be tagged/added to the tag list, just say so :D 

(Each chapter will be named after one of Halsey’s songs, just in case you will be wanting to listen to something)

Any kind of feedback is appreciated and my ask and DM are always open!

“If- if my mom finds out you’re here…” Eddie was breathless. Richie Tozier was kissing his neck and fucking him relentlessly, holding his hips and breathing hot against his neck. “Oh god.”

“As much as I like your mom, Eds, you gotta stop talking about her.” Richie panted, squeezing Eddie’s hip and bringing his other hand to cup the boy’s face, stroking his bottom lip with his thumb. “Fuck, you feel amazing.”

Eddie clutched Richie’s shoulders as he felt getting closer and closer to his climax, moaning high and desperate like he never imagined he would have. “Harder, faster!” He pleaded, digging his nails into Richie’s back and dragging them down. “Oh yes! Right there!” His voice had turned a few octaves up and his hips had started stuttering in the attempt of meeting Richie’s thrusts.

The boy’s dark, chocolate curls were falling on Eddie’s face and their eyes were locked together as they panted into each other’s mouths. Eddie knew his eyes were open wide, because he didn’t want to miss the look on Richie’s face, the way he was looking at him. His heart was about to burst, he could feel it, because, as Richie came inside him with a loud cry of Eddie’s name, Eddie knew he was utterly, completely, deeply in love.

Five months earlier

“I just don’t see what’s the appeal, you know? A bunch of sweaty, drunk teenagers grinding against each other? It sounds like a punishment, not a party.” Eddie was putting his books back in his locker, while gesturing dismissively at Bill’s attempts to convince him to go.

Eddie wasn’t kidding when he said that he didn’t see any appeal in a party. He was 17, and he had only been at one party.

It had been more than enough.

After only three hours someone had thrown up on his new shoes and Mike had accidentally spilled beer on his favorite shirt. He had been grounded for three weeks and, to be honest, he wasn’t looking forward to it again.

“But  A-A-Audra’s going to be t-t-there!” Bill protested, resting the back of his head against the lockers.

“How is this going to convince me to go to a stupid party? She’s your crush, not mine.” He pointed out, raising his eyebrows. “Besides, I have a test on Monday. I have to study, and you should too.” He added, adjusting the strap of his backpack on his shoulder.

“I’ll g-g-give you 50 b-bucks.” Bill said, very seriously.

“I’m not an escort, Bill.” Eddie chuckled, closing his locker. Behind its door was standing Richie Tozier, and Eddie nearly had a heart attack.

“Jesus, Tozier! You scared the shit out of me!” Eddie gasped, putting his hand on his chest and feeling how hard his heart was beating.

“I thought the palpitations were a side effect of your crush on me.” Richie said, wiggling his eyebrows. Eddie snorted and rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, you wish.”

Richie pouted dramatically, but Eddie knew he was just mocking him. Richie and him had never been friends. Not just acquaintances, either, but they weren’t friends. They teased each other in the hallways, they bickered when they were in the same room, but they weren’t friends.

They couldn’t have been. They lived on two different planets.

Eddie was, alongside Stanley Uris, one of the best students of the Derry High School. His grades were perfect, teachers adored him and he was never late for school. He joined two clubs for extra credits and he would have killed for a scholarship at Harvard. He knew what he wanted, and he had his goals clear in his mind: graduate from high school, go to college, take medicine and become a nurse in New York.  He liked having a plan, it made him feel safe and focused.

Richie, on the quite contrary, was a living train wreck. He wasn’t stupid, oh, not at all. Eddie knew he was extremely fucking smart. In fact, Richie managed to get straight A’s with a upsettingly small amount of studying. He was always late, and when he wasn’t late he wasn’t at school at all. The first time he saw him, during their 9th grade, Eddie thought Richie didn’t belong in Derry at all.

Richie had just moved there from California, and that immediately lighted a spark of curiosity in the small town of Derry.

Who were these people? Why did they move from California? Can we trust them?

Richie didn’t belong in boring, old fashioned, small Derry, that was for sure.

Richie Tozier wore leather jackets and ripped jeans. Richie Tozier had his ear pierced and he painted his nails black. Richie Tozier wore combat boots and let his curls grow wild and messy. Richie Tozier always had headphones around his neck and sometimes he wore eyeliner. Richie Tozier smoked weed on the school ground and told teachers to shut the fuck up. Richie Tozier was tall and skinny and he wore bands tank tops. Richie Tozier was the reason why Eddie had started biting his lower lip way more frequently than he did before.

Everyone at school was impressed when he first came around. He was different from the people of Derry. He was different from the cardigans and the polo shirts, from the shirts tucked in the jeans and the brushed hair.

Eddie didn’t even know boys could paint their nails the first time he saw Richie.

“Are you coming to the party, Eds?” He asked, checking with his fingers if the cigarette he had tucked behind his ear was still there.

“Don’t call me that, for fuck’s sake.” Eddie hissed, glaring at him. “And no, I’d rather lick a gas station’ toilet clean.”

“What a vivid image.” Richie laughed, and Eddie wondered if he knew he wasn’t joking at all. “Come on, it’s gonna be lit. Bev knows how to throw a party.”

Beverly Marsh was the only person Richie really talked to. They were similar under many aspects, so anyone could have seen why they clicked together.

Eddie was still wondering why Richie bothered talking to him at all, since they were different under all the aspects.

“I’m sure she does.” Eddie said simply, and Bill huffed beside him.

“But this one’s different. We’re going to the quarry for a bone fire.” Eddie didn’t know that. He thought it was going to be a lame house party with fifty teenagers squeezed together behind four walls. A bone fire did sound nice. Nicer than a house party, anyway. He would have had room to breathe fresh air, and sitting in front of a creaking fire with his friends was a nice prospective.

Eddie glanced up at Richie, who towered over him, being the lanky motherfucker he was. “I’m going to give it a long, hard thought.”He said, and Bill almost squeaked by his side. He knew him far too well not to know he had basically said yes.

Richie’s lips curved into a crooked smirk, as their eyes were still fixed on each other. “Maybe I’ll see you later, then.” Richie said lowly, and Eddie tilted his chin up.

“Maybe you will.”

“S-S-Seriously, Eddie, w-what’s going on b-b-between you and R-Richie Tozier?” Bill asked. He was currently lying on his stomach on Eddie’s bed, flicking through the pages of a comic book distractedly as Eddie chose what to wear at the bone fire.

“What are you talking about?” Eddie frowned, looking at his friend through the mirror. “Nothing’s going on.”

“It m-most certainly l-l-looks like s-something’s g-g-going on.” Bill giggled, and Eddie turned towards him with his hands on his hips.

“Something like what?”

“Something like a b-b-big, f-fat, mutual c-crush.” Bill said, wiggling his eyebrow, and Eddie’s cheeks heated up.

“Shut the f-“

“Eddie bear? Where are you going?” Sonia Kaspbrak had opened the door to her son’s room without knocking, making the two boys jump in surprise. “Isn’t it a bit late to go out?”

“Eddie’s c-c-coming to mine. We’re g-gonna study and watch a m-movie, mrs K.” Bill said quickly, smiling up at the woman.

“And you can’t do that here?” She questioned, and Bill’s smile only grew faker and wider.

“I’ve g-got a new DVD.”

“Very well, but no sleepovers. You’ve got to be home by 11.30.” Sonia said, pointing her finger at Eddie.

“Sure, ma.” Eddie stood on his tiptoes and kissed his mother’s cheek, grinning sweetly.

There was no other way but lying, Eddie knew it far too well. His overprotective, manipulative, controlling mother would have never let him go to a party, let alone one with a bone fire involved.

Especially if she knew Richie Tozier was going to be there as well.

Ever since the Tozier family had moved in their neighborhood, Sonia Kaspbrak had been sulking about it. She didn’t like Maggie Tozier one bit, because “she smiled way too much” and “no woman was supposed to wear skirts that didn’t reach the knees”, but truth was Sonia was extremely jealous. She never had a valid reason to smile, while Maggie Tozier was cheerful most of the time. Plus, Maggie was a beautiful woman. She was tall and slender, had round hips and beautiful curly hair  that framed a regular face and pretty, big hazel eyes. Eddie knew every single man in town fancied her and that every single woman in town desperately tried to find her flaws.

Derry was not the kind of town where a woman could have been happy about another woman’s beauty. In Derry, women despised each other.

She didn’t trust the fact that they came to Derry all in a sudden and that no one knew why. She started speculating about the reason with Eddie’s aunt, and every theory was more ridiculous than the last.

Then, Sonia had to complain about mr Tozier and his “way too loud new car”. Mr Tozier was a dentist, which Eddie always found curious, considering that Richie’s front teeth were slightly too big and they were usually resting upon his lower lip.

Eddie always thought it was cute, because those teeth, along with the freckles on Richie’s nose and cheeks, made him look younger.

But most of all, Sonia Kaspbrak despised the loud, foul-mouthed, vulgar, punk Tozier boy more than anything else in the world and she didn’t want him anywhere near her beloved, well mannered son.

“Don’t eat candies or chips or you’ll get a stomachache!” Sonia reminded Eddie as the boys were running down the stairs.

“Yes ma!” Eddie called back, before the front door slammed shut.

It wasn’t terrible, Eddie considered. The bone fire had been lighted up and it was burning high, there were a lot of students around it, mostly from the 12th and 11th grade and Eddie wasn’t hating it. He had a can of soda in his hand, while Bill had decided to go for a bottle of ice cold beer. There was music, nice music, and Eddie couldn’t deny that Beverly Marsh had a pretty fucking great idea.

“This is n-n-nice, isn’t it?”  Bill said, glancing around the crowd, desperately trying to spot Audra.

“I’m not hating it.” Eddie conceded, and Bill smiled.

“Hey guys.” Both of the boys turned their heads to look at Stan, who was holding a can identical to Eddie’s. “Didn’t think you would have come.” He said with a tentative smile that was entirely directed at Bill.

“I didn’t think that either.” Eddie shrugged, sighing as Bill ignored completely Stan’s glances, too busy to try to gain Audra’s attention.

Eddie was well aware of the crush Stan had on Bill. Everyone was well aware of that. Bill was a handsome boy: he was tall, he had ginger-ish hair and a charming smile. Eddie could see why Stan liked him so much. Bill, though, despite his stutter, was more outgoing, while Stan tended to hide behind his books, like an admirer from afar.

“Well, I’m glad you decided to come. It was a bit awkward without actual people to talk to.” He said, pressing his lips into a thin line.

“Yeah, me too.” Another voice said from behind them. Eddie twirled on his heels to find Richie standing in front of him. He was wearing a black tank top and a denim jacket with some pins on it, black and ripped skinny jeans and his combat boots. Eddie found himself staring for a couple of seconds.

“You smell weird.” Eddie said, well aware that, mixed to Richie’s cologne, was the smell of weed.

“That’s what I told your mom last night.”

“You’re fucking disgusting.”

“That’s not what you said last night.” He winked.

Stan rolled his eyes. “I’m not following. Were you with Eddie or with his mom last night?” He said flatly, not really asking a question.

“Maybe both.” Richie laughed. Eddie shrugged past him, shouldering him but not too hard, and walked away. The last thing he needed was to hear to Richie’s awful mom jokes.

He just didn’t understand. Richie was a real fucking trashmouth, but he seemed particularly keen on addressing his annoying jokes toward Eddie. Sure, he was friends with Beverly, but he never heard him being so loud around her. He leaned his back against a tree, taking a deep breath away from the crowd. His mind ran back to what Bill had said.

What’s going on between you and Richie Tozier?

Eddie had no idea. He truly, honestly had no idea of what was going on.

He didn’t know why Richie bothered talking to him, he didn’t know why he bothered answering. He didn’t know why his heart beat a little faster whenever he heard Richie’s voice near him, and he was too afraid to asking himself why.

Nothing was going on between Richie Tozier and him.

It wasn’t that great, after all. It was just like a regular party, but outside. There were people grinding in rhythm with the music, people making out and people way too drunk to function. Bill had finally managed to talk to Audra, and they were currently kissing against a tree. Eddie’s eyes immediately went for Stan, who was sitting with his head down and Mike Hanlon’s arm thrown around his shoulders. Eddie knew Mike, he was in the football team and he was probably one of the kindest person he had ever had the pleasure of knowing. If Stan was with Mike, he knew he was in good hands.

“Are you cold?” It was almost time for Eddie to go. Last thing he wanted, was to piss his mother off and being grounded for a month. He looked to his left, where Richie had sat down. They were in front of the bone fire, but the air had cooled down and gave Eddie goose bumps down his arms.

“I’m fine.” Eddie shrugged, looking back at the fire. Two seconds later, Richie’s warm denim jacket was around his shoulders.

“There you go.”

“I said I was fine.”

“Your body says otherwise.” Richie ran his index finger over Eddie’s arm, which only caused more goose bumps. He swallowed hard, gripping the grass under him as he looked up at Richie’s chocolate brown eyes.

“Thank you. You shouldn’t have,  but thank you.” He said, wrapping Richie’s way-too-big jacket around himself. They looked into each other’s eyes for a couple of seconds, and Eddie felt his stomach knotting and then filling with something that fluttered. With the fire’s light hitting his face, Eddie could clearly see every single one of Richie’s freckles. He could admire the way his curls fell on his forehead and the way his front teeth rested on his lower lip when he wasn’t thinking about hiding them. Eddie knew he wasn’t supposed to think about another boy’s freckles, eyes,  hair and mouth, but when it came to Richie he just couldn’t help but wonder. He had so many questions he wanted to ask, and yet he was afraid of the answers. It was like looking at an unsolved mystery, and it fascinated Eddie beyond any measure.

“Anytime.” Richie replied softly, and his lips curved into a relaxed smile that made Eddie wonder if that was a perfectly normal thing to do.

He was even about to ask him that, when some girl screamed.

“The cops are here!”

Eddie didn’t even have the time to think or react. Before he could even look at what was going on, he was being pulled on his feet by a warm hand firmly holding his and then he was running. The woods that surrounded the quarry were not a place you would have wanted to find yourself lost in at night, but Richie seemed to know what he was doing and where he was going as he held Eddie’s hand and dragged him away. Eddie heard the music being shut down and then voices, loud voices and sirens.

He felt like he couldn’t breathe, but the last thing he wanted was being dragged back home by the police. He wasn’t even drunk, he hadn’t touch a single drop of alcohol, but she wouldn’t have cared. He had lied, and that would have been a reason valid enough for him to be locked home for god knows how long.

“Rich! Stop!” He panted, planting his heels to the ground once they were far away enough. He leaned his back against a tree and tried to catch his breath.

He hoped that his friends managed to ran away as well.

“Are you okay?” Richie asked as he tried to catch his breath. Eddie nodded, panting, and looked up at the taller boy with wide eyes.

“Thank you…” He breathed, and Richie chuckled.

“This is the second time you thank me tonight.” He pointed out, resting a hand beside Eddie’s head as he looked down at him. They were really close. They were really close and they were alone in the dark woods, and Eddie shouldn’t have felt as comfortable as he did.

“Well, you deserve it.” Eddie bit his lower lip as he looked in his eyes, then looked back down at the ground with a blush on his cheeks. “I was supposed to be home five minutes ago. Shit, my mom’s going to kill me…”

“Well, we better get going then, am I right?” Eddie nodded slowly, watching as Richie took a step back from him. “Come on.” He offered Eddie his hand, and the smaller boy frowned a little. “It’s mad dark in here, I don’t want to lose you in a wood.”

“Are you just looking for an excuse to hold my hand, Tozier?” Eddie teased, thanking the darkness that was hiding his blush as he slipped his hand into Richie’s.

“Shut up and follow me, Kaspbrak.”  

[captainkirkmccoy]

Two friends from childhood vow to always be friends, but they grow apart when one of them moves away. Fast forward couple decades where one is successful and the other has fallen on harsh times and is homeless. The successful one takes in their old best friend and falls in love, but doesn't act on it because it would be taking advantage of them. The homeless friend gets back onto their feet, moves out and after getting a job and places of their own, asks out their friend on a date.

"Always and forever, you promised." Jimmy Kirk whispered from his sleeping bag just feet away from Leo's. They were sleeping in a pop-up tent behind the farmhouse, close enough that they could run inside if something spooked them and far enough away that they couldn't quite see Leo's mom and dad peeking at them from the wide kitchen windows. "Yeah, but only if you let me go to sleep, brat." Leo grumbled, rolling over so that he can get a glimpse of the lively fire that was still blazing from their s'mores attempt earlier. They ended up eating more marshmallows and chocolate than an actual put together s'more but the fire was still comfortable and he knew his parents would make sure it was out completely before they went to bed. Jim sat up, face lit up by the fire and freckles standing out against an otherwise pale face. He got so white in the winter that Leo's mama fed him extra servings of everything. "You can't promise something in exchange for something else. That won't count."Leo sighed. Jim was four-years-younger and his best friend regardless. They had shuffled together out of boredom and desperation--Leo's mama volunteering to babysit Jim when Winona first came to Madison, Georgia, with nothing to her name except a five-year-old shadow named Sam and a wailing baby. The town gossip said that Winona's husband had died on the day baby James was born and that she had fled Iowa as fast and as far as she could go."I meant it, okay? You'll be my best friend always and forever, no matter what."That seemed to appeal Jim, who snuggled back into his sleeping bag and fell asleep minutes later. Leo tried not to think what always and forever looked like and if that was a promise he would keep--even if he already knew he would do everything and anything to try. ***Leo was starting to hate the townhouse he had bought the year of his big promotion to head of surgery at Atlanta General. It was draftier than it seemed, too big and took too long to make it look presentable for when his mother came over. She had a penchant for announcing a visit a day before she would arrive, about to drop a bomb that would upset his fragile staus quo for months after she went back to Madison, leaving him untethered in Atlanta. Two years ago, it was that she was selling the farmhouse and relocating to the new over 50 community (more luxury than comfort). Last year it was that she was remarrying--fifteen years after David McCoy had passed away and twelve after she started vehemently protesting (and unfriending) anyone who tried to set her up. Her new beau, as she called him, was named Christopher Pike and he had moved to Georgia from San Francisco, where he spent years before retirement teaching at some prepatory for rich service brats. Two days ago, she had called and annouced that her and Chris were coming for the weekend--she was desperate to see her son before their Christmas vacation to England and Scotland and had decided to stage a Christmas brunch, lunch and dinner into the three days she would be invading his home. It wasn't as if he didn't have any room, it was just that he had finally gotten used to the quiet that three oversized stories afforded and had enjoyed being a confirmed bachelor, no matter his mother's protestations that he find someone after the divorce. But five-years post-marriage had made him comfortable with living alone, no one to balk at his long nights at the hospital, no one to nag him about not spending enough time being together. ***He was prepared for his mother and Christopher Pike. He was not prepared for Jimmy Kirk. "Hey," Jim said, a tad sheepishly, ducking his head as Leo stared, open-mouthed at the new arrival at his front door. "Leo, you remember, Jim, right?" Eleanora McCoy unwrapped her rather long multicolored scarf and set it on a hook provided by a sturdy wooden hall tree. Chris Pike still kept every stitch of winter clothing on, as if he was ready to bolt the first moment of trouble. Leo, still lost for words, nodded. 

"Well, he's been staying with us for a bit and we couldn't leave him alone for Agnes Carlton and her harpies to devour him. And we knew you wouldn't mind--what with all the space you have! It'll be wonderful to catch up again, I'm sure."

Leo hadn't seen Jim in almost twenty-years. If his mama hadn't said something he wouldn't have believed that the scruffy, skinny guy in front of him was Jim Kirk--the same shit-stirring little brat that had been his best friend during childhood. Whenever he pictured Jim Kirk grown up, he pictured him somewhere cold--chopping wood in layers of flannel with a gorgeous wife and brood of equally adorable and raucous children. What he saw instead. despite the obvious gap in years and fact that he had indeed grew up, was an emaciated, rough looking kid. Unable to stop himself he shuffled forward and hugged him. The other man smelled of fresh air, salt and the lingering cologne that he knew Chris Pike wore, telling him that this jacket was a hand-me-down from the other man's closet. "Sorry," Jim whispered in his ear as they broke the hug but Leo was unsure of whatever the man could be sorry about. ***

"Before you start--" his mama said in the kitchen as she started unpacking vegetables from her trusty old farmer's market bag that must have been as old as Leo himself. "What were you thinking, mama? And did you hunt him down just to torture me?" He's sorting through the rest of her groceries with a purpose, desperate to let his hands do something as his mind races."He's homeless, Leo."The wrapped baguette that he was holding nearly drops to his hardwood floor. Before he can say anything else, Eleanora rushes on. "He contacted Chris," at Leo's confused look his mother said, "Old friend of the family, if you believe it or not. So he contacted Chris a few weeks ago about work. He came back to Georgia with nothing, Leo. And we haven't been able to find out what happened. God only knows where Winona is. bless her heart."

"And your solution is to leave him with me?"

"Well, I know you were close and you would still have been if --"If that bastard didn't insist on taking the Kirks away, left unsaid. The bastard being Winona's new husband, a brute of a man who everyone in town called "Gaston." He and Winona met at the factory that she worked at and he insisted on whisking the family away to greener pastures. Jim (like Leo) had been devastated. Madison was the only town he knew.  The McCoys had even volunteered to keep Jim for a bit, to finish out the end of the year of seventh grade but Gaston had charmed Winona into packing up the clapboard house they lived in and moving to California, where he insisted they could become something more. Last he heard, Gaston had been forced out of the house after leaving the Kirks in shambles. Sam had run away, Jim had done a brief stint in a juvenile detention center and Winona had buried herself in work (she was the best engineer Madison had ever seen and apparently that went for Mountain View too)."Jimmy just needs to get on his feet, Leo. Chris is going to get him a job at the community college as soon as we get back and see about signing him up for some classes. He's apparently a genius, did you know?" Eleanora's eyes twinkled with pride. ***

It took four days of awkward side-stepping for Jim and Leo to get to know each other again. Once they did, they fell into the same banter and inside-jokes that had dominated most of their adolescent and pre-teen conversations. It took two weeks for Leo, now dubbed Bones as soon as Jim learned he was an old sawbones like his dad, to fall in love with his best friend. Once it happened, it felt inevitable. He couldn't imagine a time when he wasn't in love with Jim.But damn if the timing wasn't right. Jim's face still held that gaunt look that months of living in homeless shelters and on the streets did to a guy. He eventually got out the story from Jim: he had a good job at startup in Palo Alto. But when he walked in on his boss "harassing" one of their young interns, Jim got into an "altercation" and was fired (Jim was as vague as possible, probably in part for having told the story too many times and the rest because the vague terms made it easier to deal with). Because it was a startup, Jim had been living in the co-op that most of the engineers had shared and with that he had nothing but his car and the few belongings a sympathetic co-worker got for him. He stayed around the area in the hopes that he could get the rest of his things and maybe someone else would report the asshole to the cops so that Jim could at least get a reference and move on. In the end, he sold his car and bought a one-way plane ticket to the last place he felt home: Madison. "I'll make this up to you," Jim said, one night, pinks flush with the whisky they had shared from the highball glasses Leo inherited from his father. "Nah. That's what best friends do, kid. Always and forever, remember?"

***

A week later, Jim was gone. His bed was tidy and a note lay on a pillow, ripped out from the pad of DR. DAVID MCCOY that Leo realized the brat must have had after all these years. Thanks. It read. For Everything. His mother called him. "We're back. Is Jim ready to come to Madison?  We can pick him up tomorrow."

Leo took a deep breath. "Jim's not here, Ma."

"What?" Her voice took on a shrill quality that she usually used when the dogs had accidents on her rugs. "What do you mean?" Her voice was far away and muffled as she said, "Chris! Leo says Jim's not there."

“He left.”

His mother let out a string of swear words that would have made Jim proud. “I’ll call you back, Leo. Chris is going to go looking.”

***

Months passed with Leo, Chris and Eleanora dividing their time between Atlanta, it’s suburbs, and Madison. They combed through every homeless shelter in the tri-state area, prowled the streets and alleys for Jim. 

With every passing dead end brought Leo back to those few years after Jim left the first time and his father getting sick. He felt the deep pull of despair and melancholy as winter gave way to spring and spring gave way to a fucking horribly warm Summer.

He spent most of his weekends at the soup kitchen with his mother’s husband, who he realized he liked more for the way he never gave up on Jim, calling in favors, flying back to San Francisco, exhausting lead after lead until Leo wasn’t sure who was more miserable: him or Chris. 

A year passed by the only way it could in this instance, slow and without much of anything to look forward to. Leo found himself talking to a real estate agent about selling the townhouse which was feeling less big and more like a prison without Jim in it. 

***

“Ma, I just want a quiet Christmas.” He insisted on the phone, as he shoved some garland and lights into the closet. His mother had shipped them over in the hopes that it would inspire some holiday spirit but Leo wanted nothing to do with anything holiday or cheer. 

He took the phone away from his ear to protect from her shrill response. His mother and her husband were staying home this Christmas and were insisting that he come back to Madison. He could think of nothing he’d rather do less. 

“Ma, Jesus Ma, hold on.”  He set the phone between his shoulder and cheek, hoping that the Chinese delivery was early and it wasn’t some carolers or something equally unpleasant. 

He swung the door open and dropped his phone. 

Jim Kirk, completely transformed from the last time he saw him, was standing at his front door. Jim Kirk who he had imagined showing up hundreds of times before, except real. 

“Hey Bones,” The completely transformed Jim Kirk said, a smirk lighting up his face with mischief and purpose. 

“Hey Jim.” Leo managed to get out, taking in his perfectly trimmed hair, the dark jacket that framed broad muscled shoulders, the healthy bright glean to his face. 

“I’m sorry about...well, everything.”

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Jim nodded, swallowing hard. “I am.”

“Good, though my mama and Chris might demand some explanations.”

Jim looked away, the same sheepish expression that he’d seen just a year ago playing on his face. “Yeah. Definitely.”

“Do you want to come in?”

Jim shook his head. “No, Bones.”

Leo couldn’t help but let his shoulders sink at that. He could hear his mother’s high voice from the floor, demanding to know if Leo was still there. 

“I want you to come out with me.”

“What?”

“You. Me. Like a date?”

Leo blinked. 

“I’m here to cash in on my promise, Bones.”

“Promise?” Leo’s voice was a rasp as his mouth got drier and drier by the second. 

“You know,” Jim’s grin widened. “Always and forever.”

[tsw-story]

Chapter 66 - Donuts and Dragons

The snow was dissipating earlier than usual, though that didn't yet scare away the frigid breeze to make room for spring's warm welcome. Now it was mostly light rain that coated the city in a sparkling mirror. Fortunately, the clouds were parting, and under the coming sun were birds fluttering by with their melody of whistling.

“These are the last of them,” Arlandria grunted with a hefty, damp box in her embrace. “You're so strong, Renatta. You're making me think I should be exercising more.”

“My mother trained me. And I am not even cheating by using you know what.”

“You sound like you're rubbing it in,” she muttered, but ultimately decided that Renatta likely didn't have the ability to do such a thing. She sighed, and chuckled softly.

Not only was Renatta's form dark and slim, but there was muscle tone that showed a dedication to staying fit. She'd seen the girl fight before. Her moves were athletic, and she threw those bladed discs as if they were extensions of her own body. It was impressive, especially given the fact that the other wizards tended to be more helpless without their magic.

The two set down the boxes in their apartment. It was small, but it was mostly the cause due to an encroaching army of cardboard invading their space. The days had been exhausting, but relieving, and the others helped them as well. It was finally time to rest their arms, as unloading it all could be saved for another day, and despite Renatta's fitness, she seemed just as finished.

Arlandria rung out her long, blonde hair over the kitchen sink. When she turned, she saw Renatta not only dressed in completely different clothes, but her red hair was as dry as a bone, and tied up on the back. She wore blue jeans, and button-up red shirt, and Arlandria couldn't help but feel envious of wizards in that moment.

“Do you need help?” Renatta asked.

“That would be great.”

The wizard brought up her palms, and from them came a soothing burst of hot air that shook a shiver down Arlandria's spine. It felt great, and she slowly became less of a soaking mess.

Though she did finish on her own, and dressed into a different outfit of black pants and a green t-shirt. She wondered how life would be like, living in a human living space, on a human world, with a human. Not that Deena wasn't a person, but this was like a new beginning. She would finally be able to experience life as a resident of Earth could.

When she entered back into the living room, she saw Renatta stuffing one of her chakrams into a handbag that was hanging from her shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Arlandria asked.

“Packing up. You never know when you will need a weapon.”

“All right, but for what purpose?”

“Our date!”

“Pardon me?”

Renatta swung her hand in an arch over her head, and as sparks of flame followed, she cheerfully shouted, “We are going to go out and enjoy a day of relaxation! To a place that is not raining, and where we do not have to move anymore boxes. Just you and me, out on the streets, going to stores and things.”

“That does sound nice...”

“Then it is settled. I have been travelling for awhile, so I have a few anchors we can teleport to. It will be nice to get out of the city where we keep being attacked.”

Arlandria leaned against the wall of the corridor near the front door, and played a finger through the hair near her ear. She had only seen this single part of Earth, as well as the one location in Peru, but nothing more than that.

“But where are we going then, Renatta?”

She thrust a fist up into the air triumphantly. “America. The land of super-sized food.”

“Is that all they're known for?”

“Probably. Come on. I have a portal anchor in Riverside, California! Careful. It is going to be hot there. I love it. The heat is where I am the most comfortable, so it will be perfect. Bright sun, spring breeze, lots of bakeries.”

“You said the last part with a lot more gumption.”

“The day is young. Let us step through the door. With a wizard, travel is as quick as one, two—“

***

“Three!” Renatta said as she giggled, and the two emerged between two buildings that were nearly touching.

Arlandria brought her hands over her pendant, and after a spark, her pointed ears retracted into her hair, and within was now a set of human-looking ears instead. They squeezed out from alley and onto the sidewalk.

There were colourful folk walking left and right, a street packed with vehicles, and the sides were lined with incredibly tall trees, with leaves nowhere but the top. It was all new to Arlandria, even if it wasn't that different than the city they came from. She could tell the subtle differences, from the architecture, to the atmosphere.

“I have read about this country,” Arlandria mentioned. “It's much older than Canada. A lot of strange history I saw in pieces. Oh wow. Look at that guy. Is that a gun? This is so exciting.”

“I almost forgot these,” Renatta mumbled as she reached into her bag. From it, she pulled two pairs of sunglasses, and she handed one of them to her friend.

She slid them over her eyes, and Arlandria did the same.

“Much better,” said the elf. “The sun's not hiding even a little bit today. Still getting used to the sun, to be honest.”

“Used to the sun, eh?” spoke a man nearby.

He has a lengthy nose and a bandana wrapped around what seemed to be a hairless head. There was a stall before him, and on it were dozens of pictures of deserts—some cold, like ice cream, and others in the spirit of cakes and tarts.

“You must not be from Cali then, lady,” he snickered. “I'm wearing sunscreen SPF a million today. Where you from?”

Arlandria jumped at the sudden question. She turned, and waved her hand dismissively.

“Oh. I'm from Canada, so no I'm not as used to it.”

Renatta waved. “Me too. But I have travelled a bunch more than my friend. I am Renatta, and this is Arlandria. It is good to meet you,” she spoke, but her eyes never left the images of treats.

“I can tell,” the man replied. “Your accident is definitely not Canadian, eh? Hah! And I see you're eyeing my goods. Can I interest you two lovely ladies in something cold to keep the heat at bay? Especially if you're not used to it.”

“A cupcake!” Renatta shouted. “Right here. The pink frosted cupcake with sprinkles. One of those, please.”

“Not something cold then? Fine with me. What about her?”

“Oh wow,” muttered the elf. “There's so many things. I'll take the chocolate ice cream cone. That looks similar to something I've had before. Uh. Back in Canada, I mean.”

“I'd hope so. That'll be ten dollars then, ladies.”

Renatta slapped down a bill, and the man picked it up with a close inspection. “Canadian dollars? Hm. Well, I'll take it this time, but only because you ladies have been my only business today.”

“Thank you,” Renatta said with her mouth already filled mostly with cupcake.

“And you're both cute,” he said beneath his breath.

Arlandria chirped with joy as she enjoyed the taste and chilly sensation of the ice cream. She wondered if this was what it was to be human—eating treats, wearing sunglasses, and hanging out in the sunshine.

As they walked down the street, the elf soaked in the view. There were mountains in the distance, and everything was blooming, and turning green after a long winter sleep. She turned to Renatta and whispered.

“Is this what you do on a normal day?”

She shrugged. “I guess. My days are not very normal. You should know that by now, spending time with me and the others.”

“True.”

“Why? You look so confused.”

“I suppose I'm just trying to figure out how to fit in.”

“You are fitting! Back there, you ordered that ice cream like a champion.”

“Thank you, Renatta. I guess I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed.”

Still lost in thought, they continued along. They finished their treats, poked their heads into shops, and soon found themselves far away from where they began. It most likely been about an hour or two, and they were no longer downtown, but at a small basketball court outside of a building that looked to be abandoned.

“Feeling better?” Renatta asked.

“Maybe. I certainly am happy, especially to be here with you.”

“What's going on over there?” she asked, and to that Arlandria turned her head as well towards the court.

They saw a boy that couldn't have been older than eighteen being pushed up ahead the opposite fence. There were three others, and it who had the disadvantage, as the one was practically pinned by a flurry of insults from the rest—some words best left unrepeated.

He had unkempt blonde hair and a crooked nose. In his arms was a backpack, though not for much longer. One of the others tore it from his gripe, unzipped it, and started dumping the contents onto the ground. Books fell open, and some dice rolled off to the side.

“What a dork,” one scoffed as he kicked a die off into the bushes. “Never grew up, huh? Is that right, you loser? Carrying games around, where you pretend to be a little wizard shooting lightning at goblins. Grow up.”

“Stop! Those were a gift.”

“From who, huh? One of your dork friends?”

“No. My b—Ah!” he cried as a fist met his stomach, and he fell to his knees.

“Yeah. We know,” one snapped. “We know. That's why you're dead, kid. You and your pansy little friends. Now get these damned dice out of here. I'm stepping on them.”

“It's just a game about imagination... Why are you so mean?”

“Shut the hell up!”

Liquids poured down from his face, and in no way in an attractive way. He sobbed, helpless, and started picking up his belongings in panic for something to do. He glanced over just in time to see a foot coming towards his face.

He cringed and closed his eyes. The impact was inevitable. He wasn't athletic, nor was he brave enough to try fighting back, though perhaps it was smarter not to in the first place. He was out-power and out-numbered.

When the hit didn't connect, he slowly opened eyes to see a different foot before him. It went up the leg of a young woman, with dark skin, and red hair.

“Where'd she come from?” shouted one in panic.

“Imagination is the basis of humanity!” Renatta yelled.

She grabbed the man, and in one swift motion, threw him over the boy to slam hard to the ground on his back. He roared out in pain.

She spun, and thrust her foot into the guy of the next one, causing the breath to fire from his lips, and his body to fall limp and collapse. There was only one left, and he was behind her with a knife in his hand.

But behind him was another woman. He turned to see Arlandria, and he panicked between them. He thrust the knife towards the elf, but with one hand up, she projected a ward he didn't even notice. All he felt was an unnatural resistance that knocked his hand back, and then a crack to his spine by Renatta's knee.

The first man stumbled to his feet. “Who the hell are you two? More weirdos like him?”

“Weirdos? Well, yes, actually,” Renatta replied. “I think we are both pretty weird. I am not sure, but I think everybody is. Right? Like you are weird for picking on a boy for no reason.”

He gripped the post of the basketball net. “No. You're wrong,” he grunted, and started pulling a metallic object from the pocket in his baggy trousers.

She knew what it was, and spared no hesitation. A ringed blade from her purse came so quickly from her hand that in an instant, it was partly inside the pole next to the man's head. His eyes nearly popped out from their sockets.

“Do not think about it,” Renatta commanded.

They paused for a moment. Then, the three bolted out of the court as fest as they could, with one even climbing the face.

Renatta brought up a hand, and on its own, the weapon flew back to her grip, and she stowed it away. Arlandria was already comforting the boy, though he had no idea she was tending to his wounds as well.

“Thank you,” he muttered. “I feel a lot better. You didn't have to step in like that. They were really tough.” “Not that tough,” replied Renatta. “Pretty weak, actually. They must not have had much training. So why were they picking on you?”

“I don't know. I guess they don't like my way of life.” “Games?”

He shrugged.

“Is liking games not... normal?” Arlandria asked.

“I don't know,” he uttered. “I am the way I am. It isn't like I can change how my mind works. I was born this way, so this is me. And, I have friends that accept that, but I guess not everybody does. I'm thankful I have one person really special to me.”

“She sounds wonderful.”

“He is.”

Renatta smiled. She offered a hand for the boy to stand, and he accepted.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No problem. And I understand. I think we both do. Right, Arlandria?”

The elf stared for longer than she meant, not quite at either of them, but between and beyond. She looked to the Silver Stars, but they weren't there. Instead it was a swirling ball of flames, surrounded by an ocean—nothing like what she was used to. There were humans around, and games, and more.

She turned to the boy, and she gave him a sympathetic gaze. Though her eyes seemed sad, she glowed with a comforting radiant, and warmth, and it was clear there was nothing to fear now. The bullies were gone, and it felt as if her eyes were bypassing his own, straight into his soul.

“I'm so sorry you have to deal with such things,” she said.

“We all have to be strong. Right?” he replied.

“You are right. Are you going to be good to head home?”

“I am. Thanks to you both. Bless you. Goodbye, but maybe we'll see each other again.”

They nodded, and with that, he departed.

“Do you feel comfortable yet?” Renatta asked again, pulling her friend from her silence.

“Sorry. I was thinking.”

“About what?”

“Everything. Yes. I think I do feel comfortable, Renatta. And I do understand. Maybe I'm finally starting to figure it out. Or maybe I'm not supposed to. Or I'm not in need of knowing more than I do now, because I've been over-thinking it all along.”

“You will get used to the chaos of Ea—I mean America. Give it time.”

“I think that I already have. You've all given me more than enough chaos already.”

Renatta gave her friend a tight embrace, one of so much affection that the boy was brought in as well, as a hug of such vast levels of love can not be left to only two. They laughed, and not long after, they returned home, where it was soon time to get back to work.

[deafeningsuitdestiny]

The Elephant in the Room

Chapter one, My beginning

Hey there,

how are you?

Me, well I'm doing okay. To be honest a little roughed up, but okay none the less. My names Paige, I'm 22 and a bit of a nerd. 

I spend most of my time in my room, by myself, hiding in my world of electronics. That's kind of what ive always done. My whole life has been a bit of a rollarcoaster. I was born in '98 and while others wouldnt, I do wholehartedly consider myself a '90's baby. Not that I actually remember much of the 90's.

I've grew up in the sunny and ever so saught after california Inland Empire, in a tiny town called Norco, horse town USA. No, I didn't ever have a horse in my backyard growing up. But I always had one at my grandparents. Tinker was her name when I was young. We never rode her, grandma always said that she had hurt her foot when she was younger so we couldn't. I personally just think my grandma left her alone for so long that she wasn't a 'broke' horse anymore. 

Not that that was her fault. She has arthritis really bad in both knees and has had it for as long as I can remember. Growing up i spent a lot of time with my grandma. I was at her house almost everyday. Both of my parents worked. My dad in construction and my mom at a christian pre-school. That meant that every morning, Monday through Friday at 4-5 A.M, I was hauled over to grandmas house. I have endless love for my grandma for so many reasons. Her home has always been a safe haven for me to go, and really has been my whole life, even as an adult.

My childhood is probably one of the most complex parts of my life. I've never really been one to talk about  it, or myself really. If you would have asked me a few weeks ago i would have brushed it off and said it was normal. However, my childhood was far from normal. I actually don't remember a lot of it. I have really had to sit and think about it to try to piece it all together. I won't go into detail about anyone in my family but me, but it wasn't really all Glitz and Glam for any of us.

Like i said my earliest memories are at my grandmas house. I do remember a bit about my childhood home. I remember having big birthday parties and asking to go to friends houses all the time. Thats not really something I was allowed to do a lot. Except for my childhood bestfriend, Natalie. I went to her house as often as my parent would let me. I remember having her house phone and my moms cell phone number memorized only. I called her almost everyday after school waiting for her to get home from dance classes so we could talk about the Sims and whatever elementry school drama we could find.

I'm so thankful for Natalie. She's been a really big person in my life and I have been able to rely on her a lot through-out my life. She and I to this day keep in touch. I also spent a lot of time with my 'cousin' Kendyl. I say cousin because her mom Stephanie and my mom were best friends. So i know i spent a lot of time with her and she is considered Family. When I was home my mom babysat her a lot. Stephanie was a single mom when I was growing up and hustled her ass off to get whatever she could for kendyl. But that meant she worked a lot.

Therefore Kendyl was also a very good friend to me growing up. Although I can remember being a bit mean to her at times. I was older and not getting enough attention in my own home so I think I ended up taking it out on her a bit. I can vividly remember her mom going off on me for smapping a balloon on her hand. Lightning struck quite a very few times in my childhood that I remember getting really upset, but that was one of them. I don't really remember why but I think there was a small group of us all hanging out. I got embarressed.

When I talk to other people about their childhoods they remember so much more than I do, but I do think it's a blessing that I don't remember a lot of it. Another memory I have from when I was younger is being at Stephanie's boyfriends house with Kendyl riding around in her green little Jeep, we went  up and down his driveway until the battery was so low it wouldn't go up anymore and we ended up flipping over somehow. For some reason I also remember getting in trouble for that like it was my fault when i was probably no more than 5 outside playing without any supervision.

A lot of my childhood is like that, no supervision and left to my own devices. I think that kind of explains a lot of why I am the way that I am. I learned to exist by myself. So i learned how to escape from the world around me. A tool I use well into my adulthood.

Chapter 2 Growing Pains

I gained a sister at the ripe age of 2 & 1/2. Ms. Avery Rose made her appearance and I was not so happy at the time. I greeted her with a sippy cup to the head the day she came home.

Sorry Ave, Love you.

I was standarly upset about having another person to now add to, what i considered, a competition for attention. We shared a room, with a bunk bed. I claimed the top bunk so she was stuck on the bottom. I've always been messy, so naturally I ate in my bed. Therefore i had ants in my bed. That meant that Avery would not go anywhere near the top bunk, as shes a bit of a clean freak, and at the time that meant my deturrant was working as intended. I had my space and everyone stayed away. That was the goal, so I slept with ants. It didnt really bother me.

I don't remember why I wanted to keep everyone away, but I felt the need to. So I made huge messes and didnt really ever take care of myself. The idea was if I looked a mess and had messes around me, the standard person would stay away. I would be safe and could do as I pleased. which wasnt much but escape to the land of my imagination.

I can remember going to my toy box and literally throwing every toy I could grab over my shoulder to make a mess of my bedroom floor. My grandparents ended up coming over that night for dinner and my grandma helped me pick up my bedroom. When I say helped I mean I sat contemplating begrugendly as I watched my grandma pick up the beautiful chaos that I had created for myself. She knew i was upset, so she stayed in my room with me until I fell asleep, turned on sleeping beauty to try to calm me down, and it worked. Disney Works. Dreamworks Works. Very well, thanks to grandma. To this day I can turn on a classic disney movie to calm down.

I don't think she even knows, but to this day I use that. She has given me one of my greatest coping mechanisms.

Isolation bred imaginary friends. Bobber, Bingalong, and Joshco. They were with me wherever i went. I had bobber well into my later adolescent years and still vividly remember what he looked like.

They were all tiny, and could fit in the palm of my hand but would sit on my shoulders more often than not. Bobber had scraggly hair and wore overalls and had a red shirt. It's not a surprise that red was my favorite color most of  my life. My whole family still teases me about them, but in a really weird way they are family to me. They were around when no one was there.

I did not like the outdoors as a kid. Absolutely hated playing outside. My mom, thinking I needed the normalcy would lock Avery and I outside to "play". Most of the time this led to me intentionally scraping my knee, stubbing my toe, or just outright throwing a fit to get back inside. I wanted to play on the computer instead. Club Penguin, BarbieGirls, VirtualMagicKingdom, Wizard 101, Neopets, I had a Nancy Drew Orca game that I loved to play, a Jimmy Neutron game I completed several times over. I loved the escape of it all.

Those were the only places I felt happy, safe, and had enough fun that I felt like I was thriving.

Chapter 3 School House Blues

School was always something i've been naturally good at, when i put in the effort anyways. My grandpa spent the time teaching me math as a kid, thankfully. Otherwise I would have been lost. It was not my strongsuit. School was never somehing that i wanted to pursue but I did good because I was expected to do good.

Although I never really fully paid attention as a kid. I was still off in my own world. I had a Group of girlfriends I always hung out with. It was Jada, Myself, Natalie, Emily, Cheyenne, Taylor E. , Taylor M. and sometimes a Sierra or Cierra. To that friend group ~ I am sorry if I forgot anyone. This was a while ago haha

Even in the group I always tried hard to fit in, because I felt like I didn't. I felt like that third wheel friend that always had to try really hard. I think my try-harding annoyed a lot of them to be honest. By the 6th grade the whole group was done with me and the last 6 months of elementry school I spent by myself at a picnic table, until I remembered the Library and Mrs.Curd.

Thank god for Mrs.Curd. From that moment on I spent all of my free time in the library. We has something called A.R. when i was growing up when I was growing up, basically the school wanted to make sure we were reading enough books and growing our mini human brains. The goal was to get to 100% by the end of the trimester. Well in 6th grade I made it to 100% by the second day of school thanks to the twilight series, I had read in the matter of a few days, I flew through it.

I remember finishing the first book in a day and immediatly begging my mom to go get the next one.I even read Midnight Sun online as it was released without Stephanie Meyers' permission. All 152 pages then I think it was. That also meant whenever it was A.R. time I would Immediatly run to the library while everyone else silent read. I would put books away and eat all of her butterscotch candy.

A huge shoutout to Mrs.Woolard for letting me go~ that is until my other grades started to drop. Math started to get the best of me since I was so caught up in books and my imagination. I wasnt allowed to run off to the library anymore, I had to focus on my A.M. basically it was the math version of A.R. but every single recess and lunch time I spent with Mrs. Curd.

I don't really know what happened to her, but I really hope shes doing well. She is a big credit as to how I'm still here. Teachers really are the Life Blood of our society. I'm living proof.

Chapter 4

Puberty

I wish I could tell you that Jr. High got better. My grades kept falling. Thankfully my educators were still a few good and true. Mr.Walker taught me more history and structure than I ever could have asked for. That man taught me organization.

He was a stickler, he was very good at making sure the homework assignments were done and held the accountability for it as well. I remember he was the first teacher to ever give me a detention, because the whole class didn't do the outline the night before. It was a detention that came with love however. The whole class spent that hour after school writting the outline.

Thus my love of writting began. I can't tell you how many outlines i did in that class but it was a lot. A whole binder full. His homework schedule revolved on a schedule. That meant that if you missed a day you still had a pretty good idea of what was expected of you.

It was also nice because he was someone who didnt believe in homework on the weekends. He believed in putting in hard work and having your personal time as well. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were days that homework typically wasn't assigned. Unless of course we had a project, but they always came with ample time to get them done and a solid deadline.

Mr.Walker taught me the importance of balance and knowlage. That you need to know whats going on, but you also need to take care of yourself. At the time that didn't quite click BUT years later I can look back on those days and understand the importance of what he was teaching me.

Jr. High was also the time that I Joined Choir. I was hoping it would be the fun and happy place I always dreamed of but quickly learned it was kind of a free for all with songs nobody knew unless it was around christmas time. Not exactly what a Maturing Mini Human was interested in. I remember asking Mr.Betts if we could do more relent songs, or something in the Top 40, his repsonse was no, we have to keep the classics alive, which I understand. Now looking back I wish I would have told him he was living in the past and trying to grow the future.

That doesn't work.

Chapter 5

A small circle

In Jr. High the friend group was small. So small in fact I don't think I ever consistantly spoke to more than 2 people at a time. Keeping up with friends we never my strong suit. I remember sitting in the same far right table next to the choir room every day. Being excited for Pretzel day and having access to vending machines. I would spend every quarter I had on the many snacks back then, no regrets haha.

That lunch table actually had some of my fondest memories, dancing and practicing ballet spins with Chey, doodling the many anime doodles with amie. Shes probably one of the first friends I ever openly talked to about my love of Anime. I wrote every one I watched on the front of my homework planner, it was my messy list of all the things I loved. Blue and Black ink was smeared all over it.

I wish I kept it but I didn't. It was lost in the many moves. By jr high we were living in our third house. We had moved into a new house when my baby brother came along. We outgrew our little three bedroom, moved on to a 5 bedroom and then went back down to a 4 bedroom. It had stairs and don't ask me why but that was the most exciting thing to me. I could not wait to live in a house with stairs. Call me an odd ball, everyone else in the house complained that it was too hot upstairs or they didnt like to carry the laundry up the stairs, but I didn't mind at all. I thought it was fun!

I was also in love with that house because of all the trees in the backyard, lemons grew in a large plethora. We were never short on lemons, apricots, a few tiny oak trees, the street was lined with tall pines, we had peppers that grew, grapes, it was like a mini haven. I don't think we ever could have used all the lemons. The two trees produced so much fruit my dad would complain about having to pick them out of the grass.

That house is also where I fell deeper in love with music, the Ipod Touch 1st generation came out and I think i went through a pair of headphones every 2-3 weeks. My parents werent too happy about that but my eardrums were. Evinescense, Lincoln Park, Black veil Brides, and Rihanna became my heros. I ran to them when the rest of the work felt too scary to handle. I remember watching the music videos over and over. Dancing around my room with the music as loud as I could get away with. Which was pretty loud as long as it was still light outside.

I still do that, in my car the music is always full blast. Music became my escape all over again but this time it was everything I wanted to listen to which rocked my world. Figurativly and Literally.

Chapter 6

DisneyLand

Through all of this my mom was losing touch with herself. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to watch. The strong woman I once thought could rule the world was now bedridden. A lot. It was nothing she could have controled. She just fell to pieces and I had a front row seat.

It was my first heartbreak watching her shatter bit by bit. It felt endless, lonely, and daunting. My poor dad just had to keep going to work. That wasn't an option. he had three kinds and a sick wife he needed to provide for, and he did his damndest. We never went hungry, we had the new clothes still, we just had no savings. He couldn't keep up with it all by himself and I don't fault him for it. Our world was going through a forced change that none of us were ready for. At that point he wasnt even working at a job he liked. After everything crashed in 2008 he lost his fancy construction job.

He wasn't working with all the people he loved, he wasn't being paid properly, he was just working his ass off trying to make it. Lightning continued to strike,  a lot of screaming matches brewed, and it didnt help that my room was closest to theirs.

So hiding things? You could not.  No hiding anything, I knew all the struggles and annoyances.

Thank the Universe for headphones. I kept those things in almost 24/7.

Now, choir was not all bad. It did have some pretty fun moments when we got out of the classroom the few times we did. We ended up going to Disneyland, going back stage and recording a few disney songs as a class which I do have to say, was pretty fricken cool. To me we got the perfect songs, we did Hawiian Rollarcoaster Ride from Lilo and Stitch and The is Halloween from The Nightmare Before christmas. Two Iconic, what I consider to be, classics. Moments like that got me through.

That only took us a few hours and then we were free to roam Disney and enjoy all of the magic. For the first time since I was 5-6 years old. And then I could do whatever I wanted. All the ride choices were at my finger tips. It was the first time I felt Free.

Trips like tha gave me things to look forward to, and honestly thats all I needed.

It took absolutely forever to get our recordings back and I didnt end up buying one, we were struggling financially as the time and I was not about to add another expense to the plate. I knew I was taking enough. Probably too much. More than my parents could have handled at the time. But I knew that, and I was still messy as hell. It kept my room as my space so nobody could come in. It was mine. My Chaotic Castle. Where I was free to blast the music, dance, and sing all I wanted.

It was my home.

Chapter 7

Off a cliff

That chaotic castle didn't last and we ended up moving to another house, but this one hung off a cliff. We had to downsize again, so Ave and I were back in a room together, and quite unhappy about it. We already fought like we were mortal enemies and for a while the severity just got worse and worse. Then one day it was like a switch went off and we decided to just make the best of whatever situations came our way. Teamwork makes that dream work. You do what you gotta do.

Sharing that tiny room with her was hard. She didn't have a closet and had to use my brothers while he used a wardrobe. We barely had room to walk around. Each of us had a bed, a nightstand, and atop our 'Paige, Avery, Money, Boys' cabnet was an itty-bitty TV in the middle that we often faught over. Usually we could reach a mutual agreement when it came to NCIS or Law and Order: Svu.

To this day we can recite the opening by heart.

We shoved two tiny twin beds in that room and did our best to get through it. Her being a clean freak did not enjoy my mess that I allowed to take over everything. Eventually she got to the point were she would just shove everything to my side. I brushed it off with an eyeroll and a shrug.

Even worse I am not a fan of laundry. And as a lazy pre-teen I was not about to do it all the time. So I lived in dirty clothes and didn't care. Once a week we would go over to grandmas house to spend the night and she would always make sure I had clean clothes. She made sure we all did when we were over, she did what she could. I always wished It was more but you can only stretch a sheet so thin before it tares too, you know?

We also had a family dog that nobody really took the time to take care of. Crap and pee was a common occurance when you walked down the hall, it got to the point where it didn't even phase me anymore.

By this point nobody had come to our house in years. We really kept an isolated boat. It was hard, I was basically trained to stay quiet and thats what I did. I put my headphones in and went off to my own. Kinda like now its funny how everything comes full circle when you don't process it. Some things you can't just wish away.

They demand to be felt.

Chapter 8

That House

That house was one of the places that haunted my nightmares. It never felt safe or like home. I atribute that to it residing right next to a cemetary, talk about the Heebe-Jeebies. It felt wrong. While I spent all of my time in my room, my sister was smarter. She always had a knack for the more social butterfly side of things. She built her own support system of friends. She didn't wait for one to poof into existance in our household. She made sure she found people who actually cared about her. That's not something I learned until much later in life. You really need a group of people you can count on, its what makes you feel human, it brings you back down to earth. It humanizes you to yourself, as wild as that sounds.

When I was a kid i thought of myself as one of the wild things, like in that book 'Where the Wild things are." I even came with the scraggly hair to match.

Avery Rose taught me it's necessary to have people in your corner, because you cannot do everything yourself. No matter how hard you try. The world is a big place to take on by yourself and you will fail every time. Trust me.

Chapter 9

Basketball

Throught my life my family always tried to in some way shape or form keep me busy. Idle hannds never thrive. When I was small it was dance, but I grew tired of that quickly, then I was pushed head first into basketball. 10 years of it to be exact. Now that sport and I have always gone back and fourth. It's very much a love/hate relationship, But i can sit here today and honestly tell you I know that game like the back of my hand.

All the way down to Passing Game.

Its a game that tests you, pushes you to your limits, and forces growth. With some perseverance you make those sidelines and suicides your bitch. The running is good for your lungs. It helps you breath more clearly.

So note to self, basketball, the sport that needs to be played, and it needs to be played more. A hell of a lot more, and if you haven't lately- Go pick up a Basketball and start dribbling.

Your hand eye coordination probably needs it.

Chapter 10

Staying Active

Through-out my messiness, I did also stay active. The hustle has and always will be real. Its what drove me. The desire for better. If you aren't pushing yourself you arent growing. Without growth, you die. So in a sense, the hustle is the whole point to life, you just have to find your hustle. It's different for everyone.

The shoe just has to fit, you can't force it like Cinderella's step sister tried.

It won't work.

You have to find your niche, for me it's writing.

For you?

Well, what do you dream about?

[were-cheetah-stiles]

The College Years - Freshman Year (Chapter 4) - Stiles Stilinski

Author: @were-cheetah-stiles​

Title: “The First Patrol”

Characters: Stiles Stilinski & Reader/OFC

Warnings: Fluff, a teensy bit of explicit language. I think.

A.N.: Feel free to listen to any of the songs that I mentioned in the piece… or don’t let me tell you what to do. That’s also fine.

Summary: Stiles and Y/N go on your first patrol together to look for vampires in Berkeley.

Additional Note: I just realized that I have an issue with my timeline, like a very minor one, but whatever, try to ignore it as I clearly have been and will continue doing.

Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five

“So what are we supposed to be doing or looking for tonight?” You asked, breaking the silence. Stiles had picked you up in his old, light blue Jeep about a half hour before and besides small pleasantries, you two had not spoken much.

“Well, vampires… we are definitely looking for vampires for starters.” Stiles teased, grinning as he kept his face forward, watching the road in front of him.

“Oh good to know cause I was definitely not sure about that one.” You said sarcastically in return, a deep blush rising to your whole face.

Stiles chuckled softly and continued with more sincerity. “I don’t know, anything that just looks out of place, or seems shady. If you see a group of pale guys walking around at four in the morning, I think that’s a group that we follow…” Stiles glanced at you, you were nodding and watching him speak. He smiled slightly and looked back at the road.

“Okay, I can keep an eye out for that stuff… I mean, I am a New Yorker so my ’someone is being sketchy at night’ radar is finely tuned.” You joked.

“Is New York really that dangerous?” Stiles asked, skeptical.

“No.. not really, but I mean, when you are a small female, like myself, and you’re out late walking back to the train from like a concert or something and you’re alone?.. You know what your surroundings are. A measure of constant vigilance is just necessary, you know?” You answered honestly.

“That makes sense….” Stiles paused, not wanting the conversation to stop but not sure of where he should direct it next. “So why’d you leave New York? Left Coast really is the best coast?” He teased.

“You wish..” You smirked at him. “No, I just, I needed a change. Some weird… family stuff has happened in the past few years and I kind of wanted to escape… Don’t get me wrong, I love New York - it’s my home, it’s definitely where my heart is - but I needed a change and besides the vampires, Berkeley is pretty great too..”

“What kind of family stuff… if you don’t mind me asking…” Stiles was paying less attention to the road in front of him than he should’ve been and hit a pot hole that disagreed with the shocks in his car. He knew he’d pay for it later in rolls and rolls of duct tape.

You sighed. “It’s… really complicated, but I guess the biggest thing was my parents splitting up. It kind of sucked to be around and I, I really wanted out..” You explained, trying to maintain a smile, and not really wanting to tell the whole story and unload all of your baggage on this cute boy that you barely knew.

“I’m sorry, that definitely sucks.”

“It’s okay… Not a big deal.” You always underplayed how big of a deal it actually was to outsiders. “What about you?… Actually!” You stopped yourself mid-sentence, wanting desperately to veer the subject towards something cheerier. “I’m really curious as to how you became such an avid Mets fan.. did you live in New York when you were a kid or something?”

Stiles laughed. He took any opportunity ever to talk about his beloved Mets. “No, my mom grew up there. Actually, her grandparents emigrated through Ellis Island from Poland and anyway… she just got me onto the Mets at an early age because that’s what her parents raised her on.”

“Okay, well that makes sense.” You smiled, enjoying this conversation more than the previous one. “So how did your parents meet then? Was your Dad from New York as well?”

“No, he’s a California boy, born and raised, just like me. They met in college and she moved to Beacon Hills where he grew up and that’s where they raised me.”

“What do they do?” You asked, watching him drive and not watching for anything suspicious outside of the car.

“My dad is the Sheriff of the Beacon County Sheriff’s Department,” You nodded, and Stiles hesitated. “… and my mom was a teacher, but she died when I was ten so..” Stiles pressed his lips together, and stared ahead.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to….” Stiles shook his head, letting you know it was okay. You instinctively reached your hand over to his shoulder and rested it there for a moment. “I can’t imagine how hard that was.. and probably still is.” Your hand dropped back into your lap and you sat in an uncomfortable silence for a brief moment.

Stiles appreciated how sincerely and empathetically you comforted him, and glanced over at you. He smiled out of the corner of his mouth and made a right turn. He decided on a pit stop during their patrol that he hoped you would like. “It’s okay..” He finally said, catching some eye contact with you. “I miss her but I’m grateful I got the time that I did, and at least she taught me to be better than a Yankees fan….” Stiles smirked, his nostrils flaring as the devilish grin spread across his face.

“OH! I see how it is.” You smacked your lips and nodded your head, a smirk resting on his lips as well. You paused, checking your surroundings. “Aren’t we driving away from campus?” You questioned, catching what the last street sign said.

“Yea, I figured that since this is your first stakeout, patrol, whatever, that we were missing one key ingredient.” Stiles grinned and pulled into the drive-thru of a famous Californian eatery. “Have you ever had In-N-Out Burger?”

“Of course.” You laughed. He gave his order into the box and you ordered a chocolate milkshake and an animal style cheeseburger, and tried to offer to pay Stiles for her half, but he refused. You smiled to yourself thinking how his mother had also raised him to be a gentleman in her short time with him. 

You took a bite of the burger and cocked your head to the side, wiping sauce off your cheek, you smiled. “Still not Shake Shack…” You shook your head and lifted the straw to your milkshake to your small, but supple pink lips, curved up in a teasing smile.

Stiles enjoyed the playful nature of your relationship so far. He knew that he needed someone who could dish it out as much as he always did with everyone. “Oh come on! Shake Shack is the worst. Nothing compared to In-N-Out!” He yelled as you two sat in the brightly lit parking lot outside of the restaurant.

“Have you ever even had Shake Shack?!” You demanded to know with a serious smile.

“I mean no, but I don’t have to to know that it’s inferior to this.” Stiles took an exaggeratedly large and messy bite of his burger, while making direct eye contact with you.

You laughed loudly, making Stiles get butterflies in his stomach, and the blood rush to his cheeks. “Okay, well, I am very serious about Shake Shack.” You grinned. “So I’ll make you a deal. If you ever come out to New York, which now you have to, I will take you to a Met’s game at Citifield, WHERE THERE IS A SHAKE SHACK IN THE STADIUM..” You raised your voice jokingly to make a point, eliciting a laugh from Stiles, which elated you. “and we can decide then who the real winner is.” You pointed at yourself, intimating that you would eventually be victorious.

Stiles was grinning so hard over the fact that this beautiful and funny and interesting girl wanted to basically take him on a date where she promised to feed him and take him to see his favorite team in the world. “You’ve got yourself a deal… maybe a Subway Series game, then we can see who’s really the best on all fronts: Mets or Yankees and In-N-Out or Shake Shack.”

“You are so on.” You put your hand out to shake his, letting him now that you meant business. You took another sip of your shake, and thought of a story he would like. “You know, my Dad is actually a huge Mets fan, but my mom, sister and I all love the Yankees, and once, when I was like seven or eight, he took us to Shea Stadium, their old stadium..” Stiles nodded, finishing his burger while you talked. “and I’m pretty sure that the Mets weren’t even playing the Yankees, but I wore this huge oversized Yankees t-shirt and baseball cap to the game anyway, and I kept walking up and down the stairs near our seats and like glaring at the Mets fans…” The two of you had dissolved into a fit of giggles as you tried to finish the story. “…and all these die-hard, lifelong Mets fan.. old men kept like yelling obscenities at me and I was just like ’The Mets Suck!’” You shook your head as you remembered how ridiculous you were that day.

Stiles was still laughing. “I’m surprised no one like threw a hot dog at you or something.”

You covered your face with both of your hands as you laughed. “I know!…. I would’ve deserved it. What a little asshole.”

“Nah, I bet you were really cute…” Stiles smiled and broke eye contact, staring down at the empty wrappers. “Uh, should we head back towards campus?” He turned the keys in the ignition and listened to the engine turn over. You nodded and adjusted your seatbelt back over your body. 

Stiles watched you sipping at your milkshake and staring out the window. The street lamps highlighted your face in a way that made the butterflies come back as he drove back towards Berkeley, returning to your neglected patrol. “Do you mind if I put on some music?” He asked as he plugged his iPhone into his radio. You shook your head and listened as “Jesus Christ” by Brand New began playing through his speakers.

“You listen to Brand New?” You asked, a stunned look on your face.

“Yea, you know them?” Stiles asked, nonchalantly.

“…Of course.. They’re from New York, they’re huge around where I grew up….. I wonder what else you listen to…” You smirked at him.

“I guess you’ll just have to see what comes next on the playlist tonight.” Stiles was playing it as cool as possible. He did listen to and like Brand New but he played it especially because he hoped you would know them and it would give him some points with you.

“You know I can play this song on guitar?” You boasted, not being able to help yourself. You hadn’t felt this connected with someone since you left home and moved across the country.

“You play guitar? I play drums.” Stiles boasted back.

“The drums are super cool, and definitely way too hard for me to learn, so I’m impressed.” You smiled and looked down at your feet.

“I could teach you some simple stuff sometime..” Stiles offered. You nodded. “So what kind of music do you listen to?”

You sucked air into your mouth and grinned.“I guess you’ll just have to wait and see what comes up on my playlist when I drive on Tuesday night for our next patrol.”

“Okay, okay… I see how it is.” Stiles chuckled and nodded his head, sucking on the backs of his teeth. “What about movies? What’s your favorite movie?”

“Oh, I do not wanna say. It’s very nerdy and guys never believe me when I tell them and they end up quizzing me to see if I’m lying or something stupid like that.. What’s your favorite?”

“No, no, I asked first and, now I have to know.” Stiles laughed. You really knew how to pique his interests. “I promise, I will not quiz you or make fun.” Stiles lifted one hand off his steering wheel like he was taking a pretend oath to you.

You took an exaggerated breath. “Fine. My favorite movie is Star Wars. Not just one, like the franchise as a whole I just love so much. Even the ones people make fun of. I am loyal to Lucas.” You joked.

“No. Fucking. Way.” Stiles replied, trying to stare at you and not crash at the same time. Your eyes got really big as you looked back at him, worried about what he was going to say next. You had dug yourself into a nerdy grave, you knew it. “Who shot first?”

Your jaw dropped, and you tried to suppress a smile. “YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T QUIZ ME!” You yelled, and playfully shoved his arm. “And Han, of course, you asshole..” You laughed.

“Oh my god. Marry me?” Stiles joked, getting red over what he had just said out loud. You grinned bashfully and scratched a non-existent itch on your nose, trying to hide how red you got over that comment. “Star Wars is my all time favorite movie too. I remember the first time I saw it so vividly.”

“Me too!” You interjected, turning your body towards Stiles who was now just aimlessly and slowly driving through the Southern part of Berkeley’s off campus housing.

“Okay, your story first.” Stiles insisted.

You giggled, and leaned your head against the headrest to stare at Stiles as he drove. You tried not to focus on the cute upturn at the very tip of his nose, or the way that he messily shoved his hair up with gel, and how you usually hated that look but for him it was really working. “Um, so we had gone up to Cape Cod to visit some family and it was 1997, so I was just five years old, and I guess it was a rainy day or something but we went to the movies, and it was in theaters because it was the twentieth anniversary so they re-released it.”

Stiles cut you off. “I’m sorry, did you say that you were five in 1997?” You nodded. “Okay, so you’re two years older than me. We’re gonna discuss that later. Continue…”

You laughed quietly. “Okay, so I sat next to my cousin, who is older than me, and he was already obsessed with the movies and I remember watching him watch the opening crawl and he was so enthralled and excited, and then I remember the big starcruiser ships coming into view and I was hooked. That was it. I remember it like it was yesterday. It has been my favorite movie ever since. I even dressed up as an ewok that Halloween and Princess Leia the following year.. I loved it.”

“I’m going to need to see those pictures one day.” He joked, the butterflies floating through his stomach again. “I was seven when I first saw it and it was a crummy summer day for me too and it was my Dad’s off day and he was like ‘let’s watch my favorite movie growing up.’ We watched it and I remember thinking that Darth Vader was crazy scary but cool and that Han Solo was the man and that Leia was like the woman I was going to marry.” You laughed. “I was so into it that we watched all three that day, and then my mom got home and she was so pissed. She was like 'Noah, have you even taken Stiles outside today?! It’s beautiful out now. Have you fed him?!’ Meanwhile, my dad and I are covered in empty bags of popcorn, potato chips and candy wrappers. It’s still one of my favorite memories from growing up, and it is my favorite movie still too.”

“That’s really cute.” You mused, with a gentle smile.

Stiles blushed. “The funniest part is that the next day… Scott was already my best friend at this point… I went over to his house and I was like 'DUDE! We have to watch this movie!’ and Scott was like 'Meh’ and he has still never fucking watched it. It kills me.” Stiles laughed to himself, and saw you shaking your head.

“His loss.”

“Totally.”

“So how did you and Scott become friends?” You asked, as you two continued driving around aimlessly, and two hours left before sunrise.

You both drove around the rest of your patrol, not actually patrolling at all, but instead completely engrossed in each other’s stories. You talked more about movies, food, and stories about Scott and Stiles growing up, and what life was like after Scott got bit by Peter. You kept each other awake during an especially long shift and the crush that Stiles had developed on you grew substantially when he learned that you were so much more than just a pretty girl. You were funny, smart, quick, and had a ton in common with him. 

He dropped you off at your front door, waving as you got out of the car. He felt like he had just been on the greatest date of his life and he was devastated it was over, and furthermore, not actually a date. He wanted to kiss you so badly. Nothing crazy or intense; he just wanted to see what your lips would feel like. He’d spent most of the night staring at them. He walked in the door as Scott was making coffee before his early morning shift at a local dog shelter, and crashed his body into their long faux suede black couch.

“How was patrol with Y/N?” Scott asked, his voice still hoarse from sleeping.

“Great, man. It was so good.” Stiles yawned and kicked his shoes off, a sleepy grin plastered to his face.

Scott narrowed his eyes and walked over to Stiles, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. “So good? Did you even patrol or did you and Y/N just flirt all night?” Scott grinned a little.

“We patrolled…. a little… there was no flirting though. I was just getting to know her, you know, talking to keep each other awake.” Stiles barely believed himself.

“Do you think she likes you?” Scott asked his best friend, in between sips of the hot beverage.

“I don’t know, Scotty. Maybe. I definitely like her. She has the greatest laugh… it’s like……” Stiles trailed off and just shook his head, smiling from ear to ear.

“Alright, well try to actually do some patrolling next time in between all your 'talking’ and maybe we won’t have to save her from vampires again.”

Stiles ignored Scott, laying on the couch with his hands folded across his chest. He drifted off to sleep thinking about how you looked in the passenger seat of his car, the warm glow of street lamps racing across your face as he drove.

Chapter Three <- -> Chapter Five

[rxbxlcaptain]

Summer Away

Happy Birthday, @finns-roses​!! 

A while ago, after learning that we shared a love for horses, we discussed an AU in which Cassian’s family owned a ranch that Jyn visited for the summer. As a birthday present, I did my best to expand our discussed headcanons into a full fic. I hope I did it justice, my dear, and I hope you enjoy!!

AO3

If Jyn gained nothing from these two weeks, at least she’d have the landscape to enjoy. An hour outside out of the city and into the Arizona wilderness had its perks; mountains dotted the landscape towards the West, the tallest peaks dusted with snow, and to the East ran the Little Colorado River, which pooled into a lake on the property where Jyn now stood. Thanks to lake, small clumps of trees – real trees, not the cacti they had in the southern half of the state – littered the grounds.

It was, without question, strikingly beautiful.

“It’s just for a few weeks, Stardust.” Her father closed his door of the car and stood in front of her, resting his hands on her shoulders. “And then I’ll be home and you’ll be right there with me.”

Jyn nodded, determined to keep all signs of dissatisfaction with this arrangement off her face. Her father had been offered a chance to continue his physics research with scientists at CERN, the largest facility for particle research in the world, outside of Geneva. It was an opportunity Galen would be hard pressed to deny – in fact, it was an honor he had been working towards for years – but, knowing how much time he would spend in the lab, he worried taking Jyn to a country whose language she didn’t speak and culture she didn’t know would be dangerous, especially considering Jyn’s knack for finding trouble wherever she went.

So Galen had found another alternative for Jyn’s summer vacation: a family-owned ranch designed to give city kids a way to experience life working off the land. Wake at 5:30 in the morning, pastures of horses surrounding the place, work so hard you fall into bed exhausted at the end of the day. Or, at least, that’s the image Jyn had of the place.

Jyn wasn’t opposed the idea. Jyn enjoyed the outdoors, hiking and stargazing and the like; she had even gone through a serious horse phase as a child, but for eight years now, ever since Jyn’s mother had died before Jyn’s eighth birthday, her life had been centered around her Papa: she’d spent her days after school alongside him in the lab and her evenings curled up near him as they both read, her whatever book was currently assigned by her English teacher and him the newest publications in physics research. They were each other’s rock, the most important part of their lives, but, as Jyn grew older (college was only a few years away now), Galen worried perhaps he was too much a part of his daughter’s life, that perhaps he was stunting her growth by keeping her drawn to his side.

Hence the summer of separation, him to flying off to his work and her exploring who she was without her father to define her.

“That’s something you’ll be able to see here, you know,” Galen noted when Jyn didn’t reply, his eyes scanning the clear sky.

“See what, Papa?”

“The stars. Real ones, whole galaxies covering the night skies.” He smiled down at her. “Not the few we can see in the city.”

“They’ll make me think of you,” she assured him with a smile. (It did not wobble. It did not.)

“Oh, Stardust,” Galen said with a sad smile, “everything will make me think of you.”

A lump in her throat choked her next words, so Jyn threw her arms around her father’s neck instead, burying her face into the collar of his shirt, inhaling the scent of coffee and old books that clung there. Hugging her back tightly, Galen kissed the top of her head.

Jyn pulled away as someone called a hello from the porch of the property’s main cabin. A woman, a few years older than Galen, approached them, a boy, clearly her son, following a few steps behind.

“I’m Renata Andor, the property’s manager,” the woman greeted, a little bit breathless, as she reached them, extending her hand. Indicating the boy who followed her, she said, “And this is my youngest son, Cassian.”

“Jyn Erso.” She tried to smile (she really did) as she shook the woman’s hand and nodded to the boy. Up close, Jyn determined he was about her age, perhaps a bit older.

“And I’m her father, Galen,” Papa said next as he too took her hand.

“A pleasure to meet you both,” she told them, her smile stretched just a little bit too tight. “Cassian, why don’t you help Jyn take her bags inside, show her the girl’s cabin? I’ll give Mr. Erso a quick tour of the land.”

Cassian nodded, pulling the first of Jyn’s bags out of the open trunk. She yanked the second one onto her shoulder before he could reach for it, determined to show him she did know how to work for herself. His hand hesitated midair for a moment before he chuckled. Jyn stayed quiet as they trekked to the first of two cabins past the main house.

Cassian broke the silence first. “City girl, huh?”

Jyn gave the boy what her mother would have called call “a look.” The sarcastic, eyebrows-to-the-sky, “Do I look like I care what you’re saying?” kind of look Jyn had perfected before she’d started kindergarten.  

“Your boots are clean,” he shrugged, by way of explanation. They were, Jyn had to admit. The only form of boots she’d owned before this summer were wore out hiking boots that had covered the trails over South Mountain countless times over the years. Galen had bought new boots – real work boots, not the glittery kind of cowboy boots girls wore to country music festivals – for her a few weeks before. “I hope you didn’t spend too much money on them, because they won’t be clean by the end of the first week.”

“I’m not that delicate,” she shot at him. “I can handle a bit of mud.”

“Good.” As they neared the house, he asked, “Where are you from?”

“Phoenix.”

“Also good,” he grinned. “You know how to survive the heat.”

“Yeah,” Jyn agreed as he opened the door to the cabin, wiping his shoes off (those, Jyn noted, were covered in mud and noticeably not new) and ushering her in before him. “It’s called air conditioning.”

“I hope you’ll settle for cold water and some shade,” he told her with a half a grin, “because that’s the best you’ll get out here.”

Cassian left her alone to unpack after leaving her with some basic instructions. A packet waited on the bed labeled with her name, he told her, with a schedule and a map of the grounds; other campers would be arriving within the next few hours; she was free to explore until dinner, which would be served up in the main house, but he warned her to be careful around the animals until she got to know them. Jyn gave a quick goodbye to her father – knowing him, he’d delayed packing for his trip to Switzerland, and his plane left in a little under twenty-four hours, so he needed to return home soon – and flopped back onto her bed. (She’d been assigned a top bunk but, given how many sore muscles she expected to nurse over her time here, Jyn had considered it ideal to swap her assignment before her bunkmate arrived. None of the other girls milling around noted the switch.)

She met the other Andors at dinner: Estrella, the oldest and the only daughter, had taken charge of the kitchen by ordering the next oldest, Lucas, to carry the trays of completed food to each of the three long tables that filled the dining room. Cassian and his closest brother, Carlos, stumbled in the doorway at exactly six P.M., pointing at the clock and insisting to their sister they were, in fact, on time. She’d merely rolled her eyes before reminding them if they smelled of the barn (and they did bear the unfortunate marks of spending the last few hours surrounded by the horses), they would eat in the barn.

A chaotic stream of bickering reigned over the siblings until their mother walked through the door. Instantly, as if Estrella had not been waving her finger in her Lucas’s face a moment before, all the Andor siblings fell into an efficient assembly line, producing trays of steamed vegetables and rice and various forms of meat to stack upon the tables.

Mrs. Andor, whose curly hair had slowly escaped its neat bun over the day, leaving wasps of hair hanging over her temples, let out a large exhale seeing dinner prepared. Estrella rubbed a hand over her mother’s back as Cassian pressed a kiss to her temple.

Jyn, who was sitting between the girls who slept in the bunks beside her, Leia from northern Colorado and Shara from southern California, seemed to be the only one who noticed the familial exchange, most of the other campers absorbed in creating tentative friendships with the people they’d be sharing their bunks with for the next few weeks. Jyn thought she gained an important insight from her observations, however: while the city kids came to the camp to experience a few weeks away and perhaps to show off the new, fancy shoes they would rarely ever wear again, the Andors lived this life day in and day out. They ran a business, balancing keeping a horde of teenagers safe from livestock and themselves, as well as kept a ranch operating. Neither of which were an easy feat, but, combined, Jyn imagined it gave birth to extreme stress levels for all members of the family.

Regardless, Mrs. Andor greeted the campers, about 50 in all, who ranged in age from ten to eighteen, with a warm smile on her face. Each of the Andor children introduced themselves as well, and explained which part of daily activities they would oversee. Estrella ensured the campers completed their daily shores; Lucas led treks down to the river or to the mountains; Carlos and Cassian were in charge of the animals on the ranch (horses and cattle and pigs, oh my, Jyn thought with a smirk) and teaching the campers the proper ways to interact and care for them.

The campers were sent back to their cabins after dinner, with a suggestion from the Andors to take advantage of the early night; wakeup call would be early for their stay and they should enjoy the rest while they could. And, indeed, as the first fingers of sunlight danced over the colorful landscape, Mrs. Andor flipped the overhead light on in the girl’s cabin, calling them all to breakfast.

Jyn groaned, stuffing her face further into the pillow. She was much more of a night owl by nature.

“Up, up!” Leia ordered, her ever present smile clear in her voice as she poked at Jyn’s shoulder. “We gotta go get breakfast!”

Apparently she had no problem with mornings.

Jyn had just rubbed the sleep out of her eyes as she and Leia headed for the stables and their first lesson with the horses. (The Andors didn’t serve coffee to the campers, Jyn discovered. Reasonable, considering how young some of the campers were, but Jyn inherited both her parents borderline addiction to the substance and the summer suddenly darkened without the presence of coffee in her mornings.)

Cassian stood by the fence of the paddock, rubbing the nose of a steel grey mustang as the group approached. He nodded to the group, still focused on the animal in front of him, until of the boys leaned towards the fence.

“Don’t touch it!” He warned, his voice sharp with urgency. The boy drew his hand back quickly, slightly abashed but confused. Cassian turned to the whole group. “The fences are all electrocuted to keep the animals in. Otherwise, the feisty ones like this one—“ he jerked his head to indicate the mustang “—would undoubtedly try to escape. Best to keep your fingers away from it.”

Beckoning them forward, he led them into the barn, pulling one of the older mares out of her stall and into the aisle.

“Before we can teach you to ride them, you have to learn to care for them. Here,” he pulled out a box of grooming supplies and showed the campers how to use the different brushes. After dividing them into groups of four and distributing brushes, Cassian walked three more horses into the crossties of the grooming stalls and had them copy what he’d just done.

“You’ve done this before,” he said over Jyn’s shoulder as he watched her rub a curling comb in small circles over the withers of a chestnut mare.

Jyn nodded. “My mother rode horses as a child and signed me up for lessons when I was younger. It’s been years, though.” She shrugged as the images of hours spent in a barn like this one filtered through her mind. Years had faded the memories, but the smile on her mother’s face as Jyn had warmed to the animals stood out to her.

Those memories, she thought, were half the reason her father had decided on sending Jyn here for the summer. A connection back to her mother, a gentle reminder that, though Lyra was gone from their lives, she stayed with them.

“Not bad for a city girl,” Cassian smiled. “But I’ll bet you road English, not Western.”

Jyn shrugged. “I had to leave something for you to teach me.”

The difference between the two disciplines, Jyn learned quickly, was vast. English saddles and bridles were more structured, built for elegance and show. Western tack was looser, designed by those who valued practicality and hours of hard labor. Jyn figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to transfer her knowledge of one to the other, but, with how Cassian teased her technique of tacking the horse, no such transfer was guaranteed.

Her riding lessons were years ago, she told Cassian the first time he assured her lessons would be a breeze for her, and she barely remembered anything she’d learned. Muscle memory, he assured her right back, was a powerful thing and she shouldn’t be so quick to doubt herself.

(When she was able to smoothly trot around the arena without nearly bouncing out of the saddle long before the other campers, he didn’t resist giving her an expression that read “I told you so.”)

Every day, Jyn found herself looking forward to her time in the barn with the horses. Call it nostalgia or perhaps her skill with the horses, but Jyn’s day brightened as she entered the barn and, on days when she didn’t have assigned tasks with the horses, found herself spending her free time with Cassian.

“How come you don’t share your gelding with the others?” Jyn asked him one day, leaning against the stall door as he groomed the steel grey mustang named Kay-too (a name a young Cassian had appointed for it, since the horse reminded him of Kay, his father’s mount with similar coloring).

“You’re more than welcome to try,” Cassian told her, “but even Carlos can’t ride this one. He’s too skittish around most people.” Cassian rubbed the horse’s neck, just behind his ear, and Kay relaxed under his touch. “We rescued him, so he probably had some bad experiences before he came here, isn’t very trusting now. My father was about ready to sell him when I started riding him.”

“Or you’ve specifically trained him to react that way to the strangers wandering around so you have one that’s all your own,” Jyn ventured, her tone teasing.

Cassian laughed in response, putting a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell my mother.”

The conversation descended into silence, Cassian’s brush and the other horses shuffling in their stalls the only sounds in the barn.

“My brother and I ride out to go check on the cattle at the end of the day,” Cassian blurted out after a minute. “You should join us.”

Jyn raised her eyebrows at him. “Is that allowed?”

“Not normally, but you ride better than the others,” Cassian shrugged, picking up one hoof to scrape out the dirt. “I’ll make an exception.”

“Hey, as long as it doesn’t interfere with dinner, I’m on board.” She and Cassian exchanged a smile and decided on a time to meet.

Carlos waved as she joined them that evening. “You’re finally joining us,” he remarked. “I mean, you’ve been here, what, two weeks already? I’m surprised it took my brother this long to scrape up the courage.”

Jyn was just about to ask what he meant – Cassian had no idea she could even ride when she’d arrived two weeks ago – but Cassian appeared then, insisting Jyn needed to tack her horse or they’d fall behind schedule. She didn’t miss the significant look passed between the two brothers as Cassian ushered her away.

“I bet this is beautiful as the sun sets,” Jyn said as they trotted towards the cattle. She pointed out towards the mountains, their snowy tips already glowing as the sun moved lower in the sky. “I can’t see them from my cabin.”

“Lucas will take you on a hike at sunset at some point,” Cassian assured her. “There’s a pit for a bonfire about there.” He pointed at a spot part way up one of the mountain trails. “It’s normally everyone’s favorite, seeing the entire ranch all lit up.” His voice sounded reverent, in awe of the beauty his home had.

“How long have you guys owned this place?” Jyn asked.

“Our parents bought it right after they got married,” Lucas said, “a million years ago or whenever that was.”

“We’ve only opened the camp a few years ago to bring in extra money after our dad died,” Cassian explained.

“Yeah, to keep that guy Krennic off or backs.” Lucas rolled his eyes.

“Krennic?” Jyn asked Cassian.

“Rich guy who bought the next property over. He really wanted this one, too.”

“Never understood why,” Lucas said, his voice distracted as he looked out over the herd. “Doesn’t do anything legitimate with his land. Just kinda keeps it for the hell of it.”

“Mom was tempted to sell this place for a bit,” Cassian told her. “It’s worth a lot more money now than when she and dad bought it. But we were all born and raised here and, well,” he shrugged as his voice got tighter, “it’s our last piece of dad. No one wanted to sell it, so Estrella came up with a plan to build this.”

Jyn hummed her understanding. That explained the kind of stress the Andors went through to keep this place alive and the guests returning. Jyn thought of the last piece she had of her mother – a crystal pendant she wore around her neck at all times – and then pictured selling it. She shivered at the thought.

“Must be weird, though, having stranger come and invade your family’s home.”

Cassian smiled at her. “I’ve enjoyed this summer.”

Jyn had the honor of meeting Orson Krennic herself a few days later when the man stopped by for what Cassian sarcastically referred to as a “neighborly chat.”

“All his visits do is stress out my mother,” Cassian complained when he appeared just after breakfast and Jyn could see why. The man was pompous, that much was clear, even from a distance. He held himself like he stood taller than he was and wore a loose, white shirt stolen directly from the set of an old western (“Who wears white to a ranch, anyway?” Cassian sneered, and Jyn couldn’t help up agree). His hair was too neatly combed and his hands too soft to have ever spent a day doing manual labor in his life. The entire Andor family was on edge while he was on the property.

“Come on,” Cassian suggested as the sun started to set over Krennic’s visit. “Let’s get out of here for a bit.”

Cassian led her along the river in a different direction than they traditionally hiked. A jagged rock formation jutted out from the shores of the river. Hidden in the middle was a flat rock surrounded by high sides, creating a natural seat the terrain.

“This was my spot when I was a kid,” Cassian told her. “Whenever I had a fight with one of my siblings, my parents knew to find me here.”

“It’s relaxing,” Jyn said, leaning back against the rock. The shaded air between the rocks was vastly cooler than the air outside and the bubbling river created wonderful background noise.

“I’m glad you think so,” Cassian said, settling next to Jyn. Their elbows knocked and their fingers brushed. For a moment, neither of them moved, before Jyn moved her hand over his, interlocking their fingers.

“You’re leaving soon,” Cassian noted, his thumb brushing over Jyn’s knuckles.

Jyn nodded. “Just a few days.”

“I’m glad you came this summer, but I’ll miss you when you leave.”

Glancing over at him, Jyn felt a tug on her heartstrings. Cassian had made the summer so much less lonely than she had imagined, given her someone to connect to while she was so far away from her father. “I’ll miss you too, Cassian.”

His eyes flickered between her eyes and her lips for a moment. He hesitated just a moment too long, because as soon as his head began to move in, a noise startled them backwards.

“Cassian!” Lucas shouted, his voice echoing between the rocks. Jyn and Cassian scrambling onto higher ground to find Lucas. “Come on,” he waved when they came into view, seeming unsurprised to find Jyn alongside his brother. “Mom’s going to notice if you’re missing from dinner.”

Three days later, Jyn’s bags were packed and sitting outside her cabin’s door, ready whenever Papa arrived to drive her back to Phoenix. She’d barely seen Cassian over the last few days, though whether that was because of any lingering awkwardness over their encounter – maybe he’d gone over all the reasons why kissing a girl who’d be leaving in the next few days was a bad idea and decided to let her down gently – or because he was busy with his duties on the ranch, Jyn wasn’t certain.

She’d resigned herself to never learning one way or the other as she spotted her father’s car driving along the long entrance road to the property when she heard her name called out. She turned and found Cassian, slightly breathless and still smelling of the barn, running her direction.

“I couldn’t let you leave just yet,” he told her, grabbing hold of her shoulders lightly.

“Oh really?” Jyn asked, her tone bordering on sarcastic. “And just when will I be free to go?”

“After I’ve done this,” he said and pressed his lips against hers, one hand coming up to frame her face. He pulled back after a moment, his eyes still closed, resting his forehead against hers. “But I’ll miss you.”

“If you ever miss me too much,” Jyn said, pulling a piece of paper out of her pocket and stuffing it into his hand. When she’d writing the note, Jyn worried she might have been following too much of the script of a romantic comedy, but she was glad she had it now. “Give me a call sometime.”

“I’ll do that,” he promised her, pocketing the paper. He glanced over her shoulder. “But, for now…”

“I suppose it’s goodbye for now, Cassian Andor.”

“Goodbye, Jyn Erso.”

She hefted her bag onto her shoulder, flashing back to when she’d been so reluctant to follow Cassian at the beginning of the summer. Who would have guessed she’d find it so difficult to walk away at the end of it?

“Hello, Papa,” she greeted, throwing her arms around his neck in a hug. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too.” He held her close for a moment, before pulling back with a twinkle in his eye. He looked over to where Cassian stood waving before saying, “I take it that means you had a good summer, Stardust.” Galen barely contained the laughter in his voice as she dropped her bags in the trunk.

Gazing around at the beautiful landscape one last time, her eyes lingering on the boy leaning against the front porch railing a moment longer, she smiled. “You could say that.”

[retrogirlwrites]

My parents’ anniversary passed two weeks ago and I didn’t realize it until yesterday

I mean, why would I, they’ve been divorced for four years and I doubt my siblings could even tell you the date of their anniversary

I thought of my grandparents’ anniversary on January 23 but not my parents’ six days later and something about that feels wrong

Now it’s Valentine’s Day

I’m about as far from a romantic as you can get. I don’t want a romantic relationship, I don’t want to get married, anything like that. I am sentimental, though. I respect commitment in love. I do want to be in love - I just know it won’t be romantically.

I realized as the 31st came and went without a second thought on my part, my parents weren’t a very good example of love you want in a partner. They loved us, yes, but their relationship is not something I want for myself.

But I started thinking and realized that even though my parents weren’t the best example, I have good examples.

My grandparents were married when they were 17 and 22. They stayed married for 50 years, until my grandma died, and even now 19 years later my grandpa has never remarried - he still loves her.

My aunt and uncle were married when they were 19 and 22 and they’re going to have their 46th anniversary this year. They’ve been through two kids, five grandkids, the loss of three of their four parents, cancer, a heart attack... and they’re still together and they still love each other.

My aunt wore my grandma’s wedding dress when she got married. Maybe it’s the dress? Maybe not, another aunt and uncle have been married 47 years this year and they’re still together, too. Maybe it’s just my grandparents’ example.

Whatever the reason, they have all been there my whole life. They’ve set examples for me, too. Though my idea of commitment and my desires for a partner are very different from my aunts’, I know what to look for and I know what to run from.

I’m lucky, to have grown up in such a tight knit family. Sure there are a few skeletons in the closet but at the end of the day any one of us would do anything for another. My mom, when I went away to college, told me “I would move heaven and earth if any one of my nieces or nephews called me for help. You know all of your aunts and uncles would do the same. You can always call if you need help.” I haven’t needed help - but I am going to stay with an aunt and uncle on my spring break. I’m not going home, which feels weird but also necessary. I’ll get to do some networking at my dream job... and see my grandpa, and their new puppy, and my cousins and their kids.

When I think about the family my grandparents built, I cry. Often. See, my grandpa joined the Marine Corps and right after their wedding my grandparents moved away from the only home both of them had ever known. After the Marines my grandpa enrolled in the Los Angeles Police Academy. From small town Colorado to LA is a big change. They lived in a trailer park when my two oldest aunts were born. But my grandpa made it. He became an officer, then a detective. My other aunt, uncle, and mom were born when they were living in Reseda, in the Valley. My grandma went back to college after dropping out of CU Boulder to get married - she got her bachelor’s and then her master’s from CSUN. My grandpa retired from LAPD as a Lieutenant in 1980, after 26 years. He had gotten the job of Chief of Police in his hometown of Craig, CO. He and my mom moved to Craig in the summer of ‘80, after my mom finished elementary school. All of her siblings were older, out of high school. Two were married, one was engaged and none of them left Southern California. My grandma had one more year left on her degree, so she stayed too. In 1981 she joined them in Colorado, back to the place she grew up. My mom didn’t go to the same high school as all of her siblings, but she graduated from the same school as both of her parents.

While our family name is still all over Craig, we’ve expanded. A lot still in Southern California, but now in Northern California too, and on the east coast. When my grandparents moved to LA County in the early 50s, I doubt they imagined where we would all be now. 5 kids, 13 grandkids, and 17 great-grandkids later, we’re still the Sherman family. Just... a lot more of us. All 25 of us, and by extension 44 of us, are a testament to my grandparents’ love, commitment, and unwillingness to give up on anything.

Happy Valentine’s Day from a shameless sentimental.