#this post brought to you by my fiancée lost her sandwich
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The most dangerous words in ADHD are “and then I put it down”
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TAG MiniBang 2021
Because the combined bad influences of Flyboy and Sonata were at work here we also decided to bend the rules a little and post early...
I was privileged to work with one of my best friends on this project, @misssquidtracy . We went a little rogue (seems to be a theme for us) and shared both parts of the challenge with both of us contributing to the art and the writing. Squiddy provided a beautifully done pallet knife piece as the background for my foreground art and we plotted the story together to ensure that it worked for both of us. We had been looking forward to sharing the writing but unfortunately, due to life constraints on her part she was only able to write a little of the fic but what she did add perfectly compliments the tone and style of my writing.
Big thanks to @tagminibang ) @godsliltippy ) for organising this event.
So, here it is, our offering to the TAG Mini Bang. We hope you enjoy it.
Ting ting ting
“Not again,” Virgil groaned, hauling himself up the stairs from the kitchen to the lounge. He regretted ever giving Gordon that bell, he really did. Yes his brother had gone through a tough time, yes he had scared the hell out of them when the Chaos Crew had left him at the bottom of the ocean in his mangled craft, yes they were incredibly grateful that he was alive and mostly whole, but if they had to hear that dinging one more time they might possibly murder him themselves.
“Yes, Gordy, what do you need?”
“I’m lonely, and I’m hungry, come and sit with me for a bit?”
“Sure-”
“But maybe make me a sandwich first?”
“A sandwich?”
“Yeah, with extra cheese and a pickle on the side, not too large a pickle but not too small that it’s gone in one bite. I want to taste it, you know, but not be overwhelmed.”
“Sure-”
“And can you get me a drink too? One of my special milkyshakes, you know, with the ice cream and frozen banana in it?”
“Coming right up,” Virgil sighed, heading back down to the kitchen again.
“Gordon still demanding everything and anything?” Scott asked as he jogged in from the poolside. His T-shirt was sticking to his chest and his hair was damp with sweat but he still looked like he could do it all again. Not that they would have time, they were lucky if they got to do any planned exercise at all, usually they were forced to skip it and work out on the job when a call came in.
“Of course he is,” Virgil growled, slapping a slice of cheese on a piece of bread with far more force than necessary.
“What did the cheese do to you?”
“It’s guilty by association.”
“Ah,” Scott said, like that explained things perfectly.
A few slices of chicken received the same treatment and Scott wondered if the meat had actually been dead when it arrived on the island or if Virgil had simply smacked it into submission so well that the chicken had flown clear into next week and arrived as sandwich filling.
“Can you fix his drink?” Virgil asked.
“Can’t gotta shower this off before Grandma accuses me of stinking up the place again.”
“Any excuse,” Virgil scowled. “It would only take you a second.”
“A second too long, bro, I’m escaping while I can and you’d be wise to do the same,” Scott said, heading for the stairs and freedom.
“How can I escape when Gordon needs help?”
“You’re forgetting one important thing,” Scott told him wisely.
“I am? And that would be…”
“John’s home.”
Virgil snorted out a laugh. “He’s less likely to do it than you are.”
“No, you're misunderstanding me. If John’s home that means…” Scott let his sentence trail off into silence heavily filled with insinuation.
“Sel’s here,” Virgil finished triumphantly, catching on perfectly.
“Give that Tracy a prize,” Scott grinned, shooting triumphant finger guns his brother’s way as he headed up the stairs.
And they said that John was the genius in the family, they hadn’t seen Scott at his most devious. Virgil wasted no time in yanking out his phone and texting the witch to come and take over.
“Here’s your sammich, Squidward,” Selene cooed, plonking the plate down on Gordon’s lap while smacking a kiss to his forehead. “Virgil started it but I finished it for you, Brains called him down to his lab with some kind of air filter emergency so I took over. I brought you some of those crisps you like from my private stash too.”
“The cheesy curl ones?” Gordon asked hopefully.
“Yep,” she grinned, waggling a family sized bag of Quavers in his general direction.
“Did you bring my drink?” Gordon asked around a mouthful of chickeny goodness. Say what you wanted about Virgil but he made a damn good sandwich, even if Gordon could taste that this was made with a little less love and a little more impatience than usual.
“No, sorry, did you want one? Virgil didn’t say that. I’ll go get you something, just wait right there.”
"Not like I can leave if the mood takes me," Gordon grumbled as he opened the chip bag.
She was already gone, only to race back in a few moments later with a can of coke.
“What? What’s wrong, boo?” Selene asked when she saw the pouting look of disappointment on Gordon’s face.
“It was supposed to be one of my special milkyshakes,” he whined.
“Right, got it, my bad!”
She was gone again, taking off to the kitchen where, upon closer inspections, she did indeed find the beginnings of a milkshake. There were two scoops of ice cream already in the blender, melting in the warmth of the room. A half peeled banana sat abandoned on the counter next to a carton of milk.
“Typical,” she groused as she set about breaking up the banana, pouring the milk and setting it to blend as she tidied the mess away. Once done she poured it into a tall glass, added a straw and a few slices of fresh banana to decorate the edges, just as he liked it, and delivered it to the waiting aquanaut.
“Great, thanks, Sel,” he grinned, handing her his now empty plate and swapping it for the glass. She put the plate on the coffee table and sat on the couch opposite him.
“Anything else I can do for you?”
“Sit with me and keep me company?” he begged, looking so miserable and pathetic that she couldn’t say no.
“Of course I will.”
Gordon swung his injured leg up and she moved to sit next to him on the couch, placing a cushion on her lap for him to rest his cast covered foot on.
Gordon settled down with a contented sigh, sucking happily on his straw, the milkshake level in the glass steadily dropping.
“I’m bored,” Gordon bitched five minutes later.
“That peace lasted a long time,” Selene laughed, putting her phone down on the side table to give him her full attention. “What can I do to help? Do you want to watch something or play a game?”
Gordon made a face. “You’re crap at games, Sel.”
One eyebrow rose in disbelief. “I wouldn’t exactly say crap…”
“You tried to play with Alan and died three times in two minutes, lost all your lives and were forced to float along behind him as a ghost for the rest of his turn.”
“Anything is crap when you say it like that,” Selene huffed.
“Only when it’s true.”
“Tell me then, oh great games master, what do you want to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Then don’t moan you’re bored,” she pointed out.
“I mean there’s nothing to do. No one is around.”
Selene gestured to her chest. “Am I suddenly invisible?”
“No, of course not,” he scoffed. “That would be far too cool, why don’t you have witch powers like that?”
“Because I live in the real world, not a movie?”
“Lame,” he declared, dismissing it.
“Back to the original point that I am, in fact, right here. Therefore your comment that no one is around is redundant.”
“I meant no one I can do anything with.”
“Thin ice, bub, thin ice.”
“I meant like my brothers or someone. Alan is busy revising for his final exams, Virgil’s with Brains and I’ve no idea where Scott is but I think he’s avoiding me, which is just mean if you ask me. I’m a delight.”
“Yeah, you sure are,” she drawled, not sounding too convinced. “You’re also forgetting a brother.”
“Who?”
“John? You know, gorgeous ginger love of my life that’s chilling in his room right this minute? That brother?”
“John? No way.”
“What’s wrong with John?” she squawked indignantly. Her man was the most perfect of people, amazing and fabulous, just all round awesome. Although she might be a tad biased.
Gordon shrugged, scrunching his nose up in a ‘meh’ kinda way that said everything and nothing.
“No, come on, tell me what you meant,” she demanded.
“No offence, Sel, but John’s a bit…”
“A bit what?” she asked, her tone warning him that he was in very dangerous territory.
Gordon, with the grace of an elephant and confidence of a man that knew he was injured and therefore wouldn’t get slapped, plowed on.
“A bit boring.”
“Boring?!” she hollered, her voice travelling to the four corners of the island so effectively that Alan lifted his head, wondering if some distant God was echoing his thoughts as he slogged through his history homework.
“How very dare you!” Selene continued, working up a good glare that Gordon was completely immune to. He simply sipped the last of his milkshake, smacked his lips and raised an eyebrow, daring her to do something about it.
“He is not boring.”
“Matter of opinion,” Gordon shrugged, handing her the glass to put down on the table.
“Right, that’s it, you can besmirch my fun factor but I will not allow you to do so to my man. That’s a step too far.” She gently, for which he was thankful, shoved his leg off her lap and dragged his hover chair over from its spot beside Virgil’s piano.
“Get the hell in, hoppy, we’re going for a ride.”
-x-
"You deal with him, he's driving me nuts and pissing me off at the same time."
"Me? I'm the very picture of perfection, I could never drive anyone nuts."
John declined to comment on that one for fear of never stopping, he had twenty-four years worth of stories after all.
“The pissing you off is subjective too,” Gordon finished triumphantly.
"He's your problem now," Selene announced, shoving Gordon's hover chair further into the room before making her escape, slamming the door shut behind her.
John closed his eyes, praying for patience. His fiancée was well known for her legendary patience when it came to pampering and mothering his family whenever any of them were sick or injured. She'd spent almost every day with Gordon since his run in with the Chaos Crew and had done so with relentless cheer, for her to have given up now was not a good sign.
"What did you do?"
"Nothing!" Gordon protested hotly.
"Are you sure?"
Gordon averted his gaze, suddenly taking great interest in a dust particle dancing across the shaft of sunlight filtering in through the window, "Yes, I'm sure. I wasn't doing anything. That was part of the problem."
"Ah," there it was. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"I'm so bored," Gordon wailed. "And your girlfriend is being mean to me."
"Fiancée," John corrected him, not looking up from his work.
"It's not my fault I hate sitting around doing nothing all day. I’ve gone from a physically and mentally intensive, fifty plus hour a week job, to sitting on my ass from dawn until dusk. Can you blame a guy for getting twitchy?"
"Unfortunately, you don't have much of a choice at the moment," John reminded him, quite needlessly he thought.
"Gee, thanks for the reminder," Gordon huffed, trying to cross his arms although the cast and sling he was sporting prevented it. That just seemed to annoy him even more.
"I can't do anything right now! How do you do it?"
"Do what?" John asked, squinting through his magnifier at the small window frame he was carving from a piece of polymer clay.
"Just sit around all day."
John raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "I don't sit around all day."
"OK, float around then. It's not like you're actively running around like the rest of us are."
"I'll pretend I never heard you say that," John scowled, wishing Selene had dumped his brother into the sea instead of into his quiet, peaceful room.
"You're sitting around right now," Gordon pointed out, gesturing to the desk John was sitting at, which was currently doing double duty as a work table for his latest project.
"One day you'll learn to appreciate the benefits of a quiet, occupied mind and a still body," John told him.
Gordon sighed, propping his good elbow on the desktop, his chin resting in his upturned palm as he watched his brother fiddling with tiny things that seemed utterly useless to him.
"What are you even doing?"
"Working on a series of book nooks for Sel's side of the bookcase," John answered, sounding slightly distracted as he measured the finished window against its place in an intricately carved brick wall.
"Why?"
"Because she likes them."
"I mean why are you making it? Can't you just buy her one? It's not like you can't afford it."
"Where's the challenge in that? Besides, things are always more special when you make them yourself."
Gordon yawned and leant forward to rest his head on the tabletop.
"Do you want to help?" John offered, although honestly Gordon's version of helping was always patchy at best.
Gordon scooted closer to look over John's shoulder, eyes darting over the rectangular box that he was building the nook inside. About the size of two thick books sandwiched together, the nook already had a little cobbled street and two shop fronts in place. The tabletop was scattered with a selection of impossibly tiny screwdrivers, picks, scalpels and other instruments of possible torture that he couldn't hope to name.
"Pass," he announced decisively, flicking the control of his hoverchair so he spun in a wide circle, pointing to the door. "I'm out."
"Peace at last," John sighed, flicking his magnifier back into place over his right eye as he set aside the window to be baked later and reached for a fresh blob of clay.
-x-
"What ya dooooooing?" Gordon yodelled, slamming the bedroom door open so hard that it smacked into the wall and shook several picture frames. He scooted his way into the room without even waiting for an invite.
"Gordon!" John huffed, clutching his heart where it was trying to leap out of his chest from the shock of his brother’s sudden, and very noisy, entrance.
"Hi, I got bored, thought I'd drop in on my favourite big brother," Gordon grinned as he glided his hoverchair closer.
"Are Scott and Virgil busy?" John asked, that would be the only reason Gordon would have promoted him to his favourite.
"Yes," Gordon admitted, "but that's not the reason why I'm here."
John turned his head to shoot him a raised eyebrow of doom, clearly communicating without words that he didn't believe him in the slightest.
"So, what are you doing?"
"Working on this book nook," John replied patiently, holding up the small cauldron he was crafting.
"The same one?"
"Yes."
Gordon’s eyes nearly fell out of his head, "Still? It’s been four days!"
"Yes," John hissed out, starting to get frustrated by the constant questions.
"Why?"
"Because it takes a long time. If you're going to do a project you should do it right."
"At the speed you're going it's gonna take forever," Gordon snorted, casting an assessing eye over the work John had already done.
"That doesn't matter," John assured him. "It's not really about the time it takes or the end result, it's about the process, the journey to get there."
"Sounds lame to me," Gordon yawned.
"Obviously," John drawled, rolling his eyes.
"What do you mean by that?" Gordon demanded to know, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.
"Because it's you."
"Hey! Rude."
"Accurate," John said, placing the little cauldron down and selecting another piece of clay which he placed on a ceramic tile.
"Why?"
"Because it requires a calm mind. It's good to slow down sometimes and just be still."
"Says the console jockey."
Console Jockey? He did not just say that!
"So you don't think my job is stressful? Or as tiring and important as yours?" John snapped, wondering if it was bad form to smack your injured brother around the head with a partially constructed book nook. He glanced at the nook, he had put a lot of work into it… It would be a shame to waste it. That thought alone saved Gordon.
“Well, yeah I get that it might be a bit stressful, but it’s not like you have to do much that puts you in danger, not like us,” Gordon continued, digging his hole even deeper, a hole that John was looking forward to shoving him into.
“We all have our specialities, you couldn’t do your job without me doing mine,” John retorted, trying very hard not to let Gordon’s comments get to him. Gordon would never understand what it was like for him to be stuck so far away from the action, away from his brothers when things were going wrong.
Gordon, thankfully for him, had been unconscious from the moment he had activated his emergency code. He hadn’t heard the frantic calls going out over the comms as the family mobilized to help him. He hadn’t heard the desperate scramble as Thunderbirds took off, racing to the scene. But John had heard it all.
John had been the one to stay on the line with Gordon, talking to him the entire time, knowing that he probably wouldn’t hear it but feeling that he needed to say it all the same. He wanted to know that if his little brother regained consciousness for even a second he would hear a familiar voice, that he would know that they were coming, that they would rescue him. He would know that he wasn’t alone.
He knew what it was like for people that were in danger, knew the comfort they got from someone talking to them, listening to their stories, being there for them verbally if not physically. John was often the one that spent the most amount of time with those they rescued, keeping their spirits up as much as possible until his brothers got there.
His brothers were seen by their rescuees as the real heroes, the ones that leapt in and plucked them out of danger, but John was the one that got them that help, the one that made sure the rescue played out as best it could, liaising and coordinating until the job was done. But Virgil, Scott, Gordon and Alan were the ones that got the thanks , the ones that got the hugs after they dropped their charges off, not John.
Not that he minded too much, he knew that his job was just as important as theirs, maybe even more so because, when someone put out that call for help, when they sent their desperate plea out into the world, they deserved to know that someone would always be listening out for it, that someone would hear and that help would come.
He knew all of this, and he knew that Gordon did too, it was just the frustration of inactivity that was making him say the things that he was. John just wished that that knowledge made it easier to listen to.
“I might not be doing the physical rescuing,” John continued, feeling the need to push his point home. “But I work just as hard, when you’re home you’re off duty until a call comes in, you can relax, swim, watch movies and laze around until you’re needed. When I’m up there I’m on duty 24/7 and even when I do manage to catch some sleep it’s not deep or particularly restful. Any little noise, any call that triggers the system's keyword algorithm gets transferred automatically, I have to go from asleep to awake in seconds to take it.”
Gordon was quiet for once, watching him closely. John didn’t like it, it made him feel like an exhibit in a zoo. And here we have the little seen Tracy, see how he stays inside his hide and hardly ever ventures out… he knew how they saw him, why they likely thought he had the easy job.
“These help, they give me something else to focus on. I need to keep my mind active and challenged while still trying to relax.” John paused, trying to think of a way to explain his thinking that Gordon might understand.
“These are almost like a meditation,” he started. Gordon understood meditation and finding your zone. “Creating something out of almost nothing. It keeps my mind focused, helps with finger dexterity and hand eye coordination with the added bonus of it relaxing me. It’s good to slow down and take some time to do something creative, you should try it some time.”
Gordon listened to his brother and he tried to take in all his words, he tried to understand the meaning behind them, he really did, but it just didn’t make any sense to him. He understood about wanting to be lazy, to sit around and do nothing sometimes. He loved to laze on the couch with his snackies and an Into the Unknown marathon playing out on the holoscreen, but that was watching something exciting, interesting, to him that was relaxing. This...whatever it was that John was actually doing, made no sense whatsoever to him. The idea of trying to relax by actually thinking...that was the most alien concept of all.
Gordon knew, probably better than his family gave him credit for, what it was like to be mislabelled. Within every sibling pool, there were the mandatory roles: the serious one, the caring one, the smart one, the funny one, the calm one, the angry one, the one who sang in the shower, et cetera. He’d proudly embraced the role of ‘the funny one’, and had diligently flown the flag for the humour camp for as long as he could remember. If a brother came home from a rescue in a slump and needed a cheery pick-me-up, it was Gordon who stepped up to the task, irrespective of his own mood. His smile and laugh were infectious, and he had yet to encounter a frown he couldn’t (eventually) turn upside down.
But with every ‘role’ came misconceptions. Scott was serious, therefore people were quick to automatically assume that he was a killjoy. Similarly, John’s intellect and preference for solitude often went hand in hand with him being branded antisocial, since there was apparently no possible way someone could enjoy their own company so much, yet still pursue and maintain meaningful relationships with actual people.
Gordon was no stranger to this treatment. He liked to laugh and be spontaneous, and consequently, was often regarded as the Tracy who didn’t take his work seriously, the Tracy who had the attention span of a gnat (albeit a very handsome one), and the Tracy who couldn’t be trusted with anything that required delicacy, be it physical or emotional. His affinity for making people laugh, though an exceptional quality, frequently acted as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, his relentless optimism made him the most effective of the bunch when it came to emergencies involving children and young adults. On the other hand, it sentenced him to a fate where the bad jokes he cracked would always be two steps ahead of the secret deep thinker that lay within.
“Let me see it again,” Gordon sighed, trying his best to be a supportive and understanding brother, since he did feel a little bad about the things he had just said. He hadn’t meant to say them, they had just come out. That was the trouble with being laid up from an injury, not only were you out of action but you were in pain, and pain made you grumpy and less likely to monitor the things that came out of your mouth the way you should.
He knew that John worked hard, hell he knew that what his brother had said was right, John was never truly off duty. They were all aware that he didn’t get enough sleep, enough down time, enough time to relax and just be. They knew that if John was on Five he would consider himself on duty, at work, and therefore he’d never allow himself to take time out. Things had changed since Selene had blundered her way into his life, now he spent a lot more time on the Island, which meant that he was finally taking some time out for himself. If one of the ways he chose to do that was by crafting ridiculously tiny things out of clay to stick in a hollowed out box that was his business. Gordon wasn’t there to judge, he was there to spend time with his brother.
John moved aside a little so Gordon could get a closer look, trying to resist the urge to smack his hand away every time Gordon reached for a tiny piece that had taken him hours to perfect.
“These are really small,” Gordon mused, poking at a window that John had just finished painting, leaving behind a smudged fingerprint. “Woops, sorry, Bro.”
“Maybe you should try making something of your own,“ John suggested, carefully removing the window from his brother's possession and picking up a brush in order to attempt a fix.
Gordon nodded and John passed him a ceramic tile and a miniature rolling pin.
“How about you try cutting me out a few shop sign bases?” John suggested.
“Do I get one of those scalpel things?” Gordon asked, a little too eagerly for John’s liking.
“Maybe we can work up to that,” John hedged, subtly moving the scalpel out of his brother’s reach and passing him a square cookie cutter. “Use this cutter for now.”
Gordon shrugged and spent a few minutes rolling and squishing the clay trying to get the thickness to the exact measurement that John insisted on. It wasn’t easy or fun.
“Nope!” Gordon announced, giving up and pushing the tile away. “It’s still boring. Pass.”
He swung his hoverchair around and headed in the direction of the door. “Later, Bro.”
“Oh...OK...later, I guess,” John stuttered, wondering just what he had done to deserve such a chaotic family as his.
“Oh, hey, boo, where are you go- WAHH!”
John’s head shot up as Selene’s yelp rang out from the hallway.
“Sorry!”
“So you should be, you little shit,” she grumbled to his retreating back as she thumped into the room.
“What happened, love?”
“Let’s just say that if his chair had wheels I’d have lost a few toes,” she said, wincing in imagined pain.
John scooted his desk chair back and patted his lap in offer, one that she happily accepted.
“So, why was Gordy doing his boy racer bit? What did you say to him?”
“Me? What makes you think I said anything to him?”
“Because I know you two?”
“Fair,” he sighed, sliding his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. “I don’t know what to do to help him.”
Selene turned her head to look at him, not liking the helpless look on his face.
“Babe, you are helping him, you’re there to keep him company or talk to him if he needs it, that’s more important than anything. What happened to make you think that you weren’t helping?”
“He was asking me about these again,” John nodded towards his work area on the desktop. “But he didn’t seem to understand, that or he just didn’t want to.”
“He’s Gordon,” she sighed. “You know what he’s like, he’s full on, he’s in your face and he’s not at all subtle. Taking his time with things just doesn’t compute with him.”
“It would do him good though, if he doesn’t learn to embrace it he’ll be exactly the same as he was last time.”
“Was he really that bad?” she asked, concern lacing her voice.
John nodded. “He doesn’t do inactivity well. When he had his hydrofoil accident his therapist talked him into signing up for a virtual college degree in Environmental Management of Rivers and Wetlands. It was supposed to take him at least a year as a part time course with ANU in Canberra, but he blew through it in the first semester and earned himself a distinction for his insights on the impact of Anthropogenic Noise on Wetland Habitats. His professor was so impressed he offered him a fully funded PhD, citing his time with WASP and the time he spent in the bathyscaphe as practical experience that would make up for his lack of degree. Obviously he turned it down, but he still likes to rub our faces in it now and then.”
“Wow,” Selene breathed. “Forget his professor being impressed, I’m impressed.”
“He has a phenomenal brain,” John said, a small but very proud smile on his face. “When he actually decides to use it to its full potential, that is. There is nothing he can't do when he chooses to focus on something, he’s all in. It really helped him to feel like he was gaining something and moving forward even though he was sitting still.”
Selene nodded, understanding completely. She knew that all of her boys were wicked smart, but Gordon always presented himself as the least academic. He was more of a doer, wanting to be out in the field, learning as he went, diving in head first to every situation.
But as Selene and John both knew, appearances could be deceiving.
“If that’s what helped him last time, then we need to find a way to convince him to try something new,” Selene insisted.
“I tried, he’s not interested.”
“That was with your things, babe. We need to find something that’s a little more him, and I think I know just the thing.”
-x-
“I have arrived!” Gordon yodelled, announcing his entrance in his own unique way. He slid his hover chair in through the open door like the boss that he was, bringing his shining presence in to brighten up his middle brother's obviously dull existence. “Didja miss me?”
“Like a hole in the head,” John grumbled, turning to look at the grinning face of his brother. His eyes immediately began to water as they were assaulted by the far too bright colours of the shirt Gordon was wearing, a tie dyed monstrosity that Selene had made for him for his birthday.
“A little more gratitude, if you please," Gordon huffed.
“Grandma finally released you?”
“Yep,” Gordon stretched out his injured leg and patted the air cast on his now slingless arm. “Got time off for good behaviour.”
“I find that hard to believe,” John teased, then nodded to Gordon’s arm. “How’s it feeling?”
“Not too bad, my grip still isn't great but Grandma promised me that once the bone has finished knitting I’ll just need to exercise it and build the muscle strength up, then it’ll be as good as new.”
“That’s great, it won't be long before you're able to go back out with Virgil and stop, how did Sel put it, 'haunting the house like the ghost of Christmas future'?"
"Can't come soon enough," Gordon sighed, butting his chair right up close to John's, knocking his arm in the process. "What you do- you're still doing that? Still? It's been a week!"
"It's not like I get a huge amount of down time," John pointed out. "I'm only here now because Sel said she'd dump me if I didn't make an effort to come down earlier in the evenings so I could actually eat a meal with you all."
"You actually believed that threat?" Gordon laughed.
"Of course not, she'd never dump me, but I thought I had better humour her and let her feel like she at least had a little sway," John shrugged, pushing aside the little piece of doorstep he had been painting. "Honestly, it's nice to come down for a meal and family time, I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it until it was happening again."
"I guess we all got a bit too caught up in International Rescue after we lost Dad," Gordon admitted.
"Like we had nothing else in our lives," John nodded, completely understanding.
"Yep."
Gordon fell silent and John let him, concentrating on mixing the perfect colour acrylic to add a few highlights to his stones.
"Can I have a go at making something? I bet I could do it quicker than you," Gordon asked, reaching towards what Selene called the sharps tub. John smacked the lid down on it just in time.
"Actually, we got you a present."
"You did?" Instantly distracted, Gordon sat up straighter, excited by the prospect of a gift. "What did you get me?"
This," John answered, opening his desk drawer and extracting an interestingly shaped bottle, upright with a thicker, rounded bottom and a thinner neck, ending a cork stopper.
"Wow, is that an original?" Gordon asked, taking the bottle carefully and turning it to study it from all angles. He knew exactly what this shaped bottle was, there had been a collection of them in Commander Shore’s office that he would stare at every time he got called in for some reprimand or another.
"19th century," John nodded. "Sel found it in a little shop in Mayfair. They assured her it was a genuine, used on a ship, captain's decanter from around the time of the civil war. They hadn’t fully traced it when Sel bought it but they think it came from one of the ships that fought in one of the smaller skirmishes around 1861.”
“This is really cool, thanks,” Gordon smiled, still turning the bottle over and over.
“It’s to hold this,” John continued, drawing Gordon’s attention back to him.
Grinning, John delved back into his desk drawer and pulled out a rather faded and quite dusty box. He brushed the dirt off the top and slid it over to Gordon.
"A ship?" Gordon frowned.
"Yep, Selene and I thought that you needed a little project of your own, so she had the idea to get you a ship in a bottle. You don’t see them a lot these days, but apparently her Grandfather had a couple and they always fascinated her.”
“So you put the ship in the bottle?”
“Yep, instructions are inside, go nuts.”
“Pfft, instructions,” Gordon snorted. “No one needs instructions, they’re a waste of time.”
-x-
“Ouch,” John hissed, hopping in place on one foot as he bent down to pick up what looked to be a tiny piece of mast that had attacked the sole of his foot. “Gordon, why are there bits of ship all over my floor?”
“Because I dropped them,” Gordon replied, his voice muffled due to the tongue of concentration that was peeking out from between his teeth.
Huffing, John gathered all the pieces off the floor, both pieces of ship and bits that they had been cut out of, and deposited them on the desk next to Gordon.
“How’s it coming along?” John asked, settling in his own chair. He’d only been gone a day but Gordon had managed to take over the entire bedroom, spreading his belongings, bottles, snack wrappers, his phone and a discarded hoodie, all over the place, as well as half the contents of the vintage ship box.
“It’s ridiculous. I think it’s missing pieces or something, it’s broken.”
“Well it was an old kit, but we were assured that it was complete,” John frowned, sliding the tray over that Gordon was supposed to be storing all the pieces in. “Have you checked the contents list and matched each piece to make sure they’re all there?”
Gordon looked at him blankly, like he was talking a foreign language.
“Did you check that everything was there before you started?" John elaborated.
“Of course I did,” Gordon promised, crossing his fingers and hoping his brother didn’t see.
“Against the list?” John clarified.
“I eyeballed it, OK?”
“Not good enough,” John insisted. “That’s not how you go about doing things like this, you can’t just slap them together and hope for the best.”
“Why not?” Gordon whined. It worked for him in almost everything else he did in life.
“Because this happens," John gestured to the mess surrounding them.
“Fine, I’ll read the damn instructions.”
Leaving Gordon to it John slid his almost completed book nook over and picked up his paintbrush to start adding some finishing touches before he started on the wiring for the lights. He’d barely done more than five minutes when Gordon started huffing.
John waited a little longer, trying his hardest to ignore the ever increasing sounds of frustration and impatience from his brother. In the end he couldn't stand it a moment longer, he had to ask the most loaded question ever.
“What’s the problem?” John asked, pushing his own work aside.
“These instructions don’t make sense,” Gordon bitched, flapping the paper in John’s face. “Look at the little picture here, you have to stick this little pole into that hole in the deck but the deck doesn’t want to stay together and that piece there keeps sliding and the pictures make no sense.”
“That’s because you missed around eight steps in between,” John told him, praying for patience.
“No I didn't, I followed the pictures exactly,” Gordon insisted.
“The steps aren’t in the pictures,” John explained. “See right there?” he pointed to the words above the pictures. “The pictures are a diagram of each finished stage, not how to get there. They are for reference only, not instructions.”
“Urghhh, this is going to take forever,” Gordon pouted, crossing his arms. “What’s the point?”
“The point is that by the end of it you’ll have something unique that no one else does, something you can be proud of and know that you built with your own two hands.”
“I’m not sure it’s worth the effort,” Gordon muttered.
“It is,” John promised. “I’ll help. How about I read out the instructions and you follow along? We’ll get through it quicker that way.”
Gordon wasn’t convinced, but John looked so hopeful that he didn’t have the heart to refuse him, especially since he and Selene had gone to so much trouble to get the things for him in the first place. He might be a miserable little sod, but he wasn’t that ungrateful. He knew that they had gone out of their way to get something they thought he’d like, the least he could do was make the thing, even if he knew he wouldn’t enjoy it. Maybe John was right, working together they could get through it quicker, and that could only be a good thing.
“Alright,” Gordon agreed, “let’s give it a go.”
Slowly, methodically, John read out each piece that was needed and Gordon located them, storing them neatly in a wooden box that Selene provided when she popped in to bring them drinks an hour or so later. She stayed just long enough to steal a kiss from John and drop one on the top of Gordon’s head before she beat a hasty retreat, not wanting to get roped into helping. She wasn’t the best at following instructions and didn’t want to get grumped at.
By the time they had all the pieces checked and catalogued they had discovered there were indeed two pieces missing, but thankfully they were easy fixes, just a small , round piece of wood to represent a porthole, which they could easily make a replacement for and a piece of mast. One snipped toothpick later and that was sorted too.
John started with the first set of instructions, reading them out patiently as Gordon found and fitted them together.
“So, how’s work been?” Gordon asked, like a chatty hairstylist, as he carefully dipped the end of a thin dowel into a small pot of wood glue.
“Same as ever,” John deadpanned, “a bunch of idiots that got themselves into trouble and needed help, and only half of them related to us.”
Gordon sniggered, glancing at John, seeing the sly smile on his brother’s face. He’d forgotten just how amusing John could be when he delivered something sarcastically witty with such a serious tone. Gordon hadn’t realised how much he’d missed it, wondering just what his more serious brother would come out with next. John was always like that, he seemed so quiet and reserved but, when he was relaxed and in company he was comfortable with he’d take you by surprise by letting loose a zinger that you couldn’t help but laugh at.
“Let’s not talk about work,” Gordon suggested, “we haven’t hung out properly in ages, you’re either up in Five or there are other people around.”
“Is that your way of saying you’ve missed me?” John teased.
“Maybe,” Gordon allowed, “but if you ever tell anyone I said that I’ll deny it and tell Grandma you want her to make your birthday cake this year.”
John held his hands up in surrender, although he couldn’t hold in the laugh that bubbled up as he reached for the instructions again.
“OK, let’s get this done before we stop enjoying each other’s company.”
They worked slowly but steadily over the next few hours, putting together the structure for the first mast. Once it was done they called it quits and abandoned it for another day, the smell of something tasty coming from the kitchen proving to be too much to ignore.
-x-
“Gordon, that’s my finger.”
“Oh, sorry, can you just like… I don’t know, yank it off?”
“If I wish to leave half my identifying fingerprints behind, yes.”
“Do you really need them?”
John didn’t dignify that with an answer, the look he threw at his brother communicated his thoughts perfectly.
“OK, OK, I’ll get some dissolver from Virgil’s studio, wait right there,” Gordon instructed him, grabbing his crutches and hobbling his way out of the room.
John sighed, keeping his hand perfectly still, the hull of the boat dangling from his fingertip. He was still there five minutes later when Gordon clumped his way back in, Selene hot on his heels. She had the glue dissolver under one arm, a large bag of chips under the other and a plate of sandwiches in each hand.
She dumped the plates on the desk, then the chips, before turning to see the state her fiancé was in.
“Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not,” Gordon winced, dropping down into his abandoned desk chair and reaching for a plate.
“Can you at least help me before you start stuffing your face?” John asked, waggling his hand, which made the boat sway violently from side to side.
“Can’t, eating,” Gordon mumbled around the massive mouthful he had just taken.
“What did I say?” she demanded to know. “No hurting the hands, you know how I feel about that.”
John wiggled his fingers again, drawing her attention to his plight. He looked so pathetic with the half built little ship swinging from his hand that Selene took pity on him, intervening when he looked like he was about to grab the thing and yank it off himself, fingerprints be damned.
“Oh for the love of the Gods, let me do it!” Taking his hand she used a paintbrush to smear glue dissolver around the area of skin it was stuck to. She took her time, rewetting and using the brush bristles to push the dissolver under the boat, trying to ease it free from his skin with minimal pulling.
“Thank you,” he sighed, sitting patiently while she worked. Thankfully it didn’t take her too long, although it took a lot of cursing under her breath and the odd ouch from him to get there.
“One boat,” she announced, placing it triumphantly on the desk.
“Fanks,” Gordon said, spraying chip crumbs as he did so.
“Welcome,” she said, brushing at her leg which had unfortunately been in splatter range. Still holding John’s hand she bestowed a kiss to each of his abused digits before releasing him.
“Right, I’m out of here. Play nicely, you two, I don’t want to have to send Grandma in to babysit you both.”
“It won’t come to that,” John assured her, reaching for his own sandwich. “We’ve not got much left to do now. We just have to attach the rigging to the masts, check that they fold properly then insert th-”
“I’m out, I don’t need to hear anything about insertion, not after you just glued a boat to your hand,” Selene declared, her exit swift and to the point, the door shutting firmly behind her.
“She has a point,” Gordon admitted, swallowing his last bite. He pushed the chip bag in John’s direction, although there was barely more than a handful and a few crumbs left in it.
“But we’ll never admit it to her face,” John insisted, steadily munching through the large sub she had brought for him.
“Never,” Gordon agreed.
-x-
Gordon sighed dramatically as he crutched his way down the hall from his bedroom. John’s bedroom door was open but his brother wasn’t inside. The ship, now fully rigged, sat beside the bottle on the desk, just waiting to be placed inside once some sand had been poured in as a base. Gordon had chosen all different shades of blue to represent the sea and had even watched a few videos on how to do sand pouring art, something he’d never expected to find even remotely interesting, yet he couldn’t bring himself to go in and make a start on it.
John had barely been home the past week and when he had it had only been for food and enforced sleep. Even then he had been known to sneak out of bed the second Selene was asleep, being discovered on numerous occasions sitting at their father’s desk until the small hours working on this, that or the other.
Emergencies, and therefore the need for their services, had seemed to increase three fold, something Selene was blaming on the moon phase and mercury going retrograde and, for want of a better explanation, they were all inclined to agree. There was no rhyme or reason for the surge in idiots that were calling in at all hours of the day and night with trucks caught under a too low bridge causing a pile up, hands stuck down toilets, drunks climbing to the top of electricity pylons and repair men getting trapped inside ATM machines they had been fixing.
His brothers had been on the go near constantly, whether it was from rescue call outs or working on their plan to find their father, but none more so than John. While Selene had always been good at what she liked to call Tracy Wrangling, none more so that when she was dealing with a stressed out Scott, even she had admitted defeat and left them to their own devices. Self preservation was key after all.
John had been dealing with not only rescue calls and Chaos Crew sightings, but signal tracking, GDF liaising and general hoop jumping, all of which had kept him far too busy.
It had been over a week since they had done anything to their project and Gordon was feeling the loss. Not so much of the project, although that really had helped with his frustrations at his lack of physical ability, not that he would ever admit that to John, but in spending time with his brother.
Much to his surprise he’d found that he was reluctant to work on it alone, it had become their thing to do together. It was a time where they would hang out, shoot the shit, reminisce about childhood memories, times that they had spent together talking about their hope for the future where they would find their father alive and bring him home.
Both of them knew that it wouldn’t be easy, that if they did manage to find him there would be no telling what physical or mental state he would be in. Gordon knew from experience just how tough physical injury, limitations, and recovery could be on the mind and the body, especially in someone who had been as active and viril as Jeff Tracy.
They all knew, although no one seemed to want to talk about it, that as hard as it was going to be to actually locate him and hopefully bring him home, that would only be the beginning of what could potentially be an incredibly long and difficult journey of rehabilitation and reintegration into the family and the world as a whole.
John had been right, taking some time to be quiet, to slow down and think while keeping your mind and hands busy really was a productive way to spend your rest hours and, stupid as it sounded, Gordon didn’t really want that to end.
He was only a week or two away from potential cast removal and a return to physical activities like his beloved swimming and strength training in their home gym and, while he couldn’t wait to get back to it, he knew he’d feel the loss of his enforced quiet time.
He glanced again at the abandoned ship on the desk and turned away, clumping down the hall towards the stairs. So it would take them a little longer to get it finished, Gordon was fine with that because for once he wasn’t feeling the need to rush.
-x-
“Remember to pour it slowly,” Gordon instructed as he held the funnel in place, its long pipe reaching right down into the bottom of the jar. “Start with the darkest one, that’s going to be our base colour.”
“I’ve got it,” John assured him, selecting the tub of midnight blue sand and scooping some out into a smaller pot to make things easier. At Gordon’s nod he began to slowly and steadily pour the sand into the open neck of the funnel. As he watched Gordon expertly directed the tube, allowing the sand to pour out to pool in the bottom of the bottle.
At Gordon’s signal John stopped pouring and waited while Gordon carefully removed the tube and used a long metal skewer to poke and prod the sand into something that looked vaguely like waves.
“The next colour up,” Gordon requested and John did as he was asked. They repeated the process four more times with different shades of blue, John pouring in a little at a time, Gordon directing the tube to deposit more in one place than others, mimicking the movement of sea waves as best they could. In between each layer Gordon used the skewer to poke and mix the colours here and there, blending the layers into a smoother transition.
“That’ll do,” Gordon said confidently, twisting the bottle so John could see the full effect.
John had to admit that he had been pleasantly surprised when Gordon had announced that he had ordered some coloured sand and looked up how to do sand art on the internet. He hadn’t really known what to expect, although he would admit, if only to himself, that he had thought that Gordon would be a little heavy handed and impatient, but once again he had proved him wrong. He really had done his research and the result was a beautiful mix of colours that really did give a perfect impression of a gently moving sea.
“That’s looking great.”
“I know,” Gordon grinned, modest as always. “Where’s that resin gone?”
“Here,” John answered, pushing it across the desk towards his brother. “Make sure you read the instructions and measure the amounts accurately or it won’t set and you’ll ruin the sand and the bottle.”
“Yeah, yeah I got this,” Gordon assured him as he did indeed read the instructions through properly. Once he had familiarised himself with the ratio of resin to hardener, he measured carefully and poured them into a mixing jug. Once it was fully mixed he slowly, gently, poured the mixture a little at a time into the bottle on top of the sand. With each little pour he waited for the resin to trickle down between the grains, slowly adding to it until all the sand was covered.
“And now we wait,” John said, carefully placing the bottle in the patch of bright sunlight coming in through the window.
“Wanna watch a movie?” Gordon offered casually, not really expecting his brother to agree. John hardly ever watched anything with just him, they had vastly different tastes in movies and John usually made some polite excuse to escape.
“Sure, sounds good.”
“Really?” Gordon goggled, his eyes almost falling out of his head. “You don’t have anything more important to do?”
“More important than watching a movie with my little brother? I don’t think so,” John grinned, retrieving Gordon’s crutches from where they were leaning against his bookshelf and tossing them to him one by one. “Come on, last one to the lounge picks the movie.”
“Hey, no fair!” Gordon yelled, scrambling to his feet as he fumbled with his crutches. “You’ve got legs like a giraffe and neither of them are broken!”
“Sucks to be you,” John tossed over his shoulder as he took off down the hall to victory.
-x-
“Careful,” John warned.
“I am being careful,” Gordon snapped. “I got this.”
“Your hand’s shaking.”
“Thanks for that, Captain Obvious.” He steadied his, only slightly shaky, hand by propping his elbow on the desk for stability. “OK, let’s do this.”
They both held their breath as Gordon maneuvered the body of the boat through the opening in the bottle, making sure each sail stayed carefully folded down and the strings remained untangled before he fed it down the neck and into the bottle.
“Phase one, complete,” John intoned in such a serious voice that Gordon couldn’t help the laugh that he snorted out.
“Pass me those long nosed tweezers?” Gordon asked, holding out a hand.
John slapped the requested instrument into his brother's hand like a nurse in an operating theater, provoking another burst of laughter.
“Thanks.”
“Welcome.”
Making sure the strings of the sails were still dangling outside of the bottle, Gordon carefully moved the body of the boat further down into the bottle with the metal skewer until the stern touched the top of the resin and sand layer.
“Now the sails,” Gordon whispered, hardly daring to breathe as John moved in to help, taking over the holding of the strings while Gordon reached in with the tweezers.
Gently, working together, they started the delicate process of tugging gently on each string, unfolding the paper sails and locking them in place.
“String one.”
“Got it. Watch number four sail.”
“Yep, thanks...OK… can you just give string five a little pull? Perfect.”
“Sail three is flopping!”
“Gah, hang on, just got to tighten that...yep that’s got it.”
“Maybe if I gather…”
“Yep, that’s good, do that again.”
“This next bit is going to require a delicate touch, maybe I should-”
“Hey! I can be delicate!”
“It’s not coming up...back sail two is stuck, release it...careful!”
“There, saved it.”
John gently pulled the strings a little more and there it was, their ship, sails proudly upright and everything. He kept hold of the strings, while Gordon held on to the boat with the tweezers as they carefully lifted the bottle from its side to its proper upright position.
Using the skewer John maneuvered around Gordon’s hand and nudged the boat into a better position before he carefully released the strings. They both held their breath, hoping and praying that the sails wouldn't collapse the second the strings fell.
The boat, with its sails, stayed strong.
“Yes!” Gordon cheered, holding up his free hand for a high five, grinning when his brother’s palm smacked against his own.
“Scalpel,” Gordon joked as John handed it to him so they could lop off a little of the trailing strings. Then, using the skewer, they arranged the strings around the edges of the boat.
With the boat finally upright and in place, they added another layer of light blue coloured sand with a sprinkling of white to mimic the tips of the waves. They finished it off by pouring in a little more resin, both to set the sand and hold the boat in place, using the tweezers to make sure it was correctly positioned.
“Phew,” Gordon breathed, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his cast covered leg. “We did it. Go team.”
“We did,” John smiled. “And it looks damn good.”
“It really does,” Gordon agreed, shifting his head to look at the bottle from all angles.
“Nothing left to do but let it dry and put the stopper in,” John said. “How do you feel now it’s done? Was it worth the time?”
“I still think we could have done it a lot faster if you’d just let me skip a few steps in the instructions and do it my way, but it wasn’t that bad,” Gordon admitted. “I’m oddly proud of it.”
“You should be, you did good,” John leant back in his chair, crossing his arms as he relaxed. “Are you going to stop teasing me about my book nooks now?”
“Pssh, no,” Gordon snorted. “Ships are cool, yours will always be boring.”
He didn’t see the bottle of water coming until it was too late.
-x-
Gordon walked straight to John’s room from the infirmary, feeling oddly free without his crutches and casts. Six weeks was a long time, after all.
The bottle with its little ship sat exactly where they had left it in the center of John’s desk next to the abandoned book nook that was still not finished. It took him very little time to insert the cork stopper and pour a little of Selene’s spell bottle sealing wax around the top, a bright, cheery yellow wax that matched his beloved Thunderbird Four.
He smiled as he thought of his little craft, waiting down in her dock for him, ready to be taken out when the next call came in. It had been a long and frustrating time but finally, blessedly, that time was over.
He poked an experimental finger into the wax seal, checking that it had set properly. It had, and he couldn’t help feeling a little sad about it. It had been a project that at first he’d had very little interest in, but slowly it had turned into so much more. Not just something to wile away a few hours but a chance for him to reconnect with the brother he spent the least amount of time with.
Years ago, back when he had been small, John had been his everything. When Alan had been too tiny to be of any use and Scott and Virgil had been too old to be bothered with him hanging around, it had been John that had been there for him. It was John that had patiently listened as he read aloud from his sealife books, who had watched movies with him, played with him, and spent the most amount of time with him. Back then, their three year age difference had seemed like so little but so much at the same time, an older brother that made him feel wanted and included when the other two saw him as an annoyance.
Gordon couldn’t quite put his finger on when things had changed, when they had slowly drifted apart. John had seemed to grow up so much faster than he had, Alan had welded himself to his side, looking up to Gordon as he had to John and things had never been the same again.
It had been too long since they had been able to just hang out, to laugh, to tease each other without things going too far and one of them getting annoyed. It had been nice and Gordon had realised that he didn’t want to go back to nothing but hollocalls to Five when an emergency came in or the odd family dinner and movie night where he had to share with the rest of the family. John was the only brother that Gordon didn’t spend one on one time with as standard and he realised that, no matter how much he might blame it on John being so far away, in reality it was as much his fault as John’s.
Gordon picked up the bottle, leaving a box in its place. The model kit of the Mercury Project space capsule and its launch pad had been hard to find even with his junker contacts. In fact, he had almost given up and admitted defeat before he'd thought to look at the label on his ship box and sent the shop owner an email.
Smiling to himself, knowing that there was no way John would be able to resist that challenge, he took the finished bottle, with its little ship, to his room where it would take pride of place on his bookshelf, a constant reminder that even in the worst of times, positivity could still be found.
“Thanks, Bro.”
#tag mini bang 2021#tagminibang2021#Gordon Tracy#John Tracy#thunderbirds are go#thunderbirdsarego#thunderbirds fandom#thunderbirds 2015#thunderbirds fanfiction#thunderbirds fanart#TAG Mini Bang 2021#TAGMiniBang2021
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CS ff: “On the Two” (Chapter 1/9) (au)
Summary: He’s one bad trip from ending up in AA, and she’s one performance away from a solid job and moving closer to home. Their paths were unlikely to cross until Camp Hope brought them together. How and why they meet and intertwine is against the odds, and definitely against the rules, but will that really stand in their way? A Dirty Dancing inspired modern au.
Rating: E
Content Warnings: Borderline alcoholism, very brief mentions of past relationships, mentions of the loss of a limb - this fic is primarily tame but I’ll do my best to tag anything that might need tags.
Chapter Specific Warnings: Alcohol use, past injury mentions
A/N: Holy. Shit. I’ve finally found a minute to post chapter 1. Hoping to stick to a Thursday schedule for posting, and I can’t wait for you all to see this unfold.
I have to give shoutouts and love to three very important people to this process. @initiala sent this over a year ago: look i know you're busy and have a lot of fics, but just hear me out: CS Dirty Dancing AU. So. Now you know who to blame/thanks, like I’ve been doing! To @phiralovesloki for the heaps of emotional support and handholding when I needed it. I can’t imagine my life without you in general, let alone my writing process. And of course, my beta, my dancing expert, my sanity: @captainstudmuffin. Thanks for all you do for me, from proofreading to slapping me into action. I’m sure we’re even on boob punches... for now.
Catch it on FFN & Ao3!
Welcome to Camp Hope!
About Us
Years ago, Ruth Nolan operated these camp grounds as a haven for children to explore the fruits of the Earth and come into their own. For fifteen years, she oversaw the summers of thousands of children, all in need of the room to grow and eager to learn the skills of the outdoors.
In honor of Ruth’s hard work, we’ve re-opened the camp to those who still want to learn about the wilderness, explore the rich terrain that this coastal Maine property has to offer, and take the classes you’ve maybe not had time to take in the past. It’s not all outdoors, either! Our staff is composed of very talented individuals that are available to teach you almost anything, from dancing to the arts, yoga and fitness routines, as well as anything you’d expect from the average camp of summers past. You’ll enrich your body and mind and connect in ways you never have before!
A summer camp for adults may seem like an outdated or unconventional thing, but here at Camp Hope, we aim to improve the memories you may have of summer camps long past, or make new ones if this is your first time. Plus, now is your chance to try things like zip-lining without getting a consent form signed! There are plenty of perks to trying new things when you’re old enough to decide for yourself.
Please check our FAQs and pricing packages; your stay can be as short as a week or as long as the whole summer. Our accommodations range from your own private cabin to our brand new, hotel-style lodgings. We welcome you, and hope you’ll enjoy your experiences!
Sincerely,
Snow and David Nolan
Owners, Camp Hope Ltd.
-x-
Sifting through the mail on his table, Killian tosses the pamphlet for some kind of camping place into the stack to be thrown away. It joins the myriad of advertisements and coupons that he doesn’t bother to look at or ever use. Besides, if it’s a camp marketed towards adults, it’s likely something religious or a thinly veiled addiction recovery facility, and while he’s probably edging along the lines of alcoholism, he’s damn well not there yet.
There’s roughly a week’s worth of mail here, as it’s been a couple days since he’s even thought to check his mailbox, but he’s sure Liam will be up his arse any day here to go over his finances. If he makes it look like he’s been keeping things in order, Liam is less likely to give him his Worried Brother speech this month.
He sips at his coffee, pausing just a moment to pop two painkillers before resuming his sorting. When he’s hungover, the phantom pain where his left hand should be is stronger, and today is no exception to that. He hasn’t bothered to put on his prosthetic, content instead to leave it off until he has to go into public.
Days like this, though, he has nothing but time to mindlessly sift through his queue and get day-drunk. It’s been ages since Killian can remember going more than two or three days without a drink. That doesn’t stop him from unscrewing the top of his favorite brand of rum when he pours the second cup before he settles in to watch Netflix. He sprawls across the couch, happy as he ever can be to live off the settlement over the accident that cost him his hand.
There’s a bar down the street that he visits when he needs personal interaction, and if he’s lucky there might even be a woman willing to help with even more personal interactions. That’s what last night had been – him in the bar until closing, a brunette that he can’t remember the name of giggling as she pulled him towards her car. A short while later, a cab brought him home, alone, with a little less dignity than he had before.
The sound of a key in the door announces Liam’s arrival before the man himself calls out a greeting, and Killian is minimally glad for the distraction from the road of self-pity and/or loathing that he was about to embark down. He knew there was a good reason to starting his sorting today. He stashes the bottle of rum beneath the coffee table again, running his fingers through his hair real quick to tame it down.
“Ah, you are awake. Excellent. I thought we’d set your bills straight, and maybe head out for some lunch. Breakfast? What meal are you on?”
“Let’s just call it brunch. Eat first, bills second,” Killian declares, sending his spiked coffee one forlorn look as he realizes he’ll have to go get dressed and act like a responsible adult for a few hours. He takes one more gulp before taking the mug to the kitchen to dump it out.
He’s in his room for just over five minutes, using food as a motivator to get him out the door sooner. The shirt is mostly wrinkle free, and he thinks the jeans he slides on are clean, so he’s at least presentable and won’t have to deal with Liam’s tongue-clicking. He makes sure to snag his sunglasses off the entryway table before ushering his brother out the door. Had he taken much longer, Liam surely would’ve declared that the bills looked quick or manageable, and they’d take ‘just a minute more’ to complete. As it is, he can see his piles have been tampered with, straightened and organized to his brother’s preferences, as he glances back on his way out; he timed it just perfectly.
Halfway through eating, Liam takes a sip from his water before placing it back on the table, steepling his fingers as he rests his hands on the table. “I’ve just had a thought,” he says in a way that really gives away that he’s been sitting on this for a while now. “How would you like to get out of town for a while?”
“When? How long?” Killian asks, preoccupied by the task of trapping all the toppings on his sandwich. He hates using his prosthetic to eat, doing his best instead to wrangle the whole thing with his right hand while his left arm stays beneath the table.
“Over the summer? We could make an adventure of it. Maybe go back home, visit the relatives. It’s not like you’re doing anything here. As my own boss, I can afford to take some time off. We go, we live a little, return in the fall as new men. What do you say?”
The prospect of getting out of the city, away from everything that holds painful memories for him, does sound appealing. Spending the whole time with his brother, however, tarnishes it just a touch. It’s not that he doesn’t love his brother, but Liam has a tendency to be… a little overbearing.
Of course, for a long time after Killian’s accident, Liam probably had every right to be. He’d just lost a hand, for fuck’s sake. Coming just after the loss of his fiancée probably didn’t help, either, but Killian was deep in a hole of depression for so long he wasn’t sure he was ever going to see the surface again. Now, he’s not so much depressed as he is resigned to this life, unemployed due to disability, living off the accident settlement, and drinking away his feelings as often as possible without officially becoming an alcoholic.
The thing is, Liam’s overprotective shadowing of Killian’s life is nothing new. He’s been this way for as long as Killian can remember, and since Killian can only half remember a handful of instances with either their mum or their dad, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibilities that Liam feels more like Killian’s father than his older brother. Still, every bird has to fly the nest sometime.
And Killian did for a bit. He flew, and was so close to having everything he wanted in his life – a job doing a craft he loved, a woman that he intended to marry and grow a family and home with, and still the taste for adventure on the tip of his tongue if he ever chose. But all good things come to an end, in his experience.
First was Milah’s passing. Her brief but destructive illness soaked up all their life savings, leaving Killian with a broken heart and empty pockets. He didn’t care about the money, and why should he? He lost the reason he was saving it in the first place. He could earn it all again, but he’d never have Milah back. And then, shortly after, as he helped wrap up a custom boat build for a wealthy client, something went wrong. He still doesn’t remember exactly what happened, just that one minute he had a left hand, and the next he didn’t; it really was that simple.
“I’ll think about it,” Killian finally says, abandoning the hand-held option for his food and dropping it back into the basket it came in. He stabs at the pieces of it with his fork and considers the offer. He will think about it, too; he’s not just saying so to change the conversation back to footy and traffic patterns. It’s been a long time since he’s gotten away. He’s set for life on a permanent vacation if he so chooses, but a change of scenery would be welcome at this juncture of his life.
The idea marinates all while they finish their meal, and the whole walk back to Killian’s apartment. He’s so hung up on the possibilities involved that he doesn’t even complain as they sit down with his meager stack of bills. He signs when he’s told to do so, with no remarks about the tedium of the task while they work.
By the time the afternoon is wrapping up, Killian has made up his mind. As Liam stamps the last of the bills and puts Killian’s checkbook back where it resides, Killian speaks up. “I’ve thought about your offer to get away for the summer. Might not be such a bad idea, after all.” He keeps his tone light, nonchalant, hoping that Liam won’t catch on that it’s something he might genuinely be excited about for the first time in longer than he can recall.
“Excellent. Leave all the planning to me,” Liam says as he stands and throws the trash into the bin. “I’ll send you a packing list when I’ve finalized the plans and we can meet up again to get everything squared away for a couple months out of town.”
With a shrug, Killian extracts himself from the couch in order to see his brother out since all their business is complete. In his distracted state, he misses the gleeful look on Liam’s face; it’s an expression his brother was infamous for as they were growing up and meant that Killian was about to be served a life-lesson, and he likely wasn’t going to enjoy it very much. But he’s so lost in his thoughts about all the places they may go – both familiar and new – that he bids his brother goodbye and settles back in for his slightly interrupted day of Netflix.
He doesn’t even slip more rum into his glass until after he’s had his dinner.
-x-
Emma Swan is just as much a part of Camp Hope as the camp is part of her. For the last fourteen years, Emma has been making the journey of varying lengths back to the campgrounds; it’s something a lot like flocking home for the summer, and she’s made the trip from right in Storybrooke – the tiny town closest to the camp – and from as far as Tallahassee, all those years ago.
This year, she’s traveling from just outside Boston along with her roommate, Ruby. While the stories of their upbringings are vastly different, Emma and Ruby have been two peas of a pod since Emma’s first trip.
Back then, she was journeying to Camp Hope as part of a foster kid outreach program. It was two glorious weeks that she and twenty-some other foster kids got to go to someplace new, rather than waste away in a group home or get shipped off to bible camp again. She was fourteen, and while some of the crafts and activities were aimed at kids much younger than her, she still sat at the table and made bracelets, tie-dyed a shirt and bandana, and participated in capture the flag with water balloons like it was her first time, but that’s mostly because it was.
At the campfire that night, Ruby plopped down next to her, showing her the “right” way to toast marshmallows and offering to put red streaks in Emma’s hair so they could match.
Emma passed on the streaks, but the next day when Ruby dragged her to a special meeting for future counselors, it was all history from there. More than just finding a way to spend her summers that didn’t involve wallowing in her own loneliness and isolation, Emma met David Nolan during the counselors program. Upon picking up bits and pieces about her, David decided to introduce Emma to his mother. As soon as Ruth met Emma, she was set on bringing her on as a permanent fixture in their lives.
Having previously thought that she’d never find a place that wanted her, a place that wanted someone old by foster standards and jaded beyond reason, Emma was shocked. Not only was she wanted, she was loved. Despite the three year age difference, and the short time they’d been together, David became her best friend and brother, with Ruby a close second.
There was a shared passion of dancing between Emma and Ruby, and when they weren’t raking in the volunteer hours during the summer, they were saving every penny they earned from their respective guardians to take dance lessons one town over. And that’s the way it went until they graduated.
Remembering what happened after graduation always leaves Emma with a pit of shame in her stomach that feels a lot like indigestion, so when she wanders to the kitchen, she pops two antacids before starting up the coffee maker. It used to be worse, but time heals all, even wounds that don’t feel like they’ll ever scab over.
It’s time for their annual trip back, just two days away, and Emma has too much to do to spend her morning in a guilt trip over things that happened in the past. Instead, she wanders down the hallway to get Ruby up. There’s a whole list for her friend to complete today, and she’s pretty sure she’s also battling with a hangover from being out too late the night before.
She knocks, only twisting the knob and entering the room after hearing the faint groan of invitation. “Hey there, champ. Good morning!”
Ruby groans again, struggling to push her eye mask off her face and groping for the pain killers and water on her nightstand. She’s one of those drinkers that’s always considerate to her morning self – something Emma has always been in awe of. “You’re not the morning person, stop sounding so chipper,” Ruby instructs after drinking down half the water. She hauls herself to sit up, patting the edge of her bed for Emma to sit down. “What’s on your Snow-style agenda for the day?”
“I’m going to clean. You’re going to wrap up the sub-let on the studio space. Graham is supposed to be down there around noon, so you’ve got time, but I need you to grab the costumes we’ll need for performance nights.” She leaves Ruby to get herself out of bed, and calls out that she’ll get breakfast started.
“Don’t break the toaster!” Ruby calls from behind door that Emma closes on her way out, and while Ruby can’t see Emma rolling her eyes, she knows her friend will sense it. It was one time.
Leaving for Camp Hope has always been a little tumultuous for them, but after this many years, Emma thinks they’ve gotten a little better at it. There were a few years where they weren’t going back to work camp, and those are the years that make Emma’s heart ache most – more than the year she refuses to think about.
They closed the camp when Ruth’s health suddenly declined the year after the year-that-shall-not-be-named, and Emma and David only made the journey every week to tend the growing weeds and mend the deteriorating buildings the best they could. With Ruby’s help, they were able to keep the camp from falling apart, but the same couldn’t be said for them. Ruth passed the winter after Emma turned twenty, and she lost the closest thing to a mother she’d ever found.
Luckily, they had one more to hold their family unit together. A year after Emma met him, David met Mary Margaret Blanchard, better known to her friends as Snow, and Emma got to witness fairytale levels of Love at First Punch between them. Down the road, the wedding was a bit rushed, so that Ruth could watch her son get married. Years after the quick engagement and marriage saw them going stronger than ever.
For two years, the camp remained closed, but David and Snow, thanks to an off-hand comment from Emma, decided to reopen the beloved summer camp as an experience for adults. It took a whole other year until they could renovate everything up to standards, but it was worth it. The first year they opened again, it was so profitable and the waitlist was so long that they were easily able to expand and enhance the experiences.
Shaking her head, Emma realizes she’s spending way too much time reflecting and not enough time moving. Down the hall, she hears Ruby’s water start up, and knows she has until the time the taps shut off to get that woman some hangover worthy breakfast. Pouring herself a large mug of coffee, she takes three deep, scalding gulps to get herself going.
She’s just plating up some eggs and bacon, snatching a bagel from the toaster so Ruby can construct her own breakfast sandwich when the roommate in question comes ambling into the kitchen.
This is Emma’s favorite version of Ruby. Stripped of her makeup, without a product in the world in her hair post-shower, wearing an old t-shirt and boxers for her pajamas. Her usual persona is an elaborate mask, with the heavy makeup and killer manicure, flirtation just as exposed as her long, lean legs normally are. The short shorts and low-cut tops are standard everywhere but at home. That’s the Ruby that will likely crawl into her car bright and early in a couple days, but today she’s happy to spend time with average Ruby, and she’s happy when she does not break the toaster again. There are small miracles, after all.
When both of them are settled at the breakfast bar with their food, they start talking strategy, both in prep for leaving and for camp itself.
“Are the costumes for the Waltz demo here or at the studio?” Emma asks as she alternates sips of coffee and bites of her pop-tart.
“The studio, I think. I’ll grab them when I meet with Graham and lock up everything else of ours.”
“Good. Don’t sleep with him this time, okay?”
“No promises,” Ruby says, a wicked grin spreading across her lips even as she tries to hide it behind her coffee mug.
At the very least, they might get a deal on the rent again, which is the only consolation Emma can think of. The rest of their day is a whirlwind, with Ruby taking care of the studio and Emma tidying up their apartment. She packs the bulk of their non-perishable foods to take with them, cleaning as she goes, until the whole kitchen is spotless. She also takes the time to write down the instructions and emergency numbers for Aurora, their downstairs neighbor that’s been kind enough to take care of their plants and fish while they’re gone.
It’ll be weeks until either one of them can make it back to the city, if they do at all, but Emma doesn’t mind. While she loves Ruby and living in the city, she gets her own cabin for the summer. They converted one of the old lodges into a dance/yoga studio, located just a short walk along the west trail from the main lodge. Behind said studio, they relocated one of the cabins and refurnished the whole place to act as the dance director’s housing for the summer. Thankfully, Ruby likes to throw herself into a multitude of activities, so she bunks in the staff cabins up the hill and leaves Emma to have her solitude.
Mostly, all that means is that no one will know that she’s in the studio putting in extra hours. Maybe this will be the year she can quit hunting down bail skippers and be able to focus on nothing but dancing. She can always dream, at least.
Ruby stops in only briefly to drop off a case of their costumes and check in, taking the time to change into a date dress and do her hair and make-up. She gives Emma a wink before she leaves and tells her not to wait up, before disappearing in a flurry of stiletto clicks and perfume. She doesn’t get home until late, when Emma is already tucked in her bed hoping to fall asleep. Her friend is humming and heads straight for the shower.
Emma’s not a bit surprised two days later when Ruby announces that Graham decided to pay more than they originally negotiated, and laughs at the wolfish grin on Ruby’s face as they throw their bags into the backseat and boot of the Volkswagen Bug that Emma’s had for years. They’re actually running on time for once, but Emma doesn’t expect that to last long, especially when, after only an hour, Ruby announces that she’s famished and starts calling out the name of food places they pass.
The trip to Storybrooke, on the coast of Maine, is one of Emma’s favorites. The scenic views from Boston onward are ones she’s familiar with, but that still lift her heart. The trip is only four hours if they don’t stop, but with Ruby’s pea-sized bladder, and her bottomless stomach, it’s more likely they’ll get there in five hours… if they’re lucky.
One year, it took them almost twice as long to make the journey because Ruby was chasing down the International Cryptozoology Museum and her cheap-o GPS meant that the museum (which was on the way) eluded them for hours until Emma screeched that they were done looking and if Ruby really wanted to see it, they’d find it on the way home.
They found it on the first try on their return drive, and Ruby bought her the biggest cone of Rocky Road ice cream they could find at a nearby ice cream stand, to make up for the original disaster.
This job that they do, this ability to go up and demo and teach dances to the souls that will wander through the paths of Camp Hope, is only possible because of the popularity of the camp. The first year, Emma and Ruby would switch off every two weeks, with Ruby piling all her lessons into the two weeks she was home and Emma trying to catch ask many bail skips as possible in between her own lessons and classes. When the popularity of the camp became apparent, they were able to rent out their studio space to a few other dance teachers in the area while they took the whole summer to attend to the camp. It helps that David is able to pay them, and pay them well, for their time and energy.
Along the way, Emma has met the heartbroken and the heartbreakers, she’s met dreamers and lovers, she’s taught cynics and optimists, and she’s danced for every person in between. The two of them together have dealt with perverts and assholes, handsy men and women who don’t take “no” for an answer, and people who have gone on to contact them once the summer ends to continue their lessons in the city. It makes it all worth it, these months away from all the comforts of home, to spend their summers in another version of home.
Plus, thanks to an excellent network of friends in Boston, they never want for anything from home if they forget it. It’s all just a PayPal and overnight shipping away, really.
As Ruby climbs back into the car from their third rest stop, this thought comes in handy. “I left my favorite performance shoes by the door,” Emma groans out as her friend seatbelts in and starts the car.
“Good, because I forgot to grab my sleeping pills off my nightstand,” she says, grinning quickly and dropping the sunglasses back onto her nose.
“I’ll text Aurora now.”
With the promise of a package imminently to be sent their way, Emma relaxes as the last of their journey passes by outside the windows. She zones out to the sights, not perking up again until they hit the Storybrooke town limits. They’ll top off the tank and stop in to see Granny for lunch (second or third lunch by Emma’s count) before heading up to the campgrounds. Her car crawls by each familiar sight, and Emma smiles at the simplicity of it all – the never-changing nature of their sleepy little town. While she only officially lived in Storybrooke for three years, it’s still the only place she’s ever called home.
Granny is already outside by the curb when they pull up, and Emma takes a minute to let Ruby climb out of the car to reunite with her grandmother. It’s only after she sees their hug loosen up that she opens her door, languidly stretching as she unfolds herself from the passenger seat. Then it’s her turn for Granny to gather her up and hug her so hard that Emma’s back cracks. She won’t complain, it definitely eases the travel tension to get a hug from Granny. They’re ushered inside the small diner the elderly (and boy, would be lose her shit if Emma said that term out loud) woman has run for the last billion years.
“When should I expect the first package from your neighbor?” Granny asks after their lunches have been set in front of them.
Ruby laughs, not even ashamed of the fact that they’re so predictable that her grandmother knows they’ve already left something behind.
“We’ll be back in town over the weekend to get it,” Emma answers.
“I already saw one of the trucks of shipment head up to the campgrounds,” Granny remarks as she refills Ruby’s coffee cup. “Your brother has been up there for weeks getting everything ready.”
“Please tell me he’s at least eating.”
“Snow has badgered him back home a couple times now to eat and sleep, and she picks up meals on the days they decide to stay up there. Sounds like you’re gonna have a full camp most of the summer.”
“That’s the plan,” Ruby says, beaming before she takes the last bite of her sandwich.
Emma waves them both off when they move to go into the back for more family time. It’s not that she and Ruby don’t get to visit ever, it’s just that the stretch between Christmas and camp time can sometimes feel like much longer. The same itch resides just below her skin – the need to see her brother and sister-in-law so strong that she almost slips away before she’s done eating and leaving Ruby to hitch a ride out later with one of the counselors that lives in town.
Instead, she idly swirls her onion rings through her ketchup, taking her time with making sure every crumb is gone from the plate while she waits. She glances around, waving to the familiar faces in the booths and at the counter beside her, and she grins at the large board already propped near the entrance that loudly welcomes the campers to town. Since the grounds are two miles north of Storybrooke, many will pass through on their way. Some will stay overnight in the bed and breakfast while others will stop for a bite and a fill-up before continuing on to Camp Hope.
Thankfully, the business that the camp brings to the town will mean that the owners of most, if not all, of the establishments will have their pockets lined for months to come, making the onslaught of guests and visitors worth it when the summer ends and they go back to something less than a speck on the map of Maine.
Ruby and Granny are back a short time later, while Emma is idly catching up with a sweet yoga teacher that goes by Tink. The name is fitting of the cherub-faced woman with the perfect curly bun of blonde hair on top of her head. She’s new to the staff, but not to the town, so Emma is happy to listen to her excitement bubble over as she discusses all the classes she’ll be teaching for the next few months.
“A little help?” Ruby asks, and Emma finally glances up to see her friend’s arms laden down with several bags of what Emma assumes are home-cooked meals, prepared in advance and packaged for the crew that’s already working on getting the grounds ready for the summer. She moves around the counter to take a few of the cloth totes, waving farewell to Tink as they head out.
The rest of the afternoon passes quickly; they use the main entrance to deliver the food to Snow, who’s waiting for them beneath the welcome sign when they pull up. Emma hugs her tight before transferring two of the bags to her. They make the short trek down to the main lodge where Emma gets to give her brother his own hug, tight and bracing and full of the warmth she misses when she’s away from him for so long. With lunch delivered, Ruby and Emma head back up to the car to move it to the staff parking.
The lodges they’ll each be staying in are much closer to their hidden lot than they are the main entrance, which works out well when they’re unloading enough luggage for four months, and maybe a kitchen sink or two. It takes them three trips up and down the steps leading to the lot: one to Ruby’s space in the staff lodges, one to Emma’s private lodge, and one to the studio itself.
Emma wastes no time turning on all the lights and stepping up onto the vast wooden floor. There are mirrors lining one wall, floor to ceiling, and another has all the cabinets where they store their costumes and gear. The wall opposite her reflection has windows spaced evenly apart, which she immediately starts working open even as Ruby brings in the last tote of their stuff. The air is a little stagnant, but flipping on the overhead fans will get it moving again.
Ruby drops the last container with their gear, rushing out to choose her space and start unpacking as soon as she can and promising to come back later to help get the studio in order. Emma waves her off, already itching to have the space to herself. Her muscles are practically begging to be warmed up, to take advantage of the wide open space that calls her name.
She knows she needs to clean first; the mirrors and windows all have that faint tinge of grime that comes from a long winter of neglect. The air conditioning unit needs to be tended to, as well, and tested to make sure it’s in working order before the summer starts in full. Then there’s the cleaning and organizing and stocking and… and Emma doesn’t care. She rips open the first bag she finds and pulls out leggings and a sports bra – they’ll do in a pinch. She changes quickly before skipping along the path back to the studio.
It’s only a matter of time before she’s selected something with an upbeat tempo, thankful again for the auxiliary port that allows her to play her own music from the impressive sound system. She sits on the dusty floors for a moment to slip on a beat up pair of practice shoes and lamenting again how she’ll have to turn her focus to cleaning next.
She takes her time stretching, making sure to work out all the kinks from the drive up and getting her muscles and body all warmed up. As soon as she’s on her feet, she’s running through swing patterns that she can do on her own. Through lines of sailor shuffles and slides, she dances using the whole dance studio, going from one end of the spacious floor to the other. She doesn’t get this much room in Boston. She doesn’t get this solitude. She doesn’t get this freedom. Maybe this is the real reason she loves coming back to camp so often, and there’s probably something in her psyche to deal with in those regards but it’s nothing she’s willing to look too closely into.
By the time the playlist switches to something for cooldown, Emma has worked up an impressive sweat. She grabs a towel from the same bin she found her shoes in, wiping down her face and neck before dropping back to the floor for final stretches. Placing the towel on the floor, she stretches out briefly, staring up at the ceiling and watching the fans whirl peacefully above her. This is it. This is home for the next couple months. And nothing will change how happy she is to be here.
With that thought, and a beatific smile, Emma changes back to her tennis shoes and hauls herself off the floor. There’s hours of cleaning ahead of her, after all.
Chapter 2
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HEART UPON THE SOUTHERN GROUND, a clexa southern au
i’ve been wanting to write a clexa southern au ever since i fell in love with country music and i’ve had bits and pieces of a story scattered around my brain for months now. i finally buckled up and started writing it! posted this over on patreon way back in september and i might have to rewrite this to fit into the story i have planned out. so it’s not really much of a sneak peek, but here you go!
Her first night back in town had been… tiring.
Having to sit through dinner with her mom, after not seeing her for over four years, and listen to her talk about what everyone Clarke knew when she was ten was doing with their lives now? Not her idea of a good time.
Friday nights back in Chicago had a completely different feel to them. Chinese take out instead of pimento cheese sandwiches, tequila shots instead of sweet tea, fighting the rush hour traffic into the city instead of rocking gently in a porch swing, going back home watching the sunrise instead of getting ready for bed with the sunset.
The sneaky tendrils of nostalgia cling to Clarke’s ribs - but it has less to do with being back to her childhood home and more to do with aching to see a building rise more than three stories.
She misses the city. She feels like a fucking failure and she misses the city.
As she walks past the town square and makes a right onto the main street, Clarke sees the spot she used to hide away from her grandpa whenever he came to the same grocery store she’s going to, begging for “five more minutes” of playing with her friends before he tugged her back home.
Clarke can’t say the town doesn’t have its charms - she has loved this town since the moment her parents brought her down here all swaddled up, ready for a Midwest winter that would never made its way to the south. But the memories jump at her at every damn corner.
“Well, well, the good son always does come back home,” someone Clarke doesn’t recognize says with a raised eyebrow and a southern drawl as she walks towards her, hand in hand with someone else. “If it’s not Clarke Griffin as I live and breathe!”
Something about her makes a sparkle come to life in Clarke’s mind - maybe the mischief in her eyes or the child-like smile that somehow doesn’t feel out of place. Slowly, Clarke places her brown skin and tight curls, although in her mind they’re a lot more wild, “Costia? Oh, my god!”
Strong arms curl around her and Clarke reacts to the hug immediately, clinging to Costia’s shirt, smiling wildly against her shoulder as the years between them fall away. She remembers a skimpy nine year old running ahead of her, towards the tire swing on the lake in her dad’s farm, leaving a chubby Clarke to catch up as she struggles for air. It’s a far cry from the woman in front of her, all warmth and elegance that only comes from being raised in the south.
It’s been too long and for the first time since she set foot in the old gravel roads, Clarke feels at home again.
“Gosh, I’m so rude,” Costia sniffles against her, loosening her hug and taking a step back. She keeps Clarke’s arms in her hands for a moment, a bright smile illuminating her face that Clarke knows is mirrored in hers, and then turns to the woman beside her, “Clarke, this is my girlf- my fiancée.” She links their hands again, hiding her face on her arm to chuckle as the woman looks at her with a fond smile, making Clarke feel like she’s intruding in a private moment, “I’m still getting used to it. This is Lexa.”
Lexa.
Clarke takes her in, trying to place where she might have heard that name before. Her tight jeans and tucked in flannel shirt with rolled up sleeves make up the wardrobe of half the population in this side of the country, but something about her eyes- fuck.
If her braid were tucked into a neat bun, if there was a winged eyeliner to compliment her green eyes, if she lost that ridiculous cowboy hat- fuck.
Reaching out her hand for Lexa to take, Clarke hurries to think of something to say, but the woman - Costia’s fiancée - beats her to it.
“We’ve met before, actually.”
#clexa#clexa fanfic#clexa au#southern au#mine#mine: writing#i know the moodboard/picspam has nothing to do with clexa but i'm so proud of it and i live for the aesthetic so i'm posting it too#mine: southern au
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