Archive of Our Own

Shawn Hunter starts thinking about Jonathan Turner as his father figure the first time that he seriously comes down sick.

He’s been sick before, of course. Everybody has. It was just his first time getting seriously sick, (you know, more than a small cold,) while living with Jonathan.

Shawn wakes up that morning, gets ready, gets his stuff as together as he can manage it, and starts to make a move for the front door. He doesn’t get very far, though.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

Shawn motions over at the door he was about to go through, before he got interrupted. Then he motions over to the backpack slung over his shoulder. “I’m going to Cory’s,” he says as if it’s obvious, which to him it probably is. He’s always at Cory’s. “We’re going to walk to school, but I need to get to his before another storm can roll in.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Either playing dumb, or he genuinely hadn’t noticed that the weather outside is rapidly going from mildly bad to pretty rough to horrible, Shawn says, “Um, no, I’m not kidding you. I always go to Cory’s. You know this. I’ve been doing this forever now.” He shoots the man an odd look.

In a very matter-of-fact sort of tone, Jonathan replies, “Alan isn’t going to let his son walk to school in this kind of weather. Nobody with a right mind is going to let their kids walk in this kind of weather. I’ll just call and ask if you can catch a ride with Alan. I’m sure he’s already going to drop off Cory and Morgan anyway.” As he says that, true to his word, he picks up the nearby phone and starts to dial.

Shawn shrugs and fights back a wince as the movement comes out all stiff and slow. He feels like he’s moving in slow motion, although all he did was move one shoulder up and down for maybe three seconds, tops. Probably not even that long. In an attempt to not have to bother the Matthews and to just to get out of the house before Jonathan could possibly notice anything off, Shawn tries, (and fails,) to downplay how likely it is that the softly falling snow could quickly turn into a severe, dangerous blizzard.

(Yesterday, every single local weather channel had announced that everyone had better either stay home or, at the absolute minimum, do not walk to school. Really, it was just an absolute wonder that school didn’t get cancelled ahead of time. Shawn blames the Philadelphia school system. If they had just cancelled the whole shabang, he wouldn’t even be in this mess.)

“Look, it’s just a few little snowflakes. Not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?” Jonathan incredulously motions at the no-longer transparent window, hot coffee mug in hand. He places his other hand on the window. It’s icy and cold to the touch. “How is that not a big deal?” he questions rhetorically, drawing his hand back slowly. “With that kind of storm, I don’t even know if I should let you leave the house!”

Shawn waves that statement off dismissively, even though the man does has a point. Best to stay indoors where nothing can hurt you, right? He shrugs again and, in a tone way too casual, says, “I’ve made my way through something like that before.”

(He purposely does not add in the fact that he’s trudged through it all in jackets worse than the half-torn up one that he’s currently in possession of. He does not mention the fact that he’s done that in ratty old shoes much worse than the ones currently on his feet. He does not mention how he’s had to wait around after school for hours when he was younger until either his dad finally remembered that he had a child, or the Matthews decided, “We aren’t leaving you here,” and brought him back to their house instead. He also pointedly does not mention how often he became sick and had to just suck it up and go along with his day because he was staying at the Matthews’ or he was staying with an unconcerned relative, or because his dad was off who-knows-where doing who-knows-what and he had nobody to take care of him. Then, finally, he also dutifully doesn’t mention that in the dead of winter, sometimes, the only reason he even made it out alright was because the Matthews family cared for him and were beyond pissed off and confused about how someone could just have a kid, but didn’t even make sure that the aforementioned child is safe and warm and healthy and full. In the grand scheme of things, Shawn thinks, does any of it really matter anyway? He’s fine now. He’s safe.)

“You did what?”

“What?” questions Shawn defensively as he desperately tries to hide his sniffles, which only seem to intensify every time he looks out at the frosty glass and pictures himself trudging his way to school through the snowy, cold outdoors. It only gets worse when his legs threaten to buckle underneath him and send him crashing to the floor. Somehow, though, he doesn’t collapse like he feels he will.

“Are you out of your mind?”

He doesn’t sass the man like he wants to. He doesn’t even know if he can. He just doesn’t really have the energy. “No.”

Jonathan sputters, still in shock that Shawn walking at least a mile to school in that was just a thing that used to happen. “You- I can’t even tell if you’re exaggerating or not.” He sighs and rubs at his forehead, already tired. The day has barely begun. “But for once in my life, I hope you are.”

Trying to avoid the lecture that he would certainly get if he fully confessed, Shawn does not inform his guardian that he was actually under exaggerating. Jonathan turns back to the phone, greets Alan Matthews, and asks him for a favor, all without taking his watchful gaze off of a confused Shawn.

For a second or two, the boy’s sniffles clear up, his legs gain some strength back, and all is perfectly, beautifully, magically well. The birds outside sing a choir’s song, flowers are blooming, the sun is shining brightly, green grass is existing... the world is an amazing place in his mind for about a minute.

By the time his head starts throbbing even worse than it did when he first woke up this morning, Shawn is regretting everything that he’s ever done in life, as if his previous life decisions did this to him. Either way, he’s deeply wishing it didn’t bring him to this one simple fact:

He is definitely sick. Hard-core sick. Maybe dangerously sick, even.

Around the same time that he realizes this fact, he silently vows that he’s not going to bother anybody with it, and, just like usual, he’s going to try to make it though the day... no matter how much his head is swimming and no matter how much he wants to just curl up in a blanket and fall fast asleep for seventeen years. (Longer than he’s even been alive, by the way, but that’s besides the point.) He eyes a water bottle that sits peacefully at the kitchen counter. Slowly, sluggishly, but like a man on a mission, he gets to his feet and shuffles quietly toward it.

Despite how sneaky he’s trying to be, Jonathan still notices.

“Yeah, could you please?” he asks Alan over the phone as he quickly moves into the kitchen, tosses the water bottle at Shawn, (who fumbles to catch it in time, fails, and watches it fall to the floor in front of his feet,) and just as quickly, crosses back into the living room. “Yeah, that would be great. I don’t really want him out there.” He pauses. “Yeah, actually. He mentioned something like that a few minutes ago.” He side-eyes an increasingly confused Shawn, who’s peacefully chugging the water down his dry throat. “No. I didn’t ask. I thought he was exaggerating.”

Shawn looks away. Jonathan very obviously doesn’t.

“So he’s not?” He pauses again, even longer this time. Then, suddenly, his knuckles turn white for a split second, and he looks as if he’d love to strangle the poor, innocent phone in his hand. He calms down, though, with much reluctance. Seemingly trying, and failing, to rein in his anger, he asks, “ Why did nobody tell me that?” Whatever answer he received, he was not very satisfied with, judging by his gritted teeth and clenched fist. He hangs up the phone. (It’s a miracle that he doesn’t toss it across the room entirely.)

For a few seconds, silence reigns.

It doesn’t last very long.

Shawn sits quietly, no doubt expecting a lecture of some sort- Jonathan is so angry that he feels like something is bound to happen- but nothing does. At least, not at first. And not in the way that he’s expecting.

Jonathan looks around the apartment for a minute or two, clearly searching for something, and when he finds an old, but sturdy coat, he tosses it at Shawn.

“We’ll talk when you get home.”

Great. Talking. A thing that requires energy, which Shawn can feel slipping away from him.

He doesn’t argue, ( can’t,) just shrugs on the jacket and leaves.

*****

“So, what do you think is going to happen at this year’s career day?”

Cory Matthews eagerly looks over at his best friend, who’s swirling around some pudding, not caring in the slightest bit.

He shrugs and dignifies that excited question with an answer, but just barely. “I don’t know. You?”

Cory squints at him, instantly suspicious. (He should be.) He wags a finger at him accusatorially and says, “You’ve been really off all day. You didn’t disturb Mr. Feeny in class today. You didn’t crumple up any papers. You refused to make a paper airplane. You didn’t stomp out. You didn’t even sass him one time. Not once.”

Ah, that’s true. That’s probably what tipped the kid off in the first place. Whoops? He’ll... try harder next time? What’s a guy supposed to even say to that?

“So?” Shawn says calmly, even though he knows that that will only fuel Cory’s fire.

“Which means that something’s clearly wrong with you!”

“Maybe I just decided to give the old man a break today.”

He scoffs and promptly proceeds to call his best friend out, with absolutely no hesitation. “Yeah, that’s fake.”

Knowing that he’s caught, somewhat, but still trying to keep it together, he asks, “What makes you think so?”

Confidently, Cory says- “Because I’m you’re best friend and I know you better than anybody. I know when you’re lying.” He wags a finger at him again. “I know when something’s wrong with you. Mr. Feeny even asked if you’re okay.”

“What? He did?” He sits up just a little bit straighter.

“Uh-huh. He thinks something’s wrong with you. I told him that I agree with him... which is probably what really tipped him off, by the way.”

“Ah Cor, you totally messed up.” He stops fiddling with his food and looks over at his friend. “He’s totally going to rat on me.”

“To who? He’s the principal, you idiot! Who’s he gonna tell on you to, the superintendent? Please!” The fifteen-year old scoffs. Somehow, even that is full of energy. Shawn envies him.

“Hey, Cor?”

“It’s not like the superintendent is going to care. It’s not exactly his forte- hey, who even is the superintendent, anyway? We’ve never even met him.”

“Cor, I know someone Mr. Feeny could squeal to-“

“And of course we’ve never- oh. Right.” As realization dawns, and he figures out what Shawn is trying to tell him, he calms down. “Oh right. Mr. Turner. I forgot about him.”

“There ya go. Took you long enough.”

“Hey-“

“What are you two talking about?”

“Topanga!” Both boys look away from each other and over at the curious blonde, who seemingly just came out of nowhere. ( I swear she knows how to teleport, one or both of the two might say later.)

“Hi.” She places her tray down, pulls out a chair, and sits down on the other side of Cory, who’s still frowning. She looks in between the two. Because she is smart and observant and quickly realizes that her boyfriend isn’t just losing his mind over nothing this time around, she asks in a concerned tone, “What’s going on?”

Cory quickly hops back into action, pointing across the other side of the table. “He’s hiding something from me!”

The other boy instantly denies it, but it doesn’t really do any good. “No, I’m not.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He doesn’t try to convince him anymore, at least not right now. He slowly begins eating again. Most of the food on his tray is left untouched, Topanga quickly notices, and the lunch period is already half over. The one thing that most definitely was touched was a slowly growing collection of empty, plastic water bottles. She considers the way that Shawn keeps his mouth shut and keeps laying his head down on the probably dirty lunch room table. She also notices how he keeps occasionally glancing at the clock on the wall, and how his flimsy little jacket is all but abandoned, despite the fact that it’s actually a bit chilly in the cafeteria.

After a second or two more of thinking things through like a smart person does, she shrugs and leans over her confused boyfriend. She lays a cool hand on Shawn’s forehead. Before he can push her off or tell her off, (which he probably wants to do anyway,) she’s already leaning back into her own seat.

“What was that for?”

As if it was obvious, which to her it probably is, she says, “I was trying to check your temperature.” She frowns. “Your head is pretty hot. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just hot in here.”

Cory and Topanga share a worried glance.

“No, it’s not,” they both promptly answer. I’m unison. Like those little twins from The Shining.

“I think you’re sick,” says Topanga bluntly. Before anyone can chime in with an argument, she’s already listening off reasons why she thinks so. “Number one,” she says, putting up one finger, “You’re hot.”

There’s a pause, a small lapse in which nobody acknowledges that. Cory doesn’t snap at her for words accidentally coming across as flirting with Shawn; Shawn doesn’t purposely flirt back, joking and saying something about how she is, too. In fact, he says nothing at all. Just listens and stares at her, all the while still sipping at some water.

That in itself concerns her.

“Uh, okay,” she’s a bit shaken over the fact that that gets absolutely no reaction at all, but she powers through. “Number two,” she holds up a second finger, “You never remember to take care of yourself on a good day.” She motions around at the empty water bottles, then over to the half-full one that he’s still holding. “You’re probably trying to get over being sick- or you still are sick, which I think is just about right- without letting anybody know that you’re not feeling well in the first place. Number three,” she points at Shawn, “You’ve been sniffling or sneezing or coughing all throughout History. I wasn’t even with you for the last half hour, but I’ll go ahead and assume it was just more of the same. Cory?”

Cory keeps his gaze on Shawn even as he nods his confirmation to Topanga’s question. “That’s all true.”

She nods. That’s what she was expecting. “Look, you need to go to the nurse.”

Shawn frowns. “No, I don’t.”

Then suddenly, Cory, with a gleam in his eye that only spells trouble, says- “Then prove it.”

Both teenagers turn to stare at him. “What?”

“Yeah. If you’re doing so well on your own- even though if you would just communicate with your friends, you wouldn’t be in this situation- anyway. I have an idea.”

“I’m going to regret asking this,” Shawn, who already looks like he regrets every single decision in his life, says. “But what’s your idea?”

“We need to go ice skating.”

“...Ice skating?” That’s nowhere near the stupidity that he was expecting. “That’s it? Just ice skating?”

“That’s it. You and me, after school.” He glances to his left and absently adds, “Oh, and you too, Topanga.”

She doesn’t immediately accept. Unlike the other two, she decides to think things through for a second. Also, she just can’t see what the point of it all is. It doesn’t make sense. (She’s always been the more cautious one, anyway, even if that’s not particularly saying much.) “I feel like this is a bad idea.”

Cory pulls together an innocent look that would work well if she wasn’t his girlfriend and/or didn’t actually know him. “Why ever do you think so?”

“You’re going to take your very sick, very stubborn best friend to go ice skating, which requires skills and gracefulness, when he can hardly even stand on his feet?”

“I can stand!”

She puts up a dismissive hand and doesn’t even look at the brown-haired boy as she says, “Yeah, I’m not talking to you.” (Despite the fact that saying so means that technically she is talking to him.)

Cory, though, definitely is. No doubt about it. “If you’re so confident that you’re not sick, that you’re all well and fine, then you’ll go skating with me tonight. You’ll prove it.”

Ohhh. She suddenly sees the point. Still thinks it’s not the best idea in the world, but not the worst. It could work.

“Well played,” Topanga whispers. Now Shawn’s definitely going to back out, he’ll stop pretending that he’s feeling well when he’s not, he’ll go home to his loving, (and pretty clueless) guardian, eat some soup, and be just peachy within a week. Or at least, that’s what she’s hoping will happen.

However, they all failed to acknowledge just how stubborn the teenager is. Instead of doing what the whole plan is banking on him doing, Shawn tries to stifle what is bound to be a loud coughing fit and nods his head. “You’re on, Cor,” he croaks.

“Okay. Go ask Mr. Turner if you can just ride back to my house after school, then we’ll go from there.” He points over at a nearby table, over to where Mr. Turner and Mr. Feeny are calmly eating their lunches, blissfully unaware of the stupid decisions being made, and about to be made, behind them.

For a second or two, Shawn seems to hesitate. Then, instead of just giving up, he wobbly gets to his feet and heads on over.

Cory watches him go. The second the other boy finds his way over to the other table, he facepalms. “He’s so stubborn. He’s going to get himself killed someday if he keeps this up. Why won’t he just let me help him?”

“Because, like you said, he’s stubborn. And incredibly self-sufficient. He’s probably learned how to suck it up when he gets sick. Think about it for a second. Over the many, many years, how many times has Shawn gotten really sick? Sick like he is now?”

The two stop to think.

“Hardly ever.”

She nods. “That’s what I thought- oh wait. Let me hold that thought. We’re being waved over.”

He looks over to where, sure enough, the two of them are being waved over by a frowning Mr. Feeny.

“Should we go over there?”

“I don’t know. We probably should. It seems like a good idea.”

Despite that, the fifteen-year old looks mournfully down at his lunch tray. He looks up to the sky, kisses two of his fingers, and holds them up in the air. Then, ignoring the looks from his girlfriend, who has definitely done weirder, he abandons his food and stands up.

“What’s going on, Mr. Feeny?”

He wastes no time in answering. “Why is Shawn in school today? He looks horrible.”

“Because he has who has no respect for his own wellbeing, that’s why.”

Mr. Feeny heaves his long suffering, very familiar, why-do-I-deal-with-you, type of sigh. It’s trademarked. It’s written in gold. It’s his own thing, like the Feeny call is Eric’s. “That’s been established, Mr. Matthews. I know that you usually have the observation skills of a rock, but when it comes to your friend, you usually take notice.” He pauses. “So, why are we being told that you want to take him,” he points a finger over at Shawn, who’s struggling to listen to something that Jonathan is saying, “Ice skating?”

“Because that’s the plan. All three of us are going after school if the storm doesn’t roll back into town.”

He stares. Hard. He’s probably contemplating their sanity at this very moment. “ Why?”

“We were hoping that he would chicken out,” Topanga politely informs him. She’s frowning, too. She puts two and two together and says, “But since we’re even over here in the first place, I’m guessing that he didn’t.”

“He didn’t,” Jonathan called out, confirming. “But he’s not going.” He doesn’t even look at them as he says it. His stare is locked on Shawn, as if he’s expecting the boy to just fall right over the second he takes his eyes off of him. “If you aren’t feeling well, why didn’t you say anything?”

“I’m feeling fine,” he somehow manages to say  half-way convincingly. Nobody else but Jonathan even somewhat believes it, (and even he isn’t really convinced,) but he can’t really be faulted for that. He hasn’t been around long enough to know better. “Cory and Topanga are just looking for a problem that isn’t there.”

“On the contrary.” And that’s Mr. Feeny speaking again. “I think you ought to see the nurse.”

“What?” he scoffs, as if the very idea offends him. (It probably does.) He crosses his arms. “I don’t need a nurse!”

Four pairs of very not-convinced and very unamused eyes shot over to look at him.

“Just let me stick it through the day. It’s almost the weekend, which means I can just be lazy and do nothing for days. I can make it through today, okay? It’s not like I’m dying or anything, geez.”

Everyone shakes their heads at him, making their displeasure known.

“You’re going to fall over by the time we get to English,” Topanga says, her tone of voice matter-of-fact. She raises her hands in surrender. “I’m not in charge of you, though, so I can’t make you go home. Just don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

*****

Shawn never does get permission to go ice skating. He doesn’t even make it to English.

The trio, (well, technically, two out of three of them, are sitting down during gym class, having just recently gotten out during a game of Dodgeball, when Shawn decides to stand up and go grab one of his many water bottles.

That turns out to be a mistake.

Shawn stands up and crashes straight to the floor.

Cory takes one look at his sprawled out best friend and yells, “I freaking knew it! The stubborn idiot.” Just the same, he leans down to help Shawn up. “Dude come on, get up.” He huffs. “This isn’t funny-“ he rolls his best friend onto his side and stops.

Shawn, upon further investigation, is not actually awake.

“Uh... I wasn’t expecting that,” Cory chokes out weakly. Then his brain goes into overdrive as he frantically looks around for help. “Topanga!”

Topanga, who is still playing Volleyball, (the gym teacher had decided to ditch Dodgeball and switch games once the last match ended,) doesn’t even hear him. As a matter of fact, nobody does. It only then hits him, as cheerleaders arrive out of nowhere and enter the gymnasium shaking their Pom Poms excitedly, that something is about to go horribly wrong.

And sure enough...

A pep rally is going to start.

A mandatory pep rally is going to start. Aka, they don’t have a way out.

“Hello? Anyone? Anybody at all? Please help!”

Nothing. Topanga, not noticing that anything is wrong, waves at him after serving an especially hard spike. She lifts her hands in the air, triumphant. He, quite frankly, could not care less as he face palms and tries once again to motion her over. She wrinkles her nose at him, probably confused, but stays put. Cory frantically looks around the room for anybody that’ll pay attention to him. He would just leave and go find an adult, like he so desperately wants to do, but he can’t just leave Shawn all alone.

More people begin filing into the room. Cory leans down to check Shawn’s pulse, and is relieved to find that the boy is still breathing. That’s definitely a good sign, but it’s still a cause for worry when people who were awake and active one moment are knocked out cold on the dirty, crowded floor the next.

Topanga looks over to the sidelines. Because of the most recent group that just flooded inside- at least ten people, if not more- she doesn’t spot the fact that one of her two friends is completely unconscious. What she does catch, luckily, is the look of sheer panic on her boyfriend’s face.

She frowns. “Is something wrong?” she tries to say. He can’t hear her, and she can’t even hear herself, but he does see her lips moving. He takes a shot in the dark and hopes that both himself and her can read lips well enough to get through this.

“Yes!” he calls out, loudly. She doesn’t hear him, but she catches on anyway.

“Five more minutes.” She holds up one hand, holds up all five fingers. He shakes his head violently, trying to convey that he can’t just sit around and wait that long, but before he can attempt to get through to her some more, the world finally seems to let him catch a break as, miraculously, something good finally happens.

After ten whole minutes, Shawn’s eyes slowly flicker open.

“Fuck yes!” Cory positively screams. A few people look his way, but ultimately nobody cares. It’s a high school. They’ve probably seen and heard much weirder. “Shawn, what the actual hell was that?”

“Shh.”

He doesn’t listen. He somehow gets even louder.

“NO, I’M NOT GOING TO SHUSH! I NEED TO KNOW EXACTLY-“

Shawn winces while he lifts one hand slowly up to hold his head. In a voice that might not even be loud enough to be considered a whisper, he says, “Calm down.” It’s a wonder that the other boy even hears him at all, but judging by his quick nod, he gets it.

And sure enough, he listens that time. He lowers his voice.

“I have questions.”

“What?”

“What the hell was that? You were fine one minute and now you’re just-“ he motions wildly at his best friend, who is still laying collapsed on the floor, not moving, wincing as he holds his head tightly with his eyes closed. He’s hardly even speaking. “What happened?”

The only response he gets is a shrug. To him, it’s not good enough.

“That’s not gonna cut it. Get up, we’re leaving.”

He doesn’t do it. Without opening his eyes, he points over at a large banner that somehow neither of them had noticed up until that point. Mandatory annual pep rally, it reads.

“Well, we’ll just skip it.”

He points at the lower print. Skipping this rally will result in a one hour detention after school.

“...That might be a problem.”

“Why is he on the floor?”

The two boys look up to see that Topanga is looming over them, clearly confused. “Scratch that- why are both of you on the floor?”

Cory, who stands up once he notices the blonde, points downward. “Because he’s on the floor.”

“I see that,” she says patiently. “But why?”

“See, that’s the problem. I don’t know. ”

She doesn’t quite believe that. “You’ve got to know something.”

“All I know is that one second we’re sitting down, we’re laughing, everything is normal, we’re having a good ol’ time-

Her forehead wrinkles. “I thought he was sick? How is that a good time?”

He points at her and nods. “I was getting to that. We were just having a ball when suddenly, I look down and this one is just crumpled up like a piece of paper, totally unconscious.”

Topanga, who was completely calm up until then, briefly loses it. “What?”

(Quite a few people wince that time around.)

She whips around to face Shawn, who has managed to sit up by this point in time. His eyes are squeezed shut even tighter than they were before, one hand his holding his head while the other is covering his eyes, his jacket is once again pretty much completely abandoned, and he has finally stopped chugging water, for what was likely the first time in the day. He’s not looking back at her. He’s not looking at anyone or anything at all, really.

Her anger quickly dissipates and turns into genuine concern. “Are you okay?” She kneels down to his level.

He shakes his head, just barely. Even that seems to take some effort, but it’s very telling that he’s even admitting anything at all, even if it’s not verbally.

“We need to get him out of here,” Cory says quietly, “But we’re going to get in trouble. And we’re going to have to get out before anybody can catch us, unless it’s somebody that we need to run into.”

She doesn’t question it. Doesn’t stop to wonder why they would need to run into anyone. She just allows herself to be completely roped into whatever the plan will be. She even throws in a suggestion. “Okay, I’m in. How about one of us stays here with him while the other sneaks out to go find Mr. Turner? Or maybe even Mr. Feeny? Mr. Turner can sign him out early, right? Because let’s face it, either Shawn goes home or he goes to the nurse. He’s not staying here for another four hours. It’s just not happening.”

“I agree. And you have a good plan, but here’s the thing- we don’t know if it’ll work. There’s like, a fifty-fifty chance of it succeeding.”

“That’s better than your two’s usual plans.”

He lets out a halfhearted sounding, “Hey! You’re right, but I’m offended.” He quickly shakes it off. “That’s not important right now. We should probably brainstorm some more.”

“Wait, Mr. Turner is Shawn’s legal guardian, isn’t he? So why wouldn’t my plan work out?”

Cory hesitates. “Well, see...”

“The papers,” Shawn manages to get out. Both heads turn to face him again.

“What?” both other teens inquire in unison once again. It’s beginning to look like this is just a thing that they do. It’s usually not even on purpose.

“The guardianship papers,” Cory fills in as he connects the dots first. “We aren’t sure if Mr. Turner has actually signed them or not yet.”

Topanga gapes. “He’s been living with Mr. Turner for like, ten months! And he didn’t even sign the papers?” She pauses. “And nobody’s even questioned this until now?”

“Well, I’m not sure-“

“You better be sure-“

“I could be wrong! He could have signed the papers months ago and just not said anything-“

“Yeah, no, I really doubt that. We would know by now. I don’t think he signed them-“

Their argument gets interrupted as Shawn taps them both on one of their shoulders, probably desperately wishing for them both to just shut up because they’re making things- and his headache- even worse. For two people so desperate to help, they aren’t doing very much of that. When the two do indeed shut up, (which he didn’t even actually tell them to do, they just figured that out on their own, god on them,) and look at him again, he clears things up pretty quickly.

“He didn’t.”

“Oh shit.” Cory leans back. “Does that mean that he can’t sign you out?”

“That means worse than that,” Topanga answers. “Shawn can’t even go to the doctor, or even a nurse. Other than the school nurse. A real one, I mean.”

“What on Earth are you three doing?”

“Ahh!” All three kids jolted at the sudden voice. One kid instinctively went to protect the other, while one blearily blinked up at Mr. Feeny, and the other shot straight into some semblance of an explanation.

“He’s sick out of his mind and he probably needs some drugs. Or more than some. He probably needs a lot of drugs. Just pump him up and go from there- okay, I’m not making much sense. Let me try again. He didn’t let any of us know he was sick until lunch, which you already know, because you were kind of there and all. Cory and I thought that he might be able to make it to English, and he thought so too, but he fainted during gym a little while ago. He apparently only woke up a few minutes ago, and he’s a lot worse off than he was earlier. I don’t even think that he’s trying to hide it anymore, which really tells you something right there. We need to get out of the pep rally like, pronto, and get him to a doctor, but we can’t do that and I know that you aren’t going to let us go,” Topanga straightens up just a bit. “But we’re going to just have to accept the detention that you’re going to give us. Just, you know, not today. We’ll take it tomorrow. I swear. They swear too!” She points back at the other two. Then she shakes her head and points back just at Cory, then at herself. “Come on Mr. Feeny. You know us. You know how this goes. We get in trouble and we accept the punishment. We do the time, and we all move on with our lives. That doesn’t have to change now!” She nervously pulls both hands together and pleads. “Please?”

It takes Mr. Feeny a second or two to reply to the verbal keysmash he received from Topanga, who’s usually calm enough to get things under control. This is not the case. Still trying to process, Mr. Feeny picks out one bit toward the end of it all that he instantly latches on to. “Why can’t you take him to a doctor?”

“Dad isn’t here,” offers Shawn vaguely.

“That’s our problem.” Cory nods, not elaborating in the slightest bit.

“Mr. Turner apparently never signed the guardianship papers.” Topanga grumbles, crossing her arms and blowing a puff of hair out of her face.

“Yes he did?” replies the honestly baffled teacher. “He did it months ago.”

“No, he didn’t!” she retorts bitterly. “We would have heard about it by now!”

“And he would have told Shawn!” Cory points out indignantly.

“I can assure you, he’s definitely signed the papers. He even showed them to me.” When the three don’t say anything, the man comes up with a plan. “All of you stay put. I’ll be right back.”

He disappears.

In the ten minutes that he’s gone, things don’t improve at all. He’s not very surprised by this. Time doesn’t seem to be helping anything very much at all.

“Why the heck-“ Cory is frowning.

“What kind of sickness does he even have?” Topanga is confused as she watches Shawn pick up his jacket, put it on, be content for all of two seconds, before throwing it back off again. She watches him do this for other various objects, too. There’s a lot of things surrounding him.

Shawn eventually gets sick of this. He unstably wobbles to his feet, but before he could even take a step, Cory and Topanga are shooting to their own feet, protesting loudly.

That’s what Mr. Turner and Mr. Feeny come back to- one fifteen-year old wincing and trying to push the other two back as far away as he can, one blonde trying her best to wrangle the other two, and one panicking, brown-haired kid.

Without hesitation, the two adults push them all apart.

“I left for ten minutes!” The oldest of them all called out. “What could have possibly happened in ten minutes?”

Two out of the three attempt to mumble out a good explanation. At several points, they’re looking over at Mr. Turner, who’s not paying any attention to them at all. He’s, once again, busy trying to have a conversation with Shawn, but not much progress is being made during that. For some reason or another, (later on, people throw in their opinions. The most popular one of them is that he’s just a very concerned father, panicking at the sight of his kid getting sick,) red, glaring alarm bells seem to go off in his head.

“Shawn,” he says lowly, but loud enough to catch his attention. He’s waving a hand in front of his face for good measure, but that’s not necessary. The kid hasn’t taken his eyes off of him since he entered the gym with Mr. Feeny. “Will you be okay?” It’s close enough to the standard question are you okay, and he wants to ask it, but it doesn’t seem right to. After all, the answer is quite obvious. Shawn is not okay. If he was okay, he wouldn’t be lying on the ground surrounded by various objects, trash, his two very concerned best friends, or two of his equally worried teachers. “Hey. Look at me. We’re going to go home, okay?”

Despite the fact that usually this kid would be jumping for joy at being able to skip school, he shrugs and wrinkles his nose instead. He’s clearly not happy with something specifically in that sentence, but he doesn’t actually specify what it is. (Or, you know, he could just be uncomfortable. Or it could be both things.) “Wait.” He points over at the sign which very clearly spelled out consequences for leaving. Detention, without a single doubt. He does his best to shoot a smirk at his teacher/guardian and says, “Mind if I miss that?”

His attempts at levity and snark fall flat for more reasons than one. The fact that he immediately fell into a coughing fit didn’t help matters any.

“We’re leaving,” came the reply as he, Topanga, Cory, and Mr. Feeny, (who’s on the phone with Alan Matthews, presumably attempting to get a ride for Shawn,) all attempt to get the kid mobile.

Somehow, it works. It helps that there are four people trying their best to get him out the door, and four people can make quite a difference.

Within a few minutes, Alan Matthews pulls up.

“Jonathan,” he says, beckoning the other man over. “Am I taking him to my house or your apartment?”

He doesn’t answer right off the bat. Jonathan instead turns to Mr. Feeny. Then, as if it was obvious, says, “I’m not going to be here for English today.”

The man nods. “I figured. We’ll find a substitute. It’ll be fine.” He waves goodbye to Shawn, who looks confused. The confused expression increases when Jonathan slips into the car and the seat beside him.

“You’re coming with us?”

“Of course I am. I’m not going to leave you home alone when you’re sick.”

Shawn pauses, considering that.

Jonathan doesn’t ask the question he has on his mind until they get safely back to the apartment and Shawn is all curled up on the couch, enveloped by blankets, all snug and tight like a burrito.

“What did you think I was going to do?”

“What?” The boy asks, barely lifting his head up. He’s finally a bit comfortable and he doesn’t want to move. He blinks for a few seconds before his brain kicks in. “Oh, yeah. I thought you’d stay at the school.”

“And leave you by yourself?”

He shrugs. The motion is painful for more reasons than one. “Yeah.” He eyes Jonathan, who’s over in the kitchen heating up a can of soup. “I guess you didn’t do that, though.”

“No, I didn’t.” He looks over at the kid, then. Puts the stirring spoon down, (which is just any spoon, really,) and says-

“I would never.”

*****

Two.

Jonathan is just peacefully minding his own business one night. He’s not caught up in any drama for once, and he’s honestly having a great time.

He’s got a date sitting beside him on the couch, they have the lights turned down low, a few candles are burning softly off in the distance, they have a full spread out of snacks... the evening is going really well.

Until Cory Matthews comes along and ruins it.

“Hello?” The kid’s voice calls out loudly as he knocks on the front door. Once, twice, three times- no, four. Persistent, that Cory is. “Is Shawn here?”

Jonathan sighs heavily. Great. Just what he needs. His night is ruined! The blonde next to him looks over at the door in confusion. “Uh. Who’s that?”

My son’s annoying best friend, is the first thought that comes to mind, but he shakes it off almost instantly because Shawn is actually not his son, thank you very much. (Even though most people don’t actually believe him when he says that. He knows Eli doesn’t. The man teases him constantly about it.) “One of Shawn’s friends. Who shouldn’t be here right now.” He says the last part of the sentence pointedly, hoping that the kid in front of the apartment will just take the hint and leave.

He doesn’t, unfortunately enough. “I need to talk to Shawn,” he says urgently. “It’s important.”

For a second or two, Jonathan is still very tempted to just ignore him and hope that he’ll go away, but before he can do that, he notices something- Cory doesn’t seem like he’s kidding around. His voice is serious. This isn’t his I-have-a-prank or his I-have-an-idea tone of voice. Something’s up.

So, sighing, he gets to his feet and opens the door.

His eyes behold quite a sight.

He sees Topanga, who’s trying to yank her hair up in an awkward looking ponytail as she dangles a pair of car keys in between her fingers. She’s standing beside Cory. Cory, who’s face is as serious as his voice was as he holds a very thick envelope pushed out away from him. Then, finally, and oddly enough, a half-wincing and more than half furious Alan Matthews is standing directly behind the two, a protective arm around both of their shoulders. He’s glaring. Jonathan gets the impression that the glare is not aimed at him.

He looks them all up and down carefully for almost a solid minute before coming to a verdict. “I can’t ignore this, can I?”

They all shake their heads.

“This is a legitimate problem, isn’t it?”

They all nod their heads.

Sighing some more, he opens the door up wider to allow them all inside. His date, a woman named Virginia, is still sitting on his couch. She eyes each newcomer wearily. Motioning in between the three, who are standing very close to each other, she asks, “What’s going on here?”

“Heck if I know, but it’s probably nothing good.”

He knows there’s a slight issue, and he has a tiny bit of a bad feeling about it, but that bad feeling only intensifies into something large and unavoidable the second that he notices Alan’s hurt hand.

Jonathan doesn’t directly tell Virginia to leave, but she catches on that something’s about to happen, (or already did happen,) and she leaves on her own. The second the door clicks shut behind her, everyone starts talking. It’s like a switch was flipped.

“I probably shouldn’t have punched him in the face-“

“He had it coming!”

“We really need to talk to Shawn!”

“Is Shawn here?”

“No, of course he’s not here!”

“This is important! Where is he?”

“Okay, okay. Calm down, everyone.” Jonathan, much quieter and calmer than the rest, (ignorance is bliss,) tries to relax them. It takes a few minutes, but eventually they all stop yelling. “Sit down.” They do so. “Now, can anybody explain what’s going on here, without raising your voices?”

The trio shoot nervous looks at one another, all trying to decide where to begin and who should start talking first.

In the end, Alan does.

“Okay. Cory found Chet Hunter.”

Well, that’s news. He has everyone’s full attention- especially Jonathan’s. He doesn’t want to know more, he just wants to go back to his nice, quiet evening, but he has a feeling that he needs to get involved in... whatever this is. So he asks,

“Does that have anything to do with why your hand is bloody?”

Alan nods, then oh-so-casually says, “I punched him in the face.”

“ What?”

“He deserves it! I don’t regret it.”

“Back up. Why did you punch him in the face?” He lays one hand over his face, sighing. He’s tired already.

“Well, after we confronted him, and pretty much screamed at him to just come back for Shawn and not be the absolute deadbeat-“ Cory, who’s attempting to take over the conversation, pauses. He takes a deep breath and continues on. “He refused.”

Jonathan nods, not all that surprised. Resigned, maybe. Annoyed, yes. But not surprised. “That sounds about right. What’s his excuse now?”

“I want to do what’s best for my boy.” Cory takes on a gruff, deep sounding voice as he imitates Chet. He quickly shakes it off and returns to sounding like himself. (Nobody complains about that.) “Same as usual.” He shrugs, but he’s clearly still pissed. That seems to be the most common expression coming from the living room’s occupants.

“What’s not the same as usual is that he refuses to even see Shawn.” Topanga puts in, scowling. “He doesn’t even want to talk to him over the phone.”

“Shawn’s been throwing away his dad’s letters,” Jonathan informs them all. “At first he said it was because the guy just won’t visit him, but I feel like there’s more to the story there. He just won’t tell me why, and I haven’t been wanting to push him too hard on it, especially when I don’t really know what’s going on.”

“He hasn’t talked to any of us about it, either.”

“So, let’s recap. We have one kid upset with his father for who knows why, we have one dad who refuses to even speak to his son while, at the same time, still pretending he wants the best for him, then we have you three,” he motions at them all then, “That keep getting in the middle of it. So, one of you punches someone in the face,” he motions at Alan, who nods, “One of you keeps lugging around some huge envelope,” he motions at Cory, who’s yet to actually put the thing down, “And there’s somehow even more to this than you all originally thought. To sum up: we know pretty much nothing at all. Does that sound about right?”

The other three nod their approval of that blunt, but not terribly inaccurate, summary of the most current events.

Cory frowns. “Okay, so, how do we move forward from this point?”

“Carefully,” Topanga, calmer than everybody there at this point, (except maybe Jonathan,) says. She’s clearly angry too, she’s just holding it in better than the rest. “We should probably try to get to the bottom of this.”

“But how?”

She frowns, too. That’s also becoming a familiar thing tonight. “I’m not quite sure. I would just say that we try to get through to Shawn, but that has a high chance of blowing up in our faces, and a very low success rate.”

“Maybe we should just leave it alone?” suggests Alan, but even he doesn’t believe that’s a good idea. Plus, it’s way too late for that. He looks down at his hand. “Forget that I even said anything.” He shakes his head.

“This could be a really delicate situation for all we know. Usually Chet will at least visit Shawn, or Shawn will at least send him letters back. Now, suddenly, neither wants to communicate at all? It’s just... really weird. It doesn’t make much sense. And you guys know that I’m not a huge fan of meddling in people’s lives- Cory don’t give me that look, you’re one to talk here- but I really don’t think it’s a good idea to leave this alone. Maybe we should try to get through to Chet, go back and figure out what the problem is?”

“Hey, wait.” Cory says suddenly with his usual I-have-an-idea face on. “Mr. Turner,” he turns to face the man, who’s sitting in silence now, “You never actually said where Shawn is.”

“He’s on a date.” Jonathan cocks his head slightly. “Why’s that important?” Even as he says that, he’s beginning to think that this is some kind of situation where pretty much any and all information is relevant. He just doesn’t know why.

“Are you sure he’s on a date?” The boy double checks.

“Yes.” He doesn’t hesitate for a second. At least this, he’s sure of. After the first instance that blew up on both of their faces, Shawn and Jonathan are pretty open with each other on that particular subject. Others, not so much, clearly, but that’s for another time.

“How do you know he didn’t sneak off to see his dad? How do you know that he didn’t get in a fight or something?”

“Because I know better. Plus, even though he won’t apply himself or ever admit it, Shawn’s smart. And he knows that he’s smart. He would consider his options and know that there’s no realistic way to get to where ever his  dad went.”

“How do you know that for sure?” Cory challenges. “He’s done some pretty reckless stuff before. You know, like when he tried to hop on a train after he talked to that nut job guidance councilor. He wasn’t thinking things through then, either.”

“The girl he’s with can’t drive, he’s double dating with your brother, his date will keep him plenty busy, none of them even drove tonight, seeing that they all walked to Chubbie’s, and he usually doesn’t take off before telling you.”

“...Those are some good points.” Cory, at least momentarily relieved, sinks down into the couch. That peace only lasts for a few seconds, though, before he’s springing up again. He’s making a face as he hesitantly says, “I forgot to tell you something.”

Everyone stares. More? There’s more? They already have quite a mess on their hands, they don’t need anything to add to it.

“What did you forget to tell me?” Jonathan, taking notice of how the kid seems to be really close to just closing off entirely, questions suspiciously. Like most things with this kid, he’s not sure if he even wants to know.

Cory’s response to that is to hand over the thick, and probably heavy, stack of papers and envelopes that he’s been holding for at least the past ten minutes, but probably far longer than that. “Chet told me to give these to you. He wouldn’t tell me what they are, but I can take a wild guess.”

He takes the stack and quickly starts flipping his way through it. The first thing he notices are a bunch of random, fancy words and a bunch of forms that will more than likely take a while to get through. The second thing he notices is the oh so terrifying word adoption.

He suddenly stops short.

Adoption. Several things hit him all at once.

His face positively burns with anger. Realization comes quickly. “I know that Chet’s been neglectful in the past, but he always comes back...”

“Yes?” says Cory, but it comes off more as a question. Topanga shrugs. Alan, in the background, is still furious. Probably even more so now, actually, as he connects some dots.

“Alan,” Jonathan addresses him as he throws everything else down and holds up one singular piece of paper. “Did you know about this?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t...” He trails off as he begins pacing around the room.

Cory and Topanga shoot a look at one another. They’re clearly concerned. They’ve been concerned about an abundance of things that evening, so what’s one more?

He holds up the paper out to the kids for them to read. “I’m... do you all understand what this means?”

No, they don’t. Or at least the younger two don’t, not right away. Alan does. He’s still seething.

“If Chet is giving this to Jonathan to sigh,” begins Alan lowly, as the teenage couple stare blankly down at the form, probably in shock, “It means that he’s not coming back.”

“Who’s not coming back?”

Alan freezes. He can’t turn around. If he turns around and acknowledges the voice behind him, then that means things are really real. Well, they already are, but still.

This is going to crush Shawn.

The other three catch on to that too. Nobody makes a sound. Everybody freezes. Their eyes lock on to one another, wide eyes and frightened faces that clearly scream something along the lines of, ‘this is really, really bad.’

Jonathan, after a few painful seconds, tries to speak. He’s trying to be the adult here. It would be much easier to be in charge of this chaos if he doesn’t have to break heartbreaking news to the kid who he’s been watching over for almost a year- and now, apparently, just as the two are slowly getting used to the idea that Shawn might have to leave, (a week or two before all of this went down, Chet had actually been pretty involved, for him at least. It was both amazing and heartbreaking... things clearly took a sharp turn somehow,) now they have to face the fact that it could now last a lot longer than that. Temporary doesn’t look so fleeting anymore.

Shawn is studying them all with varying emotions on his face. Sadness and anger are definitely there, but the most prominent of it all is suspicion. Oddly enough, his best friend seems to catch the brunt of it.

“Look,” he says, voice low and serious as he turns his attention over to the other brown-haired boy, “My dad came to talk to me at Chubbies. He said that you confronted him. That you caught a bus and traveled fifty miles away just to get up in his face.”

Cory doesn’t deny anything. He doesn’t show any remorse, either. “I wouldn’t quite say that I got up in his face. I’d word it differently.”

“If you’re going to be accusing anybody of anything, it’s going to be me.” Alan calls out, waving with his still bloody hand. He makes a face and pulls it back down directly after. “I’m the one that punched him.”

Shawn, to everybody’s confusion, barely reacts to that surprising piece of information. He simply speaks in the same low tone that he used with Cory. Nothing seems to change. lI figured somebody did. His face was bruised when he came up to my date and I.” (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that surprising. Go figure.)

And there’s another thing. Despite the fact that Jonathan gave him permission to bring his date back to the apartment, (because they wouldn’t be alone, and Jonathan would be able to make sure they didn’t do too much of anything like that,) Shawn doesn’t have a girl on his arm. He’s not bragging or complaining about how his night went, either- he seems to be skipping over it entirely in favor of talking about his dad.

Something else happened. Jonathan eyes Topanga, who’s proved pretty observant in important matters recently. The girl nods at him, as if acknowledging the new matter at hand.

Shawn turns away from all of them and starts walking off. He makes his way silently into the kitchen and pulls out some leftovers from last night. He puts some onto a plate and throws it into the microwave. Since his back is to the others and they’re all whispering, they barely notice when Shawn sniffles and picks up the phone.

“I need to call Samantha,” he explains when his guardian eyes him with both heavy suspicion and concern. Mostly concern, though. “I kind of ran out on her earlier.”

“You ran all the way back here? It’s pouring outside.”

All he gets is a shrug and a, “You should probably be used to this by now.”

“Where’s your jacket?”

“Probably still in the back booth at Chubbies. It doesn’t matter. It’s super old and torn up anyway, it’s not like it does much anymore.”

“I’ll buy you a new one,” he promises. For some reason, that just sends Shawn’s previous odd calm crashing down. His face falls as he looks away and eyes his friends wearily. It doesn’t take long for Jonathan to catch the hint.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He doesn’t even know what it is, but it clearly upset the kid, who nods. The nod is just barely noticeable. Shawn eyes the others once again.

Jonathan looks over at the others, too. He catches on, once again. “I’ll be in touch. I’ll talk to you all later, okay?”

“Do we have to leave?” questions Cory, who Topanga is already dragging out the door.

“Tonight is their night,” she says to him. “We need to leave them alone now.”

Alan pats both Jonathan and Shawn on the shoulder and walks right out the door.

Shawn pulls his plate out of the microwave. He grabs a fork and sits down on the couch, and remains silent when his guardian sits down beside him.

“So, what’s going on?”

He pauses and sets his plate down. He eyes the now closed door and pushes the food away. Even now, with his mouth opening and closing, he doesn’t particularly look ready to do any explaining- or talking at all, really, despite the fact that that’s all he had wanted a few minutes ago.

When words fail him, he mentally goes, fuck all of this, and just does something that he rarely ever does.

He reaches out for a hug.

So it’s just the two of them in the quiet, not-quite-empty apartment at who-knows o’clock at night. One of them is a jumbled up ball of emotions while the other is still positively furious. Both of them are clueless about one thing or another, and one of them is still completely lost about the situation at hand, but it’s fine. They don’t know much. They don’t know everything.

They don’t need to, though.

Just being there is enough.

*****

Three.

Nobody takes Jonathan Turner’s motorcycle accident very well.

It wouldn’t be over dramatic at all to say that everyone’s on edge and everything is awful. For starters, nobody knows if Jonathan is going to live or die, Shawn joined a literal cult and is still reeling from that on top of everything else, everyone is stressed and all of the adults are trying to keep everyone in one place the best that they can, which gets complicated really quickly.

Shawn flip-flops in between wanting to run away from the hospital as fast as his legs can take him, and refusing to even budge when the Matthews’ family tries to take him to their house so he can actually get some rest instead of falling into a fitful sleep every once and a while while laying on one of those hard, metal chairs for what is probably the third night in a row. Cory and Topanga try to be around as much as they can, but they do have school and family of their own to deal with, which somehow just brings on yet another problem: having to separate everyone because of those particular reasons. For the first few days that Jonathan is in the hospital, nobody directly tries to force Topanga, Cory, Shawn, Morgan, and Eric, (the latter of which has recently graduated, but keeps popping in on the other’s throughout the day,) to go to school, but that can’t last forever. Everyone knows that, but nobody wants to accept it.

Eventually Mr. Feeny can’t get away with ditching work, so he has to leave. He keeps coming every single afternoon and night, though, without fail.

About the time that the fourth day comes along, some of the adults start realizing that the hospital waiting room may or may not be the best place for kids to stay semi-permanently. ( Gosh, it better not be permanent. That would just destroy everyone.)

“Honey,” Amy Matthews quietly greets the small, cuddled up cluster of kids the fourth morning. It’s still really early, probably only around six or so if that. The sun isn’t even fully up yet. If the sun is still snoozing, then why can’t they? It’s a fair, reasonable opinion, but it’s not like anyone’s been having a good time sleeping anyway. (Especially not the adults. Or Shawn, for that matter, so Amy actually feels really bad about considering waking him up, but staying there surely isn’t helping anything at this point, if it ever did.)

They still have time to wake up and get moving, so Amy makes an executive decision that they should all go back to school for real this time.

Or, more accurately, she just wants them to try. If it doesn’t work out, if they’re way too distracted to do well or even pay attention at all, then they’ll just find a way to make up the work or something. She’s not going to force them to stay if they just honestly can’t handle it. She won’t do that to them.

Then, because life just likes to slap everyone in the face, the fourth day is also the day that other people, other family members, start to pour in. (If it strikes her as odd that these people didn’t show up until now, she doesn’t say it to their faces. That doesn’t mean that she’s not thinking about it, through.) The people who have been around since day one- Shawn, Topanga, Cory, Amy, Alan, Mr. Feeny, Eric, even little Morgan- none of them had actually stopped to remember that Jonathan does have a family outside of them all. (Maybe they would remember if the people ever showed up outside of an emergency. They’re even four days late to an emergency, of all things. Not a good thing.)

They become very loudly reminded when a short woman in tall high heels comes stomping her way into the waiting room, screeching angrily.

“Where is he? Where is my son?”

Amy doesn’t know who the other woman is, but she’s about three seconds away from fist fighting her, just because she doesn’t want anyone waking up her kids just yet. It’s one thing if she’s the one waking them up gently, and it’s another if a stranger interrupts her kids’ peaceful slumber via screaming. Okay, sure, technically not all of them are her kids, as a matter of fact only one of them biologically is, but that doesn’t matter. Not in the grand scheme of things. After all that they’ve been through, separately and together, all of them are family.

Jonathan, Mr. Feeny, Eli, (who had shown up after school the first day and popped in and out up to day four,) Eric, Shawn, Topanga, Cory, Morgan, Amy, and Alan.

And not the woman making her presence known about three or four days too late. She better have a damn good reason why she wasn’t there sooner.

Even though she wants to, Amy doesn’t punch her. She does shush her, though, as loudly as she dares without disrupting the burrito pile of children on the floor.

The woman instantly stops yelling, (score!) and swivels around to face her. Her hands are on her hips and her nose is in the air as she snaps, “Excuse me?”

She calmly shushes her again, motioning over to the cuddled up kids. Shawn’s brow wrinkles as he snuggles even deeper into the stack of blankets he’s in the middle of. For the second time in only a minute, it reminds Amy of a burrito wrap. Come to think of it, the other two look exactly the same. She doesn’t know who wrapped them up like that, but she knows it wasn’t her. (This time around.) Maybe it was Alan? Or Mr. Feeny? “Keep your voice down, please.” Her voice comes out as a whisper.

The woman does not. She does stop screaming though, so that’s a plus. “Who are you?” she motions downward to the lumpy mass. “And who are they? I’m assuming that there’s people in there.”

“I’m Amy Matthews,” she introduces herself and pointedly doesn’t mention the other three. The person takes notice of this. “And you are?”

The woman doesn’t answer. She looks downward some more, no longer as hostile. The sight of the kids was enough to calm her down initially, so maybe they would keep her that way. “They look comfortable.”

No, they don’t. One of them, Topanga, probably, is stuck in the middle with her arms haphazardly wrapped around the other two, withone leg sticking out from underneath a blanket as the other is all tangled up in it. One of them is cuddling the other... somewhat. That was probably the original intention, at least. In reality, he’s rolled over towards the one in the middle, one arm around her waist while one arm is stretching far past her in a way that has to hurt. One of his legs is in her lap, while the other is laying on top of Shawn. Then, on the left side of the one in the middle, one of them is rolled away from the other two entirely. Or, at least, that had been the original intention. His back is turned to the others, and he’s not as snug as the other two, but one arm is reaching out for Cory while the other is sprawled out across Topanga’s shoulders. Topanga’s face is scrunched up. Cory’s face is impassive. Shawn is frowning. None of them are peaceful, even in their sleep.

“They look miserable,” Amy corrects quietly. “This week has been really hard on them. They’ve been here for the past four days.”

“Four days?” the other person echoes skeptically. “That’s... quite a while. Don’t they have something else that they need to do? Anything better than just... sitting here and stressing out?”

“Yeah. I can’t get any of them to go home, no matter what I say. Nobody else can make any progress, either. One of them won’t go home without his best friend, but his best friend won’t go anywhere until he knows that his guardian will be alright. The blonde in the middle there,” she points at Topanga, “Refuses to go home until one of them do.”

“So, she won’t go home until they do, but one of them won’t go because his guardian is in the hospital here, and the other won’t go until he knows his friend will be alright?”

She shrugs. “Pretty much.”

“That’s a really loyal group. Everybody needs one of those sometimes.” The person pauses, before smiling and saying, “Or most times.”

“I agree.” Amy nods, then suddenly realizes that the mystery woman is all alone. She looks behind her, then off to the sides. “Do you have one?”

She blinks. “Do I have one what?”

“A loyal group. Shouldn’t they be here?”

The woman even lets out a small, sincere looking smile at that, even though she still looks incredibly irritated and stressed out. (But don’t they all?) “They’re actually right around the corner. They’re getting some snacks... I have a feeling that we’re going to be in for the long haul here.”

She points vaguely at a space not too far behind them. “There’s at least three different vending machines in this building. Why don’t they just get something in here?”

“They’re very particular. Oh! Also, I should probably warn you, they can all be very loud.” She frowns. “Or at least they usually are. They’re so stressed right now that nobody’s been acting like themselves... it’s pretty concerning, actually.”

Amy leans down and brushes one of the kids’ hair away from their eyes. “I know exactly what you mean.” Unfortunately though, the movement wakes one of the teenagers up, which is not her intention. At least, it isn’t anymore.

Shawn squints blearily up at her, rubbing tiredly at one of his eyes. “Mrs. Matthews?”

“Yeah.” She ditches the chair she was sitting in and positions herself down on the floor beside the boy. Quietly, she asks, “How are you doing, honey?”

“Tired.” Well, that one little word is better than nothing. He squints some more and silently looks around at the newcomer. Or, well, newcomers, technically. Several people enter the waiting room, each carrying a bag full of something or another. One of them is also holding a picture frame. One of them has a sleeping bag. He figures something out pretty quickly- all of those people are here for Jonathan, just like he is. (Except, no, not really. He’s been there since the beginning of this whole thing.)

“You might need to get up,” Amy tells him softly as the crowd grows by a few people and as they get closer.

“I don’t want to.” He still reaches out for Amy anyway.  “Also, I’m stuck.” Sure enough, he is. He’s pretty darn lost in a complicated tangle of fabric and limbs. With some difficulty, (read: quite a bit,) the two manage to tear him apart without waking the other two.

Once that’s all taken care of, he goes back to squinting suspiciously at everyone that isn’t Amy. He tenses up, runs a hand through his hair, and scoots closer to Amy. She tries to grab his hand in an attempt to comfort the boy. He doesn’t try to wiggle out of it, just accepts it, shoots her the most real smile he’s had in four days, and stands firmly in place. She takes that as the token of trust that it is. She can’t help but be really impressed and touched- he would have never done this a few years ago.

The woman nearby them finally decides to give them her name. “Hi, I’m Andy Turner. It’s nice to meet you Amy and...” she purposely trails off, staring at Shawn, wondering who he is. After an awkward second or two, he catches on.

“I’m Shawn Hunter.”

Recognition seems to dawn. “Oh! I’ve heard so much about you!”

He doesn’t repeat it back at her, doesn’t say anything to her at all, as a matter of fact, and just takes her offered hand instead. He doesn’t make it clear just how much he already doesn’t like her, or at least he doesn’t make it known to her, but Amy can already tell. She knows him well enough to tell. The second this Andy woman walks away, he’s shaking his head.

“If she’s heard oh so much about me, then why haven’t I heard anything about her? I don’t hear much about Jonathan’s family at all, really, and that just about tells me what I need to know. Any extra information usually comes from Eli.” His frown deepens as he eyes the now chattering group. He crosses his arms and says, with a matter of fact tone, “Jonathan wouldn’t want them here.”

“What about Jonathan?” mumbles Topanga, rubbing at her eyes. It’s like the man’s name is enough to just magically summon her awake. “Hey, that’s the most that you’ve said in four days,” she points out as she reaches forward to pat his shoulder. It’s supposed to be a nice touch and gesture, but she’s still hardly awake and rubbing at her eyes, so her hand doesn’t actually land where she wants it to. When her hand simply brushes air, she shrugs with one shoulder, yawns a bit more, and says, “Proud of you.”

“Thanks.” Shawn shifts a bit closer to her, but it’s not quite enough.

“Hey, wait a minute. Why are you awake?” she frowns at the empty spot beside her and makes grabby hands. “Come back.”

“Topanga-“

“Come backkkkkk.”

“Topanga, come on-“

“I’m not taking no for an answer.”

“Yes, you are.” He shakes his head but knows that he’s going to give in. That knowledge is reinforced when Topanga sighs and pouts at him.

She says nothing more, just sits up and drags him back down with her. The two are talking and Topanga is, in spite of her best efforts, completely awake when a pleased looking, smiling doctor walks in.

“You don’t smile when something goes horribly wrong,” Amy says to one hopeful looking teenager and one who’s face is hard as stone, already expecting the worst. Luckily, the worst is not what happens now.

The doctor looks around the room, sees the lack of patients in the waiting room, and the large number of people sprawled out on the floor and/or up and active, comforting one another, and speaks. “You’re all here for Jonathan Turner?”

That’s all he has time to say before Shawn and Topanga are shooting to their feet like a lightning bolt, arm in arm and accidentally kicking a no-longer sleeping Cory Matthews in the face. If they notice that, they say nothing. They don’t even look in his direction, they’re so focused on what the doctor has to say. Cory mumbles his confusion, yawning, and Topanga wastes no time at all as she yanks him to his feet. He’s still half asleep on her shoulder when Amy goes to join them.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” the man with the clipboard says. Some of them nod. Some of them glare. Cory and Topanga yawn some more, but they’re paying more attention than they’d like. “I just wanted to let you know that there’s been a change.”

Shawn stiffens up. Topanga and Amy, flanking both of his sides, eye him worriedly.

“What kind of change?” The oldest of the three, gripping onto the teenagers next to her protectively, asks cautiously.

“He’s awake.”

*****

It’s like magic, the way everyone can suddenly just let loose and breathe.

“Do you wanna play poker?”

“Since when can you play poker?”

Of course, it’s not all fun and games. There is an adjustment period, after all. After all, it was a pretty bad motorcycle accident. Jonathan isn’t going to be back to tip top shape in a few days, after all.

“I don’t want you doing anything too physical for at least a month, but probably longer. You’ll have to walk on crutches for at least six to eight weeks.”

Jonathan, though wide awake and interactive, is still not allowed to leave the hospital for another three days due to monitoring and various other medical related reasons. That is only the start of it all.

Despite the fact that the kid is right in front of him and practically glued to his side, (and his hospital bed,) he totally blanks on the fact that Shawn can’t exactly live with him at the moment, and that he needs somewhere else to go in the meantime. Luckily, the Matthews’ family has half-heartedly come up with an idea. It’s not the worst one in the world. It has the potential of working.

The plan takes quite a big turn before it can even actually begin, (and before Shawn even gets to find out what it is,) when there’s a loud knock on the hospital room door as a familiar, but not exactly welcome, face peeks his head in.

“Hi there!”

Shawn, who’s in the middle of showing Jonathan the impressive variety of card games that he knows, suddenly stops short in the middle of his sentence. “And I’m learning how to play-“

Jonathan frowns, as if not pleased by the sudden silence. He doesn’t exactly want to know why his kid knows how to play all of those games, some of which he’s legally not allowed to compete in, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want the kid to stop talking to him. He finds it nice, actually. The chatter. The sitting around and just talking about everything and nothing at all. It’s really, really nice; it’s the uninterrupted bonding time that the two usually never get to have. “Hey, what’s wrong? Why did you stop talking?”

His answer comes in the form of one Chet Hunter.

“How you doing there, teach?”

Oh. He mouths the word and catches Shawn solemnly nodding, still silently and mostly frozen in place. Jonathan, as the minutes tick by, isn’t quite sure why Shawn hasn’t like, exploded or screamed or you know, anything at all. He’s just sitting there in silence, seemingly drowned by some sudden, unexplained tension. Both men notice it, but Jonathan has the tact to not say anything. (He definitely wants to know why the usually talkative Shawn is frowning down at the cards sprawled out in front of him, not willingly looking at... well, either of them, really. Jonathan really wants to know what’s going on, instead of feeling like he’s going to need to,  but he doesn’t want to confront the teenager in front of his father. He has a feeling that it wouldn’t go over very well. He just wants to find a polite way to kick Chet out, and continue having a nice, peaceful conversation with Shawn. They can just go back to talking about card games, if they both want that. All the heavy stuff can come later.)

“What’s the matter with you, boy?”

Clearly, the man at the door doesn’t have the same thought.

Shawn, for the first time in probably five minutes, decides to speak. He scoots just a tiny bit closer to Jonathan. It’s such a small difference that nobody actually notices. Frowning, the boy places a card down. It’s an ace. “Why are you here?”

He motions over at the hospital bed and the two laying on top of it. “Came to check in.” He doesn’t specify which person he’s checking up on, or if he’s here to see both.

“Great. You’ve done that now. Is there anything else you need?” Nobody was expecting the bite in his voice, considering the fact that he’s been so quiet the entire time. It makes sense, though, kind of. He very clearly does not want his father around.

“Oh come on,” the man groans. “What’s the problem now?”

For a few seconds, he doesn’t answer. Then, when he does, he completely evades the question. “How did you even find us in the first place?”

Chet shifts. He sounds like he’s lying when he says, “Uh. The Matthews.”

“Yeah. Sure. So, why are you actually here?”

“I told you already.”

“Are you just here to check in, or do you want something?” Shawn sounds bored as he hands a card or two over to Jonathan, who’s just watching this go down with a high level of suspicion.

“I don’t want anything-“

Shawn scoffs. He mumbles something to Jonathan, probably something about the game, and still doesn’t look up. For some reason, Chet takes this as an insult.

“You got something you need to say to me, boy?”

The aforementioned boy shrugs, looking totally nonchalant. It’s totally an act. “Not particularly...” he trails off and shrugs a second time. “It’s not anything that I’ve never said before.”

“Of course. What’s the problem?”

This time, he says nothing. Just looks up and shoots his father an unimpressed glance. The man picks up the meaning of that pretty darn quickly.

He throws his arms up, frustrated. “How am I the problem?”

“You’re too... inconsistent. One minute you’re here and the next you’re done. One minute you’re telling me how much you love me and the next you’re chasing after mom. One minute you tell me that it’s great to see me and the next you’re throwing adoption papers at my best friend to deliver like he’s some sort of mail boy. So just... try being straight forward with me sometime. Tell me what you want this time around, and let’s see how that goes.”

For a second or two, nobody speaks. Chet and Jonathan stare at one another, wide eyed, before looking back at Shawn. Shawn is now sliding off of the bed and yanking his shoes on, avoiding both of them. It’s not going too well.

Chet’s the first one to say something. “So, you found about those papers already, huh?”

Shawn still isn’t looking at him. He’s looking down at the last few cards in his hand that he has yet to drop or hand off to his guardian, who’s staring. “Yeah. I did. Wish you would have at least bothered to talk to me about it.”

“We’re talking!” the man protests, motioning at the wide, gaping space in between them. “We’re talking right now!”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. I want you to talk to me before making important decisions about me and about my life. You didn’t even bother to man up and tell me yourself. I’m your kid. You’re my dad, and in case you haven’t noticed, until these papers are signed-“ he pauses and looks over at Jonathan, who’s frowning as he’s throwing an ace card into a slowly growing stack. Shawn pauses, throwing himself out of his rant suddenly. He looks a tiny bit less angry as he asks, “You didn’t already sign them, did you?”

“Not yet. I wanted to talk to you about it first.” The words come out pointed and rough. Nobody comments on it, but Shawn is shooting a tiny, pleased smile at him, and that’s undoubtedly a good thing.

It drops as he nods and continues, shifting his focus back on to his father. “Until these papers are signed, I know that you have legal control over me and whatever, but the least you could have done was sat me down and had a real conversation about it.” He looks up then. “I’m your kid. What are you so afraid of?”

There’s a deeper, longer pause then. When Chet does speak, all he says is, “You’ve got a good thing going here. I’m glad that you’re going to be well taken care of.”

He groans. Throws his head back. Drops his shoes entirely and begins pacing around the small hospital room. “Oh, not this again.”

“What?” He knows what.

“Whatever. You’re about to leave again, aren’t you?” There’s no denial. There’s not even a shake of his head. “Wow. Big surprise there,” he says, in a voice that doesn’t sound even the smallest bit surprised. The man turns to leave, but Shawn isn’t done yet. “Actually, I have something to say.”

He stops. “I thought you already said it.”

“I will never understand why you keep leaving me.”

He sighs. He sounds deeply tired. “Shawn-“

“No. Not done. You’ve done this year after year on and off, over and over and over again. It’s always been excuse after excuse. You keep running off. I do it too, and I know for a fact that I’ve got that from you. Do you know what the difference is, Dad? I’m always back, I’m never gone long, and if somebody needs me, I try my best to be right here. You know, it’s actually not that hard to do. Really, you should look into it sometime, but I doubt that you’re going to. No, you just pawn me off the first chance that you get, all under the excuse of running after Mom. ” He takes a deep breath and shakes a finger. His next words come out sounding very accusatory. “You pawned me off to the Matthews. I love them, and they’re great and all, but you just shipped me off the first chance you got. And in the end, that didn’t even work out! They either couldn’t handle me or just didn’t really want me around. At least Jonathan,” he looks over at the man, who’s watching this whole exchange go down, “ Offered to take me in.” He’s still looking back at his guardian as he says calmly, “It makes all the difference.”

“Is everything okay in here?” a new voice is asking them as Amy glides into the room with what looks to be a few books and magazines. “I heard quite a bit of yelling.” She eyes Chet, who’s about two steps away from bolting out the door. She then eyes Shawn, who’s fists are clenched. The boy scoots even closer to the hospital bed this time.

The sixteen-year old winces, running a hand through his hair. “Just how loud were we?”

“Oh, you weren’t too bad. I didn’t even hear you until I rounded the corner to walk in here.” She looks over toward the door, which Chet is now quickly exiting through, then back over at Shawn again. “Seriously. Is everything okay?”

He shrugs, not too eager to give up an answer. He does it anyway. “It’s just more of the usual, I guess.”

“Is it?” She sits down on one of the empty chairs. She looks at the two other remaining people and says, “I heard something about adoption.”

“My dad sent Cory off back home with some adoption papers for Jonathan to sign. He didn’t even tell me about it. He wasn’t going to, either. He didn’t even know that I know about it until I brought it up.”

She places what she hopes to be a comforting hand on his shoulder. “And how do you feel about this?”

For a second or two, he doesn’t answer.

When he does, though, he smiles.

“It’s not the worst idea.”

*****

Four.

“I am going to kill Cory Matthews!”

Jonathan doesn’t even look up from the cutting board. “Okay,” he says. “Be home for dinner.”

The front door slams shut.

When about four hours go by without any update from Shawn about where he actually is, he begins to wonder if the seventeen-year old did kill Cory Matthews.

When both teenagers stomp into the house about an hour later, both arguing loudly, and both undoubtedly alive, Jonathan gets his answer.

“You can’t just do that!” Shawn announces his arrival via a slamming door shut behind him as he then proceeds to pace around the living room. His best friend stays put near the doorway, frowning.

“And why can’t I? Eric needs a roommate!”

“Eric needs literally any other roommate!”

“You’re overreacting!”

“I’m overreacting?” Shawn swivels around to face Cory, who’s frowning. “What would you do if your dad told you about Eric and then Eric never even acknowledged your existence? Ever? Huh? How would you be reacting right about now? I surely doubt you’d be doing any better than me!”

“Well, Eric used to live with me. I had to see his stupid mug all the time,” Cory says, both not catching the point and accidentally making things worse all at the same time. It’s probably a special talent of his, Topanga, or Shawn for that matter, would tell you. “So he was kind of unavoidable. He had no choice but to acknowledge me at least some of the time.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Shawn is shaking his head.

“I get it Shawnie, I’m just-“

“No. You don’t get it at all!”

“Just let me-“

“No!”

“Okay,” Jonathan abandons his cutting knife and exits the kitchen, taking notice of the way Shawn is only getting more and more agitated as he stalks closer to Cory, who’s not seeming to notice that if he doesn’t lay off, he’s going to get punched in the face. He only moves closer. “Break it up.”

Cory looks two seconds away from exploding. His fists are clenched. “I didn’t do anything wrong!” he shouts, throwing his hands in the air wildly. “I don’t get why Shawn just can’t see that!”

“Because you’re the one in the wrong on this one, Cory!” Shawn yells back at him, taking another step forward. Jonathan steps closer to Shawn, who doesn’t even notice. “You won’t even listen to me! You’re refusing to even try and hear me out!”

“Eric needs a roommate!”

“Then get him a different one!”

“There’s nothing wrong with this one!”

“I’ve explained to you several times why Jack can’t be Eric’s roommate. On top of all that, they don’t even like each other! If you can’t respect me, can’t you respect that?”

“They like each other just fine.” The boy crosses his arms, ignoring the question entirely. “They just need to get used to each other first. Just like a couple of two other people that I know.”

“I freaking swear-“

“Cut it out!” Jonathan is ripping them apart before either boy even gets the opportunity to take a swing or pounce on one another. He’s not taking any chances here. He wants everyone to get out of this situation without a black eye or any other injuries, thank you very much. “What the hell is the problem?”

Both boys talk at once. Their voices quickly overlap.

“He said-“

“But he did-“

“You can’t just involve Jack!”

“Well, too little, too late! Deal with it!”

“Oh I’ll deal with you-“

“You two need to leave each other alone for the rest of the day,” Jonathan decides, hoping to avoid some kind of a disaster. Somehow, there’s not a whole lot of protest, which kind of makes it clear how bad this whole thing actually is. The boys look each other in the eye and sober up some, but their anger is still burning.

Cory points at Shawn. “I’m calling you later. We’re not done here.”

Shawn scoffs. “No, we’re not.”

With that, Cory stomps right out the door.

*****

Comforting people, Jonathan learns, can be quite difficult sometimes.

Luckily, not too much comforting is needed. Distraction from the issue at hand, (whatever it is,) maybe, but that’s about it for now.

“Try this.”

“Hmm? What is it?”

“Spaghetti sauce. Try it.”

Shawn smiles, a big normal one, and snarks. “This is going to be a disaster.” He tries the sauce anyway.

Distraction and a chance to cool off seems to work just fine for him, which is kind of relieving. And if it gets him an opportunity to spend some more quiet time with his guardian, well, he’s not complaining.

All goes really, really well, suspiciously well, almost, until after school the next day.

“Take a hint,” Shawn is pleading at whoever is walking behind him. “I’m literally begging you.”

“But I don’t get why you’re mad at me!” There’s Cory. Jonathan, who’s on the phone inside his apartment, bites back a sigh at having to help deal with whatever’s going on now. Usually he doesn’t mind at all, and it usually ends well, but when it’s an argument in between Shawn and Cory, it’s quite a bit harder to deal with. Almost impossible, even. A lot of times, even Topanga has to eventually admit defeat, and she can be quite stubborn sometimes. The two are usually so close that it’s hard for much to come in between them, and by default, that it makes it especially bad when something inevitably does.

“I’ve already explained why I’m mad at you,” Shawn is saying, presumably to Cory. When a deeper, unfamiliar voice calls out behind him, it quickly becomes clear that whoever else is out there is not the familiar brown-haired boy that Jonathan is slowly becoming used to.

“No, you didn’t! You didn’t even bother to explain! I can’t read minds, Shawn!” And there, again, is definitely-not-Cory. He’s snapping and frustrated. Not quite heated enough to be truly pissed off, but he’s slowly getting there.

“I could have sworn-“

“Shawnie,” and that’s Cory, that’s something familiar, thank goodness, “You actually didn’t. I was the only one you said anything to.” He doesn’t sound nearly as annoyed as the other boy does- maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe that means that Shawn and Cory are almost done feuding? Gosh, that would be good.

“Talk to me,” the mysterious voice pleads. “I can’t fix anything if you don’t even let me know what’s wrong. Is it because this whole thing is so new? Because trust me, I get it. I totally get it.”

“It’s not that,” Shawn says, “But it sure doesn’t help.”

“Then what-“

“The letters, Jack!” Shawn just can’t hold back anymore. The footsteps from outside of the apartment grow closer and closer and the voices only get louder and louder. A doorknob turns, and suddenly there’s four teenagers in Jonathan’s apartment, one of which is totally and completely new. (And possibly names Jack? That one is unclear, though.)

Luckily enough, he recognized the rest of them, and even luckier, one of them hones in on him the second she gets inside.

Topanga visibly relaxes. Her shoulders slump, she sighs in relief, she smiles, and she quickly makes a beeline for the kitchen. She’s completely ditching the other three, and it’s for good reason, too.

“Help,” is the first word that gets out of her mouth as she drapes one arm over the counter and looks over at Jonathan with wide, concerned eyes. “We have a problem.”

“They’ll get over it.” He doesn’t look up from what he’s cooking, acting much more unconcerned than he actually is. Topanga, however, is not. She’s worried, and she means business. A dangerous combination, more often than not. Oddly enough, Jonathan actually feels reassured by knowing that, and a bit touched in knowing how much she seems to trust him to help out in this week’s mess. With the two of them working together, maybe it’ll all work out alright?

“No, I’m serious. This one looks like it could be pretty bad,” whispers the blonde anxiously. She shoots the three boys a quick look over her shoulder, but they’re all too busy bickering with one another to notice. “I don’t know if they’ll get over it.”

He still doesn’t even blink. “I’m sure they will. This is Cory and Shawn. They always do.”

“I don’t know-“

“And if you could just respect my wishes for once in your motherfucking life, we wouldn’t even be in this mess!” Shawn is no longer just quietly arguing- he’s about one step down from screaming. His eyes are dark and bitter, his arms are tightly shoved at his sides, and his hands are clenched into fists. He keeps side-eyeing the door that the group of four had just come in from, as if ready to run away.

Cory catches this. He moves swiftly and positions himself firmly in front of the door, standing stiff and tall. “You’re not going anywhere until we can fix this.” He crosses his arms.

“Yeah,” the other boy scoffs, “That’s cute. I can just push you out of the way anytime I want and get out of here.”

“At this point, that’s all I want to do,” mumbles the tallest boy, looking resigned to his fate- whatever that actually is.

The one little beacon of hope that things might go well makes itself known when Shawn suddenly stands up a bit straighter and inches away from the door and a bit closer to Cory, who simply blinks at him.

“He’s not going to let you past, and I’m not going to let you push him. That’s not happening.”

The boy rolls his eyes, not looking very intimated in the slightest. He has inches on the younger two, (well, three, but Topanga is wisely trying to cut some meat and stay out of the way,) and possibly more experience in fighting, (it’s possible, but you never know,) so having a seventeen-year old trying to threaten him was probably not all that frightening. “Or what? What will you do if I try?”

He eyes the older teenager up and down, crosses his eyes, wraps a now protective arm around his best friend’s shoulders, and says, “Oh, I’m sure you can figure it out.”

The boy still doesn’t look intimidated, but he does look a bit offended now, and a bit surprised. Doesn’t look ready to throw a punch, though, so there’s that. Crossing his arms, he questions, “You would really fight me? Seriously?”

“Seriously.” Shawn nods firmly once.

“Do you see what I’m talking about?” Topanga asks with a wave of her hand. “Someone’s going to end the night with a black eye.”

Jonathan passes her some spices, a knife, and the cutting board. He points at the board. “Finish chopping that. I have to go make sure that nobody dies.”

“I already tried that!” she calls out, but doesn’t try to stop him. She huffs and gets back to work.

He sighs, gets to his feet, and prepares to break apart a three way fight.

He just hopes that it doesn’t turn into a bloodbath before he can do that.

*****

In the end, it isn’t a total bloodbath.

Jonathan manages to break the three apart before they can do any real damage- one kid has a couple of bruises, one kid has a cut lip, and one kid has a black eye, just like he and Topanga had been expecting- but it’s nothing that won’t heal up.

“I have regrets,” the oldest of the three groans, flopping back against the couch with a whine. “This-“ he motions at himself, then Shawn, then Cory- “Was not the best idea.”

The other two groan out their tired agreement.

“Are you all done trying to commit murder?” Topanga, who’s holding up two plates full of spaghetti, questions.

“I wasn’t trying to commit murder,” the first boy denies instantly. He pauses, flicks a hand at the others, and says, “I don’t know about them. Either way, they clearly didn’t succeed.”

“I’m still confused on what happened. I know you’re all mad, but you managed to refrain from a fist fight up until a few minutes ago. What was that about?”

“I apparently stepped up to him,” he motions at Cory, who’s eagerly eating spaghetti as if he doesn’t have a black eye, and as if nothing ever happened in the first place. “I was trying to get out the door, but Shawn,” he shoots the seventeen-year old a halfhearted stink eye then, “Thought that I was trying to hurt his friend, for some stupid reason-“

“I didn’t know that you weren’t!” he protests, hands in the air. I come in peace, his wide eyes seem to say. “I swear, if I knew you weren’t going to do anything, I wouldn’t have punched you.”

Jonathan sighs. “ He was the one who started this whole thing? Why am I not more surprised?”

“I thought he was going to hurt Cory! What other choice did I have?”

“Trying to settle things out with your words, maybe?” Topanga suggests as she passes him a plate and a fork. He points to his no-longer bleeding but still obviously sore lip before politely declining and passing it back to her. She accepts it with a shrug and digs in. “Be mature for once, maybe? Not get into fights with near strangers?”

“I tried that, but I probably should have tried harder,” he agrees. He looks up at the oldest boy, who’s watching him wearily.

“What do you want now?”

“I’m sorry for punching you.”

“Oh.” His fork stops moving. He seems genuinely surprised, like he had been fully expecting to just make an enemy for life instead of getting a simple apology. He replies with acceptance and an apology of his own. “Thank you. I’m... sorry for your lip.” He motions vaguely.

“And I’m sorry for your bruise.”

He touches his face at the reminder, but quickly pulls back. Right. Pain. It’s supposed to hurt. It’ll probably hurt a lot more in the morning, when all of his adrenaline has died down. He picks up his fork again and prepares to keep eating, but he’s once again blindsided.

“Jack?” Shawn’s talking quietly, hesitantly. Afraid of starting another fight, maybe. He just wants peace at this point. Everyone, at this point, is too tired for another big blowup.

“Yes?”

“I probably should have heard you out about the letters.”

“Yeah,” he agrees calmly. “Probably.” He puts his fork down now, silently resigning himself to having the conversation he wanted all along, but now wasn’t all that concerned about. Oh, well. Whatever works.

“So. What do you have to say? I swear I’ll listen to you this time.”

“I never got them. The letters. And I know that you don’t believe me, but I swear it’s true. If I got them, I would have replied. I swear that I wouldn’t have just... left you hanging like that. If I had a choice in the matter back then, I definitely would have tried to have a relationship with you. If you’ll let me, I want to try now. Maybe now that we can actually give it our best shot, we’ll make some better progress. You know, without hurting each other.”

Shawn pauses, sticking to his word about paying attention. When he does speak, his words come out soft and calm. He’s not angry anymore, or at least he doesn’t sound like he is.

“I believe you.”

*****

Five.

The fact that the day ends horribly is really such a shame. It had started out so well.

Shawn woke up, trudged his way into the kitchen, had himself a merry bowl of cereal, had a nice thirty minutes or so of just chilling out in the living room, catching up on life with his guardian/former teacher.

(Former, because Shawn is no longer in high school. He graduated. He’s been done with that chapter of his life for a while now, and he’s even in college at Pennbrook University alongside his older brother, Jack, who, with his best friends Eric and Rachel, are all juniors. There’s also Topanga, Cory, Angela, and then just himself- all lowly, lost, little freshman.) (He had no true idea how lost he could be until today.)

So, with a cheerful “I’ll see you later,” he waved goodbye to his guardian of four years and headed out the door.

It just makes the whole rest of the day so much worse, because it had been such a nice, peaceful morning. One of the greats, truly.

Then Shawn’s dad dies and his whole world just goes crashing down.

Yeah, sure, they hadn’t really gotten along, and yeah, sure, Chet Hunter had been really neglectful, but fuck it, that’s still his dad.

Was. Was his dad.

That’s going to take a while for the boy to remember, he knows.

It’s been about ten minutes since Shawn’s first heard the confirmation- “He’s gone,” from one of the doctors. Within those ten minutes, he ends up in a dogpile that involves himself, Topanga, and Cory, with an extremely hesitant Jack holding on gently to one of them- nobody cares who at this point. That’s all they can really do- clutch one another, hold on for dear life, and try not to drown when things like this show up and try to completely bowl them over like they’re all somehow Jack or Rose and life itself is the fucking Titanic- sugar, they’re going down swinging.

It’s who knows how many hours later when some of them start slowly coming back into themselves and they remember that, oh yeah, they all have parents. Parents that they didn’t talk to since earlier that morning. Parents that are probably wondering just where the hell their kids are and just why the hell they weren’t in school.

And those parents have kids, kids who just witnessed somebody die, kids who are watching hopelessly as their friend crumbles down into pieces. They are kids who can’t bear to leave one another, partly in solidarity, love, and hoping to comfort one another during truly trying times. Kids who are trying to hold on tight and ride the big, nasty wave called life. Kids who, at this point in time, could really use one of those all-important and always helpful Feeny lessons, but Feeny himself has absolutely nothing, no magic words or miracle cure to get them out of this one. (And doesn’t that just say everything?)

Most importantly, they’re a bunch of eighteen, maybe twenty, maybe twenty-one year old kids who just really, really need a parents’ comfort and love.

(Cory, since his mother is right there, beelines straight for her as soon as he’s certain that his friends will be fine for a moment- well, fine is a strong word. None of them are fine right now, really. But as soon as he thinks they can manage themselves alone for a minute, he grabs his mother, grabs his father, and holds on to them as tightly as he can manage without actually hurting them. Then, once he’s momentarily satisfied, he breaks apart just long enough to pull a still-dazed Shawn into the huddle. He doesn’t protest. He doesn’t do much of anything, really.)

“My aunt,” Topanga says, apropos of nothing. The non-sequitur doesn’t seem to throw anyone off, though, or startle them even. Shawn, who’s only half-awake and deadly silent, blinks up at her, his eyes forming a question when words seem to fail him. He has to blink up at her, and he’s momentarily thrown. (Everything is throwing him today.) Normally, there wouldn’t be as large of a height difference, but the boy has his head on her shoulder, has one of Cory’s arms around his shoulders, has several other members of the Matthews family practically sitting on top of him- and vice versa- so he looks impossibly small in comparison to Topanga, who still looks relatively put together in the face of tragedy.

(Read: she’s not a complete mess, not that anyone would blame her if she was.)

“I should probably call my aunt,” the blonde half-heartedly elaborates. Even as she says it, though, she can feel somebody scooch closer to her, and she’s not one hundred percent positive on who it is, but she can take a wild guess. She’s not going anywhere for a while more, and she knows it. She’ll call her probably hysterical aunt another time. She has much more important things- and people- to focus her time and energy on right now. “Never mind,” she says, snuggling into somebody. She doesn’t know who, and she doesn’t quite care. “It can wait.”

At that, she hears a definitely not happy but slightly less devastated than before sort of hum and knows she made the right decision, even if she’s probably going to be grounded until kingdom come- and then it hits her that no, actually, she lives in a dorm at college. She’s practically an adult- despite the fact that she feels a bit like a little kid right now. She doesn’t even get grounded anymore...

Which brings her to another thing.

College. Wait. She’s missing one of her finals right now. She’s about to stress out over it, over the fact that she’s going to lose one of her most treasured A’s- until she looks down at Shawn and swiftly forces the topic out of her mind. She gently runs a hand through his hair and watches as he makes a face at her- confusion, she determines, and maybe a bit of displeasure, but she’s sure that’s because of the whole situation that he’s in and not actually because of her- and that theory is confirmed when he doesn’t tell her to stop and doesn’t push her away.

Which, coming to think of it, would actually be pretty difficult to manage when Topanga, Cory, Jack, Amy, Alan, Morgan, Eric, Angela, and Rachel are enveloping him like a blanket, a warm, not quite soothing presence that’s both vaguely comforting, but not really, because staying all cooped up and surrounded by his remaining loved ones is all nice and all and it’s great to be shown how loved he is, but he can’t shake the feeling that’s always in his bones, either buried deep down inside or pressing up against the service like it is right now.

He needs to run.

He can’t stay here much longer.

He craves it more than anything he can remember craving. Despite the fact that he knows all the shushing and the cuddling and the hand through his hair and the forehead kisses are all meant to make him feel a bit less like screaming his head off, a bit less like his whole world is bursting into hot, blistering, burning flames, the longer he’s being held in a close embrace, the longer he’s being surrounded by all of these people and all of their stares , nothing is going to get much better. He needs to run like he needs food to eat or water to drink or air to breathe. (He needs all three, like any person does, but all of the above is very, very far from his mind right now.)

He needs to run like he needs water while standing in the midst of ferocious, unflinching flames.

He’s not quite sure how to communicate it. He doesn’t know how well it’ll go over if he goes and says something along the lines of, “I need to run.” Because, knowing his track record, and knowing just how poorly he deals with emotions, (he’s not in denial enough to not notice that,) and knowing how quickly his friends get worried and jump to conclusions, (read: always,) he knows that yelling it out loud might not be the best thing to do.

But, fuck it. His dad just died. Who says he has to be rational right now?

“‘Panga,” he whispers. It’s the first semblance of a word that he’s spoken in many hours. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since his dad died, since a majority of them all decided to camp out in the waiting room just like they had when it was Jonathan in the hospital and Jonathan in the life or death situation. Despite the fact that they all have other things to do, maybe even better things to do. Some of them have tests. Tests are hardly even in the realm of possibility at the moment, and if pressed about it, everyone and anyone will deny that it even matters- or maybe it would, if any of them were awake. Topanga, unlike most of the others in their friend group, is still somewhat in the realm of consciousness. She looks down at Shawn with a concerned but love-filled glance, and the urge to get up and run suddenly has to fight against the urge to just lay back and let himself be comforted for once. Then, suddenly, he remembers something. He spots a way that might solve both of his problems. But first, he needs something.

“Topanga, do you have a phone?”

*****

Shawn, during the whole almost year that he’s moved away into his dorm room at Pennbrook, and spending time with Jack in the spare room of his apartment, he vowed to call Jonathan every day if he can manage it. He promised it partly due to the man’s worry and partly due to his own affections and homesickness. (Discovering that he’s slowly finding Jonathan’s apartment a home was quite a discovery to make. He found that he didn’t mind it all that much.)

The fact that Shawn hasn’t made an attempt to call or visit, (he generally visits pretty much every day, unless he gets insanely busy to the point where he can barely stop and breathe- which means that usually, it renders most phone calls pretty pointless anyway,) is quite frankly scaring the fuck out of Jonathan, although he won’t admit it.

Briefly, he remembers the kid stressing out over midterms. So, for all of two seconds, he thinks that maybe he just got fed up with school, or he’s losing his mind and frowning in text books, or that he just simply got too overwhelmed to stop by.

Or worse- that he just straight up ran away. That one, out of all the options, is probably the least likely now-a-days, though, and for that he is thankful.

However, when nobody informs him of anything off, (like Cory did last time around,) and none of the other teachers have reported seeing him, (or stupid but well meaning guidance counselors,) and neither have any teenage girls that Shawn could have spontaneously hooked up with, (which wouldn’t have happened anyway- he’s very dedicated to his on-and-off girlfriend, Angela,) Jonathan is beginning to think that there’s something wrong is going on here.

That feeling only intensifies when, throughout the day, he starts slowly realizing that Mr. Feeny, who he talks to pretty much all the time, even though they aren’t actually working with one another anymore, and therefore they aren’t required to speak, hasn’t reached out to him either, and no parents have called complaining about their wild kids and their wild adventures, (which are almost always caused by Cory and Shawn along with Topanga, but most recently Eric and Jack have been the ones causing the most trouble, and isn’t that wild?)

Before the panic can truly set in and just swallow him up, the phone rings.

Oh thank goodness the phone rings. (He might not be very thankful for that much longer, but at least he’ll get some answers.)

Just before putting it up to his ear, he can’t help but think that maybe he was wrong, maybe he was overreacting, maybe- just maybe- everything is perfectly fine.

That, like he was sort of expecting, is quickly proven wrong.

“Mr. Turner?”

And that’s Topanga calling. That brings equal parts relief and terror to him, because if she’s calling, someone’s caught up in a scheme, or something equally silly and solvable as that.

But, no.

Because that would be too easy. Perhaps the world just one day decided that it doesn’t believe Shawn Hunter has been through enough pain, that this can’t just be a measly, messy little scheme like he and his best friend used to pull. (And occasionally still do, of course. Trouble follows those boys like a magnet... most times that’s not a huge issue. Today, he feels, it very well might be.)

“We have a problem.” And that’s Topanga again, her voice coming out small and tired through the cordless phone pressed up tightly against his ear. He resists the urge to sigh. Of course there’s a problem. He already knew this. He needs more information, though, before he can take a crack at it.

“What kind of problem?” Despite the fact that his heart is beating rapidly in his chest, and his whole body is filled with dread, and his brain is screaming at him that he’s about to hear something that he really doesn’t want to hear, for one reason or another, and for only a few seconds, he truly believes that everything will be fine.

“Shawn’s father is dead.”

Or not.

*****

“I need out,” is the very first thing Shawn says when Jonathan comes racing into the hospital’s waiting room like a bull in a china shop. The boy- his boy, at this point- is whispering, being careful to keep his voice down and not wake up all of the other people in the room. By this point, him and Jonathan are pretty much the only people still awake. Even Topanga is sleepy and yawning, and she’s watching Shawn protectively even as she realizes that Jonathan is here to help. ( Good job, Topanga, he can’t help but think.)

“Out?” Jonathan inquires, flicking a hand down at the smothered teenager. “Out of this, you mean?”

He nods, then pauses. Shakes his head ever so slightly. “Yes. And no.”

“Elaborate?” He words it as a question, not wanting to force the eighteen-year old to do or say anything he truly didn’t want to do or couldn’t handle, and if that included a big heart to heart conversation right now, then so be it. It can wait. He’s treading carefully, probably more so than he actually has before. He’s unsure on what the kid really needs right now. What he doesn’t need is more loss, but at this point it’s pretty clear that the world has its favorites, and Shawn Hunter is not one of them.

He likes to think that he knows Shawn pretty well by now, but disaster can bring out the worst in people, and it can cause them to react differently than they normally would. Jonathan’s expecting that, though. He waits patiently.

Slowly but surely, he does elaborate. However, he does it so calmly and quietly that, especially under the current circumstances, Jonathan is more than a bit confused. And concerned. Aren’t people, especially Shawn, usually more... loud? Reactive, maybe? Not just sitting placidly in the middle of an extended group hug? Eh, it’s probably fine. Everyone processes things differently.

“I feel like I really need to run.”

“Run as in run to your old trailer park or run as in the bus station?” Run as in, are you trying to cope with this sudden, shocking loss, or are you trying to go away and never come back? That question, though, is left unspoken. Shawn catches his drift anyway.

“Uh. Neither. Both? I don’t know, but I’m not going to like, permanently leave or anything like that. I’m not going to try and run away from you, I know that’s probably what you’re thinking.”

“No.” Yes. I wouldn’t be surprised if you want to run far, far away, and not come back. Old habits die hard.

Unamused, he shakes his head. “Yes, you were, and that’s alright. That’s to be expected, anyway.” He sighs. Even that is quiet. “Look, I know-“

“I’m not trying to lecture you.” Jonathan swiftly interrupts what already has the potential to become a rant. After a pause, he asks, “Do you... need to talk about it? Let it all out? I’m here for you if you want to, and I’m here for you if you don’t.”

Shawn pauses, too, hesitant. “...I don’t know what I need right now. My emotions- they keep changing. One minute I’m so mad that I could just rip somebody’s throat out, but the next I’m so sad that I think I’m going to cry my eyes out, but before I actually can, it just... merges all together. Then it’s just... nothing?” The last word comes out sounding very confused, very uncertain. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s just nothing. Then the cycle starts up again, and starts all over again, and I’m going through seven different things at once, and it’s like it just does a complete 180 and I just... don’t know. That’s my best way to describe it out loud right now, I guess. It’s probably fine. I’m probably fine.”

Jonathan doesn’t even know where to begin. He picks at random. “Merges all together?”

“One big, messy ball of emotions. Of nothingness. It all cancels each other out.”

Jonathan nods sagely. “Like PEMDAS.”

Shawn stares at him, but doesn’t say anything. He probably isn’t sure just what to say. That’s a pretty normal feeling between the two, at least. “Anyway,” he tries to continue on, “I just don’t know.”

He pauses at that, clearly in thought. “So, what do you think of going on a walk?”

“I’m not a dog,” the teenager scoffs. He sounds so much like his normal self for a split second that neither of them knows what to say after that. Do they act like they usually do? Do they try to make things better? Do they go out and leave the hospital instead? Do they go make the necessary funeral arrangements for Chet Hunter? Do they ignore it all and hope it goes away?

Or do they keep close to one another and just face it head on?

“I never said anything about-“ he breaks off, shaking his head. “You’re an enigma.”

He tries to break out his signature grin. He falls short. “Thanks,” comes the dry response instead.

“You’re welcome,” comes the equally dry reply.

Shawn shakes his head, but he’s clearly not actually upset- okay, scratch that, he is, just not at Jonathan’s poor attempt at... whatever he’s doing. Trying to cheer him up? Maybe? Who even knows anymore.

“Yeah,” he says after a few quiet minutes. There’s a snore in the distance. Someone tightens their grip on him. He makes a face, but doesn’t reject it.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

*****

+1.

“My friends are moving to New York.”

Jonathan, who’s talking on the couch with Eli when Shawn walks in, stares. What? Did he hear that wrong? Because there’s no way on planet Earth that they would leave that far away without Shawn. Even ignoring that, though, it’s so weird to even hear the possibility of none of his kids, (and when in the fuck did they all become his? Somebody call a manager,) being around anymore. New York is not just a five-to-ten minute walk away. It’s a big new ball game.

Also, there’s another thing: Shawn and Cory.

Shawn and Cory can hardly go a week without seeing each other, and they can barely go a few days without some form of communication. He just can’t see them not being attached to the hip like a couple of Siamese twins. It’s like being joined together is like their natural human form, and who would purposely-or accidentally, even- break that? Who would even dare?

Jonathan can’t possibly fathom the other two just leaving a member of their trio behind. He can’t imagine them breaking apart and all going on their own merry ways. All he says is, “Okay. When do you guys leave?”

“There’s no ‘us’ or ‘we’ about it.”

He scoffs, doubtful. “That just doesn’t sound right. Mark my words, Topanga is going to come flying through this door eventually, probably some time today, yelling about how stupid her husband is and how she can’t deal with him all on her own, and that no matter how much she doesn’t want to admit it, she needs you there to help control the chaos.”

Shawn, who was about to open his mouth to correct the other man, pauses. Then his shoulders slump, he looks out the window, and he sighs.

“I really hope that you’re right.”

*****

Two days later, it turns out that he is.

“You didn’t really think we would leave without you, did you?” Topanga is scoffing. Cory is smirking. Then, the roles are flipped and Cory is scoffing; Topanga smirking. Jonathan is in the background nodding like he expected this, (mostly because he did. His smile is smug.) Rachel and Jack are standing in the kitchen, one trying to flip some pancakes and the other trying to pour in some more batter to make some more of the breakfast food, (while also sneaking in some chocolate chips, because duh.) (Angela, on the other hand, isn’t even trying to sneak any away- she’s blatantly obvious about it. She’s also not even cooking. She’s just going in between observing this and flipping through a science textbook. Nobody really cares one way or another.)

“I...” Shawn trails off, staring in dumbfounded silence as he sees his already packed bags, (which he can’t remember packing,) on the kitchen table in front of him, behind his mischievous best friends. “I need a plane ticket,” is what he eventually settles on saying.

There’s apparently an answer to that, too.

Only, Topanga pulls out the wrong paper from the short stack that’s been lying on the counter.

“Here we go!” She happily hands it over. Only, as seconds pass, she realizes that that’s not pure joy or even heavy suspicion on her friend’s face, (either would be fine, because she knows how to deal with loud, expressive faces and emotional outbursts from the ones she loves. She’s done it before and she’ll do it again, she does live with her overdramatic husband, after all,) she realizes that the expression on Shawn’s face is mostly just... surprised. Confused, mostly. For a minute, she thinks that, (and the heavy silence that goes along with it,) is aimed at her. And for a second or two, maybe it is.

But he figures out what’s going on awfully fast. However, all he does is point at the piece of paper in his hands and, speaking slowly, says, “...This- this is not a plane ticket, Topanga.” He makes sure to quite literally point that out. He passes the paper back to her as he watches her furrow her brow, frown, and look back at him with questioning eyes.

“Yes it is... not?” The last word comes out more as a question than anything else. She’s squinting down at the paper- and Shawn can pinpoint the exact moment she finds what he had been looking at just moments before- Jonathan’s familiar, scrawled out signature on what was undeniably the adoption papers, that up until now, everyone had just mostly ignored the best that they could. She passes it back to him silently, but she’s grinning. There’s a moment between the two of them, a form of silent communication- her eyes are still wide, but she looks undeniably pleased, now. She’s also searching for a reaction out of him. She’s not very subtle about it, either, seeing as she’s staring right at his face as if she’s trying to beat him out during a staring contest. Cory and Jonathan are also watching for one, despite the fact that they actually have no idea what’s going on anymore. They’re probably thinking something along the lines of,  Why are they this startled by a plane ticket?

The other three are studying Shawn and Topanga in silence. Jack is frowning, like the duo is a math equation that he can’t really work out, while Rachel, beside him, is just as curious but less obvious about it, while Angela, more observant than the other two, is dutifully studying the back of the papers.

It’s Cory that says, “It’s just a plane ticket, Shawnie.” Everyone else watching either absentmindedly glares or elbows him. It’s not that hard to figure out that there’s something more going on, here. Cory isn’t so oblivious to not figure that out, but he isn’t sure how he wants to address it, so he just doesn’t. What he also doesn’t do is care about the looks being shot his way. He can brush them off easily enough, and he isn’t exactly paying close attention to what Jack, Rachel, Jonathan, and Angela are doing right now. He’s only focused on Shawn and Topanga.

Speaking of which, the two nineteen-year olds are still paying their friends absolutely no mind at all. They’re still staring at each other in silence. They’ve known each other for so long, been around each other in thick and thin, that the fact that they can just take a look at one another and take an accurate shot at the other’s emotions surprises absolutely nobody. At this point, everybody’s just waiting for a bit of elaboration instead of just nothingness.

“I have a question,” Eric, who nobody even noticed was there, because he was so oddly not up to some form of shenanigans, spoke up loudly. The duo finally, and slowly, separated. “What’s this here?” he motions in between the two. “What’s with the staring contest? Because I can do it too!” He turns around and starts staring at an unamused Jack, who glances at him for all of two seconds before refocusing on the pancakes that he was still half-heartedly making. His friends were much more interesting, and that certainly included his wacky best friend, even if he isn’t all that keen to admit it.

Topanga and Shawn eye one another before shrugging, shaking their heads, and each grabbing a plate.

“So, New York,” the brown-haired boy says, in what is possibly an attempt to get back to the original topic of conversation. It could also just be an avoidance tactic. Or, it could be both.

The blonde shoots him a glare.

Both it is, then.

He continues on anyway, trying his best to ignore her. It’s not going very well, but he tries anyway. He claps his hands together and motions over with one hand to what is still definitely not a plane ticket. “When’s that going on?”

“Next week,” comes Topanga’s dry response. When he looks her way, she shoots him a meaning filled look. She mouths, ‘talk to him, now.’ She motions around the room. ‘We’ll leave.’

“Uh, Jonathan?” Shawn, glaring at Topanga, asks.

“Yeah?”

“Can we...” Shawn clears his throat. “Can we talk?”

Jonathan instantly stops what he’s doing, slightly taken a back by the boy’s tone of voice. “Of course.”

He pointedly says, “Alone?” And the rest of the group instantly catches on.

“We’ll just go take a walk.” Jack gets up, abandons his cooking, and drags Angela, Eric, and Rachel all behind him. Eric, sighing at his stubborn little brother, yanks Cory along. Topanga is about to go, to, but Shawn stops her before she can actually get through the front door.

“You can stay.”

She blinks. She points at the open door behind her. “You just said-“

He grips her wrist. “ Stay.”

She stays.

“So, what’s going on here?” Jonathan questions as he goes to tend to the almost finished pancakes. “And what does it have to do with New York?”

“It has absolutely nothing to do with-“

“It has everything to do with-“

The two teenagers- adults at this point, already nineteen-years-old, really- both talk rapidly in an attempt to either make their points known or in an attempt to cut one another off. Maybe it’s both.

Shawn succeeds first. “This has nothing to do with New York. Not really. I don’t know why she thinks it does.” He points at the girl standing beside him as he says that. “Anyway... you know how she handed me something that she thought,” he says the word pointedly there, making it clear that just because she thought something, didn’t make it right, “That she was handing me a plane ticket?”

“Yeah, and I’m going to take a while guess and say that that’s not what she gave you.”

“No.” Shawn steps a bit closer to the ever confused Jonathan. He unfolds a crumbled up piece of paper and hands it over.

“Okay,” the man says, clearly not sure what he’s specifically supposed to be looking at here. He holds up the adoption papers, the very ones that he must have received about three years ago. “What about this?”

The boy- no, he’s practically an adult at this point, just trying to make his way in the world and his way through college- pauses. He points. “You signed them.”

“Yes?” The word comes out uncertain and small, somehow. He looks back at the nineteen-year old, who isn’t bursting into tears, or screaming, or leaving. He’s standing there calmly, taking his time and thinking his approach through. He’s acknowledging his emotions instead of just pushing them aside and deeming them as unimportant, or simply making a joke out of it, or exploding into a fiery, emotional rage. He’s really, truly, trying.

Not just at fumbling his way through a serious conversation, no. He’s trying in general. He’s trying at life.

Sure, sometimes insecurities, fear, and doubt still rear their ugly heads every once and a while, as they are wont to do, but he’s trying. It really means something. He graduated high school when he used to be so unsure if he would even get past the seventh grade, and he’s even (pretty damn successfully, too,) going to college and accepting life itself. He embraces his friends instead of always pushing them away. He communicates and lets somebody know when things are going horribly, when his world is effectively rocked, when he needs somebody to hold him or if he needs to flee. He’s no longer totally terrified of settling down, of letting someone truly get close to him.

And, in what’s possibly the most pleasing of all, he now knows and accepts the fact that he has a family. A real family, one who won’t leave him just because something goes wrong or leaves him all the while claiming it’s because of their own faults. A real family that’s been there in thick and thin, and will continue to do so. No matter what.

Morgan, the just barely teenage firecracker, Joshua, her baby brother, Eric, who’s really learning about the world and how to thrive in it and really connect with people- Jack, Shawn’s half-brother, who he hasn’t fully connected with yet, but is determined to not give up. Angela, his loving girlfriend, someone he clings to. Amy and Alan, who’ve always been much better parents to him than his own parents ever were, (At several points, they had to take him in. At one point, there’s no ‘have to’s’ about it. They wanted to adopt him, plain and simple,) then, on top of that, there was Rachel, who’s still pretty new to the group, then there’s Cory and Topanga, the best friends. On top of all of that, there’s Jonathan, too. Jonathan, who’s been fumbling his way through taking care of Shawn Hunter since he was an irritable, sad, abandoned fourteen-year-old. Now, however, five years later, things are much, much different.

Jonathan couldn’t be more proud.

“I should have signed them sooner,” he says, referring to the papers. “I shouldn’t have waited so long. I mean,” he scoffs there, smiling, “You’re my kid already. Why not make it official?”

Shawn, for a few painfully slow seconds, has nothing to say to that.

Then, his cautious expression breaks away entirely as his whole face seems to spilt into a all-compassing grin.

“Yeah,” he says. “Why not?”

The end.