Work Text:
“Your girl is late.”
Cory slides into the back room and tugs his apron off the back of the door, slipping his hat on over his head. He hates this apron, the way it digs into his neck. He hates cafes entirely and the fact that it was the only place that seemed to want to hire him.
But, hey, when you’re eighteen, have no plans to go to college, and are broke as hell, struggling in your last year of high school, you become desperate.
Keeps him out of the house at least.
“I know,” He tells Lucas, who’s sitting at the cramped desk hunched over a stack of paperwork. “It’s probably traffic.”
“She doesn’t drive,” Lucas says, without looking up.
“ Other people do.”
Lucas laughs, “So you do admit that she’s not into you.”
Cory grumbles. Every Tuesday and Thursday, like clockwork, a girl named Sam Fraser from the cheer team shows up during his shift and orders the same ridiculous drink every time. He’s made attempts to flirt with her, and she’ll flirt back, but she never gives him her number. He’s attempted to give his to her, but no luck.
It’s not busy when he works. Where he works is overpriced, and the people of Shadyside are fully aware. For the most part, they’re only busy from about three o’clock to four o’clock, once the middle school unleashes all of those coffee obsessed idiots upon the world.
There’s only two other people there and one of them is slumped behind the counter. The other is wiping down a perfectly clean table in the corner.
“Slower day?” He asks and Nikki nods from where she’s leaning, hardly looking up.
The door opens a second later and two girls come in. Cory freezes when he sees them and quietly shifts to stand by the counter when it looks like Nikki isn’t going to help him out. Even without one of the girls facing him, he recognizes her as Sam Fraser, and suddenly, his shift is looking better.
“Hey,” Sam says, and he notices that she’s gotten a haircut. Nothing dramatic. Her hair is still long, but it’s obvious that she just got a trim and the style is slightly different. She’s smiling already, still laughing at something the newer girl, the short one, something she said on their way in. “Can I get a grande iced vanilla latte and a grande hot chocolate?”
The girl behind Sam groans a little, kicking at the floor like she’s embarrassed. Cory pretty much assumes that the second drink is for her.
“The name’s Sam, right?”
“Yep.”
He makes sure to spell it right. Write it clear enough for somebody to read. He remembers the time he didn’t write her name clear enough, and Sam seemed disinterested. It’s not hard. Her name is only three letters.
The two sit at the table that he just wiped down to wait and Cory watches them out of the corner of his eye as he makes the drinks. Watches as he realizes that the second girl is wearing a sweater that seems too big for her, while Sam is wearing a shirt that seems too short for her, barely able to meet the waist of her jeans.
Huh.
He’s been flirting with Sam Fraser every Tuesday and Thursday for months, and he’s never seen her look nervous or blush. Until today. If he wasn’t a guy living in the world’s shittiest town, he’d be annoyed that Sam Fraser hasn’t expressed any interest in him, but he almost laughs to himself as he continues to make their drinks.
Of course somebody like her is Sam Fraser’s type. He can’t explain it, but the longer he looks at the two of them, the more it makes sense. Once the drinks are done, he calls Sam’s name and hopes that he can use it as an excuse to flirt- correction, talk to her, because he’s a big boy and can respect a girl’s boundaries.
Unfortunately, the other girl, the short one, gets up to retrieve them, though she and Sam seem to disagree on this initially, but then the other girl dashes over before Sam can stop her.
“Thanks,” she says and takes the drinks from Cory’s hand, giving him a polite smile.
He nods. “Sure.”
She meets Sam at the table and the hand-off is full of tension that shouldn’t be there. Their hands brush together unnecessarily, and for a second, it looks like they want to hold hands.
They leave a minute later, the door closing behind them and Cory couldn’t tell anybody why he watches them cross the parking lot outside and get into their car, the easy way their shoulders brush into one another’s, the easy way that Sam smiles, unlike the forced one she’s given him at his attempts at flirting.
“Well, they are definitely hooking up,” Nikki pipes in from the other side of the counter and then Cory realizes all of his coworkers are watching the two girls as well.
The car backs out of the spot and starts off out of the parking lot.
“Definitely,” Lucas says with a laugh and Cory just shrugs. He doesn’t know Sam that well, but he doubts that the blonde is just hooking up with the other girl.
Seriously, nobody orders hot chocolate in ninety-degree weather in Shadyside for someone who’s just a hookup.
Kate has her suspicions. About a lot of things, but her biggest one is about Deena.
Ever since Deena started her chemistry class, she’s been acting differently. She ditches lunch with her and Simon, she seems more energetic throughout the school day, and she studies now.
Actually studies. With notecards and everything.
None of this would be alarming to the average person, and at first, it wasn’t alarming to her, either.
Until she realized that her teammate, Sam, has been acting a little suspicious as well.
The thing is- Kate never bothered to introduce the two of them together, thinking that those weird stares they gave each other in the halls or during football games were just some feud between the two, but now that they share a class together, and she’s learned that they’re actually lab partners, her theory has changed.
Her new theory is that ever since freshman year, Deena has had a gigantic crush on Sam, and Kate, unfortunately, was too stupid to realize this. If she remembers correctly, Sam started to notice Deena more towards the end of freshman year, and those odd looks occurred all throughout their sophomore year.
Her hypothesis is this: Sam and Deena have been crushing on each other since freshman year, observing each other through classes and other school events, but now that they’re finally talking to each other, they’re too nervous to act on their said crush.
How stupid.
Anyone with eyes can see that they’re into each other, which means everyone but Simon thinks that they’re screwing underneath the bleachers.
Oh, and they don’t know it, either. Obviously. So that means only three people at Shadyside High aren’t aware that Sam and Deena are together.
Now that Kate has this hypothesis, she needs to put it through a meat grinder and test it.
Nothing too dramatic, or extreme that will make Sam and Deena catch onto what she’s doing, because she spends a decent amount of time with both of them, together and separately, and to pull this off, she recruits some help from her trusty sidekick- Josh.
He doesn’t really want to do it, but he doesn’t really have a choice. Kate knows that there’s no chance Sam and Deena will ever get together if she doesn’t intervene. There’s nothing wrong with playing Cupid for a while, is there?
It starts like this- Deena doesn’t want to play for the school band anymore, announcing this dramatically in the middle of the library one day. The five of them have been studying separately for a while, and Sam is the only one who seems alarmed by this revelation.
For the rest of them, it’s not their first rodeo. Deena has been threatening to quit the school’s band since the seventh grade.
“ Why ?” Sam asks, sounding genuinely concerned. Simon grins at Sam’s reaction. Kate and Josh share a look, and Josh rolls his eyes- knowing exactly what Kate is thinking.
This is the perfect opportunity for Kate to intervene. Not right this second, of course, but if the conversation is a little too stale, she can insert a comment or two that will really get the gears going.
“Because its stupid and a waste of my time,” Deena tells the blonde, then she grumbles, “I look fucking ridiculous in those outfits, too, and they’re always scratchy. Sometimes I get a rash, which is definitely not normal.”
Sam takes a few moments, then realizes that Deena has no real reason to quit band. “Well, I think you look cute in the outfits.”
“Even with the hat?”
“Even with the hat.”
Kate is about to say something, but she just realizes what the two girls across from her are saying.
“Still,” Deena complains. “I don’t like them.”
“I think they’re okay. Especially the black one for away games,” Sam says, going back to studying. “You definitely look good in that one.”
Wait, what?
Are Sam and Deena flirting?
Is this their version of flirting, complimenting each other over basic school uniforms?
It must be, because Deena stops complaining, and Kate has known Deena for seven fucking years, so she sure as hell knows that Deena doesn’t get flustered very easily.
However, Deena’s cheeks are a slight shade of pink with the information that Sam thinks Deena looks cute in the black band outfit, and she has a small smile on her face as she goes back to her own studying.
Sam glances over at Deena when Deena isn’t paying attention, and when she notices that Deena is blushing, Sam’s smiling too, and her own pale skin is getting pink. Kate wants to scream at them.
Fools.
They’re fucking fools .
Anyways.
Kate continues this throughout the next few weeks. Perfect example is, after a football game, while they’re in the locker room changing out of sweaty uniforms, Kate asks Sam what her plan is for the rest of the night.
Kate’s babysitting, so there’s no way she can keep an eye on Sam and Deena, or get the two of them to hang out after this.
She doesn’t think that she’s aware of it, but Sam breaks out into a huge smile at the question, and she starts tying her sneakers, while Kate kicks her own off, happy to change into clothes that don’t reek.
“Deena’s teaching me how to play the drums.”
“Oh, that sounds fu-”
Kate’s sentence dies in her throat.
Deena hates telling people that she plays the drums, even though it’s obvious. She carries a pair of drumsticks with her everywhere she goes. She hates telling people that she plays the instrument- which means she hates teaching them how to play even more.
Trust her, she’s seen Simon ask Deena for the last seven years, and the answer has never changed.
Sam looks up at her, confused by Kate’s sudden disinterest. She coughs then clears her throat, acting like something was stuck.
“That’s fun, did you ask her to?”
“No, she offered,” Sam tells Kate, and Kate gasps, then coughs again, to hide that slip up as well.
“She did?” Kate chokes out.
Sam looks at her weird.
Like, if Kate’s a fucking moron- despite the fact that she’s got a fucking 4.2 GPA.
After a few moments, Sam decides that maybe Kate actually is coughing, or perhaps she’s too excited for her date with Deena to care why Kate is acting so strange. Either way, Kate’s more surprised by the minute.
“Yeah,” Sam answers, as if it’s the most simple thing in the world- and it’s not, because Deena Johnson is the most complex, royal pain in her ass, which is saying something, since she’s friends with Simon. “She offered after she found out I listen to the Pixies.”
Of course.
That part doesn’t surprise her.
Deena’s convinced that they’re the greatest band in the world, so of course she offered to teach Sam how to play the drums after learning that the taller girl is a fan.
It makes perfect sense.
Who the fuck is Kate fooling?
It makes no sense that Deena is offering to teach Sam to play the drums. Isn’t there an order to this? Aren’t Deena and Sam supposed to go to the music store first, and geek out over more albums by the Pixies before they get to this stage?
Kate doesn’t know anymore. She thought she knew Deena’s dating habits, but clearly not.
“I didn’t know you listened to the Pixies.” Kate comments, almost feeling defeated, because what the fuck is she supposed to do? Deena is better at this than she had thought, and a part of her is sad with this information.
Sam grins mischievously, “I didn’t, until I heard Deena talking about them one day with Simon, so I checked them out for myself.”
With that, Sam grabs her backpack and bids Kate a goodnight, leaving her alone in the locker room.
Kate can’t help but laugh at the information, at Sam being so sly about it.
Then, she’s endeared by it. Her best friend found someone who overheard her talking about her favorite band in the world, then took the time out of their day to listen to them herself, then went to lengths to have a conversation about said band.
It’s sweet, and Kate hopes that Deena pulls her head out of her ass real quick, because even Kate is getting a little frustrated by all of this.
As it turns out, Deena never really needed Kate’s help. The more she stands back and watches the two of them, the more obvious it becomes.
She sees them.
Everywhere, and they aren’t secretive about it or anything, but Kate doesn’t want to flat out ask them if they’re together, so she waits.
Doesn’t even ask when they’re holding hands in the hallway. She certainly doesn’t ask when they’re all in Deena’s basement one night, and when Sam mentions something about being cold, Deena takes the clothes right off her back to keep Sam warm, instead of giving her a blanket.
Judging by Sam’s reaction, she really just wanted an excuse to steal Deena’s sweatshirt. She thinks Deena knows this, but it seems like Deena doesn’t care.
Whatever.
The two are definitely in love, because the next day, when everyone wakes up and Josh is cooking them all pancakes, Deena makes Sam sit in the empty chair next to her, and she pulls the chair closer to her. On top of that, the two of them are in their own little world, so close and comfortable with each other that it’s clear Kate missed some development in their relationship.
Sam wipes some flour off of Deena’s face, and Deena makes sure that Sam gets the first plate of pancakes and bacon, and the two of them share a look before they’re giggling together.
They’re clearly dating.
Or hooking up, some sort of friends with benefits thing.
No.
They’re definitely dating, because when Sam leaves later that morning, she’s leaving with Deena’s walkman and a small pile of cassettes.
“Did you make her a mixtape?” Kate questions.
Deena just smiles and shrugs, “Maybe.”
Jesus Christ.
As she learned very quickly, Sam and Deena don’t need any help getting together. She just needs enough evidence to confirm her suspicions, because gay people are confusing, and terrible at flirting for that matter. Just because they’re holding hands and exchanging mixtapes doesn’t mean they’re together.
She gets all the evidence she needs when she’s walking down the empty hall in school one day, on her way to the front office.
A few feet ahead of her, a door opens and Deena is stumbling out, a slightly dazed look on her face.
Kate swears. If Deena’s high right now, she’s going to kill Simon.
Deena straightens out her shirt, runs her fingers nervously through her hair, and the next thing Kate knows, Deena’s reaching into the room she just stumbled out of, and is pulling out Sam.
Kate starts laughing.
Laughing because the two of them just came out of a supply closet, and she thinks that she’s the only one who sees the irony in that as she walks closer, the two of them are thoroughly embarrassed at being caught.
“We were just making out.” Deena tells her, and Sam slaps her arm.
“We weren’t!”
The two of them start bickering. Kate just looks over her two friends, and she really can’t refrain herself from making a joke, “So, I guess you two came out of the closet?”
Sam and Deena stare at her blankly.
Clearly, they don’t find this as funny as she did.
She decides to bite the bullet, “Okay, how long have you two actually been dating?”
“We aren’t.” Sam answers, sounding panicky.
“Four months.”
Oh no.
Kate wasn’t expecting this. If she had known that Sam would be so uncomfortable with someone else knowing, she would have kept to herself.
Deena gives Sam a look. Sam doesn’t really meet her eyes, and then Deena gives Kate a look, like this is her fault, and maybe it is. She’s the one who made the closet joke, after all.
Okay, so clearly, it’s her fault, since she asked how long the two of them have been dating, and she’s not sure what other underlying problem there is, but Kate has a feeling it’s something to do with her crazy ass step mom.
“Sam, I hope you know that I don’t care if you and Deena are dating. I mean, I do care, but not like that,” Kate’s never really dealt with this situation before, and she finds herself out of her comfort zone very quickly, rambling. “I mean, I’m also not going to tell anyone because it’s none of my business. And obviously, if you break her heart, we’ll have some issues, but like, if you guys are happy together then I’m happy for you, and it’s clear that Deena really likes you-”
Deena’s turning red again, “Okay, Kate that’s enough, thanks.”
“It’s been five months.” Sam finally says, voice quiet.
“What?”
“We’ve been dating for five months, not four.”
Kate’s grinning again, and Deena is counting off on her fingers.
“Sam, it’s been four.”
“No, we started dating in September. It’s January.”
Jesus, has Kate really been trying to figure this out for five months?
Okay, whatever. She’s just glad that she’s not questioning her sanity anymore, and that Sam and Deena actually have been together. For four or five months. She looks over her friends again, and Deena’s clothes are still a bit disheveled, but when Kate looks at Sam, she loses it.
She debates on telling Sam, and it takes her a few moments to do so, because her and Deena are still trying to figure out how long they’ve actually been together.
Poor Sam. She has a small collection of bruises forming right in the middle of her neck.
“Hey, Sam? Nice necklace, is it handmade?”
Realization is immediately on Sam’s face, and she stares at Deena. Then she punches Deena’s arm, hard.
Deena doesn't even retaliate. Deena just stares back for a second, then runs down the hall, shouting, “It was an accident, I swear!”
Sam and Kate watch her go, then Sam turns to her, “It’s been five months,” Sam tells Kate, clearly wanting to be the winner of that particular argument. “September 4th.”
Then, she’s chasing down the hallway after Deena, most likely to reprimand her for leaving so many hickeys behind.
Kate just shakes her head in disbelief, wondering how the two of them even managed to get together.
When the Shadyside High school gets put on lockdown because of some killer plowing through the town, his first thought is to pull his daughter from the school. For a few days, at least. He’s in a towel while his wife is at work.
For a moment, Ted stands there, watching on the news as the channel focuses on the front of the school, and he knows that he’s all the way in Sunnyvale, and that all the kids in the school are used to this, but that makes it scarier. His daughter is a student there, and while he knows he’ll be sending his sons off to Sunnyvale high when the time comes, he’s still absolutely furious that he let his daughter talk him into letting her stay there instead of transferring.
He’s also furious at his new wife, because as much as he loves her, his own daughter doesn’t like to spend as much time with him, ever since he got remarried.
As he watches the camera zoom into the school, his first thought is Sam. Then the second thought is his wife, and how she would have Sam pulled from the school already. He calls Sam, then remembers that she’s not supposed to use her phone unless it’s an emergency.
This is an emergency, but he has a feeling she won’t answer.
He punches in her number, and even though she doesn't answer just like he thought, he calls her fifteen times, anyways.
Then he calls the neighbors, asks if they’ve heard from Sam, and the answer is a quick no before hanging up.
He debates on calling his wife because his wife has more power than him, and would be able to pull the strings that will get them the answers they need in a matter of minutes.
His wife calls- as if she knows he was just debating about it and tells him she’ll have to spend an extra day in New York for her business trip, and in a moment of panic and shock, he doesn’t tell her that he’s worried about Sam.
She’s chatting about how great all the schools are up there, how the people are nicer, but he can barely listen. He has no idea if his daughter is okay.
The neighbors call him back and tell him that there’s not many casualties.
Not zero.
He’s about to get in his car and speed the whole way to Shadyside and demand that Nick Goode lets him see his daughter.
Sam finally calls him. On the cell phone that he had given her earlier this year, the one he told her to use for emergencies only, because after all, they still have a house phone attached to the wall in the kitchen.
Calms him down with, “Dad, I’m fine. I wasn’t at the school, I was in town with a friend.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, dad. I’m fine. We were getting milkshakes, that’s like, fifteen minutes away from the school.”
Ted breathes a little easier, but he still is worried and spends the next ten minutes babbling into his cell phone while Sam grumbles on the other end. The boys are in the living room, arguing over some toy instead of paying attention to the news.
It sounds crazy.
A killer getting loose, again.
Sam is home within forty minutes after their phone call, and the last time he hugged her was two weeks ago, before she left for Shadyside, to spend some time with her mother. Sam hasn’t been as fond of his hugs as she used to be, but she lets him scoop her into his arms, like she’s still ten years old and begging for his attention.
“I was so worried,” He tells her, and Sam rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling a bit.
She looks like her mother when she does that and Ted hugs her again, feeling his sons slide over to wrap their arms around Sam. “I’m fine, guys. Really.”
Eventually she wiggles away. She always does.
She sleeps in the living room that night because he doesn’t trust himself to let her go back to Shadyside, and she doesn’t really want to sleep upstairs- he wonders when that problem started. He tells Sam that her room is just as she left it, but she says she would rather sleep on the couch, because it reminds her of one of her friend’s houses. That part scares him. Sam seems happier at her friend’s, than at her own home, in a town so dangerous.
He’s alone with his kids, and he should tell his wife, but he doesn’t because he knows Sam is safe; and his wife and Sam never got along.
It’s late when he finally feels at ease enough to leave Sam alone again and he brushes some of her hair away from her face before he turns off the light and goes upstairs.
He passes by Sam’s room again on his way, with the intention of inspecting it, to make sure his wife hasn’t messed it up. He's stopped at the doorway when he hears a thump from inside. A quiet, “ Shit .”
A thousand images jump into his mind at once--some robber scaling the side of the house (that’s something he can take care of), or maybe another Shadyside killer, one that’s decided Shadyside wasn’t enough, one that’s ready to kill him and his children. What he’s not expecting is a teenage girl sitting at his daughter’s desk by her open window, inspecting her shin like she’s hurt herself.
She’s young, he realizes. Around the same age as Samantha, maybe a little older- but still. Young. Has to be from the way she’s holding herself, as if she’s still so unsure of how to carry her own weight, and he’s starting to think she has a resemblance to one of the girls he saw a few weeks ago, when he had picked Samantha up from a football game. His suspicions are confirmed when he notices that the sweatshirt she’s wearing is the same as the one Sam wears proudly whenever she visits home, just to annoy her step-mother.
What he can’t figure out is what she’s doing in his house at one in the morning.
“Can I help you?” he asks, trying to sound firm, but amusement and immediate parental concern tinges the outskirts of his tone.
Either way, the girl jumps, her eyes wide as she whips her head up to look at him. “Holy shit!”
Ted smirks a little when he sees how flustered she gets--the way her hand flies up to her mouth, as if embarrassed or surprised or both.
“Um, sorry?”
He takes a step into the room, holding on the doorknob. “It’s past visiting hours,” he tells her and the girl drops her hand from her mouth and scrambles to her feet like he’s her sergeant or something.
“I um… I was just…”
He stands there, waiting to see what she’ll come up with, but no real answer comes. He almost wants to be grateful that it’s him and not Iris who came in to find a girl in Sam’s bedroom, looking for her, no doubt. Iris hadn’t recovered for almost two weeks after the last time they found Sam getting close to another girl.
This is a whole new level.
One that would likely send his wife into a babbling, worried, awkward mess for the rest of the year. She’d still be edging around it at Sam’s graduation. The best thing is, Iris doesn’t have to know, and he doesn’t have to tell her. Instead, he can tease his daughter about it tomorrow morning before she can convince him to allow her to go back to Shadyside to spend the weekend with her friends.
“Looking for my daughter?” he asks and the girl is silent for a moment, hands clasped nervously in front of her stomach, just sort of hanging midair.
She nods.
“She’s sleeping downstairs,” Ted explains. “But it’s late. Can I take a message?”
“She is? Oh.”
She looks disappointed and Ted sighs, looks up to the ceiling and doesn't really know what to say. That’s the problem.
He doesn’t like to think of Sam as anything other than his daughter, at three-years-old and drawing on the walls. Sitting on his lap in the living room. The young girl, excited to have twin brothers. But now she’s practically an adult.
A practically-adult who has other practically-adults climbing the side of his house to sneak into her window in the middle of the night, wearing the Shadyside cheer sweatshirt that belongs to Sam, and he can’t help but feel like he’s invading into a part of his daughter’s life that’s only supposed to be hers . A world that he doesn’t know about, a place where she’s happy and content and is able to be herself fully with the people around her.
He glances back down, thinking about the situation at the school. Wonders if she’s a friend, or if she’s somebody that causes Sam to skip class and hang out on the bleachers for a few hours. Tries not to wonder how many times this girl has snuck into Sam’s room, or how many times Sam has said she was sleeping over at Kate’s, only to spend the night with the girl in front of him. Wonders if she’s never been caught by Deena's own parents.
“Anything you’d like me to relay?” he asks again and the girl looks back up at him with even wider eyes, as though grasping at something to say that won’t get her into trouble.
A pang of sympathy ropes through his chest. She seems nice. He bets that he would have liked her more if he met her when she was just Sam’s friend, and not the girl climbing through his window.
“N-no,” she stammers out. “That’s okay. I can just...I’ll just talk to her later, I guess?” A beat.
“She is coming back to school, right? I mean, at Shadyside. She really doesn’t want to transfer.”
It sounds like a question. Ted shrugs, wondering why Sam hasn’t shared the news yet. Maybe Sam had wanted to tell her today, and never got around to it. He doesn’t answer the question, deciding that Sam can tell her herself.
“Okay, well, I’ll just…” She gestures back towards the window, as if asking if he’d like to intervene and let her stay. Or go wake his daughter up.
One or the other.
“Can I at least have a name to give her?” He asks, the corners of his lips tilting up in amusement. “Unless you happen to have a business card on you.”
She frowns. He wonders if she even knows what that is.
“Oh, I’m um… Deena Johnson.”
He knows that name. Of course he does. His daughter has managed to become close friends, or more, with her. Sam has talked about her often, but he’s never been able to put a name to a face.
Now he can. He’s not sure how he feels about it, but Deena seems sweet enough. She seems sweet enough, but there’s also this edge to her that tells him if he ever tried to cross her, he’d regret it. And he’s a grown man.
Deena Johnson jerks forward like she’s seconds away from trying to shake his hand and then seems to think better of it.
“Nice to meet you, Deena,” he says, then nods towards the window. “I assume you know how to leave?”
It’s meant to be a joke, he’s not that cruel, though she did climb into the house that way, but Deena doesn’t seem to understand that.
She steps back onto Sam’s desk and then hoists herself out the window. His heart leaps up in some echo of his earlier worry, calling the school for Sam, but by the time he crosses the room to look out the window, she’s already across the yard, running to a car parked up the street.
He’s impressed. Clearly, Deena has snuck in here more times than he originally thought, able to sneak out the window with practiced skill. He might need to invest in a security system.
Sam is quiet at breakfast the next morning, which is nothing new.
What is new is the face she makes when he says, “Deena Johnson dropped by last night. Nice girl. Fast runner, too.”
His sons don’t really get the joke, but it’s okay, because Sam knows exactly what he’s talking about.
He just didn’t know his daughter could turn that shade of red.
Simon would like to point out that since he has a key to the Johnson household, he has free reign to do whatever he pleases in the house, at any time.
(Also, Deena gave him permission.)
So one night, after an extra shift at Bag n Go, he’s too lazy to make the twenty minute drive to his own house, so he stops by Deena’s, because she’s only like fifteen minutes away.
He took a shower and felt like he might collapse in the middle of the house if he didn’t get to Josh’s room soon. He usually stops by the living room first, especially since Deena is always up around the same late hour as him, watching a movie or something like a normal person, and not in the basement like a creep.
That doesn’t happen tonight, and as Simon realizes that it’s a Friday night, he can only assume two things. Deena’s out with her newest friend from school, Sam Fraser. Or, she’s helping Kate babysit, or she’s dead. Simon prays that it’s the first option- him and Sam may not be friends, (yet) but he likes the girl. She laughs at his jokes and isn’t as mean to him as Kate and Deena are.
He wasn’t expecting to take the turn to the terribly lit hallway on his walk to Josh’s room, seeing two figures covered by shadows.
One of them is Deena. He knows that much, but he really wasn’t expecting to see this, or hear Deena giggle- yes giggle as she leans up and takes the taller girl’s hair out of her braid- Simon can’t see who it is, since they’re covered in the dark and Deena whispers, “I’m really glad we left that party, it was boring. No offense to your dad.”
Now, Simon’s always known that Deena likes girls, so that’s not what throws him in for a loop. What does throw him a loop is that Deena is actually crushing on one hard enough to bring her home and make out with her for a while.
Simon plans on turning and running in the other direction if they notice that he’s there- and when he hears the other voice, he’s surprised.
“I’m sorry I made you stay out of your room for longer than usual. I know you like your quiet and peace.”
Sam Fraser. Deena is kissing Sam Fraser , the type of girl who seems to get nervous when Simon makes vulgar jokes, the type of girl who’s on the cheer team, flirting with boys in the stands at football games and gets dragged to church every Sunday by her crazy ass step-mother.
Hell must be freezing over.
Hell must be freezing over, because Deena has sworn that she wouldn’t be stupid and crush on someone who is straight, unless Simon has been completely oblivious this entire time.
Maybe he has been. Maybe Sam is gay, too, and the two of them have been dating for a while now, all while Simon had thought they were just friends.
Simon has seen both of the girls around school- he even has a class with both of them and has noticed that they’ve been teaming up more often for projects, leaving him in the dust and sees them in the library studying together, shoulder to shoulder, talking in hushed whispers. All of which made sense to him because that’s what friends do. It’s what he forces Kate and Deena to do when they have class together, anyways.
Friends is the wrong word as Deena leans up and kisses Sam, “Yeah, well, I like hanging out with you, too. I thought you’d notice by now.”
Sam stutters, “I mean, I have, I just… I just- I’m not used to the idea that you’re my girlfriend.”
Oh. Oh. Simon is totally dead if they realize he’s there. Deena just might snap his neck and Sam will probably just… well, she’d be a witness to his death.
“Well, get used to it because I don’t plan on giving up that title so soon.”
Simon can hear the smile in Sam’s voice, even though it’s quiet and soft, “I think I can try.” And Sam’s leaning in for another kiss- and Simon isn’t going to lie, even though he’s surprised at the two of them being together, he has to admit, it’s kind of cute seeing Deena being sweet with Sam. After all, Deena deserves someone who actually notices and cares for her- makes her feel like she can be all lovey dovey and all that shit.
From what he’s seen, it’s the happiest Deena has been since her mother passed away, so who the fuck is he to judge? He’s happy for her.
They start to get more carried away, only making it more awkward for Simon. They’re sort of blocking the way to his (technically Josh’s room) and Sam’s starting to make these little noises and-
Simon clears his throat awkwardly and Sam’s the one who jumps backwards, and Simon can see the moment Deena decides to rip his head off.
“What the hell, Simon?” She hisses. “How long were you there?”
His face burns with embarrassment. He doesn’t know how long he’s been there, and the longer he takes to answer, the more angry Deena seems to get.
Until Sam simply laces their fingers together and Simon can see Deena physically relax. She doesn’t quite meet Simon’s gaze- which is fine, since he’s too busy staring at the wall behind them, afraid to look at Deena.
“C’mon, Deena, you promised me that we could finish making that mixtape tonight.”
Deena's face softens again, even breaks out into a smile that Simon figures is only meant for Sam. “Yeah, you’re right. I forgot about that.”
Somehow that surprises Simon the most. Deena doing the most mundane thing with Sam.
Sam’s pulling Deena into her room, “Good night, Simon!” She says, the first thing she’s spoken since Simon caught them.
As the door slams shut behind them, Simon rolls his eyes and goes into Josh’s room. He was about to fall asleep around an hour later when he hears the two girls arguing on the other side of the wall- a playful banter, followed by a pause, the pause followed by a loud thud, shaking the floor.
“Oh, shit! Sam?” Simon can hear the concern in Deena’s voice, “I didn’t mean to push you off- are you okay?”
Simon barely hears Sam’s response, “I’m getting you back for that. And you didn’t push me. You kicked me.”
“I did not! This wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t touch my blanket!”
“You spent the past fifteen minutes begging me to spend the night!”
“To spend the night! Not steal my blanket!”
Simon has to hide a laugh at their argument, and when their voices die off, he assumes that they’ve made up.
The next morning, before everyone else is awake, he goes to the kitchen with the intention of grabbing a piece of fruit and going back to his own house.
Unfortunately, his plans are ruined.
Simon has to stop making the habit of walking in on Deena and Sam. More for his sake than theirs. Nothing screams embarrassment more than walking into the kitchen and seeing Deena and Sam kissing rather sloppily. Simon swears that if he sees them kissing one more time, he might gouge his own eyes out.
After his initial shock to see them, he’s not exactly sure why, but he decides to ignore them, and opens the fridge, grabbing the last box of raspberries. Sam only notices his presence when he shuts the fridge loudly.
“Simon!” Sam yelps, and Deena groans, hiding her face in Sam’s shoulder. “We- uh, we were just grabbing some breakfast.”
“Good morning, Simon,” Deena grumbles.
Simon munches on a handful of raspberries. “Please limit your saliva exchange to your room, Deena. I really don’t want to see that again.”
He leaves the girls to their banter, slightly proud that he’s the one who caused it, and he’s off to get his clothes before he leaves.
Of course, just to his luck, he runs into them again when he’s leaving, and they’re sitting on the couch in Deena’s living room.
He says goodbye, and Sam says it back, while Deena waves.
He just thanks god they were only holding hands and looking at each other like two lovestruck idiots as he passes by.
Lindsey has a dilemma.
She’s standing in the principal’s office, staring down two of her students, with her boss right next to her.
“Deena Johnson,” He starts. “Junior. 3.3 GPA, in the school band and yet…” He slams down a calculus test, with a 18% written sloppily in the corner, and Lindsey winces. She’s Deena’s teacher, and it physically hurts her to know that her lessons don’t make sense to the girl.
Deena seems unphased. Yet, her classmate, Samantha Fraser looks surprised, giving her friend an exasperated look.
Principal Smith slams down another test with Deena’s name on it, this time with a 94% in the corner.
“Can you explain to me how you went from eighteen percent to a ninety-four percent, Deena?” He asks.
The girl shrugs. “Studying.”
He sighs. “Your grades have improved since you and Samantha started talking to each other.”
“Uh,” Sam cuts in. “Just Sam.”
“What?”
“She likes to be called Sam, not Samantha.” Deena answers, and Lindsey wishes that the girl didn’t have such a short temper. She’s seen the way Deena gets in class. Annoyed and frustrated that she doesn’t understand the material, until Sam starts to help her.
Principal Smith shakes his head at the interruption, and goes back to the mission at hand, pointing back to Deena’s grades.
“Can you explain to me how you went from an eighteen percent to a ninety-four?”
Deena shrugs. “I got lucky.”
“Ms. Hunt pointed out that you started improving a lot after you met Sam.”
The girls share another look, and she wonders what could possibly be on their minds. She sees the way they interact during her class, and has never been able to put her finger on what it is. There’s just something.
Clearly, they’re friends.
Principal Smith doesn’t take Deena’s answer, and her demeanor changes when she realizes this, leaning forward, “Are you saying I cheated?”
“We take that accusation very seriously here in Shadyside. Not to mention, we need to discuss the fact that you blew up the girl’s restroom in the east wing at the beginning of October…”
Sam cuts in, “I did that!”
Lindsey can’t help but laugh, then covers it up when three pairs of eyes land on her. She was well aware of the scandal involving the explosion in the girls restroom, but had no idea that Deena Johnson was on the top of the suspect list, and the idea of a girl as quiet and smart as Sam Fraser in the middle of that chaos.
“Sorry.” She mutters, mostly afraid of being reprimanded by her boss in front of two students.
“You both blew up the bathroom?” He asks, completely forgetting about the original reason he had brought the two of them.
“Yes.” They answer in perfect sync, and Deena doesn’t reveal any more information, until Sam adds, “We were being chased by the Skull Mask killer, Ruby Lane, and the nightwing killer, we didn’t have-”
Principal Smith holds a hand up, “Nightwing? Ruby Lane? Those kids have been dead for years.”
Once again, Deena and Sam share a look, and she doesn’t know how they’re able to do it, but they’re having a conversation without sharing a single word, and nobody misses the way Deena’s hand falls onto Sam’s knee for a split second, before she places her hands back in her pockets.
“Fine, I cheated on the test and I blew up the bath-”
“I tutor her!” Sam cuts in. “I tutor her after school for calculus and chemistry, okay? Call her dad and ask if you don’t believe me. And she didn’t blow up the bathroom, I did!”
“Right, because Nightwing was chasing you.”
“Yes! That’s what we keep telling you,” Sam replies, exasperated. “Deena didn’t cheat on her test, so if you want to suspend or expel somebody, it should be me.”
Principal Smith looks at her, and Lindsey is suddenly reminded that she’s supposed to have some say in this. They are her students, after all.
“I don’t think Deena cheated on the test, Sir. She was improving on the pop quizzes I hand out, and has been getting much better at turning in her homework,” She clears her throat, still shocked that the two girls are claiming they were chased down by two of Shadyside’s most prolific killers, leading them to blow up the restroom in the east wing. “And for the restroom situation, I think, uh… You might need to launch an investigation for that.”
Her boss sighs in annoyance, upset that he’s been outnumbered, and sends all three of them back to class.
The walk back to her class room is awkward, especially since the girls need to walk with her to return to their chemistry class. Deena and Sam refuse to speak around her, and they both seem to be off in their own little world as they do so, shoulders brushing.
She returns to her own classroom, and tells them that she’ll see them later today. Sam nods politely. Deena doesn’t react.
Later that day, when they are in her class, she can hear the two of them arguing on how to solve one of the questions in the assignment she handed out, and despite their angry hushed tones, underneath the desks they pushed together, they’re playfully kicking at each other, and when they hunch over the assignment together, there’s a moment when Sam gets really close to Deena, leaving the other girl in a daze, and herself victorious as she steals her pencil, and starts writing on the paper.
She can’t help but shake her head a bit at their antics.
Teenagers.
Josh hates being alone, especially after the night of October first- especially in the dark.
Sure, he’ll stay in the basement and continue to listen to Iron Maiden, but as the band once said, he has the phobia that someone is always near. He doesn’t want to admit this, mostly because he knows that Deena is being brave for him- all of them.
Whatever she saw that convinced her that Goode was evil is only revealed in small moments that slip through the cracks.
Josh knows that Deena loves Sam. Knows that Sam loves Deena, too, so it’s no surprise to him when they get back together. In fact, a part of him is relieved, because he had started to think that Deena was going to drive herself crazy for the short three months they were broken up.
He still hangs out in the basement, and Sam and Deena join him more than they used to, seeming to be in the same dilemma that he’s in. Afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone upstairs in Deena’s room when their father isn’t home.
Anyways. It’s only been a week since the craziest night of his life, a week since he broke his arm, and he’s hungry.
Today is different. They’re not with him, meaning that he’s a little lonely, and he goes upstairs, on a mission to find a snack. When he reaches the top of the stairs, the house is scarily quiet, and it takes him a few moments to remind him that he won’t walk into the kitchen and find a bloody Deena, rambling on about a possessed Sam.
He barely turns the corner when he realizes that Sam and Deena are, in fact, in the kitchen.
Sam’s sitting in one of the chairs at the table, and Josh has to avert his gaze because she isn’t wearing a shirt, the fabric bundled up in her lap. He doesn’t want to be that brother, but do they really need to be doing… that in the kitchen?
He quickly realizes that they aren’t doing what he thought they were getting up to, because Deena is in the other corner of the kitchen, fully dressed as she sorts through the cabinets, an assortment of items in her arms.
She dumps them all on the table, and starts prodding at Sam’s shoulder gently.
“When can the stitches come out?” Deena asks.
“Next week.”
“Do they still hurt?”
Sam shakes her head. Deena starts to clean the wound, and she winces. “It’s a little sore,” She admits. “How about you?”
“A little sore, too.’
There’s nothing much said between them after that. Deena continues to clean Sam’s stitches, and Sam continues to stare at one of the titles in the corner of the kitchen. Josh knows exactly what she’s looking at. Him and Deena couldn’t get all of the blood off of the tiles after everything that had happened, and Josh keeps forgetting to try again.
“I’m sorry,” Sam mutters.
Josh knows this is a conversation he has no part of, but he can’t move.
“For what?”
“For stabbing you with a drumstick.”
Deena laughs, pressing a kiss to Sam’s temple. “It was payback for when I drowned you.” She redresses Sam’s wound, and Sam twists to look at her.
“Do you need me to clean yours?”
Josh loses his footing for a split second, causing the floor beneath him to creak.
A roll of gauze is being thrown in his direction, “Josh! Fuck off!”
And just like that, they’re back to normal.
Damien knows that the double shift is never fun; taking up the majority of his time, especially when he has two young teens living under his roof. He’s a little annoyed, because today is Deena’s birthday, and he’s going to miss most of it. He’s been working his ass off to stay sober, and while he’s holding onto a five month chip, he can’t help but feel like he’s failing.
He’s supposed to be able to spend his daughter’s birthday with her, not getting his hands dirty to make a couple extra bucks.
He knows Deena is home when he sees a pair of shoes by the front door. In hind-sight, she should have known that Deena would never be caught wearing those worn out sneakers he walked past- but he’s tired. The only thing that’s making his day better is seeing his daughter on her birthday, being able to sit down at dinner with both of his children because they have something to celebrate.
Naturally, he gets home exhausted, drops his things onto the front table, and remembers too late that he didn’t leave any money for Josh to buy some fresh food for dinner, along with cake mix or cookie dough for dessert. Josh has always been the better cook out of the three of them, getting that skill from his mother.
Damien also realizes that it’s too late and that Bag n Go is closed, meaning that there’s only a select few options for dinner. It’s unfortunate that Josh never gets excited about his ability to cook, only cooking when he or Deena request it. But hey- he has two teenagers, for crying out loud. What’s the harm in some pizza? Or Chinese?
Usually his wife would scold him for it later, no doubt, because he always ends up letting their kids gorge on junk food whenever he’s gone. But who has the time? He’ll have to apologize to her later, if he’s ever lucky enough to see her again.
Anyways- he certainly doesn’t have the time to cook. Not after fourteen hours straight on his feet.
So, he starts wandering up the stairs as inspects the menu for the new Chinese restaurant, intent on asking his daughter if she prefers Chinese or pizza tonight.
“Deena?” He calls at the top of the steps. “Honey, I’m going to order dinner.”
There’s no answer, which probably means that Deena has her music up too loud or she’s already disappeared to hang out with her friends.
Damien doesn’t put much thought into it, really.
He wanders down the hall to his daughter’s bedroom and usually he knocks, but if Deena has her headphones in (on the rare occasion, she does use her Walkman), then she’s not going to answer. So he opens the door.
And immediately wishes he didn’t.
He looks up from the menu in his hand, another question about dinner already prepared on his tongue, only to see his daughter sit up in her bed with a friend of hers that Damien hasn’t officially met, because when has Deena ever properly introduced her friends?
For a moment, Damien is certain that they’d been fighting or something. Perhaps in some girlish, Hollywood manner. Like a pillow fight, like the ones in all those ridiculous movies he sees the kids watching these days.
But then... no. That’s not very Hollywood at all, is it? And Deena has been in a few relationships- flings would be the correct word. He hasn’t even thought of the idea that Deena would do something like this, because Damien would know, right? Deena would tell her that she’s dating this seriously.
“Holy fucking shit, Dad !”
Damien has half a mind to scold his daughter for her use of language, but that seems like it should be on the low end of his priorities just then.
Deena’s friend looks just as mortified as Deena and, for a moment, Damien wonders if she may be choking, what with the shade of reddish-purple she’s turning.
“Dad! Knock or something! Oh my god! Get out!”
He’s been so surprised to find them like this in the first place that Damien is just now realizing that his daughter is only half-dressed and that her friend- girlfriend(?) is even less decent, somehow.
Deena tries to cover herself up and looks like she’s about to remove herself from the bed to retrieve some clothes, but thinks better of it at the thought of leaving the other girl completely exposed.
“I-” Damien starts, but he doesn’t have any idea how to finish it. He just gaps dumbly as Deena finally manages to pull up the blanket to her friend’s shoulders, then starts fumbling around her room, retrieving clothes, refusing to look at him. “Deena, were you…?”
The answer to that question, though, is obviously an emphatic yes , yes she was.
“We weren’t!” Deena tries. “We were just- shit , Sam. Sam, breathe. It’s okay.”
The girl- Sam takes a deep breath and Deena’s handing her clothes, then she throws another blanket over the girl so she can sit up. Damien's worry and instinct takes over and he crosses the room on shaky legs- and maybe he shouldn’t, but he’s fucking worried, and he’s asking, “Are you okay?”
“Dad, leave her alone…”
Sam nods, at least, but they don’t make eye contact. Maybe that’s for the best.
“Deena, I… Were you… I didn’t even know you… I didn’t know you were dating...” He’s sputtering and not making an ounce of sense, and Deena isn’t even looking at him. He thinks that out of everything that Deena has done, this is the worst. Not because she’s with Sam, or a girl, but because it means his daughter is growing up, and… Nobody wants to catch their child in a position like this- and because he is certain that if his wife were still alive, she would be able to handle this better than any other parent on the planet could.
No parent prepares for walking in on their daughter doing something like this.
Or their son, he thinks.
Maybe just their kid.
Sam is a nice enough girl. Damien finally recognizes her as the girl who is one of the kids Deena hangs out on the weekends with. Remembers Sam introducing herself with a kind smile and bright eyes. One of the friends that he always sees Deena more excited to see, more comfortable with on the couch in the basement.
Damien supposes this would be much worse- he’d be much angrier if he walked in on her daughter with that ridiculous blonde boy she’s friends with, mostly because he’s convinced the kid can’t tell left from right.
Deena looks mortified, but she also looks happy- genuinely happy with somebody else for the first time since her mother died. She looks happy enough that Damien thinks that all of this could have been worse for a moment.
And then Sam finally breathes and Deena puts on a shirt and they both just look at him like they’re waiting to be punished and all Damien can do is ask, “Pizza or Chinese?”
The girls share a look, then in perfect unison, “Pizza.”
For a moment, it scares him. They didn’t even exchange any words, yet they knew exactly what they wanted. It was a bit eerie to hear them answer together, so perfectly.
Pizza it is, then.
“What do you like on your pizza, Sam?” He asks, then establishes a firm Open-Door policy that makes both of them look embarrassed again.
Sam likes peppers and refuses to let Deena put anything resembling pineapple on hers. He’s surprised when Deena accepts her fate, because he’s never seen her daughter not do what she wants.
Damien appreciates the effort, but not enough that he doesn’t briefly consider completely removing his daughter’s bedroom door entirely. Even considers calling up Sam’s parents to tell them that they need to keep a closer eye on their daughter, despite the fact that she gets along well with both of his kids, and Josh is clearly happy for them.
Just to be safe. To protect his daughter, is what he tells himself.
He doesn’t make that call when Sam leaves that night, shaking his hand and thanking him for the pizza, and then in a small, quiet voice that shakes she says, “Thank you for… uh.” She fumbles with her words, and he waits for her to figure out exactly what she wants to say, because if he had ever met a girlfriend’s father like this, he’s convinced he wouldn’t know what to say, either. “Thank you for understanding us.” She finally says.
The words break his heart a bit. All he did was buy the girl some pizza and had a normal conversation with her over dinner. Nothing spectacular. It makes him wonder about what her parents think, what they’ve said to her.
After that, he decides that he’ll defend Sam as if she’s his own daughter, if that day ever comes.
Mason is ten years old, thank you very much. And four months.
He does not need a babysitter.
Let alone five of them.
He would like to make that very clear. Because he is ten years old and some of his friends are already staying home alone when their parents go out for dinner, so how come he’s the one stuck at home with Kate Schmidt and her friends every other Friday night during the summer days?
It used to just be Kate, for the past two summers which wasn’t so bad up until the last few weeks of last summer. She had gotten all quiet and broody in a way that makes him think of a vampire sometimes. She used to be fun and she’d play video games even though she made fun of him for it, and they’d pool their allowance to order one of those really big meat lover’s pizzas from the pizza place up the street. And sometimes she would let him stay up late and then let him run into her bedroom and fling himself onto his bed when they heard Mason’s parents' car pull into the driveway.
He had begged his parents to let him stay home alone, but they never listened.
So, of course his overprotective parents decide to hire a babysitter, which ends up being an army of them. When they told him his babysitter would be Kate Schmidt, he started to get excited, until he realized that she brought her whole group of friends, including Simon Kalivoda from Bag n Go, Deena and Josh, who he’s met a few times at neighborhood parties, and a pretty quiet girl named Sam.
He wonders why Kate brings her friends along with her now.
He also wonders if his parents would have hired Kate if they realize how dysfunctional the soon to be adults are. His parents haven’t even been gone for twenty minutes, and he can already hear Kate and Simon bickering in the kitchen as Josh geeks out to him about his gaming console. Mason just pretends to listen to him and he nods at all of the appropriate times. Josh doesn’t seem to notice his disinterest.
If he was honest, Deena and Simon were the only ones he was excited to see. From when Simon helped him beat that really hard boss on his game, he found him pretty cool, and they talk in the kitchen at night while he makes himself sandwiches on the nights his parents are out super late.
But Deena? Deena Johnson is the coolest person in Shadyside. She plays the drums, makes him mixtapes, and most importantly, she doesn’t treat him like a kid.
She’s always more than happy to teach Mason new things about drums, which he loves. Deena makes everything more fun, and he thinks it’s a shame he doesn’t get to hang out with her more often. But he gets it; she’s older and he’s sure she’d rather spend her time doing something else. It doesn’t bother him much. Also, she never talks down to Mason- even when he does something wrong, which, naturally, makes her the coolest of them all.
But there’s Sam.
It’s only her second time being dragged along by Kate, and he thinks that she’s the prettiest girl that he’s ever seen.
“I’ll be right back.” He tells Josh, who frowns.
“Wait, where are you going? Mason? Uh, do I need to-”
“I’m getting the CD so you can play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” Mason tells him, which, technically speaking, isn’t a lie.
He’s making his way upstairs to his room when he freezes on the stairs. Kate and Simon are arguing more loudly now- a fact Mason decides to ignore.
He’s just sort of standing there on the stairs when he hears a noise and then he jumps. Normally, he would tell himself not to be a baby. To either go downstairs or go and investigate, because it’s probably nothing. He only has an army of teenagers with him.
But then that weird stuff happened with those weird killers at the high school and now he’s not sure what to believe. He thinks it may be better to not investigate weird noises.
Even when they sound like some kind of muffled grunt or something.
He frowns and tries to peek over to where the sound comes from, curiosity getting the best of him. He knows his house well, he’s lived here for his entire ten short years, but that doesn’t mean he knows everything . He’s just a kid after all.
There’s another noise, some sort of thump against one of the walls by his parents room, he guesses and Mason jumps again.
He almost wants to go and get Kate, to go downstairs and grab her and tell her about it, but only because she’s a little bigger and does cheer, which means she knows how to kick stuff around. Right?
Downstairs. He thinks it over. The noise is probably just nothing. A figment of his imagination.
Nothing else.
It’s definitely not some masked teenager at the mall. Or Sarah Fier.
Simon is laughing in the kitchen and he can hear Kate saying something that sounds like Josh’s full name. Before he really decides to, Mason is up the last few stairs, walking past his room and around the turn where the noise came from.
He barely makes it to the bathroom door, where he can see his parents bedroom better. There’s another noise before he can, that weird grunting noise, and Mason freezes in shock, pressing his hand onto the wall to steady his balance.
He’s rethinking this whole ‘superhero’ thing as Kate calls it, when he’s being brave. He just wishes he never came up in the first place when hears a familiar voice say, “We really shouldn’t be doing this here.”
It sounds a lot like Sam.
Mason is just about to call out to her, when he hears someone else let out a muffled, “She says, with her hand down my pants.”
It sounds like Deena.
But…
What are they doing upstairs? It’s nothing but Mason’s room, his toys, and his parents room.
There’s a new kind of noise then- one that Mason has definitely heard before. His parents make it sometimes, in the kitchen when they’re alone or in their bedroom.
He knows what it is.
Sam and Deena are kissing.
Which is… okay, he guesses, since that’s what teenagers do and he knows this. It just feels weird that they’re kissing upstairs at his house.
He moves forward on shaky legs, inching closer to where they are, and then he peers around the corner of the wall. Two dark figures are pressed into the wall there. Mason can’t make them out exactly, but she knows their height difference and the basic shape of them enough to understand that Deena is the one being pressed into the wall.
“ Shit ! Mason?”
And, okay. He wasn’t exactly subtle. He should have stayed closer to the bathroom.
Sam and Deena spring apart, looking flustered even in the dark and Mason can feel his face heat up. He backs away. Mostly because he’s seen what both girls could do when they’re mad. Or annoyed.
“Why are you guys kissing up here?” He asks and Sam immediately looks way more nervous than she usually does, which is surprising because she usually looks nervous around Mason. Or in any situation where anybody gives her attention, unless it’s Deena.
“We weren’t kissing!” Sam sputters out, which makes Mason laugh.
Mason is ten years and four months old. He’s young, but certainly not stupid.
Mason crosses his arms and Sam gives Deena a dirty look that Mason mimics.
“Okay,” Deena says, sounding a little scared, too. “We were kissing but we definitely weren’t fuc-”
“Fun!” Sam cuts in, sounding scared.
Mason jumps at her volume.
“We definitely weren’t having fun, right, Deena?” She corrects, but that somehow makes less sense. “We were just coming down.”
They seem embarrassed at having been caught, which Mason sort of understands if Sam maybe didn’t want to kiss Deena, but isn’t that the whole point of kissing someone- being in love with them? He’s seen the way the two of them are when they start goofing off- it’s just like the way his parents are when the three of them are having fun together.
So, that can’t be the case.
“Okay,” He says incredulously and takes a step backwards, stumbling on the carpet to keep his footing. “Come down, then.”
They do, defeated.
Mason can’t say he’s thrilled, because he’s confused about the whole thing and they won’t explain it to him.
At least it gets Kate out of the kitchen. She stands in the living room when they come in and looks confused for a second until she seems to put two-and-two together.
“Did you traumatize the baby?” Kate demands and Mason frowns.
He certainly isn’t traumatized, or whatever that word means, and he isn’t a baby. He’s just confused. And a little sad, because he really did think Sam was pretty.
Deena’s face is red (which is a first for her, Mason thinks) and Sam’s pretty hair is messed up, but she doesn’t seem to think it’s funny that Kate called Mason a baby, so Mason takes that as a good sign. “No!” She says. “We definitely didn’t, right, Mason?”
“Kissing is gross.” Mason decides, and then they’re all laughing, even Deena, and he knows it takes a lot to make her laugh.
Mason feels like he’s a part of their group for a second.
And then the laughter dies down and Simon says, “Um, Deena, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your jeans are, like… super undone, man.”
His words make the rest of them laugh again while Deena grumbles, and Mason is pretty much just confused again.
Babysitting nights aren’t so bad after that. Mostly because Kate and Josh refuse to let Mason or Deena and Sam out of their sight, which is fine, he thinks, if it means he never has to walk in on them kissing like that again.