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chapter twenty-five: 'till our ribs get tough

a/n:

for the eighteenth time in my career i am reminding you that "dating" and "being boyfriend and girlfriend" are not always the same thing! you can kiss and date someone but never be their boyfriend or girlfriend!

tw(s) -- rory vs spiders.

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The six main ducks' parents meet them at the airport with enthusiasm, signs, and bouquets of flowers.

Rory stands off to the side with the other new kids and watches with a strange sort of envy as they get fawned on. Connie's mother holds Connie's face in her hands as the girl animatedly talks and smiles tearfully, and Jesse's dad nearly lifts him off his feet in a hug, and she gets this tight feeling in her chest that forces her to look away. Her lip wobbles pitifully as she realizes that the others (barring Dean) probably have this waiting for them, too. When they go home, they'll be met with hugs and kisses, and she'll be picked up by her father's driver.

Luis wraps an arm around her shoulders and squeezes her tightly just as the massive group in front of them turns their attention toward them.

She turns her head, slightly, and frantically wipes her eyes.

Lester's parents are just like she imagined they'd be-- short, stout, and redheaded, not unlike those little people from those old Rankin/Bass movies. His siblings aren't very different, either, but her thoughts don't linger on them for very long because his mother is wrapping Rory up in a tight hug before any of them can say anything.

Her widened gaze meets his over the woman's shoulder. He petulantly whines mom but is ignored.

"Oh, my god." Mrs. Averman exclaims breathlessly as she pulls away, holding the brunette at arm's length. "Let me get a good look at you-- Uff da, you're just as pretty as my Les said you were."

Rory's face wobbles into an attempt at a smile. Once again, she meets his eye across his mother, and he mouths 'I'm sorry' over and over.

She doesn't want to look like she hates this, because she doesn't. Not really.

"It's so good to finally meet you!"

Rory swallows thickly. "Uh, you too, ma'am."

Does she sound genuine? She hopes she does.

"It's nice to finally meet you, Lorelei." Mr. Averman cuts in. He's smiling warmly at her through the forest of red and white hair on his upper lip.

"Uh, it's Rory, sir. I prefer Rory. But you can call me whatever you want."

He nods. He doesn't stop smiling.

"Rory." Mrs. Averman hums. "I like that. It's a pretty nickname."

Rory really wishes that the ground would just swallow her whole so she didn't have to be the center of attention anymore.

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Oh, you're so respectful." The woman pinches her cheek and then pats it. "You don't have to keep up with that 'sir' and 'ma'am' crap, sweetheart. You can just call us Mia and Logan."

For a brief moment, she stands there, unsure of how to proceed. Then she nods and whispers, "Okay."

"Good. Now that the formalities are over with, I have something for you." The woman says and then dips into her bag, digging through the things that are in there.

"Oh. You didn't have to get me anything."

Averman, in her periphery, covers his face with his hands.

"Well, that's good because I didn't buy it, I made it." She hums before pulling out a sweater with a ta-dah.

It's hideous. Absolutely hideous, purposefully so, and the material is fuzzy-- she understands, now, her boy's insistence that it was itchy.

Still, she finds herself smiling.

"Come on, mom. She's an uptown girl, she won't wear it."

"Don't you speak for her." His mother scolds half-heartedly before turning back to her. "I want pictures of you in this sweater around Christmas time, for the mantle."

Rory almost mentions the fact that she and Averman are barely together, and that putting her on the mantle is absolutely outrageous, but the words die on her tongue. She nods, frazzled, and continues to smile at the older woman.

"Thank you, again."

"You're welcome. Now go on, we're holding up traffic."

With another hug from each of his parents and a quick kiss to Averman's cheek, she speedwalks over to Connie's parents with her new sweater in hand, knowing that she's going to stay in their house tonight.

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"Look at me!"

Rory tries the sweater on, even if it's summer and the fabric makes her skin crawl, and does an excited little spin for her friends with a smile on her face. Julie laughs from her spot sitting cross legged on Connie's bed but the other brunette pulls away from her vanity to, momentarily, drag her eyes up and down Rory's figure with a tired expression.

"That's... ugly."

"It is." She hums, running her hands down the front of it. "But I love it."

Connie shakes her head fondly, amusement swimming in her eyes, and turns back to the vanity to continue getting ready.

"It better not wrinkle your dress."

Rory and Julie exchange a look, and the two of them giggle quietly as Rory pulls the sweater off, again, for Connie's sake.

For one last hurrah, everybody's supposed to meet at Bombay's house for some food-- 'a little going away party' is how he described it. She's not entirely sure how much of a party it's going to be seeing as they're all going to be scattered across the country come tomorrow, but she doesn't want to ruin anything for anyone, so she's going to let herself be consumed by the euphoria that she gets from the stupid, ugly sweater.

It's a symbol of acceptance. It's more than she could have ever wanted.

"Hey," Julie says to get her attention, and then rocks forward onto her knees so she can silently adjust the top of the pink dress that Connie put Rory in. Afterward, she gives her a thumbs up, and Rory reciprocates it with a smile.

"What is that sound?" Connie huffs rather suddenly, standing up straight again to look around the room.

Rory lifts a brow. She can't hear anything over the music.

"What sound?" Julie voices Rory's thoughts, her expression equally as pinched in confusion.

Connie, frowning, stops the music in the middle of Madonna's Into the Groove. It's then that they finally hear the faint tapping noise that Connie was talking about.

"That! That noise. What is it?"

"It sounds like it's coming from the window."

At Julie's words, Connie makes her way over to the window. Rory shrugs.

"Maybe it's the raven."

Julie's the only one who gets her joke.

"It's not a bird." The other brunette huffs, opening the window. "It's your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend yet." Rory hums at the same time Averman's voice drifts up to them.

"Hey, Connie, as much as I like your face, you're not the girl I'm here for."

Connie rolls her eyes, and the girls switch places. The wind whips her straightened hair about as Rory leans out the window.

Averman smiles up at her. "Oh Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair so that I might climb thy mahogany stair."

"Shut up." She snorts a laugh and says without malice, and then smiles back. "What's up?"

"Come down! Oh, and bring your blades! I want to walk my girl to the party."

"It's still early-- I'm not even ready yet."

She isn't. Not really.

She's dressed, and her hair is done, but her makeup isn't.

"You don't need any makeup! C'mon!"

Twinging on exasperated, Rory turns back to the girls.

"You should go." Julie urges, a soft smile on her face.

"Yeah." Connie nods in agreement. "I have my parents handled."

"Alright..." Rory leans out again. "I'll be right down."

Averman gives her a big, bright grin and blows her a kiss before she disappears back through the window again.

She grabs a pair of flats from her suitcase and shoves them into an old tote bag that Connie gives her. Just as she's grabbed her roller skates and is prepared to go out the door, Connie stops her.

"Wait!" The brunette fumbles for some lip gloss before carefully applying it on Rory's lips. Then she grabs a bottle of perfume and spritzes it across Rory's body. "There. Now you can go."

Slightly flustered, Rory thanks her and sneaks out of the room, past Connie's parents, and out the door. Averman is out there and waits, patiently, for her to put her skates on before grabbing her hand.

When she stands, he grabs her hand and intertwines their fingers.

"Here, I got you a slushie. There's no seven-elevens in Minnesota, so I just got the next best thing."

"Aw, thank you." She takes it from him. It's blue. She smiles. "That's so nice of you."

He shrugs softly, a slight blush on his cheeks, and smiles back. They skate in silence for a few minutes, her drinking her drink and him swinging their hands between the two of them, before he breaks it.

"So, how are you feeling, my dear?"

Her brows pinch together. "I'm alright, I guess, but please don't call me that."

"Why?"

"Because that's what my driver, Joe, calls me."

There's a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. She wonders if he'll ever get used to the idea of how her life works.

"What am I allowed to call you then?"

"Well, let me think." She chews on the straw. "Rory for every day, princess whenever, and... I guess... baby, but only when you're really, really happy."

He laughs and the corners of her lips twitch up.

"Whatever you say, baby."

Her face gets all red as he pecks her on the lips. There's another beat of silence.

"Listen, I really just wanted to get you alone to talk to you about something."

"Okay." She says, trying to suppress the way her heartrate spikes at the wording. "What about?"

While she braces herself for the potential goodbye she'd worried herself sick with earlier that morning, Averman takes another moment to figure out what he wants to say.

"Rory... You're just amazing. You're so pretty, and smart, and you're so nice despite everything in your life. These past weeks have been the best damn weeks of my entire life because of you, and I really like you."

Oh.

"Oh?"

"I know that with you being in Detroit and me here that it's going to be difficult," He confesses in a way that's strangely soft for a boy like him, but I think we could make it work. We have to make it work. So, I guess I just want to say... will you be my girlfriend?"

The relief that washes over her almost knocks her over.

Just a little while ago, it seemed strange to her. Strange to her that someone, somewhere could understand her a little, love her a little despite all of her despair and ideals and everything else. But now it's right in front of her, glaringly obvious in a loud boy with red hair.

(She realizes, now, that he was confessing to her that night in LA, and she resists the urge to groan softly.)

"Uh, yeah." Rory exhales and smiles nervously. "I mean your mom has already decided it, so I guess we should make it official."

Lester laughs, a brilliant smile on his face, and then kisses her sweetly to seal the deal.

Eventually, they find themselves in the nicer-looking neighborhood that their coach lives in. Rory, who has long since thrown out the cup, looks around at the houses-- they're much more her family's style, but they're still small and close enough together that it can be considered an actual neighborhood.

It fits the profile of the man he used to be: a young, hotshot lawyer (with a drinking problem.)

Bombay is in his backyard when they arrive. He stands, hands on his hips, and leans over a grill with a confused look on his face. Adam and Charlie stand a few feet behind him.

Neither of them looks like they know what's going on, either.

The couple gets vague greetings from the three distracted men and Rory takes the moment to sit carefully on an old log and change her shoes.

"Hey, coach, do you need any help?" She asks after she's stood up and wiped the back of her dress.

"Yeah." He says, and then turns to her with furrowed brows. "You wouldn't happen to know how a grill works, would you?"

Averman looks like the cat that got the cream but, before he can make the joke he's dying to make, she cuts him off.

"No... but I can read instructions in multiple languages."

"Thank you, but I have Adam for that." He sighs and sniffs, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. As he mutters a complaint about the circumstance he's found himself in, Rory's shoulders deflate, slightly. "You know what, Myrtle. I might actually have a job for you."

"What?"

"I need the propane tank. It's in my basement. Could you go get it for me?"

"You... want me to go get a propane tank?"

"Yeah. The lights out, so you'll need to use a flashlight. Take Charlie with you."

Charlie hands the pamphlet back to Adam immediately and walks over to her with a soft smile. She smiles at him before looking back at Bombay.

"Don't you want to wait until, like, Fulton and Dean are here to do manual labor?"

"No." Bombay puts his hands on his hips, again. "Go on. This'll be a learning experience."

Rory scoffs. Charlie breathes a laugh and grabs her bicep, gently tugging her back.

"C'mon. You can hold the flashlight if you're really that afraid."

"I'm not afraid of work," She grumbles, letting Charlie drag her along for what feels like the tenth time in the past few weeks. "I just don't want to see Connie's face when I get this dress all dirty."

"Mhm."

"Stop being an ass."

As they make their way into the house, Averman turns to his coach. "What about me? I can't do manual labor?"

"No." Both Adam and Bombay answer at the same time.

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Bombay's house is terribly empty.

That's the first thing that Rory notices.

"I can't believe he keeps his propane in the basement." She comments as Charlie closes the glass door behind her.

Her captain walks into the kitchen like he's been here before and opens a drawer.

"Well, where should he keep it?"

"In a shed, maybe?" She says, sitting up on the counter as he roots around through Bombay's belongings for a flashlight. "Not in the basement in between the heating system and the hot water tank. I mean, propane... that's a volatile organic compound, isn't it? Dude's keeping a really sturdy bomb underneath his house, and he wants us to go get it."

Charlie pauses to give her a look that's both amused and perplexed. She simply lifts a brow, though, so he returns to what he was doing.

"What?"

"The way you ramble." He glances up at her. "It's just... cute, I guess."

He resumes his job while Rory perks up and smiles brilliantly.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

The flashlight he eventually finds is on its last legs, but it works well enough.

Or, at least, she thought so until he led her to the basement entrance and opened the door.

"Oh, we're definitely going to die." She says, swiping the dull light across the dusty staircase.

Bombay's basement doesn't appear to have gotten much attention in a very long time. The stale air reeks of mildew and mothballs, and thick cobwebs collect in every juncture where wall meets wall. At the bottom of the steps, there's a stack of wilting cardboard boxes.

"Has anybody ever told you that you're an optimist? Because, if they have, they were lying."

"I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that Pennywise isn't down there."

Sighing shortly, Charlie looks Rory directly in the eye. "Pennywise isn't down there because Pennywise isn't real. He's a fictional character. Tim Curry played him."

Rory narrows her eyes, slightly, and clicks the flashlight off.

"I don't like your tone."

"Yeah, well, I think you're just afraid of the dark." He smiles when she gasps dramatically.

"I am offended by that suggestion, Charlie Conway."

"Of course, you are."

Without another word, nor any trepidation whatsoever, he starts going down the stairs and into the darkness. Rory glares half-heartedly at the back of his head and follows him with much more hesitance.

Scared of the dark?

She's not scared of the dark.

She has stepsiblings who used to lock her in closets-- what does he know about darkness?

Swallowing thickly, she flashes the light up at the ceiling. Four or five spiders with thin bodies and very long legs litter the space. Her skin starts to itch just at the sight of them.

Yeah, she'd take a million years in the darkness-- Pennywise and all-- over spiders.

"I thought you said your mom dated him..." Rory says, her voice wavering despite her best effort.

"She did." Charlie doesn't look up from his search. "Why?"

"This is such a bachelor pad. Bare minimum in furniture, stuff all over the place, and a cluttered basement. It's like my dad's office for the majority of my life."

"Well, they didn't date for very long."

Rory nods even if his back is turned to her and strains to see if she can find the tank in the dark.

"You've never said anything about your mother."

"Hm?"

"You talked about your dad a bit, but never your mom." He explains himself, sounding as if this has just dawned on him. "Sorry. You just mentioned that your dad's been single a while."

"Oh."

When Rory turns back to him, he's already looking at her.

"Uh, there's not much to talk about, really. My parents got divorced when I was young, and my mom gave my dad full custody, and that was that. I rarely see her, now, and I barely know her."

Though she tries to come across as casual, she knows she doesn't. Or, at least, she knows that Charlie knows she's being ingenuine.

"It's okay, though. Really. One day, she'll want my attention, and I'll Cat's in the Cradle her so well."

Charlie isn't amused by her joke.

"You're not alone, you know that, right? You'll always have me and the ducks."

"I know."

That finally eases the tension in the room. She says it with a soft smile, and he smiles, too.

But, then, the smile slowly falls from his face.

"What?"

"Don't freak out--"

"Don't tell me not to freak out-- that makes me want to freak out!"

"You've got a spider on your shoulder."

Rory almost drops the flashlight. She shuts her eyes tightly and shakes her hand, shifting from one foot to the other.

"Oh, god, Charlie, get it off! Get it off!"

"Just give me a second--"

"Get it off!"

She doesn't open her eyes until Charlie's hand brushes across the expanse of her shoulder.

When she wraps her arms around him, he almost falls over.

"Rory--"

"I need to leave this basement." She groans. "I hate spiders. I hate them."

"Rory--"

"Why couldn't it have been a monster?"

"Rory, can you stop climbing me? I can't carry you and the propane tank out of here."

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The afternoon consists of hamburgers, hotdogs, and several games of wiffleball that Luis carried so much that he could have played by himself.

As the sun started to set, though, Bombay, with some help, got a fire going in his fire pit and gave out the necessary ingredients to make s'mores.

Dwayne has a guitar in his lap and he strums the strings lazily, humming the song to himself as Luis talks to him like he's listening. The rest are mingling-- Connie resting her head on Guy's shoulder and giggling at something Julie says, Jesse and Goldberg arguing about something in their corner, Fulton and Kenny trying to teach Dean how to make an appropriate s'more, and Adam watching Charlie talk to Bombay. Rory silently watches them all, Averman too busy making her a s'more to fill her mind with his chatter, and thinks about what Charlie said earlier, and the experience over the past few weeks.

She's been so busy pre-mourning the loss of her friendship that she hasn't taken a moment to consider the fact that they aren't mourning because they don't actually see it as a loss.

Putting on those specially made jerseys officially made them Ducks, too, and, as Bombay made abundantly clear just last night, ducks always fly together.

Her mouth moving faster than her mouth, again, Rory clears her throat to grab their attention.

"So, uh, I just wanted to say, before we go our separate ways and everything, thank you... for being so nice to me, and for being my friends."

Her sudden admission is met with strange stares.

"I'm being completely serious. No matter what I do, people tend not to like me, and people aren't very nice to people they don't like, but you guys are nice, and you like me, so... Thanks."

Rory's then met with playfully mocking laughter and a few coos, and Dean reaches around to punch her on the arm. Flushed but happy that she said it, she lets them mock her, rubbing her arm where he punched her.

Averman finally finishes his 'perfect' s'more a moment later. Rory holds a hand under her mouth as she bites into it, starting to laugh as the marshmallow squeezes out of the graham crackers, even if it burns her hands.

"Messy." She says, but it comes out more like 'methy.'

Averman laughs at her and hands her some napkins.

"You're adorable."

She mocks him playfully as she wipes her hand.

"No, I'm serious. My girlfriend is adorable."

Rory rolls her eyes but Averan grins brightly.

Goldberg's marshmallow catches fire, capturing their attention, and Charlie helps him stomp it out. Dwayne starts to play We Are The Champions on his guitar, and Averman starts to sing.

Slowly but surely, everyone around the fire joins in, singing along to the words. They wrap their arms around each other, swaying along to the song, and absolutely nobody is in the same pitch, but it's happy. They're warm and laughing and singing along to a song, their gold medal victory brightening their spirits-- and the fact that, come tomorrow, they're going to be scattered across the country being pushed to the back of their minds.

(Unbeknownst to any of them, though, there will be a moment just over a year from now where Rory looks back and wonders how she could have ever been so fucking gullible as to believe in anything involving the word 'forever.')

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a/n:

dun dun dun...

connie dressing her (girl)friends is so real. rory's sense of style is predetermined for her by whoever her father hires and julie's masculine.

charlie and rory own my heart. my little kicked puppies. (canon is going to kick them both so hard.)

basement based on my grandfather's basement (except my grandfather's basement is straight up just a hole in the ground that nobody over 5 ft can stand up straight in)