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As Monty walked into his kitchen in the early hours of the morning, the last thing he expected to see was Carla stood laughing and chatting away to his mom with two massive bags that looked like they weighed the same weight as a small child.

"You're up early." Monty's mom chuckled, raising her eyebrows at her son.

"You two talking woke me up." He grumbled, rubbing his eyes.

"You look like you've been dragged through a bush." Carla snickered.

"Thanks for the confidence boost," He said sarcastically as he squinted his eyes and walked over to the coffee machine, "Also, what's the need for the bags? You could fit Penny in there if you tried hard enough."

"Jerome's new 'genius' idea. He's decided that instead of a party, we should all go on a camping trip. I have absolutely no idea where it came from, but I figured it would be fun." Carla shrugged.

"Camping? Really? What are we, Bear Grylls?" Monty rolled his eyes and drank his coffee.

"Lighten up a bit, Schatz, be grateful Carla's dragging you with her away for a weekend." Monty's mom scolded him.

"I'm glad someone appreciates the effort." Carla glared at Monty.

"Mm.. 'all hail Carla' or whatever." Monty mumbled under his breath as his mom cussed him out in German, even though Carla understood none of it, she giggled nonetheless.

As Carla and Monty were about to leave after Monty's mom gave him an embarassing wet kiss on the cheek whilst hauling two very heavy bags out the door, a short blonde ran up to them.

"Where are you going?" She tilted her head.

"On a trip." Monty stated unenthusiastically, not looking at Penny as he shuffled out the door.

Penny frowned, her eyes changing from the radioactive green to a baby blue, "How long for?"

"Only a couple days, don't worry." Carla smiled.

Penny stayed so quiet for a second you could practically hear the gears in her head turning.

"We'll be back soon, I promise. Hey, i'll even bring you back a present." Carla grinned as she whispered the last part into Penny's ear, although she didn't do a good job at whispering because Monty shouted back "She gets spoiled enough as it is!"

Penny giggled at her brother, "Okay, make sure Monty doesn't do anything stupid.. I worry about him."

Carla frowned slightly and nodded, "I'll keep an eye on him, don't worry." She winked and smiled and hugged Penny as she said her goodbyes.

As they got in the car and Carla buckled her seatbelt, she turned to Monty, "Do you mind if we stop at mine? I've still technically got to ask my dad if I'm allowed to go.. and I also need some clothes that aren't your moms."

Monty nodded, still keeping his eyes on the road but glancing at her through the corner of his eye, "Sure, you'll have to help me get to it though."

Carla nodded and directed him with slight impatience, but no yelling or arguing over the map ensued so she counted that as a win. They pulled up and she got out the car.

"Aren't you coming in?" Carla asked, raising her eyebrows at the ginger with a puzzled look on her face.

"Oh! Uh- Yeah, I can do." Monty swiftly unbuckled his belt and went inside Carla's house, internally panicking because so many things could go wrong in this moment and he could screw their friendship over for good, and oh my god her dad was coming towards him and-

"Ah, you must be Monty, Carla's told me all about you." The six foot four, built man who was covered in tattoos and looked incredibly intimidating, probably just because he was his best friend's dad, smiled warmly at the boy below of him.

"Yes, aha, hello! It's, uh, lovely to meet you." Monty smiled awkwardly and shook his hand.

Carla's dad beamed down at the boy and they began to engage in a long conversation about football, whilst Carla spoke and entertained her younger brother.

"Monty, can you help me pick out some clothes? My rooms the first one on the right." Carla shouted into the hallway where her dad and Monty were stood.

"Oh, yeah.. sure. It was nice talking you." Monty said as he scurried away upstairs to her room and entered, whilst Carla tried to convince her dad to let her go out, he looked around in bewilderment.

Her walls were covered head to toe in various posters and tapestry's, one banner representing the one they saw at the party where they nearly.. nevermind. Monty shook his head at the thought as if that would help lessen his blush and began looking at all the trinkets on her beside table. A half-drunk coffee cup sat there peacefully, which he thought was definitely her style. She had a couple bracelets and a small frame that displayed a family photo from what seemed to be a good ten years or so ago. Monty smiled warmly as he stared at the small Latina who was incredibly easy to spot, as she stood out thanks to her signature ponytail that she infamously sported all the way through Kindergarten and elementary school.

Monty walked over to her desk and saw an old beat up jewellery box that stood loud and proud in the centre, one draw slightly open that displayed a locket. He managed to crack it open with minor struggle and inside was a photo of Carla's mom holding her as a baby, he raised his eyebrows as he suddenly saw how similar the two were, the only difference was the hair. Carla's mom had her hair down and cut into a bob. If it wasn't for that, you could put a photo of Carla now next to her mom in that singular photo and you'd think Carla just got a haircut. Monty smiled to himself and closed the locket hurriedly as he heard footsteps, practically running and flinging open the wardrobe doors and pretending to think hard as he scanned over all her outfits.

Carla raised her eyebrows, sensing something suspicious but shaking it off as she held her little brother and spoke to him in hushed Spanish.

"My dad finally agreed to let me go, have you found anything yet?"

Monty jumped slightly as she spoke, coughing loudly.

"Oh! Uh- not yet, they all look... decent." He tried to seem like he had any inkling of an understanding about women's fashion but failed.

Carla chuckled and set her brother down, "You're a horrible outfit picker." She said as she got out a bag from under her bed and scanned over her outfits, picking out a few tops and placing them infront of her, trying to visualise what they'd look like on her.

"Is this top okay?" or "What do you think of these?" was all Monty heard for the next ten minutes as he tried hard not to visualise Carla in the outfits, as he knew he wouldn't be able to hide his blush that shone through visibly and painfully on his pale freckled skin. He distracted himself by playing peekaboo with Carla's little brother and giving the occasional 'yeah' to Carla when she prompted him to speak.

"You've said yes to everything i've shown you, are you even paying attention?" She said, slightly annoyed by his lack of enthusiasm.

"What? Oh- Uh, I am, I just.. think you'd look... good in all of those, you have good taste in clothes." He flushed slightly scarlet as he spoke and scrambled for an appropriate response to say out loud rather than the one he was actually thinking, which was 'you look amazing in everything, you could wear a trash bag and still pull it off.'

Carla's expression softened as she took in his response, nodding slowly as a smile crept onto her face. "You're forgiven, although flattery usually doesn't work on me.. I'll let you take this win."

"Wow, I feel lucky." He joked and went back to playing with her younger brother, making train noises which the baby seemed to find incredibly amusing, and honestly so did Carla.

Eventually she managed to chuck together three decent outfits as she looked down and smiled at Monty playing with her brother.

"I didn't realise you were so good with kids." She chuckled and kneeled down beside them.

"Babies are easy to please, you just make random noises and act stupid and they love it." He shrugged, covering his eyes and pretending to hide.

"Yeah, but he usually cries when my dad does it with him.. I'm usually the only one who can get him to calm down." She sighed and she stared at her little brother.

"Maybe I'm just special then." He chuckled and gasped as he pulled his hands away from his face and Carla's brother burst into giggles.

"You're certainly special in one way." She put her finger next to her head and did a circular motion, grinning.

"Rude! I let you sleep in my bed." He scowled and stood up.

"Yeah, alone. It was freezing in there!" She stood up aswell and crossed her arms, slinging her rucksack over her shoulder.

"I don't know what you expected me to do, Penny hates when the heatings on and I gave you atleast four blankets." He rolled his eyes.

"Maybe if you stopped being a pussy around women we could've solved the problem of me being freezing." She mumbled under her breath and picked her brother up as she exited her room.

Monty shrugged it off, not hearing what she said (which was probably for the best) and followed her down the stairs.

Carla passed her brother to her dad and spoke to him in Spanish, giving him a kiss on the cheek and turning back to Monty as she put her shoes on.

"Bye dad, bye Antonio!" She shouted as she ushered Monty out the door and locked it behind her.

Monty smiled and gave an awkward goodbye as he walked to the car, taking her bag off her shoulders and placing it in the trunk.

"I think he likes you, you know." Carla said as they were about ten minutes into their long two hour drive to the mountains.

"Who? Your brother?" Monty asked, glancing at her in the corner of his eye.

"No, gringo, my dad." She scoffed.

"You think so?" He turned to her, slightly surprised.

"Yeah, I expected him to go full overprotective dad mode.. but he was so unbothered, usually he goes beserk if I bring a boy round." She pulled down her windshield and began re-applying her lipgloss carefully.

"How many boys have you brought round?" Monty raised his eyebrows, feeling a pang of a certain emotion he wouldn't admit.

"Only Jerome before, not like that, but he still asked him loads of questions." She quickly clarified, putting the lid back on her lipgloss as she turned to face him.

Monty hummed in agreement, that foreign emotion shrinking but still lingering as he thought over her words as he drove.

"Can I have aux?" Carla spoke up after a while, breaking the comfortable silence between the two.

"Sure, just don't play any shitty songs." Monty joked.

"You don't trust my music taste?" She gasped.

"I do, I'm just setting the expectations high." He turned to her and grinned.

"You wont be disappointed." She smiled as she began to play her playlist.

To Monty's surprise, she did have alright music taste. The songs were mostly Arctic Monkeys with the occasional Avril Lavigne and a couple Chase Atlantic songs. At one point she began to change the songs up to more.. suggestive songs, that was how Monty described it. Carla skipped a few before Spotify decided it wanted to embarrass her, as it began to play the one Taylor Swift song she had in her playlist. Carla widened her eyes and tried desperately to skip it but realised she used all her skips and groaned, slumping in her seat.

"Taylor Swift? Really?" Monty snorted.

"I don't even know why this is on here!" Carla scrambled and tried to save herself, blushing from embarrassment.

"You're such a bad liar, I'm playing my playlist, you ruined your chance." Monty chuckled and turned on his own playlist, which unfortuntely landed on the one song he didn't want to play, which was 'She looks so perfect' by 5 seconds of summer.

"You like 5SOS?" Carla snorted, it was her turn to make fun of him now.

"I do not!" Monty protested.

"Then why is it on your playlist?" She teased.

"I- okay fine, maybe I wanted to be Michael Clifford when I was younger.." He frowned.

Carla laughed hard at that, practically turning the same shade as a tomato.

"Seriously? God you were weirder than I thought."

"I was 9!" He groaned.

Carla scoffed and turned out her own playlist again, turning it loud to drown out the sound of Monty trying to come up with a valid reason to cover his tween weirdness.

This was going to be a long car ride.

///

au/n lol monty weird kid superiority

also the og plan was meant to all be one chapter but this is like a third of my plan and it's already 2000+ words so i'm breaking it up lmao

also also if you can guess what taylor swift song i'm thinking of that carla has in her playlist i'll give you a penny