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chapter eight: have you no idea that you're in deep?

a/n:

the title is way more dramatic than the actual writing.

tw(s) — discussions of bad parenting

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Their first stop is Rick's dorm, which he insists that she step into so she isn't standing outside the whole time he gets ready.

She lingers awkwardly by the entrance, her eyes tracking his every movement as tears the place apart in search of his car keys, only averting her gaze when he starts getting changed out in the open. Never, in her entire life, has she gotten comfortable enough with someone to undress in front of them within a few days of meeting them. Whether he was never taught basic decency as a child or is just immune to shame because of his pretty face and physique, she's unsure. She just knows that she'd rather eye the various band posters or the table of elements over the opposite bed than so much as glance at his corner of the room.

Scott—— the goalie who is unafraid of Rick and, apparently, is also his roommate—— sits at his desk, leaning back in his chair and sipping at a can of something she doesn't recognize, unfazed by the other boy's half-nakedness.

After a moment of tense silence, she tilts her head at him.

"What are drinking?"

"Who, me?" He swivels toward her and points to himself, waiting for her to nod before continuing. "Red Bull. It's an energy drink. Want some? I've got an AP Chemistry quiz tomorrow that I need to cram for, so I've got plenty."

So caught up in the thought of one of her team being in a class of such high caliber, Rory hardly notices that she's pushed off the door and taken the can from him.

"You're in Advanced chemistry?"

She sips at the energy drink and makes a face almost immediately. It tastes like water that's already been in someone's mouth, or like the final bit of coffee that comes out of a bad filter, and she shakes her head as she hands it back to the smiling boy.

"Don't sound so surprised." Scott teases gently, lifting the hem of his sweater to wipe the lip of the can. "Not all of us are idiots."

"Maybe not, but you sure are friends with some."

Rick makes an indignant noise from the corner and Scott laughs, turning back to his notes. She looks at them over his shoulder, pondering the reality in which someone as kind and smart as Scott seems to be chooses to hang out with guys like Rick and Cole.

The goalie swivels slightly to make it easier for her and they stand there, silently, until Rick's done.

"I'll have you know," He says, slightly winded as he aggressively puts his varsity jacket on, "I am a straight-A student."

Rory looks him up and down. He's exchanged his leisure clothes for a pair of jeans and a nice black crew neck under his jacket; around his neck is a dainty yet sturdy looking gold chain, not unlike the one Luis wears.

"Mhm. Sure. I believe you."

Rick narrows his eyes and Scott really laughs, then.

"I don't like that you two are getting along."

"You'll get over it." Rory says, grinning with her teeth just to spite him.

"Why am I taking you out to dinner again?"

"Because my dad's super rich and that makes me an invaluable asset?"

She cocks her head and he heaves a sigh, and she thinks that, maybe, she'll be able to survive all of this if he continues to be so easily messed with.

"Let's go before I decide to strangle you, hm?" Rick frames it like it's a question but Rory's known enough guys like him to know that it's more of an order.

"Oh, that makes me feel so great about leaving the safe campus grounds with you." Rory crosses her arms over her chest.

Meanwhile, at the exact same time, Scott snorted derisively. "How romantic of you, Rick."

She cocks an eyebrow as Rick flicks his roommate on the ear without breaking eye contact with her.

Rick ignores her questioning gaze and gestures to the door again, then adds, as an afterthought. "Please?"

Rory runs her tongue along her teeth but, as fun as it is to mock him, she's getting really hungry, and the anticipation of where he's going to take her for the night is the most exciting thing that's happened to her all day (in a positive sense, at least.) Besides, she doesn't get the impression that Rick Riley says please a whole lot, especially not to women, and she wouldn't want to turn him off the right track now, would she?

So, she turns to the goalie, who is hardly studying anymore, and smiles warmly. "See you at practice tomorrow, Scott?"

"Yeah." He nods and smiles back. "Be there or... be kicked off the team, Myrtle."

"Okay," Rick sounds relieved that she's finally ready to leave, "we'll be back in, like, an hour or two, Scooter."

"An hour or two? What a lucky girl..."

She turns around again, vaguely amused, just in time to see Rick fully slap his roommate on the back of his head. Scott takes the hit with a smirk and the faintest wince.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do." He calls after them. "No adding to or subtracting from the general population!"

Rick slams the door to their dorm on him. He must've made a face or something, though, because the boy's laughter is so loud that she can almost hear it through the wall.

This walk out to his car is quiet and she struggles to keep up with him

The walk out to his car is unsettlingly quiet and Rory struggles to keep up with Rick. He walks like he's making his way through Midtown at rush hour on Black Friday, or something, and the cold hits her so hard that she's expending more energy shivering than she is walking, hugging herself so tightly that her footsteps fall behind his significantly.

When he finally stops, she has to half-jog to close the distance between them, teeth chattering against each other noisily.

"You're cold?" He observes, looking down at her with the slightest furrow of his brows. "Aren't you from Michigan?"

"I spend a lot of time in warm places." She mumbles miserably and sniffs.

Rick bites back a grin and exhales an amused sound, glancing down at the floor to compose himself before looking back up at her. Rory balks, slightly, as he shrugs his varsity jacket from his shoulders and holds it out to her by the collar.

"What?"

"The car's top-down and your lips are turning blue."

She briefly weighs her options for a second time that night. If she were to be seen out with a boy who isn't her publicly acknowledged boyfriend and wearing his red jacket (over her boyfriend's sweater), chaos would ensue. But, that banks on her being caught, doesn't it? Figuring that she is cold enough already, she throws caution to the wind and takes the coat from him, putting it on with a wrinkled nose—— it stinks of him, like Giorgio Armani and cigarettes, and that smell just engulfs her as she finds herself almost drowning in the too-large article of clothing.

Aside from the face, though, she doesn't make any complaints. The jacket is made of a finer, thicker fabric than Averman's sweater, and she's significantly warmer almost immediately after putting it on.

"Thanks..."

"You're welcome."

Rory sees his car, then. It's a top-down, just like he said. A red, vintage Ford Mustang. She eyes it and hums, appreciating it for all it is.

"Nice car."

"Thank you." He seems to glow from her praise of his car. "It was my grandfather's."

"It kinda looks like Dallas Winston's." She says instead of prying, even if she's quite curious.

Rick looks up at her as he walks around to the driver's side door. "That wasn't his car. It was the guy he was living with, wasn't it? The rodeo guy?"

Rory blinks, taken by surprise yet again.

"You read The Outsiders?"

"Didn't everybody?" He asks as he opens the door and steps in. "I mean, hell, every kid in my class wanted to be a greaser so badly."

He reaches across to open the passenger door for her as she stands there, shocked, and tries to deal with the conflicting images of him she now has in her head. The cogs are still turning as she gets in and buckles her seatbelt.

"That's kind of ironic, isn't it?"

Rick turns to look at her, bottom lip in his teeth as he turns the key. "Hm?"

"Rich kids wanting to be poor kids because they think they're cool."

That dip returns to his brow for a moment before he nods.

"Yeah."

The engine purrs as it comes to life and Rory sits there, quiet, as she tries to prepare herself for the rest of the evening.

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"Sushi?"

There wasn't much conversation over the course of the drive. Rick subjected Rory to an incredible amount of New Wave music that she enjoyed to some degree and, eventually, she found herself looking up at a restaurant that was decorated with bright light. He'd obviously been there—— he knew exactly where the front doors were, and they were seated immediately after the staff got his name—— but he didn't tell her where they were, so she had no idea what they were eating until she opened the menu.

And her mildly surprised question is the first thing she's said since the lame comment she made back in the school parking lot.

"Yeah." Rick's shockingly blue eyes peer over his menu at her. "Do you not like it?"

"No. No. I do! It's just—— I don't—— I haven't been out to eat anything like sushi with anyone in a long, long while."

"Yes, well, that tends to happen when you hang out with Tiny Tim and his band of misfits."

Rory sent a scathing glance across the table at him. He pretends not to see it.

They order heaps of food at Rick's insistence and he fills any space with effortless small talk. What are her classes like so far? What does she think of the team? What is it like to share a room with his annoying sister? The questions are constant and they keep her mind busy, not letting it dwell onto other subjects. In the process, she learns that he's been best friends with Scott since their freshman year, that he's better in history and language arts than he is with math or science, and that he does not get along with their little brother, but that it's his obligation to defend him, but she figures that he loves him a lot more than he lets on, because he's being pretty damn awful to the Ducks for it to be an obligation. (Not that she says that out loud, though. She knows enough to know that he probably wouldn't take kindly to that.)

But, then, their food comes, and the questions stop, and her mind drifts back to the car.

"Forgive me if this is rude," She says, tucking a hair behind her ear, "but, what does your family do?"

Rick pauses mid-bite. "What do you mean by that?"

Rory watches him eat a roll and anxiously fiddles with her chopsticks.

"Like, my dad's a CEO, and Adam's dad does law, but I don't know what your dad does."

"Ah." He says once he swallows. "We're big in oil. My great-grandad was buddy-buddy with the big leagues, but we're not quite Rockefeller level in the dawn of the new millennium."

Rory stares at him, suddenly feeling stupid for all of those comments she made about how rich her father was. Rick Riley was Old Money.

Oliver Myrtle could only hope to be of that status.

"Oh. Wow. I've never——"

"Heard of me?" He smirks, slightly, and wipes his upper lip with his thumb after taking a sip from his drink. "Yes, well, one of eight descendants of some old white guy doesn't sell as well as the very pretty, only granddaughter of a CEO who messes with the paparazzi and dates dudes way below her pay grade."

Rory's face heats up, both out of indignation and embarrassment. She puts food in her mouth just to keep from commenting on how he apparently reads magazine articles about her.

"There was one summer a few years ago, though, when here my dad took us to Italy, and the press jumped all over that." Rick gestures with hands as he speaks. "I even did an interview with Tiger Beat, I think. I don't know. I was, like, thirteen."

That makes Rory think.

If Rick was thirteen when it happened, it must've been ninety-two, and she was an avid consumer of all those magazines when she was twelve. She can remember it so clearly. How desperate she was to know what was being said about her, her father, and all of the older, famous boys who stole her heart—— how desperate she was to be like all the pretty, skinny girls who decorated the covers and effortlessly floated about the world.

There's something about that summer, though, that rings a bell, though. Something specific——

"Oh!"

Rick cocks a brow.

"Oh, my god. You were—— I had the hugest——" She stops herself short, face absolutely burning as everything dawns on her. "You said affogatos were your favorite dessert. I ate so many that I can't even stomach the thought of them."

He laughs, suddenly, and his eyes are alight with an emotion she can't quite discern. "Really?"

"This is so embarrassing."

"It's not." Rick's still smiling. "That's—— it's cute. I find that incredibly flattering."

"You're mocking me."

"I'm not!" (Rick is definitely mocking her.) "I just find it funny that you were reading about me but running around with some boy in the suburbs of France."

Rory groans quietly and covers her face with her hands.

"Hey, look here."

Eventually, she looks up again. She thinks that she'd rather he go back to smirking like an ass than keep smiling at her like that.

"I've read plenty of magazines about you, too." Rick promises. "See, I'm not so bad, am I? We're two sides of the same coin, you and I."

Rory wants to say she's not sure about that but he took her out to dinner and has been nicer to her than she's been to him all night, so she doesn't say anything.

She just smiles and shakes her head and keeps eating.

The small talk questions continue after that.

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After dinner, Rick, despite Rory's frustration with not being allowed to pay, gets them both a cup of ice cream and drives her out to a pull-out spot by a lake she doesn't know the name of.

"If you're about to kill me, I'd think again." She jokes, pulling his jacket tighter around her body and glancing around at the tree line somewhat apprehensively. "People will know."

Rick snorts a laugh as he shuts off the engine. "Why would I drop a hundred bucks to feed you dinner just to kill you after?"

"I don't know." The girl shrugs. "Not all killers are super intelligent, y'know."

He shakes his head, the corner of his lip quirked up, and picks up his ice cream.

"You're a trip, Myrtle."

She doesn't know how to respond to that, so she lets his statement fade into comfortable silence.

It's as dark out, now, as it is cold, the black water staring back at her as the faint breeze chills her to the bone. Rory pulls the sleeves of the jacket over her hands and lifts both of her shoulders so the collar covers more of her neck, unsettled by how secluded and quiet it is here more than she is by the temperature.

The times in which she is completely and totally isolated from the outside world are too rare for her to be comfortable.

Rick stares at the side of her head as she finally picks up her ice cream.

"What did you mean earlier?" Rory asks as she pushes the ice cream around in the container. "When you said we're two sides of the same coin, I mean."

"I mean that we come from the same world."

"No. I'm sorry, Rick, but we're from different galaxies." She says. "In your world, you are the king of the school. You have a band of babbling sycophants to yes you to death and all the girls love you. In my world, I am liked by everybody but the people that count, and loved by nobody."

Her words don't get much of a reaction out of Rick. His face falls, slightly, but it's such a minuscule thing that she hardly notices.

"I think you're selling me short, here."

"Oh, please."

"I know way more about your life than you think, and way more than some stupid magazine could tell me."

She glares at him scathingly. "Enlighten me then."

"Your dad's a drunk, isn't he?"

The casual way he delivers it makes Rory woozy.

"Fuck you, Rick. Seriously——"

"Your dad is a drunk." He speaks over her. "He has his good days and he has his bad days, and his bad days are really bad. And on the bad days, you watch him and you wish he'd just die because you'd be better off for it."

She's frozen in place. The world spins around his head as she stares at him, jaw and fists clenched.

"But then," He continues, his voice taking a weird quality, "you feel guilty because he's your dad, and, no matter how much of an asshole he is, he's built you a pretty cage that you've never seen the outside of. So, you take back your wishes, and you close the door of that cage behind you, and you find other ways to make life feel like you don't live under his thumb. You date a few people that he doesn't approve of, and you hang out with some more that he really doesn't like, and you act like you're a normal kid from a wholesome family background and not some lonely rich kid whose dad hates them."

Rory swallows thickly.

"Feel free to tell me when things stop making sense."

Rick stops talking then, finally, and she continues to stare at him, feeling like shit, until the words come to her.

"I'm sorry for making assumptions. I just——"

"I know."

"And I'm sorry about your dad, Rick."

"Me too."

He sniffs and rolls his shoulders, dropping his mostly empty ice cream cup back into the cup holder. She chews on the inside of her cheek.

"Anyway, do you have any other big feelings to discuss tonight?" Rick asks, voice lighter than it was before. "Because I should probably get you back before your rugrat boyfriend and his merry band of misfits call the cops on me."

Rory scoffs half-heartedly. He smiles.

As he pulls out of the spot, she wonders if she's doomed to a fate where the only person who really, truly understands her isn't her boyfriend but Rick Riley.

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"We don't have to be friends if you don't want to be." Rick tells her after they've gotten back to the school, walking her to her dorm even though he doesn't need to.

"I don't know." She shrugs, handing him back his jacket as they walk through the heated building. "I think we have a kind of undeniable chemistry between us that either makes people enemies or friends, and I'd rather try to be friends."

It's almost said like a joke, with an elbow to his ribs and a playful grin, but she does mean it.

She enjoys his company so much more than she thought, and it's not exactly like she's allowed to be picky in the friends department right now.

"Don't talk to me like that. That's the kind of talk I use when I try to kiss girls, and I haven't kissed any girls in months." He jokes as he holds a door open for her. "But, alright, Myrtle. We're friends. My brother's gonna lose his mind to know that I got to know you before he did."

Rory rolls her eyes but keeps smiling anyway.

"Now that we're friends, though, I think it's my duty to impart wisdom upon you." Rick says, hands in his pockets. "Stop dumbing yourself down for the benefit of others. If those ducks don't want to be your friend because you aren't like them, then fuck 'em. And if they want you to be the bad guy... Well, being the bad guy can be cathartic."

(He speaks from experience.)

Rory silently considers his words as they reach her room. He waits for her to unlock her door and they exchange a brief goodbye before he goes to leave. She's still standing in the doorway, one foot in and one foot out and looking at Rachel's sleeping form, when she stops and turns back to him.

"Hey, Rick!" She whisper-shouts down the hall at his retreating form.

He stops, too, and faces her again. "Yeah?"

"Women's medium, or men's small."

"Huh?"

"For the jacket." She smiles, tapping on the wood of the frame. "That's my size."

Rick's lips quirk up into a crooked grin, again, and he nods.

"Alright. Goodnight, Rory."

"Goodnight."

She watches him go until he disappears around the corner before she finally goes into her room, leaning against the closed door with a churning stomach.

Be the bad guy. Be the bad guy. Be the bad guy.

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a/n:

word count — 3601

this is the most developed backstory I have ever had for rick riley yet. the mighty ducks writers owe me a salary atp.

god this fic is gonna be so complicated y'all better buckle up.

comments and votes are super appreciated! they let me know that you guys like my writing and they motivate me to continue! thank you