The sun streamed through the curtains that didn't belong to Maddie, a floral pattern that she recognised but couldn't place. The cream walls with the pink trim were familiar, something she knew she had seen before but where exactly that was, she had no idea. Her dress was draped over a chair, her bra hanging from the back, and it was then that she realised she was wearing no more than last night's underwear. A blush stained her cheeks and she pulled the duvet up higher over her chest as though there was someone watching.

Then it hit her like the hangover that had already settled in her head. The familiar wallpaper that she had seen hundreds of times before; the paper that belonged in Peter's guest room. She lay on a crisp white sheet beneath a luxurious duvet, completely along in Peter's guest bedroom. Not his, she thought. Why hadn't they shared a bed, when they had shared so much else? She swallowed a seed of doubt and clasped her hands over her chest.

A knock on the door roused her attention, bringing her into the reality of her pounding headache and the heartburn that stabbed her chest. When she said nothing, paralysed beneath the covers, the door slowly opened and Peter's mother stepped into the room.

"Oh, good morning, Maddie," she said with a sunny smile. "I wasn't sure you'd be awake yet, hun." She had a pile of laundry folded over one arm and a glass of water in her other hand.

"Hi, Cathy," Maddie croaked, her throat not quite accustomed to the day yet, and she smiled at Peter's mother. Cathy Jensen was the kind of woman whose looks perfectly suited her disposition: warm and motherly with lips that were never without a smile, her eyes never without their sparkle, she was destined to be soft and matronly. She possessed the kind of bosom that provided the best comfort, and many a time she had calmed a distraught Maddie against her chest.

"I just thought I would leave you a glass of water and something to change into." She left the pile of clean clothes on the end of the bed and set the glass down on the nightstand. "I'm just about to put a wash on, hun, so if there's anything you want cleaned, I'll be back in a minute.

"Ok," Maddie said a little dumbstruck by Cathy's unquestioning hospitality towards a girl she hadn't seen for years. "Thanks, Cathy."

"Oh, Maddie, the pleasure's all mine," Cathy said with a broad smile that deepened the crow's feet around her eyes and showed off her crooked incisors, almost identical to Peter's. "You just relax, darling. Peter's still asleep anyway." She rolled her eyes fondly and left the room, pulling the door shut behind her.

Maddie's skin prickled with warm humiliation and she slipped out from under the duvet, balling her underwear up in her dress before she changed into the fresh pair Cathy had left for her. The top was more like a short dress and the leggings were a little baggy around the ankles but it was preferable to putting last night's clothes back on, with the faint aroma of alcohol and sex, and whatever else had happened after Maddie's memories faded.

Cathy returned a few minutes later with a basket full of dirty clothes from five sons pressed against her hip. She added the dress to her pile and paused in the room for a moment.

"It's lovely to see you again, Maddie. It's been ever so long since we've seen your face around here," she said in her warm, honeyed voice. "I'm sorry I don't have anything smaller. I've never been your size so I'm afraid even my smallest pre-Jack clothes will dwarf you."

She had maintained for years that her fifth son had been the undoing of her body, pushing her skin past its limit of elasticity. Her wardrobe was like a charity shop rack, a mismatched combination of every size from twelve to twenty, with nothing suited to Maddie's trim size eight.

"No, it's great, thanks Cathy," Maddie said. The soft, loose material was delicious against her skin after the tight straps of the dress she had worn for the party.

"Anything for my Maddie," Cathy said. "You know you're welcome here any time, hun. It's nice to have a girl around the house. Far too much testosterone in this place is you ask me." She adjusted the laundry basket against her hip. "There're towels in the cupboard if you want a shower. Now, if you need anything, you just holler, ok?"

"I will do," Maddie said, though they both knew she wouldn't.

*

Once Cathy had left for the second time, Maddie made the bed so that it was hard to tell anyone had slept there and after confirming the coast was clear of any more members of Peter's family, she slipped into his room next door. He was stretched out on his side, low snores rumbling each time he took a breath with his face pressed against his pillow. Maddie crept over to his bed so slowly that her movements didn't wake him, and she lay down beside him close enough to feel his warmth between them. There was a strange, comforting solitude in lying there next to his sleeping form and Maddie felt a moment of utter tranquility wash over her. She turned onto her side and shifted closer to Peter so that her spine lined up against his stomach and he shifted in his sleep, tucking his cheek against her shoulder and draping his arm over her. Cocooned by him, Maddie's doubts floated away and her eyelids drooped once more, carrying her off to dream about her reality.

*

Waking up for a second time, the first thing Maddie noticed was Peter's absence. Somehow he had extracted himself from her without waking her and his side of the bed was cold when she rolled onto it. The sun was even higher now, brighter and more blinding, and Maddie froze when she noticed the time: half past eleven. Almost midday, and she was still in bed.

"Shit," she muttered, pushing off the covers and standing up too fast, blood rushing to her head and forcing her to sit down again for a couple of seconds. Usually she woke up before Peter, and she hadn't even planned to fall asleep beside him: she had wanted to shower before he was again but he was gone and she was still dirty.

Hot water scorched her skin, the night running off her in soapy rivulets that streaked down to her fingertips and plummeted to the drain.

The water did something to her head, the heat sending her brain spinning and under the hot spray, Maddie leant against the tiles and slid to the floor. Her insides groaned and her chest fizzed, her eyes stinging with exhaustion despite a good night's sleep. Or so she assumed. She couldn't remember anything specific after about one in the morning, her head a clouded fog.

Aware of how lazy she seemed, Maddie used all of her effort to stand and rinse the conditioner from her hair and squeeze out the water before she shut off the shower. With the noise gone, she could hear voices from downstairs, Cathy's voice distinguished against the low tones of the men and Maddie knew there was no way she could avoid facing Peter's family with her bleary eyes and fuzzy brain.

Forcing her unsteady limbs to cooperate, she dressed in Cathy's hand-me-downs and towelled her hair before heading down the old, steep staircase, gripping the banister as though her life depended on it.

In the kitchen, Peter stood by the toaster with a steaming mug in one hand and when he noticed Maddie in the doorway, a bright and alert grin lit up his face.

"Hey," he said, sipping his milky tea. "I didn't want to wake you. You were really out. How'd you sleep?"

"Not bad," Maddie said. As far as she could recall, Peter had drunk more than her yet he didn't seem to be feeling the effects at all. She, on the other hand, still had a slant to the way she walked. "What time did we get back?"

"Almost three," Peter said. So that made for a good two hours that had slipped Maddie's memory. Peter's toast popped up and he held out a slice to her. "Want some?"

Though she wasn't particularly hungry, she needed to eat something in order to take some paracetamol so she nodded and Peter took out another plate for her.

"I was just going to head into the conservatory," he said, flicking the kettle on and taking out the brightest mug for Maddie. "Tea?"

"Yes, please," she said, stepping further into the kitchen to refill the glass Cathy had left her with. "God, I think I'm still drunk."

Peter laughed and said, "Well, I wouldn't be too surprised. You were really putting it away last night." He glanced at her as he set about making her tea, finding the softly flavoured Earl Grey he knew she liked. "Do you remember?"

Maddie grimaced. She remembered seeing Posy at one point, and she remembered taking Peter up to one of the empty rooms. She remembered a disgusted Ryan walking in on them quite a bit later when she had been on the floor with her legs wrapped around Peter and her hands tangled in his hair, pulling him into her. After that, they had joined a raucous game of Never Have I Ever, during which she recalled sharing a little too much about herself to a group of virtual strangers and imbibed even more.

Despite the number of people at the party, a steady flow between rooms, she had come across Ryan far more than she would've liked, each time with a scowl on his face and a drink in his hand. Shortly before her memories blurred, she come across him trying to start a fight, and one of the guys trying to break it up had later told her that he was an angry drunk. Maddie wasn't surprised: he was already angry sober.

"Last thing I remember is when Posy fell off the table," she said: Posy's insistence that she could dance on the table had ended with a bruised hip and a fair amount of laughter, mostly from Posy herself. Peter chuckled, buttering the toast.

"That was about two hours before we left."

"Shit."

"Don't worry, you didn't embarrass yourself or anything. You were a very classy drunk." He stirred milk into Maddie's tea and she sighed her relief, a little terrified by her lack of memories. "You did get in a bit of a tangle when we got back, though."

"What do you mean?" She frowned and took the tea he held out to her, grateful for the soothing heat against her hands.

"You couldn't get out of your dress," he said with a laugh. "I had to give you a hand."

Maddie's cheeks coloured. "You undressed me?"

He held up his hands. "You begged me to. I swear, you were on the edge of tears. If I hadn't, you probably would've woken Mum up to help you. Plus, it's not like I've never seen you naked." He said the words so nonchalantly that Maddie had to replay them in her head a couple of times to confirm that she had heard correctly. He passed her a side plate with her piece of toast and squeezed her shoulder. "You look really cute, by the way."

Maddie looked down at herself. "These are your mum's clothes, you know."

"Oh." He frowned. "Does that make it weird that I think you look cute then?"

"Maybe a little bit," she said with a quiet laugh. "Could you get me some paracetamol?"

"Hungover?"

"Just a little bit."

Peter popped a couple of tablets out of the blister pack and added them to Maddie's plate before leading her through to the conservatory, the source of the voices. Cathy sat in an armchair with the Sunday newspaper and a huge coffee while Peter's father, Adrian, had his head in a motor magazine.

"Morning, sleepyheads," he said when the two of them wandered in. "I was beginning to think I'd never see you. How'd you sleep?"

"Not bad," Peter said, and Maddie nodded her agreement, taking a seat at the table and following a sip of tea with a bite of toast in order to take the painkillers her head so desperately needed.

"Let me know if you need a lift home or anywhere, Maddie," Cathy said. "I can drive you anywhere you need."

"Thanks," Maddie said, and turned to Peter. "What're you doing today?"

"Max and I have a match in a couple of hours, actually," he said. "Just a friendly at the club. You can come, if you want to watch?"

A slow smile spread over Maddie's lips as she drank her tea. She had always enjoyed watching Peter's matches at school, going to as many as she could for moral support, and partially just to watch him play, admiring the way he twisted his body to make each shot. His brother Max, the middle of the five, was a rising star on his school's tennis scene, following in Peter's well-worn footsteps.

"Yeah, that'd be cool, if you don't mind."

"Of course I don't mind. Always nice to have a little support, though I'm not sure everyone will be on top form after last night." He finished his tea and leant back in his seat, leaving the crusts of his toast abandoned on his plate. 

"Good party, huh?" Adrian asked, looking up over his glasses. Peter grinned and subtly glanced at Maddie.

"Yeah, it was pretty great," he said, and Maddie was powerless against the furious blush that spread down her cheeks to her chest. It had been great, four times over, but the last thing she wanted Peter's parents to think of her as was the girl who got drunk and put out. She wasn't that girl; it just so happened that both of her trysts with Peter had involved being at least a little tipsy, else she wasn't sure she would have the confidence to act on her urges. Just thinking about last night sent that familiar rush from the base of her spine and she crossed her legs beneath the table, hiding her lips behind her mug.

*

They needed to leave in the next five minutes else the risk of hitting a traffic jam was high, and Max was adamant not to be late, though Peter was far less concerned. He sat on the edge of his bed, watching Maddie as she used his brush to sort out her hair.

"Mads?"

"Mmhmm?" She met his eye in the mirror, watching him over her shoulder as she dragged the brush through her hair now that it was dry. The bristles snagged on the odd knot that she tugged free.

"About last night..."

She stopped brushing, her hand frozen above her shoulder. "What about it?"

"About what you said," he continued, visibly nervous, or perhaps just feeling a little awkward. Maddie could hear her heartbeat in her ears: she wanted to talk about what he had said, and she couldn't remember having let anything slip from her own lips.

"What did I say?"

"About your mum," he said, and Maddie's pulse immediately slowed. She'd forgotten dropping that bombshell, though she could always count on herself to find a way to kill a party vibe.

"Oh." She let her hand drop to her side.

"If you ever want to talk, you know I'm here, right?" He tilted his head to the side like an inquisitive spaniel. "It really sucks. I hope you know you don't have to deal with that alone."

It wasn't what Maddie had wanted to talk about, but the fact that Peter had not only remembered but brought it up touched her, and she turned to face him.

"Thanks, Petey," she said, a smile softening her eyes. He cared. That mattered more than she realised, overriding her fear that he hadn't meant what he'd said in last night's climactic moment. Maybe he hadn't. He probably hadn't. It didn't matter, she told herself. He didn't have to love her to care.

Her thoughtful face must've looked like one of sorrow to Peter because he stood without a word and wrapped strong, silent arms around her, pinning her limp hands by her sides until she lifted them to his shoulder blades.

"You're something special, Mads," he said when he pulled away. "I hope you know that."

"You're not so bad yourself, Petey," she said with a laugh. "Thanks, though."

Peter grinned. "Anytime."

*

When they arrived at the tennis club and Peter and Max immediately disappeared to the changing room, Maddie began to reconsider her decision to tag along. The seats were all filled with parents and reluctant siblings, while the grassy bank opposite the courts was strewn with various boyfriends and girlfriends, and those who wanted to be boyfriends and girlfriends. She laid down a blanket Cathy had given her to sit on in a relatively quiet spot and leant back on her elbows to enjoy the sun.

The whole way over, with Cathy driving and Max in the passenger seat, Maddie had been desperate to talk to Peter about them, about whatever their situation was. In her head, it was a mess of tangled sheets and sentiments going in no particular direction and if there was one thing Maddie hated, it was lack of direction. Her head and her heart were caught at a crossroads and with Peter playing his hand close to his chest, she had no idea which way to go.

Peter was due to start in the second match so as the first round of players streamed onto the court, she paid little attention to them and more to the first buzz of her phone for the day. A text from Posy landed in her inbox, quickly followed by a few more.

Maddie chuckled at the messages and shifted on the blanket. It had only taken about a week of living together for her and Posy to become the best of friends, to the point that people assumed they'd known each other for years. By now, after actually having known each other for years, there was nothing one didn't tell the other. Maddie had heard all about not only everyone Posy had ever dated and everyone she'd slept with, but the minutiae of her life. Every spat with a parent was documented in a series of short, aggressive texts, or a Skype call that inevitably turned to more trivial matters. There was nothing Maddie could keep from Posy, and nothing she wanted to.

It didn't take long after replying for three dots to indicate Posy's imminent response, one of the best texters Maddie had ever known. Her father, on the other hand, was easily the worst. He took forever to type out a message and he had a habit of wandering off without his phone in the middle of a conversation.

She didn't really know what to say to that, though it turned out she didn't need to formulate a response as a moment later, Posy sent a message that she had to go. Maddie bid her a good day and dropped her phone by her side. She would be lying if she said she had never imagined being married to Peter. Before now, she had tested out Maddie Jensen on a piece of paper and baulked at how ordinary it sounded, testing out Maddie Jensen-Hyun before she had decided that Maddie Hyun-Jensen had a nicer ring to it. But those were just schoolgirl fantasies, the kind of things she and her friends had done on sleepovers to laugh over: she had always treated her crush on Peter as a joke, as though the possibility was ridiculous, though in reality she had harboured it for years.

Now it was back with a passion, stronger than ever before, but not in the way she had expected. Whenever she had envisaged a future with Peter, it had been an idealised romance in which he confessed his love for her, desperate to call her his girlfriend and to take her in his arms. Not a contract. Not that it really was a contract, she thought. The proposition had clearly been thin mask for some kind of mutual feeling, unless sixteen-year-old Peter had been telling the truth: he really did only care about sex.

When her phone buzzed again, she pushed the thought to the back of her mind upon seeing that it was from her father.

She smiled at her screen and locked her phone. It wasn't often that she and her father fell out and when they did, it didn't last long. Though tensions had remained high the day after she had read the letter from her mother, her father's persistence at normality while encouraging her to feel how she felt had done a lot to smooth out her emotions. It was hard to stay angry when he had been hurt so much more than her.

*

By the end of the first match, Maddie was snoozing on the blanket until a voice came over the tannoy announcing the next match and she sat up, rubbing her eyes. Peter strolled onto the court, bouncing a ball with his racket and looking around until his eyes fell on Maddie and he grinned. A few of the girls on the bank turned to look at her when they followed his gaze, and she returned his grin with the addition of a thumbs up.

There was something so mesmerising about the back and forth of tennis, and Maddie couldn't tear her eyes from the racket in Peter's hands until she spotted a face she knew out of the corner of her eye; a face she seemed to see all the time recently. Turning her head a fraction to the right, her sole cousin replaced Peter in her line of sight, sitting a few metres away from her. An initial wave of irritation that always came with seeing Ryan was replaced by a moment of clemency and before she realised what she was doing, she had moved closer to her cousin.

"Hi," she said to Ryan, sitting with her knees up and her hands clasped beneath them. "What're you doing here?"

Ryan gave her a glare before turning his eyes back to the court in a wordless dismissal of her presence.

"Look, Ryan, I'm sorry about last night."

"Which part?" he spat, more venom in the two words than they could ever necessitate.

Maddie stiffened, her eyes hardening. "Jesus, Ryan, calm down, ok? It's not like I asked you to walk in on us. I was just apologising. We're family, you know. I think you forget that sometimes."

Ryan lifted a hand, slowly turning his head back to Maddie with the coldest gaze. "Don't bother. Ok? Do you get it? Just leave me alone, for God's sake. Why do you keep trying? What are you trying to prove?" He spoke slowly and coolly, his tone so measured that it sent a chill through Maddie.

"Why do you hate me so much? What have I done?" She shook her head. "I don't get it, Ryan. You're my cousin. I've never hurt you, and you hate me. I just want to know why."

Ryan clenched his jaw, staring straight ahead. "You don't get it. You have no idea what you're dealing with. You have no fucking clue. So stop trying to be my friend and fuck off."

With that, he stood and stalked off, and Maddie was left speechless on the bank, tears pricking her eyes. She had never liked Ryan, but he harboured such an intense hatred for her that she couldn't get her head around, and it hurt her to know that someone existed who could despise her for no reason. It was difficult to focus on the match after that, her head swimming with reasons for Ryan's attitude towards her, but she came up empty-handed. There was nothing. And yet clearly, she was wrong.

+ - + - +

i hope you liked this! how're you finding #peddie? what're your thoughts on ryan, eh? i'm trying to toe the line between my hints being way too obvious and way too subtle - it's not easy! please leave a vote and a comment if you enjoyed this: your feedback means the absolute world to me. as per usual, any fanart is much appreciated and will be featured in a chapter with a dedication! below is a quote vector thing that i made, which took far too long for something essentially so pointless

edit: it has come to my attention that people are concerned Ryan might have a crush on maddie - I hate to give spoilers but I can assure you he does not

this chapter is dedicated to arrowheads for having the dedication to read the whole thing in one go and leaving brilliant comments for me to wake up to!