I have worked 2-3 hours on a writing for my au, I am a bit rusty since I haven't written anything in a while, but this is the best I got, and I hope y'all like it!
Family reunions were supposed to be loud. Children running through the yard. Relatives arguing over food. Someone inevitably setting off a small disaster near the grill. By every measurable standard, this reunion was a complete success. The backyard buzzed with conversation. Music drifted from a speaker on the porch.
Samuelson should have been enjoying himself. Instead, he was counting. One. Two. Three. Three missing children. He found the first one near the edge of the property. Sunny was running laps around the fence line. Not playing tag. Not talking with cousins. Running.
Across from where she ran back and forth, there stood Angel, holding a stopwatch and yelling command after command at his daughter, making her run faster, to train harder, making her work in the hot summer sun
“I did not train you to slack Sunnymae! Pick up the pace! You don’t want to be built like half of these folks down in the south let me tell you that much! I advise YOU RUN FASTER!”
She picked up the pace, running faster and harder. Samuelson got up, and walked over to Angel
“Angel.”
“What?!”
Samuelson took a deep breath to keep himself calm
“It’s a family reunion. Have some respect.”
“...And??”
Sunny stumbled over a rock, Samuelson had nothing to say. An uncomfortable feeling settled into his chest, before angel playfully nudged him and roughly wrapped his arm around Samuelson, messing up his hair by giving him noogies, speaking condescendingly
“You know! You should get out there too! You need it!”
Samuelson scowled as the other uncles laughed from across the yard, hearing the yelling. He forced Angel off of him, before noticing Rosie sitting under a tree, her face shoved into a mirror, a magazine beside her as she tried taking care of her “ugliness”
He shook his head in disappointment, and he approached the tree she was sitting under, sitting up beside her and slowly taking the mirror, setting it on the grass, and moving the magazine.
“Rosie.”
Rosie blinked, and looked up at him
“Oh- ehm- Hi uncle Sammy!”
Samuelson frowned
“What are you doing, hon?”
Rosie grabbed her mirror and rubbed her cheek, then pointed at her face
“Trying to fix this.”
Samuelson stared, he forced himself from grabbing the mirror and throwing it at her mothers face, or beating her father with it, and got up, gently patting her head, but Rosie spoke again
“My face looks weird.”
Samuelson's heart sunk
“No it doesn’t.”
“My smile looks weird.”
“Rosie.”
“I am not looking perfect enough!”
Samuelson shook his head, his fists tightly clenched
“You shouldn’t think like that.”
Rosie didn’t respond. Samuelson walked away, his hands trembling just from anger alone, he looked to his side. Clover was studying, face buried in a book. At first he thought it was a break from science and from working, until he noticed the book. He went over and got on his knees, lium watching from afar, his gaze hard
“Clover, hey buddy. You should be playing with everyone else!”
“..Father says I should use my free time more productively.”
Samuelson blinks
“Clover?”
“Yes?”
“You’re 10.”
Clover fixed his glasses
"The probability of obtaining a competitive position within the scientific community decreases substantially when developmental opportunities are neglected."
“..Thats a fancy way of saying you’re doing homework at a barbeque, son.”
“That is an oversimplification.”
“Clover please take a break.”
Clover paused, he wanted to take a break. To go hang out with his uncle or with his cousins, but seeing his fathers horrifying glare, the way he stared, made him afraid, unsure. He shook his head at samuelson, but samuelson spoke again, grabbing his hand
“Clover. Are you even happy right now?”
“..I am meeting expectations. That is good enough.”
Samuelson’s stomach dropped, that didn’t answer the question. He was about to speak, until lium firmly grabbed Samuelson's shoulder. Clovers posture straightened
“Actually, Samuelson. He’s demonstrating excellent time management.”
“Hes 10!”
“And? Being a child is no excuse. Clovefield.”
Clover looked up
“Tell your uncle what we’ve discussed this morning.”
"Consistent intellectual stimulation is necessary to maintain academic advancement."
"Exactly."
Samuelson growled under his breath, and stormed off back to the porch, sitting down at the edge as he picked up a cigarette pack, watching daisy and dandy being the only two actually playing together
He heaved through the cigarette puffs, before coughing violently into his hands, causing darla to shoot up and quickly stride over, patting his back firmly
“Hey, hey, you okay?”
“No! I’m not okay! For once we got the whole family together and– and everyone is working! Not even the adults! The kids, darla! A senior needing to enjoy her final summer, a 13 year old worried about her jaw being out of place, a 10 year old using words i’ve never heard before!”
Darla sighed and hugged him from behind, squeezing him tightly, just for patches to run over and join them. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he felt like it was right.
As they sat there for a minute, Samuelson finishing his cigarette, he noticed Priscilla and Bloom getting on the porch, sitting on the porch swing, have heard everything. Bloom spoke first
“They’re ambitious kids!”
“They’re exhausted, Bloom!”
Samuel argued, but bloom quickly shot back
“There's a difference??”
“...There should be.”
Bloom folded her arms, scoffing angrily as she spoke
“Clover likes science!”
“Well, no shit!”
Bloom gasped angrily, and Samuelson shot up. Scowling. Pricsilla butted in quickly, unconvinced
“Rosie is fine however!”
“I sat there with Rosie, talking to her for 5 minutes and she's worried about her JAW.”
“Rightfully so. She needs braces. The invisible ones so she can still participate in pageants!”
“Shes 13!”
“Shes a model.”
Samuelson let out a cold, humorless laugh, pinching the bridge of his nose
“Theres your problem.”
The yard fell silent at what Samuelson just said, until angel ran over with a shark tooth grin. He jumped onto the porch, holding the stopwatch up proudly
“My little Sunnymae ran a lap in under 30 seconds! Shes ready for her trackmeet this saturday!”
Darla looked over and saw Sunny keeled over, sweating and dry heaving, chugging water from a cold water bottle, she looked ready to collapse.
“Maybe let her rest?”
“Champions don’t rest, sis.”
Something dangerous flicked in Samuelson’s eyes, Darla being the only one that noticed. Angel continued boasting proudly
“Shes got lots of potential! I mean look at her! The way she's built! She's gonna find a wonderful man, shes gonna have a family once out of college! Then she’ll take care of me!”
Samuelson stepped forward, his voice dangerous, cold
“Is all that the only thing that matters to you? Her graduating high school, then college, then being married and having kids?! You are absolutely sick!”
Darla looked at Samuelson, as Samuelson began to approach Angel
“SHE IS 18!!”
He lunged, and swung, his fist connecting with angel's cheek, sending him coiling backwards, it made the women gasp, the other two uncles staring. Not getting involved, not yet. Daisy and dandy stopped playing, they stared. Sunny looked up, rosie stopped looking in the mirror, and clover stopped reading
Samuelson. More mature than half of the people in that yard, a working husband and father, a peacemaker, a teddy bear if you must.
Angel slowly looked at him, his teeth clenched as he slowly said his name
“Samuelson.”
Samuel spoke up
“You put her in a hospital countless times!”
“Watch yourself.”
“She collapsed several times because of the one that's supposed to love her!”
“I do love her!”
“DO YOU?!”
Samuel swung again, but this time Angel was ready. He grabbed Samuelson's fist and shoved him back against the porch, making him fall, the air getting knocked out of his lungs, causing him to wheeze momentarily as he got back up, but angel just swung again, aiming for his face, It hit, but Samuelson stood his ground and spoke, wiping the blood away
“Im done pretending this isn’t a huge deal! All I see is a stopwatch and telling her what to do and how to do it!”
Angel shoved him again, and all it did was open the gates to hell. Both of the men began shoving, swinging, yelling colorful words at each other, neither stopping. Samuelson was laid on the ground roughly as Angel stayed over him, fist raised above him
“You think you’re better than me, Samuel?!"
Samuel laughed bitterly
“In a million different ways!”
Angel swung a few firm times before there was a loud, firm “STOP FIGHTING!!!”. The two stopped, and there they saw it. The kids, one big group, staring. Dandy was teary-eyed, Daisy seemed a little emotionally out of it. Clover seemed unphased, Sunny seemed shocked, her hands over her mouth, and Rosie's eyes were wide from the shock of it all.
Samuelson shoved Angel off and sat up, his good eye swelling up as he looked at them, he let out a breath of defeat, getting up off the ground as he got his inhaler, taking a few puffs
“...We should stop this here.”
He mumbled, but angel shoved past him and grabbed sunny by the wrist
“Thats the plan! We're going home. Right now.”
Sunny sighed quietly as she was dragged away, looking a little angry at Samuelson for hurting her father, even if he was just trying to help.
“..Sunny-”
“Don’t.”
Sunny quickly responded as they got into the car, angel driving them out of the driveway. Nobody said goodbye properly. That was the strangest part. After everything—after the shouting, after the porch shaking, after the silence that followed—the reunion didn’t end with closure. It just… loosened. Angel was the first to leave. Sunny walked beside him, quiet, arms wrapped around herself. She didn’t look at anyone as they crossed the yard. Not because she was angry. Because she was tired.
Rosie followed soon after, Priscilla a step behind her, still trying to say her name like she could rewind what had happened if she said it softly enough.
Clover left last with his mother, Bloom walking beside him without her usual sharp corrections. He still held his teddy bear, but now it wasn’t clutched like armor.Later that night, the house was quieter than it had been in years. Daisy and Dandy were asleep already, tangled in blankets on the couch like nothing in the world had ever been complicated. Samuelson stood in the kitchen, staring at a glass of water he hadn’t touched. Darla moved behind him, gently taking it and pouring it out. “You don’t have to fix it tonight,” she said.
“I don’t know if I can fix it at all,” he replied.
Darla didn’t argue. That was her way of agreeing without making it heavier. Upstairs, a floorboard creaked. Samuelson looked up automatically. Paused. Then didn't go check. For the first time that day, he didn’t try to control what happened next, and somewhere far away from the house, three different families were learning how loud silence could actually be.
ALL OCS EXCEPT SAMUEL BELONG TO @diggitydoggo. I HOPE YALL ENJOYED READING THIS!! I WORKED REALLY HARD.