darling, i fancy you

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“Fuck the dinosaurs,” she echoed, another laughing falling from her lips. 

Her smile faded when he spoke again, not because she wanted to immediately disagree with him as she was usually wont to do whenever Fitz opened his mouth. This time, she was struck dumb with emotions that existed in colours she didn’t know what to do with. Fitz seemed riled, genuinely riled on her behalf, and she felt her eyes widen as she stared at him. Nobody had ever told her that her mom mattered in a manner that reflected how deeply June felt it herself. Almost immediately, her vision blurred.

“Yeah,” she sniffed, quickly looking away from Fitz. “She meant something. She mattered.”

Once upon a time, nobody else in the world had mattered to June like her mom had. Back then, she’d always had someone in her corner when her dad was too busy shaping Harrison into his shadow to even remember he had a daughter. When Clem had come around, June knew she’d be subjected to the same fate and so she’d sworn to make sure her little sister would never feel the same way June did when her mom passed and she realised she had no one to help her fight her battles. As long as June was around, Clem would always have a champion.

“I think I sometimes forget how to show the good parts. Not the cooking bit. I am actually really bad at cooking,” she admitted, huffing gently. “But my mom was really patient. Super, super kind.” She winced a little and peeked sideways at Fitz. “I think we both know that’s not always me.”

Her gaze fell to her lap when Fitz brought up Brendon again, citing Eli and Jax as the ones to carry on his legacy. There was a weight to his voice that suggested he was more affected by the otherwise casual statement than someone might think. Any other day, June would have written it off as none of her business. Brendon Fitzgerald’s man pain was not of any interest to her. But the man sitting next to her wasn’t the image of Fitz that she’d painted in her head. It was a guy, sweeter than she gave him credit for, who’d calmed her down from a panic attack and let her remember her mom out loud. That didn’t count for nothing.

“I think we should get the choice of whose legacies we want to carry,” she said, hoping it was the right thing to say. Did Fitz want her to reassure him that he should uphold Brendon’s name by sharing it with him? Wasn’t there a reason nobody even called him by his first name, at his own request?

She looked up at him, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth. Quickly, she leaned in and bumped her shoulder off his.

“Are you going to be super weird if I thank you?” she asked, chasing her words with a soft eye roll. “For… sitting with me. Letting me talk.”

“Yeah, well. I’m well good at cooking,” he teased, giving her a light nudge of his elbow. He doubted June would be inviting him over for a meal anytime soon, nor would she be accepting any offer he might extend, but he wanted to put it out there anyway. Maybe someday she’d need a friend to help her throw together some of her mum’s favourite dishes.  

He let the rest of what she said sit between them, the two of them exchanging sheepish smiles and a knowing glance. June wasn’t always patient or kind, not where he was concerned, but he didn’t think it was something she should be punished for. He hadn’t earned her kindness, so why should she pretend? All he could do was shrug, feign indifference, and let her words roll off his back whenever he got caught in the crossfire of her bad days. Even when her vitriol was reserved for him and him alone, Fitz never had the fight in him to call her out on it. He craved her approval, practically spent his entire career chasing it. 

His gaze flickered away from hers and back again, restless and jittery as the topic of Brendon held them in its grip. He was waiting to be reprimanded, to be branded selfish and ungrateful, unworthy of the name he’d had no say in being granted, but it never came. June only offered empathy, entirely contradicting her earlier statement of not being kind enough, and Fitz’s thought he might cry from gratitude alone. In all his life, nobody had ever told him that.  Elias was too sweet to be cruel, but his displeasure for Fitz had always been palpable, pressed deep down into the recesses of his heart but etched neatly onto the corners of his features all the same. Hayden had a long list of justifiable grievances with Fitz, ones he’d never bothered to try and temper. Nobody ever stopped to tell him that the burden wasn’t his, that he didn’t need to wear it any more than he deserved to have it thrust upon him, without his consent, the moment he was born. Instead, they chiseled away at their obvious disapproval and shot daggers in his direction every time. His heart ached with how loathed he was on the grid, with how lonely a place it was to be travelling the world without a single ally on his side. 

“Thanks,” Fitz breathed, his voice cracking over the feeble note of appreciation. He could feel tears welling up behind his eyes, and he knew that was all he’d manage for now. He hoped June would understand. 

Instead, he allowed her to slip back into a steady rhythm of playful indifference, eyerolls and shoulder bumps, making light of their situation as she sought a way to thank him too. He didn’t need her thanks, but he was grateful to have it anyway. He knew it had been a tall ask for her to have confided in him of all people, and it wasn’t something he considered lightly. 

“Only as weird as I usually am. Which is very, by your usual estimations,” Fitz laughed, before his smile melted away into something softer, more earnest. “It’s fine, really. I like talking to you. And I'm always here to listen, if that’s what you need.” 

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When she’d met Fitz, the man who’d taken Brendon’s name even before he died, she’d been cruel about it. Harrison had recruited him as a lackey almost instantly, so that hadn’t endeared him to June any more than him sharing the same name with one of the greatest drivers the racing world had loved and lost. As she’d parsed through her memories of Brendon, she couldn’t recall Fitz being in an awful lot of them, and so she had wondered how he’d managed to have this claim on Brendon’s name, on the title of his successor. Eventually, she’d slowly realised this was more the fault of Fitz’ parents than the man himself, but June was stubborn to a fault and had never learned the art of forgiveness, so she’d clung onto her spite and continued to direct her ire at Fitz. 

Now, as he spoke about her mom, about honouring her, she couldn’t help but let the words fall out of her mouth.

“Do you honour Brendon like that?” she asked.

Her ponytail swung a little as she turned her head to look at Fitz properly. There was an expression of open curiosity on her face. For once, June wasn’t asking with any sort of malice in her tone. She wasn’t needling Fitz to admit that he was nothing like the dead man she was named after, but right now he was the only other person who knew what it felt like to try to uphold the legacy of someone who had passed; June, because she loved her mom and wanted to remember her, and Fitz because he’d been burdened with Brendon’s name and had no choice but to carry the other man’s memory with him whenever he stepped foot on the track.

“I’ve never actually made a quiche,” she admitted quietly, her lips turning up in a soft smile, a quiet acknowledgment of Fitz’ words.

She supposed she appreciated them. Even if she wasn’t sure she believed she was doing a great job of honouring her mom, she was at the very least grateful for the fact that someone seemed to recognise that she was trying to keep her mom alive in any way she could. And as Fitz parroted her words back to her, sewing them into new hypothetical memories, little ways she could remember her mom by, June could only smile helplessly at him. It felt like a betrayal of her mind, committed by her heart. She let herself stay like that for a few seconds, unconsciously mimicking Fitz’ own head tilt.

“You know what’s weird?” she said. She rolled her head back so she was facing up front.

“I watched this documentary with Clemmy once. She was going through a dinosaur phase and this documentary was talking about the cosmic clock. Have you heard of it?” She barrelled on without letting Fitz answer. “It said that if Earth’s history was compressed into twenty-four hours, then the dinosaurs wouldn’t show up until 11pm. Like, 11 at night. And there’d already been four mass extinction events.” She shook her head in awe, like she was hearing this information for the first time again.

“And so us humans only show up at like 11.58. So sometimes, it’s like… who cares? We’re not even really a millisecond on that clock and then I think about how little time that means my mom was around for and I just get angry.” She frowned, nose wrinkling as she fought back a fresh wave of tears. “Why am I the only person fighting to remember her when she wasn’t even around for a nanosecond in the whole history of the world?”

She narrowed her eyes and then gave Fitz a sideways glance, cheeks heating up.

“That probably didn’t even make sense.”

“I’m really trying,” he breathed, pathetically. 

 And it was true, even if everybody chose not to believe him. It might be just about the only reason he’d stuck with the godforsaken sport in the first place. He knew he’d disappoint his parents regardless – he could stay or go and he’d never be enough, not really. But that eternal, lingering weight of expectation and Brendon’s legacy held him in place, sturdy and unweilding. Fitz wasn’t nearly as stupid as most people assumed; He knew how much men like Elias hated him, how much of a resounding disappointment he was to Hayden and June, to Jax and Annie, to the whole fucking grid. He pushed his body to extremes with his head pounding and his ears ringing while every single one of his limbs screamed in protest, all to honour the ghost of a man who probably couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup. 

There was nothing more he could add to the conversation, not to satiate June’s need for answers. He had nothing to offer, so he simply sat and waited, listening in earnest, quietly basking in the momentary glory of her fleeting smile. June had never smiled at him like that, and she likely never would again. It worked wonders to alleviate the ache in his chest, even if only briefly, and he wondered if she knew even a fraction of the impact she had on his heart. 

He let June's words sit with him, possibly for a beat too long. He wanted to give her some great, fantastical response that would put the whole entire universe into perspective and help her view things in a fresh light. He wanted to twist the narrative and remind her that her mum was special, and that she'd meant something. Because she was, and she had. She still did. But he found that he fell short, his mind whirring with useless, meaningless advice and anecdotes that would take them nowhere but on a journey to a dead end. He wasn't smart like Elena or a wordsmith like Vinny. He was just some dumb jock that was in over his head. 

"Well... Fuck the cosmic clock," he grumbled. He begun drumming a finger against his thigh, nervous energy coursing through his limbs. "An' on that note, fuck the dinosaurs too." 

He huffed out a weak laugh, fully recognising how ridiculous he probably sounded to June, but he powered on anyway. 

"Nah, seriously. Like, who gives a shit what some scientist says? Like, whether it's a theory or actually rooted in something, what does it actually matter to us? Maybe we're a nanosecond on the Universe's clock, but for us it's a lifetime. And your mum meant something, and she left a fucking mark whether the Universe likes it or not!" Fitz hadn't intended to get so riled up, and he'd hardly even noticed that he had been until he felt his voice lift on his final exclamation. He blushed, shaking his head as he ducked away from June's gaze and stared down at his shoes instead. Lowering his voice, he adopted a softer, lighter tone. "I just mean, like. She made you, init? And all those good parts of her are being kept alive through you, so she's not gone. Not completely." 

The more he thought about it, the thicker his throat felt. He tried not to think about dead people all that much, you know, as a rule. He had enough on his plate without spiraling down the thought process of his own mortality, but it was hard not to let June’s words ring in his ears. He thought of Brendon, who was probably looking down on him now, clocking him for the fraud that he was. 

“And Brendon, too. He lives on in people like you, like Eli and Jax...” he frowned, clearing his throat as he tried to disguise the way his voice cracked. He highly doubted he was making much sense as it was, the last thing he needed to do was cry in front of the girl of his dreams. “I don’t reckon there’s a clock out there that gets to decide who we are or how much we matter, I guess. Only we do.”