this is me trying

He opened his mouth to speak and then processed what Chey had said, and turned to look at her with a confused scowl. “What?” He narrowed his eyes at her and closed his mouth for a moment, then opened again. He had a hard time determining if she was trying to be funny and sincere, and got the weird sense that it was a bit of both. At a loss for words, he just shook his head and could only grumble, “It’s a bit late to try buttering me up, Johnson.”

“What? I’m serious,” she insisted, already scanning him like she might find a way to rough him up on short notice. The thought barely had time to form before he tipped his head toward the porch.

Her gaze followed, and just like that, something in her chest softened.

“There she is,” Chey murmured, quieter now. “That’s my mom.”

Obvious, sure - they looked too much alike for it to be a coincidence. Same sun warmed freckled skin, the same easy waves in their hair, eyes that caught the light like the ocean on a clear day. Carrie was in her usual overalls, undoubtedly dusted with clay somewhere. Chey had spent half her summers dressed the same way - overalls, bikini top underneath, sun on her shoulders. She was, by all accounts, her mother's daughter.

The warmth twisted just slightly. Guilt crept in knowing a lie stood between them. Chey swallowed it down and pushed the car door open, stepping out just as Carrie reached them. The hug came fast and tight, familiar in a way that knocked the air from her lungs. Vanilla and coconut wrapped around her, grounding and the most familiar scent in the world.

“My Mandy,” her mom cooed, squeezing her a little too hard. “How do you keep getting more and more beautiful?”

Chey huffed, rolling her eyes as she gently pried herself free. “Genetics. You’re welcome.”

But Carrie was already looking past her.

“Oh, honey… he’s gorgeous,” she whispered loudly, which, for her, meant absolutely not a whisper.

Chey turned, dragging her gaze over Matt like she was just now verifying it. Annoyingly… yeah. Her mom wasn’t wrong.

“Mom, this is my -” She hesitated just long enough to feel it. “Matt.” The word boyfriend stuck somewhere behind her teeth, refusing to cooperate. “Matt, this is Carrie.”

Without a second of hesitation, she pulled Matt into a full, inescapable hug. “It is so nice to meet you. I can’t tell you the last time Chey’s brought someone home.”

Chey cleared her throat, heat creeping up her neck. She crossed her arms, shifting her weight like she might physically outrun the moment.

If her mom only knew that Matt was far from a significant other. Wasn’t really anything she could neatly define. Not quite a friend, not quite an enemy - something inconveniently in between. And somehow, standing there under her mother’s knowing smile, that line felt a lot blurrier than it had five minutes ago.

As Matt parked the vehicle outside of the rental in Concan, there was a part of him that was, quite frankly, shocked that he had allowed himself to be put into this situation. But, another part of him grumbled at the fact that it also wasn’t surprising at all - since when had he become soft-hearted, wanting to help out the girl he had once seen as his sworn enemy in an elevator many years ago?

The drive through hill country was filled with Chey catching Matt up on all the things about her life he should probably know, from where she grew up to all the members of her family. For the most part, he just listened intently with the occasional follow up question here and there. He was an only child and his immediate family was small, and the closest to a sibling he had ever had was Tegan, who lived miles away when they were young. Hearing stories of the way Chey grew up was incredibly far removed from his own experiences in his youth - so he listened, partially from necessity of the information, but also from curiosity.

Silence washed over them as they pulled up to the rental home and as he put the car into park, there was a slight sense of regret that struck him for a moment. It wasn’t until this moment that he really contemplated the fact that he was going to have to socialize, a lot - and it was far from his intent to embarrass Chey, so he really was here to make a good impression and not just beeline for his room to hide away.

With a deep sigh, he rubbed his palms against the sides of his jeans and looked over at Chey. As their eyes met in the silence of the car, the dread slowly started to dissipate; he was strangely comforted by the fact that Chey was here, and that he wasn't going into this alone.

He raised an eyebrow at her and tilted his head towards the house. “You ready?”

How the hell had she actually talked him into this?

Her gaze fixed on the house as it came into view - her family’s favorite rental, every truck and SUV parked like a warning sign in the driveway. This was usually the part where Chey thrived. Pressure, unpredictability, a little chaos. It’s what made her so good at her job. But this wasn’t a set. There were no second takes here, no clean exits if it all went sideways.

This was real life, and for once, her nerves didn't sit quietly in the background. No, they clawed their way forward, loud and relentless.

“Huh?” she blinked, turning to him a beat too late, realizing he’d asked her something she hadn’t even registered. Her brain had been too busy running worst-case scenarios on a loop. Then her eyes met his. Something in her chest loosened - just a little. She exhaled, nodding faintly as it clicked. “I think so.”

She held his gaze a second longer than necessary, studying him now like she hadn’t fully let herself before. The sharp line of his jaw, the stupidly perfect hairline, eyes that were honestly kind of unfair...

God, her family was never going to believe this.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, like she was sizing him up for a problem she hadn’t accounted for. “Can you try to look…” she tilted her head, squinting at him, “…less pretty?”

Once the authorities had left, she started making a makeshift ice pack for him as he came out from the back. She looked up at him, she felt two things at once: a somewhat guilty feeling, fueled by the sense that there was something she should have done differently so Devin didn’t find himself with a black eye forming and the authorities at his door. Another part of her - a big part - was overcome by the warmth that bloomed in her chest with the way he fiercely protected her.

A smile touched her lips as she shook her head at his comment. Lying to the authorities seemed minor relative to the other events of the evening. “Yeah, alright, hotshot. It’s the least I could do for someone willing to take a punch for me.”

Nadine peered up at him, and she found herself overcome with a sudden urge to brush her lips against the bruises forming on his hands and his face. She blinked and quickly turned her attention to the ice pack as she let the thought fade away, tracing her fingers with a feather-light touch across his cheekbone before starting to gently press the ice pack around the edges of his swollen eye. She took in a deep breath before letting her eyes flicker back to his. “Thank you, by the way. I’m sorry you got hurt.”

"Hey," he murmured, voice lower this time, steadier. "Don't do that."

She was saying more without actually saying it. He saw the look in her eyes, the heaviness to the unnecessary apology. His brows furrowed slightly, the crooked grin fading into something more sincere as he reached up to lightly catch her wrist before she could pull away completely. "You don't owe me an apology. Guy had it coming. Been waiting all night for someone to shut him up anyway."

His thumb brushed once against her skin absentmindedly. A beat passed and his hand fell from her wrist. Devin held back the words that nearly came spilling from his lips: I didn't do it because it's the right thing to do. I did it because it was you. He swallowed back that truth and instead smirked once more.

"Besides," he muttered, nodding toward the ice pack still pressed to his face, "worth it for the free medical care."

When Mira heard the whispers of a map of the Uncharted Lands, she tried her best to ignore it. Rumors like that would float around every few years, and in every iteration they ended up being untrue and a waste of time. She had learned to stop finding hope in those supposed maps of the unknown, and she no reason to believe that these new rumors would be any different. However, this time around seemed to stir something within her, and she struggled to keep her ear out of it and simply continue with her own life of hiding in the shadows. Perhaps because it was the first time rumors of a map started to crop up after a year of loneliness and solitude, when in the past it was always her mentor who would put a misplaced hope into one of these maps finally being the one. In his many years of life, the possibility of uncovering that unmapped part of the world would lead him to seeking out every possibility, even taking the crew on elongated journeys to get a hold of any clues and information. So as she tried to let it go and remind herself of all the times it wasn’t true, she couldn’t help the nagging thought that Elias would have wanted to know. He would have made it sure it wasn’t real. It was for that reason that, in some small shop somewhere off the coast, she hesitated before leaning over towards the shopkeeper and asking, “Sorry, did you say something about a map of the Uncharted Lands?”

What she had hoped would be a short detour ended up becoming a mystery that unraveled slowly - she had to trace back the source rumors through multiple people across different lands, before eventually starting to find the people that had supposedly possessed it and sold it off to one another for an ungodly amount of money. The further along she went, the more expensive the information became - she was far from the first person to ask a lot of people these questions, and as they got weary of telling the different travelers that came to them, she started to pass off coin to squeeze out information that they hadn’t told the travelers that came before. They all confirmed the same thing - that the map came in the form of a scroll, with a distinct dark brown scroll rod that had a wax seal on the end with a dragon design. The last individual she spoke to had cursed up a storm about a dark-haired man that had stolen it from him, and that the guy had last mentioned that he would be docking in Ashe Lenore.

Getting a spot on different ships, pirate or otherwise, was not too difficult. Pirates in particular don’t exactly ask for much from you - she would mention that she was a practicing navigator, and most of them would take her in for as long as she wanted with no questions asked. She joined up with a small crew that was sailing to Ashe Lenore, and quickly abandoned them upon docking to traverse the city of Alorion. It was a lot of ground to cover, and she wanted to try to find the dark-haired man before he skipped town or sold the map off to someone else.

Alorion proved to be exactly like what the rumors said it to be; it wasn’t exactly the definition of high society. Despite being Ashe Lenore’s capital, a majority of the town was disorganized marketplaces and seedy back deals. It was an easy way to sell off the map with hardly a trace, which made her start to worry that maybe finding this thing was impossible after all.

As the day faded to evening, she had glanced through the window of a tavern in passing, and she saw a scroll sticking out of a back pocket. Holding her breath, she froze and looked again - the man, with wavy dark hair leaning against the counter, and a scroll rolled up in a dark wooden rod, with a stamped red wax seal on the end. Though the angle wasn’t in her favor, she could see within the wax seal a curved tail of a dragon peeking through.

When Kestrel, lord of Usthar and a royal pain in the ass, hired Varth to retrieve an important item, Varth hadn't expected the job to be very difficult. Yet, the harder it was to find this mysterious scroll, the more insistent Kestrel had become, the more he began to wonder: was this scroll worth more than whatever fee Kestrel would pay for his services? He was willing to make that gamble, even if it added Kestrel and his men to his ever growing list of enemies.

He had spent too much of his time hunting down the scroll to simply hand it over. Though he knew it had to be something of substance, he felt relatively underwhelmed when he studied it. It was a map, this much he knew. Or at least, he assumed. It contained markings he had never seen nor understood. For all he knew, it was just some sentimental nonsense Kestrel wanted back.

He was dedicated, or perhaps desperate, to find out what exactly this scroll was and why a lord was willing to spend a pretty penny on getting it. When Varth stepped foot in Alorion, it was the closest he felt to being home. He had made countless deals there with many walks of life - thieves, pirates, traders, and more. It was his source of good coin, but even better information.

When the body of another collided into him, he stumbled a bit and glanced at the woman who mumbled a quick apology. Varth reached out and grabbed her wrist before she could walk away, that painfully annoying smirk of his finding his lips as he made eye contact with her. "Are you now?" Careful fingers reached into her sleeve and felt the scroll she attempted to steal. Exactly as he hoped. "You don't seem too sorry to me."

It had been part of his plan, even if it was a half-assed one. Alorion crawled with thieves who'd sell anything for a quick coin, but it also contained some rather knowledgeable people. With the scroll so blatantly on display in his back pocket, he had hoped someone would try to take it from him. He had hoped someone knew what it was. "It's not very polite to take from strangers. Have you no manners?" Varth retrieved the scroll and held it up in display.

At least, that was his thought going into it. He hadn’t been in the state for twenty four hours yet, and he heard her voice outside his door. At first, he didn’t move from his spot, and considered pretending that he hadn’t heard her. Then the door pounding started picking up. Then the yelling.

With a deep, irritated sigh, he got up and made his way over to his hotel door, flinging it open.

“What do you -” His exclamation came to a halt as soon as he realized Chey was standing in front of his door in only a towel. He closed his eyes, his tone going from angry to resigned. “Explain.”

"Let me in," she grumbled, not particularly feeling like standing in the hallway any longer than necessary. Letting out a huff of defeat knowing he truly needed her to explain, she spoke fast above a whisper. "I just got out of the shower and the room service I ordered was left at the door. I stepped out to grab it and the door closed behind me. I need to borrow your phone to call the front desk. Okay there, now you know the story, now will you let me in or shall I stand naked in this hall all night?"

Without letting him answer, she invited herself in and and moved past him. The blonde made a beeline to the phone on his bedside table and called down to the lobby to explain her situation. When they explained they were tied up at the desk and that’d it be better if someone could retrieve the key or wait, her eyes hesitantly glanced at Matt. She hung the phone up slowly with a sigh and thinned her lips once again. Now she needed another favor. Lord, help her. She smiled slowly, the kind of smile was painfully forced and trying to be suddenly polite. “So… do you have some clothes I can borrow? Or would you like to go down to the front desk for me?” She didn’t even give the option to wait. That was the last thing she needed - her in nothing but a towel waiting in his hotel room. Tegan would have a fucking field day if she saw.

Hanna could feel the way she went stock-still as Will explained the accident - what had happened to Sully, to Luke’s health and his leg. She could feel the way she started to manually breathe as immediate sorrow washed through her, thinking of how devastating all of this must have been for Luke. Entwined with the sorrow was a sense of guilt - she had chosen to break things off, knowing how deep he was in his addiction. It had taken her years to be able to sleep at night, without the panic attacks that would come with the worry that something horrible had happened to him, somewhere. She tried to eliminate the guilt that rose up in the back of her throat, now - even though she was listening to all her worries come to fruition.

After Will explained, and he answered her questions (Any word from Sully’s family? How is the recovery going? Will he be able to walk again?), she realized her attempt to hold her tears back was quickly failing. She blinked quickly and brushed a tear off her eyelashes. “God, sorry.”

Hanna could hear her sister’s voice in her head now, telling her that this was the part where she told Will thanks for letting her know, and best of luck with Luke’s recovery. And she could also sense her sister’s inevitable eye roll as Hanna responded with the only thing that came to her mind. “Okay. What can I do to help?”

Luke didn't deserve second chances. He didn't deserve a lick of kindness from possibly the kindest woman on this earth. Will knew this, but also knew that there was hope… There was hope that maybe Luke could become a man worth forgiving.

Her quick willingness to help had Will feel a twinge of guilt. The man knew if he shared his brother's sob story that the woman would feel inclined to do something - it was in her blood. He knew he wouldn't try to convince her to do anything, but also knew she'd need no convincing. That was the lingering lawyer in him playing dirty with the facts, and for that he felt guilty. But he was doing this for Luke, even if it was wrong to accept any help from someone who was so scorned by him.

"You don't need to do anything," he started and shook his head lightly. It was the truth. She didn't need to. There was no obligation whatsoever. "He's just in a bad place right now. Not like before… with the drinking and the pills. This is different… I think for the first time in years he's having to really sit with himself and it's killing him."

Will took in a breath and did his best to speak delicately. "You are not tied to him. You owe him nothing. But I just wanted to say that I think seeing you may do the man some good. He might not deserve that, but he needs it." With the shrug of his shoulders, he sighed and knew he was doing what any good big brother would do. Dragging Hanna back into their lives was not an easy thing for him to do, but he would for Luke. "The choice is completely yours. I felt like you at least would have wanted to know."

Seeing him was like hearing the sounds of laughter mixed with waves crashing against the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, no matter how many years has passed. Ella had told him that before, she was sure - as she fell asleep against him in their bed, once upon a time. It felt like that when she used to see him every day, through thick and thin; and it felt exactly the same now, when she rarely saw him at all.

Their check-ins had become a bit less frequent the past couple years, not for any particular reason outside of circumstance. But when she saw the wedding invitation come through for an old mutual friend from Yale, she couldn’t help but text him to see if he was going - and she wasn’t surprised at all to learn that he was.

There was a large part of her that was reluctant to go, having to brave seeing old friends and classmates she hadn’t seen for at least a decade, not having a plus one to help be a social buffer, and all of the attendees knowing about Ella and Will. But, the bride was one of the few Yale connections Ella still held close to her heart - so, she was brave, and she went.

After braving the drive to upstate New York, and managing to find a dress that fit the wedding’s maroon color scheme, Ella now found herself wandering and socializing at the wedding reception area. The wedding was at an outdoor venue, and as the weather was starting to cool, the space was surrounded by trees in varying shades of red, orange and yellow. She drifted through the same repeating conversations in the midst of cocktail hour, trying her best not to look specifically for a particularly tall and familiar individual, until finally she saw him. She hadn’t realized the breath she had been holding, expecting to see him out of the corner of her eye hand-in-hand with someone else. The relief, selfish as it was, was immediate once she saw he was standing on his own.

Seeing him was like the sound of laughter and waves hitting the shore, and the feeling of home - but it also came with a slight sting; a wave of bittersweetness. With a quick excuse out of her current conversation, she made her way over to him. As she came up from behind him, she saw an orange leaf had landed perfectly on his shoulder. With a slight reach, she plucked it off his blazer, and as their eyes met she smiled up at him. For a beat, they just stared at each other before words came back to her. “Hi.”

So, yes. He agreed to attend the wedding only with the hope of seeing his ex-wife.

People gravitated to Will whenever he arrived, as they often did back in college. That was the Edwards charm at play. He did his best to keep the small talk small so he could actually see if Ella decided to attend or ditch at the last moment. He was in the middle of nodding his head mindlessly as an old colleague went on about a good investment they had just made whenever he finally saw her. She was a maroon vision in the midst of an autumn color explosion. He had always thought she was beautiful, but now it was different. He was taken away by her.

He patted his old colleague's shoulder and mumbled a few congratulatory words before moving past him. With each stride towards Ella, he felt his chest tighten. Happiness, sadness, love, and hurt. It always happened when he saw her - every emotion that came with knowing and loving Ella Lin. She plucked a leaf from his blazer as they met and a smile tugged on his lips. He was fighting every instinct he had to not pull her into an embrace. It truly was second nature - but it had been some time since they had seen each other, let alone spoke to one another. Baby steps.

"Hi," he replied simply, that smile of his growing. "You look beautiful." He looked at her for a moment longer than he meant and realized the blood rushing to his cheeks likely mirrored the maroon of her dress. He stepped a bit closer and leaned in to whisper. "I thought you ditched for a minute there and left me to deal with these people alone." Though the actual bride and groom were great old friends, everyone else seemed rather… insufferable. Then again, that's what he gets for socializing with fellow Yale students.

Cohen's comments about the quality of the eggs made them suddenly taste like...well, maybe he was right and they had been sitting out too long. Despite cooking for a living, sometimes she just ate whatever was in front of her without thinking much of it.

She grimaced through her last bite of her egg before looking down at the plate full of them, shivering to herself and putting the plate to the side. As Cohen ranted, her mind wandered to the fact that she really did love Halloween, and normally it didn't feel like...this. Eating clammy eggs at a crappy party. Halloween meant themed bars, or going to places decked out in costume for the hell of it.

After a momentary pause, Liv slowly turned to him and replied like she discovered the cure for cancer. "Dude, let's just...leave."

"I didn't really consider that as an option." But it was one - a great one, even. He wanted nothing more than to get away, even if that meant no longer being able to keep an eye on his bedroom and if any random freak stepped foot in there.

Letting it sit with him a bit longer, he stood up suddenly and scoffed as if he just had the great idea. "Dude, let's just leave!"

The first was that she didn’t realize how long it had really been since she had seen Luke and his family. She’d thought about Luke often since she had last seen him - more often than she liked to really admit - and she had acknowledged the days, then weeks, months, and years as they passed by with a very Luke-sized hole in her life. Even now, as that hole started to patch up, the stitches and the gaps they failed to fill continued to live within her periphery, no matter how hard she tried not to see it.

Seeing Will now suddenly made the years feel more real than they were, and it made her heart ache. Though subtle, he looked a little different, a little older. She wondered how different she looked to him now, or if he felt like nothing about her had changed.

The other realization was that seeing Will triggered an immediate fear that something horrible had happened, and that worry was quickly eclipsing the joy she felt in seeing someone that was warmly familiar. She realized she was blankly staring at him for a brief moment before words came back to her.

“Will - hi!” Her voice showed both her shock and joy of seeing him, but was a bit higher pitched in a way that was clearly anxiety ridden. The smile on her face was instinctual once she had recognized him, but was now starting to feel like it was plastered onto her face. “I didn’t expect to see you, it’s been so long!”

She stood still for a moment before opening her door wider. “Please come in - how are you?”

"I'm sorry to drop in like this," he told her sincerely. "I was in the neighborhood." Not exactly a lie - he was in the neighborhood... he just happened to be there for her.

He stepped inside her home and resisted the urge from pulling her into a bear hug. His tall frame towered over her in the doorway and he gave her another smile. Deciding to put her out of her misery, he lingered there and gave a small nod. "He's okay." Alive, yes. Okay? The jury was still out. That's why he was here.

"You have a minute to talk? I promise I won't stay long. I just wanted to... I don't know. Catch up."

emma stone & jennifer lawrence

She sat on the bench out on the porch, enjoying the brisk air outside and the significant lack of partygoers as she picked her finger foods off her skeleton-themed party plate. As she felt Cohen plop down beside her, she didn't need to look up to know it was him as he started his rant. She fought down a laugh mid-bite. "Someone said you were Rick Astley?" A small laugh escaped her as she shook her head. "Could be worse. You could've been called a janitor - not speaking from experience or anything. I've come to the conclusion that these are all Noel's friends."

Noel was their roommate who, essentially, has lived under a rock. He had the pop culture knowledge of a Victorian child, which was just as painful as it was hilarious for Liv and Cohen. She looked over at him. "Okay, consider this - maybe you and pumpkin girl weren't meant to meet under the same circumstances a second time. Maybe she's just as much of a Halloween hater as you are, and you two are destined to meet again in, like, a coffee shop or something when the two of you aren't expecting it. It would be a much better love story that way." She pointed at him with a deviled egg in hand. "If it's meant to be, it's meant to be. Also, don't shit talk Halloween."

Real love was when it got hard.

"I feel bad for Noel," he feigned sympathy, "It must be so hard to have two roommates with amazing taste and perfect opinions." And then, without even saying anything more, he stuck his knuckles out for her to touch.

Not able to help himself, he stole the deviled egg in her hand and popped it into his mouth. An immediate grimace found his face. "God, why is clammy? How long have those been sitting out?" As if it was her fault that he chose to steal her snack.

Reluctantly swallowing it, he sighed and looked around at the party. "Look, Halloween is fun. Or at least it used to be. Now I feel like it's just another night that comes and goes. Are we really gonna remember three years from now about that night we ate clammy eggs at our roommate's party while no one understood our 80's themed costumes?" Though it was meant to be a rhetorical question, he pondered it for a moment. "Well, maybe we will because I'm pretty sure that has food poisoning written all over it... Still. I just wish this night was a little more exciting."

And, admittedly, she had also ducked and ran away - expeditiously.

In the midst of her career shift and her quest to do the kind of work that made her love music in the first place, Hanna had signed up for this music instructor role at the last minute. It felt like a good way to take some time away, to think, to do something fun for the first time in a while. She had expected to see some more familiar faces from the local music community, but surprisingly found herself not recognizing any of the staff. Almost.

To his credit, she knew it was kind of her fault that they started off on the wrong foot. If she'd mentioned she was a violist earlier in their last (and only) conversation, he wouldn't have dug himself into such a deep hole about his opinion on her life's work. And, running into each other at a place where they were unexpectedly going to work together wouldn't have been awkward.

As the different instructors started to socialize around the cabins, it didn't take too long for him to recognize her and flag her down. Despite the instincts to run away again, she smiled sheepishly and made her way over to his little corner.

"Hey," she echoed him with a small smile. As she came to a stop in front of him, she shrugged, pretending to barely remember their previous encounter. "Oh, yeah, that - don't even worry about it. I didn't take it personally anyways."

She let the unconvincing lie sit for about one second before pursed her lips and shook her head. "Okay, well, that's not true. But, I've had plenty of time to process the criticism. So no worries - really."

All in all, it was far from his finest moment and now here they were again. Stuck in the damn wilderness together, of all places. 

Nodding his head to her words, he took them in and then did his best to deflect the situation to something lighter. “Yeah, sorry, I have this condition where I turn perfectly good moments into awful ones. I’m thinking about getting cards made. Y’know, so I can hand one to someone in advance so they’re properly warned.” Apologies were never his strong suit. Making light of it was. 

Putting his free hand out for her to playfully shake, he decided to recite what this card would read off. “Connor Rose. Turning lemonade into lemons since 1988.” A half smile appeared on his lips and he flicked some ash away. Which, smoking in this highly flammable area was likely just another bad impression. “Anyway, you’re here of all places. Must mean you’re not all that bad.” He was joking. Well, half-joking.