#geniusidict

Just because it was new, didn’t mean it was good.

Cheryl having bought the piece because her own old was busted down in the rioting of the Southside. When Ghoulies ran free and the whole place burned, her beautiful little bike had met its sad end at the hands of some goon with a baseball bat and a painted face, with spikes on his collar and anger in his heart. And she’d been there, fighting, pulling him off a little too late to make good of what had happened, the madness, paramount, everything burning, burning, BURNING!!! And when it was over, her paramour had arrived, a new bike gifted, but her heart still swollen, wondering what it’d take to make something so shiny and lovely, actually her own, when she knew she was most comfortable with the broken down mechanics of something borrowed, something used.

He’d get it; Lip at the garage today, having called ahead to get the schedule. Wheeling in what was brand new and untouched, save the ride she’d taken to get here. Knowing it’d earn a few strange looks, who ever had the cash for a piece like this unless you were high up? And she, well, she knew her place, regardless of the lineage that ran within her veins. “Ey, Gallagher.” a-yo, she called, her grin fixed but her eyes a little weary, patting the seat upon which she’d been sitting on gently. Not sure still what to think of expensive gifts that she couldn’t repay, of the lovely things, that felt strange in her life.

“I got you a new toy to play with. Think you can tell me if everything is up and good? You never know what those fucking sharks are gonna sell you on the lot.” letting him come by as she hopped up on the edge of a working table, clearing the debris out of the way first with a cocksure grin that didn’t match how she felt inside. His head still a mess of unruly curls and terrible self care, head shaking slightly. “How the fuck do you get out of the house without your sister attacking you to use a comb, I’ll never know.” 

                            you’re giving me a million reasons

Opening her locker, Clandestine had gotten used to the cascade of notes that fell out, ever since she’d been included in the infamous book. It hadn’t mattered to her social circle that they were only rumors and that Chuck and his crew had been outed as liars. They never looked at her the same. The notes generally held a single word, but filled with as much malice as someone could intend. Slut. Whore. Bitch. She was used to those, maybe receiving multiple a day. Yet, there was a new one today when she opened one of the small pieces of parchment. Serpent. She stared at this one as long as she could before crushing it in her hands and throwing it away along with all the others. She wished she could burn them instead. 

Dealing with all the hate filled stares targeted at her in the common room, the classrooms, and the halls of Riverdale, Clandy could feel herself breaking. It was as if she was standing on a thin sheet of ice and she was just waiting for it to break completely. She needed to get out of Riverdale High and she needed to do it right away. There was one person she knew she could talk to. Well, one person that would actually care. Lip, and she had no idea how to find him. All she knew was that he was on the South Side. 

The South Side was the one place Clandy had been finding solace in recently. Her father had reconnected with her and was making some sort of effort, whether she really accepted or not. She wasn’t quite sure yet, but she was glad to have a parent who didn’t hate her. 

As she wandered around, she focused on trying to find her friend. Lip had only been at Riverdale for a year, but he had shown her compassion and friendship when nobody else had. So for some reason, she felt she needed to find him. She needed to talk to him, maybe cry and yell and scream and just have him there. She needed to stop feeling so…numb. 

After wandering into the trailer park, Clandy had basically given up, but she had one more option. Yelling his name and hoping that somehow, he would hear her, because she couldn’t being alone for much longer. “LIP,” the scream of his name left her throat feeling raw, but it almost felt good. She needed to scream, whether she knew it or not.

Bo hurried down the hall of the university’s science building to where Lip’s class was. She didn’t have class until later in the afternoon and this just couldn’t wait until after when she’d see him after both their classes had ended for the day. Her body was humming with excitement. She bit her lip and paced outside the classroom door, tugging her tank along behind her and shaking out her free hand as she rehearsed what she was going to say and how.

They had been trying for two months to have a baby, doctors after appointments trying to get it to stick and Lip had been a real hero to Bo. They weren’t dating but when he found out Bo really wanted a baby well he stepped up to the plate and honestly, Bo couldn’t pick a better partner or baby dad for her little one. Lip went to everything with her and he was there every time it failed, all three times, but this time she had good news. News that just couldn’t wait.

Class let out and students began pouring from the doors, Bo in the middle trying to watch both waves at once for any signs of her best friend. “Lip!” she shouted when she spotted him turning to probably head to his next class. Bo ran right up to him and collapsed into him, wrapping her arms around him tightly and squealing excitedly as she squeezed him. She pulled back with a brilliant smile on her face.

The party was busy and the music making the walls shake. It was your average teenage party and Carlson was bored out of her mind. The music wasn’t her favorite and although she nursed a beer, she didn’t find the party particularly enticing. The only reason she was here was because Lip said he was going but she hadn’t seen him. She nursed her drink and turned around, jumping with a squeak when another student whom she tutored appeared behind her, smirking down at her as she frowned up at him.

“You’re looking particularly sexy tonight, tryin to impress me?” he asked quirking a brow and she rolled her eyes, guys like Tyler were the reason she swore off high school boys and started sleeping around with college professors and businessmen. 

“Any girl in a skirt impresses your small mind, Tyler,” she smarted, “I’m so not interested in you that words cannot describe my level of disinterest.” She looked around and went to walk past the man when he stepped in front of her.

“Don’t be that way baby, come on, come dance with me,” he said reaching up to tuck a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear. She frowned and swatted at his hand.

“I’ll say it slower since English and you don’t get along. NOT. INTERESTED.” She went to move around him but Tyler grabbed her wrist causing her to spill her beer as he pulled her back. “Have you ever sang falsetto, Tyler? Because if you don’t let me go in five seconds you’ll be singing soprano for at least a week.”

–– @geniusidict

Good things don’t happen to Emily Hayes -- that was a well established fact, cemented in fact into every aspect, every facet of her life. Wealth had come with benign neglect, marriage with abuse and violence, and motherhood with death. Everything good had inevitably been followed with something terrible, something soul-crushing that had changed and broken her in ways that she could not mend. It was of course no surprise then that she was still waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop in her relationship with Lip Gallagher. He had come as a planned one-night stand, one she had anticipated to regret because he was her patient and held the possibility and power to destroy her career –– the only thing she had left to hold onto with a vicious determination to not be destroyed.

But he’d continued reappearing in her life until she was sure she never wanted to let him go, until she knew that he wasn’t just a one-night stand or a good fuck (yes, he was definitely good) when she needed to forget. Lip Gallagher was someone she fell in love with –– against all odds, against the statistics of her life and the calculations she’d made about the probability of her future. She’d fallen in love, honest, true and head-over-heels cliché love, for a south side kid that her parents would gawk at, and whose family would have them mortified. Emily had fallen in love with his family though, not over-night, nor they with her (with the exception of the littlest Gallagher, her Liam), but she had never felt so blessed. 

It was a new sensation, having a family that cared and while his family were their own unique strain of chaotic, Emily –– even given her contrary up-bringing –– had fallen into their rhythm quickly. 

Lip had proven to be one of the most stable relationships she’d ever had, which in itself was astounding considering their beginning, considering they’d first met as doctor-patient in the Emergency Room of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital. It was something she was still surprised to be on the receiving end of, a man that loved her as much as she did he, someone intelligent and witty and fun. It helped that he didn’t beat the shit out of her or regularly find his way into the bed of another woman. No, he was no where near what she’d had before, no one even brushed the sides of what he was to her.

But as things seemed to go for, whenever Emily was happy, there was always something waiting to pummel her back to earth. This time, it appeared in the form of a small white stick, decorated after five minutes by two bold lines –– her worst nightmare. Pregnancy hadn’t been a wonderful experience for her the first two times she’d endured it, one had ended in tears and the other had ended in her beautiful Gracie –– and that had of course had ended in absolute, heartbreaking ruin. This time, she was sure, would be no exception and the thought of medical intervention, an abortion, before Lip had a chance to find out briefly filtered through her mind, until of course the vast majority of her conscience mutinied against the idea. 

A baby –– if her hostile uterus even let it reach that stage.

Delicate hands ghosted over the flat expanse of her stomach and for a moment everything was quiet, the calm before the proverbial storm –– and that thing hit in a tsunami of feeling. Her stomach twisted, turned and had her breakfast doing the electric slide before it rose up her throat and into the toilet bowl, her knuckles white with the grasp she had on the porcelain. A fucking baby. How it had happened was beyond her, she was safe; always cautious and as far as she had known, her body had made this scenario impossible. Obviously not, chided the self-deprecating part of her mind, and Emily spent the next five minutes emptying the contents of her stomach. 

When she was sure the initial nausea had past, she stood on shaky legs and brushed her teeth. Lip was in the next room, presumably fast asleep and Emily was still trying to wrap her mind around the fact that there was something taking refuge in her womb. The honey blonde was tired of the things life continued to throw at her, exhausted by the brief glimpses into happiness before it was torn away from her –– and Lip, he was young and she was sure this hadn’t been what he’d had in mind when he’d agreed to love her. No one signed up for the constant torment of her life, it was very possibly why very few stayed.

Their bedroom was lighter than it had been when she’d made a bee-line for the bathroom three hours ago, the sun was reaching tentative hands through the cracks in the curtains and the man she loved was splayed where she’d left him, wrapped in expensive white sheets. Their bedroom –– the one they’d agreed to share when Lip had agreed to move into her recently acquired apartment –– was a mess of clothing, memoirs of last night. Emily toed a blouse to the side, moved to stand at the end of the bed and admire him for a moment longer, because in those three hours spent trapped in the bathroom, she’d all but convinced herself he’d turn and leave at the news. 

Still, the obligation to tell him sat in her throat like a lump of coal.

Lip began to stir and Emily was overcome with instant regret. She should have conjured another way to tell him, one that would prepare him and ease him into the news of potential parenthood, but now it was too late for clever ideas. When arctic eyes opened to meet hers, wincing against the bright of the morning, Emily pursed her lips and tapped an anxious toe against the carpet. Her lips squeezed together hard, teeth biting down on the inside of her mouth to stop the tears that had gathered in the curves of golden-green eyes from eventuating past her lashes. The offensive little stick was still held between her thumb and forefinger and she held it out as if it had personally offended her –– which it had.

Standing there in nothing but her sleep-shirt, she’d never felt so exposed.

For a long minute, a silently deafening minute, Emily couldn’t get anything out. When she did, it was a quiet and strangled.