Fidelity

[The Delaney Twins]

ooc1: Guys, this should have been posted 6 months ago, I apologise. It's set pre-Listen to the Rain on the Roof but after the Hallowe'en Party.
ooc2: Separate replies again, as I have no self-control XP
ooc3: Yes, you guessed it, it is ridiculously long.

Lynn got approximately three minutes’ sleep the night after the Hallowe’en party.
The boots had come off her aching feet, and her hair had been pulled out of the unnatural plait and lay in unusual kinks around her face, and the makeup had been washed off and the freckles were on full show again, and the costume had been replaced by her rumpled Beatles pyjamas, But, for all intents and purposes, she might as well have not left the common room, might as well have just stayed there in the exact same position all night long. After all, her body may have left that place, but her mind hadn’t stopped vibrating around that place, those few minutes, those words.
The first couple of hours she spent trying to wrap her head around what had happened. Time didn’t make it any easier to get used to the idea – Russ had asked her out. Russ had asked her out.
No matter how many times she repeated the words to herself in the moonlight, the idea didn’t get any easier to handle.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting when she’d gone to the party, but it hadn’t been that. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting when she’d started talking to him, but it hadn’t been that. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting when he danced with her, but, Jesus Christ, it had not been that.
She’d never expected this.
From day one, after all, had she not figured it out? The first time she met him, what had her first thought been? He’s out of your league; you don’t have to be careful here. And, Christ, she’d stuck to that, hadn’t she? She hadn’t been careful at all. She’d flirted with him – she didn’t like thinking about it that way, but that must have been what it was – she’d joked with him, and then she’d… Well. That part didn’t even bear thinking about.
But that was the point. She shouldn’t have had to think about it. It was all a joke. It was just what she and Russ did. It was just having fun, it was just being friends. Everyone joked with their friends; maybe not in that exact same way, but still.
She’d never thought he could have been serious. After all, if he’d been serious, should he not have got seriously pissed with her by now? Should he not have thrown in the towel long ago, with every passing week that his smutty comments were met with a smutty remark right back? Instead of her going weak at the knees, or being shocked, or… she didn’t know. Slapping him or something. Whatever girls were expected to do in situations like that.
She’d just thought that it was fun. That they were joking. She’d never really thought that Russ was interested – she knew they were friends, obviously, and that he cared about her that way, but she hadn’t thought that he was serious. And the more ridiculous the jokes got, the more certain she was that that was the case.
Apparently, she had been lured into a false sense of smutty security.
And the more she thought about it the less sure she was exactly why she had thought he hadn’t been serious. And she got pissed with herself, because the only reason that she could think of was that that idea had stayed in her head, that he was ‘out of her league’. And Lynn didn’t like that. She didn’t like thinking that she’d been so effing obtuse just because she’d been convinced that a guy like Russ wouldn’t be interested in a girl like her. Or, rather, like a guy who looked like Russ wouldn’t be interested in a girl who looked like her.
That wasn’t flattering to anyone involved, that assumption. For a start, Lynn didn’t think that Russ was that shallow. She didn’t. Maybe she’d just had it ingrained in her from an early age, that men who looked like Russ and who behaved like Russ were only after one thing, and that one thing was preferably to come from some sort of femme fatale, not the speckled Scottish soldier who walked her bloody dog with him every morning. Because obviously every single attractive man on the planet who’d had a few girlfriends had the exact same predictable personality.
And the second thing that bothered her was how it reflected on herself. Lynn didn’t think that she was ugly. She didn’t think that she was drop-dead gorgeous, the most beautiful woman to grace the earth, but she didn’t think that she looked like some kind of ogre, either. And even if she did, it shouldn’t have bothered her. Lynn’s self-respect didn’t derive from what she looked like, it came from what she did, which was entirely more important, in her book. She respected herself for who she was, and her face wasn’t supposed to be anything to do with that. It wasn’t supposed to be a factor in her dàmn relationships.
And, as it was, she didn’t even have issues with her appearance. She liked her eyes and her mouth and her hair; she didn’t like her freckles or her nose or her chin. Three versus three. That was half and half. How much more bloody balanced could you be?
Just because she liked all of Russ’s face didn’t mean that she had to go and get all weird about her own.
And that, of course, led nicely into what she started thinking about after the first couple of hours were done, after she’d figured out why she was so surprised and after the idea had started to make sense.
The thing was that it wasn’t just Russ’s face that she liked. His face was the least of her concerns. It wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg; it was a snowflake balanced on the tip of the iceberg. She liked a lot of things about him.
She liked how he smiled at her when she met him in the entrance hall in the morning.
She liked that it would take all the soap in Bristol to clean his mouth from the language he used.
She liked the way he laughed. Or just his voice in general, really.
She liked that he smelled of cigarettes. (She liked how, when it came to him, she liked things that she would have hated in anyone else.)
She liked the fact that he was utterly shameless. And cocky. And said the most inappropriate things, the like of which she’d only ever otherwise heard out of her own mouth.
She liked the panic that had been in his eyes after he’d asked her out, even though she was sure it had been met with the exact same emotion from her.
She liked the way his arms had felt around her when they had danced.
And she was sure that she would like the way that his lips would feel against hers.
This last realisation came as her alarm clock started beeping at six-thirty, and her hand shot out to switch it off as she sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake despite her lack of sleep and heart thumping madly.
That was… unexpected. That was even less expected than his asking her out. That was the last thing that she would ever have imagined.
But it was still true.
She moved to the edge of the bed, legs dangling over the side and arms placed on the side of the mattress, fists squeezing the material hard. She couldn’t stand up yet. Her mind was reeling.
Lynn… wanted him. She guessed that was how to express how she felt, although she doubted that, if she said it out loud, people would understand what she meant. That was usually taken to be a physical thing, wasn’t it? Just physical, just sex, nothing else.
That wasn’t what Lynn meant. She wanted him, she wanted Russ Ford, and she couldn’t just want Russ physically. Russ wasn’t a face to her, he wasn’t some sort of personality-less entity of attractiveness. He was her friend already, he was one of her best friends, and she had already wanted him in that way; she’d wanted him there, she’d wanted him to keep laughing with her and she wanted to know more about him, but as a friend, and with a friend’s boundaries.
So, really, her wanting him wasn’t wanting him, in a sense, it was wanting more of him. It was wanting to take a sledgehammer to those boundaries and scatter them to the four winds.
But the very notion of tearing down those boundaries, those defences, utterly terrified her.
And the scariest thing was that this feeling didn’t feel new. It didn’t feel like it was different. It just felt like it was acknowledged. It was out in the open, now, but it must have been hidden for a lot longer. And how long had that been?
Lynn didn’t think she wanted to know.
And the sign on the clock said 6:37, and she knew that she would have to get up soon, get Terry, get her kit on and go down and meet him, and what on earth would happen then?
If she was serious about this, this wanting, then she knew what could very well happen then. She could go and apologise to him and ask for a second chance, and, if he’d meant it when he asked her, then he’d probably give her one. After all, he’d promised that it wouldn’t be awkward, so clearly there weren’t too many grudges. And then after that… Who knew?
She’d be waltzing right into the unknown, and, while the idea did partly exhilarate her, as a general rule Lynn didn’t like that. She didn’t like being unprepared. She didn’t like being unsure, and with this, right now, she couldn’t say she was sure. She knew a hell of a lot more than she had last night, but she was still lightyears away from being sure.
And so she decided, as she got up and dragged the brush back through her plait-waved hair and pulled on her jeans and her shirt and her shoes, that she wouldn’t do anything differently for now. Lynn would act exactly the same, or as close as could be expected after last night, and she would just keep him as a friend for now, keep those confining protective boundaries standing tall until she felt sure about what she needed to do.
And she could ask other people what they thought, too. That would help. That would be good; maybe an outsider’s perspective would be able to cast some light through the murky complications of this situation. Maybe her friends could help.
She could take a little survey.

[The Delaney Twins]

Jamie was not the best person to choose to go to first.
“Right, you know you’re my best friend, OK?” she said, rolling over on her bed, which was adjacent to Lynn’s own, so that she could face her.
Lynn could tell that she wasn’t going to like the way this went already, but decided not to comment on that fact. “ ‘Course, Jay.”
“Which means that I’m obviously not saying this to hurt your feelings, or anything like that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But it also means that I’m not going to not say it in case it does hurt your feelings,” Jamie said, and she seemed to take some sort of mental deep breath before continuing. “Lynn, that’s really a bad idea.”
Lynn could feel her face fall.
But that was stupid. It could have been worse. This was pretty kind, when Lynn thought about the amount of gloating Jamie could justifiably do. Considering that Lynn did ‘have a crush on Russ Ford’, as Jamie had jokingly put it so many times over the last few months, after all her denials. It could have been worse.
“I mean, think about it. You know – you know, he asked you out for dinner, yeah? And – OK, first of all, let’s presume that he meant it in the way you think he did.”
Lynn smiled, but it was a fairly pathetic attempt compared to her usual grin. “I’ll try not to take that as an insult.”
Jamie sighed. “You know I’m not trying to insult you.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry. Go on.”
“So, presuming that he meant it that way – well, fair enough, yippee, he wants to go out with you. But Lynn… God, Lynn, you have to understand, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re special to him. He’s been with dozens of other girls; I mean, clearly he’s not picky. For all you know, you’re just another whim. So you can’t know what he wants. Sure, there’s a chance that he might think you’re different and want something different, something like what I know you’ll be wanting, but if you look at his past behaviour…”
“That chance is pretty small,” Lynn finished.
“And even if you don’t consider that…”
“There’s more?”
Jamie gave her a strange look. “Of course there’s more. OK, right, suppose you ignore that, and you say yes anyway… Lynn, I don’t want to be horrible, but what does that make you? It’ll… It’ll look like you’re condoning what he does. What he did to all those other girls. Just threw them away like they weren’t worth anything to him. And really, Lynn, in some ways, you would be condoning it. I can understand how you can ignore it just being his friend, because it’s not really a friend issue. But if you become his girlfriend… It won’t matter how good he is to you, if he’s good to you. Can your conscience honestly let you be with him, be happy with him, and ignore the fact that he’s hurt so many other women before you?”
Lynn hesitated. “I didn’t think about that,” she admitted.
“I know. I’m sorry. But you have to. You really do. And even then… even if you don’t consider that…”
Lynn couldn’t help laughing. “God, Jamie, you think too fast for your own good. I’ve been thinking about this for days and I haven’t come up with half of this!”
Jamie smiled. “Would you expect anything less from an Academic from a family of lawyers? Surely it should come with the territory.”
“Sure, but it’s freaky seeing it in action, is all. Never mind. Go on.”
The smile dropped. “Even if you don’t consider that he might not want the same things as you, even if you don’t consider that you probably would want completely different things, even if you can ignore what he’s done to other people… Lynn, you’re going to have to think about what will happen to you if it ends badly.”
The way she said that if made it sound like a when.
“I mean, if you think about what happened when Cass left… I mean, Christ, Lynn, I know you’re over that now, but you were devastated for weeks. I know you. When you love, you love… fully. You put everything you have into it.” She paused. “I just… don’t want to see you putting everything you have into a relationship as dangerous as this. I mean, I know what that’s like, and when it ended… well, I felt about this tall.” She held her hand a couple of inches over the mattress on which she was lying. “And I’m pretty sure I didn’t even put half of what I had into that relationship. And if I think about it, I did what you want to do: I went into it with full knowledge of the girls he’d been with before, and wanting to be with him for his personality and thinking it would be different for me. And it bloody wasn’t, you know? People don’t change. And I don’t want that to happen to you too. You need to be careful, or…”
“I know,” Lynn said quietly. “Christ, I know, you’re right. You’re right.”
Jamie was quiet. Again, she didn’t gloat, and Lynn wanted to hug her for it.
She didn’t. She just let herself think about everything that Jamie had said. And Lynn couldn’t stop herself from coming to the conclusion that she was right.
A few seconds passed, then Lynn spoke again. “Thanks, Jamie, that’s really helped. I… Well. Thank you, anyway.”
Jamie smiled. “Any time, Lynn, you know you can talk to me about anything.”
“Yeah.”

[The Delaney Twins]

And Lynn had thought that that talk with Jamie had made her decision.
But two days later, she was already questioning it. She couldn’t find any flaws in the logic, true, but she was searching desperately for them.
Clearly she wasn’t ready to let the idea go, and so her survey continued. With the unlikely suspect, Cardo Sierra.
The unlikely suspect had an unlikely reaction.

[The Delaney Twins]

“And you said no? Heavens above, Lynn. Go back and tell him you’re an idiot. Right now,” he said, waving his hand to direct a bunch of cotton wool balls back into their drawers with his telekinesis.
Lynn blinked. “Seriously?”
He raised an eyebrow, smirked. “Surprise? Weird. Why ask, if you don’t think I’ll say you should say yes to him? He can’t be that bad.”
Lynn laughed. “No, it’s not that, it’s just – well, I talked to Jamie first, so…”
“Ahhh, I see,” he said, moving to pull a chair. He dragged it in front of where Lynn was sitting then set it down with the back facing her and straddled it. He folded his arms and set them on the backrest. “Bad?”
“Kinda. She said I’d be doing a disservice to womankind by saying yes.”
Cardo exhaled sharply through pursed lips. “Now that is harsh.”
“I know, but she argued it very convincingly.”
“Pfft, this is Jamie you’re talking about, Lynn. She could argue compulsory castration for all men who’ve ever made a mistake when it comes to their girlfriends very convincingly if she wanted to. You know what she’s like. I mean, I love her to pieces, but come on. She’s harsh; you can’t deny it. Men are people too! They make mistakes. It’s only natural.”
Lynn shook her head. “You and Jamie are never going to agree on things like this, though.”
Cardo’s smile fell a little. “Well, that depends if you compare this conversation to the conversations that we had about me. What Russ has done is different to what I did, in my book. Hell, Lynn, you know how I feel about what I did. I would have deserved the castration. But I mean – I know what she’s going on about here, about Russ and his eleventy-billion girlfriends –”
“I’m hoping that that’s an overestimate, Cards.”
“- and she told you you’d just be the eleventy-billionth-and-first, right?”
“That was the gist of it, yeah.”
Cardo pursed his lips. “OK, well, first off, don’t get pissed at her, she’s only trying to protect you. And saying that, for the love of all that is holy, don’t listen to her. She’s probably got some sort of a point, but…do you really want to give up what you’d have if it went well ‘cause of what she said? I mean, just because Russ’s had other girlfriends doesn’t mean he wouldn’t care about you. And I think Jamie’s probably blowing the other girlfriends thing out of proportion. Sometimes people can’t help it; it’s a fact of life.”
Lynn laughed. “But let’s bear in mind that Russ doesn’t have the excuse you do, Cardo.”
“Again, really not the same thing,” he said dismissively. Lynn looked down at her feet for a moment, a couple more doubts helpfully cropping up in her head to replace the ones that Cardo had just assuaged.
“Did I help then, darling?” he asked, tilting his head to one side inquisitively. “This silence isn’t encouraging.”
“No, you did help,” Lynn said quickly. “But it’s just… I’ve just thought of something else.”
Cardo grinned, the smile composed of equal measures concern and exasperation. “Come on, then. Out with it.”
Lynn smiled, but the smile was sadder than she intended. She shrugged slightly. “It’s just… I don’t know.” She looked up to meet his eyes. “What about Cass?”
Cardo’s smile fell. “Oh, Lynn, come on…”
She looked down again. “I know it’s stupid,” she said through gritted teeth.
“No, it’s not stupid, it’s just – upsetting. Lynn, you’re not seriously going to give this up for the sake of a relationship that ended seven months ago?”
“It wasn’t going to end, though, was it? Cass didn’t leave because he wanted to. He left so he could go to be with his dying mother – I mean, Jesus Christ, Cardo,” she said, her fists clenching and her voice peaking in aggravation, “I am not the one who should be moving on first here!”
“OK, OK, shhh, don’t get angry,” Cardo said, quickly switching into his carer mode as he stood up and set both his hands on her shoulder, forcing her to meet his eyes again. “Seriously. Listen to me. There’s no point in getting angry. It won’t help anything.”
“I know – I know,” she said, frustration still throbbing through her voice. “But it can’t be me. I can’t be first. It’s not fair.”
“Why isn’t it fair? Why would his moving on first be any better than you doing it? I know he didn’t want to leave you. He still did. And you agreed that you’d see other people. Why on earth should there be a problem with you actually doing it?”
“I just – Look, I know we said we’d see other people, but saying’s different from doing, y’know? And Cass was my first proper boyfriend. And it would have been easier for me to move on if it ended badly, but it didn’t, and I can’t help thinking – what the hell do I do if he comes back?”
“You’re willing to throw away a new relationship for the sake of ‘what if’?” Cardo asked incredulously. “Fine. I’ll give you a what if, then. What if Cass was here? What if you had to choose between them, right here, right now? Would you choose Cass over Russ?”
“I- ” Lynn started, and all words abandoned her as she realised that she couldn’t answer that question easily at all. A moment passed, and then she muttered, “No.” And a second after that, a louder, “No. I would still want Russ. I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.”
Cardo didn’t say anything. Another torrent of thoughts tornadoed through Lynn’s head, culminating in her bitter bark of, “Oh, God.”
“You’ve moved on already,” Cardo said quietly.
Lynn buried her face in her hands. “Oh, God, I’m a horrible person.”
“Oh, no,” he said quickly, and he hugged her. “No, you’re not. This is normal. In fact, what would have been normal in this situation would probably be for you to have pounced on Russ months ago.”
Lynn shook her head. “Cass is your best friend, Cardo, how can you say that?”
Cardo hesitated. “Because he needs to move on as much as you do, Lynn. You both need to let go of this. Or at least, I think you do. After all, if you’re meant to end up together, then it’ll work out that way no matter what anyone does. But if you go about it this way, screwing over every other chance you get… You’ll just have months of heartache and you’ll start resenting him, Lynn, you know you will. Resentment never ends well.”
Lynn was silent for a moment. He was right. He was so right. The torrent of thoughts in her head eased off and left a blessed calm in her head, one she hadn’t felt since before she’d spoken to Jamie. She took a deep breath, and pulled back from the hug. She smiled at Cardo widely. “You know, I swear to God, Cardo, you could make me feel good about committing murder.”
Cardo raised an eyebrow. “Well, good that you’re feeling good about it now, I guess. But – equating your relationship with Russ to committing murder? Now, that there, I can’t help think that that’s not a good sign.”
She laughed. “Shhhh, you know I didn’t mean that.”
“Do I? Do I really, Lynn?” he said jokingly. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is doomed to fail…”
“Cardo, seriously. Shut your face,” she said, hitting him lightly.
“I’ll take him for you, if you’d rather,” he said mock-seriously. “I mean, if it would ease your conscience about the heinous crime of starting a relationship with him, of course. I don’t want you to be consumed by the guilt.”
Lynn’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? You love him too?”
Cardo paused. “…well, all things considered, probably not. I cannot tell a lie. But let’s face it, Lynn, a lot of people do. Don’t want to miss your chance, now, do you?”
“Well, good point, Cards, I guess time is of the essence,” Lynn said. “But Christ, I’ll have my work cut out for me if I say yes, won’t I? The competition, Cardo! The girls love him, the guys – apparently – love him…”
“But Sally loves him most of all,” Cardo teased in a sing-song voice.
“Oh, shut up.”

[The Delaney Twins]

She smiled for three days straight after the conversation. But she still couldn’t forget that that was only a 50% verdict. That what Cardo had said hadn’t made Jamie’s points any less true. That he might have been wrong.
On the fourth day, she hunted down Ari. Ari was sensible. Ari would think of all the worst-case scenarios, that was what he was good at. Ari wouldn’t lie to her. Maybe Ari would know what she should do.

[The Delaney Twins]

“He asked you out?” Ari said, his eyes widening. “When?”
“The disbelief is flattering, Ari-face, seriously.”
He rolled his eyes. “Disbelief and shock aren’t the same thing. And you didn’t tell me that he had.”
“I didn’t tell anybody when it happened,” Lynn said. “I’ve been thinking about this since Hallowe’en.”
“Hallowe’en?” Ari asked. “That’s ages ago!”
Lynn’s eyes narrowed. That tone was hardly necessary. “And you’ve known Kira for how long now…?”
Ari flinched. “Um, right. Cheap shot, Lynn,” he said, looking her directly in the eye. His stare was so hurt that she felt almost bad for saying it.
“OK,” she said. “Fine. I won’t get into that… now.”
“You don’t need to get into it,” he muttered, averting his gaze again. Eye contact was a rare thing to receive from Arihant. “I would have to be deaf not to know your opinion on the matter by now.”
Lynn sighed, frustration gusting through the air. “All I’m saying is that you should talk to her about it. There’s nothing dangerous about talking to her. It’s not like I’m telling you to go up and grab her arse, or any-”
“Weren’t we talking about you?” he asked quickly. The agitated tone juxtaposed the furious heat waves that Lynn could faintly see radiating from his cheeks.
Lynn took a deep breath, focusing very hard on not continuing what she had been saying before. He was right; they had been talking about her. She could save the pep talk for another day, she guessed.
“Yes. We were. What should I do?”
Ari laughed quietly. “I can’t give you a verdict until you tell me more about it. I mean, is Ross –”
“Russ.”
The blush sprang up again. “Right, sorry.”
“It’s OK. I kind of love you for not knowing that. Means you haven’t been listening to Jamie teasing me, and that can only be a good thing.”
“Jamie,” Ari said. “Ahh, Jamie. Why don’t you go talk to her about it? I’m sure she’d be able to give you more advice than I would.”
“I’ve done Jamie. Cardo, too. It’s your turn now. You’re not getting out of it that easy,” she said.
“Dàmnit,” Ari said. “All right. Well… I mean I don’t know exactly what you think I can do. Isn’t this the sort of decision that you should make yourself?”
“Really?” Lynn said sarcastically. “Oh wow, that is a point. Maybe I should think about it myself. And here I was just twiddling my thumbs for the past two months. You eejit,” she said, lapsing back into her normal tone. “Don’t you think I would have made a decision by now if I could?”
A small smile played around Ari’s lips. “Maybe I’m against this relationship on principle. From what I can tell so far, it’s making you mean.”
“My relationship with Russ doesn’t make me mean,” she said. “You implying that I wouldn’t think to make a simple decision does.”
“OK. Right. What do you want me to do, then?”
“I want you to tell me if it’s a good idea!”
“What? How am I supposed to know? I don’t know the guy, Lynn.”
“Jamie and Cardo were able to form pretty solid opinions without knowing him,” she pointed out.
“Lynn, that’s Jamie and Cardo. Jamie and Cardo could form pretty solid opinions on a potato if it occurred to them to do so.”
Lynn laughed. “Oh, that’s awesome. Remind me to make you joke more often, Ari.”
Ari looked uncomfortable at that. “…Right. Anyway, the point is, I’m not like them, and I don’t know him.”
“I know, but you know about Russ, even if you don’t know him know him. You know about what everyone says about him. And you know me. And that’s enough for people to tell me to run screaming for the hills, apparently.”
That strange little smile played around Ari’s lips again. “Does it matter what everyone says about him? What does that have to do with you?”
“Well, if I made him my boyfriend, I’m pretty sure it would have something to do with me, Ari-face.”
“No, I mean, why does it matter? Here,” he said, turning down to face her again. “OK. I’ll ask you just one question, and if you can answer it well, then I’ll be pro-you-and-Russ-not-Ross.”
“You can call him Ross if you want. I want to see what he’d do.”
“…Yeah, not doing that. But anyway. The question: What is it that makes you want to say yes?”
Lynn hadn’t been expecting that.
Ari’s eyes crinkled a little at the corners, and he said, “Is it a hard question?”
Lynn laughed. “Not necessarily. Embarrassing, though. Just let me think for a minute.”
“I’m hoping for Ross-Russ’s sake that this is a minute to decide on the many, many personality aspects of his that you like, instead of a minute to find one.”
“Shhhh, I’m thinking,” she said.
“Well, you’re going to have to answer with something, or I won’t be able to say yes.”
She hesitated. “Fine. I don’t know. I… have fun with him? I know that sounds pathetic, but it’s true. I mean, he makes it worth it to get up at seven in the morning and wrestle a hyperactive dog out of a dorm filled with girls who will be very, very angry if they get woken up by its yapping. And it was fun that time to see that look on your face when you came over after the, uh, machine blew up. You know. That time. And it’s other things, too. Like, I mean, he reeks of cigarettes, but I don’t mind, because it’s… well, ‘cause it’s him, I guess. I know that sounds stupid. And he says the most brilliant things – oh, I don’t know. It’s just… Russ. That’s what makes me want to say yes. I want to say yes because it’s Russ who’s asking me.”
Arihant didn’t say anything for a moment. Then when he did speak, it was with a faint tone of surprise. “Wow. OK. Honestly, that was more than I was expecting. And it didn’t even mention the fact that he has half of Orchid swooning over him. I’m impressed.”
Lynn looked up at that, frowned. “You people have such a low opinion of me! I mean, seriously? Is that the only reason you can all see for me wanting to go out with him? His dàmn face? My God, I’m not that shallow. You know what, Ari? I would still be thinking about saying yes if he didn’t have a bloody face.”
Arihant’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be saying the most brilliant things and reeking of cigarettes if he didn’t have a face to do it with, though,” he pointed out in a very matter-of-fact tone.
“Well, nuh,” Lynn replied childishly.
Arihant laughed quietly, and, again, Lynn resolved to get Ari in this mood more often. It was so rare that he would talk like this, like… Like what he was discussing with Lynn was something that he would ever be capable of having.
“Lynn?” he said quietly a moment later, and, when she looked at him, he was smiling.
“Yeah?”
“I say you should go for it.”

[The Delaney Twins]

Two votes for, one against. It was obvious that the odds lay in Russ’s favour. And again, she thought that she had made her decision, so much so that, the next morning when she saw him, she came so close to telling him that she could only stop the words around a millisecond before they left her mouth.
And she was left wondering why she had stopped. She tried to do it again the next day, and the same thing happened. And then the next day, and then the next.
Then an epiphany: it was Kennedy. She realised that she couldn’t let herself start into this without asking her brother, or at least telling him. There was nothing she could do about it. It was like it was programmed into her DNA. She would have to speak to Kennedy before she could do anything.
And she wasn’t looking forward to it.

[The Delaney Twins]

“Um. OK. Right.”
This wasn’t going well. Lynn could tell already. There were a million signs. Like how he hadn’t met her gaze, kept looking firmly down at the book that he had been scrawling over. Like the way his back had stiffened as soon as she said the words. Like the way he had sounded those words so deliberately, conveying a hundred shades of discomfort and disapproval to Lynn’s finely-tuned ears.
“You don’t think it’s a good idea.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No,” he said immediately, and he set his book down. He still didn’t turn around. “When did he ask you?”
“A, uh, a while ago. Sort of… Hallowe’en-ish time.”
“Hallowe’en?” he asked. “Christ, Sally, why didn’t you tell me?”
A little spark of irritation ignited in Lynn. “Oh, I don’t know. I was considering the strange idea that I don’t need to run everything that happens to me past you, I guess. Clearly that was a stupid plan.”
“Stupid or not, it’s clearly not a plan that worked, if you’re running it past me now.”
Lynn rolled her eyes and resisted the urge to tell him to shut up. She knew that if she did that now, he would take it literally, and then she wouldn’t get a single word out of him. Either that or he’d get pissed off, in which case nothing he said would be of any use.
So she just didn’t say anything. A momentary silence, then Kennedy shut his journal, put it in his coat pocket, and turned to face her. “So he asked you out on Hallowe’en.”
“That’s pretty much what I’m saying here, yes.”
“What kind of asking out was this? Like, did he just try to kiss you or someth –”
“What? No! Christ, Kennedy. Some people do have a little more class than that.”
“I know that. A lot of people do. But I didn’t think that he –”
Lynn exhaled sharply through her nostrils. “He just asked me out for dinner, Ken.”
Kennedy nodded. “Right. And then you said…?”
“That I didn’t think it would be a good idea.”
He looked down, and shook his head. “Well, what do you know? Neither do I.”
Lynn stared at him for a moment. Then a very eloquent “Urgh” noise escaped from her lips, and she walked over to the nearest armchair and tossed herself down on it lengthways so that her legs dangled over the armrest.
“Don’t need to get pissed off, Sally,” Kennedy said, looking up again and turning to face her. “You asked me what I thought. I mean, I could lie to you, but what would be the point? You’d see right through me.”
“I know,” Lynn said through gritted teeth. “I know, I’m not pissed at you telling the truth. I’m pissed that I asked you at all.”
“…well, that makes me feel all warm and special.”
“Ken, I’m pissed that I have to ask anyone. You know what I mean? This is ridiculous. This is utterly bloody ridiculous. Four people – four! – and I still haven’t been able to make a decision. Doesn’t help that all of you have to go and contradict each other, either.”
Kennedy frowned. “Who else have you asked?”
“Jamie and Cardo and Ari.”
“You asked Ari for relationship advice?”
Lynn wasn’t rising to the bait. “Yup,” she said deliberately, popping her lips on the ‘p’.
Kennedy raised his eyebrows. “Christ. It must be bad. And Mason? What did she say?”
“Same as you.”
“Seriously?”
“I know, the two of you actually agreed on something. It’s a miracle. Let’s just ignore the fact that if I’d asked you both at the same time you would have pretended that you didn’t think the same thing just to piss each other off.”
Kennedy shrugged. “Well, who knows? Not like it matters, anyway. Not like you asked us in the same room. Or even like you asked me first,” he said pointedly.
Lynn groaned. She knew that he’d get to this part sooner or later. “I didn’t want to ask you first because I knew that you would react like this.”
“Then why’d you ask me at all?”
Shrug. “I don’t know. Because I’m an optimist? There was always a chance that I’d be wrong –”
“Aye, well, maybe about anything else, but not about my reaction to this. I don’t care if I’m predictable. I’m glad if I’m predictable about stuff like this. Sall, I really don’t like the idea, y’know.”
Lynn looked down at her hands. With her left hand she started flicking the fingers of the right irritably, one by one. “Is this like a general brotherly-protective-complex thing or is it specifically Russ?”
“Well, you tell me. Was I like this with Cass?”
“If I remember correctly, you were huffy for about a month after we started –”
“Well, yes, shut up, that’s neither here nor there,” Kennedy said quickly, his point clearly having been deflated somewhat by Lynn’s response. “But did I ever tell you it was a bad idea?”
“…no. OK, no, you didn’t do that.” Lynn started flicking her fingers with more agitation, but she kept her voice composed. “Right. So why is Russ so much more of a bad idea than Cass?”
Kennedy was silent for a moment. “Sally. No offence, but that’s bloody obvious.”
She stopped flicking her fingers, and instead clasped her hands together so hard that her knuckles went white. “I would like you to explain it all the same,” she said, and her voice was not quite as composed as it had been before.
And Kennedy could obviously tell how pissed Lynn was becoming, but he didn’t bother sugar-coating his words any in response. “Um, well, Sall, you might have noticed – Cass was a male Carer. Who couldn’t see properly. And who had noodle-arms. And who no one had a bad word to say about –”
“OK, don’t exaggerate. Someone must have – ”
“OK, well, fair enough, but if they did, then it wasn’t a bad word that got back to me, y’know? Whereas your bloke –”
“‘My bloke’?” Lynn asked, looking over at Kennedy and raising an eyebrow.
“You know who I mean.”
“You can say his name, Ken.”
“Yeah, well, whatever. The point is that he is a Warrior –”
“Oh, God, not the Warrior-complex again. So what if he’s a bloody Warrior? I know that you Spies feel threatened by us all –”
“Oi! Not true.”
“So true, and you know it is. But what difference does it make to me if he’s a Warrior? So am I, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Kennedy shook his head in exasperation. “No, really?” he said sarcastically. “I know you’re a Warrior, Sall, I know what you’re going to say. But Russ Ford,” he said, sounding slightly uncomfortable, over-pronouncing the name, “is not like the rest of the Warriors. Which is something that you might have noticed. The other male Warriors – well, I mean, a lot of them are dicks, true, but they’re all show, y’know? It’s not like they’re any risk to the rest of us –”
Lynn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But Russ is, is that what you’re saying?”
“…well, short answer: yes.”
“Oh my sweet Lord…”
“Sally, I’m serious!”
“You’re telling me not to go out with Russ because he’s dangerous?”
“Um, basically? Yeah.”
Lynn pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “Chrissake, Ken, he’s really bloody not.”
“OK, that’s not true. Everyone knows it. Like there was that time – with that Spy, what’s-his-name – when he went and attacked him in the middle of the dàmn corridor! Don’t you remember?”
Lynn sighed. “Yeah, ‘course I do. But that doesn’t mean he’s dangerous. People can have bad days, Ken. Sometimes I want to smack people up the face. And anyway, the guy he hit probably deserved it.”
Kennedy shook his head. “You can’t just assume that.”
“I bloody can! Russ isn’t dangerous. And even if he is, he’s not dangerous for me, which is all that really matters in this situation. I mean, come on, Ken, it’s not like I don’t know him, here! I am his friend.”
Kennedy shook his head. “Friend or not, I still don’t like it. I can’t like it. C’mon, can you try to understand where I’m coming from here? I mean, I’m your brother! No brother in his right mind on this earth would want his sister to go out with someone with a record like that.”
“No woman in her right mind wants to hear her brother claim that the guy she’s thinking about going out with is some sort of violent psycho!” Lynn countered.
“Awk, c’mon, please be reasonable. I mean, you’re asking me whether I think you should go out with a guy who not only has a violent history, but who’s chucked every other girl he’s dated, and who more and more people are getting pissed off with as time goes by. What am I supposed to say here? Of course I don’t!”
Lynn responded to this by staring at Kennedy for a moment, then turning her head away and folding her arms hard against her chest, looking straight ahead with a gaze of flint. “I hate this,” she said. “I bloody hate this, Kennedy. People shouldn’t see him like that. He’s not a bad person.”
“Well, yeah, maybe not to you,” Kennedy said, getting up from his seat and starting to walk across the room. “But… Just think about it. If you’re seeing things in him that no one else sees, and not seeing the things that everyone else does… Well, statistically, doesn’t it mean that – Couldn’t there be a possibility that you’re the one who’s not seeing the real him?”
“No,” Lynn said stonily.
Kennedy seemed taken aback by the immediateness and force of her reply. “But you can’t be sure about tha –”
“Yes I bloody can, Kennedy!”
He blinked. “OK. Right. There’s really no need to shout.”
“Oh, I think there is,” she snapped. “All right, you don’t want me to go out with him, that’s fine. I get that. I understand. I didn’t really think that you would, anyway. I didn’t think that you wouldn’t want me to because you think he’s going to fùcking hit me or some shìt like that, but whatever, fair enough, I can even see why you would assume that. I am being bloody reasonable here.
“But you can’t tell me I don’t know him, Ken, because that’s just not fùcking true. You can’t go telling me that the entire school’s bloody gossiping assumptions about him based on like three incidents are worth more than my seeing him every day and talking to him every day for the past three months. You know what, let the rest of the school spend that much time with him, then they can talk. You can’t be so judgemental that you go and assume you know what I’d be heading into better than I would just because you’ve listened to what people bloody say about him!”
When Lynn finished speaking, Kennedy didn’t say anything, and he didn’t keep looking at her. He folded his arms and looked away.
Time passed, and Lynn’s anger deflated with the speed and shame of a pricked balloon. And it was replaced by a swelling feeling of guilt which welled up in her throat and expanded with every millisecond that she looked at Kennedy until she could no longer take it, and, like her brother, looked away.
She wasn’t supposed to speak to Kennedy like that. She didn’t speak to Kennedy like that. And now she had, she felt about three centimetres tall, especially when she considered the fact that he probably hadn’t deserved it.
More time passed, and the silence started to grate on Lynn, and she decided to break it. “Kennedy –”
“Do you trust him?” he interrupted, his voice low and angry, and he looked over at her.
Lynn was taken aback. “What?”
“You know, I’m not trying to offend you, here. I’m not trying to make this into a fallout situation. I am trying to protect you, although, have to admit, Sall, part of me thinks I shouldn’t bloody bother, if you’re so dàmn determined. But yeah, all right, fair enough, you know the guy. God knows I’m not going to question that again. But if you know him, and you know him so dàmn well that you’re willing to blow up even over the suggestion that you don’t, then you should trust him. Then you shouldn’t have to be asking me these bloody questions. So do you trust him?”
And that was it.
That was the moment when Lynn figured out why she had been so unable to say it to Russ, tell him that she had made a mistake and she should have said yes.
It was because part of her didn’t think that she had made a mistake at all. Part of her thought that she had done the right thing.
Oh, God.
Because the thing was that she did know Russ. She knew a lot about him. But knowing and trusting weren’t the same thing. Some of what she knew was what made her feel like she couldn’t trust him completely. She knew that he was a good person and that he made her laugh and that he was a brilliant friend, but she also knew that he’d been through half the girls in her year in the space of nine little months and that he’d thrown all of them away. She knew that he had done violent things, and although she was sure that he had had his reasons, she didn’t know what those reasons were. And she didn’t know what his reasons were for wanting to go out with her. And she didn’t know what this all meant to him.
After all, he’d just been chancing his luck, hadn’t he?
And chances were that Lynn had spent the past two months thinking about something that had been just that. An offhand comment. Heat of the moment. A whim.
The idea made her feel even smaller than her snapping at Kennedy had, like she was only millimetres tall.
Lynn trusted Russ as a friend, but… no further.
And maybe if she had been someone else that wouldn’t matter. Maybe if she was braver, or if she didn’t think ahead so much, or if she didn’t care as much, then she would be able to do it anyway. But Lynn couldn’t, and Kennedy was the only person who would ever understand why.
The past that they’d shared hadn’t left them with the most trusting natures, after all.
And so she couldn’t chance her luck with Russ. She didn’t trust him enough. She couldn’t do it.
And this realisation tumbled through her head in the space of a few silent seconds, and then she shook her head, gritted her teeth, and said, “No.”
A few more silent seconds. Then Lynn looked down, feeling too ashamed to look over at her brother. “Kenny, I’m sorry, you didn’t deserve... You didn’t say anything wrong. I’m sorry. I was just… confused,” she said quietly.
Silence, then a sigh. “…Well, if this is how you do confusion, Sally, you can keep the hell away from me next time you do a crossword,” he grumbled. But he uncrossed his arms, and his voice was more gentle now.
Lynn shrugged embarrassedly, and wrapped her arms around her own chest, suddenly feeling very bereft, which was ridiculous, because she hadn’t lost anything, not really. And she knew it was for the best.
It had to be for the best.
Seeing Lynn’s protective motion, Kennedy sighed again, and held out his arms. “C’mere.”
And Lynn got up from her seat and moved across to sit beside him, and he put one arm around her as she laid her head on his shoulder. And she didn’t say anything, because she knew she didn’t have to. She knew that they were thinking about the same thing. After all, in the trust issue department, Kennedy had it at least as bad as she did, if not worse. Chances were that something like this was going to happen to him someday, too.
After a few minutes, she decided to send a wave message. We’re screwed, aren’t we?
Not necessarily, Kennedy answered after a minute. I mean, yeah, we are now, definitely, but…well, you never know. It might get easier some day.
Lynn snorted disbelievingly.
It might! We could make it easier. We could try. I just… I think that making it easier is the sort of thing that needs to be done with someone who regular people wouldn’t be apprehensive about saying yes to. Who wouldn’t be dangerous in the best of circumstances. You know what I mean?
She nodded, and began speaking aloud again. “Yeah, Ken, I do. I know. But I think I’ll have to leave it for a while. I think I’ll need to get over Russ first. Or, well, the idea of him, anyway.”
Kennedy nodded. “Well, that’s fair enough.”
“I think so too.”
A pause. “You gonna be all right, Sall?”
She smiled. It was a sad smile, but it was a smile all the same. “’Course, Kenny. Don’t you go worrying about that. I’ll be fine.”
And he smiled sadly too. Well, you’d better.

[The Delaney Twins]

Lynn got approximately three minutes’ sleep the night before Christmas.
In the three minutes’ sleep that she did get, she dreamed.
And it wasn’t like her other dreams, half-conversations and meeting the Beach Boys and flying and battle training and living on the moon. This dream had no precedent. This dream was bizarre.
The people in this dream had no eyes. Every person in the dream acted entirely normally, as if they were unaware that they were blind. But they had no eyeballs; instead, nothing but skin stretched from their cheekbones to their brows.
She was standing in a crowd of the eyeless people, and what had been unsettling became in a moment suddenly and inexplicably terrifying. She was standing, and they were pushing in from all sides, and she couldn’t get away.
She got more and more scared with each passing second until she was shaking. She sat on the ground, held her legs to her chest and tried to stop the shudders. Her hand phased metal, and she forced it to phase back.
The eyeless people kept milling around as if nothing was happening. But that was understandable; they had no eyes with which to see her.
She got more and more terrified, and the dream started fading, as the fear started to seep through into her conscious mind and bring her up from her sleep. The eyeless people started to be replaced with the cool stream of moonlight through her bedroom window and the sounds of bustling were replaced with a low roaring sound coming from the night which made the hairs on the back of her neck shudder upright.
And just before the dream faded, something caught her attention.
She saw eyes. She didn’t see the face that held them, there wasn’t time for that before the dream left her, and she didn’t see the person who was looking at her. But she didn’t care. She felt relieved. She was just thankful to see the eyes, and, although she should have been ashamed to have been found shaking and shuddering and pitiful and broken, she was thankful that those black eyes had seen her.
Then a roar from outside sounded and she jolted awake, all the images of her dream leaving her in her sudden consciousness and nothing remaining but residual terror.
The residual terror was sharpened into current terror when she saw the flash of white light through her window and heard another roar a moment after. The thunder shook through the night and shook her, so that she started shuddering, as she always did at times like this.
Oh, Christ.
Well, that explained the nightmare, she guessed.
She couldn’t stay here. It only took her a millisecond to figure that out. This was the first night-thunderstorm she’d been in, but if it was anything like the daytime ones she wouldn’t be dealing with it quietly. Or, scratch that, she wouldn’t be dealing with it at all. It was Kennedy who got her through these things. Kennedy, who was now undoubtedly fast asleep in his dorm after the work he’d been doing today, and who she couldn’t disturb. He needed to rest, and Lynn…
Well, Lynn needed to learn how to take care of herself, didn’t she?
Fine. But she couldn’t stay here. She’d wake everyone up, and then she’d have to explain why the thunderstorm was affecting her like this, and she honestly couldn’t think of anything that she wanted to do less. She needed to get away from everyone else.
She’d go down to the common room, she decided after a minute.
It’d be better down there.