based on the season 6 episode, 'Standee'.

❛ You lift my feet off the ground
You spin me around
You make me crazier, crazier ❜
- Crazier, Taylor Swift

I enter the Wilkerson house with a pep in my step. Today started off on the perfect note, my hair was cooperating with the curling iron, my shirt actually fits me properly, and I had my favourite cereal for breakfast.

"Hey, Lois," I chirp when I enter. As usual, she's pacing around the house, she acknowledges me with a quick yet effective 'hi'. "Hi, Jamie," I say in a sing-song voice and kneel down to where he's crawling and playing with some car toys.

"Oh, Tessa, could you please get him in his chair? I got some food ready for him but I just haven't gotten the chance to feed him," she says and I do what she asks.

"No worries," I pick up the little boy and place him in his high-chair in the kitchen, smiling from ear to ear at his cuteness. My day has just gotten ten times better. I figure she'd want me to feed him as well, so I place the plate in front of him and hold the spoon to feed him.

"Thank you so much," Lois says, she sounds exhausted as she collects some laundry from around the house. "You'd think that without a job and with all the parenting experience, I have I'd be able to manage my time better, but God, it's impossible!"

"I can only imagine," I reply in between shared giggles with Jamie. Lois passes by the kitchen table where I'm sitting and lays a swift kiss on my head. Her motherly antics never fail to warm my heart.

"You're a doll." she yells from the nook where the washer and dryer are. "Have you been doing something different with your makeup? You look better every day I see you," she adds.

I blush at her comments. At least someone notices my efforts. Sure, Reese has been staring more often. He even said I 'look nice' the other day, and that had me absolutely melting. I'll admit to myself that my fashion sense and makeup skills have been improving day by day.  "Well, I've started wearing some pink blush. I also learnt how to line my eyes, but I don't do that every day," I tell her excitedly.

She lets out a sound of approval and appears in my view with a hand on her hip. "I like that you've been taking care of yourself. And you know, it's so nice to get to talk about girly things like this with someone. With these boys sometimes you just need an escape." She shakes her head.

"Yeah, for sure," I laugh. After all, I've spent my whole life with these boys, I sure know what it's like to be overwhelmed with their masculine tendencies. "Speaking of, where's Reese?" I finish feeding Jamie and perk up with my question.

She waves a spare hand nonchalantly. "Eh, I don't know. He just got back from the grocery store. Go check on him—he's probably in his room."

She doesn't need to tell me twice. I practically jump out of my seat and beeline to the boys' room.

I slow down right before entering. I peep my head through the door to see Reese messing with one of the drawers. I prepare to jump into the room, and...

"Boo!"

He doesn't even flinch, he just turns around quickly. "God, you scared me," he lies in an attempt to make me feel better about my pointless prank.

"No, I didn't," I scoff. "Watcha doing?" I continue, trying to look over his shoulder.

"I didn't want you to see this, but it's gonna be hilarious." He moves out of the way to reveal a giant crab in the drawer.

"Oh my god! Is that thing alive?!" I exclaim. "I'm not even gonna ask how you got it." All he does is give me that mischievous smile of his. Yep, it's probably stolen.

"He won't know what hit him," he says and shuts the drawer with the poor creature in it.

"Who? Dewey?" I furrow my eyebrows at him. It's pointless to try to understand this, I should know this by now. I might as well indulge in the chaos.

"Shh! Here he comes." He grabs me by my shoulders to push me out of the way and stands next to me in anticipation. I'm not even going to try to prevent his harmful prank—I've learnt to not disturb the balance of things around here.

Dewey walks into the room, Reese straightens up to feign casualness before speaking up, "Dewey, could you reach into the sock drawer with your hands and get me a pair of socks?"

The younger boy shrugs, which surprises me, "okay." He reaches for one of the drawers.

"Not that one, on top," Reese orders. Dewey begins looking on the top of the dresser. I see where he's going with this. I try to hide my smile. "Not on top of the dresser! Right in front of you, the sock drawer." Reese's frustration grows. Dewey misses the drawer once again. "That's your sock drawer! Go next to it!" he begins to yell.

Dewey now begins feeling the sides of the dresser. It's pretty obvious he's messing with Reese, but it's amusing how he just gets angrier. "On the other side! Not behind the dresser!"

He shoves Dewey away roughly and goes to open the said drawer. No way. My mouth opens in anticipation of what's going to happen next.

"All you have to do is reach into my drawer, and—" there's a little crack, and then a bunch of loud screams.

The crab fully latches on to Reese's finger and he flails around until it flies off and onto Dewey's bed. My eyes follow the ridiculous scene in awe.

Reese cradles his injured hand. "You're so stupid, Dewey." How ironic. Dewey simply gives him an innocent look and shrugs before walking away.

When he leaves, I let out something between a gasp and a laugh. Reese gives me a look of distress and I shake my head at him. "See, this is what you get," I lecture.

My face softens at his puppy dog look he's giving me. I guess he's really hurt—it sounded like a bitch. "Ugh, let me see." I motion for him to give me his hand.

His finger is red, and there's some blood where the crab's pincers really dug in. I wince.

"Yikes, it's bleeding," I say and his eyes widen. "Come here." I pull him into the bathroom, turning on the faucet and handing him a bar of soap. While he washes his hands, I crouch to look for a bandaid and some antiseptic—god knows what sort of diseases that thing could have. I retrieve both items and stand up to place them on the sink.

"Gimme," I say and he gives me his hand. I pour some antiseptic on the wound and he hisses in pain. "I know."

I apply the band-aid. "There." I give him an encouraging smile and let go of his hand. He cradles it again, his face all scrunched up.

I sit down on the corner of the bathtub. "You do realise that Dewey was the one who pranked you here, right?"

"He's just an idiot," he grumbles.

"No, what he did was actually pretty smart. He's got the hang of your tricks by now. You gotta let it go or it'll just keep backfiring," I say as a matter of fact.

He stares at the ground for a moment before replying. "I just wanted something fun to do..."

I cock my head at his disappointed appearance. "I know tormenting people is your favorite thing to do, but there are other things, you know? You should take a break and hang out with me more often, for example. That way, when you do prank Dewey, you can catch him by surprise!"

He shrugs and I can tell he's seriously considering my idea. I stand up and wrap my arm around his shoulder to guide him out of the bathroom. "I think there's plenty of fun things we could do. We can go to the park and you can teach me how to skateboard—remember when you promised me you'd teach me?" I turn around to face him and his face lights up.

"I know there's plenty of fun things we could do," he whispers.

He then grabs me by my waist and pulls me in.

"Wha—" I barely have time to speak before his mouth latches onto mine. Of course, I give in. It's been a while since we've kissed, and it feels better each time. I didn't even know that was possible.

I grab his shoulder and squeeze the muscle, deepening the kiss. I can feel his hand slide over my back and down to—

"Wait, stop," I step back from him. He's still clearly high on the kiss but his face is apprehensive.

"What's wrong? Did I do something wrong?" His voice is soft and laced with worry. I shake my head. He could never do anything wrong to me.

"No, you didn't." My hand goes up to pinch my nose. "I just... everybody's home. If someone even passes by—I mean," I give up on trying to explain and give him a concerned look.

He sighs, "I know what you mean."

There's a few minutes of awkward silence, I fidget with the charm on my necklace.

"I don't know how we're going to do this," I say, searching his expression through my lashes.

"Me neither, we haven't really spoken about all of this." He sits on the foot of his bed and I follow suit.

"I know... but there isn't much to talk about, I mean we both know we love each other, and that we wanna kiss and all. We just need to decide where to go from here." As i speak, my heart thumps louder and louder. "Are we dating?" I ask.

He shrugs. What'd I expect, this is Reese I'm dealing with. I purse my lips.

"Okay, I guess we both haven't decided on that. You know what? It's fine, we don't need to throw around any labels. Nothing has to change now, we can keep doing this, but no one needs to find out just yet. Agreed?"

"Yep," he nods. He takes my hand in his and places it on his lap. "Look, Tess. All I know is that I wanna be with you and kiss you and hold your hand. But as much as I wanna do all that, I know how weird it's gonna get if they all find out. I just don't wanna ruin what we have. We're in this together."

I beam at his words and he squeezes my hand.

"I love you," I say while looking into his warm green eyes. I haven't said that to him since the day he got back from the army, but it just feels like the most natural thing.

Right when he's about to open his mouth to speak, his mother barges into the room. Our hands immediately seperate "For god sakes, Reese! What am I supposed to do to get you to stop throwing your damn socks all over the place!This thing has been under the couch for god knows how long." She holds up a disgusting looking sock. "Eventually you'll just lose 'em all—and you know what, I'm not getting you any new ones! Get all the blisters you want!"

He stands up, aggravated. "Will you just throw that piece of trash away!" He yanks the sock from her hand and it lands on Dewey and Malcolm's bed, drawing Lois' attention to the live crab wriggling on it. This can't be good

Her mouth opens in shock and she moves closer to examine the animal. Her nostrils flare at her son. "Reese, if you don't get this crab out of the house right now, I'm going to make it bite you in the ass!" she yells.

"Alright, alright!" He motions her away. "Just get out!"

She gives me an inquisitive look before returning to glare at him and stomping out of the room.

"How are you gonna pick it up?" I ask as he mumbles to himself in frustration at the crab.

"I'm gonna get my revenge first," he scowls.

I cringe, "Come on, dude, just put the poor thing out of its misery."  I shake my head. There's never a dull moment when it comes to Reese's bright ideas of destruction.

author's note:

This is where the story will begin to slowly stray away from the canon plot. Some things will be different than the season 6 episodes, such as Jessica not really playing a big role (the Kitty's Back episode doesn't really happen) and also Reese doesn't burn and peel all his skin off, you know, cause Tess probably stopped him. So yeah, regardless, I hope you'll enjoy what I have planned for this season. And again, i edited 'empty' and 'reese comes home' so if u haven't reread pls do that🙏

and again, another reminder for you readers to leave as many comments as your heart desires!!! Please please!