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chapter twenty-four: homeward bound

a/n:

krystal's character development is so important to me, actually.

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"Father--"

"No."

Rory hides her face behind her menu and tries her best to keep her composure. Across the table from her, her twenty-seven-year-old stepmother-to-be mimics her.

Oliver thought that the morning after the game it would be a swell idea (and by a swell idea, he meant good press) to take his fiancée, daughter, and father out to breakfast before Hendrix sent the girl packing back to the Midwest.

What he hadn't accounted for, however, was Elijah being lucid enough to pick a fight with him at nine o'clock in the morning.

"I've lived ninety-eight years, and I didn't get here by eating like a fucking rabbit." The old man snaps and snatches his menu out of the reach of his son. "I'm going to eat what I want and so is your daughter."

Oliver exasperatedly drags both of his hands down his face and shoots his daughter a pleading expression. She pretends not to see it.

Rory woke up at an ungodly hour, quietly got ready in the dark so she didn't wake either of her roommates, and then had to get into a car with her father and Krystal. Her morning was far from pleasant before they spent the better part of five minutes arguing over what she can and can't eat, so she's going to ignore them as long as she can in favor of closing her eyes and imagining that she's back at the hotel, eating pancakes and hanging out with her friends.

"She's an athlete. She can't fill up on carbs and sweets." Oliver grits his teeth and tugs the menu back toward him. "And you are a diabetic and on the verge of heart disease. You can't either."

"Put a sock in it. You think you're a big man, don't you? Just because I let you take the position doesn't mean that you've got a modicum of power--"

She puts her menu down with a heavy sigh and meets Krystal's hesitant gaze. As the two men at the table dissolve into the world's quietest fight (in which her father shrinks down to a human level and her grandfather maintains his subhuman one), Rory leans toward the other woman and presses her lips into a line.

"So... What are you getting?"

Krystal breathes a laugh. She's exhausted. Rory can tell that much.

(Her concern for the woman is another thing that she'll never admit.)

"The baby wants pancakes, eggs, and sausage, but I think, judging by the tone of this conversation, I'll cut out the pancakes. What about you?"

Rory laughs, too. "The steak and eggs, I think."

"Good choice."

The two of them settle into an awkward silence as Krystal's sentence trails off. Rory chews on the inside of her cheek and stares at the table but, before she can come up with anything else to say, her father's fiancée asks her a question.

"Your father said you were seeing a boy. The mysterious Lester Averman, I presume?"

That catches Rory so off guard that she can't help but be flustered.

"Oh, uh, yeah."

"Listen, I won't make you talk boys with me if you don't want to." Krystal pauses to take a sip of her orange juice. The argument on the other half of the table has officially taken the back burner for both of them. "I know I'm not your mother, and I know that we didn't exactly get off on the right foot, but I know that your father is... uncomfortable with it, so if you do need someone to talk to, I'm here."

Rory nods silently.

She wants to talk about Averman. She does. But telling her family more about Averman would make him real to them, and that's the last thing she wants.

Les is so uncomplicated-- so unbroken-- that it's refreshing. He was the first boy she's ever met that was as kind as he was funny, and the first one to love her even if he's had to work hard for everything he has while she rarely lifts a finger. (Working class boys are hard to come by, but working-class boys that don't, rightfully, resent her a little are even harder.) Dating him, for her, is like diving into a cold pool on a hot day, or like pulling her hand off hot coals after holding it there for a lifetime too long.

Her family corrupts everything it touches.

She doesn't want that to happen to him. She can't let it.

So, all she does is shrug. "He's... nice to me. That's all that matters."

Krystal lifts a brow.

"Just don't go getting your heart broken over nice, okay?" Is all the blonde says. "You're too smart and pretty for that."

The teenager sits back in her seat and blinks, thoughtfully, at the older woman. (It dawns on her, then, that she doesn't know much about Krystal's life, and even less about her relationship with her father.)

She smiles a little, though, because none of her father's romantic interests have ever called her pretty.

Not even her own mother.

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After an emotionally taxing breakfast, Rory bids her family goodbye and gets carted back to the hotel, where she has, at maximum, an hour and a half to pack up all of her belongings before their flight.

The mood on their entire floor can only be described as somber, but it feels concentrated in the air of the girls' room as the three of them fold their clothes in silence, the reality of what's going to happen to them in particular sinking in. (After all, before this competition, they were each the only girls on their teams. In just a few days' time, it will be back to walking on eggshells. There are no sleepovers or lunch dates when you are one thing and one thing only to everyone you hang out with on a regular basis.)

(Girlhood is incredibly lonely when it wants to be.)

"I can't believe it's over." Julie sighs, breaking the silence as she folds a sweater so she can stuff it into her suitcase. "It feels... anticlimactic, doesn't it?

Rory nods sluggishly in agreement. She's been fighting back tears ever since she got back.

While they aren't going home immediately and are, instead, going to fly back to Minnesota for a day long layover, the grief that's been sitting at the back of her mind, dormant until the right moment, is overwhelming her. After the roller coaster that has been the last few weeks of her life, she's going to have to leave behind some of the only friends she's ever really had, and she knows she's going to miss them like an addict misses drugs when going through withdrawals, and it's going to majorly suck.

Her life is too empty, too cold, now that she's known the USA Ducks.

"Hey, it's going to be alright." Connie says strongly (as if she hadn't spent the entire night crying.) "We have phones and email addresses. I refuse to let a single one of you new kids fall out of contact."

Rory laughs, albeit sadly, and shuts her suitcase, zipping it closed.

"I'll still miss you guys, though."

The other brunette, her lip wobbling, pulls the two girls into a tight hug.

Once they're all packed, they hand their baggage over to the staff and wait in the lobby of the hotel for a bus to take them to the private airport where the Myrtle family jet awaits them.

Rory sits on a couch with Averman and rests her head on his shoulder. She tries to find comfort in the circles he absentmindedly traces into the skin of her bicep, but her thoughts are too far away. What would become of their relationship? Long distance doesn't exactly have the best reputation, and it certainly didn't work out with Henri. Would they make it?

Or would they fizzle out?

She can picture it now. First, it would start with agitation as the months apart from each other and the physical distance between them festered into some kind of monster. Then, they'd just be too busy to take time out of their schedules to come to Minnesota or Michigan respectively. And then he'd meet a girl. A girl from a wholesome background, one who wears overalls and eats tater tot hotdish.

A girl like him--

"You're overthinking." Averman's voice draws her out of her spiraling reverie. "You're quiet, and you're overthinking."

"I'm not overthinking." She lies, mumbling the words more than she's saying them.

"Mhm. Sure."

"I'm not." Rory defends herself, pulling herself away from him and sitting up straight. "I'm just contemplating all of the possible outcomes of the end of this competition."

"I'm pretty sure that's overthinking." Jesse, sitting on the other side of Averman, interjects.

The redhead halfheartedly hits his friend on the arm with the back of his hand while Rory leans around him to glare.

"I don't think you guys-- you original ducks-- understand just how unfair this is." She huffs, pushing loose hairs behind her ears as she sits up. "You guys all live near each other. Not only in the same state but all within the same district. Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, you can call Jesse, or Jesse could call Guy, or Guy could call Charlie and you can all make plans to hang out with each other that afternoon. Do you know what's going to happen when I wake up? When any of the rest of us do?"

"I'm assuming you guys can't just call up your friends--"

"Yeah. You're right. We don't get to just call up our teammates because we live all over the country."

Jesse stares at her flatly for a moment. "Yeah. You definitely weren't overthinking though, right?"

Before Rory can reach across Averman to hit him, someone is grabbing her shoulders and pushing her back to a seated position.

"Don't kill him." Dean says. "You'll feel guilty about it for the rest of your life."

"He's asking for it! He's making fun of me."

Dean, who's slumped himself down on the cushion behind her, looks at Jesse.

"Stop making fun of her."

"Or what?" Jesse taunts playfully. "You ain't her boyfriend."

"I'll still kick your ass if she asks me to."

Rory turns to look at Dean. "Do it. This is me asking you to."

All the boy does is smile crookedly at her. She narrows her eyes.

"I'm feeling weirdly inadequate." Averman dry comment brings her attention back to him.

"Aw, sweetheart, don't feel bad." She coos, half-mocking, and cups his face in her hands. "You're very good for me, you're just not very tough."

Jesse laughs loudly and sharply as Averman's face starts to burn as red as his hair. Dean sucks his teeth and whispers an ouch dude that doesn't sound very sympathetic in reality.

"I'm not very tough? You're the prissy princess."

Dean loops an arm around her midsection and pulls her into his lap to keep her from smacking Averman.

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Sitting next to him on her family's jet, Rory purses her lips, watching Averman sit there, looking utterly ill with his eyes clenched shut. The flight attendant has finished her speech about safety and they're about to take off and, despite their conversation on the flight over to Los Angeles a lifetime ago, the boy is shaking like a leaf in his seat.

"And I'm the prissy princess."

Averman heaves a sigh through his nose and opens one eye to look at her.

"I'm terrified of the plane crashing. You don't know how to take public transportation and eat caviar."

Rory opens her mouth to protest but then closes it again because he's not wrong.

"I don't love caviar, actually." Is what she settles on.

Even if he looks like he's about to pass out, he snorts a laugh.

Deciding that it's probably best to stop picking on him now and actually offer some help, she gives him her hand again.

"Hey, remember what I said last time. It's going to feel a little weird and you might hear some mechanical noises, but there's no need to panic. Nothing will happen. Just like, lean your head on my shoulder or something."

And he does. Averman buries his face into her shoulder, squeezing her hand tightly, and she brushes a finger across his face as the plane takes off.

"Hey, look, we lived." Rory says once the plane has stopped climbing.

"Oh, no, really. I didn't notice."

"You know what, Lester, you're cute and all, but the snark."

He opens his eyes, letting go of her hand, and turns his head to rest his chin on her shoulder.

"You like me anyway."

"Yeah. I do. Unfortunately."

And he gasps, pretending to be offended.

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a/n:

every chapter I write makes me dread d3 a little more (that's a lie. i'm excited about it.)

comments and votes are super appreciated! they let me know that you guys like my writing and I cannot stress how much they motivate me to continue! thank you