Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Yasuhiro Wada, Marvelous Interactive and publishers including but not limited to Natsume/XSEED Games (NA), Rising Star Games (EU), Nintendo (AUS) and Marvelous Entertainment (JP). No money is being made from the posting of this story and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This disclaimer is true for this chapter and every chapter that follows in this story.

A/N: So I decided to write a little one of these because at the time I'd run out of decent length, completed Velsea fics to read. I don't know if some of what I've put in here has been done before, but I hope not! Just to make things clear:

This first chapter gets pretty grim at one point and if you've been in a shipwreck or similar disaster then it may be triggering.

For other chapters that may contain mental health (mainly PTSD in this fic) triggers, I'll appropriately label them in an A/N at the start of the chapter.

This is meant to be a more realistic fic, so there will be varying sexualities on the island. Therefore if you're homophobic at all, please leave and re-assess your life's priorities.

M for language not sexual content, sorry folks, though there's heavy hinting and some light frottage and, I dunno, description of the naked body? On a language note, I 'take the Lord's name in vain'. A lot. So. I'm sorry if that offends you.

This is sort of a weird fusion of Island of Happiness and Sunshine Island, with bits of other games chucked in there for shits and giggles.

The cover photo is not mine! I can't find out who drew it, but all props goes to them.

THIS FIRST CHAPTER IS REALLY HEAVY, BUT IT HAS IMPORTANT BITS IN IT SO PLEASE PUSH THROUGH TO CHAPTER 2!

Chapter 1.

- Chelsea -

A tinny foghorn blared in the distant reaches of my consciousness and I blinked my eyes open, rotating my body so I was treading water in the sea. Looking around I saw the daily ferry from the mainland approaching on the horizon. Not wanting to get caught in the wake of the boat as it moored, I checked my watch and decided to paddle to shore – I'd been out in the water for too long as it was; my fingers closely resembled prunes and I could feel my face throb lightly with heat. I had woken ridiculously early that summer's day, sorted out my crops and decided to go for an early morning swim.

Reaching the beach I quickly towelled off, squeezing the water out my bikini's padding, and manhandled myself into my clothes. I'd learnt my lesson about being scantily clad when the sailors arrive in the past – when faced with a half-dressed woman, they made Denny seem like a prude. Speaking of – I spotted the fisherman walking out his shack, yawning and stretching, topless and with his rod in one hand.

"Morning, Denny!" I called as I jogged over to him, carrying my shoes in one hand and my damp towel in the other.

"Morning." The man yawned again and reached down to scratch his crotch lightly through his knee length shorts. I rolled my eyes and met him halfway as he made his way to the dock. He barely looked awake enough to talk, let alone navigate, so I was pretty sure that his feet were moving on autopilot.

"Why're you up so early?" I asked. Denny normally stole all the sleep he could get away with – which meant you were lucky to catch him before 10AM at the earliest – and it was 8AM now. At first I had put his habit down to jetlag – we had all suffered from it when our boat had shipwrecked on the island – but after a week of his staying, I had realised he was just lazy. Travelling "back in time" had been toughest for me as Natalie's family were at least American so they only had to suffer staying awake a few more hours than normal. My story was slightly more complicated, but simply put I was still running on London time when I'd stepped foot on the boat, so I had to deal with about 11 hours difference between my body clock and the one my wrist carried.

"Didn't Mirabelle tell you?" He asked, sitting down and prepping his rod to be cast. The ferry was about twenty minutes away at my estimation. Were it I that was preparing to fish I wouldn't have bothered, but knowing Denny he'd be able to bring in a decent haul even in only twenty minutes. "The animal dealer is coming to the island today. She figured that seeing as I live on the beach -" he broke off to yawn again, casting his line simultaneously, "it'd make sense if I were the one to greet him. Completely ignored the fact that there are plenty of other people here who actually wake up at stupid o'clock every day." He eyed me pointedly.

"Wouldn't it have made more sense if I were to?" I asked, slightly affronted at Mirabelle's lack of thought. "Me, the rancher?"

"That's what I told her." Denny said, perking up slightly as he reeled in a medium sized fish. "But apparently the guy's got some attitude. She thought it'd be better if someone more…buoyant dealt with him." He sent a grin my way – the first one of the day. It seemed fish and he were truly meant to be. I grimaced at his words however. Along with being the most jetlagged of the survivors, I'd also handled the change the worst and it seems that my actions back then were still affecting decisions made now.

Tourists had started arriving to the island in the last week of June – the official start of summer – once I'd shipped off the last of spring's crops and started fishing in earnest. It didn't sound bad when waffled about in talk of seasons…only we'd landed on the island in the last week of winter – midway through March – and I didn't actually start planting anything until the end of April. The month in between had been a pretty dark time for me. Taro, it seemed, had been part of the American troops that fought in the Second World War and was pretty accustomed to losing people, unexpected situations, near-death experiences and making do with what you could. He had seen the affair as an opportunity to live out his last years in peace and tranquillity on this little island somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. He had brought Felicia up with similar morals, as she had with her kids. Natalie had mourned the loss of the crew and life as she knew it for a few days maybe, and then got on with what needed to get done. Even Elliot, though he had struggled more and often cried in his sleep those first weeks (inside information from Natalie, you didn't hear it from me), had managed to pick himself back up again, possibly through the abuse that Natalie constantly shouted at him. I hadn't condoned her verbal abuse of her brother when I'd witnessed it first on the boat, but by the end of that first day he had saved her life and it had seemed more a twisted show of sibling love after that than it had before. Either way, it seemed that in this case he needed it to become functional again.

I, on the other hand, had been brought up with no such survival instincts. Perhaps growing up was less cut-throat in London than it had been in America, but my survivor's guilt had almost got the best of me within the first week. My mental health had never been brilliant, but at this point in my life I'd considered myself mostly recovered – and if not, then I was coping well enough for me. I'd got things in order in my head and I'd been blowing some cash on a holiday in the US before I was planning on moving out of my crappy flat in the City and bumming it in Somerset, trying to get some farming experience. Perfect opportunity – washing up on the shore of an island with and abandoned farm in need of a rancher, wasn't it? Well forgive me if it took me a while to see past the evening of dragging the prone body of the waitress who had served me dinner through the storming sea. To see past the line of corpses we'd managed to accumulate on the shore – each of them alive merely hours before. Each of them with their own life and family and history. Each of them now cold and dead, lungs filled with water or skulls cracked. The head of the last crewman we recovered had been markedly floppy and when Taro had moved it in preparation to try CPR we had all witnessed the bulge of broken bone distort the skin of his neck as the corpse's head had moved freely of the rest of his torso. Both Felicia and I had thrown up in the sand at that, and when I saw seaweed and tiny twitching prawns come up in my vomit, I'd started sobbing, clawing at my stomach knowing there were things inside me, moving, and they were probably inside of all the bodies in front of us as well. I envisioned cutting them open and a whole ocean-full of life bursting out and I couldn't decide if that was beautiful or akin to something from a horror movie. That had been the beginning of a deep spiral for me.

While Taro had been frantically working at Natalie – one of the bodies we'd recovered and the only one who survived – I had been given the task of recovering items from the wreckage of the boat. The waves had calmed over the course of our recovery of the crew members which made it safer for me to handle solo, but more urgent as the water was no longer churning and keeping many of the belongings close to the surface. I hadn't felt in any way ready to deal with responsibility, but when you're in that sort of situation you just do what you have to – your body mostly moves on its own. Like how the adrenaline had made it possible for me to drag a dead human body through a stormy ocean, I now bypassed the pile of shivering prawns, seaweed and stomach juices, and dived right back into the sea that had tried to kill me. Looking back I wondered if I'd have ever been able to get in the water again if I hadn't had done it at that moment. There was no time for newly developed phobias to settle in – we were on a deserted island and if we were going to survive, we were going to need shit to do it with and that meant I was in charge of getting whatever I could. My rucksack had never left my back during the entire ordeal – so that was abandoned on the beach behind me as I swam back to where the shell of the ship rested in amongst rocks and gathered anything I could find – damp piles of cloth, books, even two cooking pots that were upside down and had air trapped in them, making them float on the surface of the tranquil sea. I didn't stop until the sun set – something that sounds far more impressive than it was, seeing as in actuality it was early evening when we crashed and maybe only three hours from sunset, two of which had been spent trying to find other survivors. The wind was biting when the sun wasn't up and we had sheltered in an old farmhouse – the one I lived in now. During my escapades, Felicia and Elliot had gone about burying the bodies in the sand. There wasn't time to make individual graves, so they had dug the deepest hole they could using the pans I had recovered in my first run, and rolled all the bodies in there one of top of one another. Following that, they'd pushed a massive rock on top of the grave, marking it and hopefully stopping the sea's drag from uncovering it.

Ever heard that saying that things look better in the morning? Yeah? Ever had a drunken one night stand and woken up in the morning to see their face and question why you ever went near that and grimly thought that the pale light of morning didn't help a thing? Well take the latter and multiply it by a hundred and you might be near how wrong that saying is. The morning brought nothing but a bleak realisation that we were alone on an island with a pile of decomposing dead people and a few half-built shacks to see us through the end of the winter. Natalie spent that day in bed with Felicia looking after her, clutching her daughter's hand, still looking as pale as she did when Elliot had pulled his twin onto the shore, sobbing with the most torso-wracking heaves I'd ever witnessed. He had wanted to stay with his sister as well, but she had insulted his manliness for a few minutes and he'd turned tail pretty sharpish after that. Taro had been planning on dragging him out as it was. Me as well – we were all meant to explore the abandoned town and try to come up with a plan together, but I didn't make it. The only reason I'd slept the night before was because my body had shoved my brain into shut-down mode and I'd passed out, but now I was well-rested, my brain had full reign again and it wasn't happy. I kept seeing flashbacks even when my eyes were open and bile rose in my throat at one point and then just never went back down. It took three more vomits before I stopped seeing remnants of sea-life in what left my body, and by that point my throat was so raw I was glad when the bile decided to just hover instead of coming all the way out again. It wasn't a pretty day – me curled in a ball in the corner of the main room in the farmhouse, lying in my own sick because Natalie required too much care to leave and who else but myself was going to look after me? Once I was back on my feet, the first thing I did was shove one of the cabinets over that patch where I had lain, but at that point in time the corner became my home for most of the first week there.

By the evening of the first day, Natalie was recovered enough for Felicia to cook some sort of herb soup from some of the stuff the men had foraged that day. Taro and Elliot had come up with a plan as well – their family were in the shipping business and Taro had been a farmer back in the day. The trip had been properly documented and our absence would be noticed the next day when the boat didn't return from its weekend round trip. Taro guessed that people would be here to find us the day after that, but he had decided to stay on the island. Talking it over with their family, the rest of them agreed that they could use provisions from the rescue team to start up a new life here. They tried to bring me into the plan, saying I could be the farmer for the island and together we could bring the island back to life. They painted a glorious picture of rolling fields and blue skies, kids squealing on the beach in the summer and families sitting around fires with hot chocolates in an Inn in the winter. It was beautiful; it was fake. I felt like the only one who remembered the reason for the rock on the beach. I could see kids climbing on it and declaring themselves king or queen of the castle, I could see old couples going on moonlit walks on the beach, their feet sending vibrations through the sand to the corpses six feet underneath them. I could see widows back on the mainland drinking themselves into a stupor, parents mourning a picture of their child, children crying out for their dead mother or father in the night and dogs starving to death in locked flats with no one to care for them. It was the last one that really hit me hard – I'd always felt a strong sense of responsibility towards animals, especially those we human domesticated to the point where they would struggle to look after themselves if abandoned.

Long story short, I'd stayed silent. The rescue boat had come and gone, and I had stayed for reasons which I didn't have. We moved out the farmhouse and into a smaller one that was a bit better up-kept and closer to the shore. I spent a lot of time on the beach, back against the rock and hands wrist deep in sand. Elliot had actually had to drag me out the water a few times as I'd just sat there as the tide came in. I'd had problems before, but I'd never been this out of it. I thought all these sorts of things were just fictional – ways to make the audience realise how deeply upset the protagonist was. I'd never realised that these were mental states that human beings were actually capable of; never seen it possible for someone to be so detached that looking after their own bodily functions became too much to handle. In TV shows, someone always came to the rescue – they showed the romantic interest helping the broken person shower and eat; they strung in good lines with pretty words and some moving backing music and made the thing entirely tragically beautiful.

They don't film the bits where you piss your own clothes because you didn't realise you needed the loo, or the long hours in the day when there simply isn't anyone to spare to look after you. If they were to be filming me they'd show the times when Elliot dragged me heroically from the rising tide and Felicia manhandled soup down my throat twice a day, they'd show Natalie making me smile and my slow but tragically beautiful decent into insanity followed by my equally slow but equally tragically beautiful recovery to normalcy, all with the help of a loving family around me. But they wouldn't see the times when I'd force myself to throw up the food I was given; when I'd flat out kick off at one of Natalie's comments and attack her in her own sick bed until Elliot pulled me off. They wouldn't see me then screaming at Elliot and running out the house determined to swim to somewhere else. They wouldn't see the twins yelling at me about staying and having such a horrible time here when I could have left with the rescue boat, or any of the following boats that started to come regularly with provisions in exchange for foraged items that were worth something. They wouldn't see the night I disappeared and Elliot's torso-wracking sobbing that followed when Felicia found me sitting on the edge of a cliff next to a broken bridge, staring at the island across the way. None of them believed me when I said I hadn't been planning on jumping – which I honestly hadn't – but I didn't blame them.

In a soap opera there's usually a watershed moment, or a slow gradual recovery. There wasn't really either for me. I didn't slowly get better, nor did I suddenly snap out of it one morning. I was somewhere in between – my states of detachment began getting interrupted by a full bladder or empty stomach and for a few minutes after one such period of functionality I'd find myself feeling bored…before I'd remember that there were five people under the beach who would never have the luxury to feel bored again. One day, Taro had been in the house when I'd had a moment of boredom and had started talking to me about farming. It reignited something tiny in me, and in my lucid moments over the next week I would follow him to the farmland and huddle into a ball to watch him till the soil and plant turnip seeds, watering the ones that were already sprouting. I realised it was halfway through April and I couldn't remember a single notable thing I'd done from the past three weeks. I guess if I did have a grand awakening moment, it was seeing an old war veteran break his back over a field in the middle of nowhere to feed his family and live his dream of a peaceful retirement. Only it was hardly peaceful or a retirement when you had to work 24/7.

I moved into the farmhouse soon after, taking over Taro's crops and planting my own as April ticked over to May. Getting out of their hair improved my relationship with the twins, though Elliot and Felicia were nervous to let me go unsupervised. They made a rota to check on me and I was still required at theirs for meal times, but by the time I was well enough to look back and apologise at every given moment for all my embarrassing behaviour I guess they decided I was doing better, and they eventually stopped popping up every other hour to see how I was doing. Chen, Charlie, Gannon, Mirabelle and Julia moved in the first week of May. I clicked better with Julia than I did with Natalie – the brazen girl was funny but I was too delicate at the time to take her humour that was thinly veiled in borderline abusive comments. Julia was the sort of person that was genuinely good and she was there for me in those first few weeks of me being on my own two feet. I'd broken down on her more times than I cared for, and my usual stubborn nature made me promise each time would be the last; my British stiff upper lip meaning that I would apologise for my ridiculous breakdown and then steadfastly deny it ever happened. Frustration was always near the surface with me, as my timid mentally sick self was so vastly the opposite of my bouncy, friendly mentally well self, and everyone on the island had seen enough of the former to make them think that the latter was an act. In any case, that was Mirabelle and Julia's first impression of me – this broken mess of a person – and it seemed they wouldn't ever really be able to see past that. It was comforting in a way to know that they would have my back – the number of times Julia had had a go at Natalie when one of her comments had cut me deep enough to upset me – but frustrating to see that they were always going to see me as this delicate little thing that they couldn't be frank with. I'd spent the majority of May convincing them – and everyone else to that matter – that I was just fine and no, fine actually means fine and yes, I will let them know if there's anything wrong.

"Oh." I replied as I flopped down next to Denny. Denny had arrived with the first influx of fishing tourists in June and had only seen me as Happy Chelsea. He had heard the stories of course – who hadn't? – but it was clear he couldn't really equate it to the person in front of him and that's exactly how I wanted it to be. I didn't want to be treated like glass, I didn't need to be treated like glass – I hadn't been hurt by Natalie's snide nature in over a month, and in return she and I had actually bonded quite well seeing as we both had a pretty dark sense of humour. "Well that's dumb." I said, lying back and flicking my feet in the water. Denny grunted and placed a hand on my thigh to stop my legs from moving and scaring away the fish. "I can handle attitude."

"Well maybe it was more the fact that you have your own attitude that she chose me then." He replied, grinning cheekily. I knew that it was definitely because Mirabelle thought I was easily broken, but I appreciated his words nonetheless. As it was, I knew that Mirabelle had put off calling in her animal dealer connection until I was "well enough" to care for something more than tomatoes.

"Hey, I don't have attitude!" I denied obediently, flicking my feet a few more times to spite him.

"No miss, sorry miss, I won't say it again miss." He drawled out, grabbing my lower leg and bending it towards me to tickle my feet. I started squealing as the boat drew in, trying not to roll off the pier and get squished by it as the sailors clambered to moor it and the lone passenger waited to disembark. Denny dropped my leg and pulled his line in, huffing at the tiny fish that was twitching on the end of it. "This is your fault." He said as he dropped the fish onto my stomach. "And your boobs are leaking." Looking down at the fish, I saw my bikini had indeed leaked two big wet patches through my tank top on my chest. Not really bothered about it either way, I replied,

"They'll dry." I plopped the fish back into the sea and stood up, rolling my shoulders and pinwheeling my arms a few times to get the circulation flowing properly. Denny stood too, narrowly avoiding being hit by my flailing arms and smiled at the one man not in uniform on deck.

"Ahoy!" He called out, smiling his most infectious grin. The stranger grunted which caught my attention. I'd never seen that smile of Denny's be met by anything other than a pleasant greeting. Even the fisherman himself was taken aback slightly, but took it all in his stride, smile not dropping. I could see what Mirabelle meant when she said she needed someone buoyant. I definitely would have been huffing and frowning by now. Looking at the stranger in curiosity I took in his unique appearance. He was dressed head to toe in black apart from a brown vest, boots and a white neckerchief. Most of his skin was covered up from the sun's rays, but his face and what was visible of his neck and wrists was a very pale pink. His face was handsomely structured – jawline defined and nose straight, mauve eyes large and framed by silvery white lashes that matched the hair that hung from under his black Stetson. Albino my brain provided as he scowled at the crewmen and moved to jump down to the pier. Both Denny and I were silent as we watched him move, in awe of his intimidating stature, and he was quite imposing, only…he went to step over the edge of the boat as if the fall was a lot shorter than it was and quite literally tumbled face first onto the dock below him. Denny burst out laughing as I went down under him and I heard a voice like out of old cowboy movies curse above me.

"Fuck's sake, always assume it's lower than you think." He seemed to be reprimanding himself. Climbing up off me, he adjusted his hat, pulling its rim down over his blushing face. He glared so hard at Denny that he actually stopped laughing – a true feat, indeed – and grumpily held out a hand for me to grab onto. I did so and he pulled me up and into him in one fell swoop, other arm flinging around my waist to steady me. He blushed harder and scowled at me when I looked up at him. Man he was tall!

"Hi!" I greeted, not moving from the position we were in. I found myself suddenly pushed away at arm's length as the cowboy coughed and muttered something which might pass for a greeting if you squinted your eyes and tilted your head. "I'm Chelsea." I continued, sticking my hand out for him to shake, which he didn't, but he did mutter his name back.

"Vaughn." Because he was so set on not meeting my eyes, his gaze fell upon my chest instead and saw the leaks my bikini had made. I found myself on the end of a – dare I say it? – amused look as his purple stare finally met my blue one. I blushed a bit, but puffed my chest out, not ashamed of something so trivial. He snorted, "Bird of paradise." and then snorted again at the double edged pun.

- Vaughn -

The girl – Chelsea – was grinning at me and I knew she had picked up on both meanings of my joke; her all puffed up like a bird of paradise, and then her literally being a woman – bird – on a paradisal island. She seemed pretty laid back for someone who had just been ploughed to the ground; I would have been fuming were it me…but then I guess I'm not the poster child for socially acceptable temper levels, am I?

The half-naked fisherman guy chose that moment to butt in and bumped Chelsea out of my poor line of vision.

"The name's Denny and I'm to be your tour guide for today." He greeted amicably. I felt my amused look morph into a glare again as I remembered how this guy had laughed at me when I fell off the boat. Maybe if it had happened to someone else it would be funny, but to me it was something I'd been dealing with all my life and hadn't yet managed to find the amusing side to. So I grunted again. He'd heard my name when I told it to Chelsea, there wasn't any need for me to waste my breath on repeating it to him. Undeterred, the guy shouldered his rod and started walking down the dock. "Let me just grab a shirt and I'll take you to Mirabelle's so you can dump your stuff." At the mention of it, the crap that I'd brought with me got shoved over the side of the boat and onto the pier next to me. At breakneck speed, the sailors were untying the boat and sailing away, leaving Chelsea and I to lug my bags towards the beach.

"So I'm the farmer round here." She said, her British accent automatically making her sound too distinguished to be doing something as laborious as farming. I kind of grunted in response, but internally I was relieved that it wasn't Denny. Constant socialisation was a big no with me anyway, but especially if the other party was someone like Denny. "Mirabelle sent Denny to greet you, but I bumped into him on the way." She continued. She hadn't struck me as a fill-the-silence type of gal, so I guessed that she was telling me this to hint at her specifically not being invited to meet me. But she didn't say anything else on the subject, so presumably she didn't really want to talk about it either. I'm pretty sure Julia thinks I'm socially inept – and maybe I'm not that great at the interacting side of things – but I damn sure know how to read people, never let it be said otherwise. We reached the beach in silence and I took in my surroundings as best I could in the bright light.

To my right was the shack that Denny had disappeared into and was now coming out of, stupid ass smile on his face and all. To my left was a far better constructed house and a large rock not too far away, sitting on the beach. Everything else was just beaten track and wild grasses, completely open and deserted.

"That's my house." Denny said, pointing at the barely-standing structure he'd emerged from. "And that's Gannon's. He's probably still sleeping though. Best not wake him – you'll get it when you see him. He's the carpenter round here – he built Mirabelle's house as well." Did he build yours? I wanted to ask, but the striking difference in structure made the answer clear. It may have been funny to say, but I already knew the answer, so what was the point? I'm not here to impress. I heard a snort from my left and looked down to see Chelsea hiding a smile whilst looking at me slyly, amusement in her eyes. I said that out loud, didn't I?

We marched across the barren wasteland; Denny striding ahead as I carried two bags and Chelsea carried one, along with her rucksack. I was impressed with her strength, but frowned at Denny for not offering to carry something for either of us.

"So this is West town, and over that way is East town." Denny rattled off, pointing right where I could see a patch of land even more barren than the one we were standing on. "This is our first stop." he pushed open the door to a house with a horseshoe nailed to the door without even knocking. "Mirabelle, Julia! I have something for you!" Only Julia was already up and moving around the kitchen area, Mirabelle presumably out back prepping my room for me.

"Chelsea!" the blonde cried out moving to hug her.

"Bitch." I muttered, as Chelsea laughed.

"I'm not the present, Jules." She giggled, hugging my all-but-cousin quickly before pushing her back and turning the girl's shoulders to face me. Julia's nose wrinkled and Denny laughed, rubbing Chelsea's bandana a bit.

"But you're so much more aesthetically pleasing than he is." the fisherman chuckled at her ruffled look and I pulled my hat down, frowning, secretly just a tiny bit hurt by his comment. I mean, Chelsea was gorgeous – there was no denying that – but my looks had always been a bit of a sore spot with me. Julia looked at me worriedly, knowing this, but I just shrugged one shoulder lightly. The guy liked making jokes at other people's expense. I'd already figured that out, so this wasn't really unexpected.

"Oh shove off." She said, pushing his hand away and trying to scoop some loose hair back under the fabric. "He's more aesthetically pleasing than you are." It was said in jest but it still made me feel a bit warm and stupidly pleased. I'd been complimented before by some stereotypical hick girls, but with all the grace you could expect from them, they'd quickly shot themselves in the foot. 'You're real good lookin', ya know, considering ya got white hair 'n all.' I watched as Denny raised an eyebrow at Chelsea who blushed but raised one back in a challenge.

"Ma's just making your bed." Julia cut in before I could witness a clash of the stubborn. As if summoned, Mirabelle appeared around the corner of a corridor and into the kitchen.

"Oh, Vaughn!" She said as she rushed towards me and gathered me into her. She hadn't seen me in a while – maybe around 6 months – so I understood her need for a hug, but I still couldn't bear it for more than a few seconds before I started squirming.

"Aunt Bella." I said, prising myself out of her arms as she leaned back and patted me all over. I knew my skin was slightly sticky from sun cream, but then I knew that she was used to that so I pushed the insecurity out my mind. It was bright here on the island – less glare from windows and cars than the city had but more natural light – and there was more sun exposure, but I felt comforted by being around people who knew me and my history.

"We were just dumping his stuff before taking him round the island." Denny explained to my surrogate aunt. Mirabelle sent a glance my way.

"How long have you been outside, dear?" She asked, trying to be subtle. I figured my hair and eyes were about as subtle as a knife through the stomach, but some people just thought I had unusual colouring and left it at that. I checked my watch.

"'Bout an hour and a half." I drawled, hearing my accent twang and feeling Chelsea's gaze on my face as it did. Mirabelle tutted.

"Well that just won't do. Come, I'll show you your room and you can unpack a little bit, then you can go out later after a spot of lunch." I knew she just didn't want me out while the sun was at its highest, but she was pretty good at clucking about nonetheless. "Chelsea, dear, you follow me with that bag. Thank you for fetching him Denny but he'll be here for a while and I don't want to hold up your day." It was a politer dismissal than I was used to hearing, even from her, and Denny just smiled and went on his way, not even questioning why Mirabelle wasn't allowing me back outside for the next few hours.

Traipsing along obediently behind the woman, Chelsea spoke to me in hushed tones,

"Is it really tough for you in these sorts of climates?" I chanced a glance down at her, surprised at her courage to talk about my albinism so openly, but not really shocked she'd coined it for what it was. A lot of people skirted around the subject, or never asked any questions at all. Her direct approach made me feel uncomfortable, but I figured it'd lead to less embarrassing assumptions if I just answered the questions she had.

"I'm wearin' sun cream." I replied. "But the sun's pretty bright at noon and if I can avoid it, I will."

"Oh, of course." She responded, paused, then, "So Mirabelle's your aunt?" I could tell she was just making conversation, but the question made me tense a bit anyway.

"Not biologically." I left it at that and she thankfully dropped the subject, unlike a lot of people in my past. Maybe the Brits were better at knowing when to keep their noses out of things. We reached my room and I whistled as I looked around, letting out a quiet, "whew-wee" under my breath. It was done up in varying shades of black and gray with blackout blinds in the window. Every now and then there were some navy blue accents, but mostly everything was designed for the room to be as blissfully dark as I could hope for. "You've really outdone yourself, Aunt Bella, this is amazing." Chelsea moved into the room and placed the bag she was carrying on my new bed. I dumped the two I was holding next to it, and began to unzip one.

"I'll leave you two to it then." Mirabelle said, and I looked at her in alarm. She wasn't taking Chelsea with her? She met my gaze and I saw a sly smirk hint around her lips. She had heard us talking in the corridor then and was under the impression that I was making a friend. Brilliant. The door shut behind my aunt and I was left in the room alone with Chelsea.

Meanwhile, the girl in question had merrily climbed onto my bed and settled into the corner made by my wall and the wardrobe. She pulled a suitcase towards her and started unzipping it without a second thought. Please don't be my underwear, please don't be my underwear, please don't be my underwear.

"Wow, satin, Vaughn? Someone's a fancy cowboy." I blushed as she pulled out a pair of my dark purple satin boxer-briefs. She started rubbing the material and I snatched them from her, shoving them into my jacket pocket and grabbing the suitcase.

"Let's swap." I said, pushing the one I'd just opened and knew to contain a jumble of miscellaneous objects, along with a large stash of sun cream. She just grinned and started un-piling my shit, deftly jumping on and off the bed to place it wherever she felt it fit the best. I figured I could just rearrange it later if I didn't like it. We worked in silence for a while, only broken by the occasional huff from me when her monkey jumping messed up a pile of clothes I'd laid out to find space for.

"Mirabelle's really lovely." She broke the peace with. I grunted in affirmation. "I mean, it can't have been easy to get blackout curtains. It's not like Chen sells them or anything."

"Who?"

"Oh, he runs a sort of convenience type store. He's opposite Gannon's." I grunted again and silence reigned…until it didn't.

"I don't know why Mirabelle didn't want me to greet you. You're not so bad, and it only makes sense if the island's rancher meets the guy who's going to give her animals to ranch." I wasn't sure if that was the correct way to use the word, but I wasn't going to say anything. "I guess it really was just down to the fact that I caused a bit of a hullabaloo when I arrived here." Oh she wasn't done talking yet. Wait. Did she just –?

"You people actually use the word 'hullabaloo' in serious conversation?" The words were out before I could stop them, and my eyes were looking at her in bemusement without my commanding them. She grinned.

"You people actually say 'whew-wee' when you're impressed?" I snorted.

"Touché."

"And he knows French, too!" She gasped and I glared at her, but I think she could tell my heart wasn't in it as she started laughing. "Yer alright, Partner." She said in a horrible impression of my accent. I zipped up the last of the empty bags and shoved it under my bed with the others before straightening up.

"Don't you got somewhere else to be? Away from me?" I asked, taking my hat off and hanging it on the bed knob after drawing the blinds down and turning on the dim desk lamp I'd been provided. I couldn't really see in the lighting I'd created, but I thought maybe Chelsea looked a bit hurt at my words.

"Right, yeah, sorry." She said, suddenly springing into action. "You must be pretty tired and all, so yeah, I'll just go back to mine. Let me know if you need a tour guide or something. The ranch is just north of here." My eyes were wide at her rambling and I realised belatedly that I probably had upset her, but I couldn't get a word in edge ways to stop it. "It was nice meeting you, bye!" And then she was gone. And I thought I was known for abrupt exits.

Looking around the room, I saw that the way she'd unpacked everything and placed it actually made sense. Almost in a panic, I looked around for something to move, but everything was put exactly where I'd have put it myself. I didn't come to this island to make friends, but it seemed that I'd unwittingly acquired one. Even if I had just somehow chased her out the house. Damn I wasn't good at this shit.

Chapter End.

A/N: Just a note to say that this is a completed fic and I'll be posting it in instalments as I go over and edit the chapters.

I hope you enjoyed chappie 1; 2 coming soon!