UPDATE: SO sorry for this originally being posted with the AN in the middle of the chapter. I blame Doc Manager. Hopefully this corrects the issue!
So it shouldn't be a surprised to anybody who has ever read and of my fics that I am a HUGE Chibs/Fiona shipper. I could go on and on about how dumb I think it is that Chibs' family had been entirely written off, but I won't do that. I haven't posted a lot of what I have written, because honestly I am will aware that they don't have a super popular relationship and I wasn't sure anybody would want to read it. A few writers who have posted their own Chibs/Fiona stories lately have inspired me to post this one, because even if it is unpopular...I really don't care!
This is going to be relatively short, probably 4-5 chapters, as to how they met and how they came to be. I hope that if you chose to read it, you enjoy it and leave some reviews! If you are not a fan, that's fine, but keep your remarks to yourself, please. Anyway, this is dedicated to Ambrosia Rush, Land of the Delta Blues, and skywasmadeofamethyst. You all rock!
It started in a park; they started in a park. In all honesty, it was just a simple, run of the mill, rundown park. There was a swingset and a picnic table and a few trees and an old slide and some sand, but there was nothing particularly impressive about tit at all. Years ago, before any of their history started, it had been a fresh, shiny new area where children played and mothers gossiped, but that all ended in a spray of bullets courtesy of the IRA not long after it was built. That ended the flood of families spending afternoons at the local park and allowed it to become a rundown place where nothing but love ever grew.
In the beginning, it was easy. It was a park, in the middle of south Belfast, not far from their schools or their houses or the places where kids hung out. They walked past it everyday, and occasionally Fiona would stop to read a book under the shady tree, or Filip would stop at the picnic table and use it as a quiet place to work on homework. It was almost as if they were bound to meet, right from the beginning.
Of course, later, after their history had run its course, Fiona would curse the park. Each and every time she walked by it, which was often considering the fact that she still lived in her childhood home, she tried not to look; tried not to recall the ever present memories of a boy with messy hair and brown eyes and a smile that lit up her world. Of course, every time they walked by it, Kerrianne begged to stop "just for a few minutes", desperate for a chance on the swings or the slide. She could never understand why her mother had tears in her eyes when she refused.
Their long, and at times tragic, love story began on a Tuesday afternoon. It was the beginning of a school year, and for Fiona, that meant long days of pretending to be a well adjusted Catholic school girl who was immune to the strange stares and rude comments. It also meant a lot of work and a lot less time to herself to read and doodle and live in her own little world inside her head. For Filip, the beginning of this particular school year meant a new school that he hated and a new city that he hated and new people that he hated. For her, he was the first person who dared her to step outside of her own head and take a chance with him. For him, she was his chance for a bit of happiness and sunshine in his bleak world, literally the only part of his life that wasn't miserable.
She was rushing as far from school as she could get, after an exceptionally long and exhausting day at school. She had suffered through Algebra, European History, Mass, and the dreaded Chemistry class, all in one day. She had spent her lunch hour fretting in the girl's room about how she was possibly going to pass chemistry; her thoughts had encompassed her so astutely that she had actually forgotten to eat. By the end of the day, she was stressed, hungry, and nearly in tears over the prospect of an entire semester in a science lab, learning a subject she would never, ever use.
Walking home from school that day, Fiona had a lot on her mind. She should rush home and start revising and begin dinner before her father arrived home. He always told her that she was a better cook than Nanny was, and if there was anything she wanted in the world, it was to make her father proud and happy. He was all she had in the world, and it wouldn't do to let him down. That thought in her brain caused her to walk a little faster.
Even years later, Fiona had no idea what had made her look up as she passed the park. She walked by the park every single day, and only rarely did she ever take note of it. That Tuesday, though something caused her to glance across the street as she walked past, long enough to see the breeze blow strong enough to move the swing the smallest amount, almost as if it was taunting her, begging her to come swing, just for a few moments. If she was honest though, perhaps it was the boy sitting alone underneath the tree, book in hand, the same breeze blowing his hair in all directions, that really captured her attention, not that she would ever admit it.
It wasn't hard to convince herself to cross the street. The sight of the boy under the tree, looking completely relaxed with his tie thrown off and his school shirt unbuttoned to reveal a comfortable looking undershirt, intrigued her. The way he sat there, staring at the book in his hand as if he had no place else in the world to be. Until right that second, she had been convinced that she was the only one in the world who felt that way, and the fact that this strange new boy was sitting there, free as a bird, doing exactly what she wished she was doing, caught and kept her attention. Fiona had grown up in this town and, due to her fathers associations, she knew most of the people her own age. She was quite sure that she had never seen him before just now.
In her head, she knew that a sixteen year old girl sitting on a swing and staring was more than a little creepy, so she tried her best to act nonchalant. There was a subtle art to glancing out the side of your eyes and seeing as much as you could see, and luckily Fiona had perfected it at a young age. She entered the small gate and managed a tiny glance toward the boy. His eyes remained on his book, as though he hadn't noticed her. Good; she wasn't really a fan of being noticed.
The more she sort of, kind of, a little bit looked at him, the more she wanted to look at him. His hair was long, too long to be considered appropriate at her school. That fact told her that he went to the public school. Her classmates at the expensive private school her father insisted upon tended to look down on the public school kids. The boys she had known since she was a toddler, the ones with expensive leather shoes and short, impeccably trimmed hair, tended to more violently look down on the public school kids. Fiona suddenly felt glad that she didn't have any friends to walk home with her.
The slightest bit of movement, caused by the boy using his right had to scratch his left elbow, had Fiona's eyes pointing directly ahead, for fear of being caught staring. She suddenly realized that she was just sitting on the swing like a lump, and if the mystery boy ever decided to look up from his book, she would be considered highly suspicious. She used her feet to push off a bit and enjoyed the swooping feeling of the swing rushing forward. It had been years since she had spent any time on a swing set, but the familiar sensation and routine came right back. Quite suddenly, she remembered exactly why the swings had always been her very favorite thing at the playground.
As she swung higher and higher, she felt more free than she had in a long time. It felt like she was flying, but instead of being nervous or afraid, she felt grand. She wasn't thinking about her father and how disappointed he would be while he ate Nanny's cooking tonight. She wasn't thinking about how she should be studying her chemistry, because failing was not an option. She wasn't even thinking about the boy sitting under the tree, or how his messy brown hair might feel under her fingertips. In fact she wasn't thinking about anything at all, except how great this felt, and then she realized very suddenly that she was laughing, out loud, where anyone could hear her.
It took a full minute for the swing to come to a stop and for Fiona to catch her breath again. For years, she had forgotten about the joys of being carefree on a park swing, of laughing loud enough to be heard. Now that she had rediscovered the experience, she knew for a fact that she would be coming back much more often to enjoy the simple pleasure, though perhaps next time she chose to laugh to herself with reckless abandon, she would make sure she was alone. With a sigh of displeasure, she realized that she had pretty much spoiled any chance of getting to know anything about this boy, as people generally didn't talk to crazy girls who laughed at themselves in parks.
Fiona found herself suddenly eager to make her exit. She felt no desire to be laughed at or mocked by this once intriguing stranger. She hurried off the swing and grabbed the backpack that she had casually discarded onto the grass in her haste. After situating it securely on her shoulders, she took a deep breath and began her path to the park gate. As much as she knew she should, Fiona simply couldn't resist the urge to glance up one last time at the boy, engrossed in his book; her curiosity and some deep, unnamed thing inside her just had to look at him again.
She would have been prepared to find him still thoroughly engrossed in his book. She would have been prepared to find him running as fast as he could away from the crazy girl who laughed at nothing. However, Fiona thoroughly was NOT prepared to look up and see him staring back at her, his brown eyes locked on hers, reading materials forgotten, and the beginnings of a smile playing on his lips.
It froze her in place, literally stopped her from moving another single step. Never before had this happened to her, and if she was thinking clearly, she would have found it very unnerving. However, Fiona was not quite thinking clearly, because when this boy looked right at her, and she saw him fully, she was blown away by how...gorgeous he was. On most people, untrimmed, messy hair would detract from their looks, but on him, it worked. She found herself wondering if he knew that, if he kept it that way on purpose. His skin was pale, but his eyes were so warm that they lit up his entire face; that much was clear to her, even at a distance. He leaned against the tree with the air of somebody comfortable in his own skin, and Fiona wondered if she would ever feel that way.
Almost as if it was happening in a slow motion, dream sequence, the smile playing on his lips turned into the real thing. If she thought he was attractive before, the smile cemented it. It was the kind of smile that lifted his whole face, and to top it off, he had dimples, which made the butterflies in her stomach go wild. As if she weren't frozen on the spot, as if she wasn't completely captivated by him, he raised his right arm and offered her a wave. This boy, who until seconds ago she had been sure wasn't aware of her presence in the park was now waving at her, and Fiona was equal parts thrilled and terrified.
She could feel her face heat up, and she worried that she would burst into flames, but from somewhere within, she found the courage she didn't know she possessed, and she waved back. It was just a wave, but to Fiona, it was huge. She was not the type of girl who did that, who waved at strangers, who went off to parks on wild larks, chasing after her own curiosity, but she didn't care. She had stopped at the park on a whim and she was glad she did, because this boy was smiling at her and waving. She didn't wait to see what his reaction to her wave was. Instead, she hightailed it from the park as fast as her legs would carry her.
Fiona was once again heading home, her pace rushed, but this time, it had nothing to do with studying or cooking dinner for her father. This time, it had more to do with the nervous energy that was coursing through her body, inspired by the beautiful, waving boy in the park. She knew, right in that very moment, that no matter how much studying she had to do, no matter how many dinners she should cook for her father, she would be stopping at this park much, much more often.