A/N: Hey There! This is my first foray into a song fic, so please no mocking if it's horrible! I thought I'd give it a try. Please let me know what you think at the end, so that if I ever get the urge to write one again, I know if it's worth it.
This idea came to me while singing along to the song Mine by Taylor Swift with my sister in the car the other day. The story just caught me up as summing the relationship of Remy and Dexter perfectly. At least, I thought so.
So, enjoy, and don't forget to review!
Disclaimer: I do not claim any ownership of the characters of Remy or Dexter, the storyline of the book This Lullaby, or the song Mine. Those belong to Sarah Dessen and Taylor Swift, respectively. I do own this plot, but it's not much to brag about...
Do you remember we were sitting there by the water?
You put your arm around me for the first time
You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter
You are the best thing that's ever been mine
Even though it was so unlike her, Remy was almost bouncing with excitement. It had been over five months since she had last seen Dexter, and she missed him.
Yes. She, Remy Starr, bachelorette extraordinaire, had a serious boyfriend that she was in love with.
And that she had been with going on three years now.
She was a junior at Stanford now, and classes were going well. Her mother was still single, and loving it for the first time ever. Chris and Jennifer-Anne were doing well together, happily married for over two years. And Remy had many friends in college, far enough away that she could enjoy her family's happiness without having to deal with them full-time.
The only downside to her life right now was how far away Dexter always was from her. Truth Squad was doing so well that they had released several albums, and they were doing tours almost constantly right now. None of the guys had families, per say, to visit, so their manager thought this was the best time in the careers to do so.
In fact, this was the highest their career had been so far. With songs a little less eccentric than the Potato Opus, they were really very good to people other than the locals of small towns, where they had been performing for the most part before.
But they still liked doing the small gigs, too, which is why they were going to be playing at the old bar, Manny's, right near Stanford.
And Remy was going. And she was going to see Dexter for the first time in months.
Which explained the abnormal (for her) excitement.
"Remy! Open up!" the voice outside her apartment was her roommate, Elizabeth. Not Lizzy, or Beth, but Elizabeth.
"What?" Remy demanded as she obliged her friend and unlocked and pulled open the door. "Don't tell me you forgot your keys again?"
A sheepish smile was her only response.
An hour and a half later, Remy was at the bar with Elizabeth, her boyfriend Tyler, and a few other friends who had tagged along.
"Remy? When are we going to meet this imaginary boyfriend of yours?"
"He's not imaginary!" Remy snapped without looking at Rena. She was peering over the heads, trying to spot one of the band members.
"Well excuuuuse me. It's not my fault we've never met the guy."
Remy supposed that much was true. Dexter had never made it to her school before, and she had never brought any of her friends from school back home with her. It was easier to keep her two lives more separate. And she didn't want to scare any school friends off.
"Remy!" she heard a voice shout. "Over here!" she looked in the direction the voice was coming from, and saw Lucas and John Miller pushing through the crowd towards her.
"Hey guys!" she shouted over the racket, reaching them and giving both hugs. After the obligatory introductions, she asked the question burning inside her.
"Where's Dexter?"
John-Miller held out a hand to his band mate, who sighed and gave him a dollar. Remy decided she really didn't need to know what they'd been betting on.
"On his way. They needed him for sound check."
Right then, she saw the messy mop of hair that she loved so much appear somewhere behind Lucas. Luckily Lucas got out of the way just in time as she ran forward and tackled Dexter, who surprisingly kept his feet without stumbling too much, and wrapped her in a tight hug.
"Dex." She sighed into his neck. His face nuzzled her hair as he sighed in contentment.
"Ah, I've missed you, my fair Remy."
She giggled softly, having almost forgotten the silly nickname.
She squeezed him closer. In his arms, she was finally home.
Flash forward and we're taking on the world together
And there's a drawer of my things at your place
You learn my secrets and you figure out why I'm guarded
You say we'll never make my parents' mistakes
But we got bills to pay, we got nothing figured out
When it was hard to take
Yes, yes, this is what I thought about
A week later and Dexter and the gang were still in town. They had a month between gigs and shows, and the manager had allowed them to stay in Stanford for the time. Really, the guys had just decided it because of Dexter. And Remy was especially grateful. Even more so when he told her what he'd done the afternoon before.
"What did you just say you bought?"
"Now Remy, don't overreact. I have the money. We've made a lot the past couple years, and I've hardly spent any. And being on the road the company pays for everything. But I want somewhere permanent, to come back to. The apartment was perfect, close to your school, and not too expensive. Promise."
"Dex, there's a doorman at the front!"
"Yes, but that's a security thing." He promised earnestly, looking at her with the innocent expression that had melted her since she'd first met him. She knew she wouldn't hold out long now. "I don't want to worry about you when you're coming back late at night alone. I know you can take care of yourself, but I care about you too much to lose you."
Remy sighed. He knew that between the words and the puppy eyes he was giving her, she would lose all her fight. He was right.
"But why would I be there when you're not?" It was a last ditch attempt to stall the inevitable—she couldn't win against him.
"Didn't you say that you and your roommate were moving out? That she was moving in with her boyfriend and you needed to find a new place?"
"Yes," Remy said grumpily. She was still annoyed about that. Elizabeth had decided to move in with Tyler before their next rent payment was due, which gave Remy only two months to find a new place to live. Then she realized where this was going.
"Dexter!"
"No, hear me out. I'm going to negotiate the contract with the company. I'm going to base myself in California somewhere, Stanford hopefully. And when I come back to our apartment, I want to come home to you."
She melted. She really didn't mean to, but she did.
"I love you, Dex."
"I love you too, my Remy."
Do you remember we were sitting there by the water?
You put your arm around me for the first time
You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter
You are the best thing that's ever been mine
Do you remember all the city lights on the water?
You saw me start to believe for the first time
You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter
You are the best thing that's ever been mine
After the way she'd grown up, with her father's abandonment and her mother's marriages as examples, Remy was more afraid than she would admit about moving in with Dexter and making that commitment.
She knew that she wasn't her mother and that Dexter wasn't her father. He wasn't even a little like her father (besides the musician part). But she couldn't help the fear that rose in her.
But after putting her shirts in the closet next to Dexter's, and seeing her pajamas next to his in the drawer, she thought that maybe this would work.
And one look into his laughing eyes as he pulled her towards him into a hug, and she knew it would work.
He'd changed her; made her into the woman she was today. After she had built up walls around herself as protection. After her childhood, watching men come and go, watching her mother have to patch herself up after every time, she had become so careful. No man got through, because if he did, he could hurt her.
But Dexter had gotten through. He'd kept fighting, long after she'd told him to get lost and sent him away. She'd fallen for him: hard. The type of love that assured her that if things went wrong, it would hurt far worse than anything she'd ever experienced.
However, Dexter had assured her over and over that they were nothing like her father, or his mother, and that they belonged together. That together, they could do anything, beat anything, and stay where they belonged: together.
He gave her hope, and she basked in it as they stood by the large, bay window at the back of their apartment, watching the city light up slowly as the sun set, and the colors and lights were reflected onto the water in the distance.
And I remember that fight, 2:30 am
As everything was slipping right out of our hands
I ran out crying and you followed me out into the street
Braced myself for the goodbye
Cause that's all I've ever known
Then you took me by surprise
You said I'll never leave you alone
Things were going well until a few months later when the band was back in town again.
He got home late, so, so late, from a band thing he'd been required to go to. She had class the next day, so she had stayed home studying and waiting up for him.
She'd expected him before 2:30 in the morning, though.
She worried so much, about if he was alright, if he was on his way, if he was hurt, if he didn't want to come home. She sat inside the dark apartment, not even turning a light on, hating how the rain against the windows made her worry that much more, and hating how she needed him beside her. Why wasn't he coming home? Would he rather be out partying with the people involved with the band?
She was insecure, as much as she hated to admit it.
"Why couldn't you have called me to tell me you would be late?" she demanded angrily as soon as he stepped through the front door, setting the wet umbrella aside uneasily as he processed her tone of voice and her mood.
"Remy, baby, I'm sorry. I told you before I left that there wouldn't be any cell reception at the resort they took us to for the evening. And on the way back I was afraid I would wake you up." He looked at her pleadingly, but she refused to look him in the eye. She was furious and afraid. And she hated being scared: it was such a weakness. So she did what she did best. What he'd come to stop expecting from her years ago, when she once used this regularly as her typical protection.
She pushed him away.
"No, I don't remember that! Why don't you ever consider me? Why should I be left alone to worry about you when you're out? The apartment is big and empty and scary by myself and it's too quiet, and you are god knows where and I hate that you leave me all the time! This is no way to have a relationship! I hate that!"
"It's not my fault, Remy!" Good, now he was shouting too. She felt vindictive, wanting him to hurt and be afraid too. That is, until her mood drastically fell, as her anger tended to do. Dexter was the calm one. If he was angry and shouting, then she had really screwed up this time.
She felt the tears build up after in her eyes—felt the prickling, stinging sensation that she knew it would be futile to try to fight. And she knew she couldn't face Dexter like this; she couldn't let him see her cry.
So she ran out of the still open front door, leaving Dexter standing stunned and confused behind her, ran down three flights of stairs, and out onto the silent, dark, wet and chilly street, where she finally let the tears come while standing in the nighttime rain.
She knew she had messed up for good. Dexter would finally see how damaged Remy was from her upbringing—how she couldn't be in a functional relationship. God. She would lose him.
And that thought allowed her to collapse onto the wet curb in front of their apartment, sobbing her heart out as tears streamed steadily down her face and soaked into her hands and her sleep tee shirt, mixing and mingling with the cold rain.
You said I remember how we felt sitting by the water
And every time I look at you, it's like the first time
I fell in love with a careless man's careful daughter
She is the best thing that's ever been mine
And then there was a presence behind her, and she knew without looking. Dexter. He was such a part of her that she could tell it was him from the heat of his body in the cold air, the sound of his breath, hitched and tense, the vibration his footsteps made as he approached through the rain.
And she knew he was coming to tell her that this was the last straw.
Then a large, warm, comfortingly familiar hand was on her head, smoothing her soaking hair softly and brushing stray, damp tendrils out of her eyes.
"God, Remy," he whispered, and she choked back another loud sob.
Suddenly he was sitting next to her, his arms around her, pulling her forwards, and despite her pride and her hurt, she instinctively moved closer, burrowing into his cotton tee shirt and the warmth there despite the dripping material, and letting his strong arms shield her from the world and the storm.
"Remy, I know this is your way of protecting yourself, but you've got to get it through that thick, pretty head of yours that I'm not leaving—I'm not going anywhere. I didn't fight so hard for you to let you go so easily. I won't leave you alone."
And, despite herself, she believed him. And she had never loved him so much.
She looked up at him through wet eyes, and he smiled softly, reading her expression through the rain coming down between them, over them, all around them. He reached a hand over to wipe away the tears on her cheeks, though the rain just replaced them an instant later.
"I know," he whispered, showing that uncanny ability to read her mind, "I love you too, so much, my Remy."
And she knew then that they'd be okay. They could make it through anything. Because she was his, his Remy.
And he was hers, forever and always.
"Mine," she whispered into his shirt, tugging him closer with a fist twisted into the soaked cotton, "mine."
Hold on, make it last
Hold on, never turn back
You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter
You are the Best thing that's ever been mine
Yes, yes do you believe it?
Yes, yes we're gonna make it now
Yes, yes I can see it
I can see it now.
A/N: There it is! Hope that wasn't a complete waste of time... Anyway, for anyone who made it through, thank you so much for reading! Any review would be so helpful and appreciated here, just to let me know how I did.
Oh, and for anyone keeping up with my other fics, the sequel to the Weasley Twin's fic Trying to Decipher the Legend went up the other day, and my Song of the Lioness fic, Morning Surprises in the Form of Naked Friends will hopefully be up by the end of this weekend, at the very latest. However, I'm trying to keep my areas of Fanfiction broad right now, and am also working on a oneshot for Percy Jackson, about him and Annabeth. Purely fluff, but worth reading, I hope, for anyone into that and into the PJO series. It'll take place at the end of their high school years.
Again, thank you!
-Books