A/N: Hey look, another early morning one-shot! Hip hip hooray for insomnia!
Well, as I've mentioned before in my "Once Smitten, Twice Shy" A/N, I'm not going to be writing extensively for the Casagrandes until I get a better sense of their characters. Keep in mind, however, that I said "extensively"; stories like this are fair game, in my book.
Let me know if I veered off to far into "implausible territory" with the way I portrayed the selected Casagrandes. With that, (pretty please) enjoy part one of this two-shot.
There was a short list of things that Ronnie Anne wanted to do with her Sunday: completing school assignments, grinding down a few rails on her skateboard, watch some old wrestling highlights from Payne & Suffering, video chatting with Lincoln, enjoy a refreshing popsicle, and if none of those things suited her, a good ol' fashioned light nap would do the trick.
Listening to her uncle, Carlos, droning on about his latest knowledge-sought fixation did not make the list; not on Sunday and not on any day.
But, not one to mind his immediate surroundings, Carlos Casagrande took it upon himself to sporadically enrich his clearly reluctant family of his latest fascination, and before Ronnie Anne could hope to enjoy the rare quiet in the privacy of her bedroom, he had barged in on her, plopped down on the side of her bed, and began excitedly rambling on about some really crazy Roman emperor as he read the information from one of his treasured textbooks.
Though she was quick to groan, a groused utterance that her uncle was blissfully unaware of, she desperately clung onto the hope that he would be finished soon enough.
Three hours later…
"…and that, my dear niece, is how the short-lived reign of the mad Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, or Caligula, came to an end." He closed the textbook, placed it on his lap, and looked behind him to see Ronnie Anne staring catonically at the ceiling. "A most fascinating biographical perusal about the tyranny of an insane dictator, wouldn't you agree?"
A frown appeared on his once elated face at the lack of response. His grin returned when an "astute" observation popped in his head.
"Ah, she must be dwelling on the enriching history behind one of ancient Rome's most fearsome rulers," he said to himself. "I sense a scholar's life in her future."
He got up, opening his textbook to read from it as he stood. "Well then, I'm off to offer C.J. some assistance with his homework. You be sure to take care of yours, too."
With that, he walked away, his attention focused on the pages in front of him…
…and paid the price for his inattentiveness when he walked into the wall next to the open door instead of through it.
He took a few seconds of reprieve to gain his bearings, as he straightened his askew glasses and rubbed at his sore nose.
"How'd that get there?" he asked out loud as he successfully walked through, closing the door behind him.
The door shutting snapped Ronnie Anne out of her stupor.
"Whazzahuh?" she muttered intelligibly.
Groaning as she sat up, she wiped the streak of drool away from her mouth, and gave herself a few quick slaps on her cheeks to perk herself up.
'Yeeeeeeep. Uncle Carlos will do that to you,' Ronnie Anne thought miserably as she glanced over at her open laptop, stationed on the top of her fridge, and flinched when she spotted the time at the bottom right corner of the screen.
6:23 PM. It had been three whole hours since her spontaneous seminar and she felt ticked off at all the time that was wasted. Oh sure, she knew her uncle just couldn't help himself, and it wasn't like he was intending to be a nuisance, but with times like these, times where her new life in Chicago felt like it was overwhelming her, there was one person she knew that could help her.
But right now, she didn't need a plan or coping mechanism, per se, just a sympathetic ear.
And if there was one thing (among many others) that Ronnie Anne liked about Lincoln, it was his ability to offer his deepest of sympathies…
…even if he could be just a little too saccharine for her own tastes, at times.
"Three hours?!" Lincoln cried, grimacing at the horrors that Ronnie Anne had just brought to his attention through their video chat. "Gosh, that sounds awful!"
"It felt even longer; three days, to be exact," Ronnie Anne said grumbly as she set aside the laptop between her legs instead of next to one of them. "And I thought the boring lessons were supposed to be meant for school."
"I'm just glad Lisa never drones on that long with her lectures," Lincoln said. He left it at that, as if he were finished, but an incident came to him. "Although, there was this one time where she was trying to get me to appreciate one of Beethoven's symphonies, so she went on this super, and I mean, super long tangent about how he-"
"Uhhhhh," Ronnie Anne groaned dramatically as she clutched her temples, "my head. Make it stop, make it stooooop."
She was only half-joking, but one quick look at Lincoln told her that he had taken her plight more seriously than he intended.
"Sorry, Lincoln," Ronnie Anne said, smiling to ensure her comfort, "I just really don't want to be in a spot where I have to hear someone talk for too long. I've had enough of that today."
"Right, I'm sorry," Lincoln said, his mood barely improved. "I didn't mean to make you suffer."
Ronnie Anne sneered. "Okay, you don't have to be so overdramatic about it, ya dweeb."
"Hey!" Lincoln retorted, glaring softly. "I'm just trying to be nice!"
Ronnie Anne chuckled. Long distance bantering was almost as fun as doing it in person. "Yeah, but sometimes, there's such a thing as being a little too nice. You could stand to have a little bit of grit to you, you know. You're as soft as a marshmallow."
Lincoln returned a sneer of his own, finding eagerness in accepting the implied challenge of her accusation. "Oh, you think I don't have grit, do you?! Well, just last week, Rusty dared me to eat an entire tray of slugs for ten bucks. Well, not only did I eat every last slug, but I also didn't puke once." He paused to rub his knuckles against his chest while flashing a slug-eating grin. "And I did it without chewing; I just slurped them down like the gritty man that I am."
"Okay, I said 'grit' not 'grossness'," Ronnie Anne countered, quirking an eyebrow and folding her arms.
Lincoln sighed, shook his head, and chuckled. "There's just no winning with you, is there?"
"Nope."
Her bluntness made them both laugh, and in the moment, Ronnie Anne was besides herself. She couldn't care less about her wasted time now that Lincoln was here…well, as close to here as he could physically be. The reason why was simple and the revelation that she'd keep towards her chest; with Lincoln, there was no such thing as wasted time.
About ten seconds in and the laughter ceased when Ronnie Anne heard her grandmother, calling out for the family to join her for the dinner that she made. Ronnie Anne wasn't about to keep her waiting; Rosa Casagrande was not going to let anyone get out of eating her meals in a timely manner because doing so was just as good as spitting on her food.
"I think I hear grandma calling us for dinner," Ronnie Anne said. "Do you mind if we talk later, after I eat?"
As she got up from her bed, she waited for an understanding reply of, "Sure. Okay then," but got a hasty, "Wait!" instead.
"There's, uh, something I want to tell you first," Lincoln said.
"What's it about?" Ronnie Anne asked, the thought of her nagging grandmother in the back of her head.
"Well…um…" Lincoln bashfully looked away and rubbed at his left arm. If Ronnie Anne's perfect 20/20 vision wasn't deceiving her, she could also see his cheeks brightening with pink. "I've been meaning to tell you this for a while, but I didn't want to do it earlier, since I was afraid about how you'd react to it."
His timidity didn't have the chance to be called out on, as it gave way to a hardened, determined expression that looked back at her. "But it needs to be said. I've put it off long enough and I should've told you before you moved to Chicago. Way before."
Ronnie Anne leaned closer, her curiosity extremely piqued.
"Ronnie Anne…" A deep breath broke through his monologue, "…I love y-"
*DING*
Before another word could be said, the call dropped; the still image of Lincoln's face was the last thing that an utterly stupefied, shocked Ronnie Anne saw before it was swapped out for the generic profile picture of a gray human-shaped silhouette.
All Ronnie Anne could do, as her body refused to even twitch a single muscle fiber, was think about to the context of the situation and what was going to be spelled out to her; the reason behind his initial diffidence (his fear of a negative response), his renewed courage (his sense of duty to see his task through to the end), and his words, oh, his words:
"Ronnie Anne…I love y-"
"What?!" Ronnie Anne shrieked at the lack of closure. "What was he gonna say?! Yogurt?! Yoga?! Yodeling?! What was it?!"
Those alternatives were offered in panicked haste, a desperate scramble to find a comforting answer to fill in the blanks. But countless "y-" words later (except for that one) and Ronnie Anne still wasn't any closer to securing herself in the knowledge that Lincoln wasn't about to say…say…
A fiery blush consumed her face as she fell back on her bed. "You've gotta be kidding me."
It may not have been said in full but was there any real doubt about it now? Was there any chance that within the context of his stymied declaration, that he could've meant anything other than that?
She was just going to have to accept things for they were; for better or worse (though Ronnie Anne was quick to latch onto "worse" immediately), Lincoln…Lincoln Loud loved her.
A/N: Alright, you've heard enough complaining about my insomniac writing streak as of late, so how about I bring up some important news, instead? I already let people know about it in my "Give It a Shot" A/N, but I'll be repeating it now:
If you check out my profile, you'll see that I've added a list of stories that have yet to be finished. You can check out the progress of those stories and what I'll be planning to do with them in the upcoming months. So, if you're curious to see what's happening with my unfinished work, go over there and take a look for yourself.