Every morning, Ronnie Anne Santiago would walk the ten blocks from her house to Lincoln's and wait for him at the end of the walkway to his front porch. When he came out, they would walk the mile and a half to Royal Woods Consolidated. It was a routine she established at the beginning of the current school year when she realized seeing him in school and occasionally in the afternoons wasn't enough; she liked Lincoln, and she enjoyed spending time with him. Ronnie Anne wasn't the type of person who was open with her emotions: She had been hurt in the past, and she had learned early on that baring your heart and soul makes you look weak. She was not, as some might suspect, made of stone, and she did not reject the emotions she felt, she simply kept them to herself.

She was attracted to Lincoln Loud the first time she saw him. They were in the cafeteria at school. Her, her mother, and her brother, Bobby, had just moved to Royal Woods from East Los Angeles, and though she would never admit it to anyone (she hardly acknowledged it herself), she felt totally and absolutely alone. She knew no one here, she knew nothing here. The world as she knew had come to an end and she was by herself in the wreckage. She was sitting at an empty table and trying to look tougher than she felt when she spotted him across the room, waiting in line for a tray. His snowy white hair was what drew her attention. She had never seen white hair on someone so young, and for a long moment she stared, her brow furrowed. She knew about albinos. Was he one? He didn't look like it, but she couldn't tell, so she watched him as he got his tray, waited for his food, then crossed to a table. She didn't think he was albino, but she did think he was kind of cute in a dorky way: He had big brown eyes, freckles, and a little cowlick that swayed back and forth with every move he made. His face was soft, and Ronnie sensed a vulnerability in him. He was like a baby bird, and she suddenly found herself wanting to nurture him.

Instead she started bullying him.

She did this for the simple reason that Lincoln Loud inspired feelings of warmth and tenderness in her. She had never felt that way about a boy. Sure, there were others she'd liked in the past, but none of them turned her to jelly the way he did. She would catch herself staring dreamily at him in class, imagining holding him in her arms and playing with his little cowlick (how he'd giggle, and how her heart would pound!). She didn't feel tough when she looked at him, she felt...well, mushy. Soft.

Weak.

It was not liking him that bothered her. It was the way she liked him, because he made her weak, and in the world from which Ronnie Anne had come, weakness makes you a target. Weak people lose their lunch money, weak people get victimized, weak people live miserable lives. She tried to make herself forget Lincoln Loud, but she couldn't. She was drawn to him like a magnet, and she realized that it was either pull his hair or run her fingers lovingly through it, so she chose the former. She shot spitballs at the back of his head, shoved a sandwich down the back of his pants, taped a KICK ME sign to his back, and even stuffed him in a locker. He would get so mad at her that his face would turn red, and sometimes, if she was sitting behind him and flicking him in the back of the neck, he'd whip around and yell. It was so cute!

It wasn't until the day he asked her to meet him at his house that she realized just how much of a toll her teasing was taking on him. When he came to her, his shoulders were slumped and his eyes were wounded. He looked like a defeated man.

Ronnie was appalled. He looked so sad, and that made her feel like shit, because she didn't mean to make him sad, she just...she never thought of how it might make him feel, and when it hit her just how selfish that was, she crumbled inside. Where she came from, it was every man for himself. That was her normal, even though she knew deep down that it really wasn't normal. Now she liked someone sensitive and gentle and ethereal, and he needed her to be sensitive to his needs. To her, the "bullying" was harmless fun, but to him it must have been torment. She thought of his eyes, and that decided her. She would apologize for messing with him and try to make things right so that one day they could be together.

After school, she walked to his house, her stomach twisting with nerves. Instead of begging her (or yelling...everyone has their limits and even the most timid of people occasionally lose it), he kissed her on her lips.

When he did that, she clammed up and her brain went haywire. She panicked.

It was fight or flight with her, only in this case it was hit him or throw her arms around his neck and kiss him back. In the heat of the moment, she hit him.

It was his sisters who inspired this split-second decision. Had they been alone, maybe, she thought, she would have kissed him back, but she saw them clustered by the front door when she walked up, a sea of faces watching her intently. Without an audience, she may have given in to her emotions.

After she hit him, she fled, her being in turmoil. She remembered the way he looked up at her from the ground after she did it: His eyes brimmed with hurt – deep hurt, spiritual hurt – and he looked so small, so frail, lying there propped on his elbows. Her chest flooded with love, and she turned around. In that moment, she decided she would go back, snatch him off the ground, and give him the biggest, wettest kiss anyone ever gave anyone else. When she got there, though, he was gone, and she hung her head in misery.

Remembering the way he kissed her made her smile, though. He liked her too!

She only hoped she didn't really mess it up this time. She apologized profusely, and over time they became friends. She could never quite bring herself to move their relationship forward, though, because as time passed, she realized something: She didn't like Lincoln Loud...she loved him. She loved his sense of humor, she loved his kindness, she loved everything about him, and the prospect of opening her heart to the man she absolutely loved scared the shit out of her. This wasn't kiddie 'I like you, do you like me?' stuff, this was real, and it wasn't 'taking the next step' it was plunging headlong into a yawning abyss. She wanted Lincoln Loud. She needed him. But she didn't know how to get beyond that first hump without just taking his hand and looking into his eyes and telling him, and that prospect made her shiver. This couldn't go on, though. She ached for him, to take him in her arms and hold him and make him smile and nurture and protect and love him forever and ever.

Maybe she could get away with showing him rather than telling him. Showing was easy, telling was not.

But he needed to hear it and she needed to say it.

She didn't know. She just didn't.

And it was in this stricken state of mind that she reached the Loud house on November 7 and waited for Lincoln, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her hoodie. Cold wind buffeted her. Dead leaves danced around her feet. She shuddered, but when Lincoln came out onto the porch, she felt warm.

She couldn't wait to be his girlfriend.


Lincoln Loud was not a morning person. His sisters said he looked like a zombie when he came out of his room first thing, and while that might be cliché, it was true: He literally shambled and stumbled like a zombie in an old movie. If he was feeling groggy, he would even moan and groan. "Uh-oh," Luan would say (or maybe it would be Lynn or Lucy...they all loved ribbing him), "here comes Linc to eat our flesh!" They would scream and run around, and Lincoln would get so irritated he'd yell. He wasn't proud of it, but in the morning, he was simply not in the mood.

The morning of November 7 was no exception. When the alarm clock went off, filling his head will its maddening beep-beep-beep, he opened one eye and scowled. Fog choked his brain, and for a moment he was certain that the alarm was malfunctioning: Despite the golden autumn sunshine falling through the window, it was not morning, it was midnight, and he'd only been asleep for an hour. He blinked, and the red digital numbers swam into focus. 6:30.

No. It was midnight.

He closed his eye and started to drift back to sleep, but jerked awake as the mist in his brain cleared. Damn it! He slapped the clock and sat up, his head swaying and his eyelids fighting to flutter closed. He stood, and pitched forward, crashing into the dresser and landing on the floor in a heap. A hissing, breathless cry escaped his lips as pain radiated from his shoulder. For a second he just lay there, hating life, then he pushed himself up and staggered to the door. I should get back in bed, he thought as he stumbled into the hall.

Luan, Lola, Luna, and Lana were waiting in line for the bathroom. Luan turned when he came out of his room, her face turning into a mask of faux fright. "It's awake," she said.

"If we stand really still, it won't eat our skin," Lola whispered.

Lincoln sighed. Can't a guy wake up in the morning and have his sisters not act juvenile? Sheesh. All he wanted to do was pee and get his day started. Shaking his head, he got in line behind Luan, who leaned away from him. "It's standing right next to me, what should I do?" she whispered.

"Stop talking and it'll leave you alone," Luna replied.

"Yes," Lincoln said, "stop talking. That would be great."

"Lincoln is no fun in the morning," Lola said with a humph.

"I know what'll brighten his mood. A joke."

"A joke will not brighten my mood, leave me alone." Lincoln crossed his arms over his scrawny chest.

"Jeez, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed," Luan said.

"He's like that every morning," Luna said. The bathroom door opened, and Lynn came out. She saw Lincoln, and grinned.

"I thought I heard the zombie apocalypse," she said. She punched him in the arm, and he stumbled. "You gotta be on your toes, bro. You never know when the hammer's gonna drop."

Lincoln rubbed his arm and took a deep breath. He was getting really tired of her stuff; she was always beating up on him. I'm just trying to toughen you up, bro, she'd say when he reached his breaking point and flashed. If he was honest, that kind of hurt his feelings. Was he so pitiful and weak that someone (his sister no less) felt they had to "toughen " him up?

Looking at his pigeon chest and noodle arms, he thought maybe he was. He knew he wasn't the strongest or most forceful person, and sometimes he suspected that he might actually be weak. It kind of bothered him if he thought too much about it, but...so what? He was who he was and he was comfortable enough with that. It's not like he was a quivering little coward or anything. If he had to fight, he'd fight...though he didn't like to, and wanted to avoid that kind of the thing.

When his turn for the bathroom finally came, he scurried in, did his business, and then went back to his room, where he dressed in a pair of jeans and an orange polo shirt. He glanced out the window; the dying leaves shook on the branches, so it was windy, but the sun looked warm. He got up, lifted the sash, and stuck his head out.

It was cold.

He closed the window, sat down once more, and pulled his shoes on. He was not in the mood for cold. When he was done, he grabbed his coat from the hook on the back of the door and went downstairs, where his sisters were gathered at the dining room table for breakfast. As he approached he heard laughing, yelling, and bickering. Ah, a normal morning in the Loud house. He wondered if they were going to make fun of him today, or if it was someone else's turn. See, siblings mess with each other...in every culture, nation, and time period. That's just how it goes. Sometimes, when they picked on Lincoln, he took it personal and let it get to him, but that's only because instead of one or two siblings messing with him at a given time, he had six, or eight. They could be a pack of sharks. Then again, when it was Luan's day, or Lynn's, or Lola's, he was part of that pack.

When he entered the dining room, he knew whose day it was: Luna's. "Mick Swagger is literally the oldest dude ever," Lori said to the table in general. "And he wears belly shirts. Gross."

"Wrinkled flab bouncing with the sway of his hips," Lisa said, and shivered.

"I bet he stuffs socks down the front of his pants because he's small," Lynn said.

Luna shook her head and ate her breakfast. She wasn't often on the menu because she was so easygoing that she was no fun to pick on. She didn't blow up like him, or Lucy, or Lynn, and she didn't get all red-faced and huffy like Lola. She just shrugged her shoulders and took it. Sometimes she even laughed along with them.

"Hasn't he been married a bunch of times?" Lola asked. "I bet that's why. His wives see how shriveled it is and divorce him."

Everyone laughed, including Luna.

In the kitchen, Lincoln filled a bowl with Raisin Bran, topped it with milk, then walked into the dining room, taking a seat next to Lucy.

"Speaking of shriveled and small," Lynn said, "how's it going, Linc?"

"Just fine," Lincoln said and dug in.

"His arms are so dangly," Lana said. "I'd be embarrassed."

"Not to mention his legs," Lori added, "they're, like, pencils."

Lincoln glanced at Lori's legs under the table. She didn't have much room to talk. He could say something about her being small, but she'd probably get all bent out of shape.

"So skinny," Luan shook her head. "Hey, Linc, the Olsen twins called: They want their eating disorder back."

Everyone laughed. He looked up, his mind working. He could bury them all. He really could. And he should, he really wasn't in the mood for this.

"Small, small, small," Lori said, "like a broken little duckling."

Alright. He turned to Lori. "Lori, you want to talk about small? You're seventeen and your tits look like mosquito bumps. I have bigger breasts than you."

Her eyes went wide, and Lynn laughed.

"And you," he said turning to Lynn, "...you wish yours were as big as Lori's."

Her smile dropped. "Hey," she said.

He looked at Luan next. "And you look like a beaver."

She winced.

Leni laughed. "LOL!"

"Shut up, Leni; I guarantee you everything everyone's said at this table this morning soared right over your blonde head."

"You're an asshole," Luan said tightly and got up.

"My tits are not that small," Lori said, looking worriedly down at her chest. "It's just this shirt."

Lynn leaned across the table, her eyes hard...but a little grin spread across her face. "It's nice to see you growing a set, Lincoln." She socked him in the arm and got up.

"Man, that was harsh," Luna said, shaking her head.

"They deserved it," Lucy replied.

Luna chuckled. "Yeah they did."

When he was done, Lincoln put his bowl in the sink and went into the living room. Luan was standing by the front door, glaring at him, her arms crossed. Lincoln sighed. "I'm sorry," he said, "but you were making fun of me."

"Yeah? Well I'm sensitive about my teeth."

"You don't think I'm sensitive about being small? I'm a boy and almost all of my sisters are bigger and stronger than me. Even Lola."

Luan blinked and her scowl softened. "Well...I'm sorry."

"So am I."

She grabbed her books and left the house while Lincoln looked around for his backpack. Where was it? Oh, here, hanging on the coat rack. He got it, slipped his arms through the straps, and went outside. When he saw Ronnie Anne Santiago standing on the sidewalk, his mood radically improved; the autumn sun shimmered in her black hair, and when she lifted her head, it touched her eyes, which sparkled. The corner of her lips turned up, and his heart stopped for just a second, the way it did every morning when he saw her waiting for him.

Lincoln liked Ronnie Anne. He really liked her. He liked her even before he knew he liked her. When he first met her, she was a bully...pure and simple. She shot spitballs at the back of his head, stuck out her foot and tripped him when he passed, stole things from his desk when he wasn't looking. At first it really got to him because here was another tougher-than-him girl, and while he was comfortable not being a chest pounding alpha male type, it did bother him that almost literally every girl he knew was tougher than he was. That's enough to make you feel like a total loser.

The thing was...he liked it when she picked on him, because no girl had ever paid attention to him. When it came to other girls, he might as well have not existed. But to Ronnie Anne, he warranted a pretty impressive amount of time and energy, and it felt nice. It didn't hurt that she was beautiful, with liquid dark eyes, warm, sun-kissed skin, and flowing black hair. The thing that bothered him so much toward the end of it was not that she was bullying him per se, it was the knowledge that that's all their relationship would ever be. She was an angel and he couldn't have her.

But things changed after he kissed her and she punched him. Over time, he came to the heart-stopping realization that she liked him too. She couldn't admit it, though. She was a mystery to him and he was still trying to figure her out, but she had this fear of being forthright with her emotions. She made fun of Bobby for being so cutesy with Lori, calling him weak and gushy, and Lincoln suspected she was afraid of being weak and gushy herself. He couldn't lie, Bobby and Lori really laid it on thick, but to Ronnie Anne, you were either outwardly cutsey and mushy, or outwardly cold and steely. There was no middle ground.

To be honest, the thought of taming the beast that was Ronnie Ann Santiago, of turning her into a wide-eyed, mushy-gushy girl appealed to Lincoln. What an accomplishment that would be.

Maybe he would try...

Here it is, the long awaited Lincoln x Ronnie Anne story. Several people requested this, but I was already either working on it or planning it. That includes Lynn being involved. Someone asked for that specifically...little did they know, she already was. Great minds think alike. I owe a debt of gratitude to AberrantScript. It was talking about Ronnie Anne with him that got me really fired up to write her character. I think he also suggested Lynn be involved, an idea I really liked because they're very similar and pretty evenly matched. Thanks, AS!