Be Happy

Acepilot

AN – This is a third one-shot based in the Tertiary universe. This takes place immediately (eg. hours) before Chapter 12. It takes place from Phil's perspective. Hopefully this will give you something of an insight to what's he's been going through in the story. It's very short and sweet (especially compared to the marathon length the chapters in Tertiary have been getting up to) so please, read and enjoy. And reviews, if you would be so kind, are always appreciated.

Disclaimer – the characters contained within are property of KlaskyCsupo and Disney.

8 ---- 8

The sun is just beginning to trek its way past the middle of the sky by the time she arrives. I've been sitting here starting out over the horizon since the morning, listening to my discman and thinking. Thinking has apparently become my new favourite pastime – I can't remember the last time I was able to just sit quietly without launching into deep introspection.

There are no prizes for guessing what it is I'm thinking about.

"My god," a voice interrupts my musing.

"Just plain Phil would be fine," I tell her, turning to face her as she crests the hill – our hill. Here is where I first kissed her, this is where I told her I loved her, and though we first had sex in a nice, warm, cozy bed, we crossed certain…boundaries on this slope as well.

God, I'm a bastard for doing this here.

She ignores my flippant comment and stares at me in disbelief. "What the hell did you do to your hair!?"

I strike a model pose, tossing my head back and letting the sun catch my natural radiance. "You like it?"

She rolls her eyes. "Seriously. You dyed it?"

"It's for my costume tonight," I tell her.

"What on earth are you going as?" she asks.

"We're all supposed to come as something we'd never end up as," I explain, "so I will be a journalist."

"And journalists are blonde?"

"Well, the only prospective journalist I know is blonde," I justify my choice.

She rolls her eyes. "At least you did your eyebrows. Who helped you with that, anyway? Lor?"

I blush slightly. "Uh, Dil, actually. Lor's…not exactly been herself this week, I thought maybe I'd just leave that be." I realise I'm rambling slightly and look up at her. "But anyway."

She nods. "Yeah. Anyway."

We sit in companionable silence for a few moments.

"Dad tells me that you asked to talk to him this afternoon," she says.

I nod. "Yeah. In about an hour."

"Can I ask about what?"

"In a few minutes," I tell her.

She sighs. "Phil, there's something I've got to talk to you about."

I rewind that in my brain, certain I'm hearing things wrong. Something she wants to talk to me about?

To be honest, I'm finding this hard enough to do, for all my determination and knowledge that it's the right thing, that almost any distraction is a welcome reprieve. "Okay."

She takes a deep breath and seems to try and make herself more comfortable, shifting around on the hill, searching for a soft bit of grass. "I got accepted to a new course. Specialising in costumes."

I know how much she's been loving wardrobe work lately, she's been looking to move out of broader drama and start specialising in that kind of area since last year. "That's great!" I tell her, my enthusiasm for her success momentarily dwarfing the fact that I brought her here to hurt her quite badly. "I'm so happy for you."

"It's in New York," she breaks back into the conversation. "I'd be going there to do an apprenticeship, starting midway through next month."

Alarm bells go off in my head. This sounds suspiciously like a break-up conversation. And while I was certainly intending to have one of those this afternoon, this wasn't so much the direction I thought it would be going in. "Ah," I offer, trying not to sound too…presumptuous.

"Phil," she says with a sigh, "I think our time together is sort of…over."

I feel my jaw drop open. "Huh."

She sighs. "Look, don't take this the wrong way. I've loved every minute of being with you, and I think you will always be one of the best friends I've ever had. But…I think, maybe, it's time we said it's been fun, but we should move on."

I'm now ready to contribute to the conversation, but she's evidently not to be deterred while on a roll, and cuts me off before I can so much as draw breath. "I mean, it's going to be really hard, anyway, with me being so far away, and while I'm not wussing out of a long distance relationship, I think we both know this has been coming for a while now, and maybe we should end it now, rather than let it deteriorate into cross-country shouting matches and miserable times for both of us. This way, we can at least look back at the good times – and there were good times, plenty of them, and I wouldn't have traded being with you for anything else in the world,. But now it's time to move on to the next phase of our lives – and I don't think they include each other in…that way."

She's breathing heavily but not crying or anything – she's clearly had this all worked out, possibly for some time. I'm sitting here, absorbing it all, not stunned by the speech but surprised she was the one to deliver it. I allow myself, just for a moment, a quiet giggle.

She glares at me. "Is this amusing?"

I sigh and shake my head, reaching over to wrap an arm around her, pulling her to me and holding her tight. "Ah, Kimi. I love you, you know. And it would be quite mean of me to not confess that I actually came here this afternoon to break up with you."

She doesn't look taken aback or surprised. She just smirks and leans into my embrace. "I suspected as much."

"I was pretty surprised when you beat me to it. I thought you'd stolen my notes."

She sighs and buries her head in my chest. "Please tell me you didn't actually make notes. You probably rehearsed, too."

I grin. "Tried to get Lil to help, but it was a bit creepy. Wrong colour hair, and all that."

She rolls her eyes as she pulls back from me. "So, what was your speech going to entail?"

I lean back and hug my knees to my chest, staring out over the afternoon sky. "Much the same. Basically, I love you, but when I think about the future, I just…" I sigh. "I dunno. When we were in high school, we had this burning sexual tension thing going on, but we were friends. Then we slept together, and we became boyfriend and girlfriend sort of by default, but now the sexual tension has burned out and we're still friends, but really, we're just friends." I realise how that sounds and backpedal quickly. "Not that you're not pretty or not sexy and that the sex isn't great but…I feel almost like we're still in this relationship more because it's what we both know, not what we actually want."

She nods. "I get that. And nice save in the middle there." She grabs my hand to get me to look at her. "So, Philip William DeVille, this begs the question: what do you want?"

I groan. "Are you going to make me say it?"

She shrugs. "Well, I might have persisted with this a bit longer if she wasn't in the picture, so we might as well be up front about it."

"Alright," I retreat, falling back onto the grass. "I don't know what I want, exactly. I know that there's something…there. I think there's something there. And I think it could be…it could be pretty great."

"I think that's putting it mildly," she says. "What you and Lor have – "

"It wasn't something I was looking for," I tell her. "I'm still not entirely sure what to do with it now that I've found it. But…"

"But it's something you can't deny, nor should you, really," she tells me. "Don't rush things with Lor. But…just, be happy, okay?"

"I'll give it a red hot go," I tell her, pulling her to me again and kissing her, softly. It's a goodbye kiss, it's a last kiss, but it's something. Something I needed, this beautiful moment of acknowledgement of the wonderful part of my life that is ending, of the love we had, the love we made, that we're not casting each other aside for something new or breaking apart for lack of trying – we had something important and it will always be important, no matter what happens from now on. It's just also…over, and this is just a beautiful moment of closure between us.

We sit in a pleasant silence for a time after that, only broken when she asks, "So, what do you need to talk to my Dad about? I'm guessing you weren't going to ask for my hand in marriage."

I chuckle. "No. I'm going to ask him to let me buy out Mom's third of the Java Lava so I can run it when I graduate."

Her jaw drops. "Oh."

I shrug at her shock. "I've been thinking a lot about what I can do when I'm finished with college, and being a starving artist isn't my favourite option. I can run a café, I've been running the one on campus for over a year already. This would just be staking an ownership in it. It would give me a steady job and the freedom to draw and paint. I think I might even enjoy it."

She smiles at me broadly. "You realise it would mean interacting with customers, and not being allowed to make fun of them, yes?"

I shrug. "I'll work on it."

She squeezes my shoulder. "This is very mature and well thought-out. Planning for your future and all. I'm proud." She quirks an eyebrow. "And you wanted to break up with me before hand so as not to get in under false pretences and risk losing it all later?"

She saw right through me. But then, she always did. "If you could come along and explain that to your Dad, it'd be great."

She rolls her eyes. "Be happy, right?"

I nod. "Be happy. You too."

"When am I not?"

We roll back down the hill. Not for any particular reason, it just makes us happy.

8 --- 8

hope you enjoyed this, it was actually surprisingly fun to write. more of Tertiary coming soon, but for the time being, please be kind and review.