"Fear is stupid." Our resident daredevil, Gryff, stated directly after tipping the rest of his third bottle of beer into his mouth.
"Fear is what keeps us alive, stupid." Rowen, her dark curls tangling in the wind in front of her face, snapped at the redhead to her left. She was turned with her back to me from across the fire so she could use the flickering light to read her book. I'm pretty sure it was the A-Levels prep book she'd bought for all of us to study from.
Sal, who sat in dramatic, moody, angsty silence most of the time, smirked with chaotic devilishness. "Fear is a useful tool." His black, shoulder-length hair disappeared in the emptiness behind his head. My eyes dropped to his long, slender fingers as he carefully picked a marshmallow out of the plastic bag at his feet and impaled it with the double-pronged metal rod in his hand.
Gryff snorted as he sprawled out, his t-shirt riding up to expose the bottom of his six-pack. I giggled behind my hand as Rowen 'The Intellectual' got distracted by the wardrobe malfunction. "You're psycho, Sal. Gonna kill somebody one day." He belched, patting his belly, and Rowen wrinkled her nose in distaste. She flicked a glance at me and blushed when she realized that I'd recognized her interest.
Sal, stabbing another marshmallow onto his stick, shook his head solemnly. "No, I would only think about it. Prison doesn't interest me." He stuck his treat over the fire, watching it with careful attention.
"Well, Hel, whatcha think?" Gryff was experimenting, seeing how close he could get his hand to the flame before it hurt.
I jumped a little. I wasn't used to being asked what I thought. I frowned. "What do I think about what?"
Sal, whose marshmallows were roasted the perfect golden color, huffed out a breath and rolled his eyes. I winced. I hated that I was just the tagalong friend-of-a-friend to him. "What do you think about fear, Helga?" He bit off the words.
I dropped my chin so my light blonde hair would hide my face from Sal. "Oh, I think you three have covered the basic viewpoints on fear." A branch cracked and I swallowed, shrinking in on myself and hugging my knees to my chest.
Sal's bright green eyes flashed to me. He leered, making me uncomfortably aware of his mean streak and the fact that I was his favorite victim. He leaned just a bit closer to me, the shadows from the fire playing in hollows of his aristocratic features. "Are you scared right now, Helga?"
My cornrows flew out around me as I shook my head. By the smirk on Sal's face, I could tell he didn't believe me.
"Well, I think that this is the perfect time for a ghost story."
I gulped. I hated ghost stories.
He rubbed his hands together, his eyes glinting harshly in the firelight.
"Out here in these woods," he started, and Rowan rolled her eyes.
"That's such an overused beginning, Sal. Do be more original." She flipped a page almost lazily in her prep book.
Sal's lips pinched together in irritation. I wondered why he talked to us at all, if two of us bothered him so much. "Rowen, the point of telling a true story is that you're not being original. You're telling the truth." Sal had adopted a patronizing sneer and an impatient tone.
Rowen paused, placing a finger in her book before closing it, looking at Sal with icy anger. "If you're going to revert back to being a rich, snotty-nosed, stuck-up child when one of us says something you dislike, I-" She rose gracefully to her feet. "-am going find a decent moonlit patch to read in." She sniffed and her knee-length pea-coat swirled behind her as she stalked away from the fire.
Gryff watched her go indifferently, while Sal was caught between glaring- she'd called him a child- and smirking- he'd irked her enough to chase her off. Gryff took another long pull from his bottle before rolling his shoulders. "Well. I wonder who's PMSing." I cringed at the tactless joke, having been on the receiving end of it far more than I cared to be, and Sal stayed quiet. Gryff didn't notice the lack of appreciation and laughed alone.
After a few minutes of silence where Sal squished four more marshmallows in between graham crackers, he started again.
"As I was saying." He broke off a square of chocolate and popped it into his mouth. "In these very woods, years and years ago, there was a boarding school. Its grounds were not fenced, and the lawn ended as suddenly as the woods began. The students, at the end of term, were allowed to wander, as long as they promised to stay in groups and to be back in time for breakfast. A small group of them, four," The specific number made me shiver, though some infinitesimal part of me- the part that fear didn't affect- doubted the authenticity of the story. "-tromped through the woods after exams. There were two boys and two girls-" A high scream ripped through the night- and Sal's story- and made my breath quicken in fear. "Well, one of the girls quickly got lost." Sal's green eyes peered down at me sinisterly.
Another scream sounded. Gryff jumped to his feet. He patted me on the head as he nodded at Sal. "You watch out for Hel. I need to piss." He sped off quickly. I frowned at the darkness that had concealed him in seconds.
"Rowen went that way." I pointed to the opposite side of our campsite.
Sal waved a hand lazily. "Don't be absurd, Helga. Why would Gryff go to Rowen to relieve himself?"
I felt my frown deepen, but kept quiet. The scream had come from the direction Gryff had picked.
"Now, the story again. The-" Sal wrinkled his nose as if he had encountered a bad smell. "The braver of the two boys- young men, really- went off in search of the lost girl, telling the other two to stay put." A scream started again, and ended with a crack, leaving a silent void behind it.
"The two sat in a clearing with the moon shining down, listening past the sounds of the woods for any sign of their friends. But there was nothing. Nothing but growls and screams and-"
My scream tore through the night when Gryff and Rowen jumped on me, Gryff growling low in his throat.
Rowen giggled, her eyes crinkling in her good humor, Gryff guffawed, but Sal's hearty laugh- he only laughed like that when he'd just finished thoroughly embarrassing someone- was the worst.
I stood suddenly, grateful that the dark would cover the tears in my eyes. "It's not funny!" Sal rose to his feet and tried to make eye contact with me. I turned my head away.
"Oh, lighten up, Hel! It was a bit of a prank!" Gryff had been knocked off-balance when I'd stood up and was on the ground.
"NO! You wanted to know how I felt about fear, fine! Fear is scary! Fear is cruel." Who cares if they know I'm about to cry? I thought and jerked my head up to look Sal in the eye. "Fear isn't a tool to use against friends. That just makes you a tool." I froze as I processed my own words. "Oh, how could I forget? We aren't friends." I gestured between Sal and myself angrily. "You aren't interested." Had I been close enough, I would have stabbed him in the chest with my finger. As it was, I settled for pointing viciously at him.
"I-Hel-" Sal stuttered, but I just spoke over him.
"Drive me home." My voice was flat.
"Oh- Helga, we didn't mean to ups-" Rowen fell silent when I turned to look at her, my lip quivering.
"I'm not having any fun. I want to go home. Now," I stressed when Gryff tried to object. "I'm sure some unsuspecting soul will be available for you to prank at a later date, but I am not interested in being an absolute child."
Sal drove us home in a stony silence, broken only by my sniffles and Sal's frustrated finger-tapping against the wheel every time he peeked at me from the corner of his eye. Now that I wasn't feeling so scared, I felt bad about calling my friends tools. I felt rather horrid about calling Sal a tool. All four of us knew that I'd really only been angry with him.
When he pulled up into my parents' drive, I climbed out of the passenger seat of his Velite convertible and shut the door without saying a word. As I walked up the walk to my front porch, I heard hushed voices behind me, ending with the not-so-quiet "Fix it, you tool!" from Rowen. A car door opened and closed and footsteps followed me.
I sighed and stopped at the bottom of the steps, listening to Sal's shoes scrape across the concrete. Soon enough, I could feel him behind me. I didn't turn around or say anything. I just crossed my arms over my chest, absently rubbing my upper arms through my thin black cardigan.
He let out a breath that blew my hair out of place and fluttered across the back of my neck. "Look, Helga. I-" In his silence, a gust of wind caught my thin little braids and made me shiver.
"I-" His voice stuck in his throat. I couldn't contain a shudder from the cold, and Sal seemed to choke on nothing."Dammit, Hel!" Suddenly, his arms were wrapped around me and his hands were chafing warmth into my arms, his front pressing against my back and his chin- Was it his cheek?- laying on the top of my head.
His chest rose and fell rapidly, as if he'd just run a long way. After several minutes of silence, after he'd gotten his breathing under control, he said quietly, his deep voice rumbling through my body, "I apologize. I did not intend to make you angry. I thought that you would have a laugh with me."
A little bubble of warmth bloomed in my chest.
A nervous laugh cracked unexpectedly from Sal's lips. "With us! I thought you'd have a laugh with-" He sighed before squeezing me tightly and releasing me. "Have a good night, Helga. I shall see you in the morning."
I watched him walk down the driveway, a smile breaking across my face as he drove away.
~A/N~ So, I wrote this a while ago... Founders AU... I love these characters a whole freaking lot...
Edit: Fixed Helga's name. Threw some italics in there. 23/12/14