So, like many in the Glee Tumblr community, I saw some of those gifs and pictures where Rory, Sugar and Harmony are the kids of Klaine/Britanna/Faberry and go back in time.
This is what happened when I saw those late at night. This is totally unedited and I honestly have no clue where it's going, but I figured I'd put it up, since I think it'd be fun to write all the way through.
Just a little note, though. I, personally, don't ship Faberry at all, so I didn't include Harmony in this (yet?), since she wouldn't exactly have parents...
However, I may be a little bit obsessed with Cameron Mitchell, so yes, the Cameron in here's looks are based on him. However, I needed a parent for him, so don't kill me for his last name...or if you have a better idea as to who his parents should be, just tell me because I can't think of who they should be xD
This is almost 100% AU, by the way, and I apologize for the annoyingly long A/N
Glee belongs to FOX and Ryan Murphy.
Backpack? Check.
Video camera? Check.
House keys? Check.
Cell phone?
"Crap!" Rory Hummel-Anderson hissed, throwing clothes off of his bed and desk in search of his missing phone. Just when he was about to start flipping the furniture, he remembered.
"The kitchen!" he whispered to himself as he tiptoed out his bedroom door and down the hallway to the kitchen. On the counter by the fridge lay the device in question, which he promptly slid into his pocket.
Check.
Rory quickly checked the time on his watch. The green glowing numbers read "12:47 AM". Rory let out his breath, as he still had almost a half an hour before he was supposed to met Sugar at Dalton. Sneaking back up to his room, he sighed at the mess he'd left before grabbing his backpack off the now-clear desk. Dad was totally going to give him hell once he saw the room. Then again, Papa would probably cut him some slack like he always did, so he wouldn't be in too much trouble.
Sneaking back downstairs and out the front door, quietly as possible so as not to wake his dads, Rory made sure the house was locked before stepping out into the night. He let out a groan when he realized it was raining, so he broke into a sprint. Luckily, Dalton was only a few blocks away, so it wouldn't take to long to reach the boarding school.
Completely winded and vowing never to run again for as long as he lived, Rory made it to the front of Dalton Academy by 1:05 AM, a whole ten minutes early.
"Good job, buddy." Rory patted himself on the back. He was somewhat notorious for consistently being late to everything, from Glee rehearsals at McKinley to Dad's weekly Friday night dinners, so being early was quite an accomplishment.
Making his way to the right, Rory walked until he found the familiar hole in the rusty gates of the once-inhabited boarding school building. Glancing around to ensure no one was watching, he swiftly slipped through the gap and made a dash for the building's side door. Once there, he rapped the large metal door four times with the side of his knuckle, receiving four identical raps from the opposite side before the door opened to reveal a short brunette clad in an old-fashioned white lab coat and a pair of thick black-rimmed glasses.
"How astounding! You're early!" the girl exclaimed, a look of surprise on her face.
"Very funny, Sugar. Now let me in, I'm soaking." Rory replied, pushing past her and closing the door behind them. "And you know, I am capable of being early or on time on occasion."
"Yeah, but that happens about as often as Harmony shuts up during Glee practice." Sugar Pierce-Lopez replied with a smirk, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
Rory chuckled with his best friend before the two of them headed up a dark staircase, down a few hallways and finally to a room they visited all too often.
"Hey Cameron! Rory's here!" Sugar yelled, knocking rapidly on the glass pane of the old classroom door.
"Wait, but it's early! How did that happen?" a voice replied from the other side of the door.
"Hey, shut up and just let us in, Cameron!" Rory smiled and shook his head at the comment.
The door swung open, a tall, skinny, shaggy-haired brunette standing in the doorway. He wore a lab coat to match Sugar's, and also wore black-framed glasses, but his were in the large style of retro Ray-Bans.
"Welcome." Cameron Abrams said in a low voice as he gestured for the two other teens to enter the room. The two obliged, and as Cameron shut the door behind them, they found themselves in the middle of a highly complex laboratory, machines and computers whirring as chemicals bubbled on lab tables at the far end of the old chemistry room.
"Home sweet home." Rory sighed, tossing his backpack to the floor and slipping on his own dry lab coat that was hanging on the back of the door over his damp clothing. From the pocket of the coat he pulled out his own glasses, black-rimmed like Sugar and Cameron's, and slid them over his eyes. The glasses immediately whirred to life, booting up display screens on the edges of his field of view once his DNA was confirmed. Rory had to admit, out of all the gadgets he and his friends had made over the past three years since they'd started up the laboratory, the glasses were probably one of his favorites, another being the target-lock marshmallow gun they'd invented in their earlier days.
"Okay, Sugar. Now that we're both here, what exactly is it that you want to show us as such an ungodly hour?" Cameron asked, leaning against the edge of a lab table. "And if it has anything to do with those guinea pigs you've been feeding chemicals to, I've told you a million times that I don't want to have anything to do with it."
"No, this is much more important than Herman and Jamie! And those tests are going excellently, I'll have you know!" Sugar huffed indignantly, crossing her arms across her chest.
"Yeah, if you count 'excellently' as 'slowly killing poor innocent guinea pigs by exposing them to radioactive materials'" Rory quipped, earning him a loud laugh from Cameron as Sugar glared at the two of them.
"Fine. I see just how much you two appreciate my work," Sugar turned her back to the boys and stepped over to her own personal computer hooked up the the wall. "So I guess I'll just keep the finished formulas for time travel all to myself, then."
Rory felt as if his jaw came completely unhinged, unable to create a coherent response out of shock. Cameron, apparently, was not the same way, as Rory could have sworn his eardrums burst when Cameron yelled "WHAT?" louder than any human he'd ever heard.
"B-b-but how!" Rory finally managed to stutter out. Time travel was an experiment the trio had been working on even since before the lab, but they'd always had to complete the final equations, which they'd been stuck on for several years. In fact, the goal to figure time travel out was one of the main reasons why they'd decided to build the laboratory.
"A few weeks ago, I decided to look over some of the old stuff we'd scrapped when we first came up with the basic conceptual formulas for time travel, and it turns out that we'd actually come up with a major piece of the final equations at the beginning without even realizing it!" Sugar explained excitedly as she brought up a series of complex mathematical equations and formulas on her computer monitor.
"Wait," Cameron began skeptically, "you've known the answer for weeks and you haven't bothered to tell us at all?"
"Well of course not. I had to test the machine first before I could tell you two idiots." Sugar typed a few commands into the computer, bringing even more screens full of numbers and variables.
"Are you trying to tell us that you've actually time traveled already? Without us?" Rory practically yelled. The three of them had been working on this for as long as they could remember! Why did Sugar feel she had the right to just go and complete the experiment without them?
"That's exactly what I'm saying." Sugar answered simply as she finished typing and turned back around to face her two angered friends.
"And what made you think you had the right to do this?" Cameron began, his voice gradually rising to a yell. "How could you take something we've all been dreaming of accomplishing for years and just go and test it yourself without our help or consent? You could've been killed doing this, Sugar! What if a single variable had been wrong and ended up splitting every cell in your body until you dissolved! Or what if you'd gone back and been trapped there? What if-"
"Cam down Cameron! Let me explain!" Sugar yelled, interrupting her distressed friend's rant. She then met Rory's eyes, silently willing him to hear her out as well. Rory wasn't as quick-tempered as Cameron, and he trusted Sugar to have good reasons behind her actions. "It was actually an accident the first time I went back, but I only went back five hours. I jumped back to the future immediately of course, not wanting to accidentally run into myself and destroy the space-time continuum, but the time travel had already been done."
"Did you do any more experiments after that?" Cameron asked in a much calmer voice than before, seeming to accept Sugar's explanation.
"Yes, but only a few, just to make sure the process wasn't simply a one-time accident. Luckily, each time I tested it, going back larger intervals of time each trial, I successfully made it to the past and back, no problem."
Rory continued to stand silently. He really didn't know what to think at this point. After all, what was one supposed to say when they figured out that one of their best friends since childhood had literally just discovered time travel, a project they'd been dreaming of completing since their childhood? But there was still one important question sitting in the back of his mind.
"Sugar, how far back did you travel, exactly?"
The brunette in question clasped her hands and looked down at her feet, quietly muttering an incomprehensible sentence.
"Sugar, what did you do?" Cameron continued Rory's question, taking a step towards the girl.
"The last time I tested it, I may or may not have gone back, say...thirty years or so?"
"SUGAR!" Both boys yelled simultaneously, Cameron leaning down to grab her by the shoulders, shaking her almost violently.
"I'm sorry!" Sugar yelled, sincerity apparent in her panicked voice. "I just..curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to see Santana and Brittany when they were our age and..." Sugar trailed off, her voice cracking as she broke into soft sobs, pushing Cameron's hands off of her.
Rory immediately ran to her aid and engulfed her in a comforting hug, not being able to stand the sight of her crying. While Cameron was the more confident and vocal of the two boys, Rory tended to be quieter, yet more sympathetic towards others.
"It's okay, Sugar," Rory softly spoke, "I probably would've done the same thing to see my dads. And you came right back, right? So everything's okay, alright?"
Sugar nodded in his arms and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. Rory pulled his arms away and glanced at Cameron, who was standing awkwardly to the side, but looked concerned for Sugar nonetheless.
After a few moments of sniffling and regaining her composure, Sugar finally spoke up once again. "So, now that you guys know, do you want to test out the machine?"
Rory and Cameron shared an excited glance, both of them nodding at Sugar like a pair of excited puppies, causing her to break out into laughter as her sobs finally subsided.
Sugar led the boys to her personal computer, then opened a large drawer beneath the glowing computer screen. After unplugging a few cables, she pulled out a small machine, about the size of a shoebox, covered in blinking lights, screens, wires and buttons. The machine was all but unfamiliar to Rory, as he was the one who'd designed the prototype when the three of them were fourteen and had just made the laboratory. It was astounding that something he'd designed had finally been made to fully function.
"We're going to want to take this somewhere else to test, as we can't run into our past selves." Sugar pointed out, gaining anxious nods of agreement from her two friends.
The three, still clad in their lab coats, headed out of the old chemistry classroom and down the hallway onto the top of a large staircase, where they could hear the rain still pouring outside. Rory could feel his body shaking with nervousness and excitement and he could see that Cameron was doing the same. The day had finally come. They were finally going to travel to the past like they'd always dreamed.
"Now, I think to start, we should just go back a few minutes. I'm warning you, though. The sensation's a bit weird, so brace yourself." Sugar said, fiddling with the controls. "I'm just going to set this so-AH!"
A thunderclap shook the building, causing Sugar to jump and drop the time machine onto the marble floor. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion as Rory watched the small machine hit the floor before everything was shrouded in a blinding white light.
Just as he lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the light, he found himself still in the hallway and accompanied by Sugar and Cameron, the time machine lying on the floor.
"No!" Sugar yelled, picking up the machine gingerly. "Guys, this is not good. We have to get back right away, or the repercussions could be horrendous!"
"Wait, Sugar. What do you mean?" Cameron questioned, rubbing the back of his head and looking slightly dazed. "We only went back a few minutes, right?"
Rory looked around the hall and realized something. No longer was it storming. In fact, it wasn't even dark out anymore. Also upon closer inspection, the entire hall and stairs looked entirely different, almost...new.
No. It couldn't be.
"Cameron, I don't think we went back just a couple of minutes." Rory stated, just before a bell echoed through the halls.
"Shit!" Sugar yelled as she fiddled with the machine at an exceedingly fast pace. "Guys, we've got to find somewhere to hide before-"
A flurry of teenage boys, all clad in blue and red blazers, suddenly filled the hallways, some completely ignoring the trio on the top of the stairs, but most glaring at their lack of uniform and especially the presence of Sugar, who was still tinkering with the time machine.
"Guys! Please, we have to hide before we do something that might screw up the future!" Sugar yelled over the cacophony of noise onset by the many boys all rushing towards the same location. She began to walk in the opposite direction of the many boys, avoiding them as well as she could as she tried to make her way down the hallway. Cameron and Rory immediately followed, despite being extremely confused.
"Wait, Sugar! Where exactly are we-oof!"
Rory was interrupted as a tall and slim brunette slammed into him, knocking him down to the ground.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" A slightly high-pitched voice exclaimed as Rory saw a hand reach down to help him up.
Rory gasped. He'd recognize that voice anywhere, that voice he'd known since the day he was born to his surrogate mother. He looked up to meet the familiar blue eyes he'd seen every day and night, and the perfectly coiffed hair he always tried to imitate as a child.
"Dad?"
