So, I guess I owe an apology. School, as always, is a bitch and I'm just a generally busy person nowadays. However, I shall definitely come back with a vengeance and I plan to update a lot more frequently in the foreseeable future! I hope you enjoy this chapter. It cuts off at a bit of weird point, but I'm really bad at writing small talk and I kinda wanted to spare you that!
"My parents want to meet you."
Sugar and Rory were sitting on their park bench in Washington Square. Having gorged themselves on peanut butter and jelly, they had decided that their picnic mat was best used as a blanket to defend them from the chill that had started to accumulate in the late afternoon. They hadn't talked about anything in particular since they'd sat down, choosing to make up life stories for passers by instead. Rory would make up dramatic adventure stories, and Sugar would condemn them to eternal misery in some form or other. While an onlooker would have found it a mundane way to pass the time, they each found the other's sentiments disproportionately interesting. Hearing this, however, Rory felt his heart begin to speed up:
"They do?" His eyes were wide, and he had a look of anguish on his face.
Sugar gave a lively laugh "You look terrified."
"I'm not good with parents!" Rory protested, trying to keep a straight face as Sugar laughed in his face. "I'm not used to them, am I?"
Sugar gave him a sympathetic look and spoke plainly "I'm a qualified misanthrope, you don't get more sceptical than me, if you can win me over you can do the same for them." Rory began to feel relieved until Sugar gave him a mischievous smile before adding "I should warn you, my mamá grew up in Lima Heights.
"Is there anything that happens in Lima Heights I ought to know about?" Rory questioned, raising one eyebrow.
"Cosas malas," Sugar half-whispered, a sparkle in her eye, before giggling at Rory's petrified expression. "You'll be fine."
Sugar came home from school exhausted on the Friday afternoon. Having suddenly acquired someone with which she wanted to spend all her time, keeping up with schoolwork was proving difficult, and her parents seemed to be keeping a particularly close eye. Santana was still at work, dealing with to some complex court case which had taken her weeks of work to build up. Brittany, being a Kindergarten teacher, had shorter days, and she was sitting at the kitchen table with knitting needles in her thin fingers, knitting a scarf that had managed to become about twice as wide in the middle as it had been at the start. Sugar smiled fondly, choosing not to say anything about said scarf, and kissed her mother on the cheek instead to announce her presence. Brittany gave her a fairly absent smile, deep in concentration "Hey mom," Sugar began meddling with coffee mugs, brewing up something that was far more coffee than it was water, before sitting down beside the blonde woman. "How was your day?"
Brittany looked up "It was great! We made macaroni necklaces."
Sugar grinned at the collective pronoun, knowing that her mom had probably had just as much fun as the kids did. In all her life, Sugar had never met someone so optimistic, so absolutely enthusiastic as her mom- the only person Sugar had ever met for whom the glass was always at least two thirds full. "Sounds awesome."
"Is your boyfriend coming over tonight?" Brittany asked, never having been one to exercise restraint.
Sugar blushed "Yes, yes he said he'd come. But he doesn't call himself by boyfriend, at least he hasn't to me- so you need to, like, not talk about that. And maybe hold back on the macaroni necklaces too." She felt a little guilty for that last comment.
"I get it," her mom winked at her. "Santana and I spent about 4 years being not-quite-girlfriends before we actually got together."
"Seriously?" Sugar was shocked. Until that moment, she'd never thought of her parents ever being separate entities at all. They just worked so well together- two halves of a whole.
"Yep, things were harder back then I guess. But it doesn't mean we didn't love each other, it was the opposite- we loved each other more than any high school couple should. It was scary for both of us, but we got older and wiser and... It started to make more sense." She had a distant smile on her face, like she was in the midst of a happy daydream. "I lit the fire for you in the living room so it'd be warm when you got home."
Sugar's eyes widened "Mamá would freak out! You're not supposed to touch that thing, mom."
"What your mamá doesn't know won't hurt her- you can say it was you." Brittany winked at her, a grin on her face. "Now go make yourself look nice for your almost-boyfriend or watch TV or something, I want to finish this scarf- it's one of the kid's birthday tomorrow."
Sugar nodded, making her way to the (gloriously toasty) living room, thanking an ambiguous deity -as she did every day- that she had one of the smartest women in the world for a parent.
Rory came home to find both his parents sitting at on their enormous leather couch and watching America's Next Top Model reruns. Rory swallowed any witty comments about stereotype and delved into the bowl of popcorn that rested on Blaine's lap. "Affernon," he mumbled with his mouth full up.
Kurt gave him a disapproving look, and Blaine threw popcorn in his ear. "Hello, my dapper young son, how's the etiquette coming along?"
"It perhaps requires some improvement," Kurt said in a stern voice, although his eyes were humorous and his face was kind.
"Think you guys could help me out by tonight? I have to go to Sugar's parents," Rory gave them a wide-eyed look of disdain, which only deepened as he watch the grins spread across his fathers' faces "Please don't say it."
The men looked at each other knowingly "Well," Kurt said "I guess you should ask Blaine, he's the private school boy!"
Blaine gave a mock gasp of appal "So are you!"
"For one semester!"
"That counts!"
"Guys?" Rory cut in; too nervous for the usual banter that was the household norm. "Okay for starters, Blaine, I've seen the pictures. Hair gel stocks must have been proper high is all I'm saying. But that's not the point." He cleared his throat "The point is that I'm freaking out because I have never met actual normal parents before and I have to act like an eligible bachelor and I have nothing to say and I don't know how to act and Lima Heights and-"
"Lima Heights?" Kurt looked bewildered at hearing the name of his home town come out of Rory's mouth "What about Lima Heights?"
Rory stared at them despairingly "I have no idea! Sugar said something about it. She speaks Spanish- it's weird. I should have learned Spanish, Gaelic isn't even used here!"
Kurt raised his eyebrow, and Blaine turned round to look him in the eye questioningly "You think?" Blaine whispered to him, with no need to finish the sentence "It can't be."
"GUYS?" Rory jumped off the sofa in frustration "Still freaking out over here!"
With one last fleeting look of disbelief mixed with confusion, Kurt hopped up to join him "I'll do clothes." His generosity was met with a look for true horror from Rory so he added "Blaine can moderate."
The doorbell rang at precisely 7:58pm which, Rory being due at 8 (after dinner because this wasn't a formal occasion, and also because Santana had to work late on her case), made Sugar's moms raise their eyebrows in approval. "Well, he's punctual." Santana winked at Sugar, and before her daughter could stop her she had ran down the hallway to let Rory in. Her eyes fell upon the boy who was, although perhaps not so conventionally good looking, definitely attractive in his own way- especially as he was dressed like a Vogue Homme magazine cover.
"Santana?" he asked in a strong Irish accent. "I'm Rory, just Rory for now, it's nice to meet you."
A blonde rushed past before Santana could respond, bringing a shocked Rory into a tight hug "Nice to meet you, Rory, my name is Brittany Lopez-Pierce, please come in! I've made cookies, do you like cookies?" Rory, deciding he liked this woman a lot, followed her inside to a living room with a large and lavish fireplace, with promised cookies resting on a coffee table and Sugar (whom he was relieved to notice had also changed her clothing) sitting on the couch with her knees pulled up against her chest. She gave a genuine smile when she saw him coming, and jumped up to wrap her arms around him
"Thanks for coming over." She spoke quietly enough for her parents to look at each other with amused expressions before taking their places on the couch.
"So Rory-just-Rory," Santana smiled at him, which did little to diffuse the anxiety that was building up inside him under the Latina woman's close eye. "You're from Ireland?"
"Yes, I only got here a few months ago when my foster family who'd moved me out to Chicago decided to ditch me. The services are better, or so I'm told." He felt bad about bringing up his bumpy ride of a past, but he knew the subject would come up eventually.
"I'm sorry," Brittany said, a look of genuine melancholy in her eyes.
"That's alright, I'm happy now." Rory have his most earnest smile, with a sideways glance at Sugar for reassurance. "My new fathers are fantastic."
"You have two dads?" Santana asked, "That's awesome! Sugar can get her male influence from your end." She looked as though she was joking, although Rory wasn't quite certain.
"Yeah, Kurt and Blaine, they're-" he stopped talking when Brittany and Santana's heads snapped round to look at each other.
"Hold up." Santana held up her hand, as if to silence him although he hadn't been talking. Rory looked at Sugar for an explanation only to receive an expression bearing an equal amount of confusion to his own.
"Your parents are Kurt and Blaine? Short dude with the curly hair and a guy whose voice never quite broke?"
Rory dismissed the slightly crude description of his parents, having received fair warning from Sugar that Santana was a generally straight-talking person ('She always said the only straight she is is straight up bitch') "You know them?"
"We went to high school together!" Exclaimed an excited Brittany, while Santana sat wide eyed, looking both shocked and amused. "They live in New York now?"
Rory didn't answer her, he was too busy staring at Sugar in amazement. Words like 'fate' and 'destiny' started popping into his head- words that shouldn't be in a teenage boy's vocabulary (of that he was sure). 'Coincidence' and 'chance' were much better valued in society, and more importantly sounded far less girly. Eventually he cleared his throat "Erm, yes. West Village."
Brittany looked ecstatic, and Santana looked a little like she could burst out laughing.
"This," Santana began
"Is AWESOME!" Brittany finished off her sentence for her, earning an expression of true affection from her wife. "We should totally meet up! I'd love to see them again. It wouldn't be weird, would it?" She glanced at Santana, apparently seeking approval.
"No way, Britt." Santana smiled, we should totally get together sometime. I miss those guys."
And so it was agreed.
I hope you enjoyed! Reviews always very very very welcome!
Next chapter shall appear very soon (possibly even tomorrow!). Our sets of parents won't actually be united until chapter 8, the next chapter takes a little look into Sugar and Rory's school life and has more about their relationship- so come back for that if you so wish! :D
