A/N: Billy is alive in this story. Not a main character by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely not dead. He showed up briefly in Growing Pains to laugh at his grandsons. If I did reference him as dead, please tell me where because...whoops.
I went to my mother's office afterwards and did the butt monkey work she ordered me to do. Then I ran the afternoon patrol by myself and once I figured I'd given them enough time, I dropped by the Uley place yet again. Brian and his sister were in the same room so I counted it as a victory. I was even glad Will had taken himself home because it probably wasn't the most relaxing environment for an injured person. The Uley boys had always been a loud crowd and with my sister added into the mix it was ear drumming splitting. I grabbed my sister and we headed home.
"Where'd you leave Bert?" I asked as we went.
"I took him home with me first." My little sister cackled. "Because I'm a genius."
Bert wasn't a genius. English was probably the one subject the kid was doing well in. We picked a few subjects and helped him not fail those so at least the whole year wasn't a write off. It was pretty hard not to fall behind if you were a werewolf; Baxter was absolutely unbearable trying to do well and be a werewolf at the same time.
Still, it looked like the kid needed more help. He was currently sitting across the kitchen table from my very unimpressed big sister, who was reading his homework. Judy gave him a thumbs up sign and I couldn't help but wink—the kid just blushed and went back to staring at Dinah like she was glowing.
Judy and I collapsed on the couch, totally not spying on anyone. Dinah was lecturing, "So rewrite that keeping what we talked about in mind and you should be—"
"I have to go see Will tonight."
"Time management, puppy. The only useful thing you learn in high school. Keep your meeting short and put in the work."
"But Di—"
"Hey, fine. Ignore me. I don't care. It's not like I'm trying to help you improve your writing and pass high school and become a more productive citizen."
"I think you're exaggerating to prove a point."
"Possibly. Fix the paper first. It won't take long."
"I will if you stop calling me puppy."
Finally, the kid had grown a back bone. Maybe all the sobbing had made him a man. Or maybe it was because Dinah was single, even if she was way older and kind of repulsed by him.
"You're making demands about doing your homework? Am I supposed to care?"
"I'll do it if you stop calling me puppy," he repeated. Beside me, Judy had buried her head under the pillow, unable to watch, but was crossing her fingers so tightly together, the tip of her pointer fingers were white.
"Don't give me those puppy dog eyes."
"I'm just looking at you."
"You can stop doing that, too."
"Okay."
Dinah probably disapproved of the pathetic puppy dog voice, too, but all she said was, "I will possibly reconsider scowling meanly, if you want."
"Unnecessary adjective," he muttered.
"True," my sister said after a moment. "Nice catch there, tiger."
"Genius," Judy mouthed at me, so I hit her with a pillow.
I walked Bert home that night. We didn't talk much as a rule, but since Judy's little breakdown the other day I figured she wouldn't be able to reassure him. Normally I would have left it to Will, but he had enough to worry about with getting better and I could talk to Bert. How hard could it be?
"How are you doing?" I asked him.
"Fine."
Except for the part where I had never really had a heart-to-heart with the kid and had no idea how to go about doing that.
"Your parents okay?"
"I couldn't find a statistic about people divorcing after the death of a child. And Marely wasn't really a child, so I don't know." He shrugged. "I think they're doing okay."
Right.
"Okay, look, I don't really know what I'm supposed to say. But, uh, Will's going to be fine. And even if something happened to him, you'd still have the rest of us. Okay?"
The kid looked at me with these huge hazel eyes. Her eyes had been hazel, too, but greener. Happier, too. I'd never seen her look like this.
"It wouldn't be the same," he said finally. "The rest of you don't—"
"What?" I said as gently as I could. I wanted to prod him to talk to me, but not so hard that he'd start crying.
"Sometimes I forget things. Will remembers. About the way she'd play with her hair when she was nervous or how she couldn't snap with her right hand or her favourite way of getting rid of hiccups or...just the stuff I don't remember."
"Yeah, but the important stuff, you don't need anyone's help remembering. You were always—she thought you were awesome, you know?"
"Yeah?"
The disbelief and the hope and the grief kind of hit me all in the gut. I was not cut out for this sort of thing. "Yeah. Of course."
I'm not sure he knew he was shaking his head. "You're just saying that."
It was the hope that got to me, the way he had lit up like I hadn't seen him do in forever, not even around Dinah. He'd never been the most outgoing guy, but he'd been lighter and the hope made him look like—it made it easier to pretend he didn't have a dead sister.
"We're going to go phase and I'm going to show you something, okay? Only—I don't want you to show it to anyone else. I really, really need you to not show it to anyone. And to know that anything I think then—I'm an idiot, okay? Ignore all of that and just listen to her. Please?"
"Okay." The kid frowned but he followed me into the woods.
"You're sulking."
It should annoy me but Marley stumbles over the last porch step and ends up half in my lap, so I'm not going to complain.
"I am not."
"And you're hand's on my butt, cuz."
"You're just drunk."
"I'm little drunk. You're medium drunk. And big sulk." As she rolls off of me, she takes my beer with her. It's mostly empty because tonight kind of sucks, even if she is in this slinky red thing and an almost matching lacy red bra that doesn't want to stay covered.
"I'm not sulking."
"You're sulking, Levi. There's a party inside and you're outside. It makes no sense." She finally notices her dress has slipped and she's pissed because it won't stay up, but there are worse sights than seeing Marlena Call push her chest around. "See? You're staring at my boobs and you're still not smiling. You're sulking."
"Shut up, cuz," I say with a laugh. "Fine. I'm sulking."
"Told you so." After she takes a sip, she hands me my beer back. "You were supposed to have a good time tonight."
"He could be dead. Or dying. Or—I don't know what he could be doing because he fell off the face of the planet."
"Levi," she says as she scuttles closer, legs in my lap (I think she might be braiding my hair, but it feels nice so I'm not going to stop her), "Dude. Even I knew Will Lahote was going to take off one day and never come back. It doesn't mean he's dead. He's just…not here."
"He didn't even leave me a note." And I sound three, but she puts her head on my shoulder so it's okay.
"If he had left you a note, you would have stopped him. Or gone with him. And that would have sucked."
"Your boob is vibrating."
Marley checks her phone (after she digs around—it only occurs to me to offer to help once she's finished). "Just Ray," she says, putting the phone down beside her. "He's inside."
"I'll go in," I promise. "I just…what do I do without him?"
"Well, first off, you need to start coming to school more."
"Fuck no."
"Fuck yes. I'm there," she says with a grin, forcing me to smile back. "You come and we'll pass notes and you'll love it. Then you need to get some friends that I can talk to because, ew, the guys you hang around now suck and I refuse to talk to them."
"They aren't that bad."
"Mike told Fran a ride on his dick was worth three hundred bucks. You're friends are sketch."
"They're more Will's friends."
"So it'll be easy to get rid of them. Then I'll be able to invite you to stuff without worrying about who you'll show up with. I'll finally be prettier than all your friends."
And I might be drunk, but she's grinning so evilly that I figure her out. "You called Will pretty to his face, didn't you?"
"Oh, all the time." It might be a little late, but at least I finally figured out why he hated her so much. "It's the word! I have no choice. It's the eyelashes. I'd kill for eyelashes like that."
"You're nuts, you know?"
"You just say that because I drive you crazy." She's biting her lower lip and I kind of want to—even on vibrate, her phone is way too loud.
"Ray again?"
"He likes me," she explains as she texts him back.
"I like you and I don't text you every five fucking minutes. That's some needy bullshit."
"You text me enough that my boyfriend checks in every five minutes, cousin." But she hands me her phone and if it somehow ends up in the forest behind her house, we can find it later.
"Whoops."
"You're so helping me find that tomorrow morning."
"I plan to be hung over tomorrow morning."
She tugs on my hair. "Help or I won't do that ever again."
"Not even if I beg?"
She laughs as she tries to stand up, hand on my shoulder to steady herself even if it doesn't work well. When I stand up, hanging onto her doesn't help steady me that much, either, but it doesn't really convince me to let go of her.
"Be good, Levi."
"But if I'm bad you can lock me up."
"I always thought you'd be the one with the handcuffs," she says. She's a lot of things, but graceful isn't one of them. Walking backwards up the stairs in those heels while half-drunk means she's got to lean on me a lot more than poor Ray will like. "And a badge and a big stick."
"I have the big stick already."
"I bet you do."
We're eye to eye now and she's leaning against my chest and the smell of oranges from her hair is making me kind of hungry. And want to kiss her, but I usually want to do that anyway.
"Thanks for coming out here," I say softly. Her cheek is soft and she has the tiniest hint of a curl right by her ear. I try to tuck it back because she always complains when it's in her face, but it doesn't want to go.
"Be good, Levi."
"I'm better than good, cuz." She gives me half a grin and that's all I need. "I'm sorry I was sulking. I just...I miss him." His parents don't even care he's gone. Someone should miss him.
"I get it." I snort and she protests. "I do. Every time Bertie goes to visit my grandparents without me I bawl every night until he comes back."
"Seriously? You miss the dweeb that much?"
"You miss Will. And my brother is the most awesome dweeb ever. Fact."
"I challenge your fact."
She narrows her eyes (as best she can drunk and in the dark and it's like the most adorable thing ever). "Challenge accepted. Okay, so remember when Sugar Pie Dumpling 'ran away to join the circus'?"
"When really she just died from the embarrassment of being called that?" It hurts when she flicks me in the nose, but even she has to admit the name was not the best idea. Looking at her dog always made us hungry. "And I thought you were trying to convince me not to worry Will was dead?"
"He's not," she insists. "He's like those things—you know, like a vampire or a zombie or a," she mimes stabbing herself, "Unkillable monster type thing. Oh! Or like a cockroach."
"You did not just compare him to a cockroach."
"I just like saying cock-roach."
"Now you're trying to distract me." It was working, too.
"Yes," she agrees. "Okay, but the whole point of all this is that when Sugar died—well, I thought she ran away, not that you should think Will is dead just because he ran away, but you totally know what I mean, right?"
"I do."
"So I was bawling in my room for days, totally miserable because she was a girl's best friend and fuzzy and cute and adorable…" She sniffs and lets me hug her as she remembers the old dog who's been dead seven years. "And one day I'm crying some more and Bertie knocks on my door and he's got Mr. Popsiclehead in his hand, the absolutely cutest stuffed polar bear you've ever seen, and he says that I can have him if I want because when you hold Mr. Popsiclehead you don't feel as sad."
"Are you crying?"
She swats me on the chest and tries to brush away her tears without wrecking her makeup. "Mr. Popsiclehead was like his best friend, Levi. Okay? And Bertie was a little kid, but he tried to give him to me just because I was sad. Like anyone's given you anything in your life. And no, Tessa giving you syphilis doesn't count."
Just because she was a whore, didn't mean she was diseased.
"Cute."
Marley giggles, then says, "So, Bertie is the most awesome."
"Fact," we say together. She adds, "Also, just because you think you're all alone, doesn't mean you are."
"At least I'll have polar bears and dweeby brothers?"
"Uh, no. Those are mine. I don't share. How many other people would pretend I know how to cheat at poker?"
"Or do your chores for you?"
"Or let me dye their hair because I'm bored? Or buy me band-aids for my birthday with all my favourite Disney princesses on them? And even carry around an extra ice pack when we go for walks just in case?"
"All that kind of sounds like fun, actually."
"You'd let me dye your hair?"
"As long as you didn't dye it pink."
That gets me a bright smile, but she doesn't get a chance to answer because the back doors are pushed open and Lori and Ruth are standing there, not looking too happy to see me. I have that effect on some people; I know it's a good thing that she's not next to me anymore.
"You okay?" Lori says, grabbing Marley by the arm and practically yanking her inside. "We've been looking for you forever."
"We need tequila," Marley announces, but she turns around before she leaves. "Levi?"
"Yeah?"
Her nails are red and they sparkle in the light from the house. Her fingers wave towards me as she laughs, all sweetness and light and sometimes I wish I did serious because she's got the best laugh I've ever heard.
"School. Notes with me. It'll be the best."
I phased back because I had stopped sulking then and gone to have fun and the kid didn't need to see that (or Dinah was going to kill me).
"We kind of stopped talking after I phased," I said as I started pulling on my clothes. "So I can't tell you what she thought right up until the end. But we'd have conversations like that before, where she thought you were the greatest. We'd have who has the better little sibling contests. And when you helped her to convert all that old music, she wouldn't shut up about how brilliant you were for like a month."
I finally glanced up; Bert gave me a tiny grin.
"She threw Mr. Popsiclehead at my head. Said she didn't want a stupid bear, she wanted Sugar back. I didn't know she even noticed I tried to help."
"Sometimes it's not about what you did, it's about what you tried to do."
The grin got a little bigger. "I guess if I'm going to trust anyone, it should be her, right? Will can survive anything."
"Uh, yeah. Just, uh—"
"Don't show anyone." Bert laughed. "You'd have been nuts to let her dye your hair. The bleach made mine fall out."
"Maybe bald was the look she was going for."
Baxter turned eighteen at the beginning of February, which was a relief to his family. Now there was just Artie and the twins under eighteen so maybe everything would be fine. We did something small for his birthday, even though he didn't want us to (the stick in the mud). He did insist his sister didn't have to come back, which worked out because I was kind of in the doghouse with Kara and I figured it would be easier to get out without Francy around.
I waited until after Judy and I had helped fix dinner at the Uley place one night and us werewolves were sitting outside on the badly patched table, enjoying our after dinner fullness, before I demanded my pack help me figure out what I was going to do for Valentine's Day.
"It had better be nice," Brian said. "You've been kind of ignoring her lately. Not that I don't appreciate the company, but—"
"She gets it. She understands. Just…"
"Presents make understanding easier," Judy explained.
"Yeah. So, what do I get her?"
"Well, it has to be cheap and you can't cook…maybe if you did something for her and her mom. I bet she'd really like that. Fix something around the house or something."
Judy suggested, "There's always flowers or pictures or pictures of flowers or maybe jewellery…"
Brian asked, "Do you have like some sort of old athletic jersey or watch that you could pass onto her? She'd like it if it was yours first."
"She'd look ridiculous in my old clothes."
"Well…" Judy and Brian went back and forth, trying to come up with ideas. They both agreed if I could figure out something for Kim I would definitely be golden, but they couldn't agree on what it should be. Eventually, Judy poked Baxter and demanded, "You could help."
"Valentine's Day," he said, "Is a stupid holiday."
If he kept that up—that and the being the most reliable, useful person in my pack—I was actually going to have to admit that he wasn't so bad after all.
"I would pick your words carefully," Brian suggested.
His brother ignored him. "If your relationship depends on giving a present one day a year, then you're doing something wrong. Besides, it's meaningless, commercialized nonsense."
"Well," Judy said briskly, "Just because Baxter's an idiot doesn't mean you don't have to buy Kara something."
"Hey," he protested, "Just because I think it's crap doesn't mean I'm not—I celebrate Valentine's Day. I just think it's stupid."
"Which is the point," I realized. "Ignoring how you think something is stupid and doing it anyway just because your girlfriend wants you to is basically what a relationship is."
"This is why I don't like talking to your brother," Baxter said to Judy, who was rolling her eyes at me.
"Ask Will to let you buy jewellery," my sister said. "You're going to need all the help you can get."
I wasn't desperate enough to give Will another reason to hate Kara, thank you very much, so in the end I figured something out.
We had to push back my brilliant plans because on the Thursday itself Art had a gig-type thing that we all had to go to—I tried to pass because I hadn't gotten laid in well over a month, but the kid looked so pathetic when I told him I couldn't go that I talked Kara into the massive double date from hell. Not that it was so bad.
Whatever was wrong with Brian and Dinah, they were still polite to one another. Judy was leading a cheering section for Art, which kept Bert distracted from my older sister. Will skipped the thing altogether since Valentine's Day was making him particularly miserable (though he did let the kid buy a guitar that wasn't used, afterwards). Francy and Kara spent way too much time together for my liking, but even if it was annoying, at least it was kind of hot.
My parents were going out the Friday night, too, but Judy argued that I couldn't bring Kara to our place because that would be boring, so I took her to the Cullen house instead.
"We always go to the Cullen house," Kara said as we drove there.
"Are you doubting my romance planning skills?"
"No." She was cute when she grinned. "You have romance planning skills now?"
"I have so many skills I'm unreal."
"You're something, all right."
"Was that sarcasm? On Valentine's Day? I'm hurt."
"Sorry."
"You're going to have to make it up to me." Fortunately, I had a couple of ideas on how she could do that; I was a pretty creative guy, when I had to be.
"Okay." It was kind of sickening how cute she was when she giggled like that; then again, it might have made me smile.
I'd gotten Brian and Baxter to cook for me, since cooking wasn't my strong suit (it wasn't exactly theirs, either, but they could do it better than I could) and Art had set up in the corner. I thought the whole serenading thing would go better, actually, but once Art had finished the three of us ended up looking at each other awkwardly. "I'll just show myself out," he murmured as he left.
"He's really good," Kara said.
"So should I give him the flowers?"
"Well…I suppose you can give them to me." The bouquet was bigger than her head; I wanted to laugh as she sniffed the pink roses. "You didn't have to."
"Yeah, well, it's kind of hard to deliver, 'I promise to try to spend more time with you despite the crazy mess that is my pack,' so I figured I'd stick with the classics."
"I know you've been busy. I—I just wish Fran hadn't been the one who told me why you were always off with Brian."
Maybe I could get my imprint to be my personal secretary. It would be less awkward if the job was official.
"I didn't want to embarrass the guy. He's almost moping as much as Will. But I have forbidden my pack from being stupid, so we should be good."
"You did what?"
"I told them there was to be no more drama. So there will be no more drama ever and we will enjoy a nice, quiet evening to ourselves."
There was a second, as she thought it over, where I wondered how much of a pain it would be trying to get Will to agree to a cheap pair of earrings. Fortunately, it didn't come to that. Kara was grinning at me—I was sure we were good again.
"Since when are you quiet?" she wondered.