There are very few situations either Blaine's looks or charm could not weasel himself out of. That is, there would be, if he ever did anything that needed weaseling. Because he didn't. Because he spent the majority of his 'trouble-making years' learning how to play a guitar, and when he was finally in an environment where he could be fully influenced by guys his own age, they were all goody-little-two-shoes, well-educated, well-groomed…wholesome guys.
Which made for a very wholesome Blaine. Which made for some tense moments the second Del learned what rebellion was.
~x~
"Are you crazy?" he screamed, furrowing his brow in disbelief.
"No, I'm thirteen. Mom said I can't trick-or-treat anymore, so I'm doing mischief night." Del crossed her arms and glared him down.
Mischief night 2009 would forever live in infamy within the Anderson home: Mr. and Mrs. Anderson would insist that they'd be home by ten—and then have the charity dinner run really, really, really late; thirteen year old Del would insist that she was old enough to go and that Lori was going too and that she wouldn't do anything really bad; and fifteen year old Blaine would do the first in a long and almost never ending string of authoritative actions.
"No," he said very firmly, moving to stand in between Del and the front door. "Mom and Dad would never allow it, so there is no way in hell that I can."
Del let out an indignant huff of air. "Mom and Dad aren't home." She took a step towards him and scowled, getting right in his face. "And I'm going out."
"What exactly are you planning to do anyway? Egg something? TP someone's house? This is stupid, Del. Really, really stupid." He grabbed her by the shoulders and backed her towards the couch.
"I'm going to bike to Lori's house and her brother is going to set us up with everything we need, because her brother is cool." She pulled away from his grasp and plopped heavily down on to the couch.
"Yeah. Cool. That's why he was arrested four times this summer?" Blaine raised an eyebrow in speculation and Del sighed, rolling her eyes.
"We're not gonna get arrested," she snarled, refusing to look at him.
"But you don't know that. If you want, I'll…I'll call Lori and say that I was the jerk that kept you from going out. Okay? Would that fix this little problem?"
"No!" Del spat.
"Then I don't know what to tell you!" He threw his hands up in exasperation. "I will sit in front of that door until Mom and Dad get home because—"
"Because why?" she hollered. "I'm old enough to take care of myself, Blaine! I don't need you to hover over me! Mom and Dad do that enough!"
"No! You're not old enough! You're thirteen and impulsive and too independent for your own good and tiny!" He took a deep breath. "And if I let you go out there tonight, either you're going to get hurt or in trouble or I'm going to get in trouble."
Del was still looking down, scowling and fiddling with the bracelet on her wrist.
"I don't want any of that to happen. If you got hurt, I…Mom and Dad would never trust me again, and I probably wouldn't be able to live with myself." He sighed heavily and crossed his arms.
"I don't know why you're so convinced I'm gonna get hurt," she mumbled.
"Because I know better than you—heck, I probably know better than Lori's delinquent brother, that there are people out there that will hurt you for no other reason than the fact that you're there and an open opportunity." He looked down at his hands, balled into fists, and worked very hard at relaxing them before continuing. "They don't need reasons, Del."
She was quiet. A part of her knew that he was right—and had evidence to prove it—but another part of her wanted to bolt from where she sat on the couch and make a beeline for the door.
Finally, she looked up at him, standing a few feet from the door. His chest was puffed out in a deliberate attempt to look stronger, his arms were crossed and his eyes were narrowed, but his mop of hair, sticking out in curly tufts at odd angles detracted from his efforts at authority.
"Fine," she said quietly. "Just let me call Lori."
Blaine kept an eye on her as she stood from the couch and made her way to the phone in the kitchen. After she hung up, she headed for the stairs with a quick, "goodnight" and disappeared into her room.
Blaine fell asleep on the couch that night, full of something like pride…at least until his parents came home and shuffled him off to bed.
~x~
"I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you so much right now you don't even know!" Blaine hollered through his teeth as he leaned up against a tree on the edges of the Westerville town green, panting like he had just finished a marathon.
"If you hate me so much," Del said breathlessly, also struggling to catch her breath. "Then why are you smiling right now?"
He was silent, only smiling wider and continuing to try and catch his breath. "Did you at least get it?"
Del held up a blue pendant on a silver chain and smiled slyly. "I got it."
Earlier that day, the green had been covered in tents and small farm stands, bustling with people ready to sell their products or whatever they had picked from their gardens that day. Del had only gone because Lori had promised that a guy from school would be there at his dad's stand…and that said guy had a crush on Del.
So Del had slipped her mom's topaz necklace out of her drawer and picked out a nice top and joined Lori at the green. And guess who wasn't there.
And guess what chain had broken the second Del had arrived. And guess who didn't notice until she got back home. And guess who she had talked into going with her to find it.
"Why the hell is our town spending money on paying cops to patrol the green at one in the morning anyway?" Blaine asked, finally speaking clearly.
"I don't know…maybe to keep stupid kids off the grounds." Del pocketed the necklace and stole a glance around the tree to the open field and could just see a cop car driving off in the opposite direction.
"If we get caught, I swear Del I will—"
"Shh!" she hissed. "We're not gonna get caught. Come on." She darted out from behind the tree and ducked back under a bush—Blaine on her heels—and grabbed her bike.
"It's amazing you found it, you know. The chances of that are like, one in—"
"A lot. One in a lot chances. I know." She mounted her bike and started off down the road. "Can we just be thanking the fates or whatever right now? Because that was some kind of higher power stuff going on right there."
Blaine snorted back a laugh. "Yeah. Fates be praised, alright."
When they rounded the final block to their street, and turned down their driveway, they both held their breath.
They crept up to the front door and Blaine took what felt like an eternity to open it. Once they were inside, though, they both collapsed on the couch with heavy sighs.
"I feel so alive!" Del whispered, pulling the necklace out of her pocket and waving it in the air.
"I feel like I'm gonna die…" Blaine groaned, rubbing his eyes and cracking his neck dramatically.
There were a few moments of silence in which either of them could have fallen asleep.
"You owe me," he finally said, his expression stony. "You owe me big time." He poked her hard in the arm.
"Fine! Whatever you want, whenever you want. Deal. Now," she stood up slowly and stretched. "I'm going to pop this back onto Mom's dresser"—she shook the necklace in her hand—"and then I'm going to bed."
"I hate you!" Blaine called Del climbed the stairs to her room.
"Love you, too!"
~x~
Odd and unexpected things happened when Lori came for sleepovers. One could just be walking down the hall, minding his own business, and a hand could pop out from Del's room, grab him by the collar of his shirt, and drag him inside the 'dragon's den.'
Few left the dragon's den unscathed. Blaine was one of the lucky to have not only lived through one capture, but several.
Even Del would admit that her room could be scary some days: the walls were an unsettling shade of green—that probably could be pretty if she wanted them to be; the floor was covered wall to wall in a deep brown shag carpet; the windows were concealed by heavy, wooden blinds, and there was stuff absolutely everywhere. He avoided walking past the door after midnight most days.
"Go get us the phonebook," Del commanded after tossing Blaine into her room and standing in front of the door.
"And why would I do that?" he asked, straightening his shirt.
"Because," Lori chimed in from where she sat on Del's bed. "We're gonna have fun."
"No," he said plainly, crossing his arms. "Get it yourselves. I refuse to be involved with whatever wrongdoings are about to transpire here."
Del rolled her eyes. "Please? If I go down there looking for the phonebook, Mom will get suspicious. If you go down there looking for the phonebook, she won't even bat an eye. You're too goody-goody to do anything! She'll probably think that you're looking up the number to the animal shelter to change your hours or something."
Lori stifled a laugh and Blaine looked no less than disgruntled.
"I resent that," he said indignantly. "I am not a 'goody-goody'!"
Del smiled slyly and opened the door behind her, raising an eyebrow in skepticism. "Prove it."
With a huff, Blaine marched out of the room and down the hall, in the opposite direction of where Del knew the phonebook to be.
"Darn it," Del sighed, swinging the door shut and taking a seat on her bed next to a pouting Lori, then flopping to stare at the ceiling.
"Now what?" Lori sighed, laying back, too.
"I don't know. We could watch more prom proposal videos on YouTube…" Lori shook her head uninterestedly. "We could…have another Angry Birds marathon?"
"You're brother sucks. What are we supposed to do now?" Lori groaned.
"I dunno. We could—" but she was cut off by a sharp rap on her door.
Lori sprung up. "You don't think he squealed on us, do you?"
Del, too, sat up and headed for the door, grumbling under her breath. "He better not have."
But when she opened the door, she came face to face with her brother, wearing an expression that read somewhere along the lines of mutinous, holding a phonebook in one hand and his cell phone in the other.
"Um," he stuttered. "How do you pick who to call?"
And once again, he was dragged into the room by the neck of his t-shirt by an overzealous Del as a giggling Lori looked on.
And less than an hour later he would be thrown out of the room, Del huffing with exasperation and Lori no more pleased, deemed forever as the worst crank caller in history.
I like it. Gives Del…depth. Please, please, please, please review! I love all of you so much and I have so many ideas in the works! Please review!