"Oh my god!" Mariana practically squealed as she abandoned her backpack by the front door. "Oh my god, girl," she repeated as she made her way into the living room where she spotted Alex and Lena sitting next to each other on the couch, watching television.
"What? What are you 'oh-my-god-ing' about?" Lena wrinkled an eyebrow, sitting up from her reclined position to shoot a confused glance at her overexcited daughter.
"Hair," she said simply, pointing to Alex.
"Yes, hair," Alex said, touching her head and sitting up as well. She wrinkled an eyebrow. "Very good, you've learned body parts. Maybe next we can learn shapes or colors," she said sarcastically.
Mariana rolled her eyes. "I meant I think it looks really good. Not very many people can pull off the French braid look without looking like a horse or something, but I think it suits you," she nodded approvingly.
"Well thanks," Alex said, laughing at the intense reaction over a simple hairstyle.
"You should do things with your hair more often," Mariana suggested. "Oh! Better yet, you should let me do things with your hair more often. We could run with the braid theme. There are so many new ones these days that people are coming up with. They're all the rage. Let's see," Mariana said, preparing her fingers to list off each one she could think of. "Regular, simple braid, French braid, fishtail braid, braid where you have to like braid three individual pieces and then braid those together and then do something with the-"
"Mariana," Lena held up a hand. "Mariana, sweetheart, I think we get it. There are many braiding options."
"Well this work of art was all Lena," Alex stated, fingering the tip of her hair, twirling the bottom.
"Thanks. What can I say?" Lena smiled jokingly.
"Just giving credit where credit is due," Alex shrugged, smiling at her as well.
Tensions had evaporated quite a bit since that morning. Her honest conversation with Lena had calmed Alex significantly, and the older woman's graces and reassurances had lessened the guilt she'd felt about the night before and her overall relationship with her. She surprisingly hadn't even regretted the 'I love you' bomb she'd reciprocated throughout the day. They'd spent their hours together watching cheesy sitcom reruns, Lena giving Alex a lesson on how to play Euchre, and then participating in the shamelessly nerdy activity of completing a 250-piece jigsaw puzzle when the turn of conversation had miraculously led them to discover the realization that they were both closeted puzzle fanatics.
"Do you feel better?" Callie asked, joining the group in the living room, her entrance and demeanor considerably mellower than Mariana's.
"Yeah, quite a bit actually," Alex looked at Callie, silently communicating with her eyes that she had taken Callie's advice and that things had changed for the better.
"Good," Callie grinned, understanding the implicit message she was sending through her pointed look. "I'm glad."
"Yeah, seriously bro, you can't get sick on us. I still want a rematch on that stupid Dance Dance Revelation thing," Jesus grinned cockily.
"It's Dance Dance Revolution," Callie corrected. "And dream on."
"Yeah for real, Jesus, relax. Give Alex time to chill. The game will still be there when she gets better and you'll still suck at it," Mariana flipped her hair tauntingly.
"Be nice, please," Lena mediated at Mariana's teasing.
"Soon we'll go back and rematch. And I want in this time," Alex pointed at them. "I will show all of you up."
"Threat or promise?" Jesus questioned.
"Whichever you want it to be," Alex raised an eyebrow.
"Oh you're so on," Jesus replied with a cocky grin, sticking out his knuckles for a fist pound.
"My bets are on Alex, dude," Callie said, patting Jesus apologetically on the shoulder.
"Same," Mariana agreed. "Actually, we should probably take Brandon along next time so you won't be the worst one there."
"Mariana," Lena warned.
"Where are you guys taking me?" a clueless Brandon asked, dropping his backpack by the door as he overheard the last part of the conversation as Jude followed him in, shutting the door behind him.
Mariana began to open her mouth to explain before Lena cut her off. "Nowhere, honey," she assured him. "Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember how school usually works I'm assuming you all have homework, yes? How about you all get on that please?" she suggested, shooing them into the kitchen.
She was met with groans, but the teens complied, picking up their backpacks once again and trudging to the kitchen table to get started. One of the children, however, stayed back; awkwardly standing in the middle of the living room after the others had cleared out.
"Jude, is something wrong?" Lena inquired as she, Alex, and her youngest son were left alone in the living room.
"No," Jude said. "No, I just…I have something…" he stuttered.
"What, Jude? What do you have?" Lena asked, a bit of nervousness creeping into her tone as she made a move to get up and comfort the timid boy.
Jude took a deep breath before unzipping his backpack and pulling out a green folder. "I don't know, it might be stupid, but I had some free time in art class and so I made you this," he said, removing a piece of blue construction paper, bubble letters in multi-colored markers and several spots of glitter littering the front.
"I just thought maybe you'd like it," he said, biting his lip and handing the folded sheet over to Alex.
Alex took the paper from him and began to read out loud. "Get well soon," she read on the front. She opened up the card and read the words inside as well. "Dear Alex, I hope you feel better soon. You need stop being sick so you can tease me at dinner. Also so we can get some more A's on math tests! Love, Jude."
"Do you like it?" Jude questioned shyly, searching Alex's face for any sign of a reaction.
"I love it, Jude. Thank you," Alex said sincerely, unexpected tears welling up in her eyes. They seemed to be doing that a lot lately. She swore, she'd cried more in the past few weeks here than she had in her entire life before that combined. Luckily, a lot of them were for happy reasons, though, and this was certainly one of them.
"Good. Did it make you feel better?" Jude asked with a toothy grin.
"Oh heck yeah," Alex nodded, returning his cheerful expression. "I feel better already."
xx
"Hey, babies," Stef greeted, walking into a full kitchen, her salutation being returned with a chorus of 'hey mom.' It was nearing dinner time and everyone was starting to gather together. Alex and Lena were putting the final touches on the meal while the other kids were packing up their book bags and setting the table. "Sorry I'm a little late," she apologized, going over to kiss her wife.
"It's fine," Lena sighed over dramatically. "I've just been slaving over this stove for the past three hours making dinner all by myself. It's your favorite stir fry, not that you were here to help prepare any of it," she complained.
"Wow, getting sassy are we? Let's not forget while I was out playing sole breadwinner you were at home lounging all day," Stef teased back.
"I would hardly call what I was doing lounging," Lena rolled her eyes. "You try spending the whole day with this one and see if you feel relaxed," she joked, gesturing over to Alex who stood next to her chopping up vegetables.
"Uh oh. Alexandra Elizabeth, what did you do? Have you been causing trouble?" she asked in a mock-stern tone, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.
"Elizabeth?" Lena perked her head up, looking over at Alex. "That's my middle name."
"So I've heard," Alex responded with a small smile.
"Yeah, yeah, we get it, you guys are name twins, but let's get back to the subject at hand. What'd you guys do today?" Stef inquired.
"Nothing much," Alex said quickly. "Just watched some TV, ate some lunch, played some cards," she said simply, excluding the deep conversations they'd had and hoping Lena would too. It was still a bit too personal to share, even with Stef. It felt too odd and she selfishly wanted to keep it to herself for just a bit longer.
"Anything else?" Stef asked, eying the two of them suspiciously.
"No, I think that about covers it," Lena said. "Don't you?" she asked Alex, who nodded, relieved.
"Yup. Pretty chill day," she agreed.
"All right," Stef said, still not convinced, but letting it go. Lena would tell her if something major happened. "Well, us three still need to have a conversation after dinner just to kind of regroup so hang back after we're done cleaning up, yes?" she asked Alex.
"Yeah," she said quietly, suddenly concentrating very hard on the chopping block she was shredding carrots on.
"Good," Stef replied, squeezing the younger girl's shoulder reassuringly as she passed by to go to the refrigerator and grab some drinks.
The next few minutes included the routine hustle and bustle of scrambling around, setting plates and silverware on the table as everyone slumped into their chairs, passing around various bowls and dishes as they filled their plates. It wasn't until a few minutes later, after everyone had successfully scooped everything they so desired onto their dishes before conversation began to start up.
"Anything exciting happen at school today?" Lena questioned.
"Not really," Jude shrugged.
"Same old stuff," Brandon agreed.
"That's not true," Mariana argued. "Remember Nick and Marco got into that big fistfight in the hallway together because Nick accused Marco of sleeping with Madison?" she pointed out.
"Oh yeah," Brandon said, suddenly remembering the incident. "Idiots."
"There was a fistfight?" Lena cringed.
"Yeah, it was actually pretty awesome," Jesus said, changing his tune when Lena shot a glare at him. "Awful. Not awesome. I definitely meant awful."
Lena sighed. "Besides violent altercations, what else did I miss today? Come on, you guys have to fill me in," she prompted.
"My science teacher bought some fish to be our class pets," Jude shared.
"Oh that's nice," Lena nodded.
"Not really. The biggest fish ate the four smaller ones within five minutes so it was actually pretty sad," Jude replied.
"Oh," Lena wrinkled her eyebrow worriedly. "Well that's…kind of disturbing."
Stef cleared her throat before opening her mouth, attempting to save her wife from this epic failure of conversation starting by changing the subject. "Callie, you had newspaper today, yes? How did that go?"
"Oh, it was good," she said, looking up from her plate. "I meant to tell you about that, actually. Um, they're going to include an article I wrote in the next issue."
"Callie, that's wonderful," Lena congratulated.
"That is great news, but I thought you were just doing the photography stuff," Stef said.
"Well I was," Callie agreed. "Or, I mean I still am," she clarified. "It's just a one-time thing. Every month the group picks a theme to do for a certain section and five staff members do little write-ups about it. It's to show diversity and interpretation I guess. I don't really know. Timothy somehow caught wind of what the theme was going to be and thought something I wrote for class would be a good fit. He practically forced me to submit it and it got picked," she shrugged it off nonchalantly, looking back down to spear a piece of baby corn with her fork.
"Timothy would never encourage me to submit anything I wrote to the paper," Mariana rolled her eyes. "I swear, he hates my writing."
"Didn't you write your last paper on the similarities of a Shakespearian play and an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians?" Brandon asked.
"Hey, there's a lot of tension and backstabbing in both. I deserved way higher than a D+. It was a good argument." Mariana stressed.
"Yeah, if you're working for E! News," Alex joked.
Mariana sighed. "Some people just don't understand the importance of pop culture."
"And some people just don't understand that classic literature shouldn't be compared to reality trash," Brandon replied.
"You have no creativity, Brandon. You're just too afraid to think outside the box," Mariana accused.
"Well I got an A for thinking inside the box, so I think I'm going to remain happily inside the box for right now," he said back.
Before Lena or Stef could jump in to diffuse the rapidly heating situation, Callie surprised them both by speaking up again.
"Oh, and before I forget, I need pictures of you two," she said casually, still staring down at her plate.
"Who are 'you two'?" Stef asked.
"You and Lena," Callie replied. "I just need them to go along with my little theme article."
"All right, that's no problem," Lena assured her. "What's the theme, sweetheart?"
"Heroes," Callie replied simply.
Stef paused, her water glass stuck in midair. She slowly lowered her cup back to the table before folding her hands. "Heroes?" she asked quietly in clarification.
"Yeah, heroes. One kid wrote about like growing up reading Superman comics and another one reviewed the new Spiderman movie."
"And you wrote about the two of us?" Lena asked softly, pursing her lips to hold back the tears now gathering in her eyes.
"Well yeah…" Callie said quietly, looking up. She blushed, suddenly embarrassed. The whole table was now silent and starting at her, and she was afraid she'd maybe crossed a line. "I mean, is that okay? I can probably get them to take it out if you're not comfortable with it-"
"No, no," Stef shook her head, clearing her suddenly thick throat. "It just…it surprised us, that's all. But we're honored, sweetheart, really."
"Yes," Lena agreed. "That's incredibly thoughtful of you, hon," she smiled, reaching across the table to squeeze Callie's hand.
Callie blushed, but her face twitched up into a small smile. "It's really not that big of a deal."
"It is to me," Stef said quickly, unwilling to let her downplay this particular thing.
"Me too," Lena agreed.
"Hey, I call reading it first," Brandon said, raising his hand.
"No way, I totally have dibs on getting the first copy," Mariana argued.
"And why is that?" Brandon questioned.
"Um, because I share a bedroom with her. Duh," she said as if this was obvious.
"What does that even have to do with anything?" Jesus asked.
"I've been her brother the longest, I think I should get to read it first," Jude butted in.
"Jude, dude, you're the youngest. Dream on," Jesus said, lightly punching his shoulder.
"He may be the youngest, but he's also the cutest," Alex pointed out.
"Ha! Good point. Thanks, Alex," Jude beamed at her.
"Anytime, bud," she winked back.
"Well, as the writer of said in-demand article, I think I get to choose who will be the lucky person to get their hands on it first," Callie laughed at her faux, over-the-top celebrity status of the moment.
"Do you take bribes or are you above that? Because I have a job and am willing to pay the big bucks," Alex wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
The teasing and good-natured bickering went on for a few minutes, but neither Stef nor Lena noticed much of it. They were too busy looking at each other, tears shining in both their eyes as they smiled.
Heroes.
A little break in the drama for some fluff. How did you like this chapter? Thanks for all the congratulations! Graduation went splendidly, and now it's summer! Hooray! Oh, and did anyone notice we passed 300 reviews? That's unbelievable and so incredibly exciting and humbling. You guys are the best and I truly cannot thank you enough for all your support.
And by the way, Happy Fostersversary! It's crazy to think it's been exactly a whole year since the Pilot aired.
Liz and Grace - I would never have made it this far without you, so thanks.