This one was requested by jaylalovesreading on tumblr. High school Brackendra AU. Enjoy!


A knock sounded at the door, and Kendra glanced up at the clock on the wall; 8:00am, the same time as usual. She smiled and opened the door to find Bracken on the other side of it. He waved at her and she waved back, then motioned for him to come inside. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

She sat down on a bench near the front door and put her shoes on, then grabbed her coat and backpack. "Bye, Mom!" she called.

Marla's voice rang from the other room. "Bye, sweetie! Have a good day at school today!"

"You might want an umbrella," Bracken said. "It's a bit drizzly out there this morning."

"Got it. Do you have one?"

He shook his head. "My sisters absconded with all of ours."

"We can share," Kendra said. She felt her cheeks tingle a bit. "It's large enough for two people."

She could swear his smile was bright enough to light up the entire world. It wasn't hard to see why Bracken was one of the most popular guys in school.

Kendra opened the hall closet and removed an umbrella from its depths, then turned toward Bracken. "I'm ready," she announced.

He opened the front door and motioned for her to walk through. "No Seth?" he asked.

"Not today," she replied as she walked outside and opened the umbrella. "He has baseball practice this morning."

"Isn't baseball practice usually after school?" Bracken asked as he fell into step beside Kendra, under cover of the umbrella.

She shrugged her shoulders. "They've been doing a mix lately. Some days before school, some days after. I think some of the team is part of other clubs and had a hard time making it to all of the practices. Not sure. The game season is about to start, anyway."

"Makes sense to practice a lot," Bracken inferred. "I look forward to watching one of his games."

"They're okay," she replied. "They're definitely getting more interesting as he's getting older. When he was younger? Super boring."

Bracken chuckled a bit at that. "I know the feeling, but with ballet and piano recitals rather than baseball."

They walked in companionable silence for a few seconds, and then Bracken switched topics. "So. You know how I'm on the student council, right?" he asked.

"Yeah. Of course," Kendra replied. He went to meetings every Wednesday before school, and stayed after school on Mondays and sometimes Fridays as well because of it.

"Well… this'll be announced today in the junior and senior homeroom classes, but we've decided on a date, location and theme for this year's prom," he said.

A well of hope started to spring up inside of Kendra and she tried to quash it. Prom?! Was he going to ask her to prom?! "Oh yeah?" she asked, suddenly feeling a bit nervous. "When is it?"

Please ask me to prom. Please ask me to prom. Please. Ask. Me. To. Prom.

"May 4th," he stated, then stopped walking and looked at her. She was surprised to see that his cheeks were rosy, but then again she felt like hers were going to catch fire in a minute as well.

He had her full attention. "May is a good month," she stated. "Maybe it'll be less rainy by then."

His hand made its way to the back of his neck, a gesture of embarrassment that she'd come to recognize in him over the past months since school had started, and his blush intensified. "Would you like to go with me?" he asked.

Okay. Her cheeks were surely on fire now. "Yes!" she said, perhaps with a little too much exuberance. She cleared her throat and tried again, this time keeping her voice calmer despite the party she was throwing in her brain. "I mean, um. Yes, I would love to go to prom with you." She couldn't stop smiling. Alert. Alert. She could not stop smiling!

His grin matched hers, and he offered her his arm which she gladly accepted. He in turn took the umbrella and held it for both of them this time. "I'm glad you accepted," he said. "I didn't want to go with anyone else, and I didn't want to show up alone, either."

How much more could her face burn? Was she some sort of science experiment or something? "I wouldn't want to go with anyone else, either," she mumbled. They resumed their walk and continued to grin like maniacs. Kendra was through the roof with happiness and excitement.

Upon reaching the school, Bracken closed up the umbrella after shaking it out, then returned it to Kendra. "Thank you for walking with me," he said, just like he always did. This time, though, the words seemed to somehow stand out a little more.

"Thank you for picking me up," she replied. "See you after school?"

He nodded his head. "Same place as usual."

A sense of boldness, maybe, came over Kendra, and she stood on her toes in order to kiss him on his cheek. When she pulled away, she found his face had become a brilliant shade of red, probably like her own, and he moved his hand up to cover the spot where she'd kissed him. He had the biggest smile on his face that she'd ever seen. "It's going to be hard to concentrate today," he said.

Kendra laughed. She wholeheartedly agreed, but didn't care. She had the feeling that today was going to be a great day.