Disclaimer: I own none of the below: Summerland, Bradin, the characters, and etc.
"Bradin?" Lea anxiously reaches up to her eyes, only to pat at Bradin's warm hands, which are both covering her eyes at the moment.
"Yeah?" Bradin tilts his head sideways from behind to verify Lea's eyes, he hated to cover up her luminous orbs, but this is for the greater good. "You're not peeking are you?"
It's a random Saturday morning and Bradin had been plotting this date for a while now.
The more time that he spends with Lea, the more he realizes how much there is to the girl behind the pretty eyes, behind the cross country medals, the good grades, and the unassuming smile.
Being from completely different backgrounds, their experiences are time zones apart. They spend a lot of time simply talking, sharing their thoughts and feelings on everything and anything that happens upon their minds at the moment. Bradin doesn't think he can ever tire of their conversations, he wants to know everything about her; and there is also so much about himself that he'd like to share with her, which leads to the events of today.
"No, I'm not peeking...but..." Lea answers while squinting through his eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse in between his fingers.
"Good." He whispers close to her ears. The warmness of his breath transcends onto Lea's nape sending a cool tingle down her arms.
She quickly draws a breath herself and squares her shoulders. Clearing her throat, she asks, "where are we going?"
"Stop asking! It's a surprise! Look up the definition, woman!" Bradin smirks in the way that he knows can make Lea roll her eyes but want to kiss him at the same time. It's a shame she can't see it at the time being.
"I would need to be able to see to look it up..." Lea strains her ears and attempts to rely on her other senses to deduce their locality.
"Well, I guess you'll have to do it later then." The smirk turns into a genuine smile as he ushers them towards the final destination.
"Bradin?" Lea tentatively sniffs the air.
"Yeah?"
"It smells!" Bradin feels her nose wrinkle slightly.
The pungent aroma of their surroundings is actually one that smells of nostalgia for Bradin but he understands that Lea may not see its charm, "well, hold your breath."
"Hmm, voluntary suffocation is not my favorite way of suicide."
"Don't worry! If you faint, I'll revive you. The whole mouth-to-mouth thing? I'm pretty good at it." Bradin assures her smugly, thinking that, in fact, he doesn't mind performing CPR on Lea at all.
Lea coughs slightly, she'll get him back for that one later. "Okay, seriously Bradin, it's really pretty, uh, odorous here. Where are we?" She feels a halt in their movement.
"Ready?" Bradin is grinning widely to himself.
Lea rolls her eyes as best as she can with them closed. "What am I supposed to be ready for?"
He finally removes the screen of his palms from her eyes.
Lea blinks several times, adjusting to the light, and then everything came into focus.
"Oh," she pauses, blinking a few times to confirm her vision, "my gosh!" She exclaims, jumping back and colliding into Bradin.
Bradin chuckles and steadies his girlfriend. Giving her a soft peck on the cheek and brushing her arm lightly as he passes, Bradin moves forth to pat the shiny black coat of the immensely gorgeous animal in front of them.
He has taken Lea to a stable.
Growing up on a farm, Bradin is used to agricultural animals—chickens, cows, horses, and the sort. Riding has always been a leisure recreation that he's enjoyed and he figures that Lea might like it too. He had wondered if Lea already knew how to ride. Seeing as how her family is rich, he wouldn't be surprised if somewhere on that vast property of theirs is a stable, housing rare and expensive thoroughbreds.
"Oh my FREAKING GOSH!" Lea repeats again, as she edges cautiously but quickly towards the doors of the horse stall, her eyes as wide as watermelon.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Bradin grabs her wrist before she can take off sprinting. "Where you going?"
"Preferably far away?" Lea answers in a bewildered tone. "That's a HORSE!"
"No wonder they say you're a smart girl." Bradin smirks slightly.
Lea, on the other hand, is not amused, in fact she's far from being amused. She's so far from it that she couldn't see the word even if you outlined it with flickering neon lights. "Shut up, Bradin!"
"You've never seen a horse before?"
"I've seen horses before... in pictures, at the zoo, on TV, you know, where they can't trample you?"
Lea is making sure that she's completely hidden from the view of the steed as she positions herself directly behind Bradin.
Bradin chuckles as her obvious movements. "I would have thought that you already know how to ride?" He maneuvers Lea back in front of him, both of them facing the horse. Bradin encircles his arms around her waist, making sure that she can't get away.
"Oh my goodness, no! What part of me resembles Annie Oakley to you?" Lea snaps, there's a hint of frantic panic in her voice as she's made to face the tall, gallant stallion.
"Hey! It's okay!" He lowers his head to softly nuzzle against Lea's neck line, hoping to soothe her nerves a little. "I'll teach you." Bradin says simply.
"No, really Bradin, I've never been good around horses, or any other large animals with galloping tendencies."
"So you have been around them."
"Well, yes, technically. When J.B. and I used to get summoned to France to stay with my grandparents, I tried riding once but the whole swinging up to the saddle thing is really just not my cup of coffee."
"Lea," Bradin is beginning to grasp the problem, "it's okay if you're not great at something."
Lea's is strained as she watches the horse with alarm and perplexity. "Yes, it is okay, but I find sticking to what you excel at to be a good rule of thumb."
He chuckles at the brazen confession of her own faults, "C'mon, just try."
"Try what?"
"Riding," Bradin replies matter-of-factly.
"Ride what?" Lea's tone rises slightly in apprehension.
"The horse, Lea." Bradin attempts to move forward with Lea in his arms, but she is firmly planted to the ground like an ancient sequoia tree.
"Umm, how 'bout no? Oh wait, I've reconsidered, I mean, no way in hell!" Lea attempts to wiggle out of his arms as she maps the fastest way to the stall doors in her head.
Bradin chuckles, he's enjoying the unadulterated reaction that Lea is exhibiting. "You're not scared, are you?"
"Oh you bet I'm afraid, I'm petrified, in fact, I think I'm about to keel over and vomit."
Bradin frowns pensively, "I doubt that Mars here will like having you puke in his stall."
"His name is MARS?" Lea utters the name as if it is poison.
"Yeah?" Bradin doesn't understanding how the name can be offensive.
"As in angry, violent, vengeful, temperamental Greek god of war?"
"As in the candy, Mars bars, Lea." Bradin has always suspected that too much knowledge drove people to paranoia.
"Oh." Lea silences herself lamely.
"Yeah." Bradin releases her only to turn her around, and make her face him.
"Okay." Entranced by the glitter in Bradin's eyes, Lea forgets the brilliant excuse that she had previously formed in her head.
"Okay." He grins, chalking up one victory for himself.
"Oh my gosh, Bradin, this is insane." Lea sighs, shaking her head.
"Calm down! Come here, he won't bite." Bradin feigns a small pout. He lets go of Lea and moves towards the black horse, "You're going to hurt his feelings."
"Good to know you've got your priorities in order, Westerly." Lea mutters bitterly as Bradin drags her next to Mars.
The stallion's enormity only seems to grow in Lea's eyes as she is juxtaposed with the creature, "Oh my goodness Bradin what if he decides it might be fun to charge at me, pummel me to the ground and then proceed to tread over my body, compressing my bones into powder and mincing my tissues into ground meat?"
"No, I promise, he won't. Mars is one of the most tamed horses I've ever seen. I'm sure he'll take to you, Lea."
"It's really okay, having Mr. Rogers as my best friend was never a life goal of mine."
"Lea, c'mon."
"In fact, I've never even watched Mr. Rogers, I was always more of a Sesame Street kid... you know, hand puppets, monsters popping out of trash cans, counting vampires? That sort of thing I can handle." Lea turns on her best coping device— irrelevant speech.
"Big Bird is, you know, big?" Bradin decides to humor her for a second, hoping to prove to her that the horse is not going to make any sudden dangerous movements that will expedite them towards an untimely death.
"Yes, but he's also yellow, fluffy, and relatively unthreatening."
"I'm sure his beak qualifies as weaponry."
"Hmm...." Lea is momentarily distracted in contemplation, before Mars shuffles his feet in the stall and slightly bobs his head. At the movement of the horse, Lea is immediately spooked, "Holy crap!"
"No, no, Lea, it's okay. I promise, he won't hurt you. Just try petting him first. Mars is actually kind of old, so he isn't as active as the more vigorous horses. If you really don't feel comfortable, then I really won't force you to ride him. We can just hang out and walk around the grounds or something." Bradin implores sincerely.
When Lea still doesn't look convinced, Bradin lowers his face close to hers, close enough so their lips almost brush when he softly speaks, "for me?"
Lea finds herself holding her breath as she stares into Bradin's clear blue eyes, almost hypnotized by its crystal qualities. She can only give in. "Ugh, FINE!" Lea examines the horse warily, but now with a newfound interest. "So, how do you even get UP there?"
Bradin chuckles, he knew that he'd convince her one way or another. He opens the stall doors, and lets Lea out first. Bradin follows Lea out with Mars' reins in his hands, leading them towards a more open space.
"Okay, so you put your foot in the stirrups like this..."
The following Monday at school, Bradin, Lea, Adam and Callie are gathered around Lea's locker, trading stories of their weekend.
Bradin puts his hand on Adam's shoulder to support himself as he shudders from laughter, "you should have seen the look on her face, man, it was so hilarious!"
"Okay, the horse was like, really... large." Lea scowls at her boyfriend as they recount their date to their friends. "I mean, sorry if I'm not a member of Barnum and Bailey's"
"Aww, don't pout Lea, you make me want to kiss you when you do that." Bradin lowers his lips to hers, grinning into the kiss.
Callie and Adam roll their eyes and mutter something indistinctly sounding like "give me a break," and "get a room."
"Remember when the fair came to the boardwalk a couple years back? There was this petting zoo and Lea was practically crying." Callie laughs as she recollects one of the first times that she and Lea had hung out when she just moved to California.
Lea rolls her eyes, "That... rabid boar, was like... obscenely large! Honestly, if they slaughtered it, they probably could have rid starvation in a small third world country."
"It was a pig! It was pink! It had a curly tail! It was BABE!" Adam guffaws.
Lea rolls her eyes. "Oh you're one to talk! I remember in third grade when we went to San Diego Sea World for a field trip? Who was the one that started hyperventilating at the shamu splash show?"
"Shamu is a killer whale. KILLER whale? Emphasis on killer? It should be called the shamu slash show..."
"He's contained in a tank!"
"Yea, of glass!"
Just as Lea is about to remind Adam that the glass is probably meters thick and impenetrable, Lea feels a tap on her shoulders.
She turns away from her friends to find herself looking at a tall African-American boy, "oh hey Jeremy," she smiles. Jeremy Miller is a boy on the varsity basketball team with J.B., consequently a recurrent raider of Lea's kitchen.
"Lea, girl, let me borrow your locker." He holds up a poster size roll of paper in his hands, using it to point to the empty wall space above Lea's locker.
"Yeah, no problem." Lea opens her locker and moves to the side to give Jeremy access.
The lanky boy agilely grabs onto the top of the lockers, pulling himself up by pure arm strength, then secures his footing in the Lea's opened cubby. Lea hands him the scroll that she held for him. Unrolling it with one flourish movement, and he plaster the poster onto the wall.
After he's made sure that all the corners are secure, Jeremy hops off Lea's locker and dusts himself off in the way that rappers do in music videos. "Alright, thanks Lea, I'll see ya later, girl." He saunters off into the crowd.
The four friends lift their heads to read the freshly exposed sign.
On a vivid yellow background of the poster, written with thick paint-based marker in a bold broad font:
BOYS' BASKETBALL TEAM TRYOUTS!2ND WEEK OF NOV. AFTERSCHOOL. GYM.
Contact Coach Mortsen in the Athletics Office for more information.
Adam smirks at the sign, "I'm hoping that it was a conscious team decision to leave out the verbs due to lack of space."
Lea glances at Bradin and his expression gives his thoughts away like a supermarket worker at a taste testing booth. "You're thinking of trying out?"
Bradin nods and shrugs at the same time.
"What about football?" Callie raises an eyebrow.
"Football is alright," Bradin answers noncommittally. "But in Kansas I actually played on the basketball team."
"Then why'd you try out for the football team?" Adam looks at him quizzically.
Bradin grins and reaches to put his arm around Lea, "so I could get that free last period with this one."
Lea rolls her eyes, but the ends of her mouth are curling up regardless. She tiptoes and brushes her lips against Bradin's cheeks softly, rewardingly. Reacting to her touch, Bradin enwraps his other arm around her waist as they begin a slight public display of affection.
Adam and Callie roll their eyes and cough conspicuously at the same time. "Shoot me, now," one pleads.
"Only after you gag me first." The other implores in return.
Lea and Bradin pull themselves apart in order to save their friends' breakfasts. Lea's expression quickly turns dim as she remembers a crucial detail, "Bradin, you do recollect that my brother plays on the basketball team right?"
Bradin nods affirmatively.
"Have I uh, alluded to the fact that he's the captain?"
Bradin nods affirmatively again, this time slower, as a dreadful realization dawns upon him.
Lea can already imagine the newest editions of history text books in her mind...
a/n: um this is sort of a pointless chapter? Well, there is a point, Lea's not perfect-super girl, and it's a transition, into the next part of the story. I admit, I'm taking my time with my updates because of the ongoing status of the show. I wanted to see what they did with Sarah when they brought her back, (I guess straight hair sarah is still crazy sarah...) in fact, I actually wrote chapters in which I also brought Sarah back as well, but shrug we'll see, there's a couple of places that I'd like to take this story so...The commencement of World War III dates to the year 2004. The first fires were shot in the obscure California seaside town of Playa Linda, at the most unlikely location—the venue of a high school basketball tryout...
AlwaysAnalyzing- Thanks for reading! Kudos for reading all ten chapters in one sitting! I'm afraid my story can get a bit tiresome at times, hope that it didn't make your brain swim too much! Hope you come back for more... I promise Lea and Bradin won't be just cuddly love all the time.
melodie568- Thank you for your review! Starbucks is the basis of my existence... so I just had to make Lea a caffein fiend. I hope you'll keep reading this story even if the updates lag until the season ends.
icytigergrrrl- Ahh! it's good to know evil minds still exist! One of the reasons why I'm lagging with this story is because I'm debating on how explicit I should make it... I don't want to be the polluter of young minds, but we all know that Bradin's had sex already and that issue will not go unaddressed with Lea.
dolphinchick2568- Thank you for your compliments! It almost made me ashamed to post this chapter because it's such a inane piece... but hey, not everyday can be heartfelt confessions right? Hopefully I can write something to take your breath away sometime in the next couple of chapters...
