Love Knows No Chronology
By Jeune Ecrivain
Rating: PG
Part III
Summary: Phil/Keely reunion fic. Having returned to the 22nd century, Phil reflects on all of his past experiences and makes a decision.
A/N: Here it is, the happy ending I've been wanting to write!
Keely Teslow opened the door to her college dorm to find a young man standing there with auburn hair, a loose-fitting jersey, dockers, and a baseball cap. He looked up at her and gave her a casual smile, but she could've sworn she saw a brief and peculiar glint in his eye. "Hi," he said.
The slight hitch in his voice made Keely wonder inwardly about him, but she smiled brightly back and replied, "Hi! You must be Fred!"
"Huh?" he uttered, looking baffled. "Oh, right!" he recovered rather crudely. "Fred…yeah. That's me!"
"C'mon in," said Keely. "I have my short story in my room. I'll go get it."
"Story?" the youth called Fred blurted.
Keely cocked a puzzled eyebrow at him. "Yeah. The one I wrote for our Creative Writing class. We're s'posed to exchange our stories and then critique each other."
"Oh, right!" There he went again with his crude self-reassertions. "Yeah, I…uh…can't wait to read yours."
Keely blushed. "Oh, I don't even know if it's any good." She quickly disappeared into her room, from which the sound of moving books and shuffling papers could be heard. "What about your story?" she called as she rummaged through her stuff. "What's it about?"
A look of panic struck Fred's face. He ran his hands over his person, and when he struck the right leg pocket of his dockers, a light bulb seemed to appear over his head. "Uh…it's a…sci-fi," he said, pulling out four typed pages of text. "And a romance."
"Oh, I love romance!" she said as she reappeared in the small living room with a notebook under her arm. "But I can't say I've ever met a boy who likes it."
He shrugged. "I'm not your average guy," he said. "Speaking of which, before we do this, I have to ask you something."
"Sure," she replied.
He breathed in deeply and then exhaled. "Do you have a boyfriend?"
For a moment, she looked surprised at his question. Then, for the briefest moment, a downcast expression daunted her pretty face. It promptly disappeared and was replaced by another casual, cute smile. "No," she answered. "What's it to you?"
Fred shrugged. "Well, I was just thinking…"
"Look," Keely stopped him hesitantly, "you're probably a really nice guy, but…I just don't really feel like dating right now." She looked at him apologetically.
Fred nodded. "I understand. If you change your mind, let me know."
"Alright," she responded half-heartedly. "Anyway, do you want to go first or do you want me to?"
Fred seemed to speak with a subtle enthusiasm now, and she inwardly wondered where it had come from. "I think I'll go first," he said. "In fact, if you don't mind, I'd like to read it to you myself."
"Oh," Keely said with a smile. "Sure, why not? The prof didn't say we couldn't do that."
"Good," said Fred.
Keely took a seat on her couch with her hands in her lap, encouraging him with her eyes. Sighing, Fred took a seat in a chair across from her and brought his four pages in front of him. He gave her a quick smile that Keely couldn't quite interpret before he began reading. She became engrossed pretty quickly, but as he continued to read, she became more than engrossed. Every now and then, Fred would glance up at her. From those glances, he could see her facial expression change. As the story progressed, interest turned to nostalgia and nostalgia turned to sympathy with a hint of reminiscence. As he reached the last half of the third page, he observed her eyes growing visibly moist. He hadn't finished the first half of page four before tears had begun to escape from her blue orbs. Finally, as he read the last paragraph, she let out a small sob.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to make you cry. Is it that bad?"
"God, no!" she said, smiling warmly through her tears. "It's wonderful! I'm sorry,…it's just so sad! You have to keep writing! It's not done, by any stretch of the imagination."
Fred chuckled. "If I'd have known it was that good, I would've written a happier story."
"It's not over is it?" she said with a final sniffle before standing up slightly uneasily. "I mean, did he convince his family to go back? Did they get back together? What happens next?" She whined. "You can't leave a crying girl hanging like this!"
Fred chuckled again. "No, it's not over," he reassured her. "The rest…just hasn't been written yet."
"Well, what happens?" she asked, eagerness showing despite her eyes still being not at all dry. "It's just so good. It makes you really feel for them."
Fred gave her a strangely knowing smile and averted his gaze. "There are just so many ways I could end this. I want it to have a happy ending, but I just don't know what would be the best. I was wondering if you could help me."
"Sure," she responded eagerly.
Fred pursed his lips and turned his back to her to look out the window. "What would you think of this scenario: Before he goes to have that conversation with his family, he decides to write down everything that happened and everything he felt. Maybe because he thinks getting it all out might help him deal with it if his attempt at persuasion failed. I don't know. Anyway, he talks to his family, using every single heartstring he knows they have to the 21st century to convince them all to go back to where they had spent some of the most…interesting years of their lives. He reminds them of all the little mishaps and misunderstandings they had, how much fun it could sometimes be doing things the old-fashioned way. He uses every persuasive trick in the book, and…he succeeds."
Keely's happy squeal was hindered by her lingering sadness, but it was still quite obvious.
"I thought you'd like that," remarked Fred. "So, long story short, they all pack up their stuff and leave the 22nd century for good. But suddenly, the guy has a thought." He turned back to face her.
She was visibly disappointed by his last statement, but her eyes remained wide with anticipation. "What?" she asked simply.
"It had been quite a while since he'd left the 21st century. Several months. That may have been enough time for her to get over him and start dating again."
Realization played in her eyes. "There may have been someone else."
"Exactly," said Fred. "So, he decides he has to find out if she's moved on. After all, he gave her no reason to think he'd ever be back."
"Right," nodded Keely. "So what did he do?"
Fred turned his eyes to the floor, pausing for dramatic effect. "He used…one of his futuristic devices…to disguise himself…as one of her classmates. He went to see her in her dorm, and just his luck, the classmate he had chosen to impersonate apparently was her partner in some writing thing. They were s'posed to…exchange some stuff that they'd written."
"Like you and me!" she said, a slight squeak in her voice. "Using real life events as inspiration. Good strategy."
Fred grinned at her. "So, how do you like that scenario so far?" he said, inching towards her.
"I like where this is going," she replied, surprised at the decreasing distance between them but somehow not wanting to move.
He stopped just a few inches away from her. "Good," he said, reaching into another pocket of his dockers. "Because that's what really happened." No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he drew out his InstaMorph. She barely had time to recognize it and utter the resulting gasp before electronic waves surrounded Fred. Before her eyes, his light brown hair darkened, his gray eyes turned brown, and his face became the face of the man she had never given up on.
"His name was Phil Diffy," said Phil. "And he loved Keely Teslow with all his heart."
Keely's expression of astonishment quickly morphed into one of pure delight. Her blue eyes shone like they had never shone before and accentuated the huge grin that had sprouted on her face. She launched herself at him so hard that they both nearly fell over. "Oh, my gosh, Phil!" she cried through tears of joy. "I can't believe you're back!" Her grip on him tightened, and he reciprocated the action. "I missed you so much!"
"Not as much as I missed you!" he said, burying his face in her blonde locks. "At the risk of sounding incredibly cliché, I was a complete fool to leave you in the first place."
She giggled, neither one of them loosening their hold on one another. "Yeah, you were a fool…a fool to think there could be someone else!"
"It's been six months, Keel! I know we loved each other, but even that fades if one person just walks away. I didn't know what to think."
Keely loosened their embrace so that she could pull apart enough to look him in the eye. Running her hand through his hair gently, she whispered, "What do you think now?"
"I think I got lucky."
At that point, she could resist no longer. She brought her lips to his and engaged him in a deep, passionate kiss. When they finally broke apart to breathe, Phil grinned brightly at her, and she returned it with a warm smile. "Do you know how long I've wanted to do that?" she said.
"Technically speaking, Keel, you didn't really need me to…"
"Shut up," she cut him off and kissed him again with passion to rival that of the first kiss. "You know very well you're the only person I want to do that with," she added when the kiss ended.
"In that case, giving up a lot of the comforts of 22nd-century-life for good was a small price to pay."
"Ugh!" grunted a female voice from the doorway. "I can't believe I agreed to come back to this naïve century and watch you two gush all over each other again!"
Phil and Keely turned to find Pim half-standing, half-leaning against the open door with a smirk on her face.
"Pim!" Keely squealed. She rushed up and hugged Pim, who rolled her eyes but nevertheless returned the hug with all the feeling she would allow herself to show openly.
"Yeah, yeah, I missed you too, Little Miss Sunshine," she said.
"And so did we," added a male voice coming up from behind Pim. Pim made way for her father to enter, and her mother followed immediately after. "Greetings from the 22nd century," Lloyd Diffy said, accepting a hug from Keely.
"And this time, it wasn't an accident," supplemented his wife Barbara.
"Welcome back you guys!" exclaimed Keely, embracing Barbara. "I can't believe you all came back."
"Ah, we saw right through Phil's persuasive maneuvers when he came to us about going back. But he made a couple of good points, and I think we both knew that he would ultimately have ended up coming back for you with or without us, so we decided to keep the family together."
"So, you're all staying…for real?" Keely practically begged for affirmation.
"Now and forever," confirmed Barbara.
"On one condition," Phil amended.
Keely rolled her eyes. "Phil, you have my word. I will never call you 'Philly-Willy' again!"
Phil laughed. "No, that's not what this is about."
"Then just name it," said Keely. "Anything."
Phil swallowed, nervous for the first time since he had first shown up at Keely's door. He took her hands in his, and she looked him in the eyes.
"Keely," he began. "You know I love you, right?"
"Of course," she whispered in response.
"And you love me, don't you?"
"Do you even have to ask?"
Pim rolled her eyes while Barbara and Lloyd exchanged knowing glances.
"Then, what I want you to do is…change your name."
Keely looked at him, perplexed. "Change my name? Wha-?"
"Not your first name. Just your last name." Phil averted his gaze slyly. "How do they do it in this century?" Despite a nervous swallow, he gazed away in mock concentration. "Oh, yeah," he smiled at her hopefully before lowering himself onto one knee.
Keely squeaked. She knew what was coming next.
"I was just kidding when I said this was a condition for my staying,…but that doesn't mean I don't want it to happen very much." Never having let go of her hands, he released only her right hand so that he could use his left to pull out a ring from his shirt pocket. "Keely…will you marry me?"
Keely looked at him tearfully and kept him in suspense until she managed to say, almost at a whisper, "Of course I will."
Phil smiled like a little boy and promptly slipped the ring onto her finger. Standing up, he gave her another sly smile and said, "You know what this calls for, don't you?"
"A serious make-out session?" suggested Keely.
"Well, that too," Phil willingly conceded. "But…" he held out his hand to Pim, who smiled genuinely (admittedly a rare thing for her to do) and tossed him a familiar glowing ball that resembled an atom complete with electron orbitals whirling around it. Phil held it up before her, and she smiled knowingly with a glint of mischief in her eye.
Phil cocked his head cleverly. "…how about a celebratory skyak ride?"
There were going to be a lot of supposed UFO sightings that day.
