A/N: imagine. I update, and then keep updating, and then eventually finish a story. what a lovely dream.
p.s. this really was supposed to be a comedy, god damn.
The Forks Bowling Alley smelt like shit. Like three times fried egg rolls that come already made; the ones that are wrapped inside a piece of plastic and sealed inside a cardboard box, the ones you don't have to open to just know that they're bad, bad. And it's fine, mostly, because, like, they know what they are – they aren't ever trying to be something they're not –
Still, the bowling alley smelt gross.
But Paul wasn't a rich kid, in fact he didn't know any rich folks that shared the same bronze colored skin as him – not in Forks anyways – he knew lazy grandsons that refused to leave their rooms, and having to make a car from the scrap metal nobody wanted, he knew about rust, and dents, and digging through the trash. He knew about searching wastelands and always coming up empty – he knew about empty.
Paul worked a grueling nine to five at his construction job just to come to this shit hole – sorry – establishment on the weekends. The kids were rude and never wore socks; which just made the whole place fucking stink worse than it already did and they didn't, they didn't care about the things they left behind, they didn't think about the angry man that was always, always picking through somebody else's leftovers.
"A seven and a nine please," a soft if distant voice stirred Paul from his begrudging musings. Without even looking he plopped the requested shoes on the counter and in one fell swoop plucked the wadded-up cash from off the counter.
"Dollar fifties your change," He grunts brusquely and drops the cash into the open waiting palm. He doesn't take his eyes off the register; he's already moving onto the next task, because there is always something to do – somethings broken somewhere, probably the arcade, it's always the arcade.
"Thank you," that same small far away voice pipes up again, she hesitates for a moment before adding a hasty, "Paul."
He looks up then, because nobody says his name like that, or nobody he's ever met has said his name like that and he's, well, he's curious. Paul is not prepared for what he sees – her face is still scrunched up from trying to read the name tag angled away from her. She's got freckles – and like yeah, he's definitely seen freckles before, but none like this – none that bloom.
"You're welcome." Another grunt.
And she's gone, walking away from him and he's sworn he's seen this one before –
The girl always leaves, doesn't she? He thinks idly, helplessly, fidgeting with that stupid name tag, does she ever get to stay?
He had to shake his head to remind himself that she wasn't – she wasn't Rachel. Hell, he didn't even know that woman. There was really no reason to get so philosophical – not when he was this fucking sober at least. That was probably the wolf in him – the pet. The ugly beast that somehow always managed to find comfort in the girls that didn't want him; not the messy, impossible parts of him anyways.
He tells himself he's not going to watch her, he's not going to stare like a fucking creep, but he is hyper aware of her presence – the dog again, then – the way she had smelt, in fact he could still smell her in the empty space she had occupied, if only for a few seconds. It was dandelions and laundry detergent. Not the stuff he always bought on clearance, but the kind Emily had, the large purple bottles that smelt like parents that hug their children just because they want to and friends that are just your friends and –
And girl's that stay.
He practically growls, because he has spent the past three years pushing it away, forcing it down, down, down and it's not fair that some random girl gets to make him dizzy with her smell and remind of him of everything he had once. All the things he'd lost.
He hastily sprayed the can of Febreze – stored strategically beneath the register for when the aromas got particularly finnicky – her scent fades and is replaced with the strangely sweet bottled aroma of the sea and he doesn't know – not really – if it actually smells like that anymore, because he hadn't been to the beach in a really, really long time.
It felt weird, Paul decided, to forget something you never thought you would, something you had memorized and felt so fiercely and breathed all the way inside of you for twenty years. It's just as well, he shrugs, there is no use dwelling on the things you can't change; or what you don't really want to change – because forgetting that part of him, leaving it behind, that had been a choice.
A teeth gritting, spine crushing, finger numbing choice – but it had been his.
The fake ocean smell dispersed leaving him with a clear head, and a plethora of things to do. He squeezed into the small office branded employee's only and yanked open the neon green – well neon for a metal filing cabinet, point is, it was fucking ugly – bottom drawer and snatched up the fraying utility belt used for fixing whatever cheap ass contraption needed it.
Paul hiked the belt up and over his waist, he's just about to click it in place but something stops him; the feeling of being watched washed over him like the sickly sweet mist he'd sprayed earlier had, in the same way it had clung to his skin and stayed there. It's an instinct more than it is anything else – the damn wolf –
– When he turns around to see who could be looking at him; big scary Paul Lahote – the sad sack nobody wanted to look in the eyes anymore, he's surprised to see those blooming freckles. Paul swallowed the lump in his throat and sends a sneer rivaling a rabid animal in her general direction, because it only makes sense; because that's what he is, isn't it? An animal.
Paul Lahote was not fucking soft and he didn't like being stared at – not by red haired girls that could break his heart if he didn't – if he wasn't careful; if he had one –
When their eyes meet and she's realized she's been caught, she, she yelps – actually yelps – and well, it stirs something in him, in the wolf, mostly. But she doesn't look away, she just watches him curiously, her sister or friend or whoever the fuck taps her on the shoulder when it's her turn and she bowls – she's awful, seven gutter balls – but then she just keeps on staring.
He sends her another glare and she smiles.
God help him it's going to be a long fucking night.
Gillian Stanley was not, has never been, and will never be boy crazy, despite the narrative Jess was trying to peddle.
"Okay, but you didn't take your eyes off him like, once –"
"I did too!" Gillian snapped in that embarrassed flustered kind of way.
"Look," Jessica said pointedly before taking a sip of the fruit smoothie she purchased on the way home from the alley, "I know you're a liar, you know you're a liar. There's really no point in denying it."
"I will kill you, and it will be bloody, and painful if you do not shut up!" Gillian exclaimed, but it wasn't scary or intimidating because halfway through her threat Gill's resolve crumbled away and burying your head in your hands is decidedly not threatening.
"Yeah, and then our poor mother is going to ask why you murdered her precious angel baby and you'll have to tell her it's because you were ogling Paul Lahote –"
"I wasn't ogling –"
" – She'd have a heart attack on the spot!"
"Jessica Stanley, if you have ever loved me – even a little bit – you would kindly stop talking and never open your mouth again." Gillian squirmed restlessly against the too tight seatbelt strapping her safely into Jess's 2009 Honda Accord.
"Jeez, you need to relax, I'm not like, going to tell mom or anything," Jess shrugged innocuously, "besides you're like an adult now or whatever. Ogle away."
"I wasn't –" but the words die on Gillian's tongue, because she was ogling, wasn't she?
A beat. Silence.
Before Gillian can talk herself out of it, she turns her entire body to face her sister, "Why would mom die? Because she's mom or – "
Gillian trails off again, just like before she doesn't have the words – they coil in her mind tightly like springs and when she needs them, really needs them they just disappear. She feels herself flush and she wants to duck her head again. But she doesn't, because she was a twenty-three-year-old woman, because this was Jessica and they had just went bowling, because you should be able to talk about the things you want to talk about with the people you trust –
– you shouldn't be scared, but, stars, she was.
"Oh," Jessica paused, scrunched up her nose in confusion, "uhm, you mean like why mom would die if she found out you were crushing on Paul Lahote?"
"It's not – ugh, fine, yeah, whatever."
"He was part of that strange cult that got beefy in high school, pretty sure they just lifted and took steroids in the woods, but it was weird anways and well, you know mom, she doesn't like –
"Weird," Gillian finished for her sister.
"Yeah." Jess nodded along silently.
So that's it then, that's why she couldn't stop staring, because she had seen herself in him, in those dark hooded eyes and that awful, ugly, angry mask. Was he stuck then? Like Gillian had been all those years ago, or –
No, some people are just angry, hadn't Gillian been the one to tell her sister that before she'd abruptly left home, they don't have a reason sometimes, or maybe they have a really good reason, but there's no fixing a fire like that.
"Hey," Jess tutted at the forlorn look on Gillian's face, she fixed those dark brown eyes on her sister and smiled, "hey, don't get lost on me Gill, you're twenty-three, what mom doesn't know won't hurt her."
"Yeah," Gillian nodded, and flashed her sister that smile – the one that says I'm okay even though it might not seem like it, I am trying to be better, and good, and normal, "you're right."
Jessica studied her sister for a moment, her lips parted like she was going to say something important but some part of her must have decided against it. She shook her head and painted on a mischievous smile, "I'll show you how to sneak out tonight and you can go visit him."
"Oh my god," Gillian gaped before jostling her sister with an uncertain strength a lingering question hung in the air – is this okay? Can we pretend I didn't leave and that we still talk all the time and that we aren't strangers? "remind me to never do anything with you ever again."
"You love me," Jess teased, her smile and the flick she retaliates with is all the answer Gillian needs –
Yes, we can love each other like this; in our own quiet unassuming way.
"Gillian Stanley," Sarah barked out admonishingly, while wrapping her cardigan tighter around herself – despite the fury in the woman's voice the move struck Gillian as odd, as something flimsy and delicate – "you can't just leave and not tell anyone where you've gone, I am not so young that my heart can take this kind of thing in stride!"
Nonsense mother, you're as young as a bird. Gillian wants to say, and bird's don't ever get older; they are forever, like the horizon and the wind and the clouds.
The two Stanley sisters were stood in the foyer of their childhood home, heads lowered in shame – or at least Gillian's was, Jessica was too bold and unapologetic to feel anything resembling shame – being berated by their furious frail mother. An oxymoron if there ever was one.
Gillian focused on the pristine white marble beneath her feet just as she had done when they were kids, counting the lines and the squares – twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty four –
"What do you have to say for yourself then, hm?"
Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven
"Gillian!"
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine –
Jessica nudges her and Gillian's gaze snapped to her angry mother.
Oh, right.
"Jessica knew –" Gillian started but as she thinks of the tremble in her mother's fingers when she'd pried opened the door the words die on her lips, "I didn't mean to scare you."
Her mother only nods, seeming to accept this.
"And you," Sarah turns her indignant, appraising eyes on her oldest daughter, "do you know what I felt when I came to the porch and found my babies gone? Gone! What was I to think Jessica Stanley?"
"That we're capable adults that can take care of ourselves?" Jessica deadpanned, always her mother's harder child, "I am nearly thirty, if I can't come and go as I please by all means, say so."
"Why! I never," Sarah stuttered, "Phillip Stanley, it seems we have raised spoiled rotten children."
"Yes, dear," Philip's agreement rings through the living room loudly enough albeit slightly distracted as he scratched something onto a cross word in his large red leather psychologists chair, "spoiled rotten!"
"Dad!" Jessica exclaimed equal parts indignant and bewildered. Gillian doesn't even have to look at her to know her hips cocked and her head is tilted and her face is scrunched up in disbelief – it's amazing how you can still know the quiet ordinary things about people you haven't seen in years.
"I'm sorry, mom," Gillian confessed, because there was very well no use fighting a hurricane, it comes, and it wreaks its havoc and then it trembles away – wasn't this the same thing? "we got sushi though."
Sarah trains her wide beady eyes on her young, soft, delicate daughter. "Okay," She breathes like that's all she wanted – needed to hear; I'm sorry. She fluffs the bottom of her short bob, but it barely moves, courtesy of magic concrete hair spray, already moving on and letting whatever tangible fury she had go, "we can watch Jessica's ballet recital in the den."
It's an apology as much as anything else is, Gillian decides, and she thinks she can read the message in her mother's piercing gaze – I'm sorry about earlier, I have never had a daughter like you, I've never had to be careful with my words before.
"Okay," Gillian agrees quietly, painting on a soft smile; its lips quirked up, only slightly, and for all she's grown and changed it's an apology too.
"Oh my god," Jess protested, "no, no, no."
"Phillip," Sarah calls to her husband, promptly ignoring her eldest daughter.
"I'll find the VHS." He confirms and something strikes Gillian then. He set his crossword puzzle aside and delicately removed the obviously newly acquired reading glasses, smoothing his sweater vest down, down, down.
Gillian wanted a love like that – the kind that was more habit than anything else, the kind that was patient and lasting and capable of enduring summers that felt more like winters.
"I can't believe mom yelled at us like that," Jess whispered later that night when the two girls were safely tucked away in one of the fancy guest bedrooms, "it's like she thinks were twelve or something."
"Yeah," Gillian agreed, the irony of wearing onesies and cuddling in bed like they were twelve was not lost on her. She stared up at the ceiling remembering the time she had tried to convince her mother to put up those little plastic neon stars –
"Remember that story I used to tell you when we were kids? The one about the wolf?" Jess asked suddenly.
A beat, "Yeah," Gillian nodded without tearing her eyes away from the ceiling, of course she'd remembered. "The wolf was eating or whatever and a bone got stuck in his throat, he was suffocating, dying –
Jessica nodded, "He told the crane he'd give anything – everything – to be saved,"
"So, the crane saved him," Gillian replied, "but when he asked for his reward the wolf told him he'd stuck his head in the mouth of a wolf and taken it out again in safety, he said that was reward enough,"
"Yeah," Jessica agreed. Silence.
"Why do you bring it up?" A beat.
Jess grimaced, "You mentioned it, before you left for good, you said you'd seen the teeth of the wolf and that they were red, red, red, and – and you said he was going to swallow you whole."
"I didn't say that," Gillian shook her head dismissively, she would have remembered saying something ridiculous like that, surely –
"You did, Gill," Jessica insisted, and Gillian suddenly wasn't so sure, "you told me – you said, I am no crane, and it, it scared the hell out of me."
"Okay," Gillian nodded, because if Jessica told her she'd said it then it had to be true. A dark ugly grey chord inside of her was struck so hard her ribcage rattled and the sound reverberated so violently the end of her toes and fingers went numb.
"Do you think that story is why you – your – " Bold, brave Jessica trails off like she doesn't want to finish her sentence, and this particularly strikes Gillian as odd. But of course she knows where she's going with this.
"I'm what?" Gillian snapped, the words tumbling sharply from her chest, already defensive, ready to tell her that she was better now, thank you –
"Don't get testy," Jessica retorted, but because she really wasn't trying to fight with her sister she schooled her frustrated features into something soft, "I'm just wondering if – if I did it to you, if I'm, if that's why you left –"
"I left because this town was making me crazy," Gillian forced the words out, surprised at the sheer honesty; she hadn't planned on ever talking about this again let alone with Jessica but she couldn't very well let the older girl think she was the reason she'd left, "because I was saying scary things to anyone who would listen to me and I was seeing things, things normal people didn't see, and I really wanted to be normal."
"Okay." Jessica said softly, and relief, gratitude washed over Gillian because it felt like finally, finally being believed –
A beat.
"Jess?" Gillian whispered, grateful for how easy it was to say hard things in the dark, and the fact that she'd failed in getting her mother to agree to the stars –
"Yeah?" Jessica hummed quietly.
Gillian blinks once, twice, before rolling over to face her sister, "I wanted you to come with, you could have and –" She stops, suddenly, shockingly, she swallows down a crater sized lump but her voice is gone and the words, well, they always seemed to die on the tip of her tongue, didn't they?
Jessica turns to face her sister and their foreheads brush together, the older girl takes her trembling sister's fingers into her hands, we can love each other like this, loudly, boldly, "And?"
"I wouldn't have said no."