A/N: thanks for the faves/follows, etc. and for being so patient during this absolutely inexcusably long wait.
At the end of the school year, Ryan pushed his graduation party back, in case a miracle happened and his uncle suddenly lost what Ryan called the Hackett Supreme Stubbornness gene and decided to let Katie spend the summer in Solana Beach. Always the optimist (he could hear Katie laughing in his head whenever he had that thought), he'd also tentatively arranged a summer job for her, teaching the youngest swim class at the resort where he worked as a lifeguard. He hoped if his uncle saw that Katie would have something to keep her out of trouble, and away from the bar, that he might let her stay. Not to mention, it was the longest bit of time they'd get to spend together for awhile; Ryan was heading to New York for college in August.
"Fine," Hackett snapped at breakfast the morning of the party. He and Katie had been in Solana Beach for two days already, the Admiral having relented to at least letting her go to the party, and she and Ryan hadn't stopped talking except the few hours they'd been asleep. "If you two will stop bugging me about it, we can... we'll see. All right?"
"Is she like this with Jeff?" Jason asked when Katie and Ryan got up from the table to do a celebration dance.
"You mean do they wear me or his parents down until we say yes to something?"
"Exactly."
"No, they usually skip the middleman, as it were, and just do it." Hackett sighed into his cup of coffee. "If she thought she could get away with it, I'm sure Katie probably would have done the same thing here."
"I would have sent her on the first transport back to Arcturus," Jason said. He held up a hand. "Actually, no. I would have taken her myself on the first transport back to Arcturus."
"Thank you. I do wonder, if she stays, are either of them prepared for the reality that it may not last the whole summer?"
"Why wouldn't it last?" Ryan asked as he and Katie sat back down to finish eating.
She leaned over to whisper something in his ear before she picked up her last waffle and walked out the back door. He followed a moment later without another word.
Jason raised an eyebrow. "What the hell was that about?"
"I'm assuming she just told him she still has nightmares occasionally," Hackett said. "She thinks I don't know about them, probably assumes I would use it as a reason to keep her from staying, because of –"
"The whiskey," Jason finished for him. "Don't worry. When you decided she could come down for the party, I locked all of my personal stash in the safe in my office at the Argo. Liquor cabinet here in the house is bone dry."
"Good. Are you prepared if she has a nightmare?"
"It's not like she was always a ball of sunshine and nightmare-free when she stayed here months at a time as child, so we'll manage. Assuming we make it to the point where she stays this time."
"Right. Let's just get through the party."
Ryan certainly hadn't been the only one in his class to throw a graduation party, but since his was two weeks after everyone else's, it ended up being the biggest and the loudest. The ultimate last hurrah before everyone left for family vacations, jobs and college. When he'd planned it, he hadn't thought of that, how big it was going to be, and the effect being around so many people might have on Katie. But now that they were in the middle of it,she seemed to be holding her own, spending most of her time with his girlfriend Sarah and her small group of friends.
A few hours later, as the party was winding down and most people had gone off to other parts of the beach, Ryan noticed a commotion over by the bonfire. He grabbed his father and uncle and ran over to see what was going on, praying that Katie wasn't in the middle of it all.
There was a collective muttering of curses as they pushed their way through to reach the center of the small crowd. Sarah was passed out in a chair, her younger sister Lisa sitting beside her. A few feet away, Sarah's best friend Whitney had her heels dug into the sand as she tried to hold back a furious Katie from attacking an intoxicated football player who was being held up by two of his friends.
As the crowd dispersed, Ryan and Hackett sat with the girls to find out what had happened, while Jason went over to the drunk and his friends to find out their side of the story and to call the police.
Whitney relayed the story with occasional muttered angry interjections from Katie.
The two guys who'd been holding up the linebacker had been hitting on the girls all night, except Sarah; they didn't want to risk tangling with Ryan. The drunk had showed up much later and apparently hadn't had the same thought, because he'd immediately latched onto Sarah. She'd pushed him away repeatedly but he kept coming back; eventually though, he gave up, went back to his friends and that's when the trouble had started.
Katie had seen him putting what looked like a pill bottle into his pocket as he walked away. She immediately went over and knocked Sarah's drink out of her hand but it was too late as she'd already drunk enough for the drug to kick in.
While Lisa and Whitney were looking after Sarah, Katie had gone over to confront the drunk; she'd heard him laughing and talking about what he was "going to do to the dumb slut once she was unconscious." She'd tackled him and punched him in the face a few times before Whitney and one of the boys were able to separate them.
Whitney and Lisa looked surprised that Ryan and Hackett didn't look surprised.
The girls looked over at Katie, who seemed slightly calmer now.
She shrugged. "It's not my first fight. My best friend Jeff has Vrolik's Syndrome. We ended up becoming friends after I got into a fight with a kid who had stolen one of his crutches."
"On your first day of kindergarten," Ryan added with a laugh.
"Yeah." She grinned. "Who knows, maybe I'll get into another fight last day of my senior year. Be a nice way to bookend my school career."
"Oh God, please don't," Hackett muttered.
Jason came over then with a cop and a paramedic as well as the drunk and one of his friends. Ryan went with the paramedic as he went over to attend to Sarah. The cop was apparently waiting for the drunk and his friend to answer a question he'd asked previously.
"The little redhead," the friend said, pointing at Katie.
"Yeah, tha' one," the drunk slurred as the cop waved them away again. "Attack'd me."
Again, Jason didn't look surprised at the revelation, but the cop raised an eyebrow. "How old are you?"
"Sixteen, a month ago," Katie answered. "And whatever that jackass told you happened was a lie."
"Well, Moore's account of what happened differed completely from Perez and Frost, so... out with it. What's your version?"
As Katie and Whitney launched into another retelling of what had happened, the paramedic finished with Sarah, and Ryan left to take her and Lisa home.
"That's about what the other two told me as well, particularly his words right before the fight," the cop said when the second run-through was done. He shook his head and glanced at Katie. "Moore claims you attacked him unprovoked."
"So what's going to happen now?" Hackett asked before she could make some sarcastic remark.
"Your daughter's free to go. The attack was far from unprovoked. Moore will be charged with public intoxication at the very least, probably more than that after I get statements from the Clarke sisters."
"Thank you. We'll... be here for awhile, a few weeks. So she'll be easy to reach if you should need to."
"For now, we're going to take her home before she wakes the entire city with her squealing," Jason said to the officer a moment later as Katie started dancing again. He sighed as he and Hackett followed her back toward the house. "This is going to be one long summer."
