Sorry I'm a day late with this one, guys, but work has been kicking my butt. Tomorrow isn't going to be a good day, either, so reviews would definitely lift my spirits after 8 hours of ABSOLUTE RETAIL NIGHTMARE MISERY.
This chapter is dedicated to the real-life Britney and the real-life Bryce!
The following Friday night (after yet another hellish week of classes) Guinevere and Britney could be found curled up on Gwen's bed watching Netflix on her laptop. The failed trip to the pub the week previous and all of its excitement had led to the current situation. Britney was still a little nervous to be out and about and preferred to have one night in the dorm watching horror movies and having girl talks. Insidious was playing, mostly ignored, while Gwen and Britney chatted. Half an hour before, Natalie had given a loud and melodramatic huff before announcing that she would be spending the next week at her boyfriend's apartment and don't wait up for her, which Gwen didn't plan on doing anyway.
Thus the room was all theirs.
"Did the date go well?" Britney asked, leaning forward eagerly and smiling widely at her friend. She gave a lewd wink. "I want all the dirty little details."
"Dirty little details? He took me out to dinner, we chatted, and he walked me back to my door. We didn't even kiss," Gwen shrugged. "I actually had a brilliant time."
"Brilliant, huh?" Britney snorted. She flopped back against the pillow and flicked her hair out of her green eyes in exasperation. "You didn't even kiss!"
"I don't want to kiss him just yet," Gwen stated. "He is quite attractive, though. Next weekend we're going on a date to Kensington Gardens."
"Oh, lovely" Britney practically squealed. She clapped and sighed. "The gardens are so romantic! They're not really in bloom right now, but it doesn't matter. It's still really cute."
"Maybe we can check out where my great-grandmother died," Gwen beamed. Britney raised a speculative eyebrow.
"Really? Murder, on a date?"
"What's wrong with a little family history while I'm in the area?" Gwen asked. "I'm sure Peter won't care. He's just as interested in my project as I am."
"That's a little weird, honestly," Britney laughed. "Now, how soft is his hair?"
"I'm supposed to notice things like that?" Gwen tittered, rolling her eyes. "It's not like we sat there and petted each other."
"Seriously, though?"
"Very soft," Gwen conceded. Britney snorted and the girls fell into giggles on the bed, the conversation moving to Peter's butt and then drifted to maybe restarting the movie because Britney actually kind of wanted to see this one. So as Insidious started again from the beginning, something strange was happening on another part of the campus.
In a darkened classroom, two people were deep in a conversation. "What am I supposed to do?" a high female voice asked, the pitch indicating her frustration and confusion.
"Seduce him!" the deep tenor of the male voice replied. He was anxious and his nerves were frayed, he didn't have time for silly things such as this. She should have known by now.
"I can't! It's clear that they're already falling for each other," the girl retorted.
"I didn't call you here to have you fail in your mission," the man declared. His voice was low and angry, almost threatening. The girl crossed her arms, daring him to make a move on his emotions.
"I didn't say I was going to fail you," she said, "But it will be very difficult to find a way to meet the ends you've given me, here."
"I don't care about the level of difficulty," he raged. "Just do not fail me! If you do, you will never see your homeland again!"
"I'm not an idiot!" she cried. "But do not threaten me idly, sir, for if I fail, none of us shall ever see our homeland again!"
"Then get out there and do what you're supposed to be doing," the man snarled, gesturing at the door. The girl turned, her hair flicking out behind her as she made a rather dramatic exit. The man leaned back against a desk and sighed heavily, scratching at his right hand absently. This was going to be more difficult than he'd originally thought. The campus was huge, but of course they managed to find each other on the first day and get ahead of his plans.
In their dorm, Bryce and Peter were poring over notebooks and working on various essays. "This is so lame," Bryce groaned. "It's a Friday night and we are doing nothing."
"The girls demanded a fun ladies' night in," Peter asserted, "There is nothing we can do to change that short of kidnapping them."
"Well maybe I can hang out with Erika or something," Bryce smirked. "She's probably free."
"You're not her only source of entertainment," Peter snorted. Bryce was already dialing his phone. "I'm sure she has other plans for her Friday night than waiting around for you to call her."
"Hey Erika!" Bryce's voice chimed. "Want to hang out? Cool! When? Where? Be there in a minute!"
"No way," Peter groaned, slamming his face into his textbook. "You can't be serious!"
"As serious as the plague, which I am tired of reading about this evening," Bryce winked, throwing his sweatshirt on over his t-shirt and heading for the door. "I will see you eventually."
"Don't catch any sexually communicable diseases," Peter warned. "And don't get drunk."
"I will try to avoid both of those things," Bryce nodded, swiftly shutting the door behind him and leaving Peter alone in the dorm. Peter put his headphones in, surrounded himself with Chopin's Nocturnes, and settled down to write four essays. This was going to be a long night.
Bryce meandered across the green, searching for the familiar brunette. He finally spotted her waiting for him by one of the science buildings, her arms crossed over her chest as she leaned against the wall. She was the picture of calm and collected…and hot. Bryce called her name and waved, catching her attention and making her smile widely.
"What's the plan, my man?" she asked, slipping her arm through his when he got close enough.
"I don't know, really. What do you want to do?" Bryce asked.
"Get dinner? Chat?" she suggested.
"Sounds perfect," Bryce winked. Erika giggled and allowed him to lead her off the campus and down the street to a small pub where the Friday night patrons were still mostly young college students. Later in the evening the drinkers would arrive and the partying would begin.
The couple found a table and ordered before they started chatting. "I've only hung out with your little group once," Erika smiled, leaning her chin on her hand, "And it was rather odd. Tell me about your friends, I'm curious."
Bryce took it as a good sign that she was interested in his friend group and started his explanations of everyone in brief. "There's Peter, the leader of the gang. He's really smart but also very shy and awkward…unless he's around Gwen or us, then he's rather loud. Britney is funny and loud and Gwen is the same but she uses bigger words. Stephanie mostly keeps to herself, but she's really smart. Kevin and I are pretty much the same person but he's more into geek culture. Colie and Jack kiss a lot and ignore everyone else when they can. Finn is quiet, clever, and very intelligent. That's the Losties, in summation."
"You have a very diverse group of friends," Erika smiled. The food arrived and their talk turned to Manchester United's football team this year and how good the chips were.
Meanwhile, back in the dorm, Peter had fallen asleepsprawled next to his textbook. His dreams, which began with foggy pictures of the familiar Kensington Gardens, had grown darker and more confusing.
The wind whipped through his hair, blowing it out of his face. He felt happy, carefree, and safe. The air seemed to lift him, throwing him from one current to another. He was going to see her. He flew over rooftops and down alleys before coming to the nursery window, and there she was in all of her splendor, though she seemed different in some way. She was facing away from him and her hair was pulled up. Her dress hugged her differently than it had the last time he'd come to the window, but it was most assuredly her.
Wendy.
His Wendy lady, with her stories spun like gold and her sweet, innocent thimbles that were all for him. Peter didn't understand when a man slightly taller than her entered the room and walked to her side. He smiled down at her and kissed her gently on the forehead before saying something that made Wendy laugh. They looked at the nursery beds and Peter noticed, then, that one of them was occupied by a small sleeping figure. Michael, he thought. It was just Michael.
But, as he was approaching the window to open it, the most shocking thing happened. The stranger leaned down and Wendy leaned up and she thimbled him. Peter faltered in his flight, shocked and confused. No! Wendy! He floated away from the window, something hot and angry pricking at the back of his eyes. Something wrenched at his gut, tearing him inside and pulling forth thoughts he had long forgotten since Hook…Hook…
The pirate's words came back to him then, in a flash of iron and crimson satin coattails, "There is another in your place. He is called husband."
Then he was soaring away, the hot pricking having turned into tears and the angry feeling in his stomach had vocalized itself in sobbing. His flight staggered, his body dropping closer and closer to the ground as his happy thoughts vanished with every thought of his Wendy thimbling the strange man.
The husband. Peter cried, landing rather ungracefully and unceremoniously in Kensington Gardens, near the front gate. He curled up into a ball, his shoulders wracked with sobbing and his small body compacted as if he could hold the tears and pain inside. But even the boy who never grows up understands when love has been lost, when selfishness and childishness have given way to a real growing-up, having-a-feeling moment. As Peter sat and cried, something strange happened. Something that he had sworn he wouldn't ever do.
When he stood again, untangling his gangly limbs, his leaves only barely fit him. He whistled for Tinkerbell, and she came in a hurry. Something wasn't right about the whistle. Something wasn't right about Peter.
When the fairy at last arrived, she hung in the air. She was shocked.
Peter squinted, part of Peter Gardner's conscious mind thinking that she was so familiar. She was so close but he couldn't see her face.
Wrapped in the dream again, he reached for her, hearing, in her jingling language, "Peter, no! You've grown up!" Her wings fluttered and she floated toward the ground, her tiny shoulders slumped.
Peter Gardner woke up suddenly, feeling very confused. Something familiar dragged across his mind like a hand pulling off his bedcovers, but he couldn't quite tell what it was. He didn't remember his dream, but he knew that whatever it was, it was important somehow. Shaking his head, he laid back down and fell asleep, this time dream-free.
Downstairs and down the hall, Britney suddenly sat up in bed and shrieked. Gwen sat up, wakened by her friend, and rubbed at her eyes to clear them of sleep. Britney was sobbing, her shoulders shaking and her usually smiling face scrunched in pain. "What is it!?" Gwen asked, wrapping an arm around her friend. As soon as Gwen's arm touched Britney's shoulder, though, the smaller girl cried out loudly.
"Stop it! It hurts!" Britney bawled, and Gwen removed her arm as if she'd touched a hot surface. Britney lifted desperate, tear-filled eyes to her friend, "Gwen, make it stop!"
"I can't make it stop if I don't know what it is," Gwen said. She calmly looked Britney in the eyes and asked her again, "What hurts?"
"M-M-My shoulders, Gwen, th-they-they're on fi-f-fire!" Britney was almost beyond speech, her words caught between sobs and chokes and heavy breathing. Guinevere rushed to the bathroom and shook some pills into her hand. She brought Britney a plastic cup of water and made her take the fast-acting painkillers. Then, without another word, Gwen rushed to the communal kitchen area down the dorm hallway and filled two plastic sandwich bags with ice, taking them back to the room and wrapping them in t-shirts.
"Lay down," Gwen ordered. "Face on the pillow, that's it."
Gwen gently placed the ice packs on Britney's shoulders and waited for the girl to calm down enough to speak.
"It h-hurt so b-badly, Gwen," Britney breathed, trying to regain her composure. "It f-felt like m-my shoulder blades were g-going to come through m-my skin."
"It's alright now," Guinevere crooned, running her hand through her friend's hair. "Go to sleep, okay?"
"Okay," Britney nodded. "Will you sing?"
"Sure," Gwen agreed, understanding that her friend's childish behavior was a mix of pain and the medication setting in and doing its job. Her friend was getting drowsy, so Guinevere rubbed her hand back and forth across Britney's lower back and started to sing, "Oh stop your crying it'll be alright. Just take my hand, hold it tight. I will protect you from all around you, I will be here, don't you cry…"
Gwen didn't even have time to make it to the second verse of the Disney lullaby before Britney was breathing the heavy, peaceful breath of sleep.