Spring is in the air, as is romance...so what would be better than a new STRANGE LOVE collection?

Here's how it works. Authors can sign up to write a story for this collection, and they will be given the names of two characters (picked at random) that have appeared in the Suite Life series...with the idea that those two characters will have some form of romance with each other in your story. For further details, PM me or check out the thread at "The Suite Life Authors' Collective and More!" forum here on the FanFiction site.

Now on to our first story by the noted author, tiger002.

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What Dreams Become

by tiger002

When does a dream become a nightmare?

When the dream wasn't even yours to begin with.

My mom was famous back in the day. Her face on covers, spokeswoman for so many makeup brands. But as her time passed, I grew up. And in the beauty that she gave me, she saw her dreams reborn. She started the Cindy Cannon modeling agency. She said she wanted to pass on all her wisdom to the next generation. A noble desire. And maybe that really was her desire. But sometimes, noble and selfish desires can be hard to differentiate.

And of course, I was part of it. We travelled the world. Cruise ships in Florida, hotels in Vegas, even did a photoshoot in front of Stonehenge. But I always felt that I was just in the background, an extension of her. Sometimes it seemed like days would go by without me saying more than two things. Sometimes I felt nameless, just another pretty face.

I thought things would get better when we all moved into the loft together. The other models were nice enough. Janice was always really kind, and Jessica was always really, really kind. But they all had their big dreams and goals and things got tense. I tried to subtly tell my mom that I wasn't sure this was for me, but she was oblivious to my hints. There was even that time I yelled and stormed off when she wanted to take some photos with me after a big gala.

She forgave me without me asking, and maybe without me even wanting it. She told me she didn't want a little outburst to ruin my dream, she loved me, and knew I had a bright future in modeling ahead of me.

Dreams are something you have to believe in. And I didn't believe in mine.

I bottled it up, kept my feelings hidden and just kept moving forward. I smiled, nodded, did my best trying to enjoy my life, and her dream.

Then we made our way to Boston. There were some brand deals in the works, they wanted to meet us, and I honestly forget the rest. A pretty normal day for us. Get up super early, get on a flight half way across the country, check in to a hotel, make ourselves look our best, then rush to the shoot, and back to the hotel for a quick break before a dinner with some old people with important sounding job titles. All in all, pretty normal.

She banged on my door, told me to be ready in an hour. I was taking a nap, savoring the few minutes I had to not be a product she was trying to sell. And I don't know why what she said got to me the way it did. But I said no.

Just to my pillow. Just to my bed. Just to my room. She didn't hear me. She was probably three doors down before I even said it.

But someone did hear me.

Myself.

I said no.

To her message. To her dreams. To her demands.

I said no.

And it's not like what I said meant anything. I still got up. I still opened up the suitcase, unfolded the dress, laid it across the bed, and took a deep breath, about to change into it.

But the simple word I said earlier still echoed in my head.

No.

I looked at the bag of makeup safely tucked inside my luggage, packed so that nothing would spill all over these overpriced clothes.

And I looked at the door.

I had a choice.

I could put on the make-up, the dress, go through the motions of another night of being the person my mom has shaped me to be for so long. Or I could just not.

I thought about just continuing down this path for the night, put up with it, grin and bear it, and then have a serious conversation with my mom when we got back home. But I knew myself. I knew that the conversation would never come. I'd be too scared.

But making a choice in that moment left me no time to second guess it. So while wearing my pajamas, I grabbed my coat, tennis shoes, the room key, and walked out the door.

I didn't know where I was going, but as my feet made their way to the elevator, the thoughts going through my head kept coming back to one refrain. 'Not here.'

Where was not here? I didn't know. It could be anywhere, or nowhere.

The elevator door opened to the lobby. I took a glance across at the businessmen making their way in from the cold winter's night, along with a dog who seemed to be angrily staring at all the guests from the front desk. I wondered for a moment if my mom would see me and ask me what I was doing. I had no idea how I would answer. But luckily, I didn't have to.

I walked across the lobby, out the front door, and my face was stung by the cold winter Boston air, while a couple flakes of snow fell before my vision. I looked up and saw the Tipton hotel just across the street. That seemed to be as good a place to go as any.

I looked across the street, seeing a break in the early evening traffic and walked under those bright hotel lights. As I walked to the door, an older doorman gave me a slight blow as he opened the door for me.

Now out of the dark and cold Boston evening, I was bathed in the warmth and artificial lights of this hotel. I still didn't know where I was going, but I just walked forward anyway. Where didn't matter, just that I kept walking. And so I did.

Over on my left was a man at the front desk who was professionally handling guests with complaints, but it looked all too close to a familiar scene, of things being fine on the surface but a pressure cooker within. I decided to avoid that part of the hotel. Across the lobby was a snack stand, stocked with what looked like overpriced candy. There was a girl around my age behind it, though she seemed uninterested in what she was doing and instead had her nose in a magazine.

I walked over to her.

I wasn't sure why.

Could be that she looked bored and thought she'd want to talk to me. Or could be that I wanted to believe that about her.

"What can I get you?" She asked, only sparing half a glance up from her magazine.

"I don't know," I said.

"Kit-kat is always a good choice. Or Reese's, though chocolate always gets over my hand. There's also the convenience store down the road, grab some ice cream there and mix with the Reese's if you want way too much sugar." She said that while not looking up and flipping to a new page in her magazine. "Cheaper than here by the way."

It had been a long time since I actually had a candy bar. Mom always was spending time crafting these meal plans, balancing calories, researching the best food for our skin tone. But some candy actually sounded really good. "Give am a kit kat."

But then I noticed there was a problem.

"Crap, I don't have my wallet."

"Don't worry about it," she said sliding the candy bar across the counter.

"You sure you can just give it to me?"

"Uncle Marion has bigger things to worry about by the looks of it." She looked up, across the lobby, and I followed her gaze to the front desk where the agent there was holding a three-foot-long sword fish while mouthing what appeared to be some words my mom says aren't proper for a proper lady to say.

So I accepted her generosity. Or generosity on behalf of her 'Uncle Marion.' I opened the bar and took a bite of it, watching bemusedly as 'Uncle Marion' passed the swordfish off to what looked like a janitor who rushed out the front door with it. "Is that normal here?" I asked.

"If there's not a fire or a flood here at least once a week then Uncle Marion gets bored. He even asked me to help out here, saying that things got too quiet without his favorite hooligans. Though I know it was because my parents asked him to keep an eye on me while I went to college." I took another bite of the candy bar, imagining what kind of life she'd had.

"So what brings you to Boston Tipton?" she asked after awkward silence had taken hold for a couple minutes.

"I don't know," I said after pausing for a bit, letting the first fully formed thought my brain could come up with fall out of my mouth. And it was true. My mom told me that Boston was where we were going, so here I was. It was a steppingstone for my career, another rung on the ladder of someone's dreams, a thing that I just did. But that's what brought me to Boston; what about the Tipton?

"I'm actually staying across the street," I said pointing to another giant building filled with people's stories. As I did so, the janitor from before came back, carrying a giant extension cord in one arm and a fish tank in the other. "By now I'm probably late for some fancy dinner that doesn't taste as good as this candy." I held it up, halfway through the bar already. "But I just didn't want to go." I didn't know why I was venting to this girl I never met before. I didn't even know her name, though glanced at her name tag and saw it said "Nia."

"Running away when your parents think that you have something more important to do for your future. I've been there." She nodded a few times, seeming to think of the times that she'd been where I was. She was in college, probably a couple years older than me. It made me wonder where I would be when I'm her age. Probably even more miserable chasing after someone else's dream, wandering through life, figuring out just who I was and who I was meant to be. But it's not like I had a firm understanding of who I was now. And maybe the only way to find myself was to forget who I was before.

I was thinking about everything and nothing as I took another bite of the candy bar. "So, what happened?" I asked. "Did you go back?"

"Three weeks later. Dad was happy, angry, worried, and relived."

I looked back at the hotel across the street and wondered how my mom would feel. How she'd react. Had she noticed I disappeared? Did she think I had just oversleep? "It was rough after that," Nia continued. "There were a lot of hard conversations, a lot of shouting. Eventually that's how I ended up in Boston. Dad thought that Uncle Marion could help me figure things out."

"Did he?"

"I don't know," she continued. "But he helped me apply for college and I'm halfway through it, so I guess that's something. This might surprise you, but working the candy counter at a super posh hotel wasn't my dream as a kid."

"And this sure as heck isn't my dream," I said holding up the now empty candy bar.

"I think you'll figure things out soon though."

"What do you mean?" I asked, eager for some type of reason to think that things might get better.

"Well, when I ran away from my dad, things were really tense for a while. But they also got better. Instead of just keeping everything bottled up, we actually talked. Then Uncle Marion and my dad talked, and I moved here for a semester, working at this candy counter. I hated it at first. But it felt like I came around. It was a new place, new people, new opportunities. A guy even asked me out. Right in the Tipton restaurant where he'd prepared this great meal." She smiled at that. Then she signed a little bit and looked up, as she was reminiscing through a bunch of memories.

"So, you said yes?"

"Yeah. Relationship didn't last long. But that's okay. Sometimes you just have to take that leap. It's scary, leaving everything you know. And it won't go the way you plan. But it will let you be who you truly are."

I let those words sink in. If someone asked me who I truly was, I couldn't give them an answer. Sure, I was a model. But that was just what I did. Who was I really? "Thanks," I said, taking a step away from the candy counter. I looked across the crowded lobby. I glanced at the front desk, where Uncle Marion was dragging a bathtub into the back room. Part of me wondered why, but that wasn't important right now. Instead, what was important was across the street. "I think I need to have a difficult conversation."

"Let me know how it goes."

I walked forward, the same older doorman giving me a silent bow as he opened the door for me, and I was once again greeted by the cold dark December air.

I could feel my heart beating faster. Even though the cold struck me, my whole body felt warm. I wondered what would happen when she saw me. Part of me wished that some kind of apocalyptic battle between angels and demons would break out in the middle of the street.

But no, that wasn't where my life was meant to go. Instead, I waited for the traffic buzzing across the street to stop and made my way across. No crazy supernatural battles blocked my path. No secret agents took me away for a mission to save the world. No one even slipped on a banana peel. It was just an ordinary night in an ordinary city, though one in which I was to face an extraordinary choice.

As I entered the hotel, I saw her.

Over at the front desk, my mom was pacing back and forth, her phone next to hear ear. It looked like the front desk agent was trying to placate her, and the dog on the desk next to her was growling at anyone else who tried to get close.

I looked back, wondering if the cold night air would be a warmer place than my mother's state. But it didn't matter. If I didn't talk to her now, then it would only be even harder later.

"Mom," I said, and with those words there was no turning back.

"Kate, where have you been?" she said, rushing across the lobby and hugging me. For a moment I thought she cared. Then she let me go. "Okay, so you're not dressed yet and running late. The shuttle took the other girls 10 minutes ago, so hurry up and get dressed. Then meet me back down here and I'll call an Uber. I'll tell the client that you were talking to protestors caring about, let's see, the environment is trendy so let's go with that. You wanted to see how you could help. That will be good for your image. Now go, hurry up."

"Mom," I said again. "I don't want to go to another stupid networking dinner."

"I know it can be tiring, but this is part of the job. We need to make connections, win hearts and minds, show how we can partner with them to bring out the best in their products. That's part of the job dear, part of your dream."

It was her dream. It was my nightmare. And it was time to wake up.

"It's not. It's not my dream. I don't want this. Every day it's more and more pressure, needing to talk to stupid managers, needing to make sure my makeup is just right, forcing myself to fit in outfits that look like a drunk clown designed then, running place to place, every minute scheduled, every day dedicated to more of this stupid job. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to quit. I want a normal life. I want to go to school with friends, not watching videos online and reading textbooks on my own. I want friends I can actually see and hang out with, who are like me. I hate this life."

I was crying a bit at this point. Then I took a few deep breaths trying to catch my breath.

"Yes, it's hard right now, but we'll get through-"

"Niet." My mom was stopped by the front desk agent cutting her off and putting her hand on her shoulder.

"In order for a young bird to learn to fly, they must be pushed from the nest," the front desk agent said with a German accent. "An eagle kept in its egg will never soar."

"And this young lady is ready to fly on her own wings. You must learn to listen to those around you."

"But she doesn't know what she's saying."

"Twin brats once taught me that even the weakest's voice should be listened to. You can learn from them to be stronger to crush all your enemies beneath your heel." The front desk agent balled her hand into a fist at that which somehow caused the mole on her face to twitch.

"Let's go upstairs Kate." Mom said leading the way. It took me a second to follow her. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this front desk agent. But I made a note to thank her later. Or at least not get on her bad side. Maybe both.

I rode the elevator up with my mom. Every ding as it climbed the floors sounded deafening. What had I done? What would I say? Was this right?

We made it to her room. "So Kate," she said, sitting down on the bed, looking up at me. "You don't want to be a model." Her voice was flat. Like the impossibility of those words stripped away all their meaning.

"No, I don't."

There was an awkward silence. I was waiting for her to respond while she was waiting for me to say more.

"I know you've done a lot for me, for this." I'd see all of her stress, calling clients, sending hundreds of emails, sometimes just pacing around trying to figure out how to get everything lined up just right for us. This made me feel a bit guilty with what I then had to say. "But every day I wish that I woke up as someone else. That this life was just a dream that I was finally waking up from. I'm tired. Just tired of it all."

"Are you sure? You know if you want a career as a model you have to give it your all. If you take a step back now, you might not be able to change your mind later?"

"I'm sure. I've never been more sure of anything."

"All right then. It's your life so your choice," Mom says. She looks down at her watch. "I need to go join the other girls at that stupid dinner."

"So you think they're stupid too," I say with a bit of a smirk.

"Especially with Michael. But sometimes you just have to put up with things you don't like." She seemed to pause in reflection a bit at that last sentence. "Tomorrow, we'll sit down and figure things out together," she then added.

"I love you, Kate."

"I love you too Mom."

With that she left the hotel room, on her mission to help some beautiful ladies bring their dreams to life. And as I sat in the room alone, I felt free. My breaths felt lighter. I laid back on the bed and closed my eyes, feeling like I was flying through the sky. There were a lot of things that I felt like I still needed to say, other thoughts that I had built up for so long, but it was okay. Mom and I never really had those long conversations. And maybe that was okay. Maybe I didn't need to say every feeling that I had. Not now. But over time. That would be okay.

The next evening appeared from the outside to be just the same as the day before. Standing in the lobby of the St Mark, I saw that manager handling guests, her tiny dog standing on guard, and all the people consumed with their own lives and concerns. I thought about walking over there to thank her, but then her dog barked at me so I decided to walk on by.

Just like the night before I walked outside, looking out over the busy street. And while the sun had set, the world seemed a little brighter. Maybe the solstice had passed, so now the days were getting longer. Or maybe it was just my imagination. Either way, I made my way across the street once there was a break in the traffic. As I got to the door of the Tipton, the same doorman opened the door for me while giving me a silent bow. I thanked him and was once again stuck by the warmth of this hotel. Over to my left was "Uncle Marion" and what appeared to be a bellhop carrying a stack of 10 pizza boxes. I considered asking him what was going on, but the look on Uncle Marion's face told me that he was one dumb question away from exploding. And, he wasn't the reason for my visit.

Instead I looked across the lobby to the candy counter. To my relief, Nia was there again, but looked to be talking to another customer. Which made me a bit sad, though I'm sure her uncle would rather her actually sell stuff to guests instead of talk to people staying across the street and give them merchandise for free. But I made my way there anyway, figuring she didn't look too busy, and I brought my wallet so I could actually be a paying customer tonight.

"Hey Model-girl!" she said waving to me, which made me realize that I had never told me her name.

"It's Kate," I said. "And actually not a model anymore." I smiled a bit at that. Well more than a bit actually. "I talked to my mom last night." The person who I thought was a customer stepped away from the counter, as I ran up to it, though I noticed that he had a Tipton jacket on, so I guessed that he was an employee here too. He looked to be around the same age as Nia, probably a couple years older than me.

"So what did she say?"

"Not a lot actually. She seemed disappointed, but told me that it was my choice to make. When she wasn't busy with the girls today we started looking at colleges that I could go to." Mom had home schooled me since we travelled so much, and I was able to get my high school diploma next summer, though it always felt like it was secondary to the modelling. Which if modelling was going to be my career, then what was the point of school? At least that's how she seemed to feel. So college wasn't really something we talked about.

"That's awesome, do you know what you want to study?" Nia asked.

"Not at all," I answered.

"There's an ocean of possibilities out there," the other Tipton employee said. Turning to him, I saw that he also had a name tag that said 'Lance.' "Vast and filled with the unknown. A single fish could never hope to explore it all."

That thought excited me. "That's why I want to go college." I didn't know what it would be like. Sure, I'd seen it on TV and movies. But that was fake. It wasn't like I'd just go to some institute of technology and learn how to blow stuff up with my mind.

"Oh Kate, this is Lance. The lifeguard here," Nia explained.

"Nice to meet you," I said, subconsciously remembering everything my mom taught me about how to make a good impression as I held out my hand. I noticed that his jacket had a bunch of fish embroidered on it. I wondered if that was standard issue from the Tipton. But one glance back to the front desk to see Marion trying to put a luggage cart back together with duct tape and rubber bands told me all I needed to know.

"He goes to school with me. Actually didn't figure that out until I was here nearly a year. Never would have pictured him as a physics major, but shows you can't judge a book by their cover," Nia said.

And Lance did look like his mind was just a bit elsewhere. "How the world works, the mysteries of it. You know we've only explored five percent of the ocean," he started to explain. "And physics is like that. The pieces, we can put them together, but the standard model doesn't quite fit. Why is that? Why can't we figure it out?"

As he said that, I wanted him to tell me the answer. I wasn't sure why I felt that way. But there it was, a mystery laid before me, and maybe it was because I felt truly free for the first time in a long time, but I wanted to jump into those questions.

"I don't get it, but he really gets into that stuff," Nia said.

"It's pretty cool," I said, definitely not knowing much about it either. But I felt like I didn't have to know.

"Hey, you said that you were looking at colleges, did you think about moving to Boston?" Nia asked.

"No, so far I've just looked at places in California near where I live. But maybe." A college near my home would make sense, but it's not like Mom would be home on a regular basis, so what's the difference between San Jose and Boston?

"You should go to school here," Lance said, this time seeming to be fully present instead of his mind elsewhere.

This was going to be another hard conversation with Mom. But maybe. I even chuckled a little bit at the thought. "It's like diving into the ocean, filled with danger and unknown, but when you're in it, it's like you're at home." And maybe he was right. Maybe it was the fact the furnace was pumping warm air into the lobby from the vent right next to us, or maybe it was the warmth of these friends I had just made, but Boston felt right.

"Though it sucks when it's the middle of March and still snowing," Nia added.

"I think," I started to say. "I could be happy here. And I'll miss this place when I head back home Friday."

"You're leaving so soon?" Lance asked.

"Yeah, only here for a few days. I was supposed to be joining the models for another photo shoot tomorrow, and then we go back home the day after that. Which at least I won't have to deal with all of that agony."

"Then tomorrow. We should go on a date to the aquarium," Lance said.

I was a bit taken back at that. I turned to Nia. "He's a good guy," she said with a nod.

"Sometimes you just need to jump into things, right?" I said.

There were a lot of unknowns in my future. Where would I go to school? What should I study? What should my career be? Would this lead to a life of doing laundry and taxes with a great guy? Should I go to the aquarium with this guy I just met? Could visiting an aquarium mess with my shellfish allergies?

But talking to Nia. Talking to Lance. They taught me something valuable. That sometimes you had to jump into things to find out what you truly wanted. "All right Lance, it's a date."

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The assigned pairing:

Kate Cannon - daughter of Cindy Cannon, the model agency owner from SLOD episode Model Behavior. She was one of the models with Janice and Jessica

Lance Fishman - lifeguard at the Tipton Hotel. Loved everything about water and swimming.

A/N: First of all, thank you to Wyntirsno and WoundedHearts for betaing. That feels good to say

This story though, definitely not the easiest for me to write. It's been a long time since I wrote fanfiction, and it was hard to really get into it, though once I did, it started taking form in a way that I found fascinating. Kate's character started as a completely blank slate from Model Behavior, but what I found interesting about that episode was Cindy, so framed my interpretation of Kate based off that. Lance I didn't really know what to do with, but I thought having Kate go to the Tipton and meet him would work. Except Nia showed up and sort of took over the role I expected Lance to fill. Now if you've read my stories from way back when, you know that I don't have control of where my stories go. They just go places and I have to deal with it. The reason I included Nia was because while working on this I was reading through my Strange Love entries back from 2010 and had a pairing of Cody and Nia which was really short, just Cody writing a letter confessing his feelings to Nia. And the reviews for it made me want to show what happened from that, even if it's 13 years later. Though what I thought would be a quick cameo and reference turned into something much more. I feel bad that Lance didn't get more of a focus in his story, but I feel having the start to the romance just be a part of it makes the story feel more full. Or at least that's what I'm going with since it's well past Valentine's Day as I write this. Also, it was fun showing some familiar characters through Kate's eyes because she has no idea who they are. It sort of flips the whole main characters vs minor character thing.

This was also slightly inspired by me visiting Boston back in December. It was cold.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed. This is making me want to write more because writing is fun.