Pairing: Jake n Bells

Rating: T

Genre: Family/Fluff/Romance

Prompt: "Love Bites" by Def Leppard

Word Count: 507, for the preview. The one-shot that follows, on the other hand... Can we just all agree that I need more practice at this brevity thing? So this is a preview for the one-shot I couldn't avoid writing...

Ten Years & Two Bites

Jake n Bells, ages 6 and 7 ½

Jake n Bells sat on his back stoop, eating a pair of juicy peaches his mama bought at the market. Well, three peaches, technically, because Jake ate enough for two six year olds, easy.

But he did offer to share his with Bells. Jake would give her the shirt off his back, the pillow off his bed, or the little stuffed red wolf named Russell that he'd had since he was born.

Jake loved Bells more than food, and that was really saying something.

Bells ate her peach efficiently, nibbling daintily around the pit and neatly removing all the sweet yellow fruit before moving on to the next bite.

Meanwhile, Jake gobbled his like it was the last fresh peach on earth and zombies were about to storm the yard and eat his brain before he could finish it.

Jake did everything like it was his last moment on earth. Bells didn't know anyone else who could squeeze the happy out of every waking moment like Jake could. He was born happy and busy. He never stopped moving or fiddling or thinking about something.

Bells, on the other hand, was quiet and thoughtful and did everything with a quiet deliberation.

At seven and half, she had already chosen which college she would attend (University of Washington so she and Jake could go together), what she would do when she grew up (a librarian at the school on the rez), and where she would live (in the house next door to Jake). They spit and shook on it two weeks earlier when she told him her plan for the rest of her life after she informed him sadly about her parents' divorce and having to go back to live with her mom at the end of summer.

Jake had gnawed the sweet flesh thoroughly, if not efficiently, off of both of his peaches. The juice was running down his chin when he tilted his head, looking at her funny.

"Bells?" he asked.

"What's up, Jake?" she smacked her lips delicately and set her peach pit carefully on the step beside her where it wouldn't stain Jake's new shorts.

"If you move to Phoenix, will you live there forever?" his lip wobbled and Bells had to remind herself that he was only six and his parents still lived together.

Bells didn't think they had much longer, though. They fought all the time about the twins.

Loud fights, too, just like when her parents fought over her before they decided to not live together.

"No, I'll get to come visit Daddy every summer and most of the holidays from school. The judge said so. And it won't be forever. I have to come back to go to college with you and live next door and be a librarian. I can't do that in Phoenix," she tried to ease his worry, leaning into his shoulder to nudge him into giving her one of his biggest, bestest hugs.

She knew what he was thinking.

"Will you marry me, Bells?"

Or maybe not.

You can find the rest of the one-shot in a few days when it is posted to my profile on FFn.