Liam comes in through the garage door and tosses his soccer bag into the kitchen where it lands with a loud thunk.
Finn stands in the doorway, with a look of disbelief on her face.
"Hey," he says, nodding at her. And the next second, her face breaks and she starts to sob. "Oh! Oh, God!" Liam gasps, going to her. "I'm sorry! I was going to pick it up, promise. I didn't want to track snow into the house."
Finn is still crying, and Liam quickly acts on his statement.
"See? It's cleaned up." His sister is still crying. "What's wrong?" he tries, knowing it was more than just his mess that was making her cry.
"Did something happen with you and Christian?"
"Uh-huh," she hiccups, sniffling. She and Christian had been casually flirting for a few weeks, and Finn had begun to develop a crush on the teen.
"Okay." They were getting somewhere. "Do you wanna talk about it?"
"Why are you boys so stupid?" Finn shouts over her tears. "Why do you never listen." she shoves on her brother, using him to get her emotion out.
"I listen! Not the Castle men, right?" Liam asks, smiling. "We're the exception."
"You and Austin are on thin ice," Finn says, her crying now mostly over. "Dad too. Max is fine."
"As it should be," Liam nods with a laugh. She and their brother-in-law had always been close. "What happened? What did Christian do?" The two boys had played on the same club soccer team for years, so Liam knew Christian fairly well.
"He annoyed me all day! First, in algebra, he didn't move his stupid backpack when I asked him to, so I tripped over it. Then, he cut in front of me in the lunch line and took the last piece of cheesy bread. And then, he and his buddies were making fun of me when we were giving our psychology presentations! I'm so sick of him!"
Liam looks at his sister with a slack-jawed face. He had no idea all of this had happened to her. "Look, I'm sorry he was being like this. We have practice later, I'll talk to him."
"You better," Finn growls, stalking out of the kitchen and into the living room where she throws herself onto the couch.
Later that night at practice as they were warming up, Liam scoots closer to Christian and strikes up a quiet conversation. "Aye, what happened at school today with my sister? She said you and some of your guys were ragging on her."
"Eh. it was nothing. We were just teasing! She needs to learn to take a joke," Christian laughs.
"Dude, it's not cool! You were being mean to her! She knows the difference between that and teasing. And from what I saw at home earlier, you were not teasing."
"Nah, your sister needs to get tougher skin! We were just teasing!"
"Well, then you need to leave her alone. She doesn't appreciate you 'teasing' her. Especially not while she's giving a presentation."
"Alright, fine. We'll leave her alone, god." Christian stands up and goes over to their other teammates. "Ay, Henry!"
Liam lets the conversation end at that, hopeful the teasing would actually stop.
He hated seeing his sister so sad like that.
A/N: I think we all know where this is headed to.
I hope your new year is going well so far! If you have any requests, send them my way!