Chapter content warnings: swearing; infidelity mentions; discussions of sex

Don't forget that you can find me on tumblr: we - are - all - of - legend - now and that my ao3 account is wearealloflegendnow (even though I haven't posted there yet)!

~TLL~

Lily cried herself to sleep.

When she woke up, she cried again.

Lily's eyes were crusty and she could feel the remains of mascara and powders and shame just sticking to her. She stared up at the ceiling, feeling what had happened last night settle over her for the thousandth time. She felt guilty about how the whole thing had happened, especially with how sweet and apologetic Jake was when he had said his goodbyes last night, but there was one truth about it all that made Lily feel worse about everything. She didn't feel guilty about what she had done with Marcia. She would do it again, to feel Marcia close like that, to feel like that within herself. And, Lily still wouldn't tell Jake about it.

That was probably the part that made her feel worse. Lily just didn't know how to keep secrets. Jake was her best friend and she was going to have to look at him and lie to him every day now and she was just deciding to live with that burden. It was unfathomable but she didn't know what else to do. At least, not yet.

Lily heard footsteps in the hall and she pushed herself out of the bed. Her head ached and the room spun and, for a second, that was all that she could think about it. There was a threatening pressure at the back of her throat and Lily willed herself not to vomit. Vomit. Tears. She was not going to be that girl. Like Marcia had said: it was time for hot girl shit. She could be a hot girl; she had done it last night when she was at Marcia's side.

Lily pulled herself up, only teetering a little and went to the bathroom. She scrubbed at her face and run a brush through her hair. Then, thinking that if Rose was still in bed and it was Marcia she heard go downstairs, Lily brushed her teeth. She put on the clothes that she had packed, the chunky knit that she usually loved seeming dorky and inadequate as she pulled it on. Everything about her felt inadequate now that she knew what it was like to be someone different.

Lily made sure everything was in her bag and checked her phone. There was a message from her father, reminding her that she and Rose were going to be picked up at eleven but Lily didn't answer it. She just slid the phone in her pocket and bounced down the stairs.

Lily's dreams of Rose still being in bed were dashed. Her twin was lounging at the kitchen island, draped across two of the tall stools, just watching Marcia unpack takeout boxes. Marcia was wearing a monogrammed bathrobe that looked fluffier than the blankets on Lily's bed and matching slippers, while Rose was looking like a Lululemon ad with her high ponytail and form fitting yoga pants. Neither of them looked like they had gone to bed late, let alone been drinking until the late hours. Lily's throat clamped down at the thought of alcohol and she quickly tried to distract herself.

"What do I smell?" she asked, going and sitting at the island, on the opposite end from Rose.

"Croissant breakfast sandwiches from my favourite bakery," Marcia gushed.

"Their croissants likely have crack in them, the way Marcia consumes them," Rose said dryly.

"I like croissants," Lily said but it felt lame the second it was out of her mouth. It was a croissant. It was a safe bet she liked croissants.

Marcia put plates down in front of everyone and took the seat closer to Rose. Lily tried not to read into it but she was reading into everything now, her normal social anxiety being given a whole new standard by her at ease twin.

"Should we do mimosas?" Marcia asked.

"Dear God," Rose groaned. "No, we slept in. The not parents will be here shortly."

"Aww, come on," Marcia prompted. "You can't say slept in when I know you still went jogging this morning. I felt you get out of bed."

Lily was starting to feel very left out and there were little flares of jealousy going through her as she wondered if Rose and Marcia had ever done anything like she and Marcia had last night. She needed something to distract from those thoughts so she asked, "What's a mimosa?"

"It's sparkling wine and orange juice. Or other fruit juices," Rose said, staring at Lily so Lily could feel how stupid the question was.

It wasn't as stupid as her next question which was, "Wines glitter?"

Rose stare deadened even more as she said, "no, it has bubbles."

Marcia snorted behind her croissant and mumbled, "this is why we don't hang out with the public school kids."

The comment pierced Lily's heart.

"I didn't have a choice," Rose replied, her voice not quite as low.

Two pierces and she wasn't even finished with her breakfast. It was a relief when her phone rang, her mother telling her know that their parents were outside. Lily relayed the information and Rose crammed the rest of her croissant in her mouth.

"Shit, I haven't packed."

"My bag's all ready," Lily said.

"I'll grab it," Rose offered.

"Just leave your shit, you'll be back in two days anyway."

Rose rolled her eyes. "There's some stuff I need you know."

When Rose was out of the room, Marcia slid from her seat. Even in her morning wear with her hair up, she was just as sensual as she was last night. Lily held her breath, well aware of the croissant crumbs on her lip. She was too scared in the light of the day to make any of the moves that she had last night but that was okay because Marcia didn't seem to be afraid at all. Despite the fact that there was nowhere to hide in the bright kitchen and Rose could come back at any time, Marcia kissed her deeply, with tongue, her hand hot and teasing between Lily's legs. It was only one kiss before Marcia went back to her seat and neither of them said a word but they didn't need to. That kiss told Lily everything she needed to know as Rose came back down the stairs and they went out to the car, sliding into the backseat.

Lily couldn't help but look across the seat, wondering what it would have been like to grow up with Rose right there the whole time. She knew that she would never stop thinking about it and she wondered if Rose had started wondering what it would have been like to be part of this family in the way that she supposed to. Probably not. Rose had a heart of stone.

"How was the sleepover?"

"It was good," Lily said quickly. "Marcia's a good host. Rose gave me a makeover last night."

"That sounds fun," Melinda said, but Lily knew her mother and she knew there was something on her mind. She hesitated to ask and, in that space, Rose spoke.

"Lily and I have plans for Friday night, if that's all right."

Lily tried not to react in surprise. Since when? Doing what? With who? The same questions that Carl actually asked aloud.

"A double date with Jake and Brad. We're going to do karaoke."

What the – No. Absolutely not. Who had made these damn plans? She was not going to karaoke. Never. No way. Not even under threat of death. Lily pulled out her phone, texting Jake.

Lily: Did you and Rose plan a karaoke date?

Jake: Uh … Kinda? She got excited about it and I said yes.

Lily: Why?

Lily: Without asking me?

Jake: I just thought you'd be excited to spend more time with her. She wanted to include you. I didn't ask her to.

Lily: I hate karaoke. How am I supposed to get up on the stage and sing?

Jake: you don't have to. We can just hang out, eat some food, judge the people who do get up and sing

Lily: great. Another activity where I don't want to participate and I bring the whole group down

Lily: tell me Trixie and Spud aren't going

Jake: it's a double date with just me, you, Brad, and Rose. Didn't Rose tell you that?

Lily: no one told me anything! She just asked our parents if we could go! No one talked to me!

Jake: I'm talking to you now. If you really don't want to go, I'll get us out of it

Lily: when did you even have time to plan a whole date with my sister?

Jake: last night. We were hanging out while you were upstairs.

Lily: so while I was upset, you were planning dates with my twin?

Jake: I'll cancel it

Lily: no. don't. it's fine.

Jake: it's clearly not fine

Lily: I said it was fine.

Trying to hide the seething that she knew what unfair, Lily put her phone back in her pocket, rejoining the conversation that was going on in the car.

"It's not that we don't want you to go," Melinda said, "but there are some things we want to talk to you about at home that might make things more complicated."

Lily didn't care for that tone at all. She felt like she was crumbling on the inside by the time that they were seated in the living room, her parents on the loveseat together while she and Rose sat in the big armchairs, staring at them.

"Our lawyer, John Martin, called last night," Carl said.

"About me?" Rose guessed. "Did something happen with my dad?"

"No, your case is still active and being investigated," Carl said. "However, as of this morning, the news has a hold of the story."

"The police weren't going to say anything until they knew what was going on better, especially with the brothers and finding their birth families," Melinda said. "At least, that was their claim."

Lily just stared, still trying to figure out why that was such a big deal – of course it was going to be in the news. Everyone was obsessed with true crime now and this was a big story. Kidnapped infant goes home alive. She didn't have to be a journalist to see how that headline just wrote itself.

Rose swore. "Fantastic. Are they allowed to use my name? My picture?"

Then, Lily understood.

"Depends on how much integrity they have," Melinda said, "the online side though …"

True crime was an obsession and a popular one. Lily had just had that thought but now it was truly hitting her what that meant. There were people out there already trying to figure out who they were – maybe already had. Jake had found Rose's Facebook profile easily enough with a lot less to go on. Right now, she and Rose could be going up on Instagram reels, their story recorded into Podcasts, their privacy going up in a puff of smoke. And there was not a single thing that they could do about it.

"We want to make sure that you're prepared. People might try to approach you and ask you questions –"

"They will be kicked in the face," Rose said assertively, cutting off Carl.

"Or just say no comment," Carl advised.

"We live in the middle of New York City. No one's going to look at us," Lily said. The fact that she was practically invisible had never seemed like such an asset before.

Rose looked down at her phone. "I'm being DM'd already, asking to interview."

Lily looked at her phone but there were no requests for her.

"John Martin says it's best not to speak to anyone because you never know what kind of bearing this will have on the police investigation. He also said that if you don't feed the fire, it's likely to die out that much faster," Carl said.

Lily nodded because it made sense and it wasn't like she could fight it anyway. She stood up from her armchair. "I'm going to my studio."

No one stopped her as she left the room and then headed for her art studio, which was really just the cramped attic, but it was her space. It was where she could be alone, amongst her paint brushes and sketched on canvasses and the comforting smell of attic dust, no matter how much she tried to keep it clean. In the cleared space around the base of her easel, Liy sat down on the floor and pulled her legs into her chest. In three days, everything that she had known about her life had completely disappeared and she was hurtling toward the unknown and the unsafe and she didn't know what to do or what to think or who to turn to.

So, Lily just cried again.

(-.-)

Rose stared at the window, thinking of climbing out of it. She could be on the street in a minute and then she could just … go. Go where? She couldn't go home; she knew what kind of position it would put her father in. She swallowed the lump in her throat, thinking that she was supposed to be stronger than all of this but she didn't want to be. Not this time. This time she wanted someone to catch her.

Her phone buzzed again and Rose glared at it. If it wasn't the only way that she had to talk to Nicholas and Kyle, she would just put the damn thing through wall. She snatched it from the bed, thinking that she was going to have to block another snoop. It probably said something about the state of her relationship that she was surprised to see Brad was calling her but she wasn't going to dwell on that too hard. She and Brad were always on the rollercoaster but that was fine. It meant that they weren't too attached and Rose liked having a boyfriend; she just didn't like being attached.

"Hello," she said.

"Babe," Brad said, "Heard you had a party last night and I wasn't invited!"

Priorities.

"It was 'Boy Night'," Rose said, making finger quotes even though he couldn't see her. "You always tell me not to call you on Boy Night."

"Boy Night could have been at the party," Brad insisted, but he didn't sound angry about it. That was the other nice thing about Brad – he never held grudges with her and he didn't care when she held grudges with him. It was all part of the rollercoaster. "What are you doing?"

"Just sitting on my bed, staring out the window," Rose said honestly.

"Thinking of me?" There was a lewd undercurrent in Brad's voice and Rose needed to shut that down immediately. She was so not in the mood.

"Thinking about our Friday plans."

"We have plans on Friday?"

"Karaoke with the twin and her boyfriend," Rose said. "It'll be … fun."

She didn't believe it enough to make the comment sound completely sincere. Oh, Rose knew that she and Jake could have fun together, especially once she prodded him into singing. Brad genuinely liked going to karaoke and was good hearted about the fact that he as bad at it. Overall, Rose really believed it could be fun if she thought Lily had any capacity for fun at all.

"I'm always down for karaoke! Hell yeah!"

"You'll have to drive; I don't have my car."

Brad snorted. "No. I'll pay for an Uber but I am not going to drive when we're going to a karaoke bar. You know the beer just makes me better."

It didn't make him sing any better but the comment did make Rose laugh. Some of the stress lifted when she giggled and so she did it again. This was one of the moments when she understood why she and Brad kept coming back to each other.

"I'll pick you up from school on Wednesday, though. Let's go get burgers."

"Okay," Rose agreed, "I'll see you on Wednesday."

"Kisses, babe!"

"Kisses," Rose responded, because it felt far too formal to reply 'goodbye now' and hang up the phone.

The silence of the room was oppressive and, for the briefest moment, Rose wondered what Lily was doing in her studio. She decided to not wonder and then got up off the bed, digging out the homework she'd been neglecting all weekend. Like it or not, life went on.

(-.-)

"You haven't been home a lot this weekend."

Jake fought down a sigh because his mother was right, because he was trying to get Gramps to eat some form of dinner while Fu took a well-deserved break, because there was no escaping this conversation. He didn't take his eyes off his grandfather, who was showing some interest in the mashed potatoes.

"I know. There was just a lot going on, I guess."

"A social life is normal."

Jake could hear Susan fluffing pillows and he wondered why she bothered. It was all going to be over soon anyway. The second they got Gramps into a magical home everything from the shop was going to be sold or given away or adopted into their house. No one gave a damn if the pillows were fluffed because Gramps didn't even know where he was and Fu was just going to get dog hair all over them anyway.

"Just pry, Mom," Jake said.

"I don't know what you mean."

Jake didn't bother to dignify that with a response; he just waited. Gramps let out a string of Cantonese that Jake didn't understand at all and Susan could only respond to with the most basic of ideas. When Gramps finished what Jake assumed was complaining, he stuffed his hands in the mashed potatoes and started licking them off his fingers. He was eating and so Jake wasn't going to fight about it.

"All right," Susan said, "what's going on in your life? I know this is about Lily to some extent, right?"

"Her no longer missing twin." Jake admitted, "I used magic to find her and then finding her isn't going the way that Lily wanted her to and I guess I feel a little responsible for making sure they get along, I'm not doing so hot. Lily's mad at me."

Susan held up her hand. "Did you tell Lily about magic?"

"What? No. I'm not stupid and Gramps would kick –" Jake pulled him up short. Gramps wasn't going to kick his ass for anything ever again. Gramps didn't even know that he was Gramps. "Anyway, I'm a little smarter than that."

"Now," Susan teased with warm affection. Jake appreciated her trying to distract him but there was nothing to distract him. "Why's Lily mad at you?"

"She was hanging out with her friends last night," Jake said, not wanting to get into the whole thing, "and Rose was hanging out with me, Trixie, and Spud, and Rose and I made plans to go out with Lily and Rose's boyfriend on a double date and Lily said I should have asked her first and I told her we could cancel and now she's not talking to me."

The fact that Jake had to edit out so much to not make himself look like a terrible person probably should have made him take a closer look at himself. As it was, just trying to open up to his mother was hard enough. It wasn't that he kept secrets, necessarily, but he was a seventeen-year-old boy. Things were supposed to be private now. He had never been like Haley, who felt no shame in sharing all the details of her life with their parents.

"Were they plans that Lily would like?"

"Not really."

"Then maybe you should make a second set of plans with Rose – something that Lily will like."

Jake nodded. Yeah, that made sense.

"And chocolates," Susan added. "Chocolates never hurt anything."

That definitely made sense and it was what Jake did, showing up to school the next morning with a box of Lily's favourite chocolates. He found her in the art room, a pencil clenched between her fingers even though the page in front of her was empty. They hadn't talked last night, which was unusual for them. Jake had tried to call but she had never answered the phone so he had sent her a text and she had left him on read.

Jake sat in the seat across from Lily and slid the chocolates next to her sketch pad. Lily looked up at him.

"You're right," Jake said, "I didn't think about what you would want to do when making plans. You've done a lot of things this weekend that you don't normally like to do and I should have pushed Rose more into doing something that you think would be fun."

Lily gave a little shrug.

"So, I looked around and I found this place we can go paint ceramics. I figure we'll do karaoke this time because it was what we planned and you said not to change it and then next week, we'll go do ceramic painting, okay?"

"You want to hang out with Brad?" Lily asked suspiciously.

"Not at all. I'd rather pull my eyeballs out," Jake said cheerfully. "But I want to spend time with you and you want to spend time with Rose and I assume Rose wants to spend time with Brad."

Lily finally smiled at him and Jake felt relieved. He didn't like to see her upset, especially when he had done so much to make her upset.

"I like that plan a lot." She pulled the top off her chocolate box and picked one out before offering him one. "Thanks for thinking of it."

Jake accepted the chocolate and then he leant across the table to kiss her. She didn't taste like her usual eucalyptus lip balm and when he leant back into his seat, he realized that she was wearing a slightly tinted lip gloss. How had he missed that?

"I'm always thinking about you," Jake said. "Have a good day, okay? I'll see you at lunch."

"See you at lunch."

Jake had his phone out as he headed toward his first class of the day, pulling up Rose's number. Was it weird that he had Rose's number? It shouldn't be. She was his girlfriend's sister. But, it felt wrong to send a text because as he did, he was thinking of that locked door at Marcia's party, where nothing happened but Jake had thought about it for two seconds which was enough to make this feel wrong. Even though he didn't do anything and she didn't do anything. Jake shook his head. He was making it weird. It wasn't weird. It was just a text message.

Jake: Hey. Lily's not in love with the idea of karaoke so I'm trying to plan a second double date with something she'd be more interested in. what do you think?

Rose: planning a second date before the first? That's a little desperate, don't you think?

Jake chuckled at her response, hearing exactly the way that she would say it. Immediately after, he wondered what he was doing. He didn't laugh at his phone. Laughing at phones was a preteen thing when people were having their first ever crushes. He schooled his features into a neutral face, even though no one was paying attention to him.

Rose: but, yes. Whatever we must do to keep Lily from having another tantrum.

Jake rolled his eyes and immediately typed out a response in Lily's defence. Rose's answer came back immediately, as if she had already known what he was about to say. They were still volleying back and forth when he dropped into the desk next to Spud's, in the back of the physics classroom.

"Stacey won't talk to me," Spud bemoaned.

"Stacey has never talked to you," Jake said, not looking up.

"Yeah but now we've fucked so she probably should talk to me."

Jake nearly dropped his phone in surprise. "Wait, when?"

"Saturday night. In Marcia's laundry room."

"I don't believe you," Jake said. "You would not have kept this from us since Saturday."

"Kept what from us?"

Jake didn't turn to face Trixie, he just blurted out Spud's news. "Spud says he and Stacey screwed."

Trixie scoffed, just as Jake had been expected. It was nice to know not everything had gone off the rails this weekend and that some things couldn't ever change.

"Yeah right. How drunk were you?"

"Or were you just drunk?"

"Maybe it was Lacey."

"Or Tracey," Jake finished.

"You cannot get drunk enough – or high enough, Trixie, don't look at me like that – to confuse Stacey with Lacey or Tracey," Spud said defensively. "It really did happen."

"In your head," Jake said.

"If she's not even talking to you, it can't have been that good," Trixie added.

"You'd know," Jake said, "you trained him."

Jake didn't bother to defend himself against the textbook Trixie hit him with. Jake knew he deserved it. Spud and Trixie had slept together – several times, if Jake remembered correctly – but neither of them really liked to talk about it. It had never been a romantic thing, more like everyone else was doing it so they might as well see what all the fuss was about with someone they trusted. Jake had never quite been able to figure out if they regretted it or not. He didn't want to ask because he was okay with his two friends having that stay just between them.

"Mr. Long, Miss Cater, Mr. Spudinski, is there anything you would like to share with the class?"

"No, Mr. Anderson," they chorused, like they were in grade school again.

The three of them made an effort to look like they were paying attention and being good students. And Jake really tried until his phone vibrated, distracting him.

Rose: Ta. Tea. Crumpets. What do you think the English do all day? Bloody American.

Jake couldn't help but it as he let out a small laugh and started typing out his response. Jake was completely oblivious to the looks that Trixie and Spud were trading above his head.