Title: When She Cries
Book: II
Chapter: Ten
Chapter Title: A Little Unwell
Rating: R.
Coupling: Ultimately: Dallie/Lola, Aggie/Fin, Devon/Ashley,
Thalia/Ethan, Paris/Jess, Meggie/Zander, Aurora/Tolly. Now aren’t you glad
you’ve spoiled yourself in that way?
Disclaimer: Aye, captain. I hold no deeds to
Gilmore Girls. And I don’t own matchbox twenty’s Unwell.
Author’s Note: To Gracie, apparently I’m an updating Goddess, though
she’s just a Goddess in general.
Important
Author Reminder:
Want Trory? Happy Trory? Angsty Trory? Any sort of Trory at all? Check out the
WSC Prequel written by Bent137, The Way To Atlantis.
*
Hold on/Feeling like I'm headed for a breakdown/
And I don't know why.
Freud would say that avoidance was
Augusta’s current defense mechanism. And that her relationship with her father
prevented her from having a functional relationship with another male. He would
also call her Elektra and say that she wanted to murder her mother so that she
could sleep with her father. So that showed how much Freud knew. Really- could
you trust a man who made up most of his psychological theories so that he
would sound more normal? So there had to be another perfectly logical reason
why she had taken a bus to Hartford, so that she could spend the weekend at her
parents. One that didn’t include Irishmen, her father or murdering her mother.
One that had more to do with what
she was currently doing. Right, she had come home so that she could watch
reruns of M*A*S*H in the Recreation Room of the house. That Hawkeye, you could
only watch him in a place that wasn’t your apartment. Well, that was currently
her story and she was sticking to it until she could learn some creativity. Or
ask Lola to make up an excuse for her. Lola was good at excuses.
The least she could do is watch
something else and take notes on them. She’d do that for M*A*S*H but had
psychoanalyzed every single episode and character already. She needed a life.
Quite badly. Wasn’t she old enough to drink? She should really take that up.
Aggie sat up and looked around for her notebook. Damn? Had she not brought it
into the room with her? That had to be a first. Must be in the foyer
still.
She heard voices in the foyer, but
nothing to alarm her. Five people lived in this house, at one time or another.
Nothing completely shocking. At least it wasn’t until she saw who was
talking, and to whom he, her father, was talking to. Fin. Great. It was always
nice to learn that fate really did hate you that much. The two had been
talking about work, more specifically the changes Finvarra had made at Jess’s
recommendation, but the moment they saw her- the talking stopped. Gee, wasn’t
that just spectacular?
“I left my notebook down here,”
Augusta told them, since they were so obviously waiting for an explanation of
her presence, as she passed. It was no big deal.
“I didn’t know that you were home,”
her father commented. Did he look suspicious? “Or that you were coming home.”
There were a lot of things her
father didn’t know about, and most were through no fault of her own. So she
stopped in her tracks, and turned towards him. “I haven’t been here long.”
“So you’re home.” Jess continued.
Yeah, he was suspicious, and he was starting to sound worse than her mother.
Guess this staying at home thing had affected him after all. “No particular
reason?”
Augusta finished the trek and picked
up her notebook. She turned back to her father. “Do I need one?”
“Not at all, Ags,” he replied. “Just
surprised, is all.”
Her father always seemed surprised to
see here there. Ever since she was born. “Take that up with Dallie, then. I
told him last night.”
“Oh.” And that was that. Of course,
she knew that as ironic as it seemed, her father thought she had come home for
some sort of affair with Fin. The truth of the matter was, that coming home, to
Hartford, looked quite appealing because of the lack of Fin’s presence that had
been anticipated.
Of course, she could always ignore
his presence. Really- how much more business could he have with her father? It would
be easy, she could move on with her life. She didn’t need a boyfriend; she had
a degree to work for. After that she had mentally unstable people to deal with.
No time for men until she was thirty, at least. So without even a word, or a
glance at Fin, she left the room.
It’d be easy alright. Last summer?
Nothing happened. Nothing at all.
*
Devon would like to say that he was
laying in the cool breeze with a light breeze blowing over him, but it’d be a
lie. The grass was warm and almost brittle from the lack of water that had been
fed to them, due to the broken sprinkler system, and the breeze was
nonexistent. Not to mention the fact that he was sitting in the grass, since
lying down near a bunch of guys who had just took a break from a game of Pick-Up
football, with some still tossing the football around was not a good idea. He
took his hat off and dragged his discarded t-shirt across his sweat-laden
forehead. Despite the heat and bruises he was pretty sure he was going to have
in the morning, he loved playing sports. It was the one thing had kept him from
suffering middle-child syndrome, despite the claim Aggie had that he had it
anyway.
He was tugging his baseball cap back
on while Chuck sat next to him before handing him a water bottle. “So how was
the beach? I haven’t seen Ash since you guys left.”
Devon waited until after he had
taken a few sips of the water before answering, “It was fine.”
“Fine?” Chuck mimicked
questioningly. “Man, you sound like a woman.”
He ran a hand through his blonde
hair, “Er, it was whatever. That better?”
“So who’d Ashley met?”
Devon looked at his roommate out of
the corner of his eye, “What do you mean?”
“Well if it wasn’t a blast, and you
seem all down,” Chuck explained. “Then obviously you’re jealous of some guy
Ashley talked to.”
“Now who sounds like a woman?” He
returned. “And I’m not jealous of Zander Hanes.”
“But there is some guy Ashley talked
to,” his roommate pointed out. “And, no, you’re not jealous.”
“Not at all, he has a girlfriend.”
“You ask?”
“No, I’ve known Zander since he was
thirteen,” Devon answered. “And last I checked, he was dating Marguerite
Giselle.”
“Nice name.”
“She thinks so. It’s a literary
thing.”
“Sir Percy,” Chuck thought aloud.
“What’s that book? The Scarlet Letter?”
“Pimpernel,” Devon corrected.
“By Baroness Orczy. Letter is Hawthorne.”
“Not all of us can have such
extensive knowledge in classic literature, because some of us spent out
adolescence watching some good ol’ fashioned TV.”
Devon snorted. “Not in my house. I
think Aggie and Dallie had completed all of Salinger’s novels by the age of
ten.”
“I didn’t even read Catcher In
The Rye when I was suppose to in tenth grade,” Chuck cracked his knuckles.
“Thank you sparknotes-dot-com.”
“My mother had that blocked from our
Internet access, still don’t know how she did that,” he shook his head. “So
I’ve read all about Holden and his duck pond adventures. My sister and brother
swear by it, but I don’t see the appeal.”
“You must have been very blasphemous
in your household,” Chuck commented.
Devon shrugged, watching as a few of
the college students passed by. Never mind any of that, there was a game to be
played. The Ashley non-issue would just have to wait until later.