fierce ↠ sweet pea [1] [✔]

|| BONUS CHAPTER ||

Little Lauryn Fogarty kicked about the stones beneath her feet, sipping her juice box and squinting in the sunlight.

She happily hopped along the driveway of Bumblebee's trailer, waiting for her friends to come back from the park to play. She was not yet allowed to go with them, as she was too small, and would often get hurt.

From behind her, she could hear a flurry of footsteps on the gravelly driveway, and turned around excitedly in hope that it was her brother and friends returning.

Her smile faded from her cheeks when she realised it was the opposite of who she'd expected, and she took a few steps back.

They picked on her almost every day at school, always taking her stuff and calling her names when they'd catch her alone.

"Leave me alone!" Lauryn begged, trying to run inside when she was shoved roughly to the ground by one of the boys, scuffing her knees and palms. The leader of their group placed his foot onto her back to hold her down, laughing.

They could see the tears in her eyes out of fear, ridiculing her in all sorts of ways. "Aw, what's the matter? Your big brother's not here to defend you?"

"What do you want?" she struggled, her spine beginning to tremble. "Please, go away."

"Please go away!" their leader mimicked, digging his hand-me-down sneaker into her back harder. "What are you gonna do, huh, Fogarty? My dad says your dad was a pussy!"

Lauryn was too young and innocent to know the meaning of the word thrown at her, but she knew it was nothing nice. She tried to wiggle out of his grasp.

"Get off of me!" she begged, starting to cry.

The boys laughed and jeered, feeling as if they were larger in the grand scheme of things.

"She told you to get off," a new voice barked, and Lauryn felt the pressure lift off of her back. She saw the group of boys scattering off as their boss tripped over his own feet, eventually getting off to retreat the same.

Lauryn looked up to see a boy with striking black hair who looked not much older than her, but was pretty tall.

He held out his hand to her, pulling her up and helping her dust the gravel and dirt off of her t-shirt.

"Who are you?" Lauryn asked in awe, and the boy chuckled.

"They call me Sweet Pea," he replied. He had dog tags hanging around his neck, which were too big for the scale of his body. "I'm new. Well, new to the trailer."

Lauryn's eyes widened. "You're staying here now?"

He nodded. "Mhm. My parents just died."

"Oh," Lauryn's gaze softened. "I'm sorry about that."

"Aren't you a Fogarty?" Sweet Pea asked her, and she gave a nod, almost ashamedly. "Where's your brother?"

"At the park, with the others," she shrugged, kicking about some loose stones. "Bumblebee won't let me go, I'm too little."

"What?" Sweet Pea frowned, shaking his head. "Come on, I'll ask Bumblebee if I can take you, no one will bother you."

Lauryn smiled appreciatively as she watched the boy jog up the trailer steps.

A moment later he came back out with a smile across his face. "Let's go, Angel Face."

"Angel Face? What kind of name is that?"

"Means your pretty," he said, but he didn't look her in the eye when doing so.

They started walking along the road. She noticed that Sweet Pea was very over-aware of his surroundings. He stared down anyone that so much glanced at them.

"You don't like people?" Lauryn asked him.

He sighed. "Someone always wants to fight me, my dad told me I'm trouble."

"It's not like that here," she comforted him, and he pursed his lips together. "I'm gonna be a Serpent when I grow up. No one touches the Serpents."

"Me too," he said. "My parents were Serpents, my dad's trailer is over on the east side."

"I've never seen you before."

"My mom didn't want us living too close, we lived in an apartment."

As they crossed the muddy path into Pickens park, they heard the squealing of the other young Serpents.

"Lauryn!" Fangs called when he saw his sister, and he jumped off the swing to run over. "Why are you here? You could get hurt."

"Elliot came back," Lauryn told her brother, and she broke down as he took her in for a hug. "They hurt my back."

Fangs encased his little sister, hushing her like he often would've when things were bad at home. He studied Sweet Pea with a blank gaze.

"It's okay, they're gone now," he told her. "Who's this guy?"

"That's Sweet Pea," she sobbed. "He's new."

"Thanks for looking out for my sister," Fangs told him, to which he replied with a nod. "You're one of us."

"I couldn't let those idiots get away with it."

Fangs pulled away from his sister, analysing her. He wiped her tears with his thumbs. "No more crying, Laur, it's over. We're here. They're not gonna come back."

"I want them to just leave me alone."

"They will. You got us to protect you."

Sweet Pea patted her on the back. "Hey, you put up a pretty cool fight. There was just too many of them."

Fangs half smiled in appreciation, nodding in agreement. "See? You're, like, super tough."

"What's going on?" an innocent Jared Aleks asked as he and the rest of the group came over to see what's going on. He narrowed his eyes at Sweet Pea. "Who's this guy?"

"Sweet Pea."

"Sweet Pea?" Jared scoffed. "What kind of name is that?"

Sweet Pea tilted his head back. "I don't know, but I'm told it fits me pretty well."

Jared looked at Lauryn, hugging her suddenly. "Hey, what happened to you? Are you hurt?"

She shook her head, taking a step back towards Sweet Pea. "No, just bullies."

"We'll get them for you at school tomorrow," Jared promised her. "You going to Southside Elementary, Sweet Pea?"

Sweet Pea nodded. "Think so."

"Right," Jared replied, he turned towards the others. "Soccer time, guys!"

Lauryn hung back with Sweet Pea to go and sit on a bench, he wasn't letting her out of his site.

"Thanks, again," she said, and he shook his head.

"No need, just did what anyone else would."

"They don't," she told him. "No one has ever stuck up for me like that. The others aren't there to see it when it happens."

"Well, you're in luck." he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and his fingers intertwined, as if he were already a grown man. "That's not gonna happen ever again."

Comforted, Lauryn gave him a smile.

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