SOME KIND OF DISASTER ─ oliver wood

[ 038 ] do not open till you've got forever to spend with me

"How—"

Wriggling her fingers mockingly, Sawyer smirked. Wyatt had only landed one hit so far, and it'd been ten minutes into the game that Sawyer managed to hit four of his ships consecutively. Maybe she really was that intuitive. Maybe she'd also seen the reflection of his board against the TV screen and memorised the coordinates.

Brandishing his pencil like a dagger, Wyatt narrowed his eyes at her. "Dad! Sawyer's cheating!"

"Prove it," Sawyer said, nonchalantly.

Their father emerged from the kitchen with a mug of eggnog in hand.

"What're you gonna do about it?"

"Pray the gods smite her before she takes out my last ship," Wyatt muttered, supposedly under his breath, though everyone in the living room heard it.

Their father let out a dubious laugh, scratching his stomach as he stood over their board game. He sent Sawyer a conspiratorial wink. "Don't tell me when that contingency plan works out for you."

Wyatt didn't answer and Sawyer thought it was because their grandfather was a devout Bhuddist but their father didn't inherit his prayer-dirtied knees and now him and his children and all their children after that would never achieve transcendence into spiritual nirvana and Wyatt would be praying to old spirits who've shut their ears to their non-believer blood. After all, they were of witch blood and magic in their bones. In most religions that was a kind of sin. To have the supernatural intwined in the strands of their DNA was to forfeit all that was part of the natural order of the universe. Of life. Even if they'd been raised on prayer and burning incense and the Eightfold Path, no deity would listen.

"Anyway," their father said, pinning the both of them with accusatory looks over the rim of his #1 DAD mug. (Sawyer was beginning to think that stupid mug was glued to his hand, because he never went anywhere without it.) "Which one of you slimy mice ate both the gingerbread houses?"

"It wasn't me, it was the one-armed man!" Wyatt said, sending their father an innocent smile as he jabbed the pencil in Sawyer's direction, even though there was, very obviously, powdered sugar on his black shirt. They were both still in their pajamas, but Sawyer remembered to brush off all the evidence way ahead of Wyatt.

Sawyer sent Wyatt a scathing look.

"Mhm, sure. Try D-6, Sawyer."

"Dad!" Wyatt squawked in exasperation.

* * *

THERE WAS SOMETHING INEXPLICABLY MAGNETIC about the loneliness of being awake when everyone else was asleep, about a time where she was untethered from the world, like the moment in girlhood where she didn't belong to anybody. Where it felt like she wasn't anyone's daughter and she wasn't anyone's partner. Where it felt like she wasn't related to anyone at all. At the centre of the universe was herself and everything else was centrifugal. Even though she'd had no sleep the previous night, Sawyer found herself in the kitchen at two in the morning, perched on the counter with her feet dangling just inches off the floor. Ankles knocking against the drawers, Sawyer was wrestling with the plastic seal around her new tub of ice cream, half-contemplating using her teeth to just bite off the stubborn thing, when she heard a deep laugh from the doorway.

Flicking her gaze up to Oliver, who cut a lean figure against the doorframe in a white shirt that made him look softer than usual and red flannel pajama pants, arms crossed over his chest, Sawyer pinned him with an unimpressed stare. Mirth glimmered in his expression. Sawyer dug her thumb into the plastic. It didn't give.