dakota looks up at the face of fulton reed, who looking as shocked as she probably does right now. they stare at each other in silence for a while, not quite knowing what to say, until another voice calls, "fult, was it her?" that breaks whatever weird tension was going on, and fulton clears his throat and steps back.
"uh, yeah. it's her." dakota watches as a red-haired man appears through the doorway, walking toward the door. he has a slight limp, she notices. interesting.
the man smiles. "well, are you just going to let her stand outside all night? come inside, dakota." she and fulton glance at each other again before he steps back to hold the door for her as she comes in.
"thanks," she says softly. as the man disappears back into the other room, she and fulton stand in the entryway. the tension is so thick that you could cut it with a knife, and she's tempted to cough or shuffle or say something, just so that she doesn't feel like the awkwardness is choking her. instead, she decides to look around the house. the entryway is tall, with a large vaulted ceiling and tile floor. there are two rows of coat racks, one on each side, and two rugs underneath for shoes. should i take my shoes off before i go in? she thinks. oh no.
there's nothing she hates more than the little unsaid nuances of each house that she lived in. she never knows if she needs to take her shoes off before going in the house, or if they don't want her in certain rooms, or if they don't allow elbows on the table, or any of that etiquette stuff. some homes genuinely don't care, but other houses just say they don't care in order to not cause problems, and then she can feel them staring at her disapprovingly for the whole first week she's there. then, there are houses that do care and expect you to know. those ones are the worst.
in a moment of awkward desperation to get at least something right, she glances down at fulton's feet. he's still wearing his boots. wonderful. she glances back up to him. shit. he saw her. he looks at her quizzically, but she doesn't think it's a judging stare, which is good. the corner of his mouth quirks up in a little half-smile, and huffs out a little laugh.
"don't laugh at me," she says quietly. she's nervous, too nervous to really be mad at him. fulton gives her a small smile, and- is he trying to make her feel better?
"my girlfriend and her son should be here soon, too," the man's voice calls from the other room. he comes back through the doorway. "they're over here a lot, so i thought it would be a good idea to have you meet them too. if not, i can call them and tell them not to come." dakota shakes her head.
"no, that's okay, i would love to meet them too." the man smiles and dakota's glad she said that. there's a little voice in the back of her mind that goes 'yay! you did something right!', but she shuts that down pretty quickly. there's still a long way to go. he disappears back in the other room, but only for a couple seconds before his head pops back around the corner.
"hey, fulton, why don't you show her around while i finish up dinner and wait for casey and charlie to get here?" fulton nods and the man leaves again. charlie? where had she heard that name befor- oh. she looks up at fulton.
"that charlie?" fulton nods again.
"yeah, that charlie." a realization hits dakota.
"oh, so this is what you guys were talking about earlier." fulton hums in agreement.
"yeah, and it's a good thing that you wanted to meet them tonight. they're in the process of moving in right now. they're selling their apartment and everything."
dakota stares at him. "so you're telling me that i'm going to be sharing a house with charlie conway." she says, deadpan. that little half-smile comes back on his face, almost like he's trying not to laugh at her.
"yep." he's having way too much fun with this. the death glare dakota gives him must be pretty spectacular, because it's enough to make him go, "it really won't be that bad. he's going to be upstairs with me, and you'll be in the basement. you're literally the furthest away from him you can get." oh great. the basement.
the basement means that she gets her own space, but the basement also means that she's cold, and the walls are concrete, and that's where all the bugs go. of course they would put her in the basement.
"stop looking like we just sentenced you to prison." he's not even looking at her while he talks, saying it offhandedly, like he doesn't care that much. "the basement here isn't bad. it's not like the other basements you've stayed in." she looks at him while he's talking, like he's talking from experience. she wonders how many houses he stayed in before this one. she wonders if they were as bad as the ones she was in.
she's startled out of it when he starts moving. "come on, i'll show it to you." she follows him down the hallway and looks around. the floors are nice hardwood, and there are pictures on the walls of... wait.
"is that julie?" she's pointing at a picture of a hockey team dressed in red, white, and blue uniforms. julie's front and center. dakota feels like she's seen this picture before, maybe in-
"yeah, we played for team usa a few years ago during the goodwill games. huge international hockey tournament. that's how we all met, actually." dakota scans the picture. fulton's in the back row, standing between vicky and the other boy he was with all the time, what was his name... oh. dean portman.
the more she looked at the picture, the more she realized that almost all the kids in the picture were part of the hockey team at eden. "wait, hold on. you guys won an international competition, meaning that you're the best in the world, and the school still put you on the JV team as freshmen?" fulton stiffens beside her and looks at her, confused.
"how did you know about that? you didn't even go to eden then." dakota shrugs.
"vicky kinda gave me the rundown. wait, how did you know i didn't go to eden as a freshman?"
they just look at each other them, dakota staring at him like she's giving an interrogation and fulton looking like he had accidentally said too much. it's not like her scholarship status was necessarily a secret, but she didn't go around telling people the story or anything. in fact, she hadn't told any of the ducks that she was a transfer, even vicky, and eden was a big school, so it's not like he would have noticed her transferring in or anything. so there was no way fulton would have known anything about her unless he got it from somebody else.
if she was a normal person, she wouldn't care. she would have laughed it off that he knew, maybe with some offhanded comment about how he had ruined her mysterious vibe, and they would have laughed and no harm would have been done. but she's not a normal person, and the fact that he won't tell her how he knows makes her worry about what else he had found out about her. it makes her worry even more about who else might be able to find out.
she opens her mouth to ask him again, to interrogate him more, and she knows she looks hysterical, but she needs to know where he found that out, and-
"hey fulton, can you show her the basement and let her put her stuff in it while we're waiting? that'll save us a little bit of time later." the man's voice comes from the kitchen around the corner. she and fulton stare at each other for a second longer before they look away. dakota stares at the floor.
"uh, yeah. sure," fulton replies. he looks back at dakota and tilts his head towards a large door that's next to them. "c'mon." he opens the door, holding it for her as she walks through the doorway, bag in hand. she's almost stepped down the first step when she feels a hand on the strap of her duffel bag, and it feels like a full-body shock. she jerks her hand away, looking at fulton right as he jumps because of her sudden movement. she's holding her bag close to her chest now. she probably looks crazy. fulton's staring at her, but it's not confused, just surprised. "sorry," fulton says quietly, but he doesn't push it.
"it's okay, i'll just carry it," she replies. he nods, and she backs into the stairway wall so that he can pass her and lead her down the stairs. the stairwell is nice, with lights embedded in the wall by the stairs so that you could see where you're going. close to the bottom, the stairs take a left turn, and they spit out into-
whoa. dakota looks around at the basement. it wasn't one open space with multiple rooms off of it, like she thought. the whole basement was open, with a bed on a riser stand backed up to the wall opposite them. the rest was all linoleum floor that looked like hardwood, with a big rug in the middle that had a gaming chair and a beanbag chair in front of a flat screen tv. it was the biggest basement she had ever seen.
she can see fulton out of the corner of her eye, watching her with amusement. "welcome to your room," he says nonchalantly.
"my room?" she asked. "this whole thing is my room?" fulton nods.
"yep. charlie and i are going to get the upstairs bedrooms, the master is on the main floor, and so you get this." dakota knows she looks stupid, but she can't stop looking around. the whole thing was so huge and so nice. there's no way it was her room. she must be sharing with someone, or it's just temporary, or-
"pretty cool, right?" fulton asks. his expression's changed, from less amusement to something softer, something more understanding. she realizes suddenly that he knows exactly what she's feeling. she smiles back.
"yeah. really cool." she stands and just stares at the room some more, fulton standing awkwardly beside her before he clears his throat.
"well, uh. i guess i'll let you do your thing, or whatever. i'll let you know when casey and charlie get here." he turns around and starts walking up the stairs. he's about halfway up when he turns back around. "and, uh, the door coming down here locks from the inside if you want to keep us out or anything."
"wait, we're allowed to lock the doors?" fulton smiles that knowing smile again, like he still can't believe it either.
"yeah, you can lock the doors." and with that, he climbs up the rest of the stairs and goes through the door, shutting it behind him, leaving dakota alone with the biggest personal space she ever, ever remembers having.
there's a tapestry hung behind the bed. it's rainbow tie dye, which is one funny coincidence, but dakota loves it. she wonders who did the decorating, because it sure wasn't fulton, and the man didn't seem to have much in the way of a sense of decoration. there's a basket on the bed, too, and dakota drops her duffel bag at the base of the stairs to walk over and look at it.
there's a note at the forefront of the basket, and she picks it up to read.
'hello! we know that this can be sort of a scary time, so we decided to leave you some goodies to make things a little better. if you need anything, we're always around, and both gordon and fulton have ways to get a hold of us if you need it. we hope you enjoy, and we'll see you around! love, vicky (fulton's girlfriend) and casey (gordon's girlfriend).'
dakota smiles at the mention of vicky. of course she would put something like this together. it seemed like such a vicky thing to do. and the man's name being gordon was a good thing to know. she puts the note aside to look at the things in the basket. it's all from bath and body works, she can already tell, and the smell coming from the basket is so strong that it's already a whiff away from giving her a headache. but the sentiment and thought behind it was appreciated.
there's an exfoliator, a body gel, a big bottle of lotion, a couple of small hand sanitizers, a bottle of hand soap, a body spray, and a eucalyptus scented three-wick candle. dakota figures that the candle is the only thing out of the basket that she'll actually use, but she really appreciates the whole thing nonetheless. she knew vicky would do something like that, but she's never met casey before, so it's nice to know that she's at least nice enough to help vicky put something like this together.
she moves the basket to the top of the dresser, folding up the note and slipping it inside. she's walking over to get her bag from the base of the stairs when she hears a loud knock at the door.
"you can come in," she says loudly, and she hears the door squeal as it opens above her.
"hey, casey and charlie just got here, but no rush. just whenever you're ready." fulton's voice above her disappears as quickly as he said it, and she hears the door close again. her heart jumps into her throat. standing at the base of the stairs, she contemplates staying in the basement for a few minutes longer to calm herself down or to try to get more ready than she already is. but instead, she takes a deep breath and begins to climb the stairs. it's now or never. meeting the foster family. just like she's done several times before.
and there's a little glimmer of hope that it's the last time she'll ever have to.