FOUR
"Hey, short stack. What are you doing?" Miller asks as he leans against the locker beside Letty's in their school hallway.
"Wondering why you're such a moron." She says, and he smirks as he looks down at her.
"You think about me often?" He asks, and she rolls her eyes as she pulls her English textbook out of her locker. "Am I wearing clothes in those thoughts?"
"No..." She smiles as she shuts her locker and turns to face him. "But you are duct taped to a poll on the football field."
His eyes darken as all teasing leaves his demeanor. "Repeat that again...and I'll murder you in your sleep." His voice is hushed as he takes a step toward her, and she chuckles.
"Aw, come on, Mills. I thought it was an adorable prank."
"Yeah? Well, you should've seen what I did to them after Dean cut me loose."
"And was that before or after you found a pair of jeans?"
"You think you're funny, Black?" He asks, and she shrugs.
"I'm definitely amused." She nods. "But don't you worry your pretty little head about anything. I mean, nobody here will see the pictures. It's a secret safe with your last school...and all of us."
"Pictures?" He questions, and she laughs as she looks up at him.
"You didn't really think that Dean and Hope wouldn't take pictures?"
"Who's all of us?"
"Who do you think, Winchester?" She shakes her head, enjoying this a little too much. "Come on, you know how we are. Sharing is caring, right?"
He grinds his teeth. "I'm gonna kill all of you."
"That's a lot of graves to dig." She says as she takes a step back. "Might take you a few nights."
"You're all dead." He nods. "I'll get you back."
"Hey, I didn't do anything." She tells him. "Take it up with your brother." She turns around then and walks away from him, leaving their high school.
It doesn't take very long at all after the brunette gets to the Matthews' house that she starts arguing with Eric. She's trying to keep him focused, and he's working to convince her that they need snacks while they do their homework. The only problem with that is that it would be his third snack break, and he clearly doesn't want to get back to work like he's supposed to.
"Eric!" Letty yells at him as he gets up from the table once again.
"Yes?" He smiles as he looks down at her.
"Homework. English. Sit. Now." She tells him, and he sighs as he walks back over to her, his smile no longer present on his face.
The two teenagers are finally working half an hour later when they hear Cory screaming upstairs in the boys' bedroom. Letty, Eric, and the boys' mom all run up to the room and they scream when they see Cory with a towel wrapped around his shoulders to keep his shirt from getting wet or stained. Letty quickly puts her hand over her mouth and tries not to laugh as she looks at his hair. He tried to perm it straight because someone at school called him a Brillohead.
"I had nothing to do with this." Shawn says as he quickly runs past them.
"Shawn!" Letty turns around to look at his retreating form.
"See you for dinner!" He calls over his shoulder and then keeps running.
"Cory, what did you do to your beautiful hair?" His mom questions as she walks over to her younger son.
"It wasn't beautiful. It looked like Velcro." He argues.
Eric then reaches out and touches his younger brother's hair. "Nothin's gonna stick to that now, man." He tells him, and Letty smacks his arm.
"This is your fault. You got the good hair." Cory says as he looks at his older brother.
"Yeah, I did, didn't I?" He smooths out the back of his hair as he walks away from them to sit at the desk by the window. Letty shakes her head at him.
"Okay. We can fix this." Mrs. Matthews says as she tries to comb it, but it doesn't work. "Just...not with a comb."
"Doesn't really matter, Mom. His hair's gonna fall out." Eric says.
"Eric, stop it." She scolds.
"I'm gonna go kill Shawn now. See ya." Letty says and then heads back downstairs to get her stuff before leaving their house.
The brunette gets to the trailer park, but she runs into her dad before she can make it to the Hunters' place. He makes her go straight home, and she listens to him, not wanting a repeat of what happened after she gave him her paycheck.
"Oh, look, Satan." Miller smiles sarcastically at his housemate when she walks into the trailer a few minutes later.
"Oh, look, he still has clothes." She retorts as she shuts the door and walks over to the fridge. "I don't understand how we never have food here."
"The hell-spawn eats it and doesn't buy more."
"I can pick a few things up at the store after work tomorrow. The employee discount helps a little bit." She tells him. "Any requests."
"Rat poison." He says, and she turns to look at him. "You think I'm kidding, but I'm not."
"I'd rather live here than in prison."
"I wouldn't."
"Then leave, Miller." Letty says as she shuts the refrigerator. "You don't have to stay. There's nothing holding you here."
"That's not how things work in this family." He argues, and she sighs as she looks down. "We don't turn our backs on each other."
"We don't damn each other to hell either."
"Nobody damned me anywhere." He says as he gets to his feet and walks over to her. "Being here is my choice, not your fault. Don't confuse the two."
"You're under some false impression that you're protecting me." She argues as she looks up at him. "I'm not a child. I don't need protection."
"I'm not babysitting, Scar." He tells her. "We don't leave each other alone when we need each other the most. I didn't know what you were going through before, and I was a dick to you back then. I know better now, and I'm here because we're family. I'm sorry I gave you such a hard time for awhile... Now let me do what little I can for you."
She pauses for a moment, never really knowing how to react when someone shows concern for her, or compassion. Finally, Letty nods as she looks up at him. "Okay. Thank you." She says, and he nods once before walking away from her so that he can get back to his homework.
—
Letty goes to school the next day and she sees Eric sitting in the cafeteria before class. "Hey, how's Cory?" She asks as she sits down next to him.
"Well, after you left, Morgan came in and called him Punky Brewster." He tells her, and she starts laughing.
"Oh my God, he did look like her." The brunette says, and Eric starts laughing as well.
The two teenagers go back to his house after school and they head up to his bedroom to study where Morgan isn't currently playing. They walk in, and Letty stops when she sees Cory sitting on the edge of his brother's bed with pink curlers in his hair.
"I swear, there is always something weird going on in your house." The teenage girl says to Eric, and he looks at his brother.
"Okay. What I'm doing is... I'm just trying to get my hair back to normal." Cory tells the older two.
"Sure." Eric nods slowly.
"If you say anything, I'll find some way to hurt you when I'm older."
"Not a word, man. I mean, it's cool. You know. Don't worry about it." He says as he walks around a desk. The older boy quickly grabs a camera and takes his brother's picture.
"Hey!" Cory yells when he hears the click and then the Polaroid printing, and Letty starts laughing at the two boys.
"I own you now." Eric tells his younger brother, and she shakes her head as she keeps laughing at them.
"You are such a child." The brunette chuckles, and then Cory tries attacking his brother, wanting to get the picture from him so that he can get rid of it.
Eric gets past him easily enough and runs around the desk, grabbing Letty as he passes her. He then quickly pulls her into the bathroom with him and slams the door shut behind them. Cory's banging on the door, and the teenager's are both laughing because he can't get in to take the picture from his older brother.
"He's gonna kill you." Letty says, and her best friend shrugs as he sits on the floor with the picture. "Let me see."
Eric pats the white tile beside him, and she then slides down the door to sit down. He passes her the Polaroid, and she laughs as she looks at the hot pink curlers in the eleven-year-old's dark brown hair. The usually curly mess is now totally slick from the perm solution that he and Shawn put in it, and those curlers are not going to solve his problem.
"I'd sleep with one eye open for awhile, if I were you." The brunette tells him, and he laughs as he takes the picture back from her.
"I think I'll be alright." Eric smiles as he looks at his best friend, and a smile spreads across her own face when she turns her head and her gaze meets his.