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chapter fourteen: what adam knows
a/n:
I love kind teenage boys. I wish they existed.
tw(s) — new kids on the block and donnie wahlberg slander
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Adam's first steps were taken trying to get to Gwen.
It was at his first birthday party. She and one of their various cousins were running around their yard, and Adam was watching them from where he was sitting in the grass with their mother. On her third or fourth lap around, Gwen stopped to say something to Mrs. Banks, and he must have wanted their attention, because he pushed up to his feet. Then, while they were watching, Adam, with little hands outstretched, took one, two, and then three steps toward her before falling. Gwen caught him and hugged him tightly, and then she went on to tell anyone who would listen to a five-year-old that her littlest brother loved her this (with her arms stretched open as wide as they could go) much for months afterward.
Adam's not sure how much of the story he can believe. Jake, who was the only one to tell him the story, is weird about his relationship with their older sister, after all. He figures it makes sense, though.
Gwen has always, as far as he can remember, been his favorite person in the world.
The rest of his family, and his friends, and, hell, even Charlie, all pale in comparison.
She, who cut the crusts off of his sandwiches, and let him hide from imaginary monsters in her bed, and taught him how to tie his shoes, knows him better than anyone. No matter how she's feeling about him on any given day, he can count on her; she'll always take care of him, and support him, and keep his secrets with a wink in his direction and a lie for others on the tip of her tongue.
Which is why, when Jake pulled him aside that Saturday after homecoming to warn him Gwen was having a rough time, Adam decided that he would have to do something to help.
Do what she'd do for him, at the very least, and give her a hug.
So, when, after days of being unable to catch her attention, an opportunity to talk to her falls into his lap after school that following Wednesday, he jumps on it.
She's sitting on the back patio, wearing a too-big hoodie that he knows isn't hers and hugging her knees to her chest, when Adam finally finds her. He slides open the door, undeterred by how she's too consumed with staring at her beeper with an indiscernible emotion to look up at him.
He eyes the crumpled box of cigarettes on the floor next to her. "I didn't know you smoked."
"Huh?" Gwen's head snaps up to him, a slight furrow in her brow, before she follows his gaze down. "Oh, uh, I—— they were in the pocket."
Adam nods and sits down next to her.
The skin around her eyes is red and swollen, and she sniffles, turning the device over in her hands, as they fall quiet. He knows that she was crying. She's been crying a lot as of late. More than he's ever seen her, actually.
He pretends not to notice when she wipes her face with her palm.
"Jake gave me a ride home today." Adam says once he thinks she's recovered, still staring out into the backyard instead of at her. "If I never hear another New Kids on the Block song again, I'll die happy."
That draws a wet laugh out of Gwen.
"I'm serious. He keeps trying to sing Please Don't Go Girl, but he's tone deaf, and it's awful."
(He really does mean it. Jake's obsession with the Pop and R&B group has been driving Adam nuts. It's not his favorite kind of music, and Guy likes it quite a bit, and thinking about Guy makes him think about the Ducks, which makes him think of Charlie, and he's trying too hard to move on to fall back into that pit.)
She's almost smiling, now, as she looks at him. "Hey, it's not his fault he's tonally challenged. I can't sing for shit, either."
Adam shrugs. He's pretty certain Jake sings like that on purpose because he knows it bothers him, but he's not going to tattle like Jake says he does.
"I think You Got It is worse." Gwen says after a moment, that spark of mischief back in her eyes. "He gave me so much shit for Madonna, but now he's subjecting other people to Marky-Mark's less attractive brother singing the same verse over and over? Unbelievable."
He grins because someone finally agrees with him, and because this is the most she's said to him in days.
That's the longest they've gone without talking, he realizes. The longest in his memory, at least. She's always been this formidable presence in his life—— the big, golden sun that all the planets in his universe revolve around, the one who found a way to get him to tryouts across town and nursed his fevers—— and his life felt vaguely... cold with her not in it.
Gwen must notice the shift in his mood because her expression turns a little somber at the edges and she wraps her arm around his neck to pull him into her.
Her sweatshirt, faintly, smells like Rick.
"I'm sorry for worrying you." She whispers, like it's their little secret. "But I'm gonna be okay. I promise. This is just—— I'll get over it, okay."
"Okay."
Adam doesn't believe her for a second. He knows Gwen misses Rick and Scott in the same way that he misses Charlie, even if she won't say anything about it.
"Hey, do you have a ride to practice?"
"I was going to ask Jake." He sounds a little more miserable about that than he intends.
"C'mon, I'll take you." Gwen heaves herself to her feet and extends a hand to him. The Minnesota Stars emblem on (Rick's) sweatshirt is worn and fading.
Adam takes Gwen's hand even if he knows that she's been avoiding everything hockey for days and lets her pull him to his feet.
He lingers by the front door with his gear like an impatient child as she gets her wallet and shoes. When she comes back down to the first floor, she pauses on the last step and turns on her heel.
"Hey, Jake! I'm taking Adam to practice! Want to come?"
There's a beat of silence before Jake appears at the top of the staircase. He's squinting down at them and his hair is a mess, like he's just been napping.
"Huh?"
Gwen repeats herself, arms crossed over her chest.
"I don't know..."
"I'll take you to Target after."
That makes Jake shrug and go get ready. Gwen exchanges an exasperated glance with Adam in his absence, and Adam laughs.
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(The story Jake told was true. The only pieces of information he left out, though, were that their mother had already received her diagnosis, and that he was standing off to the side and watching them like he always was.)
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It was at his eleventh birthday party, on the other hand, that Adam realized Rick and Scott liked Gwen.
His sister, at the ripe age of fifteen, had planned the whole thing—— a quaint, friends-only pool party at the Banks' just before the weather got too cold. The Ducks, as they were Adam's only friends, were the only people officially invited, but Rick and Scott (and James) came to help hang streamer paper and inflate balloons and just never left.
Their presence went decently under the radar, (enough so that, he supposed, the Ducks just couldn't recall them when they started at the school), but Adam's eye drifted over to them occasionally. He'd only known them for a few months at that point, but he'd liked Scott from the get-go, and he knew enough to know that both of the boys wore a guilty expression as he caught them staring at Gwen, who was cleaning up lunch while wearing her brand new bikini.
He didn't know exactly what they were feeling until a few years later, when sharing everything with Charlie led to him wearing that same look on his face more than not, but, if he hadn't figured it out then, he would definitely know by now.
Rick's a real ass the entire practice. Mean in his criticisms and constantly reminding them that they have a game that upcoming Friday, he gets told to cool down three times by their coach. A fight almost breaks out between them, but most of the boys break it up, and Adam gets reminded why he likes Scott, who bought him a Simon & Garfunkel album for his thirteenth birthday and liked to rub his knuckles into Adam's head, better when his captain takes to ignoring his presence altogether.
"You need to talk to them, man," Dom says in the locker room after practice, jerking his head in the direction of the two boys who were not bickering as quietly as they thought they were, "they'll kill us or each other before your sister recovers from whatever they did."
Adam, the youngest and definitely least qualified to deal with Rick-Scott drama on the team, blinks up at the boy he's never really spoken to before as he stares, desperate and exhausted, back at him. A quick glance around (to avoid eye contact with Dom) tells him that the rest are feeling the exact same way.
They all file out slowly while Adam's sputtering through a response, and then Dom leaves him, too.
Neither of the co-captains notice his presence until he awkwardly clears his throat.
"What?" Scott asks, sounding more tired than he does angry.
"Look, uh, I don't know exactly what's going on," He scratches the back of his neck awkwardly, not sure what he's meant to say, "but you guys are being douches, and it's not fair."
Rick's eyebrows are at his hairline when he turns to face him but Scott's expression borders on amused.
"Gwen's sad. She misses you. She just—— you have to let her figure it out. You can't make her. She'll hate you, and then hate herself for hating you."
Rick's still staring at him but Scott nods slowly.
"Thanks..."
Adam nods, too, but much more awkwardly, and scrambles to get his stuff together before leaving.
Scott catches up to him in the hall, no Rick in sight, and puts a hand on his shoulder.
"Need a ride home?" He asks, a half smile on his face. "I'll let you pick the music..."
Adam smiles, too, and nods again, adjusting the strap of his bag.
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a/n:
word count — 1776
listen, i'm writing this fic kinda like it takes place in 1987, and by that I mean everybody smokes. idk when that happened but y'all can deal with it.
i write each and every duck in such a specific way that it's hard to read other people's fics about them. like, you're telling me that not everyone gets sad little baby vibes from adam, who almost has as much screen time crying and being sad as he does speaking?
gwen wearing rick's clothes??? scott being implied to have a cd of adam's favorite music in his car??? more banks sibling drama??? listen, idc if you don't like this stupidly short chapter! it's important to me!
the whiplash I'm gonna get when I go straight from all this back into the horny mess that is this fic is going to kill me btw. (you have like... literally one more chapter LMAO.)
again, with the good stuff™️ over the horizon, you need to participate. comments and votes make me want to write!