Ben woke up the next day earliest in the house. On a Sunday at the Summers', he did not find it odd. The young ones had woken up in the middle of the night. He could hear them all too clearly from the first floor. He had drifted off again before they did. All that studying had wrung his brain out well and good.
So he was prepared to roam the house alone, get some junk food into his system before the breakfast got set up and race through the channels on the television because they looked better that way than any program on at that time anyway.
All said and done though, he was not prepared to find what he did soon as he turned on the lights in the living room. The heavy curtains across the windows had thus far shaded the area from the brimming sunlight outside. They could not hide the secret anymore.
Darian and Kelly were passed out on the centre table, dishevelled, two empty glasses of wine sporting maroon dots at the bottom.
"And drooling? Really? What happened last night?" Ben scrunched his nose and tread closer very carefully. "There's red wine too! Were they fighting?"
He poked at his aunt's shoulder first, being in closest proximity to her. When she did not stir or make a sound, he moved to his uncle and repeated the process with the same result.
"I'm getting scared now," he murmured, backing away and turning on his heels. He raced to the sliding doors and knocked fervently. "Jeez, who scares a twelve year old like this? I am not cut out for this lifestyle!"
~
They assured Ted they'd think about it and let them know by the next day, bid them good night and sat on the bed, staring at each other.
"So much for the plan of growing old with just the two of us, huh?" Darian punctuated the break in silence with a nervous laugh.
Kelly sighed and shook her head, pressing at the ends of her temples. "I am not cut out for this! ARRGHHH!!"
Her husband stroked her back in silence while she buried her face in her hands. He could hear a horde of generic dialogs to say in such a situation go through his mind, but it was not a simple matter of consolation. Kelly was still Kelly, consolations did not work. Exact solutions worked and exact solutions would not come up unless she told the problem, which she did not.
She had to resolve her problems on her own first. As always.
He heard her inhale a long breath and smiled. "Ready?"
Kelly straightened her back and leaned over to kiss him. "F-ck it, yes."
"Wow, you come back strong."
"Such is life, my darling, such is life." She patted his thigh once and jumped to her feet, stretching her arms over her head.
Behind her, Darian shuddered. "Don't... don't say that. Oh no... did I do something wrong again?"
When his wife turned to face him, her expression was bright, a huge smile plastered over her lips and her voice was cheerful when she spoke. "Not at all. But I am pissed at a whole lot of things right now. And for lack of a better outlet, I'm drinking red wine tonight."
"Seems like the only way I won't be culpable is if I join your strange quest." He stood up and held out his arm. Kelly readily linked hers through it.
"See? I don't have any reason to be mad at you."
"Just... let me get the remote!"
"Sure, my dear sounding board." Kelly slapped him on the back as they walked out of the room and down the stairs. "Ah, I already feel half good!"
Darian, however, did not. By the time they got round to eating dinner, with the kids awake, their parents back, he was quite close to sulking. In all the hubbub of feeding the children, making sure they ate what was theirs and did not sneak in the food of the adults, nobody noticed his frown.
Evelyn and Wren were both deliriously happy after the day-long date that they were ready to hit the hay soon after tucking their little ones in – little ones who were not Ben, because he wanted to "at least be older than them!", whatever that meant.
By 10 p.m. though, he was found snoring on the couch and had to be lifted by his uncle and taken to the room upstairs. When Darian returned, he found the centre table cleared of its magazines and newspapers, and replaced instead with a bottle of red wine and two glasses. Kelly had already poured herself some and was swirling it around when she waved him over.
"I just have to make sure you aren't mad at me, because that has been the sole purpose of the red wine around the house until now." Darian joined her on the floor behind the table and crossed his legs, taking the stem of the empty glass while it got filled.
"Nah, don't worry about it. I'm beginning to think I'll just use this whenever I'm annoyed at anything. And since you'll always be the one listening to it, it's just as well."
"That's solid logic. Time to find out if those divider curtains are soundproof." He took a sip and nodded his head, looking at the glass. "Definitely tastes better when I know I'm not in the wrong."
Kelly chuckled and emptied her own glass. "Phew. That takes a load off!"
"Hey, hey, hey, slow down! We want to make a decision sober."
"Relax! We'll keep it under control!" Kelly waved him off. He watched her pour till it levelled with the brim. She beamed at him and went in for another long sip. All Darian saw then was the other bottle standing under the table, still unopened, but the night was long.
Her eyes were alive by the time the foot of the emptied glass touched the table top. "So," she said, almost too loudly, as she turned to him and rested her elbow on the couch, "we both aren't thrilled about the prospect of Sawyer turning up here, right?"
"Of course not! I don't mind having an unruly punk in the house, but he very near killed you last time! I was damn scared back then!"
"Yeah, me too. He was seventeen then. He's grown up by now, but it just doesn't..."
"... feel safe, especially with the kids around. If it was just us..."
"... then there was no problem. Plus, even if Ben acts like he's all grown up, he's still an impressionable kid!"
Darian nodded. He could not help it. Every time he thought of Sawyer, it was only pure rage he felt inside. If Kelly had not insisted on covering it up then... He took a long swig of his wine and ground his teeth. It was time to be rational.
"He's... twenty, right? Does he need to stay with us though?"
"Oh, I don't know. Uncle Wes' kids are so different from us sisters, not just individually but in terms of getting along with each other, we found it hard to connect with them. Really, none of us have a good memory of interaction with any one of them. And then, by the time Sawyer was born, it had been only three months since the accident. He never really got to have a family life the other three had. And those three just didn't make it easier for him."
Kelly paused and wound her fingers around the bottle. She tapped on it for a moment before picking it up. "Want more?"
"Sure. Where's the harm? It's only Sunday tomorrow."
~
"Who drinks till they pass out at this age?" Evelyn mused as she cleared out the glasses and the two bottles lying under the table, their rolling momentum obviously stopped by its legs.
"To be fair, mom, you're way older than either of them," Ben piped up, his mouth full of cereal. By voluntarily waking his mother, he had to forgo his early morning treat of junk food and settle with the "healthy stuff".
"Eat," Evelyn called back in a stern voice.
"Sure. Speak the facts and get berated. Whoever said truth triumphs obviously never met my family," Ben muttered into his spoon, milk dripping off its curvature. He took in the mouthful and continued to speak under his breath, his words unintelligible and inaudible.
"Kel dear? Ryan? Wake up, guys!"
Ben watched his mother try in vain to wake up the two passed out humans. But neither of them made any form of response except an occasional snore here and there.
And then a sharp note of music erupted somewhere in their area. Ben and Evelyn nearly jumped at this sudden breach in peace, but they were not the only ones acknowledging the disturbance.
Kelly sat up straight, looking every bit like she had woken up from the dead. The music erupted into full bloom, sending her hands scrambling to find the source while her husband stirred and clutched his head with both hands. The headache swept in exponentially. For her too.
The call ended by the time she picked up the phone from her lap and squinted to see the source of the noise. Groaning and putting her forehead on the edge of the table, wholly unaware of her environment, she unlocked her phone.
And she was wide awake just like that, sitting up straight.
"Shit!"
"Language!" one stern voice admonished her while another familiar voice snorted and sniggered, coughing out milk – a scene she missed since her eyes would not waver from her phone's screen.
Darian waved a hand over his head and murmured, "F-ck the language." He got whacked on his back promptly while the room filled with cereal-spitting laughter.
"I... I said yes..."
The utterance almost went unheard while Evelyn tried to contain the damages by asking her son to concentrate on eating once more. Darian took a long moment to process not just the thundering slap and the echoing, pulsating pain bouncing round his skull but his wife's words as well. When the meaning hit home, his face dropped.
"No."
*
A/N : The good news is that from today onwards the updates will be regular - every other day. And while I said it like I am about to append an 'unfortunately' or 'but the bad news is...', there really is no need for either!
During the NaNoWriMo quest, I finished 21 and a half proper chapters, along with three special chapters, so yeah, you can be sure, the updates will not be missed or long overdue! xD
See you here on Sunday then! Lots of love to you awesome readers! <3 <3