#i just. adore the characterizations here too. seeing the kiddads just being kids is something that can be so personal... ough

[happi-tree]

I noticed your paper rings songfic so I thought this would be fitting, inspired by long live <3 I associated it the most with terry jr., not quite as dramatic as hero’s but still a heartache considering everything that happens later with them

tonight was a victory. yelling and running across the field, whooping like schoolboys- it was a spontaneous soccer game at the dads’ insistence, reminding you of the game you played with yeet and killa before the battle in faerun. the world kept ending and you kept fighting, and you know time is running out for you to still be boys, still be sons. this might even have been the last time. everything these days feels like it's happening for the last time.

they tend to look to you for a stabilizing influence. right now, the five of you are sprawled across morgan freeman’s living room. sparrow and nick are dozing, lark and grant occasionally commenting on the movie and digging through the last of the snacks. right now it’s not your job to be the mature one, to be anything. right now your only job is to sit right here between grant and sparrow and avoid the hot tamales lark scattered in the popcorn and laugh, unrestrained- and you do.

you glance over to grant, smile wide on your face. it never feels quite real, to grin with abandon like this, but right now you are nineteen and the whole world is a bright shining coin, falling head-over-heels heads-over-tails so bright you hope it blinds you.

it would be nice, if this was the last thing you ever saw, your best friends and a hope close at hand.

“hey,” you say, “will you promise me something?”

you’re the historian, the poet of the group, they’ve always said so. sparrow takes his pictures and you paste them in and write the captions in the scrapbook henry gave you. grant rolls his eyes, affectionate, and places his hands in yours.

“yes,” he says seriously, dramatically. oh, he loves you- they all do. this is what it is, to be loved and indulged in. sweet brown eyes, smile soft as the blanket around your knees.

“we get this forever, right? we’re not- not gonna get fucked up.” he wouldn’t have chosen this group, if he was honest. of all the kids on the soccer team, it was an unlikely four to end up being closer than family. that was the real inheritance of being ron stampler’s stepson. you got the abusive step-grandfather, sure, but you also got the wilsons and the close-fosters and the oak-garcias. he didn’t ask anything of you other than to be loved. you used to wonder how that man could ever be so bold as to consider himself a father; now you just hope you can be just as gentle in your expectations and legacy with your own child, someday.

grant holds your hand tighter. you feel sparrow’s head nestle in just that much closer on your shoulder. nick’s fingers idly strum his guitar strings, humming in that way they all like.

“yes,” grant promises. “no bullshit. we’re gonna stay good.”

lark’s fingers are running through nick’s hair. you don’t see him use magic very often, but it’s casting its own kind of spell. nick’s eyes are half-closed, relaxed in a way that if you squint, you could almost find familiar, in that part of you they say must have existed before the timelines split. you settle into the comfort of another timeline still running parallel in which you are all just as good as you are now.

AAAAAAAA NONNIE THIS IS SO SWEET 🥺🥺🥺 Thank you so much!!! Terry's one of my favorites of the kiddads, especially his s1 iteration, and you write him so well!!! Mentally I am hanging this up in my mind like a treasured painting where I can look at it frequently. Your writing is absolutely PHENOMENAL, lovebird, and I hope you know how much simultaneous joy and heartbreak it brings me!

I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, Nonnie! I will be thinking about this for the rest of the week <3