Fic: Where You Invest Your Love (The Killing, Holder/Linden, Kalia, 2000 words, Teen)
Summary: When Kalia's fifteen, she stays out all night on a Friday night with a couple of her friends and doesn't pick up when her parents call.
Notes: Spoilers all the way through season 4. Title from Mumford & Sons' "Awake My Soul."
Story on AO3
When Kalia's fifteen, she stays out all night on a Friday night with a couple of her friends and doesn't pick up when her parents call. She knew it was going to land her in deep shit, but she didn't know they were going to get picked up by the cops.
And then, to make it worse, her mom and Roger and her dad and Sarah show up before Izzy and Mia's parents get there, so she's the only one getting yelled at, and it's so embarrassing.
"You do not do that," her mom says, all white faced and mad like Kalia's never seen her be. "You do not ever go somewhere without telling us where you are."
"Mom," Kalia says, but her mom shakes her head.
"This is not a negotiation, Kalia."
Her dad and Sarah show up then, shoving through the doors to the hallway they're in so hard they bang against the walls, and slowing down to a walk. Sarah stops just before she reaches them, but her dad comes all the way up to her and wraps his arms around her.
"You are in so much fucking trouble," he says, and she knows he's serious because he doesn't call her any of the million things he usually calls her.
Kalia risks looking around him at Sarah, and that's even worse. Sarah's whiter than mom, her whole face pinched, and just looking at her makes tears prickle in Kalia's eyes.
"Stephen," her mom says, and her dad lets go of her.
"Caroline," he says, "it is the middle of the night and all of us are all adrenaline shocked."
Her mom nods, lips pressed together. "I'll call you in the morning," she says in what Kalia thinks of as her stern lawyer voice. "We'll figure out a punishment." She steps forward and hugs Kalia tightly, kisses her temple. "I was so scared," she says, and that makes Kalia feel worse than anything else they've said.
Kalia exchanges sympathetic looks with Izzy and Mia and follows her dad and Sarah out to the car.
Her dad and Sarah are silent the whole drive home.
"Go to bed," her dad tells her when they get home, and Kalia doesn't argue with him.
She can't sleep, though, still wide awake, and hungry because they got picked up by the fucking cops just as they were headed into a diner.
Her dad and Sarah are in the kitchen, and she hangs back in the hallway watching them, her dad so much taller than Sarah, him looking down and her looking up.
"I thought she was going to be one of those girls," Sarah says, and fuck, she's crying. Kalia's never seen Sarah cry.
"No way," her dad says. He wraps his arms around Sarah. "She ain't never going to be one of those girls. Whatever else we done, Linden, no one's ever going to be one of those girls again."
"I'm sorry," Kalia says, stepping forward. She's not so angry at them for ruining her evening anymore.
Sarah tries to pull away from her dad - he doesn't let her - and wipes at her eyes, looks away like she doesn't want Kalia to know she's been crying. That makes it worse.
"I didn't mean to freak you out."
Her dad holds out an arm. "Come here, baby girl."
She goes over and leans against her dad's chest, his arm around her, the other one still around Sarah.
"I know you're growing up and want to be all independent and shit," he says, "but you can't disappear on us. Linden and me, we got some real bad memories about girls just about your age who never came home, and we don't need to go thinking that might happen to you."
Kalia knows her dad and Sarah were cops, but she doesn't think about it most of the time, never thought about how that might be a thing she has to care about.
"I'm sorry," she says again.
"I know," her dad says. He kisses her temple. "I know you are, baby girl. You're still in a hell of a lot of trouble."
"I know," Kalia says, because when her mom and Roger and her dad and Sarah are all in agreement that she's in trouble, she's in trouble. "Sarah, I'm sorry I scared you."
Sarah gives her a tight smile, one that says she's pretending she's okay, and slips away from them.
Kalia's dad sighs and hugs her tight. "Go to bed. We'll talk about it in the morning."
She still kind of wants a snack, but she goes to her room instead, and presses her ear to the door so she can hear the soft murmur of her dad and Sarah's voices.
*
In the light of day, it seems like way less of a big deal, and being grounded for a month is a total overreaction on the part of her parents.
She gets out of it for one day when Jack and Alyssa visit. Alyssa spends the day with a friend - "She has friends everywhere," Jack says - and Kalia and Jack spend the day wandering around the city, a thing they've done together when he visits for almost as long as she can remember.
"They're so overprotective," she complains to Jack when she tells him the whole story over lunch.
Jack doesn't immediately sympathize with her. He looks thoughtful for a minute. "You know your dad and my mom were cops, right?"
"Yeah," Kalia says.
"The first case they worked on," Jack says, "was one where this teenage girl didn't come home. They found her body later. It was tough on both of them, on the whole city." He pauses, like he's thinking. "My mom ended up in a psych ward during that."
"What? No way!" Sarah is the most calm person Kalia knows. She can't imagine her ending up in a mental hospital.
Jack nods. "She sent me to live with my dad during that case, before the psych ward." He looks down. "It was a bad case."
Kalia didn't know any of that.
"They're not overprotective," Jack says. "They know what can happen to you out there. Look, I know it sucks, but you have to tell them where you are. Go easy on them. They're scared."
Kalia grudgingly agrees. "I guess."
Jack nods. "And maybe don't ask them about it. I don't think they like to talk about it."
Kalia agrees to that too, but she maybe watches her dad and Sarah a little more closely when they go home. Sarah has that slight smile on her face to have them all there, and her dad is his usual gregarious self, talking up a storm for all of them. She still can't believe Sarah ended up in a psych ward.
"We didn't just come to see you," Jack says over dinner. "We have something to tell you." He smiles at Alyssa.
Alyssa smiles back, and tells them all, "I'm pregnant."
"Oh, snap," Kalia's dad says, "Linden gonna be a grandma."
They all laugh, and then they're all laughing and getting up to hug each other.
"Promise me you'll be better at this than I was," Sarah says when she's hugging Jack.
"Mom," Jack protests. "You weren't-"
"Promise," Sarah says, all fierce like she can get sometimes,
Jack nods. "I promise."
Sarah hugs him tightly again, and there's a look on her face Kalia has never seen before, something that looks fierce and loving at the same time.
*
Kalia supposes her dad and Sarah must go on dates sometime, but when she's with them, they usually stay home. They go out when she's still grounded, though, which is fine with her, but they invite Mrs. Cowan from next door to hang out in the living room all evening so Kalia can't sneak out or anything, which is totally embarrassing.
She hears them come home, because she's in her room but not asleep, hears them thank Mrs. Cowan, and then their voices almost too soft to be heard.
Kalia cracks her door open and looks down the hall toward them. They're being cutesy like she doesn't see them be much, Sarah with her arms up over her dad's shoulders, and his hands on her hips. As embarrassing as it is to see your parents acting like that, there's something good about it too.
"One nine hundred Linden, dial and you shall receive," Kalia's dad says.
It makes Sarah laugh, throwing her head back. It's the first time Kalia has really seen her laugh since the night that got her grounded. She can see Sarah still smiling when she puts her hands on Kalia's dad's face.
"I love you."
Her dad gets all serious too. "I love you too," he says. "This is everything, you and me, my baby girl down the hall, Little Man about to become a daddy."
Kalia shuts her door carefully, not making any noise, as her dad leans down to kiss Sarah.
*
"There's a party Friday night," Izzy says. "Jacob Miller's parents are out of town. We should totally go."
Kalia shakes her head. "I can't be out past curfew."
"Come on," Mia says. "It'll be fun. And everyone's going to be there."
"I just got done being grounded," Kalia says. "I'm not getting in trouble again."
"Sucks," Izzy says, "but we can cover better this time."
"Only if I can tell my parents where I'll be," Kalia says.
Izzy and Mia both laugh before they seem to realize she's serious.
"You want to tell them where you are," Mia says, "when you're at a party that's not supposed to be happening. Are you crazy?"
"Last time," Kalia says, "Sarah cried."
"So?" Izzy says. "My mom cries all the time. She cries at, like, TV commercials."
Kalia shakes her head. "Sarah doesn't cry. She's lived with us since I was four, and I've never seen her cry before."
"What, like never?" Mia asks.
"Never," Kalia says. "I'm not doing that again. It freaked me out."
"You can't tell them where you're going," Mia says.
"Then I'm not going." It's a tough decision to make, but one Kalia's going to stand by. She's trying to go easier on her parents these days, at least about not making them worry. "You can still go."
Mia and Izzy exchange a look and there's a couple of seconds of silence.
"No," Mia says. "We'll have a sleepover or something."
*
They do have a sleepover, piling into the rec room at Izzy's with sleeping bags and pizza and, later, ice cream.
"We could sneak out," Izzy says, licking ice cream off of her spoon. "The party's still going." She turns her phone around to show the picture someone must have texted her from the party.
"Only if we tell my parents where we're going," Kalia says.
Mia and Izzy make faces at her, and Izzy puts her phone down.
"Forget it. We'll just eat ice cream in our pajamas and be high school losers forever."
Kalia rolls her eyes. "We're not losers. We're just a different kind of cool."
Mia and Izzy stare at her, and Kalia shrugs.
"It's one of those things my dad says, okay?" She picks up her phone. "Can we just take a selfie so I can send it to my parents?"
They crowd in together with their bowls of ice cream and grin at Kalia's phone while she takes the picture. It's a good one, and she sends it to her mom and Roger and to her dad and Sarah.
Her mom and Roger both text her back with boring replies. Sarah texts back, Glad you're having fun, and then sends a picture of her dad, stretched out asleep on the couch. More fun than us.
Kalia giggles over it and sends a laughing emoji to Sarah.
Sarah sends her another picture, a selfie, one of herself smiling, looking happy like she did the night Kalia sort of spied on her dad and Sarah after they got home from their date.
Kalia's giggles die down, enough to make Mia ask her, "What is it?"
Kalia shakes her head. "Nothing." It would be too hard to explain to her and Izzy. She looks at the selfie for another second, and then types out a text and sends it, fast before she can rethink it.
Sarah's reply comes back almost as fast: I love you too.
Notes: Spoilers all the way through season 4. Title from Mumford & Sons' "Awake My Soul."
Story on AO3
When Kalia's fifteen, she stays out all night on a Friday night with a couple of her friends and doesn't pick up when her parents call. She knew it was going to land her in deep shit, but she didn't know they were going to get picked up by the cops.
And then, to make it worse, her mom and Roger and her dad and Sarah show up before Izzy and Mia's parents get there, so she's the only one getting yelled at, and it's so embarrassing.
"You do not do that," her mom says, all white faced and mad like Kalia's never seen her be. "You do not ever go somewhere without telling us where you are."
"Mom," Kalia says, but her mom shakes her head.
"This is not a negotiation, Kalia."
Her dad and Sarah show up then, shoving through the doors to the hallway they're in so hard they bang against the walls, and slowing down to a walk. Sarah stops just before she reaches them, but her dad comes all the way up to her and wraps his arms around her.
"You are in so much fucking trouble," he says, and she knows he's serious because he doesn't call her any of the million things he usually calls her.
Kalia risks looking around him at Sarah, and that's even worse. Sarah's whiter than mom, her whole face pinched, and just looking at her makes tears prickle in Kalia's eyes.
"Stephen," her mom says, and her dad lets go of her.
"Caroline," he says, "it is the middle of the night and all of us are all adrenaline shocked."
Her mom nods, lips pressed together. "I'll call you in the morning," she says in what Kalia thinks of as her stern lawyer voice. "We'll figure out a punishment." She steps forward and hugs Kalia tightly, kisses her temple. "I was so scared," she says, and that makes Kalia feel worse than anything else they've said.
Kalia exchanges sympathetic looks with Izzy and Mia and follows her dad and Sarah out to the car.
Her dad and Sarah are silent the whole drive home.
"Go to bed," her dad tells her when they get home, and Kalia doesn't argue with him.
She can't sleep, though, still wide awake, and hungry because they got picked up by the fucking cops just as they were headed into a diner.
Her dad and Sarah are in the kitchen, and she hangs back in the hallway watching them, her dad so much taller than Sarah, him looking down and her looking up.
"I thought she was going to be one of those girls," Sarah says, and fuck, she's crying. Kalia's never seen Sarah cry.
"No way," her dad says. He wraps his arms around Sarah. "She ain't never going to be one of those girls. Whatever else we done, Linden, no one's ever going to be one of those girls again."
"I'm sorry," Kalia says, stepping forward. She's not so angry at them for ruining her evening anymore.
Sarah tries to pull away from her dad - he doesn't let her - and wipes at her eyes, looks away like she doesn't want Kalia to know she's been crying. That makes it worse.
"I didn't mean to freak you out."
Her dad holds out an arm. "Come here, baby girl."
She goes over and leans against her dad's chest, his arm around her, the other one still around Sarah.
"I know you're growing up and want to be all independent and shit," he says, "but you can't disappear on us. Linden and me, we got some real bad memories about girls just about your age who never came home, and we don't need to go thinking that might happen to you."
Kalia knows her dad and Sarah were cops, but she doesn't think about it most of the time, never thought about how that might be a thing she has to care about.
"I'm sorry," she says again.
"I know," her dad says. He kisses her temple. "I know you are, baby girl. You're still in a hell of a lot of trouble."
"I know," Kalia says, because when her mom and Roger and her dad and Sarah are all in agreement that she's in trouble, she's in trouble. "Sarah, I'm sorry I scared you."
Sarah gives her a tight smile, one that says she's pretending she's okay, and slips away from them.
Kalia's dad sighs and hugs her tight. "Go to bed. We'll talk about it in the morning."
She still kind of wants a snack, but she goes to her room instead, and presses her ear to the door so she can hear the soft murmur of her dad and Sarah's voices.
*
In the light of day, it seems like way less of a big deal, and being grounded for a month is a total overreaction on the part of her parents.
She gets out of it for one day when Jack and Alyssa visit. Alyssa spends the day with a friend - "She has friends everywhere," Jack says - and Kalia and Jack spend the day wandering around the city, a thing they've done together when he visits for almost as long as she can remember.
"They're so overprotective," she complains to Jack when she tells him the whole story over lunch.
Jack doesn't immediately sympathize with her. He looks thoughtful for a minute. "You know your dad and my mom were cops, right?"
"Yeah," Kalia says.
"The first case they worked on," Jack says, "was one where this teenage girl didn't come home. They found her body later. It was tough on both of them, on the whole city." He pauses, like he's thinking. "My mom ended up in a psych ward during that."
"What? No way!" Sarah is the most calm person Kalia knows. She can't imagine her ending up in a mental hospital.
Jack nods. "She sent me to live with my dad during that case, before the psych ward." He looks down. "It was a bad case."
Kalia didn't know any of that.
"They're not overprotective," Jack says. "They know what can happen to you out there. Look, I know it sucks, but you have to tell them where you are. Go easy on them. They're scared."
Kalia grudgingly agrees. "I guess."
Jack nods. "And maybe don't ask them about it. I don't think they like to talk about it."
Kalia agrees to that too, but she maybe watches her dad and Sarah a little more closely when they go home. Sarah has that slight smile on her face to have them all there, and her dad is his usual gregarious self, talking up a storm for all of them. She still can't believe Sarah ended up in a psych ward.
"We didn't just come to see you," Jack says over dinner. "We have something to tell you." He smiles at Alyssa.
Alyssa smiles back, and tells them all, "I'm pregnant."
"Oh, snap," Kalia's dad says, "Linden gonna be a grandma."
They all laugh, and then they're all laughing and getting up to hug each other.
"Promise me you'll be better at this than I was," Sarah says when she's hugging Jack.
"Mom," Jack protests. "You weren't-"
"Promise," Sarah says, all fierce like she can get sometimes,
Jack nods. "I promise."
Sarah hugs him tightly again, and there's a look on her face Kalia has never seen before, something that looks fierce and loving at the same time.
*
Kalia supposes her dad and Sarah must go on dates sometime, but when she's with them, they usually stay home. They go out when she's still grounded, though, which is fine with her, but they invite Mrs. Cowan from next door to hang out in the living room all evening so Kalia can't sneak out or anything, which is totally embarrassing.
She hears them come home, because she's in her room but not asleep, hears them thank Mrs. Cowan, and then their voices almost too soft to be heard.
Kalia cracks her door open and looks down the hall toward them. They're being cutesy like she doesn't see them be much, Sarah with her arms up over her dad's shoulders, and his hands on her hips. As embarrassing as it is to see your parents acting like that, there's something good about it too.
"One nine hundred Linden, dial and you shall receive," Kalia's dad says.
It makes Sarah laugh, throwing her head back. It's the first time Kalia has really seen her laugh since the night that got her grounded. She can see Sarah still smiling when she puts her hands on Kalia's dad's face.
"I love you."
Her dad gets all serious too. "I love you too," he says. "This is everything, you and me, my baby girl down the hall, Little Man about to become a daddy."
Kalia shuts her door carefully, not making any noise, as her dad leans down to kiss Sarah.
*
"There's a party Friday night," Izzy says. "Jacob Miller's parents are out of town. We should totally go."
Kalia shakes her head. "I can't be out past curfew."
"Come on," Mia says. "It'll be fun. And everyone's going to be there."
"I just got done being grounded," Kalia says. "I'm not getting in trouble again."
"Sucks," Izzy says, "but we can cover better this time."
"Only if I can tell my parents where I'll be," Kalia says.
Izzy and Mia both laugh before they seem to realize she's serious.
"You want to tell them where you are," Mia says, "when you're at a party that's not supposed to be happening. Are you crazy?"
"Last time," Kalia says, "Sarah cried."
"So?" Izzy says. "My mom cries all the time. She cries at, like, TV commercials."
Kalia shakes her head. "Sarah doesn't cry. She's lived with us since I was four, and I've never seen her cry before."
"What, like never?" Mia asks.
"Never," Kalia says. "I'm not doing that again. It freaked me out."
"You can't tell them where you're going," Mia says.
"Then I'm not going." It's a tough decision to make, but one Kalia's going to stand by. She's trying to go easier on her parents these days, at least about not making them worry. "You can still go."
Mia and Izzy exchange a look and there's a couple of seconds of silence.
"No," Mia says. "We'll have a sleepover or something."
*
They do have a sleepover, piling into the rec room at Izzy's with sleeping bags and pizza and, later, ice cream.
"We could sneak out," Izzy says, licking ice cream off of her spoon. "The party's still going." She turns her phone around to show the picture someone must have texted her from the party.
"Only if we tell my parents where we're going," Kalia says.
Mia and Izzy make faces at her, and Izzy puts her phone down.
"Forget it. We'll just eat ice cream in our pajamas and be high school losers forever."
Kalia rolls her eyes. "We're not losers. We're just a different kind of cool."
Mia and Izzy stare at her, and Kalia shrugs.
"It's one of those things my dad says, okay?" She picks up her phone. "Can we just take a selfie so I can send it to my parents?"
They crowd in together with their bowls of ice cream and grin at Kalia's phone while she takes the picture. It's a good one, and she sends it to her mom and Roger and to her dad and Sarah.
Her mom and Roger both text her back with boring replies. Sarah texts back, Glad you're having fun, and then sends a picture of her dad, stretched out asleep on the couch. More fun than us.
Kalia giggles over it and sends a laughing emoji to Sarah.
Sarah sends her another picture, a selfie, one of herself smiling, looking happy like she did the night Kalia sort of spied on her dad and Sarah after they got home from their date.
Kalia's giggles die down, enough to make Mia ask her, "What is it?"
Kalia shakes her head. "Nothing." It would be too hard to explain to her and Izzy. She looks at the selfie for another second, and then types out a text and sends it, fast before she can rethink it.
Sarah's reply comes back almost as fast: I love you too.