forever young
Author: Nathalia
Rating: PG
Challenge:
Quince #01 - that’s a good question
Red Velvet #10 - treading the boards
Tropical Punch #05 - memory lane
Extras / Toppings: blueberries (You can only be young once but you can be immature forever. - Dave Barry), caramel (last section), malt (Easter Egg: Nina: “But I will not wear my heart upon my sleeve/ For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.”-Othello), peaches (There's a distinct presence nearby that requires your attention. Luckily, your emotions are a lot more stable than usual, and you're more strongly connected with your feelings.), strawberries (Giovanna Tornabuoni), whipped cream (first section)
Word Count: 2,033
Story: Misfits
Summary: Kendra and Jamie through the ages.
Notes: Karaoke: song from the 70s or 80s as a prompt: Forever Young by Alphaville (1984).
Pop classics and currents hits were played at a ratio of one to three, Kendra guessed, but she couldn’t really make out all of them from where she was sitting in the grass, about two hundred yards from the gym the event was taking place in. She wasn’t sure why she had come in the first place -- this might be a momentous occasion for a girl who had grown up in Rosemont, who had friends here but Kendra couldn’t recall staying in one place long enough to actually make friends or to care about the people she went to school with. For her, prom was a waste of time.
And yet, here she was, sitting in the grass, listening to the songs that were being played at junior prom. She didn’t want to be in there but somehow, she didn’t mind being out here, listening in like the stranger she was, who was never part of the group, always an outsider.
“What are you waiting for? Your magic godmother who will turn your sweatshirt and jeans into a dress and sent you off to prom in a pumpkin she’ll transform into a limo? ‘Cause I don’t think that’s going to happen, Cinderella.”
She whirled around at that voice to find Jamie standing a few feet from her. He was dressed appropriately, in a blazer, a white shirt and dark pants -- unlike her, he belonged in there.
“Nah, I’d miss the curfew anyway and wouldn’t get home before midnight, so there’s no point, really,” she joked and Jamie shook his head.
“So you’re planning to go in there dressed like this? You sure won’t be elected prom queen.”
She wrapped her arms around herself defensively. “I don’t want to be prom queen. I don’t even want to go in there. I just … I just want to sit here.”
“But this is prom!” Jamie said with a certain gravity to his voice that surprised Kendra. She hadn’t thought he cared that much. “This is every girl’s dream. Charlene has been planning this evening as long as I’ve known her.”
“I don’t think she planned her boyfriend to run off during it to talk to the weird military brat.”
“We broke up. She came with someone else. I’m here stag.”
Kendra ws about to point out that that wasn’t the way he had probably imagined it but he was faster, adding, “But at least I came instead of being a creep and lurking around watching the whole thing.”
“The only reason I’m here is ‘cause I needed to get away from home and since you’re not at the boxing parlor, I can’t get in and hang out there.”
Jamie started to rummage through his pockets and pulled out a key chain. He looked at it thoughtfully for a moment, then grinned. “I’ll give you my keys and you can go there for the rest of the evening if you want to but I want something in return.”
“I’m not kissin’ you,” Kendra said immediately and Jamie shook his head.
“Not what I was talking about. One dance and you can have the keys.”
He was holding them out, dangling them in front of Kendra and she was sure she could have wrestled him to the floor and gotten the keys from him but she didn’t. She slowly got to her feet, muttering to herself that this was pathetic.
“Let’s just wait for the next song to play, this one’s not exactly good,” Jamie decided, pocketing the keys once again.
A rap number was playing and Kendra understood why Jamie wouldn’t want that one. She wouldn’t even have known how to move to it, how to behave, it just sounded so ridiculous and she couldn’t picture so many high school students all dancing to this.
They waited, not saying a thing until the song was over and Jamie smiled happily when he heard the first notes of the next one. He stepped up to Kendra, put his hands on her waist and Kendra followed his moves, putting hers on his shoulders.
They swayed slowly to the strange but oh-so-familiar tunes of Alphaville and Kendra places her head on his chest as he pulled her a little bit closer. She felt surprisingly comfortable with him but then he had always been an exception to the rest of Rosemont, someone who would look at her and know that she wasn’t like everyone else, that she had secrets and he had been the first to understand, the first person in many years Kendra had felt any emotional attachment to.
“I wish this would never stop,” she whispered as the song was drawing to its end and as if to fulfill her wish, Jamie didn’t release her at the end of the song, moving to the wrong beat for the next song, as if Alphaville was still playing in his ears, a music only he could hear.
***
Jamie was looking around the ball room, a little bit lost. He wasn’t sure about this whole thing, this mission that required him to wear a tuxedo and keep an eye on the crowd while Cammie snuck upstairs and got the job done.
He had seen Cammie pass him and disappear a few minutes ago in her magenta dress but there was no sign of Kendra who had been the weirdest pick Jamie could think of for security detail in a ball room but Big Mike had insisted that Kendra go. Maybe she hadn’t showed up yet because she had changed Mike’s mind and he was sending someone else? Jamie had no idea.
Maybe she was dressed as a waitress or behind the bar, places that would have been the most fitting for her. Jamie decided to stop focusing on it and keep his eyes wide open instead. Nobody could go up those stairs at the end of the ball room without finding out that Cammie was up there and so he positioned himself so that he would be able to interfere or warn her, depending on what was more fitting. The job was a simple one, one he had done a million times before but among all these people with tailor-made suits and haute couture dresses, it felt different. He felt like he had been beamed onto a different planet to watch their strange society and customs that made no sense at all to him.
It seemed to take forever until Cammie caught his eye again, slipping past a group of men and grabbing a champagne flute from the next waiter who passed by. She looked like she hadn’t been gone for a second and fit into the surroundings perfectly. When Jamie looked to her, she nodded across the room. Yes, she had gotten what they were looking for.
Jamie started to walk up to her but stopped for a second when he saw a blonde in a red dress standing there, talking to Cammie. He was sure Cammie was just making conversation but when he approached, he noticed that the woman in red was none other than Kendra.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Cammie greeted him but he shook his head.
“I’m seeing this girl and I know it’s Kendra, but I can’t believe it,” he admitted and Kendra laughed.
“Fifty bucks at a second hand shop. Take in the sight well, you won’t see me in a dress again anytime soon.”
Her red strapless dress went down to her knees, a flowing delicate cloth from the breasts downwards. Jamie had never seen her in a dress, usually, she was either in jeans or boxer shorts but never had she worn anything girly. Seeing her like this was somewhat of a shock.
“We should get going once he’s recovered from staring at you,” Cammie joked but Kendra shook her head.
“You go ahead, Jamie owes me a dance before we go.”
Cammie raised her eyebrows but Jamie who had registered what song was playing in the background, nodded. “Kendra is right. You go ahead, we’ll be with you in a sec once that song is over.”
Cammie still looked confused as Jamie and Kendra hurried to the dance floor, Kendra holding Jamie by the hand so she wouldn’t lose him.
“Freaks.”
***
Jamie found her far away from the settlement of houses, spread out on the grass, looking up at the night sky covered with more stars than Jamie could recall ever seeing at once.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said quietly and Kendra who hadn’t seen him looked in his direction in complete surprise. “I wanted to thank you for helping with--” He hesitated. “You know with what. Without you coming here and deciding that you needed to help, this would have blown up in my face pretty spectacularly.”
Kendra didn’t answer, looked away, back up into the sky and Jamie was about to leave, sensing that she wanted to be alone when he heard her mutter, “I’m sorry I said I wish they’d just kill you so I wouldn’t have to see you ever again. I didn’t want them to kill you, I just said it.”
“I know,” Jamie assured her. “I’m going to go check on the others and then --”
“Stay,” Kendra whispered, sitting up and looking straight into his eyes. “I … I think maybe you should stay here with me a little. We could talk. I have questions.”
Jamie tried to hide his surprise at that and sat down next to her. Kendra laid back down and went back to watching the stars. Jamie, unsure of what she was trying to get at, followed suit. Maybe this was something delicate, something that she needed to think about before she said it. He remembered how long it had always taken her to spit out what she was thinking when it came to feelings. Apparently, that hadn’t changed over the past decade.
“I never thought I’d get this old,” she sighed.
“You’re only thirty-six. I wouldn’t say that’s old,” Jamie countered. “And we were both pretty close to death today.”
“But what’s the point, really? Kendra asked. “I’m thirty-six and I don’t have a life or a home or anything. I am never at the same place for too long, I don’t have friends. I have a long list of people I can look back at that I killed or took out but I don’t really have a satisfactory life to look back on. I always thought there would be so much more time and that things would eventually just fall into place and I would have a life. But I’m still at the same spot I was in when I was sixteen, wandering through life aimlessly.”
Jamie didn’t answer, unsure what he was supposed to say. He could tell her that she had a life but that would have been a lie. She had over a decade and a half to Cerberus, burned all the bridges to a normal life she could have had along the way and now she had suddenly realized that her way might not be the best, certainly wasn’t one that would make her happy for much longer.
“You just stopped and built a family and became sheriff of a hippie commune. As much as I make fun of it, it is so much better than anything I ever managed.”
“There’s still a lot of time left. Quit Cerberus now and just start your own life,” Jamie tried, hoping he sounded helpful.
“And where would I go? I’m not like you, I can’t just make friends anywhere.”
“Stay here,” Jamie suggested, taking her hand. “At least for a little while. I think you could fit in pretty well. “If you say yes, then I’ll go get wine to celebrate and play our song and we’ll dance.”
Kendra laughed. “It’s been forever since I heard that song.”
“Is that a yes?”
“We’re no longer young,” Kendra said, suddenly gloomy again.
“Yes, we are. You are immature and you are young. How can you be old if you say you never even started living?”
He hadn’t expected her to burst into tears but he held her close while she cried.
Rating: PG
Challenge:
Quince #01 - that’s a good question
Red Velvet #10 - treading the boards
Tropical Punch #05 - memory lane
Extras / Toppings: blueberries (You can only be young once but you can be immature forever. - Dave Barry), caramel (last section), malt (Easter Egg: Nina: “But I will not wear my heart upon my sleeve/ For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.”-Othello), peaches (There's a distinct presence nearby that requires your attention. Luckily, your emotions are a lot more stable than usual, and you're more strongly connected with your feelings.), strawberries (Giovanna Tornabuoni), whipped cream (first section)
Word Count: 2,033
Story: Misfits
Summary: Kendra and Jamie through the ages.
Notes: Karaoke: song from the 70s or 80s as a prompt: Forever Young by Alphaville (1984).
Pop classics and currents hits were played at a ratio of one to three, Kendra guessed, but she couldn’t really make out all of them from where she was sitting in the grass, about two hundred yards from the gym the event was taking place in. She wasn’t sure why she had come in the first place -- this might be a momentous occasion for a girl who had grown up in Rosemont, who had friends here but Kendra couldn’t recall staying in one place long enough to actually make friends or to care about the people she went to school with. For her, prom was a waste of time.
And yet, here she was, sitting in the grass, listening to the songs that were being played at junior prom. She didn’t want to be in there but somehow, she didn’t mind being out here, listening in like the stranger she was, who was never part of the group, always an outsider.
“What are you waiting for? Your magic godmother who will turn your sweatshirt and jeans into a dress and sent you off to prom in a pumpkin she’ll transform into a limo? ‘Cause I don’t think that’s going to happen, Cinderella.”
She whirled around at that voice to find Jamie standing a few feet from her. He was dressed appropriately, in a blazer, a white shirt and dark pants -- unlike her, he belonged in there.
“Nah, I’d miss the curfew anyway and wouldn’t get home before midnight, so there’s no point, really,” she joked and Jamie shook his head.
“So you’re planning to go in there dressed like this? You sure won’t be elected prom queen.”
She wrapped her arms around herself defensively. “I don’t want to be prom queen. I don’t even want to go in there. I just … I just want to sit here.”
“But this is prom!” Jamie said with a certain gravity to his voice that surprised Kendra. She hadn’t thought he cared that much. “This is every girl’s dream. Charlene has been planning this evening as long as I’ve known her.”
“I don’t think she planned her boyfriend to run off during it to talk to the weird military brat.”
“We broke up. She came with someone else. I’m here stag.”
Kendra ws about to point out that that wasn’t the way he had probably imagined it but he was faster, adding, “But at least I came instead of being a creep and lurking around watching the whole thing.”
“The only reason I’m here is ‘cause I needed to get away from home and since you’re not at the boxing parlor, I can’t get in and hang out there.”
Jamie started to rummage through his pockets and pulled out a key chain. He looked at it thoughtfully for a moment, then grinned. “I’ll give you my keys and you can go there for the rest of the evening if you want to but I want something in return.”
“I’m not kissin’ you,” Kendra said immediately and Jamie shook his head.
“Not what I was talking about. One dance and you can have the keys.”
He was holding them out, dangling them in front of Kendra and she was sure she could have wrestled him to the floor and gotten the keys from him but she didn’t. She slowly got to her feet, muttering to herself that this was pathetic.
“Let’s just wait for the next song to play, this one’s not exactly good,” Jamie decided, pocketing the keys once again.
A rap number was playing and Kendra understood why Jamie wouldn’t want that one. She wouldn’t even have known how to move to it, how to behave, it just sounded so ridiculous and she couldn’t picture so many high school students all dancing to this.
They waited, not saying a thing until the song was over and Jamie smiled happily when he heard the first notes of the next one. He stepped up to Kendra, put his hands on her waist and Kendra followed his moves, putting hers on his shoulders.
They swayed slowly to the strange but oh-so-familiar tunes of Alphaville and Kendra places her head on his chest as he pulled her a little bit closer. She felt surprisingly comfortable with him but then he had always been an exception to the rest of Rosemont, someone who would look at her and know that she wasn’t like everyone else, that she had secrets and he had been the first to understand, the first person in many years Kendra had felt any emotional attachment to.
“I wish this would never stop,” she whispered as the song was drawing to its end and as if to fulfill her wish, Jamie didn’t release her at the end of the song, moving to the wrong beat for the next song, as if Alphaville was still playing in his ears, a music only he could hear.
***
Jamie was looking around the ball room, a little bit lost. He wasn’t sure about this whole thing, this mission that required him to wear a tuxedo and keep an eye on the crowd while Cammie snuck upstairs and got the job done.
He had seen Cammie pass him and disappear a few minutes ago in her magenta dress but there was no sign of Kendra who had been the weirdest pick Jamie could think of for security detail in a ball room but Big Mike had insisted that Kendra go. Maybe she hadn’t showed up yet because she had changed Mike’s mind and he was sending someone else? Jamie had no idea.
Maybe she was dressed as a waitress or behind the bar, places that would have been the most fitting for her. Jamie decided to stop focusing on it and keep his eyes wide open instead. Nobody could go up those stairs at the end of the ball room without finding out that Cammie was up there and so he positioned himself so that he would be able to interfere or warn her, depending on what was more fitting. The job was a simple one, one he had done a million times before but among all these people with tailor-made suits and haute couture dresses, it felt different. He felt like he had been beamed onto a different planet to watch their strange society and customs that made no sense at all to him.
It seemed to take forever until Cammie caught his eye again, slipping past a group of men and grabbing a champagne flute from the next waiter who passed by. She looked like she hadn’t been gone for a second and fit into the surroundings perfectly. When Jamie looked to her, she nodded across the room. Yes, she had gotten what they were looking for.
Jamie started to walk up to her but stopped for a second when he saw a blonde in a red dress standing there, talking to Cammie. He was sure Cammie was just making conversation but when he approached, he noticed that the woman in red was none other than Kendra.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Cammie greeted him but he shook his head.
“I’m seeing this girl and I know it’s Kendra, but I can’t believe it,” he admitted and Kendra laughed.
“Fifty bucks at a second hand shop. Take in the sight well, you won’t see me in a dress again anytime soon.”
Her red strapless dress went down to her knees, a flowing delicate cloth from the breasts downwards. Jamie had never seen her in a dress, usually, she was either in jeans or boxer shorts but never had she worn anything girly. Seeing her like this was somewhat of a shock.
“We should get going once he’s recovered from staring at you,” Cammie joked but Kendra shook her head.
“You go ahead, Jamie owes me a dance before we go.”
Cammie raised her eyebrows but Jamie who had registered what song was playing in the background, nodded. “Kendra is right. You go ahead, we’ll be with you in a sec once that song is over.”
Cammie still looked confused as Jamie and Kendra hurried to the dance floor, Kendra holding Jamie by the hand so she wouldn’t lose him.
“Freaks.”
***
Jamie found her far away from the settlement of houses, spread out on the grass, looking up at the night sky covered with more stars than Jamie could recall ever seeing at once.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said quietly and Kendra who hadn’t seen him looked in his direction in complete surprise. “I wanted to thank you for helping with--” He hesitated. “You know with what. Without you coming here and deciding that you needed to help, this would have blown up in my face pretty spectacularly.”
Kendra didn’t answer, looked away, back up into the sky and Jamie was about to leave, sensing that she wanted to be alone when he heard her mutter, “I’m sorry I said I wish they’d just kill you so I wouldn’t have to see you ever again. I didn’t want them to kill you, I just said it.”
“I know,” Jamie assured her. “I’m going to go check on the others and then --”
“Stay,” Kendra whispered, sitting up and looking straight into his eyes. “I … I think maybe you should stay here with me a little. We could talk. I have questions.”
Jamie tried to hide his surprise at that and sat down next to her. Kendra laid back down and went back to watching the stars. Jamie, unsure of what she was trying to get at, followed suit. Maybe this was something delicate, something that she needed to think about before she said it. He remembered how long it had always taken her to spit out what she was thinking when it came to feelings. Apparently, that hadn’t changed over the past decade.
“I never thought I’d get this old,” she sighed.
“You’re only thirty-six. I wouldn’t say that’s old,” Jamie countered. “And we were both pretty close to death today.”
“But what’s the point, really? Kendra asked. “I’m thirty-six and I don’t have a life or a home or anything. I am never at the same place for too long, I don’t have friends. I have a long list of people I can look back at that I killed or took out but I don’t really have a satisfactory life to look back on. I always thought there would be so much more time and that things would eventually just fall into place and I would have a life. But I’m still at the same spot I was in when I was sixteen, wandering through life aimlessly.”
Jamie didn’t answer, unsure what he was supposed to say. He could tell her that she had a life but that would have been a lie. She had over a decade and a half to Cerberus, burned all the bridges to a normal life she could have had along the way and now she had suddenly realized that her way might not be the best, certainly wasn’t one that would make her happy for much longer.
“You just stopped and built a family and became sheriff of a hippie commune. As much as I make fun of it, it is so much better than anything I ever managed.”
“There’s still a lot of time left. Quit Cerberus now and just start your own life,” Jamie tried, hoping he sounded helpful.
“And where would I go? I’m not like you, I can’t just make friends anywhere.”
“Stay here,” Jamie suggested, taking her hand. “At least for a little while. I think you could fit in pretty well. “If you say yes, then I’ll go get wine to celebrate and play our song and we’ll dance.”
Kendra laughed. “It’s been forever since I heard that song.”
“Is that a yes?”
“We’re no longer young,” Kendra said, suddenly gloomy again.
“Yes, we are. You are immature and you are young. How can you be old if you say you never even started living?”
He hadn’t expected her to burst into tears but he held her close while she cried.