F is for Facade
Title: F is for Facade
Fandom: Pretty Little Liars
Characters: Jason DiLaurentis, Peter Hastings, Veronica Hastings, Jessica DiLaurentis. Mentions of Alison, Spencer, Melissa, Ian and Garrett.
Word count: 1980
Pairings: past Peter/Jessica, Peter/Veronica, mention of the Jason/Melissa kiss
Warnings: Spoilers and speculation for the S4 finale.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: As Jason deals with the revelation of his paternity, Peter, Veronica and Jessica reflect on the facades they have created.
It wasn’t as if Jason even really liked Melissa in that way, and he knew that she wasn’t interested in him either. She was just pissed at Ian because she thought he was flirting with some other girl and had been trying to make him jealous, and given that Ian was being a bit of a jackass at the time, he’d been more than happy to go along with it. As far as they were concerned, it was just a kiss that they were going to forget all about the next day, and he couldn’t understand why Peter Hastings was so mad. Eventually, the whole thing died down, and Jason put it from his mind until that trip to their grandmother’s.
It was a total accident that he found out. He’d pulled up the floorboards in Ali’s room at their - her - grandmother’s looking for some money that he’d lost and thought she must have hidden. The joke of it was, he later found out that that was about the only time he’d lost something and Ali hadn’t hidden it, because it turned up under his own bed. If he’d just thought to check there first before jumping to the obvious conclusion, there was every chance he still wouldn’t know. Instead, he’d searched Ali’s room, found Peter’s letters and realised that his whole life up to now had been a lie.
He could almost have laughed to himself as he remembered the day in tenth grade when Melissa had freaked out because she’d lost out to someone else at some prize or other, and was worried about how her parents would react as they’d been counting on her to win. As Ian had comforted her, Jason had turned to Garrett and whispered something about how he was glad the Hastings weren’t his parents and he didn’t have to face that kind of pressure, as his parents were pleased if he even got a pass grade. If only he’d known then, he thought now. But he had wondered after he knew how his life would have been different if he had been raised by his father. He’d tried to put the possibilities from his mind at first, saying to himself “Come on, you grew up with Melissa, you saw for yourself how she had it all these years. You and Melissa would just end up becoming rivals, just the same way she and Spencer are now. You’d spend your whole life trying to please Peter and never feeling like you quite measured up.” But then when Jason thought about it again, was that really so very different from the way he had spent his childhood believing he could never please Kenneth DiLaurentis?
There are things that make sense to him now, in a way they didn’t before. Jason’s mother had always told him he was imagining it when he’d thought that his father favoured Alison over him, but now he knew that Kenneth DiLaurentis wasn’t his father, he knew it was true. And if Grandma D also knew, then it explained why she always favoured Ali too.
Jason knew that none of them were happy about him spending time with Spencer. But he didn’t much care. She was about the only one in the whole situation who hadn’t lied to him, and that meant that she was what he needed right now.
If they had never come back, Peter would never have known for sure.
They’d heard, of course, that Jessica was pregnant not long after the DiLaurentises moved away, but Peter had said nothing at the time and Veronica had naturally not questioned that Kenneth was the father. They’d had a ready-made excuse for not visiting when Jason was born, of course, because Melissa was just about due then. There had been times over the years when Peter had always wondered, but he thought it was better for him not to know. Their perfect little family unit would be shattered if the truth ever came out. Besides, the family lived far enough away that it wasn’t going to impact on him anyway.
Peter had never expected them to move back to Rosewood. As far as Veronica was concerned at the time, it was just nice to have her old friends back, and Peter acted like he agreed. Jason could still have been Kenneth’s, and then it didn’t need to be a big deal anyway. He managed to keep that up right up until the day he first saw Jason riding his bike past their house. And he knew.
Maybe things would have been okay if they’d moved somewhere other than the same street, or if Spencer and Alison hadn’t become part of the same friendship group, meaning the families saw a lot more of each other. It hadn’t come as much of a surprise when Peter found out that Ali knew - he’d caught her looking at him with a sly look on her face enough times, but he’d also caught her doing the same to Byron as well, so he could never be sure.
He knew he had no right to expect sympathy, especially from Spencer, but how could he explain to her exactly how he’d felt every time Jason did well in one of the sporting events Melissa used to drag the family to to support Ian? How could he explain the way he’d felt when he’d helped out at the father-son ball game at Rosewood Elementary and watched Jason and Kenneth taking part, knowing it should be him out there? Or the times when he’d attend Melissa’s parent teacher conferences and see Kenneth going in with Jason, and wondering the whole time what was being said? He wanted the whole world to know how proud he was when Melissa and Spencer did well, but he couldn’t let anyone know that he felt the same way towards Jason. When he was around Jason, he was so careful to appear as just the neighbour, just Melissa’s father, to do nothing that would shatter the facade he had so carefully constructed. And it had worked, right up until the day he’d caught Melissa and Jason kissing.
If he’d been thinking clearly, he’d have realised Veronica was right when she said she was sure it was nothing and it was Ian who Melissa really wanted. But he knew that he couldn’t allow it to develop into anything further. Jason and Melissa could not be together, and he would do whatever it took to stop that.
Even if it meant that he was going to have to destroy the facade he had spent so long trying to construct.
Had there been any clues that she had missed? Yes, Veronica thought now. There had been the time at Melissa’s birthday party, all those years ago, when some kid whose name Veronica couldn’t remember now had pushed Jason, causing him to fall down the flight of steps and cut his knee badly, and Peter had got a lot angrier at the kid than was strictly necessary, while Kenneth DiLaurentis had taken it pretty calmly when he’d collected him. Veronica had asked Peter afterwards why he’d reacted so strongly, and Peter had replied “The kid had his accident on our property. The DiLaurentises could have sued us if that had been any worse.” Veronica had replied “Not all parents are you, Peter,” and that had been the end of the conversation, never to be mentioned again.
She’d thought about that day again when Peter’s reaction to having caught Jason kissing Melissa had again seemed over the top. They’d carried on arguing about it as Peter had made a big deal of it even after he found out that Melissa and Ian had patched up whatever they had been fighting about. They were back together, why would Melissa want Jason again? Considering what Peter thought of Ian, Veronica wouldn’t have expected him to mind as much as he did when Melissa kissed someone else.
When Peter finally admitted the truth, Veronica had tried to keep it from the girls at first. To all intents and purposes, they were the happy family they had always been. She was Veronica Hastings, high powered attorney, happily married, perfect mother. Maybe not quite the Stepford wife that Jessica DiLaurentis had drunkenly called her once thinking Veronica wasn’t listening, but she still felt she had to keep up the front of perfection. It almost made her laugh now to think how afraid she had been of anyone finding out about her cancer scare. Much as there was no room for mistakes and flaws in the Hastings family, she would rather have faced people knowing about that than about Jason. She could hear the likes of Pam Fields talking now. “There goes Veronica, thinking she’s the perfect wife and mother and not a clue what’s been going on under her own nose.”
That couldn’t be allowed to happen. When Alison DiLaurentis went missing, there was a part of Veronica that was actually relieved. As long as she was around dropping her little hints, there was always the danger that Spencer and Melissa might find out and Veronica’s carefully constructed facade would crumble around her.
She was Veronica Hastings, attorney, wife, mother of two daughters, and that was the way it was going to stay. There was no space for Jason DiLaurentis in the world she had constructed for herself.
She had never intended for Jason to know.
Kenneth had agreed he would raise the baby as his own, and as far as Jessica was concerned, Jason was his own. They’d keep up the facade of being a happy, united family for the sake of Jason and the outside world. And if that stupid little bitch Melissa hadn’t stuck her tongue down Jason’s throat to piss off Ian Thomas, they could have stayed that way.
Jessica had always tried to ignore the whispers around town. “That Alison DiLaurentis will come to a bad end one day, you mark my words.” She knew what people thought of her daughter, and had tried to ignore it. But once she knew that Alison had become aware of Jason’s paternity and intended to use it for her own ends, Jessica began to see that the whispers were right. How the hell had Alison found out? Listening at the door as she had argued with Peter, or had she gone snooping, found the old letters that Jessica had never been able to destroy? Spencer and the others had all been over one day not long after the Melissa incident, and when Spencer had brought it up that Melissa still wasn’t talking to Peter, Alison had made some comment then that had gone over Spencer’s head, but Jessica had known exactly what she meant and also knew that Spencer was smart enough that one day she might well figure it out.
If Jessica and Peter had come clean from the start, then maybe two marriages would have ended a long time ago, and maybe Alison and Spencer would never have been born. They will never know, because they made their choice at the time.
But Jessica knew that one thing would never have happened.
She would never have had to put on the facade of the mother desperate for answers as to where her daughter was, going through the motions of putting up posters requesting information, appearing on television pleading for Alison to return home, knowing that she never would because Jessica was the one who had buried her in the ground.
She was trapped in this facade because she had created another. If she had not lied, then maybe Jason wouldn’t have been in such a dark place, and wouldn’t have struck his sister. Now Jessica had to conceal his crime, to bury yet another dirty little secret. She would do whatever she had to do to help her son.
Fandom: Pretty Little Liars
Characters: Jason DiLaurentis, Peter Hastings, Veronica Hastings, Jessica DiLaurentis. Mentions of Alison, Spencer, Melissa, Ian and Garrett.
Word count: 1980
Pairings: past Peter/Jessica, Peter/Veronica, mention of the Jason/Melissa kiss
Warnings: Spoilers and speculation for the S4 finale.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: As Jason deals with the revelation of his paternity, Peter, Veronica and Jessica reflect on the facades they have created.
It wasn’t as if Jason even really liked Melissa in that way, and he knew that she wasn’t interested in him either. She was just pissed at Ian because she thought he was flirting with some other girl and had been trying to make him jealous, and given that Ian was being a bit of a jackass at the time, he’d been more than happy to go along with it. As far as they were concerned, it was just a kiss that they were going to forget all about the next day, and he couldn’t understand why Peter Hastings was so mad. Eventually, the whole thing died down, and Jason put it from his mind until that trip to their grandmother’s.
It was a total accident that he found out. He’d pulled up the floorboards in Ali’s room at their - her - grandmother’s looking for some money that he’d lost and thought she must have hidden. The joke of it was, he later found out that that was about the only time he’d lost something and Ali hadn’t hidden it, because it turned up under his own bed. If he’d just thought to check there first before jumping to the obvious conclusion, there was every chance he still wouldn’t know. Instead, he’d searched Ali’s room, found Peter’s letters and realised that his whole life up to now had been a lie.
He could almost have laughed to himself as he remembered the day in tenth grade when Melissa had freaked out because she’d lost out to someone else at some prize or other, and was worried about how her parents would react as they’d been counting on her to win. As Ian had comforted her, Jason had turned to Garrett and whispered something about how he was glad the Hastings weren’t his parents and he didn’t have to face that kind of pressure, as his parents were pleased if he even got a pass grade. If only he’d known then, he thought now. But he had wondered after he knew how his life would have been different if he had been raised by his father. He’d tried to put the possibilities from his mind at first, saying to himself “Come on, you grew up with Melissa, you saw for yourself how she had it all these years. You and Melissa would just end up becoming rivals, just the same way she and Spencer are now. You’d spend your whole life trying to please Peter and never feeling like you quite measured up.” But then when Jason thought about it again, was that really so very different from the way he had spent his childhood believing he could never please Kenneth DiLaurentis?
There are things that make sense to him now, in a way they didn’t before. Jason’s mother had always told him he was imagining it when he’d thought that his father favoured Alison over him, but now he knew that Kenneth DiLaurentis wasn’t his father, he knew it was true. And if Grandma D also knew, then it explained why she always favoured Ali too.
Jason knew that none of them were happy about him spending time with Spencer. But he didn’t much care. She was about the only one in the whole situation who hadn’t lied to him, and that meant that she was what he needed right now.
If they had never come back, Peter would never have known for sure.
They’d heard, of course, that Jessica was pregnant not long after the DiLaurentises moved away, but Peter had said nothing at the time and Veronica had naturally not questioned that Kenneth was the father. They’d had a ready-made excuse for not visiting when Jason was born, of course, because Melissa was just about due then. There had been times over the years when Peter had always wondered, but he thought it was better for him not to know. Their perfect little family unit would be shattered if the truth ever came out. Besides, the family lived far enough away that it wasn’t going to impact on him anyway.
Peter had never expected them to move back to Rosewood. As far as Veronica was concerned at the time, it was just nice to have her old friends back, and Peter acted like he agreed. Jason could still have been Kenneth’s, and then it didn’t need to be a big deal anyway. He managed to keep that up right up until the day he first saw Jason riding his bike past their house. And he knew.
Maybe things would have been okay if they’d moved somewhere other than the same street, or if Spencer and Alison hadn’t become part of the same friendship group, meaning the families saw a lot more of each other. It hadn’t come as much of a surprise when Peter found out that Ali knew - he’d caught her looking at him with a sly look on her face enough times, but he’d also caught her doing the same to Byron as well, so he could never be sure.
He knew he had no right to expect sympathy, especially from Spencer, but how could he explain to her exactly how he’d felt every time Jason did well in one of the sporting events Melissa used to drag the family to to support Ian? How could he explain the way he’d felt when he’d helped out at the father-son ball game at Rosewood Elementary and watched Jason and Kenneth taking part, knowing it should be him out there? Or the times when he’d attend Melissa’s parent teacher conferences and see Kenneth going in with Jason, and wondering the whole time what was being said? He wanted the whole world to know how proud he was when Melissa and Spencer did well, but he couldn’t let anyone know that he felt the same way towards Jason. When he was around Jason, he was so careful to appear as just the neighbour, just Melissa’s father, to do nothing that would shatter the facade he had so carefully constructed. And it had worked, right up until the day he’d caught Melissa and Jason kissing.
If he’d been thinking clearly, he’d have realised Veronica was right when she said she was sure it was nothing and it was Ian who Melissa really wanted. But he knew that he couldn’t allow it to develop into anything further. Jason and Melissa could not be together, and he would do whatever it took to stop that.
Even if it meant that he was going to have to destroy the facade he had spent so long trying to construct.
Had there been any clues that she had missed? Yes, Veronica thought now. There had been the time at Melissa’s birthday party, all those years ago, when some kid whose name Veronica couldn’t remember now had pushed Jason, causing him to fall down the flight of steps and cut his knee badly, and Peter had got a lot angrier at the kid than was strictly necessary, while Kenneth DiLaurentis had taken it pretty calmly when he’d collected him. Veronica had asked Peter afterwards why he’d reacted so strongly, and Peter had replied “The kid had his accident on our property. The DiLaurentises could have sued us if that had been any worse.” Veronica had replied “Not all parents are you, Peter,” and that had been the end of the conversation, never to be mentioned again.
She’d thought about that day again when Peter’s reaction to having caught Jason kissing Melissa had again seemed over the top. They’d carried on arguing about it as Peter had made a big deal of it even after he found out that Melissa and Ian had patched up whatever they had been fighting about. They were back together, why would Melissa want Jason again? Considering what Peter thought of Ian, Veronica wouldn’t have expected him to mind as much as he did when Melissa kissed someone else.
When Peter finally admitted the truth, Veronica had tried to keep it from the girls at first. To all intents and purposes, they were the happy family they had always been. She was Veronica Hastings, high powered attorney, happily married, perfect mother. Maybe not quite the Stepford wife that Jessica DiLaurentis had drunkenly called her once thinking Veronica wasn’t listening, but she still felt she had to keep up the front of perfection. It almost made her laugh now to think how afraid she had been of anyone finding out about her cancer scare. Much as there was no room for mistakes and flaws in the Hastings family, she would rather have faced people knowing about that than about Jason. She could hear the likes of Pam Fields talking now. “There goes Veronica, thinking she’s the perfect wife and mother and not a clue what’s been going on under her own nose.”
That couldn’t be allowed to happen. When Alison DiLaurentis went missing, there was a part of Veronica that was actually relieved. As long as she was around dropping her little hints, there was always the danger that Spencer and Melissa might find out and Veronica’s carefully constructed facade would crumble around her.
She was Veronica Hastings, attorney, wife, mother of two daughters, and that was the way it was going to stay. There was no space for Jason DiLaurentis in the world she had constructed for herself.
She had never intended for Jason to know.
Kenneth had agreed he would raise the baby as his own, and as far as Jessica was concerned, Jason was his own. They’d keep up the facade of being a happy, united family for the sake of Jason and the outside world. And if that stupid little bitch Melissa hadn’t stuck her tongue down Jason’s throat to piss off Ian Thomas, they could have stayed that way.
Jessica had always tried to ignore the whispers around town. “That Alison DiLaurentis will come to a bad end one day, you mark my words.” She knew what people thought of her daughter, and had tried to ignore it. But once she knew that Alison had become aware of Jason’s paternity and intended to use it for her own ends, Jessica began to see that the whispers were right. How the hell had Alison found out? Listening at the door as she had argued with Peter, or had she gone snooping, found the old letters that Jessica had never been able to destroy? Spencer and the others had all been over one day not long after the Melissa incident, and when Spencer had brought it up that Melissa still wasn’t talking to Peter, Alison had made some comment then that had gone over Spencer’s head, but Jessica had known exactly what she meant and also knew that Spencer was smart enough that one day she might well figure it out.
If Jessica and Peter had come clean from the start, then maybe two marriages would have ended a long time ago, and maybe Alison and Spencer would never have been born. They will never know, because they made their choice at the time.
But Jessica knew that one thing would never have happened.
She would never have had to put on the facade of the mother desperate for answers as to where her daughter was, going through the motions of putting up posters requesting information, appearing on television pleading for Alison to return home, knowing that she never would because Jessica was the one who had buried her in the ground.
She was trapped in this facade because she had created another. If she had not lied, then maybe Jason wouldn’t have been in such a dark place, and wouldn’t have struck his sister. Now Jessica had to conceal his crime, to bury yet another dirty little secret. She would do whatever she had to do to help her son.