scrappy.

[diayers]

blacksheepdavis:

“I know.. I know.” He could still see it as clear as day in his mind. The car, the body, George’s face. Leo hadn’t made much time for Dante since he arrived back in town, he was always so in and out he assumed that he would catch him another day. Now those days were gone, and the only way he would see him again would be in his twin’s faces. 

“It’s just going to get worse from here.”

Di had done her very best to hold it together in the face of the sudden chaos. She’d forced warm smiles the the clumps of Lost Boys who kept milling about, and she’d bought about every sweet that the gift shop had had to offer to get a smile out of her son. Because that was all she could seem to do, and she felt so helpless...

When Leo spoke, she knew his words were true. That car bomb wasn’t a punctuation, it was an ellipsis. This wasn’t the end, there was more to come, and the thought of her son being dragged under the wheels of it...

Dianna’s hands flew up to cover her face, her body keening forward to that her elbows were resting on her knees, a sharp sob finally finding it’s way to escape her mouth.

[diayers]

blvckwellheir:

“Dante was her hero.” 

Emmett didn’t know how else to describe what he saw when he looked at Renee. She was an open wound, pure devastation. It did not help matters that she knew exactly who was responsible. 

“I used to be jealous of that. I was always compared to him but it felt like an insult when I was sick and he was healthy and squandering it. Joke’s on everyone.” 

Watching Lewis interact with Dante was as surreal as witnessing any other interaction he had with people from her life in Neverland. Seeing her son and George stand next to each other was unsettling, and she had at times practically gawked at Lewis and Leo having a casual conversation over the bartop. Hearing Emmett express how he was often compared to his father made her ache hollowly in her chest. What kind of relationship would Louis and Lewis had, had he lived?

“That’s always the way,” Di answered, her voice tired. It had to be a joke, right? How was it possible that she almost lost her son in the same spot as her fiance’ without someone upstairs having a really good laugh about it?

“Your dad...” she started, meaning to express some sort of condolence. It was so hard to accept that someone so full of life, so full of shit, was actually dead. But she couldn’t get it to come out of her mouth just yet.

[diayers]

blvckwellheir:

“Trying to keep it together.” 

Emmett had never thought to notice before how her jaw tightened when she was willing herself not to cry, or how she unconsciously reached for her children when she saw them struggling. He hadn’t noticed the pain either in her eyes when Dante cheated, leaving her to do it- maybe he only noticed now because this was the one time Felicity knew that Dante wouldn’t be coming back. 

Di bobbed her head in slow understanding. Felicity had always seemed to be good at that -- composure. Back in the day, Dianna had been terrified on the older woman. (To be honest, she still kind of was.) Felicity had always carried herself so highly, had such ambition. Di had been the tomboy, and she would have been happy to run the cinema for the rest of her life. Before everything else...

And now there was a thin, common thread to tie them. Di wasn’t a widow, by technicality, but she was close. And now they both had children with dead fathers. 

“And your sister...” she added slowly. “I expect she’s heartbroken.”

[diayers]

dcrlinglittle:

Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Michael kept his gaze trailed on the ground as he walked over to the pew, taking a seat a few spaces away. He didn’t want to evade Dianna’s privacy. Instead, he simply turned his stare towards the cross before him, frowning thoughtfully as he took the sight in.

“I heard Lewis is going to be alright?”

Shit, he’s Lewis’ cousin. It was all still hard to realize, after years of being her son’s only connection. Only family...Now there were a good handful more...

“Yeah, just a few bumps and bruises,” she answered with a heavy nod, a hand reaching to scratch the side of her nose.

“But the doctor expects he’ll clear out just fine.”

[diayers]

blvckwellheir:

“I didn’t mean to disturb.” 

Emmett’s tone was dull, there hadn’t been much by way of the sardonic hilt to his tone since Dante died. A quality they both shared seemed to be another one that fell by the wayside now, any reminders of their father just seemed cruel at this point. 

“No, of course not,” Dianna answered with a shake of her head, straightening in her seat as she saw Emmett’s thin frame enter.

She knew what it was like, losing a father. She hadn’t spent a lot of time before thinking about what kind of father Dante was to his kid. Interesting, would probably be the best fit.

“How’s your mother?”

[diayers]

dcrlinglittle:

“Would you like some company?” Michael questioned politely and softly, as was his way. But anyone who truly knew them would have been able to detect a gravelly undertone that usual didn’t occupy his voice. Not before encountering the chaos outside the penthouse.

Perhaps his parents had kept him locked up all those years for a reason.

Rubbing at his bloodshot eyes, the youngest Darling took a careful step back, in case he was crowding on her space. He felt sadness of just finding out and knowing about Lewis and hearing he was hurt; he couldn’t imagine what his own mother felt.

“I could leave if you’d like.”

Di couldn’t help but be reminded of Lewis in the way Michael carried himself. She wasn’t sure why, maybe it was the height? Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but feel a sort of maternal ache towards him. How tired he looked, but also a weight of weariness. 

“No, of course not. You look as if you need a quiet spot. This place is as good as any.”

[diayers]

blacksheepdavis:

Leo had headed straight for the hospital once he was told the other casualty of the car bomb, having to lie his way in to get Lewis’ room number. When he had stuck his head around he found him there with Tootles, telling him quietly the would be back later before he set off to find Di. 

There was something twisted about it being the same hospital where she had suffered through both of her parents dying. It had been renovated in the years since but Leo still remembered the twists and turns of the hallways like the back of his hand, he had visited her there as much as she had visited them. 

He knew where he found find her, in the one place supposed to offer solace in a hospital but never seemed to do so for either of them. 

“There you are.” He said as he sat down in the pew beside her, still trying to wrap his head around the loss he knew they were all feeling that night. “I came as soon as I could.”

Di had forced herself to keep a level head when she got the call about Lewis. She’d swallowed down all of her panic to get the the hospital as quickly as she could, she’d channeled all of her terror into questions for the doctors, she focused mental and emotional energy in willing her son to regain consciousness -- as if they shared some sort of telepathy from the years of it just being the two of them.

She hadn’t even had a chance to process the loss of Dante yet, she’d been so focused on Lewis...

“Did you see the car?” she asked softly, her voice thready as she looked down at her lap. She took a breath, shook her head, everything pouring out. “It’s just...Obliterated, Leo, there wasn’t even a shell...There were fucking bricks knocked out of the wall of that building, there wasn’t glass in a single window...” 

[diayers]

Di had discovered when she was seventeen that the chapel of the hospital was the most empty place in the entire building. It was a good place to hide, cry, catch a quick sleep in the pews. No one here bothered with God. Not anymore, at least.

That had been when her parents got sick, both taken within two weeks of each other by a freak bout of flu followed by pneumonia. She’d spent a lot of time in the hospital then. She never thought she would be back in this room. She never thought it would be Lewis...

She had ducked out of the room to give her son privacy as some Lost Boy with a ridiculous name came to visit, hiding in the chapel with a long cold paper cup of hospital coffee in her hands. Di to a drink, just for the sake of doing something with her hands. The coffee stained bitter on her tongue, the wrinkle in her nose seeming to carry all the way to the corners of her tired eyes.

[diayers]

lewisayer:

“So riches to rags to riches? That’s at least an interesting one.” He took another gulp of champagne, never having been particularly fond of the stuff before but he couldn’t deny the stuff going around was good. 

He wondered if he might have a better appreciation for those sorts of things if he had of been standing there with two parents rather than one. 

“Are you alright? Having a good time?”

Di wouldn’t have exactly called it a good time, more like a realization of one of the worst fears she had had since the moment she had found out she was pregnant. But it didn’t seem to be going as badly as she imagined -- George had put out an impressive effort to welcome her son. And the children, as odd she as found them, seemed to be being polite was well.

“Don’t mind the time I’m having,” she said as she shook her head. “What about you, you’re okay?”

[diayers]

lewisayer:

  “I was feeling tops until my own mother went and stole my drink.” Lewis complained as he fetched himself another, though the truth of the matter was there was nothing he had that he wouldn’t give to her at the drop of a hat. 

“Was it always like this?” He asked, feeling like he could pry a bit more info from her given their surroundings. 

“Cause I can’t imagine you here at these sort of things.” 

“God, no, nothing near this,” Di told her son, shaking her head as she swallowed her drink. 

“Our parties in those days were cheap drinks in Leo’s bar, there was nothing even close to this. They were just posh boys who suddenly found themselves poor when I first met them. Somehow George made his way back to posh again.”

[lewisayer-blog]

For the first time since he had arrived in Neverland, Lewis felt more overwhelmed than curious. The Penthouse was bigger than he had imagined, the interior fancier and his presence more out of place than he thought it would be. He approached the party the same way he approached everything else – head on and with very little finesse. 

“Yoink. Yep. Thanks.” He tacked on at the end of his champagne flute plucking, nearly forgetting his manners a moment.

[diayers]

“Very kind of you, always thinking of your mum,” Di quipped as she appeared next to him, plucking the flute from his hand and taking a drink. She knew this dinner was all of a welcoming nature, but she couldn’t help but feel it was partly a trial. Had she done the right thing hiding Lewis, or not? 

“You feeling alright?”

[diayers]

blacksheepdavis:

Leo raised his hand in surrender before he rested his pool cue to the side and began to rack up again. If it wasn’t for the fact he kept looking to the bar to check everything was running as it should, he might have thought he was living in a memory. The pair of them, a pool table and a challenge in the air. 

“Fine by me, but you know I remember how good you are, right?” Too many of their youthful adventures had been funded by her pool prowess and the suckers who bought into her amateur act. 

Di never liked to lose at pool, but losing at her pool table seemed to make the matter all the more insulting. She leaned back against the wall for a moment, watching Leo reset the table before pushing herself from it and rechalking her cue with a smug smirk on her face. 

God, the men she had used to fool. Her blonde hair, her small stature, her big eyes and ability to feign innocence. Between his tips and her con, they had once taken a summer holiday to the sea, they had seen U2 in concert in their grand heyday and she still had the shirt to prove it...

“It never hurts to give you a reminder.”

[diayers]

lewisayer:

Lewis couldn’t mask his surprise at her ready agreement, he had come there expecting far more resistance, or at the very least a lecture of some sorts. Despite being an adult now, he still hated being at odds and ends with his mother. 

“Really? Just like that? No Lewis David Ayers.” He imitated her voice by making his almost comically higher, slouching down at the bar to appear shorter. If that was even possible. 

“I know I can, but I think it would be pretty cool to meet them all.” Sat straight again, he wrapped a hand around his pint, finally sampling some. Family to him was a singular person, but if they were open to accepting him then he would be the same. 

“I’m bringing a friend so I’m not too anxious about it.”

“Don’t slump like that, I raised you better,” Dianna scolded as he hunched to mock her height, snapping the bar rag at him with a long-suffering shake of her head.

Pretty cool. That’s exactly what she had thought of the Darling boys when they had rolled into town. Look what that had gotten her.

She watched him as he drank for a moment, mouth wrinkled to the side as she silently considered him. Di would often find herself doing that over the years of his life; get caught up in watching him, wondering what he was thinking about, marveling at his existence. 

“A friend?” her voice was bright, optimistic, and trying to hide exactly how intrigued she was. “What friend?”

[blacksheepdavis-blog]

“You owe me a tenner.” Leo was nothing but smug as he stood straight after pocketing the eight ball and winning the game. He rested the pool stick upright by his foot, holding onto it tightly as he gestured to the table itself. 

“I warned you, I’m pretty experienced with this table.” 

[diayers]

The look that Di gave Leo was nothing short of withering, chewing on the inside of her cheek as she shook her head to herself just slightly before stepping around the corner of the table.

“Nah, rack them up again, we’re going for best out of five,” she told him stubbornly, reaching to the table behind her to grab her beer and take a drink.

[diayers]

lewisayer:

Lewis suddenly felt under a microscope when his mother looked at him, a guilt of sorts spreading through him though he knew technically he had done nothing wrong. There was a chance that his actions might upset her, something he hated to do. 

“Well.” He started like he started most of his confessions, this time having a little more to share than a fight at school or a detention. “I spoke to George. As in my.. Uncle, not loaded George who’s always in here drinking gin and tonics. About Louis. And he invited me to some sort of meet the family dinner. Which I said you would go to.” 

Just the word ‘Louis’ was enough to land a lurch in her stomach. It never felt quite right to hear the name anymore, after running from it for so many years. It had an especially strange sound to it coming from Lewis’ mouth, as well. And in this bar -- where she had still not been able to tell her son that she had first met his father ten feet away by the old jukebox or that he’d stood on the very bar that separated them to propose to her...The thought of a Darling family dinner, where her long-dead fiancee` would be the topic of conversation...

Lewis David Ayers.

She said his name in her head so she wouldn’t sigh it out loud. Because, really, none of this was his fault -- it was hers. And if he wanted to be closer to them -- the uncle and aunt and cousins (and father) she had intentionally hid him from -- he deserved to have that. And she would be there to support him, no matter how anxious she felt about it.

“Of course I will, Lewis,” she agreed with a nod of her head and a pause. “But you know this isn’t something you have to do if you’re not ready, right? You’re allowed to tell George Darling no, no matter what anyone around here says.” 

[diayers]

doctorsparks:

lewisayer:

“Don’t encourage her,” Lewis said to Thea with a shake of his head, his tone light. In truth, he liked having his mum nearby. This had been the longest they had stayed in one place since he was little, he felt less restless here. 

“Must have done, definitely didn’t inherit you’re height.”

“Oh but Mother encouragement is one of the many services we offer at the clinic.” Thea teased, watching the exchange between them with a warm amusement. From her limited time in Neverland, she knew that most parental bonds were strained, if they even existed at all. Watching the two of them, it was comforting to see they could still exist in this place.  “It seems he inherited your mother’s wit too.”

“Yeah, that smart mouth is all my doing, I’m afraid,” Di sighed as if she was long suffering, clicking her tongue and shaking her head. 

His looks, however, she could take almost no credit for. He’d shot up like a light, taller now than what she remembered Louis being. The shock of dark hair had been there since the day he was born, and the strength of his jaw was pure Darling. The eyes, however, were Ayers. He’d missed out on the trademark Darling blue, instead getting the same hazel that her mother had had.

[lewisayer-blog]

Perched on a stool at the Sheep, Lewis had bent a beer mat, the same one he had been picking at for the last ten minutes. His mum had been back and forth serving drink, including the pint that remained untouched before him. 

“Have you got a second yet?” He asked, rolling up a piece of the mat he had just tore up between his finger and index finger. There was little doubt in his mind that their conversation would be unpleasant once he revealed what the subject matter would be. 

“I need to ask you something.” 

[diayers]

“Yes. Sorry about that, love.” Di frowned, letting out a sigh of breath as she finally managed to make her way back over to her sons end of the bar, blowing a piece of blonde hair out of her face that had managed to slip free of the bobbypins that held it all back. 

She wiped her hands off on her apron, frowning briefly as she noted the pint that was just as full now as when she had pulled it nearly thirty minutes before, the tattered beer mat...

Uh oh.

“What do you need, you have my full attention,” she said sincerely, placing her hands on the edge of the bar as if preparing to bare herself.