i’m so full on resentment

@nytadelaide: I’ve never seen him this brooding.

#insta: ivy #ivy

topshelfshooter

↳INSTAGRAM: @jamesyhan11 uploaded a photo:

I don’t like to encourage paparazzi but I have to admit, this is a pretty funny photo! Lol! 😆

@nytadelaide: I don’t know how you consistently manage to be so charming James, but you pull it off every time.

#insta: james #james

↳INSTAGRAM: @carolanandclover posted to their story:

@nytadelaide: Let’s get some skates on you! Quickly now!

#insta: sean #sean

topshelfshooter

↳INSTAGRAM: @jamesyhan11 uploaded a photo:

Dinner with Coop! 🙂

#a regular beat for the star reporter;

@nytadelaide: Glad you boys had fun. Would you recommend?

#insta: james #james

50shades

Sean watched, unsure whether to be delighted or horrified, as his pleased as punch daughter sprinkled a second spattering of crumbs into Adelaide's hand. She had seemed so endeared by the first offering, after all! He supposed she would be less enthused by them falling into the folds of her skirt, though.

Clover giggled lightly and began unfurling her tiny fists, torn between reaching for Adelaide and whipping her head to the side, amused by Greyson's insistent pleas.

"Paul? Yeah. He's the quiet one." Sean smiled, thinking of his brother fondly. He wasn't aware he'd exchanged anything but polite hello's with Adelaide. He hadn't been quoted in her article that week, anyway. "The others behave a lot more like... well."

A tiny whimper fell from Clover as she strained towards Adelaide, brow furrowing.

"You wanna take her?" he asked, thinking about how readily she'd accepted her squashed, slightly soggy crumbs.

"Like the idiot on the other side of the table?" Adelaide hazarded a guess.

"M'literally right here," Greyson said.

Slowly, Adelaide's eyebrows rose upwards when Clover began straining against Sean's hold on her, practically dangling herself in Adelaide's direction. At Sean's question, she looked up at him unsurely, remembering how taken aback he was that first day at the rink when he'd found her sitting alone with his daughter.

She supposed that time, and Clover sitting rinkside with Adelaide at many a game, had reassured Sean that handing his daughter over to her wouldn't put her in any immediate danger of being eaten alive by the witchlike Miss Davies.

"Sure," Adelaide said, holding her arms out for Clover.

Once the little girl was neatly situated in her lap, it meant the plate was further away from Clover than she apparently liked. Adelaide didn't have any free hands right now to bring the plate closer, which meant that Clover let out a cry that turned into an immediate sensory attack.

The noise was high and sharp and Adelaide immediately slammed her eyes shut, ducking her head as jagged lines tried to score themselves across her vision, blocking out the rest of the coffee shop around her.

As a wolf-like grin flashed across the face of Adelaide's brother, Sean had a strange feeling he was being made fun of. Although, he tried too hard not to dote on it. He had that feeling a lot around her.

"Huh, no way." he said, voice bordering on sarcasm - however unintentional.

He watched as Adelaide steered the plate closer, looking up at the brother and sister for their combined approval. Adelaide's attention was a hundred percent fixed on his kid, though. And besides, Clover's hands were already banging on the side of the plate, tipping the muffin sideways.

"You sure?" he asked, tucking a strand of hair back that had managed to escape from his bun. Crumbling up bits of the muffin for her, he added vaguely, "Adelaide much prefers Clover to me, if you couldn't tell."

Adelaide was momentarily distracted by a rather charming display from Clover. The little girl picked up one of the crumbs from the muffin and held it out in Adelaide's direction. What was she supposed to do, say no?

"For me?" Adelaide smiled, gratefully accepting the crumb in the palm of her hand while Greyson made a scoffing noise from the other side of the table.

"What? No way! Clover, m'the better Davies by far," he said, practically folding himself in half across the tabletop in his bid to get the little girl's attention. "Clover, I like cake too! And m'fun!"

Rolling her eyes, Adelaide looked up at Sean and, for a moment, they were united in the unpleasant business of being the youngest sibling.

"At least your brothers are far more well-behaved. Well, the one that visited at Christmas was," she quickly corrected herself, having only met one other Carolan outside Sean and Clover.

"It's okay, you don't have to!" Sean scrambled, the overwhelming urge to be pliant and likeable once again overcoming him. He apparently hadn't learned his lesson from the many, many times Adelaide had rolled her eyes or shut him down with a verbal quip. He couldn't make everyone like him. And yet, he kept trying.

He withdrew his fist, opening his fingers in mimicry of an explosion, the 'pew!' sound slightly flat sounding as he laughed off the moment.

He kicked his chair back so he could sink into it, repositioning Clover atop his knee. He could practically hear her surveying her surroundings with confusion, chubby fingers grabbing the edge of the table.

"You're... Greyson?" he guessed, thinking about the brother Adelaide mentioned most often. "Not Micah?"

His glance slid to the side of him where Adelaide was sitting, quietly seeking her approval.

Don't do the explosion, don't do the explosion, Adelaide silently begged.

Sean, of course, did the explosion, and Greyson looked like all his Christmases had come at once.

"Where'd y'find him?" he beamed, although there was nothing kind about a smile like that when worn by Greyson Davies. In lieu of answering him, Adelaide simply directed her attention towards Sean and Clover instead.

"We'd be having a much nicer time if he was Micah," she said.

She looked back down at Clover who was eyeing the muffin on Greyson's plate with open desire.

Smirking, Adelaide reached out and dragged the plate across the table until it was in front of Clover, blatantly ignoring Greyson's half-hearted protestations. She knew that her brother couldn't begrudge a cute kid anything.

"I don't know." he blurted out, unable to keep the honest-to-God fear out of his voice. "Sometimes I say things and I don't think them through."

Coward that he was, he continued to hide behind his daughter, absently pressing a kiss to the top of her head. Half to soothe himself, half to remind Adelaide that he had a little girl he loved dearly and who relied on him for a lot, actually, so he would quite like to stay in the land of the living.

He still didn't know if she was gonna dump her coffee on him.

"Huh." he said, looking at her brother, unsure if his facial expression was bemused or irritated. He doubted her brother was a Rangers fan. Mostly because they kind of sucked this year. But also because Adelaide had made it very clear she was not a Rangers fan. But hadn't Adelaide said his boyfriend was a boxer, or something? Maybe he too just really liked contact sports.

Sauntering quickly past Adelaide before she could change her mind, he placed his cup down at her usual table, if only cause his arms were getting real tired.

"Sean Carolan." he greeted, moving to fist-bump the other man. "This here's Clover."

"That much is apparent," she noted, thinking about the pages upon pages of unusable interview material she'd had to scratch out in various notepads, all because Sean consistently forgot to state that things were off the record before he set off a verbal avalanche that ended in him quickly saying, 'wait, you can't include that though!'

When Sean hid behind his daughter like a coward, Adelaide was forced to contend with the strong taste of marshmallows in her mouth and a significant softening in her chest. Her nose crinkled a little when she returned Clover's smile, helpless to do anything but in the face of Sean's daughter's manipulative adorableness.

And then both father and daughter were moving. Towards her usual table and her brother who continued to wear a shit-eating grin.

"Peter Rhodes, may you feel my wrath in Philadelphia," she muttered, sending out a curse to Rhodes who was on some sort of away match for boxing. Whenever he went away, Adelaide was saddled with Greyson and that was a task no one wanted to undertake, especially sober or uncaffeinated.

She followed Sean to her table, where Greyson was still grinning at Sean's outstretched fist.

"Wha's he doin'?" he slurred, looking far too pleased with himself.

"Just fist-bump him," Adelaide said, failing to hold back a groan as she sank down into her seat.

It appeared Sean was never going to get out of a conversation with this woman unscathed.

"Just the ones you're related to?" he tried, face stretching into a too-wide grin in an attempt to get her to laugh. "Bad joke. Awful. I think you're the last woman who would - well -"

He groaned internally. Zero points to Sean Carolan.

"Uh, me or him?" he gulped, using the baby to point. "'Cause uh, like I said. I'm off coffee. Never started, really."

"What," Adelaide said plainly, no questioning intonation in her voice. She wasn't sure she actually wanted Sean to try and explain his horrible joke.

She continued to blink at him, unimpressed as he stated he'd never even really started on coffee, drawing up yet another comparison between the two of them that just highlighted how incompatible they were. Adelaide had come out of the womb craving an espresso.

"Luckily I'm not inclined to waste my coffee on a day like today by using it as a weapon," she said, without properly answering him.

Just as she was about to say her goodbyes, Greyson piped up again. Because of course he did.

"Is the hockey guy joinin' us or what?"

When it came to the inevitable murder trial, Adelaide was sure no jury could blame her when they heard her side of the story.

"He's a fan," she explained to Sean.

It became quickly apparent Sean was completely mistaken. The obvious hostility Adelaide and this man exhibited towards each other was simultaneously dead serious and utterly harmless. It reminded Sean of all the times his brothers had sat on him as a kid.

It appeared that when he noted her brother's charming good looks, he'd completely forgotten to mark the obvious similarities between the two siblings. Blonde hair, same frustrated scrunch of the nose. Definitely a Davies.

"Oh, God." he echoed, all the color draining from his face. "I'm so sorry."

Clover kicked her feet animatedly.

"I am just the biggest idiot." he stated, imagining recounting this story to the team later and the looks on all their faces. "I just thought.."

"You thought I just let men call on me like a dog," Adelaide finished for him, lifting her voice at the end of her sentence to make sure Greyson heard.

Perhaps she would enjoy the look of mortification on Sean's face when the caffeine had properly infiltrated her system. A few sips could only do so much to temper her early morning moods.

"Aw, shut up," came Greyson's drawl as he turned into far more of a presence (read: nuisance) in the current conversation than she would like.

"Has Clover ever seen a grown man wear an iced coffee before?" she asked conversationally.

“Oh, okay.” he bit the inside of his cheek. He’d been secretly pleased to have shared a coffee shop with Adelaide, as mundane a shared interest as it was.

Peering just over her shoulder, Sean caught sight of a man who appeared to be glaring daggers at the back of Adelaide’s head. He cleared his throat, gesturing awkwardly with his head at the insistent man.

“Is he calling you?” he asked.

His stomach plummeted at the sound of the man calling her Addie, the nickname that was strictly off limits to Sean. But very much available to the handsome, sandy haired man at Adelaide’s usual table.

“Hot date?” he joked.

As Sean questioned whether or not Greyson was calling her, Addie couldn't help but pull a face.

"Only every day of my life," she remarked, uncharitably.

She glanced over her shoulder, scowling right back at Greyson and mouthing one minute with all the childish impatience she usually exhibited around her brother. The relation was normally stark to most people who came across the pair and their usual bickering. Sean, however, was barking up the wrong tree entirely.

"Oh, God. Stop it, no," she said, hastily. She screwed up her face and shook her head at once. "That's my brother, he's a pain in the..." She trailed off, her gaze landing on an alert-looking Clover again. "Bum."

Clover wiggled defiantly in his arms, as though she would rather be clambering all over Adelaide instead of tucked into the safe and loving embrace of her Father. Little traitor.

“She was raised on contact sports.” he tried to joke, the corner of his mouth turning up halfheartedly.

Hoisting Clover up, his eyes travelled down to the to-go cup he was clutching in his other hand, Clover’s butterfly-covered backpack dangling from his wrist.

“I don’t drink coffee.” he admitted, the blush that constantly lived on his cheeks when he was around Adelaide Davies threatening to show itself again. “But I like sugar. And I need it to keep up with her.”

He smiled, nodding at Adelaide’s own cup.

“Is this your usual coffee spot?”

Adelaide bit back a groan. She had thought that the team being knocked out of the play-offs and the ensuing summer break would grant her a reprieve from Sean Carolan's placating jokes. And now they apparently shared a coffee spot.

"No, it's not," she lied.

It was, and Greyson's booming voice from the other side of the cafe exposed her lie immediately.

"Got our usual table!" her brother called out. Adelaide remained facing forward, hoping that Sean would assume the words were for some other unfortunate in the building.

"Addie." Greyson simply wasn't going to take his foot off her neck, was he?

She sighed quietly.

"But it has its merits, I suppose, so I've been known to show my face."

One moment, Clover was toddling around at his feet. He’d paused for a second - just one second! - to pay for the hot chocolate he was pretty sure he shouldn’t be drinking, and she was off like a shot. Gosh dang it, she was getting fast.

Coins clattering to the countertop, Sean snatched up his drink and scanned the floor for a small blonde in a dungaree dress.

“Clover!” he called, picking her up off the floor and swinging her into his arms. Only to be met with…

“Miss. Davies.” he blushed, “Uh, something like that.”

There was the ever-so-formal Miss Davies again. Seemingly allergic to simply calling her 'Adelaide', Sean always managed to make her feel like a strict schoolteacher.

"She certainly packs a punch," she commented. It had taken her a few seconds to get her bearings again, after all.

Her eyes dipped down to the steaming cup of hot chocolate in his hand. Annoyingly, she felt like her own weakness against heat was being challenged as she continued to nurse her own iced coffee.

"Isn't it a little warm for that?" she asked.

Adelaide was grateful that she didn't immediately spill her coffee when a tiny human being ran into her legs. She raised the to-go cup above her, as if to avoid any potential spillages and peered down at the small girl. As soon as she recognised Clover, she relaxed a little, the taste of marshmallows flooding her mouth.

And where Clover was... Adelaide lifted her head. Ah, yes. There he was.

"Is she practising bodychecks now?" she asked Sean.