He would not have Katie if Katie did not have Kendall.
fandom: big time rush (tv)
characters: omc, katie knight, the rest of 2j in supporting roles
ship: katie knight/omc
genres: family, humour, fluff, romance
themes: outsider pov, minnesota fic, first impressions, meeting the family, fear of rejection, first kiss, getting together
word count: 6.7k+
rating: T for language
read it below, on ffnet, or on ao3!
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A/N (1.8.2026): I wanted to write this fic, but it wasn't coming together for me until I participated in bigtimesecretsanta this year. My recipients' interests and prompts helped focus the narrative big time. (This is not my secret santa gift; that was submitted on time lol) If they happen to read this and happen to enjoy it, that's just the cherry on top. :)
Title retrieved from the song of the same name by Walk the Moon.
A/N (3.13.2026): Guy is Black, btw. That wasn't overtly stated before, but then I read this post and concluded that this is not something that should only be hinted at in the text. I've included new language to align with this mindset; for anyone rereading, you will find the fic hasn't changed at all.
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The specific ringtone of an incoming text makes Guy stop short two blocks away from his destination.
hey! i know i told you t ocome over at five, bit i have to go with my mom for some last minute frocery shopping. we should be back within an hour, bur i’ll let you know if not. sorru to push dinner back :/
The familiar red van turns the corner ahead just then, taking the one-way road away from him and toward town. He looks back down at his phone with a smile. The contents of the message may have been disappointing, but the typos are still adorable. They always got worse the colder it got because she couldn’t help but shiver.
haha np katie, i’ll see you at six-ish
He rearranges his silk-lined beanie on his head and thinks about what he should do next. He could reasonably walk back home—the air is calm now that the morning’s snowfall has stopped; and the sun is even still out behind the overcast sky, though that won’t be true in about an hour—but he slipped so many times just getting this far. Something he refuses to call the sunk cost fallacy tells him to at least complete the journey before going back the way he came, so he does.
It’s only the second quarter of freshman year, but he’s already been to the Knight household plenty of times to work on assignments with Katie or to just hang out. The two of them became fast friends when they met at orientation, but just friends isn’t really the best way to describe what they are now. Some of their hang outs could reasonably be considered dates, if the handholding and flirtatious banter and (one time!) kiss on his cheek were any indications. They're not technically dating, but he won’t try to clarify it… mostly because she hasn't. It doesn’t bother him if it doesn’t bother her, and he's not about to upset the balance by trying to define the relationship.
Dinner at the Knights’ isn’t typically that special of an occasion, but it won’t just be the three of them tonight. Katie’s brother, a junior in college, is back for winter break. She specifically invited him over so the two of them could meet, which says more about how she views him than a mere label could. Anyone with ears knows how much Kendall Knight means to her: she may be one of the least sentimental girls he’s ever met, yet she openly looks up to her big brother and never misses an opportunity to bring him up in conversation.
Guy intended to make a good impression by showing up early and offering to help with dinner preparation, but the text made it clear he wouldn’t have that chance.
That’s why he’s eager to offer his assistance when he sees a young man shoveling the driveway of the Knights’ single-story household. It would be super clutch if he had Katie's brother's approval before they even formally met.
“Hey, man. You got an extra shovel? I'll help.”
A helmeted head snaps up to address him. Guy notes his obvious Latine features and wonders whether Katie would have ever deliberately left out that her older brother is adopted. “Oh my god, really? You’re the best!!”
He stuffs his mittens into his pocket as the older boy makes a scene of opening the garage and banging around to look for another shovel.
“Thanks so much for the assist,” Kendall effuses as he hands it over. “If I didn’t get this done in time, I would have missed dinner.”
Guy chuckles as he moves to the other end of the driveway to work. “That’s a threat if I ever heard one. Mrs. Knight don’t play about dinner.”
“She really doesn’t! After the semester’s over, I always come back here craving her dinosaur chicken nuggets like nobody’s business.”
“You can keep the nuggets, man. I’m here for the corn dogs.”
Kendall has stars in his voice when he asks, “You get paid in corn dogs?”
The rhythm to his shoveling stutters. “I, uh, don’t get paid at all.”
“You’re doing this for free?!” Kendall sounds even more excited, if possible.
Guy stops and makes eye contact with the older boy, who looks like he found a genie in a lamp that just made one of his wishes come true. “I’m doing this because I’m friends with Katie,” he explains slowly. He practised how he’d introduce himself to her big brother more times than he can count, imagining different circumstances for each one, but this first conversation with Kendall is so far beyond his imagination.
“Katie’s friend,” he repeats. “I thought you were a neighbourhood kid trying to pick up an allowance, but you’re Katie’s friend.” His look of realisation melts into self-satisfied scheming. “Say, I need to go use the bathroom. Would you be okay out here for a little bit? I thought so. You got this.”
Kendall has that whole conversation with himself and makes to leave without any input from Guy, but a voice from the front door interrupts. “What’s going on here?”
Guy immediately drops his shovel and throws his hands up in the universal sign for surrender, but the newcomer’s exasperation isn’t directed at him.
“Heyyy, buddy!” Kendall says in a tone so falsely innocent that even Guy narrows his eyes suspiciously. “You and I should have a little chat inside. Be right back!” he throws over his shoulder to Guy before shoving the other boy into the house and shutting the door firmly behind them.
Guy chooses not to analyse any of that and continues shoveling. No sense getting involved when it’s none of his business. Besides, it’s a good sign that Kendall trusts him alone, right?
He keeps telling himself that until about five minutes later when Kendall is frogmarched back out by the boy from before, both of them looking annoyed beyond belief.
The severely unmelanated young man shoves Kendall in the direction of the abandoned shovel and points. “I don’t care who he is; this is your punishment for elbow-dropping Katie’s laptop.”
This is news to Guy, but his shock settles quickly. Katie had often told stories of her reckless brother and his pranks that went awry because he miscalculated his own strength.
“He offered to help,” Kendall grouses as he reclaims the tool.
“And you were going to take advantage of that. Hey, kid.” Guy straightens at being addressed. “You’re better off heading home. Whatever he said he was gonna pay you isn’t coming, and you should know he planned on making you do all the work anyway.”
“It was a rite of passage!”
A glare from his friend makes Kendall redouble his efforts if only to work out his annoyance in a productive manner.
“Uh, is it okay if I stay anyway?” Guy asks hesitantly, taking his first chance to say something in almost ten minutes. “I obviously arrived a little too early, but Katie invited me over for dinner… We’re friends,” he adds at the other boy’s appraising look.
Kendall spins and points at his friend in vindication. “Ha! I told you: he’s the ‘friend’ Katie invited to dinner tonight. You know what that means,” he sing-songs. “Katie and her boyfriend, sitting in a tree—”
The other boy smacks him upside the head, more out of reflex than for effect. That must be what the helmet is for. “Can you focus? I can’t drive you home until you clear and salt both the driveway and the sidewalks.”
“Actually, I was gonna see if I could stay and eat here. The boyfriend said Mama Knight’s making corndogs!”
He doesn’t even have the wherewithal to debate the boyfriend verbiage because… Drive him home? ‘Mama Knight’?
Embarrassed realisation hits him as soon as the confirmation does. “You have corndogs at home, Carlos!”
“But that’s so far away…”
Carlos—because of course the Latino is Carlos and not Kendall—is ignored in favour of offering to Guy, “Come on. Let’s get you warmed up a little.”
Guy spares one last glance for the dejected but somehow still energetic young man going back to his winter workout before he follows the one who must be Kendall into the house.
“Could you stomp the snow off outsi—oh,” he cuts himself off as Guy has already finished doing that, now moving to take off and put away his winter gear. “You must come over a lot.”
“For homework!” In light of the contentious b-word being thrown around earlier, he rushes to refute whatever conceptions Kendall must be making in his head. “We have every class together except gym—that’s how we became friends—so it just made sense to do our homework together, too. I only live, like, 20 minutes away from here. On foot. We go there sometimes. When my parents are home, of course!”
He’s overexplaining himself, but he can’t help it. Feeling foolish for mistaking Kendall’s identity and conscious of the proper way to introduce himself lest he incur Katie’s annoyance later are rattling his composure.
“I see… You must be pretty smart then,” Kendall compliments with an impressed smile as he leads them to the kitchen. They pass by the dining table where Katie’s busted laptop is wired up to a second open one.
Guy fights complicated feelings over the sentiment. He wants Katie’s brother to like him, to think he’s good enough for her; and yeah the best person would be someone who could keep up… but he still bristles when people sound surprised that he’s smart. As though people who look like him couldn’t be in the honours classes Katie’s in, too.
He forces the thoughts out of his mind. Kendall probably doesn’t mean anything by it. This is the man Katie looks up to most, after all. She couldn’t be the ruthlessly judicious yet empathetic person she is if her role model weren’t someone worth modeling.
“Still dumb enough to get roped into whatever Carlos had going on out there,” he jokes lightly.
Luckily, whatever tension he felt or sensed breaks. “Oh my god, ignore him. Seriously. If you’re ever walking somewhere and you see him coming your way and waving, cross the street.”
A laugh bursts out of him. Katie did say her brother was one of the funniest people she knew.
Kendall chuckles along. “By the way, hot chocolate okay?” he asks even as he starts preparing enough for two.
Guy notices a specific ingredient out on the counter along with the chocolate mix and whip cream. “No way. You’re why Katie thinks hot cocoa isn’t complete without cinnamon?”
Kendall gives a self-satisfied shrug. “Guilty as charged. Why? You don’t like it?”
“Katie put me onto it! You’re a genius, man.” Guy reaches out for a dap, which the other hands him with a grin. “That’s what they call me.”
The wording triggers a memory of Katie’s voice. Kendall’s not an idiot, but he’s more clever than smart. …’s the genius.
A sinking feeling accompanies the thought. This isn’t Kendall either.
The front door opens just then with the accompaniment of stomping feet. “Logan, I’m back!”
“In the kitchen!”
The newly dubbed Logan begins preparing one more mug of hot cocoa, then the prettiest man Guy has ever seen steps into the room with a shopping bag in hand. This is surely Katie’s brother. They have the same shiny brown hair, same skin tone, and same squint to their eyes when they smile.
Kendall stops short. “Who’s this?”
“Oh, this is… Katie’s friend whose name I don’t actually know,” Logan finishes sheepishly.
He takes his cue and stretches out his hand for introductions. “Guy,” he gets out as strongly as he could. “Guy Richardson.”
Kendall crosses his arms firmly across his chest in return. “And you’re Katie’s ‘friend’?”
Guy is pretty tall for his age—definitely taller than Logan and Carlos—but Kendall has several inches and maybe thirty pounds on him. He has no plans to pick a fight with Katie’s big brother, but he’s calculating his odds if the same grace isn’t extended to him. “Yes, sir,” he says with his hands held behind him and a straight back, respectfully putting himself up for assessment. Katie warned him of Kendall’s protectiveness, and he’s prepared to ignore his self-consciousness.
What comes out of his mouth next isn’t the inquisition Guy’s expecting. “‘Sir’?!” Kendall shrieks, his free hands immediately going to his cheeks.
“You’ve done it now,” Logan comments dryly from behind him as he hands over his phone to Kendall, selfie camera already on. He picks up the dropped bag. “I’m gonna go back to recovering the files from Katie’s laptop. Good luck with,”—he gestures to the sight of Kendall pulling at his skin as he assesses himself through the phone screen—”that.” He grabs his mug and shuffles past them both to leave the kitchen.
Kendall glares at Logan’s retreating back. “You’re welcome for the thingamajig, by the way!”
Logan doesn’t respond, so Kendall redirects his glare onto Guy, who resumes his upright posture. “So. Guy Richardson. If that’s even your real name.”
He only nods, the mildest response he could think of to such an accusation.
“What brings you around this fine Saturday evening?”
“Katie invited me to dinner.”
“Likely story.” Kendall taps Logan’s phone against his chin, discerning eyes trained on Guy. “Let’s say she did ask you to dinner. Why did you say yes?“
He blinks, unsure what the correct answer to the unconventional question should be. “I like Mrs. Knight’s cooking.”
Kendall makes a buzzing noise. “Everybody does; try again.”
“Because Katie asked me, and I like spending time with her?”
“You better not like it too much,” Kendall warns.
Guy rolls his eyes at that, but thankfully Kendall doesn’t call him out for it. Based on the way he reacted to being called ‘sir’, though, perhaps appealing to his unexpected vanity might help… “Because she said I’d get to meet you, and I wanted to know what her big brother was like?”
Brief confusion flashes across Kendall’s face before it melts into delight. Guy is so relieved to finally say something right that he misses the touch of mischief in Kendall’s grin. “Yes, right! Exactly. That’s who I am, Kendall Donald Knight; and if you want to date my baby sister, then—”
“—We’re not exactly dating,” he corrects with a bashful scratch of his neck.
All the bravado drops heavy like Guy’s stomach. “What do you mean you’re not dating?” Kendall asks with a voice so abruptly contemptuous that Guy takes a step back in genuine fear. “Are you ashamed of her? Are you leading her on? Do you have someone else on the side? Why wouldn’t you want to be Katie’s boyfriend?!”
Guy is stuttering out denials before Kendall even finishes his mountingly agitated tirade. “N-N-No! It isn’t like that!”
“I thought I could trust you because you’re wearing the seasonal-exclusive Mandy Cane-scented Barracuda Man Spray, but your taste is clearly limited to mid-luxury haberdashery products.”
“How did you—” Guy resolves to bypass his bewilderment in favour of more pressing matters. (For the record, he didn’t spray on that much before leaving the house today.) “I promise there’s nothing duplicitous happening here. I’m not ashamed of Katie, I’m not leading her on, and I don’t have someone else on the side. I’m good to Katie; I treat her right!”
“Who would treat Katie wrong?”
Never in his life has he been so excited to see Mrs. Knight’s bright smile. “Mrs. Knight!”
“Guy?” Katie asks from behind her mom.
“Katie!” Kendall rushes over to protectively wrap her in his arms.
“James,” she whines.
“Carlos!” he names himself as he pops into the kitchen.
For his part, Guy can only stare. Three different college-aged boys in and around the Knight household, and none of them were Kendall. He lets the counter behind him support his weary weight.
“Is that hot cocoa?” Carlos inquires. Guy lets him take the mug Logan made for him, and he leaves the kitchen whistling.
Katie finally untangles herself from James’ hold and goes to give Guy a hug. “What are you doing here so early? I just texted you saying dinner was still on for 6,” she reprimands in that way people do when they’re actually extremely pleased by the turn of events.
Her smile is enough to eclipse the lassitude from his misunderstandings. “I was in the neighbourhood, and I figured you guys could use an extra set of hands for dinner,” he says with overplayed nonchalance, like this wasn’t something he was looking forward to ever since she invited him earlier this week.
She giggles, but a drawn-out and obnoxious throat clearing takes his attention from the sight of her round happiness.
The person actually called James has his glare trained on the casual arm Guy has over Katie’s shoulder.
Before he could uneasily pull away, Katie’s hand shoots up to keep him in place. “Dealer’s choice,” she says with the authority of someone who is actually used to dealing. “You can either keep me and Guy six feet apart like we’re terminal, or you could go dig out your car from underneath the snow Carlos buried it in.”
“Carlos!” he roars immediately, barrelling outside with momentum that isn’t hampered at all by stopping to get his coat. His aggravation quickly transforms into affronted squeals and yelps.
“Kendall was out there ready to snowball attack the next person who left the house. I think he was hoping it’d be Logan, though,” Katie narrates to him conspiratorially.
“Kendall, go easy on him!” Logan shouts from the living room. “He has my phone!”
“Snowball fight!!” Carlos cheers.
Seconds later they’re outside, joining the frozen fray. Even from the kitchen, the children’s yard game sounds mortiferous.
“They’re going to be doing that for a while.” Mrs. Knight comments from the counter. She was calmly preparing ingredients and cooking apparatus while battles of wit and snow occurred around her, acclimated to the chaos. “Now, did I hear you say you were here to help with dinner?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Katie groans. “Stop making me look bad whenever you’re here. Mom always ends up wishing she had a kid like you.”
“You could start being a kid like him any day now, you know.”
Guy looks over his shoulder as he finishes washing his hands, intentionally provoking. He knows she’s just raring to go outside and join the snowball fight.
Katie faux-petulantly stomps forward, hip-checking Guy out of the way so she could wash her hands too. “I can’t be shown up in my own home,” she grumbles.
Mrs. Knight assigns them prep duties which they work on together. The three of them pass around small talk, stuff like the gossip going around school that Ms. Corcoran won’t be returning after winter break and when the last time they visited the Glensheen Mansion for Christmas was.
Soon enough, all they have to do is wait for the food to finish cooking. Katie is eager to watch tv with Guy, but he innocently points out, “Shouldn’t we set the table first?”
“Nah, I got it.”
Guy’s attention snaps to the entryway. Finally, he meets the real Kendall: waterlogged blondette hair stuck against his forehead, strong nose anchoring a face flushed from the cold, and eyebrows. Guy has to fight the urge to facepalm; how could he forget the eyebrows? Katie’s favourite joke to tell about her brother is about his eyebrows.
“Yeah, Kendall should do it! We did everything else,” Katie agrees eagerly. Without any more discussion, she grabs Guy’s wrist and tugs him onto the living room couch next to her, putting on Nickelodeon. Meanwhile, Kendall makes quick work of the table before leaving to shower and change into dry clothes.
After three increasingly harrowing encounters stemming from the status of his relationship to Katie, the fact that the true Kendall hasn’t bat an eye in Guy’s direction since stepping into the house is… anticlimactic. He doesn’t know whether he prefers the overt interest from the others in comparison. This indifference wouldn’t exactly lead to the great first impression he wanted either.
One episode of The Haunted Hathaways later, Mrs. Knight calls out that dinner is ready. Guy’s palms begin to sweat.
As casually as possible, he buys time for everyone else to sit first under the guise of washing his hands in the kitchen; and he’s immediately grateful for his foresight. It turns out that the seat he normally takes for dinner at the Knights’ is Kendall’s. Go figure.
As it is, he ends up between Katie and her mom, directly across from the man he’s been so anxious to meet.
“Hey! So you’re Guy,” he greets amicably as he starts serving himself. “I’ve heard a lot about you. You must be pretty special if Katie invited you over for dinner while I’m home.”
There’s a friendly bait in the words, almost compulsory in its lightness, one that Katie would have no problem rebutting even on her worst day. Astoundingly, all she does is roll her eyes with fondness.
Guy gulps. She really loves her brother.
“And you must be the Kendall I never stop hearing about,” he says with a smile, forced only because he wants so badly for it to be natural.
This Katie has a reaction to. “He’s lying. I don’t talk about you that much.”
“Well, she does,” he can’t help but point out, if only because teasing Katie is as second-nature to him as breathing, “but even if she didn’t, Mrs. Knight would pick up the rest of the slack.”
“Moms just can’t help these things,” the woman comments with an unaffected shrug, her smile having never left her face since she came back from grocery shopping. “He hasn’t joined us for winter break since his freshman year. Two years ago!” She tucks some hair behind Kendall’s ear that didn’t need tucking. “I’m happy to have him home again.”
“The Banff trip was epic, but the guys and I agreed that we couldn’t do Christmas away from home two years in a row.”
Katie’s fork clatters onto her plate. “Wait. The guys. Guy met the guys,” she says to the table. Turning to Guy, she repeats, “You met the guys?!”
Even Mrs. Knight gives him her full attention, curious about Guy’s impressions of the boys who are extra sons to her.
It takes a nanosecond to decide against going into detail regarding the last two hours of his life. It’d be embarrassing to admit it now that he’s in front of the actual Kendall who is nothing like the people he mistook him for, and he isn’t confident he could spin any of the uncomfortable parts into a joke. “Yeah, they let me in when I explained I got here too early for dinner,” he offers. “They’re cool.”
Kendall has a small smirk on his face, but most of Guy’s attention is on Katie’s sigh of relief. “I’m so glad we didn’t have to do any major shopping at the grocery store so you weren’t alone with them for too long.”
“They’re not that bad,” Kendall defends.
“They are when you meet all of them for the first time at once and without you around. Well-adjusted people would be running for the hills.”
“You’re saying Guy isn’t well-adjusted?” he teases, sparing a mirthful side glance towards the younger boy at the table like it’s an inside joke they already share.
“Don’t patronize us. He’s one of my best friends; of course, he isn’t.”
“Katie,” Mrs. Knight warns. The addressed shrugs in a ‘what did I do?’ kind of way, Kendall’s resulting laughter isn’t mean at all, and Guy decides he told the right story and this is all a good sign.
During dinner, he finally learns what happened to Katie’s laptop (“You should really know better than to leave your valuables out in the open when all four of them are home.” “It’s been a while since all four of them were home!”) and who won the snowball fight (“Once Logan got his phone back, it basically turned into us versus James.” “I bet that went over well.” “Let’s just say we’re lucky that he keeps a second set of his hair care regimen at home.”)
The food and conversation and atmosphere are so pleasant, so familial, so warm that he feels fully himself by the time he has to leave. He almost regrets how long it took him, but the invitation to return for sledding the day after Christmas will be his chance to enjoy time with the full Knight family without reservation, a gesture even more meaningful because Kendall himself had made it.
Kendall Knight.
Katie speaks of her brother with such obvious reverence that Guy used to think she had a mild if uncharacteristic case of little sister hero worship; but he discovers through the course of the evening that she (characteristically) wasn’t exaggerating. His understanding of Kendall gleaned through the stories he heard fits very neatly against the man he turns out to be with astoundingly minimal reconciliation. Kendall’s personality is typical yet specific, and Katie has a masterful perception of it.
It’s not that she glorifies him as some deity blessing her life and the earth around him, but every facet of him is treasured. His devotion to his family, his sense of humour, and even his sloppiness are endeared to her like the stuffed rabbit she doesn’t admit she still sleeps with. With only two hours in his presence, in his domain, Guy can plainly see: he would not have Katie if Katie did not have Kendall.
His desire for approval skyrockets even though he already has it. (He mentioned preferring Spider-Man to other superheroes over dinner, and Kendall literally said, “Baby sister, I officially approve.”)
When Katie is in the bathroom and Mrs. Knight is handling cleanup, it’s just him and Kendall in the foyer for a second. The other leans against the wall while Guy gets his stuff together, and he doesn’t let the opportunity pass him by. “Kendall, I want to thank you,” he murmurs as loud as he dares.
“What for?!”
“I was pretty nervous to meet you because you’re really important to Katie, and I want to be someone important to her, too. You figured that out already, but you haven’t, like, done anything yet… It means a lot that you accept that,” he ends, hoping he wasn’t being insanely presumptuous.
Kendall’s eyes crinkle with amusement. “Were you expecting the third degree or something? ‘You better not hurt her, or else’?”
Guy thinks of James and bobs his head maybe.
“Nah, threats aren’t really my style…” Kendall admits as he picks himself up off the wall and reaches for the door, nonchalant yet purposeful.
Panic seizes Guy. Katie’s mentioned this before. Kendall doesn’t threaten; he just does. All he had to do was bide his time until he could kick Guy out himself without intervention from his family.
“... I have people to do that for me.”
The open door reveals all three of Guy’s previous psychological tormentors. They’re just standing there, waiting to be let in, but they’re so much more threatening all together like this. The picture is complete when Kendall steps forward to slot easily between Logan and James. Guy didn’t even realise there was space there until Kendall filled it, and now he can’t remember what it looked like empty.
“Get a load of this guy,” James jibes smugly, obviously pleased with making a joke that Guy has heard a thousand times before and will hear a million times more. “You’re at East Duluth, right, big guy?”
“Yeah,” he gets out through a tight throat. “I go to the same school as Katie.”
“Have you heard of Denfield vs. East, 2008?” Carlos is still wearing his helmet, and it doesn’t look like a strictly defensive measure anymore.
Guy’s eyes widen. “The hockey fight? Yeah, that’s a legend in our school. No one’s been allowed to bring helium balloons to games since, and we’re still the only school in our division that puts up carbon fibre netting around our rink.”
“You don’t know about the fight itself?”
He shakes his head at Logan’s question. “Not really. Just that four freshmen went absolutely berserk on our C, and…” He eyes the smirks growing on the others’ faces and pales.
“Why’s it so cold in h—” Katie cuts herself off as soon as she sees them gathered in the foyer. It takes her only a second to understand what’s happening; and to Guy’s surprise, her first victim is him. “You said you didn’t play hockey!”
“You know I don’t!!”
“Then why were they able to intimidate you?” she demands with crossed arms.
He flails his own in the general direction of the door. “Katie! Your older brothers are Denfield’s Fearsome Foursome!! Who wouldn’t be intimidated by that?”
(In the background, Carlos and James perk up at their successful overture of menace. “We have a sobriquet?” Logan asks aloud. Kendall, for his part, melts a little. Guy said, “brothers,” plural.)
“If you can look at those four bunched together and feel anything other than secondhand embarrassment, we’re not going to last long,” she tells him frankly.
“But—!”
Her raised hand stops him short. “I’ll meet you outside in a second,” she directs him. “I have business to take care of first.” Her hard eyes lock meaningfully on the bulky college boys letting in winter air.
The door barely closes behind him before the four young adults start begging Katie for their lives. The din gets less intelligible as they move deeper into the house, and Guy takes that as his own cue to move further away. He stops on the sidewalk, leaning against a streetlamp under its spotlight and facing the block.
He had gone into today harbouring hopes that this meeting was the final piece of the puzzle to their relationship, that Kendall’s approval would be the thing that allowed them to become official and let him earn the title of Katie’s boyfriend. Apparently, she thought similarly up until she was unimpressed with how he handled himself around her family. The idea that he lost his chance before they even really started kind of makes him want to faceplant into the snow.
“Hey.”
His eyes refocus to find Katie standing in front of him, bundled up like she was going dogsledding and not just breaking up with her classmate. The sight is precious enough that his anxious “Hi” in response still comes out warm.
The silence stretches between them as he debates doing the hard part for her, but she interrupts the thought. “So… Do you still like me?”
“What?” he balks. Of course I do! I thought you stopped liking me.”
It is only because her shoulders slump that he recognises she was ever tense. “Yeah, I could have phrased that b-better. I’m sorry; I was p-panicking.”
Huh. So that’s what panic looks like on her.
Consolation and fondness relax him enough to let this day end net-positive. “Hey, we don’t have to do this now, out here.” It’s not even that cold out considering the sun has set, but her teeth are chattering like she was in the Siberian tundra instead of the suburbs of Duluth. “You can go inside; I’ll text you later.”
She stubbornly shakes her head. “There’s no p-privacy inside, and there’s not even any wind chill. I’m fine; I want to talk about this now.” She steps closer to him, and the streetlamp casts her beseeching eyes into relief. “I owe you an explanation… and an apology.”
Guy can’t help his apprehension. “I wasn’t beaten to a pulp, and you still like me; what’s there to apologise for?” he tries joking, but it falls flat even to his own ears.
She at least graces his attempt with a wan smile. “Just hear me out.” When he nods, she begins, “Those four have been best friends since they were in 3rd grade. I was barely one year old. Basically my entire life they’ve been there; for me, against me, around me. After they left for college, it took some time to get used to being by myself. I did miss them, but I quickly found that it was really nice not to attend weekend games when I didn’t want to or worry about whether my laptop was safe. Even better, it was nice to have things for myself again. The school I went to, the friends I made,”—here, she meets his eyes—“they were mine.
“I love those guys. They’ll always be important to me, but I didn’t want it to be like before where everything I had was coloured by them in some way. That’s why I panicked when I saw how you reacted to them. You were supposed to be, like, I don’t know, immune from them. Something they couldn’t touch… and that’s where the apology comes in.”
Katie presses forward before he could voice the question. “When you said you had met the guys already, you didn’t sound distressed at all. I let myself believe that meant they were normal about you.” She huffs in annoyance, her breath not even getting to fog up before a breeze wisps it away. “They told me how they acted, and I’m sorry that they weren’t.”
He inhales sharply. It never occurred to him that they’d tell her their sides of the story before he could, that they’d admit to anything wrong in the first place. He is so used to having to find his own closure for things like this.
“It’s—” He clears his throat and tries again. “It’s okay.”
“You don’t have to shrug it off just because it’s easier that way.” She takes her ungloved hands out of her pockets to reach for his own, and he can feel her gaze mapping the contrast between their fingers. “I know how you were probably taking it. I’m not gonna tell you it’s all in your head or that they didn’t mean it that way because that’s not for me to say, but what I can tell you is that they are idiots before they are anything else. Any other boy would have been subjected to their dumbassery.”
He hears what she isn't saying: it's not just because he's Black. Hyperaware of every interaction today as he was, Guy does trust the reassurance... which worsens his embarrassment.
"For the record, I didn't feel particularly targeted, but I was definitely more sensitive to it today." Katie squeezes his hands in sympathy, but he's really over it. Probably. "But I also didn't make it easier on myself either… Well, you know how badly I wanted your brother to like me. I was putting all this pressure on myself, and I was nervous… Basically, what had happened was: I met each of them individually; and every time, I thought he was Kendall."
He smiles down at her, more than happy to move onto a lighter topic of conversation, even at his own expense. “He was the first one I met! Besides, he got a vibe.”
“Ignoring the fact that I am clearly not Dominican, you think I’d be related to someone who doesn’t know what a vegetable is?”
“We didn’t get that far in the getting-to-know-you process,” he defends.
“And Logan?”
“You always said your brother was smarter than he gave himself credit for. As for James—”
She waves him off. “He’s actually the only one I can understand. He definitely acts like it.”
This brings to mind: “What about Kendall? He seemed normal about me.” He repeats the verbiage she used. “You know, until the end there.”
“Kinda?” she equivocates with squinted eyes. “I told him not to embarrass me, but I don’t know whether he behaved himself because he was listening to me or because the guys had already told him about meeting you. It’s weird: he doesn’t give me grief about boys I like, but he always has a problem with boys who like me.”
His heart beats in his chest once, twice, then he decides to go for broke. “So I’m guessing asking to be your boyfriend would needlessly garner his negative attention.”
She freezes in a way that would portend disappointment if not for the death grip she has on his hands. “Guy,” she breathes out. “Have you been worried about that?”
“‘Worried’ is a strong word. I’d use ‘preoccupied’.”
Katie shakes her head, disbelieving. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know we should have talked about it. I thought we were being cool and un-clingy.”
“I didn’t bring it up either,” he reassures her. “I’m only saying something now because James made me realise it could seem like I didn’t want the commitment.” He tugs her closer to him by their joined hands. “That couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Weirdly, he can’t read her face from this close. He knows what she looks like when she has a particularly good hand at poker, when she has a plan to get back at the overcompensating bullies in their grade, when she’s thought of a quip that she knows will ruin your whole day and decides to say it anyway… but he’s never seen her look like this before, and definitely not at him. Resolute yet nervous while considering and—
—and then he can’t see her at all because his eyes are closed.
When she pulls away, he staggers backwards like the pressure on his lips was the only thing keeping him upright. His head lolls against the streetlamp when it breaks his stumble. “There’s no mistletoe out here,” he observes as he stares into the light above them.
“You wanted our first kiss to be traditionally-prescribed instead of fuelled by actual affection?”
He scrambles upright to face the potency of Katie’s incredulity head-on. “I’m gonna be so for real with you right now: I did not think any farther past ‘I want our first kiss’.”
Her eye roll is not enough to distract from the cute shyness of her grin, but then something to her side catches her attention. “Does it bother you like it bothers me that said first kiss had an audience?”
His stomach drops even before he turns to see the murderous intentions on James’ face through the living room window, sometimes obscured behind a flailing arm as two Knights and two best friends try to hold him back from storming outside.
“I think that’s my cue to go.”
Her swift and tight grasp on his wrist demands his attention back on her. “You’re immune, remember? They’re not allowed to scare off my boyfriend.”
He grins so wide and so immediately that his dry lips chap. “Will my big, strong girlfriend protect me from the evil Fearsome Foursome?”
She jerks his arm sharply. “Maybe I won’t. I figured out that was them but never said anything on purpose, and now I’ll be hearing about it for at least the rest of winter break thanks to you.”
He quirks his lips in a way he knows makes him look rather charming. “Is there a way I can make up for it?”
“KATHRYN GISELE KNIGHT!”
“Yeah, you can take my side in the snowball fight!” she quips as she hands him a pre-packed ball of snow he didn’t even see her make then ducks down to prepare more. All there’s left for him to do is throw. It misses James and hits Carlos, who was hot on his heels with the other friends trying to keep James from adding aggravated assault to his rap sheet.
A quick glance between the four boys, then the front yard quickly devolves into a second wayward wintry warzone in almost as many hours.
In between coordinated attacks and less coordinated defenses, Guy finds himself acutely aware of what growing up was like for Katie, why she’d love it and why she’d be ready to let it go. The chaotic streak that he loves in her is far more controlled than this, but these are the roots. Or maybe the soil. The water? He doesn’t have time to refine the metaphor because Kendall just dumped snow down his back.
“That one’s for Katie.” He pats Guy’s shoulder with a challenging grin then twirls around to launch at his next target.
Guy ends the night colder and damper than he wanted to be, but he can’t complain. Katie got the snowball fight she wanted, he got the girl, and he doesn’t slip once during his walk home.
~~~~~
A/N (1.8.2026): I know it’s not pre-Christmas anymore, but it was either now or wait 11 more months ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
i dont want songs to be leaked b.c it means i'll never get to hear them live or in an official capacity, but if they /are/ leaked i am not ashamed to bump that noise. enter 'the rest of me', which has had a chokehold on me since i first heard it. it's clearly the spiritual predecessor to 'superstitious' and kind of sonically messy, but that's why i love it. it's literally a mashup of kendall's solo sound (the opening verse was lifted straight off of honeydew's cutting room floor change my mind),
logan's solo sound (twisting and turning my hands on your waist vs. probably something 'bout your waist that got me weak plus that so whatchu gonna do with the rest of me is quintessential henderson cadence),
and the entire 2010 boyband era (shout out to the shout-harmony on the cause you break my heart lines)
aka the exact sound/genres that ive been preoccupied with since july. it's practically hand-tailoured for the express purpose of making me obsessed, and it worked. i am. i want 11 more just like it 😭🙏
btr and pokemon, pt. 5: pokemon the characters would actually have! since this is my last post in this series, i've included many characters from the show to celebrate :)
if pokemon were real in our world, these are the ones i think everyone would have, how they'd get them, and how they'd use them. just like the last post, there's a three pokemon limit. more insights can be found in the image descriptions.
cc @inkameswetrust. now that i've finished this, i can read your blogs on the subject and compare/contrast our lists haha
kendall knight and carlos garcia can deffo tie cherry stems into knots with their tongue. james diamond and logan mitchell cannot, to the eternal consternation of the former. part of why he has more kissing partners than everyone else is to make up for 'talent' with experience
i made my best friend watch btCrib and btGold for my birthday because they're the two best kogan episodes
At Length we discussed the flanderisation of kendall knight and assassination of logan mitchell. we used to have a mischievous anti-authoritarian leader and reticent rule-abiding best friend which shunted the typical four-humours personality lineup that the teenage mutant ninja turtles perfected in a refreshing and compelling way. then we got the anxious straight man leader and goofy pseudo-intellectual best friend.
it certainly wasn't in the best interest of btr's branding to portray characters on their tv show which were so unlike their actual selves, so we understood that the characters we were introduced to needed to undergo transformation. however, the versions we ended up with still don't address the underlying issue which made this ip so much less successful for nickelodeon than hannah montana was for disney. they could have altered the characters to bridge that gap and make it easier to promote the real life band, or they could have kept that gap in order to facilitate the creation of an interesting, character driven show; and instead they gave us neither. astounding decision making on the showrunners' parts.
even though the personalities were much goofier in Gold vs Crib, she had more fun watching Gold. Crib still felt like show exposition to her which, while helpful and enjoyable, was harder for her to connect to since she knew a lot of that set up wouldn't last. Gold also had the benefit of kogan acting more like a team than they did in Crib where it was very much kendall leading by the seat of his pants and logan following along begrudgingly (a delightful dynamic for one episode but not for a whole friendship). in Gold, they both enabled each other's bad decisions, which is True Friendship.
she didn't realise that camille was in both episodes because erin sanders had such a glow-up between seasons lol
she liked camille in Crib but not in Gold because she thought camille was Annoying. afterwards i explained that camille was deffo exaggerating just to make logan sweat (along with a crash course on how freak4freak lomille are), so she was willing to give camille/lomille a second chance; but for now she vastly prefers jo/jendall to camille/lomille. this is refreshing to me because that is not a popular sentiment in the btrtv fandom lol
she observed that kendall knight may have evolved into the group's straight man amongst the band, but in Gold that responsibility to temper the other three's antics seemed to fall to jo. i LOVE that. i already liked jo/jendall, but this heretofore unexplored insight into the kogan-jomille dynamics and her role in them made me appreciate her so much more.
she was also surprised that kendall wasn't the one to end up with camille, and i was SO HYPE SHE NOTICED THAT because kenmille are one of the very few instances i can think of where the Most Eligible Female Character is not paired up with or intended for the Most Eligible Male Character in the media. my conspiracy theory is that they paired erin sanders' character up with logan simply for the zoey 101 quinn pensky/logan reese parallel and that camille and kendall would have otherwise been dating in an alternate universe.
i told my friend that i ship all four sides of this love square, and she went 'even logan/jo?' at which point i got to reveal that in the episode that introduces jo, logan was only taken out of the running as a contender for her affections by camille's dibs on him. otherwise he conceivably had as much of a chance to woo her as kendall did, which is personally more than enough for my wheels to start turning. i love rarepairs idc idc
for my next opportunity (maybe her own birthday? although i don't know how much of a gift it is to make her watch episodes of /my/ boyband lol) i am torn between two lomille episodes or two jendall episodes. she still doesn't know the contextual impact of worldwide, after all haha
i made my best friend watch the first and last episodes of btr with me, and these are the highlights:
she literally asked "what happened to everyone???" BESTIE, I WOULD L O V E TO KNOW!!! from the characters to the writing quality to the humour, it was like the entire cast and crew were replaced and she was watching a different show. "i'd watch the show the pilot promises but not the show the finale completes" and no one blames her
"the finale was surprisingly meta" (derogatory)
she did not notice the sound effects lol
her bias irl is carlos, but even she succumbed to kendall knight's charm (and eyebrows)
"do you ship kogan in the show too?" prompted by the line in btAudition when kendall accuses 'youre taking james' side now?? >:(' and logan stammers '... yes?' and then later she said she saw more in-universe jagan than kogan 🥲🥲🥲
"i understand why katie is your favourite character" 😌✊
i told her we get very few episodes that depict the knight family dynamic, and she agrees that is a shame
"is logan... talented?" this one killed me because she knows logan henderson (at least, my opinions on logan henderson) and was surprised at the logan mitchell character in btAudition. "he's the only one of them acting" SHE'S RIGHT!
she expressed interest in watching other logan projects to assess the talent question. i told her he doesn't /have/ other projects and she wondered, "do you think this being his main professional experience is why he gave up acting?" h e l p. manifesting a logan henderson acting comeback 😭🙏
afterwards, we looked up tracks of my tears by smokey robinson, james' go-to audition song... it's about the narrator's competence at masking his true emotions and his underlying desperation to be found out??? james diamond is Not Okay, and we knew that, but i've yet to see anyone use this song to point out the extent to which that is true. his dysfunction is baked into his introductory dialogue, yet never to be seen again :(
it's a shame she didn't get to see how freak4freak lomille are or the contextual impact of worldwide—she doesn't like the song (blasphemy), and i fully blame the fact that she wasn't exposed to it via btBreak Up—but i dont think i could convince her into watching any more episodes unless it's my birthday or something lol
btr and pokemon, pt. 4: pokemon the members would actually have!
if the last post asked, 'what if the guys were in the pokemon world?' this one asks 'what if pokemon were real in ours?' it's a mix of 'which pokemon would they get to increase their quality of life' and 'how did they meet'. limit to three because in real life, the average pet owner doesn't own more than three pets.
slide 6: the type specialist post was originally going to be 'what if the guys were pokemon?' (mostly to explain my 'kendall s hella has the keen eye ability' headcanon in context), but i surmised that is too much suspension of disbelief. i already had the types and abilities assigned, though, and didn't want to let them go unpublished.
next post will be the last in the series. happy belated thanksgiving to the americans :)
