friends (rick riley and scott holland)(INDEFINITE HIATUS)

chapter three

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chapter three: gwen's boys

a/n:

i hate this chapter.

anyway, gwen's literally insane but that's okay bc she's hot and girls are allowed to be a little deranged as a treat. also, I genuinely don't care that rick wears button-downs to school in canon. I've basically rewritten his character, so I might as well give him a better fashion sense.

tw(s) -- mentions of the banks' kids poor home life, mentions of sex, mentions of past and current bullying, descriptions of poor mental health, and gwen really hates mindy. i think that's it.

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"You're freaking out." It's the first thing that Alexa says in fifteen minutes.

It's also, incidentally, the first thing that Gwen has heard clearly since her revelation. The ringing that had settled in her ears starts to fade as she meets the other girl's gaze.

"No, I'm not." Her voice is strangely raw. "I'm fine."

Gwendolyn Banks has never, not once in her eighteen years of life, made an error quite as grave as sleeping with Brody Cargill.

It's a side effect of the childhood she had. A never-ending balancing act performed by anything other than a professional. Be a good sister, Gwen. They'd told her. You have to look after your brothers, Gwen. They're only little and you, at seven years old, are the lady of the household, now, Gwen. Make sure that your dad's still breathing, Gwen. Having to keep her footing with three other lives tucked under her tiny, ineffectual arms meant there wasn't enough wiggle room to not be perfect.

Though, if she were to think back on every single mistake she's ever made, she'd be truly hard-pressed to find something else of this caliber.

That one time she kicked a whole case of beer off the counter when climbing to reach the non-perishables in the top cabinet? Whatever. Her father started speaking to her eventually, and she only got glass in her feet once or twice when she was cleaning it up. That time she broke a nail down to the quick because she fought a boy for making Jake cry? That was barely a scratch. Antibiotics cleared the resulting infection right up, and the nail grew back the correct way a month or two later.

This, though?

Sleeping with the enemy?

Letting Brody Cargill, the perpetrator of the biggest scandal to hit Minnesota high school hockey and the sole reason the Eden Hall Warriors almost got second in state championships last year, get into her pants? See her naked?

Yeah, there's (very easily) no coming back from this.

"I'm not." She insists when Alexa stares back at her disbelievingly. "I'm just—— maybe I drank a little more last night than I should've?"

Gwen is definitely freaking out.

The two of them stand together outside of the auditorium, a little to the left of the door that their peers pour out of, the walls reverbing their chatter about the assembly and how it ended. Gwen watches them with a heavy feeling of unease, this wide (incredibly fake, probably twinged with insanity) smile gracing her face whenever one of them glances her way. She wonders if any of them also taste bile in the back of their throats, but she has no desire to commiserate with any of them over this. The presumption that, if she were to let any of them see past the facade and share with them how every second feels like another second she gets closer to the chopping block, then her social life would certainly meet its dreary end, prevails.