Knots: A Fab Moretti Fanfiction

Barely Legal

1998 – SEVEN YEARS AGO

Teen-age Fab and Ana sat in Fab's small attic room, his walls plastered with various music posters and floor covered in dirty laundry and other miscellaneous items. Ana, perched in Fab's decrepit red desk chair, scribbled something on a sketchpad. As she drew, she occasionally glanced over at Fab. He lay out on his bed, feet crossed and arms resting behind his head. He had headphones on, connected to a CD-player resting on his chest as he listened with his eyes closed. A cigarette hung out of his mouth, which he occasionally took a drag from. Stacks of CDs were scattered around him on his bed and on the floor below him. The CD he was listening to ended, and he opened his eyes to change the disc.

"What are you drawing?" He asked in a light, raspy voice after observing her doodling on the pad.

"Nothing," she replied without looking up at him.

"Oh, nothing, huh?" He smirked and leapt out of his bed. He reached to pull the pad out of her hand, but she jerked it away from him before he could.

"It's none of your business, asshole!" She shouted, clutching the sketchpad in her hands as if her life depended on it, "Jesus, it's like having a five-year-old brother."

"Hmm, whatever you say," he hummed and landed back on his bed, "it must be something pretty scandalous if you don't want me seeing it, though. What is it? Mike Jennings nude?"

Mike Jennings was a senior at the local college she and Fab had met at a party that some of the students from the college were throwing, which kids at their high school were invited to. Ana went home with him for the night and when she didn't call him back afterwards (as she fake-promised she would), he made several desperate attempts to get in touch with her again, including showing up at her and Fab's high school and making a Shakespearean declaration of his affection for her, embarrassing her in front of the whole school. Naturally, she had never heard the end of it from Fab, and he often broke into a dramatic re-enactment of the scene just to irritate her.

"Would you shut up about that already?" She sighed and looked back down at her drawing. Fab smiled and sat up in bed, crossed his legs, and began sifting through a stack of CDs.

"Hey, you still comin' to that thing Saturday? With Nick and Julian and everybody?" He asked, changing the subject. His voice was casual and nonchalant in an attempt to hide how much he really wanted her to come, to meet his friends. And, just to see him play. He had hoped he could impress her with his drumming skills, though it was still a learning experience for him. Maybe, he thought, she would just be impressed that he was in a band at all, and would think they were good. He sure did, and he believed in himself and each of his friends and their individual talents. It wasn't what he thought he would end up doing, or even what he had planned on doing, but he was happy nonetheless.

"Of course. It'll be nice to finally meet the guys you haven't shut up about for the past two months," she teased him.

"Yeah," he looked down and gave a half-hearted chuckle, "I don't know... I feel like I finally fit in somewhere, you know? Like I'm one of the cool kids... Or at least I have the potential to be."

The enthusiasm in his voice as he spoke was palpable. This was one of the rare moments where he was actually approaching something sincerely, and not making a joke out of it, so Ana took advantage of the moment to reassure him, "You know all the kids at school are dumbasses, right? You're already pretty fucking cool. They're just wannabe assholes who wouldn't know originality if it bit them in the ass."

He smirked, having already switched back into his default joking-around-mode, "Oh, so I'm cool all of a sudden, huh?"

Ana rolled her eyes. He had an infuriating ability to turn the most serious of moments into jokes, and took almost nothing seriously, to the point where Ana had almost given up ever trying to have any kind of a meaningful conversation with him. This particular conversation proved to be no exception.