the 'brook action threads

When Mallory went to bed on Thursday night, she knew that she would be woken up around 2 or 3 am by her boyfriend, whose birthday was on Saturday.

Mallory was ecstatic. She was debating just staying up, but she decided not to, because she wanted to stay up and talk to Benson for awhile - for as long as he could stay awake, anyway. She knew he'd be tired after driving all day. She felt bad that he was the one who had to drive to her for his birthday, but he'd insisted, so....

Mallory could barely get to sleep that night. She felt like a little kid on Christmas Eve, trying to get to sleep knowing that the morning would bring exciting surprises. She finally dozed off at around 11:30.

She was awakened by a text; she lived with two other girls, and she knew that Benson was too considerate to bang on the door and wake them all up. He probably wouldn't even have woken her up, if she hadn't insisted on it.

She ran to the door and threw it open, rushing to hug him before he even got the chance to step inside. "Hi," she mumbled into his shoulder, squeezing him tightly. She hated being so far away from him.

Benson had to hand it to the Carver family--when they had a party, they had a party.  Madeline's twenty-second birthday was on Wednesday and she, Cary, and Salinger had had a private birthday party for just the three of them that night, but her parents had hosted a blowout party for their families, the Retlins, and tons of friends of Mad's and Cary's.  Benson was glad to get to see his roommate, Mad's cousin Garrett, and to introduce him to Mallory who had, of course. attended with him.

They had begged off as it approached midnight when it became evident that the party wasn't showing any signs of ending on its own.  Even Benson's parents were having too much fun with Mad's parents and aunts and uncles to put their drinks down and go home, but Benson wasn't too surprised by that.  After Salinger's birth four-and-a-half years ago, his grandparents had bonded and eventually made each other part of their respective families, just as Mad had done with Benson and Stieg.

It took almost a half hour just to make the rounds and say good bye to everyone that they needed to, but Benson and Mallory were finally in his car, driving away from the festivities.  "You wanna go anywhere, Mal?" he asked, taking the wheel with his left hand and reaching over to take hers with his right.

Mallory was feeling as happy as anyone had ever felt before. Her and Benson were together almost all the time, but it was a completely different feeling than being with Brian. She still couldn't believe how quickly it had all happened.

Luckily, Brian had had all his things taken out of her house by the time she'd gone home that day, and it didn't appear that he'd taken anything belonged to her or anyone else. She was a little concerned about the things in his apartment in North Carolina, though. She had most of the important stuff with her for the summer, but she'd left some books and furniture there.

Right now, though, she wasn't concentrating on that. She thought she would rather buy everything back that she'd left there then face him again, even though that would be expensive. She really just didn't want to see him again, though she figured she would probably run into him in North Carolina, knowing her luck.

Surprisingly, she hadn't heard from Brian. She'd been expecting to get, well, something; cryptic phone calls, notes with the letters cut from magazines, anything.

But there'd been nothing, and Mallory was enjoying just being with Benson again. She didn't know what would happen when they both had to leave again, but she was trying not to focus on that thought, because it depressed her. They should enjoy what time they had together; yet Mallory knew she would miss him tremendously.

Mallory had just gone to bed on a Saturday night when she finally got the message from Brian she'd been expecting. It came in the form of a text; perhaps he wasn't as crazy as she'd thought.

Babe im sorry and i want u back. im sorry.

And then a few minutes later:

I really am. plz, we can give this another try, i love you.

Mallory wasn't really surprised. He always apologized after fights, but there was no way in hell she would ever go back to him now. As long as he kept it to apologies, she thought she could handle texts. Hopefully he would get tired of her unresponsiveness and just give up.

Mallory hadn't spoken to Benson since the night of his party.

Well.

That wasn't technically true. They'd nodded to each other, and said hi, and other things you might say to someone that you were casual friends with.

But they hadn't talked, really talked, since the party.

She saw him sometimes at school. She'd decided to take a writing class, after all. Now it was halfway over and she still hadn't spoken to Benson. One part of her missed him desperately.

She knew that one reason that she hadn't spoken to him sooner was because of Brian. She loved him, but she knew he would flip his shit if he saw, or heard, about her speaking to Benson. He didn't like her talking to boys when he wasn't there, that was all. That was not perfectly reasonable, especially when said boy was her ex.

Still ... everytime she saw him, the butterflies in her belly began flying crazily. Today was no exception. Today, however, was different in that this time she wanted to speak to him.

"Hey," she said softly, touching his arm to grab his attention. She hoped he didn't hate her.

Benson looked around his living room where his former SHS classmates had started showing up over an hour before.  So far everything was staying relatively clean--no spills anyway--but he wasn't too worried about it getting rowdier.  Cary had taught him a long time ago that if he wanted to throw a party, he needed to hide certain things and make sure that everything was exactly where it had been when their parents left.  And when he cleaned up after, he shouldn't clean things too well because it'd be a dead giveaway.

Presently, Elise was getting some guys to help her set up the beer pong table in the kitchen and he'd noticed his ex...well...ex-hook up buddy, Evangeline Sullivan, sitting on the lap of a former baseball teammate of his.  Yeah, everything seemed to be completely normal for an SHS party, even three years after graduation.

Benson had been looking forward to moving home for the summer for a while; he was happy to get to hang out with his brothers and even to baby-sit Salinger, who he was pretty sure was the smartest four-year old ever.  What Benson hadn't expected was that his parents would go away for Memorial Day weekend and leave the house to him and Stieg.  Stieg wanted to go to the beach with some of his friends and Benson encouraged him to go so that he could host a party for his old classmates.  Presently, he was at the grocery store buying some snack food and loading up on beer.

He wasn't watching where he was walking as he returned to his cart and wound up bumping right into someone.  "Hey, sorry about that," he said automatically before he looked down and saw that it was Mallory Pike.  "Wow, Mallory!  How are you doing?"

This was weird and he didn't quite know why it was.  He'd run into Evangeline Sullivan several times and it had never been odd.  I also never cared about her really, he reminded himself.  But Mal...is different.

Although generally Laura didn't appreciate being told that one of her best friends would rather spend time with a boy, she had managed to be understanding for Mallory's birthday. Partly because she wasn't going to ruin Mallory's day, and partly because on her birthday, Laura preferred just spending it with her boyfriend. So rather than argue, she'd pushed back the birthday dinner a day.

So now she was in JJ's bar and grill, irritated at being around a crowd, but trying to be happy and enthusiastic for Mallory. Who wasn't there yet. Trying not to frown, Laura leaned back into her seat. It was probably Brian's fault. "I bet Brian's being a dick," she muttered to Matt.

Sitting next to her, his arm resting on the back of her seat, he shrugged. "Probably," Matt agreed, tapping his fingers on the table. He didn't really like Brian too much either, but they'd only met once, and unlike Laura, he wasn't quick to dislike people. "What d'ya think?" he asked Josh. Josh usually seemed a lot less biased than Laura.

Laura interrupted. "That he's a dick," she said in exasperation, before looking at Josh, expecting him to agree. "A total dick, right?"

Mallory had managed to get through the entire day without thinking about Benson. Not that she thought of him a lot, but it was especially hard on her birthday, she'd found. Her favorite birthday gift would always be the graffiti on the water tower, that he'd painted for her sixteenth birthday.

However, as the night wound down and she found herself sipping a cup of tea at her kitchen table, she allowed her mind to wander.

She'd had a nice enough day. She'd gone out for brunch with Brian, and they'd spent the day together. He'd bought her a bouquet of roses, and a sweet card. It was.. a good day, for him. He'd made an effort to not be so irritable, for her sake, Mallory thought.

Still, Mallory couldn't help thinking of how Benson was doing. She missed him. She hadn't wanted to break up with him, and he hadn't wanted to break up with her. They'd both decided it would be for the best .. but sometimes Mallory wondered if it was, really.

Elise would know how he is... she thought, taking a final sip of her tea. Glancing at the clock on her wall, she was startled to see that it was 11:12. Definitely too late to call her now ... but maybe she would in a few days.

So it was that Mallory put her mug in the sink, turned off all the lights, crawled into bed next to Brian, and thought about Benson.

Although she'd gotten used to the seeming crowd of people Faith normally allowed to hang out in the apartment they shared, Laura always preferred to just have one or two friends over. She suspected it was a consequence of the aversion to people she'd gotten at some point in middle school, but didn't really care too much.

So when she'd finally gotten the place to herself, she'd invited Mallory over; though they hadn't been too friendly in high school, Mallory was probably one of her closest friends now. Laura just kind of wished Mal would get a different boyfriend. She was convinced he was an ass, though she was willing to admit that she tended to think about almost everyone that way.

"Surprised you managed to find time for me," she teased Mallory, partly because she didn't think Brian particularly liked it when Mallory hung out with her. She didn't know why else she'd been seeing so much less of Mallory; the redhead wasn't the type to just drop her friends.