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 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.

Benson let himself into the off-campus apartment that he shared with Garrett Carver, one of Madeline's cousins, and immediately dumped his backpack on the floor just before flopping down onto a ratty old sofa that his mother had insisted that he remove from the Retlins' basement.  When a quick glance didn't turn up the TV remote, he started feeling beneath the sofa until he spotted it across the room on top of the TV itself.  Now he was faced with getting up to get it and turn on the TV or stay lazily on the couch.  Before he could make a decision, though, a knock sounded on the front door, so he stood up and walked over to answer it, making a detour by the TV set and grabbing the remote so that he wouldn't forget.
 
"Elise!" he smiled, moving back to let her walk inside.  "Garrett didn't tell me that you were coming."
 
This was his and Garrett's second year as roommates, having been introduced to each other by Madeline during Benson's freshman year.  He'd been skeptical of her prediction that he and her cousin would make great friends because he was used to her trying to prank him...and getting him to sign up to live with someone awful for an entire school year would be a pretty epic prank to pull, no matter how mean-spirited.  To his surprise, she'd been right; Garrett wasn't much like Mad except for his friendly, outgoing personality and he and Benson wound up having a lot in common.
 
Garrett met Elise at the beginning of this school year when he and Benson had a party at their new place, finally having moved off-campus.  She came up for the weekend for the party and to hang out with Benson, but Garrett had tagged along with them and spent his time trying to keep Elise's attention to himself.  Since she had arrived early on a Friday morning, they had the entire day together before that night's party.  When Benson woke up Saturday morning with a hangover, he shuffled out of his bedroom to find Garrett in the kitchen at the sink and Elise not on the couch.
 
"Where's Elise?" he asked, wondering if she'd managed to escape a hangover and was already out running or something.  Garrett turned around and Benson saw his eyes dart to his closed bedroom door before looking at Benson with a slightly alarmed look.  "Shit!  Is she in there?!  I swear to God that if you took advantage of her at all, I'm gonna--"
 
Garrett shook his head vehemently and threw his hands up in the air, defensively.  "No, Ben, I swear, nothing happened!  Well...I mean, some stuff happened--we made out--but that's it, I swear!"
 
Benson trusted that his friend was telling him the truth, but still wasn't happy about the situation until Garrett promised that he actually liked Elise and wanted to go out with her.  Shortly thereafter, they became a couple and Benson got used to two of his best friends dating each other.