Lights Out and Shoot Up The Station 10 of ?
Title: Lights Out and Shoot Up The Station 10 of ?
Pairing or Characters: Ruby, Darryl, Lottie and a lot of OC's
Word Count: 2828
Rating: PG-13,
Disclaimer: Set now perhaps last week or possibly today. Doctor Who and Sex Wax references. Enjoy : D
“Oww get off, that went in my eye!” Theo shrieks.
The sound of splashing and Lottie's excited giggles float through the kitchen door. Behind the bar Darryl catches Ruby with a shrug.
“Sounds like they're having fun.”
Ruby rolls her eyes, knowing full well what her son, and Lottie 'having fun' will equate to.
“Why, are you such a baby!” Lottie sniggers.
Ruby ducks through the beaded curtain, which acts as a divider between her Saloon, and her home. The sight which greets her is of her son, and Lottie furiously splashing each other with water at the kitchen sink, she spots the growing puddle of soapy water spreading across her floor.
“Why, is there more water on the floor than in that bowl?” She asks, trying her best to appear stern, when actually she's enjoying the sight of her family having so much fun.
Ruby bites down on the inside of her cheek to stop herself from smiling.
It must work, because the pair fix her with twin sheepish expressions.
“She started it!” Theo exclaims, jabbing one wet index finger in Lottie's direction.
“You are such a snitch.” Lottie sneers, the bridge of her nose wrinkling in disgust.
“I'm not interested in who started it, I'm finishing it. You two, do this deliberately, so me and Darryl end up doing the dishes for you.” Ruby frowns.
“Yeah well, it wouldn't exactly kill Ram to lend a hand around the place, would it.” The younger woman replies.
“He's busy.” Ruby sighs, tired of rolling out the same old excuse, even she doesn't really believe it any more.
“Too busy to lift up a cup, or even bother to speak to his own son.”
Theo shifts awkwardly from foot to foot at Lottie's observation.
Ruby's not trying to stop herself from smiling any longer.
“Theo, it's not like that.” She says her expression becoming pained, remembering a time when that had genuinely been the truth.
“Why do you bother defending him, when we all know that Ram would rather spend his time staring at a screen, than be here in the real world with us!”
Darryl leans against the bar, straining to listen to the conversation flowing out in snatches from the kitchen, so he only half hears the sound of his name when it's called.
“Hey Darryl!” Finally he glances in the direction of the Saloon's open doors noticing Josh hovering on the threshold.
“Hi Josh, why don't you come on down.” He greets the young boy with a wide, enthusiastic smile.
“I can't,” Josh explains, sliding his crooked glasses off the end of his nose, wiping the lenses with the edge of his checked shirt.
“I'm a minor, I've got to be accompanied into the Saloon by an adult.”
“I'm an adult!” Darryl grins suddenly remembering that he is now well over the age of eighteen, although he has yet to admit that fact on his acting CV.
“Really, ah well then, you're just the man I need.”
Darryl makes his way across the Saloon towards the door, linking arms with Josh over the threshold he escorts the boy towards the bar, noticing his clashing lime green bow-tie as they walk.
“Bow-ties are cool.” Josh informs him sagely.
“Why do you let him get away with it, the old Ruby never would have let someone walk all over her like this!”
Theo watches his Mother's expression carefully, she looks as if she's about to cry.
He's not one hundred percent sure how he feels about the situation himself, it's not easy growing up with someone like Ram as your Father, a man who most people dislike and distrust intensely for reasons no-one has ever bothered to explain to him fully.
All Theo knows is that in the dim and distant past his Father did a lot of terrible things, mostly to their neighbours.
But he was his Dad, and up until about a year ago Ram had been a pretty great one, admittedly Ram was never in the same league as Josh's Dad Slade, who would easily take home medals in parenting.
Lottie is right, now everything has changed, Theo can't recall the last time they shared a meal as a family, or failing that a conversation.
Theo decides he should probably interject about now.
“Leave it, Lottie.” He says feebly, he's never found it easy to assert himself within a household of two such mouthy, and opinionated women.
It's at this point Darryl thankfully appears, rescuing the situation in his usual bumbling manner.
“Hey Theo, you're little friend Josh is waiting out here for you.”
A wave of relief floods him, he seizes his chance to escape.
“Josh is waiting, I better go.” Theo shrugs, his hands finding their natural home in his pockets.
The fight that's not a fight between the two women dissipates.
“Oh, promise me you'll take care.” Theo's Mother can't stop herself from fussing, he's the boy who always has to wear a scarf, wrap up warm even though they live on a tropical island that has never known winter, and eat those extra sandwiches.
He rolls his eyes at the very suggestion.
“Mum please, I'm not planning on plummeting off a cliff. It's just a party on the beach,” He quickly ads before his Mother gets the chance, remembering her many, many lectures on the subject “...and yes, I won't go swimming.” Recalling the numerous times that his Mother has invoked the opening scene of a film called Jaws, when warning him about the dangers of night-time swims.
Theo's never actually seen a film, but Jaws sounds excellent.
Theo then plants a kiss on her cheek before she has a chance to object, slipping seamlessly into the bar he catches the trail end of Josh moaning about how he's “...not little.”
“Alright, Joshua Tree!” Theo greets his best friend with a wide grin.
“Is your last name Tree?” Darryl snorts from behind the bar.
Josh pauses to think for a moment. “No, it's Slade.”
Darryl meets this comment with his own unique brand of slack-jawed idiocy, asking as the boys are half way across the Saloon. “So Slade's name is Slade Slade, that's weird.”
“No, it's Ron.” Josh replies.
Outside the Saloon, Theo and Josh are assaulted by another balmy evening, the temperature never manages to drop into single figures.
“Do you think Darryl's on a register somewhere?” Josh observes as they skip down the steps that lead up to the entrance of the Saloon.
“What you mean like 'behold the worlds stupidest man, how does he survive without a working brain' sort of thing?”
As his eyes slowly becomes accustomed to the darkness of their surroundings, Theo makes out the outline of the wheelbarrow he persuaded Josh to liberate from the community vegetable patch.
“Now, don't get angry.”
He discounts Josh's suggestion the closer they get to the wheelbarrow, which is already full with something that in no way resembles their secret stash of booze.
“What's she doing?” He spits in disgust at the sight of Josh's sister, sitting in their wheelbarrow, her massive pink and white tutu sucking up all possible available space.
“She has a name.” Estelle asserts, folding her arms across her chest.
Theo can't believe that she's actually pouting.
“You look like a cake!” Theo remarks his a sneer, she's ridiculous, her very presence sets his teeth on edge.
“I'm going to accept that as a compliment, Theodore.” Estelle grins innocently back up at him.
He completely hates her.
“Well don't, because it wasn't!”
“Yeah alright, can you two just shut up, you don't like each other we're all on the same page with that. And there's nothing I can do, she threatened to tell our Dad about the booze if I didn't let her come.” Josh illuminates the situation with a long drawn out sounding sigh.
“You are such a snitch!” Theo turns Lottie's earlier sentiment on Estelle.
She retaliates by poking out her tongue.
“Great well, now you've both got that out of your systems, can we move?”
“I can't.” Estelle whispers softly, her expression changing from deviance in the face of Theo to downcast and sheepish.
“I'm stuck.” She admits.
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Leaning against the bar Ruby absent mindedly listens as Ellie reads out the weather forecast for the forthcoming day on the screen perched in the corner of the Saloon.
“Well fancy that, clear skies and sunshine, again.” The sound of Tom's voice snaps her back into the reality of her surroundings.
Ruby struggles to remember what she'd even been thinking about.
The weather wasn't always quite so perfect though, for instance Theo's birth had coincided with one of the island worst ever hurricanes, which had left Ram stranded on the mainland with Amber, Lex and Slade.
She can't help but smile as Tom lifts Mia up onto the bar, the pretty toddler has a head full of floppy blonde curls, and a mouth that is currently occupied by a clutch of brightly coloured, plastic keys.
“Are you hooked on the hard stuff, already?” Ruby grins at the little girl, who simply dribbles down the front of her lilac coloured dungarees in reply.
“Well, I did catch her trying to sell some of her toys to Lex for bottle money.” Tom chuckles indulgently, ruffling his hand through the little girl's hair.
“How's Trudy, it can't be long now, until 'D' day.” Ruby's not entirely sure about her sudden employment of mimed quotation marks, she giggles softly.
“Holding up, we're on the home stretch, Tai-san thinks it should be any day now. We're excited, but it's a bit crazy, you know, I've never thought as myself as a Dad, before, I mean Brady was twelve when me and Trudy, you know.”
Ruby does know, she can still clearly recall the evening where Alice had unceremoniously dumped Tom in the middle of the Saloon for cheating on her with that...fruitcake of a former Supreme Mother, she pretty sure she's substituting the word fruitcake for another F related word.
“And I mean, Brady already had two Fathers the mighty Z.O.O.T...” He glances nervously in Mia's direction at the invocation of Zoot's name, nothing terrible happens.
“And Bray who is perfect.” Tom fails at concealing his bitterness towards his rival.
“I heard that.” Ruby teases.
“I mean, I'm from Grays in Essex, I can't compete with a demi-god, and the worlds most compassionate man.” He huffs.
“Where is Brady?” Ruby asks, deciding now would be the right time for a subject change.
“Some beach party Amber persuaded her to supervise, but you know Brady, she doesn't do supervision, or responsibility.”
She nods in complete agreement, Brady having just walked out half-way through the lunch hour rush during a trial shift.
A sinking feeling begins to overtake Ruby at the thought of the antics her son, and his friends will probably end up falling into. She knows it's ridiculous, because at Theo's age, Ruby was self-sufficient, with a pair of skinned knees, and her own burgeoning business, but he's her baby, and all logic seems to pale in the face of that.
“What can I get you two, anyway?” She says noticing that KC has started to sway in the general direction of the bar.
“Food. Trudy's taken the night off from cooking, and I'm too afraid to cook anything in front of her. So, me and Mia were wondering if we could get a takeaway, nothing special fish and chips, three times, would be great.” Ruby chortles at the suggestion, buzzing the doorbell on the bar to alert Darryl to the order.
It's only been two months since Trudy departed the Saloon on maternity leave, but Ruby already bitterly misses the other woman in her kitchen, there isn't a better cook on the island, and her own merge lunch and evening menu repertoire simply doesn't measure up.
Briefly Ruby catches sight of Ellie's familiar blonde locks once again gracing the screen. She leaves Tom, and Mia at the bar, ducking her head through the beaded curtain she catches sight of Darryl slaving over a small camp stove.
“I've got an order here for fish and chips three times, do you think you can handle it?” He's currently struggling with scrambled eggs.
“I'll try.” He frowns, catching a bead of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
She turns to duck back into the bar, when the the question she really wants to ask suddenly gets the better of her.
“Darryl,” She says, picking at a loose piece of skin on her thumb. Darryl grunts back at her, which is enough for Ruby to continue.
“I thought your fashion show was meant to be screened tonight?”
The conjunction of the words fashion and show are enough to capture Darryl's attention.
“It was, but Ram said he was bumping it.” He shakes his shoulders, the very picture of forlorn.
“Ram should re-name the channel Ellie-Net, since she's the only person who is ever on there now.”
Ruby tries to raise a smile, but she can't quite bring herself to do it.
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Brady and Alex part as soon as Bray rounds the corner.
His blushing cousin immediately turns on her bare heels, hurriedly collecting up a pile of sticks, and driftwood for the fire that is already raging away.
“What, the hell has happened to you?” Alex asks in amusement, his lips swollen.
The fake tan.
Bray can't entirely recall the mechanism, which had encouraged him to trade with KC for one of Gel's treasured bottles of fake tan, seeing the expression on his best friend's face he now knows it was a terrible mistake.
“What?” Bray replies defensively, an awful liar, he shifts his weight from one foot onto the other, and then back again.
“Your face is really brown.” Alex explains, struggling to master the filter between what he thinks, and what he says.
Bray feels heat burn his cheeks, and he squeaks out a “So!”
“Yeah, I got a suntan.” His hands fumble across his chest, he feels transparent. If Alex is this bad, Bray shudders to picture Violet's response.
“Since this morning?”
“It's a nice day,” Bray stumbles.“I'm just not as pallid as you lot, I exercise.”
And then Bray sees her, and his throat dramatically constricts.
Violet.
The most beautiful, and violent girl on the island.
She smells like pineapple sex wax.
Bray still vividly remembers the first time she ever punched him, and the fact that she use to enjoy wiping her snot on the back of his head at school.
He lost his heart to Violet at the age of ten, when she'd brutally rugby tackled him, burying his face in the sand.
Violet is Bray's idea of perfection, right down to her almost buzz-cut, and perpetually sneering expression.
The only problem is her disdain of his very existence.
“Not this, again.” The sound of Alex's voice brings Bray back into reality, he quickly closes his mouth.
Alex has been forced to spend most of their friendship listening to Bray's unrequited obsession with his twin sister.
“Bray man, there are other girls on the island. What about Estelle she's really pretty,”
Bray notices Brady's eyebrow arch at Alex's suggestion.
“Really?” She repeats, with Brady it's often hard to tell if she's joking or being serious.
“You know what I mean. Or Fenny, she's obliging.”
Fenella as she's better known, is a recent addition to their group, who KC won on the mainland during a poker game. She'd originally been intended as a sort of pet/friend/slave for Gel, who was horrified by the sight of the flea invested child.
Bray's Mother had immediately removed Fenny from the dubious care of KC and Gel, relocating the girl to his family home, where she'd promptly infected them all with nits.
Fenny had also primarily communicated in a language no-one had ever heard before on the island, which had led Salene to suggest that it might possibly be Swedish, definitely European of origin.
She has now enough English under her belt, to be able to converse easily in a thick accent. She now also lives with Alice, helping her to run the vital ferry service.
The small circular burn scars that pickle her arms, and legs, denote that her primary use on the mainland had been as an ashtray.
“Fenny's not my type.” Bray whispers, a point, which has little to do with her lack of personal hygiene, and more to do with the fact that Fenny just isn't Violet.
Pairing or Characters: Ruby, Darryl, Lottie and a lot of OC's
Word Count: 2828
Rating: PG-13,
Disclaimer: Set now perhaps last week or possibly today. Doctor Who and Sex Wax references. Enjoy : D
“Oww get off, that went in my eye!” Theo shrieks.
The sound of splashing and Lottie's excited giggles float through the kitchen door. Behind the bar Darryl catches Ruby with a shrug.
“Sounds like they're having fun.”
Ruby rolls her eyes, knowing full well what her son, and Lottie 'having fun' will equate to.
“Why, are you such a baby!” Lottie sniggers.
Ruby ducks through the beaded curtain, which acts as a divider between her Saloon, and her home. The sight which greets her is of her son, and Lottie furiously splashing each other with water at the kitchen sink, she spots the growing puddle of soapy water spreading across her floor.
“Why, is there more water on the floor than in that bowl?” She asks, trying her best to appear stern, when actually she's enjoying the sight of her family having so much fun.
Ruby bites down on the inside of her cheek to stop herself from smiling.
It must work, because the pair fix her with twin sheepish expressions.
“She started it!” Theo exclaims, jabbing one wet index finger in Lottie's direction.
“You are such a snitch.” Lottie sneers, the bridge of her nose wrinkling in disgust.
“I'm not interested in who started it, I'm finishing it. You two, do this deliberately, so me and Darryl end up doing the dishes for you.” Ruby frowns.
“Yeah well, it wouldn't exactly kill Ram to lend a hand around the place, would it.” The younger woman replies.
“He's busy.” Ruby sighs, tired of rolling out the same old excuse, even she doesn't really believe it any more.
“Too busy to lift up a cup, or even bother to speak to his own son.”
Theo shifts awkwardly from foot to foot at Lottie's observation.
Ruby's not trying to stop herself from smiling any longer.
“Theo, it's not like that.” She says her expression becoming pained, remembering a time when that had genuinely been the truth.
“Why do you bother defending him, when we all know that Ram would rather spend his time staring at a screen, than be here in the real world with us!”
Darryl leans against the bar, straining to listen to the conversation flowing out in snatches from the kitchen, so he only half hears the sound of his name when it's called.
“Hey Darryl!” Finally he glances in the direction of the Saloon's open doors noticing Josh hovering on the threshold.
“Hi Josh, why don't you come on down.” He greets the young boy with a wide, enthusiastic smile.
“I can't,” Josh explains, sliding his crooked glasses off the end of his nose, wiping the lenses with the edge of his checked shirt.
“I'm a minor, I've got to be accompanied into the Saloon by an adult.”
“I'm an adult!” Darryl grins suddenly remembering that he is now well over the age of eighteen, although he has yet to admit that fact on his acting CV.
“Really, ah well then, you're just the man I need.”
Darryl makes his way across the Saloon towards the door, linking arms with Josh over the threshold he escorts the boy towards the bar, noticing his clashing lime green bow-tie as they walk.
“Bow-ties are cool.” Josh informs him sagely.
“Why do you let him get away with it, the old Ruby never would have let someone walk all over her like this!”
Theo watches his Mother's expression carefully, she looks as if she's about to cry.
He's not one hundred percent sure how he feels about the situation himself, it's not easy growing up with someone like Ram as your Father, a man who most people dislike and distrust intensely for reasons no-one has ever bothered to explain to him fully.
All Theo knows is that in the dim and distant past his Father did a lot of terrible things, mostly to their neighbours.
But he was his Dad, and up until about a year ago Ram had been a pretty great one, admittedly Ram was never in the same league as Josh's Dad Slade, who would easily take home medals in parenting.
Lottie is right, now everything has changed, Theo can't recall the last time they shared a meal as a family, or failing that a conversation.
Theo decides he should probably interject about now.
“Leave it, Lottie.” He says feebly, he's never found it easy to assert himself within a household of two such mouthy, and opinionated women.
It's at this point Darryl thankfully appears, rescuing the situation in his usual bumbling manner.
“Hey Theo, you're little friend Josh is waiting out here for you.”
A wave of relief floods him, he seizes his chance to escape.
“Josh is waiting, I better go.” Theo shrugs, his hands finding their natural home in his pockets.
The fight that's not a fight between the two women dissipates.
“Oh, promise me you'll take care.” Theo's Mother can't stop herself from fussing, he's the boy who always has to wear a scarf, wrap up warm even though they live on a tropical island that has never known winter, and eat those extra sandwiches.
He rolls his eyes at the very suggestion.
“Mum please, I'm not planning on plummeting off a cliff. It's just a party on the beach,” He quickly ads before his Mother gets the chance, remembering her many, many lectures on the subject “...and yes, I won't go swimming.” Recalling the numerous times that his Mother has invoked the opening scene of a film called Jaws, when warning him about the dangers of night-time swims.
Theo's never actually seen a film, but Jaws sounds excellent.
Theo then plants a kiss on her cheek before she has a chance to object, slipping seamlessly into the bar he catches the trail end of Josh moaning about how he's “...not little.”
“Alright, Joshua Tree!” Theo greets his best friend with a wide grin.
“Is your last name Tree?” Darryl snorts from behind the bar.
Josh pauses to think for a moment. “No, it's Slade.”
Darryl meets this comment with his own unique brand of slack-jawed idiocy, asking as the boys are half way across the Saloon. “So Slade's name is Slade Slade, that's weird.”
“No, it's Ron.” Josh replies.
Outside the Saloon, Theo and Josh are assaulted by another balmy evening, the temperature never manages to drop into single figures.
“Do you think Darryl's on a register somewhere?” Josh observes as they skip down the steps that lead up to the entrance of the Saloon.
“What you mean like 'behold the worlds stupidest man, how does he survive without a working brain' sort of thing?”
As his eyes slowly becomes accustomed to the darkness of their surroundings, Theo makes out the outline of the wheelbarrow he persuaded Josh to liberate from the community vegetable patch.
“Now, don't get angry.”
He discounts Josh's suggestion the closer they get to the wheelbarrow, which is already full with something that in no way resembles their secret stash of booze.
“What's she doing?” He spits in disgust at the sight of Josh's sister, sitting in their wheelbarrow, her massive pink and white tutu sucking up all possible available space.
“She has a name.” Estelle asserts, folding her arms across her chest.
Theo can't believe that she's actually pouting.
“You look like a cake!” Theo remarks his a sneer, she's ridiculous, her very presence sets his teeth on edge.
“I'm going to accept that as a compliment, Theodore.” Estelle grins innocently back up at him.
He completely hates her.
“Well don't, because it wasn't!”
“Yeah alright, can you two just shut up, you don't like each other we're all on the same page with that. And there's nothing I can do, she threatened to tell our Dad about the booze if I didn't let her come.” Josh illuminates the situation with a long drawn out sounding sigh.
“You are such a snitch!” Theo turns Lottie's earlier sentiment on Estelle.
She retaliates by poking out her tongue.
“Great well, now you've both got that out of your systems, can we move?”
“I can't.” Estelle whispers softly, her expression changing from deviance in the face of Theo to downcast and sheepish.
“I'm stuck.” She admits.
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Leaning against the bar Ruby absent mindedly listens as Ellie reads out the weather forecast for the forthcoming day on the screen perched in the corner of the Saloon.
“Well fancy that, clear skies and sunshine, again.” The sound of Tom's voice snaps her back into the reality of her surroundings.
Ruby struggles to remember what she'd even been thinking about.
The weather wasn't always quite so perfect though, for instance Theo's birth had coincided with one of the island worst ever hurricanes, which had left Ram stranded on the mainland with Amber, Lex and Slade.
She can't help but smile as Tom lifts Mia up onto the bar, the pretty toddler has a head full of floppy blonde curls, and a mouth that is currently occupied by a clutch of brightly coloured, plastic keys.
“Are you hooked on the hard stuff, already?” Ruby grins at the little girl, who simply dribbles down the front of her lilac coloured dungarees in reply.
“Well, I did catch her trying to sell some of her toys to Lex for bottle money.” Tom chuckles indulgently, ruffling his hand through the little girl's hair.
“How's Trudy, it can't be long now, until 'D' day.” Ruby's not entirely sure about her sudden employment of mimed quotation marks, she giggles softly.
“Holding up, we're on the home stretch, Tai-san thinks it should be any day now. We're excited, but it's a bit crazy, you know, I've never thought as myself as a Dad, before, I mean Brady was twelve when me and Trudy, you know.”
Ruby does know, she can still clearly recall the evening where Alice had unceremoniously dumped Tom in the middle of the Saloon for cheating on her with that...fruitcake of a former Supreme Mother, she pretty sure she's substituting the word fruitcake for another F related word.
“And I mean, Brady already had two Fathers the mighty Z.O.O.T...” He glances nervously in Mia's direction at the invocation of Zoot's name, nothing terrible happens.
“And Bray who is perfect.” Tom fails at concealing his bitterness towards his rival.
“I heard that.” Ruby teases.
“I mean, I'm from Grays in Essex, I can't compete with a demi-god, and the worlds most compassionate man.” He huffs.
“Where is Brady?” Ruby asks, deciding now would be the right time for a subject change.
“Some beach party Amber persuaded her to supervise, but you know Brady, she doesn't do supervision, or responsibility.”
She nods in complete agreement, Brady having just walked out half-way through the lunch hour rush during a trial shift.
A sinking feeling begins to overtake Ruby at the thought of the antics her son, and his friends will probably end up falling into. She knows it's ridiculous, because at Theo's age, Ruby was self-sufficient, with a pair of skinned knees, and her own burgeoning business, but he's her baby, and all logic seems to pale in the face of that.
“What can I get you two, anyway?” She says noticing that KC has started to sway in the general direction of the bar.
“Food. Trudy's taken the night off from cooking, and I'm too afraid to cook anything in front of her. So, me and Mia were wondering if we could get a takeaway, nothing special fish and chips, three times, would be great.” Ruby chortles at the suggestion, buzzing the doorbell on the bar to alert Darryl to the order.
It's only been two months since Trudy departed the Saloon on maternity leave, but Ruby already bitterly misses the other woman in her kitchen, there isn't a better cook on the island, and her own merge lunch and evening menu repertoire simply doesn't measure up.
Briefly Ruby catches sight of Ellie's familiar blonde locks once again gracing the screen. She leaves Tom, and Mia at the bar, ducking her head through the beaded curtain she catches sight of Darryl slaving over a small camp stove.
“I've got an order here for fish and chips three times, do you think you can handle it?” He's currently struggling with scrambled eggs.
“I'll try.” He frowns, catching a bead of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
She turns to duck back into the bar, when the the question she really wants to ask suddenly gets the better of her.
“Darryl,” She says, picking at a loose piece of skin on her thumb. Darryl grunts back at her, which is enough for Ruby to continue.
“I thought your fashion show was meant to be screened tonight?”
The conjunction of the words fashion and show are enough to capture Darryl's attention.
“It was, but Ram said he was bumping it.” He shakes his shoulders, the very picture of forlorn.
“Ram should re-name the channel Ellie-Net, since she's the only person who is ever on there now.”
Ruby tries to raise a smile, but she can't quite bring herself to do it.
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Brady and Alex part as soon as Bray rounds the corner.
His blushing cousin immediately turns on her bare heels, hurriedly collecting up a pile of sticks, and driftwood for the fire that is already raging away.
“What, the hell has happened to you?” Alex asks in amusement, his lips swollen.
The fake tan.
Bray can't entirely recall the mechanism, which had encouraged him to trade with KC for one of Gel's treasured bottles of fake tan, seeing the expression on his best friend's face he now knows it was a terrible mistake.
“What?” Bray replies defensively, an awful liar, he shifts his weight from one foot onto the other, and then back again.
“Your face is really brown.” Alex explains, struggling to master the filter between what he thinks, and what he says.
Bray feels heat burn his cheeks, and he squeaks out a “So!”
“Yeah, I got a suntan.” His hands fumble across his chest, he feels transparent. If Alex is this bad, Bray shudders to picture Violet's response.
“Since this morning?”
“It's a nice day,” Bray stumbles.“I'm just not as pallid as you lot, I exercise.”
And then Bray sees her, and his throat dramatically constricts.
Violet.
The most beautiful, and violent girl on the island.
She smells like pineapple sex wax.
Bray still vividly remembers the first time she ever punched him, and the fact that she use to enjoy wiping her snot on the back of his head at school.
He lost his heart to Violet at the age of ten, when she'd brutally rugby tackled him, burying his face in the sand.
Violet is Bray's idea of perfection, right down to her almost buzz-cut, and perpetually sneering expression.
The only problem is her disdain of his very existence.
“Not this, again.” The sound of Alex's voice brings Bray back into reality, he quickly closes his mouth.
Alex has been forced to spend most of their friendship listening to Bray's unrequited obsession with his twin sister.
“Bray man, there are other girls on the island. What about Estelle she's really pretty,”
Bray notices Brady's eyebrow arch at Alex's suggestion.
“Really?” She repeats, with Brady it's often hard to tell if she's joking or being serious.
“You know what I mean. Or Fenny, she's obliging.”
Fenella as she's better known, is a recent addition to their group, who KC won on the mainland during a poker game. She'd originally been intended as a sort of pet/friend/slave for Gel, who was horrified by the sight of the flea invested child.
Bray's Mother had immediately removed Fenny from the dubious care of KC and Gel, relocating the girl to his family home, where she'd promptly infected them all with nits.
Fenny had also primarily communicated in a language no-one had ever heard before on the island, which had led Salene to suggest that it might possibly be Swedish, definitely European of origin.
She has now enough English under her belt, to be able to converse easily in a thick accent. She now also lives with Alice, helping her to run the vital ferry service.
The small circular burn scars that pickle her arms, and legs, denote that her primary use on the mainland had been as an ashtray.
“Fenny's not my type.” Bray whispers, a point, which has little to do with her lack of personal hygiene, and more to do with the fact that Fenny just isn't Violet.