fool (lester averman)

chapter twenty-five

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chapter twenty-four: homeward bound

a/n:

krystal's character development is so important to me, actually.

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"Father--"

"No."

Rory hides her face behind her menu and tries her best to keep her composure. Across the table from her, her twenty-seven-year-old stepmother-to-be mimics her.

Oliver thought that the morning after the game it would be a swell idea (and by a swell idea, he meant good press) to take his fiancée, daughter, and father out to breakfast before Hendrix sent the girl packing back to the Midwest.

What he hadn't accounted for, however, was Elijah being lucid enough to pick a fight with him at nine o'clock in the morning.

"I've lived ninety-eight years, and I didn't get here by eating like a fucking rabbit." The old man snaps and snatches his menu out of the reach of his son. "I'm going to eat what I want and so is your daughter."

Oliver exasperatedly drags both of his hands down his face and shoots his daughter a pleading expression. She pretends not to see it.

Rory woke up at an ungodly hour, quietly got ready in the dark so she didn't wake either of her roommates, and then had to get into a car with her father and Krystal. Her morning was far from pleasant before they spent the better part of five minutes arguing over what she can and can't eat, so she's going to ignore them as long as she can in favor of closing her eyes and imagining that she's back at the hotel, eating pancakes and hanging out with her friends.

"She's an athlete. She can't fill up on carbs and sweets." Oliver grits his teeth and tugs the menu back toward him. "And you are a diabetic and on the verge of heart disease. You can't either."

"Put a sock in it. You think you're a big man, don't you? Just because I let you take the position doesn't mean that you've got a modicum of power--"

She puts her menu down with a heavy sigh and meets Krystal's hesitant gaze. As the two men at the table dissolve into the world's quietest fight (in which her father shrinks down to a human level and her grandfather maintains his subhuman one), Rory leans toward the other woman and presses her lips into a line.

"So... What are you getting?"

Krystal breathes a laugh. She's exhausted. Rory can tell that much.

(Her concern for the woman is another thing that she'll never admit.)

"The baby wants pancakes, eggs, and sausage, but I think, judging by the tone of this conversation, I'll cut out the pancakes. What about you?"

Rory laughs, too. "The steak and eggs, I think."

"Good choice."

The two of them settle into an awkward silence as Krystal's sentence trails off. Rory chews on the inside of her cheek and stares at the table but, before she can come up with anything else to say, her father's fiancée asks her a question.