brutal | grayson hawthorne

let's get this party started

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favorite crime - Olivia Rodrigo
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"You're not taking it seriously, are you?" Grayson's voice causes Liz to jump a bit before she relaxes, spinning around to face her intruder. "The letter my grandfather left you, I mean."

Liz ignores the tone underlying Grayson's voice as she turns back around once he steps next to her, both now facing the bricked up entrance to Toby Hawthorne's wing of Hawthorne House.

She figures if she has no idea where to start with all of this, it might as well be the one place in the world she can directly correlate to the man she's on the hunt for.

"I haven't decided yet," she answers truthfully. On one hand, is she just supposed to ignore the letter the old man left her like it means nothing to her? On the other, if Grayson thinks it's a bad idea, maybe she should listen to the person who's objectively less impulsive and more emotionally mature than she is. But that hand's boring, so.

Grayson seems like he wants to say more, but an alarm on Liz's phone goes off before he can go into some rant about how silly the whole thing is.

Football game :/// Liz's phone screen shows, buzzing unrelentingly.

"You're wearing that?" Liz is reminded of the event, then taking in Grayson's red button down and black dress pants, wondering if she can have a conversation with him without bullying him.

Probably not.

"I could ask you the same thing," Grayson looks her up and down and Liz pretends it doesn't make her feel the way it does.

"I'm a Cowboys fan," she explains, both knowing she couldn't care less about football, she just thought it would be funny to show up in the owner's suite wearing the opposite colors that everyone else in the room would be wearing.

"We need to talk about this thing with Toby," Grayson's voice gets impossibly quiet when he says the name, but his tone his heavy.

"Just because you think you're too cool for these games-" Liz is ready to mess with him some more before he interrupts.

"It's not a game," he says sharply, and Liz hates when his voice gets like that with her.

"Lighten up, Gray," she tries pushing his arm to get him to stop with that hooded look in his eyes, but he hardly budges. Strong shoulders, and all.

Liz's alarm starts up again.

"After the game," he nods at her in continuation of what he was saying before she interrupted him the first time, not waiting for a response before stalking off.

Rather than heeding to Grayson's words, Liz spends the ride over to the stadium and the entirety of the game hiding into herself, googling everything there was to know about Toby Hawthorne.

From his "death" by arson in some old town in Oregon 20 years ago to what his favorite store to shop at used to be, Liz knew everything the internet could offer her about the old man's youngest and seemingly favorite child.

She was following up on the girl who was at the Hawthorne residence with Toby and his friends, Kaylie Rooney, when Xander came into the kitchen to see her perched on the edge of the counter, hunched over her phone, distractedly eating the cake pops Mrs. Laughlin made her.

"So you're in?" Xander greets her, grabbing a cake pop and putting his free hand up in surrender when Liz suddenly turns her phone screen away from him at realizing he was in the room with her.

"What?" She collects herself easily, swiping out of Safari and finishing off her cake pop.

"'Find Tobias Hawthorne II,'" Xander is smarter than Liz hoped he would be.

Grayson never got around to telling her whatever it was he wanted to about the whole mystery thing, but the more research Liz did into the topic, the more it felt like something she shouldn't be digging up anyway.

Why fake his death? What did the girl have to do with it? Why go 20 years without seeing his family? Did the old man try to find his son? If he did and couldn't do it, what makes him think some teenagers can figure it out? If he did find his son, why not make him come home?

Xander is examining Liz too intensely for her to continue spiraling, so she shakes her head to ignore her thoughts and eyes him evenly.

"I don't know if I'm in or not," she says similarly to what she told Grayson earlier. Y'know her and her commitment issues, so.

"Well, keep me updated," Xander grabs a second cake pop and eats it whole. "I could use some more team members," he says around a full mouth, walking out before he can explain himself more.

Liz isn't sure exactly what he means by that, but does start to think about how many other people might know about all of this. Her thoughts still somehow making their way back to Grayson.

"Don't you have school tomorrow?" Speak of the devil.

"Don't you have a life?" She responds to Grayson as he walks into the kitchen moments after Xander left, making himself comfortable on the counter beside her, a half empty platter of cake pops between them.

"If my mother or Aunt Z find out that Toby's alive, it could end horribly for a lot of people in this house, especially Avery, probably you too," Grayson gets right into it instead of playing into Liz's childish games.

"Me?" Liz decides to fixate on those words, already seeing what he may be talking about with Skye and Zara.

"If one person can argue against the will, it's Toby. If people find out he's alive, who knows what'll happen to the estate. To the foundation," he explains.

"I would be fine losing the foundation," Liz replies, knowing Grayson already knows how she feels about getting ownership. She wasn't raised to take it over like the Hawthorne brothers were. Like Grayson was.

"Is that why you're doing this?" Grayson looks like he just unlocked a clue.

"What?" Liz shakes her head easily. "No, I didn't even think of that."

"Hm," he nods like he realizes that would be silly anyway. Even if Liz does technically have conservatorship over the foundation, her and Grayson both know he's doing more of the heavy-lifting over there - something neither of them mind.

"Well," Liz hops off the counter and turns to Grayson, walking backwards out of the kitchen. "See you tomorrow?"

"What's tomorrow?" Grayson picks up a cake pop.

"Bring Liz to Work Day," she grins, seeing him suppress a smile just as she spins around again to walk out of the door.

a/n:
liz is just the girl version of if jameson and avery had a son ykwim - anyway This Love by u know who