GOLDEN, luke hemmings

XXXVII: WE'RE BIG KIDS IN A GROWN UP WORLD

this is so long (like seriously super super long) but so cute and important, enjoy babes xx anyways this is dedicated (i'm doing this on mobile plus idk if wattpad still lets you dedicate stuff whoopz so imma just tag) to grlfrndsbtchn because i love willow with all my heart & she's so pretty??? and sweet?? sorry i suck at holding a conversation but i'm willing to learn fortnite for u boo

chapter thirty seven; we're big kids in a grown up world

Kids, as Luke had discovered, were incredibly hard to keep under control.

It had been nearly seven or so hours—yes, seven—and Luke had no clue how two people with such tiny little bodies could produce and pack so much energy. Maybe he shouldn't have given them both extra KitKats, which Ava had a stash of in her room next to her If you wanna makeout, smile when you give back the lighter lighter (and Luke did, one hundred percent, get flashbacks to the night they met), when Ava had sternly said no. He truly had never seen two children so hyper before, and it was now 5:45 PM and they were just beginning to cool down.

During the past seven hours, Luke and Ava had entertained them and fed them occasional snacks, including his mistake of sneaking them candy and Ava forcing them to eat some vegetable chips because she didn't have any actual fresh vegetables. The four of them stayed precisely in the living room, Ava knowing that Becca would be livid if kids had rummaged through her room when she wasn't home with their grubby little fingers, and Ava just didn't know what hazards her room held. And she was not willing to risk it.

Becca wasn't coming home until much later, her shift running longer with articles ever since she got promoted at the beginning of the year as a New Year's gift from her superviser (a long awaited and well deserved promotion that she had been effusive about for ages). That, however, didn't mean that she wouldn't be upset if she came back and her shared apartment was a mess.

Ava had sent her a text earlier, warning her of the assignment that was thrust upon her in the morning, and Becca had only sent one thing back: Keep out of my room. So, as aforementioned, Becca's room was off limits.

The living room became the place where the Ryuu and Kaito not only watched nearly every family friendly movie on Ava's Netflix account, severely butchering the algorithm, guaranteeing that her recommendations would be messed up for weeks, but it also became the place where they beat Luke consecutively at four board games. And that was being generous. (Ask anyone else there, and they would've said that Luke had lost seven.)

For half of those board games, Luke didn't even know you could lose at them, not until today. He assumed they'd be good at the simple childish games, but he hadn't known they would demolish him at nearly every friggin' game underneath the coffee table.

There were many things that made him insecure, but he didn't think two cocky nine-year-olds taunting him with the name Sore Loser two minutes into Monopoly would be one of them.

Yes, he was a twenty-one year old man ashamed of losing to two kids in front of his insanely attractive best friend, who was also those said kids' older sister. Don't even get him started on how the twins ruthlessly murdered him at Jenga as Ava struggled to stifle her laughter.

Despite his horrible and almost pitiful losses however, the twins quite liked Luke. While Kaito had already thrown boundaries out the window and clung onto Luke for a majority of the previous hours, Ryuu let him grow on her for a while before she now laid on top of his chest, eyes falling heavily as everyone currently watched Mia Thermopolis freak out over the fact that she was a princess.

Kaito, on the other hand, and on the opposite side, was fast asleep against Ava's legs, his head drooling onto her left thigh while his legs were curled up by Luke's hip.