honey, i'm home! {cleo, adrian}

[sadie0blue]

YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE YOUR EYES

if ten million fireflies lit up
THE WORLD AS I FELL ASLEEP

Sadie was so happy as the cab pulled up to the dorms that when she opened the door and scrambled out, her foot got caught in her bag's strap and she fell out of the car and onto the ground, gravel scraping against her knee through her jeans. And this was while the seatbelt was still attached, straining and practically begging her to get back in. Which she did, at a crawl, and unbuckled herself with hurried fingers. She handed the driver four twenties without thinking to count, bouncing up and down as he grew wide-eyed and in an agonizingly slow way counted the money and nodded for her to leave. She did so without haste, and barely remembered to grab the bag that had tripped her up before slamming the door and turning to sprint to the stairs.

Stupid Niagara Falls! Stupid Camping! She'd been bribed with not having to pay for her own summer boarding and a lack of curfew if she came home instead in return for going on a camping trip with a few uncles and an aunt. Well, along with not being a brat about the whole thing, but that was simple! She was hardly ever bratty, especially when she got to chart stars! Lovely, lovely stars, EVERYWHERE! More stars than she could see in any city she'd ever been in! How could she call it stupid? She scolded herself for the very idea that anything that could let her see wonderful, wonderful stars, more than she could count, could be stupid! How silly she'd been to think so.

But it was a little stupid, she told herself stubbornly. She hadn't seen her friends, her family outside of her "family" had been absent from her life for longer than she wanted them to be ever. Ever, ever, ever! And that was why she tripped herself up on her sprinting up the stairs, landing on her face and tumbling forward to land sitting on the square between where the staircase turned. Scrambling up, she ignored the small trail of blood now trickling down the side of her face.

Then she was at the door. She was at the door! Sadie was at that amazing, amazing, awesome door! She stopped a moment to remind herself to open the door, and in that moment she wondered if something had happened while she was gone, if they'd been killed, kidnapped, disabled in any way, shape, or form, what had happened, was something wrong, what would she do if they weren't there, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh goddddddd!!

But that was only for a moment.

Throwing the door open, she burst in with her arms up and hands spread wide in a triumphant pose similar to if she had just finished the climactic number or at least a very long note of a song in a Broadway musical.

"HONEY, I'M HOME!"

- - - - - - - - - -

status: COMPLETE
tagged: ADREO *hiss* Adrian and Cleo
words: COUNT 'EM!
outfit: POLYVORE, BABES!
notes: ANYTHING ELSE?
lyrics: FIREFLIES, OWL CITY
credit: TEMPLATE BY SHAZI ?! AT CAUTION 2.0

"Talking looks like this!"
Thinking looks like this!
"Other characters talking looks like this!"

[CLEO EVERETT]

Agreeing to this. Was perhaps. The stupidest thing. She’d ever done. Ever.

For one, Cleo did not play video games. If she played a video game, it was Harry Potter. Or something tame. And safe.
Second, Cleo did not like zombies. Zombie anything. Movie or book or TV show or video game.
Third, there was no way she was going to play a video game in which you had to kill zombies (or ‘infected,’ whatever).
Fourth, THEY WERE PLAYING THE STUPID GAME IN THE DARK.

She couldn’t decide if there was something she hated the most. It might have been that even the slightest movement made her jump. Or perhaps it was that her own shadow scared her. It also could’ve been that she couldn’t hide behind a pillow and hold the controller at the same time. It was probably the music. Cleo hadn’t agreed at first, actually. Unfortunately, she agreed to watch Adrian play Left 4 Dead. That was her downfall. Because then she became curious and thought “oh, this doesn’t seem so bad.” (Then again, she’d gone to her room and only returned in time to see character selection thus missing any intros that would’ve frightened her).

Adrian had turned her cell phone off so any incoming texts or calls wouldn’t scare her. Cleo didn’t care, really, though she did question the ‘scaring’ bit because she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be that scary. Oh, how she had been wrong. What scared her most was having to creep around, keeping an eye out, only to have a zombie jump out at you from behind. That was cool. Totally fair. A lot of times, Cleo half started to get up to turn on the lights. Somehow, she managed to be mauled by a zombie each time, forcing her to sit down and fight the stupid thing off. She complained most of the time: “Adrian, I hate this.” “Adrian, this sucks.” “How does anybody play this game ever?”

There was another thing annoying her! It was this tiny little nag at the back of her mind, something she was supposed to be remembering. It continued to slip out of her grasp each time she tried to recall what it was. Eventually, she quit trying and focused instead on doing better at the game. Unfortunately, the witch music had just started up; Cleo hated the stupid witch. She curled up, hugging her legs against her chest, her chin resting on her knees, practically peering over the top of the controller. “Adrian, where is she? I don’t want to die. She’s so scary and such a brat. Why is she so temperamental, I don’t underst—” The door flung open quite suddenly, in fact, just as soon as Cleo seemed to wake the witch up and there was this wretched music and her character was dying but—

Cleo leapt up onto the couch, wobbling a bit. She threw her controller down (she was quite sure it hit Adrian in the head) and screamed bloody murder, assum—no knowing that it was an infected (never mind that it had said “honey, I’m home!”) and she was going to die or something and clearly the only rational thing was to hide behind the couch. Which was exactly what she did. Diving behind it, Cleo managed to turn her terrified shrieking into words, something along the lines of: “ADRIAN, KILL IT!! KILL THE INFECTED!!!! KILL IT BEFORE IT KILLS YOU!!!!!”

outfit~!

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[JONAH CETACEO]

Adrian was good. No, he was really good. He had successfully gotten Cleo to join him in a game of Left 4 Dead..with the lights off. Life was good again, aside from the drama at the fountain that caused Cleo and him to stop seeing eye to eye, but meh, so that was life. You roll with the punches, but you act as though those punches aren't effecting you...no matter how much you hurt on the inside. He was sitting sprawled out, back against the couch, smiling as Cleo sat next to him, but his insides churned and knotted up as the memories of how they looked and acted towards one another that night and a few days after. He felt betrayed, but Jacob had the trump card... knowing her longer and her having feelings for him. No matter how much she denied that the accusation, Adrian could see it and practically feeling the chemistry between the two. He shook his head a bit shoving the thoughts away and looked at Cleo with a reassuring smile that everything was okay. He meant with their life, but she'd perceive it as the game.

He had told Cleo to turn off her phone because the noise it made when it rang was obnoxiously loud and would scare the living hell out of her. He however left his phone in his lap when the screen flashed to life and a message popped up. He glanced down and it was a message from Sadie. She was here. She was home. And Adrian had to fight the urge to tell Cleo and smile. He'd want Cleo to be surprised, but his calculations on Cleo reaction and Sadie's entrance were WAY off. They were successfully killing infected left and right, Cleo adding commentary and instructing him like he was brand new to the game. She also complained...more than usual about how much the game sucked and how much she detested it. Adrian just shrugged it off as nonsense, and they continued playing. That's when they got to the the witch.

Cleo freaked as she begged him to tell her where the witch was,and before he could answer the door was flung open and Cleo was panicking. She ended up throwing dropping the controller on his head, which made him wince in pain. Adrian stood up protectively as Cleo hid behind the couch, "CLEO...Nooo!" He yelled as he approached Sadie. Adrian smiled big as he took Sadie into a big hug. He lifted her off the ground, held her, and gave her a squeeze before setting her back on the ground and lightly kissing her cheek. "Welcome back, Northstar." Adrian's voice was low and her nicknamed felt foreign on his lips, but it felt right. He was happy again.

[SCOTT PARKER]

All Scott had wanted was a bit of sleep. That's it. That was his one wish in the entire world. Just some rest so he could get back to working hard on his artwork the next day. God, he didn't know where all the time had gone. he felt like the semester was flying by and he had hardly gotten anything done on his scultpure. It was still just a pile of different pieces and parts lying in what used to be Adrian's room. Every day he went to class now was a reminder of how absolutely slow and pathetic he was being. He would hear other people talking about how they had just started putting the finishing touches on their work before it would get graded, or how they had created their masterpiece as a tribute to the master Renaissance artists.

He had thought that some sleep would do some good. It would at least allow him to escape into a world where all his creative juices flowed freely and he could get a kickstart for his inspiration. Unfortunately, and he didn't know whether it was the result of the stress or something he ate or just pure bad luck, Scott's dreams were less fantastic and inspirational and more of a terrifying, nightmarish memory.

He hardly remembered any of it upon waking, but there was definitely fear involved. Fear and his family. He remembered that it involved the night he left. There was the yelling and the anger and the tears and the feeling of betrayal that still sat heavy on his mind upon waking up.

And when he DID wake up, it wasn't to exactly the most pleasant of scenarios. The horrified screams that echoed throughout the apartment jolted him back to the waking world. Frankly, he was terrified of what may have laid beyon the door to out of his room. There was hardly any light filtering in, and it was all just awful timing to be honest.

Still shaking, he got out of bed to approach the door. The screaming had stopped, but all he heard was something muffled on the other side of the walls. More scared than he'd ever been inside that dorm, Scott grabbed the first piece of metal sculpting material he could get his hands on. Quietly, he nudged the door open with his foot, holding the scultping metal at his head like a bat.

Upon seeing Sadie standing down the hall in the front door, however, Scott breathed a sigh of relief. Oh, thank god. Sadie he could handle. Terrifying scream-inducing murderers he could not.

Dropping his weapon at his feet, he ran to join the welcoming party. "SADIE! WELCOME HOME! OH GOD, WE MISSED YOU!"