Posting from overcast Portland now.
Bellevue is about half an hour south of my house depending on the traffic on I405. Hope you're enjoying yourself. I'm enjoying your story. Bullies are hard to deal with and schools still don't do enough to help.
I enjoyed it. It's a lovely place and I hope to return one day!
Yeah, I've had m own bad experiences with bullying in schools. Massachusetts started cracking down it a little too late for me to benefit. Sigh.
(Though I obviously hope that it helps many other victims)
How heartbreaking for Julian and Lita. I really, really hate it when story progression does that.
Lilac prince. That makes me smile. 
I was very mad at the game for nixing Nikita like that! She wasn't the only victim to story progression, but losing her saddened me the most. I wanted her genes!
Can't believe he had the nerve to come to her party! Good thing papa doesn't know about this XD I'd hate to see him get arrested. And it's probably a good thing the Sims aren't actually violent for some of the stuff the game does lol
Oh Heph... A lilac prince indeed! And I still love Julian. It's so sad that he lost a teenage daughter! Bad story progression, bad!
That little snot! A lot of people liked showing up to Waverly parties. At least he didn't cause much trouble there.
Tegan is even more gorgeous as a teen! She's just going to keep getting prettier, isn't she? And it's good to know that Bryant will get his comeuppance.
She was beautiful, and got better as a young adult, yes. Bryant will get what he deserves, but in due time. Nothing happens instantly when you're a Waverly.
I live about ten minutes from Bellevue! Hope you escaped before the rain hit. I'm not a fan of the pinched philtrum and tubercule, but Tegan is pretty darn cute. I may have to steal borrow her clothing aesthetic for one of my Sims it's so gorgeous.
Yes, I escaped the rain...right into Portland's rain. Tegan and company did have weird mouths (as you can see even better when I need to make Jo angry or surprised). Borrow the aesthetic all you want! I actually recycled hers from one of my Life State Dynasty heiresses.
Chapter 71: Trauma Conga Line
“Bryant’s back in town,” Tegan said one afternoon to her mother, “Though I think that he’s fine with girls reading.”
“Gram, you know what to do,” Lily told Annette later that night.
“Spike her orange juice?”
“The other thing.”
As awful as Bryant was, as much as he was likely still a misogynist hiding behind his (admittedly fantastic) talents as a programmer and mathematician, his bad traits did give Tegan more of grandma Annette’s piping hot and sweet baked angel food cake for breakfast. She felt pity for Tegan and had a store of it in the fridge waiting for her. However, it didn’t stop Annette from dishing out rude remarks like she dished out home fries at the diner. Spring came around and love was in the air.
“Maybe he likes you,” she taunted.
“Oh please.” Tegan rolled her eyes. “He’s misguided and I hope he turns around, but he doesn’t like me like anything. Who does?”
“So? I bet my husband said loads of bad things about me before leading me into his bed for, well, things that will come later for you. Whether it’s Bryant or one of those Whelohff boys.” She held her tongue, for the first time in a while, before the name of Hephaestus escaped. Let that happen naturally, she thought, as she dreamed about the wedding of her darling porcelain doll to the older lilac lunatic.
But for Annette, there were other weddings to inappropriately bother the household about.
“It’s almost Love Day,” Annette told Julian one morning, “You’ve been talking about finally tying the knot and what better time to do it?”
“Alright, alright, I’ll talk with her about it tonight. I did pick out my tux, I think. But what if it looks wrong?”
“Uncle Bill didn’t wear a tux when we got married. Stop fretting over it. Just set a date with her. Exchange rings right there if you like. I don’t give a crap.”
She cooked one less meal that night. And then, about an hour before midnight, the door to Julian’s room slammed and the lock clicked in place. He didn’t come downstairs for a midnight snack or a midnight sculpt-a-thon, and he didn’t even go to work the next morning.
Code Aqua was texted to Lily again.
“You poor thing,” she said after cracking the door open. Annette picked the lock for her. Julian, again, missed a day of shaving, though he kept most of his formal suit on. His jacket and white shirt were wrinkled, and he took off his pants, wearing his best jacket with a pair of boxers in need of a wash.
“I know I am,” Julian sighed, “I’m ready to die at this point.”
“I don’t even know what happened.”
“Grab the paper.”
Lily read the fresh newspaper on the porch, and picked out a headline.
Good-Bye Julian: Telecaster Retires. No, it couldn’t have been that. She turned to the obituaries and was hit in the face by the first listing.
Angelita Coddle, 95. Lily didn’t even read the cause of death or who she was survived by. She ran upstairs as if she was starting a marathon, and gave Julian a bigger hug than she ever gave Bronson.
“I’m so sorry about that,” she whispered, letting Julian lean over her shoulder to cry it out.
He let out all of the tears and saline in his body before letting go of his grip on Lily. “It was a bad evening.”
Not that it started out bad. He exited work with a small award in his pocket, for Anchor of the Year, following his excellent coverage of the new space program (which made for a lot of interviews on Bronson’s behalf; he kept asking why he had to dress up for his own housemate to question him). The office threw him a party at lunchtime, complete with red velvet cake, catered finger sandwiches, and tiny pieces of toast with bruschetta. Lita and the family prepared him a healthy salad back at their new-ish home, at the old Rotter residence.
He also got to throw the confetti out of his pockets and retire with a little more peace in his mind, as opposed to biting “oh god I failed” horrors running through his frantic mind.
So instead of failure, he planted a smooch on Lita and prepared to ask her about wedding dresses, or about seeing Franco for some advice about one. But a knife hit a wooden cutting board in a rapid pace, making pieces of shredded lettuce for the salad the family had planned.
“I hope you don’t mind some guests,” Lita said, looking over at a few non-Coddles getting themselves some water before supper. Felix Kindle and Emma Ball were there, meaning that Julian had no escape from his housemates’ families after all.
“As long as your mum isn’t here,” Julian said. He didn’t need his future mother-in-law having an opinion.
Julian changed into something more comfortable than his coat. The family sat down at the dining room table, which seated four. Their guests could pull up a barstool if they needed to get off their feet. Julian ate a third of his salad before looking over at his beautiful Lita again.
“Honey, we’ve been engaged for a while,” he said, “The landlady has given her blessing. Wanna get hitched?”
“I’ve had a white dress picked out for ages,” Lita said, “And the kids are all grown up. Why not?”
“Tonight?”
“Have a headache. Tomorrow.”
Tomorrow was simply too late.
Lita had a headache, but instead of being a little stress headache, it was something along the lines of a giant tumor choking her, or an aneurysm shooting her down in an instant. Whatever the investigation said later was irrelevant, as Lita floated off the ground to meet the Grim one.
Julian mourned, though just for a few minutes. When the first whiff of black smoke hit him, he bolted out the door, unable to face Grim again, not even for his would-be wife.
“I feel like crap for that,” he told Lily, “I want a spine.”
“You don’t need a spine. You were always there for Lita when she was living, and she knows what kind of person you are, doesn’t she?”
“One who could be better.”
“Can I get you something to eat?” Lily asked. He shook his head no. She still went downstairs for a breakfast of her own, only to be greeted by the quiet sound of screws being unscrewed and the static of a broken speaker.
Bronson squatted and fixed the speaker, again, with it still plugged in. Mortified, Lily ran and disconnected the plug from the socket and gave her husband a kiss on the top of the head.
“Never again,” she breathed, “Not even if you’re old.”
Love Day loomed over the household, and Julian still drew the blinds to the windows in his room and buried himself in his down-stuffed comforter. Franco put himself up on dating sites, with little success even if he lied about his weight. Annette didn’t care about love. Lily and Bronson still had each other. Hephaestus avoided the calls from his French mistress ever since he first lead her into the master bedroom of their cottage along the river. Tegan searched for prom dresses, and prayed to the watchers above that she could get away with going to prom by herself.
She still was in Mr. Whelohff’s math classes, and she asked him if he could relay a message to either of his two nephews that she was interested. They both had dates. She asked close to everyone she knew that was interested in girls, even a few other girls in spite of not sharing that interest. All of them had dates or just were not interested. Tegan returned to Mr. Whelohff, desperate to make someone’s night by being their companion rather than go stag.
“Please, Mr. Whelohff, is there anyone else?”
“Listen, Tegan, you know that there is someone else,” he said, “But you and I both don’t want him near you.” Of course, that someone else was Bryant. He turned off all of the girls and gay boys in class with his attitude, and even the adult chaperones wanted to stay 10 feet away from him.
“That is pretty lonely. Maybe we can reconcile, and be friends,” Tegan said.
“Oh why do I have to deal with this?” Mr. Whelohff muttered, “I guess it is your life.”
“Are you going to ask Ms. Kindle out? You said something about liking her, and my grandpa says that she’s single.”
“I guess they’re estranged from each other. No, she’s taken and I’m very happy for her.” He sighed at his bare hands again. “One of these days…”
Tegan barely slept that night, even though she had the privilege to sleep in thanks to a day off from school and Love Day. Bryant was going to be lonely at prom, and he was going to the event. She spotted him at the salon getting fitted for a suit after school. What sort of evil person wouldn’t intervene in such a case, even for an old enemy?
Regardless, she went to the Spring Festival with those questions unanswered. Julian moped, and everyone except for him and Hephaestus was content with their romantic situation. Maybe Tegan could cheer her lilac prince up, flip the gender roles and be the princess who saved him from a crappy Love Day. She could kiss those thin lips if she was older and taller, but at that point, the top of her head fit snugly under Heph’s chin and the soft hairs of his beard if they hugged, and he mastered four different levels of calculus while she was stuck with trigonometry. So she would probably engage in a chaste dance with him, even though he detested the popular music that played over the intercom.
Hephaestus found a different solution, and way to experiment. Francisco, Julian’s illegitimate son, blew a kiss in his general direction. Well, Francisco’s mother was pretty, right? Maybe Hephaestus could use him as a crutch until he found truer love.
So he tried. Francisco melted into the kiss, while Hephaestus stiffly stuck with it.
“Yeah, I’m not gay,” he told Francisco, putting five simoleons in the tip jar regardless.
“Suit yourself,” Francisco replied. Julian cried in the distance, not at his son liking men. That was fine. Charging for kisses to pay the bills wasn’t so fine.
Lily and Bronson changed into clothing more comfortable and danced to the same song that they went steady to so many years ago, attempting to replicate the moves. It likely knocked Lily’s vertebrae out of alignment and into a chiropractor’s nightmare, but the two of them were taken back to their prom night, with Tegan jealously watching. She wanted that, and everybody deserved the feeling of holding a dance partner. Even Bryant, as much as the thought of him in the same room as a girl shook up the remnants of breakfast in her stomach.
Oh well. Hephaestus practiced his aim with throwing horseshoes, and even in a spring rain-shower, she was eager to join him for a short period of time.
For a while, everyone was occupied.
Bronson spun Lily around to the next ten songs on the playlist.
Franco and Annette practiced for future immortal gnubb tournaments.
And Tegan, well, letting go of childhood was tough for her, okay?
She also received a text from Bryant, odd as she never gave him her number, and his demeanor towards her took a sharp turn from childhood.
Your legs are beautiful like wowStop going for bad boys. They just want anorexic hussiesI’m a nice guyShe responded from the top of the jungle gym.
I’m busy.
Lol you’re just gonna get dumped you—She stopped reading at the seven insults he threw at her after that.
“You okay?” Hephaestus asked, “I feel a bad presence in you, peapod.”
“Exactly that,” she mumbled.
“Come down from there.”
“Make me.”
“Oh man, I’m going to be so lonely down there, dancing by myself. Who would let me live like this?” he moaned, mockingly.
“Alright,” Tegan said, with a chuckle.
They could do better than the elders, so why not dance?
Neither of them knew how to dance. They both stepped on each other’s feet, bare feet against kitten heels or the worse reverse. They both fell on their rears multiple times, slipping on the sick floor in the rain or attempting a move beyond their abilities.
“You know, you’d make for a pretty good…chaperone,” Tegan said, biting her tongue for a second before saying “date.”
“I don’t like those types of things,” he said, “But you’ll be a good date for someone. Someone nice, I hope. I don’t want our lovely peapod to be the world’s chew toy.”
“What if it’s for the greater good?” she asked.
“Not even for that.” A synthesized buzz, the intro to a new song, played over the speakers. “I can kind of tolerate this one. Let’s dance.”
The whole family danced for the rest of the night, partnered or alone. Hephaestus and Tegan slowed down their pace and moved and made fewer mistakes. Bronson and Lily worked up a sweat that still couldn’t kill their woohoo drive for the night.
Tegan slept soundly that night, but Hephaestus stayed awake, looking at pictures of curvy pin-ups alongside his newest research into genetics. Whatever, who didn’t like models and cell biology? Bronson walked into his room at that moment.
“What the hell are you doing?” Bronson asked.
“Appreciating.”
“I warned you about this before she was born. I’m saying it again. Not a hand on my daughter. Not an insane hand on her.”
“We weren’t slow-dancing or anything.”
“I know everyone in this house well, boy,” said Bronson, “My daughter is not your plaything. You let her romance naturally, even if it is some high school kid. She’s lovely, but I’m a tough man. I’m all for toughening her up through mistakes.”
“I’m not doing a thing. Maybe I sensed a bad aura on her last night.”
“And if you decide to pounce on her when she’s legal and I’m dead and gone, get your defective mind checked out first before I summon a tank from the afterlife to your exact location. If you get yourself checked out, it will just be an angry new recruit instead.”
“Fine, Mr. Curious, fine. Let me sleep.” Hephaestus plopped down on the pillow, dressed in his finest heavy coat and boots.
“I just don’t want her to get hurt, that’s all,” he said under his breath, before the motion-activated lights dimmed and shut off.
Word Count for this chapter:
2,453Word Count so far:
120,895
