Chapter Text
Sterling, Blair, and April are seniors in this. The events of the show take place in the fall semester of their senior year culminating in the events of the lock-in which happens in mid-November
April has to stop herself from texting Sterling about six different times on Saturday. The past few days they have been in near-constant contact; she feels lost without the goofy texts and short facetime calls.
She is shocked that Sterling has managed not to text her first. She knows she fucked up when Saturday goes by without a peep from the blonde. She already knew she fucked up, but she thought maybe just maybe Sterling’s stupid optimism would bounce back after a good night’s sleep. She secretly hoped Sterling would be back to coaxing her painstakingly from the closet as if nothing had happened. Not that it would have worked, but Sterling could still try.
Luke told her that he saw Sterling’s mom pick her up from the lock-in on Friday. He also mentioned that Sterling was crying when he went to talk to her. April felt her heart literally ache with that information. She has to do this though. She has to push down her feelings and get through this. Sterling is managing not to text her, so if she can do it, so can April.
Compartmentalize.
She is secretly looking forward to church on Sunday simply for the fact that she can sneak a peek at Sterling. She misses the girl so much already. She forces herself to sleep on Saturday night with the image of Sterling waving sheepishly at her from the Wesley pew the next morning.
Except the next morning when she gets to church Sterling is nowhere in sight. In fact, the entire Wesley family is suspiciously absent from their pew. She feels her stomach plummet at the thought. Why is the whole family missing? Sterling would have mentioned if they were going to be out of town or something this weekend, right? They were talking up until yesterday. She is sure if they were going to be gone this weekend, Sterling would have mentioned it.
She plasters on a false smile while she listens to everyone welcome her dad back to the church like he wasn’t persona non grata last week. She hides her dismay under layers of practiced grace and etiquette.
All the while her mind is racing. Where are the Wesleys? She sits down in their usual pew before the sermon is set to begin and sneaks her phone from her bag. She texts Sterling quickly just to check in. Checking in is okay, right? She has never been so unsure about her actions. She presses send anyway and crosses her fingers for a quick response.
Her mother and father come to join her a few minutes later and she has yet to get a text back. She shoves the phone back into her bag and scoots over to make room for them. Her father’s eyes stay glued to her bag for a moment too long and she knows she is going to hear about it later. No phones in church. One of his many rules for their family. She is starting to chafe against his expectations of perfection.
As soon as the service is over April is practically running from the church. She pulls her phone out only to see there are no new messages waiting for her.
The ride home is filled with her father talking about the importance of giving church her full attention. He talks the entire time about her using her phone. She tries in vain to defend herself by saying it was before the service started, but he won’t let it slide. He says the time before the service is time she should use to catch up with her friends and neighbors.
“You don’t want people to think you are rude, do you April?”
“No sir,” she gives the only answer he’ll accept.
When they get home, she makes some excuse about having a group project and leaves without much explanation. Her mother calls to her reminding her about their family dinner later, but she is only half listening. She is in her car and driving to the Wesley house before she can talk herself out of it.
Sterling can’t feel her legs. She is still standing, she knows that, but they are completely numb. Her heart is racing so fast it feels like it might burst. She feels like her chest is hollow. A swirling vortex pulling her inside herself and she can’t catch her breath. Her senses aren’t picking up her surroundings anymore. It’s all murmuring voices and bright blurry lights. She can feel a tightness in her hand. She squeezes and realizes it’s Blair’s hand in hers. The only thing cutting through the fog, Blair.
The police show up to arrest Dana and Levi. Watching the pair being put in the back of a cop car is slightly comforting. The police start taking statements and the fog rolls back in on Sterling. She doesn’t even remember what she told them. Blair is talking to a cop to her right, but the words aren’t making it through the fog.
Then something touches her shoulder. She jumps violently. She spins quickly to see Bowser standing there with a cup in his hand. His eyes are soft and he holds his hands out to show she isn’t in danger.
“Drink some water, kid,” he urges gently. He holds the cup out to her and she takes it weakly. Her hand is shaking, but he doesn’t say anything. He puts his hand on her shoulder and squeezes comfortingly. She sips from the cup, grateful to have a distraction.
Silently drinking her water, Sterling waits for Blair to finish her statement. Bowser stays close, a calming presence even in his stoic silence. Blair finally finishes up and turns to Sterling.
“Hey,” she whispers. “They said we can leave if you’re ready.” Sterling nods rapidly. She needs to go now.
After the earth-shattering revelation that her entire life has been a lie, Sterling can’t stand to be in the same car as her parents Debbie and Anderson. Blair seems to share this thought. She turns to Bowser and begs him for a ride home. She has yet to drop Sterling’s hand once and Sterling could not be more thankful. She isn’t sure she would still be standing without it.
Bowser looks toward Debbie and Anderson. They have clearly heard what Blair has asked. Blair looks too, but Sterling can’t get herself to glance their way. Bowser shrugs and tilts his head as if to say it’s alright with him if it’s alright with them. No words are exchanged, but they must agree because next thing she knows Sterling is being ushered into Bowser’s Jeep with Blair tucked beside her in the backseat.
They get five minutes down the road before Blair seemingly can’t take it anymore.
“I can’t believe they have been lying to us our entire lives. What kind of people do this?!” Her voice is raised and Sterling can’t help flinching at the volume.
Maintaining her optimism throughout the entirety of tonight’s events has taken a toll. She is crashing hard. The reality of what was about to happen to her is setting in. Dana and Levi were fleeing the country and she was about to be going with them. She was about to be trafficked to another country and then what would have happened. Levi clearly was not a stable person. He was cruel to Dana in the few minutes Sterling watched them interact. She can’t even imagine what he would do with her, a person he cares nothing about.
Blair is still talking about their parents her parents when a sob breaks from Sterling’s throat. Blair cuts off immediately and pulls Sterling close as she breaks.
“I can’t,” she mumbles into Blair’s chest as she crumbles into her embrace. “Blair I can’t…”
“It’s okay,” Blair reassures. “I’ve got you.” She rubs a soothing hand up and down Sterling’s back. “You’re safe. I will never let anything happen to you again.” She kisses the top of Sterling’s head as the blonde continues crying roughly into her shoulder.
“I can’t talk about it yet,” Sterling finally manages to say. “I can’t,” her voice cracks over the words.
“Sh, sh, it’s okay.” Blair hugs her tighter. “If you can’t talk about it, we won’t talk about it. Until you’re ready we don’t have to talk at all.”
And so, they don’t. They ride home in silence. The only noise being Sterling’s sobs and Blair shushing her softly.
Even Bowser respects her wishes. When they arrive at their house he gets out and hugs them both. He doesn’t say a thing but they know they can call him if they need him. He steps back and nods once before getting in the car and going.
Blair leads her silently into the house. They beat their mom and dad Debbie and Anderson home it seems and that’s a blessing in so many ways. Sterling isn’t sure what she is feeling yet, but she doesn’t want to look at them let alone talk to them.
They climb the stairs and go into Sterling’s room. She looks around and suddenly feels out of place. A feeling of not belonging here is creeping into her bones. She looks around the room and knows that everything inside of it is hers, yet it feels like someone else’s things. She scans over the books and pictures, the bed she has always slept in, her initials displayed proudly on the wall and gets a bitter taste in her mouth.
“I need a shower.” She grabs her towel from her desk chair and walks into the bathroom. She hasn’t let go of Blair yet, so the brunette is following her without complaint.
Sterling reaches into the shower and turns on the water. Only then is she faced with the reality that she is going to have to let go of Blair now. She stares at their hands with nothing short of despair on her face.
“Hey,” Blair says softly. She shakes their joined hands a little to get Sterling to look up. “I won’t leave the bathroom if you don’t want me to.” Sterling starts shaking her head. “How about this? I’m starving and I know you must be too, so I’ll go collect up a ton of snacks. You shower. Then we will hole up in your room for as long as you want.”
“Yeah, okay. We can do that,” Sterling murmurs. She looks down at their hands again and lets go for the first time in what feels like hours. “Please hurry though,” she pleads.
“I will,” Blair promises before turning and rushing out of the bathroom.
Sterling showers. She tries to let the hot water relax her, but every time she closes her eyes she sees Dana saying “Sterling, you are my daughter.” She rushes through the shower as fast as she can. She doesn’t want to be alone any longer than she has to.
She walks into her room wrapped in a towel and Blair is waiting on her bed. The brunette is staring down at the blankets with her brow furrowed. There is a collection of possibly the unhealthiest snacks Sterling has ever seen sitting on the bed next to Blair. The door to her room is closed, but she can hear Debbie and Anderson moving around in the house.
“Sterling, you are my daughter,” Dana’s voice echoes in her mind. She shakes her head sharply to dislodge the thought.
“Blair,” she says gruffly. The brunette snaps her head up. Sterling thinks she didn’t hear her come in.
Blair points at the bottom of the bed. Sterling’s favorite hoodie and pajama pants are waiting there for her. Sterling exhales in relief. Thinking isn’t necessary as she grabs the clothes and throws them on quickly. She looks up and Blair is climbing under the covers. Once she settles in, she reaches out for Sterling. The blonde throws herself into her sister’s Blair’s arms. The blankets are thrown over her as she snuggles into Blair further.
“Movie?” Blair asks.
“Please,” Sterling grumbles without lifting her head from their embrace.
Blair moves as little as possible while setting up her laptop. She puts on the first comedy that she finds on Netflix and settles back in with Sterling. They stay like that until they both fall into a fitful sleep. Sterling’s dreams are plagued with Dana and Levi.
April knocks on the door of the Wesley house timidly. She has no idea what is waiting for her on the other side. She has a hunch that it’s going to be Blair Wesley with a lacrosse stick, but she tries not to dwell on that image. A moment later the door swings open to reveal Debbie Wesley. She is as beautiful as ever, but April notices that she isn’t wearing makeup or jewelry and her hair is in a low ponytail. This is the most disheveled April has ever seen her.
“April,” Debbie breathes softly. She seems surprised to see her but doesn’t have the energy to do anything about it.
“Hi, Mrs. Wesley,” April uses her talking-to-church-people voice. There is a moment of awkward silence as Debbie practically uses the door to hold herself up. The longer she stands here the more April thinks something is very wrong. “Sorry, is Sterling here?” she finally asks.
Debbie looks up over her shoulder toward the second floor. “Um,” falls from her lips. April has never heard Mrs. Wesley say um in her life. Debbie’s eyes find hers again. “She is, but I’m not sure she is up for visitors right now.” April’s face must show her confusion and dismay. Did Sterling tell her parents about their break-up? Debbie reacts to whatever April’s face is doing. “She had a rough night on Friday. I can tell her you stopped by though,” she says tiredly but not unkindly.
April isn’t sure how to proceed. She should leave. The manners her parents hammered into her are telling her to leave, but she can’t. She has a bad feeling now. Worse than the feeling she got this morning when she saw the Wesley pew empty in church. Worse than the feeling when she opened her bedroom door to see her father standing there and definitely not in prison anymore. Worse than sitting on a bench outside school swerving a kiss from the only girl she has ever really wanted.
“Actually,” she starts reaching out and stopping Debbie from closing the door. “She texted me.” A white lie never hurt anyone right?
“She did?” Debbie sounds shocked and confused.
“She asked me to come over.” Okay two white lies.
“Oh.” Surprised again. Apparently, April is full of them today. Debbie looks up over her shoulder again. “Well okay then,” her voice sounds steadier now. She steps to the side opening the door wider with her movement. “She and Blair are upstairs in her room,” she gestures to the stairs. “You can head on up.”
April steps through the threshold and feels an odd sense of Déjà vu. When she was friends with Sterling in elementary school, this house was like a second home to her. She remembers the halls and stairs. She remembers the kitchen and the foyer, but the décor has changed. The pictures are new. It reminds her of what she lost when her and Sterling stopped being friends. It sends a feeling of dread through her stomach. The thought that she was this close to getting it all back just to lose it again. She shakes it off.
Compartmentalize.
“Thank you, Mrs. Wesley,” she turns back to Sterling’s mom. She smiles sweetly as Debbie closes the front door.
“Sure thing, honey.”
April turns to go up the stairs. She takes a few paces and is on the first step. She is wringing her hands in front of her. She hopes Mrs. Wesley can’t see.
“April?” Debbie calls to her. She stops dead in her tracks and spins to face Mrs. Wesley again. “I’m glad you two are friends again.” April exhales in relief. “She will need all of her friends right now,” Debbie says cryptically and walks away into the kitchen.
April watches her go with a furrowed brow. What the hell does that mean? What happened on Friday?
She can hear the television playing when she gets to Sterling’s door. She reaches a tentative hand out and knocks loudly so it can be heard. There is no response, so after several seconds she knocks again.
“Just leave it by the door,” Blair shouts gruffly.
“Uh Sterling?” April asks. “It’s me,” she calls into the wood of the door. “It’s April,” she corrects. She isn’t anything to Sterling anymore so she shouldn’t assume she would know who ‘me’ is.
The sounds of the show cut off. She hears Blair say something but can’t make out what. There is a distinct shuffling sound and a crinkling of a chip bag maybe. Then silence.
“Come in,” Blair yells to her.
Her hand shakes as she reaches for the doorknob. She takes a deep calming breath before opening the door. She steps inside the room and closes the door behind her. She turns to face the twins.
Blair and Sterling are both tucked into her bed. They are propped up slightly on the headboard with a laptop between them. They are in comfy clothes under a pile of blankets and their heads are leaned together. She would say they looked cute if she didn’t hate one of them.
She locks eyes with Sterling. “Hi,” she says sheepishly. She stares at Sterling’s icy blues. They look so sad. Her eyes are red and puffy. She has bags under them like she hasn’t slept. April’s chest clenches.
“Hi,” Sterling parrots back with a matching tone. Then no one says anything for a while.
April can see Blair looking back and forth between them. She is surprised she is still standing here. She thought for sure that Blair was going to kill her the moment she saw her.
Blair moves. She is pulling back the blankets on Sterling’s bed. She goes to stand up while she speaks.
“I’m gonna give you two some time alone,” she explains. Before she has even stood up Sterling is grabbing her. Sterling’s hands both wrap around the arm closest to her.
“Please don’t leave,” Sterling pleads. April watches her eyes fill with fear.
Blair reaches up with her hand that isn’t in Sterling’s death grip. She takes Sterling’s hand. “Okay dude, I’m staying right here.” She settles back onto the bed, but even closer to Sterling than before. “I’m not going anywhere.” She takes Sterling’s hands from her arm and holds both of them between their bodies. “You’re safe,” she whispers so softly that April is sure she wasn’t supposed to hear it.
April shuffles closer to the bed. She feels the need to explain herself. “I was worried when y’all weren’t at church this morning.” Blair and Sterling both look at her then. “You haven’t texted me since Friday, and when I didn’t see any of you at church…” she trails off. She doesn’t know if she should tell Sterling how desperate she was to see her this morning. Catching glimpses of Sterling is all she’s been doing for years now. Catching glimpses just to stay in her orbit. Picking fights and competing in every activity just so she knows Sterling is thinking of her too. Even if those thoughts are negative. She disguises it as hatred, but she has always been far too intrigued with the blonde Wesley twin. (She won’t even let herself think the L word.) And now, like Icarus, she has flown too close to the Sun and gotten burned. No longer allowed to admit that she wanted to see Sterling, be near her, feel her warmth.
“Shit Sterl,” Blair cuts into her poetic thoughts. April’s eyes fall to the brunette. “You should have told me to text her for you.” She nudges Sterling with their still-joined hands.
“I,” Sterling seems like she doesn’t know what to say.
“Sterling, uh, broke her phone on Friday night,” Blair plows right through Sterling.
Sterling’s eye cloud over. She is staring blankly ahead. She seems a million miles away.
“Sterling,” Blair calls her back. “You’re okay.” April thinks it’s meant to be a statement, but it sounds to her like a question too. Sterling nods once. “Sorry,” Blair directs at April. “I know we don’t really get each other, but I should have texted you. That was shitty of me.”
April’s head is spinning.
“Blair,” Sterling says weakly. “We uh…” Sterling looks at April searchingly.
Suddenly it clicks. Sterling didn’t tell her. Blair doesn’t know that April ended it. That April ripped out her sister’s heart and stomped on it. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic, but still. April thought it was at least noteworthy enough for Sterling to tell Blair about it. They talk about their top five gum flavors, but April breaking up with Sterling doesn’t make the cut? Maybe she wasn’t as important to Sterling as she thought.
“I should go,” April says without meaning to.
“What?” Sterling and Blair say in unison.
April stares at them. She doesn’t know what to say. Everything that comes to mind sounds pathetic.
“I haven’t told her yet,” Sterling finally says.
“Told me what?” Blair asks instantly. “What the hell else could have possibly happened? We have been hiding out in this room since we got you back.” April tilts her head at that. Got her back? “What else could have happened since then?” Blair sounds frustrated. April can see their grip on each other’s hands tightening.
What the fuck is going on?
“It was before. At the lock-in,” Sterling explains. “It’s why I wanted to leave so badly.”
“What happened?” Blair asks plainly. She looks at April and the redhead sees anger peeking through.
“I broke up with her.”