Renfaire Fantasy 2: We are not Friends pt 1 (Patreon)

Although she’d decided on an impromptu plan of action for them just so that they weren’t all dawdling in despair by the graveside all night, it took several tense minutes for Kelly’s plan to get any traction. Rebecca wanted to heft Brian up piggyback and carry him back towards the camp, because she was the only one remotely capable of attempting it, but an unresponsive Stephanie had her arms locked tightly around Brian and was refusing to let go.

Brian roused not long after, coming to his senses with everyone fussing over him in the dark.

“Are you okay?!” Emily demanded. “Brian? Answer me.”

“No,” Brian said. “Of course I’m not okay. Who would be okay with this?”

His voice felt smaller somehow, defeated and angry, and although it wasn’t like he had snapped at Emily, his tone of voice cast a pall of despondence over the gathered girls all the same. Kelly and Rebecca helped him—and by extension Stephanie as well—up to their feet, but Brian seemed stiff and unsteady. No one seemed inclined to say anything more after that, and so Kelly simply began leading them back to the distant campfire light they could see through the trees.

What had seemed like a brief stretch of woods in the panicked run over here in twilight turned into quite a hike in the darkness. Kelly tripped several times and nearly fell, swearing colorfully with each misstep, and Brian holding her hand was moving forward with slow steps as Stephanie shuffled along with him, both arms still hugging him tight. Rebecca kept pace with them without apparent problems, and when Kelly looked back over her shoulder at the grave site, all she could see was Emily’s angry shadow silhouetted by the flashlight that was directed down the hole in front of her.

When they arrived back at campfire, the actual flames had petered out in their absence, and only the orange glow of coals beneath smoldering wood was illuminating the cabin clearing. The somber Brian was directed towards one of the seats around the fire, and then Kelly made sure Stephanie was situated to sit in his lap. She could see now that Steph’s cheeks were wet with tears, but wasn’t able to see much of the girl’s expression—she was hiding her face up against Brian.

“I can set up the tents,” Rebecca offered in a low voice. “I know how—I can get them both up quick, even in the dark.”

The young woman was crouched at the fireside, quickly coaxing it back to life with a stick. Embers danced up into the air as Rebecca prodded the largest remnant of log, breaking away cracked chunks of char and turning unburned surfaces deeper into the coals until tongues of fire reappeared. Kelly watched firelight reflect in Brian’s eyes as he stared into it without seeming to really see it. His brow was furrowed and his jaw was set as though he was gritting his teeth, but his expression mostly seemed grim and at a loss to her.

“I’ll help,” Kelly decided. “Brian—stay with Stephanie. Please.”

“I can carry stuff up the hill,” Brian said, finally meeting her eyes.

“I’d rather you hold onto Stephanie,” Kelly said. “Please.”

“Okay.”

With the atmosphere bleak and heavy, Kelly then followed Rebecca back down the tire rut path towards their vehicles. She wasn’t sure how to feel right now; she felt so many things but held each of those feelings at arms length and simply disassociated from dealing with any of it right now. There was anger and also relief, she was glad this was resolved, even as seeing Brian upset and Stephanie overwhelmed and unable to function was a kick to the gut that made her feel sick.

In regards to whatever mechanics of magic had occurred, Kelly wasn’t really sure what had happened. Her ‘senses’ weren’t working very well, because she’d wicked away her personal well of magic showing off and summoning that speck of light on her fingertip earlier to prove that Rebecca was currently un-influenced by the charm—or at least had no magic in her right now. As a result, Kelly had been enjoying a stabbing migraine throughout all of this, and if they didn’t wind up force-feeding the whole jar of magic cum to Christine tonight, she would be asking for a sip or two.

Brian didn’t seem particularly in the mood for kissing right now, and from the look of things he might not have much magic oomph to spare right now.

“Are you okay?” Rebecca asked as they reached the bottom of the incline and stopped at the parked vehicles. “Kelly?”

“Headache,” Kelly said.

“Your head? Oh, I do have aspirins!” Rebecca said. “I keep a bottle right in the front, in the center console.”

“No,” Kelly let out a bitter laugh. “It’s the kind of headache medicine can’t fix. Found that out the hard way. It’s a magic thing.”

“Okay,” Rebecca seemed to simply accept that.

“Hey, uh,” Kelly stopped the girl before she could unlock a car door. “Rebecca? Thank you.”

“Oh, don’t mention it,” Rebecca brushed her off. “If you do need—”

“No, stop,” Kelly shook her head. “I mean, you’ve done a lot for us. Without getting much of anything in return—you’re not even properly kissed in yet, and I definitely think you should be. Watching after Chloe all this time, staying out here for a whole fucking month… that’s a lot. Keeping her out here as a prisoner, taking care of her all this time, digging a fucking grave. In case of the worst. And, not even knowing when Brian would wake up or when we’d be back out here to, uh, to resolve everything. It’s a big fucking deal, and. Well. We appreciate it. A lot.”

“You’re my friends,” Rebecca said with a shrug, sounding pleased but also embarrassed.

“No,” Kelly said with finality. “We are not friends. Okay? The um, the ‘friends’ I used to have, outside of maybe Chelsea, I wouldn’t trust them enough to let them borrow my fucking hand lotion. For you to do all of this for us, we are not just friends. I don’t know what we are, but we’re a hell of a lot more than friends, and I promise that we’ll figure out exactly what as soon as we can. Okay?”

“Thank you,” Rebecca let out a sigh. “I was honestly, um, I was honest not sure you even liked me very much!”

“I didn’t,” Kelly admitted as Rebecca unlocked her car and then hit the button to pop open the rear hatch.

Together they went around to the back, where Rebecca started tugging out the folding wooden frame of a viking tent, apparently complete with horse-shaped carved figureheads. The ceiling lights of Rebecca’s Suvaru revealed a smorgasbord of camping equipment and historical LARP stuff to Kelly’s gaze. Padded swords and shields were piled up overtop coolers, blankets, and dropcloths, with leather belts and buckles and shopping bags with bread and bananas and cans of soup.

“You’re a weirdo and a goodie-two-shoes; I just wanted to belittle and look down on you,” Kelly said. “The more you stuck with Emily and Brian and didn’t flake out, the more I started to just resent you—and that doesn’t even really make sense, I know. It’s just, like—where the fuck was a friend like you back when I needed one?”

“Hah,” Rebecca let out a good natured laugh at that. “That, I do get! ‘Where have you been? WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! And what good is it that you come to me now? Where were you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am THIS?!’ It’s funny, thinking about it that way—I never thought I would be someone else’s unicorn.”

“Unicorn?” Kelly asked with a frown. “What’s that from?”

“We’ll have to have a movie night sometime with everyone, so we can show you!” Rebecca said. “Catch you up on the classics. Here, take this. It's our ground tarp. Mine is a two-person tent, but you should be able to fit three in there, if you’re cozy. Four might be a squeeze, though!”

With a lunging motion Rebecca ducked deep inside the rear of the hatchback and pulled out a bundle of heavy canvas to pile in Kelly’s arms, and then atop it she placed a large leather pouch that had a distinct jangle of metal upon metal from within it—presumably tent stakes or fixtures. Then, Rebecca started to move aside the grocery bags so that she could pull out another large bundle, this one clearly the tent cloth for her viking thing. The wooden frame itself needed eased out from beneath everything else back there, and Rebecca took a moment to carefully do so before taking it the whole way out and propping it up against the side of her car.

“So you do realize that you’re a unicorn friend,” Kelly remarked. “Like, a real super loyal friend. That’s so rare these days that ‘unicorn’ might not even cut it.”

“What about you?” Rebecca countered. “Aren’t you a unicorn, too? How rare is it for someone like you to stick with Brian and them through everything like you have?”

“It’s not like I even had a choice,” Kelly chuckled. “Stephanie got her grubby little fingers on my heart, and then she was just so sure that I needed to trust Brian with it. And, when I did… yeah. What the fuck am I supposed to do, take all of that back? I’m the last person who I’d trust with my heart, or whatever’s left of it. They need to hold onto it, it really does belong to them. It’s like—it’s like, Steph and Brian and yeah, even Emily went… rooting around through my soul and found a bunch of good bits I didn’t even realize were still there. If I left them, nothing decent or worthwhile part of me would leave with me. Or even be left at that point, I don’t know. Nothing about myself I can stand living with, at least. The thought of not having them in my life anymore… terrifies me. I need them.”

“Hmm, so you’re held captive by the magic of the charm, I see,” Rebecca surprised Kelly with a teasing tone.

“I… guess so,” Kelly scowled. “But, it’s not even like that. It’s a lifeline that got thrown my way, and I’m just trying to hang onto it no matter what. A little worried that I’ll just wind up pulling everyone down with me, since yeah, I always do.”

“You’re fine, you’re fine,” Rebecca assured her. “I was joking.”

“I know. Just…” Kelly groaned. “You’ll see what I mean when you kiss into the group. Maybe. Maybe not? You don’t seem like the rest of us, you seem pretty uh, like you’ve got your shit together. While like the rest of us are incomplete without each other, we each had our issues and hangups and problems.”

“We all have our part to play, and we all need each other,” Rebecca said. “You’re… I was going to uh, to try to talk to everyone individually, but you’re definitely okay with me joining the group? Being with Brian? Sharing into all of this?”

“I guess I always just figured you would be in the first place,” Kelly said. “Like I said—none of this bullshit with Chloe would have worked out, if not for you taking care of everything. Kinda just took that for granted. Are you into Brian? And, are you bisexual at all? Because… yeah.”

“Oh, Gods yes,” Rebecca laughed. “I didn’t want to say anything inappropriate, since everyone’s mood seems so down. I was a bit back and forth over the whole Brian thing over the past month, you know? Thinking about how I feel about him a lot, and just not really completely sure. Because I kept thinking—Brian really isn’t my type, is he?”

“So—?” Kelly gave her an unsure look.

“But then, I saw him punch Chloe, right in the kisser! Bam!” Rebecca tossed out a fist for emphasis. “And, watching him wrestle her up against the wall and just pin her, mmMmmhh. Turned me on so much. The best part, too? That he’s so conflicted about it! He didn’t want to hurt her, even when he had to! I mean Kelly, she bit him! Knowing that blood could possibly put her back on that very bad path and all vampire, again! She did it on purpose, too, she was trying to maybe kill him! I want to comfort him and smother him with affection and assurances, and then at the same time—yeah I want him to wrestle me up against something and uhhhh. Stuff. Yeah! I guess I just saw that he really does have it in him, he’s just maybe not to terms with it exactly yet, and that evokes all sorts of weird compulsions in me? Like, my mothering side and my primal side, both at once? Does that make any sense?! I guess in the end it turns out Brian just does have it in him after all, and now I really really want it in me.”

There was a moment of stunned silence as Rebecca shouldered the viking tent frame and the two started back up the path towards the fire again.

“Uhhh, yeah,” Kelly finally said. “We’re all definitely not gonna be just friends.”

/// Sorry for the delays! Lost water for a bit even here at the new place because of a freeze and then I was working on RE:TT. This section and the previous one might get merged into each other later on today when I'm organizing teasers into chapters. Definitely can't keep "kissing Chloe" as a chapter name because too spoilery for someone just starting Renfaire Fantasy and glancing down the chapter list, so we'll probably go with this. Will fix links and all when I organize into chaps