"Okay. I shouldn't be more than a couple hours. I'll check the gate again on my way out."

She checks the gate. Not yet. She goes foraging and comes back with her basket full of dew and berries and nuts and roots and edible flowers and strips of delicious tree bark.

The gate takes a week to settle on Forks. Promise flutters back from her after-waking check and says:

"The gate's working. You can go home now."

"You're welcome!"

Fred follows, excited to head home. "Not that your food isn't great, but - dad's probably freaking the hell out. Also, quicksand and being stuck in a house for like - a month."

"Nevermind the more dangerous things here."

Ted is feeling very snarky today. It's rather fun.

"For rescuing you from quicksand?" says Promise. "You're welcome. Well - here's the gate."

It is, now that it's working, very pretty - sort of pearlescent and shimmering, an arch just tall enough for a full-sized human to step through, wildflowers already starting to wind around the places where it touches the ground. There is a curtain hanging from the arch, which looks filmy and thin and translucent while conveying absolutely no real information about what's on the other side of it.

"Pretty. Wheee, cheeseburgers here I come!"

And without further adieu, off Fred goes through the gate.

"You're welcome," Promise says. "I'm just glad you found me and not - anyone else."

And she pauses, then flutters up so she's eye-to-eye with him, and kisses him, on the lips -

- and gives him a push through the curtain and he's standing in his backyard in Forks.

!!!!


Ted has no idea how to respond to this, he's never been kissed by a pretty fairy girl before. Or anyone before. He tries to think of - some response, any response aside from being stunned and catatonic and utterly still. And then before he can reconstruct his head, he's pushed gently through the gate and - is no longer kissing her.

He is standing in his backyard. He thinks there are words he wants to say, things he wants to do, but - but he just got kissed and he is bewildered and confused and damn it, now it's too late to kiss her back and they can't even talk about having a relationship (it had never even entered his mind, that a relationship was a thing that could happen) or - or something. Literally anything. He almost, almost goes back, almost goes back to see if he can think of literally anything as a response, but then -

- Then his father's there and has scooped him up into a hug and he's remembered how much he missed his dad and how much he wanted to be able to go home. Fr- Savannah's already blurted out most of what happened, but Ted (Darren, he reminds himself, he's not in fairyland anymore, he can go by his actual name again) gets to explaining the fine details.



It's a while, before he can start trying to figure out how to get back. There's some issues involving the police and no longer being a missing person and trying to explain where they've been for three weeks, or why Darren's lost so much weight in such a short period of time. Darren leaves the explanations to his sister, as the one actually capable of lying. The official story is: someone unpleasant kidnapped them, they escaped but without ever seeing the person's face or getting any real details from them, and were helped by a friendly stranger who got them back home. Close enough story, if you consider the unpleasant person the place itself.

Which, of course, is why Darren starts grid-searching the backyard so he can get back. Savannah thinks he's crazy, but leaves him to it, vowing to never go back. She doesn't want to be trapped in a tiny house again, as much fun as eating from Promise's hand was. Darren's not of the same opinion. He's got a bag of food this time, and keeps muttering something about angles and directions all the while. Just because he can't see it doesn't mean it's not there, he thinks that from the mortal side it needs just the right angle, otherwise people would fall into them all the time -

-and then, predictably, he finds it. And he's not in Forks anymore.

He takes a deep breath, and goes back to Promise's house, and knocks on the door.

Promise opens the door, apparently having just come out of the bath, since her hair is wet and she's wearing a towel.

She looks positively stunned to see him.

... Yup. That's Promise. Wearing a towel. And nothing else. Darren (Ted, now, or some other name that's less stupid.) wanted to say something clever or do something smart or - something. But Promise. In a towel. Unhelpfully, he wonders what it would be like to kiss her now. While she is wearing nothing but the towel.

The clever or smart thing he was going to say comes out as: "B- th- Promise, um, -" and then he looks up at the sky above and manages a squeaky, "Hi?"

"N-No, no, this time was on purpose," he says, quickly. "I'm fine, totally fine, even brought food this time just in case - um."

Words. He knows he can speak them. He literally just did, so why can't he think of anything to say?

"Should I go put on some clothes and plot a sightseeing tour that doesn't require you to be able to fly? Do you want to borrow more books? What's up?"