KitsuneIchigo

Will pulled into the Ridge driveway and was surprised to see Emily just sitting in Sam's car, the vehicle running although it didn't look like she was going anywhere. He parked his car and walked over to Sam's, stuffing his hands in his pocket as the chill of the day already started to get at him. He was only slightly surprised to see that Emily was asleep in the front seat, head having tilted forward at an angle that made his neck hurt to just look at. He knocked on the window and Emily's entire body jerked in surprise; she looked all around in bewilderment for a moment before she woke up enough to actually see him standing outside the wind

Ben stared at the TV hung up on the wall morosely. He had long since muted the sound and about an hour ago he'd gone from trying to read the subtitles to giving up entirely and trying to entertain himself by guessing at what they were talking about. Though he was more than a bit tired, and almost constantly yawning, he couldn't fall asleep. The constant whir and beeping of the machines in his own room coupled with that of the other rooms nearby had him on edge—it was only made worse by a nurse coming in every half hour or so to slink about his room uselessly as if he was too stupid to guess that they were making sure he wasn't going to

Sam took controlled breaths as the music switched back to Fighter Plane and Ben twirled her back into his arms, the two of them slipping back into the pace of a slow dance easily as the crowd around them roared with applause and laughter. Sam allowed Ben to lead them along the dance floor slowly once more, catching sight of all their friends and their loved ones as they twirled around the dance floor. Emily was beautiful in her white floor length wedding gown, her face glowing as she stood next to Will. Sam’s husband didn’t look too much different from their own wedding day, as handsome as ever in a tux, but he was a bit more rel

Sam breathed out deeply as she started to enter the crow pose, allowing her arms to take the brunt of her weight as she leaned her head forward a bit to elevate her back and keep her feet off the ground. Yoga had always been a calming exercise for her, something to fall back on to help work out the stress of the day. With Ben in rehab and both Will and Emily suffering because of it, she knew she needed it. Emily was a person that she could never abandon, she knew that. There was no question in her mind that when it came to most people, Emily would always come first. Sam would never allow herself to forget who was responsible for the person h

It took Emily a few years to realize that Max was an unofficial member of the Leonardi household. She had known he was there, of course, but it had just slipped her mind and she’d never bothered to truly appreciate him. She loved him and saw him as a weird cousin thing and her kids saw him as an uncle, she even knew that her husband loved him, but it just never really hit her until she took a day off of work because he had to fly to South Korea for a family funeral and she’d been left to handle her own kids. What she and Ben did—it was important. Their jobs were important. They just didn’t leave a lot of time for thei

His mom had been black. Brittany Louis King had breathed poison into his life; it had been nothing simpler than a puff of a cigarette to her. He had never meant anything to her, not after his dad died, but black was a color that consumed. His happiness and innocence had been the inhale; his strive to make her proud the exhale. Black was a color that made you want to lighten it, shine a light through the darkness or mix it with another color. Black was something to be feared. It had sucked him back in even after he had thought he’d escaped to his Freedom. Maximus Leonard Sullivan was yellow. Warm, like the sun. The first family that h

Amber picked her way through the market place carefully, walking swiftly despite how crowded the tiny streets were. There were hardly any women out and about, and those who were had their heads held low, accompanied by their fathers or husbands or brothers. She stuck out like a sore thumb, head held high even with the stares she could feel on her back. The country she was in currently was largely patriarchal, and it wasn’t the first time that she would wonder if it was a mistake for the king to send her here. But, alas, someone did have to talk to the different governments that their kingdom was allied with, and she did so want to see

Buck Jr. Lancaster, known simply as Buck to his friends and Junior to the family, had been shipped to the city when  the crops went bad and Senior went bankrupt, with Ma being too sickly to do anything but housework. The farm, which had been in his family since the first Lancaster had settled in America, was sold off to a man Buck had secretly nicknamed the Boogeyman. The Boogeyman was a grim, cantankerous sort of fellow—Ma said he had salt ‘n peppah hair—who’s age showed in the crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes, the gray creeping into his naturally dark hair, and the yellow stain on his teeth from smoking to