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inthequeeryetgood · 7 years

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Still Looking Up

A Raven’s Home fanfic Rating: T Paring: eventual Raven/Chelsea (Chrave) Summary: PARENT TRAP(ish) AU. Raven and Chelsea ended up falling out big time after the chinchilla controversy in their senior year of high school and haven’t spoken to each other since. When Levi, Nia, and Booker discover a photograph of their moms from their good old days, the kids decide it’s time to try and bring the two old friends back together. Chapter: 2/? (1) Word Count: 4567

(You can also read on AO3)

At first, Chelsea thought she was imagining things. She had to be. She slammed her eyes shut and drew in a sharp breath of the mild Chicago air that was still cool enough to burn her lungs.

That couldn’t be Raven, she thought to herself, because the last she’d heard, Raven was living in New York. That couldn’t be Raven because Eddie had never mentioned anything about Raven having kids, let alone twins. That couldn’t be Raven because Raven wouldn’t have just spent the last five minutes so aggressively ignoring her. That couldn’t be Raven, because, well… It just couldn’t be.

She released the breath she’d been holding and chuckled softly to herself, suddenly feeling silly that she’d over-reacted the way she had. She didn’t know what she was thinking. That so wasn’t Raven.

Except when she opened her eyes and looked back over at the mysteriously evasive woman dressed in black, watched as she placed gentle kisses on two eager foreheads, it became crystal clear that the strange woman was, in fact, no stranger at all. She could feel her eyes bugging out of her head and had every desire to reach up and make sure they stayed right in their sockets where they belonged, but she found herself frozen, stuck standing stock still.

Not moments later, the woman looked up. Their gazes locked and confirmed for Chelsea that she wasn’t making things up. Her eyes weren’t deceiving her. Standing there before her, looking exactly as she had all those years ago and yet completely unrecognizable at the same time, she was sure, that it definitely was—

“Raven?”

A long time ago, Chelsea might have been able to pick out the specific emotions from the quick succession that flashed across the woman’s face before a careful smile settled into place, but she couldn’t anymore. At least, not right now.

“Oh, hey!” The long, high-pitched greeting seemed to ring in her ears for hours.

Chelsea would generally consider herself a happy person. She got along with most people and all animals, she always laughed at the jokes that no one else found funny (unless they were hurtful because there was nothing funny about being mean), and she didn’t tend to get angry very easily. When that last one happened, and it happened only very rarely, it had to be caused by something really, really big.

The past ten minutes, in any larger picture, weren’t something really, really big. They were nothing compared to the great college-roommate-script-theft fiasco of 2009, which she got to relive a second time when the movie was released three years later without a credit to her name. Nor did they stand up to the ten-year-long con that ended with her in serious need of a divorce lawyer and a therapist, neither of which she could afford by that point. The only free therapists she knew of had run off to live in a remote Icelandic village as soon as she’d moved into her college dorm, and while they might not have charged her a penny, the phone company sure would have and a pretty one at that.

Somehow, though, this hurt more than either of those moments in her life combined.

Chelsea more than anything believed in fate. She believed that someday, if it was meant to happen, she’d see Raven again. She had been imagining it for a long time, actually. They’d both be older and wiser and they’d talk and hug and things would just work out and they’d be back to being the best of friends. The disagreement that had led to their separation would no longer be an issue—not because Chelsea stopped caring about the chinchillas or the sheep or all the other innocent animals or because Raven had become a vegan and joined PETA, but because they’d realized after all these years that their friendship mattered more than their differences. But maybe Chelsea had imagined wrong. Maybe Raven had recognized Chelsea before Chelsea had recognized her and was still so angry and all she wanted was for Chelsea to leave her alone. The thought made her stomach turn.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you,” Raven finally supplied, filling the silence that had fallen heavily over them. Chelsea could feel two small pairs of eyes looking at her with curiosity, perhaps trying to parse out whether or not they should be recognizing her, too. “It’s been a long time, you know?”

Or maybe that was it. It had been so long that Raven barely even remembered who she was. Despite not keeping in touch or asking for a lot of details from Eddie, Chelsea knew that Raven had moved on to big things. It was pretty hard to step into a department store anymore without seeing at least one of her designs. Raven had probably met so many amazing people and gone to so many amazing places that her life before wasn’t worth remembering anymore, best friends (well, ex-best friends) included.

“Yeah, it has,” Chelsea nodded her agreement.

It was hard to decide which felt worse—being ignored or being forgotten.

Before anything else could be said, Zoodles started beating his tail wildly against Chelsea’s leg. She crouched down beside him and began to run her hands through his shaggy coat to calm him, grateful for the distraction, but it wasn’t as much of a distraction for Zoodles. He lunged forward as soon as the object of his affections was in range and was immediately wrapped in a hug by a weary-looking Levi. Chelsea leaned forward and brushed her son’s short bangs back from his face, momentarily forgetting that the rest of the world existed.

“Hey, honey. How was the first day?”

Levi sighed and, instead of giving any sort of answer, buried his face into the dog’s soft hair. Chelsea didn’t push further, but it left her with nowhere to turn but back to Raven.

“So, how have you been?” she asked as she stood, her genuine curiosity getting the better of her. The answer seemed obvious because Raven looked good. Great, even, despite the damp patches of slobber on the hems of her (suede, she tried and failed not to note) pants.

“Good, good, you know,” Raven said. She was no longer looking at Chelsea, though, her gaze falling instead to Levi below. Chelsea could see him peeking back at her from the corner of her eye. Raven cleared her throat. “You know what, though? We really have to get going. We have… things to do at home, right, guys?” The kids nodded after a moment of silence under their mother’s scrutinous gaze. Raven resumed her walk toward the parking lot, passing Chelsea almost completely before calling out a rushed, “Bye!”

They were gone a moment later, leaving Chelsea stunned and silent. It was Zoodles’s wet nose pressing into her palm that brought her back to the present.

“Well, that was weird,” Levi noted.

“You’re telling me,” Chelsea agreed absently. Her mind was still lagging a few moments behind everything else, which wasn’t out of the ordinary but extremely inconvenient in this particular moment.

A loud clatter caught her attention and she looked down to find Levi attempting to wrestle his bike from the small trailer that was hooked to the back of her own. Without hesitation, she leaned over to help and, after freeing it from its bungee confines, traded him the bike for his backpack, which she immediately hiked on her shoulders.

“Ready to go?”

Levi nodded, and as soon as their helmet straps had clicked under their chins and Zoodles’ leash was safely hooked to Chelsea’s handlebars, they were heading for home—or for the hotel, which was as close as they could get for the moment.

They were in the car and halfway home before Raven felt as though she could breathe properly again. And by breathing properly, she meant being able to take a breath without feeling like her heart had found a new home in her throat and her lungs didn’t constrict with every new intake of air.

She felt guilty, in a weird way, for acting the way she had toward Chelsea, for pretending as if years and miles could erase the memory of a person who had been by her side for a majority of her years and miles in the first place. Sure, it was a bit harsh, but you know what else was harsh? Ignoring someone for a decade and a half over a silly little sweater. That was harsh.

Raven sat up straighter in her seat then, a smug smile forming on her lips. Of course, this wasn’t her fault. There was no fault to be had in the first place, because what harm had she caused (if she had really even caused any at all) that was any worse than what Chelsea had done all those years ago? Protesting her boss’s company, sabotaging her design, and nearly getting her fired from the best internship Raven could have possibly asked for? That seemed a lot worse in Raven’s opinion. She’d always been good at rationalizing.

“Mom!” she heard Booker and Nia yell from the back seat, the sound loud enough to jar Raven from her thoughts.

She narrowed her eyes and looked at them through the rearview mirror. Even though she was grateful for the reprieve, she still didn’t appreciate being yelled at in her own car. “May I help you?”

“You missed the turn,” Booker said, pointing behind them.

Raven scoffed. How could she have missed the turn onto her own street? That was just ridiculous, she thought to herself. She looked into her rearview mirror with a soft sigh, just to appease the kids, but they were right. The blue and white house that marked their corner was slowly disappearing into the distance behind them.

Well, shit.

She cleared her throat. “Well, I decided we’re taking the scenic route today. Past the Obamas’ house.”

“But we’ve already seen the Obamas’ house. A lot actually,” Nia muttered.

“Well, we’re gonna see it again. It’s historic.”

No one made another sound until they had actually passed the Obamas’ house five minutes later. Only the ping-ping-ping of Booker’s video game and the bass thumping from Nia’s headphones could be heard over the hum of the engine. Raven was about to reach for the radio to turn on her own music when Nia’s voice rose again.

“Hey, Mom?” They locked eyes in the rearview mirror. “Who was that woman you were talking to at school?”

Raven’s back stiffened, the hairs on her arms rising up. “What woman?” she asked, her brow furrowing deeply, as though she were digging into the deepest depths of her memory. She suddenly, inexplicably felt guilty all over again.

Booker had paused his game and joined in. “You know, that woman with the dog?”

“You were being really awkward?” Nia prompted one more time.

Raven knew she had smart kids, which meant she also knew she couldn’t play the obtuse card for much longer. So, she conceded. Kind of. “Oh, that woman,” she finally said, playing it off with a shrug. “Just someone that I used to know.”

She could feel their eyes on her, looking at the back of her head with a suspicion so intense that their gazes felt hot on her skull. But she ignored it, refused to look back at them fearing she might give herself away. She let out a sigh of relief when she finally made the turn into their driveway.

“So, what do you guys want for dinner?”

When Chelsea woke up in her hotel bed the next morning, the butterflies in her stomach were fluttering so furiously that she thought they were just seconds away from bursting free from her abdomen. She always felt like this at the cusp of anything new. That morning she’d be starting her new job at the and after a few hours of training, she’d be leaving at lunch to get her keys and finally move into their new apartment.

She couldn’t tell if the butterflies were nervous or excited. Maybe both. Maybe something else completely. All she knew was that, as much as she loved butterflies, she really wished they would go away. She thought as she got older they might subside, but they were still there, and still beating their wings as strong as ever. And they stayed there all morning while she showered, while she brushed her teeth, while she took Zoodles for a quick walk around the building, and even while she woke Levi and started him on his morning routine. She wondered if had been this nervous yesterday before his first day of school—maybe he had inherited her butterflies. But if he had, he hadn’t shown it.

Nothing had changed by the time he emerged from the bathroom half an hour later, fully dressed in his school uniform except for his tie.

“Do I really have to wear this?” he asked, the tie dangling limply from his clasped fist.

The sight made Chelsea smile, the fluttering in her stomach taking a break for just a moment. “I think so, honey. You don’t want to get in trouble on your second day, do you?”

Levi seemed to consider his options for a moment before he sighed and held his hand out to her. “Can you do it?”

She took the blue and white fabric in her own hands and knelt down in front of him. It didn’t take her very long to secure a tight-but-not-too-tight knot at the base of his neck—she’d had a few years of practice with her ex-husband. “All right. All set.”

“Thanks, Mom,” he mumbled before walking off to collect his school supplies from around the room. Chelsea did the same and soon they were saying goodbye to Zoodles and heading out the door, bundled up in the warmest clothes they had in their suitcases. It was much colder than it had been the day before, Chelsea had unfortunately discovered during her morning walk, and riding their bikes was pretty much out of the question.

Minutes later, their minivan pulled up to the front of the drop-off lane and Levi gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before sliding out of the car and toward the school’s front doors. She watched and waited until he disappeared behind the heavy wooden doors, and then waited a while longer before finally pulling away from the curb. She’d be lying to herself if she said she hadn’t been looking out for someone other than Levi.

As she began her drive toward the Great Lakes Lacustrine Research Center or the “glurck” as her boss had lovingly called it when she had offered Chelsea the position, she noticed something weird had happened: the butterflies had stopped.

She tried not to think about why that could possibly be as she drove the remaining five miles to work.

Levi wasn’t much of a complainer but that was mostly because, until recently, there wasn’t all that much to complain about. Before his dad had left him and his mom, Levi had gotten whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and if that came at the cost of picking up his socks and underwear from his bedroom floor once in awhile, so be it.

But now that he and his mom were finally moved into their new apartment in Chicago, he felt like he had a little more right to complain. The whole place was smaller than the living room of their old house and kind of smelled funny. To top it all off, his bedroom window looked right into the apartment of an old man who seemed to prefer walking around only in boxer and an undershirt.

But just because he felt more entitled to complain didn’t mean that he would. He knew how hard his mom had been working to try to make the move exciting and fun, even though it was neither. He wouldn’t want to make her feel bad.

Instead, he decided, he would just lay on the weird green carpet of his new bedroom and close his eyes. With his eyes closed, he could pretend that he was back in his old house, in his old room, with his bed and his old trampoline and his old hardwood floors. (Hey, at least they smelled way better than the “new” carpet.) He could pretend that tomorrow when he woke up, he’d be going back to his old school with his old teachers and old classmates, although to be fair, his old school wasn’t much different from his new one. He’d only been at Lakeshore for two days but he could already tell that he’d still be the kid who sat in the back of the class that nobody talked to and whose name the teachers always forgot.

His mom kept saying that things would get back to normal. That in no time, everything would feel the same as it always had. He was suddenly starting to think that maybe she was right. Even if they weren’t living in the same house, even if his dad wasn’t there, even if they were in an entirely new city, he was still going to be the same Levi. He wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about that.

A knock at his door caused him to snap back upright.

“Sorry, honey. Didn’t mean to scare you,” his mom said from where she was standing in the doorway, her arms full with an open box of knick-knacks.

Levi pushed himself up to his feet. “It’s fine, Mom.”

She smiled at him, but something about it looked… he didn’t know how to describe it. “Well, I found some boxes full of stuff that I thought might be fun to go through together. Look,” she said, pressing the box in her arms against the doorframe for support and then reaching inside. She pulled out what looked like a stuffed whale and promptly put it on her head like a hat, moving her head from side to side and pursing her lips like a model would. “We can decide if we want to keep any of it. We don’t really have much room for it anymore.”

“Okay,” Levi agreed, walking toward her. He watched as his mom’s eyes lit him and a smile overtook her face. “And as our first order of business, we’re not keeping that.”

Her smile immediately fell away. “Aw, really?”

Levi reached and reached, but couldn’t quite grasp the hat in question until she crouched down to meet him. “Yeah. Sorry, Mom. It’s a little too much. Even for you.”

She pouted for a moment, but finally released a great sigh and ruffled his hair softly with her fingers. “I guess you’re right. That must be why I keep you around.” They began the short walk back into the living room with him following behind her like a baby duckling. He put the whale hat that was still in his hands on his head, just for safe keeping.

“No, I’m pretty sure you keep me around because I’m cute,” Levi corrected. His mom nodded, her lips pursed together. She couldn’t disagree.

They took their seats on the sofa, each with a box in front of them full of what looked like junk to Levi. He didn’t really think he needed to go through the stuff at all. Based on what he could see right away—a broken robo-dog, some feathers, and a bunch of buttons with silly slogans about vegetables (which, okay, maybe he found a little funny but not really)—he was ready to say it should all go in the trash. But he watched for a moment as his mom began her careful evaluation of each new-again item and placed it in a pile, before switching it to the other because she changed her mind, he began to dig in. He figured he should at least pretend to care about this stuff. She clearly did.

They sat quietly for a while, sometimes nudging each other to show off an especially impressive (or creepy, or just plain weird) find, but soon Levi found that his box was empty.

“All done,” he announced, standing from the couch and gesturing to one of his piles, the one that was larger by far than the other. “What should I do with all of this trash?”

His mom glanced over briefly to where he was pointing and had to do a double-take. “That’s all to throw away?” Levi nodded, causing his mom to giggle uncertainly. “Honey, that’s kind of a lot of stuff. Are you sure? Maybe I should go through it again.”

She began to lean forward, but Levi stepped into the small space between her and the coffee table, blocking her reach. “You wanted me to help you get rid of stuff, Mom.”

He watched as his mom closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, then watched her nostrils flare as she released it again. “You’re right,” she agreed, but he could see the doubt in her eyes.

“I can take them to the trash room for you,” he offered, thinking maybe it would help if she didn’t have to do it herself. That was how he finally stopped needing to sleep with his blanket when he was seven.

She hesitated for a moment more but finally nodded her agreement. “Okay. But make sure to sort out what can be recycled. Remember the rules: paper, plastic, and aluminum go—”

“Styrofoam, batteries, and ceramics, no. I remember, Mom,” he assured and began to put the pile of trash back into his box.

As the last two items fell in, the whale hat and a pair of weird-looking red binoculars, he heard his mom gasp. “My View-Master!” she said as she reached out for the toy. “That was my favorite. They had a wheel with pictures from the natural history museum and—”

Levi stopped her once more. “Mom,” he said sternly and took a step back to put even more distance between her and the box in his arms.

She sighed in defeat and fell back into the sofa cushions. “Alright, alright.”

Levi began to walk toward the apartment door, but he couldn’t miss the soft “Goodbye, Mr. Whale,” that his mom whispered from across the room. He shook his head, trying hard not to laugh.

It took him longer to sort the box into recyclables and trash that he thought it would, but when he finally finished, he stood from the concrete floor of the trash room and dusted off his hands. He was actually glad that his mom had given him something to do, otherwise, he’d probably still have been lying on his floor staring up at the boring ceiling. At least sorting through his mom’s really old toys and stuff had been kind of fun.

He stooped down to pick up the box to take it back upstairs, when he noticed something stuck under one of the bottom flaps that he hadn’t seen before—a picture, it looked like, but he couldn’t tell what of. He knelt back down and lifted the cardboard flap, tugging on the photo hard as he could without ripping it. When it finally came loose, he tumbled backward, his back hitting the concrete with a thud and the picture flying out of his hand on the way down. But as he pushed himself up onto his elbows, he was finally able to take a good look at the folded up picture that had landed not two inches away from him.

He picked it up carefully. The picture was old, obviously, and there was a giant crease down the middle, like it had been folded up again and again and was about to fall apart and probably would have if he had pulled any harder. When he unfolded it, he was unsurprised to see that it was a picture of his mom as a teenager. He’d seen a lot of pictures of her from when she was young—his grandparents’ yurt in Iceland was filled with them. But as he took in the rest of the photo, he could immediately see that this one was different from the rest. In all the other pictures he’d ever seen, they were always just of his mom and no one else. He’d always thought it was kind of weird, especially since he knew that she and his uncle Eddie had been friends since they were in kindergarten and even he wasn’t in any of the pictures.

Except, well, this one. And there was someone else in the picture, too: another girl that Levi didn’t recognize.

The three of them stood in a park on a sunny day, a checkered blanket and picnic basket laid behind them in the background of the picture. They were posing in the shade of a giant tree: the other girl was on his mom’s back with her arms looped around her neck, while Uncle Eddie squatted in front of them with his arms crossed over his chest. His uncle Eddie’s pose made Levi laugh because he still did that pose when he used to visit and they all took pictures together. He looked back at his mom for a second—she was smiling and he thought that it was the biggest he’d ever seen.

Then there was the mystery girl.

Levi squinted his eyes then, focusing as hard as he could. The longer he looked at her, the more familiar she started to seem, but he still couldn’t figure out who she was. He looked for a long time, longer than he probably should have, but nothing was coming to him. Maybe he didn’t know actually know her and his brain was playing tricks on him. He figured he’d probably remember a person who could wear bright orange corduroys and not look silly; he still had a hard time picking out what to wear when he wasn’t in a school uniform.

School. That was it.

He looked at the picture one more time, and then he was sure. The girl in the picture was the weird woman his mom had been talking outside to when she’d come to pick him up after the first day.

When he’d asked her about it on their bike ride home, she’d said it was nothing and immediately started talking about decorating the apartment, even though they hadn’t actually seen it yet. Levi had forgotten about it since, but now it was bothering him.

Why would she say it was nothing if they had obviously been friends once, and based on the picture, really good ones? What had happened to them? Why could they hardly talk to each other now?

He took another look at the picture—everyone seemed so happy. Why didn’t they smile like that anymore?

He needed to find out what happened. He needed to make a plan.

He carefully refolded the photo, slipped it into his new school slacks as gently as he could and gave a final pat to his pocket (just to make sure the picture was, in fact, where he had placed it just seconds before). With the picture safely in its place and the now very empty box tucked under his arm, Levi began his trek back upstairs to the new apartment, his thoughts never straying from the photo.

He had a mystery to solve, but he was going to need some help.

#raven's home #raven's home fanfic #raven's home fic #raven x chelsea #chrave #writing tag

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