SO AT SOME POINT somebody thought it would be a good idea to leave me and Rui alone in chan to coo over baby pictures (WE CAN NEVER CALL OURSELVES MANLY AGAIN :'() and Rui suggested that it might be fun to do a meme where we talked about childhood moments of our characters.

So I decided to jump the gun and drabble a few specific moments. Because I can. :D

August Saturdays in Oxford meant warm light streaming in through the wide windows of Rhea's nursery, sending dust specks dancing. Normally, Rhea would have been studiously trying to catch them, with the help of Benjamin Edward Jones, her partner in crime.

But right now, the only-just-four year old was sitting, legs crossed in front of her sister's bed, the wide-brimmed straw hat she had to wear during the summer on the floor beside her, and Benjamin hugged close to her chest, her solemn face rapt with attention.

"And that," Melody, her far older and wiser sister was saying, "is why you should never trust boys."

"Because they...don't...call?" Rhea repeated, wondering what they didn't call her sister.

"Yep," Mel was seated on the bed, carefully painting her toenails a shocking pink. "Never trust boys. They will break your heart."

"Ow," the little girl moved Benjamin slightly to press a sympathetic hand to her chest.

"Yeah, like that." Her sixteen year old sister slipped a hand into her desk drawer, rooting around for cigarettes. "But see, Dean isn't like that."

"Benjamin isn't like that, too."

"Benjamin is a bear," Mel said, dismissive. "Dean's really cool. He's twenty-one and he's got his own bike."

"I have a bike."

"Trike, tyke. Anyway, you should see his tattoo, it's of an angel and it's bloody massive. And," at this point she leaned forward, secretively. "He's got his own snake."

"What's a snake?" Rhea asked, wiggling Benjamin's paws. A little put out that he'd been put down so quickly.

"You don't know what a snake is? Fucking hell," Mel dropped the box back into the drawer after further struggles could not turn up a lighter and shrugged. "Well, it's..." she stopped, and beckoned her sister forward. The girl wriggled forward, and leaned close. "It's a monster which eats little girls," she whispered, consiprationally and grinned as the little girl pulled back with a squeak of terror. "Oh yes. First it waits until they're sleeping, and then it crawls down their throats and lays eggs in their stomachs. Then it crawls out again, and goes back in its cage, so nobody can tell what happened. Not until a week later when all the eggs hatch and then they explode out of the girl and the baby snakes eat her all up."

"What if she's still alive?" Rhea has started to lean back, terror etched across her features.

"It'll eat her anyway," Mel said, and then leaned over to go back to painting her nails, trying not to laugh at the baby's horrified expression. It was just a bit of fun after all, right? Right. Not like she wouldn't forget about it soon enough anyway.

Which was why Mel was so shocked when one night around a month later she came back to the sounds of screaming and her father's angry shouting. Shutting the door quietly, and hoping that this at least would be a distraction from the fact that she was two hours late and had alcohol on her breath, she hung up her leather jacket on the coat rack and was about to start sneaking upstairs when the screaming grew louder and closer. Until her little sister flew through the hallway, screaming, tears in her eyes and a knife from the kitchen in her hands. "Jesus," Mel said, as Rhea ran to hide behind her, grabbing a leg and sobbing into her ripped jeans as their father marched in, absolutely furious.

"Do you know what your sister did?" he thundered, and both girls shrank back towards the wall a little. Mel became vaguely aware that the baby was wiping her nose over her favourite pair of jeans, and kicked a little trying to knock her off. Rhea hung on like a trooper, still snivelling and burying her face into the back of her sister's knee.

"What happened?"

"Next door's gone on holiday, and they asked your mother to take care of their son's python while they were gone," he said putting his head in his hands. Mel somehow managed to hide the mixture of shock, horror and a strangely detached feeling of amusement that was churning inside of her in favour of a shrug, not daring to speak.

"It was going to kill me! I had to attack it first! Tell him Mel, tell him snakes always eat little girls!" Rhea pleaded, and for a second Mel drew in a breath. Then she removed the knife from her sister's small fingers with a tug and freed her leg before handing both to her father and continuing up the stairs. From the safety of her room, she slipped a cigarette into her mouth and left it there thoughtfully. She'd left the lighter downstairs, but judging by her father's shouts and her little sister's hysterical sobbing it was probably best if she did not venture down there for a little while.

For a second she felt a twinge of something resembling guilt, but then shrugged it off. It wasn't like Rhea'd be scared of snakes forever, right?

-

Adair stopped by the pond on the way home from school, to give himself a good looking over.

There was the scrape on the cheek, which could probably be explained away as him falling over on the tennis court. Small cut on his forehead which he could probably hide with his hair. Little bit of blood staining the cuffs of his shirt from the wounds on his hands. All in all, he didn't look too bad for someone who'd just spent half an hour being alternately beaten and chased by thugs. Luckily the nosebleed had cleared up, which meant he could ditch the paper he'd had wedged up his nose, and his black eye from last week had started to clear up a little. A little dab of rancid pond water here, a little spit there, and he didn't look half-bad.

Adjusting his jumper, he took pains to walk carefully the rest of the way home. He'd fallen roughly at one point, and his ankle twinged whenever he put too much weight on it. Still, he did his best to put a jaunty spring in his step, just in case his dad could see him from the window as he turned into his street. Continued to do so anyway when he noticed that the curtains to his father's room were shut tight, just in case any of the neighbours could see.

He'd gotten so much help from them recently, he had. That lady next door always brought food round, even though she had seven kids of her own to feed, and that nice girl from across the road had started doing dad's shopping for him, dropping off the meagre groceries that would have to last them all week. People had come round with adverts for young carers groups, had offered to move in and help out, but both Thomas men had refused more than the slightest of help. Pride, yes, but also because neither wanted to be a bother to the other people in their community - dad had always said that they should keep themselves to themselves, and that was how they stayed out of trouble.

His own body felt as though it was betraying him, adding to the strain. He was growing too fast, too soon. His feet were too big for dad's shoes and he'd outgrown his expensive grammar school uniform already, despite only being in his second year. He found it difficult to speak up to the boys in his year (as though the words turned sideways and stuck in his throat) and he couldn't chat it up with the girls for fear of being labelled a girl. Awkward fantasies in maths made him scared of talking to the teachers, and his legs were too long and clumsy to run properly from the older boys who taunted him; his arms were too slender and did not feel fully attached when he tried to defend himself with punches.

And through it all was his bad luck. Entrenched and forever there, a lurking viper.

He dropped his blazer on the floor of their house (this place felt too small for him as though his rapidly growing body would grow up and out of it; like the grandmother in that story he'd read as a little boy) and kicked his shoes off before he entered his father's sickroom. "I'm home."

"'Lo, Adair. How's school?"

"Same old, same old." The room was almost completely dark when he entered it, which was a bad sign. Adair's hand paused by the light switch, but he let it drop down to his side, navigating the way to his father's bedside. "How're you feeling?"

"Like shit." Dad coughed, and it sent vibration all through his wrecked, skeletal body. "Won't be long."

"Don't say that," Adair murmured absent-mindedly, searching for some pain-killers. His father held up a hand to stop him.

"Got something for you."

"Dad..." the boy started, but trailed off as the man shakily reached out to grab his son's hand and pull it out. With great effort, he leaned up in bed and dropped something into Adair's open hand, before closing it, wrapping both his hands around it.

"Sorry can't leave you anything better," he wheezed, as Adair opened his hand to reveal what he would later recognise as his father's last gift. "Maybe you c'n sell 'em. Get a few bob for yourself." He gave Adair a weak smile, but the blonde haired boy was staring forward solemnly, refusing to meet his eyes.

There was a picture on the mantelpiece across from the bed, of the Thomas family as they had been, once upon a time. His mother, pale and soon to depart, but still smiling, the newborn Adair in her arms. His father behind her, laughing, and the brother and sister he had never known on each side of him. Beside that, was a photo taken after the funeral; Adair in his brother's arms, his sister and father standing a little off to the side. There was another upstairs, of Adair as a toddler, hands held by his sister and father. The rest of the photos in the house were just of Adair and his dad, staring into the camera lens blankly, as though they had lost themselves.

Now it'd just be him alone in any photos, wouldn't it? Nobody to hold his hands, or squeeze his shoulders as the shutter clicked, or whisper to him to smile for the birdie. He thought about it as his hands gripped the things in his fist too tightly; the metal bit into his palm. His throat tightened, partly out of shame for missing moments like that (he was thirteen now, wasn't he? practically a man) and partly from tears.

"I'm not selling them. You should take them back," he managed, keeping his voice level.

"What use are they t'me? Earrings are to make you look nice," he said, twisting in his covers. "They're so your ears don't look bare when you go out. And believe me," he said, an edge of dark humour in his voice, "I ain't going anywhere."

"I wish," Adair said as he clutched the earrings tightly, staring at the tiny gleams of gold on his father's ears in what he could see of the photographs. "I fucking wish."

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