are you ready for this

Lunch has just started and there are not very many people in the cafeteria, but apparently there isn't enough room for these two students to stand in line next to one another without... friction.

It begins with a scowl. Well, a scowl from the taller of the two. Delaney honestly doesn't seem to care. Unfortunately, this is not the correct response.

He has been in Forks, Washington for six months and they have been the most excruciatingly boring six months of his life to date.

There are so many things he can't do here, because this town is so small, and if anything gets back to Daddy dearest they'll just move somewhere worse. He honestly can't imagine anywhere worse, but then, before Forks he couldn't have imagined Forks.

Getting in fights at school is one of the few remaining forms of entertainment he can find any joy in, and it's also necessary for a few other reasons. So he doesn't waste any time on his first day back: it's ten after ten, he just got out of Art, the hallways are full of students rushing from class to class, and he finds one of the boys who already hates him a little and gives him a hard shove into the corner of a row of lockers.

Success. The crowd tries to stream around them at first, but at the point where the other boy has him on the ground and is punching him repeatedly in the face, traffic has come to a halt on all sides.

It's late at night in LA and Laney is up to no good, as usual.

He hasn't tried hooking again since the latest disaster; first he wants to see if stealing will work any better. So he found himself a nice deserted toy store, picked the lock, and opened the cash register with a crowbar.

• ?

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It's something like the second week of school, and something like the second month that the Hammond family (father, mother, son, assorted house staff) has lived in Sunnydale.

He expected Dad would hear about it, and he expected he'd catch hell, and both of those things happened. What he didn't expect was the part where they packed up and moved to a tiny California town (with a really surprising number of unoccupied mansions for its population). Delaney Hammond Sr didn't even explain his reasoning, not that his wayward son was dumb enough to ask. Somehow, though, moving to the opposite corner of the country is supposed to make all of Delaney Jr's problems disappear.



Yeah, it's not working that way.



Right now, for example, he is meant to be in class. He doesn't even know what class. Where he is is outside in the schoolyard, leaning against a tree, watching the afternoon sun through the leaves and playing with a lighter in his lap. Flick, flick. It's relaxing.