* let's dance to joydivision ,

[regan]

REGAN LIAM TURNER
WE'LL CELEBRATE THE IRONY AND EVERYTHING IS GOING
WRONG BUT WE'RE SO HAPPY, YEAH WE'RE SO HAPPY
. . . . . . .

It was a miracle that a certain Turner brother was still within the city limits of Valkyrie. He should have been gone by now since he hadn’t stayed in one place for more than a month and a half, tops. It had been four months now. And the funniest thing was that Regan Liam Turner didn’t feel the need to leave either. That had been a first in five years. Under normal circumstances, Regan would get this itch, this inexplainable rush to drop whatever he was doing, throw some clothes into his bag, grab his fiddle and take the next bus out of this god forsaken town. That had happened the last time he left. He simply left his eldest brother a note, went over to his mother’s and kissed her on the cheek before he vanished; just like that. It was very refreshing, having the ability to just leave, to have nothing to tie you down or have anything so grand to keep you anchored. He liked it like that, the way he can disappear and reappear and pick up where he had left off, the ideal magician’s trick. When the youngest brother left, he didn’t have a destination like he did the couple times he had left earlier. To be honest, by now, he should even be referred to as ‘baby boy,’ but really, Regan’s new nickname should have been ‘drifter.’ However, that all changed very much after the earthquake. Before, when the first time he went away from Valkyrie, he booked a flight straight to Dublin Ireland. The boy was going back to the motherland. It took some convincing and some ace detective work, but Regan managed to find some of his old friends while he was bumming around the nation’s capital. It was such a culture rush, no, not a shock, just a rush. It was like riding a bike, one never forgets supposedly, and this was the same experience for Regan. Distantly, he knew the ways of Ireland, it just took a crash course for it to be fresh again. His accent came back even thick than when he first went away to the United States when he was six, and to fuel stereotypes, he drank heartier than ever. This is what Regan missed, the instant connections and the feeling of home, something that Valkyrie, no matter how long he could have stayed, could never possess. Nothing against California, where the surf was good and the girls were pretty, but here in Ireland, it just felt like home to him. After a few days of finding long lost friends, Regan departed again; this time to Cork for some real family time.

For all his life, Regan was quite family oriented. If he was ever loyal to something, it was to his family, and fiercely at that. It wasn’t a joke when he said he would die for his brothers and his mother. Regan’s father was another matter, and he cursed the fact that he looked like Seamus and that half his blood ran through Regan’s veins. He wouldn’t care less if something were to happen to his father; aw...shucks, Seamus died, bummer. But if something would ever happen to his brothers or especially his mother, for lack of a better example, Regan would go all crazy white girl. Completely psychopathic and bat-shit crazy, looking, finding and eliminating the person and/or people who would do anything to his family. Some might say that Regan was exaggerating or that he really was that crazy about his relatives, but it was the God honest truth. It was here in Cork at his aunt and uncle’s house that he, for once in a very long time, decided to go to church. It was such a revelation, considering his mother just gave up after a few weeks for him to come along. It wasn’t as bad as he thought, this whole Church and God thing, Regan actually didn’t mind confession either. It was wondrous how a change of scenery could manipulate a man to go into God’s house.

And it was in God’s house, on a rainy Sunday that Regan had his first of many great ideas; he was going to be a fisherman. It was all thanks to Father John’s celebratory luncheon for something that Regan didn’t pay attention to. All it took was a complaint from a very large lady with a very large flowered hat saying that the fish wasn’t fresh and she knew it. That was all it took, some words from a greedy old hag and Regan ran from Cork to the Seaside and began to fish. Out of all his professions that he had scrambled up, Regan enjoyed fishing the most and he was damn well good at it too. And for a while, he kept fishing, ignoring the small pangs of drifterhood as he called it. He didn’t want to leave the ocean, despite the hard work of fishing off the coast, all the pulling, lifting tugging, but the sea air kept him longer. Of course like everything in this world, this fleeting moment ended and he was back in Valkyrie for three and a half weeks before he repeated the process, but this time to travel the continental United States.

Honestly, to this day, Regan couldn’t decide which one of his trips were his favorite. Of course the trip back to Ireland was held very close to his heart, but being a blackjack dealer in the heat of vegas was pretty fucking entertaining. He enjoyed how some people hot on their luck seemed to be able to take their life savings and pretty much hand it over to the casinos so readily. It was amusing. That and the showgirls were hot, and since he was staff, he was occasionally tapped on the shoulder to ask to help... checking out the hot girls was strictly optional. But he always liked the feeling of when he would come back home to his mother and brothers. It was always nice to come back home to a good home cooked meal after being gone for a while, like it was time to hit a small pause before life started up again. It was like how he would always go surfing every time he was back in California, each and every time. And at this moment, Regan hit the beach in his wetsuit and surfboard. Surfing was something that kept bringing him back, even if he went to the ends of the earth on his various travels. He enjoyed the crunching of the sand beneath his feet, the way the ocean salt lined his hair, curling it a little in its watery fingers. The adrenaline that pumped through his veins was also very much appreciated, as he ran towards the ocean, his board with him and glided through to the waves. There were only two places in the world where he felt the most comfortable, in Dublin or here, right here in the ocean and waves. It was a crisp surf that made him feel as though he was home, that warming feeling that he belonged.

After a few more waves, and diving into the water, Regan got back onto the shore, walking a few feet away and just laid down on the hot sand. Closing his eyes, he just absorbed the sunshine and the sounds around him. It was a prolonged period of time, how he almost managed to nap. After a while and after hearing some shoes shuffling through the sands toward him, Regan turned his head to the side, looking through his eyes which were now slits due to the blaring sun. He could never forget the way she looked, it was something that he knew as well as his appearance. Carly Sutton, the famed dancer was walking towards the less than famous irish boy. That didn’t matter though, it was always the same with them, Carly and him. No matter how far away or how long it had been since a legitimate phone call or letter, they were still the same, snarky but caring friends, “Well would you look at that, hot shot Sutton made some time for little ol’ me.” He smiled wide for he hadn’t seen his best friend, nor his honorary niece, in person for a very long time.

. . . . . . .

NOTESyay cargan!
TAGGEDcargan, ya'll.
WORDS 1395
ATTIREtoo lazy to look up a wetsuit. plus a surfboard.
LYRICSlet's dance to joydivision, the wombats
CREDIT format and graphics to yours truly.

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[caroline isabelle sutton]

VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, VALKYRIE BEACH, AFTERNOON, JANUARY 2012

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-----this place, it was like being in heaven all over again. she was home. really and truly she was home to the one place where everything had gone right in the world. that fact and that fact alone had the biggest of big, cheesy smiles on her face as she sat in her hotel room, awaiting the finishing of her parent's valkyrie home. the earthquake had been all kinds of devastating and she'd been happy as hell that when her family's home had fallen that her parents hadn't been in it at the time. it was like answering a miracle because carly had surely been the biggest mess the day she'd seen the news report on january 7, 2012. she'd been in her new york apartment and lily had been shipped off to pre-k while carly spruced up the house a little. she'd put on the television, loud so that she could hear over the vacuuming she'd been doing. it was her routine for that particular day. one day out of the week was clean up day in which anything that desperately needed a good cleaning or in this case vacuuming got it's due. so she'd been pushing around the inexpensive little bag less vacuum with vh1's jump start blasting throughout the room when she'd felt the vibrating of the music stop, interrupted by a special news report. since those were rare especially on a show like vh1, carly had stopped, turned off the vacuum, and the first words that hit her ears were "...massive earthquake in the suburb of valkyrie, california." it was in that moment that the world literally stopped spinning. she'd gotten dizzy, put her hand to her mouth, and sat down on the couch hyperventilating. the worst had yet to come as she'd scrambled for the phone in an effort to call up her parents and on the first try had gotten nothing. she'd started crying her eyes out all alone in her apartment and she honestly hadn't known what to do with herself. she'd just sat there, staring at the phone. she's been a blubbering mess up until about forty minutes later when her parents had finally gotten through to her. once she'd heard the update she told her parents to hang tight and immediately called up the inferno where she made plans for them to stay and of course, got herself and adjoining room. there was no way she'd let her parents go through any of this by themselves. no way in hell.

-----thankfully a lot of that horribleness had passed and she was left now in valkyrie without much to worry about. she'd been back for almost a month now and she'd been totally immersed in getting her parents back on their feet. she was holding them up in rooms at the inferno, she was paying for their house ot be completely rebuilt, and basically she was paying them back for the support they'd given and the misery they'd endured because she'd made the mistake of getting pregnant at fourteen years old. of course lily was no mistake but sleeping with cain archer certainly had been. she had to admit though that all the pain, all the teasing, torturing, and exile had been worth it. there was no one in the world like her daughter and ther would never be anyone who could compare to the love she felt toward her. lily, the daughter she raised on her own and the little girl who she'd set aside life for to get back. carly had been crazy enough to go to san diego to see her and meet with the family. it had to have been the stupidest thing she'd ever done, walking into her daughter's life without knowing whether or not she could stay there. she had no idea how her adoptive family would treat her and she'd been lucky enough that they'd seen her honesty and had believed her enough to trust her to take her daughter back. it had been the most fulfilling moment of her life. she'd been given the chance to be the mother she knew she could be and carly was ever thankful for that. she'd never been given the chance up until then. it had always been at the discretion of her parents who hadn't believed that she was capable of taking care of a child at such a young age and granted up until she'd learned she was pregnant carly had been stupid. she'd been like every other teenager out there and had gone out to party because there had literally been nothing else to do in keizer, oregon. she didn't blame her parents for being hesitant but having little to no faith in her? they'd seen just how much she'd handled in school being that she was pregnant and they'd seen how level headed she'd remained and just how well she'd taken things but that hadn't been enough to prove to them that she could handle it. instead they didn't listen to a world she'd said. they saw her excitement during the weeks prior to the pregnancy and they'd said nothing about the new parents they'd already had lined up for her little girl.

-----it had taken carly an incredible amount of time to forgive her parents for what they'd done but at the same time she couldn't deny that they'd been nothing but good to her otherwise. so they hadn't taken her opinion into consideration? she'd gotten her daughter back so what had happened was relatively moot. sure she hadn't had the opportunity to bond with lily the way she would have liked to but that didn't matter now. lily knew who her mother was and they both loved each other so it wasn't like there was something missing there. honestly it was as if that big chunk of time they'd spent apart had never really happened so all was to be forgiven and it had been for a long time. carly was past it. she was willing to help her parents now because of all they'd done for her, all they'd sacrificed for her, and all the support they'd given her over the years and in doing so she finally felt as if she'd repaid them in some way. it hadn't been long since the house had gone under repair, which was pretty much a total reconstruction, so she knew she'd be staying in the hotel for a long while, something that didn't really sit well with her. the place was nice of course and it was awesome having the kind of services that a hotel like this provided but at the same time it didn't feel like home. everything about the room was too sterile. the rooms were all the same with all the same miniature little necessities like bars of soaps, conditioners, shampoos, and lotions, but it didn't have that homey feel carly loved so much. it didn't have that personal quality to it. maybe it was the smell. that didn't go to say that the inferno reeked to high heaven because it didn't. despite the influx of occupied rooms from the quake the place smelled like it always did. that was the problem. it smelled sterile. of cleaning supplies like lysol and bleach. it never had the lingering smell of a home cooked meal or of febreeze-soaked couches. it didn't smell like a place that was actually lived in. which was fine enough, but like i said, it never felt like home. carly liked waking up to the smell of bacon rendering, or the smell of a cup of coffee whose promise of a wake up call would be the only thing getting her out of bed. room service was similar to that but when your food came freshly ready it was hard to built up the childlike anticipation she loved so much. she was one of those types who liked to embrace life as it came and something like sitting around the kitchen table watching her mother work, salivating over the delicious mix of smells percolating in the kitchen was something she both loved and missed.

-----it was those missing homey essentials that had carly out and about in the morning. because the place just didn't feel like home, carly didn't feel like sticking around for hours at a time the way her parents did. carly was sure they loved it. the cleaning service had them pampered what with not having to do their own laundry and having new sheets to sleep in on a nightly basis. the break from their hectic lives had to be welcome, but for carly it was just a little too much, which was why she tried to find excuses to leave the hotel every day. she would go to the construction site to meet up with the building coordinator and make sure everything was on schedule. she met with her new los angeles agent who was much closer to her than the new york agent she'd been forced to leave behind, and she met with people on regular basis to help coordinate a earthquake relief effort that would last more than the week. she was doing all that she could for the place that she loved because, well, she loved it. valkyrie had been her home even when she'd only lived there for a couple of years. still she felt the need to get out and just take a break from the hotel and today she just didn't feel like taking on another responsibility. what did that spell? a day at the beach. why the hell not right? she'd gotten lily all ready with her cute little bathing suit, grabbed one for herself, then slid a pair of jean shorts and a tee shirt over top, packed up a bag with sunscreen and the usual beach-y essentials, and high tailed it out of the inferno. the drive had been relatively easy this time around. the roads were being repaired left and right and the town in general was starting to spruce itself up. things looked like they were finally working their way to normal. she'd pulled into the parking lot adjacent from the beach, noticing a vehicle that looked familiar but she was unsure whether or not it was actually his. it'd been a long time since she'd laid eyes regan turner and boy did she miss him. she'd meant to see him sometime soon after she'd arrived but it just had yet to happen. she walked hand in hand with lily as they made their way across the sand to the shore. upon finally seeing the familiar figure, carly pointed him out to lily and headed toward him. as he spoke lily let go of carly's hand and went rushing for regan. "ray-gee!" she cried out as she sprinted toward him, tackling him. carly chuckled settling down next to them both on her knees. "of course i did. how could i not make time for my favorite fiddler." she said with a smile as she parked her butt in the sand and looked out over the water.

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status • finished
words • 1,893.
tagged • cargan !
clothes • clicky !
notes • sorry for the lateness.

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