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ajremixNote: The WWE was known as the World Wrestling Federation back in the 90's. Title from the love letter from Twelfth Night.
Title: To the Unknown Beloved
Fandom: DC TV
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3460
In Responds to: ColdWave Week 2018: Back in Our Day
Characters: Lisa, Len, Mick, OC
Summary: Lisa decides to hook up Len and Mick by taking a page from the Bard.
It seemed to Lisa that Mick had always been in her life. She knew that wasn't true but by now all her pre-Mick memories were just blurs of fear and adrenaline, softened by time to feel almost like a bad dream. But then he appeared abruptly, so thoroughly intertwined with Len from the start- his health both mental and physical, in his budding criminal career -that at first Lisa couldn't think of him as 'Mick' without 'Len and' tacked in front.
Over the years, as she came to know Mick outside of roaring to Len's defense or coming around for a job, he became less 'Len and Mick' and more like a second brother. It was his constant presence in her life that caused her to miss the obvious for so long: that he and Len were in love with each other.
It wasn't any kind of big, extravagant gesture on either of their parts that made Lisa realize it. Just noticing the way Mick would look at Len while he was absorbed in something else, with the same hypnotized awe he'd get from staring at fire. Or the way Len never seemed completely relaxed unless Mick was nearby. She watched the two of them, so obvious once she bothered to notice, dance around each other for months, both seemingly content to just be in the other's orbit.
It was enough to make Lisa pull at her hair in frustration.
It wasn't until Lisa was half drowsing through her reading of Twelfth Night for class that inspiration struck her: a love note.
"You know it doesn't end well in the play, right?" Connie asked after Lisa explained her plan. She was basically Lisa's only friend both in and out of school and a genuine romantic at heart. Unlike Lisa's cynical view on such things.
Lisa rolled her eyes. "It's not like I'm gonna have them do stupid things. And it's not like I'll be putting down stuff that's not true."
"You're going to write fake love letters from your brother to his friend."
"Yeah, but the only thing fake about it is that it's not written by Len. It's still his real feelings."
"As interpreted by you."
"You gonna help or be a killjoy about it? I thought you liked this mushy crap."
Connie rolled her eyes. "Fine." She looked down at the note Lisa was working on. "Does your brother normally write in loopy cursive or a purple gel pen?"
"...it's a draft."
"Sure."
~*~*~*~
Dear Mick,
We've been together for a long time. I've been halfway in love with you for years and completely in love with you probably like forever
~*~*~*~
Writing love letters, it turned out, was difficult. Not so much the handwriting part after Lisa swiped a sample and practiced until it looked close enough. Len wasn't happy her snagging his note but was too deep in planning his next heist to do more than glare and tell her to leave his work alone. No, the problem was with her brother and his stupid inability to have feelings like a normal person. Not at all helped by the fact that all the references of love letters she had available to her were the trashy romance novels Connie lent her that talked about fawning over some dude's glistening muscles or feeling faint by the scent of overwhelming musk and the overuse of the word 'bosom'.
"Ugh." Lisa flopped face down on Connie's bed. They were having a sleep over to work on the letter. "It's never this hard in the movies!"
"You're thinking about it as a love letter," Connie said, flipping through a fashion magazine idly. "Think of it as a letter from your brother that just happens to be a love letter."
"What does that even mean?"
"Well, what does your brother even like about this guy?"
"Mick literally saved his life." When Connie opened her mouth, Lisa cut her off. "I mean literally literally. Lenny was getting ganged up on when he was a kid and nearly got stabbed before Mick saved him."
Connie's eyes went wide. She knew vaguely that Len was a crook, but not any of the details. "O...kay." She took a piece of paper and wrote 'saved life' as a bullet point. "What else?"
"Lessee, he listens to Len. Not just to his plans but when he just talks. Lenny likes the sound of his own voice. He protects Len from getting hurt and helps him if he gets hurt anyway. Makes sure he's eating, does the laundry." Lisa rolled on her back, continuing to tick off her fingers as she thought of things. "He's hot. I mean Mick's got a body those WWF guys would cry over. He always seems to know what Lenny's thinking, you know- anticipates his needs or whatever. He does stuff just to make Len... well, maybe not happy 'cause Lenny's weird like that, but I guess to make his life better."
Connie paused and looked up at Lisa. "That's... weirdly sweet."
"I know, right?"
~*~*~*~
Mick,
Ever since you saved my life I haven't been able to keep you out of my thoughts. You're everything I never knew I wanted and it tears me up inside whenever I see you with someone else. It's probably selfish not wanting to share you with anyone but you know I'm a selfish kind of guy.
~*~*~*~
"I hate everything." Lisa shoved her folder at Connie one lunch break. She ended up swiping some printer paper from the copier in the teacher's lounge because she'd torn far too many failed love letters out of her notebook and like hell she was going to explain to Len why she needed a new one only halfway through the school year. "You write it."
"I don't know either of these guys," Connie said around the straw of her Capri Sun. "Also I don't want to be remotely part of this in case it blows up in your face."
"It's not gonna blow up in my face." She paused in brief thought. "At least it won't if it's well written."
"Yeah, no. I've seen the kind of grudges you can hold. I'm not taking my chances."
Lisa put her face to the table. "Ugggggggggh!"
~*~*~*~
Mick,
You know I'm not good at emotional stuff so I'll say it straight out: I like you. A lot. More than friends should.
~*~*~*~
Lisa had hoped that watching the two together would give her inspiration. Unfortunately it was nothing but that same old same old. The two of them going through their routines as Len planned: Mick making sure he ate and slept, Len looking away from his work long enough to snap Mick back to reality if he drank too much or was staring too long at his lighter.
It was so banal and pragmatic that Lisa wondered if she was mistaken.
Then, after putting a bowl of something down in front of Len, Mick asked Lisa, "Your field trip is this Friday, right?"
She started, not realizing how focused she was on nothing. "Uh, yeah."
"Here." Mick pulled out his wallet and passed her two twenties. "Don't worry about change, amusement park food is always expensive."
Len looked up, frowning slightly. "Mick."
"What?"
"You don't have to give her money. I can give her some."
"Yeah, but I did it first. 'Sides, she's practically my little sister, too." Mick picked up his own bowl and went to sit on the couch, flipping through tv channels to find something interesting.
Len stared after him with a look that was more than awe. It was like he suddenly remembered why he loved Mick and had fallen in love all over again. Lisa ducked her head and shoveled food in her mouth to hide her grin.
~*~*~*~
Mick,
I hadn't expected this to happen but looking back it really isn't a surprise that I've fallen for you. I may not have realized it but all this time it was like I was subconsciously looking for someone who knows me, understands how I feel. Someone to comfort and hold me through the long lonely nights and these are Mariah Carey lyrics dammit
~*~*~*~
"Is this weird?"
"You're asking this now?" Lisa glared, unamused, until Connie sighed. "Yes, it's weird, but you're kind of weird anyway and we've been working on this for months and now I'm invested so we can't really stop now, can we?"
Lisa didn't know if she should be feeling smug about that considering she was on the verge of snapping over the entire situation.
~*~*~*~
My dearest darling Mick,
We need to make out forever. Right now. It'll make Lisa's life so much easier. This is totally Len by the way.
~*~*~*~
Lisa wasn't ever going to trash the writers she had to read for English again. At least not all of them. Writing was hard and being able to put down words to communicate thoughts and emotions without making everyone sound idiotic took a lot more work than she had thought. Maybe she'd take a creative writing course.
After she got her stupid brother and his stupid partner hooked up.
~*~*~*~
Mick,
Writing this letter has been difficult given how much it relies on emotions. You know how I am with emotions. You know more about me than anyone else. For the years we've been together you have been one of the most dependable constants I've ever known and that's what makes this so hard. Because I don't want to lose what we already have. I don't want to lose you. But it's getting harder and harder to keep this to myself. I don't know how to tell you how much you mean to me but I don't know how much longer I can keep it a secret, either. I think I'm in love with you. I can't say for how long, it's just something that crept up on me over time until one day I looked over at you and realized I don't want to spend a day of my life without you by my side.
~*~*~*~
Lisa didn't know what suddenly changed but, for some reason, Len was being distant and cagey. At first she thought it was just him getting hung up over something regarding the upcoming job or maybe something to do with Lewis. But then he asked Mick to start taking her to and picking her up from school. For nearly a week and counting.
Whatever it was, it was getting to Mick, too. "Len tell you anything?" He asked gruffly one morning as they piled into the car.
"No. It isn't about work?"
"No." His voice was rough and dark. "He hasn't mentioned any problems he's just..."
"...pushing you out?"
"Yeah."
Lisa stayed silent for a few miles. Quietly she asked, "Are you mad at him?"
Mick snorted. "Annoyed. Kinda hard to fix the problem if he ain't gonna say a damn thing."
"Well, that's kinda how he is."
"Yeah, I know." Mick's hands tightened on the steering wheel as he fell silent for a moment. "Hate when he isolates himself like this."
"Me, too."
It wasn't until a day later, when Lisa had come up with additions to her fake love letter that she figured out what the problem was: the letter wasn't in the section of her notebook she normally kept it in. Now that she thought about it, Len started acting weird right around the last time he gave Lisa her backpack after she left it and her school stuff sprawled over the coffee table. He barely even lectured her on cleaning up after herself. At the time Lisa had chalked it up to him being too focused on his work to do more than a cursory retread of that familiar refrain but now Lisa wondered if it's because he may have read the letter.
Was he acting weird because she wrote something bad? Lisa scanned over the letter again. There was nothing that seemed particularly damming and Lisa knew it wasn't because she was wrong in assuming he was in love with Mick. She scanned it again and another thought hit her: did Len think this letter was from her? Which, yes it was, but not from her point of view. Sure, it was in her own handwriting until she finalized the words and maybe there wasn't anything that explicitly said it wasn't her own feelings but he had to know, right? He had to know that it wasn't how Lisa would write.
Not that she ever actually wrote anything that wasn't for school. Dammit.
It took another moment before the extent of the situation hit her. How was she going to fix this? Len, despite how he might protest, was like one of those stupid, tragic romance heroes that would rather suffer quietly if he thought it meant the people he cared about were happy rather than talk about things. Her options were limited. Pretending like she no longer had a crush on Mick would mean throwing away the letter. If she wasn't careful about it, Len might get insulted on her behalf and get into a fight with Mick over 'breaking her heart'. Though maybe the letter was useless now that Len had seen it. If she gave it to Mick anyway, he might show it to Len and then he'd know exactly who wrote it. If Lisa told him about the letter, Len might clam up about his feelings even more which would put Lisa back at square one. Maybe even negative one depending on how badly Len took it.
She agonized over what to do for days until she went to Connie's for an emergency sleepover, hoping for a solution.
Connie took in all the information quietly, looking off into the distance as she thought and Lisa wallowed. Eventually she said, "Tell Mick."
Lisa gave her a look. "About the love letter? Yeah, that's gonna go over well."
"No. About how you think your brother is, for whatever reason, trying to hook you up with him. Do you think Mick would go for it?"
Lisa wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, no. At least he better not. I don't want it and Mick's always telling me to be firm with what I'm okay with and not let anyone try to force me to change that, so I'm certain he'd back down if I said so. This is, of course, ignoring the fact he's totally in love with Lenny, so."
"Right, well, you said Mick doesn't deal with crap. So if you tell him about it, especially if you tell him you're not into him, he'll probably confront Len, right?"
"What do I say about the love letter?"
"Say it was a passing crush that lasted, like, a week or something. Then someone else caught your eye and that's why you never finished it." She raised her eyebrows at Lisa. "You're very fickle about relationships, don't pretend you're not."
Lisa looked at Connie with a new respect. "You know, for someone that doesn't actually have to lie, you're really good at it."
Connie flashed her a grin. "Why do you think I'm so good at English?"
~*~*~*~
Lisa waited a couple days more until Mick was starting to get shorter tempered than usual due to Len's caginess. Then she told him that it seemed like Len kept pushing the two of them together and she knews it's a really weird thing to say but she couldn't help the feeling that maybe he was trying to hook them up?
"You're great, Mick, don't get me wrong," Lisa said breezily as they drove back from school. "But honestly you're so much like a brother it'd be like me dating Len. Or some weird uncle because you're kinda old for me, don't you think?"
Mick just stayed quiet, jaw squared and eyes intense they way they always got when he was about to go crack someone's head. Metaphorically this time, she hoped.
When they got in, Mick grunted at Lisa to go to her room. Which she did for precisely as long as she knew they'd be expecting her to sneak out, then snuck out ten seconds after. She crept as quietly as possible down the hall, bypassing all the creaky bits of the floor. She could hear them talking but their voices were low and it wasn't until Lisa reached the corner that their words became audible.
"-you really think that?" She caught the tail end of Mick's growl.
"She has a crush on you," Len's voice was petulant, almost on the verge of pouting which he would deny to his dying day. "I know that much."
"So what? Don't my opinion matter?"
"You like her well enough. If you spent more time together, you might like her more." There was a stretched silence before Len snapped, defensive, "What?"
"Wondering why you aren't threatening me," Mick said, voice slow like he was thinking his words through as he said them. There was a long silence. "Len?"
"You're a better option than her other boyfriends were."
"That's not what I'm talking about. You're ready to shoot guys that look at her."
"You don't think she's just a piece of ass."
"I'm still almost twice her age." There was another, longer pause. "What aren't you telling me?"
"Just don't hurt her." Lisa peeked around the corner. Len wasn't looking directly at Mick, had his arms crossed and shoulders drawn like a shield. "I'd rather not lose you because of this."
"Len." She'd never heard Mick like that before. Lisa shoved her fist against he mouth as Mick, slowly, took Len's face in his hands. Len looked up at him with such vulnerable hope. He leaned forward, eyes sliding closed and Mick pressed a soft kiss to Len's lips. It took everything in Lisa's power not to jump up and cheer victoriously. After some time- long enough for Lisa to think maybe she shouldn't be watching her older brother make out with his best friend -Mick pulled back, resting his forehead against Len's. "You're not going to lose me," he said quietly.
Len gripped Mick's wrists, looking for all the world like he just wanted to fall into Mick's arms. "What about Lisa?"
He smirked. "It's kinda insulting you think I'm into kids."
Which was insulting in its own right because Lisa was barely a kid anymore. But, given the circumstances, she decided to let it slide.
"She'll be disappointed."
"She'll live."
She needs to go before she's caught, Lisa thought to herself, slinking away as quietly as she arrived.
It was a few hours later that Len found her in her room. She pretended not to notice the lightness in his step or the unconscious curve of his lips, let alone the start of a hickey on his neck Len probably didn't even know about. Lisa very nearly couldn't keep a straight face. "What's up?"
Len cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable as he sat on Lisa's bed by her feet. "I wanted to talk to you about Mick."
"What about him?"
Len wiped his palms against his jeans. "I was cleaning your things up from the front room," he shot her a silent reprimand, "and found a note. I wasn't intending to look at it, but I saw Mick's name on it and wanted to make sure there wasn't an issue. I didn't think it was a love letter," he said quickly, mistaking Lisa pressing her lips together as a sign of anger rather than an attempt not to laugh. "Look, I don't blame you. Mick is," he got an adorable, far away look in his eyes, "he's great. But it wouldn't work out. He's too old for you and he... he's my partner."
Oh god, if this lasted much longer Lisa was going to burst out cackling. "Okay," she said. Too quickly, judging by Len's expression. "I wrote that, like, a month ago. Mick's still hot and amazing and all but football season just started. I've got plenty of guys in spandex to oggle." Plus a cheerleader or two but Len didn't need to know about that yet. "It's not like I'm looking to settle down with someone, I'm only fifteen."
"Well. That makes sense." He hesitated, looking like he was going to say something- was he going to admit he was in a relationship with Mick, Lisa wondered. But he stood and went to the door. "I'm glad you're handling this so maturely."
Lisa snorted and waved him off. After the door clicked shut again, Lisa rolled over to muffle her laughter into her pillow. Sure, it didn't go how she imaged it would but she'd still count it as a victory.
Title: To the Unknown Beloved
Fandom: DC TV
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3460
In Responds to: ColdWave Week 2018: Back in Our Day
Characters: Lisa, Len, Mick, OC
Summary: Lisa decides to hook up Len and Mick by taking a page from the Bard.
It seemed to Lisa that Mick had always been in her life. She knew that wasn't true but by now all her pre-Mick memories were just blurs of fear and adrenaline, softened by time to feel almost like a bad dream. But then he appeared abruptly, so thoroughly intertwined with Len from the start- his health both mental and physical, in his budding criminal career -that at first Lisa couldn't think of him as 'Mick' without 'Len and' tacked in front.
Over the years, as she came to know Mick outside of roaring to Len's defense or coming around for a job, he became less 'Len and Mick' and more like a second brother. It was his constant presence in her life that caused her to miss the obvious for so long: that he and Len were in love with each other.
It wasn't any kind of big, extravagant gesture on either of their parts that made Lisa realize it. Just noticing the way Mick would look at Len while he was absorbed in something else, with the same hypnotized awe he'd get from staring at fire. Or the way Len never seemed completely relaxed unless Mick was nearby. She watched the two of them, so obvious once she bothered to notice, dance around each other for months, both seemingly content to just be in the other's orbit.
It was enough to make Lisa pull at her hair in frustration.
It wasn't until Lisa was half drowsing through her reading of Twelfth Night for class that inspiration struck her: a love note.
"You know it doesn't end well in the play, right?" Connie asked after Lisa explained her plan. She was basically Lisa's only friend both in and out of school and a genuine romantic at heart. Unlike Lisa's cynical view on such things.
Lisa rolled her eyes. "It's not like I'm gonna have them do stupid things. And it's not like I'll be putting down stuff that's not true."
"You're going to write fake love letters from your brother to his friend."
"Yeah, but the only thing fake about it is that it's not written by Len. It's still his real feelings."
"As interpreted by you."
"You gonna help or be a killjoy about it? I thought you liked this mushy crap."
Connie rolled her eyes. "Fine." She looked down at the note Lisa was working on. "Does your brother normally write in loopy cursive or a purple gel pen?"
"...it's a draft."
"Sure."
~*~*~*~
We've been together for a long time. I've been halfway in love with you for years and completely in love with you probably like forever
~*~*~*~
Writing love letters, it turned out, was difficult. Not so much the handwriting part after Lisa swiped a sample and practiced until it looked close enough. Len wasn't happy her snagging his note but was too deep in planning his next heist to do more than glare and tell her to leave his work alone. No, the problem was with her brother and his stupid inability to have feelings like a normal person. Not at all helped by the fact that all the references of love letters she had available to her were the trashy romance novels Connie lent her that talked about fawning over some dude's glistening muscles or feeling faint by the scent of overwhelming musk and the overuse of the word 'bosom'.
"Ugh." Lisa flopped face down on Connie's bed. They were having a sleep over to work on the letter. "It's never this hard in the movies!"
"You're thinking about it as a love letter," Connie said, flipping through a fashion magazine idly. "Think of it as a letter from your brother that just happens to be a love letter."
"What does that even mean?"
"Well, what does your brother even like about this guy?"
"Mick literally saved his life." When Connie opened her mouth, Lisa cut her off. "I mean literally literally. Lenny was getting ganged up on when he was a kid and nearly got stabbed before Mick saved him."
Connie's eyes went wide. She knew vaguely that Len was a crook, but not any of the details. "O...kay." She took a piece of paper and wrote 'saved life' as a bullet point. "What else?"
"Lessee, he listens to Len. Not just to his plans but when he just talks. Lenny likes the sound of his own voice. He protects Len from getting hurt and helps him if he gets hurt anyway. Makes sure he's eating, does the laundry." Lisa rolled on her back, continuing to tick off her fingers as she thought of things. "He's hot. I mean Mick's got a body those WWF guys would cry over. He always seems to know what Lenny's thinking, you know- anticipates his needs or whatever. He does stuff just to make Len... well, maybe not happy 'cause Lenny's weird like that, but I guess to make his life better."
Connie paused and looked up at Lisa. "That's... weirdly sweet."
"I know, right?"
~*~*~*~
Ever since you saved my life I haven't been able to keep you out of my thoughts. You're everything I never knew I wanted and it tears me up inside whenever I see you with someone else. It's probably selfish not wanting to share you with anyone but you know I'm a selfish kind of guy.
~*~*~*~
"I hate everything." Lisa shoved her folder at Connie one lunch break. She ended up swiping some printer paper from the copier in the teacher's lounge because she'd torn far too many failed love letters out of her notebook and like hell she was going to explain to Len why she needed a new one only halfway through the school year. "You write it."
"I don't know either of these guys," Connie said around the straw of her Capri Sun. "Also I don't want to be remotely part of this in case it blows up in your face."
"It's not gonna blow up in my face." She paused in brief thought. "At least it won't if it's well written."
"Yeah, no. I've seen the kind of grudges you can hold. I'm not taking my chances."
Lisa put her face to the table. "Ugggggggggh!"
~*~*~*~
You know I'm not good at emotional stuff so I'll say it straight out: I like you. A lot. More than friends should.
~*~*~*~
Lisa had hoped that watching the two together would give her inspiration. Unfortunately it was nothing but that same old same old. The two of them going through their routines as Len planned: Mick making sure he ate and slept, Len looking away from his work long enough to snap Mick back to reality if he drank too much or was staring too long at his lighter.
It was so banal and pragmatic that Lisa wondered if she was mistaken.
Then, after putting a bowl of something down in front of Len, Mick asked Lisa, "Your field trip is this Friday, right?"
She started, not realizing how focused she was on nothing. "Uh, yeah."
"Here." Mick pulled out his wallet and passed her two twenties. "Don't worry about change, amusement park food is always expensive."
Len looked up, frowning slightly. "Mick."
"What?"
"You don't have to give her money. I can give her some."
"Yeah, but I did it first. 'Sides, she's practically my little sister, too." Mick picked up his own bowl and went to sit on the couch, flipping through tv channels to find something interesting.
Len stared after him with a look that was more than awe. It was like he suddenly remembered why he loved Mick and had fallen in love all over again. Lisa ducked her head and shoveled food in her mouth to hide her grin.
~*~*~*~
I hadn't expected this to happen but looking back it really isn't a surprise that I've fallen for you. I may not have realized it but all this time it was like I was subconsciously looking for someone who knows me, understands how I feel. Someone to comfort and hold me through the long lonely nights and these are Mariah Carey lyrics dammit
~*~*~*~
"Is this weird?"
"You're asking this now?" Lisa glared, unamused, until Connie sighed. "Yes, it's weird, but you're kind of weird anyway and we've been working on this for months and now I'm invested so we can't really stop now, can we?"
Lisa didn't know if she should be feeling smug about that considering she was on the verge of snapping over the entire situation.
~*~*~*~
We need to make out forever. Right now. It'll make Lisa's life so much easier. This is totally Len by the way.
~*~*~*~
Lisa wasn't ever going to trash the writers she had to read for English again. At least not all of them. Writing was hard and being able to put down words to communicate thoughts and emotions without making everyone sound idiotic took a lot more work than she had thought. Maybe she'd take a creative writing course.
After she got her stupid brother and his stupid partner hooked up.
~*~*~*~
Mick,
Writing this letter has been difficult given how much it relies on emotions. You know how I am with emotions. You know more about me than anyone else. For the years we've been together you have been one of the most dependable constants I've ever known and that's what makes this so hard. Because I don't want to lose what we already have. I don't want to lose you. But it's getting harder and harder to keep this to myself. I don't know how to tell you how much you mean to me but I don't know how much longer I can keep it a secret, either. I think I'm in love with you. I can't say for how long, it's just something that crept up on me over time until one day I looked over at you and realized I don't want to spend a day of my life without you by my side.
~*~*~*~
Lisa didn't know what suddenly changed but, for some reason, Len was being distant and cagey. At first she thought it was just him getting hung up over something regarding the upcoming job or maybe something to do with Lewis. But then he asked Mick to start taking her to and picking her up from school. For nearly a week and counting.
Whatever it was, it was getting to Mick, too. "Len tell you anything?" He asked gruffly one morning as they piled into the car.
"No. It isn't about work?"
"No." His voice was rough and dark. "He hasn't mentioned any problems he's just..."
"...pushing you out?"
"Yeah."
Lisa stayed silent for a few miles. Quietly she asked, "Are you mad at him?"
Mick snorted. "Annoyed. Kinda hard to fix the problem if he ain't gonna say a damn thing."
"Well, that's kinda how he is."
"Yeah, I know." Mick's hands tightened on the steering wheel as he fell silent for a moment. "Hate when he isolates himself like this."
"Me, too."
It wasn't until a day later, when Lisa had come up with additions to her fake love letter that she figured out what the problem was: the letter wasn't in the section of her notebook she normally kept it in. Now that she thought about it, Len started acting weird right around the last time he gave Lisa her backpack after she left it and her school stuff sprawled over the coffee table. He barely even lectured her on cleaning up after herself. At the time Lisa had chalked it up to him being too focused on his work to do more than a cursory retread of that familiar refrain but now Lisa wondered if it's because he may have read the letter.
Was he acting weird because she wrote something bad? Lisa scanned over the letter again. There was nothing that seemed particularly damming and Lisa knew it wasn't because she was wrong in assuming he was in love with Mick. She scanned it again and another thought hit her: did Len think this letter was from her? Which, yes it was, but not from her point of view. Sure, it was in her own handwriting until she finalized the words and maybe there wasn't anything that explicitly said it wasn't her own feelings but he had to know, right? He had to know that it wasn't how Lisa would write.
Not that she ever actually wrote anything that wasn't for school. Dammit.
It took another moment before the extent of the situation hit her. How was she going to fix this? Len, despite how he might protest, was like one of those stupid, tragic romance heroes that would rather suffer quietly if he thought it meant the people he cared about were happy rather than talk about things. Her options were limited. Pretending like she no longer had a crush on Mick would mean throwing away the letter. If she wasn't careful about it, Len might get insulted on her behalf and get into a fight with Mick over 'breaking her heart'. Though maybe the letter was useless now that Len had seen it. If she gave it to Mick anyway, he might show it to Len and then he'd know exactly who wrote it. If Lisa told him about the letter, Len might clam up about his feelings even more which would put Lisa back at square one. Maybe even negative one depending on how badly Len took it.
She agonized over what to do for days until she went to Connie's for an emergency sleepover, hoping for a solution.
Connie took in all the information quietly, looking off into the distance as she thought and Lisa wallowed. Eventually she said, "Tell Mick."
Lisa gave her a look. "About the love letter? Yeah, that's gonna go over well."
"No. About how you think your brother is, for whatever reason, trying to hook you up with him. Do you think Mick would go for it?"
Lisa wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, no. At least he better not. I don't want it and Mick's always telling me to be firm with what I'm okay with and not let anyone try to force me to change that, so I'm certain he'd back down if I said so. This is, of course, ignoring the fact he's totally in love with Lenny, so."
"Right, well, you said Mick doesn't deal with crap. So if you tell him about it, especially if you tell him you're not into him, he'll probably confront Len, right?"
"What do I say about the love letter?"
"Say it was a passing crush that lasted, like, a week or something. Then someone else caught your eye and that's why you never finished it." She raised her eyebrows at Lisa. "You're very fickle about relationships, don't pretend you're not."
Lisa looked at Connie with a new respect. "You know, for someone that doesn't actually have to lie, you're really good at it."
Connie flashed her a grin. "Why do you think I'm so good at English?"
~*~*~*~
Lisa waited a couple days more until Mick was starting to get shorter tempered than usual due to Len's caginess. Then she told him that it seemed like Len kept pushing the two of them together and she knews it's a really weird thing to say but she couldn't help the feeling that maybe he was trying to hook them up?
"You're great, Mick, don't get me wrong," Lisa said breezily as they drove back from school. "But honestly you're so much like a brother it'd be like me dating Len. Or some weird uncle because you're kinda old for me, don't you think?"
Mick just stayed quiet, jaw squared and eyes intense they way they always got when he was about to go crack someone's head. Metaphorically this time, she hoped.
When they got in, Mick grunted at Lisa to go to her room. Which she did for precisely as long as she knew they'd be expecting her to sneak out, then snuck out ten seconds after. She crept as quietly as possible down the hall, bypassing all the creaky bits of the floor. She could hear them talking but their voices were low and it wasn't until Lisa reached the corner that their words became audible.
"-you really think that?" She caught the tail end of Mick's growl.
"She has a crush on you," Len's voice was petulant, almost on the verge of pouting which he would deny to his dying day. "I know that much."
"So what? Don't my opinion matter?"
"You like her well enough. If you spent more time together, you might like her more." There was a stretched silence before Len snapped, defensive, "What?"
"Wondering why you aren't threatening me," Mick said, voice slow like he was thinking his words through as he said them. There was a long silence. "Len?"
"You're a better option than her other boyfriends were."
"That's not what I'm talking about. You're ready to shoot guys that look at her."
"You don't think she's just a piece of ass."
"I'm still almost twice her age." There was another, longer pause. "What aren't you telling me?"
"Just don't hurt her." Lisa peeked around the corner. Len wasn't looking directly at Mick, had his arms crossed and shoulders drawn like a shield. "I'd rather not lose you because of this."
"Len." She'd never heard Mick like that before. Lisa shoved her fist against he mouth as Mick, slowly, took Len's face in his hands. Len looked up at him with such vulnerable hope. He leaned forward, eyes sliding closed and Mick pressed a soft kiss to Len's lips. It took everything in Lisa's power not to jump up and cheer victoriously. After some time- long enough for Lisa to think maybe she shouldn't be watching her older brother make out with his best friend -Mick pulled back, resting his forehead against Len's. "You're not going to lose me," he said quietly.
Len gripped Mick's wrists, looking for all the world like he just wanted to fall into Mick's arms. "What about Lisa?"
He smirked. "It's kinda insulting you think I'm into kids."
Which was insulting in its own right because Lisa was barely a kid anymore. But, given the circumstances, she decided to let it slide.
"She'll be disappointed."
"She'll live."
She needs to go before she's caught, Lisa thought to herself, slinking away as quietly as she arrived.
It was a few hours later that Len found her in her room. She pretended not to notice the lightness in his step or the unconscious curve of his lips, let alone the start of a hickey on his neck Len probably didn't even know about. Lisa very nearly couldn't keep a straight face. "What's up?"
Len cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable as he sat on Lisa's bed by her feet. "I wanted to talk to you about Mick."
"What about him?"
Len wiped his palms against his jeans. "I was cleaning your things up from the front room," he shot her a silent reprimand, "and found a note. I wasn't intending to look at it, but I saw Mick's name on it and wanted to make sure there wasn't an issue. I didn't think it was a love letter," he said quickly, mistaking Lisa pressing her lips together as a sign of anger rather than an attempt not to laugh. "Look, I don't blame you. Mick is," he got an adorable, far away look in his eyes, "he's great. But it wouldn't work out. He's too old for you and he... he's my partner."
Oh god, if this lasted much longer Lisa was going to burst out cackling. "Okay," she said. Too quickly, judging by Len's expression. "I wrote that, like, a month ago. Mick's still hot and amazing and all but football season just started. I've got plenty of guys in spandex to oggle." Plus a cheerleader or two but Len didn't need to know about that yet. "It's not like I'm looking to settle down with someone, I'm only fifteen."
"Well. That makes sense." He hesitated, looking like he was going to say something- was he going to admit he was in a relationship with Mick, Lisa wondered. But he stood and went to the door. "I'm glad you're handling this so maturely."
Lisa snorted and waved him off. After the door clicked shut again, Lisa rolled over to muffle her laughter into her pillow. Sure, it didn't go how she imaged it would but she'd still count it as a victory.
