The Ages of Man
Fandom: Press Gang
Pairing: Kenny/Lynda
Spoilers: General through to There Are Crocodiles
Notes: For the LiveJournal Daily15 Word #120 – nineteen. Inspiration arrived for this, then I had to move it around a little bit… but it is in there.
When Kenny was five years old, he met Lynda Day. It was their first day at school, and while he and some of the other kids were terrified, clinging on to their mother’s hands as if they never wanted to let go, Lynda had marched into the classroom and taken over the place. The same day, when one of the older boys had decided that he’d try to take Kenny’s lunch from him in the playground, Lynda, a full year younger than Kenny, a full two years younger than the bully in question, had marched over, punched him hard on the arm, and told him to leave her friend alone.
In his teenager years, Kenny sometimes wondered if the only reason that they were ever friends was because he was as scared of her as the bully was.
Sometimes he didn’t wonder, sometimes he knew it, but that had stopped mattering a long time ago. He’d stopped wondering why he was Lynda’s friend, just enjoyed the experience when he could, walked behind her and cleaned up the debris left in her wake when he couldn’t.
When he was seventeen, his friendly duties became his assistant editorly duties, and he didn’t mind it a bit. Even if he had to spend his time watching Lynda falling for Spike, even if he kept on telling himself that he wasn’t jealous, that he just wanted what was best for her, wanted her to be happy. Besides, the sight of Lynda Day – headstrong, stubborn, no-emotions-on-display Lynda Day – in an emotional tailspin was some pretty entertaining stuff.
When he was eighteen, when they were
preparing to take the kiddy newspaper professional, he walked into her bedroom
and she told him that Spike was going back to
She’d refused, stubborn as ever, but Kenny knew how much she was hurting.
That was the first time he ever saw her cry.
It was also the first time he realised that he was in love with her, and it was no coincidence that when he went home that night, he wrote a song called “You Don’t Feel For Me.”
When Kenny was nineteen, he left the love
of his life behind him in
It was hard to leave, but it would have been harder to stay.
When Kenny was twenty, he was woken up by a phone call in the middle of the night, and when he heard his mother’s voice on the end, he was ready to berate her for getting the time difference wrong. Until, that is, he realised that she was crying, heard her say something about a fire in the newsroom, about Lynda being dead.
When Kenny was twenty, he got more drunk than he’s ever been in his entire life.
Until, that is, the phone rang again, and it was his mother, again, to tell him that, by some miracle that no-one could explain, Lynda had escaped the fire, that she was alive.
When Kenny was twenty-one, he flew home to celebrate his birthday with his family, but the only person he wanted to see was Lynda. And when he finally did, when her face lit up in a smile at the sight of him, when she barrelled into his arms and held him tightly, he never wanted to let her go.
When Kenny was twenty-two, he found himself once more sitting on Lynda Day’s bed, listening to her talk about Spike, about how this time it was really over between them. He hoped it was true, was sure that it wasn’t.
When Kenny was twenty-three, he found out that it was, because that was when he found himself once more in Lynda Day’s bedroom, but this time, in the bed, not on it, and Spike Thomson was nowhere near the conversational agenda.
When Kenny was twenty-four, he asked Lynda to marry him.
When he was twenty-five, he stood at the altar of their local church and watched her walk up the aisle to meet him. He couldn’t keep the smile off his face, especially when her nervous hic made a reappearance as she was trying to slide the ring on his finger. “Sorry,” she muttered, but he hadn’t minded in the least.
It had taken them a long time to get there, and nothing could ruin the moment.