The Best Friends You'll Ever Have | 3: The Pact

[luxken27]

Chapter Title: 3 | The Pact
Prompt: #096 – Siblings (Writer's Choice)
Universe: early canon
Genre: Angst/Family
Rating: T
Warning: None
Word Count: 2,056
Summary: Charlie Thomas would never forget the night his father abandoned his family.

Links: FF.net | LJ | DW

This was originally written for desert_vixen during the holiday exchange at fandom_stocking. It wasn't the first piece I wrote for the comm, but as I'm still waiting for a couple of recipients to find their gifts, it's the one I'll start off with =)

As this story was written as a gift!fic, there was a certain amount of tailoring. I was mostly just deliriously happy to find someone else in the comm full of Doctor Who and Supernatural fans who shared my interests, even a little bit :P Luckily for me, desert_vixen took part in Yuletide, so she wrote a Yuletide letter to her potential author, which I also used as my guidelines:

#1: Baby-Sitters Club - Elizabeth Thomas Brewer, Watson Brewer, Charlie Thomas, Kristy Thomas

What I'm really, really interested in here: How did these two meet? How did they get into a relationship? Is their favorite movie Yours Mine and Ours? (okay, the combined family isn't that big.) The story in the books is told from the kids' POV, so we don't know any of this, and I want to. I've always assumed it had to be work-related, but maybe not. Tell me about it - either how their relationship starts, or while they're dating, or after they're married and doing something WITHOUT the horde of kids. I have a soft spot for Kristy and Charlie, and how they react as well, but what I'm really interested in is Elizabeth and Watson.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to come up with anything for her request - though luckily her Yuletide author did - but considering her mention that she also liked Charlie and Kristy? Now that I could work with =)

Charlie Thomas is a major player in my 'original' BSC fic, and I did some pretty major research into the canon for his characterization in said fic, so the chance to kinda warm up with him in a smaller, more self-contained story was welcomed. I have a lot of respect for him, as the eldest Thomas kid, and thus, the one who had to hold it together the most when their father took off while they were all still so young. That's something I knew I wanted to explore in the context of the babysitters100 comm, so I decided that I'd write this gift in such a way that I could also post it to the comm, and take another step towards completing this table.

The ultimate inspiration for this fic was this song:

Even though it's a song about the end of a romantic relationship, the lyrics put me in mind of a kid trying to understand why his father walked out, without explanation, and became basically a wandering deadbeat. The series starts off long after Patrick Thomas walks out on his family, but the effects of his abandonment still linger, manifesting themselves differently in each kid.

It's not something that's brought up on a regular basis (outside Chapter Twos, at least), but at the end of the regular series, it comes into play a bit more. In #107, Mind Your Own Business, Kristy!, Kristy hurls the accusation of being exactly like their father at Charlie during a fit of anger and frustration, just because she knows how much saying something like that would hurt him - and it does.

The first book of the post-BSC "Friends Forever" series deals with Patrick Thomas suddenly inviting three of his four kids back into his life (he apparently forgot about his youngest, David Michael, which has, of course, led to rampant fanon speculation that David Michael isn't his, ooh la la!) when he decides to get married for the second time. I read this book with a great deal of trepidation, because I'm not a fan of what little bit of the FF series I'd read til that point, but it was actually pretty good. It detailed all three of the older siblings' reactions to being thrust back into the life of a father who didn't want much to do with them, and it was quite telling for all of their characters. Considering what minor roles Charlie and Sam play in the main series, this canon fodder was relished, indeed!

desert_vixen really enjoyed the story, going so far as to rec it at her journal (for which I'm forever grateful <3), so I hope any and all other Thomas family fans like it as well. I love working with these siblings, and I'm looking forward to finishing my Charlie/Janine fic so I can share it with the world as well.