The Scrapbook: An Unauthorized Riverforest Bends Fanfic
Warning: Audacious stealing of characters and events from Riverforest Bends without permission! Names, events, and locations changed to protect the guilty...Or because I forgot those details. Who knows?
The Scrapbook
It was a quiet day at The Center when Keaton took a break from laundry to join his romantic partner, Grew, at the front desk. It only took a few seconds for Keaton to notice Grew was flustered, their cheeks blushing pink and hands fluttering nervously... And not, Keaton thought, because of his quick, almost completely chaste kiss of greeting.
"What's the matter?" he asked Grew quickly. The short, nearsighted mutant had blossomed since escaping government custody, growing in confidence day by day, but a crisis could still reduce them to an anxious, tearful mess. Grew didn't seem that upset, thankfully, but Keaton was still concerned.
"Nothing! Nothing at all!" Grew said. If anything, their cheeks turned even redder. "What could be the matter? Everything is normal," they went on in a rush.
Keaton narrowed his eyes. "If everything's normal, why are you acting..." His voice trailed off. 'Weird,' he'd been going to say, but as Grew's small eyes darted this way and that, Keaton refined his assessment. "Guilty!" he finished emphatically.
"Who, me?" Grew feigned shock, widening their eyes as far as they could, even as those eyes darted once more to the magazine lying open on the desk. "I'm not hiding anything, Keaton," they added.
"I never accused you of hiding anything," Keaton pointed out, and snatched up the magazine over Grew's ineffective protests. Keaton blinked in confusion at what was revealed: a haphazard pile of small pieces of paper, obviously swept under the magazine in haste as Grew had seen him approach. Other items on the desk provided clues: a pair of scissors, an envelope apparently stuffed with more bits of paper, and a copy of the local newspaper, the North Country News. And not the current day's paper, a stack of which were always laid out for residents to peruse if they cared to. (Few residents of The Center cared much about the goings on of the small town of Canton nearby, but that was neither here nor there.) No, this was an out-of-date copy, Keaton noted, from several months back.
"Newspaper clippings? What? Why?" What could possibly be in the North Country News that would interest Grew?
"I'm collecting them," Grew admitted. "I know it's silly--"
"It's not silly." Whatever was going on here, Keaton was not about to let his love dismiss it. If Grew was interested in the mundane lives of local humans, then those clippings were important as far as Keaton was concerned.
Grew smiled, regaining confidence as they saw that Keaton wasn't going to tease them. "Look," they said, choosing a clipping and handing it over. "Canton had a baking contest back in October."
"Hey, that's Minerva," Keaton exclaimed. "And that's the kitchen, I mean, Minerva's kitchen, right here in The Center! How did this get past the Boss?" Everyone knew Negan was militant about protecting his community of mutants from government detection, and with good reason.
"Pfft, the Boss knows. Of course he does," Grew said confidently. "Look, this one's from Pride Month." They passed another clipping to Keaton.
Keaton couldn't help but let out a snort of laughter at Negan and Cash's flamboyant former next-door neighbors, who never passed up a chance to get offended over nothing. And the couple's nonsense posed no threat to The Center, he had to admit.
"Ha, this is great, Grew. What else have you got?"
"Doesn't Luna look absolutely beautiful?" Grew' voice was reverent.
Grew and Luna had escaped from a top-secret government facility together. Grew's love for the teen was as deep and pure as a father's love for a daughter, but with a twist: Luna had been Grew's protector. Keaton knew that Grew, whose mutation gave them the ability to shape-shift into the form of a rat, had practically lived in Luna's jacket pocket during their first weeks at The Center. "Oh, yes," he agreed with Grew. "She looks like she just stepped out of the pages of a fairytale. A real princess."
Thoroughly invested now, Keaton eagerly browsed through Grew's collection, until he came to a write-up about Ethan. The Boss's own son!
"Negan can't be okay with this," he said.
"The Boss knows what he's doing," Grew said loyally. "There's nothing in the clippings that even hints at any of our true identities. Nothing about mutations. If anything, being in the newspaper actually helps with our cover." When Keaton frowned and opened his mouth as if to argue, Grew hurried on.
"If you were from the government, would you really believe a guy attending a dance with his teenage daughter was actually one of the military's most formidable weapons? That an Alpha--the most powerful of all our kind-- would send his son and heir to a small town public school?"
"I have to concede your point," Keaton said, nodding.
Fortunately, things were slow at the front desk, and no visitors or residents approached. Work was utterly forgotten as the couple avidly read the clippings.
"You have to put these in a scrapbook," Keaton said.
"I really should," Grew agreed. Now that Keaton had shown his approval, Grew knew they didn't have to hide their hobby any longer.
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