The Stewarts Family (and other shenanigans)
Sims player fourteen generation deep into a legacy. Here's their story! Also, art and builds.
Told you I did Yoga now. It helped to cope with the morning’s disaster.
Shanna, probably editing one of her latest songs on her computer.
Turned out Romain had a bit of a harder time coming to terms with the recent events than I’d have anticipated.
But everybody coped differently.
And I was there to witness it.
I swear sometimes we take the beauty of the Air Complex for granted.
On that sunny afternoon — one of the lasts of the year according to recent weather forecasts — we go down to the swimming pool together. Hugo and I have a diving contest. Little does he know, I recently took up yoga, so I’m much more agile than him, no matter how much he boasts about his muscles from the top of the diving board.
It’s all in good fun, though.
At least, until Romain starts getting jealous in turn, and out of nowhere, kisses me. He takes me by surprise, but I push him away.
Too late. Hugo is already gone.
I quickly — too quickly — explain to Romain that kisses are out of the question, and run after him, but he is nowhere to be found.
Lining up for the diving board. I am the figure you see drowning in the water. It took me some time to warm up, okay?
Marie ogling Romain. As usual.
Show-off.
Marie on a Yoga break. Hugo and I, trying to have a conversation.
Looking straight over my shoulder, right at Hugo. Classy, Romain.
Awkward.
…
Finally telling him to stop. Too late…
The night — or rather, early morning — progresses. It’s the outcome you would expect after romantic stargazing and weeks of barely hidden affection.
Then Hugo and I end up cuddling in his room. We lost track of time a little bit, but that’s more than fine. He confides about his dreams and his projects. He’s told me about them before, but he’s always stopped shy of actually showing me what he’s working on.
Today, though, I don’t give up. We’re alone, and we have time. I tell him I want to see. And he ends up agreeing.
It’s an impressive piece of work. A mobile app like many, until you dig under the surface. He shows me some pieces of the code — genius bits, the ones he had trouble figuring out, the ones he’s still working on. He has templates, and diagrams, and spreadsheets on spreadsheets of data from his experiments. He has a demo. He says it’s a bit “wonky,” but I’m impressed.
Thoroughly impressed. I tell him I want to help.
And with that, we’re pretty much ready to take on the world together.
Thanks to @simcophogi for the poses ❤ You made this scene happen.
And then on the evening, we invest the tiki bar. I challenge Romain to a game of Don’t Wake the llama, but I can tell his mind is elsewhere. Thankfully, when the time comes to attack the Hugo/Marie team on the table football, his head is back in the game.
I don’t know how all four of us thought matching us in these specific teams was a good idea. By some magic trickery, Romain and I won the match; Hugo could not have faked the look on his face.
I think seeing us celebrate sent him just over the edge of frustration. Which probably explains the rest of the evening. How he got emboldened. More confident. Maybe realizing he didn’t want to lose his shot.
Hugo and I kissed for the first time that night, just as the sun rose, around the dying embers of a tall campfire.
Fist Bump!
Hugo, not a fan.
I went outside on my own, to play with the giant campfire on the beach.
Hugo moved closer, under the pretense of helping me revive it.
We started talking.
And watching the flames dance under the stars.
And then we kissed.
The weekend! We decide to spend the Saturday at the beach. It means a drive to the Oasis Springs lake, but it’s worth it.
In the morning we just lounge, hang around the water, fill our stomachs with ice cream from the tiki bar that watches over the beach, and roast marshmallows on a campfire. This last part is my favorite activity. We exchange gossip over the flames, and once the sun has set, we tell silly ghost stories that somehow always end up being salacious.
The terrace of the tiki bar, with iced tea and vanilla ice creams. No table for six; the boys are perfectly fine on their own.
The Blue Oasis Spring waters. Fresh and refreshing, perfect under the burning desert sun.
The evenings get cold fast around here. Weather forecasts say we might even expect actual winters soon.
Warm temperatures, warmer glances
Should have worn darker glasses as well.
Things have a way of working out.
I know I make it sound like we spend our teenage years partying, and dancing, and flirting, and barely studying, but really, on a normal day, we have pretty casual, easy going hobbies and pastimes. The day after a big night out, for instance.
Like Hugo and I, talking by the pool.
Shanna, practicing in her bedroom.
… And things I was not aware of.
It’s silly how easy it is to forget to…
… lock…
… the door…
The club has a secret room. It has a DJ booth, dimmed light, and a glowing dance floor. It’s a lounge with a quiet, soft atmosphere. It might as well be in another building. You can only access it if you have a special key, or if you know the special knocking code.
Hugo has the special key.
And I know the special code.
The DJ booth is playing a smooth jazz playlist when I enter, and we start swaying along the slow beat. For a while.
The girls from the cheer squad and I liked to go outside as a group. And sometimes, the boys would tag along. They watched us rock the dance floor with the perfectly prepared choreographies that put every single dancer to shame. Even the weird ones that always seemed to appear out of nowhere around midnight and had glowing eyes.
Really, we sort of suspected that part of their interest would have been lost without the short, short cheerleader outfits.
*sigh* Teenagers.
It doesn’t stop me from having the time of my life on the dance floor once my friends have had enough. I’m cheer-captain for a reason: whether with pompoms or with glow sticks, my whole family has rhythm in the blood.
And Charlotte and Romain apparently don’t mind me being busy with something else.
It’s okay, though. On this particular night out, my head is absolutely elsewhere. And pretty soon, I leave the dance floor too, anyways.
The Queen of the Dancefloor
The Queen I tell you.
Too preoccupied with my moves to care about them.
I barely have the time to reach my locker after Geography class, and Charlotte is already on my heels. She says there’s apparently something we need to discuss; she forbids me from sitting with the boys at lunch.
So I sit with the girls.
Our cafeteria is small, fit for the very limited number of students in our school, but that day it feels even smaller. It feels like I can’t breathe. Being called out by strangers is one thing; being called out by a friend is another. But being called out on your behavior by three of your best friends, it sucks the oxygen out of a cafeteria faster than the words “remember we have a test next period?”.
Marie is the angriest. She shouts, and she accuses, and she doesn’t realize it, but she’s not entirely being fair either. Charlotte tries to act supportive, and I see she’s not mad for the same reasons: mainly she’s hurt that I’m not talking to her about the situation. That these are the lengths she has to go to to get me to listen to her. Still, she doesn’t help.
Even Shanna is in on it. In typical Shanna fashion, she doesn’t get mad. She doesn’t scream, she is not pointing fingers. She is not pleased, but she talks calmly, clearly, and out of the three of them, she is the only one whose words I hear.
I know that she is right.
Ambush!
This would have been my last chance to talk to her, and her only. Maybe I would have been excused from the rest of the plan.
You know an argument is serious when there’s a half-eaten slice of pizza on the table and no one has made a claim for it yet.
No use defending yourself…
… When you’re attacked on all fronts.
Thank Plumbob for how oblivious teenage boys can get.
The Stewarts Family (and other shenanigans) 