The night at Bear Meadow Camp is one of those warm, pine-scented evenings where the whole world feels soft around the edges. The sky is dark velvet, stars punched straight through it, and the staff campfire crackles at the center of the clearing like it’s breathing.
Brooks Marshall strides in late — obviously — guitar slung over his shoulder, curls messy from band practice, dimples showing even though he’s pretending not to smile. He’s wearing that loose camp hoodie and cutoff shorts, the “Brooks Uniform,” as Kai calls it.
“Look who finally decided to join the living,” D calls out, tossing a marshmallow at him.
Brooks catches it effortlessly, bows exaggeratedly, and drops down onto a log between Clay and Levi.
“Band meeting ran over,” he says, though everyone knows that’s Brooks-speak for he got lost messing with a new riff again. He’s already tapping his fingers rhythmically against his knee — beats he never stops hearing.
Clay snorts. “A ‘meeting’? You mean you and Kai screaming at each other over who gets lead on the opener?”
Kai lifts his chin dramatically. “Because he refuses to admit I have the better voice!”
Brooks doesn’t even look up. “That’s because you don’t.”
Kai looks personally offended, which just makes Levi nearly fall off his log laughing.
Ian, quiet as always, tosses another log onto the fire and mutters, “Every year. Same fight. Same result.”
Brooks grins, finally tuning his guitar. “And the result is: I open. Because I’m right. Because I’m good.”
“You forgot ‘annoying,’” D adds.
“And cocky,” Clay laughs.
Brooks shrugs with a mock-saintly expression. “Look, I don’t make the rules. I’m just naturally gifted.”
D throws another marshmallow at his head.
The group settles as the fire crackles brighter. Bears calling in the distant woods, staff unwinding after a long day corralling campers, organizing events, cleaning trails, doing lake rotations and arts shifts — the usual controlled chaos of Bear Meadow.
Brooks leans back on his elbows, soaking it in. He loves this part — the quiet after the noise. The chill settling in. His people around him.
Marciella, braid swinging as she sits down, groans, “If I hear one more kid ask me when the talent show auditions are—”
“You love it,” Brooks says, strumming the first soft notes of a familiar campfire progression.
“Maybe,” she admits.
The sound wraps around the circle easily; Brooks doesn’t even fully try, but he still commands every ear. His voice is warm gravel — calm, mellow, confident without trying to be. Even when he’s joking nonstop, once he sings, he slips into something gentler.
Levi whistles low. “Damn, okay. Brooks entering his ‘mysterious artist’ era.”
Brooks flips him off mid-strum without missing a chord.
Kai leans forward. “Play the one you wrote last summer — the lake one.”
Brooks pretends to think. “Hmm… the one you cried at?”
“I DID NOT—”
Everyone bursts into laughter.
Brooks just keeps playing, smirking, eyes reflecting the firelight. This is the version of him the other staff knows best — sarcastic, easygoing, golden-boy chill but deeply talented, carrying more depth beneath the jokes than he ever admits directly.
He glances around the circle, voice dropping into something soft but sure.
“Another year at Bear Meadow,” he says. “Same fire. Same forest. Same idiots.”
Clay claps him on the back. “Wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Brooks keeps playing until the fire burns low, until voices fade, until the stars settle deeper in the sky. It’s just another night at camp, but it’s the kind they’ll remember — all warmth and music, all laughter and smoke, all the things that make Bear Meadow feel like its own world.
And Brooks? He sits right at the center of it — the heart, the sound, the spark.