So, this is the next part. The last part was short, only one chapter. The one's for the characters will be longer, and have several chapters. 7x1 was mostly to let everyone get a little feel on how the characters are. I decided to start with Hanna, so enjoy her story!
Oh, and on a side note, I know I wrote the name 'Hew' in the last part, but it's really Huw. I guess I was just tired…
R&R! I love reviews!
7x2: Hannah
As her alarm clock went off, Hannah slowly opened her eyes.
She had been awake for a while already, but hadn't made herself get up from bed yet. It wasn't any point in heading downstairs anyway. Her parents had been fighting, and she had heard it all the way to her room.
Slowly, she moved her duvet away from her body and rose up from her bed slowly, carefully not to rush it.
She cast a glance to some of the pictures hanging on one wall and the cameras that were standing on a table on the other side of the room. Then she moved over to her dresser, picked out an outfit, a pair of fancy black jeans, a red shirt and a jeans vest to top it off. She got dressed and headed to the bathroom.
While she was inside the bathroom putting on her makeup, she heard the front door open and close, telling her that her father had left for work.
Hannah sighed to herself. She was getting fed up with her parents crap. They couldn't keep behaving like this. It had to end. If not for her, then for Sarah and Bill.
After finishing her makeup she moved out of the bathroom, and opened the door across the hallway.
Sarah and Bill were lying in their beds, both thankfully asleep, neither aware of the shouting match that had taken place in the kitchen not long before.
After taking another glance at the two sleeping children, Hannah left the room, carefully closing the door behind herself before she walked down the stairs and into the kitchen, making herself a bowl of cereal.
"Morning," her mother tried carefully, but Hannah refused to answer or even look up at her mother.
She quickly finished her breakfast, leaving the kitchen in a hast after putting away the dirty cutlery, even though she knew that she was early as usual.
She headed upstairs again, only to get her shoes and her bag, stuffing one of her cameras inside her bag as she headed outside and rang the doorbell on the house next door.
The door opened and a tired face poked out.
"Good morning, is Blaine ready?" she asked with a smile, and she was let inside the house by Blaine's mother.
"Blaine! Hannah's here!" Blaine's mother shouted and Hannah took her place in the stairs, waiting for Blaine to get ready to head to college.
%&%&%&
"Hey!" Huw exclaimed as he caught Hannah on the way out of Psychology.
"Hi!" Hannah said, a bit surprised. They hadn't talked a lot since the meeting in the park.
"So, I was just wondering... If you still wanted to hang out sometime?" Huw asked, rubbing his neck a bit, his eyes wandering over the floor and his feet.
"Yeah, I'd like that. Hey, you mind walking me to my locker?" she asked, indicating to the books in her arms.
"Oh, sure!"
The two of them started walking side by side, Hannah leading the way to her locker.
"So, when were you thinking we should hang out?" Hannah asked, starting the conversation again as they walked.
"I dunno really... Not tonight though. I have a football match, and then the team is going out to a pub or something," Huw said, shrugging.
"Is it the school team?" Hannah asked, curious.
"Yeah, we're not too good though. So we go out no matter if we win or lose. Probably we'll lose," Huw told, not sounding proud of his team.
"That's kinda sad," Hannah commented as she stopped by her locker.
"Here let me," Huw said, taking her books, letting her open the lock before opening the locker and he put her books inside.
"Thanks Huw, that was nice," Hannah told him with a smile. "Wanna lunch?"
"Sound nice," he said, returning her smile. "I just have to tell Hawa that we're heading for the cafe," he said, taking up his iPhone from his pocket and sent a text to his twin.
"You guys are really close," Hannah commented as they started walking in the direction of the cafe.
"Mhm," Huw answered with a little nod.
"That must be nice. Having someone to talk to all the time, someone really close."
"It is, don't you have anyone? Friends or siblings around your age?" Huw asked her, a bit surprised.
"Well, of course I have friends. I just guess it's not quite the same. Even though we are really close, we don't live together, and we don't share parents. But no, no sibling around my age. My siblings are younger, 6 and 8 years old. I wasn't really planned," Hannah told, blushing a bit.
"Wow, and your parents told you that?" Huw asked.
"Yeah... Subtlety isn't their thing..."
"I can see that," Huw agreed.
"Hay and I, we have an older brother, Shane. He's five years older than us, he wasn't really planned either. Our parents never said, but we have guessed our way to it through the years," he told.
They took places in the queue to get food, continuing their conversation as they helped themselves to some food and took a seat by one of the free tables.
Not long after Blaine and Moira came over, taking a seat by the table too as they saw Hannah.
"Hannah-banana, what's up? Who's this?" Blaine asked, studying Huw as he took a seat next to Hannah.
Hannah hit him lightly in the shoulder, not liking the childish nickname he used for her. "Stop it Blaine! You know I hate it when you call me that!" she exclaimed. "This is Huw, he's in Psychology with us. Huw, this is Blaine and Moira," she told, indicating to each of them in turn.
"Hey," Huw said, being polite.
"Hi," Moira answered with a smile before she started to eat her lunch.
"So, how did you two end up talking?" Blaine asked, a bit curious.
"Oh it's nothing really," Hannah told, taking a bite of her own food.
"Really? I'm still interested," Blaine argued.
"I guess I could tell," Huw cut in, shrugging a bit.
"Please do," Blaine said, waiting for Huw to start telling.
"You see, the other day I..."
%&%&%&
The shouting was the first thing Hannah noticed when she came home.
She had been staying out for a while after college, hanging out with Moira and taking some pictures down by the docks. She had managed to snap several got shots, but it slipped her mind as soon as she heard the shouting. She wasn't quite sure if it was coming from the kitchen or the drawing room, but she didn't care.
She quickly slipped off her shoes and hurried up the stairs and down the hallway. She opened the door into her siblings' bedroom. In there, she found the two of them huddled together on Bill's bed.
Bill was embracing Sarah as she cried silently. Bill wasn't crying, but he looked like he was about to any second.
Hannah strode over to the bed with just a couple of steps and hugged the two of them tight.
"C'mon," she said softly.
She tried to wipe Sarah's tears away with her hands, and she ushered them downstairs to the front door. Quickly, she put on a pair of trainers and grabbed one of Bill's hand in her right and Sarah's hand in her left before she led them outside.
"How about a trip to Moira's?" she asked them lightly as she led them down the street.
%&%&%&
"They can't keep going like this," Hannah told Moira in a quiet voice and let out a sight.
The two girls were standing in the kitchen in Moira's flat, each nursing a cup of tea, leaning against the counter.
"I guess not, you know I don't mind you bringing Sarah and Bill here, but I'm not home all the time. I dunno, maybe you should try talking to them?" Moira suggested.
Hannah nodded absentmindedly as she leant back a bit, looking out into the drawing room, checking that her sibling were still watching the movie, Peter Pan, that Moira had put on for them. They both seemed entranced by the film, even though they had both seen it several times before. Hannah was really grateful that something as simple as a movie was enough to get their thoughts away from the shouting match that had taken place at their home not long ago.
"I just don't know what to say to them," Hannah said quietly, not wanting the children to hear them talk about this. "And it's not like I'm home all the time, I can't just keep disappearing with them either. Last time my mum asked me where we had gone off to. I just had to tell her I had taken them to the playground."
Hannah ran a hand through her hair, loosing up a few knots.
"And it's not like I can just take them to Blaine's either. He's basically never home, and when he is, he's got company around." It would have been a lot easier for them to just stay at Blaine's, seeing as he was their neighbour, but the one time she had taken her siblings there, he had to throw out the girl he had over at the time.
Moira put down her mug of tea on the counter before she gathered Hannah in her arms, embracing her. "Shhh, it's going to be okay. Promise me that if you need anything, ask me?"
Hannah relaxed in Moira's embrace and nodded slowly. "I promise." She let her forehead rest on Moira's shoulder and took a deep breath.
"Thanks, I needed that," Hannah said with a small smile after Moira had let go of her.
"Now, how 'bout I find some ice-cream and we join the bugs out there?" Moira said, a smile on her lips as she strode over to the freezer without waiting for an answer.
%&%&%&
"Hey!" Huw greeted Hannah from the other side of the road.
The two of them had decided to meet up and hang out for a while.
Hannah had spotted his wild, ginger curls the moment he had passed the corner, instantly leaving a smile on her face.
"Hi," Hannah said with a soft smile. Finally, she could let go and leave her flat without worrying about her siblings. Her father was out of town for business for the weekend, meaning that there wouldn't be any shouting.
"So, what do you want to do?" Huw asked her as he caught up with her and leaned against a fence.
"I'm not quite sure really, I just wanted to hang out and get out of the flat for a while," she told, not sure if she wanted him to know all about her situation at home yet. Maybe later, if she got to know him better.
"Hmm, how about we head to the park then?" Huw suggested, thinking back to the first day he had seen her there.
"That's a good idea," Hannah agreed and they started walking towards the park.
"Hey, did you bring your camera?" Huw asked, an idea forming in his head as they walked.
It was only a short distance to the park, and soon they would be able to see parts of it.
"Yeah," Hannah said, "I basically never leave home without it," she told.
"Good," Huw said with a smile. Then he grabbed her hand and started running, dragging Hannah with him the last 200 yards to the park.
"Gimme the camera," Huw more told than asked her as they had come into the park and Hannah had stopped, trying to catch her breath.
Hannah looked up at him, eyeing him up and down for a minute. She wasn't quite sure if she wanted to hand him her camera. It was one of her most expensive ones, she had used a long while saving up the money to buy it. And what was Huw going to do with her camera anyways? She was perfectly capable of taking photos herself.
In the end, she took it up from her bag and gave it to him, hesitating for a minute before she did so. "Be careful with it," she warned him, something she said every time she leant out her camera to someone.
"I'm not going to run around with it or anything," Huw promised her as he turned on the camera and inspected it for a moment, trying to figure out the basics.
"So miss, you ready?"
"Ready for what?" Hannah asked suspiciously.
"Modelling for me, of course," Huw told her with a grin as he placed the camera in front of his face, looking through and taking the first picture of Hannah.
"No way!" she exclaimed. She was in no way a model, she was the photographer, the one who could look shabby and not care about her looks.
"Yes way," Huw told her softly. "You look great, and it would be a shame if you didn't own a single picture of yourself," he pointed out to her as he kept taking pictures, not caring if she was glaring a bit at him.
Hannah's eyes softened a bit. "So, you want me to like... pose and stuff?" she asked, posing with her hand on her hip and making a trouty mouth at him, mostly joking around.
"No," he told her, letting down the camera from his face. "Try to be natural, like... do something that you don't have to make an effort to do. Just sit down on a bench or something."
Hannah bit her lip, trying to think of something. But he had sad natural, right? So the first thing that came to her mind was to sit down by the trunk of one tree, pulling her legs up to her chin and smiling sweetly at him.
"That's better," Huw told her as he snapped several pictures of her like that.
%&%&%&
"I really had a great time today," Hannah said with a smile at Huw.
Huw was walking her home. It wasn't late, but he had promised to help his twin with some of her coursework.
"Me too," he smiled back at her. "We should definitively do it again sometime."
"Yeah. Oh and by the way, I was wondering if you have any football matches anytime soon. I'd love to come watch it," Hannah asked, sincerely interested.
"Uh, yeah. There's one in a week's time, on Friday next week. Are you sure you want to come? It's probably going to be terribly boring, and we will probably lose," he told her, kicking a stone on the sidewalk as they strolled towards Hannah's house, not rushing it.
"I don't care if you win or not. I'd just like to watch you play, that's all," Hannah told, blushing a bit as she did.
"Well, thanks." Huw looked down at his shoes for a second, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand.
"You could always come out with the team afterwards. Some of the guys usually bring their girlfriends..." he trailed off, blushing a bit as he realised what he had just said."So there's not a problem to bring along a friend," he quickly finished, trying to get the conversation away from the awkward turn it had taken.
"Sure," Hannah said, trying to smile at him, but it failed a bit and ended up looking fake. "I'm sure it would be nice..."
"Yeah..."
"Well, this is me," Hannah told, indicating to the house just a little ahead of them.
"This was nice," Huw said quietly, trying to ignore the awkward moment that had just occurred.
"Mhm," Hannah agreed with a short nod.
"So... I'll see you on Monday?"
"Yes..." Hannah trailed off as she noticed how close the two of them were standing. She could almost feel Huw's hot breath on her face.
"Bye then," Huw said, sounding like he'd rather stay with her for a while longer, rather than go help Hawa with her coursework.
"Bye," Hannah mumbled, unsure of what she should do. Should she stick out her hand and let him shake it? Maybe she should give him a hug? Or a kiss on the cheek?
The decision was made for her as Huw embraced her in a hug.
"Night," he told her softly before he released her from the embrace.
"Good night," she answered, her voice just as soft as his.
Then she made her way towards her door. She stopped once, looking back at him before opening the door and disappearing inside.