"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Rory, happy birthday to you."
The group of people gathered around Rory in the flat - Stephen, Callum, Boo, Thorpe, Freddie, Jazza and Jerome - made the flat near impossible to navigate. There was simply too many people in the room. Rory laughed as they finished the song and took a drink that a random arm - she thought it was Jazza's - offered her.
"Well, I'm 18 now but you have to be 21 to drink in Louisiana." She looked out and smiled widely at the expectant faces around her. "So it's a good job that I'm in London!" She downed her drink to a cheer while Boo's voice called for music. As the music started, Rory spied the CD collection in the corner of the room and made her way to it, getting another drink as she went. Considering everything that had happened in the last few months, she deserved every drink that England had to offer. She looked across at Stephen who was chatting away to Thorpe on the other side of the room. He briefly glanced at her and offered a small smile before resuming his possibly serious conversation.
She made it to the CDs, miraculously unharmed in the over crowded flat, and scanned them for music she wanted to hear. Nothing caught her interest until she saw a band whose name she recognised: H.I.M. She was sure that Jerome had shown her their music once but she hadn't paid much attention.
She picked up one of their albums and scanned it as she felt someone come up behind her. "H.I.M. Good band." She turned around to see Stephen looking at the album over her shoulder. She smiled. "Yeah, I heard them once. I think. Do you like them?"
To her surprise, he chuckled a little. "Yeah, they're my CDs."
Rory nodded. "Oh, well then, yeah, I guess you like them. You wouldn't have bought them otherwise. Although, I remember this one time, someone in Benouville completely bought out an entire collection of CDs from the shop so that they could stick them on their wall. A sort of weird art deco thing." She shrugged as Stephen chuckled again. She liked the sound. It was nice that he had become a little less serious. Mind you, it might have been because he'd had a few to drink. Either way, the tension that existed between them seemed to be a little lighter in that moment. She pushed the CD at him. "Can we put some on?"
"Of course, it's your birthday. You choose the music." He took the album and made his way to the CD player, tripping over his feet a little as he went. Yep, he'd had a few. H.I.M played for the rest of the night, and Rory listened to the lyrics in wonder. It almost sounded as if they were singing about her life and the lives of the people around her.
"Rory!"
Rory shook herself out of her trance to find Boo right in front of her. "I've been calling on you for ages. You looked completely out of it. You alright?"
"I'm fine. Just thinking about how these songs sound like our lives."
Boo laughed. "I think you're over thinking things Rory."
And as Rory lay on the couch later that night - Stephen had offered her his bed but she didn't think sleeping in his room was going to help that oh so wonderful tension between them, even if he wasn't there - she couldn't help but think about the lyrics of the song she heard. And she figured she'd be thinking about them for weeks.