For anyone who doesn't know and would like to listen to it, the lyrics here are from 1000 Times by Sara Bareilles.

Back of the room,
Looking at you,
Counting the steps,
Between us...

Margaret Tate ran her fingers through her long hair as she sighed deeply into the darkness provided throughout the bedroom she was currently staying in by the blackout blinds. The time on her phone read 2:13am but it felt a lot later. She had been struggling to sleep and counting each passing minute for hours. If it hadn't been for the fact that there were four other people asleep within the household, she probably would have rolled onto her stomach and screamed into her pillow from frustration, but she knew from experience that the other two women at least were light sleepers with superb hearing which probably came from raising children.

This was the first time she'd been alone for a prolonged length of time since she and Andrew arrived at his family's home in Sitka, Alaska and it was the first chance she'd had to really think about what they were actually doing. Sure, she'd had a bit of a freak out on the boat but that had been a momentary lapse in her own self-confidence and worth. It had been about the stress of her life and what she had gone through since her parent's death when she was sixteen. Now she was really thinking about it, what it would mean to hurt Andrew and his family, what it would mean to not be alone and to have people caring about her for the first time in years. Margaret didn't want to always been seen as the villain, that was just how her life had turned out. If she had learned anything from her parent's death it was that if you don't care about people you don't leave yourself open to being hurt by them. But, this was going to hurt, that she could already tell.

Slowly, Margaret sat up against the headboard and closed her eyes tightly, running her hands across her tired face. She needed something to take her mind off things, something to help her sleep. What she really wanted was Andrew to be asleep close by on the bedroom floor so that she could listen to the comforting sound of his breathing but she'd never admit that to anyone. She wasn't sure if it was simply the situation they were in or if it was something else but having Andrew around these days always seemed to keep her calm. He always seemed to know how to talk to her and what to say and when she needed him to hold her, even when she said she didn't want to be near him.

Eventually, Margaret gave up and padded barefoot to the dimly lit kitchen. The plan was to make a warm drink of milk or something to put her thoughts and body to rest but in the back of her mind she knew that Andrew was asleep on the couch just around the corner. She concentrated for as long as she could on the numbers counting down the seconds on the microwave until she caught herself looking towards the other room.

It was their "wedding" night. She shouldn't go in there. She couldn't go in there. They weren't supposed to see each other at a time like this. Despite herself, she felt her body carry her towards the entrance of the lounge. When she got there, she paused for a moment, unable to see him from this angle.

"I know you're there, Margaret," Andrew's hushed voice came after a moment. She could imagine him facing the opposite wall with his head buried into the thick pillow he liked to sleep on, the blanket hunched around his waist.

She moved a few steps closer. "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," she whispered, tucking strands of loose hair behind her ear before crossing her arms over her body.

She heard him shuffling around and assumed he was moving onto his back. "You didn't."

"Can't sleep either, huh?" Margaret asked as the microwave beeped, telling her it was done. "Better get that," she said awkwardly, walking away before he could reply.

Eyes on the ground,
But I can't look up now,
Don't wanna give it away,
My secret...

When she turned back around from the microwave, she wasn't expecting Andrew to be standing just a few short feet away. She hadn't even heard him move. For a second, she froze in surprise and then, with a sudden jolt, she spun back around to face the wall.

"What are you doing?" She exclaimed as harshly as she could manage in a whisper. "It's our wedding night, we can't see each other!"

"C'mon, it's not as if it's our actual wedding," he said sounding genuinely confused.

"Andrew, it's bad luck, we don't need any more of that!"

"You're already on the verge of being deported and losing your job, Margaret, how could your luck possibly get any worse?"

Had it been anyone else standing there, she probably wouldn't have cared this much but somehow Andrew had the ability to frustrate her to no end. She knew he understood, he just had a habit of questioning everything before he showed that he did. Often, she swore he only did it because it got a childish reaction out of her that amused him but nonetheless she still fell for it every time.

"What if someone finds out why we're really doing this, huh? Then what?" She ground out, managing not to dramatically fling her arms around as she spoke so she didn't spill her drink everywhere.

"They're not going to find out, ok? We're not going to let that happen. Trust me." He told her, his voice softening with the last two words.

"I'm still not going to look at you," she replied, stubbornly holding her ground. She tried to steer the conversation away from trust without him noticing but she knew he had. Andrew always noticed.

It wasn't that she didn't trust him, in fact, if she let herself, she would probably trust him more than anyone else she knew but giving yourself to someone in that way was dangerous, it made you vulnerable and so she couldn't let herself. She didn't mean to intentionally hurt him but she had to be at the top of her own priorities.

She felt the air around her get warmer as Andrew moved closer. She felt as though her feet were glued to the spot and the rest of her was paralysed.

"Don't look at me then, just shut your eyes," he said, sounding louder now as he was closer. She could feel his breath tickling the back of her hair. Automatically, her eyes shut softly.

Then she felt him, his fingers tensed around her hipbones.

"Come on," he began to guide her gently back towards their bedroom, surprisingly without allowing his hands to move down over her ass.

"Andrew, what-" she started to say but was interrupted by him making shushing sounds.

"I'm taking you back to bed," he explained, "and you can keep facing away from me with your eyes shut - if you want to - and I'm going to stay with you until you fall asleep. Deal?"

"Andrew, you don't have to do that, you need sleep too," Margaret protested.

"I'll sleep better knowing you're ok, I promise."

Knowing this was an argument she wasn't going to win, Margaret relaxed and allowed herself to be glided back to bed by Andrew and even when she pulled the covers up to her chest, she still felt him tucking her in. Even in the middle of the night with little or no sleep, his sweetness never faltered.

Cause I would die,
To make you mine,
Bleed me dry,
Each and every time…

Margaret felt the bed sink and then Andrew's warmth behind her once again. She had been expecting him to touch her, put his hand on her arm, anything, but instead he kept a respectful distance. She wasn't sure she was keen on this, not being able to see the expression on his face while he spoke to her or how he looked when he was watching her. She was sure he was watching her. As tired as he must have been, she could feel his eyes on the back of her head.

"Andrew?" she whispered after a few minutes of no talking, just comfortable companionship in the night.

"Yeah?" he responded.

"Just checking."

After a few more minutes, Andrew's voice came again. "It's ok to be scared, you know," he said.

"I can't go back there," she murmured into the night, eyes remaining shut.

Andrew took a moment to process the comment, as he had to every time she opened up a little piece of herself to him. It wasn't something he had ever had to get used to her doing before this weekend. Everything he had learned about her in the past, including the answers in that file of questions given to them by Mr Gilbertson, he had learned though being her assistant. Every so often he would overhear little snippets of information that he could piece together until they made sense or people would give away more than they probably should over the phone or when asking him to pass on messages and sometimes, but rarely, Margaret would mutter things under her breath that gave bits of herself away when she thought he had left the room.

The more he tried to process the comment the more Andrew realised that there was very little you could say in the way of comfort to someone who was still grieving over the loss of people so close to them. Especially when that person had long since closed themselves off to the idea of love and would laugh in the face of anyone who cared about them, not out of cruelty but purely because they believed they could no longer be cared for.

He cleared his throat. "I'm allergic to bananas," he stated slowly.

"What?" Margaret began to say but was cut off by Andrew continuing to talk.

"At the end of the second grade my class put on a play for our teacher who was head of the drama department. We did Peter Pan and I was Tinker Bell. I never learned how to whistle. I hate thunderstorms. My favourite number is eleven . . ."

This time it was Margaret's turn to cut him off mid-sentence. "Andrew," she hissed, "what are you doing?"

"Seeing how long it takes before you'll tell me I'm a very beautiful person," he quipped.

"Oh, my god. I'm actually marrying a teenage girl," she rolled her eyes at the wall but then laughed softly, just as he had predicted she would.

Kiss me goodnight,
Like a good friend might,
I'll do the same,
But I won't mean it...

She felt the pillow sink as he settled further into it and she felt his breath again as he let out a sigh. She knew he wasn't angry or upset, it was just the situation, it was a hard feeling to describe but she knew it was the same one she was feeling too.

"Thank you," she murmured into the room.

"What for?" Andrew asked sounding a little strained, as if he were stretching or struggling to stay awake.

"Making this easy. For not fighting me too badly every step of the way like anyone else would. For not acting like you hate me."

"Maybe I don't want to be like anyone else, not to you at least."

Margaret smiled tightly at his response. "When did anyone else's opinion matter to you?"

The air grew thicker around them when he didn't answer. She reached her arm around behind her, searching for his hand and placing hers underneath it, holding it. It wasn't a move she usually would have made but it said what she couldn't express out loud. Right then she just needed to touch him.

His fingers curled slightly before letting her hand go and shuffling towards her, pressing his chest against her back but just barely. "Thank you," he said finally.

"What for?" Margaret mirrored his earlier words just as he had with hers.

"Making my life more interesting, saving me from all the repetition, making me feel useful."

Her brow creased. "Andrew, you have everything. Your family loves you, your mother's world revolves around you, your dad is harsh but he just wants to know you're the best person you can be," she stressed. "You have your own place, a good job, plenty of money, a beautiful home to come back to, this lovely ex-girlfriend who looks like a model and is clearly still in love with you…"

"Margaret, just stop talking," Andrew groaned out. "Having everything a person could want doesn't mean I have everything I need."

"You don't need me; I'm a mess."

"Margaret, all this time I've been working with you and you've shown me next to no kindness, you barely seemed to respect me or even treat me as a human being half the time and yet you've never wondered why I stuck around for so long?" He could feel his words cutting her but he carried on, "You intrigued me. Your fire and passion made me want to work harder even on the days when I hated my job. You're so intelligent sometimes it's frightening and even then you still manage to get yourself into situations like this. You're rough around the edges and who isn't, although I'll admit you're sharper than most. You make me laugh when you least want to. You're argumentative and you get on my nerves. Trust me, you're the last thing I want but Margaret," Andrew took one quick, deep breath, "you're my everything."

He had been getting louder with every word he spoke until she was afraid he'd wake the rest of the household but the last three words he had uttered with such a quiet vulnerability she was sure she'd heard them wrong. She was used to people showing vulnerability around her, the kind that proved the presence of weakness or fear in a person, but never the kind Andrew was currently exhibiting.

Her eyes shot open and she spun herself over before she had decided whether she wanted to slap him or kiss him.

By the time she'd processed how close they actually were, noses brushing, and opened her mouth to yell a badly thought out form of something that amounted to 'yeah, well you're not all that great either', the decision had been made for her and his mouth had descended onto hers.

Andrews arms snaked around her waist, pulling them impossibly closer. Without thinking, her left hand made it's way into his hair and her right hand brushed his cheek, rubbing gently at the slight stubble there and holding him to her. Somewhat regaining her senses, her hand pulled at his hair, wanting to be in control and letting him know she remembered not all of the things he had just said to her had been sweetness and light. He kissed her harder in return, pushing her back against the pillows.

By the time they broke apart for air, she knew that even in the blackness their hair was dishevelled and their lips a bruising red. She breathed his name.

"Don't," he sighed against her mouth, never moving away from her. They both took a moment to close their eyes and take the feeling each other in. "Don't speak, not yet," he finished.

She nodded, their foreheads rubbing together and his eyelashes tickling her cheeks as he blinked. Once again being unable to express what she so badly wanted to convey with words, Margaret kissed him quickly, lingering for a few short seconds before proceeding to do it again, and again, and again.

It wasn't certain how this would end or how the rest of their lives would continue on after it had all blown over but one thing that was for certain was that this was going to be one of the unluckiest wedding days anyone had ever experienced…

You can make me wait forever,
Push me away and tell me never,
I don't mind, no I don't mind it,
I would come back a thousand times.

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