Title: Closer

Summary: One-shot for "I Caught Myself." Reid explains his feelings for Josie in more detail. Reid POV. Rosie; ReidxJosie.

Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Romance

Rating: T, just in case

Silent Knight: Since I couldn't stay away from Rosie or ICM, I had to make a oneshot for the two of them while I plotted out the sequel. I think I'll be making more of these small little snippets for ICM - some of them might not even be all Rosie - just so I can understand the characters farther and add more depth to them and also know how they would act in certain situations still as I write the sequel. :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Reid, or Tyler, or Caleb, or Pogue, or Kate. Or Aaron. *shudder* Thank goodness for that. Nor do I own "The Covenant."

Claimer: I do own, however, Derek, Josie, the plot for ICM, ICM itself, and pretty much anything you don't remember/haven't seen in the movie.

:) Enjoy.

Silent Knight over and out!

"Stranded in this spooky town
Stoplights are swaying and the phone lines are down
This floor is crackling cold, she took my heart, I think she took my soul
With the moon I run far from the carnage of the fiery sun"

–Closer, Kings of Leon

Closer

Oneshot

Love was definitely a weird thing for me.

I didn't usually, you know, love anyone. Sure, I loved Tyler, I loved Pogue, I loved...Caleb, I guess. Oh, and Kate. She was pretty much the only girl I spend more than one day – or should I say night? (Though I don't spend nights with Kate – I leave that for Pogue...that naughty boy) – with, no lie.

But then I got patterned for a stupid History project with, you guessed it, a shy girl named Josie Wesley whom I had never noticed before. Long, beautiful brown hair. Doe-like green eyes. Small frame; even smaller curves. Petite yet – heck, cute facial features. I felt my heart softening when I first laid eyes on her, and wanted desperately to flirt with her, but Caleb was no doubt going lecture me like a mad man about our Using and Powers when he found out what I had done to Abbot last Saturday and so I was pissed over that. Which was why I snarled random words at her that I could tell struck a cord in her, and she...well, she stood up to me.

Now, this isn't some cheesy little love story or whatever, so, no, I'm not saying that she's the first ever girl who stood up to me, because she isn't. There are many girls who stood up to me – Kate being one of them, naturally. Many girls, believe or not, hated me deeply – especially after I pretty much screwed them and left them. But how was that my fault? They knew what they were getting into. I mean – hello! I'm Reid Garwin, the biggest playboy in Spenser Academy! They knew they couldn't "tame" me, yet those stupid girls tried anyway and, guess what? They failed. Miserably, might I add.

But, yeah. Many girls hate me, many girls have "stood up" to me, but Josie was different. Here she was, this weak, shy, petite little girl who obviously had a crush on me – whether it be big or small – standing up to me, one of the most popular guys in school. It shocked me, really. And I knew I'd never look at petite little bookworms the same way ever again.

Josie had certainly changed me. Better, worse, whatever, I had absolutely no idea, but she had changed me. And I hated her for quite some time for that, though came to terms with it in the end. Of course there was gonna be people who would change me either insignificantly and significantly – Josie just managed to be grouped in the latter one. It shouldn't have bugged me much – it still did, though.

Never did I know that this change was going to be so insignificant to what would happen between Josie and I later on.

Slowly, I came to befriend her, without even knowing it. And soon that little friendship morphed into love. It astounded me how quickly that had happened, for when I found out, I had been simply bewildered. I mean - how cliche could things get? The playboy and the bookworm ending up together with the bookworm finally "taming" the so-called "wild beast"? That was basically the epitome of cliche-ness. Er...if that's even a word.

But it had happened, and there was nothing much I could do.

Of course, at the time, I still had not come to facts with that, and continued to try and deny, deny, deny her as much as I could. In the end I simply got even more whipped, as would've happened anyway, I'm sure.

Though, something definitely different happened.

Josie managed to catch the eye of another; this shy bookworm managed to get another lover boy other than yours truly, and this certainly pissed me off to no extent. Derek, that asshole's name was. Man how I wanted to deck him in the face and watch him cry and whimper and beg me to stop like the little pussy baby he was. It was so hard not to do so, but I managed to control myself – something that would've definitely surprised Caleb if he had known how much self-control it had taken me.

Things only managed to turn worse. And worse. And worse. Until, the next thing I knew, I was pretty sure I was on the road to actually falling in love with Josie Wesley. Yup. That's right. Love. I said it clearly, didn't I?

For a while I tried to hide it from Tyler, but he found out soon enough. After all, he was my best friend. He managed to dig deep enough inside of me – no, not with Using – and picked apart every single way I acted and every single thing I did around Josie and figured out that I was pretty much almost in love with her. Sometimes it sucked to have such a nerd for a best friend, but it was seriously a relief to tell Tyler day in and day out about my frustrations like a whiny little girl who had just started PMSing.

After time, it was official.

I had jumped off of the deep end.

I was officially in love with Josie Wesley, nerd extraordinaire. And I certainly didn't mind, shockingly. Of course, this was a blow to my reputation – not that I cared for it. My reputation didn't matter much, because I would always be a Son of Ipswich, which meant instant rep. for the rest of my life. And even if I hadn't been a Son Of Ipswich, I wouldn't care about rep. as long as I knew that Josie would be mine in the end.

Of course, I wasn't so lucky.

The night I decided to go to Josie and confess to her that I actually loved her – I saw her outside her dorm room, lip-locking with that asshole Derek. When her eyes met with mine, I quickly turned around and left. Part of me wished that she would follow me, and I was ready for disappointment when I heard footsteps behind me and Josie calling out my name in desperation.

I, of course, continued to walk away from her and down the stairwell when I finally decided to confront her once and for all. Either she would be my girlfriend and not Derek's, or she would not be my girlfriend, we'd leave one another alone and she could happily trade spit with her beloved Derek again.

Though I knew that there was two options for her when I asked her to be my girlfriend, I was still shocked when she said no to me. That she would not be my girlfriend – that she didn't want to be my girlfriend. My world that had begun to revolve around her and only her shattered into a million pieces, along with my stupid heart that I had given blindly to Josie, not sure as to what I should do with it, but hoping that she would take good care of it.

In the end, she hadn't.

And she expected me to wait for her – to stay her friend!

First it had been a blow to my ego, but I realized the truth – that she needed time. I had been a complete and total ass to her for so long, after all. Who knows how many time she had handed her heart to me, only for me to break off a chunk of it, hurl it away and throw her heart back at her face? Probably too many times to count, which immediately made me feel bad.

Then I decided that being friends would be better for her, so she could make a decision – one that I had been waiting for for so long. One that would make or break me – one that had yet to be announced. So I decided that it was time for me to wait, wait patiently to see if she was willing to give me her heart again. I hoped she would, but hoping for something to happen was far different from something actually happening.

But, in the very end, Josie had entrusted her heart to me again. And I, gleaming, didn't refuse it; didn't break off any chunks, didn't hurl it back at her face like I had done many times before. Instead, I handed her mine for safe keeping, just so we'd be even, and that we'd both be on the same level of...vulnerable-ness, I guess.

And now?

I'm trying my very best to take care of her heart.