Disclaimer: Characters not mine. That is all.

Winning against Macy

When things went wrong, Nick's first instinct was usually to blame Joe. Most of the time this worked. And as always, he was sure that he was correct in blaming his brother for his latest troubles.

It was, after all, Joe who had suggested that they all go play a game of golf together. It wasn't Joe who had made it so that Macy won, but the initial suggestion had been Joe's. It wasn't Joe's fault that Nick was competitive and then felt the need to challenge Macy at baseball, ping pong, Xbox and a foot race when he kept losing each event to her. It wasn't Joe's fault that in spending all this time with Macy, Nick eventually found himself falling in love with her. But, the initial suggestion had been Joe's, and so Nick felt completely justified, as he kept telling himself, to blame it all on Joe.

For example, Sarah Goldman's sweater. Joe's fault. If Joe hadn't suggested the golf game leading up to everything that then ensued, Nick would not have been distracted by the way Macy was skipping into the cafeteria with obvious good news to share, and he wouldn't have bumped into Sarah and spilled his lunch on what was apparently her new and already favourite sweater. (Even he hadn't been able to block out the sound of her yelling at him despite how close Macy was at the moment.)

Or take Mr. Connelly yelling at him in science class. If Joe hadn't suggested golf, Nick wouldn't have let his mind drift to Macy and her brown eyes during the class and he wouldn't have felt a rush of lyrics coming over him and his foot wouldn't have started tapping a beat to said lyrics and he wouldn't have been blamed for "disrupting the entire class with a concert that no matter who he was, no one had asked for".

And so, with all this evidence in his back pocket, Nick felt completely justified in storming into their bedroom that afternoon, pointing a finger at Joe and yelling out "This is all your fault," before raising his drum set and plopping himself down on his bed, crossing his arms in front of his chest and sticking out his lower lip.

He was fairly certain he could also find some way of blaming Joe for the fact that he, Nick Lucas, couldn't pull off the pout that his brothers always got away with.

"What's your problem, dude?" Joe asked without putting down the game controller that was in his hands.

"I'm not talking to you," Nick answered.

"What did I do?"

Nick slid lower into his bed.

"He's mad because you planned that golf game he lost which made him compete at just about everything with Macy which made him spend time alone with Macy which made him realise just how awesome Macy is and now he's in-love-Nick which we all know always leads to trouble."

The two younger boys in the room froze.

"What?" Kevin asked with a shrug before returning his attention to the game he was losing. "I'm observant."

"Is that true?" Joe asked with a laugh.

"Yes. I am observant."

"About Nick." Joe shook his head at his older brother before turning his attention to the younger one. "Are you mad at me because you think I made you fall in love with Macy?"

"Yes."

"Well, if hanging around her so much is what made you fall in love with her, just stop hanging around her."

"But don't make it obvious," Kevin added quickly. "If you just stop hanging out with her entirely she'll know something's up and she'll either get it out of you that you're in love with her or you'll really hurt her feelings."

Joe opened his mouth to say something, then took a second to look back at Kevin.

"Kevin's right. Again... What is up with that?"

Nick ignored Joe who was the cause of his problems and quite possibly the root of all evil. "So you're saying that I should stop hanging out with her without stopping. Is that right? Do I have it now?"

Kevin shook his head. "You're making it more complicated than it has to be. You just need an actual reason to stop hanging out with her alone."

"Which would be?"

"Finally beat her at something. If you've only been hanging around her alone so that you can beat her at something, do it, and then it'll be completely normal for you to go back to only hanging out with her when we're a group."

Joe and Nick's jaws dropped. Kevin pressed two buttons on his controller and jumped in the air.

"And I win!"

He did a victory lap around the recliners, pumping his fist in the air and failing to notice his brothers' stares until he finally stopped. He jumped back at the anger pointed in his direction, apparently having missed everything that had occurred during their conversation.

"What? What happened? Is this about the hamster?"

Joe nodded, satisfied. "And he's back."

***

Nick was not used to following Kevin's advice. All right, he had to admit that sometimes Kevin would have a good idea which Joe would dismiss and that he, Nick, would then phrase in a different way to great applause, but that wasn't the same thing. He could usually convince himself in those cases that it had actually been his idea. This time, he wasn't willing to take the blame.

The thing was that while Kevin's plan originally sounded pretty good, Nick had forgotten one very important piece of information. He couldn't beat Macy at anything.

"Bowling?"

"Nope."

"Tennis?"

"No."

"Hockey."

"Pff."

"Soccer."

"Almost needed to visit the hospital."

"Basketball?"

"I can barely beat you at basketball, Joe."

"Are you guessing that you can't beat Macy at any of these sports, or do you know it for a fact?"

"I know it for a fact." Nick sighed as he reached into the oven to pull out the batch of brownies he'd just made. There was something Macy probably didn't know about him. He baked to calm his nerves when they were frazzled. Like now, when even doing an activity that was supposed to get his mind off Macy only made him think of her more.

He shook his head to clear his brain.

"I've played all those sports against her and she's beaten me every single time. She's like a machine or something."

"She's a robot," Joe said jumping from his stool. "I knew it the moment Stella first told me she had a best friend that wasn't me that this couldn't be any ordinary person."

"She's not a robot, Joe. She's just... amazing." Nick sighed and his body melted against the kitchen counter as he lost all focus and fell deep into his thoughts of Macy.

"Oh, no. Nick! Nick!" Kevin snapped his fingers in front of his brother's face. "Come back to us. Don't get lost in a Macy daydream now. We're trying to solve your problem, not make it worse."

Nick blinked back to reality.

"Ahh! Seriously, what is wrong with me? It's just Macy. Macy who can't go five minutes without injuring us. Macy who is fanatic and is president of a fan club and has her own fan site. Macy who has the most adorable laugh in the world and just wants to make everyone happy and sticks out her lower lip just a little when she thinks she's done something that might hur—Oh, there I go again!"

"You've got it bad, bro," Joe said with a laugh, his mouth half-full of brownies.

"Thanks for the support. I'm so glad I was there for you through your years of Stella obsessing."

"I never obsess—"

"We just have to think outside the box," Kevin offered before Joe could get much further with his thought. Both brothers turned their attention to him and away from their argument. They stared at Kevin who suddenly noticed just how much attention he had drawn to himself once again. "Right, that's usually my department."

"You are excellent at out-of-the-box thinking, Kevin."

"Yeah." Nick shrugged. "Let's face it. I'm strictly a colour inside the lines guy. And apparently when dealing with Macy, we're going to have to get messier than what's in my nature."

Joe and Nick stared at Kevin as he rested his hand under his chin. Joe counted slowly in his head, promising himself he wouldn't interrupt to ask if he could finish all the brownies until he had reached a hundred, while Nick tried to blink himself out of any Macy fantasies that would creep in his mind as he waited.

Finally Kevin shook his head.

"You're not going to like it."

Nick sighed. "I guess I wasn't expecting I would."

"There's only one way that we can figure out how to solve this problem."

Nick cringed, hoping Kevin wasn't about to suggest what he thought he was going to say.

***

"Ahh, you have a crush on Macy."

Nick furrowed his brow and took a deep breath from his nose. He tried to remind himself that the wrong words could bring more damage to his cause then they could help.

"Stella, focus please."

"That's the most adorable thing ever. You should ask her out."

Seriously, he had grown to love Stella like a sister, but if it wasn't for Joe, he was fairly certain that Stella would only be that loud girl who gets rude about his clothes. But no, really, he loved her like a sister now, he reminded himself. He did not, however, necessarily believe that letting her in on his Macy dilemma was the best idea in the world. Somehow, he had let himself agree with the master of thinking out-of-the-box despite his trepidation.

"We're working on getting rid of the problem," he told her, "not making it worse."

It was Stella's turn to let her face scrunch into an expression of anger. "Why is this a problem? It's just Macy. It's not like she'd reject you, Nick. Unlike all those other girls that you decide to fall in love with even if they're all wrong with you."

"Joe," Nick said rather than try to form a sentence that would betray his impatience.

"Stella, Nick is... Yeah Nick, what's the problem anyway? Macy's awesome. Why are we getting rid of this crush instead of just winning her over? Don't you think that would be easier?"

"Not helping, Joe."

"Is it because she keeps beating you at sports?" Kevin asked.

"You won't date Macy because she keeps beating you at sports? Nick, if that's really—"

"That's not what's going on," Nick protested quickly, all too conscious of where Stella's feminist mind was about to take them all.

"Then what's the problem?"

Nick worked his mouth open and closed a few times hoping an intelligent answer would fall out. He shook his head. He shrugged his shoulders. He got up from the chair he had been occupying and grabbed his jacket.

"I knew this was a bad idea."

***

He found his escape in the quiet atrium. Just him and his guitar. Unfortunately, one of them wasn't cooperating and everything he played seemed to come out all wrong. He closed his eyes and sighed as he waited for the calm of music to come over him.

"Hey, Nick. You want to come jogging with me?"

"So you can beat me at that too?" he asked, letting out a loud note on his guitar to put a final nail in the coffin of his peace and quiet.

"How do you beat someone at jogging?" Macy asked, bouncing from one foot to the other to keep her limbs loose and ready. From the way she kept the happy-go-lucky expression on her face, Nick guessed she was completely oblivious to all the stares she was drawing from those walking past the atrium and wondering what she was doing.

"You jog faster than them, or further than them."

"But then you wouldn't be jogging with the person. You'd be racing. I asked if you wanted to jog."

"Right."

"As in jog. Jogging isn't a competition."

Nick sighed. Since when could he not even win a verbal debate against Macy?

"I'm not really a jogger, Macy. Maybe you can ask Joe."

"Oh."

He bit the inside of his cheek. He knew that oh. That was the oh that was going to make him feel guilty for the rest of the day and get Stella after him once she realised what he had or hadn't done. That was an oh of disappointment like only Macy could utter while still keeping a ghost of a smile on her face to let him think he hadn't done anything wrong when he wasn't really paying attention to her.

Nick shook his head at himself.

"But, once you're done jogging, we can do something else."

"Yeah?"

He couldn't help but chuckle at the hopeful tilt to her voice despite the fact that he knew he had to stop finding adorable things about Macy.

"Of course."

"Okay."

And off she went at a speed Nick knew he wouldn't have been able to match.

***

"So what do you want to do, Nick?"

"Not play sports."

Macy gave him a puzzled look, but shrugged it off quickly enough. Nick let out a sigh of relief. He'd been thinking about what to do with Macy all afternoon, trying to find something, anything, he could beat her at, when his thinking had been interrupted by his brothers, as it usually was. This time, the interruption had actually proved useful. Somewhere between debating whether it was her hair colour or her backswing that were most attractive, Kevin had said something about Macy being as adorable as a penguin hunting for Easter eggs when she played sports. That's when it hit Nick.

Maybe he wasn't falling for Macy. Maybe he was just falling for athlete-Macy. It therefore stood to reason that if he stopped hanging around athlete-Macy and started hanging around clumsy-friend-Macy once again, there was a chance that the affection that had sprung out from nowhere would disappear again.

He could hope anyway.

"Do you want to watch sports, then?"

"No," Nick answered quickly. He had been watching sports lately, and the last thing he needed was to be watching a baseball game and imagining Macy as every player on the television when she was sitting right next to him. "I mean, we always do something sports related, and that's more your thing. I feel like I'm at a disadvantage."

"So we should do something that's more your thing..."

"Yes," Nick agreed, because he couldn't think of anything else that would support what he had just said, and really, she had a point. If they were in a setting where he was the more comfortable and able of the two, his affection for Macy would probably simply melt away.

"Like music."

"Like music." He nodded, because music he knew, and music he understood, and music he was good at. Music was something he could definitely beat Macy at.

She smiled. "I have an idea."

***

Nick entered the firehouse with his head down and his arms full of bags.

"What's your problem?" Joe asked between spoonfuls of ice cream.

"Macy."

"What did she beat you at this time?"

"Everything."

"What?"

"I said no more sports because I thought it was maybe just athletic Macy that was making me fall in love. So we do something other than sports. We do something related to music because I figure that while I can easily impress her, I'm pretty safe from being impressed."

"Wrong?" Kevin asked.

"So wrong. She brought me to this little record store I had never noticed before. We spent three hours walking the four aisles of the store, looking at everything. She has the best taste in music. She introduced me to bands I'd never heard about. Me! She was teaching me about music! What is that?"

"She likes us, man." Joe smiled. "You should have guessed that she had great taste."

Nick sighed and grabbed Joe's bowl from him, taking his own spoonful of ice cream.

"I figured she had mainstream taste. The stuff she was showing me, it was not mainstream. It was old school and soulful and... Why does she have to be so fricken amazing?"

"Why did you agree to do something related to music?" Kevin asked as he looped his arm around his brother's shoulders. "Music is the one thing you can't ignore, Nick. Your worst enemy could lure you in with something related to music, never mind the girl you're crushing on."

Nick sighed. "I was just expecting something else."

His brothers offered him sympathetic looks as Joe took back his ice cream.

"So what's your next plan?"

Nick shrugged. "I just don't know."

***

"Hey Nick, want to go listen to—"

"No music," Nick answered quickly, slamming his locker shut and pretending not to notice how much attention the noise drew from his classmates milling the hallway.

"What?"

"I don't want to do anything that has to do with music."

"Are you okay?" Macy asked, reaching out to touch Nick's forehead.

"Yeah, I'm just..." He leaned away from her touch, stopping her hand with his. "I'm music'ed-out. I just need a break, I think."

"Did something bad happen?" Macy asked quietly.

Nick smiled at her worry and pulled Macy into a comforting hug before he could even realise what he was doing. He held her against him for a moment until he found himself relishing in the smell of her shampoo, whatever it was.

"No. Nothing bad happened." He pulled away from her, happy to see her worried look replaced by one that was on the safe side of fan-glazed. He cleared his throat, reminding himself of his plan. "I just... We should do something that puts neither of us at an advantage. Something where neither of us are experts. Something..."

"New," Macy offered.

"Something new," Nick agreed.

"Okay," Macy shrugged.

***

So they did a puzzle together. And they baked together. They went for a walk. They went to the zoo. They played hacky sack because Macy admitted she wasn't very good at that. They went to an open mic night to listen. They went shopping. They took one dance lesson—Macy couldn't convince Nick to attend a second. They went for a bike ride. They helped Frankie train for soccer season.

Sometimes it was just the two of them, and sometimes Kevin, Joe, Stella, Frankie, or a combination of the four would join.

Nick managed to avoid most sports- and music-related activities without ever explaining to Macy why.

***

"So how was the date?"

"What date?"

"Your date."

"I wasn't on a date," Nick said as he folded his jacket and placed it neatly at the end of his bed before sitting down in front of the television next to his brothers. "I was with Macy."

"Dude, you are so dating Macy."

Nick furrowed his brow at Joe. He picked a piece of lint from his shirt. He waited until he was sure his voice would come out calm and even and without a trace of any panic that his brothers could mock.

"No, I'm not."

"You spend all your time with her."

"I spend a lot of time with her." Nick shrugged. "She's a friend. We have fun together."

"Yeah, and you haven't looked at another girl since this 'friendship' started. You even admitted to having a huge crush on her."

"So?"

"So it's obvious that you're dating her." Kevin shrugged and reached for another handful of popcorn.

"Your logic makes no sense."

"You guys are hanging out alone more than Stella and I do!"

"And that comparison works because you're dating Stella?" Nick asked with a smirk he knew Joe couldn't argue away.

Joe blushed at the question. "This isn't about me and Stella."

"You're the one who mentioned her."

"You're the one who—"

"All right, truce!" Kevin interrupted, waving the bowl of popcorn between his brothers in the hopes of distracting them. "Nick, are you saying that you're over your crush for Macy?"

He was about to say yes, until the mention of his crush on Macy sent him in a spiral of Macy-thoughts and his eyes suddenly focussed on faraway as a goofy smile adorned his lips.

Crush. Macy.

Macy. Crush.

"That's a no," Joe mumbled through a mouthful of popcorn.

"He's got a plan d, right?" Kevin asked Joe as their younger brother continued to stare off in space.

Joe only shrugged, taking another handful of popcorn.

***

Macy plopped down next to him on the bench in the atrium and sighed.

"What's up, Macy?" Nick asked, strumming his guitar as he waited for her to answer. Even if his time with Macy hadn't helped him get rid of his crush, at least he could play music again.

"I'm out."

"What?"

"Of ideas. I'm completely out of ideas."

Nick stopped, finally looking up at her. "What do you mean?"

"I'm out of suggestions of new things that we can do together." She sighed again and shrugged.

"We have done everything I could think of."

"I guess we can just... not do anything today, and start again when one of us thinks of something new to do."

Nick's brow furrowed at the suggestion. He didn't like the sound of that. Who knew how long it would take him to find something new for them to do. He'd gotten used to his time with Macy, and if he were to be completely honest with himself, he would admit that Kevin was right and that he wasn't over his crush. In fact, his time with Macy had simply given his affection space and reason to grow.

"You know there's one thing," he finally said.

"What?"

"There's one new thing we haven't tried yet."

Macy smiled brightly, her eyes lighting up. "Really? There's something else we can do?"

"Yeah." Nick coughed gently and took a deep breath. "One thing I thought of."

And before Macy could ask him what this one thing was, she was suddenly feeling Nick Lucas' lips against hers. The contact could have lasted a second or an hour; she wasn't sure. It even took her a moment to eventually realise their lips were no longer touching.

She blinked.

"Kissing? Kissing is new to you?"

"Kissing you is new to me." Nick shrugged.

"And it's something we could do."

Nick nodded, barely noticing that his right hand rested against Macy's neck, keeping her near him should he swoop in for another try.

"And after today we'll have tried it and we'll have to find something new to try," she whispered.

Nick's jaw dropped for a moment. He let out a breath and his mind whirled quickly.

"Well," he finally answered, "we'll have tried it here. But there's a first time kissing at the firehouse, and at the park, and in the car."

"That sounds like it could keep us busy for a while."

"Yeah, and then there's a first time kissing for the second time at all those places."

Macy smiled as Nick's lips neared hers again.

"I thought I was going to have to beat you at a lot more things before we got to this point."

"What?"

"Nothing..."

Nick narrowed his eyes, watching Macy from less than an inch away.

"Macy did you just..."

"Win again?" she asked. "Absolutely."

He could have argued because he was good at words and Macy seemed to lose hers around him, but her lips were already against his and he really didn't see the point in putting an abrupt end to that. After all, they could always keep the argument for a first in some far distant future when they would be more than ready for their first make-up.