A Little (Less) Conversation.
Fandom: Wizards vs Aliens
Rating: K+
Genre: Humor, Romance
Pairing: Tom/Lexi
Word count: 2799
Summary: University is supposed to be exciting. Lexi expected this. She didn't expect her best friend to travel all the way to London and drunkenly serenade her outside of her window at a hideously early hour. Tom/Lexi ONESHOT.
AN: After watching my dad come staggering back drunk from my uncle's at midnight this morning and then proceed to sing the classics pretty loudly (and make me fall off my chair laughing, like the mature almost-university student that I am) I thought I'd do this. Hope you all enjoy.
DISCLAIMER. I do not own WvA or Elvis Presley. Or Gmail, for that matter.
"...and then I said, "But I saw her do it!", and Lyzera just laughed, and was all, "Mwahahah you saw nothing!"." Jathro finishes his long and complicated story with a loud sigh directly into the receiver. "I swear, if it wasn't for the science programme, I wouldn't stay another freaking moment in this stupid university. I'd go back to my mother, that's how bad it is. How's things at your end?"
"Oh..." Lexi taps the Gmail icon in the corner of her laptop screen, her fingers drumming on the duvet underneath her as she waits for the connection to catch up with her. "Okay, I guess. Raining, as usual, but then you probably knew that. I met a couple of nice people on my floor yesterday, Gemma and Alicia. I think you'd like Alicia; she's in my Physics seminar."
"You don't sound so enthusiastic." Jathro detects the vague tone in her voice. "What's up, Princess? Those posh studio flats in London not floating your boat?"
Lexi glances around the room, as she considers her answer, analysing the brown wooden table, the mismatched chairs found in a jumble sale, the kitchen unit, and the short corridor that leads to and from the door. It's rather small compared to some of the other student housing, and Varg has repeatedly stated that he was willing to pay for her to move into a bigger flat, should this one not suit her liking, but she's always reassured him every time the subject matter has been brought up. For all his shortcomings, Varg can be a good brother, when he wants to be. He wouldn't be paying all her loans for her, if he wasn't.
"It's fine," she says, after a while. "It's just...I don't know. Lonely, I guess. I miss you, and Tom, and all the others back home."
Jathro snorts down the phone. "Tom will be fine, Lexi. He's always fine. I don't know why you spend half your time worrying about him. I mean, I knew that you liked him, but that's still no excuse for all of this."
Lexi pulls a face, even though Jathro won't be able to see it. "You don't understand -"
"You don't understand? Really? You haven't used that excuse since we were seven. You can do better than that now, surely?"
She refreshes her inbox, and then sighs. "I'm not worrying about him all the time. Just -"
"Just most of the time."
"Let me finish! I'm not worrying about him all the time. I'm just a little concerned, now that I'm not there to keep the balance."
"As in, you're worried that Tom will go off with Katie, get married, and have twenty or so children, and you'll be the crazy cat lady consumed with jealousy that will eventually lead to your ultimate demise."
"Why do you always assume the worst of me?" Lexi grumbles. "I mean, I'd get a dog, at least."
"You can't do that! That's even worse!" Jathro tuts in a pitying fashion. "You are in a sad, sad situation, my friend. You need help."
"Now you sound like my brother."
"For once, your brother is right."
"My brother is never right."
"He can be. On occasion. Such as this one. Tell you what -" Jathro sounds like he's now pointing at something in his own student room, hundreds of miles away in Edinburgh. "- Christmas holidays, forget my mother, I'm going to get a train down to London, and we're gonna go out for a couple of drinks, yeah?"
"I guess so."
"Enthusiasm, Lex'! It's a good skill to have! Besides, it'll get your mind off Tom and Katie preparing their wedding vows."
Lexi resists the urge to get up and whack her head against the nearby wall. "Will you stop with that? They're not even together!"
"Don't let that jealousy get out of control now. I don't need you having a brain haemorrhage at the other end of the phoneline."
A car horn suddenly blares outside of her window, along with the sound of a few stray cats running for cover, cutting her off.
"Lexi? Princess?" Jathro is most likely frowning at the other end of the phone. "What's going on?"
"Uh..." Lexi pushes her laptop to one side and climbs off the bed, tiptoeing cautiously towards the window. "I'll call you back." She hangs up and tucks her phone into the back pocket of her jeans, before tentatively pulling the blinds up, to reveal the view from the other side of the glass.
It's getting on for one o'clock in the morning outside, the street lights illuminating the road outside student housing. A rusting car is idling in the middle of aforementioned road, headlights blazing and the windows rolled down. Despite the pouring rain, someone has climbed out of one of these open windows and is now perched on top of the car, a speaker in one hand, a mobile phone in the other. Lexi unlatches the window and pushes it wide open, so as to get a better look, only to realise that the speaker is blasting out an Elvis karaoke track, and the person on top of the car is singing - or, really, slurring, would be a better description. Slurring loudly, and in the familiar, off-key tone of Tom, her best friend.
'Wise men saaaaaaay
Only fooooools rush in
But I can't help
Faaaaalling in love wiiiith yoooooou...'
Lexi watches as the driver of the car falls about laughing at the wheel, hand clapped to his mouth to try and block the sound. Another passenger - Quinn, a boy from high school, she remembers - has leapt out of the car entirely to record the whole thing on his phone. No doubt it will go all around Facebook, and Lexi will never hear the end of it from Jathro.
'Shaaaaall I stay
Would it beeeeeeee a sin
If I can't help
Falling in love with yooooooooou...'
"Hey! Buddy!" The window of another studio flat opens; Jackson Hawke leans out, hair still damp from the shower, frowning down at the boy beneath him. "What do you think this is, X Factor, or something? Shut up and leave, or I'm calling the police on you!"
Tom doesn't appear to notice Jackson's threat, or even that he's joined the serenade at all. He's far too busy trying to hit a higher note and failing terribly at it.
'Like a river flows
Surely to the seeeeea
Darling, so it goes
Sooooome things are meant to beeeeeeee...'
The windows of more flats are opening now; Lexi notices Gemma Raven peering out of hers and sending a murderous look down at Tom, who's still going, as if he isn't even aware of how his audience has grown from its intended audience of one.
'Take my hand,
Take my whooooole life tooooooo,
For I can't help,
Falling in love with you...'
"Oi, Lexi!" She cranes her neck out of the window to see who is addressing her; Jazz James is glaring at her from the room three doors down from her own. "Get Hairdo to shut up, or I'm going to go down there and shut him up myself, and I guarantee I won't be as friendly as you!"
"Right." Lexi nods hurriedly. Jazz says a lot of things, but this is one of those times when she's being deadly serious. "Getting on that."
She ducks back inside, shutting the window and all but sprinting in her haste to get out of the room. She can still hear the singing, and the angry shouting now accompanying it, and it only gets louder as she makes it down the stairway and out into the street.
"Tom?"
"Lexi!" Tom slides off the roof of the car, staggering a little as he lands on his feet. "There you are!" He practically skips over towards her and throws his arms around her in a bone-crushing hug, despite his sopping clothes, face nestled into her shoulder. "I thought you were asleep. I was gonna start singing louder to wake you."
"I'm glad you didn't," she replies. "I think Jazz would have actually killed you, if you had. Speaking of which..." She pulls back from the hug. "...we'd better get inside before we freeze to death or someone decides to extract their revenge on you."
"Good idea." He beams at her docilely. "Lead the way."
"Hey, hey, wait!" The driver of the car - Benny Sherwood, Lexi recalls - sticks his head out of one of the open windows. "What am I supposed to do with my car?"
"Eh..." Tom makes a wild, vague gesture in the air with his right hand. "Just drive back without me."
"But, what am I supposed to tell your dad when I don't deliver you home tomorrow sober?"
"Eh, you'll think of something!" He grabs Lexi's hand and lets her drag him towards the safety of the student housing block, throwing a casual wave behind him as they run for shelter from the pouring rain. Tom's trainers make squelchy footprints in the stairway carpet, and Lexi all but shoves him inside her flat, before locking the door behind them, just in case anyone does decide to take revenge.
Tom raises an eyebrow of approval, as he stands in the middle of the flat. "Nice. Don't exactly go halves on this up here in London, do you?"
Lexi ignores this comment entirely. "What are you doing here?"
"Uh..." Tom shrugs. "I don't know. Quinn's turning twenty tomorrow, so we all went out for a couple of drinks to celebrate after work -"
"More than a couple, by the looks of it," Lexi snorts.
" - and, I don't know, I guess I ended up talking about how much I miss you an' everything, and somehow we found ourselves driving up here."
"You miss me?"
Tom frowns. "'Course I do. You're my best friend. I grew up with you. I'm hardly not gonna notice when you move miles away, to London, of all places, in order to go to university."
"It's just, from the emails, you made it sound like you were living the dream, with the job, and looking for your own place, and everything else."
Tom pulls a face at her. "Only so I didn't look desperate. I didn't want you to realise that I was spending all my time thinking about you."
Lexi pours him a glass of water and hands it over, encouraging him to drink. "So you drove all the way up here to tell me that you miss me? Why didn't you just call me?"
"Yeah, well..." He takes a sip, mumbling his next words. "Singing down the phone isn't exactly romantic, is it?"
"Neither is singing outside of my window in the pouring rain, at one o'clock in the morning."
"You didn't like it, did you?" His face falls, something that he tries to hide behind the glass of water. "You didn't like it. Sorry. I thought...Clearly it didn't go as well as I planned...Sorry. Again."
"No, no! It's not that I didn't like it, per say; I'd just rather have you serenade me at a reasonable time of day, preferably at a time when you won't run the risk of dying from hypothermia." She gestures to his jacket. "You might want to hang that on the radiator to dry. Here -" She ducks into the bathroom and returns a few seconds later, carrying a towel, just as Tom peels off his jacket, and holds it away from him with an expression of disgust. "- dry yourself off a bit." She can't help a yawn. "I'm going to go to bed, or else I'm gonna be late for my lecture tomorrow. I recommend you getting some sleep too, before the hangover kicks in."
"Good idea." The docile smile is back, as Tom dumps the towel on her table, leans forward, and plants a sloppy kiss on her cheek. "'Night, Lexi." He promptly turns and trips a little, landing face first onto the sofa, burrowing into the cushions to muffle his laughter, leaving Lexi watching him with an expression caught between surprise and confusion.
It's at least another hour after that before she manages to get off to sleep, and, all too soon, her alarm is waking her for her lecture. Tom is still asleep on the sofa, face hidden by the cushions when she glances over, meaning that she tiptoes around the flat as she showers, dresses and grabs her bag and notes, making him a cup of coffee before leaving. Her mind is still half asleep, however, and she doesn't hear a word of the lecture she's supposed to be taking notes on. She's too busy thinking about the early hours of the morning, and what it all means. At one point, she considers calling Jathro, but she knows that she won't get past "and then Tom turned up and drunkenly sung Elvis to me outside my window" before the laughter starts, and so that idea is ruled out. When Ms Gaunt leaves the platform at the front of the room, signifying the end of the lecture, she almost doesn't notice. Her notepad is still as blank as it was when she came in, save for some mindless doodles in the margin; she makes a mental reminder to get the information from Alicia later on.
The smell of food fills her flat when she lets herself back in, three hours after she left. Tom is no longer sprawled across her sofa, but making his way through his third cup of coffee.
"Hey," he greets, smiling when he sees her, and nodding towards the kitchen counter. "I, um, I made breakfast, if you wanted any."
"Oh." Lexi reaches for a slice of toast and nibbles on it. "Thanks."
"Sure." Tom drains his coffee, before placing the empty mug on the sideboard and filling it to the brim once more. "So, uh, are we going to talk about -?"
"Look, Tom, I don't know what you remember about this morning. You were pretty intoxicated."
"Um...all of it?" It sounds more like a question than a statement.
"Really?"
"Yup." He takes another gulp of coffee, not waiting for it to cool properly. "You know I meant what I said, don't you? I meant that I miss you, and that singing to you down the phone isn't romantic in the slightest, and that I think about you all the time. Granted, maybe Elvis wasn't my best song choice, but, well, what's more romantic than Elvis?"
Lexi is silent for a moment, chewing on her toast, before smiling. "I always knew that you were a sap."
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"Hm..." Lexi pretends to deliberate. "Good. Definitely good."
"Oh, yeah?" Tom raises an eyebrow. "I don't believe you. Prove it."
Lexi steps forward and does just that.