So… I was supposed to have this story finished like… WAY before Christmas… but then I got distracted by my Harry Potter fanfic, and my Rise of the Guardians one (I'm still pretty happy with the Harry Potter one, but the Rise of the Guardians isn't that good. Very fun to write, though). I've been doing quite a few different projects and collaborations with my friend Amy (Deesney on deviantART and fanfiction), and a couple of my OCs are featured in her Maximum Ride fanfic, which I will persuade her to put on fanfiction. It's called 'Recast'.

I came up with that name. ;)

SO… I don't own Night World, but this story is pretty much mine. And Jez and Morgead aren't exactly in character when it's an AU… Anyway. Review. And I'll love you forever.

Painting in Red

Part 1 – Treacherous (Jez)

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once. ~Audrey Hepburn

Chapter 1

I had a bad feeling from the moment I woke up.

It was little things, like the fact that I'd fallen out of bed. The kettle had refused to boil and the teabag I threw into the water had a rip in it. And I was out of sugar.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back (a very weak back) and after some very impressively inventive swearing I threw the mug at the wall and spun round to come face-to-face with a very rumpled-looking, scared Pierce.

"Oh. Hi," I said. "We're out of sugar."

"And out a mug. What did it do to you?"

"I'm just stressed."

"Yeah. I gathered. You haven't been this stressed since we left England."

I kept my expression carefully blasé. I'd tried to think about England the bare minimum in the four months since we'd left.

Tried being the operative word. Every now and then, a memory would hit me, pierce me through like a cannonball and leave me raw and gasping at the intensity. Who knew the capability of human memory? I couldn't remember anything as vividly as I could remember him. Though I tried and tried to forget.

Forget forget forget forget.

"Are you alright, Jez?"

I smiled at him. "Yeah. I'm fine."

That phrase sticks in my head a lot. I'm fine. It's true, for the most part. Living with one of my best friends (there's nothing romantic – thank God – between me and Pierce) means that I've never a cause to be lonely. My parents have promised to come sometime soon, and we talk for about two hours every day. The band is really taking off, and our gigs are usually sold out within a day or two. The songs for our upcoming CD are coming on really well, and we've recorded about four songs. Our first single, 'Fly', is coming out two weeks today.

Of course, I miss England, with its rain and clouds and the green and yellow patchwork-quilt of fields in the Suffolk countryside, the grey waters of Felixstowe, reaching out to the east to meet the morning sun, and even the sprawled, scattered buildings of my old school.

And of course, I miss Morgead.

I flinch, as always, when his name slips, like a thief, into my consciousness, stealing my mind and dragging me forcibly away from the really quite… beautiful present. I love every moment of my life, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be better.

But that's being selfish, isn't it? I'm lucky. I shouldn't demand more when I've already been given so much. It's only when I'm alone in the flat that I curl up on the sofa and allow myself to linger over his green eyes, sparking with laughter and love when he looked at me, his ruffled hair falling over his forehead, and the feel of his strong hands on mine.

It's brilliant fodder for song writing.

I am working through it. It's easier than I thought it would be, actually. It's not what it says in the books and songs; not being able to function. Maybe because it was my own choice. I wasn't going to give up my entire dream, everything I'd worked towards, for love, was I? That wasn't me.

I feel comforted, as always, when I go across the hall to the flat that Hugh and Val are sharing, at least until Raven comes over to California.

I open the door – they always leave it unlocked when they're in – and go to the kitchen to take a bit of their sugar. I'm sitting at the table rubbing the warm ceramic of the mug when Val comes in.

"Hey, Jez," he says, not surprised to see me. "Pierce being weird again?"

I smile. "No. We're out of sugar."

"Is that why you threw something at the wall? You woke me up."

"Good. We need to get ready for the recording studio. And it was a mug."

His smile helps me relax. Exactly what could happen today which would be so bad? For all intents and purposes, I am happy. I am complete. And happiness is strong and versatile, isn't it?

We're at the recording studio 11 sharp, due to my meticulous planning. The recording session goes as it should and it isn't long before I'm talking to my parents on Skype, the bad feeling has completely leached away, and is the furthest thing from my mind.

But I can't get to sleep that night.

Part of it is a reason I'm used to; a melody and a few snippets of words are circling around my head, both taunting and tempting me. It doesn't take long before I write some ideas down, singing very softly under my breath. I don't realise how exhausted I am until the room starts slowly getting lighter. I look in shock towards my clock, which says that it is four in the morning. I collapse back onto my bed, and sleep until Pierce throws a pillow at me later on in the morning.

"Oh," I mumbled. "I dreamt a massive marshmallow was eating me."

Pierce grins. "Come on. Don't you have schoolwork to do?"

I throw him a murderous glare. School work. You would have thought, with what I was planning to do with my life that I would never have to do school work ever again. I should have figured that my dad would never let me quit school.

At least the work is easy as anything (apart from English, but I've never been good at that), and I have fun afterwards talking to Claire.

We have quite an odd relationship, Claire and I. For years, I despised her, but now we were actually quite close (albeit not close enough to have told her about Morgead). What really helped, though, was that she was going out with Hugh, so now he didn't come chasing after me whenever he had an inkling to do so.

Anyway, I tell her about how the CD is coming along, and promise to send her a copy of the single before we log off and I finally am able to go to bed (I like sleeping).

I wake up with more feelings of trepidation, and feel even more distracted than usual when we're recording. It's an odd feeling; halfway between terror and guilt. We leave Val at the recording studio; he has a meeting with our producers and I have yet more work to do.

When it's done, I decide to go for a walk round the city. I love it here; San Francisco is a beautiful city to live in, and the shopping isn't bad either.

I'm walking within a couple of blocks of the Golden Gate Bridge when it happens.

With a suddenness that strikes me hard, a boy about my age, who was walking backwards holding a camera up, facing one of the older buildings in the district, walks into me. He almost drops the camera, but just about holds on, whilst I fall back and land quite hard on the floor, letting out a rather embarrassingly high-pitched squeal.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" the boy says, once he's satisfied that his camera is safe. He helps me up, his pale blue eyes creasing with repressed humour.

I narrow my own eyes at him as he runs a hand through his cropped white-blond hair, leaving it dishevelled.

"I didn't mean to," he says, a bit more uncertainly.

"Maybe if you'd stayed still to take the photo, you wouldn't be walking into people," I say, surprising myself by how annoyed I sound.

He smiles, and a shock goes through my body. He has the same smile as Morgead… my thoughts trail off as I look at him a bit closer. He does look like Morgead. Only the colouring is different.

"Hey, England, right?"

I raise my eyebrows. "Yeah. So?"

He looks a bit more uncomfortable now. "I really am sorry about that. I'll be more careful."

I just nod before leaving, shooting a look over my shoulder at him, engrossed by his camera again.

Well, that was… odd. There was something about him… I shook my head in an attempt to clear it before making my way back home.

Pierce isn't there, which surprises me a bit. It wasn't as if he was social; I don't think he has friends apart from the band, even when we were living in England.

I'm trying to focus on music that evening, taking advantage of the fact that the flat is empty, and what unnerves me… normally I'm thinking of Morgead at moments like this, but now I'm thinking of a stranger with pale blue eyes and cropped blond hair, rumpled from pushing his hands through it. But that's stupid. There's even less chance that will work than anything working out between me and Morgead. At least I'd seen Morgead every day. I'd known him. This boy… I didn't even know his name. He could be gay, for all I knew.

This thought makes me laugh out loud, and I'm repressing a fit of giggles when the door opens and Pierce walks in, looking quite pleased with himself.

"Met someone," is all he says, grinning, before he ducks into his room.

I feel my mouth drop open, and I discard the guitar to one side before running to his door. "Pierce, open the door now!" I shout, my voice shrill. "Now, you jerk! You can't leave me hanging like that!"

I hear an exasperated sigh the other side of the door before it swings open. "Can't you leave me to reminisce in peace?"

"Reminisce?" I say. He slams the door shut in my face. "What did you do, Pierce?"

"You don't need to know that."

I hit the door one more time for good measure before going back to the sofa and picking up the guitar. And the song that comes to me is… hopeful.