A/N: So I just started writing H2OVanoss fics. I feel like I need to be smited for even trying, but y'know, once you've gone down the rabbit hole, you're not coming back up. To be frank, I've never been so inspired in my whole life, and this got me out of my dumb stupor for a moment just to work on a piece of writing. And so here is the first chapter of RotH, it's a silly title I came up with on the spot because I can't think of any other titles. Chapter 1 is incredibly slow, so bear with me for a little bit, because this is just the very beginning. The story will pick up its pace, I promise (actually, no promises there whilst I'm still writing.)

I hope you enjoy the first chapter of Rule of the Heart - a H2OVanoss fanfic…


Chapter 1 - Halloween

"How do I look?" Evan peeked out from the bedroom, his body half hidden behind the door. A sky blue jacket hung limply from his muscular frame, almost as though it was too big for him.

"I can't see you when you're shying away, sweetie."

Evan sidled out from behind the doorway and into the light – and as it hit him, a soft glow emanated from the bright blue he was barely wrapped up in.

A small, quirky smile played on Sarah's lips.

"I can't quite tell who you're trying to be except some dork who's wearing an oversized blue jacket."

"Wait a second," Evan flashed a playful grin, and hurried back into the bedroom, returning with a badly painted-over hockey mask over his face.

Her smile widened, equally playful now. "You must like him a lot, huh? This hockey mask-wearing guy with his mismatching blue jacket."

"Well, I'm out of ideas." Evan shrugged.

"So your mind goes straight to him first, then?" Sarah teased, her eyes glinting.

Evan chuckled, and pulled her into a loose embrace. "Hard not to think of him when I think of fun. Cheap, easy fun… that's different from this extraordinary bundle of beauty and fun I have here, no?"

Sarah pulled away, pressing her lips into a feigned pout. "So you like him more than me, then."

"Sarah…" Evan mock-whined, gently cupping her face. "You, more than anyone else." Slowly, he leaned in, and soon their lips met in a breathless kiss.

It was a long moment before they parted, their eyes still fixated on each other, deep brown into grey.

"We'd better get going," Sarah whispered, her voice tender. "We can't keep everyone waiting."


"Looks like everyone else is here," Evan peered into the distance as he pulled over by the roadside. "Let's go."

He left the car, shutting the door behind him, and walked over to passenger seat to open the door for Sarah, holding his hand out in a spitting image of the perfect gentleman. Taking his hand with a soft giggle, Sarah emerged from her seat gracefully.

"I'm dressed as a witch, not a princess, you know."

"All the same, you're a princess to me."

Hand in hand, the couple set off towards a house illuminated by intense green and red lights. Just as they stepped onto the porch, they were greeted by distant, anguished screams that faded very slowly into nothingness.

"Great," Evan groaned. "They haven't any intention of letting this be just a party."

"Oh, come on, at least it's rather fitting. You have the mask of a killer right there. And to be quite frank you're dressed as a deranged – OH GOD!"

Quite abruptly, the door in front of them swung violently open, revealing a man in a skeleton suit, arms raised in an awkward attempt to terrify. Evan stared at the man, suppressing an urge to laugh.

"Oh, it's you two… Sarah, who said you could bring Delirious, huh? That's the wrong Youtube guy I wanted at this party, you know."

"Oh, let us in, you goof, at least he's someone bigger than you'll ever be!"

Loud whooping and shouts of "OHHHH!" reverberated throughout the room behind him. The man paused, and stepped aside almost reluctantly, shutting the door behind them as they entered the darkness of the house.

The rest of the night was but a mess. After being offered several consecutive glasses of drinks straight after he entered, Evan was beginning to get tipsy – tipsy to the point of delirium. He broke into fits of giggles at the slightest push, and was staggering from side to side ever so slightly, engaging all sorts of strangers in the strangest of conversations.

"Hey, hey," one of strangers giggled as she stumbled face-first into him, the smell of liquor invading his nostrils as she got closer. "Do a H2O Delirious face reveal!"

A laugh bubbled up from the depths of his chest. "Sure, sure…"

Pulling his phone out from his pocket, he turned on the video function of his camera and flipped the camera lens towards him. Barely holding back his laughter, he pressed the big red button on the screen, and began slurring his words as he had always heard from the mouth of his dear friend –

"What's up everybody, it's H2O Delirious here and I'm gonna do a face reveal… It's been too long, and I'm gonna bare my soul out to the world and all my subscribers, okay?"

Evan fastened his hands on the hockey mask and slowly slid it upwards away from his face. As he felt the cool air begin to hit his lips and his nose, the gleeful laugh that he had tried so hard to hold back came tumbling out in a loud guffaw, prompting him to hastily pull the rest of the mask off his face.

"I'm- I'm here!" He barely choked out between laughs, promptly ending the video as the rest of the room joined in his gaiety.


Evan awoke with a start as a sharp light hit him from beyond his eyelids. Turning away from the source, he slowly opened his eyes, mentally willing the haze in his mind to subside. He soon became aware of a low, annoying buzz in his ears, and it was beginning to tick him off. He lay still, ignoring the gentle lurches of his stomach and the misery in his head, until his body's displeasure at his antics of the previous night began to slowly abate.

The sunlight, however, was a less forgiving disciplinarian. It crept ever so slowly through the glass window, moving closer and closer towards his eyes, until Evan was completely consumed by the annoying heat and light. Frustrated, he migrated to another side of the bed, but was once again consumed by the sunlight in what felt like a short moment.

"Get up, lazy bum, even the sun's trying to wake you up." Sarah's soft voice tinkled gently against the still-annoying buzz in his ears.

"What the hell happened?" Evan groaned, his voice barely a murmur against a pillow.

"You got shit-faced, posted a ton of things online and I had to whisk us all home like the witch I was. I could barely even get the mask and the jacket off you before you straight up passed out on the bed."

Evan frowned, and turned his face into his pillow.

"Your phone has been going off the whole morning, by the way, if that's enough incentive for your sleepy bum to get up."

Her words were followed by another frustrated groan from Evan. He listened as she softly padded out of the room, before he finally turned back upright and reached for his phone, swiping away at it from memory. As his eyes fluttered open, he was greeted by countless messages from his friends.

"Evan, are you even getting on?"

"Evan, god damn it, we're all waiting and Nogla's going to go to bed soon."

"Evan, where in the god damn hell are you?"

"Where are you? We're waiting and you said we'd record today."

Shit. Evan did promise, only to stand his friends up at the very last moment. He shot out from the bed hastily, scrambling towards the bathroom to clean up and get dressed. As he hurriedly brushed and shaved, he looked through all of his social media accounts for signs of last night. Most of them were intact and free from the destruction of the night before – with the exception of Twitter.

Countless pictures and videos littered across his Twitter timeline, with the very first being his "face reveal" video. At more than three thousand favorites and nearly a thousand re-tweets, the video of him drunkenly doing a "face reveal" as his close friend was undoubtedly the best-received tweet of the night – not that Evan wanted his drunken antics to be well-received in any way at all. His friends, as well, have all re-tweeted the video. He sighed, slightly tempted to erase all evidence of the whirl that was the previous night.

As he logged onto Skype and joined in on the group chat, he noticed that it was much more silent and emptier than he had expected it to be – some of the guys were offline, some of them had their statuses set to away, but almost none of them were on the call – except two. Luke and Delirious.

"Hey, uh – I'm sorry about standing you guys up," Evan began as he joined the call.

"'Sup H2O?" Luke slurred, evidently exhausted. Delirious responded with his subdued, yet signature giggle, sounding equally fatigued.

"Nothin' much, lotsa drink and bustin' my face reveal, it's all game over man, the world knows how I look like now; I'm that hot Asian guy." Delirious chortled.

"Yeah, yeah," Evan feigned a sigh, trying not to laugh himself. "At least you're not like that guy Vanoss who stayed home and got wasted thinking about how he's going to grow old all alone while throwing sweets at kids that come by or something like that."

Luke laughed softly, sounding as though there was little energy spurring him on. Delirious, however, was sharply silent – and this silence dragged over a long, protracted pause.

"Are you alright there?" Evan queried, his voice uncertain. He was almost sure he had hit a nerve with the statement, judging by the odd reaction that Delirious had.

"Yeah, I'm alright." Delirious replied, unusually quickly. "What's up with you? You go and have a nice long party and you forget about us?"

"Look, I'm sorry, guys. I'm even sorrier that I can't tell that to the others. How long did you guys wait?"

"Eons," Luke drawled. "And then we just decided to record something small and postpone the bigger ones with you to another day. We figured you probably died somewhere and won't be coming back until next Halloween."

"Shit. Uh, I guess I'll have to make it up to you guys, big time. Are we playing again later on?"

"Yeah. Just don't get wasted and dump us again. Now go work out or somethin', big guy, and leave us to rot." Luke murmured, his exhaustion increasingly apparent.

Both Luke and Delirious watched as Evan's profile picture vanished from their screens.

"Y'know, I'm no Evan and I can't make you say whatever embarrassing shit you say half the time, but it's fuckin' about Liselle again, isn't it?" Luke grilled, breaking out of his sleepiness abruptly.

"Shut up."

"Really? Because I'm pretty damn sure you said nothing about your Halloween night. And it's supposed to be one of your favorite holidays, too."

"Just – just shut it, okay?"

"Yeah, that reaction… it's about Liselle alright. Just like Evan said, huh?" Luke probed, ferocious. "You dumbasses decide you're done again and you mope your damn spooky holiday away thinking you're all alone like you always do. Jonathan, you're far from being a damn high school kid, man, the two of you have been at this on-and-off thing for ages, the fuck are you still moping for?"

Jonathan sighed. The cat was out the bag – and there was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could hide any longer. "I think… getting back together with her… might've been a mistake." He mumbled, biting his lip.

"I'm listenin'." Luke sighed.

"I thought I was done. I thought we were finished, for real this time. I even made plans to move away and get away from all those memories and start afresh and all that shit, but even before I moved I just had to fall back into that trap. I don't even know what I was thinking. I was sick, sick and delirious." He chuckled sadly. "And then I thought I wanted her back. Sure it was nice having her around when I was all sick and alone, but… in the end… It's wasn't good, was it?"

"Nope. You two… just no."

"And even now… I'm in a new place and all, and it's still going to be the same thing again now that we're done again. I don't even know if I should even stay here anymore. Maybe go to Antartica or something."

"Jonathan…" Luke began, distressed. "You don't need to leave. Look, we can always take a nice long holiday. To L.A., for instance. Meet some of our friends. They're dying to meet you. It's a nice change of scene for some time, and you won't be all alone."

"I'm not sure, Luke... It's nice to be alone sometimes. After all, I've only been in this house for a couple of weeks. I've got to finish up fixing up the place before I go anywhere."

"It's all up to you, buddy." Luke stifled a long, drawn out yawn. "Look, I'm going to bed. Don't linger on it. I know your house is still a little bit empty now, but… don't go looking for something to fill that void so soon, you get what I mean? You'll just change what you have right now, and just live to regret it."

Jonathan paused, thinking about Luke's words. It was but a subtle warning to him to not turn back to Liselle, wrapped up with the warmth of his love for him as a brother.

"No promises there… but I'll try."