First of all, thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, alerted, and favorited this already! I was extremely hesitant on posting it because I wasn't sure what the reaction would be, but I'm definitely feeling 293856 times better about this.
So now we're on episode two, Groovy Movies! Sadly Macy wasn't in this episode at all so I had pretty much nothing to work off of, but in the beginning of the episode Nick, Kevin, and Joe decide to go to the school store and in the next scene - viola! They're back at the firehouse. Naturally, my Nick/Macy brain asks: what could've happened at the school store and, more importantly, could Macy have been there just openly available for a conversation with Nick? ;)
And special thanks to my wonderful Beta, Ally117!
Enjoy!
Nick had never really been good at remembering dates, a perfect example of this being when the fact that his mother's birthday had arrived only crossed his mind when eleven hours of the day itself had already passed. It didn't come as much of a surprise to him, because he was well aware of this flaw. But just because he was aware didn't mean he was accepting; it only meant that he'd taken note of it. And although forgetting yet another date had given him perfect opportunity to fix it, getting a gift for his forgotten mother had taken the place of top priority.
Macy had always been terrible at remembering just about everything - except dates, surprisingly. She had this uncommon ability to just rattle off dates ranging from the Revolutionary War era to her first ever hit in a baseball game. Sadly, this ability did absolutely nothing to help with her forgetfulness in all other aspects of life, and she was still faced with the seemingly impossible challenge of making it to the school store (which just so happened to be on the absolute other side of the building from her next class) and back to Chemistry with a newly bought pencil to take a test with. She supposed she couldn't really complain, because it was her fault and it wasn't like she needed to buy a million other things. All she needed was a pencil for her Chemistry test next period.
A pencil.
It was too bad for her that as she was walking to the counter to pay for her plain, orange number two pencil that her eyes caught on a particularly shiny collection of glittered ones. She didn't even think twice before tossing her almost-purchase of bland orange over her shoulder and start tracing her fingers over the sparkling, patterned ones. And of course, she couldn't get just one - because the lavender one was lovely, but then again the cherry one was too.
She couldn't help it, because she'd always been attracted to color.
Meanwhile, as his number one fan was browsing through the shimmering pencil rack, Nick was leading his brothers toward the entrance of the school store with one mundane thought of a dull black and white color running through his mind: get Mom a birthday present. Surely he had no idea that Macy would already be there, just as Macy had no idea that when she made her first trip to the school store that her celebrity infatuations/obsessions/crushes would show up a mere two minutes later.
Nick noticed her first but his steps never faltered, despite the fact that the bruise she'd given him from a clumsy swing of her baseball bat earlier that day had become a bit more painful at the sight. The image of her through the plate glass door as she stood in front of the sparkling display, a small twinkle in her eye being visible to his spot from what must have been twenty feet away ridding any unhesitant thought he may have had.
His brothers, though? They were a different story.
"I refuse to take one step further," Joe had abruptly stopped walking once he saw her, too.
"I second that," Kevin stood next to his brother.
"Relax guys, she's only given us like three bruises," Nick coaxed them.
"Each," Joe deadpanned.
"I've counted at least six on myself," Kevin added with a nervous gulp, "and those were only the ones I could see!"
"Do you two want to be the ones to tell Mom we didn't get her anything?" Nick asked, his eyes narrowing as he reached for the handle of the door.
"She'd understand!" Kevin retorted.
"Yeah, I'm sure she'd totally accept the, 'Sorry Mommy, there was a big bad number one fan in the store so we couldn't buy you a gift!' excuse," Nick replied sarcastically as he took his first step inside. Joe, seeing Nick's point but still not supportive of it, followed in back of him after a moment's hesitation while Kevin strayed behind.
"I still think she'd understand!" he shouted before catching up to them.
Once inside, two thirds of the brothers took careful steps in order to avoid collision with her, but Nick kept his focus on trying to find a present. Besides, he'd understood upon meeting her that she only meant well and she certainly had no intentions of causing them such bodily harm. Stella had once told him of her grace as an athlete, and he couldn't help but believe it when (only on occasion) he would notice her walking down the halls with a bat thrown expertly over her shoulder as she juggled her books and softball in one hand and her glove in the other.
(He noticed her.)
The only problem was that the second she was within even a ten foot radius of one or all of the brothers, her athleticism seemed to disappear completely and was instead replaced with a clumsiness that made her constantly fumble with her (heavy) sports equipment and somehow send it colliding (roughly) with the forehead or chest of the given Jonas that had caused the whole clumsiness issue to arise in the first place. Still, Nick wasn't really afraid because he'd always had some unexplained ability in dodging things (like her unexplained ability with dates) and he still prided himself on always being picked first for dodge ball in third grade gym class (like her with the Revolutionary War of 1775 and baseball games of 1996).
And somehow he just knew that underneath all of the fumbling and blundering, the real, athletic, non-fangirl Macy was there.
"Code red! Code red!" Kevin whisper-shouted to his brothers, who only looked at him in confusion. "Why does everyone always look at me like that?"
"Oh I don't know, Kev, because you whisper-shout things like 'code red!' like you're in stupid Mission Impossible or something!" Joe whisper-shouted back.
"Guys," Nick warned (in his normal voice) to avoid the ridiculous argument he knew was coming.
"I'm sorry! But she's got a tennis racket!" Kevin whisper-shouted in response, and Joe's hand flew instinctively to his cheek.
"My face hurts just thinking about it," he whimpered. "Is it possible to feel a bruise before you get it?"
"Joe," Nick furrowed his eyebrows at the question, "that's ridiculous."
"OW!" Joe screamed out as his sight was met again with the racket she was gripping in her hands.
"You blew our cover!" Kevin shouted.
"No I didn't, but you just did!" Joe yelled. "Now we're going to have to run for it, so I'll count to three and-"
"Run!" Kevin whisper-screamed, cutting off Joe and grabbing his arm to drag him to the exit. "Nick, save yourself!" he shouted to his brother and tried to reach for him too, but Nick simply pulled his arm back to his side and Kevin's grip on him was lost, instantly sending him to near panic as he left his brother behind.
Nick stood, unaffected by the sudden drama - and it really was literal drama because Kevin had begun running in slow motion and making those weird slow motion faces that he'd convinced himself made him look like a 'wicked awesome, and totally kick-butt!' secret agent. He watched his brothers hurl themselves back to the plate glass doors of the exit and run through them. He had to suppress a laugh as Kevin nearly knocked over a crowd of innocent bystanders because he'd been too busy looking over his shoulder at Nick with his hand reached out to him and an expression of fear displayed in his widened eyes. For a moment he mused that Kevin had been kind of right about the slow motion thing - it was, kind of, cool looking.
On the other side of the store, a shell-shocked Macy Misa was frozen at the realization that Jonas had actually been in the same room as her, occupying the same space and breathing the same air. Every thought of making a purchase and going to class had then gone completely out the window at that point - not because she didn't still want to make it back to class on time, because she did, but for the simple fact that her sudden inability to move had compromised her plan.
And now, she was stuck.
After his brothers had disappeared completely, Nick turned back around and began browsing through what the store had to offer for a gift for his mother. He looked through some humoring things on display, seriously considering a spiral 3-subject notebook because it had her favorite flowers (daisies) on the front cover before he realized the idiocy of what he was thinking and came back to his senses.
It wasn't long after that until he'd given up completely on trying to find something on the shelves and, in a final attempt, wandered over to the checkout counter to see if there was anything worth buying on display. He saw a few things that were particularly interesting, but nothing that seemed nearly good enough to get for her. His best option was a corny little keychain that had the initial of her first name on it with a scarlet heart scribbled next to it. A very audible sigh of defeat escaped him that earned a strange look from the Senior working behind the counter, to which he just faced the other way in response.
He began reexamining the room, his eyes scanning every little shelf and display case in his vision until his gaze finally landed on Macy, whose unblinking eyes instantly met with his. She looked down rather quickly as her breath caught in her throat, trying to refocus her sight back on the sparkles of the pencils in front of her that seemed suddenly less colorful compared to the deep brown color held in the eyes of the Jonas standing a mere five feet away from her.
She wondered if he'd left yet, as she figured he would, but she didn't want to look in fear she'd either pass out (again) or miraculously whack him with her tennis racket (again) - both options seeming very unappealing. After a few moments of silence, she'd told herself that he was probably gone by then. Perhaps it was for the better anyway, because she still hadn't recovered from seeing him and his brothers five minutes ago, much less seeing him a few seconds ago, and if she ever wanted to get to class on time then she'd rather do without the distraction (and embarrassment) that came with each encounter she'd had with a Jonas.
But to her dismay, she could feel someone approaching her from the left and soon felt the presence of another person standing mere inches away from her. Her heart began pounding, sending her pulse into an irregularly fast pace while her breathing became ragged and her fingers started to shake. She tried to pretend he wasn't there - facing her, watching her. When that inevitably didn't work (because she'd gotten so use to being able to recognize each Jonas from a mile away) she told herself that he wasn't there for her and he was just trying to look at the pencils to see if any were worth purchasing.
The pencils.
"Hi Macy," she heard him speak, and everything began blurring when he said her name. With several different experiences of fainting in front of a Jonas under her belt, she immediately recognized this as the first sign that she was about to black out and frantically tried to regain her mental composure.
"Hello," she greeted shakily, making sure her eyes remained fixed ahead instead of on the intensity of his eyes.
He waited for her to turn around, but was apparently waiting for nothing because after a minute of stillness she still hadn't faced him. The shaking of her hand as she reached to grab another pencil from the rack was enough for him to figure out why she wouldn't look at him - because she was nervous, as she always was around his brothers and him, and she probably didn't want to faint again. He wondered for a moment why it was that he could pick up such subtle hints that allowed for him to be able to read her so easily, but dismissed it quickly by telling himself that he'd always been good at reading people, not just her.
Definitely not just her.
"Not one for small talk, today?" he jokingly asked in an attempt to ease her nerves.
"I'm sorry," she tried to say, but it came out in an audible whisper that somehow he could still easily hear.
"Don't apologize," he spoke softly, and was a bit surprised to see that she had begun turning toward him. His eyes followed her shoulders as they began revolving and continued up the path of her arm until they landed on the faltering grip of her hand on the tennis racket that had scared his brothers out of the store. He automatically predicted the trajectory of the angle just in time to realize it would collide perfectly with his face if he didn't duck in time and was able to move just before it crashed into him. The racket swung above him, making a breezy whoosh as it brushed over his curls, and he picked his head back up once he felt safely out of dodge.
"I am so sorry!" her mouth dropped open and her hand flew to cover it.
"Relax, it didn't hit me," he tried to calm her down. "And you apologize a lot," he added thoughtfully.
"I'm sor-"
"Macy."
"Right," she closed her eyes tightly and put a cold hand to her chest to try and stop her racing heart. Her effort only failed though, as she could feel her heart begin to beat even quicker underneath her fingertips, which she thought was just about impossible at that point.
"So, I was wondering if you could help be out with something," he began.
"But you're Nick of Jonas," she stated obviously, but the confusion in his eyes was evident and she further explained, "why would you need my help?"
"I don't know," he shrugged honestly, "and remember, you can just call me Nick."
"Okay," she said shakily, still unsure, "but I'm not sure I'll be of any help. I'll probably just end up giving you a bruise."
"It will heal," he replied without thought, and the beat of her heart started to pound in her chest so loudly that she swore he could probably hear it. The question of why the beating of her heart had never been this erratic around Joe or Kevin flickered across her mind for an instant, but the way his eyes were looking at her expectantly didn't allow her to fully realize that the question had arose and it was gone before she ever could.
"Uh, so," she struggled with her words, "wh-what can I help you w-with?"
"Well, to make a long story short, I somehow forgot that today was my mom's birthday and now I have absolutely nothing to give her. Stella said to check here, but I can't seem to find anything," he explained. "You wouldn't happen to have any suggestions, would you?"
With the fact that she was having a (second) one-on-one conversation with a third of her celebrity infatuation of three years already being nearly enough for her poor brain to process, trying to think of a gift idea for a forty-something year old mother of four (extremely famous - and not to mention incredibly good looking) boys who probably already had everything in the world resting in the corner of her closet seemed impossibly difficult. The only thing she had the ability to do was shrug in response to the question.
"Well," she thought suddenly, "you can give her one of these pencils!"
He looked at the sparkling ruby pencil in her hand as she held it out to offer it to him and let out a chuckle before he had the chance to suppress it. She simply told herself she was imagining it, like the way she'd decided she was imagining his small smile in their first conversation.
"Thanks, but somehow I doubt she'll consider a pencil to be an adequate gift," he politely declined and she returned her hand back to her side, looking down sadly at the pencil in her hand which suddenly seemed so dull. There was a small pang in the bottom of his throat at the image and before he knew it he had asked, "So, what's with those pencils anyway?"
And somehow, just by expressing even the smallest amount of interest, her gaze met back with his.
"I've always thought a girl could never have too many sparkly pencils," she laughed, trying to be convincing because she didn't want to admit that she was only going to use them for some boring old test. He was Nick of Jonas, after all, and she wanted her life to seem as exciting as his. But his eyes narrowed in disbelief and she knew that he didn't buy it, so she truthfully admitted in a quiet voice, "I have a math test next period and I couldn't resist."
He felt the corners of his mouth begin to lift just a little too late, but as he was about to reveal his smile to her the final bell for class had rung and both of their faces dropped instantly.
"Oh no!" she shouted, quickly pulling a five dollar bill out of her pocket and slamming it on the counter for the clerk before grabbing the ruby-sparkled pencil. Quickly, she turned on her heel and Nick just dodged crashing against her racket as she swung around and began running out of the store. "I can't be late again!" she yelled, more to herself than to anyone else.
Inexplicably, instead of going down the opposite hall to get to his classroom, he followed her.
"Hey!" he called out, jogging to catch up with her and slowing his speed once he reached her.
"I can't be late," she repeated. "Ms. Snark told me yesterday that if I'm late to her class one more time she'll call all of my coaches and have me suspended from my teams for two weeks!"
"Do you want me to walk you there?" he offered, sensing how important her sports were to her and feeling it was his fault for putting them at risk. After all, she wouldn't have been late if he hadn't have asked for her help and kept her so long.
"Why would you want to walk with me?" she asked curiously, wanting to stop and find out but knowing that she couldn't if she wanted even if the slightest chance of making it to class before Ms. Snark noticed that she was missing.
"Ms. Snark sometimes seems like a bigger fan of Jonas than even you are," he explained, "and if you show up late to class with a Jonas by your side, then she'll probably be more accepting."
"Oh no, that's okay. You don't have to do that!" she declined guiltily, picking up her pace.
"Are you sure?" he asked, matching his steps with hers.
"I'm sure!" she replied, "but uh, good luck with finding a gift! Bye, Nick of-" she stopped herself before letting the suffix slip out of her mouth, "Nick!"
She broke into a jog as he began to stray behind, waiting until she rounded the corner before he himself turned back around to begin his trek to class. Somewhere along the way, sometime just after he'd passed the school store again, he decided to stop by Ms. Snark's room before he left that day to let her know that Macy wasn't to blame for her tardiness. Although his brothers would probably accuse him of being an enabler by making it possible for her to continued injuring them with her equipment, he knew he'd do it for her anyway.
But it was only because he felt guilty for making her late, he told himself.
Only because he felt guilty.
I dare you to count how many times I used sparkle, glitter, shine, or some other variations of those. Ha, just kidding; don't really do that.
And just as a little side note, I'm sure a lot of you are fond of Kevin/Macy and I just want to put out there that I'm trying to make each character as close as possible to how they were at the given time on the show. In the first episode, Kevin ran away from Macy screaming, "Who are you!?" so anything he may have said in this chapter should be understandable. No flames, please. But other reviews/feedback? Always loved. (:
