A/N: re the Chunnel scene – I looked it up. I'm not crazy. I promise. Yes, there is a coach on a train. And I'm so sorry I'm so late posting this. My day was a little bit ridiculous and crazy. I'm sorry still.
Thanks for reviewing – darkhk, BlacknPotty, Oddliver, Belle, Prunella7, noodlesandcheese, PrettyLittleDiary, grace2girl16. You guys are cool.
Chapter Thirty-Six – The Better Best Man
(Teddy)
"But see, you're the expected choice," I pointed out, flicking a guitar pick at Tom.
"They're going to bicker about this until the day of, aren't they?" Rian asked. Tom and I ignored her.
"Yeah, but because I'm the expected choice, it would be in Levente's contrary nature to pick you, therefore in order to be actually unexpected – since it's expectedly unexpected for him to pick you – he'd have to pick me," Tom said.
"Did you get a degree in doubletalk from Jack Sparrow?" Logan asked.
"There should be a captain in there somewhere," Tom and I chorused.
"Guys, we're not getting married until next May," Rian said.
"Yeah, and you've already got your maid of honour," Tom pointed out.
"Wait you do?" I asked as the coach lurched around the corner. We were almost to the Chunnel and I couldn't say I was looking forward to it.
"Yeah, she's asked Victoire," Logan explained.
"Oh," I mumbled. Then, because I'm ridiculous, I blushed and curled back up on my bunk with my headphones in, and started playing Metallica loudly to try and calm my nerves before I was forced, on a coach, onto a train and then under the English Channel. I was not excited for this, due to mild claustrophobia, and so I started humming under my breath.
"Are you humming Metallica?" Logan asked, giving me an unnerved look.
"It helps me relax," I replied, covering my ears and burying my head under my pillow.
"Oh my God, Rian – Rian he's Dean Winchester," Logan said, bouncing enthusiastically and beaming at her. Rian sighed and shook her head.
"Fine," she said. "Marry him instead. I see how it is."
Logan started protesting loudly about how if he were to go for a bloke, it wouldn't be me since I was not his type, and also that he wasn't going to go for a bloke since he was so passionately in love with her he couldn't comprehend his life without her, which was why they were getting married in the first place. Then he clammed up for a moment and announced he had an idea for a song and retreated to the corner, promising it wasn't specifically about Rian since he intended to make it weirdly obsessive and creepy just for fun.
Rian and I stared at him for a long while and then swapped a look. As quickly as I could, I conjured up my mental picture of Dean Winchester and felt myself get a little taller and a little broader and turned my eyes green. I left my mouth approximately the same, and then, with a tragic sigh, shortened my hair and turned it dark blond. Rian tried very hard not to laugh, and I sat down across from Logan without saying anything.
We stayed in that stalemate for a while, him scribbling things on his notepad, me staring at him with my hands clasped on the table in front of me. I hadn't seen many episodes of Supernatural, but it was impossible to be friends with Logan and not know enough about it to get by. Tom and I had recently been forced to swear that upon returning from the tour, we would sit down and watch all thirteen seasons.
Finally, the coach slowed to a stop as we were driven onto the train, and the general noise and clamour of the loading process made Logan look up. He did a double-take when he saw me and then gaped.
"I like pie," I said, in my best (very poor) approximation of an American accent.
Logan twitched and his fingers twisted in mid-air like he was trying to restrain himself from reaching across the table to touch me.
"Please change back," he said finally.
"Why?" I asked, still in my terrible American accent.
"Because I have the pressing desire to have sex with you and that would be really fucked up," he replied.
Rian burst out laughing. She laughed so loud she woke Tom up and he glared at her until he noticed me playing Jensen Ackles and Logan's obvious discomfort.
"When are we going to resolve the best man conundrum?" Tom asked as I shifted back to my standard appearance.
"I dunno," I said. "We could do beater-bludger-bat and see who comes out best of three."
Tom looked ready to agree when a horrible thought crossed my mind.
"Wait, isn't there some sleazy tradition that the maid of honour and the best man sleep together at the wedding?" I asked.
"Generally," Rian agreed, and I noticed she was flipping through a bridal magazine. I briefly wondered where she'd got it, but shrugged it off for more pressing matters.
"Okay, then fuck that, Tom I will actively murder you before you get to be best man," I said.
"Why?" he asked, looking offended. "I like getting laid as much as you do."
"Yeah, but Victoire's the maid of honour," I replied.
"Oh," Tom said as though this explained everything. "Fine, but then I'm best man at your wedding."
"Done," I agreed. "And Logan's best man at yours."
"Sweet I never have to write a best man speech!" Logan exclaimed.
"Oi, fuck off," Tom grumbled.
"Never, Gabriel," Logan replied. He grinned in a very Slytherin-esque manner and went back to scribbling on his notepad.
Rian returned to her bridal magazine, and Tom and I were left to our own devices.
"What's happening with Victoire, exactly?" he asked as the coach rumbled slightly with the motion of the train.
I shrugged. The news that she had meant it when she told her dad she started to fancy me at the platform was the best thing I'd ever heard, even if that was slightly dampened by my being an arse over Christmas. The fact she was coming to our show (at least one of them) was delightful and I couldn't wait.
"I think she likes me," I replied.
"So are you guys dating now finally?" Tom asked.
I wanted to say yes, and that I had every intention of asking her out as soon as we saw her in ten days, but I didn't actually know the answer. For all I knew she was still vehemently opposed to dating and that wasn't something I wanted to force on her. Maybe just…a continuation of the summer except with some sort of possessive exclusivity clause thrown in.
"I dunno," I replied, shrugging. "Maybe? Maybe someday?"
"And you're not going to tell her you're in love with her," he guessed.
"No I think she would panic and run away," I replied.
Tom nodded. "That's what Kate did."
"It's also what you did," I pointed out. "Erm…you know she's seeing Regan Emerson, right?"
Tom considered this information for a moment. Then he looked vaguely murderous. "She's doing what?"
"Dating Regan Emerson?" I said slowly, wondering if I should brace for impact.
He blinked several times and then a slightly mad smile stretched across his face. He bore a passing resemblance to the Cheshire Cat.
"Is this because she's a lesbian, or…" I prompted, getting ready to duck in case he exploded.
"Regan?" he repeated. "Regan, who she spent all of August hanging out with instead of me?"
I felt my face go slack and realised he'd just surmised that Kate had been cheating on him.
"I don't know," I said, suddenly desperate for him to stop staring the way he was.
Tom was silent for a long time. So long I thought he'd stopped breathing. Then he very slowly clambered into his bunk and closed his eyes. I stared at him with worry, but he simply rolled himself up in his blankets and covered his head with a pillow. Rian and Logan exchanged a married couple look and I decided that made it the perfect time to reacquire my claustrophobia and hide in my bed.
OOooOOooOOooOO
Tom was mostly despondent for our first show in London, and the next show in Reading. Then as we were encroaching on Cardiff, he finally perked up and looked alive.
"Okay, so you're trying to woo Victoire as much as necessary," he said. "Which are her favourite songs?"
I blinked at him, Rian and Logan looked shocked, and then unanimously and silently we agreed to not mention it.
"Erm, I know she likes I Found a Way," I said. Then I realised that was about all I knew.
"She likes most of our things," Rian said. "But yeah, I Found a Way. And you should play Love, Love, Kiss, Kiss since she helped write it."
I nodded in agreement.
As we made our way to the arena in Cardiff, we had our whole line up planned, only slightly different from our standard. I drove Nathan mad during the warm-up act by asking him to go check with the ticketing agent to see if Victoire had picked up her ticket and her backstage pass yet. Eventually he threatened to have me emasculated if I kept it up, so I stopped pestering him.
"Someone's eager," Logan said, clearly trying not to laugh at me. I took a look at what he was wearing and then had to stop myself from cackling madly. In a fit of, well, being Nathan, he'd authorised the merch company to put our faces on shirts and Logan's shirt was plastered with a glamour shot of Rian.
"You're wearing your fiancée's face on your shirt," I said.
"Yes," Logan agreed, smoothing his hand over it defensively. I nodded, doing my utmost not to seem condescending. Before I could get that far, or wolf-whistle at Rian for wearing her leather trousers again, the stage manager turned up and shooed us out. The crowd went wild as soon as we started playing. It was honestly my favourite part of performing. I absolutely loved the crowd reactions. And the fan reactions. It was one thing to have a crowd of concertgoers who were mostly (on this tour at least) there for A Day to Remember because they lit things on fire during their shows and their singer, Jeremy McKinnon, tended to get into an inflatable plastic bubble at some point and crowd surf. We didn't do this, but we'd only been touring for – two years.
Holy shit, we've been doing this for two years.
"Hi everyone, how's your night going?" Tom asked as we finished the first song.
The crowd screamed and a slew of various objects ended up on the stage by Tom's feet.
"That was awfully quiet," I said, cupping my hand to my ear and waiting for them to scream again. They did.
Tom bent down and picked up one of the things on the stage. He burst out laughing and promptly hung the lacy pair of knickers around his microphone stand.
"Wow, after only one song," he said. "This is gonna be a great show."
"Anyways, we're Hearts on Fire," I said. "And this is Love Like War."
We started playing and even though I spent the whole show wondering what Victoire was doing, whether she enjoyed our set, if she really did like me, if she was even there, I was convinced we were the best we'd ever been.
As we took our final bow, and headed back for the greenroom, this impression was solidified by Rian jumping excitedly onto my back for a piggyback ride. I laughed, and actually thought it was funny, until Logan kissed her and suddenly they were making out on either side of my shoulder.
"I do not want to be a part of this!" I exclaimed, attempting to duck out of it. "Have your threesomes with someone else!"
I dropped Rian's legs and was tried to edge out from between them and failed miserably.
"Or you know, maybe ask my permission first," I suggested, tugging helplessly on my arm from where it was pinned between them.
"So I should come back later?"
Rian and Logan mercifully let me escape and all four of us turned to face Victoire, who was standing in the doorway of the greenroom looking amused. She was actually painfully beautiful, her hair falling in strawberry tumbles almost down to her waist, and her very short pink skirt clinging to her arse in fantastic ways.
I noticed belatedly that she had one of the ridiculous shirts with our faces on them, but instead of Rian's face, it was mine.
I blinked in shock and hadn't quite knocked it off before she and Rian started squealing together, making absolutely ridiculous noises at supersonic speeds. I caught the words "engaged" and "cathedral" and "floral arrangements" and a threat in the form of, "If you stick me in a horrendous train-wreck of a bridesmaids' dress, I will never forgive you and force you to wear chartreuse if I ever get married."
"Just think, Levente, you're getting married to that," Tom said, clapping Logan on the shoulder and then slinking off with an evil grin.
"And I'm happy about that, thanks," Logan grumbled, glaring at him. Rian let go of Victoire and she immediately flung herself into Logan's arms and kissed him on the cheek.
"I'm so happy for you guys," she said. "I mean, we always knew you were going to get married, but it's so fun."
Logan laughed and let go of her. She ran off straight past me to Tom and promptly sat down next to him on the sofa, wrapped her arms around his waist, and lay her head on his shoulder. The act of sitting made her skirt ride up and made me want to touch her legs. I restrained myself.
"Hey Buttercup," Tom said.
"Sometime, we have to talk, alright?" she requested, kissing him on the cheek. He nodded.
"Can we talk, maybe?" I asked, sitting down next to her as gently as possible so she wouldn't spook.
Still, she blushed and glanced at me out of the corner of her eye and then looked down at her hands that were pulling on the hem of her skirt.
"Alright," she mumbled. She let me pull her to her feet and lead her out of the greenroom to a much emptier lounge area. By much, I mean entirely.
"Who all's here?" I asked.
"Nika," she started.
I gaped. "You left your fifteen year old sister alone in a mosh pit?"
"What? No, of course not," she replied. I realised I sounded much older than twenty when I said it. "Nika and HannahandDavid and Mackavis are all out there with her. I just wanted to come back and see you – guys."
"You wanted to come back and see me?" I asked, smirking at her and sitting down in one of the chairs. She sat very primly on the next seat over.
"I just," she mumbled. "I need you to not be an asshole for a bit."
"I'm not an asshole," I protested, realising as I protested that I was definitely an asshole a lot of the time.
"Because I – I haven't actually fancied anyone or admitted to fancying anyone since that dickhead," she continued as though I hadn't said anything. "And I really like you so I didn't say anything because I don't want it to…hurt…"
She looked like she wasn't quite pleased with her word choice but left it there anyways.
Because I'm an asshole, I didn't. "Hurt?" I prompted.
She groaned. "Not 'hurt' necessarily, but cause several years of emotional trauma and inspire the desire to spend the rest of my life comfortably numb never engaging in interaction with the opposite sex."
I considered this for a while and tentatively touched one of her hands, retracting my own when she jumped and started chewing on her bottom lip.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
She looked absolutely terrified and suddenly the line in her letter about assuming I'd logicked myself out of liking her made sense. She just honestly didn't think she was worth it.
"Hey," I said softly, suddenly finding myself on my knees in front of her chair. She stared at her legs and chewed on her lip. I put my hands on either side of her face and she shivered while I attempted to make her look at me. "Victoire."
She finally glanced up and met my eyes with her stunningly blue ones. I tried to smile as unthreateningly as possible at her. It was weird territory. I'd always been the stupid, vulnerable one in our various interactions, and now she was being shy and nervous and…fragile.
I pushed her glasses up her nose and the very tip twitched. It took me far too long to realise I was kneeling there with her face in my hands, counting the freckles on her nose.
"See the thing is, I'm completely mad about you," I said. "Quite possibly since the New Year's Eve kiss three and half years ago. And I'd very much like to date you, if that's alright."
She most closely resembled a unicorn in the wandlight.
"This was a lot easier when it was just physical attraction," she mumbled. I shrugged. "I don't want to date."
I deflated and let go of her face, sinking back onto my heels. "Right," I said.
I started to stand up and brace myself for the horror of Rian shouting at me, when Victoire grabbed my wrist.
"This is exactly what happened at Christmas you fucktrumpet," she said. "I said something reactionary and you reacted and left."
I stared down at her hand, actually somewhat relieved we were returned to our normal patterns of me being the emotional one and her being annoyed with me.
"Sorry, but you just said you didn't want to date me, so I figured that was a dismissal," I replied. I made no move to free myself from her grasp however.
"I said I didn't want to date as in anyone as in ever as in I hate the idea of sitting at dinner making small-talk that essentially equates to a negotiation about whether or not we'll be going back to one of our flats to shag after we pay for our meal," she replied. "So can we just…stay in, instead?"
I blinked and looked at her. She was still chewing on her lip. Very gently, I pulled it out from between her teeth with my thumb and kissed her. It occurred to me that this wasn't something we'd done often. With two exceptions – the first kiss at New Year's and the kiss on the platform – every other kiss we'd shared had been immediately followed by, during, or immediately after sex.
"You just want to skip the whole dating limbo thing and what? Be in a relationship?" I asked, my forehead resting against hers.
"I know it's stupid, I just-"
"It's not stupid," I replied. "It sounds nice. No pressure."
"Exactly," she said. "Like, you're not going to break up with me because I can't make small talk over dinner and start rambling on about my fictional characters."
I very nearly said, "At least they're interesting fictional characters," but then I remembered I wasn't supposed to have read it. I could pull that off. I could wait until she gave me permission to actually read it before I said anything about Nate and Emory and Maggie and Scott and Lizzie and Maggie and Mark and Oliver. Before I mentioned the tragic injustice that was the six months Nate and Emory got to spend together before they both died –
"Maybe you could tell me about your fictional characters sometime," I suggested, kissing her again.
She blushed. "I kind of need readers," she said.
"Conveniently, I have a three day break until the next show," I replied. I stood up, and when she looked confused, I scooped her up before I sat back down and settled her in my lap. "Sorry. I got tired of bending over to kiss you."
She blushed and chewed on her lip again. "You don't have to read it," she said. "It's not that good. I need to edit it still, or, edit it again, and then I need to find a publisher who'll actually accept it since the last one didn't, but you're under no obligation."
"Victoire," I said. "I want to read it. And whichever publisher that turned it down is an idiot."
She kept turning bright, bright red as I kissed her cheek.
"Besides, if you're my girlfriend now or-"
"No," she interrupted. She was still blushing furiously and staring at her knees. "Please don't."
"Don't what?" I asked. "Call you my girlfriend?"
She nodded in agreement. "Can we take the relationship part really slowly?"
I frowned, but fortunately she couldn't see me. "Okay, so what's acceptable?"
"I dunno," she said. "Can we just have what we did last summer but with the added knowledge that we both like each other?"
"So I'm not allowed to hold your hand or anything?" I asked. She nodded in agreement. "But we can still have sex?"
"Yeah," she agreed.
"And you'll stay the night most of the time, but you won't go out with me," I continued.
"We could also watch films together," she mumbled. "Mack's been trying to get me to watch Doctor Who, so…"
I nodded and rested my head against her shoulder. "You're going to drive me mad, just so you know."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm just not…comfortable calling it a relationship yet."
A tiny flickering of hope set up camp in my chest and wouldn't go away. "But that's the direction we're heading, right?"
She nodded softly, still picking distractedly at her skirt. I stilled her hands.
"So if we're not in the same room am I allowed to tell people you're my girlfriend?" I asked.
She shrugged half-heartedly and still looked horribly uncomfortable.
"Hey," I said, kissing her. "You're not obligated to anything you don't want to do."
"I know, but I just feel bad because you want a relationship and I just want…something simpler than that," she mumbled.
"You're wrong," I said. She stared at me. "I don't necessarily want a relationship. I want you."
She almost giggled. "You're ridiculous," she informed me.
"Yes," I agreed. "But you're worth being ridiculous over."
She opened her mouth, presumably to fight with me, but I cut her off by kissing her.
"Not today," I requested, kissing her lightly and bumping my nose against hers. "You can fight me about that for years, but today just…leave it."
She nodded and kissed me again.
Review!