Chapter One

The Tower

It was the summer holiday and Lance had gone to New York. He had meant to hang out with his friends in New York and brag about it back at home but instead his friends (Simon, Enrique and Henry) had wanted to hang out with Simon's old group from when he lived in New York. This is when one of them asked if they'd ever been to the Tower of Sleeping Beauty and everyone said no and they had all agreed to go, well, everyone except Lance. He had wanted to see the sights, go watch films, play video games with his friends, not go watch probably a dummy sleep.

Lance had finally let his friends convince him to go to the Tower, where they supposedly had the Sleeping Beauty and anyone was given a chance to wake her up. Of course, in the past four years no one had. He suspected that it was because she was actually a dummy because many people claimed she looked the exactly the same as she had when the Tower had first opened. People were to go in groups into a room, all the doors closed to give the illusion of privacy but Lance bet that there was a camera hidden in the room to make sure nothing got out of hand.

As Lance looked around he noticed that though there were quite a few women it was mostly men, this made Lance feel uncomfortable but he didn't know why. He hadn't wanted to go there but his friends had insisted until Lance had said yes just so that they would stop pestering him. As they reached the top he realised his friends were talking to him.

"Helloooo, Earth to Lance. Are you there?" asked his best friend Enrique.

"Yeah, what is it?" he answered feeling a taunt coming.

"What is with you today? I get that you didn't really want to come but you're here and it is the Sleeping Beauty we're going to see! How can you not be excited?" his friend exclaimed, Lance was surprised that they weren't taunting him and saw their point but he still felt it was kind of unnecessary to pay twenty dollars to try and wake a dummy, although he hadn't paid, his friends had.

"Yeah but people have said that the 'Sleeping Beaty'," he said sarcastically, "has not aged once in the past four years which is impossible unless she is actually a dummy." Lance looked pointedly at his friends having made his point.

"Yeah but she isn't a dummy-" Enrique began to say something to prove his point in the argument before Lance cut him off.

"Okay, fine. She's actually a real life breathing person, that means she's essentially in a coma. Okay? A coma. And people are paying to go up there and kiss her. Okay? So I agreed to come on this trip but not to go assault an unconscious lady. I mean, how old is she supposed to be anyway?"

After his rant his friends looked a little uneasy until a kid from in front basically shouted, "It's SLEEPING BEAUTY!" and then his friends were back to being excited at the prospect of seeing the Sleeping Beauty.

When they were second in line though, he did begin getting a little bit excited, I mean what if it was the Sleeping Beauty? Lance told himself it was just his friends getting him annoyed and him being excited to soon being able to leave this place.

They were first now and even his friends could tell he was a little excited because, well, it was the Sleeping Beauty! The doors opened and in went their group, they had been climbing what had been made to look like an old stone castle but Lance thought was probably not and was actually more like Rapunzel's tower as they had to climb up to what he thought was probably a stupidly tall height. The room they were now in was actually, to Lance's standards, quite realistic. It had an old oak desk and chair which both looked like they were hundreds of years old, it had a couple of books on one of the shelves and he glanced at the first one, and not surprised in the least, he saw that it was Sleeping Beauty.

"Right then," he muttered to himself, "Sleeping Beauty had a copy of Sleeping Beauty before she became Sleeping Beauty. Because that makes sooo much sense."

He continued looking around the room, there was a wardrobe, he went up to it but it was locked, there was also a mirror and, closest to a massive window, the bed on which she slept. His friends had already gathered round her and were complaining that their phones didn't work so they couldn't take pictures.

"They probably found a way to disable them because I don't if you noticed but there are literally zero photos of her online," Lance told them.

"Hm, Lance is right guys, I mean, have any of you seen a picture of her before we came here?" Enrique asked the others, they all grumbled 'no' and put their phones away.

Lance finally looked away from his friends and down at the sleeping princess, Wow,he thought, that is definitely nota dummy. She had really light brown hair or a dark gold and pale skin, she was dressed in a dark blue dressed which was carefully laid out so as not to crease the fabric and her hands were laid gently on her stomach. She was probably his age, he was turning seventeen in a month. He was captivated, this was definitely not a dummy. He began to get a little stressed when he glanced at his friends, this girl could be in a coma and his friends might try to kiss her. He felt a little sick.

"Hey guys," Richard, who he didn't know too well, said, "do you think I should sneak a peek?" He smiled in a horrible way. Enrique looked a little uncomfortable but the others didn't look like they minded. Lance paled as he realised Richard's meaning, Lance immediately said no.

"No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You are definitely not doing that. That is probably assault and there are cameras in this room." Lance hissed at the end. Richard glared at Lance.

"Oh, really? Well then, I guess you'll just have to get in the way of the camera then."

Lance fumed, no way was he letting that happen. "No. If you try and do that I'll call the manager and you'll be kicked out and you'll be in sooooo much trouble with your parents and-" Enrique elbowed him to shut up before Lance did one of his desperate rants where he basically spewed nonsense and people generally lost track of what he was saying after the first ten seconds. He glanced at Enrique gratefully who gave a slight nod of his head. Richard however seemed a little uneasy but not wanting to seem like he lost decided to compromise.

"Fine," Lance thought he was agreeing and felt relieved but Richard carried on, "on one condition. We don't do anything if Lance agrees to kiss her."

Richard watched in glee as Lance paled and paled and then paled a little more.

"What?!" He squeaked. He turned to Enrique for help but he just shrugged and said, "It's just a little kiss and you stop Mr Pervert over there from being, well, a pervert. Come on."

The others watched him expectantly and Lance saw that if he wanted to stop them he had to be the one to kiss her. He felt quite sick now. He tried to say something but was still frozen about what Richard had said, he really didn't want to kiss a girl who was probably in a coma.

Enrique saw him turn a little green and said to the others, "Come on, let's go to the next room and wait for him there, you know Lance would never be able to kiss anything with people around him, especially watching him." He grabbed the others and steered them towards the exit.

"But how do we know if he kisses her?" Richard stepped out of Enrique's reach, not ready to leave just yet.

Enrique sighed as if talking to a small child who was asking a question and the answer was on the board, "Because Lance will come out bright red from his head to his toes. You know how much he blushes."

Richard then suddenly thought that this was even better and smiled wickedly, "Yeah, you're right. Let's go. Have fun Lance." He cackled and left. The others followed after him, Enrique, making sure none of them stayed behind, glanced behind him at Lance and gave him a look of let's just get out of here quickly.

Now left alone in the room, Lance looked down at the girl. Her skin like porcelain, he thought, she is so- wait, you don't want to be here so just kiss her and get it over with. He then worried about what was a kiss, and Lance began having a silent discussion with himself until someone banged on the door, "Are you done in there yet?!"

Lance nearly jumped and ran off by being so startled but then found his voice and answered, "Almost, just a minute," then criticised himself for sounding like he was in the toilet which he most definitely was not. He looked down at the girl, sat himself on the edge of the bed and leant towards her. He was sure he was bright red already. After arguing with himself once more he leaned forwards and brushed his lips against hers, it could barely count as a kiss but barely was all he needed so he sat up and all but jumped off the bed. He thought he heard something and froze but there was nothing. He looked down at the girl and swore she was breathing more than before. He watched her closely but not too closely so that it would be weird and thought he saw he eyes moving behind her eyelids.

"That's completely normal," he whispered to himself, "she did that before… didn't she?" Lance then thought about the one thing he hadn't considered before. She was Sleeping Beauty so if kissed by the right person would wake up… was that person… him? He froze, both hoping it was and wasn't him. Then he heard a boom and he saw the light move, as if it were a shockwave, it knocked into him and he almost fell onto the floor. He gulped and looked down, expecting to see the girl hurt but she was fine.

He thought that he should leave before anyone came to investigate what had happened there when he thought he saw her move. He looked down and saw her eyes move again. He looked at her, almost feeling tension, like as if something was going to explode. And then she opened her eyes.

Hi! Thanks for reading. Please let me know what you think, you can review or PM me. I hope you liked it! I didn't really know what to put as the title so suggestions are welcome.