A/N: Please excuse the shortness of this chapter, it's really just a filler so... yeah. Enjoy.
I do not own Total Drama, all rights reserved to the respective owners.
As the sun rose and found its way into the still open tent I found myself clenching my eyelids shut as hard I could bare. After our moment the night before I had slipped out of my jeans and quickly snagged Duncan's shirt from the tent's plastic floor. He had chuckled at me as I pulled the big, black shirt over my head and smoothed the skull-print down over my torso; leaving me only in the oversized, wrinkled t-shirt and my underwear. I had made a disgusted face toward the motif but was soon back with my head on his chest.
Duncan laid next to me with one arm under his own head and his legs spread all over the place, we had drifted apart during the night due to the lack of actual mattress, leaving both of us free to spread out if wanted.
The warm rays of the sun heated my skin and was a nice change to the cool breezes of air that had sneaked their way into the tent during the night. Even as I kept my eyelids shut the rising light crept through, making it harder for me to enjoy the nature and its sounds and scent that surrounded our home for the night. I sighed tiredly in defeat and sat up in the tent, looking around me for a few seconds before crawling out of the opening into the sun and the rest of the camp. I could feel my skin soaking up the vitamin D and this time my sigh was full of nothing but relief.
Duncan moved around inside the tent and mumbled some gibberish before falling quiet and still once again. His pants laid near the opening and I snatched them with me as I walked over to the fire pit. The pockets were ridiculous! Not only were they so deep I could fit my whole hand in them, but they were so many! After a thorough search in each and every crevice his pants could possibly hide, I was now a lighter richer. The least he could do was be useful and secondarily provide some fire to this campsite.
"I see you made yourself comfortable", Duncan snickered and exited the tent half an hour after I had. He was in only his boxers and his green hair slumped over to one side in a scruffy and untamed way. I sat on the bench opposite of the tent, with both my feet tucked close to me. My arms rested comfortably on my knees as I played around with my phone; when I woke up I had texted my dad I had stayed at Bridgette's last night, not knowing whether he would be home to worry about me or not.
"Yeah, well", I shrugged as I took in his stance; he looked happy and well rested, and for once like he did not have some mischievous tricks up his sleeve. He stretched his arms out above his head and the warming sun glistened against his pale skin, just like it had Saturday morning. I shook my head to myself so as I wouldn't start staring at his toned physique yet again. "Put some clothes on."
"Why?" Duncan asked and smirked at me, "Am I distracting you?" He grinned and switched the actually quite sensual stretching to a much more silly looking flexing.
"Not at all", I snorted with laughter. Duncan's confident stature crumbled as he glared at me with his mouth open.
"Oh, shut up", he threw back at me and crossed his arms before plopping down cross-legged on the ground next to the fire. He sulked for a while with pouting lips, not moving his eyes from the warm flickers of red and orange in front of him.
"Do you have any food?" I asked and untucked my feet, swinging my legs over the edge of the bench, leaning forward as I wrapped my fingers around the edge near my thighs.
"A couple of kilometres that way", Duncan answered sarcastically, looking up at me while pointing the way I had taken to the campsite yesterday, "or we could go hunting if you'd prefer that." He snickered and nudged his head the other way, his former and annoyed demeanor long gone.
"Yeah", I nodded, "no way," I continued and changed the soft nodding of my head to a much harsher sideways shaking. Duncan only shrugged in response and started poking in the fire with a nearby stick.
"Cheeseburger with fries and a coke", the waiter smiled as she came up to our table, Duncan nodded and raised a finger, "and waffles for you." She put the plate down in front of me and smiled once again before hurrying away from our table.
"That's your breakfast?" I raised an eyebrow and eyed the plate the waiter had set down in front of Duncan.
"I'm sorry", he answered and caught my eyes, "would you rather I eat something else?" he continued in a low, raspy voice, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
"You're vile", I spat out and glared at him. Duncan chuckled before taking an unnecessarily big bite out of the hamburger, making grease run down the corners of his mouth. "Point proven", I said with a distorted look of disgust across my face.
"You know you love it", he smirked before gulping down the food with his beverage.
"As if", I scoffed back before carefully cutting a piece of my own food.
A thick tension grew between us as we ate our meals in silence; the only sound around being the limited chatter between the waiters and the few customers in the diner. There was a big, friendly looking guy sat at the counter, he was chowing down on a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon while smiling wider than anyone I've ever seen before. At the far end of the diner, sat with her back almost pressed to the corner and her arms crossed, was a tall dark-haired figure who stared at her food more than she ate off it. Two tables down from us sat a couple enjoying the sunshine, sharing a drink with two straws. Duncan looked over his shoulder as to follow my gaze to the people behind him.
"So", he started and turned back to me, shifting my focus away from the other table to him. He took a big gulp of the soda before continuing. "You like me", he stated and leaned back in his seat, I opened my mouth to protest but he held up a finger for me to wait, "and it's, I guess, kind of mutual", he shrugged and tried to wave off his own feelings, "and I've been thinking."
"That's a first", I huffed and leaned back in my own seat, crossing my arms as I did.
"I, you know", he scratched the back of his head before falling silent.
"Yes?" I raised an eyebrow and watched him intently. Duncan chewed the inside of his lower lip and kept running his hands through his hair, over the sides of his face and rubbing the back of his neck. All in all, he seemed nervous, an uncharacteristic notion to the confident Duncan I had known for years.
"Just wanted you to know", he finally managed to get out, without even an ounce of nervosity slipping through in his tone, "I'm not seeing anyone."
"Okay?" I shook my head in confusion. I told myself that whatever we had going on was only casual, yet the butterflies that had previously inhabited my stomach last time we sat in this diner came back for a reunion. My insides warmed at his words and the confirmation they meant; I was not another one of his scores, not an emotionless hook-up only to brag about.
Duncan shrugged before taking another sip of his soda, cautiously keeping his gaze away from me.
"I guess", I said and broke the excruciating tension that had built up over the silent minutes we'd spent to finish our meals, "I appreciate that." My eyes flickered between his face and the solid wood of the table between us, not allowing my eyes to stay still in a surprising feeling of anxiousness.
"Cool", Duncan answered and I dared myself, challenged myself, to look up and catch his gaze; he was smiling a crooked smile while slightly and slowly nodding his head.
"Cool", I repeated and smiled back at him.
"So, what's the time?" he asked and slapped his hands together, grinning widely in anticipation for the evening.
"Barely over noon", I answered after glancing on the big, loudly ticking clock hanging on the wall behind the counter. "I should probably head home, take a shower and freshen up."
"Yes please." Duncan put his arms down on the table and leaned towards me, looking at my face through his eyelashes; his unfairly voluminous and dark eyelashes any girl would kill for.
"Yeah, uh, you're not coming with me", I shook my head and pointed tiredly at him, he should know my house would be a risk I was not willing to take.
"I know", he looked back at me with a serious expression before cracking a sneaky smirk, "I usually come after you."
"Does your brain only have one lane?" I scoffed and narrowed my eyes at him.
"Actually", Duncan started and raised a finger, "my brain, like any other, both receives and sends away signals to and from the rest of my body, such as the sensation of pain or the voluntary movement of one's legs." A proud grin took its place on his face as I looked at him with shock written all over my own. "Soak it in, baby, you're boy got looks and smarts."
I let out a hard breath and rolled my eyes before standing up from the table, leaving Duncan to do with the time what he wanted. He called out a satisfied "see you later" after me to which I waved my hand goodbye without turning around.
As the warm water hit my skin soothingly, creating steam rising in the air around me in the process, I couldn't help but smile. Whatever Duncan and I had going on involved some sort of mutual feelings and understandings; he had more or less told me his desire for exclusiveness during breakfast and it made my stomach fill with the now familiar flutter of butterflies. Though it was a nice feeling, it was also odd and unusual.
I had known Duncan for ten years, we'd grown up together, played tag together as kids, pushed each other in puddles of mud when we lost. He was there to tease me about my hair on our first day of school and picked open my locker when the combination didn't work on our first day of high school. Somehow Duncan's present had always been a constant in my life, it had only morphed and changed as we'd grew; from playmates when we were 7, to bickering lab partners in junior high, to somewhat semi-friends sharing the same friend group, to something more. Whatever 'more' meant.