"Is Norma... ok?" Gabe asked out of the blue as they sat at the bar.
Alex said nothing for a moment, a lie forming on his lips before he swallowed it.
"No." He said simply.
Gabe nodded, as if he immediately understood everything.
"Do you remember when mom brought that cat home?" He said, after a long silence.
"Gabriel. I love you, and I know it's your wedding day but if you compare my wife to a stray cat, I'm going to punch you in the face."
Gabe laughed warmly, clapping him on the arm.
"No, no. Of course not. You remember the cat though, right?"
"Vaguely." Alex nodded, unsure of where he was going with this.
"She turned up with it one day, said it had found us, and that it was part of the family now."
"Wasn't it some kid's from the next street over?" Alex struggled to remember, a vision of a large, ugly ginger cat vaguely returning to him.
"Yeah, she had to give it back eventually. But while we had it, you loved that thing. Called it-"
"Indy." Alex supplied as it started to come back to him. "After Indiana Jones." He smiled at the memory.
"Oh god yeah. I forgot. God, you were obsessed with that damn movie."
They both smiled for a moment, remembering watching those movies with their dad, savouring whatever time he was home since he was gone so much, leaving them alone with an unstable mother and a cat that wasn't theirs.
"Do you remember the birds it kept bringing in?"
Alex shook his head, struggling to recall.
"God, there were feathers everywhere. All the time. Every time you thought you'd cleaned up all the feathers, you'd find another one." Gabe laughed as he reminisced.
"The first one it brought in, mom took to her bed for the rest of the day from the shock of it all. I was left to clean up all the feathers before dad got home, while you decided to rescue the bird."
"I don't remember this." Alex started, almost feeling affronted at being accused of being a sensitive child.
"Probably because you didn't rescue the bird at all. It was barely breathing, and had a broken everything. But you took it outside and placed it in a tree so it's family could find it and you were so happy that you'd saved it." Gabe smiled warmly at the memory of a little Alex marching back in to the house with a triumphant smile on his face. "It was in pieces on the kitchen floor the next morning. Mom made us promise not to tell you."
"If this is you trying to cheer me up, you're doing a terrible job at it." Alex rolled his eyes, taking another swig of his beer.
"You did the same thing with the next one. And the next one. And every morning, that poor creature would be back, smeared across the kitchen floor, or in bits on the doorstep, and every day, we cleaned it up and mom took to her bed, and dad got a little angrier, and you kept on thinking you were some great hero of the birds."
Alex rose out of his seat suddenly, making Gabe jump.
"I'm not gonna listen to this." He muttered angrily, stalking through the happy crowds towards the exit.
"Wait. Alex! Wait!" Gabe jumped up and took off after him, catching him up as he slipped through a door into the relative cool of the early evening.
"No. Gabriel." He said sharply, shrugging off the hand that had reached out to grasp his arm. "I get it, ok? I was a stupid child who thought he was saving these broken little creatures and I'm doing the same thing now. That's what you're saying, isn't it? That she's a lost cause? Just another fragile bird that's going to end up smeared across the kitchen floor whether I like it or not?" His voice rose as he spoke and the pause when he finished speaking seemed almost deafening, the cicadas and the sounds from the party seeming insanely loud after his shouting.
"Shit. Alex, no!" Gabe said, holding his hands up to try to calm Alex down. "Jesus. I am TERRIBLE at metaphors. Wow, I am so lucky Sarah didn't suggest we wrote our own vows. I would definitely not be a married man right now if it depended on my way with words." He babbled, rubbing the back of his neck nervously under Alex's intense gaze.
"Then what did you mean?" Alex said quietly, flexing and unflexing his fists like he wasn't entirely sure he was ready to let go of his anger.
"Well, if you'd let me finish-" Gabe started, pointedly, leaning back against the brick wall next to Alex. "The last bird Indy brought in - it was just a coupla days before that kid came a-knocking, asking for his cat back - it was different. The cat had barely got at it really - It had managed to get under one of the cupboards, and when you got it out, it wasn't like the rest. It looked fine really. But dad had lost it, came home at the wrong moment, with the house covered in feathers, and the cat scratching away at the carpet and mom a trembling wreck over the drama of it all, and he told you what was really happening - That the birds died. The birds always died, and that it was pointless to help them, and that you were stupid, and that mom was stupid for covering it all up."
"I... I remember that." Alex said, after a long pause, pieces of his time with the cat finally starting to come back to him. "I was so sad."
Gabe reached over to pat him on the shoulder awkwardly.
"Do you remember what mom told you?"
Alex shook his head. He didn't like to think of his mom.
"Weeks had passed, and the whole thing had been forgotten, but you were still so sad and one day, she looked out of the window, pointed at a sparrow in the bush in the yard and said "Look! Alex, honey. It's that bird you saved!"
Alex smiled warmly. He didn't even remember this, but he could picture his mom, on one of her good days, a day without a need for any pills, pulling him onto her lap and showing him the bird he had saved.
"I was old enough to know better really, but..." Gabe continued, smiling sadly at the ground. "I always believed her. I always thought it was that same bird."
They shared a long look between them, and Alex nodded slightly at him, not knowing what to say next.
"So, she's not a stray cat, she's a fragile bird?" Alex said, a smile tugging at his lips.
"Beats me, man. I just thought I'd tell you a nice story about a cat. Take from it what you will." He laughed, shrugging.
"Wow. You're a true wordsmith. You sure you don't wanna take a crack at some vows? Tell Sarah another story about a cat?" He grinned back at him, just as the door swung open and a flustered Sarah appeared, poking her head out.
"Here you are!"
"Here we are!" Gabe mimicked her tone.
"They're waiting to do our first dance. Been looking for you everywhere!" She said, with faux annoyance, though she couldn't stop herself from smiling at him.
"Ohhh.." He pouted at her. "Can't you just do it without me? You're SUCH a good dancer!" He finished, giggling childishly as she grabbed his arm, starting to pull him back in.
"She'll be ok, you know." He added quietly, turning back to Alex for a moment, risking the wrath of his wife. He flicked his head back towards where Sarah had just been standing. "They're stronger than you know. They're stronger than us, that's for sure."
Alex just nodded back at him, completely agreeing and feeling strangely reassured by his ridiculous pep-talk as Gabe disappeared again.
Alex was only alone for about ten seconds before Sarah's head poked out of the door again, smiling at him sheepishly. He had been gathering his thoughts, preparing to go back in, when she appeared all of a sudden.
"You too, Alex." She said simply, grasping his arm and pulling him back through the door, with a surprising strength for a tiny blonde creature.
"No.. Er, why-?" He spluttered, flustered as she pulled him towards the dancefloor, trying to figure out if there was some tradition he had forgotten. He vaguely remembered that there might be a part of the first dance where the bride danced with the groom's father, maybe? Was he going to be a stand in? Oh god. Already, the crowds had formed around the dancefloor, and he could feel curious eyes on him as Sarah pulled him to the dancefloor, ignoring his reluctance.
"Sarah, no. I..." He was cut off as he was suddenly spun round and came face to face with Norma, who seemed to be being directed by a apologetic-looking Gabriel. Her dumbstruck expression matched his own, glancing at the crowds of onlookers, before Gabriel gave her a gentle shove forwards, and she stepped towards him, shrugging helplessly at him.
Feeling incredibly stupid, he reached forward without thinking to take her hand, looking for comfort in such an awkward situation, shooting glares over at Gabriel, who swept gracefully over to the other side of the room with Sarah in his arms.
"Sorry bro." He mouthed over at them, and both Norma and Alex scowled, as they looked anywhere but at each other's faces, a healthy distance between them despite the fact that their hands were clasped.
"And it's now time for the first dance!" The DJ announced cheerfully. "And Sarah and Gabriel have requested that Gabriel's brother and his wife join them for the first dance, since they recently got married and never got to have a first dance of their own. Can we have a big hand for... " There was a pause where the DJ obviously had to check their names. "Alex and Norma, on their recent wedding?"
There was a polite round of applause, and Norma glanced at him with a muted expression of horror, before plastering a wide smile on her face, gazing around at the crowds of onlookers, slipping her arm round Alex's waist. She turned her eyes to him, gazing at him adoringly, and though he knew it was all for show, he let himself relax into her touch, mimicking her deliriously happy expression.
The first notes of the music began to play, and she closed her eyes, smiling gently to herself.
"I love this song." She murmured happily, letting him pull her close to him, like he knew they should. His hand settled on her waist, trying to ignore the warmth of her skin under his fingers, and his other hand grasped her hand tight. He didn't recognise the song at first, but he knew they had to move, and tried hard to keep his gaze from drifting over to Gabe and Sarah, where he suspected they were putting on some fabulous, over the top choreographed routine.
Come with me, my love.
He recognised it now, as some female singer covering Sea of Love, letting his body sway as he recognised the lyrics, feeling Norma hum along through her body pressed against his.
Chancing a glance at the other happy couple, he was surprised to see them swaying gently, her head resting against his chest, looking as content as two people ever had. For a couple who were usually so over the top, this simple, beautiful first dance choice was a surprise, but it also seemed to fit them perfectly.
Do you remember... when we met...?
He listened to the lyrics of the song as they rocked gently in time, momentarily forgetting about the crowds of people watching them, letting his mind drift back to the first time he had laid eyes on her.
"Do you remember the night we met?"
"It would be hard to forget." She said, her tone cold and stiff and his eyes drifted shut, silently kicking himself for bringing it up. She had eventually told him the truth and it made him sick to think of what Keith Summers had done to her, of all that she had been through that night, mere hours before he had showed up. Her grip on his hand tightened as if she could read his mind, and he responded by pulling her hand close to his chest.
"I thought you were beautiful." He said quietly, his fingers flexing nervously against her back.
She pulled back to shoot him an unimpressed look, rolling her eyes at him.
"I looked gross. I'd been pulling up carpeting for hours." She grumbled, glossing over the series of violent crimes that had happened before all that.
"You were still beautiful." He shot back, without a pause, pleased when she couldn't hide her smile. She rested her head back against his chest to cover her reaction.
"I'm..." He started uncertainly, his voice catching in his throat. Not now Alex. Don't do this now. He couldn't stop the words from tumbling out though. "I'm so sorry, Norma."
She pulled back, her expression overly neutral as she gazed at him, their dancing never faltering as they spoke.
"What for?"
"For... everything that has happened to you." He said, glancing around the room, trying to keep his face calm, while a tempest raged within.
"That's not your fault." She whispered back immediately, her bottom lip trembling slightly.
"I know, but..." He puffed out a breath, images of all the arguments they'd ever had flashing through his mind, cringing at all the moments he'd put his hands on her in the time he'd known her, all the threatening things he'd ever said to her. "I'm sorry if I've ever made you uncomfortable." He blurted out, after a tense pause.
"Alex..." She said softly, her tone reassuring, as she stared at his shirt for a moment, before shooting him a haunted look.
"I'm sorry for all the times I've touched you when you haven't wanted me to."
"What?" She huffed out with a small almost-laugh. "What are you-?"
"That night." He cut her off. "The night at my house. When we argued."
His gaze was intense, too intense and she pressed her head back against his shoulder to avoid his eyes. She knew exactly what night he meant. That night had haunted her for weeks afterwards. She found herself dreaming about it, dreaming about what would have happened had she just told him the truth, dreaming about what could have happened if she hadn't left when she did...
"I pushed you against the doorframe." He said, and she thought she heard his voice crack when he spoke and was afraid to look up at him again for fear of what she might see on his face. She wasn't entirely sure what point he was making, so she just took a deep breath, squeezing his hand reassuringly where it was pressed between their bodies.
"I... pinned your hands." He carried on in a broken voice, and she gasped softly when she began to understand his meaning.
She leaned back, shaking her head lightly at him.
"Well, to be fair, I was beating the shit out of you." She joked lightly, thinking about how her hands had been bruised for days afterwards, about how guilty she'd felt about the brutal beating her tiny hands inflicted upon him. He'd actually barely felt it, but he'd never tell her that.
He shook his head, ignoring her joking tone, his gaze lost.
"It's not right. I can't stop thinking about it. I never would have... I mean, I never would have touched you like that if I had know-"
"Stop!" She cut him off sharply. "Alex, stop." Her tone softened a little. "Don't do this."
"I didn't tell you so you could do... this. Don't overanalyse ever moment we've ever shared. I don't want that." She murmured softly, vaguely registering that they had stopped moving. Her grip on his shoulder tightened for a moment, spuring them back into their gentle swaying to the song that seemed to be never ending.
Over his shoulder, she made eye contact with Sarah, who looked mildly concerned through her wedding-haze. She rearranged her face into a smile, gazing happily back at her as she watched Gabe spin Sarah out, before pulling her back to him with a flourish. Sarah's giggle was audible over the music, and Norma smiled for real this time, before turning her attention back to Alex who still looked tortured.
"I didn't tell you to make you feel bad." She reiterated, and he immediately felt guilty for making this about him and his feelings. She returned her head to it's natural place on his shoulder, avoiding his eye contact.
"No, I know-"
"I've never felt afraid with you." She whispered and he had to look at the ceiling for a moment to calm himself, because he felt so angry at all the men Norma had ever been afraid of. "I just... I guess I've never loved anyone enough to feel obligated enough to be honest with them." She finished with a slight shrug.
Alex inhaled sharply, breathing in the lavender scent of her hair, and they both froze as they realised her revelation.
"You love me?" He breathed out, his fingers squeezing hers without realising. She gasped, realising what she'd said and pulled away from him, her mouth flapping open and closed wordlessly.
"I... guess so." She shrugged, noncommittally, her tone almost absurdly casual, her eyes remaining fixed on his collar.
He breathed out a soft, disbelieving laugh, half because he didn't dare believe that she actually loved him, and half because her faux-casual reaction to it was ridiculous.
The song drew to a close, and there was a brief pause before the DJ's voice rang out again.
"Ok, so that was the first dance! Wasn't it beautiful, folks? We'd like to invite you to all join the happy couples on the dancefloor..." A different song began to play, a slightly more uptempo, romantic number that neither Norma nor Alex recognised.
They were still for a moment, their eyes finally landing on each other, their hands frozen in place as the dancefloor began to fill around them.
"Do you wanna get out of here?" He mumbled, squeezing her waist lightly to get her attention. She paused for a second before nodding.
He took her hand, leading her towards where Gabe and Sarah were still dancing, their moves massively amplified now the spotlight was off them. Gabe raised Sarah from where she was dipped dramatically to face them as Alex and Norma came to stand in front of them.
"Hey guys!" Alex said, his tone incredibly overly cheery. "So, we're gonna go..."
"Ohhhh! So early?" Sarah pouted, continuing to dance around Gabe like a little butterfly. Gabe swayed lightly as his wife fluttered around him, his eyes narrowing curiously at Alex.
"Yeah, yeah. Norma's not-" He cut himself off. It was a cop out to blame their early exit on Norma. "Actually, to be honest, I'm still suffering from last night." He grinned guiltily at them. He actually felt fine since, despite her horrific evening, Norma had left a bottle of water next to the bed that he had drank the second he had woken up. Coupled with a ridiculously strong cup of coffee from his brother, he'd actually rallied.
Norma's hand slid round his waist, surprising him. She gave his hip a squeeze.
"I'm gonna take care of him." She said, simply, the words laden with double meaning, as Sarah winked at her knowingly, and Gabe shot an unreadable look from Norma to Alex.
He reached for Alex's hand, shaking it, his hand lingering for a second longer than necessary.
"Congratulations, Gabriel." Alex said sincerely, pulling him in for a rare hug that seemed to surprise literally everyone present. "I'm happy you're happy." He murmured in his ear, before pulling back, composing himself.
He then dithered for a moment, before Sarah cleared up his moment of indecision for him, lurching towards him for a sudden hug.
"I'm so happy we're family now!" She hummed in his ear, and he let himself relax for a moment into the tiny woman's embrace, watching as Gabriel gently enveloped Norma for a quick hug, following his wife's lead.
"We'll save you some cake." Sarah offered. "Oh my God! Do you want cake for breakfast?! We'll send cake for breakfast!" Sarah chattered excitedly, pulling Norma in for a hug.
"Thank you, Norma. Thank you for everything." She whispered, before pulling away, her fingers drifting to brush against the necklace lying against her collarbone.
"Congratulations, Sarah." She said warmly, before pulling back, letting Alex's hand slide into her own, not entirely sure what this all meant.
She let him lead her through the crowds, surprised when he veered towards the door heading outside. Gabe and Sarah had booked a block of rooms for their guests, and had insisted Alex and Norma take one. Despite their protests that they had already done enough for them, they had accepted, especially as the alternative was spending the night in Gabe and Sarah's huge, empty home without them. So Norma was surprised when he pulled her out into the night air, instead of towards the staircase.
"We have a room..?" She blurted out, immediately feeling her cheeks colour as she realised the implication of her words.
He grinned at her, enjoying watching her blush.
"I know." He said simply, his words laden with promise. "But let's take a walk."
"Ok." She smiled sweetly up at him through her lashes. "That sounds nice."
He gave her hand a little squeeze and pulled her along with him.
HEY! Thanks for the reviews, guys! Glad you're all still enjoying and you're all SO DOWN for 6 chapters of shagging. Knew you would be ;)
If you've noticed my updating pace has slowed a little it's because I've caught up to myself now. I've been about 3 or 4 chapters ahead of myself the whole way through, but I've caught up to myself now and I'm feeling the pressure! I'm sorry if the chapters are coming out a little slower, but it's only cause I want them to be ON. POINT for you guys!
