there's three ways off a merry-go-round

you either jump or you let it slow down

there's three ways off a merry-go-round, merry-go-round

And if you can't put your foot down

Then you just burn it to the ground

And you walk away, real slow, back into the crowd

Over the next several weeks, Auggie had easy success in his efforts to steer her more and more towards another, and then another, night in at his place. Of course, they'd hung out at his place before, but now, especially since she was avoiding going back to the guesthouse, it was a regular thing, their default setting, and he was actually feeling a little stuck again.

Of course, listening to Annie watch movies and tv was definitely more enjoyable than listening to men at the bar watch Annie, Auggie reflected now. But sitting on a couch with her as they watched the Daily Show together came with its own set of problems. He took another sip from the beer that he was nursing, wondering if this was the first or second.

After the three shots of Patron earlier, it was getting a little hard to keep count. And shouldn't that bottle be gone yet, Auggie wondered, after the amount of drinking they'd done lately to avoid talking about Danielle? Was Annie also not telling him that she kept buying another bottle? He wished he could just see the level of liquid, and wondered if it would be crazy to lean over and just lift the bottle, shake it very slightly. Probably.

What had he been thinking about? Right, problems. He had problems. Problems like ignoring how badly he wanted to touch her. After a couple agonizing minutes spent debating whether or not it it would be too much, he'd finally decided that he could stretch his arm out along the back behind her shoulders. He wouldn't even really touch her, just use up some space that would have gone unused. That wasn't overstepping best friend bounds, really.

He was listening closely to the show, but not to pay attention to the words. He was waiting for the right moment, not a romantic moment of course, but just something less caustic than Jon's famous rants. And when it came, he kept it low-key, and casually drew up his arm after laughing with the audience at whatever punchline Jon had just delivered.

Next to him on the couch, Annie shifted her weight from side to side briefly, and Auggie wondered what she'd just done, but kept his face carefully blank, continuing to stare in the same direction. Had she looked at him just now? It felt like it, and he couldn't help but resent that he couldn't see what had been in her eyes as she'd glanced over. He had no idea how she might react to the feelings he'd been having.

It wasn't that he hadn't tried to feel her out, because he had. Over and over, he'd tried, deftly guiding conversation closer to such topics and listening for any change in her voice, or trying to catch hints from her body movements when he "accidentally" stood too close, but he always stopped well short of risking alerting her to how he felt about her. And well short of getting any definitive information.

Because it was Annie. If she knew, and didn't feel the same way, he would lose her, he knew it. She was too kind to allow a heartsick idiot to follow her around, and too smart for him to be very confident that he'd be able to convince her that he wasn't a heartsick idiot.

But he was, literally sick from it. He felt mildly nauseated sometimes, dizzy from the dance of wanting to tell her and not telling her. Step up to the edge, step back. Watch more time spin by, as he gathered the nerve to step up to the edge again.

And she didn't make it any easier, he thought with an inward groan as he felt her lean sideways over his lap. A second later, he heard the channel change and surmised she'd grabbed the remote. "Hey," he protested automatically.

"Oh whatever," Annie said dismissively. "It's not like you were paying attention to it anyway, you were looking in a totally different direction."

"I'm bl-" he started, chagrined, and then let out a laugh as his brain caught up to the low humor in her voice. "That's not fair," he said instead, but couldn't keep the smile off of his face. "I'm the only one allowed to make fun of my disability."

"Oh, that's how that works," Annie said with playful sarcasm, "I see," she finished, with emphasis. Auggie guffawed at her boldness, imagining her leaning forward a bit, looking at him incredulously with bright eyes, and he had to reign in the desire to reach out and grab her.

"But I wasn't just making fun of you," she insisted, sarcasm gone, but still a teasing note in her voice, "I know you, your eyes usually look towards the screen most of the time when you're paying attention to it, and you hadn't even glanced in that general direction for minutes."

He let out a smaller smile than he wanted to at the idea she'd been paying him so much attention. "What, you were just staring at me the whole time?"

She was silent for only a moment, a moment when he cursed his inability to see any flash of guilt or truth in her eyes, and then she sighed, clearly exasperated, and jabbed her fist at his ribs. The small gesture, which he felt in vibrations from the couch as soon as she started to move, punctured any resolve he'd had not to touch her. Her hand was just a little too slow, and before she could pull it back, he'd seized her wrist and twisted her arm painlessly but securely under her back.

Letting his upper body weight heavily fall onto her, crowding her back to the couch cushions, he grinned from his sideways position in what he was pretty sure was the direction of her face. "First you stare at me like a creeper, then you make fun of my disability, and now, Walker," he said, his voice low and teasing, "you attack me in my own home. I'm not sure if I can trust you anymore," he finished with mock concern, but at the end of the sentence his voice feel a little flat as he realized that last sentence was closer to the truth than he'd like it to be. He didn't think she had time to be dating another Dr. Scott, but what did he know, he hadn't known about the first one.

Annie had been squirming delightfully beneath him, but as he forced himself to stop thinking, and tried to school his expression into friendly and teasing disapproval, she stopped moving. "Auggie?" she asked uncertainly. Crap. She'd seen something on his face.

"Sorry," he said, and released her arm, chastising himself for ruining the playful moment. He tried to sit up, but his other arm was still trapped underneath Annie and himself. Instead of lifting her back to make it easier for him to escape, she rocked back further onto her awkward perch on his elbow, effectively pinning him on top of her.

"No, tell me, something's going on," she said. "What were you thinking about when you weren't watching the news? You have the same look on your face now that you did a few minutes ago."

He closed his eyes. Not that it made any difference for him, but he knew she would see it, and he needed a few seconds. She probably thought he was thinking, maybe composing himself, but really he just needed to listen to her breathing, in and out. Her breath came just a little bit heavier - was that from trying to get unpinned? She was in better shape than that.

"Do you really wanna know?" Auggie asked seriously. He opened his eyes again, gazing intently at her, now sure of her position beneath him.

He heard her breath catch, then she said, "yeah." Casually, like of course, why not. But Auggie knew her, and he hoped like hell that he was right about there being something more behind that one syllable.

He was silent for another beat, and then he said, "okay", just as casually. He moved his head, tentatively at first, not consciously thinking about exactly what direction, forward and down by intuition, knowing he would eventually end up at her just by following gravity.

When their lips met, the bottom dropped out from under him, and in free fall, he got a lot less tentative.