Settling the Score
Epilogue: Part One
Alright. So. I need to preface the shit out of this epilogue-type-thing because it's essentially a schizophrenic, typo-ridden collection of a few future Andy/Oliver tidbits I wrote for STS and never got a chance to actually post and a bunch of half-brained new stuff that tries to tie everything up. There are no beginnings to them, no endings to them, and lots of randomness, so I'll start them off with a summary of the events that should've lead up to where they pick up and try and make sense of them after they cut off. Someone mentioned that it feels a lot like one of Andy's best friends is gossiping with you/telling you what went down with her and Oliver in the non-story sections, so let's go with that.
GOSSIP TIME.
To begin with, you guys left off at chapter 23ish, which had Andy desperately trying to get a foolproof plan together for her boat banquet idea so that Wood would get over his inner grandpa and approve it. I seldom plan too far into the future with fanfics (most of my plot points develop as I'm writing) so I can't get too specific, but I can tell you this much: Andy does eventually get a plan together. She has an immense amount of difficulty finding a ship, but when she does, it's a 1920s ghost ship Nearly Headless Nick happens to mention over dinner that was famous for its jazzy soirees. She books it, stays up all night writing up an exhaustive list of how much everything would cost, how much time it would take, what permissions they would need, etc., and bursts into the 7th Year Boy's Dormitories at 5 AM the next morning.
Snippet 1:
The door smacked against the wall with all the subtlety of two cymbals crashing together, and a chorus of groans rang out from the ring of rumpled beds encircling the room. "V'been shot," the bloke in the bed nearest to me moaned, flinging a dramatic arm over his unconscious face. It took me a second to realize it was Gabe. "Mum… mum, help! I've been… I… shot… "
Too tired to even bother with him, I snapped my gaze over to Wood's four poster—it was deep in the left corner of the room, easily distinguished by the Quidditch kit draped over the footboard and the broom polish sitting on the adjacent trunk. The curtains appeared to be drawn, so I set my jaw and marched across the room, nearly tripping over seventeen different recklessly strewn objects in the process.
"Jesus, is this a room or an obstacle course?" I hissed upon reaching his bed, leaning against one of the posters to rub my newly bruised ankle. If he heard me, he gave no indication, for his sheets didn't so much as rustle, and I briefly wondered if he was a deep or light sleeper.
Guess I was about to find out.
"Rise and shine," I greeted with all the plucky pep of a Death Eater, reaching up and snapping his curtains open with a flick of my wrist, though to my surprise, his bed was empty. Hell, it wasmade. I frowned, leaning forward to peer into the darkness when the door to the bathroom suddenly swung open and made me jump about twenty feet into the air. "Bloody hell!"
I whirled around and saw Wood standing in the doorway, hair tousled, skin damp, clad in nothing but the towel slung loosely around his hips. His brows were raised, expression one of mild consternation, and I floundered there for a moment, mouth opening and closing. "You—I—er." I shoved a hasty hand in my hair, forcing my eyes up to his face and narrowing them into glare. "Why are you awake?"
His brow furrowed. "I'm pretty sure I'm the one who gets to ask the accusatory questions in this scenario."
I scoffed in a needlessly defensive manner. "Ask away."
"Alright, let's start with something crazy like what the hell are you doing here?"
"Shut up," someone who sounded a lot like Zach Davies groaned, flinging a pillow in Wood's direction and missing him by about ten feet. I rolled my eyes—born Chaser, that one.
"Giving you this," I replied, settling my glare back on Wood and lifting the giant folder in my hand.
He frowned. "What's that?"
"This," I growled, striding up to him in all my wild-haired, dark-circled, over-caffeinated glory and smacking the folder into his chest, "is the best banquet plan you will ever encounter in your entire bloody life." He arched a brow in amusement, the fresh, crisp scent of his soap clinging to his skin like a jacket, and I just barely resisted the urge to inhale more deeply. "You're going to read it and you're going to love it."
His lips twitched. "Am I?"
My gaze steeled. "Only if you value your life. Goodnight." I whirled around before he could say anything and stalked across the room, the intermittent stumbling doing little to make my Head Bitch In Charge approach more believable.
"It's morning," he called after me just as I reached the door, and I replied by slamming it shut behind me with a dramatic SMACK.
"V'been shot," the Gabe moaned again from behind the door.
I rolled my eyes. Idiots.
End of Snippet 1.
Okay, from this point, there's going to be some push and pull between the world's most hard-headed duo until Wood finally admits that Andy's plan is pretty foolproof. He's actually pretty damn impressed by how thorough she was – he really didn't think she had that in her. Part of him finds her stubbornness and dedication ridiculous, but another part finds the lengths she's willing to go endearing. So they end up going with the ghost ship and planning a bunch of stuff. Along the way, the snippet below happens, and you can see at that point, they've started becoming legit friends. They've picked up on little details about each other from late nights and Kitchens runs and psychotically stressful strategy sessions, and they've opened up a bit more about their lives. In this particular part, the two of them have gone to Hogsmeade to buy some decorations, and they decide to make a stop along the way. After I wrote it I realized Florean's was in Diagon Alley, but whatever. Brooooaden your miiiinds!
Snippet 2:
"Oh, right, because that's a perfectly normal way to go about li—" my words cut off as I realized we'd just walked through the door of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, face crumpling. "Why are we at Fortescue's?"
"If I have to listen to your whining, I'll need something to counteract the headache," he supplied a bit sourly, making my confused expression flatten into an irritated one. Well, weren't we just Mr. Attitude?
"It's like negative a thousand degrees outside," I pointed out, dragging to a halt by a large window and crossing my arms in front of my chest a bit snippily.
"And?"
I tossed his back a flat look. "Ice cream happens to be cold."
"Get out of town!" he replied in mock fascination, glancing over his shoulder with a bewildered expression as he made his way to the counter. "Is that why the word 'ice' is in it?"
"You're funny."
He shot me the briefest of smug looks before swiveling back around, placing his hands on the ledge of the counter and perusing the overhanging menu. I simply rolled my eyes—git. Honestly, who craved ice cream in the middle of a blizzard?
Idly, I let my gaze stray about the shop, struck by how different it looked when there was no one in it. Usually, Fortescue's was jam-packed with students eager to get their fix ('coz really, no ice cream even compared to Fortescue's ice cream), but since we'd come on a non-scheduled weekend, it was actually remarkably empty.
My eyes suddenly lit up with realization. Fortescue's was empty. That meant the coveted Teacup table was empty! My gaze snapped over to the nook by the corner windows, bright and excited, and sure enough, there was the giant blue teacup, totally vacant. "No sodding way!" I cried, ridiculously thrilled over something so stupid, but you don't understand—this table was never empty.
Ever.
I'd been going to Hogwarts for five and a half years now, and not once had I had a chance to sit in the Teacup—it was occupied from open to close with giggling girls, groups of friends, chatting couples, irritating tourists, you name it. And how here it was, empty. Inviting. Totally available for me to lounge in it for as long as I wanted.
Can we say 'holler'?
Bad mood forgotten, I skipped over to the cup, climbing in giddily and settling myself on the overstuffed cushions sprawled over the floor. This was nice. Granted, it was a bit small, and I had no idea how groups of five shoved themselves into it on a daily basis, but it was still utterly brilliant. This was a huge achievement—I could officially say I'd sat in the Teacup!
"Oh, Merlin." I glanced up and met Wood's dark, flattened gaze, his hands holding two mugs of something steaming and drowning in whipped cream. "You're joking, right?"
I scowled—he was staring at the Teacup like it was an annoying little sibling he had to baby-sit. Blasphemy! "Of course not, why would I be joking? It's the Teacup!"
"Exactly," he drawled, a wry sort of humor creeping into his tone, and I felt the wonderfully mature urge to stick my tongue out at him, "otherwise known as the biggest gimmick in Hogsmeade."
I crossed my arms, settling back against the curve of the cup with a stubborn air. "Well, you can sit wherever you want, but I've been waiting years to do this, so I'm staying here."
He stared at me for a moment, the annoyance in his eyes clashing somewhat with the twitch of amusement at the corners of his lips, before sighing darkly. "You're ridiculous," he conceded, carefully climbing into the cup so as to avoid too much sloshing within the mugs he was holding.
"And you're no fun," I grumbled back, scooting over slightly so that he could sit down, which he promptly did. A wave of warmth immediately washed over me, spurred by the heat of his body so close to mine, but I determinedly ignored it, instead inching back so that I was as far away from him as possible.
There was no need to make things complicated.
"This is spectacularly uncomfortable," he said, gazing around the interior of the cup, and I choked out a laugh at the sight of him—his legs were far too long for the diameter, tall frame bent at a rather awkward angle to try and accommodate itself within the limited space. How adorable. "People seriously wait in line for this?"
"People that aren't six feet tall do," I snorted, causing his expression to immediately grow cheeky.
"You mean six foot two—"
"Yeah, yeah," I drawled, waving a hand, and he merely grinned at my predictable dismissal.
"Here," he said, holding one of the mugs up to me, and for the first time, it occurred to me that he'd gotten me something. His expression grew expectant as I merely stared at it, caught off-guard. "What, is hot chocolate not acceptable in winter either?"
"Oh, no, it's just…" I said, trying but failing to ignore the pleased tingle climbing up my spine as I tentatively took hold of the mug, "I, er, thought you were getting ice cream."
He smirked. "Ice cream happens to be cold."
I glared at him: mocking little git. "I bet an extremely wise person told you that."
"Oh, definitely—wisest person I've ever met," he agreed. "Same one that thought sitting in a teacup would be fun."
"Okay, a) sitting in a teacup is fun, and b) no one's making you sit here," I retorted, cradling the warm mug between my palms. "If you hate it so much, move."
"You forgot to thank me for your hot chocolate," he observed, sidestepping the point fluidly.
"Funny, I forgot to ask you for it, too."
"Dear God, woman," he exclaimed, shaking his head with a low chuckle, "you're absolutely awful at saying thank-you. It's actually kind of incredible."
"I'm not awful at saying thank-you!"
"Oh, really?"
"Really, I'm just not used to saying it to you," I retorted, knowing that I was being uselessly stubborn about this but unable to do anything about it.
"Fine, well now that the initial surprise is over," he said, proceeding to wave his free hand in a prompting motion.
I glowered slightly. "You're being annoying."
He wrinkled his nose. "No, I don't think that's how it goes…"
"You're really not supposed to demand gratitude from people, Wood. It's generally a voluntary kind of thing."
"Starts with a 'tha' sound, I believe…"
I sighed, half-annoyed, half-amused, as he continued to pretend to work out the phonetics of the word 'thanks', his face scrunched up in deep thought. He really was insufferable. Scraping my finger just along the surface of the tower of whipped cream in my mug, I leaned forward and smeared it across his cheek.
He snapped out of his mock-contemplation as I settled back, smirking. "Thanks for the hot chocolate, Oliver."
He glowered at me, entirely unamused. "Seriously? What are you, four?" And then, with lightning-like reflexes, he swiped at his own whipped cream and smudged it on the tip of my nose.
I laughed despite myself as he grinned, sly and victorious. "You're such a little kid."
"But I still won."
"Won what, exactly?"
"The right to say we're done with this teacup," he announced, setting his mug down and reaching back to the ledge of the cup, starting to lift himself from his sitting position.
"You're done with it—I'm just getting started," I countered, settling myself even deeper within the cushions and taking a sip of my drink. Surprise fluttered through me, eyes flickering shut for a moment as I savored the taste—it was dark chocolate. I adored dark chocolate. But there was no way…
My eyes opened slowly, gaze landing on Wood. He was watching me with an amused expression, perched against the ledge of the cup. "Good?" he asked.
"Spectacular," I replied, brow slightly furrowed. "Dark chocolate, huh?"
"It was the special."
I refused to feel disappointed. "That makes sense."
"It's also your favorite kind of chocolate."
I held his stare evenly, trying incredibly hard not to smile, to play it off like it was no big deal, but in the end, I felt the corners of my lips turning upward. "How'd you know?"
He snorted. "Are you joking? You've made like three hundred midnight runs to the Kitchens since we started planning this banquet, and every time you come back, you have six bars of dark chocolate stuffed in your bag."
"I do not!"
He arched a brow and I balked.
"Well, not six, anyway…"
"Beside the point."
End of Snippet 2.
As you can see, there's some genuine amicability there. They start having inside jokes that no one else gets peppered between their constant arguments and head-butting, and by the time the Banquet rolls around, they're actually pretty tight. HOWEVER, the week before the actual banquet, Andy has a run-in with Fiona that's not very pleasant and Fiona makes it clear that her and Wood are exclusive and Andy's being a nag. Andy sees Wood and Fiona looking pretty friendly and a few other people claim their dating as well, so Andy gets pissed off that Wood hasn't said anything to her (and way more jealous than she'd ever admit). They're friends, after all, he shouldn't have to hide that. Also, she's just irritated in general that he fell for someone as manipulative as Fiona. Thus, she goes all cold-shoulder on him because she's immature and blames it on being busy, and a vaguely confused Wood lets her be. Matters aren't helped when he ends up taking Fiona as his date.
Fast-forward to the banquet: Andy goes with Gabe with the intent of totally wingmanning for him and Alicia, but she ends up being so busy that she barely sees him. They gravitate toward each other naturally and end up flirt-fighting the whole night, as per their usual MO. At one point, there's a bit of a crisis with the ghosts and Charlotte, one of the volunteers, asks to meet Andy in the broom closet because she's freaking out and doesn't know what to do, and when Andy gets there, it's empty. She peers around and accidentally slips on the dusty floor, reaches out and grabs onto a shelf, rattles the whole thing, and ends up knocking a bucket of soapy water over. Naturally, the water lands right on her head, and Wood chooses that precise moment to walk in.
Snippet 3:
He peered into the closet, dark brows furrowing over his eyes for a moment before shooting upward in surprise. "Andy?"
Tentatively, I pushed the sopping mass of dark curls out of my face, trying my hardest to retain a shred of dignity as I tilted my chin up. "Yes?" The hard-edged question was followed by a loud, wet squelching noise as a rag slipped off the overhanging shelf, landing with a brilliant smack on the top of my head.
Wood's lips twitched.
Yanking the soaking thing off hastily, I tossed it to the side, my hair once again in utter disarray atop my head. To think that barely half an hour ago, it had been a long, silky curtain of straight hair—Merlin, Angelina was going to kill me when she saw her two hours of slaving gone to waste.
Shoving my now very much curly hair back irritably, I added a little more oomph into my scowl, squaring my shoulders and staring him straight on. "What did you want?"
"I wanted to know where my supposed partner had run off to—the closing speeches start in ten minutes," he said, glancing around the broom closet with a faintly bemused look—I'd made quite a bit of a mess, what with all the digging and searching.
My glare veered into a glower. "You don't have to keep tabs on me, Oliver—I would've shown up on time. Besides, if anyone's been conveniently absent for most of the night, it's definitely you." A stubborn curl slipped out of the wet mass I'd pushed behind my ears, falling right across the center of my face. I shoved it away hastily.
"I'm not keeping tabs on you, Andy, I just wanted to make sure you remembered," he countered, frowning briefly as the same curl once again lodged itself in my face, causing me to growl and force it back yet again. "We haven't really talked since Tuesday, and I mean, let's be honest, you're not exactly Princess Punctuality."
"And you're not exactly Prince Stop-Breathing-Down-My-Ne—argh!" I snarled as the same damn curl once again slipped down so that it was right in my line of vision, bringing my hand up to violently swat it away, though to my surprise, a slightly rough grip stopped me.
My eyes flickered with confusion, shooting down to where Wood's fingers were wrapped around my wrist, holding it back. I scowled: I had a curl to shove, hello—but before I could voice this, my attention was once again refocused as I felt the limply hanging curl being carefully tucked behind my ear. My annoyance faded instantly. Funny how the feeling of fingertips skimming across your earlobe can do that to you…
Without really thinking, I glanced upward and met his gaze, startled to find his face far closer than it had been before. His eyes were brilliantly open and unguarded at that moment, the warm whiskey color flecked with amusement and faint annoyance. "You're lack of patience is really quite amazing."
My skin heated at his proximity. "Kind of like your lack of respect for personal space? I can tuck back my own hair, Wood." Forcing my guard back up, I twisted my hand out of his grasp, promptly crossing my arms across my damp chest in hopes of making him step back.
He merely cocked his head to the side, arching a brow and not budging a single inch. "Someone's testy."
"Someone's also cold and wet—what's your point?"
"What are you doing in here, anyway?" he asked, completely ignoring my snap of a question as he let his gaze flicker around the dark room.
My lip jutted out into a scowl. "Meeting someone."
Wood's gaze instantly snapped back over to mine, the light quality vanishing somewhat from his eyes. For a moment, I was confused by the sharpness of the reaction, though my own words promptly struck me out of context and showered me in realization.
He thought I was meeting a guy.
I couldn't help the slight curl of my lips as he subtly cooled his expression, going from surprised to unaffected in less than two seconds. His eyes closed up entirely as his guard went right back up, dark brows arching over them coolly. "Still building up your track record with broom closets, then?"
My skin prickled at the insinuation in his tone, though I managed to keep my cool. If he could have Fiona, I could have someone, too. Even if they weren't technically real. "Well, my first experience was a bit of a disappointment, so I've been trying to redeem it, you see," I drawled, pointedly referring to the night we'd both been stranded inside the closet near the Gryffindor common room.
His eyes darkened at this, lips inverting into a mirthless smile. "Funny."
I merely shrugged, eyes cool and unwavering. "Not really—just honest."
He scoffed at this. "Right, because your moans were ones of disappointme—"
"There were no moans involved!" I snapped, unable to keep the note of hysteria out of my voice.
The corner of his lips quirked, satisfied with the rise he'd gotten. "I definitely heard a moan or two…"
"Yeah, maybe from you," I jabbed a bit nonsensically, causing a faint glimmer of amusement to bloom in his eyes. I could tell there was something on the tip of his tongue—something infuriating if his expression was anything to go by—though he promptly let it go at the severity of my scowl.
We stood like that for a moment—inches apart, irritation sketched onto my face and faint humor splashed onto his, and I slowly but surely felt a certain shift in the lightness of the air. A new sense of awareness floated into the room; awareness of the other's proximity, of the unresolved emotions, of the blatant lack of communication we'd had for the past few days, and everything just got a little bit… heavier.
An unexpected layer of goose bumps fluttered over my skin as he slowly tilted his head to the side, brows furrowing somewhat over his eyes. He was staring at me with that cryptic stare of his, gaze flitting briefly over my face, and I felt my pulse start racing beneath my skin. I hated that his stupid, couldn't-possibly-be-any-damn-harder-to-bloody-rea d expressions could do that to me, but like it or not, my heartbeat was growing erratic.
I cleared my throat, and after an extended moment, he finally glanced away. "Well, I hate to interrupt your super classy broom closet hook-up, but we've got a thank-you speech to give."
End of Snippet 3.
Alright, so after this, the actual conflict resolution type thing I wrote comes in. Skip ahead a few weeks after the banquet. Andy and Oliver have a pretty great moment on the boat after it's over, since they're both high off the huge success of it all and how it's finally over, but ultimately, Fiona comes in to collect her date and Andy instantly closes up and leaves them with an awkward sort of goodbye. She knows she's being unfair—they were just friends, he could date whoever he wanted—but she also knows that she'd be kidding herself if she pretended she was cool with being around it. So she goes back into distant mode.
This leaves her kind of down for the following few weeks, and naturally, her friends notice. Them being them, they know EXACTLY what's wrong, but talking sense to Andy is like talking sense to a brick, so they agree to let her deal with it on her own. By this I mean that they talk to Wood and tell him Andy's being all depressing and annoying and shit and that, since he was her 'friend' now, maybe he could cheer her up. As Alicia Spinnett is involved in this conversation, it's about as subtle as a nuclear bomb, but nonetheless, Wood finds Andy in the hallway after Arithmancy and says he misses hanging out with her and asks if she's down for catching up that night.
Andy's hesitant as hell but eventually caves, and takes this as an opportunity to prove to herself that she could easily be just friends with him. She decides to let herself be excited about it because despite all the unresolved tension she's feeling, Wood's a great person to talk to and she misses their conversations and interactions like crazy. Thus, she shows up in a good mood and says that whatever boring thing he has planned is out of the question because they're going to sneak onto the roof.
As usual, Wood thinks she's nuts but is eventually dragged along. He's brought a blanket and a deck of cards (something of an inside joke – whenever they hit a wall during their planning sessions, they'd play a card game to get their competitive streaks flaring and figure out a solution.) They end up on the roof of the Ravenclaw Tower, which is against about 6,000 different rules, laughing and catching up, and a big theme of the night is reinforcing that they're just 'friends'. Andy does this by constantly saying the phrase "friends –insert verb here-, right?" It starts off with innocent things like 'friends kick each other's asses at Exploding Snap, right?' and 'friends sing Britney Spears songs together, right?', but eventually, as the night progresses, the tone grows more serious, and eventually, something Andy really wasn't expecting happens.
Oliver opens up about Claire. He tells her the whole story, from what he saw to the investigation to how there was about a month where his mother couldn't even look at him without sobbing, and Andy finds her heart shattering just a little bit more for him with every word. She realizes how blown away she is by the guy sitting across from her, by how much he's gone through and the amount of character it takes to grow from an experience like that instead of collapse, but there's another part of her that's getting eaten alive by guilt because she already knew. Not the full story, but she knew about Claire and the attack, and he'd just opened up to her about while she pretended she didn't know a thing. To be clear: she tries to say something, but the way he opens up and starts telling her about it and just wants for the first time in years for someone to listen, silences her. She doesn't want to ruin this for him, so for once in her life, she just listens.
At the end of it, they're both left in silence, and Andy is just taking it all in. She's pretty affected, but after a minute or so, finally speaks.
Snippet 4, Part 1:
"Friends hug, right?" I murmured throatily, staring down at my hands. He didn't respond for a few moments, seemingly lost in thought, and for second I thought he hadn't heard me. Then, without a word, his arm reached out and wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me into his chest in a single, decisive sweep that instantly broke down my walls.
I burrowed my head into the crook of his neck, hands sweeping up his chest and hooking tightly around him. He dropped his head against my hair, and a dozen emotions swept through me at once: warmth, sadness, hesitation, guilt, anger—
"Hey," he murmured, lifting a hand to stroke my hair back, and I realized a moment of utter horror that my breath was hitching. Mother of God, was I crying? "It's alright, love."
His voice was a low, soothing rumble against my ear, and something about the fact that he was comforting me when he was the one that'd gone through such a horrible ordeal made me start crying even harder, much to my utter embarrassment. I couldn't help it; it was just so unbearably Oliver to do something like that, to care more about my wellbeing than his own, and I… I couldn't…
"Bloody hell, why am I crying?" I choked out, unable to make sense of my own thoughts, and I felt him shrug slightly.
"Who says you need a reason?"
Was he trying to make me sob? "Stop it," I said half-exasperatedly, tears blurring my vision.
"Stop what?" he murmured, moving to tuck a damp curl behind my ear, and I caught his hand in frustration, pulling back to meet his gaze.
"That. Being so…" I searched for the word for a few moments before giving up and staring at him helplessly. His brows were gathered into a puzzled frown, hand still caught in mine, and I was torn between wanting to snog the living hell out of him and desperately needing fresh air. Merlin, this was overwhelming—I didn't even know what the hell was wrong with me.
"Andy—"
"No—whatever it is, just—"
"Andy."
"—seriously, stop it—"
"Andy."
Jesus, I was freaking out.
End of Snippet 3, Part 1.
So, I didn't actually get to writing the part of this that connects to the much longer second half of this snippet, so imagine that he ends up calming her down by grabbing her shoulders and forcing her to look at him. The proximity and direct confrontation immediately spikes the tension in the air, and Wood seemingly forgets what he was going to say. He takes her in for a moment, eyes slowly trailing down her face, before lifting his hand up to thumb a forgotten tear away from her cheek.
Andy falls into a daze, her resolve quickly dissipating in the wake of the burning desire to just give in to impulse. He slowly drops his forehead against hers, and for a few seconds, they just breathe the same air, chests rising in a syncopated rhythm that steadily becomes hypnotic. The following happens:
Snippet 4, Part 2:
"Friends… kiss, right?" I managed to get out, voice throaty and thick and full of apprehension. The words were terrifying. They could change everything. Everything we'd worked through to get to this point: the fighting, the grudges, the tension, the confusion... it could mean all mean nothing with those words. But I said them anyway. He slowly brushed his nose along mine, sending a flurry of spitfires down my spine.
"No," he murmured, breath fluttering against my skin, and without any sort of warning, he dropped the lightest, most tantalizing of kisses onto my lips. It was little more than a sweep of his mouth, a soft, fleeting brush of his lips, but the friction sent my pulse into overdrive. "Which is exactly why we aren't just friends."
And before I could even respond to that, his mouth was on mine, hot and hungry and entirely unconcerned with the gentleness he'd been so insistent about earlier. Fire erupted through my veins, overwhelming any sense of logic or reason and spurring me to kiss him back blindly, feverishly—two people caught in a moment that neither wanted to break.
His hands quickly dropped to my waist, pulling me onto him in a rough motion that sent a bolt of electricity through me. Sixteen thousand different emotions were flooding me at once—desire, confusion, need, fear, excitement, dizziness—and I felt myself spinning out of control, hands tangling into his hair as I pressed myself flush against him. He dropped his mouth down to my collarbone, lips dragging against my neck, and my breath hitched in my throat.
This was too much, too fast. Sensory overload. Every motion was a mind-blowing blur of heat, and I couldn't process anything other than the hidden, devastating notion that underneath it all, something was wrong. But God, this felt… this felt like every single nerve of mine was in resonance, vibrating and short-circuiting and spit-firing in pure bliss. This felt like bloody Nirvana—like every thought or emotion I'd ever experienced was telescoping into a single moment of overwhelming everything-ness. This felt like…
Love?
I jolted in his arms. Fuck. What? No. Love… was for other people. Love was for the Katies of the world; love was for the Angelina and Fred's; love wasn't for idiotic sixteen year olds who lied to the person they weren't in love with about things. Love—Jesus Christ, fucking love! This was ridiculous. There's no bloody way I… me… Oliver… sodding love, for Christ's sake! The many splendored thing! All you need, what lifts us up where we belong, what keeps us together—fuck no!
I needed air. Or therapy. Shit, I was going to start hyperventilating.
"Oliver," I managed to rasp out, anxiety building inside me as his lips kissed their way back up my throat. "Wood, hold on—" his mouth was back on mine before I could finish, possessive and gruff and everything I never knew I wanted. I found myself rapidly losing focus, getting lost in the feeling of his fingertips coursing up my thighs and his hot breath on my lips, and somewhere amidst this daze, he managed to flip me over.
My back hit the blanket with an electrifying thud, hair sprawling around my face as his body pinned mine to the ground. Forget it—I was done. All protest flew out the window, replaced instead by the ravenous hunger for him that'd been building in me for six weeks straight. He captured my lips within seconds, knee pushing between my thighs and hand running down the length of my waist, and I found myself arching my chest against his in a sharp desire for contact.
Too much clothes, too much fabric.
Blindly, I wrenched down the collar of his Oxford, sending a few buttons flying as the top half of the shirt came undone. His skin was smooth and hot against my palm, and the friction was enough to make me rip off the rest of his shirt in an animalistic rush. Love be damned—I fucking wanted this. God, did I want this. I wanted this so much, I couldn't even see straight, and that's all it was: want.
He slowed his movements down a bit as I raked my fingers down his chest, lips easing into a dizzying kiss that made the floor feel like it was melting. Then, slowly, he began undoing the buttons of my blouse, one by one. It was a stark contrast to my slightly less refined ripping technique, but something about the control of it all was unbearably seductive—his lips maintained a deft, languid dominance over mine as he unbuttoned, and I was in no condition to protest.
Skin burned against skin the moment he finished, mouth sliding down my neck to explore the new expanse of territory he'd just accessed. My pulse was picking up again, thoughts starting to blur nonsensically, though it wasn't until his lips brushed against the swell of my breast that I rocketed right back into the overwhelming swirl of frantic emotions. What the hell were we doing? What the hell were we doing? I'd just lied to him about—now we were—Jesus Christ, what were we—
"What the hell are we doing?" I suddenly snapped, jolting up on my elbows to stare at him in panic.
He lifted his head to meet my gaze, hair ruffled and eyes a bit hazy. "What?"
"You—me—we're… we're supposed to be…" I gestured frantically for a moment, trying to signify 'friends' but not quite managing it. "We're supposed to avoid—"
"Snogging?" he asked, left side of his mouth quirking the slightest bit. "Pretty sure we're destined to fail at that, love."
The word love sent another surge of panic through me, and before I knew it, I was going back into meltdown mode. Unfortunately, he was already leaning in to kiss me again, and I said quite possibly the last thing in the world that I should've said: "I already knew about Claire."
He slowed to a halt, face inches from mine. His eyes were warm, unguarded, and slowly filling with confusion. "What?"
"I…" I averted my gaze, dropping it down to his chest as my heart began pounding, "I already knew about the werewolf attack. Before you told me."
Silence filled the air for a beat, tension slowly seeping through the cracks in the stones, until he shook his head in disbelief. "Who the hell—how could you have possibly—"
"It doesn't matt—" I started to say, but he cut me off.
"How long?"
My stare flew up to his. "What?"
"How long have you known?" I winced a bit, and his stare grew cold. "How long, Wiles?"
"Since the victory party."
His eyes flared with anger, mouth parting to say something, though it promptly closed as realization clouded his face. "Is that what I told you that night? What I really told you?"
"What? No—I wouldn't have lied to you about that!"
"Really? Because you did a pretty fucking brilliant job of pretending not to know about it ten minutes ago." His anger was building and I felt alarms starting to go off in my head.
"I wasn't pretending, it's not like I knew all of it, I just—"
"Merlin, and here I was, forcing myself to finally open up to you and you already fucking knew—have known, actually, for six bloody weeks! Sorry if I bored you, Wiles."
"Oliver—"
"Do you want to know the last time I trusted anyone enough to talk about what happened with them?" he snapped, eyes molten and intense. "Zach Davies, third fucking year. Four years, Andy. Four bloody years, and I happen to choose the girl who already knew but thought it'd be fun to get it out of me herself."
Indignation swept through me. "That is not what I was trying to do!"
"Oh, really? Then why the hell didn't you tell me?"
"Because!"
"Because what!?"
"Because I didn't want to make it worse!" Angry confusion swept through him, flashing in his eyes, and I shook my head in desperation. "I didn't want this to happen, Oliver—any of it. The friendship, the closeness, and especially not the snogging, I just…" I sighed tightly, dropping my gaze. "I didn't… I didn't want to remind you of her."
His gaze flickered in surprise, and I felt it burning into my profile for a few long moments of silence. And then it hardened. "We never talked things out that night, did we?"
I didn't have to ask what night to know what he was referring to. "Not really, no."
"That 'just friends' thing was pure bullshit, then?"
"If you want to put it that way, then yeah, I guess so."
He shook his head, expression bitter. "I knew it."
"I wasn't doing it to trick you, Wood, I just thought it might make things easier," I retorted, a slight edge rising in my voice, and he chucked hollowly.
"Make things easier. Right. Hell of a lot of good that did."
"Well, it did for a while," I pointed out, growing increasingly irritated with the accusation in his tone, and he shot me an acidic look.
"Guess that while's up."
My eyes flickered with exasperation. "Look, I just did what I thought would be best for you—"
"And that's exactly what I fucking hate about this entire situation!" he snapped, voice rising into a yell that caught me entirely off-guard. "Jesus, Andy, you barely knew me then! What, you heard some story about my sister and all of a sudden you thought you knew better than I did how I should live my life? That's exactly why I don't talk about this with people!"
"Wha—no, I didn't—it was more complicated than that!"
"No, you made it more complicated than that," he cut in, tone bitter. "God, you really thought you reminded me of Claire?"
I faltered at this, mind spinning with a mixture of frustration and uncertainty. "I… I mean, yeah, maybe a little bit—"
"And what, you thought that my being around you would force me to confront that whole thing, relive the past?" he pressed on.
"Well, kind of, but—"
"Unbelievable," he snapped, and a flare of frustration shot through me. "Un-fucking-believable. You seriously thought that you had to stay away from me because of that?" he scoffed. "Because I'm obviously not capable of gauging my own psychological stability, right, so you had to take matters into your own hands."
"Okay, putting it that way makes it sound like—"
"Exactly what it bloody is—you making a decision for me, without any of my consent, that you thought I wasn't capable of making myself," he completed, voice rising yet again. "Jesus, and you call me patroni—"
"I wasn't patronizing you, damn it, I was just trying to do the right fucking thing!" I cried, my frustration starting to filibuster. "For Christ's sake, you even told me that I reminded you of Claire before; what the hell was I supposed to think? Yeah, I might've lied to you a bit and yeah, I might've made some one-sided decisions, but stop acting like I did you some gross injustice by deciding to neutralize whatever the hell we had going on—which, by the way, was not even functional to begin with!"
"I'm not angry at you for that," he growled, gaze locked on mine. "If you wanted to be friends, you could've bloody talked to me about it and I would've heard you out—hell, I probably would've agreed with you. What I can't stand is the fact that you made up this whole elaborate lie to do 'what was best for me'. I'm not some broken person that needs to be analyzed or tiptoed around, Andy!" Katie's words instantly flashed in my head, the warning in her eyes and pleading in her voice, and I immediately shook them off. "And about the Claire thing, yeah, obviously there are times when you remind me of her, but there are times when Alicia reminds me of her, too. Hell, a lot of people remind me of her, but that doesn't mean I need to cut myself off from them and stop living my damn life."
This threw me for a bit of a loop. Was it possible that—had I really just made that up? I flickered my gaze up to his, full of guarded question, "So… you don't see me as her?"
He looked bewildered. "Of course not—are you insane? You're far too infuriatingly you to be anyone else, it's a fucking nightmare."
I glared at the words, though inside, I felt a strange sort of weight lifting from my shoulders. I felt like for the past six weeks, I'd been carrying the burden of being Claire—keeping myself in check, trying not to get to close, trying not to stir up old pain—and here I was, completely deluding myself. I was just as much Claire as any other damn person, for Merlin's sake. "I'm really stupid," I admitted after a moment, staring down at my hands.
"Finally, something we agree on," he muttered in return, shaking his head. "God, you've really been pushing me away all this time because of that?"
"I…" I trailed off, pulling my knees up to my chest and resting my chin on them in a defeated slouch. "I made some assumptions, is all."
"Yeah, obviously."
"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" I said a bit tetchily. "I didn't mess things up on pur—what are you doing?" Without warning, he'd placed the back of his hand on my forehead, eyeing me in alarm.
"You just apologized for something. Willingly. You must be coming down with something."
I shot him a 'ha-ha' look, swatting his hand away, but he laced his fingers with mine before I could retract my hand, eyes trained on my own. A multitude of crack-addicted butterflies fluttered through my stomach, making my pulse speed up the slightest bit—we were still half-naked. If he was aware of this fact, he didn't show it, for his stare remained calmly level with mine, dark and speculative.
"You're a really frustrating person, you know that?"
I scoffed at this. "And you're a walk in the park."
"You realize if you'd just talked to me about it from the begi—"
"You realize if you'd just told me from the beginning."
"I had no reason to tell you, we weren't even frie—"
"You could've at least told me it had nothing to do with me."
"Pretty sure I did on multiple occa—"
"Yeah, but you're so locked up and guarded, it's impossible to know if you're telling the truth or just going into self-preservation mode." Silence followed my words, and I glanced over to see him staring at me with a dry expression.
"Done interrupting, or should I just stop talking?"
I flushed a bit. "Sorry."
"Bloody hell, two apologies in one night—you sure you're not sick?" His lips quirked a bit as I scowled.
"Sod off."
"There's the Andy I know."
"Did you have something to say or not?" I asked rather snippily, the warmth of his fingers around mine making it really hard to stay annoyed.
"Are you going to cut me o—"
"No." He shot me a flat look and I balked. "Point taken."
He sighed. "Well, first of all, in case you haven't noticed this already, I don't lie to people. Ever. A lot times that means avoiding certain subjects or not giving any input on things that I know will cause a useless fuss," he explained, thumb drawing slow circles over my wrist. "I get that I can seem really closed up, and I get that it's probably frustrating sometimes, but never feel like anything I tell you is just a self-preserving lie. I'll either say what I think or not say anything at all—it's just the way I am."
I chewed my lip as I took this in, thinking back to all the arguments I'd had with him. Now that I thought about it, I realized how often he'd just stay quiet about certain things and how I would always assume he was just being arrogant and above it all. God, keeping opinions locked in was such a foreign concept to me; it was hard to relate to the desire to stay quiet.
"Second of all," he said, drawing me back up from my thoughts, "from your perspective, it probably seemed completely ridiculous that I hadn't opened up to you about my life because you thought it had to do with you personally—I didn't have that same connection in my head. What happened to Claire might explain certain things about my personality, sure, but it doesn't define me. When you're doing your whole suicidal routine on the pitch, I'm not thinking about her or anyone else, I'm thinking about you. That's why I didn't feel the need to tell you about her before—you're both completely separate people to me." He shrugged, "Tonight she came up, and you're my friend, and for the first time in a while, I felt like talking about it. So I did. It was that simple."
I ruminated over this for a minute or so, hugging my knees to my chest with my free arm and staring at my feet in thought. Upon speaking, however, all I could really come up with was one thing: "We have serious communication issues."
He chuckled at this and I smiled slightly at the sound, staring off into the night sky. We stayed like this for a minute or so, holding hands like a bloody Hallmark card and thinking about nothing and everything in particular, until I finally took the leap I was avoiding and cleared my throat. "So."
He continued gazing at the sky. "So."
Don't be a jealous cow, just be rational. "About Fiona."
He shot me an odd look, seeming genuinely surprised by change in topic. "What about her?"
I met his gaze with a flat one of my own. "Don't play dumb, Wood, you guys have a thing."
"A platonic thing?"
"No, a very much not platonic thing, according to her."
"Andy—"
"And I know some people are okay with the whole friends with benefits thing, but I'm honestly just not a friends with benefits type of person—"
"Andy."
"—either like you or I don't, and based on what happened ten minutes ago, I think it's pretty clear what category you fall into for me, so—"
"Andy."
"—really not sure I can pull off random hook-ups on the side, which might make me old-fashioned but honestly, sharing isn't always bloody caring, so it boils down to either me or—"
I inhaled sharply as his mouth came down over my own, silencing my rambling ultimatum and sending a rush of goose bumps up and down my spine. All of my carefully planned arguments flew right out of my head, and like clockwork, I found myself melting into the kiss. His lips were slow and pliant on mine, his hand lifting up to brush along the side of my cheek, and after a few lobotomizing seconds, he pulled away, lips curled a bit crookedly at the corners. "You are the hands down the most impossible person to argue with on the entire bloody planet."
"I meant every word," I responded like the stubborn old man that I am, though my tone was a bit dazed.
"I know you did," he replied, thumb lightly tracing the line of my jaw. "What I don't know is why you ever got the impression that I'd want you to share me with Fiona. I certainly have absolutely no intention in hell of sharing you." He dropped a feather-light kiss on the tip of my earlobe before murmuring, "I'm a bit possessive, love."
You know, you'd think being made to feel like a possession would be demeaning, but holy hell, coming from him made it feel like the best thing in the world. "So… no Fiona, then."
"There never was."
My eyes grew suspicious. Oh, please. "I don't believe that."
"Fucking Merlin, Andy—we might've snogged once or twice, but it didn't mean anything at all," he explained, rolling his eyes. "If anything, it was to get my mind off this absurdly stubborn other girl who'd made it her life's mission to avoid me at all costs."
My skin flushed a bit at the admission, lips twitching in an effort to avoid curling into a smile. I opened my mouth to say something, closed it, opened it again, closed it, and after a minute or so eventually ended up with: "I'm not absurdly stubborn."
He tossed his head back and laughed. "You're a bloody mule."
My eyes brightened with amusement. "And you're a bloody ass."
"You know mules are half-donkey, half-horse, right?" he asked, arching a cheeky brow. "If I'm an ass, I'm literally your daddy."
"I really wish you were funny."
He scoffed, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and pulling me into him. "I'm hilarious."
The warmth of his body against mine stole whatever witty comeback I'd had right out of my mouth, and I settled into his chest with a sigh that was supposed to sound exasperated but ventured deeply into 'idiotically happy' territory. I felt light, heady, and ridiculous. Nothing had felt this… this easy in years. The heaviness was gone, and it was like both of us had grown so used to carrying around the extra weight of our drama that in its absence, we were floating.
Everything was out on the table. Everything unsaid had been said. Every reason to walk away or quit while we're ahead or label this a bad idea had been brought up, aired out, detailed, expanded upon, diagrammed, graphed, weighed, and measured.
And yet here we were.
End of Snippet 4, Part 2.
Alright. I know it was rushed, but I figured it's better than nothing, and it really does follow what I had in mind for these two all along. That said, I couldn't bear to do an epilogue without giving you a final glimpse of the supporting cast that I feel added so much to this story, and what's more, I distinctly remember promising you guys a look into Oliver's PoV, so with that said… let's fast-forward four or five months, shall we? This is more of an actual epilogue. I'm putting it in another chapter because, once again, I ramble.