Pretty Bird

"You.....what?"

"Look, I know I've been a complete sod, not paying attention to you and all the past few weeks, and I'm sorry. It made me realize a few things, alright?"

I just stared at him, his eyes looking more green than brown in the sunlight, his straightened hair framing his face as he stared intently back at me. I felt his hand take mine across the table.

"I just, watching you, I've been watching you. Like how you were at Lee's when you smiled when I finally got there with Tom and Caroline, and how you smiled so much around the the baby, and even though you were mad at me, you still smiled when I walked in to get those sketches for Drop Dead. I want to be able to make you smile like that all the time, Christian. Remember when you told me about your sister, and I told you all I wanted to do was make you happy?"

I nodded, somehow. The rest of my body was still frozen, just listening to Oliver.

"And you told me you were happy, but I knew you weren't. And now look, I feel like you're finally happy. Both of us have changed so much, love. I changed for you. I stopped drinking, without even thinking about it, just cause I know you don't like having to take care of me when I'm pissed." He smiled, uncomfortably laughing under his heavy breaths. "And, you made me pay more attention to my family, to being around them more. I feel like you made me grow up, but I like it. I'm happy too. And, well," He squeezed my hand softly, his sheepish smile still making me freeze and melt at the same time. "I want to make you happy all the time, forever. Until I die, at least. But I think the love I have for you would live longer than I will, to be honest. You're the most important part of my life, and I never want that to change. I will never let you go. I hate sounding all emotional and shit, but I feel like I need you in my life. You make everything so much better for me. You constantly make me smile and laugh, even over the littlest things. Without hesitation I can honestly say that I want to spend my life with you. Whenever we aren't speaking I'm thinking about you and how much I miss you. Being on tours for all those weeks and months helped me to realize just how important you are to me, I just didn't realize it until I got back. Coming back to you was the best part, actually because it meant I was able to talk to you and hold you and kiss you again. I know I'm overly jealous but I'm only that way because you mean so much to me. I know I'm overprotective but that's only because I never want anything bad to happen to you. You deserve only the best in your life, and I'm so excited and grateful that you've given me the opportunity to give you the entire world."

"Oliver..." I stammered, my hand that wasn't held by Oliver's hand reaching up to my face, just in case I wasn't able to hold back tears. I never cry, you know. This boy could make me do anything though. "Please don't make me cry."

"I only want you to cry if they're tears of happiness, love!" He laughed, his hand squeezing mine again. "The whole theme here is you being happy."

"I am happy! I'm incredibly happy! I didn't need a mini speech at an outdoor café to be happy!" I felt a tear slide down my cheek, but I wiped it away before it reached my jawbone. Oliver saw it anyways, though, his eyes burning holes right through me. It was like he was perfectly comfortable, like he had been planning this in his head for ages. I, on the other hand, was reduced to being a babbling, crying idiot. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a waitress staring and smiling at me.

"Well, this 'mini speech' does have a purpose."

"....You're proposing!?" It came out sounding more like a statement than a question, thanks to my jaw dropping and my eyes growing wide.

"Well," He leaned even more into his chair, his stomach pressing into the table as his free hand went to his back pocket. "Not exactly." He leaned back again, this time holding something. "I don't really have one of these engagement rings here, but I do have this."

He revealed to me a little black box wrapped up in a tiny satin white ribbon. He took his hand away from mine, and used it to pull at the white ribbon, and open the box with a soft 'pop'.

"It's my mum's." He blushed pink again, his smile now taking on its full size as he stared down at the diamond ring, set in platinum. "I had to ask her for it. We'll give it back to her once we get your real one."

"You're giving me your mother's engagement ring?" This information was taking a little bit more time to process in my head than it was in Oliver's. It seemed to make perfect sense to him.

"Well, right now, yeah." The blush on his cheeks began moving up over his cheekbones now, his face flushed pink. "You see, there's a story behind it. Remember that day when we ate dinner at my parent's, and I had to go to that 'interview' with Matt? Well, you can see right through my lies, love. It gets me nervous." His laugh was more nervous than the ones before it. "I wanted to go and pick out and buy your engagement ring, your real one. I didn't know how to get one or whatever, though. I don't know about that girly shit. But I asked Holly, and Molly. And Matt's mum. And they told me to go to Tiffany's; apparently they have good ones or something."

"Oliver," I swooned, my eyes staring down at the beautiful sparking diamond in Oliver's hands. "I don't need some expensive thing to make me happy."

"Hush, I wanted to get you the best kind! Now, anyways. turns out, there is no Tiffany's in Sheffield. Of course they cant make it easy on a bloke, right? So I had to go to Leeds. I asked Matt to cover for me, and say we had an interview or something while I drove there to the appointment."

"At like, 7 at night?"

"I told them I was on a tight schedule! But that's besides the point! Your ring isn't ready yet, it was custom so they have to make it and all. And I was going to wait to ask you until the Fall line of Drop Dead came out and after I had the right ring and all, but with all that's been happening, with Tom and all, I really wanted to ask you as soon as I could. I know I fuck up a lot, and I know I test your patience, but I want to be able to call you mine forever, Christian. I want to be able to hold you when I fall asleep like we did last night and all in my own room. And here I am, sitting across from you watching you smile and make fun of me, and you just look absolutely stunning. I just had to ask you right now. I was going to even do this later, honestly, I had some grand, not so cliché plan of asking you with my mum's ring, but I'm clearly too impulsive. So, I want you to wear this, so the entire world will know that I got the most amazing, beautiful, special girl on the planet. Do you want to marry me, Christian?

He smiled, setting the box in the middle of the table, his hands immediately pulled under the table. I could faintly hear his knuckles cracking.

I could feel the blush burning hot and powerful all over my cheeks, the waitress now gushing to some other waitress, both of them pointing at me. I didn't realize my hands were shaking until I reached out, taking the open box in my hand, the ring catching the sunlight and creating a prism. Somehow, my clumsy fingers took the ring out of the slot in the box, and slid the ring onto my left ring finger.

"It's beautiful." I exhaled, admiring the ring, now set on my tiny little hand. "Never in a million years....did I think this would be happening."

"Love, you gotta say yes before putting on the ring."

I giggled, my eyes coming off of the ring and onto his. "Of course I will, are you fucking kidding! Of course I will!"

"I'd have made you, if you'd have said no." Oliver smiled, rolling his eyes jokingly. "It's not every day I go committing my life to a single bird."

"Oh right, Oliver Sykes, the player and manwhore. The alcoholic who pisses on girls who rejects him." I scoffed, taking my left and lacing my fingers into the fingers of his right hand, the ring rubbing softly against his fingers as well as mine. "What will ever happen to him?"

"He's been dead a long, long time, love. Almost been gone a year and a half, now. California changes people."

"Oh? California did it?"

"A certain girl who lived in California did. Now she's mine forever, though. And I wouldn't ruin it for anything. Not even the chance to be accused of pissing on another girl. Tempting, but no." He laughed, before turning to one of the many gushing waitresses standing about 20 feet away from us. The number had grown from just one, to two, to now about six of seven. "Can I have the check?" Oliver smiled at our original waitress. "Part One is complete."

"Part one?"

He turned back to me once the waitress scurried away, clearly smitten with Oliver. He didn't seem to notice though. "Yeah, that is the GP, love."

"....GP?"

"The game plan! I figured it would be more mysterious to use acronyms now that I am surprising you with all this romantic shit."

"But what is the point of the acronyms if you are the only one who knows what they mean?!"

"I'm mysterious, you're not supposed to know! Besides, it saves time."

"But look at all the time we've wasted with you explaining it to me!"

".....GP..."

"What?! Game plan?! What the hell! That doesn't even make sense anymore!"

"No! Good point! You have a good point!"

"You're lucky you're cute, you know." I rolled my eyes, Oliver signing the check the waitress had brought over. I watched her stare down at him, admiring his tattoos as he signed his name and put his card back in his wallet. She was completely shameless, just ogling at him while I sat right there. I coughed under my breath, catching both Oliver and the waitress' attention. She lowered her eyes and quickly walked away, check in hand. Oliver's eyes narrowed at me, clearly confused. "She was staring for too long." I shrugged, smiling at him.

"That's my lass." He smiled back, taking my hand and standing up from the table. "Let's go, I have more planned, believe it or not."

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AP Magazine Exclusive Feature

When assigned to interview Bring Me The Horizon in their hometown of Sheffield in Yorkshire, I was expecting the same boys I had interviewed two years ago at the Kerrang Download Festival. When each member of the band slowly trickled into Nylon, a pub in the heart of Sheffield, at first my assumptions were correct. Matt Nicholls (drums) stumbles in first, ordering a round of beers for his friends who had yet to show up.
"We thought it would be funny to swap everything on our bus for booze one day," he recalls. "We all got fucking smashed and Oli ended up with his dick out. Don't ask me how."

Guitarists Curtis Ward and Lee Malia come in next, clearly best friends. Just two months ago, (lead guitarist) Lee Malia took dates off from the band's festival circuit in Europe to be there for the birth of his first child, something he still says he has a hard time believing. "My life used to be all about getting pissed and playing shows. Now I got a little girl to take care off. The worlds a mental place." (rhythm guitarist) Curtis Ward agrees, taking a drink of his beer. "We're all beginning to change. [Count Your Blessings] was written by a different band than how we are now. We were all 17, 18. Even now, we are beginning to grow away from when [Suicide Season] was made. It's like we are constantly changing, growing up."

Back when the band (Sykes, Nicholls, Kean, Malia, Ward) started from humble beginnings out of singer Oliver Sykes' garage, all agree that they were young, and more immature than they are now. "We were all about partying, and supermodels." Nicholls reminisces, his first beer almost empty. "We were barely out of school, touring all of The UK. We were living our dream."

That dream being making it big in the music industry. And, Bring Me The Horizon has definitely made a splash in the metalcore world. Ironically, the well known band has only sold 15,000 records of Suicide Season, their sophomore release in The UK, and only 20,000 copies in America. The band's fame and success can be contributed to popular internet websites such as myspace.com and youtube.com, which broadcasted everything from their live shows to numerous photo slideshows of each member of the band. When asked how they handle being such 'internet celebrities', (bass guitarist) Matt Kean explains "We don't care, as long as we are getting our name and our faces out to as broad an audience as we can."

Stumbling in last, almost 40 minutes past the set time for the interview is Oliver Sykes, with an unexpected guest in tow. Unlike the front man Matt Nicholls described earlier and the front man known by fans as being a drunk, arrogant player, Sykes greets me as if we are old friends, and introduces me to his 'lady friend', Drop Dead Clothing graphic designer Christian Serra.

(Vocals) Sykes explains quite candidly "It is easy for people to judge me off of some 5 minute interview or off of my stage performance. But that's all it is; a performance. When I am back home, I am a different person." He smiles at Serra, before adding "I don't walk around piss drunk all the time yelling to people about how amazing I think I am. I've met much better people than I am....maybe not better performers, but better people." Ward is quick to back up this statement. "When he's on stage, he's a completely different person. We all are. It comes with being in this industry."

I hung out with the band for the remainder of the night at Nylon, listening to past tour stories and current details in each of the member's personal lives. I was most surprised with (vocals) Oliver Sykes, the resident player with the worst reputation. Throughout the night, his hand stayed locked onto Serra's, playing with her fingers under the table and whispering in her ear throughout the night. When asked about his love life, Oliver lifts Serra's left hand from under the table, revealing a diamond ring on her ring finger. "She's my love life, I've been reformed." He scanned over his bandmate's surprised faces before adding "I'm not the same Oliver these blokes know me as. I've decided there's more important things to life than just getting pissed every night. I still want to have fun, but I just think I'm growing up. Lee has a baby, I'm getting married."

______________________________________

"So, apparently you're cheating on me with a Russian super model." I laughed, my fingers making the page on my laptop scroll down. "She's pretty, too. You're a lucky man, Sykes."

Oliver, fresh out of the shower, stumbled into the living room, his waist wrapped in a towel. "Let me see." He laughed, shaking his dripping wet hair on me.

"Oliver! You're like a dog!" I exclaimed, pushing him away from me and my laptop. "You'll ruin it if it gets wet, you know."

He just laughed, flipping a piece of wet hair out of his vision before taking my laptop and angling the screen towards his face. "She's alright." He shrugged, before walking back into the bedroom, in search of clothes.

"I love Yahoo Answers." I laughed, calling out to him. "Did you know that apparently I used to be a porn star? My porn name was Chrissy Divine."

I heard Oliver laugh, before he returned to the living room in his boxers and Drop Dead shirt. He sat on the couch next to me, grabbing his own laptop off of the coffee table and turning it on. "It's alright, love. I piss on fans and fuck Russian models, you do porn and feed your alleged plastic surgery habit. I mean, your face looks natural to me, but who knows!"

We shared a laugh, Oliver kissing my temple softly as his laptop loaded up. The laughter slowly turned to comfortable silence though, Oliver's still damp hair leaving my shirt barely wet.

"Oliver..." I started softly. We were shoulder to shoulder, leaning back into the couch with laptops on our laps, our positions mirror images. I turned my head, my forehead resting on the soft spot between his shoulder and collarbone. He smelled good, like Old Spice soap and spearmint mouth wash. "Can I ask you something?"

"You just did." He laughed as I rolled my eyes, hitting him playfully on the chest.

"Why did you bring me to that interview?"

"I told you, I wanted to do something romantic."

"Uhh...taking me to drink at a pub with your friends and some random guy from Alternative Press is hardly romantic, Oliver."

"You missed the point then, love." He sighed, setting the laptop next to him on the couch and turning his body towards mine, his arms wrapping around my body as he pulled me closer into him. "I didn't do it because I wanted to go drinking with you or anything. I wanted that guy to have to talk about you in the interview. I wanted everyone to know that I changed. That I am committed to you, and that I love you. And now everyone knows! So it is a mission accomplished!" He scoffed, kissing me gently on the lips, sucking gently on my bottom lip for only a second. "I didn't want to do anymore cliché shit, like take you to some park and serenade you or whatever. Oliver Sykes is definitely not cliché."

I giggled, turning so we were stomach to stomach, my fingers twisting into his dark hair, the space between our faces slowly becoming smaller and smaller. "Its better than any cheesy serenade or long walk on the beach, Sykes. You're stuck with me." I beamed, pulling him in the last few inches until our lips came together, fitting perfectly against one another.

"No, I'm not stuck," He managed to speak in between the kiss, pulling his lips away from mine, even though I hungered for more. "I've got you, and you've got me. And I think that that is all we are going to need."