Right Now, I'm Anyone's

“You going to sit with me on the way back, then?” James asked as we were making our way down to the hotel lobby to meet the others so we could get a train back to Leeds. “Everybody’s going to be dead, dead tired; I say it’s time we play some pranks again.”

I nodded my head in agreement and laughed. “Definitely.”

I think I agreed for two reasons; one, I could definitely use a distraction from all the thinking I had been doing since James had finished scolding me about sleeping in Dean’s room, and two, I didn’t want to be the target of one of James’ pranks.

James seemed to accept that nothing had happened between Dean and I, but as far as I can tell, he only accepted so that I’d stop getting annoyed at him and hurting him. He might’ve still thought something had happened, but I couldn’t be bothered to get the ideas out of his head. He linked his arm through mine when we got to the last step and we started skipping through the lobby – me with my bag clutched tight in my hand – while everybody else dragged their feet and complained about their hangovers.

Oddly, James and I seemed to avoid the hangover part.

“How are you two so fucking happy?” Tom asked, throwing a punch at the back of James’ head when he tried to trip Tom up. “I’m certain you drank more than I did, James.”

James smiled triumphantly and patted his stomach, unlinking our arms. “Liver of steel, my man.”

“My arse it is,” Chris grumbled, dragging his bag along the floor next to him. James just shrugged his shoulders and clapped both of his hands, hard, right by Chris’ ear. Chris jumped and put both of his hands to his head, a string of profanities escaping his mouth. He started chasing James around the lobby, trying to tackle him and beat him up. Lee and I laughed, while Ryan shook his head and muttered things like ‘fucking children’ under his breath. Tom only just managed a smile before he collapsed into one of the chairs.

Everybody else was outside, so it was just me, Ryan, Tom, Chris, Lee, James and Johnny still in the lobby. Zoë and Frank kept taking turns to put their heads through the automatic doors and shout at us to hurry up – receiving numerous dirty looks from the receptionist every time.

“You know what? Fuck off, you fucking wanker,” Chris called to James before he dragged his feet back over to where we stood, collected his bag from one of the couches and moved sluggishly outside into the fresh air. James bounced back over to my side and smiled evilly at Tom, Ryan, Lee and Johnny – the smile meant one of them was next.

“I’m definitely keeping away from you today, mate,” Johnny laughed as he picked his own bag up off of the floor. Since James was hell bent on pissing off at least two members of his own band, I caught up with Johnny as he was walking through the main door and stood outside with him, swaying in the near gale force winds outside. Johnny and I walked together towards the group of people.

“Have you seen our Dean today?” he asked, zipping his bag back up after checking that he had everything again. “He wouldn’t come out of his room this morning and he wasn’t there when I went to get him.”

I shrugged, while at the same time managing to keep my poker face in place. “Not today, no.”

“Makes sense,” he said, adding a small, bitter laugh onto the end of it. “Why would you have seen him anyway.”

“Yeah,” I laughed too. “Is something up?”

He just shrugged. “You know his track record with girls.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Gets them, has them, cheats, then loses them.”

“You think he cheated on Zara last night?” I asked, trying to keep a convincing amount of disbelief in my tone, enough to try and put him off that trail. If he thought his brother was cheating, surely he’d try and get it out of him – and then what? If Dean told him, there’s no doubt he’d be annoyed with me too.

“Maybe,” he shrugged again. “Maybe I’m just jumping to conclusions and he actually did have a really bad hangover.”

I shrugged. “I’m sure he wouldn’t cheat on Zara.”

Johnny made a noise to let me know my opinion had been noted. I grimaced in guilt, but Johnny didn’t notice it. Great, now I was lying to one of my best friends about what his brother had been up to. Well, technically, I suppose since he hadn’t directly asked me if Dean and I were together the night before, it wasn’t a lie.

Nope.

Once everybody else was outside with us, we started walking along to Lime Street station to get our train back to Leeds – Carcer City and Abrogation’s Crown just stayed in the City Centre, saying they’d be better off just going straight home and that their tour managers would drive the vans back down. It was around about one in the afternoon and James was still terrorising anybody he could get to while we walked – I think everybody except for me and Frank wanted to kill James then and there. The only reason Frank wasn’t ready to kill him is because James hadn’t dared piss him off yet.

“You’re so fuckin annoying, you know that?!” Sean shouted at him while he walked behind me, crouched down and snickering to himself. He just poked his head up over my shoulder and gave Sean an innocent smile while I tried unsuccessfully to stop myself from laughing. Sean huffed and turned back around to face the direction he was walking – and speeding up his pace so that he was far, far ahead of where James was.

When we were finally on the train, and I was trying to find myself a decent seat a fair distance away from everybody else, Ryan came up to me and smiled. “Can I borrow your iPod until we get to Leeds?”

“Yeah, not a problem,” I smiled and started rummaging through my overnight bag, finding my iPod – typically – at the bottom of it. I handed it over to him and he looked grateful.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll go mental if I have to deal with James when he’s this hyper for an entire train journey.”

I laughed and shrugged my shoulders. “I think its fun.”

“You’re mental too,” he said, rolling his eyes at me. He went off to take his seat – only a double – alone, stretching his legs over the spare seat. Within fifteen minutes of the trains departure, most of our group were near enough asleep. Well, close enough to being asleep that James got bored with tormenting them mercilessly after the first hour. He nudged me and broke me out of my reverie, so that I’d look at him.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing hold of my hand and yanking me up out of my seat after him. “I’m bored.”

He let go of my hand once we were out of our carriage an in the next one along. The new carriage was entirely empty, so James almost had a field day in there. He started jumping all over the seats and climbing along the luggage racks like he was in Mission Impossible or something along those lines. It was actually, really funny, but only because he kept falling off of the luggage racks and hurting himself on the chairs or the floor. At one point, he insisted that I had a go at it; naturally, I refused.

“If you don’t have a go, I’ll make you do it,” he warned, placing his feet back onto the ground and starting to advance towards me.

I backed away. “Nope, you won’t.”

James just laughed at me and started walking faster towards me. I kept backing up until I was practically forced to turn around and run so that he couldn’t catch me. Unfortunately, for me, I ran straight into somebody and almost knocked them straight off of their feet – they managed to catch themselves on the luggage racks overhead and steady the both of us. I looked up.

A man was standing in front of me with greasy black hair, slicked to his head, a long, thin, pale face and a blue suit. I could hear James trying to stifle his laughter behind me as I assessed the man in front of me. The man glanced over my shoulder, before rolling his flat, black eyes.

“Sir and madam,” he addressed the two of us calmly. “I’m afraid if you continue to...gallivant around the train, you will be asked to leave at the next stop.”

“Oh, right, sorry,” I said, my voice rising about an octave. “We’ll just go sit down.”

The steward gave me a very sceptical look, before his hard little eyes flashed back to James for a second, making his face purple more from the suppressed laughter. The steward turned on his heels and left, and I felt my face flush bright red from the embarrassment. I heard a thud and glanced over my shoulder to see James had collapsed onto the floor and was finally able to release his laughter when the door clicked shut behind the steward. I noticed the tears streaming down his face and I aimed a swift kick at his ribs as I stepped over him to go back to our carriage. The door opened before I reached it and somebody walked into me this time.

“Shit, sorry.” Familiar voice; Dean. “Er, is he okay?”

I glanced back at James, before turning and shrugging my shoulders. “Does anybody actually know?”

“Right,” Dean laughed, shaking his head just as James was managing to stand up again. “Anyway, do you fancy sitting with me for the last half an hour?”

“Well,” I said, unable to stop myself from smiling happily at him. “I suppose so, yeah.”

Dean laughed and rolled his eyes. I turned around, facing away from Dean and saw that James was back on his feet and blocking the rest of the empty carriage from us by standing in the middle of the aisle. He was giving Dean a stern once-over, his arms folded over his chest and his eyes narrowed.

“No funny stuff,” James muttered. “I’ll be back in twenty-five minutes to get you off the train.”

“Okay, Dad,” Dean shouted over his shoulder as James walked through the door joining the carriages. James gave Dean the finger and the door clicked shut behind him. I rolled my eyes and let Dean lead me to the back of the carriage by my hand, where he took the window seat of a double and pulled me into the one beside him. We sat together in silence for a couple of minutes, a couple of minutes before it got too hard for me to take.

“When are you due back home, anyway?” I asked; it was the first thing that came to mind, okay? “I think you mentioned it, but I don’t remember.”

Dean flipped my hand over on his knee and stroked my pal lightly with his thumb as he spoke. “I don’t have to be back until Sunday, at the latest.”

“Oh, okay.”

“What made you ask?”

I shrugged. “I was just wondering, I suppose.”

“You suppose a lot today,” he smirked, turning his head to face me.

I just elbowed him in the ribs and made a face at him. “So...”

“So?”

“So,” I said again, taking a deep breath. “Have you talked to Zara lately?”

“You talked to Levi?”

I raised my eyebrows and carefully shrugged his hand off of mine. “No, not yet.”

“Same.”

“Why?”

I wasn’t looking at him, but I felt him shrug his shoulders. “I just haven’t.”

“That’s not vague at all,” I mumbled under my breath. Not quietly enough, though.

“Look, I haven’t talked to her because I just haven’t. It’s not because of you, or what happened with us. Even if it didn’t happen, I probably still wouldn’t have talked to her by now.”

“Jesus, okay.”

“Good.”

And then we were back to our silence. He stared blankly out of the train window while I sat there, awkwardly trying not to look at him. I felt him fidget in his seat every couple of minutes or so – trying to get the feeling back in one of his limbs, I assumed. So, it was a shock when his arm came down around my shoulders. I automatically put my head down on his shoulder. His left arm then came down around my front and clasped with the first one.

His lips were at my ear. “Don’t think about Zara, or Levi, or anybody but me or you. Nobody knows; nobody has to. We can do whatever we want to do, Leila.”

“James knows something though, Dean,” I whispered back. “He was interrogating me until he saw that everybody was hungover.”

“James only knows that we’ve kissed,” he replied. “He isn’t one to jump to conclusions. I’ve known him a very long time.”

“But even then, he could let it slip to Zara when he sees her.”

“He doesn’t speak to Zara,” he laughed. “She annoys him.”

I faltered. “But he still knows something happened.”

“Well, we’ll keep it that way, then.”

I just nodded my head in response, because even I wasn’t too sure what he meant by that. He pressed a light kiss to my temple and then settled his cheek on top of my head while I wound my arms loosely around his waist and stared out at the passing countryside. Whenever one of the carriage doors opened, I’d jump away from Dean and try and look as nonchalant as I possibly could. Miraculously, though, when we were left entirely alone, I didn’t think at all.

As I was daydreaming, the door opened again. I leapt away from Dean and felt my heart jackhammer slightly, but calm down when I saw that it was only James. He had come to tell us that it was time to leave, and that we had to get our bags from our original carriage before somebody else from our group came through to find either of us.

“Glad to see you’re both still dressed!” James announced cheerily, seeming happier than he had when he left us along earlier on. Dean told James to shut up, resulting in James scoffing and slapping Dean around his head. We emerged back into the original carriage to see that it was empty, meaning that everybody had already gotten off. We collected our belongings and stepped off of the train. I didn’t fail to notice that everybody was considerably more bright eyed and bushy tailed than when we had departed from Liverpool – I suppose they’d managed to avoid James and get some sleep at some point during the journey.

“Leila!” Ryan’s voice called from somewhere behind us on the platform. I stopped walking to wait for him to catch up and smiled when he reached me. He returned my smile and passed my iPod back to me.

“Thanks for letting me borrow it,” he laughed.

“No problem, thanks for giving it back.”

Ryan smiled one last time before he ran to catch up with Chris and Lee – who still looked relatively tired, maybe James had focussed on them – to walk with them. James had rocketed ahead of everybody and was talking animatedly with Maddox – about what sounded like Call of Duty.

Dean and I walked together in total silence, back to Flux.

*****

“Do you want me to call later on?” Dean gasped between breaths as he pulled back from me, his hands planted firmly on my hips. I just nodded my head vigorously and pulled his face back to meet mine, my fingers woven through his thick, dark hair. I felt his laugh rumble in his throat and he shifted slightly, making the back of my jacket snag on the rough brick wall he had me pinned against. I didn’t care, though, I just kept kissing him.

But, all of our kisses had to end, and it always had to be him that ended them. “Leila, Leila. We can’t stay here long.”

“Why not?” I grumbled, trying to get back to him again, only to have him restrain me more.

“Because someone might come looking for me; I’m only meant to be walking you to the bus stop.”

I sighed heavily and let my fingers loosen around his hair slightly; I stopped trying to kiss him again and looked downwards at his chest. He chuckled at my – no doubt – crestfallen expression and raised my chin gently with his fingertips. He pressed his lips against mine again, keeping it soft this time so that my body didn’t react as...violently. So that it would understand that this kiss was the last one, and that I should cherish it until I saw him again.

“I’ll call you later,” he promised in a whisper. “And we can do something tomorrow if you aren’t busy, okay?”

“Just us?”

“Yeah,” he smiled. “Just us.”

I returned his smile with a wide one of my own, placing both of my hands on his cheeks so that I could reach up on my tiptoes and push my mouth against his again. He kissed me back and I could feel him smiling about it as he did. This time, I was the first to pull back and he chuckled at me again. He held my hand – like it was the most normal thing ever – all the way to where the alley we had been standing in joined the backstreet leading to the back entrance of Flux. He opened up his arms and I gladly walked into them, wrapping my arms around his waist as I felt his arms close around my body – another cocoon. We hugged for close to ten minutes, until he kissed my forehead and told me goodbye.

“I’ll talk to you later,” I said quietly, as he pulled away from me completely. He gave me a last, quick peck on the lips before he turned to walk back up to where the vans were situated outside of Flux. I watched him go; only turning to leave when he disappeared around the corner. I walked home, thinking that there wasn’t really much point in catching a bus; what was ten minutes longer?

I thought as I walked home, but it wasn’t thoughts that were going to keep me up late into the night. I didn’t think about the guilt that really should’ve been eating away at my heart, or what might happen if I ever told Levi about what was going on between Dean and I – I didn’t even think about how he might react to it, or how much it’d hurt him. All I thought about was Dean – even all the bad things he put me through six years earlier; it didn’t matter to me anymore. I jumped out of my skin when a car horn beeped at me, though, and I turned around and saw a familiar looking car.

“Levi?” I asked, poking my head through the half open passenger window once he had stopped the car. Oh dear, here comes the guilt. “W-what are you doing?”

“I was going to your place,” he said, reaching over to unlock the door for me. “I was going to cook something and wait until you got home; you know a surprise and an apology wrapped into one.”

“Oh, right,” I mumbled, remembering what had happened a couple of days ago. “Well, I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea.”

“Please, Leila,” he pleaded. “Just please get in and let me drive you home, at least let me do that.”

I bit my lip and tried to think properly. “I don’t know.”

“Are you scared of me?” he asked, keeping his voice calm. “Come on, you don’t have to be. I’m sorry for what happened, I lost control.”

His dark eyes pleaded with my own shamelessly and I felt my defences wavering in his favour. I wanted to just tell him to stick it and leave me the hell alone, but – being the idiot I am – I didn’t. I just sighed and opened the car door, climbing into the passenger’s side. I flinched away from him, though, when his hand touched mine.

The short drive back to my flat was spent in total silent; no noise from me, or him, not even the radio. I could feel my skin prickling because I didn’t want to be in that situation – the situation where he would be endlessly apologising to me when I was the one that had slept with somebody else. When he stopped the car outside of the block where my flat was situated, I looked up at it wearily. I suddenly felt more tired than I’d ever felt in my entire life just looking at the block. I didn’t get out of the car, and Levi didn’t make a move to climb out either.

“We have to talk, don’t we?” he said, breaking into the silence like a knife through bread. “That’s such a cliché, but I suppose we do.”

No, Levi, it’s only cliché when it’s used before a break-up. “I know. But talking normally ends in arguments with us, so right now, I don’t want to talk.”

“Leila,” he sighed helplessly. “I don’t know what to do without you. I want to show you that I’m sorry, and that it won’t happen again.”

“But you always say things won’t happen again; they do.” I shrugged my shoulders and kept my eyes down on the end of my red skirt.

“Can’t you just forgive me?”

“Well, there are three things that could stop me,” I said calmly. “One, you accuse me of cheating on you”-cringe-“because I said no to a marriage proposal. Two, you almost hit me. Twice. And three, you get angry and start a load of nonsense with me for nothing.”

“I didn’t mean any of that, Leila,” he said, grabbing both of my hands to make me look at him. “I was drunk out of my mind. You know I love you; you mean everything to me.”

Insert another sharp, jagged pang of guilt here. “I don’t know that you didn’t mean it.”

“Well, I didn’t, I swear,” he reinforced, squeezing my hand for emphasis. “I love you and I’d do absolutely anything for you; what reason could I possibly have for thinking you were cheating on me? With no evidence.”

Clearly, he didn’t remember Dean almost punching his lights out and being in my bedroom. “I know, and...I love you too”-pang-“but I’m just so, so tired.”

“Well, come upstairs and you can sleep, then I’ll get you some food when you wake up,” he pressed. “How does that sound?”

“Fine,” I huffed. There wasn’t any point at all in arguing a losing battle. Levi had his mind set on going up to my flat with me, so there was no way he wasn’t going to do it. He always managed to get me to do whatever he wanted me to do, often disguising it so that it seemed like I wanted to do it too. We walked together up the several flights of stairs to my front door; I leaned on him the entire way because I steadily got more tired the higher up the stairs we got. He had to unlock the door with my key because I was too tired to lift my head.

The last thing I felt before I went to sleep were a set of soft lips, pressing lightly against my own for a second, only a second. I found myself smiling, and hugging myself tighter against Levi, where he lay on the opposite side of my bed to me.

*****

“I’ve been watching your world from afar, I’ve been trying to be where you are, and I’ve been secretly falling apart, unseen. To me, you’re strange and you’re beaut-”

“Hello?” The flow of Aqualung’s Strange & Beautiful was cut off when I slid my phone up with blind hands and answered it, my voice hoarse and rough from the lack of use. I was groggy and uncertain of my surroundings. Something constricted my waist, and I carefully tugged it away from me, standing up from the surface I had been lying on.

“Leila?” It was Dean’s voice. “Did I wake you up?”

“Only slightly,” I whispered, feeling my eyes adjust to the lack of light in what I realised was my own bedroom. I glanced at the bed and saw that Levi was curled into a ball, his arms in the same position as they had been when I was lying with him, sound asleep. I told Dean to be quiet for a minute while I left the room and walked along to the bathroom. The door clicked quietly shut behind me and I slid the lock over – paranoid, I know, but it was just a precaution. Levi definitely wouldn’t have understood another man calling me at half past two in the morning for seemingly no reason.

I was surprised that I’d slept for so long, actually.

“Okay,” I said. “Talk away.”

“Sorry for waking you,” he laughed quietly. “I couldn’t call until midnight because everybody here was just like, extra alert – it was surreal. And then I called you and your boyfriend answered instead of you.”

“Oh no,” I said, groaning very quietly. “Did he say anything to you?”

“No, he just asked who was calling,” he explained. “I kind of panicked and just said I had the wrong number, and then hung up really fast.”

“You panicked?”

“I don’t want any more trouble for you, y’know,” he said, sounding uncomfortable. “I can’t keep fighting people for you, Leila, I’ll be locked up.”

“Don’t fight people then,” I shuddered. “I don’t have your number saved to my phone anyway, plus he probably wouldn’t remember you - you two only talked three times; the second time you threatened him and the third he was drunk.”

“Thanks for saving my number and stuff,” Dean laughed. I could visualise the mock-pout that he would’ve given me had I said that to his face and felt my lips pull upwards at the corners. “Hang on for one minute.”

The line went totally silent on his end for a moment or two, before I could hear him clambering around inside of his van, and a couple of disgruntled complaints from his sleeping band mates. Somebody demanded to know who he was speaking to, but he managed to play it cool and say it was Zara, before he carried on climbing over his friends to get out of the van. I heard a click, and then a deep inhalation of air – which told me he was smoking a cigarette, and therefore outside of the van.

“Right, so,” he said. “I’m safe to talk properly now, how about you?”

“Uh, I think so,” I sighed. “Everybody’s asleep here, I think, and I’ve locked myself away in the bathroom.”

“What if your darling boyfriend needs the bathroom?”

“Don’t call him that,” I complained. “I’ll just tell him I’m speaking to my dad or something.”

“At”-pause-“quarter to three in the morning?”

I faltered. “Oh, yeah. Well, I’ll think of something good.”

“Just tell him it’s Sierra,” he laughed quietly. “And that she was in the bathroom and so insisted that you had to be too before she could speak to you...because that just sounds like something she’d do.”

“Ah, good thinking Batman,” I yawned and leant my head against the bathroom wall, trying to get as comfortable as I could on the closed lid of the toilet. I listened carefully to his end of the line as he took another deep drag of his cigarette – I managed to convince myself that I could hear him wheezing as he breathed, but deciding against berating him about it.

“You know what’s really strange?” he asked, after more than ten minutes of silence. Well, maybe to other people it was silence; I was quite enjoying just listening to his even breathing – wheeze or no wheeze.

“I know a lot of strange things and people,” I answered smartly. “You included.”

“As are you,” he laughed. “But that isn’t what I meant.”

“Okay then, what’s so strange, D?”

“D? Really?” he asked, disbelief colouring his tone. I giggled and heard him chuckle low in his chest after a moment. He continued. “Anyway, I miss you already.”

My face stretched out into an impossibly huge smile – honestly, my face might just have split into two pieces – and I felt the butterflies floating around in my stomach. Keeping silent would keep him on edge a bit, and I knew that, but I actually couldn’t find my voice for a minute or so.

“Hello? You still there, Leila?” he asked after another five minutes of silence.

“Y-Yeah, I am,” I smiled, finally finding my voice again. “That’s sweet.”

“So I didn’t creep you out?”

“Not at all,” I said, shaking my head enthusiastically, even though he couldn’t see what I was doing.

“Oh, damn,” he paused for a moment and laughed. “I was banking on scaring you a little bit with my blatant obsession. But maybe I can still creep you out by telling tell every gory detail of what I plan to do to you before I leave on Sunday morning.”

“Oh, God,” I said, feeling my eyes go wide. “Dean, please, don’t.”

But, he did. I had to hold the phone away from my ear for a good twenty minutes so that I couldn’t hear the pure smut he was talking over the phone. After those twenty minutes, I thought it was safe to bring the phone back to my ear; how wrong I was. I cringed when I realised he wasn’t finished with his play-by-play description vis-á-vis, everything he wanted us to do together. And when he said gory, he meant it; I was constantly cringing.

“And when we’re all done with that,” he finished. “I want to lay with you, and kiss you until my lips bleed.”

I blushed and then thanked God that he couldn’t see me. “Thanks, Dean.”

“I’m serious,” he laughed. “I don’t care if all my sexual fantasies never happen, as long as that happens.”

“Still got your charm, I see.”

“Don’t you know it.” He chuckled and took another drag – he can’t still be on the same cigarette, right? “But really, I want to take you out somewhere. Somewhere nice, that’ll make me seem undeniably perfect.”

I cringed again. Truthfully, it wasn’t because I was embarrassed. It was because he was saying things that you’d expect a boyfriend to say to you; not a fling, or a friend with benefits. I never even thought I’d have either of those things after I met Levi, but there I was. I stuck with a safe bet; a lie, “Did anybody ever tell you you’re really embarrassing sometimes?”

“That’s true,” he said, his teeth chattering slightly in the cold – I assumed he was still outside so that nobody could overhear our conversation. “But, honestly, you like it.”

“Nope.”

“Come on, if I wasn’t so embarrassing, you wouldn’t enjoy my company half as much as you do.”

I shrugged my shoulders, forgetting again that he couldn’t see me. “Maybe, maybe.”

“No,” he argued, a smile in his voice. “Not maybe, definitely.”

“Dean-” But I didn’t have time to finish what I had to say, because somebody was knocking on the bathroom door impatiently. My head snapped up off of the bathroom wall like a deer caught in the headlights of a particularly huge SUV, and I scrambled to get my voice back again. In the quietest voice I could manage, I quickly told Dean had I had to go and that I would text him once I was alone again. I hung up my phone without letting him utter a goodbye and shoved it into the pocket of my sweatpants – which Levi must’ve changed me into when I fell asleep. I flushed the toilet and washed my hands quickly under the cold tap – for authenticity, of course.

“Is that you in there, Leila?” Georgia’s voice carried through the wooden door. I hurried over and grabbed hold of the lock, composing my face into a tired mask before I unlocked it and opened the door. She looked wide awake and curious, giving me a quick once-over before she tried to scrutinise my tired face.

“You okay?” I asked, managing to yawn in what I thought was a very convincing way. I lifted my right hand to massage my temple lightly, to make it look like I was exhausted, though I’d already had so much sleep.

“Yeah,” she said, keeping her voice low and quiet. “I thought I heard you speaking to somebody else.”

I shook my head. “Nah, just using the bathroom.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” she said, smiling crookedly at me. “Is somebody else here?”

“Y-Yeah,” I answered tentatively, trying to keep my voice soft. “Levi’s in my bedroom.”

Her face slowly altered from calm to unhappy in about a fifth of a second. Her crooked smile fell from her face to be replaced by a frown, and the lines on her forehead and between her eyebrows made an appearance – which they rarely ever did those days. “Why, Leila? I thought that would’ve been over by now.”

“We still have to talk things through, Gee.”

“What’s there to talk about? He almost assaulted you, twice! I say you close the book.”

I sighed and tried to keep my tired facade going. “Gee, I swear I’ll talk to him properly about it in the morning, and if it happens again – which I don’t think it will – you can personally kick his arse for me. But, please, just let me handle this alone.”

“I’m only trying to help you,” she grumbled, her head dropping slightly, crestfallen like I’d just bruised her ego.

“I know,” I said, mustering a smile and wrapping my arm around her shoulder. “I appreciate your help, I really do, but there are some things I have to deal with on my own, y’know?”

She sighed and I could see her argument swaying. She seemed to be thinking for a good couple of minutes, before saying, “But I definitely get first dibs on him when it happens again?”

“If it happens again,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Definitely.”

She smiled and we parted ways there; she went into the bathroom while I headed back to my own bedroom. I inched the door open as slowly as I possibly could, just in case I made any noise and woke Levi up. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness again, I saw that he was still sound asleep where I’d left him on half of my bed. Instead of lying back down, next to my boyfriend, I sat cross-legged on my desk, my phone in front of my face.

To: D
Time: 3:25AM

So, what were we talking about? – L x