Whispers

It was another one of those grey days, the sky taking on the color of a dull, dirty quarter. People filled the streets as the working day came to a close. The tall buildings glimmered and shined. They gave promise of a good weekend, in a strange way.

Rae just returning home from work, getting out of her car. It was a normal day at work in the music shop, and before work she had attended her art class, in which they were studying realism pieces. Rae still dove head first into everything in those classes, enjoying everything she learned.

The house was quiet. Rae threw her keys on the counter, the whole house clean. Trystan was clearly not home, so Rae took it upon herself to make a cup of tea, humming as she moved around the kitchen, thinking about what exactly it was that she wanted to do with life.

It couldn’t be ignored, that Rae was at plateau. She needed to decide what it was that she was going to do with her life, because though she was content at her place of work and her life as it was, she couldn’t live that way forever. She needed to do something.

Finding a profession in art was difficult. You could paint and draw and sketch and do all sorts of amazing things, but only some people were recognized for it. Rae liked the idea of maybe having art shows in which her pieces starred in, but at the same time, she wanted to do something more.

Pouring tea into a small, green cup, she hopped up on the counter. She swung her feet back and forth as she picked up her notebook. The lined pages held her thin, elegant script on them. She had jot down several ideas for careers, though it wasn’t helping much.

She tapped the pen on her chin. After a few seconds past, she realized she was tapping the beat to Sweet Disposition against her chin, a fact that made her snicker and roll her eyes. So she hopped off the counter, carrying her tea with her.

The moment she sat down on the couch, her phone rang. Sliding her finger across the glass, she answered the phone sweetly, “Hiya.”

She could almost hear the smirk to his lips as Harry said, “Well someone’s in a chipper mood. Can you share it with the weather outside? It looks awful.”

“No thank you, I want to keep my happiness to myself. You know what I do want?”

“Please tell me, oh Princess Rae, so that I may be your knight in shining armor and bring it to you.”

Rae giggled. “Not a knight in shining armor, just a moron wrapped in tinsel. Can you please, please bring home Virgilio’s?” Virgilio’s was a place that made amazing sandwiches just a couple blocks away. “I will love you forever.”

“Funny.” She heard what sounded like him closing the car door as he left his English class. “I was under the impression that you already loved me forever.”

“Only if you bring me that sandwich.”

“Fine. The usual?”

“The usual.”

Sprawled out on the couch, Rae turned on the TV. She hit the channel button over and over, searching for something to watch. Unfortunately, the only thing that she thought was near interesting enough to watch was Keeping Up With The Kardashian’s. And that was simply because she liked to laugh at how obnoxious people made money. Rae loved to hate that family, because they made her feel better about her own fucked up life.

That was the thing about reality television. Everyone wanted to watch someone more obnoxious than them, wanted to feed into the ridiculousness of it all, because at least if you were not showing your ass on television, you were an okay kind of person. The things people do to make themselves feel better.

It was that kind of deep thinking Rae was doing when Harry walked in. She could hear the way that his footsteps got quieter when he took off his shoes, showing that he was staying for a while. She craned her head and smiled at him when he walked in.

Harry was dressed in a black sweater and jeans. Simple, but looking extremely handsome on him, as everything always did. His nose was slightly pink from the cold, irresistible to Rae, who leaned forward and kissed him on the nose delicately as he sat down next to her, waving a brown paper bag in front of her.

“Thanks, love,” she said. She leaned back, unwrapping the goodness within the bag. Harry did the same to his, looking up at the TV and making a face. “Don’t even make that face. Kim is your favorite.”
“Her ass is my favorite,” he muttered, biting into his sandwich. With a mouth full, he continued, “There is a difference.”

Together, they ate in silence, watching the reality TV show as they ate. When they were done, Harry rolled Rae to the edge of the couch, laying down behind her and then finally rolling her back into his chest. Her back was pressed against him, legs tangling with one another as they watched.

Between watching the show and Harry making small circles on her back as they lay there together, Rae let her eyes shut, dozing off as she memorized things for her art test the week following her father’s birthday.

Somewhere in her dreams, Rae was dreaming that she and Harry were sitting in a strange field that she had never been to before. The flowers were red, and they swayed when the wind picked up. Something about the warmth that she felt is what told her that it was summer.

And then there was ringing. It was such a strange thing to interrupt a dream, but then she realized the ringing that was echoing in the middle of her dream was her phone ringing in real life, making her open her eyes groggily, leaning away from Harry and searching the coffee table for her phone.

“To the left,” he laughed as she blindly reached for it, still not able to see clearly. “There you go.”

Grabbing her phone, she answered it, disoriented and tired. “Yeah?”

“Is that anyway to great your dad?”

“It is when he wakes me up from a nap.”

He laughed. “It’s six at night, Rae.”

“Yeah well I wanted a bloody nap. What can I help you with?”

Rae sat up, stretching like a cat and flicking Harry in the chest. He made a face at her and she grinned, getting up to get a glass of water as her father spoke. “My birthday is in a week and I know you know that we go to the house in Derbyshire with the family every year for that weekend.”

Rae sipped her water glass. She did in fact know that. The house in Derbyshire was a large family house that they gathered in for Holiday’s. It was situated in a very rural area, surrounded by fields and made great for the winter. “Yeah, I remember. I just wasn’t sure how my class and work was going to pan out.”

This was some form of a lie. She wasn’t worried about class or work. She was worried about what she was supposed to do with Harry. She wanted to ask him to come with her to the weekend getaway, but she knew that her father’s best friend and his son would be there. He son of whom Harry had punched months before.

“Well, I want you and Harry to come out to the house for the weekend, even if it’s just one night.”

Her brows shot up. She had not been expecting her father to be inviting him. That was… kind of him, if anything. “Really?”

“Yes, I think it would be nice for him to meet the rest of the family.” Rae tried not to laugh when he said the rest of the family. Their family was rather small, and Harry really only had to meet a few more members like her grandparents. “And I always like to get to know him better.”

“I suppose that I could ask Harry.”

“Ask me what?”

Rae helped up her hand to him as he came in the kitchen. He wrapped his arms around her waist, setting his chin on her shoulder as he tried to listen to her dad. “Alright, well can you let me know by tomorrow?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Alright, I’ll talk to you then. Love you, Rae.”

“Love you too.”

Rae hung up the phone and leaned against the counter. Harry looked at her, his eyes looking like the glowing green at the bottom of a lake. His curls were not exactly curls at the moment, they were this wear mixture of straight and wavy. He had obviously been running his hands through his hair.

“So what are you asking me?” he questioned, cocking his head to the side. His pink tongue slipped out and brushed across his lips, keeping them soft. She loved his lips. They were always the perfect shade of pink, the shade that girls would kill for.

“I’m supposed to ask you if you would like to go to the family house in Derbyshire with me this weekend. It’s my father’s birthday and what small amount of family I have usually goes for the weekend.”

His brows shot up. “Really?”

“Really we go there or really I’m supposed to ask you?”

“What?”

“Come off it, I don’t know. Just answer the question!”

Harry grinned, crossing his arms over his chest. “Of course I’ll go.”

She hesitated. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you’re smart and you know that going is probably going to cast us into utter self-destruction and turmoil?”

“Stop reading books, Rae.”

She grinned. “I love you, stupid.”

*

“So basically,” Louis said, sitting down, “Is Leon was just ‘checking in on things’ and we all lived? That’s mental.” Louis and Trystan were sitting in his home on his couch. His couch was black leather, soft looking. Trystan sat atop is, posture straight and a blanket in her lap. She nodded. “That doesn’t add up.”

“He went on for an hour about how all of us ruined his life,” she said quietly. Trystan’s blonde hair was pulled out of her face, dark circles under her eyes. No makeup was on her face. “It was like he took it really personally, you know?”

“Well obviously. We threw him in jail.”

“Yeah but that’s the thing, he did it to himself. He would have never gotten himself on Harry’s bad side if he had just left Rae out of it. It’s like… Leon seems like the kind of person who get’s off on watching other people crumble or suffer.”

Louis sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I only know Leon through Harry for the most part. Once upon a time, I did not mind him. But you’re right- Leon has a tendency to enjoy watching things burn. He’s sick in the head.”

“I get that, but still. How is he so good at knowing everything?”

Louis shook his head. “Leon has so many people who work for him. Even when he was away, he probably had people writing him and letting him know how things were going with Harry and Rae. And let’s not forget about Sean, who sometimes is more involved than we know.”

Tystan sighed, relaxing her posture. She was exhausted. “This is all ridiculous, though, isn’t it? This isn’t a movie. All of this,” she waved with her hands, “All of this is so cliché and it’s exhausting. It’s so…”

“Dramatic?” Louis suggested. Trystan nodded her head. It was dramatic. Leon was making her life feel like a cinematic reel. “Leon has always been like that. I think he likes living life by clichés.”

Silence fell between them for a few moments. Trystan was thinking about how tired she was. She had not slept well since the night that Leon told her that he was always watching them, and that he was mad at them all for his life of jail, for his constant being watched by law enforcement. In other words, he wanted revenge on them all.
“Come on,” Louis sighed, taking Trystan’s hand and pulling her up. She stumbled with tired feet. “Let’s get you a proper nap. You look like you’re dead on your feet.” She winced. “Right, not a good expression to use, since someone does want us dead.”

Trystan hoped that it would never come to something like that.