igrab
in
grabi_hands
Heart-Shaped Boxes
Alan/Mae . 3,037 words . PG-13 . Nick isn't afraid; but what he does feel can only be called 'dread'.
It all started with a box.
It was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand; squarish, with rounded corners and papered in red velvet. He flicked it open with the nail of his thumb, felt the hinges snap and creak like they'd never been pushed quite so hard before.
There was a ring inside.
"It was my mother's," Alan's voice came, quietly, from the doorway where he'd been leaning. "It's the ring Dad gave her."
Nick leaned closer to it, eyes narrowed. It was mostly ordinary - a plain gold band, fit to a woman's slender finger - but right in the center there was the tiniest engraving of a rose.
He snapped the box shut.
"What are you doing here," he asked tonelessly, and Alan, as always, chose not to react.
"I was looking for you. There's a man downstairs with one of your business cards, and he won't speak to me." He stepped forward, drew the box out of Nick's hands and popped it open again.
"Well tell him to go away," Nick bit back, but he got to his feet anyway. That was the problem with having a decent business; he had to, you know, work.
But he didn't want to leave Alan up here. He didn't like it, the way he was staring at the ring; he didn't like how clean it was, clearly well-loved and precious. He didn't like the thought of Alan fussing over it in the middle of the night. Alone.
His brother gave him a helpless, apologetic look over one shoulder, and Nick shrugged. He may not have liked it but he wouldn't let Alan know that; there were a lot of things he didn't like, and for the most part, he just had to deal with it.
He left Alan in the attic, staring at a shiny bit of metal that used to belong to a dead woman, and couldn't understand why this particular dislike felt like a knife twisting in his gut.
+
Finally, Nick figured it out.
Some day, Alan and Mae would get married, and then they would leave.
He knew how these things went. He wasn't stupid. He wasn't blind. He'd been taught social convention since birth and had learned it all by rote, he knew what was expected even when he flagrantly refused to participate. Alan liked normality. Alan liked tradition. Alan had kept his mother's wedding ring clean and now he was looking at it thoughtfully, Nick didn't have to be a genius to work that one out.
He wasn't afraid. He still didn't know what fear was like. On the other hand, what he did feel was an alarming sense of dread.
Some day, Alan and Mae would get married, they would leave, and Nick would have no one.
They would keep the house. That was obvious, but knowing Alan he wouldn't suggest it - he'd do the stupid and self-deprecating thing, make a big show of saying that they'd find somewhere else, and maybe he'd bring up Annabel for the icing on the guilt cake. Nick, of course, would react predictably, and refuse to let them leave. He'd leave instead. It made sense, it was a huge house and like hell he was throwing his brother out of the house they'd grown in.
But Nick would have nothing. He'd grown here, too.
Frustrated, Nick slammed the teapot down on the stove a little harder than intended, glared at it, then picked it back up again, frowning.
He couldn't remember who had bought this teapot.
He remembered what happened to the first one. The combination of Alan and Jamie and kitchens was a particularly volatile one, and in this case, it had become incendiary as well. Literally.
You'd think a magician would have developed good instincts for dealing with unexpected fires, but no, Jamie chose instead to panic, and Mae had to save them all while trying not to laugh.
So they'd gotten a new teapot. Somehow. It could have been Nick and Jamie at the mall, it could have been Alan and Mae in one of their fits of antique-store trawling, it could have been Mae and Nick, forcing him to choose because let's face it, he did most of the cooking. It could have been all of those. Nick simply could not remember.
It was just a fucking teapot, but something about it only made this situation worse. Who the hell would cook for them, anyway? Not that Nick wanted to call attention to the fact that he'd essentially become a housewife, but the last time they'd had to fend for themselves it had been a disaster. A messy, pathetic disaster that had pushed him into a new kind of rage - a culinary one.
Mae chose that moment to meander into the kitchen, blinking the sleep from her eyes, and Nick had shoved eggs and toast and tea under her face before he even had a chance to think about it. "Thanks," she muttered, giving him a warm, if sort of foggy, smile. He grunted and tried not to slam pans.
It was final, then, he decided, as Alan came in looking much more awake and kissed Mae on the cheek before engaging Nick in a fruitless nonverbal argument over whether he deserved to eat breakfast. They couldn't live without him. They couldn't leave him, they wouldn't, he wouldn't let them.
+
Evenings were for dancing.
Not always, there wasn't any sort of schedule to it, though initially they'd tried to include Jamie as often as possible. Now, he was gone more often than not, and while it was best when he was there, there was something special in the room when it was just the three of them. Something perfect.
Nick did dance, of course. He danced in ever more complicated patterns with Mae because she liked it, liked the adrenaline rush of moving with him, and he couldn't say he didn't either. They danced for the thrill of it, for doing a thing and doing it well, to the best of both of their considerable abilities. He could feel Alan's eyes on them and that was nice, too - he knew how much Alan enjoyed watching her move.
He danced with Alan. This, more often than not, was only at Mae's urging, and because she needed to catch her breath and drink her weight in water. He danced with Alan to teach him, to give back a little of what he'd taken so thoughtlessly throughout his entire life. There wasn't much he could make Alan learn that he didn't know already, that he wanted to learn, that he was willing to. Dancing, though, dancing was Nick's forte and Alan's secret longing. It was one of the few times that Alan truly looked up to him, and Nick had found, with surprise, that it wasn't about that. It was about trust, maybe, and it was definitely about giving. It was also about Mae, because Alan's eyes never really left her, even when he was staring straight ahead. He was doing this for her, and Nick never wanted to forget that.
The best of all, though, was when it was his turn to watch.
When Jamie was over, he danced with Jamie, because it was better than not dancing with him, because Jamie couldn't keep still. He was a good dancer, and Nick often found himself lost in their repartee that he had come to treasure, but Nick had spent too long living for his brother and not long enough watching his brother fall in love.
Their dances were always slow ones. It could have been blamed on the leg, but Nick had a feeling that Alan simply liked them better, liked the low crooning vocals and smooth, delicate piano tones. One long arm looped around Mae's curvy waist and settled at the small of her back, the other held her hand, candlelight glinting off purple nails curled in the vee of his thumb and forefinger. He leaned close, took her in like the smell of roses, blushed, embarrassed, when he missed a step. She laughed and pressed closer, her smile bright and leaping, and of course he missed more steps then. There was never a moment that he saw her that he wasn't, in some small way, distracted.
What Nick loved best; and yes, it had taken him a long time to come to terms with that word, but in this case he was completely certain. What he loved best was how he might as well have been a piece of furniture, or a strip of wallpaper, or air. In that moment, he did not exist, and he breathed as low and quiet as possible and he did not move, could not, was not even aware of his own body because the only world existed between Alan's eyes and hers.
He loved to see Alan love.
Because everything was all right, then. He could fade away into nothingness and it wouldn't matter; they could leave him and forget he was ever a part of their lives and it wouldn't matter; he wasn't angry, he wasn't resentful, he wasn't jealous, because all that existed was Alan's happiness and Alan's love and Mae's smile because she loved him (and hadn't that been an adventure - but it was over now, and they were all better off for it).
Then one or the other would turn and see him, and the spell would be broken, and he would suddenly be seized again by the feeling that he couldn't live without them - no, that wasn't right, they couldn't live without him, so he had to stay.
It was for their own good, which made it right.
+
"Nick," Alan said, attempting casual but only managing 'not hysterical'.
That was never a good sign, particularly not while mutually up to elbows in soapy water and breakable items. Nick cocked an eyebrow.
Alan's lips pressed because he was exasperated and fond, and he sighed because he was getting so much worse at lying. "I - I need your advice."
Well, this was new and different and, frankly, alarming. Nick smirked. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Nick."
"I just want this burned into my memory..."
"Nick." Alan's voice had shrunk, and his hands gripped the plate they were supposedly cleaning. "This is important."
Of course it is, Nick thought, but he obediently fell quiet, and nodded once to show that he was listening.
Alan took a deep breath. "It's... look, I know that our lives have always been... strange, and for the most part, I love that - I wouldn't want to change anything about you, and I don't regret the choices I've made-"
Get on with it, Nick thought, furiously, though some part of himself was slowly freezing a little more with every word. I know exactly where this is going; spit it out.
"...but there are... this is something I want for myself, and it's selfish and unfair, but-"
"Whatever it is," Nick finally cut in, his voice low and grating. "It's better than standing here listening to you all day. What. Is it."
Strangely enough - or not strangely, Nick had done it on purpose - Alan calmed down when he heard that vibrating tone of anger threaded through Nick's words. He felt he deserved it, and this time, Nick could almost agree with him.
"I want to ask Mae to marry me," he said, simply and without pretense. But he braced himself, tensed his muscles under the soap-dotted white shirt, and shuttered his heart away from the tirade he expected.
Nick gave him a long look. "...Are you... asking my permission?"
Alan flushed sharply. "Not as such, but I suppose - yes, I am."
"That's none of my business," he snapped, turning back to the dishes.
"Of course it is, you live here," Alan pointed out in a soft, hurt little voice.
"And is that going to change?" Nick whipped around and felt, for the first time in his life, afraid. It couldn't be dread anymore - the shoe had dropped, so to speak, he'd done exactly what Nick had dreaded so it wasn't dread. But he was still afraid. He was terrified and he had no idea what to do about it.
"No, of course not. But you're my brother, you're all I have and I need to know if this is all right." It was plain to see, it was obvious, that Alan could see it on him. Could feel it himself. He said he needed reassurance but if he had he wouldn't have asked him, he came to Nick to be shot down, because that's what Nick did. He wasn't comforting. He wouldn't be happy for him. He would be angry and Alan would feel vindicated.
So Alan would have thought.
"Of course it's all right. What do you mean, no?"
Alan's brows snapped together in confusion. "I mean - that is - why would anything change?"
He could do it, he could tell Alan how fine he was with their relationship and their engagement and whatever the hell else Alan expected him to disapprove of, but this, this was something else.
And Alan apparently had no idea how these things worked.
Nick threw the dishtowel down to the counter, hard enough to make Alan jump at the wet thwack that echoed in the kitchen. "Everything will change. I'm not stupid. I know what happens next."
He stalked out of the room after that, because it was a good exit line, and because he didn't want to see the look on Alan's face when he realized that Nick was right.
+
Mae found him in the attic the next day. Her hair caught the light, giving her a sort of halo, and Nick took her in, all of her; how pretty she was, how pushy, and kind, and accepting even when she couldn't understand. He was absolutely sure she was the best girl in the entire world, and he was going to miss her.
She sat down on a box across from him and he could see his mark on her collarbone as it peeked through the lacings of her shirt. He remembered that night in her room, so long ago, when they were still teenagers and swept up in lust and power - but, the sentiment had remained. Mine.
"I thought I'd find you up here." She gave him a quiet, secretive smile. His smile. "Alan told me you had a row. It's not my business, but..."
"It's your business." Nick leaned back, stretched. "Thought you'd get the point by now; everything of ours is yours."
He stared at the ceiling. He knew every crack in it (not that there were many), he knew every room of this house, every floorboard, every not-so-secret passageway. He knew all the spells that Jamie had plastered the place with, he knew the movements, the sounds. He knew that Mae had known to find him in the attic because that's where he went when he was thinking, just as Alan's place was the library and Mae's was the music room. He loved this place. He'd spent so long wandering that the simple pleasure of owning made it more special than any other place in the world.
"It works both ways, Nick," Mae's voice said, soft and forgiving to his ears. "I can't imagine life without you, and Alan - " she stopped, laughed at herself like even the very idea was ludicrous. "Alan said that if it was going to upset you, he refused to do it, and I knew that already. Of course I did. I know Alan, and I know - " And her hand reached out, touched Nick's, and even after all this time, he still flinched. "...I've known for a long time. Loving Alan comes with a price."
Nick's eyes slowly tracked downward, down the walls, across the boxes until it came to rest on her face, on the familiar tilt of her lips. "What are you saying," he managed, though something inside him was going wild - this isn't right, what's going on, this isn't how things are supposed to be, but when were they ever?
"You'll always come first. Always." She patted his cheek then, grinning, and stood up, like she hadn't just pried open his chest and given him everything he ever wanted and told him he could keep it, forever.
He could only stare.
"...Besides, neither of us can cook," she added, and he snorted.
"I'm not your cook."
"We can call it something else if it'll make you feel better," she teased, but her eyes sparkled with mirth. "Personally, I like 'housewife'."
"Fuck you!" Nick pushed to his feet and dragged a hand through his hair, scowling. "I am not a housewife!"
Mae's expression suddenly sobered as she looked up at him, and he pulled his hands back, in case she got it in her head to start touching again. "You will stay with us, won't you? Please stay."
And, when all was said and done - when she put it like that, there was no other way he could answer. No way he wanted to answer, except with the truth.
"I'll stay."
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Love Me Do . 101° Fahrenheit
It all started with a box.
It was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand; squarish, with rounded corners and papered in red velvet. He flicked it open with the nail of his thumb, felt the hinges snap and creak like they'd never been pushed quite so hard before.
There was a ring inside.
"It was my mother's," Alan's voice came, quietly, from the doorway where he'd been leaning. "It's the ring Dad gave her."
Nick leaned closer to it, eyes narrowed. It was mostly ordinary - a plain gold band, fit to a woman's slender finger - but right in the center there was the tiniest engraving of a rose.
He snapped the box shut.
"What are you doing here," he asked tonelessly, and Alan, as always, chose not to react.
"I was looking for you. There's a man downstairs with one of your business cards, and he won't speak to me." He stepped forward, drew the box out of Nick's hands and popped it open again.
"Well tell him to go away," Nick bit back, but he got to his feet anyway. That was the problem with having a decent business; he had to, you know, work.
But he didn't want to leave Alan up here. He didn't like it, the way he was staring at the ring; he didn't like how clean it was, clearly well-loved and precious. He didn't like the thought of Alan fussing over it in the middle of the night. Alone.
His brother gave him a helpless, apologetic look over one shoulder, and Nick shrugged. He may not have liked it but he wouldn't let Alan know that; there were a lot of things he didn't like, and for the most part, he just had to deal with it.
He left Alan in the attic, staring at a shiny bit of metal that used to belong to a dead woman, and couldn't understand why this particular dislike felt like a knife twisting in his gut.
+
Finally, Nick figured it out.
Some day, Alan and Mae would get married, and then they would leave.
He knew how these things went. He wasn't stupid. He wasn't blind. He'd been taught social convention since birth and had learned it all by rote, he knew what was expected even when he flagrantly refused to participate. Alan liked normality. Alan liked tradition. Alan had kept his mother's wedding ring clean and now he was looking at it thoughtfully, Nick didn't have to be a genius to work that one out.
He wasn't afraid. He still didn't know what fear was like. On the other hand, what he did feel was an alarming sense of dread.
Some day, Alan and Mae would get married, they would leave, and Nick would have no one.
They would keep the house. That was obvious, but knowing Alan he wouldn't suggest it - he'd do the stupid and self-deprecating thing, make a big show of saying that they'd find somewhere else, and maybe he'd bring up Annabel for the icing on the guilt cake. Nick, of course, would react predictably, and refuse to let them leave. He'd leave instead. It made sense, it was a huge house and like hell he was throwing his brother out of the house they'd grown in.
But Nick would have nothing. He'd grown here, too.
Frustrated, Nick slammed the teapot down on the stove a little harder than intended, glared at it, then picked it back up again, frowning.
He couldn't remember who had bought this teapot.
He remembered what happened to the first one. The combination of Alan and Jamie and kitchens was a particularly volatile one, and in this case, it had become incendiary as well. Literally.
You'd think a magician would have developed good instincts for dealing with unexpected fires, but no, Jamie chose instead to panic, and Mae had to save them all while trying not to laugh.
So they'd gotten a new teapot. Somehow. It could have been Nick and Jamie at the mall, it could have been Alan and Mae in one of their fits of antique-store trawling, it could have been Mae and Nick, forcing him to choose because let's face it, he did most of the cooking. It could have been all of those. Nick simply could not remember.
It was just a fucking teapot, but something about it only made this situation worse. Who the hell would cook for them, anyway? Not that Nick wanted to call attention to the fact that he'd essentially become a housewife, but the last time they'd had to fend for themselves it had been a disaster. A messy, pathetic disaster that had pushed him into a new kind of rage - a culinary one.
Mae chose that moment to meander into the kitchen, blinking the sleep from her eyes, and Nick had shoved eggs and toast and tea under her face before he even had a chance to think about it. "Thanks," she muttered, giving him a warm, if sort of foggy, smile. He grunted and tried not to slam pans.
It was final, then, he decided, as Alan came in looking much more awake and kissed Mae on the cheek before engaging Nick in a fruitless nonverbal argument over whether he deserved to eat breakfast. They couldn't live without him. They couldn't leave him, they wouldn't, he wouldn't let them.
+
Evenings were for dancing.
Not always, there wasn't any sort of schedule to it, though initially they'd tried to include Jamie as often as possible. Now, he was gone more often than not, and while it was best when he was there, there was something special in the room when it was just the three of them. Something perfect.
Nick did dance, of course. He danced in ever more complicated patterns with Mae because she liked it, liked the adrenaline rush of moving with him, and he couldn't say he didn't either. They danced for the thrill of it, for doing a thing and doing it well, to the best of both of their considerable abilities. He could feel Alan's eyes on them and that was nice, too - he knew how much Alan enjoyed watching her move.
He danced with Alan. This, more often than not, was only at Mae's urging, and because she needed to catch her breath and drink her weight in water. He danced with Alan to teach him, to give back a little of what he'd taken so thoughtlessly throughout his entire life. There wasn't much he could make Alan learn that he didn't know already, that he wanted to learn, that he was willing to. Dancing, though, dancing was Nick's forte and Alan's secret longing. It was one of the few times that Alan truly looked up to him, and Nick had found, with surprise, that it wasn't about that. It was about trust, maybe, and it was definitely about giving. It was also about Mae, because Alan's eyes never really left her, even when he was staring straight ahead. He was doing this for her, and Nick never wanted to forget that.
The best of all, though, was when it was his turn to watch.
When Jamie was over, he danced with Jamie, because it was better than not dancing with him, because Jamie couldn't keep still. He was a good dancer, and Nick often found himself lost in their repartee that he had come to treasure, but Nick had spent too long living for his brother and not long enough watching his brother fall in love.
Their dances were always slow ones. It could have been blamed on the leg, but Nick had a feeling that Alan simply liked them better, liked the low crooning vocals and smooth, delicate piano tones. One long arm looped around Mae's curvy waist and settled at the small of her back, the other held her hand, candlelight glinting off purple nails curled in the vee of his thumb and forefinger. He leaned close, took her in like the smell of roses, blushed, embarrassed, when he missed a step. She laughed and pressed closer, her smile bright and leaping, and of course he missed more steps then. There was never a moment that he saw her that he wasn't, in some small way, distracted.
What Nick loved best; and yes, it had taken him a long time to come to terms with that word, but in this case he was completely certain. What he loved best was how he might as well have been a piece of furniture, or a strip of wallpaper, or air. In that moment, he did not exist, and he breathed as low and quiet as possible and he did not move, could not, was not even aware of his own body because the only world existed between Alan's eyes and hers.
He loved to see Alan love.
Because everything was all right, then. He could fade away into nothingness and it wouldn't matter; they could leave him and forget he was ever a part of their lives and it wouldn't matter; he wasn't angry, he wasn't resentful, he wasn't jealous, because all that existed was Alan's happiness and Alan's love and Mae's smile because she loved him (and hadn't that been an adventure - but it was over now, and they were all better off for it).
Then one or the other would turn and see him, and the spell would be broken, and he would suddenly be seized again by the feeling that he couldn't live without them - no, that wasn't right, they couldn't live without him, so he had to stay.
It was for their own good, which made it right.
+
"Nick," Alan said, attempting casual but only managing 'not hysterical'.
That was never a good sign, particularly not while mutually up to elbows in soapy water and breakable items. Nick cocked an eyebrow.
Alan's lips pressed because he was exasperated and fond, and he sighed because he was getting so much worse at lying. "I - I need your advice."
Well, this was new and different and, frankly, alarming. Nick smirked. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Nick."
"I just want this burned into my memory..."
"Nick." Alan's voice had shrunk, and his hands gripped the plate they were supposedly cleaning. "This is important."
Of course it is, Nick thought, but he obediently fell quiet, and nodded once to show that he was listening.
Alan took a deep breath. "It's... look, I know that our lives have always been... strange, and for the most part, I love that - I wouldn't want to change anything about you, and I don't regret the choices I've made-"
Get on with it, Nick thought, furiously, though some part of himself was slowly freezing a little more with every word. I know exactly where this is going; spit it out.
"...but there are... this is something I want for myself, and it's selfish and unfair, but-"
"Whatever it is," Nick finally cut in, his voice low and grating. "It's better than standing here listening to you all day. What. Is it."
Strangely enough - or not strangely, Nick had done it on purpose - Alan calmed down when he heard that vibrating tone of anger threaded through Nick's words. He felt he deserved it, and this time, Nick could almost agree with him.
"I want to ask Mae to marry me," he said, simply and without pretense. But he braced himself, tensed his muscles under the soap-dotted white shirt, and shuttered his heart away from the tirade he expected.
Nick gave him a long look. "...Are you... asking my permission?"
Alan flushed sharply. "Not as such, but I suppose - yes, I am."
"That's none of my business," he snapped, turning back to the dishes.
"Of course it is, you live here," Alan pointed out in a soft, hurt little voice.
"And is that going to change?" Nick whipped around and felt, for the first time in his life, afraid. It couldn't be dread anymore - the shoe had dropped, so to speak, he'd done exactly what Nick had dreaded so it wasn't dread. But he was still afraid. He was terrified and he had no idea what to do about it.
"No, of course not. But you're my brother, you're all I have and I need to know if this is all right." It was plain to see, it was obvious, that Alan could see it on him. Could feel it himself. He said he needed reassurance but if he had he wouldn't have asked him, he came to Nick to be shot down, because that's what Nick did. He wasn't comforting. He wouldn't be happy for him. He would be angry and Alan would feel vindicated.
So Alan would have thought.
"Of course it's all right. What do you mean, no?"
Alan's brows snapped together in confusion. "I mean - that is - why would anything change?"
He could do it, he could tell Alan how fine he was with their relationship and their engagement and whatever the hell else Alan expected him to disapprove of, but this, this was something else.
And Alan apparently had no idea how these things worked.
Nick threw the dishtowel down to the counter, hard enough to make Alan jump at the wet thwack that echoed in the kitchen. "Everything will change. I'm not stupid. I know what happens next."
He stalked out of the room after that, because it was a good exit line, and because he didn't want to see the look on Alan's face when he realized that Nick was right.
+
Mae found him in the attic the next day. Her hair caught the light, giving her a sort of halo, and Nick took her in, all of her; how pretty she was, how pushy, and kind, and accepting even when she couldn't understand. He was absolutely sure she was the best girl in the entire world, and he was going to miss her.
She sat down on a box across from him and he could see his mark on her collarbone as it peeked through the lacings of her shirt. He remembered that night in her room, so long ago, when they were still teenagers and swept up in lust and power - but, the sentiment had remained. Mine.
"I thought I'd find you up here." She gave him a quiet, secretive smile. His smile. "Alan told me you had a row. It's not my business, but..."
"It's your business." Nick leaned back, stretched. "Thought you'd get the point by now; everything of ours is yours."
He stared at the ceiling. He knew every crack in it (not that there were many), he knew every room of this house, every floorboard, every not-so-secret passageway. He knew all the spells that Jamie had plastered the place with, he knew the movements, the sounds. He knew that Mae had known to find him in the attic because that's where he went when he was thinking, just as Alan's place was the library and Mae's was the music room. He loved this place. He'd spent so long wandering that the simple pleasure of owning made it more special than any other place in the world.
"It works both ways, Nick," Mae's voice said, soft and forgiving to his ears. "I can't imagine life without you, and Alan - " she stopped, laughed at herself like even the very idea was ludicrous. "Alan said that if it was going to upset you, he refused to do it, and I knew that already. Of course I did. I know Alan, and I know - " And her hand reached out, touched Nick's, and even after all this time, he still flinched. "...I've known for a long time. Loving Alan comes with a price."
Nick's eyes slowly tracked downward, down the walls, across the boxes until it came to rest on her face, on the familiar tilt of her lips. "What are you saying," he managed, though something inside him was going wild - this isn't right, what's going on, this isn't how things are supposed to be, but when were they ever?
"You'll always come first. Always." She patted his cheek then, grinning, and stood up, like she hadn't just pried open his chest and given him everything he ever wanted and told him he could keep it, forever.
He could only stare.
"...Besides, neither of us can cook," she added, and he snorted.
"I'm not your cook."
"We can call it something else if it'll make you feel better," she teased, but her eyes sparkled with mirth. "Personally, I like 'housewife'."
"Fuck you!" Nick pushed to his feet and dragged a hand through his hair, scowling. "I am not a housewife!"
Mae's expression suddenly sobered as she looked up at him, and he pulled his hands back, in case she got it in her head to start touching again. "You will stay with us, won't you? Please stay."
And, when all was said and done - when she put it like that, there was no other way he could answer. No way he wanted to answer, except with the truth.
"I'll stay."
if you liked this, you may like:
Love Me Do . 101° Fahrenheit