Fic: Stormswept (David/Selena) M/NC-17 (2/2)
Title: Stormswept (2/2)
Author: chaosdragon
Pairing/Character: David/Selena
Word Count: 12,634 (total)
Rating: M/NC-17 (mild sexual situations, cursing)
Summary: He's pretty sure that things like this only happen when scripted. He never really considered that life is stranger than fiction, or that all fiction has its basis in reality.
Stormswept
The third day of Selena’s fever David wakes up before the sun while dawn is nothing more than a silver gray mist through the island that has become their world. When he touches her she's burning alive inside her own skin and David's heart stutters. He's just twenty-two, he's not supposed to be responsible for the life of the girl next to him. (Not that he doesn't want to be, by now David is willing to admit that he's more than a little in love with her, and damn the consequences.)
But she's burning up, and this isn't exactly a haven of modern technology, and the first aid kit doesn’t exactly have limitless supplies. (They were just lucky it had band-aids and tape, even if it doesn’t have Tylenol or Advil or something else that could help her.)
He does the next best thing and scoops her up, ignoring her faint moan of protest. Her head lolls back and her arms drag and other than the shallow breathing that's scared him half the night Selena doesn't do anything, say anything. Her eyes are sunken and her hair is lank, emphasizing how ill she must actually be.
It scares him. Badly.
But David pushes that fear back and carries her down the little trail they've worn over the last week and five days and when they get to the pool he heads right in. Who cares if they get soaked? Because at this point, that water will be like ice on her fever and that's just what she needs. His shirt is back at the lean-to (having been left behind when it failed it’s duty of keeping her fever down) so David hesitates for all of two seconds before he strips hers off of her, looking away as he does so when he realizes that she never put her bikini top back on after she washed it before she got sick.
After he's sunk her back under the water and there's nothing but the vague shape of her naked torso he wraps the wet shirt around her head. Selena's shivering now, her teeth almost chattering, but she's still so hot that he thinks the water should be boiling around her, or at least steam rising where it touches her skin, and he's really scared.
When the sun's finally risen high enough to make the world bright and she's not shivering and even the still cool water is beginning to feel balmy she stirs in his arms where he's been holding her, trying not to doze and failing spectacularly.
“David?” she murmurs, her voice a little raspy from disuse, and when he looks down her eyes are open and-though still sunken-clear. The pink on her cheeks isn't as bright and the fever's broken (he thinks, because he's never had to do this but really, someone's got to help him out because he's lost in more ways than one right now.)
He smiles, trying to project assurance. He's pretty sure all he manages to do is look pitiful. “Hey, Sel. You feeling better?”
“I'm naked,” is all she says to him, and her eyes are so wide, so dark, like deep pools of dark chocolate against the sick-pale of her skin. He flushes, because the fear that has dominated him for days has fled his body with her apparent lucidity, and he's quite aware that she's half naked and fuck, he's still just twenty-two; how could any sane person blame him for his reaction?
It certainly doesn't hurt that he's completely in love with her. Or maybe he means help. David doesn't know and, more importantly, doesn't really care.
“Only a little,” he temporizes. “But unless I was completely naked, it had to be your shirt. Sorry.”
She makes a small noise of assent, her eyes closing. He thinks she's asleep again and is pondering whether or not to take her back to the lean-to when she speaks, startling him out of at least ten minutes of his life. “I should be embarrassed.”
“Nah,” he tells her softly. “Not really. Desperate times, desperate measures.”
He knows he sounds a little desperate as he says it.
She makes another noise. “Okay.” She sounds half asleep; he decides to keep her there until she asks to be moved since it seems to help and really, it’s not like he has anything better to do than to take care of her. “Because I'm not.”
It's quiet a little longer as his mind wraps around that, his arms full of half naked Selena, and her body temperature beginning to fall to equal his own now. “Sel?” he asks, wondering if she's awake. She is, a bit, her head tilting up to look at him, peering up through her lashes sleepily as she tries to avoid actually being fully aware. “I didn't look.”
Much. But remember, he's twenty-two (and yeah, the horny side of that), which is something he's trying to forget still.
She smiles, her eyes close again, and she’s apparently content to lay there in his arms. “Such a gentleman,” she murmurs into the quiet. “That's what I love about you.”
His heart does back flips and somersaults for hours until she wakes up and wants to be dry.
xXx
They’ve officially passed two weeks lost and Selena is actually feeling pretty damn good now. The morning she woke up to a rapidly dropping fever (half naked) in the water with David seems to have been the turning point for her illness. She improved just as quickly as she fell ill and feels at least a hundred percent better. Maybe more, since something is different with David, and it doesn’t just seem to be that he saw her breasts.
Sure, he could be shadowing her just because she got sick and he’s worried she might get sick again. But if that were the case he wouldn’t be holding her as they go to sleep at night. And he wouldn’t be looking for excuses to touch her. And he wouldn’t have nearly held her hand the night before as they watched the leaf wrapped fish cook at the base of their little fire.
It’s a pleasing change, though, because Selena has been looking for excuses for a long time. Just before, she used Disney and Waverly Place as a shield from it, because it’s kind of daunting to want someone so badly when you’re only sixteen.
She’s not sixteen anymore, and she’s not afraid of how much she wants him.
In fact, she’s beginning to not be afraid that he doesn’t want her.
So as the sun starts heading towards the middle of the sky (she estimates it’s ten, but neither of them ever know the time anymore because they weren’t wearing their watches during shooting) she looks for David and, when she finds him busily putting new fronds of leafing things in the lean-to (the old ones dragged to the side to finish drying for the fire) Selena convinces him that they deserve a day to goof off. Or at least relax a little.
She asks him to swim.
“Why would I want to swim?” he asks her, distracted.
She huffs and yanks the frond out of his hands. “David Henrie, I want to swim and I want you to swim with me.” He’s startled by her vehemence, so Selena backs down a little, then turns pleading eyes on him. “Please? It’s so boring to swim alone.”
And of course he relents (because if there’s one thing Selena has in common with Alex Russo it’s the fact that Selena generally gets what she wants) so she spends the next while in the water with David. They race and play Marco Polo and Selena begins to get used to the sting of salt in her eyes enough to try opening her eyes under water. She wants to look at the fish and the reef and naturally David laughs when it doesn't work so well.
She huffs again, this time from mere inches away as she contemplates splashing him. She also contemplates kissing him; Selena can easily imagine what it would be like to kiss him. It's not like she hasn't thought of it before; his lips will be firm, but still soft (though they're chapped right now from too much sun and salt water) and he'll be good (but not too good, because Selena hates thinking of David kissing anyone but her) and-
She shies away from the thought, unable to contemplate it properly because no matter that she thinks he might want her, she's not sure, and Selena isn't sure she could take rejection.
She splashes him. David protests, and the game begins again until she's too tired to escape properly and David is starting to look a little pink and the sun has definitely started moving down in the sky. When they stumble to shore Selena declares herself parched and, instead of accepting David's suggestion of water, tells him she's sick of water and she'd rather crack the skins of a few of the fruits and enjoy the juice instead.
They find a tree and Selena convinces him that if they pull hard enough they can break a branch off. They do, but every fruit that was on it falls to the ground before they finish. When she and David collect them and haul them back to the beach she doesn't think twice about the fruit being a little softer than she's used to. It's easier to break open and it's tart and sweet and has an acidic tang that hits the back of her tongue and throat harder than normal, but Selena doesn't really mind all that much. The juice is refreshing, even if it's not cold, and they work their way through the pile, peeling rinds, sucking juices, chewing the flesh.
It's not until Selena goes to rinse her hands in the ocean that she realizes the fruit had fermented past its peak and had more than a little naturally made alcohol in it.
xXx
Having Selena pester him into spending half the day swimming and working on a sunburn isn't David's idea of fun (even though everything they did was close enough that it makes no difference) because he already knows that a sunburn in the middle of nowhere is extra painful-there's no conveniently located stores to buy Lidocaine-laced after sun lotion to soothe and numb the mistreated skin. So when Selena proposes they tromp into the forest to find her juice-laden fruit he doesn't argue. He goes along with it because he knows by the time they find it, cull it from the tree, and make it back to the beach, the sun will probably be setting.
And he's right, which is an unfortunate characteristic to share with the character he's played for years, but David has learned it's best to hedge his bets with educated guesses. It's usually easier to just follow Selena's lead when she's in the kind of mood she's in. Arguing with her only makes her more perversely mischievous (and David can't deal with that right now.)
After all, he's already put forth superhuman efforts not to kiss the girl more than once today.
Herculean efforts aside, David doesn’t really want to think about kissing her anyway-even if he does think she wouldn’t mind it so much (at all) there’s still always the possibility that she’d only kiss him back because he’s the only guy here. So he shoves the thoughts aside as best he can and works on the citrus-y fruits Selena’s so fond of-rolling one between his palms to soften it and then digging nails into the rind and peeling a piece back before passing it to Selena and then making one of his own.
It’s tart, very tart, and Selena has already pretty much killed hers while David is still puzzling at the flavor of his own. But it doesn’t stop him from enjoying it (because David isn’t exactly a heavy drinker) and he doesn’t really realize that he’s well on his way to tipsy. It’s about the time that Selena staggers off to the water that David thinks (knows) there’s a problem.
“You all right, Sel?” he calls after her as he works his way to his feet. His tongue feels (more than) a bit numb and his head feels thick and David thinks that Selena probably isn’t all right because he’s pretty sure that he’s not.
He’s sure when she crashes to her butt in the surf, giggling wildly as he nears (and does she have to be so beautiful?-it should be a crime to be so beautiful) and David almost follows her down as she splashes him. When she starts to scoot off into the deeper water he follows her, promising retribution-but somewhere in the back of his mind he follows because she’s as drunk off of fermented fruit as he is (and somewhere completely south of his mind he knows exactly the same)-
And he trips and falls into the water after her.
“David,” she laughs, and David can’t help but smile as he chokes and gags against the salt water, because she’s back with him pulling him up. Her eyes are dark and smiling even in the shadows and David thinks that this is a moment (maybe the moment) and maybe kissing her right now would be the right thing to do.
But Selena is a little ahead of him (like she usually is), because she’s already commandeering the moment by kissing him.
For a moment David's body is completely rigid against hers, even if his face is comfortably bent down to hers. It's wrong, completely, he knows this, but in the end, David decides that he really doesn't give a damn. (What does it matter that he's inebriated, and she is too, because even if Disney made them they were siblings on TV and not in real life.) So with her mouth soft and pliant under his, David kisses her back.
They lose her shirt in the water (maybe lose is too sanguine a word, because he's pretty sure that he almost ripped it off of her) and then his at the edge of the surf (and he knows for a fact that stitches were stretched, if not popped) and the moment he can work his fingers around the tie at the back of her neck David falls to worshiping her body the way he thinks it should be: with hands, mouth, lips, teeth and tongue.
Selena isn't complaining, not a single bit from where David is looking at her. The way she breathes, her breath hitching inside of her throat just as he nips at it, a hand curving around her breast as she winds her arms around his head to draw him down closer-it's a thing of beauty, a fucking miracle, and David swears to himself that he'll never take her for granted, never take this for granted.
“David, please,” she sighs to him, and the faint hesitation her had his gone. He eases inside of her with a groan, his face burrowing into the skin between her neck and shoulder.
He'll care tomorrow that there's no protection. He'll care tomorrow that they have sand in the strangest places. He'll care tomorrow that they did this, that they had sex, that David and Selena became (even if it's just for a little while) DavidandSelena the way he thinks they should be.
For now, all he can concentrate on is the fact that he has something to care about. (And the raging desire to make it more than just the once, because this is Selena and it can't be just once.)
xXx
Her head is pounding when Selena wakes up and for a moment all she can care about is the fact that her mouth tastes like something died in it. Then Selena realizes that the sun is up, she's naked, and David is wrapped around her just as much as she is around him. If her skin weren't already sun dark from their time here she'd be showing off a full body blush (and really, how silly is that just because they had sex?) except that David is still asleep and wouldn't see it.
She thinks that if she were cooler, more hip, more something, she'd know how to handle this. But it's nothing like the two boys she'd taken before as lovers (god, nothing like that because this is David) and she's just Selena Gomez and no one ever told her that one day she'd have wild drunken sex with the man she's pretty sure (completely sure) she loves on the deserted island they've been stranded on for weeks.
Selena decides her life sucks (even though according to her blurry memory it really doesn't.)
The first step, she thinks, is to do something about the sand and dead-animal breath, otherwise she might be sick. It's just sad that she can't hold her alcohol like some other people she's known (not that she's ever really tried all that hard) and Selena finds that concentrating on how messed up everything is really does help take the focus off of her head and the way her stomach lurches as she wriggles away from David to leave him alone on the sand just under the shade cast by the trees.
She doesn't think for a moment that he could take her abandonment wrong (after all, she's never exactly been in this place before) so she doesn't do more than search for her shirt (and stumble over his) at the edge of the water. It's a miracle that she finds it, but Selena is long past miracles at this point and only the thought of cleaning up in their pool of cool, fresh water keeps her going.
It helps, a lot. (Not as much as scrubbing at her teeth and tongue with a badly peeled stick, and even the acrid flavor of the left-behind bark is better than the taste of her own mouth.) It helps more to focus on scrubbing sand from her body and her clothes.
It's only when Selena hears him coming through the brush, his steady footfalls crashing loud, that she looks up, suddenly pensive. But she's so quiet that when David emerges he doesn't even realize she's there. She doesn't make any moves to tell him otherwise because (no matter how stupid it seems) she's embarrassed (which is just sad) and-what if he regrets it?
He looks...like hell. And it doesn't have anything to do with the sand he's covered in, the painful looking burn he's sporting across his shoulders, or the the bloodshot eyes. For a moment Selena can't breathe, and the embarrassment fades as she sees the tension in his shoulders, the way David's jaw is clenched hard enough to chip tooth, the line between his eyes that only happens when he's unhappy and thinking too hard.
She stands up. (She also conveniently forgets that she's not wearing much of anything, which isn't really such a bad thing after all.) “David,” she says.
His head whips around and Selena thinks for a moment that she sees revulsion on his face. Oh, that's it, she thinks, he regrets it and now nothing is ever going to be right between the two of them again. As quickly as he sees her he turns his face away. She breathes out, hurt, but she's not really sure what to expect because this is David, not some boy she can convince herself that she cares about so that for just a few nights she doesn't have to sleep alone.
“I'm sorry,” he gets out. She wants to tell him to shove the apology back through his clenched teeth. She doesn't.
“It helps to scrub your tongue,” she tells him instead, still entertaining the sudden (and completely rational) desire to smack him with a stick instead of let him scrub his tongue. And when he moves to leave she can't help make a pitiful noise that's somewhere between a whimper and a sniffle.
David stops suddenly and Selena knows that he heard. Her hand is on it's way to stifle anything else, ready to clamp over her mouth until he's gone so that she can cry (sob, weep, scream, any-fucking-thing that will make the sudden pain inside her come out) when he apologizes again.
He hasn't done anything wrong and she tells him so.
“You were drunk,” he breathes (and neither of them think that it's funny she was drunk on fruit) as he faces her again.
“So were you,” is her angry retort. The sudden fit of temper helps soothe it (which magically makes her innate humor fly through-because who gets even a buzz from fermented fruit, much less a full on drunk?) so she continues. “Besides, it's my fault. I picked that bunch of fruit.”
“I had no right,” he says, and she ignores it because if he had no right than she certainly didn't (because she kissed him after all). He argues, she argues back, and it ends with the sudden realization that they're face to face, nose to nose, and he's still all over sand and she's still missing the majority of the clothes she still has.
“There's room for two,” she says quietly, not sure if it's an invitation or a benediction to what she hopes will happen. And this time he kisses her, and Selena doesn't protest at all, not even when the rocks at the side of the pool are pressing into her back and probably breaking skin, because this is what she wants and he is it.
xXx
Somehow it's not all that strange to him for them to fall into this (whatever it is) with Selena. Nothing has really changed (because that's just they way they are) even if everything has (because this is the way they want to be) and David is content with it. The time they spend together is good (and the sex is even better) and the time they spend apart isn't the most terrible thing he's ever suffered through. He just tries not to think about what will happen when rescue comes, because David doesn't really want to think about it.
If everything has changed between them now, everything will change again when that happens. Now if only David could stop thinking about it.
Except that he can't; it eats up a lot of his day (and more of his night than he wants to admit to) until he feels like a candle being burnt at both ends. But David doesn't talk to Selena, because she's happy, and because he doesn't want to know if this (whatever it is) is just something that happened because they're here, or if it's something that happened because they're them.
(Truthfully, he wants it to be because they're them, because he doesn't want to go back to being David and her being Selena, he rather-really-likes being DavidandSelena instead of DavidandSelena. The fact that there's a difference is startling enough that he can spend an entire morning adding to the HELP sign instead of brooding over whether Selena is sleeping with him because he's convenient or because she really, truly wants to.
When she curls into him that night he holds her even tighter because he's afraid-that they'll never be rescued, and that they will be.
They make love, they work, they play. David gets another sunburn with freakish ease; Selena teases him mercilessly. He teaches her to gut a fish (and manfully steps up to the plate when she can't finish it without running off to lose her lunch) and doesn't mock her for it. The self-depreciating grin she gives him isn't even what keeps him from doing it, he doesn't because that's just him, because he is David Henrie and she is Selena Gomez.
The twenty-third morning that they're there David wakes up to the knowledge that he's not a little bit in love with Selena. He's completely in love with her, and he can't see his life without her in it always.
He hates himself for considering it a stroke of luck that this is the very same day that she has a meltdown over whether or not they're ever going to be rescued. (Unfortunately the knowledge bitch-slaps him even harder when he doesn't convince her that sex will help and she doesn't think it's odd that he's willing to just hold her until the crying jag has passed.)
He wakes up the twenty-fourth morning to Selena staring at him. This scares him more than the thought of rescue or a lack of it, because he can't help but wonder if Selena is beginning to regret what has happened between them (whatever it is, because it's definitely more than sex) or if she thinks he does or if she thinks it's just sex, because it's not (and the thought of it being just sex makes him feel kind of sick to his stomach) no matter what she might think.
David wakes the twenty-fifth morning to the dull roar of the ocean and the sharper roar of an engine. Selena doesn't stir beside him even when he can hear people calling their names. He knows that no one can see them, that the only think properly visible (especially in the dull dawn light) is the now knee high debris begging for help. And as much as he's grateful to be rescued (or at least he will be when their rescuers find them) David can't help but resent it, because this is going to change everything.
Again.
xXx
She should be grateful that she wasn't naked and in the middle of having her way with David. Selena knows this, instinctively and logically. But she isn't. She isn't grateful at all. They were rescued, one of her prayers is now answered (the other is still in progress because while she's not grateful, she isn't sure how David feels) and she resents the hell out of it.
They've been separated, but Selena supposes that it's for the best (because, honestly, she's not really all that thrilled with the idea of sitting through her own physical and his) especially after she's kicked her agent out and is alone with the (supposedly) impartial doctor who knows how to (again, supposedly) keep her mouth shut. But it had to be asked, because David sure as hell didn't carry condoms habitually in the hopes that he'd get to sleep with his costar (at least she hoped he didn't, because they certainly didn't use any) and she's late.
Which is laughable, considering everything that's happened, but Selena has learned something valuable in the last month: life is stranger than fiction. And besides, the Imp of the Perverse obviously has it out for her, so why not do this to her on top of everything that has already happened?
“It's not unusual for your body to sustain a cycle-or even more than one-given the stress you were under and the lack of proper food,” the woman is telling her.
Selena is biting her tongue not to yell at the woman, because she'd think it's pretty obvious that she wouldn't mention being late if it weren't important. She's nineteen, not twelve, and she knows all about stress and her cycle. (Her mind twitches at that-stress, it's a killer, it says, and Selena bites back the urge to laugh and simultaneously dissolve into tears.)
AND, she even thinks it in capitals, they had way better food than they might have. (It must be a sign of stress that she's so offended at the assumption that she and David were malnourished and starving.)
“Except that I was having sex,” Selena finally says, impatient and frustrated and probably a bit louder than she needs to.
But it has the desired result and she gets to pee on a stick and then have blood drawn and even if the stick is ambiguous Selena isn't sure what she wants the blood test to say (because what they had on that island, yes, whatever it was that-god-was definitely not just sex, might be all they had and she can't stand the thought that all she walks away with is memories and sand in strange places for the next month) in the end. And in the end it's not the blood test that says anything, it's the doctor's face which, Selena assumes, is supposed to be a reflection of her non-pregnant state of being.
Selena doesn't find it at all odd that she's not sure she's grateful.
And then everything goes to hell in a hand-basket (which is just really fucking sad considering she's already been to hell on a jet ski) and there's a press conference. Everyone's there from reporters to rabid fans, her mother (who knows nothing), David's family (who definitely know nothing), Demi (who knows everything) and the rest of the Waverly cast. It gives her a headache after all of the peace they had on the island, but at least now she has Tylenol and Advil and even some very interesting narcotics prescribed to her (because she's so obviously a delicate wilting flower after her 'ordeal' with David) that she can take-just after the damn press conference.
Damn the press conference. And Disney too, while she's thinking about it.
And maybe even David, too, because he hasn't looked at her more than once since it began and she's sick with the realization that fuck, he really was only in it for the sex and companionship. Before it can leak into her face Selena bites it back because hey, she's Selena Gomez, and she's still a damn fine actress.
And if David's gone this far without realizing that she's in love with him, then obviously she's doing something right.
But the questions make her sick, the headache eats at her composure, and Selena is sure that this is hell or penance because there's so many people and she really can't handle this. But she does, she fields questions with the same ease that she sees David force through, she answers them, laughs, makes witty comments and tries to pretend that she's actually slept in the forty-eight hours since they were 'rescued' instead of lying awake all night wishing they weren't.
But everyone has a breaking point, and Selena is about to hit hers just as it's ending. She thinks she's safe for a moment but she knows better (after all, this is Disney and they're stars now) and the last question that comes as they're walking through the door isn't anything just much, just another simple question on top of a million others. It's just that they ask her and Selena just can't handle it.
She doesn't understand how no one can see her falling apart, because the press obviously doesn't care, and her mom and Demi are too far back (because the security she and David apparently need now separate them from just about everyone) and her agent is going on about optioning her 'tragic time lost at sea' as a movie, and Selena just needs to scream. And then she feels David's hand on the small of her back, and Selena thinks that she might be able to handle anything, because right now, he's actually looking at her.
And she's pretty sure it's because he wants to.
xXx
It's their third night back and David is wide awake in the too big bed of his hotel room. They're still on Nassau but mostly because it'll be a nightmare for both him and Selena if Disney shipped them back to the mainland right now. Everyone is so caught up in it, the story, the apparent romance (even if he and Selena said nothing how could the gossip mongers not notice how close they stood, how they constantly touched, how they looked and how they stared?) and the completely insane fucking drama.
He can't sleep, he's not sure he's really slept since the rescue, except for the time on the boat when Selena huddled against him under the blanket in the shade, warm and soft with his arms holding her tightly. He doesn't think she's been sleeping either, because every morning her eyes are dull and the circles match his own. He wishes he could explain it, when people ask them if they're okay. But how do you explain it?
He's twenty-two years old, he never asked to have to take care of someone else, or have someone else take care of him. He's never been in love before, either, so this particular happenstance is completely mind-boggling. But David's learning to accept it, what else is there to do when he's laying there awake all night?
But it's the third night, and he wants to sleep. He wonders how bad it will look if he steps out into the corridor, smiles at the two security guards on his door and hers, and slips into her room for the rest of the night.
And then he remembers that it's Disney, and he should probably talk to a fucking shrink because there are thousands (millions) of preteen fans who could be scarred for life if he did something like that. (Never mind that there's even more who are older who thinks it's just so fucking romantic.)
He's already up, reaching for his pants and shoes when the knob on his door jiggles and the electronic beep tells him that a key card has been successfully swiped. The door opens and he doesn't have sense enough to be alarmed that someone else is breaking into his room, he just stands there and stares curiously, like he has no sense of self preservation (which he doesn't-didn't he stupidly get stuck on a desert island for five weeks because he was careless?) and waits.
That's it, just waits.
But he's glad he did, even if he looks like a total ass, one foot half wiggled into a shoe, his arm paused in mid reach for the khaki's thrown on the chair next to the bed. The light pours in from the hall; he ignores the knowing smile from the guard on his door in favor of Selena. Beautiful, wonderful, practical Selena, who's standing in his door, eyes dark and wide, her lip caught between her teeth.
“I couldn't sleep.”
“Neither could I.” He doesn't try and tell himself that he sounds smooth. If she wanted smooth she wouldn't be here in his room, she'd be in her own moving on. Which means she must still want him as badly as he wants her.
She closes the door behind her and takes a step towards him. He doesn't wait and opens his arm, pants forgotten as he toes the shoes out of the way. She comes into them, her own slim arms tight around his waist. It feels good. It feels like heaven. It feels like home.
Her voice is muffled against his chest, but he understands her plaintive words easily. “I can't sleep alone. I can't sleep without you.”
He presses a kiss to the top of her head, her dark hair smooth under his lips. “I know. I can't either.”
She speaks again, softer, and this time he can't hear her well enough to understand. He tells her so, and she looks back up at him. He thinks he could drown in her eyes and die happily doing so. “I don't want to.”
“Then stay,” is all he says.
And she does, curled against him, warm and wonderful. He holds her carefully, like she's breakable, but smiles when she shifts and moves to kiss him, revels in it when she accepts his own. It's the first time he's ever loved her properly; it's expatiation. He wants to stay like this forever, but he's afraid to tell her. Except that she does.
“I like this,” she says so bluntly that even in the darkness it's like the sudden glaring of light. “I like this with you.”
He smiles, pulls her a little closer. “Then lets see how it works out for the next twenty or thirty years.” When she suddenly kisses him he doesn't fear the sudden damp of tears on her face.
It's hours before they sleep with dawn beginning to break through the windows. David knows that there's going to be a furor when they can't find Selena in her room (because this is Selena Gomez, after all, and of course they're going to fetch her for press conferences before him, he's just David Henrie, and she's way more beautiful than he is). Disney's probably going to have a few things to say to them when they find her in his room.
Or, more accurately, naked and asleep (and having been thoroughly debauched) in his room.
But then he thinks, Fuck Disney. Because he's David Henrie. And if that's good enough for Selena, then he doesn't really care if he pisses Disney off. He's going to be with her for a lot longer than he was ever with Disney and, after all, he loves her, and she loves him, and that's all that really matters, right?
xXx
Selena makes it quite apparent that he's right and that's all that really matters when they finally do find her and their agents and the Disney representative act like they've done something wrong. She doesn't wait for him to tell them to fuck off, she tells them herself, and David loves her even more for that.
FIN
Stormswept (1/2)
Author: chaosdragon
Pairing/Character: David/Selena
Word Count: 12,634 (total)
Rating: M/NC-17 (mild sexual situations, cursing)
Summary: He's pretty sure that things like this only happen when scripted. He never really considered that life is stranger than fiction, or that all fiction has its basis in reality.
Stormswept
The third day of Selena’s fever David wakes up before the sun while dawn is nothing more than a silver gray mist through the island that has become their world. When he touches her she's burning alive inside her own skin and David's heart stutters. He's just twenty-two, he's not supposed to be responsible for the life of the girl next to him. (Not that he doesn't want to be, by now David is willing to admit that he's more than a little in love with her, and damn the consequences.)
But she's burning up, and this isn't exactly a haven of modern technology, and the first aid kit doesn’t exactly have limitless supplies. (They were just lucky it had band-aids and tape, even if it doesn’t have Tylenol or Advil or something else that could help her.)
He does the next best thing and scoops her up, ignoring her faint moan of protest. Her head lolls back and her arms drag and other than the shallow breathing that's scared him half the night Selena doesn't do anything, say anything. Her eyes are sunken and her hair is lank, emphasizing how ill she must actually be.
It scares him. Badly.
But David pushes that fear back and carries her down the little trail they've worn over the last week and five days and when they get to the pool he heads right in. Who cares if they get soaked? Because at this point, that water will be like ice on her fever and that's just what she needs. His shirt is back at the lean-to (having been left behind when it failed it’s duty of keeping her fever down) so David hesitates for all of two seconds before he strips hers off of her, looking away as he does so when he realizes that she never put her bikini top back on after she washed it before she got sick.
After he's sunk her back under the water and there's nothing but the vague shape of her naked torso he wraps the wet shirt around her head. Selena's shivering now, her teeth almost chattering, but she's still so hot that he thinks the water should be boiling around her, or at least steam rising where it touches her skin, and he's really scared.
When the sun's finally risen high enough to make the world bright and she's not shivering and even the still cool water is beginning to feel balmy she stirs in his arms where he's been holding her, trying not to doze and failing spectacularly.
“David?” she murmurs, her voice a little raspy from disuse, and when he looks down her eyes are open and-though still sunken-clear. The pink on her cheeks isn't as bright and the fever's broken (he thinks, because he's never had to do this but really, someone's got to help him out because he's lost in more ways than one right now.)
He smiles, trying to project assurance. He's pretty sure all he manages to do is look pitiful. “Hey, Sel. You feeling better?”
“I'm naked,” is all she says to him, and her eyes are so wide, so dark, like deep pools of dark chocolate against the sick-pale of her skin. He flushes, because the fear that has dominated him for days has fled his body with her apparent lucidity, and he's quite aware that she's half naked and fuck, he's still just twenty-two; how could any sane person blame him for his reaction?
It certainly doesn't hurt that he's completely in love with her. Or maybe he means help. David doesn't know and, more importantly, doesn't really care.
“Only a little,” he temporizes. “But unless I was completely naked, it had to be your shirt. Sorry.”
She makes a small noise of assent, her eyes closing. He thinks she's asleep again and is pondering whether or not to take her back to the lean-to when she speaks, startling him out of at least ten minutes of his life. “I should be embarrassed.”
“Nah,” he tells her softly. “Not really. Desperate times, desperate measures.”
He knows he sounds a little desperate as he says it.
She makes another noise. “Okay.” She sounds half asleep; he decides to keep her there until she asks to be moved since it seems to help and really, it’s not like he has anything better to do than to take care of her. “Because I'm not.”
It's quiet a little longer as his mind wraps around that, his arms full of half naked Selena, and her body temperature beginning to fall to equal his own now. “Sel?” he asks, wondering if she's awake. She is, a bit, her head tilting up to look at him, peering up through her lashes sleepily as she tries to avoid actually being fully aware. “I didn't look.”
Much. But remember, he's twenty-two (and yeah, the horny side of that), which is something he's trying to forget still.
She smiles, her eyes close again, and she’s apparently content to lay there in his arms. “Such a gentleman,” she murmurs into the quiet. “That's what I love about you.”
His heart does back flips and somersaults for hours until she wakes up and wants to be dry.
xXx
They’ve officially passed two weeks lost and Selena is actually feeling pretty damn good now. The morning she woke up to a rapidly dropping fever (half naked) in the water with David seems to have been the turning point for her illness. She improved just as quickly as she fell ill and feels at least a hundred percent better. Maybe more, since something is different with David, and it doesn’t just seem to be that he saw her breasts.
Sure, he could be shadowing her just because she got sick and he’s worried she might get sick again. But if that were the case he wouldn’t be holding her as they go to sleep at night. And he wouldn’t be looking for excuses to touch her. And he wouldn’t have nearly held her hand the night before as they watched the leaf wrapped fish cook at the base of their little fire.
It’s a pleasing change, though, because Selena has been looking for excuses for a long time. Just before, she used Disney and Waverly Place as a shield from it, because it’s kind of daunting to want someone so badly when you’re only sixteen.
She’s not sixteen anymore, and she’s not afraid of how much she wants him.
In fact, she’s beginning to not be afraid that he doesn’t want her.
So as the sun starts heading towards the middle of the sky (she estimates it’s ten, but neither of them ever know the time anymore because they weren’t wearing their watches during shooting) she looks for David and, when she finds him busily putting new fronds of leafing things in the lean-to (the old ones dragged to the side to finish drying for the fire) Selena convinces him that they deserve a day to goof off. Or at least relax a little.
She asks him to swim.
“Why would I want to swim?” he asks her, distracted.
She huffs and yanks the frond out of his hands. “David Henrie, I want to swim and I want you to swim with me.” He’s startled by her vehemence, so Selena backs down a little, then turns pleading eyes on him. “Please? It’s so boring to swim alone.”
And of course he relents (because if there’s one thing Selena has in common with Alex Russo it’s the fact that Selena generally gets what she wants) so she spends the next while in the water with David. They race and play Marco Polo and Selena begins to get used to the sting of salt in her eyes enough to try opening her eyes under water. She wants to look at the fish and the reef and naturally David laughs when it doesn't work so well.
She huffs again, this time from mere inches away as she contemplates splashing him. She also contemplates kissing him; Selena can easily imagine what it would be like to kiss him. It's not like she hasn't thought of it before; his lips will be firm, but still soft (though they're chapped right now from too much sun and salt water) and he'll be good (but not too good, because Selena hates thinking of David kissing anyone but her) and-
She shies away from the thought, unable to contemplate it properly because no matter that she thinks he might want her, she's not sure, and Selena isn't sure she could take rejection.
She splashes him. David protests, and the game begins again until she's too tired to escape properly and David is starting to look a little pink and the sun has definitely started moving down in the sky. When they stumble to shore Selena declares herself parched and, instead of accepting David's suggestion of water, tells him she's sick of water and she'd rather crack the skins of a few of the fruits and enjoy the juice instead.
They find a tree and Selena convinces him that if they pull hard enough they can break a branch off. They do, but every fruit that was on it falls to the ground before they finish. When she and David collect them and haul them back to the beach she doesn't think twice about the fruit being a little softer than she's used to. It's easier to break open and it's tart and sweet and has an acidic tang that hits the back of her tongue and throat harder than normal, but Selena doesn't really mind all that much. The juice is refreshing, even if it's not cold, and they work their way through the pile, peeling rinds, sucking juices, chewing the flesh.
It's not until Selena goes to rinse her hands in the ocean that she realizes the fruit had fermented past its peak and had more than a little naturally made alcohol in it.
xXx
Having Selena pester him into spending half the day swimming and working on a sunburn isn't David's idea of fun (even though everything they did was close enough that it makes no difference) because he already knows that a sunburn in the middle of nowhere is extra painful-there's no conveniently located stores to buy Lidocaine-laced after sun lotion to soothe and numb the mistreated skin. So when Selena proposes they tromp into the forest to find her juice-laden fruit he doesn't argue. He goes along with it because he knows by the time they find it, cull it from the tree, and make it back to the beach, the sun will probably be setting.
And he's right, which is an unfortunate characteristic to share with the character he's played for years, but David has learned it's best to hedge his bets with educated guesses. It's usually easier to just follow Selena's lead when she's in the kind of mood she's in. Arguing with her only makes her more perversely mischievous (and David can't deal with that right now.)
After all, he's already put forth superhuman efforts not to kiss the girl more than once today.
Herculean efforts aside, David doesn’t really want to think about kissing her anyway-even if he does think she wouldn’t mind it so much (at all) there’s still always the possibility that she’d only kiss him back because he’s the only guy here. So he shoves the thoughts aside as best he can and works on the citrus-y fruits Selena’s so fond of-rolling one between his palms to soften it and then digging nails into the rind and peeling a piece back before passing it to Selena and then making one of his own.
It’s tart, very tart, and Selena has already pretty much killed hers while David is still puzzling at the flavor of his own. But it doesn’t stop him from enjoying it (because David isn’t exactly a heavy drinker) and he doesn’t really realize that he’s well on his way to tipsy. It’s about the time that Selena staggers off to the water that David thinks (knows) there’s a problem.
“You all right, Sel?” he calls after her as he works his way to his feet. His tongue feels (more than) a bit numb and his head feels thick and David thinks that Selena probably isn’t all right because he’s pretty sure that he’s not.
He’s sure when she crashes to her butt in the surf, giggling wildly as he nears (and does she have to be so beautiful?-it should be a crime to be so beautiful) and David almost follows her down as she splashes him. When she starts to scoot off into the deeper water he follows her, promising retribution-but somewhere in the back of his mind he follows because she’s as drunk off of fermented fruit as he is (and somewhere completely south of his mind he knows exactly the same)-
And he trips and falls into the water after her.
“David,” she laughs, and David can’t help but smile as he chokes and gags against the salt water, because she’s back with him pulling him up. Her eyes are dark and smiling even in the shadows and David thinks that this is a moment (maybe the moment) and maybe kissing her right now would be the right thing to do.
But Selena is a little ahead of him (like she usually is), because she’s already commandeering the moment by kissing him.
For a moment David's body is completely rigid against hers, even if his face is comfortably bent down to hers. It's wrong, completely, he knows this, but in the end, David decides that he really doesn't give a damn. (What does it matter that he's inebriated, and she is too, because even if Disney made them they were siblings on TV and not in real life.) So with her mouth soft and pliant under his, David kisses her back.
They lose her shirt in the water (maybe lose is too sanguine a word, because he's pretty sure that he almost ripped it off of her) and then his at the edge of the surf (and he knows for a fact that stitches were stretched, if not popped) and the moment he can work his fingers around the tie at the back of her neck David falls to worshiping her body the way he thinks it should be: with hands, mouth, lips, teeth and tongue.
Selena isn't complaining, not a single bit from where David is looking at her. The way she breathes, her breath hitching inside of her throat just as he nips at it, a hand curving around her breast as she winds her arms around his head to draw him down closer-it's a thing of beauty, a fucking miracle, and David swears to himself that he'll never take her for granted, never take this for granted.
“David, please,” she sighs to him, and the faint hesitation her had his gone. He eases inside of her with a groan, his face burrowing into the skin between her neck and shoulder.
He'll care tomorrow that there's no protection. He'll care tomorrow that they have sand in the strangest places. He'll care tomorrow that they did this, that they had sex, that David and Selena became (even if it's just for a little while) DavidandSelena the way he thinks they should be.
For now, all he can concentrate on is the fact that he has something to care about. (And the raging desire to make it more than just the once, because this is Selena and it can't be just once.)
xXx
Her head is pounding when Selena wakes up and for a moment all she can care about is the fact that her mouth tastes like something died in it. Then Selena realizes that the sun is up, she's naked, and David is wrapped around her just as much as she is around him. If her skin weren't already sun dark from their time here she'd be showing off a full body blush (and really, how silly is that just because they had sex?) except that David is still asleep and wouldn't see it.
She thinks that if she were cooler, more hip, more something, she'd know how to handle this. But it's nothing like the two boys she'd taken before as lovers (god, nothing like that because this is David) and she's just Selena Gomez and no one ever told her that one day she'd have wild drunken sex with the man she's pretty sure (completely sure) she loves on the deserted island they've been stranded on for weeks.
Selena decides her life sucks (even though according to her blurry memory it really doesn't.)
The first step, she thinks, is to do something about the sand and dead-animal breath, otherwise she might be sick. It's just sad that she can't hold her alcohol like some other people she's known (not that she's ever really tried all that hard) and Selena finds that concentrating on how messed up everything is really does help take the focus off of her head and the way her stomach lurches as she wriggles away from David to leave him alone on the sand just under the shade cast by the trees.
She doesn't think for a moment that he could take her abandonment wrong (after all, she's never exactly been in this place before) so she doesn't do more than search for her shirt (and stumble over his) at the edge of the water. It's a miracle that she finds it, but Selena is long past miracles at this point and only the thought of cleaning up in their pool of cool, fresh water keeps her going.
It helps, a lot. (Not as much as scrubbing at her teeth and tongue with a badly peeled stick, and even the acrid flavor of the left-behind bark is better than the taste of her own mouth.) It helps more to focus on scrubbing sand from her body and her clothes.
It's only when Selena hears him coming through the brush, his steady footfalls crashing loud, that she looks up, suddenly pensive. But she's so quiet that when David emerges he doesn't even realize she's there. She doesn't make any moves to tell him otherwise because (no matter how stupid it seems) she's embarrassed (which is just sad) and-what if he regrets it?
He looks...like hell. And it doesn't have anything to do with the sand he's covered in, the painful looking burn he's sporting across his shoulders, or the the bloodshot eyes. For a moment Selena can't breathe, and the embarrassment fades as she sees the tension in his shoulders, the way David's jaw is clenched hard enough to chip tooth, the line between his eyes that only happens when he's unhappy and thinking too hard.
She stands up. (She also conveniently forgets that she's not wearing much of anything, which isn't really such a bad thing after all.) “David,” she says.
His head whips around and Selena thinks for a moment that she sees revulsion on his face. Oh, that's it, she thinks, he regrets it and now nothing is ever going to be right between the two of them again. As quickly as he sees her he turns his face away. She breathes out, hurt, but she's not really sure what to expect because this is David, not some boy she can convince herself that she cares about so that for just a few nights she doesn't have to sleep alone.
“I'm sorry,” he gets out. She wants to tell him to shove the apology back through his clenched teeth. She doesn't.
“It helps to scrub your tongue,” she tells him instead, still entertaining the sudden (and completely rational) desire to smack him with a stick instead of let him scrub his tongue. And when he moves to leave she can't help make a pitiful noise that's somewhere between a whimper and a sniffle.
David stops suddenly and Selena knows that he heard. Her hand is on it's way to stifle anything else, ready to clamp over her mouth until he's gone so that she can cry (sob, weep, scream, any-fucking-thing that will make the sudden pain inside her come out) when he apologizes again.
He hasn't done anything wrong and she tells him so.
“You were drunk,” he breathes (and neither of them think that it's funny she was drunk on fruit) as he faces her again.
“So were you,” is her angry retort. The sudden fit of temper helps soothe it (which magically makes her innate humor fly through-because who gets even a buzz from fermented fruit, much less a full on drunk?) so she continues. “Besides, it's my fault. I picked that bunch of fruit.”
“I had no right,” he says, and she ignores it because if he had no right than she certainly didn't (because she kissed him after all). He argues, she argues back, and it ends with the sudden realization that they're face to face, nose to nose, and he's still all over sand and she's still missing the majority of the clothes she still has.
“There's room for two,” she says quietly, not sure if it's an invitation or a benediction to what she hopes will happen. And this time he kisses her, and Selena doesn't protest at all, not even when the rocks at the side of the pool are pressing into her back and probably breaking skin, because this is what she wants and he is it.
xXx
Somehow it's not all that strange to him for them to fall into this (whatever it is) with Selena. Nothing has really changed (because that's just they way they are) even if everything has (because this is the way they want to be) and David is content with it. The time they spend together is good (and the sex is even better) and the time they spend apart isn't the most terrible thing he's ever suffered through. He just tries not to think about what will happen when rescue comes, because David doesn't really want to think about it.
If everything has changed between them now, everything will change again when that happens. Now if only David could stop thinking about it.
Except that he can't; it eats up a lot of his day (and more of his night than he wants to admit to) until he feels like a candle being burnt at both ends. But David doesn't talk to Selena, because she's happy, and because he doesn't want to know if this (whatever it is) is just something that happened because they're here, or if it's something that happened because they're them.
(Truthfully, he wants it to be because they're them, because he doesn't want to go back to being David and her being Selena, he rather-really-likes being DavidandSelena instead of DavidandSelena. The fact that there's a difference is startling enough that he can spend an entire morning adding to the HELP sign instead of brooding over whether Selena is sleeping with him because he's convenient or because she really, truly wants to.
When she curls into him that night he holds her even tighter because he's afraid-that they'll never be rescued, and that they will be.
They make love, they work, they play. David gets another sunburn with freakish ease; Selena teases him mercilessly. He teaches her to gut a fish (and manfully steps up to the plate when she can't finish it without running off to lose her lunch) and doesn't mock her for it. The self-depreciating grin she gives him isn't even what keeps him from doing it, he doesn't because that's just him, because he is David Henrie and she is Selena Gomez.
The twenty-third morning that they're there David wakes up to the knowledge that he's not a little bit in love with Selena. He's completely in love with her, and he can't see his life without her in it always.
He hates himself for considering it a stroke of luck that this is the very same day that she has a meltdown over whether or not they're ever going to be rescued. (Unfortunately the knowledge bitch-slaps him even harder when he doesn't convince her that sex will help and she doesn't think it's odd that he's willing to just hold her until the crying jag has passed.)
He wakes up the twenty-fourth morning to Selena staring at him. This scares him more than the thought of rescue or a lack of it, because he can't help but wonder if Selena is beginning to regret what has happened between them (whatever it is, because it's definitely more than sex) or if she thinks he does or if she thinks it's just sex, because it's not (and the thought of it being just sex makes him feel kind of sick to his stomach) no matter what she might think.
David wakes the twenty-fifth morning to the dull roar of the ocean and the sharper roar of an engine. Selena doesn't stir beside him even when he can hear people calling their names. He knows that no one can see them, that the only think properly visible (especially in the dull dawn light) is the now knee high debris begging for help. And as much as he's grateful to be rescued (or at least he will be when their rescuers find them) David can't help but resent it, because this is going to change everything.
Again.
xXx
She should be grateful that she wasn't naked and in the middle of having her way with David. Selena knows this, instinctively and logically. But she isn't. She isn't grateful at all. They were rescued, one of her prayers is now answered (the other is still in progress because while she's not grateful, she isn't sure how David feels) and she resents the hell out of it.
They've been separated, but Selena supposes that it's for the best (because, honestly, she's not really all that thrilled with the idea of sitting through her own physical and his) especially after she's kicked her agent out and is alone with the (supposedly) impartial doctor who knows how to (again, supposedly) keep her mouth shut. But it had to be asked, because David sure as hell didn't carry condoms habitually in the hopes that he'd get to sleep with his costar (at least she hoped he didn't, because they certainly didn't use any) and she's late.
Which is laughable, considering everything that's happened, but Selena has learned something valuable in the last month: life is stranger than fiction. And besides, the Imp of the Perverse obviously has it out for her, so why not do this to her on top of everything that has already happened?
“It's not unusual for your body to sustain a cycle-or even more than one-given the stress you were under and the lack of proper food,” the woman is telling her.
Selena is biting her tongue not to yell at the woman, because she'd think it's pretty obvious that she wouldn't mention being late if it weren't important. She's nineteen, not twelve, and she knows all about stress and her cycle. (Her mind twitches at that-stress, it's a killer, it says, and Selena bites back the urge to laugh and simultaneously dissolve into tears.)
AND, she even thinks it in capitals, they had way better food than they might have. (It must be a sign of stress that she's so offended at the assumption that she and David were malnourished and starving.)
“Except that I was having sex,” Selena finally says, impatient and frustrated and probably a bit louder than she needs to.
But it has the desired result and she gets to pee on a stick and then have blood drawn and even if the stick is ambiguous Selena isn't sure what she wants the blood test to say (because what they had on that island, yes, whatever it was that-god-was definitely not just sex, might be all they had and she can't stand the thought that all she walks away with is memories and sand in strange places for the next month) in the end. And in the end it's not the blood test that says anything, it's the doctor's face which, Selena assumes, is supposed to be a reflection of her non-pregnant state of being.
Selena doesn't find it at all odd that she's not sure she's grateful.
And then everything goes to hell in a hand-basket (which is just really fucking sad considering she's already been to hell on a jet ski) and there's a press conference. Everyone's there from reporters to rabid fans, her mother (who knows nothing), David's family (who definitely know nothing), Demi (who knows everything) and the rest of the Waverly cast. It gives her a headache after all of the peace they had on the island, but at least now she has Tylenol and Advil and even some very interesting narcotics prescribed to her (because she's so obviously a delicate wilting flower after her 'ordeal' with David) that she can take-just after the damn press conference.
Damn the press conference. And Disney too, while she's thinking about it.
And maybe even David, too, because he hasn't looked at her more than once since it began and she's sick with the realization that fuck, he really was only in it for the sex and companionship. Before it can leak into her face Selena bites it back because hey, she's Selena Gomez, and she's still a damn fine actress.
And if David's gone this far without realizing that she's in love with him, then obviously she's doing something right.
But the questions make her sick, the headache eats at her composure, and Selena is sure that this is hell or penance because there's so many people and she really can't handle this. But she does, she fields questions with the same ease that she sees David force through, she answers them, laughs, makes witty comments and tries to pretend that she's actually slept in the forty-eight hours since they were 'rescued' instead of lying awake all night wishing they weren't.
But everyone has a breaking point, and Selena is about to hit hers just as it's ending. She thinks she's safe for a moment but she knows better (after all, this is Disney and they're stars now) and the last question that comes as they're walking through the door isn't anything just much, just another simple question on top of a million others. It's just that they ask her and Selena just can't handle it.
She doesn't understand how no one can see her falling apart, because the press obviously doesn't care, and her mom and Demi are too far back (because the security she and David apparently need now separate them from just about everyone) and her agent is going on about optioning her 'tragic time lost at sea' as a movie, and Selena just needs to scream. And then she feels David's hand on the small of her back, and Selena thinks that she might be able to handle anything, because right now, he's actually looking at her.
And she's pretty sure it's because he wants to.
xXx
It's their third night back and David is wide awake in the too big bed of his hotel room. They're still on Nassau but mostly because it'll be a nightmare for both him and Selena if Disney shipped them back to the mainland right now. Everyone is so caught up in it, the story, the apparent romance (even if he and Selena said nothing how could the gossip mongers not notice how close they stood, how they constantly touched, how they looked and how they stared?) and the completely insane fucking drama.
He can't sleep, he's not sure he's really slept since the rescue, except for the time on the boat when Selena huddled against him under the blanket in the shade, warm and soft with his arms holding her tightly. He doesn't think she's been sleeping either, because every morning her eyes are dull and the circles match his own. He wishes he could explain it, when people ask them if they're okay. But how do you explain it?
He's twenty-two years old, he never asked to have to take care of someone else, or have someone else take care of him. He's never been in love before, either, so this particular happenstance is completely mind-boggling. But David's learning to accept it, what else is there to do when he's laying there awake all night?
But it's the third night, and he wants to sleep. He wonders how bad it will look if he steps out into the corridor, smiles at the two security guards on his door and hers, and slips into her room for the rest of the night.
And then he remembers that it's Disney, and he should probably talk to a fucking shrink because there are thousands (millions) of preteen fans who could be scarred for life if he did something like that. (Never mind that there's even more who are older who thinks it's just so fucking romantic.)
He's already up, reaching for his pants and shoes when the knob on his door jiggles and the electronic beep tells him that a key card has been successfully swiped. The door opens and he doesn't have sense enough to be alarmed that someone else is breaking into his room, he just stands there and stares curiously, like he has no sense of self preservation (which he doesn't-didn't he stupidly get stuck on a desert island for five weeks because he was careless?) and waits.
That's it, just waits.
But he's glad he did, even if he looks like a total ass, one foot half wiggled into a shoe, his arm paused in mid reach for the khaki's thrown on the chair next to the bed. The light pours in from the hall; he ignores the knowing smile from the guard on his door in favor of Selena. Beautiful, wonderful, practical Selena, who's standing in his door, eyes dark and wide, her lip caught between her teeth.
“I couldn't sleep.”
“Neither could I.” He doesn't try and tell himself that he sounds smooth. If she wanted smooth she wouldn't be here in his room, she'd be in her own moving on. Which means she must still want him as badly as he wants her.
She closes the door behind her and takes a step towards him. He doesn't wait and opens his arm, pants forgotten as he toes the shoes out of the way. She comes into them, her own slim arms tight around his waist. It feels good. It feels like heaven. It feels like home.
Her voice is muffled against his chest, but he understands her plaintive words easily. “I can't sleep alone. I can't sleep without you.”
He presses a kiss to the top of her head, her dark hair smooth under his lips. “I know. I can't either.”
She speaks again, softer, and this time he can't hear her well enough to understand. He tells her so, and she looks back up at him. He thinks he could drown in her eyes and die happily doing so. “I don't want to.”
“Then stay,” is all he says.
And she does, curled against him, warm and wonderful. He holds her carefully, like she's breakable, but smiles when she shifts and moves to kiss him, revels in it when she accepts his own. It's the first time he's ever loved her properly; it's expatiation. He wants to stay like this forever, but he's afraid to tell her. Except that she does.
“I like this,” she says so bluntly that even in the darkness it's like the sudden glaring of light. “I like this with you.”
He smiles, pulls her a little closer. “Then lets see how it works out for the next twenty or thirty years.” When she suddenly kisses him he doesn't fear the sudden damp of tears on her face.
It's hours before they sleep with dawn beginning to break through the windows. David knows that there's going to be a furor when they can't find Selena in her room (because this is Selena Gomez, after all, and of course they're going to fetch her for press conferences before him, he's just David Henrie, and she's way more beautiful than he is). Disney's probably going to have a few things to say to them when they find her in his room.
Or, more accurately, naked and asleep (and having been thoroughly debauched) in his room.
But then he thinks, Fuck Disney. Because he's David Henrie. And if that's good enough for Selena, then he doesn't really care if he pisses Disney off. He's going to be with her for a lot longer than he was ever with Disney and, after all, he loves her, and she loves him, and that's all that really matters, right?
xXx
Selena makes it quite apparent that he's right and that's all that really matters when they finally do find her and their agents and the Disney representative act like they've done something wrong. She doesn't wait for him to tell them to fuck off, she tells them herself, and David loves her even more for that.
FIN
Stormswept (1/2)