Baby's First Chopped Nuts (with special guests Apple Pie, Marshmallow, and Peanut Butter)
Author: Indie
Rating: PG
Challenge: Apple Pie #5 (heirloom), Marshmallow #5 (hand-me-downs) Peanut Butter #2 (water)
Extra: Chopped Nuts
Word Count: 1,994
Story: The Nolanverse, AU. ( Index)
Notes: A Band AU, pretty self contained, kind of cute. Just a night on the tour. Romulus, Zia, Nolan, and Noble, with mentions of Rylie. I pretty much fell in love with this, so, uh, yeah. I'll probably revisit it. Sorry about the length.
Water was trickling down from the sky softly, as if it was hesitant about the whole idea. Zia watched her window of the bus, keeping an eye on a few drops at a time as they slid down the glass.
“Egging them on to race?”
Zia turned around to look at Romulus. “Duh,” she smiled.
“You should get some rest.”
Zia made a dismissive noise. “Thanks, mom.”
“Should I be taking dictation?” Rom asked, gesturing at his lap, where he was apparently pre-writing postcards to, yes, mom.
“You suck,” said Zia, who was clearly the patron saint of witty repartee.
“Guys,” Nolan said, from the wheel, without taking his hands of the wheel, because that’s what type of guy he was. “It’s three AM. If I have to hear the Romulus and Zia show and longer I’m going to tear out my hair.”
Zia moved her mouth in time with his words.
“I know that you’re making fun of me, Zia Mikal. Rom, control your sister please?”
Romulus threw up his hands in a ‘don’t look at me’ gesture. “I’m the victim, remember?”
“The antagonist,” Zia corrected.
“I’m so glad you’re not in charge of my life’s cast list.”
“Your life would run so much more smoothly if I was in charge,” Zia said, because this was an opinion she held. (Although Romulus’ life was pretty much interchangeable with anyone else’s.)
“Guys!” Nolan muttered. “Seriously.”
Zia locked her lips.
Romulus wrestled away her imaginary key and threw it out the window. Zia spent several minutes making desperate eyes and close-mouthed noises and clawing at her own throat. Rom fell out of the third row bench laughing.
Nolan pretended he didn’t hear the noises, occasionally catching glances of her in the rear view, mostly just grateful for a few moments of relative quiet, especially once Rom ran out of air (and he was behind the first bench seat, so out of Nolan’s vision) and was mostly gasping into the van’s fuzzy carpet.
“Stop drooling on my guitar, fathead,” Zia said, apparently breaking her vow of silence to twist around from her bench seat to smack Romulus.
“It’s time for a new one anyways,” Rom said, when he was done laughing, and had climbed back on the seat.
Zia scowled. “That used to be Mark’s,” she said, in the same tone a catholic might say that something was touched by St. Peter. “It’s practically an antique.”
“That’s it,” Nolan said, pulling sharply onto the next off-ramp. Anyone else would have rolled off the third bench if they’d been sleeping, but Noble, curled up like a cat with the top of his head pressed against the glass didn’t budge. It might have had something to do with the fact that he’d arranged a seatbelt around him like a bungee cord, but because he was the band’s only Asian member, they were more likely to blame it on his “ninja skills.”
“I’m going to take a stretch break here,” Nolan announced, “and then I’m going to bed. One of you is driving.”
By one of you, he meant Romulus, because Zia hated to drive, but she also hated to be treated like a child / other people to boss her around / to be patronized, all of which she would accuse him of doing if he said that.
“Dibs on not it,” she said immediately, laughing.
Nolan smiled at her despite himself, pulling the van into truck stop parking space and killed the engine. “I’m going to go get some beef jerky.”
“Coffee?” Rom asked.
“Zia? Need anything?” Nolan asked, in response, without affirming.
Zia shook her head. “I’m getting up. I have to stretch, too.”
“It’s rainy,” Romulus reminded her.
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Never let the man, or a little rain, get you down. I taught you better than that.”
“So just a coffee for you?”
Rom nodded.
“Coffee something something,” came a mumble from the Noble shaped ball of clothes and blankets and hair.
“Shhh,” they responded at once, on habit.
Nolan stepped down from the van and into the little rest stop. Zia followed, splashing as her feet hit the ground, leaving Rom with a, once again, sleeping Noble. He adjusted his clothing, which were twisted from trying to get comfortable in the back without disturbing Noble.
Since Rylie had left the band right before the tour (the band’s website cited the split as a mutually beneficial change with no animosity, but what that really meant was that Ry was a walking hangover and Nolan had a broken heart) Zia was the only girl.
They used to fit perfectly, if a bit more squished: a driver and a map reader in the passenger’s seat (or, if it was Zia, a map misreader) and the other three arranged between the two bench seats, sometimes all up and messing around, or sleeping. Sometimes, they used to play rock-paper-scissors to dictate who was doubling up, and sometimes they just fell into place. The girls would squirm until they both fit, or someone would sit and let the other rest in their laps; the possibilities were endless. Living on the road for long stretches, they all got creative.
Now, it was only the four of them, which meant they didn’t have to sleep two to a row anymore, but there was something missing.
(And by something, obviously they meant Rylie.)
When Nolan and Zia got back in, Nolan handing him his coffee (raindrops pooled on the plastic lid and draining back in through the hole in the top) through the window and climbed over the first bench seat without a word to him. Zia sat in the previously unoccupied passenger seat.
When Zia went to eject the soft-pop CD Nolan had put in almost an hour before, Rom could smell the flowery soap on her hands, which meant that that she’d used the facilities. Rom smirked, but didn’t say anything. Although he was literally always ready for Rom and Zia bickering time (seriously, he was only three years older; he wouldn’t recognize a Zia that didn’t want to bicker, and vice versa) it was almost three thirty in the morning at that point, and Nolan looked tired. Too tired to listen to and also, I am a lady Romulus Mikal - if I even stepped foot in the restroom, it was to adjust my hair and fix my makeup.
Zia didn’t seem tired, exactly, but she started to droop, corner of her temple against the window, like all the laughter had gone out of her all of the sudden.
“Zee-ya, she’s the bestest girl in the world,” he crooned softly at her, navigating their van (like a bloated cow, and twice as ugly) through the parking lot and back into the interstate.
“You’re my best brother who’s twenty-one, you know that?” Zia said, smiling softly at him.
“I’m your only brother who’s twenty-one,” he reminded her.
She shrugged, the neck of her sweatshirt almost the same width as her body from one shoulder to the other. The left side slipped a few inches down and the right pulled flush against her neck.
His rear-view caught his attention. Nolan, blond hair mussed and glinting only by the light of the streetlights, was leaning over Noble’s tense (he always seemed tense when he slept, mouth in a tight line, shoulders drawn almost to his ears) body. Nolan took the smaller boys elbow, and with one hand, unwrapped his seatbelt.
Romulus looked back at the road a he heard Noble murmur - half surprise, half sleepy nonsense that might have happened anyways.
“Shhh.” Nolan shushed him the same ay any of them would have, with a reassuring sound, because sometimes Noble made little noises or said things in his sleep, and all they could do was shh him gently to coax him back to sleep or agree with him. Except, they usually didn’t run his arms gently, coaxing him into a more comfortable position, either, unwinding his legs from their tight against his chest position.
Zee might have, come to think. Maybe.
Romulus kept his eyes on the tired road in front of him, the asphalt that had probably been new at one point in time was now the grey of old acid washed jeans, just like the sky, and the muddy puddles collected on either side of the street.
“I’ll try to sleep,” she said, cupping her chin in the crook of her elbow and picking up a pillow from the floor to put on her lap, “so I can take over for you in the morning.”
Zia didn’t really like to drive, but she probably thought it was only nice manners to offer. He probably wouldn’t wake her up if she really fell asleep. She might kill them all. Thanks, but no thanks.
He kept himself company for a long time after Zia’s breathing evened out, and Nolan pulled out his iPod and headphones, closing his eyes and leaning his head back.
For a while he during the early hours he listened to talk radio (he’s never been so caught up on current events before this tour. It was sort of weird) but then he got annoyed with the host’s voice and eventually turned it off.
“Finally.”
Rom almost tapped the brakes in surprise, and then regained composure.
“Morning, Walsh,” he said, because that’s what he was in the habit of calling him.
“Morning,” he yawned delicately, most of his dark hair sticking up. Somehow they’d ended up differently on the back row, Noble sitting up, and Nolan slumped against him, unplugged headphones still in his ears. Noble looked sort of put-upon, but Rom just knew that it was all for show. Nolan was totally endearing, even when he was playing bus mother.
“I had this crazy dream,” Noble said, voice low and quiet so as not to disturb Nolan or Zia. Normally, he probably would have climbed into the second row, so that his voice didn’t have to carry across the bus, but he was a bit pinned by Nolan.
“Yeah?”
“About Rylie. Like, she was back, and she was wearing these crazy live-goldfish earrings, and - this is the weird part - she was drumming.”
“N, you are so weird.” Rom said, squinting at the illuminated mile marker, and then thought about it. “Also, please stop fantasizing about ways to get me out of the band.”
“A dream is not a fantasy, Romulus.” Noble corrected. “Case-in-point; nightmares.”
“Masochists,” Romulus declared, and Noble’s face darkened.
“Maybe,” he said, affecting aloofness. “Anyways, if I was going to imagine a situation where you weren’t in the band, it wouldn’t be Rylie taking over for you. She’s a twig. Also, I wouldn’t trust her with drumsticks.”
“She’s a monster,” Romulus agreed, and then wondered if perhaps he should have used the past tense.
Noble looked down at the boy tucked against his chest. “Nol’s Rylie radar is going to wake him up if we keep talking about her.”
The van settled once again into quiet, Romulus at the wheel, Zee folded double on her own lap, hand wrapped around the corner of her pillow, the Ns in the back row, soft grayish light creeping onto the horizon.
At five, Romulus put a CD in to keep him awake, but after his third head-dip, Walsh rearranged Nolan off of him. “Alright, just pull over on the shoulder before the morning traffic hits, or you hit the morning traffic.”
It was hard to argue with a ninja, even one who is only five foot six, so Romulus pulled over and laid down into the first seat, and didn’t fall asleep until Zee woke up to fill the van with her inane chatter. His hand dangled down from the bench, fingers resting against the battered fabric case of Zia’s hand-me-down guitar, and between Noble and Zia’s voices drifting over to him from the front seat, to the rumble of the van beneath him, it almost felt like home.
Rating: PG
Challenge: Apple Pie #5 (heirloom), Marshmallow #5 (hand-me-downs) Peanut Butter #2 (water)
Extra: Chopped Nuts
Word Count: 1,994
Story: The Nolanverse, AU. ( Index)
Notes: A Band AU, pretty self contained, kind of cute. Just a night on the tour. Romulus, Zia, Nolan, and Noble, with mentions of Rylie. I pretty much fell in love with this, so, uh, yeah. I'll probably revisit it. Sorry about the length.
Water was trickling down from the sky softly, as if it was hesitant about the whole idea. Zia watched her window of the bus, keeping an eye on a few drops at a time as they slid down the glass.
“Egging them on to race?”
Zia turned around to look at Romulus. “Duh,” she smiled.
“You should get some rest.”
Zia made a dismissive noise. “Thanks, mom.”
“Should I be taking dictation?” Rom asked, gesturing at his lap, where he was apparently pre-writing postcards to, yes, mom.
“You suck,” said Zia, who was clearly the patron saint of witty repartee.
“Guys,” Nolan said, from the wheel, without taking his hands of the wheel, because that’s what type of guy he was. “It’s three AM. If I have to hear the Romulus and Zia show and longer I’m going to tear out my hair.”
Zia moved her mouth in time with his words.
“I know that you’re making fun of me, Zia Mikal. Rom, control your sister please?”
Romulus threw up his hands in a ‘don’t look at me’ gesture. “I’m the victim, remember?”
“The antagonist,” Zia corrected.
“I’m so glad you’re not in charge of my life’s cast list.”
“Your life would run so much more smoothly if I was in charge,” Zia said, because this was an opinion she held. (Although Romulus’ life was pretty much interchangeable with anyone else’s.)
“Guys!” Nolan muttered. “Seriously.”
Zia locked her lips.
Romulus wrestled away her imaginary key and threw it out the window. Zia spent several minutes making desperate eyes and close-mouthed noises and clawing at her own throat. Rom fell out of the third row bench laughing.
Nolan pretended he didn’t hear the noises, occasionally catching glances of her in the rear view, mostly just grateful for a few moments of relative quiet, especially once Rom ran out of air (and he was behind the first bench seat, so out of Nolan’s vision) and was mostly gasping into the van’s fuzzy carpet.
“Stop drooling on my guitar, fathead,” Zia said, apparently breaking her vow of silence to twist around from her bench seat to smack Romulus.
“It’s time for a new one anyways,” Rom said, when he was done laughing, and had climbed back on the seat.
Zia scowled. “That used to be Mark’s,” she said, in the same tone a catholic might say that something was touched by St. Peter. “It’s practically an antique.”
“That’s it,” Nolan said, pulling sharply onto the next off-ramp. Anyone else would have rolled off the third bench if they’d been sleeping, but Noble, curled up like a cat with the top of his head pressed against the glass didn’t budge. It might have had something to do with the fact that he’d arranged a seatbelt around him like a bungee cord, but because he was the band’s only Asian member, they were more likely to blame it on his “ninja skills.”
“I’m going to take a stretch break here,” Nolan announced, “and then I’m going to bed. One of you is driving.”
By one of you, he meant Romulus, because Zia hated to drive, but she also hated to be treated like a child / other people to boss her around / to be patronized, all of which she would accuse him of doing if he said that.
“Dibs on not it,” she said immediately, laughing.
Nolan smiled at her despite himself, pulling the van into truck stop parking space and killed the engine. “I’m going to go get some beef jerky.”
“Coffee?” Rom asked.
“Zia? Need anything?” Nolan asked, in response, without affirming.
Zia shook her head. “I’m getting up. I have to stretch, too.”
“It’s rainy,” Romulus reminded her.
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Never let the man, or a little rain, get you down. I taught you better than that.”
“So just a coffee for you?”
Rom nodded.
“Coffee something something,” came a mumble from the Noble shaped ball of clothes and blankets and hair.
“Shhh,” they responded at once, on habit.
Nolan stepped down from the van and into the little rest stop. Zia followed, splashing as her feet hit the ground, leaving Rom with a, once again, sleeping Noble. He adjusted his clothing, which were twisted from trying to get comfortable in the back without disturbing Noble.
Since Rylie had left the band right before the tour (the band’s website cited the split as a mutually beneficial change with no animosity, but what that really meant was that Ry was a walking hangover and Nolan had a broken heart) Zia was the only girl.
They used to fit perfectly, if a bit more squished: a driver and a map reader in the passenger’s seat (or, if it was Zia, a map misreader) and the other three arranged between the two bench seats, sometimes all up and messing around, or sleeping. Sometimes, they used to play rock-paper-scissors to dictate who was doubling up, and sometimes they just fell into place. The girls would squirm until they both fit, or someone would sit and let the other rest in their laps; the possibilities were endless. Living on the road for long stretches, they all got creative.
Now, it was only the four of them, which meant they didn’t have to sleep two to a row anymore, but there was something missing.
(And by something, obviously they meant Rylie.)
When Nolan and Zia got back in, Nolan handing him his coffee (raindrops pooled on the plastic lid and draining back in through the hole in the top) through the window and climbed over the first bench seat without a word to him. Zia sat in the previously unoccupied passenger seat.
When Zia went to eject the soft-pop CD Nolan had put in almost an hour before, Rom could smell the flowery soap on her hands, which meant that that she’d used the facilities. Rom smirked, but didn’t say anything. Although he was literally always ready for Rom and Zia bickering time (seriously, he was only three years older; he wouldn’t recognize a Zia that didn’t want to bicker, and vice versa) it was almost three thirty in the morning at that point, and Nolan looked tired. Too tired to listen to and also, I am a lady Romulus Mikal - if I even stepped foot in the restroom, it was to adjust my hair and fix my makeup.
Zia didn’t seem tired, exactly, but she started to droop, corner of her temple against the window, like all the laughter had gone out of her all of the sudden.
“Zee-ya, she’s the bestest girl in the world,” he crooned softly at her, navigating their van (like a bloated cow, and twice as ugly) through the parking lot and back into the interstate.
“You’re my best brother who’s twenty-one, you know that?” Zia said, smiling softly at him.
“I’m your only brother who’s twenty-one,” he reminded her.
She shrugged, the neck of her sweatshirt almost the same width as her body from one shoulder to the other. The left side slipped a few inches down and the right pulled flush against her neck.
His rear-view caught his attention. Nolan, blond hair mussed and glinting only by the light of the streetlights, was leaning over Noble’s tense (he always seemed tense when he slept, mouth in a tight line, shoulders drawn almost to his ears) body. Nolan took the smaller boys elbow, and with one hand, unwrapped his seatbelt.
Romulus looked back at the road a he heard Noble murmur - half surprise, half sleepy nonsense that might have happened anyways.
“Shhh.” Nolan shushed him the same ay any of them would have, with a reassuring sound, because sometimes Noble made little noises or said things in his sleep, and all they could do was shh him gently to coax him back to sleep or agree with him. Except, they usually didn’t run his arms gently, coaxing him into a more comfortable position, either, unwinding his legs from their tight against his chest position.
Zee might have, come to think. Maybe.
Romulus kept his eyes on the tired road in front of him, the asphalt that had probably been new at one point in time was now the grey of old acid washed jeans, just like the sky, and the muddy puddles collected on either side of the street.
“I’ll try to sleep,” she said, cupping her chin in the crook of her elbow and picking up a pillow from the floor to put on her lap, “so I can take over for you in the morning.”
Zia didn’t really like to drive, but she probably thought it was only nice manners to offer. He probably wouldn’t wake her up if she really fell asleep. She might kill them all. Thanks, but no thanks.
He kept himself company for a long time after Zia’s breathing evened out, and Nolan pulled out his iPod and headphones, closing his eyes and leaning his head back.
For a while he during the early hours he listened to talk radio (he’s never been so caught up on current events before this tour. It was sort of weird) but then he got annoyed with the host’s voice and eventually turned it off.
“Finally.”
Rom almost tapped the brakes in surprise, and then regained composure.
“Morning, Walsh,” he said, because that’s what he was in the habit of calling him.
“Morning,” he yawned delicately, most of his dark hair sticking up. Somehow they’d ended up differently on the back row, Noble sitting up, and Nolan slumped against him, unplugged headphones still in his ears. Noble looked sort of put-upon, but Rom just knew that it was all for show. Nolan was totally endearing, even when he was playing bus mother.
“I had this crazy dream,” Noble said, voice low and quiet so as not to disturb Nolan or Zia. Normally, he probably would have climbed into the second row, so that his voice didn’t have to carry across the bus, but he was a bit pinned by Nolan.
“Yeah?”
“About Rylie. Like, she was back, and she was wearing these crazy live-goldfish earrings, and - this is the weird part - she was drumming.”
“N, you are so weird.” Rom said, squinting at the illuminated mile marker, and then thought about it. “Also, please stop fantasizing about ways to get me out of the band.”
“A dream is not a fantasy, Romulus.” Noble corrected. “Case-in-point; nightmares.”
“Masochists,” Romulus declared, and Noble’s face darkened.
“Maybe,” he said, affecting aloofness. “Anyways, if I was going to imagine a situation where you weren’t in the band, it wouldn’t be Rylie taking over for you. She’s a twig. Also, I wouldn’t trust her with drumsticks.”
“She’s a monster,” Romulus agreed, and then wondered if perhaps he should have used the past tense.
Noble looked down at the boy tucked against his chest. “Nol’s Rylie radar is going to wake him up if we keep talking about her.”
The van settled once again into quiet, Romulus at the wheel, Zee folded double on her own lap, hand wrapped around the corner of her pillow, the Ns in the back row, soft grayish light creeping onto the horizon.
At five, Romulus put a CD in to keep him awake, but after his third head-dip, Walsh rearranged Nolan off of him. “Alright, just pull over on the shoulder before the morning traffic hits, or you hit the morning traffic.”
It was hard to argue with a ninja, even one who is only five foot six, so Romulus pulled over and laid down into the first seat, and didn’t fall asleep until Zee woke up to fill the van with her inane chatter. His hand dangled down from the bench, fingers resting against the battered fabric case of Zia’s hand-me-down guitar, and between Noble and Zia’s voices drifting over to him from the front seat, to the rumble of the van beneath him, it almost felt like home.