Title: Morning Twenty-Two
Author: Hieiko
Movie: Till I Met You
Pairing: Bryan/Hazel
Disclaimer: I don't own the movie Till I Met You, or any of the characters.
Summary: One day in a hundred days of courtship.
"What do you want from me?" Hazel asked.
"All I'm asking for is a chance to prove that I love you," Bryan told her.
"Are you sure?" she said. "You might regret it."
Bryan blinked a few times to allow his eyes to adjust to the sunlight. He stared blankly at some bushes several feet away, before hoisting himself upright into a sitting position. He stretched his arms above his head, and yawned. Seventy-nine days to go, he thought.
Wait outside my house for a hundred days to show that you love me, Hazel had told him, twenty-one nights ago.
He hadn't known at first whether he should take her words seriously, but the look on her face told him that she meant it. So even though it sounded like something out of a movie, Bryan slept on the stone bench outside her house that night. The next morning, Hazel found him waiting for her. She told him that he didn't have to stay there all day; he was free to leave in the mornings, but he had to return every night.
That made things just a little bit easier. Though it was uncomfortable sleeping on a stone bench, Bryan had slept on worse. Hazel, of course, didn't know that. There were some things she had yet to learn about him.
Getting up, he turned to face the house. Hazel's bedroom window was still shut. As he'd done for the past few weeks, he went to her window and knocked loudly.
"Go away! Let me go back to sleep..." came the groggy reply from inside.
"I'll see you later," he called out cheerfully, before heading home.
The pleasant smell of fried eggs and pan de sal greeted Bryan when he arrived home. His stomach growled. Without a word, he sat at the table and began to devour breakfast like it was his last meal on earth.
"Good morning to you, too," Gabriel, his surrogate older brother, said.
"Sorry, Kuya. I just felt hungry all of a sudden." Bryan gave him a sheepish smile. "This is delicious!"
Gabriel rolled his eyes. "We eat the same thing every morning."
"Not every morning," Bryan said, in between bites of food. "Sometimes, we..."
Gabriel raised a hand to silence him. "Just shut up and eat. When you're done, go take a shower because you stink. Then meet me at Senor Manuel's house in half an hour." He stood, grabbed his jacket from a nearby chair, and walked out, muttering, "Why he's stupid enough to sleep outside that girl's house, I will never know..."
Bryan just grinned, and took another bite of pan de sal.