Destined To Explode

I hadn’t thought that being cooped up in the hotel today was going to be any fun at all.

Alex and I had argued that morning. I having made what I had meant to be an innocent comment about Lisa publicly bad mouthing me over the likes of Twitter, and whether Alex was tired or just touchy seeing as he had only just woken up, I don’t know but he had ranted for a while about it coming with the territory, that she was going to be sour and that he was sure that Rick would react the same way if he knew of us.

Not something I had expected to happen on my first full day back but I had let it fly over the top of my head as much as possible and gone to join Cass and Jack for breakfast, leaving Alex to continue his ridiculously long shower that he had started just after he finished lecturing me.

“Trust it to rain once you get here, Zicarelli.” Zack mutters as I take a seat opposite him, not taking my eyes off of my food as I throw a packet of Splenda in his direction, laughing to myself as I hear his protest about it landing in his cereal. “Just… did you have to?”

“Don’t blame me for the weather, Merrick.” I look up and smile. “You’re the one sporting a shirt – it probably thinks that it has to because you’re finally covering your chest.”

“Jeff told me that it wasn’t suitable to come down here without one.”

I smirk as Jeff chuckles, giving him the high five he wants from across the table, taking the light punch Zack gives my arm before I can move it out of his way. “Don’t make me kick you in the balls now, Zacky.”

“You know that you’re not allowed to use that move, Poppy. We can’t kick you anywhere to induce the same pain.” Jack points out as he sits in the spare chair to my right, an array of cereals all mixed in a bowl and a plate full of pancakes making up his breakfast. “Unless we somehow make you give birth-”

“Gonna stop you right there, Jack.” Rian looks like he’s ready to burst into laughter as he wanders past to find a seat on the long table. “Breakfast table talk only, please.”

“Why wasn’t that breakfast talk?” Jack turns back to me. “I mean, it wasn’t that vulgar.”

“I don’t know whose table you’ve been sitting at Jack, but for now, just eat your food.”

Alex stalks in a few minutes later, just as I’m getting up with Vinny, Drew, Travis and Patrick to go seek out the game room that the hotel apparently had, just about everyone else saying that they would be joining us when they were done getting their fill of breakfast, seeing as the weather had ruined all plans of another day on the beach or up on the roof.

I don’t ignore him purposely, but he doesn’t take notice of the fact that I’m there at all, he just slips into a seat by Evan without even bothering to go get food or greet anyone else, so I leave without another thought.

“Poppy!” I turn my head at the sound of my name, Cassadee running to catch us as we trail down the corridor that the game room is situated at the end of. “Holy fuck, you guys walk fast!”

“Don’t give yourself a heart attack now.” Patrick laughs as Cass stops to bend over, taking in a few deep breaths before she stands and directs a kick towards her bandmates leg, purposely missing and shooing him off to go and catch up with the rest of the boys.

“What’s going on between you and Alex then, honey?”

“It’s nothing, Cass.”

“That’s coincidental, because Rian just asked Alex the same questions and he answered exactly the same with that same ‘I’m bullshitting you’ look on his face!” She smirks. “Come on, let a girlfriend in.”

“We had an argument.”

“What about? Maybe I can shed some light on just how stupid you’re both being?”

“I don’t even know. I brought up the shit that Lisa’s been saying about me, you know when the boys were tweeting that they were looking forward to me coming back and he just totally bugged out about it. It was like a full lecture on how I should suck it up and the fans were saying a lot worse and, I don’t know. Bad morning, I’m hoping.”

“He’ll get over it and come apologise, I bet.” She smiles, linking her arm through mine. “Now, come on; we have to go and kick these boys’ asses at every game that they have.”

Maybe today could be some fun.

~*~*~*~

I leave the room after a few hours, Dan and Lipshaw joining me on what we were calling the ‘lunch run’ which basically meant getting a cab, making that person wait as we go and fetch everyone’s orders from the nearest Subway and then racing back so that no one’s sandwich’s got cold.

Just as we’re rounding the corner back into the lobby, Alex emerges with his head down, knocking the other Alex off of his feet as they collide.

“Dude, sorry!” My Alex apologises, pulling the man up. “I wasn’t looking. My bad.”

“No sweat.”

They chat for a few minutes, Dan and I waiting in silence until Alex shifts his gaze to me, gesturing to the side. “Can we talk?”

“Yeah, sure. You guys have everyone’s orders, right?”

Dan nods in affirmation. “You want some Subway, Alex?” Alex reels off his complicated order, Dan quickly scribbling it down. “If you’re not in the games room when we get back, I’ll ring you.”

“Thanks, Dandy.”

We watch them leave and then Alex is grabbing my hand and leading us towards the elevators in the lobby. “You mind doing this in the room?”

You know, I hadn’t panicked when he had asked to talk, it was something that I had been wanting as well, and if I hadn’t have bumped into him when I did then I probably would have sought him out later in the day but now that he wasn’t willing to do this somewhere semi-public – I was worried.

“You’re not going to break this off with me are you?” I ask as we settle in the ride up to our floor. “That would be really shitty of you.”

Alex laughs with a shake of his head, hand squeezing my own. “Of course I’m not. Idiot.”

“Good.”

Panic over.

We travel the rest of the way up to the room in silence, Alex’s hand still linked with mine, and once he has the door open, he pulls us over to the small couch, making sure that I sit impossibly close to him as he slings an arm over my shoulders.

“I actually just wanted to apologise for this morning.” He mutters, looking at me. “I was an asshole.”

I shrug. “You want to tell me why you acted out like that?”

He sighs. “It’s just, Lisa. She’s just everywhere at the minute. I mean, since you left, and I guess that she found out from the guys’ twitters, she just keeps texting me, ringing me and just generally getting up in my business, telling me that while you were gone that she should come visit and I just… I’m angry. I mean, yesterday when you came back, she had been constantly phoning and I was just so pissed off at everything and I don’t know, I feel like I didn’t act like I should have.” He shakes his head as I let my hand drop from my hair to land on his knee, giving it a tight squeeze. “And then you mentioned her this morning, and I know that I shouldn’t have bugged out like I did but I just don’t know why she can’t leave everything alone.”

“She’s obviously just acting out. I mean, if I was her and we had broken up and got back together as often as you two did, I guess that I would have expected for this to be the same thing, if you get what I mean? She was probably expecting you not to get with someone else and want her back by now.”

“Yeah, but she knows that I’m with you.”

“But she also knows that you were with both of us in High School. Who are we to say that she doesn’t think that this is the same thing all over again?”

“I suppose so.” He shakes his head, leaning it on top of mine. “See, there you go again, clearing everything up.”

“You just muddle things up that are already pretty easy to understand.” I smirk. “If you’re done moping around, I say that we go and get our sandwiches and you let me beat your ass at Sonic.”

“Dream on.”

Notes