Work Text:
In the second story of her home, in a bedroom illuminated by a laptop with its brightness all the way up, Victoria Spring is staring at the blinding light of the bluish screen. She is nestled comfortably beneath the covers, in a pair of borrowed shorts that only sort of cover her legs. They’re Becky’s, and Becky is much shorter than her.
Tori always feels tall next to Becky, but then; next thing she knows she’s talking to Lucas, or to Michael, and then she feels tiny and insignificant. She only feels insignificant next to Michael though, because Michael Holden is magnificent and wonderful and so beautiful and so real that it makes her entire brain fizzle out and explode in a happy sort of way.
God, that sounds pathetic. She feels appropriately embarrassed for a few seconds, and then returns to staring at her screen. It is winter, and outside the bedroom bathed in technicolour blues and slightly muffled moonlight, the world is cold and unforgiving. But in here, it’s warm. In here she can wear too-short shorts and a cropped shirt with no bra, and not feel cold at all. She loves it when her room is like this. It’s one of her favourite things.
Her other favourite things are kissing Michael Holden, blogging, sleeping, and diet lemonade. Kissing Michael is a very new addition to that list, but finds itself at the top anyway. She’s only kissed him like, three times, but every time she does she’s left with the most wonderful kind of aftershocks and she can’t get the taste of him out of her mouth for days after. It
makes her feel special, like some girl in a romcom. Like Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice (which she never actually read), or maybe like Bridget Jones or whoever is famously in romcoms.
Tori wouldn’t know. She doesn’t watch romcoms. She thinks of Michael Holden. And Michael Holden’s mouth, and his hair, which is more free than she could ever hope to be, and his smile and his glasses and those round, lightning eyes. She thinks of his long arms and his messy sort of laughter and his- and she stops herself, and hides under the covers because Christ, she sounds like a middle schooler with her first crush.
She laughs, and it surprises her because she never laughs when she’s alone. But she does laugh, because she actually is having her very first crush. And it’s on Michael. Michael “I’m always angry” Holden. Michael, with his quiet sort of rage and his perfect, sort of crackly, voice. She wants to kiss him a fourth time. She wants to kiss him a billion times. She smiles, into her pillow, and feels childish and embarrassed and does it anyway because who cares? She’s a little bit in love, and that’s okay.
She closes her eyes, because it is two in the morning and she doesn’t feel like getting out from under the covers to scroll through Tumblr. She dreams of curly brown hair and river eyes, she dreams of swimming in moonlight and drowning in a kaleidoscope, and of being kissed a million times over.
•••
At 4:00 AM, her phone rings, because she’d forgotten to put it on silent before she went to sleep. Well, she more tumbled into sleep. A little bit unwillingly, to be honest. Tori groans, and reaches out blindly. She grabs the phone, and considers chucking it at a wall. Instead, she checks who’s calling and finds that it’s Michael. Michael fucking Holden, who she had just dreamt of making out with. She, despite her better judgement (she absolutely knows he’s going to suggest something stupid, and be far too energetic for this hour) clicks the green button and opens the call.
‘What?’ She grunts into the phone’s speaker.
‘Hey,’ says Michael, and though her annoyance doesn’t go away, a little bit of it dies when she hears his voice.
‘Hey,’ she says, letting a vulnerable softness slip into her voice, and then goes back to grunting, ‘What’s up?’
‘I’m…Uhm-..I’m outside?’ He says it like a question, which is not something she has ever known him to do.
‘Oh,’ she says, ‘Outside…my house?’
‘Yeah. Can you come out?’ he asks, which is strange because he always tells her to do things and then really hopes she’ll do them instead of actually asking her to. She usually finds it endearing. The rest of the time, it makes her tell him to fuck off.
‘Yes. Let me get dressed, I’ll be out in a bit.,’ she says, because she’s gotten a little excited at the prospect of them being alone at such a late hour. She thinks the world is more…private, this early in the morning. It always makes her feel like the whole world belongs to her. Tonight, the whole world will belong to them, and that is special in a way that Tori can’t quite articulate.
They say a few more words, and Tori puts the phone on speaker (quietly, of course) so that she can still talk to him while she’s putting a coat on, and shuffling into her most comfortable winter boots. Then she hangs up, mumbling something about needing to be quiet when she leaves her room.
She creeps down the stairs, carefully avoiding the steps that creak, intently listening to her parents’ every snore, to the sound of Oliver shifting about in his tractor bed, of Charlie talking in his sleep. He does that sometimes. Usually, he’s sleep-talking to Nick. Sometimes he sleep-kisses Nick, and leaves his pillows covered in spit. It’s really gross, in Tori’s opinion.
When she’s close enough to the bottom of the staircase to listen to the dull hum of the refrigerator, she lets out the breath she had been holding, and stops being so incredibly careful. Tori starts tiptoeing towards the front door, then feels incredibly stupid for doing it, so she stops and just walks normally the rest of the way.
She gently, half-hesitantly, pushes it open. The cold air hits her so ferociously that she genuinely gasps, wrapping her arms around her own body. She wishes she had been less lazy when getting dressed. She wishes she had put in the effort to take off the too-short shorts. She wishes she had put on sweatpants, maybe. The tiny hairs on her thighs are standing on end, and she doubts she even looks like she’s wearing pants at all, considering the length of her unzipped coat. If it were zipped up, people might mistake her for a nudist.
While she is busy overthinking this, she sees Michael fucking Holden. His hair is a mess. His eyes are wild. She wants to jump into his arm and kiss him so hard that they both tumble, laughing, into a pile of snow. Instead she stares at him, and feels embarrassed about her shorts.
‘Hey,’ he says, and his eyes are starry. The blue one is a kaleidoscope for her to stare into, and the green one is a galaxy to get lost in.
‘Hey,’ she says, and doesn’t resist the fondness that creeps into her voice.
She steps down from the porch, steps into the snow. It crunches under her boots. Tori thinks about how much she loves the sound of snow. She walks - waddles - up to Michael. He is on the sidewalk, using both of his gloved hands to keep his bicycle upright. She breathes out, and watches the clouds of her warm exhalation fog up his glasses. She almost laughs. Almost.
‘Those shorts don’t leave much to the imagination,’ he says, and waggles his eyebrows suggestively. She punches his shoulder.
‘Shut up,’ she says, and actually does laugh this time, ‘I was asleep,’
‘Sorry, sorry!’ He waves his hands in surrender, laughing at her. His bike crashes into the snow. They both stop for a moment. And then they’re both laughing, laughing so loud she’s sure her parents are going to run out, perhaps waving knives, and chase Micheal away. They don’t, and even if they did, Tori would have kept laughing all day. Night. Morning. Who cares? She laughs again.
Michael is looking at her. She looks at him. He grins, that manic sort of grin that makes her want to run into his arms and also makes her want to cry a bit because he’s so perfect. A while ago, she might’ve told herself that she doesn’t deserve him. Now, when the thought arises, she tells it to shut the fuck up while she’s trying to appreciate everything about Michael.
‘Why are you here?’ She asks when their giggling dies down, in a way that most people would think of as rude, but she knows that Michael understands her better than anyone. Even Charlie. It means that he understands that she’s genuinely asking, rather than being sarcastic.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, suddenly serious. Michael Mood-swings Holden looks at her in a curious sort of way. She takes a look at him and thinks that she is definitely a bit more in love than she previously thought. She loves him, and she isn’t going to say it. But it’s true, and she hopes he knows it, like she’s telepathically confessing her adoration.
‘What?,’ she asks, ‘Did you just miss me that much?’ She waggles her eyebrows in the same way that he always does. Like they’re talking about sexy stuff.
She doesn’t know why she says it. But she does, and then he reaches out to touch her face, and smiles his manic smile.
‘I think,’ he says, in a tone meant just for Tori Spring, ‘That might actually be the reason.’
‘Christ, Michael. You wake me up at four in the fucking morning, just because you missed me?’ She smiles when she says it, so he knows she means it in a “Oh my God, I love you so much, you crazy bitch,” way and not a “Oh my God, you are so ridiculous,” way
‘What can I say? You woke up for me at four in the fucking morning, didn’t you? What does that say about you?’
She smiles, her cheeks straining. She’s so fucking cold right now. She hugs him. It comes as a surprise to both of them. And, much in the way she had so fondly imagined a few minutes prior, they tumble into the snow. She laughs. He laughs.
‘You’re freezing to death, aren’t you?’ he murmurs, wrapping his arms around her. She’s on top of him, and they are lying in the snow, and it is four in the fucking morning.
‘So. Fucking. Cold’ she whispers, nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck. He shivers, probably because her nose is so cold. She shivers too, because she’s quite sure her bones have turned into ice.
She breathes in. Michael smells of warmth. He smells human, but he also smells faintly of some sort of magic. Like wildflowers and spiced rum. Impulsively, she kisses his neck, because it’s right there, and because she really really wants to.
He makes a startled sort of sound - halfway between a gasp and a giggle. She likes that noise. Commits it to memory. She wants to do it again, but he runs his gloved fingers through her hair, and it’s much too cold to be thinking about kissing.
‘You should’ve put trousers on. Even tights would’ve been alright.’ he tells her, and it’s almost like he’s scolding a child.
‘Didn’t want to,’ she says, and shrugs. This results in her hitting her head against his chin. They both laugh again. Tori laughs quite a lot when she’s with Michael. Even though he’s always sort of angry, he has this cheerful madness to him. It must be contagious.
Suddenly, Tori decides to stop being a coward and actually tell him something. There’s not particularly any reason behind it, other than it being four in the morning and him being here. With her. Holding her.
‘Are we dating?’ she asks, uncertainly. Her voice wobbles. She doesn’t know if it’s because her whole body is dying of cold, or because she’s nervous. Probably both.
‘I don’t know. I think…’ he pauses, takes her face in his hand and pulls it up so he can look at her through those thick glass lenses, ‘I think we’re sort of…past dating? I don’t know. I think this is too comfortable to be dating, like, I’m not really very nervous around you, not like people are when they get together with someone they like. I think I’ve sort of been dating you for ages, and now we’re just…something else. Something more.’
‘Poetic,’ Tori teases, but she knows everything he’s said is true. She pauses. Then she nods, ‘You’re right, though. I think you might be perfect. Really, I do. Or…I don’t know. I think-‘ she stops again, because she feels a bit cringe, and a bit pathetic for what she’s about to say. She says it anyway. ‘I think you’re the closest I’m ever going to get to having a soulmate. I think, Michael Holden, that I might actually be in love with you,’
He stares at her, and she can see his thoughts moving. Gears in a clock. Or clouds in a storm. Or maybe both. Michael is a little bit crazy. He looks confused, then curious, then shocked, then confused again, and then he looks so happy she thinks he might start crying.
‘I think I might be in love with you too, Victoria Spring.’ She cringes at the use of her full name, tries to look away because she hates people seeing her blush. Can’t see you if you can’t see them, that’s her motto. He isn’t having it, takes her face in his hands and smiles at her, a bit like he’s just been told he’s won the lottery.
‘You’re so pretty,’ he tells her, ‘I don’t say it much, but you really are. You’re so gorgeous, Victoria Spring,’ he watches, with his stupid beautiful smug face, his eyes crinkling at the corners, as her face turns red for a lot of different reasons. His hands on her face. His use of her full name. The way he compliments her. Hypothermia. Lots of reasons.
She can’t think of anything to say, so instead she says something very dumb to fill the silence. Or, more accurately, blurts something very dumb. ‘I want to kiss you so many times that I never get your face out of my head’ she says.
It is his turn to blush. She blushes too, because she feels immensely stupid for saying that. Also because her face is freezing off. For a long time they say nothing, and just lie there in the snow, blushing. Then he clears his throat.
‘Can I kiss you? That many times, I mean. Can I kiss you so many times that you never forget me?’ He asks, and she can’t see his expression in the dark, because the orange light of the streetlamp is a bit dull.
‘I will literally die if you don’t,’ she tells him. He laughs. He kisses her cheek. She’s surprised his lips don’t fall off from the cold.
Then she’s smiling, getting up. Helping him to his feet. Zipping up her coat because she is freezing. He helps dust snow off her. She helps him do the same to himself. His poor back, she thinks.
Then, when he’s done getting the last of the icy white powder off of himself, she grabs him by the collar of his jacket and pulls him down to her height, and then she kisses him as hard as she physically can. He grips her waist. She grins into his mouth, because the whole world feels all pink and fluffy and she is most certainly in love. With Michael fucking Holden. She is in love with Michael Holden.
‘I’m so cold,’ she says, when she pulls away - after a few seconds of breathing hard, of course.
‘Go inside, Tori. And next time, sleep in something warmer. She flips him off, kisses him again. A chaste, soft sort of press of her lips to his own. It is gentle. Innocent. So unlike both of them.
‘I’m glad we’re in love,‘ she says.
‘Me too,’ he tells her.
He fishes his bike out from the snowy path. She hugs him. They kiss again. That’s six times on the lips, now. Only a few hundred million to go, she thinks.
They say goodbye. He waves as he cycles off. She goes inside.
When she gets upstairs, she turns off her laptop, because her room is too bright with it on. And then she tumbles into her bed, and if she rolls around on the mattress and squeals a little into her pillow, there’s no one awake to judge her. And even if someone is, it doesn’t matter. She’s allowed to do this. She’s in love, after all.
That thought makes her squeal a little more. Then she goes to sleep, and dreams of Micheal Fucking Holden, and his perfect fucking grin.