Romeo, Romeo

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

ooc: I'm sure you guys are used to my crazy late posts by now, but I'm really sorry! This should have been posted a while ago, it's set the day after the Hallowe'en Party. =]

She was trying not to laugh; Russ could see that pretty well.
“She said that?”
Russ sighed. “I quoted.”
Madeleine bit her lip to stop the automatic smile in its tracks, before it stuck on her face and made Russ want to swear at her. “It was a no?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, it was a no, or yes, it was a yes?”
The bítch was enjoying this.
“Yes, it was a no. What the hell d’you think, Madeleine?”
Madeleine smiled. “Oooh, touchy. Honestly. That ever happened before?”
“Again, what the fúck d’you think?”
She smiled serenely, kicking her legs out and pushing the tyre swing into motion. “Well, if you’re going to swear at me, then I don’t think anything, do I?”
Russ made a disgruntled noise and rolled his eyes. “No, sir.”
This time, though, the gender-confusion didn’t leave the mark it usually did. She just laughed. Maybe after doing it for seven months, it was getting a little old…
Saying that, though, it had worked yesterday.
“Maybe that’s why she turned you down, you know,” Madeleine laughed from her tyre perch. “Your foul mouth.”
“Because you’re one to talk,” Russ snapped from the grassy floor, where he was leaning against a birch tree.
“What are you talking about? I don’t fúcking swear!”
“Oh, you’re funny.”
Russ was wondering why he’d bothered to even mention this to Madeleine. First of all, she’d given him the advice to – what were her words?: “Take it seriously, Russ, it might work. Stop expecting everything else to do the work for you and just ask her out, why don’t you?” – which had gotten him turned down and mortified him – and she was right, that never friggin’ happened. Ever.
“Right okay, go over what she said again,” Madeleine asked, trying not to laugh again.
“I already have,” Russ sighed, deciding it was a better idea just to keep his head. “Why’d you find it so funny, anyway?”
Madeleine giggled – giggled – and pushed back on the swing. “It’s just… ironic that you picked probably the only girl in the school that wouldn’t have said yes. Think about it. That’s why I accused you of wanting what you couldn’t have.”
Accused? Accused sounded about right. Madeleine hadn’t been a bit happy when he’d asked her advice on this before, but she seemed much more cheery now.
Sadist.
“But… I’m also quite amused because it seems to have brought you down a peg or two.” Then she giggled again. “Oh my God, Imogen will be thrilled when she hears.”
“Why the hell would you tell my mother about this?”
“You know why.”
God, sometimes he really hated her.
“Bítch.”
She smiled blissfully. “Jerk.”
Russ snorted derisively, closing his eyes so he didn’t have to look at her smug face anymore.
It was the first of November, All Soul’s Day. Seeing how it was traditionally a day to remember the dead, and it was three days after the anniversary of Shaun’s death, Madeleine had hit off on the idea of heading out to the nearest site, seeing how Shaun’s grave was 7 hours away. Just to, y’know, talk about and remember him in a place that was actually relevant, and to get away from Orchid. Russ had just been thrilled that she hadn’t decided to leave at four in the morning to go up to Lylis Glen Cemetery. Russ really hated those places, and he remembered the grimness of Shaun’s funeral (one of the only funerals he’d ever been to) all too well to want to go back and visit the scene. The one time he’d actually gone to visit Shaun’s grave left him with a horrible bleak feeling, because he just couldn’t get the images of the black clad mourners or the eerie knowledge of being surrounded by bodies in boxes out of his head. The whole thing left him with a sort of horror of being buried, tradition be dámned.
So really, he was just grateful she’d decided against that.
So they had. They’d left when Russ got back from walking Jake with Lynn, and taken the train out to Riverton, about fifteen miles outside of Cardsdale, and wound up sitting out round the back of the camp, just chatting and telling stories, all of that. Nothing sad, of course, Madel made sure of that. They both had too much experience of dealing with the fallout of his death to bring that up again. So sharing stories it was. Madel had been literally in tears of laughter at some points, and Russ was actually kind of glad they’d come out here, even if Riverton was in an even worse state than Cardsdale. It just reminded him of the state she’d been in after Shaun died where she couldn’t even hear his name without flinching, and here she was talking and laughing about him.
But, even with all the happy celebrations of someone’s life, talking about someone who died always does bring on a sort of sadness, so after a while, Madeleine’s laughter kind of gave out and she went quiet, so they’d thought it best to change the subject. By saying “Oh! I saw you dancing with Lynn last night, how did that go?” So, this was her way of distraction, and even if it bugged the hell out of Russ, at least she was laughing again.
“So, why do you think she said no?”
Even with his eyes closed, Russ could see the huge grin on her face.
“Well?”
“I don’t know, Madel, why do you think she said no?” he asked, sighing exasperatedly.
“Could be the very bad temper you’re displaying now,” she cackled, and it was oh so easy for Russ to imagine her sitting on the swing in witch’s gear, complete with green skin and pointy black hat.
“Uh huh.”
“Or it could be how much of an idiot you made yourself, Romeo.”
Despite himself, Russ cringed, last night’s mortification washing over him again. Christ Almighty. But Madeleine was right, he had made an idiot of himself, so, he smirked. “It was your idea but, alright, I’ll give you that.”
“That’s not like you, to be so… awkward.”
“Well, it was the first time I’d asked anyone out properly. Most people take the hint.”
“Or you take theirs.”
“S’actly.”
“And you screwed it up?” He could hear the smile in her voice.
Russ sighed, without opening his eyes. “Yes.”
There was a pause, before Madeleine giggled again. He opened his eyes and glanced at her in irritation as she tried to muffle the laughter. “It’s not that funny.”
“It is,” she said, grinning. “This is your karma.”
“Aw, c’mon, you don’t believe in karma.”
Madeleine didn’t even bother to smother this laugh. “I do now!”
Russ contented himself with rolling his eyes instead of voicing the insult he had building in his throat.
“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, you admitted that you were hardly… smooth.”
“No, I wasn’t, but isn’t everyone allowed one cock-up?”
Madeleine tilted her head with a smile. “Of course they are, but you’re hardly inexperienced with girls.”
“True.”
“You must really like her.”
Russ sighed. “Hadn’t we established this?”
She grinned. “Yes. But I wouldn’t feel too bad about not asking her out smoothly. You should have heard Lee when he asked me out.”
Yeah, but, well… that was Lee, wasn’t it? Not that he’d say that aloud. She’d murder him, and she now had, well, more than enough ammo to take karma into her own hands for that. But Lee was Lee, and Russ was Russ. Yeah, his mouth tended to run on ahead of him, but he hadn’t mortified himself like that before.
Madeleine sighed. “The sarcastic comment is waiting to burst out, isn’t it?”
It was Russ’ turn to grin now. “Sorry.”
She rolled her eyes and kicked back on the swing, her silver pumps shining in the sunlight, and there was a minute of silence. Thank God. Russ closed his eyes for a minute, enjoying the peace and the sense of air and space around him. Space. Now that school was officially on a break for half-term, Russ could now legitimately go to places like this without the thought that he may have to face the Inquisition when he got back. Because he now had the choice of leaving for a couple of days, it eased some of the tension, the trapped feeling that he was getting. He’d called it a prison, and each time he did it Madel started to purse her lips. It wasn’t like a prison, not really, but he couldn’t understand her adaptation to it. It was … it was stone. And that was his problem with the place. Stone walls. It wasn’t a bad place, and it definitely had its advantages, but no matter how much he tried, Russ knew that it would be a long time before he could ever get used to being in a boarding school – more time than he had there, thank God. How Madel was planning to give their lifestyle up, he’d no idea. Air, space, freedom. He got the point, he did. She was in love, she was going to get married and that was all she needed – ‘sides, he really couldn’t see Lee living in a trailer. But Russ… he couldn’t do it. Or maybe he could, if it came to it but he wouldn’t be happy living any other way. It was just… space. He needed space.
That was why he’d been coming out here so often, wasn’t it? To get out and to get air. Be in an open space – it made sense. His head was clearer out here.
“Russ…”
And then, that clarity and peace was done.
“Yeah?” he groaned, looking over at her.
“Seriously, though, do you have any idea why she might have said no?”
Yeah, God, how he wished that clarity would come back again. It would really help just to know, wouldn’t it? “No. Do you have any suggestions?”
Madeleine sighed softly, as though disappointed, which immediately aroused Russ’ suspicions. She knew something that she wasn’t telli- wait, of course she knew something she wasn’t telling him. She was a girl. Chrissake.
“I don’t know, Russ.”
Ha, liar.
He pulled himself up straight and stared at her, as her eyes ducked and dodged his gaze. “Hey, what is it?”
“I don’t know, Russ,” she repeated, avoiding looking at him. Definitely something she wanted to say. Madeleine only ever avoided your gaze if there was something she wanted to get out of her system and didn’t know how to put it and stay in the boundaries of tact. But it would only take three seconds for her silence to snap.
One, two, three.
And bang on cue: “I just can’t help thinking that I see exactly why she said no. In fact, I think she did the best thing.”
… okay, where had that come from? After Madel’s big pep talk a couple weeks ago, she’d sure as hell changed her tune from the “oh-you-should-ask-her-out” song. Or maybe she’d known that Sally would say no all along.
“Right.”
He couldn’t help sounding irritated – that was pretty harsh, wasn’t it? God, he couldn’t be that bad. He knew that Madeleine had a deep ingrained distrust of him – after all, hadn’t she written “Behave” in bold letters at the bottom of the note she’d passed him that first training session with Lynn? – when it came to female Warriors, but Madeleine of all bloody people should know-
“I’m not apologising for that,” she said defiantly. “You should have been able to work that out already.”
It was too early and Russ hadn’t drank enough caffeine to understand what the hell she was on about. “Elaborate on that one for me, would you?”
“Well, your track record isn’t exactly-”
Right, okay, so she was hitting this nerve again.
“My track record’s fine.”
“Christ, Russ, for someone who should know so much about girls you’re really naïve, you know that?”
Russ rolled his eyes and slid his Benson and Hedges out of his pocket, deciding it might be a better idea to ignore that piece of rhetoric if he could. Nothing good ever came out of it.
“You’re going to be dead before you’re thirty, you know that?”
“Huh?”
She didn’t bother to respond; just frowned and nodded at the cigarette he was lighting up.
“We’re still on this subject?”
“We’re still going to be on this subject until you listen to the fact that they’ll kill you and you’re not supposed to be smoking in Orchid.”
Russ grinned, taking a drag. “First, I don’t smoke in Orchid. I smoke outside. And your battles could kill me, so let me enjoy these while I can.”
“Well, they could kill me too but so can my passive smoking from your cigarette smoke, which I don’t particularly enjoy.”
“Says the former smoker,” he laughed, exhaling. “Besides, the smoke isn’t blowing in your direction.”
“Russ, I smoked one a day for like, three weeks.”
“That’s still, what, twenty-one days worth of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide in your system. I hope you’re happy with yourself, your lungs must be black and you’re going to be dead before you’re thirty, you know that?”
She had the grace to smile. “Touché. But I’d really rather you gave them up.”
“Tell you what, I’ll give them up the day you get rid of that witch-cat, okay?” he said, taking another drag despite her wince.
Madeleine looked at him, as if trying to make a decision, before biting her lip and nodding shortly. “Fine. I’ll put an advert in the Cardsdale Times, then.”
… she wasn’t serious, was she? No, she couldn’t be serious. It didn’t stop him spluttering mid-exhale, though, making him cough and choke on his cigarette smoke. Which, of course, just made her burst into laughter again.
“See? Smoker’s rattle already. What are we going to do with you, hmm?”
“You know, I really thought for a minute there that my long, healthy, smoke-free life was worth more to you than your demon,” he said, mid-cough. “Then, I remember that this is you.”
It was a good thing she wasn’t serious, though. Russ wasn’t about to give up his nicotine habit for the sake of the mangy, flea-ridden, evil bítch.
Mocha, that was, not Madel.
Though sometimes it was close.
“You do it to yourself, Russ,” Madeleine laughed. “You’re having a bit of a rough time in this conversation, though. First Lynn, now Benson and Hedges. Come on, rejoin here.”
“Forgive me if I’m struggling. Guess how much sleep I got last night, thanks to that dámn party.”
“Not much, I’m guessing,” she grinned brightly. “But you’ve no excuse, I stayed up to help with cleaning-up. Psychokinesis makes it much faster. So it looks like neither of us slept much.”
He’d slept for approximately ten minutes, towards the end of the morning before his alarm clock went off. Not only did the party run on until the early hours of the morning when a very píssed off Professor Simpson arrived to tell them to shut up, but the other guys in his dorm were all Spies, and so were banging in and out of the room for hours afterwards whilst engaging in the clean-up operation, cursing loudly about all the glitter that ended up in their hair – “Who the fúck am I, Edward Cullen?” “Ha! You wish you were Edward Cullen!”, which of course begged the question: who the hell’s Edward Cullen? – and all the streamers that they’d had to pin up on the walls beforehand. And, though Russ wouldn’t have admitted it, he wouldn’t have slept much anyway – he was too busy giving himself a mental beating for allowing his mouth to run on ahead of him. It wasn’t only that, though. Part of him was panicking about how their walk the next morning would turn out – the aftermath of what happened last night had been hellishly awkward, so would it have been like that the next morning? Thankfully it hadn’t, but it had still been worrying him last night (and, admittedly, he was worrying about the fact that he was worrying because he had no idea what that meant, and he should have just shut up and gone to sleep) because obviously Russ didn’t want that to have messed up a friendship by being an idiot. Yes, he’d wanted to ask her out for a while. Yes, if she’d said yes, it probably would have been worth the risk. But it backfired on him and Russ didn’t know if she’d be weird with him – and he hoped he wouldn’t be weird with her. Like he’d said, if she wasn’t awkward, he wasn’t going to be awkward either. But he knew it probably wouldn’t be quite the same. There was going to be a wariness surrounding the innuendo and smut that made up a fair amount of their conversations – it wasn’t going to be the same. She’d be on her guard around him, as opposed to how natural they both were with each other. Things would be different, and if this didn’t work out, Russ… well, he didn’t know what he’d do. He liked her laugh and he liked her smile, and if she didn’t smile at him anymore…
Well, yeah. He liked her, yes, like that. But he liked her as a friend too, and he didn’t want to have screwed it up.
He was able to tell last night that Lynn was surprised, something which frustrated him more than anything else. Surely, surely, surely it wasn’t that hard to tell that he was interested in her like that, you know, somewhere between the flirting and the jokes and any of their conversations? Any hints dropped had missed the mark. In one way, he didn’t mind, because it had meant that they could be friends, but in another way it was easily a very, very frustrating thing.
“What are you thinking about?”
Madeleine’s voice broke through his train of thought, bringing him back to the present with that question, beloved by loved-up girls, hated by guys.
Russ shook his head, stubbing out his cigarette on the grassy ground. “How beautiful you are, obviously. Christ, Madel, what a question.”
“Fair enough,” Madeleine chuckled, mirroring the shake of his head with her own dark curls.
But even though the question was idiotic, he answered it anyway. “I was just wondering how things got lost in translation.”
“You’re usually pretty direct,” she said, tilting her head. “I guess hints confuse things.”
“What, hints like outright flirting?”
Madeleine grinned, but her face fell. “To be honest, Russ, I’m not surprised she said it wouldn’t be a good idea. I didn’t think she would think it was.”
His head went up at that. “What? Why’s that?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted slowly. “It’s just … don’t take this the wrong way, but if I were in her place, I wouldn’t find you exactly… trustworthy.”
Untrustworthy? That was a new one. Russ opened his mouth to counter that argument, with the reasons Madeleine show have known by now – he didn’t lie, he didn’t cheat, etc, and Madeleine of all people should know that he could be trusted – but she got there first.
“I’m not saying you’re not trustworthy, Russ, because you know I know that you are. I of all people should know that by now. It’s just… well, before all of that, I would have trusted you about as far as I could throw you.”
Well, there was a revelation, and one he hadn’t been expecting.
“Really?”
“Really,” she said, arching an eyebrow at his surprise. “You shouldn’t be surprised – and to be honest, Russ, that is how a lot of people feel about you. They wouldn’t trust you.”
“Name one person.”
“… Do you really want me to go there?”
On second thoughts, he probably didn’t. So he sighed. “No, probably not. Point taken.”
“It’s just… your reputation goes before you.”
Russ rolled his eyes to heaven. “Isn’t it funny how I’ve actually been behaving myself 85 per cent of the time in this school and I have a reputation here when I never did before?”
“Well, teenage girls like to talk,” Madeleine shrugged.
He laughed. “Okay, I don’t believe you now. Surely there are more interesting things to talk about than my “reputation”.”
She looked at him quizzically, before apparently sensing that he was serious, and tapping her feet on the ground. “Well, you know a lot of people gossip about the Heads. You’re my cousin, therefore you’re associated with the heads.”
“Even so-”
“Not only that, but you’re a figure of interest, coming in all dark and moody,” she continued, pausing while Russ laughed at her. “Thanks to you, a fair amount of people also know that we have a history, and that’s my love life, which, as you know-”
“-Has been a source of uncalled-for interest ever since you started dating Lee. I do know this, Madeleine, I’m not an idiot. But I don’t see how that’s rel-”
“That’s not all of it,” she warned. “When a girl gets hurt or jilted by a guy, she goes to her friends, and believe me, Russ, word spreads.”
What an impressive list. Madeleine had clearly thought about this beforehand, and though he knew he shouldn’t find it funny… a little bit of it was.
Russ nodded, unable to keep a smirk from his face. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, right?”
“Hell hath no fury like said scorned woman’s friends,” Madel corrected, with a smile.
He nodded again, mulling this over. It made sense, he’d give her that – even if he didn’t believe that his life was of that much interest to people. A Head’s cousin he may be, but he wasn’t a Head or a deputy or anything like that; he wasn’t of enough social status to be interesting like that. But academically, what she was saying made sense. Word spread, and Russ gained a reputation for treating girls badly. That was what she was saying.
“Right, I get where you’re coming from, but there’s a flaw there.”
Madeleine sighed, blowing out her frustration. “What?”
“I haven’t scorned any of Sally’s friends, and I’m guessing by now she probably knows me well enough to trust me a bit more than the, er, rumours tell her to. We are friends, you realise.”
“No, I realised,” Madeleine said, leaning back on her swing, clearly bored with having to explain this to Russ like he was a slow child. “But, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter if you’ve scorned her friends or not. Like I said, word spreads and your reputation grows. Now, I don’t know her friends but I’m going to bet that they haven’t heard of a good side to you, and they’re worried about how close you two are getting.”
And now confusion. “Why’d they be worried?”
“Well, few people would trust you.”
Okay, this again.
“Right, hold on a second here,” Russ said, sitting up straight and making eye contact with her. “You keep saying I’m not trustworthy, but you haven’t yet given a reason why. Am I a liar?”
“No, but-”
“Am I a cheater?”
She gritted her teeth, before apparently deciding to shelve all attempts at tact. “No, that’s not what it is. It’s because you’re a womanizer.”
A womanizer. Right, what?
“You mean they think I’m a-”
“No, I mean you are a womanizer, Russ,” Madeleine said shortly. “There’s no opinion involved in there, it’s a fact.”
There was a pause after that statement as Madeleine averted her gaze and Russ leant back against the tree again, fuming slightly. A womanizer. Right.
A few seconds later. “So, if I’m a womanizer, how come you trust me now?”
Madeleine glanced towards him, worrying her lip. “Because of how you helped me after Shaun, of course.”
Oh, right, of course. Because that was completely relevant. “Oh, well, I’m glad there was a silver lining to that, then.”
Her reaction to that was immediate – she looked as though she’d been slapped, her face a white mask of shock. His reaction to that was also immediate: as soon as the words fell out of his mouth, his irritation disappeared to be replaced by a wave of guilt that hit right between the ribs.
“Shít, Madel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“I know,” she said, through gritted teeth, avoiding his gaze and looking instead at the cluster of caravans close to them. “It’s just your temper.”
“S’not an excuse,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have said that. You know I didn’t mean it.”
“No, no, I know,” she sighed, shaking her head to try and recover herself.
There was another pause, with Russ’ guilt radiating through the air. “What I meant to say,” he interrupted it with, “was how is that relevant to my ‘womanizing’?”
She frowned, but he could see that she’d recovered from it and forgiven him. “I don’t know, actually. I never thought about it. I guess… you didn’t hurt me once then, and I was easily bruised, so I knew you wouldn’t hurt me again, I suppose.”
“Makes sense,” he muttered, but if he was honest, that didn’t make sense in the slightest. It was as good as she could give, and after that Russ had no right to ask for anything more.
“No, it doesn’t,” she said, with a gentle laugh. “I don’t know. I just do. Saying that, I wouldn’t trust you with any of my friends, hence why I’m not so keen on the idea of you going out with Lynn.”
“You think I’d hurt her?”
“Not deliberately,” she conceded. “It’s just the way you roll, you love them and leave them. It’s why I asked you to stay away from female Warriors most of all, because I couldn’t risk you seriously hurting someone, and they need to be-”
“On top of their game,” he finished, before adding sarcastically. “No, I get it. I’m just glad you think so highly of me.”
Madeleine sighed. “It’s not that I think badly of you. Sure, you can admire someone in one way and hate something else about them, you know that.”
“Very true,” he admitted, with a grin. “So, what you’re saying is that you trust me, but not with women?”
She smiled. “In a nutshell. No offence.”
“None taken,” Russ smiled back, before pausing for a second, pensive. “Would you trust me with Lynn?”
That was the important question here, after all.
Madeleine sighed, taking a second to muse on it. “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never seen or heard of you getting like this over a girl, and I think her turning you down may have humbled you a bit-”
“That’s true,” he laughed, however inappropriately.
“So, that could have been for the best, but… I don’t know Russ, I don’t think you can help it. It’s just what you do.”
“Did I hurt you?”
Thankfully, she didn’t need to think about it. “No. I was a bit píssed when you dumped me that first time, but no. And when we were – well, serious-ish, you wouldn’t have hurt me like that, but if we’d gone on-”
“We’d have hurt each other.”
Madeleine nodded sombrely. “Yeah.”
Russ frowned for a second. “But… right. When you said “hurt you like that”, by that you meant… like I’ve hurt or almost-hurt other girls, right?”
“Right.”
“By leaving them?”
“If you want to use that choice of word,” Madeleine said, suddenly grinning and setting her swing in motion again. “There are loads I could substitute there.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Russ said, not rising to the joke. “So, you think that I’ll treat Lynn like one in a line, and I could hurt her like the others, that’s what you’re saying?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
That’s what she was saying. He couldn’t pretend to completely understand her, because, let’s face it – he never got close enough to anyone to hurt them. Sure, he píssed people off, but he didn’t think he’d hurt anyone. Maybe it was wishful thinking but he could see where she was coming from here. He just hoped to God that wasn’t the reason for her turning him down. He didn’t want her to think badly of him, and that right there was a very bad reflection.
“There’s a difference, though,” he said slowly.
Madeleine looked back over at him. “Hmm?”
“There’s a difference.”
“Between?”
“Her and the other girls,” he answered.
“What’s the difference?”
Russ looked up at her, and frowned. “What, I have to tell you? That’s not good enough for you?”
“If you want my help, you need to tell me the difference,” she grinned wickedly. “I could already see there was a difference, now I just need to hear what it is.”
Russ paused, weighing up whether the constant mick-taking he’d get for the rest of his life from her was worth it, before deciding he didn’t give a shít. He had more than enough ammunition to last the rest of her life, this didn’t matter. “I don’t want… well, no, I never want to hurt anybody. But I really hate the idea of hurting her. That’s …part of it.”
“Part of it.”
“Yeah.”
Another pause, before Madeleine exhaled loudly. “Come on, I need to hear more than that.”
But even with the decision that he’d made seven seconds ago, Russ knew that there was an awful that he wasn’t going to let Madeleine hear.
He wasn’t going to let her hear that even though he really wasn’t a morning person, he actually liked getting up early in the morning to go walking with Lynn – he liked the fact that she made him a morning person.
He wasn’t going to say how much he liked her smile, or how it never failed to make him smile back. And on that subject, he liked her laugh, the sincerity of it
He wasn’t about to bring up the fact that he liked her freckles, even though she hated them.
For several reasons, he wasn’t going to mention the fun they had, and all the jokes she made, how funny she was and how much she made him laugh.
And he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Madeleine that he even liked the fact that Lynn was able to make him panic like this, that she was able to stop him from sleeping.
“I’m waiting, Romeo.” Madeleine’s slow smile was audible in that sentence.
Russ couldn’t help but smirk. “I know. I’m just trying to decide whether it’s worth answering you or not.”
“Come on, I’m hardly that bad,” she said, rolling her eyes. “One thing, just.”
“Alright, one thing?” Russ frowned. “Right… um. Right. I guess her confidence – she says what she likes, says what she means without worrying what anybody is going to think of her. She’s not afraid to laugh when she wants to – and really laugh, not that stupid giggling crap that most girls do.” He paused for a second. “I guess she’s not afraid to be herself, and it’s herself that I like, just that she’s… well, her. She’s not… false. She’s … I don’t know, real.”
There was another silence, where Russ was left avoiding her gaze because he could feel her laughing. Or, well, thought he could feel her laughing. When he did look up, she actually looked vaguely impressed, if surprised.
“What?” he asked, frowning.
She then pulled a face. “Nothing. I just wasn’t expecting you to say that.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“Um…” She blushed, and immediately Russ grew suspicious. “I guess preconceptions are hard to get rid of. I was still wondering if it was the wanting what you can’t have, again.”
Russ rolled his eyes, starting to get the feeling that if he rolled them anymore in this conversation, they were going to roll backwards and permanently face the back of his skull. “Thanks for that.”
“I’m impressed now, though.”
“Well, it’s hard not to impress you with those expectations,” he said, with a grin. “Why are you impressed?”
“I think you’ve matured, strangely enough. I never could have imagined you saying something like that a year ago.”
The eyes went further towards sticking permanently facing the wrong side of his head. “Maybe it’s the good example you’re setting me.”
Madeleine laughed, shaking her dark head. “Nope, but I really do think that being turned down has done you a lot of good.”
“Well, it’s definitely a humbling experience, but I don’t think I’d do it twice.”
She smirked. “Rejection is a cruel thing.”
Russ winced. “That doesn’t sound good. Rejection…”
“Oh, get rid of your pride, would you?” she said, rolling her blue eyes to the heavens. “It’s not so bad.”
“Well, no, but I’m not going to put myself into the position where I can get “rejected” again,” he said, making air quotes around the word.
“That’s called denial, Romeo, and don’t you make those-” she imitated the air quote gestures, laughing “-at me. So what are you going to do next?”
Dámn good question. He’d no idea. Thank Christ things had been as normal as they could have been this morning. It wasn’t strained and it wasn’t tense, which was great because Russ didn’t know what he’d do if it had been - didn’t really know what he was supposed to do if he didn’t get to see her smiling and laughing every morning.
“You mean about Lynn?”
‘Course she was talking about Lynn. What the hell else would she be talking about? “No clue. Any suggestions?”
Madeleine pursed her lips for a second. “I don’t know. I’d just say leave it, but I think you’re serious about this, so…”
She thought? Jesus.
“Well, I’m so glad you managed to come to that conclusion after all of this,” he replied sarcastically. “Wasn’t that the one thing established here?”
She laughed apologetically. “Old habits, sorry.”
Huh.
“Have you any ideas?”
Russ exhaled exasperatedly, before pulling out the cigarette packet again. “None. She said no, so I’m gonna guess that carrying on as normal is the best idea.”
Madeleine laughed suddenly. “God, you have grown up. I thought you were going to insist that persistence was the answer here.”
He frowned, fumbling with the cigarette lighter. “Well, why would it be?”
“I do have an idea though,” she said, in a thoughtful way that made Russ think she was so deep in thought about the whole thing that she was completely oblivious to the fact that he was lighting up.
“And what’d that be?”
“Take it seriously. Show that you can be trusted because I’m going to bet that that will help, even just in the friendship.”
“It usually does,” Russ frowned. “But I have been doing that for a few months, now, you realise.”
“So keep doing it,” she shrugged. “It could work.”
He sighed loudly, bringing the cigarette to his mouth. “I can’t believe the day came where I asked you for advice on stuff like this.”
Madeleine laughed. “Neither can I.”
Russ rolled his eyes again for what he hoped would be the last time that day, leaning back against the tree.
“Oh, and Russ? Put that out, please.”