Downtown (auston matthews x oc)

-twenty-seven-

𝓝𝓸𝓻𝓪

When the door to her bedroom creaked open, Nora barely had the strength to lift her head. She and Lex had stayed up late and drank far too much wine in celebration of surviving the long week since everything went to shit.

It was Lex who appeared in the doorway then, her arms crossed over her chest. "Hi, beautiful," she greeted, though her voice was weak and she, like Nora, appeared half-alive.

Nora groaned and pulled a pillow over her head. "I regret everything," she grumbled against the fabric, which made Lex giggle. Tossing the pillow aside, Nora managed to prop herself into a sitting position. "What's up?" she asked Lex, who hesitated.

"There's—um—" she paused. "Auston's here."

Nora's jaw fell open. "What?" she hissed.

"Don't worry," Lex hurried. "I didn't let him in. I told him to wait in the hall until I got a chance to talk to you. Want me to send him away?"

Nora moaned in frustration. She was still only half-awake and not entirely convinced she wasn't dreaming. As if she might find some answers there, she grabbed her phone off the bedside table.

"What the hell?" she muttered.

"What is it?" prompted Lex, who strolled to the side of the bed and sat down on the edge of it—as if Auston were not waiting outside the apartment.

Nora shook her head. "Trick just texted and said I needed to talk to Matthews." She turned the screen towards Lex so that she could see, too.

"Hm," Lex hummed. "To be fair, he looks like he's in bad shape."

"What do you mean?" pressed Nora.

Lex sighed and offered a shrug. "He looks tired. Sad." She raised her brows at Nora before adding, "He said even if I couldn't convince you to talk to him, he wanted to make sure I told you how much he misses you."

It tugged at Nora's achy heart, which had been so battered by the last week's series of events. After a moment, she murmured, "I guess you can let him in."

Lex gave Nora a little hug of reassurance, and then headed from the room. Prior to last week, Nora would have cared more about looking like such a mess in front of Auston, but now she couldn't be bothered to make herself presentable. Auston didn't deserve her energy.

Admittedly, Nora's steadfast resolve faltered when Auston appeared in the doorway to her bedroom. Lex was right: he looked tired, his face unshaven and his eyelids heavy. His shoulders were low, and he'd buried his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, defeated. The sight of him weakened Nora to the point of tears. As desperately as she tried to stop herself, she felt the first slip through her eyelash, followed by another and then another—each heavier than the last.

Auston stepped inside, shutting the door lightly behind him as he drew a long breath. Nora almost thought for a second that he, too, was close to tears. "Nor," he whispered, though his eyes didn't reach her.

Nora didn't have the strength to respond. She just hurried to brush away her tears, as if Auston might have failed to notice them. Suddenly, she was regretting this: she never should have told Lex to let him in.

"Can I sit down?" Auston stammered after a moment, now looking at her.

Nora, sniffling, gestured towards the foot of the bed. Silently, Auston accepted a seat there, far away from her. "Why are you here?" Nora prompted, though her voice was not nearly as strong as she wanted it to be.

Auston sighed as he ran a palm up and down on his cheek. "Because I want to help," he mumbled. "I want to make everything better."

"You can't," Nora snapped. She wiped some of her tears with the collar of her t-shirt. "I've already lost my job, I'm getting attacked online constantly, and my heart is so fucking broken that it feels like I can't breathe." Nora's hands shook as she brushed her hair away from her face, which was now sticky with tears.

"Please," Auston tried, "just hear me out for a second."

Nora glanced away, and Auston must have taken her silence as confirmation enough.

"Trick came to my apartment yesterday," Auston began, and Nora tried her best not to give any emotion away. Auston went on, "He thought that I might be able to fix this if we—" he hesitated and swallowed hard. "He suggested that I tell everyone you and I are—like—together."

"What?" Nora scoffed. There was no way Trick ever suggested anything even remotely close to that. The thought was laughable. She replied to Auston, "Lying still isn't a good look on you, Matthews."

"Nor," Auston countered, voice steadier now, "you can ask him. This was one-hundred percent his idea."

The way he said it almost made Nora believe him. She tested the waters a little more: "How would that even fix anything?" she demanded.

Auston rose to his feet and started to pace. The motion made Nora dizzy enough that she laid her head back down on the bed. "Like—if we make it seem like we're actually dating, and I tell everybody who you are, they'll see you're not—"

When he stammered and failed to find the word, Nora interjected, "Just your whore."

Auston's jaw tightened. He ceased his pacing and turned on his heels to face Nora fully. "We don't have to do it," he muttered.

Just as she had when Lex first entered her room, Nora covered her face with a pillow and groaned. "Fuck," she shouted, tossing it aside again. She sat up, shaking with frustration and sadness and anxiety all at once. "You think you're gonna say, Oh here's my girlfriend, Nora Mallone, all that stuff you've seen online can't be true because I'm dating her, and then everybody will just buy it?"

Auston rubbed the back of his neck and admitted, "Maybe." He shrugged. "It's not the worst idea I've ever heard."

"Why would I ever put myself back out in front of everyone?" Nora snapped. "There are already pictures from my OnlyFans being dissected by every fucking hockey fan on Twitter."

Auston sat back down on the edge of the bed, this time a little closer to Nora. "Maybe if they see that I don't give a shit about all of that stuff, they'll stop giving a shit about it, too." He turned to meet Nora's gaze, though she was quick to look away.

There was no way this would work, was there? Plus, it would entail spending time with Auston, which now sounded unbearable to Nora. Still, her curiosity not quite sated, she prompted, "How would we even do it?"