Under Control.

chapter five.

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Albert was no lightweight. And even though he was impressed with Nora's ability to know herself, he had spent the last several hours fostering a burgeoning kind of brotherly protectiveness over the woman whose tenacity and enigmatic charm he, much like the rest of his bandmates, couldn't help but find intriguing.

Nora was all big, mysterious grey eyes and wild hair. She seemed nice, and she looked nice, but she didn't let people in. She was almost never over dressed, even when she was at the gallery, and there was something magnetic about the way she carried herself.

She looked more confident in jeans and a wrinkled shirt than most people did in an outfit of artfully cobbled together designer brands, and, for the most part, she gave off an air that she just did not care — not about what people thought of her, and not about how to be. Although, Albert suspected that she did, in fact, care, and about much more than she was willing to let on. Mostly about other people, it seemed to him. But also, about how they saw her.

She cared about Fab — about what he thought about what she thought, and about what he could do. And Al was starting to think that she might just have cared a little bit about him, too. Because, she kept showing up.

Nora was easy to talk to, and to be around. She wasn't judgemental — not outwardly, at least — and she gave off the impression that she was interested in hearing just about anything that he, or anyone else for that matter, had to say.

There was something compelling about the warmth of her — being in her orbit felt like sitting in the sunshine. But, when she spoke about herself? That's when Albert could see through to the delicacy of her, simmering just below the impermeable surface.

It was only barely visible to the unknowing eye, but, it was there that she harboured a hint of unease. And so, she was careful. She never said too much, or opened herself up quite enough.

It was a very specific way to be. And, it reminded Albert of someone else that he knew.

And, speaking of Julian — after Al had stolen Nora away from the clandestine chat of theirs that he'd interrupted in the kitchen, Julian had taken to skulking around the party in the closed off way that his roommate knew meant he was trying to get his head around something.

There was, it seemed to Albert, something Julian was desperate to try and understand.

And that thing, he suspected, was Nora.

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The night had once again bled into the early hours of the morning, with almost everyone having given in to the hazy daze of it.

But few were feeling more fuzzy around the edges, than Julian.

He'd been oscillating between sitting and standing, drinking and half-heartedly chatting, ever since Nora had stolen away from him with Albert. And his focus, blurry as it was, had barely seemed to stray very far from her since the first moment he'd first seen her walking towards him down the shadowy street, earlier.

He wasn't being blatant about it, or even all that strange. She was just a problem that he was trying to solve. And Julian did need to solve her, and himself, and all of the churning, whirring thoughts that were roiling around his bleary head. Because, he hadn't been able stop himself from hearing the echo of her kind words since first she'd said them across the kitchen at him, or from feeling the heat of her steady gaze that was long gone from him, now.

He had an image of her stuck up there in his mind's eye, too — the simple sight of Nora, calm and quiet and cloaked in his leftover smoke, with her lips wrapped around the end of his cigarette. And for Julian, all of that and her as well, was becoming entirely too much.