brutal | grayson hawthorne

hello hawthorne house

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Somewhere Only We Know by Keane
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"Must you always be here?" Grayson greets Liz as the only other person in the kitchen as she pours milk onto her Cheerios as a late night snack.

"Must you always be so annoying?" Liz's day isn't complete until she's been rude to Grayson at least once.

The two move around each other silently as he gets his strawberry ice cream from the freezer and microwaves it to thaw as she pours herself a glass of chocolate milk.

There's 13 months worth of unspoken words between the two of them, but all Liz can think about is the tingly feeling she gets on her neck when Grayson slides behind her between the counter space to get a spoon.

Liz's mom always used to tell her she feels too much.

When she was a kid, it was endearing the way she would scoop up spiders to lead them outside when her dad tried stepping on them. Or the way she would have to say goodnight to every single one of her stuffed animals before bed so none of them would be left out.

It came to be a problem in middle school when girls started being mean and boys started being stupid.

Liz was always towards the top of the social ladder, and would never consider herself to have been bullied in school, but something about the kind of life she lived made it hard for her to keep wearing her heart on her sleeve.

The one time she let her guard down, it had been the worst mistake of her life.

Now she's in this room with Grayson, them ambling around each other like they'd been doing for their whole lives before 13 months ago. Like there's nothing in world more significant than understanding the way the other moves and adapting a part of their own actions with ease.

But she knows how to hide her feelings now. She knows if she keeps pushing down the thoughts that have been haunting her for 13 months, her hands won't keep trying to subtly brush against Grayson's when they both reach for a napkin at the same time.

"I can help you," he can probably feel the energy radiating off the two to be in such close proximity, and if there's one person better than Liz at pretending his feelings don't exist, it's Grayson Hawthorne. "With the foundation, I mean."

Liz knows she shouldn't be relieved to be under Grayson's mentorship for who knows how long until she can properly manage the foundation, but he really is the lesser of two evils between him and Zara.

"Thank you," Liz thinks that's the right thing to say.

Something passes between the two of them. They stare each other evenly like there's nothing between them. Like the first person to look away loses this impromptu staring contest that they suddenly feel themselves drawn to.

That was always the case between Liz and Grayson. They always had their silly competitions. The Who Can Make A Nutella Sandwich Faster Contest. Who Knows More 90s Bands Contest. Who Does The Best Hermione Granger Impression Contest.

They fall into old habits easily, and Liz forgets herself as she laughs as Grayson blinks and huffs dramatically at his loss.

Grayson smiles too, which never used to come as a surprise to Liz, but as the sudden wave of what they're doing crashes over her, she just clears her throat and grabs her food to the other side of the kitchen island.

"I just figured for sake of your own physical and mental well-being, Zara wouldn't be the best option," Grayson mixes his ice cream around into a soup like he always does, talking as if this can just be a normal conversation between the two.

As if not only did Liz acquire the one thing that Grayson's own grandfather had raised him to take over by the old man himself, but like they were the type of people who could have normal conversations anyway.

"You always were so considerate," Liz is sarcastic the way she would've been before 13 months ago. See, I can be nonchalant too.

And that's how they both realize what this is. Another one of their competitions. The Who Can Act The Coolest Contest.

Liz and Grayson's days of Sunday morning riddles with Tobias Hawthorne may be over, but they'll never get over the thrill of the game.

"Anything for you, Lizzy," he plays along, biting into his ice cream as Liz takes a sip of her chocolate milk.

She almost chokes on it as she hears the nickname, but that would mean she loses, so she forces herself to swallow and continues eating her cereal like heart didn't just drop to her stomach.

"Grayson," Liz huffs dramatically as she falls on her stomach on the bed beside the boy who's working on his summer reading work.

"Elizabeth," he replies in a way that completely contrasts the distraught tone in the girl's voice.

"Your girlfriend is being a bitch," the pillow she's smushed her face into muffles her voice, but Grayson's ear has been trained to understand Liz's gibberish for years now.

"She is not my girlfriend," Grayson shifts as an unsettling feeling rests in his stomach.

"But you knew who I was talking about," Liz teases, lifting her face to look up at him with a silly smile.

Grayson just looks down at her to meet her eyes with his unamused gray ones. "What did she do?"

"It doesn't matter now," Liz dismisses easily as if she wasn't the one who burst into his room because of it. She flips onto her back easily, staring up at the ceiling stars the two had put up when they were 9 & 10 because Liz was worried that Grayson was afraid of the dark, but he was too embarrassed to admit it.

"What do you want me to do about it?" He puts his book to the side, moving down so he was on his back, resting on a pillow, turning his head towards Liz the same time she turned onto her side to face him.

The two get a glint in their eyes, and Grayson's gaze falls on her lips as he watches her try to suppress a little smile.

"I can think of a thing or two," she tilts her head towards him the slightest bit.

"Anything for you, Lizzy."

a/n:
liz does not condone cheating she just liked to tease grayson when he was hanging out with emily but they were just being silly and no one was anything official ✊

also an alternative song for this chapter is the story of us by t swift but i didn't wanna have too many of her songs right off the bat ✊