Dangerous: A Marcel Styles Fan Fiction

14: Glittering Cities

14: Glittering Cities

 

   As usual, work was slow, and ninety percent fetching beverages and sorting files and contracts. Though the idea of working up close and personal with celebrity clients in the music and cinema business seemed glamorous at one point, it was truly mind-numbing. The best part was definitely when it was over, even though I was released from the burden of work at eight at night on school days.

   During my shift, without Rachel’s knowledge, I received a text and answered it, looking at the small digital words on my phone:

   Hang out tonight? – xMx

   After the morning I’d had, witnessing Marcel nearly kill a man I’d known practically the entire span of my life, his invitation scared me, but, then again, it did have potential. It seemed whenever I was alone with Marcel, without any threats, he was the sweet nerd he’d been when we’d met (well, maybe a tad hotter). I wanted to be friends with the nice Marcel, not the Marcel who, I’m sure, could murder someone with one punch. I accepted.

   When today’s shift ended, I met Marcel downstairs in the lobby and he led me outside into the growing twilight. The bright moon rising glistened and, in the darkening sky, stars had begun to appear. Half of the canvas still shined with bright pinks and oranges.

   Marcel led me over to his motorcycle parked in the lot. He gave me the helmet again, and hopped on, instructing me to, again, put my arms around him tight. He revved the bike to life, and sped off. I rested my head on his shoulder as he drove into the dusk and weaved through streets.

   “Where are we going?” I asked him at one stop at a red light.

   “Somewhere nice,” was all he said.

   He continued to drive for a while actually, so I closed my eyes and just held on, feeling the wind whip passed us. I stayed this way until Marcel parked the bike at the side of a rode and told me to come with him. I slipped the helmet off and left it with the bike, following him through the forests outside Hollywood.

   After a couple minutes of hiking a rather shallow incline, I admitted to Marcel, “I’m really not much of a hiker.”

   Marcel stopped along with me and shot me his familiar dimpled grin. He took two slow steps toward me and turned his back before speaking the two words, “Hop on.”

   I let out a small laugh and hesitated before he followed with a jaunty, “I’m waiting.” I rolled my eyes and got on his back. After all, if he could single-handedly take down two of our school’s most popular, athletic bullies, what was to say he couldn’t carry me?

   And so he did, running up the incline, while I let out involuntary giggles. What he was planning I didn’t know, but I was ready for it. He carried me a half mile up the incline until we reached a fence. Knowing the simple history and geography of the Los Angeles area, I knew where we were. I saw it from here – well the back of it – the Hollywood Sign.

   “Ever been here before?” he asked me with a grin and sparkling green eyes.

   I answered honestly with a no, and Marcel led me on along the fence. My stomach turned, however at the wrongness of this all. The Hollywood Sign could no longer be touched anymore by human hands. The best view one could get of it was from Runyon Canyon.

   Marcel led me until I could see the whites of the letters slightly and until there was a hole in the fence just big enough for a person to slip through. Marcel took a step towards the break in the barrier and I felt compelled to ask:

   “Isn’t this trespassing?”

   “Yeah,” he replied with a nonchalant shrug, “If we get caught.”

   His words were debatable, but I followed him anyway, squeezing through the fence right behind him. We stopped in front of the huge white letters, rising high above us both and shining luminous beams from the light radiating from the city.

   The city itself below us twinkled with the glitter and shimmers from the lights – streetlights, spotlights from the Chinese Theater, even regular lights from the windows of residences or skyscrapers. Los Angeles was beautiful and shining with a view no one should ever be denied.

   “It’s so beautiful,” I purred.

   “It still barely compares to you.”

   He turned me slowly to face him, giving me a taste of his dimpled smile. When it was just the two of us, he was a different Marcel. He wasn’t a nerd from math class, or the bad boy who’d nearly assassinated Kevin Heartwood and Lionel Phillips. Now, he was just my friend, Marcel; someone nice and kind and caring. To think at any moment, he could snap and become something vicious if anything threatened either of us.

   He made his eyes lock with mine and his right hand lightly caressed my chin. This time, it was me. I don’t know if it was the compliment and romance, the fact I knew he wanted me to, the fact he deserved it, or the fact I was the only thing anchoring him down from becoming the menace I’d seen in the halls earlier, but this time, he didn’t make that move. This time I went for it and started our make out session with a kiss.

   His arms fell around my waist and pulled me close to him and mine rested on his shoulders, wrapping around his neck. My heart fluttered as his tongue penetrated the barrier my teeth had made, and I didn’t even mind the slight shock of a small wave of cold on my forehead, then my arm, then cheek.

   I broke the kiss to open my eyes and see the origin of the cold, watching as a raindrop landed above Marcel’s eyebrow. I looked up and one splattered the left lens of my glasses, making Marcel release a small chuckle. But that wasn’t the end of it as the downfall grew heavier.

   “We really should get out of here,” I remarked, holding a smile.

   He nodded and let one hand travel lower on my body, lifting me off my feet and into his arms with a twirl. The rain continued around us, falling so fast I was expecting thunder bolts and lightning any minute now. As a gesture of one last goodbye to the glittering sign, Marcel gave me another twirl; the twirl which caused him to trip and fall back to the ground with me.

   “Are you okay?” I asked from on top of him.

   He laughed again and nodded. “Yeah,” he purred, “You?”

   “I think you kind of broke my fall,” I said through a giggle, feeling my heart race as my brown eyes once again stared into his orbs of green, still shining, even in the clouded, wet burst of monsoon which had fallen upon us.

   His arm rose and grazed my cheek, bringing my lips back down to meet his briefly for another time. Then, again, Marcel spoke the words I was still uncertain about. However, this time a feeling washed over me. It wasn’t a feeling of shock, that I knew, but it still turned my stomach, and still made my heartbeat speed up noticeably.

   “I love you.”