Disaster • Arctic Monkeys Fanfiction

[seventy six]

Alex's POV

I ran straight into Indi as I pulled her front door open, ready to head over to Jude's.   We didn't collide as forcefully as usual, but it was still enough to almost knock me off my feet.

Indi looked up at me, wide-eyed.  She smiled, but there was something strange about it.  It seemed worried.  Almost... fake.

"Slow down there, Tennessee," I said, nodding to her University of Tennessee sweatshirt that I hadn't noticed she was wearing until now.  

She looked down at her sweatshirt like she'd forgotten she was wearing it before looking back up at me.  "It's my mom's.  She went there for a semester before she got knocked up with me and moved back to Kansas."

"So you're a proper cowgirl, then," I asked with a smirk.  "Seeing as you were conceived in Tennessee, and all."

She really smiled this time.  "Is this going to turn out to be a sexual innuendo?  Are you about to ask me if I ride?"

I laughed.  Because I don't think as long as I live that I'll ever be able to predict anything she says.  She was a wild card if I ever met one.

She moved passed me into her apartment.  I shut the door, following behind her.   She threw her phone on the counter and headed toward the balcony, and I did the same.  I didn't want to think about Tom or any of the shit from my old life.  

Right now, I just wanted her.

I stopped at the door of the balcony, just watching her as she stepped out.

She was facing away from me, staring out at the city lights surrounding.  She stretched her arms high above her head, revealing a sliver of pale skin on her lower back.  She stayed like that for a moment before her arms fell back to her sides.  Her shoulders lifted as she took a deep breath and turned over her shoulder to look at me, the breeze playing with her brown waves.

I wanted to do so many things.  I wanted to wrap my arms around her and snog her until I had to be forcibly removed.  I wanted to take her hand and get on a plane and fly somewhere far away where nobody would find us.  I wanted to write fucking symphonies for her.  

But instead I just stood there, unable to move or speak.  

Her eyebrow arched slightly.  "Are you coming, or what?"

"Yeah," I said like an idiot.  I stepped out, stopping next to her.  I wasn't sure what I should do.  Last night I'd been so confident with AM playing, but now that I had to do all my own talking and my music couldn't save me, I had no fucking clue what to do.  

I would ask myself what was happening, why all of a sudden I was completely at her mercy, but I knew.

I knew exactly what was happening. 

She turned toward me after a few moments.  "We need to talk."

So I wasn't the only one filled with anxious uncertainty.

"We do," I agreed.

She inhaled sharply, her eyes shooting down.  She looked at her feet for a few moments, like she wanted so say something, but wasn't sure how.

"What do you want, Alex?" she finally said.

As if she even had to ask.

"You," I said.  "Always you."

She looked up to me apprehensively.  "For how long, though?"

"What do you mean for how long?" I asked, unable to help myself from laughing.  "You act like I can turn it off and on, like some kind of switch."

I could tell by her face that she didn't find it as funny.

"You sure as hell did when you left me in Colorado."

Ouch.

"Bloody Colorado," I mumbled.  "I'd thought we'd forgotten about that."

She bit down on her bottom lip.  "I didn't mean to say that.  I just... I don't know, Alex.  I want to know for certain that this isn't all going to end in some shit storm where I end up hurt or you end up hurt or-"

Before she could say anything more, I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her lips to mine.  Maybe not the most polite way to shut her up, but it would have to do.

She hesitated for a moment, going tense under my touch, but then she relaxed and pushed herself into me, her arms finding their way around my shoulders.  

We pulled back and I looked her over, feeling a sudden anger that she'd existed for the last 21 years and I'd had little to no part in it.  The idea that she had been here all along and hadn't been mine was frustrating beyond belief.  

"You're beautiful," I told her.

She looked away, the corner of her mouth turning up.  "And you're off topic."

"You want to know what I want?" I said.  "As if you don't already know."

She just stared at me, waiting for me to go on. 

"I want you now, disaster girl," I told her.  "I wanted you yesterday and I'll want you tomorrow.  You're the absolute worst person for me, and I'm the absolute worst person for you, but it is what it is."

Her eyes stayed glued to mine, the crease between her eyebrows slowly disappearing. 

"And what do you want?" I asked her.

"What do you think?" she said after a moment, trailing her hands up my arms and resting them around my neck.  "Money and notoriety, of course.  Why else would I be with you?"

I laughed, pulling her closer to me.  "Then its yours."

She laid her head against my collarbone, sighing deeply.  We just stood there for what felt like all the time in the world and none of it all at once.  I felt like I never had enough time with her.  Hell, we'd been stuck as roommates for the last week, spending nearly every second together, but I still felt like it wasn't enough.

Our bliss was interrupted once Matt and Rose came back with the Chinese, barging in the door with loud voices and laughter.  

Indi pulled back first, smiling a bit sadly.

"Guess we should go back inside," she said.

"Guess we should," I agreed.

But before we could move, she grabbed my arm.  She pressed her lips together, like she was thinking hard.  Like she wanted to say something.

"Alex," she said after a moment, but then she closed her mouth again.  Alex, I..."

I knew what she wanted to say, because I wanted to say it too.  I wanted to say it more than fucking anything.   The words felt like they were right there, ready to come tumbling out as recklessly as everything else about us.

But neither of us said anything at all.  Indi just shook her head, took my hand, and led the way inside.

"Idiot," I thought.  "Idiot, idiot, idiot.  Why can't you just tell her?"

And so the words stayed there bitterly on my tongue.  The words I'd been meaning to tell her since Colorado.  The words that were always running through the back of my mind when she smiled or tripped or sang off-key.  

The words that had crashed into me with momental force when our lips met for the first time, and hadn't left since

I love you.