Limelight

Zephyr and Alonzo: Bottled Up

(Another Limelight! Three in one day! I've had this particular one-shot done for a little while now... I recommend listening to Ridiculous while reading this one~)

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"Try not to talk when there's nothing to say. Kept bottled up, we get carried away."

Al lay sprawled on his bed, one leg hanging off the side, the other bent at the knee, with his guitar in his hands. His eyes were half-closed as he played and sang along. One of his favourites, but one a little too serious and emotional for the others to know that.

"Then I fall, then I fall down, then we fall down..."

It was good for venting.

"And you know that it makes me feel so ridiculous."

He did feel ridiculous. And stupid. Z, he was so stupid. Anybody who looked at him could see it, so why had he never seen it? How had he been so blind to his own feelings? What was he supposed to do now?

"A pocket full of posies, we fall down on the inside, pretty on the outside. Turn it around, can we turn it around?"

He wasn't sure if he could turn this around, though. He loved Zephyr. Loved him. He knew he loved him, he always had, but somewhere along the way, that love had changed to something beyond friendship. It was a good feeling, that wasn't the problem.

"Try to make a comeback with nowhere to start from now..."

Zach and Roz knew. They had known the whole time. This was what they had always been teasing him about. It was obvious to them. It was obvious to everyone. But not to him. Alonzo had just thought 'he's my best friend, and I love him' and left it at that. The feelings grew stronger, they seemed to grow closer, and Al could barely contain how happy it made him to even hear Zephyr's name. He never stopped to consider there was more to it than friendship.

If it was so obvious to his other friends, was it obvious to Zephyr, too? Was he just making a fool of himself?

"But it's looking up."

He felt a tear prick his eye and blinked it away. It wasn't looking up from where he was standing. Judging from the way Zach and Roz pretty much mocked him on an almost daily basis, he guessed he had no hope in this. They would know whether or not Zephyr felt the same. Maybe they knew he didn't.

He'd be stuck in the same role forever. The idiot of the group. The one the others could never take seriously...

"A second chance a much better day, a sunset that just won't go awa-"

"Alonzo?"

The door opened and Al sat up, surprised to see Zephyr standing there.

"Zeph? What are you doing here?"

"Well, you didn't come over today, and the guys haven't heard from you either. Nobody's seen you all day, that's not normal."

Al tried to shrug it off, "What, can't a guy get a little time to himself every once in a while?"

"Yeah, but you always at least call me. You've never gone completely off the radar like that, not with me."

"You're not the boss of me, Zephyr," he leaned against the headboard of the bed and went back to his strumming.

"Al, what's going on?" Zephyr asked him, obviously not buying it. This wasn't the Alonzo he knew, and he knew Alonzo better than anyone.

"Nothing!" Al avoided his gaze. For one thing, he couldn't lie right to his best friend's face like that and for another, he couldn't risk losing himself in Zephyr's eyes and giving it all away.