BOND

18.

I swear you're an angel

Sent to this world

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.

Elena worked alongside Alex as they rechecked that everybody's tux had come in.

The ballroom of the hotel had been rented out to host the prize distribution ceremony in a few hours, and it was a formal event to say the least. Yesterday, after their match, designers had been shoved into the boys' rooms who took their measurements for their tuxedos. A couple of boys had some formal shirts with them but one of the designers had scowled so deeply at them that they had just quietly let them do their job.

And true to their word, all of their tuxedos had been delivered at the hotel reception at an utterly unnatural hour. The boys had been sleeping but Elena had been down in the gym, so she had had them put them up in her room lest they get lost with all the others for the other teams.

When finally she'd gone to see if any of them was awake, she only found Alex and the two of them had brought everything from her suite to theirs, not bothering to call bellboys.

All the hangers had name tags attached to them so it was really easy to confirm that everybody's tux had been delivered. Now as they finally collapsed down on the couch, Alex asked, "You're gonna be there tonight, right?"

Elena nodded at him, "Yeah, I got an invitation and everything so might as well." Hugh, her manager, had received an email from the organizing committee the previous night and she had agreed to go after about a second of persuasion. She had a few dresses she could choose from to wear tonight coming into her room in a few minutes, so this was probably the only time she would get during the day to really rest. All of them had stayed awake through the night, too wired to fall asleep, and to top it off she had woken up early.

Both of them turned to look over the headrest as one of the doors behind them opened and Joey walked out, rubbing his eyes with the palm of his hand. At first he didn't notice them sitting there and when he did he did a double take, "Why the hell are you two up so early?"

Alex rolled his eyes and said, "It's ten, sleeping beauty."

The door to the suite was open, she and Alex hadn't bothered with closing them when they had been rushing in between hers and theirs and they must've forgotten to close it afterwards, so they got a clear view of two luggage carts with dresses hanging from them being pushed in the direction of her suite.

Elena gave a sigh and stood up, "That's my cue." She waved goodbye to the boys and headed out.

Joey followed her to close the door behind her and asked, "Still coming tonight?"

She stood in the hallway smiling at him and he could see the rings of sleep deprivation and fatigue around her eyes, "Yeah, of course. I'm not going to miss a chance of seeing you in a suit," she grinned cheekily as his expression turned sour. He had fought the hardest against going all out for the ceremony, saying that button downs and jeans worked just fine. And just for that they had been told to wear dress shoes.

Teasing back, he said, "So tie or no tie, which one do you like better?"

Elena narrowed her eyes at him and smirked, "Well ties really help during," she cleared her throat for show, "later in the night activities." She got the reaction she wanted as he struggled to come up with a response with his mouth opening and closing without any noise coming out and walked away.

Joey went back inside shaking his head to clear off the mental pictures coming into his mind.

It was almost three in the afternoon when all the boys had woken up and they got to getting dressed since the ceremony started in another few hours. It turned out to be more time consuming than they had thought because Joey was the only one who knew how to tie a tie and in the end he had gotten so frustrated that a couple of boys had agreed to go without them to not aggravate him any further.