i. a moment of love
It's all coming at him way too fast and her perfect words are tumbling over her lips like a waterfall, crashing to the misty depths below his heart and he has no idea why he can't make himself say what he feels. He acts nonchalant but all that warrants is a crippling punch in the shoulder. But then he realises if he doesn't say something soon he'll lose her. So he just skips all the perfect romantic scenarios he's been carefully calculating and conceiving and tells her. And he wonders why he waited for so long to see that smile.

By the pool, he just watches her as her head's in his lap and she's looking up at the sky, cloud formations reflected on her caramel irises, peppered with specks of grey. He asks her what she's thinking about, running the tip of his index finger along her hairline and twirling a strand of her soft hair around his finger. She replies with a dazed hum, she's heard him but doesn't understand the point of the question. Her nose wrinkles as the rays of the sun scatter across her face, and she represses the urge to sneeze. He laughs at the constipated look on her face, and she decides that the curve of his mouth that dimples into one cheek and exposes his top row of teeth makes her really happy.

He thinks the way she moves around a golf course is the sexiest and most frustrating thing he's ever seen. Not only has he been hustled, but she went behind his back and tipped Joe off about the showdown for the guest house beds. She just frowns and points out that if he hadn't been so patronising in the first place, he wouldn't be in this situation, and besides, manipulating Joe into a helpless situation was hardly fair. Yes, he argues, but you're my girlfriend. She pushes her hair off her face and smiles, replying that he'd hardly keep her around if she didn't keep him on his toes. He can't argue with that.

Her heart breaks for the blush rising up his cheeks, but below the surface she's absolutely thrilled that she gets to be the strong one for once. He's the one that's falling over her. The one that embarrassed himself in order to impress her. But she plays the sympathy card and kisses his hot face kindly, and then he's got the upper hand again with his advance planning and she's the proud new owner of a beautiful pair of diamond earrings. It's not that she doesn't appreciate the gesture, but it would have been nice to look back and laugh at that time he messed up, that time he got it all wrong and she was the one who got it right. And she pushes down the feeling that maybe this power struggle isn't a healthy foundation for a relationship, because when he takes hold of her hand it doesn't matter anymore, as long as his fingers are locked with hers.

When Frankie tries to seduce her, she resists because he's just a little kid and she's clearly besotted with his brother. What makes him think their relationship is so fragile that it would collapse under the pressure of a ten year old? She pushes this thought under the carpet of all her happy memories with Nick, to stop her from thinking about it, obsessing over it, over-analysing everything that's happened in the last month to see if there was anything she could have missed. She's busy not thinking about it and shoving her terrible cookies in the trash when a warm pair of arms wraps around her waist and a soft kiss is pressed to the skin just behind her ear, and he murmurs that he's heard she could use some cooking lessons. Under his careful supervision, she makes a new batch of his special blue cookies, he declares them delicious and Kevin goes absolutely nuts after eating twenty seven, before curling up into a ball on the ground and crying how this has been the best summer ever.

Even though he chose the band over what he really wanted, he knew he would be able to bear the brunt of their resentment, because they were brothers and they have to love each other no matter what. But every time he imagines the look on Macy's face when she thought he was going to abandon the band she had dedicated her life to, he is terrified. He doesn't want to keep it a secret, but he can't bear to have her look at him like he's ripped the world out from under her feet. But she knows he's hiding something, and instead of confronting him, she uses quiet reassurance and before he can stop himself he tells her that he wants to make a record with Mantra. He doesn't meet his eyes until she takes his face in both her hands and whispers that she just wants him to be happy. In between kissing every part of her he can reach, they talk and talk until he no longer feels scared. He feels so right and she's so right for him and he holds her hand tightly and never wants to let go.

He's forgotten how crazy she can be until they're below deck on the boat. She's freaking out and he tries holding her but she doesn't want to be touched. She paces back and forth and looks so insane that he bites down on his bottom lip to keep from laughing. She sees the expression on his face and shrieks that this isn't funny and how could he be laughing when they could very likely perish out at sea, with seagulls eating away their dehydrated flesh until their skeletons can no longer be identified and their families would forever wonder what happened to their children who were so young and had their whole life ahead of them until SOMEBODY got the anchor stuck! Her frenzied raving only makes him laugh harder, and he can no longer contain it. She smacks him in the arm before she's infected with his contagious giggling and suddenly she's in his arms and they can't stop.

They watch Stella and Joe come together and fall apart and he sits her down and makes her promise that if she ever doubted him that she would say so and not just run off without any explanation. She takes both his hands in hers and swears that she would never be so stupid. Stella may be her best friend but she thinks if she got on that plane she wouldn't be able to forgive her for being so irresponsible with Joe's heart. While Nick is on stage playing his new solo record, and she's staring up at him lovingly, Joe sidles up beside her and whispers thank you in her ear. She turns to him questioningly, and he says that if it wasn't for her and Nick he would never be as happy with Stella as she was with his brother. She just gives him a crumpled smile, before turning back to watch her boyfriend. Joe grabs her arm and demands to know what that look was. She just shrugs and tells him that nobody can be as happy as her and Nick.

ii. a dream aloud
There are times when she stops short and reminds herself what an inherently good person he is, and then wonders if she could really fall so far so fast without even a scratch. There's nothing wrong but she feels like something should be. But she hides behind smiles and kisses and hopes he doesn't notice.

He trips over her sweet disposition often enough. He swallows down the nervous lump in his throat when he feels her gazing off, distancing herself, and her wants to tie string around her ankles and tether her to the ground so she won't float too far away from him.

Her eyes flutter open from her nap and he's watching her curiously. He leans down and presses his lips to her nose, and her face collapses into a yawn, before she looks at him, puzzled. He asks her what she was dreaming about, and she answers that she thinks it might have been about not being able to fly without her glasses, but she can't really remember, because who ever remembers their dreams?

He would give anything to remember her dreams for her. He wants to tell her that, but instead he just chuckles and tells her that she doesn't wear glasses. She knows that, she replies, but it's a dream, silly. Dreams aren't real.

You're real, he thinks, and kisses her one more time.

And they drift along through life, and they're fine. At least, they feel the kind of happiness that's always accompanied by the sense of fear that it could disappear at any time because love like this is always too good to be true. He has his feet on he ground and is walking towards somewhere, while she has her head in the clouds without a clue where to go, and so she turns in circles. She's following him and he's following her and so they both go nowhere.

There is a moment one day when she realises they're stuck. This is the moment, she announces. This is our moment.

He stares at her quizzically from across the counter, with a glass of juice in his hands, and asks what kind of moment.

The moment when we choose where to go from here, she bites her lip and stares straight into his eyes.

He's confused. He thought they were going to go to the movies and then maybe grab some dinner.

Not here, here, she scolds. I mean us. What are we doing with ourselves? We do the same thing every day and it just doesn't seem real anymore. What happened to those fireworks that went off every time we even looked at each other? Where did those moments go?

Life isn't just about the moments, he sighs. What about the in-between the moments moments? She frowns and whines that she's not making any sense. He thinks about explaining the times when she thinks he doesn't notice her looking at him while he tunes his guitar, but he really does. Or when she reaches across his plate to pick the olives out of his pizza because she knows he hates them. But he knew he could never put them into words so he just holds her in his arms and tells her there isn't anywhere he would want to go without her.

It feels too much like a fairytale, she murmurs. And I know fairytales aren't real.

But what we feel is real, and not even fairytales can compare to that, he says, and he wonders how many times he will have to reassure her that everything will be okay, how many times will she falls into her classic case scenario of letting her imagination run away with her. Not that he minds all that much, because that's one of the things he loves about her. That place that lies between dreaming and reality, that time when you wake up but you're not really sure if you have; that's where she permanently resides.

iii. a kiss, a cry
Her period is late but she doesn't tell him. He's about to start his solo tour and has enough to worry about. She replays what might happen in her head over and over again, if she tells him and it's nothing, if she doesn't and it's something. She delays and delays, setting deadlines for action. If a week goes by and it still hasn't come, that's when she'll go to the doctor.

He notices the strain in her tone and the worry around her eyes, and politely presses her to talk about it. She dismisses it as stress over school work, and he just nods, kisses the back of her hand and goes back to perusing set lists. Babies follow her everywhere, from maternity clothing catalogues coincidentally turning up in their junk mail, to pregnancy test advertisements on the television seemingly every commercial break, to a crazy hobo screaming about the socio-economic effects of abortion at her from the sidewalk while his dog chews on a dead rat.

The week comes and goes and she finally steels herself for a trip to the medical clinic. She ends up walking right past it and into the pharmacy on the corner, taking deep breaths. Ironically, tampons are on special on a shelf next to where she paused to hyperventilate, and she grabs a box and takes it up to the counter, because wishful thinking never hurt once in a while. There's an Arab man working the till and a squat soccer mom with a basket full of disinfectant and cough medicine telling him how to pack her grocery bags in the condescending tone most people take on when talking to someone who speaks English as a second language.

As the woman pushes a large bag of candy onto the already overflowing counter, a bottle of cough medicine is knocked over, and in slow motion, rolls over the edge, smashing into pieces on the floor. And suddenly she is transformed. She starts screaming at the cashier that she's no going to pay for that and how she could sue him for being so careless. Macy shares a perplexed glance with a teenage couple behind her, unsuccessfully trying to camouflage a packet of condoms within several other arbitrary items.

But the shared look turns to horror as their combined attention is focused back on the soccer mom, because she has turned her tirade from criticising the Arab man's aptitude as an employee to abusing his ethnicity. She tells him how lucky he is to be living in the best god damn country in the world instead of shitting in a hole in the desert, and then loudly states that she isn't going to get any of this stuff because she doesn't want her hard-earned tax dollars going towards paying an immigrant who will just take it home to feed his terrorist family.

Macy watches the storm of ignorance thunder at the poor man in front of her, and opens her mouth to say something, anything, but her mind is blank and she just gapes at the woman in shock as she flounces out of the pharmacy, shooting a few choice profanities and a suggestion to learn some god damn English back over her shoulder. She is rooted to the spot until she's called forward by the cashier. Stumbling towards the counter, she stares at the calm face of the man whose name tag labels him as Anwar.

I'm sorry, she gushes, slowly and clearly to make sure he will understand just how sincere she is. I'm so sorry for her. You didn't deserve that.

It's not your fault, dear, he replies in perfectly intelligible English, with a cringing smile. She doesn't know me.

She buys the tampons but doesn't have the emotional strength to go back to the clinic. Instead she goes home to find Joe sitting on the doorstep, a sports bag at his feet, asking for Nick. He tells her that Stella threw him out, that she gave up, that she didn't love him anymore and he didn't know what to do. She invites him in and makes him a cup of tea, desperately trying to process the situation in her mind. She considers calling Stella but decides to hear Joe out first. Somehow he had always been the one who was more invested in the relationship, so naturally he would be the one who was more devastated. Her hands are shaking more than his as she hands over the cup and saucer, sitting down next to him on the sofa and listening to what he has to say.

His tears come along somewhere between explaining how Stella thought that they didn't make enough time for each other, with him always on movie sets and her constantly working at her internship with Calvin Klein, and the retelling of the screaming match they had right before she threw a vase at his head. He doesn't know what he did, he sobs. What did he do to drive her away?

She swallows the lump in her throat and tells him that it's not his fault, that he loved her as much as he could and if that wasn't enough for her then she didn't deserve him. He shakes his head, muttering that he could have done more, he could have tried harder, but she wraps her arm around his shoulders, his wet face pressed into the curve of her neck, and says listen to me; you gave that girl everything you had, Joe. From the very beginning, it was you taking a step forward, and her taking a step back. But somehow you always managed to blame yourself for pushing her away, whereas in reality she was already running away without any help from you. You loved her with all of your heart, but she only loved you with most of hers. Maybe she realised she should stop trying to force it, or maybe she just knew something was missing all along. Either way, it was one hundred percent not you. It was her.

A sniffle comes from the vicinity of her collarbone, and Joe mumbles that she's only saying that to make him feel better. She chuckles and looks down at him, asking if it's working. He sits up straighter and his head rises off her shoulder, but it is still tilted to the side and is slowly coming closer to her every second. Suspended in disbelief, his lips are a centimetre from hers before she fully understands what he's doing, and she gasps and jumps away, briskly pacing to the other side of the room.

He buries his face in his hands and burst into tears again, apologising over and over. She insists that it's okay, he's vulnerable and seeking comfort, it's just unfair to expect her to provide that sort of comfort. He nods and looks back up at her, and something catches his eye on her skirt, and he looks back to where she was sitting moments ago. He points to the dark stain freshly blotted on the light fabric of the sofa, and she twists the back of her skirt to face the front, an identical imprint across the denim. At the same time, Nick walks through the door and his face is momentarily brightened by the presence of his brother before the atmosphere of the room hits him and he darkens, worriedly demanding what happened.

Stella broke up with Joe, she whimpers, and I got my period. She runs into the bathroom, strips off all her clothes, turns on a searing shower but doesn't wait to get in before she starts to cry.

iv. our rights, our wrongs
He feels guilty for no reason. Maybe it's because his world is getting brighter every day while hers seems to be crumbling to pieces. His music is getting international playback, there is huge demand for his presence in the studio and some of his greatest idols want to collaborate with him. Some days she just can't be bothered to even get out of bed.

What used to be a carefree girl who always saw the best in everything has been boiled down to a frustrated, snide human being who doesn't know why she's so sad. He longs for the days of reckless abandon, when it was just her and him and the world didn't matter. He was never completely carried away, there was always rationality restraining him, but she always made sure he came along for the ride, and she held his hand and laughed as the wind whipped at her hair and she didn't need to know about anything else except the here and now.

People are awful, she says one day, looking up from the newspaper.

Not everyone, he reassures her, kissing her forehead.

But most of them are, she sighs, folding up the paper and pushing it away from her, queasiness on her face and in her stomach.

They go out to lunch with Joe and he's still shattered but doing a better job at hiding it. He talks about red carpet walking and crazy fans and Frankie's basketball game and whether he should get a Mercedes or Jaguar and anything but Stella. When Joe goes to the bathroom Nick remarks jokingly that it's an improvement on constantly enquiring after her, obsessing over her, missing her out loud. Macy just grimaces and tears the corner off her napkin. He thinks about asking about her opinion but is sick of shrugs and non-committal grunts.

They're walking across the parking lot after paying for lunch and suddenly she gasps and grabs for his shirt. He turns in alarm, wondering what horror has caught her attention. She looks desperately back at Joe, who is distracted with finding his keys, as he catches a glimpse of Stella on the phone across the other side of the street. He understands Macy's sudden panic, and looks on in dread as his brother looks up and locks eyes on the blonde who tore him to shreds. She sees him too, and suddenly stops mid-conversation, her cell clattering to the pavement. She looks at his lunch companions, and her eyes narrow in an unreadable expression. Macy suspects it might have something to do with the fact they haven't talked since she tried to reason with her about breaking Joe's heart like she did, and the discussion turned into an argument which turning into a full-blown fight where they both said things they could never take back.

Eventually, Stella takes a deep breath, picks up her phone off of the sidewalk, redials and keeps on walking. Joe is biting down on his lip so hard that it's bleeding, and his hands are bunched into white-knuckled fists. They both move towards him sympathetically, but he waves them away, mumbling about how it's no use, losing the love of his life is something that he'll always have to live with, and maybe one day he'll find someone who makes him feel a fraction of what he did for Stella. Macy turns to Nick with shimmering eyes.

Isn't it sad, she says, how nobody ever knows what they have until it's gone?

He shakes his head, squeezes her hand and whispers in her ear that you always know what you have, you just never think you'll lose it.

Her movements have slowed, her feet drag along the ground instead of skipping along lightly beside him. She staring at him and he's breathing but somehow she's drowning. She's still the same person, but somehow different. She still has her moments where she lights up like a Christmas tree and her laughter sprinkles his face like a sprinkling of warm summer rain. They are just less frequent, and the moments where she seriously frowns at him when she doesn't find a joke funny or lets out an exasperated sigh at offhand comments seem to fill the days more and more.

She's lying on the bed, but instead of the traditional horizontal head to toe, her back is on the pillows and her legs rest on the wall that the bed is pushed up against. He regards the ninety degree angle of her body in bewilderment, before shrugging and lying parallel to her, his legs hanging off the side of the bed. He doesn't say anything, he just waits. She reaches to tousle his hair with her hand, and he kisses her palm as it brushes across his face.

I feel like a supernova, she breaks the silence with her revelation. He asks her what she means. She means that she used to be this innocent little star, just twinkling away, not worrying myself with what could happen tomorrow and just living for the day. But then I exploded. And you know what happens to a supernova once they burn out? He doesn't answer, he just concentrates on how close his fingers are to hers, how if he moved just one tiny centimetre he could touch them again.

They turn into black holes, she sighs as her gaze flicks to his face, and his wishes he could erase the lines of apprehension that crease her eyes. She breaks eye contact to look back up at the ceiling. That just seems ridiculous, doesn't it? The idea that I feel so infinitely unexplainable, that I can burn everything in my path and change my universe in a second.

It's not ridiculous, he replies. Stuff like that, it can never be fully understood. Humans are smart, but we're not that smart. We don't know all the answers, even though we like to pretend we do. Our minds just don't have the capacity. It took us tens of thousands of years to figure out that the world is round, for fucks sake. Not everything has to be known right now.

Nothing is set in stone, ever, she murmurs, and he nods in agreement until she looks at him and says not even us.

He sits up and she pushes off the wall with her feet, rolling backwards to face him. He's the one who looks anxious now, while she is smooth and calm. He denies over and over the smallest possibility of him having a future without her in it, while she listens and coolly argues that the occasional tour separation and hoard of rabid fans can take it's toll on a girl. This is the first time he's hearing of her insecurities, but he's long suspected them. She's become the emotional metaphor of emptying a packet of Mentos into a Coke bottle. Every doubt and fear she's ever buried beneath happy memories is cascading out of her in an everlasting flow; dreading that he'll meet someone famous and he'll want to be with her instead, that he'll think she only wants him for his money, that one day he'll just realise it's too hard to be away from each other for so long.

He takes her hand when she's finished, and tells her that all the fame, all the money, all the sleepless nights in cities he can't remember the names of, none of it matters to him as much as she does. Then he walks out of the room and comes back with his guitar, and a song of desperation is played just for her. He's calling out her name in the melody, the longing for her happiness resounding in the harmonies. He knows, he's known for a long time, that she was feeling broken. But he also knew it had to up to Macy Misa to fix herself. He was no knight in shining armour and she'd rather stab herself in the eye than be a damsel in distress. They were never going to be a fairytale, because fairytales are just full of shit.

v. won't stop 'til you surrender
He lit the sparkler, the flame fizzing upwards, illuminating his face and hers. She smiles at him, reaching forward to taking this thin stick out of his hand. As he releases it, he catches her ring finger and slides on a silver band. She looks at it in confusion, and the spluttering lights of the fireworks glint off the diamond in the centre. She gasps and drops the sparkler.

He changes his attention to stamping out the grass at her feet that just caught alight, and when he looks back up she immediately kisses him, hard, until Kevin yells at them to get a room. He wants to tell everyone straight away, but she has a glint in her eye and insists that she wants to wait and see how long it will take them to notice the ring. He raises a single eyebrow and asks if she's met even his brothers, because if she hasn't noticed, they aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the shed. But she gestures zipping her lips shut and he just smiles and waits to see how long she'll last before she gets bored and decides to tell them anyway. She lasts about five minutes waving her hand in their faces before she cracks.

Amidst the cheek kisses and back slaps of congratulations, he leans over and teases that he knew she wouldn't be able to keep it up. Her fist hits his shoulder and it still hurts as much every time, and after his grunt of pain he points out that he might have made a mistake by permanently attaching the hardest mineral in the world to her punching hand. She just rolls her eyes and giggles that he wouldn't have it any other way, she knows it. He imitates her mocking tone and asks where she got that kind of confidential knowledge.

I just know, she shrugs nonchalantly. I'm your Macy.

a/n: I LOVE NICK&MACY :D
baby i'm your biggest fan.
SO FREAKING CUTE.