fame liquor love

“Why not?” Nick prompted, deciding to go full toddler and rolling all the way into the living room, gathering cat hair and dust as he went. He shuffled all the roaming kitties to his chest once he hit the chair Selene was sitting in, her feet digging into the small of his back.

Selene grunted with displeasure when Nick collided with her feet and reflexively kicked him in the back while emitting a high-pitched whining noise. “Stop,” she barked, growing increasingly irritated with the multiplying googly eyes beneath her if only because anger was the only thing between her and swooning at the cuddly pile that congregated on her living room floor. Even Lasagna had reared his fluffy head to join Nick and edged towards the sticky sweet smell on his fingers.

“I’m not the one who had her head so far “Oh that’s where that name came from! What is it again? Serafina? Selena? Don’t tell me I’ll get there… Oh right! Selene isn’t it?” She pretended to be embarrassed when really she’d known the girls name all along - she was Hazel Williams, minion of Blair Waldorf. She had to know who everyone was. “Sorry, it’s a bit of an off day for me but I appreciate the attempt at what I’m assuming was humor because surely you would never pass for Serena Van Der Woodsen.” 

"You’re right,” Selene chirped, unphased by Hazel’s derision. “I’m much prettier than her. Not to mention, I make Serena look like the Virgin Mary. I practically gave her virginity back to her, gift wrapped and tied with a bow and she still hasn’t sent me a thank you card. That skank.”

The chilly breeze did not feel as refreshing as Dylan thought it was going to feel. It was cold for New York in April which was quite ironic considering in early March it had been in the seventies. He hated this indecisive weather. “If you’re gonna say anything stupid, just don’t.” He said with the shake of his head. “But if you’ve got a lighter on you, I’d really appreciate borrowing it. It looks like I misplaced mine and I really don’t feel like heading to buy a new one right now.”

“Cool it with the ‘tude, lover. I’ve got you.” Selene extracted a lighter from her purse and held it out as she stared at him expectantly. Her bedraggled hair and greasy pores said everything about her current state despite the composure that she maintained just enough of to pass through crowds undetected but her pinched brows and cocked hip said she was growing impatient. 

Nick had Stromboli in one arm and Ravioli and Spaghetti in the other. He was busy purring along with the three cats, pausing only to shoot Selene a considering glance before returning to his enthusiastic smothering.

“They’re not your babies,” Selene hissed from the bedroom as she rifled through her things for a sweatshirt that didn’t reek of dollar store goods and Nick Hudson. She emerged in a Kermit sweater that looked about a thousand years old and stepped over Nick to make her way to the screen doors in her living room. Shoving the doors open, she dropped down into her seat with a heavy exhale as thunder rolled in the distance.

The smirk that so often rested upon Hazel’s lips returned at the girl’s idiotic choice of confrontation. “If the wide load you’re referring to is your ass then yeah you’re right and that sounds like your problem.” She took a sip of her coffee, trying to ignore the little munchkins stomping on the inside of her skull. “And if you must know, Serena, the heir of an oil company bought these for me. I hardly think you’d expect me to buy my own things so nice try, but the sunglasses are $400.” 

“I’m not the one taking up two seats in a full coffee shop,” Selene retorted. “If you’re going to be a bitch bright and early, you should to be prepared to pay the price.”

Nick instantly forgot his fear, treats, and everything else the second Selene’s door swung open to reveal her feline entourage. Happy and mollified, he launched himself straight at the floor, gurgling like a toddler in a ball pit as he gathered as many furry friends into his arms as he could.

Selene stared blandly at Nick as dove onto the floor to greet her cats, unimpressed with his behaviour but pardoning it on the fact that nobody else was there to witness it and suffer the second hand embarrassment. She kicked the door closed behind her after raking Nick’s legs into her condo and bent down to scoop Boconccini out of Nick’s reach before he could steal all of her cuddle buddies for the evening. 

“Oh Christ.” Hazel mumbled to herself as she saw who it was. Selene Buchanon - Penelope was never a fan of her and by extension neither was Hazel. “I said that seat was taken. By all of my things which, by the way, you just crushed.” She tugged on the strap of her purse to get it back and started digging through it. “If anything is broken you’re paying for it.” Nothing but a pair of sunglasses (very expensive mind you) was broken so she dangled it in front of the girl’s face. “Maybe if you’d taken your head out of your phone my Prada sunglasses wouldn’t have paid the price.” 

It hadn’t occurred to Selene that she had planted her hind flanks on something until Hazel mentioned it and even then her expression only changed from bewildered to slightly less bewildered when a mass was yanked out from under her. She stared at the other girl for a minute, eyes shifting to the sunglasses only briefly before recognizing the contempt. She caught herself in the midst of an apology, her gaping mouth closing instead in a grimace.

Hazel rubbed her forehead, nursing a hangover one could only have after having dinner with the Williams. She remembered now more than ever why she’d gotten her own place as soon as she could and the reason started with M and ended with other. She took a sip of her coffee, all too aware of the large amount of people in the cafe. At the sight of a figure near her table she purposefully filled the seat next to her with her belongings praying that the person didn’t get any funny ideas like thinking that they could sit next to her. “That seat is taken.” She stated, not bothering to look up at the person.

Like most natural disasters, Selene paid little mind to what other people’s plans and motivations were before she collided into them with all of the grace of a tornado. She had her phone tucked against her shoulder as she narrowly avoided ramming her hip into the table before promptly dropping down onto Hazel’s things with a punctuated crunch. Juggling a panini and a tray of coffee in her hands, she impressively managed to bark over the phone for another minute before setting everything down with an accomplished exhale and looked to the girl beside her.

Nick didn’t hide the relief that overcame him at Selene’s invitation and he enthusiastically scampered forward, winding his arms around her middle and attaching himself like a particularly unwieldy backpack.

Selene furrowed her brows as Nick attached himself to her back, refusing to acknowledge that somehow they’d clumsily bumbled into a realm where Nick felt at home using her hair as a pillow to lay in. She made an effort to swat at his incessant nosing as they entered the elevator but gave up pretending that she was at all offended by his neediness by the time they got to the door of her condo.

Nick narrowed his eyes, pulling away with a frown. “If I managed to crawl out from under a desk long enough, I might be able to.” He hugged his doughnuts to his chest, shoulders hunching instantly at the lightning that flickered through  the windows. 

“Right.” Selene took the opportunity to escape from Nick’s claws the moment he left her side to favor his doughnuts and she had every intention of making off with her loot as she pushed open the door to her building when a clap of thunder rattled the windows. While she was personally undeterred by the noise, she immediately looked back to watch Nick’s reaction.

“Of course not,” Nick said, making a grab for the bag of doughnuts. He tore into it with eager desperation, popping two into his mouth all with one arm still looped with Selene’s. “As if I’d be with anyone during a storm,” he mumbled absently around a mouthful, reaching for another.

“Bullshit,” Selene declared before stealing a powdered doughnut from Nick’s stash and popping it into her mouth before he could protest. “You’d totally be with her and acting like a cool guy while regurgitating some tired old poetry about why storms were named after girls or whatever. What I don’t get is why does Grace get Cool Guy Nick? I mean, aside from the fact that she’s naive enough to buy it.”

Nick opened his mouth to retort that he was fully capable of weathering the storm for another block when a deafening clap of thunder rattled a strangled noise from his mouth instead of the clever words he had prepared. Plastering himself to Selene, he whined pitifully into her shoulder, which might’ve been funnier if he’d faking it.

Selene gave Nick a half-hearted nudge as he glued himself to her side like an overgrown koala and had it been any later than 4AM, she might’ve ditched her arm entirely at the pitched noises reverberating into her shoulder and made a mad sprint for her building at the end of the block.

Nick pretended to be unaffected by her remarks, grabbing a bag of powdered doughnuts and several bars of milk chocolate as he passed. “I only spy on clear nights, I’m not an amateur,” he sniffed, jostling her back. He added them to her pile of cartoonish treats, peering at her imploringly like a child with his parent at a candy store.

Selene shot Nick a look before slamming down another twenty as they made their way past the cash register. She didn’t have the nerve to spare the cashier another look, knowing already what to expect when she was towing a six-foot-something man-child out with her on one arm and an armful of kiddie snacks with the other.

Nick peeled himself off Selene like a sticker, beaming triumphantly as if he’d won something significant. “And look what you’re leaving with,” he said, threading his arm through hers because he liked to push her buttons and not at all because he could still hear the dull clap of thunder in the distance. “Friendship,” he gushed.

Pulling her hood back up over her nest of hair, Selene glared down at Nick’s arm as it looped under hers but chose not to comment in fear that drawing attention to her displeasure would encourage him. Admitting enjoyment and deflecting seemed to do the same things with Nick only deflecting allowed her plausible grounds for denial later on.

Grace smiled, glancing at Selene a bit in awe as her advice resonated in more ways than one. “How is it that you always know exactly how to describe what I’m feeling? Lately I’ve been feeling like a monster or…” She trailed off, unwilling to shed any light on the verbal lashings her parents had been increasingly administering lately. “But you get it.”

“I may or may not have been there myself at some point,” Selene replied, purposefully vague as she fell into step with the shuffle of the lineup. It’d been a long time since she had set herself on fire in order to rise from the ashes and she never liked to look back and think of the misery she felt when she still cared. “Not all monsters do monstrous things, Grace. People are just afraid of what they don’t know.”

“I would never send your nudes to Gossip Girl,” Nick said automatically, and was a little horrified to find that it was true. He tucked his face in to hide his expression, flushing and irritated about it.

Selene glazed over the fact that Nick admitted to having her nudes in the first place in favor of trying to dislodge him from her shoulder before he merged with it, doubling her efforts when she could feel his breath against her neck and the flush of his cheeks against her pulse.