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chapter twelve: the aftermath

a/n:

tw(s) -- none really.

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When Rory wakes up, she's warm. Almost too warm, actually.

For a moment, she lays there, unmoving, and lets her eyes adjust to the wisps of light that pour in from the window. Her entire body aches with the aftershocks from her injury, her jaw aching and her knee throbbing in protest as she, even though she dreads the throat, stretches her leg out just to see if she can. Moving jostles this weight draped over her waist and she freezes in place as she becomes aware of it.

Turning her head, she finds that she isn't in her own bed, but in Averman's.

He sleeps like the dead as she tries to recall how she got from the lounge to sleeping in a boy's bed (a habit Oliver had 'strongly discouraged' after a night that she'd been caught napping with a male companion, swearing that the then eight-year-old, who had yet to have her first period, would get pregnant if she wasn't more careful.)(This belief would affect her every action until a girl from Canada and a boy from France each did their part to, through their laughter, correct it.) Her eyes dart around the room as internal panic sets in.

Her father, who was already furious with her, is going to lose his mind.

Averman doesn't wake up when she slips his arm from her waist and sits up. He just rolls to face the other side of the bed and mumbles something incoherent in his sleep.

Rory slowly curls her knees to her chest like some little kid, wary of the purple bruises that splotch her skin, and rests her chin on her knees as she recounts everything from the previous night. She got hurt, she yelled at her coach and got kicked off the team for it (though that's not a guarantee), she told Averman she liked him--

She told him she liked him and he told her he liked her, too. And he'd meant it.

He genuinely meant it.

After everything, he likes her.

Him. Lester Averman. A boy untouched by the world she grew up in, who makes a fool of himself just so the people he loves will laugh.

Rory sits there and waits for the other shoe to drop.

The loss of her warmth eventually rouses him from his slumber. He wakes just as silently as he slept, and she watches him rub his eyes as he looks up at her.

"Hi..." Averman croaks, a silly, sleepy smile on his face.

"Hi." She breathes, and then tries to smile back. "I'm freaking out."

His expression bars on confusion as he stretches languidly, like a cat in a patch of sunlight.

"What are you freaking out about? It's too early to freak out."

It's never too early to freak out.

"I slept in your bed." She says and feels frustration in the back of her mind when he doesn't look any less confused. "I'm not supposed to do that."

"You're not supposed to do a lot of things."

Rory opens her mouth but then closes it as she realizes that he isn't wrong. Her gaze lands on the alarm clock that's on one of the boys' desks.

"We have class in an hour."

Averman groans. "Why do we have class before God wakes up?"

Her head tilting to the side, she smiles. "I think omnipotence implies that He doesn't sleep."

"No sleep?" Averman asks, incredulous. "Immortality without sleep? That's terrible. Sleep is great."

Rory nods in agreement. Sleep is great, a necessary greatness, and the thought of never getting to sleep again is horrifying.

"Oh good, you agree." He sits up on his elbow. "You should just stay here and go back to sleep, and forget about MacKay and her stupid tutoring--"

As nice as their cocoon of warmth was, she knows she can't accept his invitation.

"I would love to, but we can't. I'm already on the coach's shit list, I don't want to piss Ms. MacKay off, too."

He dignifies her reasoning with another groan and flops onto his back.

She rolls her eyes when he pulls his pillow over his eyes like a toddler.

"No."

Pursing her lips to hide all evidence of a smile, she rolls over. Her knees on either side of his abdomen, she leans over him, placing her hands on either side of his head for balance.

"You have to get up."

With a huff, he pulls the pillow back down and stares up at her with an odd look on his face. That sparkle returns to his eyes as he feels around blindly for his glasses, not breaking their eye contact, and, when he does find them, he rubs the lenses on his shirt before he puts them on.

Then they hold each other's gazes for what might be a moment too long.

He breaks the silence. "Do you do this to every boy you like?"

"Only the pretty ones."

The effect is almost immediate.

Averman's cheeks become splotchy and red as she sits back on his stomach.

"Pretty?"

"Mhm. Very."

He gets up on his elbows, watching her as she gets off both him and the bed.

The cogs are visibly turning in his head.

"Not as pretty as you, though."

Rory turns to him and grins, shrugging her shoulders. "Debatable."

And she knows she's won when not a single retort, sarcastic or not, can make its way past the tip of his tongue.

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The majority of the team, excluding a few stragglers, are already at breakfast when Rory and Averman get down there.

Some of them are half-asleep, staring at their food instead of eating and nodding off in their seats, but a few have forgone eating altogether. More than a few kids have their heads down on the tables and are sacrificing fuel for the day to catch a few more minutes of sleep before they have to start their day. Rory, too used to international jet lag and late-night galas that ended in early morning training to struggle with running on empty, eats her breakfast and tries her best to ignore the wandering gazes. Averman rests his head on her shoulder and pours like a child.

Charlie, who sits across from her, stares at her in the mounting silence until she looks up from her plate.

"I know." She says, her voice as small as the nervous smile that warbles to her face. "It's pretty gnarly, isn't it?"

His face scrunches, slightly, with confusion, "What?"

"My face." She caught a glimpse of it in the mirror of the boys' room. Her bottom lip is a little swollen, the beginning of a bruise almost painstakingly obvious against her pale skin.

"Oh, no! That's not-- you look fine!"

Rory tilts her head inquisitively.

"I just-- You aren't actually off the team, are you?" He's got this kicked-puppy look on his face and it makes her feel terrible.

"No. Well, I don't think so." She spears a piece of fruit with her fork. "Tibbles says Bombay can't really do that, but Tibbles doesn't have a track record with being trustworthy."

Charlie seems to be off-put by how blasé she is with her impending termination.

"You can't leave. I'll-- I'll talk to Bombay. I'll reason with him. We'll mutiny."

And Rory blinks, unsure of what to say to him.

She doesn't think anyone has ever offered to fight her battles for her so willingly.

"I don't think you're mutiny material, man." A smile twitches its way to her lips. "Thank you, though. Really."

Charlie nods, a look of determination in his eyes, and then turns to Adam and gets the tired blond up to date on his plans to usurp his almost father to keep Rory on the team. Rory turns to the head on her shoulder in his absence.

"You should eat something." She waves a piece of fruit in front of his face to entice Averman.

He shakes his head. "No. I should be in bed right now, asleep and cuddling with this incredibly pretty, infuriatingly stubborn girl I know--"

Rory rolls her eyes. Her face flushes with how casually he says it, and the way that Jesse lifts his head off the table when his words register, as he continues to wax on. She lets him have a moment before she intervenes.

"You can hang off my arm like a toddler if you shut up and go get food."

Theatrically, Averman snaps his mouth shut and mimes locking it, throwing away the key. She stares after him with a puzzled expression as he jumps up from his chair and waltzes off as if he wasn't half-dead a moment before.

Jesse, meanwhile, pins her down with a narrowed gaze.

"We've been trying to get him to shut up for years."

All she can do is lift her shoulders in a shrug.

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Their class for that day ended abruptly. Hardly a quarter of the way through her lesson, MacKay, who'd spent the duration of the class pacing the front of the room and eyeing her uncharacteristically quiet students warily, paused at Luis' desk. The boy took the risk that none of them were willing to take, whether it was of his own volition or not, and fell asleep at his desk. She hadn't even noticed until he started talking in his sleep. After waking him up, she asked the kids what had happened to make them all so tired, and, upon hearing everything-- everything from how he'd kicked Rory off the team to how he'd made them practice into the early hours of the morning as means of punishing them for their loss -- she gave them the day off.

Something about the fact that Averman and Jesse dubbed him Coach Blood made MacKay's body tremble with rage, and that was more than enough incentive to make the kids pack their belongings to get the hell out of dodge.

Before Rory could slip out, though, MacKay gently grabbed her arm.

Then, after everyone has left the room, she turns to the teen with a softened expression.

"Are you okay, Rory?"

That, and the hand the woman extends to rub her arm comfortingly, makes Rory's brows crease together.

"Yeah. I'm okay."

MacKay doesn't appear to believe her. Her smile cracks at the edges and her head tilts, ever so slightly, to the side.

"Really, I am." She doubles down on her point. "I mean, my knee kind of hurts if I put all of my weight on it, and my face is..."

Rory's sentence trails off as she gestures to her chin and attempts to make it all sound like a joke. If MacKay notices the way that her voice shakes, she doesn't say anything.

"Alright. If you end up needing anything, even if it's just someone to talk to, you can come to me, alright?"

Hesitantly, the girl nods.

"Alright."

"Good. Run along now. I'm sure you could use the rest, and I have a meeting with coach blood."

She doesn't have to tell Rory twice.

When Rory scurries from the room, all of the team is out there. They're arguing and hardly notice her presence as she saddles up next to Connie and Guy.

"What are we going to do?" Charlie pesters.

"It's a day off. We do nothing, that's the point."

Their captain shoots Dean a look. The enforcer crosses his arms over his chest and stares right back.

"Hey, we're in California," Kenny says, raising his voice a bit to make sure he has their attention, "why don't we go to a beach or something?"

As the team starts to digest what he said, Rory groans.

"I don't want people to see me. I look like the walking dead."

Averman turns to her but before he can say a word Guy is reaching around Connie to shove her arm.

"Shut up."

Rory turns to Guy, scandalized, and then looks at Connie for help.

Connie shakes her head. "No. He's right. You're pretty, so shut up."

She resigns herself with a huff.

On the way back to their floor of the hotel, people talk animatedly about the beach. Rory quietly holds Averman's hand.

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a/n:

we've reached the part of the book where like the ducks and rory get cute, and all it does is make me dread and anticipate the next book.

also, me and my friends have always been incredibly comfortable with one another. we call each other hot and sexy all the time, so I'm going to write stuff like that into my friendships. does that mean you can't decide one of the ducks likes her bc of the way they interact? no, it does not.

comments and votes are super appreciated! they let me know that you guys like my writing and I cannot stress how much they motivate me to continue! thank you