hey i've just posted my karen and the babes au fic thing and its taken me ages to write so i'd appreciate it if you read and liked/reblogged and just say if you want part two?
“What do you think of Karen?” Arthur asks Matt later on, when Karen’s gone back to halls. They’re sat watching Jools Holland repeats and dreaming of things they assumed would never happen. “She’s brilliant, isn’t she.”
It’s not a question and Matt realises: Arthur’s smitten. Well and truly smitten. It’s sort of adorable.
“She’s alright,” he says, sipping beer straight from the bottle. Truth is, Arthur’s not wrong, but that’s not something he’s going to admit. He remembers her singing and it’s unlike anything he’s ever heard—Arthur told him that she’s just a student with no musical experience other than karaoke and a bit of piano, but he finds that difficult to believe because her voice hangs and swoops like someone who has had professional training for years. But he’s Matt and he’s too freaking haughty so he’ll never say that to her out loud. Not for a while, at least. It’s too early for confessions.
(one band, multiple heartbreaks, a lot of alcohol and, finally, new york. a karen and the babes au, part one of two. predominately smillan and karen/arthur, with a smidge of richard/jenna and matt/daisy. rated m. about 11.7k words. listen to the soundtrack here.)
a/n: this has taken me a hell of a long time to write and it may be a tiny bit shit and a little vague in places, but hope you enjoy anyway. don’t hesitate to like/reblog/reply, it makes me happy.
Part One
When Karen moves to London, she doesn’t think it’s to join a band—at first. At first, it’s for university, like pretty much every other person her age: to study art history, because she’s so bloody indecisive that she can barely agree on what to have on her toast for breakfast let alone choose art or history so in the end she settles for both. It’s safe and it’s somewhat normal for a degree, even though she knows it’s going to be impossible to find a job in the end of it. But that’s okay with her. Karen’s weightless; she goes where the wind takes her.
She spends the first few weeks getting into things and establishing a routine: it takes her what feels like forever to memorise her path to lectures across campus and even longer to navigate the tube system, but she ends up liking the anonymity of it and the way she can slip through crowds effortlessly like a tiny fish in a massive ocean. Karen’s from a miniscule town in Inverness—a combination of bright red hair and unforgettable laugh means that she gets recognised everywhere back home, all the people her age knowing her since primary school and nearly every one of the adults has been her babysitter at some point. In London it’s the exact opposite, the only people who know her are the people on her floor in halls and the ones that decide not to directly ignore her in class.
It’s one of said people, a petite, brunette-haired girl called Jenna (they bond over their incapability to find the cafeteria nearest their hall and end up at a different place each time so they safely call each other friends just so they don’t feel totally inept on their own) who invites her out the third Saturday of term.
“My boyfriend’s friend owns a club in town,” Jenna informs her, books laid out in front of her. Karen and Jenna don’t actually share a class—Jenna’s doing an English degree, so there’s no coinciding with art history—but they like to study together in the library anyway. “They do an open-mic-karaoke-thing every so often and it’s always a laugh, mainly because no-one is ever any good.”
Karen chews the end of her pen thoughtfully. She used to sing a lot in her teenage years, but her parents had always said that it wouldn’t get her anywhere (cue art history, which seems just as redundant to Karen in hindsight) but she thinks it might be nice to stretch her vocal chords again. And Jenna’s one of the only people whose asked her anywhere off campus (other than a few creepy lads she definitely does notwant to go anywhere with) so it’s an offer too good to refuse. “Sure. Sounds good. Where about is it?”
Jenna smirks, glad to have recruited someone. “Near Leicester Square. Don’t worry about it, my boyfriend can give us a lift.”
That’s great news to Karen’s ears, because she’s still not totally sure where Leicester Square is. She flips her textbook to the next page. She’s not really reading it to be honest: Jenna’s a fountain of gossip, who knows things about people she doesn’t know yet is still somehow interested in. Jenna could probably make maths interesting. “Your boyfriend has a car, then?”
“Of course he has a car,” Jenna snorts, “Trust me, if he didn’t have a car we would not be dating.”
The curl of her mouth indicates that she’s joking—Karen realises, through the casual way she mentions him and the small smile that stays on her face long after, that she’s in love. Karen’s never felt like that: she’s never felt like her heart’s trying to push its way out of her ribcage, blood pumping ferociously round her body, like the Earth’s rotating just for her and the way she feels. She’s never felt broken, either, so she guesses that’s the one good thing about being unattached.
***
Jenna’s boyfriend is called Richard and he’s tall and handsome (and, kudos, also Scottish) and he does own a car (albeit a shitty red Toyota which sounds like a child screaming when he puts the key in the ignition). He greets Karen with a kiss on the cheek and takes Jenna under his arm, her tiny frame completely swallowed by his hefty torso, but they look so right together anyway. She tries not to stare at the tender and intimate moments between the two of them—the way he brushes the hair out of Jenna’s eyes, her fingers curling round his just so they can be close—but often she can’t help it. She’s never seen two people look so at ease with each other before.
Karen sits in the back while Jenna takes the front. Compared to the outside of the car, with the doors sprayed with mud off dirt-tracks and a slightly crumpled bonnet, the interior is surprisingly clean; there’s only one empty bottle on the floor and the two seats beside Karen would be empty if it wasn’t for the stacks and stacks of CD’s which, on further inspection, looks like every band/singer Karen has ever heard of.
Richard catches her looking in the rear-view mirror and he chuckles, running his free hand through russet curls as he backs out of the street. “Yeah, uh—sorry about the mess. Just push them to the side if they annoy you.”
Jenna rolls her eyes. She turns in her seat to look at Karen, one eyebrow raised. “I’ve been telling him to move them for fucking months,” she insists, “I’m telling you, Karen, never get with a music type. They procrastinate to the point where it’sinfuriating.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get with a literature type either,” Richard adds, “They’re arrogant as fuck.”
Jenna whacks him on the arm good-naturedly while Richard merely laughs, and Karen lets them continue like she’s not in the car at all. She’s always been good at reading people, couples: they’re bickering, but they might as well be saying never let me go. Instead, she rummages through Richard’s CD collection. She’s impressed that he’s got so many modern ones as well as those from earlier in the century and the last, seeing as most people tend to download music from iTunes now (her own library on her iPod brimming with music from every genre she can think of) from Of Monsters and Men and the 1975 to The Beatles and Noah and the Whale. She thumbs the paper sleeves carefully, admiring the bold colours in the artwork and the impeccable care Richard obviously takes of his music (more than he seems to do than his car).
“You’re really into music, then?” Karen asks during a gap in conversation. She leans forward so she’s closer to both Jenna and Richard, elbows resting on either side of their seats.
Richard seems a bit taken aback by the question, especially as she’s been so quiet the majority of the ride, but he answers anyway. “Yeah, absolutely. Always have been. It’s like an obsession.”
“You can say that again,” Jenna mutters under her breath and Karen laughs, “All the time I’ve known him he’s been jumping from one band to the other, forcing me to listen to recordings of this new group who he’s convinced are going to be the next big thing.”
“Some of them have EP’s out now!” Richard argues hopelessly, but Jenna waves him off.
“It’s a good job that I’m into indie stuff otherwise I’d have dumped him ages ago,” she assures Karen, Richard gasping with disbelief, but Karen’s totally unconvinced.
“Thanks, Jen,” Richard murmurs—his voice is light, like he never gets tired of saying her name, “Karen probably thinks I’m a loser.”
“No… It’s cool,” Karen remarks sincerely. She swallows a snort when she sees Richard grin smugly at Jenna, “Really cool.”
“Thanks. That’s more than I get from her,” he gestures towards Jenna who just grins, shaking her head. “Are you into music at all, Karen? Jenna says you do art history.”
“I do,” she confirms: the more she says it, the more she wishes she wasn’t. “But yeah, I am. I used to sing quite a lot and I’ve played the piano since I was a kid.”
Richard nods, impressed, while Jenna looks slightly startled. “You don’t sing anymore?”
She laughs and bites her bottom lip. She’d dreamt of being in a girl band up until the age of about thirteen—she used to crave crowds yelling her name and her voice filling a stadium and her album on the shelves in HMV, but then she joined high school and people told her to get real and she realised the closest she’d ever get to stardom was performing in her friend’s brother’s garage to a crowd of people she’d known from birth. Everything seemed pointless after that. “Not really. Outgrew it, I guess.”
Jenna gasps, rotating in her seat. “You are definitely singing tonight. I need to hear you sing.”
Richard hums in agreement. The city blurs past her window, bright lights and people and worlds away from what she’s used to but she’s somehow never felt more at home. It’s not in her bloodstream, not yet: but it’s soaking into her bones. She laughs at Jenna’s expectant look. “Yeah. Fine. I did agree to come to a karaoke night, Jenna.”
Jenna looks satisfied. “She’s going to put us all to shame, now. The only regular who’s ever any good is Arthur.”
“Hey—I never said I would be any good, I haven’t sung properly in years,” Karen interrupts, but she sighs when she realises that Richard and Jenna are chatting away now and back into their couple-y bubble about some guy named Arthur and his guitar and other local bands that could be making an appearance.
She only catches snippets as the engine roars loudly, masking words:
“…He might bring Matt, I’ve heard that they’ve started playing together…”
“Matt? Christ, he wouldn’t be seen dead…”
“He’s written some new lyrics, god, he’s a fucking genius…”
“…Duet’s never work, Richard. It’ll be over before it’s begun…”
She presses her head against the window, glass cool against her cheekbones. Her breath creates clouds of condensation like it’s mapping a path that’s too quick for her to follow.
(She wants a path. She wants something to go down—well, she thinks it’s something, but it turns out to be someone in the end).
***
Richard parks his car a short walk away and Karen’s surprised they’ve managed to park at all, as London is incomprehensibly busy at all hours of the day. The streets are always packed out with people: tourists, hipsters, businesspeople, drunks. She could write a book on the groups that push by her on a daily basis and she’s barely been here four weeks. That being said, she tries to stick as close to Richard and Jenna as possible—she’s not used to the leery glares she gets as she passes by certain males, and it’s way too early for them to be drunk enough for Karen to be remotely okay with them staring down her cleavage.
(Just to reiterate, she’s not okay with it at all, but at three am after way too much tequila everything is a bit of a blur by then. She brushes off slurred flattery and dodges clumsy limbs trying to collide with hers.)
Richard’s mate’s club is called Luna and it’s tucked away between a couple of restaurants and a photography studio. The first word Karen can think of is metallic, the blues and silvers reminding her of the moon and the grasp it has on the tides, the Tenerife Sea. There’s a queue which carries a few metres down the street, but Richard knows the bouncer at the door so he gets Karen and Jenna in quickly without having to wait (to the annoyance of the crowd outside who she gleefully ignores). Inside, it’s packed almost to the brim, people laughing and dancing to the DJ on the main stage near the back of the club. The karaoke isn’t due to start for another twenty minutes or so and when Jenna drags her to the bar she quickly scrawls their names on the set-list.
“I can’t sing for shit,” Jenna calls over the pounding bass, blue lights contouring her face, “But I’ll be halfway to drunk by then. What about you? What do you want to sing?”
“Just put any Spice Girls song down,” Karen says and Jenna smirks, knowing. If she’s singing, she’s fulfilling her fantasy of being Victoria Beckham, even if that’s in front of loads of mildly-drunk strangers in an even stranger city. “I know them all.”
“Off by heart, backwards and in French, I presume.”
“Spanish,” Karen corrects jokingly and Jenna laughs. She’s having a good time already.
Richard gets the first round of drinks in and introduces Karen to a bunch of people she forgets the names of almost immediately, only stopping to chat to the ones who are willing to buy her drinks. She only drinks whiskey because she’s Scottish and she’s willing to fulfil the stereotype, and it also impresses the people who watch her chug shot after shot and she’s not even tipsy. She says she’s Scottish, and that’s what they do. They fry things and they drink. A lot. Jenna promises to buy her anything fried she wants later if she’s still standing up straight at the end of the night and Karen agrees instantly, because she can drink any of these English idiots under the table.
(It doesn’t quite end like that. She doesn’t end the night with Jenna, at least.)
She hangs around with Jenna for most of the time and the pair of them dance and scream lyrics near the front of the stage, along to whoever has signed up before them. Most of them are spectacularly horrific, howling pop songs off-beat and out of tune with a half-finished beer in their hand without a mic, but it’s so funny and the pair of them laugh so much they have to hold onto each other to stay standing. The only person who is any good—and when Karen says good, she means that the guy could be aprofessional—is Arthur, who she vaguely remembers Jenna and Richard nattering about in the car a couple of hours previous. He has a guitar slung over his shoulders and dusty-blonde hair which falls into his eyes, and he announces that the song he’s about to sing is one that he’s actually wrote himself and not from a Now That’s What I Call Music album.
Richard joins them just as Arthur throws himself into the music. He plays the guitar like it’s an extra limb: a part of him, like he feels incomplete when he’s without it, and Karen’s enthralled.
“Told you he was good,” Richard comments, arms wrapped round Jenna’s waist and her head crooned into his shoulders. Arthur’s sound isn’t like anything she’s heard before; it’s scratchy and warm and new, not like the heavy beats and electronic sounds from before. It’s not a song you can dance to but no-one is bothered. The crowd sways, couples holding onto each other.
Karen just nods and her eyes don’t leave Arthur for the rest of the performance. For a moment, she wishes he would open his eyes—he screws them shut the whole time, like opening them was a betrayal to the emotion he’d put into his music—just so he could see her. She doesn’t believe in love at first sight and she doesn’t believe this is it, but she does believe you can fall in love with the way someone makes you feel. It’s the equivalent to having someone’s arms around her, like Richard and Jenna, the way Arthur’s sound seeps into her bones and warms her from the inside out.
When he finishes, Arthur throws his arm triumphantly in the air and grins. The people in the club roar with applause (Richard yells I’m your number one fan jokingly which makes Arthur flush ever so slightly and gives him a thumbs up and a thanks for the support, pal). Karen finds herself screaming and Arthur sees her, in his peripheral, and throws a smile over his shoulder as he leaves the stage and the presenter (some guy who is actually called Guy, and Karen’s at the level of semi-drunk where she finds that funny) follows up.
“No Matt, then,” Richard murmurs to Jenna. She shrugs, not looking surprised—I told you, she says. Matt doesn’t do karaoke. He’s too fucking haughty.
Guy has a clipboard in his hand and a microphone in the other. Karen would usually think he’s attractive with skin the colour of rich mocha and cropped black hair, but she’s still high on Arthur. “Next up is… Karen, with Wannabe!” Karen raises her arms high in the air, the crowd roaring, Jenna whooping from next to her. Guy gives her an amused look as she makes her way onto the stage (not trying to trip over her own feet) and says, “And, I’ve got noted down here… In Spanish?”
Karen gives Jenna a pointed eye roll from her spot centre-stage: the, roughly, two hundred people scattered about the club either laughing or cheering. She realises with a swoop in her stomach that this is the biggest crowd she’s ever performed for. She knows it’s just karaoke and she knows no-one is expecting much and she knows her bloodstream is at least fifty percent alcohol, but it makes her nervous nonetheless.
“Not in Spanish,” she iterates as Guy hands her the microphone. “God, I can barely do English.”
It’s not a fact that anyone argues against and she doesn’t know whether to be offended, but Guy leaves her and she loosens her body and throws herself into the opening I tell you what you want and it’s like she never stopped singing. This song is her life, she decides, because it’s cheesy and lame and doesn’t make sense in the best possible way and everyone loves it and the vigour she has.
(Karen’s different to Arthur, Richard says to Jenna a bit later on. She’s incredible, she fills a room, she has this energy. Like whenever she opens her mouth you have no choice but to stop and listen.)
When she finishes her voice is hoarse and red hair has spilt messily all over her face, but she’s never felt so free. It may be because she’s drank five shots of whiskey and the adrenaline pumping so furiously round her body that she feels she could burst but, honestly, it could be because this is what she’s always wanted to do.
Jenna hands her a beer (“Sorry, I can’t deal with the whiskey”) and an almost gobsmacked look when she returns to the floor. Her chestnut eyes are wide and she looks so comical, like an animal in an old Disney cartoon. “When you said you could sing, I didn’t think you meant like Christina fucking Aguilera!”
Definitely Beyoncé, but she lets it slide. She takes the beer and lets the liquid warm her aching throat, soothe her muscles. “I have my talents.”
Jenna snorts. “Understatement, Karen. You’ll have people buying you drinks the rest of the night. Or re-enacting their Emma Bunton fantasies.”
She scoffs a laugh at Jenna’s bluntness and the two of them sit by the bar for a while instead of up at the stage. It crawls on for one am now and the club shuts at three, and Jenna’s thinking about getting Richard to take them home. They don’t fancy taking the tube, seeing as Karen is totally inept at reading public transport timetables and Jenna’s a bit more plastered than she is so wouldn’t be exactly reliable. She loses Jenna amongst the crowd as she goes to look for her boyfriend and for a few moments, she’s alone—
—until she feels the presence of someone sitting beside her, and it’s a glimpse of a greyJoy Division t shirt and scruffy blonde hair that indicates he’s Arthur. She tries to hide her mouth as she smiles into her glass.
“You were pretty amazing up there,” Arthur says—he talks like he sings, low and sort of croaky. He orders a rum and coke. “You don’t tend to get amazing people here. Amazingly awful, maybe, but not amazing in the good sense.”
He’s rambling but she likes it, so that’s alright. “Thanks. You weren’t too bad, either.”
He smirks. So she’s one of those types. “Spice Girls fan? Very 1996.”
“Don’t mock the Spice Girls. Ever.” Karen warns seriously, pointing her index finger at Arthur. He grins and it should infuriate her, but she feels too golden to care.
“Okay, okay. Fine. I won’t,”—spoiler, he most definitely will—“Are you into anything other than cheesy late-nineties pop?”
She raises an eyebrow but lets it slide, taking a sip of beer. Arthur watches her closely. She wonders if he gets absorbed in everything he does or asks, because he’s studying her the way she reads David Levithan books—intensely.
(It’s not everything: its two things. At first it’s one thing [music] but, later, it becomes two.)
“Yeah. Of course,” She was going to leave it there, but it’s obviously a question that needs a longer answer. “Um… Ed Sheeran, I guess. The Script. The Fray.”
Arthur just clamps his head in his hands and she elbows him, offended. Yeah, they’re not indie-little-heard-of bands which people seem crazy about lately, but she likes them. She also likes show tunes [a lot] but she leaves that bit out, not because she’s embarrassed, of course. It’s just another part of her she’s not willing to give away.
“What? What’s wrong with them?”
“What’s wrong? Oh God, Karen—I never want to see your iTunes library.”
Karen pouts. “You’re a music snob, aren’t you?”
Arthur looks affronted, eyebrows knitting together. “No, of course not! You’ve just got horrific taste!”
“That’s exactly the kind of thing a music snob would say.”
“Shut up,” he grumbles, and he takes a swig of rum. Karen mouth curls and her bottom lip tucks underneath her teeth. Fuck, she likes him. And it’s taken two minutes. She really, really likes him. “I can’t help being cultured.”
“Educate me, then,” she says, and Arthur almost chokes on his drink. He gazes at her, like he’s trying to find a glitch in her system which reveals it—her—as a joke. But she’s deadly serious and her chin is in her palm and she wants him to tell her everything there is to know about everything ever.
“Oh—right. Okay. Yeah. That’s…” She blinks, lips set in a fine line, crimson hair contrasting with the porcelain of her skin.
(It would just be inappropriate to waste the moment and not kiss her.)
***
She wakes up in a bed that’s not her own with an unfamiliar duvet which feels odd against her bare legs—but the most startling thing is smelling coffee which actually smells good and not like it’s been brewed in a sewer like the stuff from the machine at Uni. It takes a couple of minutes for her to adjust and she rubs her eyes, wincing at the slight pain throbbing away at the peak of her skull (it’s not the worst hangover she’s ever had: that involved a lot of vomit and a small dog, and luckily none of those things are around. Yet.).
She’s wearing a t shirt that isn’t hers and her own clothes/belongings are strewn lazily across the floor. It starts to come back to her, slowly, then all at once; Arthur backing her against the wall and his hands tracing the curves of her body and the taste of rum, bitter, on his tongue. She takes in the scent of the fabric covering her chest—its cigarette smoke and black cherries and cedarwood, and it’s how she imagines it would be. There’s a packet of Marlboro Lights on Arthur’s nightstand and wood panelling covers his floor. It’s actually quite a big room (much bigger than hers but that’s no feat in the scheme of things) with a double-bed and a wardrobe and a desk and two different guitar hung on his wall, but the window is even better. It’s right above the bed so she barely has to tilt her head to look out and see London and cars and civilisation. She’s also about three floors up but doesn’t remember any stairs.
(There’s also posters everywhere: postcards and record sleeves, photographs of him with different people and the only consistent this one guy with a floppy fringe. Wow. He’s definitely a music type.)
She reaches out for her mobile which is hidden under her dress on the floor. The green light is flashing, indicating a new message, but she quickly realises it’s just a snidey comment from Jenna about leaving with someone other than her. It makes her smile, nonetheless, memories from last night flooding back to her in small bursts. Everything making sense.
Arthur brings her coffee in a chipped yet thankfully clean mug (which is better than she was expecting, to be frank) and it’s the best coffee she’s had in London. Karen tells Arthur that and he snorts with laughter.
“The coffee you’ve been drinking must be fucking dreadful,” he comments, taking a sip of his own, “Because this is from the Sainsbury’s basics and trust me, it’s basic on so many levels.”
She eats buttered toast and strawberry jam messily in his bed but he doesn’t complain about the crumbs spilling onto the sheets. She brushes them onto the floor and promises to vacuum (an empty one, it seems, because she trips over the cord half an hour later and Arthur says she’s an occupational hazard). While Arthur showers Karen takes liberty in poking around his flat because last night is still hazy, hidden under a foggy sheet of whiskey and lazy guitar chords.
It’s poky but it’s nice: no matter what room she’s in she can still hear the pelting of water from the bathroom. The kitchen and the living room are attached—well, she says kitchen, but she believes the term is kitchenette or too small to really do anything in. There’s a kettle and an oven and a microwave and a sink somehow all crammed into one wall, a table taking up most of the space on the linoleum which is covered in sheet music. Dirty dishes and mugs overflow from the sink like in the tiny kitchen at the university, each of the twelve students she shares the floor with claiming that they’d clean later but never actually doing so. The living room looks even smaller, somehow, but it could be because an electronic keyboard takes pride of place next to the back wall and the television is sat on the edge of it, like a second thought. There’s a sofa but it’s mismatched and old, one of the cushions fabric and the other leather, and a low-rise coffee table which sits in front of it covered in even more sheet music and mugs and takeaway cartons.
It’s blindingly obvious he doesn’t live here on his own, to Karen. She’s seen his bedroom—it’s not exactly tidy, but it’s an organised mess, like things are placed somewhere for a reason that only he knows. The rest of the flat is half that and half just generally unsystematic like someone else is moving things around.
(That, and the fact that there’s another bedroom. She likes to think it’s down to her spectacular deducting skills though.)
Karen’s tempted to take a look behind the closed bedroom door because he’s obviously not in, this mystery flatmate, but her hand is wrapped round the door-handle when she decides it’s too much of a violation. Curiosity killed the cat, after all. Arthur backs out of the bathroom at just the right moment, rubbing his wet hair with a towel in a jumper and jeans.
“What’re you doing?” he asks, bemused, hanging the towel round his neck. Karen can’t deny that he looks attractive with his hair dishevelled like that.
“Being nosy,” Karen admits. There’s no point in lying. If he wants to see her again that’s something he’s going to have to deal with: that if you open your diary, she’ll read it. She leans into the doorframe. “Who’s your flatmate, then?”
“Flatmate? Yeah,” Arthur says and she’s not sure what that means. He throws the towel into the bathroom, fingers raking through his scalp. “He’s part of the reason I came over to you last night, actually.”
Karen’s eyebrow quirks. “Oh—right. Oh! I didn’t realise…”
It’s Arthur’s turn to look confused. He takes the mug from Karen’s grasp and takes a sip, to her annoyance: but she allows it, because she doesn’t know anything about Arthur and he doesn’t know anything about her but she feels like she does. “What are you on about?”
She coughs. “Uh, erm… I didn’t realise you were into that.”
He looks up at her through blonde eyelashes over the brim of the mug. “What? Into what?”
Karen sighs. “Three-way.”
Arthur chokes on coffee, eyes wide in shock. “What! Fuck, no! What I was going to say was that we’re in a band and we need a singer but… God, are you into that?”
“No!” she argues back profusely, “Absolutely not! I just assumed…”
“Seriously? I mention my flatmate and that’s the first conclusion you come to?”
“Fuck off! Just forget it,” she mutters, flushing hotly. Her cheeks match the colour of her hair. Alarmingly crimson. Arthur thinks it should be a colour on a B&Q paint chart. “What were you going to say?”
“Well, I was going to say that Matt and I need a singer, and I saw you on stage last night and you’re it.” Arthur says. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he takes another swig of coffee. “Weird three-way whims and all.”
She kicks his ankle lightly but, oh, she’s walked straight into this one, hasn’t she? “Is this Matt too-fucking-haughty-for-karaoke?”
Arthur’s walked away into the kitchen but his voice carries out into the small hall between the bedrooms and him. She hangs around, studying the pictures on the wall. It’s mostly concert ticket stubs—bands she’s never heard of, obviously. She runs her fingertips across the shiny card, thinking of mosh pits and lukewarm beer and raw voices. “Yeah… How do you know about him? Have you met before?”
“No—Richard and Jenna mentioned him, that’s all,” she calls out. She hears the rush of a tap and pottery clanging against a draining board. “I’m friends with Jenna. We’re in the same halls at University.”
“Oh—right! I didn’t know that. Or that you were in University. Or anything about you.” Arthur admits. The tap stops. Yeah, it’s sort of weird. They really don’t know anything about each other and Karen’s never been more okay with it. “What do you do, then? Music?”
“No,” and it comes out as a half-laugh half-scoff. “No, art history.”
“Art history? That’s a real degree?”
“Yes!” Karen barks, offended—why is she still here? Arthur’s cynical to the point where it should be classed as unhealthy. “It’s good, actually. Interesting.” She can’t tell if she’s lying. “What about you? Not a student?”
“Nah. Well, I did a year, then my gap year turned into four gap years.” A cupboard door shuts. “I don’t know, I liked it, but I was doing philosophy and I was writing more music than essays on, in the scheme of things, stuff I didn’t care about whatsoever. So I dropped out and I started singing more and got a job in a library and admittedly I’m always skint but I was skint all the time in Uni anyway.”
Familiar story. You’re either drowning in student debt or drowning in London debt. You might as well take a plunge in the one you care about more.
Karen trails into the kitchen. Arthur’s tidying, throwing magazines into a rack by the sofa and piling up the music, like he’s trying to make the place a bit more presentable. It’s a bit too late for that—Karen’s had too big a glimpse into what he’s really like.
“This band, then,” Karen perches on the fabric side of the sofa. She rests her arms lazily on the back so she can watch Arthur potter about without having to move herself.
“You’re interested?”
“Maybe,” Yes. “I’m just trying to establish what I could be getting in to.”
“Well,” Arthur pauses, “Matt’s on keys and I’m on guitar, but we need someone that fits in between us. We both sing but we need a singer, like you.”
Her ears go hot and she hides her face from him. She’s flattered, really, that he thinks she’s good enough to take vocals in a band where he’s a singer. Arthur, whose voice captivated her last night in ways she didn’t think were possible, raw with emotion and secrets no-one else knows. She has a million different ways she could express how she feels but instead she says, “Right. Do you write all your own stuff, then?”
Arthur’s eyes glitter and he’s back where he belongs: talking about music. His music. “Yeah, mostly. We do some covers but most of the stuff comes out of mine or Matt’s head. Matt’s a genius, Karen. Like… I don’t even know how to describe it, he justknows.”
“Wow,” Karen mumbles, “That’s good, because I can’t write at all.”
Arthur chuckles. Like he knows something she doesn’t. “That’s what everyone says. So you’re up for it? Being in a band with two people you hardly know?”
Karen shrugs. Stranger things have happened. Like getting laid three weeks into term with someone she doesn’t directly regret afterwards. “As long as this Matt isn’t a complete tosser, sure.”
Arthur laughs and she doesn’t get the joke, his back turned away from her. “We’re screwed, then.”
***
(She gets back to halls a couple of hours later in last night’s clothes [even though Arthur tells her to keep the shirt she can’t very well walk out in just that, she’s notthat obscene] and the late September wind has her hair knotting in tangles all over her face. She’s the subject of gossip of the girls on her floor, who pester her about where she’s been and who she’s been with and ooh, that’s not your jacket, Karen! She’s all too relieved to slam the door on them and fall back onto her own, rickety bed and stare up at the bland ceiling, mapping the cracks like constellations in a midnight sky. She has guitar chords in her ears and her heart thrums like a drumbeat.
Jenna pops her head round the door a few minutes later. Ooh, she says, playful smirk prevalent. Look what the cat dragged in.
She doesn’t reply.
Have a nice night with Mr Darvill, then? She continues to poke, not giving in. From what I’ve heard, he’s got a talent for strumming…
Karen chucks a pillow at her, but the door closes just before, cutting her off. It feels like a victory.)
***
They become a couple without anyone actually declaring their a couple—Arthur’s number is the most texted in her phone and she’s round at his flat every other night, watching TV and trying out harmonies and eating greasy takeaways straight out the box and more often than not without cutlery. He kisses her and it’s warm and lovely and it feels good, and the sex isn’t too bad either. Karen likes him, more than anyone she’s met at Uni—the guys on her floor are alright but they’re much younger than Arthur and she notices it more as she spends more time with each. They’re not passionate about anything, not even their degree, unless you count when football matches are on the telly or its half price beer-and-snooker night at the union bar. Arthur on the other hand: you’d cut him and he’d bleed music, she’s sure of it.
(This is all before she meets Matt, though.)
Jenna prods at her for details incessantly. Karen’s good at keeping the things which are private to herself, though, to Jenna’s annoyance—although the two of them do grow closer, sharing a bottle of wine between the two of them much too often to be considered healthy and talking about boys. Jenna declares herself a matchmaker because she believes that she’s the one that got Karen and Arthur in contact (even though their encounter was nothing to do with Jenna whatsoever, but if it makes her happy) and she promises to be at the front of their first gig when they finally get the band together. Duets never work, she says. But a trio might.
“Matt’s coming back Saturday,” Arthur says. They’re sat in the library where Arthur works: it’s a lot less convenient than the library at the university but she’s not complaining because she can study and spend time with him. It’s ancient, with shelves that trail all the way up to the ceiling and covered in books with leather-bound covers that need constant care and attention, Arthur re-binding and dusting volumes which look like they’ve come from a seventeenth century bookshelf. “So we can finally start practicing.”
“Oh,” Karen looks up from her book. She’s supposed to be planning her essay on Rene Magritte, but what’s she supposed to be doing and is actually doing are two completely different things. “Great! Exciting.”
“Not exciting.” Arthur corrects. “Matt is an awful human being. You’ll hate him.”
Karen grins, flicking a page. “Good thing I’m a professional, then.”
Oh God, she couldn’t be more wrong. She’s not a professional. At all. Especially when said professionalism is paired with Matt Smith.
***
Karen meets Matt that Saturday night at his and Arthur’s flat. At first, she forgets he’s supposed to be there at all—she turns up at Arthur’s door after being buzzed in in one of his sweatshirts and her hair piled on top of her head, curls almost as unruly as she is, and no makeup. She’s bought a pizza from the Italian down the street and the grease seeps through the cardboard, warming her fingers.
Matt answers the door, his hair wet like he’s just got out the shower. It almost feels like culture shock to Karen to realise that there’s someone other than Arthur standing at the door and something unfamiliar jolts through her, like someone lit a firework in her gut and it’s fizzing and spitting. The two of them just stand on the doorstep for a few moments longer than necessary, unsure on what to say.
“I didn’t realise we ordered pizza,” Matt mutters. He scrubs his scruffy, brown hair with the towel wrapped round his shoulders. He leans into the hall. “Arthur? Did we order pizza? Also, the pizza girl is looking at me weird.” He does a double-take, forehead furrowed, to check she’s still staring at him. She is. “I didn’t think there were pizza girls, either.”
“I’m not a pizza girl,” she argues, albeit a minute too late for it to sound sane. “I’m, uh, Karen.”
“Karen?” Recognition flits across Matt’s features. “Karen! Arthur’s Karen! Arthur! Karen’s here!” He pauses to study her and he’s not even discrete about it, but first impressions and all that. “I didn’t think you would be ginger. Or Scottish. Or a pizza girl.”
Karen rolls her eyes, not even bothering to ask as she pushes past into the hall. Matt harrumphs, but she ignores him. “I’m not a pizza girl. I’m Karen.”
“Are you sure you’re not a pizza girl?” Matt gestures towards the box in her hands, “You’ve got pizza.”
“I’m not a pizza girl, and you’re not having any.”
Arthur chooses that moment to walk out into the hall and he sees the two of them, already bickering, and he thinks that maybe this wasn’t the best idea in the world. But Karen’s amazing and Matt’s begrudgingly brilliant and he’s not too bad either, so if he can somehow make it work this band could be the best thing that’s ever happened.
“Karen,” Arthur says, cutting their argument, “This is Matt. And Matt, Karen.”
Karen pouts, folding her arms. Matt laughs—when his mouth curves two dimples appear by his lips and his eyes are laughing with him. He’s attractive in an unconventional way, with a big chin (seriously, where did he get that chin?) and strong features and hair that curls right into his eyes.
(Oh. He’s the guy from the photos on Arthur’s wall. It makes sense, somehow.)
Karen huffs into the living room and throws herself onto the couch. The boys follow, but Matt’s infuriating and Arthur’s trying to keep the peace. In the end, he plugs Matt’s keyboard in at the wall and he gets his favourite guitar and tells them to playanything, literally anything and he’s right. So right. This is the best thing that’s ever happened.
When they finish, the three of them sit in silence for a while, astounded at their own capability. It’s not perfect—Matt’s a little rusty, Karen’s voice wavers on the high notes—but it’s miles better from what they anticipated for a first shot. Arthur doesn’t know how him and Matt managed on their own. Karen belongs there more than they do.
(And Karen’s a little bit pissed off, because Matt is a genius. He’s like Arthur with his guitar on the keyboard; as if it’s something he’s born to play—and his voice. Fuck. It’s like ocean waves crashing against her skeleton, all-consuming, leaving the bitter taste of seasalt on her tongue.)
“The pizza is probably cold,” Karen points out futilely, just so she fills the silence. Arthur and Matt nod. They eat it anyway, cold and all, and Karen wipes her greasy fingers on Matt’s jeans. She’ll put up with him, for now.
***
(“What do you think of Karen?” Arthur asks Matt later on, when Karen’s gone back to halls. They’re sat watching Jools Holland repeats and dreaming of things they assumed would never happen. “She’s brilliant, isn’t she.”
It’s not a question and Matt realises: Arthur’s smitten. Well and truly smitten. It’s sort of adorable.
“She’s alright,” he says, sipping beer straight from the bottle. Truth is, Arthur’s not wrong, but that’s not something he’s going to admit. He remembers her singing and it’s unlike anything he’s ever heard—Arthur told him that she’s just a student with no musical experience other than karaoke and a bit of piano, but he finds that difficult to believe because her voice hangs and swoops like someone who has had professional training for years. But he’s Matt and he’s too fucking haughty so he’ll never say that to her out loud. Not for a while, at least. It’s too early for confessions. “A bit Scottish, though.”
Arthur screws up his nose. “Bit racist there, mate.”
“That’s not racist, it’s just the truth.”
“Which is what a racist would say.”
“Shut up,” he says, with a laugh. It’s nice to be back home. And when he falls asleep later that night, he’s thinking about a girl with flame-red hair and a voice that could make the sun rise.)
***
Their first gig is in four days’ time, late October, at a club called Alaska which Matt knows the owner of. They’re booked from ten until eleven which is a pretty decent slot, but there’s not a chance in hell that they’ll get paid for it. Karen doesn’t find herself minding, though. She just wants the exhilaration of being on the stage and hopefully a free drink or two. She starts spending more time at Arthur and Matt’s flat than the university, and when Matt calls her up on it she says it’s because the foods better but really, it’s the company, to Jenna’s disappointment—but she’s out with Richard and a lot of his mates most of the time, anyway.
Karen feels herself pulling closer to Matt and Arthur, like they have their own orbit, which makes no sense whatsoever because Matt bullies her incessantly and Arthur’s starting to become protective and defensive of her. They’re still “together”, in the sense they shag every so often and she sort of thinks of him as… Not her boyfriend, but as the person she saw first and a person she likes. That’s the thing. Nothing really compared to that first night they shared together but it’s too late for her to declare it aone night thing without it creating a rupture between them which she doesn’t to deal with in the aftermath.
She’s with Arthur for ease and because she’s a coward and because she can’t deal with relationships. She values him too much to hurt him, which is becoming increasingly more difficult because Matt.
He drops by one of the rare occasions she’s in her own room actually studying for her half-term art history assessment, reading about Picasso and Monet and Van Gogh and quite a lot more artists she wishes she cared more about. He has a daft bowler hat perched on the back of head and comes bearing gifts: a punnet of cherries and a carton of dark chocolate ice cream.
She pretends like she’s not glad to see him, throwing her book down on her duvet. “Who let you in?”
He gasps, pretending to look affronted. He closes her bedroom door behind him—she bets it’s because of Aria and Ellie, two of the girls on her floor, who still have nothing better to do than enquire about her life outside lectures. “I hope that’s not how you treat all your guests, Karen, especially ones that bring you gifts.”
“No. It’s only how I treat you.” Matt throws his hat at her menacingly in the least menacingly way possible and she catches it, positioning it on her own head.
“Wow. I never realised that a hat could make you more ugly.”
“You could just give me the food and leave, y’know,” Karen grumbles and he laughs, throwing himself on the bed beside her—the mattress ricochets under his weight and the springs squeak unnervingly. None of them do anything about it.
“Not a chance. If I’ve bought the food, I’m definitely eating it.”
Karen manages to keep in a laugh as Matt takes out the goodies from the Sainsbury’s carrier bag. The condensation from round the ice cream carton has dried, making it sticky, but he lays it on her duvet in anyway and peels the film off the top of the cherries. He’s come prepared, with spoons, and Karen takes one with a giggle as Matt makes a funny face at her. It’s melted a bit—the chocolate runs from the spoon onto her fingers, but it tastes good anyway. Rich and smooth like velvet. Like Matt’s voice, come to think of it.
“What’s this for,” Karen asks because she can’t not. “You don’t buy me nice things. You steal my chips when you think I’m not looking and hide my socks.”
Matt’s lips quirk, on the edge of a laugh. He swallows down a spoonful of ice cream (or just cream, really) and drops it to answer the question, wiping his hands clean by brushing them together. “It’s an apology. I was a dick to you when we first met, and I’m sorry. Even if you are a bit too Scottish for me.”
She whacks him on the arm, but he just laughs. It’s a rubbish apology, and it’s so overdue that she’s past caring, but he’s brought her cherries and ice cream and she knows it doesn’t get much better, so it’s good enough for her. “You’re a bit too English for me, so I guess we’re on equal footing.”
“I guess so.”
(I think I need you.)
Matt looks round her room and he realises that he’s never been in it before, but it’s exactly how he imagines it should be: it’s basic, but Karen fills it like she fills every cell of his body, all colour and life and books brimming with poetry and ideas of romance. Post it notes covered in her familiar scrawl decorate every space on her wall, detailing the ideas of artists he’s never heard of and there’s small photos of her family, rare glimpses of Gillan life in the homeland. He can recognise a young Karen straightaway—her hair has always been the same shade of red, like she never grew out of it.
They eat cherries and play the disgusting game of let’s-see-who-can-spit-the-stones-in-the-bin from where they’re sat on the bed, which inevitably leads to a lot them landing on Karen’s carpet and leaving questionable red stains (and trying to convince anyone who looks in that no, she’s not murdered anyone. Ha-ha.) on the fabric. Juice spills out onto Karen’s chin and Matt wipes it away with his thumb, and it’s such a tender moment that both of them pause and stare at each other too long for it to be explained away, and Matt’s lips come so close that—
—Karen backs away, because that’s not right. Right? She laughs to disperse the feelings that have settled over them, but it doesn’t really do anything to help. Matt shuffles awkwardly on the bed.
No, he’s Matt and he’s not yours and that’s not okay.
“Well,” Karen says and Matt looks up, unabashed. He’s totally over it. Karen doesn’t understand him at all—he’s completely unaware on boundaries. “Thanks for coming round. It’s been… Nice.”
Matt doesn’t laugh, exactly, but he exhales with a small smile. His hands rest lazily across his chest. He doesn’t leave for a while but they don’t talk either, just reading over her shoulder but none of them are actually reading. She’s painfully aware of the long and slow inhales and exhales and the tension pulsing between the two of them but she thinks of Arthur and how this could mean the end of the band before its even begun.
***
“What’s the deal between you and Arthur? Are you—“
“Together?”
“Yeah. I mean, the way he talks about you and I know—but are you?”
“I… Don’t know. Sort of. What about you?”
“Yeah. Um, yes. Before I met you, at Arthur’s, I was visiting my girlfriend in Northampton. Daisy. She’s called Daisy.”
“Oh! Right! I… Never knew that. Good for you.”
“Ha. Yeah.”
“…I guess we’re both unavailable, then.”
“Something like that.”
***
The gig is a huge success, and Karen’s high on adrenaline and sweat sticks to her skin and her voice is raw, but the audience can’t get enough of their sound—Matt and Arthur are loving it too and even the two of them who are used to doing gigs say it’s the best one they’ve ever done. She loves it, loves it, loves it. Compared to the monotony of walking into the same rooms for lectures day in day out, performing sends her into outer space. She almost wishes she didn’t have to go back to reality.
Richard and Jenna, true to their promise, show up and stay right at the front of the stage the whole time. Richard volunteers buying the first round of drinks and the bubble of alcohol in Karen’s stomach only sends her higher into the clouds. Tonight, she can do anything.
Arthur takes her onto the dance-floor as soon as the next band comes on—it’s an electronic punky sort of group with a lead singer that has one side of his head completely shaved and the other an almost blinding blonde. They’re called Funky Teeth which is pretty fucking weird, but they’ve got more of a name than Karen, Arthur and Matt have currently—at the moment they’re called KMA which is something Arthur’s four-year-old niece could come up with, but they all have conflicting ideas about what’s cool so fail to come to a conclusion. They’ll think of something. Some day.
“You were amazing up there,” Arthur tells her, mouth inches away from her neck. It’s something she’s grown accustomed to. Arthur’s lips and her skin. “Absolutely incredible.”
“Stop flattering me. You’ll inflate my ego.” Karen jokes. Arthur laughs, slightly hoarse, but he looks happier now than he has in a long time. It’s the music, she thinks. It makes him happy.
(Arthur thinks it’s not just the music. It’s her. It’s Karen.)
Arthur’s hands slink round her waist. The music’s terrible, there’s no rhythm to it at all, but there’s a rhythm to the way his heart beats inside his chest and the way Karen sways into him. “No more flattery, then. I’ll stick to abusing your pathetic excuse of a CD collection.”
“And I’ll stick to abusing you on how you never knew that Beyoncé and Jay Z were married.”
Arthur’s face crumples into her shoulder. “It’s because my head is full of important things which aren’t in Heat Magazine.”
“Yeah, but Arthur, that’s just general knowledge. Like knowing that Madrid is the capital of Spain and that Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice.”
“Well, next pub quiz I go to, I’ll make sure you’re on my team. To provide all thegeneral knowledge.”
Karen smiles and Arthur smiles in ricochet, and he swears he’s never seen anyone so beautiful, inside and out. It doesn’t matter what light she’s under: whether it’s the blazing crimson from the club or the early evening sunlight sweeping over her cheekbones, he can’t find fault.
And Karen thinks Arthur’s perfect too, but there’s a little voice in the back of her head that says but yeah, he’s perfect as a mate, isn’t he? She doesn’t know whether that little voice has always been there from the day they met or whether it’s Matt’s fault—he’s sat at the bar across from them at the club, sipping on a vodka and coke (“With lime and ice—seriously, don’t forget the lime and the ice. Very important.”) and laughing at something Jenna says, and she thinks of that time they come so close it makes the hairs on the neck stand up…
But Arthur’s here. And Matt’s got Daisy. Ah, Little Miss Ambiguous. The girlfriend that he never mentions and when asked doesn’t really mention her either.
Suddenly, Arthur’s fingers are entangled in her hair and his eyes are boring into hers and his lips are parted. It’s hard to make out his features in the dim light but she’s knows his face off by heart anyway. She’s known him for almost two months but it might as well be a lifetime. But for some reason, when he leans in to kiss her like he’s done so many times before—lazy afternoons spent with their legs intertwined on his bed, underneath the arch outside the library where rain drips from the bricks in front of them—but it feels different, somehow. It’s still nice—she’s not complaining, but it doesn’t feel so right any more.
Arthur retracts and he notices a blip. He frowns, slightly. “Are you alright?”
She glances over by the bar. Matt’s gone.
Why is she thinking about Matt so much?
“Yeah. Fine.” She slips her hands onto Arthur’s shoulders. “Absolutely fine.”
***
It gets to the point where it’s ridiculous.
She goes to rehearsals and attends lecture and still loves being on stage, in the little pubs and clubs which are always owned by friends-of-friends, and she loves the band. She’s still Arthur’s ‘girlfriend’ and she does normal girlfriend-y duties like lets him take her out to restaurants and walking her back to campus and a new bouquet of flowers every week. She’s still not sure if she’s 100% sure she wants to be this, but she’s living under the pretence that because they’ve never had a formal conversation about it that it’s not actually real, which is stupid but, yeah. Indecisive.
It’s ridiculous, because she’s avoiding Matt. She ignores his text messages and pretends she’s busy with art history (which Matt knows immediately is a lie) and scurries off as soon as Arthur mentions he needs to leave when they’re altogether. And it’s sad, because Matt’s one of her best friends and she wants to spend time with him without thinking all the things she shouldn’t be thinking.
have you and matt fallen out? Arthur texts and shit, he’s twigged.
no.
then why are you treading on hot coals round him? i’m not blind karen
She can’t really say because I really, really fancy him, can she?
i don’t know. it’s nothing.
i believe you, but sort it. do you want me to speak to him? did he say something?
no! i’ll sort it.
good, because we’ve got a gig at a wedding in york and i want you two happy again. see you later x
Damn.
***
They meet in a pub that’s barely ten minutes from the university and a little longer from the DIY shop where Matt works (she thinks it’s the most ironic thing in the world, that a man who got frustrated about putting a shelf up in her room and had to stop for a break to watch Grand Designs actually works in a place where he has to give carpentry advice for a living). It doesn’t take long for Matt to convince her it isn’t his first career choice and that his CV isn’t exactly reliable.
She waits for him at the bar, hair tied back in a sloppy ponytail and yesterday’s jeans because she’s been up since 4am finishing an essay and thinking about this. He spots her straight away and sidles onto the barstool next to her. Karen doesn’t look at him, at first.
She orders him a pint. “I’m… Sorry.”
The bartender hands Matt the Carling and he takes a sip, wiping the froth from his top lip. “Sorry for what?”
“You know what.” Karen reminds him. She feels the side of her face heating up and she curves her palms round her jaw to hide it. “It’s just…”
“No, no. I get it.” Matt tilts, pulling her hands away from her face. The contact is soft and serious, like for once he’s trying to do the right thing by her. “Forget about it, Karen. We didn’t actually do anything and you’re with Arthur…”
“And you have Daisy.”
“Yeah—Karen, look at me. Look at me.”
Her eyes leave the wood of the bar at Matt’s gentle command. She looks up at him and he’s more sincere than she’s ever seen him and it startles her for a second, like this person in her life is so much more important than she’s given him credit for.
“Karen, you’re my pal, and I don’t want you to be angry with me forever.”
“I’m not angry with you,”—no, it’s more a maybe you’re the one that I’m sort of in love with—“I’m never angry with you. I’ve just been an idiot.”
“Can’t dispute that,” Matt offers and she elbows him gently in the side. He laughs shortly, slinging an arm round her shoulders and pulling her close. Her head lolls into him, hair tumbling down his chest in long, scarlet tendrils—and, really, he’s never going to see a hair colour like that again. “You’re a right one, Gillan. Don’t know what Arthur sees in you.”
And it’s better, like that, as if there’s nothing easier than the two of them spending time together.
***
The wedding they’ve been booked for is just before Christmas, which is admittedly a bit short notice (Matt expects a cancellation somewhere down the line) but the couple had seen them perform later in November in a club and instantly fell in love—by absolute coincidence the groom bumped into Arthur at the library and asked him if they were free on the spot and Arthur said yes conclusively. The three of them huddle round Arthur’s laptop to calculate how long it will take to drive from central London to York and, assuming there are no heavy traffic delays, it should take about four hours. Luckily it’s in Karen’s two week break from university and Arthur says that he can borrow his dad’s car to get up there as none of them have an actual vehicle—come on, it’s London. A car isn’t exactly economically viable.
“What name did you give them?” Karen wonders—three months on (almost) and they still can’t agree on it. They’re sat in Richard’s front room, who is throwing a pre-Christmas party, and the house he shares with two other men (one of them whose doing a history degree at the same university as Karen and Jenna and the other teaches guitar lessons) is dressed up in strings of white Christmas lights and sprigs of mistletoe. The house is brimming with people she vaguely recognises from various clubs and students she’s seen walking across campus.
“I didn’t give them a name.” Arthur admits, running a hand through his hair. He leans further back into the couch. “I just gave them my email.”
Matt snorts. He’s sat on the opposite side of the room, a whole armchair to himself, sipping on a lukewarm can of beer. “We need to get this name thing sorted out.”
Jenna pipes up from next to Karen. The two of them are sat on the floor with their backs against the coffee table and a bowl of salt-and-vinegar crisps propped between their knees, because the boys have such a lack of manners that they don’t offer any space on the couch. “You’ve been together three months and done at least ten gigs and still don’t have a name?”
Arthur rolls his eyes and Matt shoots her a look, while Karen inhales another mouthful of crisps. She speaks with her mouth full and crisp crumbs spill out of her mouth, Matt muttering some sly comment with a withheld grin. “Because we all hate what each other comes up with.”
Jenna sighs, exasperated. It’s all so clear to her. “You should both go with what Karen says. You’re her boys, after all.” She waggles an eyebrow. “Her babes.”
Karen chokes on nothing and Matt’s completely perturbed by the notion that he’s Karen’s anything let alone her babe (“Disgusting, Jenna. I don’t want anything to do with that disgrace.”) and Arthur’s mockingly annoyed and says I’m her only babe, thank you very much. But then a eureka moment flashes over his features and oh, he’s got it.
“Karen and the Babes.” Arthur says, sitting upright. “That’s it. That should be the name.”
Matt’s got an argument on the tip of his tongue but for some reason he can’t find the words to object—he’s so used to disliking anything on this subject but this time, it fits. He can see it. He glances over at Karen who looks just as excited, the smile on her face bright and warm despite it being frosty and cold outside. There’s something about it that makes him smile back.
“What can I say?” Jenna announces, arms thrown in the air, “I. Am. A. Genius.”
“Well,” Arthur scrunches his nose, “It was me. Really.”
Jenna’s prepared to argue that fact and stands up, knocking the bowl of crisps into Karen’s lap (who catches it just before the contents spills all over Richard’s lovely, beige carpet). Jenna’s only five foot two and a bit of a lightweight so it takes Karen’s hands round her calves to steady her. “You want to say that standing up?”
“What does that even mean?” Arthur contests. He’s comfortable enough in the groove of the sofa but Jenna grabs onto the wool of his jumper, her tiny fists not doing much to haul him up but the contact causes enough shock for him to stand. He towers above her, but the alcohol has caused Jenna not to really notice. “Oh. Right. What now?”
“It was me who came up with the name, Darvill.”
“If we’re being pedantic—“
Matt’s howling and Karen decides to join him on the armchair with snacks, clambering onto the arm with as much grace as Matt calls later a drunk giraffe. Jenna continues to hurl abuse at Arthur who just stands there providing dry comments, the epitome of sarcasm and wit. It’s so funny that Matt uses his iPhone to record the whole altercation to possibly blackmail Jenna with when she’s sober. Karen scarfs more crisps and watches intently and realises that people are actively avoiding the front room, completely baffled at what exactly a tiny woman is doing throwing colourful curses at a man who just looks moderately amused.
Matt rests his arm across Karen’s thigh and for a moment, she feels her heart try to surge up through her throat—but it calms, pulse slowing, because she realises it for what it is. He’s one of her best friends. They’re allowed to be affectionate without it being interpreted it as something different.
Richard notices the commotion a few minutes later when he props his head round the living room door. He sees Matt and Karen laughing and spraying crisp crumbs onto his floor and thinks he didn’t expect anything less of the two of them, but he also sees his tiny girlfriend telling a man much taller than herself to fucking admit it and even though it’s hilarious, it’s probably about time for him to break it up.
(Matt and Karen aren’t going to do it, obviously.)
He puts his hands on Jenna’s shoulders and pulls her away. She protests, at first, in the heat of the moment—but like Karen’s seen so many times before, Jenna loves Richard even when she’s a little bit drunk, so she does what he says and follows him through to the kitchen.
Arthur stays standing up, still slightly confused. “I’m not entirely sure what happened there.”
“None of us are, mate,” Matt says—he’s gone pink from laughing so hard. Karen snorts. “But let’s get more drinks to celebrate! We finally have a name which isn’t absolutely shit!”
Karen whoops, throwing an arm in the air. Matt throws her off the armchair and hauls her on to his shoulders while she kicks and screams at him to put her down but he absolutely won’t—he’s got into a habit of never doing what she asks. She yells at Arthur for help but he stands back and laughs, loudly.
“Karen and the fucking babes my arse!” she squawks, “You two are not my babes! You’re both absolute shits which are not my babes!”
***
The night ends like this:
All three of them drink way too much, including these cocktails which Karen calls Boozy Claus because it’s Christmas and it’s a mixture of vodka, beer and orange juice—and it’s absolutely vile but they drink a huge jug of it between them anyway while Karen howls Santa Claus is Coming to Town but replaces the word Santa with Boozy to fit in with the alcoholic theme. It gets to the stage where even Jenna is telling them to slow down even though she’s so past plastered that Richard has to guide her to the bathroom down the hall as her brain isn’t coordinating her legs enough for her to walk properly.
Karen spends the night lying across Matt and Arthur’s legs, with her shoes off and bare feet in the air. Matt mutters God, Gillan, do you ever wash those? Disgusting, and she gets him back by putting her toes in his face and he tries to push them frantically away, complaining about how he doesn’t want to catch the bubonic plague or something that obviously comes from Karen. Somewhere along the line Arthur staggers off, kissing her sloppily on the mouth and Matt looks away—all she can taste is beer and oranges.
Matt and Karen are amongst the last to leave (meaning that it’s 4am and Richard is trying to chuck people out) but Karen whinges about how she wants a cigarette so Matt pulls her out onto the balcony, where it’s relatively quiet apart from the people below trying to get home in relative states of drunkenness. She fumbles around in her bag so pathetically that Matt ends up doing it for her, even going as far as lighting it and placing it between her lips. She inhales deeply, her knuckles turning white round the iron of the balcony to prevent her from lurching over. She passes the cigarette over to Matt, who doesn’t even smoke, and he ends up spluttering and choking and he throws the dratted thing over the side, sparks trailing like a pathetic firework. Karen almost collapses with laughter.
Give me another, Kaz. I’ll do it right this time. I’ll do rings and everything.
Slow down, Kurt Cobain. Wouldn’t want you to get addicted.
Like you, you mean?
I’m not addicted, Matthew. I’m just temporarily dependent.
If that’s true, then, I’m also temporarily dependent.
What? After one cigarette? God, Matt you don’t—
No, not on cigarettes, idiot. I’m temporarily dependant on you. Maybe without the temporary part. Possibly permanently. It’s hard to tell, yet.
…Oh.
(The night ends like that. With Matt’s fingers knotted in her hair and her lips colliding with his, her whole body thrown in to the kiss. He doesn’t mind the taste of nicotine when it’s in her mouth, he decides, even though he’s so past drunk that it could taste like anything and he wouldn’t care. It’s cold and her hands her numb but her lips are hot and furious. At one point it starts snowing and they discover it’s 5 am, and Karen’s ready to pass out and Richard hauls them inside, muttering curse words profusely—how the fuck did I not realise that this was obviously going to happen.)
He laughs in spite of himself: that’s Karen. That will always be Karen. She laughs, too, and they hold onto each other at the bar for a bit longer—like the embrace will prolong the time they have together. It’s ironic, really, that he plays a man who has all the time in the world yet now when he needs it most it’s non-existent.
(Smillan fic, set during the filming of TAtM, where some realisations are made, tears are shed, but it's matt and karen. of course he isn't going to let her go. rated t, about 2.5k words. hope you enjoy, message if you would like more smillan).
Karen’s leaving. Karen’s actually leaving and even though Matt knew this ages ago—he knows that most companions on the series don’t stay for longer than two, and that was only Billie; he’s been so, so lucky to get two and a half out of Karen—it’s something that he refuses to accept. Jenna’s lovely, but she’s not Karen: she’s not Invernetian grit and alarmingly bright red hair and a laugh that ricochets deep within him. Karen’s unique and Karen’s the first face this face saw and Karen’s his, the woman he’s navigated most of the Doctor Who journey with, and it’s going to be too weird for her time on the show to end and for his just to carry on.
Truth is, he can’t face going from spending nearly every day working [breathing, living] with her to practically nothing at all. Matt tries to hide it, how much he’s going to miss this mad, ginger idiot, but it seeps out through his pores even if he doesn’t actually say anything. Brushing her shoulder-blades with his fingertips. Doing anything, no matter how odd, just to stay close to her. Mumbling daft jokes and witty comments between takes just so he never forgets the sound of her laugh.
And they’re in New York, too, which just makes it all the more painful for him. The most beautiful city in the world and the most beautiful girl. He doesn’t say that out loud of course, she’d whack him for being soppy: but as the sun makes the golds and auburns in her hair glitter, he wishes he could.
“We should come back here,” Karen mutters, eyelids closed. The sun is high above Central Park and her porcelain pale skin almost reflects it perfectly. He nearly laughs—like the moon. “You and me. Maybe Arthur.”
She adds the Arthur bit on the end so she doesn’t have to admit anything, and Matt knows it. That’s what their relationship is built up on. Getting as close as they possibly can without setting anything in stone because neither of them are ready for it. Or they think they’re not. Same difference, in Matt’s head. He wants nothing more to have Karen all to himself in a city as big as this, explore every inch of it together with fingers interlaced [maybe] but they both know that their schedules are hectic and full-to-the-brim and barely any of their breaks coincide so it’s nothing but a distant dream.
“Yeah,” he says, going along with her, because he can’t not. “Matt and Karen take New York.”
“Karen and Matt take New York,” Karen corrects, and she opens her right eye just enough to see Matt roll his with a laugh. She gently kicks him with her foot. “Ladies first, Matthew. Where have you left your manners?”
He shakes her head. Karen’s incorrigible yet he can’t seem to get enough of her and he can’t seem to shake how awful it is that this is their second last day of filming. “In London.”
She snorts. “I don’t remember you having many there, either.”
He tips his head back with laughter, whacking her arm with his copy of Melody Malone. She hits him back and he can imagine this turning into something violent (well, violent for Karen anyway) so he rolls back, missing her grasp. The thing about these altercations was that they always ended with one of them too close for comfort, lips barely inches apart and so close he can feel Karen’s breath on his neck, and he’s not sure [after four years knowing her] that he’ll be able to restrain himself if it came to that. And restraining himself is vital with crew and journalists and fans scattered all around them—he can barely give away what he feels for Karen to himself let alone to the hundreds of others with their eyes on them.
She blinks, her lips curling. He swears she’s thinking what he is, but she’s smarter. Karen is always smarter. Their gaze snaps when Arthur returns—he’s frighteningly specific over his coffee so insists on going with whoever is on the drinks menu—and the cameras are all back on them, the director reminding them five more minutes and they’re going to continue recording.
“What did I miss?” Arthur hums, handing Matt and Karen their drinks. His own is overflowing with froth—Karen always turns up her nose at it, baffled at why he even bothers in the first place.
“Nothing new,” Matt remarks, “Just Kaz being a mentalist.”
Karen frowns, but she gets it all the time. She’s just as bad to him, really, and it happens so often that Arthur’s sometimes feels left out that nobody bullies him: but Arthur knows.
Arthur laughs. Matt loves Arthur, he really does, and it hits him that he’s losing not one but two of his dearest friends from the show. Matt looks at the two of them in turn, running a hand through his hair, and decides something. “We should all go out tonight. The three of us. Before the last day of filming.”
Arthur crooks his eyebrow like he knows something Matt doesn’t, but Karen grins.
“Yes! Let’s all get horrendously drunk so we all look terrible tomorrow,” she jokes: Karen doesn’t do drunk in the way Arthur and Matt do. She’s practically indestructible, not even tipsy up to the eighth shot. The problem is, as Matt has discovered, that she continues to think she’s indestructible well after the point even she is too intoxicated to stand.
“You couldn’t possibly look terrible,” Matt says and he’s not joking, but the tenderness in his tone indicates that he’s serious and this isn’t another one of his jokes. He grins wildly to cover it, but Arthur knows him too well to buy it and Karen… Well, Karen’s Karen. “So… What do you say? Check out some of the clubs around here?”
Both of them are up for it, especially seeing as their flights leave tomorrow night. This is the last chance for them to go out together as the Doctor Who cast. The day after Matt is the only one still standing.
One of the makeup girls calls Karen over for a touch up so she hops up, hand skimming Matt’s thigh as she does so. It’s something that Matt hardly registers because it’s just normal for the two of them, but Arthur’s ears prick and he studies Matt’s expression from the rim of his cup.
Matt narrows his eyes at him. “What?”
Arthur waves him off but Matt’s not letting it go, so he sighs and gives in. “Are you sure you want me to come with you and Karen tonight? I could just stay in the hotel.”
Matt tries to pretend he doesn’t know where this has come from. “Of course I do! What are you talking about?”
Arthur rolls his eyes. “I’m not blind, Matt. I’ve been your third wheel for four years and that’s cool, but this is your last night together. I’m fine with letting you get on with things.”
“…Get on with things?”
“Yeah. Without me there. Not that you need privacy, you act like an old married couple as it is.”
Matt smirks at his turn of phrase but refuses to let Arthur leave himself out. “No, no, Arthur man. That’s… No. Just come out. Have a good time. Anyway, you know where all the good places are.”
Arthur nods with recognition. “Oh, I see how it is. I’m your tour guide. Only useful in that aspect, am I?”
“Spot on, mate. Spot on.”
-x-
The day drags into the night and Matt’s never been so happy to see the sun go down—the costume is off and the night is their own, no limits and expectations and directors placing him where they want. Karen looks ravishing, as always, her red hair hanging loose and a tight, black dress and high heels which make her stumble on the pavements.
(“Karen, you’re a disgrace, and you haven’t even drunk anything yet.”
“…Who says I haven’t drunk anything yet? What’s the mini bar for, Smithy?”
Fuck.)
Arthur takes them down side-streets and the cold bites at their shoulders, until they find a small club outside the centre of town. It’s decorated in reds and golds and the exterior looks like its falling to pieces, but Arthur assures them that Golden is the only good place to party in New York City.
The warmth’s a blessing as they enter, the lighting dark and the music just loud enough to dance to and quiet enough to not have to strain your voice over, a live band on the stage. It’s filled with an assortment of people from so many backgrounds and Matt’s never felt more at home.
“You’ve done good, mate,” Matt claps Arthur’s shoulders and he smiles—Karen’s already carried away with the beat. “Now, should I get drinks in?”
“I’ll get drinks in,” Arthur asserts, gesturing towards Karen who is getting absorbed by the crowd. “You look after her. She’ll have whiskey, right?”
Matt nods. “Get me a vodka and coke.”
Arthur wanders over to the bar and Matt collapses into people, pushing past bodies to reach the tall, slim and unforgettable redhead. She sees him before he gets to her and she grins, holding out her arms so Matt can grab onto her wrists.
“This is great!” Karen says and she’s so carefree and so happy, and Matt wants to pull her into him and never let go. “Arthur’s an impeccable tour guide, isn’t he?”
“Top notch,” he teases, twirling her around as she squeals. Before they know it they’re dancing together, and it’s two hours later and a lot of alcohol that Matt notices that when he’s with her there might as well not be anyone else in the room. She towers above them, her voice a little slurred and limbs clumsy, but she’s Karen and she’s perfect and she can’t leave him.
They sit at the bar when the music stills into something slower and more melancholy, Arthur chatting up a girl near the front of the club and other couples dancing closer together. Holding each other.
Karen’s hand creeps towards his, long slender fingers centimetres away from his hand. Matt’s not as drunk as her but he still feels a little bit lightheaded, but both of them know what’s happening. They’re not that drunk.
“I don’t want you to leave,” he murmurs, so quietly that it’s hardly audible under the soft chords on the lead singer’s guitar. “Please don’t leave.”
She laughs but there’s sadness behind it. Her eyes are sad too. It’s unfamiliar: Karen isn’t sad. Ever. “You know I can’t do that. It’s… It’s time, Matt.”
He leans forward and cups her cheek in his hand and she flinches but doesn’t move back. He’s never been this intimate with her, seriously and not casually, and it’s a surprise but it’s not unwelcome. Karen just wishes it didn’t have to come now when they had barely hours in each other’s company. “I’ll miss you. I can’t even begin to tell you how I’ll miss everything about you because it won’t be the same…”
She squeezes her eyes shut, placing her hand on top of his, keeping his flesh as close to her as possible. He’s her lifeline, the thing that keeps her going. She’s tried not to think about it but… It’s hard not to. “You’ll get on fine with Jenna—“
“Karen, that’s not—“
“No, listen to me!” Karen says, “You’ll get on fine with Jenna and you’ll move on and it’s not like I’m not around, Matt! You can pick up the phone any time. We just won’t… Be together all the time.”
“I need to be with you all the time!” Matt argues and Karen shatters, like the one thing keeping her together has broken. “And that isn’t me just being clingy, or whatever, it’s a basic fact that you’re the reason that I keep going.”
And Karen cries, like that, and he pulls her so close to him that this time he swears he will not let her go. Never ever. She soaks his shirt with slightly drunken sobs, fingernails gripping into his arm. She smells like dark chocolate and hibiscus, bittersweet, an absolute oxymoron.
Karen breathes. “You know you can’t say things like that to me.”
“I know, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t,” Matt says but it all comes out too quickly like he isn’t sure which statement he should say first or if he should say them at all, “But…”
“You’re the reason I keep going too,” Karen cuts in, makeup smudged and voice cracked, “And it’s been like that from the start. And I have to leave but I don’t want to leave and you and your stupid big chin face has made this all go so fucking… I don’t know.”
He laughs in spite of himself: that’s Karen. That will always be Karen. She laughs, too, and they hold onto each other at the bar for a bit longer—like the embrace will prolong the time they have together. It’s ironic, really, that he plays a man who has all the time in the world yet now when he needs it most it’s non-existent.
“Let’s go to the hotel,” she murmurs into his chest, “It’s two am and we’re working tomorrow but I still want to fuck you senseless.”
Matt’s shattered and this is probably not a good idea—he’s thought about fucking her for a long time, or sleeping beside her, or just kissing her goodnight—but all good ideas are a bit shit in the end so he might as well go for it even if it aches to go to bed from now on and see that she’s not lying next to him.
“Cool,” is all he says and she kicks him, but she also kisses him. Which is an improvement, at least.
-x-
There’s so many tears as the director shouts cut on the final scene alongside Karen and both of them collapse into each other’s arms, sobbing, because it’s over and Amy Pond is not coming back. But as their fingers intertwine in the airport and he captures her lips with a kiss as they wait into the lobby, it’s not really over. Because they’ll always have New York and they’ll always have each other.
Karen stared at the camera on the cashier desk. She’d brought it home last night so as not to lose it and brought it back to the shop today, hoping that its lovely owner would come back today to get it back. She turned it on and browsed the pictures once again, completely bored due to the fact that there had been almost no customers today. It is only eight A.M, but Karen never was one to wait patiently. Her thoughts were soon interrupted by the jingling of the door hanger, indicating that someone had entered.
"Morning, Karen!", she heard a woman say.
She stood up and got out from behind the counter and found that the woman turned out to be her best friend, Jenna.
"Hey, what’s new, Coleman?", she asked to Jenna.
"Not much. Just dropped by to say thanks for the gifts to my mum the other day. She loved the flowers. Personally, I loved the china. They must have cost a fortune!", Jenna replied, cheery as always.
"You’re welcome! So glad she liked it. I’ve gotta get a new cash register, by the way. Any idea where I might get a cheap one? By the way, you cut your hair?"
"See, Karen, if you keep buying the cheap ones then they’re never going to last long! Here, let me take a look at it. And yes, I did. Tired of long hair.", she said, walking behind the counter, flaunting her new shoulder-length brown hair.
Jenna took the keys to the machine that was lying beside the register and inserted them in the lock, gently turning and pulling. However, the register wouldn’t open that easily, and the drawer remained locked.
"You tried ringing up a sale already?", she asked.
Karen nodded.
"It’s probably something here jamming the system. You got a ruler?", she asked again.
Karen took a ruler from the desk drawer and handed it over to Jenna.
"Here. I read somewhere that it’s usually the bill depressor that’s making it stuck. I’ll just slide this ruler in the top corner of the drawer,", she did what she said, "and move it from side to side until I hear something drop."
Soon enough, the drop was heard and the drawer snapped open in time for Jenna to pull the ruler out. She placed the ruler in Karen’s hands and smiled.
"Thank you!", Karen said with a smile.
"No problem. I’m warning you, though, one of these days that register will break down for good."
"Yeah, okay. Thanks, Jen."
"No problem.", Jenna said, shifting her gaze to the camera on the desk. "Gotten a camera?"
She picked it up and turned it on, browsing through the pictures just like Karen did the previous day. She stared at the pictures in disbelief, thinking that it was Karen’s. She looked up and opened her mouth to speak, but Karen was quicker.
"Not mine.", she said.
"Thanks for clearing that up. Whose, then?"
"This…guy came in yesterday. Went to buy the paper, among other things. Cash register wasn’t working, so while waiting, we talked. He showed me his pictures."
"Ooh, is he good looking?", Jenna asked.
"Um. Well, he’s..he’s…walking in here right now."
Jenna turned her head in the direction of the door soon enough as to see Matt walking in. He walked confidently to the cashier desk, nodding at Jenna.
"Hi there, Karen. I seem to have left my camera here?", he said.
"Um, yeah. Matt, this is Jenna. I was just telling her about how you left your camera here.", she said, motioning for the two to get to know each other.
"Hey, Matt Smith.", he said, introducing himself.
"Nice to meet you. Jenna-Louise Coleman, or just Jenna Coleman. I’m a friend of Karen’s.", she said, smiling.
"Well, more like best friend.", Karen interjected. "Anyways, want your camera back?", she asked.
"Yes, please! Battery not low?"
"Nope, still good."
Jenna interrupted by saying something about having a cousin’s birthday or something like that, and saying goodbye to Karen and Matt, she left them both alone, mouthing “hottie” to Karen.
"Sooo…", she said.
"So…business good?", he asked, obviously making small talk.
She laughed lightly at that question, knowing that he already knew the answer. “Not bad. Work days are always emptier. But we’ve only just opened half an hour ago, so you can’t really tell. You want your camera back?”
"Oh, right. Do you want to see some other pictures?", he said, taking out a media card from his bag.
"Really? That’s okay with you?", she asked.
He handed her the chip and she gladly took it. She gently removed the current media card and handed it to him, carefully inserting the new one. She turned the camera on again and excitedly looked at the new pictures.
"You went to Brazil?", she asked, flipping the camera to face him.
"In time for one of their extravagant festivals, yes. Flip over a few pictures to the right, and you’ll see Venice’s annual masquerade."
She did so and gasped at the gorgeous picture he took-a lady in a Venetian masquerade costume with her partner in another costume. Behind them were people dancing on the street.
"You are so lucky.", she said.
"Most of the time.", he said, agreeing.
She sighed and browsed through the pictures once again. He stared at her once again, occasionally smiling at her reaction to the pictures.
As last time, she caught him staring. He looked away a little too late, making her slightly laugh.
"Were you staring at me?", she asked.
"Um…no, I..", he stuttered.
She laughed at the reaction and raised an eyebrow. “Okay, whatever you say then.”, she said, focusing on the pictures once again.
~*~
It had been a week since Karen and Matt last met, and Matt had been going there everyday to show her the pictures. Last week it was all about Europe, with the exception of Brazil.
Karen had seen pictures from France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and (of course) England. She wanted to go so badly, yet it seemed so impossible.
Today, however, the photographer that Karen had nicknamed ‘Smithers’ was nowhere to be found. He usually comes at 9AM, before the customers flood in, and leave at 10.30 for work. The clock showed 9.30AM but Karen hadn’t seen him at all.
Bored, she started to draw on the notepad near the new cash register. Matt had accompanied her to the store over the weekend and she got a brand-new cash register that won’t get stuck again. At least, that’s what the clerk said.
The door-hanger jingled and Karen shot up, desperate to see who it was. Her guess was proven to be correct-it was Matt, with a Starbucks bag in one hand and the camera bag in the other.
"Hi, Kaz! Sorry I’m late, traffic was hell."
"Kaz? That’s new. And you always walk, what traffic?", she asked in confusion.
"I had to go deliver some pictures to the book publisher, they wanted to see me at 8AM. They’re at the east end, so I had to take a cab here. Like I said, traffic was hell. Apparently cabs and Monday mornings don’t do well together.”, he said, placing the Starbucks on the cashier desk.
"Okay, but what’s with the nickname and the Starbucks?"
"It’s new. Since you came up with a nickname for me, why can’t I come up with one for you? And this?", he said, pointing to the Starbucks. "I know you don’t like coffee, but try this one out. It’s my favorite: Iced Caramel Frappucino with extra cream."
"No, no, no. I don’t do coffee. Ever."
"Try it."
She tentatively took a sip. Clearly, her mind changed as she quickly drank some more.
"Shit, this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted!", she exclaimed.
"I know, right? I call it my Monday morning pick-me-up drink.”
"I don’t care what you call it, but I love it.", she said.
He smiled triumphantly and handed her his camera.
"Filled up with pictures of my trip to the United States."
She took it and placed it on the table. For a while, she disappeared into the room behind the desk, and returned with another chair. She placed it next to hers and motioned for him to sit down and waited until he did so.
After Matt sat down beside her, she turned on the camera and pressed the buttons, looking through the pictures. It hadn’t been five minutes when a lady walked in the shop, bringing a toddler along. The lady walked straight to the cashier desk.
"Hi, Karen.", she said.
Karen looked up at her and smiled.
"Donna, hi!", she said.
"I’m going to Harrods but I need someone to look after Rose. Is that fine with you?", she said.
Matt figured out that Rose must be the blonde toddler standing beside the lady.
"Sure, sure! I’ll see you later?"
"Definitely, at three-ish. Thanks, Karen!", she said, leaving the toddler with Karen.
"So, Matt, that was Miss Donna Tyler-Noble. This is her daughter, Rose Tyler.", said Karen. "Rose, darling, say hi to my friend, Matt."
The adorable kid waved and grinned, showing gaps in her teeth. “Karen, is this your boyfriend?”, she asked.
Matt and Karen laughed at the girl’s remark, Matt especially. I wish, he thought.
"Mommy tells me that only pretty girls have boyfriends. You’re pretty!", the three-year-old said.
"Why, thank you, Rose! You’re pretty, too! But I don’t have a boyfriend, not now.”, she said, putting her hands on the little girl’s shoulders.
"Can I go pick a book to read?", she asked.
"Go ahead. Come back here when you’re done."
When Rose ran to the children’s section, Matt spoke up.
"Donna’s your friend?"
Karen laughed at that remark. “No! She’s a friend of my friend’s. She lives in Kensington, with the posh houses and all. She’s really busy, so whenever she has something to do she drops her daughter here.”
"Rose looks more like your daughter than Donna’s.", he pointed out.
"She loves Rose. She’s just really busy."
Matt nodded, understanding the situation. “And what does she do for you in return?”
"She insists on paying me, although I try my best to refuse."
Rose called Karen from the children’s section, saying something about a book about giraffes and another about dancing flip-flops. Karen excused herself and walked over to Rose.
Matt pretended to browse through his camera, while he actually stared at Karen. He realized he’s starting to fall for her, even though he barely knows her.
Get a grip, he thought. What would she see in you?
Now that he knew she’s single, it’d be easier to approach her. He liked how she’s good with kids-like how she is with Rose. He heard her agree to read to Rose, settling on the book about dancing flip-flops because Rose thought that the one about giraffes would be ‘too long, just like a giraffe’s neck’.
From day one, however, he admired the fact that she wouldn’t take any money from anyone, despite making a living out of selling books from a store in a small alley.
He wasn’t sure if this was for real or just a feeling, but he knew that he was falling fast. If only she were there to catch him.
~*~
He’d stayed there for about an hour when Rose wanted some lunch. Apparently she wanted some food from some café near the main road, it was an expensive one.
"Rose, I’m working, so is it alright if we get something from the café across and eat it here?", Karen asked.
She shook her head.
"I’ll take you! We can eat outside the shop.", Matt offered.
Karen shot him a look that said ‘what are you doing?’, and he mouthed a ‘trust me’ to her.
"Okay, I’ll make you a deal, Rose.", he said, kneeling down to face her. "We eat in the café across, and I’ll buy you some ice cream."
A smile quickly spread through Rose’s face. “Deal!”, she said, quickly pulling him towards the door.
"See you soon!", Karen shouted from the desk. She mouthed a ‘take care of her’ to Matt, to which he simply nodded.
*~*
"I want my ice cream!", Rose said, not forgetting the deal they made.
"Okay, Rose, what flavor do you want?"
"Chocolate and vanilla."
"Two scoops? You sure about that?", he asked.
She nodded. “Two scoops.”
Matt raised his hand and ordered the ice cream while Rose looked on with a satisfied smile.
"Matt, do you like Karen?", she asked innocently.
Matt was clearly taken aback, but laughed at that remark.
"Now what makes you think that?"
"You’re friends. If you don’t like her, then how can you be friends?.", she whispered.
Matt sighed in relief. Turns out Rose didn’t mean ‘like’ that way.
"Of course I do! I like you, too.", he said.
The ice cream came and Rose dug in, despite the fact that she finished a whole burger. The two conversed while Rose worked on her ice cream.
They didn’t notice Karen looking at them from the bookshop, secretly smiling in satisfaction. She noticed how Matt’s actually good with kids, and how he’d make a good dad.
There was definitely something about him that Karen liked, though she couldn’t exactly figure out her feelings. But right now, this would have to do.
What do you think? See what I did with Jenna, Rose, and Donna? ;)
Karen gets sick and Matt takes care of her because friendship (and other stuff yeah but)
Rating: G
Karen wakes up to a thud and an "Oh, fuck!" coming from the kitchen. She stumbles down the hallway, rubbing her eyes, and into the kitchen, where Matt is standing. The floor looks like it's moving and she blinks a few times before her vision clears and she realizes that the floor is covered in ants.
"Oh." she says.
"Yeah." he replies. Then he looks at her and smiles brightly, "Good morning!" she laughs and he rushes off to the bathroom, returning with two cans of bug spray in aerosol cans. He hands her one and shakes the other. She shakes hers as well and he starts spraying the ants that cover the floor. The spray kills the ants instantly, which is kind of unnerving. She follows him around the kitchen, spraying anywhere that still moves, and is hit by a strong smell of chemicals.
"That's...really strong!" she says, coughing. She reads the label. "Cockroach killer." she says, "This is for killing bugs that can't be killed. And we're using it on ants."
"Should get the job done, then!" he says, spraying some ants on the counter. Eventually, they've sprayed the entire floor and counter. But now their floor is wet and covered in dead bugs and chemicals. Karen grabs a towel from the bathroom and comes back to the kitchen.
"I'll wipe this up, you go check for more ants." she says. Matt runs off with his can and she gets on her hands and knees, wiping up the floor. The smell is even stronger in this proximity, and her knees are slipping on the ground. She does get everything wiped up after a while, and the process probably only took four years off of her life. She stands up, coughing, and has to go over the floor again because it's still slippery.
"Well, there aren't any other ants, so yay." Matt says, coming back into the kitchen.
"That's-" she has to stop to cough, "That's great!" she stands up and hands him the ant covered towel, "Here...this is yours."
"Are you okay?" he asks, taking the towel.
"Fine." she says, coughing again.
"Alright." he says, walking to the bathroom to dispose of the towel.
They spend the rest of that day eating leftover cake and watching whatever is on TV, and since the next day is Karen's first day of work, she goes to bed early.
***
She wakes up and puts on a skirt and work-appropriate shirt. She finds some black flats in a suitcase and puts those on. She opens the door to her room and walks into the kitchen, where Matt is eating Sparkle Flakes and sitting on the counter.
"Morning!" he says.
"Morning." she replies. Her voice sounds strangled.
"Are you okay?!" he asks, setting down his cereal and hopping off of the counter, walking over to her.
"Fine." she says, coughing.
"Maybe you should start work tomorrow." he says. She shakes her head.
"I'm fine, really." she says, pulling some sort of chocolaty cereal off of a shelf and eating a handful. It hurts to swallow and she puts the box back.
"I'll drive you to work." Matt says.
***
When they get there she's put to work getting coffee for people and making copies. It requires almost no talking so that's nice. People don't really talk much in general there. Matt brings her lunch.
"Thanks." she chokes out. His brow furrows.
"You're sure you're okay?"
"Ye-" she tries to clear her throat but ends up coughing, "Mm hm."
"Okay." they eat lunch in the break room, Matt does most of the talking.
"It's really quiet and empty without you. I should be used to it, I lived alone for years, but it still feels empty. I had Doctor Who on TV all day, because if you're not shouting in the apartment then Amy is the next best thing. You're really pale, are you sure you're oka- ow! But really, you're not usually this pa- okay! I ate a lot of that cake we made. Kaz, eat your sandwich. Your throat hurts so bad that you can't eat? You're sure you don't wanna come ho- ow! Okay, I get it!"
By the time he comes back to get her at five she's lost her voice completely.
"You're going straight to bed as soon as we get home." Matt says when they're driving home.
She makes a raspy noise that sounds kind of like a protest.
"You're not helping your case." he says. She doesn't go to sleep when she gets home though. She sits on the couch and watches Doctor Who with Matt. He puts his arm around her shoulders and she rests her head on his shoulder and oh. Turns out she does go to sleep when she gets home.
****
When she wakes up in the morning she makes random noises to make sure her voice is back. It is, but her head hurts, she's freezing, and her stomach doesn't exactly feel the best. Oh. Scratch that. She might throw up at any moment.
"Ugh..." she groans, pulling the blanket tighter around herself. Matt knocks on the door and then promptly opens it without waiting for a reply.
"You're not going to work today." he says, looking at her.
"That bad?" she asks.
"Your voice is back!" he says, sitting on the edge of her bed, "Good! My voice was lonely."
"Mmm." she says, "It's so cold..."
"Oh, Kaz...no it's not." he says, brushing her hair back from her face and letting his hand rest on her head, "Yeah, you have a fever. I'll call Steven and tell him you won't be in today."
"Thanks..."
"Do you want soup or something? I can turn the heat up or get you another blanket. You didn't eat anything yesterday, I can get you whatever you want. Do you want some aspirin or something? Or maybe-"
"Matt," she says, coughing, "Calm down." She shivers and he gets up and walks out of her room, returning with a blanket, which he drapes over her.
"Do you want anything else?"
"No..." she says, closing her eyes.
"Okay. Sleep it out." he says, walking to the door.
"Mm." she mutters, "Matt?" she opens one eye to see him leaning in the doorway.
"Yeah, Kaz?"
"Thanks for the blanket."
"No problem, Kazza. Get some sleep."
***
When she wakes up the light in her room is orange and the blankets have created an oven and now she knows how the cake must have felt.
She groans and pushes the blankets off of the bed. Her stomach growls and she feels like she's being stabbed.
"Matt..." she moans, deciding to take him up on that offer of soup. No answer. "Maaaaaatt..." she says, forcing her voice out. She groans and tries to stand up. Her legs give out and she collapses onto the floor. She whimpers and stands up. Her legs are still shaky but she manages to get across the hall to Matt's room and push the door open. He isn't there. She walks into the living room and collapses onto the couch. There is a piece of paper on the coffee table and she picks it up.
Kaz,
went to get comfort food, back in twenty.
she smiles and puts the paper back on the table, switching on the TV. Some sitcom she's never seen before is playing, and it looks pretty okay, so she leaves it on.
The door opens and Matt walks in. She doesn't look up, but she can tell by the sound of his footsteps that it's him, which is kind of weird considering that she's only known him for a little over a week.
"You abandoned me." she says. There is a crash and he jumps.
"Oh, you're awake!" Matt says. Karen rolls over and looks at him over the back of the couch. He picks up the bag and walks into the kitchen, coming back out quickly and kneeling in front of her, feeling her forehead.
"You abandoned me in my time of need." she mutters, closing her eyes.
"Sorry." he says, patting her shoulder.
"Did you bring food?" she opens her eyes.
"Yes I did!" he says, standing up and walking away, "What do you want? I've got chicken soup, two minute noodles, and ice cream."
"Chicken soup please." she says, turning her attention back to the TV. He comes out of the kitchen five minutes later with a bowl of chicken soup and she sits up, taking it from him. He sits down next to her, draping his arm around his shoulders and she leans back against his chest.
"So what's going on in this show?" he asks.
"I don't know." she says, eating her soup.
"But you've been watching it."
"I'm sick, give me a break!"
"Oh alright, but as soon as you're better I'm gonna go right back to making fun of you."
"Of course."
She eats her soup and they watch TV and when she finishes her soup she sets her bowl on the coffee table and rests her head on his shoulder. He starts absentmindedly stroking her back and she must fall asleep because she wakes up to an explosion coming from the TV screen and Matt pointing the remote and holding down the button that turns down the volume.
She rubs her eyes and groans and Matt looks at her and smiles.
"That's the second time you've fallen asleep on me in two days." he says smugly. "You look really weird when you're sleeping."
"Shut up." she replies, yawning. They watch one more episode of That Sitcom That Was on TV and then Karen feels a sharp pain in her stomach and rolls over, arms curling around her stomach and moaning.
"Are you okay?" Matt asks. She groans and shakes her head, then jumps up and runs into the bathroom, vomiting into the toilet. She feels two hands pull her hair back into a ponytail and start patting her back. Her stomach decides it's done rejecting things, and when Karen stands up she leans on the sink and Matt wipes her mouth and hands her a glass of water. She rinses her mouth out and takes a drink, and tries to walk to her room, but doesn't get any farther than the doorway. She almost falls down but Matt catches her, and picks her up in his arms. She wraps her arms around his neck and he carries her to her room,
"There you go...time for sleep. You'll feel all better in the morning." he lays her down in her bed and picks her blanket up off the floor, draping one over her gently. He kisses her forehead and her fingers curl around the collar of his shirt. "Did you need something?" he asks.
"Thank you." she says. He cups her cheek and smiles at her.
"It's not problem, Kaz. This is just what good friends do."
"Do good friends sleep in their sick friend's bed with them?" she asks.
"Hmm." he says, "Well they can if their sick friend wants them to."
"Their sick friend wants them to."
"Alright." he says, crawling over her and under the covers. She rolls over and rests her cheek on his chest, he wraps his arms around her and she can feel herself falling asleep almost instantly, which she hates because she'd really like to be awake to enjoy this experience more. But she's exhausted and needs sleep and the steady rise and fall of his chest is extremely comforting and lulls her to sleep no matter how hard she tries to stay awake.
Prompt: Anon requested Matt and Karen get stuck inside an elevator. My mind refuses to cooperate, basically.
Summary: Thunderstorms, frozen lifts, and secrets do mix. Matt/Kaz filmschool!AU.
Author's Note: Second and last part of this! Hope you enjoy.
Part One
They’d lapsed into silence for a while after Matt had given Karen a cigarette she wasn’t smoking, but claimed she wanted to merely hold. He’d become a bit unnerved at the way she twirled it in her fingers, rolling it, while she dreamily stared into space. At first he’d thought she was looking at him, but she was looking at a spot directly above his head. He’d chanced a glance up, but was only met with smooth steel – nothing of note to see there at all. He didn’t see anything, anyway.
Maybe she could.
Most of the time.
He had just about reached his previous high score when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a smirk on Karen’s face, barely perceptible but definitely there. He flushed and with that smashed directly into a tree.
Huffing in annoyance, he shut off his phone and met Karen’s stare. “Can’t be much longer now,” he stated, almost challengingly.
“I suppose not,” she smiled, reaching up and pulling all of that ginger hair into a near-perfect ponytail.
Something about the way she smiled drove Matt crazy. He was used to most of the girls he knew laughing out loud when they thought of something funny. Karen looked more than willing to keep her witticisms to herself. Which was attractive and aggravating at the same time, because she could be laughing at him and he’d never know it.
“Do you always look like you’re harbouring secret jokes to yourself?” Matt blurted out, uncomfortable.
She blinked, and he could tell he’d surprised her. “…No,” she said, after a beat. She’d been caught off guard.
“So normally when something is funny, you share it?”
“Yes. All the time.”
“You’re smiling. Something’s funny.”
She smiled again, but this time he saw something different in her eyes. “Not exactly. I’m just thinking.”
“About?”
“About why you chose screenwriting after your knee injury. I mean football to screenwriting, it’s not exactly a logical jump now, is it?”
Matt very nearly shot back with something like “can you not?” or another protest akin to this, but found himself wanting to tell her. Maybe the heat was making him giddy.
“I don’t know whether I’m picking the right thing, to be honest,” he sighed. “I’ve always liked television and film but never figured it for a career, to be perfectly frank. It’s something I know – I just can tell – that I’d be good at. I’m not the academic sort – don’t fancy teaching or going into any PhD programme. So I’m giving this a shot so everyone back home doesn’t think I’m a total fuckup. No fallback plan as a footballer, believe me, I’ve heard it a dozen times. Not very smart.”
Karen winked. “Live and learn.”
He didn’t know quite how to take that, so he resolutely plowed on. “I watch my favourite telly shows and I wonder how something could be better – an arc, etc. I know fans tend to do that in general, but I reckon I can come up with some relatively snazzy stuff. I can be creative when I want to be, if I’m not being a fuckup otherwise. Matt fucking Smith. Career over before it began.”
“You’re self-deprecating. And you think you’re more defeatist than you are,” Karen mused, almost too quietly for him to hear.
“What?” he asked loudly.
She shook her head pensively. “Nothing.”
This irritated him. “And you? Why did you want to be a photographer?”
Karen looked at him lazily, but then shifted her gaze, eyes scanning the row of buttons on the lift’s panel. “I like to look at people.”
A pause.
“Well, we all like to look at people,” Matt said, trying to understand. “At least nice-looking people.”
“I like settings too. Nature. Stills. And editing. Gradients and overlays. Capturing moments. Someone laughs, someone frowns, wrinkles and laugh lines and cracks. Sometimes they’re not always visible, or they disappear too quickly to be seen by the naked eye. And if you’re lucky enough to catch it, you can keep it and it’s yours before it flares and fades forever.”
Matt’s heart began thudding harder in his chest, and he knew it wasn’t solely because of the heat and his rising blood pressure.
“People like to take pictures of sad things, happy things, angry things, big and powerful things. But they don’t seem to realise that there’s power in little, everyday things. It just becomes so normal. But half-empty paint cans in a garage and the half-finished paint jobs – it’s all a consequence. It looks insignificant but it’s really, really not.”
Matt was mortified when his mind came unstuck for just a few seconds, enough to absorb the fact that he was aroused. Noticeably. He shifted, trying to cover his lap. He hoped she didn’t notice.
She smiled. “That’s one of the projects I’m working on. Folded, creased bank notes, taped together sometimes. Pink and purple, UK and Europe. Green, if America. All the same. There has to be something in common.”
His forehead furrowed.
Karen continued. “You drop a 50p coin on the pavement and wait until someone notices. They’ll pocket. You take a picture. It’s nothing. You drop 20p. Wait. Someone picks it up. Click. Move on.”
“Try it in a different neighbourhood. You know what I mean. It stays. It’s kicked. Click.”
It dawned on him.
She grinned. “Click?”
He couldn’t help but smile. “Click,” he responded in kind.
A further few minutes passed and he noticed she was still smiling.
“You’re smiling. Something’s funny.”
“Yes. I’m thinking again.”
“About?”
“About whether we’ll shag here or after we get out of here.”
Out of all the things he’d expected her to say, he certainly hadn’t expected that. Matt’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head and he could imagine them rolling out and onto the floor. Karen looked somewhat delighted.
“I…how do you mean? What?” That was all he could coherently manage to utter.
“I like you and you obviously like me. I’d like to shag you and I think you’d like to shag me. So the only question is whether we’ll just get on with it or do it later, after my class or something, assuming we get out of here in time.”
Matt could do nothing but stare at her, highly disturbed and aroused all at once. He didn’t know what to make of her or of her statements, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to make of it. Any of it.
“Well? Shall I?” Karen prompted, raising an eyebrow. She grabbed the hem of her shirt and began tugging it up.
“Wait,” Matt said, stilling her hands. “Someone could get us out any minute.”
“And I take it you don’t get off on that.” She stilled and looked at him pensively, cocking her head to the side as she looked at him piercingly.
“No…I mean, yeah, when the time is right. Now isn’t the time.” Matt, rather blustering, looked away and refused to meet her eyes.
Karen shrugged. “All right.”
There was quiet for a few seconds and Matt sensed that another silence was coming on and the thought was more than he could bear. He sighed.
“Are you in the habit of fucking strangers on lifts, anyway?”
Her head snapped up, and she glared into his eyes. “Is there something wrong with that?”
He didn’t answer right away. The truth was no, there wasn’t anything wrong with that…he just wouldn’t have expected that of her.
“You just don’t seem the type that does that,” he finished, rather lamely.
“Oh? And why’s that?”
He winced, wishing he’d never gone down this road and had kept quiet like he’d ought to have done. He couldn’t help noticing the way the ginger strands that had either fallen out of the ponytail or had escaped the sweeping of those long-fingered, deft hands clung to the back of her neck. It was the one indicator he could see of her being physically affected by the heat the way he was, aside from the removal of some of her clothes, and something about it made him feel braver.
“Well up until a few moments ago, you seemed like a charming, ordinary girl. But now you’re willing to have sex in a cramped, malfunctioning lift, brash, outspoken, secretive but loud, self-confident…”
She laughed a pure, genuine laugh, and he couldn’t help feeling proud of that. “You haven’t met many actresses, have you?”
“I suppose not,” he smiled. “If they’re all like you, I don’t know if I could handle any.”
He had the impression that her gaze was x-raying him. “Let me see,” she said. “Willing to have sex in a cramped, malfunctioning lift if the timing is right, brash, outspoken, secretive but loud all at once, obviously self-confident in your judgements, asking personal questions and willing to ask them of others, and to top it all off – a bowler hat on a 30 degree day?”
He blinked.
She grinned. “I think you’re more like us than you know, Matt.” Her smile died away after a moment but a hint of it remained on her lips. “Except for the Temple Run. I don’t know if that’s a screenwriter thing or what, but that’s definitely not us.”
There is banging and a lurch and they move.
* * *
He enrolls in Karen’s 12-week acting class along with his screenwriting one. They meet for coffee every day.
His first screenplay is about a pair of strangers who fuck in a lift. It’s selected for a rough filming, and he and Karen celebrate accordingly.
Summary: It’s High School. It’s New York. Matt Smith is the star player in the soccer team. Karen Gillan is new, all red hair and pale face and scottish accent. He notices her for the first time and now he can’t stop.
Pairing: Matt Smith/Karen Gillan
Rating: PG-13 (for now)
A/N: I'm gonna be trying to update at least once a week, hopefully I can make it twice. Let me know if you like this. Here you go.
All chapters: Smith
-Chapter 2: Gillan-
Karen’s room was painted green. It reminded her of Scotland and the smell of grass, but the room still felt alien to her. There wasn’t much else that really made it hers. Her mom had chosen the bed covers and her furniture, it was nice, but it didn’t feel like home. It wasn’t that she didn’t like New York, because she did. She liked her school and her new friends, but when she wasn’t around them, she felt alien. The tall, weird, ginger girl who wasn’t from around.
Karen! Come over and hang out. Stop doing homework. The guys are here!
She read Aislinn’s text again and made a decision, closing her Chemistry book and heading downstairs, “Mum!”
“What is it?” Marie Gillan called from the living room.
“Can I go to Aislinn’s?”
“Sure, honey. Just don’t come back before ten, alright? It’s a school night.”
Karen walked to her mom and kissed her on the cheek, “Promise.”
She arrived at her friend’s house to find them baking cookies. Arthur and Patrick were both covered in flour, making funny shapes with the dough, calling which ones would be theirs, fighting over some and throwing them at each other, laughing.
“So this is hanging out, huh?” Karen said from behind them, making them turn around. Goofy smiles were plastered on both their faces and Patrick nodded enthusiastically. She laughed at them, “Manly.”
Aislinn smiled behind Karen and pushed her inside the kitchen, situating herself next to Arthur. Patrick pulled Karen’s hand until she was next to him.
“This one’s for you,” he whispered, pointing to dough shaped like something that could only be described as lumpy.
“What’s it supposed to be?” she asked, looking at it curiously.
“The Loch Ness Monster, of course! To remind you of home.”
Patrick liked her, she knew that. It showed and Aislinn had told her as much. Karen hadn’t decided if she liked him back the same way, but he was sweet and smart. All black hair and kind eyes, so she kissed his cheek in thanks. He blushed. It was cute.
After the cookies were put in the oven, they agreed to play a video game. It turned out to be something a lot more violent than they’d intended, with Karen throwing cushions at Arthur and Aislinn hitting Patrick’s chest repeatedly.
They ended up sitting outside, Aislinn got the guys a couple of beers, and Karen started feeling like she was actually making good friends. Talking, laughing, teasing, she felt genuinely happy for the first time since she’d arrived in New York, so when Patrick held her hand under the table, she just smiled and let him.
A couple of hours later, they heard laughs from inside, they all turned as Harry and Luke Treadaway stepped outside, “Well, hello. Little sister and friends,” Harry said. Karen only recognized them because Harry had a shorter haircut. Made it a hell of a lot easier to distinguish the two.
They all smiled, saying a ‘hello’ back.
“Mind if we join you?” Luke added.
Aislinn huffed in annoyance, the two brothers took that as a definite yes and sat down around the table, “No Matt, today?” she asked.
“He’s in the bathroom,” Harry answered absentmindedly as he glared at Arthur, who was holding hands with Aislinn on top of the table. Clearly intimidated, Arthur removed his hand and lowered it.
Karen was oblivious to that exchange because she stopped paying attention after she heard Matt was in the bathroom. She did not want to cross paths with Matt Smith right now, not after making a fool out of herself at school that day. Out of all the people she could’ve crashed into, it had to be him. Every girl in school had a crush on either Matt, or one of the Treadaway twins. Karen thought Matt was definitely interesting but she never thought she’d actually talk to him, let alone make him late for a class.
Suddenly she stood up, “I’m gonna check on the cookies.”
“You made cookies?” she heard one of the twins ask excitedly as she walked inside and straight to the kitchen, maybe she’d have less chances of running into him there.
To her surprise, she was wrong. When she lifted her head from the oven she gasped and jumped back, almost dropping the tray with cookies she was holding. Matt was standing by the door, looking at her.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No –no, that’s- it’s fine,” she said, setting the tray on the counter to save it from her trembling hands.
He took a few steps towards her and she swallowed. He made her nervous, she didn’t like that. He suddenly smiled brightly, “Cookies!”
She couldn’t help but laugh at the five year old he’d turned into in less than a second.
He looked up at her, his smile didn’t fade, “What?”
“Nothing. Just you. You look like a kid on Christmas morning.”
“I just really like cookies,” he demonstrated his statement by grabbing one and taking a bite, speaking through a mouthful, “See? Goooood.”
“That was mine,” Karen said with a smile on her face, realizing he’d just eaten the cookie Patrick had made for her.
Matt swallowed the last of it before answering, “Your cookie?”
“Yeah, Patrick had made that for me.”
“Um, Patrick…”
“Patrick Green? He goes to our school.”
“Is that the photographer guy?”
“Yeah.”
Matt shrugged, “Oh well, you made me late for class and paid with a cookie. Seems fair to me.”
Her smiled turned forced, “Yeah. Sorry about that.”
“Hey, I’m just kidding. It’s fine, I crashed into you, too.” Karen looked up at him; his smile was warm and comforting, bright eyes looking back at her. They stayed like that for a moment too long, staring. Until he spoke again, “Karen, right?”
She found her voice after a couple of seconds, “Yeah. Karen Gillan.”
He hummed in acknowledgement as he turned around and opened one of the top cupboards, taking out a bowl and walking back to her. Karen felt a little slow not realizing what he was doing until he started putting the cookies inside the bowl and she quickly began to help.
“So, when did you move here? You’re clearly Scottish.”
Of course she did. “During the summer, just in time to start school. You?”
“Me?”
“You’re clearly English.”
“When I was twelve,” he answered with a smile, “Look at us. The two foreigners.”
She laughed, “In an unknown land.”
He moved to open the oven again and took the second tray of cookies out, “Well, technically I’ve already been here for five years. Unknown for you, maybe.”
Suddenly she felt like an outsider again. It was unknown for her, away from home and all she knew. Matt must’ve noticed her change in demeanor because she felt his hand stop hers before she could reach another cookie.
“I know how you feel. Like this is all new, and strange and so away from home. I can show you around, make it a little bit less unknown.”
The offer was unexpected, maybe even for him, but Karen felt herself nod, “I’d like that.”
Matt smiled warmly again when they heard someone walk into the kitchen, breaking the moment. Matt let Karen’s hand go quickly.
Patrick stared at Matt for a second, “Hi, man.”
“Hello. Patrick, isn’t it?”
“Right.”
That was the end of their interaction because Patrick stepped towards Karen, whispering, “Hey, I’m gonna go, just wanted to say goodbye.”
“Oh, okay,” Karen said as she turned around to face him, unsure of what to do.
Patrick kissed her cheek, “Bye, Kazza, see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, sure. Bye, Pat.” He held her hand in his for a second before turning around and leaving, without acknowledging Matt again.
Karen knew Patrick had interrupted whatever had happened between her and Matt, and she felt torn between being annoyed or glad. She wanted to get to know the guy beside her, but at the same time he made her feel weird, like she couldn’t be calmer but endlessly nervous at the same time. She wasn’t used to it and she didn’t necessarily like it. It didn’t help that Karen kept finding him more attractive and he had a very pretty, very popular girlfriend.
She suddenly felt the urge to get out of the house, away from Matt. She didn’t need confusion in her life. Not right now, not when she felt like she was actually getting to know people here. He didn’t have to be one of those people. She had a feeling it’d be a lot easier if he wasn’t.
She quickly got back to the task they were doing before and putting the rest of the cookies inside the bowl without a word, Matt followed and did the same.
He broke the silence, “So, you two together, then?”
She kept her gaze down as she answered, “Together? As in going out and all that?”
Matt looked at her and couldn’t help but chuckle, “Yes, as in going out and all that.”
“Um, no.” Karen threw the last cookie in the bowl, heading to the kitchen door, “Not yet, anyway,” she said before heading out, leaving Matt standing alone in the kitchen.
She got home in time for dinner and helped her mom set the table as her dad finished cooking. When the three were sitting down, they inevitably asked Karen how it’d gone, to which she responded with a simple, “Fine, it was fun.” They moved on from that and talked about her father’s job, and her mother’s new class at the primary school.
This was a routine Karen was comfortable with, sitting down for dinner with her parents. Both of them smiling at each other while talking and listening to what she had to say. It had been like this for as long as she could remember, and she loved it. She loved her family more than anything, and as much as she needed friends and was glad to be finding people she liked, it was that moment of the day that reminded her she had moved for her family, for her dad, and they were all she needed to get through everything.
Her phone chirped with a text that night, before she fell asleep. She picked it up assuming it would be Aislinn, asking if anything had happened with Patrick, but it was from an unknown number.
You left without saying goodbye.
Matt. Why is he doing this, she thought to herself, doesn’t he have his girlfriend? She immediately felt stupid. He just wanted to be her friend, just because she was attracted to him it didn’t mean that feeling was mutual. He’d seen her today worry about New York being “unknown”, and he’d gone through the same thing. He just wanted to help her. She typed and deleted her answer about ten times before finally hitting send.
Sorry. I had to rush home. How did you get my number?
It was a lie, but what was she gonna say? Sorry, I had to run out because I you confuse the hell out of me even if I don’t know you at all and I had to get away from you? How had this boy sneaked up onto her life after two conversations? That wasn’t normal, was it? She barely even knew him. She told herself it was just because she found him interesting. It’s not like she actually liked him, they’d exchanged a probable total of fifty words with each other. She could see herself liking Patrick. Patrick, who was becoming her close friend, someone she had actually talked to almost every day, someone who liked her back.
Stole it from Aislinn’s phone. Do you still want me to show you around New York?
He just wants to be your friend, Karen thought again. Still, if her boyfriend was showing some other girl around she probably wouldn’t be okay with it. Maybe. She’d never had a boyfriend, but that’s how it worked, right? She hit send before thinking about it.
Yes. Is your girlfriend okay with that?
She received a reply a few seconds later.
Why wouldn’t she be? She’s okay with me making friends.
Okay, then.
Good :) I’ll see you at school. Night, Gillan.
Good night, Matt.
She closed her eyes and fell asleep with thoughts of Matt Smith filling her tired brain.
