I've Put My Trust In You (Orion/Randomname98766789)

[randomname98766789]

Words pleading with Payton to stick around nearly left Nick’s lips, but the boy thought better of it. Biting his tongue, he cracked a half-smile in response to her prompt about leaving. “Yeah… maybe we will.” Nick answered in reference to possibly seeing each other around. After all, they were sealed within the neighborhood for an undetermined length of time. If they did not run into each other occasionally, it would have been a huge surprise. Escorting Payton to the door, Nick quietly bid his ex-girlfriend a goodbye. When she left the house, his eyes watched her from the front window until she disappeared into the distance. For whatever reason, Nick felt disappointed with the situation. Despite accomplishing the first, small step in making amends, the interaction felt tense. The poor guy expected a fairytale-like reunion one day with Payton, but he should have known better.

The rest of the day seemed to drag. Nick lazily lounged around the house, waiting for whatever happened next. Eventually, the sun set over Los Angeles. Nick found himself lying in his bed, shirtless, a pair of pajama pants on with his underwear underneath. It was warm in the house, so he lay on top of the sheets, arms folded underneath the back of his head, gazing up at the ceiling, lost in thought as time ticked by.

 

[Orion]

There were times that Nick had felt inevitable to her - like when she was fourteen and they had just met, destined to be best friends. Again at seventeen when they had shared their first kiss and she realized she stood a chance of having him as her own. Three months later in that dumb treehouse that her parents had made her and her older siblings when they had been small, as she let Nick become the first person to slip inside of her, swearing it was okay because "he was going to be the boy she married one day". The last time nine months after that when he showed up at the same college party she had, like he had known that she would be there and that she was still desperately in love with him.

Now. Payton couldn't ignore the fact that even through everything that happened, in that moment she walked away and once again Nick had an inevitability to him. Why else would she have found herself stuck here of all places? Maybe it was dumb but she definitely believed in fate. She also believed, correctly, that there was a zero percent chance that she had actually ever been over that boy. After returning to her current makeshift home, her friend wasn't too supportive either. They'd already met by the time that Payton and Nick had started to see each other in college, so there was no denying how terribly that had gone. Somehow, being told that she shouldn't do something just made the blonde want to do it more.

She didn't know what took her over as night settled in. Others fell to sleep, she eyed one of her last cigarettes. She may have never been in to hard drugs like Nick had, but Payton had her vices as well. At first her intentions were innocent - she strolled as she smoked, intent on avoiding prying eyes who would love to get her in shit for being out after curfew. She hadn't even realized that her feet had lead her to the house she had stepped in to earlier that day. For a moment all she could do was flick her gaze between the cigarette in her hand and the darkened house. There were no signs of life this time around.

How many times had she been here in similar situations? After they had been banned from keeping his door closed (thanks, Madison, for walking in without knocking while Payton had his dick in her mouth) they had gotten sneaky. She would come round long after everyone had fallen asleep, or him to her place. They didn't always fuck but they did most of the time - more than anything they had just liked being able to have privacy. Looking at Nick's house, the situation so different yet so much the same as the many times she'd stood here before, she felt bittersweet. More than anything, she wanted this to still be her norm. It was a dangerous game to be playing.

She couldn't fight it, though. She pinched her cigarette dead, the tip so hot her fingertips burnt and she flapped her wrist a couple times in hope of negating the sting. She tossed it on to the clean, unsullied suburban roads and then treaded forward until she could hop the gate. Around back, she still knew where Nick's window would be. The curtains may have been down, but she crossed her arms on the sill regardless and then raised one at the elbow to rap against the glass.

 

[randomname98766789]

Perceiving the fact Nick and Payton both happened to be stuck here in the apocalypse could be viewed with a variety of beliefs. Fate was one option, but Nick chose a grimmer option. Nick believed he was being punished – the girl that he loved the most was being dangled in front of him like he could just reach out and touch her. Yet, he knew that this was the closest he would ever be with the girl again. In his heart, Nick truly wanted Payton. Despite trying to move on, there was no denying that she crept in his mind often. Nick often debated whether he would ever get over her, or if he had found the only person that could make him feel complete.

Yet, here she was – literally within an arm’s reach of him earlier in the day. In the past, they would have been all over each other. Today? It was so much different than ever before. It broke Nick’s heart. Perhaps the universe was punishing him for being an addict, for putting his family and friends through a world of shit they did not deserve. Nick believed this was all a product of his actions. That thought weighed heavily on his mind while he tried to sleep. It was no surprise that rest did not come easy.

Lost in thought, the sound of the tapping against the window made Nick jump up from his bed. It scared the piss out of him. What the fuck was going on here? With everything happening in the world, Nick halfway wanted to ignore it. The curiosity was too strong, though. Nick drew the curtains back and his heart dropped when he saw a familiar sight (or maybe he was just hallucinating because he wanted to see Payton). He quickly unlatched the window anyways, pulling it open for her to crawl into his room like old times, to see if she was real. “Payton... what are you doing here? It’s way after curfew!” Why would she even want to be back around him in the first place? The questions were building, his heart was pounding, and his knees felt weak.