Saints & Sinners

Chapter Eight

A.N: TRISTAN ARRIVES AND HAS BEEN OFFICIALLY CAST! I hope you like him, he's played by Asa Butterfield, so beautiful! Tell me what you think about the casting in the comments. (NEW: I hate this casting choice, years later, but I can't think of anybody else to change it to so use your imagination lmao, or comment somebody better and I'll change it).

Chapter Eight:

"And I'll never talk again, oh boy you've left me speechless, you've left me speechless."

The soft, sweet humming was what had drawn me back. A honeyed voice, laced with tender French wisps that left me tantalising and calm, content with where I was and why I'd gotten there. It made me forget, for a moment, everything. All of my problems and my pains and just relax.

My eyes fluttered open, hearing the soft merging of Lady Gaga's voice on the radio in another room with the French tint lingering from the mouth of the stranger that I could hear; the one in a million that had actually done something while others just walked passed and pretended not to see.

Slowly, I rose from an old silky orange sofa, looking around half-heartedly. It was a cosy room, small and bundled, the lulling echo of voices drafting in from behind a closed door. It was nice.

I tried to stand, but pain jolted my ankle and I sunk back down onto my shoulder, erupting a volcano of pain in my stiff and bitter joints. I wailed, and made another attempt to stand, but found myself back where'd I'd started: wormed out on this horrendous orange sofa, in horrendous amounts of pain, and sneezing horrendously every other second for reasons I couldn't explain.

The door swung open lambently, and there he was, the kid who'd helped me when no one else would dare. He stood and stared at me a moment, his sweet blue eyes licking over me, like he was judging me, but they were never hurtful or hateful, just warm and caring. A hand swept to his hair, a short-cut, bright black quiff that crowned his pale face sweetly. I looked him over again, from his eyes to his feet, admiring his turquoise tie-dye shirt and his snow-washed light blue skinny jeans. I never had a sense of fashion, but I liked to notice other people's. He had a kind of sense in style that wasn't too risquee but wasn't as bland as mine.

"You need to stay sat down," he ordered me, propping down a steaming mug of hot chocolate on the table before me, purmeating the air with aromas of cinnamon and sweet things. His accent was once again a soothing tang of British and French.

"Why?" I'd forgotten for a moment why I was even there.

"You were beaten up, remember? Your ankle is twisted, your shoulder is badly bruised, sort of like most of your chest. It'll heal without any medical help, though, you're just fortunate I was there. Take a drink, it's Norwegian hot chocolate."

"Why is it Norwegian?" I asked, wrapping the cup in my hands and raising it to my face to whiff at the darling scents wafting off of it. It smelled positively gorgeous, but I wasn't speeding to neck it all down at once. God knows what he'd tossed in there. He was a stranger, and for all I knew, a rapist or strangler or serial axe-murderer.

"Well, like everything else that's Norwegian, I suspect it's made in Norway, that usually makes it Norwegian." He cracked a crooked smile, and without it, I would have thought he was being serious. "Now drink it, and stop worrying, I haven't drugged you, I'm not going to sell you to some nearby druglord or have my sexual way with you."

I smiled back, but only briefly, and just barely a ghost of a smile. "I'm sure the townies wouldn't like to hear you saying sexual stuff like that."

"Well, not before marriage."

I chuckled. "That wasn't what I was getting at, but okay."

"Besides, since when did I care about what other people think?" he asked sweetly, stealing my mug of hot chocolate and freely taking a long drink. I glared at him.