"This place always looks like a google stock photo." She laughed, glancing back at me and Elio.
"Hey, wait for us!" I called out as we failed to catch up to Tori who basked at the sun and wind with a wide smile.
"Not my fault your slow grandpa!" Tori teased as I chuckled.
Elio and I walked beside each other. "I appreciate you guys showing me this place, it's beautiful! Is it usually only you and Tori that come here?" He asked.
"Yea, pretty much. We've been cloud watching ever since we were young." I smirked as we all collectively went up a familiar hill which included a tree.
Tori instructed us to simply lay down and relax. The rules of cloud watching were simple. If we see a shape, call it out and let everybody else know about it.
All of us proceeded to call out unique shapes that we saw in the clouds such as a dolphin, a carrot, a hammer and even a oddly shaped wedding ring which I thought looked more like a fire hydrant.
"I don't really see it." I announced in response to Tori. She was persistent in making sure that the cloud she was showing us was indeed shaped into a wedding ring.
"Oh my god bitch squint your eyes and tilt your head just a little bit. Don't you see the band and the rock?" She responded as I did what she said.
"I can't see it either." Elio adds, making Tori playfully groan out in annoyance. "Is this just your way of saying that you might get married soon?" Elio teased as I glanced at him amused.
"What?" Tori's hands rapidly began to flail around in defense. "Definitely not! I'm not even nineteen yet you guys." We laughed at her.
"What about you?" Elio's voice became softer. Seeing him turn his full attention to me caught me off guard as his piercing eyes looked into me with nothing but warmth and kindness.
"W-what about me?" My voice came out shyly.
"Do you see yourself ever getting married one day?" Elio's question made my mouth subtly widen as Tori snorted to herself.
I broke eye contact as he still followed it. "I-I never really thought about it before. With all the things that I'm going through right now, I can't even think about marriage and all that wedding stuff. It sounds like stuff only found in my dreams."
"It's not bad to dream, sometimes they can come true." Elio's eyes glimmered with so much optimism and hope that some of it even rubbed off on me.
"What about you?" I asked him.
"Same answer as you." He bluntly answered as I nodded, an enticingly small smirk forming on his face as he looked away. "I definitely would want my life put together before I ever plan to put together a wedding." He chuckled nervously.
"Same." I awkwardly laughed as we seemed to mutually know what we meant by that. "If that ever even happens."
"Who do you think out of the three of us is gonna get married first?" Elio playfully questions.
"You." Tori shrugs as if it wasn't a question. "Straight people just have way more options."
"Who said I was straight?" Elio abruptly answers as Tori and I kept silent in momentary surprise.
"O-oh then Tori." I point as she crinkles her face at that. "What? I mean you're confident, funny, and you have more social skills than Elio and I put together." I say with a quiet laugh.
Elio chuckles with a nod to agree.
"If that was the case then why am I still single?" Tori says. "If anything it would be you."
"Me?" I asked with widened eyes.
"Yea, you." She nods with a devilish smile. "You like to cook and clean and you're the cutest human being ever, you'd definitely end up getting married first." I waved it off as a lie as her eyes shot up at the clouds. "Holy shit no way."
Elio and I followed her gaze. "What is it?" He asks.
"It's a dick!" Tori loudly announced as she pointed up at a cloud. We all exploded out in laughter as the shape and outline was definitely there.
I went to work later that day, the suite much more busier than usual as multiple grunts and the sound of kicks, jabs, and right hooks echoed throughout the place.
I really only expected to see Castiel training but there he was, standing next to Luka who had on his usually devilish smirk. I gulped as Castiel's hands effortlessly shot through a thick plank of wood like a bullet.
"Alright my turn." Luka ran a hand through his chestnut hair as the old man nodded.
Castiel's sapphire gaze landed on me, his face flushed red and glistening with sweat. His eye contact eventually leaves to look at Luka who was beginning to do tiny hops to gain momentum of some sort. His breath sharpened as his stance began to mold with the hops.
"Hrah!" Luka's voice roared through the suite as his hand failed to crack through the thick plank of wood. "Fuck! Shit!" He hissed, flailing his hand out in pain as he tried his best to hide it.
I couldn't help but snort as his mouth fought the urge to quiver, his eyes darting at me in a teasing way. "That's enough for today. Like I said, you must not rush your practice. Let this pain be a lesson." The old man spoke as I gulped down my laugh and began to pour some water for the boys to drink.
The old man said his goodbyes as Luka and Castiel proceeded to clean up and pack up the mat. It was incredibly nerve-wrecking approaching these two tall boys knowing it was only us at the suite alone.
"S-some water, sir?" With quick succession, Luka snatched the mat underneath the couch, sending his arm back as his elbow struck into my left eye like a bolt of lightning which caused a sudden and excruciating pain to present itself into my head as I fell back.
The punch caused me to momentarily witness multiple versions of reality as I was too in shock and in pain to defend myself. I thankfully wasn't caught out of guard enough to drop or shatter the glass as the only mess was the water soaking into my uniform.
Ah, shit.
I lightly coughed out on the floor as the sound of Castiel's voice boomed towards us. "What the fuck, Luka?" He immediately rushed towards me as Luka did the same.
"Shit! Im sorry Shiloh i-it was an accident!" Luka exclaimed as my vision recollected with the most bizarre sight. The two boys sat on each of my side, my eyes hastily taking turns to examine their overwhelming presence collide before me.
"You can go, I'll help him up." Castiel gently shoves Luka to the side to help me first which visibly made his mouth falter.
I hissed. "I-I'm fine, I can get myself up." My eyes watered from the throbbing pain I began to feel all throughout my head.
"Nonsense, you can't even stand up straight." Castiel insisted to help as I really did appreciate it.
"I'm sorry." Luka's voice cracked as he looked like he was suffocating through anguish. "Let me help him."
"I-it's okay." I coughed, the pain barely subsiding as if it was a tidal wave of pain and discomfort.
"Just go, I'll see you around school." Castiel sharply let out towards Luka as I felt him carefully wrap his hands around me, helping me get back up.
"I'm sorry Shiloh." Luka softly scoffed to himself, his fists clenched as he proceeded to walk past us and out the door with a ruined facial expression.
I sniffed as Castiel sat me down on the couch. "It was my fault, I should've told him I was behind him." I blinked for a moment. "Ah." I flinched, feeling my eyes become worse regardless if it was open or shut. It was paired with a formidable headache as well which made me just want to sleep and never wake up again.
"Here, this should help." Castiel deeply spoke out after quickly leaving and returning with a ice pack.
"Thanks." I quietly hissed again as I feared how the ice would feel against my freshly swollen eye.
"Shiloh you have to ice it now before it's too late." He spoke after a couple moments of watching me hesitate.
I took a deep breath as I slowly began to move it closer to my eye, eventually feeling the formidable frost intertwine with my flushed heated skin.
It was absolute torture as I couldn't even hold my groans back. Castiel's face remained unreadable as he spoke again. "What a way to start off your shift am I right?" He teased.
"I'm so dumb why did I have to approach him like that?" Castiel's head shook as he sharply breathed in, almost as if he was annoyed at what was coming out of my mouth.
"Why does everything have to be your fault?" He dryly asked, running his hands through his soft black hair.
"W-what?" I spoke low. "I mean it was."
"No it wasn't, I saw everything. It was an accident on his part, not yours." He responded as I stayed quiet, feeling the ice begin to melt and drip down my arm. "In a weird way, I saw it happening too. I should've protected you."
I let out a heated breath from all the butterflies from that sentence alone. "You don't have to do that."
"Do what?"
"Protect me."
"It's more so about me, not you. You're already really ugly and unbearable to look at in your usual state and now the black eye is just adding up to that eye sore." He humorously let out with a sarcastic tone, dryly teasing me as I tiredly chuckled at that comment absolutely ripping me apart.
I smiled, preparing to tease him back. "Speaking of things that are ugly and unbearable to look at, nice presentation at english today. The drawing was definitely something." I snapped back as his face remained unscathed.
"Thanks, it was a drawing of you." His words paired with his crystallized eyes and tall demeanor made me speechless.
The room fell silent enough that you'd be able hear how slick the ice began to turn. "Me?" I asked, not knowing if I should be offended or not.
"Yea." He nodded. "That was the work I was trying to hide from you the other day."
I softly hissed and pulled the ice away from my eyes. "So, so does this make me your muse?" I asked coyly with a bit lip.
"I mean in a way yea, but don't feel too special." Castiel clicked his mouth as he threw me a teasingly dirty look. "I just used your face as a reference, everything else I had to say was purely and solely for the sake of my art, and grade." Castiel tacked.
Asshole.
My tone was a lot quieter and more serious now. "It was beautiful Castiel." I exhaled out after a moment of silence.
"Really? You think so?" He swallowed, scratching the side of his cheek as I didn't expect to ever see Castiel so flustered and so nervous before. I always thought he was incapable of feeling this way.
"I do." I nodded. "I really do and I'm not saying that because my face was a reference but because it was genuinely beautiful. I don't know if you heard but everyone gasped the second you unrolled the poster. You have such a talent." I ended as it filled the room with another wave of silence, this time strong enough to heat up our bodies and add weight to our surroundings.
Our eyes met and hastily observed each other's faces, time feeling like it was stopping right before us, only to be cut short by Castiel's jaws rapidly clenching as he got back up with a flushed face. "I-I'm gonna go get you some more ice for the swelling."
"I-I can do that myself."
"But I wanna help."
"Why?"
"Because if you don't heal up that eye now, then how long am I gonna have to wait to be able to draw my muse again?" He says without returning any eye contact.
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