"When you stop believing in Santa, you get underwear." – Unknown
DEDICATION: bookperson555 for caring and being so sweet! I love you <3
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Andrew's POV
"Chipmunnnnnnk! Tell meeeeeee!" Quinn's voice whined down the phone, hints of static snipping off the ends of her words. Snowfall had strengthened over the past few days. A mattress of snow glittered mischievously past the glaze of frosted windows.
The fingertips of Andrew's right hand grazed the glossy glass of a snow globe. It followed the theme of a winter wonderland. Tiny flakes of iridescent snow rested in a thin layer on the ground, though the tiny villages and trees were not spared either.
Andrew squinted at the minuscule figurines preparing for a snowball fight. A sudden rush of homesickness flooded through his chest. It didn't help that the snow globe was a gift from his non-biological Aunt Faith, who enjoyed collecting them and told Andrew that she'd strangle him if any harm came to this one. Oh, what a loving family he had.
Having just admitted his undying-ish liking for a mozzarella stick, he needed a few seconds to collect his thoughts so they wouldn't spill out in a jumbled mess. He had a tendency to screw up the order of his words, you see, and with a girl he has a grudging yet almost genuine liking for, that was bound to happen.
The snow shimmered a different colour depending on which angle Andrew tilted the snow globe, which gave him another idea. He shook it gently, keeping his eyes fixed on the snowy clouds. "It means you're every colour of the rainbow. Words strung together to form a poem. Multidimensional. Scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle."
No hint of a sound came from the other end regarding his expressive verse, but for once, Andrew wasn't worried. He felt entirely in his element, and had never been so sure of anything in his entire life. The God of Confidence could zap him for all he cared.
After a few moments, silence was reaching an unbearable volume. At this point, Andrew was feeling mighty less confident and was actually starting to wish that the Confidence God would fry him like a fly in a bug zapper. But eventually, Quinn's flummoxed whisper graced his ears. "And what, you think you're the one who can put me back together?"
"I just think you're a broken kind of beautiful," Andrew said earnestly.
To avoid potential fainting or cooing from the other party, he ended the call at a hasty pace and gingerly set his phone down. Once making sure that Quinn would not call back and scream in his ear about how cheesy he was, he turned to a figure behind him. Andrew gnawed his bottom lip uncertainly as he asked the figure, "was that okay?"
"She'll be thinking about your poeticalness for a week," Oliver reassured him.
He'd arrived unannounced at Andrew's door a half hour ago, and made up a sob story about how Quinn had taken down his Christmas decorations. One glance at the lodge and anyone could see that he was lying. The fairy lights twinkled as beautiful as ever in the distance, and their glow highlighted the glint of the tinsel mania Oliver had created.
Of course, Oliver was also cunning enough to know that there was no way Andrew would leave him to freeze his snowballs off in the increasingly frigid weather. He'd had enough skiing experience to know the pain of genital frostbite firsthand.
Thus, Andrew let Oliver bound in, bringing flurries of frost and enthusiasm with him. Just before Andrew had called Quinn, Oliver filled him in on what he was planning for his sarcastic coworker. It was then that Andrew planned a more sentimental route for his phone call, because he needed to keep her distracted.
Andrew nodded at Oliver's reassurance, though not entirely satisfied. "So, how do you know it's her birthday today? Don't tell me you went through her phone when she wasn't paying attention. If so, I'd morally have to tell her and she'd castrate you."
Oliver snorted, grabbing several cushions and checking them for insects. Once he had determined that Quinn was not out for vengeance, he dumped them in a messy pile and dived onto Andrew's bed without so much as a please. "Nah, there was a letter mailed to her with a cheque and a card from her parents. Wasn't difficult to piece together."
"Wouldn't she rather have a present?" Andrew asked in surprise, thinking of how his non-biological Gran, Melanie, only ever sends him a wad of cash. No letter, no nothing. Although money is awesome, it never beats the beauty of a thoughtful gift.
Oliver's expressions went through an entire catalogue of emotions, ranging from frowning confusion to dawning realisation. "You don't know?"
"What don't I know?" he inquired, equally mystified.
It was the first time that Andrew had seen Oliver genuinely unsettled. He slowly explained, "money's tight with her family."
"That's it? I know that much," Andrew said, with a bite of impatience.
Oliver fixed him with a stare. "No, you don't. You don't know that her dad lost his job right after she was born and her mom was too busy raising a child to work. You don't know that neither of her parents could hold down a job. You don't know that she lived in a house with one room, a few cardboard boxes for furniture, and slept on the floor for years. You don't know that she earned a scholarship to a private school by being educated by her dad."
"Er-" Andrew made a tiny noise, as if to interrupt.
Oliver wasn't having any of that. He continued ranting. "You don't know that every penny her dad managed to salvage went into buying textbooks. You don't know that even when her mom and dad got steady jobs, she took up this receptionist job because she had the opportunity to pay them back for something priceless. Her education."
Andrew was struck speechless. Searing blood pounded in his ears. He wasn't sure whether it was from embarrassment, or anger regarding Quinn's misfortune. He had everything. She had nothing. He imagined the heartbreaking sobs of a vulnerable girl, which left him with his head buried in his hands.
"Fuck," he whispered at the floor.
Andrew had grown up with the most cheerful childhood imaginable. Money was never an issue. He had grown up eating ice cream every afternoon. Quinn had been eating scraps. He had slept in a plush bed with mounds of stuffed toys and quality cushions. Quinn had been sleeping on the floor with nothing but a blanket. No mattress, no nothing.
In that moment, he regretted every single ungrateful outburst he had ever made as a child. That was nothing compared to Quinn. No wonder she wanted a job. No wonder why she wanted Employee of the Month so badly. No wonder she wanted a raise. Andrew could only mumble, "Oliver, how did you know about this?"
"I caught her crying over a photo from when she was a kid," Oliver said quietly. A shadow haunted his face, reducing his youthful glow and replacing it with a grim seriousness that Andrew had never seen before. "I said I'd give her space if she needed it, but she insisted on explaining everything. Said she needed to get it off her chest."
A moment of understanding passed between them, before Andrew suddenly asked, "do you know any spare venue where we can throw a nice birthday bash?"
Oliver's sudden grin stretched from ear to ear, bouncing back to his enthusiastic self within seconds. "I thought you'd never ask. I know just the place. Come on, let's go!" he leapt to his feet without a second thought and took off towards the door. Andrew barely had time to grab a coat, before following him into the life-sized winter wonderland.
It took them several minutes of stumbling and a string of expletives from Andrew to find the venue that Oliver had in mind, but once he escaped the bite of winter and collapsed in front of a roaring fireplace, he could see why Oliver had chosen this. It was a modest room. Not overly large that Quinn would feel overwhelmed, but not tiny enough to remind her of her childhood.
Oliver dug out a box of decorations that he had brought, and the two got to work. After half an hour, both boys were praying for the mini snowstorm to migrate inside so they could remember that coldness felt like. Plus, decorating was more difficult than they had assumed. Andrew, in particular, managed to get himself into multiple shenanigans.
First, he tangled himself in streamers – "I think we've found your Halloween costume," Oliver snickered. Not to mention that Andrew almost fainted from blowing up too many balloons – "we don't need Quinn anymore, since you're already seeing stars," Oliver remarked, wriggling his eyebrows.
Andrew chucked a piñata at his head.
After the initial grumbling, Oliver announced a fact with astounding nonchalance. "You know, Quinn has the hots for you."
That made Andrew drop his streamers. "You're crazy."
"Denial!" Oliver coughed into his fist.
"Shut up," Andrew retorted. "Quinn's not- we're not-"
'Oh, you're using her real name now?" Oliver picked on the subtlety alarmingly quick. As much as Andrew tried to hide his heated cheeks and blame them on the strenuous effort of hanging a streamer, he couldn't drag Oliver away from his suggestive thoughts. "Does that mean that you're a step away from the friendzone?"
"Go stand in the corner and think about what you said," Andrew ordered. "You should be ashamed of yourself."
No more words were exchanged for another twenty minutes.
"So, how'll Quinn know when and where to come?" Andrew asked, having won his battle with the streamers and arranged them in a crooked arc that was meant to resemble a rainbow. He was actually quite proud that it looked half-decent.
"I'm meant to be working, so I'll let her know!" Oliver said brightly.
"All right, but don't we need to get her presents?" Andrew asked.
"I've got that covered." Oliver pointed to a pile of presents in the corner, which were clumsily wrapped with an excessive amount of tape. "She'll love them."
"If you say so," Andrew said, imagining what Oliver could have gotten her. Probably something ridiculous. Maybe Christmas baubles, or a weird lamp. "Let me know whether she likes the decorations, all right? I'm heading back to the lodge."
"You're not staying for the party?" Oliver burst out, horrorstruck. "But I have a huge guest list of invitees! You're on it!"
Andrew smiled apologetically. "Sorry man, but we'd start arguing the moment we saw each other and that'd ruin her birthday. Besides, it's not the right time for us to meet. She's really preoccupied with work these days."
Oliver looked crestfallen, but he bid Andrew a goodbye. As the latter trudged away in the snow, he glanced back to admire the dented Rudolph piñata through the glass windows of the venue. With a chuckle under his breath at what Quinn would say, he continued on, bidding her the infinite amount of birthday wishes she deserved.
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Quinn's POV
"Chipmunnnnnnk! Tell meeeeeee!" Quinn complained down the phone, a sigh of exasperation escaping through her lips. Seconds later, she realised that the volume of her voice meant that people in Japan could probably hear her. Although Quinn was seated on her lonesome at the festive reception desk, her cheeks flushed crimson.
The line was silent. Quinn would have been worried and offended that Andrew had hung up on her, but she could hear his steady breathing and the tap of fingernails on glass. She didn't even notice that her breathing pattern was mimicking his, nor that she was tapping her nails on the desk at the same pace as whatever he was tinkling with.
"It means you're every colour of the rainbow," Andrew responded, and with a jolt, Quinn realised how much she had been hanging onto his every word. She'd never admit it out loud, but even just hearing him talk, calmed her down. "Words strung together to form a poem. Multidimensional. Scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle."
Quinn opened her mouth to reply, but no words could be forced out of her throat. No words that would match the annoying beautiful poetry that Andrew had just spewed, anyway. She was struck dumb by his wisdom, unable to fathom that he, someone who seemed to act only on others' orders, would be so irritatingly perceptive.
See? This is why she needs to spend more time with bald Asian monks! They're totally the reason why Andrew managed to one-up her with his perspicacious remarks.
Unfortunately, she couldn't vocalise any of her internal sass without sounding harsh, so she settled for, "and what, you think you're the one who can put me back together?"
"I just think you're a broken kind of beautiful," Andrew replied without missing a beat, honey tone oozing with earnest appreciation.
If anything could struck Quinn dumb, it was that. The thought of someone caring for her. The thought of someone who loved her for every strength and every flaw. Who didn't shy away from her sarcasm or steadfast work ethic. Someone who picked up every shard, no matter how much pain they caused.
Andrew was that person.
It was ridiculous. How could he have changed her life when she hadn't even met him? A lonely boy with a chipmunk voice wasn't your typical therapist, but every time Quinn picked up the phone and heard his voice, her body relaxed. Everything else was forgotten. He was a guy she could banter with, give advice to. A guy who could listen to her rants without interrupting. A guy who had flaws, but was perfect in his own way.
"Quinnie, I'm home!" A voice interrupted her thoughts.
It took her a moment to snap out of her trance, but it suddenly struck her that she'd been tightly gripping the phone for an hour. Andrew had hung up long before then. In fact, it was the irritatingly chirpy Oliver Twist who had just skipped through the door. He'd said he was going to take a break, and didn't come back for over an hour.
"Where have you been?" Quinn snapped, eyes blazing with a thirst for vengeance.
She wasn't being paid to work extra hours or fill in for Oliver! In fact, her break time had started ten minutes ago. Even though she'd spent it with her eyes glazed over and mouth hanging slightly open, in deep thought, ten minutes of break being wasted was a tragedy. Since she didn't want to blame it on herself, she blamed it on Oliver instead.
"Oh– um– out," Oliver stumbled over his words, eyes flicking from side to side in a shifty way that didn't have her fooled. The word out was very vague for someone like Oliver, who'd happily ramble on about the exact degree of crispiness his fried chicken was for hours, without anyone even asking him to. It was one of his more vexatious traits.
Quinn narrowed her eyes. "Out where?"
"Out there!" Oliver chirped. He pointed at the soft blizzard outside, attempting to restore his usual chirpy demeanour. "In the snow! Making snow angels and stuff."
"Right," she drew out, unconvinced. There was no point in egging Oliver on about it, though. He was probably preoccupied with something that didn't even concern her, and the last thing she wanted to do was to have the fried chicken debate again. "By the way, was Andrew the one who tipped you off about me murdering you with snowballs?"
Oliver's expression relaxed at the change of subject, though he frowned as he tried to recall the incident. "What? You mean last Friday? Oh, I saw you coming and ran out the side entrance as fast as humanely possible. Andrew had nothing to do with that. I saw him positioning his camera for some reason. Did you ask him to take pictures of me?"
"No," Quinn said hastily and changed the subject once again.
This time, Oliver was happy to partake in a conversation about snow angels, though he was so enthusiastic about it that it might as well have been a monologue. All Quinn had to do was nod along and grunt an occasional affirmative. She let her mind wander, though another thought struck her that she'd been meaning to ask him for ages.
"Hey," Quinn interrupted his explanation on exactly how soft the snow should be to craft a perfectly sized angel. "Why do you call me Quinnie?"
"I thought that was obvious!" Oliver said brightly. "You resemble Minnie Mouse."
That was the answer she had least expected. Quinn needed to take a moment to gather her thoughts on the pure unwontedness of his explanation. "What the actual fuck, Oliver?" she asked incredulously. "In what way am I anything like Minnie Mouse?"
"You're the rational mindmaster," he reasoned.
Quinn started to laugh in earnest at that. "Are you crazy? Andrew's the rational one, not me!"
"Is he?" Oliver asked seriously, which slowed down Quinn's hearty laughter to faint chuckles. It was very unusual for him to sound serious about anything. When he did, even Quinn knew that she had to shut up and listen, because he was one hundred percent going to spout some real talk. "Who tried to talk me out of our jealousy plan?"
"Me," Quinn answered, wavering.
"Who went out of her way to get Andrew a skiing instructor?"
"Me, and how do you know about that?"
Oliver's grin returned, his teeth glinting so radiantly that they could replace the sun. "See? Quinnie Mouse!" he declared, blatantly ignoring her question.
"How do you know about that?" she repeated.
Oliver sighed dramatically. "You do realise that I'm friends with your phone buddy, right? It's not like we don't talk about you occasionally. Maybe more than occasionally. A few times. Okay, maybe more than a few times," he said sheepishly, burying himself deeper in his own verbal track wreck. "You're our most interesting conversation topic."
Quinn scrunched up her face. "Are you trying to imply that you two have girly sleepovers and gossip about girls? Have pillow fights? Watch chick flicks together?"
"No!" Oliver snorted. "We prefer rom-coms."
She couldn't help but let out an unattractive snort. "How precious."
"By the way, since when have you started saying Andrew's real name?" Oliver asked. He seemed genuinely curious, though Quinn couldn't fathom why a smirk lingered on his face. Oliver rarely smirked, so his expression was rubbing her the wrong way.
"Since now, Captain Observant," Quinn retorted.
"What happened to Chipmunk?"
"I call him that to his face, but it's awkward to constantly refer to him as a rodent," she clarified.
A wave of dizziness suddenly swept through Quinn's body. She involuntarily swayed on the spot as panic seized her throat. Then she blinked hard and returned to consciousness. Her lack of sleep was beginning to have physical symptoms. Not only cloudiness, but the fact that she worked for hours each day meant that she was more tired than usual, hence the brief lapses of unconsciousness, though she fought hard to stay awake.
She hadn't told anyone that she frequented two hours of sleep a night. That every time her eyelids fluttered shut and she drifted into dreamland, nightmares would emerge from the mist and grin with skeleton teeth. That every time she woke up in a cold sweat just minutes later, she would have only the tiniest recollection of what happened. Even so, it wasn't life-threatening. She could handle it alone. She didn't need no stinkin' pity.
Oliver, having noticed this, frowned at Quinn. Fortunately, he didn't confront her about it right there and then, for which she was very grateful. After a moment of awkward silence, Oliver brightened up again.
"Come on!" he suddenly exclaimed. "I have a surprise for you!"
"Wha-" Quinn didn't even have time to finish her sentence before she was dragged into the blanket of frigid snow. She shrieked from the sudden coldness, but didn't bother complaining. Beside, she needed the energy to maintain a normal body temperature.
Although Oliver's enthusiasm was not contagious, it did mean that they reached wherever he wanted to go in record time. He crept towards the door and put an ear on it, listening. Quinn had a sudden urge to ask him if his surprise was legal, but before she could do so, Oliver beckoned her with his index finger. "You go in first."
Quinn squinted at him suspiciously. "Why? Are you going to sacrifice me to Satan?"
But curiosity got the better of her in the end. She grabbed the doorknob, shooting a glare at Oliver that was colder than the snow they were buried in. A tiny push and the door gave away, revealing an explosion of colour and grins, but first and foremost, huge golden balloons shaped like the number seventeen were dotted around the room.
"Happy birthday!" Oliver shouted in chorus with several other co-workers.
Quinn could only stand there in shock. Every thought flooded out of her mind, except how on earth people found out that it was her birthday today. She had been determined to keep it as quiet and mellow as possible. Besides, another birthday was another cheque that she'd mail back to her parents. They needed the money more than she did.
On the other hand, this was the first time she'd had a proper birthday party. Affection welled up in her throat for Oliver Twist, whom she suspected was behind this. Right then and there, she took back every bad thing she'd ever said about him. "How'd you know?"
"I saw your dad's letter," Oliver said sheepishly. Quinn immediately understood. Oliver was the only person at the lodge who knew about her money situation and history, and therefore had a motive to do this.
Quinn then noticed that Oliver was deep in thought. Him being deep in thought was always dangerous, so she changed the subject. "What's with the dented piñata?"
"Hm? Oh, that." He surprised her with a chuckle. "Andrew smacked me with it when we were putting up the decorations."
That caught Quinn off guard. Andrew knew about this? He decorated this venue for her? That meant he cared, and that was enough for her to feel as light as air. The words beat at the same rhythm as her heart. He cares. He cares. He cares.
Hold on a minute.
She scanned the faces of the crowd. She recognised everyone. No Andrew.
"So, uh, why didn't he show up?" Quinn tried to stay nonchalant, but she couldn't keep the twinge of disappointment out of her voice.
Oliver gazed at her sadly. "I don't think it's anything personal, but he said something about not wanting to ruin your party with banter. Um, he says happy birthday though."
Quinn wanted to argue that the last thing she was worried about was banter, but she was cut off by several people crowding around a cake. A cheerful chorus of happy birthday was sung. "Make a wish!" someone shouted.
As she exhaled and robbed the candles of their flame, her whispered wish was lost in cheers. Even so, she hoped that a few walls away, the boy who cares can hear her unspoken desire and know that she cares too.
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Ah geez, I stayed up 'till midnight to write this 4000 word chapter. I know some people despise long chapters, but I really can't help it. Sorry guys!
Anyway, thank you for your comments on the previous chapter! Also, I'm sorry that this chapter is late. I've been busy reading contest entries.
Note that Miss Skyscraper Legs has been absent for the past ten or so chapters *smirks* and gods, I love Oliver so much. He's the best character I've ever created, in my opinion. I don't want to reveal much about the #Quindrew ship, but there may be an iceberg in their path soon ;)