WWAWR - [05] I've Fallen Quite Hard Over You
Chapter Five [PG]
I’ve Fallen Quite Hard Over You
David is not fast enough to move away from the couch and to Michael as Carly turns and rounds on him, “Seriously, the both of you.” She stands straight and tilts her head up to look Michael in the eye, and David turns his head slightly to see him grinning sheepishly at the Irishwoman. Michael coughs, points to David, and David stares at him incredulously.
“Me?” he asks as he points the pencil toward himself; he points the pencil to Michael, “You were the one who gave me the idea.”
“Correction, David,” Michael says in defense of himself, barely managing to control his laughter as he shakes his head, “you were the one who gave yourself the ‘something unexpected’ idea.”
“But you went along with it!” Carly says, the slightest hint of disappointment and disbelief in her voice. “Michael--”
“Oh, have some fun, Carly,” David rushes to say, turning away from Michael and facing her, “we were only having fun.”
Carly raises an eyebrow toward him, before Jason begins to laugh, and they turn to look at him. He looks at them with piercing blue eyes and says with a shrug, “Hey. At least now we know not to disturb older David when he’s working on his crosswords.”
This statement cracks up the other Idols as David watches Brooke begin to laugh lightly, and Kristy Lee and Ramiele begin to giggle, and the younger David laughs along with Jason. David has a slightly smug look on his face as he looks at Carly, “Just loosen up every once in a while, Carly.”
Carly’s tone is low, “Oh, you want ‘loosen up’?”
“David, move away!” Michael calls out jokingly as Carly begins to walk towards him, and David begins to take small steps back. “Faster,” Michael urges, but David is not fast enough as Carly comes at him, and within moments, she is tickling his sides, and his crosswords have all been forgotten.
The very fact that David is being tickled by Carly only fuels Michael’s laughter as he shakes his head. Watching David attempt to get away from Carly, his hands trying to push her away from him but her hold on to him is just too strong, he decides it’s time to help David out.
“C’mon, Carly,” he says lightly, “it was just an innocent little joke.”
Carly stops tickling David, who rushes over with a laugh to Michael’s side, who wraps an arm around his shoulder, and she draws herself to her full height, staring at Michael with narrowed eyes. “‘Innocent,’ you say,” she spoke slowly.
Michael raises the hand around David’s shoulder, “Innocent.” He tilts his head down and whispers into David’s ear, “When I nudge you, go run upstairs and I’ll follow.”
David snorts, shaking his head, but whispers in return, “If you say so, Papa Johns.”
Michael grins as he looks back up at Carly. She is still looking at him --at them-- with a suspicious look in her eyes, and shakes her head. “Whatever you say, Michael, but that was a little vulgar to be innocent, don’t you think?” Michael nudges David, and David removes himself from Michael’s warmth and speeds up the stairs, shouting down to Carly, “It’s ‘Little Sparrow,’ if you still want to know!”
With Carly staring after David, Michael coughs politely and runs up the stairs to follow him.
Brooke watches David run up the stairs with amusement lighting up her eyes. She laughs as Michael follows him, but as soon as they are gone, she stands up and moves next to Carly, “Did I hear David right? ‘Little Sparrow’?”
Carly shrugs, “I -- I guess.”
Brooke’s lips thin, her eyes narrow, and her forehead wrinkles in confusion as she frowns and begins to think of David’s strange song choice, before she remarks, “For the record, I thought David was going to choose ‘The Fire That Keeps You Warm.’”
Carly coughs and begins to laugh. “Well, I guess it’s ‘something unexpected,’ or whatever Mike said.”
Brooke isn’t fooled. “Well, quite obviously, it isn’t as ‘unexpected’ as they’d like for it to be.”
“It’s cute,” Carly comments, a large smile on her face. “Let them be.”
David throws open the door to their bedroom, and sits down without a care in the world on Michael’s bed. Michael comes through the door, closes it, and sits down next to the younger man. “Oh, that was good,” Michael remarks.
David leans gently on Michael as the Australian wraps an arm around him. It’s nice, really, David thinks, to be just here, away from the company of everyone else and just here with Michael. He is silent as he relishes in the moment, the peace they usually never get the chance to have; the warmth coming from Michael is enough for right now, completely enough to last him through the day, and he doesn’t want anything else to do with the world.
Not when he’s right here with Michael, because the world doesn’t mean anything to him anymore.
He doesn’t realize he’s murmured a soft “I love you, Mikey,” until Michael chuckles, and tilts his chin up, and then David is staring up in those beautiful eyes. There is a serene smile on Michael’s face, a smile so soft and so tender that if he were some sort of ice cream, he would’ve melted already, and the tone in his voice is so rich, “I love you, too, Dave.”
He leans further into Michael, tilting his head down and breathing in the scent of the Australian. David could’ve died happy as he stays there, simply sitting with Michael and nothing more.
Michael listens to David’s steady heartbeat as he holds the other man close to him. So many emotions are running through his head as he feels David underneath his fingers and through the cloth adorning David’s body. Questions run through his head at unbelievable speeds, and he cannot help his heartbeat as it becomes faster than he believes it’s ever been. David is here, David is here right now, and anything that happens, Michael knows it isn’t David’s fault. None of it is David’s fault, nor will it ever be. He doesn’t have the heart to put the blame on David, is totally prepared to carry all the blame on his shoulders if he has to.
It’s all him, Michael knows. He could’ve said no, could’ve chosen not to put David in direct range of heart-wrenching pain --but isn’t he going to go through heart-wrenching pain no matter what you choose? Aren’t the both of you going to go through the same type of pain?-- but then that wasn’t right. That was something Michael couldn’t see himself doing to David. So he decided to be selfish. But is it really selfish? He decided to say yes, because he wanted it more than anything in that moment. He loves David, of course he loves David, anybody who doesn’t obviously has lost their minds, but Stacey--
Then there’s Stacey. The woman he’s shared his life with for more than a year, the woman who’s known him, who’s been with him through the ups and downs of the industry and through it all, and it is unfathomable to just throw it all away, but David --David is-- is so much more than a passing feeling, and he doesn’t know what to acknowledge it as, and he doesn’t know how to describe it at all.
To be willing to throw it all away for David--
To be willing to set David aside for Stacey--
He doesn’t know what to do.
It’s obvious he doesn’t know what to do. But he has to make it through one more week. This relationship with David is so wrong on so many levels, Michael; you’re a married man, damn it, and you’re both men and there's nothing you do can change that! My God, Michael, why do you have to love him so much? Why the hell do you have to love him so much? Why do you have to insist on making things so hard for yourself? but in the heat of the moment, like everything else, it is right. It is right, more right than anything else in the world has ever been.
There is a light bulb that turns on as, in the midst of all the emotional turmoil, Michael has found something, has found a stable thought to hold on to.
He knows what he’s going to sing next week.
Downstairs, Carly and Brooke are sitting down on the couch again, settling in the peacefulness that has descended once David and Michael went up the stairs; the other Idols have since then dispersed to choose their songs for Dolly Parton week. There is no awkwardness in the silence between them, and they fall into quick conversation as Brooke confesses, “I’m worried about them.”
“I know,” Carly says as she crosses her legs. “I’m worried about Michael the most, though. I’m not sure how he’s going to handle all of this.”
“It’s something that can’t be helped, I’m guessing,” Brooke says. “It really looks like they care so much for each other, and I’m happy, but--”
“--Michael’s married,” Carly finishes. “I know.” The sigh that escapes Carly’s mouth is a relatively sad one, and she says to Brooke, “It’s a right-love-wrong-time situation, isn’t it?”
Brooke allows herself a small smile and a light chuckle. “You never know. All I’m hoping for is that they’re stable enough to make it through this, Michael especially.”
“Michael’s got so much more riding on this, don’t you think? If this doesn’t work out with David, and once he tells his wife and that doesn’t work out, then what happens to him?”
“Michael’s a strong man, though,” Brooke speaks slowly, “I --I think he’ll be stable enough for both of them.”
“I just don’t want to see him crash and burn,” Carly admits. “I don’t want to see either one of them hurt.”
“They’ll be fine, I should think,” Brooke says firmly, although it is more to assure herself than to assure Carly. “They’re strong men. They --they’ll be absolutely fine. We just --we just have to stand by them, no matter what.”
“This is the real thing, isn’t it?”
“More real than you could ever imagine, Carly.”
Carly knows that masculine voice doesn’t belong --at all-- to Brooke.
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