Heaven and Hell

He was right, moving my stuff was entirely too easy and made a mockery of his awesome truck. It was literally what was in my suitcase, the bag I used for work and my fridge’s contents. If I died tomorrow, this is all I would have to show for it. On the plus side, there wouldn’t be any freaky stories about how I owned a life size my little pony or a 72 piece vibrator set. I didn’t even own a one piece vibrator set.

          I covered the dress with bin bags so he wouldn’t be able to see it and placed it in my case with the love and care of a holy relic.

Going down to tell the asshole at the desk I was leaving was way too much fun. The benefits of living in a shit hole that didn’t take card details, wanted cash and didn’t do contracts. There wasn’t even a deposit to worry about. Awesome.

          On the drive to Van’s I was thinking about all the benefits of living with him; rides to our appointments, not having to make sure he was up, internet access, and well…Van. I would be living with Van. I would be actually living with Van. Holy crap, life just got better and better (minus the attempted mugging)

          “Van, I’m going to have a huge mark on my face for the premiere.” I said, prodding the stitches with my finger in irritation.

          “Don’t mess with it. If you like, I’ll put stitches on my face and we’ll pretend we’re making a fashion statement.” I hoped he was joking.

          “So come on, tell me everything I need to know about attending a premiere.”

He thought for a moment, his eyes on the road. He began chewing on his fingers again. Uh oh, this usually meant bad news.

          “Basically, you just stand there and look pretty as I wow the crowds, smooze with the red carpet interviewers and look utterly gorgeous.” He winked at me in the rear view mirror. “There’ll probably be an after party, but I generally don’t stay for those. They’re messy, dangerous and are usually crawling with paps waiting to get photos of you vomiting in the gutter.”

          “So I just stand there.”

          “Yup.”

          “And if they ask me questions like that evil bitch did?” I’m sitting on my hands to stop myself picking at the stitches. It’s so addictive, but I don’t really want to make this any worse. I don’t think scars are in fashion right now.

          “You give them my favourite hand gesture.”

          “I hope you’re kidding. I’m sure as your PA I should be discouraging it or something, but it is slightly hilarious watching people’s faces when you do it. I also love how all your fans greet you with it, it’s a whole sea of middle fingers. Could there be anything more beautiful?”

          “Mac, my favourite word is fuck, I love giving the finger, I smoke where I’m not supposed to, drink too much, make no secret of my hatred of interviews…I’m the brat as far as everyone’s concerned and I couldn’t give a flying fuck. If you want to piss off every person in that place, go for it, just draw the line at directors I might want to work with in the future.” He shot me the cutest lop sided grin and pushed his hair out of his face. His accent peaked on hard consonants and made my insides feel like squirming eels.

          We pulled up at his, taking only one trip to get my things upstairs. Unpacking took all of two minutes, the only thing I cared about was my dress getting wrinkled. Van had obviously already decided I was moving in before he mentioned it to me as he’d made the room more girl friendly, I.e. taken down the posters of cars that had been up before. All of Luke’s things were packed away (though there hadn’t been much.) It was a gorgeous room with a window that had a view over the skyline, the sun setting in a thousand shades of orange and gold. I could hear myself sighing contently. This was bliss.

          Van appeared in the doorway.

          “Let me show you where you can stick your bathroom junk. I know girls have a million bottles.”

I held up my shampoo, conditioner and shower gel.

          “That’s it? Wow. Don’t ever live with Sofia, she had three medicine cabinets full of lotions and potions. They quite honestly scared me.”

          “Van, I can’t thank you enough for this…”

He held up a hand to stop me.

          “It’s purely selfish. I hate living alone, I miss Luke and it’ll be nice to have company. Plus it’ll make both our lives easier. I won’t need an alarm clock because you’re uber organised.” He grinned, showing all his perfect white teeth. How did a smoker have such amazing teeth? “Hungry? I thought I’d cook, y’know, welcome you to the apartment…”

          “You have food?” I said in mock horror, pulling a Macaulay-Culkin-in-Home-Alone expression.

He rolled his eyes.

          “I even bought some of that fake meat, mushroom protein crap. It looks vile, but apparently tastes like chicken.”

          “That sounds great. Thank you. Let me help though.”

          “Nope. You relax, check your email or something. What’re you going to do now that you have internet access? How will you cope with the excitement?”

          “I’ll be watching cute videos of kittens and puppies all day long.”

He smiled and left to go start on dinner. He thought I was joking!

          I carried my laptop through to the main room, liking that there was someone else here. I could watch him attacking vegetables with a cleaver like he was in the middle of the zombie apocalypse and not have him realise that’s what I was doing.

I made my first port of call the hate group on Facebook. It had thankfully been removed, but another had been set up in its place, cleverly called ‘FUKIN TRY N GET THIS TAKEN OFF BITCH! WE STILL H8 GEORGIANA MACMANUS!’ And the best part? Apparently I used to be a man. They’re basing this on the fact that I have a huge Adam’s apple. Do I? I can’t say I’d ever taken the time to focus on that part of my body as I was usually fixated on how awful my skin was. Nope, I wasn’t going down that road. I wasn’t going to let a group of silly little girls give me even more things to worry about. I was neurotic enough without adding to it. I reported the group again and headed for Twitter. I was tagged in no end of posts telling me I was fugly, stupid, fat (?!?), anorexic (make up your minds people) gay, and one person was even telling everyone I was dead. Impressive that I can check this from beyond the grave.

          I clicked on my Beloved’s profile and felt myself blushing at some of the things he’d written in defense of me;

          ‘@myusername is probably the sweetest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, please stop insulting her as I find it really hurtful.’

          ‘Look people, can we stop now. @myusername is my close friend and I won’t have people insulting her.’

          ‘Please don’t call yourself a ‘fan’ if you’re insulting one of the most important people in my life @myusername.’

          ‘Spent the day with my favourite girl @myusername. She made me laugh so hard coke came out of my nose.’ I smiled remembering that day.

          ‘@myusername is making sure I eat my vegetables. Three square meals a day, and coffee doesn’t count? ;p’

          I felt better after reading those. I was his favourite girl? I wasn’t going to start getting excited, he was doing it to protect me and piss off the haters no doubt. But my heart was doing little back flips of happiness. 

          “Are they leaving you alone yet?” Van called, his arms covered up to the elbow with pieces of carrot peel.

          “Nope. I have several face book groups dedicated to me. I used to be a man according to them.”

          “Awesome. I always wanted to meet a chick with a dick.”

          “Classy Van.” I said snorting back a laugh. “I just don’t understand why they’re wasting their time! They could be doing something productive or fun, but instead they’re spamming the crap out of me.” I clicked onto an actor database. This was what I’d secretly wanted the internet for, to stalk Van! Mwahaahahhahahahaaaa!

          In another window, I did a search for pictures of him and left it running whilst I looked at his career. Holy crap he’d been in a lot of films, and I’d actually seen a couple of them! Surely I’d remember him wouldn’t I? There were a lot of independent films listed, along with ones that hadn’t been released in England, which would explain why I’d never really known about him (that and me living under a rock.) I scribbled a quick list, intending to get hold of every single one. Heh heh heh. God bless the internet. I closed that page and looked at the photos. Holy fuck.

          “Jesus Van, you look hot in a dress.” I said, looking over at him.

His eyes widened in panic and he rushed over to the computer, shutting the laptop.

          “Banned! No more! You can help me chop veg if you’re going to misbehave.” He looked utterly horrified.

          “It’s ok, all I have to do is this…” I closed my eyes and smiled dreamily. “Oh yeah Van, work it.” I was laughing, trying not to snort as I did that WAAAAAAY too often and it was not remotely sexy.

          “You’re evil.”

          “Well you have great legs. Miaow.” I said winking at him

          “I hate you. You can stir this.” He handed me a wooden spoon and steered me over to the hob, his hands on my hips guiding me.

 

And he can cook. The stir fry was so good! I almost felt indecent eating it in front of him because I was enjoying it way too much. We were getting like an old married couple, bantering, teasing and chucking things at each other. It never escalated to a full food fight, but it was close. We did the washing up together and slobbed out on the couch afterwards, chatting about trashy TV (Jerry Springer is awesome) and what our favourite shows were.

          “So what do you watch?” I asked, stretching and yawning. Sleeping was hard when you can’t lie on your back due to puncture wounds. They weren’t agonising or anything like that, but when I was asleep and rolled over, they stung enough to wake me up.

          “I don’t watch much TV to be honest.”

          “Have you seen Breaking Bad?”

He shook his head. Uh oh.

          “What? Please tell me you’re joking. That show is the best thing on TV! Tomorrow we’re going to find a box set and watch them all in a giant marathon!” I said, my voice getting higher and higher as I got more excited. The hand clapping and squealing started then. I felt like saying we could paint each other’s nails and put on face packs, but I thought it would scare him, plus I’d never done that myself. Girlie sleepovers were alien territory for me. Maybe I had missed out on a whole chunk of my life through being a social pariah. Meh, Van could be my girlfriend.

He smiled indulgently as I chatted away about how great the show was, how much he sucked for not watching it and how much fun we were going to have. I don’t get out much and get excited over stupid things. Plus Aaron Paul is AMAZING. I just hope I don’t tear up when bad things happen to Jesse. Just thinking about it made my eyes a little misty. I had to say though, watching Meth addicts on BB was a lot better than nearly being mugged by them!

          The evening was such a wonderful bubble of domesticated bliss without the complication of a relationship or sexual tension. We chatted, teased, play fought and then planned what to do tomorrow on a rare day off. I went to bed happier than I could remember being for so long, secretly a tiny bit thankful to Stabby McStabberson for making this happen. Poor bastard was probably going through withdrawal in a holding cell somewhere.

          I fell asleep quickly and didn’t wake up once.