CAPACITY FOR WONDER. | alex albon

xx. turn away from you

There were many things Juniper didn't understand and she was lucky that she could admit this without extensive ridicule. She didn't understand how money couldn't help buy happiness, or how planes managed to stay in the air, or how the internet even really worked, or how fault lines were discovered. She didn't understand why people didn't do more to help others, or how family always seemed to have a single definition, but those were more personal than the rest.

At that moment, she didn't understand why they were still in Monaco. She had expected him to speed off, travelling along with the coast to a neighbouring country but instead, he drove them a few miles away from shore. Their usual attempts took place in England, admittedly, though her art class and his proposal had taken place in Monaco only because they were easier. Here, she was technically still in Monaco, but too far away from land.

Mooring the boat to a bouy, Alex stopped their motion and turned to her now. "Most people don't like wearing clothes they've travelled in, you know, after they've travelled so," He extended his hand to her, a bag hanging from his fingers that she hadn't seen him grab at any point.

"Charlotte."

Alex only nodded, there was no further explanation needed. The only other place he could've found anything of hers might've been with Charles, but going to Charlotte made more sense. Given the past month, he wasn't sure anybody else would've given him her clothes anyway.

"I promise I'll turn around, hands over eyes too."

"A true gentleman?" She mused with him, but he had already turned away from her. The water around her seemed to become more evident now, as if she hadn't really been on the boat until that moment, as if the boat had been on land.

Juniper only remembered shaking in a few instances: when she told she her parents she was dropping out of University, when Charlotte had shown her a video of Charles' crash at Monza in 2020 and now. Because when she looked down at her hands, they were shaking.

It seemed to be more like a tremble at first, maybe the smallest of vibrations impacting her handwriting if she put pen to paper, but it had progressed like anything did. Then it wasn't just her hands, but her breath too and if she tried to change her clothes like she was supposed too, her jumper seemed to suffocate her as it stuck to her skin.

She thought her legs might be shaking too, but that easily could've been the water beneath them. If she'd ever bottled her strength before, she'd hand it to herself in that moment as she felt Alex's eyes on her back now for she had turned away from him too.

"I'm fine when I'm sat down, when I don't have a direct view." She told him, but her voice met the air like somones who had just stopped crying. The sounds she deemed pathetic when someone wanted to pretend they hadn't been crying, the breaths between words deeper than they should've been and a tone so soft, if it dropped then it'd break.

He'd nodded, an action she was obviously unaware of before he pressed his back against hers. "I'll steady you out, you can use me as your anchor."

So she did, she would've been foolish not to. Her back leant into his as if it was the only thing holding her up as she managed to peel her jumper away, as if uncovering a layer of herself that never should've seen the light of day -- which she supposed, it didn't. The haze of sunset had settled almost instantaneously, the light dropping as her clothes switched.

Her hand held onto his wrist as she sat herself back down on the bench, letting him know she was finished with a gentle tug.

"You look like a local." He told her as he sat down beside her.

"A true Monégasque?"

"A true Monégasque."

She thought his words couldn't be further than the truth of what everyone assumed about fashion in Monaco that seemed too high-brow to be compared to her current outfit.

"I didn't realise it was that bad, I'm sorry."

"Ask me something else." She requested, though her words seemed more like a deman as she turned her head up to look at him properly, the tremmers in her hand calming as she rested her hands on her thighs.

His hand met hers, resting on top of the one closest to him to steady the vibrations further. "Nothing seems to keep you here, so why Monaco?"

"I like it here, its far enough away from home but its still a direct flight. I stayed with Charlotte for a couple months and decided I wanted to stay here, so I saved up and I got my own apartment. Now, it's my home base, I guess."

"Home is a not a place." Alex suggested and the settling of her laugh seemed like she'd momentarily let go of her stress.

"Charlotte says that."

"George says home is a people."

It was funny, how true both Charlotte and George's words were. Home was not a place, because she'd managed to feel at home in the house she grew up in -- a place that definitely did not fit her definition of home. Home was a people too in those she had known for varying amounts of times: Charlotte, Charles, Kamri, Lilia and Pierre, the usuals. But in a strange sense: Isla, Lando, George, Hannah and her friends too.

Home was obviously evident as a person in Alex too, it couldn't not have been. This was clearer now as he allowed her to lean into his side as she thought, the clearest of concepts in her mind was that she was thankful it was dark. The water didn't look so scary anymore because she could barely see it, its depth covered by darkness in what she called a twisted metaphor to herself.

"George is right." She responded after too many moments, covering her momentary silence with an echo of his question. "Why Monaco for you?"

"It's a hotspot for people with my job."

There it was again, the walls. She thought her own were high, but his made hers look like a white picket fence around a sunny home in the suburbs. His walls were four bricks deep at least and the lack of scuffs or marks on them showed how nobody ever tried to climb them but June vouched to herself, in that moment, that she would try to. Even if all she had was the smallest of pickaxes, chipping away at the brick piece by piece in a tedious act, it was one she would partake in for him.

"Ah, your job." She allowed, but the laugh that slipped from her lips snipped a little harder than she wanted it to.

"You know I'd tell you what it was if you asked." He returned, pulling him closer into his chest as he ruffled with her hair. "Don't pretend like you actually want to know."

"I'm just nosy."

"Inquistive."

"Same difference." She scoffed in response but she shuffled her body further into him as she turned her head to look up at him. "Why are we out here, Lex?"

"Lex?" He questioned, the look on his face not clearly visible to her because of the low light but his expression didn't portray anything his tone didn't already say. Lex? Alex was already a nickname, and Alexander only provided Xander otherwise -- one he'd plateaued years ago. But Lex? That was new in general, but more importantly, new from her.

"I've been calling you 'Lex' in my head for months, I just decided I'm using it for special occasions."

"Is this a special occasion?"

She scoffed, again, and if anybody was hearing their conversation that didn't know them then they might be convinced June hated Alex. It was the opposite, clearly, to everyone who was friends with the pair of them.

"Just a test run."

He skipped over the past minute of conversation, something she was too grateful for as he answered the question that had been toying on her mind since they boarded. Laying down on the bench, that hadn't previously seemed wide enough for the both of them, he pulled her to the same position as him. Once their backs were against the cushion now, he responded to her question. "Well, since you like them so much, why not take you to a place where the only light seems to be the stars."