hitchhiker // c.h (au)

17. twenty one pilots

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"You've got to be shitting me," Iris's words were spat across at Calum as he sat in the booth opposite her, "as if you don't like twenty one pilots."

"They're just not my type of music."

"They're everyone's type of music, they're amazing. If you have working ears you should adore twenty one pilots."

"Well I have working ears as we know, and I just don't like their music."

"I promise you I can make you like them," Iris grinned around her mouthful of pizza and Calum shook his head exasperatedly back at her, "they're pretty much my favourite band, so you need to like them."

"I'll give them a chance I guess, but if I don't like them even after you try and force me then that's that and you need to leave it." Calum said, a smile playing on his lips as he raised his hand between them, "deal?"

Iris raised her eyebrows in a questioning manner before clasping their hands together, "deal." Iris begins to go off on a tangent as her voice rises and falls with passion and excitement as she talks about her favourite band. Calum listens to her rant and rave, soaking in every word but also every detail of her. Her dark skin that always looks smooth and lovely, her hair that spirals around her face and sometimes into her facial features creating lots of irritation on her behalf. He watches her lips move and shape the words that cloak him in a feeling of peace and serenity, god she was beautiful. The way the light hit her face and illuminated her in a halo of grace and tranquility, the way her eyes swirled with excitement and happiness. He couldn't tear his eyes off her, but he didn't want to either. He wanted to stay there for hours, days, years in that booth, staring at the way her facial features shifted and changed. How she smiled when she thought someone was being stupid, that forced smile that stretched her lips too far and too tight; how she constantly seemed to be fidgeting in some way, a tapping foot, a picking hand, a twirling hair, she always had to be moving. He couldn't imagine the way she had opened up her life and her world so quickly to a random stranger she picked up on the side of the road, and he was almost frightened in how trusting she was, but he was also thrilled that she had done it. Otherwise he would've wandered through his life possibly never knowing her, and that seemed like a bleak existence to him now. 

"Calum?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you even listening?"

"Yeah?" Iris fixed her most playfully harsh stare on him and he sheepishly smiled back at her, "okay you caught me, but I was admiring you so that's even better."

"No it's not, you were putting value in my appearance over what I had to say, the way women are treated so much in our modern day society. God it's like you want me to launch into a feminist rant."

"Oh god no, not the feminism." Calum jokingly raised his hands, pretending to shield his face from her. 

"You're the worst."

"You are," he stuck his tongue out at her, "equality; we're both the worst."

They both laughed, Iris at what she thought was his absurdly stupid comment, Calum at what he thought was his genius comment; yet it remained they both laughed, their different laughs mingling in the packed restaurant, barely heard to anyone but themselves. 

"You're an idiot."

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For the first time in the entire time Calum had known Iris and they had been on this trip, he longed to be out of the car. After the first song by twenty one pilots Iris had shown him, he had warmed to them and been thoroughly enjoying all their different songs, so it wasn't the music that made him want to jump out of the window and run free into the world around him. No it wasn't Iris herself, definitely not Iris, especially considering he was finding it exceedingly difficult not to reach out and touch her, to lay his hands on her and feel the warmth and vitality to held. No it was the fact that the road was stretching out for what seemed like eternity, the car air conditioning at started to malfunction an hour ago, and his feet were numb from the lack of movement. He felt restless, to feel the warm air he knew was swirling around outside, to run up mountains and scream into the abyss around him, to hurl himself into the ocean he kept picturing in his head; the ocean he knew was waiting for him in California. God he wanted nothing more than to feel free, and being cooped up in this car, it's heat stifling his skin and his mind, wasn't helping him at all.