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happiness is

Chapter One - Hippy Hippy Shake

Plaything

Title: Hippy Hippy Shake (01/??)
Author: tumbling_down
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,055
Genre: Hancest




Zac

I woke up as the sun filtered in through the blinds. Taylor’s hair was soft against my neck and his left hand gripped my side tightly while his other was bunched up beneath his stomach. I smiled and kissed the top of his head before slowly moving him onto his own pillow while he murmured in his sleep. After I had put some sweat pants on and pulled a t-shirt over my head, I stood in the doorway and watched him sleep for a minute.

It was something I did almost every morning; just stared at him when he couldn’t know that I was looking and tried to convince myself that he was actually mine. Sometimes it was so hard to believe that someone so amazing and beautiful was willing to dedicate himself entirely to me. I smiled as his fist gripped his pillow and he sighed in his sleep, his eyelashes fluttering softly against his cheeks.

Nothing really woke Taylor up other than the smell of coffee or his name shouted directly into his ear and I really, really hated doing the latter. So I did what I did almost every morning and started the coffee pot before I began making breakfast. Taylor mostly only ate when I cooked for him and I almost always made sure he at least had a big breakfast. Lunch he would usually skip because we weren’t at the apartment and dinner we had if we were home in time for it, otherwise I’d grab some take away for myself and he’d eat a bit of mine with his head in my lap and his eyes on the television.

Just as I was putting two sunny-side-up eggs, toast, and sausage onto a plate for him, I heard him shuffling down the hall in his slippers. A moment later he appeared, hair a right mess and a sleepy smile on his face as his eyes met mine. “Morning,” he yawned, plopping down at the breakfast bar.

“Morning,” I said, setting the plate and a mug of coffee down in front of him. I got my own food and sat across the bar, watching as he dunked his toast into an egg.

“Thanks for breakfast,” he said before taking a bite of his food and I nodded in response. “What are we doing today?”

“Dunno…Isaac wanted to get some music laid down at around two…but we’ve got nothing to do until then.”

“Anything you needed to do?”

“No, not really,” I said, looking at him skeptically. Usually when he questioned me like this, he had an idea up his sleeve that I probably wouldn’t like. “Why?”

He stared at me over his coffee mug while he took a sip before smiling sheepishly, his cheeks turning slightly pink. “I was thinking…it might be fun to go to the church carnival for a little bit.”

“The church carnival?”

“Mom called the other day and said we should go…there’s rides and games and stuff.”

“And…you think that’d be fun?” I asked quizzically, finishing up my eggs.

“Sure,” he said. He grinned, “You can win me a stuffed animal.”

“And that wouldn’t look at all obvious,” I laughed as I rinsed my plate in the sink.

“Can we please go?” he asked, looking at me hopefully and I rolled my eyes. “It’ll be fun.”

Taylor’s idea of fun and my idea of fun are two entirely different concepts. A lot of what I found fun, however, consisted of watching him have fun. “Of course,” I gave in, sticking his empty plate into the dishwasher next to mine.

“And can we play that game where you throw the ping pong balls into the fish bowls?” he asked, heading into our bedroom. I followed him.

“Tay, last time you did that the fish sat in the bathroom for four days before it died,” I reminded him, watching as he stripped out of his pajamas and put on a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt.

“Um…really?” he asked, staring into the mirror and pushing his hair back, securing it into a ponytail at his neck.

“Yes.”

“Well, that won’t happen again?” he said, turning to face me with a ridiculous grin on his face. “I want a fish.”

“You’re so weird,” I mumbled, digging through my own dresser for some clothes. I should have showered before I made breakfast because there was no way he was going to give me the time to do so after he had a plan to do something.

“I also want to go on that ride that spins in circles and you go upside down in it,” he said, sitting on the bed. He looked very impatient while I tried to find something suitable to wear in the July heat.

“Uh…I should probably take some Dramamine before we go, then,” I said, pulling on a pair of cargo shorts and a black tank top.

He went out of the room and I put my shoes on before following after him. There was a can of Dr. Pepper and two yellow pills on the counter and he was leaning against the wall by the door, glaring at me. “Hurry up,” he whined. “Mom said she’d be there after one and I want to do stuff before then.”

“You’re like a six year old sometimes, you know that?”

“Shut up,” he grumbled, heading out of the apartment once I’d taken the pills.

* * * * * * * * * *

I leaned against a fence, feeling a bit drowsy from the Dramamine, while I watched Taylor attempt to pop balloons with darts. He wasn’t exactly bad at the game, but he really wasn’t good either. I’d have offered to play the game for him, but he was really fucking cute doing it and it amused me too much. Plus, he was wearing incredibly tight jeans and the way he bent over the counter to throw the dart made me warmer than the late morning sun could have accounted for.

“That game was stupid,” he muttered when he came back to me, a small stuffed elephant clutched in one of his hands. I snorted.

“I’m sorry.” I tried to look sincere but it didn’t really work. He glared at me and elbowed me in the side.

“Shut up. Let’s go play the fish game.”

“Tay, we should play the fish game last…otherwise you’ll have that with you when you go on rides.”

“…So?”

“I’m pretty sure fish don’t like going around in circles and upside down,” I told him and he frowned, but nodded his agreement.

“Okay, then let’s go on the tilt-a-whirl,” he said, grabbing my elbow and pulling me in that direction. He was pretty good at maneuvering himself between the crowd, but people kept running into me since I was to the side of him with my elbow almost being ripped out of my body.

He finally stopped at the end of the line and I stared at the twirling ride for a minute, already feeling nauseated and I really hoped that the Dramamine would do its magic. I turned away from the ride when Taylor started bouncing from foot to foot. “What?” I asked.

“I’m bored,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and stuffing his hands into his jeans pockets.

“Right.”

“Do you think Ike’ll want to go get drinks tonight?” he asked and I shrugged. “I kind of want to go get drunk at LuLu’s.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. We haven’t gone out in a while and Tom said they got a new pinball machine,” he said. Yes, Taylor the pinball master. Once he had a handful of quarters, a bar tab, and a pinball machine, he was unresponsive until the power was shut off on him.

“Oh, great,” I breathed as we shuffled forwards in the line. “Cause that’s what I want to do. Sit at the bar and drink with Ike, listening to him complain about being a single father, while you get your rocks off on pinball.”

He grinned down at me and the way the light was reflecting off his hair made my breath catch in my throat. No matter how many times I looked at him, I could never get over how ridiculously gorgeous he was, and I certainly never got tired of thinking about it. “C’mon, please? I’ll totally make it worth your while once we get home.”

“You’re lucky I love you,” I said, though my face flushed at his suggestion as we finally got to the gate and Taylor handed the man there four dollars.

We picked the compartment that was farthest away from the entrance and ducked into it. Taylor closed the door behind us and I gripped onto the wheel in the center tightly. I knew better than to let him touch the thing or we’d be spinning around like mad.

He slid close to me, wrapping his arms around my waist and dropping his chin to my shoulder. “I love you,” he said, kissing my neck softly.

He sat like that the entire ride while I clutched the wheel to keep us from spinning around too wildly, and it was actually pretty fun. I didn’t feel at all sick as we got up and headed out of the ride, though Taylor seemed to have a bit of difficulty walking properly. “I feel so dizzy,” he said pathetically, holding onto my arm tightly while we walked. It was rather difficult with him practically pulling me to the ground.

“I think I’m going to hurl,” he informed me. “Like, now.”

I guided him to a garbage can behind a corn stand and he gripped the sides before throwing up his breakfast into the receptacle. He stood there for a few minutes once he was finished, his head hanging over the can while he breathed. “Do you think you could get me some water?” he asked weakly, wiping at his mouth with his hand before he stood straight.

“Sure, babe,” I nodded, pushing his bangs out of his face that had become rather sweaty. “Just wait here a sec, okay?”

I went to the nearest snack cart and got a ridiculously expensive bottle of some sort of bottled water that I had never heard of before. He was sitting against the garbage can, staring up at the sky with his glasses on his face when I came back. “Thank you,” he mumbled, tipping the bottle back and taking a long drink.

“Feel better?” I asked, sitting next to him. He nodded. “Why don’t we take it easy for a while and play some more games? Then when we meet up with Mom, maybe you’ll feel a bit better and we can go on some rides with the kids.”

“Alright,” he agreed and I got up before heaving him up into a standing position. He didn’t let go of my hand right away, pulling me closer to him instead. I wanted to pull away but I realized that nobody could really see us behind the corn stand. He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tightly. “Can you play that ring toss game and win me a stuffed alligator?”

I laughed, pulling away from him and giving him what was probably a ridiculous look. “An alligator?”

“I don’t have any stuffed alligators,” he shrugged, letting me go and leading the way back into the crowds.

I rolled my eyes, but smiled and followed him anyway. He always had the most ridiculous, yet obviously simple logic and there was just no way to say no. He stopped at the ring toss game and looked at me expectantly when the carnie came over by us. “Uh…six rings, I guess,” I said, digging two dollars out of my wallet and passing them over.

“Alright, you get one on, you get a small prize,” he said. “Two on a medium prize, three a big prize, and four a large prize.”

“Right.” Taylor grinned and stood to the side while I threw the rings at the plastic bottles set up on the platform. I got all six rings securely around the bottles – hey, we’d gone to a lot of carnivals in our lives. The carnie looked slightly impressed.

Taylor’s grin was a little overenthusiastic when I handed him the huge stuffed alligator, but still incredibly cute. “Thank you,” he said through his smile, nudging me softly in the side.

“Sure thing.”

“Now it’s time for you to win me a fish,” he said and I rolled my eyes, but followed him to the game, anyway.



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