Morning Voice

Title: Morning Voice
Rating: PG
Genre: Fluff
Word count: ~800
Summary: This is what happens when I try to divert my characters from finding their OTL.
A light hearted piece on adolescent crushes when you're too old for them.

---

Her phone rang sometime early in the morning. The first time, she thought it was her alarm and felt her way across the bed under her pillow and found the button to shut it up. When it began to ring again in the next three seconds, her sleep addled brain (somehow) realized that it probably wasn't her alarm. She fished her phone out of the sheets and almost jumped out of her skin seeing the name on the flashing screen. She sat up all of a sudden, scaring the pants off her roommate who by now knew only to expect her to be up ten minutes before her first class started.

She cleared her throat, smoothed down her hair(she wasn't quite sure why) and answered the call, "Hello?"

"Hello? Natalie?"

She tried to keep the butterflies in her stomach from flying out of her mouth as she said, "Yeah, hi."

"Were you sleeping? I'm sorry if I woke you-"

"You didn't. I was up anyway.."

Her roommate snorted at her obvious lie and Natalie shushed her with a wave of her arm as she focused her attention to more important matters - the call.

As she said bye and heard the click of the person on the other end of the line hanging up, she fell back onto her bed, a big goofy grin spreading across her face.

***

When she walked into class that morning, she couldn't help feeling silly. It actually was rather ridiculous, the way the air seemed sweeter and colours seemed brighter just because she spoke to him in the morning. She felt silly admitting it to herself.

He had already reached class, she walked up to her desk and sat down. She didn't bother to acknowledge him or mention their early morning conversation, she knew it didn't matter to him as much as it mattered to her.

She wasn't crushing on him, it was just an attraction. Maybe an infatuation. Or that he had a nice arse. Strike that last bit out.

She didn't think about him the first thing when she woke up in the morning or the last thing before she went to sleep. She didn't write Natalie+Michael in hearts all over her books. She hadn't even ever thought about how it would be to kiss him or even go out with him. All she knew, was that she liked watching him. Discreetly.

It was intrigue, maybe that drew her to him. The way he seemed perfect. Nobody was that perfect. He appeared to be. Near-perfect grades, tall, good looking, perfect in his personal relations too, everyone knew him, liked him. He was nice without getting too close, friendly but not invasive.

She wondered about his demons and where he hid them. Nowhere near the surface though, on the surface he was crack free, flawless.

The next morning she woke up early, went for a jog, came back, had a shower. Her roommate looked at her with an incredulous expression on her face when she saw her step out of the shower. Not because she was naked or anything, just that in the history of the universe, Natalie had never been up and showered so early in the morning, unless she had been up all night.

She had a paper to turn in first thing in the morning so she sat down at her table to finish what she had started last evening. It was pretty basic, so it didn't take very long. Until she reached this one question which had her stumped. Well, maybe she could have figured it out if she tried but it was the perfect opportunity. For what? Her roommate asked when Natalie voiced the thought.

Natalie wasn't sure what exactly her main objective was when he picked up her phone and dialled Michael's number, but she knew it was worth it as soon as he picked up the phone.

"'lo?"

Natalie fought to control her smile, "Hey I'm sorry, did I wake you up?"

"No it's fine, I was up already."

His voice clearly said otherwise and Natalie felt a wonderful sense of deja vu, only the tables were turned this time.

After the call (she hung up first) she sat back in her chair and sighed. It was all worth it. The waking up at an unnatural hour, sitting down to write her paper instead of going back to sleep, waking the guy up so early in the morning. Not just as petty revenge for the previous morning. It was all worth it, worth hearing his groggy voice over the phone.

Michael had the sexiest morning voice in the world.

-end-

Note: If you didn't know what the genre 'fluff' meant, you probably are a little confused, maybe just a little annoyed with the utter pointlessness of the story. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you - FLUFF!