, get me out of here.

[KEELEY NOELLE CARTWRIGHT.]

keeley never planned these things out. she never set things out in advance in her head. she just .. did them. like the time she got her ears pierced, or that tattoo on the small of her back that people had yet to discover. keeley acted on impulse. she never thought things through. today was no different. today, keeley had tried to stick to a set plan ( her mother was well aware of keeley's inability to do anything without becoming sidetracked, so had written all of her tasks down on a piece of paper & ordered her to stick it to the dashboard of her car ) but even that had failed once she saw the poster. she found a parking space & let herself out, locking the small ford with a beep. she wandered up to the poster, looking around carefully, making sure she wasn't in anyone's way. she needn't have bothered; most people were giving her a wide berth after realising what it was she was looking at. keeley didn't understand why people found vampires so repugnant. what was wrong with them? absolutely nothing! they were humans too, once! she chewed at her lip, & moved swiftly towards the doors of the history museum, half wondering why such a talk would take place here, in an old building filled with dusty old artefacts.

snaking her way through the crowd, keeley caught snatches of their conversations, eavesdropping without even meaning to. gerald had snuck out again last night despite his mother's wishes, annabel wanted to leave 'cause the pale men scared her, maria was fuming because some incompetent traffic warden had given her a ticket. everyone around her were each involved in their own drama & were paying next to no attention to the talk, yet keeley couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from the oddly pale man, chatting away at the pulpit as though he were incredibly comfortable with the situation. she leant against the door frame & just listened, ignoring the mutterings of other people. people just didn't get it; they didn't seem to understand that if they kept treating vampires the way they did then the vampires would eventually turn on them, & they'd only have themselves to blame. there were already reports of people going missing, especially that jaimeson girl, & then there were those mysterious murders in the government? everything was becoming exceedingly fishy, & very dark. keeley didn't agree with the way vampires were treated & she certainly opposed them being made illegal, but she also thought that there were much better ways to go about proving a point than kidnapping & murder.

checking the time, keeley tucked her hair behind her ear - a habit she hadn't managed to shake since her school-girl days - & pulled her phone out of her pocket, sending a quick text to her mother & jessica, both saying the same thing, just so that jess could explain to mrs. cartwright how to reply. she honestly didn't understand why her mother had bought the ridiculously expensive phone if she didn't know how to use it. she sent two more - to aislin & trevor, explaining that she might be late picking them up - & refocused upon the talk, tuning out chatter about gerald or annabel or maria. all keeley was interested in, right now, was oliver wilde, standing right in front of her. keeley wasn't usually one to obsess over celebrities ( noah was obsessed with robert pattinson & taylor lautner & frankly, keeley found the twilight craze to be ridiculous; despite never meeting a vampire before, she was pretty sure they were not like edward cullen - he was giving vampires everywhere such a bad rep ) but oliver wasn't a normal celebrity. he wasn't famous for being in a film with emma watson & rupert grint, he didn't have any songs at number one on the chart & he certainly wasn't adopted by two ridiculously rich parents. keeley liked oliver simply for what he stood for; equal rights, the lifting of the law against vampires, allowing them to wander the streets at night without fear of repercussions. it was a pity the government weren't listening to him hard enough.

before she knew it, he'd finished talking, & people were moving, getting up & grumbling to each other. some were animated, some were reluctant, though keek knew he'd struck a chord with everyone. whether people liked vampires or not, no one could deny that the points he made were valid. people were just so thick headed & stubborn that they refused to admit it. keeley stepped out of the way, into the room, moving against the flow of people until she'd managed to elbow her way to the front of the room. she was standing right in front of him, though he'd not yet noticed her. what should she do now? this was classic keeley cartwright; she never thought these things through. dithering, keeley's eyes widened, & she turned on the spot, tripping over her feet at the voice behind her.

olly. idk how many words. it's shit, ahahaha. c:

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[TRAVIS OLIVER WILDE]

When it came around time to be giving speeches, Oliver Wilde had a game plan. Which he stuck to quite simply, every time he presented a speech or debate. It wasn't anything fancy. No secret tricks. But every time he walked up to a podium, or stood in front of a crowd, he reminded himself, keep it friendly. The thing about human nature, he would muse to himself as he watched the crowds come in, some bigger than others at times, is that they tend to trust the conventional and moderate. Of course, there were certain situations that may call for brash action and raised voices, but dealing with a subject as sensitive as this, attempting to get the people to understand that forcing vampires to live in hiding and solitude was not any way to make peace, was certainly not one of those times. This had been his game plan since the entire movement had begun. He was the voice for his community. He spoke calmly, fluidly, and with a smile in his eyes, and he gained the trust of those that they needed it from the most: the humans.

It was outrageous to him to think that the humans actually believed that by making vampires illegal, it would apparently get rid of them. Funny, that the word immortal didn't seem to ring with them. Nor did they seem to understand that the vampire population was much larger than they seemed to believe. He presented facts, and strong, hard-hitting points in his speeches, attempting to persuade those listening to understand that this was not the way a situation like this was to be handled. Those that he spoke to believed he was human, never seeming to mind the fact that when he spoke, it was always at night. Strange, how easily most of the human population seemed to overlook these facts.

Tonight was just like any other night. He stood off to the side, watching as the crowd filed in, gathering and seating themselves, chattering amongst themselves. He studied them closely, listening in on a few of their conversations. Happily, he nodded his thanks at the few that approached him, in hushed voices, wishing him good luck. He was pleased that he at least had a few supporters in this room full of people. Though, when his attention was then drawn to the three young women coming his way, he smiled a different way entirely. He knew that these women, more than likely, supported him not for his beliefs and the cause he was working for, but because he was handsome in their eyes. A delight to look upon, he supposed.

He, personally, didn't understand it. He felt as though he looked as he always had. He certainly wasn't vain, and if he could see his reflection in any mirror, he was sure he wouldn't quite understand the appeal that he apparently held. But, all the same, he smiled and greeted the women cheerfully, shaking their hands, and posing for a picture. He smiled charmingly, unphased by the flash of the camera and then wished them all a good night, telling them to enjoy the speech. They walked away, beaming, and chatting giddily amongst themselves as they left. He felt himself laugh quietly, shaking his head with a small curl of his lip.

As he stepped to his place to speak, a polite hush fell over the crowd, and he thanked them all for coming. Then, he began his speech and, as was the usual, he watched as many of them began to whisper and chat amongst themselves. Still rolling onward, he tried not to appear to amused when he heard that, as was yet again per the usual, most of the conversations were hardly anything to do with what he was talking about. For a moment, he wondered why some of them had even bothered to come, if they weren't going to listen, but decided it really didn't matter all that much because, despite the fact that the majority of the crowd wasn't listening, a select few were. He had met these select few at least once before, having seen them at one or other of his speeches in the past. But, after a moment, there was a face he didn't recognize.

He watched inconspicuously as she entered, the bright red hair being hard to miss in the crowd, watched as she made her way though the door, and watched as she settled herself there, leaning against the doorframe. For a few moments, she seemed distracted by the people around her, and he took the time to look around at those he was speaking to as well, attempting to keep his eyesight from looking locked and focused. After a moment, though, he lifted his gaze once more and caught her eye, holding it for a moment. He couldn't help the small smile that tugged at his lips as he did so, but it only lasted a few seconds before he was moving the focus of his eyes elsewhere. Though, as he spoke, he was curious to look back, to see if she still looked as interested as she had been when he had first looked.

Before long, he was finished, and the crowd was milling about, moving to leave. He stepped down from his podium, thanked a few people, had a brief conversation with someone wishing to speak more about points he had brought up, and then to pose for yet another picture. Though, this one, was for a small business newspaper. It might not have been the New York Post, but any kind of media was better than none. And from the looks of it, and the way the reporter presented himself, he agreed with the cause Oliver was speaking for.

It took hardly any time at all for the hall to clear out, a few stragglers remaining behind. He could hear the janitor outside, waiting to come in and clean up after the crowd, pamphlets and trash on the floor beneath the seats. He distracted himself momentarily with the shuffling and reorganization of his papers, turning and taking a moment to file them safely back in their place in the folder in his messenger bag. That's when he caught the quiet thudding of a heartbeat, from the sound of it, only a few feet in front of him. Curious, he looked up at the source of it, pleasantly surprised to see the same redheaded girl from before. Though, she seemed to quickly change her mind about where she was, because she turned heel not two seconds after he had laid eyes on her.

Smiling, recognizing the all-too-familiar traits of an admirer (although, apparently one attempting to hide it), he tilted his head, and stepped down, a bit closer to her. "The speech ended quite awhile ago, you know," He stated, matter of factly. He watched as she tripped over her feet and reached out to catch her elbow in his hand, quickly coming around to hold an arm out in front of her, just in case she wasn't quite steady. "Careful~"

keek. word count; 1185. notes; i'll make a graphic later... i have to go save some pictures first. :c its done now~! hurrr. c:

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[KEELEY NOELLE CARTWRIGHT.]

she knew she wasn't graceful. she never had been. her lack of grace had been discovered at age five after she twisted her ankle after one ballet class. keeley managed to trip over anything, including air. it could get quite annoying, or in this case, embarrassing. keeley struggled to right herself & managed only when another hand appeared on top of her arm, gently tugging her upright. ordinarily, the help of a stranger would set keek off on a rant so long it took her hours to finally run out of grumbles, but the hand didn't belong to a stranger. the hand belonged to oliver wilde. oliver wilde. not only did keek believe in pretty much everything he stood for, she couldn't deny that he was also rather enjoyable to look at, something she couldn't stop herself from doing even now. her eyes travelled over his face, taking in his dark eyes ( a stark contrast to her own ), his angular cheekbones, the chin that seemed too big yet exactly the right size at the same time. the bow tie, the braces, the pencil thin physique that made it seem as though he could break at any moment. & then her eyes started travelling lower, & lower, until they got so low that keek started to feel rude & snapped her eyes back to his. she felt her cheeks heat up in a blush that no doubt clashed horribly with her hair & tried to regain her composure, trying as hard as she could not to fall into the arm that was held in front of her. she wriggled her elbow out of his grip & pushed her hair out of her eyes, more for something to break her awkwardness than irritation.

she pursed her lips as he spoke, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. she needed an excuse, quick. keeley wrestled with her brain, demanding words, before finally coming up with, "i lef- lost my .. purse. i was just .. looking for it?" oh, oh, brilliant, absolutely brilliant. make it sound as though you were asking a question & therefore completely & blatantly lying through your teeth. fantastic, keeley. she kept shooting glances at him out of the corner of her eye, moving away awkwardly & pretending to examine the first row of seats, tucking her hair behind her ear so that it wouldn't fall into her face. did he know that she'd been lying? how could he not? it had been plainly obvious that she wasn't telling the truth. keeley didn't even know why she'd walked up to him in the first place. to say something? to congratulate~ him? no, of course not. keeley wasn't like that, & never had been. keeley wasn't a congratulator, at all. she just .. moved on. she left feeling like she agreed with the points made & that was that. there was no need for keek to say thank you to someone if all they'd done was agree with the thoughts that were already in her head. keeley rolled her eyes & concentrated on 'looking' for her 'lost purse', hoping that he'd buy it & if he didn't, he wouldn't say a thing, & would just leave her to it.

her eyes seemed to be moving back towards oliver more & more, as though something were drawing her in, pulling her gaze back to him. but that was a ridiculous thought. no one could make someone look at someone. that was stupid. she tilted her head to the side & carried on pretending to look, no doubt making a complete & utter fool out of herself but not caring in the slightest. it was too late to just turn around now & say that she'd been lying about the purse, & that the only reason she'd come up to him in the first place had been an impulse decision. she had to keep going. she looked at him again, frowning ever so slightly, before turning back to the seats in front of her. twisting her mouth, keeley moved towards the back of the room, feeling her cheeks heat up more & more the further away she moved. murmuring something about going to check the back seats, keeley wondered if she could sneak out the room when he wasn't looking & drive like the wind all the way home. honestly, the one chance she actually gets to meet someone .. not famous, as such, but certainly well known, & she makes an absolute tit of herself.

the silence in the room was starting to irritate keeley, like an itch she couldn't quite reach. growing up with a family like the cartwrights, silence was something that was hard to come by, & completely overrated. keeley felt quite alone when it was quiet; at least when it was noisy she knew there were people around her. she cleared her throat, & sat down on one of the seats, giving up all pretences of searching momentarily. she tucked her hair behind her ear ( again ) & looked back at oliver. "you were good. before."

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[TRAVIS OLIVER WILDE]

Oliver watched her closely, carefully, arching an eyebrow when he noticed the path of her eyes, and when her gaze quickly snapped back to his, her face turned such a lovely shade of red he could help himself from smiling. The pink of her cheeks might have clashed with the red of her hair, but Oliver didn't really think so. As she tugged on her elbow, obviously attempting to free it, he smiled wider and let it go, though he wasn't quite sure if she was steady on her own two feet just yet. She seemed ready to fall over again any minute. However, he decided there was no use in worrying about it, because she was speaking now.

He arched an eyebrow, tilting his head slightly as she spoke, claiming to have apparently lost her purse. Though, by the fact that her statement had been a question more than a claim, he could simply assume she had been lying. And if it hadn't been by the way she had told him her purse was "lost", it would have been her behavior in "looking" for it that gave her away. He watched her quietly, tilting his head, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the podium, eyebrow raised as she awkwardly made her way through the rows of folding chairs set up in the hall. He watched her continually, catching her looking back at him a few times and smiling at her in turn, eyebrow still arched. However, after a moment, he stood himself straight. "Well! If you've lost your purse, it's pretty important you find it, yeah~?" He sang at her, shoving his hands in his pockets and moseying his way down the aisle to the rows she hadn't looked through yet. He'd play along, for now. After all, she seemed embarrassed as it was. What sort of gentleman would he be if he made to embarrass her more? And, to be completely honest, he didn't want to leave quite yet. He smiled charmingly at her over his shoulder, eyebrows raised. "What kind of good man would I be if I didn't give you any help?"

With that, he continued moseying, walking through the aisles, pretending to look, though he knew there was nothing to find. After all, she hadn't even taken a seat when she had arrived. She had spent the entirety of the speech, standing in the doorway. So, why would her purse have gotten lost in the chairs, when she had never even been sitting in one? Though, he decided he'd keep this clever little fact to himself. He wondered if she would find it strange that he knew exactly where she had spent the entire of his time at the podium. Then, he decided that yes, she probably would. Pursing his lips, lost in his thoughts for a moment, he paused his casual walking and stooped over, pulling one of his hands out of his pocket to pick up a program, folded on the floor beneath one of the seats. As he began walking again, he opened it to find crayon drawings on the inside, obviously done by a child, who had come with their parents, for one reason or another. He tilted his head, studying the drawing, eyebrow raised as he continued walking once again.

He only paused his examination of the red crayon at the sound of a throat clearing just a few rows back. Pausing, he turned to face the source of it, raising her eyebrows at her. He watched as she pushed her hair behind her ear (for the third or fourth time that night, he noted), arching an eyebrow further when she spoke. Then, he chuckled, lowering his gaze to the drawing in his hand once more. "Thank you," He responded, because it was an automatic response, more than anything, dropping the drawn-on program on one of the chairs. However, after a moment, he turned on his heel and slowly began making his way back to where she was seated. He paused a moment, tilting his head at her before carefully sinking into the chair beside her. Almost as though he were afraid that any sudden movements would frighten her away, like some sort of baby deer. A fawn. He smiled as he realized that the comparison was rather fitting.

After a moment, he came out of his musings and turned his head slightly to look at her out of the corner of his eye before crossing his legs at the knees, shoving his hands in his pockets again, and looking at the podium at the front of the room. A look of reserved indifference came across his face as he spoke next. "Its rather interesting that a room like this can be full of people, with the intention of one man conveying a message to them all... But only a few of them actually listen." He tilted his head, before raising his brows and glancing at her again, a smile tugging at his lips. "Six, actually. To be exact. Yourself included." He leaned back in his chair again, taking in a deep breath as he focused his attention on the front of the room once again. His lips curled of their own accord when he registered that she smelled sweet, very much so, and decided that it seemed rather fitting. A sweet scent for a sweet girl.

He was silent for a moment before suddenly turning to face her, turning his body slightly in his chair as well. He threw one of his arms over the back of the chair he was seated it and held out his free hand, tilting his head at her with a smile. "Oliver Wilde, pleasure to meet you." And then, after a moment, his smile widened. "And who might you be? If we aren't able to find this purse of yours before you've got to leave - which I'm afraid will have to be soon because the janitor is outside and I'm sure he's rather irritated with us for having stayed after so long - I'd like to know who to return it to if I happen to miraculously stumble upon it before leaving myself~"

keek. word count; 1035. notes; tadaaaa~

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[KEELEY NOELLE CARTWRIGHT.]

'you were good, before'? keeley was mentally battering herself. who says that? who says that?! was she trying to look & sound like an idiot? because, if so, it was working. she sounded like the biggest idiot this side of london. this side of england. 'you were good, before' could sound so horribly wrong if it were taken out of context. what if her mother had walked in at that precise moment & had heard her? what if her mother assumed that keek had been talking about sex & then proceeded to lecture her about the consequences of being promiscuous? what if she did so in front of oliver? keeley didn't think she'd be able to survive that amount of embarrassment. she'd already endured once, when her mother & father had taken it upon themselves to give her & her then boyfriend at the time the birds & the bees talk. they'd only been going out for a week & both of them had known it was nothing permanent. keeley could feel her cheeks warming up already, though whether it was because of that unfortunate conversation or the one she was having now, she couldn't say.

rather than look at his reaction, keeley trained her eyes on the floor in a feeble attempt to carry on looking for her non-existent purse. why had she even said she'd lost her purse anyway? it was quite apparent that there was nothing left in here except abandoned brochures & pamphlets. why couldn't she just have admitted that she didn't know why she'd come up to him in the first place? why was she acting so oddly around him? keeley never acted this way around anyone. she'd always been vaguely normal. she'd been the outgoing one in school, talking to boys before they got a chance to say anything to her. she'd also been a bit of a geek in high school but no one really knew that, or if they did, they didn't think it was that much of a social deterrent. it couldn't have been that he was well known, because she had plenty of friends who'd gone off to work for well known people and were now rather well known in their own right, & it wasn't because he was a stranger, because keeley was usually fine with strangers. she could talk for england & that was the way it had always been.

"thank you,"

keeley looked up as he spoke, watching as the leaflet fell from his hand. she blinked, & suddenly he was moving, walking towards her swiftly. keeley could feel her heartbeat speeding up, & fought the urge to look down, to see if it really was beating so hard she could see it through her chest. that was the only way keeley could describe the sensation. this was ridiculous. he was just a guy. one guy that keeley happened to have almost everything in common with & was undeniably attracted to. but still. he was just one guy. there were bound to be other people out there who also agreed with keeley's way of thinking & looked as pleasing to the eye was he did. somewhere. she watched as he sat down next to her, shuffling slightly in her seat before stopping awkwardly. she felt like slapping herself for being so stupid. she leant back in her seat & crossed her legs at the knee, turning to face oliver.

"it's rather interesting that a room like this can be full of people, with the intention of one man conveying a message to them all .. but only a few of them actually listen. six, actually. to be exact. yourself included."

keeley couldn't help but smile. the teenage phrase, 'he noticed me!' ran through her head incessantly, barely allowing her any brain space to consider her words. forcing herself to calm down, her hands wormed themselves into the pockets of her jacket & she chewed at the inside of her lip, half listening to him. his voice was rather enjoyable, though that would be one thing keeley would have to keep to herself. telling someone you found their voice enjoyable probably wasn't the best way to kick off a friendship. "it's hard to find someone who shares all my viewpoints. when i find people like that, it's hard not to listen," she grinned, eyes travelling - yet again - the sharp angles of his face. she liked it; the angles were odd, but normal at the same time. familiar yet completely foreign. her eyes ventured back up to his slowly, taking her time, ( though making sure at all times that her eyes stayed above his chest; she had no doubt that he'd noticed where she'd been looking before ) shifting to his arm as it moved. her hand wriggled out of her pocket, & she took his outstretched one, blinking slightly at the difference in temperature.

"oliver wilde, pleasure to meet you. and who might you be? if we aren't able to find this purse of yours before you've got to leave - which i'm afraid will have to be soon because the janitor is outside and i'm sure he's rather irritated with us for having stayed after so long - i'd like to know who to return it to if i happen to miraculously stumble upon it before leaving myself~"

it took keeley a few moments to process the information; longer than necessary. had she been with anyone else, they would barely have been able to get a word in edgeways. maybe keek was just having an off night. she'd been feeling off all day. "k- keeley," she stammered, trying to cover it up quickly in the hopes that he wouldn't notice. "keeley cartwright. but people usually call me keek." another grin was shot in his direction, & it was only at this point that she realised her hand was still firmly within his grip. she wriggled it out carefully, before shoving it back into her pocket, trying to appear nonchalant.

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