Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2013-07-23 01:05 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2013-07-23 01:05 pm
Entry tags:
Fake News | ensemble | PG-13 | Shout*For, chapter 16
Title: Shout*For, chapter 16: Give The Girl A Kiss
Characters/Pairings: Jon/"Stephen", Jimmy, Tina, Olivia/Kristen, cameos, OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Contents: Mild creeping, more drinking
Disclaimer: See series Table of Contents.
Stephen has a birthday and a concert, Olivia has a stumble and a revelation, and Tina just has really awkward timing.
Bonus art: Portrait of Jon and "Stephen" (with the new dye job).
Stephen's first sweet-sixteen present — aside from the deluge of celebratory tweets, wall posts, gifsets, and YouTube videos from fans — was the dye job he'd been wanting for years. The stylist politely demurred from putting any streaks in Briar Rose's fur, but allowed her to sit next to him during the process, and gave her fur some professional brushing while the color was setting.
From the salon Papa picked him up and took him to the tuxedo fitting. That was more discouraging, since Papa disapproved of all the sparkliest accessories. But he finally got a pair of acceptable-if-plain gold cufflinks that went with his purity ring, and a nice burgundy tie with thin gold stripes, which made him feel like a particularly formal Gryffindor.
The puppy went home after that, but the rest of them were off to the concert!
Stephen didn't even care that Ned was riding over with them. It wasn't like Ned would do anything when Papa was right there. Except hold Stephen in place for a tie adjustment, linger on straightening his lapels, and brush some stray dog fur off his pants, all of which was downright tolerable.
"Now, remember, son, this isn't a gift, it's a promotional event," Papa told him as they approached the concert hall. "You need to be on your most professional behavior at all times. Be affectionate with your date, but don't do anything embarrassing...at least, not when the cameras are on you."
"Yes, sir," said Stephen.
No matter how Papa presented it, you couldn't not feel gifted when you were attending a concert featuring Alan Menken, selected scenes from Disney stage musicals, one of the up-and-coming teen girl stars the network was trying to promote (a New Zealand import named Jaquie Brown, who seemed talented enough, though obviously she was never going to outshine Olivia), and a special guest appearance by former Mad Tea Party lead Bill O'Reilly. The fact that Stephen got to preen for photographs and cutaways throughout, without even having to do anything himself, was icing on the cake.
Speaking of which..."But when we get together and have cake afterward, that's just for me, right?"
Ned answered this one. "Buddy, we talked about this. There's a photographer coming along to get shots of the new line of Shout*For party supplies in action. You need to make sure you're eating photogenically." He chucked Stephen lightly on the chin. "No getting caught with cream all over your face."
Stephen held himself as still as possible. "No, sir."
Now he couldn't wait to get out of the car. Especially since they were close enough to hear the hopeful cheering.
The noise jumped several decibels when Stephen's door swung open, and he stepped out onto the red carpet that had been rolled out for the guests of honor. Killer was already there, ready to shield Stephen from the throng of fans crammed up against the velvet ropes on either side of him, dazzling him with applause and camera flashes. Some of them might have paid the couple hundred dollars to get seats inside; others were just hoping to get a sight of one of their favorite stars on the way in.
Stephen didn't let them down. Such adoration deserved to be rewarded, after all. He stuck his hand in an inside pocket of the tuxedo and came out with a fistful of I ♥ Shout*For rubber wristbands (a portion of the sales went to charity; Stephen forgot which one). Flinging these into the crowd on either side kicked off waves of shrieks and leaping and scuffles as people fought to get one.
At the last minute dropped into a crouch and offered the last one to a tiny girl of maybe seven or eight right against at the ropes, who had been clinging to a Shout*For tote bag with one hand and her mother with the other. Face-to-face with Stephen himself, her eyes about popped out of her head, reflecting the flashbulbs going off on all sides of them.
Stephen beamed at her until she got up the courage to take the wristband, then rose and gave the crowd one last wave...
...and stopped short, because Olivia was waiting for him at the entrance, and she was stunning.
She was in a deep blue floor-length gown, not strapless but definitely more shoulder-baring than anything the Mouse had let her be seen in before, with a necklace of silver and pale blue stones that matched her ring. Her dark hair was swept back to reveal silver earrings, and it was all accented by bright pink lipstick that Stephen really didn't want to risk messing up by kissing.
"This is not fair," said Stephen in an undertone as he stepped up to meet her. "You're not supposed to upstage me at my own party."
"Aw, is it hard not being the pretty one?" teased Olivia. She dropped a quick, minty kiss on his mouth — her lipstick came out intact, thank goodness — and linked her arm through his. "C'mon, let's knock some socks off."
~*~
For once, Jon was grateful for Shout*For's enforced "oh, the boys are just like a family!" public hanging-out. It meant that even though Stephen's birthday concert was purportedly a date with Olivia, they were still going to watch from the same VIP balcony as the rest of the band.
Jon had invited Kristen to be his plus-one, thinking mostly of how best to keep Olivia company. Jimmy brought Tina, and although she was initially taken aback by some bawdy joke Kristen made, a few minutes later the two of them were getting on like a house on fire. After stumbling on a shared interest in politics, they settled into a vigorous debate over which Daily Show correspondent was the hottest, which didn't seem to require any of the guys' input.
Tucker's companion, a striking blonde wearing a cross necklace, stayed out of it too. She didn't seem to be getting over being put off by Kristen. She did manage a bit of small talk with Jimmy, from which Jon learned that her name was Gretchen and she was some kind of serious violin prodigy. No wonder Tucker liked her. Girl was downright highbrow.
Stephen and Olivia were the last to show up. They were arm-in-arm and flanked by parents, specifically Stephen's father and Olivia's mother: all together, a shining beacon of heterosexual American family values.
Some part of Jon's brain registered that Olivia looked fabulous. The rest of him was busy being distracted by Stephen: whose dark hair was now tipped with blond in the front, and who was wearing that tux like he'd been sculpted as the model for it.
Judging by a certain hitch in Stephen's voice as he greeted them, he didn't think the suit Jon had been stuffed into was hanging too badly, either.
The selection of adults was rounded out by their two bodyguards and Stephen's manager. Killer and Lonny did their usual trick of melting into the background, but Ned was in finest overly-touchy form. He praised Gretchen's jewelry and Tucker's suit with a hand on each of their shoulders; he touched Jon's cheek when he asked whether Jon wasn't shaving yet; and he ran his fingers through Tina's loose waves of hair. "This is really something, sweetheart. Have you ever thought about dyeing it?" he asked. "Maybe something to match Stephen's? You two look remarkably alike, you know."
"We do not!" snapped Stephen. To Jon's surprise, he got between the two and practically shoved a startled Tina back into her seat. "Enough chitchat. Let's get into place so this thing can start, already."
~*~
Olivia still wasn't gutsy enough to do her normal "roll out a couple of shocking lines to test the new people" routine in front of her mother. Not to mention, she was pretty sure the weight of Stephen's father's disapproval would make their balcony collapse. So she trusted Kristen's assurance that Tina was cool, and Gretchen maybe less so.
The first half of the concert went beautifully. The crowd below them was in a great mood, especially when the big screens over the stage cut to Stephen and friends; the performers were in fine form, especially O'Reilly, who had made a smooth transition in the past ten years from generic teen pop to a country-rock hybrid that combined shouty anger with being terminally catchy. When the lights went up on him, Stephen nearly hyperventilated, gripping Olivia's arm so hard it was going to leave marks.
...That could make some interesting tabloid fodder later.
She was scheduled to be whisked away after intermission to do a surprise set of her own (a round of He Could Be The One, not explicitly dedicated to Stephen, but with some serious winking and nudging in that direction). At least they left her enough time to stretch her legs beforehand.
The VIP balcony was connected to a VIP corridor, a couple of VIP bathrooms, and a VIP bar. The latter drew away Olivia's mother, Mr. Col-bert, and Ned; Olivia spared a few moments to look longingly after them before disappearing into the ladies' room to check her makeup.
It was the kind of restroom with a carpeted entryway, filled out by little couches and lit by an honest-to-goodness chandelier. Olivia's heels clicked on tile once she got far enough in. She stood in front of the mirror, adjusted her necklace, rifled through her clutch for lipstick.
"Everything okay in here?"
Olivia almost dropped her lipstick down a sink. "Hey, no fair sneaking up on me!"
Kristen had followed her as far as the edge of the carpet, where she was standing in stocking feet, heeled shoes dangling from one hand. Instead of her usual wide-skirted party dresses, she was wearing a figure-hugging flapper-inspired number, dazzling with patterns of sparkly silver sequins. With wide-eyed innocence, she replied, "But how else am I supposed to catch you in the act?"
"There is no 'act'," huffed Olivia. She held open the clutch again, picking through it. "Look: tissues, falsies, my phone, tampons, compact, lipstick. There's no room in this stupid thing for a nip of vodka. You want to come over and see?"
This was sort of cheating, since the last thing she'd done before leaving the house was finish off a bottle she'd been working through. But it was enough to settle Kristen. "No, I'll manage," she said, waving the offer away with her shoe-holding hand. "These things are a bear to walk in anyway."
"It isn't that hard! You just have to get the hang of them." Olivia had worn heels to so many awards shows it was second nature by now. Snapping her clutch shut, she sashayed over to the entryway and dropped the little purse on one of the couches. "Here, I'll show you. Sit down for a second...but put those back on ASAP. When you take them off your feet swell, and that makes any pain even worse when you put 'em back on."
Kristen looked horrified. "I knew there was a sinister agenda in these patriarchal standards of beauty!"
"Well, geez, if you decide they're not worth it, you never have to wear 'em again. Just at least make sure it's an informed decision, you know?"
So Kristen took a seat and slipped back into the heels, then let her feet relax with the weight off them while Olivia gave her a practical demonstration. Small steps, legs close together, heel-toe, keep your knees straight. She herself had mastered turning the walk into a sashay, but that was a varsity-level skill; Kristen had better stick to the more modest goal of moving forward and not falling over.
"Now you try." She offered Kristen her hand. "Come on, you can lean on me."
Both their growth spurts had leveled off at some point during the past year, so it was looking like Olivia was never going to make up those last couple inches between them without some sartorial help. And with Kristen in shoes of the same size, that help came to nothing, putting them at relative heights where Kristen could sling her arm over Olivia's shoulders with no trouble.
"Baby steps," Olivia repeated, as they aimed forward. "Heel-toe...careful!" she added, when Kristen came down at a weird angle and both of them wobbled. "There, now you're getting it! Want to speed it up a little?"
"Ugh," muttered Kristen, but she matched Olivia's pace as it kicked up a notch, and then another. Longer strides, more confident...
...until she came down slantwise again and her whole body went yawing away from Olivia's.
Without thinking, Olivia yanked them back in the other direction. And maybe her own balance was more precarious than she'd realized, or maybe she just overshot the force required, because all she got for it was the two of them going down like a rock in the opposite direction, Olivia's skull clipping one of the chairs on the way.
"Ow," she croaked, flat on her back with Kristen on top of her.
"Omigosh!" squeaked Kristen, pushing herself up on her elbows just enough to take the weight off Olivia's body. Her wide-eyed face filled most of Olivia's field of vision. "Are you okay?"
There was a sharp ache at the back of Olivia's head, she could feel that a bunch of her hairdo had come loose and undone, and she'd had the breath half knocked out of her, but other than that? "Yep," she panted. "Peachy. Carpet's real soft. You?"
"I'm fine, but I was cushioned!" Kristen's hand came up to sweep a stray lock of hair from Olivia's face...
...fingers brushing slowly across Olivia's cheek, lips slightly parted, and either the bump on the head was making Olivia delirious or she might have to re-evaluate everything she'd thought about what Kristen might...
...there was a swish and a brief burst of chatter from the corridor, and an awkward yelp from not far past Olivia's feet.
"Sorry!" cried the embarrassed voice of Tina. "Didn't mean to interrupt!"
She backed out of the room in a flash. Kristen was on her feet (and out of her shoes) again seconds later. She didn't offer Olivia a helping hand, so Olivia had to hoist herself off the ground, careful not to catch the chair again on the way up. "Well. Uh. That was...."
"...a hilarious misunderstanding!" finished Kristen, voice even higher than usual. "Hey, listen, you should probably head out. I bet Mac's looking for you right now! Don't worry about me, I've got this walking thing covered!" She grabbed her discarded shoes and scuttled back a couple of steps. "See? ...You can get up okay, right?"
Olivia grabbed her clutch and straightened. "Don't worry, I'm...on top of it."
They swept out into the corridor together without another word, to find Tina practically hopping. In a stage whisper Kristen advised her, "Should've bolted the other way."
"I'll remember that for next time!" squeaked Tina, and all but ran into the ladies' room.
Before Olivia could come up with anything that was actually intelligent to say to Kristen, Mac's voice cut across the VIP corridor. "Olivia! There you are! What on Earth did you do to your hair?"
"It can be artfully tousled!" said Olivia, and threw one last anxious look back at an unreadable Kristen before allowing Mac to drag her off toward the dressing rooms.
~*~
The next day found Stephen at a get-together at Olivia's, where apparently — much to Jimmy's delight — Tina had gotten herself onto the regular invite list. They were hanging around the pool, along with Kristen, Wyatt, and Steve, while Stephen took Briar Rose out front and waited for Jon to arrive.
At last the familiar car pulled up...and the wrong door swung open, revealing that Jon was the one behind the wheel. "You can drive?" breathed Stephen as he got out.
"I can learner's permit," corrected Jon, looking almost embarrassed at Stephen's awe. His aunt was coming around from the passenger side; she exchanged a brief hello with Stephen (who now wished he'd put a shirt on for this) before taking the keys. "It isn't that exciting. I'm not late, am I?"
"You're right on time." Stephen called Briar Rose over from the rosebush she'd been sniffing; she bounded happily back to his side. "And it is totally exciting, what are you talking about."
"Well, I'm not allowed to do anything without a Licensed Adult In The Car At All Times," said Jon, accompanying him around the side of the Munn mansion "So it's not like I can go driving us off to Makeout Point or anything. And I know it's embarrassingly overdue, but I haven't exactly had a lot of time for lessons...."
"But you don't need to learn at all. We have people for that," pointed out Stephen. "So it's amazingly hot that you're doing it anyway."
"Oh," stammered Jon. "Well. That's definitely motivation."
A choked noise made them both start.
Another step and they'd cleared the corner of the house, to find Tina and Jimmy just a few feet down the patio. The pair had been carrying soda and ice cream, respectively, down to the pool; Tina tried to hide her face with the oversized soda bottles. "I didn't hear anything!"
Stephen looked instinctively to Jimmy, who nodded at Tina and flashed a thumbs-up. She's cool. He turned to Jon, who squeezed his hand; scanned the rest of the yard to make sure everyone else was safely off by the water; and said, "This is super top secret information, Tina Fey. Understand?"
"I figured," groaned Tina. "It's my curse."
Stephen wasn't sure what that meant, so he ignored it. "Well, Jon's my real boyfriend. Only a couple of our best friends know. And now you, but that's okay! You can be an honorary Best Friend of mine, on account of being Jimmy's Best Lady Friend. Just don't talk about it around anyone else, okay? Except Olivia and Kristen, obviously they know, because..."
"...you're double-bearding," finished Tina, cheeks red under her glasses. "I get it, I get it."
Now she was being confusing in a way that got Stephen's attention. "What do you mean, 'double'?"
~*~
Kristen had co-opted the floating pool chair (with Steve and Wyatt using a beach ball to play an informal game of volleyball over her head), so Olivia stuck to the sidelines, hiding behind oversized sunglasses and a frozen margarita.
She'd invited the rest of them mostly to have an easy excuse to draw Kristen over, but was stalling on the part where she confronted Kristen alone, and still hadn't figured out what the hell to say when she did. The alcohol was...really not helping on that count, either.
Her dithering was cut short when Jon and Stephen appeared on the chairs on either side of her, both staring her down.
"Okay, Olivia, be straight with us," said Stephen sternly.
"For a given value of 'straight'," added Jon.
"Do you, or do you not, have a thing going on with Kristen?"
"No," said Olivia morosely. "No thing."
"You're sure," said Stephen.
"Because, don't take this the wrong way, but you kinda talk about her the way I sometimes can't help talking about Stephen," explained Jon.
"And we heard something involving the two of you alone in a compromising position," added Stephen.
"You two have got to stop doing that," said Olivia. "It's creepy."
"What?" said Stephen.
"Finishing each other's sentences?" suggested Jon.
"Like you're always doing with Kristen?" concluded Stephen.
Olivia brandished her drink. "I will throw this at you," she slurred. "One of you. Then get another glass an' throw it at the other."
The guys shut up, but the way they sat back and waited in expectant silence was almost worse.
"I don't know," moaned Olivia at last. "Like, one minute I think we're having moments, and then she's all, ooh, I just heart being your BFF, but then she falls on top of me, which was a total accident, by the way, and suddenly there's looking and touching except a second later she can't back off fast enough, and, and, I don't understand any of this!"
"So...if she was interested, you would be all over that?" asked Stephen.
In the lowest voice possible, Olivia admitted, "Uh-huh."
"Have you mentioned that to her?" suggested Jon.
Olivia slumped even lower in her deck chair. "Dunno how."
The other two exchanged Meaningful Looks.
Then Stephen sat up straighter, tossed his hair, and crooned, "There is one way to a~ask her... / It don't take a word, not a single word, go on and... / Kiss the girl!"
Jon took up the thread, on a different melody. "Ain't written in the sky above~ / No fortune-teller told me this~ / You gotta tell her that you love her / Tell her that you need her / And give the girl a great big kiss."
A wave of Stephen's hand encompassed the pool, including Kristen down at the far end. "Now's your mo~ment / Floating in a blue lagoon! / But, girl you better do it soon / No time will be be~et~ter...."
"Now if you're such a fool you think / It don't matter, baby, what you say / Maybe you better tell her how you're feelin'," sang Jon. "Ain't gonna happen any other way...."
"Shala lala lala don't be scared! / You got the mood prepared, go on and~ / kiss the girl!" warbled Stephen. "Shala lala lala don't stop now! / Don't try to hide it how / you wanna kiss~ the~ gi~irl~!"
"Shut up, shut up, I'm going!" wailed Olivia.
She didn't actually think she was going to do it, until she realized she was standing up.
Heat wafted up from the tiles under her flip-flops as she slapped her way to the edge of the pool. A swan-dive got her into the deep end; the cold water shocked her halfway back to sobriety, and she broke the surface with a gasp, shoving a curtain of wet hair out of her face. Kristen was still on the floating chair, not far off, the beach ball soaring back and forth over her head.
Olivia kicked and paddled in her direction.
"Give it a rest for a second, guys," she ordered Wyatt, who caught the ball and obediently kicked himself backward through the water. Her feet touched down; she grabbed for the side of the blown-up plastic. "Hey, you! C'mere."
Kristen still had a cute striped skater skirt on over her bikini, but the stability of her seat was all of a sudden compromised, so she let herself get pulled down into the water. "What —?"
Then Olivia's arms were flung around her shoulders, and Olivia's mouth was on hers.
It wasn't Olivia's first kiss. First not-for-a-part kiss, though, yeah. And while some of those for-a-part kisses had been pretty good, objectively speaking, none of them had come with this particular berry chapstick, or a mass of thick curls to tangle her wet fingers through, or this soft, plush boob-squish situation they had going on...
...or Kristen's soft hands cupping her face, gently but firmly pushing her back. "You are so drunk."
Olivia's face fell into her best pout. "Only a little drunk!"
"Uh-huh," said Kristen cheerfully, patting her on the cheek. "Well, I'm pretty sure all the guys here are taken or not your type or both, so maybe save it for another party, mmkay?"
"...bwuh?"
Her grasp had loosened enough in confusion for Kristen to slip easily out of it. "And now this thing is kinda soaked," she said sheepishly, getting a double handful of the fabric of the skirt as it billowed in the chlorine-saturated water. "Can I go grab something from your closet to wear while it dries?"
"Um," said Olivia, her fogged brain latching on to the one question that made sense. "Sure. Go ahead."
"Thanks!" chirped Kristen, and then she was past Olivia, heading for the edge.
~*~
Olivia stayed underwater for so long that Jon was starting to wonder if someone ought to go down there after her. At last her head and shoulders popped up at the lip of the pool nearest him and Stephen. "You guys suck!"
Jon had no arguments. He kind of wanted the earth to open up and swallow him out of pure sympathy embarrassment. Stephen, though, sank into a crouch in front of Olivia. "What exactly did she say?"
"She talked like I was doing the whole thing for your benefit," moaned Olivia. "I mean, not yours personally, obviously, but the rest of the guys!"
"Then you have to go after her!" declared Stephen.
"Are you insane?!"
Stephen was undeterred. "You have to get her to say exactly what she means! If you go making assumptions, you can end up convinced that someone doesn't like you, when in fact they secretly want to kiss you very badly! Trust me, I know!"
Olivia chewed on her lip for a second, then hefted herself out of the pool, making Stephen skitter backwards in a hurry. "Fine," she muttered. "But if this just makes things worse, I'm strangling you with one of your own ties."
And she cut a dripping path back toward the house, grabbing a towel along the way.
A soft cough alerted Jon and Stephen to the fact that Wyatt had come up behind them. (Steve, Jimmy, and Tina were all keeping to a polite distance.) "Hey, uh, I don't know what you guys said to her," he began, "and I have been trying to stay out of this, because, you know, girl drama...but if you can convince them to quit dancing around each other and start making out already, you will be my new heroes."
~*~
Kristen was sitting cross-legged on Olivia's bed — not looking at clothes at all, just staring at the pattern on the sheets. Olivia, towel saronged around her waist, stopped in the doorway.
"That wasn't for any dude's benefit," she said flatly. "You know that, right?"
She took Kristen's almost-inaudable huff as an affirmative.
"And it wasn't because I've had a couple margaritas, either. I am way into you sober. And if you want me to start getting over that, you've gotta say to my face that you're not interested."
Kristen made a face like a particularly sad kitten macro. "We can't."
Another response that Olivia had totally not prepared for. "What are you talking about?" she demanded. "It's working fine for Jon and Stephen! And don't say they're under less media scrutiny than I am, because it's not that much less."
"The difference is that they're both under it!" burst out Kristen. "They're on the same level. They're in the same band! And you're up there too, you've got talent coming out your ears, and you're not going to peak at fifteen, either. Ten years from now you're gonna be a super-duper-star. I'm gonna make a living. You're gonna make millions."
Olivia took a couple of steps in. "Are you seriously saying you don't think you're talented enough for me?"
"I'm not talented enough to follow you!" shot back Kristen. "You're already out of town as much as you're here! I don't play an instrument, I'm not gonna land a spot as one of your backup dancers, I'm never gonna have a steady thing in movies — let's face it, the market for 'quirky' is way narrower than the market for 'hot' —"
"I'd take you with me!" exclaimed Olivia. What good were all those buckets of money if she couldn't? "Anywhere you wanted."
"For the next couple years, the company wouldn't let you! Not to mention my parents wouldn't let you."
"I could tour less," countered Olivia, moving forward again. "I can say I won't do any more movies for now. There's a ton of ways I can stay home more without messing up my contract."
"That is not in the plan!" Kristen thumped her hand against the bedspread. "You're going to do everything they let you get at, show off all the skills you have and learn the ones you don't, and then when this contract's up you're going to transition your image, cut your hair, do some weird indie movies and some sexy-but-tasteful photoshoots, and then get back to knocking out an EGOT. There is no part of the plan that involves kicking the whole thing off the rails to have a secret romance with the weird girl who lucked into getting cast with you on your terrible teen TV show!"
Olivia covered the last few steps and threw herself into Kristen's arms, clasping her in a damp embrace. This time Kristen didn't back off or push them apart, just buried her face in Olivia's shoulder and shuddered against her.
She wasn't used to this. Kristen was supposed to be the secure one, the calm buffer for Olivia's moodiness and well-hidden insecurities, deceptively silly but always reliable when it counted. If she was the one freaking out, what could Olivia possibly do about it?
"Can't we just...try?" she pleaded against Kristen's wet curls. "We're already long-distance BFFs half the time. What's it gonna hurt to add some tongue action to it?"
There was a murmur of discontent against her neck.
"And if you really can't stand it...then we either call the whole thing a failed experiment or I start walking stuff back. Not too far!" she added, before Kristen could protest. "I'm not gonna kill my dreams over you. I swear I'm not. But they were never...I mean, I never wanted to have the world's most flawless career if it meant not also having a life."
Kristen had stopped shivering. Olivia held her breath.
Closing her eyes, she said, "I kind of love you, you know."
Her BFF let out something between a laugh and a sob. "How come you always make it so I don't want to say no to you?"
Olivia swallowed. In a rush she said, "If you were my girlfriend I would let you push me around sometimes."
To her immense relief, now Kristen was outright giggling. "Oh, god, I think I read this in a fanfiction once."
Olivia gave her a light shove. "You're not supposed to tell me about those!"
"Well, it wasn't about us, obviously," said Kristen, then blurted, "Okay let's do it."
Yanking back just far enough to gaze into Kristen's watery blue eyes, Olivia lit up. "Seriously?"
"Uh-huh."
"So can I kiss you again?"
Kristen raised her eyebrows. "Was there a version of this deal where you didn't?"
With a delighted squeal, Olivia peppered Kristen's jaw with a bunch of quick kisses before going for the big one.
This time Kristen was giving as good as she got. There was tongue. It was awesome.
When this one broke off, more because they needed to come up for air than anything else, Kristen panted, "You know, your back yard is full of people who are probably taking bets on whether we're doing this."
"So you're saying maybe we shouldn't do it much longer," deduced Olivia.
"Pretty much."
They looked at each other.
"Just one more," said Olivia.
"Can't hurt," said Kristen, and leaned back in.
Characters/Pairings: Jon/"Stephen", Jimmy, Tina, Olivia/Kristen, cameos, OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Contents: Mild creeping, more drinking
Disclaimer: See series Table of Contents.
Stephen has a birthday and a concert, Olivia has a stumble and a revelation, and Tina just has really awkward timing.
Bonus art: Portrait of Jon and "Stephen" (with the new dye job).
Stephen's first sweet-sixteen present — aside from the deluge of celebratory tweets, wall posts, gifsets, and YouTube videos from fans — was the dye job he'd been wanting for years. The stylist politely demurred from putting any streaks in Briar Rose's fur, but allowed her to sit next to him during the process, and gave her fur some professional brushing while the color was setting.
From the salon Papa picked him up and took him to the tuxedo fitting. That was more discouraging, since Papa disapproved of all the sparkliest accessories. But he finally got a pair of acceptable-if-plain gold cufflinks that went with his purity ring, and a nice burgundy tie with thin gold stripes, which made him feel like a particularly formal Gryffindor.
The puppy went home after that, but the rest of them were off to the concert!
Stephen didn't even care that Ned was riding over with them. It wasn't like Ned would do anything when Papa was right there. Except hold Stephen in place for a tie adjustment, linger on straightening his lapels, and brush some stray dog fur off his pants, all of which was downright tolerable.
"Now, remember, son, this isn't a gift, it's a promotional event," Papa told him as they approached the concert hall. "You need to be on your most professional behavior at all times. Be affectionate with your date, but don't do anything embarrassing...at least, not when the cameras are on you."
"Yes, sir," said Stephen.
No matter how Papa presented it, you couldn't not feel gifted when you were attending a concert featuring Alan Menken, selected scenes from Disney stage musicals, one of the up-and-coming teen girl stars the network was trying to promote (a New Zealand import named Jaquie Brown, who seemed talented enough, though obviously she was never going to outshine Olivia), and a special guest appearance by former Mad Tea Party lead Bill O'Reilly. The fact that Stephen got to preen for photographs and cutaways throughout, without even having to do anything himself, was icing on the cake.
Speaking of which..."But when we get together and have cake afterward, that's just for me, right?"
Ned answered this one. "Buddy, we talked about this. There's a photographer coming along to get shots of the new line of Shout*For party supplies in action. You need to make sure you're eating photogenically." He chucked Stephen lightly on the chin. "No getting caught with cream all over your face."
Stephen held himself as still as possible. "No, sir."
Now he couldn't wait to get out of the car. Especially since they were close enough to hear the hopeful cheering.
The noise jumped several decibels when Stephen's door swung open, and he stepped out onto the red carpet that had been rolled out for the guests of honor. Killer was already there, ready to shield Stephen from the throng of fans crammed up against the velvet ropes on either side of him, dazzling him with applause and camera flashes. Some of them might have paid the couple hundred dollars to get seats inside; others were just hoping to get a sight of one of their favorite stars on the way in.
Stephen didn't let them down. Such adoration deserved to be rewarded, after all. He stuck his hand in an inside pocket of the tuxedo and came out with a fistful of I ♥ Shout*For rubber wristbands (a portion of the sales went to charity; Stephen forgot which one). Flinging these into the crowd on either side kicked off waves of shrieks and leaping and scuffles as people fought to get one.
At the last minute dropped into a crouch and offered the last one to a tiny girl of maybe seven or eight right against at the ropes, who had been clinging to a Shout*For tote bag with one hand and her mother with the other. Face-to-face with Stephen himself, her eyes about popped out of her head, reflecting the flashbulbs going off on all sides of them.
Stephen beamed at her until she got up the courage to take the wristband, then rose and gave the crowd one last wave...
...and stopped short, because Olivia was waiting for him at the entrance, and she was stunning.
She was in a deep blue floor-length gown, not strapless but definitely more shoulder-baring than anything the Mouse had let her be seen in before, with a necklace of silver and pale blue stones that matched her ring. Her dark hair was swept back to reveal silver earrings, and it was all accented by bright pink lipstick that Stephen really didn't want to risk messing up by kissing.
"This is not fair," said Stephen in an undertone as he stepped up to meet her. "You're not supposed to upstage me at my own party."
"Aw, is it hard not being the pretty one?" teased Olivia. She dropped a quick, minty kiss on his mouth — her lipstick came out intact, thank goodness — and linked her arm through his. "C'mon, let's knock some socks off."
~*~
For once, Jon was grateful for Shout*For's enforced "oh, the boys are just like a family!" public hanging-out. It meant that even though Stephen's birthday concert was purportedly a date with Olivia, they were still going to watch from the same VIP balcony as the rest of the band.
Jon had invited Kristen to be his plus-one, thinking mostly of how best to keep Olivia company. Jimmy brought Tina, and although she was initially taken aback by some bawdy joke Kristen made, a few minutes later the two of them were getting on like a house on fire. After stumbling on a shared interest in politics, they settled into a vigorous debate over which Daily Show correspondent was the hottest, which didn't seem to require any of the guys' input.
Tucker's companion, a striking blonde wearing a cross necklace, stayed out of it too. She didn't seem to be getting over being put off by Kristen. She did manage a bit of small talk with Jimmy, from which Jon learned that her name was Gretchen and she was some kind of serious violin prodigy. No wonder Tucker liked her. Girl was downright highbrow.
Stephen and Olivia were the last to show up. They were arm-in-arm and flanked by parents, specifically Stephen's father and Olivia's mother: all together, a shining beacon of heterosexual American family values.
Some part of Jon's brain registered that Olivia looked fabulous. The rest of him was busy being distracted by Stephen: whose dark hair was now tipped with blond in the front, and who was wearing that tux like he'd been sculpted as the model for it.
Judging by a certain hitch in Stephen's voice as he greeted them, he didn't think the suit Jon had been stuffed into was hanging too badly, either.
The selection of adults was rounded out by their two bodyguards and Stephen's manager. Killer and Lonny did their usual trick of melting into the background, but Ned was in finest overly-touchy form. He praised Gretchen's jewelry and Tucker's suit with a hand on each of their shoulders; he touched Jon's cheek when he asked whether Jon wasn't shaving yet; and he ran his fingers through Tina's loose waves of hair. "This is really something, sweetheart. Have you ever thought about dyeing it?" he asked. "Maybe something to match Stephen's? You two look remarkably alike, you know."
"We do not!" snapped Stephen. To Jon's surprise, he got between the two and practically shoved a startled Tina back into her seat. "Enough chitchat. Let's get into place so this thing can start, already."
~*~
Olivia still wasn't gutsy enough to do her normal "roll out a couple of shocking lines to test the new people" routine in front of her mother. Not to mention, she was pretty sure the weight of Stephen's father's disapproval would make their balcony collapse. So she trusted Kristen's assurance that Tina was cool, and Gretchen maybe less so.
The first half of the concert went beautifully. The crowd below them was in a great mood, especially when the big screens over the stage cut to Stephen and friends; the performers were in fine form, especially O'Reilly, who had made a smooth transition in the past ten years from generic teen pop to a country-rock hybrid that combined shouty anger with being terminally catchy. When the lights went up on him, Stephen nearly hyperventilated, gripping Olivia's arm so hard it was going to leave marks.
...That could make some interesting tabloid fodder later.
She was scheduled to be whisked away after intermission to do a surprise set of her own (a round of He Could Be The One, not explicitly dedicated to Stephen, but with some serious winking and nudging in that direction). At least they left her enough time to stretch her legs beforehand.
The VIP balcony was connected to a VIP corridor, a couple of VIP bathrooms, and a VIP bar. The latter drew away Olivia's mother, Mr. Col-bert, and Ned; Olivia spared a few moments to look longingly after them before disappearing into the ladies' room to check her makeup.
It was the kind of restroom with a carpeted entryway, filled out by little couches and lit by an honest-to-goodness chandelier. Olivia's heels clicked on tile once she got far enough in. She stood in front of the mirror, adjusted her necklace, rifled through her clutch for lipstick.
"Everything okay in here?"
Olivia almost dropped her lipstick down a sink. "Hey, no fair sneaking up on me!"
Kristen had followed her as far as the edge of the carpet, where she was standing in stocking feet, heeled shoes dangling from one hand. Instead of her usual wide-skirted party dresses, she was wearing a figure-hugging flapper-inspired number, dazzling with patterns of sparkly silver sequins. With wide-eyed innocence, she replied, "But how else am I supposed to catch you in the act?"
"There is no 'act'," huffed Olivia. She held open the clutch again, picking through it. "Look: tissues, falsies, my phone, tampons, compact, lipstick. There's no room in this stupid thing for a nip of vodka. You want to come over and see?"
This was sort of cheating, since the last thing she'd done before leaving the house was finish off a bottle she'd been working through. But it was enough to settle Kristen. "No, I'll manage," she said, waving the offer away with her shoe-holding hand. "These things are a bear to walk in anyway."
"It isn't that hard! You just have to get the hang of them." Olivia had worn heels to so many awards shows it was second nature by now. Snapping her clutch shut, she sashayed over to the entryway and dropped the little purse on one of the couches. "Here, I'll show you. Sit down for a second...but put those back on ASAP. When you take them off your feet swell, and that makes any pain even worse when you put 'em back on."
Kristen looked horrified. "I knew there was a sinister agenda in these patriarchal standards of beauty!"
"Well, geez, if you decide they're not worth it, you never have to wear 'em again. Just at least make sure it's an informed decision, you know?"
So Kristen took a seat and slipped back into the heels, then let her feet relax with the weight off them while Olivia gave her a practical demonstration. Small steps, legs close together, heel-toe, keep your knees straight. She herself had mastered turning the walk into a sashay, but that was a varsity-level skill; Kristen had better stick to the more modest goal of moving forward and not falling over.
"Now you try." She offered Kristen her hand. "Come on, you can lean on me."
Both their growth spurts had leveled off at some point during the past year, so it was looking like Olivia was never going to make up those last couple inches between them without some sartorial help. And with Kristen in shoes of the same size, that help came to nothing, putting them at relative heights where Kristen could sling her arm over Olivia's shoulders with no trouble.
"Baby steps," Olivia repeated, as they aimed forward. "Heel-toe...careful!" she added, when Kristen came down at a weird angle and both of them wobbled. "There, now you're getting it! Want to speed it up a little?"
"Ugh," muttered Kristen, but she matched Olivia's pace as it kicked up a notch, and then another. Longer strides, more confident...
...until she came down slantwise again and her whole body went yawing away from Olivia's.
Without thinking, Olivia yanked them back in the other direction. And maybe her own balance was more precarious than she'd realized, or maybe she just overshot the force required, because all she got for it was the two of them going down like a rock in the opposite direction, Olivia's skull clipping one of the chairs on the way.
"Ow," she croaked, flat on her back with Kristen on top of her.
"Omigosh!" squeaked Kristen, pushing herself up on her elbows just enough to take the weight off Olivia's body. Her wide-eyed face filled most of Olivia's field of vision. "Are you okay?"
There was a sharp ache at the back of Olivia's head, she could feel that a bunch of her hairdo had come loose and undone, and she'd had the breath half knocked out of her, but other than that? "Yep," she panted. "Peachy. Carpet's real soft. You?"
"I'm fine, but I was cushioned!" Kristen's hand came up to sweep a stray lock of hair from Olivia's face...
...fingers brushing slowly across Olivia's cheek, lips slightly parted, and either the bump on the head was making Olivia delirious or she might have to re-evaluate everything she'd thought about what Kristen might...
...there was a swish and a brief burst of chatter from the corridor, and an awkward yelp from not far past Olivia's feet.
"Sorry!" cried the embarrassed voice of Tina. "Didn't mean to interrupt!"
She backed out of the room in a flash. Kristen was on her feet (and out of her shoes) again seconds later. She didn't offer Olivia a helping hand, so Olivia had to hoist herself off the ground, careful not to catch the chair again on the way up. "Well. Uh. That was...."
"...a hilarious misunderstanding!" finished Kristen, voice even higher than usual. "Hey, listen, you should probably head out. I bet Mac's looking for you right now! Don't worry about me, I've got this walking thing covered!" She grabbed her discarded shoes and scuttled back a couple of steps. "See? ...You can get up okay, right?"
Olivia grabbed her clutch and straightened. "Don't worry, I'm...on top of it."
They swept out into the corridor together without another word, to find Tina practically hopping. In a stage whisper Kristen advised her, "Should've bolted the other way."
"I'll remember that for next time!" squeaked Tina, and all but ran into the ladies' room.
Before Olivia could come up with anything that was actually intelligent to say to Kristen, Mac's voice cut across the VIP corridor. "Olivia! There you are! What on Earth did you do to your hair?"
"It can be artfully tousled!" said Olivia, and threw one last anxious look back at an unreadable Kristen before allowing Mac to drag her off toward the dressing rooms.
~*~
The next day found Stephen at a get-together at Olivia's, where apparently — much to Jimmy's delight — Tina had gotten herself onto the regular invite list. They were hanging around the pool, along with Kristen, Wyatt, and Steve, while Stephen took Briar Rose out front and waited for Jon to arrive.
At last the familiar car pulled up...and the wrong door swung open, revealing that Jon was the one behind the wheel. "You can drive?" breathed Stephen as he got out.
"I can learner's permit," corrected Jon, looking almost embarrassed at Stephen's awe. His aunt was coming around from the passenger side; she exchanged a brief hello with Stephen (who now wished he'd put a shirt on for this) before taking the keys. "It isn't that exciting. I'm not late, am I?"
"You're right on time." Stephen called Briar Rose over from the rosebush she'd been sniffing; she bounded happily back to his side. "And it is totally exciting, what are you talking about."
"Well, I'm not allowed to do anything without a Licensed Adult In The Car At All Times," said Jon, accompanying him around the side of the Munn mansion "So it's not like I can go driving us off to Makeout Point or anything. And I know it's embarrassingly overdue, but I haven't exactly had a lot of time for lessons...."
"But you don't need to learn at all. We have people for that," pointed out Stephen. "So it's amazingly hot that you're doing it anyway."
"Oh," stammered Jon. "Well. That's definitely motivation."
A choked noise made them both start.
Another step and they'd cleared the corner of the house, to find Tina and Jimmy just a few feet down the patio. The pair had been carrying soda and ice cream, respectively, down to the pool; Tina tried to hide her face with the oversized soda bottles. "I didn't hear anything!"
Stephen looked instinctively to Jimmy, who nodded at Tina and flashed a thumbs-up. She's cool. He turned to Jon, who squeezed his hand; scanned the rest of the yard to make sure everyone else was safely off by the water; and said, "This is super top secret information, Tina Fey. Understand?"
"I figured," groaned Tina. "It's my curse."
Stephen wasn't sure what that meant, so he ignored it. "Well, Jon's my real boyfriend. Only a couple of our best friends know. And now you, but that's okay! You can be an honorary Best Friend of mine, on account of being Jimmy's Best Lady Friend. Just don't talk about it around anyone else, okay? Except Olivia and Kristen, obviously they know, because..."
"...you're double-bearding," finished Tina, cheeks red under her glasses. "I get it, I get it."
Now she was being confusing in a way that got Stephen's attention. "What do you mean, 'double'?"
~*~
Kristen had co-opted the floating pool chair (with Steve and Wyatt using a beach ball to play an informal game of volleyball over her head), so Olivia stuck to the sidelines, hiding behind oversized sunglasses and a frozen margarita.
She'd invited the rest of them mostly to have an easy excuse to draw Kristen over, but was stalling on the part where she confronted Kristen alone, and still hadn't figured out what the hell to say when she did. The alcohol was...really not helping on that count, either.
Her dithering was cut short when Jon and Stephen appeared on the chairs on either side of her, both staring her down.
"Okay, Olivia, be straight with us," said Stephen sternly.
"For a given value of 'straight'," added Jon.
"Do you, or do you not, have a thing going on with Kristen?"
"No," said Olivia morosely. "No thing."
"You're sure," said Stephen.
"Because, don't take this the wrong way, but you kinda talk about her the way I sometimes can't help talking about Stephen," explained Jon.
"And we heard something involving the two of you alone in a compromising position," added Stephen.
"You two have got to stop doing that," said Olivia. "It's creepy."
"What?" said Stephen.
"Finishing each other's sentences?" suggested Jon.
"Like you're always doing with Kristen?" concluded Stephen.
Olivia brandished her drink. "I will throw this at you," she slurred. "One of you. Then get another glass an' throw it at the other."
The guys shut up, but the way they sat back and waited in expectant silence was almost worse.
"I don't know," moaned Olivia at last. "Like, one minute I think we're having moments, and then she's all, ooh, I just heart being your BFF, but then she falls on top of me, which was a total accident, by the way, and suddenly there's looking and touching except a second later she can't back off fast enough, and, and, I don't understand any of this!"
"So...if she was interested, you would be all over that?" asked Stephen.
In the lowest voice possible, Olivia admitted, "Uh-huh."
"Have you mentioned that to her?" suggested Jon.
Olivia slumped even lower in her deck chair. "Dunno how."
The other two exchanged Meaningful Looks.
Then Stephen sat up straighter, tossed his hair, and crooned, "There is one way to a~ask her... / It don't take a word, not a single word, go on and... / Kiss the girl!"
Jon took up the thread, on a different melody. "Ain't written in the sky above~ / No fortune-teller told me this~ / You gotta tell her that you love her / Tell her that you need her / And give the girl a great big kiss."
A wave of Stephen's hand encompassed the pool, including Kristen down at the far end. "Now's your mo~ment / Floating in a blue lagoon! / But, girl you better do it soon / No time will be be~et~ter...."
"Now if you're such a fool you think / It don't matter, baby, what you say / Maybe you better tell her how you're feelin'," sang Jon. "Ain't gonna happen any other way...."
"Shala lala lala don't be scared! / You got the mood prepared, go on and~ / kiss the girl!" warbled Stephen. "Shala lala lala don't stop now! / Don't try to hide it how / you wanna kiss~ the~ gi~irl~!"
"Shut up, shut up, I'm going!" wailed Olivia.
She didn't actually think she was going to do it, until she realized she was standing up.
Heat wafted up from the tiles under her flip-flops as she slapped her way to the edge of the pool. A swan-dive got her into the deep end; the cold water shocked her halfway back to sobriety, and she broke the surface with a gasp, shoving a curtain of wet hair out of her face. Kristen was still on the floating chair, not far off, the beach ball soaring back and forth over her head.
Olivia kicked and paddled in her direction.
"Give it a rest for a second, guys," she ordered Wyatt, who caught the ball and obediently kicked himself backward through the water. Her feet touched down; she grabbed for the side of the blown-up plastic. "Hey, you! C'mere."
Kristen still had a cute striped skater skirt on over her bikini, but the stability of her seat was all of a sudden compromised, so she let herself get pulled down into the water. "What —?"
Then Olivia's arms were flung around her shoulders, and Olivia's mouth was on hers.
It wasn't Olivia's first kiss. First not-for-a-part kiss, though, yeah. And while some of those for-a-part kisses had been pretty good, objectively speaking, none of them had come with this particular berry chapstick, or a mass of thick curls to tangle her wet fingers through, or this soft, plush boob-squish situation they had going on...
...or Kristen's soft hands cupping her face, gently but firmly pushing her back. "You are so drunk."
Olivia's face fell into her best pout. "Only a little drunk!"
"Uh-huh," said Kristen cheerfully, patting her on the cheek. "Well, I'm pretty sure all the guys here are taken or not your type or both, so maybe save it for another party, mmkay?"
"...bwuh?"
Her grasp had loosened enough in confusion for Kristen to slip easily out of it. "And now this thing is kinda soaked," she said sheepishly, getting a double handful of the fabric of the skirt as it billowed in the chlorine-saturated water. "Can I go grab something from your closet to wear while it dries?"
"Um," said Olivia, her fogged brain latching on to the one question that made sense. "Sure. Go ahead."
"Thanks!" chirped Kristen, and then she was past Olivia, heading for the edge.
~*~
Olivia stayed underwater for so long that Jon was starting to wonder if someone ought to go down there after her. At last her head and shoulders popped up at the lip of the pool nearest him and Stephen. "You guys suck!"
Jon had no arguments. He kind of wanted the earth to open up and swallow him out of pure sympathy embarrassment. Stephen, though, sank into a crouch in front of Olivia. "What exactly did she say?"
"She talked like I was doing the whole thing for your benefit," moaned Olivia. "I mean, not yours personally, obviously, but the rest of the guys!"
"Then you have to go after her!" declared Stephen.
"Are you insane?!"
Stephen was undeterred. "You have to get her to say exactly what she means! If you go making assumptions, you can end up convinced that someone doesn't like you, when in fact they secretly want to kiss you very badly! Trust me, I know!"
Olivia chewed on her lip for a second, then hefted herself out of the pool, making Stephen skitter backwards in a hurry. "Fine," she muttered. "But if this just makes things worse, I'm strangling you with one of your own ties."
And she cut a dripping path back toward the house, grabbing a towel along the way.
A soft cough alerted Jon and Stephen to the fact that Wyatt had come up behind them. (Steve, Jimmy, and Tina were all keeping to a polite distance.) "Hey, uh, I don't know what you guys said to her," he began, "and I have been trying to stay out of this, because, you know, girl drama...but if you can convince them to quit dancing around each other and start making out already, you will be my new heroes."
~*~
Kristen was sitting cross-legged on Olivia's bed — not looking at clothes at all, just staring at the pattern on the sheets. Olivia, towel saronged around her waist, stopped in the doorway.
"That wasn't for any dude's benefit," she said flatly. "You know that, right?"
She took Kristen's almost-inaudable huff as an affirmative.
"And it wasn't because I've had a couple margaritas, either. I am way into you sober. And if you want me to start getting over that, you've gotta say to my face that you're not interested."
Kristen made a face like a particularly sad kitten macro. "We can't."
Another response that Olivia had totally not prepared for. "What are you talking about?" she demanded. "It's working fine for Jon and Stephen! And don't say they're under less media scrutiny than I am, because it's not that much less."
"The difference is that they're both under it!" burst out Kristen. "They're on the same level. They're in the same band! And you're up there too, you've got talent coming out your ears, and you're not going to peak at fifteen, either. Ten years from now you're gonna be a super-duper-star. I'm gonna make a living. You're gonna make millions."
Olivia took a couple of steps in. "Are you seriously saying you don't think you're talented enough for me?"
"I'm not talented enough to follow you!" shot back Kristen. "You're already out of town as much as you're here! I don't play an instrument, I'm not gonna land a spot as one of your backup dancers, I'm never gonna have a steady thing in movies — let's face it, the market for 'quirky' is way narrower than the market for 'hot' —"
"I'd take you with me!" exclaimed Olivia. What good were all those buckets of money if she couldn't? "Anywhere you wanted."
"For the next couple years, the company wouldn't let you! Not to mention my parents wouldn't let you."
"I could tour less," countered Olivia, moving forward again. "I can say I won't do any more movies for now. There's a ton of ways I can stay home more without messing up my contract."
"That is not in the plan!" Kristen thumped her hand against the bedspread. "You're going to do everything they let you get at, show off all the skills you have and learn the ones you don't, and then when this contract's up you're going to transition your image, cut your hair, do some weird indie movies and some sexy-but-tasteful photoshoots, and then get back to knocking out an EGOT. There is no part of the plan that involves kicking the whole thing off the rails to have a secret romance with the weird girl who lucked into getting cast with you on your terrible teen TV show!"
Olivia covered the last few steps and threw herself into Kristen's arms, clasping her in a damp embrace. This time Kristen didn't back off or push them apart, just buried her face in Olivia's shoulder and shuddered against her.
She wasn't used to this. Kristen was supposed to be the secure one, the calm buffer for Olivia's moodiness and well-hidden insecurities, deceptively silly but always reliable when it counted. If she was the one freaking out, what could Olivia possibly do about it?
"Can't we just...try?" she pleaded against Kristen's wet curls. "We're already long-distance BFFs half the time. What's it gonna hurt to add some tongue action to it?"
There was a murmur of discontent against her neck.
"And if you really can't stand it...then we either call the whole thing a failed experiment or I start walking stuff back. Not too far!" she added, before Kristen could protest. "I'm not gonna kill my dreams over you. I swear I'm not. But they were never...I mean, I never wanted to have the world's most flawless career if it meant not also having a life."
Kristen had stopped shivering. Olivia held her breath.
Closing her eyes, she said, "I kind of love you, you know."
Her BFF let out something between a laugh and a sob. "How come you always make it so I don't want to say no to you?"
Olivia swallowed. In a rush she said, "If you were my girlfriend I would let you push me around sometimes."
To her immense relief, now Kristen was outright giggling. "Oh, god, I think I read this in a fanfiction once."
Olivia gave her a light shove. "You're not supposed to tell me about those!"
"Well, it wasn't about us, obviously," said Kristen, then blurted, "Okay let's do it."
Yanking back just far enough to gaze into Kristen's watery blue eyes, Olivia lit up. "Seriously?"
"Uh-huh."
"So can I kiss you again?"
Kristen raised her eyebrows. "Was there a version of this deal where you didn't?"
With a delighted squeal, Olivia peppered Kristen's jaw with a bunch of quick kisses before going for the big one.
This time Kristen was giving as good as she got. There was tongue. It was awesome.
When this one broke off, more because they needed to come up for air than anything else, Kristen panted, "You know, your back yard is full of people who are probably taking bets on whether we're doing this."
"So you're saying maybe we shouldn't do it much longer," deduced Olivia.
"Pretty much."
They looked at each other.
"Just one more," said Olivia.
"Can't hurt," said Kristen, and leaned back in.