Twilight RPF // But She's Just Like a Maze (Kristen Stewart/Nikki Reed)
But She's Just Like a Maze.
Twilight RPF.
Kristen Stewart/Nikki Reed, PG-13, 3611 words. Part of yuletide's 2008 challenge, written for Kit, originally posted here.
Notes: Thank you to marginaliana for the last-minute beta! As a disclaimer, this was inspired by Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway' and the beginning and ending lines borrowed from that book and modified to fit the story. Title from John Mayer's 'Daughters'.
*
Kristen thought she would buy the baked goods herself.
For the party, that is. For poker night. The one where she would announce that Nikki and she had decided to buy a villa in Tuscany and leave the acting business behind. Nikki would support them both through scripts written under pseudonyms and they would live in sin for the rest of their days.
Everyone would go all, "You're joking, right?"
And she would be like, "No, I'm not. We've already paid the lease for the house. It's awesome." And she would say to Nikki, "Right, baby?", and Nikki would nod and kiss her on the cheek, and Kristen would smile, and then Nikki would pass around a picture of them cuddling on a bench in front of the house.
"This thing is in ruins," someone would point out.
"Well, that's the beauty of it," Kristen would say. "We'll fix it."
"You'll fix it," someone would say incredulously. As Kristen walked around the corner, she tried to look away from the leotard-clad girl on the opposite sidewalk, who seemed sicker by the minute, and her mother's hand over her mouth didn't help, and Kristen didn't like to see people throw up. No one liked to see people throw up, she thought. The little girl really was changing colors, though, and Kristen had to fight herself to stop looking. At this rate she'd never get to the bakery.
Anyhow, as Kristen walked around the corner, she had a distinct vision of Pattinson, half-stoned and half-drunk, questioning Kristen and Nikki's ability to fix a house in ruins. And Kristen would want to go on with the stupid joke -of course it was stupid, it had been Nikki's idea- but he would look adorably incredulous and she would have to ruffle his hair and promise that she'd wait a year at least, till he was big enough to deal by himself.
"To deal what?" he'd say, and Kristen would shake her head, and Nikki would laugh at her, because that was what Nikki did. All the time.
Maybe she should uninvite Pattinson to the party, because he would ruin the entire thing, and Kristen wanted to show Nikki that she could lie through her teeth for hours without anyone noticing. If Pattinson wasn't there, someone would eventually ask why they had invited everyone to celebrate Nikki and Kristen's departure. "We don't really think you're that bad," someone would say, and Kristen would raise an eyebrow as if mad, but of course she wasn't. Kristen didn't get angry at people. They just frustrated her a little, and she felt like smashing their heads in.
In a totally calm manner.
So the girl was throwing up, and now Kristen had no trouble looking away, because that was a disgusting sight if there ever was one.
She crossed the street.
She wasn't going to buy a villa in Tuscany, of course. The crazy Twilight fangirls would track her down and accuse her of having driven Pattinson to the bottle, or something. Italy would never stop being a hot spot, unless Mount Etna finally exploded and drowned it all in lava. Or maybe if the Volturi really existed and had a sudden litter of alien freak vampire babies and had to kill all the population to feed them.
That wouldn't really drive the fangirls away, though, she thought with a snicker. So she started to consider the countries which she might be able to move into upon her early retirement.
She wasn't going to retire, mind, she'd miss the billions and the acting and maybe even Nikki's smile, not that she would ever tell her that, but she didn't feel like listening to music -even the silent earphones were kind of bothering her, but she kept them on as a means to pretend she couldn't hear, say, you- and there wasn't much reason to fight the thought process.
As if on cue, her cellphone vibrated in her bag and she forgot what she was thinking about. It couldn't have been that interesting, anyway. She checked the caller ID, because she only answered calls from people in her contacts list - if it was really important, they would call her agent, or her mother, or - well, if they called Nikki she would ignore them, because Nikki was the one calling her, and she didn't believe in three-way conversations, or three-way anything, really, or putting people on hold. She said it was distracting. Kristen thought it was an awesome excuse to hang up on someone.
She pressed the answer button and held the phone between her head and her shoulder, trying to rearrange the few things in her bag as she walked in order to be able to get the zipper closed. A woman with a stroller passed by so close that she almost dropped a pen in the baby's eye.
"Ugh," she said before she was out of earshot. Nikki laughed at the other end of the line. Kristen would tell herself that she hated her for it, but she was so used to Nikki laughing about everything that it had become comforting to hear her. Besides, her voice wasn't as high-pitched as most girls', and it was an almost nice sound on its own.
"Are you decent?" Nikki asked. Kristen managed to get her bag closed.
"Never," Kristen replied dryly, and turned a corner.
Nikki was standing right across the very narrow street, which she crossed immediately. If Kristen didn't know better, she would have thought Nikki was running towards her, sporting that bright smile of hers that made Kristen want to kiss her, but the thing is, Kristen did know better, and what she knew was that Nikki was about to smile, and about to start running.
She was very obvious about it all. Kristen had been worried for a while that someone would figure it out before they were, like, married or something - not that they could right now, or that she even wanted to, but that was the only reason she would announce her relationship status to the tabloids - but then she had realized that people only saw what they wanted to see, and right now they wanted to see that Nikki was a bitch and she and Kristen had a feud.
Which, whatever.
"Okay, I was gonna ask where you were, but I don't think I need to anymore," Nikki said into the phone, and Kristen smiled despite herself as she hung up and waited, and greeted Nikki by letting her place a short kiss on her cheek.
Nikki intertwined their arms, although Kristen thought she actually wanted to hold her hand, but Nikki had learned long ago that cheese and Kristen only worked well in private. Nikki was a fast learner - Nikki knew a lot of things about Kristen, like how to make her smile, and how to piss her off, and also how to piss her off without really pissing her off, which was really quite a feat, and Kristen hated her for it, but she kind of loved her anyway.
"You said you were gonna wait for me to pick you up," Nikki pointed out. Ah, yeah-that was-Kristen hadn't remembered that when she had decided to go to the bakery a few minutes earlier. She usually didn't. You can't expect a girl to grasp what you're saying to her when you're also distracting her like Nikki was distracting Kristen when she asked her that.
"I had like, your entire-I mean, you asked me that when I was-you can't hold me responsible for what I say when I'm about to come," Kristen said. Nikki chuckled.
"I'll keep that in mind," Nikki said.
So they went into the store, and as they went into the store, Kristen realized that Nikki had gone straight ahead before calling, which was the kind of thing Nikki did, because she knew it didn't bother Kristen when she did it, even though it bothered Kristen when anyone else did anything even remotely near that stalkerish.
Kristen had thought that she would buy the baked goods herself, but Nikki was there already, talking to the woman like she'd known her forever, which was probably true, because Nikki was obsessed with her apple pie and you can only reach that level of adoration for something that you have either had a lot of times, or only once and lost track of, but Nikki hadn't lost track of this, and she had cakes regularly sent out to her house, so she was on-
"Hey, Becky, can you add another layer of chocolate to that?"
-a first-name basis with her, so yeah, she'd probably known her for a while.
It happened a lot these days, that Kristen would think she'd do something, and then Nikki went and joined her and did it herself, and meanwhile Kristen stood there, holding onto her arm, wanting to run her fingers through Nikki's hair and not being bothered at all because, what the hell, it wasn't that Nikki thought she would bite the salespeople-not that it would be much of a stretch-but that Nikki liked dealing with them, and Kristen liked not having to deal with them, so it worked out just fine.
Like that theory that you're meant for each other when you like the opposite thing in salads, so you can get one and share it evenly or something, only Kristen didn't really believe that she was meant for Nikki, because that was stupid. It didn't even make sense.
Nikki looked at her and smiled.
"We should sit down," she said, and dragged her to a booth near the window display. The window display was so big that no one going by would notice they were a little famous, so Kristen complied. So they settled, and the woman-Becky, or whatever-brought them a very large slice of some-red-fruit pie and placed it on the middle of the table.
So either it had been a mistake and it was for Nikki, or what's-her-name knew that Nikki was a) into girls, and b) the corniest person ever.
Nikki dug in with her fork and wound up with a huge piece, which she then cut in half with her teeth, making almost obscene sounds as she savoured it, and held the fork out for Kristen to like, lean forward and grab it, or something.
Kristen frowned.
"Come on, we're totally in private," Nikki said around her mouthful, trying not to let any of the sauce fall out. "It's fantastic."
Kristen frowned a little more. She kept wet towels in her purse, she thought, and she believed she'd seen the sign of a restroom when she walked in-it should be right behind her-so she went to grab the piece with her hand, and Nikki took it away and left it on the plate, tilting her head a bit to the left and raising an eyebrow.
But she was smiling. She was smiling and then she chuckled and Kristen felt kind of young.
"You know I don't like public displays of affection," Kristen remarked.
"Fine," Nikki said, and took the rest of the pie in her mouth before handing the fork over to her. "But I've known Becky for years, baby, you shouldn't feel threatened," she said with a playful smile.
"Don't call me-" Kristen started, but Nikki was waiting for her to finish, so she didn't finish the sentence. It wasn't like she hadn't said the same thing before. So she took a bite of the pie, and it was... good, if you liked pie.
Which Kristen did, but she was more of a chocolate cake kind of person.
"What's with the face?" Nikki asked.
"What face?" Kristen mumbled around her fork. Okay, so she was licking the fork. It had cherry sauce in it and it was really sweet and she hadn't had breakfast. And Nikki had licked it first, and Kristen was all of fourteen years old, so sue her.
"You look pissed," Nikki said.
"I'm not," Kristen answered. "This is the face I was born with."
Nikki leant back on the booth and took a swig of her - strawberry smoothie. And then Kristen realized that she had a chocolate one, and she hadn't seen Becky bring them.
Okay, so maybe she really liked the pie.
"Just... smile or something," Nikki said, and she grinned widely as if to illustrate her point, and the side of Kristen's mouth turned upwards before she could stop it, but then she did, because Nikki had way too much power over her, and it had to be stopped.
"Why?" she asked instead. Nikki shrugged and pursed her lips.
"I don't know," she said then. "You look like you don't have an awesome girlfriend." Kristen snorted.
"And I do?"
"Clearly," Nikki stated. "And also, you're the star in a billion-dollar trilogy, and you're young and gorgeous, and did I mention that you have a seriously awesome girlfriend?"
"Yeah, you did," she said, and took another bit of pie. It wasn't as big as she had thought at first. There were like two bites left, and Kristen realized she had eaten most of it. She felt a pang of embarrassment.
"Good. Because you have an awesome girlfriend. And I know the paparazzi camping in front of your house isn't exactly ideal, but it'll pass, and then you'll only have the billions and the awesome girlfriend."
"Really," Kristen said, questioningly.
"Really," Nikki said, and downed the rest of her smoothie. She seemed to be expecting something.
"Ah," Kristen said. "Do you expect me to lick the smoothie off your chin or something?"
Nikki snorted. "I was hoping you would feel tempted."
Kristen shook her head, and Nikki got up and joined her in her side of the booth, because that way she could lean into Kristen and Kristen would look at her eyes and her knees would all go wobbly, and thank God she was sitting because she hated Nikki.
So she leant forward and licked Nikki's lower lip, sucked in the bits of thick pink liquid, which was actually decent for a strawberry smoothie, considering Kristen didn't really like strawberry anything, and the inside of Nikki's mouth tasted like the awesome pie, but even if it hadn't Kristen couldn't have stopped herself from going in deeper, because Nikki had amazingly soft lips, but her tongue was - well, you get the picture.
She didn't realize she had tangled her fingers in Nikki's hair and was halfway up on her lap until she heard a chuckle behind them. Then she became painfully aware of Nikki's hand under her sweater and the one on her thigh, and she coughed as she returned to an appropriate position.
A smile was playing on Becky's face. She must have been over fifty years old, and her hair was graying everywhere-where it was not it looked like it had been a dark shade of chocolate once. Kristen felt welcome, as though she had initiated herself in a club or something, because Becky kept smiling at her like Kristen was the answer to her prayers, and Nikki seemed to be kind of blushing, which Kristen had learned to tell as of late.
Becky probably thought that Nikki was-and Nikki was, actually, that, but Kristen didn't want to think about it.
"Your order is ready," she announced. It had been half ready when they'd showed up, anyway, which made Kristen realize that Nikki had probably called in while Kristen was-brushing her hair or something, and Nikki knew that Kristen didn't like waiting, it was one of the many things she shouldn't have known about her, but the pie had been lovely.
"Thanks," Nikki said, standing up, not bothering to hide her grin, and Kristen fell compelled to at least smile a little, because she didn't want to disappoint a stranger.
That was how things went sometimes, since she'd become whatever she was with Nikki. She didn't want people to warn Nikki against her. She didn't want people to think she liked Nikki any less than Nikki liked her, but it was hard to show when you also wanted them to think you were just friends, and you couldn't decide which one was more important at a given time.
It was one of those things.
They were walking back to Kristen's house for lunch when Kristen felt the sudden need to announce that she was a terrible choice for Nikki.
"You're bad for me?" Nikki said, snorting. "You've seen my movie," she said, as if that explained everything. That was a long time ago, and also the kind of thing people got out of and never wanted to fall back into again. And Kristen was cold and she really liked smoking-she really needed to smoke-and she was... she wasn't exactly the best choice for Nikki, that was all.
"It's not your movie," Kristen remarked, because she didn't want to talk about it anymore.
"It's totally my movie," Nikki said.
"It isn't," Kristen said, and nodded pointedly. Nikki chuckled.
"It's totally my movie. It's the movie of my heart," Nikki said, and Kristen could feel Nikki's arm hold hers tighter. God, she really didn't want to talk about it.
"Well, it did a pretty good job, you know," Kristen said, "for a heart." Nikki shook her head.
"Whatever," she said, and the gesture-the fake arrogance, the raised eyebrows-made Kristen laugh. Dryly, once, but laugh nevertheless. "I've gotten through worse. I can deal with your - softie drugs and your sleep deprivation. Easy," she said matter-of-factly. "You don't have to start sleeping for me, like - I'm good as long as you sleep with me."
Kristen snorted.
"That is a terrible pun."
Nikki raised her eyebrows in a seductive manner, and said, nodding, "I know."
Nikki did know that she had a ridiculous sense of humor sometimes, and the thing with ridiculous senses of humor sometimes was that Kristen laughed because the person was adorable rather than because what they had said was funny, and Nikki made her laugh because of that, and sometimes Kristen thought that maybe Nikki believed she was funny.
But she wasn't, most of the time. And she knew that.
"Wait, what does that even mean?" Kristen said, realizing the way Nikki had said that. Nikki laughed loudly, and a bunch of old women looked at her from the other side of the street, as though she was disrupting their tranquility. Kristen ignored them.
"I don't know," Nikki said. "Pun, kind of rhymes with cunt, there's something there."
Kristen hit her on the arm. "You're stupid," she declared. Nikki was still laughing.
"Hey, don't knock it," she said, trying to catch her breath, and snuggled her head into Kristen's shoulder for a moment. "I mean," she said in a whisper, directly into Kristen's ear, "that's probably why I lo-" She coughed. "-like you."
So they had lunch with Kristen's family, because they'd grown used to Nikki, and her mother loved Nikki more than she loved Kristen, probably. They sat in the living room after and Nikki discussed all sorts of baking recipes with Kristen's mother while Kristen lay with her head on Nikki's lap and had her neck petted.
It was Nikki, and she was home, and she fell asleep for about an hour and when she woke up Nikki was still talking about vanilla cupcakes.
And then they were in Nikki's apartment, and Nikki was eating apple pie like a pig, because she couldn't go to Becky's store without getting one of them, and Kristen was looking at her like she'd never seen her before.
Nikki was digging her fingers into the box to pick up the small slices of apple that had fallen off her piece, and it was Nikki, and they were at home, and Kristen reached over to lick her fingers, because it was Nikki and they were at home.
"This is awful," she cried, hiding her face. Nikki looked down at her like she had blasphemed.
"This is Heaven," Nikki said reverently, and Kristen thought that, as far as profanity went, that was much worse, so she captured Nikki's lips into a kiss, because the apple pie was good. It was her that was awful. She was cold and boring and she usually tasted like nicotine and she liked to lie down on the couch and look at movies without really watching them.
Still, Nikki found things to laugh about. Still, there was probably no one like her, and Kristen didn't want to venture into the world to find out. Still, Kristen wouldn't hurt her, and she would sleep with her and for her and maybe one day she would not look uncomfortable when she smiled. It was getting there. She wasn't smirking now.
She drew away from Nikki, and Nikki smiled, and started to kiss her neck, and came back to the apple pie because she loved the apple pie so much that kissing Kristen could wait.
Kristen could deal with that.
"I think we should cancel poker night," Nikki said, and opened the cupcake box, and handed her a chocolate one with extra icing.
Presumably there were compensations to worrying about someone else. Presumably, Kristen really wasn't as bad as she thought, because Nikki was her own person, and she had gone through a lot, and flair would stick to her forever, if it knew what was good for itself.
"I think so too," Kristen agreed.
And Kristen was smiling into her cupcake now, really smiling, because Nikki was eating apple pie and making obscene noises, and Kristen couldn't help it.
It was Nikki, she thought-and there she was.
Twilight RPF.
Kristen Stewart/Nikki Reed, PG-13, 3611 words. Part of yuletide's 2008 challenge, written for Kit, originally posted here.
Notes: Thank you to marginaliana for the last-minute beta! As a disclaimer, this was inspired by Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway' and the beginning and ending lines borrowed from that book and modified to fit the story. Title from John Mayer's 'Daughters'.
*
Kristen thought she would buy the baked goods herself.
For the party, that is. For poker night. The one where she would announce that Nikki and she had decided to buy a villa in Tuscany and leave the acting business behind. Nikki would support them both through scripts written under pseudonyms and they would live in sin for the rest of their days.
Everyone would go all, "You're joking, right?"
And she would be like, "No, I'm not. We've already paid the lease for the house. It's awesome." And she would say to Nikki, "Right, baby?", and Nikki would nod and kiss her on the cheek, and Kristen would smile, and then Nikki would pass around a picture of them cuddling on a bench in front of the house.
"This thing is in ruins," someone would point out.
"Well, that's the beauty of it," Kristen would say. "We'll fix it."
"You'll fix it," someone would say incredulously. As Kristen walked around the corner, she tried to look away from the leotard-clad girl on the opposite sidewalk, who seemed sicker by the minute, and her mother's hand over her mouth didn't help, and Kristen didn't like to see people throw up. No one liked to see people throw up, she thought. The little girl really was changing colors, though, and Kristen had to fight herself to stop looking. At this rate she'd never get to the bakery.
Anyhow, as Kristen walked around the corner, she had a distinct vision of Pattinson, half-stoned and half-drunk, questioning Kristen and Nikki's ability to fix a house in ruins. And Kristen would want to go on with the stupid joke -of course it was stupid, it had been Nikki's idea- but he would look adorably incredulous and she would have to ruffle his hair and promise that she'd wait a year at least, till he was big enough to deal by himself.
"To deal what?" he'd say, and Kristen would shake her head, and Nikki would laugh at her, because that was what Nikki did. All the time.
Maybe she should uninvite Pattinson to the party, because he would ruin the entire thing, and Kristen wanted to show Nikki that she could lie through her teeth for hours without anyone noticing. If Pattinson wasn't there, someone would eventually ask why they had invited everyone to celebrate Nikki and Kristen's departure. "We don't really think you're that bad," someone would say, and Kristen would raise an eyebrow as if mad, but of course she wasn't. Kristen didn't get angry at people. They just frustrated her a little, and she felt like smashing their heads in.
In a totally calm manner.
So the girl was throwing up, and now Kristen had no trouble looking away, because that was a disgusting sight if there ever was one.
She crossed the street.
She wasn't going to buy a villa in Tuscany, of course. The crazy Twilight fangirls would track her down and accuse her of having driven Pattinson to the bottle, or something. Italy would never stop being a hot spot, unless Mount Etna finally exploded and drowned it all in lava. Or maybe if the Volturi really existed and had a sudden litter of alien freak vampire babies and had to kill all the population to feed them.
That wouldn't really drive the fangirls away, though, she thought with a snicker. So she started to consider the countries which she might be able to move into upon her early retirement.
She wasn't going to retire, mind, she'd miss the billions and the acting and maybe even Nikki's smile, not that she would ever tell her that, but she didn't feel like listening to music -even the silent earphones were kind of bothering her, but she kept them on as a means to pretend she couldn't hear, say, you- and there wasn't much reason to fight the thought process.
As if on cue, her cellphone vibrated in her bag and she forgot what she was thinking about. It couldn't have been that interesting, anyway. She checked the caller ID, because she only answered calls from people in her contacts list - if it was really important, they would call her agent, or her mother, or - well, if they called Nikki she would ignore them, because Nikki was the one calling her, and she didn't believe in three-way conversations, or three-way anything, really, or putting people on hold. She said it was distracting. Kristen thought it was an awesome excuse to hang up on someone.
She pressed the answer button and held the phone between her head and her shoulder, trying to rearrange the few things in her bag as she walked in order to be able to get the zipper closed. A woman with a stroller passed by so close that she almost dropped a pen in the baby's eye.
"Ugh," she said before she was out of earshot. Nikki laughed at the other end of the line. Kristen would tell herself that she hated her for it, but she was so used to Nikki laughing about everything that it had become comforting to hear her. Besides, her voice wasn't as high-pitched as most girls', and it was an almost nice sound on its own.
"Are you decent?" Nikki asked. Kristen managed to get her bag closed.
"Never," Kristen replied dryly, and turned a corner.
Nikki was standing right across the very narrow street, which she crossed immediately. If Kristen didn't know better, she would have thought Nikki was running towards her, sporting that bright smile of hers that made Kristen want to kiss her, but the thing is, Kristen did know better, and what she knew was that Nikki was about to smile, and about to start running.
She was very obvious about it all. Kristen had been worried for a while that someone would figure it out before they were, like, married or something - not that they could right now, or that she even wanted to, but that was the only reason she would announce her relationship status to the tabloids - but then she had realized that people only saw what they wanted to see, and right now they wanted to see that Nikki was a bitch and she and Kristen had a feud.
Which, whatever.
"Okay, I was gonna ask where you were, but I don't think I need to anymore," Nikki said into the phone, and Kristen smiled despite herself as she hung up and waited, and greeted Nikki by letting her place a short kiss on her cheek.
Nikki intertwined their arms, although Kristen thought she actually wanted to hold her hand, but Nikki had learned long ago that cheese and Kristen only worked well in private. Nikki was a fast learner - Nikki knew a lot of things about Kristen, like how to make her smile, and how to piss her off, and also how to piss her off without really pissing her off, which was really quite a feat, and Kristen hated her for it, but she kind of loved her anyway.
"You said you were gonna wait for me to pick you up," Nikki pointed out. Ah, yeah-that was-Kristen hadn't remembered that when she had decided to go to the bakery a few minutes earlier. She usually didn't. You can't expect a girl to grasp what you're saying to her when you're also distracting her like Nikki was distracting Kristen when she asked her that.
"I had like, your entire-I mean, you asked me that when I was-you can't hold me responsible for what I say when I'm about to come," Kristen said. Nikki chuckled.
"I'll keep that in mind," Nikki said.
So they went into the store, and as they went into the store, Kristen realized that Nikki had gone straight ahead before calling, which was the kind of thing Nikki did, because she knew it didn't bother Kristen when she did it, even though it bothered Kristen when anyone else did anything even remotely near that stalkerish.
Kristen had thought that she would buy the baked goods herself, but Nikki was there already, talking to the woman like she'd known her forever, which was probably true, because Nikki was obsessed with her apple pie and you can only reach that level of adoration for something that you have either had a lot of times, or only once and lost track of, but Nikki hadn't lost track of this, and she had cakes regularly sent out to her house, so she was on-
"Hey, Becky, can you add another layer of chocolate to that?"
-a first-name basis with her, so yeah, she'd probably known her for a while.
It happened a lot these days, that Kristen would think she'd do something, and then Nikki went and joined her and did it herself, and meanwhile Kristen stood there, holding onto her arm, wanting to run her fingers through Nikki's hair and not being bothered at all because, what the hell, it wasn't that Nikki thought she would bite the salespeople-not that it would be much of a stretch-but that Nikki liked dealing with them, and Kristen liked not having to deal with them, so it worked out just fine.
Like that theory that you're meant for each other when you like the opposite thing in salads, so you can get one and share it evenly or something, only Kristen didn't really believe that she was meant for Nikki, because that was stupid. It didn't even make sense.
Nikki looked at her and smiled.
"We should sit down," she said, and dragged her to a booth near the window display. The window display was so big that no one going by would notice they were a little famous, so Kristen complied. So they settled, and the woman-Becky, or whatever-brought them a very large slice of some-red-fruit pie and placed it on the middle of the table.
So either it had been a mistake and it was for Nikki, or what's-her-name knew that Nikki was a) into girls, and b) the corniest person ever.
Nikki dug in with her fork and wound up with a huge piece, which she then cut in half with her teeth, making almost obscene sounds as she savoured it, and held the fork out for Kristen to like, lean forward and grab it, or something.
Kristen frowned.
"Come on, we're totally in private," Nikki said around her mouthful, trying not to let any of the sauce fall out. "It's fantastic."
Kristen frowned a little more. She kept wet towels in her purse, she thought, and she believed she'd seen the sign of a restroom when she walked in-it should be right behind her-so she went to grab the piece with her hand, and Nikki took it away and left it on the plate, tilting her head a bit to the left and raising an eyebrow.
But she was smiling. She was smiling and then she chuckled and Kristen felt kind of young.
"You know I don't like public displays of affection," Kristen remarked.
"Fine," Nikki said, and took the rest of the pie in her mouth before handing the fork over to her. "But I've known Becky for years, baby, you shouldn't feel threatened," she said with a playful smile.
"Don't call me-" Kristen started, but Nikki was waiting for her to finish, so she didn't finish the sentence. It wasn't like she hadn't said the same thing before. So she took a bite of the pie, and it was... good, if you liked pie.
Which Kristen did, but she was more of a chocolate cake kind of person.
"What's with the face?" Nikki asked.
"What face?" Kristen mumbled around her fork. Okay, so she was licking the fork. It had cherry sauce in it and it was really sweet and she hadn't had breakfast. And Nikki had licked it first, and Kristen was all of fourteen years old, so sue her.
"You look pissed," Nikki said.
"I'm not," Kristen answered. "This is the face I was born with."
Nikki leant back on the booth and took a swig of her - strawberry smoothie. And then Kristen realized that she had a chocolate one, and she hadn't seen Becky bring them.
Okay, so maybe she really liked the pie.
"Just... smile or something," Nikki said, and she grinned widely as if to illustrate her point, and the side of Kristen's mouth turned upwards before she could stop it, but then she did, because Nikki had way too much power over her, and it had to be stopped.
"Why?" she asked instead. Nikki shrugged and pursed her lips.
"I don't know," she said then. "You look like you don't have an awesome girlfriend." Kristen snorted.
"And I do?"
"Clearly," Nikki stated. "And also, you're the star in a billion-dollar trilogy, and you're young and gorgeous, and did I mention that you have a seriously awesome girlfriend?"
"Yeah, you did," she said, and took another bit of pie. It wasn't as big as she had thought at first. There were like two bites left, and Kristen realized she had eaten most of it. She felt a pang of embarrassment.
"Good. Because you have an awesome girlfriend. And I know the paparazzi camping in front of your house isn't exactly ideal, but it'll pass, and then you'll only have the billions and the awesome girlfriend."
"Really," Kristen said, questioningly.
"Really," Nikki said, and downed the rest of her smoothie. She seemed to be expecting something.
"Ah," Kristen said. "Do you expect me to lick the smoothie off your chin or something?"
Nikki snorted. "I was hoping you would feel tempted."
Kristen shook her head, and Nikki got up and joined her in her side of the booth, because that way she could lean into Kristen and Kristen would look at her eyes and her knees would all go wobbly, and thank God she was sitting because she hated Nikki.
So she leant forward and licked Nikki's lower lip, sucked in the bits of thick pink liquid, which was actually decent for a strawberry smoothie, considering Kristen didn't really like strawberry anything, and the inside of Nikki's mouth tasted like the awesome pie, but even if it hadn't Kristen couldn't have stopped herself from going in deeper, because Nikki had amazingly soft lips, but her tongue was - well, you get the picture.
She didn't realize she had tangled her fingers in Nikki's hair and was halfway up on her lap until she heard a chuckle behind them. Then she became painfully aware of Nikki's hand under her sweater and the one on her thigh, and she coughed as she returned to an appropriate position.
A smile was playing on Becky's face. She must have been over fifty years old, and her hair was graying everywhere-where it was not it looked like it had been a dark shade of chocolate once. Kristen felt welcome, as though she had initiated herself in a club or something, because Becky kept smiling at her like Kristen was the answer to her prayers, and Nikki seemed to be kind of blushing, which Kristen had learned to tell as of late.
Becky probably thought that Nikki was-and Nikki was, actually, that, but Kristen didn't want to think about it.
"Your order is ready," she announced. It had been half ready when they'd showed up, anyway, which made Kristen realize that Nikki had probably called in while Kristen was-brushing her hair or something, and Nikki knew that Kristen didn't like waiting, it was one of the many things she shouldn't have known about her, but the pie had been lovely.
"Thanks," Nikki said, standing up, not bothering to hide her grin, and Kristen fell compelled to at least smile a little, because she didn't want to disappoint a stranger.
That was how things went sometimes, since she'd become whatever she was with Nikki. She didn't want people to warn Nikki against her. She didn't want people to think she liked Nikki any less than Nikki liked her, but it was hard to show when you also wanted them to think you were just friends, and you couldn't decide which one was more important at a given time.
It was one of those things.
They were walking back to Kristen's house for lunch when Kristen felt the sudden need to announce that she was a terrible choice for Nikki.
"You're bad for me?" Nikki said, snorting. "You've seen my movie," she said, as if that explained everything. That was a long time ago, and also the kind of thing people got out of and never wanted to fall back into again. And Kristen was cold and she really liked smoking-she really needed to smoke-and she was... she wasn't exactly the best choice for Nikki, that was all.
"It's not your movie," Kristen remarked, because she didn't want to talk about it anymore.
"It's totally my movie," Nikki said.
"It isn't," Kristen said, and nodded pointedly. Nikki chuckled.
"It's totally my movie. It's the movie of my heart," Nikki said, and Kristen could feel Nikki's arm hold hers tighter. God, she really didn't want to talk about it.
"Well, it did a pretty good job, you know," Kristen said, "for a heart." Nikki shook her head.
"Whatever," she said, and the gesture-the fake arrogance, the raised eyebrows-made Kristen laugh. Dryly, once, but laugh nevertheless. "I've gotten through worse. I can deal with your - softie drugs and your sleep deprivation. Easy," she said matter-of-factly. "You don't have to start sleeping for me, like - I'm good as long as you sleep with me."
Kristen snorted.
"That is a terrible pun."
Nikki raised her eyebrows in a seductive manner, and said, nodding, "I know."
Nikki did know that she had a ridiculous sense of humor sometimes, and the thing with ridiculous senses of humor sometimes was that Kristen laughed because the person was adorable rather than because what they had said was funny, and Nikki made her laugh because of that, and sometimes Kristen thought that maybe Nikki believed she was funny.
But she wasn't, most of the time. And she knew that.
"Wait, what does that even mean?" Kristen said, realizing the way Nikki had said that. Nikki laughed loudly, and a bunch of old women looked at her from the other side of the street, as though she was disrupting their tranquility. Kristen ignored them.
"I don't know," Nikki said. "Pun, kind of rhymes with cunt, there's something there."
Kristen hit her on the arm. "You're stupid," she declared. Nikki was still laughing.
"Hey, don't knock it," she said, trying to catch her breath, and snuggled her head into Kristen's shoulder for a moment. "I mean," she said in a whisper, directly into Kristen's ear, "that's probably why I lo-" She coughed. "-like you."
So they had lunch with Kristen's family, because they'd grown used to Nikki, and her mother loved Nikki more than she loved Kristen, probably. They sat in the living room after and Nikki discussed all sorts of baking recipes with Kristen's mother while Kristen lay with her head on Nikki's lap and had her neck petted.
It was Nikki, and she was home, and she fell asleep for about an hour and when she woke up Nikki was still talking about vanilla cupcakes.
And then they were in Nikki's apartment, and Nikki was eating apple pie like a pig, because she couldn't go to Becky's store without getting one of them, and Kristen was looking at her like she'd never seen her before.
Nikki was digging her fingers into the box to pick up the small slices of apple that had fallen off her piece, and it was Nikki, and they were at home, and Kristen reached over to lick her fingers, because it was Nikki and they were at home.
"This is awful," she cried, hiding her face. Nikki looked down at her like she had blasphemed.
"This is Heaven," Nikki said reverently, and Kristen thought that, as far as profanity went, that was much worse, so she captured Nikki's lips into a kiss, because the apple pie was good. It was her that was awful. She was cold and boring and she usually tasted like nicotine and she liked to lie down on the couch and look at movies without really watching them.
Still, Nikki found things to laugh about. Still, there was probably no one like her, and Kristen didn't want to venture into the world to find out. Still, Kristen wouldn't hurt her, and she would sleep with her and for her and maybe one day she would not look uncomfortable when she smiled. It was getting there. She wasn't smirking now.
She drew away from Nikki, and Nikki smiled, and started to kiss her neck, and came back to the apple pie because she loved the apple pie so much that kissing Kristen could wait.
Kristen could deal with that.
"I think we should cancel poker night," Nikki said, and opened the cupcake box, and handed her a chocolate one with extra icing.
Presumably there were compensations to worrying about someone else. Presumably, Kristen really wasn't as bad as she thought, because Nikki was her own person, and she had gone through a lot, and flair would stick to her forever, if it knew what was good for itself.
"I think so too," Kristen agreed.
And Kristen was smiling into her cupcake now, really smiling, because Nikki was eating apple pie and making obscene noises, and Kristen couldn't help it.
It was Nikki, she thought-and there she was.