I'll Just Admit This To You Now...
work title: what to do with wings
author: pandastacia/panda/sonya
chapter title: taking chances
dedication: For Riz, mostly.
Because she doesn't want to feel like a pedophile because she likes an eleven year old. ;)
& this is also to Sara & Les for being there when I was panicking, either about writing a total of 5000 words or what someone smells like.
notes: So here is eighteen year old Rush, seventeen year old Wesley, sixteen year old Simone, & fifteen year old Pandora! I'll eventually make a timeline, but this happens about seven years after the garden scene & five years before the dance scene.
words: 3124
total words for january: 6446/5000
EDIT: I fixed some of the types & random changes in tense as well as the description of Simone's dress that I posted twice. T_T
I actually finished the 5000 total words before midnight, but I wanted to finish the entire scene before I posted.
This is definitely the longest of any of the three parts I have posted so far & I have to say- I think it might just rival the dancing scene as my favorite.
(Predicting something: yes, Pandora's hair is really that color. It's not a typo & it's not your eyes. Like I've said to Riz & Sara & Les, this all happens in another universe. Hair colors aren't limited to brown, blonde, red, black, & orange. For instance, Duchess has purple hair. I'm planning on other people showing up with different colored hairs because it just makes this world more distinctive. If any of you have read "The House of the Spirits" by Isabel Allende, Rosa has green hair. It's like that.)
Enjoy!
"Follow me."
The young woman did not even pause to look up in her stitch work, needle flying in and out of her template. Even her friend stepping right in front of the triangular window affected her sewing pace. "Not now," she muttered. "We cannot spar until after I finish this. I do not know about you, but I like my head attached to my body. While Mother has, in a way, gotten over my sword practice, she would not be so happy if I didn't complete this."
When Rush opened his mouth, Simone shushed him with a narrow glare directed at him, her hands still working on their task. "No, you are not going to go and use your commanding 'I am the prince' charm on her. She became impervious to it the second time you tried to get her to let me skip organizing the storage closet so we could explore the second basement of the palace."
The green dress she wore was one that her mother had forced into her wardrobe. If it hadn't been for the fact that all of the clothes she had looked just like the one she was wearing, she would have changed. In the summer heat, it made her uncomfortably hot. She did her best to ignore the itchy silk and heat, though, by focusing on her task. It was not a fun one, but one that she had to deal with all the same.
Satisfied that she had given herself enough time, she ignored the slow, methodical movements he made toward her.
At least she did until her work ended up dangling five feet above her head.
"Rush!" Simone exclaimed, her cheeks flushing in anger. Standing up with narrowed eyes, she fisted her hands and propped them on her hips. "I have already explained to you that I will spar with you- once I have finished what Mother wants done. Even your mother is behind her on this. So just give me my sewing back!"
He wore that crooked grin of his, looking like a satisfied cat, happy that he finally had her complete attention. She didn't bother trying to jump for it. He was more than half a foot taller than her and, with those long arms of his, there was no chance of her getting it back by force. Undoubtably, he would only be amused if she tried.
So Simone settled for looking annoyed.
When it didn't look like her annoyance was helping her cause, she huffed and gave up. "Fine, fine," she grumbled, letting her arms rest by her sides. "Just… wipe that look off your face."
"What look?" Rush looked very confused.
"That self-satisfied pompous look. The one you were just wearing. It's so… so…" Simone tried to think of a word to describe exactly how much that look frustrated her, but gave up. "Augh!" She threw her hands up in exasperation.
He laughed a warm sound that made her feel as if someone had lit a match inside her stomach and everything was melting inside. She tensed as it echoed around the entire chamber.
The room was the one she stayed in whenever she resided at the palace. As the heir apparent's best friend, she enjoyed having a chamber right off her room in which to do private things. While Rush had a key to the bedroom, he did not have one to that room, seeing as it was for bathing and other things that was not appropriate for a man to see a woman.
That was what they were now. It was something that she had begun to realize rather late. Just because he was royalty and she his closest friend, they were not an exception to this rule. Although he did have a key to her bedchamber, it was because he stole it from the head housekeeper and made a copy of it before leaving it in a spot where the woman, prone to drinks, would just believe she had missed searching.
But these weird feelings and sensations that she had just recently begun experiencing in Rush's presence made her uncomfortable. She did not know if he had noticed how she was starting to avoid spending alone time with him, but she was.
Even if they were good friends, Simone did not think he thought of her like that. To him, she would always be the one friend that, although not generally allowed, that he had.
His one win against his unstoppable destiny as the future king.
"Simone, turn around."
His words bringing her back to the real world, Simone gave him a suspicious look. "What are you planning?"
Giving her a sigh as a testament to his suffering beneath all of her questions, Rush gave her a depressed look. "After the past seven years as friends, you still don't trust me?"
She gave an unladylike snort. "I trust you implicitly. However, your judgment… not so much."
His woebegone expression sent her into a gale of laughter. "Honestly though! Your idea of fun last year was to see if you could stay standing on the mast of a ship in the middle of the biggest storm ever. You nearly drowned in a hurricane. What kind of good judgment is that? See, I know that you mean well, you often have the most foolhardy of schemes ever created by mankind."
A small pout on his lips, he spun her around. "Come on, 'Mone. Where's your sense of adventure?"
"On the bottom of the moat after you decided to see where all of the tunnels go and made me come with you." She suppressed a shiver as she felt his body press into her from behind along with the effect of his name for him, distracting herself from that with her normal sassy dialogue.
"Psh."
She gave a sigh, but she did not fight him when she felt him lift his hands to her head. The world gradually dimmed from her as the black blindfold Rush gently tied over her eyes blocked all light.
Without her sight, Simone found that she could smell better. The scent of the floor polish of her room flooded her nose. It was similar to the smell of boiled leather, a smell that made her dizzy and nauseous. Walking forward with her hands in front of her, she managed to grasp the doorknob and jerk the door open. It let in fresh air and diluted the smell enough that she could think clearly.
"Come on. That room smells noxious..."
Simone felt him take the lead, gently grasping her wrist in his hand, callouses from practicing with a wooden sword in spars catching on soft skin. Her own hands were lily smooth as her mother forced her to wear leather gloves.
Even as she started walking, she asked, "So you never told me, Rush. Where are you kidnapping me to? And what do you plan on doing about my mother? To reiterate my last point in case you ignored it earlier, I don't think she'll care that you're the prince."
"Don't worry, Simone. She'll probably be fine with you doing this. Stitch work is not the only womanly art."
His tone was slightly mocking. In the years after their first meeting, Rush had tolerated Simone's mother's obsession with stitch work with ill patience though he displayed the upmost grace and respect to Lady Lucas in person. When he explained it to Simone, he mostly said that decorative arts, though considered for women, were unnecessary.
He was more interested in the practical applications of the tasks generally set aside for woman only. "After all," he had asked Simone after one of these meetings with her mother, "what can be done with a doily? It cannot sustain a life. All it does is make things look pretty."
"You had better be looking forward. I will kill you if you let me hit my head on a low ceil-."
Simone yelped as the ground below her seemed to disappear. Falling forward, she crashed into Rush, who was standing right below her. Terror filled her as he instinctively held her around the waist and wobbled from side to side, trying to balance on the small area of stairs and the awkward weight and physical change in his center of mass by holding another person.
Suddenly, they were in the air as Rush jumped off the step he was on before he could toddle off its edge, taking the chance that he could land in a safer position.
Still blind to the world, Simone panted as her heart slowly returned to its normal pace. Her head on his chest, she could feel hear through the silk of Rush's shirt- dark blue like his eyes, if she remembered correctly- his heart. Except, unlike hers, it was not slowing down. Instead, it was still beating like a rabbit's heart.
"Are you okay?" she asked softly as she tried to regain her bearings. Unconsciously, she nuzzled into his shirt, smelling the comforting scent of rainwater, grapefruits, and oranges. She could feel him tense at the action.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
She could not help but be glad she could not see his face and that he could not see her eyes. He'd always said that her eyes were the most expressive part of her face. Even when she didn't blush, Rush could see embarrassment in her eyes. Simone didn't want to know what her eyes would look like if she saw his face. If her eyes were the most expressive, then Rush's face was built out of intensity. He had always felt things so deeply that she could almost swear feel his emotions through the distance and space between them.
Pushing against his chest, Simone gave herself and, by extension, him some space to breathe. "I don't think this blindfold thing is going to work. Why don't you just let me see where we're going?" She gave him the sweetest smile she could manage, but there was not changing Rush's mind once it was made.
The young man- because he was no longer a boy, she was forced to remember- as his fingers, interlaced through hers, tugged her along insistently.
She didn't know where they were anymore. Simone had given up on trying to keep track of the directions after a few times in which Rush seemed to be sending her in circles.
After a while, though, her nose started picking up the familiar scent of rising yeast- whether from making beer or bread, she had no idea-, roasting beef, and other smells often smelled in the dining hall.
A smile bloomed on her face as she figured out where they were going as she heard Rush push open a door. When he let go of her hand, Simone missed his warmth until he swept the piece of cloth off her face.
While her eyes adjusted to the light after ten minutes or so without it, she heard Rush proclaim, "Welcome to the kitchens, 'Mone,"
The kitchens of the Sapienti castle was bustling with people moving through it at breakneck paces in an effort to put together supper. Three long wooden tables stretched down at least thirty feet with space between each so that people could work on either side of the middle table. Pressed against the wall, the outer most tables had several sinks as well as chopping boards. At the middle table, people were stirring, mixing, and plating the dishes that would, in two hour's time, make their way to the dining hall. Fire flickered in the ovens across the room from them.
Everyone in the room was too harried to notice that the Crown Prince was calmly walking past all of the people working furiously on the food. Simone, being dazed in all of the confusion, would have just stood there, wide-eyed, if Rush hadn't called over the din, "Simone! Follow me wouldn't you?"
Half-running in her black slippers with her hands holding the dress out of her way, the confused girl followed her old friend through the mass of cooks into a back room. It was equipped with a table in the middle, a door leading into the supply room, and an oven to the side, where she was surprised to find Pandora and Wesley.
For a few years after the incident with the poison oak, her younger sister had kept herself away from Rush's younger brother. Perhaps it was a fear of retribution or simply wary of another punishment from her father, but Simone had discounted both of these things. More likely was that the youngest Lucas knew that she would have to apologize for her actions if she ever had to talk to him.
Now, things seemed to be much calmer between the two. Perhaps they weren't close like Rush and Simone were- they had been friends for almost half of their lives, after all- but they were, at least, tolerant of each other.
"There you two are." Pandora's light blue hair was slightly frizzy with the oven heat that was coming through the door. Her own dark blue eyes glared at Rush. "What took you so long? It is so hot in here and even His Stiffness was complaining of the heat! Did you get lost? In a broom cupboard, perhaps?"
"That's the heat getting to her head," muttered Wesley. Ever the quiet, studious one, the younger Sapienti brother, he settled for leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. "And I doubt they would do something like that, pipsqueak. They're best friends, not engaged."
"Who are you calling names, you-?!"
"Pandora, control yourself," Simone warned her.
Wesley gave Pandora a smirk, sweeping black hair out of his eyes imperiously.
"Wesley, stop acting like a jerk." Rush pushed him over, causing him to fall to the ground.
"Rush." Simone's warning tone made Rush's face pinch into a pout as he obediently helped his brother up.
"Sorry."
Ignoring the apology, Wesley brushed himself off as dignified as he could, considering he was wearing a white apron like many of the people in the main kitchen were wearing.
"So what are we doing here?" Burning with curiosity, the brunette focused on her best friend, who had obviously brought the four of them together.
"I brought you three here…" Rush, ever dramatic, paused to build suspense.
"To…?" Pandora, as usual, seemed intrigued by whatever Rush did. Unlike his younger brother, he was more easy going and none of the pranks she had tried- like the itching powder she had put in his bed- had ever fazed him.
"Bake cookies."
::::::
Half an hour later, Simone found herself staring at a large bowl of cookie dough. It was just like Rush to go overboard. Certainly making two hundred cookies for a court of twenty was a bit much?
And then there was the matter of baking these cookies…
"Rush?" she called.
"Wha?" The young man rested, slumped on the chair keeping the door of the room closed.
"How do you put cookie dough on a pan?"
"You make it into a ball."
Glancing at all of the cookie dough, she asked, "How far apart on the sheets?"
"About an inch."
"How big are the balls supposed to be?"
She heard him give a sign before she heard the chair creak. Looking over her shoulder, Simone saw him walking up to her.
"Okay, I'll help you make a few. Then you can do the rest on your own. Pandora and Wesley, you two take the other half of the dough. Else Simone will never get this all done."
"Hello! Two hundred cookies, believe it or not, is a lot of cookies."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say," Rush drawled.
Coming up from behind her, he held her small hands in his. She could feel his body heat surround her as he helped her fit just enough cookie dough in her hand for one. His hands enveloped hers as they shaped the cookie into a ball.
"Why can't we make chocolate chip cookies?" she muttered sulkily.
Rush bent down towards her. "What?" His breath tickled the back of her right ear, making her shudder and the hair on the back of her neck prick up.
"I mean, I guess sugar cookies are fine, but chocolate…" Her voice trailed off as the heat of the ovens in the main kitchen and his body heat overwhelmed her. Once again, Simone could barely see straight.
She needed to get out.
Sliding out of his embrace, she ran off to the back room, hoarsely telling Rush that she was going to go get some flour and chocolate chips because, "Chocolate chip cookies are way better than sugar cookies."
In the safe darkness of the supply closet with her head resting on one of the cool metal racks, Simone tried to catch her breath. Her heart was pounding in her head and she couldn't think and she needed space and-.
"Simone."
God, did he know what his voice did to her? It made her heart flutter like a bird that could feel the cage door opening. It made her insides melt again. It made her feel like she was flying in heaven.
It was like love.
"Are you okay?"
The proximity of his voice made her eyes fly open. His face was five inches away, peering into her eyes.
"I'm perfectly fine. I just wanted chocolate," she murmured, looking at him for a second before turning and searching for the flour in an attempt to avoid his searching eyes. "It's sweet."
But Rush, she thought, was not the type to give up.
He grabbed her shoulder and gently but firmly turned her around so that she faced him. Without his eyes leaving hers, he silently leaned down and presses his lips to her forehead.
Nothing different. It was something he'd done many times before
But then his lips trailed from her forehead, across the corner of her right eye and cheekbone until it rests on the corner of her mouth.
It was like they were resting on two different sides of a line, unsure whether to cross it or not. They could stop now, turn away, and pretend that they'd never come this close to toeing it. They could easily play it safe.
Simone had never been the type to go only halfway.
She slowly turned her head to the right so that her lips brush his.
And then there was no stopping as he held her tightly against him as he took more of her than she had ever thought she was capable of giving even as he gave her all he was.
He was sweeter than chocolate, she decided.
"Wes, where did my sister and your brother disappear to?"
TBC
author: pandastacia/panda/sonya
chapter title: taking chances
dedication: For Riz, mostly.
Because she doesn't want to feel like a pedophile because she likes an eleven year old. ;)
& this is also to Sara & Les for being there when I was panicking, either about writing a total of 5000 words or what someone smells like.
notes: So here is eighteen year old Rush, seventeen year old Wesley, sixteen year old Simone, & fifteen year old Pandora! I'll eventually make a timeline, but this happens about seven years after the garden scene & five years before the dance scene.
words: 3124
total words for january: 6446/5000
EDIT: I fixed some of the types & random changes in tense as well as the description of Simone's dress that I posted twice. T_T
I actually finished the 5000 total words before midnight, but I wanted to finish the entire scene before I posted.
This is definitely the longest of any of the three parts I have posted so far & I have to say- I think it might just rival the dancing scene as my favorite.
(Predicting something: yes, Pandora's hair is really that color. It's not a typo & it's not your eyes. Like I've said to Riz & Sara & Les, this all happens in another universe. Hair colors aren't limited to brown, blonde, red, black, & orange. For instance, Duchess has purple hair. I'm planning on other people showing up with different colored hairs because it just makes this world more distinctive. If any of you have read "The House of the Spirits" by Isabel Allende, Rosa has green hair. It's like that.)
Enjoy!
"Follow me."
The young woman did not even pause to look up in her stitch work, needle flying in and out of her template. Even her friend stepping right in front of the triangular window affected her sewing pace. "Not now," she muttered. "We cannot spar until after I finish this. I do not know about you, but I like my head attached to my body. While Mother has, in a way, gotten over my sword practice, she would not be so happy if I didn't complete this."
When Rush opened his mouth, Simone shushed him with a narrow glare directed at him, her hands still working on their task. "No, you are not going to go and use your commanding 'I am the prince' charm on her. She became impervious to it the second time you tried to get her to let me skip organizing the storage closet so we could explore the second basement of the palace."
The green dress she wore was one that her mother had forced into her wardrobe. If it hadn't been for the fact that all of the clothes she had looked just like the one she was wearing, she would have changed. In the summer heat, it made her uncomfortably hot. She did her best to ignore the itchy silk and heat, though, by focusing on her task. It was not a fun one, but one that she had to deal with all the same.
Satisfied that she had given herself enough time, she ignored the slow, methodical movements he made toward her.
At least she did until her work ended up dangling five feet above her head.
"Rush!" Simone exclaimed, her cheeks flushing in anger. Standing up with narrowed eyes, she fisted her hands and propped them on her hips. "I have already explained to you that I will spar with you- once I have finished what Mother wants done. Even your mother is behind her on this. So just give me my sewing back!"
He wore that crooked grin of his, looking like a satisfied cat, happy that he finally had her complete attention. She didn't bother trying to jump for it. He was more than half a foot taller than her and, with those long arms of his, there was no chance of her getting it back by force. Undoubtably, he would only be amused if she tried.
So Simone settled for looking annoyed.
When it didn't look like her annoyance was helping her cause, she huffed and gave up. "Fine, fine," she grumbled, letting her arms rest by her sides. "Just… wipe that look off your face."
"What look?" Rush looked very confused.
"That self-satisfied pompous look. The one you were just wearing. It's so… so…" Simone tried to think of a word to describe exactly how much that look frustrated her, but gave up. "Augh!" She threw her hands up in exasperation.
He laughed a warm sound that made her feel as if someone had lit a match inside her stomach and everything was melting inside. She tensed as it echoed around the entire chamber.
The room was the one she stayed in whenever she resided at the palace. As the heir apparent's best friend, she enjoyed having a chamber right off her room in which to do private things. While Rush had a key to the bedroom, he did not have one to that room, seeing as it was for bathing and other things that was not appropriate for a man to see a woman.
That was what they were now. It was something that she had begun to realize rather late. Just because he was royalty and she his closest friend, they were not an exception to this rule. Although he did have a key to her bedchamber, it was because he stole it from the head housekeeper and made a copy of it before leaving it in a spot where the woman, prone to drinks, would just believe she had missed searching.
But these weird feelings and sensations that she had just recently begun experiencing in Rush's presence made her uncomfortable. She did not know if he had noticed how she was starting to avoid spending alone time with him, but she was.
Even if they were good friends, Simone did not think he thought of her like that. To him, she would always be the one friend that, although not generally allowed, that he had.
His one win against his unstoppable destiny as the future king.
"Simone, turn around."
His words bringing her back to the real world, Simone gave him a suspicious look. "What are you planning?"
Giving her a sigh as a testament to his suffering beneath all of her questions, Rush gave her a depressed look. "After the past seven years as friends, you still don't trust me?"
She gave an unladylike snort. "I trust you implicitly. However, your judgment… not so much."
His woebegone expression sent her into a gale of laughter. "Honestly though! Your idea of fun last year was to see if you could stay standing on the mast of a ship in the middle of the biggest storm ever. You nearly drowned in a hurricane. What kind of good judgment is that? See, I know that you mean well, you often have the most foolhardy of schemes ever created by mankind."
A small pout on his lips, he spun her around. "Come on, 'Mone. Where's your sense of adventure?"
"On the bottom of the moat after you decided to see where all of the tunnels go and made me come with you." She suppressed a shiver as she felt his body press into her from behind along with the effect of his name for him, distracting herself from that with her normal sassy dialogue.
"Psh."
She gave a sigh, but she did not fight him when she felt him lift his hands to her head. The world gradually dimmed from her as the black blindfold Rush gently tied over her eyes blocked all light.
Without her sight, Simone found that she could smell better. The scent of the floor polish of her room flooded her nose. It was similar to the smell of boiled leather, a smell that made her dizzy and nauseous. Walking forward with her hands in front of her, she managed to grasp the doorknob and jerk the door open. It let in fresh air and diluted the smell enough that she could think clearly.
"Come on. That room smells noxious..."
Simone felt him take the lead, gently grasping her wrist in his hand, callouses from practicing with a wooden sword in spars catching on soft skin. Her own hands were lily smooth as her mother forced her to wear leather gloves.
Even as she started walking, she asked, "So you never told me, Rush. Where are you kidnapping me to? And what do you plan on doing about my mother? To reiterate my last point in case you ignored it earlier, I don't think she'll care that you're the prince."
"Don't worry, Simone. She'll probably be fine with you doing this. Stitch work is not the only womanly art."
His tone was slightly mocking. In the years after their first meeting, Rush had tolerated Simone's mother's obsession with stitch work with ill patience though he displayed the upmost grace and respect to Lady Lucas in person. When he explained it to Simone, he mostly said that decorative arts, though considered for women, were unnecessary.
He was more interested in the practical applications of the tasks generally set aside for woman only. "After all," he had asked Simone after one of these meetings with her mother, "what can be done with a doily? It cannot sustain a life. All it does is make things look pretty."
"You had better be looking forward. I will kill you if you let me hit my head on a low ceil-."
Simone yelped as the ground below her seemed to disappear. Falling forward, she crashed into Rush, who was standing right below her. Terror filled her as he instinctively held her around the waist and wobbled from side to side, trying to balance on the small area of stairs and the awkward weight and physical change in his center of mass by holding another person.
Suddenly, they were in the air as Rush jumped off the step he was on before he could toddle off its edge, taking the chance that he could land in a safer position.
Still blind to the world, Simone panted as her heart slowly returned to its normal pace. Her head on his chest, she could feel hear through the silk of Rush's shirt- dark blue like his eyes, if she remembered correctly- his heart. Except, unlike hers, it was not slowing down. Instead, it was still beating like a rabbit's heart.
"Are you okay?" she asked softly as she tried to regain her bearings. Unconsciously, she nuzzled into his shirt, smelling the comforting scent of rainwater, grapefruits, and oranges. She could feel him tense at the action.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
She could not help but be glad she could not see his face and that he could not see her eyes. He'd always said that her eyes were the most expressive part of her face. Even when she didn't blush, Rush could see embarrassment in her eyes. Simone didn't want to know what her eyes would look like if she saw his face. If her eyes were the most expressive, then Rush's face was built out of intensity. He had always felt things so deeply that she could almost swear feel his emotions through the distance and space between them.
Pushing against his chest, Simone gave herself and, by extension, him some space to breathe. "I don't think this blindfold thing is going to work. Why don't you just let me see where we're going?" She gave him the sweetest smile she could manage, but there was not changing Rush's mind once it was made.
The young man- because he was no longer a boy, she was forced to remember- as his fingers, interlaced through hers, tugged her along insistently.
She didn't know where they were anymore. Simone had given up on trying to keep track of the directions after a few times in which Rush seemed to be sending her in circles.
After a while, though, her nose started picking up the familiar scent of rising yeast- whether from making beer or bread, she had no idea-, roasting beef, and other smells often smelled in the dining hall.
A smile bloomed on her face as she figured out where they were going as she heard Rush push open a door. When he let go of her hand, Simone missed his warmth until he swept the piece of cloth off her face.
While her eyes adjusted to the light after ten minutes or so without it, she heard Rush proclaim, "Welcome to the kitchens, 'Mone,"
The kitchens of the Sapienti castle was bustling with people moving through it at breakneck paces in an effort to put together supper. Three long wooden tables stretched down at least thirty feet with space between each so that people could work on either side of the middle table. Pressed against the wall, the outer most tables had several sinks as well as chopping boards. At the middle table, people were stirring, mixing, and plating the dishes that would, in two hour's time, make their way to the dining hall. Fire flickered in the ovens across the room from them.
Everyone in the room was too harried to notice that the Crown Prince was calmly walking past all of the people working furiously on the food. Simone, being dazed in all of the confusion, would have just stood there, wide-eyed, if Rush hadn't called over the din, "Simone! Follow me wouldn't you?"
Half-running in her black slippers with her hands holding the dress out of her way, the confused girl followed her old friend through the mass of cooks into a back room. It was equipped with a table in the middle, a door leading into the supply room, and an oven to the side, where she was surprised to find Pandora and Wesley.
For a few years after the incident with the poison oak, her younger sister had kept herself away from Rush's younger brother. Perhaps it was a fear of retribution or simply wary of another punishment from her father, but Simone had discounted both of these things. More likely was that the youngest Lucas knew that she would have to apologize for her actions if she ever had to talk to him.
Now, things seemed to be much calmer between the two. Perhaps they weren't close like Rush and Simone were- they had been friends for almost half of their lives, after all- but they were, at least, tolerant of each other.
"There you two are." Pandora's light blue hair was slightly frizzy with the oven heat that was coming through the door. Her own dark blue eyes glared at Rush. "What took you so long? It is so hot in here and even His Stiffness was complaining of the heat! Did you get lost? In a broom cupboard, perhaps?"
"That's the heat getting to her head," muttered Wesley. Ever the quiet, studious one, the younger Sapienti brother, he settled for leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. "And I doubt they would do something like that, pipsqueak. They're best friends, not engaged."
"Who are you calling names, you-?!"
"Pandora, control yourself," Simone warned her.
Wesley gave Pandora a smirk, sweeping black hair out of his eyes imperiously.
"Wesley, stop acting like a jerk." Rush pushed him over, causing him to fall to the ground.
"Rush." Simone's warning tone made Rush's face pinch into a pout as he obediently helped his brother up.
"Sorry."
Ignoring the apology, Wesley brushed himself off as dignified as he could, considering he was wearing a white apron like many of the people in the main kitchen were wearing.
"So what are we doing here?" Burning with curiosity, the brunette focused on her best friend, who had obviously brought the four of them together.
"I brought you three here…" Rush, ever dramatic, paused to build suspense.
"To…?" Pandora, as usual, seemed intrigued by whatever Rush did. Unlike his younger brother, he was more easy going and none of the pranks she had tried- like the itching powder she had put in his bed- had ever fazed him.
"Bake cookies."
::::::
Half an hour later, Simone found herself staring at a large bowl of cookie dough. It was just like Rush to go overboard. Certainly making two hundred cookies for a court of twenty was a bit much?
And then there was the matter of baking these cookies…
"Rush?" she called.
"Wha?" The young man rested, slumped on the chair keeping the door of the room closed.
"How do you put cookie dough on a pan?"
"You make it into a ball."
Glancing at all of the cookie dough, she asked, "How far apart on the sheets?"
"About an inch."
"How big are the balls supposed to be?"
She heard him give a sign before she heard the chair creak. Looking over her shoulder, Simone saw him walking up to her.
"Okay, I'll help you make a few. Then you can do the rest on your own. Pandora and Wesley, you two take the other half of the dough. Else Simone will never get this all done."
"Hello! Two hundred cookies, believe it or not, is a lot of cookies."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say," Rush drawled.
Coming up from behind her, he held her small hands in his. She could feel his body heat surround her as he helped her fit just enough cookie dough in her hand for one. His hands enveloped hers as they shaped the cookie into a ball.
"Why can't we make chocolate chip cookies?" she muttered sulkily.
Rush bent down towards her. "What?" His breath tickled the back of her right ear, making her shudder and the hair on the back of her neck prick up.
"I mean, I guess sugar cookies are fine, but chocolate…" Her voice trailed off as the heat of the ovens in the main kitchen and his body heat overwhelmed her. Once again, Simone could barely see straight.
She needed to get out.
Sliding out of his embrace, she ran off to the back room, hoarsely telling Rush that she was going to go get some flour and chocolate chips because, "Chocolate chip cookies are way better than sugar cookies."
In the safe darkness of the supply closet with her head resting on one of the cool metal racks, Simone tried to catch her breath. Her heart was pounding in her head and she couldn't think and she needed space and-.
"Simone."
God, did he know what his voice did to her? It made her heart flutter like a bird that could feel the cage door opening. It made her insides melt again. It made her feel like she was flying in heaven.
It was like love.
"Are you okay?"
The proximity of his voice made her eyes fly open. His face was five inches away, peering into her eyes.
"I'm perfectly fine. I just wanted chocolate," she murmured, looking at him for a second before turning and searching for the flour in an attempt to avoid his searching eyes. "It's sweet."
But Rush, she thought, was not the type to give up.
He grabbed her shoulder and gently but firmly turned her around so that she faced him. Without his eyes leaving hers, he silently leaned down and presses his lips to her forehead.
Nothing different. It was something he'd done many times before
But then his lips trailed from her forehead, across the corner of her right eye and cheekbone until it rests on the corner of her mouth.
It was like they were resting on two different sides of a line, unsure whether to cross it or not. They could stop now, turn away, and pretend that they'd never come this close to toeing it. They could easily play it safe.
Simone had never been the type to go only halfway.
She slowly turned her head to the right so that her lips brush his.
And then there was no stopping as he held her tightly against him as he took more of her than she had ever thought she was capable of giving even as he gave her all he was.
He was sweeter than chocolate, she decided.
"Wes, where did my sister and your brother disappear to?"
TBC