Fic: See How Far the First One Takes Us (Z/Tennesseee)
no_tags reveals went up yesterday. no_tags was harder than I thought it was going to be/than it should have been; for some reason keeping bandom stories to ficlet length isn't easy, which is weird because before bandom, short, one-shot character study type fics were pretty much all I wrote. Anyway, I started and abandoned six different fics with two different pairings (the other pairing was Z/Laena) and then finally ended up with a combination of attempts one, three and six. *hands* So I guess this was attempt 7? /o\ But it came together eventually.
Title: See How Far the First One Takes Us
Prompt 31. Z/anyone, preferably a lady; diner. (Z/Tennessee)
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Notes: Thanks to inlovewithnight for cheerleading. She keeps saying she doesn't know much about The Like, but I'm pretty sure she will before I'm through with her.
1) 2001
They went out for breakfast the morning after the night they met. The cake situation had gone so poorly the night before that Z didn't want to tempt fate by trying to cook again, no matter how much Tennessee insisted that breakfast would be easier. She'd started talking about eggs and waffles and Z knew that those things involved frying pans and frying pans were dangerous. She warily eyed the kitchen and the charred cake still sitting on the counter waiting for her to try to scrape it out of the cake pan and shuddered before closing the door and dragging Tennessee and Charlotte out of the house. None of them were driving yet, but there was that diner her dad liked within walking distance. Z thought that the service sucked and the food was overpriced, but the food was good too and, importantly, way better than anything they were going to manage, even if they managed food without setting the kitchen on fire.
Tennessee and Charlotte spent most of the meal giggling and shoving on each other, then looking at Z and having conversations with their eyes. They'd told her they didn't have a lot of friends (sometimes Z felt like she didn't have any), but they were clearly so close and the history between them made her feel a little twitchy and unsure, until Charlotte turned her dark-eyed smile on Z and said, "You're in, right?"
Z looked at Tennessee, who was smiling at her encouragingly, her hair glinting gold and bright in the light from the window; something skipped in Z's chest and she had to look away. She ducked her head and said, "Yes, I told you that last night."
Tennessee kicked at her ankle under the table and said, "We're just checking. The is going to be great, you'll see."
The look Tennessee and Charlotte exchanged was secretive and warm, but it didn't exclude Z, and Z believed her.
2) 2005
The night Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking dropped, they celebrated, just the three of them, by getting in the car and driving east. "Because you can see everything out there," Tennessee said and she was the one driving, so Z didn't argue. Charlotte passed out in the backseat by midnight and she didn't even wake up when Z put the CD on and turned the stereo all the way up, leaning her head against the window to watch the stars as they got further from the city and the sky opened up. She got up on her knees on the seat and stuck her head out the window and sang along into the wind until Tennessee reached out and caught her hand and tugged her back, smiling when Z looked over.
"Don't you think we're being a little bit full of ourselves?"
Her voice was teasing, but Z's response was to reach over and crank the radio up higher and then slide over next to Tennessee and sing "Hey, haven't you heard, you have the right to make a move" in her ear until Tennessee laughed and started drumming on the steering wheel with her left hand. She was still holding Z's with her right, and Z dropped her head down onto Tenn's shoulder and watched the highway lines in the headlights through the windshield and planned headlining tours in her head.
They stopped at a diner in Arizona before they turned around. They ate apple pie a la mode for breakfast as they watched the sun come the rest of the way up, glinting off the horizon, and they made Charlotte drive while they slept in the car on the way home.
3) 2006
Z kissed Tennessee in an Ihop in Atlanta in August. She was still drunk on vodka and adrenaline and touring with fucking Muse. She wasn't so drunk that she didn't know it was a questionable move at best, but they were hidden behind a partition where no one could see them and she was drunk and exhilarated enough not to care that much.
The first time she'd ever thought about kissing Tennessee she was fourteen and she'd woken up in her parents' bed with her arm going numb because Tennessee's head was pillowed on her shoulder. When she'd tried to move her arm, Tennesse had blinked her eyes open and smiled and Z's mouth had gone dry and she'd been thinking about it on and off ever since. She hadn't thought about it seriously in years, but then there was this moment, when they were alone at the table and Tennessee was laughing at the way Z had managed to drip syrup all over herself and Z, very intentionally, dipped her fingers in the maple syrup puddle and wiped it on Tennessee's cheek, which made Tenn widen her eyes in faux shock before it made her laugh harder. And Z stared at her, at the shine in her eyes, and thought, very consciously, Oh, what the hell? before sliding over and tugging Tenn's head down toward her.
It was light, barely anything, and Tenn didn't freeze in shock and she didn't pull away. Z was already shivering in the air conditioning of the restaurant, from the sweat of southern summer drying against her skin, but she shook even harder when Tennessee wrapped one hand around her elbow to hold her in place. Z slipped her hand onto Tenn's shoulder, her fingers sticky with syrup against Tenn's skin, and Tenn pulled her closer for a second before she broke away, looking at Z with wide eyes. Charlotte found them staring at each other when she came back and she just raised her eyebrows as she slid into the booth and asked, "Everything okay?"
Z looked at Tennessee out of the corner of her eye and Tennessee grinned and looked down, her shoulders shaking again with silent laughter. Nothing ever came of it, not really, it never turned into a thing, but it wasn't their only kiss either, and Z had moments, always unexpected and catching her by surprise, when she would look at Tennessee and wonder what if?
4) January 2009
Z was shaking so hard she could barely even lift her cup without spilling it and the hinge of her jaw was starting to ache from the clench of her teeth.
"Breathe, Z," Tennessee said, but her voice was faint, and Z started, feeling guilty and jarred; if she felt like she felt, then Tenn had to feel worse.
Z inhaled slowly and looked up at Tennessee, who looked ashen sitting across the table. Z unclenched her fist and then reached out her hand.
"I'm breathing, okay? Are you okay?"
Tennessee sighed and looked down at her untouched food. She'd drowned the fries in ketchup and then eaten maybe two of them. The smell of Z's veggie burger turned her stomach, and she wasn't sure why they'd bothered to order at all.
Tennessee shook her head and said, "She can't have meant it."
She didn't sound really convinced though, and Z didn't know what to say because she was pretty sure that Charlotte had meant every word. Maybe she wouldn't, later, when she calmed down, maybe later Z wouldn't mean the things she'd said anymore either, but she was pretty sure that they both meant it enough that they couldn't take it back. She could feel it, the final snap of the tension. It had been building for so long that she wasn't sure she wouldn't fly apart without its confines; she was half sure that was exactly what was going to happen, but there was no coming back from this, she knew that.
She wanted to tell Tennessee that the worst was over, but she didn't trust her voice and, looking at Tenn's face in the pale light from the window, she suddenly wasn't sure that the worst was over at all.
She said, quietly, "I think she did, Tenn," and thought, selfishly, Don't choose her; don't want what she wants; don't leave me too.
Tennessee just nodded, said "I know" and looked away.
5) October 2009
Z tapped her fork impatiently against the side of her water glass, waiting for the server, or for Tenn and Laena to come back from where they disappeared to. She dug her phone out of her bag and tweeted the picture of herself with the Grand Canyon in the background that Tenn insisted on taking. It wasn't the best picture of her, but she liked it anyway. She looked like she felt, chilled and wind-blown and standing on the edge.
She was tired, but it was the restless end of tour tired; it was coming down from a high tired. Her emotions were bottoming out and she felt rubbed raw, like her body might give out on her, but her head was such a dizzy rush that she couldn't sleep at night, too hyper-aware of every sound and the movement of the bus and the left-over adrenaline buzzing just under her skin. She liked the way she ached to her bones with all the reminders. Her back hurt from where she got thrown on her ass during their rodeo prank and her jaw was going to ache for days from hitting that guy in the face with her face when she misjudged her first stage dive. There was a bruise on her hip from quick hands grabbing her too hard to keep her from falling and she liked the way it throbbed, dull and hot, when she pressed her fingers against it.
She knew herself at the end of tour. She knew the antsy, jittery feeling and the way she could get loud and abrasive, overcompensating for the disorientation of the sudden stop, but this was as bad as it had ever been. She'd been so glad to be out there again and to feel like she was moving; it had been so long since she'd had any momentum at all. But she was always okay when she was moving too fast to think about it. She needed things to hold onto when she wasn't. She even felt like she had them, standing there at the railing, staring down into the Grand Canyon with the wind stealing her breath away, feeling Tennessee and Laena pressed up on either side of her, but it was still weird, a little, with Reni gone.
And then there were three she thought. There was still some guilt in that, lingering underneath, waiting to pounce.
She sighed and dropped her head against the window, only looking up when Tennessee finally sat down and looked down pitifully at the empty placemat. "No food yet?"
Z shrugged. "No food and no Laena."
Tennessee shifted a little uncomfortably and coughed, looking at Z out of the corner of her eye. Z sat up a straighter and narrowed her eyes.
"What?"
"Laena's coming. I wanted to talk to you."
"About what?"
"You're being really weird, Z."
"I don't think I'm being weird."
Tennessee cocked her head to one side and studied Z intently until Z shifted in her seat, edging over further against the wall and looking out the window. There was a saguaro cactus planted in the strip of dirt running along the side of the diner next to the window. "I'm not" she said to the cactus.
Tennessee followed her gaze. "Remember that time we drove to Arizona for pie?" she asked and Z swallowed around the lump in her throat.
"We drove out of the city to see the stars," Z says, "We drove to Arizona because you wanted to keep driving."
Tenn smiled, tight and wary. "You are being weird, you know. Weirder than usual. You're being weird because this is the first tour without Charlotte and now we're slowing down and you have time to think about how different everything is. You miss her and you're pissed off and you're being a little bit clingy at Laena."
"I'm not," Z said, but she was startled and annoyed and absurdly grateful at how well Tenn knew her.
Tennessee held up her thumb and forefinger with maybe half an inch of space between them. "A little bit."
Z sighed and folded her arms over her chest.
Tenn said, "Oh sorry. I was going to be more tactful, but sometimes that doesn't work as well with you." She laced her fingers together and leaned over the table toward Z, staring until Z looked at her.
"What?" Z asked again, and she could hear the snap in her own voice; she didn't mean for it to be there. Then she sighed and looked out the window again, "Reni isn't going to stay either, you know."
Tenn nodded. "I know. Maybe Laena won't either." When Z looked up sharply, Tenn shrugged. "She fits with us. I really think she will stay, but she might not."
Z shook her head "I'm not worried, Tenn." She really didn't think she was, not anymore. She was still sad, though, and angry under that, and reeling as much from memories of the end of other tours as from the end of this one.
"Okay," Tennessee said, and there was something in her voice, something soft that made Z look up, the voice that always made Z think about kissing her again, that made her wonder, just in that moment, why the kissing had always been a game and why they always stopped themselves there. "Okay," Tennessee said again slowly, "Well, what if I said that I was?"
"What?" Z asked again.
"I'll promise I'll stay. I'll promise, but only if you will." Tenn smiled and Z looked away from the warmth in her eyes, but she reached out her hand across the table blindly.
"I promise," Z said, and Tennessee laced their fingers together and squeezed.
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Title: See How Far the First One Takes Us
Prompt 31. Z/anyone, preferably a lady; diner. (Z/Tennessee)
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Notes: Thanks to inlovewithnight for cheerleading. She keeps saying she doesn't know much about The Like, but I'm pretty sure she will before I'm through with her.
1) 2001
They went out for breakfast the morning after the night they met. The cake situation had gone so poorly the night before that Z didn't want to tempt fate by trying to cook again, no matter how much Tennessee insisted that breakfast would be easier. She'd started talking about eggs and waffles and Z knew that those things involved frying pans and frying pans were dangerous. She warily eyed the kitchen and the charred cake still sitting on the counter waiting for her to try to scrape it out of the cake pan and shuddered before closing the door and dragging Tennessee and Charlotte out of the house. None of them were driving yet, but there was that diner her dad liked within walking distance. Z thought that the service sucked and the food was overpriced, but the food was good too and, importantly, way better than anything they were going to manage, even if they managed food without setting the kitchen on fire.
Tennessee and Charlotte spent most of the meal giggling and shoving on each other, then looking at Z and having conversations with their eyes. They'd told her they didn't have a lot of friends (sometimes Z felt like she didn't have any), but they were clearly so close and the history between them made her feel a little twitchy and unsure, until Charlotte turned her dark-eyed smile on Z and said, "You're in, right?"
Z looked at Tennessee, who was smiling at her encouragingly, her hair glinting gold and bright in the light from the window; something skipped in Z's chest and she had to look away. She ducked her head and said, "Yes, I told you that last night."
Tennessee kicked at her ankle under the table and said, "We're just checking. The is going to be great, you'll see."
The look Tennessee and Charlotte exchanged was secretive and warm, but it didn't exclude Z, and Z believed her.
2) 2005
The night Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking dropped, they celebrated, just the three of them, by getting in the car and driving east. "Because you can see everything out there," Tennessee said and she was the one driving, so Z didn't argue. Charlotte passed out in the backseat by midnight and she didn't even wake up when Z put the CD on and turned the stereo all the way up, leaning her head against the window to watch the stars as they got further from the city and the sky opened up. She got up on her knees on the seat and stuck her head out the window and sang along into the wind until Tennessee reached out and caught her hand and tugged her back, smiling when Z looked over.
"Don't you think we're being a little bit full of ourselves?"
Her voice was teasing, but Z's response was to reach over and crank the radio up higher and then slide over next to Tennessee and sing "Hey, haven't you heard, you have the right to make a move" in her ear until Tennessee laughed and started drumming on the steering wheel with her left hand. She was still holding Z's with her right, and Z dropped her head down onto Tenn's shoulder and watched the highway lines in the headlights through the windshield and planned headlining tours in her head.
They stopped at a diner in Arizona before they turned around. They ate apple pie a la mode for breakfast as they watched the sun come the rest of the way up, glinting off the horizon, and they made Charlotte drive while they slept in the car on the way home.
3) 2006
Z kissed Tennessee in an Ihop in Atlanta in August. She was still drunk on vodka and adrenaline and touring with fucking Muse. She wasn't so drunk that she didn't know it was a questionable move at best, but they were hidden behind a partition where no one could see them and she was drunk and exhilarated enough not to care that much.
The first time she'd ever thought about kissing Tennessee she was fourteen and she'd woken up in her parents' bed with her arm going numb because Tennessee's head was pillowed on her shoulder. When she'd tried to move her arm, Tennesse had blinked her eyes open and smiled and Z's mouth had gone dry and she'd been thinking about it on and off ever since. She hadn't thought about it seriously in years, but then there was this moment, when they were alone at the table and Tennessee was laughing at the way Z had managed to drip syrup all over herself and Z, very intentionally, dipped her fingers in the maple syrup puddle and wiped it on Tennessee's cheek, which made Tenn widen her eyes in faux shock before it made her laugh harder. And Z stared at her, at the shine in her eyes, and thought, very consciously, Oh, what the hell? before sliding over and tugging Tenn's head down toward her.
It was light, barely anything, and Tenn didn't freeze in shock and she didn't pull away. Z was already shivering in the air conditioning of the restaurant, from the sweat of southern summer drying against her skin, but she shook even harder when Tennessee wrapped one hand around her elbow to hold her in place. Z slipped her hand onto Tenn's shoulder, her fingers sticky with syrup against Tenn's skin, and Tenn pulled her closer for a second before she broke away, looking at Z with wide eyes. Charlotte found them staring at each other when she came back and she just raised her eyebrows as she slid into the booth and asked, "Everything okay?"
Z looked at Tennessee out of the corner of her eye and Tennessee grinned and looked down, her shoulders shaking again with silent laughter. Nothing ever came of it, not really, it never turned into a thing, but it wasn't their only kiss either, and Z had moments, always unexpected and catching her by surprise, when she would look at Tennessee and wonder what if?
4) January 2009
Z was shaking so hard she could barely even lift her cup without spilling it and the hinge of her jaw was starting to ache from the clench of her teeth.
"Breathe, Z," Tennessee said, but her voice was faint, and Z started, feeling guilty and jarred; if she felt like she felt, then Tenn had to feel worse.
Z inhaled slowly and looked up at Tennessee, who looked ashen sitting across the table. Z unclenched her fist and then reached out her hand.
"I'm breathing, okay? Are you okay?"
Tennessee sighed and looked down at her untouched food. She'd drowned the fries in ketchup and then eaten maybe two of them. The smell of Z's veggie burger turned her stomach, and she wasn't sure why they'd bothered to order at all.
Tennessee shook her head and said, "She can't have meant it."
She didn't sound really convinced though, and Z didn't know what to say because she was pretty sure that Charlotte had meant every word. Maybe she wouldn't, later, when she calmed down, maybe later Z wouldn't mean the things she'd said anymore either, but she was pretty sure that they both meant it enough that they couldn't take it back. She could feel it, the final snap of the tension. It had been building for so long that she wasn't sure she wouldn't fly apart without its confines; she was half sure that was exactly what was going to happen, but there was no coming back from this, she knew that.
She wanted to tell Tennessee that the worst was over, but she didn't trust her voice and, looking at Tenn's face in the pale light from the window, she suddenly wasn't sure that the worst was over at all.
She said, quietly, "I think she did, Tenn," and thought, selfishly, Don't choose her; don't want what she wants; don't leave me too.
Tennessee just nodded, said "I know" and looked away.
5) October 2009
Z tapped her fork impatiently against the side of her water glass, waiting for the server, or for Tenn and Laena to come back from where they disappeared to. She dug her phone out of her bag and tweeted the picture of herself with the Grand Canyon in the background that Tenn insisted on taking. It wasn't the best picture of her, but she liked it anyway. She looked like she felt, chilled and wind-blown and standing on the edge.
She was tired, but it was the restless end of tour tired; it was coming down from a high tired. Her emotions were bottoming out and she felt rubbed raw, like her body might give out on her, but her head was such a dizzy rush that she couldn't sleep at night, too hyper-aware of every sound and the movement of the bus and the left-over adrenaline buzzing just under her skin. She liked the way she ached to her bones with all the reminders. Her back hurt from where she got thrown on her ass during their rodeo prank and her jaw was going to ache for days from hitting that guy in the face with her face when she misjudged her first stage dive. There was a bruise on her hip from quick hands grabbing her too hard to keep her from falling and she liked the way it throbbed, dull and hot, when she pressed her fingers against it.
She knew herself at the end of tour. She knew the antsy, jittery feeling and the way she could get loud and abrasive, overcompensating for the disorientation of the sudden stop, but this was as bad as it had ever been. She'd been so glad to be out there again and to feel like she was moving; it had been so long since she'd had any momentum at all. But she was always okay when she was moving too fast to think about it. She needed things to hold onto when she wasn't. She even felt like she had them, standing there at the railing, staring down into the Grand Canyon with the wind stealing her breath away, feeling Tennessee and Laena pressed up on either side of her, but it was still weird, a little, with Reni gone.
And then there were three she thought. There was still some guilt in that, lingering underneath, waiting to pounce.
She sighed and dropped her head against the window, only looking up when Tennessee finally sat down and looked down pitifully at the empty placemat. "No food yet?"
Z shrugged. "No food and no Laena."
Tennessee shifted a little uncomfortably and coughed, looking at Z out of the corner of her eye. Z sat up a straighter and narrowed her eyes.
"What?"
"Laena's coming. I wanted to talk to you."
"About what?"
"You're being really weird, Z."
"I don't think I'm being weird."
Tennessee cocked her head to one side and studied Z intently until Z shifted in her seat, edging over further against the wall and looking out the window. There was a saguaro cactus planted in the strip of dirt running along the side of the diner next to the window. "I'm not" she said to the cactus.
Tennessee followed her gaze. "Remember that time we drove to Arizona for pie?" she asked and Z swallowed around the lump in her throat.
"We drove out of the city to see the stars," Z says, "We drove to Arizona because you wanted to keep driving."
Tenn smiled, tight and wary. "You are being weird, you know. Weirder than usual. You're being weird because this is the first tour without Charlotte and now we're slowing down and you have time to think about how different everything is. You miss her and you're pissed off and you're being a little bit clingy at Laena."
"I'm not," Z said, but she was startled and annoyed and absurdly grateful at how well Tenn knew her.
Tennessee held up her thumb and forefinger with maybe half an inch of space between them. "A little bit."
Z sighed and folded her arms over her chest.
Tenn said, "Oh sorry. I was going to be more tactful, but sometimes that doesn't work as well with you." She laced her fingers together and leaned over the table toward Z, staring until Z looked at her.
"What?" Z asked again, and she could hear the snap in her own voice; she didn't mean for it to be there. Then she sighed and looked out the window again, "Reni isn't going to stay either, you know."
Tenn nodded. "I know. Maybe Laena won't either." When Z looked up sharply, Tenn shrugged. "She fits with us. I really think she will stay, but she might not."
Z shook her head "I'm not worried, Tenn." She really didn't think she was, not anymore. She was still sad, though, and angry under that, and reeling as much from memories of the end of other tours as from the end of this one.
"Okay," Tennessee said, and there was something in her voice, something soft that made Z look up, the voice that always made Z think about kissing her again, that made her wonder, just in that moment, why the kissing had always been a game and why they always stopped themselves there. "Okay," Tennessee said again slowly, "Well, what if I said that I was?"
"What?" Z asked again.
"I'll promise I'll stay. I'll promise, but only if you will." Tenn smiled and Z looked away from the warmth in her eyes, but she reached out her hand across the table blindly.
"I promise," Z said, and Tennessee laced their fingers together and squeezed.
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