'Storm in the Heartland' [Angie Harmon/Stephanie March, Angie Harmon/Kristin Chenoweth] [1/2]
Title: "Storm in the Heartland"
Author: that_1_incident
Fandom: Misc. actress RPF
Art: HERE, by karneol_vision
Rating: R
Warnings: Het, sexual themes
Pairing: Angie Harmon/Stephanie March, Angie Harmon/Kristin Chenoweth, (Angie Harmon/Jason Sehorn)
Word Count: ~15,000
Summary: In the late 80s, high schooler Angie Harmon dreams of becoming a model, traveling the world, and wooing hunky Kieran March from the senior class. But soon after her modeling aspirations begin to take flight, she finds herself unexpectedly falling for another member of the March family - Kieran’s younger sister. We follow her from the tumult of a lesbian relationship conducted against the backdrop of the conservative Texas heartland to her time in New York City, where she meets the footballer she goes on to raise a family with, and finally to Hollywood, where she makes a friend who may turn out to be a little more than that.
Disclaimer: I’ll take Things That Aren’t Real for 500, Alex.
Author's Notes: Written for rpf_big_bang; my artist was karneol_vision. Although most of this isn’t true to life, certain elements are. Stephanie and Angie did go to school together, Angie did win that competition to grace the cover of the October 1987 issue of Seventeen with her presence (the other finalists’ names are real too), the Dillard’s ad is here and a lot of the early Jason stuff was taken from this article. Angie and Stephanie ran into each other at an art auction in 2001; photo here. The Leno appearance is here, and Angie and Jason really did serve beef and chicken, in case anybody was desperately interested in finding out the validity of that little detail. The second got milk? ad Angie did with her children is here. Also, Kristin actually tweeted Angie the day they first met, although whether or not any subsequent make-out sessions occurred remains to be seen. Oh, and the title of this is a, um. Billy Ray Cyrus song?
Click on the picture to see the rest of karneol_vision's fantastic artwork:
---<---<---@
When Angie was in high school, she wanted to be a model. She and two of her friends - it was all they talked about. She wanted to be Linda Evangelista more than she wanted a car. She read Seventeen religiously, gazed enviously at the models who couldn’t have been much older than her and wondered what it would take to get where they were. When she looks back on it later, she realizes most of them never went anywhere, that Seventeen was the peak of their modeling careers and they went on to become regular people, nurses and convenience store workers and the ladies who spritz you in Macy’s, but at the time she would’ve traded places with any of them in a heartbeat.
Her best friends’ names were Beth and Calleigh, and together they dreamed of being the most famous modeling trio the world had ever seen. The press would call them ABC, and they’d be notorious for turning down offers of work unless all three of them were to be included, which might be difficult sometimes but they’d be so well renowned that everyone would agree in the end. Beth plans to marry David Hasselhoff and Calleigh’s less specific, maintaining “if he has a British accent, he’ll do just fine.”
As for Angie, her sights are set on Kieran March in the senior class, even though anyone in Highland Park will tell her it’s hopeless because he’s been with Brittany Levesque for as long as anybody can remember. She gets that, she’s accepted it, but it’s her secret hope that he’ll walk past a newsstand one day, recognize her on the cover of Vogue and upend his whole life in order to track her down and marry her.
The day the 1987 Seventeen cover model contest comes out, Angie’s beside herself. She sees it first because her house is literally down the street from her high school, and she calls Beth and Calleigh’s houses so many times while she’s waiting for them to get home that she thinks she’s starting to irritate their parents.
“We’ll have her call you, Angela, just like we said the first five times,” Calleigh’s dad tells her firmly, and she’s so keyed-up she can’t do anything but pace the same four feet of floor in front of the phone. When it finally rings, she jumps sky high.
--
They pool their money to get professional photos taken at a studio downtown, and when Beth calls them “head shots” they all shiver with the excitement of how professional that sounds.
“If one of us wins,” says Calleigh as they’re standing outside the post office, gripping the manila envelopes with all of their dreams inside them, “we gotta remember the ABC pact, okay?”
They promise, and Angie’s heart literally aches because of how badly she wants this.
--
They don’t find out whether they got through for a really long time, to the point where Angie thinks none of them must have made it because surely they’d have heard something by now, but there isn’t anything in the magazine announcing the finalists and as long as that continues to be the case, she and her friends hold out some hope.
--
The day Angie gets home from drill team practice and opens the mailbox to find an envelope with SEVENTEEN embossed on it in those block-print letters everyone thought were the bee’s knees in the late 80s, she thinks it’s a joke. Her first reaction is pure rage, because people know how important this is to her and anyone who pokes fun at her dreams like this is cruel beyond measure, but her anger quickly dissipates when she slides out the contents of the envelope and sees the official magazine letterhead.
She doesn’t remember anything for a little while after that, but her mom said she cried.
--
Right after school gets out for the summer, Seventeen flies Angie and her mom out to New York City. Angie appreciates the timing - she’s in mourning over Kieran graduating, and the rumors that he’s going to ask Brittany to marry him aren’t making things any easier.
To make things worse, her friends are being weird. Neither of them got through to the finals, but she thought they’d be happy that she did - and they are, kind of, or at least they act like it, but the enthusiasm isn’t there. She has copies of their head shots packed in her suitcase that she plans to plead the Seventeen people to consider, but aside from that, she’s not sure what else she’s meant to do.
--
New York is at once familiar and foreign to Angie. She recognizes it from Highlander and Desperately Seeking Susan, Different Strokes and The Jeffersons, yet it looks different somehow when she’s seeing it all around her instead of through the lens of a camera or the box of a TV screen. She’s enchanted by it - the sights, the smells, and the fact that it’s never quiet even in the dead of nighttime. Whether she wins the contest or not, the fact that she got to visit this city was reason enough for her not to regret entering, all friendship drama aside, and she vows to come back someday.
None of the other seven finalists are from the south and they all adore her accent, which is funny because to her, Claudine’s Boston twang is the strangest, coolest thing she’s ever heard. The eight of them quickly grow close, which is surprising considering they’re all in direct competition with each other, but in spite of that they can’t help but let the experience bring them together. Years later, she’ll think back to this time while watching an American Idol finale, recognizing the same kinship among the last two contestants standing - each person wanting desperately to win, but recognizing and respecting their opponent on both a professional and personal level.
She calls Beth from the hotel because Calleigh’s on vacation, and her friend says all the right things but her tone sounds a little too strained to actually be sincere. Angie can picture her standing by the phone with that stretched, too-bright smile on her face - the one that doesn’t reach her eyes. The conversation doesn’t last for long, and after she hangs up, she realizes no matter what happens with the contest, the three girls will never truly be close again.
--
Angie doesn’t share her ABC issues with the rest of the girls, but Claudine’s one of those freakishly empathetic people who can pick up how someone’s feeling from twenty paces away. She touches Angie on the shoulder after their tour of the Seventeen offices is over, and Angie knows that unlike with the other girls or even her mom, there’s no persuading Claudine that everything’s fine.
There’s a courtyard sandwiched between the building where the magazine is based and the skyscraper next door to it, and Claudine leads her over to one of the stone benches. It was a hot day that day - which Angie remembers, looking back, because of her surprise over the cold smoothness of the granite.
She’s not sure what to say at first, but Claudine murmurs “Tell me” and that’s all she needs.
--
Angie’s a little embarrassed about crying but Claudine is totally cool with it, and it feels good to have someone to talk to in this strange, bustling home away from home. City life is so different. Not necessarily a bad kind of different; it’s just a lot to take in. Although she lives in the suburbs, she’s been to Dallas before, but it’s nothing like New York is. She doesn’t think anywhere is like New York.
One night, they take a trip to the Empire State Building, the whole group of them, and she can’t speak the whole time she’s up on the observation deck. It’s like her breath got carried off with the wind that slices around them, so much harsher now than when they were eighty-six floors below on the sidewalk. Every time she thinks she might be able to say something, she catches sight of something else that takes the words away - the Chrysler Building spearing the sky with its distinctive silver spire, the glittering bridges looming from the inky blackness of the Hudson.
Not having a boyfriend has never really bothered her before, but up here, she feels the absence keenly. Experiencing this without someone special by her side feels blasphemous, somehow - like she’s missing an opportunity, or can’t fully grasp it.
She grabs Claudine’s hand wordlessly because the other girl just happens to be nearest to her, and Claudine’s pale skin flushes crimson under the bright white lights.
--
Claudine pulls her aside again the day they’re due to leave, while everyone’s in each other’s rooms at the hotel, chatting and packing and reminiscing about their time together. Angie figures she wants to check up on the ABC drama until the other girl gets this look on her face that Angie’s never seen on her before.
“I just… wanted to tell you,” she begins, “Not because I expect anything, but because you should know.”
“Okay…” Angie says cluelessly. She’s kind of morbidly fascinated by the way Claudine’s almond-shaped eyes keep flickering between her and the floor.
“I know you’re from Texas, and a lot of the people down there probably don’t like to hear this - hell, a lot of the people up in Boston don’t even like to hear it - and maybe you won’t want anything to do with me after, but it’s the last day and you never have to see me again, so I figured I had nothing to lose.”
Angie reaches out to put her hand on Claudine’s. “Claud, really, whatever it is, you’ve been a great friend to me and I can’t imagine anything you could say that would change that.”
Claudine closes her eyes and says, without opening them, “I’m gay, and I think I’ve fallen for you.”
Angie’s mouth drops open.
--
It takes her a minute, but she manages to gather her thoughts in the end. It’s not that she’s disgusted, because she isn’t. It’s more the fact that this whole huge thing about Claudine is different but she never knew, she couldn’t tell, and that’s strange to her. She really doesn’t know a lot about lesbians, but what she’d picked up from various non-credible sources was that they liked to look like guys, crop their hair short and wear no makeup. Claudine’s… well, she’s a model. Angie’s never seen her in anything except sundresses and skirts, and she wears more makeup than almost all of the other contestants. Her saying she’s gay feels totally incongruous with everything Angie thought she knew, and she almost asks Claudine if she’s sure before realizing how insensitive that might seem.
“I… I don’t mind,” she says carefully, and Claudine looks utterly disbelieving. “I’m just… really surprised.”
Claudine manages a small smile. “Because I’m not all decked out in jeans and leather jackets?”
Angie shrugs. “You seem so… normal.”
Claudine looks hurt for a millisecond, but she covers it well. Still, Angie could kick herself.
“I didn’t mean that to sound like you’re -”
“It’s okay,” Claudine interrupts before continuing a little sadly, “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Angie feels terrible. “I guess so.”
“Just… listen.” Claudine puts her hand on top of Angie’s. “I sensed how lonely you were feeling the night we went up the Empire State Building, and I just wanted to tell you - you’re amazing, Angie, and you’re beautiful, and you’re probably gonna win this competition, and you’re going to go on to have the best life, okay, the best life, because if some gay girl from the mean streets of Boston can see the worth in you, the guys should be falling all over themselves. And if they’re not yet, they will be. They’re probably just too busy being dumb and immature and snapping your bra straps to realize you’re the most gorgeous girl they’ve ever met.” She takes a deep breath, glances down at her shoes. “Aaand I’m done.”
Angie can feel her throat closing up from how touched she is. She wants to say thank you, that Claudine’s great too and she’ll find a nice… girl, if that’s what she wants, but the words don’t want to come so she pulls her friend into an enormous bear hug instead and hopes that does the talking for her.
--
The cruel thing about Angie’s time in New York is that while Seventeen makes everyone shoot covers, nobody will know who the winner is until the issue hits the stands. After she returns to Texas, she, Stacy and Tara stay penpals for a while, and she gets birthday cards from Kathryn and Claudine as well, gestures she treasures more than she ever would have in the ABC days. She’s not unpopular at school by any means, but Beth and Calleigh were her true blues as they always used to call it, so she’d never made a lot of effort to connect with other people. Over the summer, they’d grown close without her, and when she walks into school on the first day of the year, she feels more lost than she had starting kindergarten.
--
It isn’t an easy couple of months, but between school, church, and extracurriculars, Angie keeps busy enough not to dwell on things too much. Truth be told, she has so much going on by October that she forgets about Seventeen entirely until she pulls her own face out of the mailbox one day.
--
After she wins the contest, Angie’s life gets hectic to a degree she never even thought possible. The local newspapers all want to interview her, and it seems that those old, pervasive town rivalries don’t seem to matter as soon as someone from Highland Park finds success. It’s not the jet setting lifestyle she and her friends had imagined they’d be springboarded into if they won, but she has a portfolio now, and she goes to casting calls in Dallas on most weekends. Her New Year’s wish is to get another big break, and shortly after that, Seventeen has her back to do some modeling for Dillard’s, so she gets to open the March 1988 edition and find herself wearing a cropped shirt and culottes that she’ll regret in later life.
By the summer, she’s eased herself into catalog work, using her Seventeen appearances like a trump card that regional retailers can’t resist. She hears Kieran got married and, around Christmas, that Brittany is having a baby girl, but she doesn’t think of him that often anymore - at least not until mid-way through her senior year, when the female spitting image of him walks by her in the hallway.
--
Angie thinks it’s a mirage at first, some strange, hallucinatory side effect of staying up too late listening to Madonna on her Walkman, but then she sees the girl again a week later and pulls the kind of lame move that boys used to use to get her to talk to them in the sixth grade.
They’re outside in the quad when she does it - drops her books on the ground and lets all the looseleaf papers go flying - and sure enough, the girl runs to grab some, handing them back with a timid smile on her face.
“Thanks,” Angie says winningly, stomach fluttering like she’s talking to Kieran because of the resemblance, she supposes, as she stares into the girl’s alarmingly blue eyes. “Hey, are you, um. This might sound weird, but there was this guy who graduated last year…”
“Kieran?” the girl responds, sounding exasperated in a fond kind of way. “Yeah, he’s my brother. I only get asked that like four times a day.”
“Sorry.” Angie blushes - blushes, and the last time she blushed was… she doesn’t even know when. The girl’s fingers brush hers as she takes back the last sheet of flyaway paper.
“We look alike, I guess,” the girl continues, shrugging off the apology. “I look old for my age, so a lot of people assume we’re twins.”
Angie squints at her, studying her poise, her demeanor. She doesn’t have the frenetic, displaced energy of younger teenage girls, and when Angie gets past the similarities to Kieran, she’s quite beautiful in her own right, but in a woman’s way, not a girl’s.
“You’ve gotta be, what, a junior? A senior? Why haven’t I seen you before if you’re in my grade?”
The girl smiles like the Mona Lisa, and Angie knows that’s corny but the comparison seems like a fair one from where she’s standing at the moment.
“I’m a sophomore,” the girl says, laughing as she holds out her hand for Angie to grasp. “Good to meet you. Stephanie March.”
--
Angie sees Stephanie again in the hallway a few weeks later, while she’s standing by the locker of this guy she’s kind of into. She’s talking about how Linda Evangelista has a spread in Vogue Italy that month, how beautiful the thumbnail prints she’d seen in the American version were, and how desperately she wishes she knew someone overseas. She’s fairly sure everything she’s saying is boring to him but since she doesn’t really talk to Beth and Calleigh anymore, everyone else gets to put up with her modeling talk.
Stephanie has blonde hair that she doesn’t tease like all the other girls do, fluffing it into a hairsprayed halo around their heads that would be hard to dislodge even in a force 10 gale. It hangs long and straight, brushing the gentle curve of her chest, and as Angie watches, she trails off in the middle of a sentence without even realizing. The guy takes his chance to get a word in edgeways and escape to his next class as Stephanie looks at her with piercing blue eyes, offering a hint of a smile as she walks by.
--
Angie has her own car now, and it isn’t as cool as she thought it would be. Sure, she can drive herself to school and casting calls, and if she needs something from the store she doesn’t have to wait until her mom gets around to buying it, but she, Calleigh, and Beth had all these plans for when they got their licenses, and the three of them not being close anymore kind of makes the whole thing not worth it. In addition, she had to quit drill team because her weekends are filled with modeling stuff and church so she has to get all her homework done on weeknights, and she’s just… she’s kind of lonely, is all.
--
She’s driving home from school one day when she sees the glaring sheen of sunlight reflect off a pedestrian’s hair, and when she looks closer, she’s pretty sure it’s Stephanie’s. Stephanie wears acid-washed jeans to school every day, not the miniskirts or fun dresses favored by most of her female peers, and while those who may wear jeans on occasion tend to dress them up with jewelry and exuberant T-shirts or blouses, Stephanie favors tank tops and oversized men’s dress shirts that she wears unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. It makes her look like an artist or something - someone different, intriguing.
There’s a hint of fear on Stephanie’s face before she recognizes the identity of the person in the car slowing down beside her, and the smile she gives Angie feels big enough to light up the whole world.
“Hop in,” Angie says, trying to sound casual. “I’m not gonna let you walk home in this heat.”
“I live kinda far…” Stephanie begins uncertainly, and Angie leans across to open the passenger-side door.
“Then you shouldn’t be walking,” she says with a grin.
Stephanie smiles again. “I guess you’re right.”
--
It’s awkward for the first few seconds after Stephanie climbs into the car, and then she breaks the silence with “So, hey, nice car you’ve got” at the same time as Angie asks “Uh, so how’s your brother doing?” which she could kick herself for because really? Stephanie giggles and it’s a great sound, the kind that makes Angie want to join in.
“I suppose I should ask where you live first,” Angie says wryly, and Stephanie gets halfway through her address and then pauses. “What?”
She shrugs. “I don’t usually go straight home.”
“You don’t?”
Stephanie’s looking at her, sizing her up like she’s trying to decide whether or not to trust her with something, and after a beat she says, “There’s a place not too far from here. If you go a little way into the trees, there’s a stream. I like to sit there sometimes, and think.” She bites her lip. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“Wow.” Angie would be lying if she said that didn’t make her feel special, didn’t make something in her chest spark like it did when she used to talk to Kieran by the soccer field. “Do you want me to take you there? Can I… would you let me come see it?”
Stephanie nods and tells Angie to turn at the next right, and then they carry on down the road for a while until the area grows less inhabited. Stephanie lays her fingers on Angie’s wrist as she tells her to stop the car, and Angie does, trembling a little at the touch. She parks on the side of the road and Stephanie says “This way” before striding into the woods, hair shining like pale gold. Angie follows her.
--
Stephanie’s obviously been coming here for a while because there’s a slight groove worn into the path that she follows, and the ground in the clearing she stops in is bare of leaves. Angie’s amazed when she reaches into the stream trickling beside it and pulls out a bottle of water from under the surface, and Stephanie looks up, sees her expression, and laughs.
“It’s fine as long as it’s sealed,” she says with a chuckle, taking a swig and wiping her mouth before holding it out to Angie. “Keeps it cold, too. Here.”
Angie just kind of stares at her for a second, and Stephanie smirks mischievously.
“I promise I don’t have cooties,” she says solemnly, which makes Angie laugh, and as Angie drinks, the other girl watches her with those brilliant blue eyes like she’s contemplating something or wants to ask a question. “You don’t mind hanging out with a sophomore?” she asks finally.
“Aw, I don’t see you like that. I just… think you’re interesting,” Angie says frankly. “And age doesn’t necessarily mean anything, anyway. You seem more mature than a lot of people in my grade, to be honest.”
The corners of Stephanie’s lips twitch like it pleases her to hear that, and Angie gets a flash of her Mona Lisa smile again.
“Hey, Stephanie…” she begins, half-daring herself to go through with finishing the sentence.
“Call me Steph,” Stephanie interrupts, which almost makes Angie lose her nerve. “And go on.”
“I - it’s nothing, I just…” Angie shrugs uncomfortably then blurts against her better judgment, “You have a really nice smile.”
Stephanie smiles wider - like, beams at her, and Angie’s never seen something like that before. She can feel herself blushing.
“Yours isn’t so bad yourself,” Steph tells her in this tone that’s half teasing and half serious, lightened just enough that her frankness doesn’t feel awkward. She sits down on the ground, leaning against a tree trunk, and Angie follows suit. “We should do this again sometime, if you want to.”
Angie definitely does.
--
When Angie gets home after dropping Steph off, her mom looks at her strangely, and she can’t understand why at first.
“What kind of friend was this?” her mom inquires, casual but probing, and why is she being so - oh. She rolls her eyes.
“It’s not a boyfriend, mom. It’s nobody. Just someone from school I ran into.”
It’s completely the truth, but her mom says “Oka-ay” in that sing-song tone she uses when she knows there’s more to it than that and wants her to be careful. Angie shakes her head and goes upstairs to do her homework.
--
The rides out to the place in the trees become a regular thing, and as the school year marches on, she and Steph are out there almost every day, if only for a little while. In the spring, Angie gets busier with modeling commitments, but when she’s not otherwise engaged they spend whole evenings there, reading or listening to one of their Walkmans until it gets dark, their heads bent close together so they can both hear what’s playing. Steph hides beers in the stream too sometimes, and they get pleasantly buzzed as they listen to The Cult or chat about nothing at all.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” Angie says one day, and it’s a spur-of-the-moment thing, just an idle musing that breaks their comfortable silence, but Steph sits up from where she’s sprawled by the water with an expression on her face that Angie’s never seen before. “What?” Angie says nervously, and Steph’s lips curve up at the edges.
“It’s nice to hear stuff like that. Especially from… you know, you.”
Angie tilts her head, puzzled. “Me?” she repeats.
Steph breaks her gaze, stares at the bank of the stream and picks at the packed-dirt ground with the stub of a stick that she’s holding. “Yeah, I just… really like you.”
“I like you too,” Angie responds sincerely, and as her words hang in the air, something changes between them. Steph still isn’t looking her in the eye, and a germ of a thought grows inside her, a small hint of suspicion burgeoning in her mind.
“Steph, are…” She begins trepidatiously, not wanting to finish the sentence in case she’s terribly off base. She recalls Claudine, and half of her thinks she’s crazy. This is Texas. This is a school friend of hers. This is not someone from another world she crossed paths with in a city a thousand miles away.
“I didn’t wanna say anything,” Steph says quietly, like she’s unburdening the most shameful secret ever told, and oh, God. Oh God.
Part of Angie’s still convinced she misunderstood this whole thing, but she’s not sure how to clarify anything without sounding totally stupid.
“How long?” she asks instead.
Steph smiles at the ground like something’s hurting her before admitting, “A while. You basically charmed me from the start.”
Angie puts her hand on Steph’s shoulder. “God, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you tell?” Steph says miserably, finally meeting her gaze again with a look of humiliation that makes Angie’s heart ache. “If you felt like this about another girl, would you tell?”
Angie opens her mouth to say that she wouldn’t know unless she was ever in that situation and then closes it again, dumbstruck. Maybe there’s a reason she loves hanging out with Steph so much. It’s not just that the girl’s funny, or good companionship, or shares beers that she swiped from the fridge in her basement - they have chemistry, actual chemistry, and she’s never thought about what that means until now.
“I get it if, you know, you don’t wanna…” Steph falters like it’s hard for her to even get the words out, and the sound of that just about breaks Angie’s heart. She finishes the sentence like she wants to get it over with, all in one short, rushed burst of words. “…Hangoutwithmeanymore.”
“Steph, no,” Angie soothes, rubbing her thumb back and forth across Steph’s forearm. It’s easily 90 degrees, but she can feel the goosebumps prickle under her touch. “Oh, my God.”
Steph pulls away, face flushing. “I have it bad, I guess,” she mumbles, and Angie says, “Hey. Come here.”
She means for it to just be a brief hug, a reassuring squeeze that things are fine, it doesn’t change anything, but somehow neither of them pull away so they end up sitting there, holding each other. Steph’s shaking a little, and Angie’s nose is pressed up against the crook of her neck, inhaling the sweet, clear smell of the other girl’s shampoo.
Steph shifts slightly in her arms and Angie’s’s about to start pulling away when Steph’s hands slide up to her cheeks and hold her there, cupping her face with a featherlike touch. Angie opens her mouth to say something and Steph leans in, and then they’re kissing, and they keep kissing, and they can’t stop. Steph’s hands are in her hair and, God, she’s finally touching Steph’s hair, and it’s softer than she thought it would be - smoother, like she brushes it a hundred times a morning - and her lips are soft too, and her tongue.
They break for breath occasionally but press right back against each other’s lips like this has been building up for months and now they’re finally releasing it, and in a way that’s not far from the truth. They’ve been dancing around each other since the day they first met, Angie realizes, and it wasn’t just a new friendship thing, it was deeper than that - it always had been.
Part of her is afraid to break away and face the aftermath, and she guesses Steph feels the same way because even after the fire has dissipated, they keep kissing, just chaste little brushes of their lips that Angie wishes she could revel in forever.
When Steph finally opens her eyes, her features are soft and dreamy, and Angie thinks in awe, I did that. That was me. She wonders if they’re going to talk about it, but Steph just takes her hand and walks her back to the car in silence, and The Cure’s on the radio and everything feels just as perfect as it can be.
--
Strangely, not a lot changes after that, which both comes as a surprise to Angie and doesn’t. On one hand, it’s a huge thing, what happened between them, but on the other, it feels totally right, like there’s no need to panic because everything’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be. They still listen to music and read by the stream, but now they make time for kissing, too, lying by the bank of the water and timidly resting their hands on each other’s hips as they explore each other’s mouths.
They don’t talk about what they’re doing - they never do. They barely acknowledge each other in school, keeping their acquaintanceship as secret as their after-school activities. Whenever Steph wants to initiate something, she just smiles in that way she has that Angie finds irresistible, and Angie quirks an eyebrow, instantly putting down whatever it was that she’d been occupied with because kissing Steph by the stream is a million times better.
--
Steph’s parents are never home because her dad’s some kind of high-powered lawyer and her mom’s social calendar is fuller than the president’s, so on days when it’s raining or just too damn humid out, the girls spend time at Steph’s house, listening to The Smiths as they rifle through Steph’s cassette collection or just enjoy being still together. They never discuss taking things further than kissing but Angie wants to, she thinks about it, she just doesn’t have the words to express her feelings. They get close to it on a couple of occasions when sitting side-by-side on Steph’s bed somehow morphs into Angie lying underneath her, legs spread as they kiss, the air humming with the pent-up desire of two teenage girls in love. During those times, Steph would make these little murmur-sigh sounds that drove her wild, made her wish she knew whether girls needed to use protection - and if they did, that she had some on hand.
Steph had kissed her chest before, too. Not her actual chest, exactly, but near where her clavicles are, and afterwards she’d looked at Angie with a fire in her eyes that made wetness pool between Angie’s legs, prompting her to consider just jumping Steph right then and there before the phone in Steph’s room rang and ruined things.
--
One time, Steph asks Angie to get something out of her desk drawer, and when Angie opens it, she sees a sliver of her Seventeen cover at the bottom and Steph goes red as a fire engine.
That’s the day Angie asks for a photo of Steph in return, and Steph jumps off the bed and says “Let’s take one together,” so they drive straight to the mall to go find a photobooth. They squeeze into the narrow seat together, making silly faces and serious faces, and in the last shot, Steph kisses Angie’s nose. That’s one of the things Angie loves about her - she’s spontaneous, impulsive, and it’s never boring when she’s around. Angie dresses to the nines no matter where she’s going, so when Steph’s walking next to her in her too-big shirts and jeans, it almost feels like they’re a real couple, like Steph’s her boyfriend and they’re showing each other off in public.
It’s still not something they talk about, what this is, what they’re doing, but one time Steph shows her a movie that had come out a few years earlier and after that she gets it a little more. The movie’s Silkwood and Cher’s gay in it - she’s in love with Meryl Streep, but Meryl doesn’t like her back that way.
“I’m glad that wasn’t us,” Steph murmurs at one point when Cher’s character’s crying over it and Meryl’s is trying to comfort her, and she says it so softly that Angie questions whether she imagined it at first. After all, they don’t discuss what’s going on between them - they never do. There’s an electric charge of silence after Steph speaks, and the other girl is tense like she’s waiting for something. Her face lights up like Christmas when Angie whispers, “Me too.”
--
Steph has a pool - a really nice one, with a pool house and granite everywhere and a fountain in the middle, and one Saturday they put Depeche Mode on the boom box and swim until their fingers wrinkle up. Steph’s hair gets darker when it’s wet, and the contrast makes her eyes blaze with a cool intensity that makes Angie feel all crazy inside. She reaches out to tenderly brush away the drops of water that are clinging to Steph’s lashes, and pretty soon has her pressed up against the edge of the pool, kissing her. Biting Steph’s lip elicits this sound that drives Angie wild, and she pulls Steph closer, close enough to feel Steph’s nipples pressing hard against her, which lights all of her nerve endings on fire.
Without breaking the kiss, Angie lifts her hand to hesitantly cup the full, firm weight of Steph’s breast, and the other girl moans into her mouth, spurring her to continue. Heart hammering, Angie strokes her thumb across the erect nub beneath the fabric of Steph’s bikini and Steph gasps “Please,” tilting her head back against the ledge of the pool and exposing the delicate skin of her neck. Angie sucks on her there for a few moments, not wanting to leave a mark that will be hard to explain later, and dances her fingers up Steph’s back until she reaches the clasp. Steph helps her, scrabbling until it comes undone, and her chest is the most perfect thing Angie has ever seen.
She has a moment of sheer, unbridled bliss as she leans down, hardly daring to believe what she’s about to do and how right it feels, and just as she sucks a hard nipple into her mouth she hears “Stephanie Caroline” from the direction of the back door and her whole world stops turning.
--
She doesn’t think she’s ever been this mortified, sitting in her bikini and a towel in Steph’s kitchen, dripping all over the marble floor. Steph had been sent upstairs so it’s just her and Mrs. March now, and Mrs. March won’t even look at her, she’s that disgusted. Angie has never felt so small.
“This whole thing - all of it - it’s over,” Mrs. March says firmly, making eye contact on the last word. She has the same bright blue eyes as Steph, but unlike Steph’s, they’re cold and unfriendly and utterly terrifying.
“Are you… what are you going to do to me?” Angie mumbles, and to her profound embarrassment, she can’t even look at Steph’s mom when she’s talking to her, she just talks to the floor instead, staring at the chlorinated puddles.
“Nothing,” Mrs. March says, and for a second Angie thinks she’s kidding but then she continues, “Unless I want to drag my whole family’s name through the mud over my daughter’s youthful indiscretions, which I don’t.”
It breaks Angie’s heart to hear what she and Steph shared together being referred to like that, with such a total disregard for what it meant to them, like it’s some stupid teenage thing they only did to be rebellious. Steph’s the love of her life, not some joyride.
“But you’re never to see her again, or I will tell everyone I know about it, family reputation or not,” Mrs. March finishes.
It feels like something breaks apart inside Angie, like her entire chest is splitting into two, but she nods numbly because she’s cornered. She’s trapped. There’s no way to get herself out of this without accepting those conditions, and she doesn’t think she’s ever known a more horrifying feeling in her life.
Mrs. March gets her clothes and sends her packing before Steph’s dad arrives, and she gets all the way home before realizing how hard she’s shaking.
--
Angie moves to Europe soon after that. She doesn’t want for it to seem like she’s fleeing the country after her deepest, sweetest, most precious secret was exposed, but - yeah, she kind of is. She graduates, packs her stuff, calls in her Seventeen connections and models in Milan for a while, where she meets an Italian boy and loses her virginity and convinces herself she’s not that way after all. She puts Steph out of her mind because that’s where she wants her to be, and by the time she meets David Hasselhoff on a plane in the mid-90s, her trysts in the Highland Park woods with Stephanie March are but a distant memory.
--
She’d laughed when David inquired whether she’d be interested in acting. To be honest, she’d been distracted thinking about how jealous Beth would be of her if they were still friends, and when he asked, she straight-up laughed in his face and actually turned him down. But he was pretty insistent, she supposes, because she finds herself with a breakout part on Baywatch Nights before the year is out, and then some way, somehow, she’s a TV star.
--
The Hoff is fun to work with, and the camaraderie between the cast almost makes up for the fact that the plotlines are ridiculous, with Vikings, aliens, mutated mermaids, and David’s character having to clone himself to escape from Brazilian body-snatching snails.
…Seriously.
Not to Angie’s immense surprise, the show only runs for two seasons, but it’s enough of a springboard to get her some movie work and, a couple of years down the road, a part on a little show called Law & Order.
--
Angie feels a kinship with Abbie Carmichael immediately. Nobody who knows Angie would call her shy - far from it - but Abbie gives her an excuse to tap into a tough, badass side of herself that she’d never really been given the avenue to explore before. In her inaugural episode, one of her lines is “Hang ‘em all,” and she thinks that encapsulates the character perfectly - Abbie “Hang ‘em all” Carmichael, kicking ass and taking names.
She has a lot of fun on set. Not only does she get to live and work in New York City as she’d dreamed all those years ago, but Sam Waterston is absolutely the most dapper man she’s ever met, and Jerry Orbach is - well, he’s a legend. The second year she does the show, Jesse L. Martin of RENT fame joins the cast, and they sing show tunes in the squad room at any opportunity. She wishes Dick Wolf, the show’s producer, would be less of a stick in the mud about blooper reels because there’s some fantastic footage of the two of them belting I’ll Cover You - her as Angel, Jesse reprising his role of Collins - during which she does Angel’s signature jump onto Lieutenant Van Buren’s desk, much to the set dresser’s dismay. She thinks that if she ever, in some strange twist of fate, ends up with more clout than Dick Wolf in her lifetime, the first thing she’ll do is get those videos released.
--
It’s while she’s living in New York that her friend Mike, the defensive lineman of the New York Giants at the time, invites her to a home game at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. She says sure, because what Texan girl doesn’t like football at least a little bit? Abbie has a Longhorns pennant in her office, and she chuckles to herself as she imagines the character’s indignance at her going to watch another team play.
--
She’s standing by an exit ramp outside the home locker room when she sees him. This guy, this.. this perfect guy. He’s walking by with an older woman she assumes is his mom, and she wants him to stop, but he doesn’t. She prays about it right then and there, putting any future she may have with him in God’s hands, and as he keeps walking, she says “Okay, God, great, thanks” inside her head.
The next thing she knows, the older lady is beside her, asking if she’s the girl from Law & Order and complimenting her on her work when she answers in the affirmative.
“Oh,” the woman says, “and I’d like for you to meet my son, Jason.”
--
Part Two.
Author: that_1_incident
Fandom: Misc. actress RPF
Art: HERE, by karneol_vision
Rating: R
Warnings: Het, sexual themes
Pairing: Angie Harmon/Stephanie March, Angie Harmon/Kristin Chenoweth, (Angie Harmon/Jason Sehorn)
Word Count: ~15,000
Summary: In the late 80s, high schooler Angie Harmon dreams of becoming a model, traveling the world, and wooing hunky Kieran March from the senior class. But soon after her modeling aspirations begin to take flight, she finds herself unexpectedly falling for another member of the March family - Kieran’s younger sister. We follow her from the tumult of a lesbian relationship conducted against the backdrop of the conservative Texas heartland to her time in New York City, where she meets the footballer she goes on to raise a family with, and finally to Hollywood, where she makes a friend who may turn out to be a little more than that.
Disclaimer: I’ll take Things That Aren’t Real for 500, Alex.
Author's Notes: Written for rpf_big_bang; my artist was karneol_vision. Although most of this isn’t true to life, certain elements are. Stephanie and Angie did go to school together, Angie did win that competition to grace the cover of the October 1987 issue of Seventeen with her presence (the other finalists’ names are real too), the Dillard’s ad is here and a lot of the early Jason stuff was taken from this article. Angie and Stephanie ran into each other at an art auction in 2001; photo here. The Leno appearance is here, and Angie and Jason really did serve beef and chicken, in case anybody was desperately interested in finding out the validity of that little detail. The second got milk? ad Angie did with her children is here. Also, Kristin actually tweeted Angie the day they first met, although whether or not any subsequent make-out sessions occurred remains to be seen. Oh, and the title of this is a, um. Billy Ray Cyrus song?
Click on the picture to see the rest of karneol_vision's fantastic artwork:
---<---<---@
When Angie was in high school, she wanted to be a model. She and two of her friends - it was all they talked about. She wanted to be Linda Evangelista more than she wanted a car. She read Seventeen religiously, gazed enviously at the models who couldn’t have been much older than her and wondered what it would take to get where they were. When she looks back on it later, she realizes most of them never went anywhere, that Seventeen was the peak of their modeling careers and they went on to become regular people, nurses and convenience store workers and the ladies who spritz you in Macy’s, but at the time she would’ve traded places with any of them in a heartbeat.
Her best friends’ names were Beth and Calleigh, and together they dreamed of being the most famous modeling trio the world had ever seen. The press would call them ABC, and they’d be notorious for turning down offers of work unless all three of them were to be included, which might be difficult sometimes but they’d be so well renowned that everyone would agree in the end. Beth plans to marry David Hasselhoff and Calleigh’s less specific, maintaining “if he has a British accent, he’ll do just fine.”
As for Angie, her sights are set on Kieran March in the senior class, even though anyone in Highland Park will tell her it’s hopeless because he’s been with Brittany Levesque for as long as anybody can remember. She gets that, she’s accepted it, but it’s her secret hope that he’ll walk past a newsstand one day, recognize her on the cover of Vogue and upend his whole life in order to track her down and marry her.
The day the 1987 Seventeen cover model contest comes out, Angie’s beside herself. She sees it first because her house is literally down the street from her high school, and she calls Beth and Calleigh’s houses so many times while she’s waiting for them to get home that she thinks she’s starting to irritate their parents.
“We’ll have her call you, Angela, just like we said the first five times,” Calleigh’s dad tells her firmly, and she’s so keyed-up she can’t do anything but pace the same four feet of floor in front of the phone. When it finally rings, she jumps sky high.
--
They pool their money to get professional photos taken at a studio downtown, and when Beth calls them “head shots” they all shiver with the excitement of how professional that sounds.
“If one of us wins,” says Calleigh as they’re standing outside the post office, gripping the manila envelopes with all of their dreams inside them, “we gotta remember the ABC pact, okay?”
They promise, and Angie’s heart literally aches because of how badly she wants this.
--
They don’t find out whether they got through for a really long time, to the point where Angie thinks none of them must have made it because surely they’d have heard something by now, but there isn’t anything in the magazine announcing the finalists and as long as that continues to be the case, she and her friends hold out some hope.
--
The day Angie gets home from drill team practice and opens the mailbox to find an envelope with SEVENTEEN embossed on it in those block-print letters everyone thought were the bee’s knees in the late 80s, she thinks it’s a joke. Her first reaction is pure rage, because people know how important this is to her and anyone who pokes fun at her dreams like this is cruel beyond measure, but her anger quickly dissipates when she slides out the contents of the envelope and sees the official magazine letterhead.
She doesn’t remember anything for a little while after that, but her mom said she cried.
--
Right after school gets out for the summer, Seventeen flies Angie and her mom out to New York City. Angie appreciates the timing - she’s in mourning over Kieran graduating, and the rumors that he’s going to ask Brittany to marry him aren’t making things any easier.
To make things worse, her friends are being weird. Neither of them got through to the finals, but she thought they’d be happy that she did - and they are, kind of, or at least they act like it, but the enthusiasm isn’t there. She has copies of their head shots packed in her suitcase that she plans to plead the Seventeen people to consider, but aside from that, she’s not sure what else she’s meant to do.
--
New York is at once familiar and foreign to Angie. She recognizes it from Highlander and Desperately Seeking Susan, Different Strokes and The Jeffersons, yet it looks different somehow when she’s seeing it all around her instead of through the lens of a camera or the box of a TV screen. She’s enchanted by it - the sights, the smells, and the fact that it’s never quiet even in the dead of nighttime. Whether she wins the contest or not, the fact that she got to visit this city was reason enough for her not to regret entering, all friendship drama aside, and she vows to come back someday.
None of the other seven finalists are from the south and they all adore her accent, which is funny because to her, Claudine’s Boston twang is the strangest, coolest thing she’s ever heard. The eight of them quickly grow close, which is surprising considering they’re all in direct competition with each other, but in spite of that they can’t help but let the experience bring them together. Years later, she’ll think back to this time while watching an American Idol finale, recognizing the same kinship among the last two contestants standing - each person wanting desperately to win, but recognizing and respecting their opponent on both a professional and personal level.
She calls Beth from the hotel because Calleigh’s on vacation, and her friend says all the right things but her tone sounds a little too strained to actually be sincere. Angie can picture her standing by the phone with that stretched, too-bright smile on her face - the one that doesn’t reach her eyes. The conversation doesn’t last for long, and after she hangs up, she realizes no matter what happens with the contest, the three girls will never truly be close again.
--
Angie doesn’t share her ABC issues with the rest of the girls, but Claudine’s one of those freakishly empathetic people who can pick up how someone’s feeling from twenty paces away. She touches Angie on the shoulder after their tour of the Seventeen offices is over, and Angie knows that unlike with the other girls or even her mom, there’s no persuading Claudine that everything’s fine.
There’s a courtyard sandwiched between the building where the magazine is based and the skyscraper next door to it, and Claudine leads her over to one of the stone benches. It was a hot day that day - which Angie remembers, looking back, because of her surprise over the cold smoothness of the granite.
She’s not sure what to say at first, but Claudine murmurs “Tell me” and that’s all she needs.
--
Angie’s a little embarrassed about crying but Claudine is totally cool with it, and it feels good to have someone to talk to in this strange, bustling home away from home. City life is so different. Not necessarily a bad kind of different; it’s just a lot to take in. Although she lives in the suburbs, she’s been to Dallas before, but it’s nothing like New York is. She doesn’t think anywhere is like New York.
One night, they take a trip to the Empire State Building, the whole group of them, and she can’t speak the whole time she’s up on the observation deck. It’s like her breath got carried off with the wind that slices around them, so much harsher now than when they were eighty-six floors below on the sidewalk. Every time she thinks she might be able to say something, she catches sight of something else that takes the words away - the Chrysler Building spearing the sky with its distinctive silver spire, the glittering bridges looming from the inky blackness of the Hudson.
Not having a boyfriend has never really bothered her before, but up here, she feels the absence keenly. Experiencing this without someone special by her side feels blasphemous, somehow - like she’s missing an opportunity, or can’t fully grasp it.
She grabs Claudine’s hand wordlessly because the other girl just happens to be nearest to her, and Claudine’s pale skin flushes crimson under the bright white lights.
--
Claudine pulls her aside again the day they’re due to leave, while everyone’s in each other’s rooms at the hotel, chatting and packing and reminiscing about their time together. Angie figures she wants to check up on the ABC drama until the other girl gets this look on her face that Angie’s never seen on her before.
“I just… wanted to tell you,” she begins, “Not because I expect anything, but because you should know.”
“Okay…” Angie says cluelessly. She’s kind of morbidly fascinated by the way Claudine’s almond-shaped eyes keep flickering between her and the floor.
“I know you’re from Texas, and a lot of the people down there probably don’t like to hear this - hell, a lot of the people up in Boston don’t even like to hear it - and maybe you won’t want anything to do with me after, but it’s the last day and you never have to see me again, so I figured I had nothing to lose.”
Angie reaches out to put her hand on Claudine’s. “Claud, really, whatever it is, you’ve been a great friend to me and I can’t imagine anything you could say that would change that.”
Claudine closes her eyes and says, without opening them, “I’m gay, and I think I’ve fallen for you.”
Angie’s mouth drops open.
--
It takes her a minute, but she manages to gather her thoughts in the end. It’s not that she’s disgusted, because she isn’t. It’s more the fact that this whole huge thing about Claudine is different but she never knew, she couldn’t tell, and that’s strange to her. She really doesn’t know a lot about lesbians, but what she’d picked up from various non-credible sources was that they liked to look like guys, crop their hair short and wear no makeup. Claudine’s… well, she’s a model. Angie’s never seen her in anything except sundresses and skirts, and she wears more makeup than almost all of the other contestants. Her saying she’s gay feels totally incongruous with everything Angie thought she knew, and she almost asks Claudine if she’s sure before realizing how insensitive that might seem.
“I… I don’t mind,” she says carefully, and Claudine looks utterly disbelieving. “I’m just… really surprised.”
Claudine manages a small smile. “Because I’m not all decked out in jeans and leather jackets?”
Angie shrugs. “You seem so… normal.”
Claudine looks hurt for a millisecond, but she covers it well. Still, Angie could kick herself.
“I didn’t mean that to sound like you’re -”
“It’s okay,” Claudine interrupts before continuing a little sadly, “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Angie feels terrible. “I guess so.”
“Just… listen.” Claudine puts her hand on top of Angie’s. “I sensed how lonely you were feeling the night we went up the Empire State Building, and I just wanted to tell you - you’re amazing, Angie, and you’re beautiful, and you’re probably gonna win this competition, and you’re going to go on to have the best life, okay, the best life, because if some gay girl from the mean streets of Boston can see the worth in you, the guys should be falling all over themselves. And if they’re not yet, they will be. They’re probably just too busy being dumb and immature and snapping your bra straps to realize you’re the most gorgeous girl they’ve ever met.” She takes a deep breath, glances down at her shoes. “Aaand I’m done.”
Angie can feel her throat closing up from how touched she is. She wants to say thank you, that Claudine’s great too and she’ll find a nice… girl, if that’s what she wants, but the words don’t want to come so she pulls her friend into an enormous bear hug instead and hopes that does the talking for her.
--
The cruel thing about Angie’s time in New York is that while Seventeen makes everyone shoot covers, nobody will know who the winner is until the issue hits the stands. After she returns to Texas, she, Stacy and Tara stay penpals for a while, and she gets birthday cards from Kathryn and Claudine as well, gestures she treasures more than she ever would have in the ABC days. She’s not unpopular at school by any means, but Beth and Calleigh were her true blues as they always used to call it, so she’d never made a lot of effort to connect with other people. Over the summer, they’d grown close without her, and when she walks into school on the first day of the year, she feels more lost than she had starting kindergarten.
--
It isn’t an easy couple of months, but between school, church, and extracurriculars, Angie keeps busy enough not to dwell on things too much. Truth be told, she has so much going on by October that she forgets about Seventeen entirely until she pulls her own face out of the mailbox one day.
--
After she wins the contest, Angie’s life gets hectic to a degree she never even thought possible. The local newspapers all want to interview her, and it seems that those old, pervasive town rivalries don’t seem to matter as soon as someone from Highland Park finds success. It’s not the jet setting lifestyle she and her friends had imagined they’d be springboarded into if they won, but she has a portfolio now, and she goes to casting calls in Dallas on most weekends. Her New Year’s wish is to get another big break, and shortly after that, Seventeen has her back to do some modeling for Dillard’s, so she gets to open the March 1988 edition and find herself wearing a cropped shirt and culottes that she’ll regret in later life.
By the summer, she’s eased herself into catalog work, using her Seventeen appearances like a trump card that regional retailers can’t resist. She hears Kieran got married and, around Christmas, that Brittany is having a baby girl, but she doesn’t think of him that often anymore - at least not until mid-way through her senior year, when the female spitting image of him walks by her in the hallway.
--
Angie thinks it’s a mirage at first, some strange, hallucinatory side effect of staying up too late listening to Madonna on her Walkman, but then she sees the girl again a week later and pulls the kind of lame move that boys used to use to get her to talk to them in the sixth grade.
They’re outside in the quad when she does it - drops her books on the ground and lets all the looseleaf papers go flying - and sure enough, the girl runs to grab some, handing them back with a timid smile on her face.
“Thanks,” Angie says winningly, stomach fluttering like she’s talking to Kieran because of the resemblance, she supposes, as she stares into the girl’s alarmingly blue eyes. “Hey, are you, um. This might sound weird, but there was this guy who graduated last year…”
“Kieran?” the girl responds, sounding exasperated in a fond kind of way. “Yeah, he’s my brother. I only get asked that like four times a day.”
“Sorry.” Angie blushes - blushes, and the last time she blushed was… she doesn’t even know when. The girl’s fingers brush hers as she takes back the last sheet of flyaway paper.
“We look alike, I guess,” the girl continues, shrugging off the apology. “I look old for my age, so a lot of people assume we’re twins.”
Angie squints at her, studying her poise, her demeanor. She doesn’t have the frenetic, displaced energy of younger teenage girls, and when Angie gets past the similarities to Kieran, she’s quite beautiful in her own right, but in a woman’s way, not a girl’s.
“You’ve gotta be, what, a junior? A senior? Why haven’t I seen you before if you’re in my grade?”
The girl smiles like the Mona Lisa, and Angie knows that’s corny but the comparison seems like a fair one from where she’s standing at the moment.
“I’m a sophomore,” the girl says, laughing as she holds out her hand for Angie to grasp. “Good to meet you. Stephanie March.”
--
Angie sees Stephanie again in the hallway a few weeks later, while she’s standing by the locker of this guy she’s kind of into. She’s talking about how Linda Evangelista has a spread in Vogue Italy that month, how beautiful the thumbnail prints she’d seen in the American version were, and how desperately she wishes she knew someone overseas. She’s fairly sure everything she’s saying is boring to him but since she doesn’t really talk to Beth and Calleigh anymore, everyone else gets to put up with her modeling talk.
Stephanie has blonde hair that she doesn’t tease like all the other girls do, fluffing it into a hairsprayed halo around their heads that would be hard to dislodge even in a force 10 gale. It hangs long and straight, brushing the gentle curve of her chest, and as Angie watches, she trails off in the middle of a sentence without even realizing. The guy takes his chance to get a word in edgeways and escape to his next class as Stephanie looks at her with piercing blue eyes, offering a hint of a smile as she walks by.
--
Angie has her own car now, and it isn’t as cool as she thought it would be. Sure, she can drive herself to school and casting calls, and if she needs something from the store she doesn’t have to wait until her mom gets around to buying it, but she, Calleigh, and Beth had all these plans for when they got their licenses, and the three of them not being close anymore kind of makes the whole thing not worth it. In addition, she had to quit drill team because her weekends are filled with modeling stuff and church so she has to get all her homework done on weeknights, and she’s just… she’s kind of lonely, is all.
--
She’s driving home from school one day when she sees the glaring sheen of sunlight reflect off a pedestrian’s hair, and when she looks closer, she’s pretty sure it’s Stephanie’s. Stephanie wears acid-washed jeans to school every day, not the miniskirts or fun dresses favored by most of her female peers, and while those who may wear jeans on occasion tend to dress them up with jewelry and exuberant T-shirts or blouses, Stephanie favors tank tops and oversized men’s dress shirts that she wears unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. It makes her look like an artist or something - someone different, intriguing.
There’s a hint of fear on Stephanie’s face before she recognizes the identity of the person in the car slowing down beside her, and the smile she gives Angie feels big enough to light up the whole world.
“Hop in,” Angie says, trying to sound casual. “I’m not gonna let you walk home in this heat.”
“I live kinda far…” Stephanie begins uncertainly, and Angie leans across to open the passenger-side door.
“Then you shouldn’t be walking,” she says with a grin.
Stephanie smiles again. “I guess you’re right.”
--
It’s awkward for the first few seconds after Stephanie climbs into the car, and then she breaks the silence with “So, hey, nice car you’ve got” at the same time as Angie asks “Uh, so how’s your brother doing?” which she could kick herself for because really? Stephanie giggles and it’s a great sound, the kind that makes Angie want to join in.
“I suppose I should ask where you live first,” Angie says wryly, and Stephanie gets halfway through her address and then pauses. “What?”
She shrugs. “I don’t usually go straight home.”
“You don’t?”
Stephanie’s looking at her, sizing her up like she’s trying to decide whether or not to trust her with something, and after a beat she says, “There’s a place not too far from here. If you go a little way into the trees, there’s a stream. I like to sit there sometimes, and think.” She bites her lip. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“Wow.” Angie would be lying if she said that didn’t make her feel special, didn’t make something in her chest spark like it did when she used to talk to Kieran by the soccer field. “Do you want me to take you there? Can I… would you let me come see it?”
Stephanie nods and tells Angie to turn at the next right, and then they carry on down the road for a while until the area grows less inhabited. Stephanie lays her fingers on Angie’s wrist as she tells her to stop the car, and Angie does, trembling a little at the touch. She parks on the side of the road and Stephanie says “This way” before striding into the woods, hair shining like pale gold. Angie follows her.
--
Stephanie’s obviously been coming here for a while because there’s a slight groove worn into the path that she follows, and the ground in the clearing she stops in is bare of leaves. Angie’s amazed when she reaches into the stream trickling beside it and pulls out a bottle of water from under the surface, and Stephanie looks up, sees her expression, and laughs.
“It’s fine as long as it’s sealed,” she says with a chuckle, taking a swig and wiping her mouth before holding it out to Angie. “Keeps it cold, too. Here.”
Angie just kind of stares at her for a second, and Stephanie smirks mischievously.
“I promise I don’t have cooties,” she says solemnly, which makes Angie laugh, and as Angie drinks, the other girl watches her with those brilliant blue eyes like she’s contemplating something or wants to ask a question. “You don’t mind hanging out with a sophomore?” she asks finally.
“Aw, I don’t see you like that. I just… think you’re interesting,” Angie says frankly. “And age doesn’t necessarily mean anything, anyway. You seem more mature than a lot of people in my grade, to be honest.”
The corners of Stephanie’s lips twitch like it pleases her to hear that, and Angie gets a flash of her Mona Lisa smile again.
“Hey, Stephanie…” she begins, half-daring herself to go through with finishing the sentence.
“Call me Steph,” Stephanie interrupts, which almost makes Angie lose her nerve. “And go on.”
“I - it’s nothing, I just…” Angie shrugs uncomfortably then blurts against her better judgment, “You have a really nice smile.”
Stephanie smiles wider - like, beams at her, and Angie’s never seen something like that before. She can feel herself blushing.
“Yours isn’t so bad yourself,” Steph tells her in this tone that’s half teasing and half serious, lightened just enough that her frankness doesn’t feel awkward. She sits down on the ground, leaning against a tree trunk, and Angie follows suit. “We should do this again sometime, if you want to.”
Angie definitely does.
--
When Angie gets home after dropping Steph off, her mom looks at her strangely, and she can’t understand why at first.
“What kind of friend was this?” her mom inquires, casual but probing, and why is she being so - oh. She rolls her eyes.
“It’s not a boyfriend, mom. It’s nobody. Just someone from school I ran into.”
It’s completely the truth, but her mom says “Oka-ay” in that sing-song tone she uses when she knows there’s more to it than that and wants her to be careful. Angie shakes her head and goes upstairs to do her homework.
--
The rides out to the place in the trees become a regular thing, and as the school year marches on, she and Steph are out there almost every day, if only for a little while. In the spring, Angie gets busier with modeling commitments, but when she’s not otherwise engaged they spend whole evenings there, reading or listening to one of their Walkmans until it gets dark, their heads bent close together so they can both hear what’s playing. Steph hides beers in the stream too sometimes, and they get pleasantly buzzed as they listen to The Cult or chat about nothing at all.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” Angie says one day, and it’s a spur-of-the-moment thing, just an idle musing that breaks their comfortable silence, but Steph sits up from where she’s sprawled by the water with an expression on her face that Angie’s never seen before. “What?” Angie says nervously, and Steph’s lips curve up at the edges.
“It’s nice to hear stuff like that. Especially from… you know, you.”
Angie tilts her head, puzzled. “Me?” she repeats.
Steph breaks her gaze, stares at the bank of the stream and picks at the packed-dirt ground with the stub of a stick that she’s holding. “Yeah, I just… really like you.”
“I like you too,” Angie responds sincerely, and as her words hang in the air, something changes between them. Steph still isn’t looking her in the eye, and a germ of a thought grows inside her, a small hint of suspicion burgeoning in her mind.
“Steph, are…” She begins trepidatiously, not wanting to finish the sentence in case she’s terribly off base. She recalls Claudine, and half of her thinks she’s crazy. This is Texas. This is a school friend of hers. This is not someone from another world she crossed paths with in a city a thousand miles away.
“I didn’t wanna say anything,” Steph says quietly, like she’s unburdening the most shameful secret ever told, and oh, God. Oh God.
Part of Angie’s still convinced she misunderstood this whole thing, but she’s not sure how to clarify anything without sounding totally stupid.
“How long?” she asks instead.
Steph smiles at the ground like something’s hurting her before admitting, “A while. You basically charmed me from the start.”
Angie puts her hand on Steph’s shoulder. “God, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you tell?” Steph says miserably, finally meeting her gaze again with a look of humiliation that makes Angie’s heart ache. “If you felt like this about another girl, would you tell?”
Angie opens her mouth to say that she wouldn’t know unless she was ever in that situation and then closes it again, dumbstruck. Maybe there’s a reason she loves hanging out with Steph so much. It’s not just that the girl’s funny, or good companionship, or shares beers that she swiped from the fridge in her basement - they have chemistry, actual chemistry, and she’s never thought about what that means until now.
“I get it if, you know, you don’t wanna…” Steph falters like it’s hard for her to even get the words out, and the sound of that just about breaks Angie’s heart. She finishes the sentence like she wants to get it over with, all in one short, rushed burst of words. “…Hangoutwithmeanymore.”
“Steph, no,” Angie soothes, rubbing her thumb back and forth across Steph’s forearm. It’s easily 90 degrees, but she can feel the goosebumps prickle under her touch. “Oh, my God.”
Steph pulls away, face flushing. “I have it bad, I guess,” she mumbles, and Angie says, “Hey. Come here.”
She means for it to just be a brief hug, a reassuring squeeze that things are fine, it doesn’t change anything, but somehow neither of them pull away so they end up sitting there, holding each other. Steph’s shaking a little, and Angie’s nose is pressed up against the crook of her neck, inhaling the sweet, clear smell of the other girl’s shampoo.
Steph shifts slightly in her arms and Angie’s’s about to start pulling away when Steph’s hands slide up to her cheeks and hold her there, cupping her face with a featherlike touch. Angie opens her mouth to say something and Steph leans in, and then they’re kissing, and they keep kissing, and they can’t stop. Steph’s hands are in her hair and, God, she’s finally touching Steph’s hair, and it’s softer than she thought it would be - smoother, like she brushes it a hundred times a morning - and her lips are soft too, and her tongue.
They break for breath occasionally but press right back against each other’s lips like this has been building up for months and now they’re finally releasing it, and in a way that’s not far from the truth. They’ve been dancing around each other since the day they first met, Angie realizes, and it wasn’t just a new friendship thing, it was deeper than that - it always had been.
Part of her is afraid to break away and face the aftermath, and she guesses Steph feels the same way because even after the fire has dissipated, they keep kissing, just chaste little brushes of their lips that Angie wishes she could revel in forever.
When Steph finally opens her eyes, her features are soft and dreamy, and Angie thinks in awe, I did that. That was me. She wonders if they’re going to talk about it, but Steph just takes her hand and walks her back to the car in silence, and The Cure’s on the radio and everything feels just as perfect as it can be.
--
Strangely, not a lot changes after that, which both comes as a surprise to Angie and doesn’t. On one hand, it’s a huge thing, what happened between them, but on the other, it feels totally right, like there’s no need to panic because everything’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be. They still listen to music and read by the stream, but now they make time for kissing, too, lying by the bank of the water and timidly resting their hands on each other’s hips as they explore each other’s mouths.
They don’t talk about what they’re doing - they never do. They barely acknowledge each other in school, keeping their acquaintanceship as secret as their after-school activities. Whenever Steph wants to initiate something, she just smiles in that way she has that Angie finds irresistible, and Angie quirks an eyebrow, instantly putting down whatever it was that she’d been occupied with because kissing Steph by the stream is a million times better.
--
Steph’s parents are never home because her dad’s some kind of high-powered lawyer and her mom’s social calendar is fuller than the president’s, so on days when it’s raining or just too damn humid out, the girls spend time at Steph’s house, listening to The Smiths as they rifle through Steph’s cassette collection or just enjoy being still together. They never discuss taking things further than kissing but Angie wants to, she thinks about it, she just doesn’t have the words to express her feelings. They get close to it on a couple of occasions when sitting side-by-side on Steph’s bed somehow morphs into Angie lying underneath her, legs spread as they kiss, the air humming with the pent-up desire of two teenage girls in love. During those times, Steph would make these little murmur-sigh sounds that drove her wild, made her wish she knew whether girls needed to use protection - and if they did, that she had some on hand.
Steph had kissed her chest before, too. Not her actual chest, exactly, but near where her clavicles are, and afterwards she’d looked at Angie with a fire in her eyes that made wetness pool between Angie’s legs, prompting her to consider just jumping Steph right then and there before the phone in Steph’s room rang and ruined things.
--
One time, Steph asks Angie to get something out of her desk drawer, and when Angie opens it, she sees a sliver of her Seventeen cover at the bottom and Steph goes red as a fire engine.
That’s the day Angie asks for a photo of Steph in return, and Steph jumps off the bed and says “Let’s take one together,” so they drive straight to the mall to go find a photobooth. They squeeze into the narrow seat together, making silly faces and serious faces, and in the last shot, Steph kisses Angie’s nose. That’s one of the things Angie loves about her - she’s spontaneous, impulsive, and it’s never boring when she’s around. Angie dresses to the nines no matter where she’s going, so when Steph’s walking next to her in her too-big shirts and jeans, it almost feels like they’re a real couple, like Steph’s her boyfriend and they’re showing each other off in public.
It’s still not something they talk about, what this is, what they’re doing, but one time Steph shows her a movie that had come out a few years earlier and after that she gets it a little more. The movie’s Silkwood and Cher’s gay in it - she’s in love with Meryl Streep, but Meryl doesn’t like her back that way.
“I’m glad that wasn’t us,” Steph murmurs at one point when Cher’s character’s crying over it and Meryl’s is trying to comfort her, and she says it so softly that Angie questions whether she imagined it at first. After all, they don’t discuss what’s going on between them - they never do. There’s an electric charge of silence after Steph speaks, and the other girl is tense like she’s waiting for something. Her face lights up like Christmas when Angie whispers, “Me too.”
--
Steph has a pool - a really nice one, with a pool house and granite everywhere and a fountain in the middle, and one Saturday they put Depeche Mode on the boom box and swim until their fingers wrinkle up. Steph’s hair gets darker when it’s wet, and the contrast makes her eyes blaze with a cool intensity that makes Angie feel all crazy inside. She reaches out to tenderly brush away the drops of water that are clinging to Steph’s lashes, and pretty soon has her pressed up against the edge of the pool, kissing her. Biting Steph’s lip elicits this sound that drives Angie wild, and she pulls Steph closer, close enough to feel Steph’s nipples pressing hard against her, which lights all of her nerve endings on fire.
Without breaking the kiss, Angie lifts her hand to hesitantly cup the full, firm weight of Steph’s breast, and the other girl moans into her mouth, spurring her to continue. Heart hammering, Angie strokes her thumb across the erect nub beneath the fabric of Steph’s bikini and Steph gasps “Please,” tilting her head back against the ledge of the pool and exposing the delicate skin of her neck. Angie sucks on her there for a few moments, not wanting to leave a mark that will be hard to explain later, and dances her fingers up Steph’s back until she reaches the clasp. Steph helps her, scrabbling until it comes undone, and her chest is the most perfect thing Angie has ever seen.
She has a moment of sheer, unbridled bliss as she leans down, hardly daring to believe what she’s about to do and how right it feels, and just as she sucks a hard nipple into her mouth she hears “Stephanie Caroline” from the direction of the back door and her whole world stops turning.
--
She doesn’t think she’s ever been this mortified, sitting in her bikini and a towel in Steph’s kitchen, dripping all over the marble floor. Steph had been sent upstairs so it’s just her and Mrs. March now, and Mrs. March won’t even look at her, she’s that disgusted. Angie has never felt so small.
“This whole thing - all of it - it’s over,” Mrs. March says firmly, making eye contact on the last word. She has the same bright blue eyes as Steph, but unlike Steph’s, they’re cold and unfriendly and utterly terrifying.
“Are you… what are you going to do to me?” Angie mumbles, and to her profound embarrassment, she can’t even look at Steph’s mom when she’s talking to her, she just talks to the floor instead, staring at the chlorinated puddles.
“Nothing,” Mrs. March says, and for a second Angie thinks she’s kidding but then she continues, “Unless I want to drag my whole family’s name through the mud over my daughter’s youthful indiscretions, which I don’t.”
It breaks Angie’s heart to hear what she and Steph shared together being referred to like that, with such a total disregard for what it meant to them, like it’s some stupid teenage thing they only did to be rebellious. Steph’s the love of her life, not some joyride.
“But you’re never to see her again, or I will tell everyone I know about it, family reputation or not,” Mrs. March finishes.
It feels like something breaks apart inside Angie, like her entire chest is splitting into two, but she nods numbly because she’s cornered. She’s trapped. There’s no way to get herself out of this without accepting those conditions, and she doesn’t think she’s ever known a more horrifying feeling in her life.
Mrs. March gets her clothes and sends her packing before Steph’s dad arrives, and she gets all the way home before realizing how hard she’s shaking.
--
Angie moves to Europe soon after that. She doesn’t want for it to seem like she’s fleeing the country after her deepest, sweetest, most precious secret was exposed, but - yeah, she kind of is. She graduates, packs her stuff, calls in her Seventeen connections and models in Milan for a while, where she meets an Italian boy and loses her virginity and convinces herself she’s not that way after all. She puts Steph out of her mind because that’s where she wants her to be, and by the time she meets David Hasselhoff on a plane in the mid-90s, her trysts in the Highland Park woods with Stephanie March are but a distant memory.
--
She’d laughed when David inquired whether she’d be interested in acting. To be honest, she’d been distracted thinking about how jealous Beth would be of her if they were still friends, and when he asked, she straight-up laughed in his face and actually turned him down. But he was pretty insistent, she supposes, because she finds herself with a breakout part on Baywatch Nights before the year is out, and then some way, somehow, she’s a TV star.
--
The Hoff is fun to work with, and the camaraderie between the cast almost makes up for the fact that the plotlines are ridiculous, with Vikings, aliens, mutated mermaids, and David’s character having to clone himself to escape from Brazilian body-snatching snails.
…Seriously.
Not to Angie’s immense surprise, the show only runs for two seasons, but it’s enough of a springboard to get her some movie work and, a couple of years down the road, a part on a little show called Law & Order.
--
Angie feels a kinship with Abbie Carmichael immediately. Nobody who knows Angie would call her shy - far from it - but Abbie gives her an excuse to tap into a tough, badass side of herself that she’d never really been given the avenue to explore before. In her inaugural episode, one of her lines is “Hang ‘em all,” and she thinks that encapsulates the character perfectly - Abbie “Hang ‘em all” Carmichael, kicking ass and taking names.
She has a lot of fun on set. Not only does she get to live and work in New York City as she’d dreamed all those years ago, but Sam Waterston is absolutely the most dapper man she’s ever met, and Jerry Orbach is - well, he’s a legend. The second year she does the show, Jesse L. Martin of RENT fame joins the cast, and they sing show tunes in the squad room at any opportunity. She wishes Dick Wolf, the show’s producer, would be less of a stick in the mud about blooper reels because there’s some fantastic footage of the two of them belting I’ll Cover You - her as Angel, Jesse reprising his role of Collins - during which she does Angel’s signature jump onto Lieutenant Van Buren’s desk, much to the set dresser’s dismay. She thinks that if she ever, in some strange twist of fate, ends up with more clout than Dick Wolf in her lifetime, the first thing she’ll do is get those videos released.
--
It’s while she’s living in New York that her friend Mike, the defensive lineman of the New York Giants at the time, invites her to a home game at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. She says sure, because what Texan girl doesn’t like football at least a little bit? Abbie has a Longhorns pennant in her office, and she chuckles to herself as she imagines the character’s indignance at her going to watch another team play.
--
She’s standing by an exit ramp outside the home locker room when she sees him. This guy, this.. this perfect guy. He’s walking by with an older woman she assumes is his mom, and she wants him to stop, but he doesn’t. She prays about it right then and there, putting any future she may have with him in God’s hands, and as he keeps walking, she says “Okay, God, great, thanks” inside her head.
The next thing she knows, the older lady is beside her, asking if she’s the girl from Law & Order and complimenting her on her work when she answers in the affirmative.
“Oh,” the woman says, “and I’d like for you to meet my son, Jason.”
--
Part Two.