What Happens in Agoura Hills (May or May Not Stay There)
Title: What Happens in Agoura Hills (May or May Not Stay There)
Fandom: Twilight RPF
Pairing: Taylor Lautner/Kristen Stewart
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,500
Summary: Maybe she should’ve been excited for this. Who says skinning your knee is a bad thing?
Author's Notes: I started this back in August, and left it sitting out until yesterday. Perhaps the fact that I spent most of yesterday reading Merlin RPF made me feel guilty. I dunno. Anyway. This takes place during the Entertainment Weekly photo shoot. You probably saw this coming months ago and then promptly forgot about it (like me). No worries. I'm not sure if I like this one, but oh well. It's in Kristen's point of view, this time, but I don't think it tops Conspiracy Theories, sadly. Love Story belongs to Swifty. Blah blah blah, taycob_kstew.
What Happens in Agoura Hills
(May or May Not Stay There)
They’re in Agoura, California. Agoura Hills. Something like that. Someone tells them where they are, and the first thing Kristen thinks of is, like, a sweater, or something. Or maybe a rabbit. Not this place full of dirt and dried grass and weeds and hills, and, oh, yeah, the sprawling landscape of million-dollar houses that stretches basically everywhere the eye can see, except for here. Because they’re in the hills. And the dirt. And the dried grass and weeds.
Not that she’s afraid of a little dirt. She’s not one of those girls who never chips her nails, who has a fucking panic attack when her shoes are covered in tiny dust clouds. Whatever, they’re dust clouds, who cares? And nails grow back, even if maybe you bite them sometimes. Stuff like that. It’s not like she’s a pig who rolls around in the mud all day, or anything.
But it’s a shock, the whole sudden change in scenery thing. They start off driving through streets with huge ass mansions and palm trees and blue skies. Probably inside those mansions are celebrities and people so rich and famous they could send Twilight into a dark corner, curled up and crying like a baby. Probably. They probably hadn’t even needed to keep a low-profile in the car as they passed people with their dyed, Southern California hair and aviator sunglasses. Short-shorts. Tank tops. Designer jewelry. But the low-profile had been more about lightly wresting Taylor in the back seat of the car, shoving him down when people came into view - and him pulling her back down when she tried to poke her head up to look out the window. Both of them giggling, of course, and the driver shooting them the weirdest look ever.
Anyway, it goes from that to the middle of nowhere. Southern-California-nowhere. Kind of. It’s nothing like Canada-nowhere, where you can step outside one grey morning and find a fucking moose staring at you. (Which had actually happened once. She’d been so startled and freaked out that she’d screamed - moose are really dangerous, aren’t they? - until Taylor had come out of nowhere all sleepy-eyed and clapped a hand over her mouth. He’d told her to shut up, seriously, or it was going to come and eat her, and he was so deadpan that for a second, she almost believed him. Then he’d laughed right in her face.) When someone says wilderness, it’s definitely not here that she thinks of. It’s not necessarily Canada, either - maybe sometimes it’s Colorado, or even Australia - but it’s definitely not California.
Blah, blah, blah.
Ugh.
Obviously, she’s really bored. If she doesn’t keep it on a short leash, her brain just wanders the hell away.
This time, she’s bored because Taylor’s fallen asleep with his head against the window, probably drooling on the glass. It’s kind of weird, but normal things seem so boring after he stops talking and eating up time. And when he’s sleeping, like he is now, the silence is almost missing something.
Really weird.
Kristen fidgets, glances out the window, and then pokes Taylor sharply in the arm. Of course, it’s kind of like poking a rock - y’know, a really warm, buff rock - but that’s not going to stop her.
“Hey,” she says. It comes out a little like a hiss. Snakey. Secretive.
She coughs, too, but he doesn’t twitch at either of the sounds. So she makes a face and shoves him a little harder. “HEY.”
He makes a noise that you could probably only spell out by pressing a bunch of different computer keys at the same time. Mnnfadrardruadfdadadgggg. Like that. Like maybe someone just actually sat on your keyboard.
Shit. Would he sleep through a nuclear holocaust, too?
She unbuckles her seatbelt - they’re in a normal car with normal rules, okay? - and climbs over the seat space between them until she’s crouched right by his face. Then she blows air lightly into his ear.
“MnnyrrAHH!” he yells, finally waking up. He swats at the space around his ears like she’s a fly buzzing around them, and then he looks at her with rapidly-focusing eyes. And she’s perched there on the part of the seat that really isn’t much of a seat, grinning at him like a fucking cat. Feline.
Yeah. That’s hot.
“Wake up,” she says, like it’s anything but pointless. “We’re here.”
Instantly, he’s smiling. Is there a switch on the back of his neck, or something, to turn on his smiles like the brightest desk lamp ever? The brightest desk lamp ever that never goes out, just keeps burning forever until you turn it off again? Or like he’s got a crew following him around everywhere that’s always shining lights at him so that his teeth are always so glinting and white? You could probably point his face up at the night sky and summon Batman.
“Awesome,” Taylor says. He means it.
Not like he ever says anything he doesn’t mean, but still.
“You’re totally excited for this, aren’t you?” she asks, teasing.
“Of course. We’re gonna be on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. That’s kind of a big deal, ya know.”
“Yeah, ‘cause I had no idea.”
They roll their eyes at each other.
Outside the window behind Taylor’s head (the one Kristen’s sure is covered in slobber), she sees them passing lighting equipment and cameras and tripods, and a small handful of people milling around beneath one of those tent things you use at weddings and barbecues. And photo shoots, of course. The tires of the car crunch on dirt and gravel - it might be a road, it might not - and then it eases to a stop.
When someone unfamiliar taps on the window, it’s time to get out.
She expects this photo shoot to be just like all the others: boring as fuck until the end of the day when everyone gets tired and therefore hyper, and they all do weird shit because who cares if there are cameras here or not?
But she forgets that photo shoots with Taylor are fun. Because Taylor is fun. She’s used to the ones with Rob, where they’re just - ugh. Where they just suck. Seriously suck. And they’re fucking depressing. It’s not that Rob sucks, or that he’s more boring than a pet rock, or anything, because he isn’t; and he’s not depressing. Or depressed. It just feels like every time she has to take pictures with Rob, it’s all about intense stares with passionate poses and dead eyes. She’s not Kristen, and he’s not Rob. They’re Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. Pictures with Rob means true luuuurrvveee, and we’re sexy and dangerous ‘cause we chill with fucking vampires. And, yeah. That thing about being sexy, again, because apparently that’s all that sells nowadays.
Kristen is giddy and giggly at the start of the day, before everyone’s even really set up. It’s hot out, but not insanely so - this is Southern California, after all, what can you expect? - and she’s sweating like hell in the clothes she has to wear. They’re sticking to her back like an extra layer of skin. But who cares? Maybe this shoot is supposed to be about Jacob and Bella, but she’s pretty sure that she and Taylor steal the show. He’s doing flips, and they’re kicking up dirt and shit, flinging themselves around in the dried grasses and weeds.
There’s a lot of touching, too. God. He’s just. Like. One of those people you have to touch. All the time. Not in a pervy way, but in the way that just having a little bit of your skin against a little bit of his, or a little bit of your head on his lap, makes you feel so damn good. Kinda complete, but not in the way that’s all sappy and stupid. It’s just nice to know he’s there.
Maybe she should’ve been excited for this.
It’s definitely been the best shoot ever.
When it gets too hot, and they’ve kicked up enough dirt that they’re hacking like a pair of eighty-two-year-old chain smokers, the photographer calls for a break. Pretty much everyone rushes under the tent like a stampede of animals looking for water. Fucking shameless. Not that Kristen can’t blame them. A few assistants linger to make sure she and Taylor are taken care of, but she waves them away, wanting them out of her face.
She rolls over in the weeds, and wipes her sweaty forehead on the back of her hand. She’s going to need more makeup after this. It’s probably all running down her face. She probably looks like a clown. But whatever. Somehow Taylor still has a hell of a lot more energy than she does, and he jumps to his feet so that he can reach down and help her up.
“Leave me here to die,” she moans, pretending to be melodramatic, and swats his hand away.
“Not gonna happen,” he informs her. He keeps on reaching down, and then he just completely picks her up off the ground. Like she weighs nothing. Holy fuck.
She really only freaks out because she’s not expecting it. So she screams, and kicks her legs, but hell no is she going to push away and pretend - even just a little - that she isn’t enjoying every second of this. She likes the way he makes her feel weightless, but it doesn’t cross her mind that maybe it’s not just because he’s so freaking strong.
In fact, she just sort of likes the way he makes her feel. Just in general. Taylor has this effect on people. He turns people into better people. Not in the way that just one look at him will make you jump out in front of a train to rescue a box of helpless kittens, or anything. But in the way that you feel yourself picking up your feet, smiling a little more in the way that you mean, and when you blink your eyes, the world looks brighter and a lot less shitty than before. Time with Taylor can be encased in its own little bubble, or maybe a snow globe; and inside that bubble, you’re different. You can look back on it, shaking the snow globe and watching little flecks of memory stir around within, and you’ll ache because you aren’t there right now, this very second. And you want to be.
Christ. She would kill for him.
Literally.
She counts herself down as one hundred percent platonically smitten.
Because. Obviously. She has a boyfriend, even if it’s hard to remember him inside the Bubble of Taylor Goodness. Because. Obviously. Taylor is still a kid, even though he struts around in a way that’s almost cocky - but isn’t, because it’s Taylor - and has the body of a twenty-five-year-old. He could probably pass off as older than her if basically everyone in the world didn’t know his name by now. Or at least, every pre-teen girl and possibly their mothers.
Twilight Moms.
Something like that.
Taylor spins her around for a few seconds, so that by the time he sets her down again, she’s almost too dizzy to stand, and she nearly lands on her ass as she stumbles around briefly like an idiot. Of course, he’s laughing at her, but she’s laughing, too - at least, she will be once the ground is firmly beneath her feet and the sky gets back up above her head. Taylor grabs her hand once to keep her from tripping over a huge rock that she doesn’t remember being there before. He is so fucking sweet, even when he’s making fun of her.
There are people filming them at this point.
Kristen doesn’t care. Side-effects of habitual nonchalance combined with the Taylor Bubble.
“Come on,” he says. “We should get water.”
Which is a good idea, since she’s forgotten in the past thirty seconds how thirsty she is.
“Water’s for the weak,” she jokes in a low, gravelly voice, adding an “Arrrrrr” afterward, so that she’s not sure if she’s trying to be a He-man or a pirate.
“Oh, okay,” Taylor says. “You definitely need water, then.”
She slings her arm around his shoulder, and they make their way to the tent, shoving each other with their hips in an attempt to make each other fall, mischievous looks passed between them. At some point, they’re stopped and interviewed - she can’t remember if it’s before or after Taylor pours ice water down her back - and end up with Love Story stuck in their heads.
“You wanna go for a walk, or something?” Taylor asks. They’re sitting in the weeds again, side by side and playing footsies absentmindedly like it’s nothing else but second nature. They’ve got their heads leaning together, too, and Kristen makes a face at the epic but lazy battle happening at their feet.
“Where?” She runs a hand through her hair, and they both glance around.
“Well,” he says after a pause, “there’s the hills. And then there’s the hills. There’s also the hills. Kinda hard to decide.”
She snorts. “Man, I dunno. How ‘bout we go with door number three?”
“Ya know, that’s exactly what I was thinking. You must be psychic.”
“Fucking clairvoyant.”
Note that a series of significant glances are exchanged during this time.
“You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess...”
“It’s a love story baby just say yes...”
Taylor apparently can’t remember the next line - and neither can she - so he sings an exaggerated, off-key, falsetto, “Yeeeeessssss!” into an invisible microphone.
“Yeah,” Kristen nods, “we definitely need to audition for American Idol. Like, together.”
“We’d totally win. Obviously.”
“Yeah, both of us. We’ll make pop culture history, especially if you keep singing the line about being a princess.”
“Nah. It’s my improv skills that’re gonna get us a record deal.”
“You mean like, yeeeeessss!” she imitates in a high-pitched voice, knocking into him again.
“Yeeeeeesssss!” he sings again in reply. If you can call it singing.
Which you can’t.
The truth is that they both really suck, but that’s also one of the things neither of them gives a crap about.
It’s not like she really likes that song, anyway. She’s just always liked teasing him about making out with Taylor Swift, and somewhere along the line, he’d come to accept it, and it’s been an inside joke ever since. Or something like that. Somewhere along the line, she sort of forgot the origin of things. It’s just something that kind of is, and even though it hasn’t always been, the dividing line between a Before and an After has disappeared.
She should probably ask him about that, sometime. (Even if it’s just to see if he’ll say the same thing.)
They’ve been walking for a while; Kristen isn’t really sure how long, mostly because she hasn’t been paying attention. There was the whole thing about figuring out which way to go, sneaking off indiscreetly and not-unseen by any means. They crept around cars and equipment and people who were definitely staring at them, until Taylor spotted something that looked like a path, and they followed it. Are still following it, as it weaves a thin brown line through the chicken noodle soup-colored hills. (Out of the can. Not home-slash-restaurant-made.)
She doesn’t want to admit that she’s tired, because Taylor’s definitely not; he’s definitely just going along at her side as if he could stay there forever, walk there forever, contented with a half-smile still on his face that forgot to fade away. You don’t want to end something like that.
But God, it feels like they’ve been gone for hours. The sun is sinking in the sky, turning the grass from chicken soup to - well, to burnt chicken soup. And not that burnt - maybe they really haven’t been out here that long. Maybe the sun really hasn’t sunk all that low, and she just has no sense of time or depth or comparison, or whatever skill might be best suited to judge the situation.
She squints up at the sky, and gets an eyeful of sunlight.
“Ugh,” she says, rubbing her eyes.
“What?” Taylor asks.
Kristen trips over a rock in response. Seems she was inevitably going to do it at some point.
Taylor snorts, but catches her sort of awkwardly before she does a faceplant, or at the very least, lands on her ass. As it is, she still lurches forward violently enough to skin her freaking knee.
“Shit,” she says through gritted teeth. Taylor lowers her to the ground so she can inspect the damage she’s managed to bring upon herself. Then he kneels down beside her as his fingers flutter around the cut, hesitant as hers, because any contact there will only bring a sting.
It’s really just a scrape, with little pinpricks of blood poking out in an almost mesh-like pattern, except smeared a little; tiny bits of rock, like sand, make impressions in her skin, and there’s dirt everywhere. Her Converse and socks are stained light brown, her legs looking bruised, even though they aren’t. She tries blowing on the scrape, as if that’ll make it cleaner, but it doesn’t.
“Shit,” she winces again. For such a tiny little fucker, it still hurts like hell.
Kristen is about to lean back, partly because she’s tired, and partly because she doesn’t want to look at the thing anymore, or at least not for just another minute, please, when she notices how close Taylor is. Her breath catches. He’s leaning over her leg earnestly, still.
“You’d think I’d never been on a hike before, or something,” she jokes. She can smell him, and he smells good, in that guy kind of way. She can feel the heat off his body.
He looks up, and grins at her. “You call this a hike?”
“Okay.” She rolls her eyes. “A walk.”
“I mean, you don’t really hike anyway, do you? I mean, y’know, there’s nothing wrong with that, or anything, but -”
Kristen smiles now. “But I’m not, like, a mountaineer. Or a Boy Scout.”
“Yeah.”
And she smokes, she thinks. She knows it fucks with her lungs. With her brain. She works out, but not like Taylor does, of course. She doesn’t have a lot of endurance. And her lungs are shit. No. Kristen doesn’t hike.
He pulls a small water bottle out of his pocket - where the hell did that come from? - and uncaps it, gently pouring it over her knee. It feels like a kiss. She squirms as it trickles down into her shorts and her shoes. It leaves clean, pink trails along her dirty skin, and mud where she isn’t quite washed clean.
“Were you?” she blurts out.
“What?”
“Um. A Boy Scout.”
“Nah,” he says, still close. “No time. I was kind of a ninja, instead.”
“Being a ninja taught you how to treat wounds, Shark Boy?”
“I’m just...” He suddenly looks embarrassed, shy. “I’m just, um, you know, cleaning it. You’re s’posed to clean it. I’m pretty sure. I mean...” He dabs at her knee with a corner of his grey shirt, not meeting her eyes for the first time.
She usually thinks it’s funny when she makes people nervous. Funny, because she’s just a normal person, when everyone treats her like she isn’t. Like she’s a goddess, instead of this girl who’s happened to stumble into a goldmine. Like she’s amazing, and perfect. She kind of enjoys it sometimes - because sometimes, really, who wouldn’t? - in a bemused sort of way, even though at other times it just bothers her. She appreciates fans, honest to God, but it’s not as if they’re of a different species.
She usually likes embarrassing Taylor. Making him blush. Making him slip up, so they can elbow each other in mock-annoyance afterward. That impishly mischievous grin on her face. That sheepish quirk of his lips. The overall lightness of their combined expressions.
But she thinks it’s funny in a different way, and right now, it’s even more different than usual. It feels funny somewhere in the pit of her stomach; there’s a funny look in his eyes. It’s funny, because she kind of wants to stay here forever, inside this tighter-than-usual Taylor Bubble, knee bleeding, ass in the dirt, under the blazing sun, with his shirt gently but firmly held to her knee like he’s stopping blood from seeping out of her heart.
Kristen’s throat is dry. “I’m not usually like this,” she rasps. She’s staring with fascination at the shirt, where it’s pressed, the blotches of sweat around his collar, the way he still isn’t looking at her, and how she’s pretty sure it’s on purpose, not just that he forgot, or doesn’t want to. Before he can ask her what? again (and she can feel like an idiot because she’s not making any damn sense today, not at all), she adds, “I mean, this damsel-in-distress shit. I don’t - I mean. I’m just. Not.”
“Except when you’re Bella,” he snorts. He’s still looking at her knee. “Maybe she’s rubbing off on you.”
“Ugh,” Kristen says, wrinkling her nose. “No thanks.”
But she has to admit, she’s done this scene before. Only that time, there was fake blood around her hairline, and Taylor’s hair was long - and he had his shirt all the way off, not stretched out to meet her in a way that connects them, almost. But it’s more practical this way, isn’t it? Pulling your shirt off just to dab it against someone’s head is only good for a gratuitous shirtless scene. Which it was.
Which Kristen hadn’t liked.
Not that she hadn’t liked seeing him shirtless. (Because she had. There’s no point in denying it.) What she hadn’t liked was that everyone else would like seeing him shirtless, too, and that meant he was having his body exploited for the sake of getting more money from screaming tweens and TwiMoms, like some kind of poster-boy-hooker-thing. Bait.
Which. Well. They’re actors, it’s what they do, blah blah blah -
But no. Not. Fuck that. Fuck the fundamental job description. It’s Taylor - Taylor’s body. Taylor, who isn’t like the rest of them. Who’s only seventeen. And sweet. And funny.
So what if she appreciates that extra thirty pounds of pure fucking muscle he’s put on? She knows him. They’re friends. She’s allowed to notice things like that, and maybe in more than a good-for-him sort of way.
She shakes her head, then smirks slightly. “You know... You know, you’re sort of beautiful?”
This makes him look up.
“You hit your knee pretty hard, didn’t you?”
Her eyelashes flutter as she looks down. How demure. “It’s not really that bad.”
“Yeah... I know.”
“Then why are you - ?” She gestures vaguely to her knee. To his hand. To that combination she can’t seem to shake out of her brain.
He shrugs, a little uncomfortable. The gesture seems to say, Because I want to, and for a second, she can almost hear those words tumbling from his mouth, as easy as anything.
Because he wants to.
Because she wants him to.
Wants him to want to.
“It’s probably stopped bleeding,” she says, probably unhelpfully. Fill in the silence, ‘cause this shit just got awkward, and then clicked into place - where it should have been all along.
“Yeah.” He lets his shirt go; one part of it is wrinkled and soaked with coppery blotches, and it’s almost amusing to think of what the people in charge of their wardrobe for the shoot are going to say when they see what’s happened to their clothes.
But Kristen doesn’t think about this for too long, because she’s watching Taylor instead, intently, waiting to see what he’s going to do. She’s not this kind of girl; she doesn’t need to read other people’s cue cards to decide what the appropriate action is, here. She’s not the kind of girl who waits until it’s her turn to make the second (or third or fourth or fifth) move. It’s not like she just goes barging blindly ahead like some heinous bitch who can’t take a hint and wouldn’t give a shit, anyway. It’s that she doesn’t always need affirmation to be able to live her life.
Her palms are a little numb now, digging into the gravelly ground. An ant tickles the breadth of her thumb. And she waits, maybe not for affirmation, but out of curiosity, as if what’s going to happen next will define everything, and she needs to wait, to pay attention, so she doesn’t miss it and get kicked out of the loop. Maybe it’s not even that she needs to wait, but that she wants to. Which is important. Really important.
Biting his lip, Taylor touches her knee again, like an afterthought, except carefully enough that her scrape is loosely encircled by his thumb and forefinger.
“Kristen,” he says. He looks at her.
“See you make your way through the crowd,” she sings offhandedly as she meets his gaze, small smile quirked into place, “and say hello, little did I know -”
“We should, like... go for an actual hike sometime,” he interrupts, determined.
“Yeah?” She raises her eyebrows. Runs a hand and streaks of dirt through her hair.
“Yeah.” He nods to himself.
And then he kisses her.
The walk back is like the walk there, with hip-bumping and leaning into each other’s shoulders, hands clasped and unclasped, sun on their hair and faces.
The first person to spot them (“Where have you been?”) goes apeshit (“And what’s that on your clothes? Is that blood?”), and everyone else either grumbles about actors, honestly, or gives them a friendly smile.
They apologize, giving an explanation about losing track of time (but not about Kristen’s heart, which is fluttering a mile a minute, and maybe, she thinks, maybe, probably, not from all that walking. She doesn’t really have an explanation for how she and Taylor went from wrestling like six-year-olds in the backseat of a car to kissing - not making out, exactly, because it wasn’t like that - in the middle of nowhere, all in one day, either).
“There’re handprints on your leg,” someone notes dryly.
“Oh, um. Yeah. Thanks,” Kristen says. “I tripped.”
Taylor blushes, and they’re both silent for about five seconds, until they start cracking up at exactly the same time. Everyone else probably thinks they’re crazy from having been out in the sun too long.
But that’s not what matters, is it?
Kristen leans closer to him so that she’s giggling into his ear, just to make him blush more, which he does, of course.
It’s probably only the familiarity of the exchange that disguises the new meaning behind it.
“Okay,” she says. “Where did we leave off?”
THE END
Fandom: Twilight RPF
Pairing: Taylor Lautner/Kristen Stewart
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,500
Summary: Maybe she should’ve been excited for this. Who says skinning your knee is a bad thing?
Author's Notes: I started this back in August, and left it sitting out until yesterday. Perhaps the fact that I spent most of yesterday reading Merlin RPF made me feel guilty. I dunno. Anyway. This takes place during the Entertainment Weekly photo shoot. You probably saw this coming months ago and then promptly forgot about it (like me). No worries. I'm not sure if I like this one, but oh well. It's in Kristen's point of view, this time, but I don't think it tops Conspiracy Theories, sadly. Love Story belongs to Swifty. Blah blah blah, taycob_kstew.
What Happens in Agoura Hills
(May or May Not Stay There)
They’re in Agoura, California. Agoura Hills. Something like that. Someone tells them where they are, and the first thing Kristen thinks of is, like, a sweater, or something. Or maybe a rabbit. Not this place full of dirt and dried grass and weeds and hills, and, oh, yeah, the sprawling landscape of million-dollar houses that stretches basically everywhere the eye can see, except for here. Because they’re in the hills. And the dirt. And the dried grass and weeds.
Not that she’s afraid of a little dirt. She’s not one of those girls who never chips her nails, who has a fucking panic attack when her shoes are covered in tiny dust clouds. Whatever, they’re dust clouds, who cares? And nails grow back, even if maybe you bite them sometimes. Stuff like that. It’s not like she’s a pig who rolls around in the mud all day, or anything.
But it’s a shock, the whole sudden change in scenery thing. They start off driving through streets with huge ass mansions and palm trees and blue skies. Probably inside those mansions are celebrities and people so rich and famous they could send Twilight into a dark corner, curled up and crying like a baby. Probably. They probably hadn’t even needed to keep a low-profile in the car as they passed people with their dyed, Southern California hair and aviator sunglasses. Short-shorts. Tank tops. Designer jewelry. But the low-profile had been more about lightly wresting Taylor in the back seat of the car, shoving him down when people came into view - and him pulling her back down when she tried to poke her head up to look out the window. Both of them giggling, of course, and the driver shooting them the weirdest look ever.
Anyway, it goes from that to the middle of nowhere. Southern-California-nowhere. Kind of. It’s nothing like Canada-nowhere, where you can step outside one grey morning and find a fucking moose staring at you. (Which had actually happened once. She’d been so startled and freaked out that she’d screamed - moose are really dangerous, aren’t they? - until Taylor had come out of nowhere all sleepy-eyed and clapped a hand over her mouth. He’d told her to shut up, seriously, or it was going to come and eat her, and he was so deadpan that for a second, she almost believed him. Then he’d laughed right in her face.) When someone says wilderness, it’s definitely not here that she thinks of. It’s not necessarily Canada, either - maybe sometimes it’s Colorado, or even Australia - but it’s definitely not California.
Blah, blah, blah.
Ugh.
Obviously, she’s really bored. If she doesn’t keep it on a short leash, her brain just wanders the hell away.
This time, she’s bored because Taylor’s fallen asleep with his head against the window, probably drooling on the glass. It’s kind of weird, but normal things seem so boring after he stops talking and eating up time. And when he’s sleeping, like he is now, the silence is almost missing something.
Really weird.
Kristen fidgets, glances out the window, and then pokes Taylor sharply in the arm. Of course, it’s kind of like poking a rock - y’know, a really warm, buff rock - but that’s not going to stop her.
“Hey,” she says. It comes out a little like a hiss. Snakey. Secretive.
She coughs, too, but he doesn’t twitch at either of the sounds. So she makes a face and shoves him a little harder. “HEY.”
He makes a noise that you could probably only spell out by pressing a bunch of different computer keys at the same time. Mnnfadrardruadfdadadgggg. Like that. Like maybe someone just actually sat on your keyboard.
Shit. Would he sleep through a nuclear holocaust, too?
She unbuckles her seatbelt - they’re in a normal car with normal rules, okay? - and climbs over the seat space between them until she’s crouched right by his face. Then she blows air lightly into his ear.
“MnnyrrAHH!” he yells, finally waking up. He swats at the space around his ears like she’s a fly buzzing around them, and then he looks at her with rapidly-focusing eyes. And she’s perched there on the part of the seat that really isn’t much of a seat, grinning at him like a fucking cat. Feline.
Yeah. That’s hot.
“Wake up,” she says, like it’s anything but pointless. “We’re here.”
Instantly, he’s smiling. Is there a switch on the back of his neck, or something, to turn on his smiles like the brightest desk lamp ever? The brightest desk lamp ever that never goes out, just keeps burning forever until you turn it off again? Or like he’s got a crew following him around everywhere that’s always shining lights at him so that his teeth are always so glinting and white? You could probably point his face up at the night sky and summon Batman.
“Awesome,” Taylor says. He means it.
Not like he ever says anything he doesn’t mean, but still.
“You’re totally excited for this, aren’t you?” she asks, teasing.
“Of course. We’re gonna be on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. That’s kind of a big deal, ya know.”
“Yeah, ‘cause I had no idea.”
They roll their eyes at each other.
Outside the window behind Taylor’s head (the one Kristen’s sure is covered in slobber), she sees them passing lighting equipment and cameras and tripods, and a small handful of people milling around beneath one of those tent things you use at weddings and barbecues. And photo shoots, of course. The tires of the car crunch on dirt and gravel - it might be a road, it might not - and then it eases to a stop.
When someone unfamiliar taps on the window, it’s time to get out.
She expects this photo shoot to be just like all the others: boring as fuck until the end of the day when everyone gets tired and therefore hyper, and they all do weird shit because who cares if there are cameras here or not?
But she forgets that photo shoots with Taylor are fun. Because Taylor is fun. She’s used to the ones with Rob, where they’re just - ugh. Where they just suck. Seriously suck. And they’re fucking depressing. It’s not that Rob sucks, or that he’s more boring than a pet rock, or anything, because he isn’t; and he’s not depressing. Or depressed. It just feels like every time she has to take pictures with Rob, it’s all about intense stares with passionate poses and dead eyes. She’s not Kristen, and he’s not Rob. They’re Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. Pictures with Rob means true luuuurrvveee, and we’re sexy and dangerous ‘cause we chill with fucking vampires. And, yeah. That thing about being sexy, again, because apparently that’s all that sells nowadays.
Kristen is giddy and giggly at the start of the day, before everyone’s even really set up. It’s hot out, but not insanely so - this is Southern California, after all, what can you expect? - and she’s sweating like hell in the clothes she has to wear. They’re sticking to her back like an extra layer of skin. But who cares? Maybe this shoot is supposed to be about Jacob and Bella, but she’s pretty sure that she and Taylor steal the show. He’s doing flips, and they’re kicking up dirt and shit, flinging themselves around in the dried grasses and weeds.
There’s a lot of touching, too. God. He’s just. Like. One of those people you have to touch. All the time. Not in a pervy way, but in the way that just having a little bit of your skin against a little bit of his, or a little bit of your head on his lap, makes you feel so damn good. Kinda complete, but not in the way that’s all sappy and stupid. It’s just nice to know he’s there.
Maybe she should’ve been excited for this.
It’s definitely been the best shoot ever.
When it gets too hot, and they’ve kicked up enough dirt that they’re hacking like a pair of eighty-two-year-old chain smokers, the photographer calls for a break. Pretty much everyone rushes under the tent like a stampede of animals looking for water. Fucking shameless. Not that Kristen can’t blame them. A few assistants linger to make sure she and Taylor are taken care of, but she waves them away, wanting them out of her face.
She rolls over in the weeds, and wipes her sweaty forehead on the back of her hand. She’s going to need more makeup after this. It’s probably all running down her face. She probably looks like a clown. But whatever. Somehow Taylor still has a hell of a lot more energy than she does, and he jumps to his feet so that he can reach down and help her up.
“Leave me here to die,” she moans, pretending to be melodramatic, and swats his hand away.
“Not gonna happen,” he informs her. He keeps on reaching down, and then he just completely picks her up off the ground. Like she weighs nothing. Holy fuck.
She really only freaks out because she’s not expecting it. So she screams, and kicks her legs, but hell no is she going to push away and pretend - even just a little - that she isn’t enjoying every second of this. She likes the way he makes her feel weightless, but it doesn’t cross her mind that maybe it’s not just because he’s so freaking strong.
In fact, she just sort of likes the way he makes her feel. Just in general. Taylor has this effect on people. He turns people into better people. Not in the way that just one look at him will make you jump out in front of a train to rescue a box of helpless kittens, or anything. But in the way that you feel yourself picking up your feet, smiling a little more in the way that you mean, and when you blink your eyes, the world looks brighter and a lot less shitty than before. Time with Taylor can be encased in its own little bubble, or maybe a snow globe; and inside that bubble, you’re different. You can look back on it, shaking the snow globe and watching little flecks of memory stir around within, and you’ll ache because you aren’t there right now, this very second. And you want to be.
Christ. She would kill for him.
Literally.
She counts herself down as one hundred percent platonically smitten.
Because. Obviously. She has a boyfriend, even if it’s hard to remember him inside the Bubble of Taylor Goodness. Because. Obviously. Taylor is still a kid, even though he struts around in a way that’s almost cocky - but isn’t, because it’s Taylor - and has the body of a twenty-five-year-old. He could probably pass off as older than her if basically everyone in the world didn’t know his name by now. Or at least, every pre-teen girl and possibly their mothers.
Twilight Moms.
Something like that.
Taylor spins her around for a few seconds, so that by the time he sets her down again, she’s almost too dizzy to stand, and she nearly lands on her ass as she stumbles around briefly like an idiot. Of course, he’s laughing at her, but she’s laughing, too - at least, she will be once the ground is firmly beneath her feet and the sky gets back up above her head. Taylor grabs her hand once to keep her from tripping over a huge rock that she doesn’t remember being there before. He is so fucking sweet, even when he’s making fun of her.
There are people filming them at this point.
Kristen doesn’t care. Side-effects of habitual nonchalance combined with the Taylor Bubble.
“Come on,” he says. “We should get water.”
Which is a good idea, since she’s forgotten in the past thirty seconds how thirsty she is.
“Water’s for the weak,” she jokes in a low, gravelly voice, adding an “Arrrrrr” afterward, so that she’s not sure if she’s trying to be a He-man or a pirate.
“Oh, okay,” Taylor says. “You definitely need water, then.”
She slings her arm around his shoulder, and they make their way to the tent, shoving each other with their hips in an attempt to make each other fall, mischievous looks passed between them. At some point, they’re stopped and interviewed - she can’t remember if it’s before or after Taylor pours ice water down her back - and end up with Love Story stuck in their heads.
“You wanna go for a walk, or something?” Taylor asks. They’re sitting in the weeds again, side by side and playing footsies absentmindedly like it’s nothing else but second nature. They’ve got their heads leaning together, too, and Kristen makes a face at the epic but lazy battle happening at their feet.
“Where?” She runs a hand through her hair, and they both glance around.
“Well,” he says after a pause, “there’s the hills. And then there’s the hills. There’s also the hills. Kinda hard to decide.”
She snorts. “Man, I dunno. How ‘bout we go with door number three?”
“Ya know, that’s exactly what I was thinking. You must be psychic.”
“Fucking clairvoyant.”
Note that a series of significant glances are exchanged during this time.
“You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess...”
“It’s a love story baby just say yes...”
Taylor apparently can’t remember the next line - and neither can she - so he sings an exaggerated, off-key, falsetto, “Yeeeeessssss!” into an invisible microphone.
“Yeah,” Kristen nods, “we definitely need to audition for American Idol. Like, together.”
“We’d totally win. Obviously.”
“Yeah, both of us. We’ll make pop culture history, especially if you keep singing the line about being a princess.”
“Nah. It’s my improv skills that’re gonna get us a record deal.”
“You mean like, yeeeeessss!” she imitates in a high-pitched voice, knocking into him again.
“Yeeeeeesssss!” he sings again in reply. If you can call it singing.
Which you can’t.
The truth is that they both really suck, but that’s also one of the things neither of them gives a crap about.
It’s not like she really likes that song, anyway. She’s just always liked teasing him about making out with Taylor Swift, and somewhere along the line, he’d come to accept it, and it’s been an inside joke ever since. Or something like that. Somewhere along the line, she sort of forgot the origin of things. It’s just something that kind of is, and even though it hasn’t always been, the dividing line between a Before and an After has disappeared.
She should probably ask him about that, sometime. (Even if it’s just to see if he’ll say the same thing.)
They’ve been walking for a while; Kristen isn’t really sure how long, mostly because she hasn’t been paying attention. There was the whole thing about figuring out which way to go, sneaking off indiscreetly and not-unseen by any means. They crept around cars and equipment and people who were definitely staring at them, until Taylor spotted something that looked like a path, and they followed it. Are still following it, as it weaves a thin brown line through the chicken noodle soup-colored hills. (Out of the can. Not home-slash-restaurant-made.)
She doesn’t want to admit that she’s tired, because Taylor’s definitely not; he’s definitely just going along at her side as if he could stay there forever, walk there forever, contented with a half-smile still on his face that forgot to fade away. You don’t want to end something like that.
But God, it feels like they’ve been gone for hours. The sun is sinking in the sky, turning the grass from chicken soup to - well, to burnt chicken soup. And not that burnt - maybe they really haven’t been out here that long. Maybe the sun really hasn’t sunk all that low, and she just has no sense of time or depth or comparison, or whatever skill might be best suited to judge the situation.
She squints up at the sky, and gets an eyeful of sunlight.
“Ugh,” she says, rubbing her eyes.
“What?” Taylor asks.
Kristen trips over a rock in response. Seems she was inevitably going to do it at some point.
Taylor snorts, but catches her sort of awkwardly before she does a faceplant, or at the very least, lands on her ass. As it is, she still lurches forward violently enough to skin her freaking knee.
“Shit,” she says through gritted teeth. Taylor lowers her to the ground so she can inspect the damage she’s managed to bring upon herself. Then he kneels down beside her as his fingers flutter around the cut, hesitant as hers, because any contact there will only bring a sting.
It’s really just a scrape, with little pinpricks of blood poking out in an almost mesh-like pattern, except smeared a little; tiny bits of rock, like sand, make impressions in her skin, and there’s dirt everywhere. Her Converse and socks are stained light brown, her legs looking bruised, even though they aren’t. She tries blowing on the scrape, as if that’ll make it cleaner, but it doesn’t.
“Shit,” she winces again. For such a tiny little fucker, it still hurts like hell.
Kristen is about to lean back, partly because she’s tired, and partly because she doesn’t want to look at the thing anymore, or at least not for just another minute, please, when she notices how close Taylor is. Her breath catches. He’s leaning over her leg earnestly, still.
“You’d think I’d never been on a hike before, or something,” she jokes. She can smell him, and he smells good, in that guy kind of way. She can feel the heat off his body.
He looks up, and grins at her. “You call this a hike?”
“Okay.” She rolls her eyes. “A walk.”
“I mean, you don’t really hike anyway, do you? I mean, y’know, there’s nothing wrong with that, or anything, but -”
Kristen smiles now. “But I’m not, like, a mountaineer. Or a Boy Scout.”
“Yeah.”
And she smokes, she thinks. She knows it fucks with her lungs. With her brain. She works out, but not like Taylor does, of course. She doesn’t have a lot of endurance. And her lungs are shit. No. Kristen doesn’t hike.
He pulls a small water bottle out of his pocket - where the hell did that come from? - and uncaps it, gently pouring it over her knee. It feels like a kiss. She squirms as it trickles down into her shorts and her shoes. It leaves clean, pink trails along her dirty skin, and mud where she isn’t quite washed clean.
“Were you?” she blurts out.
“What?”
“Um. A Boy Scout.”
“Nah,” he says, still close. “No time. I was kind of a ninja, instead.”
“Being a ninja taught you how to treat wounds, Shark Boy?”
“I’m just...” He suddenly looks embarrassed, shy. “I’m just, um, you know, cleaning it. You’re s’posed to clean it. I’m pretty sure. I mean...” He dabs at her knee with a corner of his grey shirt, not meeting her eyes for the first time.
She usually thinks it’s funny when she makes people nervous. Funny, because she’s just a normal person, when everyone treats her like she isn’t. Like she’s a goddess, instead of this girl who’s happened to stumble into a goldmine. Like she’s amazing, and perfect. She kind of enjoys it sometimes - because sometimes, really, who wouldn’t? - in a bemused sort of way, even though at other times it just bothers her. She appreciates fans, honest to God, but it’s not as if they’re of a different species.
She usually likes embarrassing Taylor. Making him blush. Making him slip up, so they can elbow each other in mock-annoyance afterward. That impishly mischievous grin on her face. That sheepish quirk of his lips. The overall lightness of their combined expressions.
But she thinks it’s funny in a different way, and right now, it’s even more different than usual. It feels funny somewhere in the pit of her stomach; there’s a funny look in his eyes. It’s funny, because she kind of wants to stay here forever, inside this tighter-than-usual Taylor Bubble, knee bleeding, ass in the dirt, under the blazing sun, with his shirt gently but firmly held to her knee like he’s stopping blood from seeping out of her heart.
Kristen’s throat is dry. “I’m not usually like this,” she rasps. She’s staring with fascination at the shirt, where it’s pressed, the blotches of sweat around his collar, the way he still isn’t looking at her, and how she’s pretty sure it’s on purpose, not just that he forgot, or doesn’t want to. Before he can ask her what? again (and she can feel like an idiot because she’s not making any damn sense today, not at all), she adds, “I mean, this damsel-in-distress shit. I don’t - I mean. I’m just. Not.”
“Except when you’re Bella,” he snorts. He’s still looking at her knee. “Maybe she’s rubbing off on you.”
“Ugh,” Kristen says, wrinkling her nose. “No thanks.”
But she has to admit, she’s done this scene before. Only that time, there was fake blood around her hairline, and Taylor’s hair was long - and he had his shirt all the way off, not stretched out to meet her in a way that connects them, almost. But it’s more practical this way, isn’t it? Pulling your shirt off just to dab it against someone’s head is only good for a gratuitous shirtless scene. Which it was.
Which Kristen hadn’t liked.
Not that she hadn’t liked seeing him shirtless. (Because she had. There’s no point in denying it.) What she hadn’t liked was that everyone else would like seeing him shirtless, too, and that meant he was having his body exploited for the sake of getting more money from screaming tweens and TwiMoms, like some kind of poster-boy-hooker-thing. Bait.
Which. Well. They’re actors, it’s what they do, blah blah blah -
But no. Not. Fuck that. Fuck the fundamental job description. It’s Taylor - Taylor’s body. Taylor, who isn’t like the rest of them. Who’s only seventeen. And sweet. And funny.
So what if she appreciates that extra thirty pounds of pure fucking muscle he’s put on? She knows him. They’re friends. She’s allowed to notice things like that, and maybe in more than a good-for-him sort of way.
She shakes her head, then smirks slightly. “You know... You know, you’re sort of beautiful?”
This makes him look up.
“You hit your knee pretty hard, didn’t you?”
Her eyelashes flutter as she looks down. How demure. “It’s not really that bad.”
“Yeah... I know.”
“Then why are you - ?” She gestures vaguely to her knee. To his hand. To that combination she can’t seem to shake out of her brain.
He shrugs, a little uncomfortable. The gesture seems to say, Because I want to, and for a second, she can almost hear those words tumbling from his mouth, as easy as anything.
Because he wants to.
Because she wants him to.
Wants him to want to.
“It’s probably stopped bleeding,” she says, probably unhelpfully. Fill in the silence, ‘cause this shit just got awkward, and then clicked into place - where it should have been all along.
“Yeah.” He lets his shirt go; one part of it is wrinkled and soaked with coppery blotches, and it’s almost amusing to think of what the people in charge of their wardrobe for the shoot are going to say when they see what’s happened to their clothes.
But Kristen doesn’t think about this for too long, because she’s watching Taylor instead, intently, waiting to see what he’s going to do. She’s not this kind of girl; she doesn’t need to read other people’s cue cards to decide what the appropriate action is, here. She’s not the kind of girl who waits until it’s her turn to make the second (or third or fourth or fifth) move. It’s not like she just goes barging blindly ahead like some heinous bitch who can’t take a hint and wouldn’t give a shit, anyway. It’s that she doesn’t always need affirmation to be able to live her life.
Her palms are a little numb now, digging into the gravelly ground. An ant tickles the breadth of her thumb. And she waits, maybe not for affirmation, but out of curiosity, as if what’s going to happen next will define everything, and she needs to wait, to pay attention, so she doesn’t miss it and get kicked out of the loop. Maybe it’s not even that she needs to wait, but that she wants to. Which is important. Really important.
Biting his lip, Taylor touches her knee again, like an afterthought, except carefully enough that her scrape is loosely encircled by his thumb and forefinger.
“Kristen,” he says. He looks at her.
“See you make your way through the crowd,” she sings offhandedly as she meets his gaze, small smile quirked into place, “and say hello, little did I know -”
“We should, like... go for an actual hike sometime,” he interrupts, determined.
“Yeah?” She raises her eyebrows. Runs a hand and streaks of dirt through her hair.
“Yeah.” He nods to himself.
And then he kisses her.
The walk back is like the walk there, with hip-bumping and leaning into each other’s shoulders, hands clasped and unclasped, sun on their hair and faces.
The first person to spot them (“Where have you been?”) goes apeshit (“And what’s that on your clothes? Is that blood?”), and everyone else either grumbles about actors, honestly, or gives them a friendly smile.
They apologize, giving an explanation about losing track of time (but not about Kristen’s heart, which is fluttering a mile a minute, and maybe, she thinks, maybe, probably, not from all that walking. She doesn’t really have an explanation for how she and Taylor went from wrestling like six-year-olds in the backseat of a car to kissing - not making out, exactly, because it wasn’t like that - in the middle of nowhere, all in one day, either).
“There’re handprints on your leg,” someone notes dryly.
“Oh, um. Yeah. Thanks,” Kristen says. “I tripped.”
Taylor blushes, and they’re both silent for about five seconds, until they start cracking up at exactly the same time. Everyone else probably thinks they’re crazy from having been out in the sun too long.
But that’s not what matters, is it?
Kristen leans closer to him so that she’s giggling into his ear, just to make him blush more, which he does, of course.
It’s probably only the familiarity of the exchange that disguises the new meaning behind it.
“Okay,” she says. “Where did we leave off?”
THE END