Chapter Text
Lottie’s eyes drift closed as she exhales curling tendrils of smoke, dropping her head back against the broad trunk of a white oak. Thank god it’s finally Spring Break. Of course there’s a bonfire to celebrate the start of an entire week off from school, and she chuckles to herself that today is considered ‘Good Friday’ when she and so many of her classmates are out here being anything but. Compared to what some of the seniors are getting up to tonight, Lottie’s cigarette and cup of cheap beer are pretty tame, but the thought amuses her all the same.
The sound of a stick snapping underfoot pulls her out of her musings. Turning toward the source of the noise, she smiles, recognizing the approaching figure.
“Hey Nat,” she greets warmly. Her teammate looks like Hot Topic personified, all black eyeliner and black jeans and black studded belt.
“Wassup, Lottie,” the shorter girl drawls, dark stained lips painting their way into a grin. She then nods her head toward the cigarette nestled between Lottie’s index and middle fingers. “Can I bum one?”
Lottie frowns. “This is all I’ve got,” she says. Then her brow furrows in thought. “Want a drag?” she asks, deftly repositioning the cigarette between her thumb and forefinger, proffering the filtered end to the blonde.
But instead of taking the cigarette itself, Natalie’s fingers curl around Lottie’s wrist as she leans over. Wine colored lips wrap around the paper, her eyes fluttering closed. Cheeks hollowing, she inhales long and slow, and the whole thing has such an unexpected sensuality to it that Lottie kind of forgets how to breathe in the moment.
Natalie holds the smoke in her lungs and stands upright again, releasing her grasp on Lottie’s wrist, and the taller girl finds herself missing the coolness of her touch. Then Nat joins her leaning against the tree, her shoulder just barely resting against Lottie’s upper arm, eventually blowing the smoke into the crisp night air.
They stay there in companionable silence, passing the cigarette back and forth between them, and each time Lottie places her lips over the colored outline left by Natalie’s lipstick, her heart thumps a bit harder.
Snuffing out the butt under a chunky boot, Nat departs their impromptu smoke session with a casual “later”. And Lottie, still using the tree for support, can’t stop thinking about her. Especially her lips.
Over the next couple hours Lottie gets a good buzz going, spending her time drifting in and out of conversations with various teammates and classmates. Yet the smallest things will remind her of Natalie’s lips: the scent of tobacco, the crack of a twig, the deep garnet gemstone in Mari’s necklace. Clearly the thought of them has completely taken over her brain and she needs to clear her head, so she excuses herself from the small talk she had been making with Mari and Akilah and ventures off to find someone willing to part with a cigarette. She can see a cloud of smoke drifting from the tree line and sets off in that direction.
As she gets closer, a dank odor fills her nostrils. Yeah, that’s not cigarette smoke. But the silhouette against the tree is very familiar and belongs to someone very much at the forefront of Lottie’s thoughts tonight.
Natalie looks the epitome of cool, one knee bent with her boot propped up on the scraggly bark behind her, a brilliant orange glow emitting from between her fingers. She turns her head in Lottie’s direction as she exhales, squinting to see through the plume of smoke.
“Lottie, that you?” she calls out. There’s an attractive roughness to her voice that wasn’t there earlier in the night, and it sends a tingle up Lottie’s spine.
“It’s me,” she confirms with a breathlessness that she doesn’t quite want to admit is due to more than just her walk over here. “Was gonna see if I could grab a smoke, but…” she trails off, gesturing toward the stubby ember that remains.
Natalie chuckles as she holds up the nearly expired joint and studies it for a moment.
“Eh, it’s got one hit left, I can shotgun it to you if you want,” Nat proposes, and before Lottie’s brain can even process the offer, her head is already nodding its assent.
“Yeah, sure, sounds good,” she verifies verbally, stepping closer to Natalie, trying to uphold an air of confidence despite an untimely eruption of butterflies. Lottie’s no novice with marijuana, having several times partaken in shared blunts and bites of pot brownies (first accidentally, then on purpose), but for some reason there’s a nervousness bubbling up inside her at the prospect of shotgunning with Natalie. She’s seen it done in movies but never tried it herself; as an athlete she’s driven by the mantra of ‘practice makes perfect’, so she chalks her nerves up to a lack of practice with this particular skill. (Besides, what else could it be?)
“Alright, c’mere,” Natalie beckons, pinching the tiny stub between her thumb and forefinger and carefully securing it between her lips. Lottie takes a step closer, but apparently it’s not close enough because Nat’s free hand is coaxing her further in. She takes another step into what is definitely Natalie’s personal space now, but then the blonde shuffles even closer and tugs Lottie to her by the sleeve of her jacket. She pulls the joint from between her lips and drops it to the dirt, holding her breath while she quickly stomps it out under her boot.
Then Nat brings them chest to chest as their dark eyes lock, and Lottie’s heart jumps into her throat.
The shorter girl cups the taller girl’s jaw and pulls it down toward her, eyebrows raising and chin jutting up in a nod, signaling for Lottie to do her part. Their faces are so close that Lottie can almost see her own reflection in the depths of her friend’s pupils.
With their lips mere inches apart, Natalie pauses expectantly, still waiting on Lottie to do something, but they’re too close for Lottie to function. She feels Nat’s thumb tap twice at the corner of her mouth before tracing the outline of her bottom lip, then tugs it down at the center. The sensation makes Lottie gasp, which apparently was the effect the other girl was going for because all of a sudden there’s a stream of smoke being transferred from Natalie’s mouth into hers.
And Lottie gets that she’s supposed to be inhaling all of this, but most of it is escaping. She feels like she’s screwing this up, her brain scrambling for a way to stop the smoke from billowing out around them.
Of course, it lands on the singular solution that’s been manifesting in Lottie’s subconscious this entire evening. So Lottie closes her eyes and the remaining distance between them, then attaches her lips to Natalie’s.
Despite the chill of the night air, everything is warm. The smoke flowing into her mouth, the pressure of Nat’s lips on hers, the flush of her skin, the tightening beneath her stomach. Lottie doesn’t know if this is how shotgunning is really supposed to go down, but Natalie isn’t pulling away, so she’s pretty sure she didn’t fuck this all up too badly.
In fact, she kind of likes it, this feeling of Nat’s lips connected to her own. Like to the point where she’d maybe want to try it again without the smoke involved.
Speaking of smoke, Lottie can feel it wisping around down the back of her throat, and their lips stay sealed despite the fact that Natalie has long since stopped exhaling.
Then Nat takes a sharp breath through her nose, and Lottie swears there’s the tiniest bit of movement against her lips as it happens. So she begins moving her own, trying out the feel of it.
Are we… kissing? The thought barely registers before Natalie pulls away, clearing her throat and taking a half step back. Lottie opens her eyes to find Natalie regarding her curiously.
“Well,” Nat starts, her lips twitching up at the corners. “Can’t say I’ve ever shotgunned like that before.” Her ensuing smile is equal parts mischievous, amused, and teasing. It makes Lottie feel like trapped prey, helplessly opening and closing her mouth as the ability to respond completely escapes her. Natalie breaks into a full-toothed grin, eyes sparkling when she adds, “But hey, I’m not complaining.”
With that, Natalie departs their little rendezvous, giving Lottie a playful bump with her shoulder as she goes.
And Lottie can’t even begin to explain why the ache from it resides low in her gut.