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She hasn’t even read it yet.
Riley smacks a finger against her phone screen when it dims, threatening to put itself to sleep, but there’s no new text message waiting for her from Iris when it brightens. Her own wall of lilac speech bubbles greets her, sickly pale against the darker theme that Iris set as their private message background image. Her eyes scan over the one-sided conversation, each text growing increasingly more desperate than the last.
The final one, sent four fucking minutes ago, is just a string of exclamation marks.
“What the hell are you doing right now that’s more important than texting me?” Riley whines, but she already knows the answer.
The BOTB scheduling is bonkers.
If somebody told her that the earth had shifted on its axis in the last however many weeks, and the only significant consequence was losing a few hours of daylight, she’d believed them. She thought she’d perfected the art of a quick costume change, back in the days when the band’s dressing rooms were the equivalent of vacant bathroom stalls and mostly empty supply closets, and the busted old truck that Rowan ferried their instruments about in was on a meter that always seemed to run out minutes after their final set.
Now, Riley recognises the luxury in those frantic nights.
She actually feels kind of awful for the bands who committed early to a signature full face paint routine.
Her phone screen dims again. This time, Riley lets it.
When she straightens, she’s greeted by her own reflection. Her hotel bathroom isn’t huge, but it is well-lit enough that the first thing she’d adorned it with upon arrival was her makeup bag. The contents of it lie scattered around the counter top in organised chaos, now. Loose powder dusts the porcelain sink and her eyeliner pencil has rolled beneath the fancy hand soap dispenser, but she hasn’t got time to tidy up.
In fact, she hasn’t got time to do much of anything, if she doesn’t want to embarrass herself on national television and give her parents an actual legit reason to disown her ass.
Staring back at herself, Riley contemplates the polished dishevelment that is her outfit.
She is pale skin and black leather, fishnet and metal, bleached hair and dark eyes.
She is… tits out and on the cusp of having a breakdown the likes of which even the BOTB production team would hesitate over releasing to the public, before ultimately throwing her under the bus for views and flashing dollar signs.
The halter neck top that is supposed to be the only thing protecting her dignity from a swarm of hungry camera crew tonight hangs loose around her sternum, exposing her breasts. She can still feel the imprint from the clasp at its neckline grooved into her fingertips from where she’s spent the last fifteen minutes trying to close it on her own. Just when she thought she’d had it, the bastard had sprung almost comically back open. She can already imagine the response that would get her, if the same were to happen while filming.
Riley meets her own mortified gaze in the mirror.
“Not like this,” she begs of herself, the universe at large.
Her phone remains conspicuously silent on the counter. That doesn’t stop Riley from checking it again, only to confirm that Iris has not yet read her string of texts begging for help. Drawing on her bottom lip, she considers the distance between their hotel rooms. She recalls Iris disappearing behind a door several rooms down from her own. They are a scant few meters apart. They’re practically roommates.
She steps outside of the bathroom.
Her half-unpacked suitcase waits for her on the bed, its innards spilled across the sheets. She contemplates the swatches of fabric on display and how she might pair them with her current fit, but her boots have already been painstakingly laced, and leather this tight doesn’t come off quickly unless there’s a second pair of hands that’s eager to see her naked.
You don’t have time for this, she tells herself, grabbing a fistful of her own hair.
With a groan, she pinches the halter neck up to her chest and moves towards her hotel door.
The fisheye curve of the peephole gives her a decent view of the area directly outside of her room, if not the corridor at large. For that, Riley has to crack the door open and slip just enough of her head outside to confirm that the hallway is not already swarming with camera crew. In fact, it’s empty. She finds Iris’ door, so close she’s almost tempted to just yell for her, but that’s sure to attract attention that she’s trying to avoid.
She has time, but barely.
Within minutes, this hallway is going to be chaos.
If she leaves it even just a second longer—
Riley forces herself outside with barely enough wherewithal to snatch her keycard from the wall before the door closes on her back. The corridor is not exactly vacuous, but there’s something uncomfortably vulnerable about being out in it while looking this exposed. She keeps her top pressed flush to her chest, the keycard biting into her palm from the grip that she keeps on it, and tries to move so fast that she nearly loses her balance and has to slow down again.
She has almost cleared the first door between her room and Iris’ when she hears the sound of voices bouncing off the walls. Eyes wide, she cannot stop herself from twisting around to look with horror at the stretch of hallway over her shoulder, and—
Collides chest-first into a solid wall of dispassionate irritation.
The impact winds her.
“Oof.”
“The fuck—?”
In the wealth of a second, stretched taught to its limit, Riley fixes the ever-present obstacle within her BOTB experience with an incredulous glare.
This cannot be the path that the universe intended for her when she auditioned.
She refuses to believe it is.
Just like she refuses to acknowledge how Blake Winter had just taken a body to the chest at full force and hadn’t even faltered.
Riley watches in real time as the sneer on Blake’s face fades with recognition. Her smirk is too familiar. So is the heat that it brings to Riley’s cheeks. Blake always seems to catch her when she’s just short of her breath, or at least that’s what it feels like.
“You know,” Blake says, her dark eyes falling to Riley’s chest, “if this is your new tactic to win over the haters, I approve. At least you’re doing it on your own merits.”
Riley gasps and follows her gaze, checking that she’s still modest.
When she looks up again, her scowling face only makes Blake grin. Riley sucks in a breath to say something intelligent and scathing.
“Fuck you.”
So close.
“Ohhhh,” Blake laughs, “that’s what you’re trying to do? Well, shit, be my guest, why don’t you?”
She presses her key card to the door fob until it beeps, then shoves the handle down to open it. There is something so ridiculously theatrical about the move that Riley kind of just stares at her, confused and scandalised, and—that other thing that she isn’t acknowledging.
“I can’t say I’m not curious to see you try.”
“What—”
Riley sputters, but that’s when the voices at the end of the corridor round the corner, and she has no time to worry about Blake, only the fact that she’s standing in an open corridor, that’s about to be filled with five-thousand-dollar film cameras, with a precarious amount of side-boob on display.
Without thinking, she shoves an open palm into Blake’s chest and pushes her backwards through her door.
“Move, move—!”
She doesn’t know whether or not to be thankful that Blake realises what she’s doing and actually lets her, walking backwards into her hotel room with a laughed, “oh, shit,” and a grin that exposes her teeth.
As soon as she clears the threshold, Riley slams the door shut behind her and presses close, her nose almost up to the grain as she peers out of the peephole.
The camera crew haven’t come into her field of vision yet, but she can hear them chatting animatedly amongst themselves as they wait for the cast to be called to attention. By the time Riley gets a look at the crew, more voices join them as the cast begin leaving their hotel rooms, some still fixing their mics.
Riley deflates with a sigh, drawing back from the peephole.
“Shit.”
She has just time enough for the prickling sense of eyes against her exposed back to catch up with her, when Blake’s hand enters her field of vision—reaching for the door handle.
Without thinking, Riley covers her hand with her own.
“What are you doing?” she hisses over her shoulder.
Blake almost looks confused. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
Her hand is cool beneath Riley’s, and flexes when she tries the handle again.
Riley sputters and firms her grip, stopping her from opening it.
“Wait! You can’t…”
The unimpressed look that Blake is giving her warms with her smile. The flame tattoo beneath her eye dances with her amusement. She’s close, Riley realises. She’s really close. Close enough that Riley can feel the heat coming off her, can smell her perfume—floral, almost, sweet—close enough that Riley realises she won’t be able to get herself out from between Blake and the hotel door without touching her.
“Did you really just barge into my hotel room uninvited,” Blake starts, “and start telling me what I can and cannot do?”
Riley opens and closes her mouth.
“Technically,” she blinks.
Blake snorts, but she is sounding less amused, now, and Riley’s hand feels too warm on top of hers. The voices on the other side of the door are growing in volume and number. Soon enough, it’ll be Cory’s reedy shout above the masses, calling them to their marks. When Blake attempts the door handle again, Riley bracelets her wrist, instead.
“Please,” she whispers, and feels the tendons in Blake’s wrist shift as her grip relaxes. “I can’t go out there like this. I was trying to get into Iris’ room before anybody turned up, and now—”
Blake leans into her space. So close that Riley has to twist her head back around to face the door, for fear of where her lips would be if she didn’t. That breathless feeling, again, that pull towards something desperate inside her lungs. Riley holds her breath as Blake peers past her, lining one eye up with the peephole.
She makes a noise like she’s interested.
“It is getting pretty busy out there,” she mutters, drawing away.
They are cheek to cheek, almost. Without turning her head any further, Riley has access to her profile and nothing more—the sharp edges of her, the terrible warmth in her eye. Blake steps away again before she can become concerningly lightheaded. Her hand leaves the door handle and Riley does not try to keep her, lets her fingers loose around Blake’s wrist and shivers at the delicate tickle of arm hair against her open palm, so familiar it’s almost obscene.
With room to move, Riley turns around and puts her back to the door, feeling not unlike a cornered animal.
Blake stands before her with folded arms, looking about as severe as she ever has.
The only gentle thing about her is her smile, and Riley still isn’t sure if she knows when to trust it.
“So,” she says, like she’s preparing herself.
In a way, she is.
Her arm is beginning to cramp from holding the halter neck top so tightly to her chest.
Blake releases a bored sigh. “What do you want, Riley?”
The expression on her face, or else the affectation in her voice, dislodges the shelf of embarrassment at having being caught in this situation. Riley blinks and she is free, suddenly, from the mortification of being at Blake’s mercy.
“What do I want?” she mimics, offended. “Only seconds ago, you were the one telling me how curious you are about me fucking you. And it was with invitation.”
Thank you very fucking much.
Blake grins slowly, her tongue peeking from between the corner of her teeth—trapped between her canines. Riley feels like she’s looking at something she shouldn’t see, even as her eyes are drawn to it: the pink and soft of her.
“I guess I was, wasn’t I?”
“And what I want,” Riley says, finding her stride now, pushing her luck, “is for you to shut your mouth just long enough to help me, before we both have to explain to a corridor full of cameras why I’m coming out of your hotel room half-naked.”
The expression on Blake’s face wars between unimpressed and intrigued. Irritated and curious.
Amused, Riley realises, and wonders if it would be better if she wasn’t learning how to read her so well.
Everything she’s learned about Blake Winter has thus far been against her volition, up to, and including, Riley’s unwitting, accidental, incessant attraction towards her.
Goddamn, but she has eyes, doesn’t she?
“Cory would have a fucking field day,” Blake muses, looking like she’s actually considering the carnage. Her eyes widen, scandalised. “Imagine the television we would make.”
Riley grits her teeth. “Blake…”
“I’m fucking with you,” Blake laughs. “But I am kind of curious about what you’d say.”
“Don’t fucking tempt me.”
“No, you’re right, that’s more your thing, isn’t it?”
She juts her chin towards Riley’s chest to make her point, and Riley forces herself not to cover herself with both hands—or let her amusement show. Idiot. Her expression must have given something away, though, as Blake tilts her head to one side and grins. Just as quickly, she’s nodding towards the door.
“Turn around, then, let’s get this over with.”
Riley replays their conversation in her head as though she’s accidentally skipped too far ahead and missed something crucial.
“Your top,” Blake says, like duh. “That’s why you were running to your friend in such a hurry, right?”
“Oh. Yeah. The clasp is…” she trails off with a hand gesture, “finickity.”
Blake nods again, her amusement gone, the persona shelved. Riley hesitates a second before she finally just turns herself around to face the door. She hears Blake moving behind her, the familiar hush of leather, the weight in her boots, and steels herself. On second thought, and without really needing to, she reaches her free hand around herself to clasp her hair. It stops at her chin and wouldn’t be much in Blake’s way, and as Riley tucks it up to expose the back of her neck, she immediately regrets her decision.
She feels exposed in a way that she just hadn’t, out in the corridor. Not even when she was in this same position, with Blake all teeth and smiles at her throat.
If she closes her eyes, Riley might be able to transport herself somewhere—a house party, a bar. An overcrowded bathroom. Somewhere safe.
Which is strange, because Riley knows that she isn’t, and yet when Blake’s cool fingers finally reach around to take both ends of the halter neck clasp by her throat, she could be anyone; any stranger in a bar, any friend of a friend of a friend who she’s never met before tonight, anyone who Riley wouldn’t hesitate two seconds before asking them if they had a tampon or a lighter.
It’s unsettling.
She wonders if Blake feels it, too, if that’s why her fingers turn clumsy when her first attempt to close the clasp does not work. They tremble in a way that reveals her humanity—in comparison to her ego, her anger, her abs, that’s almost more than Riley can stand to see.
Finally, the thin collar of her halter top closes around Riley’s neck.
She hears the clasp take with a click that Blake is careful not to catch her hair or skin with.
Turning around, Riley tentatively lowers her hand away from her chest and looks down to ensure that Blake has actually closed it. When the fabric remains in place, she releases the breath she hadn’t realised she was holding and shakes out her hair. Recovered, she lifts her gaze to meet Blake’s, and tries for pleased amusement, but the expression on Blake’s face stops her.
She is not smirking, exactly, but there is a loose kind of softness to her face.
A slackening, an unintentional realness.
Blake recovers it quickly.
“Tada,” she deadpans, throwing her hands up. “You’re not going to flash anyone tonight. Well. Not unless you want to.”
“I don’t,” Riley says, allowing a smile to creep into her voice. “Thanks. Who knew you were such a girls’ girl.”
Blake makes a face at that.
“Don’t piss me off tonight,” she says, but she’s smirking. “I know exactly how to open that thing, and I’d bet money on my reflexes being faster than yours.”
A breath stutters in Riley’s throat, offended and amused.
You’re chaos, she thinks and does not say aloud, for fear that it might reveal how much it excites her to acknowledge it, how much it terrifies her.
Is she destined to be drawn into the orbit of every woman who has the uncanny ability to destroy her life?
Maybe, Riley thinks, and even her internal monologue sounds intrigued by the fact.
“I’m going to leave now,” Riley says, like she’s preparing herself to do just that. “Just… give it a minute or something before you follow me, yeah? There are enough people out there that we might actually get away with going unnoticed.”
Blake’s eyes narrow as she nods her head. “And if we don’t?”
Riley thinks about that before ultimately blowing out a long breath and shrugging.
Then, fuck it.
She’s halfway towards turning to face the door, hand grasping the handle, when Blake speaks again.
“Well, you know where to find me,” she says, and Riley looks at her oddly over one shoulder. Blake gestures towards her chest with her chin. “When you need help getting back out of that thing.”
Smug.
“In your dreams, Winter,” she scoffs, and slips through the door.
Blake’s smile softens once she’s alone, retreats. The room is dim and cavernous around her.
A breath passes, then a second, as she contemplates what Riley had asked.
Give it a minute or something before you follow me, yeah?
She’s almost tempted, too. There’s something addictive in how it made her feel to do Riley a favour. Her hand reaches for the handle and then hesitates as she begins to depress it. She is too self-aware to pretend that she doesn’t know what it means, but Blake is here with purpose and she isn’t going to let anybody distract her from it.
No matter how pretty they are.
With a grin that shows her teeth, Blake pushes the handle down and strides out into the crowd.