Maizie Wolfe (maizielou) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-10-19 10:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2018 [10] october, maizie wolfe, olivia jensen, savannah posey |
Who: Savannah, Olivia, and Maizie; then Olivia and Maizie alone
Where: the Oval Office, then the roof of the LBJ
What: an awkward but successful attempt at a "normal" dinner, followed by a visit to the roof that sets things right
When: 10/6/18, starting around 7PM
Olivia had never necessarily considered herself an abnormal person. She'd spent all twenty-one years of her life so far doing normal things, eating normal food, talking like a normal person (even if certain people had the gall to tell her that her accent was anything but normal). But now, faced with the prospect of spending a normal night in the Oval Office in an attempt to show Savannah that everything was okay and to prove to herself that narrowly escaping zombies didn't bother her? She had no idea what to do.
Like, this whole 'announcing herself' thing. She'd learned to not knock before just opening the door, unless it was super late or early. There were partitions up there for a reason, after all, if anyone was naked or whatever. But now she hesitated, staring at the familiar door, before rapping her knuckles on it three times and regretting it almost immediately.
Maizie was putting the finishing touches on the table when a knock sounded at the door. Wondering who on earth it could be, she went to answer and -- to her surprise -- found Liv on the other side. Since when did she knock? "Oh, hi."
"Hey," Olivia said, stepping through the open door and glancing around to see if Savannah was there already, too. She hadn't planned on being alone with Maizie before dinner. "Um, how's your day been?" she asked, crossing her arms and forcing herself to maintain regular eye contact.
Ok, could Liv's stance be more closed off? That, taken in account with the fact that she hadn't just entered the Oval Office like she always used to, was beginning to add up to a picture Maizie wasn't sure she liked. Biting her lower lip, she worried it between her teeth as the first threads of uncertainty wrapped around her. How on earth were they going to act normally in from of Savannah? This dinner was supposed to convince her things were normal, not make her more convinced they weren't.
"Y'know. Just the same as always," Maizie replied with a shrug. Maybe if she just kept up the act it would put Liv at ease. It wasn't like she was just going to grab her and start kissing, heedless of the fact that Savannah was due any moment. "How about you?"
"Oh, you know." Olivia shrugged, walking in further and taking a seat on the cushion that had already been her favorite, before she looked up and over at Maizie, who looked just about as normal and totally okay with this situation as Olivia did herself: both of them were hitting all the right cues, but there were the subtle tells that she'd learned from spending so much time with Maizie that would likely clue Savannah in as soon as she saw them both. "I mean, the same. Same as always, I mean."
Olivia had basically just said like, a palindrome of words. Great.
"Anyway," she added then, quickly. There was more she could've said, of course; she doubted Maizie knew about the zombie thing from the day prior. But talking about that just then would've set her nerves even more on edge. "Do you know when Savannah's coming? Is she bringing the food up?"
"Yeah, she should be here any minute." Maizie followed Liv over to the table, dropping onto her usual cushion, which just so happened to be right next to the one Olivia was on. There had to be something they could do to rescue this situation, or they were sunk before even starting.
At the sound of footsteps in the hall outside their eyes met, an automatic response that was probably buried so deep in both their subconsciouses that the awkwardness couldn't reach it. Maizie forced a smile. "We can do this, ok?" she whispered. "Friends no matter what." Olivia nodded, repeating Maizie's words silently in her head to reassure herself, then looked up as the door opened.
It might be a silly thing to do, considering they’re living in a zombie apocalypse, but even now Savannah made herself up every day and slapped on a pair of heels before heading down to her office to work just like she would have back when she was practicing law. She hoped that if her appearance was put together then everything else might just fall into place, too. Shallow as it was, when all she wanted to do was stay in bed all day and let the sadness consume her, sometimes just looking good could make her feel better.
Her heels clacked down the hall as she approached the Oval Office and she entered, her hands full with a casserole dish. “Hi girls,” she greeted, walking straight over to the table to deposit the food. “D’you know what this is, Liv? The girl down in resources said she got the recipe from you.”
"Oh, yeah!" Olivia brightened noticeably as she took the foil off the dish. The term 'comfort food' had never felt as appropriate as it did just then; God knew she could use the moral support that only a hotdish could bring her. "My aunt made this all the time. It's like, salmon with noodles and stuff." Who knew that knowing how to make use of dried pasta and canned salmon and cream of mushroom soup would come in handy during a zombie apocalypse? "I swear it's good. It'd be better if we had real onions to flavor it, but I think they used onion powder instead."
She started to serve them all a scoopful, feeling grateful for Savannah's presence as a distraction from the awkwardness between her and Maizie. "Did you guys see that post my friend Erik made about the greenhouse project? If anyone's gonna figure it out, I think he'll be able to. I told him once to build a death ray and he totally did."
“Huh, this is good,” Savannah chimed in, a tone of surprise in her voice, once she’d swallowed her first bite. Once the initial shock had passed, she nodded at Liv’s question. “I did see that. It’s about time someone started to seriously think about that.”
Maizie, too, had felt the tension in the room lighten with Savannah’s entrance. Or maybe she was simply responding the the fact that Liv seemed more at ease. Whatever. Food was an awesome distraction and anything beat more Spam. Picking up her fork, she tried a bite, smiling when it turned out to be good, as promised.
“I saw it,” she volunteered. A note of wistfulness had crept into her voice. It wasn’t as though she really wanted to garden, but it would have been really nice to spend the time outside. There was a time when she’d spent more time outside of her home than in it. “You’ll have to tell me how it goes, Liv, since I’ll be -- you know -- here.” Like always, she thought, but didn’t add. That would have been a bit too petulant.
Savannah turned her gaze towards Maizie, trying to detect the tone in her voice before saying, “Do you want to go to the meeting?” It wasn’t lost on Savannah that Maizie almost never left the library, but that had been Gray’s doing, not hers. The love a father had for a daughter was a special one, but in her opinion, he’d kept her too under lock and key. She wasn’t about to let Maizie go run around freely in the wasteland but going to a relatively safe meeting at the bar in town seemed okay enough.
For a second, Maizie wasn't sure how to answer, and she poked her fork at the salmon. The fact that she was restricted to the LBJ had sometimes been a source of contention between her and Dad, and the last thing she wanted was to accidentally ignite another disagreement with Savannah. But, then, she'd been allowed to go to Nadia's party and the carnival. Funny how a couple seconds before she thought she hadn't had any hopes to raise, yet here they were.
"I mean, yeah? Of course I do." Maizie looked away from Savannah, not able to hold their eye contact. "But, you know. It's okay."
Savannah had a strong suspicion that Maizie’s interest in the Greenhouse meeting had nothing to do with gardening and everything to do with getting out of the LBJ, but she couldn’t fault her for that. Fork pausing in her salmon, she looked at Maizie and said, “Well, I was going to go. If you want to come, you can.”
Olivia straightened noticeably, her eyes moving from Maizie to Savannah and back to Maizie, as she wondered whether she'd just heard everything correctly. "Really?" she asked, even before Maizie had a chance to speak, a smile appearing on her face despite all the nervousness and discomfort she'd felt only a few minutes ago. How could she focus on something like that when a serious life goal was about to come true for her friend? "You both should definitely go!"
With a wordless noise of glee, Maizie scrambled to her feet and rounded the table to hug Savannah, squeezing out a noise of surprise from her. "Thank you!" Maybe it was silly to be so excited about something relatively minor, but when she'd been bound to one location for the majority of two years, every departure felt like a Big Deal. If she got involved in this project, too, there was the possibility of regular trips outside the LBJ.
It only took Savannah a moment to return the hug, a smile spreading across her face. Seeing Maizie happy was a more frequent occurrence these days and Savannah felt her heart swell knowing that little gestures like this could be the cause of it. “Oh, you’re welcome honey. It’ll be nice to get away for a little bit, huh?”
“It will!” Standing once more, Maizie returned to her spot, where she grinned at Liv. For the moment, the fact that things were awkward between them was completely forgotten as they made real eye contact for the first time that night, settling into it without someone looking away almost immediately. “Have you heard if anyone else we know is going, Liv?”
"I do, yeah." Olivia was nodding for no reason, the movement serving to get out some of that happy energy that had settled into her at the sight of things going well again. "A few of the kids -- people -- from Fox Grove." It was an honest mistake; the connections she had at the shelter were mainly around her age, but she couldn't get over the fact that they lived in a high school.
Savannah had quite a few opinions about those kids living at Fox Grove -- ranging from sad that they didn’t have parents to frightened that they actually hanged people -- but she just smiled between Olivia and Maizie, happy to see them so excited. Even though Olivia had moved out, and Savannah still wasn’t exactly sure why, things really did seem okay between the girls. At least there was one less thing she needed to worry about.
The topic of the Greenhouse meeting carried them through the rest of dinner and once they were completely fed and happy, Savannah pulled out her phone to check for messages. “Gotta go take care of a few things real quick. I’ll see you girls later, okay? And, Liv, tell them down at resources that they should make this one again,” she said with a laugh, motioning to the decimated casserole dish.
"I definitely will!" Olivia felt ten times better now that they'd successfully had dinner, glad they'd had a buffer topic that carried them all the way through it. It was reassuring to know for sure that she and Maizie could be around each other and not have things be super weird all the time. The way she'd felt when she'd first come up to the Oval Office hadn't become their new normal.
Once Savannah left, though, and the two of them started to clear up the common area with practiced ease, moving around each other just like they once had when Olivia had lived there, the tension started to creep back in. She could feel it, at least, and she wondered if Maizie could, too. It was hard to not be very aware of the fact that they were alone again, that if she really wanted to, she could reach out and --
Olivia cleared her throat to break the silence then, the sound louder than she'd intended, and tried a smile that felt better on her face than it had when she'd first arrived. "You want to go up to the roof or something, while I'm up here?"
“Yes,” Maizie answered, maybe a little too quickly. “That sounds like a good idea.” She'd thought it was nice, at first, the way the two of them had settled back into their old routine, until a glance at her friend revealed the tense set of Liv’s shoulders and the downturn of her mouth. Dinner might not have gone as badly as expected, but now that they were alone, that comfortable feeling of normalcy was slipping away. Maybe retreating to the roof, which had always been their spot, would relax both of them again.
She'd never unpacked the stargazing supplies, hoping that they would eventually use them again, so it was the work of only a few seconds to grab what they needed. Maizie gestured for Liv to follow her, and lead the way. Up on top of the LBJ there was a light breeze in the air, and she found herself wishing for a sweater. It wasn't freezing or anything, though, because this was still Texas after all.
Maizie spread out the blanket without looking at Liv, letting her friend take this time to loosen up, if she wanted to. She couldn't help but think now about just grabbing Liv and kissing her, knocking out all this awkwardness between them in one go. But she'd made herself a promise that she would stay chill no matter what, and an impromptu make-out session was kind of the exact opposite.
Turning in Liv's direction once the roof was set up, she said, "Ok, then, you wanna sit down?"
"Yeah, sure." It'd been Olivia's idea, after all. She sat down on her usual side of the blanket, legs stretched out as she propped herself up on her elbows and stared at her shoes. As always, getting away from the hustle of the LBJ Library -- even the relative quiet of the Oval Office -- tended to calm her down her down. Something about the quiet made her feel less like she had to bring out her own energy in order to compete with everything else going on, or something.
After a moment, Maizie followed suit, careful to leave a safe distance between the two of them. Not too far, not too close. Just right, like Goldilocks. Flat on her back, she looked up and watched the clouds scuttle across the sky, hiding and revealing the stars in turn.
Olivia let the silence settle between them before she spoke up again, glad that at least up here, things didn't have to feel as weird and stilted between them as they did downstairs. Or maybe it was just that they were hanging out again; it was funny how two days without seeing a person could make you so unsettled. The space had helped her figure a few things out, but it left her with more unanswered questions still. Maybe she ought to tackle them one by one.
"Are you really doing okay?" she started, turning her head to look directly over at Maizie. "After everything, I mean."
"Really?" Maizie echoed, and sighed. Of course she wasn't doing okay. "It's super weird. I'm -- I'll get used to it, but I'm not there yet." She still kept looking for Liv, wanting to tell her things and only belatedly remembering that her friend had moved out. In short, it sucked.
Turning her head, she looked back at Liv. "What about you?"
"I don't know." It seemed to be Olivia's motto these days. And whenever she thought she had some kind of response to the question, she noticed just how sad -- no, resigned -- Maizie looked just then. She lost track of what she wanted to say each time. "I'm okay. I mean, all things considered. I'm not bad, but I'm not great?"
She paused, weighing her options, then decided to lay her cards out on the table or however that metaphor went. "I had a zombie thing yesterday."
Maizie's eyes widened immediately. "What? You had a zombie thing, what does that even mean?" As one of those rare people who hadn't actually seen one of the undead face-to-face since the earliest days of the outbreak, she had no frame of reference for such a remark. Liv obviously hadn't been bitten, since she was here on the roof and not in quarantine, but how close, exactly, had this encounter been?
"Like, you saw some from a safe distance and ran away? Or you fought them off in close quarters?" Even though Liv was probably going to say it was nothing, a tight ball of worry settled in Maizie's chest. How much concern was an appropriate level to show right now? She pressed her lips together and didn't say anymore.
"I mean, I didn't really fight them? They were there, but I got away. It wasn't like I was, you know. Out there with a baseball bat." Olivia had the good sense to at least not say loud that it hadn't been the worst incident she'd experienced outside of their shelter. "There was just…. a ton of them. We were in some abandoned building looking for Babs' friend and they were kind of surrounding us and we got out." She was playing down the intensity of the situation, of course, because every time you stared zombies in the face and made it out alive, it kind of ate at you -- no pun intended -- but she didn't want to freak Maizie out. Besides, it really hadn't been all that bad.
Kind of surrounding them? What did that even mean? Either you were surrounded or you weren't, right? Liv was being unbelievably calm about the whole thing, and Maizie tried to match her, but she could feel the look of horror just sitting there on her face. She took a slow, even breath and tried to put on a more neutral expression.
Olivia tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear and pushed herself up, wrapping her arms around her knees. "It's just kind of freaky, I guess. You know? That these are our lives now." Olivia turned her head, searching for Maizie's eyes in the darkness. Her voice got quieter. "I'm just glad I made it back. And that I got to see you tonight. Even though it was, um. Kinda weird." Her lips twisted in a wry smile. "But that was partially my fault."
Rather than follow suit when Olivia sat up, Maizie raised herself only part way, leaning back on her elbows for support as she carried on the conversation. “I’m really glad you made it back. Could you tell how hard I was trying to play it cool just now?” It lifted her spirits immediately to hear Liv say she was glad they were together. It was something that, if she were being truthful, she’d worried might be a thing of the past, once Liv moved out of the Oval Office. “And I’m really glad you came to dinner. The weirdness was a little bit my fault too, but it got better.”
"You can play it cool?" Olivia was mostly teasing, but there was an undercurrent of seriousness to her words still. Maizie had been much cooler about the -- disagreement? -- that they'd had a few days ago than she herself had been. She was kind of starting to think she could learn a lot from her.
She smiled at Maizie, and this time it didn't feel forced or fake. It felt right again, just the two of them commiserating together. It felt good. "I'm glad I came tonight. I kind of almost didn't, because I wasn't sure if it would be weird. But I wanted to see you."
"I wanted to see you too," Maizie replied, with a return smile. She tried to ignore the way her heart flipped at Liv's words, tried not to read too much into it, but hope bubbled up inside her all the same.
The time and distance between them had been good for Olivia, she thought. It had been a chance to make sure that what she'd felt that night at the carnival hadn't just been because she had been drunk and kind of on the rebound in Josh's home turf. She enjoyed the time to herself, but the biggest thing was that she'd actually missed having Maizie around 24/7. So that was one thing figured out. There was something else she was wondering about, too, but she wasn't sure when to bring that up.
Olivia ignored that curiosity for a moment, choosing instead to ask: "So are you excited to leave the library?" Of course, she knew full well what the answer would be.
Now Maizie did sit up, almost comically fast, nodding her head in response to the question. "Of course I am! Sprung from my tower at last, are you kidding me? It's basically the second best thing that's happened to me this week."
Ok, she totally had been thinking about the trip to the carnival just then, but it kind of sounded like a reference to the ferris wheel too (and the kissing that had happened on it). And while Maizie didn't have a problem with that, Liv might. They were supposed to be backing off to figure things out.
It was dark enough, maybe, that the way her smile slightly faltered would go unnoticed, but just to make it absolutely clear what she'd meant, Maizie added, "I mean, come on, nothing quite measures up to funnel cake."
"I mean, funnel cake is kind of the best thing ever." Olivia was smirking, though, without even realizing it. Dinner had been all kinds of awkward, and there was still a lingering nervousness from yesterday's zombie encounter, but she was beginning to feel more and more like her old self the more they sat out here under the night sky. Besides, it was hard to argue with the genuine excitement that was practically radiating off of Maizie at the thought of going outside the LBJ.
"In a previous life you would've never caught me wanting to learn how growing plants works." There had been way too much farmland around Mora, Minnesota, for her liking. "But now I'm like, 'Hell yes, let's farm some shit.' Especially since you get to go, too. I guess you never know how stuff will turn out, but I think this will be really awesome for you."
"Gardening's not really my thing either," Maizie admitted, with a shrug. She'd been thinking as much, earlier at dinner. "But I'd do just about anything if it meant getting out of here sometimes." The LBJ was home, and Maizie didn't imagine, anymore, what it would be like to leave for good. Wow, did she get sick of being in the same place all the time, though. A change of scenery and some new faces would be really, really welcome.
"It'll be awesome for both of us." She turned her eyes up to the sky again, purposefully looking at the stars -- even if she didn't really see them -- rather than at Liv. "I'm glad we're doing it together."
"Me, too." Olivia's gaze remained on Maizie's face, even as the other girl seemed to concentrate hard on the sky. The stars were nice, but she'd inadvertently fallen into memorizing the slope of Maizie's nose and the way the moonlight tinted her eyes. "We can head over to the bar together, too, with Savannah and Nadia. We'll have to borrow a car. Two car rides in one week, right? Or three, technically." The allusion to the morning after the carnival made her stumble, though, tripping over her words as she sought to pretend that it wasn't a big deal. "Um, you know. It -- the car, it almost makes it feel like it's, you know. Before. When you get to ride around, I mean."
It took a lot of willpower not to look over when Liv tripped on her words. Suddenly thinking of too many things she really wanted to say, Maizie hugged her knees against her chest and kept her eyes firmly upward instead. There wasn't any doubt in her mind what Liv had to be thinking about, because she'd shied away the same topic herself just minutes before. Time for another detour, then.
"I can see that. Going out on foot, you probably have a lot more time to think about how weird everything looks now." She paused, nervously wetting her lips; Olivia's gaze dropped down to watch the movement. "Do you think it will work? Is there even a snowball's chance?"
And, yes, she meant the garden, but of course Maizie was thinking about them too, even if she wasn't saying as much.
"I don't know." There was that phrase again. Olivia knew she ought to trademark it by this point, but what else was there to say when she was too busy grasping for the right thing to say or do? "I mean, if anyone's going to do figure out how to do it, it'll be Erik. He's like, crazy smart. He fixed my earbuds in ten minutes, seriously, when the right one stopped working."
There was maybe a foot's worth of space separating the two of them, if that, but it seemed an unsurpassable amount even for a girl who logged miles each day. She set her hand down between them, hoping the movement seemed casual and not at all intentional, then turned her palm up.
“Erik sounds interesting.” Distracted by the movement in her peripheral vision, Maizie’s voice was vague, and her eyes flickered over in Liv’s direction. She was just about to write the change in position off as her friend’s nerves creeping in again again, when a glance down revealed Liv’s hand between them. An invitation? An accident? But the way it lay there, palm up -- that didn’t just happen, right? There was every chance she was reading too much into this, but Maizie let herself hope.
Shifting, she placed her hand atop Liv’s and linked their fingers together. Hers were so cold, her friend’s warmer. And though this was such a simple thing, holding hands, Maizie’s butterflies were back, in full force. Right, conversation. Act like this was normal. “Um, anyone who makes a death ray or a TARDIS has to be pretty cool. And knowledgeable.”
"I don't know what a TARDIS is." Olivia drew a shallow breath, then another, and told herself to stay put and not panic. They'd done this so many times before; why was it suddenly so different? (She knew exactly why it was different.) "But it was my idea to build the death ray. I mean, why wouldn't we want at least one in Austin?"
The strength of her urge to pull Liv in toward her took Maizie a little bit by surprise. Leaning against each other would have been nice. Another time, maybe, she might dare, but the tension between them was palpable, a third person on the rooftop. And it wasn't really their physical distance she most wanted to close. So she didn't so much as twitch a finger, keeping their hands lightly clasped.
“It's from Doctor Who,” Maizie explained, more for the sake of keeping the conversation going than anything else. If they fell silent, things were only likely to get awkward again. Or more awkward. “A death ray is much cooler, though. I'd like to see it someday. Does it work?”
"I don't know yet. I'll have to visit him some time and see." Olivia chanced a glance over at Maizie and swallowed, wondering if she ought to address what was going on between them. Probably, right? That was the responsible thing to do. The non-cowardly thing to do. And it wasn't like she hadn't thought about trying things out again.
She couldn't help but feel like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop after the marathon of nervous, elated, and anticipatory emotions she'd experienced so far tonight. There was more she could say, ask about the doctor or whatever, but frankly, she didn't care all that much. So after a deep breath -- and reminding herself that she dodged zombies for a living -- she spoke up again.
"So I was wondering," she said quickly, then cut herself off. A deep breath, one she drew out on purpose, then another, until she'd pushed away the urge to stop there for good. After all, she'd already started. "Do you think the kissing thing was a drunk thing? Or -- I mean, should we try it again just to see?"
Maizie’s head turned at last, her eyes widening slightly at Liv’s words. Yes, they should try again. They totally should try again. For science. Kissing science. Her gaze jumped down to Liv’s mouth, but Maizie made herself look back up. Hadn't she sworn to be chill? This was the exact opposite of chill. This was warmth, spreading up through her from the hand that held Liv’s. And hope, too, because the fact that Liv had even brought up the subject so soon meant that, maybe, she'd been thinking about Maizie as often as Maizie thought about her.
After a moment, in which she tried with minimal success to slow her racing thoughts, Maizie nodded. “I've always wanted to do it again.” She already knew that, for her at least, it wasn't a drunk thing. “I mean, if you do.”
Olivia bit her lip, harder than usual, and tried to focus on the slight twinge of pain in an attempt to distract herself from the way her heart was suddenly racing out of control the longer they sat there, looking at each other. She felt hyper aware of everything: the slight breeze in the night air, the lump in her throat that was just as stubborn as she was, the exact sound of Maizie's voice.
Her own voice, once she got it working again, seemed unfamiliar. "I just want to see," she said again, unable to drop that one last bit of pretending even as she started to lean in towards Maizie. It was like she was moving in slow motion; all she could focus on was the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears and the way her breath hitched as their lips met again.
Closing her eyes, Maizie leaned in to kiss Liv, determined that this time she would be more present in the moment, just in case it never happened again. The Ferris Wheel was more a series of impressions than a real memory, thanks to the moonshine. The music, the lights, Liv’s mouth sweet like autumn apples and spun sugar, and yes -- that sensation of flying as the ride carried them up and around. This time there weren't any distractions, aside from her own thoughts. And once their lips touched, even those fell away.
It just felt so right to her: this was where Maizie was supposed to be, and who she was supposed to be with. So she dared to deepen the kiss, her hand coming up to rest lightly on the back of Liv’s neck. Not to hold her in place if she didn't want to be there, just to touch her.
Olivia's eyes fluttered closed and, without even realizing what she was doing, shifted forward to rest her other hand on Maizie's knee. It was an innocent gesture, one that she must have done countless times before the carnival, but now it felt incredibly, headily illicit. And most importantly, she'd gotten her answer to her question. Yes, this was a thing she wanted -- really wanted, if she was going by the little gasp she let out against her lips before she pulled away, breaking the kiss and leaning her forehead against Maizie's.
"Okay," she whispered, dazed, her eyes closing again on their own accord. She wasn't sure if she could handle pulling away just yet. "I don't think it's just a drunk thing."
Maizie, on the other hand, actually opened her eyes so she could see Liv’s expression, and that -- coupled with her statement -- brought a broad smile to Maizie’s face. I don't think it's just a drunk thing were some of the sweetest words she’d heard in awhile, and a warm feeling of joy flooded through her in their aftermath. She and Liv had kissed again! And they were totally still close enough that at any point one of them could shift and bring their lips together another time. Maizie wanted to, but she also didn't want to get selfish and move too fast.
“Definitely not a drunk thing,” she said, curling her fingers against the back of Liv’s neck and stroking her thumb along the hairline. “That was … really, really nice. To put it mildly.”
The compliment cut through the wild mess of thoughts in Olivia's head and she raised her eyebrows as she pulled away just enough to better meet Maizie's eyes. A memory from that night at the carnival was coming to the surface, too, one that must've been suppressed by their fight. "Nice enough to make you feel like you're flying?" she asked casually, but there was a mischievous smirk on her face.
She still felt awfully confused about the whole thing; knowing you were attracted to someone, especially if you'd never been attracted to that gender before, didn't necessarily make all the answers come to light, after all. But flirting came naturally to her, even if dealing with the associated feelings didn't.
Maizie laughed softly. “You're reading my mind now? I'm pretty sure I was just thinking about that.” In hindsight it had been kind of a dumb thing to say, inspired by a mix of moonshine and whatever that happy brain chemical was that went along with kissing someone. She didn't feel embarrassed about it, though. Well, not too embarrassed. Her cheeks were a little warm, true, but that could just as easily been thanks to the same thing that was giving her heart that little skip in its beat -- being this close to Liv.
“And I'm gonna stand by it, too.” She shifted her hand, sliding it from the back of Liv’s neck to her face, where she let her thumb trace along Liv’s cheekbone. That was something else she remembered from the ferris wheel, the way Liv had reached out to touch her first. It had felt different and exciting all at once. Still did. Maizie smiled. “Totally feels like flying every time.”
"I can't say I've ever affected anyone like that before. Maybe that's just a you thing," Olivia said, her words imbued with more steadiness than she really felt as she focused on the way Maizie's fingertips felt against her skin. She bit her lip, as she wondered if she ought to pull away before she fell into this simmering thing between them head first, never to resurface again. But then again, what if she was already there? What if she'd already passed the point of no return?
Her breaths were coming out shallowly, goosebumps raising on her skin the longer she sat there and mulled over this girl who was looking back at her like nothing else mattered. And then she was speaking before realizing it, her smirk giving way to a real smile: "Kiss me again before we go back downstairs?"
Rather than answer, Maizie simply pressed her lips to Liv’s. Why waste time with words when they could be doing something a lot more enjoyable? Maybe it was a thing just for her, this effect that Liv had, but she was okay with that. She didn’t want to share.
The night had started badly, with both of them tense and nervous. It had gotten better, then weird again, and now it looked like it was ending on a high note. Whatever hesitations had held her friend back before, they were apparently put aside for the moment (and maybe, Maizie hoped, for good). As much as the last few hours had been a bit of an emotional roller, there wasn’t a thing that Maizie would have changed. It all lead here: the two of them on the rooftop, warmth under her skin despite the cool air, and Liv’s mouth against her own.
Eventually they'd go back downstairs, it was true, but there was no rush. None at all.