Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Janis stands in the driveway, looking like she’s being recharged by a celestial power source with her arms stretched wide, head tilted back and eyes closed. The Hawaiian sun hits her full in the face, unrelenting and glorious, and she accepts the gift from the gods of vacation. She lets the heat soak into her skin, her bones, her soul, until she feels something deep and parasitic unclench inside her chest—a tight coil of stress that’s been there since approximately junior year.

It’s already working. She’s healing. Her chakras are not just aligning, they’re speed-dating, and her inner child is doing backflips.

“I will be doing zero thinking while we're here,” she announces to no one and everyone.

Cady, emerging from the car with the cautious energy of someone who once got food poisoning on vacation and has never fully forgiven the concept of leisure, raises an eyebrow. “You do zero thinking most of the time anyway.”

Damian slithers out of the backseat with his shirt already unbuttoned. “Let her live her dream, Cady, this is not the time for realism. This is the season of excess, the era of decadence. I didn’t bring seventeen silk shirts for this energy.”

“I brought an inflatable pool float shaped like a croissant,” Aaron offers helpfully, nearly decapitating himself with the car trunk as it swings closed. “And six tubes of sunscreen.”

“Jesus Christ,” Janis mutters, but it’s affectionate. She watches him fumble with three bags like a clumsy octopus and thinks, not for the first time, that Aaron is basically the human version of unsalted butter. Somehow he’s still managed to worm his way into their circle like a benign parasite. Mostly because Cady likes him. And because he makes good banana bread.

Janis turns around slowly, like a horror movie villain or a goddess at the peak of her power. “Guys. Look at this house. This is the site of my rebirth.”

The ‘Imi’ike family’s vacation house is not modest. It's a sprawling, two-story masterpiece of glass and wood, sun-soaked verandas and four different areas specifically designed for lounging, drinking, and forgetting capitalism exists. There’s a pool. There's a private beach path. There’s an outdoor shower, which Janis already knows she will not, under any circumstances, use with dignity.

Janis' mom decorated it like Architectural Digest had a violently sensual affair with a Pinterest board, and Janis could not be more obsessed. She’s never appreciated her parents more than in this moment, granting her free reign of the house while they go gallivanting around Italy or Greece or wherever rich people go to avoid dealing with their offspring.

“This is where I’m going to fake my death and start over as an heiress named Allegra,” Damian declares.

“I’m gonna read at least six books,” Cady mutters, dragging her comically overstuffed suitcase that’s probably 80% sunscreen.

“I’m gonna eat, like, a hundred poke bowls and finally learn how to do a backflip,” Aaron adds, sounding both hopeful and like someone who will dislocate a shoulder within the week. He’s already kicked over one of the decorative planters and apologized to it.

Janis doesn't respond. She’s too overloaded by sensory bliss to form words and she just stands there, breathing like she’s never inhaled real oxygen before. She lets the salty breeze rush into her lungs and watches the sunlight skitter across the glass like it’s dancing for her. She listens to the distant crash of waves and the screech of some bird.

This is the start of the most iconic summer in the history of summers. She has manifested this. She deserves this. She is a woman reborn. A hot, unbothered, gay phoenix rising from the ashes of high school.

Janis marches up to the front door and it clicks open under her hand like it’s been waiting for her. She kicks off her shoes in the entryway and lets out a long, dramatic sigh as she steps into the cool tile-floored paradise that is her kingdom for the next few weeks.

No parents. No rules. No math. No expectations except daily beach trips, casual alcoholism, and the possibility of sketching something other than demons in her notebook. Maybe she’ll even pick up a brush. Maybe she won’t. Who cares. She’s not here to be productive, she’s here to vibe.

“I CALL THE BIG ROOM WITH THE BALCONY!” she shouts, because this is war.

“Too late!” Damian yells from upstairs. There’s a thud, followed by what sounds suspiciously like furniture being scaled.

“Bitch!” Janis shrieks, charging up the stairs two at a time. “I invited you! This is my ancestral territory!”

“You invited me because I’m the spice in your otherwise tragic little life!” Damian yells back. “I’m your beautiful emotional support peacock, and I demand tribute in the form of a king-sized bed and a view of the ocean!”

Janis tackles him onto the bed mid-monologue. Cady walks in a moment later with the exhausted look of someone who has already accepted her fate as the responsible one.

Aaron wanders in after them and squints at the view. “This place is so nice. It feels almost illegal to be here.”

“It is illegal to be this hot and emotionally unstable in the same place for this long,” Janis quips.

This is it. This is what she’s been waiting for. The summer of no responsibilities. The summer of chaos and pleasure and possibly developing a mild drinking problem.

She is finally whole, and if the universe would kindly not fuck this up, that would be great.

They’ve officially moved in and claimed the territory. Bags have exploded across floors and shoes have been flung into corners. There’s already sand in places sand should never be, despite the fact that they haven't even seen the beach yet.

Damian is lounging on his new balcony like the sun personally requested his presence, holding a bottle of water in one hand and a book he’s not reading in the other. He accepts the sun’s adoration with the entitlement of a man who once got mistaken for a celebrity at an airport and will never shut up about it.

Janis stands in the doorway, arms crossed, leaning on the frame. “I hope you know I let you have this room out of the kindness of my enormous, gorgeous, overly-taxed heart.”

Damian snorts without so much as a glance in her direction. “You haven’t done a kind thing in your life. What’s the catch, Satan?”

“No catch. Just me being generous and selfless. Like a vacation Jesus. A saint. A humble legend letting a gay king have his gay castle.”

Cady ghosts by with a stack of towels and mutters, “She remembered the downstairs bathroom has the rainfall shower with the massage settings.”

“I knew it,” Damian hisses. He whips off his sunglasses to glare at her. “You manipulative bitch.”

“Enjoy your view,” Janis sing-songs over her shoulder as she retreats downstairs.

By the time she’s staked her claim on the first-floor room and assisted Aaron through the dramatic three-act play that was figuring out how to stop the pool lights from blinking, it’s closing in on golden hour and they're all gathered in the kitchen arguing about dinner. 

Aaron’s googling takeout spots on his phone, reading off Yelp reviews with the earnestness of a man who believes in honest customer feedback and the inherent goodness of humanity.

“There’s a taco truck ten minutes away with five stars and a review that just says, ‘I cried in the parking lot and saw god.’”

“I want that,” Janis says immediately.

“I want chicken,” Cady says from the kitchen island, scrolling on her tablet like she’s scheduling a surgical procedure instead of trying to find dinner. “Something with vegetables. You all need vitamins or you’re going to get scurvy and die before August.”

“I want validation, a nap, and a man who owns more than one shirt,” Damian argues. “But we can’t all have what we want, Caddy.”

Janis is about to declare loudly, dramatically, and with full commitment to the bit, that she will in fact be eating noodles or dying in this very kitchen when they hear the sound of a car in the driveway.

They all go still. No one’s expecting anyone.

“Did someone order food already?” Cady asks, brows drawn.

“Unless DoorDash upgraded to luxury SUVs, I don’t think so,” Aaron says, squinting toward the window.

Janis peers out toward the driveway. There’s a horrible, crawling sense of familiarity already gripping her spine. She sees the car and her stomach drops directly into her ass.

It’s his car. Big, shiny, and black with those custom wheels her brother won in a poker game, or a blackmail scheme, or some other aggressively Kai-coded nonsense. She’s never gotten the full story and refuses to ask because the answer would definitely lower her IQ.

“Oh god no,” Janis breathes.

The car door opens.

“No,” she says again, this time with more panic and less breath.

Out steps her older brother, Kai, the human embodiment of a migraine, like he isn’t supposed to be halfway across the world doing whatever frat-boy nonsense his life currently consists of.

Tank top. Board shorts. Shitty gold chain glinting like it knows it’s an asshole. He walks like the soundtrack to Fast & Furious is playing in his brain 24/7 and everyone else is just an extra in his spin-off.

“Why is he here,” Janis growls through clenched teeth, hands curled into little rage claws at her sides, body vibrating with the specific kind of fury only a younger sibling can feel when an older sibling dares exist in their space without warning. “Why is he here.”

“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Aaron offers gently.

“It’s his family’s house,” Cady deadpans. She’s not unsympathetic, she just knows this war is already lost.

“Still. Uncalled for,” Janis snaps.

Kai yells something cheerful towards the car, probably about beers or surfing or being the worst. The passenger door opens and the real horror begins because Regina George steps out. Two legs, all menace, no mercy. She’s wearing jean shorts and a tank top that should look casual, but on her it somehow broadcasts the energy of a Greek goddess doing Coachella.

“NO!” Janis shouts, spinning in place like she can escape this timeline by physically twirling into another dimension. “Absolutely not. I reject this. I’m rejecting this reality. Send it back. I demand a summer redo. I DEMAND A RECOUNT.”

“Is that Regina?” Damian gasps.

“No one say her name three times,” Janis snaps, ducking below the window, eyes wild. “She might appear closer.”

“She’s walking up the driveway,” Cady reports helpfully. “She looks mad.”

“She always looks mad,” Janis hisses, peeking up just enough to confirm it. Yep. That’s the face. The face that made her realize her sexuality and then never let her breathe again. “She came out of the womb mad!”

“Your brother didn’t say anything about coming?” Aaron asks, already inching toward the front door. Maybe just locking it and pretending no one’s home is a viable long-term solution.

“Of course not,” Janis snarls. “Kai doesn’t communicate. He’s a disease, he just shows up. Like herpes.” She turns to her friends, eyes wide with desperation. “Do we have a back exit? Can we dig out? Anyone know how to tunnel? Caddy, you read books about things. What’s the structural integrity of this house?”

She is halfway to a full meltdown when the door swings open with the audacity of something that doesn’t know it’s about to ruin her entire fucking summer.

Kai walks in like he owns the place. To be fair, he kind of does, but that’s not the point. The point is that he's there.

“Hey, losers,” he beams. “Got room for two more?”

Janis is already opening her mouth to unleash a scream so powerful it’ll rupture the time-space continuum when she appears behind him.

Suddenly Janis isn’t breathing anymore. She’s just existing in stunned, lustful silence as the final boss of her sexuality steps fully into the house. Janis’ personal hell, or maybe heaven, depending on the angle and how tightly she’s clenching her thighs.

Regina doesn’t walk. She saunters, like someone born under a more powerful moon, like gravity applies to everyone but her, like the air rearranges itself to better flatter her as she moves. Her hair bounces with every step like it’s got its own damn agenda, and her skin is doing that golden thing that only happens to people with main character energy and no acne history.

Janis blinks once. Then again. And then again, slower, like maybe this is a stress-induced mirage. Maybe she passed out somewhere and is hallucinating the walking, smirking origin story of her gay awakening just casually entering her vacation house without warning.

Regina’s eyes flick to her, devastatingly blue, and her mouth curves up, too pleased with herself for someone who just trespassed. It’s not even a nice smile. It’s the kind of smile a lion gives a deer before the chase. 

Janis is the deer. She swears on everything she holds sacred that her panties, untrustworthy and weak-willed, nearly drop of their own accord. They’re trying to drop, they fucking attempt it and honestly, she’s too stunned to stop them. It’s a mutiny with absolutely zero regard for her well-being. A spiritual pantsing.

“Hey, Janis,” Regina says, voice like a slap to the face. “You look taller. Or maybe you just finally grew into that giant head.”

Behind Janis, somewhere out of her line of sight, Damian wheezes. Half laughter, half gasp, and 100% I know your secret, bitch.

“Oh my god,” he whispers. “Oh. My. God.”

For what could be ten seconds, or forty, or a year and a half of spiritual suffering compressed into a single psychic collapse, everything around Janis ceases to exist. The house disappears. The walls dissolve. The air goes quiet and the only thing that remains is her. Regina. Towering, terrifying and celestial. The forbidden fruit that keeps falling directly into her face.

“She’s disassociating,” Damian announces. “We’ve lost her. Someone splash her with water before she disappears completely.”

That’s what snaps her out of it. Not Regina’s lethal smile, not the blood rushing away from her brain, not the sweat breaking out on the back of her neck, but Damian. The all-seeing oracle of gay panic. Damian, who knows every horrifying, embarrassing detail of her years-long crush. He is gleefully watching her fall apart in real time.

Janis flinches out of her horny coma like someone’s slapped her with a Bible. Regina’s still looking at her, that same smug little smile stretching across her stupidly symmetrical face, and Janis wonders if she knows. She shakes her head violently in an attempt to rattle her soul back into her body.

“WHAT,” she yells, louder than any human needs to be indoors, spinning on Kai like a woman possessed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Kai is now sprawled on the couch like an unwanted fungus in board shorts and no dignity whatsoever. “Vacation,” he says blinking innocently, like a golden retriever who just shat in someone’s shoe. “What else?”

“I’m on vacation. I’ve been planning this for months, you human stain.”

“And now it’s our vacation,” he replies. “Aren’t you excited?”

Janis makes a strangled noise. Her fists curl and her eye twitches so hard it might detach and fly across the room. The wall behind Kai begins to look very punchable.

“Excited? I am two seconds away from sacrificing you to the ocean. This is my vacation, I’m on vacation from you. From your face. From your voice. From your emotionally stunted terrorism and your endless, testosterone-soaked nonsense. I didn’t invite you for a reason, Kai. Because I want peace. I want silence. I want to exist without your stupid laugh giving me ulcers!”

“I live here too!” Kai argues, spreading his arms like the asshole he is. “Family house!”

“You don’t even like this house! You said it smelled like colonizer candles and unresolved trauma!”

“Yeah, and it still does. But I figured you losers could use some real energy around here. You’ll thank me by the end of the week.”

“I definitely will not,” Janis growls. “You’re ruining everything.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“I’m being normal! You’re just... you’re infesting! You’ve infested my summer! Like a rat in ugly shorts!”

Janis glares at him, vibrating with rage. She is this close to stomping her foot. She wants to throw something. Possibly him.

“And you brought her? Her?!”

“She’s my best friend,” Kai shrugs innocently. “She needed a break too.”

“I will murder you,” Janis whispers. “And I will cry at your funeral only because mom will be upset if I don’t. I hope a jellyfish stings your ass and no one helps you.”

“Try it,” Kai dares, casually tossing a pillow at her face. “I dare you.”

Cady appears silently at Janis’ side, her expression the emotional equivalent of a fire extinguisher. “Do I… need to get the duct tape?”

“Do you have chloroform?” Janis rasps. “Do you have a blunt object? A brick? A baseball bat?”

“Well,” Damian mutters with far too much glee. “I know what I’m journaling about tonight.”

Janis points at him without turning. “Shut your cursed mouth or I’ll shave your eyebrows while you sleep.”

“Please do,” Damian responds. “It’s time for my reinvention. Call it my bald era.”

Janis does not scream out loud but she’s definitely primal-screaming inside. This was supposed to be her summer. Her glorious, responsibility-free, hot gay girl summer. Now it’s just shaping up to be a hostage situation, and she’s the one tied to the emotional radiator while her brother eats chips too loud and Regina breathes the same air and maybe smiles at her on purpose.

She turns on her heel, muttering under her breath, and stomps off toward the backyard because if she doesn’t put herself in emergency time-out right this second, she’s going to do something unholy. Like yell. Or cry. Or accidentally ask Regina to step on her.

Chapter Text

Janis knows defeat when she tastes it, and right now it tastes like mango and acid reflux.

Kai’s here. Regina’s here and there’s nothing she can do about it. Her brother has planted himself in this house like an invasive species and she knows deep in her soul, in the same place where she stores generational trauma, that trying to evict him will only make things worse. Kai doesn’t back down. Kai doubles down. The more you resist, the more he digs in. He’s like a cockroach: too persistent to kill and far too annoying and gross to ignore.

So she lets it happen. She lets them stay because she has no choice. Her parents aren’t answering their phones (probably wine-drunk in Santorini, buying silk robes and evading accountability), and if she so much as nudges this summer in the wrong direction, it’ll collapse. The sun’s starting to sink lower, throwing long golden beams through the windows and painting everything in that soft, almost-too-pretty glow that would feel romantic if she wasn’t currently experiencing the slow death of all her hopes and dreams.

The others migrate outside to keep debating dinner like it still matters, like the vibe hasn’t been permanently contaminated. Like she isn’t currently spiraling into gay oblivion while everyone else discusses sauce preferences.

Janis should be tanning. She should be buzzed on spiked lemonade. She should be drawing terrible ocean-themed erotica in her sketchbook while Aaron says something dumb and Cady pretends to laugh.

Instead, she’s back in the kitchen, aggressively washing a cup that isn’t even dirty. Her jaw hurts from how hard she’s clenching it. The breeze slips through the open windows and brushes against her skin, but it doesn’t soothe her, it mocks her. The whole house does. The whole island. This was supposed to be her sanctuary. Her serotonin safari. Her last glorious summer of no responsibilities before the slow crawl into debt and deadlines that is college.

She doesn't hear Kai approach, which is unnatural. Kai is not a subtle man. He usually moves like he’s auditioning for the role of ‘no indoor voice, ever’. But this time he’s quiet, suspiciously so. Already a red flag. It usually means he’s about to make her life significantly more complicated.

The hairs on the back of her neck rise before he even opens his mouth.

“No,” she says flatly. “Whatever you're about to say, the answer is no. Go away. Die in a hole.”

“Wow,” Kai says, from somewhere uncomfortably close behind her. “Haven’t even said hi and I’m already getting the warm welcome.”

Janis doesn’t turn around. If she looks at him, she’ll swing. Instead, she carefully places the now-immaculate cup on the drying rack and dries her hands with the towel.

“Kai,” she says, tone dangerously level, “I swear to god, if you so much as breathe anything that sounds like a request, I will gouge your eyes out with a spoon. One that’s already tetanus-positive.”

“You don’t even know what I’m gonna ask and you’re already shutting me down?”

“I know you too well,” Janis argues. “You’re about to ask me to do something ridiculous and almost definitely humiliating.”

“Slight hiccup here, sis,” Kai admits.

Janis narrows her eyes. “Say it. Rip the band-aid off, coward.”

Kai rocks on his heels, glances out the window like he’s pretending this is a casual sibling chat and not the moment Janis begins the origin story of her villain arc.

“Listen,” he starts, drawing the word out like he’s trying to make it more annoying.

Janis says nothing.

“This is kind of on me, okay?” he says, holding his hands up like that’ll protect him from what’s coming. “But it’s also kind of on Mom and Dad, because they didn’t tell me that some of the guest bedrooms are still being renovated.”

Janis already knows where this is going and a cold sweat breaks out.

Kai continues, clearly enjoying himself. “Turns out they’re not… exactly finished. Like, no beds. No floorboards in one of them.”

Janis closes her eyes for one long, painful second. When she opens them again, she’s not even in her body anymore. She’s watching this scene unfold from above.

“Okay. And?”

“And, well,” Kai shrugs, “I might have forgotten that Karen and Gretchen are flying in tomorrow.”

Thud. That’s the sound Janis’ soul makes as it drops dead inside her.

“No,” she says, immediate and instinctual. “Absolutely not. You shut your stupid face. Shut it right now.”

“We’re out of rooms,” he says casually. “And I already promised the last upstairs room to Karen and Gretch. You know how they get. They need their own space and at least three pillows per person.”

“No.”

“So that leaves you… and Regina.”

Janis almost chokes. She takes an involuntary step back like the air just turned to poison.

“I refuse. I’d rather sleep in the pool. In cement shoes.”

“Okay, but hear me out—”

“No. Just give her your room.”

“My room? Janis, where would I bring the girl I flirt with, huh?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Kai. Maybe the beach? A tent? Maybe you slither off into the jungle and find a nice rock to grind on. I’m sure someone will have a floor for you to crash on.”

Kai rolls his eyes. “You’re hilarious, really. But seriously, where am I supposed to bring someone if you don’t make a noble, selfless sacrifice for the greater good?” He flashes a grin, the one that makes Janis’ blood pressure skyrocket.

Janis throws her hands up in frustration. “So I have to make a sacrifice? You’re the one who invited her! You’re the one who didn’t check if we had enough rooms before bringing her into the mix.”

“Look, I’m not asking for much,” Kai says, still trying to sell it. “I’m just asking if you could let Regina sleep in your bed for a couple of nights. Just think of it as an upgrade to your sleeping arrangements. You get to share your bed with Regina, and I mean, that’s practically a VIP pass for the rest of the summer. Look, I can’t share with her. That would be weird.”

“You’re her best friend.”

“Exactly,” he says with full, horrifying sincerity. “She’s like a sister. You know how that’d be. Awkward. Too many years of platonic trauma bonding. I’m obviously gonna be bringing girls back and I don’t want Regina sitting in the corner like a judgmental sex priest. She’s scary when she’s disappointed.”

“She’s scary all the time.” Janis' voice cracks. “She’ll murder me in my sleep. I’ll wake up and my hair will be gone. My sketchbooks will be in flames.”

Kai snorts. “She won’t kill you. You two used to get along. Remember?”

“I also used to eat crayons and think frogs were just wet lizards. I was dumb, Kai.”

“She’s chill now. Mostly. I mean, okay, she did punch a guy at a bar last week, but it was a misunderstanding.”

“I’m gonna throw up.”

“Be a good host,” he says, throwing an arm around her shoulder.

Janis stares at him, completely numb.

He grins. “Bonding time.”

She shoves his arm off with enough force to make him stumble. There’s a high-pitched ringing in her ears. Somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind, a tiny version of herself is walking into the sea with rocks in her pockets.

“You want me,” she says slowly, carefully, like she’s tasting the words before vomiting them out, “to share a room… with Regina George.”

Kai nods like he’s asking her to hand him a pencil. “Yeah. Easy fix, right? You’ve got that massive room. You won’t even notice she’s there.”

“I will die,” Janis says, and it is not an exaggeration. It’s a prophecy. “I will combust. I will burst into flames and my ashes will haunt this house and you for the rest of your life.”

“Better than her haunting me. You know she’d make it a whole thing.”

“I will sleep in the car. I will dig a hole in the yard. I will sleep in the fucking garbage bin, Kai.”

“You can’t sleep in the car,” Kai says, as if this is a normal conversation. “The AC’s broken.”

“I don’t need AC when I’m going to be dead.”

“Come on. It’s not that bad. You used to be obsessed with her.”

“Shut. Up.”

“I mean, not that you ever said it. But I saw your sketchbook. You drew her like, I dunno, ten times? Maybe more? There was definitely one where she had wings, Janis.”

“I will end your bloodline.”

“I’m just saying, maybe this is fate.”

Janis turns, grabs the dish towel, and whips it at his face. “You’re lucky murder is illegal,” she hisses.

“You’re welcome. Hope you don’t, like, die of lust or whatever.”

There’s no way out. She’s going to share a room with Regina. Janis agrees with all the warmth of a nuclear winter.

It’s not out of the kindness of her enormous, glittering, mythologically misunderstood heart. No. It’s because Kai is a fungus. A walking, shirtless, mansplaining fungus that keeps reproducing ideas and bad decisions at a horrifying rate, and she just needs him to shut the fuck up before she climbs onto the kitchen counter and launches herself into the ceiling fan.

"Fine,” she snaps. “Whatever. Fine.”

Kai, the idiot he is, takes it as a sign of victory and whoops.

In one swift, horrifying movement, he lunges forward to hug her, arms wrapping around her in a sweaty chokehold of brotherly affection. Janis’ arms hang limp at her sides. She contemplates, genuinely and with conviction, going completely boneless, just to see if he’d drop her.

She does not hug him back.

“Love you, sis,” Kai says into her hair, like this is a bonding moment and not a public execution.

“Die,” she deadpans.

He releases her with a grin, completely unfazed, and spins toward the sliding glass doors like a man on a mission to ruin her life further.

“Regina!” he hollers, loud enough for the whole island to hear. “Janis’ll show you the bedroom!”

Janis makes direct, vengeful eye contact with the nearest potted plant. It’s small. Harmless. Decorative. She considers uprooting it and throwing it at his stupid head. She imagines the satisfying thunk. The poetic justice. The dirt in his mouth. Instead, she turns around, places her hands flat on the counter, and breathes. In. Out. In again.

She hears the back door slide shut, and then footsteps behind her. 

She doesn’t need to turn around to know that Regina is behind her. She can feel her. Like a weather system detecting an approaching storm. Like gravity’s fucked off and now Regina is the only thing keeping her anchored.

“You know, Janis, you don’t have to do this,” Regina says quietly. “I can just get a hotel.”

Her voice is different. Not weak, never that, but softer. Less weaponized. It’s the difference between a knife in your face and a knife still in the sheath but pointed directly at your heart.

Janis turns, because she’s a masochist, obviously.

Regina’s standing with one hand on the strap of her bag. She looks casual and effortless and devastating in the worst way. So unfairly attractive that it’s bordering on a human rights violation. Her shirt hangs just so, and her expression is unreadable in the way that always makes Janis feel like a child trying to decode ancient scrolls while being electrocuted.

“I mean, seriously,” Regina continues. “I don’t want to crash your space. I can find somewhere else, it’s not a big deal.”

That nearly breaks her because it should be a relief. It should be the out she wants, but instead it feels like a test she doesn’t know how to pass or a gift she doesn’t deserve. Or a tiny, perfect act of kindness from the one person her heart has never been normal about.

This is all so fine.

It hits her, suddenly, absurdly, that they’re alone . In a room. Together. It’s not even nighttime yet. She’s not emotionally fortified. She hasn’t had enough alcohol. Her hormones are unsupervised. There’s nothing shielding her from the full-force reality that Regina is there.

“Nah,” she says, leaning against the counter, trying to seem casual. “It’s fine. Totally fine. This is, like, what people do for guests, right? No big deal. Big fan of guests. Guests are so... guesty. Love having guests.” 

Her voice comes out dry, light, too easy. A little too loud. Her default setting when the panic rises and the gay starts leaking out of her pores.

Regina raises an eyebrow. The subtle flex of a woman who knows her power and knows exactly what she does to poor, defenseless lesbians trying to breathe.

“Really? Because you look like you’re about to have a stroke.”

“This is just my face.”

Regina’s lips twitch. “I mean it,” she says, quieter now. “You don’t owe me anything. I wasn’t expecting this. I just... Kai said it was fine. But I can leave. It wouldn’t be a big deal.”

Janis shrugs with one shoulder and tries to focus on the feel of the countertop, on anything that isn’t Regina’s eyes. “It’s not a big deal, it’s just a room. You’re a guest. This is what people do for guests.”

Even as she says it, she can hear how hollow it sounds. How not-fine this is. How much it is, and how hard she’s trying to sound like it isn’t.

This private room with shared air and shared space and a too-big bed and nowhere to run is not what people do for guests. This is what people do for emotional crucifixion. This is how people get sent to horny jail.

But she can’t say that. If she says that, she has to explain why.

And Janis ‘Imi’ike would rather swallow broken Christmas ornaments than say out loud, in this humidity-choked kitchen, that being in close quarters with Regina George is already making her feel like she’s trapped inside a bottle of shaken soda, pressure building behind her ribs until she explodes in a rain of gay feelings and bad decisions.

“I’m a very nice guest, you know,” Regina smirks. “I could’ve asked for much more.”

“Well, I’m just so lucky to have you here. It’s practically like living the dream.”

Regina laughs, soft and warm and genuinely amused, and it’s so jarring Janis almost drops her entire facade. 

“Alright, alright,” she says, waving her off. “I’ll try to keep my princess behavior to a minimum, promise.”

“Thank you,” Janis mutters, her nerves still bubbling underneath. “Because I am definitely not sleeping on the couch.” She gestures vaguely toward the hallway and says, “C’mon. I’ll show you the room.”

Regina nods once and follows her as Janis leads her to the door of the room that was supposed to be her sanctuary. Her personal territory, and, sadly for her pride, now shared territory for the summer.

Janis was five when they moved. Just a baby, really, with a lopsided haircut her mom gave her on the porch and scraped knees that never healed properly because she kept launching herself out of trees like she had a death wish and zero depth perception. A little goblin in hand-me-downs and mismatched socks, constantly crusted with sidewalk chalk and opinions no one asked for, whose entire personality was just dinosaur facts and yelling “BUT WHY?” any time an adult made the fatal mistake of giving her instructions.

She didn’t know much about the world, but she knew three hard truths: her brother was annoying, change was scary, and airplanes were the worst thing to ever be invented.

She didn’t want to move. Hawaii was home. It was wild and warm and loud, overflowing with cousins and aunties who pinched her cheeks and gave her candy when her parents weren’t looking. She was convinced the mainland would be cold and boring and full of white people named Linda.

She wasn’t entirely wrong.

It wasn’t bad or traumatic. No evil teachers, no sudden divorces, no geese attacks (that came later). It had snow in the winter and trees that turned weird colors in the fall. It had corner stores and public parks and a painfully mediocre zoo with a sad-looking otter that Damian once tried to liberate in the third grade. It had chaos and laughter and bad school lunches and an unreasonable amount of standardized testing.

But mostly, it had her.

Regina.

Eight years old, all elbows and eye rolls and an attitude way too big for her tiny body. She had this beautiful blonde hair that looked like it had been engineered in a lab. She wore pink . Not because she liked it, Janis would learn later, but because she knew people expected her to. She wore Heelys. She could roll into a room and ruin your life in under ten seconds.

Janis took one look at her and that was it. Game over. Brain fried. Sexuality set on fire before it had a chance to figure itself out.

Kai had just said, real casual, like it wasn’t about to alter the course of Janis’ emotional trajectory forever, “This is Regina. She’s in my class.”

Janis stood there in a dinosaur T-shirt three sizes too big and a single Velcro shoe because the other had been lost in a tragic mud puddle incident that morning. She stared at this celestial being and promptly spilled grape juice down her front.

Regina had looked at her with those big, judgmental eyes. “Um. That’s gonna stain.”

And Janis, without knowing what love was, experienced every single phase of it in a ten-second span.

Infatuation. Awe. Fear. Worship. The vague desire to change her identity and start a new life under a different name because she had already embarrassed herself beyond recovery.

She didn’t even know what being gay was at the time. She didn’t know why her heart stuttered or why her palms got clammy or why the sound of Regina’s laugh made her want to climb into the nearest laundry hamper and never come out again. She just knew that something enormous and confusing had cracked open inside her ribcage, and it definitely wasn’t asthma.

She was too shy to talk to her at first. She tried, once. She walked up to Regina in the backyard where she was humiliating Kai in a game of HORSE and stood there, frozen, holding a half-melted popsicle. Regina had glanced at her, raised a single eyebrow, and said, “What?” in that perfect, eight-year-old way that sounded like a challenge and a threat and a test of character all at once.

Janis fled. She tripped on a sprinkler and got a nosebleed. It was kind of iconic.

After that, she mostly watched from the sidelines. Like a weird little ghost haunting the living room doorway while Regina and Kai played video games or fought about movie endings or made up increasingly stupid dares that ended in mild injury. Regina was cool. She was confident. She knew what she wanted and said what she thought and never cried during Disney movies.

Janis decided she must be part witch or maybe a fallen star. Something enchanted, definitely.

Their parents made a big deal out of it and Regina became a fixture. Sleepovers and school projects and summer BBQs. She and Kai were thick as thieves. They would joke, loudly and with annoying frequency, that Kai and Regina were so cute together. That they were totally going to get married one day. That they’d be high school sweethearts and have babies with Kai’s terrible hair and Regina’s scowl.

“Oh, they’re gonna get married one day,” Regina’s mom had laughed.

“They’re inseparable!” Janis’ dad chimed in, clearly thrilled that his son had befriended someone so polite and terrifyingly competent.

“Regina and Kai,” someone cooed at every holiday gathering. “High school sweethearts. It’s fate!”

Janis, five years old and already filled with a healthy amount of rage, stood there clutching a Barbie head and knew that it was wrong.

Her brother? Kai? The human embodiment of athlete’s foot? He was going to marry Regina?

Absolutely not. No. Over her dead body.

She didn’t know what marriage was, exactly. Something about kissing and rings and maybe legally binding your soul to someone through cake. Whatever. Irrelevant. All she knew was that if someone was going to marry Regina George, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Kai, the sentient toenail clipping she was unfortunately blood-related to. He of the mysterious sock odor and the constant chewing sounds. He didn’t deserve her. Why should he get to have the magical creature who could do a cartwheel in glitter sneakers and spell “chrysanthemum” without looking it up?

Janis decided, right there in the backyard, that she was going to marry Regina. Not Kai. Janis. 

Janis, age five, with a bowl cut and a chip on her shoulder the size of a small planet, made it her life’s mission. She didn’t know how weddings worked, but she figured she'd pick it up as she went. If no one took her seriously, fine. That just meant they’d be shocked when the flower girl tossed petals and Janis appeared in a suit three sizes too big, ready to seal the deal with a juice box toast and eternal devotion.

She didn’t tell anyone. Not her parents. Not Kai. Definitely not Regina. She was five. What was she going to do, object with crayon logic and dramatic finger pointing? 

She made Regina a macaroni necklace once and then immediately threw it into the trash before anyone could see. She tried to draw her a picture once but panicked halfway through and turned it into a velociraptor. She would steal glances during movie nights and then pretend to be fascinated by the popcorn bowl when Regina looked over. She was a wreck .

Thirteen years later, Regina is tan and even hotter, and Janis is still a wreck. Just taller. 

The feelings haven’t gone anywhere, they’ve just matured. Evolved. Gone from I’m gonna marry you and give you a juice box every day to I want to make you a painting that captures your laugh in brushstrokes and also maybe die between your thighs.

And okay, maybe now she knows a little more about gayness and boundaries and how one does not actually propose marriage at age five. She has adult teeth and adult problems but that five-year-old in a dinosaur T-shirt is still in there, stomping her foot and screaming SHE’S MINE every time Regina so much as glances at Kai.

Janis tries not to feed the delusion. She tries. She’s eighteen now. She’s mature. She’s healthy. She understands the importance of realistic expectations and healthy emotional detachment. She likes to pretend she’s grown out of it. She tells herself that it was a childhood thing, a weird emotional rash, a symptom of early gay puberty that went untreated for too long. That it wasn’t real. That it was a phase and not an early queer awakening that spiraled into a years-long obsession and not, say, a prophecy.

But the truth is that she still remembers the first time Regina smiled at her. She still remembers the heat behind her ears, the dizzy panic, the joy-soaked horror of holy shit she’s looking at me. She still remembers swearing, deep in her soul, that one day, somehow, Regina George would be hers.

And if some ancient part of her still clings to that? Still hopes, still aches, still believes? Well. She’s trying really, really hard not to feed the delusion, but the delusion is standing at the metaphorical front door, holding a marriage license and a bouquet.

Chapter Text

It’s early evening, that liminal time when the sky is peeling itself out of its sweaty daytime skin, and the breeze is finally cooling like the earth has decided to quit its day job. 

Janis is busy convincing herself, against all odds and all evidence, that she is fine. That she is okay. Maybe she will get through this night without being body-slammed into another round of emotional trauma and gay panic so intense it qualifies as an Olympic sport.

Then Kai, dumbass extraordinaire, lets words crawl out of his mouth.

“Hot tub tonight,” he announces with the confidence of a man who has never once had a thought worth sharing. “I’m talkin’ drinks, music, vibes. First night energy. Let’s go, full send!”

Janis doesn’t groan or sigh out loud only because she has transcended the need. Her soul is a helium balloon cut loose at a child’s birthday party, floating quietly above the patio to consider its options: possession, arson, possibly nunhood in a remote monastery where no one has ever heard the words “hot tub”.

“Are you fucking serious,” she says.

It’s the first night. The first fucking night. Could she not have one single evening to recalibrate her fried nervous system, to gently peel herself off the hormonal ceiling where she’s been nailed like an art project gone wrong, before her idiot brother throws her headfirst into a bubbling cauldron of chlorine soup with Regina George in a bikini?

Of course not. That would require Kai to possess even a shred of human decency, which he absolutely does not. The man is a morally bankrupt dog in human skin, who operates entirely on impulse and beer. He has never heard of boundaries unless they’re football-related. The man has the emotional depth of a clogged sink and probably thinks foreplay is a brand of sunscreen.

Kai has never known shame or tact or the deeply uncomfortable, blood-boiling reality of having to sit next to Regina in a pool of steaming water while she exists with her stupid wet hair and her unfair face and her microscopic bikini and her little beauty mark under her collarbone that Janis has definitely, definitely not memorized to the millimeter.

“Hot tub?” Janis turns slowly toward him, like a horror-movie doll about to murder its owner. 

Kai’s already halfway to the hot tub, dragging out a Bluetooth speaker and his third beer. “Obviously! We’re in paradise! It’s a celebration, Jan-Jan, don’t be lame. It’s not like you’re shy.”

“That’s not the issue,” she mutters, but it’s like throwing words into a garbage disposal. He’s not listening. Or maybe he is, and simply doesn’t give a shit. “And I’ve told you, repeatedly, not to call me that.”

God, she thinks, staring at his back with the weight of all her ancestral rage. How the fuck are we related? How did we crawl out of the same womb? Did mom give birth to you and a bottle of rum at the same time? Was I cursed in a past life to share DNA with a man whose idea of culture is mixing Monster Energy with tequila?

Damian is no help. Damian is never any help. He is giggling like a leprechaun on molly, sprawled on a lounge chair. “Are you okay?” he says sweetly, which is clearly code for you’re spiraling and it’s hilarious to me personally.

“I’m going to drown myself,” Janis mutters.

“You can’t, you’ll just float. Too much boob.”

Janis kicks the leg of his chair, which he receives with an indulgent laugh and zero resistance. “No one asked you,” she hisses.

Cady, mercifully, seems to pick up on the rapidly mounting chaos in Janis’ body. The stiff shoulders, the twitching eye, the way she keeps gnawing the inside of her cheek like she’s trying to bite through her own anxiety.

“Maybe we save the hot tub for another night?” Cady suggests gently, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “We could do something more lowkey tonight. Ease into things.”

Janis turns to her in awe. She might have just seen the face of god. Or at least the face of someone offering her an emotional life raft with snacks and a built-in excuse to not sit in bubbling lust water next to her mortal weakness. It takes every ounce of Janis' self-control not to throw herself forward and sob into Cady’s lap like a damsel rescued from certain death.

“I would literally kill for you,” Janis says.

Cady smiles. “I know.”

Aaron, slouching nearby in a chair he probably doesn’t know how to fold back up, perks up. “We could do a bonfire. Maybe some drinking games?”

“Oooh,” Damian says, already spinning the idea into something campy. “Yes. I want stories and drama and someone crying about their childhood.”

“That’s very specific,” Cady says.

“That’s summer, babygirl.”

Regina, who’s been leaning against the patio door frame in absolute silence like some kind of sexy cryptid, finally speaks.

“I’m down,” she says simply. “Bonfire sounds better.”

Janis, who is already emotionally unstable, feels her heart skitter in her chest like a beetle on a hot skillet.

Kai is now visibly annoyed that his wet-and-wild fantasy evening is being derailed, and throws both hands in the air with the exaggerated defeat of a man who just realized no one’s buying his OnlyFans content.

“Ugh, fine,” he groans. “No wet chaos tonight. Whatever, you’re lame. You’ve all lost your edge.”

“I never had an edge,” Aaron says, cracking open a beer. “I’m a circle.”

“Bitch, I am the edge,” Damian mutters.

Kai waves them off, stomping toward the storage shed at the side of the house. “Whatever. Bonfire. Booze. Secrets. I’m bringing the speaker and at least one bottle of tequila.”

Janis exhales long and low, like she’s been holding her breath for hours. Like she’s finally stepped away from the edge of the emotional cliff Kai nearly shoved her off of with his casually incestuous social planning.

“I actually might kiss you,” she declares to Cady.

“Please don’t. You’d get lip balm on me.”

“I’m serious. I owe you my life.”

Cady pats her shoulder. “You owe me carrots, as in you eating them. For the illusion of nutrition.”

Regina walks past them then, slow and graceful, her shoulder brushing lightly against Janis’ as she heads toward the house to grab a hoodie. The contact is so brief, so casual, but Janis feels it like a fucking earthquake. She stares straight ahead, absolutely frozen, and thinks, I would not have survived the hot tub.

Bonfire it is. Games. Distance. She can handle that. Probably. God willing.

As long as no one brings up the hot tub again. Or touches her, or speaks to her, or exists within a five-foot radius of her emotional unravelling.

Totally fine. Everything is going great.

The bonfire crackles and pops and each hiss sends tiny embers spiraling into the night, little orange devils dancing their way into the air. The breeze from the ocean rolls in heavier, carrying salt and smoke and just the faintest stench of whatever ungodly thing Kai dropped into the flames earlier. The sand beneath Janis’ legs is warm from the heat, rough against her skin, and absolutely everywhere.

They’ve been drinking for hours now, at the point of tipsy that turns everything funny and everyone too loud, that makes snack food taste like fine dining and secrets start to loosen their grip. One of Kai’s busted sandals has been slowly melting near the fire for the last thirty minutes and no one has stopped it.

The heat from the fire has mingled with the heat from the alcohol and the buzz in Janis' bloodstream is not entirely from alcohol. She’s sitting in the circle, knees hugged to her chest, hoodie pulled up even though she’s still warm, because Regina’s sitting directly across from her and looking like the concept of temptation itself.

Janis has been trying not to look at her all night. It’s not going well.

Regina’s tucked into a blanket that somehow makes her look even more unfairly beautiful. Her eyes are half lidded, mouth curled into a faint smile like she’s watching a slow-motion train wreck she knows she could stop but won’t, because the explosion might be prettier. She’s not talking much, which makes it worse because silence makes Regina more powerful. It leaves room for Janis to think, which is the last thing she should be doing with alcohol in her system and her lifelong crush wrapped up like the world’s most fuckable burrito.

She’s spent the last thirty minutes hyperfixated on snacks and trying to keep her gaze on anything other than Regina’s face. She’s been chewing on the same piece of licorice for at least ten of those and it’s definitely starting to disintegrate in her mouth, but she’s too afraid to move and break the fragile barrier between her and total emotional combustion. Every now and then Regina glances at her over the rim of her cup, and Janis has to physically reset her brain.

Janis is fighting for her life. She can’t stop glancing at her from the corner of her eye, which is a problem, because she also can’t stop drinking. Which is another problem, because drunk Janis has no filter and even less shame. She’s already on her third “whatever this is” concoction and her last two brain cells are swinging each other around by the hair, fighting for dominance. One is yelling say something flirty, the other is screaming chew your tongue off and run into the ocean.

She’s just starting to zone out, staring into the flames and quietly debating whether or not her heartbeat is medically concerning, when Kai opens his mouth.

“I have a genius idea,” he announces and stands on wobbly legs. “Skinny dipping. Let’s fucking go.”

Janis chokes on her drink and she coughs violently.

“I—what the—NO,” she blurts, full volume, full body horror. “Absolutely the fuck not. I would rather sew my eyes shut with dental floss than ever risk seeing your naked body, Kai. I would rather gargle hot oil. I would rather French kiss a sea urchin. You’re my brother.”

“You’ve seen me in swim trunks.”

“That’s not the same and you know it,” Janis hisses. “I would rather be trapped in a room with our mother during her psychic reading phase.”

Aaron, to his credit, looks visibly terrified. “This escalated really fast.”

Cady, predictably, steps in before things spiral into bloodshed. “Maybe we don’t do that? The tide is weird right now and the current could pull someone under. Plus there are sea urchins.”

“Thank you,” Janis breathes, sending her a look of pure, exhausted gratitude. “Sea urchins. God’s middle finger.”

Kai, clearly unimpressed with reason or safety, lets out a groan. “You guys are so boring. Regina, back me up here.”

Regina takes a long sip from her drink and tilts her head at Kai. “You’ll drown,” she says simply, in that perfectly disinterested tone that suggests she’s considered letting it happen.

Kai looks affronted, the way only dumb hot guys can when their ego gets gently smacked with reality. “Damn, okay. Cold-blooded. You used to be fun.”

“People grow.”

Kai, having been thoroughly denied the opportunity to traumatize everyone via skinny dipping, flops back into the sand. He picks up his drink, takes a swig, then leans back on his elbows with a sigh that somehow manages to be both nostalgic and stupid.

“You know,” he says, voice thick with the desire for attention. “Regina doesn’t get drunk often, but when she does… it’s like witnessing the birth of a new species.”

“Don’t.”

“I must,” Kai grins, because he was born with the evolutionary flaw of zero self-preservation. “It’s for the greater good.”

Janis goes rigid. This feels dangerous. This feels like watching a rollercoaster you didn’t agree to ride slowly ascend the first drop.

Kai continues, clearly delighted by his own idiocy. “See, regular Regina is... y’know, murderous. Looks like she was sculpted by angry gods. Stares at you like she’s mentally writing your obituary.”

“She probably is,” Janis mutters into her drink.

“But drunk Regina,” Kai says, holding up a finger. “Really drunk Regina? We call her Reggie. She’s like... frat boy Regina.”

Regina exhales sharply, surely already considering homicide.

Janis stares at Kai, scandalized. “Frat boy? She’s not a frat boy. She's Regina.”

Kai waves his hand like he’s swatting at a mosquito. “Not all the time. Just when she hits, like, maximum tequila. There’s a line. A switch, and once it flips... boom. Reggie.”

“Reggie,” Kai continues, undeterred, “is a menace. Weirdly affectionate but also kind of threatening. It’s magical. She’ll call you a bitch and then hug you. Reggie is the brother I deserved.”

Janis whips her head around. “Excuse me?”

“I said what I said. You’re my sister and I love you and you’ve emotionally crippled me in seventeen unique ways—”

“Thank you,” Janis deadpans.

“—but Reggie? She’s legendary.”

“I am legendary,” Janis argues, jabbing a finger into the air. “I am the human embodiment of joy and chaos. You should be grateful to share genetic material with me. I am a delight. I threw a smoke bomb into your sixteenth birthday party.”

“I still have nightmares about that,” Kai says distantly.

“Hold on,” Damian chimes in. “Back up. You’re saying Regina has an evil twin trapped in her liver named Reggie?”

“Not evil,” Kai says thoughtfully, “just... aggressively unhinged, in the most charming way. Like, one time, she came to this party at my frat house, uninvited by the way, just rolls up with a bottle of whiskey and judgment in her eyes, and immediately challenges Chad to a chugging contest.”

Regina sips her drink slowly, unbothered, eyes fixed on the fire like this is all beneath her.

“She demanded to be initiated,” Kai says. “Made us put her through a challenge. Said, and I quote, ‘If I can out-chug Chad, I want a paddle and a hat.’”

“Who’s Chad?” Cady asks, sounding equal parts confused and terrified.

“Chad,” Kai says solemnly, “was our reigning drink king. Six-foot-four, offensive lineman, could shotgun a beer in seconds.”

“And Regina?” Damian asks, riveted.

“Reggie buried him,” Kai says. “Destroyed him and then stole his sunglasses. It was like watching a myth be born. We made her an honorary brother and gave her her own nickname on the wall and everything. There’s still a Polaroid of her on the fridge with a fake mustache and a Solo cup crown.”

Janis is full-on malfunctioning. The mental image of Regina drunk, reckless and yelling at frat boys is now permanently etched into her soul. It’s burned there. Frat boy Reggie, honorary brother of the Beta Chi house, destroyer of Chads, drinker of beer, ruiner of lives. 

Damian leans toward her, whispering, “Do you need a defibrillator or a bucket of ice water maybe?”

“Shut up,” Janis mutters, ears burning. “Don’t talk to me.”

Damian then sits forward so abruptly it startles a seagull somewhere down the beach. His eyes gleam with something far too intense for the relaxed bonfire ambiance. The flames snap and hiss like they’re scared of what’s coming.

“Wait,” he says, deadly serious. “No, but actually. We have to meet Reggie. I’m sorry, but it’s not a want, it’s a need. It’s on my itinerary now.”

He looks wildly around the circle, like he’s about to start a petition.

Regina brings her cup to her lips with deliberate calm, taking a slow sip. “That’s not how it works.”

Damian’s face contorts. “What do you mean that’s not how it works? We just... wait? And hope?”

“She’s not a circus act,” Regina sighs. “I don’t summon her. It’s not Beetlejuice, it’s not like I can just yell ‘Reggie’ three times and black out in a stranger’s bathtub.”

Kai looks like he’s about to say something about a bathtub incident and then wisely decides to preserve his life.

Damian gasps. “Are you saying I’m not worthy?”

“I’m saying she shows up when she wants to.” Regina keeps going, unbothered. “It depends on the cosmos. The vibe. My blood alcohol content. The moon. She appears when she wants to. She chooses. She’s not a frat party fairy.”

“She is now,” Damian declares. “I’m making her my patron saint.”

Janis snorts, choking a little on her drink, and doubles over coughing. She waves one hand like, don’t worry, this is fine, I’m not dying, just allergic to my own unspoken lust.

Kai, now reclining in the sand like a Roman emperor who’s had one too many jello shots and no real power, raises a lazy hand and gestures vaguely at the fire. “She’s unpredictable. You don’t understand, Damian. It’s not about inviting Reggie. It’s about surviving her. The frat gods don’t give warnings.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Regina adds. “I don’t plan for Reggie. She doesn’t operate on logic. She’s dictated by... alcohol ratios. Emotional imbalance. Astral alignment.”

“So she’s queer,” Damian nods. “Got it. I will be praying to every god. Every entity. Every crystal girl’s TikTok altar. To the ancient spirits of tequila and white girl rage. Whatever it takes.”

“No promises,” Regina shrugs.

Just like that, the conversation spirals into theories about how to summon Reggie, and whether full moons increase the chance of her arrival.

“We need to figure out how to summon her,” Damian announces. “There has to be a method. A ritual. A sacred act that tears the veil between this world and Reggie’s.” He turns abruptly to face the fire, raising his arms like Moses about to part the waves. “Reggie, if you’re out there, I offer my soul and two shots of Fireball. Come to us, oh goddess of chaos and crop tops.”

Aaron snorts. “You guys are unwell.”

“No, you’re unwell if you don’t want to see this happen,” Damian shoots back, whipping around. “Think about it. Think of the possibilities. We just need to recreate the right conditions. She needs a trigger.”

“Beer pong?” he suggests, eyes gleaming. “Maybe a chugging contest. Maybe some tit action. Janis, quick, flash her!”

Janis chokes again. “Absolutely the fuck not.”

“I’m just saying,” Damian shrugs, far too casual, “it might work. I’m trying to be thorough. This is science.”

“She’s not a werewolf,” Cady says, now deeply concerned, “she’s just Regina.”

“Exactly,” Kai grins. “And Regina once did six shots of tequila and then threatened to fight a police horse because it looked at her funny.”

Aaron suggests tequila sunrises. “They’re deceptively sweet, and that feels very Reggie-coded.”

Cady argues for Long Island iced teas, citing the “everything at once” energy. “It’s unhinged. It’s mysterious. It makes you forget your own name.”

Kai launches into a dramatic retelling of the time Regina drank something called “The Boot of Brotherhood” out of a plastic novelty boot at a frat party in Reno and then did thirty pushups on the roof while chanting, “Beta Chi till I die, bitches.”

“That wasn’t a chant,” Regina mutters. “It was a threat.”

Damian is vibrating now. Physically vibrating. “I have never wanted anything more. I am going to build a shrine out of Solo cups. I will make offerings. I will contact a psychic. I will call your mom.”

“Please don’t call my mom.”

Janis is, miraculously, silent through all of this. She doesn’t want to ruin it. This moment. This gift. Her eyes dart between Kai’s dramatic storytelling, Damian’s increasingly unhinged devotional ceremony, and Regina, who has become some kind of urban legend before her very eyes.

She can’t even be annoyed. This entire derailment has had a surprising and incredibly important effect: no one is talking about skinny dipping anymore. The horror of seeing her brother's junk is no longer on the table. Her life has been spared. Even better, everyone is so thoroughly obsessed with Reggie and her lore no one notices Janis quietly looking. One second. Two. Three. Just long enough to trace the curve of Regina’s cheek in the firelight, the arch of her brow, the way her mouth twitches when she’s trying not to enjoy herself.

Regina looks criminally good with eyes slightly narrowed as she listens to Damian swear he’ll sacrifice a mango White Claw to the gods if it’ll bring Reggie to life. 

No one’s watching Janis. It’s safe. No one’s watching her watch, which is a blessing because Janis can’t be trusted with eye contact right now. More importantly, there’s no room for Janis to say something stupid or horny or both. Which is rare. A gift that she will not take for granted.

There are no tragic attempts at casual cool-girl comments that come out sounding like emotional rabies. No moments of panic-induced poetry that she’ll hate herself for in the morning. There’s no pressure to be clever. No audience and no spotlight, just a quiet thrill in her chest, a little coil of something secret and electric, winding tighter with every story Kai tells and every look Regina doesn’t return.

Maybe Reggie will come, maybe not. Either way, Janis feels like she’s been knocked on her ass.

Chapter Text

Janis wakes up with a tongue like sandpaper and the distinct, grim certainty that her skull is about three sizes too small for the sheer velocity of her thoughts. She's immediately struck with the existential certainty that she must be dead. Or, at the very least, lightly cursed.

The room is too warm and sticky like someone turned on an oven and said, “Let’s make this bitch suffer.” The early morning sun slices through the half-closed curtains in fat, golden stripes that land across the bed. The air smells like the ocean and faintly of citrus body wash. Obviously Regina’s, because of course even her soap smells subtly devastating.

Janis blinks up at the ceiling with the hollow-eyed intensity of someone halfway between enlightenment and a brain hemorrhage, waiting for the full orchestral arrangement of a hangover to start tuning up in her frontal lobe. It doesn’t.

Huh.

Her head is foggy, sure, and her stomach feels like she swallowed an entire roll of paper towels, but all things considered, she’s okay. Not great, not good, but better than she deserves. She doesn’t feel like she got hit by a truck, more like a tricycle. That’s new.

No vomiting, no seismic migraine and no strange mystery injuries. Some would consider that a success.

Even more surprising: she’s in bed, fully clothed, phone on the nightstand. She has a feeling she didn't say anything mortifying and she certainly didn’t fall into the fire. She didn’t even cry over emotional intimacy like she sometimes does after three drinks.

It’s an actual miracle. Is this what growth feels like?

The bed is soft beneath her, sheets slightly tangled around her legs, the faint imprint of another body still lingering beside her on the mattress.

Except Regina’s not there.

Janis sits up slowly, blinking around the room.

No trace of her.

A part of Janis—maybe the one with a partially functioning survival instinct—sighs with relief. The other part wilts with a stupid kind of disappointment. She will not name the feeling. Not before coffee. Not ever, if she can help it.

She scrubs her hands over her face, peels herself out of bed, and goes through her morning routine on autopilot. Her joints pop with every movement, her hair looks like it tried to fistfight a thunderstorm and lost, but she’s functioning.

The smell of bacon and faintly burnt toast drifts through the house like a homing beacon, guiding Janis down the hall in a slow, lurching march of the semi-revived.

The kitchen is obnoxiously bright and the wide glass doors open to the breeze that sweeps in. Cady is at the stove, hair twisted into a no-nonsense bun, moving like a woman who’s never known sin, like she’s physically incapable of being hungover. Aaron is in charge of fruit, which is to say he’s butchering a watermelon. They both look aggressively upright and Janis does not trust them.

Kai and Damian, however, are suffering exactly the way God intended. They’re slumped over the kitchen island like casualties of a very dumb and very self-inflicted war, occasionally emitting sad, inhuman noises that sound less like speech and more like dying Roombas.

Janis smirks and slides into the kitchen with the smug gait of someone not currently dying. “Well, well, well,” she drawls, and pours herself a cup of coffee, “if it isn't the consequences of your own actions.”

Kai lifts one hand in a feeble attempt at a middle finger, but it flops back down, too weak to commit. “I want to die,” he groans. “Why are you yelling?”

“I’m speaking at a completely reasonable volume,” Janis argues.

“I’m requesting euthanasia,” Damian lifts one trembling hand. “Escort me gently off this mortal plane. Play Lana Del Rey at my funeral and just let me go.”

“This is what you get,” Janis snorts. “I told you not to mix that energy drink with tequila, but no one ever listens to me. I hope you suffer.” She takes a triumphant sip and lets out the most obnoxiously satisfied noise to ever exit a human mouth. “Mmm. You hear that? That’s the sound of my internal organs not dissolving from poison. Incredible.”

“I hope your coffee turns into sand,” Damian mutters.

“Aw, look at you two,” Janis coos, all fake sympathy and malicious delight. “So delicate. So tragically breakable. Like wilted lettuce in human form.”

Cady flips a pancake and glances over. “Try not to bully them too hard. I still need them semi-functional for dishes.”

“I’m running on spite and the whisper of a dream,” Damian says.

“Fruit?” Aaron slides a bowl of massacred melon across the counter and offers Janis a fork. 

Janis takes what she guesses is supposed to be a cube and she’s ready to spend the morning basking in their misery. Her headache is barely a whisper, the air is breezy, she’s got caffeine and minimal trauma. Her friend and her brother are suffering. For one shining second, all is right in the world.

Then Regina walks in through the sliding doors and Janis promptly dies. Her consciousness leaves her body and is immediately ejected into the sun. Gravity stops being real.

Regina isn’t in pajamas. She’s not bundled in a hoodie or cozy from bed. No. She’s fresh back from a run.

A run.

Of course she’s that bitch. Jesus fucking christ.

She’s glistening with sweat, the kind of dewy, golden, hot sweat that makes her look like a fitness model caught mid-commercial. She’s wearing a black sports bra that barely counts as coverage and a pair of tiny runner shorts that could only be described as proof that god is real. Her abs are on full display, clearly hand-sculpted by gay angels. Her thighs are actual weapons of destruction and every inch of her looks like an ad for athleisure and queer devastation.

She steps into the kitchen like she has no idea she’s bringing about the emotional ruin of a girl who is already hanging on by a thread. She’s breathing lightly, like she didn’t just go for a run in hell humidity. She grabs a water bottle from the fridge, pops the cap, and tilts her head back.

Janis ascends.

She watches the line of Regina’s throat shift as she drinks, the way a single drop escapes the corner of her mouth and trails, slowly and traitorously, down the side of her neck. It glimmers in the sunlight like some sort of wet, gay prophecy.

Janis cannot function. She is no longer a person, she’s a vibration.

“Oh,” she says, voice cracking audibly. “You went running.”

Regina wipes her wrist across her forehead and exhales. “I forgot how humid it gets here. My thighs are chafing and I might actually die.”

Janis opens her mouth but forgets how to make words. Her brain has been replaced with static and the Wikipedia entry for lesbian crisis.

Kai lifts his head just long enough to mumble, “Yeah, she does this every morning and brags about her endorphins like a fucking psycho.”

Janis hears him, but it’s distant. Like a voice coming through a tunnel because all she can see is the soft sheen of sweat on Regina’s stomach. The way her waist dips. The curve of her hip.

“Ohhhh no,” Damian whispers. “You’re so fucked.”

Janis is actively trying to swallow her own heart. It’s sitting somewhere in the base of her throat, pulsing in full-blown fire alarm mode. Sweat is starting to bead at the back of her neck and she’s pretty sure it has nothing to do with the weather. Regina is still leaning against the counter, still glowing like a goddess after a light cardio session through the gates of heaven, and Janis needs to put a stop to her own spiraling immediately before she does something irreversible.

She’s already broken a sweat from just looking at Regina for fifteen uninterrupted seconds, and now she has to pretend to function, to casually orchestrate a whole-ass day like her neurons aren’t still misfiring with every single movement Regina makes.

So she does the only thing she can think to do: talk like a seasoned professional. Loudly. About anything else.

“So, what’s the plan today?” she blurts with the false bravado of a woman who’s lying to herself. She takes a sip of her coffee. It's too hot but she doesn't care. If she burns her mouth, maybe she’ll stop having thoughts. “Are we doing something or just continuing our slow collective descent into dehydration and alcoholism?”

She keeps going, desperate to fill the space between her ears with anything that isn’t Regina George, Sports Bra Edition.

“Gretchen and Karen?” she asks, not looking directly at Regina because her brain cannot handle that visual again. “Are they showing up today, or are they just gonna float in tomorrow on a bedazzled sea turtle? Do we need to, like, prepare emotionally? Put up warning signs?”

Regina’s voice comes from behind her, cool and casual, the auditory equivalent of a breeze through windchimes. “They’re not coming until late. Like, after dinner. Flights got delayed or something, so no need to plan around them.”

Janis risks a glance over her shoulder.

Regina is peeling a banana, her expression calm, unbothered and vaguely amused in that way she always is.

“Okay,” Janis says, trying not to sound like she’s desperate to mentally change the subject from Banana Regina. “Cool. Perfect. Then I vote beach day.”

Kai groans into the countertop like someone just told him to do manual labor.

Janis ignores him. “I want sand and I want waves. Anyone who disagrees can choke because I need to surf until I forget that I’ve ever made a single poor life choice. Which, at this point, is going to take hours.”

Cady lights up like she’s been waiting her whole life for this moment. “Yes, oh my god, yes. I want to snorkel. I brought my good fins!”

“What the hell are good fins,” Damian mutters. “Do I have to move?” 

“No,” Janis replies. “You just have to exist near the water like the tragic sea lion you are.”

“Done.”

“That’s the spirit,” Janis deadpans.

Kai makes a strangled noise. “Can’t we just, like… nap? As a group activity?”

“If we’re going to the beach… Janis, would you teach me to surf?” Regina asks like it’s nothing, like she’s asking about the weather or what kind of cereal they’re out of.

Time stops.

Would you teach me to surf. Teach me to surf. Regina. In the water. Surfing. Wet.

Janis stares at her, stunned, like a pigeon that just flew into a glass door.

Before she can even begin to process the full implications of what Regina just said or what it means to be physically near Regina, in a bikini, in the ocean, Kai butts in with a noise of deep, offended disbelief.

“What?” he scoffs. “Why aren’t you asking me? I tried to teach you like years ago!”

“Yeah. And you sucked.”

“I did not suck,” Kai gasps.

“You made me cry,” Regina replies calmly. “You told me I had the balance of a drunk seal and then nearly ran me over with your board.”

“That was an accident!”

“You made me watch you flex for two full minutes before paddling out.”

“That was a warmup! Visual intimidation!”

Regina ignores him completely, eyes flicking back to Janis, who has not moved in approximately ninety full seconds.

“You’re a better surfer,” she says, like it’s obvious. Like it's a fact. “You’ve got good form.”

Janis' jaw might actually fall off her face. She doesn’t know how to respond to that. Her brain plays a slow montage of every time she’s eaten shit on a wave, every wipeout, every mouthful of saltwater, every bikini-top-adjustment she’s ever had to do mid-ocean, and she somehow still lands on Regina George just called me good at something.

“You think I’m a better surfer than Kai?”

“Obviously.”

Obviously.

Obviously.

Janis' soul exits her body and throws a small party in the ether.

She turns slowly, carefully, like someone trying not to disturb a dream, and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I can, uh... totally. I can teach you. I’d love to. Surfing. Yes.”

It comes out too fast and too eager. Definitely not chill and the silence after is deafening.

She feels Damian’s eyes burning into the side of her skull and refuses to look in his direction. If she sees his face right now, she’ll break.

Regina gives her a little smile, nothing big or dramatic, and Janis is gone. Useless. Melting into a pile of gay.

“Perfect!” Cady claps her hands. “Beach day it is.”

Aaron cheers weakly and Kai grumbles something about betrayal and incompetence.

Janis just stands there, gripping her coffee, riding the high of praise like she’s just won a gold medal and also been personally blessed by a lesbian deity. Regina asked her to teach her how to surf. Regina said she’s better than Kai. Regina wants to be in the ocean with her.

Regina wants her. Probably not like that... 

Or maybe?

No. No. Abort.

Janis stares down into her coffee again, determined to not think any more thoughts for the next eight to ten business hours. She just agreed to spend an entire day drenched, inches from the girl who haunts her every repressed fantasy, while physically touching her and pretending to be calm about it.

She is absolutely, 100%, irreversibly fucked.

The sand is already scalding by the time Janis drags her board down to the shoreline, the heat licking at her feet in warning, like the earth is trying to brand her with a reminder to live in the now or some shit. She doesn’t hesitate. She bolts across the wide stretch of glittering beach with the desperate, single-minded focus of someone trying to outrun her own thoughts.

The morning sun is blinding in a sky so blue it looks chemically enhanced. It’s the kind of day that belongs in a travel brochure, all teal waves and soft breeze and promise.

Janis isn’t here for the aesthetics. She’s here for the annihilation. She gives herself no chance to spiral about how she's going to be physically touching Regina later. She throws her board down and paddles out like her life depends on it.

The moment she’s out beyond the break, the world goes quiet.

Not in the bullshit meditation app way or the artificial calm where she pretends to be okay for the sake of people around her. There’s still the hiss and roar of the waves and the occasional seagull screaming, but the noise in her head dies. The buzzing, anxious, relentlessly self-sabotaging narration that follows her around like a parasitic podcast is gone. Evaporated.

It’s just her and the water and the board beneath her. She just is. 

Janis paddles, arms cutting clean through the surface, her rhythm automatic, practiced, primal. She catches her first wave within minutes, the ocean lifting her up, the wind rushing against her face, her legs bending into the motion. It makes her feel like a fucking goddess. It’s a smooth run, no wobble, no flail, and by the time she skids back down and kicks off into the water, she’s already laughing to herself, shaking the hair out of her eyes, lungs full of something better than air.

Just like that, everything makes sense. Her body moves without thinking, balancing, carving and dancing with the wave like she was born in it.

She goes again and again, each wave better than the last. She doesn’t think. Her body remembers even when her brain is full of static. Out here, she isn’t Janis the panicking gay girl with a crush she’s desperately suppressing. She’s Janis the surfer. Janis the water witch. Janis, master of the ocean.

She wipes out once, hard, swallowing half the Pacific and losing a hair tie to the sea gods, but even that feels good. The salt in her nose, the sand in her scalp, the bruises blooming, it all feels earned.

She’s paddling back out after a particularly smug cutback when she sees movement on the shore. Her friends arrive in a parade of chaos and sunscreen, hauling towels and bags and looking generally not as majestic as she feels.

She spots Cady first, flapping open a beach blanket. Then Damian, dramatic as ever, definitely already complaining as he collapses into a chair. Kai’s yelling something about snacks and Aaron’s dragging a cooler. Regina steps down onto the beach like it’s a runway, like the sand should be grateful to be beneath her feet. 

Janis adjusts her stance on the board like it’s no big deal, like she’s just casually redistributing weight for balance and not, say, performing a one-woman aquatic striptease for the sole benefit of a certain blonde standing by the shore. Sure, she shifts with a little extra flair, a little flourish, a theatrical toss of her hair that absolutely no one asked for. Maybe she paddles into the next wave that’s bigger than she’d normally risk without a spotter. Maybe she pops up faster than she normally would. Just a coincidence.

She’s absolutely not catching a steeper, faster wave on purpose just because Regina’s watching. Definitely not carving sharper turns or throwing her wet hair back like a shampoo commercial.

No one can prove she’s showing off. 

Eventually, the burn in her arms reminds her that she’s still a mortal being so she paddles in, shaking water from her ears as she drags her board up the beach. She tosses it onto the sand and makes a beeline for the cooler, practically ripping it open with shaking fingers and grabbing the first water bottle she sees.

Cady’s by the cooler, rifling through snacks and drinks, skin already slightly pink. “You looked amazing out there,” she says, all chipper sincerity. “Like, genuinely. That last wave? You looked like a pro. Like one of those surf girls on tv.”

“Please,” Janis snorts. “I’ve never had that much core strength in my life.”

“No, really,” Cady insists. “You were amazing.”

It’s sweet. Warm and genuine. The kind of compliment that lands in Janis’ chest like a marshmallow. Soft and safe and familiar.

“Yeah,” Regina says, appearing beside them. “You’re kind of incredible out there.”

Oh.

Oh no.

Janis is not prepared for that voice, that tone. Regina doesn’t speak like other people.

“What?” Janis says, like an idiot.

“I meant it. You’re a better surfer than Kai. I wasn’t just saying that to piss him off.”

“Though that is a bonus,” Damian chimes in. “A delicious, powerful bonus.”

Janis doesn’t hear him because her brain has left the building. It is currently buffering in a white void, accompanied by hold music.

Cady’s compliment was like a warm bath. Regina’s is like being struck by lightning in that bath and then waking up in gay heaven where you’re both dead and thrilled about it.

“Uh,” Janis says brilliantly, really the Olympic gold medalist in being completely uncool. “Thanks.”

Her face is doing something. Something hot and unfortunate. Her soul is climbing out of her body with a tiny suitcase packed for anywhere but here. She’s going to go up in flames, right here on the sand. Just turn to steam and vanish.

Regina doesn’t seem to notice (or she does, and she’s choosing to be merciful). Either way, she just gives her that little smirk, like she knows exactly what she’s doing.

Janis takes a big gulp of water. It does not help and she looks back at the waves. Maybe she should go back in and surf until she can no longer form thoughts.

Chapter Text

Janis is ready. She’s so ready. She’s been mentally preparing for this moment like it’s a triathlon made entirely of temptation. She’s already got the lesson plan mapped out in her head, complete with helpful metaphors and demonstrations. She’s warmed up. She’s hydrated. She’s practiced her detached, mentor-like tone so many times that she can now say “arch your back a little more” without spontaneously combusting. She's even rehearsed how not to accidentally say something horrifying like “lean into me, mommy” while potentially helping Regina balance.

She is prepared. She is focused. She is a goddamn monk on a mountaintop.

Then Regina takes off her cover-up and Janis instantly forgets how to breathe, speak, or function as a carbon-based lifeform.

The cloth drops to the sand in one fluid motion like it was choreographed by Satan himself. Like Regina isn’t removing a garment, but revealing a celestial secret that should never be witnessed by mortal eyes. Her black bikini catches the sunlight in a way that feels like the light itself wants to touch her, and Janis is hit by the blinding realization that this is why ancient civilizations worshipped the sun. Not because it gave them warmth or light, but because sometimes it hit a woman’s abs just right and humanity collectively lost its shit. 

Her stomach is toned from all that running, her skin a shade of golden that Crayola could never capture, and her legs, her legs, look like they could kick open the gates of heaven. There’s a slight sheen of sweat covering her and Janis has never wanted to lick someone’s entire kneecap before. She wants to eat sand, crawl into the ocean and simply let the crabs take her.

The devil works hard, but Regina George works harder.

It’s genuinely unfair. No one should be allowed to look like that, especially in public. Janis is no scientist but she’s almost certain there’s a clause in the Geneva Convention about this exact moment. She’s almost certain this violates at least one moral code and possibly the space-time continuum. Somewhere in the universe, a nun just fainted.

Janis emits some sort of noise, something between a cough, a whimper and a death rattle. It slips out before she can stop it, a sound born from suppressed lust. Her brain, once full of useful instructional surfing tips, is now just screaming static and “boobs.”

She is going to die right here on this beach. Face down in the sand. Cause of death: too gay, too fast. She briefly wonders if maybe Cady will give a eulogy.

She turns sharply, grabbing her board and slamming it into the sand with the force of a woman trying to physically bury her feelings. Maybe if she shoves the board hard enough into the earth, it’ll absorb the raw, blinding homosexual chaos erupting inside her chest.

“Okay!” she squeaks. “We’re starting on land. Dry run to practice standing.”

Regina follows, all casual grace and glowing skin, like she personally absorbed the sun and is now radiating it back. Janis forces herself to not look at her legs, or her stomach, or anything below her smug little smile.

They set Regina's board down flat on the sand and Janis crouches beside it, looking like a frazzled PE teacher. “So, first,” she croaks, sounding very much like someone being strangled by her own lust, “you get a feel for the pop-up. It’s all about momentum. Hands here, push up with your arms, jump your feet forward, and land in a crouch like this.”

She demonstrates. It’s fine. Totally fine. Perfectly acceptable except for the part where her heel gets posessed by Judas and she almost eats shit right in the sand. There’s a half-second where her entire life flashes before her eyes—including that time in sixth grade when she cried because Regina complimented her backpack—and then she recovers. Kind of. She plays it off like it was some cool parkour move, throwing in a little flourish like yeah, that was on purpose.

Nailed it.

Regina raises one perfect, condescending eyebrow. “You good?”

“Totally,” Janis says, sweating. “I am a model of stability.”

Regina drops to her knees with an easy, fluid grace that feels personally offensive. She shifts into position like she’s done it a thousand times, like the ground exists just to cradle her body. She copies the movement once, slow and thoughtful, adjusting her feet slightly with that infuriating mix of elegance and casual athleticism that makes Janis want to bite her own fist. The second time, she nails it. Smooth. Balanced. Disgustingly hot.

Janis stares at her for a beat too long. She’s vaguely aware she’s drooling but is too far gone to do anything about it.

“You’ve done this before,” she says, slightly accusatory.

“Kai tried to teach me once,” Regina shrugs, like that explains why she looks like a goddess. “Also, I watched a video last night.”

Of course Regina prepped with hot girl research and then showed up ready to casually obliterate Janis’ ability to speak in complete sentences. This is the same girl who once learned to play Wonderwall on guitar in twenty minutes just to make fun of an ex. She’s chaos wrapped in brilliance wrapped in a really, really small bikini.

Janis clears her throat (more like chokes on her own spit). “Okay. Fine. You’re a prodigy,” she mutters, turning away before she does something drastic like confess thirteen years of repressed feelings or explode. “Let’s hit the water.”

They grab their boards and wade in, saltwater slapping at their feet, the ocean already alive with the soft rumble of waves and the faint screeching of seagulls. Janis feels more at home in the water than she ever does on land. Except maybe right now, when the water has Regina in it. The exception to every rule.

They paddle out past the breakers, Regina following close behind, splashing occasionally, laughing when she veers sideways or gets smacked in the face by a particularly judgmental wave. Janis tries not to notice how her laugh rings out.

They float side by side for a bit, catching their breath. 

Janis can feel her heartbeat slowly returning to a rhythm that doesn’t mimic a hummingbird on meth. There’s something about being out here, in the water, with the waves rocking beneath her board and the sun warming her shoulders, that lets her brain quiet down just enough to function. Almost like Poseidon himself is gently whispering “breathe, bitch” into her ear.

Janis explains the basics like reading a wave, paddling into it, where to best position your feet, and the crucial life skill of how to not get absolutely annihilated if you miss. She talks with her hands, gestures big, lets her voice ride the breeze. This is the one place she knows exactly what she’s doing. The one arena where she’s not a disaster.

Except Regina is listening, and not in that distracted, half-texting, I’m-here-but-not-really way most people listen. No, she’s locked in. Eyes sharp, head tilted slightly, expression open but laser-focused with that unsettling, beautiful intensity that makes Janis feel like her ribcage is too tight. Like her lungs have just enough room for air or feelings, and unfortunately, she chose feelings.

Regina nods along, absorbing everything like it matters. Like Janis matters. Like she’s the only person on the planet, and it’s both wildly validating and deeply distressing.

Regina paddles for her first wave and wipes out almost immediately. Her board launches forward like a torpedo, while her legs fly into the air, launching her in a pose that can only be described as reverse childbirth. She vanishes beneath the water in a flail of limbs and bubbles.

Janis nearly chokes on her own spit from laughing and Regina pops back up laughing and sputtering, hair plastered to her face.

“That was really graceful!” Janis calls.

“Shut up!” Regina yells back, grinning.

They go again and again and again. 

Regina gets closer every time. Knees wobble and feet slip, but she doesn’t get mad. Doesn’t sulk or blame the board or the waves or Kai (which is Janis’ go-to when she wipes out). She just laughs and swears and tries again, and Janis finds herself weirdly undone by it. She’d prepared for a Regina who was smug and competitive and biting. She didn’t prepare for loose and joyful and messy.

It’s almost enough to make her forget how hopelessly wrecked she is over her.

Almost.

Thirteen years of repressed lesbian yearning flare up all at once, and she has the sudden, intrusive urge to carve Mrs. Regina George into the underside of her board.

Regina resurfaces after a particularly good half-stand, cheeks flushed, breathless and looking like the world’s most attractive shipwreck victim. She floats on her back, panting and giggling, and Janis—barely hanging on to her last two brain cells—calls a break before she accidentally proposes marriage.

Janis flops down on her board, arms hanging over the sides. Regina does the same, drifting lazily beside her.

The ocean rocks them gently, salt stinging their skin in a way that feels almost holy—like maybe the sea is trying to cleanse Janis of her sins, but there are too many and they all have Regina’s name on them.

The sun beats down from above in that warm, steady, merciless way only Hawaii knows how to deliver. There’s a kind of hush out here, far enough from shore that the voices are muffled and the world quieter, like they’ve carved out their own little pocket of calm. Cady’s laugh drifts out every now and then, high and bright, followed by Damian’s banshee screech and Kai yelling something. 

It all feels far away. Like the earth hit pause and forgot to tell them. All of it pulled back to make space for this moment.

Janis lies on her board, breathing slowly, trying to be present. Trying to let the calm soak into her bones. It’s easier here, out past the chaos and the hormones and the house full of beautiful people with no chill. Here, she can feel her body. The ache in her arms, the rawness from the board, the sun-warmed water licking against her calves. Her brain usually runs like a rabbit on Red Bull, but surfing quiets it. Grounds it.

She watches Regina. She can’t not watch her.

It should be a crime, honestly, to look that good while floating. Stupidly gorgeous, dangerously at peace, like she doesn’t know she’s the reason Janis will one day be institutionalized. 

Her back is curved in a way that makes Janis want to jump directly into the sun. Her skin is still glowing, like she’s been gently bronzed by a team of skincare angels, and her eyelashes are spiky with seawater, catching the light like tiny daggers. There’s a mole just beneath her right shoulder blade and Janis has the violently inappropriate urge to touch it. Thumb-to-skin, press-and-hold, emotional-support-kind-of-touch it. Which is deranged.

She yanks her gaze away and stares down into the water, eyes burning.

The ocean is safe. The ocean is neutral.

God, the water’s so blue. Not just one blue, but layers. Deep navy where it stretches into forever, then turquoise where it thins out near the reef, and greenish-gold near the shore where the sun hits the sand and turns it all into glass.

It’s gorgeous. Nature is gorgeous. This is fine. This is good.

Janis kicks her legs a little, feeling the board rock beneath her. Her muscles ache, but it’s the good kind. The kind that makes her feel real and present. Like her body and her brain are, for once, on the same page. It roots her, anchors her, and keeps her from fully ascending into gay girl purgatory where all you do is watch the love of your life exist and suffer in silence.

“So,” Regina says suddenly, voice soft, “was I terrible?”

Janis blinks and looks up. Regina’s watching her now, head tilted, one eyebrow raised.

“Be honest,” she adds. “On a scale from Olympic hopeful to criminally disastrous.”

Janis snorts, grateful for the chance to use humor as a shield. “You were… aggressively okay.”

“Aggressively?” Regina grins. 

“Your enthusiasm almost distracted from your technique.”

“Almost?”

Janis shrugs, feigning chill, when in reality she is one smug comment away from either drowning herself or proposing on the spot.

Regina is looking at her like that. Like she knows exactly how much power she holds and is choosing, mercifully, to only wield it in small doses. Like a drug dealer with just enough to keep Janis hooked.

“You’ll get there,” Janis says, pushing with one lazy arm to turn more toward her. “You’ve got better balance than most people their first time out.”

“Is that your subtle way of saying I looked hot?”

Janis’ brain responds with what can only be described as a gay glitch. “I—what—”

“I mean,” Regina hums, lifting one hand to shield her eyes from the sun, “you said I looked graceful and I feel like that was code.”

“I said nothing of the sort,” Janis mutters, ears on fire. “You’re inventing compliments again.”

“Am I?” Regina asks, eyes sparkling. “Because I could’ve sworn you also said I was a prodigy.”

“That was sarcasm,” Janis lies.

Regina lets out a soft, knowing laugh and stretches again, her whole body unfurling like a smug, deadly flower. Janis stares straight up at the sky. The clouds are taunting her. One of them looks vaguely like what Janis is sure is a lesbian panic spiral. Or she might be projecting, whatever.

“You’re a good teacher,” Regina says after a pause. “Really.”

Janis' heart stutters. She lets herself look over, just briefly, just to catch Regina’s face still turned toward her.

“…Thanks,” she says, and it comes out more earnestly than she expects. “I mean, I try. Surfing’s just… easy. Out here, everything’s quiet. Doesn’t matter what’s going on inside your head. It’s just you and the water. And if you fuck up, the ocean slaps you around a little and then you try again.”

“Hm, kinky,” Regina hums. 

“Oh my god,” Janis groans, burying her face in her arms. “Shut up.”

Regina laughs, real and unrestrained, and the sound of it echoes across the water like music, like sunlight, like a spell. Janis lets herself smile into the crook of her elbow, like an idiot.

“Thanks,” Regina says. “For doing this with me.”

Janis removes her arms and looks over again. Regina’s watching her, mouth slightly open like she’s about to say more.

Janis swallows, and the air feels heavier all of a sudden. “No problem,” she says. Her voice cracks a little. “It’s, uh. It’s kind of my thing.”

Regina smiles, and for one terrifying, perfect moment, Janis forgets where she is. Only remembers who she’s with and how much trouble she’s in.

The boards drift closer again, nudged together by the lazy rhythm of the ocean and zero resistance from either of them. The sun is hanging higher now, turning the water syrupy and warm, the sky cloudless and brutal. 

If Janis wasn’t so busy trying not to scream out loud about how close Regina is, she might call it idyllic.

Instead, she blurts out, “So, how’s the whole journalism thing going? Are you still planning to dismantle the patriarchy one scathing article at a time, or have you sold out and started writing for a listicle site about haunted Airbnbs?”

Regina shifts, tucking her arm under her head as she floats. A hint of a smile. The sun catches her cheekbones and she looks positively edible.

“It’s going good,” she says, voice low and even and very much not helping Janis stay alive. “I have an interview next week. Internship with Global Getaway.”

“Wait, the travel magazine?” Janis raises her eyebrows. “The one with all the insane photography and, like, zero typos ever?”

“That’s the one,” Regina confirms, clearly trying not to sound too proud. 

“That’s… kind of a big deal.”

“It’s mostly writing fluff right now, destination blurbs and resort round-ups, but if I get in, I could pitch something real eventually. Cultural reporting, politics, queer travel issues, I don’t know. Something that doesn’t involve describing ten types of ocean-themed cocktails.”

“Still,” Janis grins, genuine and wide. “That’s awesome. You’d kill that. Like, actually. You’ll be the first person to write a takedown piece on lavender farming or some shit and accidentally start a global conflict.”

“Manifesting,” Regina says solemnly, crossing her fingers.

“They’ll probably give you the whole magazine within like six months.”

Regina rolls her eyes. “You have very unrealistic expectations of how internships work.”

Janis shrugs, kicking lazily in the water to keep herself steady. “Still. You’re, like… scarily competent. It’s honestly kinda hot.”

“Just kinda?” Regina says, arching a brow.

“Don’t push it,” Janis mutters while realizing what she just said and suddenly becoming deeply interested in a passing piece of seaweed.

They float in silence for a moment. The water laps gently against the sides of their boards, the breeze soft, carrying the smell of salt and someone cooking ribs from shore. Somewhere far off, Kai is yelling about someone stealing his towel and Damian is threatening something. Normal background noise. Familiar comfort.

Regina breaks the quiet. “What about you? Are you excited to start at NYU?”

Janis hesitates. Her board rocks a little beneath her—a slow, lazy roll, like the ocean is trying to lull her into confessing too much. She digs her fingers into the board.

“Yeah,” she says eventually. “I mean, yeah, of course. It’s New York. It’s, like, the big thing, you know? It’s… everything I've wanted. Finally being somewhere that isn’t basically a small town with more chickens than people.”

Regina tilts her head. “But?”

Janis exhales slowly, eyes drifting back to the horizon. The waves ahead are soft and predictable and the ocean is gentle this close to shore.

“But... I’m scared it’s gonna ruin art for me.”

“Ruin it?”

“I don’t know,” Janis mutters, eyes still fixed on the water. “It’s always been this… thing I do because I need to and it feels good. But once I’m in school, and it’s assignments and deadlines and critiques and expectations, it’s not just mine anymore, right? It’s a job. It’s something I have to prove I’m good at. I don’t know. What if I lose the whole reason I wanted to do it in the first place and I start hating the thing I’ve always loved?”

It comes out faster than she means it to, all in one breath. It’s too much. She knows it. She doesn’t look at Regina, but feels the silence stretch a little longer, like it’s making room for something more important than teasing.

“You won’t,” Regina says finally, firm but not dismissive. “I don’t think you can.”

Janis glances over. “Why not?”

“Because I’ve never seen anyone light up like you do when you talk about art. Ever. Not about anything.”

Janis stops breathing.

Regina keeps going, softer now, like she’s choosing every word carefully.

“You talk about brushstrokes like other people talk about soulmates. You literally went on a ten-minute rant about the emotional arc of blue once, and it made me want to burn my entire wardrobe just so I’d never wear color wrong again. You love it. You love it like it’s part of you and I don’t think school, or anything, could take that away from you. You’re not gonna lose that because you’re too in love with it. You don’t just do art, Janis, you embody it.”

That’s it. That’s the moment Janis' body shuts down.

She can feel the blood rush to her face with such intensity that she’s almost positive the sun has decided to focus all its energy directly onto her head. Her cheeks are on fire. Her ears are ringing. Her limbs are floating weird and loose, like she’s been tranquilized by praise.

Regina lifts one amused eyebrow. “You good?”

“I’m... fine,” Janis sputters, coughing violently as if the ocean has just personally waterboarded her for being gay. “Just... you know, a lot of sun. Probably heatstroke. Or hallucinations. Did you just compliment me?”

“Oh my god.”

“No, I’m serious. I think I blacked out for a second. Did I die? Is this heaven?”

“If heaven is full of saltwater and lesbian yearning, then yeah, maybe.”

Janis makes a strangled, deeply unsexy sound and immediately submerges her face in the water just to cool off the nuclear meltdown happening behind her eyes. When she resurfaces, spluttering and probably looking like a drowned possum, Regina is laughing.

Somehow, the sound of it makes Janis feel like the most powerful idiot on the planet.

If she dies from emotional whiplash before college even starts, at least she’ll die gay. So very, deeply gay.

Chapter Text

Regina has always teased Janis. From the moment she and Kai declared themselves best friends for life, Janis became the target of Regina’s sharp tongue and casually devastating observations.

It’s less of a habit and more of a cosmic assignment, like Regina crawled out of the primordial soup and immediately declared it her divine purpose to ruin Janis’ life one perfectly-timed insult at a time. Like she was personally knighted by some higher power and handed a ceremonial dagger labeled ‘bully this one forever’.

It started off harmless, usually with comments about Janis’ bug phase (it was scientific interest, not weird), or how she always wore the same dinosaur T-shirt or how she pronounced crayon. 

Janis, being Janis and incapable of letting anything slide, fired back.

It didn’t matter that Regina was older and taller and cool in that effortless way that made Janis feel like she’d been constructed entirely of loose Legos. The mouth on her didn’t care about social hierarchy. Her brain-to-mouth filter has always been faulty at best, completely demolished at worst, so if Regina jabbed, Janis jabbed back. Usually louder, often dumber, and with far more profanity.

If Regina rolled her eyes, Janis mimicked it so hard she once got a neck cramp. If Regina smirked and said “nice outfit” in that tone, Janis shot back with “thanks, I got it from the clearance bin your personality fell into.”

It was a sport. A dance. A constant back and forth of insults and eye rolls and hair flips. From an outside perspective, it probably looked like the beginning of a textbook sibling rivalry.

For a while it felt that way. Sort of. If you ignored the insane amount of butterflies flapping around in Janis’ ribcage every time Regina got too close, or said her name a certain way. If you ignored the fact that Janis would spend literal hours after Regina left replaying every stupid conversation, every smirk, every time their knees bumped, then yeah. Sibling rivalry. Totally normal. Very heterosexual. 

Then there was that one period. The weird, awful middle chapter. 

The Dark Ages.

Regina was sixteen. Janis was thirteen. Barely. Emotionally? Possibly eleven and a half.

The difference felt enormous. Unbridgeable. Regina had boobs and eyeliner and opinions on politics, Janis had braces and rage issues. Regina wore real bras, Janis still couldn’t walk into Victoria’s Secret without breaking out in hives. Regina was a fully-formed human woman with opinions about Margaret Atwood and low-rise jeans, Janis was a goblin girl whose entire personality could be boiled down to “touch me and die” with a side of “maybe I’m gay???”

That was when everything turned to shit and it was like Regina had flipped a switch. One day, Regina was calling her a pest with an eye-roll and a smirk that felt like a secret handshake, and the next, she was glancing past her like Janis was an unfortunate smudge on her peripheral vision. Like Janis had turned from mosquito to wallpaper. Like whatever inside joke or weird electricity used to flicker between them had shorted out and been replaced by cool, practiced detachment.

She was never openly cruel. That would’ve required too much effort. No, Regina chose dismissive. Like she’d simply outgrown Janis.

She started using words like annoying and childish and clingy. Words that hit with sniper precision, especially when Janis had no armor. She’d mock Janis’ outfits or call her weird in a voice that didn’t sound playful anymore. One time, Regina had looked Janis up and down and said, “You’re not even funny, you just say whatever pops into your mouth like a toddler.”

It had landed. Oh, it had fucking landed.

It hurt.

Janis didn’t say that, though. She doubled down and pushed back harder and louder. Meaner, sometimes. Every jab Regina threw, Janis lobbed one right back, but inside she was always glitching. Every time Regina looked at her with her new signature move—that blank, withering glare that could strip the soul from your body—Janis’ brain went fuzzy, her mouth dried out, and her chest felt like it had been hit with a defibrillator.

Which, coincidentally, was right around the time Janis started discovering some uncomfortable personal truths about herself. Like how she had never once liked a boy and how whatever the hell was going on behind the bleachers at school with her classmates looked about as appealing as chewing chalk. How her imagination kept circling back to Regina's hands holding her face, her hips, her, and how that made her feel like she’d swallowed a thousand bees.

That period should’ve been a red flag. Should’ve sent her straight into therapy because she was somehow even more attracted to Regina during that time. Somewhere in the fucked-up maze of her teenage brain, Regina being mean only made her hotter. She was utterly obsessed.

Regina would say something awful and Janis would pretend to hate her, roll her eyes, talk shit to Damian until she was foaming at the mouth, calling her a soul-sucking sociopath who’d die alone with a personalized pink casket. And then, like the hypocrite she was, she’d go home and draw her. Sketch Regina’s face from memory. Paint that one exact look Regina gave her during an argument in Kai’s car that Janis would later describe (to no one, of course) as emotional homicide.

It took years for Janis to realize that maybe associating verbal slap-fights with butterflies wasn’t the healthiest mental wiring, and probably meant her brain had been soaked in gay yearning and marinated in internalized chaos for too long. But by the time she got anywhere close to that revelation, Regina had already softened again.

Somewhere between seventeen and college, Regina chilled the hell out. Became... warmer. Nicer. Less defensive. Like she'd cut out whatever part of herself that made her burn people before they could touch her. The teasing came back but it wasn’t mean anymore. 

Janis never really recovered.

Sure, she’s got a backbone now. She pushes back, louder and funnier than she used to be. Sometimes, when Regina teases her now, Janis can’t tell if it’s flirting or just Regina being Regina, which is worse because now Janis knows what she wants and how she wants it. Janis isn’t a kid anymore. She’s an adult. With adult feelings. And worse, adult bodily reactions.

Like the first time Regina called her “princess” with a smirk and Janis had to physically excuse herself.

The wanting shouldn’t feel this much like a fucking fire hazard.

She still remembers the first time Regina said something mean and Janis wanted to cry and kiss her in the same breath. Now, years later, Janis can laugh about it. Mostly. When Regina’s being soft. When Regina’s not paying attention.

Even with thirteen years of memories stacked, there’s still a small part of her that thinks: Yeah. No. I’m definitely still gonna marry her.

It’s fine. It’s so fine.

Janis feels like her bones have been replaced with wet noodles. Every muscle aches, but in that deeply satisfying way that comes after a day spent entirely in the ocean. Limbs sore from paddling, lungs stretched from laughing, stomach bruised from when she ate shit trying to do a turn.

It’s heaven, which is rude, honestly. How dare a day be this good and this exhausting.

Surfing with Regina was the highlight. Obviously. Not that she’s going to write that in her journal or say it out loud or acknowledge it in any way that might give away just how unhinged she still is about that woman. But the moment when Regina stood up on the board for the first time—arms pinwheeling wildly, eyes wide with joy and panic and disbelief—and shouted “Did you see that?!” at Janis like she was the only person on the planet? Yeah. That’ll be carved into Janis’ brain forever. Right next to her first gay thought and the time she accidentally walked into a glass door at school.

Cady and Regina are cooking, which is either a brilliant pairing or a natural disaster depending on whether Regina remembers garlic and Cady remembers that human tongues need salt. The couch groans under the combined weight of Kai and Aaron, who are in a full death nap, limbs spread in stupid angles, mouths hanging open in twin mouth-breathing idiocy.

Janis is outside, reclining in one of the chairs, halfway through a coma, one arm flung over her eyes, and a bottle of water sweating in her loose grip. She feels fried. Perfectly, gloriously fried.

Crickets have started their nightly overture, loud and confident, and somewhere in the tall grass behind the house, something rustles.

Because peace is never allowed to last, Damian appears, holding out a beer with an expression that can only be described as casually scheming.

Janis lifts her arm from her face just enough to squint at him. “No.”

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

“To sit with my best friend and watch the sunset and pretend we’re in a movie,” Damian says smoothly. “We’ll do The Notebook 2: Gayer and Louder.”

“Ha,” Janis snorts. “No.”

Damian presses the bottle into her hand with an affronted gasp. “Excuse you. I bring you gifts, offerings, tokens of affection, and this is the gratitude I get? Cold mockery?”

“You never just give me things,” Janis points out. “You lead me into traps. Emotional ones.”

“I’m wounded,” Damian exclaims. “Wounded, underappreciated, and frankly, mistreated. I am an endangered species and you’re the hunter.”

“Also suspicious,” Janis adds, but she takes the beer anyway, pops the cap on the arm of the chair and takes a long sip. It's cold, crisp, a little too hoppy, and exactly what she didn’t know she needed. “Alright, fine, you can stay. But only because I’m too tired to fight you.”

Damian hums and gestures toward the steps. “Come on. We’re walking.”

“We’re what?” she groans, already feeling her calves burn. “No. Absolutely not. I just grew roots. I’m officially part of this chair now. They’re going to have to chainsaw me out of here when the summer ends.”

“Ugh, whatever, fine, be lazy.” Damian flops into one of the chairs beside her, crossing his legs with the precision of someone who definitely watched a YouTube tutorial on how to sit like royalty. 

He exhales, long, drawn-out and deliberately loud. It doesn’t mean I’m relaxed. It means I’m about to say something emotionally irresponsible and you can’t stop me.

Janis takes another sip of her beer. “God, just spit it out. What’s the ambush about? Are you dying? Is Regina secretly a robot? Did Cady finally find out that Aaron doesn’t know how to spell restaurant?”

“She knows,” Damian says gravely. “She just thinks it’s cute, which is the real tragedy.”

“Disgusting,” Janis takes another sip, “okay, so what’s your actual deal?”

Damian glances at her, lashes fluttering far too innocently. “You’ve been very well-behaved today.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means,” he says, “that you’ve been suspiciously normal about a certain situation.”

There it is. The trap. The reason for the beer.

“Oh my god. I knew it. I knew this was a trap. You are the emotional Grim Reaper.”

Damian beams. “And you’re my favorite victim.”

“I swear to god,” Janis mutters, “if you say one more word about Regina—”

“Oh, babe,” Damian grins, “I didn’t say her name. You managed that Freudian slip all on your own.”

Janis groans and tips her head back toward the sky, praying that the universe will smite him for her. Maybe Zeus, maybe Pele, maybe some rogue alien passing overhead. Anyone willing to put her out of her misery.

No such luck.

“I’m just checking on your emotional well-being.”

“Uh-huh,” Janis hums. “You’re using your therapist voice. I’m onto you.”

“I’m not using my therapist voice,” Damian lies. “I’m using my best friend voice. You’ve been making weird heart eyes and actually talked with Regina all day and I haven’t said a single word about it because I’m a respectful and generous king, but now it’s my time to shine.”

Janis takes a longer gulp of beer, hoping she can drown herself one sip at a time. Unfortunately, she’s still alive and Damian is still talking.

“Come on,” Damian nudges her knee with his. “You two were cute today.”

“Don’t say cute,” Janis closes her eyes and grimaces. “Not like that.”

“I mean it. You were laughing, she was smiling. You didn’t even look like you were about to combust from proximity. Progress!”

“We were surfing. She was focused on not dying. It doesn’t count.”

“You were literally glowing. Ask anyone. The sun hit you, and I swear to god I heard Disney music.”

Janis exhales slowly. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re spiraling in slow motion. Regina smiles at you and you look like you’ve been struck by a divine lightning bolt and have mere seconds to live.”

“I am fine,” Janis hisses, gripping her beer and considering if she could bludgeon him with it. “And also, shut up. I’m trying to maintain some level of dignity, and you screeching about it isn’t helping.”

Damian laughs, loud and delighted. “Oh, babe. You’re in so deep.”

“I know.”

It comes out quiet and defeated because she does know. She’s always known.

She’s in love with someone who used to mock her braces and once told her she had the posture of a rocking chair. Someone who spent almost a year ignoring her, after years of teasing her, then suddenly became soft and beautiful and interested in surfing lessons and complimented her art like it meant something.

Janis is, against all logic and survival instinct, and possibly the teachings of every religion on earth, completely and totally fucked.

Damian's quiet for a moment, which makes Janis suspicious again. He’s not really built for silence unless he's calculating something. An emotional ambush, a read so precise it should come with a hazard warning, or some unholy cocktail of both.

Janis narrows her eyes. “You’re brewing something, I can feel it.”

“Me?” Damian blinks innocently. “Brewing? No. I’m just… marinating.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Shhh.” He holds up a finger like a conductor silencing the orchestra. “The roast needs time.”

When he speaks again, it’s surprisingly not the usual teasing.

“I know I’m always making fun of you,” he says softly, “and trust me, watching you malfunction every time Regina exists within a four-foot radius is the highlight of my life. Like, top ten favorite things, right between Cady’s color coding and the time Kai fell into a koi pond. A Kai pond, if you will. But I mean it, I’m asking for real, how are you doing?”

Janis stiffens. She adjusts the beer bottle in her hands, stalling, eyes flicking anywhere but his.

“I’m…” She clears her throat and frowns. “I’m fine.”

Damian tilts his head, unconvinced.

“I am,” Janis insists, tone now bordering on defensive. “So fine. I’m not even thinking about it. Not even a little bit.”

“Girl,” Damian deadpans, flat and judgmental. “Be serious.”

“I am serious.”

Damian levels her with the look. The one that’s seen her cry into his hoodie in a Walgreens parking lot because Regina posted a selfie with her then-girlfriend wearing Janis’ favorite lipstick color. The look that’s been there through every hormone-fueled meltdown, every late-night art spiral, every ‘I don’t even care, it’s not even a big deal, but also why did she compliment my shoes and then laugh like that and what does it mean?’

“You’re not,” he says gently. “But it’s okay. I just… I’ve seen this before, you know?”

Janis sighs so hard it feels like it comes from her soul. “It has to be fine.”

“Why?” Damian asks.

“Because,” she says, throwing her free hand out, gesturing at the entire world like it's being deeply unreasonable. “If it’s not fine, this whole vacation becomes a one-woman circus and I’m the sad gay clown performing nightly breakdowns by the pool.”

Damian snorts.

“I’ve dealt with this for thirteen years, Damian. I’ve crushed and I’ve survived. I’ve wept over Spotify playlists and eaten entire bags of Doritos in a bathtub. This is just… installment number whatever. I know the script. I’ve memorized my lines. It’s fine. I’m fine. She’s hot, I’m gay, and I’m used to suffering. That’s the natural order of things.”

Damian raises an eyebrow. “You do remember that you’re sharing a room with her, right?”

Janis freezes mid-sip. “…Fuck.”

“Mmm,” Damian hums. “Yeah. That. That tiny detail.”

Janis drops her head back and groans so loud a bird startles from the nearby bushes.

“I forgot,” she mutters. “I actually forgot, because we were drunk last night and I passed out immediately and it didn’t count.”

“Right, didn't count,” Damian says, nodding solemnly. “Because nothing counts when you’re unconscious.”

“Don’t talk to me,” Janis whines. “This is hell. I’m in hell.”

“You are in a tropical paradise, with your dream girl and your best friends and a perfectly chilled beer. You’re not in hell.”

“I am, because tonight we’re going to bed sober.” Janis sits there, soul slowly leaving her body. “I’m going to die.”

The beer is warm now. Not gross-warm, but body-temperature, like it’s syncing with her internal turmoil out of sympathy. Janis grips the bottle a little too tight, her fingers sliding down the glass as condensation gives up the will to cling. She stares at the darkening sky, the stars just starting to show their smug little faces.

The porch is quiet except for the hum of insects losing their minds and the faint, rhythmic slap of waves against the shore. It’s the kind of quiet that makes thoughts louder, like the universe’s volume knob is broken and everything in Janis’ brain is suddenly set to maximum broadcast.

Damian watches her with the patient satisfaction of a best friend who knows a breakdown is imminent and is simply waiting for it to arrive fashionably late.

“I was fine,” Janis mutters. “I was fine. I had a system.”

“Yeah, I know,” Damian says, stretching his legs out in front of him. “A system where you bottle up your feelings, pretend your crush doesn’t exist, and cry once a month while listening to sad songs in the dark.”

“It worked!” Janis snaps.

“It did not work.”

“I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

Damian gives her a look so dry it could start a wildfire.

Janis slumps lower in the chair until she’s basically horizontal. “I really did forget,” she mumbles, “about the room thing.”

“How?” Damian scoffs. “You’ve been screaming internally every time she breathes near you.”

“Yeah, but that’s regular internal screaming. Room-sharing is a whole other genre of panic. That’s the kind of mental noise that causes full system failure. Memory wipe. Blue screen. Brain go brrr.”

“Understandable. It’s hard to keep track of logistics when she’s standing in front of you.”

“Damian.”

“What? I’m just stating facts. For example: she touched your shoulders earlier when you helped her on the board, and for a hot second you looked like someone plugged you into a faulty outlet.”

“She’s gonna be in the room,” Janis breathes. “Like. In the room. With the bed. And me. And her. And no alcohol buffer and no crowd and no distance. And sober.”

“Yup,” Damian says cheerfully.

“And she smells good.”

“Mhm.”

“And she wears those stupid little shorts to bed.”

“Probably with one of those oversized shirts that say something slutty like Harvard.”

Janis moans in agony. “I’m not going to survive the night. I’m going to die while clutching my chest and whispering her name as I perish.”

“Honestly? Iconic way to go.”

Janis sits up halfway. Her hands are still slightly shaking. Whether it’s from exertion or nerves or the sheer velocity at which her brain is spiraling, she can’t tell.

“I just…” she trails off. “I can’t let it be weird, you know? I can’t make it worse by acting like a feral weirdo every time she speaks.”

“You’ve literally already made it weird.”

“I have not.”

“You high-fived her after she complimented you and then tripped over a towel and fell directly into the cooler.”

“That was an accident.”

“That was divine punishment for lying to yourself.”

Janis flips him off and he grins.

The conversation lulls into a silence that isn’t really silent at all. Just layered sound of waves, distant laughter, the clink of cutlery, and the buzz of the porch light catching a moth in its weird little rave. Janis breathes in slowly. Salt air and sweat and the faint whiff of sunscreen that’s permanently soaked into her skin at this point.

Inside, someone opens the fridge. The door hisses. Regina laughs and Janis’ entire body tenses.

“You okay?” Damian asks.

Janis nods.

“Don’t pretend with me.”

Janis looks down at the floorboards, at her knees, at the empty space between them that suddenly feels like it’s holding every version of her that’s ever wanted something she wasn’t allowed to want.

“…I think I might be more scared of what it would mean if she ever liked me back,” she says finally.

“You don’t have to do anything, you know.”

“Yeah,” Janis sighs.

“But you might want to start thinking about how long you’re planning to fake being unaffected because you’re really bad at it.”

Janis lets out a weak laugh. “I know.”

They sit in silence again, the ocean whispering in the distance, the breeze brushing across their skin. Behind them, someone laughs in the kitchen.

Janis takes another sip of beer. “I hate you.”

“I know,” Damian grins and leans against her shoulder. 

They stay like that for a while, watching the sun dip lower and the waves roll in, side by side in the glow of a day well spent. It’s a comfort that only comes when someone knows you too well and loves you anyway.

Janis isn’t ready. She may never be ready, but she’s here and so is Regina, and maybe that means something this time.

The thing is, Janis has been here before, in a way. Not this exact thing, obviously. Not sharing a bed with Regina while trying to pretend she doesn’t want to peel her own skin off just to escape. But Regina’s always been around. 

Janis has seen her at her messiest with smudged makeup and tear-stained cheeks after fights with exes. She’s seen her wearing face masks and mismatched pajamas and once, horrifyingly, an actual onesie. She’s experienced her with morning breath and pillow lines and still somehow thought yeah, I’d marry you.

This should be normal because it used to be.

Regina’s been crashing at their house since Kai first dragged her home in elementary school with a scraped knee and a bossy attitude. She’d made herself comfortable in the ‘Imi’ike household with all the grace of a tiny war general. She claimed the best seat on the couch, figured out the TV remote faster than Kai ever did, and once told their mom that they needed better cereal options with an authority that worked. Janis had been five, wide-eyed and sticky with applesauce, watching this terrifying, magical creature storm into her world.

There had been one time, when Janis was eight and sick. Not, like, dramatically sick. No fever dreams or hospital visits, just a hacking cough, a sore throat, and that gross, drippy-eyed exhaustion that makes you want to crawl into a pile of blankets and never emerge. She’d been tucked into bed with her plush stingray and a mountain of tissues when she heard Kai and Regina raiding the kitchen downstairs, laughing over popcorn and arguing about whether Shrek 2 was better than the original (Regina had taste, obviously).

And then, miracle of miracles, Kai came upstairs, poked his head into her room and said, “Hey, wanna watch a movie with us?”

She’d blinked at him like he was offering her the Holy Grail.

By the time she made it to the living room, bundled in a hoodie and blanket, Regina was already curled into one corner of the couch. She didn’t flinch when Janis sat beside her. Didn’t protest when Kai squeezed in on the other side and started the movie. When Janis had a coughing fit halfway through the opening scene, it was Regina who reached over, pulled her in gently, and let her rest her heavy, fever-flushed head on her shoulder.

Regina had smelled like cherry lip balm and shampoo. Her shoulder was firm, warm and solid. Every time Janis coughed, she’d rubbed slow, soft circles into her back like it was just the natural thing to do.

Janis had pretended not to exist for the entire rest of the movie just so she wouldn’t mess it up.

That moment has lived rent-free in her brain for a decade. It’s practically a core memory. If someone asked her what comfort feels like, that’s what she’d describe: warm blanket, Regina’s hand on her back.

So this? Sharing a bed? This shouldn’t be a big deal but her body doesn’t seem to agree.

She’s brushing her teeth, glaring into the bathroom mirror like maybe, if she stares hard enough, her reflection will slap some sense into her. Her hair’s damp from her shower, curling in all the wrong directions. She’s in an oversized T-shirt and a pair of sleep shorts that she hopes are too casual to be seen as trying, but still flattering enough. She looks like a gay mess cosplaying as chill and unbothered, and it’s not working.

She spits, rinses, and gives herself one final glare before stepping out into the bedroom.

Regina’s lounging on the bed, scrolling through something on her phone, and it’s the most casual fucking vision of domestic comfort Janis has ever seen. She’s wearing a faded band T-shirt and shorts, and her legs are stretched out like a fucking invitation. She looks warm and soft and so at home.

Janis wants to die and live here simultaneously. She wants to bottle this exact moment and smash it over her own head.

“Hey,” Regina says, looking up with a lazy smile. “Took you long enough.”

Janis shrugs, trying to look unaffected while her heart is tap-dancing into her esophagus. “Had to hype myself up for the emotional gauntlet of sleeping near you.”

“Fair,” Regina snorts. “Kai says I once elbowed him in the throat.”

“Very reassuring,” Janis deadpans, even though her hands are buzzing. “I applaud you for that, though.”

She climbs into the other side of the bed with as much chill as she can manage, which is very little. She sinks into the mattress, back stiff, limbs awkward, desperately trying to look like she’s a person who has slept or been near another human before. Her body is buzzing but not in a sexy way. In a fight or flight way. Unfortunately, she can do neither.

“You good?” Regina asks, glancing at her.

“Yep,” Janis nods way too quickly. “Totally fine. Very relaxed. You know me, nothing to see here. Just a pillar of serenity.”

There’s a small pause before there’s a quiet chuckle from the other side of the bed. “You’re so fucking weird.”

“I’m so fucking normal,” Janis argues, too fast and too loud, digging her own grave.

Regina shifts again, her body turning slightly, maybe facing Janis now, maybe not. Janis doesn’t dare look. Eye contact would kill her on the spot.

“Goodnight, psycho,” Regina says gently, voice warm and a little amused.

Janis swallows down the scream trying to claw its way out of her throat. “Goodnight, Regina,” she whispers.

The bed is too big and not big enough at the same time. There’s at least a solid twelve inches of mattress between her and Regina. Janis knows because she measured it with her own eyes the moment she climbed in, panicking and calculating like she was preparing for an Olympic sport called Don’t Make It Weird, You Idiot.

The lights go off and Janis lays there in the dark, stiff as a corpse. She listens to Regina shift beside her. Her heart is tapping a stupid rhythm against her ribs, too fast, too loud, the kind of beat that makes her want to crack her own chest open and tell it to shut the hell up.

Calm the fuck down, she’s just a person.

Janis clenches her jaw and forces her eyes shut, dragging in a slow breath through her nose. It doesn’t help. All she gets is another hit of Regina’s shampoo. Hell smells like this, she’s convinced.

She tries to think of other things. Boring things like grocery lists, taxes, Cady’s obsessive planner, Aaron talking, and that one time Kai got food poisoning. Anything to drag herself out of the hormone-induced hellscape her brain is building.

They’re just two people. Two girls in a bed. No big deal.

Except it is. It so is.

Janis is suddenly eight years old again, curled into Regina’s side, heart hammering against ribs too small to hold it all in. Except now she knows what all of it means and it’s not innocent. 

She swallows heavily.

She’s used to this. This is completely, entirely, definitely fine.

Chapter Text

When Janis wakes up, it’s not a slow, gentle rising from the depths of sleep. There’s no soft bloom of awareness, no gentle flutter of lashes or a cozy, dreamlike haze. This is not a morning with birdsong or sunshine-dappled sheets or the serene mood of a tampon commercial with a pastel color palette and beachy walks in flowy linen pants.

No.

Janis’ brain yanks the emergency lever on consciousness and she slams back into her body with the force of a cursed soul being shot into a meat suit mid-exorcism. Her eyes snap open. Her heart goes kaboom. Her first thought is something is very wrong.

The second is something is touching me.

Correction: something warm and soft is touching her.

Something is warm and soft and it smells like hell. And it’s in her arms.

Correction again: she is in Janis’ arms.

Janis is the big spoon.

Worse: she is the koala spoon.

Janis’ entire torso is slotted against Regina like some kind of heat-seeking parasite, face pressed against the back of Regina’s shoulder, legs tangled in an intimate thigh prison. One arm is tucked possessively around her waist like she’s claiming her as property in the fucking sleep Olympics.

Somehow, in the darkest hours of night, her traitor of a body decided to abandon all logic and wedge itself under Regina’s blanket, close enough to feel the steady rise and fall of her breathing and the occasional tiny shift of her hips when she moves.

Regina is still asleep. Or dead. Or in a coma. Either way, she's unmoving.

There is skin contact. There is arm entrapment. There is an impossible level of humiliation and an unforgivable level of intimacy.

Janis freezes, every muscle in her body locking up like a squirrel caught in the beam of an oncoming truck. She’s a sentient anxiety attack in a cute pair of sleep shorts. Her heart is pounding so loudly it feels like there’s a very determined squirrel with a jackhammer trapped inside her ribcage. Her brain is emitting a high-pitched dial-up noise. Thoughts? None. Sanity? Gone. Dignity? Buried six feet under the floorboards with a plaque that reads RIP, you thirsty little gremlin.

She is a sentient anxiety attack.

What the fuck.

What kind of demonic REM-cycle rodeo did she participate in to end up like this? Did she astral project into lesbian hell? Did her subconscious—with no consent from her higher brain function—hijack the wheel and go full cuddleslut the second she hit REM? What entity did she piss off in a past life? Was she a homewrecker or a cursed handmaiden? 

Why is she living in a body that cuddles on instinct?

She can practically see her own obituary:

JANIS ‘IMI’IKE (Birth–Today) - Died of extreme proximity to hot bitch. Found in a spooning position she will never emotionally recover from. May she rest in gay pieces.

Time has stopped, or maybe it’s moving in slow motion, every second stretching out into a thousand agonizing, sweat-slicked years. 

Janis peeks over Regina and confirms the worst. Her arm, the one currently draped over Regina’s waist like a horrifyingly intimate seatbelt, is trapped. Not just trapped. Held.

Regina is holding her arm. Regina is holding on.

Her fingers are laced around Janis’ wrist in her sleep, and her grip is gentle but firm, like some subconscious part of her decided this is mine now and latched on. Like Janis isn’t just an accident of proximity.

Janis makes the most high-pitched, dying-animal noise she has ever made, entirely internal. Her soul keens while her physical body mercifully keeps its mouth shut like it’s been trained not to wake the predator sleeping next to it.

Outside, she hears a bird scream. Not sing, scream. It’s a deranged shriek, somewhere between a rusty hinge and a banshee, and Janis feels like it's echoing the full emotional contents of her brain. She’s never identified with a living creature more in her entire life. She is the bird. The bird is her. They are two creatures shrieking into the void together, bound by the shared experience of being awake. The only thing louder than the bird is the blood rushing in her ears, an embarrassing gay monsoon of what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.

She can’t move. She needs to move. She can’t let Regina wake up to this. If Regina opens her eyes and sees the horrifying cuddle cryptid Janis has become overnight, it’ll be game over. Not just for the summer. For her entire life. 

If Regina knows then Kai will know, and if Kai finds out, Janis will never know peace again. He will not take it to the grave. He will eulogize her with it. He will turn it into family folklore and tell her future children.

“Did you know your mom once latched onto my best friend like a lonely possum in heat? No? Well, gather round, kids, Uncle Kai has stories.”

She would rather sit naked on a hot grill. She would rather perish, shriveled and smoked like a burnt sausage, than suffer that humiliation.

Janis wants to die.

No, not die. Dying is too passive. She wants to be rebooted. Just a quick control-alt-delete her whole meat suit, please. She can’t live like this. She can’t survive this level of contact and softness and… domesticity. This isn’t a summer vacation, it’s a psychological experiment. A Black Mirror episode but it’s just her spooning Regina in a loop forever. Some twisted lab test from the universe to see how long Janis can pretend she’s fine when she’s actively suffocating on her own feelings.

She needs a plan.

She’s frozen, breath held hostage in her lungs, trying to calculate the exact physics of extraction. This is not the first time she’s needed to sneak out of someone’s bed without waking them, but it is the first time she’s needed to do it while being the world’s most clingy big spoon. Her whole body is curved around Regina’s back like a fucking parenthesis.

Okay. Okay. This is fine. (This is totally, completely, cosmically not fine, but if Janis repeats that lie enough times, maybe the universe will believe her and cut her a break.)

She just has to extract herself. Quietly and smoothly, like a ninja. A cool, platonic ninja who definitely doesn’t want to cry because Regina’s hair smells like a damn paradise and her skin is so warm it’s making Janis consider medically induced comas as a lifestyle.

She closes her eyes and prays to every lesbian saint she can think of. Saint Sappho. Saint Hayley Kiyoko. Saint Kristen Stewart in a wife beater. Somebody, please, deliver her from this moment before she spontaneously combusts and takes the entire bed with her. Maybe if she believes hard enough, this will just be a dream and she’ll wake up alone, miserable, and safe.

She begins Operation: Casual Disentanglement.

Step One: Pull arm back.

Step Two: Fake her own death, move to Canada, become a lighthouse keeper.

She tugs.

Nothing.

In fact, it gets worse, because Regina tightens her grip slightly, like her subconscious knows what’s happening and refuses to allow it. Her fingers shift, curling more fully around Janis’ wrist. Regina sighs in her sleep.

Janis floats above herself and stares down at this godforsaken scene. It’s the most violent thing to happen to her and she’s going to burst into flames. Spontaneous combustion, that’s the answer. One little spark and poof, gay ashes scattered to the sea.

Is this really how it ends? Is this my legacy? Hugged to death?

This is everything she’s ever wanted. Regina in her arms, their bodies aligned like puzzle pieces. Skin warm, breaths synced, fingers laced in sleep. It’s a dream, a fantasy, a delusion she’s had too many times to count.

It’s real but she can’t enjoy it.

Reality has teeth and if she stays here too long, Regina will wake up, and then Janis will have to invent a new identity and live on a boat forever.

Okay. She can do this. She’s resourceful. She’s clever. Just… amputate. Cut the arm off. She doesn’t need it. People live without limbs all the time. It’s fine, she can get a prosthetic. A cool bionic one. Something with lasers.

She breathes in through her nose. Mistake.

She inhales Regina’s whole existence. Shampoo. Skin. Sleep. Warmth. The faint scent of sunscreen and sweat and girl, and Janis is on the brink of collapse.

She wiggles her fingers gently, trying to slip out of the hold without triggering a full-body response.

Regina shifts again, just a subtle roll of her hips and her back pressing closer against Janis, and Janis sees God. She feels it everywhere, like a ripple down her spine, like her body is an instrument and Regina just plucked every string at once.

Janis doesn't move. She doesn’t breathe. She lies there like a corpse that died of thirst while holding the water bottle. Her brain is flashing red alerts. Her body is vibrating with fear and arousal and secondhand shame, and prays that the sun explodes before Regina opens her eyes.

—

Janis makes it out of the bed feeling like she’s just escaped from a hostage situation.

She moves in slow, delicate steps, feet whispering against the floorboards, every muscle in her body tense with the kind of fear normally reserved for horror movie survivors tiptoeing past a sleeping demon. There’s no creak, no stir from the bed. Behind her, silence reigns.

She makes it. Through the valley of temptation, out the door, down the hall, and away from the devil.

She doesn’t exhale until she’s fully in the kitchen, where sunlight pours through the open windows in buttery stripes and the sound of clinking mugs and sleepy conversation pulls her back into the safety of real life.

Real life is slightly chaotic. Sunlight is leaking in from every direction, warm and syrupy and aggressively cheerful, turning the hardwood floor into a mirror of golden puddles and casting everyone's sleep-creased faces in the kind of light that makes you forget they were all clowns twelve hours ago.

Kai is slumped against the fridge, drinking orange juice straight out of the carton like a criminal. Aaron is sitting at the kitchen island, bleary-eyed and chewing on dry cereal straight from the box with the energy of a sleep-paralysis demon on his lunch break. Damian is sitting on a stool, wrapped in a throw blanket.

“You look like you’re in mourning,” Janis mutters as she shuffles past, her voice hoarse from emotional whiplash and forbidden cuddling.

“I am,” Damian replies solemnly, tone dripping with performative grief. “I’m mourning your dignity.”

Janis flips him off in response.

Karen and Gretchen have arrived, alarmingly awake. Somehow they’re operating at full power like they didn’t stumble in from a red-eye flight or a portal to hell. Janis stares. They’re both sitting on the couch in coordinated tank tops and early-morning gay energy, radiating synchronized lesbian vibes like some kind of celestial couple’s yoga ad. Janis feels like she’s being emotionally exfoliated just standing near them.

She likes them and the energy they bring. Gretchen’s a little too intense sometimes, like she sees you and immediately knows your deepest insecurity, which she stores for either protection or blackmail, but she’s always kind. And Karen… Karen is an experience. There’s something genuinely therapeutic about listening to her process thoughts out loud. It makes Janis feel smart. 

Gretchen is typing something on her phone, probably collecting government secrets via group chat (Janis honestly respects the hustle), while Karen is staring into the distance, looking like she’s trying to recall a dream that might’ve contained instructions for saving the world.

“Oh hey, Janis,” Gretchen says brightly, glancing up. “We didn’t wanna wake you guys when we got in.”

“Yeah,” Karen adds. “You were cuddling.”

Janis flatlines emotionally. 

How do they know? 

“I... what,” she chokes. “No. No, we weren’t.”

Karen blinks at her, big-eyed and devastatingly sincere. “Oh. Okay. I dreamed it, maybe.”

Janis nods so fast her neck cracks. “Yep. Dream. Definitely a dream. So crazy. You know how dreams are.”

She moves to the kitchen counter, snagging a mug and pouring herself salvation in the form of scalding black coffee. The smell hits her in the face and for a moment she lets herself feel grateful.

Bless Cady Heron, patron saint of morning people.

There she is at the stove, already making breakfast like a domestic goddess in denim shorts. She smiles at Janis when she notices her and nods toward the coffee. 

“I figured you’d need it.”

“I love you,” Janis says. “You’re the only person I love right now.”

“Not even Regina?” Damian chirps from under his blanket cocoon.

Janis doesn’t even look at him. “Do you want me to strangle you with that blanket? Because I will.”

She sips her coffee and allows herself to breathe. The liquid burns on the way down, but it’s good. Necessary. A baptism by fire.

Regina’s skipping her run. That’s what Gretchen said, and Cady confirmed it. Regina’s taking a rest day, which means Janis doesn’t have to see her emerge in those godforsaken little runner shorts, glistening with sweat, all bright-eyed and full of endorphins. No ‘just got back from conquering a mountain’ energy.

Janis might actually live to see noon.

She leans back against the counter and surveys the room. It’s loud and unhinged and slightly unwashed. Everyone’s in pajamas or at least pajama-adjacent and it’s perfect.

Except for the whole Regina cuddling scandal of the century, but Janis can bury that.

It happens just as Janis is beginning to entertain the delusional belief that the morning might go by unscathed. She's halfway through her second cup of coffee, the world still hazy but tolerable. Gretchen and Karen are deep in a bizarre but genuinely moving debate about whether clouds have personalities, and for one precious, shimmering moment, everything is peaceful.

Then Kai, destroyer of joy, scourge of mornings, opens his mouth.

“I think we should go on a hike today,” he announces, from the depths of his swamp-brained idiocy.

Janis’ body responds before her brain does, recoiling viscerally at the word hike, spine straightening like someone just poured ice water down her back.

“No,” she says, sharp and immediate.

Damian lets out a theatrical gasp like he’s just been shot. “Absolutely not, you swamp rat,” he whines. “A hike? In this economy?!”

Aaron makes a low, guttural sound of protest.

Just like that, the Resistance forms. Janis. Damian. Aaron. United under the ancient and sacred law of Do Not Make Me Move.

“My body,” Damian declares, pressing both hands to his chest. “is a temple. It was not built for uphill trauma. Why would I betray my temple with sweat and rocks and vertical death?”

“You want us to walk? On purpose? For fun?” Aaron asks.

“We walked to the fridge and that was a lot,” Janis adds, gesturing vaguely toward Kai with her cup, as if his mere presence explains all things terrible. “That was my cardio for the year.”

Kai looks deeply unbothered. “Come on,” he says, as if they haven’t all been through enough. “It’ll be fun. Waterfall hike, nature, vibes, bonding, fresh air—”

“Fresh air can be inhaled at sea level,” Janis interrupts.

“Fun?” Damian echoes, pointing a shaking finger at Kai. “Do you know what’s fun? Air conditioning. Margaritas. Laying horizontal. A nap. That’s fun. You’re a sadist.”

“Maybe Karen will lick a rock again,” Kai shrugs, like that’s a selling point.

“I thought it was sugar,” Karen adds, not even remotely apologetic. “It sparkled.”

“You gave yourself a tongue cramp,” Gretchen reminds her, still not looking up from her phone where she’s probably blackmailing three senators.

“Worth it,” Karen shrugs. “It was very healing.”

“See?” Kai beams. “Healing! Nature heals!”

“No,” Janis groans. “If I wanted healing, I’d go to therapy, not sweat uphill.”

“Also,” Damian adds, “waterfalls are just rivers plummeting to their death. I don’t need that kind of negativity.”

Aaron nods solemnly. “Preach.”

“I love hikes!” Cady says brightly and the horror escalates. “They’re good for circulation.”

Gretchen nods enthusiastically. “There’s a trail near here that leads to a waterfall. It has stairs and shade and an overlook. There’s a legend about someone jumping off the cliff and turning into mist or whatever.”

“Sexy,” Karen grins. “Does the waterfall talk?”

“No,” Gretchen says gently, “but the lake supposedly looks like a horse from above.”

Karen claps, absolutely sold.

Janis is ready to double down on her protest when hell walks in wearing yesterday’s shirt and a sleepy smile. The shirt is oversized, exposing just enough collarbone to incite national unrest.

Janis’ grip on her mug tightens. Regina’s hair is mussed, soft and loose from sleep, and her face still carries the delicate, smug bloom of someone who just woke up well-rested and perfect, as if the concept of pillow creases would dare touch her. She’s rubbing her eye with the back of her hand, squinting against the morning light, and somehow still looks more composed than Janis has ever been in her life.

“What’s with the yelling?” Regina asks, stretching slightly as she pads into the room. Her voice is scratchy and low and Janis feels her brain begin to leak out through her ears. She takes another gulp of coffee just to remember she has a mouth.

Damian doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m being persecuted,” he says mournfully. “For my body. For my boundaries. For my refusal to climb hills like a colonialist.”

“He’s being dramatic,” Kai says, “because I suggested a hike.”

Regina pauses. Her eyebrows lift a fraction, and that’s all it takes for Janis’ nervous system to start malfunctioning.

“Oh,” Regina says. “A hike? Sounds fun, I’m down.”

Janis dies right there. Not physically—her spine remains stubbornly vertical—but spiritually, she evaporates.

“You literally said you were taking a rest day,” Cady points out, though not unkindly.

Regina shrugs. “Yeah, but if everyone’s going…”

Like someone flicking a switch in a nightmare, something inside Janis snaps into perverse clarity. Fresh air, birdsong, trees. Regina in athletic wear. Regina bending over to tie her shoe. Regina smiling. Regina getting excited over a fern or whatever the hell she finds interesting in nature.

Suddenly, yeah, a hike sounds good. Maybe even great. She’ll hike. She’ll move. She’ll maybe see a waterfall that does not talk and a lake that looks like a horse. She’ll cartwheel through poison ivy if that’s what it takes to make Regina smile. If Regina wants trees, Janis will become a tree.

Janis sets her mug down. “Yeah, I’m in,” she says casually, as if her decision wasn’t birthed from the depths of simpdom.

Damian whips his head around, staring at her like she just announced she’s moving to Utah to become a Mormon. “You traitorous worm,” he hisses. “You turncoat. You simp.”

Janis shrugs, too far gone to stop herself. “What? Nature’s good for you. Vitamin D. I read about it.”

“You are unbelievable,” Damian scoffs. “You cave the second she walks in. Not even five minutes ago you said you’d rather die.”

Janis opens her mouth to protest and then closes it because she’s blindingly aware of the way her palms feel damp, the heat under her collar, the small and traitorous flutter below her ribs. She’s an adult. She has adult feelings and equally adult bodily functions that do not cooperate.

“I raised you better,” Damian whispers, offended on behalf of civilization.

“I’m literally just going on a hike,” Janis says, as if she’s not lying to everyone, including herself.

“You’re in love with her,” Damian sings.

“Oh?” Regina smirks. “Janis, you’re in love? What's that about?”

“No, nothing!” Janis blurts. “Don’t even worry about it. He’s just being annoying. He’s always like this in the mornings. Hysteria. Hormones.”

“He’s just processing Janis' sudden change of heart,” Gretchen offers. “It’s not very subtle.”

“Janis, I cannot believe you,” Damian sighs, utterly betrayed.

“You’re being dramatic.”

“I’m being realistic, Janis. I see you. I see your weak, gay soul trembling in the presence of athletic shorts and post-sleep eye crinkles. You’re disgusting. How dare you betray our sacred lazy alliance?!” He turns to the others, flinging out a hand. “I move to strip her of best friend status. Effective immediately. No trial, only shame.”

Kai lifts his juice carton in a toast. “Seconded.”

Karen claps again. “I love when we do court!”

“I’m not going. Even if she goes,” Aaron nods to Janis. “I’ll just die right here, thanks.”

Regina snorts as she grabs a mug and fills it, glancing at Janis with a faint smirk. “Wow. Your friends are so chill in the morning.”

Janis sips her coffee again to hide the fact that she’s actively melting from the inside out.

“Nope,” Damian says, pointing at Regina. “Don’t look at her. You’ve tainted her. She’s gone full simp. You don’t even know what you’ve done.”

Regina raises an eyebrow. “What did I do?”

Janis nearly chokes. “Nothing,” she says quickly. “You just… breathe. And people panic. Sometimes.”

“Oh my god!” Damian shrieks. 

“I’m going back to bed,” Aaron mutters.

“I’m packing a knife,” Damian mutters louder.

The hike is nothing short of a biblical punishment. By minute fifteen, Janis is convinced they’ve been walking for five years. Maybe six. Time is no longer real.

She’s convinced she’s perfected the art of pretending she’s fine by keeping her face locked in a deadpan expression and only breathing heavily when she thinks no one’s looking. 

Damian, on the other hand, has no shame and even less will to live. He is wheezing like an asthmatic accordion. “I was not built for uphill battles,” he announces between gasps.

Janis would laugh if she had the lung capacity. She stares straight ahead, vision tunneling, wondering if she’s always breathed like this or if she’s just dying. Maybe she has asthma. The air feels like she’s inhaling hot soup, and her lungs are starting to whistle in a way that makes her wonder if she’s been undiagnosed her whole life. No one breathes like this, this can’t be normal. Is this how it ends? Death by incline?

Up ahead, Cady is marching like the world's most determined park ranger, rattling off animal facts that no one asked for while yanking Aaron along. Aaron, who explicitly said he was staying behind.

Karen, somehow, looks ethereal. She floats past them like some sort of forest nymph freshly conjured from a mossy pond. It’s the second most distracting thing for Janis. The first, always and inevitably, is Regina.

Regina, who is somehow immune to the laws of reality. Her skin is glowing in a way that’s either divine or demonic, Janis isn’t sure. Her tank top is clinging to her in all the right places, but instead of looking sweaty and miserable like a normal person, she looks like she just walked out of a photoshoot for Tactical Lesbian Vogue: Hiker Edition. She’s got one of the two backpacks slung over her shoulders, the weight not even slowing her down.

It’s sick. Janis wants to fight her. She wants to kiss her against a tree and die right there. She wants to be buried under this trail so Regina will one day hike past her grave and maybe cry a little.

Kai, of course, is at the front, stomping like a caveman that’s just discovered fire and testosterone. Janis watches him grunt as he swings his arms and leaps over a rock, and the alleged genetic connection between them feels increasingly unlikely.

The trail keeps winding up and every time she thinks they’re nearing the top, the trail cruelly reveals yet another uphill section like a middle finger from Mother Nature herself.

Janis considers faking an ankle injury or starting a small, localized forest fire. Anything to stop this madness. But then Regina glances back over her shoulder, sweat-slick and radiant, and just like that, Janis keeps walking.

—

Janis starts falling behind somewhere between mile “this isn’t so bad” and mile “just leave me here to die.” She slows down the way a dying animal does—gradually at first, then all at once. 

She’s dragging her feet through dirt that’s somehow both dry and sticky, a cursed kind of earth glue, and every breath she takes feels like she’s snorting warm sand. Her thighs are on fire, her calves are vibrating like overworked wires, and her lower back is screaming something foul in a language she doesn’t even speak. Every time she lifts a foot, it feels heavier than the last, like someone secretly replaced her bones with bricks when she wasn’t looking.

There’s a sharp, stabbing pain in her side that makes her wonder if one of her organs is trying to file for divorce. Her vision is going soft around the edges. She's pretty sure she can see Jesus. He’s shirtless and wearing a hydration pack.

Up ahead, everyone is still moving—Damian with the limp desperation of a man auditioning for Les Misérables: The Asthma Years, Karen twirling a leaf and Kai stomping like he’s trying to impress a goddamn woolly mammoth. And Regina… of course Regina is still gliding like an Amazon warrior. Janis would call her a show-off, but that would imply Regina even notices she’s better than the rest of them. She probably doesn’t, she just is.

Janis slows. Then slows more. She’s seconds away from simply laying down in the dirt and letting nature reclaim her. She’s ready to go full sacrificial lamb. Let the wild pigs eat her. Let moss grow over her body. Turn her into a cautionary tale.

Then, horrifyingly, Regina looks back. Worse, she stops and waits. Worse again, she turns around.

No, no, no. She does not need Regina to witness her descent into dusty, sweaty ruin. Not now. Not ever.

Regina falls into step beside her anyway, all golden limbs and terrifying calm, like she’s not even tired, like this is just a casual afternoon stroll through Hell’s backyard. She looks over with that insufferably pretty face, barely sweating, barely even flushed, and smirks.

“Short legs slowing you down, ‘Imi’ike?” she says.

Janis tries to laugh but it comes out sounding like a dying goat. She gestures vaguely at her whole body as if to say: Look at me. I am a husk. 

“You good?” Regina asks, and it’s not mocking. It’s quiet, careful, and so stupidly nice that Janis feels the mortification boil behind her eyes. It guts her more than she’ll ever admit.

Janis opens her mouth to respond but all she manages is a broken wheeze. She waves one hand weakly in the air like she’s directing traffic and gasping for help at the same time. “I can’t—I’m not—Jesus Christ, my ribs. I think they’ve collapsed. Talking is a luxury. Talking is for the strong.”

Regina huffs a laugh and turns to yell up the trail, “We’re taking a break! Go ahead without us!”

Kai hoots again like some kind of frat-themed jungle bird, and Cady yells something about not touching the moss. The rest of them trudge onward, shrinking into the trees, leaving Janis alone in the presence of the worst and most wonderful person on the planet.

Janis collapses onto a flat-ish rock, limbs splayed out like she’s posing for her own crime scene photo. The rock is warm from the sun, firm beneath her thighs, and shaped like a throne for the world’s most exhausted lesbian. She tips her head back, eyes closed, chest heaving, trying not to sound like she’s being exorcised. The breeze brushes against her skin, sending a shiver down her spine that feels almost erotic compared to the torture she’s been enduring.

Regina stays standing, which feels like a personal attack. There’s not a hair out of place. Not a drop of sweat that isn’t perfectly placed for aesthetic purposes.

“You’re not human,” Janis croaks, finally regaining enough lung function to speak properly. “You’re a cyborg or a government experiment. That’s the only explanation. There’s no evidence you’ve even moved.”

Regina raises an eyebrow, and god help her, Janis wants to lick the smug off her face.

“Genetics,” Regina says smoothly.

“Liar,” Janis accuses, jabbing a lazy finger in her direction. “You work for that body. I’ve seen your gym selfies.”

Regina shrugs one shoulder, deceptively casual. “Discipline. You liked every single one, though.”

“Shut up,” Janis mutters, hiding her face behind her hands, mostly so Regina won’t see how red she is. She is not blushing. That’s just her skin rebelling from the hike. Just her blood boiling from the uphill climb. That’s all. Definitely just exertion.

Despite the burning in her lungs and the dirt in her socks and the impending death circling, Janis is also a little bit grateful because Regina waited for her.

Chapter Text

The trees thin all at once, as if the trail has finally given up the act and decided to show them something pretty before it inevitably kills them. Branches peel back, curling away from the path and the clearing opens up. At the far end, violent and godlike and fucking beautiful, is the waterfall. It thunders down into the pool below with a noise that drowns out thought, spraying mist into the humid air, catching the sunlight in a way that makes it look suspiciously like a vacation commercial designed to ruin your bank account.

Janis stumbles into the clearing like she’s just been released from captivity. Her shirt is covered in sweat, sticking to her body in a way that feels both gross and deeply earned. Her lungs are basically overcooked pasta tubes, and her legs are trembling with the rhythm of someone who probably should not be standing. 

Regina looks fine, of course. Not even smug, just naturally powerful. She walks beside Janis like this is nothing more than a brisk jog, and her skin is flushed in a glowing way, not a desperate one.

The rest of their group is already there. Cady’s sitting with her legs dangling in the water, calmly reapplying sunscreen. Gretchen and Karen are next to her, both somehow still cute, chatting and laughing like they didn’t just survive a journey through what was essentially the digestive tract of a mountain. Damian has fully given himself to the Earth. He’s flopped across a sun-warmed slab of rock like an exhausted sea lion, one arm thrown over his eyes and a towel bunched under his head. Kai and Aaron are already in the water, splashing around like toddlers with head injuries, yelling nonsense and dunking each other. Kai tries to climb a rock and slips spectacularly, sending a geyser of water upward. Janis watches it all and decides the Earth made the right choice.

She wheezes her way up to them, footsteps slow and heavy. She’s trying not to make any sound to preserve the illusion of dignity, but every step is accompanied by a breath that sounds genuinely medically concerning. She’s not sure her spine is intact and there’s a cramp in her side that feels personal.

Regina drops her backpack to the ground with a satisfying thud, and pulls out a bottle of water. She tosses it to Janis, and the casual flick of her wrist is so disgustingly cool that Janis wants to throw up.

“Here,” Regina says, all innocence. “For your short legs and extra effort.”

Janis barely catches the bottle. She unscrews the cap and immediately downs half of it like she’s been stranded in the desert for twenty years.

She lowers it with a gasp, wipes her mouth on the back of her wrist, and fires back with what little oxygen remains in her shriveled lungs. “Short legs build character. You tall-ass people coast through life with your elegant horse limbs and your freakish lung capacity. It’s unnatural. No internal struggle and no grit. Just long, judgmental strides and superiority complexes. I hope you trip and fall.”

Regina just smirks in response. Then, without fanfare, she peels off her tank top, revealing a sports bra and miles of glowing skin and toned muscle. No warning, no mercy. Just whoop, and her shirt’s gone.

There she is. Regina in a sports bra and shorts.

The world tilts on its axis. Janis, somehow, does not pass out. It’s a miracle, or maybe a sign of the apocalypse. She’s not sure. Her vision goes a little white around the edges and her knees feel like they’re made of overcooked linguine, but she stays upright. Probably only because if she collapsed right now, Regina would have to pick her up, and that would be even worse. Or better. Or worse.

Maybe it’s the dehydration. Maybe it’s the gayness. Maybe it’s the waterfall. Something about this moment shakes loose a part of her brain and something inside her snaps into place. It’s like when you die in a video game and respawn with temporary invincibility. Her anxiety buffer is gone. Apparently physical activity has triggered some kind of override. 

Her brain is too oxygen-starved to panic properly, too weak to spiral, and without that layer of noise buzzing between her thoughts, she just... responds.

“You’re built like an Olympic villain,” she says. “Like you win a gold medal in the morning and then seduce your enemy’s wife before dinner. You probably have a secret lair with a champagne fridge and a trapdoor.”

Regina pauses mid-sip of her own water. One brow arches slowly. “Is that supposed to be an insult?”

Janis sips from her bottle again. Her hand shakes slightly, but she powers through it like a true champion. “Just an observation.”

Damian groans from his sun rock. “I knew this hike was cursed,” he mutters. “The gay tension is suffocating the wildlife.”

Karen, squinting at a butterfly, nods solemnly. “I think that moth just had a panic attack.”

Regina laughs. It’s low and surprised and warm and it hits Janis right in the chest. She thinks maybe this hell-hike was worth it after all, even if her legs are never going to forgive her.

—

Time becomes a slippery, sun-drenched thing. 

They settle into the clearing with towels spread across the warm rocks, backpacks half-open and spilling snacks, sunscreen and extra shirts no one remembers packing. Someone—definitely Cady, because she’s really the only one with functioning executive skills—has a portable speaker quietly humming through a playlist that feels designed to make you forget your obligations and abandon your worries.

Janis finds a spot and collapses like a sack of badly arranged bones. She eats a sandwich that tastes better than it has any right to, and chews slowly while the sun toasts her limbs and the mist from the waterfall cools the air just enough to feel like mercy. Her body still aches from the hike but she’s no longer actively dying, which feels like growth.

The others are scattered around in various stages of relaxation and aquatic chaos. Cady is methodically applying her third layer of sunscreen. Karen is sitting with her fingers trailing through the water, whispering to a rock like it might turn into a fish if she believes hard enough. Every now and then she coos, “They’re shy,” like she’s on a Discovery Channel special.

Gretchen is face-down on her towel, still and quiet and terrifying in her ability to track every conversation without moving a single visible muscle. If someone mentioned a celebrity’s cheating scandal from three years ago, she’d grunt once and name the side piece, the timeline, and what they were wearing. She is always listening. She is always updating.

Aaron and Kai are still in the water, dunking each other. Kai’s laughter is loud and unfiltered, the kind that echoes off the rocks and makes birds fly away. Aaron keeps resurfacing to yell things like “Bro I slipped!” and “Why is the bottom slimy?!” and honestly, it’s entertainment.

Janis, somehow, is not miserable.

She’s laughing. She’s sun-drunk and full and a little stupid with warmth and sugar and the serotonin of not being dead. Maybe a bit of dehydration, but whatever, she feels good. At some point, Kai throws a chunk of his sandwich at her and she throws a shoe back, and they descend into bickering that turns into snorting, tear-inducing laughter, and maybe she forgets for a second that she was supposed to be pissed at him for crashing her perfect, carefully curated vacation.

(Okay, fine, she usually has fun with him because even when he’s being annoying and loud and sweaty, he gets her in a way that only someone who grew up under the same roof can. They’re the same brand of emotionally damaged. It’s exhausting and it’s comforting, and it’s why she can never stay mad at him for more than, like, twelve minutes.)

She’s mid-stretch when Kai suddenly bursts out of the water, flips his hair back like some kind of delusional sea monster, and shouts, “I DECLARE A GAME OF CHICKEN.”

Aaron immediately groans. “I can’t be involved in anything that requires coordination, Kai. You’ve seen me throw a frisbee.”

“This isn’t about you, Aaron,” Kai argues. “This is about honor. Regina and I are currently tied in the lifetime scoreboard. And this,” he gestures to the water, “is today's battlefield.”

Regina doesn’t even flinch. She’s reclining on a towel like she’s been personally blessed by the sun itself. Somehow her hair is still perfect despite the hike, the humidity, and the laws of nature. She lifts her head with the lazy grace of a lioness who knows she could kill you but isn’t hungry yet.

“You’re not counting that time I beat you at breath holding when we were twelve.”

“It was a tie,” Kai snaps.

“You blacked out.” Regina sits up fully now, eyes gleaming. “Fine. I’ll end you.”

She’s already rolling her shoulders, stretching, ready to ruin him. There’s bloodlust in her eyes. She’s glowing with competitive fury, glances around and realizes with deep, visible disappointment that her team is, well… not looking promising.

Cady raises a hand, expression apologetic. “I just finished sunscreen. Like... literally just now.”

“Is this the one where you throw eggs at people?” Karen asks.

“No,” Gretchen says firmly, shaking her head before Regina can even respond. “It’s the one where someone dies and no one looks cute doing it and you get water up your nose.”

Regina’s eyes land on Janis.

Janis blinks. “No,” she says immediately. “Absolutely not. There is no world in which I participate in a game that involves you climbing on my shoulders and throwing me around like a human flotation device. I just learned how to breathe again. I refuse to suffer.”

“You scared?” Regina asks, all soft cruelty.

“I’m sore,” Janis counters. “And dry. And not ready to be humiliated in a live-action lesbian wrestling match where I lose my dignity and also possibly a tooth.”

“Then Kai wins,” Regina shrugs.

It’s... devastating. Oh god, it’s catastrophic.

That hits the ancestral pressure point in Janis’ brain labeled never let your brother win or he’ll hold it over your head for the rest of your natural-born life and into the afterlife.

Time slows.

Janis cannot, in any universe, willingly let her brother win anything. That’s not just sibling rivalry, that’s biology. That’s cosmic law. That’s engraved in the fine print of being a younger sister. She has spent her entire life waging war against his smug grin and she’ll be damned if she lets him walk away with another victory, even if the price is her dignity, her spinal health, and her ability to ever look Regina in the eye again.

It’s unfortunately a stronger instinct than gay self-preservation. The score matters. The universe depends on this.

Janis groans and throws her head back. “I hate you.”

“Let’s go, partner,” Regina grins.

Janis glares at the sky, begging for divine intervention. There is none. There is only water and war and lesbian doom. She kicks off her shoes, moving toward the water like she’s marching into a battlefield—which she is, actually. 

Regina’s already stepping into the water, unbothered and elegant, all long limbs and aggressive competence. The surface ripples around her like it’s grateful for the contact, like even the molecules of this cursed mountain pool understand that Regina George is not someone to be questioned.

Janis, meanwhile, is trying to remember how legs work. The rocks are slick with moss and too smooth in some places and jagged in others, like the mountain couldn’t decide if it was trying to help or hurt her. The spray from the waterfall drifts over everything in a cool, damp haze, settling on her skin in dewy kisses that should be refreshing but are instead giving her full-body anxiety. 

The water is cold but Regina doesn’t flinch. She just wades in deeper, already up to her waist, stretching her arms and shaking out her shoulders like she’s warming up for the Olympics.

Janis watches in full neurological lockdown, heart thumping in that same erratic, traitorous rhythm it always finds whenever Regina so much as looks at her sideways. Her mouth is dry despite all the water around her. Her hands feel too big, her limbs too heavy, like her body is preparing to humiliate her on a cellular level.

“Wait,” she calls out, still not moving, panic finally catching up to her now that the reality is happening. “Why do I have to go on top?”

Regina looks over her shoulder, slow and smug. “Because I’m taller, obviously. You’re fine, you’re like a hobbit.”

Janis’ jaw drops. “What did you just call me?”

“I said what I said.”

“You guys coming or what?” Kai yells. “I wanna win.”

That’s all it takes.

Regina glances back at Janis, that glint in her eye. A challenge, a threat and a promise wrapped in glowing skin and water-slicked shoulders. Janis can’t let Kai win. Won’t let Kai win. Not when Regina is counting on her. Not when the lifetime scoreboard is tied.

She sighs so hard it feels like her entire skeleton deflates.

Regina is already in position, looking entirely too composed for someone about to allow Janis and all her gay crises onto her shoulders.

Janis swallows hard and makes her way toward her. She’s trying not to look at Regina’s collarbones, which is hard because they are right there, glistening and unfair. She’s trying not to think about the fact that she’s about to straddle Regina’s neck. She’s trying not to short-circuit, but it’s too late. Her brain is already overheating.

Regina glances at her. “Alright. Up.”

“Up?” Janis croaks. “Like... just... just up? Like a toddler?”

“Yes, Janis. Like a toddler. A very reluctant toddler with poor upper body strength.”

Janis mutters a string of curses that would make a priest blush, then takes a breath so deep it feels like it might pull her stomach through her throat. She ducks under the water, resurfacing behind Regina with a gasp. She places her trembling hands on Regina’s shoulders—her actual shoulders, which are hard and warm and definitely shouldn’t feel this good—and hesitates. Just long enough to hate herself for it.

“You hesitating there, champ?”

“I'm... shut up,” Janis hisses. “I’m gathering myself.”

Before she can second guess, she pushes off the bottom and swings one leg over Regina’s shoulder like she’s mounting a very dangerous, very judgmental horse.

Regina catches her by the thighs and lifts. Janis lets out a noise that definitely escaped from somewhere deep and forbidden. Not a scream and not quite a moan. A gasp, maybe. A yelp.

She is now on top of Regina George, with her thighs bracketing Regina’s neck. 

“I hate this,” she says immediately, voice high and tight. “I hate this so much.”

“Try not to fall,” Regina mutters, adjusting her grip.

Kai hoots from across the water, already sitting on Aaron’s shoulders, swaying slightly. “Let’s GOOOOOOO! Chicken of the century! Battle of the siblings! Bring on the pain!”

Aaron, beneath him, looks like he’s reevaluating several of his life choices. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

“Shut up and focus, Aaron,” Regina calls out. “You’re gonna need every ounce of strength you have.”

Janis, clutching Regina’s head, leans down slightly. “If you drop me, I swear to god—”

“If I drop you,” Regina interrupts, “it’s because you flailed and kicked me in the throat.”

And with that, they square off. Four idiots, one deeply cursed game.

—

The water is frothing with the aftermath of battle. The whole clearing hums with tension and sun and something primal. Something stupid. Something competitive.

Janis shifts her weight, teeth bared in a grin, water in her ears and rage in her chest. She’s got her arms out, her thighs locked around Regina’s shoulders with the intensity of a gladiator, and she is thriving.

They’re tied. Each team has taken an equal amount of points and the next round decides the winner.

Regina adjusts her stance, rock-solid in the water, legs braced and movements calculated. She’s got that focus in her eyes—sharp, merciless, a glint that says blood will be spilled. She reaches up to steady Janis by the thighs, not too tight, but secure, anchoring Janis like she’s some kind of ancient war horse trained for lesbian aquatic combat. Every time she touches her, Janis flinches, but not in a bad way. More like a bolt of something zapping up her spine and frying what little remains of her brain.

Janis isn’t even thinking about the fact that she’s sitting on Regina’s shoulders. That her thighs are clamped around her neck. That her hands are constantly brushing Regina’s wet hair, or that she can feel the flex of her muscles beneath her when they shift direction.

She’s thinking about Kai.

More specifically: destroying him.

Fucking Kai is right there, straddling Aaron’s shoulders, flailing around like he’s conducting a demonic orchestra. He’s yelling something about revenge and honor and legacy, but it’s all garbled nonsense in Janis’ ears.

Aaron, god bless him, is doing his best. He’s upright, mostly. He’s trembling under Kai’s weight, trying to keep balance. “DUDE STOP MOVING YOUR HIPS LIKE THAT, THIS ISN’T GRINDR.”

Janis zones in on him. She watches the wobble. That tiny dip in stability every time Kai shifts a little too far. She notices how Aaron’s leg doesn’t plant as hard, how his stance isn’t symmetrical and how the left side falters just a little bit more each time they move.

Janis clocks it in an instant. She leans down toward Regina’s ear, close enough to see drops of water sliding along the curve of her neck. She can feel the heat rising off her, and she swears it should be illegal to be this composed and hot.

“Left side. Aaron’s left. He’s weaker.”

“You sure?”

“Trust me.”

“Always.”

Janis doesn’t have time to panic about that because Kai lunges.

Janis ducks under his flailing arm and shoves, hands bracing against his shoulders. They jostle and twist in the water, the two towers colliding with a mighty splash, limbs tangled, bodies struggling for dominance. Water flies up into her face, the world tilts sideways, but she holds steady because Regina is holding her steady.

Janis pivots and slams into Kai’s side, knowing Aaron won’t be able to hold them.

Predictably, Aaron slips.

It’s tiny, at first, just a little tremble. A momentary falter. Janis pushes into it with everything she has left, her core burning, her grip bruising, her voice rising in a yell as she forces Kai’s entire top-heavy chaos to tilt toward the weak side.

The moment it happens, she sees it all in perfect, cinematic slow motion.

Kai’s eyes widen, mouth dropping open. His arms flail, reaching for Janis, for air, for something, but it’s already too late. Aaron stumbles, his footing lost, and the entire human tower collapses.

It’s beautiful. Ethereal. 

Kai hits the water, sending a massive wave rolling outward that absolutely soaks the sandwich bag Damian was hoarding.

Janis lets out a scream. “Oh hell yes!” she shouts. “Suck it, Kai! That’s right! Sit the fuck down! Who’s the alpha now, bitch?!”

Regina is laughing, hands gripping her thighs, holding her steady as she cheers, “YES! THAT’S WHAT I’M FUCKING TALKING ABOUT!”

Janis throws her fists in the air, feeling like she’s conquered a nation.

She’s soaked, she’s trembling, she’s probably bruised somewhere, but she’s on top of the world—literally and emotionally—and she won. She fucking won. Maybe this is what happiness feels like. Half-drowned, sitting on Regina’s shoulders, screaming while her brother sinks in shame.

Regina lets Janis down, her hands lingering on her thighs a little longer than strictly necessary, and the splash from Kai’s dramatic defeat has barely settled before Janis is getting into her gloating arc, basking in the aftermath of victory. 

Kai resurfaces with a gasp, sputtering and flinging water from his eyes. He looks exactly the way Janis likes him: defeated and damp.

“You good?” Janis calls sweetly, moving backward just out of reach. “You guys need floaties? Water wings?”

“I slipped,” Aaron groans, which is exactly what a loser would say.

“Oh, I know, buddy,” Janis grins, high on the bloodsport of it all. “On the left side. Which I targeted like a genius. I outmaneuvered you, dumbass. I anticipated. I executed. I conquered. You’re welcome, I’ll be selling merch and signing autographs at the merch rock in ten minutes.”

She flips her wet hair, flicking water into Aaron’s face.

Regina moves over beside her, still looking maddeningly composed despite the combat they just participated in. She raises a hand and Janis slaps it with a satisfying smack.

“Thanks,” Regina says, grinning. “That puts me one point ahead on the scoreboard.”

Janis practically glows. If she could crystallize this moment and shove it into a ring pop, she would lick it forever. She’s never been happier. Never been more obnoxious. If she died right now, right in this moment, it would be in complete peace and possibly with finger guns.

“Oh, it was an honor to ruin him,” she says, dripping with fake humility and real psychosis. She tosses her hair again—less effective this time, mostly slapping herself in the eye. “Happy to humiliate my brother for sport. Honestly, I should be doing this more often. I mean, let’s be real, I’m clearly the strategic mastermind of this family. Not only did I dominate the competition, but I looked good doing it. I’m an icon. A force of nature. Objectively better than Kai in every measurable category. Smarter, cooler, funnier, hotter, taller where it counts—”

“Hotter, definitely,” Regina shrugs.

Janis takes a sip of water at the exact worst moment. It shoots up her nose, down the wrong pipe, into her brain, everywhere. The sound that erupts from her throat is an ugly, sputtering cough-snort-gasp hybrid, like a duck being throttled. She doubles over, coughing violently, one hand on her chest, the other flailing blindly as if trying to fight off the physical manifestation of her own gay panic.

Regina raises an eyebrow. “You good?”

Janis gurgles something unintelligible and coughs again.

Damian, who has been observing from the sidelines like the patron saint of public humiliation, yells, “Is she finally dying?”

“I’m fine,” Janis gasps finally, voice hoarse, eyes watering. “I just—wrong pipe. I wasn’t expecting—shut up, Damian.”

She chokes again for emphasis.

Regina’s smirk grows. Janis feels a heat rise to her cheeks that has nothing to do with the sun, but she rallies because she is nothing if not delusionally confident and powered by her recent victory. She clears her throat aggressively and straightens up, blinking through the aftermath, trying to salvage any shred of dignity.

“I’m still hot,” she wheezes. “It’s like... talent. Even when I’m choking. Especially when I’m choking. No, wait—”

“Truly impressive,” Regina laughs.

“Thank you. It’s a gift. And also a curse. But mostly a gift.”

Kai, still sulking, mutters something about betrayal and dignity.

Janis turns to him, voice full of smug glory. “Oh, I crushed you. You got obliterated. Folded like a cheap lawn chair. You may never emotionally recover.”

“I will never emotionally recover,” Aaron agrees, floating on his back nearby.

Janis flashes a thumbs up. “Good.”

She moves over to the rocks, victorious and mildly coughing, her whole body buzzing from the win. Janis is never letting Kai live this down, and she’s definitely going to remember that until she’s ninety and still bragging about it to random strangers in grocery store lines.

Eventually, after everyone’s dried off, calmed down, and the memory of Janis nearly choking to death on bottled water has been retold at least four times (once by Aaron with wildly inaccurate sound effects), they collectively decide it’s time to head back. The decision to leave is slow, like everything good that has to end eventually, dripping with contentment and that soft, sleepy satisfaction that only comes after you've exhausted your body doing something borderline stupid but kind of beautiful.

The sun’s starting its slow descent behind the treetops, casting the clearing in long golden streaks, and the waterfall thunders on behind them as they gather their things. There’s a shared, unspoken agreement among the group: we peaked today.

Janis watches the sunlight dance, and thinks, yeah, okay. Fine. Maybe that was kind of perfect.

The hike back down is a whole different beast. A better beast. A beast that doesn't try to collapse Janis’ lungs with every step.

The path that once felt hostile is now a gentle decline, practically inviting her to descend like a woodland princess who’s conquered the mountain and is returning home to brag about it. Janis walks with new purpose and new confidence. Her legs, while still sore and slightly suspicious of movement, are no longer screaming in agony, and her lungs are blissfully working in silence for once. 

“All hikes should just be downhill,” Janis announces loudly, arms swinging. “Always downhill. This is the way it should be. Gravity is my friend. Uphill is classist and violent.”

“That’s physically impossible, Janis,” Cady says from a few steps ahead, turning to look at her with furrowed brows and startling earnestness. “Geographically. Topographically. There has to be an uphill if you want a downhill. That’s literally how elevation works.”

“Okay, Einstein,” Janis grumbles. “What if you just get dropped in by helicopter, hike down, and then helicopter out to the next one? Ever think of that?”

Cady opens her mouth like she’s about to argue, then shuts it. She’s clearly doing calculations in her head. Janis considers this a victory until Cady opens her mouth again.

“You’re describing heli-hiking,” she says, completely serious. “That’s a thing. It’s very expensive.”

“Holy shit,” Janis blinks. “Rich people are smarter.”

“You realize that defeats the purpose of exercise, right?” Regina chimes in, appearing at her side like a mirage. Her hair’s still slightly damp at the ends, and her shirt clings to her in a way that’s definitely trying to kill Janis slowly. “You’re supposed to go uphill. That’s the whole point.”

“Okay, well, some of us don’t use nature as a gym.” Janis throws her hands in the air. “Some of us just want to feel smug without sweating through our underwear or being in pain.”

“You mean weak people,” Regina says. “It’s supposed to hurt. It builds character. Stamina. Mental resilience.”

“Okay but what if I have enough character,” Janis argues. “Like too much character. Overflowing. Unmanageable amounts of character.”

Regina shrugs, brushing past her just enough that their shoulders bump, and Janis feels it down to her fucking ankles.

Behind them, there’s a loud crashing noise, like something large and slightly stupid has decided to challenge a tree to a fight. Kai comes barreling down the trail at full speed, stomping like a prehistoric beast. He’s shirtless, filthy, and dripping with confidence that he has not earned.

“RAHHHHH,” he yells, pounding his fists on his chest. “ALPHA DESCENDS. DOMINANCE MAINTAINED. I AM THE MOUNTAIN!”

Janis veers away from him like he’s contagious. “I want to press charges. I refuse to be genetically tied to that.” 

“You are though,” Regina says, entirely too amused.

“There must’ve been a mix-up at the hospital. I demand a DNA test and I want receipts.”

“You’re both dramatic, loud, physically aggressive, and weirdly good at team-based violence,” Regina says. “You’re the same person. Just one of you has a better haircut.”

“Thank you,” Janis says without thinking.

“I meant Kai.”

Damian, trailing behind with a walking stick he found and is now pretending is a wizard’s staff, sighs and calls out, “It’s like watching two wolves raised by entirely different brands of alcohol.”

Kai runs around them, nearly trips on a root, shouts “I MEANT TO DO THAT,” and keeps running.

Janis shakes her head slowly. “You see that? That’s what my womb would contain if I ever reproduced.”

“Terrifying,” Regina sighs.

“Right?!”

—

At some point on the descent, somewhere between Kai trying to somersault over a fallen log and Regina very calmly warning him that if he breaks an ankle she will leave him behind, Janis drifts toward the back of the group, where the air is quieter and less full of testosterone-induced yelling.

Karen is there.

Or rather, Karen is floating there, twirling with her arms out like she’s trying to bond with the air molecules. Her steps are light, nearly soundless, as if she’s hovering above the ground. She’s got that look in her eye like she’s been communing with some higher, sparkly being this whole time, and Janis realizes with some level of concern that she’s somehow become more ethereal since they left the waterfall.

Karen moves like she belongs here. Like the trees recognize her. Like she’s part of the ecosystem. A forest sprite in bike shorts.

“Hey,” Janis says, falling into step beside her, out of curiosity or possibly self-sabotage. “You okay?”

Karen turns to her with a soft, dazed smile. “Oh, yeah. The forest is thriving today.”

Janis nods slowly, like that answers anything at all.

They walk in silence for a moment, listening to birds calling from high in the trees, twigs snapping, and the occasional loud noise of Kai being obnoxious somewhere farther ahead.

“The mushroom people don’t like how loud Kai is.”

Janis blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”

Karen nods with total seriousness. “They’re very private. They hate that kind of stomping, it disturbs the ground.” She tilts her head, frowning slightly. “It’s not personal, they’re just sensitive. I’m just saying... he might get cursed.”

Janis glances around, half-expecting to see someone in a mushroom costume crouching behind a tree. “Okay, not to question your deep connection to the forest or whatever, but... who exactly are the mushroom people?”

Karen just smiles, all knowing and vague and terrifyingly at peace. “They know who they are.”

Janis stares at her, then slowly looks away, deciding that some battles are not worth fighting. She watches as Karen stops to crouch beside a rock and gently touches a cluster of actual mushrooms.

Janis wants to say something, she’s not sure what, but Karen’s already on another thought entirely.

“I want a castle in the clouds,” she says dreamily. “With big windows and purple walls and a moat made of moonlight. And marshmallow chairs”

“Okay. That’s... ambitious.”

“But it wouldn’t work,” Karen sighs. “Because clouds are too soft to walk on. They look sturdy, but they’re just air and fluff. You’d just fall through. They can’t hold me, even though I’m light.”

She says it so earnestly, so mournfully sincere, that Janis doesn’t even know what to do with it. She stops walking for half a second just to process.

“Karen,” she says slowly, “that might be the most self-aware sentence you’ve ever said in your life.”

“Thanks. Sometimes I just know things.”

Janis is looking at her like she’s having a minor religious experience.

She’s right. Clouds are soft. You would fall through. A castle up there would be beautiful, sure, but structurally doomed. Somehow, impossibly, Karen makes sense. And also might be a druid.

They keep walking, the trees whispering around them, and Janis thinks, just briefly, that the forest probably does like Karen better.

The house greets them like an old, tired friend who wasn’t expecting guests. The inevitable scent of sunscreen still clings to the group, mixed now with the earthy scent of sweat, trail dust, and someone’s rapidly fermenting socks (probably Kai's). The screen door slams a few too many times as they file in.

Damian is the first to go down. He throws himself onto the couch like he’s been shot and is trying to reclaim the entire surface with his suffering. “I am deceased,” he moans. “If I die here, tell my mom I fought bravely. Tell my future husband I died looking hot and hydrated.”

Aaron isn’t far behind, flopping down next to him with less theatrical flair and more the resigned, heavy thud of a man who’s made peace with his own exhaustion. “I have no bones left, only vibes. Bad ones.”

“No one cares,” Damian says without moving.

Cady and Gretchen, high-functioning bastions of competence as always, bypass all of this and go straight for the kitchen. Janis hears the crinkle of bags, the soft thud of Tupperware being shuffled, the hiss of the fridge door opening and closing. She doesn’t even see them, but she knows, deep in her bones, that food is being organized alphabetically and beverages are being sorted by pH level or emotional alignment or whatever system Cady has quietly invented.

Janis is moving slower than usual, like she’s in a daze. She doesn’t sit. She doesn’t unpack anything. She doesn’t even look in the fridge like a normal person with hiking trauma and thirst. She just stands there in the middle of the hallway, staring blankly at nothing, her eyes a thousand miles away and her expression stuck somewhere between contemplative philosopher and recently abducted farmhand.

Regina, who’d come in right behind her, watches for a moment. “You okay there, Janis?”

Janis blinks and turns slowly. “I’m fine. I’m just…” she pauses, then gestures vaguely at the air in front of her. “I can’t stop thinking about Karen.”

“Okay.” Regina raises an eyebrow, intrigued but not surprised. “Why?”

“Because,” Janis whispers. “She told me the mushroom people are upset with Kai.”

Regina snorts. “Yeah, that tracks.”

“I mean like... what does that mean?” Janis demands, running a hand through her hair. “Who are they? Are they real? Are they metaphorical? Are they us? Is this a cult thing? A drug thing? Is she okay? Is anyone okay? Should we be worried?” She squints toward the living room where Karen had drifted earlier. “She might be psychic.”

Regina laughs low in her throat like she didn’t mean to but couldn’t help it. She drops her bag onto the floor and leans back against the wall, arms crossed, watching Janis with a look that’s somewhere between entertained and fond.

“She’s not on any drugs,” Regina says, smiling. “Karen’s just… Karen. She sees the world in her own way. You get used to it.”

“Used to it?” Janis asks, incredulous. “I think she might be on a first-name basis with moss. I watched her apologize to a rock. I don’t know if I should hug her or ask for her blessing.”

“She is eccentric,” Regina admits, nodding. “But she’s also the kindest person I’ve ever met. And probably the most emotionally intelligent.”

Janis squints at her. “You sure we’re talking about the same person? Karen? Cloud castle Karen?” 

That much is true though. Karen might talk about mushroom people and cloud castles and the politics of being emotionally buoyant, but she also remembers the exact way someone likes their coffee. She notices when people are upset before they even say a word. She always knows when to hug and when to sit next to you in silence and when to go outside and talk to a snail about your problems instead. She talks like someone who’s made peace with a thousand impossible dreams.

Janis presses her palms to her eyes. “I might be in love with her,” she mumbles.

Regina snorts.

“I’m kidding,” Janis mutters quickly. “Mostly. I just... should I be worried? Should we call someone? Gretchen? Is she like... Karen’s designated emotional support human? Celestial guardian? I need answers.”

“Gretchen does have emergency juice boxes in her bag for when Karen gets overwhelmed in public.”

“I knew it. She’s her handler.”

“Karen’s also the one who helped Gretchen get over her fear of parallel parking,” Regina adds. “She just... operates on a different frequency.”

They finally move into the living room and Janis flops into the nearest chair, staring into space with all the weariness of someone who’s just met a forest deity disguised as a girl. 

“I need to recalibrate my entire worldview,” she says.

Regina leans forward, one hand resting casually on the back of Janis’ chair. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t piss off the mushroom people.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Janis mutters. “I’m trying to stay on their good side.”

She looks up at Regina, still dazed, still unsure if this whole day has been real or just a very weird sunstroke fever dream.

“Smart girl,” Regina nods.

The thought stays with her. The mushroom people and their alleged irritation. The vague, unsettling sense that maybe Karen knows something they don’t. Maybe she’s a prophet or a witch. 

Janis stares out the window as the last rays of sunlight drip through the palm trees. She’s so fucking confused.