Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Regina George wouldn't consider herself an open book. Why would she? Not everyone on planet Earth needs to know her business. If she wanted to do a press release she’d just tell Gretchen. It's great until it isn't; they all want to be fed drops of her life like a bunch of starving baby birds, waiting with their jaws hanging. 

Now, for instance. Not her finest moment. So when some creep leans out the driver's side window of his white van (yes, seriously) and asks her if she's alright, Regina isn't really sure what to say.

Not Cady Heron wants to fuck my boyfriend, and I'm pretty sure my boyfriend wants to fuck her, too.

Not I forgot to fill up the car, and my dad's gonna kill me when I show up at home without it.

Not All I've had for the past twenty-eight hours is this nasty cranberry juice and, like, five shots of vodka, because Cosmo didn't specifically say anything about the diet not allowing for alcohol. Especially when it's Halloween. 

Not It's so fucking cold out here. I bet Cady Heron's parents hounded her to bring a jacket before she left the house, but Mom just told me I looked great. Now I kind of wish she'd forced me to bring a jacket. Fuck, my feet hurt. 

What she ends up saying instead, eyes stubbornly glued to the pavement, is, "I'm great." It's more of a mumble than anything; she should've paced herself with the alcohol. She isn't a sloppy drunk, not usually, but the lack of anything in her system not resembling cherry cough syrup meant that two shots in the edges of her vision had started to fray worse than the hem of her least favorite pair of jeans. She's spent her entire night chasing after an ex who might not even want her anymore, and how the hell is that even possible? And then she had to watch her two best friends slobber over boys they're too good for, and Gretchen's costume had kind of looked better than hers (a catsuit, of course, why hadn't she thought of that —) and everyone is so annoying and lost in their own little world that somehow nobody had even noticed when Regina had finally decided to slip out the back garden gate and head home on foot.

It isn't the worst night of her life or anything. But it's up there.   

"You sure?" the guy presses.

What she really wants to say is can you just fuck off, MY GOD.

Regina finally looks up at him. If she's going to skewer him, she'd better know what she's working with. 

Okay, so he isn't a total creep. Or: he probably is, but at least he's a creep her age. She doesn't have time to deal with the wounded ego of someone old enough to be her dad — or god forbid, her grandpa. Mom tells her to take that sort of attention in stride (“Once you lose it, baby girl, you lose it for good!”), but Regina knows better than that. Once you give a guy a nibble of attention, they'll never leave you alone. Like slobbery stray mutts. Ugh. 

Most guys, anyway.

"Yup," she insists, popping the p, feeling a little unmoored by the lack of any glaring flaws. The eyeliner's different, she guesses. And the fucking white van. "Just trying to get home."

"No chauffeur?"

She narrows her eyes. Who is this guy? There's something familiar at him the longer she studies his face, like being shown a diary entry she wrote in middle school. "I drive my own car. Maybe I just needed some fresh air. It's a beautiful night." She punctuates it with an accidental shiver.

The guy laughs. Regina dreams of slamming his smug face into the windshield. He must catch wind of that, too, because he sobers up quick, holding up his hands defensively.

"Sorry," he says. "I mean, just — seriously, let me give you a ride. Mom's mostly given up on trying to make a gentleman out of me, but she'd murder me if she found out I left a girl walking home by herself at this hour."

Regina blinks at him. It's been hours since her last shot, but her vision's still kinda swimmy. She's starving. She's freezing cold. She wants cheese fries and to crawl headfirst into her jacuzzi tub to hold herself under the water until she forgets Aaron Samuels' name, and she wants, mostly, to get in this freak's van. It doesn't matter that this is all wrong. It's backwards. Regina George isn't supposed to be the one wandering the streets half-drunk and alone, accepting rides from strangers. 

"It's not safe for girls to get in the car with strangers, especially this late at night. I've seen Dateline," Regina says, batting her lashes. She can feel her mascara starting to clump and fights the urge to scratch her entire face off. "How do I know you're not going to take me to your creepy torture basement and chain me up?" She crosses her arms over her chest in a weak show of resolve. 

"Strangers is a funny way to put it." The guy grins. "Hey, I liked that movie. Didn't take you for a horror fan."

She frowns. "I'm not. What movie?" 

Van Guy clicks his tongue. He looks tired, all of the sudden, but maybe it's just the eyeliner. Is he blushing? He totally is. It makes her feel a little better, a little more in control. "Look. You coming or not?"

Regina squints into the darkness one last time. She wishes she could squeeze her eyes shut and teleport home. She wishes she'd stayed at the party. Maybe she could've talked it out with Aaron. Maybe he'd be laughing with his arm around her shoulders right about now, and she’d be bored, sure, but she’d be happy.

She sighs. "Yeah. I guess I am."

They don't talk for most of the ride. There's a bunch of band equipment and garbage in the back that rattles obnoxiously with every bump in the road. Regina sort of wants to ask about it, but more than that she doesn't want to give him the idea that she's interested, which is why she also hasn't asked for his name. She took control of the radio the second her fake cotton tail hit the worn passenger seat — "Weezer, oh my God, are you serious?" — and they've been pretending not to sneak glances at one another over the musical stylings of the Pussycat Dolls for the past ten minutes. 

Because guys are always looking at her, sizing her up, measuring the inches around her waist and the length of her skirts. This guy's no different, even though he's clearly trying to hide it. It's only fair she gets to look back, right?

It's unfortunate that he's cute. Regina would rather eject herself from the moving car before saying that out loud, but it's true, even if the car reeks of pot and stale body spray, so familiarly boyish it makes her throat threaten to close, because then she's thinking of Aaron, who's really the last person on earth she wants to be thinking about right now. 

This guy reminds her of Aaron, actually. A little bit. Like, if Aaron lost ten pounds of muscle and started wearing eyeliner and also started giving a shit about where she was on Halloween night. 

Mostly he reminds her of Janis. Grinning, cocky, smudged around the edges. Fighting to keep his tongue from lolling out like a cartoon, desperate to not look desperate. Jesus Christ, maybe Aaron is actually the second-worst person to be thinking about right now. She fights the urge to bend at the waist and hide her head between her fishnet-clad knees. 

Then her stomach growls.

The guy's mouth twitches and Regina wants to claw the look off his face. "Was that y-"

"I'm fucking starving," she snaps before she can stop herself. "I'm on this cranberry juice diet where I can't have anything but that for three whole days." 

The guy raises his eyebrows at her. "Sounds pretty brutal," he says.

"Yeah, well," Regina hums, crossing her arms over her traitorous stomach and willing it to quiet down, "It's not so bad. I'm trying to lose three pounds."

He casts her another sidelong glance before popping open the center console and plunging his hand in. When it emerges, he's got a handful of shiny wrapped Halloween candy. He holds it out to her. "Here."

She huffs, trying in vain to tear her gaze away. It's not possible that she can actually smell the candy — creamy peanut butter and soft gooey caramel and chocolate that would melt so nicely on her tongue — through the colorful wrappers. The secondhand high is getting to her. "No." 

"Seriously?"

Regina glares at him. Clenches her jaw. "Three. Pounds." Boys never understand. Aaron skips breakfast once and loses three pounds; she so much looks at a slice of cake and gains five. It was never like that when she was a kid — but things change once you become a woman, Mom says while she pinches her arms in the bathroom mirror.

Mom’s two seconds away from climbing inside her asshole at all times, but she’s right about some things. 

The guy shrugs. Gives Regina one last once-over that makes her wish for the millionth time that she had a jacket. "Suit yourself."

He's barely moved his hand away before she wrenches a Reese's cup from his grasp. It feels like failure as she stares at it there in her palm, its orange-and-yellow wrapper blinking up at her accusingly. She tears it open and shoves it between her teeth before she can overthink it any further. Fuck three pounds, fuck cranberry juice or cranberry juice cocktail or what-the-fuck-ever, fuck Cosmo magazine, fuck the concept of calories and carbohydrates, fuck this corset. Fuck Aaron Samuels and Cady Heron and her wide-eyed, gag-worthy who, me? schtick. Fuck the Statistics test tomorrow she didn’t bother studying for. And fuck Halloween. 

"God," she moans, "that's good." And it is. She can't even muster up the energy to feel embarrassed. It's not like she's ever going to see the guy again.

That makes the guy laugh, but it isn't unkind. Regina knows a thing or two about mean laughter, and this isn't that. So she tries to quell the urge to spit venom at him, even though the idea of being laughed at still makes her bristle. Her head is starting to ache. She reaches over and takes another piece of candy — a mini Kit-Kat, this time — while he unwraps himself a Twix bar. He grins at her again with a mouthful of caramel.

Regina can't even look at him. Her face feels hot. Everything feels hot. She peers out the window instead and feels her heart lurch. Or maybe it's her stomach. Both, probably. If she's lucky she'll puke everything up in someone's trash somewhere in the two blocks between here and home. "You can just let me out here." 

"You worried your parents are gonna see you crawling out of a white van at three in the morning on a school night?"

Regina rolls her eyes. "Please. Mom's knocked out with her cocktail of choice by eleven, and Dad's gonna be more worried about where my car is. But if my sister sees, she'll rat me out." The car rolls to a stop near the curb, and she reaches for the door, treasuring the last few seconds of muggy warmth before she braves the bitter October — November now, technically, she reminds herself — chill. "This is the part where I say thanks for the ride, I guess."

"That's what most normal people would say, yeah."

She pauses with her fingers on the handle. "You're pretty bold. I could still ruin your life, you know." She sniffs. "If I wanted to." 

He actually waggles his eyebrows at her. "Do you want to?" 

It makes her laugh despite herself. "Ask me in the morning." As if she'll ever see him again. She launches herself into the cold and doesn't look back. Otherwise maybe she'd be tempted to stay, which is — completely impossible and ridiculous and humiliating, and she's had enough humiliation for one night.

Regina's halfway down the block, thanks for the ride and for the candy still simmering on her tongue alongside the taste of chocolate wafers, staunchly ignoring the fact that his van is still idling on the curb when she hears him call: "You seriously don't remember me?" 

Chapter Text

"And then I was also your lab partner last year in Chem..."

Regina's eyes widen for maybe a fraction of a second, then narrow. She reaches across the dash and shoves at his shoulder. "You're lying."

Rodrick relents halfway through a Kit-Kat. "Okay, that one's a lie," he admits. "I didn't even take Chem last year — I had to retake Bio. You know how it is." You're fucking blowing it, dude. He clears his throat. "But the other part is true."

(And it is true, the other part: the part where he sat next to her in Mrs. Foster's fourth grade classroom. Thank god for alphabetic seating: George, Heffley. They weren't friends, but they were friend-ly. He'd thought so, anyway, when she wasn't rolling her eyes at him. She told him she wanted to cut open the stomach of her new Holiday Barbie to see what her insides looked like. She's boring, anyway, she'd said, her tiny face pinched with displeasure. Daddy got me the one with brown hair this year. Who wants a brunette Barbie? Rodrick, half in-love as any nine going on ten year-old could be, had nabbed a chintzy plastic serrated saw from a spare pumpkin carving set Mom kept on the top shelf of the pantry and planned to deliver it at Regina's feet like a loyal hound. She'd have thanked him for it, probably, if he'd actually had the chance to give it to her and hadn't been caught by Dad halfway out the front door. He'd been grounded for, like, a million years. A month, whatever. In hindsight, he's grateful it had gone that way instead of ending up in expulsion.

He'd tried to tell Regina about it that day in class, hoping the effort would at least impress her. I got grounded for you, you know. She'd wrinkled her nose at him and said, That's really stupid, and then she hadn't spoken to him again until she called him Roger while signing his yearbook at the end of the year. He's never gotten that close to her again — she turns herself into more of an impossible thing to touch all the time.)

"I know," Regina agrees, nodding. "I remember now." Which is pretty crazy, really, because he’d only realized as he was telling it how embarrassing of a thing it was to be hung up on for eight years. 

She rubs her lips together thoughtfully, which would be distracting under any circumstances but is especially distracting now that she's been reapplying a fresh coat of lip gloss every five minutes, starting from the second she'd snagged the joint from between his fingers. She'd almost coughed up a lung after the first hit, but he's gotta hand it to her: she's determined. There's a sticky ring of gloss around it from the constantly re-applications that has to be on purpose, like a dog marking its territory or something, and is it bad that the idea threatens to make Rodrick so hard he passes out and brains himself on the steering wheel?

Maybe, but it's still true. She can mark up whatever shit of his she wants. 

He just really can't believe she's here. In his van. In hot pants and bunny ears. Sitting cross-legged in his passenger seat, smoking his weed, eating his Halloween candy.

Rodrick's trying to memorize all of it for when he wakes up. Alternatively: for when he doesn't, because either way, there's no way in fuck this is ever happening again.

He's just glad she wasn't interested enough to ask how retaking Bio last year went, because then he'd have to admit that...well, he's currently on try numero tres, and it's still too early to tell for sure, but it isn't looking great. At this rate he’s gonna be taking Chem when he’s thirty. 

"I should really stop eating these," Regina says in between chews. They're down to Butterfingers now, scraping the literal bottom of the barrel.

"Hey, eat as much as you want," Rodrick says. "But if it's gonna bother you that much, we'll go for a jog in the morning." He's never voluntarily run in his life. 

Regina snorts and polishes the chocolate from her fingers with the tip of her tongue, and Rodrick definitely isn't staring. "I don't run," she says. "Gretchen loves it, but I'd seriously rather die. Who wants to be seen all sweaty and mouth breathing like that?" She shudders, like just the thought of it slips an ice cube down her back. Don't think about her back or her bare shoulders or her skin, you fuckin' cree-

Her eyes narrow; her spine goes suddenly ramrod straight. "So you're saying you think I do need to lose three pounds?" 

"No!" God, fuck. Shit. Abort. Abort! "No, totally not, I just th-"

And she totally doesn't, but also, what fuckin' difference is three pounds? Rodrick guesses it’s probably one of those woman things, like a few years ago when, the week after Christmas, Mom went out back and smashed the bathroom scale to pieces with a rubber mallet at five in the morning. They'd gotten hit with a noise complaint from the neighbors, which Rodrick had thought was pretty funny — over dinner he’d joked, Hey, at least I’m not the only one in the house with a noise complaint now. It had been less funny to Mom, and he’d gotten grounded for two weeks for that one. Greg got scot-fucking-free, of course, even though the little shit had definitely chuckled at it, too. Even Dad grinned. 

"God." Regina's posture slackens, and she drops her face into her hands. "Sorry." Then she stiffens again, like it isn't what she'd meant to say. Maybe it's just that she isn't used to saying sorry. 

"It's cool," he says, then changes the subject so swiftly he has to fight not to be impressed with himself. "So, did you end up doing it?"

Regina peeks up at him, skeptical. "Doing what?"

"Dissecting your Holiday Barbie."

A slow smile creeps over her face, sort of weird and childish in a way that makes her look like a different person. Still hotter than hot, obviously. Just different. "Yeah, I did."

"Were your folks pissed?"

But she just shrugs. "I dunno. I guess. They never gave me brunette Barbies after that, though." She studies her nails.

Figures. Spoiled brat. Still, Rodrick's curious: "And? What were your surgical findings?"

That actually makes her laugh. "What do you mean what did I find? What do you think I found?"

"Well, I wouldn't know!" he says defensively, holding up his hands. "I've never dissected a Barbie doll like some serial killer befo- ow!"

"You're an asshole."

"So? No sparkly pink Barbie guts?"

Regina rolls her eyes, just like she's always done. Rodrick fawns, just like he always has. 

"Nope," she says, picking at the sequins on her corset. "Just more plastic."

It gets kind of quiet after that. Too quiet. Awkward quiet or sad quiet, he can't tell. He offers her the last piece of candy, a slightly smushed Tootsie Roll, but she just waves his hand away. He's got the worst cotton mouth of his life, but he chokes it down anyway.  

"Roger," she says after a while, eyes all big and earnest all of the sudden.

"Rodrick."

"I'm making a joke," she says. "I can do that, you know."

"Sure." He flinches when she lands another smack against his bicep. "Alright, you're a comedian!"

"Ugh. Rodrick. Can I ask you something?" She's chewing her lip now. "And you have to promise to answer honestly."

He's not sure he likes this game. But what is he gonna do? Say no? Ha. "Cross my heart, princess." Princess? She's going to strangle you for real, bozo.

But she doesn't. She doesn't even hit him this time, even though he probably deserves it. The corners of her mouth turn upwards briefly before she's back to looking — well, looking kind of distraught, honestly. She gives him those big sad fluttery eyes and asks, "Do you think I'm a bitch?"

I mean, yeah. Rodrick swallows. His ego can take a hell of a bruising, but he's not sure how much more his arm can bear. "Honestly?" He scratches the back of his neck. "No, I don't."

Regina rolls her eyes. "Whatever."

"Alright, honestly? A little bit." What else is he supposed to say? "I've been scared shitless of you for years, but you're more bark than bite."

"It's only because I'm high." 

"How high?"

She takes a moment to consider it. "Like somebody tied the string of a balloon to my brain."

"Fair enough." Rodrick laughs, and then somehow plucks up the courage to take the joint — gently! — from her manicured fingers. He stares for a little too long at the ring of her lipgloss around it before taking a hit. "Why d'you ask?"

Regina just looks at him. Then at the joint. Then back at him. Disbelief flickers in her eyes. “It’s Halloween,” she says, all deadpan like he’s an idiot. Which — he is, alright, but he’s really trying here. God forbid a guy be out of his depth.

“It’s Halloween,” Rodrick agrees, leaning back against the window, half to look nonchalant and half because he needs some fucking air. He's so nervous he's starting to sweat. It's like circling the ring with a lion.

“I’m not supposed to be alone on fucking Halloween.” 

“Yet here you are,” Rodrick blurts without thinking. He considers opening the door on himself and letting his skull crack open on the pavement.

But she looks more startled than offended, he thinks. Which is...crazy. It's pretty crazy. Maybe he's more high than he thought. Or she is.

“I mean, I —” he adds quickly. “That makes two of us, I guess.”

She frowns. “You didn’t have plans? What about your little band buddies?” she asks, like she didn't learn he even had a band five minutes ago. He'd sorta hoped he'd mention the name and it'd jog her memory, but she'd just wrinkled her nose. Löded Diper? You're fucking with me, right? To which Rodrick had to insist, shamefully, that he wasn't, and she’d shot down his offer to play a song for her by threatening to scream that she was being abducted. (It seemed like a bad idea to say that the music definitely would’ve drowned out her screams, so he’d just sulked about it for a few minutes instead. The band’s weathered harsher blows. Way harsher. It’s whatever.) 

“Had them,” he admits. “Was trying to crash this party on Blackbird. Some guy named Chris' place? But I got stopped at the door.” He snorts. “At the fuckin' door. Who’s got time to be a bouncer for a house party?”

She's laughing again, not moping. Doesn't matter which part of it is funny: he's fucking making Regina George laugh. He's on top of the fucking world. "I was just there. A costume would've helped your case, maybe. Maybe." She looks him up and down pointedly. "Then again, maybe not."

Rodrick faux-gasps. "Oh, shit. Is that what the bunny tail is for? Man, I wish we’d been reacquainted sooner. I could’ve been your plus one.”

She has to muffle her laughter into her hand. “Never in a million years." At least she's honest. "But if you ask me, you lucked out. It was a shitty party.”

”Now you’re just protecting my ego.”

She flutters her lashes at him. Fuck, she’s pretty. “Why would I do that?”

He grins. "Beats me." Offers her the joint again just to be polite and is surprised when she takes it. "What happened at this party that was so bad, anyway? You seemed pretty upset."

"Something terrible."

"But bad enough that you thought you'd be better off stumbling home in the dark?"

"Worse," Regina says seriously, exhaling smoke like a dragon. "Bad enough that I willingly got into this loser's gross van."

Rodrick whistles low. "Phew. Sounds rough."

"My boyfriend wants to fuck the new girl." The speed at which it comes out and the look on her face both say: I didn't mean to say that.

Rodrick swallows thickly. "Your, uh. Your boyfriend. That's...that's, um, that guy -"

"Aaron."

"I thought you broke up with him?"

She whirls on him. "Who said that?"

This time he's the one laughing. Not on purpose. It just — slips out. "Everyone says that, Regina." It's the first time he's said her name all night. It feels dangerous, the sort of thing you could get addicted to if you're not careful. He doesn't know how to be careful. Not while he's high, not ever. How can he be? She's the kind of girl they write songs about. She's the kind of girl he writes songs about. 

"Right," she says. Sort of quiet. "Whatever. That's not real."

Oh-kay. The whole world a ball of yarn batted between her cat paws. Not real. What is? He almost wants to ask, doesn’t. Just more plastic.

"Well," Rodrick says, and then stops. He doesn't know where he's going with this. Your bark's worse than your bite, he'd said, but he's not totally clueless. He knows that's not always true where Regina George is concerned. He's just lucky enough to have stayed off her radar for this long. 

"Well," Regina echoes. She raises her brows.

"Well," he says again, and they're both kind of giggling now, the way they might have when they were kids with desks two feet apart, except he's pretty sure he never made her laugh back then the way she's laughed tonight — and maybe that's just the weed —, and he's definitely sure she never looked at him the way she's looking at him now.

Again: probably the weed. But still.

"...if that is true, you know, about him going after that new girl. His loss, you know?"

And he’s not even trying to white knight or anything. Not really. It’s just true. He’d have to have a literal chunk of his brain missing not to recognize that.

The look on her face is the one he'd hoped to find when he handed her that stupid plastic pumpkin carving tool in fourth grade. Better late than fucking never. 

He doesn't know, exactly, how she winds up in his lap. He knows he didn't put her there, because he can't feel his arms. Or his legs. Or his brain, frankly. And considering the fact that Regina George is in his fucking lap, her brain's taking an extended vacation, too. The joint goes out the crack in the window. Her fingers are on his jaw. 

"If you breathe a word of this to anyone," she says, so close to his face Rodrick thinks he might die, "I will ruin your life."

"I can keep a secret," he swears. He’s just trying to keep himself from panting. This can't be happening for real. It just can't be, but it's going to be one hell of a dream regardless. "I lie to my parents, like, all the time."

She doesn't kiss him. She doesn't mention the fact that he's already hard. She takes one of his hands in both of hers, manicured thumbs stroking curiously over his knuckles for several agonizing seconds before she directs it down the front of her pants.

Warm. She’s so warm. Against his hand, draped over him, just — warm. Warm when she tips her head forward and puts her face in his neck. Warm where one of her hands is still guiding his, where the other is braced against his shoulder. 

He’s done this before. Not, like, exceptionally, but he’s been around the block a few times. Backseats of cars and basements and the occasional port-a-potty at a punk show, fingers and mouths, a knee over his shoulder, hairspray-crunchy hair between his fingers.

He curls his fingers instinctively against the lace of her panties, (of course they’re fucking lace; he wants her so badly he’s going to kill himself), prodding, but he’s surprised when she grips his fingers tightly in her own and flattens them.

”No,” she says, and he can’t see her face but he doesn’t need to to know her teeth are gritted in frustration. "Just — like this." She presses their hands flat and rocks against his palm, exhaling a shuddery sigh into his throat. 

Fuck. Fucking fuck, that’s so hot. She works herself against him, gasping and whining into his neck, and Rodrick wishes he had, like, a dozen more hands. The one down her pants and the other around her waist to keep her from tumbling off his lap aren't enough. He needs another hand for the back of her neck and one for her tits and one for her ass and one for his own fucking dick, because the friction is pretty good, especially with his zipper digging into his crotch every time she rocks forward, and the reality of having her here in his lap is even better, but still: it isn't exactly a hand on his dick.

"Hey," he chokes out, thumbing over the curve of her waist, sort of lost in the feeling of her actually getting wet against his palm. Making herself wet. "Hey, Regina, this is...this is inconvenient, I know, but I sort of need so-"

"God, shut up." 

And then she kisses him. He'd thank Mom for making him brush before leaving the house earlier if it wouldn't require all this fucking context. It doesn't matter if that was hours ago; it's not like she tastes like fucking — flowers, or whatever the fuck girls are supposed to taste like, either. Mostly she tastes like stale booze and shitty weed, chocolate and sticky strawberry lipgloss he's sure is getting smeared all over his chin with how messy she's being. It's the hottest thing on the planet. Way better than flowers. A real flesh-and-blood girl, kissing him with the same mouth that once said she wanted to look at her doll’s insides. He’d been as unnerved by her then as he is now, just in a different way, and when she settles back against him with her knees on either side of his thighs, smearing wet against the heel of his hand — holy fuck, ho-ly fuck — for some reason all Rodrick can think about is bright pink rubbery Barbie guts. 

It's not that thought that makes him come. It isn't. It's just — all of it. He can't help it.

"Did you just —" she's muttering against his mouth, lip curling into a disgusted snarl, but then he's pulling her back down again, letting her ride his hand, urging her to buck her hips, smearing his mouth over hers and then down her throat where she tastes like salt, because he isn't going out like this, okay? He just isn't.

"Yeah," he breathes, hips still stuttering a little, "yeah, I did, fuck, sorry, just — let me get you there, okay? Just take what you need, baby."

He doesn't expect that to be what makes her come.

Maybe she's faking it.

But he doesn't think so. 

She bites down on his lip so hard he's sure he's going to be dripping blood down his chin like a vampire. His blood on both their chins. Then her whole body quivers and her knees knock painfully against his hipbones and she cries out this wounded puppy noise and he feels it, fucking feels her spill against his hand, hot and wet and he knows this moment is gonna follow him into every jerk off session for the rest of his life. 

Outside the van, the rest of the world is dead asleep. Inside, the only sound is the mismatched cadences of their breathing. Warm static hangs around them like reverb. He hasn't stopped wondering if any second now he isn't gonna just wake up on the basement couch, drool drying on his chin. 

"You know," Regina says once they've both caught their breath and Rodrick's pulled his hand out of her pants. Her cheeks are still flushed. She lost her bunny ears at some point, and her hair is frizzed; she tries to smooth it down to no avail, then sighs and shrugs and gives up. (Who else on Earth gets to see her like this? Not Aaron Samuels, that’s for fucking sure. Not tonight, anyway.) "You said you never made it into the party."

"I didn't," Rodrick confirms. She doesn't knock his hands from her hips, so he keeps them there. He can feel the blood crusting on his bottom lip. 

"So what exactly were you doing driving around by yourself at this hour?"

"Oh, duh. I was on my way to pick up my shitstain of a brother from his friend's place." On his phone, if he were to open it right now: HI HONEY. KNO U R BUSY BUT IF YOU WOULDN'T MIND LEAVING WARD'S EARLY TO PICK GREG UP FROM ROWLEY'S. THEY GOT CAUGHT WATCHING A SCARY MOVIE :/ :/ :/ AND ROWLEY IS VERY UPSET... MR JEFFERSON THINKS IT WOULD BE BEST FOR GREGORY TO COME HOME. THANK YOU LOVE YOU XOXO MOM

He’d agreed to do it, of course, because he’s a good, helpful son. Also because he needed to intercept Greg before he could rat Rodrick out for loaning him the movie. 

"And...?" Regina arches a brow.

Rodrick blinks. His vision goes out of focus, then lands on a tree out the window. "Shit." He scrubs a hand over his face. "Oh, fuck."

Regina shrieks. "Oh, my god!" She claps a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. "Rodrick. You gonna get in trouble?"

Oh, yeah. He's in trouble. He's dead. Deader than dead the second he walks through the front door, and Greg's gonna dance on his grave. "Totally fucked." He grins up at her despite himself.

And then she’s grinning, too, and dragging him back in — or maybe he’s dragging her back in, or maybe they’re both pulling at one another, sucked in like...shit, he doesn’t know, fucking magnets or something, like the sort of dream you slam they invented the snooze button for. Just five more minutes, please. 

Greg can wait.