The first time Hayley heard their music, she turned it off. She knew they were on Fueled by Ramen, she knew they were already generating buzz; she just didn't care.

It wasn't a snob thing. Hayley wasn't delusional or stupid; she didn't think just because Riot! had gone gold that she was some kind of pinnacle of musical achievement or whatever. She just wasn't too into the music, and she'd never been big on pretending to like a record just because of the logo stamped on the CD.

She was trying to talk Zach into teaching her drums. It was fantastically unsuccessful, mostly because she didn't think it was nearly as funny as Josh did when she stuck his sticks up her nose. Zach could joke about everything except his instrument. "Fine, assh - jerkwad," she said. "I'll find someone else to teach me."

For kicks, she kept one of the sticks in when she wandered through the camp. Warped reminded her of the Christian camp her parents had sent her to one summer, only with less Jesus and more beer. She hadn't managed to tell her parents yet how much she liked this version better.

No one even commented on the stick, not until she turned backwards and ran straight into a girl she could've sworn hadn't been there two seconds ago. "Crap! Sorry," she said, turning around. "That'll teach me to walk backwards, right?"

The girl blinked. "How do you get it to stay in when you're walking?"

"Huh? Oh, right." She laughed and pulled it out, wiping it on her jeans. "You just kind of squinch your nose, you know? Like you smell something nasty."

"Right," the girl said. She didn't sound really pissed or mocking - which plenty of people would, girl or guy, so Hayley wasn't sure why this one didn't - just confused. "Have fun with that."

It occurred to her to actually look at the girl. She was dressed normally, almost like a tech except way too neat. "Who are you?" she said quickly, before the girl could walk away.

"Charlotte," the girl said, but she kept walking.

Maybe she had someplace to go. Hayley shrugged, stuck the stick in her back pocket, and kept going.

||

"Sometimes?"

"Sometimes what?"

"Charlotte." Josh shook his head. "You're so clueless about the weirdest stuff."

"You mean the girl I met? No one's actual last name is Sometimes."

"It's a stage name." He flicked her forehead. "She's too cool for you anyway."

"Shut up and hand me the hammer."

The finished stool wasn't exactly pretty - a stool cobbled together from boards the techs had given her and crappy cheap nails was kind of destined to be ugly - but she stood on it and fistpumped anyway. "Hah! Take that."

"We don't even keep anything in the highest shelves," Josh said, looking up at her.

"Not the point." She leaped off the stool, tackling him to the floor.

She didn't see Charlotte around. Not that she was looking, of course, but if she had been, she knew for a fact that she wouldn't have seen her. It was a little weird doing Warped as a band everybody knew about; she didn't know nearly as much rock history as, say, Zach, but she knew what happened to bands after they had That CD, the one that got big. She didn't want that to happen with them.

Not wanting it to happen manifested itself in her bossing the rest of the band around more than usual, to the point where one night Jeremy took her aside and said, as seriously as Jeremy ever said anything, "Take a walk, okay?"

"But -"

Jeremy just raised his eyebrows.

"Fine," she said, but she punched his arm. "I'm just trying to. I don't know."

"Just walk."

It was good advice and she knew it. She made a face but followed it, heading out past the buses and vans.

She saw Charlotte leaning against a fence, of course. 'Take a walk' probably didn't mean 'interact with people you barely know and might piss off', but it would at least be interesting, and get her mind off the band thing. "Hey," she said, standing awkwardly.

"Hey. Grab a piece of fence." She took a sip of the beer she was holding. It would look a lot more intimidating if she didn't have a crazy straw stuck in it. "It's not even that rusty."

"Thanks," Hayley said, leaning against it. "Nice, um. Drink."

Charlotte didn't even blink. "I like straws."

"I expected you to smoke, to be honest." Hayley frowned. "I'm not sure why."

"I expected you to be shy. And not prone to sticking shit up your nose. Is it true you guys don't curse?"

That got brought up pretty much every time Hayley talked to someone not her band, so she didn't know why it surprised her to hear it now. "Yeah, it's...complicated. The cussing thing, the drinking thing."

"There's a drinking thing?"

Oh. "We don't drink," she said, feeling like the lamest person in the world.

Charlotte nodded. "Okay," she said, and took another sip.

Hayley watched the liquid loop and wiggle up the straw. "I gotta go," she said. "Nice, um. Nice talking to you?"

It wasn't a smirk, which Hayley was grateful for because she hated the feeling that people were messing with her. But it was close to a smirk. A non-mean one, if that kind of thing was possible. "Definitely."

||

"So," Josh said two days later.

"That's not a good so. What?"

"It's kind of good." He dropped down next to her, but she didn't bother to sit up. "Charlotte was asking around about you."

"Why? How do you know?"

"Apparently she wants your life's story, and because people think we're dating."

That actually made her turn her head; he shrugged. "It makes people tell me stuff about you. I don't know."

"I just don't get why she'd want information on me." Hayley grinned. "Maybe she wants to assassinate me, you know, take my band."

"Yeah." Josh sighed. "You've mentioned that she drinks beer through a crazy straw six times, you know."

Josh's problem - or Hayley's problem with Josh, really, but she liked the first phrasing a heck of a lot better - was that he could read her way too well. She shook her head. "Yeah, she's cool. You know how I get."

"I do."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He touched her shoulder. "It's different on tour," he said. "You don't have to tell your parents, if...it's different. You know it's different."

"That doesn't mean I want to," she said belligerently. "God, Josh, come on."

"What?"

"Do you really think -" She sat up. "Even if, hypothetically, I...whatever. Even if I did. Do you think it would just be tour? Seriously? You know me."

She had no idea why he looked so sad when he hugged her.

||

"Hey."

"Jesus!" she said, and dropped the mic.

"I'd feel bad, but I'm pretty sure you can afford to replace it." Charlotte leaned against the wall, looking amused. "Are you always this jumpy?"

Hayley glanced up. "Sorry," she muttered, fifteen years of church looming large in her mind. "Only when people sneak up on me."

"I didn't sneak." She looked Hayley up and down, playing with her dogtags. Hayley looked away. "You should sing me something."

"What? Why?"

Charlotte shrugged. "Because I want to hear it?"

Hayley felt like the new kid here, which was so completely stupid it actually made her mad. "Then watch the show," she said, and went to find the guys.

She wasn't expecting to actually see Charlotte backstage, but she stayed for the whole set. Afterwards, Hayley put a towel over her head and mopped the sweat off her face. "Satisfied?"

"Mostly."

She wished that didn't sound so...suggestive. She wished she didn't know it sounded suggestive; wasn't church supposed to make you immune to that kind of thing? "Really."

"Yeah." Charlotte grabbed the towel and pulled if off her head, too quickly for her to react. "Hey, you should come with me."

There was no good way to say "stop saying things that make me think of sex that will send me to hell", so Hayley didn't. "Where are we going?"

Charlotte's smile was every bit the kind of mischief Hayley's parents had lectured her about before putting her in the hands of her label. "You'll see."

||

"A park?"

"Better than the parking lot." Charlotte sat down on the grass, stretching out. "Come on, a patch of grass no one's puked in is hard to find back there."

Hayley sat down warily. "I'm not saying I think you're right, or anything."

"I heard you were bossy." She reached out too quickly again, pulling Hayley down. "Come on, just relax."

She tried to. It was just starting to look like evening, the shadows getting long and the mosquitoes coming out. She took a deep breath and pressed against the grass.

"Why do you keep doing what I say?"

She turned her head; Charlotte was looking at the sky.

"I don't know," Hayley said finally. "There's no reason to say no, I guess."

"But you've never done anything but walk up to me. It's a little weird."

You're a little weird, Hayley definitely didn't say. "I guess."

She wasn't expecting Charlotte to turn her head. They were close, and she could feel her eyes get wider.

"You know what this is about, right?"

She did; she also knew where this conversation was going, so they didn't really need to have it. That was the rationale she used with herself, the line of reasoning that made leaning forward and kissing Charlotte make sense.

Charlotte didn't move. She'd remember that for a long time; it was important, even if at the time she didn't really know why. She kissed back a little, and she touched Hayley's cheek, but Hayley was the one who eventually opened her mouth, and Hayley was the one who pushed her back and moved half on top of her.

"Moving a little fast, aren't you?"

"I'm not moving anywhere," Hayley said, and kissed her again.

It was a gutsy line, and she would have been proud of it if she wasn't distracted by the way Charlotte was kissing back, pressing against her and running a hand up and down Hayley's back. "Hey, um," she said a minute later, and Charlotte smiled and tugged her hair.

Okay. She leaned back a little. "I haven't actually," she said.

"I've only kissed." She splayed a hand on Hayley's breast, palm rubbing her nipple. Hayley jerked, half in surprise and half because God. "But I think we can figure it out."

In the end they didn't do much. Slow, almost lazy making out was proving to be surprisingly fun, and she didn't think either of them really felt like pushing it further.

They didn't hold hands walking back or anything. That would have been weirder than the kissing, for Hayley.

||

"I just don't get it. You're a kid."

Hayley stopped screwing around with the hotel TV long enough to give Charlotte the flattest look she could. "So are you."

"Yeah, but you're..." Charlotte gestured with newly-black nails. "You're cheerful. Flat-out wholesome. I don't know how you've stayed like that."

The TV was a lost cause. She gave up and sat back, sprawling and looking up at Charlotte. "You mean the cussing? The drinking?"

"Or lack thereof, on both counts. What gives?"

She shrugged. She'd met a ton of people like Charlotte in the scene, enough to know that her band's struggle to stay at least kind of true to their roots was closer to the flat-ironed hair and heavy eyeliner than a lot of people realized. "Just our thing. It doesn't make us kids, you know."

The look Charlotte gave her was doubtful at best.

"It doesn't," she said. "Come on, do I come off as a little girl? Being - upbeat, happy, whatever you want to call us - that's not being a kid. Living differently is still living."

It wasn't the smartest thing she'd ever said, but Charlotte got a funny look on her face anyway. "Hey," she said, "come here."

Hayley went. This wasn't their first time with a hotel bed, but it still felt prickly to let herself be pulled down like this, to feel Charlotte pressing against her - Charlotte, who was very definitely a girl and who made Hayley squirm and try for friction against her clit.

"There's a lot I don't say to you," Charlotte said thoughtfully. "You know?"

Hayley shook her head.

Charlotte traced a finger down her side, fitting a hand against her hip and ducking her head to kiss Hayley's neck. "That you're gorgeous. That I want to eat you out. Stuff like that."

It felt weird to hear. It forced her to think about Josh, her parents, stuff she wasn't sure she'd ever be ready to sort out, even though she knew she couldn't just do causal tour flings.

It also made her want to get naked right there, though, and that was definitely the better train of thought. "So," she said, reaching down and pulling at Charlotte's shirt, "we should take advantage of hotel time."

"Any ideas as to how?"

"You'll see," Hayley said, pushing her back and tossing her shirt on the floor. Charlotte squirmed a little when Hayley went straight for her pants. "Hold still...or don't," she added, watching Charlotte play with her own nipples.

"You'd better do what I think you're going to do, or I'll be pissed," Charlotte said. She sounded like she was trying to be flip, but her voice was way too breathy to pull it off.

"Sure," Hayley said, and lay down, kissing Charlotte's stomach and her hip.

It was a little funny how just licking Charlotte's thigh could make Charlotte squirm. It was even funnier how Hayley herself was turned on, enough that rocking her hips against the bed actually felt really good.

"This is so weird," she said quietly, brushing a finger over Charlotte's pussy.

"Yeah, um." She actually reached down, spreading her two fingers so Hayley could see (smell, feel. God) how wet she was. "Weird's the wrong word."

"Just tell me if I screw up, please," Hayley said, and licked around Charlotte's fingers.

"Not so much," Charlotte said. Her fingers curled in Hayley's hair. "Just...my clit."

The hair pulling shouldn't have turned her on even more, but it definitely did. She licked up, sucking lightly on Charlotte's clit, trying to remember what motions got her a gasp or a moan. She wouldn't remember everything, she knew, and the thought of practicing more made her press up against Charlotte's hand.

"Fingers?" she said quietly, looking up.

"Please," Charlotte said.

One finger made her squirm; two had her pressing her hips up, fingers actually twisting Hayley's hair. Hayley curled her fingers, rocking her hand gently and tracing her tongue around Charlotte's clit.

"Harder. I won't break, Hayley, you know - you know."

And yeah, she did. She thrust her fingers a little harder, matching the rhythm with her tongue. It felt weird but not even a little bit wrong, and when Charlotte started to come, shaking and bucking against Hayley's mouth, she looked up and pressed her thighs together, watching greedily.

"Get up here," Charlotte said, slow and lazy. Hayley moved up, resisting the urge to wipe her mouth. It paid off when Charlotte kissed her, biting her lip and draping a leg over Hayley's hips.

"Get your pants off," Charlotte said quietly. Hayley scrambled to obey.

When Charlotte went straight for her clit she caught her breath and hid her face in Charlotte's neck. All the breath training in the world wasn't helping her not make an idiot out of herself right now.

"Look at me," Charlotte said. "Come on, Hayley, I want to watch."

She couldn't say no to that. She pulled back and looked Charlotte in the eye, right when Charlotte thrust her fingers in and almost pinched her clit, hard and sharp and more than enough to push Hayley over the edge.

Charlotte moved back a little afterwards, pulling the covers up over them. Hayley only hesitated for a second before pushing the covers up and wiggling closer. "Okay?"

She smiled when Charlotte did, tilting her head until it just touched Charlotte's shoulder.

"Okay," Charlotte said quietly.

Charlotte, to Hayley's surprise, fell asleep first.

||

"So what are you guys?" Josh asked a few days later.

"Shut up and hand me the mic," Hayley said.

It was a good enough answer for both of them.